[OT] - Story thread: Xenology Resurrected

[primitive]

Xiati – the other red meat

Great stuff.

[Raging Deadstar]

Great as always, i loved the whole frontier chic thing, very original.

I swear your playing as this race with Hannibal lecter as your race pic to scare your opponents

[sachmo]

bump?

[Unknown_Enemy]

Originally posted by sachmo:
bump?

it not my fault, that lazy dogscof is not playing turns quickly en...what ? I am a lazy b.....d ?

well..yes I am..

I'll give a text to dogscof tomorrow for correction purpose. Still have a part of it which I am not happy with.

[dogscoff]

I'd play my turns more reularly, really I woull, but I deleted Matyx's modpicker and installed the companion instead. It has far more features and is much much more complete but it's still in Beta and... well... it can be kind of hard to load turns sometimes.

I'll have a look now and see if I can persuade it to open another turn.

[Unknown_Enemy]

Xi-Chung’s Nest.
The thought band was still full of excited howling from the finding of the Parasite’s homeworld. Tigers of Eden had managed to break the strong defences of the Tirenda/Wisani warp point. Behind these lines lay the Xi-Chung nest, the source of their power. With more than 10 fortresses in orbit of their planet and a formidable planetary shield network, it would be a daunting task to storm the place. Nevertheless, it was a major step toward extinguishing their threat to the natural order. Major research efforts in shield depleting weapons and planetary bombs would be needed to cleanse the Nest, but victory was now within reach. Without their homeworld, the Xi-Chung power would be broken. However, the downfall of the parasites would be long in its coming, as two different supply bases would have to be build to allow a direct assault on their nest. Meanwhile, it was highly doubtful the aliens would stand idly while Eden’s children build up in force within strike range of their sacred homeworld. Indeed, the OverMind was considering unavoidable heavy losses with great sadness.
On the other side, this part of the campaign was proving the definite superiority of Void-Tigers in the field of warfare. Void-Hawks lacked the killer instinct for these duties. One by one, surviving veteran Hawks were coming back in orbit of Eden, to put themselves on hibernation, waiting for more peaceful times to awaken, but also allowing their battered hide to slowly regenerate.

Hungry KaneSS.
Somewhere in deep space near Urani warp point, a Hawk of Eden closed on a KaneSS population transport.
“Your attention please, I am One from Eden requesting immediate and direct communication with the captain of this civil transport. Waiting.”
A few minutes later, a hissing voice replied : “this is captain Trissi speaking, what do you want ?”
“I want 200 individuals of your species delivered in a container with enough supply to survive for 1 day. I also want speed in that transfer.”
“You are a warship, I see that. But you’re nothing compared to our military. I refute your threat, you won’t dare attack us. So begone or face KaneSS wrath.”
“You misunderstood captain. For 200 live adults, I’ll pay you 50 tons of top quality meat. You’ll also get a 10 tons bonus if the exchange is done in less than 24H. Any questions ?”
Ten hours later, the Hawk of Eden was flying at full thrust toward his Homeworld. In a sealed part of his stomach lay 200 KaneSS in cryogenic sleep. A few months later, all KaneSS specimens had been studied, their brains assimilated and their bodies dissected. After all, KaneSS life was cheap.

The OverMind found that once again, prudence had been the wisest choice. In fact, it all came down to the Project. To create a planetary mind, a bare minimum of 1 million individual was needed. Even so, such a newborn mind was barely able to merge with Eden’s OverMind, and Intelligence was not its strongest point. Time was needed for his parts to grow, as the OverMind was not a distinct specie, but a whole ecosystem gone sentient. Thus all constituent species had to reproduce at the same relative speed. Or, to put it mildly, if you wanted to accelerate the growth rate of colonies, all species had to be cloned simultaneously. Thus the Hive Mother Project. A new life form able to store thousands of genetic codes, a being whose gigantic body would be laying both on earth and underwater, a mother for thousands of different species, from animals to vegetal, from fishes to insects. Unfortunately, the Hive Mother needed a long list of rare nutriments to create its offspring. These had to be found on several planets. So far, the OverMind had not found a solar system able to support more than one Hive Mother at a time. The research work done on that project had been tremendous, and it also generated a myriad of smaller projects, like the KaneSS abduction. That Last one was used to understand more thoroughly their psychology, and prove a point : what the OverMind was seeing as “Accelerated Growth Project”, KaneSS would translate as “Unlimited Free Meat”. They would kill anyone or enslave anything to own such a food generator.

Unsurprisingly, the OverMind was very uneasy seeing itself from the Free Meat’s point of view.


REMINDER : we are using proportion mod, so homeworlds are the main source of power.

[ June 23, 2004, 13:14: Message edited by: Unknown_Enemy ]

[dogscoff]

On the edge of a broken crater, two suited figures waited outside a tiny, grey building. Eventually a doorway slid silently open, and the pair collapsed into it and were swallowed by the closing aperture. Mexa'renath'xe removed his helmet and took a deep breath. The air in his suit had been getting stale for the Last hour or so, and it seemed impossible that he should still be alive. His next instinct was to help his daughter, who lay unconscious on the floor beside him. He removed her helmet with trembling fingers and felt a crippling wave of emotion as he heard a stuttering breath from her. Then he slid down the wall of the airlock and passed out.

When he awoke, it took him several seconds to remember where he was. Eventually his cybernetics kicked in, rushing hormones and drugs through his system to bring him as close to alertness as possible. His daughter was still motionless. Xiati cybernetic improvements could only do so much, and he feared she was beyond any kind of help now. Her breathing was barely detectable, and he knew that under the suit she was missing an arm, casually torn off and eaten by one of those monsters. He tried to block out the flood of memories triggered by that thought, but he could not. He knew he would be terrorised by those memories for the rest of his life, but he took comfort in the knowledge that the rest of his life would not be long. The horror, the trauma of those Last few months had taken their toll, and even if help came, even if he somehow survived this and got back to Xiati space, he had nothing left to live for.

His family had been caged and kept like cattle in their own home, with nothing to do but wait as the KanesS brood who now inhabitted his house had picked them off, not one by one but piece by piece, limb by limb. Those who looked weakest and most vulnerable had been selected first, and every valiant attempt to defend his offspring had simply moved him closer to the end of the list. Every time he tried- and failed- to prevent the monsters from taking another one of his precious children, he knew that the inscrutable aliens granted him an extra few days of agonising life with which to witness their cruelty. His mate had simply given in, choosing death over torture, and had laid impassively and barely protesting even as they tore meat from her. Mexa'renath'xe had been envious, he had longed for death, and yet he had somehow never been able to submit to it. He had fought them whenever they came, and had even caught and killed a few of the younger ones with his bare hands. The adult KanesS hadn't seemed particularly upset about this, they had simply retreated, knowing that in the end, he would be too weak to resist.

Eventually, after an uncountable number of days or weeks or months, only he and his eldest daughter remained, she with a rough tourniquet about the bloody stump of her left shoulder. It was then that the fighting had started. Another group of KanesS had burst into the house and all hell had broken loose. Maybe they had come to rescue them; maybe some of these creatures were outraged at the behaviour of their fellows, but he doubted it. There could be no compassion, no mercy in those creatures.

Somehow, in the confusion the cage had been upturned and broken open, and he had managed to guide his daughter out of the house, avoiding the rioting that had suddenly sprung up around them. They had made their way to one of the dome's airlocks, where a few Xiati suits still hung. From there they had trekked for days over terrain that would have been impossible in anything but this moon's low gravity to an abandoned mining survey outpost. He had hoped against hope that there would be some method of escape here, driven himself on with the prospect of survival, but even as he conducted his fruitless search for food, water or transport, he realised now that he didn't want any of those things. All he really wanted was to die in peace, and to deny the filthy KanesS his flesh. However, he had a job to do first. This outpost had some communications equipment, and Mexa'renath'xe knew enough about it to send a message home. The atrocities committed on Pruli VIa would not go untold.

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

A tight phalanx of sinewy shapes appeared on the crest of the hill, their weapons reflecting not only the thin starlight that glittered beyond the transparent dome overhead, but the blazing fires of the buildings below. The troops poured down the hillside, the dusty rock unfamiliar beneath their ice-bred bellies. With their tails holding their lance-like firearms parallel to the ground, the serpentine soldiers looked for all the world like the striped shadows of their own guns, until one of them gave the order to halt and raised herself to her full height, coldly surveying the scene below. It was anarchy. Heaps of writhing, serpentine bodies slashed randomly at one another with razor teeth, tearing lumps of flesh from friend and foe alike, each one possessed by a consuming blood-lust. Others stood alone or in tight family clusters, defending their torched homes from all comers with guns, blades and bared teeth.

The leader of the infantry unit bit at her immediate subordinate's face, drawing blood for no reason other than to register her distaste for the disorder laid out before her. "Open fire." She yelled, and death spat indiscriminately into the warring crowd below. Many fights spontaneously ended in confused panic as the crowd dispersed, scattering for cover. Others were too overcome with their frenzy to think of survival and were shredded as aggressors and victims alike were seared and torn by the disciplined gunfire from the hillside. Within a minute it was over, and a bloody, steaming peace closed the latest chapter in the grisly history of Pruli VIa.

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

Kleesh threw the reports aside and twitched her tail in irritation. With hindsight, it had been inevitable. There had only been a limited number of Xiati survivors and homes up for grabs in the newly-conquered colony, but that hadn't stopped thousands of hopefuls from making their own way out there to try to take some of it for themselves. Access to the official colonisation starliners had been strictly controlled, of course, but an alarming number of private craft had taken the initiative and were ferrying KanesS from system to system by the million, leading to scenes like this one on the ex-Xiati outpost.

And it wasn't just the starliner industry that had gotten out of control. Ever since Captain Shreekep's bucaneering adventures in that same system, a wealth of privately owned boarding vessels had taken to the stars with hopes of chancing upon a similar opportunity for profit and fresh meat. Most of them were clueless aristocrats or unrealistic entrepreneurs with only only the faintest understanding of running a spacecraft. Only one ship other than Shreekep's had yet managed to capture a Xiati craft, and most of the others had wandered so far from home in the search for prey they had run out of supplies and had to limp home on emergency power. A whole industry was springing up for supply vessels to come and bale them out before they became victims themselves, since the kind of enterprising pirates that flew these ships had no qualms about killing and their own kind.
Other raiders had started targetting Cue Cappan ships, resulting in all kinds of deliciously difficult situations for Shrikeesh's diplomatic office. Any satisfaction that his brought Kleesh, however, was outweighed by the problems this anarchy was causing for her. Quite apart from the costly and embarrassing piracy on her own ships, back on the homeworld, certain hysterical, liberal sections of the population- namely those that were now fanatically opposed to cannibalism and had long ago ad condemned Kleesh for the revival of the old ways on the colonies- had latched onto the chaos emerging in the colonies and their anti-colonial movements were gathering momentum. There had been several messy demonstrations and acts of violent protest there already, and it was just a matter of time before things got out of control. It had caused her no small amount of embarrassment with her royal parents, so she knew she had to act. A plan was formulating behind her cool eyes, and she allowed herself a small writhe of pleasure at the possibilities it opened up.

[ June 29, 2004, 15:02: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[Raging Deadstar]

Great pieces of Writing from the both of you.

I was wondering if i should update the Xenology Story at spaceempires.net with the latest chapters. Would this be ok with the both of you?

[Unknown_Enemy]

Why should we object ?
There is no copyright on my stuff. Anybody can use it as much as he wants.

[dogscoff]

A very small update to whet your appetites for the major piece coming soon (tomorrow maybe?)

Note to U_E: These events happened a few dozen turns ago, but I don't think that will cause a problem with general continuity. I hope to catch up with current affairs in the next installment.

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

KanesS historians debated long and hard over whether to call it the Second Battle of Pruli, the Third Battle of Pruli or the Fourth. It all depended on whether you chose to include the bloodthirsty boarding of the stricken ship or the massacre of the rioting colonists on Pruli VIa. A small but vocal minority even refused to acknowledge the conquest of the tiny moon, claiming that the Xiati colonists didn't really put up enough resistance to constitute a battle, but that particular crowd of spoilsports were quickly silenced. The one thing everyone agreed on though, was that this latest battle was by far the most spectaular. It was a desperate chase that ran around the system for weeks and unlike any of the previous conflicts, it was never clear from the outset just who would win. The Xiati had sent a small relief force to reclaim the stricken colony. They were immediately spotted by three KanesS buccaneer ships, who had been in the system following news that another Xiati explorer had been taken following the capture of the moon. No doubt it had been sent to investigate the distress call transmitted by an escaped colonist, found rotting and inedible in an abandoned mining survey outpost.

The three captains had been fierce competitors, and in the long, boring months waiting for more prey had almost taken to fighting among themselves. However, when they saw the size of the fleet they decided to form a temporary pact and split the considerable profits between the survivors. The troop transport alone- full of battle-suited and vengeaful Xiati infantry- would provide a small fortune in toys and meat for anyone who dared to unload it, if only it could be taken intact. All engagements between Xiati and KanesS so far had been single-ship skirmishes that had resulted in outright victory for KanesS, who would swoop in quickly, pounding the enemy with their cannons and doing their best to dodge incoming fire until they were close enough to deploy their boarding parties. Once the pirates had found their way aboard, the outcome was both predictable and grisly. With this in mind, the temporary alliance was confident enough to take on this fleet, despite being somewhat outnumbered.

Their confidence was shattered, however, when they discovered that one of the Xiati ships was actually a carrier.

Such technology was unknown to them, and they were amazed to see dozens of miniature ships emerge from the larger one and fly at them, inflicting terrible damage in a multitude of small hits. Although their ships easily outclassed the capital ships, the KanesS were woefully unprepared for these tiny, nimble targets. Only their thick armour offered any kind of defence. It was a bitter struggle from that point on, and when it became clear that the Xiati would destroy any captured ship, delicate boarding maneuvres were considered too risky in such a life-and-death situation. After a great deal of carnage and destruction, the Xiati capital ships were all utterly destroyed, and a few homeless fighters harrassed the damaged pirates as they fled the system. Eventually these few vagrants retreated to the system's other warp point to await either rescue, or destruction.

The wounded ships KanesS limped back to the nearest repair facility with no booty to show for their efforts, while repair and supply ships hurried in to offer them their overpriced services. Meanwhile, as the news of the battle's ambiguous outcome spread, weapons developpers were already working on improved anti-fighter targetting systems that pirates throughout KanesS space were queuing up to pay for.