A Vargin, one pink in color with its spherical segments connecting its loose body and long fibrous limbs stretched out, that are purple with long, spindly fingers and a yellow visor-like illuminant head walks into a orb-shaped room that is a dark blue color and is filled with diamond-like stars that light up the room collectively. Another vargin, this one a pale orange color wonders why Shirkwa is here at this hour.
"Shirka, What are you doing in my office?" she asks her employee, who is Shirkwa. "Demand for spaceship parts are twice that they were, why?" Shirkwa asks her boss. "Because Shirkwa, war. You know this, why are you asking this when you know of the ongoing civil war against the deluded? Worshipping psychopathic machines, what has that ever done for us?" the boss scolds at Shirkwa. "Well all our tech-" "Lies! They have done nothing but use us as Zerp juice yet the majority of the Vargin race are treating the damn machines like saviors and gods- what they are neither of which!" The boss interrupts Shirkwa before going into a tangental rant.
"Oh right." Shirkwa, unable to say anything else replies. "OH RIGHT?!" The boss angrily snaps. "Well- What else do you want me to say?!" Shirkwa frantically asks, afraid her boss is going to demote her or worse. "I understand." the boss answers. "I am not your friend, I am your boss. It's a creul truth, but do you want to be living the lies that those who worship the zatrai live? Do you?" The boss continues ranting, waiting for Shirkwa's response.
"No." Shirkwa infantility replies, fearing her bosse's next response.
"Good. Now leave my office and understand that all the money is used for a good cause. Every doppleganger-class frigate counts after all, and fifty more can make all the difference." the boss tells Shirkwa, dismissing her. As Shirkwa slithers out the door, the boss at her desk goes back to using the computer to check on updates on... things.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
One day, there will be someone who looks at my signature and wonders "who gives a damn?"
( indeed. Very slow paced. In space. No one hears your pleas for more players )
Pirate's Den, Pirate's Den
Aaron sat back, so he could see every member of the council, they were all looking at each other, looking for signs of weakness. The armor plated bullet proof car they were all traveling in would protect them, a driver was sitting in a cab at the front, with a locked door heading to it. The back section of the car was a circular set of leather couches. angled so everybody could see everyone. This was done so you couldn't stab someone in the back, among other things. Even so Aaron had noted a remote explosive strapped to the bottom of the car, and the driver was most likely armed. He also had seen at least one glint from a sniper scope.
Somethings never got old.
The car containing the leaders of the different gangs rolled up to a hanger on the outskirts of town, all the different council members were skeptical, Aaron had brought them all out to this hanger to show off a new piece of tech, something that would aid in the exodus two systems over. The car pulled up to the hanger, it's rusted steel doors showing it's age. The car door slid open easily, prepared before hand for the trip. All the leaders got out, ducking to miss the over hang. They all assembled before Aaron, as they expected Aaron to brief them before hand.
Aaron got out last, and stood before the 3 other adults, all secretive in their own right, all being worth more then anyone on the planet. Aaron signaled his men by slightly moving his hand, causing the rusted hanger door to slide open. Aaron walked in, signaling for the council to follow. They walked in, what the saw was a massive escape pod, the width of 4 men, and just tall enough to let one stand in there. Rocket boosters were attached to the back of it, indicating that it was designed for flight. The front of the pod had a mechanical cutting device attached to the front.
"What is this designed to do?" Asked the only lady in the group, the head of the Shadow knights.
"Watch" Was Aaron's only reply. A smug grin on his face. A wall was lowed down from the ceiling, so it was placed in front of the pod. Aaron made another movement and the pod sprung into action. The metal device lurched forward from the front and pierced the metal sheet, hooking the pod it. Suddenly a welding noise and sparks were heard, men were inside the pod! A squere of metal was being cut away, the size of a man. With a plunk the metal was pushed out, and four armed men jumped out.
"And that, Is how you will capture a ship" Aaron said, triumphant.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
That's three mass invasions within the same bloody month! I mean, seriously! The UDTU is attacking now, Blue has a sleeper attack coming soon, and now an invasion by space pirates? What is this, Russia if every american-made FPS happened at once?! - MagicallyDwarven
Admiral Jacob Townsend
Bridge of the ESS Leviathan, dead space, Rigel
0:16 GMT
"Incoming missiles, sir." one of the many staff members on the bridge remarked.
Captain Inman, the shipmaster of the Leviathan was the one to respond, quickly barking out,
"Well? Tell any ships with clear shots to shoot the bloody things!"
"Aye sir." was the response.
Townsend briefly wondered whose jurisdiction it was to answer that, and went as far as to take in a breath to say something about it, before deciding that he wasn't the captain of the ship, and he would have said the same thing anyway.
Outside the ship, a few destroyers and a frigate slid into place, and several batteries of laser turrets swiveled in the direction of Rigel III. Electricity surged through the network of wires and cables that ran under the armour of the ship almost like veins of a human, charging large arrays of lithium batteries that had been placed under the top layer of the hull, fanning out around the turrets and extending several layers down. A sea of tiny green LED lights started to appear as the batteries and capacitors hit 100% charge, and power was rerouted to the next ones.
As the missiles drew near, beams of red and white shot across the void in between ships, there one instant and gone the next, most hitting their marks, and the others speeding across the galaxy at unimaginable speed, destined to either get sucked into a black hole, hit a star, or maybe even reach a planet and ruin some unlucky sods day. Most of the missiles were destroyed within the first barrage of laser fire, either having the engines shot off of them and then getting hit by another beam, or simply fizzling out from a more direct hit. The second torrent brought more down, until finally only a handful remained, and soon the space where the missiles had been was dark, and thankfully devoid of deadly missiles. Although it couldn't be heard from the bridge, as manny gunners as there were turrets that had fired were sighing in relief.
The sighs of relief quickly turned to things more along the lines of "oh, bugger," when a passerby noted that they had missed one.
The bridge was flooded with white light, and the ship rocked sideways. The many steel trusses, plates and beams that held the ship together groaned in unison, and, at first one by one, but rapidly gaining speed; they started snapping. The sound of steel breaking, tearing and rending wasn't a very pleasant one, but the fact that he was relying on the steel that was currently breaking was enough to put the most primal feeling of all in him. The fear of death.
Townsend panicked, and grabbed the nearest railing. Hand over hand, he pulled himself towards the door, gaining momentum until he finally simply leapt for it. He sailed through the canned air towards the doors at the end of the short hallway to and from the bridge, and made it about halfway until he realised that he couldn't hear any breaking noises anymore. Instead, all he heard was a soft whooshing sound, almost silent, but still horrifyingly there.
Townsend took a deep breath in, and didn't give any resistance as the sudden vacuum sucked him through the hole in the wall of the bridge, through the gap in the nearly 150 metres of shattered tunnels, corridors and chambers, past hundreds of dead bodies, and finally past the outer hull of the ship.
Although he was most certainly going to die, he ventured a quick look around. What he saw would stick with him for the remaining forty-odd seconds of his life.
He had always known, at the back of his head, that starships were truly fantastic creations, and that although almost no one ever actually saw them from a flattering angle and lived to tell about it, they were amazing things to behold. This time was no exception. The massive steel and alloy hulks of the ships around him, and the plasma flares coming from their circular vents (even when idling) did wonders to put into perspective how utterly tiny and insignificant he, as well as anyone else who had been sucked out and was still conscious, were. Even though there was a crater the size of a city block in the right wall of the Leviathan, the engines still kept blazing; the emergency crews kept working to seal off the destroyed space, save those who had fallen out nearby, and get people into life pods; and the hundreds of people who hadn't been affected by the blast still floated through the kilometres of tunnels, hallways and tubes that honeycombed the ship. He didn't really matter all that much, he came to think as his mind started to run out of oxygen, everyone (including him) just thought he did.
As the final lights from the nuclear blast started to die, he noticed his former badges of office floating nearby, torn from his jacket by the suction. Six polished silver stars, as well as countless small ribbon-ish-looking pins and decorations, and finally the likeness of a falcon (or maybe it was an eagle. No one living had ever seen either of those birds alive, so what it was supposed to be varied from person to person), cast in platinum and polished to a dull sheen, drifted by, reflecting starlight and the fading light from the blast in hundreds of different directions.
Huh, he thought in his last few seconds of consciousness, You don't explode in a vacuum.
Several centuries later, some scavengers would come to the Ruined System, and find the body of a high-ranking member of the old Union (by then, tales of which would be used to scare children into behaving), the body almost perfectly preserved by the cold emptiness of Space. They would steal anything of value left, and throw it back into the void.
Admiral Rachel Toralen
Bridge of the ESS Celestial, dead space, Rigel
0:20 GMT
"****." she muttered under her breath, as she watched the white ball of nuclear fire grow and envelope the hull of the Leviathan. Hundreds of specks of black appeared as it receded seconds later, and the wave of blue light that signaled an EMP blast tore across the hull. Unfortunately for whoever they were up against, the Leviathan had been hardened years ago (although the same could not be said for the destroyers around it).
About half a minute later, the reports came in. The blast had reached all the way to the bridge. Of the three hundred-odd casualties from the blast, it was certain that the bridge staff, and, by proxy, the Admiral, were gone. She briefly entertained the notion that Townsend might have lived, but the thought was shoved aside. He was dead. There was no question of that.
"I guess this makes me Admiral." she announced. It was a heartless thing to say in the wake of a few hundred people dying, but a necessary one.
"Aye, ma'am." the shipmaster of the carrier, Captain Verrill, answered from his position behind her.
For a moment, she forgot the deaths, and was exhilarated by the power she was figuring out she now had. But her mind was drawn back to it, like a bug to a lamp, always returning to it even if it hurt her.
But now was not the time for sadness. It was the time for revenge.
"Well? What are you idiots doing?" she snapped, "RETURN FIRE!" sounding as angry as possible. She didn't want to appear unsure of anything in her first battle as an Admiral.
"Aye ma'am." Verrill replied.
If she could have, she would have leaned back and put her feet up on the railing in front of her 'chair'. All the better to watch the fireworks, was it not?
Outside the ship, hundreds of darkened needles, drifting away from the ships that had launched them, flared to life, chemical rocket engines blazing as they gained momentum.
"Also, tell all attack ships to decrease range. We can't very well fight them from half a system away, can we?" she ordered. The destroyers, frigates and cruisers of the group surged forwards towards Rigel III, and the rest of the fleet slowly picked up speed, the near-shattered (but somehow still moving) Leviathan included.
Several minutes passed as the ships steadily gained speed with little incident. The annoying voice of the enemy AI had yet to make her reappearance, and as of yet, no further missiles were troubling them.
A sailor floated over to Verrill, and said something inaudible to her, before floating straight through to the hallway beyond.
"Ma'am, we've got unknown contacts entering the system outside the orbit of Rigel VIII!" Verrill announced.
"Well? Get me a channel to them!" she ordered, and quickly added, "and get me a view of their ships."
Seventeen boxy-looking ships, each painted varying shades of green, came into focus on one of the few screens on the walls of the bridge of her new flagship. She studied them, and noticed two things:
One, these must be very fast, and very powerful ships for the nation they represented to only send seventeen.
Two, they really did overuse the colour green.
"Connection established." Verrill announced.
The screen with the ships on them faded, and was replaced with a view of a rather stunted-looking human.
"Greetings!" she announced, a bit louder than she had intended, "I am Admiral Toralen, of the Altak Union Navy." it was a line she'd memorised at the Naval Academy, but it was better than what she might have said if she had had to come up with something on her own.
Chancellor Spencer Mayaan
Kings St., Arcadia, Rigel III (8km from the ruins of the Watson Building)
0:34 GMT
Spencer wandered the abandoned streets, having not seen any humans since the disastrous late-night Council meeting that had inadvertently saved his life. He occasionally wondered how long he had been out, under the rubble near the Chambers, and he couldn't check because apparently it had been long enough to blanket the entire city in EMP waves. Neither his watch not his cell phone worked, and there were no purely mechanical clocks outside of museums and the homes (and sometimes wrists) of eccentric billionaires in the Rigel system.
The closest he had gotten to finding life was glimpsing a small scavenger animal rummaging through a rubbish bin on a street corner, and even then it had run off less than a second after he spotted it.
He climbed over the engine hood of another dull greyish-silver car as he crossed the A 104, and threaded his way through the tangle of empty vehicles for the other five lanes. His mind began to wander. What will I do if I find someone else? How will I get off this planet? and, recently the most commonly, Why does every car look exactly the same? All three were questions for either better-equipped versions of him, or, in the case of the last one, a physicist; he decided.
Spencer leapt over one last car, and kept following the sidewalk. A few vans surrounded a still-standing office building, and he spotted a window cleaners hoist far above.
No matter, I can't help them. he thought, unsure of whether or not there were people up there in the first place.
He kept walking towards the city centre, where he hoped he would find other survivors.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
We did not invent the Algorithm. The Algorithm consistently finds Jesus. The Algorithm killed Jeeves. The Algorithm is banned in China. The Algorithm is from Jersey. The Algorithm constantly finds Jesus. This is not the Algorithm. This is Close.
Dizin still can't believe the Vitz Cruztik fell for that one. Who would have known that simply claiming you are a Dikul that winning a melee fight with the zatrai behind you would work? Now it has a spaceship it has no logical reason to have- A Zirtrix-Class craft! These spaceships are oddly easy to pilot despite only letting Dikuls normally pilot them, despite Dikuls being superior to Dizin because they have Dullibus memories in them unlike the other zatrai, and the only reason not every zatrai is a Dikul is for the same reason not every zatrai is a Arctek or Vizar, because every zatrai replicates except the very short lived ones and even they technically replicate. Even Dizin has replicated, at least three times.
Speeding out of the hanger, through the synthetic gel edged hallways lighting the ways through the dark blue structure until it flies out of the place and speeds over the skies of the world as if it was a comet or asteroid. However, it suddenly detected multiple contacts from behind it. A Deterik and 3 Razors are suddenly after it, only confirming this is a sudden communications message. It seems that trickery only works for so long after all. Now time to face the consequences Dizin thought... Or perhaps not. For it already has the ship, all it needs to do is get away from this infinitely replicating douche.
“Vust Ike Zatrai zirk ivis qi zitrix-valis or?” the comm scolds at Dizin, who just replies “Yirk iz raz” before Dizin quickly hits the wormhole activation button, setting course for a set of randomized coordinates. The Zirtrix craft, in its dumbell-like appearance with sqaure edges having two spreader gauss cannons attached to the sizes of it rapidly speeding up preparing to warp to Visaraz and evade its pursuers. The comm opens again. “Dizin, vrik ur!” it shouts, as the deterik starts firing a volley of guass rounds from its spreader cannon at Dizin, who quickly maneuvers its ship out of the way due to being a quite far distance from the deterik.
The ship quickly jolts itself 90 degrees to the ship and speeds horizontally, avoiding the gauss rounds quite easily as it continues charging up its energy to open the wormhole and get away from this place. After evading that volley, it quickly starts trying to use the twin spreader gauss weapons, but despite getting a deadeye aim at one of the fighters who has just launched a nitrogen bubble at it, it realizes that not even this craft is exempt from the way zatrai ships use wormholes; they gotta save up most of the energy for charging the wormhole and the energy causing by rapidly firing twin spreader gauss cannons would be too much on the craft.
Dizin wonders how they haven't figured out a better way to do that yet. Perhaps there is no way to. Though that's irrelevant since there's a nitrogen bubble about to hit it! In order to evade the ship, Dizin activates the thrusters on the top of the the ship causing the ship to decline in altitude very fast, dodging the nitrogen bubble as it notices that its ship suddenly has seemingly... Deactivated? Perhaps all the moving while opening a spacecraft wasn't such a good idea.
The ship, now rapidly speeding downwards suddenly has the same fighter launch a volley of gauss rounds at it that are aimed perfectly- they go where it is going. In order to counter this, Dizin just sits there due to having no way to counter it in the tiny pod of the craft it is in. Only hope it can regenerate after this and its children from that not make the same mistake it did perhaps. However, instead of of crashing the ship suddenly shoots out a wormhole right below that the spaceship falls into, having a bit of the ship fractured from a couple gauss rounds that hit the ship.
Somewhere in Visaraz Galactic Rotation: 15, Degree: 0, Sub Degree: 1, Alpha degree: 25, Delta Degree: 146, omega degree: 11
Dizin sees that the ship has finally activated, though the temperature has spiked quite a bit in the ship which while detected doesn't affect it much due to being a crystallin war machine. Dizin proceeds to continue moving through the nice peacefulness that is the Visaraz (mini-dimension as called by some weird folk). The ship continues to move through the empty voids of the Visaraz with the only things in the distance being ominous lights are other wormhole stations that use this Visaraz channel. Due to them being zatrai in origin, Dizin just keeps its distance to avoid being attacked again since it knows that the Dikuls will stop at nothing to shatter it for theft.
After some time passes, Dizin can finally use the wormhole in its craft again. However, Dizin decides not to and just try to figure out what to do next as wandering aimlessly through the Visaraz can only go for so long and while most zatrai craft are very stealthy, especially this one, it fears that the other zatrai will inevitably find it and shatter it. Something that it hopes never happens to it since it would suck to have its mind fragmented.
Without much else to do, it just decides to play around with the ship systems to see what it has, causing the ship to waste some of its ammo as tons of projectiles are shot out of the ship in multiple directions as it rotates and aims around the two spreader gauss turrets on the side of its craft and “dashes” from a quick thruster burst upwards, downwards, left, right, sideways, and even diagonally. Though eventually Dizin decides to stop as it only did that to see what the craft is capable of, or basically being able to make it rain projectiles while constantly evading its target.
Dizin decides to just punch in a random set of coordinates into its wormhole generator and wait until the craft can keep the wormhole open long enough to get through and not snap shut by force making a massive anti-matter explosion. If it doesn't do that, it minus well be making a black hole right in front of it which due to being to close to it isn't exactly the best way to weaponize a glitch. Dizin wonders if a ship ever accidently generated a black hole instead of a wormhole while continuing to drift through the mostly dark void of the Visaraz, awaiting the first opportunity to get the hell out of here.
How many times could it happen? How many black holes generated by an irresponsible race who forgot the most important ingredients to a wormhole, waiting long enough to use it? How many wormholes have snapped shut on them, causing the nasty anti-matter explosions that happen from those from their impatience? Dizin suspects at least a good several thousand in just these two omega rotations because after all, galaxy is a big place and it has bound to happen multiple times as it sits here waiting to even be able to use its own wormhole.
Shame it knows the consequences of opening a wormhole prematurely, or else it could have tried to open one anyways. However, it is not stupid enough to take a risk that could not only shatter it, but annihilate it from being converted to energy by millions of anti-matter particles. Funny to think that if the very first war in the universe went differently, "anti-matter" would be normal matter and normal matter be anti-matter. The violence of the universe has created and destroyed so many things. It has created what created the zatrai, and will probably destroy the zatrai or even whatever zatrai creates one day assuming nothing from another galaxy comes in and slaughters the living **** out of everything in the galaxy in a few million years.
Dizin briefly looks at the charging indicator and sees it is not only a quarter full. It is quite obvious that it will be here for quite a while, and while tempting to prematurely open a wormhole... It knows just how stupid it would be and why it keeps considering it is madness! What good is there in trying to open a wormhole prematurely anyways? It can wait, can't it?
Bridge of the SCD-1 North American Superdreadnought
Admiral Campbell frowned slightly once the Leviathan had returned fire. He had hoped that their EMP missiles would have done more damage to the ship, but, to his dismay, their ships had been hardened in a manner similar to his. No matter, for they would have no defense against a devastating beam of antiprotons. Campbell turned to face the ship's Chief Weapons officer, sitting not far from Campbell on the bridge. "Commander, order all ships to return fire. Tell the carriers to launch every ship they have, and order them to target the ammunition stores on those ships, or any superweapons they detect. Charge the antiproton cannon and prepare to fire on the Leviathan." he said. The weapons officer responded with a quick "Yes sir." and conveyed his commands to the rest of the fleet's warships.
Campbell then turned his head to face his communications officer, as the 17 new arrivals would ahve to be dealt with, one way or another. If the Pentagon protectorate ships had open communications channels, they would recieve the following message, in the Admiral's voice: "We mean no harm to your nation of any of her people. Our conflict is with the Altak Union, and we wish no harm upon you. Feel free to join us in combat, though you have no obligation to do so. Again, we mean no harm to your people. As this is the capitol of the Altak union, it was a choice target for our forces in our war to reclaim the system of Sol."
Bright green disruptor blasts darted towards the Altak ships, tearing into their unshielded hulls. Though the UTDU fleet wasn't as large as the Altak's, it was extremely well armed. The UTDU ships fired relentless barrages of disruptor beams, railguns, and even nuclear missiles towards the Altak ships, supported by electronic jamming systems and warp beams on their support ships, used in hoped of weakening the hulls of the Altak ships, and disrupting their targeting systems. The North American had now turned to face the Leviathan head-on, as it charged its immensely powerful antiproton beam. Massivespikes in power could be detected towards the bow of the ship, as antiprotons begam to float listlessly towards the Altak ships. Though they would do little damage for the time being, once the cannon was fully charged, the Leviathan would recieve a nasty surprise. (unfinished)
Master Sergeant Miller's Coyote Multirole fighter-bomber darted towards the Leviathan's bridge, barely avoiding the vicious Altak Union barrage that tore into the hulls of the UTDU ships. As his wingmen were picked off one by one, he and his copilot were left the only remaining members of his 3-ship flight. As he neared the bridge, his ship let loose a barrage of eight small nuclear-tipped missiles, all of which headed towards the bridge, though his ship was soon struck by the railgun of an adjacent frigate, his own tiny ship sent careening towards the hull of the ship.
A massive ship floated around Pirate's Den. With several smaller fleets circling the ship. They were preparing to split off, one fleet heading to Saturn. the other to Earth. Aaron was standing on the deck of his pride and joy. The Dead Mans Hand. Or the DMH. He strode between the monitors on the deck, manned by technicians who were in constant contact with the engineering decks below, as they were about to preform a scientific feat. Aaron grabbed the radio that was handed to him, and contacted all the other captains on deck. He checked in with the head of every fleet, and nodded at the technician who relayed orders to the engine room.
A massive wormhole opened at the back end of the Dead Mans Hand, growing larger and larger as Einstein rolled around in his grave. One fleet, a group of ships painted midnight black, and with little to no noise slowly made their way through the wormhole, and were spat out a fair distance from Saturn. The hole closed for a moment. A second one soon opened, and the rest of the fleet made their way through the hole. Including the Dead Mans Hand.. The other fleet was spit out a distance behind Earth, hiding right in plain sight.
Solar System, A trade route outside of Saturn
The Shadow Knights fleet moved into position, waiting on time for a trade convoy to pass by. It wasn't a simple undertaking, if they went to early, they would simply turn around. If they went to late they would be chasing them down. They needed to strike with deadly precision. The majority of the small fleet was hidden behind one of Saturn's many moons, their special light weight plating bending the light, making it look like nothing was there. Their specialty engines kept them off radar, and they waited.
A radio command was given, and like a hunter stalking their prey they struck. For the ships traveling with the convoy, it must of been strange, to see a small army appear out of what seemed like no where. It seemed like it was just a trick of the eyes. That was until the first hails of gunfire slammed against the side of the hull. It shook people into battle stations, as an army bore down on them. The ships were effective, yes. But as the defenders quickly found out, they were made of paper. The ships fell fast at first, but engines caught fire, and many of the defenders fell. Suddenly the head of the defending fleet came into view, a Altak Cruiser. The Shadow Knight fleet head, a simlar sized Cruiser made a pass. Although the Altak captain noted something odd about the enemy ship, slots were built into the side of the enemy ship, and he only got a bad feeling from this.
The pods deployed off the side of the Shadow Knight ship, and kicked into full speed. It dumbfounded some of the enemy gunners at first, but after the first hit the side of the ship, and latched on they began to fire, killing troops by setting fire to the pod. However 17 pods had attached to the side of the ship, comically sitting on the side. The Altak captain was puzzled, they hadn't fired on them, and the enemy ship had moved behind the moon again. The pods had hit, yes. But they hadn't exploded. He suddenly got reports of troops spilling onto the lower decks, shooting up the engineers and crewmen. They had boarded their ship! He thought to himself, as the doors to the captain's deck opened.
"Hello?" He said out to the door opening.
A hail of gunfire answered.
Two hours later they had captured the ship, and repaired the holes in the hull, even if it was slightly damaged. They moved away from Saturn, into deep space. Hopefully they could capture the attention of an enemy fleet.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
That's three mass invasions within the same bloody month! I mean, seriously! The UDTU is attacking now, Blue has a sleeper attack coming soon, and now an invasion by space pirates? What is this, Russia if every american-made FPS happened at once?! - MagicallyDwarven
Captain Thomas Calderra
War Room of the Cruiser ESS Von Braun, Sol
12 May 2604
“This is where we got the distress signal from.” a man with brown hair who smelled heavily of cologne announced as he floated into the bridge.
Thomas didn’t look away from the table in front of him. Partially hidden behind the silhouette of his head and shoulders, was a three-dimensional, blue-tinged rendering of Saturn that occasionally flickered and spasmed. Around the blue planetoid were three visible moons, the others stored in memory, but not rendered. What, from a distance, appeared to be static (but was actually all the random space debris in the system, rendered individually) surrounded five bright green renderings of Cruisers, arrayed in a loose formation and well away from any of the Saturnian Moons.
"What's that?" he asked, indicating a piece of wreckage that was highlighted orange on the map, drifting close to the wreckage of a helium mining trade frigate.
"A black box." the man explained, making no effort to do the next logical thing.
"Well? Go and get it!" he snapped.
"Sir, we can do this over radio, we don't have to retrieve it." normally, he was rather intelligent, but today Lt. Foste was completely lacking in common sense.
“THEN PLAY THE BLOODY RECORDING!” he thundered.
Not missing a beat, Foste signaled the goateed, lab-coat-wearing man with rust-coloured hair behind him to do something.
Wordlessly, the man nodded, and walked up to the holographic table and pressing a long string of keys on one of the four keyboards attached to it. The blue shut off, and the two-dimensional recordings played.
There was no sound, but whatever had happened to that ship made him feel strangely afraid. Whoever they were, they had access to pretty advanced technology, based on the fate of the cruiser that the ambushers had been taken by surprise had been.
All seemed normal, until for no apparent reason, unknown warships appeared out of nowhere from one of Saturn’s moons, and the cruiser suddenly turned around, as if under enemy control. But why? he had wondered. His original guess was that they had used a virus of some sort, but there were manual overrides, so he had ruled that out. Perhaps they had boarded (this was his current theory, although he hadn't seen any boarding craft).
They deliberated over what had happened for nearly an hour, until Calderra stormed out of the room in frustration.
“I still don’t know what they did.” the brown-haired man said preemptively when he returned, anticipating Calderra asking what he thought of it for the thirtieth time.
“I didn’t ask.” he said, rather annoyed.
"Play it again, starting from the moment it goes under their control." he ordered, The red-haired man nodded, and pressed a button on the keyboard.
The rogue cruiser, now evidently under enemy control, headed away from Saturn, and into deeper space.
“Set a course for wherever they went. We’re going to find these blighters and take them down,” he ordered, “and stay the hell away from the moons!”
Foste saluted, and floated out of the room, and up the lift shaft beyond. A few minutes later, the ships on the hologram turned sharply to the right, away from Saturn and into deep space, plowing through the fields of space rubbish and looking almost like slow-moving comets on the map, albeit comets of steel and heavy elements that carried nearly two thousand people (he would like to see comets do that!).
As time wore on, Saturn, and finally its moons, disappeared, leaving only them and the space dust. For what seemed like hours, nothing happened, except for a few larger bits of rubbish getting fizzled into nothing by the laser batteries of the lead ships. Once, he was incredibly excited by finally seeing something on the map, but it turned out to be nothing more than a passing asteroid. He ordered it blown to pieces with a missile for that. Maybe it would attract attention, he thought.
Unfortunately, even more time passed, and they were nearing Uranus.
We did not invent the Algorithm. The Algorithm consistently finds Jesus. The Algorithm killed Jeeves. The Algorithm is banned in China. The Algorithm is from Jersey. The Algorithm constantly finds Jesus. This is not the Algorithm. This is Close.
(on ipad atm, advanced options dont work on it)
Bridge of the "North American" Superdreadnought
Admiral Campbell stifled a laugh. He would let these new appearances believe that the Rigel System was indeed Sol. The UTDU had no interest in Rigel III, and the planet would be barely habitable soon enough. "The antiproton beam is ready, sir. Opening fire on the enemy fleet."the weapons officer said, typing in a series of unlocking sequences before firing the massive beam. Campbell smirked as the new, tore into the "Leviathan", the antiprotons creating massive explosions as the particles ahnihillated each other in an instant.
In the confusion, two massive hangar doors opened on the bottom of the ship, releasing what appeared to be a windowless, heavily shielded shuttle, which began speeding towards the planet's Capitol. It seemed somewhat inconspicuous, and any scans would reveal the shuttle was unarmed, although it had an extremely thick hull, and heavy shielding for a craft of its size. It sped towards the planet at full power, moving far faster than more spaceborne craft at combat speed.
Meanwhile, in a UTDU military asteroid base...
For being on such a remote location, Asteroid Base Zulu-39 was far busier than usual. The base's staff had been tasked with building the UTDU's next trump card; a superweapon, so to speak. The base was heavily defended, though most of it was under several hundred feet of rock, which made it near-undetectable. It would have to be so, for if their research was captured, there would be grave consequences for the UTDU. As to ensure that would never happen, the base's reactors were set to detonate, thereby obliterating the asteroid and everything inside, including their research. What they had designed was a series of highly advanced nanobots, designed solely to bring the grey goo hypothesis to life on target planets, among other projects. If they were to defeat the Altak Union, they would need every weapon of war their science could provide.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement."~Winston Churchill
"Aaron, We've received the distress call from the Shadow Knights, and they're tracking the fleet." Shouted Simon Isia, Aaron's second in command. Simon had grew up with Aaron on Pirates Den, and Aaron paid back his childhood friend for always watching his back. The business he was in was brutal, but respect ran deep.
"Fire up the warp drive, Let the negotiations begin." Aaron shouted back, the technicians kicking into hyper drive as they communicated with the engine room to start up a wormhole. The ships in the fleet parted, moving into formation for entering the wormhole The wormhole opened, causing Einstein to flip over in his grave again. The ships entered through the wormhole and were spat at the location that the Shadow Knights recorded. Entering deep space, Aaron opened contact with the head of the Altak fleet, while the USR ships moved around him.
"Hello, I represent a small fraction of the USR, as you can see we have neutralized one of your transports. We are asking you to stand down, and let us pass by your territory, lest we be forced to destroy you. We have enough ships and firepower to obliterate you, and have 5 other fleets on standby, that with the press of a button I can command to launch orbital strikes on all major population centers in your systems."
Aaron waited a moment to let this statement set in.
"If you send out a distress call, I will launch the command, I am asking you to stand down, and allow us to freely pass through your territory, Pick carefully, and remember the fleets, and the fact that all our guns are trained on you."
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
That's three mass invasions within the same bloody month! I mean, seriously! The UDTU is attacking now, Blue has a sleeper attack coming soon, and now an invasion by space pirates? What is this, Russia if every american-made FPS happened at once?! - MagicallyDwarven
New Europia, Zeta System. Capital of the Dromo Systems Alliance
"Sir, trust me. You are making the right decision here. "
"I couldn't agree more sir! The Systems Alliance is perfectly capable on its own."
"Our military is the most powerful of all the species in the Federation, if they even try to take us, they'll be decimated."
"Indeed! We'll show them that the Systems Allian-"
"Shut up, both of you. Now is not the time for your arrogance." Said Carival to his two advisors, who quickly shut up on command from their president. "Now, throw those speech cards away. I know what I'm going to say already..."
Carival walked out onto a large podium, right in front of Freiheit Square. A massive crowd of nearly two million stood in front of him. The flag held in the hand of several of them was not that of the alliance flag, but something completely different. Carival looked over the crowd, smiling with satisfaction. We began to speak, the microphone in front of him making his voice much louder and possible for the crowd to hear.
"Glorious Dromo citizens, today is a proud day for all of us. As I speak, history is made. For years, we've been dragged by the Federation, forced to keep to work for them. No longer. On this day, on this hour. The Dromo unite, not under the banner of the Systems Alliance, but under the banner of the United Conglomerate. Our new nation, is not of the Noviran Federation, but independent. On this day, of this hour, the United Conglomerate proclaims independence from the Noviran Federation! Any attempts for them to bring us back into their fold will be seen as an act of war against us!"
As the speech continued, several workers recorded it and copied it. They made sure there were thousands of copies of this monumental occasion in Dromo history. As soon as there were enough copies, they sent the broadcast out to every news station of every species in the Noviran Federation. The message would be clearly heard.
In orbit, twenty 'Dezimierer-Klasse Schlachtkreuzers' and a single 'Frieden-Klasse Schlachtschiff' entered FTL towards Nova, to establish official diplomatic relations with the Noviran Federation. I mean, what's wrong with sending armed warships to establish relations?
Vice Admiral (pro tem) Rachel Toralen
Bridge of the ESS Celestial
12 May, 2604 0:17 GMT
"Detecting massive antiproton spikes from the big one!" Verrill announced.
What could be seen on the screens next was both terrifying and confusing.
Random clouds of whatever there was floating around in space suddenly ignited, bursts of fireless energy radiating out from the invisible splotches of matter. The explosions surged forwards, making the progress of the antiprotons far clearer than anyone would have really wanted to know if it weren't for morbid curiosity.
Toralen pre-emptively flinched as suddenly the Leviathan vanished in a massive burst of light, microexplosions going off wherever any un-vented air had been. The escape pods that hadn't launched in time going off in tiny explosions that quickly faded away as all the air in them vanished in the short-lived blazes of red and yellow.
"Ho-ly ****." someone said, although no one bothered taking their eyes off the screen to shoot daggers at him.
It was over as quickly as it started. The Leviathan was gone, leaving only a few hunks of molten metal and some rather lucky escape pods. The light dissipated, leaving nothing but dust, echoes and bad memories.
"Well then." someone said. This time, someone did shoot metaphorical eye-daggers at him.
Toralen paused for a moment, her gaze fixed on the screen showing the remains of the Leviathan. They needed to take out that cannon on the big one. That was a fact. They also needed to save the Council below. That was also a fact. The other fact was that if that thing shot many more times, there would be no fleet left to do those things.
"Admiral?" Verrill asked, apprehensively.
"Sorry, thinking." she said, looking away from the screen.
"The rest of the fleet is requesting updated orders, ma'am. The captains don't want to get hit with that themselves." Verrill pressed.
"Tell them to spread out, keep moving, and open fire on that ship!" she ordered. Her chief radio officer, a fairly anonymous (to her. He had a name, though) man with frizzy hair and overpriced headphones, nodded.
More silver needles tumbled out from the sides of the other ships, flaring and spinning to tray and adjust their trajectories, before speeding off towards the enemy fleet. The parent ships were also reaching full speed at about that time, engines cutting to reserve power, leaving the ships hurtling towards the enemy fleet at remarkable speed.
"KINETIC MISSILES! BRACE!" someone yelled, a mere second before the ship was suddenly spinning anticlockwise. A large glob of vomit sailed across the bridge and hit a wall, thankfully a good metre or two away from her while in flight.
When the ship finally stopped spinning, Verrill yelled,
"Sorry ma'am! Jenkins is new at this!"
"What the hell was that?" she asked, fully aware of what had caused it.
"Kinetic missiles, ma'am. The space-dwarves apparently don't like us. They're saying that they 'know what we're up to'." Verrill said.
"Well tell them that they know more about what we're up to than we do, because last time I checked we've never run across any space dwarves before!" she ordered. The radio officer did that annoying head-bobbing nod-ish-thing that always seemed too calm for him to not be a robot or something.
"The Van Buren is asking whether it should start boarding attempts!" Verrill announced.
"What kind of ship is the Buren again?" she asked.
"It's an assault ship, ma'am." Verrill said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Oh. Sure, why not?" she said, still thinking a bit funny from the missiles.
"If you say so." he answered, and turned back to his chair's console.
"Give them a few fighters to escort the ships, though!" she added.
A minute or so later, the first shuttles began leaving a rather large ship visible just to the right of the Celestial, and joining with a small group of fighters that had been launched from the Celestial itself just seconds previously. After a brief radio exchange, they were off, and speeding towards the enemy ships, laden with nearly a thousand soldiers in the first group alone.
While the shuttles were moving, the metaphorical gears in her head finally did too.
"Verrill!" she yelled.
"Aye ma'am?" he yelled back.
"Have them… 'acquire' an enemy destroyer. I've got a plan." she ordered.
"Will do." was the answer.
Captain (of the Marines) Thomas Calderra
A transport shuttle en route to Rigel III, Rigel
12 May 2604, 0:31 GMT
Of the ten shuttles and twenty fighters that tarted the journey, only 7 and 12 remained after ploughing through the sea of enemy fighters, stray missiles, and space debris. Still, it was enough to take a ship (he hoped).
A contingent of light missiles had been keeping pace with them the entire ride over. Now, they came into play. Outside the pressurised hulls of the shuttles, the small, elongated rockets that had been tailing them for almost ten minutes suddenly shot ahead towards a pre-selected ship.
On the way over, cameras on the motherships had analysed the enemy ships, and found what appeared to be docking bays built into the sides of them. Their locations had been plugged into the missile guidance, and suddenly they had an entrance plan. All that was left to do, was do it.
He laughed internally, and put on his EVA helmet. While three shuttles might have a chance to dock (depending on how thick the hatch was), his shuttle had already elected to board the old-fashioned way:
With EVA suits, magnetic gloves and boots, a plasma cutter, and a whole lot of bombs.
We did not invent the Algorithm. The Algorithm consistently finds Jesus. The Algorithm killed Jeeves. The Algorithm is banned in China. The Algorithm is from Jersey. The Algorithm constantly finds Jesus. This is not the Algorithm. This is Close.
Rigel III System, Bridge of ESS Steve Jobs, 12 may 2604 0:18 GMT
From the void of space, a wormhole penetrates the dark veil and a Dreadnaught commandeered by Admiral Sternum enters the fray. It took quite some time to get to this place, but Sternum is sure as hell happy to be here to kill some rebel scum! His ship has numerous spaceships guarding it, namely a couple battle cruisers, a few cruisers and a lot of destroyers, frigates and interceptors. Sternum looks over the scene as he hears his men telling him in fear "We have contacts all over sir!"
"Waht?" Sternum asks, confused how there can be so many rebels as he looks at the reports from the scanners made by his ship AI. The scanners can't be right; There is a massive ass spaceship bigger than anything the AU has ever created. No way some rebel scum could make such a ship, not even the glorious AU could make that! Perhaps this ship is commandeered by aliens, like those from his run-in at Marx-Delta. Either way, he notices that there is rubble all over and another dreadnaught is attacking it.
So he decides to enter the fray of battle by yelling over the intercom in a fiery, anger filled voice "FIRE EVERYTHING WE GOT, THESE ALIENS ARE GOING TO SEE JUST WHAT THE AU IS MADE OF! SEND IN EVERY INTERCEPTOR, SEND IN EVERY MISSILE, SHOOT EVERY GAUSS, LAUNCH EVERY RAILGUN, THIS SPACESHIP IS GOING DOWN BE THE LAST THING I DO!"
And with that, the ESS Steve jobs fires all the gauss cannons, missile launchers, and railguns in a barrage from hell aimed straight at the big ass spaceship. As he does this, he opens comm. with his fellow dreadnaught and voices "Sorry if I am a bit late, some things happened on the other side of this sector. Regardless, I am here and pissed! This aliens are going to pay even if its the last thing I do!"
As he says this, a deadly cloud of gauss projectiles spurring from the dreadnaught following a much faster wave of railgun projectiles speeds towards the UTDU's north american. Along side this, multiple interceptors move quite fast, keeping up with railgun projectiles in their stealthiness to try to get a closer look at this ship. In all honesty, the pilots of the interceptors are scared out of their minds and think sternum is batshit insane, but they are too low ranking for their opinions to matter so who cares?
Two Hyxera floated calmly within bubbles of breathable air suspended in the blackness of space. The boundaries where the air met the cold vacuum rippled softly in the sunlight as the Hyxera within worked to telekinetically deflect the radioactive rays of the system's star and heat their bubbles of atmosphere by jiggling the surrounding air molecules to create a tolerable temperature. Mentally, it was rather taxing on the Hyxera, but they still managed to monitor the ongoing battle intently. Everything from the formations and strategic movements of the combatant fleets down to the individual explosions of missiles and venting of burning atmosphere from destroyed starships was studied meticulously by the two, slug-esque creatures floating in space.
I infer that the vessels carry crews of sapient organisms that fight one another in space. One of the Hyxera explained to the other by telekinetically manipulating the brainwaves of the other. Based upon the different construction methods and styles between the vessels, I hypothesize that there are two or three combatant groups, perhaps comprised of different species.
I support these inferences. The other replied in the same manner. Considering the possibility that the combatants are of different species, could you support my own inference that the nature of this conflict is territorial?
No. I could not support that inference at this time. I sense a high volume of communicative transmissions and signals from either group of combatants, but I could not possibly interpret any of them without prior study.
Mental silence for a moment as the pair of Hyxera observed salvos of missiles colliding into a very large starship in the center of the fray blossoming into brilliant flashes of energy.
I suggest a closer investigation.
I eagerly support this suggestion.
With that the two Hyxera disappeared in a single flash of bright blue light as they cooperatively tore a rift back into Hyperspace.
Bridge of the AU Cruiser ESS Tasmania ((That a reasonable name?))
Seconds later, another brilliant flash of light came into being, this time inside of the bridge of one of the AU starships. In the midst of startled and confused ensigns and crewmembers stood a pair of hulking, eyeless creatures with no recognizable features save for two-digited arms, a row of tentacles over their "mouths", and two gigantic antler-like protrusions on the back of their heads. The air hummed and vibrated as the bizarre aliens scanned and pondered every detail around them.
Thirty seconds until detonation...
Campbell grinned as the Leviathan was bathed in antiprotons, and even more widely a the ship's AI chimed in, warning the admiral that the bomb was close to detonation. Defensive cannons immediately opened fire on the approaching smaller AU craft, bombarding them with a torrent of missiles, disruptors blasts, and railgun projectiles. As the ships came nearer to the North American, dozens of automated turrets emerged from the ceilings, each equipped to fire smaller disruptors blasts at a rate of 900rpm.
Twenty-Five seconds until detonation...
The North American heaved as the dozens of projectiles slammed into her hull, shields finally completely breaking down under the unrelenting barrage. Fires began to break out on the more sensitive decks,though the hull had yet to be breached. "Prepare a second antiproton blast, cone-shaped. Hit as much as that fleet as you can, but don't diminish the beam's intensity too much. Fire when ready. Fire all remaining nuclear arms in five seconds, direct a third of the payload towards these new arrivals, a third towards the enemy fleet, and the remainder.... Cover as much as the planet as possible. Transmit orders to the fleet in five."Campbell said, his weapons officer quickly complying.
Twenty seconds until detonation...
A final barrage of nuclear missiles erupted from the UTDU fleet, ranging from 56kt, to 5mt, all the way to 25mt MIRVs speeding towards their targets, most of the 25mt missiles speeding towards the planet, though at least two sped towards each hostile fleet. Though many would likely be destroyed by point-defense systems, many others would likely hit home.
Ten seconds until detonation...
Campbell continued to smile as fires continued to erupt across the ship, knowing that, soon, the UTDU's vindication would be at hand. Almost as if to spit in the faces of the AU, he sent a second message to the entire UTDU fleet, this time simply stating "Prepare yourselves, for Earth is about to be avenged. In mere seconds, you scum will see what happens to those who destroy our home. As to paraphrase Robert Oppenheimer, "We have become death, destroyer of worlds." Watch, as your planet burns in the flames of retribution. You will pay dearly for what you have done. Our vindication is at hand."
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement."~Winston Churchill
((Dude.
OOC, this RP is still alive, just very slow paced.
Like very, very slow paced.))
Detirius Nebula, Visgo System, Tundric World Vulch
Galactic Rotation: 15, Degree: 0, Sub Degree: 1, Alpha degree: 25, Delta Degree: 145, omega degree: 179 (each sub-degree tier goes by 360 degrees)
A Vargin, one pink in color with its spherical segments connecting its loose body and long fibrous limbs stretched out, that are purple with long, spindly fingers and a yellow visor-like illuminant head walks into a orb-shaped room that is a dark blue color and is filled with diamond-like stars that light up the room collectively. Another vargin, this one a pale orange color wonders why Shirkwa is here at this hour.
"Shirka, What are you doing in my office?" she asks her employee, who is Shirkwa. "Demand for spaceship parts are twice that they were, why?" Shirkwa asks her boss. "Because Shirkwa, war. You know this, why are you asking this when you know of the ongoing civil war against the deluded? Worshipping psychopathic machines, what has that ever done for us?" the boss scolds at Shirkwa. "Well all our tech-" "Lies! They have done nothing but use us as Zerp juice yet the majority of the Vargin race are treating the damn machines like saviors and gods- what they are neither of which!" The boss interrupts Shirkwa before going into a tangental rant.
"Oh right." Shirkwa, unable to say anything else replies. "OH RIGHT?!" The boss angrily snaps. "Well- What else do you want me to say?!" Shirkwa frantically asks, afraid her boss is going to demote her or worse. "I understand." the boss answers. "I am not your friend, I am your boss. It's a creul truth, but do you want to be living the lies that those who worship the zatrai live? Do you?" The boss continues ranting, waiting for Shirkwa's response.
"No." Shirkwa infantility replies, fearing her bosse's next response.
"Good. Now leave my office and understand that all the money is used for a good cause. Every doppleganger-class frigate counts after all, and fifty more can make all the difference." the boss tells Shirkwa, dismissing her. As Shirkwa slithers out the door, the boss at her desk goes back to using the computer to check on updates on... things.
Pirate's Den, Pirate's Den
Aaron sat back, so he could see every member of the council, they were all looking at each other, looking for signs of weakness. The armor plated bullet proof car they were all traveling in would protect them, a driver was sitting in a cab at the front, with a locked door heading to it. The back section of the car was a circular set of leather couches. angled so everybody could see everyone. This was done so you couldn't stab someone in the back, among other things. Even so Aaron had noted a remote explosive strapped to the bottom of the car, and the driver was most likely armed. He also had seen at least one glint from a sniper scope.
Somethings never got old.
The car containing the leaders of the different gangs rolled up to a hanger on the outskirts of town, all the different council members were skeptical, Aaron had brought them all out to this hanger to show off a new piece of tech, something that would aid in the exodus two systems over. The car pulled up to the hanger, it's rusted steel doors showing it's age. The car door slid open easily, prepared before hand for the trip. All the leaders got out, ducking to miss the over hang. They all assembled before Aaron, as they expected Aaron to brief them before hand.
Aaron got out last, and stood before the 3 other adults, all secretive in their own right, all being worth more then anyone on the planet. Aaron signaled his men by slightly moving his hand, causing the rusted hanger door to slide open. Aaron walked in, signaling for the council to follow. They walked in, what the saw was a massive escape pod, the width of 4 men, and just tall enough to let one stand in there. Rocket boosters were attached to the back of it, indicating that it was designed for flight. The front of the pod had a mechanical cutting device attached to the front.
"What is this designed to do?" Asked the only lady in the group, the head of the Shadow knights.
"Watch" Was Aaron's only reply. A smug grin on his face. A wall was lowed down from the ceiling, so it was placed in front of the pod. Aaron made another movement and the pod sprung into action. The metal device lurched forward from the front and pierced the metal sheet, hooking the pod it. Suddenly a welding noise and sparks were heard, men were inside the pod! A squere of metal was being cut away, the size of a man. With a plunk the metal was pushed out, and four armed men jumped out.
"And that, Is how you will capture a ship" Aaron said, triumphant.
Bridge of the ESS Leviathan, dead space, Rigel
0:16 GMT
"Incoming missiles, sir." one of the many staff members on the bridge remarked.
Captain Inman, the shipmaster of the Leviathan was the one to respond, quickly barking out,
"Well? Tell any ships with clear shots to shoot the bloody things!"
"Aye sir." was the response.
Townsend briefly wondered whose jurisdiction it was to answer that, and went as far as to take in a breath to say something about it, before deciding that he wasn't the captain of the ship, and he would have said the same thing anyway.
Outside the ship, a few destroyers and a frigate slid into place, and several batteries of laser turrets swiveled in the direction of Rigel III. Electricity surged through the network of wires and cables that ran under the armour of the ship almost like veins of a human, charging large arrays of lithium batteries that had been placed under the top layer of the hull, fanning out around the turrets and extending several layers down. A sea of tiny green LED lights started to appear as the batteries and capacitors hit 100% charge, and power was rerouted to the next ones.
As the missiles drew near, beams of red and white shot across the void in between ships, there one instant and gone the next, most hitting their marks, and the others speeding across the galaxy at unimaginable speed, destined to either get sucked into a black hole, hit a star, or maybe even reach a planet and ruin some unlucky sods day. Most of the missiles were destroyed within the first barrage of laser fire, either having the engines shot off of them and then getting hit by another beam, or simply fizzling out from a more direct hit. The second torrent brought more down, until finally only a handful remained, and soon the space where the missiles had been was dark, and thankfully devoid of deadly missiles. Although it couldn't be heard from the bridge, as manny gunners as there were turrets that had fired were sighing in relief.
The sighs of relief quickly turned to things more along the lines of "oh, bugger," when a passerby noted that they had missed one.
The bridge was flooded with white light, and the ship rocked sideways. The many steel trusses, plates and beams that held the ship together groaned in unison, and, at first one by one, but rapidly gaining speed; they started snapping. The sound of steel breaking, tearing and rending wasn't a very pleasant one, but the fact that he was relying on the steel that was currently breaking was enough to put the most primal feeling of all in him. The fear of death.
Townsend panicked, and grabbed the nearest railing. Hand over hand, he pulled himself towards the door, gaining momentum until he finally simply leapt for it. He sailed through the canned air towards the doors at the end of the short hallway to and from the bridge, and made it about halfway until he realised that he couldn't hear any breaking noises anymore. Instead, all he heard was a soft whooshing sound, almost silent, but still horrifyingly there.
Townsend took a deep breath in, and didn't give any resistance as the sudden vacuum sucked him through the hole in the wall of the bridge, through the gap in the nearly 150 metres of shattered tunnels, corridors and chambers, past hundreds of dead bodies, and finally past the outer hull of the ship.
Although he was most certainly going to die, he ventured a quick look around. What he saw would stick with him for the remaining forty-odd seconds of his life.
He had always known, at the back of his head, that starships were truly fantastic creations, and that although almost no one ever actually saw them from a flattering angle and lived to tell about it, they were amazing things to behold. This time was no exception. The massive steel and alloy hulks of the ships around him, and the plasma flares coming from their circular vents (even when idling) did wonders to put into perspective how utterly tiny and insignificant he, as well as anyone else who had been sucked out and was still conscious, were. Even though there was a crater the size of a city block in the right wall of the Leviathan, the engines still kept blazing; the emergency crews kept working to seal off the destroyed space, save those who had fallen out nearby, and get people into life pods; and the hundreds of people who hadn't been affected by the blast still floated through the kilometres of tunnels, hallways and tubes that honeycombed the ship. He didn't really matter all that much, he came to think as his mind started to run out of oxygen, everyone (including him) just thought he did.
As the final lights from the nuclear blast started to die, he noticed his former badges of office floating nearby, torn from his jacket by the suction. Six polished silver stars, as well as countless small ribbon-ish-looking pins and decorations, and finally the likeness of a falcon (or maybe it was an eagle. No one living had ever seen either of those birds alive, so what it was supposed to be varied from person to person), cast in platinum and polished to a dull sheen, drifted by, reflecting starlight and the fading light from the blast in hundreds of different directions.
Huh, he thought in his last few seconds of consciousness, You don't explode in a vacuum.
Several centuries later, some scavengers would come to the Ruined System, and find the body of a high-ranking member of the old Union (by then, tales of which would be used to scare children into behaving), the body almost perfectly preserved by the cold emptiness of Space. They would steal anything of value left, and throw it back into the void.
Admiral Rachel Toralen
Bridge of the ESS Celestial, dead space, Rigel
0:20 GMT
"****." she muttered under her breath, as she watched the white ball of nuclear fire grow and envelope the hull of the Leviathan. Hundreds of specks of black appeared as it receded seconds later, and the wave of blue light that signaled an EMP blast tore across the hull. Unfortunately for whoever they were up against, the Leviathan had been hardened years ago (although the same could not be said for the destroyers around it).
About half a minute later, the reports came in. The blast had reached all the way to the bridge. Of the three hundred-odd casualties from the blast, it was certain that the bridge staff, and, by proxy, the Admiral, were gone. She briefly entertained the notion that Townsend might have lived, but the thought was shoved aside. He was dead. There was no question of that.
"I guess this makes me Admiral." she announced. It was a heartless thing to say in the wake of a few hundred people dying, but a necessary one.
"Aye, ma'am." the shipmaster of the carrier, Captain Verrill, answered from his position behind her.
For a moment, she forgot the deaths, and was exhilarated by the power she was figuring out she now had. But her mind was drawn back to it, like a bug to a lamp, always returning to it even if it hurt her.
But now was not the time for sadness. It was the time for revenge.
"Well? What are you idiots doing?" she snapped, "RETURN FIRE!" sounding as angry as possible. She didn't want to appear unsure of anything in her first battle as an Admiral.
"Aye ma'am." Verrill replied.
If she could have, she would have leaned back and put her feet up on the railing in front of her 'chair'. All the better to watch the fireworks, was it not?
Outside the ship, hundreds of darkened needles, drifting away from the ships that had launched them, flared to life, chemical rocket engines blazing as they gained momentum.
"Also, tell all attack ships to decrease range. We can't very well fight them from half a system away, can we?" she ordered. The destroyers, frigates and cruisers of the group surged forwards towards Rigel III, and the rest of the fleet slowly picked up speed, the near-shattered (but somehow still moving) Leviathan included.
Several minutes passed as the ships steadily gained speed with little incident. The annoying voice of the enemy AI had yet to make her reappearance, and as of yet, no further missiles were troubling them.
A sailor floated over to Verrill, and said something inaudible to her, before floating straight through to the hallway beyond.
"Ma'am, we've got unknown contacts entering the system outside the orbit of Rigel VIII!" Verrill announced.
"Well? Get me a channel to them!" she ordered, and quickly added, "and get me a view of their ships."
Seventeen boxy-looking ships, each painted varying shades of green, came into focus on one of the few screens on the walls of the bridge of her new flagship. She studied them, and noticed two things:
One, these must be very fast, and very powerful ships for the nation they represented to only send seventeen.
Two, they really did overuse the colour green.
"Connection established." Verrill announced.
The screen with the ships on them faded, and was replaced with a view of a rather stunted-looking human.
"Greetings!" she announced, a bit louder than she had intended, "I am Admiral Toralen, of the Altak Union Navy." it was a line she'd memorised at the Naval Academy, but it was better than what she might have said if she had had to come up with something on her own.
Chancellor Spencer Mayaan
Kings St., Arcadia, Rigel III (8km from the ruins of the Watson Building)
0:34 GMT
Spencer wandered the abandoned streets, having not seen any humans since the disastrous late-night Council meeting that had inadvertently saved his life. He occasionally wondered how long he had been out, under the rubble near the Chambers, and he couldn't check because apparently it had been long enough to blanket the entire city in EMP waves. Neither his watch not his cell phone worked, and there were no purely mechanical clocks outside of museums and the homes (and sometimes wrists) of eccentric billionaires in the Rigel system.
The closest he had gotten to finding life was glimpsing a small scavenger animal rummaging through a rubbish bin on a street corner, and even then it had run off less than a second after he spotted it.
He climbed over the engine hood of another dull greyish-silver car as he crossed the A 104, and threaded his way through the tangle of empty vehicles for the other five lanes. His mind began to wander. What will I do if I find someone else? How will I get off this planet? and, recently the most commonly, Why does every car look exactly the same? All three were questions for either better-equipped versions of him, or, in the case of the last one, a physicist; he decided.
Spencer leapt over one last car, and kept following the sidewalk. A few vans surrounded a still-standing office building, and he spotted a window cleaners hoist far above.
No matter, I can't help them. he thought, unsure of whether or not there were people up there in the first place.
He kept walking towards the city centre, where he hoped he would find other survivors.
Galactic Rotation: 15, Degree: 0, Sub Degree: 1, Alpha degree: 25, Delta Degree: 146, omega degree: 1
Dizin still can't believe the Vitz Cruztik fell for that one. Who would have known that simply claiming you are a Dikul that winning a melee fight with the zatrai behind you would work? Now it has a spaceship it has no logical reason to have- A Zirtrix-Class craft! These spaceships are oddly easy to pilot despite only letting Dikuls normally pilot them, despite Dikuls being superior to Dizin because they have Dullibus memories in them unlike the other zatrai, and the only reason not every zatrai is a Dikul is for the same reason not every zatrai is a Arctek or Vizar, because every zatrai replicates except the very short lived ones and even they technically replicate. Even Dizin has replicated, at least three times.
Speeding out of the hanger, through the synthetic gel edged hallways lighting the ways through the dark blue structure until it flies out of the place and speeds over the skies of the world as if it was a comet or asteroid. However, it suddenly detected multiple contacts from behind it. A Deterik and 3 Razors are suddenly after it, only confirming this is a sudden communications message. It seems that trickery only works for so long after all. Now time to face the consequences Dizin thought... Or perhaps not. For it already has the ship, all it needs to do is get away from this infinitely replicating douche.
“Vust Ike Zatrai zirk ivis qi zitrix-valis or?” the comm scolds at Dizin, who just replies “Yirk iz raz” before Dizin quickly hits the wormhole activation button, setting course for a set of randomized coordinates. The Zirtrix craft, in its dumbell-like appearance with sqaure edges having two spreader gauss cannons attached to the sizes of it rapidly speeding up preparing to warp to Visaraz and evade its pursuers. The comm opens again. “Dizin, vrik ur!” it shouts, as the deterik starts firing a volley of guass rounds from its spreader cannon at Dizin, who quickly maneuvers its ship out of the way due to being a quite far distance from the deterik.
The ship quickly jolts itself 90 degrees to the ship and speeds horizontally, avoiding the gauss rounds quite easily as it continues charging up its energy to open the wormhole and get away from this place. After evading that volley, it quickly starts trying to use the twin spreader gauss weapons, but despite getting a deadeye aim at one of the fighters who has just launched a nitrogen bubble at it, it realizes that not even this craft is exempt from the way zatrai ships use wormholes; they gotta save up most of the energy for charging the wormhole and the energy causing by rapidly firing twin spreader gauss cannons would be too much on the craft.
Dizin wonders how they haven't figured out a better way to do that yet. Perhaps there is no way to. Though that's irrelevant since there's a nitrogen bubble about to hit it! In order to evade the ship, Dizin activates the thrusters on the top of the the ship causing the ship to decline in altitude very fast, dodging the nitrogen bubble as it notices that its ship suddenly has seemingly... Deactivated? Perhaps all the moving while opening a spacecraft wasn't such a good idea.
The ship, now rapidly speeding downwards suddenly has the same fighter launch a volley of gauss rounds at it that are aimed perfectly- they go where it is going. In order to counter this, Dizin just sits there due to having no way to counter it in the tiny pod of the craft it is in. Only hope it can regenerate after this and its children from that not make the same mistake it did perhaps. However, instead of of crashing the ship suddenly shoots out a wormhole right below that the spaceship falls into, having a bit of the ship fractured from a couple gauss rounds that hit the ship.
Somewhere in Visaraz
Galactic Rotation: 15, Degree: 0, Sub Degree: 1, Alpha degree: 25, Delta Degree: 146, omega degree: 11
Dizin sees that the ship has finally activated, though the temperature has spiked quite a bit in the ship which while detected doesn't affect it much due to being a crystallin war machine. Dizin proceeds to continue moving through the nice peacefulness that is the Visaraz (mini-dimension as called by some weird folk). The ship continues to move through the empty voids of the Visaraz with the only things in the distance being ominous lights are other wormhole stations that use this Visaraz channel. Due to them being zatrai in origin, Dizin just keeps its distance to avoid being attacked again since it knows that the Dikuls will stop at nothing to shatter it for theft.
After some time passes, Dizin can finally use the wormhole in its craft again. However, Dizin decides not to and just try to figure out what to do next as wandering aimlessly through the Visaraz can only go for so long and while most zatrai craft are very stealthy, especially this one, it fears that the other zatrai will inevitably find it and shatter it. Something that it hopes never happens to it since it would suck to have its mind fragmented.
Without much else to do, it just decides to play around with the ship systems to see what it has, causing the ship to waste some of its ammo as tons of projectiles are shot out of the ship in multiple directions as it rotates and aims around the two spreader gauss turrets on the side of its craft and “dashes” from a quick thruster burst upwards, downwards, left, right, sideways, and even diagonally. Though eventually Dizin decides to stop as it only did that to see what the craft is capable of, or basically being able to make it rain projectiles while constantly evading its target.
Dizin decides to just punch in a random set of coordinates into its wormhole generator and wait until the craft can keep the wormhole open long enough to get through and not snap shut by force making a massive anti-matter explosion. If it doesn't do that, it minus well be making a black hole right in front of it which due to being to close to it isn't exactly the best way to weaponize a glitch. Dizin wonders if a ship ever accidently generated a black hole instead of a wormhole while continuing to drift through the mostly dark void of the Visaraz, awaiting the first opportunity to get the hell out of here.
How many times could it happen? How many black holes generated by an irresponsible race who forgot the most important ingredients to a wormhole, waiting long enough to use it? How many wormholes have snapped shut on them, causing the nasty anti-matter explosions that happen from those from their impatience? Dizin suspects at least a good several thousand in just these two omega rotations because after all, galaxy is a big place and it has bound to happen multiple times as it sits here waiting to even be able to use its own wormhole.
Shame it knows the consequences of opening a wormhole prematurely, or else it could have tried to open one anyways. However, it is not stupid enough to take a risk that could not only shatter it, but annihilate it from being converted to energy by millions of anti-matter particles. Funny to think that if the very first war in the universe went differently, "anti-matter" would be normal matter and normal matter be anti-matter. The violence of the universe has created and destroyed so many things. It has created what created the zatrai, and will probably destroy the zatrai or even whatever zatrai creates one day assuming nothing from another galaxy comes in and slaughters the living **** out of everything in the galaxy in a few million years.
Dizin briefly looks at the charging indicator and sees it is not only a quarter full. It is quite obvious that it will be here for quite a while, and while tempting to prematurely open a wormhole... It knows just how stupid it would be and why it keeps considering it is madness! What good is there in trying to open a wormhole prematurely anyways? It can wait, can't it?
Admiral Campbell frowned slightly once the Leviathan had returned fire. He had hoped that their EMP missiles would have done more damage to the ship, but, to his dismay, their ships had been hardened in a manner similar to his. No matter, for they would have no defense against a devastating beam of antiprotons. Campbell turned to face the ship's Chief Weapons officer, sitting not far from Campbell on the bridge. "Commander, order all ships to return fire. Tell the carriers to launch every ship they have, and order them to target the ammunition stores on those ships, or any superweapons they detect. Charge the antiproton cannon and prepare to fire on the Leviathan." he said. The weapons officer responded with a quick "Yes sir." and conveyed his commands to the rest of the fleet's warships.
Campbell then turned his head to face his communications officer, as the 17 new arrivals would ahve to be dealt with, one way or another. If the Pentagon protectorate ships had open communications channels, they would recieve the following message, in the Admiral's voice: "We mean no harm to your nation of any of her people. Our conflict is with the Altak Union, and we wish no harm upon you. Feel free to join us in combat, though you have no obligation to do so. Again, we mean no harm to your people. As this is the capitol of the Altak union, it was a choice target for our forces in our war to reclaim the system of Sol."
Bright green disruptor blasts darted towards the Altak ships, tearing into their unshielded hulls. Though the UTDU fleet wasn't as large as the Altak's, it was extremely well armed. The UTDU ships fired relentless barrages of disruptor beams, railguns, and even nuclear missiles towards the Altak ships, supported by electronic jamming systems and warp beams on their support ships, used in hoped of weakening the hulls of the Altak ships, and disrupting their targeting systems. The North American had now turned to face the Leviathan head-on, as it charged its immensely powerful antiproton beam. Massivespikes in power could be detected towards the bow of the ship, as antiprotons begam to float listlessly towards the Altak ships. Though they would do little damage for the time being, once the cannon was fully charged, the Leviathan would recieve a nasty surprise. (unfinished)
Master Sergeant Miller's Coyote Multirole fighter-bomber darted towards the Leviathan's bridge, barely avoiding the vicious Altak Union barrage that tore into the hulls of the UTDU ships. As his wingmen were picked off one by one, he and his copilot were left the only remaining members of his 3-ship flight. As he neared the bridge, his ship let loose a barrage of eight small nuclear-tipped missiles, all of which headed towards the bridge, though his ship was soon struck by the railgun of an adjacent frigate, his own tiny ship sent careening towards the hull of the ship.
A massive ship floated around Pirate's Den. With several smaller fleets circling the ship. They were preparing to split off, one fleet heading to Saturn. the other to Earth. Aaron was standing on the deck of his pride and joy. The Dead Mans Hand. Or the DMH. He strode between the monitors on the deck, manned by technicians who were in constant contact with the engineering decks below, as they were about to preform a scientific feat. Aaron grabbed the radio that was handed to him, and contacted all the other captains on deck. He checked in with the head of every fleet, and nodded at the technician who relayed orders to the engine room.
A massive wormhole opened at the back end of the Dead Mans Hand, growing larger and larger as Einstein rolled around in his grave. One fleet, a group of ships painted midnight black, and with little to no noise slowly made their way through the wormhole, and were spat out a fair distance from Saturn. The hole closed for a moment. A second one soon opened, and the rest of the fleet made their way through the hole. Including the Dead Mans Hand.. The other fleet was spit out a distance behind Earth, hiding right in plain sight.
Solar System, A trade route outside of Saturn
The Shadow Knights fleet moved into position, waiting on time for a trade convoy to pass by. It wasn't a simple undertaking, if they went to early, they would simply turn around. If they went to late they would be chasing them down. They needed to strike with deadly precision. The majority of the small fleet was hidden behind one of Saturn's many moons, their special light weight plating bending the light, making it look like nothing was there. Their specialty engines kept them off radar, and they waited.
A radio command was given, and like a hunter stalking their prey they struck. For the ships traveling with the convoy, it must of been strange, to see a small army appear out of what seemed like no where. It seemed like it was just a trick of the eyes. That was until the first hails of gunfire slammed against the side of the hull. It shook people into battle stations, as an army bore down on them. The ships were effective, yes. But as the defenders quickly found out, they were made of paper. The ships fell fast at first, but engines caught fire, and many of the defenders fell. Suddenly the head of the defending fleet came into view, a Altak Cruiser. The Shadow Knight fleet head, a simlar sized Cruiser made a pass. Although the Altak captain noted something odd about the enemy ship, slots were built into the side of the enemy ship, and he only got a bad feeling from this.
The pods deployed off the side of the Shadow Knight ship, and kicked into full speed. It dumbfounded some of the enemy gunners at first, but after the first hit the side of the ship, and latched on they began to fire, killing troops by setting fire to the pod. However 17 pods had attached to the side of the ship, comically sitting on the side. The Altak captain was puzzled, they hadn't fired on them, and the enemy ship had moved behind the moon again. The pods had hit, yes. But they hadn't exploded. He suddenly got reports of troops spilling onto the lower decks, shooting up the engineers and crewmen. They had boarded their ship! He thought to himself, as the doors to the captain's deck opened.
"Hello?" He said out to the door opening.
A hail of gunfire answered.
Two hours later they had captured the ship, and repaired the holes in the hull, even if it was slightly damaged. They moved away from Saturn, into deep space. Hopefully they could capture the attention of an enemy fleet.
War Room of the Cruiser ESS Von Braun, Sol
12 May 2604
“This is where we got the distress signal from.” a man with brown hair who smelled heavily of cologne announced as he floated into the bridge.
Thomas didn’t look away from the table in front of him. Partially hidden behind the silhouette of his head and shoulders, was a three-dimensional, blue-tinged rendering of Saturn that occasionally flickered and spasmed. Around the blue planetoid were three visible moons, the others stored in memory, but not rendered. What, from a distance, appeared to be static (but was actually all the random space debris in the system, rendered individually) surrounded five bright green renderings of Cruisers, arrayed in a loose formation and well away from any of the Saturnian Moons.
"What's that?" he asked, indicating a piece of wreckage that was highlighted orange on the map, drifting close to the wreckage of a helium mining trade frigate.
"A black box." the man explained, making no effort to do the next logical thing.
"Well? Go and get it!" he snapped.
"Sir, we can do this over radio, we don't have to retrieve it." normally, he was rather intelligent, but today Lt. Foste was completely lacking in common sense.
“THEN PLAY THE BLOODY RECORDING!” he thundered.
Not missing a beat, Foste signaled the goateed, lab-coat-wearing man with rust-coloured hair behind him to do something.
Wordlessly, the man nodded, and walked up to the holographic table and pressing a long string of keys on one of the four keyboards attached to it. The blue shut off, and the two-dimensional recordings played.
There was no sound, but whatever had happened to that ship made him feel strangely afraid. Whoever they were, they had access to pretty advanced technology, based on the fate of the cruiser that the ambushers had been taken by surprise had been.
All seemed normal, until for no apparent reason, unknown warships appeared out of nowhere from one of Saturn’s moons, and the cruiser suddenly turned around, as if under enemy control. But why? he had wondered. His original guess was that they had used a virus of some sort, but there were manual overrides, so he had ruled that out. Perhaps they had boarded (this was his current theory, although he hadn't seen any boarding craft).
They deliberated over what had happened for nearly an hour, until Calderra stormed out of the room in frustration.
“I still don’t know what they did.” the brown-haired man said preemptively when he returned, anticipating Calderra asking what he thought of it for the thirtieth time.
“I didn’t ask.” he said, rather annoyed.
"Play it again, starting from the moment it goes under their control." he ordered, The red-haired man nodded, and pressed a button on the keyboard.
The rogue cruiser, now evidently under enemy control, headed away from Saturn, and into deeper space.
“Set a course for wherever they went. We’re going to find these blighters and take them down,” he ordered, “and stay the hell away from the moons!”
Foste saluted, and floated out of the room, and up the lift shaft beyond. A few minutes later, the ships on the hologram turned sharply to the right, away from Saturn and into deep space, plowing through the fields of space rubbish and looking almost like slow-moving comets on the map, albeit comets of steel and heavy elements that carried nearly two thousand people (he would like to see comets do that!).
As time wore on, Saturn, and finally its moons, disappeared, leaving only them and the space dust. For what seemed like hours, nothing happened, except for a few larger bits of rubbish getting fizzled into nothing by the laser batteries of the lead ships. Once, he was incredibly excited by finally seeing something on the map, but it turned out to be nothing more than a passing asteroid. He ordered it blown to pieces with a missile for that. Maybe it would attract attention, he thought.
Unfortunately, even more time passed, and they were nearing Uranus.
So where the hell were these people?
Bridge of the "North American" Superdreadnought
Admiral Campbell stifled a laugh. He would let these new appearances believe that the Rigel System was indeed Sol. The UTDU had no interest in Rigel III, and the planet would be barely habitable soon enough. "The antiproton beam is ready, sir. Opening fire on the enemy fleet."the weapons officer said, typing in a series of unlocking sequences before firing the massive beam. Campbell smirked as the new, tore into the "Leviathan", the antiprotons creating massive explosions as the particles ahnihillated each other in an instant.
In the confusion, two massive hangar doors opened on the bottom of the ship, releasing what appeared to be a windowless, heavily shielded shuttle, which began speeding towards the planet's Capitol. It seemed somewhat inconspicuous, and any scans would reveal the shuttle was unarmed, although it had an extremely thick hull, and heavy shielding for a craft of its size. It sped towards the planet at full power, moving far faster than more spaceborne craft at combat speed.
Meanwhile, in a UTDU military asteroid base...
For being on such a remote location, Asteroid Base Zulu-39 was far busier than usual. The base's staff had been tasked with building the UTDU's next trump card; a superweapon, so to speak. The base was heavily defended, though most of it was under several hundred feet of rock, which made it near-undetectable. It would have to be so, for if their research was captured, there would be grave consequences for the UTDU. As to ensure that would never happen, the base's reactors were set to detonate, thereby obliterating the asteroid and everything inside, including their research. What they had designed was a series of highly advanced nanobots, designed solely to bring the grey goo hypothesis to life on target planets, among other projects. If they were to defeat the Altak Union, they would need every weapon of war their science could provide.
"Aaron, We've received the distress call from the Shadow Knights, and they're tracking the fleet." Shouted Simon Isia, Aaron's second in command. Simon had grew up with Aaron on Pirates Den, and Aaron paid back his childhood friend for always watching his back. The business he was in was brutal, but respect ran deep.
"Fire up the warp drive, Let the negotiations begin." Aaron shouted back, the technicians kicking into hyper drive as they communicated with the engine room to start up a wormhole. The ships in the fleet parted, moving into formation for entering the wormhole The wormhole opened, causing Einstein to flip over in his grave again. The ships entered through the wormhole and were spat at the location that the Shadow Knights recorded. Entering deep space, Aaron opened contact with the head of the Altak fleet, while the USR ships moved around him.
"Hello, I represent a small fraction of the USR, as you can see we have neutralized one of your transports. We are asking you to stand down, and let us pass by your territory, lest we be forced to destroy you. We have enough ships and firepower to obliterate you, and have 5 other fleets on standby, that with the press of a button I can command to launch orbital strikes on all major population centers in your systems."
Aaron waited a moment to let this statement set in.
"If you send out a distress call, I will launch the command, I am asking you to stand down, and allow us to freely pass through your territory, Pick carefully, and remember the fleets, and the fact that all our guns are trained on you."
"Sir, trust me. You are making the right decision here. "
"I couldn't agree more sir! The Systems Alliance is perfectly capable on its own."
"Our military is the most powerful of all the species in the Federation, if they even try to take us, they'll be decimated."
"Indeed! We'll show them that the Systems Allian-"
"Shut up, both of you. Now is not the time for your arrogance." Said Carival to his two advisors, who quickly shut up on command from their president. "Now, throw those speech cards away. I know what I'm going to say already..."
Carival walked out onto a large podium, right in front of Freiheit Square. A massive crowd of nearly two million stood in front of him. The flag held in the hand of several of them was not that of the alliance flag, but something completely different. Carival looked over the crowd, smiling with satisfaction. We began to speak, the microphone in front of him making his voice much louder and possible for the crowd to hear.
"Glorious Dromo citizens, today is a proud day for all of us. As I speak, history is made. For years, we've been dragged by the Federation, forced to keep to work for them. No longer. On this day, on this hour. The Dromo unite, not under the banner of the Systems Alliance, but under the banner of the United Conglomerate. Our new nation, is not of the Noviran Federation, but independent. On this day, of this hour, the United Conglomerate proclaims independence from the Noviran Federation! Any attempts for them to bring us back into their fold will be seen as an act of war against us!"
As the speech continued, several workers recorded it and copied it. They made sure there were thousands of copies of this monumental occasion in Dromo history. As soon as there were enough copies, they sent the broadcast out to every news station of every species in the Noviran Federation. The message would be clearly heard.
In orbit, twenty 'Dezimierer-Klasse Schlachtkreuzers' and a single 'Frieden-Klasse Schlachtschiff' entered FTL towards Nova, to establish official diplomatic relations with the Noviran Federation. I mean, what's wrong with sending armed warships to establish relations?
Bridge of the ESS Celestial
12 May, 2604 0:17 GMT
"Detecting massive antiproton spikes from the big one!" Verrill announced.
What could be seen on the screens next was both terrifying and confusing.
Random clouds of whatever there was floating around in space suddenly ignited, bursts of fireless energy radiating out from the invisible splotches of matter. The explosions surged forwards, making the progress of the antiprotons far clearer than anyone would have really wanted to know if it weren't for morbid curiosity.
Toralen pre-emptively flinched as suddenly the Leviathan vanished in a massive burst of light, microexplosions going off wherever any un-vented air had been. The escape pods that hadn't launched in time going off in tiny explosions that quickly faded away as all the air in them vanished in the short-lived blazes of red and yellow.
"Ho-ly ****." someone said, although no one bothered taking their eyes off the screen to shoot daggers at him.
It was over as quickly as it started. The Leviathan was gone, leaving only a few hunks of molten metal and some rather lucky escape pods. The light dissipated, leaving nothing but dust, echoes and bad memories.
"Well then." someone said. This time, someone did shoot metaphorical eye-daggers at him.
Toralen paused for a moment, her gaze fixed on the screen showing the remains of the Leviathan. They needed to take out that cannon on the big one. That was a fact. They also needed to save the Council below. That was also a fact. The other fact was that if that thing shot many more times, there would be no fleet left to do those things.
"Admiral?" Verrill asked, apprehensively.
"Sorry, thinking." she said, looking away from the screen.
"The rest of the fleet is requesting updated orders, ma'am. The captains don't want to get hit with that themselves." Verrill pressed.
"Tell them to spread out, keep moving, and open fire on that ship!" she ordered. Her chief radio officer, a fairly anonymous (to her. He had a name, though) man with frizzy hair and overpriced headphones, nodded.
More silver needles tumbled out from the sides of the other ships, flaring and spinning to tray and adjust their trajectories, before speeding off towards the enemy fleet. The parent ships were also reaching full speed at about that time, engines cutting to reserve power, leaving the ships hurtling towards the enemy fleet at remarkable speed.
"KINETIC MISSILES! BRACE!" someone yelled, a mere second before the ship was suddenly spinning anticlockwise. A large glob of vomit sailed across the bridge and hit a wall, thankfully a good metre or two away from her while in flight.
When the ship finally stopped spinning, Verrill yelled,
"Sorry ma'am! Jenkins is new at this!"
"What the hell was that?" she asked, fully aware of what had caused it.
"Kinetic missiles, ma'am. The space-dwarves apparently don't like us. They're saying that they 'know what we're up to'." Verrill said.
"Well tell them that they know more about what we're up to than we do, because last time I checked we've never run across any space dwarves before!" she ordered. The radio officer did that annoying head-bobbing nod-ish-thing that always seemed too calm for him to not be a robot or something.
"The Van Buren is asking whether it should start boarding attempts!" Verrill announced.
"What kind of ship is the Buren again?" she asked.
"It's an assault ship, ma'am." Verrill said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Oh. Sure, why not?" she said, still thinking a bit funny from the missiles.
"If you say so." he answered, and turned back to his chair's console.
"Give them a few fighters to escort the ships, though!" she added.
A minute or so later, the first shuttles began leaving a rather large ship visible just to the right of the Celestial, and joining with a small group of fighters that had been launched from the Celestial itself just seconds previously. After a brief radio exchange, they were off, and speeding towards the enemy ships, laden with nearly a thousand soldiers in the first group alone.
While the shuttles were moving, the metaphorical gears in her head finally did too.
"Verrill!" she yelled.
"Aye ma'am?" he yelled back.
"Have them… 'acquire' an enemy destroyer. I've got a plan." she ordered.
"Will do." was the answer.
Captain (of the Marines) Thomas Calderra
A transport shuttle en route to Rigel III, Rigel
12 May 2604, 0:31 GMT
Of the ten shuttles and twenty fighters that tarted the journey, only 7 and 12 remained after ploughing through the sea of enemy fighters, stray missiles, and space debris. Still, it was enough to take a ship (he hoped).
A contingent of light missiles had been keeping pace with them the entire ride over. Now, they came into play. Outside the pressurised hulls of the shuttles, the small, elongated rockets that had been tailing them for almost ten minutes suddenly shot ahead towards a pre-selected ship.
On the way over, cameras on the motherships had analysed the enemy ships, and found what appeared to be docking bays built into the sides of them. Their locations had been plugged into the missile guidance, and suddenly they had an entrance plan. All that was left to do, was do it.
He laughed internally, and put on his EVA helmet. While three shuttles might have a chance to dock (depending on how thick the hatch was), his shuttle had already elected to board the old-fashioned way:
With EVA suits, magnetic gloves and boots, a plasma cutter, and a whole lot of bombs.
From the void of space, a wormhole penetrates the dark veil and a Dreadnaught commandeered by Admiral Sternum enters the fray. It took quite some time to get to this place, but Sternum is sure as hell happy to be here to kill some rebel scum! His ship has numerous spaceships guarding it, namely a couple battle cruisers, a few cruisers and a lot of destroyers, frigates and interceptors. Sternum looks over the scene as he hears his men telling him in fear "We have contacts all over sir!"
"Waht?" Sternum asks, confused how there can be so many rebels as he looks at the reports from the scanners made by his ship AI. The scanners can't be right; There is a massive ass spaceship bigger than anything the AU has ever created. No way some rebel scum could make such a ship, not even the glorious AU could make that! Perhaps this ship is commandeered by aliens, like those from his run-in at Marx-Delta. Either way, he notices that there is rubble all over and another dreadnaught is attacking it.
So he decides to enter the fray of battle by yelling over the intercom in a fiery, anger filled voice "FIRE EVERYTHING WE GOT, THESE ALIENS ARE GOING TO SEE JUST WHAT THE AU IS MADE OF! SEND IN EVERY INTERCEPTOR, SEND IN EVERY MISSILE, SHOOT EVERY GAUSS, LAUNCH EVERY RAILGUN, THIS SPACESHIP IS GOING DOWN BE THE LAST THING I DO!"
And with that, the ESS Steve jobs fires all the gauss cannons, missile launchers, and railguns in a barrage from hell aimed straight at the big ass spaceship. As he does this, he opens comm. with his fellow dreadnaught and voices "Sorry if I am a bit late, some things happened on the other side of this sector. Regardless, I am here and pissed! This aliens are going to pay even if its the last thing I do!"
As he says this, a deadly cloud of gauss projectiles spurring from the dreadnaught following a much faster wave of railgun projectiles speeds towards the UTDU's north american. Along side this, multiple interceptors move quite fast, keeping up with railgun projectiles in their stealthiness to try to get a closer look at this ship. In all honesty, the pilots of the interceptors are scared out of their minds and think sternum is batshit insane, but they are too low ranking for their opinions to matter so who cares?
Curious.
Two Hyxera floated calmly within bubbles of breathable air suspended in the blackness of space. The boundaries where the air met the cold vacuum rippled softly in the sunlight as the Hyxera within worked to telekinetically deflect the radioactive rays of the system's star and heat their bubbles of atmosphere by jiggling the surrounding air molecules to create a tolerable temperature. Mentally, it was rather taxing on the Hyxera, but they still managed to monitor the ongoing battle intently. Everything from the formations and strategic movements of the combatant fleets down to the individual explosions of missiles and venting of burning atmosphere from destroyed starships was studied meticulously by the two, slug-esque creatures floating in space.
I infer that the vessels carry crews of sapient organisms that fight one another in space. One of the Hyxera explained to the other by telekinetically manipulating the brainwaves of the other. Based upon the different construction methods and styles between the vessels, I hypothesize that there are two or three combatant groups, perhaps comprised of different species.
I support these inferences. The other replied in the same manner. Considering the possibility that the combatants are of different species, could you support my own inference that the nature of this conflict is territorial?
No. I could not support that inference at this time. I sense a high volume of communicative transmissions and signals from either group of combatants, but I could not possibly interpret any of them without prior study.
Mental silence for a moment as the pair of Hyxera observed salvos of missiles colliding into a very large starship in the center of the fray blossoming into brilliant flashes of energy.
I suggest a closer investigation.
I eagerly support this suggestion.
With that the two Hyxera disappeared in a single flash of bright blue light as they cooperatively tore a rift back into Hyperspace.
Bridge of the AU Cruiser ESS Tasmania ((That a reasonable name?))
Seconds later, another brilliant flash of light came into being, this time inside of the bridge of one of the AU starships. In the midst of startled and confused ensigns and crewmembers stood a pair of hulking, eyeless creatures with no recognizable features save for two-digited arms, a row of tentacles over their "mouths", and two gigantic antler-like protrusions on the back of their heads. The air hummed and vibrated as the bizarre aliens scanned and pondered every detail around them.
Thirty seconds until detonation...
Campbell grinned as the Leviathan was bathed in antiprotons, and even more widely a the ship's AI chimed in, warning the admiral that the bomb was close to detonation. Defensive cannons immediately opened fire on the approaching smaller AU craft, bombarding them with a torrent of missiles, disruptors blasts, and railgun projectiles. As the ships came nearer to the North American, dozens of automated turrets emerged from the ceilings, each equipped to fire smaller disruptors blasts at a rate of 900rpm.
Twenty-Five seconds until detonation...
The North American heaved as the dozens of projectiles slammed into her hull, shields finally completely breaking down under the unrelenting barrage. Fires began to break out on the more sensitive decks,though the hull had yet to be breached. "Prepare a second antiproton blast, cone-shaped. Hit as much as that fleet as you can, but don't diminish the beam's intensity too much. Fire when ready. Fire all remaining nuclear arms in five seconds, direct a third of the payload towards these new arrivals, a third towards the enemy fleet, and the remainder.... Cover as much as the planet as possible. Transmit orders to the fleet in five."Campbell said, his weapons officer quickly complying.
Twenty seconds until detonation...
A final barrage of nuclear missiles erupted from the UTDU fleet, ranging from 56kt, to 5mt, all the way to 25mt MIRVs speeding towards their targets, most of the 25mt missiles speeding towards the planet, though at least two sped towards each hostile fleet. Though many would likely be destroyed by point-defense systems, many others would likely hit home.
Ten seconds until detonation...
Campbell continued to smile as fires continued to erupt across the ship, knowing that, soon, the UTDU's vindication would be at hand. Almost as if to spit in the faces of the AU, he sent a second message to the entire UTDU fleet, this time simply stating "Prepare yourselves, for Earth is about to be avenged. In mere seconds, you scum will see what happens to those who destroy our home. As to paraphrase Robert Oppenheimer, "We have become death, destroyer of worlds." Watch, as your planet burns in the flames of retribution. You will pay dearly for what you have done. Our vindication is at hand."
--Starship--
Captain: Augustus Mcdonaru
Type/name: The Roma VII
Info: Only one laser cannon, peaceful crew of 50
"Jettison some weight, or I'll never make it back home to Cybertron!"- Astrotrain, The Transformers: The Movie
http://2425048-the-aether-and-new-nether-new-and-improved/