Prologue

In the silence above an average sized, temperate jungle-covered world, a massive ship lie cloaked, awaiting the moment to strike. It was massive nearly beyond believe, dwarfing even the massive battlecruises employed by what little was left of the Terran race, though it appeared human in design... Though much more advanced. Around it, buzzing to and fro from the ship and the many smaller vessels within its cloaking field, flew many smaller ships, ranging from what could be one man fighter craft to ships that were around the size of the Terran's valkryie frigates.

But all of these ships we far different from the Terran armadas. Around the hulls, fitting to them, hugging all the counters, was an energy field, which may or may not have been a shield. And the fighters, while about the size of a Terran wraith, were much faster, and were made of mainly smooth curves, with sharp, pivoted wings and lasers mounted on the front ends...

This fleet was completely undetected by its quarry... A fleet of 3 Dominion battlecruisers, along with nearly a dozen frigates and 4 dozen squadrons of wraiths, only one of which was deployed at any given time. This unwary fleet patrolled the sector, supremely confident in their power... Unwary of their impending doom... The fleet was nowhere near combat readiness, and the fighters were barely carrying half their combat loads.

Then, from the frigate sized ships within the cloaking field of the massive behemoth that was their flag sip, many small black shapes emerged, and proceeded towards the Terran fleet.

They appeared, at first anyway, to be fighter craft, but upon closer examination one would have seen that they were small, gently curved, black missiles. They streaked towards the frigates of the fleet.

Only when these missiles were within a kilometer were they picked up on the scanners of the ship, but by then it was much to late to do anything. The ships began evasive maneuvers, just as the missiles slammed into them. The first frigate hit took a missile just aft of the bridge, and the resulting explosion completely destroyed the CIC *combat information center* of the ship, as well as the bridge itself. The ship was effectively stuck in space... But still able to fire its many missiles.

The second ship hit was not nearly as lucky. The missile struck just forward of the main engines, and tunneled through the relatively light armor and hit the reactor cooling systems... Immediately escape pods began to jettison, but only one got away before the fusion reactor blew, in a spectacular explosion that took three wraiths and another frigate with it. The resulting EMP shock wave temporarily blinded the other ships, as well as rendering the charging yamoto cannons on the massive battlecruisers completely useless. Three other frigates fell to the missile barrage, while the rest survived with varying amounts of damage. These remaining six ships turned toward the direction the missiles had come from, just in time to see space itself seem to shimmer and a ship so massive it blocked nearly their entire veiwscreens, even from nearly a dozen kilometers away.

Coming from this ship was a swarm, no other word could describe it accurately, of the small figher craft. The wraiths onboard the battlecruisers had deployed when the missiles had been sites, and moved to intercept, although they were outnumbered over five hundred to one... The smaller ships came within 6 kilometers and a number double that of the wraiths moving to intercept fired missiles. Two missiles homed in on each wraith, and despite all efforts the pilots tried, most were unable to lose the hypersonic, yet suprisingly agile missiles.

Barely a squadron of the fighters survived, but mainly because the explosions from their former comrades had destroyed most of the incoming missiles, and a quick salvo from one of the few remaining valkryies had eliminated those which were left. These remaining wraiths began to fire their own missiles at their attackers, only to see them easily evaded. Their assailants closed to less than a kilometer and lasers which fired more rapidly than anything those with the Dominion fleet had ever seen began to fire upon the wraiths. The nearly helpless Terran star craft were shredded like paper, and ballooned out into fireballs.

Then the battlecruiser nearest to the assailants was hit with a full broadside from a ship nearly twice its side, that was more than 13 kilometers away. The blasts ripped through the ship, and a few seconds after the blasts had hit, the ship exploded into a huge fireball, completely destroying the ships.

The other two began to fire their laser batteries at a fleet of closing frigate size vessels, only to see them absorbed by an energy field.

Then the frigates fired small, yet powerful laser blast in the direction of the battlecruisers... And neatly detached the "wing" of the nearest one. The large piece of space junk drifted off, spewing escape pods wildly.

From behind the frigates many comparatively slow moving, large fighter craft emerged. At an extremely close range they discharged many large missiles, which promptly tore into the remaining frigates, (at this point only 2 were left) and the battlecruisers... Completely destroying them.

With the Terran fleet annihilated the ships returned to their mothership...

The massive mothership began to charge its engines, and entered warp space...

On the side of the massive vessel, painted in huge letters, was the word ENTERPRISE...

Below that was written U.E.D. ...

When the ship emerged from warp space it was in the middle of a fleet that defied imagination. It stretched for thousands of kilometers, with hundreds of thousands of ships, all of the same design as the one which had annihilated the Terran force... All of them had, in large letters, U.E.D. painted upon their sides...

This was the prologue to my newest story... If you like it please tell me so and I will post the other chapters. I will be working on this as I am working on "The Temple".

Oh yes, if you don’t understand about these ships... The U.E.D., in Brood War, used captured Terran equipment... Other than the Valkryie we saw nothing of their actual technology, which should be several hundred years ahead of that of the Terrans... I gave a sneak peak at what I feel they would be like in this chapter... The population would have numbered in the TRILLIONS by now, and the number of planets under their control would have been many times the size of the Koropolu sector...