On screen, sir." Pankow said. That seemed to explain everything. On screen was a distant angular speck that could only be a ship. Marnetti broke a rather tense moment by arriving. Ortez groped for the arm of his command chair and sat down, his eyes fixed on the viewscreen. Marnetti went to his station.

What the hell was that?” he asked no-one in particular. “Did they ram us?”
“Uh – negative, sir.” Marnetti offered, reading an instrumental assessment from his display, “It seems we were hit by some kind of pulse wave generated by their jump.”
“Their jump? – You mean by arriving they nearly killed us?”
Marnetti nodded, continuing, “Range 0.5 kilometers, Captain. Holding steady. No recognized weapons activity.”
“Damage report.” He ordered, feeling his way back into his seat, eyes glued to the viewscreen.
“Shield 2 down, 1 is buckling.” Pluddeman choked.
“Power stable, all systems holding steady,” Marnetti added, now rubbing some bruises.
“Any communications?”
“Nothing, sir. Static on all frequencies.”
“What are they doing?”
“Nothing, sir. Waiting maybe.”
“Waiting, my ass!” Dayne barked. “They must be sizing us up!

Ortez sauntered over to the nearest wall intercom. "Bridge, this is the captain -- what the hell's going on up there? I didn't schedule a combat drill for today." Hell, it occurred to him -- he hadn't scheduled any kind of drill for at least four months. On the other end of the line, young 2nd lieutenant Cedric Pankow, the com officer, let it fall.

Something clicked inside Ortez mind, like the bolt of a door latch being released. Man’s first encounter with sentient alien life was a disaster called the Gimp War in the history books. The aliens simply began an all out onslaught without any warning. Fortunately the Human race proved a little more difficult to dispose of than the aliens thought. The Gimp, or Ruminarii as they were called, were driven off and hadn’t been heard from since. Their origins were still a mystery. This was not a Ruminarii ship, but this encounter might have similar repercussions. And Commander Dayne Ortez aged 26, realized the meaning of this.

Being the commander of a Ruminarii war vessel meant that he had risen to the rank by means of assassination and ruthlessness and was therefore implicitly distrusted by the Tidhii Mah’k’hai (Naval Command, that is The Queen Of Suth Herself.) He was expected to mete out, in generous portions, brutality to conquered subjects and to act swiftly and mercilessly in dealing with alien encounters. In short, he was expected to be a bad example.

He thought about it for a minute. The kitty was only around seven thousand give or take a gold tooth and some coinage – minus the ship – which must’ve been worth well, a lot more than seven thousand, even in scrap metal. An alarm was going off somewhere, faintly.