The Demise

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

I felt like a fictional (i.e. non-game) SEIV story, so here goes 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 !

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

[TurinTurambar]

Is my style of writing terrible?

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...

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

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



More background info

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.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

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.

Well, opinions so far? Is my style of writing terrible? Please, tell me.

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 thank you for your advice 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

[dogscoff]

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.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

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-----

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Pretty good.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

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? ) between Tamarillho and..... You didn't really think I was gonna tell you, huh? 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-----

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Little background (simply because I like to write background information for my stories ):

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? 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

[El_Phil]

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.