"I had the very special privilege of intelligence gathering during the first contact war so I would get to see our enemy up close. Sometimes I had the chilling feeling that we where fighting ourselves", - Unknown Intelligence Officer onboard the SSV Udaloy

Water Hauler Canterbury, John Grissom
Several hundred light years from earth, a lone ship gently cruised through the massive ring system surrounding a gas giant. Several kilometre wide chunks of ice where crushed, mined and transferred into strong carbon fiber rigging on the walls, while electrolytic separators split the valuable water into oxygen (for use to breathing) and hydrogen which made an excellent fuel source when cryogenically condensed into rocket fuel for atmospheric craft and short range docking pods. Also for use in RCS thrusters.

If you wanted to get filthy rich fast in the Systems Alliance, water mining was probably one of the better ways, as pirates would often neglect hoarding water ice in favour of precious metals like platinum, titanium, gold, silver and other compounds. Asteroid stations built onto the floating space mountains always needed oxygen and hydrogen. Coolant for nuclear and antimatter reactors was one of the largest industries, and oxygen was practically as expensive as gold in certain areas. Generally many stations had large backups of oxygen, and used Lichen based hydroponics tanks to reproduce oxygen, but buying it was more reliable than plant farming. Specially considering the fairly large market for CO2 which could be shipped to planets being terraformed.

In short, Poseidon H2O Sources was a fairly well known company throughout the outer colonies, as it had shown itself to be a reliable source of water. It made good use of its fleet of water haulers, each almost a kilometre long. Don't let the size trick you though, as working on one of these floating freight haulers wasn't glamorous. Many weren't even equipped with FTL drives, as they where energy intensive, and they where basically plasma thrusters attached to giant hangar bays which hosted massive racks to carry the ice, a few high pressure storage tanks to store melted water and oxygen or hydrogen, and a small command deck. Even the Canterbury, at almost 897 meters long had a crew of just 89. 9 Command staff, 10 navigational crew, 20 engineers for its severely outdated wormhole drive, and the rest where mercenaries or crewmen who actually worked around the ice. Moving it into the rigging using mechanical claws and drones.

As the ship ignited its plasma thrusters to leave the field, the captain, one James Holden noticed something odd. "XO To the bridge, XO to the bridge". John Grissom, XO of the Canterbury ran in quickly, ensuring he was fully dressed for the former military man. "You wanted to see me sir?".

James was staring at a console. On it was a pulsating red blip, which constantly bleeped. "A distress call, coming from that asteroid, doesn't match military, pirate or civilian, but I know a distress call when I see one".

"So what's the catch? Why is it we aren't burning at full speed now?".

The wideness and vastness of open space, meant that hearing a distress call meant immediate rescue. It was something practically every single pilot had drilled into them, as no-one wanted to be on the drift. No fuel, little supplies, watching as ships just ignored you. Of course no-one mentioned pirate decoys, tiny little radio transmitters which simulated larger ships, probably to attract a poor freighter, then unload a jury-rigged railgun and steal some stuff. Anyone could wire the reactor up to a pair of metal rails.

"They're directly in our course, and ETA puts our arrival at 20 minutes".

"What do you want me to do?".

"Buckle up, Kamal's carrying out a 6g burn to get us directly on course".

He nodded and hopped into a crash couch. Across the ship, the alarms turned a deep crimson, alerting everyone that the acceleration would begin, and a set of pipes wired up to John's arms began injecting drugs which stimulated his bodies vitals, before clenching his teeth down on a special mouthguard, for a split second, there was no gravity, as the ship changed its orientation, before a roar filled the room with noise. The acceleration felt like someone was sitting on his lap and after a few minutes of it, the noise died down, and the acceleration reduced back to acceptable levels, as John prepared for what was likely just another 'can we borrow some tools, our FTL drive went'

17 Minutes Later, CIC of the Canterbury
As the civilian hauler neared the distress call, long range communicators leapt into life. The message was nothing special by the sounds of it, "CHZZZZ Sghaela CHZZZZ Fru Dandod Khelio CHZZZZZ Mechanalla Sinko CHZZZZZ Lai CHZZZ".

James stroked his chin, "Hmm, odd, been heavily distorted, what's the laser ranging picking up?".

The sensor board, an outdated piece of equipment which looked like it was held together with duck tape and plastic, beeped once. "Unknown ship, looks like a Light Freighter. 200 meters long, lightly armed I think?".

Before John could reply, the captain interrupted. "Bring us to 2000 kilometres. John? Take Kaylee, Simon and Jayne to the shuttle and investigate them. Grissom nodded,

"Investigate a ship which mysteriously shut down? My favourite. KAYLEE! GET SIMON AND JAYNE AND MEET ME AT THE SHUTTLE BAY".

Before he could leave, James grabbed his shoulder. "You see anything out of the ordinary, hightail it back to the Cant and we leave it behind". He nodded, before throwing a mock salute towards the captain.

Unknown Starship
As the shuttle neared, John looked out upon the vessel. It was built very efficiently, with a frontal section in the shape of an upright ring. On each side was a pair of dorsal guns, which resembled cannons. Across the ship where what looked like PDC turrets which where longer and less bulky than normal ones. The secondary hull leading back almost uniformly to the single engine and no shuttle bays or open cargo doors. "Doesn't look like anyone's home, no power signatures, no lights, nothing".

"Any ideas on what it was doing out here?", Asked Kaylee.

"Don't care much squirt, all I know is that sure as shit ain't any design I've seen before. What about the engine signature?".

"Scanning", said John as the sensors penetrated the odd metal hull. "A primitive plasma driver? Looks much less efficient than our thrusters".

"This just got creepy" said Simon.

"No... It's shiny cap', makes me nostalgic for the older engines", he heard Kaylee bite back.

"'Cept when they blow up from overheating. Where you even born back then?", laughed Jayne.

The faint sound of something heavy striking something metal sounded out, followed by Jaynes' pained cry. "Ow, god'darnit alright woman quit hittin' me".

John rolled his eyes, Kaylee was very much like a daughter to most of the crew. Much younger and less cynical than many, but she could make even the worst engine sing like a butterfly.

"Docking in 3, 2, 1", he said quickly, shutting them up as the entire ship made a metallic clunking noise.

"I can't see any docking ports I recognise, so we're cutting our way in. Open the skirt Kaylee".

"Copy that Cap".

They would have to deal with the fallout of cutting through the hull later. "Laser should take ten or so minutes to cut through standard plating". And yet, 12 seconds later it was through. "Or not?"

Okay now that didn't make any sense either.

"What the hell. Thought you said it'd take longer than that to get through".

"Crew, what's the status on the freighter?".

"Unknown design with a much thinner hull. I don't recognise the shipbuilder either".

Generally, all human ship builders had a specific style in how they built their ships. Gemenon Engineering Systems built their vessels bulky, octagonal and very modular. SpaceX built aesthetically pleasing ships with smooth curves and hidden weapons emplacements. Lockheed-Grumman built wide and flat ships with a main focus on resilience, as much of their money came from designing civilian haulers and military transports. The Canterbury herself was a Lockheed Grumman design, though like almost all engines used by the military, the thrusters where Rolls Royce designed plasma thrusters. Highly efficient, but often lacking high thrust compared to conventional rockets and especially pion rockets.

By the utilitarian design, he'd say the ship they where on was probably closest to the Laniakea Engineering Systems. A lesser well-known company which built small scale multi-role ships. They where often preferred by paramilitary organisations over SpaceX vessels as they lacked the complex moving parts and could be refitted easily.
"Grissom, the reactor isn't registering as anything I've seen. It's not military or civilian. No antimatter deposits, radioactive materials, or other compounds detected, but I'm picking up faint traces of helium-3".

Now that didn't make any sense. Fusion powerplants had never turned out for humanity, as getting the plasma to hot enough temperatures and high enough pressures required more energy than you got, and at present the closest anyone could got was a reaction which lasted all of seven seconds. So why the hell did they have Helium-3? It's only use back home was to build nuclear weapons.

Things where already starting to look creepy. So why didn't he turn back around and head back?

"Cap, run a full system scan please, I'd feel better if I knew we where safe".

"Copy that, RADAR pulse is out, expecting a bounceback whenever we get a hit". He let his breathing loosen up. The longer that the pulse returned no contacts, the better he would feel. Stealth technology was highly illegal outside the military, and just possessing RADAR absorbent materials or building an emission sink would be enough for an arrest and then several trials. Maybe even jail time.

Finally the plate came free, and John jumped into the vessel. The hallways where tight, and stacked with crates. The arrangement was even odder. Unlike pretty much every ship he had ever been on or seen, this ship had decks arranged parallel to the direction of movement. Why? The ship didn't look like it used centrifugal gravity, and without gravity, months in space could cause significant bone loss, and eventual death.

"Kaylee, head for engineering and try to get the logs, Simon you're with me, maybe we can find some survivors". They all nodded and split into their separate groups. As he proceeded down the corridors he took in the ship. It was a brown and dull grey colour with occasional LEDs lacking light. Some of the crates had blankets and shawls on them.

It reminded him of scenes from old movies. "These crates, they're like tents".

"Who knows", he muttered. "Maybe a refugee ship. Would explain the sorry state its in. Hey cap any strange contacts?".

"Nothing expect 3 corvettes and a frigate 12 gigametres out. IFF's are military by their uniformity, so I'm not sure".

As he continued into the depths, the silence grew, pressing in on all sides. "John this is Kaylee, we've reached engineering, we think. This ship isn't like anything I've ever seen. Nothing matches any known IFFs or technologies, and I don't recognise any of the symbols. They aren't in any books we know".

That was the last straw. "I've had it. Everyone back to the shuttle, double time people I don't want to spend any more time out here". There was no complaint, and they began to run back, until he was interrupted by one of the doors banging. Immediately he drew his weapon. Around the corner, Jayne and Kaylee emerged. "Jayne, get your weapon out. Simon, get the door. Kaylee get behind us".

They took up positions, and Simon hit wat he assumed was the mechanism for the door to open, and it did. Five figures where inside the dully lit room. All where humanoid in shape, dressed in odd-looking fabrics, and opaque masks. Two where collapsed and being held by two more, while the one that was banging the door stared in surprise. "PUT YOUR HANDS UP!", Yelled Jayne.

The beings withdrew, and yelled frantically in their own odd language. Something which reminded John of eastern Europe. "I said put yo-".

Simon held his hand in front of Jayne. "NO, don't shoot, I don't think they can understand us". Jayne didn't lower his weapon.

"Simon are you saying what I think you're saying", said Grissom. More in shock than anything. Before he had a chance to reply, James spoke through the radio. "Guys we have a major problem. The patrol we spotted lit up like a Christmas tree, they're approaching at hyperlight speed and will be here in less than a minute. Get the frak out of there, NOW!".

"No complaint here. Simon, get those things to follow us. I ain't sure if they're friendly, but I sure as hell won't leave them to die. Kayle get the shuttle prepped to leave, Jayne help me with the wounded. Let's double time it people".

They began to run, through the rusted corridors and past multiple small tent-like structures. As they did, thousands of miles away, the Canterbury began burning like hell. It's plasma thrusters lighting up to form a very clear signature, and John jumped into the shuttle. Behind him, the unknowns just stood there like lemons. "Jayne get them sat down".

The shuttle finally started burning away from the ship, and at a rapid pace, it reoriented itself into an intercept course with the Canterbury.

Four objects, each the size of a human arm dropped from the patrol and locked onto the Canterbury. "TORPEDO LOCK DETECTED".

The four objects sped up, beginning to transit through the space in-between. "Sir the torpedoes are closing with the Canterbury.

John grabbed the microphone, "James, drop the payload, use it as a shield!".

"Stay of this channel John! Alright fella's prepare the cargo bay for jettison".

As the shuttle continued to dive towards the vessel, Jayne chuckled, "bet the companies really wishing they installed PDCs".

They shared a good laugh at that. The torpedoes finally reached the Canterbury. The cargo door exploded outwards, and a veritable wall of ice chunks began to float into the space between the ship and torpedoes. All four struck the ice wall, and black vortexes appeared where they where.

"What the fuck was that?!".

"Jesus Christ that thing looked like a black hole".

"Energy signature!".

"Sir they got guns targeting us".

"Massive energy signature, wait, they're firi-".

The channel cut off. The four magnetically accelerated iron slugs ripped through the vessel without any trouble. Instantly, one of the slugs slammed straight through the reactor core. The slugs tore out several of the boron control rods, and then struck the cooling pump, resulting in a lack of water reaching the core. In a few seconds, reactivity rose as the remaining water converted to steam, resulting in a void within the core. The fuel began to rapidly melt down, which in turn reduced efficiency and the reactor died, but the damage was done. Without anything holding it back, the massive tanks of hydrogen and oxygen collided and split open. Sparks from fractured wires, ignited this hydrogen-oxygen mixture, and the Canterbury exploded violently, completely consuming the small ship as the ionised fuel for the engines exploded too.

Before John could comprehend what had happened, Simon was screaming in his ear, "Sir there's a wall of debris approaching at massive speed, we shut down the drive to conserve our signiture, we're sitting ducks!"

"Frak."

Heirarchy Patrol, 3 days earlier
"Keep the scanners hot. They can't have got far", growled Arterius, as the cruiser steadily continued around the system. The quarians had broken council war by planting a colony on a dextro world on the outside of the Attican Traverse. Of course, council law forbid them from colonizing any planet better suited to other species. They had brazenly ignored warnings from the council, and when a peacekeeping fleet had arrived in an attempt to remove them from the world. They had fired on the brave soldiers who had tried to subdue them.

To make matters worse, they disabled the peacekeeping fleet by obliterating their engines and then fleed the system like cowards. So you can imagine how much glee Desolas Arterius had when he found a quarian frigate slinking around the system. He had tried ordered chase throughout the system and the ship had jumped deeper into the Attican Traverse. Now they where hiding somewhere in the local area and Desolas would avenge the forty five council soldiers killed in the skirmish.

"Sir I have a single contact approaching from the edge of the system, non threatening", said the sensors officer.

"Scan and get me a classification".

"Yes sir", the minutes ticked by as the starships sensors carried it their work. "Unknown classification. Size is six times larger than a corvette, but too small to be a frigate. Classifying as a heavy corvette".

Desolas deliberated silently within his head. As the contact remained still onscreen. Another yellow contact appeared next to them. "Sir I've found a dormant mass relay next to the contact. It looks like some sort of small gun skiff. There's a couple of wierd protrusions like batteries".

"What about damage? IFFs?"

"Nothing but... Wait. There's an odd drive signiture coming from the ship". Arterius replied quickly, "What do you mean odd?".

"Well the energy for a ship of its size is much lower than normal, almost as though the ship has built in stealth systems". Desolas thought for a moment. "Run a RADAR scan on the target".

A pulse lit up the sensors screen as the ship used its dishes to gain a clear silhouette on the target. As it was building, Desolas found himself facing a very odd configuration.

The ship was cylindrical, like a long tube with a single drive cone and several suspicious looking flat planes. The front held two slightly odd panels and from the fore hull, slightly up was a conning tower containing another of the wierd panels. Overall the design was very odd.

Nevertheless. It was the only ship in the area, so Desolas decided to ask them. "Unknown ship, this is the Turian Heirarchy cruiser Basks in the Light of Dawn. Please hold position and await an inspection team".

Oddly enough when the ship received the communication, the entire vessel heaved itself round with some agility, before burning on a slight course away. As they did, Arterius ordered the Turian fleet to approach the much smaller ship, as the distance ticked down, the ship continued to drift towards the mass relay, which, without warning, activated.

A white glow appeared within the oscillating rings in the relays center, and the ship was, at present orbiting the relay. "Weapons, get me a lock on their ship and order them to stop their engines".

"Sir?"

"The only people stupid enough to actively open a mass relay is the quarians, this ship is a quarian one, judging by the simple design. Prepare to open fire".

The young Turian at weapons was hesitant, and paused. "Lieutenant... Is there a problem?".

The man was from Palevan, having bright blue facial markings and wearing a red uniform. "Sir this isn't right, what if they aren't quarians at all, what if-".

"If you are refusing to carry out my orders you can take this up with a court martial. If you can't follow my instructions, then I will remove you of duty". The man sighed, and pressed a red button, before using a joystick to highlight and target the ship.

"Enemy ship locked", he said.

Arterius pressed a blue button to his front, "Unknown quarian ship desist and submit yourselves to the authority of the Turian Heirarchy now, or we will open fire".
On response, all they got was a message which none of them could understand. "Unknown warship. This is the PT Boat, D-462, We welcome you to human space, and are honoured to lead first contact between our people".

No other message was received. The guns aboard the Basks in the Light of Dawn, spoke, sending fully charged rounds towards the enemy ship. Arterius wrongfully assumed the shells would do minor damage, possibly not even pop the shields. Instead, one of the rounds slammed straight into the antimatter containment shelter. Normally, extra armour would have folded out in battle, but in this case, the crew of D-462 never had a chance to lower the protective titanium shells. In an instant, the hull was reduced to no more than elementary particles, and the ship existed only in memory.

"Spirits what the hell happened".

"Unknown ship has been destroyed".

"High energy gamma rays consistent with antimatter detected"

"The relay is spinning up".

"There's another contact, this one is the same. Receiving hail".

The crackling voice was more like an asari this time, and came just 12 seconds after the other ship arrived. "Unknown Ship, this is the systems alliance PT Boat B-540, you have destroyed one of our vessels and as such we are within rights to open fire. Break off your attack now before we continue".

Arterius was speechles as he realised his mistake. He had just attacked a new race, and it was unlikely they could talk this out. "Sir the enemy ship is charging weapons!".

"Fire a salvo of disruptor torpedoes and prepare to target their engines. I don't want them destroyed, just disabled". In an instant, four torpedoes dropped from the flanks of the ship, and began accelerating to cruising speed. In retaliation, the PT boat also dropped a salvo of torpedoes, 2 locked on each of their frigate escorts, and 4 locked on Basks in the Light of Dawn herself.

The human torpedoes approached far quicker than the Turian ones, and the Turian made vessels found themselves struggling to intercept the missiles, which zigzagged from side to side using their manoeuvring thrusters. The GUARDIAN system struggled to compensate, and the frigate designated as FG54 was struck by both torpedoes. In an instant, a spray of plasma exploded from the shell and washed over the hull.
Both torpedoes boiled several hull plates and leaked deadly hot plasma into the ship itself. The kinetic barriers did not stop the spray much, as kinetic barriers where specifically designed to stop kinetic energy of whole objects, not individual atoms. The ship buckled like an asteroid, and the crew was thrown from their stations as several secondary explosions from power capacitors and backup generators rippled the affected areas.

The second frigate was just about able to intercept both torpedoes, however Basks in the Light of Dawn took one of the torpedoes to its starboard mass accelerator. The plasma spilt from the main barrel into the power capacitors, which ignited as the graphite burnt at such high temperatures, killing the crewmen operating the cannon. "Sir we lost the starboard accelerator. Our torpedoes are twelve seconds out".

Arterius coughed into his claw, and wiped some sweat from forehead, before angrily gesturing towards the enemy ship. "Fire a full salvo at them". They'd deal with the fallout later.

As the remaining accelerator lit up, the torpedoes entered the five kilometer range of the boat it needed to begin firing it's PDCs. The metallic rounds where projected towards the torpedo salvo from all three of the ships PDCs, which individually focused on a missile each. Of the four torpedoes fired, three where intercepted by the CIWS grid of the PT boat, the final one exploded prematurely as it neared the hull, and the resulting singularity sucked the forty millimeter cannon from its hold, leaving the ship a gun down.

The iron slugs all struck the fore hull of the ship, but the nature of human armour dissipated their explosive energy fairly well, and as a resulting, only a single deck was exposed to vacuum. None of the crewmen died due to all wearing their spacesuits, and the PT boat leapt into FTL travel to escape the Turian ships, only to detonate when it left FTL. The hit had completely destroyed the station responsible for venting static charge buildup, and while the ship had a secondary, the relay travel pushed the venting deck to its limit, which resulted in one of the electromagnets in the antimatter storage bay going offline. Several nanograms of antimatter escaped through, and cracked open the containment, and the ship disappeared in another fiery explosion.

Neither side knew the repercussions of their aggressive actions.

Codex Entry: Human Technology, Introduction
Human technology never had access to the pseudoscience methods of manipulation described in science fiction, and despite everyone's best hopes, feasible FTL travel did not become available until the late 2400s. This saw the creation of the wormhole drive and the implementation on many ships. A wormhole drive is a pretty simple creation. First a singularity is created, in this case a Kugelblitz singularity created from antimatter will suffice, but then a large amount of negative potential energy is concentrated via the Casimir effect inside of the singularity, preventing the formation of an event horizon. The wormhole will then consume the entire ship, and any auxiliary craft within a certain radius. The ship then travels a small distance in the subspace realm until opening a second wormhole and leaving.

Energy is provided mainly by antimatter reactors thanks to their high fuel storage density and ease of access as well as efficiency. An antimatter reactor unfortunately also produces a lot of heat, which is much more easily detectable, so some stealth ships get clever. Developed in the 21st century, the RBMK 3500 reactors where the first of a long line of seventh generation thorium reactors. They are almost immune to meltdowns due to their choice of thorium fuel, and RBMK-4500 models are much more easily concealable, making them ideal choices for stealth ships, even if their power production rate is lower for their size. Other than these main methods of power generation, highly efficient plasma drives propel ionised gases at extremely high velocities for high thrust to mass ratio.

Weapons technology has developed alongside these new power methods, with many space-based artillery weapons reliant on railguns and coilguns for close range battle. At longer ranges, ships will rely heavily on torpedoes as they are versatile and reliable. At extreme ranges of less than 200 kilometres some ships carry standard cannons. As in, black powder cannons. As in basically the same design as what was used on the ironclads of the 18 century, the design hasn't really changed a lot since then.