[Deathstalker]

Civilizations in Ashes:

Chapter One: The Javelin


"Tac, damage report NOW!" shouted Icarus while he batted out the flames of the scanner attached to his chair with a much tattered uniform sleeve. While not exactly vain Icarus was a well dressed man, the Uniform of a Starship Captain of the United Suns Federation Navy was normally a blinding white, not the dingy grey that he now wore. Icarus found himself torn between which was bothering him the most right now, his uniform or the fact that the pair of Phong Heavy Cruisers were tearing his ship apart. The Javelin had lost most of its shields and the Phong's Shard Cannons were ripping right by her heavy armour with ease. He finally had the flames under control when Tac answered him, indignation filling her voice.

"Reports coming in now Captain! Engines one, three, and four are down and we've lost communications with sickbay, no idea what’s going on down there. Those Shard Cannons are tearing up Javelin pretty good!". Gavi 'Tac' Anderson kept tapping away at her Posts computer all the while as she kept the bridge constantly updated with the Javelins status. Her mess of mousey brown hair was shoved into her blue navy 'ball cap', all the rage these days since the new uniform of 'dress casual' had been introduced. Some bean counters idea of saving a few creds had actually caught on with the enlisted masses, the officers however still maintained the blinding white uniform in a most stubborn way. Her blue 'golf shirt' (gods know where that term came from, Icarus had never heard of something called 'golf' before.) was tucked into equally blue pants, at least they were navy blue he mused. Her emerald green eyes flicked to him for a second; seeming acknowledgement that yes they were 'in it deep this time' passing between them. Her face suddenly screwed up in a grimace (making her almost too snub nose twitch like a neo-rabbit he thought vaguely) as she sighed.

"Another thirty seconds for shields! They caught us with our collective pants down this time Captain!". she said before swiveling her chair and quickly tapping out firing patterns on her other tactical pad. The Phong heavy cruisers had come out of the Texrek/Gith-Yari wormhole almost directly on top of them, weapons live and shields up. They must have followed the Javelin through (probably coming out of the asteroid field, the crystalline makeup of the ships had helped them avoid the Javelins advanced sensor suite). Surprise had been total, Icarus didn’t know where pirates had gotten ahold of a pair of Phong heavy cruisers but the only alternative to that was that the Alliance had somehow broken down during their assignment. Something he believed was not even remotely possible.

“What weapons can you give me Gavi?? Can we even get a few shots off to get them to break off?” He started to sound annoyed, he hated being annoyed. It reminded him too much of his father ‘The Admiral’ laying in such phrases as ‘never let them see you crack under pressure’ when he was younger. Fifth generation Navy it was never really a question that he would command a Navy Starship. No matter what he really wanted.

“Targeting sensors are still down for the direct fire weapons, LRM’s aren’t in the tubes yet, give it fifteen seconds….still out of SRM range…..I can give you decoy missiles and external racks, that’s about it.” She shouted over the pop of an exploding monitor, glass shards falling to the floor where some of the crew now lay unconscious or worse.

“Take whatever we’ve got and concentrate fire on the lead ship, set the decoy’s to sprint mode maybe they’ll think their actually full capital missiles long enough to break off!” Icarus ordered, glancing away from the closest body on the floor (his first officer, Halden Jakobstaad, the big chunk of metal protruding from his forehead making it well known the big Viking from Jotun was one of the ‘or worse’ ones.).

“Birds away!” Tac exclaimed. The main view screen filled with trails of fire as the missiles sped towards their intended target. The vibration of the seekers launchers filled the ship as they entered sprint mode, decoy after decoy following the one shot external racks. The Phong ship made a sudden turn as the missiles entered point defense range, trying to present as little a target as possible while at the same time having all its point defense cannons coming to bear. The PDC cannons chewed through the decoy missiles like a scythe through wheat (or so Icarus imagined, he’d never actually seen a scythe, much less a wheat field.) and the external missiles escaped the cannons mostly unscathed. The first two missiles took the ship right on the ‘nose’ (prow, gotta think prow his mind thought distantly.) explosions lighting up the view screen. The second two followed right into the already damaged shield screen, widening the ‘hole’ in its field. (While great against energy weapons it had more difficulty blocking conventional ballistic weapons, one reason the navy continued to use so many missiles even in these times of massed point defense cannons on most ships.). The third missile was right on target and the ships prow caved in with the massive nuclear explosion of the third generation capital missile. Its bridge obviously damaged it began to list to one side.

“Sir, second ship has entered SRM range, LRMs are locked and shields are finally up!” Tac exclaimed with a whoop, her enthusiasm getting the better of her.

“Fire at will!” Icarus ordered with determination in his voice. Damned if they’d take his ship down without a fight. He turned to order helm to close range at all possible speed and that’s when Halden sat straight up and turned to him, speaking the words he would remember as the beginning of the nightmare.

“Captain!” Halden said, his booming voice cutting over everything in the bridge and bringing quiet to everything (well, except for the pop-hiss of cooking circuits.)

“Um….Hal…..you’re supposed to be dead right now……” Icarus said mildly.

“Sorry Captain, but we’re picking up unknown movement ahead, something is bearing down on us fast and sensors don’t know what the heck it is.” The big man said, looking all the more worried as the shard of metal and the blood covering his face began to fade away as the Neural Net combat computer suddenly disengaged.

“What do we have Tac?” Icarus gazed out on his fully functional ‘first generation’ battle bridge as his crew began to orient themselves after the shock of the training session suddenly ending, their headaches would be nasty later as would his. Abee floated beside his helm controls, the EEE looking as he/she/it usually did, unfazed by anything (the only time Icarus had seen Abee literally turn a shade of red was with that Drushocka ship incident years ago.) Halden had taken his place at his command screen, the big redhead looking every inch the Viking his ancestors had been when the settled the system of Jotun. Ready, almost too ready, to take Icarus’s place in the event he was incapacitated. A gentle nudge at the back of his mind alerted him that the ships doctor (and resident CueCappa) was ready (dammit, he was going to have to get Xistos to use the comm one of these days, it was a little too disconcerting when he touched minds directly to a lot of the crew, including him! Little Xistos understood that though). He was just beginning to feel fully in control again when Exor Farl spoke softly behind him.

“Remember Captain, our mission is to guard the convoy till it reaches Gith-Yari (I), not ‘explore strange new worlds and phenomena’ as you like to quote”. Farl said with a hint of pensiveness.

Icarus hid a frown as he regarded the company (usually referred to as ‘The Company’) representative assigned to him by Admiralty for the duration of this mission. Officially the Javelin was on convoy duty, guarding the four Company transports as they made their way toward the Gith-Yari system and the newly discovered wealth of Cryslonite artifacts on Gith-Yari I. The University people were going to throw a fit when they found out the Company wanted to stick its already stained fingers in yet another pie. Unofficially they were also out here to test out the Javelins new systems out of the range of any prying eyes, the two Phong heavy cruisers were out to help with that very test in getting the Neural Net combat computers to work right. They simulated combat all right and helped a great deal with the new battlebridge in coordinating the ships systems with minimal bridge staffing but caused massive headaches and fatigue afterward in most of the humanoid crew, the EEE, CueCappa and Phong however seemed to be immune.

Farl slid closer and Icarus found that the frown had actually transferred to his face when he swung to confront the irksome Urkra-Tal. Farl was typical for his race in that he looked exactly like a slug would look if it was over five feet tall and stood upright. His mass of tentacles clung to a staff that helped to keep him upright and his eyes started to protrude out on their stalks as his irritation began to show with Icarus. The Urkra-Tal were an incredibly rich race, having massive knowledge of organic technology and bio-engineering as well as vast business holdings made them both a political and economic force to be reckoned with in the Inner Systems even though they boasted a somewhat less than stellar naval force.

“Captain…” Farl began again but was interrupted by Gavi.
“The signature is bearing straight for us, about five standard minutes away and long range scans can’t make heads or tails of it….all they know is that it is big….very big.” She said in worried tones.

“I think that the decision is taken out of our hands Mr. Farl as its going to find us no matter what we do, the convoy is too slow to evade something that big and fast, so lets just prepare for the…..”, Icarus was going to finish off with ‘worst’ when alarm klaxons that he had never hoped to hear went off around him.

“Captain!” Hal shouted. “Organic Wormhole Signature directly ahead of us….no make that TWO of them!”

“Grife! Battle stations people! It must have been a lure! Tac! Comm the Phong, tell them we’ve got Monsters inbound! And Farl, you and I are going to have a long talk afterward if we live as to why our sensors didn’t detect them earlier dammit!” Icarus finished off with a snarl as he turned back to the main viewscreen and the first of the two creatures came through the swiftly collapsing wormholes.

They looked like gigantic squids, which were if squids could be the size of a Krill battlecruiser and twice as mean. No one really knew where they came from or how they even came to exist (some thought they were Company experiments gone wrong but records of sightings dated far back before the Company even existed.) All that was known was that there were several varieties (from the smaller Amoeba type to the gigantic ones that looked like giant jellyfish.) and they could somehow make their own stable wormholes (and close them too.) and they were just plain predators attacking anything they met up with be it ship or planetary settlement.

“Sir, the Phong are going to be a little while….the sudden disengagement of the Neural Net fried some of their computers…..give them about six minutes.” Tac said with her exasperation showing, the Phong tech was always failing at the worst of moments (their organic/crystalline computer chips were so darn fussy!).

Icarus sighed and started giving orders to engage the first of the beasts in what he believed was going to be the start of a long day…….