StarDestroyer.Net BBS

There was some small interest in seeing this in my last thread, so I decided to write this when I found some time.

I don't actually have anything else to add at this time, so have the actual story already:

Epsilon Eridani
Interstellar Highway 1, Junction 1 Access Point

There are two axioms about space that aren't entirely true. Firstly, it is often said that space is big. In the literal sense, that is very true; the distance between a planet and its own moon can easily be more than the width of the planet itself. In the practical sense, however, space is not that big. Even before the advent of the Highways, trips to the outer bodies of humanity's home system had been reduced to a matter of months. With this technology, a trip from one end of the Empire to the other takes little more than a week, traffic notwithstanding.

The other axiom is that space is dark. Right now, that is not the case.

The burning wreckage of a Resurgent destroyer raced through space, its main engine firing at maximum power with no-one to tell it to stop. Behind it raged a storm of fire.

The attack had begun at the start of the standardised Imperial day, an entire Resurgent battlefleet coming in from the edge of the system. The Imperial fleet stationed at the naval base in the system had responded, expecting to easily crush the outdated and poorly-maintained Resurgent ships.

That, of course, had been when the second Resurgent fleet had pulled out of the Highway gate. And the third, and the fourth.

Therefore, to say that Commander Horatio Jackson was not having a good day would be an understatement.

“Helm, can't you do anything about that spin?” he bellowed, as chaos reigned. “And will someone please shut off that damned alarm? I know we're under attack!”

“Sir,” said Ensign Sasha O'Brien, the helm officer; “I've lost most of the portside thrusters. It's going to take a while to get us stable aga-” She was cut off by the sensors officer, Ensign Jacob Buck.

“Incoming! We've been targeted by that bloody battlecruiser. Six missiles, each one's a capship killer.”

“They don't mess around, do they?” said Commander Jackson. His Executive Officer, Maria Carter, let out a laugh.

“It seems they want the base pretty badly,” she said.

“Helm, go evasive. See if you can't get us into that debris field at zero-seven-zero by one-two-six. Weapons, shift whatever processing power we've got into the ECM and point defence systems,” Jackson ordered. “And why the hell is that bloody alarm still ringing?”

The heavy destroyer Seine, one of the last few ships of the Imperial garrison fleet, powered forwards. Several dozen kilometres away, the six missiles launched by the Resurgent battlecruiser PGS Antioch raced towards their prey. A hit by even one of the heavy fusion warheads they carried would annihilate the entire ship.

One's guidance system broke, and it flew straight on, accelerating until its fuel ran out. It would eventually hit an asteroid, the destruction of which would be logged by the various observatories that witnessed the act as an anomaly.

Another missile was confused when the Seine entered the thickest part of the debris field and hit the wreckage of the INS Tame, one of the first casualties of the battle. Yet another was tricked by the Seine's ECM suite, and started tracking the PGS Saint Thomas Becket. The Resurgent destroyer panicked, colliding with the PGS Saint Malo. Both were annihilated when the missile struck.

The other three, however, were not so easily fooled. They split into their pre-assigned groups, one attacking the Seine from “above” and the other two on the port side of the ship.

“Station keeping,” ordered Commander Jackson. “Have the point defence guns focus on the one coming in from above.”

“Sir,” objected Harry Furman, the ensign at the weapons station, “That's the decoy. The other two will go full burn as soon as it's gone, it's a simple kill-pattern!”

“And that,” replied the Commander, “is why as soon as the first missile is destroyed I want the helm to rotate us to two-seven-zero by zero-zero-zero. Ninety degrees direct to port, in other words.”

“And how does... oh,” said Furman, realisation spreading across his face.

A kilometre above the Seine, the decoy missile coasted towards its target, shielded from direct view by a large piece of debris. The ship it was headed towards hadn't moved, so its programming told it to conserve fuel. It cleared the wreckage, and fired its main engine. Alone, and relatively slow, it didn't last long against even the Seine's meagre point defence battery, but killing the ship would only have been a welcome bonus.

As soon as the computers on the other two missiles registered the destruction of the decoy, they fired their own engines. While they were quite close together, they had both reached the conclusion that the enemy ship would not be able to intercept them.

Since their programming only considered the point defence and ECM of the warships they were targeted against, this was actually quite an inaccurate conclusion. The Seine's main armament, a railgun capable of shredding other destroyers with ease, fired.

The magnetic shockwave of the projectile had several effects. It scrambled the missiles' circuitry; at such close range even their hardened cases stood little chance of standing up to the interference from the railgun and its projectile. This alone would have given the Seine a reprieve, the detonators on both warheads being rendered nearly useless.

More spectacularly, however, the passing of the projectile magnetised the missiles with opposite charges. A kilometre out from the Seine, they collided with each other, and one of the backup detonators on one of the warheads did its job.

A wave of fire swept across the Seine, blinding the destroyer. The explosion swept the small ship away, further into the debris field.

On the bridge, there was silence. It was broken after a few seconds, as the collision alarm went off again.

The crew had blacked out for a few seconds. Jackson was the first to wake up; he was used to g-forces.

“Alright,” slurred Jacob as he came to, “I think that went well.”

“No time for talking,” ordered Jackson, “Sasha, get us under control. Jacob, see what the hell's going on out there. And for the last bloody time will someone please shut of that alarm?!”

“Uhh... sir?” said Jacob, “You should probably take a look at this.”

“Onscreen,” said the Commander, and immediately regretted it. The main screen was filled with the red dots marking enemy ships, but all were engaged with the various tasks of a victorious fleet. “What am I looking at, Ensign?”

“Ah, you probably can't see it at that resolution. Zoom in on sector one-eight hundred by thirty-six,” Jacob replied. Jackson did so.

“That's... odd,” he said. Far on the edge of the system was a single white dot, the mark of an unidentified contact. “I haven't seen one of those since my days on the Magellan,” he continued. “Well, whatever it is, all we can do now is wait and hope the Resurgents keep thinking we're dead. Go to silent running, low emissions. Hopefully some of the line fleets will decide to do some actual work for once before the Resurgents loot the whole bloody system...”

Nice opening. i'll definately be following this one

Have an update. They might not be as frequent as they were last time, but I do have this next week free so they should still be relatively frequent.

Also, I'm not entirely happy about the way I wrote the last segment of this update. Let me know if it feels a bit dry.

For those wondering, yes the Resurgents will probably be explained at some point. No, they are not entirely just generic rebels with religious flavour

Story:

Epsilon Eridani
Unidentified Object

If there had been a ship near the white dot on the Seine's sensors, anyone looking out of a window at it would have seen the impossible: a living creature, floating in space.

It had no analogue amongst the creatures of Earth – it did not have legs, or fins, or wings. Its body was a white, hardened exoskeletal tube running from its “head” to the end of its body, where two glowing recesses sat, the creature's equivalent of a spaceship's thrusters.

The “head”, a skeletal parody of a human's, was fixed in one direction. It hung in space for a while, watching the battle millions of kilometres away.

Then it turned and fired its “engines”, heading towards the contested Highway Junction.

--------

Highway 1
Nearing Junction 1
INS Warrior

Admiral Patrick Collins relaxed in his chair as the Imperial First Line Fleet raced towards Epsilon Eridani. Around him, the crew of the Imperial dreadnought carried out their tasks with calm efficiency.

“So, captains,” he said, addressing the globe of communication windows around him, “let's review the plan. We will come out of the junction and engage the enemy. They have several fleets in the area, but we still hold the numerical advantage. More importantly, they will be spread out and complacent after killing the cannon fodder Command decided to leave here. Standard tactics; fighters and missiles after the ships furthest away from us. Everyone else is to engage the ships by the gate – stay within two thousand kilometres. Shield the missile boats and carriers, too. Their capital ships should be outdated, and they'll only have one of them for each fleet, if that. Everyone got all that?”

There was a round of nods from his captains. “Alright then,” he concluded, “stay in formation. We'll be in combat in thirty seconds.”

--------

Epsilon Eridani
Highway 1, Junction 1

A blaze of colour washed out from the junction as the Imperial fleet pulled out of the highway. The civilians on board the huge station watched in awe as masses of ships flowed away, spitting fire from their weapons.

To their credit, the Resurgent ships reacted quite well to the shock attack. The fleet tasked to secure the junction was an elite unit, equipped with the best ships the Resurgents could provide. The battleship Jerusalem poured barrage after barrage of laser and railgun fire towards the approaching fleet, forcing the screen of destroyers to open out and allowing some fire to scar the armour of the Imperial capital ships.

Then, those capital ships returned fire, their lengthy charge cycles completed. The dreadnoughts Warrior, Iowa and Yamato launched a single volley from their own axial railguns, each shot obliterating one of the support ships of the Resurgent fleet. Two shots from the Iowa hit the Jerusalem in the middle of the ship. One of the battleship's magazines exploded, blowing it in two. The Iowa's third shot went off target, and cored a Resurgent cruiser on the periphery of the battlezone.

The attacking fleet's cruisers, a mixture of missile ships and carriers, let loose their payload. The remaining Resurgent fleets responded in kind, the battlecruiser Antioch launching a huge volley of missiles towards the Imperial dreadnoughts and the carrier Rome scrambling its wing of fighters, their attendant cruisers following suit. The final Resurgent capital ship, the dreadnought Mecca, surged forward along with the remaining close combat ships.

Between the fleets, a combined missile and fighter duel broke out. The massive amounts of jamming put out by the combatants forced entire volleys of missiles to chase after illusory targets, detonating in the depths of space. Squadrons of Imperial fighters chased down their Resurgent counterparts. While the Imperial pilots had the better equipment and training, each Resurgent pilot had been in combat for the past year, making the dogfights more equal than would otherwise be supposed.

Entire squadrons of Imperial fighters were picked off as Resurgent pilots lured them into unfavourable fights, groups of them forcing the Imperials to fight them alone. On those occasions where the Imperial squadrons could concentrate their firepower, however, the effect was enormous. Eventually, the Imperials consolidated themselves in a single area, annihilating any Resurgent fighter that dared come close.

It was at this time that the Resurgent close-combat fleet and the main strength of the Imperial fleet made contact. Dozens of Imperial light destroyers surged in to the dogfight, pinning the Resurgent fighters against the Imperial formation. The Resurgent light cruisers and destroyers responded, targeting the Imperial picket ships. This drew in the comparatively rare Imperial heavy destroyers, and another dogfight broke out, this time between much larger ships.

The remainder of the two fleets stared each other down; the Imperials had the advantage of having three dreadnoughts to the Resurgents' one, but the Resurgent fleet contained about twenty heavy cruisers.

The battle for Epsilon Eridani was still in doubt.

I really wasn't happy with the last section of the last update, but it'll stand.

Sorry for the rather... extended... delay between updates. It has been rather busy over here.

Story:

Junction One Realspace Service Station

The alarms had woken James up. At first, he'd hoped it was just another drill, the third in the past month alone. Unfortunately, a quick look on one of the station's exterior cameras soon dispelled that notion. So he, along with most of the other occupants of the station (or rather, those who weren't foolish enough to take a civilian spaceship out into a full-blown battle) had taken refuge in the special bunkers that had been set up for this sort of occasion.

A burly Imperial Marine, in full power armour, was standing guard at the door. From that alone, James reckoned things weren't going well outside. They'd even cut off the exterior cameras from the main internal network, forcing James to use some slightly less legal means to see what was going on. The raw feed was useless, of course. Even the ships that were sitting “close” to the station could barely be seen. The traffic view, however, was another story.

“Hey,” came a voice from his shoulder. He turned around, recognising the voice of one of his co-workers from the service bay.

“Hi Al. Take a look at this, would you?” he said, handing over his 'pad.

“Looks like they're losing, huh?”, Al noted after a while. James took the 'pad back, switching between the various views.

“I think they've lost. I don't see any Imperial ships out-” the entire station rattled, and the lighting in the bunker switched to the emergency backups. The exterior feed cut out for a second.

When it came back up, there was a massive Imperial fleet right outside the station.

“Okay, I was wrong about that,” said James.

____________

INS Seine

To say that Horatio was elated when the Imperial fleet showed up would be an understatement. When half the Resurgent fleet flew right past the Seine's hiding place in the counter-attack? Not so much. The Mecca, engines blazing, passed less than fifty kilometres from the destroyer. Either they hadn't noticed it, or they were choosing to ignore it to focus on the Imperial ships. The latter was far more likely; they'd powered up the Seine's sensors as soon as they'd noticed the disturbance around the Junction.

The Resurgent dreadnought was massive, easily the size of an ocean-going super-carrier. Its main guns, two railguns running along the port and starboard sides of the ship, fired. Two shells spat out towards the Yamato, boring a hole straight through the Imperial dreadnought. The Mecca's attendant fleet fired in unison, scattering the other two ships.

Horatio watched this with some trepidation. The Warrior and the Iowa had the Mecca outgunned, but the heavy cruisers floating around the Mecca gave it an edge. He sighed, and turned to his crew.

“How're the repairs going?” he asked. The bridge crew looked at Maria, who replied.

“The gun's back online. Thrusters are active, but if we push them too hard we might overload the reactor; it'll take weeks to get working again in the state we're in. Point-defence is... well, I'll just say it'd be better to get out and spit at any missiles headed our way. The drones are saying we've got enough structural integrity to go at half thrust, and we've lost manoeuvring thrusters on the ventral side, and the port thrusters still aren't responding. We can shoot and go in a straight line very slowly, and that's about it.” Horatio could have easily found out that information himself, but he preferred someone to tell him what was going on.

“Alright,” he began, “Here's the plan.”

____________

GNS Mecca

High Captain Alexus was beginning to think he might be able to win this battle. One of the anti-religionist capital ships was down, and the other two were unable to bring their guns to bear. At the same time, though, something still wasn't right. The Patriarchs had assured him that God had sent a servant to watch over this battle, but all he'd felt since the Mecca had joined the battle was a sense of unease. Some greater mind was watching him, and he got the feeling he was only sane because it was preoccupied with every other mind in the fleet.

He dug his hand into his jacket pocket, letting his staff deal with the enemy fleet. Swallowing a pair of pills from the bottle concealed within – diverted from the pile of medical supplies sent that were marked for destruction, being tainted by the enemy's touch – he turned his attention to the sensor feed.

Nothing, except a single enemy destroyer caught behind his fleet. He would deal with that in time. Except... didn't he have two other capital ships backing him up? Where had they gone?

“Open a channel to the Rome and the Antioch,” he ordered. One of his crew turned to him, a blank expression on their face.

“They are gone,” said the ensign. “All that is left is the First.” Their voice had a strange quality, like it was coming from very far away.

Alexus nearly drew his sidearm, before noticing that the rest of the crew had stopped doing their jobs, and had instead chosen to cluster around him. One of them reached out a hand to grab him, and something in his head told him to react.

He accessed the Mecca's control network, and opened every airlock and bulkhead on the ship. He barely had time to activate his emergency spacesuit before the air rushed out of the bridge, throwing all of the things that used to be his crew off-balance. Some were sucked out of the room outright, and it was a simple matter to clean up the ones that were left.

They tried to crawl back towards his command chair, in complete silence. None drew their own sidearms, a fact Alexus took full advantage of. Three minutes later, the battle on his bridge was over.

The battle outside was a slightly different story. Alexus brought up the sensor feeds again, hoping that the rest of his fleet was still intact. Instead of the twenty heavy cruisers, however, there was a single behemoth signature.

The First had arrived.

The Seraphim make their first appearance I presume? Enjoying this so far

Have an update, for whatever reason best suits your current situation. Birthday, wedding anniversary, marking your contract with eldritch beings from the under-dimensions, whatever.

This battle may even end soon, so I can get on with the rest of the story No it's not all going to be like this, I promise

Story:

INS Seine

Commander Jackson watched in horror as the... thing butchered the Resurgent dreadnought's support fleet. Of the twenty heavy cruisers, only two managed to fire back; more by fluke than any actual thought. The beast had paused in front of them for a second or two, just before it somehow folded in on itself, turning from a sleek cylinder shape to a spiky star, its “head” forming the centre. Beams of energy lanced out from each point of the star, spearing each of the cruisers. The two which had been pointing at the creature fired back in panic.

Their shots hit some sort of forcefield; more of an impression than something that could be seen, but somehow orange.

The beast's lances blew right through the cruisers, detonating within them. In less than a minute after the thing had shown up on the local sensors, the entire Resurgent support fleet was gone.

The dreadnought which the fleet had been escorting seemed frozen in space. Horatio was too stunned by the creature's sudden appearance to take advantage of the fact; the Seine floated in space a few kilometres to the rear of the dreadnought's engine banks, ready to attack. By the time he had recovered, it was too late. The Mecca's airlocks opened all at once, and a few seconds later its engines flared, pushing the colossal ship towards the new arrival.

The wash from the engine banks swept the Seine away. For the third time today, Horatio found himself trying to stabilise a spinning, heavily damaged destroyer.

----------

The First

The creature sat in space. If one could liken it to a person, it could be described as thinking. It had tried to – for want of a better term – talk to the creatures it had seen, but they all had fragmented minds. Their parasites had gotten in the way, as well, so it had swept them aside; it had even been forced to kill the first two creatures it had come across when they tried to defend their parasites.

It had tried to learn from its mistakes, though. Several of the animals had been fighting, so it had intervened in the hope that they would pause for a while and listen to it. Hope had flared, briefly, as one of the creatures' minds suddenly lost most of the competing voices.

Then it had realised its mistake.

It shifted back into a fighting stance.

----------

GNS Mecca

Alexus was determined to force the demon in front of him back to hell. It had destroyed most of the ships his people had left, dooming them to either the oppression of the anti-religionists or permanent exile in the cold of space.

To that end, he connected the emergency controls straight into his cybernetic input ports, taking full control of the Mecca. Every single function on the ship was now controlled by his mind. In time, the strain would kill him; not even fighter pilots could use the technology without dying. It would, however, take long enough to do so that he could do what he wanted.

He slowly brought the dreadnought's bow around, pointing it towards the demon. He fired the round that had been left in the main guns, more as an afterthought than anything. Predictably, it ran into the demon's shield.

Then, he triggered the Mecca's engines.

----------

INS Iowa

Admiral Almasi of the First Imperial Line Fleet watched as the last Resurgent ship in the system ploughed into the... whatever the hell it was. Somehow, the dreadnought managed to break through the thing's shield, impacting right in the centre of the spiky mass of white chitin. Its main reactor detonated shortly afterwards, a last act of defiance from the ship's captain.

The fleet's sensors were blinded for a short time.

When the dust cleared, the thing was still there. Only, now it seemed to be looking at Almasi.

Without even thinking, he gave the order: “Shoot it!”

It was a testament to the discipline of the Imperial Navy that no-one questioned the order. Six super-high velocity rounds – three from each dreadnought that was still intact – sped towards the thing... and hit its shield. Five were stopped completely, the last just about managed to get through, tearing one of the spikes off of the creature.

It screamed, and folded in on itself again. Where before, it radiated spikes in every direction, now its entire body had become one larger spike, its “head” forming the base.

The thing pulsed with light for a few moments, and fired. That was the last thing Admiral Almasi saw.