From the Begining New Chapter Added (9/12/06)

[Starhawk]

This segment is rated R for Graphic violence, language, and scenes of gore if you are offended by such material please skip this chapter:

The Goddess of the hunt
To: Grand Admiral’s Office
From: Rear Admiral Alan Hindecker, His Majesty’s Bureau of Ship Design
Re: Project Artemis

Grand Admiral your excellency it is my happy duty to inform you that the Artemis project has finally born fruit, the two Nimitz class carriers are already in my yards being retrofit for the Artemis heavy raider configuration with the extended marine barracks and shield depletion weaponry, fortunately due to the size of the Nimitz carrier’s we’ve also been able to give her more individual firepower and shielding then we originally thought, she can easily destroy an enemy super dreadnought in a single broadside and can take enough punishment on her shields to get within boarding range.
The light raiders designed to capture rather then destroy those colony ships and transports we’ve been having to destroy will begin production shortly after the Artemis heavies have been tested in combat.
Unfortunately the Light raiders will not be able to take on capital ships or any proper heavy warships, so they must operate either in larger groups or with the protection of Royal Navy dreadnought or super dreadnought units.
Your Faithful Servant
Rear Admiral Hindecker

One Month Later:
His Majesty’s Ship Nimitz had once been a mighty carrier for the Royal Navy, however her and her sister ship had been gutted, her flight bays and munitions storage facilities had been removed and replaced with extended marine barracks, small arms armories, briefing rooms and “tubes” carrying the new breaching pods Her personal armaments had been dramatically increased though, with massive mount I-Las cannons and massive shield depleter cannons. Captain Harold Kimmel paced the command deck of his new “raider” configured command, that too was nothing like it’s carrier configuration no air boss, no CAG liaison officer or flight ops stations, now there were marine boarding command stations, armor suite monitors and a lot of other equipment that went with being an independent raider, including the latest and greatest cloak detection and long range scanner systems the navy could offer.
But even with all that High Tech equipment Captain Kimmel felt little better about his situation, they had been dispatched to pursue a lone Neo-Star super dreadnought that had been detected by a system’s spier satellites, but what made this a bad situation in his mind was that his lone little “raider” was now in a frontier system that was 350 light years away from any Naval base or even starship and the warp point which had brought him here had been closed to ensure the enemy ship did not escape him.
They don’t even know we can detect them why the bloody hell would they try to escape us? he thought irritably as the numbers ran down and the distance between his starship and his prey closed.
“Marine boarders to stations, tactical time to intercept.” Kimmel paused his pacing and looked at the officer he had just addressed, the young woman looked at her screen for a long hard second before returning her captain’s gaze levelly.
“Three minutes to intercept, one point five to boarding pod range.” Kimmel nodded at her and returned his gaze to the screen once more, three minutes and we’ll see if this new idea actually works.

Three minutes passed like an eternity as the massive raider closed on her much smaller prey at her maximum available accel until she had closed in with her weapons range, the only sign the enemy commander had that the raider had actually seen him was when the orange beams of massive shield depletes reached out from the raider and reduced his shields to less then half power, the following massive I-laser mount shot tore through his shields with incredible ease, unfortunately for the NeoStar super dreadnought the burn through knocked out two of her engines making her slower then the massive raider that was even now closing on her.
A few pot shots from the SD actually impacted on Nimitz shields but the huge raider shrugged off the blows like a Spartan Kraken shrugged off darter shots, as Nimitz passed broadside to broadside with the enemy starship dozens of strange objects darted from her side at speeds just lower then that of a missile volley, though in many ways their payloads were much deadlier then any missile, as the NSE crew was about to discover.

“Alright marines lock and load five seconds and we’re in!” Sergeant Nick “Sharktooth” Monroe grinned as he smacked a dart magazine into his auto rifle, the other marines in his breaching pod were also smacking their magazines into place, except of course for the one marine who was carrying a breacher gun, corporal Sally Faucet fed the “shells” into her heavy weapon’s hopper with a devlish look on her face, Monroe’s platoon had three heavy weapons operators, two carried the breachers which were the equivalent of a 14th and 15th century shotgun prior to the development of magnetic accelerated weapons, a breacher fired 12 micro explosive darts at a target with gruesome effect, it was a perfect weapon for boarding and breaching actions because of the sheer hell it could unload onto any poor bastard caught in it’s range. The third heavy weapons operator carried a perdition rifle, which fired balls of “energy” hotter then the core of a star, it’s purpose was pure and simple personnel extermination as anyone or anything caught in that energy ball would vaporize rather quickly even though the energy ball only lasted for about three meters before dissipating.
The rest of the marines were equipped with the simple auto rifle- which fired either explosive, incendiary or solid darts at a rate of 300 rounds per minute when at full auto, though most marines preferred firing their weapon in a burst in order to increase accuracy and save ammunition.
After a moment of absolute silence a thundering crash echoed through the breaching pod like the wrath of God, Sergeant Monroe smiled at his marines as the all unhooked from their shock harnesses and move into their positions with silent well practiced discipline.
Monroe counted to 10 silently and then slammed his fist against a green button at the end of the pod, a hissing replied as the pod sliced through the last layer of armor plating between the marines and their target, as the front hatch erupted forward in a sparkling fireball Monroe and his marines charged forward like wild animals leaping upon their prey.
An enemy security detachment was unfortunate enough to be caught by the marines right after the sparkling eruption had dazed their senses, Sally Faucet’s breacher hiccupped twice and turned five enemy soldiers into a cloud of blood and torn flesh as the explosive darts tore them apart, a sixth enemy soldier was reduced to a crying heap of shattered flesh as an explosive dart tore her legs apart.
“Alright marines get moving, we have an engineering section to secure.” Monroe hissed as he watched the crying spasming woman on the deck, he sympathized with her but he couldn’t afford to detach one of his marines to secure her so he simply walked passed her with the rest of his unit as the advanced over the blood slicked deck.
After a moment the sobbing screams died away and Monroe flinched absently at the thought, he shook off the feeling after a second only to hear the whine of darter fire erupt ahead of him, one of his marines went down as a half a dozen darts tore his chest open even with the armor and sent him down as blood geysers erupted from his wounds and the gruesome sewer smell of bowels loosed in death filled the corridor, Monroe switched his helmet to internal oxygen and was grateful as the smell of purified oxygen replaced the death stench that surrounded him, the breaching guns hiccupped several more times as auto-rifles whined, another marine went down, with a solid shot through his throat, his gurgling death throws audible over the din of weapons fire.
Monroe moved up and saw what looked like an entire platoon of enemy security personnel blocking the corridor, a few bodies and blood splattered corridors told Monroe that at least some of the enemy soldiers had been killed, he aimed his rifle at an enemy security soldier and let off a burst of deadly accurate fire, the enemy trooper didn’t even have a chance to scream as three darts tore through his helmeted head with ease, splattering blood and brain material everywhere.
Monroe nodded at the heavy weapon marine carrying the perdition rifle, and as the other marines laid down covering fire the world suddenly turned on it’s head and shook as the amazing sound and vibration caused by the powerful weapon firing momentarily stunned the Icaran marines, the lucky enemy soldiers had been caught full on in the blast and vaporized, other less lucky enemy soldiers could be heard screaming in agony as burnt remains of limbs dangled from their bodies, others could be heard screaming “my eyes” as they clawed at the burning eyes that would never see again.
Monroe’s marines moved up with practiced speed and the quick bursts of auto-fire brought a merciful end to the grotesquely wounded NSE soldiers pain and their shrieks of agony.
Seconds later the platoon was outside of the massive blast doors that sealed off the engineering compartment, however several well placed perdition rifle shots turned the doors into molten slag, just as the doors melted away the whine of a dart pistol from within the compartment split the air, and the ominous crack of bone and armor jerked Monroe around just in time to see another dart slam into the wounded marine, knocking him on his back, the wounded soldier jerked and twitched as the pain overrode shock.
One of the marines carrying a breaching gun fired three times in rapid succession destroying the handful of armed engineers with disgusting ease.
The rest of the marines charged forward into the surviving unarmed engineers, feet and hands flew as the marines struck down their enemies, the sounds of bones breaking and of people screaming in fear and pain echoed through the compartment as the marines advanced, several used their rifle butts with deadly effect on any of the engineers who resisted, and with their suit’s muscle enhancers the rifle butts struck like a grav sled, shattering bones with little work.
In under a minute the engineers who had survived the breaching gun were lying unconscious, or in the case of two younger engineers who panicked and tried to fight back they lay dead, their skulls broken.
The com signal passed over the command channel in less then fifteen minutes, the NSE super dreadnought Roma was officially in Icaran control enemy losses were in the hundreds and the Icarans had lost 23 marines but the first combat test of the new Artemis project heavy raiders had been a success.
Two weeks later the Nimitz had secured two more NSE dreadnoughts, the three enemy ships and the Icaran raider returned to Norvor, the three enemy ships were scrapped shortly after and added considerable resources to the troubled economic situation Icara was currently suffering from.