Sun and steel [Not a DiD this time]

[Zaitsev]

Welp ... Since I seem to have quite a few people here who like my writing and would rather not see it interrupted by untimely deaths, I decided to pull a kaistern and try to do two stories at once.

Now, I'm still gonna apply some rules to keep it at least a bit challenging, but this time the 'game over'-screen is a setback, not the end of it all. And to be honest, I got tired of planning all these wonderful stories just to see them go down the drain because I screwed up or got nuked off the map

And in case you wonder, Lexa is still alive and kicking. I've just had a bit of real life stuff going on, along with setting things up for "Sun and steel", so she ended up on the back burner. I'll probably post a an update by the end of the weekend.

Anyway, let's just kick it off.

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Lights.

"He's awake."

Voices.

"You know the drill, people. Let's check him out."

Noise. Hands grabbing me.

"What's hour name, son?"

Uh … Brain is like … sludge. Hard to … remember. To … Think.

"He's not responding. Hit him again."

Pain. Feels like a needle jammed into the back of my head. I – I … Remember.

"What's your name?"

It finally comes to me.

"Jack." I said. "Jack Quinn."

I shook my head, trying to get rid of the cobwebs. I had done this countless times, but the mind transfer still threw me for a loop.

"How long was I out?" I said, shaking my head once more.

"The usual six hours, plus another hour since the last update." Talia, my resident jack-of-all-trades, looked up from her data pad and met my gaze with her usual deadpan expression.

Frak. Seven hours lost.

"Anything new while I was out?"

"Well, we got this message from a new company called 'TandiTech'. Basically the usual stuff, complete with the 'concern' about our 'safety', should our paths ever cross."

"So, if we stay clear of their property we'll be safe, eh?"

She nodded.

"Why am I not surprised …"

She just raised her eyebrows and gave me an expression of mock leniency.

I shot her my most innocent smile, then I looked outside.

"Out there," I said. "What happened?"

"Hush is out scouting with the Scylla, but so far we got nothing."

I trawled through the flight plan on my own data pad. The signal had been lost in Helios Delta, far away from any possible threats.

"Nothing, eh? I don't do well with nothing."

"Neither do I, but until we find something solid …" She let the last word hang in the air, and I saw her fingers twitch. If she did find something solid there would be hell to pay, and she would probably be standing right in the middle of it.

I took a breath and smiled. Talia might be my personal paper pusher now, but at heart she was still a merc. I still remembered the day I found her in that bar in –

"Incoming message." the computer blared.

"On screen," I said. It was Hush.

"Hey, Jack. How's it hangin'?"

"'Bout three inches off the floor when I stand up. Did you find anything?"

He grinned.

"As a matter of fact I did. Our bird saw the whole thing, and combined with the sensor data from the debris I'd be tempted to say that it looks like sabotage. The bird picked up a subspace burst, then a few moments later everything went to hell. Looks like someone wants you dead, Jack, and they're playing dirty to boot."

"That's the problem with me, Hush. I don't stay dead."

Thanks to a few trinkets I bought from this Teladi – Quistodes Fabricat Vintner the hundred and fourteenth as his name was – I had gotten this reputation for surviving just about everything. Technically I didn't survive, but since some crackpot invented the mind transfer process a couple of centuries ago and cloning was as common as bread and butter … Well, you do the math. Only downfall was that it took six hours to prepare a clone and transfer the last backup of my mind to it, so I had a few blank spots in my memory to put it that way. That's why I had people like Talia and Hush working for me, to keep an eye on things while I was out.

"So they say," Hush responded, grinning so wide I worried his head was gonna split in half. "So they say."

"That begs the question of who. Got any leads?"

"Not right now, but I'll check the grid for clues."

"All right. Keep me in the loop."

"Will do."

The image faded, and I wondered who in the blue hell would want a small fish like me dead. I didn't lack any candidates, as I'd had my fair share of run-ins with fairly unpleasant people, but except for the collection of a few pirate bounties I had been a nice boy here in the Commonwealth. Maybe someone was holding a grudge …

"So," I said, turning my attention to Talia again. "How are – "

"Incoming message."

"What in the blue, blasted hell … On screen!"

A middle aged woman popped up on the screen, and I made a mental note of the worried furrow between her eyebrows.

"Admiral Rana. What a surprise. And … not a pleasant one, it seems."

Admiral Saoirse* Rana. Supreme commander of the Sol fleet, and one of the few links to my past I hadn't severed. We kept in touch from time to time.

"Hello, Jack. An astute observation, as always. And no, it's not going to be pleasant."

"Oh-kay … Do I want to hear more?"

She snorted a laugh.

"Probably not."

"Are we talking official business, or … unofficial business?"

"Unofficial, I'm afraid."

Ouch. I had a feeling this might get hairy.

"Go on."

"All I can say is that in a few minutes you will get a message from the Argon Federation. Get back to me after you read it. Rana out."

Riddles, eh. I don't do well with riddles either ...

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*: Irish name, pronounced "Seer-sha".

[Zaitsev]

Mods, rules and stuff


Mods:

Litcube's Universe. Try it, it's awesome.


Rules:

Even though this isn't a DiD I'm still gonna apply some rules, just to keep it at least a tiny bit challenging.

- Jack can only repair fighters, freighters, TPs and TMs. If I'm going to use them myself I can only repair up 50% of the damage, i.e. if the hull is below 50% I can only repair it up to 50% and if it's over I can repair it up to 100%. And to be honest it's goddang boring to nurse an M6 back to health with the increased hull values in AP.

- When Jack "die", a clone has to be prepared and the last update must be transfered, a process that takes time. In reality I basically have to scuttle the ship I died in and then SETA for six ingame hours. I chose this approach in an attempt to even out rep gains and whatever else happened between the last save and the point of my untimely demise.

- One of Jack's TLs, the Tartarus, house the cloning facility, so my new starting point will be where ever it's at. To add a bit of extra challenge, it's game over if the Tartarus is destroyed and I die before I can get a new TL. If the Tartarus is destroyed, I also have to wait an ingame day before a new cloning facility can be set up, so protecting it is my number one priority. Of course, a TL should be kept far away from any combat zone, but with Xenon and pirates around every corner and the fact that the Phanon will start hunting my assets at one point, one never knows ...


Goals:

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women.

Or, y'know ... Curbstomp the OCV and put Phanon out of business, preferably with the use of various weapons and/or generous amounts of high explosives.


Start:

Damyath Trader - gives you a Caiman Advanced TS and three Kestrels equipped as explorers. I then worked my way up, and at the start of this story I'm five days and seven and an half hours in.


Assets

Ships:

TL Mammoth - "Whitehorse" (Mobile mining operations)

TL Mammoth - "Tartarus" (General purpose TL. Equipped with mind storage and -transfer equipment, plus cloning facility)

TM Zephyrus - "Isis" (Fighter bus and jumpdrive carrier)

M3 Starburst - "Stiletto" (Jack's first proper fighter and holder of sentimental value)

M3 Cougar - [unnamed] (Possible mass production model, unless Jack finds something better)

M5 Kestrel Advanced - "Explorer Kestrel" (Explorer extraordinaire and sniffer of asteroid yields)

TS Sturgeon - "Sturgeon" (Military TS. Loot snatcher and mineral hauler)

M6 Tempestine - "Scylla" (The M6 with the most dakka)

M7 Cerberus - "Kharybdis" (The first step on the way to a proper fleet)

Universal Traders:
1x Mercury Prototype
5x Caiman Advanced
14x Mercury Enhanced

Mobile mining ships:
6x Eclipse Miner

Station Agents:
3x Mercury Enhanced
1x Nexus


Stations:

IREx30 Saturn Complex Hub - Antigone Memorial

PACx50 Saturn Complex Hub - Antigone Memorial

1 MJ Shieldx50 - Home of Light

IREx50 Saturn Complex Hub - Omicron Lyrae

PACx50 Saturn Complex Hub - Omicron Lyrae


Cash:

567 851 170 credits.

[kaistern]

YEAH FINALLY A STORY FROM ZAITSEV I CAN TAKE GOOD AND PROPER NOTES FROM!!!!!

Can't wait to read more. I think a lot of people (myself included) have a lot going on right now... the forums have really seem to have slowed down. :-/

Anyhow can't wait to see more!

[Sabrina Bergin]

Good to see you back in the saddle Zaitsev.

[Zaitsev]

First of all, I apologize for the lack of updates. A combination of vacation and my laptop crashing every five minutes meant my writing ground to a halt, but now I'm back. And as always, it's good to know I have readers

So, let's kick off the new year by seeing how Jack's doing, shall we?

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Chapter 1 - The beast awakens

It took almost an hour before the message showed up, but that's kind of the problem with intel – sometimes it's unreliable. I read it, and …

"Ouch." I mumbled to myself, before turning to my XO. "Talia, how's that bird we put in Omega doing?"

"Fine. How come?"

"Gimme the feed from it on screen."

Advanced satellite network.
ID:211-USOmega.
Transmitting sensor data …

"Double ouch." I watched the red dots littering the screen. The image was sporadically interrupted by static, but that was not a pretty sight. Even Talia's eyes widened.

"Get me admiral Rana on the horn," I said. "Now!"

"Hello, Jack." the admiral said as her face popped up on the screen. "It looks like you got the message."

"And then some. What the hell am I looking at here?"

"Spanners in the wheels. And a somewhat extreme version of goal drift."

"Goal drift? You're talking about AGI?"

"Of a sort. We discovered a signal of unknown origin a few months back, and whatever it was triggered this crazed activity among the remaining Terraformers. What we do know is that these new designs started showing up not long after. Nothing big, and only in remote sectors where they were unlikely to be seen."

"Then how the hell did you know about them?"

She snorted.

"You think you're the only one with satellites everywhere?"

"But I –" Then the gears started turning. "Of course, the Mimir project …"

Mimir was a proposed network of stealth satellites, designed with a very small sensor cross section and intended to be placed far away from the ecliptic, where they would for all intents and purposes be invisible.

"I see you haven't lost your touch," she said, giving me a brief smile.

"Yeah, I've been keeping my wits sharp. Just one question; what the hell has this got to do with me?"

"Simple, you're the best commander we have."

"Had," I corrected her. Long story short, after the second Terraformer war we ended up having some … moral disagreements, and I basically gave the fleet the finger and left for the Commonwealth instead.

"All right, had. That doesn't change the fact that we need you, Jack. We all need you."

I wasn't sure I liked the implications of that. There were other things as well, such as ...

"And exactly what can a lonely privateer like myself do against an army of souped up Terraformers?"

"I think you just answered your own question. You're a privateer. That means you are not bound by rules and politics, and you can fight more effective than any of us. Besides, both we and the Commonwealth are still recovering from the ... incident, and our analysis show that the Commonwealth races generally have more bark than bite."

Yeah, the little 'incident' called the second Terraformer war. And the admiral was right. The Commonwealth forces were stretched thin already, and this might the famous last drop. Still, what could one man do?

"I'll have to think about it," I said.

"All right," the admiral replied. "I suggest you think fast though, before this new threat wipe us all out."

I gave her a nod and cut the link, then I slumped back in my chair.

"Sweet mother of Gunne ..." I mumbled, staring at the still active satellite feed.

After a couple of minutes in silence I turned to Talia.

"Can we do it?" I said.

"Not in our current state." she replied promptly. I suspected she had already crunched the numbers, as she probably knew I wouldn't be able to turn down such a challenge. She'd probably be right, although I wasn't ready to admit it yet.

"What do we need?" I said, picturing millions of credits growing wings and flying away in my mind.

"Well, right now our biggest problem is race notoriety. We have level five access with most races, except the Argon, where we have level six access, and the Terran sectors where we have level four access. If we ignore that for the time being we will need docks, spare parts and ideally a shipyard, as relying on Commonwealth shipyards will be both expensive and may prove to be a liability, as they can easily deny us access if we rub them the wrong way. We also need weapons, shields and missiles, in addition to various equipment and software modules. I recommend we aim to make our own, at least to some degree, as outside sources can be ... unreliable.

I winced. That would cost a bloody fortune, and even though we were currently doing very well it wasn't gonna be enough. Not by a long shot.

"All right," I said, taking a deep breath. "You start working on a complete list of what we need, and I'll start working on the notoriety end. We'll do as we always do, start small and work our way up."

"Will do."

Talia left, and I stared at the red dots still crawling across my screen.

"This might be your biggest challenge to date, Jack." I said to myself. "Are you up for it?"

[Sabrina Bergin]

Hey Zaitsev's back, good to see you picking up jack again I look forward to reading more.

Shaun.

[Nazardo]

Wow...a new story is starting! And it is amazing already!!

Let's go shoot some Xenon.

[Triaxx2]

Yeah, because that's gonna end well.

Admittedly, I'm having some trouble with pirates, so I probably shouldn't talk.