|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:00:12 GMT
On 27 October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a group of eleven United States destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph located the Soviet submarine B-59 near Cuba. Despite being in international waters the Americans started dropping practice depth charges, explosives intended to force the submarine to the surface for identification. There had been no contact from Moscow in a number of days, and when B-59 pushed close to crush depth in order to escape the barrage, no contact with the outside world was possible. The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believed the war had already started, and called for the use of a nuclear torpedo on the task force.
--oOo--
The Pontic’s target never knew what hit them. The ship that wasn’t supposed to have been there was gone within thirty seconds of the impact in a dark blue flash of silver; yes, a dark blue flash of silver. The colours from quantum entanglement cannot be effectively rendered in words or otherwise, but for those few species-those few, few species-who have witnessed the destruction of an Ascendancy vessel, and those fewer, fewer still whom evolution or the gods had blessed with wide spectrum vision, it was that constant description of the thing: a dark blue flash of silver.
The torpedoes all struck her within a four second spread, courtesy of a well rehearsed and well exercised manuever. The ship’s crew may have suspected something was amiss in the ten or fifteen seconds prior to impact when temporal functions began malfunctioning, as it was an occurrence unheard of for the Ascendancy. Regardless, death came as a surprise to them, as the impacts tore into the Chaw’Sa’Voh class man’o’war’s hull.
The shields had done nothing, for they had been offline; there was no need to armour oneself against the hands of thy enemies when thy enemies were oblivious to your existence. Beyond that, a school of thought ran through the Flux shipmasters that if anything might in theory reveal one of their ship’s presence prematurely, shielding could be it. It was not the energy itself they were worried about, but the potential sparks in the dark caused by micrometeoroid impacts upon their carefully tapered shielding. Flux hulls were formidable enough against such things, even before temporal revisions had augmented them into the crustacean-esque designs that most of the universe were oblivious to.
It had been the most unusual of means that she had fallen prey, for this ship truly had never meant to be here.
--oOo--
“Shipmaster, I am detecting quantum entanglement effects-” “-sensors are detecting energy disruptions at these localized coordinates-” “Temporal systems are reporting low grade disruptions-”
The reports all came in at once, though their order in Shipmaster Irrus’s mind clouded in hindsight. Looking up from the hologram he had been playing with for the last half hour, he watched the ship’s displays abruptly fluctuate in their indications.
“Give me a visual, would you?” He asked softly, as he stepped away from the map of the formation and the variety of proposed attack patterns to maximize his chances at leaving the secondary party unharmed and otherwise oblivious to the fact that he was ever here.
Behind him, Yithe stepped onto the bridge. The low moaning sigh of the alarms had seemed to echo through the halls behind her, and she had walked with a brisk pace the very short distance from her quarters to the bridge. The Ehm’Beh class sported a crew of only thirty, leaving the halls empty and barren. The Ascendancy’s minimal population had dictated the extreme efficiency of her designs, and as Yithe finished straightening her tunic, Shipmaster Irrus glanced back over his shoulder towards her.
“Glad you could make it, temporal intelligence overseer.” He said dryly as an aide handed him the cigarette reed. Irrus was a disgusting man, she thought to herself privately, as she approached the ship’s master. He was silhouetted against the holographic console in the center of the bridge, and as he lit up those abhorrent small little cigarettes he was fond of she could see the stubble on his face and the tiny flame’s reflection in his eyes. His skin was pockmarked, an incredibly unique condition for the otherwise flawlessly beautiful skin of the remainder of the crew. Medicinal advances made such signs of ill health-even the willful, ineffectual sort-utterly unwarranted.
“From the top,” he said bluntly as he gestured with the cigarette holder towards Yithe’s post.
“I was notified in my quarters one minute ago that our temporally sensitive systems have begun reporting abnormalities,” she said as she slipped into her position, waving her hands through empty air and causing the holographic projections to dance around her body as if they were a school of fish. “…it appears that we’re well into an anomalous temporal pocket,“ she added, a degree (soft, but still there) of surprise in her tone.
Irrus now waved the cigarette towards another post, in a manner reminiscent of a conductor directing an orchestra. The man was strange, Yithe thought as she rapidly reviewed the last two minute’s readings.
“Sir,” another post responded as Irrus pointed towards it, “within ten seconds of this anomaly occurring, we began detecting a series of energy emissions at these coordinates,” the overseer reported, not waiting to be asked to see the footage. It was dead, empty space; no movement, no trace of life…
…and then it began to light up. Explosions out of nothing, small ones, but all concentrating on a particular patch of nothing. There was no target there, though, nothing at all…
…and then silently, it clicked into Irrus’s mind, and without a word he gestured to the overseer commanding the quantum entanglement equipment. She silently triggered the audio emission.
It sounded, to the untrained ear, like whale calls in a sandstorm; a howling hiss permeated the lower end of the spectrum at first, unrelenting and unwavering. This abruptly began to be permeated by rapid cymbal crashes and bolts of thunder, which matched up to the flashes of light as the twenty or so torpedoes collided with their target. And as this sound began, so began the whale calls; the sounds of particulate energy being rended apart by forces beyond the comprehension of her attackers. The sound persisted over the bangs and crashes of the impacts, and grew louder and louder even as the explosions ceased.
They were listening to the sounds of things smaller than atoms colliding with each other, all interconnected in that strange mass of laws and suppositions the world knew as string theory. It was the Ascendancy’s handywork, the low and wavering moan of the target being rapidly converted into rapidly dissipating energy as each and every particle of its existence was transformed into untraceable, unidentifiable energy. Through this, no wreckage existed of Ascendancy vessels which could lead to speculation of their existence. It would be as if they were never there.
Irrus looked at Yithe, who looked back at him with an equal degree of horror.
“I thought we were alone out here, Yithe…” he said softly, as he began to connect the dots.
--oOo--
The “dots” were these, though the first of them did not connect in Shipmaster Irrus’ mind. Yithe had gone behind his back.
Yithe had gone behind his back. The gravity of this situation merited the consultation (or in this case as events had panned out, notification) of the Prime Admiral, and she had privately authorized the signal using her own authority to the Ascendancy’s highest authority. As she had anticipated, it had slipped well beneath the perceptions of their opponents; bounced between an infinite number of non-particulate energies, the untraceable, un-triangulate-able signal had not even been looked for, and even had it been, it would have been as indistinguishable as background noise, well concealed in its encryption.
Unknown to Yithe, for Dorin had not responded, upon receipt of the communication she had rapidly looked at her fleets and found no nearby vessels able to assist in Irrus’ and Yithe’s hunt; they were all well on the other side of the Tenebraen border, picking off the straggling survivors of the Ambrosius debacle. So she, like any good leader with the ability to rewrite time would, altered the scenario.
A single Chaw’Sah’Voh class man’o’war, well over twice the size and nearly twelve times as heavily armed as Irrus’ cozy little Ehm’Beh class enforcer, had been plucked from the time stream; her captain had not been all too successful in the turkey shoot of crippled frigates and sloops leading back from the bloodbath. With new orders, the ship had eagerly raced off to reclaim some semblance of success…
…and had ultimately been undone by the very reasons that put her there. The SSC ships had detected the temporal bleed that came with a minor temporal revision. Such whifs of the ephemeral vanished within minutes, but the ship’s master had been incredibly confident of his ability to steal the kill out from under the little Ehm’Beh’s nose, and had not considered the possibility that their quarry might ever perceive them.
--oOo--
At that moment, in Yithe’s mind, she was wondering herself just how that ship had come to be there. Ascendancy vessels are impeccably unseen things, to the degree that not even an Ascendancy vessel can detect another Ascendancy vessel. Their phased emissions are spread in two and three particle increments across the infinite wastelands of alternate dimensions, so faint that not even those peculiar Shadows could smell them out. It was not her fault for not detecting it, not by any means; rather Dorin had wisely not notified them of their approaching re-enforcements as that would have revealed Yithe’s deceit to Irrus.
“I thought so too.” Yithe replied.
In Irrus’ mind, pieces were falling together. For all Yithe thought of herself, he was probably the wiser of the two; he had actual experience in combat with competent opposition, something he suspected that the other Ascendancy vessel’s commander had lacked. And the pieces that were coming together frightened him.
The temporal anomaly, for starters, was interfering with projecting ahead potential outcomes; thank the gods that he had gotten to that promptly before the effect had taken hold on their systems. The logical ramification of this: their opponents had triggered temporal technologies in order to vanquish the unwitting and blockheaded commander of the unknown Chaw’Sah’Voh.
This meant the Sciastenos Centum weilded temporal capabilities. The implications therein where obvious.
Beyond that, Irrus thought as he puffed on his cigarette and with his free hand manipulated the display, they had been expecting us. While the torpedoes had been invisible on their way in, after the fact it was not entirely true. They were shielded from detection up until the instants before impact, but in those instants, Irrus could track their courses…
…and he realized that he was very much not alone out there. He would not presume to have tracked all of them (as it is definably the mark of an inferior shipmaster to presume they ever fully understand the situation) but regardless, a good many of the trails ended (or rather began) at a few select points in space-time. With a full three minutes since impact, they would still be close to their points of origin, but in time he expected many things…
They had known we were coming, Irrus thought. Our presence is revealed.
Three of the greatest triggers for panic in an Ascendancy shipmaster’s mind were these: discovery, increased risk of discovery, and the discovery that their opponent was not as far below them as he thought. All three, in that brief moment, struck Irrus’ mind.
He puffed his cigarette again.
“Whoever they were, poor bastards,” he said aloud so the bridge could hear him, “they just triggered the trap we were meant to stumble into. Let’s make their sacrifice worthwhile. Yithe,” he said pleasantly, as he gestured to the hallway, “a word please?”
--oOo--
“What the hell just happened out there?” He asked sharply the moment the cabin’s door had dilated closed. His tone had changed instantly from pleasant indifference to utter anguish.
“Shipmaster, as I’m sure you’re aware, this scenario fully matches and exceeds Prime Admiral Dorin’s parameters for deployment of the Great Weapons. Beyond that though, we must report back with this new information to Ascendancy Command.”
“Yes, and we must stop the Terabro because of that damn 6.3 percent! We’re bloody slaves to statistics!” He clenched the cigarette holder between his lips, showing rows of clean white teeth beneath them. He was now one ship against a much more competent opponent than he had originally given credit to, and to one who outnumbered him substantially. Unlike the sixty eight spinner Chaw’Sah’Vo that had just faced inglorious annihilation, the Ehm’Beh had six. Six spinners, and an entropy emitter. He did not in any degree like his odds, but the stakes were terrifyingly high.
“What are our temporal capabilities at present?” He inquired, as he rested his head against one of the organic seeming bulkhead struts. Yithe responded promptly.
“Limited. We can see our own future ten, perhaps fifteen seconds in advance, but only in general terms. Future projects are extremely limited.”
“Will we know ahead of time if we’re about to die?” He asked bluntly, leading to a pause on Yithe’s part.
“In a sense. We’ll just stop getting readings past ten seconds, and it will creep down from there.”
Irrus looked back at Yithe, but it was as if he was looking past her.
“Ready a updating message packet. I want everything up to our last moments recorded and mailed to Dorin.” He straightened slowly, brushing the ashes of the cigarette off on the wall and leaving a thin white streak there. “If that ship gets through, we’ll have problems bigger than our own deaths to contemplate.”
Yithe paused, understood, but asked anyway.
“Sir?”
--oOo--
SHIPMASTER’S REPORT TO: ASCENDANCY COMMAND, PRIME ADMIRAL DORIN <HIGH URGENCY> FROM: ASCENDANCY VESSEL FORTUNATE SON, SHIPMASTER IRRUS SUBJECT: FINAL REPORT
“If you are receiving this transmission,” Irrus reported as he stared into the recorder, a very wilted cigarette hanging off the tip of the reed, “it is best to presume that the Fortunate Son has been destroyed in the line of duty, all hands lost. Advise furthermore that immediate reclamation via quantum entanglement be scheduled five seconds later than destruction point, as I expect if you’re hearing this that I’ll be relying on a final kinetic option to destroy the destroyer carrier.”
“Enclosed with this encrypted transmission are full records of the past four hours, particularly pertaining to the capabilities and intelligence of the Sciasten…” he hesitated, realizing he was having issues pronouncing their name. Balls, he thought, then continued.
“…of our opposition. The possess temporal capabilities which urgently requires your assessment, as well as notable low-observation tech. Furthermore, I believe they were anticipating our presence here.”
He fell silent, still looking at his reflection in the screen. He had shaved and combed for this, though his jacket was still dirty.
“As per your policies, Great Weapons are being prepared for this engagement, as we are outnumbered and otherwise out positioned by our opponent. Shipmaster Irrus, completing final report for the Fortunate Son. End transmission.”
With that, he rose from his chair, straightened his jacket, and left the room. His cigarette holder smoldered alone on the desk.
--oOo--
TO BE CONTINUED:
|
|
|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:00:24 GMT
“The Blue principle is one of Obfuscation, you let them see what they want to see but you also convince them to see it as you wish all the while ensuring they cannot possibly do anything at all to interfere with your intentions. It is not unlike a riptide, you see calm waters at the coast but the ocean itself has other intentions.”
03:31 Hours: SCCS Oradell, Near the Tenebrae border.
Captain Weser looked over the holographic projections of the groups movement and the plotted course forward towards the ‘eastern’ tenebrae border. The direction of the convoy’s movement took it away from planetary masses, stars and anything else that would provide cover to any potential attackers while giving the SSC vessels in the group plenty of early detection. The known Tenebrae border was still a little over two hours out and yet…something was clearly off. A few moments spent pondering the sensation answered the question, he had encountered this before. Captain Weser was interrupted in his thoughts by one of the ship’s crew, an initiate. The 13th omen was a rather specialized division of the government tasked with keeping the secrets secret and more so handling incursions for the most part. This also meant maintaining certain classified portions of the SSC’s warships. The initiate in question was rather young or at least he looked it, it was hard to tell at times as most if not all of the Omen had a age defying appearance. “Captain, all vessels have activated the spheres as you have requested.” “Good, Helm maintain current speed but begin moving to pattern theta.” The appearance of the initiate and the mentions of sphere unit activation caught the attention of Chief Engineer Daugherty. She looked to the captain inquisitively at the order to change formation for a moment and turned to the two helms men and quietly stated a few positional orders. As the helmsmen moved the vessel the chief stepped back away from the two and over to the captain to inquire about the sudden change in stance for the fleet. “The spheres Captain; isn’t that being a bit hasty?” “Hasty perhaps, but I would rather be hasty and wrong in the defense of this convoy then risk taking no action and possibly failing at our task.” “Rienl owes you drinks doesn’t he?” “Indeed…”
03:42 Hours: SSCS Pontic, Position unknown.
Somewhere else, in a darkened bridge of another vessel operating in complete silence, movement stirred. Captain Reinl quietly and carefully made his way across a bridge littered with numerous consoles equipment and other devices that made the cramped bridge seem a claustrophobic nightmare. Soon over the dimmed lights of a deep passive senor array the faces of those observing the bigger picture were lit by the weak illumination of the display. The deep blue tint of the illumination played its usual tricks upon those present, adding lines and shadows that were wholly unnatural. In truth they all could have been mistaken for damned souls stuck in limbo between the living and the dead. “The convoy’s gone dark sir!” “Have they, now last known position?” “0498-0438-2086 heading roughly seven degrees, the fleet conducted a shift to pattern theta just before.” “Well It looks like you owe Captain Weser a round of drinks…he spotted them first.” “Don’t remind me Sydney, even by Inuoa standards the guys got a sixth sense.” One of the ships sensor technicians gestured to get the captains attention. Rienl carefully stepped about the cluttered bridge to lean against a bulkhead next to the sensor tech and part crouched to hear the tech’s report. “I’ve got a tangent due forty seven, clearly following the convoy, emissions verify it is not tenebrae, immortal empire or union.”
The Pontic crept along between the fabrics of reality itself technically not in the ancerious galaxy, but then not in the bordering reality either. For all intents and purposes the vessel did not exist and yet, it crept along moving without traction, and seeing without eyes. No heat, indentation on the galaxy or energy emission marked the strange craft’s existence and yet it crept along. The balance of events would change not with the equity of two powers sitting at a table with treaty but with the unfortunate realization some one had ceased being an apex predator. Back on the bridge the captain carefully moved towards its center as two cylinders emerged, one from the floor in front and one from the ceiling above. The two met at head height on the captain before a pair of grips slid from the lower cylinder and a set of optics not unlike those on electronic binoculars emerged from the upper. Captain Reinl leaned forward to peer in to the scope as provided, the holographic uplink effectively allowing him to see the situation not as one might see on a screen but rather as one might see it if their eyes were directly connected to the sensors. There it was…the hostile contact, a inconceivable mass devoid of any real discernable stern or bow in part due to the nature of ultra passive sensors. Yet the vessel was bright its very existence bending the native flow of time like any anarch vessel might and despite this was clearly not of their construction. As the captain drew the view of the unknown vessel into larger resolution, the object resembled a jelly fish almost as it took on multiple hues indicating factors about its existence all of which was largely irrelevant to what would come next. The captain took one hand off the grips of the observation device and held up four fingers to his chief engineer.
03:42:26 Hours: SCCS Oradell, Near the Tenebrae border.
The SSC vessels readily changed positions in the convoy going from a straight utilitarian position to one that seemed neither defensive nor offensive. The larger vessels doing the towing remained in the center along with their stricken charges yet the smaller warships took on three dimensional positions seemingly maximizing fire angles against possible enemy incursion. Sensor blind spots were compensated for and each of the vessels seemed to be resonating and emitting unusual energies that also seemed to be affecting the towed vessels as well. This of course would probably throw an entirely new wrench into the Flux’s plans as they might notice a field of effect from the formation change that they had just began to run into the edge of. Did they dare get any closer?
03:42:47 Hours: SSCS Pontic, Position unknown.
Meanwhile the helm following the captain’s observations slowly adjusted the vessels position to bring about the ordered firing solution. Final adjustments were made in the seconds that passed as the captain kept the ships deep passive sensors and the associated weapons targeting system on the target. A few fractions of a second should be sufficient…the target had blundered into the convoy’s field of effect. The trigger was pulled with little fanfare as the Pontic and the other vessels of her wolf pack all fired on the unsuspecting Flux craft. M2 Planar torpedoes streaked across the distance propelled by the wild energies that existed only between realities. A tense waiting game began as the seconds bled away, would the torpedoes run true. Intermittent signals indicated the warheads were indeed on target, but for the group of ships led by the Pontic there were enough torpedoes inbound it was hard to tell who launched which. For the flux craft there would be no indicator of what was coming, the warheads were shielded from chronological detection until they were right on top of the target. To make matters worse there was that field effect the craft had blundered into…it seemed to be for lack of better word making the flux’s vaunted ability to travel time itself inert. There was now here to go for the flux craft as it had fallen into a carefully lain trap.
|
|
|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:00:46 GMT
“In war, the winning maneuvers are often the ones that fail to make headlines. People want decisive battles so they can tally scores and reaffirm their nationalist feelings, us versus them in its rawest form. Little do they realize, it is the skirmishes, the raids the reconnaissance the spy games and the subtle act of obfuscation that really keeps the war machine going, they also ironically can stop it as well.”
00:23 hours, Ancerious, Exact positions unknown.
The first of the vessels arrived quietly at the initial rally point from their series of short FTL “jumps” ranging all the way back to SSC space. The travel pattern included several loops back on their path as well as a few quick passes through stellar phenomena to avoid the possibility of detection or pursuit. The group in question was comprised of a single flotilla of vessels group into two separate task elements. Each of the vessels was hand picked from the Kronstadt Taskforce, for the mission, and thus each one was one of a number of stealth warships not commonly known to the rest of Ancerious. The group was appropriately small for the mission, a total of twelve warships of similar scale and size quietly crept into the rallying zone using the shadow of a Gas giant with a decaying orbit to further mask their existence from any prying eyes. Almost two hours into the mission and not a single contact with enemy or ally. Meanwhile aboard the bridge of the SSCS Oradell the flotilla’s flagship for the mission Captain Weser leaned gingerly against one of the numerous consoles as his bridge crew went about their duties. Behind him three petty officers sat at their stations actively looking for any signs of activity other then their own flotilla’s activities. In front and to the right the two helmsmen worked to maintain the pace and speed of the vessel in relation to its portion of the flotilla. In the rear to the right the Communications and weapons officers manned their stations in much the same manner. The bridge itself was a cramped affair that was only agitated by the dim blue illumination of the combat lamps. Captain Weser looked back at the petty officers manning the sensor stations. “Hmm nothing?” “No sir, quiet as Christmas eve.” Captain Weser leaned about the strut and looked to the communications officer and before he could utter the question the officer without looking up responded. “Fleet is reporting no contact and all units are confirmed as in position and ready for the next maneuver.” “Signal them to follow respective lead to final position; it’s time to see for ourselves what sort of mess the First prime has us in.”
Mere seconds later the assembled vessels of the flotilla were simply no longer at their prior position. No flash or fanfare preceded the movement nor followed it, the vessels simply slipped into hyper speed and were gone. The very act brought a subtle irony to light when considered in its passing. When it comes down to it, the nature of war has never changed, once sentient learned we could toss things at each other and thus reduce the risk of being hit, we stuck to it. In the future ironically we still do this, though when you consider most starships are really giant projectiles hurled across the cosmos for the purpose of keeping the war out of our neighborhoods it seems a little absurd. But here speeding through the shiftless void of hyperspace travel at speeds many times greater then the speed of light were several objects, the first of a flotilla of objects. An assembled flotilla from Taskforce Kronstadt had been activated and deployed on a mission so important that the crews were led to believe they were on a routine training mission while fleet’s command were given the real details.
00:49 hours, Some where near the Ambrosius region, neutral space.
The first arrivals emerged from their travels in two unclaimed solar systems bordering a nearby contested system. The unclaimed systems were specifically picked for their apparent lack of vessel traffic and the naturally occurring phenomena that would aid in hiding the presence of the flotilla. But there they lay masked in both natural and unnatural aspects of stealth; six vessels arrived in both of the two destination systems and immediately began to use their ‘creeping’ propulsion to move into final position while presenting no trail for an interloper to follow. The six vessel groups were somewhat diverse in theory consisting of a single Corseque class, two Khukuri class, a single Falx class and two XR-51-15’s. Each group was effectively a self-contained combat fleet of sorts all geared towards a very specific operational purpose, reconnaissance. While the Corseque class frigate remained at the center of the formation it’s associated two Khukuri class frigates took up supporting positions to port and starboard. The Falx class frigate operated forward while each of the XR-51-15’s operated to the port and starboard-rear of the respective Khukuri class as an early detection screen for enemy contacts.* it would take some time to confirm both groups of warships were in position and had not been detected. Some time was spent verifying the accuracy of star charts and the odd information left at Port Asur. There was no doubt Ambrosius was looking like a major battlefield even from the distance kept by the flotilla’s split elements. The anomalous presence of a blackhole, no scratch that what appeared to be a compound black hole was of note. The star charts seemed not to show this anomaly which made the information at best seem odd.
“I do not understand it, these charts show no black hole here and yet we’re reading it’s effects well the effects of numerous gravitational anomalies.” “Perhaps someone wished they could send us into oblivion?” Captain Weser stared at the holographic display which noted the glittering fragments of the battle as much as the anomaly and other aspects of the region. The entire scene was already a bit surreal as several bridge officers looked at the display. Even with the currently incomplete imagery it was clear something rather major had occurred but, whom and why was the question. “We will know soon enough, inform flight decks to being final preflight, and make sure the other half is ready as well.”
00:52 hours, Flight deck of the SSCS Oradell
Dim lights flickered overhead as flight control prepared its star fighters for launch. Unlike with the larger carriers of the fleet, in the case of stealth vessels the conning tower or observation deck often served as a direct visualization post for launch in any situation where the ship was not in direct combat. More so it acted in the same role as one might expect for a stealth vessel, allowing for better chances to spot potential problems. Below the upper hull of the Oradell was ‘illuminated’ for lack of better word by a extremely low visibility running lights designed only to be visible at set angles and even then at a distance of less then thirty feet maximum. Internal bays buried below the conning tower and their associated facilities contained within a somewhat condensed sliver of the vessels length were rife with action as machines, pilots and flight crews prepared for any of the likely contingencies. As the first squadron of fighters was launched the next was being raised to the deck on launch elevators. In a short 45 seconds each of the Corseque frigates had launched six separate squadrons of reconnaissance starfighters moments afterwards the mission to examine the Ambrosius sector had begun.
01:13 Hours: The Bridge of the SSCS Oradell
Objects on a holographic display they were, the twelve squadrons six launched from each section moved along the gridded overlay. Each one a group of the SSC’s finest, moving at speeds that were ill represented by the images of the units. I t all seemed slow back on the bridge when in fact the fighters were making high speed reconnaissance flights. The plan itself was simple. The fighters of one section cross below while the other section’s fighters cross overhead. The pattern of the flights individually would resemble a set of lines and together a crosshatch. The4 effect was maximum sensor readings for a minimized risk. The entire affair had to be done rapidly as we were looking at The territory of the Immortal empire and to be caught would surely be an unfortunate circumstance. Fortunately the fighters carried a full electronic warfare and stealth suite making them present a nullified sensor signature on most spectrum even leaving no gravitational or subspace indentation. This was just as well as the tense moments rolled by and the regular but brief communications traffic came through at either end of the flotilla’s sections.
“Rodger that central, Recon Flight three oh nine has received course adjustments and is following the path….” “Looks like they had a real smash up down there lead; we’re picking up debris of vessels we can’t even begin to Identify.” “Stay tight folks, there’s no telling who might come back, this was a big fight someone’s apt to be looking for more of it.”
The fighter squadrons rapidly covered proverbial ground as they went about their assigned duties with the expected professionalism and skill expected of veteran fighter pilots. As the fighters moved it became clear to those of us in command that the black hole itself collapsed some time within the last half hour and was now seemingly stabilizing into something that was emitting exotic particles instead. The trinary black hole had merged collapsed and now was something else it resembled a rift in a way and yet the energy readings spoke of it having rapidly matured into another form of celestial body. As the Fighter squadrons nearest to the new anomaly began to pass sensors detected something odd…the anomaly had begun to seemingly spit out objects, artificial ones. No one on either portion of the task force would catch the significance of the event immediately as the fighter squadrons were intent on finishing the mission headed to their destination vessels while the fleets prepared to move to the next rally point. One thing was certain, the SSC’s military Intelligence department was about to pull a number of all-nighters to ascertain just what had happened.
*Force declaration reference, total of 12 warships, split in to two 6-ship groups. In total that is two Corseque class frigates, Four Khukuri class Frigates, two Falx Class Frigate, and four XR-51-15 class corvettes. All of these vessels are stealth type.
|
|
|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:00:57 GMT
Dreams stripped down beyond firelight I would go over but my only coat's off white And seeing things unreal God knows what that stain And what comes crawling back again The ashes scatter Burning Jacob's ladder And I'm afraid I might fade away!
--Burning Jacob’s Ladder, by Mark Lanegan.
--oOo--
Shipmaster Irrus quietly slipped into his spot on the bridge and reacquainted himself with the situation; Yithe entered behind him and resumed her operations as well. The bridge was quiet, and he knew what they were all thinking about. Hell, he was thinking about it too.
With a wave of his hand, he triggered the ship’s address system, and after a pause for the low warble indicating an announcement from the shipmaster he spoke briefly.
“We’re in a bit of a situation here, family in arms.” He murmured, his gravelly voice even as he could make it. “We are facing competent opposition with numerical superiority, and a proper amount of intelligence as well. As per our beloved Prime Admiral’s instructions,” he said straitfaced, his sarcasm likely slipping well above the heads of his small crew (or at least they pretended that it did), “I am authorized to deploy Great Weapons technologies in such situations. As such, we’ll be mounting Uller’s boxes onto the ship’s outer hull.” It was perhaps the least destructive of the Great Weapons, and one that might give him the best chance at making as small a splash as possible when his time came.
“That being said though, as I’m sure you’re all aware, our opponent is escorting a very high value target, and beyond that they’re of the nature of opposition that dictates their being treated as a very serious threat. Quite frankly, if this target wasn’t here, neither would we. These guys know what they’re doing, and our poor friend out there just ate it in demonstration of that fact.” And then he paused, swallowed, and looked up for a moment across the shadowy bridge at Yithe’s station.
“The destruction of this target is imperative to the safety of our families. They all expect you to make them proud. Shipmaster out.” He didn’t outright say it, but it was there: this was a one way mission.
“Helm, begin lining up an approach on the carrier destroyer, low sublight speed. Keep us in their shadow. Standby with a faster than light jump along contact alpha‘s line of symmetry. If we can’t take them out with our weapons, we’re going to have to be able to go in there and do the job by hand.”
So the Fortunate Son began her approach. It was a slow, elliptical thing, hardly a beeline, but calculated specifically to put the carrier’s massive hulk well between them and the vessel towing her. The Fortunate Son’s captain frowned slightly as he realized he would not in all likelyhood be having dinner tonight.
He enjoyed dinner, and missing it would be properly upsetting.
--oOo--
With all do swiftness, Uller’s boxes were mounted onto the prow and wingtips of the Fortunate Son. They were not opened, for their effects on the eyes of the suited crewmen installing them would have been incredibly unpalatable.
In a perfect world, Irrus would have had a subspace surge draw the waters out from underneath this whole damned fleet. It would have taken them months to clear the effect at sublight speeds, and the more time he had now the better he would have felt. But it was a fairly traceable effect, and while it would have taken hours for the enemy’s torpedoes to reach them, their target was, after all, a carrier. Swarmed by fighters, (though here he was assuming that his enemy was still capable of launching them) he doubted a lone Ehm’Beh could survive for any great period of time without speed being an option to him.
Ehm’Beh class designs are mostly engine. Their long, downbent wings contain devices capable of silently emitting vast quantities of thrust, and they were the fastest ships in the Ascendancy’s fleets when at sublight speeds; a similar degree of light-footed attributes applied to her capabilities at FTL manuevering. She was agile, quick on her feet, and a beautiful sight to behold in the eyes of her captain.
But what she was not was heavily armed; her armour had been improved via temporal revision after analysis of the Battle of the Vortex revealed that the original variants would have been cut through like tissue paper by the Dark City’s capitol guns. Wormhole spinners were quite potent as they cut through all things with equal disregard to physics, armour or shielding, but he only had six of them and an entropy spinner to turn against a target well over eight miles long.
So he had thus targeted with careful deliberation trajectories for those wormholes that would cut through as many levels of inertial dampeners, reactor cooling systems, and fuel reserves as possible. Every munitions chamber, every battery, every object capable of destroying its surroundings was carefully assessed, categorized, clarified, and studied. He would have to fire in salvos of two at a time in order to maximize his efficiency; though the entropy ray would be firing consistently up until the point where it no longer existed.
The first two would target the ship’s aft shield generators, and in terms of probability while he no longer had the steadfast guarantee of temporal premonition, it was safe enough to assume such things would come to pass. They were large, formidable things, capable of absorbing considerable energy or kinetic force. Yet to a wormhole, it would be like nothing was there at all.
The next two rounds would target the ship’s inertial dampeners, or as many of them as he could. He wanted them to feel it.
The final two he placed targeting situations on that would, in theory, send them down the ship’s tailpipes, as it were; a bomb down the funnel, right into the thing’s heart.
--oOo--
So the distance closed. Yithe aided in the targeting, as her temporal systems were only so useful when one could see well under a minute ahead of the here and now. She worked with the quiet knowledge of their impending mortality’s ultimate conclusion.
She had sailed under Irrus for a considerable while; not since the Nakai Wars, perhaps, but a considerable while. For all of his egregious disregard for decorum and the chain of command, he was a fine commander. Though he did smell horrible, she reminded herself as she caught a scent of the cigarette that clung to the shipmaster’s jacket.
They were keeping two courses now; the one they actively followed wound slowly closer towards contact alpha, keeping them well behind the bulk of the crippled carrier and carefully out of the thick stream of plasma leaking behind her. Then there was the secondary course, triggerable at a moment’s notice, that would send them into the carrier’s stern at speeds most unholy.
She was going to die here. She was going to die besides a man who smoked and neglected the sirs and formalities that came with his office.
She was going to die saving her family.
--oOo--
Uller’s Boxes are three dimensional containers, made of traditional alloys albeit via decidedly nonstandard manners. Their lids are curved, making them in a strange way resemble a treasure chest with a clam mouth door; their sized vary depending on whether or not they are intended to be man portable.
Within an Uller’s Box lie unthinkable things. As unthinkable as they are, these things are hardly as inhospitable as spirits that might dwell within some god’s ark, or the diseases and miseries that were contained in the god’s gift to Pandora.
They were merely shapes. Though, in all fairness, none like any had seen. These three dimensional containers contained shapes with more dimensions to them than can be counted.
The shapes held no malice to reality. Their effects were entirely subjective, and as unpleasant as they were, the solution, for a living thing, was simply not to look at them.
--oOo--
|
|
|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:01:10 GMT
"You'll take my life but I'll take yours too You'll fire your musket but I'll run you through So when you're waiting for the next attack You'd better stand, there's no turning back
The bugle sounds the charge begins But on this battlefield no one wins The smell of acrid smoke and horses breath As I plunge on into certain death." –Iron Maiden, 'The Trooper'
04:00:00 Hours SCCS Oradell, Near the Tenebrae border.
The convoy vessels continued on their erratic course, as the vessels in the convoy’s outer layer shifted their positions every few minutes to cover for sensor blind spots and to effectively confuse any pursuing enemy. Fields of fire were overlapped, thinned and overlapped again as the strange maneuver continued on. Its purpose seemed to be to increase possible detection of the enemy but its odd movements also appeared outlandishly ineffective. It was at the stroke of four am in the morning the fleet had finally been enlightened to the very thing that had held all of them at a state of alarm for so long. The large tenebrae vessel seemed to come alive somehow. It was clear that the vessel only had severe damage to its propulsion units and yet no one quite expected it to awaken and find the enemy that had caused so much concern. The scene was mirrored across every ship in the fleet as crew shifted to battle stations. Crew previously off duty moved to man weapons, damage control and other critical posts. A number of vessels not performing any act of towing rapidly moved ahead to intercept the enemy.
It all seemed so simple, a natural response really, but what was this, four vessels in the fleet remained back. The four turned for an obvious broadside attack but they aside from the advancing vessels stood in between the enemy and the towing portions of the fleet. Something was off, the ships remained this way for a few critical seconds as their smaller allies rushed to try and intercept the enemy vessel. Just a few more seconds passed before something revealed itself as amiss with the vessels. They looked like fulcrums but their weapons systems were registering a power spike on a level far beyond what could be considered normal for something so tiny by galactic standards. Were they mere frigates or something else? It was then that it became very clear the generous deception unintentionally lain upon the enemy as several of the so-called Falx class frigates were already demonstrating power spikes well above what any contemporary information should have indicated. The charges were seemingly altering entire sections of their hull. Entire segments of the craft seemed to comparatively lighten shifting form the trademark SSC tones of black and dark grey to an almost navy blue tinge as flickering points almost resembling malignant eyes swept across the hull to glare at the intruder as if offended by its very existence. Indeed if a warship could talk you would bet this one would be berating the flux intruder for ever having been built.
The flux vessel would likely not have much time to consider what it was saying as the four so-called frigates fired simultaneously in a pattern that was intended to create a cross fire. The weapons they lashed out left no visible beam or effect in their passing save for the occasional minor arc of energy vaporizing tiny detritus in space. The beams were visible on some forms of sensors for the brief time they were traveling towards their target but certainly not to the naked eye which made them more menacing. Unlike a conventional beam or particle weapon these weapons, the aptly named Autoglaives possessed aspects of both and yet behaved like neither. The coherent energy arced as it crossed the distance to its foe bending randomly not unlike a bolt of lightening. The flux vessel had quite a few of these inbound along a number of surrounding and close vectors. In effect the flux vessel itself was not precisely being targeted; it and the immediate area about it were being filled with a torrent of fire. After all what match is medusa versus the thundering of Zeus.
04:02:00 Hours: Hunting Unit, Near the Tenebrae border.
“Look at that Captain, the big ship is lighting the target for us!” “Seems so helm full to port, we’ve got ourselves an enemy warship to bring down, Prepare fore and aft launches for action… I want a four torpedo spread on this!” The chief engineer standing just ahead of the captain leaned forward over the two helm officers issue orders for movement. “You heard him port full stern maneuvering down ten, bow up ten….level out in twenty.” “I want…. what the hell is that?”
The hunting unit was a little more fortunate in several regards as the ships largely operated blind and their crews were used to anomalous behaviors. After all if the ravening hell of crossing between alternate realities didn’t prepare you for such oddity nothing did. It was obvious that the intercepting elements of the fleet, none of which were equipped with any sort of portless weapon mounts were having trouble with the enemy contact, much the same the fighter contingent deployed during the series of maneuvers by the fleet too was having trouble and were forced to abort their attack run entirely. This meant the Oradell and her sister ships and the four Khukuri were left to hold the line. The hunters in respects were left to do any and all of the flanking maneuvers, which dashed a few strategies and left a mad rush to intercept.
“Sir! It looks like the Oradel and her sister ships have already finished priming.” “Hell! Paint the target with the T.A.L.O.N. But maintain course!” It remained to be seen if the hunting group could intercept in time but in the least, perhaps the fleet would have a better chance to hit if the target was effectively lit for targeting sensors.
|
|
|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:01:23 GMT
“Like a rusty old nail at the bottom of the sea, Telling your tales for the good of the admiralty, You jump when you’re told to through the open door, The king of Norway is the man you all died for. On this Jacob’s ladder the only way up is down, Three days in the water, Watching all the secrets drown.”
03:43:56 Hours: SSCS Pontic, Position unknown.
“Immediate Coil dive!” The captain and crew braced for the rigorous maneuver even as the audible end of the target and the released energies of its end washed back towards the group of SSC vessels in their surrounding positions. One by one each ship cut a gap between the fabric of the galaxy and the next and slid through. The passage was not a gentle one as each craft and the crews aboard was tossed about violently in the passage. Wild bursts of energy and detonated elements never before seen pummeled the five ships in their passing. All of it accompanied by this wailing that battled the resolve of the men involved. Anything left loose aboard the vessels was hurled about and the gravity systems flickered in and out. The warship group emerged on the other side back in their home realm if you will some great distance from earth but none the less they made it through. Captain Reinl shook off the effects of the trip as he looked about his bridge, logbooks and other materials had been tossed about, more then one person was either unconscious or injured. It was a mess, but an intermittent tone brought his attention to the flickering holographic display, the computer was registering the confirmed loss of one of their number in passage. At least for the time being the convoy was on its own. Hopefully the head start was enough, time would tell however.
03:44:07 Hours: SCCS Oradell, Near the Tenebrae border.
The convoy moved at best speed away from the area of rapidly collapsing subspace as they towed their charges dutifully. Even at maximum speed with additional accelerators in play subspace’s collapse rapidly approached skirting the stern of the rear most vessels. The effect of being so close while using Faster then light engines was a bit like a jet hitting a turbulence wake. Each of the convoy vessels and their charges shook in varied degrees of violence relative to their proximity to the distorting area of subspace. A few tense seconds passed before the convoy finally started to put distance on the area of dead space and finally freed themselves of the resulting turbulence. As the group moved on making best possible safe speed to get clear of both the area and unwanted attention the crews performed damage checks to verify status. Meanwhile on the bridge as the last of the subspace tremors subsided Captain Weser finally relaxed and took stock of the situation. “Damage report?” “Teams are checking captain but so far reading as green status…rest of fleet is reporting about the same, The Macon is reporting some loss of shield strength from the tremors.” The Captain Weser turned to Chief Engineer Daugherty to see if there was any word from section B for aid. The Chief was crouched next to the communications console as a communications tech was busily decoding a heavily encrypted massage from taskforce command. “Sir… we have support in bound, Section B will be here in an hour…” The captain frowned at the information it wasn’t quite what he wanted to hear and hour was simply too long. It was clear this new enemy was using forbidden technology and they were so keen on causing trouble that it was a sure bet they would try again. “Fine, inform them there may not be a convoy to aid if they’re that slow, make sure they get a bit about the nature of this new enemy and their use of Anarch technology…” “Captain! Is that wise, we don’t know who that was that Reinl splashed to the four winds back there.” Weser and Daugherty locked eyes for a moment as if debating the wisdom of such a statement given the circumstances. The captain gestured about his bridge as if to stir up a summary of what had transpired and finally spoke. “Right, but we can’t take the risk; whoever they are they’re clearly playing dirty. Command has to know what we’ve gotten into, Send it as stated that’s an order.” The communications tech looked between the two and followed orders but Daugherty gave the captain a look as if he clearly disagreed with the wording. It was clear the Chief was going to have some words about the message later. The sound of a proximity alarm interrupted any further debate on the matter. One of the sensor officers leaned away from his station. “Captain it’s the Vicksburg, she’s just arrived to take up towing the big ship sir!” “How is that even... Open a line to her on holo.”
The holographic display that occupied the center of the room flickered and moved all non essential display elements to the sides of the projection. The initial image was of the arriving vessel, clearly of the Gettysburg series of destroyers, the flattened teardrop hull and inlay engines gave the vessel a incredibly streamlined look but also made it appear smaller then it’s actual mass. The image of the craft moving into formation was cut to that of the Ship’s Bridge and its captain and bridge crew in three dimensional representations. The captain of the Vicksburg was the first to speak all the while a friendly smile crossed his face. “Well Captain I heard you needed a little more towing torque so we rushed on over!” “Still show boating are we Captain Callard?” “Don’t you know it, what’s the point of being the fastest in the fleet if you don’t? What’s the Sit-rep?” “Captain Reinl took down an unknown hostile and had to coil dive I think, he may be back it’s hard to tell, we’re moving at half speed for the obvious reason and we expect more trouble from whomever owned the targeted vessel.” “Seems like a rough one, section B as you may know is making best speed to get here we happened to be acting as communications relay to Reinl’s detachment. You know how the hunters are. According to my estimates we can shave a bit of time off though maybe an hour and some change tops?” Weser looked back to the chief for a moment who stood over a navigation display carefully charting course path and other variables. It was clear the chief was running the numbers already. Daugherty looked up from the display and nodded to the assessment before looking back at the course information. “It seems so, a little under an hour and fifteen…but don’t let your guard down.”
In a surprisingly smooth transition the SSCS Oradell shifted position without dropping its tow beam on the tenebrae vessel even as the SSCS Vicksburg moved into the Oradell’s old position and engaged their own tow. The Oradell maneuvered to aid another vessel in towing the next largest and the interior of the fleet shifted appropriately to maintain the same theta formation with a shift in some positions. The effect of the Vicksburg’s presence as the first and only true capitol; warship in the group was immediate. The convoy was able to manage greater speed with the obvious advantages of increased sensor strength and firepower.
=========================================================================================
|
|
|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:01:34 GMT
"Don't give up the ship!" Captain James Lawrence
"We have met the enemy and they are ours..." Oliver Hazard Perry
== (O) ==
The Administrative entity of the ALTMAN stirred within the systems of the crippled Carrier destroyer as the engagement between the convoy and the as of yet unknown hostiles began.
The Sudden deployment of the SSC vessels into what it recognized roughly as a defensive position around its hull not long after entering the outermost boarders of one of the empires outer systems serving as evidence that things were not well, that the otherwise uneventful trip of the Rescue Op following its crippling engagement in the ambrosious system with a T-4 Drone carrier had been compromised.
The Immortal Empire ship had been dispatched, its hull cut wide open by concentrated ARC fire, but not before managing to deal several crippling blows to its propulsion systems
It had responded rapidly to the sudden change in the situation, Taking over systems and stations across its city sized hull for its injured or missing crew where they were absent. While lending additional support for those that were still manning their consoles, arming the undamaged turrets along its hull and sending its lesser Shipboard entities to the tasks of searching for hostiles and prepping its remaining Fighters and missile batteries for the increasing possibility that it would have to defend itself. Alerting pilots throughout the ship of the situation.
Even as it preformed the tasks, the ships of the SSC seemed to be much farther ahead of it, Deploying what appeared to be long range Tallums of an unknown design and function, setting them to converge on a point some 15,000 kilometers from its rear.
Scans of the area had yielded no readings or signatures that it’s systems could tag, but when it ran its basic optical systems in the area and brought it into dilation. A vessel could clearly be glimpsed, its light grey metal hull highlighted by the dim light from the systems distant blue sun. It’s sleek and vaguely organic design unlike any of the listed designs of the Immortal Empire on its onboard libraries records.
Less then ten minutes later the SSC Tallums impacted with its hull. Detonating with spectacular fury, the blast forcing it to employ filters to its optics in order to see past the momentary flair of the detonation. Giving it clear images of the vessel being utterly vaporized in its wake.
The ALTMANS scanner systems and entities Showed its Administrative and collective entities Multi Spectrum displays of several small chunks of largely disintegrated debris floating outward from the blast zone of the Tellums after the blast had dissipated. The stealth tech that had previously served to cloak their presence having not survived the near total destruction of the vessel.
It took the time to take several Pics and recorded several Vid files of the craft from several of its secondary memory cores. Sending the files on a joint path to the systems military capital, as well as to the SSC craft for additional assurance of their survival should it not survive the Engagement. The messages already on their way as it took note of the SSC vessels new formations, still tight around it, but now seemingly unknowing as to what direction the enemy was approaching from.
The Ships entity had responded to the situation by sending out several multi spectrum pulses and wide ranged Scans around itself, its largely intact Sensory arrays training their views outward in as many directions as they still could, Feeding back the information to the carriers inner nexus of entities, Where the smallest changes in fluxuations were scanned for possible targets.
Half an hour later it located the remaining flux vessel, glimpsed and traced on a Basic optic spectrum scan of the Zone of open space situated slightly starboard of the vessels rear, the ships path taking care not to bring it too closely to the Leaked trail of Versus charged fluids leaking from its damaged engines trailing behind it.
It didn’t hesitate in its next actions, alerting its crew on the bridge first. Then sending alerts to the individual ships of the SSC Taskforce in formation around it on the enemy vessels location, as well as taking the initiative to keep the vessel at a distance, Alerting its Gunnery entities and crew of the vessels location. The turrets and guns under their command with clear lines of fire on the enemy ship immediately opening fire, Laying down a suppressing line of Versus and Degarser Volleys on the enemy vessels hull.
All the while, the entity ran other operations within The ships carrier docks, using the head start to its advantage. As it had become all the more obvious that the enemy craft had its sights on it’s destruction, Prompting the ALTMAN to get its operation into position all the more sooner.
One of the remaining Rosaud cruisers onboard the carrier was disengaged from its docks and, through the use of Tethers and its own remotely guided A-grav thrust systems. Moved to the rear most hanger of the vessel, Its onboard hangers being systematically loaded to its maximum Tallum load capacity by mounted Loading automaton. Fresh Crystal power cells locked into its engines and A-Grav systems.
It may have been crippled in its ability to move, but in its ability to help defend itself the ALTMAN still had its claws and teeth.
|
|
|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:02:04 GMT
“It is in war that we the combatants do pray for an enemy who is both civil and merciful. Barring that we at least heed this and live by it. Distress is distress, and it our belief in the balance of things that by aiding those in suffering some day perhaps the favor will be returned. If not then it matters little, we still have done our part to purge in some part the infection on all sentience known as pain.” – SSC’s Military Medical Corps Motto
01:59 Hours: Indeterminate positions in Ambrosius Sector
The stricken vessel lay at an angle her crew no doubt inside struggling to get their ruined vessel to do something. The ship had lay here amidst a graveyard of its comrades and other vessels for hours at the least and longer at the most. The area was itself a tribute to the terrifying exchange passed across the consuming vastness of space. Two great empires locked in bloody combat with little thought of quarter given no doubt as the severity of the destruction attested. However this ship had a unfortunate fate headed its way as it was slowly and inexorably being drawn towards the distant maw of a indefatigable singularity. In that frame of urgency the crew inside toiled struggling to find something, anything that could save their vessel, which matched its less fortunate comrades nearby in its silence. The vessel had become a sort of Alcatraz in that way, as they crew no doubt could see what was to be their end, but could do little to save them selves. The area outside was dotted with dead hulks once of great concern but now a mute testament to the vast and ultimately wasted expenditures of a conflict so contrived and artificial it seemed laughable. It was then a crew member on the wrecked craft swore he saw something moving out there. The statement was met with skepticism as others failed to see it. Moments later they all saw a number of starship parts seem to move in directions that defiled their usual plane of movement in the gravitational pull of the anomaly. Nothing was visible and what working semblances of sensory devices failed to find the source of the odd activity. Minutes passed as though they were years as those who could look did so, for they were sure something was out there. Had the enemy come to finish off the Tenebrae survivors? Were they taking prisoners or just out for blood and to snuff the struggling lives of those misfortunate in the conflict? Another something moved as if it glanced off an object passing. A dull metal clang against the hull had those already on edge sweating bullets and preparing for their final stand. The low wail and screech of something dragging across the hull punctuated the moment as the crew’s own imaginations, fears and mental stresses assailed the lot of them. And then through a viewport on the starboard side something appeared.
As though appearing through some smoke something slowly materialized through the debris infested area batting away bits of hull and starship component. The ship was in it’s own way elegant in it’s own archaic fashion. It was clearly not an Immortal empire vessel as the dark hull seemed to bear hexagonal tiles that reflected light in the way a reptiles scales might giving it an odd symphony of colors all in some tones of black, gray or mixed hues of blue or green. The vessel seemed to possess a bow that more resembled that of a nautical ram ship of old while cowled engine arrays seemed to suggest a clearly more modern origin and design. Up top lay a conning tower which harkened to the flying bridges of the Victorian era albeit adapted for space. The crew aboard the crippled craft had a few more moments to consider what they were seeing before the unknown vessel attempted communication, at first conventionally and then failing that flashing codes using a deck mounted high power lamp normally employed as a navigation aid. This use of a maneuvering spot light would be repeated at numerous distress signals and in one case to an unknown but clearly non-immortal empire contact closer to the position of the black holes that had caused so much mayhem.
03:01 Hours: SCCS Oradell, somewhere near Tenebrae Space
The fleet moved slowly as it got past the outer boundaries of the ambrosius sector and by extension the Immortal Empire’s territory. In more then one case the portions of Taskforce Kronstadt had to call in assistance to move stricken vessels in recoverable shape out of the battle field. A number of vessels wrecked beyond repair were scuttled after their crews recovered and safely moved aboard SSC vessels. The going proved slow as the towing vessels chugged along hauling their charges at a quarter speed to avoid further damages to the already mauled craft. Meanwhile aboard the bridge of the SSCS Oradell the captain stood looking at the star charts considering the route and other particulars of the trip. “Captain, at quarter speed we can be there in about three hours.” “You seem unsure ensign.” “Well it’s uh…” “What the ensign means is that we’d be going faster if we were not operating submerged while towing that vessel back there!” Captain Weser turned from the star chart to the Lieutenant giving the officer a somewhat disapproving look just shy of a flat out glare. The Lieutenant was a bit surprised at the sudden shift of attention more so that most of the eyes in the conference room were suddenly on him now all of which seemed to be less then favoring. For the briefest of moments it was silent to the point a cricket chirping would have been welcome. Finally after a few long seconds Captian Weser spoke. “That is not an option and you know it, you yourself saw what was out there and the losses incurred, the convention binds us to do as we are within reason that ship back there is the lifeline of those who serve aboard it some of which are in our infirmary right now!” “But Sir I..” “No! War is ugly as is it’s worse looking then those hideous bitch-whores you wake up with after a night of drinking at that god-awful hole you call a night club! One of the great assurances we have in serving the navy is that in a time of need others will show us mercy and compassion as we are willing to do for others. If you think that vessel in tow is dead weight then you by all means are welcome to go to the infirmary and tell its crew that. But I am sure the Chief here would love to film that debacle too under the label of ‘How to fuck Up’ volume fifteen.” “Uh captain. I think I’m actually up to volume twenty.” The Chief’s comment got a few tension breaking chuckles from the assembled senior crew in the room. The captain himself goes silent for a moment collecting his thoughts to recover from his own loss of patience. In the moments that pass the captain had remind himself that indeed most of the crew were comparatively kids. Too young to have seen any real prolonged combat and too fresh to really have tasted the bitter draught that war brews. With a quick glance about the captain realized that virtually none of the crew present save the Chief bore anything resembling age lines and most were still struggling with the aspect of maintaining an idealized image of what an officer int eh navy ought look like. The impossible idea of a clean shaven perfectly kept officer as seen on recruitment posters was well known but hardly what any of the ‘old salt’ officers actually looked like. It seemed from there as if the meeting was a blur of the usual, damage reports for the section, casualties and the usual. A bit later the captain found himself in the infirmary visiting one of the injured from the vessel in tow. The captain strode into the private medical bay in which the ranking officer was situated and sat beside his bed with a nod and a brief smile. "We will be at your peoples borders in less then an hour...My taskforce recovered as many as we had distress signals to follow and scuttled the rest including vessels that were intact enough to study but bore no life signs." The Tenebrae officer looked the captain over with a mixture of confusion and alarm, not being sure if he was dead or worse aboard an enemy vessel. A few quick glances at the technology of the infirmary seemed enough to convince him otherwise. "What empire do you serve under?... why did you help us?" The captain crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair as if to seem less formal and threatening and answered in a tone that bore no negative tone either in word or vocalization. "Well, we are taskforce Kronstadt of the SSC navy, and we were performing reconnaissance of the....ambrosias sector when we spotted your vessels distress call. Think of it as proper chivalry, our peoples are not at war and yet we rarely refuse a chance to aid those who need it" The Tenebrean looked at the captain with a sort of mixed gratitude and confusion, a hint of alarm showing slightly under it all. He turned his head to regard the captain better. "Thank whatever powers that be.” he uttered quietly. "I had thought that we had been taken prisoner by I.E. forces." he nods slightly. "I'll speak for my crew in thanking Kronstadt for their actions." Captain Weser nodded leaning on the right arm of the chair towards the bed as if talking to an old friend. “No thanks are needed, our actions are what are proper, plus I've personally seen accounts of how the Immortal Empire interrogates. We would not allow that that to happen to our worst enemy, nor anyone else ever!" "That statement is without denial.” The Tenebrean technitian nodded as a grim tone emerged in his voice. He knew all too well the rumors of the vicious interrogation methods used by the Immortal empire to gain information from their enemies. "Thankee." The technitian seemingly releived leaned back in his infirmary bed. "And our ship entity? Did you recover that?"
"Actually your ship is in tow, we're currently undertaking evasive maneuvers to avoid pursuit. With any luck in about an hour we should be at your borders and..." As the captain was about to continue to detail what happens after a nurse stepped into the medical bay and interrupted him. "Captain, I need to change our guest's dressings and there is an urgent message encrypted for your eyes only." Captain Weser looked at the nurse a bit surprised no doubt damning the timing of the universe. "One moment if you will?" The nurse nodded and replied flatly "Only a bit, don’t dawdle!" As soon as the nurse was out of sight the captain turned back to the Tenebrae technician and spoke in hushed tones. "Sorry for that our medical personnel are rather; aggressive about recovery...I have something for you and your commanders though." Captain Weser reached into a coat pocket and retrieved a packaged crystal data rod from, an interior pocket and offered it to the technician. "It will adapt to any interface you put it in, that said. Consider this an offering of understanding and unity. When your commanders and you see what has transpired you will understand; but for now...hide that...and I wish you a rapid recovery." Moments later the Nurse having grown very impatient rushed in and shooed the captain out. As she turned to look at the Technician the captain winked and smiled behind the nurses back and disappeared down the hall… the die had been cast indeed.
|
|
|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:02:16 GMT
"Fortune favours the bold."
--Terence
--oOo--
“Contact Alpha registers as a Terabro class carrier destroyer, leaking plasma heavily from her tertiary starboard propulsion unit,” the sensory overseer reported back to the shipmaster. “Contact Beta is of unknown configuration. We’re running background checks on her now sir. They’re making moderate time towards the enemy’s demarcated areas.”
Shipmaster Irrus scratched his chin at the mention of the second ship; it was a stubbled thing, hardly as clean cut as it ought to have been, and he frankly didn’t give a damn either way. “Have we bagged a Terabro yet, Overseer?” Irrus asked as an aide passed him a small wooden box following a glance.
“We, sir?” The technician inquired. Irrus shook his head as he opened the box, removing a thin reed from it, and returning the box to the aide. “Dorin’s forces. We. Us. Call it what you like, overseer; have we bagged one yet?”
Irrus retrieved from his jacket a snub of a cigarette and gently fitted it into the reed with grubby fingers. Unlike his equals, he cared little for decorum or appearance once he was out of sight of Prime Admiral Dorin. He had been among the captains who had surrounded her when she authorized deployment of the Great Weapons; what a thought, he mused as he lit up the cigarette and puffed it softly, before he turned back to the aide.
“…barring this encounter, the next Terabro class vessel will not be encountered for another six weeks, two days; with only a 43.4% chance of successful engagement at that time.” The technician concluded, as Irrus removed the long reed from his lips and pointed with it towards the hologram. The Ascendancy had been picking off the smaller ones retreating from the bloodbath at Ambrosius, and compared to them the Terabro class was in incredible prize. At eight and a half miles long, it dwarfed even the heavier conventional Ascendancy designs, and Irrus’s ship was only an Ehm’Beh class enforcer, and at that it was operating alone; his companions had broken off to target a cluster of combat recovery ships, in the hopes that they might lead to bigger things. As it was, Irrus mused as he returned the cigarette reed to his lips, bigger things had come to him.
“And she’s being towed?” Irrus inquired. He had a gravelly yet soothing voice, courtesy of smoking; cancer was not an issue as the fates of individual cells could be corrected quite easily, but it was a rare habit for the Flux as it generally came off as undignified to them. Children smoked, yes, but it was a playful thing; watching the alternate timelines and the way the smoke moved in them was rather entertaining to those younger in their cycles. Irrus didn’t give a damn about perceived maturity anyway; he simply liked the flavour.
The technician nodded. It was but half a mile in length, but with admirable determination it was dragging the monster behind it. Impeccable engines, Irrus thought to himself, as he gestured with his hands at the hologram, expanding the image of contact beta and highlighting its vague and illusive nature.
“Run the design through the temporal intelligence system. See if we can figure out who this is. Navigation, at their present rate, what’s their ETA to contact with reenforcements?” Irrus glanced back towards a more distant corner of his ship’s bridge, and received his response.
“They crossed into hostile space twenty minutes ago, but it will be three days at this rate before they make planet fall; we are tracking all pertinent traffic in the sector, and there are no military contacts within range capable of assistance. I have a single Rosaud class design on the outer fringes of our sensor range, but she’s proceeding to port at slow speed; it’s highly likely she’s damaged and otherwise unable to offer much support.”
Irrus nodded with a grunt of approval, and turned back towards the display, which had refocused on the mammoth sillouette of the destroyer carrier. Without the company of its little savior to contemplate, the ship would have been incredibly formidable for a lone Ehm-Beh; that’s not to say its destruction would be inconceivable, but that it would be very, very difficult to accomplish without distress calls being issued…
…yet on the other hand, Irrus thought to himself as he heard footsteps approaching from behind him, the nearest assistance was a civilian ship roughly thirty, closer to forty minutes away; there was no competent cavalry to ride over the hill for her in any manageable distance. She was alone, and bleeding; the trails of plasma from her damaged engines bled crimson behind her, drifting like blood in water. He liked that metaphor, he realized, as much as he didn’t like the situation as a whole.
“Shipmaster.” The word came from behind him, and he turned back to face his ship’s temporal intelligence officer with a forcefully noncommittal demeanor exhibited on his face. Unlike his stubbled chin and grubby fingers, Yithe‘s uniform was spotless, and her posture almost whispered of how little she thought of him. “Contact beta is a variety of a design known as a fulcrum-type vessel, though specifics are vague at this point. She’s in the command of a faction known as the Sciastenos Centum. They have not encountered us as yet , but they are familiars of the Immortal Empire.”
Yithe gestured towards the air in a sweeping motion with her palm, and abruptly fresh information began to flow through the void into the otherwise fairly blank diagram of contact beta. “Her transponder came online once she crossed into space claimed by the Dark City Imperium, identifying her as the Oradell. I’ve provided pertinent information as available at this juncture regarding her commander at this point in time.”
Irrus sucked a breath full of smoke into his lungs and blew it out his nose, gesturing with the cigarette holder towards the diagram. “Hostile?”
Yithe gave him a meaningful look in response; though whether or not it was to the question, or the fresh dose of carcinogens…he was not certain. He turned back to the holographic display and frowned. It was a massive prize, but to be executed properly it would have to be done in a manner where his presence would not be suspect. Dorin would not be fond of involving unnecessary parties in her little war, but if he was to take down this leviathan without arousing suspicion…
“Of other note, shipmaster…” Yithe said softly, as she brought up a separate textual display next to him. “Tertiary tangents suggest a strong connection to the assassination of Field Marshall Sloane. I am not sure precisely how, but in the grand scheme of things the successful arrival of the Terabro class vessel increased the odds of Flux presence being revealed by 6.3%.” Yithe almost whispered the last words of her sentence as if it was a conspiratorial act to reveal them. “It would be highly beneficial to our cause to thus prevent the arrival of contact alpha in order to promote our unseen nature.”
Irrus closed his eyes and drew in another mouthful of smoke. “You’re certain of this, then?” He asked with a similarly conspiratorial tone. The smoke flickered out of his mouth as the words escaped his lips, and Yithe nodded.
“I ran it through infinite combinations, with fair certainty of the outcome. We stand a 31.4% chance of successfully conducting a silent engagement with the enemy; while our chances at full target annihilation increase if we wait the fourteen hours for reenforcements to arrive, our chance at discovery increases proportionally.”
Irrus reached out and twisted the cigarette out of the holder, dropping it onto the deck plates and snuffing it with his boot as Yithe frowned with disaproval. An aide quickly snatched the reed from his hands and returned it to its box as he moved towards the command post.
“Yithe, begin running attack scenarios. If we have to do this, we have to do this right.”
“Shipmaster, I would advise we contact Prime Admiral Dorin for further instructions, given the sensitivity of this engagement.” Yithe said as she slipped her hands behind her back in an conscious pose of authority. Irrus scratched his chin for an instant before removing the hand from his face.
“They may be tracking comms signals-”
“The Tenebraens lack the capability-”
“It’s not them I’m worried about, not in that avenue at least.” Irrus retorted sharply, as he reached out and began playing with the projection, inserting attack arcs and then removing or altering them as probability results came in. “Dorin would want them alive, so we have to make this look like an accident. A big damn accident.”
The Ehm-Beh class ship slipped through the dark unseen; eons of progress had perfected her invisibility to the effects of man’s handicraft, if not man’s eyes themselves. She held back in the distance, stalking like any good lion would, a quarry much larger and more formidable than her own. Irrus did not like the odds, but he did like the story he would be able to tell once it was over.
|
|
|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:02:28 GMT
“Dear heavenly Father, please don’t let me fuck up.”
--Alan Shepherd, shortly before becoming the first American in orbit.
--oOo--
Yithe was not one to second guess herself. She was an exceptionally competent temporal intelligence overseer, and in having nothing better to do she now found herself doing things against her nature.
She might not have been able to peruse future timelines, but she was still capable of assessing variances in the past, courtesy of the memory banks aboard the Fortunate Son. Pre-intent to attack, there was a 6.3% increase in Ascendancy detection probability if the destroyer carrier reached its target. During those few minutes where Irrus had been investigating potential avenues for attack, the computer had been projecting futures; possibilities and chances, virtues and fates, all carefully coexisting between streams of information quite alien to the outside world.
Presuming a successful undetected attack on the Altman, the chance of Ascendancy detection remained at 6.3%. In fact, in some projections it rose to 6.7%. Then of course, the trap sprung shut, and temporal projection became out of the question.
But those last calculations intrigued her, concerned her, and generally made her uneasy. She replayed them again, making premises and calculations as to how and why this was the case. She did not personally know anything about this Field Marshall Sloane, or how the connection regarding their true enemy would increase their visibility in the cosmic scheme of things. But the more she looked at it, the more Yithe began to doubt a very key preconception about this mission.
“Shipmaster, I believe we are somewhat in error.” She said softly, while Irrus remained glued to his post. They had been, of course, in weapons range ever since the moment they had laid eyes upon their target, but Irrus desired to close to close range in order to minimize visibility to their escorts. He had been well within their perimeter for some considerable while now, and the tension of watching the stern of the carrier grow larger and larger still-albeit still through magnification-via the holographic projection left him unwilling to leave his post. He glanced at the aide, who moved off silently to fetch the wooden box, before nodding in the direction of Yithe’s station.
“Are we?” He asked softly, keeping an eye on the closing distance indicator for contact alpha. Their rounds, at this distance, would reach the target within eight seconds of firing. Not being matter based, nor simply energy in the cosmic sense, the Ascendancy’s weapon of choice was not limited to the comparatively slow arcs of more physical instruments of destruction; in fifteen minutes, it would be down to four seconds, and at that distance he estimated he could get off as many as four rounds of salvos before the escorts could bring their guns to bare on him.
It was nerve wracking, like sneaking up on a sleeping lion in the grass.
“I’m reassessing the projections we made before the field kicked in, and I’m noticing no noteworthy drop in most timelines in Ascendancy detection occurring given the successful destruction of our target.”
Irrus glared over at the temporal intelligence overseer. Now she tells me, he wondered irately, but at the same time he knew many would not be capable of making that sort of observation without operating equipment.
In that moment, she became convinced of her theory. There had been no personnel transfers from the Oradell back to the carrier, giving credence to her theory. Whoever or whatever from the carrier that was worth dying for wasn’t on the carrier anymore.
“Really now.” He said simply, as he stared at the descending numbers pertaining to distance from target. “I seem to recall you saying that the connection was with the arrival of this target.” He kept an even tone, but having served with him so long Yithe knew he was upset by this revelation.
“It is. I…I think we’re talking about what this ship carries, more than the ship itself. The Oradell is carrying a great number of wounded crewmembers from target alpha who would return on board the ship once it reaches port, thus fulfilling the criteria for my projections. I believe what we’re afraid of isn’t on the-”
Abruptly, alarms.
“Weapons fire inbound!”
--oOo--
The Altman had opened fire. While inherently inconvenient and unwaveringly unpleasant, Irrus had expected it to happen sooner or later. They were within distances where, with proper magnification, the lithe form of the Fortunate Son would be visible to the naked eye, just under a thousand kilometers from the ship’s stern. While their opposition relied on subspace to make stealth fully feasible, the Ascendancy had managed it up here on the surface as well, though they had ironically enough found visual cloaking more easily counter-actable and not worth the effort to employ. There would always be minor discrepancies, and history had showed how these little things could bite a shipmaster in the ass at the worst possible moment. But unlike the SSC’s fleet, these methods left the Ascendancy visible to only the naked eye.
Or so most thought. Irrus wasn’t sure anymore. Their unbidden re-enforcements had been destroyed without even firing off a shot, at a distance so great the invisibility should have been guaranteed. But that was hardly relevant now that the carrier was opening fire on him.
Approaching from the stern allowed Irrus to capitalize on the area of least resistance. Most of the ship’s heavier batteries were laid out facing forward ahead of the engine block, on the underside of the vessel’s formidable hull. There were still defenses on the stern, but fewer and much smaller in caliber than the hull-cracking pieces mounted facing her bow.
“Pop the boxes, full sublight forward helmsmen! Comm, prepare preloaded transmission, max intensity, broadcast on my order. Let’s not let them miss this.” Irrus kept a calm tone as the Fortunate Son began her rapid attack run on the carrier. His aide returned with an empty wooden box, leading to a groan from the ship’s master. With some disappointment, he pulled a cigarette out of his jacket and lit it up as it hung from his lip. He was rapidly reassessing the situation, and had come up with a fresh, though risky, plan in the last fifteen seconds.
Orders were barked.
Dying time was here.
--oOo--
Uller’s boxes collapsed open on the ship’s hull, and as the Fortunate Son began her approach toward the less-unwitting-than-they’d-hoped-for target, the fire abruptly increased in flamboyance as it was radiating out from the ship outwards like fireworks. They couldn’t aim at the little ship anymore. The first rounds unloaded on her attacker shot uncomfortably close behind her, but the ship’s seemingly infeasible acceleration spared her the brunt of the carrier’s wrath, and the Uller‘s boxes saved her from worse things. Even as pilots were scrambling to their fighters and the Rosaud was completing final pre-departure checklist, the Fortunate son charged on, racing towards her quarry. She would be within thousands of meters from her target well before the cruiser began to slip away from her host.
The Uller’s boxes’ content were to blame for the sudden flamboyance, for the Altman’s automated intelligence was engineered to target entities in three dimensional space; the sudden unveiling of unnatural constructs like circles with angles and boxes with curves played havoc with sensory systems. Thought he numbers seemed circumstantial, the uncannily accurate anti-ship fire began wavering off target by increasing and increasing again deviations; by the end of the Fortunate Son’s run, they would be a full forty degrees off target.
The few manned guns stood a somewhat better chance, unless you were alive, or had once been. Having things man was not meant to see waved in one’s face tended to have detrimental effects upon sanity, and correspondingly, accuracy. Nausea, vomiting (if you still had bowels) and generalized hallucinations struck the gunnery crews as the Fortunate Son charged forwards, moments away from opening fire.
In the blink of an eye, she had changed from unseen to a constantly burning flash bang, with the target more sanity than the eyes. In moments still, the escorts would begin unleashing fire in a desperate effort to intercept the intruder. They would experience odd things as they tried it, for a ship that would not appear on sensors was now painfully flanked by unendurably visible anomalies which they themselves could not be barred to look upon; the unseen being rendered seen by things not meant to exist would render tracking methods paradoxically flawed. Look at me, Medusa screamed into the void. Look and see my hair.
|
|
|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:02:43 GMT
"Oh, Creator! Can monsters exist in the sight of him who alone knows how they were invented, how they invented themselves, and how they might not have invented themselves?” ― Charles Baudelaire
== (O) ==
The Altmans entity Reeled in the wake of the energies and distortions released by the opening of the devices known as the Uller’s boxes on the outer hull of the as of yet unknown ship. The distortions released forcing most, if not all of its rear sensors and scans into massive frenzies of data, that. Upon reviewing, made little to no mathematical or physical sense, the shapes and forms displayed in the place of the smaller ship breaking most of the known 3rd dimensional rules associated with normal space, going into the insane realms of the 4th and further dimensions often glimpsed while making shunt and rift jumps. Normal scans and optically based monitoring systems serving little to no useful purpose towards seeing through them. As it turned its attention momentarily away from the aptly dubbed flash bang of quasi dimensional insanity occurring off of its stern, it took the precious milliseconds to check the status of its other rear side defenses and Ops. The entities manning the guns reporting back stating that their own methods of observation and tracking had been similarly disoriented, their lines of fire straying far from where the enemy craft had been sighted last, following mirror images and gravitational reflections of their attacker. The manned guns had faired better in that aspect, but their crews would suffer for it none the less.. For while they could still roughly make out the location of the enemy vessel. The side effects of having such sights that multi-dimensional distortions and manipulations caused so rapidly appear before their eyes were quickly on setting them. The symptoms that had begun affecting them reportedly matching the effects of being exposed to a weak resonator pulse, those that were still living had been near totally incapacitated. While those that were calvarian, being of much sounder bodies and older more experienced minds, withstood the effects to a much better degree. But still found themselves both disoriented and too few in numbers to make an effective stand against the enemy craft.
Effectively, the altman and its rear defenses had been rendered both blind and disoriented by the unknown enemy ship. But for all of their ingenious methods of hiding themselves, they had not stripped the ship of its ability to strike back at them.
The Entity had known that it would have had little time before the Craft would open fire on it with whatever weapons it might have had mounted onboard it. Which it deducted, based on its disorientation tech, would doubtlessly be quite powerful. As well as utterly crippling if it was willing to get that suicidally close before attacking them, and it knew that it likely had even less time following the unleashing of the distortion effect.
But the unknown Race had failed to take any sort of action against the rosaud, now docked in the rearmost hanger. Facing their ship dead on. As the entity had hoped they would, the enemy ship had not accounted for it, assuming “Incorrectly.” Instead that it had intended to use the cruiser in conjunction with a living crew or an entity to either engage them, or perform a last ditch bomb run. What it had in mind was quite different. The ship, it’s payload, engine cores, and its additional piece of specialized cargo that had been loaded into its forward hanger by the Altmans Loading automaton, was, In effect, one gigantic missile. Akin to the ancient fire ships used against the Spanish armada by the British navy so many millennia ago in the nearly forgotten battle of the Grave lines on the sphera of earth, And now. The microseconds counting down following the appearance of the distortions, the Entity chose the moment to deploy it.
The tethers holding the Rosaud in place in the vast hanger disengaged. The doors to the rear most hanger long sense standing open, “an oversight of the crew following their earlier engagement at ambrosious” as if in preparation of the movement the entity was about to pull. The cruiser now being held suspended. In the center of the hanger, held in place by a particular number of docking tethers. These shifted, aiming the Rosaud towards where the last reports of the vessel, Coupled with very painfully recorded and acquired real time feeds intercepted from the SCC vessels as they moved to engage the lithe xterranian vessel. Allowed the entity to very crudely determine where the enemy craft was in relation to the rear of its hull, and it saw in those few moments of feed that it was rapidly closing the distance between itself and the Carriers stern.
Rushing headlong directly into its Trap.
The tethers holding the Rosaud in place first shifted in their position, aiming the nose of the cruiser towards the constantly shifting distortions. Aiming it at the roughly determined position of the enemy ship as it bore down on them with near blind determination, weapons no doubt primed and ready to unleash destruction on the carrier.
Then the entity released the Rosaud, Pivoting the Grav-tethers holding the cruiser in place forward at a rapid angle. The sudden tension forcing the vessel out of the hanger and through the shuttle doors in a massive sling shot movement. Sending the cruiser, minus its baffled flight crew. “Who had been, much to their confusion. Notified before hand not to board the vessel.” on a beeline towards the oncoming enemy ship. The Dimensionally generated distortions affecting its armored hull visually as its hulk closed the gap, but otherwise unchanging it on its course as it passed through the space created by the collapsed boxes on the attacking crafts outer hull plating.
It’s path bringing it to impact the oddly ridged hull of the Flux ship slightly off center on its starboard side, where its central fuselage connected to its forward most engine fin. An automated Proximity alarm telling its onboard systems to begin deployment of its payload, Creating a spreading cluster of armed and explosively charged tellums as it impacted the Xterranian vessel. The combined kinetic force of both ships opposite momentums causing greater amounts of damage as the cruiser Smashed its way deep into the Fortunate Sons hull, crushing several of the mounted uller’s boxes inward as it did so. the tallums impacting across the vessels face mere moments later.
The gorgon had so offered a glimpse into the void, but the Altman had instead responded by plunging its sword into her neck.
|
|
|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:03:04 GMT
"Take me to your eden Pitchblack garden of evil Here and back Full-defense attack Static white-noise A cross to bear I come to confess
I'm not leaving I'll find my way back home However far we go Come what may no regrets Pull me in Don't look back" - KMFDM, 'Dystopia'
03:45:21 Hours: Hunting Unit, Position unknown.
The disintegration of the coil drive’s field emissions system rattled the SSCS Mollis as the vessel lurched with in its forward motion with the rest of the hunting task force. Within engineering crew members struggled to get clear of the hotly burning plasma fires that were rapidly consuming the coil drive system and anything else flammable. Noxious smoke if one could even call it that swirled furiously along the ceilings blackening and corroding everything it touched Through a closing blast door screw members stumbled crawled and were dragged as the auxiliary engine room rapidly became a hellish inferno complete with the secondary detonations of equipment, a rare anguished wail and the sound of structural supports slackening and taking weight they no longer could. The survivors worked their way through several corridors closing the blast doors behind to further contain the disaster that threatened to consume the ship whole if left unchecked. The other surviving vessels of the group could only stand by as their comrade suffered the equivalent to a reactor meltdown. The captain of the Pontic watched as did others on the bridge with terror as the ship took a list while the on board plasma fires began to eat their way through the vessel’s hull. “Come on… drop the module!” “Sir it’s not good they’ve got power fluctuations across all systems…they may not be able to.” “Any chance we could use a Tow beam to pull it free?” “It’s…possible but risky.. sensors are detecting a successful disconnection of the module.” As the sensor tech stated the words the SSCS Mollis finally ejected the coil drive engineering section in it’s entirely and began to limp away from the spiraling piece at sublight speed it’s FTL engines apparently offline. As the damaged craft moved away the core unit finally went up exploding brilliantly and vaporizing whatever portions of the auxiliary engineering module that had not been consumed already. This left the hunters down two craft…
03:45:57 Hours: SCCS Oradell, Near the Tenebrae border.
The convoy continued onward taking a course pattern that utilized erratic maneuvers, all in the interest of making it noticeably harder to follow and track the route the group was taking. Perhaps in when considered historically it was the great grandchild of the original zigzag course used by convoys in the Atlantic to avoid German U-boat attacks. The course consisted of a three dimensional version of the same maneuvers. The convoy was ultimately heading forward and yet crossed its own wake several times in some places it’ literally cut over its own path at random points to throw numerous sensor shadows to mask the intended course to anyone attempting to predict the exact path of the vessels in question. “How long until they’re ready chief?” “They already are and are waiting for enemy contact…if there’s someone out there, their lives just got a whole lot harder.” “Good, I still want damage control ready, the enemy clearly wants what we have rather bad.” “About that captain, can we talk privately?” “Of course...” As the two stepped into the ward room Chief engineer took a seat as the captain walked about the table in the middle of the room to also sit. It took a few seconds for the Chief to measure his words mentally before speaking. “Are you certain we are facing the Anarchs here?” “No I am not, however it is clear as day these foes possess chrono-travel technology which makes them a threat. You know the oath we swear as officers.” “Of course but we also are supposed to make first contact and seek out new life civilizations and all that too.” “Indeed and we have…the problem is as the old saying goes absolute power corrupts absolutely.” “We don’t even know these people and you’re assuming they are corrupt already?” “Assume no, their preparedness to attack a convoy towing a few crippled vessels home says it all. Perhaps you lack the fortitude, but I do not. Remember what sort of chaos the Anarchs unleashed on earth.” “Persecuting time travelers, because of the actions of a few..” Captain Weser cut off the chief before the statement could be finished. “Oh you think so huh? It must be easy for you, your ancestors were untouched by the changes brought by the anarchs…mine nearly vanished in the face of the great war’s genocide. You may not agree, but at least for the sake of our guests do your job, their lives count on it.”
03:53:00 Hours: SSCS Pontic, Position unknown.
Left to limp back to the nearest starbase the SSCS Mollis finally was able to make and maintain some semblance of very low speed faster then light rate of travel. The damage for the craft was done however, the ship would likely spend months in dock, and more time would be spent handling the injured, burying the dead and finding replacement crew. Of course this is not to say there would not be an investigation into what caused the failure of the coil drive. Red tape and bureaucracy scored another point in the long-standing battle between doing what is right, and being hobbled in that action by pencil pushers and others who would never have to know the rigors of war personally. As with anything else be it surviving life’s trials or merely a stage production the show had to continue with just a bit of improvising. This left the Pontic, Aralia and the Norfolk to attempt a return to ancerious to aid the convoy as best they could. The three vessels coordinated their jump coordinates, while their crews, now prepared for the rigors of the transit between strapped into shock couches and other specifically designed means of avoiding injury during the turbulent crossing.
“All hands, we are headed into the beyond, if you are not strapped in already you best do so now…it’s going to be an rough ride!”
The ships captains gave their crews a few more moments to get prepared and all three initiated their recharged jump coils. The last thing the Mollis saw of her comrades however was the energy signature of a pre-jump power flux and then…nothing.The trip through the beyond was no worse then it was the last time as the ships were jostled, spun tossed all as though they were specks of dust caught in a hurricane. The short eternity of the travel was that of nightmare as the world blurred, became deafening, and it felt as if one was no longer in their ship, exposed to the ravages of unforgiving open space. Breathing was labored, as the air seemed to hot or coarse to breathe, and then that brief migraine that seemed to wrack ones entire body came and went and with it that blinding red light as all was awash in this impossible color. Some often guessed that this was the human body being reduced to seeing infra red, or perhaps it was just our inability to perceive that portion of the rough trip. As fast as the torment came it was gone…space faded in as if made of smoke…planets stars, all there. The crew instinctively checked to verify that they too were there as the vessel itself flickered in around them becoming physical or visible at about the same rate. Sound came last as the crew for a few more moments were deaf…but there it was, the familiar hum and tones of the ships instruments, the whoosh of automated doors, the intermittent beeping of things. A cursory check verified that all three ships had arrived and were reporting no damage and a normal cool down cycle of their coil drive. Navigation verified that they arrived in the target region in a covered position just slightly off of intended position as planned.
“Sir the convoy, it’s a bit off but present, it looks like they are performing maneuvers to ward off the enemy but have not been attacked since we left.” “Hmm good, engage creeping speed at a quarter the fleet need not know we are back yet… we’ll operate fringe patrol at a distance for now….”
|
|
|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:03:20 GMT
Some folks inherit star spangled eyes Oh, they send you down to war And when you ask them how much more we should give All they answer is more, more, more, more!
It ain’t me Lord it ain’t me I ain’t no military son! It ain't me Lord it ain’t me I ain’t no fortunate son!
--Fortunate Son, by Creedance Clearwater Revival
--oOo--
Irrus had grown up under the verdant skies of Hhomme, one of the forty hidden worlds the Ascendancy treasured like precious jewels in a galaxy full of thieves. Like all of his brothers and sisters, he had no parents: he was crafted artificially and the Ascendancy claimed him as its son. From what for most would be the ages of zero to twelve, he was educated and raised by his civilization; taught the histories of countless worlds who would never know of his existence, trained in the fine art of linguistics and tact, and the pinnacles of philosophy and religion. Above all else, he was taught that the Flux held a special place in the universe: that the gods had created them to rule unseen over all others, and to guide them to the point where they would be able to join together in holy unification as a galaxy at one with itself, free from terrors and wars and things that go bump in the night.
At thirteen, he was patroned into the family of Wential. Patronage is similar in a sense to a hybrid between adoption and internship; there was no family to speak of in Ascendancy culture. There were no mothers and no fathers because if one had to be removed from the timeline for the sake of the Great Good, then their children would cease to be, and there would be further losses. Love was permitted among the children of the Khamood-Urr, which Wential once confided to a young Irrus was likely a source of great jealousy from their highest caste. The Heraldics could not love, and to facilitate this they were constantly pitted in rivalry with one another. They were not even permitted to speak with a common Flux, Wential once mused as he watched Hhomme’s suns rising and setting from his villa’s patio, and he added that he felt sorry for them. The weight of so many lives rested on the Heraldic’s shoulders, he explained to the wide eyed Irrus, that they could not be distracted with the luxuries of comfort and affection. It was a terrible curse to be under, he added, to be incapable of being remembered, and to be incapable of loving when at some core level it felt so necessary.
Wential’s wife was Hallath, a wise and beautiful and virtuous woman whose eyes shined like the night. They loved each other dearly, and they may have even loved Irrus, though they would never say so. Patronage was not a thing of love, but of dignity and duty, for in raising him in the closest thing to a family the Ascendancy knew they were doing their best to imbue in Irrus the things that could not be taught in school. It was a rarity, for instance, to speak fairly of the universe; privately, Wential would speak about the dignity and common honesty and general goodness that could, he felt, breath and thrive in the hearts of free men. In public, the universe was not a fair place: it was a cosmic conspiracy bent upon tearing the Ascendancy apart, and were it not for the noble sacrifices of the Heraldics in assuming full responsibility for keeping the conspirators in check, their lives would be shattered beyond all recognition.
Irrus believed both in the goodness and the conspiracy; Wential went off to fight in the Nakai Wars and never returned, giving Irrus the private proof that, for all the good that may be in men’s hearts across this cosmic stage, the universe was not to be trusted. Hallath cried, and petitioned and pleaded that the timeline be modified to spare her husband from the torturous death given to him by the Nakai, but it was ultimately decided by those wiser and more beautiful and more virtuous than his death-a form too horrible to be spoken here-was for the Greater Good, in that it had rallied the other troops to ultimate victory on that small patch of rock for which so many died.
Ultimately, the many deaths of those like Wential would convince the Ascendancy to abandon ground combat as a palatable option against their opponents; instead, they would burn the stars free of the occupation of their enemies, for if the Ascendancy could not liberate, they could consume with fire. In their own slow way, the flames of war made the Ascendancy grow colder.
--oOo--
Unlike Irrus, Yithe had not followed a warrior’s path. She was a temporal architect, promoting the edits and censorships and corrections and general magic that gave the Ascendancy a utopian level of safety from the terrors of the universe around them. Her patronage was not in the comfort of a villa on one of those precious forty worlds, but on a dozen unseen starships. Her patrons were engineers and temporal intelligence overseers in the fleets of the great Ascendancy, and through them the fates of worlds were decided by careful projection and calculation, and through them the Flux moved silently across an entire galaxy. In those days, the Ascendancy reigned supreme in this galaxy, at least in their eyes: of other note at that time was the Assassin’s Order, but neither knew of the other at that time, and so a blissful peace of ignorance flourished.
Yithe was thirteen when she saw her first Heraldic, or at least she thought it was the first time. Their suits were sealed against zero atmosphere conditions, leaving them free of the pheremones that would otherwise have remembering the encounter utterly futile. With their split eyed helmets the suits strode gracefully over the outer hull of her patron’s ship, carrying between them Uller’s Boxes as they readied the ship for a special mission: she was to deliver something or someone, somewhere, at sometime. The specifics in that regard had been quite successfully kept from her mind.
She had watched their overlapping armour move, and she felt power in their being. They strode with authority, with command, with that sense of superior nature that must only be known when a crocodile ponders the gazelle’s legs above it for a moment before moving to action. She envied that. She envied the way they strode out of the airlock, not taking the time to look at the men who opened it, or to the small child they moved silently past as they carried those boxes back into storage following the mission’s end.
There are a select few in Ascendancy culture who successfully make the transfer from common Flux to Heraldic, Prime Admiral Dorin being the only one of note in our stories thus far. It took incredible things to make that change in social ranking, and an ascended herald was beyond plausibility for anyone to really anticipate or aim for. It was such a distant and removed position that it almost held a sort of religious connotation for Yithe.
Yithe’s patrons were never killed in some terribly battle, or lost to the accidents which do not happen in Ascendancy culture. They continue to live and breath to this day, continuing their work of ages, as they do their best to give perfect lives to the few million souls who call themselves the Flux Ascendancy. They taught Yithe that, in time, all things were possible; ideas could be erased, deaths amended, hopes realized and fates defied. They taught her the nature of prophecies, and how they could be played with.
Inadvertently, they taught her that she too could become like those distant gods in their overlapping armour. As she continued her studies, she carefully plotted and projected in quiet how, one day, she might be able to speak and live with the Heraldics, and become one of them. She wanted that. She wanted their power and their enigmatic sway.
--oOo--
As the Fortunate Son had conducted her final frightful charge towards the end of her life, Yithe had realized they were in line for the wrong target. Their ultimate ambition lay not in the seemingly indestructible hulk that was the destroyer carrier, but a substantially more plausible one in the form of the Oradell. So in the tail end of the last minute of his life, Irrus had issued his orders, and Yithe had followed in kind, and the ship began to shift.
Her momentum continued to move her rapidly towards the tail end of the carrier, but her bow was shifting; had she been on a road, this might have been called drifting, but in three dimensional terms it was much harder to find a phrase for this. She continued plunging towards the Altman at speed, as the Altman unleashed a mighty arrow into her.
She screamed, as any stabbed creature would, a scream unheard and unappreciated to the rest of the vessels opening fire on her, as the Rosaud class cruiser slammed into her starboard wing and clipped neatly through it. Neat here was a metaphorical sort of neat, for the effects it had were hardly that; metal was rended quite viciously, and had it not been for what Irrus had started at just the right time earlier (truly a fortunate amount of time indeed) the Fortunate Son would have immediately lost all FTL capabilities in that moment. But Irrus, knowing that he was about to die and having fallen short of his goal, made a last leap onto the pyre.
--oOo--
The scream reached Dorin’s ears, and she heard their final words. It was a chaotic thing, at least in the audio sense; all of the ship’s functions were well documented elsewhere, and she would carefully review them in time as she realized how notable the SSC threat was. But she listened to the last words first, for she wanted to know what sort of a man Irrus was in his time of dying.
“FIVE!” “Heading reset on the Oradell, standing by with faster than light-” “FOUR!” “Collision imminent, shipmaster-” “THREE!” “Punch it! PUNCH IT!!” “TWO!” “FU-”
Irrus had been rising slowly from his command chair when the initial collision took place, and at that moment, the transmission lept away into the void. But from public knowledge of what occurred next, she knew he was more of a shipmaster than most could have ever hoped for.
--oOo--
What Irrus had hoped for was this: he wanted, first and foremost, the Oradell. The Altman had at the last moment turned into icing on the cake, more on the account that it was already in his mouth and it would be incredibly tasteless to spit it out at such short notice. But the Oradell had to die, if it was the last thing he did. So it was, in fact, the last thing he did.
So he had shifted his course towards the Oradell. His plan was to, at the last second, leap from one attack to the other; with the Uller’s boxes running and at faster than light speeds, the Oradell would have no time to recognize the fact that they were under attack. They would be well past her and on their way out into deep space before the wormholes struck, and while six rounds was not hardly enough to destroy the Altman, they would be overkill on her.
Yet as he had prepared for the last seconds of fighting and the great escape that he hoped would follow, Yithe began counting down the seconds till the end. A knot had formed in his chest as she did so, because he knew this was it. This was the end. There would be no salvation, no temporal revision to pluck him and his ship from the timeline. Death would come with swiftest wings, and their would be nothing after it.
The ship had been in the process of triggering its faster than light drive when the cruiser had struck it; the impulsion drive had already been fed enough energy to make the leap, thank the gods, but the temporal feeders than bled into it were severed substantially as the wing went its separate way into the abyss. At that point, there were two seconds left in the life of the Fortunate Son.
Surrounded by explosions, the Fortunate Son charged away from the Altman; missiles were temporarily frozen in their arcs as they had been so close to the ship’s hull that the FTL field had captured them and brought them along with it. A great deal of irony would unfold the instant they arrived, as a flaming ball of death would abruptly bear down on the Oradell and ultimately meet her in Valhalla, or the far side of the Styx, or wherever the opposition felt inclined to believe the end lay.
In what was to have been icing on the cake, the four torpedoes which the enemy had dispatched towards his ship had been seconds away from reaching their target when the Fortunate Son, and part of the Rosaud class cruiser, and a number of her missiles, all lept into the void. To facilitate the release of the Rosaud, the Altman’s rear shields had dropped, and the missiles, lacking a proper target, quickly reaquired a wall of metal several miles high: the Altman’s stern. Unresisted, they struck home with force.
--oOo--
The Fortunate Son leapt out of nothing, banking wildly as the kinetic instability of the collision resumed its effect. With two seconds left in her life, she was banking hard to port, her wingtip nearly “down” if there was a down to speak of, and as the explosions of inner damage and of the DCI torpedoes enveloped her, so she enveloped the Oradell. In a hail of shrapnel and debris, parts of the cruiser and the Fortunate Son, moving just below light speed, pelted the Oradell like two barrels of buckshot fired at point blank range.
As they passed, parts of the Oradell joined the cruiser and the Fortunate Son as they rocketed out towards the distant picket line of the convoy. The Fortunate Son had never had the chance to fire a single shot, but with her dying breath she had sent four torpedoes into the Altman’s unshielded stern (where open hangars greeted them warmly) and her own body careening, with parts of her assassins’ body clinging onto them, into her ultimate foe.
It was a death well worthy of a fortunate son.
There was very little reporting done on the incident, as it was wartime and such things do not placate worried populations. The Altman’s photographs, when they arrived, showed warped space from the anomalies rapidly closing on the ship’s stern; the ship proper, much like a mythological vampire, was invisible on all recordings. The possibility of an unidentified interstellar object being involved in the Altman incident would remain a conspiracy theory in the public eye, and nothing more.
In a carefully managed press release, the authorities announced that, in an unfortunate friendly fire incident, the destroyer carrier Altman and her would be rescuer had exchanged fire, which was in a sense true: splash damage from the missiles striking the hull of the unseen Fortunate Son had reached the Oradell nanoseconds before the debris of those shattered hulks had. There would be outrage, yes, but it was more palatable than the truth: that a unidentified interstellar object had managed to sneak within a thousand meters of one of the most heavily defended ships in the fleet and without firing a single shot managed to destroy one and damage another.
Tenebraen Intelligence would pour over the files provided by the SSC, and would see the temporal radiation shining off of what would, in years to come, be known as a Chaw’Sah’Vo class man’o’war, and they would watch it be struck by an ungodly barrage of torpedoes and again vanish. But there was no debris to speak of, which lead to two trains of thought: the first being that there had been multiple vessels infiltrating the convoy…
…or that one ship, one very, very small ship, had absorbed well over twenty torpedoes and a collision before finally destroying itself in a kamikaze attack on the Oradell. Truth be told though, they weren’t even sure it was a ship that had hit the Oradell; no debris was recovered from the extensive field left by the vessel’s loss. With no sensory records of the second vessel beyond a patch of incredibly visible distortions rapidly accelerating on the carrier and then leaping into the Oradell, it was like their attackers had never been there.
--oOo--
Somwhere, glasses clinked. It might have been on small rowboat crossing a dark and foreboding river. It may have been in a mighty hall, filled to the top with the fiercest men ever to set foot on soil.
But somewhere, no matter quite where somewhere is, glasses clinked.
|
|
|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:04:13 GMT
“I felt the moment of transition from life to death approaching me minute by minute. I gave up my effort to sleep and let my thoughts wander around. My short life of 21 years is going to switch to the world of death tommorrow. Some vague thoughts about my soul being enshrined in Yasukuni Shrine, about the incomprehensive world of death, and other thoughts came and went. I thought thee were more things I wanted to do in my life, but then I wasn't sure what it was that I wanted to do. I didn't know what, but I was certain there was still much that I had left to do here. I felt embarassed to realize that I was still so attached to life after all this time. What a coward! Shame on myself! I would say to myself "So are you ready now?" and there was a self that would answer " Yes sir! I'm ready to go", but there was still another self who never stopped yelling "I don't want to die!" - Goro Nagamine, pilot of the H8K flying boat that flew as pathfinder for the Azusa Special Attack unit which struck the US fleet in the evening of March 11th, 1945.
04:02:49 Hours SCCS Oradell, Near the Tenebrae border.
Gone in an instant, just like that. A vessel a mere stealth escort carrier of sorts instantly vaporized it’s men materials and it’s story ended in the blink of an eye by a madman determined to stop at nothing to achieve some pointless accolade. In earlier days such combatants might have nodded to one another admitted each other was skilled and headed home with the battle deemed a draw. But no, absolute technology seems to have undermined proper chivalry and the crew of both vessels paid the butchers bill in a fragment of a second. In the prevailing bits of time in which it might seem the universe would suddenly slow down to fits ant starts of biological function, and all but the target of your focus was little more then precisely what you were looking at with all else in a foggy haze. Indeed the flux vessel claimed just one kill but in her last moments across the bow the following words read “SSCS Macon”. It seems tunnel vision had claimed and defiled what would have been a brilliant strategic maneuver. The flux vessel and its captain had not noticed when the Oradell was replaced in its position near the bow of the Tenebrae Carrier by the Vicksburg and went to tow a smaller vessel elsewhere*. It could be called the luck of the draw that the flux had so greatly misinterpreted their targets position or that their commander had not been looking the precise instant the Oradell was no longer at the front. Numerous eyes were locked on to the Final moments of the Macon as her hull buckled and auxiliary detonations of fuel, combustibles and her on board proxy mines widened the detonation’s fury as thrown pieces of both vessels were tossed about in all directions.
04:03:00 Hours: Hunting Unit, Near the Tenebrae border.
Three forms just outside of the range of sensory perception darted into the radius of battle. The three intact vessels of the hunting group operating in the region followed the enemy kamikaze at a distance finding her moves less and less like a organized combatant and more like that of one who intended to inflict some form of lasting and final terror.
“All vessels follow our lead we are going in target the enemy craft with everything you’ve got if it survived that…I don’t want to see anything left that is too big to fit in a thimble!”
As the craft cut about the immense bulk of the Tenebrae carrier the Hunting group darted about her just the same, with two going above and one under. As they rounded the vessel the detonation of the craft and the Macon was just beginning to subside as large fragments of the flux vessel continued onward on inertia based trajectories. True to form the Hunters were undaunted in finalizing the end of the craft using their lighter weapons to vaporize whatever survived to prevent any attempts at salvage. In an almost opposite turn of events it was the flux being erased from existence knowingly. Once the short job was done… the attempt to locate survivors from the Macon would begin.
04:05:00 Hours SCCS Oradell, Near the Tenebrae border.
“Sir the rest of the fleet is responding with resumption of nominal operations…fighter and small craft assets are making their way back.” “What of the Macon’s crew? Any survivors?” Captain Weser looked towards the normally full sensor station to see just one operator left. From the lapel on his uniform it marked the crewman as a sensor technician first class. Despite this he had a disheveled look and apparently during some part of the blinding effect had been tossed about as the bruises across one cheek and the eye swollen shut would attest. His presence at the stations spoke to the fleet’s condition in it’s own way, hurt indeed but able to carry on. The sensor technician looked up to the captain briefly before shifting about through the data pouring in. The technician held one hand to the left earpiece of his head set as he worked the controls with his right hand. Data scrolled across the screen as the reports were filtering in a loss here, damage reports, the usual flow of information and there it was in bold. ‘SSCS Macon S&R status, No beacons, Citadel destroyed in collision, recovery of fighter and small craft compliment underway.’ This was entirely unsettling as the actual ship’s crew was killed in an instant leaving the essentially orphaned pilots to be spread across the remaining escort carriers of the section. This was war; this new enemy was now an intolerable menace to be given no quarter by any means.
|
|
|
Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 16, 2017 19:05:54 GMT
“Space, the final…ugh never mind I admit is not really the final frontier anymore, when one considers the number of ancient species that have crossed any given galaxy. But then for us it is the last utterly in hospitable horizon that holds any real challenge. We’ve explored the lands, dived to the utmost bottom of the seas, and colonized our moon and a number of other planets. That just leaves the danger-filled void of space as the last great point of exploration. Explore we did, and in that endeavor we found cultures both thriving and long gone, flora and fauna previously unknown and life forms of shapes and types that defied our carbon-based concept of the universe. In the long stumbling march across the stars we erred, learned and erred again with unhampered enthusiasm. There were disagreements and even minor conflicts along the way but we got past these and soldiered on.” – The First Prime, in reference to the war in Ancerious Galaxy
02:15:02 Galaxy Corps Convoy: Position Unknown
The six vessels of the galaxy corps convoy crept carefully towards their destination utilizing only ‘creeping’ speed and complete submergence stealth to avoid detection. The convoy itself had taken more then three days to arrive at their current position due to the utmost need for stealth in their operation. Every starlane, outpost, depot and possible inhabited point had been carefully avoided causing delays when unknown contacts force the convoy to halt, some times for hours. Not unlike a cargo train, they stoically crept along making their way to a little dot on the galactic map that was at best useless for all intents and purposes. This far flung rock in a shattered solar system existed with its planets having been bounced about by the loss of a star, the attachment to a new star after ages of drift and then again cast out and finally adhering to a gas giant- gone protostar. The solar system, labeled the Gordian Knot’ for it’s unusual tri-directional orbit of it’s planetary bodies which ranged from true planets to pseudo plants and even another fourth orbit of a second super massive gas giant. In short there was no reason the system should have existed and yet there it was, a massive navigational nightmare by any standard. The convoy itself had it’s work cut out for it, as the six craft, all assigned to differing points in the solar system at the end of their journey had to split up to achieve their goal. The vessels of the convoy were largely of the same model with exception to the leader of the group. While each of the others bore a six-engine configuration the lead bore eight. Overall each was a somewhat boxy vessel with an obvious focus on being exceptionally rugged, and economical. Utility was not lost on these craft as they seemed to be equipped with triple, if not quadruple redundancies on most systems and components. Each vessel crept towards their target leaving no trail or indicator of their existence. A series of tence and precision maneuvers brought the group through the wildly fluctuating belts of asteroids, radiation fields and other hazards. This was not to say that certainly the vessels of the convoy had not had a few close calls, and indeed had a few collision scars to prove it but even so they landed.
In the cosmic scale of things it was a little like observing that first colonizing insect, perhaps an ant as it landed, it’s wings still aflutter inspecting where it was possibly going to begin to dig. The smaller convoy vessels too found their targets and carefully, slowly settled landing on stable extra-planetary objects. As they landed their arrival tossed up bits of cosmic particulate, best considered sand or perhaps coarse dust. Each target landing was a bit different in color or composition but the effect was about the same, as each of the smaller convoy vessels landed and settled their hulls were ever so briefly marred by the later settling of the heavier particles in the dust. Elsewhere the larger vessel of the convoy maneuvers its last few points before clearing a heavy asteroid belt. Its objective sat ahead cast in a sickly blue. The pseudo planet In question was barely circular as it was clearly more or less a well rounded planetary fragment that had found it’s way here. Despite this, it held a thin atmosphere and exerted an asymmetric gravity field. This was where the center of the effort would lay, and thus the convoy lead slowly landed tossing up a spray of dust and grit. In all points at the stroke of four in the morning each of the convoy vessels began their primary task as boring equipment was deployed. In means comparable to a wood boring insect each slowly but surely dug, and rapidly disappeared beneath the surface of their respective planetary bodies. Their entry marked by a smooth edged circular hole. At the end of the hour the telltale opening vanished from sight and there was no evidence to the passing of the convoy.
10:03:00 Task Force Kronstadt: Position Unknown
Taskforce Kronstadt having been reunited after the engagement with unknown vessels while aiding the Tenebrean survivors of the battle of the Ambrosius solar system began their first move in the current state of conflict. The reinforced fleet moved from docks after some final refitting in procession past the watching eyes of a number of onlookers and dignitaries assembled in the numerous observation decks of Port Asur. It was an interesting age; everyone knew it was inevitable that we would get sucked into someone’s conflict or perhaps start one of our own. Yet having been in this galaxy so short a time it was amazing to find galactic conflict so soon after meeting new civilizations. It could be supposed that this was how it was, war was the crucible of civilization and through it we either gained victory and prosperity, parity and survival or defeat and annihilation. The ships filed by in ceremonial echelon formation with the largest to the center and the smallest forming the wings of the formation. The purpose of such a formation was to allow onlookers to see the entire fleet in review, and indeed it did as each was lit by the nearby blue star. As each group reached a set point they engaged their hyper space to jump to an actual military rally point where the larger then normal identification plaques on the sides of the vessels would be removed as would other ceremonial features. It was only after this final removal of any pageantry was completed that the fleet would then proceed to its target destination about a odd star, in a solar system that lay unclaimed.
|
|