The End of Peace

Prologue

Captain Varja stepped out of the lift and onto the command deck of his dreadnought, The Spire. The sides of the deck were lined with a number of different consoles, each showing a variety of essential data and each manned by a number of different vam'un. In the centre of the room was a large table which could project holographic images of whatever Varja wanted, but it was mainly used for battlefield layouts. Varja moved further onto the deck towards his personal terminal, located next to the projector, from which he could issue a number of commands to every section of the ship. Before he entered anything on the console however he turned to a nearby vam'un officer, "Have there been any orders from the command ship?"

"Yes sir, we've been told to hold this line against any further enemy advancements until we're otherwise told."

"Thank you officer, you may return to your post."

"Aye aye sir." Varja turned to his command console and relayed the orders down to engineering and few seconds later there was a shudder as the engines of the ship powered down.

"RAI, I need a scan of this sector to put onto the projector." The electronic voice of the ship's on built computer, the Reactive Artificial Intelligence, rang through speakers positioned around the deck, "Of course captain, bringing it up for you now." The table flickered to life and shone a light to form a large square grid. In the centre of it was a large white main sequence star orbited by four barren planets, the fourth of which was underneath the images of a collection of holographic ships representing the fleet that The Spire was part of. The only other things of note were a number of large asteroids caught between the second and third planets, a considerable distance away from the fleet.

As Varja was studying the table another officer moved up to him and saluted, this time a human. The human, and many others with them, had only recently been transferred onto the ship and Varja was still not completely used to seeing them on his ship. He also didn't see why he should pick humans over members of his own species, the vam'un. His people were the most intelligent species in the galaxy, having being behind every piece of technology used by everyone as well as them also being master strategists as they were able to react at incredible speeds, while humans on the other hand had not shown any skills or features that would make them more valuable additions to the crew of a ship. They different enough from all the other races that they stood out, only looking similar to the mallaph with similar body structure and features but they were also considerably smaller in stature since they were lacking the bulk that protected the mallaph from their own planet's environment. Compared to his own race humans were miniscule, barely managing to reach up to his waist, and they also lacked the diverse skin tones that the vam'un had for each gender which made it difficult for Varja to tell them apart.

Despite all of these differences and his thoughts about how useful humans were Varja still accepted them onto his ship with open arms and gave them a chance to prove themselves, "Report officer."

"We've detected a large number of ships heading towards this system at warp speed and their ETA is around four minutes. In our current position we will be able to prevent them moving any further forward or rom jumping away."

"Good, get RAI to bring them up onto the display as soon as possible."

"Aye aye sir."

The officer turned and seated themselves back into a nearby seat and began typing on a console while Varja turned back to the command table. After waiting for time to pass the enemy ships flickered onto the display in a bright red colour, to counter their own green, a considerable distance away from where he and his fleet were positioned. The images showed every tiny detail so it was easy to tell that the ships were rout'uk yet Varja could still hardly believe that they were. Three weeks ago he had fought and worked alongside members of that race who he would have called friends and now he and the rest of the galaxy was fighting a war with them. The rout'uk were one of the oldest and most proud races in the galaxy and because of that they felt that they deserved more respect and power within the Federation than they had. However when this request was denied the rout'uk decided to take matters into their own hands and disconnected themselves from the Federation before declaring war on every other race in the galaxy. No one had expected that they would attempt anything like this and so the rout'uk were able to conquer the home-planet and systems of two races, the mallaph and the duyohn, before anyone could react at all and they had then moved on to conquer the delh planets as well by the time a suitable force was mustered to stop them from advancing any further. Now the two sides, the rout'uk empire and the Federation, were locked in a war where neither would give way but both were also unable to push any further forward. Varja had been sent to this system in command of the Spire with the hopes that the technological superiority of the ship, with its upgraded weapons and defences, would allow the Federation to create a gap in the rout'uk line that they so desperately needed.