Siege [ON HIATUS]

[SOTS]

Captain Milton Tyrell made final checks with his fleet through his neural net. He stood before the captain's chair on his Argon Titan's bridge, his feet looped through grab holds to stop him floating from the deck in freefall. A man who had made astonishing progress in the Universe, both militarily and economically. He had the look of the successful businessman-cum-admiral: tall, straightbacked, approaching middle age. His black hair was only just beginning to recede, and was edged with silver. Chiselled features and a cold, calculating glare completed the visage.

He was also a vain man, a side-effect of his success. So after pirates attacked one of his convoys for the third time in a wozura, he suffered one of his common bouts of ego, and decided to wipe such a disgusting affront from the face of this particular galaxy. He landed at his nearest holding, a solar plant two sectors away, and called for just above half of his capital ships, three quarters of his corvettes, and a quarter of his fighter fleet to him at best possible speed. The rest, he let guard his merchant vessels and stations. All his ships were of Argon design and manufacture, another vanity that let everyone know exactly where he came from and how patriotic he was. He thought it rather romantic.

His ships arrived over the next tazura. Three Titans, the Malevolent (his flagship), the Myrmidon and the Minerva; two Collossuses, the Indefatiguable and the Implacable; around 30 Centaurs, which he divided into two squadrons, their commanders being aboard the Havoc and Halcyon; and 250 fighters, with a mix of mostly M3s and '4s, along with a few M5s to provide interdiction and interception. He ordered that 100 fighters should land on the Indefatiguable and Implacable each, leaving fifty in space. All his combat ships were armed and shielded to the teeth, and were as fast as he could push his shipwrights to make them. He had the best crews he could find, and it showed: his maintenance costs were among the lowest in the known Universe.

He formed his fleet around the two carriers, with the Malevolent in front. The other two destroyers took up positions either side of the carriers, and the M6s formed a rough flat diamond at the back, ready to wade into the fray one they were at the pirates' asteroid base. The 50 fighters still in vacuum spread out in between the larger ships.

"All ships, engage jumpdrives. Target gate: Hatikvah's Faith, North gate," Tyrell said over the fleetwide comm. He had a politician's voice, one that inspired confidence and trust. One of the reasons he had made it this far.

It wasn't a long jump. All the ships arrived in front of the gate in almost exactly the same formation they had jumped in. They turned as one, linked by various scrambled and encrypted channels, and accelerated towards the base.

"Charge cannons, load missiles into the racks and power up shields. All sensors, spherical sweep. Anything with an engine, I want it tagged and IFF'd," Tyrell commanded. A ragged chorus of "Aye, aye"'s sounded through the bridge. He saw the rest of the fleet doing the same through his neural net.

As he usually did when about to enter a confrontation, Tyrell opened communications with the station before he attacked it. "This is the Admiral of the Fleet, pirate asteroid. We have a debt to settle."

A dishevelled and scarred head appeared over the holo-projector in the middle of the command deck. "Waddya want? I gots plentya debts, but I don't turn up with some masai armada to get 'em."

"You've been attacking my merchant fleet incessantly in the sector. I'm here to make sure you stop."

The head looked away, checking something behind the focus of the display. "Ah. Milton Tyrell. Quite the interstellar mogul, aren't we, eh?"

"Tyrell, please." He routinely cursed his parents for giving him such a ridiculous usename.

"Whatever. So. D'you want yer money back, or the goods maybe? Failin' that, we're always up for a fight." Even one lopsided as this? Tyrell wondered, mystified.

"I want to kill you all. You have offended me greatly. Me! Your better in every way. And you use the most underhanded, conniving -"

"We are pirates, Tyrell, you idiot."

Tyrell sat back in his chair, taking a deep sigh. "All ships, open fire. Reduce that rock to molten slag in the next mizura, and I'll double this week's wages." The holographic head blanched, then disappeared.

The pirates managed to launch a few fighters, but they didn't get nearly far enough away from the station to avoid the deluge of photons, plasma and warheads. There wasn't even a debris field from them. The asteroid started to rotate faster and faster, as the impulse from the leaking atmosphere took its hold. Tyrell smiled, satisfied. There really isn't any kill like overkill.

If he was hoping for a drink before getting underway and sending the fleet back to wherever the ships had been before he called them, he was disappopinted. His sensors officer called his attention. "Sir, new contacts bearing one-eight-zero mark plus four-five."

Above and behind. Typical pirate attack manouever. He was just about to ask which clan it was this time when the officer hailed him again. "It's not pirates, sir. Only three contacts, and they're big. Wha- sir, they just.. broke." By this time, Tyrell had floated over to the sensor station.

"Did anyone fire?"

"No, sir. They- now the pieces are moving under their own power, sir. Definite exhaust trail. Getting visual." Pictures of pyramid- and crystall-analogues filled the display. "Have you ever seen something like that before?" the sensor operative - Rourke, Tyrell noted - breathed, all pretence at military formality and decorum lost.

"Comms!" Tyrell barked. "Sound general quarters! Bring every single ship we have back up to combat readiness! Have the carriers launch all fighters, scatter pattern."

"Aye, sir."

"Rourke, get as much information as you can. Record every sezura, this needs to go to the Argon Parliament and Military Command."

"Already on it, sir."

The ships opened fire on the nearest targets: the Centaurs. They replied in kind, bolts of green plasma screaming across the void, but corvette after corvette flashed out of existence. For every one enemy destroyed, three of the fleet would pay for it. They were using some kind of beam weapon, which Tyrell had only seen on defense towers. But these were different. Purple, for a start. The fighters flew interference, diverting the enemy if ever it got close to the capital ships, allowing them to keep their laser and particle cannons trained. Space became an energistic maelstrom full of blinding bolts of plasma, burning atmospheres, drive exhaust, metallic debris, bodies and scintillating purple beams.

The Indefatiguable became the target of a determined attack. Engines fell first, then weapon capacitors. The pent up energy suddenly released burned through crossbraces, bulkheads, composite alloy pressure doors and personnel, and tore the ship apart, flinging thousand-tonne chunks of ship in all directions. The Myrmidon was struck by one such fragment, and carreened away, on fire. Innumerable physical impacts shuddered the superstructure of the Malevolent. One of the wide windows on the port side of the bridge cracked. A purple beam scored a line across the shields on the dorsal hull in front of the command module, making them flash silver. A spar from the deckhead fell under the stress of evasive manoeuvers and struck the deck next to Tyrell's chair. Sparks flew from the operations station.

"Shields down to thirty percent, sir!"

"Get us to the nearest gate! Best speed!"

"Engines answering full, aye."

They never got there. Suddenly as the battle started, it finished. Space was quiet again. The strange ships with the purple beams linked together, and disappeared. No communication was ever sent from any member of the fleet.


-----
Any suggestions for a title? And should I continue with this at all lol. It's appreciated!

[mk1-orion]

an excellent read ! to me it kind of portrays the arrogence of high powered people, thinking that might is right !!

would certainly be nice to see some more stories involving "pyramid" shaped ships, and in such detail too !! a job well done there - give your self a pat on the back

[SOTS]

Awh wow! And there was me, getting worried about the first reply lol. Thanks v much orion! XD

[Syndrome]

A good read. The only bad thing is that it dousn't exactly go hand-in-hand with the plot. But no big deal.

[SOTS]

It was more of a parallel, but I may or may not have ballsed it up lol. Not sure if I should make this a separate story from X2 altogether or make a few tie-ins.

[Syndrome]

You know, you don't need to make your chapter's that long if you don't want to. Sometimes even a small paragraph is worthwhile if you don't have much time. Clifhangers are a good thing to add at the end of your chapter as well.

You can look at my story, Sector 44, and it will tell you what not to do. lol

Oh and to the few of you who were reading Sector 44 I have finally included another chapter.

[mk1-orion]

is all good !! if i had a substantial fleet - i'd do the same thing... only i wouldn't get my ass kicked !!!

[SOTS]

Syndrome - I did have quite a bit of time on my hands, along with a good dose of boredom lol. I know that's quite tricky to read: squinting at a monitor for extended periods of time will hurt anyone lol. And I thought I did include a cliffhanger! Kinda... I could alwasy stich the last two sentences round if it would add a bidda punch, but I think it's fine as is so far.

And I've read some of Sector 44, good work!

[Syndrome]

The way you ended your story was different from a clifhanger. Nothing wrong with it though. A cliffhanger is when an asteroid is flying towards a Titan at 500 m/s. It's when, if the caracter did nothing, and no one else intervened, he would be gone quite quickly.

[SOTS]

Yeah OK. But I guess there are different types (grades?) of cliffhanger. Mine wasn't a whopper as they go, but hey. I guess we can't all get it right first time, can we?


I still need a title btw

[Syndrome]

I'm not saying the end of your story is bad. I'm just saying what a cliffhanger is so you can use one in the future. Don't use one on every chapter though. That would make it into a soap oprah style story.

I suppose also there are different types of cliffhangers.

One thing. You said in your first chapter that a kyon laser smashed the bridge. If this happened then everyone would be sucked out into space. I donno, maybe I misread.

For your title you could make it, "The Great Disscussion of The Cliffhangers." LOL

EDIT: yes i did misread. It "cracked," didn't smash.

[SOTS]

I know what a cliffhanger is. And I'll do my best not to write this like a second-rate soap opera (is there any other kind?)

And the window cracked from the bits of Colossus hitting the rest of the ship, with the stresses on the hull/shields from said impacts.

Sorry, I may not have written that bit very clearly... It was meant to hit the section of hull in front of the bridge: hence the 'dorsal hull in front of...'

Like the flat bit you can see in front of you when you're in the cockpit of a Titan, there.

[Syndrome]

I know what a cliffhanger is. And I'll do my best not to write this like a second-rate soap opera (is there any other kind?)

Ok then. Sorry.

[SOTS]

Me too. That sounded a bit snippy didnt it? lol My bad.

[SOTS]

"What do you mean, they didn't communicate?" Quinn Duvall, captain of the Myrmidon, asked his sensor and communication officers in the situation room, just off the bridge.

"Exactly that, sir," replied Dexter, the communications specialist. "We heard no transmission issued between any of the enemy vessels at all. Unless they were using ultra-tight beam transferral, or some other method unknown to us, they weren't talking to each other."

"But those manoeuvers..." Duvall could quite plainly see in his mind's eye how tight the enemy formations had been, rotating and gyrating, sweeping and looping, coming within metres of each other, yet not a single collision occurred. "Not even computer confirmations?"

"No, sir."

"Did you record what we saw?"

His sensors officer, Clarke, answered the question. "Yes, sir. But it's not of much use to us. We're not going anywhere in our current state, and all that radiation, plasma and various other... hazards rendered our comms dishes inoperable approximately thirty sezuras into the exchange."

"Return to your duties. Get the communications operational again, that way if we can't get moving under our own power we can at least organise a tow. And see if any other ships survived."

"Aye, sir."

The command deck showed all the scars of the battle just as clearly as the rest of the ship: shorn cable trunks, fallen chairs, buckled alloys, dysfunctional gravidar display, and one of the consoles had come clean off the bulkhead to smash into a pressure door on the other side of the bridge, bowing it inward and locking it shut. It had barely missed Duvall, tearing a strip from the front of his jumpsuit.

The rest of the ship had come off rather worse. Small craters, plasma blisters and linear ditches in the hull caused by the alien weapons pocked the hull. The chunk of the Indefatiguable that hit the Myrmidon landed just aft of amidships, severing plasma conduits from the engines, reducing access to the stern of the ship to a single maintenance corridor, and removing the starboard dorsal engine pod completely. A third of the crew had been killed: the energy beams, the Indefatiguable (plus plasma burns caused by the ruptured pipes) and explosive decompression claimed most of the mortalities. Yet more died from bloodloss or internal injuries. The Titan, once a proud ship the match of any in the Universe, was in a sorry state indeed.

"Get Ducheval up here," the captain ordered. As even internal communications were down, a runner had to be sent.

It took a few mizuras for the engineer to arrive, breathing heavily and bruised. "What can I do for you, Captain?"

"How long will it take for the engines to be repaired?"

"Ah. I thought you might ask that. It ain't looking hopeful, sir. Even if we do get the pipelines repaired, we lost most of our fuel before they could be sealed again. And now that the thrust would be unbalanced if we managed to get the engine pods operational again, we'd spend a prodigious amount of our cold gas reserves using the thrusters to keep the ship going in a straight line. If I can get all that done, it'll still take about a wozura." Ducheval ran a hand through his thinning hair, then wiped his brow clean of the sweat collecting there.

"A wozura...? Ops, how long will our life support last in our current state?"

"Four, five tazuras maybe. Not a wozura, at any rate. We're operating at twenty percent past capacity as it is."

Duvall's cheeks were gaunt, his face drawn. It seemed a lifetime had passed since he signed on for his shift this morning. And the battle, short as it had been, had taken more out of him than he liked to think about.

--------

The Director sat in his comfortable Argnuhide chair, looking out over Argonia City on Argon Prime. His office, as ever, was in shadow. Rumours around the establishment had produced such gems as that he was really a Paranid in disguise, spying on the Department. Or perhaps just a really ugly Argon. Or maybe he was allergic to light, and routinely creeps out at night to eat children. But it was true that he had owned his office for nigh on seventy jazuras, and he showed no sign of his age, or even slowing down.

It was the Department's job to investigate and record every sighting of Xenon ships, or otherwise unidentified alien phenomena. So when even the transponder signal from the flagship of the famous trillionaire Milton Tyrell's fleet had disappeared entirely, without a trace, along with a sizeable portion of the rest of his military arm, alarms blared in the Department. Transponders were supposedly completely failsafe: a simple pulsing beacon that was primarily of use in rescue operations. They required almost no power to operate, and the simplicity of the signal made distortion easy to filter out.

One of the lieutenants working in the Department entered the Director's office. "We've pieced together what we know. Not much, in short. But it's a start."

The Director said nothing. The effect his face being invisible had on his deputies was also infamous in the Department. The lieutenant shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. "Apparently, Tyrell was attacked. Before disappearing, that is. He suffers from acute egomania, according to all reports, and this time was no different. He was mightily offended, and-"

"Get to the point."

"He jumped into Hatikvah's Faith, where he was attacked before he assembled his fleet, and travelled to a relatively remote pirate asteroid base. Well outside the gate grid, practically in the system's Oort cloud. As far as we can make out, the base was destroyed without a single loss on Tyrell's side. About a mizura or two after that, his transponder signal stopped. We haven't been able to raise any other member of the fleet since either."

"What are you doing about it?" The Director's voice was rarely used, and it showed. It was slightly raspy, low, and there were odd gaps and emphases on syllables where there shouldn't have been.

"We are forming plans to assemble a scouting fleet to go out there and have a look, to see if there is anything left at all. Or, to scan whatever anomaly struck the fleet after the base was destroyed. Basically, to find out more."

"No."

"Director?"

"No. See if any other ships in the sector and its neighbours disappear in similar circumstances. If nothing happens for a while, we can reasonably assume the threat has moved on or the event is over."

This was unusually verbose for the Director, which only served to further unnerve the lieutenant.

"How long should we wait?"

"One wozura. Then send your fleet."

[mk1-orion]

cool ! glad to see you've continued it, and am quite intruiged now !

[X2-Eliah]

Nice, Nice, just don't listen to people suggesting to cut the chapters short- I like a good read, but if it is 5-6 sentences like other people tend to do (in a week), well, thats..annoying.
Worst part is they put cliffhangers at the end of every 6 sentence long chapter, and that really spoils the story..
For now, it's great

[SOTS]

Thanks guys! I'm glad I've expanded the readership by a whole 50% as well

I suppose if you're capable of writing a longer chapter, then you should. But I guess if you want to add endless cliffhangers, it's all a matter of personal opinion.

I'm not sure when the next update will be, but it should be by the end of the week. College is really quite a workload lol.

[Syndrome]

Nice, Nice, just don't listen to people suggesting to cut the chapters short- I like a good read, but if it is 5-6 sentences like other people tend to do (in a week), well, thats..annoying.
Worst part is they put cliffhangers at the end of every 6 sentence long chapter, and that really spoils the story..
For now, it's great

You may as well put, "I don't like what Syndrome does."

Firstly, I was only trying to help SOTS when I said that he could cut his chapters short. I like a good read as well.

Secondly, not everybody has all the time in the world. They can't always make a chapter a day.

And thridly, I don't want cliffhangers all the time either. Like I said, it makes the story like a soap oprah.

[SOTS]

Each to their own, Syndrome. He doesn't have to like what you write.

And he didn't put 'like Sector 44' in there anywhere did he? He kept it general, and didn't give your story any 'bad press.'

I don't have all the time in the world either, hence the note about the next update at the bottom of my last post. But thanks for that helpful advice in your last reply, Syndrome, really helped me make my writing better for the next section.