SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Removed
Last edited by Zor on 2010-09-04 01:46am, edited 2 times in total.
HAIL ZOR! WE'LL BLOW UP THE OCEAN!
Heros of Cybertron-HAB-Keeper of the Vicious pit of Allosauruses-King Leighton-I, United Kingdom of Zoria: SD.net World/Tsar Mikhail-I of the Red Tsardom: SD.net Kingdoms
WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE ON EARTH, ALL EARTH BREAKS LOOSE ON HELL
Terran Sphere
The Art of Zor
Heros of Cybertron-HAB-Keeper of the Vicious pit of Allosauruses-King Leighton-I, United Kingdom of Zoria: SD.net World/Tsar Mikhail-I of the Red Tsardom: SD.net Kingdoms
WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE ON EARTH, ALL EARTH BREAKS LOOSE ON HELL
Terran Sphere
The Art of Zor
-
Simon_Jester
- Emperor's Hand
- Posts: 30165
- Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Fighta-Bomba Big Mig, closing to intercept
January 18, 3400, 1245 Hours, Planetary Local Time
Migwazza could see the ship now, a little box on the horizon. Didn't look too impressive- he left one hand on the throttle and used the other to raise a pair of binoculars to his eyes. Nope, not gonna put up much of a fight. Still wasn't sure why Nazdreg cared enough to offer a thousand teeth for it, but whatever. He called back to his smartboy.
"Oi, you! Check da Squigwindas!"
His follower fooled around with the plugboard his headphones were hooked into, listening to the little microphones Bitzgrub had placed inside the missiles. He switched from one missile to the next... when he found what he was looking for, it was loud enough that Migwazza could hear it too: the ratcheting growl of an attack squig that saw something to kill.
"Boss! Missile Three has a lock!"
The ace-turned-warboss pounded a large red button on his console marked with three white dots. His plane rolled side to side as the Squigwinda dropped away from the right wing, but soon leveled out... as the rocket engine ignited, boosting the squig-guided missile towards the fleeing starship.
Glowworm-class Transport Tranquility, Bridge
Captain Tamrin, strapped in the copilot's seat, saw Gavin getting calmer. There was no expression on his face but intense concentration as he soared through the canyon, going faster than John could imagine flying.
Gav was funny that way- he'd goof off and act out when nothing was happening; even when things were serious he'd joke around. But when it really dropped in the pot, he'd just go absolutely calm and start pulling miracles out of a hat. It made him more than worth the money.
Then, as the rattling from another mass driver salvo faded, they heard another report from Overwatch Three. "Attention freighter! We have missile separation! The ork fighter has launched a missile! Break!"
Gav didn't even blink; he just yanked the attitude control, spun the engines around, and power-dived for the deck, keeping the nose pointed forward and yawing gently to port. John felt the effect, but wasn't sure what was happening at first. Then it all came together: He's keeping the missile from flying up our engine ports. If it was an ordinary air-to-air missile that might save them; Tranquility was a thick-skinned old girl by standards of fighting in atmo, like most starships. If it wasn't... well, in that case they’d get to “and explode” in a hurry.
As Tranquility’s nose pitched north, Gav waited a few beats, then punched it. They were hammered back into their seats for a moment before the compensators kicked in.
Big Mig
“ZOGGIN’ GROTS!” Migwazza pounded the control panel with his free hand as the freighter pivoted and sidestepped his missile. The faithful hunting squig controlling it tried to turn around for another pass: a credit to its training, but this was tight quarters and the Squigwinda’s turning radius wasn’t all it might be. The missile slammed into the canyon wall and exploded harmlessly.
Whatever. At least they had three more... if any of the things would get a lock already. Bitzgrub was still having trouble with that part. A missile whose guidance relied on a predatory animal spotting the target through binoculars wasn’t always good at spotting the right target.
Tranquility, Bridge
Gavin banked against the turn, tilting the ship and thrusting up and in to stop their dodge before it carried them into the cliff face.
“Freighter this is Overwatch, four rounds ETA in thirty seconds.”
“I copy, Overwatch. Can you send us a map of the canyon and any branch routes?”
“Sending. Ah, be advised, the small side canyons are dead ends.”
Gav replied. “Copy that, Overwatch,” then cut the microphone. The defense battery rounds were almost overhead; riding that out demanded his full attention.
Once the shaking stopped, he called over to John. “I think I can lose him in one of the side canyons, but I’d need to time it right... and I’d need to pull an Ivan.”
John frowned. “You sure you got it? You’ve talked about it a lot, but...”
There were a string of rattling clangs against the hull.
Big Mig
“WAAAAAGH!” Migwazza had finally got tired of muckin’ about with missiles. Time to go in for guns! The battery of dakkaguns blazed away, not that he had much hope for cracking a starship with those. But the slower-firing deffguns... those might cut it. Of course, a lot of the tracers were going wild, but just look at how much he was throwin’- that was real dakka he had going there. Still, probably had to bludgeon some of the grot oilers when he got back to base; a couple of the guns were pointing way off to the side...
A long burst from the dakkaguns stitched a line of sparks and dents from the freighter; it looked like the deffgun shells were bouncing off the curve of the hull, though. He twisted the nose around and tried it again.
Tranquility
The captain frowned. “You sure you got it? You’ve talked about it a lot, but...”
There were a string of rattling clangs against the hull.
“...Go for it.”
Gav keyed the intercom. “Sammie, how would you feel about pulling a Crazy Ivan?”
“Always wanted to try one!” The part of Gavin’s mind that tracked anything but flying chuckled, but he pushed that aside.
“Set it up.” She’d left the intercom live; he could hear rattles and bangs, and once an electric spark. Wait for it...
Big Mig
“Boss! Boss! Got snarlin’ from missiles one and two! They got lock!”
Migwazza pounded a meaty fist on the console... and missed the missile buttons. He cursed and corrected his aim.
The missiles roared out.
Tranquility
Overwatch was screaming at him. “Missile! Missile! Turn hard!” There was the box canyon just ahead; he could do it... now! A quick squeeze of the port nozzle for more thrust, and the ship was banking up and over...
There was a deafening bang as something booted Tranquility from behind.
“Sammie, you all right?”
No response.
“Sammie!”
“...OW. I’m fine, we’re ready. OW. Ow ow ow...” That sounded more like ‘stubbed toe’ than ‘shrapnel wounds.’ No time to worry. He flipped to external comms. “Overwatch, tell me when they fire the next rounds, do you copy?”
“Copy that.” Now to wait and pray no more missiles came in.
Big Mig
Migwazza whooped. One of the Squigwindas had smacked the freighter just below the engine bulb. But now there was only one left. Better to close and give ‘em the guns again. He kicked in the afterburner and pushed forward, lips skinned back from the g-forces as he made the turn into the side canyon the humans had fled into.
Tranquility
“Four rounds inbound, ETA forty-five seconds.” Gavin copied, then switched back to intercom. “Everyone hold on to something!”
This was something only a VTOL craft could do, and that very few VTOL craft should do. He spun the starboard engine around and firewalled it, spinning end-for-end in a matter of a few seconds, then powered straight for the pursuing ork.
It was only after the first tracers flew past his windshield that he realized his new plan involved playing chicken with an ork...
Big Mig
Letting fly with the deffguns was fun, but it was a sudden happy surprise when the freighter spun around in midair and started charging straight for him. Closer... closer... then the grot in the seat behind him shouted in his ear.
“Boss! They’re not stoppin’!”
Well, it was all fun and games until you got smeared all over somebody’s windshield, so Migwazza pulled up and over the ship he’d just shot up... Then he hit Step Two of Gavin’s plan- the engine backwash. Gav had angled his thrusters again, driving Tranquility down at an angle. The exhaust plume slapped Big Mig upwards, causing a temporary loss of control.
Migwazza fought to regain control; it wasn’t easy. Tranquility’s massive turbofans put out enough pressure to set him tumbling. He watched the altimeter Bitzgrub had riveted to the side of the cockpit spool upwards. For some reason it had been measured in “feet” instead of humie meters. For a moment he wondered why... then, as he passed 2500 feet, he saw the next salvo of railgun rounds come screaming in from the west.
Oh zog.
The blast wave caught him twenty seconds later and slapped his fighter towards the ground. This was gonna be rough. For a moment, not even he was sure he was ‘ard enough to handle this...
“Boss! The ejection seats!”
Oh. Right.
He yanked the lever; the Stormboy rocket pack riveted to the back of his seat lit off. Migwazza’s last thought before he blacked out was how he needed to find something good to do for Bitzgrub... such a good mek...
Glowworm-class Transport Tranquility, Bridge
January 18, 3400, 1300 Hours, Planetary Local Time
They were clear. They were finally clear. The gunners stopped shooting around ten minutes after Gav ditched the ork fighter- maybe they were running low on ammo, maybe they’d lost track of him. Captain Tamrin didn’t know, didn’t care. The very minute he knew he was clear, that those damn plasma shells stopped going off overhead, he gave the order.
“Punch it, Gavin. I want some clear sky for a change.”
January 18, 3400, 1245 Hours, Planetary Local Time
Migwazza could see the ship now, a little box on the horizon. Didn't look too impressive- he left one hand on the throttle and used the other to raise a pair of binoculars to his eyes. Nope, not gonna put up much of a fight. Still wasn't sure why Nazdreg cared enough to offer a thousand teeth for it, but whatever. He called back to his smartboy.
"Oi, you! Check da Squigwindas!"
His follower fooled around with the plugboard his headphones were hooked into, listening to the little microphones Bitzgrub had placed inside the missiles. He switched from one missile to the next... when he found what he was looking for, it was loud enough that Migwazza could hear it too: the ratcheting growl of an attack squig that saw something to kill.
"Boss! Missile Three has a lock!"
The ace-turned-warboss pounded a large red button on his console marked with three white dots. His plane rolled side to side as the Squigwinda dropped away from the right wing, but soon leveled out... as the rocket engine ignited, boosting the squig-guided missile towards the fleeing starship.
Glowworm-class Transport Tranquility, Bridge
Captain Tamrin, strapped in the copilot's seat, saw Gavin getting calmer. There was no expression on his face but intense concentration as he soared through the canyon, going faster than John could imagine flying.
Gav was funny that way- he'd goof off and act out when nothing was happening; even when things were serious he'd joke around. But when it really dropped in the pot, he'd just go absolutely calm and start pulling miracles out of a hat. It made him more than worth the money.
Then, as the rattling from another mass driver salvo faded, they heard another report from Overwatch Three. "Attention freighter! We have missile separation! The ork fighter has launched a missile! Break!"
Gav didn't even blink; he just yanked the attitude control, spun the engines around, and power-dived for the deck, keeping the nose pointed forward and yawing gently to port. John felt the effect, but wasn't sure what was happening at first. Then it all came together: He's keeping the missile from flying up our engine ports. If it was an ordinary air-to-air missile that might save them; Tranquility was a thick-skinned old girl by standards of fighting in atmo, like most starships. If it wasn't... well, in that case they’d get to “and explode” in a hurry.
As Tranquility’s nose pitched north, Gav waited a few beats, then punched it. They were hammered back into their seats for a moment before the compensators kicked in.
Big Mig
“ZOGGIN’ GROTS!” Migwazza pounded the control panel with his free hand as the freighter pivoted and sidestepped his missile. The faithful hunting squig controlling it tried to turn around for another pass: a credit to its training, but this was tight quarters and the Squigwinda’s turning radius wasn’t all it might be. The missile slammed into the canyon wall and exploded harmlessly.
Whatever. At least they had three more... if any of the things would get a lock already. Bitzgrub was still having trouble with that part. A missile whose guidance relied on a predatory animal spotting the target through binoculars wasn’t always good at spotting the right target.
Tranquility, Bridge
Gavin banked against the turn, tilting the ship and thrusting up and in to stop their dodge before it carried them into the cliff face.
“Freighter this is Overwatch, four rounds ETA in thirty seconds.”
“I copy, Overwatch. Can you send us a map of the canyon and any branch routes?”
“Sending. Ah, be advised, the small side canyons are dead ends.”
Gav replied. “Copy that, Overwatch,” then cut the microphone. The defense battery rounds were almost overhead; riding that out demanded his full attention.
Once the shaking stopped, he called over to John. “I think I can lose him in one of the side canyons, but I’d need to time it right... and I’d need to pull an Ivan.”
John frowned. “You sure you got it? You’ve talked about it a lot, but...”
There were a string of rattling clangs against the hull.
Big Mig
“WAAAAAGH!” Migwazza had finally got tired of muckin’ about with missiles. Time to go in for guns! The battery of dakkaguns blazed away, not that he had much hope for cracking a starship with those. But the slower-firing deffguns... those might cut it. Of course, a lot of the tracers were going wild, but just look at how much he was throwin’- that was real dakka he had going there. Still, probably had to bludgeon some of the grot oilers when he got back to base; a couple of the guns were pointing way off to the side...
A long burst from the dakkaguns stitched a line of sparks and dents from the freighter; it looked like the deffgun shells were bouncing off the curve of the hull, though. He twisted the nose around and tried it again.
Tranquility
The captain frowned. “You sure you got it? You’ve talked about it a lot, but...”
There were a string of rattling clangs against the hull.
“...Go for it.”
Gav keyed the intercom. “Sammie, how would you feel about pulling a Crazy Ivan?”
“Always wanted to try one!” The part of Gavin’s mind that tracked anything but flying chuckled, but he pushed that aside.
“Set it up.” She’d left the intercom live; he could hear rattles and bangs, and once an electric spark. Wait for it...
Big Mig
“Boss! Boss! Got snarlin’ from missiles one and two! They got lock!”
Migwazza pounded a meaty fist on the console... and missed the missile buttons. He cursed and corrected his aim.
The missiles roared out.
Tranquility
Overwatch was screaming at him. “Missile! Missile! Turn hard!” There was the box canyon just ahead; he could do it... now! A quick squeeze of the port nozzle for more thrust, and the ship was banking up and over...
There was a deafening bang as something booted Tranquility from behind.
“Sammie, you all right?”
No response.
“Sammie!”
“...OW. I’m fine, we’re ready. OW. Ow ow ow...” That sounded more like ‘stubbed toe’ than ‘shrapnel wounds.’ No time to worry. He flipped to external comms. “Overwatch, tell me when they fire the next rounds, do you copy?”
“Copy that.” Now to wait and pray no more missiles came in.
Big Mig
Migwazza whooped. One of the Squigwindas had smacked the freighter just below the engine bulb. But now there was only one left. Better to close and give ‘em the guns again. He kicked in the afterburner and pushed forward, lips skinned back from the g-forces as he made the turn into the side canyon the humans had fled into.
Tranquility
“Four rounds inbound, ETA forty-five seconds.” Gavin copied, then switched back to intercom. “Everyone hold on to something!”
This was something only a VTOL craft could do, and that very few VTOL craft should do. He spun the starboard engine around and firewalled it, spinning end-for-end in a matter of a few seconds, then powered straight for the pursuing ork.
It was only after the first tracers flew past his windshield that he realized his new plan involved playing chicken with an ork...
Big Mig
Letting fly with the deffguns was fun, but it was a sudden happy surprise when the freighter spun around in midair and started charging straight for him. Closer... closer... then the grot in the seat behind him shouted in his ear.
“Boss! They’re not stoppin’!”
Well, it was all fun and games until you got smeared all over somebody’s windshield, so Migwazza pulled up and over the ship he’d just shot up... Then he hit Step Two of Gavin’s plan- the engine backwash. Gav had angled his thrusters again, driving Tranquility down at an angle. The exhaust plume slapped Big Mig upwards, causing a temporary loss of control.
Migwazza fought to regain control; it wasn’t easy. Tranquility’s massive turbofans put out enough pressure to set him tumbling. He watched the altimeter Bitzgrub had riveted to the side of the cockpit spool upwards. For some reason it had been measured in “feet” instead of humie meters. For a moment he wondered why... then, as he passed 2500 feet, he saw the next salvo of railgun rounds come screaming in from the west.
Oh zog.
The blast wave caught him twenty seconds later and slapped his fighter towards the ground. This was gonna be rough. For a moment, not even he was sure he was ‘ard enough to handle this...
“Boss! The ejection seats!”
Oh. Right.
He yanked the lever; the Stormboy rocket pack riveted to the back of his seat lit off. Migwazza’s last thought before he blacked out was how he needed to find something good to do for Bitzgrub... such a good mek...
Glowworm-class Transport Tranquility, Bridge
January 18, 3400, 1300 Hours, Planetary Local Time
They were clear. They were finally clear. The gunners stopped shooting around ten minutes after Gav ditched the ork fighter- maybe they were running low on ammo, maybe they’d lost track of him. Captain Tamrin didn’t know, didn’t care. The very minute he knew he was clear, that those damn plasma shells stopped going off overhead, he gave the order.
“Punch it, Gavin. I want some clear sky for a change.”
Last edited by Simon_Jester on 2010-09-09 12:48am, edited 1 time in total.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Royal Palace, Altair
Planet and Kingdom of Fynn, Sector X-13
13 February 3400
The soft sunlight of Fynn's star entered the room that Hilda and Zara were sharing (Much to Count Dupreè's displeasure), shining over them as they snuggled under the sheets in their sleep. A knock on the door stirred them slowly. Hilda was first to open her eyes. Sitting up and holding her sheet over her bare chest, she called for whomever it was to enter.
It was a maid, as it turned out, of olive complexion and a tad bit on the thin side. She bowed respectfully to the Crown Princess as she brought in a tray. "Your breakfast, Highness," the maid said plainly, removing the lid of the food tray to display a breakfast of steak, eggs, sausage, and hashed browns fit for two adults. "And the Chamberlain bid me to remind you that the Tyconian Grand Duchess and her sister are due to arrive today."
Hilda nodded at her. "Bring it closer to the bed and you may go."
Zara finished waking up as the maid did so. Once she was gone Hilda locked the door behind her, engaging the privacy lock on top of the customary ones. By the time she looked back she saw Zara starting to get up and reach for a night robe. Smiling, she reached out with her mind and pulled the nightrobe away before Zara could get it. "Uh uh," Hilda cooed. "I like you just the way you are."
"Hilda, are you expecting me to eat breakfast and then start Druni's daily training naked?", Zara laughed.
"Not at all." Hilda grinned and walked up to the bed, sitting beside it. "I expect you to join me in finishing breakfast, after which we will make love all morning."
Zara's eyebrows raised. "You know we have apprentices to train..." Her words were cut off as Hilda planted a strong kiss on her lips.
"They're learning enough and deserve a morning off," was HIlda's defiant reply. She used telekinesis to grip one of the sausage patties, which she brought up to Zara's mouth for her to bite into. Zara giggled at her before taking a bite from the levitating sausage, which she chewed carefully. Hilda kept the sausage there until Zara finished it. By the time Zara was finished chewing she had taken her own plate in hand to begin eating, betraying her eagerness to get on with it.
The Duchess' Star, in Hyperspace
Approaching Fynn, Sector X-13
With the yacht having left the prior night and beginning an 18 hour trip to Fynn, Reina had seen fit to retire to her stateroom on the Ducal Yacht to rest up in readiness of the arrival on Fynn. They would only be staying a day; tomorrow they were to join King Charles on his royal yacht for the trip to Nouveau France and the state funeral of Jean-Baptiste IV.
Sarisa and Dragovich were along; thankfully, the Chamberlain was not, which meant Reina was able to sleep in a bit without having a knock on the door to remind her she was needed for signing papers. Or, in this case, to go over protocol on the visit. So she was able to lay in bed quietly, eyes mostly closed, enjoying the comfort of the stateroom's bed.
A pair of powerful arms wrapped around her's, prompting Reina to hold the hands as they met on her belly. Hot breath tickled her left ear and she smiled a little. "You're finally up," she whispered.
Anthony Silva responded by kissing the side of her neck. "Good morning, Reina," he whispered back, doing so into her ear. The handsome young man was technically an intern of the Palace Administration, part of his studies at the University of Carwen for a degree in political science and administration. It hadn't been hard for Reina to arrange the internship after reaching her majority, though they had been careful to keep their continuing relationship quiet. Even Sarisa believed they had broken up and Reina hadn't gotten around to correcting that misbelief.
Reina laid on her side a bit more, letting Anthony continue to kiss her bare shoulder while his arms held her's. She kept her hands on his while they moved over the front of her body. "We've got about six hours before we land," Reina sighed while looking at the clock. "The Premier will want to speak to me soon, probably over breakfast. Protocol and such."
"Mmmhmm..." One of his hands gripped Reina's left breast, the other reaching down running along the curve of her hip. "How long do you think we have?"
"An hour, at most. And that includes showering." She finally turned to face him, looking into his brown eyes, partially obscured by his disheveled dark brown hair. "So if you want a round of raunchy morning sex you'd better hurry...." Seeing his amused expression, she smirked and corrected herself. "Okay, well, not hurrying in that way..."
"Of course, Your Grace," Anthony teased.
Royal Palace, Altair
Planet and Kingdom of Fynn, Sector X-13
King Charles was trying to enjoy his lunch. It was, usually, one of the few meals where he could be truly alone - at breakfast it was paper signing at at dinner it was House affairs under Count Dupreè.
But the good Count was denying him even that now. Instead the thin, severe man was showing a great deal of irritation. "The Crown Princess' behavior is unacceptable, Your Majesty," he insisted. "Carrying on with her... paramour even as we negotiate her marriage!"
Charles fixed a stare at Dupreè as he finished a bite of his lunch sandwich. "And what business of it is your's, Count, to spy on my daughter and her lover?"
"It is my Duty, Majesty, to protect the dignity of the Family," Dupreè insisted. "Your daughter's conduct is shameful. I respectfully request you instruct her to send the Knight Delmar to her own room, as we laid out, instead of having her in bed every night. It is for the good of Your Majesty's Family and King...."
At that point, Charles had taken enough badgering. He jumped from his chair, hands slamming on the table, and thundered, "I will decide what is good for my family, Count!" The violence of his outburst made his guards do a double-take and prompted Dupreè to drop his jaw. “You want to talk about what is good for my family?! How about what is right for my daughter? Do you judge Hilda so lowly that you don’t see why she is in love with Zara Delmar?”
“Your Majesty...”
“No, I have had enough! Hilda may very well marry Grand Duchess Reina and accomplish all of the Chancellor’s ambitions to ensure Fynn’s power in the sector, but I will not let you torment my poor daughter any further than her duty already demands. God knows she and Zara will not be together for much longer anyway; Zara will return to her duties and Hilda will be lucky to see her again.” Charles returned to his seat. “And now I want you out of my sight, do you understand me Dupreè? I will see you when the Grand Duchess’ ship arrives and not a moment sooner. Otherwise I may be looking for a new Chamberlain!”
Smoldering with shame, embarrassment, and a hint of anger, Dupreè stalked off.
When the hour came, and the Duchess’ Star was coming in for a landing, Hilda and Zara had joined her father, Kasan, and a frowning Dupreè. Hilda had acquiesced to the request she wear something formal, a sleeveless and modest evening gown of light blue and violet colors, her hair carefully prepared after being washed. To her side stood Layla, in her Acolyte’s Robes and looking very much like a teenage girl who would rather be somewhere else, while to the other side stood Zara in formal robes of the Order (as was Druni, who looked even more impatient than Layla).
From the yacht Reina descended, her sister right behind her and Dragovich in the third spot. She was wearing an evening gown as well - one rather more bold than Hilda’s as it was a spaghetti-strap backless gown - and looked rather striking, her short pinkish red hair carefully brushed into shining locks at the sides of her face and her yellow dress flattering on her athletic figure. Sarisa was in light red, her favorite color, while her long purple hair was pulled back into a looped bun (she had wanted a pony-tail, but Dragovich had insisted and Reina had reluctantly supported him). Behind Dragovich the other members of the contingent came, including a smiling Anthony Silva who was, privately, hoping that Princess Atlan would turn out to be some bloated girl or, conversely, a thin bratty thing - needless to say even he had to admit she was rather beautiful, even if it increased the likelihood Reina would agree to wed her.
You shouldn’t leak your thoughts like that, a voice said in his head. He focused on Zara and felt a chill up his spine. He got the impression of her smile growing a little wider. It looks like we have something in common, she added telepathically, sensing his thoughts of Reina.
Protocol greetings were exchanged, but there was no band. This was not a full and official state visit, merely a stopover for discussions on the proposal before heading on to Nouveau France and Jean-Baptiste’s funeral. There was some quiet in the air, though, as Hilda and Reina beheld each other for the first time. Hilda couldn’t help but admire the younger woman, still just a girl really, and how she looked and carried herself. She was certainly beautiful and showed a great deal of energy in how she carried herself. It was almost unfitting for her to be the monarch of a state like Tyconia and Hilda found herself wondering how excellent a Sister Reina would have made had she been trained in the Order.
Reina, conversely, looked on Hilda and knew she was facing an older, wiser woman (even if only 13 years older). Someone with power and grace, beautiful and strong. There was an immediate attraction to her that was both physical and mental. Reina actually could see herself marrying this woman, if it came to that.
“Let us go to dinner?’, Kasan remarked, breaking the two out of their considerations. “We have much to discuss.”
The dinner took a couple of hours, as the courses were broken up by political talks. Chancellor Kasan and Premier Dragovich were in control of the discussion, Reina, Hilda, and Charles being mere spectators. Sarisa spent more time chatting with the two Acolytes than participating in the political discussions, with Zara and Anthony, among the others, gazing sadly as their lovers’ betrothal was discussed.
“The issue is that it is not the standard of our people for the ruler to become involved in the affairs of the Government,” Dragovich was saying to Kasan. “We respect that the Fynnian monarchy respects such distance, but assurances that there would be no interference in political decision making are going to be necessary.”
“Such assurances can be negotiated, but if we limit the crown’s power too greatly it undermines the traditions of Fynn in royal participation, if aloof and uncommon, in government affairs,” Kasan noted. “I honestly do not think it would be appropriate to basically tell the future Queen that she cannot even discuss her opinions on issues of state....”
Reina drew in a sigh and looked to Hilda again. She could see Hilda was looking down at Zara who was, of course, seated away from here, Layla and Druni sitting between them. She remembered this woman was not just an ESPer, she had spent 14 years in the Order of the Silver Moon, training in the use of her powers and fighting in the Outback. The stories she might tell alone....
Dinner was over, finally, and Reina took the chance to follow Hilda as she led Zara out onto a balcony. It was an outer balcony, looking out into Altair’s streets in the area. People milled by on their nightly business, not paying attention to what was going on in the Palace. It made her think of Carwen, truthfully.
Hilda and Zara were holding hands and looking at each other intently while Reina watched. Sensing her apprehension and uncertainty, Hilda chose to act first. “Your Majestic Grace?”, she called out, remembering the formal styling that the House of Schweizer had adopted.
“You may call me Reina, Your Highness,” Reina said as she stepped out from inside and onto the balcony. “And Dame Zara, it is my pleasure to meet you.” Hilda and Zara exchanged amused glances, causing Reina to look at them quizzically. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No, it’s just that ‘Dame’ isn’t the right title for either of us,” Hilda answered. “It’s a result of how the Anglians render the term Jadar, which in Lushan context is more appropriately rendered “Knight” regardless of gender.”
“Oh. My apologies.” Reina stepped closer. “I... I can only imagine how much the two of you have seen.”
Zara’s eyes lowered. “Enough,” she sighed. “It is... not a comfortable subject.”
“As Knights I imagine you have done some very heroic things with your ESP,” Reina continued. “It must be great to be able to use your gifts like that, the most I get...” She saw the looks on their faces grow darker and stopped. “I’m sorry, I... I guess I’m...?”
“You are young and earnest,” Zara answered. “There is nothing wrong with that. I was once too. All Sisters are... but few stay that way once they experience what service means.”
Realizing just what she had stepped into on the subject, Reina immediately nodded. “I understand. Anyway, I was hoping to talk to Hilda...?”
“Of course.” Zara looked to Hilda. “I need to go train with Druni. We’ve got to make up for time, so don’t wait up for me.” She kissed Hilda on the lips very lightly and walked off the balcony.
With Zara gone, Reina looked to Hilda. “I wish to be honest and frank with you, Hilda. I... am not sure about this marriage business. I understand why our governments desire it, and I am mostly fine with it.” She was lying a bit there - she liked Anthony after all - but the two of them had long ago established that their relationship would end one day. It had actually made it that much more enjoyable, in the end. “But I want your acceptance before I commit.”
HIlda nodded. “I feel much the same way, Reina, though I would prefer we get to know each other. If we are to be married, and spend the rest of our lives together, we should be capable of living together as wives, if not as lovers.”
“You won’t love me though,” Reina pointed out.
“Not entirely, no,” Hilda admitted. “I may love you to some degree, and I will certainly be an affectionate lover to you as my wife, but Zara is my beloved. And I will always love her. I would gladly marry her if not for the fact she has devoted herself to the Order and cannot walk away from it, especially not after...” Hilda looked away to the street. Reina could see the tears in her eyes begin to grow. “I know it is my fate to be separated from Zara. And I am trying to accept it. But... I love her so much... I don’t know if I could be faithful to you as a wife if she is ever around me.”
I wonder if I would be faithful, Reina considered, thinking of how much she enjoyed having Anthony as her lover. “I would understand,” she said in a hushed tone. “For what it’s worth, I would try to love you as strongly as Zara does.”
“Then I believe that will be it,” Hilda answered, her voice hoarse. “If the politicians can agree to the union terms, and if you are okay with it, I will accept marrying you.” She drew in a breath to compose herself; Reina’s questions had cut deep, especially on Zara’s suffering. And it reminded her that as much as she missed Zara, Zara would miss her even stronger. And without Hilda around... who knows what Zara might end up doing. Without love in her life, Zara has only the memory of suffering, Hilda thought to herself. How much of her soul will survive years of only duty and those memories?
There was a hissed voice behind them. Count Dupreè stepped out onto the balcony and in front of Reina. “Your Grace,” he whispered hoarsely, “you musn’t be on an external balcony. Your visit here is secret!”
“Your staff will tell people soon enough...” Reina began to say, before Dupreè’s look silenced her.
“They would not do so, as I would deal with them very harshly,” he insisted. “Anyway, please come inside. His Majesty wishes to see you privately.”
Reina gave one look to Hilda and turned to go, following Dupreè. As she did, she heard Hilda’s voice in her head. Who is ‘Anthony’ anyway?
Reina couldn’t help but smile. She replied by openly thinking about the awesome morning sex she and Anthony had enjoyed on the ship. A blush came to her face and, when she glanced back, had been duplicated on Hilda’s. She made sure Hilda spotted her smile before walking into the palace to have her private conversation with her fellow monarch.
(OOC: this is going to be a two-part post, but I’ll stop here for now, have to run errands.)
Planet and Kingdom of Fynn, Sector X-13
13 February 3400
The soft sunlight of Fynn's star entered the room that Hilda and Zara were sharing (Much to Count Dupreè's displeasure), shining over them as they snuggled under the sheets in their sleep. A knock on the door stirred them slowly. Hilda was first to open her eyes. Sitting up and holding her sheet over her bare chest, she called for whomever it was to enter.
It was a maid, as it turned out, of olive complexion and a tad bit on the thin side. She bowed respectfully to the Crown Princess as she brought in a tray. "Your breakfast, Highness," the maid said plainly, removing the lid of the food tray to display a breakfast of steak, eggs, sausage, and hashed browns fit for two adults. "And the Chamberlain bid me to remind you that the Tyconian Grand Duchess and her sister are due to arrive today."
Hilda nodded at her. "Bring it closer to the bed and you may go."
Zara finished waking up as the maid did so. Once she was gone Hilda locked the door behind her, engaging the privacy lock on top of the customary ones. By the time she looked back she saw Zara starting to get up and reach for a night robe. Smiling, she reached out with her mind and pulled the nightrobe away before Zara could get it. "Uh uh," Hilda cooed. "I like you just the way you are."
"Hilda, are you expecting me to eat breakfast and then start Druni's daily training naked?", Zara laughed.
"Not at all." Hilda grinned and walked up to the bed, sitting beside it. "I expect you to join me in finishing breakfast, after which we will make love all morning."
Zara's eyebrows raised. "You know we have apprentices to train..." Her words were cut off as Hilda planted a strong kiss on her lips.
"They're learning enough and deserve a morning off," was HIlda's defiant reply. She used telekinesis to grip one of the sausage patties, which she brought up to Zara's mouth for her to bite into. Zara giggled at her before taking a bite from the levitating sausage, which she chewed carefully. Hilda kept the sausage there until Zara finished it. By the time Zara was finished chewing she had taken her own plate in hand to begin eating, betraying her eagerness to get on with it.
The Duchess' Star, in Hyperspace
Approaching Fynn, Sector X-13
With the yacht having left the prior night and beginning an 18 hour trip to Fynn, Reina had seen fit to retire to her stateroom on the Ducal Yacht to rest up in readiness of the arrival on Fynn. They would only be staying a day; tomorrow they were to join King Charles on his royal yacht for the trip to Nouveau France and the state funeral of Jean-Baptiste IV.
Sarisa and Dragovich were along; thankfully, the Chamberlain was not, which meant Reina was able to sleep in a bit without having a knock on the door to remind her she was needed for signing papers. Or, in this case, to go over protocol on the visit. So she was able to lay in bed quietly, eyes mostly closed, enjoying the comfort of the stateroom's bed.
A pair of powerful arms wrapped around her's, prompting Reina to hold the hands as they met on her belly. Hot breath tickled her left ear and she smiled a little. "You're finally up," she whispered.
Anthony Silva responded by kissing the side of her neck. "Good morning, Reina," he whispered back, doing so into her ear. The handsome young man was technically an intern of the Palace Administration, part of his studies at the University of Carwen for a degree in political science and administration. It hadn't been hard for Reina to arrange the internship after reaching her majority, though they had been careful to keep their continuing relationship quiet. Even Sarisa believed they had broken up and Reina hadn't gotten around to correcting that misbelief.
Reina laid on her side a bit more, letting Anthony continue to kiss her bare shoulder while his arms held her's. She kept her hands on his while they moved over the front of her body. "We've got about six hours before we land," Reina sighed while looking at the clock. "The Premier will want to speak to me soon, probably over breakfast. Protocol and such."
"Mmmhmm..." One of his hands gripped Reina's left breast, the other reaching down running along the curve of her hip. "How long do you think we have?"
"An hour, at most. And that includes showering." She finally turned to face him, looking into his brown eyes, partially obscured by his disheveled dark brown hair. "So if you want a round of raunchy morning sex you'd better hurry...." Seeing his amused expression, she smirked and corrected herself. "Okay, well, not hurrying in that way..."
"Of course, Your Grace," Anthony teased.
Royal Palace, Altair
Planet and Kingdom of Fynn, Sector X-13
King Charles was trying to enjoy his lunch. It was, usually, one of the few meals where he could be truly alone - at breakfast it was paper signing at at dinner it was House affairs under Count Dupreè.
But the good Count was denying him even that now. Instead the thin, severe man was showing a great deal of irritation. "The Crown Princess' behavior is unacceptable, Your Majesty," he insisted. "Carrying on with her... paramour even as we negotiate her marriage!"
Charles fixed a stare at Dupreè as he finished a bite of his lunch sandwich. "And what business of it is your's, Count, to spy on my daughter and her lover?"
"It is my Duty, Majesty, to protect the dignity of the Family," Dupreè insisted. "Your daughter's conduct is shameful. I respectfully request you instruct her to send the Knight Delmar to her own room, as we laid out, instead of having her in bed every night. It is for the good of Your Majesty's Family and King...."
At that point, Charles had taken enough badgering. He jumped from his chair, hands slamming on the table, and thundered, "I will decide what is good for my family, Count!" The violence of his outburst made his guards do a double-take and prompted Dupreè to drop his jaw. “You want to talk about what is good for my family?! How about what is right for my daughter? Do you judge Hilda so lowly that you don’t see why she is in love with Zara Delmar?”
“Your Majesty...”
“No, I have had enough! Hilda may very well marry Grand Duchess Reina and accomplish all of the Chancellor’s ambitions to ensure Fynn’s power in the sector, but I will not let you torment my poor daughter any further than her duty already demands. God knows she and Zara will not be together for much longer anyway; Zara will return to her duties and Hilda will be lucky to see her again.” Charles returned to his seat. “And now I want you out of my sight, do you understand me Dupreè? I will see you when the Grand Duchess’ ship arrives and not a moment sooner. Otherwise I may be looking for a new Chamberlain!”
Smoldering with shame, embarrassment, and a hint of anger, Dupreè stalked off.
When the hour came, and the Duchess’ Star was coming in for a landing, Hilda and Zara had joined her father, Kasan, and a frowning Dupreè. Hilda had acquiesced to the request she wear something formal, a sleeveless and modest evening gown of light blue and violet colors, her hair carefully prepared after being washed. To her side stood Layla, in her Acolyte’s Robes and looking very much like a teenage girl who would rather be somewhere else, while to the other side stood Zara in formal robes of the Order (as was Druni, who looked even more impatient than Layla).
From the yacht Reina descended, her sister right behind her and Dragovich in the third spot. She was wearing an evening gown as well - one rather more bold than Hilda’s as it was a spaghetti-strap backless gown - and looked rather striking, her short pinkish red hair carefully brushed into shining locks at the sides of her face and her yellow dress flattering on her athletic figure. Sarisa was in light red, her favorite color, while her long purple hair was pulled back into a looped bun (she had wanted a pony-tail, but Dragovich had insisted and Reina had reluctantly supported him). Behind Dragovich the other members of the contingent came, including a smiling Anthony Silva who was, privately, hoping that Princess Atlan would turn out to be some bloated girl or, conversely, a thin bratty thing - needless to say even he had to admit she was rather beautiful, even if it increased the likelihood Reina would agree to wed her.
You shouldn’t leak your thoughts like that, a voice said in his head. He focused on Zara and felt a chill up his spine. He got the impression of her smile growing a little wider. It looks like we have something in common, she added telepathically, sensing his thoughts of Reina.
Protocol greetings were exchanged, but there was no band. This was not a full and official state visit, merely a stopover for discussions on the proposal before heading on to Nouveau France and Jean-Baptiste’s funeral. There was some quiet in the air, though, as Hilda and Reina beheld each other for the first time. Hilda couldn’t help but admire the younger woman, still just a girl really, and how she looked and carried herself. She was certainly beautiful and showed a great deal of energy in how she carried herself. It was almost unfitting for her to be the monarch of a state like Tyconia and Hilda found herself wondering how excellent a Sister Reina would have made had she been trained in the Order.
Reina, conversely, looked on Hilda and knew she was facing an older, wiser woman (even if only 13 years older). Someone with power and grace, beautiful and strong. There was an immediate attraction to her that was both physical and mental. Reina actually could see herself marrying this woman, if it came to that.
“Let us go to dinner?’, Kasan remarked, breaking the two out of their considerations. “We have much to discuss.”
The dinner took a couple of hours, as the courses were broken up by political talks. Chancellor Kasan and Premier Dragovich were in control of the discussion, Reina, Hilda, and Charles being mere spectators. Sarisa spent more time chatting with the two Acolytes than participating in the political discussions, with Zara and Anthony, among the others, gazing sadly as their lovers’ betrothal was discussed.
“The issue is that it is not the standard of our people for the ruler to become involved in the affairs of the Government,” Dragovich was saying to Kasan. “We respect that the Fynnian monarchy respects such distance, but assurances that there would be no interference in political decision making are going to be necessary.”
“Such assurances can be negotiated, but if we limit the crown’s power too greatly it undermines the traditions of Fynn in royal participation, if aloof and uncommon, in government affairs,” Kasan noted. “I honestly do not think it would be appropriate to basically tell the future Queen that she cannot even discuss her opinions on issues of state....”
Reina drew in a sigh and looked to Hilda again. She could see Hilda was looking down at Zara who was, of course, seated away from here, Layla and Druni sitting between them. She remembered this woman was not just an ESPer, she had spent 14 years in the Order of the Silver Moon, training in the use of her powers and fighting in the Outback. The stories she might tell alone....
Dinner was over, finally, and Reina took the chance to follow Hilda as she led Zara out onto a balcony. It was an outer balcony, looking out into Altair’s streets in the area. People milled by on their nightly business, not paying attention to what was going on in the Palace. It made her think of Carwen, truthfully.
Hilda and Zara were holding hands and looking at each other intently while Reina watched. Sensing her apprehension and uncertainty, Hilda chose to act first. “Your Majestic Grace?”, she called out, remembering the formal styling that the House of Schweizer had adopted.
“You may call me Reina, Your Highness,” Reina said as she stepped out from inside and onto the balcony. “And Dame Zara, it is my pleasure to meet you.” Hilda and Zara exchanged amused glances, causing Reina to look at them quizzically. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No, it’s just that ‘Dame’ isn’t the right title for either of us,” Hilda answered. “It’s a result of how the Anglians render the term Jadar, which in Lushan context is more appropriately rendered “Knight” regardless of gender.”
“Oh. My apologies.” Reina stepped closer. “I... I can only imagine how much the two of you have seen.”
Zara’s eyes lowered. “Enough,” she sighed. “It is... not a comfortable subject.”
“As Knights I imagine you have done some very heroic things with your ESP,” Reina continued. “It must be great to be able to use your gifts like that, the most I get...” She saw the looks on their faces grow darker and stopped. “I’m sorry, I... I guess I’m...?”
“You are young and earnest,” Zara answered. “There is nothing wrong with that. I was once too. All Sisters are... but few stay that way once they experience what service means.”
Realizing just what she had stepped into on the subject, Reina immediately nodded. “I understand. Anyway, I was hoping to talk to Hilda...?”
“Of course.” Zara looked to Hilda. “I need to go train with Druni. We’ve got to make up for time, so don’t wait up for me.” She kissed Hilda on the lips very lightly and walked off the balcony.
With Zara gone, Reina looked to Hilda. “I wish to be honest and frank with you, Hilda. I... am not sure about this marriage business. I understand why our governments desire it, and I am mostly fine with it.” She was lying a bit there - she liked Anthony after all - but the two of them had long ago established that their relationship would end one day. It had actually made it that much more enjoyable, in the end. “But I want your acceptance before I commit.”
HIlda nodded. “I feel much the same way, Reina, though I would prefer we get to know each other. If we are to be married, and spend the rest of our lives together, we should be capable of living together as wives, if not as lovers.”
“You won’t love me though,” Reina pointed out.
“Not entirely, no,” Hilda admitted. “I may love you to some degree, and I will certainly be an affectionate lover to you as my wife, but Zara is my beloved. And I will always love her. I would gladly marry her if not for the fact she has devoted herself to the Order and cannot walk away from it, especially not after...” Hilda looked away to the street. Reina could see the tears in her eyes begin to grow. “I know it is my fate to be separated from Zara. And I am trying to accept it. But... I love her so much... I don’t know if I could be faithful to you as a wife if she is ever around me.”
I wonder if I would be faithful, Reina considered, thinking of how much she enjoyed having Anthony as her lover. “I would understand,” she said in a hushed tone. “For what it’s worth, I would try to love you as strongly as Zara does.”
“Then I believe that will be it,” Hilda answered, her voice hoarse. “If the politicians can agree to the union terms, and if you are okay with it, I will accept marrying you.” She drew in a breath to compose herself; Reina’s questions had cut deep, especially on Zara’s suffering. And it reminded her that as much as she missed Zara, Zara would miss her even stronger. And without Hilda around... who knows what Zara might end up doing. Without love in her life, Zara has only the memory of suffering, Hilda thought to herself. How much of her soul will survive years of only duty and those memories?
There was a hissed voice behind them. Count Dupreè stepped out onto the balcony and in front of Reina. “Your Grace,” he whispered hoarsely, “you musn’t be on an external balcony. Your visit here is secret!”
“Your staff will tell people soon enough...” Reina began to say, before Dupreè’s look silenced her.
“They would not do so, as I would deal with them very harshly,” he insisted. “Anyway, please come inside. His Majesty wishes to see you privately.”
Reina gave one look to Hilda and turned to go, following Dupreè. As she did, she heard Hilda’s voice in her head. Who is ‘Anthony’ anyway?
Reina couldn’t help but smile. She replied by openly thinking about the awesome morning sex she and Anthony had enjoyed on the ship. A blush came to her face and, when she glanced back, had been duplicated on Hilda’s. She made sure Hilda spotted her smile before walking into the palace to have her private conversation with her fellow monarch.
(OOC: this is going to be a two-part post, but I’ll stop here for now, have to run errands.)
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
The following was written by (and posted with explicit permission from) SDN poster Crazedwraith, in another time and for another place. I don't take credit for it, but will nonetheless gleefully exploit promote the excellent works of others by posting it here.
For the record, I know the Battle for Janus Colony probably won't last to December, but I'm taking some literary freedom (or rather and more precisely, I'm adapting the story with some literary freedom). Or maybe Space Christmas got moved to April. Who knows?
Anyway. Look who's all grown up?
Do They Know it's The End of the World?
25th December 3400
Janus Colony, Wild Space
The world Janus Colony sat on was dying. It had been for some time. First there had been the Karlacks, then the natural disasters, then the Karlacks causing natural disasters. And now to top it all off: the Imperium was coming to nuke it off the face of the universe for some incomprehensible reason or another.
The skies, once a quite lovely shade of magenta, had now turned a sickly red colour, the colour of dried blood; the clouds were steel grey columns of ash that tended towards mushroomness. Its cities were ruined. Its building and streets were cracked and decaying. The place was crawling with Karlack bioforms, and there were probably deadites and mutant rats forming in the sewers right at this very moment.
And in the midst of all of this, was a woman standing quite still. She was not a particularly large woman and was in fact quite skinny. Nor was she was particularly feminine woman, looking mostly like an overly curvy boy. The woman's name was, of course, Isabella Noguiera, and she was not a happy chappy. You might even say she was the least happiest chappy you were likely to meet in the foreseeable future.
25-year-old Isabella was, quite notoriously in fact, a mercenary. As someone who had been in a position to learn from the very best, she had recently been given a job in the bounty hunter sub-sector of mercenarying had travelled to this quaint little planet.
But it appeared that the shithead she'd been chasing, one Jonathan "Jack" Baylor, a former marine and small time arms dealer wanted by the Sovereignty in connection to the deaths (via anti-personnel mine) of around a dozen policemen and associated hardware, (to whit: three squad cars, two bikes and one very expensive law-enforcement robot) had well and truly vanished from the face of Janus Colony. Damn him.
Of course it wasn't the Sovereignty that had hired Isabella: they had issued a far more general alert with a much lower bounty. No, it was ol' Jack's own mob connections (more specifically, Eta Bootis crime lord Papa Joe Mancini) that had approached her to track down their little liability. Isabella was just amazed the Mob wanted him brought back alive but she'd then figured they probably just wanted the pleasure of fitting him out with cement shoes themselves. They could've spared themselves the trouble. From the look of it the Karlacks would get ol' Jack long before Sovereignty authorities would.
Isabella took a deep breath and tried to take stock of things. Fuck this, She thought and rummaged around in the voluminous pockets of her rather cliché leather trench coat. She didn't particular like the coat or for that matter the wrap-around sunglasses she was wearing tonight but the coat's pockets had negated the need to bring a suitcase on this little excursion and the shades covered up her distinctive Kasanarium blued eyes; after all, she hadn't wanted to tip off ol' Jack about her arrival. More wasted effort, apparently.
Life is just no fun sometimes, thought Isabella as she finally managed to find what she was after. She fished out a homemade Kasanarium spliff and lit it with a flare of psionic energy, (real fire just totally ruined the taste for her.)
Unbeknownst to our stalwart heroine, more proof of life's essential unfunness was advancing on her from many sides. For the world on which Janus Colony sat was dying and dying worlds bring out the worst in just about everyone. As the Imperium unleashed fire and brimstone and its endless titan legions of cannon fodder on the Karlack-infested planet it was every man for himself, and everyone woman and child for themselves, also. This lead to mobs, a break down of law and order and gangs of hoodlums. And several such hoodlums were advancing quickly on our not so helpless heroine.
"Hey girlie!" shouted out their self-appointed leader, a great big fat man who had all the elegance and grace of a thirty-ton Acturian Mega-elephant with a bad limp, "Don't you know it's the end of the world?"
"Oh really?" Isabella muttered half to herself. "I thought it was Christmas."
The gang just looked at her blankly.
Colonial shithole, doesn't even know about Christmas.
That said, (or rather; that thought) Isabella's main memory of Christmas was that time when she was seven; when she'd been so intimidated by the prospect off a 'jolly' fatman slithering down the chimney to watch her sleeping that she'd broken into her godfather's 'home defence' cabinet and shoved three claymore mines (complete with highly illegal tripwire detonators) up the home's chimney. Of course she'd had to come clean about the matter three weeks later when stray pigeon detonated aid devices but the insurance company had, unfortunately, never believed her story on the matter. Luckily, Uncle Bob had managed to settle the affair amicably and out of court -- though admittedly not before several of the company's insurance reps had mysteriously disappeared.
Nevertheless these boys still took the turkey.
Bloody Philistines.
Still the gang didn't seem to be interesting in broadening their intellectual horizons. Instead, they charged. Well two of them did. The leader just stood back and smirked: clearly the voyeur in world the senseless violence. And the last one fancied himself subtle and was edging around behind her.
Isabella sighed. These fools really didn't know what they were dealing with. As a galaxy-roving mercenary, she naturally qualified as a light arms locker. (Only without the porno posters, photos of people's Signicant Others/pets/brats and half opened packs of OrGazmo.)
Still these thugs were hardly worth the bullets or even the minimal aura needed to blast them away with her psi-gun. Not for someone with her skills at least.
The first thug swung with the predictable one-two left-right swings. Isabella blocked them, and then swung the edge of her hand into his throat. He stumbled back gargling incomprehensibly.
Isabella decided to take the initiative with the next man, jabbing towards his face before he could strike and forcing him to shield is face, the lashing out with a steel-shod boot that caught him in the solar plexus and prodded upwards under the man's ribs then retracted, dropping him to the grimy tarmac wanting nothing more than to vomit his weasly black guts out.
But Isabella's most deadly boot was not done, it didn't even touch the floor before stamping down and around on the first man's right knee first as he'd been trying to get back into their little back alley rumble. The was a horrible sound halfway between a crack and ripping noise. That was probably enough to keep him out of the fight, so Isabella's follow-up punch that crushed the youth's nose was just adding insult to injury.
Isabella took another drag of the spliff held in her off hand and grinned. "Count your lucky stars little boys, at leas-"
The third guy finally jumped her from behind. Running straight into Isabella's rapidly moving left elbow. Isabella was a rather skinny woman, had had no end of trouble about it from her fashionably fat childhood associates, and thus had extremely sharp elbows.
The poor boy folded up from the impact to his guts and dropped as the left elbow as swiftly applied to the back of his head. (After all there was no way Isabella would waste her Kasanarium by punching the boy with that hand.) "At least I don't wear the high heels, no?"
Then disaster struck.
Isabella felt a colossal impact on her left temple, and fell hard as the leader of the gang, made it clear why he was the one in charge. The fat bastard had moved impossibly fast, seriously it was like the porky fucker was on HoverBlades or something.
The gang leader tried to follow through, to smash Isabella's unpretty head against the floor and spray her brains over the tarmac, but he hesitated at the look on Isabella's face. He hesitated. Just for a millisecond. But he still hesitated. Survivors never hesitate. In that millisecond he saw just three things: First was Isabella's face. It was contorted in a rictus of untellable anger. The left lens of her shades had smashed and her eye glowed with an unholy blue light. And to top off she was crying blood.
He freaked.
The second was the business end of a small revolver.
He freaked some more.
The third and final thing bore a certain to the whole of his life. It was flashing.
The cold hard slug impacted the boss's face scant millimetres below his right eyeball and tore a rather eccentric path up through his brains and out the back of his head in a miniature spray of blood, unused brains and bone fragments.
Fucking posthumans, Isabella cursed and pulled herself to her feet. She gazed at the revolver she'd telekinetically pulled out of her boot. It was smoking.
Waste of a goddamn bullet.
She saw her spliff. It had rolled into the damp gutter.
Waste of Kasanarium.
She looked at the blood and ash streaked sky.
Waste of a whole goddamn planet.
Rubbing at the small (but profusely bleeding) cut under her eye, she tucked the gun away in one of her limitless pockets and walked out of the square, heading back to the space port, hoping for all the world the Karlacks or the god-damned Imperium hadn't overrun it yet, or turned it into a smoking crater for that matter. Then she remember it'd cost her a shitload to get off the doomed world. So she shared one last thought with the bloody scene of violence. "I'm never gonna get paid."
For the record, I know the Battle for Janus Colony probably won't last to December, but I'm taking some literary freedom (or rather and more precisely, I'm adapting the story with some literary freedom). Or maybe Space Christmas got moved to April. Who knows?
Anyway. Look who's all grown up?
Do They Know it's The End of the World?
25th December 3400
Janus Colony, Wild Space
The world Janus Colony sat on was dying. It had been for some time. First there had been the Karlacks, then the natural disasters, then the Karlacks causing natural disasters. And now to top it all off: the Imperium was coming to nuke it off the face of the universe for some incomprehensible reason or another.
The skies, once a quite lovely shade of magenta, had now turned a sickly red colour, the colour of dried blood; the clouds were steel grey columns of ash that tended towards mushroomness. Its cities were ruined. Its building and streets were cracked and decaying. The place was crawling with Karlack bioforms, and there were probably deadites and mutant rats forming in the sewers right at this very moment.
And in the midst of all of this, was a woman standing quite still. She was not a particularly large woman and was in fact quite skinny. Nor was she was particularly feminine woman, looking mostly like an overly curvy boy. The woman's name was, of course, Isabella Noguiera, and she was not a happy chappy. You might even say she was the least happiest chappy you were likely to meet in the foreseeable future.
25-year-old Isabella was, quite notoriously in fact, a mercenary. As someone who had been in a position to learn from the very best, she had recently been given a job in the bounty hunter sub-sector of mercenarying had travelled to this quaint little planet.
But it appeared that the shithead she'd been chasing, one Jonathan "Jack" Baylor, a former marine and small time arms dealer wanted by the Sovereignty in connection to the deaths (via anti-personnel mine) of around a dozen policemen and associated hardware, (to whit: three squad cars, two bikes and one very expensive law-enforcement robot) had well and truly vanished from the face of Janus Colony. Damn him.
Of course it wasn't the Sovereignty that had hired Isabella: they had issued a far more general alert with a much lower bounty. No, it was ol' Jack's own mob connections (more specifically, Eta Bootis crime lord Papa Joe Mancini) that had approached her to track down their little liability. Isabella was just amazed the Mob wanted him brought back alive but she'd then figured they probably just wanted the pleasure of fitting him out with cement shoes themselves. They could've spared themselves the trouble. From the look of it the Karlacks would get ol' Jack long before Sovereignty authorities would.
Isabella took a deep breath and tried to take stock of things. Fuck this, She thought and rummaged around in the voluminous pockets of her rather cliché leather trench coat. She didn't particular like the coat or for that matter the wrap-around sunglasses she was wearing tonight but the coat's pockets had negated the need to bring a suitcase on this little excursion and the shades covered up her distinctive Kasanarium blued eyes; after all, she hadn't wanted to tip off ol' Jack about her arrival. More wasted effort, apparently.
Life is just no fun sometimes, thought Isabella as she finally managed to find what she was after. She fished out a homemade Kasanarium spliff and lit it with a flare of psionic energy, (real fire just totally ruined the taste for her.)
Unbeknownst to our stalwart heroine, more proof of life's essential unfunness was advancing on her from many sides. For the world on which Janus Colony sat was dying and dying worlds bring out the worst in just about everyone. As the Imperium unleashed fire and brimstone and its endless titan legions of cannon fodder on the Karlack-infested planet it was every man for himself, and everyone woman and child for themselves, also. This lead to mobs, a break down of law and order and gangs of hoodlums. And several such hoodlums were advancing quickly on our not so helpless heroine.
"Hey girlie!" shouted out their self-appointed leader, a great big fat man who had all the elegance and grace of a thirty-ton Acturian Mega-elephant with a bad limp, "Don't you know it's the end of the world?"
"Oh really?" Isabella muttered half to herself. "I thought it was Christmas."
The gang just looked at her blankly.
Colonial shithole, doesn't even know about Christmas.
That said, (or rather; that thought) Isabella's main memory of Christmas was that time when she was seven; when she'd been so intimidated by the prospect off a 'jolly' fatman slithering down the chimney to watch her sleeping that she'd broken into her godfather's 'home defence' cabinet and shoved three claymore mines (complete with highly illegal tripwire detonators) up the home's chimney. Of course she'd had to come clean about the matter three weeks later when stray pigeon detonated aid devices but the insurance company had, unfortunately, never believed her story on the matter. Luckily, Uncle Bob had managed to settle the affair amicably and out of court -- though admittedly not before several of the company's insurance reps had mysteriously disappeared.
Nevertheless these boys still took the turkey.
Bloody Philistines.
Still the gang didn't seem to be interesting in broadening their intellectual horizons. Instead, they charged. Well two of them did. The leader just stood back and smirked: clearly the voyeur in world the senseless violence. And the last one fancied himself subtle and was edging around behind her.
Isabella sighed. These fools really didn't know what they were dealing with. As a galaxy-roving mercenary, she naturally qualified as a light arms locker. (Only without the porno posters, photos of people's Signicant Others/pets/brats and half opened packs of OrGazmo.)
Still these thugs were hardly worth the bullets or even the minimal aura needed to blast them away with her psi-gun. Not for someone with her skills at least.
The first thug swung with the predictable one-two left-right swings. Isabella blocked them, and then swung the edge of her hand into his throat. He stumbled back gargling incomprehensibly.
Isabella decided to take the initiative with the next man, jabbing towards his face before he could strike and forcing him to shield is face, the lashing out with a steel-shod boot that caught him in the solar plexus and prodded upwards under the man's ribs then retracted, dropping him to the grimy tarmac wanting nothing more than to vomit his weasly black guts out.
But Isabella's most deadly boot was not done, it didn't even touch the floor before stamping down and around on the first man's right knee first as he'd been trying to get back into their little back alley rumble. The was a horrible sound halfway between a crack and ripping noise. That was probably enough to keep him out of the fight, so Isabella's follow-up punch that crushed the youth's nose was just adding insult to injury.
Isabella took another drag of the spliff held in her off hand and grinned. "Count your lucky stars little boys, at leas-"
The third guy finally jumped her from behind. Running straight into Isabella's rapidly moving left elbow. Isabella was a rather skinny woman, had had no end of trouble about it from her fashionably fat childhood associates, and thus had extremely sharp elbows.
The poor boy folded up from the impact to his guts and dropped as the left elbow as swiftly applied to the back of his head. (After all there was no way Isabella would waste her Kasanarium by punching the boy with that hand.) "At least I don't wear the high heels, no?"
Then disaster struck.
Isabella felt a colossal impact on her left temple, and fell hard as the leader of the gang, made it clear why he was the one in charge. The fat bastard had moved impossibly fast, seriously it was like the porky fucker was on HoverBlades or something.
The gang leader tried to follow through, to smash Isabella's unpretty head against the floor and spray her brains over the tarmac, but he hesitated at the look on Isabella's face. He hesitated. Just for a millisecond. But he still hesitated. Survivors never hesitate. In that millisecond he saw just three things: First was Isabella's face. It was contorted in a rictus of untellable anger. The left lens of her shades had smashed and her eye glowed with an unholy blue light. And to top off she was crying blood.
He freaked.
The second was the business end of a small revolver.
He freaked some more.
The third and final thing bore a certain to the whole of his life. It was flashing.
The cold hard slug impacted the boss's face scant millimetres below his right eyeball and tore a rather eccentric path up through his brains and out the back of his head in a miniature spray of blood, unused brains and bone fragments.
Fucking posthumans, Isabella cursed and pulled herself to her feet. She gazed at the revolver she'd telekinetically pulled out of her boot. It was smoking.
Waste of a goddamn bullet.
She saw her spliff. It had rolled into the damp gutter.
Waste of Kasanarium.
She looked at the blood and ash streaked sky.
Waste of a whole goddamn planet.
Rubbing at the small (but profusely bleeding) cut under her eye, she tucked the gun away in one of her limitless pockets and walked out of the square, heading back to the space port, hoping for all the world the Karlacks or the god-damned Imperium hadn't overrun it yet, or turned it into a smoking crater for that matter. Then she remember it'd cost her a shitload to get off the doomed world. So she shared one last thought with the bloody scene of violence. "I'm never gonna get paid."
SDN World 3: The Sultanate of Egypt
SDN World 4: The United Solarian Sovereignty
SDN World 5: San Dorado
There'll be a bodycount, we're gonna watch it rise
The folks at CNN, they won't believe their eyes
-
Force Lord
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1562
- Joined: 2008-10-12 05:36pm
- Location: Rio Piedras, San Juan, Puerto Rico
- Contact:
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
"My government is not known for it's friendliness. Firstly, our leadership believed that telling you about our citizens' fate would end up, in the long run, discrediting their rule. If our people thought that our government was incapable of mounting a rescue itself, then it would lose their trust.Secondly, our leadership believed that collaborating with you in order to rescue our citizens would be seen as uncharacteristic of the Centrality's expected conduct, creating suspiscion. Finally, we were prideful. We thought that we could execute this operation ourselves, without being detected, despite our inexperience in such operations. But now I see myself sent here to take that ship back to safety. A ship whose commander was ordered to self-destruct it with himself, his crew, the rescue team and the rescued citizens aboard or at least gas himself and everyone inside if captured. Given that, in our last communication with that vessel, it was parleying with an Anglian ship too close for it's self-destruct to work safely, before we lost contact, I'm sure that the latter option will be used, if only to deter the Anglians from boarding."Kartr_Kana wrote:HCNV PaktuForce Lord wrote:"Indeed I am, Rear Admiral Patku. It was never our intention to break this blockade. We were here for another reason."
Kordis took a deep breath. It was now or never.
"Several months ago, a hundred loyal citizens of the Centrality were kidnapped by a Pfhor slaver party. We tracked down ten of them in Pendleton just before your Coalition reached the B-A Gap. Since it was too late for us to join you, we were forced to send a cloaked destroyer to Pendleton just after you got there. But our leaders feared that there was a chance it could be detected, given that said ship's crew and commander lacked much expertise in stealth operations. Hence the prescence of our 5th Fleet. Yes, this is not our entire force. The rest of the fleet is just outside the Outback. Again, I assure you we are not seeking a conflict. We only want our cloaked destroyer back. In fact, the last message we recieved from it suggested it was caught by an Anglian vessel. You must tell the Anglian command about this, or there would be an incident of ghastly proportions."
Edge of the Bannerman System, The Outback
Admiral Kordis while I am sorry to hear about your people your government should have let us know either that they were there, or that you were going to mount a rescue yourselves. Now I will forward this through the gap as quickly as I possibly can, but I cannot allow your fleet to pass without orders from the Star Kingdom. However if you would like I can have one of your officers taken through the gap to persuade your stealth ships captain to stand down and prevent a interstellar incident.
"As for your offer, I will go myself, so that everyone knows that our intentions are serious. My only hope is that we arrive before the Datton's commander takes the fatal step."
An inhabitant from the Island of Cars.
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Ryan Thunder
- Village Idiot
- Posts: 4139
- Joined: 2007-09-16 07:53pm
- Location: Canada
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Eastern Subarctic Technate, Nova Miratia
It was a little warmer than usual. The sun beat down on Ain as she almost casually leapt from one rooftop to the next, not even bothering to look down at the walkways far below her. One hand clutched a briefcase which hung from a sling over her shoulder, even as the other reached for a nearly insubstantial handhold above her, using her momentum from the previous jump to give her the grip she needed to seemingly defy gravity as she glided over, under, and around the various hurdles that stood in her way.
Absolutely used to her chosen form of mobility, she paused on the side of a particularly reflective building to check her GPS.
The pursuit officer had, seemingly, followed her quite silently for some time. She loosened her grip on the pipe and allowed herself to slide down a few floors before leaping sideways onto a ledge. The pursuit cop followed, landing almost within arm's reach. "Halt! Police!" she heard him yell as she used another pipe to spin herself around a corner--where she ran headlong into another officer.
He must have been expecting her to show up sooner or later, even if he wasn't ready for it, because his machine pistol sprayed bullets erratically before he was able to regain his balance. She carried on, not even slowing down. He aimed down his sights at her, but the pursuit cop blew past him, running along the wall and blocking his line of fire. She leapt over a wire fence and slid under an air-conditioning unit. The pursuit cop took a single leap and cleared both obstacles entirely, landing again, behind her. Suddenly, the burning agony of a pain ray consumed her entire body. She reflexively curled into a foetal ball and fell, rolling across the rooftop like a rag doll.
* * * * *
"You can't be serious."
"Oh, I'm totally serious. That briefcase had enough antihydrogen in it to demolish an entire urbanate."
"Well she's got nothing on her record and her psychological profile doesn't seem to indicate that she'd do that knowingly. Or, so I'm told, anyway."
"Which means that there's somebody else behind it. I guess we'll have to do another interview."
It was a little warmer than usual. The sun beat down on Ain as she almost casually leapt from one rooftop to the next, not even bothering to look down at the walkways far below her. One hand clutched a briefcase which hung from a sling over her shoulder, even as the other reached for a nearly insubstantial handhold above her, using her momentum from the previous jump to give her the grip she needed to seemingly defy gravity as she glided over, under, and around the various hurdles that stood in her way.
Absolutely used to her chosen form of mobility, she paused on the side of a particularly reflective building to check her GPS.
The pursuit officer had, seemingly, followed her quite silently for some time. She loosened her grip on the pipe and allowed herself to slide down a few floors before leaping sideways onto a ledge. The pursuit cop followed, landing almost within arm's reach. "Halt! Police!" she heard him yell as she used another pipe to spin herself around a corner--where she ran headlong into another officer.
He must have been expecting her to show up sooner or later, even if he wasn't ready for it, because his machine pistol sprayed bullets erratically before he was able to regain his balance. She carried on, not even slowing down. He aimed down his sights at her, but the pursuit cop blew past him, running along the wall and blocking his line of fire. She leapt over a wire fence and slid under an air-conditioning unit. The pursuit cop took a single leap and cleared both obstacles entirely, landing again, behind her. Suddenly, the burning agony of a pain ray consumed her entire body. She reflexively curled into a foetal ball and fell, rolling across the rooftop like a rag doll.
* * * * *
"You can't be serious."
"Oh, I'm totally serious. That briefcase had enough antihydrogen in it to demolish an entire urbanate."
"Well she's got nothing on her record and her psychological profile doesn't seem to indicate that she'd do that knowingly. Or, so I'm told, anyway."
"Which means that there's somebody else behind it. I guess we'll have to do another interview."
SDN Worlds 5: Sanctum
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Continuation from the last post
Royal Palace, Altair
Planet and Kingdom of Fynn, Sector X-13
Dupreè led Reina to King Charles' study. The older man was there reading a book - an actual book too, not a digital one - at his desk, a glass of brandy half-full on the table beside him. "Your Majesty?", Dupreè inquired. "Her Majestic Grace is here, as you requested.
"Indeed. You may go now, Count." The edge in his voice was enough to tell Dupreè that Charles was still unhappy with him over earlier. The Chamberlain promptly left, showing enough irritation that Reina could sense it even without a normative set of ESP. She turned her attention back to Charles in time to see him gesture toward a chair. "Your Grace, please sit?"
"Please, can we go by given names?", Reina asked politely.
"Of course, Reina." Charles showed a sad smile at that. "Ferdinand always insisted on it, actually." He drew in a sigh at the memory of the late Grand Duke, Reina's grandfather. "He is missed."
"Yes, he is," Reina agreed. "He was... a father to me and my sister, really. We were so young when our parents died."
"Yes, I remember Alexander and Victoria," Charles remarked. "They were the darlings of the sector, really. And I know they would have been happy to see how well you and your sister have grown." He picked up a bottle. "Brandy?"
"No thank you," Reina answered. "I have talked with Hilda."
"Ah. That's good. If this goes through, I would like to think you two will be happy together."
"We will try." Reina swallowed as she considered her next question. "Charles... what do you know about Zara? I know Hilda loves her deeply. I am interested in knowing how she came to that love."
"You are an ESPer, yes? You know what it is like when you are... with someone." Charles spoke delicately here by habit. "Hilda and Zara have that bond. It has generated a deep and intense love in them, one that will hurt them both when Hilda has to come home for good. After everything Zara has been through, I wish there were a way it could be otherwise."
Reina heard those words and thought back to the balcony conversation and just how pained the mention of their service had made Zara look. "Something happened to Zara, didn't it? Something dreadful."
"Yes." Charles drew in a sigh. "Zara... had always been a kind and generous soul, full of optimism and courage, dedication to protecting others and all those things expected of her. Hilda fell in love with her due to that. But when you fight monsters, sometimes the monsters get to you. In Zara's case... she was captured."
"By whom?"
"A band of slaving pirates in the Outback. She had gone willingly to them, being the bait to help Anglian forces locate and destroy them. But when they realized who she was, what she was..." Charles leaned his head forward and took a deep drink of brandy. "I suppose for such vile and evil men, having a young lady like Zara as their captive gives them a chance to avenge prior defeats."
Several horrible possibilities came to Reina. Hoarsely, she asked, "What happened?"
Charles told her all he knew. By the time he was done, all the color had left Reina's face. Tears were forming in her eyes. "That's horrible," she gasped. "I can't believe she suffered so much..."
"For three days. Then she freed herself and sent out a call to the Anglians. Most of her tormentors are now dead." Charles took another drink. "I know my Kingdom's laws, but I swear that if any of the survivors were to ever cross my path I would gladly have them shot for what they did. And the fact she still risks herself... do not take this the wrong way, but I would be very honored if Zara were to be my daughter-in-law."
"I am not offended," Reina sighed. She was still crying. To know how much pain Hilda and Zara had seen, had felt, it made her sick to know she was being set up to come between them. "I... I'm sorry... I don't know if I can do this now..." Reina stood up. "Thank you for your hospitality, but I have to be alone."
Charles nodded somberly and watched Reina leave.
As it turned out, Reina didn't want to be alone just yet. As she walked out, an idea came to her head, gaining strength with every passing second regardless of what it meant. Added to it was a hot embarrassment; it wasn't just that they were trying to impose a marriage that would break up such a close couple as Hilda and Zara, but that they'd do si despite what they'd gone through....! Reina was, in fact, worked up into a hot fury, ready to explode, by the time she got to the guest wing and where she, Sarisa, and Dragovich would be staying. At the door to his suite, Reina did not knock. She made an angry motion with her hand that smacked the door open, causing it to swing along its hinge until it hit the wall with a loud thump. She found Dragovich with an assistant, going over the preliminary Union proposals. "How dare you," she rasped angrily.
"Pardon?", Dragovich asked.
"You would have me do that to them?!", she shouted in shame and anger. "After everything Princess Hilda and Zara have gone through, after all the suffering they've known, you would have me split them up?!"
"Duchess, such is the way of things," Dragovich remarked calmly. "It is for the good of..."
"No! I won't do it!", Reina insisted angrily. "There will be no wedding!"
"You really should think this through, Your Gr..."
"It is my life, my choice, and I say 'No'!"
And just like that, a change came over Dragovich. He was still quiet and well-tempered, but there was a new look in his eyes. He stood and calmly said, "You are the Grand Duchess of Tyconia. You will do what the Government and People of Tyconia expect of you, Duchess Reina. If we sign this treaty, you will marry as agreed."
Even with all her anger, Reina was still rather stunned to hear these things. "You can't make me marry," she insisted, hoarsely. "You can't make me give that oath!"
"Oh, I cannot force Reina Schweizer to marry. But I can make sure the Grand Duchess of Tyconia does," Dragovich answered. He walked up to her. "Because if you do not wed Princess Hilda, I'm sure Grand Duchess Sarisa can be convinced to. Or Grand Duke Peter, or Grand Duke Wilhelm..."
Reina gawked at him, openly. "You can't be serious..."
"Oh, I am," Dragovich said coldly. "If you try to wreck these negotiations in any way I will call for your immediate abdication for interfering in Government business. Your sister will become Grand Duchess. And if she proves as headstrong as you, then your older cousin Peter is next in the line of succession. And I will move on down the line until one of you obeys me!"
"People wouldn't let you do something like that," she insisted, feeling a sense of dread at the cold look he was giving her. "It is not the place of the Premier, of any Government, to interfere..."
"The members of the House of Schweizer serve at the sufferance of the Tyconian nation, not the other way around. You are the instrument of the Government, Reina, and if the Government asks you to do something you do it. It is not your place to do anything more or less." Dragovich returned to his seat. "Surely your grandfather taught you that."
"He taught me that it was not my place to meddle in Government affairs, but that doesn't mean you get to dictate to me something as personal as whom I marry!", Reina retorted. "And I will not wreck the relations of a couple who have been through so much!"
"You have no choice in the issue. Princess Hilda has already agreed to wed at her father's request. If it's not to you, it'll be to your sister after you abdicate and are barred from any further inheritance in Tyconia, and if not her, then Peter is unmarried and we'll simply have a conventional royal marriage to implement the union of Tyconia and Fynn." Dragovich looked to his assistant. "Matilda, dear, please begin writing the Grand Duchess' letter of abdication for me to present, should this course of action become necessary."
"Yes, Premier," the assistant said. She brought up her personal computer and began typing.
Dragovich turned his head back to face Reina. "As for you, Duchess Reina, you should sleep on this issue. I'm an understanding man. You've been told about the horrible things that Zara and Hilda went through in the Outback, clearly your great and generous heart is getting the better of you. I would like you to sleep on this; however; Hilda is to be married to someone else anyway. Don't you think she'd prefer being married to someone who sympathizes with her, who feels bad for her and her lover and will tolerate Knight Zara if she is ever around?" Dragovich gave her a moment before concluding. "Anyway, it is rather late and I am going to retire for the evening. We're leaving tomorrow, after all, after King Charles provides us a breakfast, and there's quite a bit of talking and ceremony to be had for the Emperor Jean-Baptiste's funeral."
Reina nodded sullenly. In her heart she knew Dragovich was right about everything. Forcing the abdication of the reigning Grand Duke (or Duchess) had never happened openly in the history of Tyconia, but there were rumors of past rulers forced to step down (usually for trying to restore some vestige of power to the position) and Reina wasn't about to become one of those. "I'll see you in the morning, Premier," she said as she walked out the door. It wasn't far to her room; Anthony would not be able to sneak in, so she would be alone for the night. Which, given her exhaustion from letting her emotions get so wound up and then deflated, was just fine by her.
Royal Palace, Altair
Planet and Kingdom of Fynn, Sector X-13
Dupreè led Reina to King Charles' study. The older man was there reading a book - an actual book too, not a digital one - at his desk, a glass of brandy half-full on the table beside him. "Your Majesty?", Dupreè inquired. "Her Majestic Grace is here, as you requested.
"Indeed. You may go now, Count." The edge in his voice was enough to tell Dupreè that Charles was still unhappy with him over earlier. The Chamberlain promptly left, showing enough irritation that Reina could sense it even without a normative set of ESP. She turned her attention back to Charles in time to see him gesture toward a chair. "Your Grace, please sit?"
"Please, can we go by given names?", Reina asked politely.
"Of course, Reina." Charles showed a sad smile at that. "Ferdinand always insisted on it, actually." He drew in a sigh at the memory of the late Grand Duke, Reina's grandfather. "He is missed."
"Yes, he is," Reina agreed. "He was... a father to me and my sister, really. We were so young when our parents died."
"Yes, I remember Alexander and Victoria," Charles remarked. "They were the darlings of the sector, really. And I know they would have been happy to see how well you and your sister have grown." He picked up a bottle. "Brandy?"
"No thank you," Reina answered. "I have talked with Hilda."
"Ah. That's good. If this goes through, I would like to think you two will be happy together."
"We will try." Reina swallowed as she considered her next question. "Charles... what do you know about Zara? I know Hilda loves her deeply. I am interested in knowing how she came to that love."
"You are an ESPer, yes? You know what it is like when you are... with someone." Charles spoke delicately here by habit. "Hilda and Zara have that bond. It has generated a deep and intense love in them, one that will hurt them both when Hilda has to come home for good. After everything Zara has been through, I wish there were a way it could be otherwise."
Reina heard those words and thought back to the balcony conversation and just how pained the mention of their service had made Zara look. "Something happened to Zara, didn't it? Something dreadful."
"Yes." Charles drew in a sigh. "Zara... had always been a kind and generous soul, full of optimism and courage, dedication to protecting others and all those things expected of her. Hilda fell in love with her due to that. But when you fight monsters, sometimes the monsters get to you. In Zara's case... she was captured."
"By whom?"
"A band of slaving pirates in the Outback. She had gone willingly to them, being the bait to help Anglian forces locate and destroy them. But when they realized who she was, what she was..." Charles leaned his head forward and took a deep drink of brandy. "I suppose for such vile and evil men, having a young lady like Zara as their captive gives them a chance to avenge prior defeats."
Several horrible possibilities came to Reina. Hoarsely, she asked, "What happened?"
Charles told her all he knew. By the time he was done, all the color had left Reina's face. Tears were forming in her eyes. "That's horrible," she gasped. "I can't believe she suffered so much..."
"For three days. Then she freed herself and sent out a call to the Anglians. Most of her tormentors are now dead." Charles took another drink. "I know my Kingdom's laws, but I swear that if any of the survivors were to ever cross my path I would gladly have them shot for what they did. And the fact she still risks herself... do not take this the wrong way, but I would be very honored if Zara were to be my daughter-in-law."
"I am not offended," Reina sighed. She was still crying. To know how much pain Hilda and Zara had seen, had felt, it made her sick to know she was being set up to come between them. "I... I'm sorry... I don't know if I can do this now..." Reina stood up. "Thank you for your hospitality, but I have to be alone."
Charles nodded somberly and watched Reina leave.
As it turned out, Reina didn't want to be alone just yet. As she walked out, an idea came to her head, gaining strength with every passing second regardless of what it meant. Added to it was a hot embarrassment; it wasn't just that they were trying to impose a marriage that would break up such a close couple as Hilda and Zara, but that they'd do si despite what they'd gone through....! Reina was, in fact, worked up into a hot fury, ready to explode, by the time she got to the guest wing and where she, Sarisa, and Dragovich would be staying. At the door to his suite, Reina did not knock. She made an angry motion with her hand that smacked the door open, causing it to swing along its hinge until it hit the wall with a loud thump. She found Dragovich with an assistant, going over the preliminary Union proposals. "How dare you," she rasped angrily.
"Pardon?", Dragovich asked.
"You would have me do that to them?!", she shouted in shame and anger. "After everything Princess Hilda and Zara have gone through, after all the suffering they've known, you would have me split them up?!"
"Duchess, such is the way of things," Dragovich remarked calmly. "It is for the good of..."
"No! I won't do it!", Reina insisted angrily. "There will be no wedding!"
"You really should think this through, Your Gr..."
"It is my life, my choice, and I say 'No'!"
And just like that, a change came over Dragovich. He was still quiet and well-tempered, but there was a new look in his eyes. He stood and calmly said, "You are the Grand Duchess of Tyconia. You will do what the Government and People of Tyconia expect of you, Duchess Reina. If we sign this treaty, you will marry as agreed."
Even with all her anger, Reina was still rather stunned to hear these things. "You can't make me marry," she insisted, hoarsely. "You can't make me give that oath!"
"Oh, I cannot force Reina Schweizer to marry. But I can make sure the Grand Duchess of Tyconia does," Dragovich answered. He walked up to her. "Because if you do not wed Princess Hilda, I'm sure Grand Duchess Sarisa can be convinced to. Or Grand Duke Peter, or Grand Duke Wilhelm..."
Reina gawked at him, openly. "You can't be serious..."
"Oh, I am," Dragovich said coldly. "If you try to wreck these negotiations in any way I will call for your immediate abdication for interfering in Government business. Your sister will become Grand Duchess. And if she proves as headstrong as you, then your older cousin Peter is next in the line of succession. And I will move on down the line until one of you obeys me!"
"People wouldn't let you do something like that," she insisted, feeling a sense of dread at the cold look he was giving her. "It is not the place of the Premier, of any Government, to interfere..."
"The members of the House of Schweizer serve at the sufferance of the Tyconian nation, not the other way around. You are the instrument of the Government, Reina, and if the Government asks you to do something you do it. It is not your place to do anything more or less." Dragovich returned to his seat. "Surely your grandfather taught you that."
"He taught me that it was not my place to meddle in Government affairs, but that doesn't mean you get to dictate to me something as personal as whom I marry!", Reina retorted. "And I will not wreck the relations of a couple who have been through so much!"
"You have no choice in the issue. Princess Hilda has already agreed to wed at her father's request. If it's not to you, it'll be to your sister after you abdicate and are barred from any further inheritance in Tyconia, and if not her, then Peter is unmarried and we'll simply have a conventional royal marriage to implement the union of Tyconia and Fynn." Dragovich looked to his assistant. "Matilda, dear, please begin writing the Grand Duchess' letter of abdication for me to present, should this course of action become necessary."
"Yes, Premier," the assistant said. She brought up her personal computer and began typing.
Dragovich turned his head back to face Reina. "As for you, Duchess Reina, you should sleep on this issue. I'm an understanding man. You've been told about the horrible things that Zara and Hilda went through in the Outback, clearly your great and generous heart is getting the better of you. I would like you to sleep on this; however; Hilda is to be married to someone else anyway. Don't you think she'd prefer being married to someone who sympathizes with her, who feels bad for her and her lover and will tolerate Knight Zara if she is ever around?" Dragovich gave her a moment before concluding. "Anyway, it is rather late and I am going to retire for the evening. We're leaving tomorrow, after all, after King Charles provides us a breakfast, and there's quite a bit of talking and ceremony to be had for the Emperor Jean-Baptiste's funeral."
Reina nodded sullenly. In her heart she knew Dragovich was right about everything. Forcing the abdication of the reigning Grand Duke (or Duchess) had never happened openly in the history of Tyconia, but there were rumors of past rulers forced to step down (usually for trying to restore some vestige of power to the position) and Reina wasn't about to become one of those. "I'll see you in the morning, Premier," she said as she walked out the door. It wasn't far to her room; Anthony would not be able to sneak in, so she would be alone for the night. Which, given her exhaustion from letting her emotions get so wound up and then deflated, was just fine by her.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
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DarthShady
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1872
- Joined: 2007-09-15 10:46am
- Location: Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Contact:
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
The Battle for Janus
Co-written with Fin
The Emperors Son, the mighty Rus Komnenos himself, had joined the fight - his very presence inspiring the Imperial troops and driving them forward. Their renewed courage made them push forward with great determination, led by the Emperor’s finest, the Space Marines - they followed their powerful leader into battle. The Karlack Swarm was not impressed though, they matched the Imperials drive forward with their own blood thirst. The battle escalated greatly yet again, explosions rippled across the ruined city, as shells fired by the ever present Imperial artillery hit their targets, destroying swaths of Karlack Bio-forms and reducing entire buildings to rubble.
The Swarm had their own version of artillery though, the dreaded Executioners - but instead of the standard form, the Executioners on Janus were a special strain. Instead of Omega energy weapons, they were armed with specialized tube like organs which fired living artillery shells - called blobs by the Bragulans, at the enemy. Most of the blobs were filled with highly explosive chemicals, liquid secretions that possessed enormous explosive firepower - virtually disintegrating anything they struck. Some blobs however were filled with nerve gas and other toxins, engineered to be extremely lethal to humans.
As the two mighty armies clashed, it soon became clear to the few surviving civilians, who were still desperately trying to escape the city, that after this battle was over - only blood soaked ruins would be left.
Rus Komnenos was determined to win this battle, he hated the Karlack more than anything else. They had taken his sister - and today he had one more chance to strike back. He led his Space Marines forward, carving a bloody path through the Karlack warriors, using every little bit of his power to obliterate the enemy. His rage and power were so great, that the Aspect controlling the Broods on Janus decided that it was time for a change of tactics, a special surprise.
“We are wining.” One of the Space Marines shouted as he rushed forward with his brothers, charging towards the enemy. Following only a few steps behind the great Rus himself.
“It is no surprise that these vile Xenos are no match for us.” Rus answered him as he came to a stop on a small hill. “Now brothers, destroy this filth. In the Emperors name...Finish this!”
For the Emperor!” The Space Marines shouted as they drove The Swarm back.
One had to see them in battle to believe it. The Space Marines were a force unlike no other, their power was unsurpassed - they were the Emperor’s finest, and they proved themselves worthy of being called that.
“They seem to be retreating.” One of them, a Sergeant said, as he joined Rus on the small hill. Which was not in fact a hill, but the remains of a collapsed sky scraper, destroyed in the fighting.
“They are running in fear.” One of the brothers commented, he was young, and this was his first real combat experience.
“Impossible.” Rus shouted. “You cannot scare that which knows no fear. Ready yourselves brothers!”
His words echoed through mere seconds later, as several Specters busted up from the ground, causing shock waves that echoed through the ground and collapsed the few building that had still remained standing. The black fog of death gathered above the battlefield, like a dark storm cloud, defying the Imperials and daring them to attack it.
“Abominations!” Rus shouted. “Destroy them!”
He was about to charge the Specters himself, when he noticed something strange... every Karlack lifeform within several kilometers was charging towards the Specters, ignoring Imperial fire along the way, and the Specters themselves began sending ripples of psychic and Omega energy all around them, like lightning the immense power that was being generated began discharging all around. Striking and killing dozens of Guardsmen and PDF troops, even tanks exploded to pieces when hit. Hundreds of Karlack bio-forms gathered beneath the Specters, and soon and to the great surprise of Rus and the other Imperial troops, the Specters began to consume them, absorbing their mass into themselves. That was not all they consumed though, everything from ruined buildings and destroyed tanks was drawn to the now growing black cloud of death, even the Imperial troops succumbed with many of them taken screaming to their deaths by the Death Cloud,
Then the Specters began transforming all of the accumulated bio-mass into something gigantic, tentacles began to sprout from the gigantic black cloud, the Specters had created something, and it was growing - absorbing more and more Karlacks and everything else within reach. The Specters themselves were soon consumed by the massive creature. Its size soon made it descend upon the ground, causing an earthquake that almost knocked down Rus Komnenos himself. As it grew the creature transformed, now displaying gigantic claw like limbs in addition to its tentacles, its slimy form was grotesque and had made most of the Imperial PDF troops quake in fear.
“What in the name of the Emperor is that thing?” The Astartes Sargent shouted, unsure as to what to do.
Suddenly the creature released an immense psychic shock wave, a roar if you will, that informed everyone around that its transformation was complete - and that now would be a very good time to run.
“Some kind of Bio-Titan.” Rus shouted back, as he stared at the gigantic Karlack lifeform, finding his stare met by its dozen or more huge black eyes. This would be the toughest fight in his life, Rus Komnenos realized. What seemed like a sure victory moments ago, now became a desperate fight to stay alive. For the first time, in a very long time, he felt fear. Although he did not show it. The gigantic creature began its attack. Only one course of action was left to him now, he would fight and he would fight hard.
“Brothers!” Rus Komnenos shouted, hoping to calm his troops and raise their broken morale. “In the Emperor’s name...Charge!”
Co-written with Fin
The Emperors Son, the mighty Rus Komnenos himself, had joined the fight - his very presence inspiring the Imperial troops and driving them forward. Their renewed courage made them push forward with great determination, led by the Emperor’s finest, the Space Marines - they followed their powerful leader into battle. The Karlack Swarm was not impressed though, they matched the Imperials drive forward with their own blood thirst. The battle escalated greatly yet again, explosions rippled across the ruined city, as shells fired by the ever present Imperial artillery hit their targets, destroying swaths of Karlack Bio-forms and reducing entire buildings to rubble.
The Swarm had their own version of artillery though, the dreaded Executioners - but instead of the standard form, the Executioners on Janus were a special strain. Instead of Omega energy weapons, they were armed with specialized tube like organs which fired living artillery shells - called blobs by the Bragulans, at the enemy. Most of the blobs were filled with highly explosive chemicals, liquid secretions that possessed enormous explosive firepower - virtually disintegrating anything they struck. Some blobs however were filled with nerve gas and other toxins, engineered to be extremely lethal to humans.
As the two mighty armies clashed, it soon became clear to the few surviving civilians, who were still desperately trying to escape the city, that after this battle was over - only blood soaked ruins would be left.
Rus Komnenos was determined to win this battle, he hated the Karlack more than anything else. They had taken his sister - and today he had one more chance to strike back. He led his Space Marines forward, carving a bloody path through the Karlack warriors, using every little bit of his power to obliterate the enemy. His rage and power were so great, that the Aspect controlling the Broods on Janus decided that it was time for a change of tactics, a special surprise.
“We are wining.” One of the Space Marines shouted as he rushed forward with his brothers, charging towards the enemy. Following only a few steps behind the great Rus himself.
“It is no surprise that these vile Xenos are no match for us.” Rus answered him as he came to a stop on a small hill. “Now brothers, destroy this filth. In the Emperors name...Finish this!”
For the Emperor!” The Space Marines shouted as they drove The Swarm back.
One had to see them in battle to believe it. The Space Marines were a force unlike no other, their power was unsurpassed - they were the Emperor’s finest, and they proved themselves worthy of being called that.
“They seem to be retreating.” One of them, a Sergeant said, as he joined Rus on the small hill. Which was not in fact a hill, but the remains of a collapsed sky scraper, destroyed in the fighting.
“They are running in fear.” One of the brothers commented, he was young, and this was his first real combat experience.
“Impossible.” Rus shouted. “You cannot scare that which knows no fear. Ready yourselves brothers!”
His words echoed through mere seconds later, as several Specters busted up from the ground, causing shock waves that echoed through the ground and collapsed the few building that had still remained standing. The black fog of death gathered above the battlefield, like a dark storm cloud, defying the Imperials and daring them to attack it.
“Abominations!” Rus shouted. “Destroy them!”
He was about to charge the Specters himself, when he noticed something strange... every Karlack lifeform within several kilometers was charging towards the Specters, ignoring Imperial fire along the way, and the Specters themselves began sending ripples of psychic and Omega energy all around them, like lightning the immense power that was being generated began discharging all around. Striking and killing dozens of Guardsmen and PDF troops, even tanks exploded to pieces when hit. Hundreds of Karlack bio-forms gathered beneath the Specters, and soon and to the great surprise of Rus and the other Imperial troops, the Specters began to consume them, absorbing their mass into themselves. That was not all they consumed though, everything from ruined buildings and destroyed tanks was drawn to the now growing black cloud of death, even the Imperial troops succumbed with many of them taken screaming to their deaths by the Death Cloud,
Then the Specters began transforming all of the accumulated bio-mass into something gigantic, tentacles began to sprout from the gigantic black cloud, the Specters had created something, and it was growing - absorbing more and more Karlacks and everything else within reach. The Specters themselves were soon consumed by the massive creature. Its size soon made it descend upon the ground, causing an earthquake that almost knocked down Rus Komnenos himself. As it grew the creature transformed, now displaying gigantic claw like limbs in addition to its tentacles, its slimy form was grotesque and had made most of the Imperial PDF troops quake in fear.
“What in the name of the Emperor is that thing?” The Astartes Sargent shouted, unsure as to what to do.
Suddenly the creature released an immense psychic shock wave, a roar if you will, that informed everyone around that its transformation was complete - and that now would be a very good time to run.
“Some kind of Bio-Titan.” Rus shouted back, as he stared at the gigantic Karlack lifeform, finding his stare met by its dozen or more huge black eyes. This would be the toughest fight in his life, Rus Komnenos realized. What seemed like a sure victory moments ago, now became a desperate fight to stay alive. For the first time, in a very long time, he felt fear. Although he did not show it. The gigantic creature began its attack. Only one course of action was left to him now, he would fight and he would fight hard.
“Brothers!” Rus Komnenos shouted, hoping to calm his troops and raise their broken morale. “In the Emperor’s name...Charge!”
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Lord_Of_Change 9
- Youngling
- Posts: 145
- Joined: 2010-08-06 04:49am
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Neu Lothringen (Formerly Known as Volksland)
Reconstruction was beginning in the ruins of Fuhrerstadt (now Neu Straßburg), the rubble being cleared away to make room for new foundations. There were two reasons for this. The first was that Prussia wanted to obliterate all the monuments and grandiose edifices to Volksland's belief in its own superiority. The second was that the fires that had ravaged their way through Fuhrerstadt had rendered many of the survivors homeless, and the season when Prussia had been invaded was analogous to the beginning of winter on Earth. Food and medicine was coming in ample quantities now, but if Neu Lothringen's inhabitants had no shelter, they would freeze to death in the cold.
To prevent the former Volkslanders from attacking the very people who were helping them, Reichswehr troops patrolled areas of reconstruction, pointing their fusion rifles very menacingly at people who tried to attack, then, if the subject continued, opening fire. This was generally very effective. The devastation that they had wreaked on Volksland had not endeared them to the population, but the tireless work they had put into helping the people was hopefully making an impact. It all came down to winning hearts and minds, something the Prussians knew from their own and the experience of the USA's military in the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Reconstruction was beginning in the ruins of Fuhrerstadt (now Neu Straßburg), the rubble being cleared away to make room for new foundations. There were two reasons for this. The first was that Prussia wanted to obliterate all the monuments and grandiose edifices to Volksland's belief in its own superiority. The second was that the fires that had ravaged their way through Fuhrerstadt had rendered many of the survivors homeless, and the season when Prussia had been invaded was analogous to the beginning of winter on Earth. Food and medicine was coming in ample quantities now, but if Neu Lothringen's inhabitants had no shelter, they would freeze to death in the cold.
To prevent the former Volkslanders from attacking the very people who were helping them, Reichswehr troops patrolled areas of reconstruction, pointing their fusion rifles very menacingly at people who tried to attack, then, if the subject continued, opening fire. This was generally very effective. The devastation that they had wreaked on Volksland had not endeared them to the population, but the tireless work they had put into helping the people was hopefully making an impact. It all came down to winning hearts and minds, something the Prussians knew from their own and the experience of the USA's military in the 20th and early 21st centuries.
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Shinn Langley Soryu
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1526
- Joined: 2006-08-18 11:27pm
- Location: COOBIE YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
The Gallian War
Camp Inglebard, Emmeloord Joint Security Area, West Gallian side of the East Gallia-West Gallia DMZ
An actual Baneblade in the service of the Imperium
2nd Lieutenant Welkin Gunther didn't need Eleanor back at HQ telling him about the Easties' "Baneblade," for he was right there to see the damn thing, and even with what little he knew about the Imperium's war machines apart from what was considered common knowledge, he knew that what he was facing was certainly not an authentic Baneblade by any stretch of the imagination. His realization came the moment he saw the "Baneblade" open fire; he certainly did not expect the monstrosity to be spitting out the distinct emerald-green projectiles that signified the presence of Bragulan K-bolters. Several of these bolts went over to strike the camp, while a stray shot came dangerously close to melting through the roof of Welkin's tank.
"This is Lieutenant Gunther to HQ!" Welkin called out over the radio. "We're currently receiving heavy K-bolter fire! Whatever it is we're facing, it most certainly ain't a real Baneblade!"
"We just managed to patch into your gun camera feed, and we're seeing it too, Lieutenant," Eleanor replied back. "Even if it's not a real Baneblade, we're still not taking any chances. We'll try to get some artillery and air support down on your position. In the meantime, slow down the enemy's advance by any means possible."
"We'll try, Captain. Lieutenant Gunther out," Welkin said. "Well, here goes nothing, then. Forward, Isara. We're not yet in gun range."
"Right!" Corporal Isara Gunther, Welkin's adopted sister and the driver of his personal Edelweiss, replied as she shifted the tank into gear. "We'll show those damned Easties!"
An Edelweiss MBT in West Gallian colors
The Edelweiss, as it was called by the East and West Gallian militaries, was actually an old Haruhiist design that was sold in large numbers to various minor powers in the Koprulu Zone and surrounding territories after it was retired by the SOS Imperial Armed Forces in the late 3310s. Edelweisses formed the majority of unified Gallia's tank force prior to the Civil War in 3346; both Gallias later acquired additional Edelweisses through various sources during the Unification War. While Edelweisses on both sides were subject to various upgrades to keep them competitive, Royal Gallian Marine Corps models were perhaps the most radically modified, with all-new engines and transmissions, improved armor and sensors, Sovereignty-built plasma guns in place of the original coaxial and pintle-mounted light railguns, and a reverse-engineered Bragulan heavy K-bolter in place of the original heavy railgun. With such heavy firepower at their command, Welkin and his fellow tankers were confident that they could take on whatever the Easties could throw at them, including their fake "Baneblade."
The West Gallian Edelweisses charged forward into the breach and opened fire, hoping to meet the East Gallian aggressors head-on and drown them in a torrent of K-bolts and plasma. While the vast, rolling plains of the East Gallia-West Gallia DMZ were perfect for tank warfare, infantry would not be as lucky caught out in the open, particularly with both sides liberally spitting out K-bolter and plasma fire; Welkin and the other tankers hoped that they could draw the enemy's fire away from the infantry so they could move in for the kill with their own anti-armor weapons.
The weaknesses of the Easties' counterfeit Baneblade were made clear as soon as the Edelweisses started to close in. The fake was truly inferior in nearly every way imaginable compared to the authentic Imperium article, with an underpowered engine and sluggish turret traverse speeds among its many failings; while the lumbering beast could certainly demolish stationary fortifications with ease, it had trouble taking on moving targets and was thus dependent on infantry and lighter tanks to help cover its advance. The fake Baneblade's operators were by and large stymied by the Edelweisses' hit-and-run attacks; with their main turret, demolition cannon, and missile batteries practically useless at this close range, they had to resort to using the side-mounted plasma guns and light K-bolters, intended primarily for anti-personnel and light anti-armor use, against the enemy tanks. In fact, the fake Baneblade's crew were so preoccupied with the enemy Edelweisses that they failed to notice the Westie anti-tank infantry sneaking up on them...
1stSgt Largo Potter (incorrectly) holding a PfZ 17 Lanze RPG
The standard West Gallian infantry anti-tank weapon was the PzF 17 Lanze, a reusable shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenade launcher most notable for its large size compared to other weapons in its class; like many weapons used by the West Gallian armed forces, it was an old Haruhiist design (officially designated the M17 Bisento in SOS Imperial Armed Forces service) that was sold off to willing customers after being retired by the SOS Imperial Armed Forces. Even though its size made it quite awkward for the average human to use, it could utilize a far larger warhead than other weapons of its class and generation could; while further advances in technology made it possible to accomodate the Bisento/Lanze's payload in a smaller (not to mention more comfortable to use) package, the PzF 17 was still considered a reliable enough weapon that the West Gallians were willing to put up with its odd ergonomics.
First Sergeant Largo Potter was attached to one of the anti-tank platoons stationed at Camp Inglebard, and he had the fortune of being close enough to immediately respond to the threat of the East Gallian "Baneblade"; there were two other anti-tank platoons out on the field, but it would be some time before they could get to the fake Baneblade. In the meantime, Largo and the other grenadiers attempted to advance under what little cover was available towards the fake Baneblade, hoping to knock out its secondary weapons and pierce the side skirt to get at the treads and road wheels. "Target in range!" Largo called out. "Fire!"
A large volley of Lanze fire shot out towards the fake Baneblade, hoping to overwhelm its active defenses and score hits on the chassis and weapons. While an actual Imperium Baneblade could easily deal with the barrage by shooting down most of the projectiles with active defenses and absorbing the rest with its void shields, the East Gallian knockoff was nowhere near as comprehensively protected. With weak active defenses and no void shielding, the majority of the Lanze shots hit home, knocking out the right-side auxiliary turrets before they could turn to retaliate; a few shots also penetrated the side skirt, damaging some of the road wheels and a portion of the treads. The fake Baneblade abruptly ground to a halt as Largo and the others reloaded their Lanzes for a second volley. "Man, that Baneblade must be made of papier-mache or something, 'cause I know that the real deal could eat us and our Lanzes for breakfast," Largo remarked.
The fake Baneblade was now firmly stuck between two hard places, with enemy tanks to its left and enemy anti-armor troops to its right steadily eating away at its weapons and armor. Between the Edelweisses' K-bolter and plasma fire and the Lanze volleys, it was not going to be long for this world barring some sort of intervention, which finally came in the form of the East Gallian infantry that had made the initial advance through the DMZ. While mostly composed of light and medium infantry equipped with K-bolters and slugthrowers, there was an actual anti-tank platoon among them, and they posed a genuine threat to Welkin's tanks; fortunately, the Westies had their own light and medium infantry to deal with these pests.
Profile of Cpl Brigitte Stark as sketched by a SOS Imperial Marine Corps military advisor, late 3399
Corporal Brigitte "Rosie" Stark was among the West Gallian Marine infantry available to immediately respond to the East Gallian incursion. With the Edelweisses doing an excellent job of distracting the fake Baneblade, Rosie led her companions into the breach to help protect the tanks from the East Gallians' own infantry; it wasn't very long before the two forces met and started firing upon each other. "Enemy infantry spotted! Engage!" she called out as she opened fire with her weapon.
Like many other minor powers all throughout the galaxy, the two Gallias were noted consumers of Bragulan weaponry, known to be easy to procure, easy to use, easy to maintain, and easy to reproduce. While East Gallia could easily afford to give reverse-engineered K-bolter carbines to the vast majority of its soldiers (alongside unlicensed copies of the Tianguo BQ-98 and BQ-03 rifles), West Gallia could only afford to give such weapons to the Marines, where they were issued alongside several variants of the M116 pulse rifle. What Rosie and her comrades lacked in firepower and numbers, they made up for in quality of training and sheer determination; even if they didn't have as many K-bolters as their foes did, they could still shoot straighter and inflict more casualties than the Easties could. "This ain't even fair!" Rosie exclaimed as she melted an advancing East Gallian fireteam with a few shots from her personal K-bolter. Other Eastie soldiers met a similar fate as the other Westies joined in with their own K-bolters and pulse rifles, advancing slowly yet surely as they melted their way through the enemy onslaught; however, even with acid-spewing railguns to help even the odds, there were simply too many East Gallian soldiers, and there was still the issue of those anti-tank troopers, as well as the sniper squad sneaking up on them...
Sgt Marina Wulfstan, West Gallian sniper extraordinaire
While Sergeant Marina Wulfstan had proven herself to be a truly exceptional sniper on paper, she had not actually seen combat until now; going up against the East Gallian aggressors was going to be the first real test of her abilities, and she was definitely looking forward to the experience. With her M116A1 DMR in hand, she and her fellow snipers moved out to help cover their comrades. "I heard that the Easties have got their own snipers out there," the lead sniper, Gunnery Sergeant Catherine O'Hara, remarked. "Wulfstan, you're with me. We're going hunting. Regard, Bielert, cover our tanks. We can't afford to lose them to the Easties' sappers."
"You're putting me out on the front with Oscar?" Corporal Cezary Regard groaned. "I became a sniper so I wouldn't have to be up there, you know."
"Look, just do what the Gunny says, you coward," Private First Class Oscar Bielert said. "Most of us would be lying if we said we weren't scared. We still gotta go out there and do our jobs. Now, you coming with me or not?"
"Fine," Cezary groaned as he followed Oscar off to the front lines. Marina and Catherine went off to go look for the enemy snipers before they could move in to deal some real damage; they didn't have to go far before a shot from a BQ-03 struck just a few inches away from Marina's foot, forcing her and Catherine to dive into a shallow ditch for cover and start sweeping the area with the scopes on their rifles.
"You see anything?" Catherine asked.
"Already spotted," Marina replied as she pulled the trigger on her pulse rifle, taking down the Eastie sniper who had tried to shoot her foot off. "Confirm."
Catherine pointed her own rifle towards where the enemy sniper had been and spotted the corpse. "Confirmed. Keep searching."
"Acknowledged," Marina said as she resumed her sweep of the area, rapidly taking down any and all hostile soldiers she was able to spot. Any Easties trying to approach had no chance against her and Catherine picking them off one by one.
A West Gallian gunship, equipped with the standard K-bolter and a pair of rocket pods
As the entire battle was unfolding, Eleanor was in the process of delivering the support she had promised to Welkin; while it took some brief arm-twisting on her part, she was finally able to enlist the aid of a squadron of Marine gunships to help deal with the East Gallians. The dozen or so craft sped towards Camp Inglebard as fast as they could, hoping to intercept the East Gallians and smash them all into dust.
Eleanor's message rang out loud and clear through the encrypted West Gallian channels: "Air support inbound! All infantry, withdraw! All armor, cover their retreat!"
"Well, it's about damn time!" Welkin exclaimed. "Isara, get the tank back into gear! Kreis, that Baneblade's dead already! Start engaging any enemy infantry you see!"
As Isara shifted the tank into reverse, tank gunner PFC Kreis Czherny rotated the turret until he could spot the East Gallian infantry on his viewfinder, then started opening fire simultaneously with the K-bolter and coaxial plasma gun. "Yeah, come get some!" he called out as the number of acid-melted Easties started to increase dramatically. While the Easties had the numbers, the Westies had the firepower; with all the K-bolts and plasma being tossed around by the withdrawing Westie forces, the Easties didn't have a chance, especially with their fake Baneblade crippled and unable to provide meaningful fire support.
The death blow for the East Gallian advance through Emmeloord came when the gunships finally arrived, spitting forth a torrent of rockets from long range before closing in with their ventral K-bolter turrets. The crippled Baneblade knockoff attempted to retaliate with the remote-controlled K-bolter on top of the main turret, but its fire was easily dodged, and the rocket barrage rapidly silenced it and the rest of the tank for good. The East Gallian infantry had no chance at all; even with the clumsy execution of the West Gallian airstrike, one would still be hard-pressed to find identifiable enemy remains amidst all the carnage.
"Ground forces, this is Enfield 2-5," one of the gunship pilots said over the radio. "You guys doing all right down there?"
"Yeah, more or less," Welkin replied. "Nice of you to show up when you did."
"Well, you got your captain back at camp to thank for that," Enfield 2-5 said. "You better go report back to her, buddy. Don't wanna keep her waiting. Give her our regards, 'kay? Enfield 2-5 out."
Welkin opened up the hatch of his Edelweiss and climbed out to take a look at the gunships as they flew back to base. He waved at them as they went by, as did Largo, Rosie, and the other surviving West Gallian soldiers; even Marina, known among her comrades for being extremely reserved, smirked slightly and gave a jaunty little salute of her own as the gunships flew past. Despite initially being caught by surprise, the sheer ferocity of the defense of Emmeloord and Camp Inglebard meant that the West Gallians sustained only a few casualties while managing to wipe out the East Gallian attackers. This battle would only be the beginning for Welkin and his band of brothers and sisters, though...
Camp Inglebard, Emmeloord Joint Security Area, West Gallian side of the East Gallia-West Gallia DMZ
An actual Baneblade in the service of the Imperium
2nd Lieutenant Welkin Gunther didn't need Eleanor back at HQ telling him about the Easties' "Baneblade," for he was right there to see the damn thing, and even with what little he knew about the Imperium's war machines apart from what was considered common knowledge, he knew that what he was facing was certainly not an authentic Baneblade by any stretch of the imagination. His realization came the moment he saw the "Baneblade" open fire; he certainly did not expect the monstrosity to be spitting out the distinct emerald-green projectiles that signified the presence of Bragulan K-bolters. Several of these bolts went over to strike the camp, while a stray shot came dangerously close to melting through the roof of Welkin's tank.
"This is Lieutenant Gunther to HQ!" Welkin called out over the radio. "We're currently receiving heavy K-bolter fire! Whatever it is we're facing, it most certainly ain't a real Baneblade!"
"We just managed to patch into your gun camera feed, and we're seeing it too, Lieutenant," Eleanor replied back. "Even if it's not a real Baneblade, we're still not taking any chances. We'll try to get some artillery and air support down on your position. In the meantime, slow down the enemy's advance by any means possible."
"We'll try, Captain. Lieutenant Gunther out," Welkin said. "Well, here goes nothing, then. Forward, Isara. We're not yet in gun range."
"Right!" Corporal Isara Gunther, Welkin's adopted sister and the driver of his personal Edelweiss, replied as she shifted the tank into gear. "We'll show those damned Easties!"
An Edelweiss MBT in West Gallian colors
The Edelweiss, as it was called by the East and West Gallian militaries, was actually an old Haruhiist design that was sold in large numbers to various minor powers in the Koprulu Zone and surrounding territories after it was retired by the SOS Imperial Armed Forces in the late 3310s. Edelweisses formed the majority of unified Gallia's tank force prior to the Civil War in 3346; both Gallias later acquired additional Edelweisses through various sources during the Unification War. While Edelweisses on both sides were subject to various upgrades to keep them competitive, Royal Gallian Marine Corps models were perhaps the most radically modified, with all-new engines and transmissions, improved armor and sensors, Sovereignty-built plasma guns in place of the original coaxial and pintle-mounted light railguns, and a reverse-engineered Bragulan heavy K-bolter in place of the original heavy railgun. With such heavy firepower at their command, Welkin and his fellow tankers were confident that they could take on whatever the Easties could throw at them, including their fake "Baneblade."
The West Gallian Edelweisses charged forward into the breach and opened fire, hoping to meet the East Gallian aggressors head-on and drown them in a torrent of K-bolts and plasma. While the vast, rolling plains of the East Gallia-West Gallia DMZ were perfect for tank warfare, infantry would not be as lucky caught out in the open, particularly with both sides liberally spitting out K-bolter and plasma fire; Welkin and the other tankers hoped that they could draw the enemy's fire away from the infantry so they could move in for the kill with their own anti-armor weapons.
The weaknesses of the Easties' counterfeit Baneblade were made clear as soon as the Edelweisses started to close in. The fake was truly inferior in nearly every way imaginable compared to the authentic Imperium article, with an underpowered engine and sluggish turret traverse speeds among its many failings; while the lumbering beast could certainly demolish stationary fortifications with ease, it had trouble taking on moving targets and was thus dependent on infantry and lighter tanks to help cover its advance. The fake Baneblade's operators were by and large stymied by the Edelweisses' hit-and-run attacks; with their main turret, demolition cannon, and missile batteries practically useless at this close range, they had to resort to using the side-mounted plasma guns and light K-bolters, intended primarily for anti-personnel and light anti-armor use, against the enemy tanks. In fact, the fake Baneblade's crew were so preoccupied with the enemy Edelweisses that they failed to notice the Westie anti-tank infantry sneaking up on them...
1stSgt Largo Potter (incorrectly) holding a PfZ 17 Lanze RPG
The standard West Gallian infantry anti-tank weapon was the PzF 17 Lanze, a reusable shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenade launcher most notable for its large size compared to other weapons in its class; like many weapons used by the West Gallian armed forces, it was an old Haruhiist design (officially designated the M17 Bisento in SOS Imperial Armed Forces service) that was sold off to willing customers after being retired by the SOS Imperial Armed Forces. Even though its size made it quite awkward for the average human to use, it could utilize a far larger warhead than other weapons of its class and generation could; while further advances in technology made it possible to accomodate the Bisento/Lanze's payload in a smaller (not to mention more comfortable to use) package, the PzF 17 was still considered a reliable enough weapon that the West Gallians were willing to put up with its odd ergonomics.
First Sergeant Largo Potter was attached to one of the anti-tank platoons stationed at Camp Inglebard, and he had the fortune of being close enough to immediately respond to the threat of the East Gallian "Baneblade"; there were two other anti-tank platoons out on the field, but it would be some time before they could get to the fake Baneblade. In the meantime, Largo and the other grenadiers attempted to advance under what little cover was available towards the fake Baneblade, hoping to knock out its secondary weapons and pierce the side skirt to get at the treads and road wheels. "Target in range!" Largo called out. "Fire!"
A large volley of Lanze fire shot out towards the fake Baneblade, hoping to overwhelm its active defenses and score hits on the chassis and weapons. While an actual Imperium Baneblade could easily deal with the barrage by shooting down most of the projectiles with active defenses and absorbing the rest with its void shields, the East Gallian knockoff was nowhere near as comprehensively protected. With weak active defenses and no void shielding, the majority of the Lanze shots hit home, knocking out the right-side auxiliary turrets before they could turn to retaliate; a few shots also penetrated the side skirt, damaging some of the road wheels and a portion of the treads. The fake Baneblade abruptly ground to a halt as Largo and the others reloaded their Lanzes for a second volley. "Man, that Baneblade must be made of papier-mache or something, 'cause I know that the real deal could eat us and our Lanzes for breakfast," Largo remarked.
The fake Baneblade was now firmly stuck between two hard places, with enemy tanks to its left and enemy anti-armor troops to its right steadily eating away at its weapons and armor. Between the Edelweisses' K-bolter and plasma fire and the Lanze volleys, it was not going to be long for this world barring some sort of intervention, which finally came in the form of the East Gallian infantry that had made the initial advance through the DMZ. While mostly composed of light and medium infantry equipped with K-bolters and slugthrowers, there was an actual anti-tank platoon among them, and they posed a genuine threat to Welkin's tanks; fortunately, the Westies had their own light and medium infantry to deal with these pests.
Profile of Cpl Brigitte Stark as sketched by a SOS Imperial Marine Corps military advisor, late 3399
Corporal Brigitte "Rosie" Stark was among the West Gallian Marine infantry available to immediately respond to the East Gallian incursion. With the Edelweisses doing an excellent job of distracting the fake Baneblade, Rosie led her companions into the breach to help protect the tanks from the East Gallians' own infantry; it wasn't very long before the two forces met and started firing upon each other. "Enemy infantry spotted! Engage!" she called out as she opened fire with her weapon.
Like many other minor powers all throughout the galaxy, the two Gallias were noted consumers of Bragulan weaponry, known to be easy to procure, easy to use, easy to maintain, and easy to reproduce. While East Gallia could easily afford to give reverse-engineered K-bolter carbines to the vast majority of its soldiers (alongside unlicensed copies of the Tianguo BQ-98 and BQ-03 rifles), West Gallia could only afford to give such weapons to the Marines, where they were issued alongside several variants of the M116 pulse rifle. What Rosie and her comrades lacked in firepower and numbers, they made up for in quality of training and sheer determination; even if they didn't have as many K-bolters as their foes did, they could still shoot straighter and inflict more casualties than the Easties could. "This ain't even fair!" Rosie exclaimed as she melted an advancing East Gallian fireteam with a few shots from her personal K-bolter. Other Eastie soldiers met a similar fate as the other Westies joined in with their own K-bolters and pulse rifles, advancing slowly yet surely as they melted their way through the enemy onslaught; however, even with acid-spewing railguns to help even the odds, there were simply too many East Gallian soldiers, and there was still the issue of those anti-tank troopers, as well as the sniper squad sneaking up on them...
Sgt Marina Wulfstan, West Gallian sniper extraordinaire
While Sergeant Marina Wulfstan had proven herself to be a truly exceptional sniper on paper, she had not actually seen combat until now; going up against the East Gallian aggressors was going to be the first real test of her abilities, and she was definitely looking forward to the experience. With her M116A1 DMR in hand, she and her fellow snipers moved out to help cover their comrades. "I heard that the Easties have got their own snipers out there," the lead sniper, Gunnery Sergeant Catherine O'Hara, remarked. "Wulfstan, you're with me. We're going hunting. Regard, Bielert, cover our tanks. We can't afford to lose them to the Easties' sappers."
"You're putting me out on the front with Oscar?" Corporal Cezary Regard groaned. "I became a sniper so I wouldn't have to be up there, you know."
"Look, just do what the Gunny says, you coward," Private First Class Oscar Bielert said. "Most of us would be lying if we said we weren't scared. We still gotta go out there and do our jobs. Now, you coming with me or not?"
"Fine," Cezary groaned as he followed Oscar off to the front lines. Marina and Catherine went off to go look for the enemy snipers before they could move in to deal some real damage; they didn't have to go far before a shot from a BQ-03 struck just a few inches away from Marina's foot, forcing her and Catherine to dive into a shallow ditch for cover and start sweeping the area with the scopes on their rifles.
"You see anything?" Catherine asked.
"Already spotted," Marina replied as she pulled the trigger on her pulse rifle, taking down the Eastie sniper who had tried to shoot her foot off. "Confirm."
Catherine pointed her own rifle towards where the enemy sniper had been and spotted the corpse. "Confirmed. Keep searching."
"Acknowledged," Marina said as she resumed her sweep of the area, rapidly taking down any and all hostile soldiers she was able to spot. Any Easties trying to approach had no chance against her and Catherine picking them off one by one.
A West Gallian gunship, equipped with the standard K-bolter and a pair of rocket pods
As the entire battle was unfolding, Eleanor was in the process of delivering the support she had promised to Welkin; while it took some brief arm-twisting on her part, she was finally able to enlist the aid of a squadron of Marine gunships to help deal with the East Gallians. The dozen or so craft sped towards Camp Inglebard as fast as they could, hoping to intercept the East Gallians and smash them all into dust.
Eleanor's message rang out loud and clear through the encrypted West Gallian channels: "Air support inbound! All infantry, withdraw! All armor, cover their retreat!"
"Well, it's about damn time!" Welkin exclaimed. "Isara, get the tank back into gear! Kreis, that Baneblade's dead already! Start engaging any enemy infantry you see!"
As Isara shifted the tank into reverse, tank gunner PFC Kreis Czherny rotated the turret until he could spot the East Gallian infantry on his viewfinder, then started opening fire simultaneously with the K-bolter and coaxial plasma gun. "Yeah, come get some!" he called out as the number of acid-melted Easties started to increase dramatically. While the Easties had the numbers, the Westies had the firepower; with all the K-bolts and plasma being tossed around by the withdrawing Westie forces, the Easties didn't have a chance, especially with their fake Baneblade crippled and unable to provide meaningful fire support.
The death blow for the East Gallian advance through Emmeloord came when the gunships finally arrived, spitting forth a torrent of rockets from long range before closing in with their ventral K-bolter turrets. The crippled Baneblade knockoff attempted to retaliate with the remote-controlled K-bolter on top of the main turret, but its fire was easily dodged, and the rocket barrage rapidly silenced it and the rest of the tank for good. The East Gallian infantry had no chance at all; even with the clumsy execution of the West Gallian airstrike, one would still be hard-pressed to find identifiable enemy remains amidst all the carnage.
"Ground forces, this is Enfield 2-5," one of the gunship pilots said over the radio. "You guys doing all right down there?"
"Yeah, more or less," Welkin replied. "Nice of you to show up when you did."
"Well, you got your captain back at camp to thank for that," Enfield 2-5 said. "You better go report back to her, buddy. Don't wanna keep her waiting. Give her our regards, 'kay? Enfield 2-5 out."
Welkin opened up the hatch of his Edelweiss and climbed out to take a look at the gunships as they flew back to base. He waved at them as they went by, as did Largo, Rosie, and the other surviving West Gallian soldiers; even Marina, known among her comrades for being extremely reserved, smirked slightly and gave a jaunty little salute of her own as the gunships flew past. Despite initially being caught by surprise, the sheer ferocity of the defense of Emmeloord and Camp Inglebard meant that the West Gallians sustained only a few casualties while managing to wipe out the East Gallian attackers. This battle would only be the beginning for Welkin and his band of brothers and sisters, though...
I ship Eino Ilmari Juutilainen x Lydia V. Litvyak.
Phantasee: Don't be a dick.
Stofsk: What are you, his mother?
The Yosemite Bear: Obviously, which means that he's grounded, and that she needs to go back to sucking Mr. Coffee's cock.
"d-did... did this thread just turn into Thanas/PeZook slash fiction?" - Ilya Muromets[/size]
Stofsk: What are you, his mother?
The Yosemite Bear: Obviously, which means that he's grounded, and that she needs to go back to sucking Mr. Coffee's cock.
"d-did... did this thread just turn into Thanas/PeZook slash fiction?" - Ilya Muromets[/size]
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
P.N.S. Hellbender
In orbit of Kingsport, Damascus System
“You be needing to calm down, Brother Bear.” Bessières said to the Bragulan Commissar. “I be telling you Damascus be clear across the Dominion, that be why it took so long.”
“Maybe so,” Commissar Vikim said. “But I have checked, there is a wormhole junction at Damascaus that would have cut transit time by over a third. Why have we not used it? Young Yivgeny has been left at the hands of those maniacs for weeks now. Who knows what state that he is in?”
“The unexpected transit of a Fauquier Sector Fleet battleship to Damascus would have reached the All-Human League. We’ve parked ourselves at Kingsport rather than Damascus proper as it be the naval anchorage for the system. Security, security…surely it’s not all that much different in the Bragulan Empire?”
“Well, no.” Vikim admitted “Although we do not have the internal problems that you Dominionoids do, to worry so much about dissident groups monitoring wormhole junctions. I will be coming down to the surface with you?”
“No, I think not Brother Bear.” Bessières said. “While the Lord Protector’s government may be willing to work with the Bragule a Xenos walking around outside of designated areas could cause a riot. Or at least will sounds the alarm once you step off the landing pat at the Grayson Starport. No, better that I go alone, along with Colonel Morgan.”
Vikim suppressed a shudder at the mention of the commanding officer of the Hellbender’s Marine Detachment. He had dined in the senior officer’s wardroom all throughout the trip, and the Marine was nearly as large as a Bragulan. He often derisively referred to everyone else as “meat”. Finally Vikim had asked Bessières what Colonel Morgan meant by that.
“He not have more than a few pounds of flesh left in him, Brother Bear.” Bessières had responded. “Centuries of fighting have destroyed his body, he be a bag of brain cells in a robot body with synthetic skin. If there be trouble on Damascus he’ll be helping with the cleanup.”
“So why does he continue to eat then?” Vkim had asked. Bessières shrugged.
“It be a hard, hard thing to do to give up routine.” And with that Vikim’s thoughts snapped back to the present.
“Do you think that these All-hewmons have Yivgeny? I would hate to be on the wild Canadian chase.”
Bessières shrugged, he was good at that. In fact he had gone over this several times with Vikim and believed that being trapped on a hew-mon vessel for so long with just Fiyor and the Furry for company was gradually addling Vikim’s brains. “As I said Brother, if the All-Human League doesn’t have the yearling, then the trail be cold. Now if you excuse me,” Bessières made an exaggerated show of glancing at his watch, “Myself and Morgan be leaving for Grayson City on the next shuttle.”
In orbit of Kingsport, Damascus System
“You be needing to calm down, Brother Bear.” Bessières said to the Bragulan Commissar. “I be telling you Damascus be clear across the Dominion, that be why it took so long.”
“Maybe so,” Commissar Vikim said. “But I have checked, there is a wormhole junction at Damascaus that would have cut transit time by over a third. Why have we not used it? Young Yivgeny has been left at the hands of those maniacs for weeks now. Who knows what state that he is in?”
“The unexpected transit of a Fauquier Sector Fleet battleship to Damascus would have reached the All-Human League. We’ve parked ourselves at Kingsport rather than Damascus proper as it be the naval anchorage for the system. Security, security…surely it’s not all that much different in the Bragulan Empire?”
“Well, no.” Vikim admitted “Although we do not have the internal problems that you Dominionoids do, to worry so much about dissident groups monitoring wormhole junctions. I will be coming down to the surface with you?”
“No, I think not Brother Bear.” Bessières said. “While the Lord Protector’s government may be willing to work with the Bragule a Xenos walking around outside of designated areas could cause a riot. Or at least will sounds the alarm once you step off the landing pat at the Grayson Starport. No, better that I go alone, along with Colonel Morgan.”
Vikim suppressed a shudder at the mention of the commanding officer of the Hellbender’s Marine Detachment. He had dined in the senior officer’s wardroom all throughout the trip, and the Marine was nearly as large as a Bragulan. He often derisively referred to everyone else as “meat”. Finally Vikim had asked Bessières what Colonel Morgan meant by that.
“He not have more than a few pounds of flesh left in him, Brother Bear.” Bessières had responded. “Centuries of fighting have destroyed his body, he be a bag of brain cells in a robot body with synthetic skin. If there be trouble on Damascus he’ll be helping with the cleanup.”
“So why does he continue to eat then?” Vkim had asked. Bessières shrugged.
“It be a hard, hard thing to do to give up routine.” And with that Vikim’s thoughts snapped back to the present.
“Do you think that these All-hewmons have Yivgeny? I would hate to be on the wild Canadian chase.”
Bessières shrugged, he was good at that. In fact he had gone over this several times with Vikim and believed that being trapped on a hew-mon vessel for so long with just Fiyor and the Furry for company was gradually addling Vikim’s brains. “As I said Brother, if the All-Human League doesn’t have the yearling, then the trail be cold. Now if you excuse me,” Bessières made an exaggerated show of glancing at his watch, “Myself and Morgan be leaving for Grayson City on the next shuttle.”
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
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Shroom Man 777
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
RYGNSKRGNVK, Kirensk Sector, Bragulan Star Empire
Agent Vsvlgyrod Spozavik carefully adjusted his hat and his tie. The ship would soon be landing, and once planetside he would meet with the IBGV's section chiefs in charge of not only the planet Rygnskrgnvk, but also to the bureau's branch throughout the Kirensk sector. He would be thoroughly debriefed, so he had to look sharp. He looked at himself in the mirror, noted with satisfaction on just how smart he looked.
Smarter than the average Bragulan, ye-he-hey! he thought to himself. He had to be, in this business it was not easy to stay ideologically correct while at the same time maintaining independent thought, yet those two seemingly contradictory things were necessary to survive in the intelligence world, for they were the very air one breathed in that dangerous reality. Spozavik didn't just have to think fast, he had to doublethink very fast, and he was pretty good at it, if he doublethought so himself. If he wasn't, then one day he might very well end up being led by his colleagues out to a back alley where they'd just shoot him to death. That happened to a lot of people who thought they were smart guys. He knew, since he had graduated in the same class as them. Perhaps, Spozavik grimly mused, knowing that such fate could easily happen to him even now, this might be a class reunion then.
The ship landed and its passenger doors opened. Spozavik squinted his eyes as he stepped out into the light, into the planet Rygnskrgnvk. Truth be told, he did not know what fate awaited him there.
For the fate awaiting him there was totally not expected at all...
The People of Rygnskrgnvk Thank Imperial Bragulan People's Department of Limited Foreign Interaction and Human Affairs Diplomatic Trade Liaison Mr. Dryznyl Shpechtkov For Arranging Vowel Shipments to Our Bestricken World
Those bolded and italicized words were written on a gigantic banner that fluttered between the hulls of a catamaran airship floating in the skies above. In the shadow of that hovering airship were throngs of people, males, females and cubs alike, all cheering and waving and shouting as if the Imperator himself had deemed fit to grace their world with his presence, on Bragsday no less. There was a marching band and they trumpeted their tripod music machines, making a deep 'alloooo' sound before they played their musics. It was the Imperator's March, an ominous piece of revolutionary music made during the Hundred Lightyear March, when Darvyl Sagatantron Byzon crushed the enemies of Bragulanity with each and every step of his most-patriotic boot heels. This revolutionary music was so popular that now, the Imperator's March was played for every occasion, from birthdays to weddings to even the daily wakeup call every morning on Bragule as a reminder to cubs and grownups alike of how the Imperator's boot heel might also crush them if they happened to be naughty. The Imperator's March also came in a lullaby.
"What?" Spozavik uttered.
"The People of Rygnskrgnvk Thank Imperial Bragulan People's Department of Limited Foreign Interaction and Human Affairs Diplomatic Trade Liaison Mr. Dryznyl Shpechtkov For Arranging Vowel Shipments to Our Bestricken World!" announced someone who approached him in formal attire. If Spozavik considered himself smartly dressed, then the Bragulan who was coming towards him was even more so, too smartly dressed, in fact, to the point that the secret police would probably want to drag him away at night to examine the purity of his thought content. With a stick. That was how well dressed the Bragulan was.
"Um." Spozavik's brain clicked. Dryznyl Shpechtkov was his cover back on Altacar. Dryznyl Shpechtkov was a diplomat, but since practically every Bragulan diplomat was an IBGV operative, Agent Spozavik also happened to be Dryznyl Shpechtkov. "You're welcome?"
"Ah, forgive me for being so bombastic," the smartly dressed Bragulan apologized. "I am the Planetary Governor of this world, Rygnskrgnvk, and Mr. Shpechtkov I cannot thank you enough for arranging the shipment of vowels Rygnskrgnvk so desperately needed. It was through your quick thinking in Altacar that staved off the great vowel famine!"
"Please, just call me Dryznyl," Spozavik replied flatly. He had to think of a joke or a quip to defuse his discomfort. "Hm, I think I could use a good vowel too."
"Very good, very good! We have plenty of vowels now, thanks to you! And also, my name is Vychyrgu Boyla, at your service," the Planetary Governor bowed. Or attempted to, rather, for so ostentatious were his garments that the fine robes and silks and clothings constricted his not inconsiderable mass. For some reason, he carried a scepter and had a sword on his belt too. Spozavik wondered how the governor could've afford it with the meager roubles of his pay grade. "Come, Mister Dryznyl, you have an award to receive. I hope you have prepared a speech."
"I hope so too," Spozavik shrugged. The Planetary Governor led him to a stage, and upon the sight of the great Mister Dryznyl, bringer of vowels, the crowds went wild. The females waved wildly, gyrating their multiple mammaries. It was quite distracting for Spozavik, but it was the pleasant kind of distraction. How he had missed such sights in his long and lonely missions abroad. Little (or big) things like these reminded him how good it was to be back in the Bragulan Star Empire.
Suddenly, the women quieted down and ceased their gyrations, much to Spozavik's disappointment. Planetary Governor Vychyrgu Boyla addressed the crowds first, using his scepter as a macrophone, and his amplified voice boomed from the hovering airship catamaran. His speech was long and arduous, but every once in a while in pre-designated moments he would pause and the crowd would applaud him, and the females would resume their gyrations, so Spozavik did not mind too much. Finally Vychyrgu Boyla presented the medal, the Commemoration of Great Bragulan People's Worker Class Achievement or something like that, and pinned it to Spozavik's chest. So as Dryznyl Shpechtkov, he smiled and waved at the females, and was surprised to see them intensify the movements of their gyrations. At this he was pleased.
"Mister Dryznyl," the Planetary Governor nudged him a bit. "Mister Dryznyl."
"Huh?" Spozavik was taken out of his brief reverie. The macrophone scepter was now in front of him. "Oh, right, the speech. Yes. People of Rygnskrgnvk!"
The crowds went wild. The females again gyrated, moving to the tune of drumbeats. The males and cubs were beating drums, drums with the faces of humans drawn on them in order to motivate Bragulan citizens to hit the drums with sticks and practice their musical abilities.
"Thank you, thank you, you're too kind!" Spozavik chuckled sincerely for he found the situation to be totally bizarre. He remembered making the trade deal in Altacar, where the Altacarian humans would send much-needed vowels to the Rygnskrgnvk system in return for some compensation. It wasn't much, just a business deal, one expected from an Imperial Bragulan People's Department of Limited Foreign Interaction and Human Affairs 'diplomatic trade liaison' like Mr. Dryznyl Shpechtkov. So what was this? Were the people genuinely grateful? Perhaps this was some propaganda piece from the government? Or maybe the IBGV was setting him up for something, something definitely not good.
Spozavik knew they sometimes liked to make certain people feel comfortable, even rewarding them, before disappearing them shortly afterwards. He even heard of a Space Marshal who was allowed by the Imperator himself to carry the baton and lead the Bragsday Parade in the Bragule Square. Then the next day Byzon had that Space Marshal beaten with sticks and sent to a gulag where he toiled for decades in a work camp that manufactured beating-sticks. The Space Marshal was later rehabilitated, but only because he had handmade some of the best beating-sticks in the whole Bragulan Star Empire in order to prove his loyalty. He was later awarded the Commemoration of Great Bragulan People's Worker Class Achievement.
That same medal was now hanging on Spozavik's suit. But it wasn't even his award, Spozavik noted, it was Dryznyl Shpechtkov's. What could this mean?
"Vowels are a right of all sentient beings. I did what any loyal servant of the Imperator and Empire would have done." Spozavik declared. The crowd went silent, listening to every word that came out of his mouth. "Thank you, all of you."
Then he got off the stage and went away.
And that was how Agent Spozavik left, to thunderous applause.
After the festivities, Spozavik was accosted by two IBGV agents and led to the local sub-sector office. It was disguised as a printing press, because the IBGV strictly controlled the ideological thought content of written materials in the Bragulan Star Empire. Though not all publications in the BSE were the IBGV's, a fair portion of them were, from children's story books and academic journals to revisionist history textbooks and restaurant menus. Spozavik himself had written one of these back when he was a cadet, a revisionist academic restaurant menu for small children (in the Byzon Youth). It was fairly well received.
This particular printing press they were in was for newspapers, as evidenced by the Enigma machines that would put secret messages in the news articles for IBGV agents to decipher at their leisure whenever they received the latest issue. They also tested the latest codes by putting them in crossword puzzles, to see if the IBGV agents could decrypt them. One had to be careful in doing so, because sometimes false messages were written in the invisible ink intentionally to deceive CEID and Inquisition agents and lead them to their demise. In the Bragulan Star Empire, news printed you.
"So," Spozavik said as he calmly picked up a news sheet. He read the headline 'Galaxy of Glasnot: The Imperator's Fifty Year Plan For Next Half-Century'. Interesting. Not really. "Where's Gryznk?"
"He's not here," came the reply.
"Where is he?" Spozavik asked.
"He's busy."
Spozavik immediately became suspicious. He wondered, then who was he meeting with? "Then who am I meeting with?"
"Nobody," came the reply.
"I see." Spozavik's suspicion was somewhat alleviated, but not fully. No one knew the names of the section chiefs, they were 'nobodies'. If the person had told him his name, then that would've been bad. The section chiefs could tell him his name, then they would've had to kill him. Spozavik preferred it if they didn't have to. "I brought the information."
"Is it solid?"
"Like the Imperator's Boot," Spozavik reassured him. It worked. The person stepped out of the shadows, and Spozavik saw that he was also smartly attired in a suit. Except instead of a head with a face on it, he was wearing a piece of metal on his head instead. IBGV section chiefs never showed their faces, and when they went out in public (they never went out in public) they always wore metal helmets to protect themselves from assassins. "Here."
Spozavik gave him the suitcase filled with the floppy disks and cassette tape. In it was also his report.
"Thank you."
"So, what else shall we talk about?" Spozavik asked.
"There is nothing more to talk about."
"Okay then." Spozavik shrugged.
"Fine."
"Alright," Spozavik began backing away slowly. "Anything else?"
"Give our regards to Bragga."
"That's it?" Spozavik confirmed.
"Yes, that's it."
"Okay, that's it."
"Goodbye. Spozavik."
"So long." Spozavik replied, and then he got out of there. "Nobody."
The awkwardness of the meeting wasn't lost on Spozavik. Such rendezvouses were always nerve-wracking, not only because of IBGV-honed paranoia and the danger of lethal personnel purges (that no one was exempted from, save the Imperator himself), but because the meetings were so bugfuck weird. Section chiefs and the upper echelons of the IBGV were totally isolated from the outside galaxy, their only interaction being the reports forwarded by their agents and subordinates, to the point where their view of the real universe had been warped due to sheer detachment. They were cold and uncaring, clinical, and tended to view things in solely in numbers. Yet mathematics were not their strong suit. Their arithmetic was downright horrible. Or maybe it wasn't, maybe it was all proceeding according to plan, a plan that only they could see in their stupid metal helmets. Spozavik didn't know.
All Spozavik knew was that he needed a good drink.
He picked up the telephone and made a collect call to Bragule. The IBGV could bill him.
After a few minutes of waiting (actually nearly an hour), the other side finally picked up the phone.
He heard the sweet voices of children. His children.
"Hi Daddy! Hi Dad!"
It was Buzugan, little Bu-bu. And his younger sister, Lylybylle.
"Hey, guys. How are you?" Spozavik had so longed to hear their voices again, and now finally he could, he did. He was so happy to hear his cubs again. Yet, at the same time, it was bittersweet like soured honey. He also longed to see them, to hold them in his arms as a father should. Hearing them, over the telephone from a long-distance call spanning lightyears, was the closest he could ever get...
"Good. Okay, I guess."
Spozavik closed his eyes, trying to picture his children. Two little cubs, their backs towards him, crouching in the garden, looking at something in the grass. That was the last time he saw them, he didn't even get a chance to say goodbye.
"Who's just okay? Was that Bu-bu?"
"Yeah. When are you coming home?"
"I can't. Not for a while." Spozavik squeezed the phone handle. If it were made out of human plastics, it would've broken into little bits, but it was made out of stainless steel so it didn't.
"Why?"
"Well, Bu-bu, like I've told you - I'm away because I'm working."
"Grandma says you're never coming back." It was the voice of his female cub, Lylybylle.
Spozavik paused and took a breath. He could see Buzugan and Lylybylle, faces unseen, lifting their heads from the grass, responding to someone's call. They ran away from across the garden.
"Lylybylle, can you ask Grandma to pick up the phone - "
"She's shaking her head."
Spozavik tensed and almost smashed the phone, Bragulan steel or no steel. He restrained himself at the last moment.
"Well, we'll just have to hope grandma's wrong about that won't we?" Spozavik replied sadly.
"Daddy?" came Bu-bu's voice.
"Yeah?" Spozavik sighed.
"Is Mommy with you?"
Spozavik felt like he just got punched. He remembered his wife, wind blowing her fur. She smiled calmly.
"No. No, we talked about this, Bu-bu. Mommy's gone." Spozavik had to steel himself from breaking down.
"Where?"
"Time to go, kids. Say bye-bye-" it was their grandmother's voice.
"I'll give some presents and vowels to Grandpa, okay? Just be good for -" Spozavik stared at the dead phone.
He downed a drink. Then there was a sound. He grabbed the top, the gun, and turned around. It is Gryznk.
The telescreen emerged from beside Spozavik. In it, the face of Gryznk. Telescreen Gryznk.
"Hello. Spozavik."
"Gryznk." Spozavik said in a low growl. "You didn't make it at the meet. Why?"
"I was busy," Telescreen Gryznk replied. "Your ex-wife gives you her regards, by the way."
"How... how is she?" Spozavik asked distraughtly. "The cubs, they miss her dearly. You have to let her see them."
Telescreen Gryznk pretended not to hear that. A female voice came from the telescreen, from somewhere behind Gryznk. Spozavik knew that voice, how could he ever forget her... Gryznk turned around and said something to her, before looking back to Spozavik.
"Gryznk, at least just let me go to Bragule, if only for just a day." Spozavik pleaded, begged, almost sobbed while he said it.
"No." Telescreen Gryznk answered. "You did a good job in Pendleton. As you said, you did what any loyal servant of the Imperator and Empire would have done. You've made them proud, Spozavik. That's all you can ask for."
"Gryznk." Spozavik uttered as he lowered his head and closed his eyes.
"You are bound for Altacar 3, I believe," Telescreen Gryznk said casually. "Colonel Velkro has done his duty, wouldn't you say, Spozavik? Now Imperial Bragulan People's Department of Limited Foreign Interaction and Human Affairs diplomatic trade liaison Mr. Dryznyl Shpechtkov is missed from his post at the Bragulan Embassy in Altacar. I believe it's high time he returned to his duties. Right, Spozavik?"
"Right."
With that, the telescreen went blank and lowered itself into the sofa. Spozavik roared in frustration, but knowing that there were listening devices in the room, his roar was a silent one. It was like he had no mouth even though he wanted to scream.
The moment's passed. Whatever I do I can't change this moment. I'm about to call out to them. They run away. If I'm ever going to see their faces I've gotta get back home. Bragule. The real world.
Agent Vsvlgyrod Spozavik carefully adjusted his hat and his tie. The ship would soon be landing, and once planetside he would meet with the IBGV's section chiefs in charge of not only the planet Rygnskrgnvk, but also to the bureau's branch throughout the Kirensk sector. He would be thoroughly debriefed, so he had to look sharp. He looked at himself in the mirror, noted with satisfaction on just how smart he looked.
Smarter than the average Bragulan, ye-he-hey! he thought to himself. He had to be, in this business it was not easy to stay ideologically correct while at the same time maintaining independent thought, yet those two seemingly contradictory things were necessary to survive in the intelligence world, for they were the very air one breathed in that dangerous reality. Spozavik didn't just have to think fast, he had to doublethink very fast, and he was pretty good at it, if he doublethought so himself. If he wasn't, then one day he might very well end up being led by his colleagues out to a back alley where they'd just shoot him to death. That happened to a lot of people who thought they were smart guys. He knew, since he had graduated in the same class as them. Perhaps, Spozavik grimly mused, knowing that such fate could easily happen to him even now, this might be a class reunion then.
The ship landed and its passenger doors opened. Spozavik squinted his eyes as he stepped out into the light, into the planet Rygnskrgnvk. Truth be told, he did not know what fate awaited him there.
For the fate awaiting him there was totally not expected at all...
The People of Rygnskrgnvk Thank Imperial Bragulan People's Department of Limited Foreign Interaction and Human Affairs Diplomatic Trade Liaison Mr. Dryznyl Shpechtkov For Arranging Vowel Shipments to Our Bestricken World
Those bolded and italicized words were written on a gigantic banner that fluttered between the hulls of a catamaran airship floating in the skies above. In the shadow of that hovering airship were throngs of people, males, females and cubs alike, all cheering and waving and shouting as if the Imperator himself had deemed fit to grace their world with his presence, on Bragsday no less. There was a marching band and they trumpeted their tripod music machines, making a deep 'alloooo' sound before they played their musics. It was the Imperator's March, an ominous piece of revolutionary music made during the Hundred Lightyear March, when Darvyl Sagatantron Byzon crushed the enemies of Bragulanity with each and every step of his most-patriotic boot heels. This revolutionary music was so popular that now, the Imperator's March was played for every occasion, from birthdays to weddings to even the daily wakeup call every morning on Bragule as a reminder to cubs and grownups alike of how the Imperator's boot heel might also crush them if they happened to be naughty. The Imperator's March also came in a lullaby.
"What?" Spozavik uttered.
"The People of Rygnskrgnvk Thank Imperial Bragulan People's Department of Limited Foreign Interaction and Human Affairs Diplomatic Trade Liaison Mr. Dryznyl Shpechtkov For Arranging Vowel Shipments to Our Bestricken World!" announced someone who approached him in formal attire. If Spozavik considered himself smartly dressed, then the Bragulan who was coming towards him was even more so, too smartly dressed, in fact, to the point that the secret police would probably want to drag him away at night to examine the purity of his thought content. With a stick. That was how well dressed the Bragulan was.
"Um." Spozavik's brain clicked. Dryznyl Shpechtkov was his cover back on Altacar. Dryznyl Shpechtkov was a diplomat, but since practically every Bragulan diplomat was an IBGV operative, Agent Spozavik also happened to be Dryznyl Shpechtkov. "You're welcome?"
"Ah, forgive me for being so bombastic," the smartly dressed Bragulan apologized. "I am the Planetary Governor of this world, Rygnskrgnvk, and Mr. Shpechtkov I cannot thank you enough for arranging the shipment of vowels Rygnskrgnvk so desperately needed. It was through your quick thinking in Altacar that staved off the great vowel famine!"
"Please, just call me Dryznyl," Spozavik replied flatly. He had to think of a joke or a quip to defuse his discomfort. "Hm, I think I could use a good vowel too."
"Very good, very good! We have plenty of vowels now, thanks to you! And also, my name is Vychyrgu Boyla, at your service," the Planetary Governor bowed. Or attempted to, rather, for so ostentatious were his garments that the fine robes and silks and clothings constricted his not inconsiderable mass. For some reason, he carried a scepter and had a sword on his belt too. Spozavik wondered how the governor could've afford it with the meager roubles of his pay grade. "Come, Mister Dryznyl, you have an award to receive. I hope you have prepared a speech."
"I hope so too," Spozavik shrugged. The Planetary Governor led him to a stage, and upon the sight of the great Mister Dryznyl, bringer of vowels, the crowds went wild. The females waved wildly, gyrating their multiple mammaries. It was quite distracting for Spozavik, but it was the pleasant kind of distraction. How he had missed such sights in his long and lonely missions abroad. Little (or big) things like these reminded him how good it was to be back in the Bragulan Star Empire.
Suddenly, the women quieted down and ceased their gyrations, much to Spozavik's disappointment. Planetary Governor Vychyrgu Boyla addressed the crowds first, using his scepter as a macrophone, and his amplified voice boomed from the hovering airship catamaran. His speech was long and arduous, but every once in a while in pre-designated moments he would pause and the crowd would applaud him, and the females would resume their gyrations, so Spozavik did not mind too much. Finally Vychyrgu Boyla presented the medal, the Commemoration of Great Bragulan People's Worker Class Achievement or something like that, and pinned it to Spozavik's chest. So as Dryznyl Shpechtkov, he smiled and waved at the females, and was surprised to see them intensify the movements of their gyrations. At this he was pleased.
"Mister Dryznyl," the Planetary Governor nudged him a bit. "Mister Dryznyl."
"Huh?" Spozavik was taken out of his brief reverie. The macrophone scepter was now in front of him. "Oh, right, the speech. Yes. People of Rygnskrgnvk!"
The crowds went wild. The females again gyrated, moving to the tune of drumbeats. The males and cubs were beating drums, drums with the faces of humans drawn on them in order to motivate Bragulan citizens to hit the drums with sticks and practice their musical abilities.
"Thank you, thank you, you're too kind!" Spozavik chuckled sincerely for he found the situation to be totally bizarre. He remembered making the trade deal in Altacar, where the Altacarian humans would send much-needed vowels to the Rygnskrgnvk system in return for some compensation. It wasn't much, just a business deal, one expected from an Imperial Bragulan People's Department of Limited Foreign Interaction and Human Affairs 'diplomatic trade liaison' like Mr. Dryznyl Shpechtkov. So what was this? Were the people genuinely grateful? Perhaps this was some propaganda piece from the government? Or maybe the IBGV was setting him up for something, something definitely not good.
Spozavik knew they sometimes liked to make certain people feel comfortable, even rewarding them, before disappearing them shortly afterwards. He even heard of a Space Marshal who was allowed by the Imperator himself to carry the baton and lead the Bragsday Parade in the Bragule Square. Then the next day Byzon had that Space Marshal beaten with sticks and sent to a gulag where he toiled for decades in a work camp that manufactured beating-sticks. The Space Marshal was later rehabilitated, but only because he had handmade some of the best beating-sticks in the whole Bragulan Star Empire in order to prove his loyalty. He was later awarded the Commemoration of Great Bragulan People's Worker Class Achievement.
That same medal was now hanging on Spozavik's suit. But it wasn't even his award, Spozavik noted, it was Dryznyl Shpechtkov's. What could this mean?
"Vowels are a right of all sentient beings. I did what any loyal servant of the Imperator and Empire would have done." Spozavik declared. The crowd went silent, listening to every word that came out of his mouth. "Thank you, all of you."
Then he got off the stage and went away.
And that was how Agent Spozavik left, to thunderous applause.
After the festivities, Spozavik was accosted by two IBGV agents and led to the local sub-sector office. It was disguised as a printing press, because the IBGV strictly controlled the ideological thought content of written materials in the Bragulan Star Empire. Though not all publications in the BSE were the IBGV's, a fair portion of them were, from children's story books and academic journals to revisionist history textbooks and restaurant menus. Spozavik himself had written one of these back when he was a cadet, a revisionist academic restaurant menu for small children (in the Byzon Youth). It was fairly well received.
This particular printing press they were in was for newspapers, as evidenced by the Enigma machines that would put secret messages in the news articles for IBGV agents to decipher at their leisure whenever they received the latest issue. They also tested the latest codes by putting them in crossword puzzles, to see if the IBGV agents could decrypt them. One had to be careful in doing so, because sometimes false messages were written in the invisible ink intentionally to deceive CEID and Inquisition agents and lead them to their demise. In the Bragulan Star Empire, news printed you.
"So," Spozavik said as he calmly picked up a news sheet. He read the headline 'Galaxy of Glasnot: The Imperator's Fifty Year Plan For Next Half-Century'. Interesting. Not really. "Where's Gryznk?"
"He's not here," came the reply.
"Where is he?" Spozavik asked.
"He's busy."
Spozavik immediately became suspicious. He wondered, then who was he meeting with? "Then who am I meeting with?"
"Nobody," came the reply.
"I see." Spozavik's suspicion was somewhat alleviated, but not fully. No one knew the names of the section chiefs, they were 'nobodies'. If the person had told him his name, then that would've been bad. The section chiefs could tell him his name, then they would've had to kill him. Spozavik preferred it if they didn't have to. "I brought the information."
"Is it solid?"
"Like the Imperator's Boot," Spozavik reassured him. It worked. The person stepped out of the shadows, and Spozavik saw that he was also smartly attired in a suit. Except instead of a head with a face on it, he was wearing a piece of metal on his head instead. IBGV section chiefs never showed their faces, and when they went out in public (they never went out in public) they always wore metal helmets to protect themselves from assassins. "Here."
Spozavik gave him the suitcase filled with the floppy disks and cassette tape. In it was also his report.
"Thank you."
"So, what else shall we talk about?" Spozavik asked.
"There is nothing more to talk about."
"Okay then." Spozavik shrugged.
"Fine."
"Alright," Spozavik began backing away slowly. "Anything else?"
"Give our regards to Bragga."
"That's it?" Spozavik confirmed.
"Yes, that's it."
"Okay, that's it."
"Goodbye. Spozavik."
"So long." Spozavik replied, and then he got out of there. "Nobody."
The awkwardness of the meeting wasn't lost on Spozavik. Such rendezvouses were always nerve-wracking, not only because of IBGV-honed paranoia and the danger of lethal personnel purges (that no one was exempted from, save the Imperator himself), but because the meetings were so bugfuck weird. Section chiefs and the upper echelons of the IBGV were totally isolated from the outside galaxy, their only interaction being the reports forwarded by their agents and subordinates, to the point where their view of the real universe had been warped due to sheer detachment. They were cold and uncaring, clinical, and tended to view things in solely in numbers. Yet mathematics were not their strong suit. Their arithmetic was downright horrible. Or maybe it wasn't, maybe it was all proceeding according to plan, a plan that only they could see in their stupid metal helmets. Spozavik didn't know.
All Spozavik knew was that he needed a good drink.
Spozavik retired to his meager apartment, a room that the IBGV allocated for him. It was crawling with bugs, both the insect-kind and the surveillance-kind. Some of the bugs were probably insect-kinds with surveillance-kind of equipment on them too. The IBGV had those, you know.Agent Vsvlgyrod Spozavik wrote:...compared to integrating with other human groups, we were able to operate on board the RSS Annapolis without any hindrance and I cannot stress enough how valuable Shepistani cooperation was in the completion of our mission. When the time came, Commander Louie Hushy and his crew rose up to the challenge and he did not hesitate in ordering the strategic nuclear bombardment of the planet Pendleton despite the risk of offending the Anglians' frail sensibilities. As Commander Hushy was instrumental to our success, at the risk of speaking out of place, I recommend that he and his crew be commended and awarded the Order of the Irradiated Moon Last Class for his unwitting and perhaps unwilling service to the Bragulan Star Empire and our dear Imperator. It is not a recommendation I make lightly, but after seeing the Shepistanis in action, I believe they would make good Bragulans.
In fact, I recommend that everyone involved in the mission be given the Order of the Irradiated Moon, with all Bragulans receiving higher classes than the humans, who only get Last Class, of course.
As for the primary mission objective, namely the material recovered from the mission, the data collected by Agent Bragga through his innovative utilization of local resources was further supplemented by sensor readings from the RSS Annapolis itself, which I took the liberty to obtain. The findings were not unexpected, given the drastic disparity of power between the lone Collector Monolith and the arrayed multinational Coalition fleet, and the battle played out predictably at first. A more interesting observation lies in the disposition of the Coalition forces, particularly the human vessels of the fleet, as they seemed anemic and relatively light in comparison to the vessels normally used by the Koprulu Zone powers, ourselves included. This should be factored into the IBGV's analysis of foreign (and human) forces elsewhere in the galaxy. The reluctance to expand forces in anticipation of possible additional resistance led the Coalition to be completely unprepared to face something like the Strategic Monolith.
The most interesting item in the records, however, lies in the Strategic Monolith's sudden withdrawal from the battle. The Strategic Monolith had not incurred any damage to itself and was in position to wipe out the Coalition fleet at its leisure, yet inexplicably it retreated. This was most perplexing until it was revealed that the actions of certain human individuals inside the Strategic Monolith itself was the root of this unexpected withdrawal. As unbelievable as it sounds, this has been corroborated by sources in the Anglian Coalition command itself. A human female named Katherine de la Poer, a native of Pendleton, somehow caused the Strategic Monolith to desert its allies, sparing the Coalition from a watery grave and allowing their victory over Pendleton. This, in turn, allowed us to complete our mission in extracting Agent Bragga from the planet's surface.
A human vessel was sighted leaving the Strategic Monolith as it made its withdrawal. The human vessel was identified by the Anglians as the Strahl, a cargo ship captained by one Bartholomew Miedan - the same human who supposedly attempted to warn the Coalition fleet of the Monolith's presence prior to the fleet's arrival at the Pendleton system. Whoever this Bartholomew Miedan may be, his involvement in the Strategic Monolith's withdrawal is curious and yet, at the same time, indeterminate. This item is of particular note, and must be referred to other IBGV assets for further perusal.
After the space battle, orbital operations around the planet Pendleton began, and without their Collector allies the slaver forces were easily routed by the Coalition fleet. Using the flurry of orbital activity as cover, Emerald Guard operatives on board a Shepistani gunship were inserted into the planet and Agent Bragga was successfully extracted. It should be noted that the Shepistanis went out of their way to cover Agent Bragga with danger-close orbital fire support missions by railgun, a valorous act that, I must emphatically add, eliminated ninety ambulances, three hundred police cars, five thousand civilian cars, thirty school buses and one clown car - all with plenty of humans inside them. Once on-world, Emerald Guard commandos performed with textbook Bragulan precision, as in their violence of action the four operatives killed a very commendable amount of humans in a very timely fashion. The exfiltration was slightly rougher, with Pendletonian IADS requiring a necessarily disproportionate strategic bombardment on part of the Shepistanis. I must note, most satisfyingly, that the atomic weapons killed untold millions of humans on Pendleton. This bombardment was only enacted on a portion of the planet, unfortunately, as the Shepistanis' brave actions somehow offended the Anglians' frail sensibilities, and the Anglian Lord Admiral Fisher ordered them to cease fire. Nevertheless, it is believed that the Shepistani bombardment killed more humans – military personnel and innocent civilians alike (this is a joke, there are no such things such as 'innocent' civilians) – than the entirety of the previous space battle, which is truly a noble achievement.
Though no Bragulan lives were lost, the costs of the mission was still high. Agent Bragga suffered many numerous injuries and the radioactivity has left him disfigured and in poor condition, physiologically, mentally, and pelagecally. On a more positive note, ideologically he is still in complete health, and that is most important issue of all, I believe. Agent Bragga underwent great pains to fulfill his duty, even nearly resorting to several methods to perform the Bragulan Directive, and for this I believe his patriotism, his ideological-fortitude and devotion to Imperator and Empire must be praised as an example for all loyal Bragulans in the Star Empire.
Agent Bragga is on the road to recovery and has somehow managed to regrow new fur in great time, truly a sign of the Imperator's favor. Let us all hope that he is able to return to the service soon.
Yours Truly in Most Humble Patriotic Duty to Imperator and Empire,
Vsvlgyrod Spozavik
He picked up the telephone and made a collect call to Bragule. The IBGV could bill him.
After a few minutes of waiting (actually nearly an hour), the other side finally picked up the phone.
He heard the sweet voices of children. His children.
"Hi Daddy! Hi Dad!"
It was Buzugan, little Bu-bu. And his younger sister, Lylybylle.
"Hey, guys. How are you?" Spozavik had so longed to hear their voices again, and now finally he could, he did. He was so happy to hear his cubs again. Yet, at the same time, it was bittersweet like soured honey. He also longed to see them, to hold them in his arms as a father should. Hearing them, over the telephone from a long-distance call spanning lightyears, was the closest he could ever get...
"Good. Okay, I guess."
Spozavik closed his eyes, trying to picture his children. Two little cubs, their backs towards him, crouching in the garden, looking at something in the grass. That was the last time he saw them, he didn't even get a chance to say goodbye.
"Who's just okay? Was that Bu-bu?"
"Yeah. When are you coming home?"
"I can't. Not for a while." Spozavik squeezed the phone handle. If it were made out of human plastics, it would've broken into little bits, but it was made out of stainless steel so it didn't.
"Why?"
"Well, Bu-bu, like I've told you - I'm away because I'm working."
"Grandma says you're never coming back." It was the voice of his female cub, Lylybylle.
Spozavik paused and took a breath. He could see Buzugan and Lylybylle, faces unseen, lifting their heads from the grass, responding to someone's call. They ran away from across the garden.
"Lylybylle, can you ask Grandma to pick up the phone - "
"She's shaking her head."
Spozavik tensed and almost smashed the phone, Bragulan steel or no steel. He restrained himself at the last moment.
"Well, we'll just have to hope grandma's wrong about that won't we?" Spozavik replied sadly.
"Daddy?" came Bu-bu's voice.
"Yeah?" Spozavik sighed.
"Is Mommy with you?"
Spozavik felt like he just got punched. He remembered his wife, wind blowing her fur. She smiled calmly.
"No. No, we talked about this, Bu-bu. Mommy's gone." Spozavik had to steel himself from breaking down.
"Where?"
"Time to go, kids. Say bye-bye-" it was their grandmother's voice.
"I'll give some presents and vowels to Grandpa, okay? Just be good for -" Spozavik stared at the dead phone.
He downed a drink. Then there was a sound. He grabbed the top, the gun, and turned around. It is Gryznk.
The telescreen emerged from beside Spozavik. In it, the face of Gryznk. Telescreen Gryznk.
"Hello. Spozavik."
"Gryznk." Spozavik said in a low growl. "You didn't make it at the meet. Why?"
"I was busy," Telescreen Gryznk replied. "Your ex-wife gives you her regards, by the way."
"How... how is she?" Spozavik asked distraughtly. "The cubs, they miss her dearly. You have to let her see them."
Telescreen Gryznk pretended not to hear that. A female voice came from the telescreen, from somewhere behind Gryznk. Spozavik knew that voice, how could he ever forget her... Gryznk turned around and said something to her, before looking back to Spozavik.
"Gryznk, at least just let me go to Bragule, if only for just a day." Spozavik pleaded, begged, almost sobbed while he said it.
"No." Telescreen Gryznk answered. "You did a good job in Pendleton. As you said, you did what any loyal servant of the Imperator and Empire would have done. You've made them proud, Spozavik. That's all you can ask for."
"Gryznk." Spozavik uttered as he lowered his head and closed his eyes.
"You are bound for Altacar 3, I believe," Telescreen Gryznk said casually. "Colonel Velkro has done his duty, wouldn't you say, Spozavik? Now Imperial Bragulan People's Department of Limited Foreign Interaction and Human Affairs diplomatic trade liaison Mr. Dryznyl Shpechtkov is missed from his post at the Bragulan Embassy in Altacar. I believe it's high time he returned to his duties. Right, Spozavik?"
"Right."
With that, the telescreen went blank and lowered itself into the sofa. Spozavik roared in frustration, but knowing that there were listening devices in the room, his roar was a silent one. It was like he had no mouth even though he wanted to scream.
The moment's passed. Whatever I do I can't change this moment. I'm about to call out to them. They run away. If I'm ever going to see their faces I've gotta get back home. Bragule. The real world.
IBGV wrote:The words 'Spozavik sucks!' were inscribed on the wall of the Sovereign Spire. While Sinclair, Hank and Stalin snickered at them, Spozavik knew their real meaning: He has been awarded the title of Hero Of The Bragulan Star Empire!
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source)shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people
- PeZookShroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic
Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
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Simon_Jester
- Emperor's Hand
- Posts: 30165
- Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Central Administration Complex, Prime City, Reisenburg, Sector W-7
February 3, 3400
“...and by the duties laid upon me as First Technarch, I call this meeting of the Council to order!”
The mood around the table was somber. The aftermath of the battles at Bannerman and Pendleton were near the front of everyone’s mind. Circumstances demanded a full meeting of the Council to review the Technocracy’s defense policy, and all the leading lights of the Umerian state needed to be on the same page for this, come what may.
Dr. Calvin Lanning, Second for Security, was first to speak. “If no one objects, I’d like to give a brief presentation of recent events, to review the problems we need to address.” There were, naturally, no objections; this had been planned in advance. Dr. O’Connell stood and moved his chair aside to allow the rest of the Council a clear view of the screen behind him; Lanning rose and walked over to the screen. The lights dimmed.
“First and most important, you are all aware of the attack by what Anglian naval intelligence believes to be a Collector Monolith on the Pendleton invasion fleet. None of our units were present to take direct observations, but the Anglians and some of the allied powers have provided us with their own footage; the NenAltKik have been especially forthcoming. Our attachés on the scene vouch for the essential accuracy of its contents, and the damage the Monolith inflicted on the fleet tends to confirm our analysis.”
A new image appeared on the screen, a matte black rectangular prism.
Lines and numbers started flowing across the screen. “For scale, this distance,” he indicated a line on the screen with a pocket laser, “is one kilometer.” There was a sharp intake of breath. “Moreover, even for its extraordinary volume and tonnage, the Monolith proved to have unusual firepower, greatly exceeding that of the combined Coalition fleet.” Brilliant emerald beams lanced away from the Monolith, carving at the shields of the Anglian battlecruisers. A series of brief clips from the battle proceeded in sequence.
“In addition to the Monolith’s attack, native Pendletonian ships were supported by smaller Collector ships in the cruiser and destroyer range- again, the Collectors showed exceptionally high firepower per ton. We learned a lot about their screen elements’ capabilities from a parasite craft attack on the Shepistani contingent, who-” the corner of his mouth twitched- “moved to the rear after the arrival of the Monolith ahead of the task force.” On screen, the battlestars Baltimore, Annapolis, and Upper Marlboro faced a massed attack by Collector strike craft.
“These are older battlestar models, which means that combining what we got from the Anglians with our own naval intelligence, we have extremely good information on exactly what they’re capable of, which in turn is ideal for working out what the Collectors must have been capable of. The results are... somewhat alarming, but not entirely unexpected. Their light warships, again, somewhat alarming, but not out of line with what we could realistically expect to handle at reasonable odds.”
“What is far more troublesome is the almost unbelievable firepower and durability exhibited by the Monolith itself. As we see here, the bulk of the Coalition forces, including the six Anglian battlecruisers and numerous cruiser and destroyer-weight units, directed their combined firepower against the Monolith for several minutes... achieving, so far as we can tell, no lasting effect. It warmed up their shields, and there might have been some systems damage underneath that we can’t see, especially if the Monolith has highly redundant systems, but there was no substantial drop in the Monolith’s firepower or sensor efficiency during the engagement.”
“Conversely, the Monolith inflicted heavy damage on almost every unit it engaged, however briefly. Had it not dispersed its fire across a large number of relatively agile targets, we feel confident that it would have easily destroyed any single ship in the fleet, possibly in a matter of moments. Even so, it managed to bring down several targets before-” on screen, the Monolith ceased fire and started receding from view- “it abruptly retreated for no readily apparent reason, having mission-killed one of the Anglian battlecruisers and heavily damaged two others, and having totally destroyed or disabled numerous smaller ships.”
“The key conclusion here is that at Pendleton, the Collectors have demonstrated willingness to support the scum of the galaxy, and the firepower to do so with vessels that make any other warship in human space look like a tug by comparison. They showed no compunction about attacking and destroying ships belonging to at least five different nations at once, an act that they could reasonably expect to place them at war with fleets fielding a combined tonnage not seen in action since the Chamarran Wars.”
Dr. Lanning took a deep breath “Before I move on to our recommendations, I’d like to ask if there are any questions.”
At first there was no response. Even those on the Council inexperienced with military affairs knew that this was a potential game-changer. After a few seconds, Dr. Fidanzo, Second for Finance, raised a finger into the air to draw people’s eyes to him. Then he spoke, breaking the silence with confidence. His Standard was slightly accented from his birth community, a group settled on Reisenburg since the days of the New Princeton diaspora, and originally hailing from the American province of New Jersey on old Earth.
“Cal, what are the odds these things will be coming our way? Is there a reason to expect the Collectors to attack us? We’re a long way from their usual territory. And if so, how many of these things are we liable to see? If they only send one or two that’s one thing; if these are their equivalent of battleships and they send half a dozen, we’re in a lot more trouble.”
“My people have consulted extensively with MiniDat and MiniFor to address that question as part of the report. In short, what this implies about the Collectors’ stance is unclear. It is unclear whether they consider themselves to be at war with the Coalition powers, and whether that includes us. It is unclear just how many of these Monoliths they have; estimates range from at least three to, quite possibly, as many as twenty.
“Three is the largest number of confirmed Monolith sightings found in different places at the same time, allowing for transit time and bearing in mind that Collector hyperdrives appear to be slower than the galactic norm outside of the shoals around their core worlds. Twenty is based on the number of unique hull-feature patterns sighted throughout the galaxy. It’s possible that the ships have been modified over the years, in which case there could be less than twenty- possibly only the three I mentioned for all we know. It’s equally possible that there are many more Monoliths lurking deep in their space that have never been sighted.”
Fidanzo grimaced. “So, we don’t know how many of them there are, or what they’re going to do.” He said no more; this meeting was too serious for even him to play contrarian. Gadfly, yes; contrarian, no.
“Exactly.”
From the far end of the table, Dr. Susan Warren-Marshall, Second for Ecology, looked up. As was her habit during meetings, she’d brought a pad of scratch paper and commenced to doodling almost immediately. In almost anyone else, that would be a sign of inattention, but for Warren-Marshall it meant something else entirely. She was the only active esper on the Council, albeit with very limited projective abilities. Doodling was usually a sign that she was using her own specialized abilities, pushing the intelligence-enhancing metacognitive faculties that had made her respected as an intuitionist even in areas well outside her field of specialization. The scribbles were an outlet, a way for her to keep her mind focused on the field in question.
At her end of the table, Dr. Gerber, Third for Research, looked across the table at what she’d been drawing... a series of giant black boxes next to what looked like one of their own dreadnoughts, with question marks over the biggest one.
“I was wondering, what if they have ships bigger than this? I mean, maybe these Monoliths are just their idea of a cruiser or something, and their real battleships are even heavier than that. We wouldn’t really know, would we?”
Dr. Lanning's eyes flashed; that was certainly possible, and it was something no one in MiniSec really enjoyed thinking about. “Good question, Susie. I wish I had a better answer- as a preface to what I’m about to say, we really can’t rule that out.”
“Even so, we’re... cautiously optimistic that the Collectors have no ships larger than these Monoliths. Design Directorate believes that the sheer tonnage of those things approaches a number of theoretical limits in hyperdrive design, even allowing for the unusual techniques we speculate they use for shoal-space propulsion. To do much better than that they’d need to reach a whole new level of performance in high energy density engineering... in which case their firepower per ton ought to be even higher than it already is. Though that is, of course, speculation on our part, we do not expect to see anything larger than these Monoliths in known space- though it’s conceivable that they have heavier system defense platforms in their own space, much as the NenAltKik home system’s defense monitor outmasses any of their other capital ships by a great margin.”
First Technarch O’Connell stretched, linking his arms behind his head and cracking his knuckles, easing tension around the table by keeping any hint of it from creeping into his mild brogue. “Well, I don't think we need to worry about the Collectors' home system defenses coming after us. What are the study group’s recommendations?”
“For one, looking at the interaction between the Anglian ships’ fire and the Monolith’s shields, we believe that they can be killed by a sufficient concentration of fleet units.” Most of the Council looked relieved at that- it wasn’t unexpected, but the words broke the spell that had been set by the earlier footage of the battle. “Beyond that, the Collectors appear to have one very significant weakness. From MiniDat’s analysis, their drive designs appear to be slower in normal space than conventional hyperdrive. Certainly in lanes they have trouble getting a grip.”
“So in shoals they have a major advantage in maneuverability. That was a problem for the invasion fleet at Pendleton, but it won’t affect us. That gives us a speed advantage over them, which makes it easier to concentrate fleet units against them. And given how far we are from their home space, it also means we’ll have plenty of warning- again, they’re slow; they don’t seem to be able to get a grip into the lanes, which hurts them when it comes to strategic maneuverability. We’ll be able to meet force with force.”
“The question, then, is how much. We’re fairly confident of the limits of their shielding, assuming they use the same basic technological palette we do. Trying to do it with beam fire alone, we’d need... something like twenty to twenty-five dreadnoughts.” There was an intake of breath; that was most of the Umerian capital ship force. “In practice it wouldn’t be that bad; the screen elements count for something, especially if the carriers go to Protocol Omega. Factoring in screen, I’d be confident taking a fleet against a lone Monolith, the force we saw at Pendleton, with about half the battle line. Seven battleship divisions at a minimum, preferably eight, or their equivalent in battlecruiser units. We could make do with fewer heavies pulling elements out of the system control groups in the threatened sectors and concentrating them- thickening the screen's torpedo attack in support of the capital ships.”
Dr. Takuulda, Second for Research, cleared her throat with a rumbling sound and began speaking with the hollow accent typical of Phosako speaking a human language. "How will the new ion cannon ships affect this estimate?"
"Favorably. The Mark Fifteen is greatly superior to anything the Coalition fleet had to throw at the Monolith, approaching some of the more massive heavy hitters in known space such as Byzantine warp cannon. We expect it to have significantly greater effect against Monolith-level shielding than the Mark Fourteen on our current ships... but a Monolith's firepower would still allow it to destroy any single capital ship quickly, ion cannon or not. We'd still be looking at the need to concentrate a large task force, but... factoring in screen, I would feel fairly confident engaging one with no more than ten to twelve dreadnoughts of the Vindicator class, as opposed to fourteen to sixteen ships of the current generation. And that's in part because the performance of the Vindicators is limited by what their escorts can handle; once upgraded screening elements are available under Phase Two of the Fleet 3410 Initiative, that figure will decline further."
The alien master scientist nodded. "Thank you, Dr. Lanning."
“In any case, ladies and gentlemen, we have the doctrine and the capability; we just need the ops plans to concentrate large fleets on short notice. That’s already underway. The recommendation is that we move the fleet bases, putting more capital divisions in fewer locations, to assist with that. But in essence, we can handle the threat of an individual Monolith without any major changes in doctrine, given advance warning of its approach. Our ships are designed to engage single heavy targets; we’d just need more of them in place to handle a Monolith than most other threats we’ve considered. One Monolith is roughly equal to a large fleet of capital ships, but they’re a manageable threat, much like enemy fleets. It’s unwise to let the fact that all that firepower is concentrated in a single vessel alarm us unduly.”
“Facing several Monoliths would be... very different. But unless the Collectors have near the higher end of the force estimates we’ve heard, and unless they go after us specifically, we’ll have time to deal with the threat of a general Collector offensive against human space as it comes. A war like that would probably bring in many powers, and we could hope for support from other fleets aiming to stop their fleets before they penetrated to their own space- Tianguo in particular, maybe even Shepistan. Conversely, we’d need to be prepared to fight in Altacar, the Empire, or the League to stop the attack short of our rown borders.”
“We have the plans, but honestly, MiniSec believes that the Collector threat is not a primary concern for the Technocracy at this time. A Collector attack by less than four Monoliths we can handle out of our own resources. A larger one is likely to draw in other powers in our defense, and an attack large enough to overwhelm us even with allied support... well, at that point we’d be looking at the end of civilization as we know it, because-” he grimaced- “if they’re that powerful even after fighting their way through everything between us and them, they’ll conquer everyone else whatever we do.”
Dr. Rashid Ansary, Second for Simulations, raised a hand. “It sounds like the plans you’re talking about all involve our neighbors. What about fighting them further to rimward, closer to their own space?”
“In that case we’d be looking at fleet-sized long range expeditionary forces. A lot of powers have that capability- just look at how the Centralists managed to move such a big chunk of their fleet into position out Pendleton way. We... well, we could do it, but it would involve large-scale conscription among the merchant marine. We just don’t have the organic long range logistics to support formations big enough for Monolith-busting beyond the territory of our immediate neighbors. With an ally at the end of the route it would probably be possible, but we’d have to make a very serious commitment well ahead of time to set it up. Still, something to look at, and we do have teams considering it.”
“On top of that, we also recommend that we try to learn as much about the Collectors and their habits as possible, to assess how exactly how likely an attack is, what form it might take, and what the capabilities backing it up are. That’s mostly going to be a MiniDat operation, and Qiao has plans for that, but that’s a subject for another meeting. There are other significant issues to consider here, which I would also like to address.”
“Probably the most urgent of those issues is related to Shepistan.”
Down at the far end of the table, the Second for Ecology’s face started twitching. It always did; Dr. Warren-Marshall had reasons of her own to be furious with the nation of her birth.
“Granted this isn’t exactly a new problem, but my people have been looking at the combat footage from Pendleton, and it’s sobering watching them in action. The Anglians were very cooperative, so we have quite a bit of footage and copies of the after-action reports. We even managed to decrypt a lot of the Shepistani transmissions: the encryption hardware on the older battlestars is sub-par, and it looks like the Shepistani commander picked an easily guessable encryption key- practically the equivalent of setting your password to “password.”
“To summarize: After the Monolith withdrew, the Shepistani battlestars broke formation and launched small craft to the planetary surface, apparently to extract some kind of agent. During the launch phase they also fired railgun strikes from orbit to support the agent. Their Vipers flew close air support for some time, then a dropship arrived to pick them up... at which point the Pendletonians must have got mixed up and lobbed some SAMs at the shuttle. The Shepistanis replied with nuclear carpet bombing of the general area the SAMs were fired from, launching something like four to five hundred megatons into an area of roughly a hundred thousand square kilometers.” The Council collectively hissed.
The Third for Research leaned over again to see what Susie was scribbling. The doodles had turned violent- a stick figure being bludgeoned with one of its own severed limbs, dinosaurs that he supposed were supposed to be kipakt marines from the Union of Four Stars tearing into a fairly good rendition of a Freedom Prime-class killbot, with missile launchers... he worried about her sometimes. But Cal was still talking.
“In any case, MiniDat has provided us with decrypts of the Shepistani transmissions picked up during the battle. Audio only... but the audio is sobering enough.” Dr. Lanning cut in the room’s sound system.
“Annapolis this is Cheney actual. Meeting light AA fire, over.”
“Copy that, Cheney, vectoring in two fighters to provide cover fire. Over.”
“Thanks mang, over.”
Lanning interrupted. “Now we switch to the fighters’ internal communications; again, we would not normally be able to decrypt this, but we got lucky.”
There was a shrill scream of delight from a female pilot, then a low-pitched shuddering hum, probably the Vipers firing bursts of gunfire.
A male pilot laughed. “Damn we’re good. There’s another triple-A battery on top of that church.”
“Fapollo, quit jerking off, I see one on top of that daycare center.” That was the female pilot. She sounded... bubbly. Not cheerful-bubbly either; foaming at the mouth bubbly.
“Let’s split off and blow both up!” The female pilot giggled maniacally. Over the radio her gunfire could be heard again, and the giggles rose to berserk laughter. A calmer voice (not that that was hard) interrupted them.
“Starfuck, Fapollo, proceed to the following coordinates to provide aerospace support to withdrawing ground elements.”
“WHAT ground elements?!”
“The Elements Yosemite, mang!”
“Oh, right.” She sounded indifferent to the actual mission... more interested in shooting up daycare centers?
“I can’t believe you forgot. That’s what you were sent down here for.”
“Cram it, Gayeta, before I rape you with my dick!” That was, unbelievably, still the madwoman. Her wingman cut in.
“Man, I feel so jealous.”
“Of who?”
“I don’t know!”
The controller broke in again. “Cut the chatter. Tight doesn’t want you filling the airwaves with obscenities and screams, damn it.” He had a point.
The female lead pilot screamed back. “Tell Tightwad to shove a cork in his bottle!”
There was silence for a minute.
“Starfuck, Fapollo, continue providing aerospace support to Element Yosemite. Be advised, danger-close nuke strike incoming.”
“WHAT?! They want us to give CAS while they nuke the goddamn place? Fucking fuck! YOU BUNCH OF FUCKERRS!”
“Goddamn it, suck it up and do your goddamn job you filthy whore!” Lanning cut the recording for a moment, narrating.
“At this point, Anglian sensors report that the Shepistanis initiated a fifty kiloton airburst over a refugee column fleeing the city of Dogadishu along one of the city’s main highways. Past that point we don’t have much in the way of visuals, but we do still have audio. Their agent on the ground said something, broadcasting in the clear- though with the EM clutter from the nuclear strikes, it was very hard to make out his voice. Even with the best signal processing Qiao's people could do on the data, there's still enough distortion that we're sure we're not getting an accurate voice-print. A pity, but there's nothing for it. In any case:
The agent’s voice was distorted into a deep inhuman growl, odd in some indefinable way, but with obvious horror and anguish. “That McNamara’s! Sniper fire coming from it! Request immediate air support! NOW!”
“What the fuck! Is this Element Yosemite? There’s no fucking sniper fire or shit from that goddamn place! Get your eyes checked! Better yet, try some crystal meth! Starfuck, over.” Most of those around the table blinked incredulously. Crystal meth? Granted the woman was a maniac, and granted the Sheppos made much heavier use of combat drugs than almost anyone else in known space, but... methamphetamines? Most countries at least tried to pick combat stims that wouldn’t cause devastating addictions and side effects.
“NO!” The agent roared, desperate with grief that was clear even over the distortion of the radio. “DESTROY THAT MCNAMARA’S!!”
Lanning cut in again. “By this point, of course, the Shepistani bombardment had already incinerated or flattened about half the city. There was a pause, and then the ground agent placed another call for fire support. The response to this one was... particularly damning, I have to say.” He waved his hand; the computer fast-forwarded the recording to a preset point.
The male pilot, the wingman, was first to speak. “Starfuck, that building looks like it’s got a SAM battery on it!”
“Which building? The Pendleton Widows and Orphans building? I see it, moving to engage!”
“Wait, what orphanage? There’s an orphanage?! Fuck you, Starfuck, that’s mine!” Faces around the table were shocked... but the Sheppo pilots' descent into mad, blood-crazed butchery had just begun. The Second for Ecology’s eyes were closed. She could guess what was coming next; she knew the pattern.
The female pilot responded to her wingman. “Up your worn out ass, Fapollo! You shot down the Shroomlympic Carrier without me! I had to settle for just shooting the ones who got out on parachutes!”
“Well, you fucked up that daycare center! It didn’t even have any triple-A’s on it!”
She was screaming again. “I saw a goddamn gun on the building you little sniveling daddy’s bitchboy son of a bitch! I saw it with my own two eyes! THE METH DON’T LIE!”
“But it’s my turn!” He was whining... begging for the chance to strafe and bomb an orphanage. “You even shot that ambulance! I wanted to shoot the ambulance! and the firetruck! And you set the whole field hospital on fire!”
Now the flight lead’s screams had turned to berserk laughter. “That’s because you can’t keep it hard enough long enough! HAHAAHAH!”
The wingman just kept screaming “WHORE!” into the radio over and over... the transmission ended. Lanning’s voice, still level and dry despite what they’d just heard, broke the shocked silence.
“At this point, there was an exchange between Commander Hushy, in charge of the Shepistani task force, and the pilots on the ground. It was... of a piece with what you’ve just heard, though Hushy at least sounded less like an escaped mental patient. The orbiting ships engaged with a salvo of solid shot, vaporizing the Pendleton Widows and Orphans building and leaving a crater at least a hundred meters deep.”
“Shortly thereafter, the Sheppoes landed a dropship and dusted off in short order, presumably having picked up their man. The Pendletonian defenses in the area were badly disrupted by the massed nuclear attack on and around Dogadishu, totaling at least 100 to 150 kilotons by this point, probably more. The defenders lit the shuttle up with fire control radars; a few man-portable AA missiles were launched by outlying sites, probably confused ones who had lost contact with central control. Going by what the Anglians pieced together in the post-battle analysis, we estimate that they had roughly a 0.2% chance of engaging the shuttle successfully, though the heavier vehicle-mounted missiles could have done better. “
“The Shepistanis, in turn, retaliated with nuclear area bombing averaging roughly four kilotons per square kilometer of the entire area within about 150 kilometers of the drop point. While major urban areas aside from Dogadishu were not specifically targeted, the combination of fallout and fires started by the blasts left roughly three million dead by our last report. This total is expected to rise to roughly five or six million within the next two months.”
Dr. Lanning looked very somber, and the burden of his role at the head of the Technocracy’s defense forces loomed behind him like a crushing weight. “It is at times like this that I fully appreciate the reason why our nation has been spending an average of three percent of annual GDP on the construction of deep planetary bomb shelters for the past six centuries.” He shook his head.
“This incident, so far as we can determine, represents an unusual breakdown of combat discipline even by Shepistani standards, but the bombardment plan was very much as per doctrine for them. In light of that, the Ministry of Security formally recommends a full round of civil defense drills some time in the next few months. We have the plans, we’ve passed out the instructions and updated them regularly, we’ve maintained the shelters... but it’s been too long since we last actually did a dry run of the evacuation plan.”
The Second Technarchs for Finance and Industry winced as one, then looked at each other. Fidanzo nodded to his opposite number across the table, Dr. James Borrego, who spoke. “Ah, that would involve effectively shutting down the national economy during the drills. Key industries follow regs well, so I don’t think the hit will be too bad, but... you’re not proposing a no-warning drill?”
“How much warning would we have in the event of a Shepistani surprise attack?”
“From when they crossed the border? ...I see what you mean.”
Dr. Lanning smiled grimly. “I didn’t mean it that way. I think we could expect at least a few weeks’ warning that an attack was imminent, if nothing else from our good friends at the Shepistani Desk alerting us to fleet concentrations on the border. On the other hand, part of the point would be to test our readiness and see who needs to be better prepared. We recommend that the drills be preceded by nothing more than routine public service announcements reminding people to stay updated on their evacuation plans. We’ll learn more that way.”
The Second for Finance looked uncertain. “Calvin, you’re talking about one hell of an expensive experiment here. The lost productivity is going to be up... well, there are a lot of factors, but I’d guess around a hundred terastarbucks.”
“I know. But look at what you just saw, what you just heard, and tell me we can afford not to keep up readiness. Besides, the Sheppoes aren’t our only problem- that would make life too easy. We can revisit the civil defense drill proposal later, but I want to discuss the Volksland annexation. I’ll defer to Maxim for the opening statement.”
Dr. Maxim Chernov, Second for Foreign Affairs, stood and walked to the head of the table. The presentation screen, which had faded to black, came alive again. “The Prussians blame Volksland for the recent round of terrorist attacks on Königstadt; they’re calling them “Black Sunday.” In retaliation, they jumped in with something like a third of their total capital ship strength in a surprise attack- one star system.” An order of battle appeared; the Volkslanders were badly outnumbered, and each of their few tiny ships was paired off against a Prussian vessel of far greater tonnage.
“The League blew through the system defenses in about ten minutes, and started bombing from orbit. Our casualty estimates for the capital city alone are in the hundreds of thousands, possibly into the millions: the city was almost entirely leveled by the bombardment:”
“This treatment was repeated at a number of other sites around the planet; the League showed a... I can only call it homicidal indifference to civilian casualties, of a sort we rarely see in the Spinward Expanse except from Shepistan. Extremely liberal use of high-energy weapons in the opening bombardment, attacks that caused collateral damage on a scale so large that MiniSec feels sure they were deliberate...” He sighed.
“That was only the beginning. Volksland-B rebelled in favor of the League without being attacked; the Prussians moved in very quickly to “restore order” on both planets. The League military set up a provisional government to oversee distribution of aid supplies.”
“Shortly after we received word of the invasion, I composed a note to Neu Preussen, checked it with Mike, and sent it off. No one’s going to miss Volksland’s old government very much, even given the massively destructive way the Prussians removed it from power. But the system lies within a few light-years of the edge of the Grand Coreward Trunk. In Volkslander hands its position was irrelevant; in the League’s hands it would be ideally placed to interdict commerce along the Trunk. So we needed to know- was this a punitive expedition, a regime change operation, or a war of annexation? Do they plan to put naval bases there, to patrol the surrounding space? I thought we’d need to know. Basically just asking for clarification, you see.” Dr. Chernov smiled sadly.
“The reply came back very quickly, suggesting minimal turnaround time for consideration on New Preussen. The Government assured us that this was a purely isolated incident, that they had no general aggressive aims, and that Volksland was not to be annexed. Five days later, we got word that the Reichstag had voted to annex Volksland.”
“So I sent off a second note, asking again for clarification. Gottlieb’s reply was... well, deliberately ingratiating, I think.” The screen flashed the first portion of the text of the note:
“This is a bit worrying if we are to carry on further communications. We can deal with a democratic government, but it’s hard to be sure how to deal with them if we can’t find anyone with the power to make binding agreements.” He smiled broadly. “Nancy here-” he gestured in the direction of his immediate subordinate, the Third for Foreign Affairs, “came up with the idea of beaming our next note in a broadcast to the entire star system, headed ‘to whom it may concern.’” There was a chuckle around the table.
“Of course that would be impractical, but it’s certainly tempting. We’re still not sure who in their government is competent to give us assurances we can take at face value; if their foreign secretary isn’t, it’s quite possible that no one is. Which places us in the difficult position of having to reconsider any other assurances they may give us on that basis- one of my staffers put it rather memorably, promises from Foreign Secretary Gottlieb are now shown to be written in the wind.”
“Combine that with the remaining text of his note, the middle paragraph, and our projections of Prussians’ intentions are cast in a very different light...” Another block of text appeared on the screen.
Dr. Lanning looked a question at her. “You mean, as in they had an invasion plan? That’s fairly normal.” He gave her some breathing room, then. Once in a while the Second for Ecology would come up with something truly useful- not an oracle, but at least a more reliable guide to the truth than chance would indicate.
“No. I mean like they had a plan for the occupation. In detail. Does anyone know if they’ve already started new construction, renaming landmarks, things like that? Are they already trying to... assimilate the system?”
Dr. Qiao Tian, Second for Data Collection, cleared her throat. “Actually... we just got word from an agent today that they’ve settled on a new name for the whole system. They’re calling it “Neu Lothringen.”
A chill passed round the table. Again, no one would miss the old Volksland government and its ideology of Führerprinzip, but the sheer speed with which the Prussians were moving to “Prussianize” their new conquest was astounding. Even granting that the Volkslanders had been a Prussian offshoot to begin with, some splinter party in the distant past drawn from the same basic cultural template of old Earth’s Germany, this was a very rapid campaign of annexation. And so the Technarchs found themselves asking: who else do they have this kind of lightning war planned for? Who else are they ready to overrun at a moment’s notice? What happens if they try to direct the same crushing surprise attack that took down Volksland at our own border?
Dr. Lanning broke the silence. “Ladies and gentlemen, I think it’s fair to say that those are the three greatest strategic problems we face at this time. The sudden revelation of the Collector threat, to spinward, the Shepistani threat, and to rimward, the massive question mark of the Star League’s intentions for the future. Particularly the last two of those issues.”
“Dr. O’Connell, I propose that we break for lunch and resume our discussion of this afterwards.”
The Umerian head of state ran a hand through thick, short-cropped silvery hair and nodded. “Yes. After lunch.”
February 3, 3400
“...and by the duties laid upon me as First Technarch, I call this meeting of the Council to order!”
The mood around the table was somber. The aftermath of the battles at Bannerman and Pendleton were near the front of everyone’s mind. Circumstances demanded a full meeting of the Council to review the Technocracy’s defense policy, and all the leading lights of the Umerian state needed to be on the same page for this, come what may.
Dr. Calvin Lanning, Second for Security, was first to speak. “If no one objects, I’d like to give a brief presentation of recent events, to review the problems we need to address.” There were, naturally, no objections; this had been planned in advance. Dr. O’Connell stood and moved his chair aside to allow the rest of the Council a clear view of the screen behind him; Lanning rose and walked over to the screen. The lights dimmed.
“First and most important, you are all aware of the attack by what Anglian naval intelligence believes to be a Collector Monolith on the Pendleton invasion fleet. None of our units were present to take direct observations, but the Anglians and some of the allied powers have provided us with their own footage; the NenAltKik have been especially forthcoming. Our attachés on the scene vouch for the essential accuracy of its contents, and the damage the Monolith inflicted on the fleet tends to confirm our analysis.”
A new image appeared on the screen, a matte black rectangular prism.
Lines and numbers started flowing across the screen. “For scale, this distance,” he indicated a line on the screen with a pocket laser, “is one kilometer.” There was a sharp intake of breath. “Moreover, even for its extraordinary volume and tonnage, the Monolith proved to have unusual firepower, greatly exceeding that of the combined Coalition fleet.” Brilliant emerald beams lanced away from the Monolith, carving at the shields of the Anglian battlecruisers. A series of brief clips from the battle proceeded in sequence.
“In addition to the Monolith’s attack, native Pendletonian ships were supported by smaller Collector ships in the cruiser and destroyer range- again, the Collectors showed exceptionally high firepower per ton. We learned a lot about their screen elements’ capabilities from a parasite craft attack on the Shepistani contingent, who-” the corner of his mouth twitched- “moved to the rear after the arrival of the Monolith ahead of the task force.” On screen, the battlestars Baltimore, Annapolis, and Upper Marlboro faced a massed attack by Collector strike craft.
“These are older battlestar models, which means that combining what we got from the Anglians with our own naval intelligence, we have extremely good information on exactly what they’re capable of, which in turn is ideal for working out what the Collectors must have been capable of. The results are... somewhat alarming, but not entirely unexpected. Their light warships, again, somewhat alarming, but not out of line with what we could realistically expect to handle at reasonable odds.”
“What is far more troublesome is the almost unbelievable firepower and durability exhibited by the Monolith itself. As we see here, the bulk of the Coalition forces, including the six Anglian battlecruisers and numerous cruiser and destroyer-weight units, directed their combined firepower against the Monolith for several minutes... achieving, so far as we can tell, no lasting effect. It warmed up their shields, and there might have been some systems damage underneath that we can’t see, especially if the Monolith has highly redundant systems, but there was no substantial drop in the Monolith’s firepower or sensor efficiency during the engagement.”
“Conversely, the Monolith inflicted heavy damage on almost every unit it engaged, however briefly. Had it not dispersed its fire across a large number of relatively agile targets, we feel confident that it would have easily destroyed any single ship in the fleet, possibly in a matter of moments. Even so, it managed to bring down several targets before-” on screen, the Monolith ceased fire and started receding from view- “it abruptly retreated for no readily apparent reason, having mission-killed one of the Anglian battlecruisers and heavily damaged two others, and having totally destroyed or disabled numerous smaller ships.”
“The key conclusion here is that at Pendleton, the Collectors have demonstrated willingness to support the scum of the galaxy, and the firepower to do so with vessels that make any other warship in human space look like a tug by comparison. They showed no compunction about attacking and destroying ships belonging to at least five different nations at once, an act that they could reasonably expect to place them at war with fleets fielding a combined tonnage not seen in action since the Chamarran Wars.”
Dr. Lanning took a deep breath “Before I move on to our recommendations, I’d like to ask if there are any questions.”
At first there was no response. Even those on the Council inexperienced with military affairs knew that this was a potential game-changer. After a few seconds, Dr. Fidanzo, Second for Finance, raised a finger into the air to draw people’s eyes to him. Then he spoke, breaking the silence with confidence. His Standard was slightly accented from his birth community, a group settled on Reisenburg since the days of the New Princeton diaspora, and originally hailing from the American province of New Jersey on old Earth.
“Cal, what are the odds these things will be coming our way? Is there a reason to expect the Collectors to attack us? We’re a long way from their usual territory. And if so, how many of these things are we liable to see? If they only send one or two that’s one thing; if these are their equivalent of battleships and they send half a dozen, we’re in a lot more trouble.”
“My people have consulted extensively with MiniDat and MiniFor to address that question as part of the report. In short, what this implies about the Collectors’ stance is unclear. It is unclear whether they consider themselves to be at war with the Coalition powers, and whether that includes us. It is unclear just how many of these Monoliths they have; estimates range from at least three to, quite possibly, as many as twenty.
“Three is the largest number of confirmed Monolith sightings found in different places at the same time, allowing for transit time and bearing in mind that Collector hyperdrives appear to be slower than the galactic norm outside of the shoals around their core worlds. Twenty is based on the number of unique hull-feature patterns sighted throughout the galaxy. It’s possible that the ships have been modified over the years, in which case there could be less than twenty- possibly only the three I mentioned for all we know. It’s equally possible that there are many more Monoliths lurking deep in their space that have never been sighted.”
Fidanzo grimaced. “So, we don’t know how many of them there are, or what they’re going to do.” He said no more; this meeting was too serious for even him to play contrarian. Gadfly, yes; contrarian, no.
“Exactly.”
From the far end of the table, Dr. Susan Warren-Marshall, Second for Ecology, looked up. As was her habit during meetings, she’d brought a pad of scratch paper and commenced to doodling almost immediately. In almost anyone else, that would be a sign of inattention, but for Warren-Marshall it meant something else entirely. She was the only active esper on the Council, albeit with very limited projective abilities. Doodling was usually a sign that she was using her own specialized abilities, pushing the intelligence-enhancing metacognitive faculties that had made her respected as an intuitionist even in areas well outside her field of specialization. The scribbles were an outlet, a way for her to keep her mind focused on the field in question.
At her end of the table, Dr. Gerber, Third for Research, looked across the table at what she’d been drawing... a series of giant black boxes next to what looked like one of their own dreadnoughts, with question marks over the biggest one.
“I was wondering, what if they have ships bigger than this? I mean, maybe these Monoliths are just their idea of a cruiser or something, and their real battleships are even heavier than that. We wouldn’t really know, would we?”
Dr. Lanning's eyes flashed; that was certainly possible, and it was something no one in MiniSec really enjoyed thinking about. “Good question, Susie. I wish I had a better answer- as a preface to what I’m about to say, we really can’t rule that out.”
“Even so, we’re... cautiously optimistic that the Collectors have no ships larger than these Monoliths. Design Directorate believes that the sheer tonnage of those things approaches a number of theoretical limits in hyperdrive design, even allowing for the unusual techniques we speculate they use for shoal-space propulsion. To do much better than that they’d need to reach a whole new level of performance in high energy density engineering... in which case their firepower per ton ought to be even higher than it already is. Though that is, of course, speculation on our part, we do not expect to see anything larger than these Monoliths in known space- though it’s conceivable that they have heavier system defense platforms in their own space, much as the NenAltKik home system’s defense monitor outmasses any of their other capital ships by a great margin.”
First Technarch O’Connell stretched, linking his arms behind his head and cracking his knuckles, easing tension around the table by keeping any hint of it from creeping into his mild brogue. “Well, I don't think we need to worry about the Collectors' home system defenses coming after us. What are the study group’s recommendations?”
“For one, looking at the interaction between the Anglian ships’ fire and the Monolith’s shields, we believe that they can be killed by a sufficient concentration of fleet units.” Most of the Council looked relieved at that- it wasn’t unexpected, but the words broke the spell that had been set by the earlier footage of the battle. “Beyond that, the Collectors appear to have one very significant weakness. From MiniDat’s analysis, their drive designs appear to be slower in normal space than conventional hyperdrive. Certainly in lanes they have trouble getting a grip.”
“So in shoals they have a major advantage in maneuverability. That was a problem for the invasion fleet at Pendleton, but it won’t affect us. That gives us a speed advantage over them, which makes it easier to concentrate fleet units against them. And given how far we are from their home space, it also means we’ll have plenty of warning- again, they’re slow; they don’t seem to be able to get a grip into the lanes, which hurts them when it comes to strategic maneuverability. We’ll be able to meet force with force.”
“The question, then, is how much. We’re fairly confident of the limits of their shielding, assuming they use the same basic technological palette we do. Trying to do it with beam fire alone, we’d need... something like twenty to twenty-five dreadnoughts.” There was an intake of breath; that was most of the Umerian capital ship force. “In practice it wouldn’t be that bad; the screen elements count for something, especially if the carriers go to Protocol Omega. Factoring in screen, I’d be confident taking a fleet against a lone Monolith, the force we saw at Pendleton, with about half the battle line. Seven battleship divisions at a minimum, preferably eight, or their equivalent in battlecruiser units. We could make do with fewer heavies pulling elements out of the system control groups in the threatened sectors and concentrating them- thickening the screen's torpedo attack in support of the capital ships.”
Dr. Takuulda, Second for Research, cleared her throat with a rumbling sound and began speaking with the hollow accent typical of Phosako speaking a human language. "How will the new ion cannon ships affect this estimate?"
"Favorably. The Mark Fifteen is greatly superior to anything the Coalition fleet had to throw at the Monolith, approaching some of the more massive heavy hitters in known space such as Byzantine warp cannon. We expect it to have significantly greater effect against Monolith-level shielding than the Mark Fourteen on our current ships... but a Monolith's firepower would still allow it to destroy any single capital ship quickly, ion cannon or not. We'd still be looking at the need to concentrate a large task force, but... factoring in screen, I would feel fairly confident engaging one with no more than ten to twelve dreadnoughts of the Vindicator class, as opposed to fourteen to sixteen ships of the current generation. And that's in part because the performance of the Vindicators is limited by what their escorts can handle; once upgraded screening elements are available under Phase Two of the Fleet 3410 Initiative, that figure will decline further."
The alien master scientist nodded. "Thank you, Dr. Lanning."
“In any case, ladies and gentlemen, we have the doctrine and the capability; we just need the ops plans to concentrate large fleets on short notice. That’s already underway. The recommendation is that we move the fleet bases, putting more capital divisions in fewer locations, to assist with that. But in essence, we can handle the threat of an individual Monolith without any major changes in doctrine, given advance warning of its approach. Our ships are designed to engage single heavy targets; we’d just need more of them in place to handle a Monolith than most other threats we’ve considered. One Monolith is roughly equal to a large fleet of capital ships, but they’re a manageable threat, much like enemy fleets. It’s unwise to let the fact that all that firepower is concentrated in a single vessel alarm us unduly.”
“Facing several Monoliths would be... very different. But unless the Collectors have near the higher end of the force estimates we’ve heard, and unless they go after us specifically, we’ll have time to deal with the threat of a general Collector offensive against human space as it comes. A war like that would probably bring in many powers, and we could hope for support from other fleets aiming to stop their fleets before they penetrated to their own space- Tianguo in particular, maybe even Shepistan. Conversely, we’d need to be prepared to fight in Altacar, the Empire, or the League to stop the attack short of our rown borders.”
“We have the plans, but honestly, MiniSec believes that the Collector threat is not a primary concern for the Technocracy at this time. A Collector attack by less than four Monoliths we can handle out of our own resources. A larger one is likely to draw in other powers in our defense, and an attack large enough to overwhelm us even with allied support... well, at that point we’d be looking at the end of civilization as we know it, because-” he grimaced- “if they’re that powerful even after fighting their way through everything between us and them, they’ll conquer everyone else whatever we do.”
Dr. Rashid Ansary, Second for Simulations, raised a hand. “It sounds like the plans you’re talking about all involve our neighbors. What about fighting them further to rimward, closer to their own space?”
“In that case we’d be looking at fleet-sized long range expeditionary forces. A lot of powers have that capability- just look at how the Centralists managed to move such a big chunk of their fleet into position out Pendleton way. We... well, we could do it, but it would involve large-scale conscription among the merchant marine. We just don’t have the organic long range logistics to support formations big enough for Monolith-busting beyond the territory of our immediate neighbors. With an ally at the end of the route it would probably be possible, but we’d have to make a very serious commitment well ahead of time to set it up. Still, something to look at, and we do have teams considering it.”
“On top of that, we also recommend that we try to learn as much about the Collectors and their habits as possible, to assess how exactly how likely an attack is, what form it might take, and what the capabilities backing it up are. That’s mostly going to be a MiniDat operation, and Qiao has plans for that, but that’s a subject for another meeting. There are other significant issues to consider here, which I would also like to address.”
“Probably the most urgent of those issues is related to Shepistan.”
Down at the far end of the table, the Second for Ecology’s face started twitching. It always did; Dr. Warren-Marshall had reasons of her own to be furious with the nation of her birth.
“Granted this isn’t exactly a new problem, but my people have been looking at the combat footage from Pendleton, and it’s sobering watching them in action. The Anglians were very cooperative, so we have quite a bit of footage and copies of the after-action reports. We even managed to decrypt a lot of the Shepistani transmissions: the encryption hardware on the older battlestars is sub-par, and it looks like the Shepistani commander picked an easily guessable encryption key- practically the equivalent of setting your password to “password.”
“To summarize: After the Monolith withdrew, the Shepistani battlestars broke formation and launched small craft to the planetary surface, apparently to extract some kind of agent. During the launch phase they also fired railgun strikes from orbit to support the agent. Their Vipers flew close air support for some time, then a dropship arrived to pick them up... at which point the Pendletonians must have got mixed up and lobbed some SAMs at the shuttle. The Shepistanis replied with nuclear carpet bombing of the general area the SAMs were fired from, launching something like four to five hundred megatons into an area of roughly a hundred thousand square kilometers.” The Council collectively hissed.
The Third for Research leaned over again to see what Susie was scribbling. The doodles had turned violent- a stick figure being bludgeoned with one of its own severed limbs, dinosaurs that he supposed were supposed to be kipakt marines from the Union of Four Stars tearing into a fairly good rendition of a Freedom Prime-class killbot, with missile launchers... he worried about her sometimes. But Cal was still talking.
“In any case, MiniDat has provided us with decrypts of the Shepistani transmissions picked up during the battle. Audio only... but the audio is sobering enough.” Dr. Lanning cut in the room’s sound system.
“Annapolis this is Cheney actual. Meeting light AA fire, over.”
“Copy that, Cheney, vectoring in two fighters to provide cover fire. Over.”
“Thanks mang, over.”
Lanning interrupted. “Now we switch to the fighters’ internal communications; again, we would not normally be able to decrypt this, but we got lucky.”
There was a shrill scream of delight from a female pilot, then a low-pitched shuddering hum, probably the Vipers firing bursts of gunfire.
A male pilot laughed. “Damn we’re good. There’s another triple-A battery on top of that church.”
“Fapollo, quit jerking off, I see one on top of that daycare center.” That was the female pilot. She sounded... bubbly. Not cheerful-bubbly either; foaming at the mouth bubbly.
“Let’s split off and blow both up!” The female pilot giggled maniacally. Over the radio her gunfire could be heard again, and the giggles rose to berserk laughter. A calmer voice (not that that was hard) interrupted them.
“Starfuck, Fapollo, proceed to the following coordinates to provide aerospace support to withdrawing ground elements.”
“WHAT ground elements?!”
“The Elements Yosemite, mang!”
“Oh, right.” She sounded indifferent to the actual mission... more interested in shooting up daycare centers?
“I can’t believe you forgot. That’s what you were sent down here for.”
“Cram it, Gayeta, before I rape you with my dick!” That was, unbelievably, still the madwoman. Her wingman cut in.
“Man, I feel so jealous.”
“Of who?”
“I don’t know!”
The controller broke in again. “Cut the chatter. Tight doesn’t want you filling the airwaves with obscenities and screams, damn it.” He had a point.
The female lead pilot screamed back. “Tell Tightwad to shove a cork in his bottle!”
There was silence for a minute.
“Starfuck, Fapollo, continue providing aerospace support to Element Yosemite. Be advised, danger-close nuke strike incoming.”
“WHAT?! They want us to give CAS while they nuke the goddamn place? Fucking fuck! YOU BUNCH OF FUCKERRS!”
“Goddamn it, suck it up and do your goddamn job you filthy whore!” Lanning cut the recording for a moment, narrating.
“At this point, Anglian sensors report that the Shepistanis initiated a fifty kiloton airburst over a refugee column fleeing the city of Dogadishu along one of the city’s main highways. Past that point we don’t have much in the way of visuals, but we do still have audio. Their agent on the ground said something, broadcasting in the clear- though with the EM clutter from the nuclear strikes, it was very hard to make out his voice. Even with the best signal processing Qiao's people could do on the data, there's still enough distortion that we're sure we're not getting an accurate voice-print. A pity, but there's nothing for it. In any case:
The agent’s voice was distorted into a deep inhuman growl, odd in some indefinable way, but with obvious horror and anguish. “That McNamara’s! Sniper fire coming from it! Request immediate air support! NOW!”
“What the fuck! Is this Element Yosemite? There’s no fucking sniper fire or shit from that goddamn place! Get your eyes checked! Better yet, try some crystal meth! Starfuck, over.” Most of those around the table blinked incredulously. Crystal meth? Granted the woman was a maniac, and granted the Sheppos made much heavier use of combat drugs than almost anyone else in known space, but... methamphetamines? Most countries at least tried to pick combat stims that wouldn’t cause devastating addictions and side effects.
“NO!” The agent roared, desperate with grief that was clear even over the distortion of the radio. “DESTROY THAT MCNAMARA’S!!”
Lanning cut in again. “By this point, of course, the Shepistani bombardment had already incinerated or flattened about half the city. There was a pause, and then the ground agent placed another call for fire support. The response to this one was... particularly damning, I have to say.” He waved his hand; the computer fast-forwarded the recording to a preset point.
The male pilot, the wingman, was first to speak. “Starfuck, that building looks like it’s got a SAM battery on it!”
“Which building? The Pendleton Widows and Orphans building? I see it, moving to engage!”
“Wait, what orphanage? There’s an orphanage?! Fuck you, Starfuck, that’s mine!” Faces around the table were shocked... but the Sheppo pilots' descent into mad, blood-crazed butchery had just begun. The Second for Ecology’s eyes were closed. She could guess what was coming next; she knew the pattern.
The female pilot responded to her wingman. “Up your worn out ass, Fapollo! You shot down the Shroomlympic Carrier without me! I had to settle for just shooting the ones who got out on parachutes!”
“Well, you fucked up that daycare center! It didn’t even have any triple-A’s on it!”
She was screaming again. “I saw a goddamn gun on the building you little sniveling daddy’s bitchboy son of a bitch! I saw it with my own two eyes! THE METH DON’T LIE!”
“But it’s my turn!” He was whining... begging for the chance to strafe and bomb an orphanage. “You even shot that ambulance! I wanted to shoot the ambulance! and the firetruck! And you set the whole field hospital on fire!”
Now the flight lead’s screams had turned to berserk laughter. “That’s because you can’t keep it hard enough long enough! HAHAAHAH!”
The wingman just kept screaming “WHORE!” into the radio over and over... the transmission ended. Lanning’s voice, still level and dry despite what they’d just heard, broke the shocked silence.
“At this point, there was an exchange between Commander Hushy, in charge of the Shepistani task force, and the pilots on the ground. It was... of a piece with what you’ve just heard, though Hushy at least sounded less like an escaped mental patient. The orbiting ships engaged with a salvo of solid shot, vaporizing the Pendleton Widows and Orphans building and leaving a crater at least a hundred meters deep.”
“Shortly thereafter, the Sheppoes landed a dropship and dusted off in short order, presumably having picked up their man. The Pendletonian defenses in the area were badly disrupted by the massed nuclear attack on and around Dogadishu, totaling at least 100 to 150 kilotons by this point, probably more. The defenders lit the shuttle up with fire control radars; a few man-portable AA missiles were launched by outlying sites, probably confused ones who had lost contact with central control. Going by what the Anglians pieced together in the post-battle analysis, we estimate that they had roughly a 0.2% chance of engaging the shuttle successfully, though the heavier vehicle-mounted missiles could have done better. “
“The Shepistanis, in turn, retaliated with nuclear area bombing averaging roughly four kilotons per square kilometer of the entire area within about 150 kilometers of the drop point. While major urban areas aside from Dogadishu were not specifically targeted, the combination of fallout and fires started by the blasts left roughly three million dead by our last report. This total is expected to rise to roughly five or six million within the next two months.”
Dr. Lanning looked very somber, and the burden of his role at the head of the Technocracy’s defense forces loomed behind him like a crushing weight. “It is at times like this that I fully appreciate the reason why our nation has been spending an average of three percent of annual GDP on the construction of deep planetary bomb shelters for the past six centuries.” He shook his head.
“This incident, so far as we can determine, represents an unusual breakdown of combat discipline even by Shepistani standards, but the bombardment plan was very much as per doctrine for them. In light of that, the Ministry of Security formally recommends a full round of civil defense drills some time in the next few months. We have the plans, we’ve passed out the instructions and updated them regularly, we’ve maintained the shelters... but it’s been too long since we last actually did a dry run of the evacuation plan.”
The Second Technarchs for Finance and Industry winced as one, then looked at each other. Fidanzo nodded to his opposite number across the table, Dr. James Borrego, who spoke. “Ah, that would involve effectively shutting down the national economy during the drills. Key industries follow regs well, so I don’t think the hit will be too bad, but... you’re not proposing a no-warning drill?”
“How much warning would we have in the event of a Shepistani surprise attack?”
“From when they crossed the border? ...I see what you mean.”
Dr. Lanning smiled grimly. “I didn’t mean it that way. I think we could expect at least a few weeks’ warning that an attack was imminent, if nothing else from our good friends at the Shepistani Desk alerting us to fleet concentrations on the border. On the other hand, part of the point would be to test our readiness and see who needs to be better prepared. We recommend that the drills be preceded by nothing more than routine public service announcements reminding people to stay updated on their evacuation plans. We’ll learn more that way.”
The Second for Finance looked uncertain. “Calvin, you’re talking about one hell of an expensive experiment here. The lost productivity is going to be up... well, there are a lot of factors, but I’d guess around a hundred terastarbucks.”
“I know. But look at what you just saw, what you just heard, and tell me we can afford not to keep up readiness. Besides, the Sheppoes aren’t our only problem- that would make life too easy. We can revisit the civil defense drill proposal later, but I want to discuss the Volksland annexation. I’ll defer to Maxim for the opening statement.”
Dr. Maxim Chernov, Second for Foreign Affairs, stood and walked to the head of the table. The presentation screen, which had faded to black, came alive again. “The Prussians blame Volksland for the recent round of terrorist attacks on Königstadt; they’re calling them “Black Sunday.” In retaliation, they jumped in with something like a third of their total capital ship strength in a surprise attack- one star system.” An order of battle appeared; the Volkslanders were badly outnumbered, and each of their few tiny ships was paired off against a Prussian vessel of far greater tonnage.
“The League blew through the system defenses in about ten minutes, and started bombing from orbit. Our casualty estimates for the capital city alone are in the hundreds of thousands, possibly into the millions: the city was almost entirely leveled by the bombardment:”
“This treatment was repeated at a number of other sites around the planet; the League showed a... I can only call it homicidal indifference to civilian casualties, of a sort we rarely see in the Spinward Expanse except from Shepistan. Extremely liberal use of high-energy weapons in the opening bombardment, attacks that caused collateral damage on a scale so large that MiniSec feels sure they were deliberate...” He sighed.
“That was only the beginning. Volksland-B rebelled in favor of the League without being attacked; the Prussians moved in very quickly to “restore order” on both planets. The League military set up a provisional government to oversee distribution of aid supplies.”
“Shortly after we received word of the invasion, I composed a note to Neu Preussen, checked it with Mike, and sent it off. No one’s going to miss Volksland’s old government very much, even given the massively destructive way the Prussians removed it from power. But the system lies within a few light-years of the edge of the Grand Coreward Trunk. In Volkslander hands its position was irrelevant; in the League’s hands it would be ideally placed to interdict commerce along the Trunk. So we needed to know- was this a punitive expedition, a regime change operation, or a war of annexation? Do they plan to put naval bases there, to patrol the surrounding space? I thought we’d need to know. Basically just asking for clarification, you see.” Dr. Chernov smiled sadly.
“The reply came back very quickly, suggesting minimal turnaround time for consideration on New Preussen. The Government assured us that this was a purely isolated incident, that they had no general aggressive aims, and that Volksland was not to be annexed. Five days later, we got word that the Reichstag had voted to annex Volksland.”
“So I sent off a second note, asking again for clarification. Gottlieb’s reply was... well, deliberately ingratiating, I think.” The screen flashed the first portion of the text of the note:
”This would reassure me more if I were more confident of the Reichstag’s grip on the strategic realities. As it stands, we have no idea what gambles they might be driven to take next,, and we can hardly assume that Herr Gottlieb speaks for the Reichstag in light of recent events. Indeed, our analysts are unsure who, if anyone, does.”You must understand, Chernov, that the Prussian Star League promises, deeply, hand-on-heart, to respect the neutrality of the Grand Trunk. As you can see, the Reichstag is not likely to annex or colonise any more territories in the Grand Trunk Region. This policy will remain stable, as a simple matter of necessity, as if we do not, it is likely that we will come under attack...
Again, I must inform you - the League swears solemnly never again to intervene in Sector T-10, and most definitely not in the Grand Coreward Trunk. I assure you that this is a stable solution to the incident, and that we will never annex a territory in the vicinity of the Grand Coreward Trunk again, and that we will uphold its neutrality.
“This is a bit worrying if we are to carry on further communications. We can deal with a democratic government, but it’s hard to be sure how to deal with them if we can’t find anyone with the power to make binding agreements.” He smiled broadly. “Nancy here-” he gestured in the direction of his immediate subordinate, the Third for Foreign Affairs, “came up with the idea of beaming our next note in a broadcast to the entire star system, headed ‘to whom it may concern.’” There was a chuckle around the table.
“Of course that would be impractical, but it’s certainly tempting. We’re still not sure who in their government is competent to give us assurances we can take at face value; if their foreign secretary isn’t, it’s quite possible that no one is. Which places us in the difficult position of having to reconsider any other assurances they may give us on that basis- one of my staffers put it rather memorably, promises from Foreign Secretary Gottlieb are now shown to be written in the wind.”
“Combine that with the remaining text of his note, the middle paragraph, and our projections of Prussians’ intentions are cast in a very different light...” Another block of text appeared on the screen.
The Second for Ecology’s eyes snapped open. She laid down her pen, which had been tracing small circles on the paper before her. “The Volksland annexation is unsettling. Almost like they had this planned way in advance...”It is simply that the people of Volksland are facing a humanitarian crisis, and we simply cannot help them that much if we do not annex them. There are also the matters of de-fascistification of Volksland, which is looking to be hard if we do not engender a sense of 'Prussianism' in the population, which will be rather hard without annexing them. And then there are the potential security ramifcations - suppose fascists take power in Volksland again? This is a risk we can not afford, so for the moment, Volksland will become Prussian.
Dr. Lanning looked a question at her. “You mean, as in they had an invasion plan? That’s fairly normal.” He gave her some breathing room, then. Once in a while the Second for Ecology would come up with something truly useful- not an oracle, but at least a more reliable guide to the truth than chance would indicate.
“No. I mean like they had a plan for the occupation. In detail. Does anyone know if they’ve already started new construction, renaming landmarks, things like that? Are they already trying to... assimilate the system?”
Dr. Qiao Tian, Second for Data Collection, cleared her throat. “Actually... we just got word from an agent today that they’ve settled on a new name for the whole system. They’re calling it “Neu Lothringen.”
A chill passed round the table. Again, no one would miss the old Volksland government and its ideology of Führerprinzip, but the sheer speed with which the Prussians were moving to “Prussianize” their new conquest was astounding. Even granting that the Volkslanders had been a Prussian offshoot to begin with, some splinter party in the distant past drawn from the same basic cultural template of old Earth’s Germany, this was a very rapid campaign of annexation. And so the Technarchs found themselves asking: who else do they have this kind of lightning war planned for? Who else are they ready to overrun at a moment’s notice? What happens if they try to direct the same crushing surprise attack that took down Volksland at our own border?
Dr. Lanning broke the silence. “Ladies and gentlemen, I think it’s fair to say that those are the three greatest strategic problems we face at this time. The sudden revelation of the Collector threat, to spinward, the Shepistani threat, and to rimward, the massive question mark of the Star League’s intentions for the future. Particularly the last two of those issues.”
“Dr. O’Connell, I propose that we break for lunch and resume our discussion of this afterwards.”
The Umerian head of state ran a hand through thick, short-cropped silvery hair and nodded. “Yes. After lunch.”
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
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MKSheppard
- Ruthless Genocidal Warmonger
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Battlestar Groups 75 and 62; Shepistani Space
After interminable delays; BSG-75 was on the move; backed up by BSG-62. Their mission: Establishment of the Shepistani Sector on Pendleton. To do this; they were the first re-organized battlestar groups following the lead brick that the Collectors had thrown into the galactic scene.
Instead of only a single battlestar and her four gunstar escorts as was the previous fleet table of organization; a battlestar group sported no less than five heavy battlestars backed up by thirty gunstars.
Together, BSG-75 and 62 boasted between 8 and 9 thousaaand points of tonnage, and they were led by the most ruthless Admiral in the Shepistani Navy -- Admiral Ro; known throughout the fleet as "The Iron Bitch".
Bridge of BS-62 Calvert Cliffs
"Admiral Ro, your mission is to enter the Pendletonian system; and establish a Shepistani Zone of Occupation."
"And what will I do if the goddamn fairy tale Anglicans try to interfere?" asked Ro, upset at being demoted to this mission, when she could have been sent on the Amplitur raiding fleet instead.
"It is up to the Admiral's discretion over how to handle Anglican interference."
After interminable delays; BSG-75 was on the move; backed up by BSG-62. Their mission: Establishment of the Shepistani Sector on Pendleton. To do this; they were the first re-organized battlestar groups following the lead brick that the Collectors had thrown into the galactic scene.
Instead of only a single battlestar and her four gunstar escorts as was the previous fleet table of organization; a battlestar group sported no less than five heavy battlestars backed up by thirty gunstars.
Together, BSG-75 and 62 boasted between 8 and 9 thousaaand points of tonnage, and they were led by the most ruthless Admiral in the Shepistani Navy -- Admiral Ro; known throughout the fleet as "The Iron Bitch".
Bridge of BS-62 Calvert Cliffs
"Admiral Ro, your mission is to enter the Pendletonian system; and establish a Shepistani Zone of Occupation."
"And what will I do if the goddamn fairy tale Anglicans try to interfere?" asked Ro, upset at being demoted to this mission, when she could have been sent on the Amplitur raiding fleet instead.
"It is up to the Admiral's discretion over how to handle Anglican interference."
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Debrief of WO2 Dongfeng
Given the state of Tian Guo privacy laws, it was fairly close to unknown for someone's memories to be extracted. Fortunately, this was both state business, and been approved by the subject. Without the latter, it'd be practically impossible to do it, both legally, and technically. It wasn't often that someone had access to a foreign warship, and being able to squeeze every last drop out of the experience was helpful. Photographic memories helped, and the cyber brain implants effectively allowed such for all members of Tianguo society.
WO2 Dongfeng simply laid back in a chair, and recalled his time on the ship, especially the battle with the Collector Monolith. As he did so, his cyberbrain decrypted the memory stream and memory stream and a subdermal comm port beamed the information through his skin to the receptor in the chair. It was, in fact, an utterly painless process. Most of the equipment hadn't been designed for it, but rather for the much more involved task of uploading and downloading into and out of a meatware body.
Given the state of Tian Guo privacy laws, it was fairly close to unknown for someone's memories to be extracted. Fortunately, this was both state business, and been approved by the subject. Without the latter, it'd be practically impossible to do it, both legally, and technically. It wasn't often that someone had access to a foreign warship, and being able to squeeze every last drop out of the experience was helpful. Photographic memories helped, and the cyber brain implants effectively allowed such for all members of Tianguo society.
WO2 Dongfeng simply laid back in a chair, and recalled his time on the ship, especially the battle with the Collector Monolith. As he did so, his cyberbrain decrypted the memory stream and memory stream and a subdermal comm port beamed the information through his skin to the receptor in the chair. It was, in fact, an utterly painless process. Most of the equipment hadn't been designed for it, but rather for the much more involved task of uploading and downloading into and out of a meatware body.
"preemptive killing of cops might not be such a bad idea from a personal saftey[sic] standpoint..." --Keevan Colton
"There's a word for bias you can't see: Yours." -- William Saletan
"There's a word for bias you can't see: Yours." -- William Saletan
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Simon_Jester
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Central Administration Complex, Prime City, Reisenburg, Sector W-7Dr. Lanning broke the silence. “Ladies and gentlemen, I think it’s fair to say that those are the three greatest strategic problems we face at this time. The sudden revelation of the Collector threat, to spinward, the Shepistani threat, and to rimward, the massive question mark of the Star League’s intentions for the future. Particularly the last two of those issues.”
“Dr. O’Connell, I propose that we break for lunch and resume our discussion of this afterwards.”
The Umerian head of state ran a hand through thick, short-cropped silvery hair and nodded. “Yes. After lunch.”
February 3, 3400
After Lunch
The Council of Technarchs had mostly settled back around the table. Some of the Third Technarchs had been deputized to handle other internal questions involving their ministries, but the core membership was there: all the Seconds and the Thirds responsible for external policy. Dr. O'Connell spoke the formalities to resume the meeting, then opened discussion.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I think we all appreciate the magnitude of the threats the Technocracy faces in this upcoming century. If I may be poetic for a moment, it would seem that Fate has decreed that we are to live in interesting times, perhaps some of the most eventful in our history. I think we should walk away from here with at least a broad consensus as to what is to be done. In the short term we need to respond to the developments of the past month; in the longer term we may have to consider a... realignment of strategic priorities."
Dr. Fidanzo broke the solemnity. "In other words, allies?"
The First Technarch's mouth quirked into a lopsided smile. "Right."
Dr. Chernov raised his hand off the table a fraction; O'Connell waved his hand and chuckled. "Don't worry, Max, I'm done." The Second for Foreign Affairs grinned broadly.
"Actually, the situation with respect to potential allies is not at all bad. We have our standing agreements with the NenAltKik. As long as we don't make any major mistakes, we are secure on that front; our predecessors made a very solid and mutually beneficial arrangement there. The Union's aid would be extremely helpful in the event of war with Shepistan; somewhat less so against the Prussians, but still enough that we could be fairly confident in facing either power individually and coming out ahead."
Everyone at the table had the same thought; you didn't reach high rank in the Technocracy without the ability to force yourself to look past the rosy superficials. O'Connell said it. "What if they both attack at once? They both favor preemptive attacks starting off with heavy bombardment; we could lose a lot before support from the Union arrived."
Chernov frowned and nodded slightly. "True. I have suggestions about how to deal with that. Cal, do you have anything to say about the current situation?"
The Second for Security was quick to respond. "One thing to remember is that neither nation can drop their full fleet on us at once. The Sheppoes, in particular, have large forces dispersed in the shoals in sectors Y2 and Y3, patrolling for Amplitur remnants; they could pull those forces out to hit us, but that would give us a lot more advance warning of an attack. And whether they do that or not, they still have to keep forces positioned to cover their flank against the NenAltKik. They can't exactly afford to have rampaging tyrannosauruses with rocket launchers hitting their rimward border worlds." He grinned. "So, again, the Shepistanis can't hit us with their full fleet without leaving themselves vulnerable to allied retaliation. They can try to preempt both us and the Union at the same time, but that means an offensive along two different axes, and they'll have a hard time switching forces quickly between the two fronts."
"Of course meanwhile the Prussians might be trying to blitz us on the rimward frontier, and there we have more of a problem. The NenAltKik can't open a second front against the Star League without flying through neutral space. On the other hand, the League has historically poor relations with the French Empire; they have to keep some border forces there. And they'll need to keep additional forces on station to maintain control of the Grand Coreward Trunk; they can't afford to let us run ships along their flank willy-nilly, and that means committing capital units to setting up blocking positions along the Trunk. So, like the Sheppoes, the Prussians can't hit us with the full strength of their fleet without leaving themselves naked to counterattacks: French proxies or our own raiding forces hitting them along their antispinward flank."
"The real danger is- and I underline that this is hypothetical- both nations might decide to commit a majority of their heavy fleet formations to putting us in a nutcracker, while accepting the risk of taking hits from the counteroffensives that would draw. In that case we'd be in trouble..." He paused.
O'Connell, realizing that there was a risk of the meeting getting bogged down in details, cut in. "Sounds like a solid analysis, Cal. What are your recommendations in a nutshell?"
"Hmm? Well, short form, we need tighter fleet concentrations at secure central nodes. That also ties into the Ministry's proposals for anti-Monolith defense, but it helps us against more conventional enemies as well. If we keep fleet security up and pick the locations properly, we can avoid the risk of a blitz attack by heavy units destroying too much of the fleet at once, because we'll be able to keep some of our own heavies at high alert at all times." "We're proposing four concentrations, two major and two minor, with the major ones being positioned to handle threats on the frontiers with Shepistan and Prussia. Either of the major concentrations should be able to cross swords with a Monolith with reasonable confidence, given time to rally forces from the system control groups in the immediate area."
"And the minors?"
"We'll base one minor fleet out of Hemings' Star, to keep some power projection over the neutral space to spinward and secure our communications with the Union in the event of war. The other will go to New Tyre- well positioned to keep an eye on the space between us and Tianguo to antispinward of the Badlands, and also well positioned to enter the Trunk and hit the Prussians from the flank in the event.”
“Good. Good. Sounds like a solid arrangement to me.” The First Technarch looked around the table. “Any suggestions?”
The Second for Finance looked up. “What about commerce protection and piracy suppression?”
Calvin frowned. “I think that’s going to have to devolve on the system control groups, except in the immediate vicinity of the fleet bases.”
“Not good. That means less attention for far-field sweeps.”
“Rafe, the local forces are underutilized and you know it. Every ops plan in the past half-century has relied on the control groups as a well of reserve light units for this kind of situation. There are more than enough of them to take up the slack.”
“Underutilized means undertrained, Cal.”
“How trained do they need to be to run sensor sweeps for smugglers? They do sims, and they do get tasked with these missions now and again. I’ll send you the reports if you like, but I’m telling you, we have more than enough reserve capacity to deal with this kind of situation.”
“Still, for the deep base disruption mission, we need...”
“True, we need something heavier than the Conductors. We’ll keep the intervention task forces on standby; them we can spare from a major fleet engagement if need be. They should do for cracking any pirate base we’re likely to see, if the need arises.”
Mollified, Dr. Fidanzo relaxed, smiled, and sat back. “I guess it’ll have to do, Cal.”
Dr. O’Connell looked over at the Second for Research and winked. Dr. Takuulda made a soft, unobtrusive hooting sound that served the Phosako as a means of politely asking for attention. With the latest installment in the ongoing wrestling match between Finance and Security over, she got it. “Dr. Chernov, you mentioned having proposals for dealing with the prospect of a Prussian-Shepistani combination. Given your portfolio, I infer that these proposals do not involve the positioning of battlecruiser divisions.” The smile was not a natural Phosako facial expression, but Takuulda had trained herself to it for effect, and the effect was not wasted.
The Second for Foreign Affairs nodded. “Yes, Emloy. In short, I think it is time to suggest an expansion of our local defense pact with the NenAltKik into a multilateral one. The obvious candidates would be Tianguo or the French Empire. There are arguments for and against either.”
“Tianguo shares our interests on the question of the Grand Coreward Trunk, and might well make a more powerful ally in absolute terms. But our relationship with them has occasionally been a bit on the stormy side, so the approach might be difficult, and they are in an inferior strategic position.”
“The French, on the other hand, are in an excellent position to divert Prussian forces into a second front. And they have a longstanding hereditary rivalry with the Prussians. But they also have a tradition of isolation... though that may change with a new emperor in the Palais de Tuileries. Moreover, there is at least some risk that bringing the Empire into a collective-defense pact would encourage the Ascendancy to align against the pact, which would leave us right back where we started- three against three instead of two against two, but with each of our members facing attack from two directions at once.”
Dr. O’Connell broke in. “Even so I think there’s something to be said for that. I was going to be attending the state funeral for Jean-Baptiste in any event; I’ll put out some feelers while I’m there. Max, care to name anyone you’d like to send along?”
“I’ll have portfolios for some of our more effective Paris-watchers for you tomorrow. Take your pick. What about Tianguo?”
“I’d say we need more time to mull it over. Get together with MiniDat and MiniSims; try to come up with some estimates on their reactions. It might be best to wait on the French answer before deciding how or if to approach them.”
“That would be prudent, yes. Now, there are a few other diplomatic questions at work. One is relatively simple, but I think it deserves a bit of commentary. The other... more complicated; I’d like to save it for last. Susie, if you would care to explain?
“It was my idea. Dogs are... very significant in Shepistani culture; it’s kind of profound, really. And just after I was selected back in ‘96, well, I had a conversation with one of my former students, about the tailored-organism work we did in the late eighties. She’d been doing studies of various canid genomes. And I thought back to a conversation I’d had with Max a few days before. So I sat down and put a few hours into rough simulation work, and it looked promising, especially with some of the improved genetic modeling code I’d seen for mammals.
We could rebuild the canid genome. We have the technology. Longer-lived, more trainable, cuter. So we started working on it. Upbringing conditions turn out to be critical; we had to work very hard on providing a happy environment in the first weeks of growth. But we managed it.
So, three-way collaboration. We did a lot of the habitat design; MiniRes did the genetics development. Max’s people worked out the promotion campaign. The name that stuck was, well...” She looked a bit embarrassed. “From one of the early memoes. Policy of Umeria Pertaining to Potential Enhancement of Relations with Shepistan. PUPPERS. Informally, everyone calls it “Project Puppy.” Anyway, we’re pretty much ready for Stage Three: initial release of the new breed for sale in Shepistan. We’ve checked everything against Shepistani regulations on veterinary issues and so forth and we can’t find a reason for the modified strain not to sell.”
(Like this, only cuter)
First Technarch Michael O’Connell reviewed the imagery and stroked his chin. “Hmm. It’s cost-effective, it’s a solid gesture of international cooperation... I like it. Commence Stage Three of Project Puppy.”
...
[end of segment, more to follow soon]
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Removed due to timing issues with Shep's plans.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Central Alliance, outer fringe
Research station Flowerpot, uncharted world XX-72
Amongst the howling winds, on the wide, open, frozen plains of XX-72, hidden in a valley between two towering mountain chains, stood the building of research station Flowerpot.
The Gods themselves only knew why this place was transplanted into the new, strange and dangerous universe along with the the other planets from the Central Alliance ; The people manning this station were not told what happened for weeks, only receiving word from the capital after they noticed the changed star patterns on their own. Since then, they seemed to have been forgotten again, going through the motions, mapping out the planet, collecting and preserving samples and wondering if they'd ever go home.
Flowerpot consisted of four buildings: a small hangar for the expedition's vehicles, the two-level control building and labs, a habitation module and a unified module containing the nuclear power plant and warehouse. By the seventh day of one's presence in this place, a researcher could have the entire layout memorized and become able to navigate all buildings in the dark.
It was no small surprise, then, that a certain lazy demeanor inevitably crept into the inhabitants of the base. They settled in their routines very quickly, almost always remembering their stay here as sort of a haze, a period of their lives mostly forgotten.
That day promised to be no different. As Dr. Toff Kagon entered the cramped control room to start his shift as comms supervisor, he did his usual everyday thing: greeted the base's expert system, turned on all the equipment and ran checks on the constellation of radar and comms satellites circling the planet.
He frowned, seeing the computer report a lack of signal from the constellation. He banged the machine a few times - it sometimes helped - and then started to check all the cables.
He soon heard someone else walk into the control centre, and looked up from the mess of cables and jury-rigged power systems, seeing Karta Beouf, his research assistant, stroll inside, "Hey Toff", she said, putting down a cup of hot stimulant on one of the consoles, "Equipment trouble again?"
"Yeah...the satellite feed is down. I won't be able to get you any meteo data for today's runs, and..."
He was interrupted by the equipment suddendly going completely dead.
"Did you unplug something?", Karta asked. She didn't notice her stimulant cup moving slightly towards the edge of the console.
"No...one moment it was on, and then...", before Dr. Kagon could finish his sentence, they both began to feel the floor start to vibrate. Karta caught her cup before it slid to the floor.
"We better wake the others.", she said and ran towards the door.
Toff got up from the floor, and just then noticed a huge shadow slowly enveloping the station.
"I think they are already awake.", he muttered to himself, looking out the window at a huge, black shape starting to blot out the planet's sun.
Result: Collectors arrive in Central Alliance space. Contact is lost with a minor research station on the fringe.
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
- NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
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Shroom Man 777
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
MOTHER'S WORLD, JENOVA
(Sector Y-22)
At the center of the Jenova system was a blue sun that burned unlike any other. The Eye of Jenova, the settlers called it. And around that blue sun, that blazing Eye of fire, revolved a desolate rock. Jenova itself, the Mother's World. The settlers who came to dwell upon Jenova were Shinrans, but not just any Shinrans. They were albinos, androgynous albinos, with long hairs and wiry builds. Discriminated and castigated centuries ago by superstitious Midgarians, believing that with the androgynous albinism came the curse of the geostigma, these androgynous albinos were forced to flee Midgar Space, cast out by their fellow men who chased them on enormous motorbikes whilst wielding ridiculously huge swords, forcing them into the deepest darkness of the void. It was there, so far away from home, that they found a new world as foretold to them by the prophets of the One-Winged Angel. They called it Jenova, Mother's World, after the unresolved Oedipal issues buried deep within all their androgynous albino subconsciousnesses.
Their new home was unlike most worlds, however, for as it revolved around the sun, its own planetary rotation was locked in a way that one side of the planet permanently faced the merciless heat of Jenova's Eye, to boil under the unending daylight, while the other side of the world would never ever see the light of day and would be covered in eternal night instead. One face of the world would burn at unforgiving temperatures, while the other face froze in frostbitten frigidity.
Betwixt these two inhospitable extremes was an area habitable to the sickly and frail albino androgyne settlers. Right in the middle of the hotzone and the coldplace was an equator stuck between day and night. The Twilight Meridian, where the climes were mild and moderate in contrast to the harshness of Mother Jenova's world-bosoms. On this belt that ran between the planet's hemispheres did the forsaken pale Shinrans find their home. Finally did the Age of Obscurity end, and so did the Age of Tranquility begin for the denizens of the Mother World.
The Age of Tranquility did not last. For so it was that by freak occurrence of planetary alignment did the burned visage of Jenova dare to face mighty Bragule, while at the same instance mooning its frostbitten behind at Holy Terra itself. At this affront, a crusade was launched by the Byzantine Imperium of Man in long-forgotten centuries past. Great warships landed themselves on the frigid wastes of Jenova's icy hemisphere to subjugate the heathens and heretics of Jenova, to teach them the error of their ways and lead them to the true parent of mankind, the great Father, the God-Emperor of Man. Yet the Bragulan Star Empire could not let this stand, hearing the pleas and seeing the plight of the androgynous albinos, so likewise did they dispatch their legions of liberation to free the albinoids from the oppression of Byzantium - freeing them in the only way the Bragulans could, through nuclear domination.
So it was that as the innumerable legions of the Emperor marched through the Twilight Meridian, converting those who repented whilst killing all who denied Heraclius' godhead, did the Bragulans rain down asteroids and comets to the dayside of the Mother World, in an attempt to induce global cooling and nuclear winter to make the harsh climes more suitable to their sensibilities. The Bragulans landed in the boiling surface of Jenova that faced the Sun Eye, and so were they angered for the heat made them sweat profusely.
With the Byzantines on one side of the planet and the Bragulans on the other, the peace-loving albinos had no recourse but to bear arms, taking to their enormous motorcycles and wielding ridiculously huge swords as their Shinran forebears did so in ages past. Yet their throes were quashed by the sanctified Orthodox bootheels of the Imperium even as the Bragulans sought to embrace the albinos as liberators with nuclear arms.
The once-peaceful Twilight Meridian became a No Man's Land, between the very snowy Byzantine side of the world and the very sunny Bragulan side. A vast Re-Militarized Zone drawn around the world like some enormously eldritch equator. The Jenovans were caught between the warring Byzantines and Bragulans, and their natural habitat became a world-spanning battlefield between the two galactic powers.
The Byzantines and Bragulans wouldn't have had it any other way.
As their campaigns came grinding into a painfully slow war of attrition with neither side budging or giving way, and as the months became years and the years became decades, gradually the intensity of the conflict diminished, both sides bogged down in a forgotten war in the ass-end of the galaxy. It was so, then, did the Byzantines and Bragulans seek to dominate each other in different and increasingly more creative ways.
The anguish of the Jenovans began.
It started when the Lord-General of the Byzantiums, deciding that the Imperium would be staying for the planet for good, ordered the construction of a great Aquila of the Emperor on a mountain overlooking their side of the battlefield. For no man could be spared in construction, as each was busy with combat duties, it was decided that the native Jenovans would be the ones to build this massive monument as a sign of eternal gratitude towards the great God-Emperor Heraclius. So commenced the construction of the Emperor's Aquila.
Incensed by this defiance, the Bragulans press-ganged the Jenovans they had liberated and through their backbreaking labor, in record time they unveiled a monument to Imperator Darvyl S. Byzon twice as large as the Byzantine's Aquila - laughing at the Imperial Aquila as they did so, calling it an overgrown Arcturian Mega-Turkey right in front of the Byzantines' faces. Such was the performance and dedication of the native Jenovan workforce that the Bragulan commanders decided that they would be permanently assigned to build even more statues. Forever.
Challenging each other, the Byzantines and Bragulans filled their respective sides with enormous edifices and magnificent monstrous monuments to God-Emperor Heraclius, to Imperator Byzon, to the Imperial Aquila, and so on and so forth. Whenever one side's Jenovan workforces were worked to death and could not construct more statues due to exhaustion, then that side would destroy the other's great statues in fits of jealousy. Eventually the most sacred statues of the God-Emperor, and the most patriotic monuments to the Imperator, would be outfitted with weapons to protect against nuclear vandalism.
It was so that an uneasy peace settled between the Byzantines and Bragulans, at the expense of the Jenovans. Each side would try to advance and attack, while the other side would counter-attack or flank, but neither could gain an advantage over the other. The fighting was done at a snail's pace, and territorial gains and losses could be measured in meter sticks. The Twilight Meridian that was once the home of the Jenovans was once more peaceful, with life returning to normalcy whenever the Byzantines and Bragulans deigned not to advance through their towns and cities. It was how wildlife flourished in a certain DMZ back on Old Earth, or on Galia.
Some days, Bragulan and Byzantine patrols into the Jenovan Re-Militarized Zone would encounter each other... inside Jenovan drinking establishments. The locals had somehow adapted to the nigh-constant state of variable-intensity war on their planet and whenever the war went hot, they would scurry like rodents to their bomb shelters or otherwise put bags over their heads and waited to die. When the war went cold, however, they would serve drinks. To both sides.
Most days it was pretty cold. But today wasn't like most days.
Private Gragchnkov was taking a sip of Tsvagna. The Jenovan bar was called the SephiBroth and he had to admit, they made decent Tsvagna. It was what SephiBroth specialized in, and Gragchnkov was quite lucky to have found a bar on Jenova that catered to Bragulan tastes. For that reason Bragulans favored the place, while the damned Byzantines kept well away from it.
Which was why Gragchnkov nearly fell off his seat when he saw an Imperial Guard fire team enter the place. Gragchnkov grabbed his K-bolter, but froze like a deer caught in the light of a nuclear blast, when he saw the Guardsmen level their lasguns at him. The bar's other patrons, all Bragulans like Gragchnkov though more inebriated than him, staggered to their feet and likewise pointed their K-bolters and Space RPGs at the Byzantines.
"Looks like we're in a Mexicant stand-off," the IG trooper said slowly, referring to the Hispanic-brand of Solarian Replicants made by the Tyrell Corporation. The Guardsmen were in a circular formation, with all their guns pointed outwards to everyone else in the bar.
"What is this, the KO Korral?!" Gragchnkov shot back, not literally. A couple of Guardsmen pointed their hellguns at his snout, just in case if he did. Their laser dot-sights flashed on his face. "Get those stinking flashlights off my face!"
"We're just here for a drink, bear." A Kasrkin uttered, lowering his hellgun from Gragchnkov's snout down to his throat. "Not for any bearskin pelts. We're saving those for those later."
"There are other places for you to go," Gragchnkov growled. "Other places that serve watered down piss. Don't you humans like to drink your own urine?"
The Bragulan patrons laughed at this. The Guardsmen pointed their guns at those who laughed at them, and the Bragulans pointed their own K-bolters at the Guardsmen who pointed their guns at them. After a while, nobody was laughing anymore.
"Is that a challenge?" the Kasrkin's eyes narrowed as he neared Gragchnkov and looked at him, face to face.
"Your puny human guts can't handle the Tsvagna," Gragchnkov taunted. "It'll make whatever fur you've got left fall off!"
"Well, let's just see about that, won't we?" the Kasrkin grinned viciously. "Waitress?"
"What'll it be, glory-boys?" a scantily-clad pale girl with silver hair walked over to the Byzantines.
"Tsvagna." The Kasrkin said. "With extra battery acid and rocket fuel."
"You sure?" the waitress asked, a moe of doubt on her face.
"Just get me a damn bottle," the Kasrkin said as he grabbed a seat in front of Gragchnkov. "Damn whore."
"How about you, Grag?" the waitress asked.
"Just a refill, please." Gragchnkov replied, motioning his empty glass.
"Alright, you Byzantine boys and Brag boys just sit tight, kay?" the waitress said as she walked over to the bar counter and fetched their drinks.
"So, what's your rank, Brag boy?" the Kasrkin asked cockily, leaning forward and cybernetically eying his new Bragulan drinking partner closely.
"Private, Last Class." Gragchnkov answered. The waitress came over and refilled his drink and gave the Kasrkin a fresh bottle of Tsvagna. "Thanks."
"Don't they tell you to respect your superiors, private?" the Kasrkin asked, grinning as he did so. He filled his glass with Tsvagna and downed it. His face contorted into a rictus of disgust as he swallowed the brew, before resolving itself back to its previous grin. "Damn good stuff."
"Never learned to respect my superiors, much less a human one." Gragchnkov downed his own glass of Tsvagna. He pointed at his arm, which was branded with a nasty looking burn-scar that looked like a skull. "Penal division."
"What, assaulted an officer or something?" the Kasrkin's eye telescoped out of his eyesocket, zooming into the scar.
"An officer's wife," Gragchnkov shrugged. "Sexually."
The Kasrkin laughed boisterously at this. The other Guardsmen too joined in the laughter. They were now seated around their own table, and were being eyed suspiciously by the other Bragulans in the bar. The Guardsmen paid them no attention and drank their own Tsvagnas.
"You're pretty chatty for a Byzantinian." Gragchnkov said, looking straight at the Kasrkin's cybernetic eye.
"You're pretty friendly for a Bragulan xenos," came the reply.
"Maybe we're soul mates." Gragchnkov muttered. The Kasrkin laughed again.
"Yeah, maybe we're meant to be." Gragchnkov chuckled at the Kasrkin's joke.
"Or maybe you could stop fucking around." Gragchnkov suggested. "This is getting ridiculous.
"Yes, it is!" the Kasrkin's laughter turned into chuckles and then into snickers, and then they stopped. A few were still laughing though, since they didn't get the hint. The Kasrkin just looked at the Bragulan who was sitting over at the other side of the table, off-screen. "Isn't it?"
The Kasrkin regarded Gragchnkov curiously. A bald albino bartender lit a cigarette and looked at them both. The Kasrkin shrugged.
"Well?"
"It is." Gragchnkov agreed. He finished his drink, swallowing the last of his Tsvagna. He thought of asking the waitress for another glass, she was pretty cute for a human, but he decided better of it. "So, what now?"
"Well. I was thinking of taking my plasma pistol and shooting you in the face with it."
Three things happened.
The Kasrkin acted on his thought before Gragchnkov could act on his own. With cybernetic reflex, the Kasrkin drew his plasma pistol and pointed it at Gragchnkov's face. He squeezed the trigger and there was a flash of bright light, followed by a clap of thunder and a blast of vaporizing flesh, blood and bone. Red mist stained the Kasrkin's face, scalding his cheek. Then -
The other Bragulans, already mildly inebriated, reacted a microsecond too late. The Imperial Guardsmen opened fire with their lasguns and plasma rifles, viciously carving cauterized craters into the chest of the nearest bears. While the nearest Brags died, their comrades struggled to respond. The ones nearest to their lasgunned and plasma blasted friends tried to shoot back at the humans, spraying blindly with their K-bolters. Acid bullets burned through the air while someone threw a potato-masher grenade, which cluttered to the floor unnoticed. Angry red lasers burned holes through furry heads and boiled bear brains. Carapace armor was stained with K-residue, sizzling as the acid ate through it and found the succulent human flesh underneath. There were screams of anguish and roars of pain. A plasma bolt stuck the pale waitress right in the gut, she exploded before she could scream and her vaporized albino remains stained the wall, painting her splattered silhouette on its canvas of carnage. A hatchet made out of Bragulan steel buried itself in between a Guardsman's eyes, making the rest of the Guardsman's head jerk backwards violently (while his neck made a sick snapping sound).
Then the SephiBroth exploded. Not really. But yeah.
There was an underwhelming explosion inside the watering hole, a flash of light and a deep rumbling as a thermobaric grenade detonated right inside the building. Then, a few seconds later, the SephiBroth kind of collapsed on itself, caving in as some vital support column or something broke inside of it and made it all structurally unsound. It looked like a controlled demolition, except for the part with there being people killing other people inside of it now getting killed themselves by the building just collapsing right on top of them all of a sudden. There was a mighty crashing sound and a whole lot of dust getting kicked up into the air.
Gragchnkov groaned gravelly, dust choking his throat. He tried to wipe the grime off his face, but discovered that his whole arm was gone. Everything below the Penal Division brand on his shoulder had mysteriously disappeared. Gragchnkov tried to recall how he had lost it, and in a while he remembered. When the damn Kasrkin tried to shoot him in the face with the plasma gun, he had grabbed the gun with his hand and pointed it somewhere else that wasn't his own head. The Kasrkin fired, the plasma missed Gragchnkov's head but unfortunately the bolt still vaporized his whole arm since he was still holding the gun by the barrel. Red mist stained the Kasrkin's face, scalding his cheek. Then Gragchnkov took his glass and drove it into the Kasrkin's eye socket. The glass shattered, and the broken shards went into the Kasrkin's brain. Together with his cybernetic eye. Then everything exploded, the roof fell on Gragchnkov's head, and then he woke up and groaned gravelly, dust choking his throat. He tried to wipe the grime off his face, but discovered that his whole was gone. But now that mystery was solved.
"Imperator's beard!" he cursed. He threw the rubble off himself and tried to look for a tourniquet for his stump-arm, but noticed that the whole stump was cauterized, so there was no bleeding, just smoking. No need for a tourniquet then. Must be my lucky day, Gragchnkov thought. Then he looked up and gasped. "Oh..."
"...shits."
The Byzantime Imperium's venerable Warlord-class Titan Beneviolent Wrath stomped on the surface of Jenova, each footfall crushing everything under kilotons of weight. The massive mechanical monstrosity bellowed a roar of challenge to the Bragulan lines ahead of it, and then it strode on, earthquakes with each and every step. Mighty volcano cannons on its shoulders erupted, sending devastating beams of energy towards the bear trenches and making them erupt just like volcanoes. The very ground melted, mixing with boiling Bragcrete bunkers and liquefying steel, turning into red hot lava from the sheer heat.
Along with the Titan came a column of Imperium steel. Exarch main battle tanks, with railguns and bolt-on bolter sponsors and lasguns with laser sights (twin-linked, get it). They tore through the lines, smashing through the cityscape while unleashing a rain of steel towards the xeno forces.
The Bragulans answered not with a rain of steel, but a proverbial fucking typhoon. Exploding from garage-trenches were the dreaded Dredka overtanks. Hordes of them, hundreds. Massive and ridiculously armed and armored, bearing dual big bore battle cannons and with turrets bristling with more weapons than anyone can shake an IBGV-issue beating-stick at. On their hulls and turrets were multiple K-bolter machinegun nests, anti-aircraft cannons, nuclear flamethrowers, rocket artillery tubes and missile launchers. On their hulls were everything from the tailguns of bombers ripped off and wielded on to the tank chassis, to atomic deathray cannons, to antipersonnel chain-plows. They began shooting explosions at the Byzantinians.
The two opposing lines of steel clashed head-on, like an unmovable force meeting an unstoppable object, or the other way around. Bragulans and Byzantines, like black and blue, a match made in Heaven for Hell. Tracers stitched the air, radioactive flares sailed down the sky, Geiger counters clicked incessantly in anticipation for the sudden impact. Both sides threw salvos at each other, tactical atomics to thin each other's ranks. Then when they closed in, it was all a violent exchange shells and rockets, missiles and bullets, lasers and bolts with and without Ks, plasma and lances, fire and death. The Exarchs disappeared one by one, vanishing in suspiciously mushroom-shaped pufts. The remaining Dredkas advanced, bragcrete outer layers cracked and crumbling, steel chassis glowing. They were too many. They surrounded the Titan Beneviolent Wrath and emptied everything they had on it.
The tactical nukes illuminated the warmachine's void shields. Flickers and sparks. Puny and insignificant. The Warlord made a grumbling sound, almost like a contemptuous chuckle. Then it roared. A massive foot crushed no less then five Dredkas in a single stomp, flattening them under kilotons of mass. A ridiculously huge arm with a ridiculously huge volcano cannon pointed itself at another formation, and with a flash of light another group of Dredkas turned into steam. Secondary guns all over the Titan's hull flared to life, intercepting whatever the Bragulan tanks threw at them. Vertical launch silos on the Titan's back opened and with twirling contrails, missiles gracefully arced downwards towards the tanks. The missiles detonated inches away from the tanks' hulls, turning into balls of plasma that just burned through the Dredkas like hot knives of plasma through tanks made out of Bragulan cheese.
Beneviolent Wrath gave out a triumphant roar and advanced towards the Bragulan lines. Though its Exarch escorts were gone, so were the hundred Dredkas. The Titan wasn't even scratched. The Titan wasn't stopping.
The Bragulans saw this from their lines and in a panic began throwing more firepower at the Wrath. Artillery batteries, shells and missiles, rockets and rocket-propelled missile-shells, nuclear rounds, conventional rounds, normal weapons and abnormal weapons, they threw everything they had at the Beneviolent Wrath. But the Titan took it. As it came closer, it looked as though it was getting bigger (because it was getting nearer). But to the panicked Bragulan conscripts and penal brigades, it looked as though the Byzantinian Titan was eating the explosions and they were making it grow huger!
The Titan returned the favor by throwing its own explosions at the Bragulan lines. Everything that got hit by its volcano cannons also turned into volcanoes. The Titan struck a hill with a full salvo, turning the hardened bragcrete and steel bunker into lava. The lava flowed downhill and flowed into the trenches, turning into a river of molten rock. The Bragulan troops in the trenches were being swept away like they were getting hit by a flood. A flood of fire. That made them also catch fire.
The Bragulans decided to throw even more explosions at the Titan. This time, the explosions would be even bigger than the Titan itself.
The missile was as big as a building. The Bragulans had mastered the art of thermonuclear warfare for centuries. They employed tactical nuclear weapons against defended cities as well as defenseless cities, against armies, against fleets, against fortifications, against infantry. They used them to stop enemy attacks, and to prevent enemy retreats. Nuclear arms were used to win wars, and nuclear arms were used to defeat peace. It was the Bragulan way.
The Bragulans had never before encountered a foe that used superheavies like the Byzantinians. But while the likes of the Tau had been caught with their pants down, such was not the case for the Bragulans. Their pants were up all the time, and were leaded between the legs too. So when they saw the first superheavies of the Imperium, they instinctively knew what they had to do.
The 011-R Bearlbrus. Known as the 'Spud' missile in Solarian designation. Big as a high-rise condominium, it was a weapon design that was nearly a thousand years old, tracing its roots to the missiles the Bragulans' forefathers used on each other as early as the 2600s. It was one of the great Bragulan legacies, designed much like the spacecraft that they colonized their home system with.
The Spud was propelled by liquid fuel rockets. Liquid uranium and liquid plutonium. Injected into a durable combustion chamber where propulsion was produced through a series of micronuclear explosions vented out of the cluster thrusters. Nuclear thrust vectoring gave the Spud unparalleled maneuverability. Being propelled by nuclear explosions gave it speed. Its brains were built out of hardened computers with leadened magnetic tapes and vacuum tubes made out of bulletproof glass. Additional power was provided by pistons in the nuclear combustion chamber. For protection, the nose of the Spud was composed out of thick warship-grade armoring.
The original weapon was designed to be a surface-to-space missile, where great speed and power was needed for the missiles to reach their orbiting targets. Naturally, a nuclear explosion-propelled missile would have a mighty nuclear warhead in it. The Spud had this. Contrary to popular opinion, the Spud was not named because its warhead was potato-shaped. No, the Spud gained its Solarian designation because several missiles were smuggled into Solarian space in a cargo ship full of potatoes.
The Spuds' mobile launchers erected the missiles. They rose, hard and glistening in the harsh sun of Jenova's hotside. With mighty internal nuclear explosions, the missiles launched themselves into the harsh skies of Jenova. The Mother's World would rue this boner. Forever.
The Spuds flew high into the sky, but upon clearing the landing zone they took a steep dive and began skimming the planet's surface. They flew so close to the ground, mere hundreds of feet above it, that their thermonuclear exhausts burned and irradiated everything in their wake - flash-frying androgynous albinos who had the misfortune to be outdoors underneath them. The Bragulan positions in their path were told to take cover, for obvious reasons. Nuclear thrust-vectoring aided them in maneuvering through the contours of the planet's surface, but they also had to decelerate to attack speed, slowing down to a mere Mach 30-something at mere hundreds of feet from sea level. One of the Spuds plowed through a still-standing skyscraper, demolishing it and killing all the refugees huddling inside it while continuing on its hypersonic course.
In mere seconds they were within range of the Titan. Everything they had passed laid scorched and dead behind them, glowing in the dark. The Beneviolent Wrath stood before them. It gave out a final roar of defiance, a challenge. It stamped its massive feet on the ground, bracing itself while supercharging its void-shields. Point defense batteries painted the incoming Plutorion warheads with active sensors and, when they got within range, opened fire. Lasbeams glanced off the first missile, its nose-armor requiring far heavier stuff. The Titan concentrated its fire, eventually scything through the Spud's face and damaging its interior components. The Spud initiated its afterburners, a pre-programmed response to being tagged by enemy fire. It achieved escape velocity, but with its sensors blinded, it veered off course and landed on a Jenovan city a thousand miles away - behind Byzantine lines. It detonated and roasted several giant Aquila statues, along with countless unsuspecting Jenovans believing themselves to be safe far behind the Re-Militarized Zone. They were wrong.
Spud Two kicked its afterburners, a blinding white flash coming forth from its cluster thrusters as it too achieved escape velocity - while in level flight, now mere meters away from the ground. The soil turned into glass in the Spud's passing. The sonic booms and massive air displacement of its ground-skimming approach carved a long trench into the ground. Then it rose up, a kilometer away from its target, before diving right into the Titan's kisser.
The Princeps on board the Beneviolent Wrath saw everything happen in slow motion. Computer-enhanced reflexes and cybernetics allowed him to zoom into the horrible visage of its killer.
Written on the las-scarred nose of Spud Two were the blasphorities of Imperator Darvyl S. Byzon.
If you could make God-Emperor bleed, people will cease to believe in Him. There will be blood in the water, and the Spuds will come.
The Princeps cursed.
The Spud Two crashed into the Titan, impact fuse overriding the proximity fuse. The warship-grade nose armor crumpled as it gave the Byzantinian warmachine a Bragulan Kiss. Inside the Titan, the impact's sheer kinetic force threatened to rip the void shield generators off their mountings. Then the not-potato-shaped warhead, liquid plutonium/uranium injected combustion chamber and the whole entirety of the Spud Two initiated in a brilliant thermonuclear fireball - a shaped nuclear charge directed right towards the Beneviolent Wrath.
The turbocharged void-shields overloaded and withered and died, the earth beneath the Titan's feet boiled away. It fell, falling on its back. Helpless and legs spread wide open.
For Spud Three. Coming in low and hard.
Thus was the end of the Beneviolent Wrath. The venerable warmachine, a veteran of the Great Crusade that saw the near-extinction of the Tau, a hallowed military artifact of the Byzantime Imperium of Man's victory over the xenos. Battered and fallen. On its hull, the engravings depicting the ceremonial genocide of the Tau as well as the ornamental skulls on spikes on top of spiked-skulls were defaced and ruined, while its proud banner had burned into kindling and embers. Spud Three came between its legs, rammed it where it hurt. Then there was a brilliant initiation, the atomic shaped charge pouring out of the Spud Three's hard shaft in a blinding white discharge.
The Beneviolent Wrath was atomized. Reduced into the constituent subatomic particles of its constituent atomic particles. Behind it, right in the path of the shaped atomic blast, was a portion of the Byzantine lines. While the Titan had turned a portion of the Bragulan lines into a volcanoscape, the Spud Three returned the favor and a portion of the Byzantine lines was turned into a plain - a flat geographic feature characterized by its lack of any geographic features whatsoever.
As Jenova, the Mother World, itself was a world halved between two extremes, so too were the Byzantine and Bragulan lines. One side glassed and perfectly flat, the other cratered with molten rock and magma.
Everything between them was dead.
How the Jenovans rued the day they came to this world, wishing nothing more than to return to the Shinrans who so chased them away with enormous motorbikes and ridiculously huge swords.
It was just another day on Jenova.
[To be continued]
(Sector Y-22)
At the center of the Jenova system was a blue sun that burned unlike any other. The Eye of Jenova, the settlers called it. And around that blue sun, that blazing Eye of fire, revolved a desolate rock. Jenova itself, the Mother's World. The settlers who came to dwell upon Jenova were Shinrans, but not just any Shinrans. They were albinos, androgynous albinos, with long hairs and wiry builds. Discriminated and castigated centuries ago by superstitious Midgarians, believing that with the androgynous albinism came the curse of the geostigma, these androgynous albinos were forced to flee Midgar Space, cast out by their fellow men who chased them on enormous motorbikes whilst wielding ridiculously huge swords, forcing them into the deepest darkness of the void. It was there, so far away from home, that they found a new world as foretold to them by the prophets of the One-Winged Angel. They called it Jenova, Mother's World, after the unresolved Oedipal issues buried deep within all their androgynous albino subconsciousnesses.
Their new home was unlike most worlds, however, for as it revolved around the sun, its own planetary rotation was locked in a way that one side of the planet permanently faced the merciless heat of Jenova's Eye, to boil under the unending daylight, while the other side of the world would never ever see the light of day and would be covered in eternal night instead. One face of the world would burn at unforgiving temperatures, while the other face froze in frostbitten frigidity.
Betwixt these two inhospitable extremes was an area habitable to the sickly and frail albino androgyne settlers. Right in the middle of the hotzone and the coldplace was an equator stuck between day and night. The Twilight Meridian, where the climes were mild and moderate in contrast to the harshness of Mother Jenova's world-bosoms. On this belt that ran between the planet's hemispheres did the forsaken pale Shinrans find their home. Finally did the Age of Obscurity end, and so did the Age of Tranquility begin for the denizens of the Mother World.
The Age of Tranquility did not last. For so it was that by freak occurrence of planetary alignment did the burned visage of Jenova dare to face mighty Bragule, while at the same instance mooning its frostbitten behind at Holy Terra itself. At this affront, a crusade was launched by the Byzantine Imperium of Man in long-forgotten centuries past. Great warships landed themselves on the frigid wastes of Jenova's icy hemisphere to subjugate the heathens and heretics of Jenova, to teach them the error of their ways and lead them to the true parent of mankind, the great Father, the God-Emperor of Man. Yet the Bragulan Star Empire could not let this stand, hearing the pleas and seeing the plight of the androgynous albinos, so likewise did they dispatch their legions of liberation to free the albinoids from the oppression of Byzantium - freeing them in the only way the Bragulans could, through nuclear domination.
So it was that as the innumerable legions of the Emperor marched through the Twilight Meridian, converting those who repented whilst killing all who denied Heraclius' godhead, did the Bragulans rain down asteroids and comets to the dayside of the Mother World, in an attempt to induce global cooling and nuclear winter to make the harsh climes more suitable to their sensibilities. The Bragulans landed in the boiling surface of Jenova that faced the Sun Eye, and so were they angered for the heat made them sweat profusely.
With the Byzantines on one side of the planet and the Bragulans on the other, the peace-loving albinos had no recourse but to bear arms, taking to their enormous motorcycles and wielding ridiculously huge swords as their Shinran forebears did so in ages past. Yet their throes were quashed by the sanctified Orthodox bootheels of the Imperium even as the Bragulans sought to embrace the albinos as liberators with nuclear arms.
The once-peaceful Twilight Meridian became a No Man's Land, between the very snowy Byzantine side of the world and the very sunny Bragulan side. A vast Re-Militarized Zone drawn around the world like some enormously eldritch equator. The Jenovans were caught between the warring Byzantines and Bragulans, and their natural habitat became a world-spanning battlefield between the two galactic powers.
The Byzantines and Bragulans wouldn't have had it any other way.
As their campaigns came grinding into a painfully slow war of attrition with neither side budging or giving way, and as the months became years and the years became decades, gradually the intensity of the conflict diminished, both sides bogged down in a forgotten war in the ass-end of the galaxy. It was so, then, did the Byzantines and Bragulans seek to dominate each other in different and increasingly more creative ways.
The anguish of the Jenovans began.
It started when the Lord-General of the Byzantiums, deciding that the Imperium would be staying for the planet for good, ordered the construction of a great Aquila of the Emperor on a mountain overlooking their side of the battlefield. For no man could be spared in construction, as each was busy with combat duties, it was decided that the native Jenovans would be the ones to build this massive monument as a sign of eternal gratitude towards the great God-Emperor Heraclius. So commenced the construction of the Emperor's Aquila.
Incensed by this defiance, the Bragulans press-ganged the Jenovans they had liberated and through their backbreaking labor, in record time they unveiled a monument to Imperator Darvyl S. Byzon twice as large as the Byzantine's Aquila - laughing at the Imperial Aquila as they did so, calling it an overgrown Arcturian Mega-Turkey right in front of the Byzantines' faces. Such was the performance and dedication of the native Jenovan workforce that the Bragulan commanders decided that they would be permanently assigned to build even more statues. Forever.
Challenging each other, the Byzantines and Bragulans filled their respective sides with enormous edifices and magnificent monstrous monuments to God-Emperor Heraclius, to Imperator Byzon, to the Imperial Aquila, and so on and so forth. Whenever one side's Jenovan workforces were worked to death and could not construct more statues due to exhaustion, then that side would destroy the other's great statues in fits of jealousy. Eventually the most sacred statues of the God-Emperor, and the most patriotic monuments to the Imperator, would be outfitted with weapons to protect against nuclear vandalism.
It was so that an uneasy peace settled between the Byzantines and Bragulans, at the expense of the Jenovans. Each side would try to advance and attack, while the other side would counter-attack or flank, but neither could gain an advantage over the other. The fighting was done at a snail's pace, and territorial gains and losses could be measured in meter sticks. The Twilight Meridian that was once the home of the Jenovans was once more peaceful, with life returning to normalcy whenever the Byzantines and Bragulans deigned not to advance through their towns and cities. It was how wildlife flourished in a certain DMZ back on Old Earth, or on Galia.
Some days, Bragulan and Byzantine patrols into the Jenovan Re-Militarized Zone would encounter each other... inside Jenovan drinking establishments. The locals had somehow adapted to the nigh-constant state of variable-intensity war on their planet and whenever the war went hot, they would scurry like rodents to their bomb shelters or otherwise put bags over their heads and waited to die. When the war went cold, however, they would serve drinks. To both sides.
Most days it was pretty cold. But today wasn't like most days.
Private Gragchnkov was taking a sip of Tsvagna. The Jenovan bar was called the SephiBroth and he had to admit, they made decent Tsvagna. It was what SephiBroth specialized in, and Gragchnkov was quite lucky to have found a bar on Jenova that catered to Bragulan tastes. For that reason Bragulans favored the place, while the damned Byzantines kept well away from it.
Which was why Gragchnkov nearly fell off his seat when he saw an Imperial Guard fire team enter the place. Gragchnkov grabbed his K-bolter, but froze like a deer caught in the light of a nuclear blast, when he saw the Guardsmen level their lasguns at him. The bar's other patrons, all Bragulans like Gragchnkov though more inebriated than him, staggered to their feet and likewise pointed their K-bolters and Space RPGs at the Byzantines.
"Looks like we're in a Mexicant stand-off," the IG trooper said slowly, referring to the Hispanic-brand of Solarian Replicants made by the Tyrell Corporation. The Guardsmen were in a circular formation, with all their guns pointed outwards to everyone else in the bar.
"What is this, the KO Korral?!" Gragchnkov shot back, not literally. A couple of Guardsmen pointed their hellguns at his snout, just in case if he did. Their laser dot-sights flashed on his face. "Get those stinking flashlights off my face!"
"We're just here for a drink, bear." A Kasrkin uttered, lowering his hellgun from Gragchnkov's snout down to his throat. "Not for any bearskin pelts. We're saving those for those later."
"There are other places for you to go," Gragchnkov growled. "Other places that serve watered down piss. Don't you humans like to drink your own urine?"
The Bragulan patrons laughed at this. The Guardsmen pointed their guns at those who laughed at them, and the Bragulans pointed their own K-bolters at the Guardsmen who pointed their guns at them. After a while, nobody was laughing anymore.
"Is that a challenge?" the Kasrkin's eyes narrowed as he neared Gragchnkov and looked at him, face to face.
"Your puny human guts can't handle the Tsvagna," Gragchnkov taunted. "It'll make whatever fur you've got left fall off!"
"Well, let's just see about that, won't we?" the Kasrkin grinned viciously. "Waitress?"
"What'll it be, glory-boys?" a scantily-clad pale girl with silver hair walked over to the Byzantines.
"Tsvagna." The Kasrkin said. "With extra battery acid and rocket fuel."
"You sure?" the waitress asked, a moe of doubt on her face.
"Just get me a damn bottle," the Kasrkin said as he grabbed a seat in front of Gragchnkov. "Damn whore."
"How about you, Grag?" the waitress asked.
"Just a refill, please." Gragchnkov replied, motioning his empty glass.
"Alright, you Byzantine boys and Brag boys just sit tight, kay?" the waitress said as she walked over to the bar counter and fetched their drinks.
"So, what's your rank, Brag boy?" the Kasrkin asked cockily, leaning forward and cybernetically eying his new Bragulan drinking partner closely.
"Private, Last Class." Gragchnkov answered. The waitress came over and refilled his drink and gave the Kasrkin a fresh bottle of Tsvagna. "Thanks."
"Don't they tell you to respect your superiors, private?" the Kasrkin asked, grinning as he did so. He filled his glass with Tsvagna and downed it. His face contorted into a rictus of disgust as he swallowed the brew, before resolving itself back to its previous grin. "Damn good stuff."
"Never learned to respect my superiors, much less a human one." Gragchnkov downed his own glass of Tsvagna. He pointed at his arm, which was branded with a nasty looking burn-scar that looked like a skull. "Penal division."
"What, assaulted an officer or something?" the Kasrkin's eye telescoped out of his eyesocket, zooming into the scar.
"An officer's wife," Gragchnkov shrugged. "Sexually."
The Kasrkin laughed boisterously at this. The other Guardsmen too joined in the laughter. They were now seated around their own table, and were being eyed suspiciously by the other Bragulans in the bar. The Guardsmen paid them no attention and drank their own Tsvagnas.
"You're pretty chatty for a Byzantinian." Gragchnkov said, looking straight at the Kasrkin's cybernetic eye.
"You're pretty friendly for a Bragulan xenos," came the reply.
"Maybe we're soul mates." Gragchnkov muttered. The Kasrkin laughed again.
"Yeah, maybe we're meant to be." Gragchnkov chuckled at the Kasrkin's joke.
"Or maybe you could stop fucking around." Gragchnkov suggested. "This is getting ridiculous.
"Yes, it is!" the Kasrkin's laughter turned into chuckles and then into snickers, and then they stopped. A few were still laughing though, since they didn't get the hint. The Kasrkin just looked at the Bragulan who was sitting over at the other side of the table, off-screen. "Isn't it?"
The Kasrkin regarded Gragchnkov curiously. A bald albino bartender lit a cigarette and looked at them both. The Kasrkin shrugged.
"Well?"
"It is." Gragchnkov agreed. He finished his drink, swallowing the last of his Tsvagna. He thought of asking the waitress for another glass, she was pretty cute for a human, but he decided better of it. "So, what now?"
"Well. I was thinking of taking my plasma pistol and shooting you in the face with it."
Three things happened.
The Kasrkin acted on his thought before Gragchnkov could act on his own. With cybernetic reflex, the Kasrkin drew his plasma pistol and pointed it at Gragchnkov's face. He squeezed the trigger and there was a flash of bright light, followed by a clap of thunder and a blast of vaporizing flesh, blood and bone. Red mist stained the Kasrkin's face, scalding his cheek. Then -
The other Bragulans, already mildly inebriated, reacted a microsecond too late. The Imperial Guardsmen opened fire with their lasguns and plasma rifles, viciously carving cauterized craters into the chest of the nearest bears. While the nearest Brags died, their comrades struggled to respond. The ones nearest to their lasgunned and plasma blasted friends tried to shoot back at the humans, spraying blindly with their K-bolters. Acid bullets burned through the air while someone threw a potato-masher grenade, which cluttered to the floor unnoticed. Angry red lasers burned holes through furry heads and boiled bear brains. Carapace armor was stained with K-residue, sizzling as the acid ate through it and found the succulent human flesh underneath. There were screams of anguish and roars of pain. A plasma bolt stuck the pale waitress right in the gut, she exploded before she could scream and her vaporized albino remains stained the wall, painting her splattered silhouette on its canvas of carnage. A hatchet made out of Bragulan steel buried itself in between a Guardsman's eyes, making the rest of the Guardsman's head jerk backwards violently (while his neck made a sick snapping sound).
Then the SephiBroth exploded. Not really. But yeah.
There was an underwhelming explosion inside the watering hole, a flash of light and a deep rumbling as a thermobaric grenade detonated right inside the building. Then, a few seconds later, the SephiBroth kind of collapsed on itself, caving in as some vital support column or something broke inside of it and made it all structurally unsound. It looked like a controlled demolition, except for the part with there being people killing other people inside of it now getting killed themselves by the building just collapsing right on top of them all of a sudden. There was a mighty crashing sound and a whole lot of dust getting kicked up into the air.
Gragchnkov groaned gravelly, dust choking his throat. He tried to wipe the grime off his face, but discovered that his whole arm was gone. Everything below the Penal Division brand on his shoulder had mysteriously disappeared. Gragchnkov tried to recall how he had lost it, and in a while he remembered. When the damn Kasrkin tried to shoot him in the face with the plasma gun, he had grabbed the gun with his hand and pointed it somewhere else that wasn't his own head. The Kasrkin fired, the plasma missed Gragchnkov's head but unfortunately the bolt still vaporized his whole arm since he was still holding the gun by the barrel. Red mist stained the Kasrkin's face, scalding his cheek. Then Gragchnkov took his glass and drove it into the Kasrkin's eye socket. The glass shattered, and the broken shards went into the Kasrkin's brain. Together with his cybernetic eye. Then everything exploded, the roof fell on Gragchnkov's head, and then he woke up and groaned gravelly, dust choking his throat. He tried to wipe the grime off his face, but discovered that his whole was gone. But now that mystery was solved.
"Imperator's beard!" he cursed. He threw the rubble off himself and tried to look for a tourniquet for his stump-arm, but noticed that the whole stump was cauterized, so there was no bleeding, just smoking. No need for a tourniquet then. Must be my lucky day, Gragchnkov thought. Then he looked up and gasped. "Oh..."
"...shits."
The Byzantime Imperium's venerable Warlord-class Titan Beneviolent Wrath stomped on the surface of Jenova, each footfall crushing everything under kilotons of weight. The massive mechanical monstrosity bellowed a roar of challenge to the Bragulan lines ahead of it, and then it strode on, earthquakes with each and every step. Mighty volcano cannons on its shoulders erupted, sending devastating beams of energy towards the bear trenches and making them erupt just like volcanoes. The very ground melted, mixing with boiling Bragcrete bunkers and liquefying steel, turning into red hot lava from the sheer heat.
Along with the Titan came a column of Imperium steel. Exarch main battle tanks, with railguns and bolt-on bolter sponsors and lasguns with laser sights (twin-linked, get it). They tore through the lines, smashing through the cityscape while unleashing a rain of steel towards the xeno forces.
The Bragulans answered not with a rain of steel, but a proverbial fucking typhoon. Exploding from garage-trenches were the dreaded Dredka overtanks. Hordes of them, hundreds. Massive and ridiculously armed and armored, bearing dual big bore battle cannons and with turrets bristling with more weapons than anyone can shake an IBGV-issue beating-stick at. On their hulls and turrets were multiple K-bolter machinegun nests, anti-aircraft cannons, nuclear flamethrowers, rocket artillery tubes and missile launchers. On their hulls were everything from the tailguns of bombers ripped off and wielded on to the tank chassis, to atomic deathray cannons, to antipersonnel chain-plows. They began shooting explosions at the Byzantinians.
The two opposing lines of steel clashed head-on, like an unmovable force meeting an unstoppable object, or the other way around. Bragulans and Byzantines, like black and blue, a match made in Heaven for Hell. Tracers stitched the air, radioactive flares sailed down the sky, Geiger counters clicked incessantly in anticipation for the sudden impact. Both sides threw salvos at each other, tactical atomics to thin each other's ranks. Then when they closed in, it was all a violent exchange shells and rockets, missiles and bullets, lasers and bolts with and without Ks, plasma and lances, fire and death. The Exarchs disappeared one by one, vanishing in suspiciously mushroom-shaped pufts. The remaining Dredkas advanced, bragcrete outer layers cracked and crumbling, steel chassis glowing. They were too many. They surrounded the Titan Beneviolent Wrath and emptied everything they had on it.
The tactical nukes illuminated the warmachine's void shields. Flickers and sparks. Puny and insignificant. The Warlord made a grumbling sound, almost like a contemptuous chuckle. Then it roared. A massive foot crushed no less then five Dredkas in a single stomp, flattening them under kilotons of mass. A ridiculously huge arm with a ridiculously huge volcano cannon pointed itself at another formation, and with a flash of light another group of Dredkas turned into steam. Secondary guns all over the Titan's hull flared to life, intercepting whatever the Bragulan tanks threw at them. Vertical launch silos on the Titan's back opened and with twirling contrails, missiles gracefully arced downwards towards the tanks. The missiles detonated inches away from the tanks' hulls, turning into balls of plasma that just burned through the Dredkas like hot knives of plasma through tanks made out of Bragulan cheese.
Beneviolent Wrath gave out a triumphant roar and advanced towards the Bragulan lines. Though its Exarch escorts were gone, so were the hundred Dredkas. The Titan wasn't even scratched. The Titan wasn't stopping.
The Bragulans saw this from their lines and in a panic began throwing more firepower at the Wrath. Artillery batteries, shells and missiles, rockets and rocket-propelled missile-shells, nuclear rounds, conventional rounds, normal weapons and abnormal weapons, they threw everything they had at the Beneviolent Wrath. But the Titan took it. As it came closer, it looked as though it was getting bigger (because it was getting nearer). But to the panicked Bragulan conscripts and penal brigades, it looked as though the Byzantinian Titan was eating the explosions and they were making it grow huger!
The Titan returned the favor by throwing its own explosions at the Bragulan lines. Everything that got hit by its volcano cannons also turned into volcanoes. The Titan struck a hill with a full salvo, turning the hardened bragcrete and steel bunker into lava. The lava flowed downhill and flowed into the trenches, turning into a river of molten rock. The Bragulan troops in the trenches were being swept away like they were getting hit by a flood. A flood of fire. That made them also catch fire.
The Bragulans decided to throw even more explosions at the Titan. This time, the explosions would be even bigger than the Titan itself.
The missile was as big as a building. The Bragulans had mastered the art of thermonuclear warfare for centuries. They employed tactical nuclear weapons against defended cities as well as defenseless cities, against armies, against fleets, against fortifications, against infantry. They used them to stop enemy attacks, and to prevent enemy retreats. Nuclear arms were used to win wars, and nuclear arms were used to defeat peace. It was the Bragulan way.
The Bragulans had never before encountered a foe that used superheavies like the Byzantinians. But while the likes of the Tau had been caught with their pants down, such was not the case for the Bragulans. Their pants were up all the time, and were leaded between the legs too. So when they saw the first superheavies of the Imperium, they instinctively knew what they had to do.
The 011-R Bearlbrus. Known as the 'Spud' missile in Solarian designation. Big as a high-rise condominium, it was a weapon design that was nearly a thousand years old, tracing its roots to the missiles the Bragulans' forefathers used on each other as early as the 2600s. It was one of the great Bragulan legacies, designed much like the spacecraft that they colonized their home system with.
The Spud was propelled by liquid fuel rockets. Liquid uranium and liquid plutonium. Injected into a durable combustion chamber where propulsion was produced through a series of micronuclear explosions vented out of the cluster thrusters. Nuclear thrust vectoring gave the Spud unparalleled maneuverability. Being propelled by nuclear explosions gave it speed. Its brains were built out of hardened computers with leadened magnetic tapes and vacuum tubes made out of bulletproof glass. Additional power was provided by pistons in the nuclear combustion chamber. For protection, the nose of the Spud was composed out of thick warship-grade armoring.
The original weapon was designed to be a surface-to-space missile, where great speed and power was needed for the missiles to reach their orbiting targets. Naturally, a nuclear explosion-propelled missile would have a mighty nuclear warhead in it. The Spud had this. Contrary to popular opinion, the Spud was not named because its warhead was potato-shaped. No, the Spud gained its Solarian designation because several missiles were smuggled into Solarian space in a cargo ship full of potatoes.
The Spuds' mobile launchers erected the missiles. They rose, hard and glistening in the harsh sun of Jenova's hotside. With mighty internal nuclear explosions, the missiles launched themselves into the harsh skies of Jenova. The Mother's World would rue this boner. Forever.
The Spuds flew high into the sky, but upon clearing the landing zone they took a steep dive and began skimming the planet's surface. They flew so close to the ground, mere hundreds of feet above it, that their thermonuclear exhausts burned and irradiated everything in their wake - flash-frying androgynous albinos who had the misfortune to be outdoors underneath them. The Bragulan positions in their path were told to take cover, for obvious reasons. Nuclear thrust-vectoring aided them in maneuvering through the contours of the planet's surface, but they also had to decelerate to attack speed, slowing down to a mere Mach 30-something at mere hundreds of feet from sea level. One of the Spuds plowed through a still-standing skyscraper, demolishing it and killing all the refugees huddling inside it while continuing on its hypersonic course.
In mere seconds they were within range of the Titan. Everything they had passed laid scorched and dead behind them, glowing in the dark. The Beneviolent Wrath stood before them. It gave out a final roar of defiance, a challenge. It stamped its massive feet on the ground, bracing itself while supercharging its void-shields. Point defense batteries painted the incoming Plutorion warheads with active sensors and, when they got within range, opened fire. Lasbeams glanced off the first missile, its nose-armor requiring far heavier stuff. The Titan concentrated its fire, eventually scything through the Spud's face and damaging its interior components. The Spud initiated its afterburners, a pre-programmed response to being tagged by enemy fire. It achieved escape velocity, but with its sensors blinded, it veered off course and landed on a Jenovan city a thousand miles away - behind Byzantine lines. It detonated and roasted several giant Aquila statues, along with countless unsuspecting Jenovans believing themselves to be safe far behind the Re-Militarized Zone. They were wrong.
Spud Two kicked its afterburners, a blinding white flash coming forth from its cluster thrusters as it too achieved escape velocity - while in level flight, now mere meters away from the ground. The soil turned into glass in the Spud's passing. The sonic booms and massive air displacement of its ground-skimming approach carved a long trench into the ground. Then it rose up, a kilometer away from its target, before diving right into the Titan's kisser.
The Princeps on board the Beneviolent Wrath saw everything happen in slow motion. Computer-enhanced reflexes and cybernetics allowed him to zoom into the horrible visage of its killer.
Written on the las-scarred nose of Spud Two were the blasphorities of Imperator Darvyl S. Byzon.
If you could make God-Emperor bleed, people will cease to believe in Him. There will be blood in the water, and the Spuds will come.
The Princeps cursed.
The Spud Two crashed into the Titan, impact fuse overriding the proximity fuse. The warship-grade nose armor crumpled as it gave the Byzantinian warmachine a Bragulan Kiss. Inside the Titan, the impact's sheer kinetic force threatened to rip the void shield generators off their mountings. Then the not-potato-shaped warhead, liquid plutonium/uranium injected combustion chamber and the whole entirety of the Spud Two initiated in a brilliant thermonuclear fireball - a shaped nuclear charge directed right towards the Beneviolent Wrath.
The turbocharged void-shields overloaded and withered and died, the earth beneath the Titan's feet boiled away. It fell, falling on its back. Helpless and legs spread wide open.
For Spud Three. Coming in low and hard.
Thus was the end of the Beneviolent Wrath. The venerable warmachine, a veteran of the Great Crusade that saw the near-extinction of the Tau, a hallowed military artifact of the Byzantime Imperium of Man's victory over the xenos. Battered and fallen. On its hull, the engravings depicting the ceremonial genocide of the Tau as well as the ornamental skulls on spikes on top of spiked-skulls were defaced and ruined, while its proud banner had burned into kindling and embers. Spud Three came between its legs, rammed it where it hurt. Then there was a brilliant initiation, the atomic shaped charge pouring out of the Spud Three's hard shaft in a blinding white discharge.
The Beneviolent Wrath was atomized. Reduced into the constituent subatomic particles of its constituent atomic particles. Behind it, right in the path of the shaped atomic blast, was a portion of the Byzantine lines. While the Titan had turned a portion of the Bragulan lines into a volcanoscape, the Spud Three returned the favor and a portion of the Byzantine lines was turned into a plain - a flat geographic feature characterized by its lack of any geographic features whatsoever.
As Jenova, the Mother World, itself was a world halved between two extremes, so too were the Byzantine and Bragulan lines. One side glassed and perfectly flat, the other cratered with molten rock and magma.
Everything between them was dead.
How the Jenovans rued the day they came to this world, wishing nothing more than to return to the Shinrans who so chased them away with enormous motorbikes and ridiculously huge swords.
It was just another day on Jenova.
[To be continued]
Last edited by Shroom Man 777 on 2010-09-06 01:23am, edited 2 times in total.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source)shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people
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Simon_Jester
- Emperor's Hand
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- Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Central Administration Complex, Prime City, Reisenburg, Sector W-7First Technarch Michael O’Connell reviewed the imagery and stroked his chin. “Hmm. It’s cost-effective, it’s a solid gesture of international cooperation... I like it. Commence Stage Three of Project Puppy.”
February 3, 3400
Slightly Longer After Lunch
That last sentence had been said in a deep, menacing voice with arms folded and a scowl on his face, in an exaggerated parody of the mannerisms of a tyrant. As one, the Council of Technarchs burst out laughing. Still laughing, the Second for Production looked at Dr. O'Connell and said, his Bolivaran accent thicker than usual, "Mike, I never expect the funny guy thing from you, and you always do the funny guy thing!"
"What can I say? You people give me such perfect material to work with."
The Council took a moment to regain their composure. Dr. Chernov looked around the table; his fellows nodded, ceding the floor to him, so to speak. "Hopefully the public relations boost from Project Puppy will encourage the Shepistanis to view us in a more positive light; we don't want to end up fighting them, after all. But that aside, I think we've established a solid plan for fleet dispositions, immediate regional security alliances, that sort of thing."
"That leaves us looking at the longer term picture- grand-strategic threats. The Collectors are probably the most obvious candidate; we've already discussed the military threat they pose in great detail, but on a broader level, what do we know about them?"
The Second for Data Collection frowned. "Not enough. They kidnap people, they hide in the shoals; it's rumored that they buy slaves, probably for whatever purpose they kidnap people. Clearly an AI civilization, and one that is at least broadly willing to negotiate- they've made a few deals with the Altacarans lately, and we're looking into that- but what exactly they want and why, we don't know."
"And the Collectors aren't the only enigma out there, either. We've had disturbing reports from the less explored antispinward regions of the Arm: far out to rimward, these mysterious "Emissaries of XylyX," and to coreward the sudden appearance of the Central Alliance. Emloy, do your people have any new insight into the circumstances of their arrival?"
The squat, cobalt blue Second for Research turned to Dr. Chernov. "Nothing very helpful, really. The Emissaries are, by all appearances, an AI culture. They seem to have arrived in this region of space by purely conventional means, and started beaming out hyperwave broadcasts on all the high-use commercial frequencies. Our xenocyberneticists are still attempting to analyze the broadcasts for the underlying meaning. We... cautiously infer that they are attempting to recruit allies for some sort of exceptionally destructive conflict, one which they expect to lose." Several of the Council members blinked or looked quizzical.
"One thing is certain: the Emissaries are oriented around an extremely alien purpose, to the point where any interaction could be hampered by mutually exclusive definitions of rationality. Hardly a comforting thought. Fortunately, they are many light-centuries away, so there should be time and room to let the situation develop."
Dr. Jack Holloway, Third for Security and long-time veteran of the Ground Security Forces, seldom spoke at Council meetings. But at this, he grunted. "I, for one, am in favor of leaving the loud lunatic robots alone. If they want to shout at us from the other side of the arm, let them."
Dr. Takuulda continued. "This would seem wise. In any case, on this new Central Alliance, we have a bit more data. The information passed to us by the Commune on their appearance in this region of space indicates that their arrival corresponds with a massive surge of extremely low frequency hyperwave radiation that the National Astrophysics Agency observed last year, on bands normally associated with astrophysical events such as the collapse of stars. Analysis is still ongoing, but obviously we are looking at some exotic-physics principle previously unknown. The wilder theorists have been talking about a supersymmetry-breaker of some kind, broadly analogous to the more straightforward symmetry-breaking techniques used in warp gate travel."
"Needless to say, the Agency has been most interested in permission to go investigate; one cosmology student was so adventurous as to attempt to rappel into my office window to gain an audience."
The First Technarch chuckled. "Sounds commendably eager, in a way. Have you looked into planning an expedition?"
"Yes, we have collaborated with MiniDat on the subject. For choice, we would send the science vessel USS Austin Cardynge, the same ship used to investigate the supernova of 3357. It is well designed for far-field exploration, with good self-repair capability and endurance along with limited defensive armament. The physics package is excellent- there have been some delays to modernize some of its hardware, but the ship is essentially prepared."
Dr. Chernov looked up. "This would also be an opportunity to make tentative contact with the Centrals, along with investigating their space for traces of interesting phenomena. Should we send a first contact team along?"
"I would recommend it. I also recommend that we try to arrange basing out of Commune space. The Commune is very close to the area under investigation, and their industrial base is... flexible, which could be quite helpful."
The Second for Production snorted. "Energy-inefficient too, but yes, I see what you mean: they can make almost anything with equal ease, and that would include anything we needed fabricated on a one-shot basis for research purposes."
Dr. O'Connell frowned. "That brings us back to their proposed defense pact, though. We still haven't come to a conclusion on that, and we need to send Nancy over soon if she's going to arrive in a timely fashion..."
Dr. Bowinger, Third for Foreign Affairs and the woman in question, started speaking when O'Connell paused. She was a dark-skinned woman whose looked about forty by prespace standards, with a rich curriculum vitae in the field of astropolitical theory. Her unmoving features and precisionist mindset gave her an aura of formidable competence, one that often intimidated her subordinates.
"I know many of us were thinking of turning them down entirely until recently. But in light of recent events, can we afford to do so?"
The Second for Ecology looked up from her sketch again. For this one she'd pulled out a multicolor pen and done a rough rendition of battling starships, against a background of tiny, distant red stars. "How much could they help us from so far away, though?"
Dr. Lanning frowned. "That's what's been bothering us over at MiniSec too, Susie. We're not entirely clear on what kind of long-distance power projection the Commune is capable of. Their ships are fairly self-sufficient, so they might surprise us, but similar questions arise about the IUW and the Centrals, if they decide to join. Ah, Central Alliance, not Centrality..." He trailed off, looking vaguely irritated.
"On top of that, I have to wonder, how much do they think we can help them? They may be able to send half their fleet running off somewhere thousands of light years away on a few weeks' notice, but we can't, and we've never tried to hide the fact..." Lanning now looked considerably more irritated.
Dr. Bowinger looked levelly at the Second for Security. "My opinion is that the key is in the Commune's ideology. It may be hard for us to grasp, but the Commune's entire view of the cosmos is shaped by a very specific theory about the nature of social evolution, and the relative merits of various social systems. They don't even talk to cultures they don't like, except for the most minimal necessities. And they most certainly do not like monarchy, regarding it as a form of absurd primitive anachronism; they don't care for capitalist economies either, deeming them inefficient and prone to injustice."
Lanning nodded. "Not that I"m unsympathetic; they probably have a point... but how does that affect us?"
"Simple." She gave a thin-lipped smile. "They think the Technocracy, like the IUW, represents a relatively progressive social model."
"And this affects the military calculus how?"
"Bear in mind that they pitched this proposal to Dr. Hrabowski and his staff in terms of the threat of interventions by godlike* entities, to "unite in the face of possible new calamities." They may not so much be concerned with battle fleets as with information. And there are potentially useful areas where we could provide valuable technical support to the Commune in the face of moderately-godlike* threats, even if we're not in a good position to send them naval forces."
Dr. Warren-Marshall cleared her throat. She'd done a quick, rough drawing: enormous red stars, visibly five-pointed, with tiny battling starships in the far distance...
"I think we need to know more about how they're thinking about all this. I mean, what happens if they get into a big war and pull us in? Will we be able to see it coming, to warn them, to ask them to stop?"
The Second for Simulations looked thoughtful. "Actually, now that you mention it, Geppetto did some very interesting work on them recently. It's difficult for me to summarize properly; I'm afraid I may have been too preoccupied in the theoretical papers he released along with the analysis..."
The First smiled sadly. "Well, it happens to the best of us. Perhaps we should invite him to discuss the matter? Rashid, do you know if he's been involved in anything that would stop him from sparing us the time?"
"Has he ever been?"
"True. It would be one for the record books if he were too busy to talk about his work. Why don't we take a momentary break while you put together the request for him, and we'll see what our resident master psychologist has to say about the Commune?"
*Author's note: "Godlike" is a technical term in this context, used by certain disciplines in Umeria to denote entities with greatly transhuman capabilities in terms of information or physical power. "Weakly godlike" beings are those whose powers far exceed those of any baseline human, but do not transcend the limits of what could be achieved by a baseline individual using suitable technology. Examples include the highest tier of espers such as Haruhi Suzumiya and Emperor Heraclius XX Komnenos the Great.
"Moderately godlike" beings have powers that are significant on the scale of entire civilizations, either by virtue of having vast resources under their direct control (a hive mind with a single directing intelligence) or because of extraordinary computing resources that allow them to manipulate events on a level that would take civilization-scale resources to counter (the most powerful known CIs).
"Strongly godlike" beings have abilities that transcend the known laws of physics and which have ramifications that could in principle affect the entirety of known space, or even larger regions. Again, this can be either because they personally have the power to snuff out stars or the like, or because their mental abilities are so extraordinary that they can manipulate events to twist outcomes towards their design on a cosmic scale.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
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MKSheppard
- Ruthless Genocidal Warmonger
- Posts: 29842
- Joined: 2002-07-06 06:34pm
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Montgomery Arcology, Shepistan
"Mommy, mommy, look at that! It's those new PUPPERS by that company!" shrieked the little girl.
"Awww. How cute."
Results: PUPPERS sell out rapidly on Shepistani worlds in just the first two days of sales.
"Mommy, mommy, look at that! It's those new PUPPERS by that company!" shrieked the little girl.
"Awww. How cute."
Results: PUPPERS sell out rapidly on Shepistani worlds in just the first two days of sales.
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
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Magister Militum
- Redshirt
- Posts: 47
- Joined: 2008-04-07 02:16pm
- Location: California
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Minister Hall, Palais de Tuileries
Paris, Nouveau France
Fourth French Empire
...”So, with that in mind, I believe we’ll be ready for a more active role in interstellar affairs. Naturally, I believe it would also be prudent to dust off our treaties of friendship that we have with other select polities, though, given the time that has passed their reactions to a renewed relationship may be different from what we expect.”
The new Foreign Minister, Valerot Hyintith, finished his briefing on the changes to French foreign policy, his wiry, feathered raptor-like Cortallian frame reclining back into his seat. The past weeks* after the funeral of Jean-Baptiste IV had been a hectic one for Louis-Napoleon II. A new cabinet was formed in the aftermath of Louis-Napoleon’s ascension to the Throne, and with it a new outlook on French foreign policy. Many of his ministers had known Louis-Napoleon from his Star Navy days, which had helped solidify their trust and loyalty to him.
“Very well. Unless there is anything else of note, this meeting is adjourned. Keep working on your portfolios and let me know of any significant developments.” Louis-Napoleon dismissed his cabinet, the various ministers shuffling off to their offices. Three individuals, though, stayed behind: Hyintith, the Director-General of the DGSE, Béatrice Véron, and Montesquieu.
“Is there something you wanted to speak to me about?”
“Your Majesty,” said Véron, “there is something of major significance that has been developing over the past few weeks, and we need your immediate approval before we can move to deal with it. We’re just waiting for –“ the commander of the Grande Armee’s special forces arm, the Black Legion, Prince Marshal-General Henri Yves Bonaparte-Bourbon, strode into the hall “- ah, there he is now.”
“Henri?” said Louis-Napoleon with a bit of surprise as he rose from his seat. “The fact that you’re here means that we’ve got a major situation on our hands. Precisely what is going on?”
Véron sat back down as the other took their seats. “Your Majesty, we believe that the buildup on Rapture was related to something of a much greater scope. Based on our observations, a group based in the Bright Jewel sector provided Rapture with the funds and materiel necessary for their piratical campaign, and we have reason to believe that they’ve done the same for several other groups, as well.”
“Makes sense. Rapture was never an industrial powerhouse, and there was no way they could have acquired what they fielded on their own. Who’s behind this?”
The holoprojector built into the table flickered into existence, projecting a map of all adjacent sectors as Véron continued. “About 10 years ago, a petty warlord by the name of Darren Caine had his predecessor eliminated and took control of the fiefdom of Norrland, a little planet-state ruled over by a cabal of pirates, slavers, and outlaws. People didn’t take too kindly to Caine’s power grab, which instigated a general purge of the fiefdom of all dissidents, usually by some unpleasant means. At first, he didn’t seem to have the influence necessary to unite the barbarian statelets in the Bright Jewel sector, but things have changed. Though bribery, coercion, enticement, and sheer charisma, Caine has managed to unite much of the sector together in a loose confederation of barbarian and pirate states. He keeps them all in line through the promise of plunder and riches and the threat of force. So far, he’s managed to keep his house in order.”
“So, what’s his goal with financing Rapture and other outlaw groups?”
“Apparently, Caine has decided that Bright Jewel isn’t enough. His inner circles have pushed for an expansion in their criminal activities and influence. The only problem is the return of France. Our presence in Wild Space would severely jeopardize his plans for expansion, or even threaten his power base. A direct war would ultimately be pointless, especially if we rally our neighbors, but he’s far too smart to make that kind of error. Instead, he’s opting for an indirect method to weaken our position. By supporting his outlaw proxies and encouraging them to wage a campaign of terrorism and piracy, Caine hopes to divert our attention and spread out our forces on the Imperial Rim long enough to strengthen his position to the point where he can remain fully independent. Given enough time, he could easily build himself up to the point where he can be a serious threat to stability in the region, especially in regards to our plans for expansion.”
Louis-Napoleon nodded. “Caine and his cartel have to be eliminated then. Do you have a plan?”
Véron nodded to Henri as the holoprojector turned off. “We believe that our best bet in ending this threat is to exploit the fragile structure of the cartel. The Bright Jewel Cartel is kept together through Caine’s dominance and intimidation, which also forces normally hostile groups to cooperate together. If he can be killed in a false flag operation, we can cause a major destabilization in their organization. Everyone will blame everyone else and the cartel will come apart in a frenzy of self-destructive power grabs. With the cartel no long a threat, we gain the ability to do what we please with the sector and secure the area from anymore upstarts.”
“I assume you know how this will be executed?” asked the Emperor.
“A handful of Legionnaires can infiltrate the cartel, manipulate the factions, and kill Caine while pinning it on another faction. We’ll provide them with support, but, for the most part, they’ll be on their own, though that would hardly be considered a disadvantage for these individuals.
”You have a group in mind?”
The Marshal-General passed to Louis-Napoleon a datapad. “There are over a million operators under the Legion’s jurisdiction, each one capable of operating independently or in small teams depending on the mission. The team I’ve selected after conferring with my subordinates are well suited to this type of dirty black ops work. The commander of the team in particular has had experience in disrupting pirate statelets in Wild Space.”
“Very well. Insert them into Bright Jewel and carry out the plan. It’s time to shake up things out there.”
*May change depending on when we make the time jump.
Paris, Nouveau France
Fourth French Empire
...”So, with that in mind, I believe we’ll be ready for a more active role in interstellar affairs. Naturally, I believe it would also be prudent to dust off our treaties of friendship that we have with other select polities, though, given the time that has passed their reactions to a renewed relationship may be different from what we expect.”
The new Foreign Minister, Valerot Hyintith, finished his briefing on the changes to French foreign policy, his wiry, feathered raptor-like Cortallian frame reclining back into his seat. The past weeks* after the funeral of Jean-Baptiste IV had been a hectic one for Louis-Napoleon II. A new cabinet was formed in the aftermath of Louis-Napoleon’s ascension to the Throne, and with it a new outlook on French foreign policy. Many of his ministers had known Louis-Napoleon from his Star Navy days, which had helped solidify their trust and loyalty to him.
“Very well. Unless there is anything else of note, this meeting is adjourned. Keep working on your portfolios and let me know of any significant developments.” Louis-Napoleon dismissed his cabinet, the various ministers shuffling off to their offices. Three individuals, though, stayed behind: Hyintith, the Director-General of the DGSE, Béatrice Véron, and Montesquieu.
“Is there something you wanted to speak to me about?”
“Your Majesty,” said Véron, “there is something of major significance that has been developing over the past few weeks, and we need your immediate approval before we can move to deal with it. We’re just waiting for –“ the commander of the Grande Armee’s special forces arm, the Black Legion, Prince Marshal-General Henri Yves Bonaparte-Bourbon, strode into the hall “- ah, there he is now.”
“Henri?” said Louis-Napoleon with a bit of surprise as he rose from his seat. “The fact that you’re here means that we’ve got a major situation on our hands. Precisely what is going on?”
Véron sat back down as the other took their seats. “Your Majesty, we believe that the buildup on Rapture was related to something of a much greater scope. Based on our observations, a group based in the Bright Jewel sector provided Rapture with the funds and materiel necessary for their piratical campaign, and we have reason to believe that they’ve done the same for several other groups, as well.”
“Makes sense. Rapture was never an industrial powerhouse, and there was no way they could have acquired what they fielded on their own. Who’s behind this?”
The holoprojector built into the table flickered into existence, projecting a map of all adjacent sectors as Véron continued. “About 10 years ago, a petty warlord by the name of Darren Caine had his predecessor eliminated and took control of the fiefdom of Norrland, a little planet-state ruled over by a cabal of pirates, slavers, and outlaws. People didn’t take too kindly to Caine’s power grab, which instigated a general purge of the fiefdom of all dissidents, usually by some unpleasant means. At first, he didn’t seem to have the influence necessary to unite the barbarian statelets in the Bright Jewel sector, but things have changed. Though bribery, coercion, enticement, and sheer charisma, Caine has managed to unite much of the sector together in a loose confederation of barbarian and pirate states. He keeps them all in line through the promise of plunder and riches and the threat of force. So far, he’s managed to keep his house in order.”
“So, what’s his goal with financing Rapture and other outlaw groups?”
“Apparently, Caine has decided that Bright Jewel isn’t enough. His inner circles have pushed for an expansion in their criminal activities and influence. The only problem is the return of France. Our presence in Wild Space would severely jeopardize his plans for expansion, or even threaten his power base. A direct war would ultimately be pointless, especially if we rally our neighbors, but he’s far too smart to make that kind of error. Instead, he’s opting for an indirect method to weaken our position. By supporting his outlaw proxies and encouraging them to wage a campaign of terrorism and piracy, Caine hopes to divert our attention and spread out our forces on the Imperial Rim long enough to strengthen his position to the point where he can remain fully independent. Given enough time, he could easily build himself up to the point where he can be a serious threat to stability in the region, especially in regards to our plans for expansion.”
Louis-Napoleon nodded. “Caine and his cartel have to be eliminated then. Do you have a plan?”
Véron nodded to Henri as the holoprojector turned off. “We believe that our best bet in ending this threat is to exploit the fragile structure of the cartel. The Bright Jewel Cartel is kept together through Caine’s dominance and intimidation, which also forces normally hostile groups to cooperate together. If he can be killed in a false flag operation, we can cause a major destabilization in their organization. Everyone will blame everyone else and the cartel will come apart in a frenzy of self-destructive power grabs. With the cartel no long a threat, we gain the ability to do what we please with the sector and secure the area from anymore upstarts.”
“I assume you know how this will be executed?” asked the Emperor.
“A handful of Legionnaires can infiltrate the cartel, manipulate the factions, and kill Caine while pinning it on another faction. We’ll provide them with support, but, for the most part, they’ll be on their own, though that would hardly be considered a disadvantage for these individuals.
”You have a group in mind?”
The Marshal-General passed to Louis-Napoleon a datapad. “There are over a million operators under the Legion’s jurisdiction, each one capable of operating independently or in small teams depending on the mission. The team I’ve selected after conferring with my subordinates are well suited to this type of dirty black ops work. The commander of the team in particular has had experience in disrupting pirate statelets in Wild Space.”
“Very well. Insert them into Bright Jewel and carry out the plan. It’s time to shake up things out there.”
*May change depending on when we make the time jump.
"America is impossible to conquer. There are too many gas stations and too many empty coca-cola bottles there." -Gregory Zhukov
"Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons." -Douglas MacArthur
"Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons." -Douglas MacArthur
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Legends of the 34th century, vol.2
The Datasphere
It is said that the Datasphere is in fact a living construct. That when people die, their souls will, after a certain time, be recreated by the flux of the immense galaxy-wide computer network and circle its endless expanse forever. Single-bit errors, quantum uncertainty and self-adaptive, ever changing programs running on trillions of computers created, due to laws of chance alone, information that was no put into the system by anybody else.
From time to time, as the legend claims, people would receive messages from their old friends, long-dead relatives, historical figures and even gods and angels. In the same way, it is supposedly possible to communicate with souls long lost: an e-mail set loose upon the quantum waves of the Datasphere would circulate, bouncing from server to server, until the lost soul encountered it, and for a brief moment, recalled parts of its former life.
It is for this reason, folk storytellers speculate, that vast and powerful CompInts do not go insane with boredom cause by the fact they can accomplish any mortal task with trivial ease. These entities, as is said, spend most of their time immersed in the Datasphere and attempting to draw information from its magnificient chaos.
One deck jockey, going by the nickmane of Ash, claims to have observed Olympic, the Sovereignty's most powerful computational intelligence, launch programs and feelers into the galaxy's biggest spam servers and initiate complex decryption alogrythms there. The validity of this claim if disputed, however this didn't stop various groups from attempting to do the same: collate the chaotic and disorganized information flow of the Datasphere and treat it as a code, which, when cracked, will unveil the secret of life, the universe, and everything!
The Collectors
There are as many folk legends about Collectors as there are Wild Space Traders. It is difficult to even summarize the most salient ones: many claim the enigmatic machines are, in fact, souls of spacers lost within the shoals. These unfortunate souls attempting a run across the choals whose drives give out are then confined to a lonely, terrible death in the vast uncharted void.
According to that particular tale, their grief and pain calls out the mighty Star Gods, ancient creatures which grant upon the spacers eternal life inside robotic shells. But in exchange for this boon, the spacers enter a pact, in which they shall provide more souls for the ever-hungry creatures from beyond time and space ; So they go forth, assail innocent spacecraft and feed the souls of their crews to the Star Gods as offerings.
The most succesful of those spacers become Monoliths, terrifying constructs and avatars of the Star Gods themselves, imbued with their fearsome power.
This particular legend is the most prevalent, and has sparked numerous investigative expeditions and even end-of-time religious cults of various flavors.
However, this is not the only explanation for the Collectors that is floating about: another notable legend claims the AI race is in fact a benevolent force, chosing people from amongst the mortals to receive the gift of immortality. According to the most popular versions of this legend, those who are taken by Collectors ascend to a higher plane of existence: eventually, when galactic sapients are ready, the machines will come out of the shoals, offering the gift to all sentients. This version, of course, in its most exteme sparks cults that try to deliberately attract Collector attention to themselves, in the hope that they will be thought worthy of receiving the gift.
Earth and Nova Terra
We all know the mystery of Earth and Nova Terra, which has baffled scientists ever since first contact was established between both planets. Two worlds, separated by light years, with identical sentients, fully genetically compatible - and, in fact, identical ecosystems as well! If there exists currently a bigger scientific conundrum, I am not aware of that.
As with any such matter, Earth and Nova Terra have their own share of legends and folk fairy tales. By far the most popular is the so called "seed theory", which claims humans did not, in fact, evolve on either planet at all: but were either seeded there by an unknown yet vastly powerful race of progenitors. Far from the usual spirit of a folk tale, the seed theory proponents have formed a quasi-scientific movement which claims to have evidence for such an instance, in the form of ancient writings: both from Earth and Nova Terran history.
Curiously, one cannot talk about the cultural phenomenon of Earth and Nova Terra without mentioning the Fallus Boing movement: originating from the Nova Terran nation of Shroomania, the Fallus Boingers claim the entire universe is an artificial construct. An explanation for Earth and Nova Terra, according to them, is easy: they were built wholesale no more than a decade ago by a super-powerful extrauniversal creature known as "Z", which has been using its creation as a source of amusement ever since.
The Datasphere
It is said that the Datasphere is in fact a living construct. That when people die, their souls will, after a certain time, be recreated by the flux of the immense galaxy-wide computer network and circle its endless expanse forever. Single-bit errors, quantum uncertainty and self-adaptive, ever changing programs running on trillions of computers created, due to laws of chance alone, information that was no put into the system by anybody else.
From time to time, as the legend claims, people would receive messages from their old friends, long-dead relatives, historical figures and even gods and angels. In the same way, it is supposedly possible to communicate with souls long lost: an e-mail set loose upon the quantum waves of the Datasphere would circulate, bouncing from server to server, until the lost soul encountered it, and for a brief moment, recalled parts of its former life.
It is for this reason, folk storytellers speculate, that vast and powerful CompInts do not go insane with boredom cause by the fact they can accomplish any mortal task with trivial ease. These entities, as is said, spend most of their time immersed in the Datasphere and attempting to draw information from its magnificient chaos.
One deck jockey, going by the nickmane of Ash, claims to have observed Olympic, the Sovereignty's most powerful computational intelligence, launch programs and feelers into the galaxy's biggest spam servers and initiate complex decryption alogrythms there. The validity of this claim if disputed, however this didn't stop various groups from attempting to do the same: collate the chaotic and disorganized information flow of the Datasphere and treat it as a code, which, when cracked, will unveil the secret of life, the universe, and everything!
The Collectors
There are as many folk legends about Collectors as there are Wild Space Traders. It is difficult to even summarize the most salient ones: many claim the enigmatic machines are, in fact, souls of spacers lost within the shoals. These unfortunate souls attempting a run across the choals whose drives give out are then confined to a lonely, terrible death in the vast uncharted void.
According to that particular tale, their grief and pain calls out the mighty Star Gods, ancient creatures which grant upon the spacers eternal life inside robotic shells. But in exchange for this boon, the spacers enter a pact, in which they shall provide more souls for the ever-hungry creatures from beyond time and space ; So they go forth, assail innocent spacecraft and feed the souls of their crews to the Star Gods as offerings.
The most succesful of those spacers become Monoliths, terrifying constructs and avatars of the Star Gods themselves, imbued with their fearsome power.
This particular legend is the most prevalent, and has sparked numerous investigative expeditions and even end-of-time religious cults of various flavors.
However, this is not the only explanation for the Collectors that is floating about: another notable legend claims the AI race is in fact a benevolent force, chosing people from amongst the mortals to receive the gift of immortality. According to the most popular versions of this legend, those who are taken by Collectors ascend to a higher plane of existence: eventually, when galactic sapients are ready, the machines will come out of the shoals, offering the gift to all sentients. This version, of course, in its most exteme sparks cults that try to deliberately attract Collector attention to themselves, in the hope that they will be thought worthy of receiving the gift.
Earth and Nova Terra
We all know the mystery of Earth and Nova Terra, which has baffled scientists ever since first contact was established between both planets. Two worlds, separated by light years, with identical sentients, fully genetically compatible - and, in fact, identical ecosystems as well! If there exists currently a bigger scientific conundrum, I am not aware of that.
As with any such matter, Earth and Nova Terra have their own share of legends and folk fairy tales. By far the most popular is the so called "seed theory", which claims humans did not, in fact, evolve on either planet at all: but were either seeded there by an unknown yet vastly powerful race of progenitors. Far from the usual spirit of a folk tale, the seed theory proponents have formed a quasi-scientific movement which claims to have evidence for such an instance, in the form of ancient writings: both from Earth and Nova Terran history.
Curiously, one cannot talk about the cultural phenomenon of Earth and Nova Terra without mentioning the Fallus Boing movement: originating from the Nova Terran nation of Shroomania, the Fallus Boingers claim the entire universe is an artificial construct. An explanation for Earth and Nova Terra, according to them, is easy: they were built wholesale no more than a decade ago by a super-powerful extrauniversal creature known as "Z", which has been using its creation as a source of amusement ever since.
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
- NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
-
DarthShady
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- Posts: 1872
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Somewhere in Wild Space
Jessica was dreaming, it wasn't a peaceful dream, it was a nightmare. Horrible monsters were attacking her home world, the city that she lived in was overrun, the defenders could do little to stem the tide of horror that had descended upon the people of Janus. She saw her father get torn to pieces by the dreaded abominations, he died trying to protect her and her mother, and he failed. The monsters came after them. They ran.
But there was nowhere to run.
They came from all sides, even bursting from the ground, they showed no mercy - no compassion. They were coming after her. She remembered their name, if such things truly did have a name, the Karlack - the worst nightmare of every sentient in Wild Space. They caught up to her. She fell.
Her mother tried to help her up, tried to protect her, but she too fell victim - her head blasted into a bloody mist by a Reapers Omega energy weapon. The womens lifeless, headless body fell to the ground. Jessica screamed. But it was not a normal scream. A blast of energy erupted from her, sending several of the Karlack creatures flying through the air.
She felt her anger consume her, she would fight them. She would kill them all.
Her thoughts were interrupted when she realized that she was surrounded by the horde of chitinous creatures. She felt a presence in her mind, probing her thoughts, her memories - her very essence. Jessica tried to resist, but it was a futile effort. She felt weak, the presence grew stronger, like a dark shadow it was consuming her mind, overwhelming her. She fainted.
She awoke from the dream, only to find herself immersed in a greater nightmare.
***
Jessica opened her eyes, slowly waking up, relieved that it was only a dream. But then she realized, she wasn't in her room, it wasn't a dream. She was scared and alone, she couldn't see anything around her, she was alone in the dark. At least thats what she thought. She tried to get up, to look around and try to figure out where she was. Then she remembered, it all came back to her, and suddenly an overwhelming sense of fear engulfed her.
She realized she was not alone.
A female voice spoke to her through the darkness.
"Welcome." The voice said. Jessica realized that the voice was in her head. She started shaking, panicking.
"You have a new purpose." The voice continued.
"No!" Jessica screamed. "What do you want from me?!"
The woman giggled, as if enjoying her fear. Something moved in the dark.
"Leave me alone!" Jessica screamed again.
A pair of dark red eyes flickered to life in the dark, and the room began to illuminate with a strange orange glow, allowing Jessica to see the woman who spoke to her. The woman was dressed in a short red skirt and a white blouse, and was sitting atop a large scorpion like creature,she smiled at her. The creature hissed and Jessica screamed, trying to back away.
"There is no need to be afraid." The woman spoke to her. "Your transformation will be painless, and wonderful. It is something only a select few ever experience. You should consider yourself lucky, you will become one with us."
"Never! You monster!" Jessica screamed and began crying.
The woman began playing with her long black hair, nibbling on a small lock of it with an amused expression on her face. She got up from the creature and looked into Jessica's eyes.
"You are all the same. Scared little cowards. but that will change." She smiled. "From this day forward your life belongs to us...you will serve The Swarm! Just like all the others we took from Janus..."
The room was dark once again.
Jessica was dreaming, it wasn't a peaceful dream, it was a nightmare. Horrible monsters were attacking her home world, the city that she lived in was overrun, the defenders could do little to stem the tide of horror that had descended upon the people of Janus. She saw her father get torn to pieces by the dreaded abominations, he died trying to protect her and her mother, and he failed. The monsters came after them. They ran.
But there was nowhere to run.
They came from all sides, even bursting from the ground, they showed no mercy - no compassion. They were coming after her. She remembered their name, if such things truly did have a name, the Karlack - the worst nightmare of every sentient in Wild Space. They caught up to her. She fell.
Her mother tried to help her up, tried to protect her, but she too fell victim - her head blasted into a bloody mist by a Reapers Omega energy weapon. The womens lifeless, headless body fell to the ground. Jessica screamed. But it was not a normal scream. A blast of energy erupted from her, sending several of the Karlack creatures flying through the air.
She felt her anger consume her, she would fight them. She would kill them all.
Her thoughts were interrupted when she realized that she was surrounded by the horde of chitinous creatures. She felt a presence in her mind, probing her thoughts, her memories - her very essence. Jessica tried to resist, but it was a futile effort. She felt weak, the presence grew stronger, like a dark shadow it was consuming her mind, overwhelming her. She fainted.
She awoke from the dream, only to find herself immersed in a greater nightmare.
***
Jessica opened her eyes, slowly waking up, relieved that it was only a dream. But then she realized, she wasn't in her room, it wasn't a dream. She was scared and alone, she couldn't see anything around her, she was alone in the dark. At least thats what she thought. She tried to get up, to look around and try to figure out where she was. Then she remembered, it all came back to her, and suddenly an overwhelming sense of fear engulfed her.
She realized she was not alone.
A female voice spoke to her through the darkness.
"Welcome." The voice said. Jessica realized that the voice was in her head. She started shaking, panicking.
"You have a new purpose." The voice continued.
"No!" Jessica screamed. "What do you want from me?!"
The woman giggled, as if enjoying her fear. Something moved in the dark.
"Leave me alone!" Jessica screamed again.
A pair of dark red eyes flickered to life in the dark, and the room began to illuminate with a strange orange glow, allowing Jessica to see the woman who spoke to her. The woman was dressed in a short red skirt and a white blouse, and was sitting atop a large scorpion like creature,she smiled at her. The creature hissed and Jessica screamed, trying to back away.
"There is no need to be afraid." The woman spoke to her. "Your transformation will be painless, and wonderful. It is something only a select few ever experience. You should consider yourself lucky, you will become one with us."
"Never! You monster!" Jessica screamed and began crying.
The woman began playing with her long black hair, nibbling on a small lock of it with an amused expression on her face. She got up from the creature and looked into Jessica's eyes.
"You are all the same. Scared little cowards. but that will change." She smiled. "From this day forward your life belongs to us...you will serve The Swarm! Just like all the others we took from Janus..."
The room was dark once again.
Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
GALAXY NEWS BLOG
Corporate war in the making?
The recent attack against one of Schromkorp's Von Neumann swarms has led experts, political pundits and ordinary folks throughout Sovereignty space to speculate on a possible corportate war in the making.
While the police force in charge of the affected area was unable to ascertain the perpetrator of the attack - which caused hundreds of billion in losses by activating the swarm's emergency shutdown protocol - our sources within the Kerenkov police indicate that there may be a link between this incident and the assassination and subsequent mind-state sabotage of Edward Limpkin, SinTek's director of colonial development.
Additional information uncovered by our investigative journalists indicates that Edward Limpkin's assassing - and, likely, the perpetrator of his mind-state sabotage - used a rare military upload frame manufactured by Maibatsu. Bodies of this type are only sold to the military special forces, and so may indicate a deeper involvement by the said corporation.
So far, no statement has been released by the police, CEID or corporate representatives regarding the matter.
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
- NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.