Post 039:
The birth of a new Era. “Rule 15: Only you can prevent friendly fire.”
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates, Eclipse Phase Rulebook
January 11th, 2129 AD, 26 GS
Tempest Pattern Shift Fighter “All She's Got” , Squad designation “Charlie fifteen” deployed from Experimental Carrier “The Burdens of the Republic”
“Air Control to Charlie Fifteen, you are cleared for deployment, may the stars light your path.”
Clunk “Finally, after all the simulations, we can finally go out there and show what we are made of.”
“Hey, we’re an experiment, can’t give the faulty data, can we?”
“Of course…”
The fighter accelerated, the particle trail arching as it lifted “up” relative to the cockpits position, and giving clearance to the Carrier, it arched towards the enemy.
“T minus thirty seconds until we are within combat range.”
“I’ve been thinking lately, a lot.”
“I know, it echoes through the interface, not as often as an intelligent Yaerian though.”
“Oh, you wound me, whos the lucky new guy?”
“T minus fifteen seconds, We’re getting PD ballistics pointed at us.”
“Getting deflective now?”
The Fighter pulled a heavy, direct turn, followed by a series of intense evasive maneuvers ending in a flip that neatly placed the fighters weapons to bear.
The Phazon casters engaged, and six perfectly round balls of plasma the size of a fist collides violently against the buckling energy shielding of an escort ship.
The Phazon bolts were not nearly as effective in taking down the shields as the ship's main weapons, the equivalent of a Linear Rifle scaled to be a fighter weapon.
The fighter let off a burst of thrust, and avoided direct collision with the Escort ship, weaving through the projected firing lines with the precision of a gifted Pilot.
“You mean a pair of pilots.”
“Is it really that obvious?”
“Yes.”
The immensely powerful fusion engines that drove the fighter forward screamed as the ship arched, barely missing a stray round, and the Fighter was now in position to fire it’s weapons on the Escort craft hull plates.
The enemy ships shields buckled from the combined fire of both the fighter ship and the support ships in the distance, and it’s hull melted and evaporated as the Phazon bolts collided with the armor plates.
While Phazon weapons do little to energy shields, they are far more effective on unmolested plate metal.
A gyrojet shell collided with the Fighter's shields, and promptly exploded, tumbling the craft in an unstable trajectory.
In seconds, the ship was righted and a trajectory to bring it back into its optimal range was placed.
[DATA EXPOSITED, RELAYING AUDIO RECORDING TO MAINFRAME]
”The fleet escort, [FRAGMENT DELETED], all wings deploy! All hands prepare for evac--”
“By the stars… how are they doing this?”
The Phase Fighter was on a course directly towards an escort, it’s weapons firing out as fast as it could as the engines was pushed to their maximum red-line safety limits.
“This is a very bad idea!”
“Shush, it will work, the ship was built for this!”
Just as the enemies shields collapsed, the Fighter passed through the space it occupied, narrowly avoiding the messy process of being repelled by the degenerative and utterly chaotic powers of a Shield system, and phased out of existence.
For a split second, the physics afflicted upon the fighter changed drastically, and promptly shifted the fighter neatly through the escort ship without any notable resistance and “phasing out” safely in empty space, rotated a hundred and eighty degrees, with its weapons charging up for a second volley.
Yaerian Test-Bed carrier “Burdens of the Republic”
Bridge area, Command and Control Room.
“Chief, I’m picking up strange readings from the enemy titan ship.”
The Chief of the tactical data processing room gestured towards the ensigns console, and promptly brought a representation of it to his Pad.
“Those aren't the signatures of it’s gun getting ready to fire a high range bolt, good eye.”
“It looks... Kind of like it’s firing a glasser around."
“They… that's impossible, they're not aiming at the colony.”
“It matches that signature--”
The signatures briefly spiked to an incredible degree before lowering to the bewilderingly strange pattern, and then spiked again not five seconds later. Twenty five seconds too early.
“Auuh, stars above. The-- Our ECM vessels are reporting heavy damage-- They are targeting the destroyers!”
“I’m relaying this to the Admiral, Keep Tactical updated.”
Clever bastards.
It’s obvious that they don’t sit around with their thumbs in their asses, thats for sure.
The Admiral promptly keyed the Hyper-wave transmitter pointed to Central Command and spoke a few brief words.
“They are shifting their tactical dogma, We’re gonna lose this fight.”
He sat silent for a few seconds, noting how the tactical and navigation recordings supporting his few words flowed through the emitter.
“Our ECM won’t stop them anymore.”
January 2th, 2129 AD, 26 GS
GEO Orbit over Pluto NovoStrata Mega-Extractor™ 003 IIt was a small ship by all means, only about a hundred meters in length but unlike many of mankind's ships, it had a ship mounted weapon. Essentially The equivalent of a deck gun, stolen from a American Coalition Orbital Navy facility, it had all the precision of a pack of artillery with the power of an orbital bombardment.
The ship itself was of Asian origin, one of those under a corporate charter, that was at one point a cargo hauler, until it was promptly taken over by its mutinied crew.
In a deep stereotypical russian voice, the captain ordered the new main gun to fire.
Steel rain followed, landing on the extractor and all personnel onboard are immediately exterminated.
January 2th, 2129 AD, 26 GS
Gal’Yeigher, Capital City Pur-illum Secondary Water Treatment Plant
The Manager sat in his chair high in the scaffolding, watching as the Massive Charge Lance cannon was slowly brought to operational capacity.
He wondered how the stars damned void the Operator figured out that a water treatment can be converted into a silo for this weapon, and then laughed.
He was in the hall of mad men, why should he ask questions that can never be answered?
“The Fusion mass is down to forty percent, we can't keep this up.”
The “All She’s Got” phased through a Escort ship, the hull of the vessel warped and destroyed, the ship was dead in the water.
“We have too, you know this damn it!”
The fighter was in poor shape, it’s shields collapsed little over half a dozen times, and it had a chaotic emission field of shield entropy ranging three times the vessels length as its batteries were constantly on the threshold of failure
Its hull was pockmarked with dozens of scorch marks, dents and shears from the various ordinance that had been thrown at it
“We can get to a safe distance and head into cryonics, we’re not gonna survive otherwise.”
“I am not gonna abandon this fight!”
The fighter dodged and weaved, but it’s maneuvering thrusters had only two thirds of its optimal thrusting capabilities from past attack runs. A Gyrojet bolt hit hard and true, with a direct hit on the Fusion Engines left thrust nacelle, and ripped a good chunk of hull plate out, along with breaching a fuel tank, along with offlining dozens of subsystems..
With a wet snap, the pilot's left arm had been fractured against the side of a sharp piece of shrapnel from the vicious impact. He bit back a scream as his momentarily loss of concentration with the uplink had resulted with the craft only flying with half the mental capacity it needed to fly in its optimal state.
A Long-range Missile had collided with the underbelly of the craft, and the ship shuddered as the most critical electronic component of the ship was burnt and purged.
A blank, dull voice spoke.
“Warning. Battleframe Core unlinked, attempting pilot disconnect.”
The fighter was tumbling through the airspace now, for all intents and purposes as dead as as stone and as hot as leaking fusion reactor.
In the pilot's head, a flurry of half corrupted data was flying in every direction. The echoes of the dead intelligence was slamming into his head like bricks to a wall, and it was agony. The pilot was beginning to seize up, his body twitching from the overloading signals of the interface bleeding into the motor functions of the pilot's brain. The death cry of the Battleframe slammed into his body down to its very soul.
“Pilot Disconnect, WARNING: Ship disconnected! Recommending evacuation.”
The pilot opened his eyes, not seeing the great void of the stars, the burning ion trails of warships, or even feeling the burning agony as his hull was burnt and fragmented, as his shields were buckling and collapsing on the strain, or even his hands flinging bolts of pure destruction.
He saw a fuzzy holo screens , along with a manual avionics package, most of it blearing warnings. No window to the void, that would be too much of a risk.
His head was slammed into the wall from another impact on the ship.
The Cryopods glass casing began to form around him, forming an airtight seal, and activated with a burst of extremely cold gas.
He thanked the stars before he fell asleep.
“This isn’t the true story.”
“What?”
The Media Director looked confused, looking back from his digital pad and up to the Director of the Navy Technological advancements.
“I authorized the release of the events as it happened.”
“I made the story fit the narrative better.”
“I auth--
“I invested hundreds of thousands of credits on this multi-tiered Campaign just for his image. Holo-Vids, Books, “Games” -- the works. The Republic does not need to know he died hitting his head on a wall screaming for “her” to come back while he turned into a vegetable from the mental feedback of a destroyed link. I made him die in his sleep from a damaged cryopod, The truth would be worse for the republic.
“Don’t inflate his numbers, I want to hear that he destroyed eight escort ships, no more, no less.”
January 8th, 2129 AD, 26 GS
Gal’Yeigher, Orbit, Escapepod from terminated Spaceport. Yaerian escape pods are complex machines with a simple set up. Three cryogenic pods, with a low-key Fission reactor powerful enough to power it along with the low-intensity shield for six years no less, no more. In the event that the power fails in the machine, a strong mix of soporifics is injected to the subject for a painless death, rather than the “buried in a coffin” asphyxiation death that many are afraid of.
When Kull’Seoul Wick’Tal entered the escape pod, she clearly didn’t expect to wake up to having no less than three alien rifles pointed at her in the hangar bay of a Unitarian Dreadnaught.
The bag placed over her head was more welcomed than the horrific mutilations that were perpetuated as rumors.
For the next hour (She thought it was an hour.) she was pushed, shoved and roughly handled through a complex maze of hallways, until she was pushed one final time into what some sort of semi-dark room (she could sort of see through the bag.) and left standing.
For a pungent few seconds she sat alone, and wondered if she could take off the bag when a voice -- very much roughened -- spoke.
“You just gonna stand there all day?”
Perhaps like a sheep, perhaps on her own initiative, she used her hands to take the bag off, and peered at her surroundings and the other individual in the room with her.
It appeared to be a detention center, judging from the spartan walls, with all the components of a cell: a strange toilet-like contraption, a sink, and a bed. Separating her from the other cells-- including one inhabited one was a metal wall that went up to the breast of a standard Unitarian, which was more stomach for a Yaerian, and going all the way with a presumably thick, rod-reinforced plexiglass. The guards had already left, presumably watching through cameras.
“Figures I get a Colonial as a room mate, judging from the fancy dress, you're some sort of administrator?”
“Aaah… Yes… Colonial Director of Gal’YeigherKull’Seoul Wick’Tal , at your service.”
The other occupant was scarred heavily, one of her hands simply missing while their face was covered with a hodgepodge of blue ichor, Yaerian Blood.
“Hmm. You out rank me, how in the stars did you let yourself get caught?”
“I was in my office in the space port when the general evacuation alarm sounded, I got to the escape pod designated to me and left. The Chief Engineer and the Director of Medical never arrived, so I was the only one in the pod.”
“And you woke up with some Unitarian rifles pointed at you, huh?”
“Yes.”
“They will torture you, by the by.”
“I figured… You ever thought of… washing your wounds?”
“Then they’ll club me some more, the big ones are very tribal about that sort of thing, Besides I think it makes the haughty short ones a bit disturbed.”
“Riight…”
Awkwardly, Wick’Tal sat on the bed, fiddling with their hands before suddenly searching in their pockets.
“I’m surprised they didn’t strip you down and give you the prison garb like with me.”
“They… left me with my gun?”
In the Director's hands was a Phazon pistol, a variant designed to be as small as possible while still keeping the mechanisms that stabilize the bolt of plasma, but the fusible chamber was missing.
“Took your ammo, so it ain’t worth a damn.”
Two Unitarian guards walked in, with royally crafted armor and elaborately engraved Gyrojet rifles, they typed a code into Wick’Tal’s cell, and stared expectantly at the occupant, almost beckoning her to come with them.
“What in the void? I never seen those types plated fucks, be careful.”
One guard turned his full-helm towards the other prisoner, and managed to accomplish a glare through his imposing helmet.
Wick’Tal stepped forward and followed the two Unitarians.
She sneaked glances of the hallway and the rooms of the ship as she followed the two in front of her, and noticing the two soldiers behind her. The hallways were just as stark. Likely mass produced sections of a ship combined with super-metallurgic processes to form one cohesive whole. An efficient but unimaginative production.
It wasn’t as long of a trek as the one to her brief visit in the cells, but she felt like she was heading to a different part of the ship. She passed no other crew members, which was unnerving to her on many levels.
Suddenly, the escort group entered the main corridor of the dreadnaught, and the decor changed drastically.
Expertly painted murals of various things became apparent on the bulkheads. They appeared in a similar pattern to their writing: bold and generally “solid” in look, showing geometric pictures of starships, in various states of combat damage. One “mural” in particular caught her eye. It was of a Unitarian Dreadnaught, hung over a small sphere, as the barrel glowed bright, a blade of a blue beam came out of the ship and appeared to glide towards the planet, giving the picture scene a look similar to that of a sword with a cross guard.
A light, but firm joint of the Unitarian guards limb brushed against her side, and she realized her wonder was too obvious.
She kept her head pointing forward, still taking glances of the Murals of the hall, noting how the quality of the work wasn’t the same either, it became more and more intricate and grand as the hallway stretched on.
A set of air-tight heavy blast doors opened, and they were in the bridge, and she briefly took in the scenes of the Dreadnaughts busy work staff.
A heavy turn to the right, with a firm push by the rear guard and she was in a room, that appears to be some sort of negotiation room.
It had two chairs, one of which was empty while the other, smaller chair was filled by a Unitarian, in a similar garb to the soldiers who had escorted her to the room.
The Unitarian was perhaps more robust than the others, for the fact that it was almost as tall as the admittedly short Wick’Tal, but with the stockiness one would expect from a decades worth of intensive training that any Yaerian would envy if they cared for such things.
It spoke briefly in its language, sounding almost reverent in her presence.
“Welcome to the Empresses Perpetual Domain, I trust the soldiers were not too much on you?” said the sitting Unitarian in the Yaerian Common Dialect.
It’s pronunciation was perfect, every single part of its sentence structure was perfect, except for the fact that it used the equivalent of “indeterminable” for the word Perpetual, which had confused Wick just as much as the fact that it spoke in her species langauge.
She recovered quickly, and shook her head while moving to sit down.
“We have many things to begin discussing.”
Seven pirate officers were in the bridge of the “Rancorous Raptor” self designated Battle Cruiser.
Two of which were on the floor, and only one of them was conscious, the other five each had their weapons out. It was a tense standoff, considering the fact that one of them was in power armor, the captain.
Will it devolve to a shoot out? Yeah... Really late! I could've finished this earlier, but with a couple real life things happening, I didn't have the time or perhaps the drive to do it, but it's done now, also 3000 words, woah.
Edit: slight continuty date editting.
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Topic: (SG)System Override:The Resistance (Read 13280 times)