Alright, here is the next part. Tell me what you think.
The tale of Darth Vader's Son - Chapter 15
Accompanied by two Corellian Corvettes, the Stardestroyer "Spectre" moved through the black void of space. From time to time a group of small, fragile looking objects left the main hangar or were returning.
Triplets of TIE-Avengers.
One of each triplet was modified with the most advanced and sophisticated sensors that could be fit into a fighter that small.
The "Spectre" was searching for new bases or, to be more precise, for good places were new bases could be established. Places far away from inhabited systems, far away from much-travelled and -patrolled hyperspace-lanes, places easy to cloak and where a base was easy to hide, but also places rich with minerals and natural ores to work with.
Because of this actually six corvettes belonged to the small fleet, but only two were present at the moment. They had searched in a number of systems and had now returned to the "Spectre" to report their findings. The other four, as well as twelve groups of TIE-Avengers were out and searching, too.
---
Captain Priem looked carefully to the intimidating figure of Lucan Vader. The tall Force-user occupied a small workstation and was reading through some files as it seemed. From time to time he was writing down something, too.
The Captain of the "Spectre" had no idea what his superior was doing, he didn’t even know if he wanted to find out. Lucan Vader had come aboard in a somehow sour mood and Priem didn’t want to be the one who turned this sour mood into something more dangerous by accident. Lucan Vader wasn’t a bad Master to serve under, he had shown more than once his competence in leading a capital starship and wasn’t too proud to ignore the opinion and advices from men like Guderi and Priem himself. He expected a lot from his men and paid well, he was saving with praise, but also with severe punishment. Somebody who failed or made a mistake usually got a second chance or an opportunity to make up for it.
Usually. As always, there were exceptions to this rule, too.
And this day Lucan Vader seemed to be in a mood, where he didn’t care about rules or the usual dealing with things. The other crewers of the bridge had recognized this, too. It wasn’t a very comfortable idea to serve under the eyes of a superior who was able to kill from a distance with his mind, especially if nothing of importance was going to happen. So under other circumstances the atmosphere would have been rather relaxed, as much as it would have been possible on the bridge of a warship. But now the atmosphere was tense, although for a neutral observer the young Lord Vader had managed to blend in with the background. Despite that everybody knew he was there.
Priem shook his head. The Captain of the "Spectre" worried not only about the potentially dangerous mood of Lucan Vader, but also about the changed fighter-composition of the "Spectre".
The one mile long Star Destroyer carried only half of its wing of fighters aboard, all in all thirty-six TIEs. Of those twelve were modified as scouts, sensors replacing weapons they carried. The other three squadrons were out, scouting. They were far away and only returned to report back to be fuelled, maintained and to give their pilots some rest. If one of those triplets returned, it didn’t take long for another one to take off. Together with the still remaining hangar-capacities after the ships upgrades, there was enough room for ten construction-droids, each one of them more than hundred meters long and twenty containers, that housed smaller droids and other equipment.
If the "Spectre" found a good place one of the droids and two of the containers were dropped and left behind. Assisted by the smaller droids the construction-droid would start to build a base, using the materials and ores it found to transform an asteroid, a small moon, parts of the surface of a planet (or the entire planet) into shipyards, garrisons, laboratories, mining- and construction-facilities and stores for other war-materials. As soon as the outpost was completed Lucan Vader would send soldiers and workers to crew them.
It wasn’t the first time that the "Spectre" had been on a mission like this, since the ship had left its shipyard for the first time, but that didn’t mean that Priem liked those missions.
If the "Spectre" was caught in a situation where the Star Destroyer would need all of its fighters, they might get into trouble. From the half wing aboard only twenty-four fighters were capable of battle, since the other twelve had been modified and whether the other thirty-six TIEs could return in time was a question Priem desired no answer to.
And to add fuel to the worries of the Captain of the "Spectre" he had to deal with a somehow annoyed Lucan Vader.
The situation was this way, since they had taken of yesterday morning. In those two days they had travelled forty-thousand light years through the outer rim, wild space and the galactic halo, found two places and dropped two of the construction-droids. One had been found by a corvette, a rogue planet, that had somehow left its star-system and was now drifting alone through space, the other inside an asteroid-belt rich of minerals and ores.
Captain Priem looked up, when a Lieutenant stepped towards him.
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
"The reports from the Corvettes Two and Five. They discovered three other places that should suit our needs." answered the inferior officer.
"Excellent. Order them to clean their datastores and give them the coordinates of a new meeting-point with us. And let our navigators plot a course. I will inform Lord Vader about this." Priem took the datapad out of the Lieutenants hand, who barely managed to hide his relief that it wasn’t him who had to disturb the Darksider at whatever he was doing.
Priem watched the young man leave and then turned around to join Lucan Vader in the small alcove he had occupied.
----
Lucan Vader wasn't in a fool mood, but close to. His current mental condition was a result of several factors.
Positive was, that the New Republic was distracted at the moment by the Empires new war-campaign. Otherwise, they would have been able to assemble a force large enough to take care of his current ally, Odiin Vascal. The New Republic would have crushed him, integrated the Elton-Sector into their own territory and he, Lucan, would have been forced to begin anew.
Unfortunately, there had been no other option than to destroy the taskforce. Had they managed to sneak in Vascal's territory, it would have been much more difficult to prevent them from doing any damage.
Darth Vader's son knew that his time was running out. As soon as the Republic had taken care of the empires advances, they would again concentrate on Vascal as top priority. Even more so, that they now knew about his existence. But Lucan already had an idea how to deal with that situation.
Another factor was the Empire's campaign itself. In Lucan's eyes, this was a fruitless enterprise in the long run. In a war of attrition, the New Republic had the better cards. They had the passive or active support of the most worlds and the better commanders, while the Imperials had to divide their forces between fighting the New Republic and keeping their own worlds in line and their current military leader had been a mere commander, even after forty years in the Navy and was now an Admiral, because almost every other and more competent Admiral was either dead or trying to run his own personal empire, like High-Admiral Chordal for example.
So the prolongation of this war was just a waste of time, money and lives.
Wasted lives.
Two days ago and the evening before he had watched the images of the persons he had killed in his attacks on Delva IV and Cetlic III. He had killed them, or ordered them killed and so he was responsible for their deaths. The only thing he could still do for them was to acknowledge their exterminated existence as individuals. In some ways it was a personal penitence. In a total of four hours, he had managed to acknowledge the deaths of one-thousand-four-hundred beings. Out of ten millions.
Ten million beings.
Men, women and children.
Innocents. Civilians. And their only crime had been, that they had lived within the borders of the New Republic. This act had been even worse than fighting soldiers. And even of those Lucan didn't think of as evil, they had been the enemy, because what they believed was wrong.
For Lucan, every person he killed, increased the pressure on his shoulders to succeed. It was a horrible thought, because if he failed, all the persons he had killed would have died for nothing.
"Their sacrifices will not be in vain." he thought. "I won't let it happen."
At the moment, he was working on three different things. He was reading several files on galactic history, models of governments and political theory, searching for ways and possibilities to reduce destruction and losses of life as much as possible. Lucan didn't intend to spend half his live with taking over the galaxy and then to be forced to spent the other half rebuilding. At the same time he was making notices for himself, already designing the kind of government with which he was replacing the New Republic.
And as a third thing he was studying the file of his mothers work. Lucan wasn't an expert on genetic engineering, but he knew enough to realize the brilliance in the Lady Vader's work. Much of it still waited to be completed and for a moment Lucan considered to return to Chalakdorn and to awake his mother out of her sleep, but decided otherwise. Her lifetime was limited and he only wanted to awaken her, when he had taken his rightful place as ruler of the galaxy. He would have to search for other experts.
Looking up, he noticed Captain Priem standing before him.
"Yes, Captain?" he asked calmly. He knew that his presence terrified the crew and he didn't want to add fuel to the situation.
"My Lord, our scouts have discovered three more possible places to establish a base." answered Priem, handing the young Lord Vader the datapad with the positions and descriptions of the discovered places: Another asteroid-belt, a planet that was very close to its sun and one of the twenty-three moons of a gas giant.
At first Lucan wanted to exclude the planet. Its closeness to its sun would increase the difficulties to establish a base and the transports to and away from this world, but suddenly felt something like a push towards this hostile system.
Over the years Lucan had learnt to trust his instincts. He would inspect the system himself and then decide if it was worth the trouble. If not, he could still return to the other two systems. All he had to lose were a few hours.
He rose from his seat.
"Captain, prepare a jump to those coordinates." he handed Priem the datapad back. "I will be in my quarters. Inform me when we have reached the system."
"Yes, My Lord."
----
Tersar Frascati entered the foreroom to the termination-chamber. The room was small, but still big enough to keep some distance between himself and the person, who was going to be terminated.
The Soodux of Settlement 7.459 of the Ogradevi stood at respectful attention, while the other man was taking off his clothes.
"Don’t even try it." Parkas Vigland said.
"I have to," answered Tersar. "Please, don’t go."
The old man turned around, now only wearing a long shirt and a pair of shorts. His bare arms and legs were marked with scars, silent witnesses of the countless battles Parkas had fought. The look of his eyes was still strong and clear and for a moment the old man looked at the younger man with affection.
"I prefer to do this on my own, as long as I’m still able to do it. I don´t want to appear on the termination-lists one day. I have fulfilled my duty to our people, I have lived a very long life and now it is time to make place for somebody else."
Which was more than true. When Parkas Vigland had been a young warrior, he had been one of the best among his peers, as he had proven in more than thousand battles. He had sired more than sixty-seven children of which more than thirty had survived into adulthood. Under his leadership as Soodux Settlement 7.459 had laid the foundation to become one of the richest and most powerful of all settlements of the Ogradevi and for the last five years, he had been a good advisor for Tersar, who was now Soodux.
"But we still need your wisdom and experience," Tersar hesitated. "I need you."
A small smile appeared on Parkas face. "No you don’t. And the sooner you start to believe it, the better."
The current Soodux barely managed to hide his disappointment. There were so many things he wanted to say, to discuss, to share with his mentor, but it was obvious that their time together had run out. The older man didn’t fail to notice his friends state.
"Now don’t be sad. I lived forty-five good years and with my death I will keep two youngsters alive."
"Sounds like a bad bargain," muttered Tersar. "Youngsters are easy to replace, but not men like you."
"But I’m only a burden. I have taught you and many others everything I know and I’m too old to be of any use anywhere. So give me the dignity to decide about my death myself."
Tersar took a deep breath. "Alright. I’ll have to accept your decision. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it." He made a helpless gesture. "It isn’t right, you know. We shouldn’t have to kill our old ones or our weakest children by the thousands every day."
"But we have no other choice," reminded Parkas. He put his hands on Tersar’s shoulders. "You know as well as me, that it wasn’t always this way; and you know as well that things will change one day. Perhaps not during your lifetime and perhaps not during your grandchildren’s lifetime, but one day our people will be able to leave the borders of this system behind."
A fanatical gleam had appeared in the older Ogradevis eyes.
"And then revenge will be ours. The Galactic Republic and the Jedi will pay for what they did to us."
The two men hugged each other and pressed their foreheads together. Then Parcas stepped back, turned around and entered the termination-chamber. The door closed behind him and one moment later a burning white light could be seen through the small window. Tersar knew that Parcas’ body was burnt in a millisecond, but that thought didn’t console him. The man had been his mentor and friend.
And now he was dead.
Tersar Frascati remembered the last words of Parcas: "The Galactic Republic and the Jedi will pay for what they did to us." And although his mind told him otherwise, the Soodux of Ogradevi-Settlement 7.459 wished to live long enough to see it happen.
----
Lucan Vader looked out of the windows of the Spectre’s bridge. The transparisteel had been polarized to let only ten percent of the light from the star of the system through. The young Lord Vader watched as a long, rectangular object dropped towards the surface of the planet, closely followed by two smaller objects.
The planet below was a hell without atmosphere and hot enough to melt lead. Its gravity was trice above standard. Nothing lived here and nothing wanted to live here. But the planet was not only rich in ores that could be refined into iron, titan or aluminium, but also hfredium, kammris and dolovit. After looking at the estimated numbers Lucan even doubted that there was a single source for those materials within several hundred lightyears, that was richer than the planet below the "Spectre" and he intended to make good use of this treasure. His mood had already brightened. It seemed as if there really was some kind of justice in the universe.
But he also felt, that this rich planet wasn’t the reason the Force had pulled him here. Turning his head his eyes concentrated on a small cluster of stars.
Hearing approaching footsteps he turned around to see Captain Priem walking towards him.
"Yes, Captain?"
"The construction-droid has reached the surface and started with its work. The navigator is already calculating a course, so we can leave this system."
"Good work, Captain. But we still have some time." Lucan pointed out to the star-cluster. "Tell me, Captain, what do we know about this cluster of stars?"
Priem hesitated for a moment. "I have no idea." he admitted. "I see them for the first time."
"Then get me the needed information out of the databanks. Before that, we won’t leave the system." Lucan ordered. Priem turned around and signalled a Lieutenant. Less than a minute later he got a datapad handed. The bridge crew had heard the conversation and orders of their leader and so it didn’t take much time to provide the requested data. Priem was proud of them. His men could think for themselves and they showed initiative.
"Arralis-Cluster. One-hundred-eighty suns, two-hundred-fifty-four planets, uninhabited. The entire cluster occupies a volume of only sixhundred cubic-lightyears."
"That means that the suns are less than two lightyears away from each other." stated Lucan, after doing some calculations in his head.
"Yes, Sir." confirmed Priem. The text on his datapad described the same. "The entire cluster is under quarantine and ... ."
"Under quarantine?" asked Lucan, interrupting Priem. "If the empire has declared this area to be a security-zone, I wonder what we will find if we investigate."
"Sir, you didn’t let me finish. The Arralis-Cluster was put under quarantine by the Old Republic ten-thousand years ago. Nothing indicates that anyone has entered the cluster since then."
"Ten-thousand years." muttered Lucan. "Now I’m really curious as to what we will find."
"Probably nothing but empty starsystems and dead planets." answered Priem.
"Don’t be so sure about that." stated Lucan. "This cluster wasn’t declared a security-zone for nothing."
"Ten-thousand years ago. The reason for a quarantine might have vanished for a long time."
"In that case we have nothing to fear, if we take a closer look." argued Lucan.
"But if we search the entire cluster, we will get back behind schedule on our current mission." protested Priem.
"I’m fully aware of this, Captain. But now we have a new mission. Call the Avengers back and sent the Corvettes home. Your men will plot a jump to the Arralis-Cluster. And drop the remaining seven droids and their packages."
"As you wish, My Lord." Priem knew when it was futile to discuss with the Dark Lord. So he turned around with a sigh to give the necessary orders to his crew. They wouldn’t find anything useful, but only waste their time.
And then it wouldn’t take long for them to go on another mission to deploy construction-droids. And he had so hoped that this would have been the last of those missions for a long time.
----
Tersar Frascati dropped into the seat behind the desk of his office. Since Parcas Vigland had been turned from an old, but still healthy being into a small heap of ashes the Soodux of settlement 7,459 felt tired. Tired and exhausted. For a moment he closed his eyes. He was only twenty years old, young for somebody in his position, the youngest person who ever had reached the post of Soodux of a settlement, but now he felt ancient.
Ancient, but also very angry. If there was only somebody available to become a target for his aggression. But for now, that was wishful thinking.
He took a deep breath. There was still work to do. Being responsible for one million billion beings was a full-time job. Tersar turned to the files on his desk. First the daily report.
There were parts of the daily reports he liked and others he hated and some of those were most times connected with each other.
According to the report the size of settlement 7,459 had increased by 1,550 cubic-kilometres since yesterday. Food-production and industrial capacity had increased accordingly.
On the other side around 180 million babies had been born, while only 100 million Ogradevies had died by accidents, battles, diseases or simply old age. To keep one Ogradevi alive and the settlement working 25,000 cubic meters were needed for living, production of food, clothing, waste-disposal, energy-production, education, various industries and so on. Which meant, that there were around five million living beings TOO MANY in the settlement.
One of the other files on Tersar Frascatis desk listed those five million Ogradevi of the population, that were selected to be terminated to restore the balance, including their names and status. The Soodux usually didn’t need to read this special file, he knew the numbers from memory. One million of the newborns, whose DNA was damaged to more than fifteen percent, two million of the Ogradevi, who were over forty and by that too weak and too old to still be of enough use, three and a half million of the infertile "drones" and a half million of those warriors whose performance for the last thirty days left something to be desired.
Frascati shook his head. Three years ago those numbers had been much lower. The average number of terminations those days had been a million, if not less. "Thanks to the genetic engineers", the Soodux thought darkly.
Three years ago only one out of a hundred women with the right age had been fertile. Today it was one out of seventy. Also thanks to the genetic engineers twenty-five percent more embryos survived the eight months from conception to birth and of those more than forty percent had less damages than ten percent to their DNA.
Frascati knew he should be happy that the genetic damages he and his people had inherited from their ancestors were decreasing. It also meant that more babies were born who were able to survive and would be able to procreate five years later, and the administrators and the workers couldn’t provide space for them to live in. The Soodux knew that all Ogradevi-Settlements suffered the same problems.
Another report told him, that the R&D-departments that were working on a faster-than-light-drive were still far away from a breakthrough. The Ogradevi were still bound to what was left of their system.
"Perhaps its time to start a new war." thought Frascati. "Time to cut the entire population down a few billions. This way we could reduce our population enough to increase the industrial capacity in relation to the number of people and by that could keep up with the increasing birthrates."
He was just going to call for the four warmasters of settlement 7,459 when suddenly the alarm-klaxons started to announce an attack.
"Somebody was faster than me." thought Frascati dry, while he left his office and hurried towards the control-centre of the settlement.
----
Captain Priem suppressed a sigh. This was the fifth system with planets inside the Arralis-Cluster, the "Spectre" and her crew were examining. Until now they had found nothing but dead planets.
Not that that was something to be concerned about. Most of those planets had never carried life of their own. What they had found had been traces of extensive mining-activities. If the planets, where an unknown race had mined had not been habitable from their creation, they would have been uninhabitable after being robbed of the ores and other treasures inside their crusts. Two of the seven worlds they had examined had been able to carry life, but were now as dead as the other five planets they had visited. Their investigations of some of the machinery left behind had shown that the mining-operations had been conducted more than ten-thousand years ago.
And now they had not only found dead and plundered worlds, but huge fields of debris. Debris that had once been parts of starships.
Lots of starships. Ships that hadn't died peacefully, but had been destroyed in battles. Hundreds, if not thousands, of devastated capital ships and fighters.
The men aboard the "Spectre" had been able to identify some of them; like the hulls of Alsakan-Warships, that had been the predecessors of the two kilometre long "Invincible"-Class-Dreadnoughts, even some three kilometre long "Cal"-Class-Warships and other designs used by the Old Republic, but not the ships of the people they had fought. Those ships were totally unknown, at least for the data-stores aboard the "Spectre".
It was possible that the needed information were stored in the libraries of Obroa-Skai or another information-centre, but to get an answer on a request would take weeks and possibly give away that somebody had broken the quarantine on the Arralis-Cluster. So this was no option to get an answer.
What they could tell was that the unknown's biggest ships hadn't been longer than three-hundred-and-sixty meters, with a maximum wide of hundred-eighty meters in the middle and a maximum height of eighty meters. They had looked like the wedge-shaped hulls of two Star Destroyers connected at the aft ends with tips removed, with an island-like superstructure in the centre, beginning ninety meters after the bow of the ship and ending ninety meters before its aft end. But what was most remarkable was that those ships lacked huge thrusters.
Closer inspections of some of the wreckages lead to the suspicion that their sublight-drives and manoeuvring systems had been based on a magnetic- or gravitation-device, a kind of technology, that hadn't managed to make a major breakthrough as drivesystem in the Old Republic and therefore had been limited to repulsor-drives without a deeper research of its further possibilities. Iondrives already had been too established, when magnetic-gravitation-technology had matured enough to be considered as a starship-drive.
And something else the men of the "Spectre" realized. Comparing the mass of debris belonging to the ships of the Old Republic and the mass of ships of unknown origin, the Republic had lost trice as many ships and fighters, than the aliens they had defeated.
A moan caused Captain Priem to turn towards Lucan Vader. The eyes of the Dark Lord showed a feverish gleam and he seemed to be elsewhere with his thoughts.
Priem cleared his throat and stepped to his superior. "My Lord." he asked. "Are you alright?"
Only now the heir of Darth Vader seemed to acknowledge the presence of the captain of the "Spectre". "I feel something." he whispered. "Weakened by the teeth of time, but still there. Outside this system I wouldn't have felt it, but here I can sense its power." He glared darkly at Priem, as if ready to kill the Captain as soon as he should question his leaders opinion. "I can feel it." Lucan confirmed his own statement.
"I understand." answered Captain Priem. The truth was, that he understood nothing. "And what do you feel, My Lord?"
Lucan smiled a grim smile. "Of course you do." he mocked. He finally seemed to have returned into the land of the living. "What I have felt is hate. Hate, anger, fear and desperation. It was weaker on the planets that were mined, but here the anger and desperation are stronger. It is like a trace we just have to follow."
A trace? By now Priem knew Lucan Vader good enough to know that this choice of words wasn't accidental. "And where, My Lord, is this trace leading?" he asked.
Lucan Vader turned towards the "Spectres" transparisteel-windows. With his right hand he pointed towards a single star that glowed red like some kind of evil eye.
"There Captain. In the system of this star."
The tale of Darth Vader's Son - A StarWars AU
Moderator: LadyTevar
-
Master_Baerne
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1984
- Joined: 2006-11-09 08:54am
- Location: Wouldn't you like to know?
Ooooh, scary. Why are the Ogravdevi so dangerous, I wonder?
Write more!
Write more!
Conversion Table:
2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon
2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon
Very, very fast reproduction if I read it correctly:Master_Baerne wrote:Ooooh, scary. Why are the Ogravdevi so dangerous, I wonder?
Write more!
According to the report the size of settlement 7,459 had increased by 1,550 cubic-kilometres since yesterday. Food-production and industrial capacity had increased accordingly.
On the other side around 180 million babies had been born, while only 100 million Ogradevies had died by accidents, battles, diseases or simply old age.
"In view of the circumstances, Britannia waives the rules."
"All you have to do is to look at Northern Ireland, [...] to see how seriously the religious folks take "thou shall not kill. The more devout they are, the more they see murder as being negotiable." George Carlin
"We need to make gay people live in fear again! What ever happened to the traditional family values of persecution and lies?" - Darth Wong
"The closet got full and some homosexuals may have escaped onto the internet?"- Stormbringer
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Master_Baerne
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1984
- Joined: 2006-11-09 08:54am
- Location: Wouldn't you like to know?
I saw that too, but is fast reproduction enough to save them from the entire galaxy? Especially since they don't have FTL drive, and aren't anywhere near getting one.
Conversion Table:
2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon
2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon
The old Republic quarantined them 10 000 years or so ago; without the quarantine they would have been exposed to galactic mainstream tech and have gotten hyperdrives even if they had none of their own.Master_Baerne wrote:I saw that too, but is fast reproduction enough to save them from the entire galaxy? Especially since they don't have FTL drive, and aren't anywhere near getting one.
But only the author can tell us for sure (and I hope he will do that in one of the next installments
)"In view of the circumstances, Britannia waives the rules."
"All you have to do is to look at Northern Ireland, [...] to see how seriously the religious folks take "thou shall not kill. The more devout they are, the more they see murder as being negotiable." George Carlin
"We need to make gay people live in fear again! What ever happened to the traditional family values of persecution and lies?" - Darth Wong
"The closet got full and some homosexuals may have escaped onto the internet?"- Stormbringer
-
Master_Baerne
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1984
- Joined: 2006-11-09 08:54am
- Location: Wouldn't you like to know?
Point.
Conversion Table:
2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon
2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon
I hope you'll enjoy the next part.
Aside from that I hope you had happy holidays and I wish you all a happy and successfull New Year.
The tale of Darth Vader's Son - Chapter 16
Tersar Frascati arrived at the control-centre of settlement 7,459 and climbed up to his command-platform. There he dropped into the seat reserved for the praetor and now supreme warmaster of the settlement.
"Do we know, who our visitors are?" he asked calmly.
"They are coming from the direction of settlement 7,687." came the answer. "They are still ten light-minutes away. If they keep this speed up, they will be here in two hours."
"Praetor Abro's forces." thought Frascati aloud. "How many ships?"
"So far we were able to detect four-hundred carriers, eight-hundred battleships and three-thousand-two-hundred destroyers, as well as thousand troop-transports and three-thousand transports for freight."
"Launch our fighter-forces and signal our own battleships and destroyers to take off. Keep the carriers in their docking-bays. How many ships can we launch to intercept Abro's forces five light-minutes away?"
"Additional to the ships on Condition Two?" came the question from one of the operators.
There were three Conditions for Ogradevi-Warships. Condition One was the term for battle-readiness during actual combat, Condition Two meant that they were operational and could switch to Condition One from one moment to the other and Condition Three meant ships in drydocks, shipyards to be refitted and their crews on vacation.
Condition Two also meant those ships that could take of in a matter of seconds or that were on constant guard. Under ordinary circumstances those were ten percent of the fleet of a settlement not counting fighters.
So the operator was asking for the ships on Condition Three that could be launched in time.
"Yes." confirmed Frascati.
"Three-hundred additional battleships and thousand-one-hundred destroyers."
"Hmmmpf." grunted Frascati. The attacking fleet formed a sixth of the naval forces of settlement 7,687, while Frascati's ships that were now taking off to intercept the attacking fleet formed a tenth of settlement 7,459 capital ships.
Together with the additional ships that were on Condition Three, seven-hundred-and-eighty battleships and two-thousand-nine-hundred-twenty destroyers would be able to intercept the forces of settlement 7,687 in one hour.
"How many fighters have we launched?" asked Frascati.
"Six-hundred wings." came the answer. The supreme warmaster calculated the numbers in his head. A five-hundred-forty meter long carrier transported one wing of starfighters or one-hundred-eight fighters. A battleship carried thirty-six fighters in its three-hundred-sixty meter long hull and a hundred-eighty meter long destroyer carried twelve. Together with the six-hundred wings launched from settlement 7,459 his fighter-forces would outnumber the enemy by seventeen-thousand-two-hundred-eighty fighters.
That should make up for his lower number of capital ships.
While he watched on his tactical screens and displays how the two fleets moved towards each other, he mused about the limitations of space-combat without faster-than-light-drives.
The average distance between two settlements of the Ogradevi was twenty lightminutes or 360 million kilometres. Praetor Abro's forces had needed nearly five hours to cover that distance. And with a speed limited to eight percent light speed, there was enough forewarning for everybody, even those who were sleeping at their posts.
Frascati could only guess what Abro hoped to gain, but the freighters caused him to believe that the enemy wanted to raid the stores of the settlement. Or Mirona Abro had simply been bored and decided to get herself some excitement. Or she had been disappointed with the performances of her warriors and decided to improve that with a little real combat against a real enemy. Let the gods of war select the incompetent and weak ones out of the populations gene-pool. Those who survived would be better without them.
It didn't really matter to Frascati. In less than two hours twelve-thousand-one-hundred capitol ships of different types and affiliations and almost two-hundred-fourty-thousand fighters would start to fight each other.
----
The "Spectre" dropped out of hyperspace at the fringe of the system. Despite that, Captain Priem felt a shudder running down his spine when he saw the dark glow of the red sun.
Remembering what he had learned in the courses about astronomy at the Imperial Academy he quickly realized, that this star had reached one of the last stages of its development. Once a typical star it had been to small to go nova, instead, when its own mass hadn't been enough anymore to keep its expanding energies and matter together, it had expanded, probably swallowing the inner planets of its system and increasing in diameter by a factor of three-hundred.
Here in this system, they wouldn't find any forms of live. If they had somehow survived the expansion of their sun, the radiation would have killed them.
Priem sighed. They had wasted their time and it was doubtful that Lucan Vader was pleased by this. He turned to his superior.
"Sir, it looks like ... ." Priem was interrupted by an officer from the sensor-station, who handed him a data-pad.
"Please read." ordered Lucan Vader.
"As you wish." Priem cleared his throat. "This was once and is still a big system. The red star has a diameter of three-hundred-eighty million kilometres or twenty-one light-minutes and its outer surface has a temperature of only 4,500 degrees above absolute zero. Heavy elements in high concentrations. Our sensors also discovered two gas giants and six solid planets. One in the inner system, the other five in the outer system. Unusual is, that the gas giants have only a small number of moons by comparison to other systems. We didn't get better scans, because the rest-radiation of the star is to great and from our point of view the inner system is hidden by two of the planets."
"Very well." confirmed Lucan Vader. "Plot a micro-jump close to the third planet. We'll have a look in the inner system." His eyes became slits, but Priem wasn't able to see this, since the young Lord Vader was wearing his helmet. "And prepare the ship for battle and make sure that our own emissions are lowered as much as possible. We don't want them to detect us to soon."
Priem shook his head. There were no signs of live on the planets nor on the moons. This system was as dead as a system could be. For once Lucan Vader's instincts were wrong on something. And although Priem feared the reaction to this failure of the young Lord Vader, a part of him was looking forward to it. It would finally show that his superior was a human being after all.
Priem gave the necessary orders to the helmsmen and navigators to plot a micro-jump and ordered himself a cup of tea.
----
Sholter Roeg was one of the fighter-pilots from Settlement 7,459.
He and his comrades belonged to the 541st fighter-wing of their settlement, one of six-hundred other wings, that were launched to defend their home, all in all 64,800 fighters. As soon as they would be in reach of the enemy's forces, they would be supported by the fighters of Settlement 7,459´s battleships and destroyers.
The Supreme Warmaster wanted them to save fuel and he would get his wish.
Roeg didn't feel any nervousness. For the five year old it was the sixth or seventh engagement of this kind. During those struggles he had killed thirty-five enemy-fighters and participated in the destruction of one battleship and two carriers. Considering the high numbers of fighters participating in every engagement, the chances for something like that were very low, so his successes had been even more remarkable. If he survived and continued like this, he might be promoted sooner, perhaps become one of the Warmasters one day.
But that was dreaming. Roeg had no illusions that he had millions of competitors. 64,800 were currently flying with him. Rising through the ranks meant getting access to the few privileges and small luxuries their society could provide. Like an own room, better food every six days or access to the fertile females, perhaps even the permission to found a family.
He knew that he was healthy enough to be able to sire children. Now he only had to prove that he was worthy, too.
Sholter had met his mother only once and he knew, that he had seven natural brothers and nine natural sisters somewhere in the settlement, not counting the natural offspring of his father with other women, whoever he and them had been.
"I don't need to become Warmaster." the young man thought. "First Fightmaster would be enough." On his display he could see, how the capital ships of the enemy were launching their fighters. Calmly he released the safety catch of his fighter's weapons.
Soon they would be in reach of his weapons.
---
Tersar Frascati looked concentrated on his displays. Now everything was in the hands of Warmaster Ghul, who was commanding the defense-fleet. Not for the first time the Supreme Warmaster cursed the limitations of light-speed. An order given by him would need five minutes to reach the fleet and an answer another five minutes to come back.
Frascati would have preferred to be aboard the leading ship, to direct the battle from the front, but as Supreme Warmaster and Praetor his place was in the command-centre of the settlement, if he liked it or not. Should the hostile forces manage to break through it would be up to him to fight them back. In that case Ghul would become the major participant of an execution-ceremony, should he survive the battle in the first place.
On his screens and displays he could see the formations of the two fleets.
The destroyers of Praetor Abro's forces were forming a protective screen for their carriers, while some of the battleships seemed to escort the transports.
His own forces were forming a wedge with the destroyers and fighters on the outside and the battleships in the centre. If they managed to break through the destroyer-screen, they could cause death and destruction to the hostile carriers, since his forces would be concentrated at one point, while Abro had divided her forces equally.
A mistake. But a deadly one.
"That happens when they allow a woman to become Supreme Warmaster," Frascati thought darkly. Then another thought occurred to him. Mirona Abro might be a woman, but she wasn't stupid.
What was she up to?
----
The "Spectre" dropped out of hyperspace again after making a small microjump towards the third of the remaining planets. Only seconds later the alarm-klaxons started to sound.
"Sir, we detected two groups of ships around ninety million kilometres away from us. Total numbers are twelve-thousand-one-hundred capital ships and more than two-hundred-thousand fighters."
Priem choked on his tea and spit some of it to the floor. "Are you drunk man?" he growled after finally catching his breath. "Check your sensors."
"The sensors work with maximum accuracy," Lucan Vader stated.
"Then something is deceiving them. Such a huge number of ships in a barren system is impossible. With all due respect, Sir, it makes no sense."
"Perhaps not for us, but obviously for those people. We are in need of more information." Lucan Vader turned to the sensor-operator. "Any signs that they have discovered us?"
"No, Sir, nothing indicates that our presence was discovered."
"Excellent. In that case we can lean back and observe. And shut down those klaxons. Anything else about the inner system?"
Priem still felt obliged to protest. "Sir, I don't think it wise to stay in this position. We are clearly outnumbered and we know nothing about their weapons."
Lucan Vader looked at Priem. The Captain of the "Spectre" was a competent officer with a lot of potential, but he was also only an ordinary human. It spoke matters in his favour, that he cared for the safety of his ship. He knew that many things he, Lucan Vader, did, were in many cases too daring for the mere human.
"Don't worry, Captain. Even with light-speed they would need ten minutes to reach us, if they detect us at all."
"Ten minutes, one micro-jump and they will be here in SECONDS." answered Priem.
"Yes." answered Lucan calmly. "IF they can make micro-jumps."
"If they can make micro-jumps? You think they can't travel faster than light?" asked Priem.
"Yes, that is exactly what I think." stated the young Lord Vader.
"What about the ships we discovered in the other systems, Lord Vader? They are of similar, if not the same design and are obviously built by the same species. How have they reached those systems without hyperdrives?"
"As much as it flatters me that you obviously think me to be omniscient, I have no idea. You have a point of course, but the fact that there are so many ships in this system and the fact that we have never heard or seen anything of those people before suggests that they are limited to this system. In the past that might have been different, but today it has to be as I told you. I'm sure we will find out in time what happened here. I ..., yes, what is it?"
The sensor-operator had returned. "Sir, we have completed the first passive scans of the area. Active scans weren't used to avoid detection."
"Excellent. What have you found?"
"Well, the smaller group of ships seems to originate from a point seventy million kilometers away from our current position. What we discovered there was this." The operator handed his superiors a datapad. Lucan Vader and Priem looked on the screen.
"Interesting." muttered the dark Lord.
"Interesting isn't the word I would have chosen." grunted Priem. "First this huge fleet and now this. I wonder if things can get even better."
"Oh, I'm sure they can." stated Lucan Vader with a chuckle. "After all the attackers have to come from somewhere, too. So there are at least two of those stations."
The screen on the datapad showed a disk-like structure. According to the measurements the disk had a height of four-hundred kilometres and a diameter of four-thousand kilometres. It was huge, it was dark, it was ugly.
And an awe-inspiring testimony of the abilities of the people who had built it.
"We discovered a few dozens of those stations. They have an average distance of twenty lightminutes from each other. It seems they surround the star of this system like a shell. It this assumption holds true, there are between ten- and fifteen-thousand of those stations."
Priem blew up his cheeks. "Fifteen-thousand. Force help us all. What have we discovered here?"
Nobody could answer his question.
---
Sholter Roeg was among the first wave, that engaged the forces of Praetor Abro. The hostile carriers and other ships had already launched their fighters, so there were enough targets for the young man.
Since the six missiles his fighter carried and the intervaller were better suited to fight capital ships he had adjusted his targeting-sensors to the two MAC-Guns, although he could switch to his other weapons in less than seconds.
Now a yellow crosshair appeared on the display integrated into his cockpit-window. At the same time light-green triangles marked enemy-starfighters. When they came into reach of his weapons the triangles changed from dark-green to a light-green. Overlapping a light-green triangle the yellow crosshair turned red and Sholter fired his MAC-Guns. Ten projectiles left the barrels of the MAC-Guns in a half-second, magnetically accelerated to fourty percent lightspeed each impacted with the force of a one megaton-warhead, totally obliterating the enemy starfighter and its shields.
Hearing a warning-sound, Sholter turned his fighter to the right escaping the targeting-lock of another enemy-fighter. Only moments later a salvo of projectiles were shot through the place his fighter had been a moment ago. Twisting around Sholter got another fighter into his targeting-look and again he pressed the trigger.
Everywhere around him similar scenes took place
Aside from that I hope you had happy holidays and I wish you all a happy and successfull New Year.
The tale of Darth Vader's Son - Chapter 16
Tersar Frascati arrived at the control-centre of settlement 7,459 and climbed up to his command-platform. There he dropped into the seat reserved for the praetor and now supreme warmaster of the settlement.
"Do we know, who our visitors are?" he asked calmly.
"They are coming from the direction of settlement 7,687." came the answer. "They are still ten light-minutes away. If they keep this speed up, they will be here in two hours."
"Praetor Abro's forces." thought Frascati aloud. "How many ships?"
"So far we were able to detect four-hundred carriers, eight-hundred battleships and three-thousand-two-hundred destroyers, as well as thousand troop-transports and three-thousand transports for freight."
"Launch our fighter-forces and signal our own battleships and destroyers to take off. Keep the carriers in their docking-bays. How many ships can we launch to intercept Abro's forces five light-minutes away?"
"Additional to the ships on Condition Two?" came the question from one of the operators.
There were three Conditions for Ogradevi-Warships. Condition One was the term for battle-readiness during actual combat, Condition Two meant that they were operational and could switch to Condition One from one moment to the other and Condition Three meant ships in drydocks, shipyards to be refitted and their crews on vacation.
Condition Two also meant those ships that could take of in a matter of seconds or that were on constant guard. Under ordinary circumstances those were ten percent of the fleet of a settlement not counting fighters.
So the operator was asking for the ships on Condition Three that could be launched in time.
"Yes." confirmed Frascati.
"Three-hundred additional battleships and thousand-one-hundred destroyers."
"Hmmmpf." grunted Frascati. The attacking fleet formed a sixth of the naval forces of settlement 7,687, while Frascati's ships that were now taking off to intercept the attacking fleet formed a tenth of settlement 7,459 capital ships.
Together with the additional ships that were on Condition Three, seven-hundred-and-eighty battleships and two-thousand-nine-hundred-twenty destroyers would be able to intercept the forces of settlement 7,687 in one hour.
"How many fighters have we launched?" asked Frascati.
"Six-hundred wings." came the answer. The supreme warmaster calculated the numbers in his head. A five-hundred-forty meter long carrier transported one wing of starfighters or one-hundred-eight fighters. A battleship carried thirty-six fighters in its three-hundred-sixty meter long hull and a hundred-eighty meter long destroyer carried twelve. Together with the six-hundred wings launched from settlement 7,459 his fighter-forces would outnumber the enemy by seventeen-thousand-two-hundred-eighty fighters.
That should make up for his lower number of capital ships.
While he watched on his tactical screens and displays how the two fleets moved towards each other, he mused about the limitations of space-combat without faster-than-light-drives.
The average distance between two settlements of the Ogradevi was twenty lightminutes or 360 million kilometres. Praetor Abro's forces had needed nearly five hours to cover that distance. And with a speed limited to eight percent light speed, there was enough forewarning for everybody, even those who were sleeping at their posts.
Frascati could only guess what Abro hoped to gain, but the freighters caused him to believe that the enemy wanted to raid the stores of the settlement. Or Mirona Abro had simply been bored and decided to get herself some excitement. Or she had been disappointed with the performances of her warriors and decided to improve that with a little real combat against a real enemy. Let the gods of war select the incompetent and weak ones out of the populations gene-pool. Those who survived would be better without them.
It didn't really matter to Frascati. In less than two hours twelve-thousand-one-hundred capitol ships of different types and affiliations and almost two-hundred-fourty-thousand fighters would start to fight each other.
----
The "Spectre" dropped out of hyperspace at the fringe of the system. Despite that, Captain Priem felt a shudder running down his spine when he saw the dark glow of the red sun.
Remembering what he had learned in the courses about astronomy at the Imperial Academy he quickly realized, that this star had reached one of the last stages of its development. Once a typical star it had been to small to go nova, instead, when its own mass hadn't been enough anymore to keep its expanding energies and matter together, it had expanded, probably swallowing the inner planets of its system and increasing in diameter by a factor of three-hundred.
Here in this system, they wouldn't find any forms of live. If they had somehow survived the expansion of their sun, the radiation would have killed them.
Priem sighed. They had wasted their time and it was doubtful that Lucan Vader was pleased by this. He turned to his superior.
"Sir, it looks like ... ." Priem was interrupted by an officer from the sensor-station, who handed him a data-pad.
"Please read." ordered Lucan Vader.
"As you wish." Priem cleared his throat. "This was once and is still a big system. The red star has a diameter of three-hundred-eighty million kilometres or twenty-one light-minutes and its outer surface has a temperature of only 4,500 degrees above absolute zero. Heavy elements in high concentrations. Our sensors also discovered two gas giants and six solid planets. One in the inner system, the other five in the outer system. Unusual is, that the gas giants have only a small number of moons by comparison to other systems. We didn't get better scans, because the rest-radiation of the star is to great and from our point of view the inner system is hidden by two of the planets."
"Very well." confirmed Lucan Vader. "Plot a micro-jump close to the third planet. We'll have a look in the inner system." His eyes became slits, but Priem wasn't able to see this, since the young Lord Vader was wearing his helmet. "And prepare the ship for battle and make sure that our own emissions are lowered as much as possible. We don't want them to detect us to soon."
Priem shook his head. There were no signs of live on the planets nor on the moons. This system was as dead as a system could be. For once Lucan Vader's instincts were wrong on something. And although Priem feared the reaction to this failure of the young Lord Vader, a part of him was looking forward to it. It would finally show that his superior was a human being after all.
Priem gave the necessary orders to the helmsmen and navigators to plot a micro-jump and ordered himself a cup of tea.
----
Sholter Roeg was one of the fighter-pilots from Settlement 7,459.
He and his comrades belonged to the 541st fighter-wing of their settlement, one of six-hundred other wings, that were launched to defend their home, all in all 64,800 fighters. As soon as they would be in reach of the enemy's forces, they would be supported by the fighters of Settlement 7,459´s battleships and destroyers.
The Supreme Warmaster wanted them to save fuel and he would get his wish.
Roeg didn't feel any nervousness. For the five year old it was the sixth or seventh engagement of this kind. During those struggles he had killed thirty-five enemy-fighters and participated in the destruction of one battleship and two carriers. Considering the high numbers of fighters participating in every engagement, the chances for something like that were very low, so his successes had been even more remarkable. If he survived and continued like this, he might be promoted sooner, perhaps become one of the Warmasters one day.
But that was dreaming. Roeg had no illusions that he had millions of competitors. 64,800 were currently flying with him. Rising through the ranks meant getting access to the few privileges and small luxuries their society could provide. Like an own room, better food every six days or access to the fertile females, perhaps even the permission to found a family.
He knew that he was healthy enough to be able to sire children. Now he only had to prove that he was worthy, too.
Sholter had met his mother only once and he knew, that he had seven natural brothers and nine natural sisters somewhere in the settlement, not counting the natural offspring of his father with other women, whoever he and them had been.
"I don't need to become Warmaster." the young man thought. "First Fightmaster would be enough." On his display he could see, how the capital ships of the enemy were launching their fighters. Calmly he released the safety catch of his fighter's weapons.
Soon they would be in reach of his weapons.
---
Tersar Frascati looked concentrated on his displays. Now everything was in the hands of Warmaster Ghul, who was commanding the defense-fleet. Not for the first time the Supreme Warmaster cursed the limitations of light-speed. An order given by him would need five minutes to reach the fleet and an answer another five minutes to come back.
Frascati would have preferred to be aboard the leading ship, to direct the battle from the front, but as Supreme Warmaster and Praetor his place was in the command-centre of the settlement, if he liked it or not. Should the hostile forces manage to break through it would be up to him to fight them back. In that case Ghul would become the major participant of an execution-ceremony, should he survive the battle in the first place.
On his screens and displays he could see the formations of the two fleets.
The destroyers of Praetor Abro's forces were forming a protective screen for their carriers, while some of the battleships seemed to escort the transports.
His own forces were forming a wedge with the destroyers and fighters on the outside and the battleships in the centre. If they managed to break through the destroyer-screen, they could cause death and destruction to the hostile carriers, since his forces would be concentrated at one point, while Abro had divided her forces equally.
A mistake. But a deadly one.
"That happens when they allow a woman to become Supreme Warmaster," Frascati thought darkly. Then another thought occurred to him. Mirona Abro might be a woman, but she wasn't stupid.
What was she up to?
----
The "Spectre" dropped out of hyperspace again after making a small microjump towards the third of the remaining planets. Only seconds later the alarm-klaxons started to sound.
"Sir, we detected two groups of ships around ninety million kilometres away from us. Total numbers are twelve-thousand-one-hundred capital ships and more than two-hundred-thousand fighters."
Priem choked on his tea and spit some of it to the floor. "Are you drunk man?" he growled after finally catching his breath. "Check your sensors."
"The sensors work with maximum accuracy," Lucan Vader stated.
"Then something is deceiving them. Such a huge number of ships in a barren system is impossible. With all due respect, Sir, it makes no sense."
"Perhaps not for us, but obviously for those people. We are in need of more information." Lucan Vader turned to the sensor-operator. "Any signs that they have discovered us?"
"No, Sir, nothing indicates that our presence was discovered."
"Excellent. In that case we can lean back and observe. And shut down those klaxons. Anything else about the inner system?"
Priem still felt obliged to protest. "Sir, I don't think it wise to stay in this position. We are clearly outnumbered and we know nothing about their weapons."
Lucan Vader looked at Priem. The Captain of the "Spectre" was a competent officer with a lot of potential, but he was also only an ordinary human. It spoke matters in his favour, that he cared for the safety of his ship. He knew that many things he, Lucan Vader, did, were in many cases too daring for the mere human.
"Don't worry, Captain. Even with light-speed they would need ten minutes to reach us, if they detect us at all."
"Ten minutes, one micro-jump and they will be here in SECONDS." answered Priem.
"Yes." answered Lucan calmly. "IF they can make micro-jumps."
"If they can make micro-jumps? You think they can't travel faster than light?" asked Priem.
"Yes, that is exactly what I think." stated the young Lord Vader.
"What about the ships we discovered in the other systems, Lord Vader? They are of similar, if not the same design and are obviously built by the same species. How have they reached those systems without hyperdrives?"
"As much as it flatters me that you obviously think me to be omniscient, I have no idea. You have a point of course, but the fact that there are so many ships in this system and the fact that we have never heard or seen anything of those people before suggests that they are limited to this system. In the past that might have been different, but today it has to be as I told you. I'm sure we will find out in time what happened here. I ..., yes, what is it?"
The sensor-operator had returned. "Sir, we have completed the first passive scans of the area. Active scans weren't used to avoid detection."
"Excellent. What have you found?"
"Well, the smaller group of ships seems to originate from a point seventy million kilometers away from our current position. What we discovered there was this." The operator handed his superiors a datapad. Lucan Vader and Priem looked on the screen.
"Interesting." muttered the dark Lord.
"Interesting isn't the word I would have chosen." grunted Priem. "First this huge fleet and now this. I wonder if things can get even better."
"Oh, I'm sure they can." stated Lucan Vader with a chuckle. "After all the attackers have to come from somewhere, too. So there are at least two of those stations."
The screen on the datapad showed a disk-like structure. According to the measurements the disk had a height of four-hundred kilometres and a diameter of four-thousand kilometres. It was huge, it was dark, it was ugly.
And an awe-inspiring testimony of the abilities of the people who had built it.
"We discovered a few dozens of those stations. They have an average distance of twenty lightminutes from each other. It seems they surround the star of this system like a shell. It this assumption holds true, there are between ten- and fifteen-thousand of those stations."
Priem blew up his cheeks. "Fifteen-thousand. Force help us all. What have we discovered here?"
Nobody could answer his question.
---
Sholter Roeg was among the first wave, that engaged the forces of Praetor Abro. The hostile carriers and other ships had already launched their fighters, so there were enough targets for the young man.
Since the six missiles his fighter carried and the intervaller were better suited to fight capital ships he had adjusted his targeting-sensors to the two MAC-Guns, although he could switch to his other weapons in less than seconds.
Now a yellow crosshair appeared on the display integrated into his cockpit-window. At the same time light-green triangles marked enemy-starfighters. When they came into reach of his weapons the triangles changed from dark-green to a light-green. Overlapping a light-green triangle the yellow crosshair turned red and Sholter fired his MAC-Guns. Ten projectiles left the barrels of the MAC-Guns in a half-second, magnetically accelerated to fourty percent lightspeed each impacted with the force of a one megaton-warhead, totally obliterating the enemy starfighter and its shields.
Hearing a warning-sound, Sholter turned his fighter to the right escaping the targeting-lock of another enemy-fighter. Only moments later a salvo of projectiles were shot through the place his fighter had been a moment ago. Twisting around Sholter got another fighter into his targeting-look and again he pressed the trigger.
Everywhere around him similar scenes took place
The optimist thinks, that we live in the best of all possible worlds and the pessimist is afraid, that this is true.
"Don't ask, what your country can do for you. Ask, what you can do for your country." Mao Tse-Tung.
"Don't ask, what your country can do for you. Ask, what you can do for your country." Mao Tse-Tung.
-
Ritterin Sophia
- Sith Acolyte
- Posts: 5496
- Joined: 2006-07-25 09:32am
I've only started reading 11, but since you seem so sparse of constructive criticism I thought I'd give you some. Keep in mind that since english isn't your native language that these criticisms aren't nearly as serious as it would be for someone for who it was.
I've seen a couple problems, the first is the mispelling or mixing up entirety of words and terms, just one example I've seen you mispell strength and strengthened as strenght and strenghten.
Then there's the ship designations and names, the first time you mention the Superiority-class you do it in the correct fashion (IE Superiority-class Star Battlecruiser) later you put unnecessary hyphens into it and capitalized the word 'class' (IE Superiority-Class-Battle-Cruiser). Then there's the names if you have two words then there should be a space between them, for example 'MorningTide' should be 'Morning Tide' and 'DeepSea' should be 'Deep Sea'.
The final problem is that every once in a while you mix up the past tense of a word with the present tense one.
Like I said, these problems aren't as serious for you since you aren't a native speaker of English, and you are still trying.
Other than that I love the story.
I've seen a couple problems, the first is the mispelling or mixing up entirety of words and terms, just one example I've seen you mispell strength and strengthened as strenght and strenghten.
Then there's the ship designations and names, the first time you mention the Superiority-class you do it in the correct fashion (IE Superiority-class Star Battlecruiser) later you put unnecessary hyphens into it and capitalized the word 'class' (IE Superiority-Class-Battle-Cruiser). Then there's the names if you have two words then there should be a space between them, for example 'MorningTide' should be 'Morning Tide' and 'DeepSea' should be 'Deep Sea'.
The final problem is that every once in a while you mix up the past tense of a word with the present tense one.
Like I said, these problems aren't as serious for you since you aren't a native speaker of English, and you are still trying.
Other than that I love the story.
A Certain Clique, HAB, The Chroniclers
Sorry for the long delay, but I've been busy with other things.
Here is the next part.
The Tale of Darth Vader’s Son – Chapter 17
From the bridge of his battleship Warmaster Ghul watched how the battle unfolded. Like Tersar Frascati he was wondering why Mirona Abro´s forces were so evenly spread, offering him a breakthrough towards her carriers. Ghul was able to smell a trap when it was laid out for him. But he would only find out what Mirona Abro had in store for him, if he took the bait.
"Alright." he ordered. "We'll go in. Destroyers to the flanks, battleships at the tip and at the core.”
Accelerating the wedge-shaped formation of the capital ships of settlement 7,459 moved against its enemies from settlement 7,687, while its ships were rearranging their positions. The destroyers that had formed protective front and side-screens turned to the sides and moved into positions at the flanks. Since Abro had positioned her battleships backwards with her transports, the only ships between the attacking 7,459ers and the 7,687er carriers were the six-hundred-forty destroyers in front of them, while the remaining two-thousand-five-hundred-sixty destroyers formed protective screens to the left, the right, above and under the carriers.
Firing their MAC-Cannons and Intervallers the ships of settlement 7,459 managed to break through.
---
Fascinated, the men on the bridge of the "Spectre" watched the battle between the two fleets. Their observations had revealed a lot of interesting things.
Priem had calmed down when the measurements of the alien ships had shown, that the biggest type of ship present was "only" five-hundred-forty meters long. So far they had been able to identify four ship-types. Four-hundred five-hundred-forty meter long carriers, four-thousand ships with a length of four-hundred meters that seemed to be transports of some kind, one-thousand-five-hundred-eighty battleships and six-thousand-one-hundred-twenty destroyers with a length of one-hundred-eighty meters on both sides.
By cubing those lengths Priem had calculated the two fleets to equal one-hundred-five Stardestroyers in volume, if one included the transports.
It had also been confirmed, that those ships weren't using thrusters for acceleration and manoeuvring, but highly developed drive-systems working on a magnetic/gravitational base. Similar could be said for one of their weapons-systems, which seemed to shoot projectiles with velocities near lightspeed against its targets, resulting in explosions in the range of hundred gigatonnes or more, when they hit the shields of enemy-vessels.
The performances of the alien fighters had also been very impressive. Being of wedge- or triangular shape they were eight meters long, six meters wide and two-and-a-half meter high. And contrary to their capitol ships, they still used thrusters and ion-engines. Obviously the aliens hadn't managed to scale their magnetic drive systems down enough to be used in fighters.
"Minions of Xhantos." muttered one of the sensor-operators. "That was at least sixty percent faster than a TIE-Avenger."
"Sixty percent?" asked Lucan Vader, who had heard that. "Does anybody know of a fighter with similar speeds?"
"No Sir." came the reply. "The fastest known fighter-model is the TIE-Defender, but even a Defender is fifty percent slower than one of these delta-fighters and has less acceleration."
"Why aren't we able to build a faster fighter?" wanted the heir of Darth Vader to know.
"It would be possible to build fighters even faster and with a higher acceleration, but they would have to be crewed by droids. A human body can endure only so much acceleration and our internal dampers don't support a higher performance, at least not on the scale of a fighter," explained one of the technicians
Lucan Vader thought about that for a moment.
"So their bodies are either much more durable than humans or their dampers are superior to ours."
"Yes Sir, that would be the logical explanation."
"Lord Vader, you should have a look at that." stated Priem suddenly.
"You discovered something interesting?" wanted Lucan Vader to know.
"Yes my Lord. Would you please take a look at those transports?"
Following Priem's suggestion Lucan leaned forward. When he discovered what Priem had noticed he had to nod his head.
"Clever." he muttered. "Very clever."
----
Supreme Warmaster Tersar Frascati gritted his teeth, still trying to find out what their enemies were up to. Until now the battle had gone well. Warmaster Ghul's forces had lost ten battleships, three-hundred-twenty destroyers and more than eight-thousand fighters and were now breaking through, while at the same time five-hundred-sixty destroyers and more than twelve-thousand fighters of Praetor Abro's forces had been destroyed.
Although this was an admirable performance of Ghul's forces, Frascati knew that the balance was shifting more and more in Abro's favour, since her force's only capital losses had been destroyers and fighters so far.
So it came quite as a relief to him when his subordinates told him that five-hundred additional battleships and thousand-seven-hundred-and-fifty destroyers would join the battle soon, reinforcing Ghul's forces.
That should even the odds enough until another few thousand of the ships of settlement 7,459 could arrive, that were patrolling the space around the settlement and that were expected to arrive within thirty minutes.
But then a sensor-impulse of one of Abro's freighters caught his eye. Taking a closer look he discovered nothing suspicious, but Frascati was sure that there was something. Playing the record back he watched the tape again. There it was. Something was wrong with the sensor-image and the mass of the scanned freighter.
"No." he whispered when realisation hit him.
Frascati knew how incredible lucky he had been to discover this single one out of a few thousand contacts and all the jamming and scrambling of their sensors, but at the same time the knowledge that he could do nothing about it or that he wasn't able to warn Warmaster Ghul left a bitter taste in his mouth.
The Supreme Warmaster concentrated on the status of the settlements defences. After a few moments he decided, that they could afford to launch six-hundred fighter-wings more to support Warmaster Ghul.
---
Aboard her flagship the Supreme Warmaster and praetor of settlement 7,687 Mirona Abro watched how the battle unfolded. Until now everything was going the way she had planned.
As expected the forces of settlement 7,459 had used the opportunity she had offered them to break through her formation, since the entire attack would have become pointless if she lost her carriers or her freighters. Now the enemy was moving towards the centre of her formation, while her destroyer-screen was largely intact with exception of the front of course, where the enemy had broken through.
And now it was time to close the trap.
"Tell our freighters to launch their fighters. As soon as the are launched they shall fall back and make place for the destroyers and battleships in their shadows."
---
Warmaster Ghul roared, when suddenly the doors of the storage-sections of two-thousand of the freighters opened and fighters emerged from them, each freighter carrying a wing of starfighters.
He became silent when the transports slowed down and moved to the side. Behind them battleships and destroyers became visible; they had been hidden in their mass-shadows and covered by their bulk from visual sight.
Ghul shook his head. Who would have thought it possible, that praetor Abro would commit forty percent of her entire forces to a single battle. "She must have made some alliances with other settlements to have her back free," thought Ghul. "Otherwise she couldn't have afforded to take so many ships with her."
What made sense. Since Parkas Vigland had been praetor, settlement 7,459 had been one of the richest and fastest growing settlements. The more a settlement could grow, the more people it could house and nurture and had to send less of its people and newborns into the termination-chambers. And the less people had to die, the more were available later as soldiers and workforce. With an increase in population of eighty millions every day the fragile balance of power between the thousands of settlements would have shifted sooner or later in favour of settlement 7,459. But power meant the access to the few remaining resources of the star-system they were trapped in, so if a settlement expanded more, it could only do it at the costs of the others.
And that was something the other settlement couldn't allow.
A commander who would have belonged to the human or one of the many sentient races would have considered to surrender or to make a "strategic" retreat to safe the lives and ships under his command, but Ghul and the men under him were Ogradevi.
Individual lives meant nothing to them, there were already too many of them and the protection of their settlement was a priority to them. They had to slow down the enemy at all costs.
"Concentrate fire on as many ships as possible to bring their shields down, then leave them to the fighters. They should ram them if necessary," ordered Ghul. "Our primary target are still the freighters so let’s make an example and engage them with maximum acceleration."
---
"What a nasty surprise." commented Lucan Vader, who watched on his displays how the sensor-contacts of the alien’s freighters divided into two or three parts. "First two-hundred-sixteen-thousand additional fighters and now two-thousand new battleships and the double number of destroyers."
"The new ships are also launching fighters," reported a sensor-operator. "The defending forces are now outnumbered four to one in terms of fighters, more then two to one for battleships. Most even are the odds for the destroyers, where the defenders have only a disadvantage of fifty percent."
"Doesn't seem to concern them." observed Priem. "They are attacking them even more furiously, if that is even possible. There! Their fighters are even making suicide runs against ships that have lost their shields."
"Yes. But most of them are shot down by the other fighters. The leader of the attackers seems to have expected this."
"Sir, another sixty-four-thousand-eight-hundred fighters have been launched from the station."
"Yes, but by the time they reach the battle-field it will be to late. The defending group is suffering heavy losses." Darth Vader's son and heir explained.
"But the attackers have to pay a high price for it," added Captain Priem. "There. Another battleship destroyed. Those people have to be crazy. What are they fighting for in this forgotten system? It makes no sense."
"Not for us." admitted Lucan Vader. "But I'm sure it makes a lot of sense for them. We don't have enough information to judge them."
Priem looked suspiciously at his superior. "My Lord, you don't really consider bringing the "Spectre" into this mess? Their weapons might be weaker than ours, but ten or fifteen of their ships would be able to destroy us. I don't know of other ships of that size that have that much destructive power."
Lucan Vader looked calm at his captain. After a long moment of silence he said slowly.
"Well, if we won't go to them, they have to come to us. Don't you think so, Captain?"
Priem could only stare back, wondering what this enigmatic statement of the Dark Lord meant now.
----
Sholter Roeg was biting his lower lip. He had shot down seventeen fighters so far, but there were still too many of them. And not all of his comrades were as successful as he. Many of them had already been shot down. From his original wing of hundred-eight fighters only three were left. The others had been shot down by enemy-fighters, the anti-starfighter-weapons of praetor Abro's capital ships or had decided to sacrifice their lives in ramming the big ships of the attackers.
Sholter's field of view was filled with fighters, ships and debris of the furious battle. Again the crosshair integrated into his cockpit-window turned red and Sholter was able to destroy another fighter. Eighteen fighters. Another three and he would be a triple-ace.
Before him a battleship came into view, its shields down. Activating his missile-launcher the young pilot jetted his fighter closer towards the three-hundred-and-sixty meter long behemoth; this gigantic vessel fired with all batteries to keep the enemy away from its unshielded hull. Sholter managed to evade the fire from the heavy cannons easily, not getting hit by the light cannons was more difficult. The five year old barely noticed that he was suddenly accompanied by two other fighters from his settlement, their pilots trying the same as him.
To take this cap-ship out.
Turning his fighter to the right Sholter evaded the fire from an enemy-fighter that attacked him from the front. It collided with one of Sholter's new wing-men and vanished in a sudden explosion. The other one was shot down only seconds later by anti-starfighter-fire, but their deaths had bought the time Sholter needed to launch his missiles against the point where they would cause the most damage. At the aft-end where the superstructure met with the main hull and where the majority of the power cells were located.
Focussing the explosive energies of their warheads in a cone-like blast the missiles detonated against the hull of the shieldless battleship, unleashing energies in the gigaton-range, ripping holes into the meter-thick, ultra-dense armour, exposing its more vulnerable interior. Only seconds later the second pair of missiles hit and then the third. Huge explosions ripped through the dying body of the once proud battleship and then it broke into two, still burning where the flames found oxygen, but not for long.
Sholter Roeg was already searching for a new target, he didn't care that he had just killed four-thousand-five-hundred beings of his own kind. They had known the risks and if they were not ready to die if necessary, they had lost nothing among the warriors.
Another enemy cap-ship had lost shields and the young man knew what was expected from him. After all he had already lost his missiles. If his death would slow the enemy down the warriors of the settlement would get enough time to prepare the repelling of praetor Abro's boarding-parties or time for reinforcements to arrive.
For a moment he thought about all the things he had wanted to do, about the children he would never sire, about the family he would never have. The only comfort was that if the raid of the enemy failed millions of people back home wouldn't have to be terminated. He might not be remembered as an individual, but as one of many who had ensured the survival of the settlement and its inhabitants. That had to be enough.
Roaring a death-cry the five year old accelerated his fighter to its top-speed in an attempt to ram the hostile battleship, but fate had other plans for Sholter Roeg.
A flak-burst forced his fighter out of its course and pointed it to the outside of the star-system, away from the battle and the settlement. Helpless Sholter Roeg had to watch as he left the battle behind, unable to do anything about it, unable to get back control over his fighter.
And while the young pilot felt betrayed for an honourable death, he had no idea that when he would return to his people nothing would be the same again.
Here is the next part.
The Tale of Darth Vader’s Son – Chapter 17
From the bridge of his battleship Warmaster Ghul watched how the battle unfolded. Like Tersar Frascati he was wondering why Mirona Abro´s forces were so evenly spread, offering him a breakthrough towards her carriers. Ghul was able to smell a trap when it was laid out for him. But he would only find out what Mirona Abro had in store for him, if he took the bait.
"Alright." he ordered. "We'll go in. Destroyers to the flanks, battleships at the tip and at the core.”
Accelerating the wedge-shaped formation of the capital ships of settlement 7,459 moved against its enemies from settlement 7,687, while its ships were rearranging their positions. The destroyers that had formed protective front and side-screens turned to the sides and moved into positions at the flanks. Since Abro had positioned her battleships backwards with her transports, the only ships between the attacking 7,459ers and the 7,687er carriers were the six-hundred-forty destroyers in front of them, while the remaining two-thousand-five-hundred-sixty destroyers formed protective screens to the left, the right, above and under the carriers.
Firing their MAC-Cannons and Intervallers the ships of settlement 7,459 managed to break through.
---
Fascinated, the men on the bridge of the "Spectre" watched the battle between the two fleets. Their observations had revealed a lot of interesting things.
Priem had calmed down when the measurements of the alien ships had shown, that the biggest type of ship present was "only" five-hundred-forty meters long. So far they had been able to identify four ship-types. Four-hundred five-hundred-forty meter long carriers, four-thousand ships with a length of four-hundred meters that seemed to be transports of some kind, one-thousand-five-hundred-eighty battleships and six-thousand-one-hundred-twenty destroyers with a length of one-hundred-eighty meters on both sides.
By cubing those lengths Priem had calculated the two fleets to equal one-hundred-five Stardestroyers in volume, if one included the transports.
It had also been confirmed, that those ships weren't using thrusters for acceleration and manoeuvring, but highly developed drive-systems working on a magnetic/gravitational base. Similar could be said for one of their weapons-systems, which seemed to shoot projectiles with velocities near lightspeed against its targets, resulting in explosions in the range of hundred gigatonnes or more, when they hit the shields of enemy-vessels.
The performances of the alien fighters had also been very impressive. Being of wedge- or triangular shape they were eight meters long, six meters wide and two-and-a-half meter high. And contrary to their capitol ships, they still used thrusters and ion-engines. Obviously the aliens hadn't managed to scale their magnetic drive systems down enough to be used in fighters.
"Minions of Xhantos." muttered one of the sensor-operators. "That was at least sixty percent faster than a TIE-Avenger."
"Sixty percent?" asked Lucan Vader, who had heard that. "Does anybody know of a fighter with similar speeds?"
"No Sir." came the reply. "The fastest known fighter-model is the TIE-Defender, but even a Defender is fifty percent slower than one of these delta-fighters and has less acceleration."
"Why aren't we able to build a faster fighter?" wanted the heir of Darth Vader to know.
"It would be possible to build fighters even faster and with a higher acceleration, but they would have to be crewed by droids. A human body can endure only so much acceleration and our internal dampers don't support a higher performance, at least not on the scale of a fighter," explained one of the technicians
Lucan Vader thought about that for a moment.
"So their bodies are either much more durable than humans or their dampers are superior to ours."
"Yes Sir, that would be the logical explanation."
"Lord Vader, you should have a look at that." stated Priem suddenly.
"You discovered something interesting?" wanted Lucan Vader to know.
"Yes my Lord. Would you please take a look at those transports?"
Following Priem's suggestion Lucan leaned forward. When he discovered what Priem had noticed he had to nod his head.
"Clever." he muttered. "Very clever."
----
Supreme Warmaster Tersar Frascati gritted his teeth, still trying to find out what their enemies were up to. Until now the battle had gone well. Warmaster Ghul's forces had lost ten battleships, three-hundred-twenty destroyers and more than eight-thousand fighters and were now breaking through, while at the same time five-hundred-sixty destroyers and more than twelve-thousand fighters of Praetor Abro's forces had been destroyed.
Although this was an admirable performance of Ghul's forces, Frascati knew that the balance was shifting more and more in Abro's favour, since her force's only capital losses had been destroyers and fighters so far.
So it came quite as a relief to him when his subordinates told him that five-hundred additional battleships and thousand-seven-hundred-and-fifty destroyers would join the battle soon, reinforcing Ghul's forces.
That should even the odds enough until another few thousand of the ships of settlement 7,459 could arrive, that were patrolling the space around the settlement and that were expected to arrive within thirty minutes.
But then a sensor-impulse of one of Abro's freighters caught his eye. Taking a closer look he discovered nothing suspicious, but Frascati was sure that there was something. Playing the record back he watched the tape again. There it was. Something was wrong with the sensor-image and the mass of the scanned freighter.
"No." he whispered when realisation hit him.
Frascati knew how incredible lucky he had been to discover this single one out of a few thousand contacts and all the jamming and scrambling of their sensors, but at the same time the knowledge that he could do nothing about it or that he wasn't able to warn Warmaster Ghul left a bitter taste in his mouth.
The Supreme Warmaster concentrated on the status of the settlements defences. After a few moments he decided, that they could afford to launch six-hundred fighter-wings more to support Warmaster Ghul.
---
Aboard her flagship the Supreme Warmaster and praetor of settlement 7,687 Mirona Abro watched how the battle unfolded. Until now everything was going the way she had planned.
As expected the forces of settlement 7,459 had used the opportunity she had offered them to break through her formation, since the entire attack would have become pointless if she lost her carriers or her freighters. Now the enemy was moving towards the centre of her formation, while her destroyer-screen was largely intact with exception of the front of course, where the enemy had broken through.
And now it was time to close the trap.
"Tell our freighters to launch their fighters. As soon as the are launched they shall fall back and make place for the destroyers and battleships in their shadows."
---
Warmaster Ghul roared, when suddenly the doors of the storage-sections of two-thousand of the freighters opened and fighters emerged from them, each freighter carrying a wing of starfighters.
He became silent when the transports slowed down and moved to the side. Behind them battleships and destroyers became visible; they had been hidden in their mass-shadows and covered by their bulk from visual sight.
Ghul shook his head. Who would have thought it possible, that praetor Abro would commit forty percent of her entire forces to a single battle. "She must have made some alliances with other settlements to have her back free," thought Ghul. "Otherwise she couldn't have afforded to take so many ships with her."
What made sense. Since Parkas Vigland had been praetor, settlement 7,459 had been one of the richest and fastest growing settlements. The more a settlement could grow, the more people it could house and nurture and had to send less of its people and newborns into the termination-chambers. And the less people had to die, the more were available later as soldiers and workforce. With an increase in population of eighty millions every day the fragile balance of power between the thousands of settlements would have shifted sooner or later in favour of settlement 7,459. But power meant the access to the few remaining resources of the star-system they were trapped in, so if a settlement expanded more, it could only do it at the costs of the others.
And that was something the other settlement couldn't allow.
A commander who would have belonged to the human or one of the many sentient races would have considered to surrender or to make a "strategic" retreat to safe the lives and ships under his command, but Ghul and the men under him were Ogradevi.
Individual lives meant nothing to them, there were already too many of them and the protection of their settlement was a priority to them. They had to slow down the enemy at all costs.
"Concentrate fire on as many ships as possible to bring their shields down, then leave them to the fighters. They should ram them if necessary," ordered Ghul. "Our primary target are still the freighters so let’s make an example and engage them with maximum acceleration."
---
"What a nasty surprise." commented Lucan Vader, who watched on his displays how the sensor-contacts of the alien’s freighters divided into two or three parts. "First two-hundred-sixteen-thousand additional fighters and now two-thousand new battleships and the double number of destroyers."
"The new ships are also launching fighters," reported a sensor-operator. "The defending forces are now outnumbered four to one in terms of fighters, more then two to one for battleships. Most even are the odds for the destroyers, where the defenders have only a disadvantage of fifty percent."
"Doesn't seem to concern them." observed Priem. "They are attacking them even more furiously, if that is even possible. There! Their fighters are even making suicide runs against ships that have lost their shields."
"Yes. But most of them are shot down by the other fighters. The leader of the attackers seems to have expected this."
"Sir, another sixty-four-thousand-eight-hundred fighters have been launched from the station."
"Yes, but by the time they reach the battle-field it will be to late. The defending group is suffering heavy losses." Darth Vader's son and heir explained.
"But the attackers have to pay a high price for it," added Captain Priem. "There. Another battleship destroyed. Those people have to be crazy. What are they fighting for in this forgotten system? It makes no sense."
"Not for us." admitted Lucan Vader. "But I'm sure it makes a lot of sense for them. We don't have enough information to judge them."
Priem looked suspiciously at his superior. "My Lord, you don't really consider bringing the "Spectre" into this mess? Their weapons might be weaker than ours, but ten or fifteen of their ships would be able to destroy us. I don't know of other ships of that size that have that much destructive power."
Lucan Vader looked calm at his captain. After a long moment of silence he said slowly.
"Well, if we won't go to them, they have to come to us. Don't you think so, Captain?"
Priem could only stare back, wondering what this enigmatic statement of the Dark Lord meant now.
----
Sholter Roeg was biting his lower lip. He had shot down seventeen fighters so far, but there were still too many of them. And not all of his comrades were as successful as he. Many of them had already been shot down. From his original wing of hundred-eight fighters only three were left. The others had been shot down by enemy-fighters, the anti-starfighter-weapons of praetor Abro's capital ships or had decided to sacrifice their lives in ramming the big ships of the attackers.
Sholter's field of view was filled with fighters, ships and debris of the furious battle. Again the crosshair integrated into his cockpit-window turned red and Sholter was able to destroy another fighter. Eighteen fighters. Another three and he would be a triple-ace.
Before him a battleship came into view, its shields down. Activating his missile-launcher the young pilot jetted his fighter closer towards the three-hundred-and-sixty meter long behemoth; this gigantic vessel fired with all batteries to keep the enemy away from its unshielded hull. Sholter managed to evade the fire from the heavy cannons easily, not getting hit by the light cannons was more difficult. The five year old barely noticed that he was suddenly accompanied by two other fighters from his settlement, their pilots trying the same as him.
To take this cap-ship out.
Turning his fighter to the right Sholter evaded the fire from an enemy-fighter that attacked him from the front. It collided with one of Sholter's new wing-men and vanished in a sudden explosion. The other one was shot down only seconds later by anti-starfighter-fire, but their deaths had bought the time Sholter needed to launch his missiles against the point where they would cause the most damage. At the aft-end where the superstructure met with the main hull and where the majority of the power cells were located.
Focussing the explosive energies of their warheads in a cone-like blast the missiles detonated against the hull of the shieldless battleship, unleashing energies in the gigaton-range, ripping holes into the meter-thick, ultra-dense armour, exposing its more vulnerable interior. Only seconds later the second pair of missiles hit and then the third. Huge explosions ripped through the dying body of the once proud battleship and then it broke into two, still burning where the flames found oxygen, but not for long.
Sholter Roeg was already searching for a new target, he didn't care that he had just killed four-thousand-five-hundred beings of his own kind. They had known the risks and if they were not ready to die if necessary, they had lost nothing among the warriors.
Another enemy cap-ship had lost shields and the young man knew what was expected from him. After all he had already lost his missiles. If his death would slow the enemy down the warriors of the settlement would get enough time to prepare the repelling of praetor Abro's boarding-parties or time for reinforcements to arrive.
For a moment he thought about all the things he had wanted to do, about the children he would never sire, about the family he would never have. The only comfort was that if the raid of the enemy failed millions of people back home wouldn't have to be terminated. He might not be remembered as an individual, but as one of many who had ensured the survival of the settlement and its inhabitants. That had to be enough.
Roaring a death-cry the five year old accelerated his fighter to its top-speed in an attempt to ram the hostile battleship, but fate had other plans for Sholter Roeg.
A flak-burst forced his fighter out of its course and pointed it to the outside of the star-system, away from the battle and the settlement. Helpless Sholter Roeg had to watch as he left the battle behind, unable to do anything about it, unable to get back control over his fighter.
And while the young pilot felt betrayed for an honourable death, he had no idea that when he would return to his people nothing would be the same again.
The optimist thinks, that we live in the best of all possible worlds and the pessimist is afraid, that this is true.
"Don't ask, what your country can do for you. Ask, what you can do for your country." Mao Tse-Tung.
"Don't ask, what your country can do for you. Ask, what you can do for your country." Mao Tse-Tung.