Year 2019 the Earth solar system near Pluto…
A portal opened sending purple electrical discharge billowing out into space so remote no one would ever notice the phenomenon, it cracked and spat randomly for hours before focusing and coming together shrinking into a focal point before exploding into an oblong oval fluctuating shape that writhed as if trying to escape while reaching out to the uncaring void only to be pulled back into a crackling circle that shrank at an alarming rate once established.
Through the portal a sleek white leviathan ship of gargantuan size spanning twenty-three km from end to end sped through the portal at a speed that would be incomprehensible to any of this systems top scientists should they have been able to witness such a spectacle. It blew out an extraordinary amount of energy with its appearance and sleeted purple lightning like a speeding car would rain in a storm, casting it off with a casual disregard for anything in the area…or following it.
Like a creature of the deep Earth oceans it had its entourage of hangers on, both parasitic and communal, and so a vast hanger on support fleet breached REAL space behind the flag/broadcasting ship. The fleet of smaller craft sped through the portal on the leviathan's heels before the rapidly diminishing portal snapped shut and scattered energy in a bow wave that blew out force in all directions causing a catastrophic plasma pulse.
Despite how the flag ship broke through space like a whale breaching the surface of the ocean and weathered the backlash of reentry, the retinue fleet suffered horribly from the energy cascading from the flag ship and even more so when the plasma pulse engulfed the fleet, and no less than four hundred ships out of just over a thousand from the flotilla drifted lifeless in the void after entry into this new system. All organic matter turned to ash in a plasma field and all the systems cooked hollow from the heat generated that atomized the base material, only the hulls remained leaving them empty shells drifting listlessly in the void at random trajectories and little better than space debris the survivors now had to dodge lest they themselves join them in a collision.
Now Immediately as planned, the dredger drones broke off from the larger surviving ships to begin salvaging the burnt out ships themselves and their hopefully surviving memory cores that were secluded deep within the hulls and insulated for such an occurrence as plasma death. The electronics and biomaterial might be wasted but each hull alone was worth decades of work and so the long haul will begin to find and refit these lifeless husks so that in the future they could serve again, besides this wouldn't be the first or even the tenth time some of those ships had been plasma blasted into lifeless space debris in the last twenty-thousand years.
The hulls did have one more thing of value stored aboard that were also insulated against the ravages of translation and plasma of which could be argued as the most important in these beginning stages, they held multi-purpose drones and they were the back bone of any effort to even consider building the needed facilities required for what needed to be done in this newly found region of space.
Scans peeled out scouring the system for any data that might be relevant to the new arrivals in system and within moments the augurs pinged back data showing there seemed to be quite a few moons orbiting some of the planets that were in system that had small habitable biospheres, and then there was the blue planet itself that had a perfect orbit around this system's star that could hopefully hold multiple varying bio-spheres itself. On the heels of the systems information coming in came the fleets own casualty reports as well… looking at the initial data coming in the cost in species resources seemed to be close to a billion lives gambled and lost on a single jump.
All of this information was gathered and sent directly to the leader of this vast fleet, a being known as "The Producer". As The Producer poured over the incoming data and tried to match it with the estimated losses the fleet could have incurred as an average from translation to this system The Producer fluttered his eyes in joy as he actually expected to pay an additional sixty percent in plasma deaths, so costs would be down and the timeline could be implemented immediately instead of waiting for salvage of the drones from the burned out hulls, they even arrived relatively in system albeit at the edge.
"The auger guild have really out done themselves on this jump." the producer thought as he made ready to bring this system into the great Production Empire, and begin producing this systems version of "The Show".
***********
From the projection hall of the leviathan broadcast ship "system zero-one"…
Staring at the hollo projection of the system orbiting this young star the new producer of this system found it interesting that out of their projections four-fifths of the in system life was all crammed on this one blue planet, the rest of the moons had some life that could be of use and others that could be nurtured in maybe a thousand or so years. Quite surprisingly some of the planets even had tracer marks of a race the Production Empire had already encountered recently and were currently in the process of adopting into the Empire already.
"If only they could have accepted adoption then maybe the losses suffered could have been mitigated." thought the Producer absently as he scanned the incoming data. "Though the footage of the war was decent enough even though those lanky grey types could only really rely on their different blasters and interesting array of probes."
"Sir most of the drone ships have had their crews survive, I believe we can start the recognition process immediately.", the words were whispered through a vox grill attached to the slave insectoid's neck designed to never discomfort their master's sound perception organs, this chamber was only ever dead quiet besides when information had to be passed on for analysis by those of higher station.
The Producer looked at the slave, a creature belonging to the diminutive slave insect species the Korad… not all species encountered by the Production Empire were fit for "The Show" but still had their place in implementing its smooth running whatever they may be able to do to forward its progress. The Producer opened his fang toothed mouth to scare the diminutive creature into scuttling away to its tiny work station, it amused him to hear their little legs tapping on the floor as their fear response overcame them and he hissed lightly.
The Producer was a member of the Ssrickal species, the Ssrickal were the original founders of the Production empire over twenty-thousand years ago and had begun this new and lasting Empire after a massive civil war had ruptured their old empire and coalition of allies. The Ssrickal were a reptid species that had a matte dark blue and light blue for males and females respectively though there were many different colour variations on top of this now through manipulation, they had feet that were able to grasp and hold their whole weight akin to the great apes of earth, their hands looked almost primate except that they had an extra opposable thumb on each hand on the opposite side. The top of their head were covered in multi-coloured swept back tentacles that were each one a separate sensory organ, their faces were wide with overly large multi-coloured eyes they used for communication in much the same way another species would use body language. They didn't have a nose but instead had between six and twelve olfactory holes that started in the center of their face and curled over their eyes like human eyebrows, and finally they had wide mouths filled with many small sharp pure white jagged teeth, the males were also about half the size of the females.
The Producer himself was very dark blue and enjoyed intimidating the small slave castes that were smaller than his one meter or close to three foot height. Out of many of the species absorbed into the Production empire, the Ssrickal males were usually rated as some of the smallest and in some it could create a bit of an inferiority complex.
Smirking and turning to looking through the data again The Producer of this bountiful system could see that the inhabitants seemed to have gained space flight recently…but gave up? They had a low amount of space junk presumably just communication relays and primitive detritus, but no inner system warning priority alarms or picket fleets which really showed just how primitive they were.
"Well maybe that explains these lazy space probes." The Producer murmured while looking at the handful of probes spread out throughout the planets and dark space of the system. "If only they knew what kind of things prowled out in the dark reaches then maybe they would have invested more interest into the safety of their home system."
"Or maybe they're just too primitive…", said the producer while looking at the level of technological advancement present in the equipment present in system, the thought itself was a bit speciesist but looking at the data it was hard to argue.
After a minute of data scrolling they could detect low frequency calls to this system made from a nearby system a few tens of lightyears away asking for a link and answer using a numerical code system, probably just a cut above this systems auger abilities to detect.
"Cute." thought The Producer, but no sooner than he was thinking it the signal cut off, "Hmmf," he gestured, "Track that and send a scout."
Whatever it is it will all become a footnote in a matter of time, hopefully before the phases begin so he could calculate a rough profit margin to put forward for another broadcast expansion proposal that would help add prestige to his new posting.
"Begin," the producer said while staring at the cascading data of this system of wealth. "Show me everything."
As the lightning was still dissipating off of the leviathan ship in small crackles that leapt out to try and snag at the smaller ships, a large chunk off the underside of the ship detached, broke apart and sped towards all of the planets and their orbiting moons. If there were any Elemental beings watching they had minutes before they were either trapped or would leave a trace that could be followed, unfortunately for all of those in system only a single young and very petty elemental being noticed what was happening in time but chose not to do anything about it except make an abrupt silent exit.