Captain Tyleric shivered. Even with modern heating technology, looking into the vast emptiness of space around him always made him feel lonely. He was aboard the bridge of his bulk freighter the "Skytracer-1823-37". He had a big cargo assignment job, one with a large convoy. A large shipment to Protios with materials to complete habitation projects that had been going on for nearly four years. Tyleric looked at all the other bulk freighters that surrounded him. "Wouldn't this be just the thing pirates would love?" After all, it would be too tempting a shipment to simply let it go by. I bet something is going to happen," he thought to himself. He looked back at the small group of eight Earth Republic Fighters and sole Frigate, and felt a wave of reassurance. "Not much could outdo the ER. Especially a handful of renegades."
"Convoy Number 273... Tach to coordanents 825,372 at my mark." The leader of the convoy announced. "T-10... 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2..." The darkness flashed briefly as the ships underwent the violent change into tachyonic particles. Zillions of miles away, and five days later on Universal time, the same convoy reconverted back into normal matter. It was only a fraction of an instant for the convoy, due to the effects of time dilation. Tyleric found himself going from being normal, to feeling as nothing, back into a normal person in a split second. It was an experience that took a lot of getting used to. And since he had been a spacepilot for nearly two years, he was accustomed to such weird feelings. He had known a few passengers who never wanted to ride a spacecraft again after experiencing tachyonic travel for the first time.
The Isran system was a flurry of activity. The convoy was dormant on the outskirts of the system, waiting for the older freighters with slower hyperdrives to arrive. It would also be here that the guard would change. The Earth Republic held no jurisdiction over this area of space since the Third World War. Since then, the Ellian Confederacy has maintained its patrol over it's neighboring systems. They will not allow ER military ships to enter any Ellian system, as they view that as aggression. Several of the orbiting ER Fighters began to back away from the convoy. The Frigate remained for several minutes, then also withdrew. Tyleric knew the reason for their strange behavior, the Ellian ships were stark black. And very hard to see.
These kinds of transactions between opposing governments were always dangerous. Yet so far, both sides had been able to refrain from hurting one another. Tyleric began to notice that something seemed to be going wrong with the transaction. The ER ships began to spread out, and were buzzing all over the place at high speed. Then he saw flashes, then a massive fireball. They were fighting each other! This was War! An ER fighter zipped past his freighter, only narrowly missing. The proton pulse aimed at the fighter did not miss the unfortunate freighter.
Tyleric's freighter didn't explode, because there were no fusion stores aboard. The freighter was there one second, the next, half of it was simply missing. The ER Fighters and Frigate tried to protect both the convoy and themselves, yet in the confusion they only made it worse by heading into the middle of the convoy. The Ellian ships tore through the innocent freighters and destroyed the remaining ER ships after a long drawn out battle.
Thus started what would be known as the Ellian War. A conflict that, before it was ended by the surrender of the ER in 2326, would take the lives of over 20 million people. Some of them, like Tyleric, innocent civilians killed by miscommunication. And it was all started by a simple trade dispute between these two great nations.
It turns out, that at the staging area, the captain of the frigate felt insulted by a comment made to him from the incoming Ellian ships. He stayed a little longer then he should have and ticked the Ellians off. From there, the two sides started bickering, and ended up shooting one another.
(This message has been edited by moderator (edited 02-10-2003).)
