The Demise
 

I felt like a fictional (i.e. non-game) SEIV story, so here goes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Will be using several mods/universes in one, including stock, Capship, Proportions and the upcoming HWM. In short, a rag-tag collection of sci-fi all related to SEIV in some way. I have no idea how the story will turn out, but I named it "The Demise" as I think (as of this moment) that I'll write about the decline and end of an ancient galactic council or republic or something, or the demise of an ancient race that have been in our galaxy for millenia or longer. Heck, I don't even know if I'll stick with one main character http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif !

edit: Slight change, going to make it a "freestyle" SEIV story. It'll be tied into the SEIV universe, but will also feature other things. For example, destroyed capital ships leave wreckage which you can salvage like in HW2.

Anyway, here goes.



---------------PART ONE: SECRETS AND PERILS---------------

-----CHAPTER ONE: THE ROOKIE-----

Commander Elsee Tamarillho was very proud to assume command of the new, top-of-the-line scrap hauler. "Geez," she thought to herself, "what have I done to deserve this? Insult a fleet CO or something? The least they could have done was give me a few administrative shuttles, or a light defense battery....." The ship, the NKCS Star Asteroid, or the Scrap Vulture as the crew had nicknamed it, had just been completed when Commander Tamarillho had been assigned to its command. Her first orders were simple - "Go to the site of the latest skirmish in the Tangey System, collect as much scrap as you can - preferably from capital ships - then head back to Port Royale." There, at the frontier space port on the colony named "Port Royale" by its inhabitants, the scrap would be unloaded and processed into usable construction materials. The materials thus acquired would be transferred to the nearby Tortuga Yard, where the construction workers needed it to complete the latest patrol/defense warship to be designed by the R&D people.

The Vulture was ready to leave the orbital construction yard for the first time. Tamarillho felt uncomfortable. Sure, she had been on civilian missions before. Sure, she had seen some combat action. She even experienced the terrible sensation of knowing you're about to lose a ship under your command, but this was different. What caused her greatest concern was the fact that her new crew consisted solely of fresh rookies, rejects from the Commonwealth Naval Academies. They had been trained in handling small, fast-maneuvering fighters which reacted virtually instantly. Yes, they had also received some training in the control of slower-maneuvering capital warships, like the Light Dreadnoughts patrolling the Commonwealth-Union border, but flying an old crap hauler like the Vulture would be vastly different. Being about the size of a Light Frigate, it maneuvered like a crippled Assault Dreadnought. On top of that, all of these old ships had their own unique quirks, which could cause a young helmsman like Ensign Durryn to panic at his station.

"Ensign Durryn, take her out," she ordered the fresh young cadet - he seemed to be 18 years old, 19 at best - manning the helm controls.
"Aye aye ma'am, ahead one quarter, point five m-clicks to free space, structural supports holding," the rookie replied.
"Ensign, she's got a slight deviation to the upper right quarter, compensate."
"Yes ma'am, one P extra thrust to lower left."
"Ensign, you're giving it too much power. Cut by one-quarter P."
"Cutting lower left,one quarter P."

As the Vulture left the construction bay, Tamarillho felt nothing but relief. Her helmsman had guided them out without colliding with one of the BSY's structural supports, even though she guided him the whole time, alerting him to deviations and over-thrusting he should have noticed himself. He had performed far beyond her expectations.

"Well, it looks like the life boats'll have to stay moored for a little longer, then," she mumbled to herself.
"Ma'am?" her tactical officer inquired.
"Oh, no, it's nothing." she replied.
Tamarillho had served on many civilian transports, all equipped with light defense batteries. On all ships her comms officer also controlled the batteries, making him Tactical Officer. Even though the unarmed Vulture only had a comms officer, she still called him her Tactical Officer out of force of habit.

***************

As the Vulture approached her first ever warp point, Tamarillho felt she would need to guide her helmsman through the warp procedure as he got their approach angle slightly off. It wasn’t much, but he should have noticed it. If they tried to enter the warp point on this course, their engines would blow up, their cargo hold would rupture and the life support generators would have been sent flying into space. Tamarillho didn't want to die that way. If she died, she didn't want it to be the result of a young recruit's incompetence.

"Ensign, one-Q lower central."
"I'm sorry ma'am?"
"Oh, of course. Divert course one-quarter CC regarding ship's central axis."
"Aye ma'am."

"His "Aye, ma'am," is starting to get on my nerves," she thought to herself as she observed the approaching warp point in the bridge viewscreen. Even though he was a rookie, and needed to learn the more intricate phrases of space maneuvering, he did do his best. Indeed, she saw him correcting for the ship's deviation to the upper right as the event horizon approached.

Then, a bluish blankness enveloped Tamarillho.

***************

Emerging on the other side of the warp point, she needed a second to get back to her senses. Her crew, however, needed more time, as they had not experienced warping as often as she had.

When he regained his senses, which took about ten seconds, her TO reported on the ship's status.
"She's looking good, ma'am. No damage reports. Warp succesful. Transponder bouy indicates Devonshire. We made it."

-----END OF CHAPTER ONE-----

edit: posted revised version

Re: The Demise
 

Is your sense of self-worth so low that you have to beg for approval with passive-aggressive prostrations?

No. Your style of writing is fine. Who can critique style anyway? It's yours, and there's "no accounting for taste." I would say that your efforts here show promise, if it's the "rough draft on a lark" that it appears to be. There are several typos, a bit of phraseology repetition, etc. but hey - that's what rough drafts are for.

Two suggestions:
1.) Print it out on white paper in Times New Roman with double-spaced lines and wide margins. Go over it once and check for spelling errors and punctuation oddities.
2.) If you're writing a passage this short, there is plenty of room for more background character information than you have here. Use the wide margins to make notes. (ie: "Insert 'such'n'such' here" etc.)

I already like Tamarillho; I see her as a young Capt. Janeway. If that's not what you're going for, give us some more info.

My $0.02 since you asked for it,
Turin[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon42.gif[/img]

OH and BTW "thanks a lot" for pimping my underground adventures at the B&G... sheesh...

Re: The Demise
 

It is indeed a sort of "rough draft" as of yet. Will edit it. I only made it this short since I had to shut down the computer when I was pretty much in the middle of the story.

I meant this to be longer, in the sense of "Is my style of writing terrible? Are my characters less interesting than a Redshirt?" etc. but I couldn't really think of anything then, and I had to go anyway.

I like the "young Capt. Janeway" comment, hadn't thought of her that way yet http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif thank you for your advice http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif really appreciate it.

Sorry Turin, but I just wanted to execute a little self-mocking procedure. And btw, there's nothing stopping you from telling yor story at the bar http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The Demise
 

Well, you've not really written enough for us to really comment on your characters, but you've done well with the few hundred words you've used.

I like your style, and I'm extremely glad to see more fanfic breaking away from actual games- so often game-led fanfic ends up as an endless series of dull reports on routine colony ship launches and tech advances, peppered with the odd Weberesque combat description.

Looking forward to more.

Re: The Demise
 

Little background (simply because I like to write background information for my stories http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ):

When Tamarillho ordered her helmsman to take the Vulture out, he replied with "ahead one quarter, point five m-clicks to free space,". This means that the ship accelerated to one quarter of third-degree max speed. Third degree speed is the maximum allowed speed for (civilian) ships near stations, asteroids or planets. Second-degree is for interplanetary space close to planets - up to one sector out, to say it in game terms. First-degree is long-distance interplanetary space. This explains the awful scale of SEIV systems. Third-degree max speed is 5000 kph, second-degree max speed is 150.000 kph, and first-degree is 2.5 million kph.

M-clicks are "micro-clicks". This are, again, third degree clicks. 3-clicks (for short) are 100 km. 2-clicks are 5000 km. 1-clicks are 100.000 km. 3-, 2- and 1-clicks are not directly related to the same degree of speed.

When approaching the warp point, Tamarillho orders her helmsman "Divert course one-quarter CC regarding ship's central axis.". What she said was to divert the ship's cource one-quarter of a Course Counter in "heading 000 bearing negative" to use Trekspeak. Course changes are measured along two circular planes (like the Trek heading and bearing), with each plane divided into 100 CC in both directions. Directly ahead is 0 CC, a "180" is 100 CC. CCs do not work in the same way as degrees; say, a 90-degree turn left is 50 CC left, while a 90-turn right is 50 CC right. Simple, no? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif This standard has been set universally (ok then, galactically) to make maneuvering go more smoothly. Also, this overcame the "cultural" difference between races in this area - you don't want to know how difficult it is to convert Xiati Try'lyin (speak: [trylian], like a single word) to Terran (OK, and Kytheran) degrees.

When the ship enters the WP, Tamarillho "blues out" as it is called in space travel. This is a result from both the gravitonic distortions when they go in, and from her being yanked into a different space-time "plane" - think subspace or hyperspace.

Tamarillho and her crew are from an Empire called the "New Kytheran Commonwealth". The original Kytheran Commonwealth originated from a Terran deep-space colony, founded by a sleeper ship. When the ship landed, the colonists would be declared independent anyway, so their spreading across the galaxy was a logical result.

Perhaps more to explain as the story progresses http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The Demise
 

Ahhh jumping in right in the middle. I also think the freestyling is good.

As for the style, I'm not the best person to ask I think, but it's good for a rough draft.

I'll pass on the Captain Janeway comparison, for I despise her with an unjustified vengance. I'm fully aware it's unjustified but can do nothing about it.

Re: The Demise
 

Who, Tamarillho or Janeway?

And indeed I thought it's be fun starting a story in a middle/late era, with highly developed technology (note the fact that I mentioned Assault Dreadnoughts, which are the third larget ships in Capship, and take a helluva lot of research to acquire) and large empires spanning lots of systems.

Revised "Part One", better? (I didn't modify a lot, as I personally like it this way)

Re: The Demise
 

Janeway. *spit*

Tamarilho has great potential, it'll be interesting to see what happens to her.

Re: The Demise
 

Well, as of yet, I have no idea. I do know something, however; but I won't tell it just yet. Perhaps she'll die in the execution of her mission, perhaps she'll get captured by an enemy ship, perhaps this'll be a story thread about the exciting adventures of an unarmed garbage scow http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif I really have no idea whatsoever.....

Re: The Demise
 

-----CHAPTER TWO: THE FIRST REVELATION-----

As the Vulture set a course for the next warp point, the second in the line of seven warpjumps that had to be made to reach Tangey, the TO said he’d picked up an incoming transmission. A directed transmission.

“Commander we’re receiving a call from “C-Alpha 5 Devonshire” directed specifically at us. Fleet Governor Cho on the line, he wants to speak with you.”
“Business or personal?”
She spotted the helmsman and the nav officer exchanging a look, but decided to ignore it. These were fresh rookies, who probably were all under 20 years of age.
“Business, ma’am. He says he needs to alert you.”
“Very well put him on screen then, it’s impolite to keep a ranking officer on the line for so long!”

The image of the twin suns of Devonshire, small specks of bright light at this distance, the planets invisible, flickered for a moment, then the face of Fleet Governor Yuang Cho appeared onscreen. The senior commanding officer in the Devonshire system, over sixty years of age, with a lifetime of combat action behind him, looked stern and impersonal. Tamarillho flashed on the thought that she heard a rumor that even on his wedding day, Cho looked like a statue or a robot, distant and emotionless. Oh well. He’s earned the right to have that look on his face 36/10. He’s the guy who singlehandedly saved the lives of sixteen million colonists when his ship was crippled. He’s lucky he survived the ramming maneuver.

“Commander Tamarillho, your new…. command,” the slight sarcasm with which Cho said the last word didn’t escape anyone on the bridge, “is going well, I assume? I must say, I had expected to be forced to deploy a recovery unit to get you back to a repair station after you completed your warpjump.”
“Well sir, looks like you were wrong. We’re still in one piece. You don’t even have to refill our supply of lifeboats yet.”
The corners of the FG’s mouth seemed to curl up very slightly, but it could also be a random muscle twitch.
“Now that the….. formalities are behind us, I have news for you.”
“Let me guess….. no new Exeter-class freighter waiting for me?”
“No, sorry to disappoint you. But, I do have something else waiting for you.”
Tamarillho clasped the arms of her seat. It couldn’t be? They were actually giving her command of a warship?
“No, no, Commander. I can see what you’re thinking. No. I’m sorry. But we ARE giving you other….. toys.”
“Like what, Sir?”
“A single squadron of five Wasp-class interceptors, and a heavy combat scout to escort you.”
“Why?”
“We’ve picked up evidence of unknown ship movements around Tangey, possibly enemy. We don’t want to lose you.”

This was the first moment Elsee Tamarillho realized she wasn’t just on a salvage mission, and she had been placed on the Vulture because of her previous commands, not despite them.

“I’m touched by your concern.”
“Not my concern, Central Command’s concern. Not that I don’t care about a promising young Commander, of course.”

Central Command? The central body of Grand Admirals which controlled any and all combat action and war fleet deployment? Now she knew for certain this wasn’t a simple fly-in, salvage, fly-out mission. Now she knew she was in trouble. Potentially BIG trouble.

“You are to proceed to New Carina at one point five max first grade speed.”
“Sir, besides the fact that civilian authorities are going to give me – and you – hell about this, I doubt this thing is even capable of reaching full first-grade max speed, let alone one point five.”
“I believe your helmsman might know the answer.”

Puzzled, Tamarillho looked at Ensign Durryn. He looked as baffled as herself. An 18-year-old Academy reject? What could he possibly do? OK, some of her previous engineers and helmsmen were able to work wonders – she still vividly remembered the day she outmaneuvered a Pirate Faar-Chi-class Hunter with a fully loaded London-class heavy freighter – but this young, inexperienced man – no, boy? He even had some pimples left.

A look of slow realization crept across the young man’s face.

“Ohhh….. Of course….. Setting course for New Carina, one point five max first grade.”

Fleet Governor Cho closed the comms channel. Tamarillho went over to the helm console. She was utterly at a loss for words.

The console in front of her wasn’t a standard-issue Star Hauler-class helm console like she had expected. It looked a little like the helm consoles she had seen on pictures of the bridge of the latest model of Soyuz-class destroyer.

In fact, it looked exactly like a Sojuz-class helm console.

-----END OF CHAPTER TWO-----

Well?

Re: The Demise
 

Nice! I like where it's going!

You have a keen mind for fiction, Young Padawan...

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif~T

Re: The Demise
 

Thank you Turin http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif Part Three coming up soon..... Going to name the chapters from now on I think.....

Re: The Demise
 

-----CHAPTER THREE: HAZARD-----

Ensign Durryn acted quickly. Within seconds, the stunned Tamarillho sensed the ship change course and she felt the familiar slight lurch as the vessel accelerated. She was surprised that the Vulture reacted so quickly. This design was old, and its engines far outdated. The antimatter plasma engines – primitive by today’s standards – provided less than half the thrust a semi-reactionless photon drive, as was currently widely used in the merchant navy, did. Yet, the ship accelerated faster than Tamarillho had expected. Taking into consideration the fact that the ship was slow (or so she thought), she had Durryn take them to the warp point at point five first-grade. She thought she was already pushing the ship’s engine capacities slightly, but as she saw the variable-speed indicator on the helm console display one point five max, she knew she had been wrong. What was going on?

At first she thought she was in command of an old-fashioned garbage scow, but now she realized there was more to the Scrap Vulture than met the eye. First her bridge helm console looked like it was transplanted from the newest destroyer class in the fleet, then the engines turned out to be better even than the current standard in merchant shipping….. There was more, she knew, there had to be more. She knew about the sealed-off corridors in outlying sectors of the ship, but she thought that was because of the fact that there were supposed to be test labs and armories there, and they hadn’t been built at the yard. Now she doubted that.

There was also something strange about the hull….. She did recognize it as the old Star Hauler-class, but it also reminded her of something, of something – she couldn’t remember, the image had been vague, but she had dismissed it as being a result of the curved cockpit screen of her transport shuttle. She didn’t take the opto-digital correctors into account then.

She awoke with a start from her ponderous mood when her TO shouted across the bridge.
“Ma’am! Unknown ship entering the system! It’s headed for New Carina!”
“Run a max-res deep-scan – for as far as your sensors permit – and check it with all known friendly and enemy vessels in the database!”
“Deepscanning….. I’ve got a positive hull recognition,” Tamarillho was surprised, but not too much. She didn’t expect any result this fast, but with the realizations of the past few minutes she thought it’d be logical. “it’s one of our Kent-class combat landers. But, hey, this is strange…..”
“What, Lieutenant?”
“It….. it seems to be equipped with….. no, that can’t be right….. with Tarmalean pulse-cannon turrets. And….. torpedo launchers?”

This wasn’t right. Sure, the Kent combat landers were armed, but that was with point-defense repeaters and light tracker turrets. Not with heavy anti-capital ship turrets, of enemy design no less! And torpedoes?

“Can you get me an ID on her torpedo stock?”
“Already done, ma’am. Four launchers, two tubes per launcher, one magazine per tube. Fifty-torp capacity per mag.”

Fifty torpedoes? Not even the AEGIS Cruisers deployed by Central Command in long-range fire-support duty had magazines that large.

“ID on the torps?”
“Twenty standard high-explosives, twenty long-rangers, ten heavy-duty capship killers per mag.”
“Ensign Durryn, reverse course, now!”
“Aye aye. Reverse course. Brace yourself.”

Tamarillho nearly fell our of her command chair when the ship did a perfect 100 in about half a second. Most Scouts didn’t react that fast. The image of the slightly unusual contours of her hull flashed back again. She could almost grasp it.

“Course looking good, first-grade max back to the ‘point.”
“When we’ve put one thousand clicks between us and that….. thing, change course for C-Alpha 5 Devonshire. Two first-grade max.”
Durryn turned around and looked at her for a second, puzzled. When he turned back, he changed the ship’s course again. Tamarillho remembered to grab a nearby bracer beam just in time. The nav officer didn’t.

“Ensign Terlan, back to your station. And remember the bracer beams next time.” she said on a slightly amused tone. The nav officer flushed a deep red and went back to his station.

Tamarillho’s expression suddenly changed from amusement, to surprise, to wonder, to horror.

She recognized the hull contours.

She was on the bridge of the first top-secret Hunter Assault Craft.

-----END OF CHAPTER THREE-----

Re: The Demise
 

Yeah! Keep it coming!

Re: The Demise
 

Little background again http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Opto-digital correctors are one of the greatest discoveries in interplanetary shuttle travel (or so the inventors say), it incorporates an advanced optical (the "opto-" part) detection grid on the cockpit window. The data thus collected is sent to an optical digital computer (the "digital" part) which corrects for any distortions in the image, then sends the corrected data back to the optical grid, which displays them onto the interior of the cockpit. This is handy as it avoids the outside images being distorted by the curved window (think along the lines of the Enterprise shuttlepods).

This is an obscenely large number of launchers for a ship.

The "standard high explosives" are standard-issue missiles with a medium to large warhead. The "long-rangers" are missiles with the same size, but a smaller warhead. It has an overpowered engine and increased fuel (i.e. drive plasma) supply, giving it a very long range (one hundred fifty first-grade clicks). The "heavy-duty capship killers" are, as the name implies, absurdly large warheads mounted on a short-ranged low-speed engine.

"Bracer beams" are non-structural support beams placed almost everywhere on starships where there existed the chance of people falling over and not being able to grab a wall support in time if the ship made a sudden unexpected movement. Think along the lines of the Voyager's bridge, where there are unusual bars behind Janeway's and Chakotay's chairs. Sorry Phil http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Hunter Assault Craft are the fastest, nastiest little ships in Capship. They can mount 15(!) engines at 1 required for movement. They are 500kT, which makes them too small to be a true singular threat to larger capital warships, but they are very effective scouts and harassment ships. Also, when you can swarm a large capital warship with a rather large group of them, it'll be like a cloud of enraged hornets attacking a man with a stack of fly-swatters. Yes I took that from Schlock Mercenary http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Next info block is gonna contain some background on Tamarillho.

Re: The Demise
 

And a planet/system/ship/brewery named after me..?

Re: The Demise
 

Ahh plot, background and a good story. Combined with the hint of BLAM in the offing and things are looking good!

Re: The Demise
 

The D-SCOFF Module (D-SCOFF stands for "Deep-Space COmms interception Friend or Foe) is a comms interception device deployed on lone satellites and automated stations to intercept friendly and enemy transmissions. Good with you? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Commander Elsee Tamarillho is a 34-year-old merchant navy officer. She is young by merchant navy standards - most people reach Commander rank between the ages of 35 and 40 - yet has commanded freighters since she was 23. She has commanded seven cargo ships to this date, excluding the Vulture which isn't a cargo ship - and never was anyway, since salvage ships weren't considered cargo haulers - which is excessively young. Most people receive their first merchant ship command between 28 and 35. She climbed through the merchant ranks quickly. A week after she joined her first merchant crew - at age 17 - she was promoted from Ensign to Second Lieutenant. This made her the youngest SL ever in recorded Kytheran history, both naval and merchant. She made Lieutenant Commander at 22, and served as a second-in-command on the NKCS Profitable Journey (all Kytheran merchant ships have names like this, it's said to be a lucky charm) before her CO retired a few months later. Then, she received her first command.

She made Commander at age 26, again giving her a mention in the Kytheran history books - well, merchant shipping archives anyway. Her previous crews say she's "an experienced commanding officer, who knows what to do at every turn. She is highly respected on the ship. The crew greatly looks up to her, yet she's not arrogant. She's the last person to shout at a rookie for doing something wrong. She's simply a fantastic person."



Antimatter plasma engines are old-fashioned engines, which rely on a fusion torch-like drive system, yet it uses a mixture of rapidly-fusing plasma and antimatter for thrust, instead of simply plasma. Semi-reactionless photon drives are far more complicated.

They rely on the natural flow of photonic particles to accelerate the ship and to steer it. It does have a semi-secondary photon torch engine, which it mainly uses for acceleration to higher speeds, after which the reactionless drives take over. This is why it's called semi-reactionless.

The reactionless drives rely on photon capturing and direction conduits lining the entire outer hull of the ship. They emit passive quantum fields, essentially "capturing" photons in the field. The photons are then directed to the opposite direction the ship steers - if it's going dead ahead, they're directed backwards, if they're making a 50 left, they're directed to 50 right - which in itself does not provide much thrust, but the special subquantum generators take care of that.

The subquantum generators emit active seeking fields of sub-elemental particles, essentially the particles that existed before the Big Bang as Kytheran astrophysicists have proven. A chain reaction among these particles created the Big Bang. These particles have highly unusual qualities, and are not understood at all. However, they can be used for several things already - among which a rather strange form of quantum manipulation.

Photons are essentially oversized underpowered quantums. The sub-elemental particles "grab" the photon as it's directed by the passive quantum fields. The photon is being held in place. This way, the photons are utterly still and do not move. The quantum fields still push it, however. This force is thus not transferred to the photon but translated into forward motion. That is how semi-reactionless photon drives work at high speeds.



Hope you're still with me after that rant http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The Demise
 

-----CHAPTER FOUR: FIGHT OR FLIGHT-----

Tamarillho sat stunned in her command chair. The realization that she was on the bridge of Central Command’s latest and most top-secret warship almost caused her to faint. Sure, she had wanted to make the jump to the combat navy at some point, but she had wanted to decide for herself when she felt ready. Now, she had no choice. She was commanding possibly the most powerful and dangerous ship in the Commonwealth Navy. There was no resigning now.

A sudden cry from her TO caused her already present fear to deepen.

“NAAH!!!!! Ma’am, that Kent’s coming after us!”
“What…..?”
Her TO looked at the verge of mental breakdown. He was whimpering slightly.
“It’s chasing us….. It’s chasing us…..”
“Come on man, get back to your senses.”
He continued whimpering and slowly turned a rather pale shade of chalk-white.
“No….. No…..”
Tamarillho realized she’d have to check her own small screen to see what was going on.

She felt her face change color to the same shade of white as the TO’s.

The Kent had all of its turrets trained on the fleeing Vulture, and it was preparing four long-ranged torpedoes, two standard ones and two heavy-duty, the torp’s target trackers flickering on the Vulture’s hull.

“Ensign..... Durryn..... take..... take us to the next..... warp point.....”
“Aye ma’am.”

Tamarillho felt the ship change course, but her eyes were riveted on the unknown warship racing towards them, slowly catching up with them. A cold fear slowly crept up into her stomach. She felt her heart rate decreasing. Several sentences lurked at the edge of her mind, ready to be shouted aloud over the bridge, but “Abandon ship! All hands abandon ship!”, “Kamikaze course!” and “Push the engines to as far as they’ll go! I don’t care about the Caranck border!” didn’t manage to reach her vocal cords.

Tamarillho noticed her nav officer was talking to her, but it didn’t quite register.

“Excuse me, Ensign? What did you say?”
“It’s diverting course, ma’am. It’s got its torps trained on C-Devonshire. Some of its turrets are still tracking us, but the larger part have diverted to C-Devonshire.”
It took a few moments for it to sink in, but after that she felt she was fully in control of her faculties again, and acted quickly.
“Durryn, course nearest warp point. Push the engines as far as they’ll go. Lieutenant Wheliin, get back to your senses and start jamming any and all transmissions to and from us. We’ve got a chance here, people.”

A bright light in the corner of the viewscreen attracted her attention. She immediately realized what it was, even though it took a few seconds for the shockwave to hit. C-Alpha 5 Devonshire was gone.

“Ma’am, it’s coming after us again!”
“Durryn, take us to the Cartsial Storm. Try to keep away from the pulse-energy pockets.”

She always felt nervous when sending her ship into a stellar storm where it might get damaged, but she felt it was their only chance. If they managed to lure the Kent into it as well, they should be saved – that is, if Durryn managed to stay away from the dense pockets of gas where energy pulses arced back and forth. Any ship coming too close to these pulse-energy pockets would unavoidably receive a powerful jolt of raw energy, which could easily blow out several bulkheads, and if a ship would go through one of the pockets, the energy would be completely drained but the ship’d receive massive damage. Some of the larger pockets could destroy a largish Destroyer were it to pass through. All pilots and crews were explicitly warned against entering these stellar storms when they first enrolled in a Commonwealth Navy Academy. In fact, the entire first week at any Academy consisted solely of a red-faced officer shouting these words over and over again at his recruits. Entering a storm like this without explicit orders would be punished severely. The least one could expect was a lifetime ban from piloting any space craft.

“I’ve got a fix on a clear corridor. Kent’s following. It’s at 17-right, distance fifteen hundred clicks and closing.”
Fortunately for scientists, explorers and reckless maniacs, almost all stellar storms had clear tracts of open space running through them. Most were less than fifteen m-3-clicks in diameter, barely enough to accommodate a medium-sized probe, but larger corridors are known to exist.
Unfortunately, however, all corridors changed continuously, so piloting any space craft through them was very risky. Tamarillho wasn’t at all certain if Durryn wasn’t going to get them all killed, but it was better than a certain death running.

The knot in Tamarillho’s throat tightened as she felt the slight jolts of the ship being pulled by the EM fields in the storm as the gases closed around them.
“Ma’am, way we’ve come in’s just closed.”

So here they were. Inside a very dangerous storm, with no clear way out, and a large warship approaching, bent on killing them. Well, at least Tamarillho’s command chair was comfortable.

-----END OF CHAPTER FOUR-----

Re: The Demise
 

Little more background info on Part Four http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif and no I'm not just doing this to increase my post count.

The Caranck Border is the border at the edge of a solar system. Beyond the Border there is nothing of interest save for a few comets and the odd Oort cloud. It represents the edge of the system in SEIV. Ships don't normally go beyond the Caranck border. Tamarillho's impulse to say she didn't care about it meant that she was willing to go into really empty space far out of reach of any help just to try and shake off the chasing Kent.

Yes, I am naming all my freighters and other transports after British cities http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif The reason the Vulture (or NKCS Star Asteroid as its official name goes) doesn't carry a name like this is because salvage craft aren't considered real cargo transports, since they have to pick up debris before transporting it.

When Terlan (the nav officer) mentioned "C-Devonshire" he meant C-Alpha 5 Devonshire. C-Alpha 5 Devonshire is the central command station for the Devonshire system. It relays all orders and almost all comms traffic in the entire system, and coordinates system defenses and economy. All Kytheran systems are commanded by a C-[class] [subclass] [system name] station. Alpha is the class. It is a general-purpose "inner rim" command station, designed to coordinate a system close to the core of the Commonwealth. Beta is a more military station, while Gamma is a station with a focus on economic coordination. There are more types, but most are simply small variations - usually in size - on the ones mentioned here. 5 means it is of subclass 5 - the highest level. When a station is first constructed, it is level 1. As its comman duties and capabilities increase, and more additional sections get constructed, it raises in level. The maximum level is always 5. Devonshire speaks for itself; it is in the Devonshire system.

Re: The Demise
 

-----CHAPTER FIVE: TREYGHAL-----

Tamarillho suddenly remembered something. Didn’t Cho say he’d send a Heavy Combat Scout and a squadron of Interceptors to the Vulture’s assistance?

“Incoming transmission, Commander.”
“Who from?”
“Small warship, distance three k-clicks.”
“Put ‘em on screen.”

The screen flickered for a moment, as the pinkish-red stellar storm with its occasional energy discharge vanished and made way for the face of a commanding officer. A Captain, Tamarillho knew. The three-star silver eagle pin was a dead giveaway.

“This is Captain Treyghal of the NKCNS Fortitude. You seem to be having trouble with a combat lander, no?”
“How ever did you guess, Captain?”
“The energy signatures on the remains of C-Devonshire, and the fact that that ship is the only thing in the system with pulse-cannon turrets.”
“Don’t come closer, you might attract their attention.”
“We’ve been ordered to protect you. It looks like you need it.”
“Is something wrong with your long-distance sensors or something?”
“Why?”
We’re trying to lure the damn thing into the Cartsial. We’re safe – for now at least – inside a clear corridor. If that thing enters it’ll be destroyed.”
“You do know it might not work?”
“Captain, that ship is large enough for it to trigger three pockets when it enters. Trust me, it’ll work. No need to put yourself at risk. Durryn, evasives NOW!”
A new pocket condensed in front of them, she saw on her small viewscreen. She could already see the small energy discharges ever-present in the cloud growing in strength and frequency.

The ship made a sudden turn hard right and accelerated to one-quarter third-max speed she guessed. Another pocket condensed in front of them. She opened her mouth to shout an order at Durryn, but he already reacted and banked sharply left. He led them into a relatively stable, wide corridor.

“Captain,” Tamarillho resumed, “you have been assigned to protect us. As such, under every merchant and military law you must listen to me. Back – off – now.”
“Sorry Commander, no can do. Closing on enemy. Gonna switch off visual, audio link will remain open.”
Captain Treyghal’s face flickered out of existence and turned into a random pinkish-red cloud.
“Ma’am, he’s still closing on that Kent.” her TO informed her. “Distance seventeen thousand clicks and closing.”
“Regarding what?”
“Us. Distance to Kent – fourteen k-clicks.”
“Treyghal, back off NOW!”
“Commander, we mustn’t lose you. I can’t tell you why, but it’s crucial you and your ship survive.”
“Don’t bother with the secrecy Captain, I’ve figured it out on my own.”
Her entire bridge crew looked at Tamarillho with an all-round look of astonishment. They probably didn’t even knew there was something odd about all this.
“Then you must also know it’s critical your ship survives.”
“Well, I’m touched with your concern for my personal safety.”
“Distance Kent-us three hundred clicks. They’re at the edge of the storm. Distance Fortitude-us nine thousand k-clicks and closing. He’s increasing speed.”
“Captain, if you don’t back off now I’ll have you court-martialed for insubordination on escort duty.”
He didn’t reply.

“Commander, he’s closed the channel.”
“Dammit.”
“This doesn’t look too good.”

Tamarillho transferred the TO’s viewscreen output to her own screen. He was right. It didn’t look good. The Kent was holding position outside the storm, however it now targeted its weapons at the Fortitude. It was already arming one of the long-rangers.

“Reopen the channel with the Fortitude.”
“Aye ma’am.”
“Fortitude, this is the Vul- I mean, the Star Asteroid. Retreat immediately. You are entering a direct-fire zone. That ship is targeting you with a long-ranger.”
If Treyghal received the transmission, he didn’t bother to reply.

“Distance Fortitude-Kent five-fifty clicks and closing. Treyghal’s slowing down.”

Tamarillho suddenly felt strange. She missed something. She didn’t know what, she just missed something that had been there before.

“He’s picking up speed! Distance one-seventy and closing!”
“Treyghal! Back off now!”
This time he replied.
“Commander, you are in great danger. I’ll create a diversion, you run like hell.”
“Are you LISTENING to me?!? BACK OFF!”
“Tamarillho, stop talking and start running. You’re in great danger.”
“He closed the channel. Distance Fortitude-Kent..... one-fifty clicks.”
Tamarillho saw a red crosshairs appear onscreen, moving a little, accelerating. A ---WARNING--- sign blinked red above the viewscreen.
“Long-ranger away. Distance Fortitude-missile one-ten clicks and closing fast. He’s opened a channel.”
“Tamarillho, this might be your last chance. Run – now.”

Then, Tamarillho realized what it was she missed.

“Durryn, sixty right, get us out of here, max possible speed.”
“Ma’am?”
“Just do it already!”
“Aye aye.”
“Distance Fortitude-missile forty clicks and closing.”

A small flash lit up a corner of the viewscreen before it disappeared outside its field of vision.

Tamarillho knew what was missing, and why Treyghal had picked up speed and sacrificed himself and his crew.

The energy discharges had stopped.

-----END OF CHAPTER FIVE-----

Re: The Demise
 

-----CHAPTER SIX: ENDGAME-----

The Vulture sped out of the dead storm at speeds so high the ship itself seemed to distort from an outside viewpoint. The Kent’s long-range torpedo had hit the Fortitude right under the engine block, rupturing its emergency drive plasma storages. The plasma got in the photon torch exhaust, and the entire engine block detonated a moment later. Virtually no debris larger than roughly the size of a fist remained of the small but potent warship.

Tamarillho ordered Ensign Durryn to get them back on their original course. It already cost the crew of a warship and an entire command station their lives, so what she was ordered to do must be very important.

“Ma’am! Large-scale warp point activity! There’s a fleet coming out of the Yhunni warp point!”
“Divert course! Divert course! I don’t want to end up approaching an enemy fleet dead-on!”
“Wait a sec..... no, that isn’t an enemy fleet..... those are our Edinburgh-class exodus transports!”
“What? How many?”
“It looks like..... Well, it looks like eighteen of them.”
“What?!? EIGHTEEN?!?”
“Erm, well..... yes.”

This couldn’t be. Eighteen Edinburghs? That equalled about 4.5 BILLION people.

“You’re getting false readings, Lieutenant. Run an internal sweep of the sensors.”
“The sensors are working fine.”
“Can you determine their load?”
“Each one chock-full of population.”

Tamarillho slumped. 4.5 billion people had just warped into the system, a system also containing an immensely powerful and obviously enemy warship. She was all that stood between the 4.5 billion men and women and the modified combat lander. She knew she had to do something, but what? Her small ship couldn’t possibly hope to take on the refit Kent, which was about the equivalent of a rather large warship. On top of that, it boasted both long-range attack power as well as short-range heavy hitting capability. How could an apparently unarmed ship hope to stop that much attack power?

“Look for non-comms buttons on your console.”
“Ma’am?”
“Buttons which have nothing to do with comms traffic.”

The Lieutenant hunched over his console, examining every tenth of an n-click of it. Tamarillho went over to him.

“Oh damn.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”

Tamarillho went back to her command chair in a ponderous mood.

“Durryn, place us between the Kent and the transports,” she said absent-mindedly.

Why had she been given a Hunter Assault Craft without weapons? What was the point? And why did the ship have such an unusually large cargo bay? Most salvage ships had bays just over half the size of the Vulture’s.

“Three birds in the air! Three long-rangers on the transports!” the TO cried. Tamarillho acted quickly, in a slight daze.
“Durryn, place us in front of those torpedoes! Now! Stand by lifeboats!”

Durryn guided the Vulture straight into the path of the torpedoes without hesitation. The three specks became larger and larger.

“All non-bridge crew abandon ship! Repeat all non-bridge crew abandon ship!”

Metallic clunks and wooshes indicated life pods being launched everywhere but from the bridge lifeboat bay. Three heavy explosions rocked the ship.

“Structural supports on decks two through four completely gone! Hull ruptures everywhere! Cargo hold’s been breached! Salvage arms blown away! It’s loading capship killers!”
“Abandon ship! Abandon ship!”

The bridge crew simultaneously turned to Tamarillho. The same thoughts crossed the minds of all three men. Did they really hear that correctly? Was Tamarillho ordering them to abandon ship?

“Now! Get the hell out of here!”
“It’s firing a pulse turret!”
“Get out of here! That’s an order!”

Tamarillho didn’t watch her bridge crew enter the lifeboat bay. She focused her gaze on her small screen and multi-functional console. She transferred helm control to it, then quickly grabbed a nano-activated vacc suit and activated the auto-function. She felt the slight chill as the nanofilaments pulled themselves into place all over her body. The evasive maneuver she made didn’t completely avoid the pulse. It skimped the ship, blasting away the front side of the bridge, obliterating the viewscreen and sending debris flying everywhere. Se was granted a free view of open space.

Glancing only momentarily at the evac fleet near the warp point, she didn’t think and simply acted. She turned the Vulture to face the oncoming Kent. She knew its weak spot. A flash on top of the warship, and a second pulse blasted away the tactical console. Pieces of debris pierced Tamarillho’s suit and punctured her abdomen. She aimed the ship specifically for the energy conduit juncture beneath the bridge of the approaching warship. She accelerated the ship at forty gees, and felt her body being thrusted into her command chair as the EM stabilizer fields that usually negated high-gee effects were gone. She steadied the speed at four first-grade max.

The warship realized what Tamarillho was doing only when it was too late. It tried to take evasives, but Tamatillho knew they wouldn’t work. Moments before the Vulture rammed the Kent, she took one last action and jumped through the gaping hole in her bridge. The warship’s anti-radiation fields deflected the small object with ease.

Tamarillho’s vision blurred. The large brownish streak in front of her turned into a bright flash just before she blacked out.

Commander Elsee Tamarillho was dead.

-----END OF CHAPTER SIX-----

---------------END OF PART ONE---------------

Re: The Demise
 

-----EPILOGUE-----

Grand Admiral Ghettex hurried down the corridor. He was late for a Central Command meeting. As he ran past a courier-bot and nearly knocked it down, thoughts flashed through his mind.

“Will they kick me out for being so bloody late?”
“Is this an important meeting? I hope not.....”
“Has this got anything to do with that fleet of Edinburghs?”
“Dinner at the Xiati Restaurant or at the Jraenar Take-Away?”

The door proximity sensors detected him barely in time. He just slipped through the opening door. It was a good thing, too: he ran pretty fast, and a collision between a running man and five n-clicks of solid compressed neutronium usually ended up badly for the running man.

“Sorry I’m late. Was a delay at the docking port, navcomp of a yacht went haywire and we needed to give it wide berth.”
“Jurihaan, how nice of you to join us. We were about to start without you.”

Ghettex went to his seat, still panting slightly. Damn. He shouldn’t have run all the way from the docking port. His one hundred and seventeen-year-old body couldn’t cope with it.

The Chairman opened the meeting.

“Now, if we would leave the formalities for what they are, let’s get down to business. We’ve got three things to handle here.”
“Three? I thought this was going to be about the Edinburgh fleet?” another Grand Admiral inquired.
“Yes, this will be about the Edinburghs. All three agenda points are related to them. First, the ships themselves. They carry the entire population of Hemrai. Where are we going to leave four point five billion people?”
“Perhaps we could send them to the frontier colonies in the Targah sector.”
“No, they’d be overflowing, and our flank’s too vulnerable there. If an enemy fleet manages to push through, we’d lose an unacceptable amount of civilians. We’d have riots breaking out all over the Commonwealth.”
“Hasn’t Raktel just been bombed?”
“There’s only room for five hundred million people there. We’d still be stuck with the remaining four billion.”
“Build habitat stations throughout this system?”
“Too slow. We can’t have them live on cramped transports for months.”
“Spread them out over all available transports and cargo stations until the first habitat stations are complete.”
“OK. Everybody agree?”

Nods and “Yes”es all around. The Chairman pushed a few buttons on his console.

“Now. Next agenda point. The attack on Devonshire.”

Everybody was shocked. Three people rose from their chairs.

“There was an attack on Devonshire?”
“We lost a small warship and the command station.”
“What?!?”
“We lost the NKCNS Fortitude and C-Alpha 5 Devonshire.”
“Who’s responsible? I demand we declare war on them immediately!!!”
“We don’t know.”
“WHAT?!!”
“What we know is that the attack was carried out by a modified Kent combat lander.”

Everybody rose from their seats now. A Commonwealth ship? One that always traveled in convoys, no less?

“The ship was equipped with Tarmalean pulse cannon turrets.....”
“Then declare war on them!”
“.....and an entire battery of torpedo launchers.”
“Torpedo launchers?!”
“Torpedo launchers.”
“But the Tarmaleans never even use torpedoes! The last Tarmalean torpedo was fired three hundred years ago!”
“On top of that, the magazines carried both long-rangers and capship killers as well as standard torps.”
“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t there any one single nation that has long-rangers and capship killers? This must’ve been a concerted effort by insiders and at least two other parties!”
“Or it could have been the work of pirates who raided a shipyard, took the Kent designs and built one fitted with technology they’d acquired from other raids.”
“That’s preposterous! We would have known if they’d taken any designs!”
“You’ve forgotten about Greythorn?”

The man who said this slumped.

“Greythorn. Yes. Of course.”
“Now, this means that we have to put all ships on high alert. If they spot any unidentified Commonwealth vessel, and it doesn’t reply to a set number of hails, they must shoot on sight.”
“And how about evac transports who’ve lost all means of communicating?”
“They’d be ordered to cut engines and wait until a boarding team arrives.”
“Good point.”
“Now. Third agenda point. The Star Asteroid.”

Everybody in the small, round, plasma-cannon-proof room looked astounded.

“Is..... is there something wrong with it?”
“Definitely.”
“Uh oh.”
“It’s gone.”
“What?!?”
“Did you really think eighteen wounded evac transports could’ve stood up to a heavily-armed warship?”
“Sir?”
“The transports were surprised by a comet storm in the Gharna system. Mericum riddled comets. Knocked out long-distance comms antenna and defense weaponry.”
“But what has the Star Asteroid to do with that?”
“The Kent warship, the evac convoy and the Asteroid all were in Devonshire at the same time.”
“But the Asteroid’s unarmed! How did it stop..... oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
“What?”
“Tamarillho ditched her crew and went kamikaze.”
“Oh no.”
“We are going to build a new one, no?”
“Yes, Hartag’s already working on it.”
“Then what’s it doing on a Central Command agenda?”
“Tamarillho did save the entire population of the fourth most important planet in the Commonwealth, and she stopped a warship which could’ve otherwise caused the deaths of millions, perhaps even billions.”
“So?”
“I’m going to give her an honorary promotion to Captain First Class, if Central Command agrees.”
“Just that? She did save an astonishing number of people.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Captain First Class and a post-humous Medal of Extraordinary Valor.”
“And a Medal for Services Rendered!”
“Agreed. Does Central Command have any objections to this?”
“No.”
“That’s settled then. Good day gentlemen.”

-----END OF EPILOGUE-----

Re: The Demise
 

Sorry for the delay, people!



-----PROLOGUE TO PART TWO-----

Lieutenant Tarm Heggson felt happy. Very happy. He was assigned to take the first ship of the Glasgow-class to Yhetan IV, where its captain would assume command. But, until that time, Heggson was in charge of this new type of freighter, a herald of the future design of cargo ships.

After the encounter with the Kent warship, now just over ten years ago, Central Command decided something had to be done. The next time something like this would happen, there probably wouldn’t be a ship with a CO like Tamarillho – who was seen as the greatest hero in civilian space flight to date – in the vicinity. And if the next time was anything like the first time, billions of lives could be at stake.

A top-secret think-tank of the best civilian and military ship engineers were put to work designing the “freighter of the future”. Five years of designing and another five of building and testing prototypes and refining the desing had culminated in the brand-new Glasgow class of “hybrid” freighters.

The Glasgow carried three heavy main guns, and large batteries of secondary and tertiary weapons. Unlike the old cargo ships, which were only adequately equipped to handle a smallish meteor, this new civilitary ship could take on some of the older Cruisers still in service in the enemy fleet and come out on top. And that was just this ship. What Central Command and their think-tank were planning for the future, up until over a century ahead, was even more staggering.

*****

“OK, set course for Yhetan system, coordinates 6.953 M-clicks by 2.402 M-clicks.”
“Roger.”

The Devonshire Warp Point loomed ahead, though not in the center and focus of the main screen but on a picture-in-picture tactical view mode. Still, it was getting closer. Already, a faint blue spot could be discerned in the distance, slightly larger than the infinite amount of stars surrounding it in the background.

*****

“Entering warp point dead zone, approaching event horizon.”
“Activate Tanner-shift compensators.”
“Aye, activating compensators.”

A semi-faint, deep rumble could be heard emanating from what seemed to be the floor as the advanced compensators started generating a ship-wide insulation field.

As the NKCX Faint Hazard entered the warp point event horizon, Heggson’s vision went slightly blue for a moment, until the compensators had found the correct frequency for the insulation field.

“This is much better than on the Drizzle,” he thought. “That old beaut didn’t have these new-fangled Tanner-shift things. At least when I get back here, she’ll be outfitted with ‘em too. Thank Gazhnah. No more spending days out cold in a bloody transpace tunnel.”

*****

The Faint Hazard approached the other side of the warp conduit, when Heggson’s (temporary) TO suddenly called out to him.

“We’ve got an incoming UFO, semi-organic, size of a human! Wait..... I’m picking up signatures of nanos!”
“Course?”
“Going to pass by us narrowly, sir. Ten 2T-clicks away. You could grab it by sticking your arm out the window.”
“You say it’s the size of a human, with nanos?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s exactly what I’’m going to do.”

As he walked through the ship on his way to the primary airlock, he was lost in thought. Could it be true? But how? And, if true, how come the nanos didn’t deactivate themselves? Only active nanos would be detected by a general scan. Something strange was going on here. Something very strange.

*****

“Grappler arms standing by.” the computer informed Heggson. He pressed some onscreen keys and watched the control screen turn into a visual, full-color display of what was going on outside. The main cam showed a smallish, light-blue form floating past. As the camera focused on it, a smaller screen popped up, showing what was directly in front of the grapplers. He recognized the shape as a human form, clearly with a nano-vacc suit. Ten-year-old model. Everything checked out.

He carefully maneuvered the arms into position to grab the body, then pulled it into the airlock. When recompression had occurred, he went in and noticed the vacc suit seeming to oscillate slightly. As he moved closer, he could see that it wasn’t his vision playing tricks on him. He took a portable microscope out of a small compartment in the airlock, and zoomed in on the suit.

The nanos were active, all right.

But these weren’t ordinary ten-year-old nanos from a vacc suit. Something had happened to them.

Putting these thoughts aside, he placed the microscope back into the tool compartment and cautiously deactivated the suit’s helmet. As it pulled back, a human face appeared. The face of an unconscious person, not a dead one.

Captain First Class Elsee Tamarillho opened her eyes and knocked Heggson out with a firm blow.

-----END OF PROLOGUE-----

Re: The Demise
 

Comments please? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif I like comments..... good OR bad!



---------------PART TWO: THE ABYSS---------------


-----CHAPTER ONE: SPIRITUS EX MACHINA-----

When Heggson regained consciousness several minutes later, he’d got a splitting headache and a major problem. He saw Tamarillho was not in the airlock anymore. OK. Two major problems. He saw she locked him in the airlock and disabled the comms panels in the airlock, and she took his. Three major problems. He looked in the tool compartment. No cutting torch. And anyway, there shouldn’t be a cutting torch here. He did, however, see a DHK-19 reactive interference device.

A super-flexible bouncing ball.

Oh well. At least they’d detect it from the bridge.

He immediately regretted using the ball after he’d thrown it at one side of the airlock. It now bounced all across the airlock with speeds exceeding that of the average interceptor.

By the time his crew got him out of the airlock, he had a splitting headache, two major problems and several hundred newly-acquired bruises. The DHK-19 needed to be destroyed by a round from a security guard’s rifle.

“Lock down all shuttle bays and lifeboat docks! I want security sweeps of the entire ship! Initiate broad-band wide-range internal scan! Now!”
“Sir?”
“We’ve got a ten-years-dead officer running around on the ship!”
“What?!?”
“You heard me! We’ve picked up Tamarillho!”

*****

Commander (as she still saw herself) Tamarillho, meanwhile, was pretty much panicking wildly. She had expected to find a shuttle bay near the airlock, but she couldn’t find one. On top of that, judging from the sounds of the reactor, the engines and some other device, she was headed for the inside of the ship, not the outside, where the shuttle bays, the lifeboat docks and her escape were. She knew she was captured, but by whom she had no idea. It must obviously be a ship in league with whomever ordered the Kent into the Devonshire system.

But why was the ship so empty?

And why did it look so strange?

It was like no ship she’d ever been on or seen images or design schematics of. The corridor she stood in looked like a normal starship corridor alright, but more modern. And what was this strange thing about the layout? She couldn’t make out at all where the hell on the ship she was, except for the fact that she knew she was headed to the inside of the ship. For all she knew, she was on a ship that wasn’t even known to the Commonwealth.

And speaking about strange things, what was the blue stuff outside the airlock’s outer seals?

*****

“We’ve got her! Human form in a nano-vacc suit headed roughly to the power room! Sector neg-B pos-5, C-deck!”
“Security to C-deck, sectors neg-C to neg-A, pos-4 to pos-6!”
“Team Beta here! We’ve spotted her!”
“Confirmed, Beta’s in neg-B pos-5 C-deck too, sir!”
“Apprehend her! Do not use lethal force!”
“Yessir! C’mon! Go go go go go!”

*****

Tamarillho was panting heavily. She was being chased by a detachment of security guards, with heavy rifles it seemed. Where the hell was she? How did she know there wasn’t another security detachment around the corner, waiting for her to run into their outstretched arms?

Answer: she didn’t. She did know, however, that if she stopped running, she’d certainly be killed, and she didn’t want that to happen.

So, she kept running, despite the fact that she was almost out of breath, and her legs were buckling below her.

Correction, her legs collapsed below her.

*****

“We’ve got her! Seems like she’s too exhausted to put up a fight!”
“Take her to the briefing room.”
“Roger.”

*****

Tamarillho was still exhausted when the guards took, almost carried, her into what seemed to be the briefing room of the ship. Sitting at the head of the briefing table was the same lieutenant she knocked out in the airlock. He had several rather large bruises in his face. She knew for certain she didn’t have that much power in her fists.

“Captain, take a seat.”

It took a while for her to process the fact that by Captain, the lieutenant meant her. She took a seat hesitatingly, then, once she was sure it wasn’t rigged with high explosives, crashed into the seat and slumped heavily.

“Do you know what has happened since your..... err..... demise?”
“Wh... wh... why?”
“Do you have any idea how long it has been since you rammed that Kent?”
“What... what do you mean?”
“Captain, you died when you rammed an unidentified modifier Kent warship threatening a civilian evac convoy..... ten years ago.”

Her mouth fell open as she tried to process what this young man had just said.

“Ten..... ten..... ten years?”
“Ten years.”
“But..... but how..... why.....”
“We don’t know. We just detected you in the Devonshire warp point.”
“But that’s not possible! You can’t read data from a scanner while you’re blued out!”
“That’s the beauty of this ship; it’s the first civilian – no, civilitary actually – ship with the new Tanner-shift compensators.”
“Tanner-shift what? Civilitary? What the hell are you talking about?!?”
“Tanner-shift compensators generate an insulation field that keeps the crew of the ship from bluing out.”
“Oh. But what about this..... civilitary thing?”
“Civilitary is a new phrase. After your run-in with that Kent, CC decided freighters needed more weaponry. This is the first ship that is a “hybrid” freighter-warship. It’s built like a freighter, and serves as a freighter, but has the firepower and armor of a smaller warship, and if necessary can serve as defence if there’s a sudden attack on the system.”
“So they’re going to refit the entire merchant fleet to become warships?”
“Not warships, heavily-armed freighters. But yes, in several decades the entire merchant fleet is going to be this heavily armed.”

*****

After several hours of getting up to speed with events and advances in the ten years of her death, Tamarillho went to her assigned quarters (the captain’s quarters, vacated by Heggson after her arrival – completely voluntarily, but with some regret) deeply in thought.

Ten years. Ten years. She still couldn’t comprehend it. Had it really been that long? And how did she come back to life? And what was the business with the nanos in her suit? Something strange was going on here. Definitely. Something very strange.

-----END OF CHAPTER ONE-----

Re: The Demise
 

I like this story much. Every installment leaves a good dose of anticipation. Glad you brought Tamarillho "back from the dead" but somehow I suspect there's a lot more to it.

Re: The Demise
 

Oh, trust me, you have no idea.....



More background info http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Tanner-shift compensators: When you enter a warp point, the ship enters a conduit known as a "transpace conduit" which is some sort of non-dimensional tunnel existing outside *all* dimensions, not just ours. The conduit walls emit powerful energy fields of various types. One of these types propels a ship across interstellar distances, while another is some sort of neuro-suppressant field which suppresses sentient thought, which is why people blue out when they enter a warp point. However, a scientist named Tanner has found a way to block the neuro-suppressant field, while allowing the "propulsion" field through. He designed a generator which creates a field lining the hull of a starship which stops the neuro-suppressant field from entering the ship. This way, starships can warp to other star systems and their crews remain conscious for the duration of the trip.

Since transpace exists outside all dimensions, it does not abide by any known or speculated physics model. This way, both tiny probes the size of a human finger and COMCAs larger than Manhattan can warp through the same conduit. The conduit will always have the same relative width.

Re: The Demise
 

Please, if anyone has criticism, post it!

Oh, and for all those people out there who love a fair dose of BLAM (Phil), well, you're about to get what you want.

Pity that Chapter Five was unrecoverable from my disk accident, it had fighter action in an asteroid belt (yes, I've watched Episode III. Does it show? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ) between Tamarillho and..... You didn't really think I was gonna tell you, huh? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Just gonna have to rewrite Chapter Five. Oh well.



-----CHAPTER TWO: THE SECRETS THAT REMAIN-----

Tamarillho remained in her quarters for the rest of the trip to Yheta, pondering about what Heggson had told her. Then, when they prepared to exit the warp point to the Yheta System, her self-imposed solitude was broken by a visit from the young Lieutenant.

“Captain?” Tamarillho still hadn’t gotten used to being called that, and so it took a second or two before she reacted.
“Yes?”
“We’re approaching the Yheta System. Could you come to the bridge please?”
“Why?”
“Could you imagine the face of Captain Degbar when he sees you on the bridge of his ship?”

Tamarillho grinned broadly and got up to follow Heggson to the bridge. She could imagine the look on the face of her old engineer from the Vulture.....

*****

“This is Captain Degbar to the NKCX Faint Haz..... Oh my god!”
“Hello Yuin.”

*****

After several hours, and after she took a shuttle planetside, Tamarillho still found her old engineer to stare at her goggle-eyed.

“But..... you’re..... you’re dead!”
“Well, thank you very much for being happy for me that I’m alive and well.”
“Oh, yes, of course..... Sorry.....”

She looked at him as he struggled to find words. After a minute or so of this, she silenced him with a look and asked for passage to Kythera.

“Of course! Well, you outrank me so I’d be insubordinate if I didn’t take you.....”

*****

Needless to say, Central Command was very surprised to see an officer deemed dead for ten years enter the CC building. The desk clerk at the entrance almost had Security apprehend her, until the DNA checks showed she was indeed Captain First Class Elsee Tamarillho, in person, in good health, and, most of all, not being a clone. She was admitted to the CC conference chamber – which was more than unique, since CC members are the only people allowed in the conference chamber, under penalty of lifetime imprisonment or death – where everybody stared at her in wonderment. How could this be?

The CC Chairman was the first to speak after several minutes of silence.
“Captain Tamarillho?”
“In person.”
“We thought you were dead?”
“I was. I don’t know how, but apparently I’ve been resurrected some way after ten years of being, well, dead.”
The Chairman looked ponderous for a moment.
“You don’t know what happened with the nanos in your suit?”
“No, why? I know there was something about them that made a young science officer wet his pants, but I don’t know what.”
“That young science officer was still in training, but is now on his way to being catapulted onto the Board of Science Directors.”
“Why?”
“He’s studying your nanos, and what he’s discovered is going to make everybody on the Board of Science Directors wet their pants.”
He motioned Tamarillho to step closer, as he waited for a simulation to load into the viewscreen.
“We need to update that viewscreen with nano-optical computer circuitry,” one CC member half mumbled.

An image appeared on the viewscreen. Before Tamarillho could recognize it, the viewscreen flickered and distorted coloured bands zipped across the screen. The Chairman cursed, opened a panel below the screen and gave the inside a good kick. The image resolved into a standard-issue vacc suit nano – the standard of ten years ago, that is. An elongated, blockish “head” from which twelve tiny three-jointed legs ending in claws

“Yep, really need to update.” another CC member agreed.
“Shut up. I told you we need to wait until the tech’s been refined.”
“It’s less prone to bugs than what we’re using now.”

The Chairman grumbled and pressed a few buttons. The image flashed off for an instant, then the nano began to “pulsate” as the scientists call it. The standard motions of an idle but activated nano.

“This is what the nanos in your suit looked like when you, well, died.” the Chairman resumed.
“It’s OK, I’ve gotten used to people talking to me about my death and what happened after my death.”
The image began to change. Slight changes in pulsations, small bulgings. The nano was mutating.
“This we do not know exactly, it’s a computer-generated simulation of the transition from the normal suit nanos to –”
He pressed a few buttons and the nano started to change more quickly. After a few seconds it slowed down again.
“this.”

Tamarillho was stunned.

-----END OF CHAPTER TWO-----

Re: The Demise
 

Chapter Three is kinda small, so I'm going to couple it in one post with Chapter Four.



-----CHAPTER THREE: NANOSCOPIC-----

The image began to rotate. It was nothing like the nanos she knew. A brownish-green organic skin had taken the place of the blockish grey metallic surface of the “head”. The skin was semi-translucent, revealing a complicated mesh of artificial and biological parts, kept together by what seemed like tiny rods of pure energy. Neuron-like tendrils sprouted from the rear, not the twelve manipulators of the original, but an intricate fabric of interlaced tendrils, stretching out a total of one centimeter – which was enormous, regarding the microscopic size of the rest of the nano – with numerous sliver-thin secondary tendrils sprouting from the tail at numerous locations. At the center of the rear of the nano, in the middle of the hollow tail, was a deep pit, similar in appearance to the visualization of a black hole’s gravity well. It continued to deep within the nano, with side conduits which weaved through the artificial and biological machinery emerging at its edges. Just under the outer skin at many points, coils of biological material could be seen. After the Chairman activated a subroutine in the simulation, these coild began to unfurl. New tendrils appeared all over the nano’s skin, growing in length and shrinking in width until they were over twice the length of the nano’s body, and so thin they were barely visible.

“Biological machinery. Microscopic organs. Shafts of pure immaterial energy. Now you know why that science officer wet himself. This is the greatest discovery mankind has ever made since the wheel. This opens up possibilities we couldn’t even dream of dreaming about before. And it’s all locked within you.”
“M-me?”
“We’ve analysed as much of the biological parts of the nanos as we could. We were able to run a DNA test.”
“What was–” Tamarillho’s mouth fell open and she stared at the Chairman goggle-eyed.
“The DNA is yours.”

-----END OF CHAPTER THREE-----



-----CHAPTER FOUR: WHEN THE SH*T HAS HIT THE FAN.....-----

“But– but how?”
“That’s what we hope to find out, if you’re willing to cooperate.”
“Sure, sure, take as many nanos as you want–”
“That won’t do.”
“No?”
“The nanos are directly linked to your nerve system. To find out their deepest secrets we need you in person. In fact, we can’t even perform any further research than we’ve already done without you.”
“Linked to my nerves?”
“Linked to your nerves.”

Ever since she was picked up by the Faint Hazard, Tamarillho had had a strange sensation, like there was something inside her, something subliminal, something hidden. At first, she didn’t think about it – after all, she had been brought back from the dead, perhaps it simply was something you didn’t notice until you had been dead for a while – but now she realized what it was. She didn’t know how, but she knew that she was sensing the nanos. She focused on the feeling, isolated it, made it grow.

She felt a slight tingle throughout her entire body. She had activated the nanos. But there was something strange about it she couldn’t quite place..... Then, she realized she was the nanos. Her consciousness was spread out over the nanos throughout her body. She could feel through them, see through them, hear through them. Her brain had stopped working, yet she remained conscious and alive. The nanos themselves had taken over the tasks for which her brain had had to send electrical impulses through her nerves. The nanos kept her heart beating, they kep her lungs breathing, they had even taken on the task of filtering waste material from her blood in her kidneys.

She controlled the nanos, and the nanos controlled her. She knew that it was a symbiotic relationship; even though her very consciousness had moved from her brain to the unimaginable amound of nanoscopic devices throughout her body, the nanos were still dependent upon her nerves for communication, and to keep her nerves from dying, they had to keep her body functioning. Tamarillho controlled herself from within, from a third-person perspective.

She realized she could do almost anything with the nanos. The tendrils that could sprout from the nanos’ heads could be used to manipulate matter, down to the very atomic particles. She could use the ethereal energy stored within the nanos to compress matter to the extreme, she could store tons of matter throughout her body.

It was a strange realization to hear someone speak to her. She heard it as though relayed through a remote communications device.

“Captain, we need you for the research. You open up a whole new range of possibilities.”
It took a microsecond for her to have a large number of nanos aligned along her lungs and windpipe so she could speak.
“What do you want to do?”
“Whatever it takes to reach the maximum potential of the nanos, and for us to be able to re-create them.”
“What will happen to me?”
“There is a high probability that you will not survive, but what we could learn from you while you’re still alive is invaluable. It could save–”
“No.”
The Chairman’s voice turned cold.
“Captain, you are to report to the Research Complex tomorrow at 13:00 hours.”
She fixed the Chairman in her gaze.
“Forget it.”
“Captain, you WILL report to the Research Complex at 13:00 tomorrow! It is your own choice whether or not you will be free to do whatever you want in that time or not!”
“Are you threatening me?”
The way she said that sent shivers down the Chairman’s spine, regardless of the fact that he’d faced death numerous times. His voice faltered slightly.
“I will have you imprisoned if you don’t cooperate!”
“Just – you – try.....”

Tamarillho placed her hand on the wall of the chamber. Thin black lines started to sliver over the wall, then the nanos started sucking in and compressing matter faster than anyone could ever have imagined. A large crater, three meters wide and one meter deep, remained when Tamarillho drew her hand back from the wall. She had taken in and stored a large amount of matter with dense nuclei consisting of large amounts of protons and neutrons. She could turn it into anything she wanted to by rearranging the subatomic particles.

“Cap – captain..... you..... what..... APPREHEND HER!!!”

Tamarillho sprinted to the door, only to find her passage blocked by two large security guards, looking like they’d skipped a few million years of human evolution. She altered a small amount of the matter she stored within her and produced two heavy pulse pistols. Upon seeing this amounf of firepower in the hands of this woman, the two guards backed away, keeping their eyes fixed on the barrels of the two weapons. With otherworldly speed, Tamarillho turned and ran for the nearest spaceship hangar, the guards chasing her.

One of the guards fired a pulse laser shot aimed directly at Tamarillho’s back, but she ducked and rolled forward, the pulse passing over her and hitting a third security guard emerging from a side corridor head-on. Guards started pouring out of corridors, rooms, even the broom closets it seemed. Without hesitation, Tamarillho leveled out her pulse pistols and started picking off heavily-armed men in reactive armor with uncanny accuracy. Almost all guards retreated to where they had come from. Tamarillho made use of this opportunity to create a few Firebolt-model heavy grenades and dropped them behind her, eliminating her pursuers.

Then, guards started coming out again. This time, they were armed with pulse bazookas, machine lasers, heavy sniper pulse guns and shockwave emitters. All of them wore heavy battle armor.

Making good use of the neutronium, Tamarillho created a super-flexible nuke-proof suit that covered her entire body and which moved like a second skin. She felt the impacts of pulses, flurries of lasers, narrow-band AP pulses and the broad impact fronts of shockwaves. Whenever a single atom was shredded apart, it was immediately replaced with another.

She ran onwards, seeing the hangar doors and her escape coming closer and closer. When she was within twenty meters of the door, a guard stepped in front of it, bloking her path. Without hesitation, Tamarillho lunged forward, crushing the guard against the door, ripping the solid pentronium plate which was the door out of its niche, taking a fair piece of wall with it. She rolled to a stop and stood up.

Around her, spaceships of various shapes and sized were parked. They were all official ships, slow, hard to maneuver, lightly armored and unarmed. Then, at the far end of the hangar, she saw a glimmer of hope. She saw what seemed to be the nose of a fighter, albeit more sleek than any fighter she’d ever seen, which was normal regarding her not having caught up with ten years of ship and fighter design yet.

A large pulse wizzed overhead, and she heard heavy weaponry being moved about behind her. She sprinted as fast as she could (and regarding the fact that she had created exoskeleton-like augmenters around her legs with high-powered servos, that was pretty fast – faster than the average scout hoverbike) and noticed that her assumption was correct, which relieved her greatly.

In front of her was a sleek, fast-looking fighter with what seemed to be hidden weapons behind small bulkheads, mounted in recesses in the hull to improve the fighter’s aerodynamic qualities. She got in and acquainted herself with the look of the cockpit. She heard people yelling outside.

“Go! Move move move! Get her!”
“She’s hijacked that prototype!”
“She’s in the X-3!”
“Then blast the ruddy fighter!”
“CC’s gonna have my head if I–”
Tamarillho closed the cockpit. She had taken some good looks around the cockpit and knew which button to press to fire up the engines and fly out of the hangar at seemingly impossible speeds, leaving several squads of security guards looking incredulously up at the tiny speck, shrinking into the blue of the sky.

-----END OF CHAPTER FOUR-----

Re: The Demise
 

Pretty good.

Re: The Demise
 

-----CHAPTER FIVE: CHASE-----

“Second Wing, left flank, fire all torpedoes! Third Wing, form up, right flank, fire all flak lasers!”
“Second Wing copies! Torpedoes away! Half of ‘em have hit all these rocks!”
“Third Wing! She’s hiding behind some large asteroids! We can’t get a clear shot!”
“That’s why I hate fighting in an asteroid field..... Third Wing to left flank, fire! Fourth Wing, vertical echelon, pursue!”
“Fourth Wing! She’s dropping seismic charges! She’s drop–”
“Fourth Wing lost! Second Wing, scatter cone, pursue!”
“She’s launching cluster torpedoes! Breaking off! Repeat, breaking off!”
“Third Wing, take down those torps, then form up behind me!”
“No can do, sir! Torps’ve already split up, we can’t stop ‘em anymore! Forming up!”
“Second Wing taking losses!”
“First Wing calling base, come in base!”
“First Wing, this is base. Pull back, repeat pull back. We’re sending Hunter squadrons after her. Pull back!”

Tamarillho had found a way to monitor the military comms frequencies without being noticed. This proved to be very handy.

Though she didn’t know what Hunter squadrons were, she knew, regarding her situation of being in an asteroid belt, having just destroyed several high-quality fighters and forcing the rest to break off their attack, it would spell trouble.

Big trouble.

A squadron of fifteen small fighters appeared on her scanner viewscreen. The speed with which they moved and the uncanny maneuverability of the fighters in the rather dense asteroid belt caused a slight hint of sheer terror to appear in Tamarillho.

She struggled to find the frequency these fighters communicated on. She found it. Robotic computer sounds. Not good.

The pack of fighters soon caught up with her. Risking a look backwards, Tamarillho saw a sleek black fighter with an approximate conical shape and a sleek bluish engine trail. As it easily flew past a largish asteroid, it performed a barrel roll. No cockpit window. No pilot hatch. Just two sleek weapons mounted on what seemed to be the underside of the nose of the fighter.

She was being chased by a squadron of robotic fighters designed specifically for work inside asteroid belts.

“OK, so you may be built for work in these bloody rock-infested regions, but can you handle a few tricks of a human mind?”

She still had three of her five seismic charges left, and eighteen of her twenty cluster torpedoes. Weighing in at ten small torpedoes per cluster torp, this was quite an arsenal, though she knew not to waste it unless there was a very good reason to. For all she knew, there might be hundreds more Hunters coming her way, out of her scanner range.

However, losing the squadron of fighters was hard. They hadn’t fired yet, but that was probably because they were still in an area with a rather high asteroid density. The fighters were clearly trying to drive her to open space, like a group of cowboys chasing a cow into an enclosure. Spotting this threat, Tamarillho took her chances and ducked straight down, away from the ecliptic plane. The fighters, after a moment’s consideration, followed her. Now, they seemed to be simply hanging on to her, following her until a new opportunity arose for them to drive her into a clear space. She wouldn’t give them that opportunity. Not if it was up to her.

However, she soon noticed a lightly dense dust cloud in an otherwise empty region, probably the site where a large asteroid had been mined to dust. The fighters went into a tighter formation and started closing in. There was no clear way to evade flying into the dust cloud, so Tamarillho had to take action.

The fighters pulled closer together and prepared for the kill.
“Come on, come on, just a little bit closer..... GOTCHA!”
Just at the edge of the dust cloud, Tamarillho dropped one of her three remaining seismic charges at almost point-blank range. The fighters had little or no time to evade. Ten of the fifteen fighters perished in the explosion, the remaining five scattered in all directions. The shockwave of the blast sent Tamarillho’s fighter spinning straight in the direction of a large asteroid. She stabilized her fighter with the nose pointing approximately downward regarding her previous course. She fired up her afterburners and narrowly avoided scraping the asteroid. She needed a new trap, a new place where she could easily take out her pursuers.

Four more squadrons suddenly appeared on her scanner viewscreen, closing in fast. The five remaining fighters of the first squadron pulled back together and resumed their chase.

Tamarillho spot her chance. A large asteroid which had a tunnel running through it, a rather wide tunnel with an S-turn in the middle. Probably the result of the miner droids following the path of a metal vein and hollowing out the asteroid as they harvested the materials.

“Ok, so you can perform some nice astrobatics. But can you handle the dirty tricks of a human mind?”

She slowed down to 20% of normal maximum speed and let the fighters close in. When the four squadrons and five fighters – totalling sixty-five pursuers – were arrayed behind her, she kicked in the afterburners again and sped for the asteroid. Making a tight turn, Tamarillho ducked into the tunnel. The fighters followed in single file. Leading them towards the S-turn, Tamarillho couldn’t stop grinning.

As she predicted, the fighters closed their ranks so as not to lose her in the turn. When all sixty-five robotic menaces were arrayed in the S-turn, Tamarillho pressed the button hard and dropped her remaining two seismic charges.

She pushed her afterburners to overload to escape the shockwave and massive cloud of debris chasing her through the tunnel after the detonation immediately vaporised her pursuers.

Making a sharp turn upwards, Tamarillho spotted two more squadrons closing in on her from “above”. Noticing the big empty space in front of her, she took her chances and launched three cluster torpedoes. She tracked the small dots on her scanner and saw them closing in on the thirty blips, splitting up into thirty tiny dots as they got close. None of the fighters managed to escape; all thirty were hit head-on by a micro-torp.

Thinking she was safe, Tamarillho relaxed and loosened her grip on her control stick. She didn’t really notice the cloud of blips that assembled on the edge of her scanner viewscreen.

When she did, she panicked.

She spot twelve squadrons of fifteen fighters each assembling not so far from her location.

One hundred and eighty fighters. No more seismic charges. Hey! Fifteen cluster torpedoes..... One hundred and fifty micro-torps!

She turned around sharply and headed straight for the cloud of blips, ignoring the fact that every single atom of her instincts told her to run like hell. Closing in on the fighters, she launched all of her remaining cluster torpedoes and pulled the control stick back hard.

Even though the explosion was directly behind her, she was blinded momentarily by the flash. The chain reaction of one hundred and fifty fighters exploding almost simultaneously was so powerful, that the other thirty fighters also perished – the explosion even generated a shockwave, and a powerful one at that.

Rejoicing her victory, Tamarillho set a course for the Devonshire warp point and kicked in her afterburners.

-----END OF CHAPTER FIVE-----

forum
 

who can tell me where this forum is about?

Re: forum
 

It's about Space Empires IV and V, and anything else we want to talk about.

Hi, welcome to the forums.

The developer site for the Space Empires series is www.malfador.com .

The Space Empires series is a game of galactic conquest. The latest titles are very modable. The series focuses on gameplay rather than high-end graphic.

If none of those answered your questions, just ask.

Re: forum
 

Arrgh! The narf-o-matic! my sworn motral enemy. If I could be arsed..

I endorse the zombie mouses welcome and statement.

Re: forum
 

Motral?

Hey everybody, I've got a motral enemy! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: forum
 

I did say if I could be arsed young mouseling. Having a mortal enemy sounds like it could be alot of work so I'm still thinking it over. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/stupid.gif

Re: The Demise
 

As it is, as you've not got a mortal enemy, Narf is your immortal enemy..... hmmmm..... AAAAAGGGHHH!!!!! (runs)

Re: The Demise
 

Hey! Another update! Finally!



-----CHAPTER SIX: DEEP LEGACY-----

Tamarillho felt utterly secure as she approached the Devonshire warp point. She had told her computer to warn her in case of any approaching ships. On her way here, she raided an unmanned ammo depository in the asteroid belt, restocking her seismic charges and cluster torpedoes. Nothing could stop her now, short of the warp point suddenly and inexplicably collapsing on itself, which was plainly impossible astrophysically speaking.

She had checked the fact that the fighter was jump-capable and equipped with Tanner-shift compensators.

She reached the warp point’s event horizon.

Suddenly, she was standing on a plateau of rock, approximately thirty meters in diameter, surrounded by fog and smoke.

*****

“REPORT!!!” Commodore Ghettex bellowed. The grandson of Grand Admiral Ghettex, CC member, commanded the defense forces in and around the Kytheran System Asteroid Belt. He just heard he’d lost all of his brand-new Hunter fighters to one stolen prototype fighter piloted by a fugitive that had returned from the dead some days previous.

“I dunno how she did it, but she managed to outmaneuver and outfight all of our Hunters. Long-range scanners suggests she even went inside an asteroid, how she managed to come out alive I don’t know, but I think she dropped a seismic charge or two in it. We’ve got a chain reaction, think like a nuclear fission bomb only then with asteroids instead of atoms.”
“Pull out all ships in the Belt! Now! Estimated time till total destruction?”
“My guess is three weeks.”
“Any rocks headed our way?”
“Nope. Not now, anyway.”
“Commodore!” the station’s comms officer called. “Incoming call from Central Command!”

Great, he thought. I’d best start packing now.

*****

Tamarillho looked around, but everywhere thick white fog surrounded her. The platform seemed to dive straight downwards at the edges, but she didn’t feel the need to check it. She couldn’t have, anyway; when she tried to walk around, she found that her feet failed to respond. She had completely lost control of her lower body.

Then, suddenly, a deep, resounding voice burst through the ominous silence.

“Captain. We have been expecting you.”

*****

Commodore Ghettex didn’t need to pack after all, though a CC liaison officer would be placed on his bridge, limiting his freedom to act. He also got some replacement fighters – not Hunters, this time, but normal, manned fighters, also designed for asteroid work. He – or rather his scanners officer – informed Central Command that the asteroid belt was disintegrating, but the fighters were stationed in his base anyway – after the disintegration, the belt would still exist, only then in smaller fragments, which were wider apart. It would still be too tricky for regular Heavy Interceptors.

On an impulse, Jurihaan Ghettex III shouted across his bridge:
“Get me a fighter! I’m going after her!”

*****

“Expecting me? But..... how? Why?”
“It will be explained to you. First, let me tell you the history of the human race.”
“I know that. I’ve studied it myself.”
“The real history of the human race.”

*****

His engineers having just finished rigging a standard DT-13 Fasthawk heavy interceptor with Tanner-shift compensators, beefed-up engines and an increased weapons loadout, Commodore Ghettex climbed into his newly-appointed personal fightercraft and took off. It took him only a few seconds to reacquaint himself with the controls and handling of the fast fighter. “Six years in the Space Fighter Force are finally paying off,” he muttered to himself as he veered past a large chunk of rock and iron in the process of getting hit by a smaller chunk of rock and iron and splitting apart into similarly-sized chunks of rock and iron, which would then move on to impact against other chunks of rock and iron.

Zig-zagging through a more stable region of the asteroid belt, he sometimes still had to evade flying debris from asteroids which had been hit suddenly. He sometimes saw one or more miner-bots falling prey to the explosion, exploding themselves or flying away spinning.

As he cleared the belt, Ghettex opened up the throttle and kicked in the afterburners, speeding to the Devonshire Warp Point with such a speed that if he would have hit anything which was not moving he’d explode with the force of a multi-gigaton fusion nuke. Two thirds of the way to the warp point, he activated the retro-thrusters to reduce his speed so that he would fly into the transpace tunnel and not be launched into a different dimension, as was known to happen at certain speeds, relative to the size of the object going through.

“Approaching warp point. See you on the other side!”
“Sir, please remember that you can only fire direct-fire projectile weapons while in the tunnel! Missiles won’t work and energy weapons will only destabilize the tunnel!”
“I know, I know. See you later.”

A blue flash later he disappeared from the scanners and entered the transpace tunnel.

*****

“What do you mean, the real history of the human race?”
“You think the human race has originated on Earth, right?”
“Why?”
“Because Earth was once just a remote border colony of the Human Confederation.”
“What?!?”
“The planet Humana lies – lay – near the Galactic Core. The planet was half the size of Jupiter; it had a warmer climate than Earth. The human race evolved there. The Confederation once controlled 80% of the Galaxy when-” A sigh.
“When what?”

*****

Scanning the transpace tunnel, Ghettex discovered a small blip in the distance.
“HA! Got you now!” he shouted aloud to the softly humming instruments in the crowded cockpit.

Taking his chances, he locked Tamarillho's fighter as a target and fired a volley with the two rapidfire railguns that were his only weapons in the transpace tunnel. Seeing that every single one of the depleted uranium slugs missed their target by a wide measure, he pushed the throttle to maximum and kicked in his afterburners; and even then he didn't have much of an edge speed-wise over the running thief.

*****

“When the Confederation was at its peak- oh [censored].”
Realizing that these creatures, she wasn't yet prepared to call them “humans”, apparently had great powers, hearing one say “oh [censored]” made for one of the most terrifying moments of her life.
“Some fool is chasing you! In the Gateway Lane!”
“In the what? Wait- chasing me? Oh damn. That's gotta be a task force from New Kythera.”
“No, it's just one fighter – single pilot model, by the looks of it – and it's firing at you.”
“Then lemme get the hell back to my fighter and I'll blast him all over the tunnel!”
“No, we've got a far better way of dealing with situations like this- see you soon.....”

Suddenly, Tamarillho found herself back in her fighter. She lifted her head up from the controls and wiped a spot of drool away. She'd fallen asleep. Apparently the Tanner-shift whatsits in this fighter weren't properly calibrated or someth-

Suddenly, the fighter lurched forward at what had to be relativistic speeds. She was pushed violently back into her chair, and the G-force-meter went haywire, as did the speed indicator. Within seconds she was on the other side of the warp point, something which would normally take days.

*****

Closing in, Ghettex re-locked the fighter in his target reticule, and was just about to pull the trigger in a victorious ecstasy, when the experimental fighter shot forward and disappeared within a second. Reviewing his scanner logs in a rage that would have made his bridge crew jump into the lifeboats and run, he saw that the fighter had reached-

What?

3.0 C?

Three times the speed of LIGHT?!?

That was plainly impossible.

He ran a self-diagnostic on the scanner relays and checked again.

He ran a self-diagnostic on the onboard computer and checked again.

He ran self-diagnostics of every system on the ship up to the oxygen recycling plant, and checked again.

[censored].

Apparently, the experimental fighter had just reached a speed which was, physically speaking, utterly impossible.

-----END OF CHAPTER SIX-----

Re: The Demise
 

For all those who wondered what was happening with this story, yes, it was dead for a while. However, recently I resumed writing, and I'll try to pick up the pace on updates again. Eventually, I will also be working on the already existing parts as well, expand them, and hopefully turn them into a book. I hope to have finished the online version before the end of the year, and I hope I can manage to get a good, book-worthy version before summer 2006. When (if) that's done, I'll see what I can do about publishing, and if I manage to do that, you'll be the first to know.



For now, here's the Epilogue to Part Two.



-----EPILOGUE-----

The post-human transcendi, the only survivors of the ancient Human Confederation, were in debate.

“We were wrong to bring her here – she needs to know nothing!” an elder post-human stated.
“If we were to keep her in the dark, what do you think would happen?” another elder asked. “How is she supposed to carry out our plan if she does not know what to do?”
“We have been like this for long enough. The plan has already entered its next to final stage; the sooner we can return to the physical plane the better!” This was the first time since the fall of the Confederation that a junior mingled with the debate of the elders. Most other juniors were shocked, the elders taken aback. The first elder recovered first.
“Exactly. We have been like this for a long time, I agree. That means that we can afford to spend a year or two more like this, no? What's two years on a scale of sixteen billion?”
“Still, remember that whoever was meant to carry out the plan would have needed specific information. We would have been forced to bring her here eventu-” The second elder was cut off by a sneer from the first.
“You've obviously forgotten a little too much of the physical plane, haven't you? We could've sent her a message on one of those crude “electronic” computer panels, she wouldn't even have to know we existed until we-”
“And do you really think she'd follow instruction given to her by a completely unknown person using a random computer console?!? You suggested this woman because of her intelligence and strength of will! She wouldn't follow orders like you apparently expect her to!”
“Then send the instructions directly into her mind. Manipulate her thoughts!”
“She has too much mental strength for that – she'd notice, what's more, she's probably capable of shutting us out too, of fighting us, killing us even! She has more mental strength than a Cargazian supertelepath prophet!”
“There HAS to be SOME way to give her the instructions WITHOUT having to bring her here!”
“No.” The second elder's “voice” was very calm. “There is, unfortunately, no other way in which we can instruct her, manipulate her. She – she is too strong-willed to accept anything but her own judgment, and only here are we strong enough to manipulate that.”
“We could have chosen someone else, someone who is just as intelligent but who is mentally weaker.”
“First, there is no-one – no human anyway – with her intelligence, with her specific intelligence. Second, anyone with less strength of will would shrink away from what he or she would have to do. Third – she is the only one who is capable of accessing the plasma launchers over Kythera, the plasma collection chamber inside these launchers and the biochemical laboratories on the Vespucci station. We need her. We need her here.”

-----END OF EPILOGUE-----

Re: The Demise
 

Double update! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



-----PROLOGUE-----

Commodore Ghettex had returned to his station and was now bellowing loudly at a white-faced young science assistant who happened to have the bad luck to stand near him. The poor lad would probably have suffered a mental breakdown if it weren't for Ghettex's senior comms officer.
“Sir, your grandfather wants to talk to you.”
Still red-faced and wheezing, Ghettex came back to his senses and strode angrily into the comms room. Everybody inside had worked with him for at least a few years, and experience told them that when he looked like this it would be wisest to slip out of the room silently and wait until half an hour after he had left it – he sometimes went back in after a few minutes, and the last person to experience that still suffered from what psychiatrists could only identify as shellshock.

“You wanted to talk to me?” The face of Grand Admiral Jurihaan Ghettex, member of Kytheran Central Command, appeared on the screen in front of him.
“Erit, Erit, Erit. Quite a mess you have up there.”
Commodore Ghettex could barely contain his anger as he spoke. “You know very well that I did all I could to prevent it. If anyone is to take the blame, it would be you.”
“Me? Oh really.”
His voice now cold, Erit replied: “You know perfectly well what I'm talking about, old man. There is something going on here, something which isn't right. And I'm pretty sure you are behind it.”
“Why the hell would we be behind the hijacking of one of our own experimental fightercraft?”
“I think you know what I'm talking about. The way she learned how to push that fighter to its limits so soon. The robot fighters not taking her down as soon as they had the opportunity. The way that fighter accelerated beyond the speed of anything in existence.”
“Come again?”
“The way that fighter bolted away from me in the transpace tunnel. The way it accelerated. Trust me, your experiments have succeeded. You have managed to achieve instant acceleration, and not only that, you managed to accelerate that fighter to three times the speed of light.”
Grand Admiral Ghettex slowly turned white. His eyes widened to a point where Commodore Ghettex thought they would fall right out of the old man's face.
“You..... you..... What?!?”
Commodore Ghettex gave the utterly shocked face of his grandfather a cold stare and disengaged communications.

-----END OF PROLOGUE-----



---------------PART THREE: INSIDIOUS MACHINATIONS---------------



-----CHAPTER ONE: TROUBLE-----

It had been three weeks since former Captain First Class Elsee Tamarillho had encountered the enigmatic post-humans who claimed the human race did not evolve on old Earth. Three weeks of running and hiding in asteroid fields, storms and cometary drifts. She didn't take on the Kytheran forces out to get her again; for one, the fighters chasing her nowadays were piloted – which meant they wouldn't fall for the tricks she used to destroy all prototype asteroid-belt robotic fighters back at Kythera – secondly, she didn't feel the need to kill any more fellow Kytherans. The government might have betrayed her; but she was still a born and bred Kytheran spacer, and so were the pilots trying to kill her.

She was always monitoring all military comms bands, to make sure she knew about any attempts to attack her before they actually started shooting at her. Two hours ago, she picked up a Commonwealth-wide news transmission on the civilian channels – she didn't listen to it because it was Commonwealth-wide news, or even because it was an unscheduled transmission, she listened to it because it was about the results of her actions of three weeks previous. The last asteroids in the Kytheran System had disintegrated due to the rather inexplicable chain reaction set off by her lobbing two seismic charges into the middle of an asteroid. The “asteroidal fission reaction”, as the scientists called it, had finally ended. Apparently, the chances of a sustained reaction of this type in any asteroid belt were nanoscopically tiny, yet it had happened. Tamarillho half-and-half suspected the post-humans had a hand in it, but she hadn't had the chance to ask them, as she hadn't encountered them since they first-

No.

She had had no encounter.

She had fallen asleep. Nothing more. It was just a dream.

A very very vivid dream.

Now was not the time to dwell on strange, almost nightmarish dreams, now was the time to focus on matters at hand. She was approaching – what, the seventh? warp point since her first enc- no, dream in an attempt to evade the meticulous scans carried out by several satellites which had been deployed in the local asteroid fields and near the lone storm, at the very edge of the system, right on the Caranck border. To leave the relative safety of asteroids and storms for too long meant almost certain death, as the Kytheran navy had stationed fast-reaction frigate groups in most inhabited systems within the Commonwealth and, fast or not, her fighter was no match for an 800 meter warship designed specifically to protect the really large capital warships from fighter attack. The frigates were always stationed in empty space, the pattern laid out evenly, every spot in the system within one hour of travel for some of the faster frigates. Fortunately, in this system the frigates had not yet deployed near the warp points as they had in several other systems, so she could make the leap from one of the small asteroid pockets orbiting an uninteresting gas giant to the warp point.

This was – what, the seventh? warp point since her enc- no, dream of the post-humans. She approached the event horizon, and a blue flash later she found herself standing on the same rocky plateau she had been so startled to discover three weeks earlier. Again, she had no control over her legs.

“Oh come on! This is just a dream! Wake up already!” she muttered to herself as she tried lifting one of her legs up with both arms. However, it was as if she was a gehenniumsteel statue from the waist down. Giving up her attempts to move her leg, she looked into the ever-present mist. The deep, resounding voice startled her.

“Welcome back, Captain.”
“It's OK, this is all just a dream, no need to worry now.....” She couldn't convince herself, partly because her voice was two octaves higher than normal and rather shaky.
“I understand your inclination to dismiss this all – to dismiss us – as a dream, but believe me, this is all very true.”
“You were right. We should have brought her here. She indeed wouldn't-” Tamarillho could barely hear the whisper, but she clearly recognized it as a separate voice from the first. So there was more than one post-human here?
“Quiet.” The first voice again, also a whisper, though less quiet, as if it was giving the second voice a reprimand. On a whim, Tamarillho released one of her nanos and set it to scout the surroundings. “We have brought you here for a reason.” The voice now sounded as it had before. The nano returned, and she knew her surroundings now – a circular, almost perfectly flat plateau, just rough enough to stand on without having to adjust your balance every few seconds. At the edges, the rock dropped away sharply, descending seemingly infinitely into darkness.
“Your surroundings have no meaning. We merely chose this as it was the easiest to project you into. There is nothing more than what your nano reported.” So they knew about the nano.
““Project me into”? What are you talking about?”
“This is not reality as you know it. This is what we have come to call the Plane of Thought – though this is an inadequate description of this place. The rock, the abyss, the mist, it is all but an illusion. Like this.”

And suddenly Tamarillho stood in nothingness. Utter nothingness. Everything was black. She couldn't see her body, it was as if her mind alone existed here and nothing else.
“This is an approximation of how we perceive this Plane. Here, only thought exists, only our minds, and nothing else.” The plateau was back, and Tamarillho could see her body again. Her senses were tingling, and she found she could move her legs too.
“But you were saying? You had a reason for bringing me here?”
“Indeed we have. You see, we have been like this for a long time – for too long, to be honest.”
“How long then?”
“Sixteen billion years.” A silence fell.
“But..... but that's impossible. The entire Universe is sixteen billion years-”
“I am afraid that that is yet another of your, ah, misunderstandings. The Universe is, in total, over eighty billion years old.”
“Eighty billion years ago the Universe would have had a negative size.”
“Let me explain. The Universe was created – how we do not know – eighty-one billion two hundred forty-three million one hundred and ninety-eight thousand twenty-two years, fourteen weeks, two days, six hours, forty-four minutes and nineteen point six two two five eight seconds ago.”
“A- What? How can you know that?”
“Suffice it to say that we can. Now, the early history of the Universe is exactly as your scientists have described it – they see the real beginning of the Universe, up to two billion years after that, where there is a sixty-five billion year gap between their observations. We evolved much like you have described, only our real home planet – Humana, hence humans – was located nearer to the Galactic core, was the size of a gas giant, was much more fertile and had a more pleasant climate than Earth. Our poles were comparable to the Mediterranean sea region on Earth, our equator marked the middle of a band of regions with just barely tropical climates. No deserts, few mountains, warm water oceans – what you would call paradise. We believe that the paradises described by the many religions you had on Earth all stem from the dim racial memories of Humana. We thrived there; our industrialization occurred gradually, and we always kept an eye on our environmental impact – something we, or rather our very distant descendants, forgot on Earth. This is all due to the fact that we had a far better understanding of our environment than you did, by the time our industry started to develop.”
“Somehow that strikes me as highly unlikely; a race with little or no industry having an excellent understanding of their environment.”
“We didn’t have perfect knowledge of our environment, we merely were better aware of it, and we realized what the long-term effects of ecological impact might be. Also, our industrial technology developed slower than our science. We had everything we needed; the few predators large enough to pose a threat, were also intelligent enough to allow for a basic form of communication, and we had what you might call an “agreement” with them, more of a mutual understanding actually.”
“You mean to say you shared a planet with intelligent predators?”
“Only as intelligent as dolphines, or maybe chimpanzeas.” The post-human getting the words wrong suddenly sparked a feeling of mistrust in Tamarillho, as she realized the being’s (for she doubted they were humans now as well) words had her almost in trance, in adoration of the words, like a small child getting taught about space liners or colony expeditions. She hid it under a blanket of the same bland emotion she had felt previously; she wasn’t certain he couldn’t divine it, but if he did, he didn’t show it. “The main difference is that these creatures were more communicative, their vocal chords could produce a wider range of sounds. They lived in packs, though you might say they more resembled tribes; these creatures’ social sense was exceptionally well-developed, compared to predators on other worlds. They had what you might call tribal elders; one species even had a gathering of the “elders” once per year, on a forested mountain near the north pole, where matters that influenced the species as a whole were attended to. They were not of human sentience, no; but their semi-sentience was so convincing that most people thought they were fully sentient, until the first steady communications started.” He paused. Tamarillho realized she was staring blankly at a point just to the right of the “eyes” of the mist figure which had slowly drifted into view. She quickly collected herself and looked it straight into the hollow cloudy eye-sockets.

“You are bored.” Though they were spoken on a normal, almost conversational tone, the words cut through Tamarillho like a blade of cold steel, or a shaft of fiery ice. “You are no longer captivated. You are hiding something.” Tamarillho felt the creature look into her, peering into the depth of her emotions. She fought it, but he was persistent, and more and more post-humans joined in the effort until finally they broke through to the core of her feelings and retreated. She fell to her knees, gasping, clenching her fist against her chest as she could breathe again.

“You mistrust us, Commander Tamarillho.”
“Captain..... First..... Class..... Tamarillho, now..... you creep.”
“But you still see yourself as a Commander. As a middlingly-ranked officer in the merchant shipping navy. As the discarded human being sent off to become a garbage collector.” Every word of this sneer cut through Tamarillho like an ice cold dagger. She suspected it wasn’t just because of her. Silence fell between them, only broken by Tamarillho’s gasping breaths, which were slowly returning to normal, and what seemed to be the whispers of a crowd coming from deep inside the fog. The figure had retreated; Tamarillho suspected it was whirling around her, looking for another opening in which to strike.
“No.” she whispered. “No. I am not a garbage collector. I am a decorated Captain First Class. I am a hero.”
“No you are NOT!” The creature was inside of her again. “That is what they said you were, but inside you still think of yourself as a garbage collector girl!” At this a sudden fury boiled up inside Tamarillho. “Ah, I see I’m right. Why would you be angry if I was merely telling you lies?!”
Tamarillho directed her fury, the anger enveloped the creature. She used her pent-up rage, collecting ever since she had been told she was going to become a test subject, to hold on to the creature, tightening her grip. It started to shriek. Others came in, tried to subdue her fury but she tightened her grip yet again. She felt the creature’s emotional defenses starting to buckle; it was losing its grip. It was slowly descending into madness. Still she held on, still she kept on squeezing the creature with her emotions, switching from impulsive rage to cold, dark hatred. She was now gasping for breath, but none would come to her. Still she held on; finally, she felt the last shred of resistance give way. She did not ease her grip; she pushed on, analyzing it, absorbing it. She knew what they were up to; she knew why they had chosen her. Her very strength, the reason they had chosen her, had now become their worst enemy.

The rest of the post-humans – for now she knew that they were post-humans – retreated, leaving her gasping again, but this time her throat only tightened. Another voice came from the mist; younger, more menacing.

“You will not leave this Plane alive.”

Instinctively, she knew it was right. It was only her mind that was here; but if she was suffocating here, she must also be suffocating inside her fighter. Death here would mean death everywhere. Slowly the world turned black. She knew she was going to die.

Then, everything went blue and she lifted her head up from the fighter’s controls, gasping for desperately needed air.

-----END OF CHAPTER ONE-----

Re: The Demise
 

Very Nice Read. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Thank you.

Re: The Demise
 

Almost ready with the next update, for now here's some renders of the spacecraft appearing in the story.

So far I've got Tamarillho's X-3 fighter, the manned fighter of which there was a squadron chasing her in the beginning Chapter 2.5, the robo-fighter of which she destroyed over a hundred and the Darkstar, a sub-capital superheavy anti-fighter warship which will appear in the next chapter.

Re: The Demise
 

Wow, excellent! I like that "lost history of the universe" thing. Can't wait for more.

Re: The Demise
 

'Nother update!

-----CHAPTER TWO: IN OVER HER HEAD-----

This was getting dangerous. She knew they were getting closer to finding her; the ships were redeployed daily, a net of fighter-killer warships closing in around her. Her escape routes were being cut off one by one; they already had the larger part of the asteroid fields and storms staked out with heavy anti-fighter warships. The only feasible escape route left was a route she dreaded; through a nearby warp point. It was a long-distance jumproute; they would have plenty of time to kill her. The worst part was that she couldn’t even remember what the reason was for the post-humans’ recruitment of her in the first place. The last act of the post-human she had killed was to implant a small part of its subconscious in Tamarillho’s memory. The memories she had acquired from the post-human had faded away slowly, until only vague images and abstract ideas remained. Still, she was certain the others would kill her; for one thing she did remember, was the fact that the post-human she killed was a figure of what one might call authority, and she was fairly certain they wouldn’t take kindly to people who had assassinated their leaders.

That considered, she realized she had no choice; the frigates were getting ever closer, and she wasn’t one hundred percent sure the post-humans would kill her, something she could be certain of with the Commonwealth War Fleet. So she made her decision: she pointed the fighter towards the warp point and kicked in the engine overcharger modules. Immediately, three nearby frigates diverted from their patrols and came in to intercept her at full speed. They couldn’t hope to catch up with her, but there were other ships underway that would at least be able to get off a few aimed shots at her. She would have to evade them, possibly even attack them. She still had a single seismic charge and six cluster torpedoes left, so she was still able to inflict damage, albeit not that much.

*****

Commodore Erit Ghettex was anxious. His rank and prestige were on the line. If he botched this, he was certain he’d be demoted – CC may not have explicitly said it, but the looks on their faces in the single second before the transmission ended said more than their voices had during the two-hour meeting. He was mulling over this all when his comms officer called out to him.

“Sir!”
“What?”
“System-wide transmission! She’s sighted!” At this Ghettex sat bolt upright and started giving orders frantically.
“Intercept, now! Activate target-trackers! Stand by weapons! Stand by troops! Prepare fighter bay, mobilize the pilots, inform all ships we’re coming in! Have them guide her towards us!”
“She’s headed towards the Kukulcan warp point!”
“Overload engines. Push them as far as they’ll go! I want every ounce of thrust available!”
“We won’t make it in time!”
“Overload engines, now! Stand by mass drivers, EMP burst rounds!”
The engineers and weapons officer blinked. “Yes sir!”

*****

Tamarillho narrowly avoided an energy pulse as she pushed her engines beyond the limit. She dived in between the two frigates, intending to duck under them and make a run for the warp point, but they anticipated it and cut off her way with a thick blanket of pulseflak fire, forcing her to wheel the fighter around in one of the deliciously tight turns which had moved her to love this fighter. She bolted back, heading straight for a small group of ships which were moving in to assist the first two. She cut back her engines, and just as she was on the verge of coming into the ships’ weapons range, she pushed her throttle to full again and shot past their noses. They frantically fired their broadside pulseflak batteries, whose shots were easy enough to evade. They whizzed past her soundlessly, impacting into the thick energy-shielding of the other ships. She blasted past them, a few rear ship pulseflak guns still frantically trying to hit her. She flew in a straight line for quite some distance, before coming about in a wide arc. The ships were still guarding the warp point, but then she spotted another one, not too far away, guarded by just a single ship, with no other ships in the vicinity. Even this ship was pulled away, but was quickly replaced with another. A Light Attack Cruiser. The flagships of small fleets and patrol groups. Trouble. Then her comms unit came alive. A clear voice sounded through the small cockpit.

“Attention Captain FC Tamarillho. This is Darkstar, flagship of the First Fighter Interference Fleet.” A fancy name for a posse of whatever fighter-killer ships happened to be within six systems’ distance of her. “We are sending in a fighter squadron. Power down your engines and prepare to be taken aboard.” A pause. Her reply came a few seconds later.
“Go to hell.”
“This is a one-time offer, Captain FC. Power down your engines and you will not be harmed.”
“Only shipped off to a lab to serve as guinea pig, probably to die in the process of some experiment.”
“We assure you that is not our intent, Captain FC, please.....”
“Oh just can it! I know what you’re after, and you’re not going to get it! Over my dead body!!!”

Tamarillho turned off her comms unit and headed straight towards the ship, engines at maximum overload, her last seismic charge and clustertorps being prepared for launch. The ship swiveled toward her; not very fast, but she wasn’t that close to it either. When she faced it head-on, she locked the bridge in her target reticule and..... It was still turning. She shot past it, mass-driver EMP burster rounds going off all around her. One caught her at a wingtip, and sent her spinning along the fighter’s spinal axis, but not causing any other damage.

There was the warp point. The blue disc seemed more inviting than ever, now that one of the best fighter killer warships was directly behind her, initiating a chase. The other ships dispersed and headed off back into the systems from whence they had come, which struck Tamarillho as odd. Why leave now when their flagship had her right where they wanted her? In the transpace tunnel, speed meant nothing – she could bring the fighter to a full stop and she would still arrive after the same amount of time. The only things speed were good for in a transpace tunnel, were making sure you were moving when you came out the tunnel, and losing pursuers. But that only worked with pursuers incapable of changing their speed in-flight, comets, missiles and mass-driver bullets being the most well-known examples. Ships could catch up with fighters easily; mass meant nothing, acceleration only a little – and with the Darkstar’s drives, it should have no problem catching up with her once they entered the ‘point’s event horizon. Any way you turned it, she was no match for the warship.

*****

“She’s in!”
“Engines to full! Stand by for maximum acceleration!”
“All mass-driver turrets report EMP bursters loaded and ready!”
“Event horizon in three, two one-”

Everything went black for a fleeting instant. Then, Ghettex found himself standing on a rocky plateau in the midst of a cloud of thick fog.

*****

Tamarillho was frantically trying to evade the EMP bursters that were going off everywhere in the transpace tunnel. She had managed to stay ahead of the Darkstar for about two hours, mainly due to the five clustertorps she’d lobbed at it. Now, however, she was down to her last clustertorp, and she didn’t want to lose it. Nor did she want to use her specially re-wired seismic charge just yet; the risk was too great, and if it did work, she’d be stranded. No, if she was going to use it, it would have to be near the virtual coordinates of the Clappenheim system, which lay right beside the jumproute.

The ship was still closing in on her, though. Its massive drive section could deliver a lot more thrust power than her fighter’s engines, it would take them quite some time but they would overtake her eventually. The worst part was that they were still firing EMP flak rounds at her.

She could narrowly avoid an intense burst of fire, when she suddenly felt her consciousness slowly slipping away. The post-humans were going to get her, and she couldn’t use her seismic charge yet. She was helpless. She veered around an anti-fighter missile, which the Darkstar had now decided to lob at her in great numbers. The weapons-pod-mounted micro-launchers were spitting out veritable swarms of EMP burster missiles, which were much harder to evade than the railgun rounds she’d been forced to contend with earlier. The railgun flak didn’t chase after her at least. She had pushed her throttle to maximum overdrive, and was now faster than the missiles, but their high-powered drives were providing them with enough acceleration to make them capable to catch up with her in a few minutes at best. This really was a bad time for her to lose consciousne-

She wasn’t standing on the plateau this time, instead she floated in the blank blackness the post-humans called the “Plane of Thought”. She could sense other minds around her. She could also sense that these weren’t the post-humans she had been in contact with earlier. These weren’t even post-humans for as far as she knew. She could sense a significant difference between these beings and the post-humans.

“Who are you?” she thought.
“We were humans.” came the reply. It was as if the thought was projected into her mind from an outside source, though it wasn’t forced into her.
“How can you be?”
“The beings you were in contact with claim to be post-humans. They are not. We are.”
“Then what are the others?”
“Post-Scryath.”
“Come again?”
“They described our early history quite accurately, so I won’t recount it. After we had developed interstellar flight, and had established colonies on other worlds in other systems, Humana suddenly came under attack by an unknown force. They had used a stable neutrino singularity, of which we had no knowledge, to enter our system and to attack us in force.”
“Wait- so you knew about warp points, but what are neutrino singularities? Warp points have high neutrino emissions, every spacer knows that.”
“Neutrino singularities are warp points.”

*****

“She’s stopped evading!” the Darkstar’s sensors officer shouted across the bridge. “Sir? Sir!” He had finally noticed his commanding officer, Commodore Ghettex, was unconscious. “Sir! Can you hear me?”
Ghettex lifted his head up with a gasp. “Yes. What’s going on?”
“She’s stopped maneuvering! EMP burster closing in! Impact in four, three, two one.....”

-----END OF CHAPTER TWO-----