..a few days after the ISF-scouts started their reconnaissance-mission...
...
...after searching nearby systems they eventually picked up signals similar to those of teh AA and finally found one of their targets...at least that what they thought at first, arrived at the dedicated coordinates, they found a large ship construction-site it seems to be a Mastodon in the building process...
...considering they did not know if there were any other AA ships around they stayed at a safe distance and directed their scanners towards the monstrous ship, all it´s systems were offline at the current time, yet, there were miniscule movements within the hull...the ship seemed to built...by nanobots?
...little did they know, what was already awaiting them just behind the next moon...
...the Cult had picked up their signatures and started their assault on the scouts...
...being distracted by what they just found the ISF scouts noticed too late, that the Cult was ambushing them from behind, surrounding them before battle...
...the Hunters attack was quick and brutal leaving little time for reaction and none to flee or or send off the data they found...
...they took on the bigger ships first, tearing them apart with their primal weaponry...
While the battle raged in the distance, the Cult had contacted the AA that one of their construction sites was being found by scouts, a few of their ships arrived yet they did not join the battle, for their foremost directive was the retrieval of the Mastodon...
They linked their AI to the drone-cores in the mastodon, booting up it´s warp-drives and moving it away, then they left the battlefield themselves, seeing that the battle was almost over already...
...after the most of the scouting fleet was destroyed, half of the attackers hunted down the remaining smaller ships, while the others took the leftovers of the crew of the already destroyed ships with them...
The Zankaran fleet that stormed head-on into AA-territory received the distress-signal of the scouts first, yet, when they arrived all they found was the wreckage of their ships, the crews gone along with the Hunters, the Mastodon warped off to an unkown location, the data storages of the scouting fleet were either completely destroyed or erased by the AA ships...
