Alone in the silence of the vacuum of space, inhabitants of a pirate ship with Statuary emblazoned across it's side sped towards the unexplored Star System 490. Suddenly, an alarm rang out in the captain's quarters.
In the Captain's quarters, an old man woke up with a start, and his eyes darted to the flashing command panel in the corner of his room. He stared at it for exactly 2.35 seconds before suddenly leaping out of bed, in his pajamas, before grabbing his intercom with eyes wide and running while screaming into the intercom.
In the cockpit, a young looking insectoid girl stared at the control screen, eyes wide in shock. For outside, just seconds away, was a giant ship, floating amidst the stars. Stretching beyond what the display showed, it loomed over the small Statuary. Just one question remained in her mind - how did it just... appear?
The old man suddenly slid into the chair next to her, gave a glance over the displays, and then quickly reacted, giving mental commands to the ship AI to turn around and immediately warp to avoid the larger ship. They had fallen into a trap, and the crew behind them worked rapidly to get the ship combat ready. Firing back, the gunners behind him fought in a bid to buy enough time to escape.
As the ship successfully turned around and began to charge it's warp drive, the ship was suddenly hit by a beam of light from a different side and the warp drive began to make snapping noises. His experience on full display and eyes narrowing, the old man rapidly issued controls to discharge all their cargo in the direction of the beam and immediately random warp.
With a muffled bang, the goods were discharged, the beam locked onto them for a fraction of a second and... in the radar of those commanding the larger ship, the Statuary had disappeared, but not before a large explosion could be seen in the rear drive section of the ship.
---
Siy smiled and bade farewell to a customer. A lady with a merchant badge on her cloak approached the counter he was at, and said "I'd like to post a commission for 10 light stones. I'm offering 40 credits."
Siy put out his hand, and the lady passed him a membership card. Swiping it, Siy gave a quick "Thank you" and looked up her credit balance and merchant profile.
"It seems like you're good to go! I'll post it and notify you via the GComm when it's done."
"Thank you! Have a nice day!", the lady said.
Siy responded in turn, then detracted the credits and 10% commission fee and made a low class posting for 10 light stones, 40 credits.
Turning off his holographic work display, Siy stood up, stretching.
"Boss! I'm taking my lunch break!" he called, picking up a box from under the door after a return grunt was given, weaving in and out of people that packed the guild lobby as another coworker took his place.
Walking outside, Siy sat down on a bench in the city square outside the guild building he worked at, and pulled out a sandwich. He began eating it, when suddenly-
*BANG*
A strong shockwave suddenly hit him and his sandwich, sending the bench under him flying and making him temporarily unable to hear. Around him, he saw passerby getting knocked to the ground, buildings wavering. Above him, he saw 3 Protectors flying up with staffs with brown glows around their bodies, who then sent out pulses of light that miraculously shot supports up from the ground, keeping buildings standing.
And then as he looked further up-
In sudden shock, he saw an incomprehensively large burning wreck of what looked like a giant spaceship in the sky. Burning even brighter than Ularia's sun and two moons, it shed huge burning chunks of metal as it fell towards the surface. For an unspeakably long minute, as his hearing recovered with the sound of screaming, crying, and groaning buildings resounding around him, he watched the ship slowly descend into the horizon, and then felt the ground tremor as the ship hit the ground.
Siy stood up slowly, along with everyone else who had been lucky enough to be unharmed, and they quietly stared at the sky, still streaked with burning violet smoke and fiery metal fragments falling through the atmosphere, some slowly and others quickly, like shooting stars. He had never seen a spaceship so large before. The Universal Ularian Government definitely had never developed something like that. Where had it come from? What was it? Before it went down, he thought he had seen words emblazoned on the side of the ship in a language he had never seen before. And he thought... something... was horribly wrong.