softweir wrote:Looks like your Kraken needs an "In Memoriam"-type renaming - how about Steve - So Long, and Thanks for all the Ships?
That's mint.
I can only imagine the emotional rollercoaster ride that poor NS experienced. Hell, that last operation sounds like the plot of a Hollywood sci-fi adventure flick. Take solace in the fact that Steve and crew went out in a blaze not only of quarks and neutrinos, but glory too.
I hardly think that dieing OOS in an under-staffed, under-gunned destroyer in hostile space really counts as a proper hollywood style death.
Sure it is. Leo and company died doing their jobs in a selfless manner becoming of a N-S marine.
More to the point, they boarded the vessel under extremely hard circumstances, fought heroically to gain control of the vessel, endured hardship, lost friends and fellow soldiers along the way, were beat back and beat down only to rise to the occasion and whip the enemy again, finally succeed in wrestling control of a military battleship from the overpowering forces or The Enemy, and then found out, holy crap, we're all ******, there's hundreds more out there.
I think I could endure a 90 minute flick if they did the effects nicely - it's already more story than a lot of what comes out of Hollywood now.
So, Slug... did you speak to anyone about the movie rights?
We are all explorers of the deepest reaches of space.
We don't just watch space on our monitors and listen to the sounds in it:
We, all of us, each and every one of us, owns, to a man, as many operational Space Shuttles as NASA does.
Yes, we're all that awesome. Give yourself a hug.
Unlucky Slug but if they weren't expendable, you wouldn't put them in the boarding pod.
Hollywood movie? Hollywood would have Leo survive to be in the sequal.
Think a 22 episode series might be enough to cover the exploits though, if they trim it down a bit.
Nuke 'em 'til they glow and shoot 'em in the dark.
Reach out and touch someone....with High Energy Plasma
Evildudeness wrote:Hollywood movie? Hollywood would have Leo survive to be in the sequal.
Think a 22 episode series might be enough to cover the exploits though, if they trim it down a bit.
Hollywood's into bloodying up the hero right now, so no, Leo would have died and instead of a 21 IBL salute, it would show N-S writing in his captain's log about the day, with his voice dubbed over saying that he won't lose good soldiers again.
Or they'd just portray him as losing a bit of swagger and being more hard-assed on the new recruits.
Anyway, screw hollywood, this is a full blown emmy-worthy series. I'm looking forward to season 2 already (that is if N-S survives). Something like Lost meets Mad Max or Thunderdome, but if this becomes Slug, Space Ranger aka Walker, Texas Ranger then ratings may drop. There's only one Chuck Norris in this or any universe. I think you'd all agree.
Anyway just picked up on this fine-better-than-Tolkien piece of literature. Keep us guessing!
A Hollywood movie would show the ship exploding, but still in Ma'k's sector. Ma'k would curse, watching as the distant Terran fleet, surrounding the expanding cloud of rubble from Leo's Osaka, turn and set course for Ma'k's fleet, ready to chase him from their space or destroy him. Ma'k closes his eyes for a moment in grim acceptance, before keying in the order for his fleet to jump out. As his fleet disappears around him in a barrage of flashes, he opens his eyes again, bidding Leo a solemn but silent farewell, before punching his own jumpdrive, the last of his fleet to depart. The camera lingers, staring through the space that Ma'k's ship occupied mere seconds ago. As the fleet turns and resumes its patrol, two corvettes peel off from formation to examine and destroy the now gutted and adrift freighters that gave their jumpdrive to Ma'k's new lifters. Sombre music plays throughout, mourning for the loss of Steve and the Psychos.
One corvette drifts lazily past, the camera barely bothering to track it until, there - hidden behind a gun turret - a neat circular hole cut in the outer airlock door. The music picks up, sudden tension and hope - as the camera turns abruptly, swoops in through the hole, into the ship. It races down corridors filled with the signs of recent firefights - dead crewmen, blast marks on the walls, broken computer consoles and demolished doors. Finally the camera sweeps onto the bridge just in time to see one of the Psychos kicking a gun across the floor, away from the sprawled body of the Terran captain, and Leo 'Steve' Kayean settling himself into the captain's chair, the other Psychos taking up positions at various stations around the bridge.
"Right, lads," says Steve, the hungry smile on his scarred face mirrored in the other Psychos, the crew of his new ship. The camera pans around to show the view out the primary viewport, the other Terran corvette dead ahead, oblivious to its place here at the dawn of a new chapter in Leo's pirating career. He grins to himself. "Shiver me timbers!" Cut to end credits as triumphant music swells!
AcerbicMaelin wrote:Alot of stuff, you could be a candidate to direct the series
I just saw a rerun of A Perfect Storm last night and after reading that i can't stop laughing. The parallelism.
I would add a small scene where Ma'k's ship jumps into whatever sector (a semi bit peaceful), cut to the bridge where he's perched over a hand rail, face grimacing with disappointment. He shakes his head.
Ah well, soldiers by their nature are expendable!
But steve was special, if only he had of got that desk job he asked for! It was probs his last day aswell!
Wanton Use of Nukes Blue Wing: Limbo
Quotes I like
Klanthalas wrote:Who needs engineering when ya can just hit the control panel with a wrench
Gavrushka wrote:Huh, I'm no cheat, I'm not touching the infernal Springblossom I fly an unshielded Octopus with no upgrades and a damaged hull and when I want to take on a Xenon Q, I just hold my breath, roll down the window and throw pies at it..
My under-cover agent in the Terran government has just leaked a highly classified memo to me.
I'm not able to disclose any names at this time, but it appears the death of these galant marines was no accident.
Knowing that a very dangerous pirate was operating a fleet in one of thier sectors, the Terran Government called for voliteers for what would surely be a suicde mission.
It launched 2 fleets, one as bait, the other a kill squad.
Guessing (rightly) that the pirate would focus on the biggest prize, the Osaka was rigged with the newly devloped and experimental Instajump, and upon contact with a boarding crew/pod the ship would jump straight into the kill squad.
My contact refers to the Terran Government and Military as being "chuffed as f***" with the outcome.
Pushing up the anti, I know you're gonna see me, Read 'em and weep, The deadman's hand again.
Did you realise that the number of views for this story has now overtaken your first story?
A great achievement for surviving for so long and long may you keep going to break the post into the top 10.
Graphil
There are two secrets to life: 1) Don't tell everything you know...
yoink wrote:
I've done some minimal editing and tried to keep the pictures a reasonable size, but it's still over 200 pages of excellence. I might remove the 'Assets' sections for the next issue if people think it'd work better as a document.
Thanks for the great read NS! Keep it up.
Updated the document and changed the compression so that the text in the images should be a little clearer. The new file is a little over 20MB.
yoink wrote:Updated the document and changed the compression so that the text in the images should be a little clearer. The new file is a little over 20MB.
.. That ice came in handy after all. Celebration plans got scrapped in favour of a wake for comrades lost but it turned out ok, two Atmo-Lifters captured means I'm now in a position to initiate a serious building program. That of course will require some funding so today was spent up to my eyeballs in paperwork administrating the hulks I've currently got parked up in Freedoms Reach. Frankly it's all looking a bit ragtag again so I need to do something about that..
.. In the process of consolidating my fleet and deciding on what I plan to keep and what to discard I re-discovered a bunch of ships that I'ld parked up at the Teladi trading station way back in the long distant past and completely forgotton about. Stripping them all down, trans-shipping them to Ceos Sprite and collecting together all the spare equipment I don't have mounted on combat ships has left me with a suprisingly large amount of weaponry. Wasn't aware I'ld collected together quite so much..
.. I'll be shipping that lot down to Dukes Haven tomorrow and seeing how much of it I can offload and what sort of price I can get for it. I'm thinking looking it over that I should be able to get a sizeable amount of cash out of it, which is good as I've some extensive repair work to do on a few of my ships and then the rest I can plough into a manufacturing base..
Assets
1x Brigantine 'Why So Serious?'
1x Kraken 'So Long, and Thanks for all the Ships'
1x HCP 'Feersum Endjinn'
1x Albatross 'Two Jam Butties Short Of A Picnic'
1x Atmo-Lifter 'Big Daddy'
1x Atmo-Lifter 'Big Mommy'