Newbie Galactic Combat II - Story Thread

[Ruatha]

Goodie, I can wait!

[CaptRR]

Well maybee not the end of the story, but the end is near. Hopefully I'll update a little more than Last time.
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Chapter 32

It was a beautiful night at the Headquarters of the Central Powers, but you couldn’t have told that by the semi-empty streets in the city. Josha noted this with the other reports coming in. All over alliance space the Weyrlings were recalling parts of their population. Even here at HQ over 90 percent of the representatives from the weyrling delegation had left. In a world where the population was evenly split between the 3 races of the Alliance it had become noticeable. Add to that the reports that warp point going into Weyrling space were being closed as well. Any other time Josha would have just though they were being prudent, just reducing the routes for a future invasion to take. But the points they were closing were major trading routes.

Despite all of this, the Weyrlings were continuing to push their shipyards at war time rates. With the loss of revenue from trade, they had to be running a huge deficit. Frankly it looked like the weyrlings were taking on an isolationists policy, but that didn’t explain the increased build rate.

Josha sighed, and looked at his watch. It was late, and way past the time for most government facilities to close down, but the Central Powers Speaker had insisted on a meeting at this time. When Josha asked why, he simply changed the subject. More peculiar was the location. Instead of the speakers office, he had insisted on meeting in the Alliance VIP space port.

The port was empty, more so now that almost a third of the population seemed to have left. The VIP space port was located deep in the city center on top of one of the Alliance administrative buildings. It was used exclusively for visiting statesmen, and of course the speakers Yacht. It also had the distinguished honor of being one of the most glorious ports in known space. It’s view of the alliance headquarters had inspired many artist to paint pictures of the skyline, and many a poet had said the view was a gift from the creator. But today it filled Josha with dread. The 3 sections of the city could be seen easily from here. Both the Dravel and the Thermolians sections could be seen clearly, their huge skyscrapers reaching to the heavens, glowing with life. The story was much different with the Weyrlings section. It looked almost abandoned. Only a light here and their came from their buildings. In effect that section of the city looked like a ghost town.

It was a grim reminder that the Weyrlings were facing a dramatic shift in their attitudes towards the universe, an attitude that didn’t include the Alliance.

The sound of steps snapped him back to the present, and Josha turned to see the speaker of the Central Powers walking towards him. He was followed by several other Weyrlings. Josha recognized them as his aids, one of them wore the outfit of the Weyrling Navy, his approximate rank equal to an Admiral in the Draven Republic.
As the speaker approached Josha bowed, his show of respect was repeated by the speaker and his aids.

“I hope you are well, Draven Josha. I must apologies for the location, but I’m afraid time is short.”

“It is ok speaker”

The Weyrling, gave his races closest approximation of a smile. “Still, hopefully after we finish you will understand my haste.”

Josha looked over the speaker and his aids, over the years he had learned to read Weyrlings pretty well, but all he saw now while he looked over them was a mask. Whatever they were up to they were playing it close to their chest.

“Draven Josha, I’m afraid it is time for us to part ways.”

Josha tried to look surprised, but he had to admit he was expecting this, instead he settled for a courteous nod. “I expected as much, Mr Speaker.”

“You are a smart for a Draven,” now Josha could see that Weyrling smile cross the cat like creatures lips, “so I had no doubt that you would have noticed our sudden withdraw from this planet.”

Josha nodded, “Yes, I had noticed,” he swung his arms towards the window, indicating the darkened Weyrling buildings, “it was after all hard to miss, what I don’t understand is why.”

“Draven Josha, I will try to explain as best as I can, but in many ways it will still seem strange to you. After all the alliance still considers the One to be a myth, but you see Draven Josha, The One is real, and it is so much more than any kind of God. The One is everything to us, it is our beginning and our end, our future and past all rolled into one. To be honest there is no word in your language to describe The One.”

The Speakers aids nodded in agreement. Whatever this One was it was something that they believed in with all their hearts.

“Ok, Mr Speaker, I understand this One is important to you, but what does that have to do with you leaving?”

The Weyrling nodded his feline head, “I’m afraid Draven Josha you understand nothing of the one, but that’s all right, you don’t need to. You will of course remember it was a Weyrling fleet that did the initial occupation of the Terrens. What we found was… disturbing.” The speaker seemed to shudder visibly.

“And this is the reason you are leaving? Something you saw while occupying the terrens?”

“No Draven Josha, its not something we saw, its what we learned when we probed deep into the minds of the Terrens. We saw hate, as pure and evil as anything we had ever experienced, and it was aimed at the Weyrlings.”

Josha was about to voice his objection, but the Speaker cut him off.

“I know what you are about to say Draven Josha, but the hate we saw was deeper than something as simple as war could produce. That hate was woven into the very fabric of their being. Do you understand what I am saying? The Terrens were breed to hate Weyrlings!”

Josha froze for a moment, the implications of what was being said were staggering. Most of the known races were offshoots of Terrens in some way. That included the Dravens.

“Speaker that can’t be, the Dravens have no hate for the Weyrlings.”

“Perhaps not now, after all, the trait seems to have been repressed in the Dravens. But, it is bound to come out eventually, maybe not now, but in the future for sure. It might take a hundred generations before the effects begin to become noticeable, and when that happens the Dravens will turn on the Weyrlings as well.”

“Speaker this all sounds too implausible, could their have been some kind of mistake.” Josha was pleading, almost begging, he couldn’t believe that what the weyrling was saying could be true.

“We have studied the facts as conclusively as possible, and from what we have been able to determine, all races that spawned from terrens, as well most of the other known races have this hate buried in them, waiting to come out. We also believe we know the source.”

That riveted Josha’s attention. “The source?”

“Yes Draven Josha. You see 65 thousand years ago, before even the Terrens had developed on the planet that you call Earth, the Weyrlings spanned across all of known space, and beyond. Our records, indicate that despite our relative size we were very poor technologically speaking. Our ships operated off solar wind, and journeys took centuries even with the help of the warp point network.”

Josha tried to take all this in, what the speaker was telling him couldn’t be true, no one had ever suspected that the werylings were as old as he was now claiming, but something in the speakers voice convinced him that all that was being said was true.

“Dispite the huge gulf between stars we were all One. The One kept us together, even if we were to never see another Weyrling we knew that we were always one. For thousands of years we lived this way. We never invented better technology because we simply didn’t need it. What was several hundred year journey when we were never alone.

We traveled the stars and found life everywhere, but none was advance as us. Oh sure their was potential, but it was thousands of years distant. We were content that we were the only intelligent species in the Universe. At least that is what we thought.

We still don’t know who they were, but we knew they wanted us extinct. Their physic abilities were unmatched, and even as their massive swarms of ships came down upon us they used their physic abilities to turn our own people away from the one and against us. It took everything we had to beat them. Trillions of Weyrlings died in the conflict, but we managed to drive them back to their home system.

We had thought it was over, but in the end they unleashed the worse weapon imaginable. It took the strength of every Last one of them to project a psychic virus.

All of a sudden billions of our own people went what could only be explained as mad. We destroyed ourselves in such numbers that they could not be recorded. We think this is when some of our scientists began to alter the genes of developing species. Instilling a hate for the Weyrlings in every life bearing world they came across.

We survived, but not before we lost almost 99 percent of our species. The one was scared deeper than words can convey, and we withdrew inward, into just 3 planets. From their we started to rebuild. The one knew that we could not survive another war like the Last, so it went into seclusion, and let our own competitive instincts build the technology needed to win the next war. It took us a long time develop better ways to travel the stars, and when we finally ventured out of our own warp points we found that the Galaxy was filled with life.

We never suspected that life had been altered by our ancestors, until we looked into a Terren and saw what we most feared. Hate for ourselves, the very hate we had thought was behind us, beried forever.”

Josha just stared at the Speaker, not sure what to say. What was being said was amazing, it was so unbelievable he could not see how anyone, much less an entire race could have made it up.

“That Draven Josha is why we must leave you. We cannot live in this Universe beside you. Your own nature would eventually turn against us, and we cannot fight off everyone. Instead we have come to learn, that the time of the Weyrlings has past, the future is now with you, and it is a future we cannot be a part of.”

Josha searched for words, “But what of the Alliance, surely the alliance cannot hold without you.”

The Weyrling looked up though the space ports huge glass dome, and for a moment stared at the stars in the night sky. The view was breathtaking, and Josha realized this would be the Last time he would see the Weyrling, they were right the Weyrlings could not live in this Universe anymore, the actions of their ancestors had made that impossible. No, the future belonged to the other races.

The Weyrling looked back down at Josha, “You are correct, the alliance cannot hold, but perhaps it was never meant to. With only three races, we are not diverse enough to stand off the CCCP and its vast resources, but if others we aligned together maybe you might just have a chance.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” Josha muttered softly, for some reason that phrase seemed appropriate.

“Indeed, Draven Josha, Indeed” With that the Weyrling bowed, as did the rest of his guests. Josha stood and watched as the Speaker got into his yacht and vanished into the night sky. For many hours Josha just stood their in the space port staring out the windows. For some reason the Universe seemed a little more frightening.

Chapter 33

Yalare paced his office. The news of the invasion fleet reached the Capital just a few hours after they entered the system. The amount of ships the enemy had were not many, already home fleet which outnumbered them 2 to 1 was already on an intercept course. No the invasion fleet was not the problem, what was a problem was who was leading that fleet. Of all the Dravens in command it had to be Prince Dravel, the rightful heir of the Presidency.

Even though Yalare had placed a lockdown of all media word had gotten out, that Prince Dravel was coming to free the people from Yalare. Almost every floating city had been having riots continually. Yalare knew that if the Prince managed to get troops on the ground, then the people would rally around them. Yalare may have an extensive security force, but they couldn’t fight off an entire planet!

Yalare wanted to run but he couldn’t. He was sure the Prince would be killed when home fleet managed to crush the Princes little fleet. The word of the princes death would enrage the population, and Yalare would be disposed of like any other dictator in history.

It wasn’t fair, he told himself. All he was trying to do was help the republic, and now that same republic had turned against him! Fine if that was the way they wanted it, he would make them pay.

Slowly Yalare reached into his desk and took out a small black box, it looked almost antique and mesured 15 centimeters across, with an old style keypad being its only feature. Yalare rubbed it with his hand.

“Oh yes, if they want me that bad they can have me, but they will pay more dearly than they could imagine.”

[Ruatha]

I like it!
It was a good description of the Weyrlings far history and a good farewell!
Things start to look bad for that scumbag Yalare! Good!
But what is he up to now?
Has it something to do with the cloaked CCCP ships??
Or is it another bomb??

Why are the Weyrling shipyards working so? They have 130+ planetary SY3:s so they can output alot if needed, but what are they doing now?

Suspension!!!

[ August 07, 2003, 11:34: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

[Raging Deadstar]

Great update! I've been eagerly awaiting the next few chapters of this story and i'm impressed. It gives us a great insight of the Wreylings. Hope you find time to write more soon!

*Round of Applause*

[CaptRR]

Chapter 34

The purple ball of Kornephoras X was beautiful. It sky's full of clouds shown brightly against Kornephoras the blue sun. Of course Prince Dravel knew it was an illusion. What he was seeing as he looked as his screen was thousands of kilometers distant. It was only being shown brightly through the ships optics, and they creped across the endless gulf that separated interplanetary distances.

It had been 2 weeks since the fleet has had fought it way through the warp point. The wreckage of the system bases still sent out streams of radiation. That was undoubtedly part of the reason few survivors had been found, that's something that still burned in Dravels heart. Sure intellectually he had known he might have to fight fellow Dravens, but up until the moment his ships had actually fired he had never quite believed it.

Now he took a breath, the memories of that day, came flooding back to him in full detail. He could hear the ghosts of his fellow Dravens that had died, he knew that those ghosts would haunt him until the day he finally passed.

The only thing that had made it bearable was Sosha. For several days following the fight Dravel had all but locked himself in his cabin, only leaving long enough to do his duties, then he would retreat back into his own personal purgatory. Their he would question what he was really doing here, making war on his own people, after all they had elected Yalare, maybe it wasn't Yalare who was the tyrant, maybe it was Dravel himself, and just when he was about to give up. To maybe call this entire invasion off, Sosha had arrived.

Dravel didn't know what she had said, his own emotional turmoil was too much. But just by her being their it somehow was able to take away the pain... no, not take it away, but someone to share it with. To take the burdon that he had been carrying himself and spread it between the two of them.

He wept that night, for many hours, and Sosha wept for him, and somewhere in that time they had realized what they meant to each other. The next morning when they woke up they were still embraced in each other's arms, and it seemed as if an anvil had been lifted from Dravel's heart.

Now, finally he was no longer alone.

It wasn't long after, that the incoming ships of home fleet had been spotted. Dravel still dreaded having to fight against his fellow countrymen, but now at least he could find solace in what he was fighting for. As he looked up and saw Sosha their working hard at her console the reason was reaffirmed in her warm eyes. She noticed him looking at her, and blushed slightly, but her smile radiated within him long after she looked back to her work.

Dravel did the same. He stared at the plot showing the incoming ships, they outnumbered him at least 2 to 1, and unlike the base stations these ships would have Phased Polaron Beams. The next generation of shielding was suppose to be able to stop PPB attacks, but as of yet no one had managed to adapt it to an actual warship. In any conflict his shields would be worthless against home fleets landing city class dreadnaughts, of course they would be in the same pickle, but they had more ships than he. No, the only way to win a battle with home fleet was not to fight them at all, and that was exactly what Dravel was going to do.

"Sosha?"

Her head snapped up, and despite her trying to act professional, a small hint of smile still came through. "Yes my Prince... err, I mean, Admiral." She blushed at slip of tung.

Dravel, smiled at her slip up, it was innocent of course, and had some other junior officer made that mistake he would have undoubtedly given them a talking too they would not forget. But, this was Sosha, and right now he didn't give a damn about rules and regulations.

"I want you to open a communication with the flagship of Home Fleet. But, I don't want Yalare knowing, so you'll have to use sub light communications."

"Yes, sir, it'll take a few minutes to set that up."

"No problem Sosha, we still have time." And Dravel gave Sosha the broadest grin he could manage.

Chapter 35

"...Once again I reiterate my warning to home fleet. If you do not alter from your intercept course of us we will be forced to engage you. Yalare is not worth dieing for Admiral. I await your reply." With that the small hologram over the table vanished, and the room light came back up to normal.

Admiral Nakanorma, looked over his assembled officers, "That came in over slower than light communications in a directed beam 5 hours ago, we have positively Ided the speaker as Prince Dravel. Observations?"

Commander Harlow, was the first to speak. The commander had been a "special" appointment by the Yalare administration after the former commander vanished of course that wasn't long after his less than flattering comments about the government. Admiral Nokanorma tried not to think about that, it was just more proof that the republic had gotten more dangerous over the Last few years.

"I think the prince it attempting a coup just as the Prime Minister said before we departed. He knows he can't win, so he is hoping that we will go ahead and let him walk right up to Kornephoras X and take it over. It's desperation pure and simple."

Nokanorma thought about it for a moment, then nodded his head, "I got to fight in war games against the prince several times. When his back is against the wall he never tries desperation ploys. No he is up to something."

"Sir," said Harlow, "I think you are letting your personal relationship cloud your judgment." Harlow didn't even try to keep the venom out of his voice. Their was no love between the admiral and the commander, as far as Nokanorma was concerned the commander was idiotic political appointee, totally unqualified for the position he now held. His only trait for the job was his unending loyalty to Yalare himself.

"Commander," Nakanorma did his best to keep his voice even, "Whatever my personal feelings for the Prince, it is abundantly clear that he is breaking several Republic laws, and it is our job to stop him." Good Nokanorma thought to himself, let Harlow try to make an issue of that.

Harlow seemed taken back, he had hopped to edge the admiral into a confrontation that would let Harlow assume command of the fleet, but Nakanorma seemed a little more cunning than that. Oh well there was always next time.

"I was not trying to insinuate anything Admiral, and I apologize for any misunderstanding."

"None the less," Nakanorma went on ignoring the commanders stuttered explination, "we still only have one course of action, we will continue to intercept the Princes fleet. Once in range we will send out fighter strikes. The fighers will hammer their main battle line from long range, as well as suppress their own fighters. We will then move our capital ships into range and engage the enemy wit PPB's. Commander, I trust that you concur with this action?"

"Of course Admiral."

"In that case Gentlemen, lets get ready, we launch fighters in 10 hours."

Chapter 36

Lieutenant(j.g) Shanar watched the empty blackness of space only occasionally broken by stars before her fighter cockpit. Relatively she was going almost 10% the speed of light, but outside it looked as though she wasn't even moving. Also as she looked outside it appeared that she was lone, but that was just an illusion. Her instruments told the real tale, she was joined by over 215 IF-302 attack fighters. Each spaced several kilometer apart, its immense force glowed as individual icons in Shanar's helmet display. But as immense as the force she was now apart of was, it was nothing compared to the onslaught that was heading her way.

Dravel's force had brought several of the Alliances new Escort Carriers with him. Their relatively small fighter compliment was augmented by their ability to handle starship style weapons. Shanr really didn't care about that right now though, the force coming at her was from Home fleet, it had no need for starship style weapons on its carriers so it used full blown Super Carriers. Their immense bulk could hold almost 100 large IF-400's, home fleet 7 of these, and that was what was coming at her now. 600 fighters of variouse classes was heading right to the Princes fleet.

Shanar had no doubt most of those fighters were optimized for anti-shipping strikes, but their would be more than a few escorts mixed in amount them. It wasn't all doom gloom, as far as her sesors were able to tell, they were using exclusively large fighter designs. The IF-302 that Shanar now piloted was of a small figher design. In a one on one fight the smaller fighter would lose, but the her wing had no intention of making this a fair fight. They would close to max weapons range, fire their missles, and then turn around, using their faster speed to elude the enemies as long as possible. It wasn't a perfect solution, and undoubtedly they would lose some pilots, but at least they would weaken them down so that the prince's point defenses could finish the job.

"Ok, everyone" it was her commander over the wing com system, "pick your targets, remember fire and leave. We don't want any hero's here. Good hunting everyone, out."

Shanar picked her targets, and imagined a pilot like her was doing the same against her. It was horrible to think that she was shooting at her own people, but she had little choice. Slowly the clock counted down, and then began to beep. She was in range, "Computer" she said the small crafts cybernetic intelligence, "commence staggered firing on primary targets, on mark."

She took a breath, it seemed forever, and the silence of her cockpit surprised her the only sound was of her own life support systems. She exhailed slowly, letting the stress flow out of her, "Weapons release, Fire."

The craft shuddered slightly as a massive load of a 1,000 Kilo missiles detached. Barely a heartbeat later it ignited its own Contra Tarrene engine and sped off into the darkness at a staggering rate, the process was repeated over and over. In all she launched 6 missles at 3 targets.

Barely a heartbeat after her Last missle detached her blood ran cold. Her computer beeped its cold uncaring warning in her ear, "Inbound missiles. 12'oclock forward, Inbound Missle..."

Shanar pulled the craft into an almost 90 degree turn, even with the compensators on board 20g's got through. The only thing that even remotely allowed her to live was the sensors in her suit redirecting blood to the brain. But she still blacked out.

She didn't know how long, but it couldn't have been more than a second she woke again. The roar of the computer still screaming in her ear, "Inbound missle 3'oclock right, Inbound Missle..."

Shanar cursed under her breath, and lauched decoys out, at the same time bringing the F-302's engines to over 130%. The crew dogs would just have to ***** at her for burning the fuser out, they wouldn't get the chance if she never made it back.

She was still struggling with another turn when she was almost blinded by the brightest light she had ever saw as the first missiles from home fleet stuck home. Their antimatter warhead unleashing huge amounts for energy for just milliseconds, but it was enouph to rip though the small f-302's like so much toilet paper.

Shanar's fighter buckled against the shockwave's roaring everywhere around her, as she attempted to pilot her craft through what could only be explained as hell. Then just as suddenly as it started it was over.

Ever so slowly, she was able to take stock of the survivors, their were so terribly few. She didn't know if it was proper for her to give the order but she really didn't care, Home fleets fighters would be doing the same as her, and it wouldn't be long before a second volley came through "Everyone back to the ships, on the double, anyone who doesn't keep up will be left behind." That brought a few laughs. And Shanar whipped the f-302 around back towards the fleet. So few were going to be coming back today. Of the wings original 215 fighters, just over 100 came back to the carriers to reload, and rearm.

[Ruatha]

What's the prince up to now, the odds doesn't look good!

[Raging Deadstar]

Interesting, i wonder what the prince is up to, i'm sure he has a back up plan. Great writing as usual