First Contact: The Stratos Event

The Stratos Event was a major turning point in the ISA - Singulus War, marked by a significant ISA victory immediately followed by the disasterous first contact by both factions with the ultra synthetic lifeform Omnes.

Strange Readings
While on a planetary system scouting mission with his synthetic partner Artemis, Commander James Arcarius was intercepted by a drone launched from a Singulus mothership. After evading the drone's attack, Commander Arcarius elected to follow the drone's path to a stormy terrestrial planet in the system. When the pair arrived, they discovered a lone Singulus mothership drilling into a planet with it's defensive laser. As they were taking scans, the mothership detected their starfighter and launched a sortie of drones to destroy them. Commander Arcarius and Artemis evaded the drones and escaped the Singulus.

When the pair arrived back at the star carrier the Summit, Admiral Louise Irons and her command staff determined the Singulus erected a base on the planet's surface. Since the system offered no strategic advantage to either side of the conflict, ISA leaders ordered the Admiral to take her task group to the system and seize control of the base in an effort to discover the Singulus motives. The admiral complied with the order, rallied her task group, and tuned into the system now with the designation of Stratos.

The ISA plan was relatively simple. They would program the mothership still in orbit, to de-orbit itself onto the base's primary defenses, destroying them, and allowing for a mass planetary landing of troops and armor on the surface. Commander Arcarius led the effort to reprogram the mothership, successfully accomplishing the goal to great effect, allowing the invasion to procede as planned. As the Commander and Artemis provided ground support to forces attempting to take the base, they were shot down. Both ejected and continued on with an armor division making the final push to the Singulus base.

"This is Too Easy"
While organizing dissarrayed ISA troops on the ground, Artemis determined that ISA commuincation lines where being flooded by a flurry of coded Singulus transmissions. As she began her investigation, Commander Arcarius was tasked with finding a lost squad of soldiers. He found them quickly, repelled a Singulus attack, and re-linked with the armor column. While the Singulus resisted the invasion, their reisistance was untypically disorganized, hobbled, and lacked execution. This allowed ISA forces to breach the perimiter of the Singulus base and drill site with relative ease.

While trying to investigate the flurry of Singulus transmissions further, Stratos began undergoing severe tectonic activity. From orbit, ISA commanders could see the planet was in the process of tearing itself apart. With no other option, Admiral Irons ordered the destroyer Andes to deploy a planetcracker missile in effort to deny the Singulus any more insight into their find and ordered the warship to descend into the lower atmosphere of Stratos to serve as an emergency rendezvous point for an emergency planetside evacuation.