[Starhawk]

Memories:
It was a long time ago now, it seemed like years now, though it had only been one year since the warp points to outside space had been sealed, since Jack Alderson’s ship had heard the final alerts by the navy to any stellar capable ships to make the warp jump before the points were sealed off. Jack had been on a passenger liner, the LNS Star Sparrow when the first warship appeared in his system and alerted the dozens of Civilian ships to make top possible speed for the warp point, they had only been given two days to make it and some of the poor bastards knew right off the start that their craft couldn’t make it before the point was sealed.
Jack remembered the panic, the screaming and crying of scared children, the sobbing of people who realized that even if the liner made it to the warp point they would never see their families again, some even demanded that the liner return to one of this world or that in the system but they were quickly overpowered by those people who were desperate to escape the system that was seen as doomed.

For hours upon hours the ship cut through space at full speed, other ships joined her, liner’s, freighters, bulk carriers, even civilian yachts that would never make the jump were trying to keep up, hoping to dock with some of the bigger ships and offload their passengers. It was like a scene of some holodrama, some small yachts even tried forcibly boarding an armed merchantman that was carrying over 6,000 souls that they had managed to pick up from one of the outer worlds, it was a strange space battle to say the least, none of the combatants had the weaponry of a warship and one of the three attacking yachts only had auto cannons with which to attack the behemoth of a ship, the merchantman returned fire with her frag cannons and quickly destroyed one of her attackers, tragically the exploding yacht slammed headlong into a school ship, destroying it instantly killing dozens of children. Jack remembered watching from the ship’s main view port and remembered wondering why the waiting Icaran warship didn’t even try to help that merchantman and save those six thousand souls, Jack just felt glad that he could not hear the com traffic that the crews of the surrounding ships could hear it must have been such a sad and desperate plea for help.
Another armed yacht darted into the fray, bringing it’s anti-proton cannons to bear on one of the armed yachts, the first shot missed entirely but the second volley cut into the raider’s engine housing causing the craft to spin out until the merchantman’s frag cannons locked on her and finished the job.
Unfortunately by that point the merchantman had suffered massive amounts of damage, whole sections burned with the fury of plasma fires and atmosphere was rushing into space from holed sections along the cargo pods that carried thousands of people, Jack thought back with a shiver as the site of people being sucked out into space by the hundreds as more and more weapons fire raked their ship, and the thoughts of how many people must have died in the fires or when the oxygen was sucked out of their cargo pods. It all ended when the raider tried to latch on to the merchantman and commence boarding operation, tragedy struck however when the other armed yacht scored a hit on the raider’s starboard engine forcing it to flame out, because it was latched onto the merchantman with grapplers however it did not spin away harmlessly but instead spiraled directly into the main compartment of the cargo ship causing a massive chain reaction, destroying the entire ship and killing thousands of innocent people.
More raids followed as desperate individuals attacked jump capable ships, and boarded them, though not every armed ship was in the hands of a desperate pirate, many armed yachts and racers patrolled the rag-tag fleet fighting off raiders wherever they could, hundreds of these brave people died as raiders engaged the fleet, one raider even scored three hits on the Star Sparrow killing dozens in the aft compartment before it was rammed by an armed racer that was acting as an impromptu fighter.
Jack remembered the feelings of anger and frustration as he saw a naval dreadnought just sitting there watching as raiders and “militia” fought for control of the jump capable ships, he had just come on this ship for a week long cruise around the system and now he was involved in a battle with other Icarans! And worse yet he had no weapons with which to fight back. He looked out his window just in time to see three armed racers and a yacht fly by his ship in formation, almost instantly one of the racers exploded in a ball of fire as a “merchantman” opened fire on the fleet with an I-Laser cannon, a second shot from the deadly cannon struck home on one of the poor freighters destroying it’s engines and life support systems outright. The fleet was only two minutes from the warp point and finally the dreadnought opened fire to protect the fleet, the raiding merchantman erupted into a ball of wreckage and fire.

Jack finally felt the gravity waves engulfing his ship and looked through his window long enough to see the dreadnought racing past his ship into the warp, warships were much faster in warp speed because of their higher quality GFGs and gravity sail generators that were the size of the Star Sparrow‘s entire engine block, which meant that the warship would already be thousands of kilometers off before the first civilian ship even entered the warp point it’s self.
The space around the civilian fleet was alive with colors as a Last wave of raiders tried to board the bigger ships to save their own asses, the brave few people left protecting the fleet raced out to meet them. A handful of the armed racers that had been damaged in battle managed to land aboard some of the larger civilian ships just before they made the transition into the warp.
The Star Sparrow was one of the slower ships in the fleet thanks to the damage she had suffered during the raider’s abortive attack against her, that left her and only two other ships with roughly eight thousand souls between them lagging at the back of the fleet and it was this that spelled their doom.
Jack remembered the tormented screaming and whaling coming from the forward compartments, just before the entire compartment he and dozens of other passengers were in turned red, a noise indescribable to anyone who did not hear it began and it was the noise more then anything that caused the screaming of agony, for the second the sound started every cell in Jack’s body erupted in fire, his body felt like it was twisting and distorting, his eyes lost sight for what seemed an eternity and the vision that greeted him when sight regained only made him wish for death even more, the other passengers were changing, their bodies were becoming distorted and the decks began dripping with blood as some of the passenger’s bodies liquefied because of the warping effects. It seemed like an eternity of pain before they finally exited the warp, the three ships that had been cut off from the rest of the fleet appeared light years off course and those poor souls that had survived could no longer be called human, Jack remembered the feeling of fear at first but then that feeling began to change, he felt a calling stronger then anything else he had ever felt before, the calling to find others like himself, those that had survived being cut off from the warp those that had turned into whatever it was that he had become, days passed and they had found eight other ships with other mutants like themselves, Jack had taken charge of the mutants through sheer force of character and will, and even now he had forged the 11 ships and about twelve thousand mutated individuals that had been ‘sacrificed for the good of man”, little did those bastards in the government know that they had survived the warp, their ships and bodies mutated beyond recognition but they had survived, and now they would claim vengeance upon the empire that had abandoned them to death for the sake of a numbers game!
And it would all start here, on Valhalla, he had already taken an advance team to the surface and even now their workings of sabotage and plans for the population were well underway, the entire planetary com system had been destroyed and thousands of people had been brought under the mutant’s sway, soon they would have their vengeance, very soon.