Post 021: Where it all began.
Yes.
Six hours after being boarded, the hundred and thirteen crew members of the ship had been reduced down to eight. The Sargent of Macrobiotic squad among them, they all crowded in a simple and plain room which contained the reason their mission was created.
Weighing at two and a half tons, the purpose of the device was rather enigmatic, at least to anyone who didn’t have the authorization to know what the device was, but it thrummed lowly, as its antimatter payload was kept safe for its eventual use. Technically, the Sergeant was the highest ranking crewmember of the entire vessel at this point.
“You know, I’d figure I’d die by one of them, not our own damn bombs.” Said the last of your squad, Bulldozer.”
“We’re on final approach.”
“I thought it’d be some down and dirty thing, where I’d be in the middle of the fuckers, blood, and guts all over the floor…
“Systems armed.”
“But, nope. Dead watching a damn bomb, why the hell did the navigator have to die anyways?”
“Final destination in thirty seconds.”
“The one single most important person on the ship got fucking gutted. How disgusting”
“Twenty-five seconds.”
“Fucking Psion squad had one star be dabbled job and they failed, I wanted to come home, and they all had to fail.”
“Twenty seconds.”
The silence was beheld in the room, no one else really felt much to speak.
“Ten seconds.”
“Five seconds.”
“What a terrible timer.”
“Three...Two...One.”
The hull of the ship echoed heavily, marking their final arrival.
“Judging from the fact that we just hit hell, we can hit the hell-box now.”
The demolitions expert stood up, tapping into the inputs of the device, and the hum became more and more violent.
“Hey, Sarge.”
“What?”
“You never in all the damn stars speak. Why’s that?”
“Not worth it, why do you ask?”
“We’re all getting reunion rounds and you're all just sitting there looking mopier than a damn determinisk skull.”
The ship was instantly annihilated. The blast slammed against the massive, abomination, scorching it, burning almost to the very core.
The center of the hive mind of the Determinisk had fallen, and it marked the beginnings of the relatively swift victories against the Determinisk. In just ten short years, the battle was over, and the Determinisk was rendered extinct. Before the war, the unusually militaristic and expansive Yaerian Republics had consolidated to fight the threat of extinction, and they changed because of it. Following the war was a short, but brutal and widespread collapse of the entire high-level government. There were not enough people to rebuild what was lost, and simpler times began. The sacrifice of the many was remembered, and the few left had begun to rebuild their society, perfected. Great orbital works, massive long term terraformation projects, and other such works were all normalcy. The lessons they had learned was not forgotten, however. Mass manufacturies we’re all created, massive amounts of armaments, systems and other weapons of horrific power were stored away, for darker times. Over time, this store of weapons was phased out, bygones of a past era, of almost mythical proportions. They didn’t expect such devices to be realistically useful again.
The elder chuckled, long and arduous, but he laughed all the same.
“This isn’t like the stories that the Empress-damned clan masters tell, of glory and happy tiding, it is of what it truly is, now listen before I Have to hit you with this stick.
Where was I again?”
Unitarian Dogma #3736, Section 2G.
Sobbing, weeping, she stayed where her beloved had died for days. Feeling lost, and strange in the body that wasn’t hers. She endured, learned her wonders, and the power that she and she alone held.
Unlike the false kings and their cruel gods, her mind held true, unimaginably different power. She couldn't bring back the dead, but she had brought unity to the kingdoms. She took down all the horrors of the corrupted. For every king she slew, she lost hundreds of brave fellows and brothers in the fight for good. She wept at all the death and moved to make sure it never happened again. In the few years it took, the entire continent was united. Decades later, the planet. After a century, the stars were within their grasp. The Empress held one gift that among all others paled in comparison, the curse fo eternal life. It is her burden, her duty to guide us all to perfection, and for that, we are thankful, dutiful of our ways and our contribution to the Empire. Her hands may not bear the sword to defend the empire anymore, but we shall bear the burden of war so she will not have too, to unite all others to bring the path of the unenlightened, to intertwinement of their betters.
Kitchen of Mark Hallaway & “Keeth”
Hawaii, 2128, August 23, GS 25
Groaning, the man tumbled out of bed, slipping on a pair of slippers and groggily slumbered over to his kitchen.
The evening sunlight blared his eyes and he could barely see as he poured the coffee into his mug. The coffee flavored water was just as terrible as ti always, as he dressed, and promptly walked out of the bathroom, only to be interrupted by his most hated mortal enemy.
“For fuck's sake.”
“Dude calm down, it’s just juice man.”
“in case you haven't noticed, I gotta go to work tonight asshole, and this was the only pair of pants that wasn't in the laundry.”
“could wear one of your girlfriend's skirts?”
“Haha, very funny, I hope you choke on it “
Turning away from his “friend”, the Astronomer waddled all the way back to the bathroom and picked out a slightly filthy pair of pants out of a basket, changed and walked out of the bathroom. Ignoring his very dear friend on his way out (who was chugging a beer), he walked over to his own “car”. A clunker in every sense of the word, it chugged out black smoke occasionally and worked good enough for his drive to the observatory. One of the few redeeming points of this piss small island was that the observatory was one of the most advanced pieces of observation technology in the whole wide world, You’d have to go to space or to Mars to get a better view of the galaxy. Half way through the twenty-minute journey his phone started buzzing, and he just ignored the damn thing because it was probably his friendly “roommate” calling. He immediately elected to ignore the phone until he arrived at the observatory.
By the time he parked into the observatory, his phone buzzed seven or eight more times and before he managed to even check the phone, one of his lab assistants ran over to him and gibbered madly for a couple seconds before withering under the stare of a man with slightly soiled pants. It took only a couple seconds for him to regain his wits, and he led the astronomer into the building, explaining about some sort of strange anomaly. For a good minute and a half, they walked through the facility before landing in one out the various sensor output terminals. On the screen was a picture of the where the observatories main light-based telescope was pointed at, some group of stars that held the interest of the main dish. However, the assistant began playing the video and the stars blinked and replaced by far closer ones, the relatively high energy stars made the entire video white with light input on the terminal's current settings.
Taking one good stare at it, he typed a command and it instantly dimmed down to show several stars. These stars were never recorded to have been in the position, type or amount at the location the telescope was pointed at, which should've been impossible. The entire team was shortly after called up. Discussions of exactly what sort of technical error happened when one of the local janitors at the meeting pointed out how most of the constellations got screwed up with more stars in the night sky, to the naked eye. To say that the scientists in the building went mad was a understatement. They immediately sent their data to the highest echelons of their society. It wasn't long before the simple fact that the visible stars changed caused the US Coalition to move to DEFCON 2, with every other nuclear enabled country to move up as well.
For six whole hours, the Earth was one button push away from nuclear Armageddon, until it became apparent that nothing was going to happen immediately. Scientists and citizens alike looked to the sky, and pondered just exactly what just happened, much less why it even happened in the first place, but almost everyone agreed on one thing.
That they were not alone.
How did God_Sys React?