"Where is that damn Federation Issue Megathron?"

"Sir, it is only a prototype, it is the only one in existence it can't be everywhere at once."

"I was promised a new battleship to quickly suppress this little Caldari uprising and all I get are excuses. I told that ineffective Gallente Congress that this war was going to break out soon and all those buracrats did were drag their feet and say we do not want to upset our Caldari equals.  Equals, ha!  The Caldari are down right...."
/
/
/
"Mom, I'm done with my homework and I'll be back later." I said as I ran through the door.  My mom wasn't too thrilled that my best friend was a Caldari, and such a low class one at that.  My mom believed in equality of all humans but some were more equal. 

"Come out!" I shouted.  I always did my homework quick and ran over to his house.  It was like clock work, I'd show up and he'd never be ready.  Little did I know that it wasn't so much that I was smarter than him, but more that I had personal tutors for each of my subjects and while I took it for granted, his parents were not in a position of offer him such advantages.

His parents weren't too thrilled that I was his choosen best friend but such was life and Caldari were always one to take advantage of an opportunity. My father was the only adult in this situation.

My father, as far as I knew, was a lower level diplomat here on a mission of understanding Caldari culture.  In truth he was a very high level undercover black ops.  The Gallente Federation had know of the Caldari State for years before their existence was made to public knowledge.  Gallente had then sent undercover agents to infiltrate the planet one full generation before the existence of another inhabited planet in our solar system was declared. The results of this infiltration was disturbing.  While Gallente technology was atleast a generation ahead of Caldari tech, they were catching up at an amazing rate and within two generations would surpass us unless something was done.  This was when the program started.  The program to understand Caldari society and determine who the future leaders will be, and to ensure that they would become more loyal to Gallente Federation than their individual planet.
/

"Sir... sir, you just drifted off are you ok?"

"Yes yes, I'm going to my room, let me know when we have arrived at the Caldari colony.  I need to see if it is true that they are constructing some new weapon there."

/
/
/
"Hathor, you damn cheater, there is now way the Gallente will be able to build a ship able to contain and launch multiple frigate sized ships with those specs!"

My best friend had once again defeated me.  I would always play Caldari and he would play Gallente, this time the Caldari started the war, well kinda.  Some Caldari who demanded complete freedom from the Gallente Federation had attacked Nouvelle Rouvenor.  If I had known how accurate this particular game, on this day, was to current events I'm not sure what I would have done differently, but something...

"Lies, your just upset that you lost again.  The Gallente are already the masters at controlling drones.  There is also a rumor that they have a single cruiser ship, the Guardian-Vexor that can control 15 drones."

I should have paid attention those days, how could my friend have known so much about Gallente military, why was he so keen on it?  Actually my father would have been the interested one.  My father was a deep undercover agent of Gallente to subvert any attempts that the Caldari would try to break free from the Federation, and he was aware that someone was gathering and dispersing Gallente military secret and none secret capabilities to the Caldari.  Had he known that his own son was best friends with the leader of the underground Caldari resistance movement he would have paid more attention.  The spy business is a complicated one.  Publicly my father was a minor diplomat, but this allowed him free access and mobility to conduct his true public secret mission of performing a psychological profile and historic trace of Caldari leaders to predict the next generation leaders. 

The Gallente, the only true democracy in New Eden, were also experts at propaganda and behavior prediction to the point where elections a full generation in advance was predicted to within 20%.  Caldari not being a democracy made their predictions more accurate to within 60%.  The Caldari state had an Ole Boy system of promoting those that had ties to the right people, but due to the fierce completion between rivaling Mega Corporations, if you did actually excel in your duties then based on merit you would also rise to the top.  The exact mathematics behind these predictions never interested me but for some reason modeling Caldari was simpler.  Hathors family was never particularly rich, but they did seem to work hard and excel and the models had told my father's superiors that Hathor himself would rise promenently in the Caldari military.  Funny, those same models didn't comprehend that Hathor's father already ran the military, but it was an impressively accurate prediction even with this error in input data.

Hathor's father was not particularly good at keeping secrets from his son who was well able to overhear his father's conversations, funny... here was a child whose father was everything my father was searching for but my dad didn't know.  It was a shame, my father never had time to listen to me, for if he did we might not have reached the stage we currently are, this war, this unnecessary war could have been stopped before it started but that was a fantasy now...
/

"Sir," my second in command alerted me through my neural implant, "we will be arriving shortly please return to the bridge."

Why of all these times, why was I remembering those days.  I arrived on the bridge as my Navy Dominix was dropping out of warp.  It was an old ship, not by any means outdated, just old.  It had for a log time been a ship used to lay mines in asteroid belts that the Gallente claimed sovereignty over.  Some brilliant scientists and realized that a similar interface could be used to control other weapons rather than simply deploying mines.  That was the birth of the sentry drones.  Powerful long range deployable drones that could shoot distant targets.  It was theorized that planetary bombardment could be done by these ships, that theory had not been tested to date, but it soon would...

"Sir, what is that?"

"Why are you asking me ensign?  You are controlling the ships scanners."

In the distance, aligned to an unknown warp point stood a beast, a behemoth of dangerous proportions, it was a true battleship.  And if the scans were right it had 8 missile launchers loaded.  The Caldari had earlier released a ship called the Scorpion that was able to prevent custom officers from scanning valuable cargo.  It took years for us to even realize that this was common Caldari Operating procedures.  That was a defensive ship that had no place on a battlefield, but this, this Ravenous looking ship, this was an offensive weapon, what I wouldn't do to have my father here now.

For my father got word that Hathor's dad was laid off.  My father's superiors gave him an ultimatum, stick with his hunch and stay on Caldari Prime and lose 5 ranks or return to Gallente Prime and gain one rank. My father was a man of principle whom in his own way was honestly working towards peace between Gallente and Caldari only with ensuring Gallentean superiority over Caldari ad infinitum.  But he also was a family man who knew a good deal when he saw one.  He swallowed his pride and returned to Gallente Prime with increased roles but he always wondered if he did the right thing.

Hathor's father was not truely laid off but the Caldari underground decided he was too important to have to lead a double life and so "suggested" that he get fired and took care of his material needs so he could focus on developing Caldari's military.  Had anyone bothered to keep track of the family they would have noticed that their standard of living actually increased while Hathor's dad was seemingly unemployed.  Those stupid models, assuming that an unemployed father would lead to his son becoming a nobody... all of this could have been avoided if only my father was listened to.

"Tackle squad, make sure that thing does not manage to warp away."  I was accompanied by only a few other ships, mainly cruisers and frigates.  This was after all a chase of a rumor and while a full third of the military technically answered to me, I saw no reason to have it chasing shadows.  The frigates were capable of exceeding 3 kilometers per second and in moments the Caldari ship was immobilized and unable to leave, now I would get some answers.

"Cruisers, proceed to break his shields, maybe that will loosen the tongues of the pilots in that craft."

The Thorax was a dangerous cruiser class gunship, that was also capable of achieving mind boggling speeds.  Within minutes, the shields of the incompletely active ships was falling.

"Sir, we are receiving a hail"

"Put it through, I expect that ship will give us the answers we need"

"Hello, Andrew, please stand down."  A mixture of emotions flowed through me, I hadn't seen nor spoken to Hathor since those many years ago when my family departed Caldari Prime, and yet here he was, addressing me, as a fellow ship commander.

"That vessel, is property of the Caldari state and you will release it and stand down."

As he said that a squadron of blackbirds dropped out of warp and jammed the lock of my tackling frigates allowing the Caldari ship to escape.  While this was a great loss, I just needed to keep Hathor here for a bit longer, as the Federation Issue Megathron was mere moments away with an entire wing supporting it.

Sir, scouts are not able to keep that ship in place.

"Damn it!" screamed Andrew, lock that ship down.  As I said that I realized that the blackbirds had come out of warp and things just got alot more interesting.  Fighting an unknown ship was one thing, fighting the known danger of blackbirds that had a tendency of shutting off all offensive capabilities of a ship.

"Deploy drones, Tango formation!" was my next order.  This was a highly experimental tactic, I had theorized that the Caldari countermeasures required line of sight to work correctly, and so with drones deployed and our tackle squad aligned in a straight line hopefully a few ships would be able to go back on the offensive.  The formation burnt full speed towards the Blackbird squadron, and a few reported that they were regaining their locks.  "Engage, engage, blow them out of the sky."

As some of the tackle squads began to re-engage the Blackbirds, our reinforcements finally arrived.  Caldari experimental ship, meet Gallente experimental ship.  The Federation Issue Megathron with a wing of support fell out of warp and immediately began burning towards the Caldari State Issue Raven.

The captain of the Megathron contacted me, "A pleasure Andrew, you seemed to have found something special here, I am glad I arrived in time to be of assistance."

With that said something odd happened, in my frantic moment of issuing commands and our seeming salvation arriving I had not noticed that all of the Caldari ships were aligned out, and none of our tackle squads had reported being able to keep them in place.  In mere moments after the arrival of out friendly Megathron, the Caldari were all already in warp.  That was strange, I thought, Hathor had had the upper hand, he would have been able to inflict some damage and would have almost been certain of leaving before taking too many losses.  I was confused and pondering why he would do such an action.

"Sir!", yelled my sensor operator, the station, it's falling from orbit.

"Wait, what??".  On the main display it was clear to see the massive research station falling towards the planet.  We were close enough to take significant damage from its explosion and maybe some losses.

"Scatter, warp anywhere!", was mt finaly command to the entire fleet.  Most of the tackle frigates had not made it out, The heavy armor of the Megathron somewhat protected it but it had hull breaches in multiple locations and was no longer combat ready.  The heaviest losses were in the thorax cruisers.  These were too large to warp in time, but their defense was too thin to surive the explosion.  The remenant of the fleet regrouped at Gallente Prime, this was not a good day.

Mack was nothing if not cautious, he made the majority of the fleet  warp to the far side of the moon of Caldari Prime.  From this vantage point it would take mere moments to reach any tactical point over the near by planet.  Simultaneously an scout squadron consisting of only 20 pilots were warped directly over the most populated city on Caldari Prime.

The scouts fell out of warp, and these seasoned veterans did what their training and experience, upon exiting warp they starbursted in multiple directions.  Going into this fight volunteers were called for, and the majority of the fleet stood forward.  They were blinded by patriotic fervor to defend their defiled Gallente homeland, and strike back at the evil and untrust worthy Caldari.  Mack thinned the numbers down to those without living relatives and offered them quadruple annual pay for this single operation if they died.  This pay would be sent to any cause they deemed fit.

The starburst maneuver was executed expertly and the Gallente scout ships were free from colliding into each other.  They then enabled their afterburners and increased velocity to amazing rates.  This bought them precious moments to report what they saw.  And what they saw was dire, directly in line with their warpin was a massive heavily defended and armed defense station in orbit over Caldari prime, they knew their lives were soon to be over, but they were determined to collect as much data as possible for the main fleet.