The General finally received a report about the drone from the ship which had been chasing the alien ship down. It had taken time to get to the fleet since once they had fought the battle they had changed their base of operations. The drone had to fly to several different star systems before it had located them. When he received the report he had been less than pleased since that damn egg licking captain had lost his ship. In the process he had also given away there was an enemy out there. Now they were going to have to completely rethink what they were doing and how they were doing it.
How he wished he had the damn crew from that ship to give to the priests. Frankly he wanted to strip the hide off the former captain and have a new rug made for him. It would have been quite satisfying to know that idiot was lower than the dirt on his feet. With a very angry hiss of annoyance he stalked out of his ready room and into tactical. When he did every officer stood tall and refused to meet his eyes. The General couldn't help but let out a satisfied hiss due to the show of fear. If they feared him chances were good they would be too busy covering their own tails to consider taking him out.
"Have we received anything from the Emperor?" The C in received was a sibilant hiss. His eyes were looking over the tactical table to see what was currently being done. He had changed his orders from searching for the enemy to include finding the new aliens. Their tech was lower than the Valtegan's and would make good slaves. They had fought well even with their lower tech and would make good slaves for the Empire.
After that bomb, or whatever it had been, had taken out the troop transport he had demanded some of the ships be captured. That had been done but even as they were over running the ships the enemies on board had fought hard. Very few of them had been recovered and they had been handed to the priests to get information from them. Several of the ships had been brought on board one of the repair ships for discection. He wanted to know as much about the tech as possible. Any star charts and navigation information would be good as well.
That was taking time since the tech was so different but they were slowly getting information from them. While that was happening the various scout ships had been sent to get as much information from the one system they knew about. It was going to be very tricking since it was obviously a very heavily populated system. There was also the fact there appeared to be one of the first enemies ships there which made it even more sensitive. He had taken the time to make some very grisly threats to the captains and crews.
The General had made a point of letting them know that if they failed in anyway their families would pay the price. He had very carefully detailed what he would have the priests back on the homeworld do if they failed. Their entire families would die screaming as the priests showed them the price of their relatives failure. That had been reasonably satisfying since the fear pheromones from the crews had been strong.
Now as far as the creatures they had captured most of them were not being very willing to talk. The priests were forced to be careful with them since they didn't have many. Even having shown them what they might be facing hadn't gotten much from them. One of his crew who had been turned over had been tortured in front of them and finally flayed before he died. The creatures had just laughed at them. That the General didn't understand since the idea of being in the hands of the priests made even him shudder. How the hell could they laugh in the face of that?
~~~
The Emperor's senior Generals had received the information from the drone. For the most part the battle wasn't too exciting even though the others had fought well. Based on the sensor scans and reported battle damage the tech was lower than theirs by a fair amount. Unless they had a massive military or ships they hadn't seen, taking out this enemy wouldn't be a major problem. The ships were significantly smaller, slower, and weaker than most of the Valtegan's equivalents.
Now the weapon used at the final end of the battle did have them concerned. They still didn't know what the weapon was but based on the readings it was a very high energy weapon. The destruction it had caused had actually caused enough of a reaction for the Generals to release the fear scent. One thing they had detected was a huge surge of gravitons. Though they didn't know why that happened or how it explained what happened to an extent.
After reviewing the date a number of times and slowing the footage down they could see indications of stuff being sucked in. Granted it happened in a matter of microseconds but there were indications of anything within reach being pulled in by the gravity waves. The only thing they could think of was a black hole had been formed momentarily. How such a primitive species could do that they didn't know.
As far as the rest of the data they didn't know the status of the light cruiser which had chased the enemy ship out of the system. Since they didn't know where it had ended up heading they were going to assume the light combatant had been destroyed.
Once they had all the results compiled they forwarded them to the Emperors personal staff. None of the Generals wanted to be close to the Emperor when he received the information. His tantrums were world renown and when he was well and truly pissed anyone the anger was directed at died. The Emperor had removed entire families from the rolls of the first egg in fits of fury. On the other side of the claw this might get the Emperor to release more of the military to start searching for the enemy. Now two enemies.
~~~
It had been several days since Sue Anne had talked to the lady from the FBI and she had already decided to hire her. The same went with the other person and they were going to be starting the next day. After a great deal of thought she had placed a call to the Sholan Embassy. Since she knew her office was bugged she decided to simply make the call and keep it generic. That had taken some time to get a call made and patched through.
Eventually she had been directed to an Admiral Demopolus. Once connected she had to blink since he definitely came across as a man with an attitude. "Good Afternoon Admiral, my name is Sue Anne Hoag. I am a partner with Billy Madlax and I am running his operations on Earth. I need to get a message to him about some issues which I need a quick response to. I know that we use ships to transport messages from one system to another but do the Sholan's have anything faster?" She really hoped they did.
Ike had accepted the call after reviewing the information he had about the woman and the company she had started. "And good Afternoon to you Mrs. Hoag and it is nice to finally talk to you. Billy is a good friend of mine and from what he indicated you are a friend of his as well." He had been warned that her office was bugged. "Would it be possible for you to come to Switzerland? I have a number of questions for you about your company and if you can come I can see about getting a message to Billy somewhat faster than we normally do. Their ships are faster than ours."
Sue Anne almost frowned at that question. "That might take a bit of time Admiral since I don't have a passport currently and have never left the country before. Is there any other way we can do this? I really do need to get a message to Billy as soon as possible. It is in relation to the company and some of the offers I have been receiving for building or modifying various engines. The re-crystallization of the tubes is going quite well but with the engine mods I really do need to talk to him."
