Location: Hyperspace, near the outer Core Worlds
Date: GE I (First year of the Great Emergence)

It could be called first contact. There had been clandestine efforts, of course, but until the Great Emergence was commanded into full swing, it was decreed there be absolutely no military action, nor diplomacy nor trade between the Kingdom's forces and the Sky People. All to facilitate Tyrannus Rex I's master stroke, an ambush-invasion of the Sky's great power centers. Now overseer Tien Radix monitored the blinking cluster of dots on his viewscreen, the first hostile encounter of the Emergence.

It was a respectable force, outnumbering the Terran detatchment almost two-to-one. Fair enough odds, he mused, and signaled to his underseers to call all hands to stations. It would take long enough to rally the crew - in theory, troglodytes would take naturally to the spacer occupation (or so said the eggheads at Kingdom Labs), but Radix found them as shiftless and dull-witted out here as ever. More, if that were possible. Still, they were easy to motivate and cheap to replace.

They would need raw manpower for the bulk of the invasion, where battle-trains were to grind out siege victories with overwhelming stockpiles. Those they had in abundance, already being mobilized back home. Today, however, the plan was the inverse: a shock-and-awe rout of superior numbers by a highly-specialized hunter fleet, tailored to prey upon regular patrols of the kind used by the Sky's major factions. It was to be a twofold proving ground: a test of the hunter fleet's overall effectiveness, and a display of power to strike terror into the hearts of the Kingdom's enemies.

It was imagery of the latter that Radix shouted into the broadcasting console, to the unheard cheers and whoops of the simian crew in the vessel below him. He was entertaining thoughts of being served by a superior caste of slave in the near future as the approaching hostile craft glinted into view, and he gave orders to engage.