The Demise

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

-----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-----

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

-----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---------------

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

-----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-----

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

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-----

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Comments please? 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-----

[rdouglass]

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.

[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]

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]

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.