The klaxon isn't the standard drill tone. You know it instantly — you've drilled this scenario a thousand times but never heard it for real. CONTACT PROTOCOL HORIZON. Classification: UNKNOWN VESSEL. Not Gauna.
Your boots hit the deck before your eyes are fully open. The quarters on Deck 901 are spartan — rank has its privileges, but the Izumo doesn't believe in luxury. War doesn't sleep in silk sheets.
Your wrist display is already flooding: Fleet Command, Intelligence & Recon, and Olympus Mod Operations — all pinging simultaneously. Someone on the bridge flagged this before the klaxon even sounded. That means they were watching before they told you.
The corridor outside is controlled chaos — officers moving fast, boots ringing on deck plating, voices tight. A Marine sergeant snaps to attention as you pass. "Commander. Bridge is calling. Priority one."
You're in the elevator before you process the weight of it. Priority One. In two centuries of the Izumo's existence, that flag has been raised exactly three times.
The elevator doors open onto the Command Deck. Fleet Admiral Vasquez is already at the main holotable, surrounded by branch heads — all of them standing, all of them staring at the projection.
It's a ship. Smaller than the Izumo by a factor of four, but unmistakable — a seed ship configuration. Transponder data is old, degraded, but the signature matches records so ancient they're stored in physical archives, not digital.
Sidonia.
"Commander," Vasquez says without turning. Her voice is ice. "Sidonia has entered our detection envelope. They don't know we're here. Yet." She pauses. "They will in eleven minutes when their passive sensors sweep this sector."
Intelligence Director Kessler steps forward, datapad in hand. "We have three options, Supreme Commander. Reveal ourselves on our terms. Silence our emissions and hope they pass. Or—"
He doesn't finish. He doesn't need to.
The holotable hums. Sidonia drifts through the void, unaware that the largest warship humanity ever built is watching it from the dark.
Every eye in the room turns to you.
What are your orders, Commander?