Invasion

[Caiaphas]

UNN Station Sunrise: 0032

“We’ve got a contact, Cap’n.”
“Please tell me this isn’t another false alarm.”
“Don’t know if that’s good or bad, sir, but it’s not a false alarm. It doesn’t have an IFF, and opticals don’t paint it as an asteroid.”
“Right then. Go to Alert Two and send the standard warning. Arm all weapons.”
“Aye aye sir, arming weapons. Laser banks thirteen to twenty-one charged up. Doors on missile bays B through R are opening. A is still down for repairs. All laser banks ready to fire.”
“Message away, sir.”
“Give me heading, distance, speed, everything.”
“It’s heading dead for us, sir; three point seven lightsecs and closing. Speed is reading nineteen point three two three klicks a second.”
“Sir, I’m reading heat spikes in reactor section one, from the outside.”
“Redesignate bogey as bandit one. Open fire. Keep the missiles in reserve.”
“Firing, sir. All banks discharged and recharging. We’ll be ready for another shot in five, sir.”
“Sir, open up optics. Bandit one isn’t showing any damage whatsoever; not even any heating of any kind.”
“That’s ridiculous. Computer, open up optics on bandit one—dear god, that’s impossible.”
“Sir, we got two more contacts onscreen! They have the same profile as bandit one!”
“Sound general alarm, concentrate all laser banks on bandit one, and start recording for a courier.”
“Which cour—”
“Any courier! Target it for Sunset.”
“Done and done, sir.”
“Fire is still having zero effect, sir. I’m reading spikes in the reactor section again.”
“—of the UNN Station Sunrise, we are under attack by three bandits—”
“Another four just popped in, sir!”
“—correction, seven bandits, weapons fire is having no effect whatsoever on them—”
“There’s hundreds of them!”
“Anyone who’s listening to this right now, you need to get a message to Epsilon—”
“Heat spikes all over the station, sir. I’m reading a loss of pressure in section A. Section C. Section V. Section F.”
“—I repeat, tell Epsilon that—”

station destruction recorded. courier autolaunch activated. launch successful.

Well? Liked it? Hated it? Thought it was so damn horrible that I should be tied to a stake and burned?

[CaptainChewbacca]

There's not enough to it for anyone to have an opinion. Its a fragment, I'd like to see the whole.

[Dessel_Ordo]

has potential, I like where it might be going... but yea, still to little to pass judgment

[Caiaphas]

Its a fragment, I'd like to see the whole.

Sorry. You'll need to wait a little; I'm going to really be put through the meat grinder over the next two weeks or so. Unless I can find a respite to jot something down--after all, this didn't take me too long.

[Caiaphas]

As I promised, now I deliver, with one or two modifications to the first portion. More shall be forthcoming, as I have time.

UNN Station Sunrise: 0032

“We’ve got a contact, Cap’n.”
“Please tell me this isn’t another false alarm.”
“Don’t know if it’s good or bad, sir, but it’s not a false alarm. It doesn’t have an IFF, and opticals don’t paint it as an asteroid.”
“Right then. Go to Alert Two and send the standard warning. Arm all weapons.”
“Aye-aye sir, arming weapons. Laser banks thirteen to twenty-one charged up. Doors on missile bays B through R are opening. A is still down for repairs. All laser banks ready to fire.”
“Message away, sir.”
“Give me heading, distance, speed, everything.”
“It’s heading dead for us, sir; three point seven light-secs and closing. Speed is reading nineteen point three two three klicks a second.”
“Sir, I’m reading heat spikes in reactor section one, from the outside. Cooling system is compensating.”
“Redesignate bogey as bandit one. Open fire. Keep the missiles in reserve.”
“Firing, sir. All banks discharged and recharging. We’ll be ready for another shot in five, sir.”
“Sir, open up optics. Bandit one isn’t showing any damage whatsoever; not even any heating of any kind.”
“That’s ridiculous. Computer, open up optics on bandit one—dear god, that’s impossible.”
“Sir, we got two more contacts onscreen! They have the same profile as bandit one!”
“Sound general alarm, concentrate all laser banks on bandit one, and start recording for a courier.”
“Which cour—”
“Any courier! Target it for Sunset.”
“Done and done, sir.”
“Fire is still having zero effect, sir. I’m reading spikes in the reactor section again.”
“—of the UNN Station Sunrise, we are under attack by three bandits—”
“Another four just popped in, sir!”
“—correction, seven bandits, weapons fire is having no effect whatsoever on them—”
“There’s hundreds of them!”
“Anyone who’s listening to this right now, you need to get a message to Epsilon—”
“Heat spikes all over the station, sir. I’m reading a loss of pressure in section A. Section C. Section V. Section F.”
“—I repeat, tell Epsilon that—”

station destruction recorded. courier autolaunch activated. launch successful.

UNN Station Sunset: 0040

“We got a courier incoming, Captain. It’s from the Sunrise.”
“Again? This is going to be the fourth false alarm this week, I tell you. Bring it in.”
“Aye, sir. Bringing the courier in. Courier is secured.”
“Good. Download it and wipe.”
“Sir, we’ve got something odd here. Says that the emergency launch sequence was activated.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me. The emergency sequence? We haven’t had a legitimate echo on the sensors for the past month, and it would’ve taken a huge fleet to take down the Sunrise.”
“Sir, there’s no mistake.”
“Play it, then.”
“Aye, sir. Playing.”
“This is Captain Richard Bates of the UNN Station Sunrise, I repeat, of the UNN Station Sunrise, we are under attack by three bandits, correction, seven bandits, weapons fire is having no effect whatsoever on them, and they look like nothing I’ve ever seen! Anyone who’s listening to this right now, you need to get a message to Epsilon: we have more than the Rebellion to worry about! I repeat, tell Epsilon that we have more to guard against than—”
“That’s it, sir. Sunrise must have been destroyed or disabled completely.”
“Christ. You’ve got to be kidding me. Arm everything, put the station on Alert Five.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Now we just have to figure out what the hell Captain Prichard was trying to say.”
“Sir, one contact on the scopes.”
“Shit. Have we got opticals?”
“Don’t need them, sir. It’s a freighter. Cross-section matches up and the schedule’s correct.”
“Station Sunset, this is Freighter 2A-Gamma-645779 for Asteroid Exploitation. Are we cleared for an approach?”
“Gamma, you are cleared for an approach. Recommend you stay on the alert, though; we just got an emergency courier from Sunrise.”
“Roger that.”
“Maybe Cap’n Prichard panicked or something, sir.”
“Doubtful; he’s by the book, and if he made a mistake, he’d send in another courier to report the mistake.”
“Then what’s the explanation for the origina—got something else, sir.”
“What?”
“Sir, I’m reading heat spikes!”
“Start up the cooling systems and fire all lasers on bandit one.”
“Firing, sir. Lasers are having no effect. Recharging.”
“Sir, I’m reading hull breaches in section Z. Sealing the area off… success.”
“Sir, I’m getting more contacts pouring in here!”
“Send off a courier to Epsilon, station logs only!”
“Downloaded and launched, sir.”
“Sir, I’m getting heat spikes in weapons bay three—”

[Caiaphas]

And the next chapter is up!

Luna Station, Section Omega, Command Center

“Ma’am, we just got a message from the Sunset over in the Centauris.”
“Can’t be a rebel attack, they’d never hit a fortified system like that. Play it.”
“There’s nothing to play, ma’am. It’s just a standard emergency distress message, Alert Five.”
“Did you send a squadron off to investigate?”
“Yes, ma’am. It should be returning right about now.”
“Have someone inform me when it gets here.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
“For now, have we gotten anything back on the rebels?”
“Aye, ma’am. We’ve gotten hit on the Rim System mining worlds again, but the garrisons were more than sufficient to keep them from destroying anything significant.”
“How many ships can we spare?”
“Five heavy cruisers, 21 light cruisers, 50 destroyers, and three stations, ma’am.”
“Spread all of them out along the Rim, and accelerate production on the Summer Blaze.”
“Aye, ma’am. As an aside, the squadron has come in.”
“Good. Their report?”
“Let me check with the command towe—what happened?”
“What is it?”
“The tower is reporting only one ship: it’s the Ulysses, and she’s heavily damaged.”
“Hail them, and ask for a report.”
“I am hailing, ma’am. This is United Nations Lunar Base Alpha, report in, Ulysses, report—”
“I need to talk to the admiral! I need to talk to her now!”
“Calm down, captain, calm down, and tell me what you saw.”
“Admiral, both stations were destroyed! I split off the Marathon and the Merrimack to get a closer look at the Sunrise, but they were attacked by unknowns and destroyed!”
“Calm down, captain.”
“The rest of my squadron was hit minutes afterwards, we were all obliterated, I managed to get away before all reactors failed!”
“What are you trying to say, captain, and stop shouting.”
“Arm everything! Arm everything! Arm everything! Arm everything we have and put the system on Alert Five! They’re coming here! They’re coming!”
“Ma’am, tower is reporting thousands of ships that have appeared all around Luna. Range is approximately one lightsecond, IFF is unknown. We’re surrounded.”
“Admiral, the Ulysses is destroyed. Orders?”
“Arm everything. To battle stations, and recall the fleets. We’ve got a fight on our hands now.”
“Arming and recalling, ma’am. Arming and recalling.”

[Scorpion]

“I am hailing, ma’am. This is United Nations Lunar Base Alpha, report in, Ulysses, report—”
“I need to talk to the admiral! I need to talk to her now!”
“Calm down, captain, calm down, and tell me what you saw.”
“Admiral, both stations were destroyed! I split off the Marathon and the Merrimack to get a closer look at the Sunrise, but they were attacked by unknowns and destroyed!”
“Calm down, captain.”
“The rest of my squadron was hit minutes afterwards, we were all obliterated, I managed to get away before all reactors failed!”
“What are you trying to say, captain, and stop shouting.”
“Arm everything! Arm everything! Arm everything! Arm everything we have and put the system on Alert Five! They’re coming here! They’re coming!”

Wow. Does this bring back some memories! Did you ever play Descent: Freespace - The Great War? Kick-ass game, pc space "simulator", back in '98. The Intro was almost exactly like this section I quoted!

EDIT: Got it! Here it is. God, it still kicks ass after all these years.

[Ilya Muromets]

Constructive criticism alert:

It's pretty much all conversation. I mean, I understand trying to let the reader's imagination fill in the gaps, but this is just too much in the other direction.

Things like this could be used to good effect for a small introductory snippet, with the story filling in the relative details later, but conversation alone will not carry an entire story unless you're writing a script. And, even then, a script tells us who's talking and inserts a few general descriptions of events or details. This is pretty much tantamount to a conversation by people you don't know through a closed door: you know something's going on, but you don't know who's doing the talking and can't see what's going on.

Just pick up any published novel and you can see what I'm talking about. It always looks something like this:

"Speech speech speech," Character A said, "speech speech speech."

"Speech speech!" Character B retorted.

<insert paragraph or two of exposition here>

"More speech speech," Character A reiterated, <clever metaphor regarding his expression here>, "speech speech."

Or, at least, something to that effect. Give us details and descriptions in the exposition. Tell us who the hell is doing the talking, and describe them and their expressions while you're at it. Don't dump everything in the form of conversation or it will get really boring and uninteresting really fast.

[Caiaphas]

Aww. The thing I was trying to go for here was a sort of story told entirely through the conversations of other people who happen to be in the right place. Most of the time, I try to write in the way that you suggested, but how would you try and write something in that manner.

Next chapter will have the style changed as per your suggestion, and I'll try and fix the first few when I have the time. Thanks.

[Scorpion]

Aww. The thing I was trying to go for here was a sort of story told entirely through the conversations of other people who happen to be in the right place. Most of the time, I try to write in the way that you suggested, but how would you try and write something in that manner.

Next chapter will have the style changed as per your suggestion, and I'll try and fix the first few when I have the time. Thanks.

Well, I don't know if it's exactly what you were aiming for, but your style could work if the story was told as a Cloverfield-style collection of recovered logs and black box recordings.

Something like (using Muromets' methodology):

[IDENTIFICATION OF DOCUMENT (transcript of a staff meeting, surveillance footage, black box records, etc...) FOUD AT LOCATION, DATE]

<Description of footage (if video)>

PERSON A: Speech speech speech, speech.

PERSON B: Speech speech.

<Description of change in footage>

PERSON A: Speech spee-

[RECORD INTERRUPTED AT DATE]

Don't give up on yourself yet.

[Caiaphas]

Trust me, it takes a helluva lot more than this to put me down for any period of time.

I'll see if I can get the next (modified) installment up within a week.

[Caiaphas]

Scratch that week figure. I have got a helluva lot of work incoming. I'll get it up ASAP, I promise.

[Caiaphas]

I'm back, and I finally got this little son-of-a-bitch finished. Have fun!

I might utilize that black box idea in the future. Thanks.

UNNS Thermopylae, Mars Station Cadiz

The cruiser hung suspended above Mars, dangling from the spindly-looking superstructure of the Cadiz like a spider waiting on its web. A bright flash from an Earthwardly direction signaled the arrival of a superluminal craft; the tiny black sphere that hurtled towards the Cadiz a courier. The automated systems onboard took control after it had gotten within thirty thousand kilometers—a stone’s throw in space—and brought the courier safely into a small docking cradle.
“Sir, Cadiz is hailing us,” called the comm. officer.
“Answer their call.”
“Aye, sir.” The comm. officer turned to the console, tapped a screen, and spoke: “Cadiz, we are good for transmit, repeat, good for transmit.”
“Cadiz here. We have an emergency fleet recall—all ships to jump to Base Luna.”
“Roger that.” The comm. officer turned and looked back at the captain, expectant.
“Go to Alert Five and tell the nuke crews to get me power for a jump—I want to be there in forty seconds.” The officer and his two subordinates went to their microphones as the captain called out, “Arm all missiles, charge up the main guns, and prepare the lasers. We’re in for a fight, ladies and gentlemen.”
About thirty-five seconds later, the half kilometer-long cruiser still hung in space, but was moving at a fair pace away from the Cadiz. Slightly more than a third of a second later, the ship was engulfed in a supernova’s worth of light that winked out to reveal the inky blackness of empty interplanetary vacuum.
The Thermopylae was brought back into existence in the middle of pure chaos. There were many dozens of ships that were easily recognizable to the captain—a cruiser here, two battleships concentrating their fire on a single enemy ship above it and to its right, and even one of the newer mobile stations wildly firing its missiles off on seemingly random vectors.
There were hundreds that weren’t. These ships were definitively alien in design, ellipsoidal and silvery, some almost spherical, others narrowed down like gigantic lances in flight, hurled at their approaching foes. Sparks of light were erupting from all angles on every single one of those alien ships—stray bits of radiation that were deflected off bits of random space dust and solidified fragments of vaporized hull.
What the captain found most disturbing was that there were half a dozen wrecks floating in a gentle orbit around the moon and one or two that had actually crashed into the surface that bore the blue-and-green Earth of the United Nations Navy, and that there were none that looked remotely like those so very alien ships that were attacking them.
There was a slight rumbling and a groan that was felt through the bones rather than actually heard as the ship slowly turned in a wide arc and accelerated towards Luna Station, the rock above it glowing a bright red-orange from the sheer amount of heat the enemy lasers had pumped into it during the few short minutes that had passed between their arrival and the arrival of the first Navy ships.
“I want a targeting solution for the nearest enemy ship, boost all coolant systems to maximum, and open up the doors on missile bays A through F,” ordered the captain.
“Sir, I have heat spikes in—” began one of the tactical officers, but the captain cut him off again.
“Target the lasers on the nearest ships, figure out what they’re firing, and put a cancellation signal onto their projectors,” he commanded. “And give me a line to the station! Now!”
“This is Admiral Valyesky to the Thermopylae,” a voice said seconds later. “All weapons are disabled or destroyed. Evacuations are almost done, but we’re open to space in several areas; we may be buried under twenty meters of rock, but that lava up top is already melting through. Just keep those shiny sons of bitches off of us for a while more, keep them from firing on the rock, and we’ll survive.”
“Will do, Admiral.”
“Sir! Reactor section three is open to space and the reactors are starting to go down!” shouted the comm. officer.
“How much longer until we have enough power for an emergency jump?” asked the captain.
“Thirty seconds, sir,” called out the tactical officer.
“Redirect all power to the jump drive capacitors, and evac the reactor sections,” shouted the captain. “And everyone stop giving me every single emergency we have, except for updates on the reactors! And broadcast to all ships: draw the enemy fire off of us until we can jump.”
There was an eerie silence for a brief moment, only broken by the tortured groans and creaks of the ship being torn apart around them.
“Reactor three is down, sir. Twenty-five seconds now to full charge.”
There were murmurs now of panic and of terror.
“Reactor sections four and five exposed to space, sir. Coolant systems aren’t doing a damn thing, sir.”
“Then put them on full—”
“With all due respect, sir, they are.”
The captain leaped up from his chair and started pacing.
“Five seconds. Four. Three. Reactor four is down. Seven seconds. Five is down. Eleven seconds now.” One of the comm. officer’s subordinates started openly weeping.
Another officer on the bridge started muttering, “We’re dead, we’re dead, we’re dead” over and over again.
“Section one has been spaced. The reactor is failing.”
“Oh, shit,” cursed the captain.
“Capacitors are charged, sir. Getting us the hell out of here.” The tactical officer turned. “Coordinates, sir?”
“Anywhere!”
There was a supernova’s worth of light again, in the space between the attacking ovoid ships and the blocky, steel-gray Navy vessels. When the light winked out again, the Thermopylae had disappeared from the field of battle, even as Navy squadrons from the outer fringes of human territory were appearing on it.