Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

El_Phil writes: "So a 10TW reactor powers the magnets for 10 seconds and you've put the same amount of power into the final weapon, but with a reactor 10 times smaller."

To accelerate a projectile to 0.1c in 10 seconds, the railgun would have to be about 150,000 km long. By comparison, the average earth-moon distance is about 384,000 km.

A railgun that could do the job in 1 second would be "only" about 1500 km long, but of course it would require 10 times the reactor capacity.

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

El_Phil writes: " Use DU at 19kg/m3 you need a 0.3m3 slug at 0.1c to equal your biggest turrets total 5 second output"

The density of uranium is actually 19,050 kg per cubic meter.

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

2442.6 The first test:
The buzzer woke Admiral William Ross up in the middle of the night; he woke up quickly thanks to spending fifty years in the navy (or in training) but he was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes when he tabbed the com control and selected non-visual.
“Admiral this is bridge, I’m sorry to wake you sir but our sensors have just detected three cloaked ships moving through the system, we can generate an intercept but we can’t get a clear reading on what those ships are yet.” The voice on the other end of the line was the cold baritone of Elijah Jones and it took Ross a moment to recognize the tone of excitement in the other man’s voice.
“Alright Elijah get Rukia up and tell her to meet me on the bridge in five minutes, meanwhile have CIC generate an intercept course and get us on our way.” William grinned as he allowed himself a second of cruel pleasure at the thought of waking Rukia and returning the favor for her little training exercise the previous day that had startled him out of bed at three in the morning.
“Sir which division commander should I com about providing escort?” The Captain’s asked in a conversational tone.
“I don’t think we’ll need escort to intercept three ships Captain, this ship is supposed to be its own battle group after all.” William’s grin grew as the pause on the other end drew out a few more seconds.
“Yes sir I’ll com Commodore Fujita right away.” Captain Jones cut the com and William dragged himself out of bed and staggered over to his locker to get a fresh uniform out; So three enemy ships under cloak, this should be a pretty easy intercept, let’s just hope those boys back at NavTech know what they were talking about when the designed this ship. he paused a moment to grimace in the mirror as he fastened his collar before he turned to leave his quarters and head for the bridge.

Six hours passed as the Holy Crusade tore through space at 200 gravities acceleration attempting to intercept the three enemy starships that had been detected at long range, finally the massive Icaran warship managed to get within sensor range with their opponents.
“Admiral we have a clear ID on all three enemy warships, CIC calls it one SD, one monitor and one super monitor in formation.” A com tech reported calmly before the main plot flashed for a moment as the three red diamonds representing unknown ships transformed into the fully detailed holographic representations of each of the ships in the enemy formation, two of which were clearly Andermani in design while the super monitor looked like a Sol Coalition design.
Rukia turned to Ross and opened her mouth to say something when suddenly a voice from the tactical section caused her and William to turn around instinctively.
“Enemy ships have changed course, they are reducing acceleration and are apparently turning to intercept us.” The young sensor tech blushed when he noticed an Admiral and Commodore looking at him as if he had a third eye.

“They probably don’t realize we’re Icarans, after all an object 60km across moving under its own power is probably a little shocking.” Elijah Jones said as he watched the three ships closing at around 150 gravities.
“Well if that’s true we can definitely use this.” William turned to face the main plot and saw the distance markers counting down, “Weaps, inform all gun crews to plot minimum distance firing solutions.”
“Minimum distance?” Rukia kept her voice low enough so that only William heard; he nodded slowly and turned to face her.
“If Elijah’s right and they don’t know who we are then we can’t afford to open up on those ships at maximum range, God only knows what kind of weapons they’re packing and they might just have enough power to damage us, note I said damage not destroy but either way we can’t risk it.” His voice was cold as he ran the numbers of enemy crew through his head and came up with about 31,000 people, fellow human beings who would probably never even know what hit them.
“Enemy closing the range, approaching optimum weapons range.” The voice from the tactical section pulled Ross from his thoughts and he grimly turned his attention back to the main holoplot, the enemy was still too far out for an eyeball visual but they wouldn’t be by time the Crusade fired.
“They’ve got us lit, scanners running.” Another voice chimed out from a different section of the tactical department.
“Admiral, we’re being hailed, an Admiral Daniel Smith is challenging.” A com tech said rather icily as she listened to the message “He sounds confused as hell sir, and is telling us to hold position.”

“Almost in range, Admiral, twenty more seconds.” Elijah spoke this time as he checked his display tie-ins. A glowing red sphere appeared around the Crusade, representing the planned firing envelope, and the three ships closing.
“Sir again Admiral Smith is trying to hail, this time we’re getting broad frequency bombardment and multiple languages thrown at us.” The com tech’s voice sounded tenser this time as she too began watching the main plot.
William could almost feel his bridge crew trying to will the enemy ships into the firing envelope faster and realized that he almost felt sorry for this Admiral Smith as he realized that the other man was trying to get in closer to get better scans of his the battlemoon; then all thought froze as the red sphere began flashing and the three ships crossed into it.
“All batteries open fire.” William heard Rukia give the order but he barely noticed because at that instant every forward gun on the Crusade fired and for every shot there was an amber line on the display, and Ross noted with grim pride that it was an almost solid wall of amber connecting his flagship to those three enemy vessels.

Space and time seemed to freeze for the three Mantisoran warships for an instant as an invisible force hammered at them, to the naked eye it seemed as though they simply began tearing apart for no reason as the anti-proton streams washed over their hulls causing massive warping in the materials until the hull plating contacted simply exploded in a ball of plasma.
To an observer using the special sensors that allowed the invisible energy weapons to be seen it was a very different spectacle as a massive wall of green energy enveloped the Mantiosran ships and began clawing at them with a fury unseen in any previous generation or on any prior warship.
The entire “battle” only lasted thirty seconds as the super monitor’s reactors let go and millions of tons of warship simply vanished in a glowing sphere of expanding energy leaving not even a scrap of wreckage. The monitor’s entire forward sections vanished leaving its aft end mangled and torn; the super dreadnought was reduced to a cloud of debris no larger then dust as 26 I-lasers punched through it like it was made of plastic; all of which happened without the Mantisorans even knowing what hit them.

“Are there any life pods?” Rukia asked, not actually expecting there to be any as she watched her displays in shock.
“No ma’am no life pods, or life signs.” A voice answered in tones of equal shock.

Even when a ship took a full broadside from a super dreadnought something was left unless the reactor’s went, but there were so many weapons locked on the three Mantisoran ships that almost nothing remained, even of the two who’s reactors never had a chance to go critical.

“Thirty-one thousand lives gone, just like that.” Ross said quietly as he turned away from the main plot and walked over to where Rukia was standing, “Helm, take us back to the rest of the fleet at full speed.” He patted the still stunned Commodore on her shoulder as he headed for the lift, and back to his quarters trying not to look the least bit nauseated by what he had just done in the blink of an eye.

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Yeah I did bodge the DU density, what can I say. It was late and I got it wrong. Whoops.

Anyway where did you get that railgun length from, just curious that's all. I never did work out anything about them, they just did seem a nifty idea.

Finally as i was out by a 1,000 on the density of DU, ( http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif ) you can cut the needed length of rail gun by the same amount to get the same energy from the slug. Or make them even slower but larger until you get a sensible length launcher.

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

I didn't say you had put in any such lines, but it can be good to establish such facts before the action. It does look a bit Deus Ex Machina if during an attack the captain goes 'What are the chances? Those weapons do us no damage. That was lucky, we'd be dead otherwise.'

Before I start this is not personal. These points don't affect the story, it's science FICTION, making things up is the name of the game. I know what you're like, so take this in the spirit it's meant.

Flat out violations of physics in your story:

No those shields are not subjectively wrong, they're flat out impossible. You cannot magically kill an objects KE for less energy than the object has.

FTL, casuality and realtivity in the same universe don't work. At all. At the most basic level the paradoxes FTL would introduce are horrendous. Now as your opening warp points with happy abandon they aren't natural wormholes (which are 'just' local spacetime distortions and so sneak through) so that's a potential problem.

Admitedly you could be making wormholes, but that's highly dicey in and off itself. All you'd need is 'quantum foam' to open it and 'exotic matter' to produce 'negative energy' to hold it open. I'm not making those terms up the way (you couldn't http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif), they are hypothetical particle physics concepts. For instance 'exotic matter' is amazingly usefull stuff as it has negative mass, if it exists. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

BUT if you had all the stuff that you'd need to do all that then you would be far in advance of the rest of the Icaran's general tech level. As in chucking black holes around advanced. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

As your still working out what the I-lasers aresuspend judgment on them.

Oh and I'm pretty sure you have non-rotational artifical gravity, although I could be wrong on that one. I'm sure if I poked around I could find more, but I don't particularly want to I think that's enough to be going on with. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Ian Banks stuff however has a solid basis, it has however assumed that the hugely difficult has become possible, indeed easy. It doesn't violate any physics, it's immensly difficult, horribly expensive and requires horrendous ammounts of power. But it's not impossible and doesn't violate any physics we know.

Not knowing the details I can't comment on the throwing black holes, this is just based on his other stuff. However, off the top of my head, stupendous amounts of ultra dense material subjected to massive pressure would form a black hole. That's how they form in nature. Moving it around, well look at spinning black holes. The singularity inherits the angular momentum of the star it formed from. So just launch your large mass (3x a solar mass if your using self gravitation, less if your compressing it yourself) and as the mass races along and turns into a black hole it will inherit the momentum of the forming mass. So there you are, nothing in there violates any law of physics. But it ain't easy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Three words Use Edit Button http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Oh and this stuff is all now being discussed in the "General Tech Question" thread so as not to clog this one up with this kind of stuff http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif
My shields as explained there are probobly a lot more reasonable.

Oh and I did get a kick out of "no offense because I know how you are" that right there is like saying "I hope this doesn't cause offense but your a jerkoff" lol get where I'm going with that?

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

You have been known to fly off the handle and take criticism badly. So I thought I'd pre-empt that.

I did read general tech questions, your shields are still utterly impossible. Also as the question was here, I responded where the question was.

I'm not editing that post, I stand by it.

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Constructive criticism no [/i]nitpicking[/i] yeah a little bit.

Okay as I have stated it's sci-fi with a few thousand years more advanced tech then us so they may pull stuff against our knowledge of physics that's cool with me so if you really want to you can write a book taking note of every physical impossibility in my sci-fi universe if you want (still not all THAT many) -or- you can do that pesky little suspension of beleif deal that is very important to sci-fi and just read enjoy and maybe pass along the occasional correction to something that may be possible but that I got the "math" wrong on.

Now end of that so that I can actually have more story, because you may or may not have noticed I've added another chapter already today and want people reading that more than this http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Oh and I meant edit button as in your double post http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif so go ahead and stand by that if yah want lol

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Two seperate points, no point combining them into one to confuse two seperate issues.

It was constructive post, you have learnt not to call that story hard sci-fi. I was happily suspending belief, then because of your posts I stopped and looked at it more closely. I wouldn't of bothered if you hadn't even mentioned the subject.

Re: A new Game story (From the begining) *DELETED*
 

Post deleted by Hunpecked

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

El_Phil writes: "...where did you get that railgun length from..."

A railgun that accelerates a projectile from velocity 0 to velocity "v" in "t" time has to be at least as long as the distance the projectile travels in that time. That distance "d" is given by

d = (1/2)*a*tE2

where "a" is the acceleration. We get "a" from

a = v/t

Approximating "c", the speed of light, as 3E8 m/s and using 1s or 10s for "t", we get the numbers in my earlier post.

-----------
Edit: Actually, I was off 10-fold on the 1-second rail gun (damn decimal point!). The 1-second rail gun has to be 15,000 km long, not 1,500.

Mea culpa
-----------

I was frankly surprised when I saw the results, until I remembered the post calculating Newtonian acceleration to "c" at 1 G: hundreds of days consumed and trillions of kilometers traveled.

If we settle for projectile speeds of a few km/s, as illustrated at the "Atomic Rockets" web site, rail gun lengths become more practical.

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Hmm does seem to work, but as you say ridiculously huge. Well not ridiculous obvioulsy, but very big.

Bloody obvious maths actually. I clearly wasn't thinking well that night, I spent years doing that sort of maths. I've got to stop doing even basic physics/maths in late night posts. I make far too many fundamental mistakes or just miss stuff entirely.

Still just do it in a micro second and you can get to 0.1c in only 150m. You are accelerating the slug at ~3E12m/s/s admitedly but that small technical problem aside it's a fine plan. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

2444.9
The Royal Palace was a buzz of activity as the combined staffs of the Praetor, Grand Admiral of the Navy, Commandant of the Marines and General of the Army scuttled about to carry out their various jobs even some aides wearing the Black tunics and blue pants of the Federal Security Division roamed the halls of the palace carrying out their various assignments.
This buzz of activity was the result of Praetor Rodric calling for the first strategic meeting of all of the heads of each of the respective branches of service actively responsible for the security and expansion of the Empire, as well as the Secretary of the Treasury, the head of the Bureau of Personnel and the Woman responsible for the massive construction efforts throughout the whole of the Empire and the Chief of Science for the Naval Technologies Bureau.

“Alright Tanya I’d like to hear from the navy first.” Rodric said in a far more casual tone then anyone but these select few people would ever hear.
The Grand Admiral smiled courteously at her Praetor as she walked over to the massive holo projector; as she reached the panel she reached into her pocket and took out a memory chip and placed it into one of the data scanners.
After a few seconds the holo projector began to hum and an image came to life, filling the entire northern half of the room with a three dimensional image of a map of the Icaran Empire with several systems flashing either blue or red amid the ocean of green dots representing “normal” Icaran systems.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the blue systems are where our fleets are currently stationed, as you can see we have three flashing, the one down here.” She pointed toward the sector that had once been the Christerian Republic and highlighted the blue flashing sphere with her laser pointer “Is where the first fleet is escorting warper zero zero one five in closing the last warp point in that sector that leads to Mantisoran space, after that the first fleet will finally return home to answer the recall order we gave three years ago.” She frowned at the map as if she was seeing something the others were not.
“This over here.” She continued in the same lecturing, level tone she had before “Is the fifth fleet they were carrying out a similar assignment to the first fleet by sealing off the warp points in these regions.” The laser pointer drew a red line around the former Corian and Magellan corp territories.
“Both the first and fifth fleets will return to Icara next month and proceed to the rally point over New Icara in about five weeks, after that we will worry about replacing casualties and getting their fleets up to snuff with the new formation policy.” She paused and turned to her “audience” waiting for questions, and was not very surprised to see the secretary of Federal Security raise his hand.
“Yes Secretary Kline?” the Naval officer did not much like the Federal Security Division or anyone who represented it, she saw them as little more then planetary militia except with fancy uniforms and a private fleet of fast transports that the navy had to waste warships to escort.

“That is all well and good Grand Admiral but we still have the problem of what the red systems represent, three entire systems engulfed in riots that are just short of full on rebellions, now I don’t mean to sound like I am criticizing you Tanya but when does the navy plan on finally dealing with these?” Kline seemed almost oblivious to how Tanya Bright and her staff felt about his branch of the service and so he really did sincerely seem to have respect when he addressed the leaders of the “real” military branches.
“Secretary Kline, I am afraid that the navy stands by our decision not to send in a battlefleet to pacify these regions, we would have to deploy army regiments and ships that we need elsewhere, and though I don’t want to speak for General of the Army Scollet I think we can not afford to waste our assets on cleaning up some mobs of people who don’t realize they’ve been conquered just yet.” Tanya tried to keep her voice polite and respectful as she acknowledged the genuine thought going into Kline’s question.
And after all he is better then that idiot Secretary Clarence of the old StateSec. she admitted to herself grudgingly as thoughts of the slow witted, spiteful woman who used to be in charge of the old StateSec branch.

“Well Grand Admiral I actually do have a suggestion regarding that once you are finished with your report, if you would not mind giving me your opinion.” Kline said with a smile.

“Very well Secretary if Praetor Rodric does not mind.” She said politely as she inclined her head toward Rodric who simply nodded back with what she could have sworn was a grin.

“Anyway the main problem the navy has at the moment is the sheer size of enemy space, I know that 6 mobile fleets and Home Fleet seem like a lot but you have to remember that we are dealing with enemy space several thousand light years in diameter and close to a thousand inhabited planets are in that sector, once we begin the offensives again we are going to be spread thin.” Her voice quieted as her eyes seemed to focus in on Treasury secretary Harper. “We need more ships, I would like at least 12 combat fleets of the new pattern, excluding home fleet, before we begin a full fledged offensive into Mantisoran space.” The Naval Officer forced herself not to flinch as the treasury secretary’s face went pale; every eye in the room seemed to focus on Secretary Harper and suddenly his pale face turned red with embarrassment.
“Lord Harper what is your opinion on this?” Rodric’s voice cut through the silence and Harper visibly shook himself and cleared his throat.
“Well. Highness our economy is going to be strained to pull this off, with each superdreadnought costing thirty-three billion crowns, and with a total of one hundred and forty-nine in a “new pattern” fleet that alone is over four trillion crowns, add that to the two trillion crowns a battlemoon costs and the one hundred billion crowns of a flag monitor and we are talking about each fleet costing about.” He paused and ran the numbers through his head-which Rodric found remarkable every time he saw the man do that kind of math without a calculator- “About seven trillion one hundred and seventeen billion crowns, and some change.”
“I think we can do it but our people are going to have to tighten their belts a little bit, I don’t think that will be a problem for the true Icarans but some of the frontier worlds who are still more used to their former governments and lifestyles could be a big problem; I mean taxes as they are, are the primary cause of the three systems that are currently rebellion since their former government did not even require taxes as individuals.” Aaron Harper shrugged as his Praetor looked at him blankly for a moment.
“No taxes? How the hell did they fund anything?” Rodric asked slightly more enthusiastically then he meant, not that he would let that show to any of his subjects.
“Well sir it was a bizarre form of corporate levies, apparently each warship was funded by a company, same with the army, their civil productions were all private sector as well.” The secretary’s matter of fact tone hid his own baffled thoughts as to how such a strange form of government could work even for as long as it had before Icara conquered them.

“Well I’m afraid we are going to have to tell our people to buckle down and deal with the additional taxes, my biggest fear actually comes into the labor department.” Rodric turned toward the woman in charge of the Bureau of Personnel.
“We currently have close to ten million men and women in the military, but even with that Highness our civilian sector has a lot of people to draw from so we won’t be seeing negative effects in that area for a long time. Our biggest problem right now is finding people who can work in the new shipyards we are building, and considering each sphere world we build requires a little over a billion human workers and close to two billion xeno workers we are going to run short of civilian construction workers and dockyard people sooner then I’d like.” The dark skinned woman from the former Rebel Alliance world of New Haven tossed her hand up in a throw away gesture as she put the pad with the numbers back in her pocket book.

“We need to continue building sphere worlds that’s a given, but we also need those shipyards online as soon as possible so do what you can to find a balance without requiring xenos to work at our shipyards.” Rodric frowned a moment and looked back at Tanya Bright who was still standing at the holo projector, looking rather sheepish.
“I’m sorry Grand Admiral, please continue.” He managed to sound less amused then he was as she simply clicked her heals and turned back to the display.
“It will be a few more months before we are ready to move on even our initial objectives but once we do I would like to have at least two fleets hitting any of the major systems of the Mantisorans, after the recent….um……incident with the Home Fleet I don’t want to risk being caught outgunned by one of their worlds again.” Her mouth twisted in a disgusted frown as she remembered the casualty list that came in from the Home Fleet after it seized a Mantisoran world in Icaran space, though Tanya beleived it wasn’t Admiral Yu’s fault she still had her under review until a commission could prove there was nothing Yu could have done to prevent it.

“So needless to say we are going to be short of ships as the early stages of the offensive commence, though as we do take our initial foothold systems I will order the fleets to spread out and hit more targets as quickly as possible; unfortunately we know that the Mantisorans are building both ships and planetary weapons platforms so it’s going to be bloody no matter what we do.” As she finished she pulled the data chip from the projector and bowed to the Praetor before turning to return to her seat.

“Secretary Kline you wished to say something about those three systems?” Rodric forced himself not to grin as he saw Bright blush ever so slightly, he understood all to well that no naval officer or any military officer liked being caught short like she had been but he also knew that there was a reason his ancestors had formed the now defunct StateSec generations ago, they were there to stop the riots and keep order while the military protected the Empire from external threats.

“Yes Highness, it has come to my attention that in those three systems we have already lost twenty-seven merchantmen and their crews to terrorists who think they can drive the Empire out by killing innocent civilians and destroying millions of crowns worth of property.” He paused and turned to the military officers who were all looking very shocked at the numbers of merchant ships lost to civilian hijackers and terrorists.
“Now as Grand Admiral Bright has already said we can’t throw the navy into every system with pirates who have visions of glory, so what I and several of my advisors have come up with is the plan to create a FedSec fleet.” The military officers gasped in shock at the proposal and Bright visibly forced herself from standing and saying something. It was unheard of to allow a security service to have a battle fleet of it’s own, in fact it was against the law for them to have any ships of capital status.
“Before our Military friends have a stroke I’d like to clarify, we do not want anything the size of a superdreadnought or even a dreadnought, all we want is to create battleship and battlecruiser sized ships that are capable of defending themselves in space and also deploying Intervention battalions on planetary surfaces.” Kline turned towards the military officers with a, naughty schoolboy grin before turning back to the Praetor.

“Battleships? Secretary Kline; our empire has never built battleships.” Rodric barely hid his confusion at the prospect of building battleships for a security force, Icaran naval designers never considered the low tonnage warship worth building once dreadnought hulls became available, and up until then battlecruisers had served the fleets for less cost in both construction and maintenance.
“Well I would like to point out that battleships are no longer capital class vessels compared to the more modern warships, for that matter neither is a battlecruiser, especially once you take into account the troop carrying capability of each ship reducing both armaments and shields quite a bit.” He shrugged and his expression suddenly grew somber “Though I do find the idea of shocking my colleagues amusing I would like you to consider this seriously Highness, the FSD would never be able to replace the Navy’s combat units we would just be able to lighten up the load for the Marines and Navy, not even mentioning the Army regiments we could free up from peacekeeping duties.”

“And where do you plan on getting the money from Secretary Kline?” Rodric’s tone was serious yet curious as he was obviously considering the implications of a Federal Security combat fleet capable of dealing with pirates and deploying FS brigades unescorted.
“We already have more then enough money in our budget Highness; in fact thanks to my rather ingenious financial staff we have quite a nice reserve of cash for emergency or other situations.” Kline smiled sheepishly as he admitted that his was probably the only Branch of service that was not running even close to breaking point with it’s budget, especially since he knew that the budget meetings were coming up later in the day.
“Indeed?! Well then I will definitely consider it more thoroughly.” Rodric smiled and was unable to hide the amusement from his voice, even some of the military officers-including Grand Admiral Bright- were grinning at Kline’s admission, and remarkable lack of taking credit.

“Well before we recess I would like to hear from Chief of Science for the Naval Technology Bureau.” Rodric inclined his head towards a short man in his mid nineties who was just beginning to go a little bit grey, -more because of stress then age thanks to the sustain surgeries and drugs which allowed centuries long life spans-, the man stood up and walked over to the same display Admiral Bright had used earlier and confidently placed a data chip in the reader.
Two images appeared on the screen, one of a massive capital ship the size of a flag monitor, yet Admiral Bright noticed the shape was all wrong and there wasn’t a single gun turret visible. The other image was off a large swept wing craft that had four under slung missiles and two large chin mounted weapons, to Bright it looked like a scaled up cutter but she couldn’t quite put the pieces together until COS Martell tabbed a control on the holo display and the image of the flag monitor sized ship grew and showed several dozen massive open areas on the outer hull.

“Ladies and gentlemen this is, or rather will be HMS Manticore she is the newest breed of carrier, now I know you all remember the rather disastrous and expensive use of the Hallice class carriers and their Viper and BullShark fighters and I am proud to say this is nothing like that.” He highlighted portions of the ship on the display and grinned “This is the main difference, these shield generators are much more powerful then any previous carrier concept, and these….” He highlighted another portion of the ship that would have been where the secondary broadside turrets were on a normal ship “Is the new singularity torpedo launcher that we have been working on for the past few years, granted they don’t fire very fast and do not have the range of a standard ship’s broadside but unlike the Hallice class, anyone who gets in close to this carrier isn’t going to enjoy it very much.” His grin grew wolfish as he noticed the expression on the face of Grand Admiral Tanya Bright.
“My God you finally got those damned things working?” Bright practically hissed as memories of the dozens of failed attempts at creating singularity torpedoes, one such experiment killed two dozen scientists and her own aid when the containment fields failed and the torpedo exploded in the middle of a crowded lab.
“Yes Ma’am we did, we decided we would go for the short range version our earlier theories suggested would be possible, it requires less containment power and has much less chance of becoming unstable before launch because we use less energy in the warhead its self.” Martell frowned sympathetically before bringing up a display of the smaller ship.
“This is the Hurricane class assault gunship, it is seventy five kilotons, has a much better shield and propulsion system then previous generations of attack craft and carries a crew of eight men and women.” Martell’s voice was back to the lecturing tone it had been before he was reminded of the unfortunate earlier experiments with singularity torpedoes. “Now we have included advanced vectored thrust, thrusters into her forward and aft hull allowing her to turn on a the spot, we have also incorporated the latest generation quantum stream engines, and afterburners allowing her to accelerate much more rapidly then any previous generation attack craft.” The scientist paused long enough for his information to sink in before highlighting the weapons points of the gunship “Now here’s the big difference, the Hurricane carries four cataclysm torpedoes and two high yield incinerator class anti-hydrogen stream cannons.”
“What is a cataclysm torpedo Doctor?” General of the Army Scollet spoke for the first time in the meeting and he like all of the others looked a little skeptical of the idea of bringing back fighters after the earlier dismal failures.
“Well to use a layman’s terms it’s an antimatter warhead that has a thirty two gigaton yield, and each Hurricane can carry four.” Martell’s grin returned quickly at the muttered sounds of awe from his audience.
“Now the reason we don’t include these on capital ships is because each one weighs three kilotons and has a range roughly that of a spitball out of a straw, but with our new gunships we can slip even these spitballs into weapons range, and once they are well our best estimates say five gunships could kill a superdreadnought in a single pass, and each Manticore class carrier will be able to hold one hundred and eighty-nine.”
“Now obviously the main drawbacks are very short range and one shot capacity, once a gunship fires its torpedoes they’re gone and it will have to rely on it’s energy mounts from there on out, add to that they are unfortunately very fragile compared to a capital ship and we are talking about a weapons system that is best used in concert with fleet formations and not on it’s own.” Martell winked at Bright and added “So don’t worry these gunships will never replace your superdreadnoughts and battlemoons Admiral.”
“One would hope not after all the money we’ve put into them.” Secretary Harper threw in causing a ripple of chuckling among the gathered personnel.
“Well another main disadvantage is it will take two point seven years to get even one carrier’s load of gunships built and since we are going to run a full scale real battle test of the first Manticore before launching any more it will be a long time before we see carriers in every fleet.” Martell added somewhat sourly as his scientific curiosity wanted to see his pet project in action sooner rather then later.
But at least they have no choice but[/i]to produce these carriers.[/i].” Martell thought somewhat bitter over his earlier failure with the first generation of carriers that did nothing but cost the Icaran government money and people. [/i]”And this time I’ve gotten it right damn it.”[/i] he added as he picked up his data chips and headed for the doors.

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

El_Phil writes: "Still just do it in a micro second and you can get to 0.1c in only 150m."

Indeed, although the power requirement goes up as the time goes down. Also the mechanical stress on the rails and their mount.

All solvable with a little engineering... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

As I said, small technical problems. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I am assuming you have loads power to waste (which seems to be a constant in all sci-fi). Hell it wouldn't be the future if you didn't http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Ahem guys plz do stop posting that here now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I would rather people read my STORY http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif for example did yah even notice i posted another chapter above your posts?

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Yes, and though silent (mostly) still reading so don't stop posting.

Currently ignoring the technobabble dispute because no one knows what tomorrow will bring let alone 2000 years from now.

Rasorow

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

I also am still reading and enjoying the story.

Maybe all the tech discussion could move to another thread?

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

I'm still reading and enjoying the story, too. Comments:

It seems a bit late in the war for the first meeting of the Joint Chiefs and the War Cabinet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif No doubt Icaran communication technology supports virtual meetings, so perhaps this is just the first face-to-face conference.

With regard to warship terminology, note that even the lowly escort (in stock SE IV) at 150 kT is larger than any terrestrial warship and can wipe out an undefended planetary population single-handed. The natural tendency would be to call the first such spacecraft "space battleships" or "dreadnoughts", but then what would you call subsequent classes that are several times bigger and more powerful? This problem is illustrated by the "Majestic" class of "battleships" (1895, 16,000 tons, 4x12" guns) which was surpassed only a decade later by the "Invincible" "battlecruiser" class (1908, 17,500 tons, 8x12" guns).

It might be better to drop wet navy terminology entirely and go with something more generic, like "Type 300 hull", or maybe "Intimidator class warship".

This approach also avoids terminology problems when SE IV's generic hulls are used for "non-standard" purposes, e.g. a battlecruiser minesweeper ("battlesweeper"?), cruiser-class colony ship ("colonuiser"?), or frigate transport ("frigport"?). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

On the point of ship sizes, I think it would be easier jsut to name the just the class of teh ship (eg Intimidator) and tehn refer to teh type of ship (eg battlecruiser) for size comparisons. This would also avoid the non-standard use of hull types. For example, the Mayflower class carrier is based on a monitor sized hull.

If you think of each ships classification as a size range for the ship to fit in, it should make things easier. For example, ships up to 150kt would be refered to as escorts, ships from 150kt to 200kt would be frigates, etc.

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Well as far as the first meeting, no it's not but remember Grand Admiral Hallice retired not all that long before and the new Grand Admiral has been busy trying to pull the peices of the military together so no real time for face-to-face conferences with the other members of the military council.

And on to the ship classifications well I've been referring to the ships by size since the start of my story so it would seem a little inconsistent to suddenly drop all terms for my ships like the Yu Hing Pe "Super Dreadnought" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

As far as comparing sizes for the non-conventional roles I do think I'll just leave that up to a general size comparison as you suggested for example just a "Large minesweeper" or in the case of Federal Security ships just a general "Medium and Large Peacekeeping ship" would work.

And as far as stating the actual size and tonnage of a ship I don't really see a problem with that so I'd like to stick to that http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif And I do have a clever little idea about that waiting just see http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

So this story is dead?

Rasorow

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Heck NO! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I'm typing up a chapter right now as a matter of fact but tis' a "Story Driven" chapter as opposed to action driven so it's taking a bit of time.

I'm also in college, getting a job, got Kung Fu, and scratchbuilding a fleet of warships with nothing but balsa, card board and Lentils add all this together with me trying to interest a very lovely young lady in me and I just don't have a lot of spare time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Not sure if i'll ever catch up, Starhawk, but you are doing a damn fine job so far (and that was a while back!) Keep up the great work!

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Ice the story, cut way down on the warships, find the job.....

Then pay all attention to the lovely young lady.... lovely young worthwhile ladies are a very scarce and rare delight.


Good luck


Rasorow

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Meh I only see her three times a week as is so http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I've got 4 days of no chance to try and gain her interest lol.

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

E-mail, cell phone, FedEx, candygram, etc. In the 21st Century there's no excuse for not paying attention to your SO even when you're not face to face (unfortunately). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Okay this story isn't dead I've just been so dang busy I haven't been able to finish my complete chapter yet, and so here is a little "foot note" style info on the Regiments of the Icaran forces. (the guys I have only briefly touched on)

Regiments of Honor:

The Praetor's Own
Aka: Praetorian Guardians
Unique Traits: Cybernetic enhancements, Crimson and Gold uniform with blood red trousers, life service.

History: The Praetor's Own is the best of the best, they are the most feared individual soldiers in the Icaran Empire aside from the Stormtrooper forces, and more then one foe has found it's self cut to shreds by the fanatical and disciplined soldiers of this elite regiment.

Though officially a "regiment" the Preator's own is actually a small army corps in it's own right, with over 11,000 Elite combat troops and vehicle crews, plus nearly 15,000 support staff. The regiment is broken down into three distinct branches:

The "Imperial Guard" which contains the bulk of the mechanized forces of the Praetor's Own, these are the elite soldiers that protect the hundred miles of palace grounds that form the main residence of the Preator and his staff on Icara.
The Imperial Guard is equipped with powered armor, massive main battle tanks and enough firepower to level entire regiments by themselves, and at least three companies of these soldiers are always on duty around the Praetorian Palace.

The "Praetorian Guard" the Praetorian guard is the elite of the elite, they are the men and women sworn to protect the Praetor and his family directly even if it costs their own life to do so.

The Praetorian Guard are easily recognized for their gleaming red and gold power armor and their "Long lance" rifles which are so heavy only the cybernetic enhancement provided to the Praetorians combined with the servo muscles of the Powered Armor allows these men and women to carry them.

The "Secret Service" is the intelligence corps of the Praetor's Own, these men and women are trained to blend into crowds and conduct survailence of any potential threat to the Praetor or his family. If that threat is detected these men and women "remove" it very quietly.

The Spartan Regiments
Aka: The Spartiate Corps
Unqiue Traits: The bulk of the Spartan soldiers are women, entire infantry force wears power armor, no tanks.

History: The Spartan regiments were first founded decades after the Icaran Empire set out to the stars once again; despite their relatively young position in the Icaran Armed forces the Spartan regiments (also known as Spartiate Corps) have proven themselves fierce defenders of the Empire.

Though officially "regiments" the fact that the entire Spartan Regiment consists of power armored infantry means that the cost of raising a full regimental strenght force is virtually impossible. Instead of the typical 4,000 combat soldiers of most regiments the Spartan forces usually consist of around 1,200 soldiers divided into 2 "Phalanxes" which are then sub divided into three "Companies" which each have their own individual command structure and purpose in a Phalanx.

Typically the bulk of Spartan soldiers are also women, which is needless to say a strange sight among Imperial forces; this is not because of some Matriarchal society but is in fact because the bulk of Spartan males remain at home to protect the cities from the myriad predators that would easily overwhelm an unwary city.

Sparta is renowned for it's power armor forges (many of which are used to produce such armor for both Stormtrooper and Praetorian forces) primarily because on a world like Sparta leaving a city in anything less then powered armor is a death sentence thanks to the harsh environment and hostile life on the planet, so the Spartans have virtually redefined the Power Armor design and production industry as their knew and innovative designs spread from their homeworld earning them fame and respect in the Empire.

Icaran "Home Born":
Officially: Icaran Royal Regiments
Unique Traits: Born and trained on the birth world of the Icaran Empire these troops often fight with a fanatical willingness to die in order to protect "Their Empire" from it's enemies.

History: The "Icaran Royal" regiments are those regiments raised from the Icaran homeworld its self and are considered some of the best and most loyal soldiers within the Empire's borders.

These regiments are always full strength and are always raised to exacting specifications that are often overlooked on lesser populated worlds. Icaran regiments are ALWAYS 4,000 combat soldiers, with three armored companies, two Heavy support companies, one command company, eighteen mechanized infantry companies, one air assault company and fifteen infantry companies.

Icaran regiments are usually among the first dispatched to "Core World" incidents and were the first regiments to see action in the Phong Purification being that they were raised from the most densely populated world in the Empire at that time. And though only one understrength Icaran Royal Regiment remains in service at this time they are still some of the most respected and honored soldiers in the Empire.

[to be continued later today]

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

2445.0 Returning Home:
“It’s good to finally be getting back to Icaran space.” Star Admiral William Ross said with a smile as his fleet emerged from the Wa’Tor warp point into Norvor, the home system of the Icaran Empire. Commodore Rukai Fujita smiled at her Admiral’s cheerful tone as she looked up from a report.
“What you really mean sir; is it’s good to be where Lin is after so long.” She made sure her voice was just loud enough for only Ross to hear it and she smiled again when he turned his nose up at her playfully.
“Why Commodore you shouldn’t be so rude to your elders, we are a little sensitive in our dotage you know.” William kept his face appropriately grim as he spoke, which only caused Rukia’s grin to grow broader.
“With all due respect Admiral but dotage my ***, your only sixty-two, that’s not even middle aged.” William chuckled at her overly respectful tone and turned back to face the video display that showed the tactical display of Norvor.

One of the first things William noticed as he looked at the display is how much Norvor had changed in the seven years he’d been there, the system’s total population had gone from around twenty-two billion to an almost unbelievable eighty-six billion as colonists from all over the Empire flocked to the New Icara sphereworld to bolster the population, he also noticed sixteen shipyards in orbit of the worlds of Norvor with signs that more were under construction.
“Lord, it’s hard to believe this much industrialization could have happened in only seven years.” Ross tone was suddenly much more serious and for the first time Rukia could remember it was full of awe.
“Well the Praetor ordered more shipyards built so that we could produce enough ships to fight this war properly, and planetary yards take too long to build capital ships because they have to worry about boosting all of the segments into orbit and then having orbital construction teams assemble the pieces, the government decided it’s cheaper and faster to just boost the raw materials into orbit and work on assembling the entire ship in an orbital yard, and that’s nothing once New Icara’s built up she’s going to have five orbital yards.” She walked over to stand beside William who just nodded, an expression of awe still on his face.
“Admiral Icara orbital is ordering us to proceed at maximum safe thrust to New Icara orbit; all ground assault elements are to proceed to Cadia orbit.” Captain Jones said from the com section as he ran through the final checks a ship underwent before proceeding to “anchor” as it were.
“Very well, helm lay in a course for New Icara orbit order all ground assault elements to proceed to Cadia; best thrust.” William kept his voice professional even as his own excitement was growing to finally be home; And Rukia was right; I’m looking forward to seeing Lin. he didn’t quite let the smile reach his face but when he turned and saw the twinkle in Rukia’s eye he playfully shot her a glare before looking back at his displays.
“ETA New Icaran orbit?” Rukia turned back to her station as she watched the main plot.
“ETA three hours New Icara orbit ma’am.” The helmsman responded in the professionally bland monotone most naval crewmen reserved for battle and Rukia kept the grin off her face only through a profound act of willpower.

Three hours later and the first fleet was finally in visual range of the huge artificial construct that was the size of a star, actually bigger then a star Ross corrected himself as he remembered that New Icara had been built around the Norvor star as soon as the other planets in the Norvor system had been outfitted with the latest in “artificial star” technology.
And God and some geeks in lab coats only knew how that bit of technology worked William thought with a wry mental smile, I wonder if God wears a lab coat….. his train of thought was cut off the second the main display faded from tactical overlays to real time images of the sphereworld.
“Holy mother.” William croaked out as he saw the clouds of super dreadnoughts around several small moon sized warships, all of which were around the massive Sphereworld in the largest concentration of metal he had ever seen.
“Sir I’m getting message traffic from, second, third, fifth, sixth, seventh, and home fleets all salute, and bid welcome to first fleet and Star Admiral William Ross.” The com tech sounded as awestruck as everyone else on the bridge felt at seeing so many ships in one place.
“Thank you com; pass on my compliments to all fleets.” William’s voice was quiet as he stared at the fleet that could only be home fleet as it had two battle moons and the only Five Swords class ships currently assigned to fleets.
‘My Lord I am reading four more battle moons in system, and a beacon belonging to eight fleet who appears to still be mobilizing and twelve more flag monitors!” Rukia shook her head as she looked at the sensor readouts she had patched into from various sources in the Norvor system.
“Sir Com from New Icara fleet HQ, message reads; Admiral Ross and Commodore Rukia to report to HQ immediately upon arrival.” William nodded at Rukia at the com tech’s report.
“Captain Jones you have the bridge, com tell flight bay to prepare a cutter for immediate launch.” With that William and Rukia headed for the lift William couldn’t help but wonder how Lin was doing or how the review went and had to deliberately keep his pace slow and casual as he walked beside Rukia.

A few minutes later and Ross was staring out of a portside window of his cutter, still awestruck by the sheer number of capital ships assembled in one place, not to mention the swarms of cutters, skiffs and supply craft buzzing about the fleets as they carried out a myriad of tasks required to prepare any fleet for war.
William and Rukia’s cutter, as well as their escort cutter however were headed for the sphereworld its self and the massive fleet HQ which had been built there a year before in order to rally the navy for the upcoming operations against the UMK. Although he had seen the vid chips of the construction William was still taken aback that humans could ever build something as massive as the sphereworld that was steadily growing in the view ports.

The bulky cutter gracefully flew over New Phoenix city on its way to the military spaceport and Ross noticed that New Phoenix was a sprawling metropolis, bigger even then Icara city back on homeworld. He turned to Rukia who had been here before and jutted his thumb in the direction of the small viewport.
“How many people live in that city?” he turned gaze back to the view for a second and noticed a huge mustering field outside of the city limits.
“Currently there are about sixty-five million people in New Phoenix, though with so many warships in orbit we have a lot of navy and marine personnel down here on leave so it’s probably closer to sixty-eight million.” Rukia grinned at Ross’ expression and decided not to mention that New Phoenix was smaller then Ionia back on the New Sparta sphereworld which had roughly eighty two million people living there at any given time.
Rukia had come to know William better then most of his subordinates had, and she decided that he liked it that way, after Sandra Fowler was killed William had stayed pretty aloof from the rest of his officers; howver over a year of her hard work later Rukia was proud to note that her Admiral had finally started to open up a little more, of course he was a full Star Admiral and wouldn’t likely spend any time down in the Middie birth or Lieutenant’s country but he had finally opened up a little with the senior officers. Rukia smirked at that thought, there were five full captains and 22 Commanders and “baby Commanders” on board the massive battlemoon that had become the flagship of first fleet and William had only started talking on a casual basis with two of the Captains and five of the Commanders. But it was better then nothing she decided and gave a little mental shrug and went back to reading the status reports for the Holy Crusade.

Alexander Hallice naval base and starport sprawled out before the two hundred ton naval cutter like an ocean of lights, the base its self was a city covering a two thousand square kilometer radius, with dozens of landing pads, kilometers upon kilometers of roads, and hundreds of buildings containing barracks and myriad other facilities which had purposes to myriad to think about.
William never pretended to understand the science behind artificial star technology, planetary grav generators or the technology that went into creating a full scale atmosphere for a “planet” bigger then a star; but as he looked at the sprawling military base in front of him he felt even more baffled by the sheer effort and scale of the sphereworld his cutter was now flying over. As he stared out at the wonders in front of him Ross remembered back only some forty years when the “Empire” was a single world with a “navy” smaller then a modern division, made up of ships that were smaller then a single Super Dreadnought’s primary gun turrets and he thought with some pride of how far humans could come in such a short period of time. Ross swiveled the cutters’ camera up to the sky and saw the battlemoons that were the pinnacle of starship design, each one was rated by navy standards as a 15 megaton craft which referred only to the weight in weapons, engines and primary equipment, the actual “weight” in metal of a battlemoon was in the billions of tons just like the super dreadnought actually weighed over one hundred and sixty million tons when fully loaded. But all that paled in comparison to this absolute marvel of modern construction which weighed more then a sun. A construct that had entire cities and military bases built onto its surface, not to mention hundreds of factories and industrial molecular sequencer facilities.

Suddenly Ross’ thoughts all came to a screaming halt as he saw the landing pad growing as his cutter came in. There was a small party of people already visible from the cutter’s window and against his will Ross felt a swelling of fear that Lin would not be among that party, for news had still not reached him on the result of her Naval review.

Chapter Two:

As the cutter’s hatch opened and a ramp slid silently to the landing pad’s battle steel surface a flute shrilled the traditional notes that greeted all high flag officers upon arrival.
Ross calmly walked down the ramp, flanked on either side by his two marine guards, as he reached the bottom of the ramp a small barrel chested man in a civil service uniform stepped forward and reached out his hand excitedly.
“Admiral Ross welcome to New Icara I’m Aaron Kreel; and might I say we are all pleased to meet a legend like you….yes very excited sir.” The man’s voice was surprisingly deep and sounded almost inappropriate considering the unseemly display of hero worship this Aaron had just spouted.

Ross forced a smile and shook the man’s hand; but he was glad when a woman wearing the uniform of a full Star Admiral stepped forward and gently nudged the overexcited Kreel out of the way.
Ross looked at the woman’s severe and unattractive face for several seconds before recognition finally dawned on him and his smile turned genuine and his hand came up in salute “Admiral Lady Selene how are you?”
She returned his smile and brought snapped up her own salute “I’m well Lord Ross, and from the looks of things in orbit we are all about to become very busy.” The closing part of her sentence was ominous and Ross felt the hair on the back of his neck rise; however he was not given a chance to dwell on these thoughts for too long as he quickly went about greeting the other members of the party that had met him at the landing pad; most of whom where Admirals, and Civil service leaders.

*******
An hour after the meeting at the landing pad Ross was in a ground car heading for the new Admiralty that Grand Admiral Bright had set up when she transferred naval command from homeworld to the sphereworld New Icara.

Lady Selene sat across from Ross and after a rather forced bit of small talk Ross swallowed his nerves and asked the questions that had been haunting his mind ever since he had returned to Norvor.
“Selene, what’s going on in the Empire these days, I’ve heard lots of rumors but being out on the frontier for five years doesn’t exactly help with information flow.” He frowned and leaned back into his seat as Selene folded her hands and frowned thoughtfully.
“Well William we’ve got some problems in the frontier, whole worlds are breaking out in riots all along the fringe and demanding independence and quite frankly the FSD is still trying to pull their pants back up after the SS got bootstamped by the Praetor; so we’re having problems suppressing these damned newly conquered worlds.”
Ross had heard of only some small local rioting in the frontiers and felt sick for a moment as he realized the entire frontier was being torn apart by some damned rebels who couldn’t see the benefits of being Icaran worlds…..worlds he and his soldiers had fought for; that so many young men and women had died for.
“There’s also some bad news in the military, you know Admiral White?” Selene’s voice dropped to a whisper and Ross sat up straighter and leaned a little forward.
“Not well, I only met her once in passing.”
“Well she led the 5th fleet against some frontier worlds that had rebelled, anyway she lost two warships and about 15,000 of her people trying to take one of the worlds…..so she bombed it to hell and killed everyone.” Her voice held a note of disgust that Ross had never heard in her before and his own shock and nausea seemed to grow.
“My God how many people did she kill?”
Selene winced as his voice raised higher then he meant it too and she shrugged “I don’t know, some say a few thousand but most think that she destroyed a colony of about thirty-million men, women and children…..either way she earned her fleet the nickname “Death’s Hand” which as you can imagine is a big morale killer with them.” Selene’s face grew dark for a moment as the anger of an Icaran Admiral doing something that horrible to innocent people!
“What has the Admiralty done about this mess?” William clenched his hands and stared blankly at the woman sitting across from him. Just a few hours earlier he had been marveling at the advances the Empire had made, and now this….it felt like the whole universe was caving in around him.

“Well….she was brought to trial last week and executed last night, not that this is about to become public knowledge mind you, as far as the public will be concerned she died in a cutter accident.” The woman’s severe face looked even harder as a scowl crossed her lips.

“That’s it? So what is the official word on what happened to that world?”
Selene’s scowl turned into a grim smirk as she looked out of the groundcar window “Well William with nothing but five mile deep craters covered in fused glass there isn’t exactly a lot of evidence that we have to worry about leaking to the public.”

William leaned back again and sighed, what White had done was wrong, but he told himself that at least the Empire would have a hope of bringing stability back far easier without this information spreading throughout the galaxy.

“How is Lin?” the words came out hoarse and Ross felt a split second of embarrassment.
“Her review was completed just before the so called “Death’s Hand” incident; fortunately the Navy didn’t feel there was anything she could have done otherwise, and actually decided to transfer her to the 7th line fleet instead of Home Fleet.” She paused and looked intently at the massive building that was coming into view.

“Anyway we’re at the New Admiralty so I’m sure you’ll get the rest of the information you want in the briefing tomorrow morning…..uh in the meantime I’m sure you and Lin will have to *ahem* catch up with one another.” Her grin turned wicked and as the car came to a halt she quickly opened the door and slipped out.

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Hmmm newness of much lenght. There was me thinking it was dead. Something chimes wrong with me though.
*** Search the archive ***
Oh here it is

"Throughout the Empire the victory was portrayed as a heroic act of revenge for those lives lost during the attack on the 4th fleet, what the average citizen did not know was that the destruction of the colony was not because of enemy numbers, nor because of armed weapons platforms but simply because one Admiral had chosen to pass down an order out of her own personal anger for the tens of thousands of lives lost."

Either people knew or they didn't. Continuity is a good thing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

They knew about the so called victory not about HOW MANY died or how http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I probobly shoulda phrased that better.

And heck if you read Selene's statement you know that even the MILITARY doesn't fully know how many died considering she thinks only 30 million died (that's 100 million short).

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

It's good to see that Starhawk is continuing with this story despite his other distractions. In this latest episode, I like the emphasis on the sheer scale of Icaran achievement, and the foreshadowing of a titanic conflict in the near future.

A few nitpicks:

Admirals usually don't take over a ship's bridge and give orders directly to the helm. They issue general instructions to their captains and let them give the detailed orders to carry out their assignments. Of course Admiral Ross may have taken direct control just for the fun of running a ship again. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

"Two thousand square kilometers" isn't a radius, it's an area. A circle with an area of 2000 km^2 has a radius of just over 25 km.

Our sun contains about 99.85% of all the mass in our solar system. To build a sphereworld with the mass of our sun, the builders would have to import the mass of about a thousand Jupiter-sized worlds. Not to worry, though. Freeman Dyson estimated that a sphere 3 m thick could be built around our sun at a distance of 1 AU using all the mass of the planets and other "debris", or several cm thick using only elements with atomic number greater than 2.

When I looked up Dyson spheres I was surprised to learn that Dyson's original vision wasn't for a solid shell, but rather for orbiting stations in such numbers that they intercepted all of the local sun's output. Although SE IV uses the term "sphereworld", authors can interpret that concept in various ways to suit their stories.

References:

http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/dysonFAQ.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Blimey you do indeed learn something every day, although I do struggle to think of a time I will need to know about Dyson Spheres in everyday conversation. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Anyway to topic: Mr Starhawk will we be seeing more of this soon or is another several month break in the offing?

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Hi all bet you thought this was dead eh http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Well suprise!

Okay this following chapter is a two parter (I am still working on part two) but here is Part One, sorry it took me so long to write this but this chapter and the one that follows it had a big emotional effect on me for personal reasons and though I enjoyed "writing" it I found some of the imagery hard to describe without being TOO graphic.

I will warn you all right now the Icaran universe is going to becoming darker and more gritty as the chapters go on, this is not to "gothify" it but is to show that no matter how staunch and devout a culture is that it is impossible for decades of war and billions of deaths to pass without effecting a nation (or in this case galaxy) at it's very core.

I've edited and re-edited the following segment so I hope you all like it.


Warning the following two chapters are RATED R for:
Nudity
Rape
Intense descriptions of gore and mutilation
Adult Language
Adult Conent

Please do not read further if any of these offend or scare you.


Alone in the Dark
Be near me when my light is low... And all the wheels of being slow.
Alfred Lord Tennyson

His Majesty’s Light Cruiser LC 303 formerly known as HMS Repulse before a modern Super Dreadnought took her name, was an old ship the last of the old Retribution class light cruisers that had not been turned into a museum or scrapped.. In fact even after her retrofit with modern weaponry 303 wouldn’t even scratch a modern warship if she fired all of her guns at the same time….and so she was assigned one of the most boring jobs in the Royal navy….patrolling the inner “frontier” systems while her crew (which was mostly inexperienced recruits or washouts that couldn’t cut it on an SD) ran the standard anti-smuggler and anti-piracy duties that were normally assigned to the new Federal Space Security Division.

Commander John Dexter, her current CO thought of it as a disgrace for spacers in the Royal Navy to be babysitting the inner frontiers while the real warships and their crews fought for the very survival of the Empire. But he was an officer in his Majesty’s navy and though he was young for his rank (only twenty-two standard years) he was an exceptional officer who ran his ship and his crew as if he were on the most important mission in the entire Empire.
It had been two months since 303 which Dexter and the crew had unofficially named “Forlorn” had left Neurenburg naval base on Dexter’s second cruise in command; and so far it had been the standard run of the mill boredom as the old warhorse which had once served on the fighting lines of battle fleets did her bit for Praetor and Country.

Tellus 1st:

Commander Dexter sat in the small command center of Forlorn sipping a cup of naval coffee, slowly chewing the jelled mix that had started to form as the “coffee” cooled….though the rest of the crew thought he was nuts John genuinely liked the taste of the jell better then the coffee it’s self so he’d heat up a big mug and let it cool after a few hours and chew the little chunks of mix as they formed and floated in the remaining water, it was part of his daily routine and after a few months even his bridge crew got used to it. But today he had honestly forgotten all about his coffee as he read reports that his section leaders had turned in earlier that morning.
“You look worried sir?” Lieutenant Commander Harriman’s voice surprised Dexter who swallowed a chunk of jelled coffee hard as he almost tossed the flexi pad with the reports on it across the bridge.
“Damn it Alex I told you to stop doing that….one of these days you’ll give me a heart attack.” Dexter glared even as the impish grin he rarely shared with anyone but friends came involuntarily across his lips.
“Well skipper if ye’ e’er do have a heart attack I’ll be sure to call a medical team for ye’……o’ c’urse that’d be after I assumed command o’ this old rust bucket.” Harriman said returning his Captain’s grin.
Harriman was nearly three time’s Dexter’s age and had joined the navy back when ships like the Forlorn had still been the queens of space; and though he was a gruff fowl mouthed old spacer that could make most snot noses cringe in fear without even raising his voice; Harriman was a good officer and had taken an almost instant liking to his new Commander; especially since like Harriman himself Dexter had risen from the ranks of the enlisted to become an Officer.
“Hell if I’d leave an vacuum eater like you in command Alex you’d probably end up blowing up a planet or something….and how would that make me look?” Dexter said as he placed the flexi aside with an exaggerated gesture.
“Aye, with my damned lot o’ luck I’d probably do just that sir’ but seriously ye’ do look a mite bothered and befuddled skip….if ye’ don’ mind me sayin’ so o’ course.” Harriman’s drawling voice had turned more serious as his commander’s grin faded into a grimace.
“I don’t mind you saying so Lieutenant Commander, these reports are depressing…..this ship was once a ship of the line! A warship in his Majesty’s service with the best crew and equipment, but now……” he shrugged and looked to the “sky”.
“Ah so that’s it is it sir? Well most of this crew is green, and granted ol’ Forlorn is not what she used to be but this old warhorse has some fight in her still, and she’ll surprise ye if she gets the chance.” Harriman patted the arm of his chair as if he were petting a beloved old hunting dog and Dexter couldn’t help but feel a little guilty that he could never really bring himself to thinking of Forlorn as anything but an old scrap heap that didn’t deserve the title of “warship” in this day and age but he knew Harriman had served on her not only during the Phong Wars where she survived the disaster that had been the third battle of Fornax but he had served on her ever since staying with all nineteen of her captains until they got promoted and moved onto the “modern navy”.

“Well to tell the truth I’m less worried about the ship then it’s new crew….most of these kids are just out of boot, and OCS and it’s starting to show in our performance…..we’d barely make muster if we were a line ship.” John sighed as he looked at the face of his chief weapons officer who was in fact a seventeen year old girl that had just come out of OCS with the rank of Ensign on her first cruise.
“Aye they’re kids….and they’re green but if you give me another few weeks I’ll kick their green arses all over the decks and leave each of ‘em with a boot stamp the size of a dreadnought until they shape up….or by god I’ll space the lot of ‘em” Harriman’s drawl had gone harsh as he eyed the bridge crew and made sure his voice carried enough for all of them to hear him.
And it was all Dexter could do to keep from smirking when the lovely young ensign at weaps blushed so red he thought she was about to explode.
“Well Sailing Master I think on that note I’m going to go to my quarters….such as they are. And get something to eat…..you have the Com.”
“Aye Sir I ‘ave the com, see ye’ in a few hours.” Harriman said with a mischievous wink that told his Commander to expect some drills over the next few hours that would probably make the crew wish they had gone into battle instead.

Tellus 2nd:
The attack had been a total surprise and had come in the middle of the night, a single pirate ship that was roughly the size of a Federal security Peacekeeper class starship had just appeared out of an asteroid belt and jumped the Forlorn engaging in a brief energy duel before deploying grapnels and boarding the small Icaran warship.

“Marine’s report to deck six I repeat report to deck six, we are being boarded….damage control parties to…..uh….decks five and three.” Ensign Caldwell said nervously as his eyes raced over the incoming reports from his section.
“Gou Shi! Caldwell what section do you want us at down here we don’t see the boarders!” The marine sergeant’s voice barked back.
“Ta ma de! They’re on deck five marines…..fire control get to deck six now.” Caldwell panicked as he tried to organize just what was going on, and was in the middle of panicking when the fire control party on deck five comned the bridge.
“Damn it command this is DC team seven we are under fire and ….” Automatic weapons fire cut off the end of the sentence and Caldwell’s face turned white as he realized what his mistake had done.

“Thank ye’ mister Caldwell yer damn fool SCREW UP just cost me eight member’s of my crew.” Harriman’s voice cut across the bridge like a cold wind silencing the chaos almost instantly as the weight of that simple statement sank in.
“Commander Sir, Reactor one is going critical engineering is trying to lock it down but they don’t think they can.” Ensign Paris said coolly as she looked up from her bridge readouts of the engineering deck.
Harriman turned to face her, his eyes hard enough to stare death himself down “Ensign ye’ know there’s only one thing ta’ be done….so just do it a’ready.” his voice was quiet and cool, unlike it had been only seconds before and the young woman stared back at him frozen for a second as her mind raced.
“Commander there are fifteen engineers in reactor room one if we eject it we kill all of them.” She stared for a moment and when Harriman did not respond she nodded and pressed a series of commands “Reactor one has been jettisoned reactor room has been vented….there is no longer a danger of breach sir.”
“Very well Ensign.” Harriman said simply as he monitored the situation from his command interface calmly even as dozens of voices shouted over the comns, including a dying message from marine fire team three which by the sound of things had just been wiped out.
“Commander! A group of boarders has breached into reactor two….marine fire teams Delta and Vega are engaged.” Caldwell’s voice was over excited for an Icaran Naval officer but at just this moment Harriman did not care because if a group of boarders got to the only remaining reactor and shut it down then Forlorn would lose all of her power and be helpless.
“Got that Ji Nv!” Fire Control officer Ensign Blake shouted as her guns finally struck the raider’s hull instead of its shields; as large debris and atmosphere poured from the open wound another I-Las shot struck the enemy ship tearing off it’ entire portside arsenal as the beam raked it.
“One more hit and she’s mine sir.” Blake said hungrily as she fed target data to the gun crews….just then the entire bridge sank into darkness and a low hum sounded the loss of all power.
After a few seconds of silence the lights came back up and all power was restored, the damage control board went green and all comns went quiet.

“Well great ladies and gentlemen we’re dead….or at least we would be when those pirates decided to send over more boarding parties.” Commander Dexter said as he stepped back onto the bridge; he had been declared a casualty in the opening exchange and had stepped off the bridge to monitor the simulation from the Damage control room instead and his mood had only gotten darker as the simulation went on.
“All department heads are to report to the briefing room in one hour, in the meantime Sailing Master Harriman I would like to speak with you in private.” When Harriman nodded Dexter simply nodded back and turned around, leaving the bridge in silence.

An hour later and the small briefing room was crowded with the various department heads, Ensign Blake, Fire Control; Ensign Caldwell Damage Control; Lieutenant Geer Marines, Lieutenant Elizabeth McClain Navigation, Ensign Walker Astrogation and Ensign Paris Engineering.

“Alright ladies and gentlemen let’s get right down to business, Harriman here will give each of you a review of your departments and their performance during our latest simulation.” Dexter gestured to Harriman who stood up and cleared his throat.

“First off ye’ were all caught with yer pants down and that lad’s and lassies is just plain unforgivable during a deep range patrol, Gawd forbid those’d been real pirates out there tonight instead of a simulation.” Harriman eyed each of the young department heads fiercely letting each word sink into their heads before continuing “My lord Caldwell led EIGHT crewmen into an ambush by pirate boarders because he got his bloody deck layout confused, not only that but he neglected to inform TWO marine fire teams of boarders in their sections leading to those teams being wiped out as well.”
Caldwell went ghost white as the other department heads looked at him, Lieutenant in particular was glaring at him because Geer had been in one of those two fire teams that got ambushed and wiped out.
“I’m sorry sir, I don’t know what happened.” Caldwell managed to choke out even as he nervously played with the buckle on his belt, slowly tracing the Imperial eagle with his thumb.
“I know what happened lad’ Ye’ screwed the pooch because ye’ panicked and that is something we are going to train out of you.” Harriman said more calmly as he saw the anguish in the young man’s face. “Besides your not the only one who screwed up….now Ensign Blake, if I may say so Captain.” He looked at Dexter with a small smile “Performed very well and her targeting data gave our gunnery crews several good shots before the “boarders” In reactor two took out our power.” Harriman nodded at the young woman with the barest hint of a smile on his lips.
“Now on to Navigation…..Miss McClain you unfortunately were declared a casualty shortly after the engagement began so I will not lay too much blame on you, for your performance.” Harriman paused just long enough to let the words your performance hit home. “However your navigation crew did terrible in this simulation, one wou’d think they didn’t know how to perform a bleedin’ evasive maneuver.” Harriman glared at her for a moment longer and to his surprise she simply nodded.
“Yes sir they screwed up and I intend to make sure it never happens again.” Her voice was totally unshaken and her eyes burned with a sureness that impressed the gruff old Spacer; she knew her department had made a mistake and she didn’t try to whitewash it or make excuses she simply accepted it and set herself to the task of correcting it, something most people her age never bothered with.
“Now as for…..” Harriman was about to continue when a voice over the room’s intercom cut him off.
“Captain to the bridge…..Captain to the bridge……we are receiving a class one federal distress signal.” the voice was almost mechanical over the com unit but even then the shock was audible and Harriman and Dexter exchanged brief glances before both rushed for the door.
“Everyone report to your stations now!” Dexter said as he left the briefing room on Harriman’s heels, several of the officers present immediately followed after Dexter as their stations were on the bridge….Lieutenant Geer however raced to get to the marine barracks while Walker went to check up on her engineering crew before reporting to the bridge.

Harriman and Dexter calmly entered the bridge and reported to their stations, even though Dexter felt anything but calm as the dread over receiving a code one federal distress call meant…..it was better known to spacers as a “Banshee call” because it was the last message a ship would ever send before being destroyed or it’s crew killed.
“Alright Ensign Toumas let’s hear it.” Dexter forced his voice to stay calm and casual despite the bile he could feel rising in his throat, after a second the hiss of the bridge com and then a desperate young voice cut through the silence.
“I repeat this is the Federal Security ship Pontus we are being boarded, they came out of nowhere and are overwhelming our security forces, they have already taken the lower decks…….I am declaring distress if anyone can hear me please respond……” The voice belonged to a young man who despite what he had just reported sounded eerily calm.
“Com put us through…..” Dexter waited for a moment until the com officer nodded “This is Commander John Dexter of the LC oh three to Pontus who is attacking you and what is your status?” he already strongly suspected the status of the Federal security ship but it made no sense…..they were in a core system, who could attack a FedSec ship out here?
“LC oh three, we don’t know who’s attacking us it’s an older Sol Coalition battleship that’s been refit……..status is not good they are already working their way to the bridge I hear the gunfire…..the captain and most of the crew are dead, I was ordered to stay here and relay information to anyone I could. Sir they’re not just killing our people they’re doing……horrible things to them.” The young man’s voice cracked for just a moment and Dexter felt his heart ache.
“Alright Pontus what are your coordinates we will be there as soon as possible.” Dexter turned to face Harriman and shook his head slowly.... all the Forlorn could do was get revenge for the FedSec ship because by time they got there it would all be over…..and what made it worse was that poor young man on the other end of the line already knew he was dead.
“Sir I’ve transmitted coordinates……they just set off a demolition charge at the bridge door sir one more and they’ll be through…..please make them pay for killing us sir.” The young man’ sounded more angry then sad and it was a feeling Dexter could understand.
“We’ll get them for you Pontus I swear it.” John Dexter said coldly, and after another second of silence a large explosion on the other end of the comn line sent a shiver up his spine.
“They’re through three oh three……God take our souls!” The sounds of screaming and gunfire were intermingled with a horrible sound that Dexter couldn’t quite place a sound of crunching and tearing…..and then the com went silent.

Seconds passed but it seemed an eternity until Dexter finally spoke again, using every ounce of will he had not to cry “Helm lay in a course for the Pontus last known location.”
Harriman patted his Commander’s arm gently “I hate to hav’ to say it sir but if they cou’d kill a Peacekeeper class starship so easily shou’d we really be engaging ‘em in naught but a light cruiser?” Harriman seemed to want to spit after suggesting that they simply turn around and abandon a fellow Icaran starship. Unfortunately it was true because though it was only a FedSec ship a Peacekeeper had almost twice the firepower of the Forlorn not to mention a much larger ground combat force.
“I know it’s probably not the smartest idea Harriman, and we’ll certainly launch a messenger drone to the nearest naval base but we have to at least try to see if there is anyone to save.” John looked at Alexander Harriman’s eyes and saw a glint of pride in the older man, and couldn’t help but feel somewhat more confident.
“Aye lad we ‘ave to at least try.” Alex Harriman said with a grim smile before turning back to face the screen “Time to intercept?” He barked, his voice back to it’s old give ‘em hell tone.
“Sir ETA eighteen hours, they are at the far edge of the system on the other side of the Herman asteroid belt.” Lieutenant McClain answered her voice still as stony and confident as it had been during the briefing.
“Very good…..pass the word, the marines run anti-boarding drills and have all crewman don armor and side arms.’ John looked at his bridge crew one more time and began to wonder if this would be the end for him and his crew….a crew who had been utterly beaten in a simulation against boarders.

Tellus 3rd:
It had been eighteen hours since the Forlorn had received the distress signal from the Federal Security Peacekeeper Pontus and finally the slow old light cruiser was coming up on the coordinates of the battle that had claimed a Federal security ship and it’s crew.
“Tactical what have we got?” it had been the first time in hours that anyone on the bridge had even spoken and John could almost feel the stir of tension as everyone on the bridge waited to hear from tactical.
“Sir I’m detecting the Pontus on short range sensors now, she’s dead in space as best I can tell…..multiple breaches along the hull that look like they were made by grapnels…..there’s not much air on her sir.” The tactical officer’s voice droned on professionally listing the damages the Pontus had suffered until his voice suddenly raised in surprise “Sir I’ve got life signs, it’s too hard to tell how many or even where they are but I’ve definitely got life signs!”
John Dexter didn’t even wait before slamming his fist down on the com button he had set to Geer’s com earlier “Attention Lieutenant Geer I want a squad marines and a team of Corpsmen to the launch bay in two minutes.” John was optimistic for the first time since he had heard the distress call….life signs meant survivors and that could mean that somehow the Pontus had repelled her attacker in the end.
“Aye sir……I’ve already got Alpha squad and Corpsmen Burke and Riley down in cutter six with your permission we’ll launch right now.” Geer’s voice was toneless as he pretty much admitted over the com that he had violated procedure and had his marines board a cutter. Dexter grinned for just a moment and turned to Harriman to see the old spacer smiling outright.
“Aye sir there’s hope for this crew yet.” Harriman said under his breath before turning his attention back to his tactical plot.
“Very good Lieutenant you have the go ahead…..get over there and bring those survivors back.” Dexter said more seriously before cutting the com circuit “Tactical can you get me a visual yet?” he rotated his chair to face the ship’s main screen as Tactical Officer Cherenkov’s hands raised over the controls.

After a few seconds the screen came to life and the optics began to focus on a huge grey and red object…..a few more seconds passed as the optics zoomed in to reveal what was left of the Peacekeeper class vessel Pontus.
“My God…..she’s been blown to hell.”
“How could anyone survive that?”
“Her entire superstructure been shot off!”
The whispers across the bridge were brought to a quick end as Harriman cleared his throat and leveled a look around the bridge that would have brought down a Spartan Kraken.
“Sir it looks like whoever did this tried to capture her intact but was forced to destroy too much of her for it to be worthwhile…..the grapnel hits are in non critical areas and as best I can tell other then the superstructure being destroyed there is very little actual hull damage.” Cherenkov’s tone remained bland even as the rest of the bridge crew’s nervous whispers had to be quieted.
“Sir marine cutter six has launched and will board the Pontus in under one minute at max acceleration.” Ensign Walker reported from the astrogation section almost offhandedly as his eyes remained fixed on the screen along with the eyes of almost every bridge officer.

A dull thump announced the marine’s breaching a damaged section of hull as their cutter latched onto the outer shell and fired off a breaching charge. Barely five seconds passed before the first fire team marines zip lined down to the deck, weapons at the ready. As the first four marines spread out to give the second fire team room to drop their rifle mounted flashlights shown eerily in the smoke filled darkness of the Pontus corridors
“Alright fire team one you’ve got the upper decks, fire team two your with me Burke your with team one, Riley your with me.” Lieutenant Geer whispered over his helmet com, just in case anyone hostile was here Geer wasn’t about to make a commotion.

As Geer’s fire team got past the wreckage in the corridor where they had first entered the ship the marine on point suddenly stopped short causing the marine behind him to bump into his back.
“Gou shi Henderson what’s wrong with you?” the second marine’s voice hissed over the com line as he recovered from the initial shock of bumping into another fully armored marine.
“Look…” Was all Henderson managed to croak out, hearing the tone in the marine’s voice Geer pushed forward and aimed his rifle’s flashlight at the deck.
Geer stopped up short and felt his stomach wretch, he had seen battle casualties before but the bodies that were laid out in front of him were not simply killed they were mutilated, their guts carved out and their skin flayed….by the look of agony on what was left of one man’s face it looked like the mutilation had happened while some of them were still alive.
“This couldn’t have happened during a firefight…..not even if the ship took a hit…..my God sir someone did this to them….I mean deliberately…..carved them up like meat.” Corpsman Burke’s voice barely registered as Geer raised his rifle and aimed it down the corridor ahead…….more bodies or parts of bodies were strewn about the deck as far as he could see.
“Alright…..enough……we’ve still got survivors on the deck below us and damned if I am going to let them die here when what’s left of this ship’s atmo vents because we couldn’t get a hold of our own nerve…..move out” Geer barked the last two words more to keep himself from vomiting then to sound in charge and as he passed through more of the charnel house that had once been a ship’s deck he found it harder to keep his breakfast down.

As Geer and his marines made their way down to the next deck more horrors awaited them, including female crew members stripped naked and tied to various pieces of debris along the bulkheads their bodies were in a state that would make any Icaran sick but Geer and his marines couldn’t afford that as the air supply was even now running out for whoever it was that managed to survive this massacre. As the marines reached crew quarters they found more bodies with the females being tied to the hatches the marine’s motion detectors began chirping, as the marines got closer the realized it was coming from one of the rooms that had a naked and mutilated woman tied to the hatch.
“Loren, get it open, Horrowitz, Janec provide cover.” Geer raised his rifle toward the corpse strung hatch as Loren advanced and checked for any improvised explosives. After a moment the marine slung his auto rifle and pulled out his combat knife to cut the cords that secured the woman to the hatch.
‘Who the cao could do this sir?” Marine Loren said as he gently cut down the mangled woman’s corpse and laid her aside to get through the door she had been tied too.
“I don’t know Marine but whatever xeno scum did this is going to burn.” Geer said icily as Loren opened the hatch to reveal another group of dead bodies, this time all male who had apparently been dragged in to the quarters after being injured, where they were then tortured and killed.
Loren paused as he approached the head and heard a rustle in a closet; he quickly made a gesture that alerted the other marines to what he was looking at, Geer and Horrowitz took up the flank while Janec was signaled to fall back and protect Burke.
As Loren carefully approached the door he heard a quiet thud and felt his heart begin to race, if it had not been for his training he would have unloaded his weapon into the closet right then and there but he kept his nerves under control and carefully slid the door aside.
A high pitched whine pierced the air as a dart pistol fired square into Loren’s breastplate, knocking the marine back a few inches.
Just as the two men who had been flanking him were about to open fire Loren screamed “NO! She’s one of ours God don’t shoot!” and stepped into the closet, another dart shot rang out and again Loren’s breastplate had a chip of armor fly off before he finally grabbed the pistol and threw it clear of the person inside the closet.
“Get away from me you bastards……get away I’ll kill you!” a young female voice shouted followed by some words even Geer had not heard used before, quickly the two other marines slung their rifles and rushed over to help Loren secure the struggling victim without causing her harm.
After a few seconds of struggle that seemed an eternity the naked writhing figure who’s face none of them had managed to see in the darkness suddenly stopped moving altogether and for a moment Geer felt a sick pang, fearing that she had died in her struggle.
“Burke get your *** over here, she’s hurt!” was all he managed to get out before the corpsman physically moved him out of the way and was kneeling over the nude and battered young woman. For over a minute the corpsman said nothing as he ran scans over her slowly inspecting her for any major injuries he would have to treat there, it was when that he moved the hair that had been caked in blood and blocking her face to place the oxygen mask on her did the true horror of the situation become apparent.
“Oh dear god….she’s a kid…..she couldn’t be older then fourteen” One of the marines….Geer couldn’t quite tell who at that point quickly opened their visor and went to the corner and began vomiting violently as the other two stood with him in numb horror. ”Burke…..what’s her status?” Geer kept his voice battlefield calm even though everything in him was afraid he already knew the answer.
“Sir…..she’s been raped and beaten, as near as I can tell multiple times, she’s got broken ribs and her one lung has a rib gone clear through it, she’s also got internal bleeding in several places…..I think whoever did this to her left her to die slowly on purpose.” Burke gently unhooked the greatcoat from his armor and wrapped it around the young girl before injecting her with a stasis fluid and placing oxygen on her.
“We’ve got to get her back to the ship now sir….” Burke looked up with a fire in his eye that Geer had only ever seen in combat personnel, a fire that cried for blood and revenge but tempered with months of medical training and compassion for the young woman that was lying broken on the floor in front of him.
“Alright Burke, once stasis sets in we’ll get a stretcher and get her out of here…” Geer’s voice was still filled with hatred as he tried to force himself to look away from the young woman that was lying on the floor. Less then four minutes later the marine cutter was on it’s way back to the Forlorn with two survivors, both women and both in the same condition…..a fourteen year old Fed Sec Spacer named Allyson Landry the other survivor was Commodore Liza Adair NavInt which just added new questions like why naval personnel were on a FedSec ship?

What the crew of the Forlorn could not know was that the hardest and most trying fight they’d ever face was only days away for as the marines were bringing the two survivors back to the Icaran light cruiser, she was being stalked by a predator who had already butchered one FedSec Peacekeeper class patrol ship’s crew along with others that the inexperienced crew would only later find out about……

To be Continued

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Nice switch from the frontline "Glory Navy" to the rear echelon "Working Navy". I think Starhawk has correctly portrayed the crew of such a ship: rookies, screw-ups, and pre-retirees.

The young crew members of both ships in Part 1 remind me of the Royal Navy in the age of sail, with its teenage midshipmen and pre-pubescent powder monkeys. However, given the size of the Icaran Empire, the navy's ability to draw on both manpower and womanpower, and the Icaran life span, I doubt the armed forces would need to recruit children. Moreover, the complexity of interstellar craft relative to sailing ships would seem to make an advanced education a prerequisite for service. Finally, adding "jailbait" (of both sexes) to the crew of a man-o-war on extended duty would seem to be a recipe for trouble, no matter how thorough the Icaran indoctrination and crew screening techniques.

As for the "pirate" ship, I was expecting it to strike when the Forlorn's crew was slightly weakened by the departure of its boarding party. I'm curious to see what circumstances the enemy considers even more favorable.

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Hey Hunpecked it's always great to hear from you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I really learn a lot from your critique of my story and it helps me find what i need to correct or go into more depth on.

Yeah I figure that since the "Ships of the Line" of the Icaran Royal navy only engaged in full on battles since you obviously wouldn't dispatch a squadron of your most powerful battleships to capture a few smugglers. There had to be someone to do the "scut work" that had no glory, or "honor" to it, they simply do the ugly job no one wants like stopping smugglers or pirates.

As far as the young crew, Icaran society is not quite like ours in the regards to children in the work force, they are considered adult at 13 and are usually pretty well educated by then (remember the advanced schooling techniques I mentioned way back)additional schooling from that age on is pretty much what we would consider "college" level and higher. They also perform less "tech related" jobs aboard ship while they undergo training, for example they are mess cooks, gun crews, "janitors" that sort of thing. It also depends greatly one which Icaran world they come from.

For example on a world like Sparta it's actually SAFER aboard a navy warship then it is back at home (which is also oddly enough why the bulk of the Spartan soldiers are women) so the naval recruitment age on Sparta is 14. Many worlds are like this as well as it is on some worlds seen as merely a further education, or even a right of passage.

On many core worlds like Icara, Brandenburg and the like the minimum recruitment age would often vary, usually to around 16-17 years old.

As far as "jailbait" goes, well that's hard because as far as being attracted to a 14 year old "child" goes, well I think any adult whether aboard a warship or not would know better then to do something with her/him, remember there are fully adult crewmembers aboard ship it's not like they'd go months with nothing to look at but pre-teen girls/boys.

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Starhawk, thanks for clarifying the Icaran view of adulthood. It's interesting that the advanced educational practices in the story result in a social situation reminiscent of "primitive" Napoleonic Europe, when "children" labored alongside adults in the fields, shops, and armed forces, and often married in their early teens. The lack of automation in Icaran society (explained in an earlier post, as I recall) would tend to provide ample opportunities for inexperienced workers.

However, recent scientific studies suggest that the Icarans may be employing more than just advanced education here. Apparently the part of the human brain affecting judgment, self-control, planning, and organization doesn't fully develop until age 20 or after. If so, it would seem even highly trained teenagers would be at a disadvantage in unfamiliar situations, compared to their older peers.

On the other hand, the Icarans can probably pick and choose the best young recruits (even for the Working Navy), and teenagers tend to live up to what's expected of them. Under a strict merit system, the Icarans can promote the mature teens and defer promotion of the late bloomers. I found it interesting that the youngest crewman mentioned in the story is a female; even in the future, perhaps females still mature earlier than males? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

As for jailbait, if the Icarans only recruit "adults" then the "problem" doesn't exist (presumably the age of majority is also the age of consent). However, the view that all the older "adults" would prefer their own company to that of the younger "adults" seems a bit naive--the novel "Lolita" isn't entirely a work of fiction. As an Icaran ship's captain, I'd tend to keep the cabin boy away from the chaplain, "adult" or not. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

PBS's look at the neuroscience of adolescence:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...ows/teenbrain/

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Yeah I sort of wanted to play on that in a unique way, after all with the science and technology to advance your education at an accelerated rate do you really get to stay a "child" in the eyes of society or are you expected to do what every other adult does and play your part?

Well your not about to see any 16 year old officers and as I said most of the "youths" are in positions of relative unimportance during their training and indoctrination, the ground combat forces only recruit at age 17+ because of physical and mental maturity which is not AS Important when your just a naval gunner or mess cook.
Other then that it is possible they use "artificial" means to develope the brains of the youths I haven't quite decided on this point just yet.

Yeah the navy in particular is picky about their recruits and they have about 700+ billion humans on hundreds of worlds (that are all required to meet recruitment quotas) to chose from.

And heh yeah the reason the youngest crewmembers you'll likely see are female is because (not only in scientific) but in my own personal experience girls mature far faster then boys so they'd rather have mature crewmembers who can be more easily trained and disciplined.

Well I'm not going to get into a debate about pedophiles here as that would just derail this whole storyline but I will say that most people I've met prefer company more their own age then those of people much younger then themselves.

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Hey all long time no post.....just wanted to let you know this story is fAR from dead and that I am right now working on Chapter 2 of the latest "series" involving the HLS 303 (Forlorn).

For personal reasons this story arc means a lOT to me and so I wanted to get it RIGHT so I have been working and reading and re-reading and having others read the still unfinished chapter.

Also from now on the "From the Begining" story will be a little different then it has been, it will get darker grittier and less "child friendly" during mainly battles but also in other 'arcs' that may come in the future.

As far as technology goes I have also been working on making the tech more consistant so that it is easier for your suspension of disbelief


Anyway I hope you all look forward to my story continuing http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

Alone in the Dark pt2
When my candle burns away and the dark of night replaces day,
Stand by my side, I will not fear when deaths’ grim voice at last I hear.
And when the toils of war at last are done; I will rise from dust to greet the dawn.
Death prayer of an Icaran

It had been less then an hour since the “Forlorn” had discovered the Federal Security ship Pontus adrift with only two survivors; both women and both raped and tortured to within an inch of their lives. And it had been less then five minutes since Doctor Mara Goldberg and her corpsman met the marine gunship in the docking bay with a stretcher and full life support kit.
“Make a whole damn it we’ve got wounded!” the doctor shouted as she ran to keep up with the stretchers as two marines pushed them so that her corpsman could get access to the two women and treat their wounds, thanks to modern science their bodies were in stasis and could not get any worse-at the moment at least- but if they were not treated before the stasis wore off then both of these women were likely to die in a matter of minutes.
As the two stretchers raced through the cramped corridors, naval personnel and marines who had not gone over with the boarding party stepped aside, some uttered quick prayers as the two women passed, others began crying, and still others simply looked on numbly unable to believe that anyone or anything was capable of inflicting the kind of needless suffering these women were going through, not to mention the last horrible moments that must have led to the deaths of every other person on the FedSec ship.

********

Meanwhile light years away a small community of independent minded people who had once been citizens of the now defunct Empire of Man were going about the normal work that met fringe colonists especially on tiny outposts like “Independence Bluff”. Several colonies just like it had popped up since the fall of the Empire and the Great War that currently engulfed the two largest human Empires began. These colonies remained independent mainly because Icara could not spare any ships or troops to re-conquer them at the moment,

Mostly farmers a few smithies (not even warranting the term factory by modern standards) and ranchers the 5,000 men, women and children of Indie Bluff as the locals tended to call it were hardly concerned with the galaxy at large, they had barely a scrap of modern technology as far as anyone else would consider it and they were proud of it, mainly because they were descendants of the Amish who had been forcibly removed from Sol during a war centuries ago, and long after what the Icarans called the “Final Sol war”; they were also proud of their lack of tech because as they saw it the rest of the galaxy had gotten to reliant on the stuff, even Icara; the Empire where “automation is the ultimate degradation of man” had tech that would have made their ancestors gape in awe.

It was on this world where Jeremiah Herschel and his family lived, he had always considered himself blessed with a beautiful wife, a daughter now nineteen and a son now seven and his job as a farmer in the community. Indie Bluff was a small world but it was home and he loved it’s long flowing purple grass and it’s thirty foot oak like trees and like many other elders he believed God had picked this world out for the Amish long before man had ever even realized those twinkling lights in the night sky had planets around them let alone that some day man would reach out to those worlds.

Jeremiah was working in the field with the rest of the men from his small town as they did every day but Sunday of the harvest season when a noise the likes of which he had not heard in years drew his attention to the sky, Jeremiah and the other men looked up to see a huge fireball tearing through the sky, the boom they had heard told them that this was no meteor but was under at least partial power because it had triggered it’s descent thrusters which meant a ship.
The men quickly dropped what they were doing and began running back to their village to get the women and children to shelter, Jeremiah felt panic as he thought of Icaran jackboots tramping down his fields and Icaran bayonets pointed at his beautiful family, not only that but he had heard rumors that Icarans conscripted men, women and even Children! into the navy if the ship making orbit had taken casualties in battle. He feared this less for himself then his boy Ezekiel who was a strapping and fit young man who would make a perfect spacer.
As the fireball led into a smoke trail Jeremiah strained his eyes as he tried to catch a glimpse of what kind of ship it was that was heading for his village and his family. If it was a civilian ship then they could hope that it was just an emergency landing and that whoever it was would not betray their position to Icara, if it was a warship in orbit then those could be armored marines coming down even now. As the thought of a warship coming struck him like a hammer Jeremiah ran even faster towards his village; where he now saw the women and children gaping up at the sky, though he did notice that some of the women were even now taking their children to the cellars.
Jeremiah finally reached his home and saw his wife Hilda and his daughter packing food and supplies while his son carried the boxes to the cellar, the Herschel’s unlike most of the other families had a cellar entrance inside their home instead of outside, this made it easier for them to store their supplies in the winter so that they did not have to go outside during the coldest hours to get food and other things. Hilda shot a nervous smile at her husband and waved him off to help his son pack the goods into the cellar while Mina their daughter continued to wrap bread and put it in the last basket.
After the supplies were packed Jeremiah came back to the kitchen and smiled nervously at his wife “Come on Hilda you and Mina go to the cellar now, Ezekiel and I will stay here and find out who they are and what they want, Hans and his wife and daughters are also going to be coming over any minute so you’ll have company in the cellar.” His voice was urgent but stern and if there was one thing in this universe Jeremiah Herschel could be sure of it was that his wife would not disobey him when he told her to stay safe.
“God be with you.” Was all Hilda said as she cried and embraced her husband before Hans and his family showed up, immediately Hilda lead Brenda (Hans wife), Leona (his 9 year old daughter) and Brunhilde (Hans 12 year old daughter) to the cellar.
“So Jeremiah you think that those heretic Icarans have come to our world?” Hans said quietly as the two men calmly took old fashioned sonic rifles out of their carrying cases and each man took his (a sonic rifle won’t kill you but it will sure put the fear of God in you as you feel like your brain is trying to escape your skull).
“I don’t know Hans but I hope it is just some civilian that had to put down for repairs or something, but Icarans have to be the most stubborn people I’ve ever met, and when they decide they want something they take it, all others be damned.” Jeremiah’s voice strained as he turned and saw his son taking his sonic rifle over to the window…..”If they come to take our sons and daughters they’ll have a fight though and let us hope they do not want to kill today.” Jeremiah said in a low voice so that only Hans heard him, the Amish of Indie Bluff did not use the Sustain treatments and so at most lived to be just over a hundred, and Hans and Jeremiah were already in their forties and so neither felt much fear of being taken in a press gang, but their children….they were just perfect.

What seemed like an eternity passed before the hum of an engine and the tramp of heavy boots could be heard, and Jeremiah expected to see an Icaran marine column coming down his streets at any moment instead he saw a single vehicle which reminded him somewhat of an old style earth “truck” but it was much larger and had at least one big gun in its bed, around it was clustered a group of men wearing ragged looking clothes and carrying cruel looking weapons, not all of which were firearms.
Jeremiah had only seen an Icaran once but he knew right away these men were not Icarans, not only were they dressed in shambles but they were short and most of them were black, while most Icarans were tall and either Anglo or Asiatic in appearance, only as they got closer did he notice that their black color was not their skin, at least not on all of them, it was in fact a series of deep wounds that had been filled with dark ink to give them a frightening appearance. Jeremiah did not have time to think further as all hell seemed to break lose at once, he heard in the distance the sound of screaming women and children, and the shouts and hollers of men, followed by noises he had never heard in his life (the sound of battle), sonic rifles whined as the villagers defended their homes, but slug throwers responded quickly the sound of shrieks of agony tore the warm morning air.

Jeremiah and Hans both fired their Sonic rifles at two of the men in the group that had just entered their village, both men went down screaming but to the horror of Jeremiah and Hans alike instead of taking cover or rushing to aid their fallen comrades the other men simply laughed and began firing back; other men in the village opened fire with sonic rifles as well and Jeremiah looked out his window just in time to see two of his neighbors burst into flames as the slugs from these beast-men hit them in the arm or leg. Jeremiah had never seen an inferno round being used and to him it seemed like Satan himself was attacking their small community.

As the fighting went on Jeremiah saw the raiders break away into small teams and begin breaking into houses, Jeremiah saw a young man of about twenty-years dragged from his home by two of the raiders, and then mercilessly chopped into small pieces by primitive looking axe-like weapons, what shocked Jeremiah more then the sheer gore and horror was that the poor boy remained alive for several minutes as the two raiders slowly chopped off limbs and parts of limbs and relished every moment of his pain.
Hans shouted and fired a shot into one of the raiders as he came towards the house he and Jeremiah were taking shelter in, the man went down screaming a horrible bestial short of scream and began flailing on the ground as the effects of the sonic rifle continued to play havoc with his body.
Jeremiah fired at another raider sending the man…..no WOMAN! Into violent seizures and a rather audible and noxious case of diarrhea which seemed only to make her friends even more anxious to get into the fray.
Jeremiah heard a woman’s scream and looked over to his neighbor’s house and saw several raiders go down into the cellar of Betty Holtz after a few seconds he saw a raider carrying what he sickly came to realize was Betty’s head, more shrieks tore the sky as men were ignited by inferno rounds or simply torn apart by blade and bare hands as the raiders kept tearing the village apart.

“Hans I have to find a way to disguise the cellar entrance and protect our families’ can you hold them off for just a few more minutes?” Jeremiah asked in a voice that surprised even himself in it’s calm serenity…..he knew that he would die this day and that God would welcome him home, but he also knew that his family still had hope to live and he would do everything in his power to protect them for as long as God gave him time.
“Go…..God be with you Jeremiah your boy and I will hold them here.” Hans said with a grim set on his face as he saw Ezekiel take another raider down with his sonic rifle…..the problem was of course that sonic rifles did not kill and that those raiders would be fine in a few hours and most likely want revenge. But at least for the next few hours they would not be able to hurt anyone else.

Jeremiah raced out of the kitchen back into the main house and began looking for something….anything that would let him hide the entrance to the cellar that his wife and daughter and the family of his friend were hiding in. And then without even thinking he took a book case and moved it over to where it was a few inches away from the cellar door, he grabbed a rug and placed it over the door before sliding the book case on top of the rug, he just hoped and prayed that these raiders did not like books. He found himself taken aback when he heard himself laughing at the thought of those monsters outside tearing at a bookshelf to get the first copy of the Bible or his wife’s cook books. After a moment of delirious shock Jeremiah came to his senses when he heard the sound of a horrible scream coming from his kitchen. He grabbed a small axe from it’s place on the mantle and ran to the kitchen, sonic rifle in one hand axe in the other, he saw his son taking cover behind a cabinet and took a quick look around and saw his friend Hans laying on the floor, the whole left side of his torso had been blown open by a weapon the likes of which Jeremiah had never seen before.
It was in that moment that the kitchen door broke down and a figure burst through the door only to be dropped by a sonic blast from his son’s rifle, two more raiders came in and while one was brought down by a shot from Jeremiah the other raced for his son, without thinking Jeremiah flung his axe down on the figure as it raced by and as he heard the horrible crunch of blade meeting bone and flesh Jeremiah recoiled, leaving the axe buried in the skull of the raider who fell to the floor in a bloodied heap of gore and dead meat.
Jeremiah never even felt the dart that tore his head off and was mercifully spared the sight of his son being torn apart by vengeful raiders as they carved and mutilated the young boy......before leaving to tear the rest of the house apart.

********
Commander Dexter waited outside of the doors to the light cruiser’s tiny infirmary pacing as he waited for the doctor to come out and inform him of the condition of her patients, it was the first time Dexter could recall ever hearing of a doctor sealing off a ships infirmary, but considering the nature of the two women’s injuries he could certainly understand her reluctance to allow just anyone to stumble into the infirmary at the moment.
“Commander there ye’ are, I brought ye’ coffee.” Harriman’s voice boomed from behind Dexter causing the young Commander to jump a few inches off the deck and whirl around with a grimace on his face.
“Damn it sailing master I’ll have you hung next time.” Dexter said mockingly as he took the cup from the old Sailing master and looked at it, the jell was just starting to float to the top of the brownish water.
“Ah on the charge o’ tryin’ to kill a senior o’icer n’ doubt.” Harriman said with a shrug as he leaned against the wall and waved his hand with a callous indifference.
“Now there’s an idea….they still hang folks for that right?” Dexter said as he chewed a piece of jelled “coffee” mix and stared thoughtfully at the deck for a moment “Alex, who could have killed a Peacekeeper class ship like that and butchered her crew? The mantisorans don’t operate like that and pirates couldn’t kill a ship that big.” Dexter continued to stare at the deck as Harriman took a long slow breath.
“Well sir, if’ the’es any indies out here that could kill a Peacekeeper class, I’d o’ thought NavInt would have hea’d o’ the bastads…..unless it’s someone new.” Harriman paused for a moment before he finished “A new group of damned to hell Xenos.”
“Or humans Alex…..God knows there were people back in our own history who were sadistic Gan ni niang that got off on torture and rape.” Dexter shuddered as he remembered some of his history classes covering Praetor Li and his “appetites” especially toward young boys….until he conveniently died in a tragic accident involving his shuttle exploding..
“Aye……’tis true but to do what was done to that crew, I mean that was either pure enjoyment or pure hatred on their part……to do…that.” Harriman shivered as he remembered starring in numb horror at the camera feed from the marines.
The infirmary door silently opened and a marine guard, wearing the dark green tunic and black trousers of a standard enlisted duty uniform walked through them into the corridor, his face was pale and he almost forgot to salute Commander Dexter before heading off down the corridor at a slightly quickened pace.
A young woman stepped through the same hatch the marine had left open; she was wearing the white tunic of a naval medical officer and had just pulled a mask off with her left hand before saluting Dexter.
“Captain, Sailing Master, both patients are recovering, at least physically, God knows how they will be mentally when I bring them out of their comas.” Doctor Mara Goldberg had been from Jerusalem on the New Bethlehem colony she was tall dark skinned woman with dark hair and had what she liked to call a “very Jewish personality” which Dexter had come to realize meant, stubborn as a mule, often somber, and usually unshakeable, so when he saw her flushed face, and almost wobbling legs he immediately felt his stomach clench.
“How bad is it Dr?” He asked in as calm a voice as he could manage considering the circumstances.
“It’s pretty damn bad sir, the younger one’s got internal damage caused by what I’m guessing to be a bladed weapon that was…..” she paused as she heard Harriman choke down bile.
Naval officers of the modern era would see many a terrible thing, bodies torn and shredded or simply melded with deck plating because of heat, but ironically it was easier to cope with because war was not intentionally “cruel” you did not deliberately inflict pain on your enemy if you could kill them painlessly, and it was oddly impersonal in ship to ship combat, but to see a crew not just killed but tortured was too much even for the old spacer to handle.
“Alright Doc, we get the bloody idea.” Harriman choked out with a grimace before excusing himself and following the marine down the corridor.
“Sorry doc…it’s just hard.” Dexter said apologetically as he reached a hand out and patted the doctor’s shoulder. He had been “lucky” and not seen what had happened to the two women in person, the doctor had not only had to see it but had to try her damndest to fix the shattered bodies something Dexter could never imagine trying himself.
“Aw hell its fine…..anyway Captain if you would like to come in they are both fully clothed now, and I was about to bring the older woman out of her coma.” Goldberg turned toward the open hatch and gestured for the Commander to follow; after a moment he swallowed hard and followed her in.

The infirmary was dimly lit and the older woman was in the bed closest to the hatch, the younger woman was still surrounded by a curtain so no one could see her, Dexter saw a second marine in the room that had apparently had a stronger stomach then the one whom had left; the marine snapped a silent salute which Dexter returned grimly as he walked hesitantly to the unconscious woman’s bedside, the doctor followed him quietly and prepared a hypo injector with a medicine known by laymen as “thaw”. Doctor

Minutes passed before the unconscious woman began to twitch and move uncomfortably as the waking world began to pull at her, the woman’s eyes opened and after a second of shocked silence she screamed, a horrible scream that made Dexter’s blood run cold and his hair stand on end, the scream of someone who has had something beyond all imagining happen to them. She began kicking and throttling against the soft force of a containment field that held her body in place to prevent injury; Doctor Goldberg and one of her corpsmen rushed over to the bedside to calm the violent flailing woman; several minutes passed before the woman finally started to calm down and her senses returned to her.
Dexter stared at the woman for several long minutes, trying to force himself to remember who she was, she looked like someone he should know but he just couldn’t bring her name to his forebrain. Finally as she stropped struggling and relaxed the Doctor set the restraining field to minimal force and laid her hand on the woman’s shoulder.
“It’s alright, your safe.” Goldberg’s voice was soft and sweet but the woman still stared unbelieving and in shock.
“Can you hear me……..do you know who we are?” the woman still stared up blankly her mouth slack her eyes glazed.
Dexter stepped forward and forced his face into a mask of calm “Listen to me soldier…..you will answer me now.....do you know who you are.” His voice somehow kept it’s battlefield composure even as his stomach clenched at the thought of yelling at a woman in such a horrible condition.
Somehow his tone broke through the ice and the woman’s eyes went sharp, at first with fear and then something that looked almost like fear, at last her entire body seemed to relax as she finally seemed to truly be looking around her.
“Actually…..”the woman’s voice was a hoarse whisper and she began coughing almost immediately after she spoke, the young corpsman handed her a packet of water and she drank greedily for several seconds before the young man took the packet away from her to make sure she didn’t make herself sick.
After a moment she looked at Commander Dexter with what could almost be called a smile “Actually…..commander it’s not soldier” she paused and cleared her throat again “It’s Ma’am, I am in fact Rear Admiral Liza Adair.” Her voice croaked again but somehow she managed to keep her composure “Naval intelligence.” She finished the last word with a fierce cough before almost collapsing back onto the bed.
“Oh……damn……I apologize ma’am.” Dexter saluted briefly and all color flushed from his face, which seemed to lighten the battered woman’s mood even further.
“Don’t worry….about it.” She said slowly before falling back to sleep. Goldberg looked at Dexter and nodded to reassure him that she had merely fallen asleep ‘She’ll be fine sir….but she needs some real rest for a few hours.” Goldberg’s tone left no doubt in Dexter’s mind that she was not requesting him to leave but in fact was merely being very polite about telling him to get out.
“Alright doctor…..oh and please do come to dinner tonight with the rest of us in the wardroom.” He managed to smile when she nodded and quickly turned and left the room, his gut still feeling like he’d been kicked by a Spartan Kraken.

Chapter two
An hour later Dexter was sitting alone in the wardroom, it was naval tradition that a Captain usually arrive last but Dexter had wanted some privacy and besides he thought I’ve never stood too much on tradition anyway. He was wearing his standard duty uniform and had asked that all of his senior staff do the same at dinner; he always thought the tradition of full dress at dinner for the senior staff on the same ship was stuffy and for old men and Admirals….neither of which he was.
He let his mind wander for a few minutes as the thought of some shadow in the void of space hunting down and destroying a powerful Icaran starship and butchering its crew began to create a sense of dread in him he had never felt before in his life. As he realized almost for the first time that he was scared he actually smiled….a humorless smile that made his normally attractive face look almost like an old Nazi rebel death’s head. “Son of a *****….I’m scared of a ghost.” He said aloud as he forced the fear from his mind.
Just then the hatch opened and two officers stepped through, wearing the normal crimson red tunic and black trousers of a naval officer’s duty uniform; Ensign Blake in the lead and Ensign Paris following, both men walked in and saluted; Ensign Blake was tall for an average Icaran woman, she was also rather rough looking for someone her age, especially in the modern era of Sustain but she beamed a personality that made others pay attention to her when she spoke, Paris on the other hand was almost her exact opposite, he was short and had it not been for Icaran workout regiments being a required part of school, work and general life he probably would have ended up a fat man, his body was broad as a barrel and his face reminded Dexter a little bit of a pug’s, Paris was also quiet and his personality was almost non-existent but he knew his job and he did it well.
Both young officers took their seats and a moment later two more figures appeared in the door, Ensign Caldwell, his face sickly pale as usual and his nerves so on edge Dexter was surprised the young man didn’t constantly seizure, Caldwell managed a quick shaky salute before almost running to his seat and parking himself silently, Ensign Walker stopped for a moment and stared awkwardly at the display the other officer had just made, Walker was from a naval family, he was tall muscular and by the book, his hair was cropped closer then most spacers kept it, almost marine or army like and his piercing grey eyes conveyed his emotions in a way no one could seem to ignore. He saluted smartly and walked at a leisurely pace to his seat without a second glance at Caldwell.
Lieutenant’s Geer and McClain walked in side by side and Dexter grinned for a split second, he always thought the two would make an interesting couple with interesting kids, Geer was taller then most core world Icarans, and his muscles were clearly visible even through his dark green tunic and black trousers, marines joked that the man could knock out a tank, and anytime Dexter saw the man he almost believed it, Geer was not an attractive man but he wasn’t ugly, and his close cropped hair had a habit of making his pronounced ears look even bigger, but the young marine always had just an overwhelming presence of self confidence and vitality that made the man a virtual walking recruitment holo, his dark green eyes almost matched his tunic and he often joked that his eyes were issued by the marine corps…..marine green. He saluted yet stayed next to McClain, the woman was average height for an Icaran core world woman, and she had long brown hair tied tight in a style that many naval women preferred, her posture and expression was pure confidence and professionalism as she walked into the room, but Dexter also couldn’t help but notice that she always seemed to have this glint in her eye that reminded him of a schoolgirl who looked like she would pull a prank on you in a heartbeat if she ever got the chance. And Dexter couldn’t help but take note as the two officers took seats next to each other.
Sailing Master Harriman came in several seconds later, still buttoning his tunic and looking rather sheepish before saluting and taking his seat at the opposite end of the table from the Captain. Doctor Goldberg walked in silently, her white tunic and trousers standing out amidst the dark colors of the “armed service” officers. She smiled politely and took her seat with no sign of embarrassment on her face over being late.
This was their first formal dinner with this crew since launch as he had kept the crew to too strict a schedule over the past weeks for any sort of formal activities and Dexter couldn’t quite figure out how to start up a conversation.
“Good evening ladies and gentlemen.” Dexter said quietly, the other officers nodded back at him and he felt a little twist of irony that he faced battle with less anxiety then a dinner. After a few moments of awkward silence a line of mess staff came in with trays laden with food and drinks, including a bottle of Leosian brandy that Dexter suspected Harriman brought aboard.
After the plates were set and the glasses filled with wine Dexter made a brief toast and took a sip of his wine, he hated wine but because he was in front of his officers he forced him self not to make any nasty faces as the horrible flavor and aftertaste played out on his taste buds.
“Well I suppose we should get to the point, there’s a hunter out there and she killed one of our ships…..and butchered the crew.” Dexter paused and let the statement sink in for a moment “And I intend to hunt her down and kill her.” The room was suddenly filled with a sense of heaviness in the air, as if everyone wanted to protest right then and there but through sheer force of discipline were holding their tongues.
“Sir…..is that wise?” It was Blake’s voice, soft yet confident and unyielding even though if Dexter were the type he could ruin her career just for questioning him.
“Maybe not but we are going to do it anyway by time a capital ship arrived God knows how many more people would suffer…what I intend to find out Ensign, I want you all to give me your opinions on your departments…..are they ready for battle?” Dexter said flatly as he looked around the room at his officers.
“My gunners can handle it sir.” Blake said without even hesitating, she didn’t even flinch when the other officers stared at her for a second.
“My marines are……well marine’s sir; we’re always ready for a fight.” Geer grinned boyishly at Blake before turning a solemn face to his captain.
“My……uh….well my damage control parties sir, that is to say we could use…..some more practice I think…..I mean I believe sir.” Caldwell said shakily.

Dexter glowered at the young man for a moment as did just about everyone else in the room besides Goldberg who simply shrugged and Paris who was totally oblivious to the social nuances at play.
“Well mister Caldwell I guess after dinner you should get your DC crews together and get them into shape now shouldn’t you?” Dexter said icily as he glanced at Harriman, the old spacer nodded almost imperceptibly letting Dexter know he would help kick Caldwells DC teams into shape.
“Alright, what about the rest of you can your departments handle battle?” Dexter watched the other officers in the room nod, no one spoke for a moment because everyone besides Paris seemed to notice just how big a boot stamp Caldwell would have on his posterior the next morning.

After an hour of serious discussion regarding the departments and their capabilities the dinner finally relaxed into a more casual and friendly meal between fellow officers, not just senior and subordinate officers. Geer even led the officers in singing an old “sea shanty’ about a sailor named Jack; after dinner broke up and the officers went back to their various duties, Dexter, Harriman, Geer and Goldberg remained in their places for.
“So, seriously how crazy am I for considering this Alex/” Dexter said with a grin as he looked at the three senior officers in his crew.
“Well, sir’ they ha’e a big advantage ov’r us in terms o’ tonnage an’ mass, if they actually are a battleship like that poor spacer on the Pontus said.” Harriman shrugged as he continued to ponder his answer.
“Do you think he was mistaken sir?” Geer said in the same unperturbed tone he always seemed to have.
“I’m not sayin’ he’s mistaken, just that it’s possible, not to criticize FedSec: space but it’s a new branch of a new security force, they still ha’e a lot of green people who may na’ know what’s really shooting at them when stuff starts exploding.” Harriman turned back to face Dexter, who had by now steepled his fingers under his chin as he thought the situation over.
“New or not FedSec:space technically has jurisdiction with law enforcement in the provinces since their creation, just like FedSec:ground has authority over the army and marines in matters of internal law enforcement.” Dexter spoke to no one in particular as he brought up the only argument that would allow them to save face if they withdrew from the region and allowed the pirate to continue it’s raids and massacres until a full navy or FedSec:space task force arrived to deal with it.
“Aye, but there are at least a dozen independent colonies, and about a hundred merchantmen prowling this region, not to mention five Icaran worlds within striking distance of here…..if we wait for reinforcements thousands of lives could be lost….or more” Harriman said grimly as he took a sip of brandy.

“I know, but Blake was right, it’s a damn battleship maybe bigger, and it destroyed a FedSec:space enforcement vessel larger, and better armed then we are, with a large FedSec:ground detachment aboard.” Dexter allowed his private fears to be known only among these four officers, to the rest of the crew he would always be the gung ho superman that he portrayed himself as; of course that “act” was only partially false, because Dexter had always been self confident and brazen, which is why he was blessed and cursed with the rank of Commander at such a young age.
“Sir…again not to insult those FedSec troops but FedSec:ground are peacekeepers, designed for limited engagements with primitive militaries or rioters not armored combatants skilled in infantry warfare. My marines could have probably neutralized the FedSec:ground detachment aboard Pontus with minimal losses.” Geer frowned as the thought of his marines being butchered like the FedSec crew on Pontus.
“Granted Lieutenant but we can’t be sure of that, and there’s another point I haven’t brought up, one of the survivors is Rear Admiral Liza Adair, NavInt which just brings up a whole load of new questions.” Dexter looked around, only the Doctor and he had known the identity of the older woman, the rest of the crew thought she had just been a Naval training officer. The Marine Lieutenant looked shocked for the briefest of moments before his face returned to the confident mask of steel it always was, Harriman just squinted thoughtfully.
“Well I am not a combat officer, but if I’m not mistaken NavInt having one of its highest ranking officers out in the frontier suggests something very big going on, so why did they not dispatch an entire FedSec:space and ground combined task force; why only one ship?” Goldberg crossed her arms and looked at the combat officers quizzically.

“Or a whole damned naval squadron, nothing says “peacekeeping” like a squadron of super dreadnoughts that can wipe out your solar system.” Harriman continued to glare at the table as if he could make it answer his questions.
“Only one way to find out ladies and gentlemen and that is to speak to Admiral Adair when she awakes; which reminds me doctor what is the progress on your patients?” Dexter had unbuttoned his tunic as soon as the other officers had left and now he played with one of the buttons; nervously awaiting the doctor’s answer.
“As you know sir rape is a rare crime in the Empire, not only is our culture totally geared against such actions but it’s impossible to get away with it now a days with DNA and RNA identifiers……so we are not exactly equipped to deal with such atrocities on an average medical basis.” She frowned thoughtfully “Fortunately, both of them have recovered physically, mentally on the other hand….Adair seems to be far stronger mentally and has already begun to force herself to recover with what little help I can offer, the young woman who Adair identified as FedSec:space spacer Allyson Landry, age fourteen.” Goldberg paused again as she heard the marine across from her gasp, he hadn’t realized just how young the girl was.
“Please continue doctor.” Dexter assured her as he poured another glass of brandy.
“She seems to be far more withdrawn and broken mentally, I’ve tried to help her but whenever someone touches her it gets ugly, she bit Corpsman Bran when she first woke up and realized that Bran was bathing her.” The doctor’s frown only deepened “Bran’ll be fine we already re-grew her right index finger and healed the skin and nerve damage, but Landry is a whole different story and I can’t figure out how to help her.” Doctor Goldberg sagged for the first time that Dexter could remember and he realized that it was getting late and everyone needed to rest or get about their duties, and he needed to get to bed before the alcohol he had consumed sank in.
“Alright doctor, do your best as always, Geer I want you to start your marines on counter boarding practice and CQB drills with the rest of the crew starting tomorrow morning, if they try to board us I want my naval crew able to at least put up some fight without burdening your marines.” Dexter noticed his voice had gotten somewhat sluggish and hurried his final orders and good nights before leaving the wardroom and heading to his quarters to sleep off the two glasses of brandy he had drunk cursing himself for not developing a “navy man’s tolerance” to alcohol and worrying over the next few days.

To be continued:

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

kick! sorry my first chapter posting in 4 months I want it to be at the top for a little bit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Or are you guys getting tired of my characters and stories http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Oh and if your reading this wonder WTF is the story? it's on the bottom of the previous page http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif (previous means prior or just before this one just in case you didn't know).

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

The story has taken an interesting twist. The "pirates" remind me of the Reavers in the Firefly TV series.

Re: From the Begining New Chapter Added (9/8/05)
 

2445.7 The growing darkness
“In dark times sometimes dark deeds are necessary for the salvation of all.”
Praetanii Elizabeth I just before a nuclear bomb detonated over Berlin and ended the Nazi Rebellion.

Admiral William Jefferson Ross was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes as his cutter began the twenty minute flight from his flagship to the Imperial Palace on New Icara; the summons had come at 0430 ship time when four Praetor’s Own guardsmen came aboard with an Imperial messenger. Ross had been woken up allowed only enough time to dress in full dress mess uniform, alert Commodore Fujita to meet him in the boat bay and get aboard the cutter that had taken the Praetorians and the Messenger to collect him.
Needless to say Ross was confused as to what could be so important that the Praetor would send four of his personal bodyguards-who could kill the entire 5,000 marine detachment aboard Ross’ own flagship-and an Imperial messenger to summon him and his second in command at such an early hour.
The Imperial messenger and the Praetorians came with Ross and Fujita for the fifteen minute flight and made Ross even more uncomfortable since none of the five Imperial representatives had said anything since the messenger passed the summons to Ross.
As the cutter passed over the Imperial capital Ross noticed absent mindedly that the cutter’s targeting alert was already sounding as dozens of weapons emplacements sighted on the small craft and at least two squadrons of Atmospheric fighters began scanning them.

Far below Ross finally saw the Imperial palace, the bright “sunlight” of the artificial morning gleaming off of the white stone buildings that made up the palace, acre upon acre of administrative buildings, barracks, apartments, vehicle parks, gardens, pools, a small lake, and landing strips were visible from altitude but it was not these that truly caught Ross’ attention it was the massive domed building at the center of all this, gleaming golden domes and spires of the palace its self shown brightly in the light of morning. In the midst of all these buildings the Icaran Admiral could just barely make out thousands of people moving about their daily business, also visible were thousands of red and gold clad figures, the soldiers of the Praetorian regiment, also visible were several APCs and tanks moving along the streets or keeping the perimeter secured. Ross could hardly believe the amount of firepower that was visible from this altitude; as he turned to Rukia to comment on this fact Ross tensed as the cutter made a sudden sharp descent toward the nearest landing strip.

Once the cutter touched down the Imperial messenger smiled –more a wicked grin then a smile- and gestured that Ross and Fujita should follow him and the Praetorians through the hatch. Once outside the cutter Ross noticed for the first time that several other cutters had touched down, each with Admirals, Generals, Commodores, Colonels and Praetorians stepping off of them. He didn’t know why they would call together what appeared to be the entire Flag-staff of the mobile forces to the Imperial Palace rather then the thousand click plus military base on the other side of the sphereworld.

“What’s going on Messenger?” Ross asked in as commanding a tone as he could manage through his tired confusion.
“The mobile forces commanders are being called together Admiral, that’s all I have been permitted to tell you.” The messenger said, completely unflustered by the way the Admiral was talking to him.
Ross turned to Fujita who simply shrugged and went to join the small cluster of staff officers that was forming between the cutters. After a moment of pure irritation William couldn’t help but grin, he mimicked Rukia’s shrug and walked over to join the other staff officers.

Several minutes passed before a small fleet of ground effect cars carried the gathered flag officers to a small corner of the palace which was surrounded by at least five companies of Praetorians with a tank platoon mobilized at the outer most perimeter. As the ground effect cars approached the building a massive door silently slid open allowing the cars to enter, inside what had appeared on the outside to be a small building there was actually a small roadway leading down deep beneath the surface of the sphereworld. A vast dome complex of hardened blastcrete and battle steel waited at the other end of the road and Ross for the first time in his life suddenly felt quite claustrophobic as the tunnel that surrounded the road way went from the transparent lidrium walls to the darkness of a blastcrete tube.

Not much was said on the short drive but once the car came to a halt and the doors opened to let William and Rukia out the Admiral stretched in the almost perfect “sunlight” and took in a deep breath finally feeling the claustrophobia beginning to pass.
Rukia gently nudged the Admiral with her elbow and smirked at his quizzical look.
“Look around sir……doesn’t it look familiar?” Her voice held a mixture of amusement and awe as she looked around her.
“Damn, it’s a battlemoon’s boat bay, except with artificial sunlight generators.” Ross noticed that the other officers in the vast “cave” of the battlemoon class boat bay were looking around in equal awe, any spacer knew that a ship’s light gave off only enough sun like qualities to keep a human healthy beyond that ship’s lights were dim and clearly artificial; sunlight generators on the other hand were massively expensive and only ever used on colony ships and some passenger liners, the presence of these generators suggested at the very least that they were not on an official naval battlemoon.

The Praetorians led the officers through the boat bay to the lift and finally to a huge room patterned exactly after the briefing room of one of the new Valiant Warrior class battlemoons that were still under construction. The officers took their seats and waited, a few muttering to one another others quiet.

Even as Ross took his seat he looked around for Lin, he had been seeing a lot more of her lately then he was used to, which he found to be the only good thing about the whole battle strength of the Navy being pulled back to home system, they had spent a few days with one another here and there over the past few months, she had been given command of Third fleet though so much of her time was spent scraping together a new command team for the massive “purifier class” fleet that she had been given.

Ross had been both happy and anxious over Lin’s new assignment, happy in that she was finally getting a line command which was something she had wanted for years, though it was an honor to command Home Fleet most “fighting admirals” like Lin wanted to get into action that you otherwise would hopefully avoid in command of the Home Fleet.
Even while he was overjoyed about her being given the command of her dreams he was terrified because commanding a line fleet meant going into battle against real enemies that would be trying to kill her…..something William found himself trying to forget as he saw Lin step into the briefing room with two of her aides, a Commodore Lia Tarmen and Commodore Gerald Patrick McDoogan whom she usually referred to as “Macky” when she and William were alone.

Chapter Two:

Five minutes had passed and still there was no word of what was going on, William turned from watching Lin to glance at Rukia and just as he was about to comment on the oddness of it all the light in the room dimmed and a commanding voice rang out “All rise!” a second passed where the room was in shock but slowly they all rose and stood at parade ground attention.
A door slid open silently and six massive figures stepped through and formed two lines on either side of the door, their distinctive gold and red power armor and long multi-purpose rifles showing them to be Praetorians, each one’s armor, weapons and training as expensive as an old frigate like the original Saber.
An instant later another figure came through the door, he was a tall man and powerfully built even for an Icaran, he wore a magnificent uniform similar to that worn by naval flag officers, except for its golden lace and braids, among other features that made it stand out as expensive, one such feature less noticeable unless you knew what to look for was a void shield generator in the belt and impact armor built into the tunic.
“My God it’s him….” Someone whispered a little louder then they meant to, it took William and most of the others a moment to register what was going on but once they did the entire gathered group of officers snapped salutes, and bowed at the waist. It was the first time most of them were seeing the Praetor himself, the ruler of the 700 plus billion humans of the Icaran Empire.

Praetor Rodric had grown from a shy yet confident young man to a mature, charismatic and brilliant leader in his decades of service as Praetor since his father’s tragic death when treachery destroyed the whole star system that he was touring. Rodric the second had in fact become the new shining hero of the Icaran Empire, revered and respected by almost everyone, he brought peace within the Empire’s core worlds, he was reorganizing the Federal Security forces to deal with the fringe worlds that even now rioted against the beacon of civilization and culture. Under Praetor Rodric the second the Empire had grown farther and faster then his father or any other Praetor in history could ever have imagined and because of this and his numerous other accomplishments Praetor Rodric was perhaps the most important single person in the galaxy.

“Ladies and gentlemen” Rodric spoke softly but confidently his voice a deep rumble of command, and his eyes deep and bright with thought. When he spoke the entire room fell so silent it was as if you could hear the very breath of a grasshopper.
“I have been lax in my duties of meeting with you all of late, in fact for far too long I have been a distant observer of the military, a voice hidden behind a curtain, I want to change that.” He made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the whole room “I want to be a Praetor who shows my respect for the military, not just a man who uses it as a tool when it suites him……that is why I have summoned you all here today so that I personally may brief you on perhaps the single largest threat posed to our Empire today.” Rodric paused again and tabbed a control on his wrist, the lights dimmed and a massive hologram materialized above the gathered crowd of Naval, Army, Marine, and FedSec officers. The hologram was of a world that looked much like any other barren dust ball with no atmosphere, dust storms visible from high atmosphere pocked the surface as did craters, and dried up rivers and oceans. For a moment the audience sat silently, many Officers trying to guess at which world this was.
“Ladies and gentlemen this is a world the Bureau of Stellar Mapping has designated CX 552, it is totally uninhabitable but it is in fact one of the most important worlds that has come to our attention these past few months.” Rodric’s tone was grim and William felt himself sit just a bit further on the edge of his seat then could be considered “proper” for a fleet officer, but the amount of concern in his Praetor’s voice made the Admiral uneasy to say the least.

The hologram shifted a little bit as if the camera taking the image was in motion, which in fact it was as Rodric continued to explain “The image you are seeing is from the FedSec:space Peacekeeper class ship Shimata Kieko, she was sent with two full companies of FedSec:ground troopers to investigate and neutralize a reported Terran Cult that was hiding in the wasted ruins of this world.” Rodric paused the holo for a moment and turned to the assembled audience again “That’s right people the Cult that worships the so called “goddess terra” is very much alive, unfortunately it seems that Admiral Yu Lin Ross was deceived when she eliminated the one sect, not her fault obviously the priest that fooled her fooled us all.” Rodric made a dismissive gesture as if it was something not worth mentioning again “Unfortunately however he appears not to have been the leader of the cult, or for that matter even the leader of the cult on that world…..Admiral Yu executed the real leader while he disguised himself as a mere underling.” The Praetor continued to stand perfectly straight and confident as he had since the beginning of the briefing but the look in his eyes showed some slight anxiety.

“I dispatched the Shimata to this world with two full companies of FedSec:ground troopers, fully expecting to capture or kill the three thousand some odd cultists our earlier probes had discovered in hiding. Unfortunately what happened was quite different then what I had planned, and I am ashamed to say I may have placed further worlds in danger through my actions.” There was a general murmur of disbelief and denial that it was the Praetor’s fault but he raised his hands for silence and continued in the same level tone “It is my fault and there is no point denying it…..so please let me continue.” His hands went from a gesture commanding silence to an almost prayerful position in front of him as he tapped some controls on his wrist and the holo began moving again, this time with Audio.

“This is FNS Shimata Kieko on approach to target world CX 552 Captain Liam Grayson commanding FedSec:space element.” The voice off screen was higher pitched then William would have expected from a commanding officer of any armed spacecraft but the tone conveyed enough of the man’s confidence and competence that Ross couldn’t help but feel a little guilty at his brief moment of amusement at the man’s voice.
“We are preparing to drop Companies 112 and 503 in five minutes and take stationary orbit to prevent any private ships from escaping, intent is to board or destroy said ships.” Captain Grayson was obviously intending to make sure that Command knew everything he did as Federal Security didn’t have as much leeway as the Navy or Army did when it came to pacifying a world, which meant if he had to rain fire on that world he’d better damn well prove he had to or else his career would come to a screaming halt.

Once the dropships deployed the holo switched from a camera aboard the starship to the helmet cam of an officer, the first sight was of blood red dust and sand everywhere for miles in every direction that camera looked.
“This is the view from Colonel Abraham Ben-Judah of the Hebron colony.” Rodric said quietly as the holo continued to play above them. It was obvious enough that the Colonel was riding in a FedSec:ground APC as the turret was just visible underneath him, dozens of FedSec troopers were moving around beside and in front of the APC in a protective formation, their brown impact armor standing out against the blood red sand and dust blowing all around them.
“This is Alpha group to Command we are at the entry point to the Cultist stronghold….its too small for an APC, recommend APC and Infantry perimeter while my team moves in.” the voice was identified as that of Major Thompson in the hologram.
“Alright Major, all units form a perimeter around the sight while Alpha Group moves in.” Colonel Ben-Judah said calmly over the command channel, a moment passed and the APC the Colonel was riding in began moving again just before the screen went black for a second.

As the holo came back to life several FedSec:ground troopers came into sight, this time it was obviously at eye level so the feed was either from Major Thompson or one of the other troopers in his squad.
“Alright Rendowe blow the door, the rest of you…on me.” The Major said as he moved his team back from the barely visible blast door as the trooper called Rendowe placed a demolition charge that would create a shaped explosion nearly half a kiloton in yield.
After Rendowe came back a brilliant flash lit the holo, making everyone in the massive auditorium squint against the flare; the screen cleared quickly and when it did it became a blur of fast movement as Thompson led the twenty troopers of his entry team forward while the other thirty formed a tight perimeter around the entry.
Several minutes of inaction followed as the Major and his troopers cautiously cleared the massive first rooms of the Cult stronghold.
“Alright we’re coming up on an intersection, keep your eyes peeled and your heads down….Sergeant Gear get your…..oh [censored]!” the Major’s voice suddenly went tense as a few barely visible flashes came out of the darkness; a split second later and you could hear the whine and crack as darts slammed into the walls.
“Open fire, take them out!” Major Thompson shouted as he fired his own assault rifle down the dark corridor.
The firefight continued to rise in intensity as the FedSec troopers returned fire on their attackers, it was obvious by the noise alone that the FedSec troopers were dealing with their attackers fairly easily, the Holo just confirmed it as silence suddenly replaced the noise of gunfire. Major Thompson quickly looked over his troopers, one was down in the corner obviously dead and another two were only mildly wounded and were already getting back off the floor and on the line. Their attackers were not so fortunate, armed with civilian light darters that were mostly unable to pierce the full body impact armor of FedSec much less army or marine troops, most of the cultists were torn to shreds by the solid shot darts the FedSec troopers had been using, others lay silent with small clean holes all over their bodies as darts passed through their comrades and lodged in them.
“Alright we’re clear here….move on.” The Major said, still breathing normally and relaxed as he looked over what had to have been at least fifty cultist corpses before moving on.

For the first twenty minutes things had gone well, Alpha group was taking care of what pockets of resistance they came across and the perimeter up top had cleared out two small groups of Cultists who had somehow escaped the main compound. It wasn’t until the Alpha group reached a vast cathedral like room with the statue of a woman holding a globe in her left hand and a spear in her right did things start going badly.
“I think we’re in their center of worship, that’s probably their goddess Terra, I don’t see any life signs in here but stay frosty.” The Major looked around and the Holo moved with the motion of his head, the light from the trooper’s rifles was all that there was in the room and it wasn’t totally a surprise when a scream alerted the Major of a cultist ambush.
How they had hid from life signs detectors was anyone’s guess but seemingly out of nowhere dozens of cultists of all ages came screaming out of their hiding places, some wielding axes and daggers, others darters or their bare hands.
A man wielding a large axe managed to get the drop on a FedSec trooper in front of the Major, fortunately the trooper’s armor was able to prevent a killing blow but the trooper went down heavily, probably with a broken back. The Major fired a quick burst of darts into the big old man, sending him to the floor in a bloody heap.
It was only after a few seconds that the major noticed something else was moving in the room, slowly working its way through the cultists; who seemed to part before it like the old legends of the parting of the red sea. The holo blurred as the Major whirled around and opened fire on the figure, the ear splitting noise of darts ricocheting off armor split the air as the major and several other FedSec troopers opened up on it.
With an almost relaxed gesture the figure raised a long rifle and sprayed several troopers of Alpha group with high velocity darts that tore through their impact armor with terrifying ease shredding the troopers. An instant later the figure activated a thrust pack and leapt high into the air coming down in the midst of a group of FedSec troopers who never even had a chance to turn to face their attacker, it had drawn a monomolecular sword from it’s sheath and cut down the troopers it had landed between, body parts severed with startling ease and the screams of the wounded and dying came with terrifying clarity over the holo, the screaming didn’t last long however as the M-sword sliced through armor and flesh with terrible swiftness.
Only a moment later and the holo went black as the massive figure landed right in front of the Major and made a sweeping gesture with the M-sword probably severing the Major’s head.

The com came to life only a few seconds later as the armored figure attacked the troopers of Alpha group that had formed the perimeter around the main entrance and hundreds of cultists streamed out of hidden hatches around the perimeter attacking troopers and armored vehicles all along the perimeter.
“God we can’t stop him….sir we can’t…..” a scream interrupted the sentence followed by the sound of a heavy darter whining and more screams.
The holo showed the view from the Colonels APC again except this time the red dust and sand came to life with flashes and color and the troopers in front of the APC were firing their rifles into the dust storm and the APC’s own energy cannons were firing into the distance.
One of the troopers in view suddenly went down in a spray of blood and gore as heavy darts tore a hole through the trooper’s torso. There were explosions visible through the dust storm as well as the menacing light in the background that signified heavy energy weapons being fired.
Another APC pulled into view of the Colonel’s firing it’s energy cannons and bringing it’s squad of troopers up to the fight, suddenly out of the dust the massive armored figure appeared, it’s long rifle coming to bare on the second vehicle, an emerald green beam lanced out with an incredible whine and tore a neat hole through one side of the APC and out the other, it took a split second for the vehicle to actually explode and in that split second the armored figure was already amongst the FedSec squad that had just disembarked, it’s M-sword tearing through impact armor and flesh with ease, it’s long rifle now firing heavy darts again, tearing troopers to pieces at such close range.
A rocket tore through the sky and the armored figure reacted with blinding speed firing a burst of explosive shells in the rocket’s path destroying it several meters short.
An instant later the figure aimed its long rifle towards the Colonel’s APC and a flash of green made the holo go dark again.
The holo view switched to close in orbital and it was obvious from the zoomed in image that the FedSec:ground forces were being torn apart, the armored figure was cutting a swathe through the APCs and their guard squads, while the cultists were launching massive human wave attacks at point blank range against the FedSec troopers, some coming out of hatches close enough to troopers to use axes and daggers to batter the FedSec personnel to death.
Shock was on the face of everyone in the room, it was replaced an instant later with sheer terror as the com from the Semata began playing.
“We’ve got a hull breach on deck seven….security reports….we’ve got boarders!” a voice said in shock.
“Get whatever FS:ground troopers we have left down there now, order all personnel to arm and armor themselves to repel boarders…..and find out how the [censored] they got on my ship!?” The Captain was obviously furious, but at least had the presence of mind to switch the holoview to internal security cameras.

The images were startling to say the least, a single armored figure equipped with a long rifle and M-sword being followed by about two dozen cultists were making their way through the corridors, a squad of Fedsec:ground troopers that had met them in the corridor was turned to a cloud of gore and blood as the armored figure fired a violet energy beam through them. Crewmembers and other ground personnel that set up ambushes managed to kill all of the cultists in the first few minutes of battle, but that armored figure simply wouldn’t go down to the darters of any of the fedsec personnel, some brave or foolish souls had actually managed to get close enough that they were forced to try using stun battons….with no effect except getting the trooper sliced apart by the M-sword or simply shattered into blood and pulp by an armored fist.
After barely ten minutes of action the ship’s speakers were blaring the surrender order and the armored figure now began methodically rounding up surrendering crew and taking them to the flight bay, where it proceeded to cuff them and sit them against crates or ships, the last image was that of the Captain being taken to the boat bay, his left arm missing and his right leg obviously broken in multiple places.

As the holo image vanished and the lights came back up Praetor Rodric cleared his throat loud enough to draw attention and silence the few officers that were muttering in shock and disbelief. “Ladies and gentlemen, you probably don’t recognize that powered armor, or the long rifle, unfortunately that is because under my orders NavInt has kept these particular soldiers covered up for morale reasons.” The praetor shrugged and frowned “They are the Mobile Infantry Rangers, the elite shock troops of the Citizen Federation’s ground forces.” The Praetor paused as shocked and sickened officers tried to collect their nerves. “Yes ladies and gentlemen I said Citizen Federation, our supposed allies have secretly sent two of their deadliest soldiers into our Empire to aid the Terran cultists establish military capabilities and fight against us.” The Praetor suddenly looked as if he was staring off into some distant chasm; when he spoke again his tone had changed to a quiet almost penitent shadow of the proud booming voice Icarans were used to hearing from Rodric “It is my fault they have done this, I allowed warp points into the Federation to remain open because I allowed myself to trust these people, all the while it would seem they have been filtering munitions, funds, and now even elite soldiers to insurrectionists that would tear our very empire apart…..our best scientists now tell me the Federation has somehow manipulated the warp in several of our systems, new warp points are forming even now that lead to territories within the Mantisoran United Kingdom, the Neo Star Empire, and the Citizen Federation its self” A general murmur of disbelief ran through the gathered officers, to the Icaran public the warp points to outside of the Empire had been closed, or were now guarded by massive fortresses, no one knew that the Federation had been allowed to enter the Empire, and no one knew where those warp points were….except for Praetor Rodric and a few of his staff members, as well as certain corporations who were trying to get their hands on certain Federation technologies.

“Why do we not simply close these warp points highness….that is when they open?” Admiral Lady Selene Powel, commander of Home Fleet spoke up first, immediately drawing the attention of every eye in the room.

“Good question Admiral Lady, the answer is that the Science Ministry believes that to do so would permanently destroy the connections to warp space within those systems, when I say that the Federation has manipulated the warp I mean they have not simply opened or closed a point within the warp, somehow they are opening a tear within the warp that leads to the systems they have targeted.” Rodric’s voice held no contempt or shock at an underling speaking to him, merely a matter of fact almost lecturing voice.

“Do we know why the Citizen Federation is doing this Highness?” Commandant of the Marines Harris spoke this time, unlike Lady Powel the Marine held no noble titles and so by ancient custom would have been forbidden to speak unless spoken too, but at the moment the sturdy Marine didn’t even flinch as more then one Praetorian Guard glanced his way.

“No, we do not, but we do know how.” Rodric paused a moment, always a fan of theatre he allowed the drama to build for just a second before speaking “The Admiralty and Shadow Daggers have known for some time that the Citizen Federation has set about altering the genetic structure of about a fifth of a percent of their population to allow a dormant genome responsible for telepathic and telekinetic abilities to re-assert its self within the population that carries it, they have been using these people and a set of technologies we don’t fully understand for years to power the weapons systems on their starships…..it would appear they are also manipulating the warp somehow” Rodric grimaced; the Icaran Empire had allowed the genetic therapies responsible for the Sustain treatments and for curing of diseases for over a century, but it was strictly forbidden by Icaran Law, and the faith of the Path to manipulate human genetics for the purposes of “improving” the species., even Sustain had come under fire in the early days because of the fact that it doubled human reflexes and senses, not to mention the centuries of life it added to the average human being; so now to learn of the deliberate creation of mutants by an ally was a bit of a collective shock to the Icaran officers gathered.

“Yes, we have known and done nothing; that is because we were afraid of what we knew would have to do should war come between us and the Federation.” Rodric’s voice fell once again, this time to a mournful tone “They have drawn first blood ladies and gentlemen, I do not relish the order I must give but we have no choice but to retaliate with overwhelming and crushing force and destroy their ability to sustain a fight, and so ladies and gentlemen I will leave this briefing up to Lord Marshall Valerie as this is his plan of operations.” The Praetor stepped aside and the massive screen behind him came to life, the man on the screen wore a uniform that was a mix of styles from the Icaran military, including an old fashioned metal breastplate the likes of which hadn’t been worn by soldiers in millennia.
“Lord Marshall, the Count Pacifica, Heir to Lacerta Duke of the Empire Martin Shieldstorm.” A voice intoned; the man on the screen bowed and looked out upon the gathered officers, by all rights he was the highest military authority within the Empire besides the Praetor himself, this man could order the Grand Admiral to lick his boot if he was so inclined and to see him giving a briefing meant something major was going to happen.
“Admirals, Generals, Soldiers of Icara through various intelligence sources we now know that the main staging area and breeding area of these Psychic mutants is the Tammuz-An star system, there are just over two billion psychics in system, two billion potential weapons for our enemies.” Shieldstorm clenched his fist as he continued to speak “It is because they are weapons that I have made the difficult decision to cleanse Tammuz-An……to totally and completely destroy ALL traces of life within that star system and in so doing destroy the Federaton’s psychic population once and for all.”
“My God a cleanse operation against humans?” Admiral Lord DeSoya of the still forming eight fleet said in shock, too stunned to remember to keep his mouth shut.

“No Admiral, not a cleanse against humans but against mutants, dangerous mutants that can invade the mind of a loyal citizen, mutants that can be used to power some of the most powerful weapons in the universe…….mutants that threaten the very survival of this Empire and the billions who live here.” Shieldstorm said ferociously as he stared out over the officers.

“Who is in command of the assualt your Excellency?” William heard Rukia’s voice from beside him but was so busy thinking on the gravity of the situation he wasn’t really paying attention…….until the Lord Marshall gave his answer.

“This operation is going to the 1st Fleet under Admiral Lord William Ross, his loyalty and ability to carry out this mission is unquestioned, and his fleet’s crews are some of the best in the Empire.” The Lord Marshall smiled “With his Majesty’s Permission this briefing is over, I want all of you to return to your units and tell them of this new threat, make them understand that the very survival of the Empire is at stake and that we will never bow to tyranny or threats no matter the cost.” The screen faded and three was only the silent briefing room again.

“Admiral Ross, you will be given more detailed orders in private later today, I will send forty of my best Praetorians on this mission with you, just in case you run into any of those Rangers………and to all of you godspeed and may God forgive us for what we are about to do.” The Praetor saluted the gathered officers, all of whom out of simple muscle memory and reflex also rose and returned their Praetor’s salute.

“My God Rukia, what is this universe coming to.” William whispered as he and Rukia made their way for the exit of the briefing room.
“Well…..it could be worse.” Rukia said with a dry tone, William paused a moment and stared blankly at the young Commodore, trying to figure out how it could possibly worse then the full blown war that was at the most months away.
Rukia simply smiled and kept walking before muttering “Well it could always be worse, you could have to listen to my mother give you a speech about settling down and giving her grand children before you go off to another battle, risking the whole family line and all…” She smiled again and patted William on the shoulder, as the joke dawned and the still baffled Admiral he couldn’t help but smile, he had listened to one such lecture from Rukia’s mother back when he first met her and she was still recovering in the hospital……..the two Officers walked silently down the corridor and William thought with a twinge of guilt that he was almost happy he would be too busy to see Lin before he left, he didn’t want her to see him when he was about to go out and commit mass murder on fellow human beings, mutant or not, war was one thing, the deliberate and methodical destruction of civilian HUMAN lives was another and he didn’t want to his beloved wife to see him again until after he had seen a Priest of the path and been forgiven for the sins he was about to commit on God’s creation.

Re: From the Begining New Chapter Added (9/8/05)
 

Cool stuff!!

Re: From the Begining New Chapter Added (9/8/05)
 

Thanks.....and don't worry I fully intend to continue the adventures of the Forlorn and her crew http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

The Gathering Storm
“Oh what evils man is capable of when he believes he is right, even the greatest of men can drown in the blood of their self righteous slaughters.” Aeiptus circa IY 20 after the fall of Sparta to the Icaran Empire.

Chapter One:

It had taken time to mobilize the first fleet, recall all shore leave, repair and refit the warships as necessary, ensure the ships were in good shape to fight and dozens of other tasks required before a battlefleet can leave for the front lines. Star Admiral Lord William Ross had been very grateful for the months of busy work that the preparations required of him, it allowed him to think about anything but the upcoming mission; he had been a part of purification operations before, but always against Xenos, fowl creatures barely worthy of the term “sentient” but this time he would be a part of the slaughter of over two billion human beings, mutants yes, abominations to God yes but still human.
“Admiral, all commands report ready status.” Commander Evans’ voice jolted William back to the present and he looked around the large command deck of his battlemoon, Commander Evans stood by the comns section and was looking back at his Admiral expectantly.
“Give the word, all commands prepare for warp, when the warpship opens the point, divisions one through five are to take point the rest of the fleet will follow fifteen seconds later.” William folded his hands together and forced himself to keep composure, he wasn’t scared about going to battle, he had been in so many battles and in such smaller and weaker ships then this that the prospect of death in battle had become almost common place….he was more worried about how history would see his people for what they were about to do, he had over 1,340,000 good men and women under his command and he felt sick at the thought of them some day being considered butchers and murders.
“Admiral……” Rukia said softly enough so that only William could hear her “I know what’s got you bothered sir, but don’t beat yourself up over it.” She smiled faintly at her suffering Admiral but he continued to stare at the command screen ahead; watching as the artificial warp point was beginning to form.
“Rukia….Lin and I want children.” William finally said, almost mournfully “How will they look at their father when they hear he murdered billions?” William kept his expression calm and blank out of decades of self discipline but his eyes showed the pain and fear his expression didn’t.
“Sir, they will look at you like any child looks at their father, with love and understanding…..your a good man William….”she paused as if in surprise that she used his first name in “public” “Please don’t let this kill you sir, your too young and have too long to live to keep tormenting yourself.” She laid her hand on his shoulder for the briefest of moments before turning her seat to face the navigation and astrogation section.
“Astrogation what’s the status of the warp point?” She said crisply, trying not to look as if anything was wrong.
“Ma’am warp point will stabilize in five minutes, divisions 1-5 are advancing in wedge formation and the rest of the fleet is tied in and following us.” Captain Bradley, commander of the Astro/Nav section replied in her typical nasal voice that tended to grate on Rukia’s ears.
“Thank you Captain, alright order the two flag monitors to form up with the Crusade and have their SD escorts take up position around them, I want maximum free-fire coverage possible when we get through that warp point.” Rukia as commodore was in the day-to-day command of fleet operations, and the “real” commander of the battlemoon Holy Crusade out of centuries of naval tradition she would give the pre-battle orders to form up the squadrons as best she saw fit as long as the fleet Admiral had no objections or corrections to make, and William and Rukia had gone over formation and tactics planning for the past several weeks so both of them knew exactly how they wanted things to go.
“Rukia……” William spoke softly but this time he seemed to not be as melancholy “Thank you……now do me a favor.” William’s voice seemed to finally marshal its usual crisp confident tone.
“Yes sir?” Rukia said as she turned to face William.
“Don’t tell Lin any of this okay.” He looked around and managed a small hint of a grin.
“Tell her what sir?” Rukia said with a conspiratorial grin and an unashamed wink.

As the warp point finally stabilized the beautiful flash made up of almost unreal colors was visible for over five AU in every direction, and the 1st fleet looked almost angelic for a moment as the sleek super dreadnoughts, bulky flag monitors, and moon sized flagship were bathed in the heavenly light which danced across the silver hulls like an aurora across a pond, it was at that moment the speakers of every ship in the fleet came to life and Priest of the Path Lorn Doggit began to speak in a rumbling bass voice.
“To all the brave soldiers of the Empire in the first fleet, you go now to do dark deeds, as all war is dark but know this, God knows that through darkness can come light, that night always proceeds the dawn and that you his brave children do this out of faith and to protect your fellow man…..and so he will watch over you through these trials as he has watched over the Empire for millennia.” The Priest paused a moment and when he began speaking again every Icaran that was a follower of the path bowed their head, “Divine creator in who’s image we are made, who’s breath gives us life, who’s words give us strength, and who’s love shields the Empire we ask your forgiveness for these brave men and women who are about to go to war and cleanse your universe of a fowl mutation of man.” The Priest then spoke in the ancient language of Icara; the Icaran prayer of absolution was something everyone had heard, especially those in the military but somehow this time it meant more to those listening and some of the soldiers even shed a tear or two as the prayer came to an end.
A moment later Chief Rabbi Abraham Rosenburg spoke a Hebrew prayer and the Jewish members of the fleet, some 10,000 in all bowed their heads and prayed with him, not many Icarans understood Hebrew as Jews made up less then one percent of the Empire and Judaism it’s self had barely been granted legal status when the Empire first absorbed Hebron and New Bethlehem but because of their loyal contributions to the Empire, including the three million Jews that had volunteered for the armed forces or Federal Security the Icaran government had decided to allow the Rabbi’s to pray with their people before battle out of respect.

The prayers ended and the disciplined crews of the Icaran Royal Navy returned to their stations without another word, moments later the first units of the 1st fleet moved through the warp point into the Tammuz-An star system and though they couldn’t know it at the time by this single operation they were plunging Icara into one of the largest bloodiest wars in human history.

Chapter Two

The bizarre thing about warp travel is that while it is instantaneous and has none of the pesky time dilation issues that a conventional FTL drive would impose it does have a strange effect when it comes to distance, when a ship passed through a warp point, whatever speed it entered at it exited at, however the faster a ship entered the further it was “thrown” out of the warp point which had been a big problem before the invention of the GFG as this sudden increase in thrust would turn a crew into chunky bits of goo; it also meant that while blockading a warp point was theoretically possible it was very difficult to do with automated devices such as drones and satellites as computers never seemed to be able to grasp the logic defying properties of a warp jump. For decades this had made warp point battles bloody affairs as both the fleet exiting the warp point and the fleet blockading the warp point would suffer a moment of “jump shock” as both sides computers tried to calculate where the fleet had exited into real space. For decades it had been considered nearly suicidal for a fleet to attempt to break a warp point blockade unless they had far greater numbers or technology on their side, so the Icarans had developed the tactic of sending advance divisions through a warp point several seconds before the main fleet, as the enemy fleet locked onto these advance divisions it would provide the Main fleet with the time to lock on and engage the enemy. This tactic however was often bloody and resulted in severe losses for the advance divisions; with the development of the technology that made opening and closing warp points nearly at will possible the Icarans had gained an extreme tactical edge over their enemies as they could totally bypass a blockade fleet and emerge in an enemy system from a totally unexpected point.
Unfortunately for the Empire the Psykers of the Citizen Federation were somehow able to ‘feel’ changes in the warp space and even before the 1st Fleet had emerged from the warp point which had opened above the Tammuz-An VI colony there were 67 Federal warships waiting for the lead divisions, with dozens more Federal warships moving in from throughout the system.

It was barely five seconds after the main fleet warp jump had been made when Admiral Ross along with several other members of the bridge crew gasped as the battlemoon’s shields deflected the floating wreckage of the HMS Dortmunder which had perished only seconds after it had made the warp jump with the advance divisions.
“Repeat this is Saladin to main fleet, it was an ambush Federal warships and land bases opened up on us before we even recovered from jump shock, enemy fleet is closing………” the comns went dead as a vast green beam from the colony’s surface cut through the Saladin’s midline like a knife through cloth, the beam simply vaporized whatever it hit and in less then a second the three kilometers of battlesteel and 6,000 lives of the HMS Saladin simply ceased to exist as the GFGs malfunctioned and the ship vanished in what looked like a miniature warp point.
The Icaran fleet had lost three super dreadnoughts before anyone even knew what was happening but thanks to the discipline of the Royal navy and the shock to the Federal Forces of seeing a battlemoon up close and personal for the first time the 1st fleet was able to reform it’s lines, and green beams began at last to lance out at Federal warships.
An enemy destroyer squadron that was making a run on the superdreadnought [/i]Able[/i] were the first enemy ships that a battlemoon had fired upon in an actual battle, all three destroyers simply vanished as the huge battlemoon fired it’s secondary batteries, it’s spinal guns had locked onto and utterly destroyed 2 enemy battleships at the same time.

The Icaran fleet’s disciplined fire and superior firepower didn’t even seem to make the Federal Forces pause as they valiantly attacked the Icaran warships on nearly suicidal charges, one enemy superdreadnought after losing it’s main armament to the Icaran Superdreadnought, Majestic accelerated to nearly 1,500 gee’s killing it’s own crew instantly but giving it enough velocity to make it impossible to avoid by any Icaran warship, as the huge enemy ship began baring down on the Majestic the Captain of the severely damaged Nemo made a valiant choice and accelerated her own warship into position where it struck the enemy warship amidships, the two vessels seemed to simply freeze for an instant before explosions slowly began tearing the vast warships hulls apart.
As the battle raged however the sacrifice the Nemo had made to save the Majestic proved in vein as two enemy superdreadnoughts cut the Icaran warship off from its division and traded broadsides with her until her shields and armor finally gave out destroying her with all hands.
The Holy Crusade and it’s flag monitor escorts had continued to slaughter the enemies capital ships while the bulk of the fleet attempted to disable the planetary weapons platforms and destroy whatever Federal ships tried to attack them. In the end Icaran numbers, discipline and gunnery proved too much for the brave soldiers of the Federal Forces who had stood before the Icaran fleet.
“Admiral damage and casualty lists are still coming in, rescue crews are already working to recover escape pods from Starrider and Jackal, there are no escape pods from the Federal Forces sir.” Rukia’s voice was cold and calm as it always seemed to be, but William could tell from her tone that her adrenaline levels were still a little high.
“Target planet is mostly inhospitable sir, only the poles are cool enough for human inhabitants and we detect that both poles have large cities and habitation centers, estimated planetary population is six million.” Commodore Ericka Deville of the 18th SD division had begun giving her report as soon as Rukia had finished hers, the 18th SD division had been the one to finally destroy the planet’s weapon platforms, and took detailed scans of the world as they had.
“Do you want my squadron to bombard the planet sir?” Deville asked quietly with a tone that almost pleaded for William to choose someone else, and of course he could not let himself allow one of his subordinates to do something he would not do.
“No Commodore, this battlemoon will take up position for a polar kill, pull your division back to a blockade position in case they attempt to launch any ships.” William frowned but felt somewhat better when he saw the Commodore visibly relax and heard her unintentionally sigh in relief.
“Sir…..a Polar kill?” Captain Bradley asked from her station, a “polar kill” operation was only a theory that no Imperial warship had ever put into practice as it would totally ruin a planet for inhabitation, not to mention the sheer amount of firepower it would take was mostly beyond the capabilities of anything short of a Battlemoon.
“Yes Captain, now inform all commands.” William snapped, somewhat more harshly then he had intended.
“Aye sir.” Was the simple reply and William noticed that everyone on the bridge seemed to be deliberately avoiding looking in his direction, not out of disgust but out of some odd sense of pseudo-fear.

The battlemoon moved into a position directly above the Planet’s North Pole and turned to aim it’s vast arsenal at the planet’s surface, a single seventy meter diameter spinal gun locked directly onto the center of the colonial city beneath the vast Icaran warship.
“Admiral we are being hailed from enemy colony, they are broadcasting their surrender.” Commander Sho said from his station in Communications.
“Guns, do we have lock?” William said hoarsely.
“Aye…….spinal gun eight locked.” The gunnery Captain replied in an almost whisper.
“Polar kill,…….fire.” William forced himself to sit back down calmly, even though his legs almost collapsed on him.

The single vast spinal gun glowed with full power, a split second later a seventy meter diameter green beam lanced out and almost before you could blink the beam struck the center of the North Polar city, the explosion and fireball that followed would have engulfed North and South America if it had been Terra, but even that devastation only covered the true damage that was being done as the beam continued through the surface of the planet, atomizing the soil, rock, bedrock, and then the very magma within it’s path as it continued to pass through the planet, a minute later the beam emerged in the center of the South Polar city and the explosion while less dramatic then that of the northern pole was enough to totally destroy the city and it’s three million inhabitants…..the beam finally stopped but the damage had been done and parts of the planet began to implode as the planet began caving in on the vast “hole” that had been made by the passage of the beam.
The entire Icaran fleet seemed to fall silent for a moment and Star Admiral William Ross could only manage to utter “God forgive us.” Before he heard Rukia’s calm voice asking for the list of the next targets and for battlegroups to be formed for the operation that would finish the destruction of the rest of the colonies and warships in this system.

Casualties:
6 Million Federation Colonists are killed
HMS Dortmunder (SD) Destroyed (6,100 dead)
HMS Farragot (SD) Destroyed (6,100 dead)
HMS Jackal (DN) Destroyed (5,800 dead)
HMS Saladin (SD) Destroyed (6,100 dead)
HMS Nemo (SD) Destroyed (6,100 dead)
HMS Majestic (SD) Destroyed (6,100 dead)
HMS Starrider (SD) Rendered a hulk (5,000 dead)
Total Icaran losses: 41,300
Total Federation Ships lost: 67

Re: A new Game story (From the begining)
 

shameless bump!

I am continuing this story dang it now that my life has finally seemed to settle down some http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I'm still alive and this story is too so read on!