Ulia. A contested world in what was known to the Hestari as the Aedolis system. Aedolis and Edanith, the system's native powers, both wanted the world for themselves, each for its own reasons, and, so, the world was no stranger to conflict. So it was that another relatively average day saw the space in its high orbit range begin to ripple.
At first, the spots were small, mere droplets in an unimaginably vast ocean. But soon, the ripples grew into areas of ripples so vast, anyone on the surface could see the space take on the appearance of water just before something surfaces, bursting forth as thirty-two ships, all but six shaped like horseshoe crabs of Destroyer size and larger, burst out of the rifts, the openings splashing like a diver's waves as they closed. As the four large shark-shaped cruisers and two massive ones hung back, the crablike vessels each chose a target, the nearest ship to it, and made no attempt to evade enemy fire as they closed to their chosen targets, nahrium-studded graphene hulls and multi-layer kinetic barriers trusted to hold off enemy fire.
[Note: Their strategy here is to close to grapple distance, use their ships' legs to grapple onto any Aedolian or Edani vessels in orbit, then breach and capture or kill the crews. The cruisers and battlecruisers are going to be using their main particle cannons to fire on any ships that aren't being grappled.]
