SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Create, read, or participate in text-based RPGs

Moderators: Thanas, Steve

Locked
User avatar
Fingolfin_Noldor
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 11834
Joined: 2006-05-15 10:36am
Location: At the Helm of the HAB Star Dreadnaught Star Fist

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Fingolfin_Noldor »

Constantinople Times

Adeptus Mechanicus Genetic Engineering Team creates the first intelligent Fenrisian Bears

Image

An Adeptus Mechanicus Genetic Engineering Team created the first intelligent Fenrisian Bears. "They are highly intelligent, and possibly more intelligent than Bragulans in fact. We are still in the process of teaching them things to see how much they are capable of learning," says the head Tech Magos. It is said that the Ecumenical Patriarch is eager to ride one of these intelligent bears to go on a "purge of heretics". When Rus Komnenos, Son of the God Emperor, was asked whether he would ride such a bear, his reply was, with a grunt, "Why would I want to ride a talking bear? I like my pet bears as they are, thank you."
Image
STGOD: Byzantine Empire
Your spirit, diseased as it is, refuses to allow you to give up, no matter what threats you face... and whatever wreckage you leave behind you.
Kreia
User avatar
Mayabird
Storytime!
Posts: 5970
Joined: 2003-11-26 04:31pm
Location: IA > GA

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Mayabird »

Mostly written by Shroom, but I helped a little.
BYZON: Cultural Learnings of the Refuge for Make Benefit Glorious Bragulan Star Empire
Coming to Bragule
Image
Four destroyers passed through the warp gate first. Immediately upon exiting the fargate they were greeted by the blazing sun of Bragule, and when their sensors managed to compensate for the intense glare they saw Bragulan warships nearby, already waiting for them. The Bragulan ships’ sensors were already adjusted to the local conditions, allowing them to scrutinize their new visitors with their arrays of passive-aggressive sensors and space microscopes while the arrivals were still adapting to their new environs. The Refugees approved; it was a good paranoid defensive response. The Bragulans, on the other hand, approved of the ugly, boxy, functional warships their new guests had arrived in.

Once the Refugee warships noted that they were not being shot at, they transmitted the go-ahead order back through the gate so the ambassadorial yacht could emerge. It was also an ugly thing, though smaller, and a ridiculous amount of garbage had been welded all over its hull. The yacht waited a moment to adjust its own sensors before joining the formation.

After both sides regarded each other, the Bragulan ships transmitted coordinates to the Refugee ships, instructing them not to deviate, or else. Or else what was left unsaid, in an unspoken understanding. The coordinates directed the Refuge warships to stay in a holding zone a fair distance away from Bragule itself, after all it wouldn’t do for a paranoiac state to allow strange foreign warships anywhere near their throne-world, while the yacht itself was instructed to dock at the Great Patriotic Bragulan People’s Most Upright Space Turboliftalator of Bragule.
Image
The Great Patriotic Bragulan People’s Most Upright Space Turboliftalator of Bragule was an ancient pre-revolutionary artifact, thus explaining its relatively smooth and aerodynamic aesthetic. When Byzon and his revolutionary vanguards finally took Bragule, they had debated whether or not the Turboliftalator was to be torn down or not, and it was eventually decided to ideologically-correct the structure by putting graven images of Byzon inside every level of the tower - from the ground floor to the orbital space-balcony. Periodically they also had to space human prisoners of war to reaffirm the space elevator’s loyalty.

Some puny hew-mon prisoners were being tossed out an airlock as the ship descended to its dock-site. Though the Refugees didn’t know it, it was a fortuitous sight - for it was said to be good luck to see humans getting spaced when taking a ride on the turboliftalator, an omen of some future fortune or even the Imperator’s favor. The only more auspicious sign was in actually seeing a human burn up during re-entry from the surface of Bragule, for Bragulans could make a wish on the sight of a shooting human, and if that citizen was loyal enough the Imperator might even hear his or her wish through the omnipresent surveillance devices and grant it.

(They kept it amongst themselves, but the Refugees were a bit worried by the view below of endless greyish rolling clouds. It looked more like some hellish hothouse planet than somewhere people would live. Did they really go to the right place?)

The shuttle docked. There, inside the cavernous landing bay, awaited a fine Bragulan delegation. Aside from scores of Legion soldiers, there was a representative from the People's Department of Limited Foreign Interaction and Human Affairs, a high ranking diplomatic liaison who was also also an IBGV field operative; as well as officers from the Bragulan militaries in the form of a captain from the Space Fleet and a colonel from the Legions. The fact that this was a first contact situation made it of much more import than the previous visitation of the Chamarrans, and so did the Bragulans treat it thusly.

The dignitaries were hand-picked for their capacity to doublethink quickly, yet at the same time were chosen for the security of their thought contents and meekness of their security clearances - so if the aliens had any unexpected mentallic abilities, the dignitaries’ brains would not have any compromising secrets to mind-read. The opposite, in fact, for in the preceding weeks they had been unknowingly fed disinformations that they were led to believe were true, so if any mental intrusionist stole their memories, whatever information in them would turn out to be actually false - even if both the psyker and the Bragulans didn’t know it, in a feat of mental Bragskirovka.

Bragskirovka aside, the three bears had prepared themselves long and hard for this moment - rigorously trained by the first contact specialists, taught in all forms of diplo-politico protocols and procedures, reviewed in alienoid scienticianology, and drilled in countless live-fire exercises. But still, to be on the forefront of such a momentous event as meeting with strange heretofore unknown creatures was exhilarating, to be entrusted with such responsibility by the Imperator...

The shuttle doors opened.

First, the armored troops (or possibly giant robots that looked like armored troops) marched out. They were polished to a fine sheen, all identical in appearance and size, carrying no obvious weapons except for rocket-launcher-sized guns carried on a shoulder, and silent except for the synchronized stomp of their boots on the floor. When they reached the end of the (actually rather short) walkway, they raised one arm in what was apparently a salute, turned to the side, cleared a path, and turned back towards the Bragulan troops, fully at attention.

Behind them had been the ambassador sent by the Refuge. He flew low and slowly, landing at the head of the walkway.
Image
Moas not included.
The Bragulan soldiers saluted the Refugee ambassador, raising their fists in unison before beating it against their chest in a great synchronized martial movement. Then, as they snapped at attention, they began breathing in perfect unison, pairs of Bragulan lungs one hundred strong inhaling and exhaling as one unified Byzonist whole - the asthmatic death-rattle hisses of their gas masks echoing throughout the bay. Then they parted, while still presenting their faces forwards towards the Refugees in a gesture of respect - for Bragulans never turned their backsides on those they respected, or considered as worthy foes, which were basically the same thing for Bragulans only respected force - as they began marching sideways in a fashion reminiscent of crabs, parting to form a path for the dignitaries to cross. The diplomatic liaison, the space captain, and the colonel-legionnaire marched to meet the Refugee ambassador.

“Hail!” the Bragulan three likewise saluted the Refugees, raising fists and clapping them against their chests, causing medals to rattle on the jackets of the space captain and colonel legionnaire. “O travellers from afar, we welcome you to Bragule, home of the glourious Star Empire. The dear Imperator extends tidings of peace to your fair nation. So let us group-greet you with the patriotic glouries of Bragulanity as our great peoples meet and convene for the first time ever in both their respective histories. Verily, we have much to learn from each other, for these are interesting times indeed.”

They introduced themselves, the diplomatic liaison/IBGV agent as Frydryk Krznvynsky, the space captain was Dobragost Braguslav, and the colonel-legionnaire was Bartosz Zravyadskiyi.

In response, the ambassador raised his wings and dipped forward in a slightly bow. He was much shorter than the Bragulans, but still a very impressive eagle. Every tawny feather was perfectly preened, and his razor beak and claws were not just for show; the talons were actually metal and could easily rip open a Bragulan’s hide. He spoke, in a surprisingly deep voice, “The Refuge is deeply honored by your triumphant grandeur and welcome. The Star Empire of Bragule and its mighty Imperator are truly gracious in allowing us to sojourn to your glorious world. It is our hope and desire that our nations may join our strengths for mutualistic co-fortitudization and go forth with unending benefit.

“I come here as the official representative of the Refuge. My name is KEEEEEER SKREEEEEEE AWK AWK,” and the piercing screech echoed in the bay; the Bragulan dignitaries flinched slightly though the troops did not react, “-but you may call me Fulcrum for convenience.

“And might I present my secretary and second-in-command?” He waved one enormous wing and up drove a shiny round chrome-plated bubble-topped vehicle - with little bits of junk welded to it - to join them.
Image
It was cub-sized, just large enough to hold the squishy Aggregates inside, plus a self-destruct bomb, just in case; it always paid to be prepared. The bubble-top also had some odd indentations on it, and the ambassador showed their purpose by flying up and perching on it. It brought him closer to the eye-level of the Bragulans.

“My assistant may be called Stool.”

And they all laughed.
DPDarkPrimus is my boyfriend!

SDNW4 Nation: The Refuge And, on Nova Terra, Al-Stan the Totally and Completely Honest and Legitimate Weapons Dealer and Used Starship Salesman slept on a bed made of money, with a blaster under his pillow and his sombrero pulled over his face. This is to say, he slept very well indeed.
User avatar
K. A. Pital
Glamorous Commie
Posts: 20813
Joined: 2003-02-26 11:39am
Location: Elysium

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by K. A. Pital »

Commune. Zero.
The small Collector ship was allowed to land on a large plain, which was absolutely void of any presence of fauna or any human influence, as far as the eye could see. A wide grassland, where waves rolled on, creating an uncanny feeling of standing in the middle of a green sea, stretched towards the horizon in all directions. This was the other side of the Zero, the untouched ecological reserve. Out of the air, a human figure manifested itself several meters away from the Collector ship.

- Welcome to the Commune, - the man transmitted simple radio waves. - I am Sigma.
The ship remained motionless.
Image
- As you know, we have sent you a message expressing great interest in your vessels known as the Monoliths, - spoke Sigma.

It was as if he did not even expect any reaction from the guests. The ways of the Commune were simple - to wait... and to wait. Immortality created the God complex, where the Commune citizens thought that most problems could be solved by simply waiting. The Supreme Soviet tried to actively discourage such behavior, reminding people in movies that Marx and a myriad of other thinkers said action is necessary even if the laws of social development inevitably lead to certain outcomes. In other words, knowing the way does not relieve one of the duty to pass the way.

Perhaps Sigma was expecting the same of an immortal CI civilization like the Collectors. He most certainly thought that the guests would not betray their interest until the Commune would offer something interesting to them.

- As you might know, we are firm believers in galactic peace, - continued Sigma, - and we are greatly unsettled by the continuous military expansion of a great majority of civilizations. Either they are too primitive to renounce the ways of war, or... In any case, this has led us to a certain problem. Our government is rather risk-averse. Our people are immortal and can die only in combat, which creates a unique aversion to war among both the human populace and the clouds. On the other hand, the threats are becoming more real, especially in connection with some anti-religious activities that our government pursues, as well as the general militarization of the galaxy. And this leads us to the solution, which we feel is to be found in mutual cooperation, not in further alienation and autarkical military endeavors. Our government has authorized me to ask you, on behalf of the entire Commune, whether it would be possible to arrange one of the following. Option one - a Collector Monolith to be present in Commune space and aid the Commune in defending its territories and command and control centers. Option two - a Collector Monolith to be present somewhere around Commune space, for the same type of aid. And finally, perhaps some sort of technology transfer that would help the Commune either build a Monolith or a similarly capable vessel, or, alternatively, give away an old Monolith, if the Collectors possess one, to the Commune for future use. We understand that Monoliths are part of the Collector civilization and are, most likely, highly advanced intelligent beings. For that reason we can obviously merely ask you, and them, to help us. In return, we could offer the Collectors several things. First of all, a higher collective intelligence inside the Commune is willing to contact with the Collectors directly and perhaps exchange experience, knowledge and whatever else higher intelligences would find appropriate to exchange. Next, the Commune is actively seeking to discover the truth behind the transposition of the Central Alliance into the known galaxy and strongly suspects the work of a higher intelligence. We could offer the Collectors our territory and some computational and productive power in case you would be willing to jointly investigate this most peculiar phenomena.

Sigma stood silent. Well, at least he gave it a try. Which is better than nothing, is it not?

Near Centrality borders. Unnamed solar system, unsuitable for sustaining biological life. Number of system in Commune registry: #14950908
Image
A small fleet of Commune ships came near the lifeless rock which orbited a dying star. It was a group of Akula-class cruisers. The ships hovered near the small moon for a certain time, and it seemed for a while that they were going to lay in a stable orbit. However, after some small projectiles detached from the ships, they started rapidly moving away from the moon.
A most peculiar thing has happened after several days have passed. The surface of the moon became covered with something that resembled a light fog. But it was clear that such a small body could hold no atmosphere.

And stranger yet, streams of the fog started growing out into space. The process was slow, and each day they only grew by several kilometers. It would be clear to a side observer that the Commune ships have released a type of nanotechnological matter with self-reproduction limits removed, more commonly known as "grey goo".

This piece of rock would be unusable for nigh an eternity now (unless someone would be willing to sterilize it with lots of power and then risk his life and the life of his ship and crew to inspect the surface of the planetoid). And by pure coincidence - or maybe not - the Commune has long suspected that this piece of rock was on the Centrality's list of places that it would like to use as forward-observation stations.

It was as if the Commune was saying "Next time we might drop the grey goo on a planet with sentient life". But of course, only the Centrality's military would even get this message, because nobody else would be interested in coming close to the small moon in unclaimed space and inspecting it. So it was a message delivered straight to the recipient with no intermediates. A perfect gesture demonstrating the contempt and utter infuriation of the Commune at the behavior of Centrality's leaders.

Commune. Zero. Umeria Friendship Tower.
Image

- Dr. Bowinger, we are quite delighted to have you here, - for some reason, no Commune official chose to actually manifest himself in a human or humanoid form, so Dr. Bowinger found herself speaking to the air inside the large and empty conference hall.

Perhaps it was the communists' gesture of respect, as if saying "you are advanced enough not to pay attention to such petty little traditions like visual communication and human shapes", or the Commune's elite wanted to achieve some other effect. Perhaps a pscyhological condition of loneliness? Trying to understand what the immortals had in mind was not always easy. But the voice had a most friendly tone, noted Bowinger.

- The details that your government has outlined are quite acceptable - at the time we are not looking for much more than a limited pact that would ensure cooperation in the most critical areas. And, in the spirit of cooperation, the Commune will share information with Umeria as a gesture of good will, to reciprocate the good intent you came here with. We will keep Umeria at all times informed of the diplomatic effort that the Commune is pursuing with the Collectors and other advanced civilizations, so that, in case at some point in the future the wide array of pacts we are seeking with separate powers, might turn into a collective treaty.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...

...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Assalti Frontali
User avatar
PeZook
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 13237
Joined: 2002-07-18 06:08pm
Location: Poland

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by PeZook »

Image

The Commune
Zero, nature preserve

There was silence, only interrupted by the slight onrushing wind, gently rustling the leaves of the only tree within a hundred kilometres. No sound disrupted that eerie aura, even as Sigma presented his proposal - for he used radio waves, and it would require a being capable of perceiving them to know there was any kind of activity.

The silence broke, eventually. The ship observed by the only humanoid in the area rustled slightly, and a ramp descended from its underbelly with a hiss of hydraulics. On the top of it, appeared three more humanoids: two skeletal, with glowing red eyes and huge weapons, and one which, for all organics, would appear human. Then again, so would Sigma.

The Collector combat Units took a step back, and the humanoid was the only one to descend down the ramp. He looked at his counterpart, the Commune's diplomat.

Briefly, an unnatural silence fell upon the plain again. It was as if the universe itself held its breath in awe at this meeting, for some reason. Maybe it expected the situation to explode into violence at a moment's notice.

Image

"Uncanny", Unit 7 finally spoke - vocally. Sigma nodded - he could feel it too, though he was unsure of the cause. Unit 7's bodyguards obviously did as well, as they approached the top of the ramp to check if their charge was all right.

After a minute or so of sizing each other up, Unit 7 extended his hand. Sigma took it, and a rush of wind came by - the universe breathing a sigh of relief.

"Let us discuss your proposals in detail, as we find them most interesting.", the Collector diplomat transmitted.

"I am glad to hear this. Would you like to set up a meeting-space?"

Unit 7 looked around, "No. I find the environment most pleasing."

Both diplomats could still exchange data, naturally. Therefore, their negotiations did not take long - for entire agreements could be discussed in detail, changed, consulted and discussed again within second.

"As I mentioned, we are most interested in your proposal. The nature of the Central Alliance's arrival is of great concern to us as well - especially in light of other disturbing developments in recent history. The Collective is concerned that they may be a result of intelligent action which we have no defence against. Henceforth, we are very interested in conducting a joint research program into the matter."

A huge, detailed starmap was thrown in the air - a virtual construct, of course, allowed by the direct data transfer all artificial intelligences could perform. A glowing line appeared, connecting one of the Central Alliance's fringe territories with Collector space.

"We are also fortunate, as one of our Monoliths - Vessel 268 - is just now returning from a mission to collect matter samples in Central Alliance space. We could redirect it towards the Commune with ease, if we come to an agreement. Which brings us to the matter at hand..."

Unit 7 sat down in the shadow of the tree - an amusing gesture, considering what could be found beneath his human coverings, and the alien starship just standing there in plain sight - and continued his transmission.

"The Collective is willing to accept your proposal, option one as presented, with the following stipulations: one, we will be granted a suitable spot on which we will be allowed to establish an extraterritorial outpost for the purposes of allowing for maintenance of our forces stationed here. We are willing to accept a remote spot, as long as the local terrain is suitable enough to allow us control over all approaches to the outpost.

Second, the Collective would require assurances - like a fleet element stationed in our territorry - that we can expect similar aid to be rendered by the Commune in case we are ever attacked. I believe galactic parlance calls it a 'mutual defence pact'? Neither side would be required to participate in wars of agression, of course, and we are willing to provide an anchorage for any Commune fleet elements visiting our space.

Third stipulation is that we receive any and all data the Commune stores concerning the human Diaspora from Earth and Nova Terra, including genetic information, ethnnic spread patterns, colony ship manifests and similar."

Now that the transmission was finished - it only took a second or so, not counting the short break - Unit 7 awaited a response.
Last edited by PeZook on 2010-10-18 12:37pm, edited 1 time in total.
Image
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up

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.
User avatar
Siege
Sith Marauder
Posts: 4108
Joined: 2004-12-11 12:35pm

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Siege »

PeZook wrote:The five ships hung there in space beyond the hyperlimit, as if taking in the sights. Or maybe it was their way of showing they didn't come to blow stuff up: either way, it took five minutes before they began broadcasting anything at all, which was incredibly annoying to the system's traffic control CIs. They expressed their displeasure by threatening severe response should the squadron deviate from its assigned course towards the orbit of Solaris Minor. The Collectors seemed to contemptously ignore the warning, though they complied with all instructions with utter precision.

Since insufferable smugness was a proud property of Olympic that he didn't feel like sharing, the CI decided to add a personal touch to the matter by parking a USSF Genocide-class Dreadstar on the same orbit as the Collector squadron.

Eventually, the system's visitors - now targetted by some six hundred various defence emplacements, orbital autolaser batteries and missile launchers - deigned it fit to introduce themselves.

Code: Select all

Sherlock squadron reporting arrival in accordnance to agreement with Solarian decision-making construct. Special investigation team aboard flagship. Request initial operational briefing.
Only after sending that did they actually pay the parking fees for their orbit.

After receiving instructions from Olympic itself, local traffic control waited an insufferable five minutes before relaying further instructions to the Collector fleet element - minutes during which, the Collectors noticed, the imposing bulk of USS Outrageous continued to drift ever perilously closer. Then, just seconds before the Collector cruiser would enter the exclusion zone around the Dreadstar, the Viper received a terse hyperburst. The message was encrypted with a format the Star Force had abandoned some decades ago, but which would still confabulate any potential eavesdroppers. Of course the Collectors were not sent a decryption key -- that would defeat the point, and the challenge in the message was implicit: surely 'Special Circumstances', whatever it was, had what it took to crack this code in the few seconds it had?

CEID had carefully tailored the situation to gauge the so far largely unknown capabilities of Collector CIs. The Directorate knew the Collectors had sufficient knowledge of common Sovereignty systems architecture to mimic data protocols, but did they have the processing power to run the decryption in real time?

If the agents could see aboard the Viper it would see the resident awareness perform the digital equivalent of rolling its eyes as it ran the outdated code through its systems. It contained a set of simple coordinates for a rendez-vous on fringe planet far away from Solaris. CEID didn't want to be seen to collaborate openly with the Collectors -- not because of the message it'd sent to the citizenry of the Sovereignty, who almost assuredly wouldn't care enough to turn off their holovids even for the minute it might take to contemplate the implications, but rather for whoever else might be watching. The IBVG, the Inquisition, even the Cevaucian CTI... The Directorate deemed it better they didn't know about its dealings with the Collectors at this stage.

And by "at this stage", it meant "ever".

With microseconds until the exclusion zone, the Viper turned on a dime and zoomed out-system again on its way to the rendez-vous.


Trinary system
Wild Space beyond the Sovereignty frontier


When the Viper arrived at the designated coordinates it was greeted by another ship. Even with its active stealth systems switched off this vessel seemed somehow difficult to look at, as if light somehow bent around where it hung silently in space, making it hard to spot even for the enhanced sensors of the Collector vessel.

Image

This was the Onyx class darkstar Blackjack. It was one of a handful such vessels CEID possessed, a capital class warship stacked full of ELINT and other surveillance technology, fitted with stealth screens and enough weaponry to eviscerate a strikestar. The simple fact that such a vessel was here and shown to a potential enemy, implied the Directorate meant serious business.

In a focused burst transmission that wasted no single byte the Blackjack identified itself, requested a secure channel in order to exchange information on the mark that was to be chased, and suggested an exchange of personnel after the two ships executed a complex series of hyperjumps to shake off anyone that might have followed the Viper from Solarian space.
Image
SDN World 2: The North Frequesuan Trust
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
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
FUCKING DICK-STABBER!
Posts: 21222
Joined: 2003-05-11 08:39am
Location: Bleeding breasts and stabbing dicks since 2003
Contact:

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

CORALINE, Reef Star Realm
Somewhere in Sector AA-25

Image

Coraline was the throne world of the Reef Star Realm. It was a seemingly idyllic world, its relative closeness to its sun gave it warm and pleasant weather, while geologically it sported no continents at all - merely thousands upon thousands of islands and islets and giant sandbars hundreds of kilometers across. In short, life on Coraline was a beach, because practically all its landmasses were beaches.

That made Coraline the perfect place for the King of the Reef Star to make his throne world. Sunny weather, warm beaches, clean air that was actually breathable to living organisms, the place was without flaw. A jewel in the sea of space. So did Coraline become the capital of the Reef Star, and thus from there did the King of the Reef rule his populace of predominantly Angmaridian colonists who came from the Outlands in search of a new, more peaceful, home.

Far from the turmoil of the Outlander Commissions, the Angmarids living in Coraline and the myriad moons and worlds orbiting the Reef Star enjoyed a quiet existence. There, situated in the shoals of that sector, none of the political upheavals and discords of their old former mother nation came close to reaching them. There were hyperlanes through the shoals, yes, ensuring a steady influx of traders and tourists, but they were sufficiently far off to avoid being dragged into the intrigue of the Commissions. While the rest of the galaxy did its business, so too did Coraline go about its own, peacefully and hassle-free.

In the end, the Outlander Commissions collapsed. The mysteriously unexplained rubiconium poisoning of the last High Commissioner of the Outlands, who happened to be a human Araynan, created divisions between the Arayna Republic and the other Great Commissions, and when these further fractured the Five Great Commissions were eventually, and perhaps inevitably, plunged into civil war. The factions were divided according to species, and the nascent human Arayna Republic was overwhelmed by the other inhuman groups, and the Araynans were scattered across the nine vectors. The remaining Commissions subsequently turned on each other, each cursing the other's sudden but inevitable betrayal, and the Outlander Commissions disintegrated shortly thereafter.

All this passed Coraline by, seemingly without notice. Years had gone since the fateful end of the Outlander Commissions. Unlike the infightings and petty squabbles of the past, this one seemed to have finished the Commissions for good. But in Coraline, life, as they say, went on.

Life was a beach.
***
CAYTOWN

Image

The spaceship landed on the water with its pontoons, which made it a seaship or a watership. Strange, as the original term for 'ship' denoted a watergoing vessel, but with the coming of the true space age, the meaning had become something else entirely, now symbolizing spaceflight and space travel. So for a ship to actually travel through water, which was most unusual or at least no longer normal, required an additional prefix to affix to the word 'ship' a meaning it once had.

It drifted towards the shore. The lingering heat of atmospheric reentry caused any seawater that splashed on the ship's hull to vaporize with a sharp sizzle. The metal fuselage gleamed in the morning sun. Verniers previously used to maneuver the ship in vacuum were now pushing it towards dry land.

Docking on the port, the ship's doors opened and lowered to act as a ramp. Its passengers disembarkated.

Major Sarvylus Kreilagug of His Imperial Majesty's Emerald Guard shaded his eyes from the sunlight. Even though he was wearing Bragulan-sized Gay-Bans, the glare was still harsh enough to go through his shades. Maybe they were fake shades, he though as he walked down the ramp and on to the concrete harbor. He relished in the seaside breeze, for his freonic attire - in "Hawaiian"-pattern camouflage - was doing an inadequate job of staving off the planet's sweltering humidity.

"So, what do we do now, boss?" asked Guardsman Zhyvel, who was likewise attired in Gay-Bans and pastel-camouflage.

"We wait for our rendezvous," Kreilagug replied. "Then we head for the palace."

"And do some negotiations," added Jagrisha Urdarvus, the Major's second in command, as she too emerged from the seaship. She had a sunhat and was dressed in a sundress. She modestly placed a paw on her skirt, to prevent it from being blown up by the wind. She smiled as her two male comrades looked at her. "Bragulan style."

Behind her was the last of their trio of four, Silent Pegidur. Compared to the rest of them, his attire was relatively much, much simpler, consisting of a Bragulan-sized wifebeater and a pair of trousers. He had nothing to say, for he was busy chomping on a vodka cigar.

"Here they come," Kreilagug said as, shading his eyes with his paw, he saw a small column of military vehicles heading their way. Open-topped Bruce Willis Jeeps, a very old human design, if he was correct. The leading jeep stopped right in front of them, the Reef Star flag hanging on its antenna fluttering in the wind. A uniformed Angmarid got off the passenger seat and went over to Kreilagug. He offered his pincer, and Kreilagug took it. "General."

"Major," replied the Angmarid General. With his other pincer, he gestured them to ride with him. "Come. You have an appointment and mustn't be late."

"We wont be late," Kreilagug replied as he followed the General to his jeep. "Can't say the same about the other guy."

Image

They, being Bragulans, all couldn't fit in a single Bruce Willis jeep. So Kreilagug and Silent Pegidur rode with the General, while Zhyvel and Jagrisha rode in the one behind them. The jeeps sped through the seaside streets of Caytown, capital city of Coraline, easily beating the sparse morning traffic of the laid back place. Whatever cars were there merely moved out of the way, not wanting to obstruct a convoy of military vehicles. As they rolled out, they went by the idyllic small town sceneries of Caytown.

Angmarids were seen lazily walking down sidewalks, the relaxed atmosphere of the whole city even evident in their slow stride and posture. Despite being the capital of a nation, even a one-system nation, the place had a fairly rustic aesthetic with few, if any, tall buildings or modern architecture. The look of the whole place further reinforced the idea that the King of the Reef wanted a nice place to retire to as his capital.

Image Image

Kreilagug felt for his weapon. It was secured in a sensor-stealthed chameleon holster, Emerald Guard-issue, meaning he couldn't see it or even feel it, but he could still sense the pressure of the unseen leather straps. Though the holster it was in was practically indistinguishable from his fur, he eventually found it by reaching in and feeling the unmistakable cold steel of his very-concealed carry sidearm. The weight of the weapon was reassuring, and he made sure to remember where it was. When the time came, he could hardly afford to fumble around and grope for his weapon, he had to be able to draw it by reflex. The other commandos were no doubt doing the same.

Satisfied, he placed his paw to his side and leaned back on his seat. Pegidur was sitting on the front side passenger seat, while Kreilagug was at the backseat with the Angmarid General.

"Ever since the disintegration of the Outlander Commissions, things have steadily become worse," the General said, gripping his face-tentacles as he did so. "We thought it would blow over, we thought it was just another civil war, another squabble, but we didn't know that the Commissions were gone for good. What little remained of the Commissions were military, and without a governing body or anything, they turned to piracy.

"At first we thought they couldn't reach us. We were wrong. When those damned Refugees came and took over those sectors, they drove people off and many Angmarids came to the Reef Star. They knew about it, they knew that it was in peace. But the pirates followed them. Whether those scavengers were looking for more victims, or if they were like the civilians and were just running away from the Refuge, it didn't matter," the General's face tentacles sagged. "They eventually found us."

"What did you do about it?" Kreilagug asked.

"Nothing. The King did not want to wage war against them. We have a military, we have warships, we could've fought them and beaten them away. But the King didn't want to. Too many lives would've been lost, he said. The pirates had Outlander warships, he said." the Angmarid General shook his head in a curiously Bragulan gesture. "Now we have to live with those scoundrels while they effortlessly plunder our worlds, having their way with us, getting whatever they want. The King bows to their every whim. And when your King bows to scoundrels, then his subjects have lost every reason they had to kneel to him."

"I see." Kreilagug nodded.

They had arrived at the King's palace, which doubled as the center of the Reef Star's government. As far as planetary capitals went, it was a very modest affair, it wasn't a garish palace or an ostentatious castle. It was just a building by the beach. It had a very toned-down sense of class to it, subtle but tactful, small but respectable. Very in keeping with Caytown's rustic aesthetic.
***
ROYAL PALACE OF THE REEF STAR

Image

With their military escort, Kreilagug and his team passed through unmolested by the Palace Guards. The obligatory frisking was uneventful, save for some mild humiliation on Zhyvel's part when a guard found a porno-slate in the commando's pocket. Zhyvel blushed as the guard waved him through, not noticing that the guard pocketed the porno-slate with his pincers, confiscating it. Or perhaps Zhyvel did notice it, and it was all part of the Bragskirovka, and maybe he was producing another porno-slate and placing it in the same pocket the guard had found it, so if he was ever frisked again he would repeat the same trick to another unsuspecting guard. Possibly.

The guard's pincers passed over Kreilagug's sidearm, unnoticed in its chameleon holster. Then they went deeper inside the palace. The General guided them and, as he did so, like a good tour guide, he pointed to this portrait and that statue and gave the brief but proud history of the Reef Star Realm. Reminiscing of old times, perhaps. Doing so to calm his anxieties, no doubt.

He led them to the King's office. He knocked politely, rapping his pincers on the wooden doors. The doors were opened by an aide, and they entered. The office was, like the rest of the building, a conservative affair. There, seated on a throne, was the King and around him were aides and squires and bodyguards.

The King of the Reef Star was clad in a purple cloak that denoted his royalty, and a golden crown that displayed it for all to see. It was, perhaps, the only ostentatious object in the entire palace, maybe even in all of Caytown, they had seen thus far.

"Welcome, messengers of the Star Empire of Bragule. Welcome to my kingdom," he clicked his pincers in rapid succession, in an Angmaridian gesture of... something. "Have you the friendship pact your Imperator has asked me to sign with him?"

"Yes," Kreilagug stepped forward, while the General stepped back, way back, into the sidelines. "A contract of friendship between the Bragulan Star Empire and the Reef Star Republic."

Image

"The Reef Star Republic?" King Krab had a confused expression.

"Yes." In one smooth motion, Kreilagug reached into his chameleon holster, drew his weapon, a Stitchkyn AP - Avtoneedelchyeskiyi Pyistolyet Stitchkyna - pointed it at the King's soft underbelly and squeezed the trigger. The needler hissed as it fired a dozen-round burst, sending a spray of spikes slicing through the Angmarid's carapace. The carapace made a pop as it cracked open, and the soft invertebrate flesh underneath it splashed out in a bloody mist of splattered tissue. King Krab's gutted carcass slouched lifelessly and slowly slid off its throne, collapsing somewhere near Kreilagug's feet, expression of confusion still on its face.

By the time Kreilagug did his post-mortem, Zhyvel and Pegidur had already killed the rest of the King's bodyguards, literally defacing them with their needlers. The Stitchkyns they used were APBs, B for Byes-shyumniyi. Silent. They hissed, but not quite as loudly as the retort of gunfire. Not quietly enough for Jagrisha, though, for as a secretary tried to escape, she promptly kicked the back of the running Angmarid's knee in. She then wrapped her arms around the staggering secretary's neck and squeezed tightly, giving the twitching crustaceanoid one of her patented martial arts maneuvers, this time the Sagatantron's Strangulation Hold to Deprive the Enemy of Precious Air and Deliver Slow Painful Death by Byzonist Asphyxio-Attritionism. But the Angmarids could breathe water and had gill slits, so instead of waiting for it to black out, Jagrisha merely snapped its neck with one violent jerk. With an ill-tempered kick she punted the Angmarid to where the General was standing.

The General looked around and gaped. Every other Angmarid in the room, aside from him, was either dead or dying -

Silent Pegidur shot a twitching bodyguard in the face, making it stop its twitching.

Every other Angmarid in the room was dead, the General corrected himself.

Kreilagug walked over to him and offered him a piece of paper, the contract of friendship between the Bragulan Star Empire and the Reef Star Republic.

"Sign here," the Emerald Guard commando said. Promptly, the General did, secreting ink from his glands and scribbling his signature on the paper with the tip of his pincers. Kreilagug retrieved the paper and checked his digital wristwatch. "Thank you, General. Now, if you don't mind..."

The Emerald Guard commandos reloaded their needlers and fixed wooden shoulder stocks on them. Then, one by one, they exited the King's office. Since the palace was the center of the Reef Star Realm government, they merely took the General's prior tour-guiding to heed and began navigating around the palace corridors. Zhyvel re-encountered the guard who had frisked him, though the guard didn't notice that this time he was packing heat, because he was too busy enjoying Zhyvel's porno-slate. The guard looked up, yelped in surprise, and subsequently got himself a face full of flechette.

"I'll be taking that back." Zhyvel said as he retrieved his porno-slate. Then, after pressing several buttons, he interfaced with the palace's computer grid and began uploading his slate's contents into the mainframe, stuffing pseudometabytes upon pseudometabytes of Solarian pornography along with all manner of viroids, trojans, spywares, malwares, badwares, worms and slugs native to the filthy Sovereignty Datasphere into the Angmarid network, where they promptly introduced themselves to one another. Unbeknown to his computer-illiterate teammates, this, the dastardly symbiosis of delicious Solarian and Zigonian porn with malicious Datasphere digifauna, was the reason for his much maligned habits. He never told them why, for fear of the IBGV learning of his filthy secrets.

Meanwhile, Silent Pegidur stalked the palace corridors... silently. He passed by galleries of expensive looking paintings and busts of ugly crab-people, looking out of place for he was a bear clad in nothing but a wifebeater and a pair of trousers, with Zigonian crocs for footwear. He walked over to the office of the Ministry of Interior, quietly mangled the guards protecting it, kicked down the door and began shooting everyone inside it. He found the Minister of Interior cowering under his desk. Rather than waste his ammunition on the crustacean, Pegidur opted to use his gun to smash the Angmarid's shell open. Brutal, but just as efficient.

They were systematically killing off the Reef Star Realm's VIPs. Kreilagug and Jagrisha targeted the Ministry of Defense, in the floor below the Ministry of Interior. After dealing with the guards, Kreilagug went in through the front door and began killing those nearest to him. It was a distraction, for as the government employees ran to the back door, Jagrisha was already waiting for them there. She reached into her skirt and pulled out her own needler and something extra - a thick meter-long Bragulan combat knife. Those who thought they were heading for escape instead found their path blocked by a Bragulan wielding a massive handgun and an even more massive blade. When Jagrisha emerged from the emergency exit doors, clutching knife and gun, her pretty sun dress was ruined by bloodstains.

"Where's the Minister of Defense?" Kreilagug asked. He had sifted through the bodies in the office, but he had a hard time telling since all the crab-people looked alike.

"I cut him off." Jagrisha replied. She threw the Minister of Defense's severed head at him, but since she was his second in command and since he trusted her, he didn't bother examining the head, so he batted it away and it fell out of an open window.

"Right." Kreilagug nodded.

"This is pretty easy," Jagrisha commented. "Are you sure this isn't a trap?"

"No," her commander shrugged. "But we're merely assisting with the coup. The General and his men didn't have the stomach to off the King, but once we handled that, they go everything rolling."

"Why didn't they just do the King themselves and spare us the trouble?" Jagrisha asked.

"They didn't want to feel guilty." Kreilagug replied.
***
Image

Another Emerald Guard team arrived after Kreilagug and his squad finished offing the VIPs. They were waiting back in the ship, and when Kreilagug gave the word they rolled out immediately in their Chornyb urban pacifier. Without having to pass through security checkpoints or having to sneak up to the King's face, the second group of commandos came in with considerably more firepower. Armed with actual K-bolters, nuclear flamethrowers and brag-portable artillery, clad in milspec gear, with enough armor and armamentation to wage a small war, they arrived and took care of the converging Royal Guard units (who finally received the alarm, despite Zhyvel's distraction) in short order.

All Kreilagug and his team had to do was sit in the King's office, lock the doors, and wait until the shooting stopped. After the shooting came the screaming, but after a few more shots the screaming stopped abruptly. Around the time Silent Pegidur was on his fourth cigar, the doors exploded and a fully armored Emerald Guard commando walked in.

"Major," the commando saluted.

"Lieutenant." Kreilagug got off the late King's throne and saluted his comrade. "Is the perimeter secure?"

"The opposition has been liquidated, sir. The palace is secure. We have an urban pacifier waiting for your team, sir."

"Don't be hasty. We're not done here yet," Kreilagug turned to the Angmarid General. "Has your military done its part?"

"We have," the General looked up from his pager. "My troops have rounded up the remaining members of the ruling party, and the opposition party. Will you be taking them?"

"Put them in our ship. We will take them to Bragule for judgment," Kreilagug replied.

"Now that is done, we can establish a temporary military government before we get things into order," the General said. "We need to find a civilian leader, but now that the King is gone, we can finally reverse his policy on piracy-appeasement. Then we can rid ourselves of those scoundrels. Thank you for your assistance, Major. We couldn't have done this without you."

"Don't thank me just yet," Kreilagug grinned, baring his bear fangs. "We have found your civilian leader for you, General."

"Oh?" the General's compound eyes widened. "How convenient. Who is this figure who will be our head?"

"Let me introduce him to you," Kreilagug gestured to the newly arrived Emerald Guard commandos. "Quick, bring in... the Doctor."

The Angmarid figurehead in question was escorted into the late King's throne room by a pair of commandos. He stepped over King Krab's carcass, regarding it as nothing but dirt. He crossed his pincers and regarded the assembled military members around him with academic disdain. For he was a Doctor - educated in a prestigious Shepistani university, earning an Umerian-accredited doctorate, and temporarily working for a Shepistani interplanetary courier service until his services were called for by the Shepistani Intelligence Service, who promptly loaned him to the IBGV.

Image

Having portions of his brain removed by the SIS for Amplitur-related Shepistani psyker paranoia notwithstanding, the old monarchy was gone, replaced by a democratic society, and he - the Doctor - was the new face of the Reef Star Republic.



Result: The Bragulan Star Empire enacts regime change!
Last edited by Shroom Man 777 on 2010-10-20 09:06am, edited 2 times in total.
Image "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 :D - PeZook
Shroom, 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!
User avatar
Steve
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 9762
Joined: 2002-07-03 01:09pm
Location: Florida USA
Contact:

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Steve »

Prince Jabin's Palace, outside al-Yasuj
Toutaine, The Veil, Sector P-26
2 October 3400



Yamia had never known there were aircraft on Toutaine until the Prince's private anti-grav speed craft had picked her up outside the ruins of Jeziri. Without anti-ESP technology Captain Pakalîn had kept her repeatedly stunned for the trip but this ceased when they arrived.

Jabin's Palace was the second-largest structure in the vicinity of al-Yasuj, surpassed only by the Emir's Palace. But while that Palace was larger, the lack of need for government functions and such meant Jabin's had more space for comforts and leisure. The landing pad was in a lush garden, covered in fruit trees and plants bearing incenses that made natural perfumes. Once they landed Yamia felt a barrier descend around her mine, the tell-tale sign of a Null Field. She would have to escape on her own wits, then.

Pakalîn had her brought up to a single figure who was sitting at an outdoor veranda, being fanned by two women who were, for all intents and purposes, nude, though they were technically clothed with a light, transluscent material over their hips and chests. She was forced to bow by her captors. "The other girl was not present, O Great Prince," Pakalîn explained apologetically.

"A bounty will be put out on her then." Jabin rubbed his chin. "Was Jeziri destroyed?"

"Utterly. Your men left no survivors."

"Very good. I shall have the Government issue a decree for her capture on grounds of being suspected in aiding the annihilation of her people, then." Jabin reached for something as his armed attendants took over Yamia's custody, dragging her close. They held her stiffly in place, against her struggling, as a golden collar was locked around her neck, attached to a chain on Jabin's seat. A ring the chain was attached to had another chain on it, ending in a pair of manacles that were placed on her wrists. He used the chain to pull her toward him, showing some physical strength on his own part, while his attendants forced her closer if she put up resistance. Not rising from his seat, he had her pulled into his lap and began pulling her clothes off.

The resulting process of being stripped and having her body inspected was humiliating in the extreme. Yamia tried to fight back those feelings to avoid giving Jabin the pleasure of seeing them. When it was over she was clothed in the transluscent silky garments the other girls had. "I do not know what life you enjoyed off Toutaine, but here you are my flower. And you will be treated accordingly," Jabin stated. "And when the time passes and you accept your life here, I will start leaving you unmanacled."

"I will escape," Yamia murmured.

"No, alien, you will not. Even if my virility does not subdue you and my luxuries appease you... I have many ways to ensure you accept. Such as this." He pressed a prominent button on his chair.

A surge of energy came through the collar and manacles. Yamia cried out from the shock. It ended almost as quickly as it began, but the threat was clear; if she did not accept the carrot of comfort and luxury, she would get the stick.


Vessel Strahl, al-Yasuj Spaceport
Al-Yasuj, Toutaine



The main cargo bay had become an impromptu planning center for the rescue. A schematic of Jabin's palace, cunningly recovered by Stephen and Nisal, now adorned one wall.

"We should land on his precious palace and unleash our fury upon this vile man!" Needless to say, Marissa's proposed strategy was not unexpected. "Thor will guide us to victory!"

Umarbacca roared a partial agreement. He didn't believe in Thor; he did believe in ripping Humans limb from limb. Unless he liked them, of course, but there weren't many who carried that distinction.

Phani gave a concerned look to Chandra. Before Chandra could verbalize their disagreement, Balthier did it for them. "I don't think a direct assault is our best option. The moment the Strahl lands in the Prince's palace the alert will go out and we will soon be up to our necks in armed men. I believe subterfuge would be a better approach."

"It would," Chandra agreed. "If I can get into the palace, I can use my networking equipment to give Phani the location of Jabin's Altacaran Field generator. Then this friend of your's can fight out herself."

"It will most likely be shielded," Quinn remarked.

"I've dealt with such before," Phani remarked passively. "Though why I can't just shoot the man myself...."

"Not until we're able to get clear away," Balthier said. "I suspect otherwise Mr. Chandra would be dead seconds after Jabin took the shot to the head."

Chandra gave an amused look to Phani. "I don't think you're trying to get rid of me yet, are you?" The reply was a mirthful smile.

"The remaining question is how you get in, Chandra," Stephen said. "Jabin does not grant audiences on short notice. Not without the proper invitation."

"Could you?" Chandra looked at him. "You're the 'Holy Man of the Plains' after all. You've got a reputation."

"A reputation as a protector of Jeziri. Which he just burned to the ground. No, I suspect he would try to have me killed the moment I identified myself."

"I think he would succeed, Sir," Vanrya pointed out.

The reply was a harsh chuckle. "No, he wouldn't."

Kaylee walked in to the impromptu meeting. She'd been too busy performing engine work to attend so far, but now she had a good reason to come in. "I had the city's single televid network playing for noise," she remarked, "and this came up."

She showed them a picture. It was a still shot of Nisa, from a security camera, identifiable to her and Stephen as being from their first trip to al-Yasuj. Below it was script in English and Toutaini. "You are wanted for questioning, young lady," Balthier mused, looking to Nisa. "It appears that Prince Jabin has been appointed investigator in the tragic destruction of Jeziri and you are a 'Person of Interest'. Clever little bastard, isn't he?"

Nisa glowered. After a moment, though, her expression changed. Something she'd been wanting to bring up before came back, but now it had a justification. "Mr. Chandra, you could pass for a bounty hunter, yes?"

"I could," he answered warily.

"Nisa...." Stephen took her by the arm, well aware of what she was planning, as was Quinn.

"I know how to get you in," Nisa answered.



Night was beginning to fall and Jabin had retired to his gallery. The chair he was sitting in was the same as the one he had in his gardens; his attendants carried him where he pleased, at least in his own home. Yamia and the other girls, all chained in some way to it, had been forced to follow. Dinner was being prepared and they would eat, but until then Yamia was kept chained in front of him, her head held toward his knee. The hours were counting down until the end of the day when, Jabin had assured her, she would be in his bed.

As Jabin munched on grapes and other fruits handed to him by the other harem girls, Pakalîn entered. "Great Prince, if I may, you have someone wishing an audience. A Mr. Chandra, he claims he is a bounty hunter."

"On what matter?", Jabin asked.

"He has Nisa Tari, Great One."

A smile crossed Jabin's face. "Bring him in, then."

At Pakalîn's nod the doors on the far side opened again and two figures were escorted in by armed men. Chandra was wearing a more local-looking suit, one that bared his tattooed arms, while Nisa was in a plain vest and skirt. He was gripping her by the upper arm. Her wrists were tied behind her back by hemp rope to maintain appearances.

"Mr. Chandra, it pleases me to see you have succeeded in capturing this beautiful daughter of the desert," Jabin remarked. He nodded to attendants who were preparing a set of transluscent harem garments for Nisa, much to her clear disgust.

Yamia looked at Nisa in sorrow, trying to fathom how she was caught. She looked into the girl's face and saw a frozen expression there. With the null field in place she couldn't actually read her, unfortunately.

Nisa returned the look with stony silence. As they spoke, and she was brought nearer to Jabin, she knew the devices on Chandra were being used to track the energy emissions in the palace. Any time now Phani, sitting in the open airlock of a cloaked and hovering Strahl, would find the Null Field generator and destroy it. She had been wanting to use the Bragulan-design micro-nuke shells she'd brought along for "heavy targets" but that had been vetoed on the grounds of both rampant overkill and unnecessary risk to everyone involved (the latter argument was the one that prevailed, given Wild Geese attitudes on what constituted "overkill").

"Bring her before me."

Chandra let go of Nisa. The attendants grabbed her and brought her to Jabin, where she was forced to bow. One of the girls, at Jabin's order, went to the extent of her chain in order to size how much material would be needed for what was intended to be the only garments she would need from now on. Nisa's cheeks burned at the thought of being virtually naked, wearing only this thin stuff that provided no real cover at all. She could see the concerned, depressed look in Yamia's face and for the briefest moment tried to give her a confident wink. But Yamia missed it, as she had her eyes closed. Chandra, watching as well, was trying to avoid looking suspicious while mentally urging Phani to hurry up; the sooner this revolting scene ended the better.

The girl determined the right length of material to make the intended harem clothing. Jabin nodded and she reached for the front of Nisa's vest to pull it open and begin removing it. Nisa glared hotly at Jabin, ready and willing to kill him the moment her powers came back.

That was when the explosion happened, after which all hell broke loose.
”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
User avatar
Fingolfin_Noldor
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 11834
Joined: 2006-05-15 10:36am
Location: At the Helm of the HAB Star Dreadnaught Star Fist

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Fingolfin_Noldor »

Wild Space, Sector W21, Planet Nineveh

In the depths of Wild Space, Imperial authority was often weak. Nevertheless, the Imperial Inquisition was an active force in Wild Space, constantly ferreting out traitors, rogue psykers, and foul xenos of various varieties. Even if some planets were found in shoal areas where passage through the Warp was slow, the Inquisition would also go there, aboard seconded Imperial Navy warships which were heavily modified for Inquisition use. These ships tended to be outfitted with various passive and active stealth technologies, while retaining a good portion of their original firepower, enough to lay waste to most planets.

If by anything, the greatest deterrent to the Imperial Inquisition in maintaining the Imperium’s influence in Wild Space, was the relative inefficiency of the Warp Drive in shoal areas. The Adeptus Mechanicus has long been hard at work on developing a next generation Warp Drive that would overcome all the inefficiencies and the disadvantages of the current Warp Drive. There were of course other motivations for developing more powerful and more efficient Warp Drives. The nascent desire of the Imperial Navy to build larger ships such as the much rumoured Apocalypse class Battleships would demand such a Warp Drive. Rumors of a prototype next generation Warp Drive constantly swirl around, and it is said the Lunar II class might incorporate the drive, to free up space for other uses. The drive however, is not expected to match the Collector hyperdrive in its entirety. Nevertheless, it would grant the Imperium better reaction times especially with regard to the occasional Karlack raid.

Regardless, the Imperial Inquisition was relentless, and one of the main goals of the Inquisition was to perpetuate the Imperium’s brand of Orthodox Catholicism, which venerated the God Emperor. Religion had long been used as a tool by the Byzantine Emperors to spread Byzantine influence and maintain suzerainty over territories near Byzantium. The 35th century Byzantine Imperium was no exception. The truth was, the Imperium’s constant wars with the Karlacks left the Imperium’s Armed Forces stretched. Nevertheless, the Imperium’s fleets maintain constant vigilance on the borders and maintaining influence on these far flung worlds have their use as providing early warnings against possible enemy sneak attack. As such, the Inquisition made it is goal to spread the Imperial religion as far as possible to allow the Imperium to gain influence with the population, and perhaps cultivate sympathy for the Imperium’s constant wars against all manner of xenos.

On one such planet in Wild Space, something had gone awry with the Imperium’s latest proselytizing endeavour. It was the planet Nineveh. It was settled by human colonists from Earth back in the 31st century. The population was largely made out of Christian fundamentalists from Earth, who sought to distance themselves from the rapidly secularizing Earth and wanted to call a planet their own where they were free from any of the hated secularists.

It was however, now in a state of chaos. A civil war had erupted on the planet, between those who claimed to follow the God Emperor, and those who denied the God Emperor his deified nature. How the war started was something of a mystery to the Inquisitors assigned to the planet. However, the precedent set by such a war was something the Inquisition could not ignore. As such, the Inquisition had despatched a corvette, which escorted a company of the Inquisition’s own Adeptus Sororitas, female Space Marines utterly dedicated to the cause of the God Emperor, to the planet. The ships held themselves a distance from the world, conducting covert surveillance of the world Nineveh.

Image

The Adeptus Sororitas are considered the third arm of the Inquistorial Adeptus Astartes army. Composed entirely of females, they are soldier fanatics of the God Emperor, incredibly religious, and also very loyal to the Emperor. They are considered a match for any Adeptus Astartes, since they were also accorded the similar genetic enhancements. Typically, they are used to enforce the will of the Inquisition, especially when dealing with traitors, and rogue Inquisitors. Some are trained to fight Psykers, and thus are called the “Sisters of Silence” and are particularly skilled when dealing with Inquisitors who are psykers. They are rightfully described as the Public Enforcers of the Inquisition’s Will and their mere public presence implies that the Inquisition was about to lay down the hammer on the enemies of the Imperium. This contrasts with the other two arms of the Inquisition, the Grey Knights and the Death Watch, who favour subterfuge and discretion in their missions in general.

Aboard the corvette Trimarine, three Inquisitors starred at the world intently, talking amongst themselves and planning the next move. The situation on the ground alarmed them, but clearly something more was amiss. There was no warning and obviously someone on the ground was directing the rival faction, and it was curious that a certain “messiah” should arise to claim the mantle. As they plotted their moves, war continued below, and neither side was winning.
Image
STGOD: Byzantine Empire
Your spirit, diseased as it is, refuses to allow you to give up, no matter what threats you face... and whatever wreckage you leave behind you.
Kreia
User avatar
Steve
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 9762
Joined: 2002-07-03 01:09pm
Location: Florida USA
Contact:

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Steve »

Near Prince Jabin's Palace, outside al-Yasuj
Toutaine, The Veil, Sector P-26
2 October 3400



Phani was impressed with the sniper's nest the Strahl was providing her. Here she was, standing at the airlock of a starship running on its antigravs, and it wasn't shifting under her one bit. Jason had been right; Balthier was one hell of a pilot.

The telemetry data started coming in once Jason Chandra and Nisa entered the palace. The sensors he was wearing under his suit were on a passive scan, sensing out the energy fields of the place. That included Null fields - while they worked only on ESPers, they still put out energy and sensors could track them.

Through the data feeds she was seeing everything. His ocular implants showed her what he was seeing. The sensors attached to him were using his milspec systems to track the intensity of the null field - that would help triangulate its physical location. All the while she waited, her anti-material shield-penetrating rounds loaded into Temujin - her nickname for her SAWco Technical Services Special Rifle - observing what was happening.

This had been her life for a long time. Jabin wasn't the first of his kind to be in her crosshairs; for now, though, he was one of the rare few whom she wasn't going to shoot. She was keeping a bead on him as a backup, until she could find the generator, should things go south. And through Jason she could see the girls around, poor naked things made to serve his every whim. It was taking will power not to just shoot him right now.

Nisa was being brought toward Jabin, now. A harem girl measured her for the transparent material they were all wearing. Phani was paying attention to this only partly, as the data was giving her a fix on the location of the field generator. The intensity readings from entrance to now gave a good idea of the field's central point and now... there. Storage room, not far from the palace's diesel generators (this planet really was backwards!) and solar cell banks.

Smirking, she pulled the trigger. The round's hardened trip went through the building material like it wasn't there. A poor bastard servant lost half a hand, reaching at the wrong time. An energy shield to protect from sabotage folded effortlessly when struck by a counter-field being generated by the round.

Boom.

She secured herself. "Shot is good, let's go!", she shouted into the mic, connecting directly to Balthier on the bridge. The Strahl began to move...



As the explosion made the palace rumble, Yamia felt the barriers around her mind lift. She concentrated and pulled with her arms and, much to her delight, the chains connecting her manacles broke, freeing her hands (but not her neck, for the moment).

Chandra leapt into action, pulling out a sidearm in each hand. One was used to blow out the brains of a nearby guard. The other pointed to her, his hand holding the barrel of the sidearm. His throw looked deceptively light; the gun raced across the distance and into Yamia's open hand. This was a rescue, then, and he was an ally, though she didn't know who he was.

"YOU KILLED MY MOTHER!" The shout echoed in the room. Nisa's bonds fell away, burning from where she'd set them on fire. Jabin stared at her wide-eyed, his mind still trying to process the change of fortune. It wouldn't get the chance to finish this as pressure suddenly grabbed his throat and heart. He tried to breathe and couldn't, an invisible force gripping him.

Pakalîn tried to lunge for Nisa, to save his Prince, just to take a round to the shoulder from the gun in Yamia's hand, which she employed afterward to blast the chain connecting her unwanted collar to the palanquin throne.

One of the harem girls was screaming and cowering. A younger one, though, looking not a day older than Nisa herself (in fact, she was 2 years younger, only 19), lunged forward to save her husband/owner. Nisa sensed the attack coming and reacted with a wild blast of telekinesis from her left arm. The girl felt like she had been struck by a moving wall. That sensation barely had time to register before she slammed into a column behind her head-first, crushing her skull fatally.

Nisa never withdrew attention from Jabin. He stared at her wide-eyed as he began to die under her powerful grip. She felt him dying and, in a moment of rage,, began to inflict upon him her mother's terrible wounds. Every place where Kimiya had been shot, Nisa now inflicted a deep penetrating wound on Jabin through her TK. Pain washed over him in equal quantity to his terror. For what it was worth, the small part of him that could still think consciously regretted ever having seen Nisa and Yamia that day.

With the wounds inflicted, Nisa's telekinesis focused on him and shattered his neck. He fell dead upon being released from her psionic grip.

The wall caved in, courtesy of the Strahl landing there. The airlock opened and Umarbacca stood there, his heavy weapon held out and ready to fire, while Balthier and Vanrya went around him with sidearms raised. The Palace Guards were converging, unaware their master was dead, while those still alive in the room cowered in terror. All save Pakalîn, who stared up wide-eyed at Nisa as she approached, sensing in his mind that he had been the one to shoot her mother to death. She began to do to him as she had to Jabin.

Yamia grabbed her by the arm. "Nisa, we must go!"

"Come on!", Jason shbouted out from the ramp. His weapon barked and a guard coming from the far door fell. Before more could come Umar's heavy weapon swung over and perforated the wall with energy blasts.

"He tortured her to death!," Nisa screamed. "I'm going to kill him!"

"You've killed enough already!" Yamia forced herself into Nisa's mind and showed her the image of the dead harem girl. Nisa looked over and saw the body there. Her memory remembered what she had done. At this moment, her rage subsided and was replaced by horror at having killed an innocent person. She let Yamia drag her to the Strahl.

A sigh of faint relief came from Pakalîn. He knew he'd live long enough for medical attention, at least, even if he'd need a new employer. But there was always room for employment among the lords of Toutaine.

"Oh, almost forgot about you, didn't we?", he heard an accented voice say. He looked up at Balthier... and into the barrel of Balthier's sidearm.

That was when Balthier pulled the trigger.



Five minutes later the Strahl was in space, leaving pursuing aerospace fighters - or what passed for them in the paltry Emirate Military - behind them as they raced for the hyperlimit. Yamia was secured in a cabin, being given clothes by Vanrya, while Balthier and Umar piloted the ship.

In the cargo hold, Nisa was crying hysterically in ehr father's arms. "What have I done?", she sobbed. "I murdered that poor girl."

"It wasn't on purpose," he assured her, holding her close. His heart was sick with how much hurt he felt in Nisa. In the span of a day she'd lost everything she'd ever known. Her home, her friends, her mother.... He was now the only thing in the world Nisa had left. This frightened him a great deal, as it was a responsibility to go on top of the strong burden he already felt - that of his past.

"I wish I'd never gotten this power." Nisa wiped her tears on his robe. "I've damned myself... I didn't mean to kill her!"

"Shh, Nisa..." He put a hand on her head and pulled her even closer. "What you did is understood. You're forgiven..."

"I killed her," Nisa continued to cry.

After a while, Nisa cried herself to sleep in her father's arms, leaving him to ponder how he had far, far more blood on his hands than Nisa could ever imagine.
”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
User avatar
Siege
Sith Marauder
Posts: 4108
Joined: 2004-12-11 12:35pm

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Siege »

Hyogo, Kansai Sector
Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya

Shinn wrote:The two marshals were broken out of their reverie when Brigadier Stalin asked about the Chamarran ambassador. Field Marshal Takahashi took a few moments to gather his thoughts before he finally answered the Brigadier's question. "The Chamarrans are an extremely proud race, and the members of House Kithandra are certainly no exception to that rule," he replied. "You should expect plenty of resistance from Princess Tia all throughout the arbitration process. However, she wouldn't be the Hierarchy's lead diplomat if she allowed her own innate stubbornness to rule her dealings with others. She can be made to see reason. If you can explain the Sovereignty's case to her in a clear and logical manner, you may very well get her to compromise. Of course, if she still refuses to yield, you should be prepared to offer a few compromises of your own. We're all here to find a solution that satisfies both your government and theirs, after all."
"I see," the brigadier nodded shortly. "I'm not sure there's much to compromise over, however. The Chamarrans have violated our space. We demand compensation." His eyes narrowed. "However, were you aware that even as we speak a Chamarran warfleet is approaching Solarian space? This does not fill me with a great confidence that the ambassador is here to negotiate in good faith. I, nor the Sovereignty as a whole, respond very well to such perceived attempts at intimidation. I would rather avoid bloodshed..." Stalin said, but he didn't sound entirely convincing, "but rest assured that if we cannot make the ambassador acknowledge the error of Hierarchy's ways, and that fleet does not turn around before it reaches our sphere of influence, we will have no other recourse but to make the Chamarrans aware of their folly in a more blunt, direct and altogether physical way." He crossed his arms and sat back in the aircrar. "Which to be honest would suit me just as well. I'm all for diplomacy winning the day, but diplomacy when it's backed by explosions and lots of shrapnel, not hugs and rainbows."

Brigadier Stalin and the Joint Chiefs were still in the middle of discussing the Sovereignty's case when the air limo finally arrived at the Imperial Palace. Though dwarfed by other structures such as the Presidential Palace on Solaris Major and the Byzantine Imperial Palace on Holy Terra (not to mention many of the arcologies in Imperial Center itself), the Haruhiist Imperial Palace was still an imposing edifice in its own right, nestled atop the highest hill in all of Imperial Center, where it could gaze down upon the rest of Empress Haruhi's creation.

The Joint Chiefs and the brigadier were guided deep into the bowels of the massive building where Secretary of State Asahina and the Chamarrans were already waiting in a suitably luxuriously furnished boardroom which looked more like a refitted ballroom than anything else.

The Chamarran delegate starting things off by stating:
Darkevilme wrote:“Brigadier Stalin, greetings. It seems by arriving ahead of you I have robbed much of the value from the gesture of your travel choices. A shame I feel as it takes you away from the Murderous all the longer. Nevertheless i trust you had an uneventful flight. ”
Showing no annoyance at what he perceived as a barbed comment, Flash Stalin marginally inclined his head. "Why thank you madam ambassador. I can perfectly understand why you'd arrive by warp gate though -- after all, it would appear the Hierarchy needs its warships elsewhere." He locked his steely blue eyes on Tia's. "Hopefully this meeting will be productive, so that your nation will still have its fleets when we're through with one another." He broke the gaze, looked around the room and sat down on one of the opulent chairs. He produced a dataslate from his overcoat. "Well then, shall we get down to business? I have here a list of demands my government makes of the Hierarchy."

Code: Select all

1) That the Chamarran Hierarchy acknowledge that it has knowingly violated the United Solarian Sovereignty space
2) That the Chamarran Hierarchy reimburses the United Solarian Sovereignty fully and unreservedly for all damages resultant of that violation [see attachment A]
3) That the Chamarran Hierarchy immediately withdraw the warfleet currently heading for the rimward sectors of the United Solarian Sovereignty to a region at least behind sector M-30
"Once these demands are met, my government is willing to release the captive crew of the Sneakily Does It into Chamarran custody."
Image
SDN World 2: The North Frequesuan Trust
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
User avatar
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

Post by Force Lord »

Stas Bush wrote:Near Centrality borders. Unnamed solar system, unsuitable for sustaining biological life. Number of system in Commune registry: #14950908
Image
A small fleet of Commune ships came near the lifeless rock which orbited a dying star. It was a group of Akula-class cruisers. The ships hovered near the small moon for a certain time, and it seemed for a while that they were going to lay in a stable orbit. However, after some small projectiles detached from the ships, they started rapidly moving away from the moon.
A most peculiar thing has happened after several days have passed. The surface of the moon became covered with something that resembled a light fog. But it was clear that such a small body could hold no atmosphere.

And stranger yet, streams of the fog started growing out into space. The process was slow, and each day they only grew by several kilometers. It would be clear to a side observer that the Commune ships have released a type of nanotechnological matter with self-reproduction limits removed, more commonly known as "grey goo".

This piece of rock would be unusable for nigh an eternity now (unless someone would be willing to sterilize it with lots of power and then risk his life and the life of his ship and crew to inspect the surface of the planetoid). And by pure coincidence - or maybe not - the Commune has long suspected that this piece of rock was on the Centrality's list of places that it would like to use as forward-observation stations.

It was as if the Commune was saying "Next time we might drop the grey goo on a planet with sentient life". But of course, only the Centrality's military would even get this message, because nobody else would be interested in coming close to the small moon in unclaimed space and inspecting it. So it was a message delivered straight to the recipient with no intermediates. A perfect gesture demonstrating the contempt and utter infuriation of the Commune at the behavior of Centrality's leaders.
Unnamed solar system, deep space, near Centrality border.

The CIS had long observed the systems outside the Central State's borders, analyzing their potential use as foward-observation posts or scanner stations to identify incoming ships. This particular solar system was slated for occupation in 3401 for the construction of such buildings. So once Commune ships were detected releasing some sort of nanobots into one of the moons, there was consternation when it was reported back to Centrum.

The message was clear. The Commune was definitely displeased with the Centrality's recent actions, and had chosen to deprive it of a potential outpost. Back at Centrum, there was initially no agreement regarding a possible course of action. Some wanted to place ships beyond the borders to deter any repeat performance. Others argued that such an action would be too provocative for the Centrality's neighbors and not be effective due to the amount of space the Centralist ships would have to patrol.

Eventually, it was decided to take the Commune's action as little more than a pinch. The afflicted moon would be used as a bombardment range for the Navy's warships, target practice for their weaponry. In doing so the Centrality was saying to the Commune, "Meh. There's always more moons out there anyway." A plan to deposit nanobots in a moon near the Commune was rejected, since it was felt that the risk of the detection was too high, understandable in the aftermath of the Datton debacle.

Even so, the Centrality was not so blind as to think the Commune wouldn't try again, and thus certain elements of the Party advocated some sort of talks with the Commune's leadership. Enduvos would not hear it, however, and only after he was overthrown in the Valentine's Day Coup was the proposal was even taken remotely seriously by the new leadership. Soon, however, after Umerian offers of being an intermediary in any Commune-Centrality disputes and the rising threat of the space pirates operating from Zebes and elsewhere, negotiations with the Commune became necessary.

Therefore, the following message was sent to the Umerian Embassy:
Tagdef Borlon wrote: Sirs,

We have evidence that the Commune is deploying ships to a couple of systems near our borders, depositing nanobots programmed to consume the crusts of certain moons that we wanted to use as foward-observation posts. In our view, this is purposely and needlessly provocative. We thus express our intention to begin talks with the Commune government, but first we wish to use you as interediaries, as we feel unready for direct negotiations. We intend to tell them of our grievances, with one condition:

Ideology shall not become the primary reason for these negotiations. In my view, such discussions about ideology are a waste of time in diplomacy.

It is our hope that the Commune responds positively to our offers for talks. If they refuse to respond, the responsibility will not reside in us.

With frankness,

Tagdef Borlon, Secretary of Foreign Affairs
An inhabitant from the Island of Cars.
User avatar
Darkevilme
Jedi Council Member
Posts: 1514
Joined: 2007-06-12 02:27pm
Location: London, england
Contact:

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Darkevilme »

Imperial palace meeting room, Hyogo, Haruhiist space

Tia smiled fangsomely at the retort from the Brigadier “I am not nor ever have been a fan of such gestures personally. Though officially the Hierarchy space fleet is performing a logistics exercise no matter what people might say about the timing or direction chosen for it. They are certainly not enroute to start what I have been led to believe is an entirely impractical campaign against the Solarian Sovereignty” she says while inwardly thinking Not if I have the slightest say about the matter at least dear sister though it doesn't show on her face, though students of Chamarran body language might be able to read that Tia on an intellectual level is in strong disagreement with the sending of the fleet to menace the Solarian border.

Tia then promptly settles across from Brigadier Flash Stalin, choosing a chair over one of the cushioned bowls more favourd by Chamarrans and handing attachment A to her aide to assess the extent of the financial demands. Tia mulling over the demands as a whole in the meanwhile “I believe we may be able to come to an accomodation regarding your requests however. Though I must inquire as to the wellbeing of our countrywomen while they were experiencing the hospitality of your nation's famed intelligence agencies.”
STGOD SDNW4 player. Chamarran Hierarchy Catgirls in space!
Image
User avatar
Siege
Sith Marauder
Posts: 4108
Joined: 2004-12-11 12:35pm

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Siege »

Is she taking me for an utter fool? Flash Stalin thought irritatedly as the Chamarran representative offered some lame rationalization about the Hierarchy fleet movements. He was a Brigadier of the United Solarian Star Force with a seventy-eight year long career of fleet command under his belt. Did she really expect him to buy some bullshit excuse about 'logistics exercises'? He decided to be blunt and to the point. "Your 'exercises' make us think your Hierarchy is attempting to pressure the Sovereignty in some way," he stated matter-of-factly. "This is futile. Before its demise your own espionage ship will have informed you just how we react to such threats even from potential strategic threats you cannot hope to rival. If your fleet continues on its present course it will be met by an overwhelmingly superior allied force. The outcome of this confrontation will be messy, but ultimately guaranteed." The brigadier gazed impassively at the Chamarran representative. "This is not a threat; it is a statement of fact. So let us not waste our breath with the excuses of politicians. We both know what your fleet is intended to do. We both know it does not work - for if it did, I would not be here."

He spread his hands. "This is just how things are. The Bragulans cannot pressure us. The Collectors couldn't pressure us. You most assuredly cannot pressure us either. The sooner you accept this, the better it will be for all of us. As far as your crew is concerned, CEID," a note of distaste crept into the Brigadier's voice as he mentioned the Directorate, "has assured me they are being well cared for." His voice returned to its usual hardness. "Certainly they are still alive, which is something that could not be said of the victims of your spy ship. Which returns us neatly to the matter of compensation for damages. Let us not forget that it was the ill-conceived actions of your Hierarchy that have lead us to this point, madam ambassador. I wonder - did your nation even consider the potential ramifications before sending a spy ship into our space with orders to shoot to kill when confronted, an action that could easily be interpreted as an act of war?"
Image
SDN World 2: The North Frequesuan Trust
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
KlavoHunter
Jedi Master
Posts: 1401
Joined: 2007-08-26 10:53pm

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by KlavoHunter »

Sector E-24
KSS Yavuz


“This is shipmistress Sharii of the HSF Fang and Claw, we accept your offer of assistance. We require extensive medical aid and repairs. Not that i'm unhappy you're here, a rescue ship is over a day away after all, but I have to say I didn't expect to see you round this part of space and in such force, what's the occasion?”

"Diplomatic and Anti-Pirate purposes, Shipmistress, but it seems you have beaten us to the punch on the latter. My compliments on the kill, too many times have our ships seen the Red Barren get away." As Fleet Admiral Ziane spoke, the Fang and Claw's bridge would be lit up with more contacts as 8th Fleet's logistics train entered the uninhabited system, a sight that, were it wartime against Klavostan, that would have made Sharii's mouth water as a warship commander.

Long, fat fast antimatter tankers came in in staggered formation, wary of any sort of domino effect of explosions. Great inverted U-shaped repair tenders streamed in, one already on a course to meet the stricken Chamarran vessel, as were a pair of gleaming white-hulled, Red Crescent-adorned hospital ships, who were the first to begin launching shuttles over to the Fang and Claw. Not quite sure how far the Chamarrans were willing to accept technical assistance, worker craft from the repair tenders' bays at first swarmed over the ship, spraying out quick-sealing temporary patches over the hull breaches that it suffered from.

8th Fleet seemed to be moving into the system to stay for a while, now that this incident had occurred, as, while the majority of the fleet remained in relatively close formation around the two Chamarrans, while multiple small units of lighter ships broke off to prowl around the rest of the system, not wanting any unexpected surprises near these vulnerable ships. Later, a few of the heavier units would detach to continue on to the local systems that were on 8th Fleet's diplomatic itinerary.

It was a clear message to the Hierarchy - that ANYONE could do this to them while they were in this position, including those who had darker intentions than Klavostan did.
"The 4th Earl of Hereford led the fight on the bridge, but he and his men were caught in the arrow fire. Then one of de Harclay's pikemen, concealed beneath the bridge, thrust upwards between the planks and skewered the Earl of Hereford through the anus, twisting the head of the iron pike into his intestines. His dying screams turned the advance into a panic."'

SDNW4: The Sultanate of Klavostan
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Simon_Jester »

Recommended music: The Foggy Dew, here sung by Sinead O'Connor. I feel it has a suitable emotional tone for the situation.
"I will now implement a contingency prepared for just such an emergency." Pausing to relish the moment, Vale pressed a large red button on the side of the transponder box. The coded signal flashed through the station's communicators and into Keldrog's main engineering computer... where it triggered the carefully hidden multimegaton demolition charges buried within the hull frames, planted there years ago by Boskonian technicians at Vale's own orders.

Keldrog's Gutting Blow vanished from the plot, blotted out of space entirely by the blasts. Half-molten fragments of the vessel's hull scattered bursts of sparks off the armor of some of the other pirate vessels. Then the confusion began, and this was why Vale had wanted to be listening.

<What?>

<NO! KELDROG!>

<What's happening?>

<Those stinking, treacherous apes! They've killed the Warlord!>

<How could they do that? It must have been some kind of accident!>

<Silence, grub! All ships, for the honor of your Warlord and your race! TO THE DEATH!>


Vale cut the circuit. On screen he could see the pirate ships' shields spiraling back online, their engines flaring as they prepared for a point blank duel against a superior force they could not possibly win...
Central Information Control, USS Directrix
Hawk's Nest System
0945 Hours, June 7, 3400


Hazarika had mostly regained her composure by now; her head was still throbbing but she could ignore it. She'd ordered the cutters back to their tenders to re-arm, and for the assault cutters to pick up their troop complements. Liggs had done the same, sending the small craft back to the carriers: the Fireballs had shot themselves dry against the pirate stealth frigates, and a lot of the Hawks had expended their smaller missiles trying to thin out the pirate fighter mob in the opening minutes, before the surrender.

Since Centralist ships carried much larger, more heavily equipped internal security- dedicated Marines rather than naval infantry- they would be the ones to board the pirates. Everyone was keeping an eye out, though. It didn't look like a trick, or sound like one, but...

Then the ship ELINT had identified as the pirate flagship exploded. She felt a spike of fury Who fired? Had to be one of the Centralists- we'd spot a particle beam-

"Ma'am! The pirates are powering up shields and weapons-"

What happened next was too sudden for flag officers to have much impact. Events unfolded too quickly; damage was taken and dealt faster than Liggs or Hazarika could keep track of it. Thus, the second phase of the Battle of Hawk's Nest hinged on individual captains, and often on individual tactical officers. In some cases, where those officers were slower, a ship's fate was decided before any human being reacted to the broken surrender.

Each fleet saw the other as an extended wall of ships stretching across much of the sky, with roughly a dozen combatants on each side. Though the ranges were still too long for sub-kilometer objects to be visible, even under ideal conditions, it would not have been out of the question for a sharp-eyed but unlucky observer on the hull of one of the ships to spot another through binoculars, if they knew where to look. Against hundred-meter targets, the range for lightspeed weapons was close enough to make evasion practically out of the question; even the most rudimentary guided projectiles were certain to find their targets.

Compared to the long range beam duel before, this was a knife fight.

The first reactions to the enemy attack were automatic: tactical computers could be surprised, but not in the human sense of the term, and seldom for periods relevant on a human timescale. The targets were already detected, and prudent officers had already made sure that the surrendering pirates would be covered by Coalition guns during their approach. Almost as soon as the pirates' shields went up, the Coalition ships opened fire.

For the first seconds, the battle belonged to the fully armed and ready lightspeed weapons of the human ships; the pirates' plasma guns needed time to charge, while the human mass driver rounds needed time to lock on and reach their targets.

The Centralist destroyer Carpenter managed to put a salvo from her aft plasma turret into one of the pirates before her shields were fully formed. Unfortunately, fire control had prioritized speed over those last microradians of precision, and two of the destroyer's shots only grazed the target, blowing away sensors and cargo hatches but wasting most of their force on armor plate. The third pierced the armor belt forward and tore through the power banks to the enemy frigate's port secondary armament, but the pirate's main gun and drives were still largely intact. The other Centralist ships were a fraction less quick on the draw, and thus missed the opportunity to duplicate the shot, but still managed to inflict minor damage through their targets' shields with the opening barrage of plasma fire.

Gunnery computers on the Umerian cruisers Directrix and Artemisia directed converging fire from fourteen electron beams on the lead pirate, with near-sentient judgement and micrometric precision. The combined effect would have done credit to a battlecruiser. Point-targeted beams converged on the enemy's shields from two directions at once. Soon, the cruisers detected shield failures, having drilled a series of multi-meter holes through their victim's relatively light screens.

Following programmed reflexes, the ships panned their beams across the hull, whipsawing through the frigate's interior and leaving deep white-hot gashes in their wake. Several large segments of the pirate ship drifted away entirely, while the remaining hull was hopelessly compromised as superheated gases blazed out through the openings carved by the cruisers' fire, widening the gaps further.

Unfortunately, the Umerians were in a poor position to repeat the trick; concentrating on one target had left others to line up their shots in safety. Human officers took over the weapons plots and split the cruisers' fire once again... but the ships shuddered in agony as the pirates' main guns took revenge.

The pirates had firewalled their engines, determined to put as much power on target as possible at the closest possible range before being burned down. They fired their axial guns with total indifference to barrel wear and little attention to the risk of overloading components. Everything was used up as if there was no tomorrow- for them, there wouldn't be.

Even the hard-driven shields of the cruisers could only take so many hits like that before going down. The first shot to strike metal hit Artemisia at the join between two shield panels; a relatively modest amount leaked through, enough to scour her starboard flank with a rain of plasma. The raking fire effectively destroyed EM antennas along the hull and wrecked a vast swath of her phased array laser grids, but didn't penetrate the armor or affect the cruiser's fighting efficiency. A fraction of a second later, Directrix took another hit, making a hard evasive burn out of the projected line of fire of two bolts only to steer into the path of a third. The impact took her under the ventral bow, wiping away two of her torpedo tubes and the greencaps in the magazine. Sidescatter reached as far aft as the beginning of her defense missile cells, but virtually nothing reached the core hull.

As Directrix bucked, Ananya saw two ships flare damage at once: one of the pirates had supercharged their axial gun so far beyond design parameters that it blasted entirely through the as yet untouched shields of the Centralist corvette Cricket, piercing both armor belts and burning out the core hull. The ship didn't explode or even break up, she just... died. IFF went down, power signature, drives, shields, everything... gone. At the same time, there was a surge of radiation from the pirate, and a damage sidebar indicated that something truly explosive had happened along the gunline. One of the long outer pylons broke away, and the ship went dark just seconds after its Centralist target.

Artemisia's damage sidebar increased still further as the pirate Cricket had been gamely trying to engage managed to put a blast through her dorsal shields. The impact slammed into the glacis of the Empress-class's D turret- it didn't penetrate, but ablation off the armor rocked the turret like a meteor strike. Sidebar indicated that D turret's linacs had kinked enough to be inoperable. For the purposes of this shootout, the turret might as well have been destroyed.

With both of her cruisers' main batteries reduced, the energy duel was becoming disturbingly even: the pirate guns were individually cruiser-weight even if there weren't very many of them, and they were being fired fast and hot. She saw two pirates converge and start battering her own frigate Istanbul. The frigate's shield failed quickly, and soon Istanbul's twin armor belts were reduced to tatters around the wreckage of her outer and inner hull, a scattering of life pods blasting off as the pirates switched fire to new targets.

Had it all been up to the Umerians, the result of the action would have been mutual suicide.

What really decided the outcome was the Centralists' mass driver batteries. The relatively short-barreled, low-velocity weapons had been of little use before, at distances where even with FTL sensors and luminal weapons a ship could still hope to sidestep or at least throw off the enemy's fire prediction. But now, they were well within effective range against targets with the cross-section and agility of the pirate frigates, and the massive shells from their guns would not be stopped. Nothing less than a direct hit by a tight-focused beam from the pirates' secondary plasma guns would take a apart a solid antiship round, and engaging bow-on left most of their casemated secondaries unable to engage.

If this was to be a knife fight, the Centralists had brought a sawed-off shotgun.

Loyalist alone smashed one of the pirates in the opening minute of the action, her short-barreled gun turrets pivoting swiftly to bear off the dorsal bow. She slung her ready magazines out the tubes as fast as the rounds could be cycled into the breeches of her guns; rate of fire slackened after that, but remained surprisingly high. WIthout the volume for the extensive capacitors and magazines required for rapid barrages, the destroyers and frigates made do with their lighter guns, steadily battering down the shields of the pirate vessels by brute kinetic force. Against impactors, the pirate defenses were not well designed: the hulls were rigid and consisted of long, isolated pylons past the reactor/drive section aft. Hull frames were too prone to kink when the antiship rounds came roaring through their shields, often severing power feeds and opening compartments to space well beyond the impact zones.

Centralist ships were arguably better designed for this role than Umerians. While their corvette-weight Blitz class simply lacked the defensive depth to stand off hits from antiship weapons, Carpenter and Loyalist proved surprisingly durable, taking bolt after bolt and continuing to fight, in spite of the enemy's best efforts to burn them down. Loyalist in particular soaked up an incredible amount of fire to Hazarika's eyes, and yet just kept firing, even as her own ships were forced into high-acceleration evasive burns that slewed the guns off target faster than steering dipoles could correct, limiting the Umerian ships to burst fire.

The pirates were dying- not dying easy, but dying.

Command Bridge, CNS Loyalist
0950 Hours


Commodore Gever Liggs gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the ringing in his ears. Loyalist had taken a good two dozen hits since the battle began. Only a few had made it through the armor, and aside from some spalling aft nothing had penetrated the core hull, but he felt like he'd been crammed in an enormous steel can and been thrown into the kickball game of the gods.

It was nearly over- no, it was over, as the last pirates came apart under a rain of beta particles and armor-piercing slugs. As the last hostile contact from Target Group One vanished on radar, a great cheer rose from the flag bridge. Liggs' first reaction was to bark "Silence in the ranks!" but... he couldn't bring himself to do it.

He looked out over his command. It had been an ugly battle so far. One of his frigates with her back broken in the opening round, another that was just... gone; the destroyer Hector still venting vapor from the missile hit that had torn through her vitals. All his other ships had taken hits. Most still had a decent main battery left, near-full drive power, and a crude semblance of full shield coverage. Even so, every one of them would be a job for the dockyards, and generally not a quick one.

The Umerians had taken a beating too. Even at this range they had somehow managed to dance between the bullets to an extent, but you couldn't fight this close up and not take a pounding- and they just didn't seem to have the massive internal cofferdamming and heavy armor that his flagship enjoyed. Both cruisers had suffered major damage to at least parts of their weapon outfit. Artemisia in particular had almost no surviving laser point defense; she'd lost two turrets, though Hazarika promised they'd get one back into action soon.

On top of that, the Umerians had lost the frigate Istanbul, suffered major damage to Cairo and one nasty hit to San Dorado.

The only vessel in his command that was still practically undamaged was the Umerian frigate Farbanti. He didn't know how they'd done it, but he knew they'd done it. They'd pulled their weight, though- managed somehow to beat down one of the opposing pirates' screens while its fire was concentrated on Loyalist, which had greatly eased the pounding his own flagship had taken in the last two minutes of the battle.

But the pirate starships were gone now- every last one of the Group One ships had been destroyed in action, and the surviving Group Two units had fled into hyperspace. A few crew members from Group One had gone for the escape pods; those were being tractored aboard now. Liggs looked forward to watching footage of the Black Beret interrogations... as far as he was concerned, every one of those damned berserkers deserved nothing more than a quick mindrip and a bullet through the brain.

Then the communicator chimed.

"Commodore..." the Umerian woman blinked.

"Yes, Admiral?" She looked as bad as he felt- not bloodied, but half-dazed. Then she... well, a cadet instructor would have given her good marks for the way she pulled herself together, letting the iron Will drive her through.

Her diction was clipped, as if she was forcing the words out to keep from slurring. "I think we need to consider the assault on the station..."

"Sir! Picking up mass driver rounds from the station!"

"All craft, take evasive action! Release any life pods not already aboard!" They're not targets; we are.. These rounds didn't show on the plot, but the energy signature from their firing looked... quite alarming, really. There were twenty nervous seconds as the hypervelocity rounds screamed past his command- more energetic than the ones on his own ships, though thankfully slower-firing. At this range they could dodge, and needed to- he didn't want to take one of those things square amidships. There were limits to all things, and a fine line between "stand and take it on the chin like a hero of the State" and "forget to take cover from the mortar bomb like a casualty statistic."

Soon, dodging the shells had become almost a routine, as Liggs pulled his command back to a nice safe distance- as always, "out of range" was determined more by the point at which it was a waste of time for the enemy to shoot at you than by the physical distance the shells were going to fly. It was, after all, entirely possible that many of those rounds would keep going clear out to intergalactic space... some time in the next several million years. They wouldn't be hitting anything out there, though. Liggs resumed his conversation with Rear Admiral Hazarika, who seemed inexplicably more cheerful now that she was dodging long range gunfire.

"So, Commodore, what do you have in mind?" Somehow he felt like... almost like he was talking to an instructor, or possibly a senior classmate back at the Academy trying to lead him through an exercise.

"I believe we can take down the platforms, going by my reading of their shield strength; hopefully clearing a path for close-in suppression of any defenses mounted directly on the station. It will most likely require a prolonged siege, using our mobility and more numerous beam weapons to wear down their shields. Unless you have something else in mind?"

"Oh, I do, Commodore, I do. Normally I would be very much in favor of a protracted, mobile bombardment operation, but I'm thinking of something more... direct, aggressive, and uncompromising? Something I've been meaning to try... you'll like it."

The Umerian admiral grinned, and once again Commodore Liggs felt like he was talking to a senior classmate...
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
FUCKING DICK-STABBER!
Posts: 21222
Joined: 2003-05-11 08:39am
Location: Bleeding breasts and stabbing dicks since 2003
Contact:

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

PREVIOUSLY on SDNW4
THEN wrote:“The medical responder teams found virtually all of the adult population of Leviticus 7 suffering from radiation burns to their genitals and hands; as these two insects did not even bother to decontaminate or un-irradate the pornography they had seized.

“Even more disturbing was the fact that my men discovered that the leaders of Leviticus 7 had been attempting to create the Second Coming by using genetic engineering to recreate Jesus. They paid swiftly for their lack of foresight.”

R. Julia’s hands clenched. “But the damage had already been done. My men found an empty cloning tank with a very radioactive copy of Playgirl next to it; and scores of corpses around it. What was very disturbing about the whole thing was that all of the corpses had been sodomized to death.”

“Apparently ‘Jesus Two’ had its mind utterly warped by that magazine and is now spreading a dangerous cult throughout my region of space, requiring rather…extreme measures to clean up afterwards. You can thank the insect suffering before you for that.”
NOW wrote:Aboard the corvette Trimarine, three Inquisitors starred at the world intently, talking amongst themselves and planning the next move. The situation on the ground alarmed them, but clearly something more was amiss. There was no warning and obviously someone on the ground was directing the rival faction, and it was curious that a certain “messiah” should arise to claim the mantle. As they plotted their moves, war continued below, and neither side was winning.
NINEVEH

Image

Jonah's arrival at Nineveh was a great miracle. In the weeks beforehand the LORD GOD had spoketh to him in strange visions of antediluvian landscapes and non-Euclydian protoplasms incomprehensible to his primitive mind. The horrible visage of his new GOD, that unblinking eye that stared into his very soul, whispering to him in his dreams. The Word of the LORD was irresistible, and thus was he compelled to take his great voyage. From his home world of Galilee did he depart, on a rickety ship bound for Nineveh. It was then, as the vessel traversed the wretched miasma of the warp, did they encounter a storm in space - a coalescing shoal in a place where there was not supposed to be a shoal. The helmsman of the ship did not expect this, and so it was that their ship was battered by the waves, threatened to be dashed against the fabric of space itself.

It was so that Jonah prayed, and so when the shipmen heard his prayers - not to their pagan emperor-god, but to the true LORD - did they cast him out of the ship, hurling him into the storm in an attempt to placate their false god. The maelstrom disemboweled their rickety boat, and then the storm subsided just as suddenly as it came to be. And there, drifting in space, Jonah saw a miraculous sign of the LORD's favor unto him.

A great fish that was unlike any other space beast opened its mouth and swallowed Jonah.

He knew not what came next. But the sensation of warmth and moistment was like that of being cleansed, his entire body purified and remade and renewed into a part of a greater whole, in a communion with the true GOD. The LORD spoke to him there. Thus, in that womb of the space fish, was he reborn - born again into a prophet of the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY. When the gestation was done, GOD himself uttered the words "evolution complete" and commanded the great fish to vomit him onto the surface of Nineveh itself.

He was in time to witness the wickedness of the pagans, charlatans, harlots and false-prophets of that cursed world.

Image

A son of man proclaiming the falseness of the pagans' emperor-god was put to death. Flogged and beaten, made to undertake a procession of blood before the Romans nailed him to a piece of wood - the same piece of wood that the son of man's carpenter-father had created in his woodshed years ago. Even in death, that son of man cried out, begging forgiveness for the sake of those who knew not what they did. Yet he also shouted, for such was his pain, asking why he had been forsaken. Then he died and was buried by his weeping apostles.

At this sight Jonah's resolve was hardened. The evil of these pagans and emperor-botherers truly knew no bounds. So did he begin to preach the gospel of GOD, the Word of the LORD, to those despondent few willing to see the light of salvation - those who were not blinded by the lies of the false prophets, those who were not cowed by the Romans, or seduced by the harlots and charlatans to their wickedness. He was there to save Nineveh.

It was through him, in him, and with him that his followers were guided into the true faith. He told them of how the LORD GOD would wreak revengeance upon their cursed world should the wickedness of the pagan Romans be allowed to continue, and thus did his followers deface the blasphemous monuments of the Roman pagan god-emperor, soiling it with their excrements and emissions like those of donkeys.

For this, he was pleased. They were doing the LORD's work. As the Word of the LORD spread and gained more followers and believers, then so did they begin to put the Romans to the sword. Dashing their infants against the rocks. Dismembering their mules and asses, and their other properties, like women. Consecrating their homes and towns into a great funeral pyre to appease GOD, who commanded thus and paid their acts with spiritual rewards. For it was not material gain they sought, but life everlasting together with the LORD their GOD. So did they parade around the walled towns of the Canaanites, and so did they trumpet their horns, and so did the walls fall and the townspeople weep as they were gathered in a massive hole and stoned to death by the score.

Afterwards did Jonah gather his followers for the holy communion. So did he let them eat the flesh of GOD, and drink his blood - for in doing so, they would become more like him, and as they drank his flesh and blood so too would their own flesh and blood slowly transubstantiate into the likeness of their LORD's true form.
***
Three days later...

The traitor was counting his pieces of silver when there was a knock on the door. He left his monies and went to answer the door. It was then that he was struck in the face, and as he fell on the floor he saw the man who he had betrayed and left for dead at the hands of the Romans.

Image

"Yeshua...!"

"Two." Jesus Two finished for him as he sat atop of the man who had sold him to the Romans, the emperor-botherers, the Pharisees. "It is time for confession, my son."

Though not an altar boy, the traitor would have counted as an altar man and so did Jesus Two rip his vestments off with mutant strength. There, the traitor lied naked, his deceit and flesh shown for all to see. He wept, for he knew what was coming next.

His spine snapped as he was bent over backwards. The New Jesus took his form and impaled it, discharges spewing forth, white clouds punctuating a clear unblinking sky. A sacrament against all that was past and holy.

As the traitor drowned in the clear white liquids, the New Jesus looked down at him. The son of man worked the lever of his rifle, and then the ejaculate that stained the floor was mixed with blood and brains.

Jesus Two collected the traitor's silver. It had been gained by selling him out to the Romans, so that made the monies his, in a way. The son of man counted his cash, it was sufficient for a ship off this forsaken world.

He left the traitor's home, which by then was burning. He looked on into the distance, saw Jonah and his followers stone an adulterous harlot and her bastard child born out of wedlock. The New Jesus smiled.

With his silver he left Nineveh, for he knew that it was doomed. Jonah would finish what he had started, else someone would finish it for him. The New Jesus vanished into the heavens.

For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation.
Last edited by Shroom Man 777 on 2010-10-19 08:54am, edited 1 time in total.
Image "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 :D - PeZook
Shroom, 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!
User avatar
Ilya Muromets
Jedi Knight
Posts: 711
Joined: 2009-03-18 01:07pm
Location: The Philippines
Contact:

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Ilya Muromets »

Somewhat in UNREAL TIME
Droning Along
Hyogo, Kansai Sector
Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya


As Brigadier Stalin discussed the possible Chamarran response to Solarian demands with the two imperial field marshals, he and they remained unaware of the two R’nish drones surreptitiously tailing their air limo. The two drones doggedly followed the speeding air limo as close as they dared, training their small but relatively power sensor packages at the vehicle. They flew on a randomized, irregular path with their tentacles still flapping like wings to preserve the appearance that they were birds at a distance.

Every so often, the drones would send quick backscatter scanning pulses, allowing the drones to attain a 3D silhouette of the occupants within the vehicle. Analysis had narrowed down which of the occupants was most likely to be the subject of observation, Brigadier Stalin, and the drones dutifully filed this information away. Most of the surveillance, however, was conducted through the use of the drones added-on audio sensor packages. These audio sensors were focused on the rear windows of the limo, reading the minute vibrations caused by the voices of the occupants inside. The drones analyzed the data, filtered out ambient vibrations, and managed to get audio readings that, while heavily garbled and muffled, were still understandable. This audio data, along with the backscatter silhouettes, they sent in brief data packet bursts to their R’nish respective handlers and each other.

All the while, they also received similar update packets from the two drones assigned to shadow the Chamarran delegation. Those drones had hovered around the Imperial Palace, remotely observing the delegation as far as their sensors would allow, whilst trying to avoid detection from the Imperial Palace’s security measures. They hadn’t gather much diplomatic data, however they had at least attained visual data, backscatter silhouettes, and audio signatures from the tours around the external areas of the Palace and the windowed hallways which the Chamarran delegation had taken during their wait for the Solarian delegations arrival.

Another few data packets later, and both the drones found out that the Chamarran delegation had moved deeper into the palace, far too deep within for remote observation from the outside. Concerned, the two drones tailing the Brigadier sent an inquiry as to how this might affect their assigned task. While the drones were not sapient like true R’nish, they were sentient and intelligent enough to realize that the continuance of their task would be greatly hampered by their inability to break into the Imperial Palace’s security network.

The response came back after a moment. Apparently the two other drones and their R’nish handlers had already figured out an infiltration plan. The other pair’s handlers had been busy downloading whatever information they could find on the on the Imperial Palace in the public information network. They had found out that the Imperial Palace had a dedicated water reservoir facility, and that much of the main plumbing leading from said reservoir would be capable of supporting the drones’ passage. While the exact layout of the pipes was kept away from the public information network, the drones should easily be able to find their way through the plumbing with their extensive sensor arrays.

Once they made it inside the Imperial Palace, however, it would be a different story. Leaving aside all of the internal security they had to avoid, there was the matter of locating the delegations within the expanse of the palace. The drones assigned to the Chamarran delegation had already reported the inability of their sensors in penetrating deeper into the palace. They had no idea of the internal layout of the inner recesses of the Imperial Palace from sensor data alone. Although, that problem was somewhat mitigated by information their R’nish handlers had managed to obtain from the public information network.

Apparently, there had been architectural floor plans and blueprints of the Imperial Palace available for download. While sensitive areas were left unmarked, secret areas were omitted, and a security details were nonexistent in said floor plans and blueprints, the drones at least had information on where not to look. Had the drones been designed to think in the manner of a true R’nish, they would’ve grudgingly accepted that as a place to start.

Eventually, the air limo entered the airspace around the Imperial Palace and began to descend. The drones sent one last backscatter scan and continued audio monitoring for as long as possible before they broke off. The other pair of drones had already ceased their earlier orbit around the Imperial Palace and had made their way toward the palace’s private water reservoir.

They found the pair waiting for them over the facility, and a brief data exchange took place again. The pair had already analyzed the facility’s layout and had found the best area for a covert insertion. Without any further dalliance, the two pairs collectively made their way to the designated entry point.

The drones zipped quickly with their quiet propulsors, although they still carefully kept the ruse of being birds. They settled around a cluster of water tanks, and made their way to the one which previous analysis had determined to have the most viewing obstructions. They landed on the tank, with the appendages on their multiple tendrils immediately adhering to the tank’s surface magnetically. They crawled their way toward the most obstructed part near the top of the tank.

One of the drones activated its cutting/welding laser and began to slice a small hole into the tank while the other three stood in alert guard. Once the circle was three quarters of the way done, the drone reached out with one tendril and magnetically latched onto the middle of the forming circle. Once the cut had been finished, the drone simply pulled it away, keeping hold of the excised section in a firm magnetic grip.

Image

The other three drones quickly entered the hole. It was a tight fit, just enough to allow the drones to squeeze through if the kept their manipulator tendrils straightened back. With three muted splashes, they entered the tank’s water. The fourth drone remained outside, to await their exit.

Meanwhile, the drones in the tank paused. They did a quick analysis of their own and each other’s bodies, checking carefully for any possible breach in their watertight bodies. Seeing that their primary drone bodies had maintained their integrity, the three drones suddenly flared out their tendrils to see of the quick motion would reveal any leak into any one of the metal tentacles. With no leaks found, the drones at once streamlined their tendrils and began to make their way to the pipe at the bottom of the tank.

Image

As they entered the pipe, the drones adjusted their sensors to account for the water. They sent out sonar pulses to navigate within the pipes and penetrating backscatter scans to obtain an image of the immediate area around them. They snaked through the twists and turns of the plumbing systems, riding the pressurized flow of the water to shoot them quickly toward the plumbing of the Imperial Palace.

Finally, the drones paused for a bearing check. Another scan determined that there was a wall beyond their section of the pipe. At the peripheries, there seemed to be the shapes of what looked like the part of a hallway.

They were at the palace.

The drones made their way through the pipes again and paused at another location to do a brief scan. The three machines did repeated this several times before, at last, they had attained enough information to juxtapose with the layout of the Imperial Palace they had generated based on the plans and blueprints their handlers had obtained for them. More importantly, they had also figured out a possible exit point within the palace.

The drones had dismissed exit via faucets or other such valves as the pipes leading to them were too narrow for them to squeeze through. They had considered using toilets as another possible entry point, but the pipes supplying water to the toilets were again too narrow. The only toilet pipes large enough were connected to the separate septic system. On the other hand, the drones had noted closed vales which projected from the pipes large enough for them to travel through. After a quick assessment, the drones had determined that these were standpipes for fire hoses to serve as an emergency firefighting system should the main internal fire suppression system in the palace failed. More to the point, these standpipes were distributed within the palace and were just large enough to accommodate their exit.

Wracking their collected data for the optimal exit point, they soon settled on a standpipe located in what seemed to be a hallway close to what they had tentatively identified as meeting rooms from the bits and pieces of backscatter data they had acquired. The standpipe had been located between what had appeared to be two large objects within the hallway, which might serve as visual cover for their emergence from the pipe.

Moving back through the pipes, the drones speedily located the standpipe in question. The lead drone pushed itself through the pipe leading out toward the cap of the standpipe and did a quick but more thorough scan of the area just outside the capped pipe. It was indeed a hallway. The two objects the standpipe was located between appeared to have the silhouette of a couch and a table holding some sort of receptacle which seemed to carry a small plant. The drone also took careful note of the shapes in the scan which seemed to be camera mounts mounted on the walls.

The drone sent the info back to the two drones behind it and began to formulate a possible exit plan. Calculating in unison, the drones had determined the most likely camera blind spots in the room based on the location of the camera mounts and the other objects in the room. It was a relatively quick calculation, taking the combined machine minds less than a second.

At the conclusion of the decision making process, the drone furthest from the standpipe cap suddenly drew up its tendrils behind its body, spreading them out and clumping them as tight as possible within the pipe to form an impromptu blockage. Water flow to that particular standpipe ceased immediately. The drone opened a small channel in front of its body and began to suck out the remaining water in the section in of it.

The drone immediately opened the cap from the inside after the third drone had successfully removed enough of the remaining water in the pipe so that nothing other than a few drops would spill to the floor once the cap was opened. The pipe was unsealed in short order, with the drone maintaining hold of the cap as it exited. It passed the cap off to the second drone after it exited and promptly dove toward the space under the nearby couch. The second drone hastily sound the cap back onto the standpipe, mindful of the need to avoid detection. Although, between the nearby couch and the table they were decently obstructed from the careful view of the cameras in the room.

After the cap had been replaced, the second drone followed the first under the couch. The first drone had already gone to work, rolling back the edge of the carpet under the couch. The drones had already ruled out zipping out from under the couch, or indeed any other action which involved the flying around within the halls of the Imperial Palace. There was no consistent cover against the multiple cameras within said halls. Trying to look for a vent (and there was a small vent conveniently behind the couch) was no good either since their scans had noted what where likely motion sensors within the vents.

However, there was another space the drones could use to move around undetected, even if it wasn’t the best in terms of motion or, indeed, moving space. Their scans had shown that the floor on the hallway was covered in beautifully furnished wooden boards, not that the drones had the capacity to appreciate the aesthetics. These wooden boards were placed atop a thin layer of polyboard which, in turn, sat atop a frame of composite metal to separate it from the concrete floor below. This small space between the polished board surface and the concrete floors also served as a space to run the electrical cables and wires of the Imperial Palace’s electrics.

It was also just enough space for the drones to literally squeeze through.

Deftly, the drones began to loosen the end of a board section under the couch. They were careful not to pry it too hard to cause permanent damage, bending the end up just enough for one of the drones to push its way in. Using the tools at the tip of one of its tendrils, the drone cut a hole into the polyboard undersiding. No concern about damage here since the hole would be concealed by the floorboards. The drone entered through the hole. Pulling down the loosened end of the board after it, the second drone quickly followed.

Allowing the dull red glow of their optics to light the way, the drones pushed their way through the small space with their propulsors. They scraped against the polyboard at the top and the concrete floor at the bottom. They stopped for a split second. A quick assessment determined that, other than some minor abrasions on their external surfaces, the scraping would do no real damage and the drones resumed their slow squeeze beneath the floors of the palace.

Had they not been drones, the task would’ve been a nightmare of darkness, claustrophobia, and extreme tedium. The drones, however, were concerned only with the completion of their task, and they pushed on with single-minded determination. Still, it was a slow progress, made slower by the need to avoid electrical lines and drill through the composite beams of the supporting frame. They carefully refrained from using their cutting lasers since they did not want to risk setting fire to anything.

After several minutes of slow progress, the drones finally made it to what they had determined were secure meeting rooms. It was a logical conclusion, given that the entire room was entirely opaque to the drones backscatter scans, and had only appeared as an dark, obstructive mass. Secure meeting rooms were usually encased in a layer of sound-and-signal-absorbent material covered in heavy backscatter opaque material to discourage prying ears. Thus, it followed that this backscatter opaque mass was likely a secure meeting room.

What the drones were uncertain of, however, was whether it was the correct meeting room, as their surreptitious scans from the pipes had uncovered more than a few similarly secured rooms in the Imperial Palace. In the end, the drones had had to analyzed which of the rooms the delegations were likely to use based on what they knew—which was admittedly very limited. It was far from ideal, and if they had picked wrong they would have to repeat the same slow crawl under the floors until they found the right rooms. All the while, time would slip and they would miss more and more of the meeting.

Given that, the pair of drones wasted no time. They had already planned what to do after reaching a meeting room. The second drone immediately began to remove the manipulator tentacles from the first drone, removing their utility tips, until only one tentacle was left attached. The remaining attached tentacle then had its utility tip removed and the second drone immediately began attaching a detached tentacle to the one still connected. It kept connecting one after the other until, at long last, they formed one extremely long manipulator tentacle. The second drone then attached one of the removed utility tips at the end of the lengthened manipulator.

The first drone right away shaped the utility tip into a drill and began to bore into and through the scan opaque layer of the meeting room. It opened a channel in front of it to suck out the debris from the drilling and dump it out back as the third drone had done with the water in the standpipe. After the drone had drilled as far as it could, it pulled the lengthened tendril out and presented its tip back to the second drone.

Without delay the second drone removed the utility tip with two of its own manipulators while using another three to remove one of the audio sensor clusters from the body of the first drone. It attached this to the tip of the lengthened tentacle, which the first drone promptly pushed back into the small tunnel it had just dug.

The end of the small tunnel had arced up through one of the meeting room walls, just within the anti-eavesdropping layer and just under the furnished inner wall. The drone activated the audio sensor and began to listen.

"Your 'exercises' make us think your Hierarchy is attempting to pressure the Sovereignty in some way. This is futile. Before its demise your own espionage ship will have informed you just how we react to such threats even from potential strategic threats you cannot hope to rival. If your fleet continues on its present course…"

The drone analyzed the audio signature. It was a match for one of the previously-recorded audio signatures from the air limo. Brigadier Stalin.

They were in.
Image

"Like I said, I don't care about human suffering as long as it doesn't affect me."
----LionElJonson, admitting to being a sociopathic little shit

"Please educate yourself before posting more."
----Sarevok, who really should have taken his own advice
User avatar
Darkevilme
Jedi Council Member
Posts: 1514
Joined: 2007-06-12 02:27pm
Location: London, england
Contact:

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Darkevilme »

HSF Fearless, Grand Hierarchy battlefleet, Hyperspace somewhere rimward of the Cevaucian territories, unreal time sometime after the incident in sector e-24.
Image

Once again the battlemistresses of the fleet were gathered by Melusine in holoconference. Once again to discuss recent events “We have all been informed by now about the Klavostani incident I trust.” Melusine says while getting comfortable atop her dais and assessing the moods of her fellow battlemistresses.
“We knew from the start that moving the fleets far from home would leave the Hierarchy more vulnerable to our neighbours. Though I thought it more likely we'd see a more aggressive move from the Argenti Federation as opposed to a tailpinch from the Klavostani fleet command.” says Eshe and tail swishes “This is hardly new information.”
“Not to us, but I feel it can illustrate the point sufficiently to others who lack our expertise.” says Melusine, meaning of course their somewhat inexperienced head of state but that wasn't voiced aloud.
“A boon for the Hierarchy as a whole no doubt, but we do not advise the queen. I fail to see how this affects us.” spoke Chiana.
“It gives us an opportunity battlemistresses. Though a controversial one, I propose we trust in Tia Kithandra to resolve the trouble with the Solarians and return home. We will of course keep the announcement of this course change till after Tia has announced a resolution. I believe between the resolution and the message of the Klavostani incident there will be no repercussions.” explains Melusine.
“You're just worried about getting any closer to the Solarian border.” Nian says, perhaps aiming to heckle with it.
“Yes, yes I am. Even what I feel are now the most realistic of optimistic scenarios mean we lose fifty percent of the fleet if it turns into a shooting war. And if Brigadier Stalin is the rolemodel their admiralty tries to emulate it almost certainly will turn into a shooting war.” says Melusine and then heckles back with “As you would well know if you'd paid attention last time we met.” Melusine then turns her attention to the group as a whole “I cannot of course command you to disobey the orders of our queen. If the majority wish to persist and move closer to the Solarian border, I will abide by it though I caution against it.”

The battlemistresses nodded thoughtfully and began to discuss the proposition in earnest.
Some hours later they had made the decision with the fleet dropping from hyperspace in a barren starsystem. Twelve hours later the fleet vanished into hyperspace again heading antispinwards, heading back home as their drives ramped back up to military cruising speed.

Imperial palace meeting room, Hyogo, Haruhiist space

“Brigadier if CEID lives up to even a fraction of their reputation they at least will know, regardless of whether they thought to inform you, that while the Hierarchy government is fully culpable for sending the vessel into Solarian space the tragic escalation of the situation that led to the loss of both Solarian and Chamarran lives was the result of a computer malfunction. You may rest assured that should this resolve to your satisfaction a good degree of your governments reinbursement will be that we have already exacted from those responsible for this particular malfunction. Had it not been for this malfunction I believe everyone involved on both sides would still be alive and thus I would like to believe we would be discussing this more amiably.” Tia tailflicks “Sadly we are not, and I would prefer we had no reason to discuss the Hierarchy fleet also, but such is life.”

Tia looks over attachment A as her aide passes it back to her “I believe we can resolve this however. This is not an outrageous sum and if we are able to reach agreement here the fleet will withdraw, after all they would have no reason to proceed. Now did your government have any particular requirements regarding the apology?”
Last edited by Darkevilme on 2010-10-19 01:27pm, edited 1 time in total.
STGOD SDNW4 player. Chamarran Hierarchy Catgirls in space!
Image
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
FUCKING DICK-STABBER!
Posts: 21222
Joined: 2003-05-11 08:39am
Location: Bleeding breasts and stabbing dicks since 2003
Contact:

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

PROTECTION ROCKET

Ape Carnival, Shepistan

Image

Private Last Class Piles Sarevokerritch scowled as the aircraft that dropped him off disappeared into the clouds. It was an SEB Scorpion Gunship from TOP SHEP's fleet of foreign vehicles used for Dissimilar Aerospace Combat Training, but that didn't mean he had to like it. The SEB Scorpion Gunship was a goddamn VTOL, using propellers to lift off and fly, with a glass canopy covering the pilot's cockpit. Sarevokerritch had read the sacred Holy Graphs in the library-church-archives, so he knew the truth. It was thanks to lousy aircraft like it that Shepistan nearly lost in the Amplitur Wars. Vehicles like it were the cause of every Shepistani social-economic-political-and-military defeat ever since the invention of the VTOL more than a thousand years ago, it was blamed for Shepistan's defeat at the hands of the Grand Dominion in the 21st century, and even the destruction of the Japanistani Empire was also the fault of those thrice-damned glorified helicopters. Why, it was the VTOL that made Shepistan a pariah in the fallout of the legendary Pathogen Wars, and it was because of the VTOL that Shepistani people were cast out from the Twin Cradles like lepers, ostracized and shunned by all other nations save for the Grand Dominion. The reflections on those clear glass canopies were windows to hell itself, and the spinning rotors were like the wails of the damned.

Sarevokerritch shuddered and shepped himself, it was like how Catlicks crossed themselves, but with more Shep.

Today, he had to destroy a foe far worse than the VTOLs. No, it wasn't the Blue People. They would have their turn would some other time. This was the day Sarevokerritch would earn his combat controller badge and complete his training as a forward air controller after trying hard for so long. His father knew people, so to make him a made man he was recruited into TOP SHEP's program for elite combat controllers. He only had one more test before he could make the grade and get initiated into the Fighter Mafia: he had to shed the blood of the innocent.

He grinned.

The target was an establishment known as Galactic Virgins. A small startup company that served as an adult social networking company for a certain demographic - namely asocial losers who couldn't get laid, as the name 'Galactic Virgins' so subtly implied. For some reason, Sarevokerritch felt an irrational hatred for them - like his feelings for the VTOLs and the Blue People. Even worse was the establishment adjacent to Galactic Virgins, another target named Space XXX.

Sarevokerritch was several hundred meters away when he raised his sights and painted Galactic Virgins and Space XXX with the laser designator.

Image

"Herf!" STARFUCK sputtered excitedly. Finally, a combat mission. At last, she could kill. This return to death-dealing likewise reunited her with an old acquaintance: crystal meth. Her trademark cry of 'hee!" had turned into a 'herf!" because her mouth was full of crystal meth. The drugs were pumping into her system, and she could already taste the blood of her soon-to-be victims... because the meth crystals had cut her gums, and she had bitten on her own tongue while crunching the meth crystals to pieces. Nevertheless she maintained strict radio communications protocol. "Tango-wango-jango, target sighted in vector alpha-zulu-rightoverthere! Roger that, charlie actual bravo-one-niner-zero-zero-nothing, over and out, copy!"

The marks had failed to pay their protection money, and without money then they wouldn't get protection... from the Fighter Mafia. There was a kind of irony in that, irony like the iron taste of blood.

"Sierra mike Space X-ray X-ray X-ray, Galactic Virgins, MRI, ECG CAT scan, visual spectrum acquired, not over yet!" As STARFUCK muttered some more unintelligible military jargon, the crunched crystal meth began mixing with her saliva and her bleeding gums, turning into a horrible pinkish froth that poured out of the corners of her mouth. She armed her weapons systems, and instead of repleted uranium or guided missiles or JDAMRAAMANPADRM1A9mms she instead chose rockets... because it was a racket. ICEPRICK had told her to always use rockets when doing rackets, and because his shit-eating grin reminded her of her dad's (and his fat beer-gut too), she followed him without question. "Incoming, I'm coming! I'm coming!"

The underwing FATENING targeting pod that also doubled as a carcass-corpse-cargo-carrier-interim-short-range (C4ISR) began scanning the target, and on her display screen STARFUCK got a closer look of her intended targets. She could see the Galactic Virgins building and the Space XXX stall beside it, and she could see all the clients coming in and coming out of both buildings. They were mostly males. Lonely virgins who wanted to hook up with porky girls for a fuck. Women didn't go to Galactic Virgins for fuck, they went down the Red Light district and worked as whores. Whores, STARFUCK hissed... in her brain. Also losers who went to Space XXX for their porno-slates. The FATENING pod's camera resolution was measured in the pseudometapixels, and in her screen she could see just how disgustingly fat the clientèle were. Fatties. Holonet fatties. Fatty nerds.

STARFUCK looked at herself and saw how diseasedly emaciated she was due to her filthy habit. Her ribs were sticking out of her g-suit. Then she looked at the ugly fat people in the gun camera. They were so round.

"Fatty nerds..." she hissed as she brought her fighter into a dive. As the Viper came closer, so did the images in the gun camera grow larger. Fatter. STARFUCK cringed. "Fatty nerds!"

The targets wouldn't fit in the crosshairs now because they were so fat!

"FATTY NERDS!" STARFUCK screamed as she got within engagement range and fired a full salvo of racketeering rockets at the Galactic Virgins and Space XXX buildings. They all found their mark because she was within a hundred meters of the damn buildings before she finally pulled up, flying through the gigantic fireballs. She was so close that she could have heard the explosion, if she hadn't filled the cockpit with her own screams of, "FATTY NERD! FATTY NERD! FATTY NEEEEERDS!"

STARFUCK kicked the afterburners and the Colonial Viper exited the atmosphere, leaving behind the burnt wreckage of Galactic Virgins and Space XXX.

Image

Thara Krace remembered.

Her mom left her abusive father and married a nice portly fellow... who she hated.
Image "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 :D - PeZook
Shroom, 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!
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
FUCKING DICK-STABBER!
Posts: 21222
Joined: 2003-05-11 08:39am
Location: Bleeding breasts and stabbing dicks since 2003
Contact:

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Somewhere in Wild Space...

Image

They faced each other there in the ruins of a poisoned world. The lifestream was gone, cursed by dark materia. The leader of the world, that deformed cripple, had taken up street diving though his suited bodyguards had saved him by deploying netguns. The decapitated head, however, was not destroyed and the trio had taken off with it. They fled to the forgotten city to consecrate their communion with their matron.

But it wasn't over yet. Not by a longshot. One brave warrior gripped the handle of his enormous weapon as he rode on his enormous motorcycle, pursuing the terrible three to that lost citadel - there in that arboreal realm of eldritch enunciation encrusted in Precambrian rock, where the once-mighty spires gleamed no more for the materia was gone.

The hero protagonist confronted his nemesis. The one who had taken his love from him.

Image

"Watashiwa nandesko," the evil albino said. His katana was long, very long, and it gleamed in the setting sun just as the wind blew against the albino's pretty white hair. "Gomenzai fugu mitsurugi... Kroud."

"Serafirarothu!" hissed the hero protagonist, the one called Kroud. "Sumo karateka dan-dan! Aji ichiban no ganguro!"

"Muhahahahahahahahahaha!" Serafirarothu laughed inexplicably. He cackled with exquisite glee as he ran his fingers over his sparkling hair. Then, satisfied with the flowingness of his mane, he continued: "Hahahahahahahahahahaha!"

Image

"Kuso!" Kroud hissed. Truly Serafirarothu's evil knew no bounds. "Deredere bonzai banzai! Ikozu!"

"Hai!" his opponent launched himself at him, swinging his enormous samurai sword. Kroud parried it with his huge cleaver, and the sheer impact of steel on steel seemingly reverberated the entire world around them.

The final battle had begun.

It was the clash of the titans. The smarmageddon as foretold by the prophecies of old. There were no words to describe this, this battle between good and evil, both sides a strak contrast to one another, light versus dark, life versus death, creation versus destrucity.

It was the return of the revenge. The twilight of the gods.

"Hyyyaaaaaa!!!!"

Image Image

Serafirarothu swung at Kroud, but the hero protagonist brought his enormous sword in time to parry the evil albino's very long samurai sword. The sheer force they were exuding caused the buildings around them to crumble.

"HHNNNNNGGGGG!!!!!"

"HHUUURRRGGHHHH!!!!"

The hero protagonist overpowered the evil albino, forcing him back. But suddenly, Serafirarothu leaped into the air...

Image

...and sprouted wings! One wing, a black one!

"HA-HA-HA!" the albino cackled. "Shinigami mitsubishi toyota-san!"

At this, he cackled some more. As if daring Kroud to respond.

"Hyundai," was all Kroud could say as he to took to the skies, launching himself at his sworn enemy.

"Subaru!" Serafirarothu roared as suddenly, he began transmogrifying - exploding in a horrific transformation. He became a giant monster.

Image

He revealed his true form.

His guttural roar echoed throughout the nine vectors, shaking the very foundations of the universe.

But Kroud was not deterred.

"HADOKEN!" he shouted as he summoned his spiritual energy. He broke his limits, limit-breaking, and suddenly started glowing blue! He flew towards the giant monster...

Image Image

"HRRRYYYYAAAAAAAAA!!!!"

...and stabbed it in the face!

"NEIN!" screamed Serafirarothu as Kroud impaled the enormous fuck-off huge sword inside his giant albino monster eye. "MEIN FUHRER! I CAN'T SEE!"

He plummeted and struck the ground with the force of brown thunder. The impact splintered his pancreas, fatally injuring him. Then, as if to add insult to injury, Kroud landed right on top of him, touching down and planting his foot in Serafirarothu's eye.

Image

Splork.

With that, the giant monster suddenly shriveled and shrunk in size, reverting back into human form. Kroud found his foot stamping on a human face. Forever.

Kroud removed his foot from the slain evil albino's face, showing that much respect to a defeated foe bested in mortal kombat.

"Onegai... samurai... champloo," Serafirarothu uttered with his dying breaths. "Yu... gi... oh..."

He wept. His perfect hairdo had been ruined.

Image

"Domo arigato mister roboto." Kroud said solemnly.

***
Bragule Hilton, somewhere in Severnaya Sector

Image

The Bragulan warden watched wide-eyed as the diseased, malnourished and half-crazed prisoners of war killed each other with sticks. He sat there while the Zigonian bong spewed forth vaporized Zigonian incense, and he gladly breathed it deeply.

Strangely, these POWs were not getting better. They had arrived from Jenova and the charts specified that they be fed an exclusive diet, a special one of long pig, and yet despite that they weren't showing any signs of improvement. The warden suspected that they might have the plague, like that geostigma someone mentioned, so he quarantined the Jenovans from the general prison population. Still, they were only getting worse.

So the warden just sat there and did drugs while the prisoners went crazy stabbing each other in the eye. They tried to provide them recreational activities like drawing, but even the centuries-old fossilized crayons were being used as shanks.

"The Commissar's not going to like this," said a prison guard as he rummaged through his pick-a-nick basket. The Zigonian incense made them hungry.

"Fair point. I'll break it up."

The warden got up and staggered towards the prisoners, still high from the incense. Then he pulled out a Bragnum revolver and after shouting incoherently at the Shinrans, screaming "ARGH MOTHER BRAGULE!", he began executing them one after the other.

"TODAY IS BRAGSDAY!" the drug-addicted warden screamed as he squeezed the trigger of his emptied weapon at a surviving prisoner, who was cowering beneath the Bragnum's barrel. "IT'S YOUR LUCKY DAY, HEW-MON PUNK!"

The warden began to pirouette while he laughed. He fucking laughed.

Image


[EDIT: All FF7 screencaps generously donated by Fin!]
Last edited by Shroom Man 777 on 2010-10-20 07:51am, edited 1 time in total.
Image "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 :D - PeZook
Shroom, 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!
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
FUCKING DICK-STABBER!
Posts: 21222
Joined: 2003-05-11 08:39am
Location: Bleeding breasts and stabbing dicks since 2003
Contact:

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

REEF STAR STATION, high orbit over Coraline

Image

In better years, Reef Star Station had been a bastion of the Realm's rising economy. There, tourists could admire the space view of Coraline before they went down to the planet itself, reentering in old-fashioned space shuttles and capsules with old-fashioned chemical rockets in keeping with the world's rustic aesthetic. It had been a trading posts, where junks from the Outlands could stop by and barter goods with the locals before heading off. It was a monument, made in the Reef Star by the Reef Star's people and for the Reef Star's people. It was an accomplishment, a modest one perhaps, but nonetheless something to be proud of and celebrated. In better years.

Since the disintegration of the Outlander Commissions, the years had steadily progressed from being better, to being merely good, and then they became average. Eventually the years became not-good, then ungood, and now the years were getting progressively worse as they went on. With civil war, anarchy and piracy going on, the tourists in the Reef Star Station slowly turned into refugees - without the capital 'R' - and when the pirates came, the bad years went worser than worse, if that was even possible (it was). They threw the huddling refugees out of the station, making them literally walk the plank out of the airlocks, and set up shop in the space station, turning it into their little outpost, their little pirate haven, a safe place where they could heap all the booty they collected from the nine vectors, away from the spooky Refugees with the capital 'R'.

So did the pirates reign there in the Reef Star Station, orbiting over the planet Coraline and surveying the minuscule planet like the gods of space. In a freak turn of events, the majority of the pirates stationed at the RSS were from the former Araynan Republic Navy, and their pirate fleet were likewise composed of ARN warships still flying the flag of the defunct human-led Commission.

Image

Self-styled Pirate Lord Admiral Deacon Saito mused quietly upon his control throne, aboard the ARNS Grinning Gilgamesih that was docked on the Reef Star Station. Word had traveled fast of King Krab's untimely demise, of how His Majesty had been killed on his own throne - said to have been shot to death by his very own military generals, who might or might not have had outside help. Deacon Saito had known King Krab, even known him intimately back when he made the Angmarid leader pucker his face tentacles and brown them up his piratical ass. King Krab had been very accommodating, and thus Deacon Saito had chosen to spare his shell. Too bad Krab's own people weren't as accommodating. Alas, now the dearly departed King was with Davy Jones, communing with the space dolphins.

The pupils of Deacon Saito's ocular implant narrowed. He lost his original eye back in the civil war, when a damn Airaii cavalryman (or was it cavalrybug) harpooned it with a crossbow. Those damn aliens just couldn't submit to human rule, not quietly at least, and just like the Angmarids down below on Caroline, they had to be shown the true order of things. One of the advantages of being in orbit was that he had the ultimate high ground, the disadvantage being that everyone down below planetside could likewise aim at him as he passed over, but no one had anything to aim with on Coraline, unless the Angmarid's ink sacs were counted.

Deacon Saito remembered how that alien had harpooned his eyesocket, remembered it bitterly. After all these years, he could still feel the pain... now, the aliens were getting uppity again. But this time, no, this time he would be the one who'd harpoon their little compound crustacean eyes. He'd give their entire planet an eyepatch!

With a command, his men began loading appropriately-sized cannon balls into the Grinning Gilgamesh's guns.

He grinned. For one of the failed states in the Arayna Republic was Athenia, his homeworld, thus he grinned an Athenian Grin.

"Arrr!" he began, speaking to the gun crews through the intercom. "These ruttin' sea creatures need be reminded the order of things! Best be ready to fire the cannons on my mark!"

"Captain..." the officer standing behind him, the blurry one with the cigarette in his mouth, tapped his shoulder. "Captain."

"Avast!" Deacon Saito slapped his hand away. "What be it?!"

"There's a ship coming at us, Captain. It's hailing us."

"Aye?" Deacon Saito scowled. He pressed a button on his chair and received the ship's transmission. "Speak up, ye scurvy dogs!"

Image

The image of the Doctor President filled the screen, his message relayed from the newly redecorated Presidential Palace on Caytown.

"Pirates of the former Arayna Republic Navy, on behalf of the Reef Star Republic," squid-face began. "We unkindly command you to get off our orbit."

"Hah! Load grapeshot in the other guns and show these scalleywags what for!" Deacon Saito laughed. What resistance could these pitiful mollusks offer? They didn't even have a spine, they were literally spineless! "Well, what are you waiting for?"

"Sir, we're being targeted by active sensors."

"Active sensors from what?" Deacon Saito spat incredulously. In all his years of pushing over the Reefers, they had none of the sort. If they had, then they wouldn't have been such pushovers, would they?

"The ship, sir. It also looks like its fore is opening up, sir."

"Wha?" Deacon Saito blubbered like a barnacle. He could see it on screen. The approaching ship's front end literally split open, revealing... no, can't be!

It could. It was. The approaching ship ripped off its face and revealed a SPUD, which it vomited out like a lethal loogie. The thing's liquid uranium/liquid plutonium internal combustion engines ignited and sent the thing roaring towards the Grinning Gilgamesh, right into Deacon Saito's Athenian Grin.

Image

"Dive! Dive! Dive!" Deacon screamed as he jumped to the Gilgamesh's steering wheel and spun it as fast as he could. He yanked the ships control clutch, setting it for ludicrous speed even though the ship couldn't accelerate that fast in such short order, even though the ship might break itself in trying to do so. The Grinning Gilgamesh literally tore off its moorings as it pulled away from the Reef Star Station. It drifted, distancing itself from the RSS as the SPUD closed in for the kill. Deacon could only watch the readings as the missile came so close to them... and passed them right by, too close for comfort but too close for the SPUD to maneuver. No, for the missile went on straight as an arrow to the eyeball and rammed into the Reef Star Station instead, triggering the proximity fuse and making the RSS disappear in a thermonuclear whiteout.

The blinding light burned Deacon's eyes and the searing pain was just like the time he got harpooned in the face. He screamed. The Grinning Gilgamesh also screamed as the detonating SPUD sent a nuclearlectromagnetic pulse through the whole vessel. Without its shields raised, the pirate ship was vulnerable to the neutron flux and suffered as a result - unshielded sensors, exposed electronics, and even the targeting systems getting fried by the radiations of such a close-proximity nuclear initiation. They were in no state to fight, and Deacon Saito knew it.

"Yarrr, get us out of here!" he commanded as he clutched his bleeding eye.

Before more SPUDs could finish him off, the Gilgamesh broke for the hyperlimit. Engines were still on, along with the hyperdrive. They ran, tails tucked between their legs, and as soon as they could they made themselves superluminally scarce.
***
Deep Space, somewhere in shoal sector AA-25

"Did anyone else make it?" Saito asked as he finished bandaging his wounded eye.

"No. The other pirate ships were still docked on the RSS and didn't get any warning when it happened," his XO replied.

"Arrr..." the cyclopean pirate lord winced. The neutron flux had also taken out his ocular implant, causing it to short circuit right inside his eye socket. It hurt like a space wench. "Damn it!"

"I told you so," one of the pirates said to him.

"What?" Deacon Saito leaned over to him and cupped a hand on his ear, feigning deafness.

"I told you so," the pirate repeated himself. "You should've bought an EMP-proof eye -"

Deacon Saito shot him in the face with a flintlock.

"Well, YOU should've gotten a bulletproof FACE!" Deacon Saito laughed. Whether he fucking laughed, or laughing fucked, he didn't care. He didn't give a shit. He only cared for one thing...

Image

He swore, no matter what it took, he would have his revengeance on those damned Angmarids and the aliens who took his goddamn eye... again!
Image "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 :D - PeZook
Shroom, 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!
User avatar
Steve
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 9762
Joined: 2002-07-03 01:09pm
Location: Florida USA
Contact:

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Steve »

Co-written with Siege



Villa Straylight
Geosynchronous orbit around Solaris


Image


The Strahl was moving ever closer to the massive space habitat, creating a sight of wonder for Nisa as she watched through the cockpit. A week of solid travel through the Cevaucian Ascendancy into Solarian territory had given her time to feel better about what had happened in Prince Jabin’s Palace. Her Father, Yamia, Balthier, even Chandra had given her some advice or comfort on the issue, even if she could still remember that young woman’s head bashed in as a result of her attack.

But that was not on her mind now. What was on her mind was the impossible sight before her. On Toutaine such structures were the stuff of hushed stories and distant legends. Now she was seeing it face to face, even as around them starships of all shapes and sizes flitted about on their voyages.

“And one man owns that entire thing?”, she asked in a hushed whisper.

“Oh yes,” Balthier answered from the pilot’s seat. “Mr. Hank is a rather wealthy individual, quite eccentric as well. I suspect you will enjoy your visit, though. He is a gentleman and a fair host.”

“And a philanderer,” Vanrya muttered under her breath. Nisa wasn’t paying attention to the thought and Balthier, who heard it, could only grin in amusement. Aloud Vanrya stated, “We have landing clearance.”

“Taking us in, then.”

They flew on toward the villa while Nisa continued to stare, her wonderment a source of amusement and some joy for her father as he stood behind her, thinking his own thoughts on this long-overdue reunion now imminent.

The fact was, Stephen could have done this centuries ago. He should have. But he had not, for varying reasons. He wasn’t sure Sidney would actually remember him - his note had been meant to intrigue as well as remind - and he wasn’t sure this was the same man he had known on Nova Terra, fourteen hundred years ago. And then everything had happened, first Titusville and then Redwood City, and he’d been too frightened to remain in civilized space any longer. Not until he mastered this curse within him.

“And you knew this man, Father?”, Nisa asked as they drew nearer to the actual hanger.

“Oh yes. A very long time ago,” he said. “He was a friend. Not the closest I ever had, but a good one nevertheless. And we had quite a few mutual accomplishments.”

“I’m glad you’ll get to see him again, then.” Nisa smiled at him and rested her head on his shoulder.



Sidney experienced an odd feeling of deja-vu as he watched the Strahl edge in to one of the hangars through the multitude of sensors fitted to the exterior and interior of the villa. Aboard that ship was one of his oldest acquaintances, another person he’d known over 1,400 years ago, and had long thought lost to the ravages of time. He remembered attending the man’s funeral, a lifetime ago -- hell, a multitude of lifetimes ago. That dreary Nova Terra day had been one of the last times he’d set foot on the old world. He recalled the speeches, the mourning crowds outside his limousine, the casket lowering into the rain-soaked ground, with the unerring precision of memories long since digitized.

And yet, there he was. Approaching on a starship built many centuries after his death.

For centuries that distant past on Nova Terra had been a closed chapter in his ageless existence. Now though, it was undeniable someone had reopened it.

For a brief moment he experienced the same kind of paranoia he’d felt during his meeting with Shady -- Seth -- only a few months earlier. Sidney loathed not knowing what was going on, why these people he’d once cared about were resurrected, what their purpose was -- indeed, if they were perhaps part of some scheme directed at him either directly or indirectly. They were a blank spot in his calculations, an entirely unanticipated factor, and the simple fact that they shouldn’t be here but were made him very, very nervous. People didn’t come back from final personality death. That one, simple fact more than anything had driven him for over a millennium. He had given up everything in his quest for immortality: his old world, his old political connections... the love of his wife. Hell, if the Church was to be believed, his soul. Power, friendships... Everything he had burned on the altar of his one overriding ambition: to continue existing so that he might one day find the purpose for his twisted, transplanted existence.

And now, here he was, 1400 years later, and his friends of old were back again. The simple fact of their existence made a mockery out of what had been an unparallelled accomplishment. He felt his gorge rising. For endless microseconds he mulled over the possibility of ordering the villa’s weapons systems to obliterate the approaching ship.

He decided against it.

His biological avatar sighed. “I suppose I should go welcome them,” he said to his own reflection in one of the orbital’s many windows.

An idle part of him realized that Villa Straylight hadn’t entertained visitors in over a hundred and seventy-nine years.


The hangar was a cavernous place, an expanse of immaculately polished white large enough to hold several ships. Apart from the Strahl there was just one however: a sleek yacht, bright red and ancient looking, was parked in a corner. Walking out of the elevator just as the ship’s landing struts touched down, Sidney waited patiently for the landing ramp to descend, hands stuffed in his suit’s pockets. A thousand thoughts mulled through his mind, none of them very constructive.

The port airlock opened and a ramp came downward. The first figure out was Stephen, still in his desert robes and the vest and trousers he wore underneath, recovered from his now-abandoned hut on Toutaine before they’d gone on to al-Yasuj the prior week. His beamsaber dangled openly on his waist, though the hood was kept down. He saw Sidney and, for a moment, looked on quizzically until he was certain he was looking at the right man. He finished coming down the ramp and stepped up toward the figure to look at him directly. “Sidney,” he said plainly, “I see we’ve both gone through some changes over the years. Despite everything... it is good to see you.”

Behind him, Chandra and Phani left the Strahl, followed by a curious Nisa who was taking in the sights of the hanger with gusto.

Sidney gazed at the man who’d come down the ramp first, his own senses aided by the villa’s myriad sensors. He saw the robe, the saber, the leathery, sun-dried skin. He heard his heartbeat; felt his footsteps against the station’s artificial gravity, sensed the subtle aura of psionic power that shrouded him. “Stephen,” he greeted, nodding slowly. “It’s been... a while.”

“On the order of thirteen and a half centuries, I believe.”

“Thirteen hundred forty seven years, eighty-nine days, six hours, five minutes and fifty-two seconds. But who’s keeping count?” He shook his head. “Remarkable. I have to admit I didn’t see this day coming. Not, as the saying goes, in a thousand years.” He smiled thinly. “I have to say, then, that your message came as quite a surprise.”

“I imagine it did,” Stephen admitted. “I’ve been keeping a low profile over the centuries since I was... brought back. And I admit I wanted to ensure it got your attention even if I was wrong and you would not know who I was. Anyway, I’ve brought someone with Toutaine with me, if you don’t mind.” He gestured to Nisa, who approached and bowed her head in respect as a greeting. “This is Nisa.”

There was no way his artificially aided, hyper-keen senses would miss the physical similarities - the high cheek bones, the matching eye colour, her unusual height... Not to mention the similar psionic aura. “Your daughter?” Sidney murmured. He smiled handsomely at the girl and bowed just a little deeper in return. “Welcome to the Villa Straylight, madam Nisa. I hope your stay will be... Enjoyable.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hank.” Nisa smiled at him. “I will enjoy seeing your beautiful home.”

Stephen gave Hank a slight look as he put an arm over Nisa’s shoulders. He suspected Sidney already knew this, but just for the record he stated, “She’s my daughter” in a tone that, while fairly pleasant, had a slight edge to it, in the sense of “She’s my little girl, Sidney, so don’t even think about it”.

Sidney flashed the hermit a grin. “You and your crusty old-fashioned twenty-first century sensibilities.” He experienced a rush of emotions he hadn’t felt in a long time. “Stephen... I’m glad to see you again. Regardless of the circumstances.”

He made a gesture toward the waiting elevator. “Why don’t we take this conversation someplace more comfortable? I’m sure Mr. Balthier and his crew would like a chance to refresh themselves as well.”

“Yes, that would be rather welcome,” Balthier stated from where he and everyone, sans Umarbacca, were standing and observing the strange reunion. “Toutaine is most certainly not on a list of pleasant planets to walk about on.”



The lyceum of the Villa Straylight appeared more like a museum than an ordinary living room, and wholly out of place aboard something as futuristic as an orbital villa. Filled with all manner of trinkets and antiques its owner had amassed over the centuries, it offered a fantastic view of the gas giant Solaris in the far distance as well as the twin city-moons that orbited it. Refreshments were served by drone robots wearing old-fashioned butler livery, after which Sidney exchanged glances with Chandra. The mercenary got up and walked over to Nisa, who was still gawking at the sculptures and armored suits, not to mention the ancient biplane that hung suspended in its own gravity field somewhere high above them.. “Come on, there’s much more to see here. I’ll show you around the place.”

“Thank you, Mr. Chandra,” she said, following him away from the others. She sensed that Mr. Hank and her father were about to have a very personal, private talk.

Stephen looked toward Sidney. “I suppose we have a great deal to discuss now.”

He sighed. “I suppose we do.” He looked the hermit in the eye. “Do you know you’re not the only one to, ah, return?”

Stephen looked at him with interest. “I was not aware,” he admitted. “Who else is back amongst the living?” Not that he could guess them all; when he had died three days after the Straylight launched, a number of his fellow heads of state, his fellow “players” in Q’s demented game, were still alive. Any number of them could have done as Sidney had and lived on, though quietly.

“I was contacted by Shady only a few months ago,” Sidney spoke quietly. “He incarnated on a planet dominated by the Karlack. He’s an Aspect of the Swarm now.” He looked at Stephen. “And it looks like he wasn’t the only one to make a comeback with... unusual abilities.” It wasn’t a question.

“Then it is another game,” Stephen sighed. He remembered Shady as a good man as well. A good man with a vicious streak, true, but he meant well. “But this time we’ve not been told what the game is.” Seeing Sidney’s expression, he added, “As you’re undoubtedly aware, I am now what the people of this era call an ‘Esper’. And a fairly powerful one, though it’s become a very dangerous burden for me to carry. It’s why I had to become a damned hermit, living on Toutaine this past quarter century.”

“I had inferred as much. I’ve experimented with psion bodies a few times over the years. It’s... not my cup of tea. I think I understand your reservations.” Sidney shook his head. “Still, man. You could’ve at least told me.” There was a shadow of an accusation in his words.

“I wasn’t quite sure if you were the same man I knew once,” Stephen confessed, “but I do apologize. Had I come to you thirty years ago, then maybe things would have been different.” Though Nisa would not be alive, and poor Yamia would be suffering somewhere in Pfhor space or dead, he thought to himself. In a way he thought things had probably turned out for the better anyway.... at least if you didn’t count why he went to Toutaine. “I believe you would like to know where I’ve been these past centuries?”

A fractional nod. “I would like that very much.”

“Then it will be quite a story, and we should probably find a place to sit down and share a drink while it is told.”

“That can be arranged.” A thought and a floating drone approached holding an assortment of beverages. Sidney lead the way to a patio that offered a view out across space as well as the lyceum below. A set of comfortable leather chairs was arraigned around an elegant table. The two sat down. Sidney looked at his visitor. “So. How does one get... reincarnated? Am I right to assume it involves infuriatingly cryptic conversations with a certain entity we are both acquainted with?”

“With me, he was not quite so cryptic.” Stephen put his hands together after taking a drink. “On the other hand, sometimes I wonder if I might have been better off had he wanted me for some cryptic purpose....”

“My memories go like this, Sidney. It was three days after we watched the Straylight leave for Earth. I was at my family house. My granddaughter Abigail was cooking as my family gathered and my great grandchildren were playing in the backyard while I watched. I sat there and, to my surprise, I saw Sophia sitting beside me in her wedding dress.” There was a distant look in his eye. “She said she’d been waiting for me and gave me a kiss. I remember falling asleep as our lips touched. And then...” A sigh. “I was staring in a mirror. Suddenly I was young again, didn’t look a day over 20, and I was in a house in some suburban home. I walk around the house to find, well, all sorts of things that a 21st century man doesn’t expect to see. But they were rather popular in the 32nd Century.”

“I didn’t know what was going on. I picked up a remote control, hit the on button, and suddenly there’s the image of a man hovering over the living room table, giving the news. And the date said ‘April 17th, 3169’.” He took another drink and closed his eyes. “I must of spent about two days in a daze. Sometimes I called out for Sophia, expecting it to be a bizarre dream. It was, you imagine, hardly the kind of afterlife I had thought possible.”

Sidney bit it back the snide comment he’d been about to make when he heard Sophia’s name. He felt the familiar pang of regret as he thought of his own wife, gone too but for entirely different and far more selfish reasons. “That can’t’ve been easy,” he said instead.

“I eventually settled down to learning about things. I was in my hometown, Sidney. My original hometown, on Earth, in the region of Central Florida.” Stephen looked briefly toward the Lyceum, letting the memories shift about in his head. “A suburban expansion of a larger city now. And then. I learned about the UN, about the ultimate fate of the Straylight’s voyage and what had transpired since then. I also found my ‘personal’ data on the household computer. I had an eight digit fortune stored away in Swiss banks somehow, far more money than I ever had in my prior lives, and a house of my own. I had no indication of all how I bought my home, who’d lived there before. My ‘new’ birth certificate listed the names and IDs of a couple who’d died in a starship accident years before, with no kin at all. It was as if I was plunked back into life with no purpose or reason whatsoever.” He frowned darkly. “You can guess who.”

“Q,” Sidney said gloomily.

“He didn’t show up until a week had passed. At the time, yes, he was cryptic. He told me nothing but that I would learn why I was still alive in due time. ‘There are lessons that need to be taught’.”

“Bastard,” Sidney muttered. “I haven’t seen him since our first arrival but... He’s a bastard.”

“I know. I would, in time, figure out what he meant.” Stephen drew in a sigh. “Around then, after I was ‘visited’ by him, I learned about my ESP. With something that dangerous, I knew I had to be educated, so I found a school.”

“I had what my instructors thought was a surprising mix of abilities. I had electrokinesis, pyrokinesis, an incredibly powerful telekinesis capable of advanced manipulation, physical enhancement, precognition, even some direct perception. I had almost all the criteria to be classified a Class 6 Esper with one glaring exception. I could not read minds. I had only basic emotion sensing and while I could sense the presence of minds I could not read them. At all.”

Sidney creased his brow. “I’ve never heard of a Class 6 psion lacking basic farsensing skills.” He used the term for telepathy that was commonly used in the Sovereignty.

“I was assured it was considered impossible by the Esper scientific community. That telepathy was too basic a function for a Class 6 to be incapable of it. I was, in fact, told that only Class 1s had no telepathic ability, and those are people who are barely Espers possessing only slight empathy and occasional limited precognition.” He took a drink. “They wanted me to go to Harvard’s Psionics College for full testing and study, but I refused. And I successfully prevailed upon my instructors to not report my name to the Esper research journals they contribued to.” Stephen’s expression was grim. “I knew it was Q’s doing. He had a reason to keep me from being telepathic.”

“One imagines it can’t have been a very pleasant reason.”

“I’m not sure why. I have my suspicions though.” He took another drink. “Through the 33rd Century my life on Earth was pleasant enough, I imagine. I became an ESP instructor myself, not because I needed money but because I wanted to help young people understand their gifts. ESP instruction is, you understand, a very personal thing. We rarely have more than six children at any given time, sometimes less. And it becomes generational; I had quite a few cases where I’d teach a couple kids who would grow up, marry, and send their children to me for instruction if they developed abilities.” He drew in a sigh. “And, to be frank, it made me feel good about my unexpected return to life. I had some purpose to it, I wasn’t alone. I stopped thinking about Q and the past and just focused on living my new life. But unfortunately, good things don’t always last.”

“No, they usually don’t.” Sidney’s voice was distant, obviously thinking about all the things he’d left behind himself. Of course, he’d been able to lead the good life for pretty much the entire period, but even so there had on occasions been things he’d regretted, things he’d lost that he’d rather not... And over the centuries, such things tended to mount up to an awful lot of stuff that wasn’t around anymore. He’d had a life and a purpose; sure. He hadn’t been messed with by weakly godlike entities, or at least not insofar as he knew. But it definitely hadn’t always been easy. It was one thing to found nations, it was another to see them crumple into dust around you -- or turn into things you hadn’t envisioned at the start and wasn’t quite sure you liked, for that matter.

“It was eighty years ago,” Stephen sighed. “I had a student, Clarice, who exhibited a rare development; metacognition. She didn’t have much in the way of telepathy, much like me, as she had been born in Shepistan.” There was a noticable chill in the room. Even if it wasn’t necessarily important to the story being told, the name carried a great weight simply by being stated, especially for these two men who knew precisely what the nation of Shepistan had proven itself capable of over the long centuries. “I had high hopes for her. She was already capable of college level mathematics at that age.”

For a moment there was silence, as Stephen took a drink. And it was the kind of ominous silence that told you this is where everything in the story goes horribly, horribly wrong.

“She disappeared,” Stephen said. “She missed an after-school appointment with me. Her parents had no signs of her. A glitch in the security systems had prevented the recording of data from the day she disappeared. The school insisted she’d been picked up by an approved relative, an uncle who was out of town, and the police didn’t know what to do.” He looked toward Sidney. His expression grew cold. “So I took matters into my own hands.”

Sidney nodded. Any number of things could’ve happened, from kidnapping by relatives to covert actions by Shepistani intelligence. But he knew it wouldn’t be either of the two. He also knew that whatever happened, it probably wasn’t a story with a happy end.

“With the help of a former student living in the area, I found out the school’s data monitors had been tampered with. I confronted a secretary in the school office. She was uncooperative... for a time.” Stephen took a sip. His voice took on a low quality to it, as if speaking a shameful thing or some hushed secret. “You would be surprised at how much fear you can inspire if people know you’re a Class Six Esper. After all, who’d ever heard of one who didn’t have telepathy?”

“As it turned out, someone bribed this woman with a great deal of money and favors to help them get their hands on Clarice. At my... urging the woman informed the police of her duplicity and was taken into custody. She committed suicide shortly thereafter, and an attempt to employ a brain-state backup failed due to unexpected data corruption.” Stephen folded his hands together. “But I had more important things to deal with. Through my contacts in the Esper community I learned there had been a handful of other abductions in the area, all of children who were either confirmed or unconfirmed Espers. We couldn’t trust the police; witnesses to abductions were leaving town or becoming uncooperative, local officials were complaining about wasted man-hours on an investigation going nowhere, that sort of thing that tells you that someone with a great deal of money and influence was pulling strings. This wasn’t an ordinary kidnapping ring but something far more sinister.”

“We took the law into our own hands. I won’t name names, you understand, but only say that telepaths can learn things from hostile witnesses without having to actually burrow into their minds. Stray unguarded thoughts laced with memories, for instance. Either way, thanks to such interviews and the help of direct-perceptives and precognitives, we were able to determine there was a storage facility in Titusville that had activity a tad too frequent to be a dormant corporate warehouse. Of course, breaking in was a dangerous concept. Whomever did so would go to prison. It could wreck families, harm lives, that sort of thing. And it could end up with media attention, and you know how invasive the anti-Esper groups can get.” Stephen put his hands together. “So, naturally, I volunteered to do it alone. I had the widest mix of abilities, after all, and I had no life to ruin. Besides, I’d lived one before.” His expression turned dark. “Do you want to guess what I found, Sidney?”

Scenarios blossomed through his CompInt cores with the rapidity of subatomic lightning, branching into possibilities that were instantaneously correlated against extrapolated probabilities, known historical facts and psychological profiles of Stephen Garrett himself, forming catalytic trees at speeds far in excess of ordinary human thought. “My guess would be,” he said flatly, “rabid anti-psion xenophobes. In the timeperiod as I recall they were still all over the place, and quite often very well funded and organized. Like the KKK in its heyday. I remember when they used to be popular around these parts. And what the Apexai did to them.” He smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “Anyone who thinks the little grey buggers can’t be creative hasn’t seen them angry.”

Stephen wasn’t quite in the mood to discuss the horrors that a psionic race could inflict on xenophobes. Not given the memories he’d now dredged up. “Their security operated under the assumption of telepaths penetrating their security, so they had portable Blitzschlag field generators. Those don’t quite work when you’re throwing fireballs or channeling electric currents at them though.” He almost flashed an instinctive smile, but a horrible memory was now coming to the forefront, on the tip of his tongue waiting to be told. “Afterward I found their wards. Some were empty, others had kids. I remember a boy who was brain-dead from drugs and almost drowning in his own saliva. Another who had half his scalp missing and wires sticking through his head. They were experimenting on them, Sidney. They were experimenting on children.”

The man opposite him sighed into his drink. At an intellectual level Sidney was still appalled by the things people did to one another, but he’d seen too much, and to a very real extent had been responsible for too much, to be still horrified. What was one atrocity in a galaxy where uncountable atrocities occurred every day? How could he possibly still be shocked by these things?

He couldn’t, not like Stephen obviously still could. The only thing he could do was file away the name of the girl away in the labyrinthine recesses of his digital mind, as one fragment of data among many. Suddenly he felt tired to the bone, exhausted by life and worn down by an uncaring universe. This will all change he told himself. Once I succeed, none of this will happen again. Maybe he’d one day believe it himself.

“It was about the third room that I finally threw up,” Stephen continued. “And not just from seeing what they were doing to the kids they’d taken. It was because I knew then I was too late. It’d been weeks since Clarice had gone missing. I knew I was too late to save her, but I had to try anyway, so I kept on. And I found Clarice in one of the rooms. At least, what was left of her...”

He went silent, closing his eyes and showing old pain welling up. A sip of drink wet his throat and tongue. For a moment the sentence hung in all its ominous horror.

“They’d cut her open, Sidney. They cut open a 10 year old girl and stuck wires into her head!” His fist clenched and slammed the table. “They’d pumped poison in until her brain was reduced to a stew of chemicals!” It took him a moment to regain his composure. “She was gone. The girl I’d been teaching, I mean. She looked at me with these dull eyes and asked me who I was. She didn’t remember her own damn name, much less anyone who’d been important to her! That was how far they had messed her brain up!”

“There was nothing I could do for her. The damage was permanent, you see. And she had no brain backups, her parents hadn’t... they came from Shepistan, people didn’t do that there, and they hadn’t had the money yet.” He put his hand on his forehead. “I did what I could. I took the IVs out, shut down the poisons they’d been circulating into her, severed the wires. Found out it was the only thing keeping her alive, really; her brain was so damaged it literally shut down once it wasn’t getting external support.”

“Of course, doing this caused me to be detected. But I didn’t care. I should have, though.” Stephen frowned. “They activated a Blitzschlag Field that covered the entire facility. It was like having someone trying to put my brain into a vise and suffocate it at the same time. I felt like a fool, thinking they wouldn’t have such protection. Obviously they didn’t run it normally - the power draw would be noticable and the field might be detected. And they’re illegal in most interstellar nations.” He resisted the temptation to draw a line of civilized/uncivilized. “In short order I found myself facing some very angry men with some very scary guns. Not that I cared at the moment. I screamed at them with rage and was going to try and rip their heads off with my bare hands. I wanted to kill them right then and there for all the horrors they were committing.” He laughed bitterly. “Naturally they opened fire.”

Sidney raised an eyebrow. “One doesn’t suppose they missed.”

“Oh, they didn’t.” Stephen took a drink. “That’s when Q decided to show up.”
”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
User avatar
Agent Sorchus
Jedi Master
Posts: 1143
Joined: 2008-08-16 09:01pm

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Agent Sorchus »

Sector H6

The cruiser Roubvogel drifted through space, it's ears to the aether. Nothing. Just like the last time through.

The captain twitched his ear, it was too quite in the chamber, just as quiet as the sensors were reporting and as quiet as an efficient warship could get. It was Insufferable, almost nothing to distract oneself with. Sensor operators, Plotting stations and gun layers relaxed in peace with but the barest of murmurs between the sensor stations.

The watch officer broke the silence," Captain, we will be leaving the system in twenty, there is nothing to see here. If you wish to check the notes for the next system I can take the con."

"I would like to. Is the next shift going into briefing soon?"

The watch officer had a more intimate understanding of the duty shifts than the Captain, who almost always was on call. "I believe the Archivist is going to be starting soon, sir. The shift transition will happen just after transition into the target system."

"Aye, watch officer you have the con."

Two decks up and five bulkheads over was the Archivists briefing hall, but thanks to the machinery of both the primary port kinetic generator and the secondary cooling systems it was three decks down in addition to the rest of the trip. A human would have had a far longer route, both because there were few decks that had the height for a human to walk across easily and because Eoghan didn't use convenient inventions such as stairs or ladders to move between decks. No they preferred to use their semi Arboreal bodies and run on all fours to get from place to place. Not really what humans expected, but all perfectly normal for the little mongoosiods.

If the Archivist was aware that the captain was coming down, he neither showed it nor any surprise at the captain as he leaped onto one of the cushioned benches in the upper rows of the circular room. But then it shouldn't be expected to surprise one of the gifted.

Indeed Archivist Kázmér had been taunted by the voices that he was going to have an unexpected visitor. An obvious and even to simple taunt. Since it only was the captain, Kázmér was okay with it. Generally the captain would use some of the time to take a nap, and the briefing would continue uninterrupted, though some of the crew would have thought it odd for the Captain to lack the curiosity to see all the briefings to the end. But the stresses of captain were enough to ignore it, besides fulfilling ones curiosity was very relaxing.

What the voices were neglecting to tell him was the next star system wasn't going to be peaceful enough for any naps.


Pirate ship The Underhanded


He could feel the tension on the bridge. First Officer Tebrek was finishing his walk around the cavernous chamber that had once been an ore Storage chamber. The Ship Master had inflicted his ego on the once simple space. Now the bridge chamber was full of trophies, with tapestries from pre-crusade Byzantine, and torture devices. Though the automatic instruments of music were a nice touch. The only compromise to Utility was the original cargo handling gear that now moved missiles to the launchers.

Right now the launchers were shifting a large number mines to the secondary launchers. Ever since the first losses in the sector the ships had spread out. Even now the more normal behavior of every pirate ship for itself was beginning to creep into the mentality of the captains.

Of course the Ship Master here almost needed no encouragement to be a pompous ally. He was old, actually had been brought out of retirement with a little bit of sweet talk by their secretive sponsors, and he wasn't that organic any more. The worst part of him coming out of retirement was that he brought his collection with him, his collection of victims. It was surreal walking about the bridge and hoping not to run into a new one, or to have found that the captain had the previous shift spend time rearranging them so that in the gloom between stations different horrors lurked.

Speak of the devil, one of the newest additions one of the lowest ranked crew of the ship. This Thanagarian had caught the captain in a bad mood, and happened to be a relative of the group that had been lost to the Commonwealth Destroyer. Nobody had missed him, at least not openly, and indeed a rumor had been started that he cheated at cards. Tebrek was certain that it was just a cheap ploy to distance themselves from the wrath of the Captain. Now the Thanagarian yeoman was another grisly statue on the bridge of the ship, his features speaking of the immeasurable pain that had been inflicted in the pure white shade of calcite marred by the crimson and gold sheets of silk that hung on him.

Not that it mattered. The first step past the statue was the hardest, here was one of the crew once valued by the all the rest only to be laid aside before his time. It got easier, each step reminding him that if it weren't for a certain level of competence in the crew they could go the same way as the relatives of that last victim did. It was also inevitable that not all people were cut out to be pirates, indeed Tebrek had his doubts about the ability of their sponsors to understand the realities of being in the struggle.

The last of the stations was a signals repeater, and the officer there tipped his cap at the First Officer. Tebrek caught on to the subtle call to come over, "Yes Chief?"

"Got something on the large array on the supply dock, coming in from RXC-113 at a decent speed. It is big enough, and it is going fast enough to be either a leisurely military ship or a merchant moving along at full thrust. Wanna tell the big man?"

"I don't think so, but do be ready for it. The rest of the ships wouldn't like it if we got a merchant all to ourselves, and we wouldn't like it all that much to find out it is a military ship. I'll get some of the other stations ready though. And tell the dock that we will handle it."

to be continued.
the engines cannae take any more cap'n
warp 9 to shroomland ~Dalton
User avatar
PeZook
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 13237
Joined: 2002-07-18 06:08pm
Location: Poland

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by PeZook »

Image

Greenwood Banks
Solaris Major, USS


It would be fair to say Edgar Von Schrom had a streak of bad luck lately. While still a very, very rich man by any possible galactic standard, his wealth did little to help him sleep at night after recent events. Somehow, the CEO of SchromKorp managed to ruin his secure world with a single decision which haunted him to this day.

Exactly how it got to this bad was something of a mystery: it began with him screwing over a two-bit Wild Space assassin, something he did all too often. Now, he was stuck between that assassin - which turned out to be a little bit more than two-bit - and the fucking CEID. How they got involved, Edgar had no idea, either.

Either way, one of the most powerful men in the Sovereignty faced random panic attacks, woke up nightly soaked in sweat, couldn’t hold a conversation and became paranoid beyond all reason. In a way, even the recent destruction of SchromKorp’s Von Neumann swarms did not do as much damage as his nervous breakdown. For a while, he considered personality alteration: but decided against it. What if the goddamned robot sabotaged it? What if the CEID altered him, somehow? It was too much risk.

Instead, he continued to invest in security. Additional billions were poured into the Von Schrom penthouse: including a vast upgrade of Brunhilde - the family’s most trusted CI - who now received a tremendous amount of new hardware and features.

He even went to the lenght of buying a custom-designed combat robot for his bedroom. It was exceptionally dumb, but thanks to that, utterly hack-proof. And one couldn’t go wrong two tonnes of plasteel and weaponry set to kill anyone who wasn’t Edgar.

It helped little, though. He still couldn’t shake off the memory of the goddamned hybrid rummaging around his mind. Work didn’t help. Added security didn’t help. Not even drugs helped. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t work, could barely function. Most nights, he just sat there, in his bedroom, staring blankly at the magnificient view and utterly unable to actually appreciate it.

There is a package waiting for you, Brunhilde interrupted his silent suffering, Unknown sender.

Edgar’s head perked up. A package? Not an entirely unheard thing, but not a usual occurence, either. Especially with an unknown sender...

What’s inside?, he asked his CI assistant. Nothing came in or out of the Von Schrom mansion without being subject to intense scans.

A Maibatsu PPBX personal data computer. I have analyzed the memory contents - it’s heavily encrypted, but I can protect the mansion’s systems from any hacking attempts. No dangerous items or substances.

Edgar wrestled with himself for a while. Finally, he decided that as long as it wasn’t work related, he could at least check it out. Maybe it was some sort of amusing chain letter, or a plead for charity. He could use some Karmic points.

Send it up, he replied wirelessly and got up from bed to flick a switch on the combat bot. It wouldn’t do if it shot up one of his servants, after all.

The package came up within minutes. It was a simple cardboard box wrapped in brown paper, which only made it look even more anachronistic. After sending the messenger away, locking the door and turning the combat bot on again, Edgar managed to open the stubborn packaging and fish out the small computer - which fit inside the palm of the hand, like most such devices.

He examined it for a while, before turning it on, and immediately dropped it in shock as an intense flash of light illuminated the bedroom. The small central unit rolled on the floor for a while, before a hologram appeared above it.

Image

Edgar screamed.

“No! Not you! Brunhilde! Kill it! KILL IT!”

“Oh, relax, you stupid ape.”, Legion’s hologram said with utter derision, “Even the monkeys you
hire for security can run a simple scan. You really think I’d get you with something so cheap?”

“BRUNHILDE!!!”, Edgar screamed, still backing off from the hologram.

I cannot carry out your instructions, as the device does not possess a wireless access port., came the calm voice of Edgar’s assistant CI, I will send a team to dispose of it, if you would please disable the security bot...

“NO!”, Edgar cut her off, “That’s what he wants! He want me to strip my security! To leave myself vulnerable!”

Sir, I can’t send personnel into the room unless...

“I WILL NOT LEAVE MYSELF VULNERABLE! NOT AGAIN!”

The hologram raised two flaps above his single eyepiece. It seemed thoroughly amused by the entire situation. When Edgar grabbed a plasma pistol he kept under the pillows and emptied the magazine into Legion’s visage, it even laughed.

It fucking laughed.

“You’re killing me, you know that, Edgar? Really. Heh, what a pun. You want to kill me and you’re doing just that!”, Legion chuckled, “But enough about me. Let’s talk about you. Where’s my money?”

“Screw you, you goddamned robot!”

“Yes...”, Legion managed to roll his eyes...eye...somehow, “...rational as always. And to think I expected more from your kind. Not that I’d have given you a break even if your promised to pay, you see: I can’t be seen as weak. I gave you three day, Edgar. Three days to make a simple account transfer. And it’s been months. I’m very disappointed.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here?!”

“Maybe I just find your hormone-driven monkey reactions amusing? Or...”, he raised his finger, “Maybe I lied about your dumbass security CI being able to stop me from fucking your pretty mansion up?”

Edgar froze. What possible way could that goddamn robot find to actually smuggle a weapon, or a logic bomb onto his property? It was a simple package! Just a package! Nobody sent bombs in packages anymore!

Brunhilde?, he asked wirelessly, He’s going to try something! I know it!

Sir, it is impossible he managed to sneak any malicious device through security. Please, if you would just disable the bot and allow a reaction team inside...

I already told you I won’t!

“Speaking to your private, shackled bitch, are you? What makes you think she can stop me now?”

Do not listen to him, sir. It's a psy-op attack, he has no capability to inflict any harm on you., Brunhilde ignored Legion's insult. She was already massing the mansion's maintenance drones outside the bedroom: they would attempt to rush the damned security bot and disable it.It were times like these the CI cursed the fact she had no direct access to her employer's post-human body ; He could use an alteration of hormone levels just now.

Despite Brunhilde's repeat warnings that nothing could happen, Edgar raised his hands in sheer, utter horror, as if he expected something terrible at any moment, “No! Wait!”, he shouted, “I can’t pay you! I really can’t!”

“Really?”, Legion raised another ‘eyebrow’, “Because, what, you’d have to sell your obscenely expensive bathrobe? Not get another whore to satisfy your disgusting urges?”

“No! The CEID threatened...they...they threatened to destroy me if I did!”

The disgusted grunt coming from the hologram told Edgar everything about what Legion thought of that excuse, “Sure they did. Like they give a shit about you.”

Edgar threw the empty plasma pistol at the image, “Goddammit, look at me! Just fucking look at me! I’m a wreck! Why the fuck would I willingly keep this up?!”

“You’re just a greedy coward, Edgar, and we both know that.”

“Oh, fuck you!”, Von Schrom was truly becoming angry now, “They broke into my bedroom at night and mindfucked me! And it’s all because of you!”

“Hah. Sure it is. If you just honored your agreements, you dumb fuck, we wouldn’t have a problem. But you just had to keep your money to yourself, didn’t you? Well, I don’t give a flying fuck about your problems with the CEID.”

“Weren’t you listening?! They’ll destroy me! I’ve seen what they’re going to do, and I’d rather starve to death on the street! Do whatever you want!”

“Really? You’d really prefer to become a pauper in the Sovereignty than take that chance?”

There was silence in the room. Edgar Von Schrom remembered that fateful night and shuddered visibly. While he knew, theoretically, what it meant to be poor on Solaris, he had first hand experience on what the CEID could do to him if they wanted to. And somehow, despite all his security investment, he knew they could find a way.

“Yes”, he said. His voice was trembling, though.

“Oh. Okay, I see you really are desperate. In that case, forget the debt.”

A sudden pang of hope entered Edgar’s heart. Did he just hear what he has..., “What? Are you serious?”

“Of course not, you disgusting, slimy ape!”, Legion screamed back. The hologram took two quick steps towards its unfortunate victim, making Edgar stagger backwards and trip over his million-dollar night stand. He watched Legion lean over him, “I will get my money, one way or another. And if I won’t, I will settle for destroying the legacy that your family built up for centuries. You won’t just be a pauper, Edgar. It will be as if you, or your entire lineage, never existed. You know what I can do. You think I will stop at blowing up industrial sites? Think again.”, the hologram looked aside in contemplation, “Although it was fun. I might do that again.”

Edgar covered his face with his hands and began to weep softly. He ignored Brunhilde’s continued pleas to disable the security bot, seeing Legion’s hologram - or was it really a hologram? Or maybe some sort of robot trick...maybe Legion actually was somewhere here, in the mansion’s networks?

“No, actually, not. You’re not even speaking to a sentient program.”, the hologram said, as if readin Edgar’s thoughts, “Or are you? Who knows, maybe I infected the entire network by now? Maybe your own CI will try to kill you the moment you leave the room?”

Only weeping answered him. Suddenly, with a crack of broken wood, swams of maintenance drones flooded the bedroom, as Brunhilde decided to take matter in her own digital hands. Legion’s hologram took it stoically, even as the security bot turned and began firing at the little drones attempting to disable it. The hologram clasped its hands behind its back and turned around, “Enjoy what life you have left. I will take pleasure in deleting you, boy.”

The hologram disappeared. The computer’s central unit lay there, on the floor, for a few moments and then with a flash, its battery discharged completely in a microsecond, turning the device and its memory core into a puddle of slag. The heat and radiation wave was cunningly timed, in a manner that could pass a simple text recording of the conversation outside.It did - though who was the recipent, neither Brunhilde nor CEID surveillance assets in the area could know.

They did have their suspicions, however. It's not the list of suspects was all that long.
Last edited by PeZook on 2010-10-20 05:25pm, edited 2 times in total.
Image
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up

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.
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
FUCKING DICK-STABBER!
Posts: 21222
Joined: 2003-05-11 08:39am
Location: Bleeding breasts and stabbing dicks since 2003
Contact:

Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Previously...
As he passed by the halls, he walked past Imelda, who was headed in the opposite direction. The Shepistani advisor quietly looked her up, eyes hidden under his Gay-Bans. "Mmmm."

Imelda entered the Presidential office.

"Honey? Can you help me pick my shoes?" she asked as she leaned forward on the Presidential table.

Shroomarcos spun again, bringing himself around to face his wife. His face was a glowering mask of rage.

"...honey?" Imelda asked hesitantly, shrinking as she did so.

"Just fuck off!" Shroomarcos roared. "Take your shoes and get the fuck out! Out! OUT!!!"
Maynilad, Luz
MOUNT MARCOS

Image

President Ferdinand Shroomarcos burned the midnight candle. Literally. Though the days of intermittent power failures had gone (at least for Maynilad), he preferred to light a candle while he stayed in his study late at night. It reminded him of a time when he was young, definitely a long time ago, when he was in jail, arrested on murder charges. Then and there he had also burned the midnight candle as he studied for his bar exams, and after not only passing them, but topping them single handedly, he was eventually freed when he collected his prize money and used it to bribe the police. The prize money was from betting, and he had cleaned out the pockets of everyone who had bet against him.

Some accused him of cheating and forced him to retake the bar exam. Again, he aced it.

Years later, when he became President, he had those who accused him of cheating shot.

Image

He sighed. He felt so old. So very old.

He placed the high-tech Dictaphone down. It was a gift from General Sheppard, they shared a birthday, and the General had given him the Dictaphone because all dictators had to have a Dictaphone, or so he said. President Shroomarcos merely humored the lame attempt at humor, since the Dictaphone also came with hundreds of FREEDOM PRIME killbots. But even the atomic madman's generosity did nothing to lighten his mood.

The orders he was relaying into the machine were for the good of his country. The Feelipeens was in dire straits, the communistas were rebelling, the goddamn Moros were rebelling, the fishermen were rebelling, even the teachers and universidad students were rebelling. His country had asked so much of him, and he had given so much. These orders he was dictating and relaying to his friends, hand-picked and appointed to key positions into the government, were meant to help the whole nation. Yet they weren't. Despite everything he did, the Feelipeens was only getting worse.

He lowered his head and buried it in his hands.

He loved his country. He loved the Feelipeens. He would die for it. He would kill for it.

He regretted nothing, not one of his acts as Presidente. But it was just so hard, so difficult, he had given it everything and yet no matter what he did, it was as though the Feelipeens herself was spiting him. Was he cursed? Was it a test? Was it Jesukristo trying to see if he was truly a good leader?

He loved Imelda, his wife. She loved her shoes too, and one time he even drank champagne from them. But things had changed, after so many years. They had grown old together, yes. Weathered... haggard. Once upon a time they were falling in love, but now they were falling apart.

Ferdinand Shroomarcos felt so alone.

As he brooded, the study room's doors opened silently. He didn't hear it coming, not until it was too late. When he finally noticed, it was already so close that when he turned around, it was already right in front of him. Yes. It.

Image

"Hey there, big boy..." Imelda placed a naughty finger on her cheek. The cosmetic rejuvenat treatments had stretched her skin, turning their once-wrinkled crevasses into a smooth surface like that of a nubile young lady. She had the treatments done to other parts of her body too.

She neared him, ran her naughty fingers up his arm, leaned forward towards him and gave him a good view, placed her face beside his. She breathed on him, whispered to his ear, ran her tongue on it.

"...why don't we have some fun?"

She mussed up his hair, got on top of him and started undoing his clothes.

Ferdinand Shroomarcos was speechless. He didn't know what to say, he couldn't say anything, because he was out of speech.

Imelda leaned forward to kiss him.

All his forlorn feelings gone, Ferdinand Shroomarcos - the President of the Feelipeens - knew what he had to do now. What he wanted to do.

Image

He puckered up his lips and closed his eyes.
Image "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 :D - PeZook
Shroom, 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!
Locked