The Renaissance

A brief and short distress signal awakened Dr Dredd from his peaceful slumber in the confines of the Mercy Dark. Albeit annoyed, he must’ve known that this was important and went underway to the communications room in the base.

“TFR>:DATA UPLINK COMPLETE

ERROR ERROR LEVEL 7 ENCRYPTION”

The acronym TFR was puzzling to Dr Dredd, as he had never ever heard of that before and none of the files in the archives of the Mercy Dark had no mention of it. He uploaded the encrypted signal into his neural net and set to work to try and find people who’d be able to somehow decrypt the message.

He scouted the Sirius Sector near and far until he decided Earth would be an appropriate place for him to search for answers. After a long and tiring voyage in his Chimera, he made it to the well stocked of Earth and immediately set his gaze upon the bartender. A short discussion with the drink slinging man helped Dredd understand that the acronym TFR was for The French Renaissance, an old branch of the Alliance that was believed to have been annihilated by the Coalition blockade all those centuries ago. This message here, proves that was not the case. The bartender had urged him to head to the Order HQ in the orbit of Mars, as maybe someone there would have a clue on how to decrypt the message.

However, en route to the base was another distress signal. This time strong... and close by

Deciding to put his personal mission on hold for now, he decided to investigate. The signal originated near the small rings of Jupiter, and judging on the tracking of the Chimeras intricate and complex NAV, it came from a freighter. After exiting the warp buoy, he immediately went on full cruise, determined to locate the origin of the signal. In the depths of the voids of space, he saw a faint blue vessel in the distance. And then an explosion of a smaller vessel. Activating his weapons as soon as he approached, he came to face to face with a Nomad Battleship. He knew he was outgunned and practically outnumbered, but he was definitely not outskilled. The battle was lengthy, the Nomads heavy guns were mostly missing the Chimera, but the hits that it did land hurt a lot, but the raw firepower and agility of Dredd settled the fight. He watched as he saw a bright shining blue light envelop his ship and explode far enough away to render him safe from the shockwave. He pondered how and where did that ship come anywhere near Sol... the order had managed to clear the system months ago, there should be no Nomad ships anywhere near the main planets, much less close by Jupiter. Maybe it had something to do with the original encrypted signal. And thus, Dredd left the scene and continued on his voyage to the Mars HQ, unaware of how his next huge adventure would surely not only change the history of Dredd, but also the history of humankind

Landing in one of the bays of the HQ, he had a feeling that the information he needed would be held by someone in the bar. Climbing out of his cockpit and setting foot on the cold metal flooring of the base, he headed to the bar

A random figure amongst the people of the bar had some proper information for him. He ran the message through a decoder ring and the message was soon decrypted

“INITIALIZING DATA DECODER

DATA SUCCESSFULLY DECRYPTED

DATA SUCCESSFULLY TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH:::

TFR>: this is an emergency broadcast to any and all Renaissance fighters in the vicinity. This is Arles station in the Alsace system. We are under attack by numerous alien spacecraft, requesting assistance immediately. Most of the base has been cordoned off after explosions ran through the secondary modules. Our defences have been fried and all friendly ships have been destroyed in the battle

We can’t hold on much longer

END MESSAGE”.

Arles station? Alsace system? This wasn’t registered on Dredd NAV map. The bartender hadn’t a clue about it either. However, a Freelancer a while ago managed to locate a hidden jump hole somewhere in the Asteroid field between Jupiter and Mercury. This was all the information needed for Dredd and he set out to discover it.

I guess you could say his trip was sort of... Annoying. Despite having the best scanning system money can buy, his search appeared fruitless. The asteroid field was a big place and it was home to numerous pirates that loitered the area. Dredd almost decided to give up his search and head back before a shimmering object appeared from a far off location.
He knew that was what he was looking for and immediately set full speed towards it.
Catching his gaze upon the jump hole, it lead to Epsilon Eridani, a system which was considered extremely close to the humans back on Earth centuries ago. Taking a deep breath and sigh, he entered the portal

Blue flashes of light erupted his vision and he has to quickly move to avoid being shot down.
Nomads. This system was littered with Nomads. However, they were only the light scout ships which had a decent amount of hull strength but rather weak weapons. It took him all of a minute to blast them out of the stars before he set around to scouting the system. Maybe the information he’d find would be uploaded to the Mercy Darks information archives. Bypassing numerous wings of Nomad scouts, a giant hunk of rock which appeared inhabited by Nomads and gave a big impression that it was yet another Nomad city, and sensor jamming nebulas, he’d located another jump hole. It registered as Tau Ceti. Another system which was also considered close by. It appeared phase aligned but it was extremely weak. It would more then likely disappear after the jump. He went full throttle through the portal, watching the walls of Jumpspace closing around rapidly around him

He managed to appear in one piece in a rather smallish system completely inhabited by a supermassive asteroid field. However, he had eyed a rather small asteroid fragment that stood out amongst the asteroids. He slowly approached the rocks and was surprised at what he had found