So I did something. (Original Sci-Fi, critics wanted)

[VX-145]

So this is the last segment. There'll be bonus content down the bottom.

Story:


NEAR EARTH

The dreadnought INS Victory span slowly in space.

The ancient ship was covered in a plethora of wounds; everything from point-defence gun rounds to a single, devastating antiparticle beam that had cored through the once-proud ship. Its reactors were gone, destroyed by the beam, and lights flickered on and off as emergency power was slowly established.

Captain Horatio Jackson slowly woke up in the captain's chair. His status panels were flashing red, when they were on at all. The lighting on the bridge had switched to the emergency red-lights, and most of the crew were unconscious. He keyed in the sequence for the medical kits built into the chairs, and watched as his crew woke up.

The sensor officer was the first to report; “Confirmed Seraphim kill.” That was the most important thing.

Damage control was next, slurring as she spoke; “Dama- Damage to all systems. One beam tube is still operational, but we don't have power to fire it. Reactors... they're just gone. Backups are going to be have to be patched in manually. Engines are out, we've got very little control over manoeuvring thrusters and I can't see the fuel tanks on here.” That was to be expected; dreadnought-on-dreadnought combat had always been extremely deadly.

“Alright,” he ordered, “try and regain as much control as you can. Get this spin stabilised, and have someone work on getting those backups up. We might be about to go into combat again, and I want to get at least one shot off if we do.”

“Their battleship's pulling alongside us,” said the sensors officer.

“We're being hailed,” reported the communications officer. Jackson nodded to them, and a second later the face of the Sky-Warrior admiral filled one of the screens.

“That was an... interesting interlude,” screeched the face. “I would like an explanation, if you don't mind.”

“That,” Jackson replied, “Was what we called a Seraphim. They're some sort of species that evolved in a high-energy region of space, or something. They were very dangerous, and could kill fleets in seconds. What they don't kill, they... turn. All it takes is the slightest hint of submission, and they have you. Hell, back when humanity was young, one of them screamed for some reason. It was audible on Earth from their nest; started most of our major religions. Thankfully, that one should be the last, although how the hell it survived I have no idea.”

The admiral considered this for a few seconds, then nodded to himself. “My fleet is retreating. We have just twenty ships left, all of them damaged. Goodbye, Captain Jackson.” The channel cut off.

What was left of the Clan fleet pulled away from Earth, heading towards the Transway point at Mars. As they left, Jackson relaxed in his chair, exhaling to release the stresses of battle. Then, he turned to Carter.

“So, any theories?” he asked.

“As to the Seraphim?” she said. He nodded. “Well,” she continued, “it probably went dormant somewhere in the solar system. That barge came across it, and woke it up. It would have had to have been somewhere nutrient-rich, close to the conditions we found in their nest.”

“A gas giant would work,” Jackson interjected. “Jupiter's big enough that it could have escaped detection.”

“You do realise this probably means there's more of them out there,” Maria said. “The odds of that one being the only one to try to go dormant are almost astronomical.”

“Actually,” Jackson replied, “I think that one was the one that brought down Earth, back then. After we killed the nest, it didn't get any more orders, so it just found somewhere to sleep and settled down. Considering we were the only species they knew about...”

“And if you're wrong?”

“Oh, we're going to go looking for more of them as soon as possible. I just meant that we probably won't find one in any of our systems. Speaking of which, we should probably try and get the ship patched up.”

Around them, the crew bustled, trying to coax the dreadnought back to life.

________________

EPILOGUE

One Year Later

The Alliance Dreadnought ANS Victory floated in space. Beside it was the destroyer ANS Salvager's Joy, her turrets now part of the ship rather than welded on. On the dreadnought's other side was the battleship ANS Mother's Talons, refitted with ancient Earth technology.

Around them were six hundred ships of the Alliance fleet. Most of them were Clan designs, upgraded in the orbital yards that the Magi had been able to assemble. There were a smattering of independent designs too, races which had recently discovered that there was alien life in the galaxy. They had been greeted with open arms, and invited to the Alliance. There were also a few Earth-built ships in the fleet, crewed by a mixture of the various races.

Behind the fleet floated the Great Roost. The war with the Sky-Warrior King and his court had taken several months, but between massive slave rebellions and the defection of most of the Clans, the result was inevitable. For several months, the green orb had burned, under siege within and without.

Now, however, the planet had turned into a trade hub. There had been talk of declaring it the capital of Alliance space, but a space station in Beta Arae had been found, a huge, ancient habitat which had been abandoned by the Earth empire over a thousand years ago.

The dreadnought herself was pristine. Almost every single wound it had taken had been repaired, new armour plates fitted, sensor antennae replaced and weapons refitted. The beam arrays now numbered five, just as they had when the ship was launched. One thing was different, though. A scorch mark circled the centre of the ship, as seen from the front. The Seraphim's antiparticle lance had struck there, and the scars remained as a reminder of what humanity had sacrificed.

Ancient auto-routines, now re-wired, made sure the ship was still operating. Cleaning robots stalked the hallways, moving out of the way of the crew as they bustled about their duties. Groups of fighters launched on patrol, more coming in to land. The weapon banks, still ready, sat idle. They had spat death at the creatures once thought of as gods, and none since the King had dared to challenge them.

As one, the fleet surged forwards, splitting into task forces and patrol groups. The Talons took a fleet out to Beta Arae, to guard the capital. The Joy went out to the border regions, to search for new species and to guard the ships that had been assigned to deploy new Highway Access Points across the galaxy.

The Victory left, alone, to hunt down any Seraphim that had survived and gone dormant. The dreadnought was the only ship equipped with T-band sensors, capable of detecting a Field at long range. They were too complex for even the Magi to produce yet.

As the ancient ship pulled onto the highway, it rolled in salute. Its crew sent a message to the rest of the fleet; “We will return.”

_______________

EARTH
France, Lyon

Leesh ran. Around her, the city shimmered in the daylight. It had finally been repaired; what had once been trees of stone were now solid buildings, packed with people. She came to a park, one of the city's robots helping some workers lay down a bench. The gun on its arm, welded on a year ago, hadn't been used in a very long time.

The city's defensive buildings had been retracted into the ground some months before, the space above them used for open-air markets, swimming pools and parks. A car rumbled past her, the occupants listening to some ancient Earth music.

She finally came to her home, her legs burning with the effort. Stepping inside, she was greeted with the voice of one of the Magi; “Welcome back, Councillor Leesh. There are several issues that require your attention: the rebuilding of London, the-” She cut it off.

“I don't want to deal with that right now, okay?” she said. The screen showing the command centre, converted into a council room, cut off. She walked into the living room.

“How was it?” asked Land as he saw her.

“Not too bad,” she replied, kissing him. “We had a vote on some minor stuff; things like traffic control and so on. We could just get the Magi to do it, but they've made it clear they'd rather not interfere in people's lives too much. Most of their attention's on the rebuilding works anyway. How'd it go for you?”

“It went well. I managed to start some of the children on some actual programming work, and we did some salvage practice today,” he said. “I'm thinking of taking them over to one of the other cities, controlled conditions, and have them each recover something interesting. Would be useful experience.”

“How about the little ones?” Leesh asked. She was always interested in what Land's classes were up to; it made a change from the council.

“Basic literacy and numeracy, as well as some computer work. This year's lower class should be done before the summer,” Land replied.

“That's good. Hey, if you do go over to one of the other cities, I'll have to find a reason to tag along. I could use a holiday,” she said. Land laughed at that. “Anyway,” she continued, “I'm going to have to go upstairs for a bit, sort out some paperwork. Can you get dinner started for me?”

“Yeah, fiiine,” he said, feigning reluctance. “Oh, yeah,” he called, as she walked up the stairs. “Your father called. He's having fun, apparently he found a boat somewhere and he's gone fishing.”

“Good to hear,” she called back.

For the first time in over thousand years, humanity enjoyed peace.

____

BONUS CONTENT: FTL Travel

FTL travel in this universe is accomplished in two ways. First, there's the generic space-warping drive. Point ship at target, ship goes there. This, however is relatively slow - the Victory, for those of you paying attention, can break about 14 light-years per day.

The second way of breaking the light barrier is with a Highway (Or a Transway if you're from one of the Clans - yes they are the same thing in case anyone's confused). These are essentially permanent tunnels in the fabric of space. My physics knowledge isn't good enough to come up with detailed mechanics, but there is no light-speed barrier and all acceleration is vastly improved. The base speed on a highway is about 70 light-years per day. You can go faster, but that creates risks akin to going over the speed limit on a crowded motorway.

Objects on a highway can interact with each other. Collisions can occur, and it's possible to actually dock two ships together entirely in the highway if it's clear enough. Weapons can theoretically be fired while travelling on it, but it's not usually a good idea; the tunnels can be destabilised if enough energy is pumped into them. In the heyday of the Empire, special service stations were set up inside the highway tunnels, allowing smaller ships to take longer journeys. I didn't get a chance to work this into the story, but yes you can find something akin to an American trucker stop in space.

____

Anyway, that's the end of this story. What did you all think? As in the title, be as critical as you like. Part of this exercise was to find out if I'm actually any good at this.

[jayel]

a bit of a wank but you only had two pages, good to very good

[atg]

I enjoyed the read - thanks for writing.

Wouldn't mind a prequel actually about the war against the Seraphim.

[madd0ct0r]

The captain's dialogue seemed a bit melodramatic during the battle, and the seraphim felt a bit like a deus ex machina. It has logic to it, but turning up when it did, in the nick of time to turn the battle does feel a bit simple.

On the other hand, I'm so sending this story to taccoms with a request someone look into modeling the ships up!

[VX-145]

I will say I did run out of steam towards the end; this is the first story I've ever actually finished, for the record

jayel - I ran into a certain problem with respect to ship strengths, namely: "How do I make things challenging if I've already said this ship is larger and better than almost every ship arrayed against it?". I tried toning the Victory down a little, but since I'd already posted some chapters there was only so much I could do.

atg - I'm not entirely sure a prequel would work; I was trying to keep the Seraphim as mysterious as possible (hence why it doesn't get much of a description) and writing about that war might destroy some of that. On the other hand, ideas have been bouncing around my head for a while now and it would be cool to see humanity at its (first) peak The only other problem is that lectures have actually started now; when I wrote this I was literally just sitting around doing nothing for most of the day. I'll try to find some free time somewhere.

madd0ct0r (why do none of you guys have capital letters? ) - Would you believe I was going for melodramatic? I will admit it was probably a bit over the top, though. And yeah, I should really have had hints to the Seraphim showing up a lot earlier in the story. Maybe I could have had some scouts go missing or something, I don't know.

With respect to modelling, I actually have no idea how most of these ships look myself, aside from the Builder's Wisdom which I imagined as a large, UFO-like ship. It'd be interesting to see what people come up with.

[Borgholio]

So what caused the great slave rebellions and defections of the clans to begin the civil war? Was it the realization that Humans were actually the founders?

[VX-145]

Well, the slaves were humans; a bit of propaganda from Sol and those rebellions were basically bound to happen. Since owning a slave was something of a status symbol (or rather, owning lots of slaves is), in the early rebellions a lot of leaders were taken out.

The Clan defections were partly religious and partly pragmatic. The religious aspect is quite obvious, I should imagine - basically, some of the various Clans weren't as eager to fight their gods as humanity was. (If I do a prequel, that whole idea will need to be expanded upon). The pragmatic aspect is more subtle; ships from the height of the human empire are a lot better than their more recent counterparts. While the Victory could easily be destroyed by the full might of the Clan fleets, some people don't know that and most of the people who do don't want to risk blowing the ship up and losing all of its technology.

There's also a political aspect; most Clan leaders are jockeying for position with the ultimate goal of becoming the next King. Onto this mass of backstabbing comes a Builder Dreadnought, fully crewed and, while damaged, easily repairable. So, you get a lot of leaders joining up with it... only to be stuck with the Alliance afterwards because none of them can make a move against each other and still be strong enough to fight off the true idealists and all the other various factions.

I hope that makes some sense, I've kind of had a busy day.

[Scorpion]

VX-145, I just finished reading your story and I absolutely loved it! However, I would like to make some constructive (I hope) criticism.

The main thing is that the story feels a little bit "rushed", which is natural when you have such an epic story in scope in so few chapters. The action a character undertakes in a chapter is often resolved in the very next chapter, or even the same. Maybe that's a consequence of the absence of time-stamps, analogous to the space-stamps you have in the beginning of each chapter. But there are some things that are solved (IMHO) way too quickly, like the flipping of the Clan scoutship (and the suddenness that the Captain decided to give capital-ship-grade weapons to an alien he just met), humanity going from illiterate slaves and one Dreadnought to ruling the known Galaxy in one year or merely physical things, like space travel (which takes a loooooooooooooooong time).

Don't get me wrong, I loved the story, but I think you missed a few storytelling opportunities. The "dead times" are great for exploring/analysing the setting or developing character. We never knew how the average crewman felt after knowing that he had been sleeping for a thousand years, or what were the dillemas running through the Alien captain's mind before he decided to turn, or even what was life on Earth like for the "free-slaves".

But by the Great C'thulhu, if you do decide to make a longer rewrite of this story, I'll be on it like white on rice!

[Borgholio]

Dammit, I thought it was an update.

[VX-145]

Borgholio: It'd be the other thread for updates, this one's been finished for a while. Now exams and stuff are over I might even update that one

Scorpion: Good advice, actually. This was a little rushed - I was mostly just making sure I'd actually finish this one rather than just drifting away from it after a while. There are reasons behind the specific points you made, but those scenes could use expanding. Maybe when I finish the prequel (blatant self-advertising: it's somewhere on the first or second page of this subforum) I'll come back and re-do this one. Thanks for the feedback.