Chapter 1

It was a clear, straight shot for quite some distance. Eerily so. This part of space was usually at least somewhat active with the hustling and bustling of merchant ships. But now… nothing. Most would dismiss something like this as just a coincidence and continue on with their day. But he knew better.
Brimstone, short for High Galactic Emperor-Deity Hædïve "Brimstone" Vultfœ, was already having his crew perform a check of any transmissions sent in the system during the past twenty four hours, and other than the usual, nothing stood out yet. "Captain, do you have any idea what this says?" Asked a bunny playing over a garbled bit of sound data. What else could he have given but to nod his head. 
"Run it through a few recruiters and see if we can make sense of it." He returned, a simple enough request, though even with as powerful as the cruiser's onboard pc was, it was taking time. But that didn't matter, not a bit. He didn't have a damn bit of time as it stood because the moment the decryption had started, was the moment things went to hell.
Not by any fault of the cpu, more... the massive fleet surrounding him from all directions. There was no time to think, the ship didn't need a word from him to know to man the battle stations as quickly as possible, whether this was an assault or not... and let's face it, this wasn't just some coincidence anymore. 
Still, the decryption finished. "Seems they're... space emus? It sounds a bit odd, but that is how they refer to themselves. We don't have much data on them but there does appear to be some in the galactic record... and yes, they are what they advertise themselves to be it seems."

 "Try to patch us through communications." He asked, putting on a stern face, as was of course quite necessary for moments like these. Soon, they were patched through, to the great delight of absolutely nobody involved, as what came through was nothing but indecipherable squawking. Sadly, not even the cpu could save it this time... seems their native language was pretty much undocumented.
"Prepare the stations." He sighed, it seemed that conflict was unavoidable. There wasn't any form of escape available with them so close after all. So now there was no choice, the battle stations were manned. Yet it was too late, a great explosion signalling that they weren't the first to fire at all, adn that was enough to make the crew panic, sending off a few shells at the targetted offender, the feed being cut as the fleet mobilized in a shell position, covering the cruiser from all angles in a sphere. There truly was no escape.
They weren't just around him, they were on the ship, sounds of gun fire, technology he was unfamiliar with as he drew his own state of the art weapons for battle, but before he could do a thing, there was a sharp pain, and all went dark.