 | In Response To: Re: Pfhor Battle Groups mentioned in Marathon cann (blake37)
And I quote:
Pfhor Battle Group Three, Central Arm, hung motionless above the dusty ball of
rock that was Lh’owon, the second planet of a dim star ninety-seven light-years
from the gravitational center of the Milky Way. The gigantic battleship, three
smaller destroyers and twenty auxiliary craft had not left the system for nearly
six years. They were not to be relieved for another two.
Lh’owon had once been a marsh world; now it was a nearly waterless desert. It
had been populated, a thousand years ago, by a race of highly intelligent
creatures who had already landed on their own moons and would soon have
headed to other stars. Below, their cities stood empty and ruined.
In its glory years, Battle Group Three had been known throughout the Empire;
decorated in every battle anyone remembered from the Wars of Imperium, for
turning back the loyalists at Tahrm’s Gap and holding the approaches to the
Pfhor homeworld itself during the slave revolt of the Nakh.
Undefeated in battle, it was finally politics that splintered Battle Group Three;
by sending a few ships to suppress subservient races here, a few more to
garrison the fringes of Pfhor influence there, the nobility had slowly
broken the power of the old Navy.
What was left of Battle Group Three had been assigned to this
dead world in the Galactic Core. To defend the system against
a single enemy no one expected would ever arrive, and who
had last been seen thousands of light-years away.
The tedium of blockade duty had destroyed morale and
discipline.
In the dark between the orbits of the sixth and
seventh planets, slightly above the ecliptic, a
ship vanished, folding soundlessly in on itself
in impossible ways. As the long craft twisted
and faded in one place, it began
simultaneously to appear in another.
The stolen ship had been in the system
for days, keeping its distance from
Lh’owon and the Pfhor fleet surrounding it; dodging among asteroids and moons,
testing and measuring. Looking for something. Waiting.
Alarms sounded throughout Battle Group Three, screaming that a vessel had
folded into existence less than thirty kilometers away from the battleship.
Computer operators throughout the fleet stared in disbelief at their tactical
screens— no ship could jump this close to a gravity source. For three seconds,
no warning was passed, no word spoken, no action taken.
The invader erupted in a hundred thin lines of green fire, striking out toward the
Pfhor ships, phasing through their shielding, destroying weapons or engines or
communications gear. In seconds Battle Group Three had been disabled, and
their ships began exploding. In two minutes only one ship remained among the
debris in orbit above Lh’owon.
Down on the planet, as the orbital bombardment began, the Pfhor garrison was
only just beginning to understand how hard their life would become over the
next few days.
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