The Battle in the Void

At the far south of the Human Dominion lies an unassuming planet under the name of Thargonodrim. It's uninhabited, and it has been uninhabited for the entire time humanity knows of it. Several attempts to colonize it were made; its climate neither too friendly nor openly hostile, it seemed humans could live there. >However, every time something wrong was happening. One time, a navigation error led a colony ship to be vaporized in the corona of Thargonodrim's sun. In a hundred years, another settlement seemed successful, yet it died out fifty years after without any known causes. For some time, Thargonodrim was regarded to be a cursed world; this, too, was forgotten, as the planet was far away from the main trade routes, its region rarely visited.

Everything changed after a smuggler ship passing by had discovered a surely artificial object of enormous size, orbiting the planet. The smuggler shared the find with his acquaintance within the Protectorate Admiralty; later, information and pictures found their way to the tables of the highest-ranking Protectorate officials, causing unhealthy levels of activity. A grand fleet was assembled in absolute secrecy and launched to reach Thargonodrim. Such an inadequate reaction piqued the Empire's interest, imperial intelligence gathering all possible data to learn the reasons for such actions on the Protectorate's side.

Several sources at once reported that the Protectorate has the basis to believe the huge station to be a guest from the future and to link that to the mystery of Old Earth's disappearance. Such knowledge, however imprecise and scarce, was enough for the Empire to respond. Some few mobile fleet groups, led by imperial lords, set out for Thargonodrim.

Imperial scouts were the first to reach the station; they couldn't get too close to it, but they intercepted enough Protectorate inter-squadron messages to build up a picture. It turned out that Protectorate engineers were conducting repairs on the station, trying to restore its outer hull which had lost its properties and prohibited deeper entry; and that the station was a part of the project to recover Old Earth, the planet missing since the end of the Great Expansion as a result of a failed planetary transportation experiment.

It was a testament to the Protectorate's technological advantage over the Empire, which could prove fatal to further plans of conquest. This also meant that Old Earth's loss was not irreparable, and that the planet could play a decisive role in the Empire-Protectorate war. The most important conclusion, though, had been made that the station over Thargonodrim was a colossal accumulation of technologies yet unseen.

The first to get close enough to Thargonodrim was the fleet of Markus the Three-Eyed; harassing the Protectorate fleets in a nearby Dominion sector, he aborted all ongoing operations and rushed to Thargonodrim upon receiving scout reports. Understanding that his fleet won't be enough to deal with several full Protectorate line squadrons, he betted on his advantage in planetary troops. With a breakneck hyperspace jump, Markus emerged exactly on the planet's orbit, deep within the star's gravity well. It is well-known that emerging less than one-tenth of a lightyear away from a star's center is almost impossible due to danger of hyperdrive explosion.

That was exactly what happened to some ships of Markus' fleet. Three-Eye, however, was a veteran pirate, used to such tricks. Some of his vessels engaged the nearest Protectorate ships, while the rest pierced the station like sharp thorns. Each vessel under Markus' command was a raid-built one, with boarding prows allowing to first penetrate a target's hull, then spew boarders into the breach. >Within a mere moment, more than a hundred of ships dug into the station. In less than an hour following that, all Protectorate troopers, engineers, and repair teams were slain, their corpses thrown into the space. Markus ended up as the king of the hill.

For several days, Protectorate forces in the vicinity of Thargonodrim were paralyzed by such an unexpected imperial strike. First, they tried to repel the ships rushing to the station; then, Golden Hundred units tried not to let the distracting vessels get away - with zero success. The security fleet then attempted to drive Markus out of the station, with no success either; his ships latched onto the hull and fired at the defenders, while they were afraid of returning fire in fear of damaging the installation.

Such a state of affairs lasted for days. Markus, though, was also out of work to do. He took the station, but all efforts to restart its functions were fruitless. In their "excitement", his bloodthirsty troops had killed anyone who could've been able to shed the light on the installations' control methods. Markus was suffering from success. More so, he had no idea that the rest of Empire battlegroups were intercepted long before they could reach Thargonodrim; one of them attacked at the very border of the system. Aside from his subordinates, Markus the Three-Eyed was now all alone.

The matters changed when a Protectorate representative arrived at the flagship. Well, not quite a Protectorate representative. Well, not a Protectorate representative at all - yet with full Board-granted authority regarding suppression of the Empire's actions. "You have let me down for the last time!" - he stated upon his arrival to the commanding admiral just before personally throwing said admiral out of the airlock.

After that, the man (but could one be sure?) known as Ghost* among the Protectorate soldiers, assumed command, and work ensued. The fleet surrounded the station from every direction as not to let the pirates out, especially in case they could've looted the unique tech. Alongside Ghost, several Protectorate marine squads arrived, immediately preparing to storm the installation.

In a day after Ghost's coming, the battle of Thargonodrim entered a new phase. The station was attacked by Protectorate units from eighteen directions at once, its entire volume becoming a battleground. Pirates and their nightstalker allies fought like beasts, inflicting huge casualties; during the 52 hours of the assault, Protectorate forces lost more than half their personnel yet did not advance deeper than four levels in. Meanwhile, Markus pulled the hull-latched ships deep into the huge station hangars to protect them from capture or destruction. Understanding that a frontal assault would not produce a favorable outcome, Ghost led his troops away from the station.

A miracle happened, the station went alive on its own, left the planet's orbit, and started falling in a gentle spiral trajectory. In fact, there was nothing supernatural behind that; it was only Ghost realizing that at least one pirate vessel would be bound to eventually escape with technology samples. He decided to sacrifice the station, yet not let the Empire close to the precious secrets.

Markus found his life dependent on the haste of his actions. Three-Eye had no illusions regarding the survival of his men in the impact; in an instant, his ships were now breaking through Protectorate lines.

The breakthrough did not go well. More than three fourths of Markus' fleet were destroyed, the rest forced to hide from the huge battleship guns in the atmosphere. However, the air sheath of a planet subject to an object the mass of the Moon falling onto it could not serve as refuge; the station fell approximately at the equator, causing earthquakes and hurricanes. Markus' vessels were effectively nailed to the surface by storm wind and dust clouds, like mosquitoes by a rain. He was barely able to gather the remains of his forces in time, when Ghost and what was left of his marines came to haunt Markus, landing near his surviving vessels and attacking immediately.

On the hilly plains, a battle flared up between the pirates and Protectorate marines. Markus and Ghost met each other in single combat in a day after combat began; it had been said that Ghost possessed extrasensory abilities and was a fearsome warrior, but that didn't help him. Markus inflicted several wounds upon his enemy, but had to cease fighting as well after the planet reared in a sequence of monstrous earthquakes. Despite holding together for almost a day after the impact, Thargonodrim finally began breaking down. Seeing what was happening, the fighters rushed to save their cheap lives; Ghost and his troops boarded their transports and took off.

Pirates had it harder; due to battle damage, none of their ships could get off. It was an abandoned settlement near the battlefield, with several old ships of just the size to fit everyone parked, that saved Markus from an untimely demise. They were trade vessels without hyperdrives, but Markus was certain that he was bound to be rescued after the Protectorate fleet's departure.

And so it happened. The Protectorate vessels left the orbit of the collapsing planet and took a course back; Markus' battered fleet took off as well, but only ten days later. They were picked up by a battlegroup led by lord Shinji. It was a pyrrhic victory for both sides.

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Factions:	Dusty Zone Raiders, Militia of the Planet Velian, Pirates of Marcus, Ruthenian Guard, Spetsnaz of the Planet Felicia