Forlorn Hope.

[Crazedwraith]

Forlorn Hope

The Great War, 1914~1918. Supposedly the last war. After its horrors, the governments of Earth decided to make a great alliance of men that would stop any wars before they started. This is now all ancient history but even when it was not, even in the same century, it was renamed. The Great War, the War to end all wars became world war one.

The universe, it seems, just didn’t get the message and now another war looms one that equally deserves the title of the ‘Great War’. This one won’t stop wars either….

***

Prologue: Cold Reflections.

Bloody Cold. That’s what it was, bloody cold. Captain Elias Freman was 42, of middling height and had far too many grey hairs for his liking. He was also repeatedly swearing as he rubbed his hands. This was a rather pointless activity since he was caught in an icy cold wind, that pierced straight through his decidedly non–regulation trench coat and his regulation gear and him without even stopping to say hello or enquire after his health. Elias carried on rubbing his hands though, in the vain hope it might at least have a physiological effect.

Bloody Hell, thought Elias, forty-two, I am. Forty–bloody–two and a captain. A Captain assigned to slap bang in the middle of no and where. With a dozen other screw–ups. Watching morons watching ancient ruins.

Elias didn’t like ruins. One pile of rocks looked much like another pile of rocks, to him. Regardless of the arrangement or type of scribbles that’s some long dead person had put on them. With his look it was properly but there by the ancient equivalent of spray paint armed teenagers.

It could easily have been all different. Elias knew this. It was all the fault of that damn overgrown circuit board. Elias supposed lying insensate while everyone else was slaughter and a valuable piece of technology walked out the front door made a bad impression with the brass. He scratched and an old scar on his chin. His only consolation was that the damn thing had eventually been blown into itty–bitty pieces by a rocket propelled grenade. Elias wished he’d pulled the trigger himself. Swearing again he huddled himself under his coat. Then he heard a noise; it was like a gentle whoosh, which quickly spread out through out the frozen forest base.

The sound quickly picked up reverberating loudly around the trees, it was almost instantly recognisable: the roar of ion engines.

It must be the supply shuttle making its monthly stop off with pre-packaged food, the wrong equipment for the scientists and large quantities of booze and cigarettes available for purchase from the black marketing
Crew for many times their worth.

And about time too thought Freman, the bastards were almost a week over due. He pulled up on of his last few cigarettes and lit up. He knew he shouldn’t. He was close to running out for one thing and didn’t have enough money to get many more at black market prices and for another thing, the doctors had told him the military health plan wouldn’t cough up if he got lung cancer for a third time. But what the hell he needed to unwind some how in this hell. Or Hel Elias thought referring to the rather colder Norse version. That was one part of history Elias had liked, it was full of tales of boasting and battle. Something every boy enjoys. Until he grows up and has to take part…

This rather sordid monologue was interrupted as the whine of the ion engines increased to an eye splitting scream as the asymmetrical shape of an Ubeerian Drop ships punched through the ice–storm clouds and started laying about itself with great streams of plasma.

***

Far, far away on a completely different planet, The Imperator smiled. Soon all the dishonour would be cleansed; all the insults done to his glorious creation would be expunged wiped from galactic memory.

The Imperator often thought like this. To tell the truth he and most of his lineage were stark raving bonkers. Not that anyone would have told them that. The closest you can come to telling the head of a vast interstellar empire of heavily armed fanatics that he’s “stark raving bonkers” is telling another equally worthless person as yourself that his Imperial majesty is “slightly eccentric” while in a seedy bar the other side of known space. And even then it’d be best to keep your voice down.

It all came down to the fact that The Imperator was a God. Or so he and all his people believed which meant inside Imperium space, for all intents he was God. He didn’t have a name; he was simply The Imperator. Countless generations of the Royal Family posed as one Divinely immortal person.

Divinely immortal persons do not suffer insults lightly. Hence the millennia long war between the deliverers of his righteous fury and the “atheist” heathens of the Alliance.

In a war that had lasted for Millennia, the present 20 years of peace could only be considered a brief lull while forces regrouped for the inevitable crushing blow. The “United Protectorate of Sol” would be washed away just as easily as one of his guards might swat a fly. And his divine fires would sweep across the Galaxy. Cleansing it for his greatness.

[Ford Prefect]

Ah, I've read this before! And it is just as good as before.