"Now, my friends, our honoured guests from the Humans have prepared a presentation about one of their latest border squabbles that we hacked their deep space surveillance feeds and intercepted. Our feeds appear to have been compromised from two directions, so we will be rather limited in our viewpoint, but I'm sure the Ambassador will be able to explain and cope." The Auren Emperor floated in his dining tank, surrounded by many of his family and closest acquaintances. "How am I supposed to not break eye contact with a whole pool full of senior Aurens?" This was the first time any human had been invited to such a feast, and it was considered a major diplomatic breakthrough, somehow, the Ambassador had the feeling that was being set up for him to become the starter.
On screen, a volume of space appeared in 3d, with various assets highlighted in Auren script. Several fleets were closing around an asteroid belt. The Ambassador did not recognise the system, but he could see the ships and their classes clearly. He coughed, wished he could cover his mouth in the full immersion suit he was wearing to this underwater event, floated into an upright position and looked at the assembled crowd. He knew the added bowtie was flapping about and looked silly, but he had to maintain Ambassadorial dress codes. He had been invited to a formal banquet, in the Emperor's personal dining pool, so commentating on a non-Earth border dispute might just be pushing the limits of his diplomatic abilities At least he would go out doing something he actually knew, talking about the various subsections of human settlement around the Human galactic wedge.
A long, purple, tentacle plonked the slightly bemused diplomatic droid, that had accompanied him to the outer sanctum, next to him. Another tentacle was a fixing a bowtie to where the Emperor assumed the droid's neck to be (it was nowhere near).
"I thought you hated droids? You never let them come this far before" The Ambassador thought, hoping the Emperor would pick up on the thought before the assembled Aurens telepathic thought readers did. Many older nautiloids were looking and twitching tentacles in an irritated manner, turning the shade of blue usually reserved for when something awful, brown and sticky had been dropped into their sleeping tank so much was their dislike of non-organic beings.
"No human has been this far into my inner sanctum either. You are lucky that I am not consider serving you as a garnish. Anyway, every great actor needs a clown to play off. Yours is so funny, I could not let the opportunity slip to show my colleagues and family that the hated droids can be 'mostly harmless', plus, it will so upset some of them that they will continue to move against me and I will be able to track down who was backing my nephew."
The droid looked at the Ambassador, and whimpered over comms "I already have a new chassis printing back at the residence"!
View screen flared to life in front of all the Auren dignitaries, and an underwater light illuminated the Ambassador and his drone. "Tell me you knew about this, and you'll need more than a new chassis!" The Ambassador hissed to the droid.
"Seriously, nothing to do with me!"
"Better get transmitting data to my suit and their data feeds, making yourself useful then." The Ambassador continued to hiss.
"You already have unlimited access to everyone's projectors and data feeds." The Emperor intoned in his head, reminding him there was nothing private or out of bounds with the Aurens around.
"Honoured guests, it is our pleasure to narrate the following events," The Ambassador spoke clearly, public speaking was part of his role, but in a swimming pool, surrounded by fifty tonne nautiloids? "Here you can see a fleet in being, belonging to the Cylons. A mechanoid race that split from bombastic and enslaving humans many years ago and who departed to the outer rim of the Human wedge. They have recently resurfaced and are exacting revenge on the Twelve Colonies. Two base stars are elite, slow, bristling with heavy weapons and armour piercing ammunition. The three swarms of fighters are large mobs of craft and behind them is a small swarm of Heavy Raiders, slow, berserk and cunning, ideal for boarding and subsuming enemy computer networks, perfect leadership choices."
"Facing them is a Colonial battlestar. The Colonials split from Earth Centre many centuries ago, setting up twelve home planets, but always yearning to return. Their technology even you would view as almost primitive as the devolved due to their hatred of computers and droids brought on by their fights with Cylons. They view them like many of you here feel about my friend here." The Ambassador pointed at the droid, who was busy projecting stats for the enormous mile long grey slab to the watchers.
"Oi! What do you mean friend?"
The equivalent of Auren giggles spread through the tank, forcing both the Ambassador and the Droid to deploy motors to steady themselves as the waves built up, spilling megalitres of water into cleaning troughs outside. "The Colonials are religious zealots, fueled by a misplaced faith that one day they will return to the Sol system, and they are being guided by twelve gods. We drop them occasional crumbs of information and they call it divine interventions. The have a nasty habit of destroying themselves and resettling on twelve more planets, if the Cylons don't get them first. Their Battlestar, run by their beloved inspiring admiral, is a real tank of a ship, slow, heavily armoured, with a suite of heavy weapons, armour piercing weaponry, it can fire huge ranges, and even at targets it cannot see. They can be guided in by Raptors, recon troopships. You can see those, small ships, hiding, attached to the asteroids on the right. They unarmed spotters that infiltrate and have teleport drives to get them out of trouble. The carrier ship is further protected by three squadrons of Viper class fighters, of various marks, light, big formations and very manoeuvrable." The Ambassador was in the flow now, the Aurens were actually listening.
The feed scrolled left to an approaching fleet of large ships, labelled as 'unidentified'.
"Who the hell are these?" He muttered to the droid.
"You know they can hear everything? No idea, they don't conform to any of our data bases!" The droid looked like it was scratching it's head with field generators rippling through the water. "We know the tiger striped one is a mercenary, and Earth Centre just reported they are know as is 'Angles Morts' due to their cubist designs, worshipping something called 'Le Culte de le Mort Suite'."
"Angels of Death, good name, don't fear the Reaper little droid!" The Emperor interrupted, and again the waves of giggles washed across the tank.
"They present one light frigate, a flight of two heavy frigates, the mercenary that is also a heavy, with some kind of limited forcefields, but is not affiliated with the Tigerians as far as our registers go. At the rear, a shielded elite unit. They appears to use heavy weaponry and armour piercing capability is spread liberally across the flotilla." The Ambassador blagged, it looked a reasonable supposition, but he knew it was a lie, he just tried not to think about that, otherwise he would be served as the starter, probably even without an apple in his mouth.
"The Cylons, I may occasionally slip and call them toasters." The Droid flashed an infographic of ancient Earth bread warming technology to all the assembled crowd, the Ambassador noted that the warning file about using in wet conditions was prominently displayed too. He waited for the chuckled waves to die down "The Toasters are firing upon by the Battlestar quickly, without any real effect. These two were always going to be at each other's throats, or circuits. Their Viper fighters head into cover, hoping to take on the hordes of Cylon fighters."
"The third Colonial swarm, invoking their gods, set off after the Angles Mort's heavy ships. Possibly not their greatest idea." The Ambassador could see betting odds being displayed on screens, they were not good odds, but a nice touch by the droid.
"Guided in by the recon Raptors, witness Colonials blast away at a swarm of Cylon autonomous ships, tearing the heart out of the swarm, but due to their mechanoid nature, it will be ignored as what us humans call morale is lost on them." The droid broadcast shots of humans running away from monsters, certainly amusing the Aurens. "The Colonial fighters are being targeted by the Cylon basestar, and four of them unfortunately, or fortunately, depending who you put your bets on, are spread into a one molecule thick scatter of glitter across space."
"The Battlestar and lower Basestar were blocked on either side by asteroids, the Battlestar is obviously relying on the recon to tell it where to shoot." The Ambassador guessed confidently. "But not that well, as she isn't firing now."
"On the Colonial left, you can see the light fighters realising that are trying to take on a large amount of heavy ships was probably not the greatest idea, and the fighter are turning for cover."
"The Angles Mort form line astern as they move to counter the Cylon and Colonial threats like an Early Earth sea admiral." Various images of sail based warships in line flashed across data ports.
"The Cylon fire against the colonials was telling, especially with heavy weapons and armour piercing designed to take out capital ships, their second volley from their lower Basestar ripped through a whole Colonial squadron. We can assume the Colonials computer systems have been brought down by Cylon hacking."
"Look at this, one of the Cylon squadrons is being engaged in a dog-fight with the Colonials. The Cylons horde had already taken damage, while the light fighters are fighting hard."
"The Colonials are winning the dogfight, but took heavy losses to, so with two mobs closing fast and the berserkers coming in too, this is about to be unpleasant." The Ambassador pointed out the obvious to the assembled dignitaries. "The nearer Basestar threaded the needle and is targeting the next squadron of Colonial Vipers."
The Angles Mortes mercenaries are also being targeted by the Cylons at long range, the rest of the fleet, still in line, are targeting the Colonial fighters." The Ambassador intoned as the droid highlighted several key ships for him. 
"The Raptor recon moved away from the swarm of Cylons using their teleport jump technology, a bizarre move as it is slower than flying." The odds on a Colonial victory tumbled on the displays.
"Looks like the Angles Mortes have their aim in, quickly despatching the third Colonials who routed off to safety." He could tell by the shock waves caused by what he assumed were groans that some of the dignitaries amongst the nautiloids had just lost sizable bets.
"The Angles Mortes have lost their light flotilla, their mercenaries are also badly damaged, both the Colonials have lost all their Viper squadrons and the Cylons had their Berserk HQ and a Raider swarm suffer mechanical failures and both retire. Looks like we will be calling this a victory to Angles Mortes."
"I thought this was a banquet? I'm starving after all that." The Ambassador added weight to his belt and the suits internal gravametrics brought him back down as the Aurens applauded in their own way.
"It is, the main course is the nephew who revolted. He will be brought out of stasis moments before and the honoured guests get to dine upon him. He will taste better that way."
"That sounds, awful..."
"Just don't join in the feasting!" The Droid fluttered by, twitching with worry. "A quirk of human anatomy is that if you consume any Auren flesh, even if you could open your suit, about 28 hours afterwards you will become the unexpected father of approximately 10000 Aurean youngsters."
"I take it that would be a rather explosive birth." The Ambassador scratched where his nose would be if the helmet was not over his head.
"Explosive and then cannibalistic, after they had cleaned out your cadaver."
The lists we fielded:
Studio Bergstrom Cylons/Xylons. (used by Cliff)
Basestars x 2 Elite Infantry, slow, heavy weapons, armour piercing, mechanoids ( 8 ).
Raiders x 3 large militia rabble mob, mechanoid (2)
Heavy raiders x1: Berserker infantry, slow, mechanoid, cunning. (2)
Studio Bergstromm Colonials (with a little help from Hasbro Titanium range BSG - used by me)
Armoured vehicle x 1 Anti-personnel, slow, artillery, heavy weapons, armour piercing, inspirational leader, indirect shot. (10)
Raptors x 1 (2) Recon Infantry, teleport, unarmed
Vipers x 3 (4) Light infantry, increased squad size manoeuvrable
Angles Mort (we think GZG- Mort will confirm later)
1 x large heavy infantry, Armour piercing and heavy weapons
1 x light infantry, heavy weapons
1 x mercenary, heavy infantry, type 1 shields, armour piercing, heavy weapons, mercenaries.
1 x elite infantry, type 1 shields, armour piercing.
Great game, the system really works for spaceships, as it really allows you to use different upgrades to our infantry list choices, and quote BSG all the way through!
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