Scion Drakhar wrote:Nice! I always wanted to see what you'd do on your own. Be sure to include lots of screenshots so everybody can see what Cadius' ships look like. I for one am definitely awaiting MOAR!
I'm generally poor at taking screenshots other than to keep track of missions and where I am at the moment, but I'll try to take a few extra just for you
Thanks for the encouragement by the way
Footnote: The time stamp is the time when the log was recorded, generally as the chapter ends. Just in case someone wondered (and how Scion managed to pack an entire day into just one chapter I'll never know).
And for my next trick, an update.
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Chapter 1 – Legacy of the stars.
Personal log – 768-05-01 – 02:05
I regained consciousness just as Marissa finished patching up the wound on my left side.
"Just a little bump, capt'n. You'll be fine." She hesitated for a moment. "What happened in there?" I noticed the patch she had put on my forehead as I sat up, trying to keep the world from spinning too much.
"I'll tell you later. How are we doing?" I asked as I slowly got to my feet.
"Hull integrity dipped down to fifty three percent before we jumped." It was Gunnery Sergeant Jo Pareii, leader of my marine crew and also a crack engineer. "Thrusters are down to fifty percent of nominal power and the reactor was a little wobbly for a while, but we got it under control. The navcom and the jump drive are both fried, we lost two of our shield generators and we're leaking atmosphere and drive plasma like a sieve. Not to mention that the mainframe is royally screwed, we lost our right turret and the main weapons, and we have blown fuses and burnt power couplings all over the place. The rest of the crew is downstairs to get the ETM converter going and plug the leaks while the emergency containment fields are still holding. Other than that we're doing surprisingly well considering the beating we just took … Hold on." She hesitated for a moment. "We've got casualties, captain. Mikal just reported that we got a major hull breach in the engineering compartment. Jako and Endy … They're gone." I looked down at the deck and took a deep breath, trying to keep the tears in check.
"Any good news?" I asked quietly.
"Aron reports that the Sunstorm is still in one piece. Some minor hull damage, a couple of burnt power couplings and the surge from that last hit corrupted all the star charts. It'll have to be wiped and rebooted, other than that it's still operational."
The Sunstorm was a Cougar Vanguard that had been given to us when we did a job for a Split patriarch from one of the smaller families. Turned out his family had designed the Cougar fighter, and since we managed to return his stolen Jatra and thus save him from total disgrace he insisted that we take the first fighter that had rolled off the assembly line. Personally I thought it was a bit too much to give us a fighter for that job, but I knew better than to turn down a Split offering a reward. They had the nasty habit of taking 'no' as a personal insult, and insulting a Split can get real ugly real quick.
Anyway, we armed it, tuned it and equipped it as a combination of fighter, explorer, part time taxi and roid scanner. It was a bit slow for taxi and roid scanning, but with the help of the jump drive we usually managed it anyway. A mission for an overworked prospector or a business man, woman, lar or whichever of the eleven genders of the Paranid who needed to be places yesterday could easily net us half a million or more, so it was good business. The jump drive had even survived, but since the last hit had either cooked or spaced all our e-cells it wouldn't do much good.
"Alright," I said. "Since the rest are busy keeping us from sucking hard vacuum I guess that leave the bridge up to us. Let's hope those spare chips and power couplings didn't get spaced along with our e-cells." So while the crackling of repair lasers filled the air Tracie, Jo and me started yanking out all the burnt stuff and replacing it with fresh parts. It took a good one and a half hour, but eventually the bridge was back to something resembling working order.
"There," I mumbled to myself as I slid the last power coupling into place. Then I looked up at Tracie, who was tinkering around underneath the control console.
"How are you doing?" I asked.
"As good as expected, given the … Nnh … circumstances," she said as she crawled back out. "Now, let's see …"
She got to her feet and flicked the main power switch. I was halfway expecting the whole thing to explode, but it didn't. One small victory for us. Instead the control console lit up and she typed in a couple of commands, reactivating the holographic interface and allowing us to see outside.
"Yay, it works." she exclaimed. I just smiled. The girl had a talent for fixing things with whatever she had available, and that was why I had hired her in the first place.
She stared outside for a moment, then she got a puzzled look on her face.
"Where are we, anyway? We were supposed to jump to Split Fire, but this sure as hell ain't Split Fire." The sector was foggy and littered with roids, and there was a dark planet ahead.
"Beats me," I said. "Let's check the gate ID."
http://i.imgur.com/azTZg.jpg
Tracie typed in a few commands on the console, then got a worried expression on her face.
"This can't be right …" she mumbled. "Xenon sector 534? But that's north of Getsu Fune. We couldn't possibly have made it with the e-cells we had on board, unless that last missile somehow overloaded …" Her voice died mid sentence, and I could see the cogs turning in her head. I was more worried about the 'Xenon sector' part, so I decided to move us in sector and hide as best we could while we figured out what to do. Getting ass-rammed by a Q wasn't on my 'to do'-list today.
http://i.imgur.com/Jf5km.jpg
We hadn't flown far before the scanner alarm went off.
"We're being scanned, captain." Tracie said.
"What?" I immediately thought of the Xenon, and in our condition we'd have a hard time beating anything bigger than a couple of Ls.
"Hold on a sec … There. Unknown contact …? The IFF says 'Lux Aeterna', but the configuration is completely unknown. The computer has classified it as a destroyer, though." I raised my eyebrows. The computer knew every ship in the Commonwealth and even most of the Terran ones. There was no such thing as 'unknown'.
"Hm …" She fiddled with the sensor controls. "Grav scans indicate a large ship. According to the mass shadow it's almost twenty five percent heavier than a Titan, and the energy signature is massive. It has sustained significant damage, though. Our computer estimate it has about fifty eight percent of nominal hull integrity left and the shields are fluctuating, indicating some damage to the shield generators. No weapons lock or missiles detected."
Okay, I'll admit it. I got curious and flew closer. At first it was just a blip on our scanners, then the murk slowly let go and revealed a truly odd ship. It reminded me of a hammer or some kind of archaic weapon, covered in chrome.
"New contacts," Tracie said. "Elephant, bearing 034 by 025. Distance, 10 clicks. It has some scratches and its shields are gone, but otherwise seem to be relatively unharmed. I'm also picking up a Falcon … Sentinel? Bearing 324 by 396, distance 24 clicks." I think my eyebrows would have ended up on the back of my neck if this kept up. This sector just seemed to be full of surprises.
"Never heard of a Falcon
Sentinel before," Tracie said to everyone and no one. I smiled. It was a rare bird indeed.
"Not many have, outside the fleet. The Sentinel was an attempt by the Teladi to make a more durable heavy strike fighter, so they took an ordinary Falcon and stuffed it with four hundred megajoule of shielding. However, with the Teladi being the Teladi they skimped out on the engine to keep the cost down, so it's slow as snails. And when even frigates can run you down, four hundred megajoule isn't going to last that long."
"Figures. Green cheapskates."
"At least you know what you get," I said. She snorted a laugh.
"By the way, any signs of life on board any of those ships?" I said.
"Scanners show nothing. They're all deserted."
I immediately thought about capturing them. The Elephant and the Falcon alone would be worth millions if we sold them. I wasn't so sure about our shiny friend, though. My gut feeling told me to keep it a secret, at least until we could take a closer look.
As I contemplated about what I should do about our new catch I heard the sound of feet against deck plating from below and the voices of my marines.
"… you did
not!?" The first voice belonged to Val Rider, a thin, wiry man from Elena's Fortune and one of the best hackers around.
"Yeah, I did. Looked him straight in the eye and told 'im I'd whoop his ass if he didn't back off." The second voice belonged to Mikal Slamer. He was a loudmouth and somewhat of a joker, but he could shoot the wings off a space fly at fifty paces and whoop your ass with one hand behind his back.
"Bah. You're just running your mouth again, Mikal." That was Aron Seldon, demolitions and mechanics expert. "Like that time when you told us about the swamp rat hunt on Ianamus Zura. Turned out you'd never been
on Ianamus Zura."
"I've been in the sector," Mikal countered.
"Yeah, but that's like saying you've fought a Split when you tripped over your own feet and hit his fist with your face on the way down." Val shot in.
"Come
on," Mikal continued. "I … Holy Gunne's bollocks!" He stopped dead in his tracks as he entered the bridge, staring at the chrome-clad ship that now filled the entire view-screen.
I'll admit I had a hard time keeping a straight face. There aren't many things that can throw Mikal off his game, but this was apparently one of them.
"I didn't know you had intimate knowledge about such things," Aron remarked dryly, and I heard someone stifle a laugh.
"I don't know about you, but I'm kind of curious," I said. "Who's up for a little exploration?" It might get my mind off the fact that the Nomad was stranded here, if nothing else.
http://i.imgur.com/HtcTM.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/far2X.jpg
Five minutes later me and my marines beamed aboard the Elephant. Yeah, minutes. My father was old school and since the stellar day on Argon Prime was almost identical to the old Terran solar units I grew up with seconds, minutes and hours instead of sezura, mizura and stazura. I can work with both, though. But I digress. Again.
"Cap'n, we got core access." Aron said over the comlink. "The last log entry was recorded 767-23-03 and it states that the ship ended up here due to a gate malfunction. It also mention … uhm … Kvivar datai … something."
"
Ch'vivar D'Tai. It means 'shining spear'." You don't tag along on a freelance trader for eighteen years without picking up some Split language. Either that or you would get challenged all the time because you inadvertently insulted someone. I found out pretty quick that even Split kids were into that whole honor thing.
"Whatever. It mention that our shiny friend over there was already here when they got here. Same thing, they got scanned and then nothing more. They boarded it and decoded some of the logs, but it was written in a language unknown to them. They did manage to establish that the ship had been here for some eighteen jazura though, based on astronomical data in the logs." Almost twenty five years? Could it be …? Naaah …
"The ship was heavily damaged and there were humanoid remains all over the place. According to the logs they searched the ship for spare parts, but were unable to find anything useful. Since the Elephant was disabled and they couldn't get out they chose
Dai'Chanda." Ritual suicide. Death before dishonor. Crazy Split bastards …
"Anything else of interest?" I asked.
"No, the log ends there." I thought about it for a second.
"Alright, let's take a look at the other one, shall we?" I waited a moment for everyone to get into position. "Tracie, you can push the button now." I had left her aboard the Nomad, ready to beam us out at the slightest hint of trouble. Knowing her, she had probably spent the whole time listening to the conversation with her eyes glued to the sensors and her hand on the transporter controls. I felt the slight tingling as the transporter locked on, then a blue shimmer filled my field of vision and moments later I was standing on the transporter pad aboard the Nomad with my marines.
Another transporter trip, and we were standing in a large room with white walls lit by pale blue lights. There were consoles scattered around and a row of windows or view-screens, I couldn't tell which, filled one side. My guess was that we had entered the bridge, but what caught my attention was the human skeletons sitting in the chairs and leaning against the walls. One of them caught my attention and I walked over. He, or she, had obviously been here for a long time, and all that was left was a dried up husk with a lipless smile and black, empty eye sockets staring into nothingness. A piece of metal glinted in between the rags that had once been clothes. I fished it out and looked at it. Dog tags? In english nonetheless.
O'Neill
Daniel.
USSGC-52481/2018/2020
AB+
What the …? If I remembered correctly, "US" was a designation for the old Terran United States, from before the globalization. But that was several hundred years ago, according to what little had seeped through to the Net. And I had never heard of a branch called "SGC", although the Terrans did keep a tight lid on their operations. The numbers didn't make sense either, cause if they followed Terran military standard this fella would have been over nine hundred years old. Ah, frak if I knew.
"Cap'n, take a look at this." Val waved me over to a console he had been working on. "What do you make of this?" he said as I walked over, pointing at a screen he had somehow activated.
"Hm," I said. "It's old Terran english."
"Can you read it?"
"Most of it. Let's see … It seems to be some sort of log file." I twisted my brain as I tried to remember the meaning of the words in front of me. "I'm not one hundred percent sure, but if I'm not too far off it describes a battle between this ship and something called the
kini'je. The ship was outnumbered and had to pull back, so they activated the … hm ... hyperdrive and headed for home. They had just entered hyperspace when they ran into … uhm … some sort of … spatial anomaly and ended up here. The ship had taken significant structural damage, the propulsion system was disabled, there were apparently fires raging all over the place and the anomaly had knocked out two of their shield generators. In the end they vented the entire ship with the exception of the command bridge to prevent the fires from spreading to their reactors, but they were unable to restore the atmosphere and slowly suffocated as the bridge life support wasn't meant to support that many."
I got some very nasty mental images from reading that. The thought of being locked up with a bunch of other people, knowing that the simple act of breathing is slowly poisoning you and your shipmates wasn't a pleasant one to say the least. Our instruments showed that the air was fully breathable now, so I figured the ship's systems had reset them selves in the meantime. I looked at the dried up bones surrounding me and shuddered.
"Stars," Marissa said, putting words to my thoughts as she knelt down beside another dried up husk. "What a way to go."
I knew exactly how she felt. I had seen my share of boarding ops myself, and you live and breathe the fear every time you go through that hatch, enter that pod or in our case, step on to the transporter pad and hope the computer doesn't screw up and atomize your ass. Knowing that you're separated from hard vacuum only by a quarter of an inch of advanced polymers, ceramic composite plating protecting vital areas and, if you're lucky, a shield that never seem to last long enough. That the next breath you take can be your last. That you risked dying listening to your own blood boil in your veins. Feeling your lungs freeze and your eyes bulge from the internal pressure in your body while you gasped for a breath you'd never take. Brr.
That kind of feeling.
"Let's wrap up and head back," I said. "We need to figure out how to get out of here and what to do with these hunks of junk." I got Tracie on the horn and a few moments later we were all safely aboard the Nomad. I cracked open my helmet and headed for the bridge.
"All right, people. Gather 'round." I took a breath and looked at them. Six pair of eyes looked back at me. "I've been thinking about what to do next," I said. "Right now we're flying blind and the only thing we know for sure is that someone ambushed us, so I'd say information is first priority. The Nomad is in no shape to cross the Xenon sector the gate ID say is on the other side of that gate over there, and even if she was in ship shape we could still end up in a whole lot of trouble. My suggestion is that one of us take the Sunstorm through the sector, locate the gate to Getsu Fune and snoop around a bit to find out what happened, and maybe find some friendlies. We also need to find an extra jump drive and replace some fried circuits."
I paused for a moment.
"The catch is that the rest will have to hole up here, twiddle their thumbs and hope that the Xenon doesn't come through that gate in force. Since the Elephant and our shiny friend is still here the chance seems to be slim, but the risk is still there. However, that's the best I got so if anyone else have any better ideas I'm all ears."
Silence.
"Guess that settles it, then." I rose to my feet and looked at Tracie. "Should you do the honors or should I?" She wrinkled her nose.
"I think I'll stick to peaceful flying, if you don't mind. You're the combat pilot around here." Yeah, and look how far that had gotten us. I glanced at Gunny.
"How long can you keep her together?" She gave me a reassuring smile.
"As long as we have to, captain. If it gets too bad we can always beam over to the Elephant." I gave her a nod.
"Alright." Then I looked at Tracie. "C'mon," I said. "I'm gonna need a hand with the Sunstorm."
Half an hour later I was upside down under the navigation console on the Sunstorm, carefully fishing the IFF core out of its slot. The attack had triggered my professional paranoia, so I had decided to hack the IFF core and change the ship's ID just in case. Now I just had to put these four wires in the right place and …
"I've got it," Tracie said from behind the seat. She was handling the data pad and making sure nothing went wrong. "What do you want to call this bird?"
"Morrigan."
"Morri-what?"
"Morrigan. According to ancient Terran mythology it was a deity of war, from the old Terran state known as Ireland." I couldn't see her, but I knew she was glaring at the back of the pilot's seat with that same odd look she used to give me when I pulled some useless, archaic knowledge out of the hat.
"Whatever. The core is recompiled and I have green lights across the board. Anything else you want to add while we're at it?"
"Yeah," I said as I shifted around a bit to find a more comfortable position. "Set the owner to Judith Ukada."
"Is that contagious?"
"Funny. It's an undercover identity I created while I was in the fleet, just in case I might need it. Anyone without at least omega 1-level security clearance will get a nice, innocent story about an Argon everywoman who got fed up with sitting on her ass planetside and decided to head for space to seek fortune and glory. I spent almost two years creating her, and made the history as airtight as possible. Guess it's time to find out if I did a good job or not."
"You really
are a crazy bastard, captain." I heard a hint of teasing in her voice and smiled to myself.
"I do my very best," I quipped. "It's what keeps me alive. Now, let's wrap this up and get moving."
Another ten minutes and I was strapping myself in behind the stick of the Su … Morrigan, going through the pre-flight check list. Reactor ok, engines in the green, navcom, controls and AI okey … Let's roll.
The engine made the whole ship vibrate. Then the docking clamps let go, and a moment later I was flying toward the gate at 205 m/s.
"Wish me luck," I said as I approached the gate.
"Luck, 'Judith'. Let's hope you get some." Tracie replied from the Nomad. The teasing edge in her voice made me snicker as I flew toward the event horizon. Then I was in the wormhole.
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Assets:
M6 Drake - "Nomad"
M3 Cougar Vanguard - "Morrigan"
TL Elephant - {unnamed}
M2 Asgard O'Neill - "SGC-028 'Lux Aeterna'"
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