SDNW4 Story Thread 1

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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Kartr_Kana »

HCNV Black Knight
Bannerman System, The Outback
RogueIce wrote:The Shinra Republic EA-68, backed up by a number of Umerian cutters also feeding back information, indicated a sizable fleet presence indeed.

"Confirm, one hundred tweleve, that's one-one-two ships detected." The voice of the Shinra Republic's gunboat commander had a noticable strain to it now.
Rear Admiral Paktu frowned; she'd heard a rumor from one of her peers back on the Homeworld that another nation had decided to send some ships, but hadn't heard any official word yet. Maybe this was that Centrists nation and maybe it wasn't. Either way they had a lot more than just a few ships and if they proved hostile they could potentially force the blockade. After a moments contemplation she decided the best course of action would be a reconnaissance in force while she gathered her heavy elements and informed her superiors of the development: both Coalition and HCN.

“Order the Kuun-Lan, the Troy Baker, and the Susan Dalian to form up and investigate those vessels. Assign a number of frigates to act as escorts, no more than six, and make sure they represent a goodly cross section of the Coalition. Hopefully if these unknowns see how many nations are represented here they'll hesitate to start any kind of hostilities. Also, attach our Avengers and a handful Umerian customs cutters and Shinra Republic gunboats to the Kuun-Lan Strike Group.” Admiral Paktu began snaping out orders to her crew in the Fleet CIC. “Send a tight-beam transmission to Lockley's Retreat, message follows: Unknown contacts numbering one-one-two capital class vessels has moved into position behind the blockade. If contacts prove hostile we will be unable to maintain our blockade, the invasion could be cut off. Will attempt to resolve situation peacefully, if not possible will hold Bannerman until relieved.”

As she looked around at her staff Paktu saw the grimness of the situation reflected in their eyes and postures. They knew that if this force was hostile then it would most likely come to battle since the Coalition fleet at Bannerman was the only thing preventing passage to Pendleton and if they were to abandon their position the invasion fleet could find themselves fighting a powerful force while in the middle of conducting landing operations. Realizing that if she let them dwell on the negative aspects too long the crew could begin to take a fatalistic view and that, that attitude would spread to the other ships Paktu spoke. “Their fleet outnumbers us almost two to one, but their ships are almost all smaller than ours and if tonnage is anything to go by they barely have more throw weight then us. On top of that they are no doubt operating far from home and far from reinforcements. We on the other hand are in our backyard, the rest of TF1, Home Fleet can be here in a day, the New Anglians have ships stationed at Lochley's Retreat which could be here even sooner and that fleet out there has to know that. Contrary to appearances we have the upper hand, do not forget that!”

As the CIC returned to its normal buzz with a more steady sounding tone than moments before Adm. Paktu turned to her Chief of Staff, “I want you to start repositioning ships, take everything above frigate weight off the blockade except for Directrix and the Pioneer. The SRS Pioneer will coordinate interdiction operations with the Directrix, the Aya Hirano class frigates will form their support line with the Pioneer's gunboats as a reserve. I want the rest of the ships back here and formed up around the Black Knight ready to move to engage that unknown fleet should the Kuun-Lan run into trouble. The sooner the better, but all ships must be repositioned within two hours.”
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"Our Country won't go on forever, if we stay soft as we are now. There won't be any AMERICA because some foreign soldier will invade us and take our women and breed a hardier race!"
LT. GEN. LEWIS "CHESTY" PULLER, USMC
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Kartr_Kana »

Admiral Tardis aka Force Lord wrote:"Send a message to Kordis. Tell him to go back to the Bannerman side of the Gap with his entire force..."
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[Belligerent-class Dreadnought HCNV Rieger]

HCNV Black Knight
Bannerman, The Outback

"Ma'am, the EA-68's have detected the unknown fleet approaching Bannerman." Since the fleet was not currently at General Quarters the message was given verbal since only a handful of operators were currently jacked into the BattleNet. The normal volume of activity in the Black Knights CIC lowered in expectation. Rear Admiral Paktu's voice rang out through the sudden quiet. "Sound General Quarters, bring the Fleet to battle readiness and get me my squadron leaders."

Throughout the great carrier klaxons began to sound, crew members rushed to get suited and their posts rigged for combat. Flight crews began final fueling and arming on their birds while pilots rushed to ready rooms for their briefings. As department heads began to check in, the DC teams moved through their areas checking to make sure blast doors were secured and loose equipment stowed. All across the Coalition Fleet similar scenes were taking place as everyone from the Hiigaran Dreadnought Rieger down to the Umerian frigate the San Dorado prepared for battle.

Aboard the Black Knight R. Adm Kim Paktu held conference with her commanders. "R. Adm Daumier I am giving you command of the Intercept Force screening element. It will consist of all six Nova Atlantean vessels, the HCNV Buckler and Bulwark, along with HSS Yuri Lowenthal, Danielle Judovits, and Amanda Winn Lee, the Umerian frigate USS San Dorado will also be joining your fleet element. The rest of the Umerian detachment along with SRS Pioneer will be under the command of our honorable counterpart from the Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya."

At this Paktu turned to the Haruhiist commander. "I hope you have already transferred your flag to the Pioneer? Yes? Good. It falls to you to ensure that no ship, unless it be from the Coalition, gets past that line. You will have all twelve of your Aya Hirano class frigates, the Shinra Republic contingent and Umerian contingent minus the San Dorado to ensure your success. Good Luck." With a curt nod the connection was cut and the Admiral turned to her staff in the CIC.

The Admiral looked each of them in the eye as she gestured to a CommTech to open a line to the Fleet. "Our orders are simple, Hold until relieved! I say again, Hold until relieved! I have received word that New Anglian 2nd Task Group, Home Fleet is already en-route to reinforce our position. All we have to do is be here when they arrive, so lets not disappoint them. I will see you all, when this is over. Paktu out!" After jacking into the BattleNet R. Adm Paktu examined her fleet through the compound eyes her link to the sensors on the Hiigaran vessels gave her. Having determined the Fleet was properly ordered for battle she gave the order. -All ships, JUMP!-
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"Our Country won't go on forever, if we stay soft as we are now. There won't be any AMERICA because some foreign soldier will invade us and take our women and breed a hardier race!"
LT. GEN. LEWIS "CHESTY" PULLER, USMC
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Force Lord »

CNS Datton
Pendleton, The Outback


"Sir, the Anglian cruiser is firing at us!"

Smart bastards, Forg thought. They're corraling us.

"Take evasive action!"

The Datton turned furiously to avoid the incoming fire, but found only walls of fire blocking its path.

"Blast it!"

That's it. It's now or nothing.

"Decloak us. No more of this stealth business. Our mission is to escape. But before we do, let's give the Pendies a parting gift!"

Once again the Datton revealed itself. On the aft side, two turrets began firing plasma towards the nearest installation...
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Steve »

Force Lord wrote:CNS Datton
Pendleton, The Outback


"Sir, the Anglian cruiser is firing at us!"

Smart bastards, Forg thought. They're corraling us.

"Take evasive action!"

The Datton turned furiously to avoid the incoming fire, but found only walls of fire blocking its path.

"Blast it!"

That's it. It's now or nothing.

"Decloak us. No more of this stealth business. Our mission is to escape. But before we do, let's give the Pendies a parting gift!"

Once again the Datton revealed itself. On the aft side, two turrets began firing plasma towards the nearest installation...

HMS Challenger

"Contact decloaking!", Parkins called out. "Reading one contact, destroyer-size, in atmosphere. Weapons fire being registered against the planet."

"Prepare tractors. Have Berkshire and Gloucestershire come into place. Gunnery, if you have a clear shot, shoot to disable only. I want that ship, whomever is on it." Shetty watched as the destroyer moved up through atmosphere, looking for an escape route - it would find none. With the two Myrmidon-class destroyers and the Medusa moving into intercept position, and the capable Ascendancy squadron in position, there was no way out. The operator quickly and efficiently locked tractors onto the unknown ship, pulling it toward Challenger while its drives resisted. It would be a delicate tug of war between the tractor operator on Challenger and the pilot on his opponent, the latter trying to use his drives to overpower the former's systems... though even if successful things looked dim indeed with all the vessels in intercept positions.

To eliminate hope of escape, the secondary and light batteries of Challenger opened up. Plasma cannon shots battered the damaged ship's deflectors. It would take only a few more shots to break them, after which the ship's drives would be fair game.

As this process continued, Lieutenant McNeal resumed transmitting. "This is HMS Challenger to unknown vessel. Shut down drives and prepare for boarding. Repeat, shut down drives and prepare for boarding."
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Agent Sorchus »

Irduran Confederacy Capital
Detective Adjutant Aonghus liked visiting the Irdurans, because unlike when visiting human space he didn't feel short. His shuttle finally settled down at the Terminal. The pair of patrolman escorts heaved to while adjusting the high oxygen supply tanks that were standard fare for those Eoghan that lived in their own standard environment. Aonghus had his but was acclimatized to the lesser oxygen levels and lower pressure of most other species. He would still suffer altitude sickness and would be restricted to only light activity if he stayed to long. The SPS armsmen that had accompanied them down from the yacht carrier wore the void suits that would allow them to guard the ship but not easily interact with the populace. The group of prisoners that faced extradition had heavy re-breathers that only concentrated oxygen slowly, preventing them from trying anything strenuous.

He watched on as the assembled guards met with the reception. Technically he was high enough of rank that it was unusual that he would be involved. It wasn't unreasonable for him to be here, and Magister Bréanainn had other work for him to do here anyway.

All he had to do was sign off that the convicted had been turned over and he would be free to deliver both the packages he held. Besides almost all of these purported ginger smugglers were small timers, hell their total conviction would barely reach a decade, and there was only seven of them. Irdurans had larger convictions waiting for them.

Finally he was able to make his way to the gravcar that the embassy utilized. Oh the adventures of being a paper courier.

Hours later, Ojofu Sector Command Station

Admiral Vanor growled at the budget, trying his damnedest to will a couple more ships into existence. His eyes were sore from looking at the screen, he had conscientiously furnished his office with a lower budget not knowing how much the screen would mess up his eyes. Unfortunately for him his gaze drifted upon a paper copy of the pirate base Intel.

It was only minutes later that he caught himself crafting a new plan to take out his bad mood on an unsuspecting world that he knew he needed a short break from his office. He went to check the comm dispatch office.

He sat there glowering over the holoboard that was used to keep track of ships transmitting in local space. His expression quite readily told the lower ranks to leave him alone. That is why he was very surprised that the senior comms officer walked up to him, "Sir, message came through to you and the other fleet commanders on station. It has diplomatic codes for Admiral eyes and over."

He flipped open the privacy viewer and waited for it to confirm his identity. The message wasn't long. But it brought a smile to his eyes, one that not even the burst of activity as a vessel was reported missing due to pirates could take from him.



tl;dr EUC command staff sends a message to Irduran Parliament and Fleet Command.
the engines cannae take any more cap'n
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

[i]Previously on Battlestar[/i] Annapolis wrote: Emerald Guard commando Zhyvel retrieved his tri-daily nutrition packet from the AUTOCHEF. Bragulan-grade gruel is injected onto his tray, and he is also given a glass of Bovyl liquid meat juice. The commandos had the good sense to bring good old Bragulan sustenance packets with them for their trip. They would need all the nutrients, vitamins and minerals they could get before the mission, along with supplemental steroids.

"Hey guys, what's the op?" he asked his comrades as he took a seat at the far end of the mess hall, where his fellow Emerald Guard commandos ate.

"Rescue mission. There's some juicy IBGV agent on Pendleton we gotta rescue from his virginity." Jagrisha Urdarvus, their only female team member and close-quarters-combat specialist, replied with a mischievous grin. She received her ration from the AUTOCHEF and snorted. "Shit. What's this crap supposed to be?"

"Cornbread, I think." Zhyvel shrugged. Strapped to his meaty bear forearm was a wrist-computer the size of a brick. With it he began accessing Shepistani pornography downloaded from the Annapolis' computer grid. He remembered with nostalgia the time when he hacked into a CEID computer and downloaded all sorts of degenerate human files back on a mission in the Sovereignty. "Hey, I wouldn't mind seeing me some more of that Zigonian poontang. Remember that time?"

"Yeah, Zhyvel, but the one that you saw was a male!" Jagrisha laughed harshly while she devoured her cornbread at the same time.

"Doesn't matter when it's Zigonian, baby!" Zhyvel chuckled.

The two bantering commandos were soon joined at the table by Major Kreilagug, Silent Pegidur and Colonel Velkro himself. They likewise brought platters of gruel and cornbread with them.

Colonel Velkro took a sip of Bovyl meat juice. "Comrade Zhyvel, how goes your... familiarization of comradely Shepistani culture?"

"So-so. I managed to download some picture files, would you like to see?" Zhyvel said off-handedly without thinking. His eyes widened when he realized what he had just said.

At this, Major Kreilagug glared at him silently while Jagrisha discretely stomped on his foot under the table. Zhyvel strained to suppress the wince of pain and merely smiled at the Colonel. Colonel Velro didn't seem to notice this, though, and nodded.

"Sure," Velkro agreed. "Let me see."

"Uh..." Zhyvel minimized the filthy pictures of naked Shepistanis and quickly opened some other files. Then he showed the Colonel his wrist computer. "Here."

"I see," Velkro raised a furry eyebrow. "What is this?"

"Military graphs," Zhyvel said, laughing slightly and looking at Major Kreilagug and Jagrisha reassuringly. "From the 3350s and 3360s. The Shepistani computer drives are replete with them."

"What do they contain?" Velkro asked, intrigued.

"Seemingly useless bits of military trivia, as far as I can see," Zhyvel replied. “And Shepistani warplans for every contingency, from hypothetical invasion of the Bragulan Star Empire, to a theoretical strategic space bombing of their own Dominion allies.

"Hrm... this might be of great use for our people. I want you to send me a copy," Velkro commanded.

"Yes, sir." Zhyvel nodded and did so at once, sending the files to the Colonel's own wrist computer. By virtue of his rank, the Colonel had a far superior wrist computer design, which meant that it was far larger and heavier than Zhyvel's tiny plastic machine. The Colonel's was also fashioned out of stainless steel. "Done, sir."

"Thank you. I will peruse them later, after the mission, at my own leisure." Colonel Velkro then went on to eat his cornbread.

Zhyvel made a silent sigh of relief at the close call. His teammates also relaxed. Little did he know that he actually hadn't sent the 3360s graphs to the Colonel, but had mistakenly sent him the other pictures instead.
Brought to you in GODDAMN UNREAL TIME...

BATTLESTAR ANNAPOLIS, High Orbit Over Pendleton

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INT. READY ROOM - ARMORY

The Emerald Guard commandos readied for the drop. Strapping on their bulky special-issue power armor, with interlocking plates of Brag Steel slabs. They taped their wrists. Draw on iron boots, sole cleats clanging like armored hooves. Lockers were slammed shut. Web belts. Packs. Harnesses. Helmets. Com-sets. Their fingers moved down methodically over the fastenings. It had its own rhythm, the click-clacking of powered mechanisms, the whining of servo hydraulics, the hiss of filtered air through their skull-like face masks.

On nearby racks was an arsenal of advanced personal artillery. Previously field stripped, cleaned, maintained and put back together, the weapons were in perfect condition. All Imperial Bragulan-spec armaments. Needler subguns. B-11 K-bolt carbines. Micro-grenade launchers. Nuclear flamethrowers. Autocannons. Guardsman Zhyvel got a B-11 and slapped in a scythe clip. As did Jagrisha, whilst holstering a needler gun. The Major took the B-35 autocannon while Silent Pegidur favored the nuclear flamethrower.

Young Zhyvel picked the remaining microgrenade launcher and affixed it under the barrel of his B-11. He loaded it, shoving in grenades as one would shells into a pump-action shotgun. He slung a bandolier of grenade-shells across his chest and tied a bandanna around his armored helmet.

Jagrisha Urdarvus held her B-11 and chambered a round with one precise movement. She shouldered it and aimed it, testing its sights. She liked the feel of the weight... the sensation of unquestionable Imperial authority in her hands. Her hands moved without hesitation.

Beside her, Major Sarvylus Kreilagug hauled his autocannon out on a work stand. The weapon was fastened to his armor by a brace and a gyro-stabilized support arm, it was a computer-aimed, video targeted automatic weapon. The Bragulan equivalent of an revolver cannon. Mounted on sort of a steadicam that kills.

Silent Pegidur used his nuclear flamethrower's iridium igniter to light a thick vodka-cigar, which he bit between his sharp teeth. He began puffing out thick alcoholic smoke as he sealed his airtight faceplate. Fumes began belching out of his respirator with every exhalation. How he could see inside his helmet, or let alone breathe, with the cigar's asphyxiating fumigation, was a great mystery.

"Stay frosty, comrades. We might have orbital fire support, but our LZ is far away from the main invasion forces. So on the ground we'll be all by ourselves against a whole city full of desperate Pendletonians, and the desperation makes them all the more dangerous, like the human dogs they are." Major Kreilagug informed his team. "Our mission is to extract the IBGV agent on Pendleton, from the city of Eel, Libertia District. We go in, snatch and grab, we go out. Exfil as quickly and as cleanly as possible. If any furless little human interloper gets in our way, you all know what to do."

A chorus of affirmation came from the team, except for Silent Pegidur, who was, as his name implied, silent. Instead, he just nodded and brandished his nuclear flamethrower.

"I only need to know one thing," Jagrisha commented cockily.

"And what is that?" Major Kreilagug looked at her.

"Where they are," Jagrisha coolly pointed her finger, cocked her thumb, and blew away an imaginary human. "Anytime. Anywhere."

“Yeah,” Sarvylus Kreilagug chuckled.

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With that, the Major adjusted his officer's hat and the Emerald Guard was ready for war.


MEANWHILE
EEL, Pendleton, Libertia District

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INT. BUILDING - BRAGGA'S BASEMENT

The cracked telescreen showed the fate of Pendleton itself to Bragga's beady bear eyes, and the IBGV operative watched the world's demise with utter dispassion. He couldn't have given any fewer shits about the slaver shitworld, it could burn for all he cared, but nonetheless he had a job to do and he would carry it out to the fullest of his capacity. Even if the planet's imminent doom was happening outside his refrigerated basement.

A nearby wind-up radio was tuned to the Velaria City Public Radio station, which gave the puny Pendletonian pukes their feeble wartime coverage. The host was bleating about the fate that awaited their planet, that the Anglians were coming for them just like the Shroomcoats of Nova Terra.

Whatever, Bragga scoffed. True, his original mission on Pendleton was to recruit human slaves for the IBGV's quite-literal take on human intelligence, where HUMINT would brainwash the young to become worthy agents of mighty Bragule. But nonetheless, Bragga doublethought, the Astarian slavers still disgusted him. In service to the Imperator, at least the miserable human slaves could do things far worthier than picking cotton, like killing other humans. But the Pendletonians never did this. Thus, the Pendletonians deserved their fate for their ideological impudence.

They had a choice, all of them. They could have followed in the footsteps of good men like my father or Imperator Byzon. Decent men who believed in a day's work for a day's pay. Instead they followed the droppings of slavocrats and prohibitionists and didn't realize that the trail led over a precipice until it was too late. Don't tell me they didn't have a choice. Now the whole world stands on the brink, staring down into bloody Hell, all those slavocrats and intellectuals and smooth-talkers... and all of a sudden nobody can think of anything to say.

The jerry-rigged spy satellite and the jerry-rigged picket ship were transmitting their readings back to Pendleton actual. The ship originally belonged to Bragga's front company and would have been his ride off the goddamn planet, before it was
'donated' to the Pendletonian government's war effort as a modified monitoring station, unmanned. It relayed sensor readings to the military, which Bragga had cleverly managed to tap into quietly. When he saw that the Coalition fleet was near Pendleton, but before they could be close enough to destroy the picket, he began downloading the ship's sensor data to his computers.

The transmissions would be quickly traced to the antenna sticking out of Bragga's hideout. It wouldn't take long for the Pendletonians to detect what he was doing. But that was why he had to work fast. The mission would be over soon.

"Sascha go to the underground garage and ready the car," Bragga snapped at his human subordinate, albeit distractedly. He was busy saving the precious sensor readings of the space battle between the twice-damned Coalition forces and the thrice-damned Collector fleet. Data, on a rarely-ever-seen Collector fleet in action and human warships from so many nations as well, would get him rewarded handsomely by his superiors, Bragga thought. He ejected a floppy disk and replaced it with another. "And tell the others upstairs to finish the final preparations."

Bragga was almost finished. After another floppy disk, he made the final recordings with a cassette tape. It was lead lined, with ten thick spools of radio-magnetic tape inside it that could record several ultrabytes of memory. The recorder made a clicking sound, and Bragga retrieved the tape and locked it with a mechanical combination lock. If a foolish human would ever try to open it and, due to his puny human brain, get the wrong combination, then a radium capsule inside the cassette would break open and give a fatal dose of radiation to everyone within a hundred feet of the device. Like the cassette tapes, the floppy disks also had this fail-safe measure. Bragga gathered his floppy disks and cassette and placed them in an attache case cuffed to his hand.

Image

The rotocrafts moved through the air silently, blades hushed by noise-cancellation systems. Below them was the city of Eel, situated by the adjacent Libertian district of Dogadishu. The midday sun shone harshly in the sky. Though there was no rain, the sky was dark from the black smoke of fires lit throughout the cities of Eel and Dogadishu - burning tires and garbages set alight by the conscripts of the hastily-formed ragtag Pendleton Defense Force, in an equally ragtag attempt at obscuring themselves from the scrutinizing sight of Coalition ships in orbit. It was like this all over Pendleton.

Except there were no black helicopters elsewhere. The Pendleton Intelligence Echelon, the PIE, had traced an unauthorized signal to a building in the city of Eel. The PIE had long suspected elements of Anglian intelligence, perhaps with other agents from the other nations of the Coalition. Now they had their confirmation, and now they were deploying their spooks. A rotoborne rapid reaction team, problem solvers, not quite borged-out BOSS men, but still enough to silence any spies skulking about and sending/receiving information to or from orbit.

The rotocopters hovered over the unassuming establishment with the guilty antennae, and the PIE men rappelled into the building, blasting windows in with charges and blazing away at any and all forms of resistance and bystanders that breathed. Anglian spies? Slave sympathizers? Abolitionist agents? It didn't matter, at that point in time with the invasion imminent, the spooks weren't sent to take anyone alive, so they had to cut things short and save it for the autopsy. They killed everyone at the top floor and worked their way downwards - lasers searing away at the stairway, cleaning their path with precision.

They reached the second middle floor of the three storey building and met resistance. A PIE man was ripped to pieces by a Bragulan K-bolter wielded by one of Bragga's human subordinates. The K-bolt railgun rounds were designed to burn through power armor, but the PIE men wore no such heavy protection so the K-bolts overpenetrated the first spook and splashed K-residue all over the spook behind him. The lightly armored human being got a facefull of molecular acid rated to eat through Solarian Marine battle suit. His upper torso was liquefied before he could scream. His lower torso was skeletonized. What remained of him collapsed on the floor steaming.

All hell broke loose. The PIE men reacted quickly and viciously against the resistance. Though not as dramatic as the acid bullets or Bragulan ballistics, their lasguns nonetheless reciprocated by melting faces off and burning holes through the defenders' chest cavities. That the defenders were so willing to fight was a testament to the superior IBGV training given of them, the human slaves brought and brainwashed by the Bureau's HUMINT division. Not necessarily superior training in combat skills, but in the training to turn them into loyal agents of the Imperator and Empire. The HUMINT agents fought, and they died shortly thereafter.

"Clear," a PIE man reported after executing the last dying defender.

"Okay, move to the ground floor. Watch out for more resistance," commanded the head of the PIE men. "Go Brackburn, go."

"Hut-hut-hut!"

The spooks moved down the stairway, more carefully now, but upon reaching the ground floor they faced no resistance. Instead, they saw that the place was already wrecked, with bins full of torn documents, trashed data drives and disks.

"Safehouse," the PIE man known as Brackburn said, examining the shredded refuse. "Papers. Haven't been burned yet."

"Sloppy," the head spook replied. Or they had caught the spies before they could have burned their papers. Perhaps later the PIE could sift through the shredded documents and figure their contents out. Either way, they were not yet done here. They were sent here because PIE had detected a transmission traced to an antenna on the building's roof, yet on all the floors there was no sign of any communications machine. Perhaps the spies had bounced the signal to another safehouse?

"Sir," Brackburn pointed to something under the staircase. It was a heavy set steel door. "The wires from the antenna lead there too."

Basement.

"Get the breaching charges," the head spook commanded. "Whoever's down there, he's about to get evicted for illegal downloading."

Image

Bragga sat behind a long table. He was going to leave now, leave the wretched planet Pendleton and all the humans in it. The final preparations were complete. It was time to go.

The only thing he would miss was the bonsai garden he had cultivated in the basement.

The final preparations included a gas stove in the kitchen he had instructed his men to open without lighting. In the last minutes before the attack, they had completely turned it into a makeshift thermobaric explosive. Even though his worthless human men were dead, Bragga took respite in the fact that flammable gas was now leaking all over the building.

The breeching charges detonated outside Bragga's basement doors. Bragga's explosion-proof basement doors.

Now it was time to see just how explosion-proof those doors were.

The breeching charges that detonated Bragga's basement doors also detonated the entire building.

Image Image

The poor man's fuel air explosion demolished the entire structure. The blast literally disintegrated the prefab plaster pieces, sending chunks of building raining down all over the block. People in the nearby buildings and houses screamed and crapped their pants, children cried while geriatrics had heart attacks. Most thought it was the beginning of the Coalition orbital bombardment - though unbeknownst to them that wasn't due until later. Not much later, actually. Very soon, in fact.

The handful of PIE men who rappelled outside the building and were assigned to maintain a perimeter took the brunt of the unexpected, unexplained explosion. The suddenness of the blastwave, the fact that they were never told about any unscheduled demolitions, and also the little thing about the rest of their team being in the damn building that just blew up, caught them entirely unprepared. They were not ready for the sheer violence of action that had just occurred.

Amidst the smoldering rubble of the blown up building, thick heavy set steel doors opened and Bragga emerged.

The spooks recovered quickly and, upon seeing another unexpected - an unexpected Bragulan - they wisely considered it a threat and moved to engage.

"THE BEAR HAS LEFT THE HOUSE!" one of the PIE men shouted over the radio. "I REPEAT THE BE-"

Bragga shot him in the throat with a burst from his Needler. The subgun sent a stream of supersonic needles stitching through his neck and turned his face into a perforated pincushion. He repeated this on another PIE man, this time catching the human insect in his center mass. The spray of needles made a sharp hissing sound and tore his abdomen open. The man was virtually ripped into two.

"OH SHIT! OH SHIT!" another spook pulled out a shotgun and blasted Bragga with it. Buckshots peppered a mighty muscular bear-shoulder, but instead of succumbing and dying like a humanoid, the Bragulan instead roared and ran to the man with unbearlike speed. Bragga was on him just as he pumped another round in, but a mighty bear paw ripped the gun out of his hands before he could fire off a shot. Then Bragga clubbed him in the face with his Needler, clubbed him so hard with the gun that his face caved in and his skull collapsed in itself. Bragga dropped the human and reloaded his Needler.

One last human stood in Bragga's way. The furless mongrel blubbered like the human vagina he was and fumbled with his weapon. A laser rifle. One blast from the thing would've killed Bragga dead, no matter if he was several times hardier and meatier than a humanoid. But the laser fizzled and misfired. Typical of such fragile womanly human technologies to malfunction when crushed to pieces by falling debris and rocks. A superior Bragulan thing could still be used to kill despite the damage, Bragga mused, even if one had to use the broken pieces to stab people in the dick.

To be sporting, Bragga did not shoot the human in the face. Instead, he broke a glass casing labeled 'BREAK IN CASE OF FIRE' and pulled out an axe. The human blubbered a final blubber, and with one mighty swing Bragga chopped his head into two. Diagonally.

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There amidst the smoke and fire of burning buildings and flaming homes, the bloodied Bragga held his gun and fire axe, standing above the mortal wreckage of humanity.

HONK HONK!


Bragga turned and leveled his Needler towards the source of the sound, but discovered that it was merely one of his human subordinates. Sascha. He was driving an ice cream van.

"What are you doing here?" Bragga barked. "How can you still be alive?"

"I was at the underground garage readying the van when the explosion happened," the human replied. "I was lucky I didn't get killed."

"The slavers came for us," Bragga muttered gutturally.

"The rest?" Sascha asked, referring to his fellow human subordinates.

"Dead." Bragga said bluntly as he got inside the van.

"I see," Sascha nodded. The other human IBGV agents were like him, slaves bought by the IBGV at a young age, shipped off Pendleton and raised away from the slavocracy, in tender, nurturing Bragulan hands. Brought up to learn the values of truth, freedom, justice and the Bragulan Way. Though he despised his assignment here in Pendleton, at least his work ensured that other slaves like him could be taken by the IBGV and raised far away in a better and ideologically cleaner place under the guiding light of the Imperator Byzon - the Gardener of Bragulan Happiness and Happy Friend of All People, especially pregnant women and small children. He shifted the gears of the manual transmission van. "Where to?"

"Anywhere," Bragga barked as he used his claws to dig out the buckshots in his arm. "Just away from here."

Smoke and fire, not just from the burning buildings but also from the burning tires and garbage heaps all around the city, nearly covered the sky in smog. The ice cream van was able to drive off under the cover of the thick smokescreen, unseen by the PIE's black helicopters. They were able to make good speed, the roads were devoid of traffic since the entire Pendletonian population was huddling in the inadequate safety of their basements, hiding holes, and fallout shelters.

"Get us out of the city," Bragga growled.

They headed for the exit, trying to find their way around the roadblocks erected by the militias and the Pendleton Defense Force. However, with the recent unexplained explosion of Bragga's building in the absence of orbital bombardment, and the alerts raised by the PIE men, security was tightening around the city. Eventually they had to halt at a checkpoint.

"SHITS!" Bragga roared as quietly as he could in the back seat of the ice cream van.

"What do we do?" the human asked as a pair of PDF troopers approached them.

"Let them come closer," Bragga grumbled as he got a hand grenade. "Then take them."

The human nodded and readied his sidearm, a tiny pistol concealed in his pants. Bragga readied his own weapons and gripped his fire axe tightly with his other hand. They waited for the Pendletonians to come nearer.

"Cease and desist!" the lead trooper went beside the driver's window. "Halt, who goes there?"

"Sascha," Bragga's subordinate said. Bragga himself was at the back of the ice cream van, but there were no windows, so he remained unseen as he prepared to strike.

"Sascha who?" the PDF trooper narrowed his eyes. His partner began inspecting the ice cream van.

"Sascha Cohen," came the reply.

"Well then, Sascha Cohen, you know civilian traffic is not allowed at this time," the PDF trooper looked at him suspiciously and reached for his holster. "We suspect you're carrying an armed and extremely dangerous suspect with you."

"What kind of suspect?" Sascha Cohen asked plainly. He pretended to look at the first PDF trooper by his window, but actually paid attention to the second one who was inspecting the vehicle.

"A bear -"

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With that, the van's side doors slid open and Bragga attacked the second PDF trooper, sinking his massive fangs and canines into the soldier's exposed face. With his powerful bear jaws, Bragga began chewing up the man's face, thrashing his jaws wildly in an attempt to dismember the victimized visage.

"MY FACE! MY FACE!" the conscript screamed and simultaneously urinated on himself in pain. "OH SWEET MEADOWS!

Bragga grabbed his fire axe, brought it up, and brought it down on the Astarian's chest.

"Oh shit!" the first PDF trooper by Sascha's window stepped back and pulled out his gun. Sascha likewise reached down into his pants and got his tiny weapon out. But the trooper was faster and before Sascha could even aim his puny piece, the trooper shot at him repeatedly. Bullets punched through the windshield and brain-blood stained the upholstery.

"SHITS!" Bragga roared in Bragulan rage and shot the soldier with his needler. The shot nearly missed, grazed the human in the head, but that was enough to rip off a chunk of his skull. Brains spattered on the pavement and the wide-eyed soldier fell with a small piece of his head missing.

In one quick motion Bragga shoved himself into the driver's seat, chucking Sascha's corpse out of the door, and immediately stomped on the accelerator. Before the other soldiers manning the checkpoint could stop him, Bragga threw a standard-issue Bragulan potato masher grenade at them. The soldiers were too busy ducking to block his way, and after Bragga passed them by, the grenade detonated and the soldiers were too busy exploding to try and catch him.

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"Ha-ha-ha-ha!" Bragga laughed as he ran over one last human who was trying to set up a spike strip. Consequently, he also ran over the spike strip and punctured a pair of wheels, but he just floored the accelerator and continued at top speed. The road he was on led to outside the city, and when he got out he'd be home free.

Three weeks from now, he would be harvesting his crops. He imagined where he would be, for it would be so. He held his wheel, stayed fast as he drove through the wide expanse of the highway. The shattered bloodstained windshield fell off, and he found himself alone, riding by green fields with the sun on his face. He wasn't alarmed, for he was in Bragule, and he was already dead.

A beeping sound caught Bragga by surprise. He looked around, and realized that it was coming from the IBGV-issued decoder ring in his finger. It was a signal from frequency 842 - the Bragulan secret emergency channel.

Just then the ice cream van's flattened tires disintegrated and the the wheel rims began chewing the road. Distracted by his beeping decoder ring and sudden tire blowout, Bragga inadvertently jerked the steering wheel to the side. The van flipped and came crashing on the ground. The impact sent Bragga's barrel bear chest into the steering wheel, but whereas a puny human's ribcage would be the one compressed and broken by the impact, instead it was the puny steering wheel that broke under the weight of Bragga's torso. The airbag popped like a balloon, or a fart bag. The rest of the van rolled over, crushing crumple zones and smashing windows, side mirrors breaking off and car body scraping against asphalt. The sparks subsided and the van slid to a grinding halt.

Bragga crawled out of the goddamn wreckage, chest aching and ribs slightly bruised, head banged against the tiny cabin of the puny human ice cream van, shoulder still bleeding from the shotgun blast. He secured his items to himself, made sure the floppy disks and cassette tapes were still intact and not leaking radiation. He crawled out and laid on the asphalt for a while, before noticing that his decoder ring was still beeping.

He fumbled with it and finally managed to press a button.

He coughed, placed the ring to his mouth, and struggled to speak.

"This is Agent Bragga. I have commandered a civilian vehicle and am on my way to the pickup point. Am being pursued intently by indigenous government personnel. Roadblocks have been set up on all major roads; and I estimate capture is inevitable; give or take ten minutes. As such, am preparing to execute Bragulan Directive regarding capture."

No reply. Didn't matter. Bragga staggered his way towards a rest station by the highway, hoping to find another ride there.

Overhead he saw the black rotocopters, silent but menacing. They had reacquired him.

"Shits," Bragga sputtered. He thought about executing the Bragulan Directive then and there, but he still had time. He wouldn't give up. Only at the last minute, only when all was lost, would he do it. He wouldn't give the humans the satisfaction, he'd fight them until the end, he'd keep on killing them until either there were none left to kill or he couldn't kill any more. He thoughts wandered to Sascha and his other dead subordinates - even they did not derelict in their duties to mighty Bragule, puny humans as they were. "Damn it."

He reached the rest station.

Image

Sitting in front of it was a bright yellow taxicab, its engine idling. Nearly ripping off the puny door, Bragga leapt into the backseat and roared at the unsuspecting driver.

"DRIVE FOR ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE."

The driver quaked in womanly fear, and at the sight of a talking bear roaring at him, who was he to refuse? He turned on his meter and drove into the highway.

"Faster," Bragga growled angrily.

"Um, yes sir."

"Go left," Bragga instructed as he fiddled with his decoder ring.

"Okay."

"Shits," Bragga cursed. Even before he could see them coming, he could already hear them with the acute hearing of his tiny bear ears. The slavers were coming, coming very soon. "Turn left."

"Yes sir."

The sound of sirens was louder now. Bragga stuck his head and upper body out of the taxi window to get a better view of his pursuers. He didn't like what he saw.

Image

"Damn it!" He saw the goddamned Slaver cars closing in on him. He estimated it would all be over in less than six minutes.

It was a good ride, he thought as he prepared to inject himself with the fast-acting poison. At that moment however, he dropped the syringe containing the fast acting poison on the floor of the car.

Getting back into the car and reaching down for the syringe at that moment in space and time had unexpected benefits...

A mile behind him, the Police cars disappeared in a blinding flash which was quickly replaced by a roiling mushroom cloud as the standard Shepistani railgun rounds initated at near ground level.

Shielding his eyes; Bragga watched as streaks of light tore through the atmosphere and terminated in flashes all around the horizon.

Image


TO BE CONTINUED...
Image "DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source)
shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people :D - PeZook
Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic
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Force Lord
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Force Lord »

CNS Datton
Pendleton, The Outback


"Damage report!"

"Sir, shields are down to 10%! The enemy has used their tractor beams!"

"Commodore, incoming messeage."

Forg frowned. He lost the match. But he could still do something.

"Lieutenant, you handle the discussions." Forg suddenly turned around and went down the corridor.

"But sir! What will you do!" Lieutenant Sorge had a scared look on his face.

"Tell Tardis that we've been captured. As for my next action, remember what they told us to do if we were caught."

The entire bridge crew suddenly froze.

"It's been an honor working for you, men."

Forg then continued his way. He was going to his quarters, where the instrument of his last action was...

Result: Cliffhanger...
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Steve »

Monolith

A lot of people throughout the galaxy thought they knew the feeling of staring down the barrel of a pistol. A few genuinely did: the galaxy was, after all, a violent and dangerous place. Sara never even thought she’d be in this sort of a situation: and worse, she knew, right then and there, there was nothing she could do to stop the man holding the gun from pulling the trigger. She knew it instantly, the moment she saw his eyes.

Oliver Gill grinned and squeezed the trigger.

With a bang and a hiss, the bolt of searing energy hit the catwalk above them. Sara opened her eyes and looked around in confusion, wondering how come she was still alive. The first thing she heard was an angry scream.

“WHAT THE FUCK, PARKHURST?!”, Gill was angry, the way he never was before - which was saying something, considering the circumstances of the day. He tried to free his hand from Catherine Parkhurst’s grip. The captain slapped him with her other hand and took his gun away.

“It’s Captain Parkhurst for you, Gill.”, she said, her words dripping with venom, “We’ll need hostages if we are to get off this fucking ship.”

“You will hang for this! I’m in command of this mission! When we return to Pendleton, I...”, Gill’s tirade was broken by Eli’s heavy hand landing on his shoulder.

“You really should stop right there, unless you want us to throw you out of the nearest airlock.”, the cyborg seemed utterly serious, “The captain knows what she’s doing.”

“Thank you, Eli.”, Parkhurst nodded, “Mr. Gill, you can either shut up and follow the people who have actual experience at this sort of thing, or you can stay here and have fun being chased by killer robots. Alone. You have five seconds to decide.”

Gill grit his teeth. For all his anger at the woman’s impudence, he could feel the overbearing presence of the Monolith all around him. And it scared him enough that he dreaded being left alone in those long, dark corridors filled with inexplicable, inhuman horrors.

It was obvious the rest of the unit supported their captain. So he had no other choice but to say, “All right, Parkhurst. You’re in charge.”

“I’m glad you turned out to be such a reasonable person.”, Parkhurst couldn’t pass the opportunity to mock the self-important bureaucrat some more, “Now, ladies”, she said, turning to her prisoners, “Let’s talk about getting us a ride out of here.”

Somewhere in the darkness, a lone scarab watched the entire scene, relaying it back to the ship’s intelligence.


The Catalogue

Katherine watched the events before her in disbelief. The Monolith’s intelligence, once again linked directly to her, was showing her a feed from the scarab following Sara and Rana, ostensibly so that she could make sure they’d get back to the Strahl unharmed.

“You used them as bait!”, she cried. “You knew they’d draw out those BOSS commandos!”

“Your inference is correct, Katherine de la Poer. The sector’s internal sensor networks have been disturbed by BOSS sabotage. It was imperative to locate the team before they were able to inflict more damage.”

“You could’ve done this differently!”

“This was the most efficient method. Sara Pontcaire and Rana Shaheen are not in danger. Attack Units are converging on their location as we speak.”

“The moment your attack drones arrive Sara and her friend will be shot,” Katherine pointed out.

“Under present circumstances, you are completely correct. It is a risk calculation I found acceptable when compared to the reward.”

Katherine fumed at the machine’s response. As she did so, she noticed another element to the connection she had with the Monolith; access, if cursory, to its systems. She could look up the scarab drone’s data, and noticed it was not an ordinary one. “A package drone? For what?”

“For ferrying repair materials into the most confined spaces of myself,” the Monolith replied. “It carries a package that should be of use to Sara Pontcaire and Rana Shaheen. After all, I did not release them solely to see them killed.”



Monolith, Hanger Bay


Multiple possibilities were going through Rana’s mind as the Pendletonians led them up toward the Strahl. She was unarmed, still slightly woozy, and not quite in a condition to fight. Even if she could, being covered on all sides by armed men was not something it was within her skillset to deal with. Her only choice was to go along with things.

Once they were at the ship, which was clearly inhabited, Parkhurst and Eli pulled Sara and Rana out to the forefront. Rana felt the metal of a gun barrel press up against the back of her neck. Neither spoke at first, until Eli said, “There is someone in the cockpit.”

“Whoever’s on that ship, come out peacefully, or we start shooting,” Parkhurst called out.

From within the ship, Balthier and Vanrya were watching one of the cockpit monitors and the sight of Sara and Rana as hostages. “Well, this shall be interesting,” Balthier mused. “I suppose they are seeking a ride.”

“What is your plan?”, Vanrya asked.

“Thinking it up as I go,” he answered. He wasn’t entirely used to hostage situations in these circumstances. There had been that one time in Rabintown, but Quinn had been there to provide telepathic assistance and, eventually, a sneak attack with telekinesis to disarm the hostage-taker for a critical moment. Now he had no ESPers to help him out; it would be by guile and wit alone he saved his young passengers. “Get Umar and have him at the airlock, out of sight. With his favored weapon of course.”

“Of course.”

As Balthier got to the steps down to the lower deck, he added, “And get our wayward Valkyrie and the Doctor into the appropriate turrets, should we need heavy fire. I hope our host will understand if it comes to that.”

Vanrya nodded and continued on through the upper deck. Alone, though armed, Balthier ventured his way to the port airlock and extended the ramp from within before stepping out. He had his hands held outward, a gesture to ensure nobody flinched and opened fire. Facing Eli and Parkhurst, he spoke out, “Good day to you. I take it you are looking for a ride.”

“We want control of your ship,” Parkhurst clarified. “To make sure you don’t hand us over to the Anglians, we insist your crew be disarmed and under our watch at all times.” She held her gun up toward Sara’s temple. “I shouldn’t have to point out what I’ll do otherwise.”

“Ah, you want us at your mercy,” Balthier remarked. “I understand your concerns, but by the same token I am rather fond of my crew and vessel, so what guarantee would I have that you wouldn’t, at the moment we were at your mercy, kill us all and seize our vessel for yourselves?”

“We don’t have a guarantee to give you,” Eli answered. “You’ll just have to take our word for it. The alternative is we shoot the girls and probably you.”

“True. Of course...” Balthier smirked. “You do that, and my crew will slam the airlock close and take off, stranding you here. And I don’t think you want to stay, especially if you’ve killed me. Between you and me, I think this vessel has taken rather a liking to me.”

“We don’t have a lot of time for this,” Gill cried out nervously. “Just... just shoot them and rush the ship!”

Parkhurst turned back and glowered at him, clearly not appreciating the interruption.

“Stop standing there and shoot!”, Gill insisted.

“Fairly impatient fellow, are you?”, Balthier noted wryly. “No appreciation for the fine art of armed negotiations.”

“We’re not going to ask again.” Eli was still holding his gun to Rana’s head, ignoring Gill. “You can decide now whether we just shoot you or you do as we instruct. Because no way are we getting on that ship without being in control, we’d be just as dead as if we stayed here.”

“Most likely,” Balthier conceded, as unflappable as ever. “Though you would at least to live a bit longer and enjoy a last meal.”

As this exchange continued, Rana felt something metal touch her leg. With her ESP slowly starting to return she didn’t have to look down to know what was there, as she sensed it; a small scarab drone skittering up her leg. She froze, not wanting to give away any panic or cause her captor to shoot, feeling it slip up, unnoticed, until it reached her hip. It slipped over to her hand then, at which time Rana couldn’t help but glance down.

She watched the scarab slide open the end of her beamsaber and slip the weapon’s energy pack into its slot at the bottom of the hilt.

Her senses were returning. She could tell that time was running out. Eli’s finger was already tensed on the trigger and any moment the shooting would start. Sara’s life would be save depending on the next few seconds.

For what kit was worth, the only person who had been paying attention to Rana enough to notnice the scarab was Balthier. His expression remained neutral.but Rana could sense him ready himself. It was now or never...

She ducked and extended her arms more quickly than Eli could have anticipated, his kill-shot singing the top of Rana’s head. With all her might her power struck at Sara, sending her flying through the air and, more importantly, out of the fire zone. In the next maneuver she brought her beamsaber to life with a crackle. The blade of pure energy, violet in color, moved right through Parkhurst’s wrists before she could bring her gun to bear. She cried out in pain and shock at the dismemberment before Rana used a second TK nudge to knock her over, just in time for the first shots to come from behind her.

Her immediate survival was guaranteed only because of Balthier’s quick trigger finger. He snatched his gun out of its holster and began firing it on full automatic, not entirely recommended for a sidearm with limited energy capacity and cooling capability, but the circumstances warranted it. Rana rolled out of the line of fire and brought up her saber in time to deflect rounds coming her way. Precious few did, however, given what happened next.

Umarbacca appeared at the airlock, hefting his cannon and with an expression on glee on his face that could only come from a Bragulan soldier. The cannon erupted, a sapphire barrage striking the team members behind the kneeling forms of Parkhurst and Eli. Gill barely jumped away in time to avoid being hit by the spray of energy.

Eli saw his chance. With his cybernetic reactive speed he ducked under the fire, sprinted past Balthier, and leapt up to smash into Umarbacca. With cybernetic strength he ripped the cannon out of his arms, just for the angry Bragulan to smash him in the side of the face with a powerful claw. A normal un-augmented human probably would’ve had his jaw and cheek broken - the cybernetics in Eli’s head helped absorb the strength of the blow, though he did go flying off the ramp up to the Strahl. Roaring angrily, Umar jumped after him. Eli recovered and rolled out of the way. He used his hands to keep his balance on the ground as he kicked outward, hitting Umarbacca in the chest hard enough that even he faltered and had to step back, giving Eli needed seconds to recover. Getting back to his full height he reached for his gun and fired; the blast of energy struck Umar in the shoulder like a bullet of pure fire, even sending a spray of dark red Bragulan blood back onto the Strahl (finding it later will make Balthier most displeased, naturally).

Eli fired again, looking to put a round into Umar’s heart, but he had never fought a Bragulan before and wasn’t quite sure where the heart was. Nevertheless another burst singed fur, burned flesh, and generally did a fair bit of damage to Umar’s body.

At that point, Umar let out a fierce and terrible Bragulan curse. It was a curse so filthy, so disgusting, that simply uttering it in a Bragulan jurisdiction would get one sent to a de-education camp for “offense against the ears of the Mighty People of Bragule” (conversely, in Solarian jurisdiction it would merely get you a moderate fine from local authorities for noise pollution).

Image

It also had the effect of making any Human being facing a Bragulan uttering the curse have a sudden, overwhelming urge to do Numbers 1 and 2, with no regard for hygiene, clothing freshness, or personal dignity. It did, after all, tend to come out in such a ferocious, blood-thirsting roar that you would become instantly convinced the Bragulan was going to rip your head off, tear apart your body, then eat your guts for sustenance... and not necessarily in that order.

For what it was worth, Eli was not a normal human being, and had sufficient bladder and sphincter control to not do either. He did grow pale, though.

Umar lashed out in a rage driven by pain, lunging directly at the BOSS cyborg and tackling him. Every servo in Eli’s body, along with what was left of his muscles, fought back against the massive hulk of white and brown fur that was trying to rip him limb from limb.

The loss of Umar’s fire support might have caused everyone else to get shot down by the automatic-firing weapons of the other BOSS operatives. This didn’t happen because after Umar jumped out of the way, one of the sets of pulse gun turrets on the side of the ship turned and began to fire, spraying silver-sheened energy blasts around the BOSS team - the one that got hit disappeared in a haze of energy, leaving only smoking feet behind.

Noticing the fairly chaotic fire, Balthier sighed. “I need to teach that girl better aim,” he mused, knowing Marissa was at the turret controls.

Once behind cover the BOSS operatives nevertheless resumed fire, forcing Balthier back behind his ramp. Rana was sweating, working carefully, desperately, to deflect the energy bolts as they came at her. Umarbacca was still wrestling with Eli, the two throwing each other around the cargo bay. Only Sara was unengaged; she had hidden behind a fallen drone and was nervously looking for a way to get to the ship.

With her ESP senses returning, Sara thought she could sense something. She looked up and gasped in fright at the massive four-legged robot that had crept up to her, a long head with a single glowing eye. The size of the robot made its stealthy approach all the scarier. Rana wondered if more were hiding in the darkness around her, illuminated only by the nearby firefight.

Image

As she stared at the eye, which looked at her, she was surprised to hear its mechanical voice speak with a familiar, and even feminine, tone. “Sara, I’m going to give you a distraction, use it to run to the ship.”

“Kath... Katherine?”, Sara asked in a hushed whisper.

“Go! Now!” The drone turned away from her and loudly, audibly, clanged its legs on the floor before charging. That brought enough attention from the BOSS troopers that Sara sprinted forward, rushing toward Rana.

As she did so, Gill took aim.

To be truthful, Gill’s aim was not that of a marksman even under the best circumstances. Here he was, trying to use the wreckage of a war droid that Umarbacca had destroyed earlier as cover, holding his gun with one hand and trying to put a charged particle blast into Sara Pontcaire’s head. One last blow for his homeworld, for the society that reared him and was to be destroyed, for the home he’d never get to return to and the pretty teenage slave-maids he’d not enjoy the company of any longer. He took a shot that had a high likelihood of not hitting anything on Sara’s body.

As fickle luck - almost known to play a cruel joke or two on occasion - would have it, his shot went wide - no surprise - and right toward Rana.

Similarly, under optimal circumstances, even a young Sentinel like Rana, still so inexperienced in the ways of utilizing her power, would have sensed the wide shot coming and deflected or avoided it easily. But Rana was occupied - she had many energy bolts, some larger, coming toward her and directing all of her attention.

And so it was, to her surprise and Sara’s horror, that Gill’s shot meant for Sara’s head struck Rana instead, on the right side of her chest and rather dangerously close to her heart. She stared wide-eyed as the painful burning sensation of raw energy worked through her body, scorching tissue and flesh and burning the gown the Monolith had put her in. The pain of getting shot was such that no mental exercise, no “cut off pain from the mind” practice, could have stopped her from toppling over, though she held on to her saber for dear life.

RANA!!!” Sara rushed to Rana’s side and put an arm on her.

“Get her inside!”, Balthier shouted from his cover The BOSS team was starting to notice that their shots would get through now... but as things were, they’d never get the chance to do so. Not with the Monolith’s drones having finally arrived, swarming the area.

The massive four-legged beast was now between the commandos, kicking and flailing its limbs wildly. Despite its uncoordinated and random movements, any hit with one of the thick, powerful legs would be enough to instantly kill a man, and so the entire team scattered.

But other creatures crept from the darkness, evil shapes the BOSS team encountered before in the twisted corridors of the Monolith. With soulless, mechanical determination, a wave of skeletal combat drones advanced, showering the humans with blasts of sickly green energy. The volume of fire quickly grew overwhelming, and to add insult to injury, a giant swarm of scarab drones soon surged ahead of the robot infantry. Each BOSS trooper became an island in a sea of carapaces, the blasts of their small energy pistol only showing their desperation against a foe unfeeling and unstoppable. One by one, they succumbed, either maimed by terrible Collector weapons or dragged away by scarabs, screaming into the darkness.

Not far away from the battle, Sara was able to get Rana to switch off her weapon, allowing her to lift Rana into her arms, an impressive feat given Sara was generally not the most muscular or strong of girls. Balthier let off a few more shots from his almost-depowered and fairly hot gun before lowering it, not daring to holster it given how hot it looked. With his fire and the fact that the BOSS group realized they’d been outflanked by the Collectors, Sara had enough cover to bring the stricken Rana up the ramp.

Seeing Umarbacca still fighting with Eli, Balthier frowned. The last thing he wanted was to give the Monolith any opening, whatsoever, to take them prisoner again. As it was he wasn’t entirely sure it wouldn’t try to tractor them again, hoping that the distraction of the BOSS unit might keep it from entertaining such a thought until they were safely out of range. He raised his gun and, with a fairly impressive one-handed series of shots, hit Eli multiple times in the torso and hip, bringing the cyborg down. “Umar! Stop playing around and get in!”

Umar let out an angry retort. Balthier countered with a simple reminder of their situation. “Do you want to stay here, after all the bother we had in escaping?”

Nursing his wounds and hefting his cannon back into his arms, Umarbacca ran up the ramp with Balthier behind him. Those BOSS team members not yet overwhelmed by scarabs watched their only hope shut close.

Once inside the Strahl Balthier rushed for the cockpit. “Vanrya, are we ready to go?”

“Drives are powered up, we are ready,” she confirmed.

Balthier settled into his chair and let out a sigh. “Okay, girl, let’s get out of here. Everyone hold on!” He brought the sublight drives online and took control of the ship.

The Strahl lifted off the floor of the Monolith hanger bay and turned as it moved outward toward space, through narrow, winding accesways connecting the pressurized areas of the Monolith with the main hangar bay. Balthier almost sighed with relief seeing the massive armored door being open - obviously in order to receive the parasite craft. He expertly turned his ship in the confined space, and accelerated towards the gaping maw. As soon as he cleared the bay, the drive wings folded outward into place. They glowed bright white and suddenly the Strahl was off, rocketing away from the Monolith as quickly as Balthier could drive her.

Ahead of them the Pendletonian fleet was in its death throes, being torn up by the victorious, and now vindictive, Coalition Fleet.



Monolith

Back in the pressurized parts of the hangar bay, Oliver Gill watched the Strahl lift off. He felt despair of the sort he’d never experienced before. He looked around in stupor, watching his team being torn apart by the scarabs, or dying from horrible, sizzling wounds. He heard faint screams in the distance.

He slowly turned around, and saw the giant robot which charged his team moments ago. It walked towards him, slowly, with malicious deliberation, a disgusting mass of scarabs swarming around its legs. Gill thought about his home, the shining jewel of Pendleton. Of his family’s estate amongst the rolling meadows of the Astarian Mountains. In a way, that cold mechanical eye staring at him from under an armored hood represented the perpetrators who caused all his loss.

Deciding to meet his fate with dignity, remembering his family’s proud heritage in service to the Repulic, Oliver Gill straightened himself and looked straight at the giant war machine.

“You are vile traitors. Mark my words, machine, my people will remember this betrayal and, in time, they will come for you. And then you and your kind will pay for everything you’ve done!”, he said, surprised at himself. He felt no fear. All was lost, yet he wasn’t scared of what came next.

Perhaps he should’ve been, though, as without a word, the scarabs suddenly rushed forward, swarming all over him. The small machines cut their way into his flesh, and forced themselves inside his mouth, immobilizing him in seconds.

Oliver Gill was dragged away into the darkness, managing to only utter a single scream of utter pain and terror, which echoed in the massive chamber of the docking bay.



HMS Dauntless

Lieutenant Crawford noticed the contact racing toward the fleet, having launched from the Monolith, and immediately appraised Fisher of it. He directed his attention to the holotank and asked for a magnification. When he saw the form of the customized YPA-4700 appear a pleased smile crossed his face. “The Strahl, they made it!”, he exclaimed under his breath.



Battlestar Annapolis

Commander Hushy was delighting in the sight of the Pendletonian (Astarian!) ships dead in front of him when he got the report. “DRADIS reports contact from the Monolith, racing toward us at high speed.”

“Must be the god damned slavers who were coordinating with those god damned toasters,” Hushy proclaimed, still riled up and wanting to nuke. “Track and fire with all available guns. As soon as we get finished nuking our primary target into oblivion bring main guns around to engage too. NUKE THE ASTARIANS UNTIL THEY GLOW!



Strahl

Vanrya looked up toward the cockpit window with a start. “Balthier, we’re being sighted with targeting sensors.”

“Pendletonians?”

“Worse, going by the wavelength.” She looked at him. “DRADIS systems. Shepistani.”

“They must think we are the Pendletonians assigned to the Monolith,” Balthier observed. “Shooting first and scanning the debris to get answers later. You can always count on the Shepistanis to make life interesting.” He checked out the course plots even as the first light bursts of fire from the Annapolis’ guns raced in front of the cockpit window, a couple lucky hits striking the deflector but causing no damage. :”Raise Dauntless.”

“Trying, but we’re seeing interference, and our radio systems...”

“Strahl, this is Dauntless. Please respond.

Balthier activated the cockpit speaker. “Ah, [i}Dauntless[/i], good to hear from you. Is His Lordship the good Admiral Fisher there?”

A moment later, a voice that sounded irritated yet rather pleased answered, “I am here, Captain Meidan.

WIth matters such as they were, Balthier didn’t bother getting irritated over the way he was referred to. “Admiral! Stop that fool captain on the Annapolis for me, would you? And if you might arrange some docking space, we have wounded aboard.” Before he could say more, he had to maneuver hard to avoid being struck by fire from one of the larger batteries of the Annapolis.



Battlestar Annapolis

With a Pendletonian destroyer a burning, irradiated wreck with all hands reduced to corpses that could make a geiger counter go blind, the Shepistanis were about to turn their fury on the Strahl. It was smaller than the destroyers, a good challenge for his gunnery crews and their trusty DRADIS system... Hushy looked forward to their success.

“Patching through communication from Dauntless,” the crewman at Comms stated.

The low and irritated tones of Lord Fisher echoed through the CIC. “Annapolis, hold your fire dammit. The vessel that came from the Monolith is being piloted by friendlies. I say again, hold fire!”

God damned bleeding heart Anglians, Hushy thought to himself. “Are you sure they’re not an en...”

That ship’s crew is the only reason we didn’t blunder into an ambush when we arrived in-system, Commander. Cease fire now!

Glowering, Hushy nodded for his crew to do so... and promptly directed them to nuke a Pendletonian frigate still trying to fight.


Strahl

The Strahl zipped around the shattered wreckage of one flank of the Pendletonian fleet, making her course directly for Dauntless. Aside from a few Pendletonian ships with guns still active, briefly, nothing shot at them, and those Pendletonian derelicts with capacitor-charged turrets still trying to fire found that shooting at things identified them for immediate silencing by the torpedoes and weapons of the various support fighters and light ships.

While Balthier brought them toward Dauntless, Sara was with Rana and MacCulloch in one of the downstairs cabins that acted as MacCulloch’s infirmary. Rana was laid out on the bed, MacCulloch cutting her gown open to get a look at the wound. “Marissa, where’s that damned painkiller!”

“We’re out of the...”

“The other one, you...” MacCulloch bit down the remark he was about to make. “Blue bottle, not green!” He kept his critical medications color-coded for the benefit of Marissa, who had long proven that among other things she was not particularly good with big words.

“No,”, Rana rasped, trying to grip MacCulloch’s arm. “No painkillers. Makes my mind fuzzy, want to be with Sara...”

Sara, who was holding onto Rana’s other hand and arm for dear life, was crying bitterly. She felt the determination in Rana to remain awake for her. If it will save you, please let it!

It will make no difference either way, Rana answered, re-directing her attention to Sara. If I’m going to die, then that is my fate.

“Don’t say that! Don’t you say that!”, Sara cried aloud, unable to keep the sentiment in thoughts alone. “You’re not going to die!” She looked earnestly to MacCulloch, who was examining Rana’s wound with a scanner. “Tell her she’s not going to die!”

MacCulloch gave her the briefest glance. It was one of “Not if you let me do my job” annoyance, but Sara’s frightened state translated it into “Well, can’t say for sure... which means probably yes, she’s going to die, and you’re going to be alone again, with nobody in the world to love you.”

I’m always with you now, Rana answered. Her free hand rose up and touched Sara’s cheek, then went up to her shaved head. In here... She brought her hand back down to Sara’s chest, over her heart. ...and in here. We’re going to be together. And I love you...

Rana’s mind went quiet. Rana?!, Sara answered frantically, trying to get a response, but she got nothing. Her eyes had closed and her lips were not moving. In her emotional state Sara immediately presumed the worst and began to weep bitterly.

“Oh, quit yer damned blubbering,” MacCulloch growled. His finger stabbed to his makeshift bioscan device, which displayed EKG, EEG, and other data related to the body. It revealed that Rana was, of course, still alive. “I pumped her full of painkiller and sedative so I can work with her wound.” He indicated the patch of burnt flesh along Rana’s right side, just below her breast. “Would hurt like hell otherwise.”

“Is... is she going to....?”

“If we were on some craphole Outback world with no supplies, then you’d have cause to worry. But we’re not. So quit yer melodramatic blubbering, hold her hand, and let me keep her going until the Navy medics are here.”

Sara blushed a little from embarrassment.



HMS Dauntless

The hanger bay built into the large cruiser’s ventral and side hulls was becoming a den of activity. With the Pendletonian fleet mostly destroyed and only their “space militia” vessels remaining in orbit, easily swept away, Fisher departed the bridge to be present when the Strahl was brought in.

It was taken into one of the holding bays usually employed for gunboats but, due to the usual missions of the ship, also capable of holding full starships for a time. The Strahl was not even the largest ship to have ever been docked into its large bay, but it still took up a nice bit of room. Docking arms held it in place and a platform, with protective handrails, extended out to press against the ship’s starboard airlock.

First in were the medics, who emerged with a young woman. Fisher recognized her as the Silver Moon Sentinel Sara was traveling with. Sara was following closely and, most peculiarly, they had both had their heads shaved. Seeing the look on his face, Sara answered, “The Collectors, Admiral. They shaved our heads when examining our minds.”

“I’ll have to hear more about that later.” He nodded to her to go on and follow Rana to the ship infirmary. There was someone else he was interested in meeting.

Balthier emerged shortly thereafter. The two men gazed at each other across the length of the walkway before the ship captain deigned to step closer. “Ah, Your Lordship, a pleasure to see you’re looking so well. I trust you weren’t roughed up too greatly by the unexpected participants of this little war?”

“It pains me greatly to have to say this to an undisciplined outlaw and suspected pirate, but...” Fisher nodded. “I and every man and woman in this fleet who remains owes you a debt of gratitude for your warning, as garbled as it was. Had you not gotten that transmission through we would have come out of hyperspace at the limit and been beset upon at all sides.”

“Yes, well, I found the sudden presence of a Collector Monolith off putting. And to ambush your fleet like that given the advantages they enjoyed, well, that would hardly be sporting now, would it?”

“No, it would not,” Fisher agreed amiably. “I take it you will be angling for some kind of reward for this service?”

“Well, ships are fairly expensive pieces of equipment to operate and fly,” Balthier pointed out. “But as it is, I would be considering a different form of compensation. I left my wayward holy man and two of the Sisters back on Pendleton to track down a lead on Sara’s family. I would very much like to pick them up, preferably before the less restrained members of your coalition start chucking atomic weapons at the planet for sport.” A question came to his mind. “Who had the bright idea of inviting Shepistanis along anyway?”

Fisher couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Some daft fool in the Government, I’m sure. Anyway, I’m afraid it would be rather inappropriate for me to send a civilian ship, much less an outlaw vessel, into a war zone.”

“So you say.”

“Of course, if I am sending a former Royal Navy officer in as my agent to recover friendly agents and the family of an Anglian national from that war zone before they might be harmed, then it is rather more acceptable.”

“Ah. An agent of the Navy, eh?” Balthier gave a smirk at that. “Well, I have worked for worse employers. And it’s for the girl’s sake.”

“Then you’d better get going, we’ll be in Pendleton orbit in four hours,” Fisher pointed out.

Balthier answered with a nod and returned to his ship. Vanrya and Marissa were waiting for him at the airlock. “Sara and Rana will be fine,” he said to them. “Now let’s finish this work, for I have a sudden desire to be at the Blind Boar enjoying my brandy and the company of a sweet young barmaid who appreciates fine drink.”

“As we reach orbit I’ll see if we can reach Quinn on his phone,” Vanrya said, heading back to the cockpit.

Fisher watched from the hanger dock as the Strahl was released, at his order, and slipped down through the bay and back to space. “Good luck,” he breathed, turning afterward to return to the CIC and his duties as commander of the invasion.



Pendleton, Montalba Spaceport, ruins of Berth 43

Commander Jellico gasped, reaching for a particularly large piece of concrete, as he dragged his mangled, broken body from the ruins of Berth 43. He rolled over, pulling a broken leg from a crevice he managed to dig in the rubble. He didn’t even feel pain anymore: his body felt numb and weak, yet somehow, he managed to free himself.

He fell on his back in exhaustion, feeling blood slowly soak the concrete dust under him, and smiled, looking at the blue sky. At least he’d die outside, breathing in fresh air.

Funny how fate plays with us..., he thought idly, watching the clouds roll by. A few hours ago, he was standing watch on a boring assignment, babysitting this pier which housed a Collector diplomatic courier, trying to piece together confused news reports and radio broadcasts and see how the battle was doing. All of a sudden, the broadcasts stopped, and he got word to board and detain the Collector ship.

It was too bad it opened fire first, really. The BOSS had a bewildering array of heavy weaponry hidden all around the berth, more than enough to blast the craft to high heaven. The ship seemed to know this, though so it simply took off and blew the entire structure apart with a contemptuous shot from its main weapon array, burying them alive. The last thing Jellico heard was the sonic boom it left behind it as the hangar collapsed upon his head. For a diplomatic yacht, the thing sure packed a lot of firepower.

The funniest thing about this story..., Jellico thought, watching the first fiery re-entry trails of Anglian landing craft, ...Is that I always wanted to be a farmer.

As nuclear SAMs streaked into the sky over Montalba and initiated between the landing craft, commander Jellico sighed and expired, dreaming in his last moments of the life he could have had.

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Monolith, beyond the Pendleton hyperlimit

Space was filled with wreckage. Katherine watched the debris field through the eyes of the Monolith, admiring the beautiful array of radiation waves and thermal signatures. She could feel the emissions reach the ship’s sensors, she could taste the myriad of characteristics which pointed to their origins.

With her conscious mind, she knew those ships were graves to thousands of sentients. In a briefest moments, she could feel the same thought from the Monolith itself. Despite its cold, machine mind, it seemed to feel...sadness over the massive loss of life. Katherine thought to herself that there was still much she had to learn about those enigmatic creatures.

Her enhanced senses felt a flicker of light, a tiny speckle show up between the buzzing, teeming mass of the Coalition fleet. Somehow, she instantly knew which ship it was.

They made it, she said into the void, her voice booming inside the vastness of the Monolith’s systems, Sara is safe

Yes, the Monolith agreed, Are you ready, Katherine de la Poer?

She could feel the tension building within the massive vessel. It felt like a growling beast readying itself for a leap. A familiar sensation ran through her skin: goosebumps, at the memory of the eerie song of hyperspace.

I am, she said, and saw a whole new world open up before her. Hyperspace swallowed the ship, enveloping her. She heard its song, which sounded more beautiful than any recorded memory. She felt the exotic energies gently wave over her skin. The universe, with all its wonder, lay before her.

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She was free.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia

American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.

DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Still in GODDAMN UNREAL TIME

BATTLESTAR ANNAPOLIS, High Orbit Over Pendleton

INT. ANNAPOLIS - DROP SHIP

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"Let's move it, females! On the ready line. Let's go, let's go." Major Sarvylus Kreilagug barked as he and his commandos jogged into the dropship's rear doors.

"Hut-hut-hut!"

"I am ready, man. Ready to get it out. Check-it-out. I am the ultimate badass... state of the badass art! Humans do not want to fuck with me! Hey, Secret Agent Man, don't worry. Me and my squad of ultimate badasses will extract you. Check it out..." Zhyvel went on as he secured himself on the tiny Shepistani tactical bucket seats. "We've got incendiary isotope flamethrowers, man. Burninate half a city with this puppy! We got tactical dumb-rockets, K-bolt autoguns, RPGs. We got bionic-electronic skull smashers, we got nukes, we got knives, we got blunt sticks!"

"Save it," Major Kreilagug snapped.

"Sure, Hicks." Zhyvel replied off-handedly.

"Where the hell do you get this crap from, anyway?" Jagrisha asked seriously. "Have you been watching human holofilms again?"

"Something like that," Zhyvel grinned. "Best part of the movie, almost all the hew-mans died. Except the mommy and her cub."

"Awww," Jagrisha thought that was adorable. Everyone nodded at this.

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Their pilot was a man named Shroomshop. Unbeknownst to them (and even the other Shepistanis on board), he was actually a shroomthetic, an android advanced prototype sent by Fleet's Special Ops. He was the one who piloted the ship that took the Emerald Guard commandos and Colonel Velkro to the Annapolis. Now he would fly the commandos to Pendleton. Oddly enough, he also looked like Lance Corporal Henriksen, the famous Solarian Marine Corps officer who sold HOOAH! tactical snacks.

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The UD-4L Cheney was a state of the art space-to-surface orbital insertion vehicle used by Shepistani Special Ops, far more advanced then the Raptors in common use. The Cheney was now being borrowed by the Bragulans.

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Hydraulic arms lowered the dropship into its drop position. The movement was slow and rhythmic, like the peristalsis of a mighty metal abdomen. Then the bay doors opened like a great relaxing sphincter. Below it was the grand vista of space, and a gigantic view of the planet Pendleton.

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"Initiate release sequencer on my mark. Three. Two. One. Mark!"

The hydraulic arms released the Cheney, and the dropship plunged into Pendleton like an aerodynamic brick with armed-to-the-teeth Bragulan commandos inside it. Behind it, the bay doors clenched shut like a worn and used orifice closing after releasing a great and difficult load.

The Cheney was a brown thunder.

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"Switching to DCS ranging." Shroomshop said calmly. "Two-four-o. Nominal to profile. Picking up some hull ionization. Got it. Rough air ahead."

The dropship entered the atmosphere, hitting the air at ludicrous speeds. Atmospheric friction turned the Cheney into a great ball of fire in the planet's mesosphere, and the turbulence of flying so fast and so hard that the very air itself caught fire was not lost to the Bragulans inside the dropship.

"Stand by for some chop." Shroomshop warned over the intercoms.

"We're on an express elevator to hell; going down!" Zhyvel laughed nervously. He hated orbital drops. "Somebody wake up the Major."

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Soon the reentry eased off as they finally got to the stratosphere. The Cheney rocked and rolled after one more sonic boom, but by then they had decelerated to around Mach 3, putting them in calm speeds.

Zhyvel sighed in relief. The Major woke up as though he had taken a relaxing nap.

"We're in the pipe, five by five." Shroomshop reported.


The Cheney was the sole enemy aerospacecraft in the area's airspace, the Pendletonian IADS didn't deem it significant enough to expose their concealed SAM sites to counter-fire just to shoot a single small ship down. Instead, they delegated the task to the triple-A batteries that littered the cities of Eel and Dogadishu.

Air raid sirens wailed all over town. The flak guns placed in parks, on people's back yards, atop hospitals and orphanages and churches began opening fire. Tracers stitched the sky en masse, as flakbursts staining the clouds black. In another time, in another world, such a scene may be reminiscent of old historic wars of bygone eras. But in the grim darkness of the far future, this was a story of post-modern war.
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"Schnell! Schnell! Schnell!" the Pendletonian officers cried out. These were Germanian regiments, expats from some other world and perhaps from some other time, and with their jackboots and stahlhelms and picklehauben they defended the skies of Pendleton ferociously. "Achtung! Achtung! Achtung!"

"Annapolis this is Cheney actual," Shroomshop radioed to the basestar. "Meeting light AA fire, over."

"Copy that, Cheney, vectoring in two fighters to provide cover fire. Over."

"Thanks mang, over."

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With that, Lieutenant Thara Krace - callsign: STARFUCK - was given the coordinates of her next strafing run. She gave a shrill scream of delight as she clutched her joystick tightly, clasping it between her muscular thighs. She jerked the joystick hard, pulling her fighter up and relishing in the sensation of high-G vibrations that shook the airframe and her body.

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Likewise, so was her wingman Lee Shroomdama - callsign: FAPOLLO - disowned bastard prodigal son of renowned Admiral William Pavlik. He jerked his joystick as well, but no matter how many times he jerked his stick it seemed as though STARFUCK could always jerk hers harder. No matter, FAPOLLO was still one of the best jerks of the fleet, since he jerked his joystick off all the time.

Together, they came and formed up with each other. Flying low and hard to penetrate deeper and deeper into the Pendletonian airspace. At near-hypersonic speeds they tore through the sea level air, their wake violently displacing the air and water behind them.

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They decelerated at the last minute, rose up into the air and then dove down for a strafing run, ejaculating missiles and bombs and railgun rounds from the engorged tips of their fighters' mighty fuselage shafts, raining death and ruination on the Pendleton-Germanian AAA batteries. The Germanians rued their boner and detonated to the cries of "NEIN! NEIN! NEIN! NEIN!". The explosion was by the bay. It was a baysplosion. Both STARFUCK and FAPOLLO pulled up, jerking their joysticks hard and fast, soaring back up into air. They kicked in their ionic afterburners and left a scene of carnage behind them.

"Mein Fuhrer! I can't walk!" screamed one of the surviving Germanians who had lost both his legs.

"Damn we're good," FAPOLLO laughed. Previously he had to shoot down a Pendletonian civilian transport for violating the no-fly zone. The SHROOMLYMPIC CARRIER. Due to his unresolved Oedipal issues, he found inflicting violence upon lesser people to be highly cathartic and pleasurable. In terms of classical conditioning, he gained positive reinforcement whenever he jerked the gun trigger of his joystick. These qualities made him a top gun pilot for the Shepistani Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program - TOP SHEP. "There's another triple-A battery on top of that church."

"FAPOLLO, quit jerking off, I see one on top of that daycare center," STARFUCK replied. Whatever horrible qualities FAPOLLO had that made him ace material, STARFUCK had it worse, and that made her the ace of aces. Her mouth was full of amphetamine pills, and she was chewing 'em with her teeth, grinding the crystals and mixing it with her bubbling saliva, making her mouth look like it was foaming from rabies. One week of combat aerospace patrols non-stop no-sleep will do that to you.

"Let's split off and blow both up!" FAPOLLO suggested.

STARFUCK merely giggled and broke off to engage her target, the big gun on top of the daycare center. But it wasn't actually a big gun, it was just some billboard depicting some pictures of toys and bright colors to advertise the daycare center to childrens. However, she was sure she saw it brimming with anti-air artillery, and she did not doubt the visual acuity of her Mk. I Eyeballs now that they were enhanced by the methamphetamines dilating her pupils to the size of saucers. Whereas FAPOLLO had Oedipal tendencies, STARFUCK's mother was a bitch and a whore, so she developed an even worser form of Electra complexes. Her father died when she was young, but he had left a lasting impression on her. With those pleasant memories, she jerked her joystick's gun trigger and riddled the daycare center with repleted uranium shells. As she did so, she laughed. She laughed.

"STARFUCK, FAPOLLO, proceed to the following coordinates to provide aerospace support to withdrawing ground elements."

"What ground elements?!" STARFUCK didn't know about any goddamn elements. If the Anglians had done the right thing and let the Shepistanis join the land invasion, STARFUCK would've been down there with them too since she was a crackshot and could outfight and outshoot any Marine wherever whenever, just like how she could outfly and outkill any other fighter jockey in the 'verse. Hell, STARFUCK knew for sure that she could be flying and dogfighting while leading a land invasion and firefighting on the ground at the same goddamn time while also getting drunk and winning bar brawls against goddamn toaster skinjobs simultaneously. She was STARFUCK, she could do anything she goddamn wanted.

"The ELEMENTS YOSEMITE, mang!" They couldn't use the term 'Bragulian' over an unsecure comm, so that was their codeword for bears. Hopefully STARFUCK would get it.

"Oh, right." STARFUCK shrugged.

"I can't believe you forgot. That's what you were sent down here for."

"Cram it, Gayeta, before I rape you with my dick!" STARFUCK spat back.

"Man, I feel so jealous." FAPOLLO whined.

"Of who?" STARFUCK asked.

"I don't know!" FAPOLLO cried.

"Cut the chatter," Gayeta admonished over the comms. "Tight doesn't want you filling the airwaves with obsceneties and screams, damn it."

"TELL TIGHTWAD TO SHOVE A CORK IN HIS BOTTLE!" STARFUCK shouted back. She wished that alcoholic stayed anonymous, damn it.

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Back in Annapolis' CIC, communications officer Fenix Gayeta winced at the sharp stream of profanity coming out of his earphones. He took them off and put them down. Meanwhile, Commander Hushy and Colonel Velkro were looking at the progress of the Bragulian agent on Pendleton.

"There is this mass of ground vehicles in the highway ahead of my agent," Velkro observed in the DRADIS.

"Just thousands of civilians fleeing from the devastation we've induced in the city," Hushy said proudly. "They probably think they're all going to die. They're right."

"They will obstruct the passage of my agent."

"Well, then we'll just have to clear the road then, won't we?" Hushy smiled a very vicious-looking Shepistani smile. "Fire-control, make a nuclear airburst over the aggregation of ground vehicles. Mister Gayeta, instruct STARFUCK and FAPOLLO to continue giving our bear fire support."

"Aye aye, sir." Gayeta put on his headphones tentatively after STARFUCK's stream of curses abated. "STARFUCK, FAPOLLO, continue providing aerospace support to ELEMENT YOSEMITE. Be advised, danger-close nuke strike incoming."

"WHAT?!" came the reply. "They want us to give CAS while they nuke the goddamn place? Fucking-fuck! YOU BUNCH OF FUCKERRRRRS!"

"Goddamn it, suck it up and do your goddamn job you filthy whore!" Gayeta finally snapped back.

"Commander. Target laid in. Firing. DRADIS reports 50 kilotons."


DOGADISHU, Pendleton, Libertia District

"...like a giant strobe light, burning right through my eyes... but somehow I can still see. The children look like burnt paper... black, not moving. Then the blast wave hits them and they fly apart like leaves..."

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The artificial suns rained down to punish the degenerates of the city.

Bragga was facing away from the flash, looking out the back of the car and watching for pursuers, so he was not blinded by the atomic light. His driver, on the other hand, was sceaming in anguish as his corneas and retinas and pupils and sclera were flash-fried by the sheer intensity of the radionuclear radiance. He placed his hands on his eyes and cried in agony.

Bragga slapped the back of his head.

"Keep your hands on the wheel, damn it!" Bragga spat. Stupid puny human. "Keep on driving!"

"I can't see shit!" the human mewled like a frightened tree. His face suffered from first to second degree burns, as though scalded by boiling water. "My eyes!"

"Even if you had goggles, they wouldn't have done anything," Bragga muttered. He was not unaffected, but his thick layers of Bragulan furs protected his skin from the flash. The outer fur hairs were singed, but below that there seemed to be no damage. He sniffed himself and noticed that he smelled funny. "Just keep on driving! Listen to my directions, human! Forward!"

"What?!" the human was half-deaf.

"FORWARD!" and so was Bragga.

The Bragulan reached into his tiny fanny pack and pulled out a disposable anti-radiation injector. He jabbed it in his neck. He had a second dose of anti-rad and he looked at his driver. But he decided to give himself the second dose instead, just to be safe. He rolled up the windows and shut off the air conditioning, trying to avoid the fallout.

"Shits," he muttered to himself. There, before their tiny taxi, the mushroom cloud towered over the desecrated city of Dogadishu like a great gigantic genie of thermonuclear death. Bragga estimated it to have yielded at around fifty kilotons, remembering the nostalgic days of his childhood when he was in the Byzon Youth and they taught him and his fellow cubs how to estimate weapons yields just by looking. They used flash cards with pictures of nuclear explosions, it was like a game.

What Bragga saw before him, though, was no game.

They approached the city of Dogadishu, the end of the line for the highway. The pavement was severely cracked by the groundwave, a fact Bragga noted, since back home Bragulan roads were rated to remain intact despite a megaton-yield warhead airbursting above them. On the fractured roads were cars, hundreds of them, maybe more. Refugees. Civilians fleeing from the previous orbital bombardment. They passed by an overturned bus, disemboweled by the overpressure, and Bragga gave his driver directions to avoid bumping into the unmoving cars in that post-apocalyptic traffic jam. The cars were much closer to the airburst and had taken its brunt, as evidenced by the charred remains inside the cars and buses.

Realizing that there may be some data to be had, Bragga took out a small camera and began taking pictures. The camera quickly began spitting out developed polaroids.

Image Image

He heard the sirens of an oncoming ambulance. He turned and saw it stop just in front of them. Humans started coming out of the vehicle, paramedics who began searching the area for survivors to rescue. They saw the intact taxi and moved towards it. A paramedic waved at them.

"Hey hey, are you okay?" the paramedic shouted.

Before Bragga could shoot him, the paramedic exploded as a repleted uranium round literally dismembered him to smaller pieces. Bragga covered his ears as the deafening noise of ion drives filled the air, and more cannon fire tore the other paramedics. A missile blew the crap out of the ambulance, turning it into a flying fireball. Overhead, a pair of fighters flew by leaving ionic contrails in their wake.

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Bragga nearly threw himself down to the floor of the car. The fighters were pulling up and turning around, possibly for another airstrike. Damn, he had never expected the Pendletonians to send this kind of shit after him for shutting a few of their stupid PIE holes. Shits.

The airstrike didn't come, but Bragga nonetheless carefully looked out the back window. Behind them, a kilometer or two out in the highway, was a small convoy of military-looking vehicles. PDF, like those from the checkpoint whose men Bragga killed. Flying over the formation was a black rotocopter, the same one that had been tailing him for a while now.

"Shits," airstrikes, pursuit vehicles, the day couldn't have gone worse. Bragga smacked the head of the taxi driver. "Go! Forward! Faster! Now!"

"What's happening?!" the taxi driver screamed blindly.

"Nothing, that's what!" Bragga roared. "Now drive!"

He was about to turn back to look at his pursuers again, but another - lesser - flash of light shone from their location. Bragga covered his eyes with his paws, expecting the worse, but when he opened them again he saw that the convoy was nowhere to be seen - and the rotocopter was hurtling across the sky in a downward spiral. The telltale ionized streak of a railgun round lined the sky. It came from orbit, just like the previous bombardments that had so coincidentally and fortuitously wiped out his previous pursuers.

Bragga finally realized what was going on. Then the fighters that had previously strafed the ambulance went on to strafe the flailing rotocopter, striking it with a missile and causing it to explode midair whilst still spiraling.

"No shits," Bragga chuckled. Then with a gleeful expression on his bear face, he developed a cunning plan. An idea worthy of the Imperator. "You, driver, turn left!"

The driver did so and turned left. With another command, he turned right. Then he made a U-turn. They passed by burning suburbs and collapsed buildings, past countless irradiated corpses and by fleeing families, evacuees and refugees. They nearly stopped at another checkpoint, with alerted PDF troops readying to fire on them at sight, but the fighters strafed them - just like how they strafed that ambulance - and the checkpoint became no different from the other killing fields blossoming in Pendleton at that very moment. There was a park, families used to play there but now it was becoming a field hospital with hastily set up tents where doctors and nurses and other emergency medical personnel treated radiation burn victims. That familiar fighter passed over it, mere feet above the highest medical-teepee, and with its ionic drives the fighter kicked up its afterburners and spewed plasma exhaust all over the place. The doctors, nurses, midwives, paramedics, the patients and the burn victims, and the emergency tents were all set on fire again.

"Ha-ha-ha-ha!" Bragga laughed, but it was only the beginning. He had a particular destination in mind. Soon they would arrive.

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MCNAMARA's. It was a cheap carbon copy of the MacMillan's found in the reviled Sovereignty. It was founded by the incompetent SecDef of Pendleton, Robert Satan McNamara (not to be confused with Senator Robert Space McNamara of the Solarian Sovereignty), after he got his stupid self fired for losing the first war against the Anglians. But these were not the reasons why Bragga loathed the place. Oh no.

He hated it because during his career as a circus bear, which was his miserable cover in Pendleton, he once had to serve as a mascot for MCNAMARA's. Chained to the side of the fastfood establishment, getting food and craps thrown at him by meddling kids, laughed at because he was forced to wear miserable colorful clothing, he had longed for a day like this. Revengeance.

In memory of his dead partner, who MCNAMARA's had turned into burger meat. Bragga had to maintain his cover even as they shoved his partner, his comrade, into the meat grinder before cooking his pulped remains and feeding them to the miserable children as burgers, while harvesting his other organs for aphrodisiacs. Bragga had seen it all, and had forced himself not to shed tears.

But now...

Not caring for radio silence, not caring if opening comms-channels would compromise his position or anything, Bragga activated his decoder ring.

"That MCNAMARA's! Sniper fire coming from it! Request immediate air support! Now!" Bragga cried. His cry was not of rage, but of horror, of fear, of anguish, all these things he felt as he watched his comrade getting eaten by the organ grinder, all these things he had to bury within himself as he listened to his partner's screams of anguish as they were drowned out by the sickening sound of his bones being crunched into pulp by the murderous meat-machines.

"What the fuck?! Is this ELEMENT YOSEMITE? There's no fucking sniper fire or shit from that goddamn place! Get your eyes checked! Better yet, try some crystal meth!" came the reply. "STARFUCK, over."

"NO!" Bragga roared, tears streaming down his eyes. "DESTROY THAT MCNAMARA'S!!!"

The fighter came down for a bombing run and dumped a small diameter bomblet right into the middle of the establishment, straight through the roof. Inhabitants, perhaps people merely using that place to hide, or patrons having their last meals, tried to clamber out of the doors but in their sheer numerosity they blocked each other's way like those stampedes where there's a fire and people crush each other trying to get out before failing to do so and getting themselves burned to death. Except, this time, there was no fire, just a detonating bomb that exploded them to death. It rained people parts and unfinished last meals.

Bragga felt like he should've said a witty post-mortem one liner like 'supersize that' or something, in memory of his fallen comrades. But he didn't have to say anything at all.

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Thanks to the mushroom cloud blotting out the sun, and all the smoke from all the fires that ravaged both Eel and Dogadishu, the day had become a post-nuclear night. The MCNAMARA's was a well-off establishment and had enough cash to pay for its own privatized fire department, which responded quickly. Helpful bystanders also gathered and gave aid, since all of them and their kids loved MCNAMARA's.

A shriek filled the airwaves as STARFUCK and FAPOLLO's starfighters swooped down and killed the living crap out of them all. Unlike depleted uranium rounds, repleted uranium rounds weren't devoid of radiation, but were in fact reprocessed to give them more radiation. The rounds had lead sabots to protect the weapons handlers, but when they left the barrel the lead sabots were discarded. At multi-mach speeds, the repleted uranium bullets tore bystanders and privatized firemen to pieces, and set the firetruck on fire too.

Meanwhile, Bragga and the taxi driver were nearing their next location. Halfway across the city, this time it wasn't another MCNAMARA's. It was the Pendleton Widows and Orphans building.

Bragga remembered, oh Byzon, he remembered the horror. The horrer.

They brought him to the goddamn orphans because the poor miserable hateful little shits had never seen a bear before. They brought him there in chains, his mouth gagged, his body poked and prodded by animal-agiels and shock prods and all manner of instruments. Upon seeing him, the little hatelings squealed with glee and the little crapfactories poked and prodded and pulled out bloody clumps of his fur. They rode him, made him do tricks like some kind of animal, like a dog, had him ride his bicycles and tricycles, smeared him with their shits, drew finger paintings on his hide after ripping off all the fur. They invited a clown, who also happened to moonlight as a bear wrestler, and after getting dosed with tranquilizers Bragga remembered how he had his shit ruined by a bear wrestling clown. He still felt the pain of getting punched right in the snout. The sheer humiliation as the children laughed at him, giggled and squealed so hard that they pissed themselves. He would never forget this. He would never forgive.

Goddamn orphans.

Somehow, someway, the orphanage seemed more fortified than everything else in both cities so far. With roadblocks and piles of burning tires and garbages blocking the roads, it was impenetrable. All Bragga could do was look at it from a distance. But he didn't have to be close.

Already, the precision railgun strikes that followed behind him had nuked half the city.

Now it was just a matter of telling them to blow up the right building and -

"STARFUCK, that building looks like it's got a SAM battery on it!" one of the fighters said over the radio, which Bragga could hear from his decoder ring. He identified this one as the one called FAPOLLO.

"Which building? The Pendleton Widows and Orphans building?" prior to the mission, STARFUCK had meticulously studied Anglian intel on Pendleton. With her keen sociopathic intellect, she reasoned that the Astarians would most likely position their AAA batteries on orphanages and hospitals and churches and schools, since that was what she would do in her position knowing that the Anglians were a bunch of bleeding-breast liberal women - unlike her! So she had set about identifying and committing to memory each and every elementary school, kindergarten, nursery, maternity house, orphanage and old folk's home on the patch of Pendleton assigned to Shepistan. "I see it, moving to engage!"

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"Wait, what orphanage? There's an orphanage?! Fuck you, STARFUCK, that's mine!" FAPOLLO protested.

"Up your worn out ass, FAPOLLO!" STARFUCK shouted back. "You shot down the SHROOMLYMPIC CARRIER without me! I had to settle with just shooting the ones who got out on parachutes!"

"Well, you fucked up that daycare center!" FAPOLLO countered. "It didn't even have any triple-As on it!"

"I SAW A GODDAMN GUN ON THE BUILDING, YOU LITTLE SNIVELLING DADDY'S BITCHBOY SON OF A BITCH!" STARFUCK screamed over the radio. "I SAW IT WITH MY OWN TWO EYES! THE METH DON'T LIE!"

"But it's my turn!" FAPOLLO whined. "You even shot that ambulance! I wanted to shoot the ambulance! And the firetruck! And you set that whole field hospital on fire!"

"THAT'S CAUSE YOU CAN'T KEEP IT HARD ENOUGH LONG ENOUGH!" STARFUCK laughed. "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"You whore!" FAPOLLO screamed. "WHORE! WHORE! WHORE!"

STARFUCK kept on laughing.

"This is Annapolis actual to all points," came the voice of Commander Hushy, though Bragga had no idea who or what a Hushy was, or an Annapolis for that matter. "Will the two of you just cut it out?"

"AWWW! HUSHY-WUSHY WANTS TO PLAY!" STARFUCK was foaming. "GO LUBE UP GAYETA'S ASSHOLE AND STICK IT IN, Commander."

"Bitch, please." Hushy spat over the comms. "That's it. Fire control, drop the fucking hammer!"

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Unlubricated RODS from GOD descended down like lightning, super lightning, and with standard Shepistani rounds they vaporized the Pendleton Widows and Orphans building like it was nothing. One second, it was there, and in a blink of an eye and a bright flash later, it was gone. All that remained was a deep crater several hundred feet deep, like a volcano in that it was filled with molten rock and glassed sand.

After that exchange, and the orphanage's mysterious disappearance, it suddenly dawned upon Bragga that those who were providing his skyborne protection might not have been entirely sane. Being in a tiny tin can taxi around a field of flattened ruins where, mere minutes ago, there had been an entire block of big buildings, further stamped this realization into Bragga's bear Bragulan brains. He decided to cut all the extracurricular stuff and head for the extraction point, pronto!

"Forward! Keep on going forward!" Bragga kept on roaring while the taxi driver kept on crying. Though deprived of his sight, the puny human was nonetheless shellshocked by the sounds he heard and the smells he smelled. They say those who become blind develop better hearing or smell to compensate. Turned out the taxi driver was a fast learner, and with his one good ear with the non-perforated eardrum he had heard the screams and wails and lamentations of innocent men, women and children. With his partially broken nose, he could smell the scent of death, the burnt human meats aflame all around him. This made him weep for Pendleton while his passenger kept on snarling and growling and barking. The last thing he had seen with his eyes was an artificial sun raining down to punish the degenerates of the planet.

Suddenly the taxi's wheels exploded. All of them, as they ran over a spike strip, blowing out all the tires. Before the taxi driver had the good sense to react and pull the breaks, their car was stopped for them - by a helpful truck crashing right into it, face first, demolishing the front of the car and smashing both Bragga and the driver with the impact.

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The driver's head kissed his steering wheel and he sank below the dashboard. Bragga was thrown to the front passenger's seat, and his head banged off the windshield.

Bragga didn't even bother to see if the driver was still alive. The first thing he checked was his package. Good thing it was all intact, if the radium capsules broke in the floppy disks or the cassette, they would all be dead instantaneously. But they weren't. Bragga spat out several broken teeth, dislodged from his mouth after the violent impact. No matter. He cranked up his decoder ring's transmission. He would soon be extracted.

He opened the door and tried to crawl out. His leg was broken. It hurt. He winced.

"Hey, you aren't trying to short change me, are you?" the driver uttered feebly from his crumpled-up position.

"Here," Bragga handed him five Bragulan roubles and gently slapped him in the cheek paternally. "Thanks for the ride."

"But... but what about the $50,000 in mileage you racked up?!" the taxi driver complained.

"THEY CAN BILL ME." Bragga snarled.

With that, he crawled out of the ruined taxi and threw himself on the pavement. He struggled to get up, winced as he got on his broken leg, but with the steely resolve of a Bragulan he managed to limp forward feebly. But before he could even survey the scene, he was struck in the face by something hard and something fast, and he collapsed on the ground.

He looked up and groaned. The PIE men had found him.

Image

"BEAR TRAP has been sprung."

With that, several manholes beside Bragga opened and sewer spooks emerged and surrounded him. They also came from a nearby subway. They must have had traveled underground to avoid the orbital bombardment and air support. Slow learners. They were now encircling him and pointing their guns at him and squinting at him menacingly. But Bragga chuckled. It was a painful chuckle, repeatedly bruised ribs hurting with every motion.

The head PIE man instructed his subordinates to back off from Bragga.

"Relax. He can't hurt anyone anymore," the boss said, seeing that the Bragulan's needler and fire axe were safely left back at the taxi. Strange for him to say that, though, as a proverbial army of PIE men emerged from the manholes and subway station. The path of devastation Bragga had wrought, the death and destruction he had torn through two cities, all of it warranted them bringing some serious firepower to town. "Such trouble over a single agent. I never knew the Bragulans were in with the Anglians, never thought your kind would have anything to do with this. Who knew?"

More PIE men had gathered, filling the city block with spooks. The spookshow even brought a cage with them.

"If the Anglians consider you such an important operative, and if you've got such important files with you, then we might be able to use you," the boss man mused. "Am I rite?"

"Wrong." Bragga growled as he brought out Sascha's tiny weapon. A Noisy Cricket.

He squeezed the trigger and the small gun released a HUEG blastwave that blew the boss man away, lifting him off his feet and hurling his dead corpse a hundred feet away. The weapon's recoil would've thrown a human wielder like Sascha, bless his non-existent soul, some distance, but Bragga was in a prone position and was no mere human. He was Bragulan. He took the brunt of the recoil, pointed the Cricket at another PIE man, a group of them, and smeared them on a wall.

With that, Bragga reared up on his hind legs and let out a mighty warcry, a proud bellow worthy of the great and noble Bragulan warriors of old, a resonant roar that echoed throughout the ruins of the fallen human city of that fallen human world, proclaiming for all to hear that amidst humanity's defeat he - OBRANON BRAGGA - still stood victorious.

He fell.

PIE men cautiously neared him, one jumped and smashed the hand of Bragga that carried the Noisy Cricket and kicked the tiny thing away. They brought the bear cage nearer.

Bragga chuckled. Though he had lost his suicide syringe in the taxi, he still had one last instrument of Bragulan Directive. A poison pill hidden inside a fake tooth. All he had to do was bite it, and it would release a delayed-action molecular acid throughout his circulatory system, which would cause his body to melt while he was still alive. It would not completely skeletonize him, you needed a syringe of such toxin for that, but it was good enough that there would be nothing left for the enemy to autopsy.

The fake tooth was gone. Some of the teeth on that side of his mouth had broken off, and he had spat it out. Including the fake tooth with the death pill.

No.

There was one final recourse. With one last heave, Bragga rolled on his back and reached into his pack for the floppy disks and cassettes. The combination locks, if he inputted any wrong number, the locks' failsafe would break the radium capsules. Every living thing within a hundred feet would wither and die from the radiation.

He took one last reprieve in that the floppies and the cassette were still intact and whole. Even in the end, he had performed his duties to the best of his abilities.

The PIE men were all around him now, struggling to lift him up but failing, because he was one heavy bear.

Bragga smiled serenely. It was over. He looked up into the sky one last time as he prepared to break the lock. The prevailing wind had blown the clouds of black smoke away. Now the sky was clear and blue. Not like the perpetual smog of mighty Bragule, so beautiful.

Oh well, this would have to do.

His eyes focused on one last thing. A bird flying in the sky. Perhaps it was a vulture, coming to feast on a billion corpses. Bragga knew he would be amongst them. But he would make sure all these PIE men would join him in that feast unknown.

The bird was growing larger and larger. In a moment of clarity, the image of the bird resolved, and he saw that it wasn't a really a bird. It wasn't a plane, either. It was...

Image

"Cheney actual to all points, making final approach to ELEMENT YOSEMITE, entering extraction zone in three... two... one. Now." Shroomshop activated the dropship's weapons systems. The armaments flipped out of the UD-4L like a missile-armed Swiss knife. "Hostiles detected. Engaging. Danger close."

The dropship unleashed a torrent of fire from its independently targeting particle beam phalanx, frying PIE men and half the city with a vwap while tactical smart missiles exploded several surrounding structures to clear the area and make a flattened field for the d-ship to land. With shroomthetic precision, Shroomshop manually aimed the dropship's minigun and began shooting the heads off the PIE men nearest to Bragga.

The dropship banked low and opened its rear ramp. Though it was still ten meters in the air, its passengers did not hesitate to disembark from the vehicle. The Emerald Guard commandos jumped off without rappel lines, and landed on the ground with a hard impact. Power armor hydraulics and shock absorbers dealt with the rough landing, along with several PIE men squished underfoot.

The commandos drew their weapons and began killing people with ruthless efficiency.

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"INCOMING!" A PIE man screamed, warning his squad mates right just as a massive armored Bragulan came rushing at him.

"HIIII-YAAAAAA!" came the garbled warcry of Jagrisha Urdarvus as she delivered a Patriotic Brag-jitsu Chop to Break the Weakling Neck of Spineless Antidisestablishmentarianismist Counter-Revolutionaries. With her hydraulic power suit, this martial arts maneuver ended up lopping the human's head clean off his body. As the headless norseman crumpled headlessly, Jagrisha examined her handiwork and nodded approvingly. "Nice."

"Woah, Jagrisha, you've been working out. I never saw you decaffeinate someone before." Zhyvel pumped his underbarrel microgrenade launcher and with a mighty KA-THUNK! sent an explosive shell into the back of a retreating PIE man's head. The running man kept on running, momentum carried his still-standing corpse, and then his head exploded. Along with the rest of his body and his squad mates. Zhyvel wondered about that, if the grenade exploded inside a person's head, you certainly couldn't call it a ground burst. Was it an airburst, then? Either way, it was still funny and so he laughed. "Ha-ha! Exploderized!"

"Save the trash talking and one-lining for later, boys and girls." Major Sarvylus Kreilagug brought his B-35 autocannon to bear, the smart-steadicam mounting pointing the giant big-bore battle strap-on towards the designated targets. The revolver cylinder began spinning and shoving bigass bullets into the chamber as the cannon roared to life and sent high caliber metal death at the enemy. PIE men who hid in a miraculously still-standing building were killed when their inadequate cover was vivisected by bullets. Each high-explosive round likewise splattered those hit, blowing them up into fine mist. "Acquire the agent and extract him. We don't have to kill all the humans."

"You're starting to sound suspicious, Major!" Zhyvel joked as insufficient human small arms pinged off his armor. Bullets ricocheted, but the lasers managed to leave scorch marks that ruined the paint job. Zhyvel shouldered his B-11 and returned fire, firing a burst and landing two in the chest and one in the head, but with each round going in three separate people.

"Well, you can kill most of them," Sarvylus conceded. His smart-cannon pointed him to the pillars of the building, and with precision he fired burst after burst, breaking the support columns with his bullets. Shortly afterwards, the whole building collapsed, and the smart-cannon began targeting at the humans who were buried alive in the rubble so that they would be buried dead instead.

A huge gout of radioactive flame spewed forth from Silent Pegidur's burner, bathing some more humans in an incendiary isotope fluid fire. The humans he was engaging bid a hasty withdrawal, leaving their still-standing and still-burning friends behind, who tried to run after them while still on fire. Like the rats they were, the humans jumped down into a manhole, retreating into the sewers. Other humans were also retreating in other manholes. Silent Pegidur noted this and shoved the mouth of his nuclear flamethrower down one manhole, spewed a mighty stream of radioactive fire, and noted with satisfaction that flames also erupted from the other nearby manholes that the soldiers had escaped to. The tunnel system was interconnected, so they all burned to death.

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"Nice babycue, eh Pegidur?" Zhyvel laughed at the absurdity of it all.

"Still not getting it right!" Jagrisha admonished him. For someone so well-versed with human computer technology, Zhyvel was just inept at getting the words and phrases and grammars right. He was like a particularly dull cub and Jagrisha, being a school teacher before becoming a lethal supercommando, was very impatient with these slow types.

"Enough fucking around! We've already killed more people in this long ass post than the rest of the Anglians have in their short fleet battle!" Major Sarvylus had grown impatient. Now he was using his smart-cannon's sensors and motion detectors to search for the agent. He was worried. With so many ordnances expended in such a small vicinity, there was a good chance that the agent might be already very dead. "Find the agent, get him to the dropship!"

The smart-cannon's sensors made a dinging sound. It had homed in on the agent's IBGV-issue decoder ring.

"There!" Sarvylus pointed. He jogged to the agent and checked him. Still breathing. Still alive. "Agent Obranon Bragga, the Imperator has not abandoned you. The Emerald Guard has come for you."

"Glory boys, always waiting for the last moment..." Bragga coughed weakly. "All the data I have, it's intact... I have done my mission."

"Yes, you have," with that, Sarvylus stood up and ordered Silent Pegidur to pick him up. "Get him and go, get to the chopper!"

Pegidur nodded. He removed his nuclear flamethrower and placed it on the ground, he activated the detonator's countdown clock - because all Bragulan nuclear flamethrowers were built to be also usable as time bombs, turning them into nuclear thermobarics. Then he picked Bragga up with one hand and headed for the dropship. The Cheney had finished sterilizing its landing zone.

"Jagrisha, Zhyvel!" Sarvylus barked. "Fall back with me, come on! Move out!"

"Hut-hut-hut-hut!"

They made a quick withdrawal, but nonetheless maintained their formation and firing angles to cover each other as they fell back. They made it to the dropship, and without further ado the Cheney took to the skies and prepared for an expedient escape into orbit. The aerospacecraft's variable-cycle turboramscramfanjets shifted gears and prepared for boost phase as they reached the upper atmosphere.

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Suddenly, alarms began blaring throughout the dropship.

"I'm reading six... no. Seven thousand SAMs all over the continent, all active. They're launching missiles!" Shroomshop warned. "We got radiological alarm! Vampires incoming! Strap yourselves in bears, we may be in for some turbulence."


TO BE CONTINUED
Last edited by Shroom Man 777 on 2010-08-11 03:44pm, edited 1 time in total.
Image "DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source)
shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people :D - PeZook
Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic
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Force Lord
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Force Lord »

CNS Datton
Pendleton, The Outback


Lieutenant Ricard Sorge took a deep breath. This was it. He would do his part for the Centrality and try to delay the Anglians as soon as possible so that the Commodore could do his deed. His orders were quick,

"Shut down sub-light drives, but try to keep the shields on. Prepare for boarding attempt, but do not fire unless fired upon. Prepare a channel to the Anglian vessel that fired at us."

The monitor soon showed the bridge of the Anglian ship.

"This is the CNS Datton. It appears we owe you an explaination."
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Force Lord »

CNS Govard, Centralist 5th Fleet
Near the Outback, Deep Space


Admiral Tardis thought that he was going to have a heart attack.

The Datton had been caught. It was only a matter of time before it would be boarded.

That bastard Forg be better be quick in pushing that button, or shit will happen back home, he thought. For if a strong electromagnetic blast hit the Datton, it would be unable to do anything.

Damn you Enduvos for being such a paranoid prick!

Tardis could only hope that Kordis arrived and say everything...

CNS Angom, Task Force 7
B-A Gap, The Outback


Vice-Admiral Kordis was not happy.

He had just recieved word of the Datton's fate. He hoped to Dovan's word that Forg would scuttle his ship and go down with it.

But now his job just became more important. If he told the Coalition why the Centrality was here, he may yet be able to save Forg's sorry ass...if he still had one.

"Sir, our force has left hyperspace. Sensors detect a flotilla of Coalition warships several kilometers from us."

"Hail them."

"Which sir?"

"Whichever you want."

The monitor soon showed the bridge of said ship. Kordis talked to the naval officer in front of him.

"This is Vice-Admiral Guring Kordis. We are from the Centrality. We do not seek a confrontation. I can explain."
Last edited by Force Lord on 2010-08-11 02:57pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by MKSheppard »

Battlestar Annapolis

IN GODDAMN UNREAL TIME.

Commander Hushy and Colonel Velkro watched as the Cheney boosted its way through the lower atmosphere for the thin high air of the upper atmosphere.

"Thank god this will all be over soon," muttered Hushy.

"Why so glum? We are having much fun here. I believe we've eliminated... ninety ambulances, three hundred police cars, five thousand civilian cars, thirty school buses and one clown car." noted Velkro as he read the DRADIS readouts.

Suddenly the relative silence of CIC was shattered by a blaring noise.

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"Radiological Alarm! Large amounts of nuclear armed weapons are being launched from surface to air sites all over the quadrant below us!"

Hushy stared up at the DRADIS, looking at the analysis and vector readouts for the missiles.

"We got nothing to worry about those. They're too weak to reach our orbit; and those that do can easily be handled by our flak batteries."

"Commander...what about your dropship?" asked Velkro. "It is flying significantly lower and slower than our present orbital velocity."

Fuck, the goddamned bear is right. It's the goddamned slavers, trying to make sure we don't get the agent out after all.

"Helm!" shouted Hushy in the most authoriative voice he could muster. "Roll us to bring dorsal batteries and launchers to bear on the target area!"

"Battery commanders are to concentrate on destroying enemy missiles inbound for the dropship; I want a wall of flak between it and whatever they can throw at it!"

"That won't do it, Commander!" shouted Velcro. "They can just keep launching more missiles. Your DRADIS says the Dropship won't reach orbital speeds and altitudes for another ten minutes. Those sites must be silenced!"

Hushy looked at Velkro and in that moment their eyes met.

Shouting to the weapons officer over the din of battle, Hushy said it in the widest, bluntest terms possible.

"You have permission to strike every possible military target within a twenty kilometers of the dropship's position...Strategic weapons release is authorized."

"Yessir! Target any possible military target....does this mean cities? They're of stratego-military use." asked the weapons officer.

Hushy glared at him before realizing that he was nominally under the command of the god-damned Anglicans.

"Avoid cities wherever possible; target only the mobile surface to space launchers. But if a launcher complex is in a city...too bad."

Moments later, low rumbles passed through the deckplates of the Annapolis as the dorsal heavy missile launchers popped their doors.

Image

"Mister Gayeta, signal to the dropship that heavy strategic weapons are inbound to the area and to rig for blast."

Dropship Cheney

Image

"This is your captain speaking. The enemy missiles have either been decoyed by our ECM system or destroyed by Annapolis. However, our return salvoes will pass through this airspace; so all hands, brace for turbulence."

In the cargo bay of the Cheney; the Emerald Guardsmen weren't buying any of it.

"Brace for turbulence? My ass! Ain't nothing that could cause turbulence this high." stated Zhyvel.

"Actually...Are any of you familiar with the old Shepistani nursery rhyme about the meaning of Fun?" asked Lieutenant Shroommeyer, their loadmaster for this trip.

Seeing a sea of blank faces, he began to chant it to clue them in.

"F is for the FIRE that burns down the whole town!"

"U is for Uranium...BOMB!"

"N is for no SUR-VI-VORS!"

That made everyone get the message, and soon everyone was strapped in, and none a moment too soon.

Up in the cockpit, the world went blindingly white, and even Shroomshop had to dial down the intensity of his shroomthetic eyes to avoid imaging element burnout.

Image

Image

Even his artifical reflexes aided by the dropship's computer almost weren't enough as the huge blastwave reached up even to this thin altitude and tossed the dropship around like a tin can.

But luckily, the worst was over as fast as it began and control returned quickly, and the dropship resumed its ascent slope towards orbit.

Image

Behind them the sector of Pendleton that they had taken off from was blanketed by nuclear mushroom clouds.

Image

Battlestar Annapolis

"Sir, priority one call for you from Coalition fleet HQ requesting that we cease fire!" came the shout from comms.

Hushy sighed at that. God damn bleeding heart Anglicans.

"Mister Gayeta, how far are we along in defense suppression?"

Image

"Checking. We've worked our way down to the C priority targets; all A and B priority targets have been struck, some multiple times by a total of....442 megatons. No cohesive enemy defenses remain, at least those that we can detect. Our rate of fire is going to slack anyway as we need to bring up more missiles from the deep storage magazines to replenish the ready ammunition lockers."

"That's acceptable. Terminate defense suppression fire; and signal to...." at this, Hushy had to choke it out. It was worse than taking orders from a Bear...

"...Anglican Fleet HQ that we have achived our objectives and are ceasing fire."

Turning to Colonel Velkro, Hushy stared at the man who had set in motion the events of that day, and found...a strange grudging respect for him; even if he was a goddamned Bragulan.

"We've gotten through to the Dropship. Your man made it out alive; though beat up pretty bad. We got to him just in time; he had been cornered by the goddamn PIEists, and was only moments from being shoved into a bear cage."

At that last declaration, Velkro shuddered slightly.

So there are things that scare even a Bragulan... thought Hushy as he patched in the nearest phone to the ships 1MC system.

"This is your Commander speaking. I would like to congratulate you on the preseverance to duty that you have shown throughout today's events. You truly have made Shepistan proud with your actions this day. Secure from action stations and unyoke all ZEBRA openings."

Switching the phone over to the secure line to the CAG's office next to the port hangar bay, Hushy got the man, a relatively new officer with the callsign of ASSHELO on the line.

"I want Krace and Shroomdama in my office immediately after they land. No exceptions."
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Steve »

HMS Dauntless
Above Pendleton, The Outback



The multiple tracks appeared on scopes before order to commence initial direct strike bombardment was given, prompting a shouted reaction of "What the bloody hell?!" from Fisher before he immediately reacted. "Engage that missile barrage now! All ships! And tell the bloody Shepistanis to stand down!"

The batteries on the Dauntless and other ships opened up, firing on the Shepistani missile barrage. Had they been fired immediately they might have prevented its success altogether, but the delay in action, as well as the fleet not being entirely orientated to engage completely, meant over two-fifths of the strike got through, impacting on the planet. "Nuclear detonations on the planet, in excess of 400 megatons overall," Crawford reported solemnly.

"Raise Annapolis, now!" Fisher waited until Simpson nodded to confirm they were receiving. "Shepistani vessel Annapolis, this is Fleet Command. You are to break off immediately, I'm re-assigning you and your sister ships to the rear echelon of the fleet. You are not to engage any longer. Upon completion of landing operations, Commander Hushy, you will report to my office here on Dauntless. And if your weapons go active again you will be treated as hostiles and dealt with as needed. Fleet Command out!"

"Sir, are we to send the go-ahead to the rest of the fleet?", Simpson asked from her station.

"Yes. Engage with appropriate batteries to suppress air-defense fire as needed. All squadrons are given the green light."

The various atmosphere-capable fighters and gunboats of the fleet began their missions, moving into atmosphere and engaging all identified air defense targets. Behind them, the cruisers of the fleet waited patiently; whenever a Pendletonian missile entered the sky the launcher, and sometimes the missile itself, were taken out by energy weapon or railgun round.

Behind the bombardment fleet, the Marine assault shuttles and gunboats gathered, carrying individual companies and even platoons to conduct landing zone-preparation or specific strike missions (like taking over the capital facilities), while the various troop transports came up behind them to begin landing troops as the defenses were cleared, their own point-defense ready to engage any missiles their support failed to catch.
Force Lord wrote:CNS Datton
Pendleton, The Outback


Lieutenant Ricard Sorge took a deep breath. This was it. He would do his part for the Centrality and try to delay the Anglians as soon as possible so that the Commodore could do his deed. His orders were quick,

"Shut down sub-light drives, but try to keep the shields on. Prepare for boarding attempt, but do not fire unless fired upon. Prepare a channel to the Anglian vessel that fired at us."

The monitor soon showed the bridge of the Anglian ship.

"This is the CNS Datton. It appears we owe you an explaination."
HMS Challenger


Shetty appraised the haggard looking young figure on the holotank. He looked rather young to be the ship's commander. His accent clearly wasn't Pendletonian, but Shetty had no way to know for sure if he was telling the truth. "I am Captain Jason Shetty, HMS Challenger. Yes, you do owe me an explanation. Like what you are doing here, why you landed, and if you are carrying Pendletonian officials or slaves. I promise you, we have no intention of taking you into custody if you let us confirm your ship's purpose and examine it for Pendletonian agents or officials. We will even provide you whatever assistance is necessary to get back through the Gap."

"I am not at liberty to discuss our mission or whom is aboard," Sorge answered. "This is a classified operation of the Centrality. I can only assure you we carry no Pendletonians aboard, nor people kept enslaved."

"Can I speak with your commanding officer young man?"

The beads of sweat growing on the officer's face further confirmed for Shetty that he was not in any way the Dratton's master. "I am the officer of the ship speaking..."

The transmission ended.

What had happened elsewhere now played a part in this quiet drama. The Shepistanis fired their missiles and the Anglian ships, and others in position, intercepted as many as possible with point-defense fire. One such missile hit took only a glancing blow from a pulse gun strike.

The Shepistanis had not expected to need very sophisticated munitions when they originally dispatched the Annapolis and her sisters - after all, Pendleton did not possess anything approaching a modern planetary anti-missile defense system, nor a modern fleet.  They had thus armed the older ships from fleet stocks of older missiles, not their most advanced models.  They had picked a model of missile that, while quite capable, had one flaw: the Snark Twelve guidance computer system.  Snarks could handle orbital bombardment, point to point, but ask them to change direction, or reorientate themselves after being knocked off course, and you were in for disappointment.

This missile veered wildly off course; instead of heading to its target zone it headed straight toward the South Pole, hitting atmosphere before it detonated. A powerful EMP wave erupted from the resulting nuclear explosion, washing over the Dratton and even hitting the Challenger's shields. The damaged Dratton lacked the protection needed to shield sensitive electronics throughout the ship; communications was just one system that went down.

"Confirmed; Shepistani missile detonation EMP wave has disabled our target's electronics," Parkins said from her station.

"Bugger," Shetty grumbled. "Okay, begin tractoring them back up." He looked over, for the first time in this entire business, to his quiet XO, Anneliese Gramm. "What do you say, Commander? Think they might still have an opening to detonate themselves?"

"I'd say that if we want to be on the safe side, we bring them up only to the mouth of the cargo bay and extend the main docking arm to enable direct boarding," Gramm answered in an accent that, after 24 years in the service, still hinted of her Neu Hannoverian accent.

And so the Dratton was being brought up.

(OOC: The timing issue is such that, if your other guy explains to Paktu and co quickly enough, the invasion fleet will learn of Dratton's mission within minutes and at least confirm they are Centrality.)
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia

American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.

DONALD J. TRUMP IS A SEDITIOUS TRAITOR AND MUST BE IMPEACHED
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Dave »

And now, the conclusion to our short story, brought to you by Unreal Time.
I previously wrote: Ktutz Sector (I:12)

The squad status indicators on Lann's hud had flashed grey -- no contact. He turned his head to look, and all four last-known-position indicators clustered right around the bridge.

"Bravo One to Alpha Team, come in..."

A part of Lann's brain tried to remind him that if he had no contact, they weren't going to respond...
A clanking noise came from down the hallway. It was a regular noise, slowly getting louder, as though a robot was walking...

"We've gotta get out of here." His team was holed up in a "D" shaped alcove off the main corridor, with a pillar piercing the center of the alcove. They were facing aft, towards the main corridor. He waved towards the left side of the alcove, back towards the bridge. "Let's go."

"But that's towards the war droid! Isn't there an escape pod on the far side?" exclaimed one of the team members.

"Probably packed full of ginger. You want to unload two tons of ginger with a war droid at your back?"

The other team members shook their heads.

"I didn't think so. We've got heavy enough weapons and we're leaving anyway; might as well trash a 'bot on the way out."

The clanking got louder.

"Alright, sounds like it's in the main corridor. Guns, how about we pop a motion sensor, smoke and flares in front, and you hose down the corridor from the back with that autocannon?"

"Works for me." said Guns. He shifted the 20mm gun from its carry position to the ready position directly under his right arm.

"Alright, let's do sensor, smoke, flare, shoot on a 1-2-3-GO count."

"Got it."

"One!" Lann threw a small plastic dodecahedron so that it slid a short way down the hallway. The war droid noticed this and brought up wrist mounted machine guns to bear.

"Two!" Another team member popped two smoke grenades from a small launcher on his shoulder. One, on immediate release, exploded and briefly obscured the hallway. The second, on a timed release, poured out heavy, thick smoke that obscured the rest of the hallway.

"Three!" cried Lann as he engaged the emergency flare launcher on his back. A half dozen flares sprang out into the smoke behind the little sensor ball, trashing the infrared spectrum and not doing anything good for the visible one either.

"GO!" roared Guns in excitement, as he swiveled around the corner and opened up in "fully automatic fire" mode.

The robot never really had a chance. It had discarded its spent disruptor pistols five minutes earlier, and was down to its relatively limited built-in machine guns -- which were certainly not heavy enough to do appreciable damage to the armor Bravo Team was wearing. A cheap model, it was limited to IR targeting with visual only for position referencing, and was having serious problems discriminating anything in a narrow hallway filled with signal flares.

Guns, on the other hand, had a pretty good view of what was going to be downrange of his autocannon, having linked into the sensor ball's IR sensor and had it superimposed on his HUD. He didn't have much ammo, but he had only to point and shoot at the ghostly figure in front of him...

Autocannon rounds crashed into the droid, ripping out its lightly armored torso and spraying electrical components and hydraulic fluid everywhere. Another round hit the droid just above the left side of its head mounted sensor strip, shattering the top half of its head and pushing the entire droid in a downward direction.

The autocannon clicked empty having fired only ten rounds, and Guns, seeing that the target was down, hit the release button for the gun. It dropped off the armored suit and crashed to the floor.

"Alright, get to the shuttle!" They ran for the airlock. Lann held the rear, watching for any movement. They slapped the forcefield disable buttons and piled into the shuttle. "Come on, Lann, let's g--"

It was a blessing that the enemy had used a shaped thermonuclear charge, instead of an omnidirectional one. It saved his life. It almost didn't, but it did. Of course, not using an shaped charge would have destroyed the whole of the smugglers ship. But one took their blessings where they could. The bomb, concealed behind one of the panels adjacent to the airlock, shore off the forward three-fourths of the assault shuttle in an brilliant instantaneous thunderclap. The entire ship was forced sideways, and Lann was only saved by an instinctive reaction to thrust out both arms to catch the airlock frame as he almost sailed out into the depths of space. Unsecured papers and small objects bounced off his armor and flew past him as he worked to re-orient himself in the momentary gale-force winds that blew out of the airlock.

The wind slacked off as the rest of the ship depressurized. Lann turned to grip the aft side of the airlock and switched his radio to the ship-to-ship channel. "This is Bravo One. The... the rest of the team is gone. Requesting extraction."

"Bravo One, this is Wendel. We'll have to call in another shuttle to pick you up."

Lann swore fluently. So did the Wendel's sensor operator, for entirely different reasons.

"Sir, another ship coming out of hyperspace!"

The third pirate ship of the day exited hyperspace, a couple dozen kilometers away. Another civilian retrofit, it started angling towards the drifting smuggler's ship.

Wendel's captain stared at the tactical plot. The Order from Chaos had taken a moderate beating from the converted civilian ships, and, having just finished dragging the two of them off, was out of position to assist. But this third pirate was going to be on top of them inside ten minutes. Bravo One was going to be stuck with his tailstump out in the breeze. Unless...

"Open a channel with Distinction and Bravo One."

"Ready."

"Distinction and Bravo One, this is Wendel actual. We've got another pirate headed in, and there's no way we are going to be able to get a shuttle out here in time. Distinction, I want you to pick up Bravo One while we move to intercept the pirate. As soon as Bravo One is onboard, run home. We'll be right behind you, after leaving a farewell present."

"Wendel, this is Distinction. Are you suggesting he jump?"

"No, Distinction, I suggest he leap."

A pause.

"Understood, Wendel." said Lann.

Distinction's communications officer switched the circuit to him only. "Bravo One, our current position means we will be flying over the dorsal side of the smuggler. Suggest you position yourself as best you can. "

Lann sighed and began to crawl carefully over the side to the top of the ship. Why hadn't he picked the jetpack backpack? He inched his way up and over the side, taking care to hook his metallic foot around the edge for stability. Bit by bit he worked his way over to the center of the ship. He had spotted his target -- the engine vent grills on the back of the craft. They would make a good launching point.

Finally, he made it to the closest grill. He oriented himself looking forward, directly towards where the Distinction would be coming from. He looked around, eventually spotting the Wendel, engaging the pirates.

"Sir!" said the Wendel's sensor tech "Distinction reports they are almost in position."

"Good!" said the captain. The ship rocked slightly from repeated weapon impacts in their exchange with the pirates. They only had to hold out a little longer. "Load light ship-to-ship missiles in the starboard missile quadrant. As soon as the Distinction hypers out, fire on the smuggler and then jump out."

Lann looked up at the Distinction hovering almost motionless thirty meters away.

"Close as we can get to a drifting ship without grapples, Bravo One. You're going to have to jump it!"

Lann jumped.
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by MKSheppard »

Last Week on Battlestar Annapolis wrote:INT. ANNAPOLIS’ COMMANDER’S QUARTERS

Commander Louie Hushy sat back in the bed with a self-satisfied feeling of fulfillment on his face. Next to him in the bed was his sometime confidant and secret lover, Fenix Gayeta.

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do about Krace and Shroomdama. They’re dangerously fucking insubordinate towards me and the other command staff on this ship.”

Louie paused to reach over to his nightstand and take a heavy slug of cheap Shepistani rotgut liquor.

“Why, just yesterday Colonel Tight was admitted to medbay suffering from a severe concussion courtesy of Krace, and Shroomdama was found behind a wall in the women’s head at Frame 231.”

“Don’t worry,” said Gayeta in a soothing tone of voice. “Word is on the comm bands that we might get assigned to that multinational coalition that’s forming up to Pendleton. This way when we’re in an actual combat zone; you can invoke the Uniform Code of Shepistani Justice and have both of them shot for ‘wrecking’.”

Hushy sighed. “As much as I’d love to do that, I can’t. You know Bill Pavlik?”

At Gayeta’s nod of knowledge, Hushy continued. “He seems to have a soft spot for Krace – has adopted her as a surrogate daughter, but for the love of god, I can’t see why.”

“Lee Shroomdama is actually the Admiral’s bastard illegimate son.”

At this revelation, Gayeta nearly fell out of the bed. “You’re fucking shitting me. Shroomdama is Pavlik’s son?”

“Yep.”

“How…how the fuck could the Admiral ever produce such a piece of trash for a son?”

“Who the fuck knows? We’re the dumping ground for the worst of the worst in the Fleet; the OMEGA unit, if you will, where careers go to die in the Shepistani Navy.”

Hushy paused, a deadly gleam entering his eyes as he reached over to take another ‘medicinal’ sip of liquor.

“But my dear Fenix; I have no intention of seeing my career crater because of these fuckups on my ship. I will make Rear Admiral, even if I have to walk over their fucking dead bodies to do it.”
INT. ANNAPOLIS PORT HANGAR BAY

The port flight pod had been hurriedly evacuated of all but non-essential personnel – so important was it to maintain the fiction that there were no Bragulans on the Annapolis.

As the Cheney came into the hangar pod, the polyarc lights on the top of the hangar pod revealed that the once pristine olive drab paint covering the dropship had been scorched away over most of its surface area.

As it passed into the pressurized volume of the hangar, the radiation alarms began to chatter excitedly.

Chief of the Deck Tylenol stared at the radiation alarms with disbelief before taking charge in his characteristic way.

“Okay everyone get the fuck away from that dropship. It’s goddamned hot! Get the anti-rad foam out and spray it in teams so nobody goes over their allowable dose limit for the day!”

With a thud, the ramp at the rear of the dropship clanged down; the hydraulics having been damaged in the blastwaves that had nearly flung the ship into the ground. As the Emerald Guardsmen inside began to disembark, carrying Bragga on a stretcher between them; they were hit by the anti-rad foam.

“What? What the fuck is this fucking shit?” roared Kreilagug as the foam fizzled it’s way up his long beary snout after entering it through his nostrils. The others in his team got hit just as hard, and for several moments, the Annapolis’ hangar pod was filled with the sounds of bears trying to blow their noses as hard as they could.

Just as Kreilagug was about to rip the heads off the terrified Annapolis deck crew, a white haired old man stepped in front of him.

“Standard anti-rad foam. You guys took a lot of rads down there on that hole.” stated the Annapolis’ Chief Medical Officer, Major Skittles.

Without even waiting for an acknowledgement, he walked around the pissed off Kreilagug towards Bragga on the stretcher, holding a pen-like device in front of him. As he neared Bragga, the device began to click furiously.

“Wow. This guy’s fucking hot. And I mean HOT. Get him to my medical ward. We’ll need to do severe anti-radiation treatments.”

Kreilagug spun the so-called doctor around. “Severe? Define severe anti-radiation treatments. We didn’t come so far to see you kill our agent with your pathetic human medicine.”

If Skittles was scared, he didn’t show it, for he pulled a cigarette out of a uniform pouch and lit it. Kreilagug noticed with some pleasure that the cigarette was unfiltered and upgraded his rating of the human from pond scum to insect.

“First things first; all that fur’s gotta go. It’s hot - been dusted with all kinds of really fierce radioisotopes.”

Kreilagug stared at the human. “That…that’s preposterous. The social status of a Bragulan is determined largely by how well his fur looks. You’d be dooming the agent to a life as a social outcast until his fur could regrow.”

“Look, this is the real fucking world. This isn’t Star Wreck with Captain Pirk, where you have woo woo magical cures for radiation poisoning with injections. Your man probably avoided short term damage if he had access to anti-rad injectors; but the long term damage we need to take drastic measures to prevent.”

Taking Kreilagug’s silence as assent to continue; Skittles detailed the next steps. “Then we gotta replace his blood.”

“Replace his blood?!?!”

“Yep. Regular blood doesn’t clean out the radioisotopes too well. We got this really spiffy synthblood that does it in conjunction with a blood dialysis machine. This lets us get rid of the radioisotopes as they migrate from the cells of the body.”

“Then we get rid of any metal in the body. Stuff like tooth fillings and bone screws. If he was as close to those nuclear blasts as you claim; the stuff is radioactively hot now. Besides, he was due for an upgrade around the millionth mile.”

While he was doing the monologue, Skittles had been inspecting Bragga with his penlight to find out what conventional injuries the bear had.

“Then we can get to the simple stuff.”

“Simple stuff?”

“Yeah. Once we’ve dealt with the rads, your agent needs to have severe dental work done; he’s missing most of his teeth, he’s got a shoulder wound from some kind of projectile weapon, and it looks like he has multiple broken bones all over.”

During this, Skittles lifted the bandages that the Guardsmen had wrapped around Bragga’s shoulder and sniffed it.

“God damn, that’s septic,” he muttered and without further ado jammed the burning end of his cigarette onto the shotgun wound entry points one after another.

“There. That temporary field sterilization should hold until he’s in my office.”

INT. ANNAPOLIS COMMANDERS’ QUARTERS

Hushy sat behind his desk, disassembling and cleaning his service pistol while he waited for Shroomdama and Krace to show up.

Naturally, Krace was the first to show up; bouncing in through the hatchway in a typical post-mission meth high.

She sniffed the air tentatively.

“Fee Fi Fo Fum, what do I smell?”

“Could it be GAY-ETA? Oh, and I’m so pleased to see that you’re contemplating suicide…SIR!”

“Sit down and shut the fuck up, Krace!” roared Hushy with all the anger he could bring forth; which was quite considerable.

For once, STARFUCK got the message and sat in one of the chairs and stopped talking. But instead she started to giggle insanely like a demented resident of some psych ward.

Moments later, Captain Shroomdama entered the room.

“Oh, it’s you STARFUCK. Ready to concede that I killed the most people on that shithole of a planet?”

STARFUCK leapt to her feet at that insult. “Fuck you you limp dicked turd! I fucking toasted more fucking people on that fucking planet than you ever dreamed of!”

“Oh REALLY?” countered FAPOLLO. “It looked to me that you spent most of your time flying around imagining Triple-A emplacements on top of buildings that were fucking empty shells! Maybe you oughta lay off on some of that METH.”

At this, STARFUCK ground the last shards of the crystal meth between her teeth and readied a mighty punch that would have knocked FAPOLLO unconscious. That is, if Commander Hushy had not intervened.

A pistol shot rang through the compartment and both pilots felt the wake of supersonic air as the bullet passed between them to embed itself in the far wall. Both of them turned to face Commander Hushy, who had quietly reassembled the pistol during their argument.

“Both of you, shut the fuck UP. I have had enough of you two.”

Hushy paused to examine the pistol, making sure it had extracted the shell correctly before resuming his speech.

“You two are a disruptive element on my ship, and by all rights both of you should be in the ship’s brig, crawling the walls. But I can’t do that. Because you two are my best pilots on this damned tub.”

Reaching into his desk, Hushy pulled out a sheet of paper. “I have here a request from Fleet command to recommend two of my best pilots to go to the Naval Strike Fighter Tactical Instructor Program; or as you fucking degenerates know it – TOP SHEP.”

“I hate to do this; but you two stand above the other rejects on this tub who couldn’t even manage to fly a regular patrol without shitting themselves. So you’re both going to TOP SHEP.”

“Shroomdama; since you previously did a course in TOP SHEP, you’re being reassigned as a trainee instructor. Krace, since this is your first time at TOP SHEP, you’re just a trainee pilot.”

Hushy paused.

“Now get the fuck out of my office before I regret my decision.”

As the two pilots left his office, Hushy smiled an evil smile. Only the fleet commanders like him were privy to the true accident rate at TOP SHEP. Nearly half the pilots in each intake crashed or killed themselves. Shroomdama had survived it the first time; maybe this time would be the charm. And as for Krace…it would be no big loss.

INT. ANNAPOLIS CORRIDORS

“You heard the boss man. I’m gonna be an instructor. How do you like that, STARFUCK?” sneered FAPOLLO.

“Nice way of trying to evade the fact that I killed more people, you limp dicked whore,” noted Starbuck right before she slugged him.

Normally, the gun camera footage would have been used to settle this contest, with the other pilots in their squadron looking on and shouting encouragement as women and children were torn apart by repleted uranium bullets in frame-by-frame replays on the BIG BOARD in the Squadron Ready room.

But this was no normal mission. Immediately after landing, their gun camera footage had been seized by Fleet Intelligence; so that there would be no proof of Agent Bragga’s Bragulianness on the tape.

While Lee slowly recovered on the floor; an idea like so many others appeared in STARFUCK’s mind. Unlike the other ideas; this one was actually pretty good.

She had been providing Danger-Close Air Support to an agent on the ground, with the Agent directing many of her airstrikes. So wouldn’t the agent know how many people she’d killed?

With a meth-enhanced grin and a yelp of “HEE!”, STARFUCK ran down the corridors towards the Medlab.

INT. ANNAPOLIS STARBOARD HANGAR BAY.

Commander Hushy stood in his finest uniform; resplendent in the many awards he had earned over his career in the Shepistani Navy. Next to him, a platoon of Shepistani Marines stood in their battleworn power armor; the Blitzschlag field generators crackling and their plasma weapons at the ready.

Hushy felt the weight of his own Blitzschlag field generator on his belt. Unlike the heavy active models that the Marines wore, the BS-1000 was a relatively small portable clip-on generator that was defensive in nature and prevented a Psyker from reading the mind of the wearer. It was standard issue for all Shepistani military personnel visiting foreign warships or planets, both on and off duty.

Just before he stepped towards the Raptor that was to take him to the meeting with Admiral Fisher, he snuck a quick kiss with Gayeta, who had come to meet him before he left.

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"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by MKSheppard »

Vulture Rock, Sublevel 90

After the initial flurry of terse messages from the Pendletonian system; things had calmed down once messages became far more descriptive and said that the Collectors had abandoned their Pendletonian ‘allies’.

Admiral William Pavlik turned to his friend Saul Tarsus after reading through some of the latest messages.

“You know, if the Collectors have started to intervene on a Galactic scale like this, then we need to completely reorganize the way the Navy is laid out. Right now we just have a heavy Battlestar with four Gunstars forming a heavy BSG; and two Gunstars with a light Battlestar for a light BSG.”

“That’s not even enough to begin to offer the slightest resistance to a Collector Monolith. Remember when we were planning FREEDOM DROP a few hours ago? We were talking about bringing in no less than twenty to twenty-five BSGs to deal with the Monolith.”

“That’s a lot of comms traffic we would’ve had to send, and I’m not even sure if most of the ships could’ve gotten the message in time to form Task Force 34.”

“So what you’re saying Bill,” replied Tarsus. “Is that we need to start thinking in terms of bigger BSGs. But you know the politicians will hate consolidation. A lot of those BSGs have long and proud histories and are part of sector and planetary militas.”

“That’s why I suggest we concentrate on bulking out a dozen existing BSGs with new-build ships instead of forming new BSGs with new construction.”

At that moment, an aide interrupted their discussion.

“Sir, latest dispatch from Pendleton. This is fairly long.”
///TS/SI/DIET COKE///
TO: CINCNAV
FROM:BSG-102

1. ALL PENDLETONIAN EXTRA-PLANETARY DEFENSES SUPPRESSED.

2. HEAVY SUPPRESSION OF PENDLETONIAN PLANETARY DEFENSES IN SUPPORT OF OPERATION YOSEMITE (SEE CLASSIFIED MESSAGE //FRIED BALUT//)

3. WEAPONS EXPENDITURE BELOW NORMS FOR THIS TYPE OF OPERATION. REQUEST PERMISSION TO TRANSFER UNUSED AMMUNITION PROCUREMENT FUNDS INTO THE MORALE AND WELFARE FUND.

///TS/SI/DIET COKE///
Unlike the simple DIET COKE fleet status messages, the FRIED BALUT annex was larger. Much larger.
///TS/SI/FRIED BALUT///
TO: CINCNAV
FROM:BSG-102

1. ONCE COMPLETE ORBITAL CONTROL HAD BEEN ATTAINED BY THE ANNAPOLIS AND HER ESCORTS; WE CONTACTED AGENT YOSEMITE VIA FREQUENCY 842.

2. AGENT YOSEMITE INDICATED THAT HE WAS BEING PURSUED BY A LARGE AMOUNT OF PENDLETONIAN PARAMILITARY FORCES AND THAT CAPTURE WAS IMMINENT. DUE TO STANDING BRAGULIAN REGULATIONS REGARDING CAPTURE, THE AGENT PLANNED TO COMMIT SUICIDE UPON CAPTURE.

3. IN ORDER TO OBTAIN SUCCESSFUL MISSION COMPLETION, ANNAPOLIS ACTUAL DECIDED TO ENGAGE ALL POSSIBLE ENEMY VEHICLES AROUND THE AGENT’S LOCATION FOR A RADIUS OF THREE (3) KILOMETERS.

4. THIS INITIAL FIRE MISSION RESULTED IN THE FOLLOWING DGZ:

A.) GROUP OF (5) POLICE CARS. OH POINT THIRTY (0.3) KT.
B.) MILITARY BASE AT LOCATION 212A. TWENTY (20) KT.
C.) CONVOY OF TANKS AT LOCATION 200G. TWO POINT ONE (2.1) KT (ERW).
D.) MEDICAL AID CONVOY ALPHA. OH POINT SIX (0.6) KT.
E.) MEDICAL AID CONVOY BRAVO. ONE (1) KT.

5. ONE MINUTE LATER, SCM DROPSHIP 44-32132, UD-4L “CHENEY” PROTOTYPE WAS LAUNCHED WITH A PAYLOAD OF FOUR BRAGULAN OPERATIVES TO EXTRACT AGENT YOSEMITE.

6. ENEMY GUN-BASED AIR DEFENSES THAT POSED MARGINAL THREAT TO UD-4L WERE SUPPRESSED BY FIGHTER PAIR OPERATING FROM ANNAPOLIS. SOME DEFENSES WERE LOCATED ON “CIVILIAN” TARGETS, APPARENTLY IN ATTEMPT TO PREVENT THEM FROM BEING STRUCK.

7. DUE TO LARGE AMOUNT OF MILITARO-CIVILIAN TRAFFIC JAMS ON THE HIGHWAY AHEAD OF AGENT YOSEMITE, MAKING CONTINUED EVASION BY THE AGENT IMPOSSIBLE, THE DECISION WAS MADE TO CLEAR THE HIGHWAY WITH ATOMIC BLAST WAVE.

TO THIS EXTENT ONE (1) FIFTY (50) KT DEVICE WAS INITATED WITH AN OFFSET AIMPOINT TO ENSURE THE BLAST WAVE WAS OPTIMALLY POSITIONED TO CLEAR THE TRAFFIC JAM AND TO AVOID NUCLEAR CRATERING OF THE HIGHWAY.

8. AGENT YOSEMITE’S VEHICLE SLOWED DOWN TO TRANSIT THE BLAST ZONE. DURING TRANSIT, ENEMY OPERATIVES IN A COMMANDEERED AMBULANCE ATTEMPTED TO SEIZE AGENT. DUE TO PROMPT ACTION BY FIGHTER PAIR, THIS WAS PREVENTED.

9. ELINT ASSETS REVEALED THAT CONVOY BELONGING TO PENDLETON INTELLIGENCE ECHELON (PIE) WERE DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO AGENT’S LOCATION. A SINGLE FIRE MISSION WAS LAID IN AND FIRED. DGZ OF OH POINT FIVE (0.5) KT.

10. AT THIS POINT, AGENT YOSEMITE DEVIATED FROM PATH TOWARDS EXTRACTION POINT FOR REASONS UNKNOWN TO ANNAPOLIS ACTUAL.

11. FIGHTERS PROVIDED TOP COVER DURING THIS DIVERSION, STRIKING THE FOLLOWING TARGETS TO ENSURE THE AGENT’S SAFETY.

A.) MILITARY AID CENTER PROVIDING REGENERATION OF FORCES FOR THE ENEMY.

B.) MCNAMARA’S FOOD CENTER PROVIDING FOOD TO ENEMY FORCES AND ALSO LOCATION OF SNIPER NEST.

C.) ENEMY FORCES PERFORMING DAMAGE LIMITATION DUTIES ON MCNAMARAS POST-STRIKE.

12. DURING THIS PHASE, ANNAPOLIS PROVIDED AREA COVERAGE; STRIKING NO LESS THAN THIRTY FIVE (35) DGZS WITH AN AGGREGATE OF FORTY-FIVE (45) KT TO PREVENT ENEMY FORCES FROM APPROACHING AGENT YOSEMITE.

13. ANNAPOLIS PROVIDED EXTREMELY DANGER CLOSE SUPPORT TO AGENT YOSEMITE DURING THIS PHASE OF THE OPERATION; STRIKING AN ORPHANAGE WHICH WAS BEING USED TO HOUSE A SURFACE TO AIR MISSILE BATTERY IN VIOLATION OF THE LAWS OF WAR WITH SOLID KINETIC KILL ROUNDS DUE TO THE UNAVAILABILITY OF AIR SUPPORT AT THE TIME.

14. AS THE AGENT NEARED THE EXTRACTION POINT; ENEMY FORCES SPRUNG AN AMBUSH FROM THE CITY’S SEWERAGE SYSTEM AT RANGES TOO CLOSE FOR ORBITAL OR AIR SUPPORT. AS A RESULT AGENT YOSEMITE WAS REDUCED TO FOOT TRAVEL AND BRIEFLY CAPTURED BY ENEMY FORCES.

15. AT THIS POINT UD-4L PROTOTYPE WAS THIRTY (30) SECONDS INBOUND, AND PROCEEDED TO ATTACK ENEMY FORCES AND LAND FOUR (4) BRAGULAN ELEMENTS FOR GROUND SUPPORT.

(SEE TOP SECRET: PEPSI ANNEX FOR RATING OF BRAGULAN GROUND COMBAT ABILITY)

16. AGENT YOSEMITE WAS RECOVERED FROM ENEMY FORCES AND LOADED ONTO UD-4L.

17. DURING FLIGHT FROM AREA; UD-4L WAS LOCKED ONTO BY MULTIPLE FIRE CONTROL RADARS, AND AN ESTIMATED SEVEN THOUSAND (7,000) SURFACE TO AIR MISSILE SITES ON THAT CONTINENT WENT ACTIVE; OF WHICH TWELVE HUNDRED FIFTY (1,250) WERE IN THE AREA OF EXTRACTION.

18. DECISION WAS MADE BY ANNAPOLIS ACTUAL TO LOSE ORBITAL VELOCITY AND ALTITUDE SO THAT DROPSHIP COULD BE RECOVERED FASTER, AS WELL AS TO PROVIDE DANGER-CLOSE FLAK SUPPORT OF THE DROPSHIP.

19. DUE TO THE VELOCITY DEFICIT BETWEEN RECOVERY ORBIT AND THE THREAT PROFILES OF ENEMY SAM SYSTEMS; THE DECISION WAS MADE TO INITATE BOMBARDMENT OF MILITARY TARGETS IN A RADIUS OF 200 KILOMETERS AROUND THE DROP SHIP WITH A KEEP OUT ZONE OF 20 KILOMETERS. DUE TO POLITICO-MILITARO REALITIES OF OPERATION WITH ANGLICIAN FORCES, NO CITIES WERE DELIBERATELY TARGETED, UNLESS THEY CONTAINED A SUBSTANTIAL SAM PRESENCE.

20. FOUR-HUNDRED-FORTY-TWO (442) MEGATONS WERE DELIVERED TO ALL DESIGNATED GROUND ZEROES. THIRTY-FIVE (35) PERCENT OF TARGETS WERE STRUCK MULTIPLE TIMES.

21. DROPSHIP WAS SUCCESSFULLY RECOVERED AT 1253 HOURS SHEPISTANI LOCAL, ENDING THIS OPERATION.

//CASUALTY ANNEX//

FRIENDLY FORCES: NONE

ENEMY FORCES:

350,000~ CASUALTIES FROM ANNAPOLIS FIRE SUPPORT DURING EXTRACTION.

5,000~ CASUALTIES FROM FIGHTER SUPPORT DURING EXTRACTION.

1.5~ MILLION CASUALTIES FROM HEAVY STRATEGIC STRIKES TO SUPPRESS SURFACE TO AIR MISSILE SITES.

1,855,000 TOTAL ENEMY CASUALTIES.

NOTE: NUMBERS ARE TENTATIVE ESTIMATES OF PROMPT INITIAL CASUALTIES AND MAY TREND UPWARDS OR DOWNWARDS DEPENDING ON STATE OF CIVIL DEFENSES AND PREPAREDNESS OF ENEMY POPULATION AGAINST FALLOUT. COUNT MAY TRIPLE OR QUADRUPLE AS LONG TERM EFFECTS WORK THEIR WAY THROUGH.

//FORCES ANNEX//

BSG-102 ANNAPOLIS // HUSHY, LOUIS S/N 871076
BSG-102 UPPER MARLBORO
BSG-102 BALTIMORE

VIPER MK2 #2220NC // SHROOMDAMA, LELAND “FAPOLLO” S/N 318742
VIPER MK2 #8737NC // KRACE, THARA “STARFUCK” S/N 462753
UD-4L CHENEY #44-32132 // SHROOMSHOP (SHOOMTHETIC) #231561

FOUR (4) BRAGULAN EMERALD GUARDSMEN

///TS/SI/FRIED BALUT///
Upon reading his illegimate bastard son’s name on the forces annex; a wave of paternal warmth washed through Pavlik. His bastard son was mentioned in a top secret fleet dispatch.

And what a kill count!

Though most of it was probably by his son’s wingman; STARFUCK.

Even as a child, Lee always had a problem with finishing what he started; thought Pavlik sadly.

That childhood problem had continued on to adulthood, albeit in the stigma of premature ejaculation; and that long on-off affair with STARFUCK hadn't helped matters any.
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong

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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by PeZook »

Image

SchromKorp Von Neumann swarm TYX-71
System Indigo-VBT543


For centuries now people have been predicting the rise of post-scarcity societies, where all industrial resources would be available freely for anyone who asked. Various technologies came and went, failing to realize that dream: for there would always be bottlenecks and resource scarcity amongst the resources necessary to build and maintain the exotic and complicated machinery that made the modern star nations go round.

This didn't mean, however, that one couldn't use technology to make the process easier.

Around the Sovereignty, hundreds of star systems were seeded by Von Neumann machines performing various tasks. Throngs of self-replicating machines constructed vast automated industrial centres, which mostly accomplished tasks requiring no human supervision, and with a long, long lead time. Resource extraction, terraforming and, of course, construction of cheap baubles to flood competing markets with at cutthroat prices. Maibatsu strip-mined two entire star systems and converted them into ping-pong balls ; SinTek produced amphetamines at the cost of 0.0000001 cents a dose (mostly in administrative costs), which it then sold to the Shepistani military earning profits which could only be described as "humongously obscene".

And, finally, SchromKorp tasked its Von Neumann swarms with production of weapons and ammunition for the ever-hungry Sovereign military, as well as thousands of militias looking to survive in this violent galaxy.

A Von Neumann swarm wasn't exactly easy to set up, though. Because of the inherent danger of letting autonomous machines assemble billions of small arms and hundreds of thousands of heavy weapons, the government kept a very, very close eye on all swarms employed in the Sovereignty's territorry. Any company which attempted to reprogram their machines for use as, say, genocidal self-replicating warmachines, was swiftly and efficiently shut down. Mostly without a trial.

By nuclear fire.

It was for this reason why all corporations utilizing them made sure that a VN swarm enjoyed only the best possible security measures that money could buy. Historically, no cases of hacking a swarm's control nodes were ever recorded, despite many tries. Only someone with a truly ridiculously detailed knowledge of the system and an instinctual understanding of computer science could ever stand the slightest chance of achieving this

So, overall, there was no chance of anything going wrong on this trip, thought Roger von Krotschschniffern, Director Of Remote Manufacture, as he watched the swarm of Indigo-VBT543 go about their daily tasks. The ship he was on, the Eisenarsch was one of the few vessels owned and operated by SchromKorp equipped for inspecting and maintaining Von Neumann swarms, subject to the same strict security protocols as the company's swarms themselves. Its captain seemed annoyed by Krotschschniffern's visit, though he recognized the opportunity to advance his career, and so made the best effort to explain everything, however annoying and stupid the executive's questions might have been.

"That object you see on the holotank is the system's CPU core", the captain pointed towards a giant construct, orbiting Indigo's sun, constantly swarmed by autonomous transport ships, "It also serves as the central storage hub for all processed weapons."

Krotschschniffern adjusted his monocle and nodded.

Image

"Ja, der kapitan, very ja ja indeed! Vat iz ze zip's mission here?", he said with a thick German accent. For the Eisenarsch's captain, who was an actual German from Earth, that accent was...beyond annoying. Even more than the man's obviously fake name and terrible fashion sense.

"Well, director...we will dock with the CPU core and run diagnostics on the swarm's central control programming to ensure it has not mutated or been subverted by saboteurs. Should we find any problems, our ship will send a pulsed shutdown code to the swarm until we can flush the core, and..."

Roger von Krotschschniffern didn't listen to anything beyond 'dock', as technical talk bored him. He only cared about the glowing self-congratulatory report he would file upon returning home, painting himself as a good, hands-on administrator. He just let the captain ramble on, as pleasantly syconpathic fool as he was, he'd probably not take well to being interrupted.

While the poor officer explained to his superior the nature of the ship's mission, its automated systems brought the Eisenarsch towards the CPU core. It docked swiftly, a procedure rehearsed a hundred times.

...and all its system immediately shut down, including the lights.

Before anybody on the bridge could utter the customary "What the...", an explosion shook the Eisenarsch. The damage control board, running on auxilliary power, lit up, showing fires in all computer compartments.

In the confusion, as the crew and shipboard CI attempted to regain control and ascertain the damage, von Krotschschniffern cried out, looking at the still-operating holotank: "Kapitan! The swarm! Eet iz collapsing!"

And he was right. As if it received one of the coded emergency shutdown signals, the entire Von Neumann swarm of Indigo-VBT543 turned upon itself, individual machines frying their control circuits. The larger ships began assemling the dead husks and burning at full thrust into the system's sun.
Image
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
- NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11

Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.

MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Steve »

Strahl
2 Hours Before Invasion



Under cloak, the Strahl moved toward the planet and the side facing away from the sun, though less so as time went on. Below them was mostly a vast expanse of sea, with three island archipelagos to be seen. One was sparsely-inhabited, mostly by members of the planet's scientific community, as it lay in the northern polar regions. Another was in the southern temperate areas, its southern-most chain actually subarctic, fairly more populated due to agricultural and mineral resources to be had. But the most important, and largest, were the Palmer Islands. They existed in a large area of shallows in the middle of the Great Ocean, the center of what had been a continent during the planet's main Ice Age about thirty thousand, forty thousand years in the past. Straddling the planet's Equator, the chain was made up of about four thousand islands, though only four hundred were of any size to inhabit. The largest, Jacobsen, had a landmass similar to England, Wales, and souther Scotland on Earth and was the center, culturally and economically, of the region. It was notable as the only island to contain a city, Calhoun Bay, that had a population that reached six digits, as the islands were altogether a primarily rural area divided up into vast plantations that grew transplanted and native crops of coffee, sugar, palms for palm oil, and other tropical fruits and foodstuffs.

None of this minutiae was of particular interest to Balthier as he brought the ship low and found an open landing spot on a small island, the name of which he didn't know, across Jacobsen from Calhoun Bay. Here, dawn was distantly coming into view. Soon enough the sky would be lit by the sun, but most likely to be filled with contrails and explosions to herald the beginning of the invasion.

Vanrya was working on her comm unit. There was no answer from Quinn or the Sisters yet, making Balthier ponder regretfully on if he had made the right call in leaving them behind. Then again, I cannot imagine how many I would have gotten back if the Collectors had taken them all, he remembered, reminding himself in the process to have faith in Quinn's ability to survive.

He breathed a sigh of relief, one that Vanrya picked up despite his best efforts to hide it, when a voice finally answered. "Hello. We didn't expect you back so soon," Quinn answered.

"Have you found this Jason Smythe fellow yet?"

"We have. It is in the northern region of the island, a plantation twenty miles outside of the regional city of Beulah. Or rather what passes for a city here, it is no larger than 30,000 persons in population."

"Explains why this island and places like it are a place to hide slaves from the Anglians," Balthier noted.

"Yes. From what we can tell, the Palmer Islands' economic need for labor and lack of easy access to the planetary slave markets has led to the workforce being the most integrated on Pendleton. It is almost impossible to tell a slave and a free worker apart if you do not already know their status."

"Thankfully, we know what Sara's loved ones look like and their names."

"I believe I might be able to repeat our effort with Danton."

"No, I don't think that will be our approach. The invasion will begin in the next two hours and I want to be off this rock before the shooting starts. Besides, I've rather run out of patience with this planet and I don't want to remain here any longer." Balthier looked back to the others, who were all armed. Even Kaylee was carrying a sidearm now, though she and the Doctor would be protecting the ship. "Are you in position to enter the plantation within ten minutes?"

There was a brief silence. "Yes."

"Very well then. Remember, Quinn, how we dealt with that pirate crew on Canton? That is how this shall work."

"I understand. We'll be ready."

The call ended. Balthier took the controls again and began directing them toward the location of Quinn's position, tracked by the ship's sensors. Below them were fields of tropical fruit trees, one after the other, some even being worked despite the imminent invasion. With their cloak on nobody saw them coming. "Okay everyone, you all remember what Sara's family looks like? Let's make sure we've got a proper head count too - three sisters, one brother, and a neice."

The others nodded, all agreeing with the sentiment of getting this over with as quickly as possible.

The Strahl made it to the plantation yard by Quinn's locator. As expected, Quinn and Sisters Rydia and Maria were already hard at work, given the distant flashing of beamsabers and some shouts of alarm. Balthier led his crew out, all armed, and none quite in the mood for the usual wit.

The taking of the de la Poer estate had been somewhat exciting. This was less so - the security forces were thinner due to the ready availability of help from the free laborers and Smythe hadn't been wanting to call attention to himself when the Anglians came in. A sweep of the house soon cleared all the staff.

Sara's family had been scattered around the plantation, though much to Balthier's relief they were together. The brother Andrew had been assigned to the slaves and laborers maintaining the plantation's equipment, having a bit of a penchant for mechanical work. The youngest sister Abigail worked the field and the older sisters Hope and Clara were in the house staff, as was Clara's daughter Hope.

The complication came when they were put together. The Pontcaires refused to actually get into the Strahl, or even to acknowledge whom they were. "Sorry, sir, but we don't know who you're looking for," Clara said, in that voice that betrayed utter nervousness and fear. "We're free laborers here. This is an abolitionist plantation, you see."

Balthier looked around. Smythe was under gunpoint from Vanrya and was a fairly intimidating man, muscular and powerful looking. His glare was upon all of them. Among the workers, nervous looks were exchanged and then pleading ones directed toward the Pontcaires.

"I imagine threats have been given if any of you identify yourselves as slaves," Balthier noted.

"Yes," Quinn remarked. "I've seen it in their minds. The threat is that if any of the slaves step forward to Anglians or escapes, even if they gain safety, the others will be executed, if not by Smythe then by his agents still here."

"Now that sounds particularly foolish. Though it does serve as effective deterrent I suppose, even if you never intend on following through," Balthier noted. "So, good, sir, given that your planet is about 2 hours away from being taken - and this time for good I believe - why don't you spare us the trouble and stop this pitiful charade?"

"Ha," Smythe laughed. "You and I both know the Anglians will lose interest before long, just like every other time. They'll get tired of our resistance and leave. And anyone who betrays his citizen brother to them will face...."

Balthier shot Smythe in the head.

It was a particularly dramatic flair, but the kind one associated with him. In a single movement Balthier removed his gun from the holster, brought it up, and put a bolt of energy into Smythe's forehead. The resulting blast went through his skull and reduced his brain to a smoldering cinder. "Shame, I was trying to get him between the eyes, far more impressive that way," Balthier lamented. He looked back to the others. "Would anyone else like to renew Mr. Smythe's threat?"

There was silence. A look of relief came to the faces of the Pontcaires.

"Now, I'd recommend you all find some shelter in the basement or what have you. Afraid to say some daft fool in Westminster invited Shepistanis along for this sojourn. Helping yourselves to arms would also be for the best Ms. Pontcaire, would you be so kind as to indicate the slaves for me?"

Clara did so. "You all may go first and help yourselves to your master's arms. The rest of you will wait here briefly, while we embark, and then I suggest you find shelter elsewhere. You have, oh..." Balthier checked the digitial watch on his wrist, tied into Strahl's clock. "An hour, give or take fifteen minutes, to do so. Then the invasion begins and I wouldn't want to be anyone left outside."

The indicated slaves all headed toward the house and the basement shelter beneath. The free laborers remained on the lawn, looking around fearfully, as the Pontcaires and Balthier's crew piled back aboard. Even with the sidearm guns no longer pointing toward them, the ship's pulse gun batteries were fairly intimidating and directed right at them.

Balthier felt a tug at his pants leg Little Hope stared up at him, golden blond locks framing the cherubic face of a precocious 4 year old in a plain frilly dress. "Can I fly?"

"No, I'm afraid not, but I shall let you watch if you promise not to touch anything."

"Are you taking us to see Aunt Sara?"

"Yes I am. Now, come along."

They filed back onto the ship, Balthier closking the lock behind him and securing it. Hope bounced along behind him, Clara not far behind to watch her daughter, while he went up to the ship's cockpit. Vanrya was in her place. "The authorities were alerted during our attack," Vanrya said, listening to transmissions. "SAMs are being prepared to shoot at us."

"Not good storms to hide our wake in. No point in cloaking until we exit atmosphere. Have the deflectors on full. Hang on, everyone!"

The Strahl lifted off the ground. Her drive wings locked into open poisition and flashed to life, rocketing the ship into the atmosphere.

"We have missiles in bound!"

"Get all the turrets going!"

The various pulse gun turrets, manned and unmanned, shifted into position, as well as the pulse cannon turret on top of the ship. Bursts of silver energy erupted from them, tracking across the dawn-lit sky of Pendleton until they struck the missiles.

The ship rocked hard as a wave of energy crashed into the starboard side, from a nuclear detonation. "Deflectors absorbed it," Vanrya confirmed. ""But we can't take hits much closer than that. We need to get out of their range."

"Everyone hold on, I'm shifting power into drives and G-compensators." Balthier made the necessary corrections. Despite the latter piece of technology, the pull of G-forces was becoming stronger as the drives were pressed to their limit and beyond, redlining. The Strahl erupted from the atmosphere like a phoenix, her deflectors glowing red from the heated air around them that, now, dissipated. Below them, the Pendletonian SAMs that had fired detonated at the apex of their ascent. Electronics acrossed the Palmer Islands went out from the resulting EMP blasts; the Strahl's deflectors absorbed the EMP and what little energy reached them.

Free of the planet, and hopefully to never return, Strahl raced on back to the Dauntless.



HMS Dauntless


Balthier and the Strahl crew, save Umar, joined Rydia and Maria in following the Pontcaires to the ship's medical bay. They found Sara sitting by Rana, hooked up to monitoring systems and with a machine continuing the process of healing her blaster wound.

"Aunt Sara!" Hope burst forth from the others and ran up to her aunt. Sara looked down at her neice and smiled widely, scooping Hope up into her arms. "Where is your hair?", Hope asked quizzically as they hugged.

"Oh, it's a long story," Sara answered with tears in her eyes. She accepted the hugs of her siblings next, one after the other, while still holding Hope in one arm. "A very long story."

Smiling widely, she introduced her family to Rana and Rana to them, making her relationship to Rana clear. There were more hugs, albeit more careful ones, and smiles. The family was reunited at last and, with Rana, adding a new member.

"There are times, Balthier, when I wonder why I remain aboard your ship," Quinn admitted.

"Indeed?"

"I believe this is as good an argument as any," Quinn continued. "For all your talk of being an outlaw and rogue, you do end up doing the right thing."

"Yes, well.." He flashed a little smile. "It is in the job description."
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Steve »

HMS Dauntless


With the invasion already well under way, and now under the control of the Marine general officers, Fisher was free to do other things. He checked in on Sara and her family, exchanging handshakes with them and even relenting to a hug from her neice Hope. While in the medical bay, he was informed the Shepistani shuttle bearing Commander Hushy from Annapolis had arrived. He headed to his office.

The Shepistani officer looked self-assured as he entered Fisher's office, giving a salute that seemed borderline contemptful. He saw Hushy's hand reach reflexively for the Blitzschlag Field Generator clipped to his person, providing the means to block telepathic intrustion into his mind. "Commander, you were not given any order or authorization to commence bombardment or airstrikes, and most certainly were not given authorization for atomic weapons fire. I demand an explanation."

"Sir, I can now tell you that I was under orders to retrieve an agent from the planet's surface, an undercover operative who had been compromised by Pendletonian counter-intelligence," Hushy answered succinctly. "All operations undertaken were to secure his escape long enough for commando teams to rescue him."

Fisher's glare grew cold. "And that included plastering an entire region of the planet, 400 kilometers in diameter, with atomic weapons?!"

"I had to suppress any enemy SAM site that could attack our dropship. There were far too many to destroy with light fire in the time we had available, so we used atomics." Hushy had a little twitch in his eye, the one tell that he was, in fact, rather annoyed with having to report to Fisher at all, or having to endure a grilling over what, to him, was a perfectly acceptable military operation and one that should be repeated across the planet. He reached into his uniform jacket and pulled out a universal-format data disc. "Our agent has provided us with a lot of information on the Pendletonians' activities leading up to the invasion. We retrieved the locations of secret weapons depots, slave-hiding operations in their countryside, and the names and locations of BOSS operatives assigned to assassinate former slaves and collaborators with the occupaiton force after the occupation begins." He placed it on Fisher's desk. "With all due respect, Admiral, that information was well worth a mere 100,000 square kilometers of planetary devastation. And now, if I may add, this will make the planetary invasion far easier. That entire zone is a safe LZ for our troops which we can use to secure the main continent."

"We didn't bloody need it!", Fisher shouted in retort. "This isn't some independent planet in the mid-range sectors, this world is a bloody backwater! Their troops pose as much threat to our Marines as a micrometeorite poses to this ship!"

"A backwater with seven thousand nuclear armed missile sites capable of defeating aerospacecraft in the atmosphere. That we know of. Did it ever cross your mind, Admiral, that those sites could be reprogrammed to operate in surface to surface mode to strike landing zones? Powered armor can mitgate a lot of the damage from atomic effects; but being in the vinicity of multiple fireballs isn't...healthy."

"Why else do you thing we've been engaging them with light batteries, Commander?", Fisher retorted.

"And the intel?", Hushy asked pointedly, wishing he could show this pompous, self-righteous hand-wringing bleeding-heart Anglican just what he truly thought of him. He could be confident, at least, that such wouldn't get to Fisher's ESP senses with the safety of his BFG at his side. As it was, he just wanted to get off this fucking boat of bleeding heart idiots so he could have sweaty buttsex with Gayeta.

"Let's hope it turns out to be worth the million people you've killed, including some of the very same people we came to this planet to help." Fisher glowered and stored the disc away. "Now that you have your agent and the landing operations are underway, your services are no longer needed. As soon as your ships' hyperdrives are ready for it you can re-enter the Gap and head home. You are dismissed."

For the briefest moment, Fisher let himself consider how much he would like to remove the condescending look from Hushy's face. Preferably by reaching out with every erg of his power to close it around Hushy's windpipe, choking the murderous man until he collapsed. But this was something that was simply not done, and so he said nothing as Hushy departed. Instead he quietly slipped the disc into his computer and began to look through the intelligence, to collate it for later use.
”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia

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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Kartr_Kana »

Force Lord wrote:CNS Govard, Centralist 5th Fleet
B-A Gap, The Outback


Vice-Admiral Kordis was not happy.

He had just recieved word of the Datton's fate. He hoped to Dovan's word that Forg would scuttle his ship and go down with it.

"Sir, our force has left hyperspace. Sensors detect a flotilla of Coalition warships several kilometers from us."

"Hail them."

"Which sir?"

"Whichever you want."

The monitor soon showed the bridge of said ship. Kordis talked to the naval officer in front of him.

"This is Vice-Admiral Guring Kordis. We are from the Centrality. We do not seek a confrontation. I can explain."

HCNV Black Knight
Edge of the Bannerman System, The Outback

"Vice-Admiral Kordis, I am Rear Admiral Kim Paktu Hiigaran, Clans Navy. I am in command of a multi-national fleet charged with ensuring the blockade of Pendleton. This is an active warzone and no non-Coalition vessels are allowed within the exclusion zone. I'm afraid that without orders I cannot allow you to proceed, but by all means I'm eager to find out why you're here and as long as it doesn't conflict with my orders perhaps we could work something out. I do not wish to throw away the lives of those under my command, I'm sure you must feel the same way."
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"Our Country won't go on forever, if we stay soft as we are now. There won't be any AMERICA because some foreign soldier will invade us and take our women and breed a hardier race!"
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Zor »

The Apex, Mareiopolis

Around the Apex was a ring of parkland, radiating a bit more than a kilometer from the Spire's base, mostly composed of manicured bushes and grassy fields. Right now much of it was filled with protesters, a large number of people, mostly from the more nationalistic groups that had placed fears about foreign powers gaining access to what they beleived should be an advantage exclusively reserved for the people of the Commonwealth, that the resources allocated towards this would be better used to prevent the uninetional creation of a Master Race and other things to the effect of which. As it stood, the Commonwealth had the ability to Cyberize between Five and six Hundred Million people a year and upgrade them to Posthumanity, with figures. This rate of conversion was the result of many decades of incremental expansion of specialised infastructure, personnel training and so forth. Of these "slots" for the cyberization process, some fifteen million of which had been set aside for a special program that had recently been announced. A few special slots had been allocated to a special program.

Across many predominantly human areas

Through various media systems, an advertisement campaign was launched. There are dozens of supsets customized to local tastes and media forms, but among the most common subcatagory are things to the effect of this.

Several shots of a healthy attractive individual is enjoying himself in an active way

Narrator-"Ah Life, is it not great? So many things to do and see and so many things to do it with. However, no matter how good it is there is always one thing that has, no matter how good it is, has always loomed over it..."

In the background a dark shadow loom, slowly comming into focus and eventually reveiling itself to be the grim reaper carrying an hour glass, eventually he comes to dominate the screen and th sound runs out, as this happens he raises his Scythe and swings, cutting to black after the swipe

Narrator-"Death."

Afterwards it cuts to various timelapse images of organ

Narrator-"The Human body is not perfect, it can only keep on going for so long before it fails...

This then turns to images explaining some of the shortcommings of the Human body

Narrator-"And on top of that has numerous flaws, the result of the crudeness of Darwinian Evolution. Never the less, there is a way around it..."

Cut to scenes of a human brain having cybernetic augmentation installed, finishing with a casing

Narrator-"Through advances in nanotechnology and cybernetics, the Nova Atlantean Commonwealth has bested the forces of Gradual Decay..."

Cut to said brain being put into a Robotic Body, clearly Robotic in design but still quite attractive which proceeds to engage in a variety of fun activities

Narrator-"upgrading the human brain into a longer lived and infinately more flexible form to assume command of a variety of bodies, capable of experiencing the same range of senses and sensations as any organic form. Billions have already undergone this proceedure. The next stage of Human Evolution is here in the fusion of man and machine and now it is made available to you."

This is followe by some information in regards to the price of said cyberization proceedures (roughly twice the cost that a Cyberization proceedure would cost a Commonwealth Citizen)
HAIL ZOR! WE'LL BLOW UP THE OCEAN!
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Live on Solarian HoloNet
FREEDOM BEEF

The meat of tomorrow is a really sad thing. Most places in the Koprulu Zone make meats that are totally against what God intended. In the Sovereignty and the Imperium, their meats are either made out of solidified liquid ‘nutrients’ and ‘proteins’ and ‘carbohydrates’ or cloned pieces of fleshy icky things grown in tubes. That ain’t right, no way. And in Haruhi Suzumiya, their fried chicken is actually made out of this longish, centipede-ish thing made out of cloned chicken meat, with wings and legs and breasts and the occasional head sticking out somewhere. Either that or it’s fish! Fish! In worlds and moons with lots of water, they just put fish and clams in the water and throw their nets! Protein ‘pseudomeat’, cloned beef, bizzaro chicken, seafood, the state of humanity is downright wrong!

Heck, even here in Fringe Worlds, lots of meats are just like that weirdo stuff from outside. But we’ve got our saving grace, right here, right now. Freedom Beef!

It’s not made out of shitty tasting goo, it’s not cloned from them stem cells, it’s not scaly and fishy either. And it sure as hell ain’t some dinosaur that’s been grilled to lizard-steak by them crazy egg-sucking Zigonians! No, it’s real beef for real people, like how man used to eat in the good old days of the 22nd century. Ain’t no need for nano-sauce to give the thing actual taste, no way.

Freedom Beef! The way they did it in the past, the way we still do it in the future. Not like them yokels out there.

What is Freedom Beef? Well, in Butch’s Butchery Incorporated, we don’t use weirdo labs to grow nutrients or stem cells or grow fish out of clams or anything like that. Freedom Beef is real beef. As in we have a ranch, with free roaming cattle like cows, sheep, ostriches, imported Arcturan Megaturkeys, moose, goats, dolphins, and other frolicking animals. They’re bred prompt and proper, fed good food (as in hey and not stupid sci-fi gunk out of tubes), made to run around as to make their meat good firm and not like that soggy cloned crap. It’s quality stuff right here. Actual living animals that we have to kill and skin and gut before we grill it on an open fire and put it on your plate! Freedom Beef! Just like how they did it back six thousand years ago, at the beginning when God created the old Earth. Shame now all Earth people in the USS like to eat fake meat, or suck nutrients from tubes like them Greys.

Of course, not everyone in the universe has a cravin’ for substandard subhuman food. Cause of Freedom Beef’s proud example, lots of other place are servin’ up real meat. They’re starting to kill and cook Megaturkeys! And, well, the so-called ‘nature lovin’ Ziggies have always been killing and eating meat – but that’s cause they’re goddamn talking velociraptors.

We here make good meat that a toothless Apexai can’t chew. Just like how God intended. If they came over to our place, them anorexics and Apexai would starve to death.

Hippies call it unethical to blow out a moose’s head with a boomstick? Well, it’s natural order, plain and simple. Natural order to skin the thing, use the skin for rug and antlers for hood ornaments, and put the meat on an open charcoal grill and make some good old fashion hamburgers, like what they did in the 16th century, the good old days. It tastes great, and no one has to worry about crazy nanites eating all your teeth or something. Of course, the Commies would rather have vat-grown stuff and feed you with stem cell gruel ooze like some crazy porridge, but that’s just wrong – we kill real animals, not them replicant fake-animals, and if you want something to gulp down soft, we can kill another animal and boil it so hard with ole fashioned plasma until its fat turns to soup.

It’s called Freedom Beef. Because we care. We used to be a small butcher shop killing goats, but now we’re a fast food chain known throughout the universe for fine dining with real live red meat.

Would you want some fries with that?
Image "DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source)
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Lonestar »

Unknown Location
Dominion Space


Yivgny Chamski's eyes gradually opened. He had...why did he have a splitting headache? The room he was in gradually came into focus. There was a small open window, and he had the sense once more of being in a camp...but the smells were different. He was not on Spevik Ansils. Where was he? He rumbled and rolled off of the bed, which was oddly made. It occurred to him that the bed was a human style one, he had seem them on reruns of Friends. Grunted he ambled over to the human-style door and pulled. It was locked firmly in place.

"It won't open." Came a raspy voice from the shadows. Yivgny whirled around. He inhaled and gave a roar.

Image

"Ho ho...there is nothing you can do to me but grant me death, little one." Came the voice again. And Yivgny believed him. Yivgny spoke in halting English.

"Where are we?"

"Therapy Camp." Came the voice. "To help people like you and me."

"People? I am Bragule!" When there was no response Yivgny continued. "Why would I need help? What's going on?"

"You know, for us Moreaus." The voice was a whisper now. "To purge the unclean things we have done to our bodies. To make us Human, as God intended."

"Moreaus? Vat are you talking about it?"

"That is the scientific term for...for people who desire to believe they are animals. Others call us 'furries'. This camp is here to SAVE us."

Yivgny didn't like this one bit. "Who are you?"

"Pastor Davies will explain everything tomorrow morning."

"Who are you? You do not smell like Bragule."

There was some shuffling, and then the click of a light switch. Yivgny screamed.

Image

"I am Jerry...your Responsibilibuddy."
"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

MEANWHILE...
Image

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts
And I looked and behold, a pale bear
And his name that sat on him was Byzon
And Hell followed with him


The whole world was on fire. The sky burned, the oceans boiled. The planet died.

He heard the sound of joyful laughter even as the playground around him was consumed by flames. The sounds of soft singing and sweet giggling echoed in the air, mixing with the howling wind and the screams of a dying planet. The voices came from nowhere, yet at the same time they came from everywhere. All around him. He could hear the pitter-patter of small feet, like the sound of playing children. He heard squeals of delight and playful shouts, but he couldn't make out if they were nearby or far away.

A searing breeze made the merry-go-around turn slightly and the thing's nearly molten-metal gears creaked in protest. Plastic toys on the ground melted, deforming and flowing like melting candle wax forming puddles on the cracking asphalt.

He could hear crying now. Faint sobs and sniffing. A little girl's voice crying for her mother.

He looked around, tried to see where the sounds came from, but saw nothing. There was so much smoke, it stung his eyes, made them tear, but he looked harder to see where it came from. The heat and intense light of the blaze around him nearly blinded him. He stumbled and staggered and nearly fell, his leg was hurting badly.

The voices laughed at him. Childlike laughter at first, but they changed and turned more malevolent. The laughter sounded more like hisses. The pitter-patter of feet grew louder, coming closer.

He saw things in the shadows. Moving silhouettes of the children playing in the burning playground. Shadows of children made from smoke, riding on the swings.

Image

He was scared of them. He tried to run. He turned back, and now the smoke and shadow had resolved themselves and he saw them for what they truly were. They were children, with charred and blackened flesh and burned out eyes. Human children. Despite having all recognizable features burned off of them, he knew them.

Orphans.

They disappeared again in the smoke and shadow, but he could hear them, the pitter-patter of their feet, their malevolently gleeful laughter and giggles, growing louder as they came nearer. All he could see were their eyes. Their eyes.

He tried to scream to drown out their sounds, but the smoke choked him.

His broken leg gave up, snapped like a twig that couldn't bear any more weight, and he fell. Splintering bone broke out of his skin. He screamed in his mind.

He crawled, as he always did, turned around and saw the children again. Smoke and shadow gone, he saw that they were no longer human. They sneered and grinned, teeth showing, evil eyes glowing red. They were now cubs, burnt baby bear cubs, and there were so many of them surrounding him. The retractable claws came out of their hands and they bent down to him and began clawing at him, ripping off chunks of fur and flesh, so many moving so fast, tearing off the skin and meat, peeling off the fat underneath. He couldn't scream.

He fell into the water and drowned.

Image

There was an army of bodies under the river, people who ran out of time, out of friends. He could feel the dead down there, reaching up to welcome him as one of their own. It was an easy mistake to make.

He would wake up to a new nightmare. A worse one.



Brought to you in GODDAMN UNREAL TIME
BATTLESTAR ANNAPOLIS, Rear Echelon of the Coalition Fleet

INT. SICKBAY - WARD

The Annapolis' sickbay was designed with all the medical amenities of operating an isolated battlestar patrol in mind, and as such had quite a collection of modern facilities that were necessary for those who operated in the warship's potentially hazardous working environment. It had a small surgical ward, a laboratory with the appropriate diagnostic tools, and even several operating rooms. Several of the ORs were prepped for operations involving work-related injuries, which were not uncommon in such an ordnance-loaded vessel such as a battlestar. One of the ORs was in the process of being restocked and cleaned after a particularly long and arduous session of surgerizing.

The operation had finished a few hours ago. Now the patient was in the surgical ward, recuperating. While his pre-operative diagnosis was not caused by work-related injuries, it was still quite similar to those that sometimes occurred in the Annapolis. It was radiation exposure. The primary treatments included replacing his blood with a synthetic one hooked up to an anti-rad dialysis machine to clear his circulation and tissues of isotopes. His lungs as well were purged of inhaled fallout particulates through the use of a mechanical liquid breathing ventilator, with every inspiration he breathed in a fluorocarbon subsance, and with every expiration he breathed it out - along with the radioactive substances he had inhaled back on Pendleton.

His entire body system was being cleansed in a long and painful process.

Image

Curtains were drawn around his bed to maintain privacy, and to hide him from prying eyes. He had to be sedated due to the intense and excruciating post-op pains, to ensure comfort, promote rest, and to suppress the sensation of drowning that breathing liquids induced upon him. There on his bed, hooked on the liquid ventilator, he drowned in his sleep. He drowned in his dreams.

An evil figure entered the ward silently, with all the invisibility of a stealthed ship and the predatory hunger of a reptile thing, it lurked outside the curtains, with the lights making a menacing silhouette on the curtain cloth - like a massive mutated shadow puppet. It made a chittering noise, a fierce barely restrained chattering.

Had Patient Zero seen this, he would've feared for his life. But he was sound asleep, the mechanically-controlled waterboarding inducing horrible nightmares in his lucid subconscious. He could not see what was approaching. A monster that had the blood of countless lives staining its wicked talons.

The creature bared its fangs.

Image

It attacked. In one violent action it tore through the curtains and ripped the liquid respirator off Bragga's snout. Now breathing air whilst water was in his lungs, Bragga began to cough severely. Then his eyes shot wide open as STARFUCK stabbed him in the organ with a syringe filled with combat-grade stimulants, pumping it into his circulation to counteract and override the sedatives. His heartrate spiked while his lungs began hyperventilating - while the ECG began beeping alarms together together with the disconnected ventilator.

Bragga roared, but his roar was a sputtering choking hacking convulsion instead. He heaved copious amounts of phlegm and mucous, black-tinged from the particulates scraped off by the liquid he had breathed. He clutched his heart as his eyes went bloodshot from the near drowning asphyxiation as well as from the cardiac overpressure making the small blood vessels burst in his eyes. He reared up from his bed, gurgled, and collapsed back on the mattress.

"HEE!" Thara Krace the STARFUCK squealed in delight. She had used her week's stash of stims to properly formulate a large enough dose appropriate for a Bragulian.

Bragga twitched feebly on his bed.

"HEY!" STARFUCK straddled him, riding him like how she did so many weaker men who never matched up to her father. Except this wasn't like that. She placed her face near the big black bear's. "I'M TALKING TO YOU!"

Bragga wheezed.

"YEAH!" she grinned, satisfied that she had his undivided attention. Then she spoke, her mouth spitting out words rapid-fire like a fighter cannon spewing out repleted uranium rounds: "Your friends in Fleet Intelligence confiscated all my goddamn guncam footage and now that little bitch FAPOLLO's being a pussy and saying he won our little game but I know he's totally ejaculating prematurely as always cause there's no way that little limp-dicked lesbian can top my kills right so I want you to tell me who had the most kills, Mister Agent Bear, since you were on the ground vectoring me to blow the fuck out of orphanages and hospitals and restaurants and shit, so I want you to tell me who killed the most women!"

"Uuuhh...?" Bragga stared feebly at her. Great, he was on a high.

"How many women did I kill? How many?" STARFUCK asked, slow and loud for his benefit.

"All..." Bragga finally managed to utter. "You... killed... all of them..."

"YES!" STARFUCK jumped off him and punched the air. The methamphetamines made her nigh-superhuman so her fist actually dented the ceiling upon contact, and even though her knuckle bones had shattered she still didn't feel a single thing. She laughed. "THANK YOU TEDDY BEAR!"

"What the hell is going on here?!" a new voice came into the scene, along with a new person. It was some old fart with a white coat. STARFUCK rolled her eyes, it was just Major Skittles the Chief Medical Officer. "STARFUCK! You again! I don't know why you keep coming here, but get the fuck out of my ward!"

"HEE!" STARFUCK squealed and jumped away.

"Jesus Christ!" Major Skittles moaned as he ran to his patient. The bear was in a shit shape, barely breathing without his liquid air, and he was going into tachycardia. Damn. Skittles checked the creature's vital signs, not knowing the baselines since he wasn't no goddamn vet, after reattaching the damn liquid airway back so he could breathe while drowning again. He hooked the bear up into a morphine drip to lower his pulse rate, so his heart wouldn't explode from whatever the fuck STARFUCK did to him.

Meanwhile, STARFUCK quietly tiptoed to the sick bay's locked controlled substance medication chest. She tried picking the padlock with a hairpin, but saw that it was now a combination lock - Skittles had probably figured out how she was doing it - so she tried ripping the damn thing off with her bare hands instead. She was perplexed when she couldn't, only then realizing that her knuckles were broken. She shrugged, bit on the lock, and ripped it off with her teeth.

With another "TEE-HEE!" she collected all the epinephrine and atropine vials she could find for her bi-daily quota of stims, and also all the morphia and sedatives. She needed them too, or else she could never ever have any sleep at all. With her groceries done, STARFUCK hopped off away like an Energizer playboy bunny rabbit on crack.



Much later, Bragga had sufficiently stabilized that pulling the liquid breather off was already possible. He was awake and coherent, which was definitely a good sign. Doc Skittles' geiger-pen wasn't clicking anymore when passed over him, so he was pretty much clean. Due to their certain proclivities, it was necessary for Shepistanis to be able to treat radiation-related injuries as effectively as possible as fast as possible. So it was decided that Bragga could have visitors.

Colonel Velkro came in with Major Kreilagug, though the Major just stood back some distance. Velkro walked over to Bragga, approaching him slowly so he wouldn't startle him. He sat on the adjacent bed, which was empty, it creaked upon his sitting.

"Bragga, how are you?" Velkro asked quietly.

"Spozavik -" before the surprised Bragga could continue, Velkro shushed him. "How did..."

"Shhhh... comrade, I am Colonel Zupyr Velkro of the Imperator's Emerald Guard," Spozavik gave a conspiratorial wink. Here and now he wasn't IBGV, he was Emerald Guard. "How are you, my friend."

"Horrible." Bragga replied tersely. His mouth still hurt. "You?"

"Not to shabby either," Velkro said lightly. He handed Bragga a glass of water with a straw, and the IBGV agent drank.

"How did you get here?" Bragga asked.

"Gryznk pulled a favor. We are now in a Shepistani warship, which I was temporarily in command over while we rescued you." Velkro grinned.

Bragga laughed at that, but his chuckles soon devolved into coughing fits and Velkro had to pat his back to help him hack out a loogie.

"So did you..." Bragga struggled to speak, but had another coughing spell. "Th... the floppy disks?"

"Yes, thank you." When they were in the dropship, Bragga had managed to whisper the combination of the floppies to Major Kreilagug. Cautiously, Velkro had opened them and discovered that the contents contained amongst them information not pertaining to the Collectors only, but also some interesting things about Pendletonian preparations for the Anglian invasion. In keeping with being a good guest, now that his command of the operation and the Annapolis had expired with the mission's end, Velkro had given Commander Hushy some of the pertinent Pendletonian data as a favor. It would help him with his upcoming meeting with the Lord Admiral Fisher. Hopefully. "It will prove useful, comrade."

"And the code for the cassette..." Bragga whispered it to a leaning Velkro, who nodded. "Got it?"

"Yes. My friend, I will see to it that the Bureau gives you its highest honor," Velkro said this with full sincerity, finally appreciating the sacrifices Bragga had made for Imperator and Empire. "Truly what you've done was an act of great Galactic Vigilance."

"Bah..." Bragga grumbled drowsily. "I'm too old for this shit, Vsvlgyrod... I'm no Hero of the Bragulan Star Empire."

"Who is?" Spozavik shrugged. Bragga tried to reply with something witty, but what came out of his mouth afterwards were just snores.



Image

Agent Spozavik had brought with him a small and portable Master-Slave Manipulator Mk. 8, standard opening kit for all Bragulan agents when dealing with radium-protected data media such as code-locked floppy disks and cassette tapes. Not that he wasn't trustful of Bragga, but it always paid to play safe and Spozavik was always a bear of caution. The MSM-8 was superior to a glovebox that used lead-lined gloves, and with the Brag-crete lined walls it could absorb any conceivable dose of radiation from the disks and tapes. It was a bit like the protective gear the Emerald Guard used when assembling their nuclear hand grenades. It was also like what Explosive Ordnance Destroyers used, except instead of telemanipulators they had prisoners-of-war locked in the chamber and told to disarm bombs under the threat of dropping a cyanide pellet into a drop of bucket located in the chamber to gas them to death.

Agent Spozavik remembered the time he had only 24 hours to find and defuse a bomb Gamma-Sigma terrorists had planted in Vladirominsk, how he tortured a CEID spy to locate it, and then placed the same human agent in the same room as the ticking time bomb. Dealing with such pressures, Spozavik could understand why his fellow Bragulan EODs would be pressured to use captives and POWs in bomb disposal, for humor's sake. Sometimes a good laugh was needed every once in a while to relieve pressure and calm nerves.

Image

Spozavik unlocked the cassette without triggering the radium capsule failsafe. Despite the ungainly robot hands of the MSM-8, he had manipulated it deftly to input the precise combination Bragga had given him. With that, he retrieved the compact cassette from the chamber and went on to decrypt its contents of Collector data. From a cursory glance, Bragga's picket ship and spy satellite were in orbit around Pendleton and thus quite some distance away from the Collector fleet action, so the data he had collected wasn't quite as much as the data from the Annapolis' own sensors - which Spozavik had obtained through his own initiative by simply asking Commander Hushy for it.

Spozavik chuckled and got himself a warm steaming cup of Bovryl liquid meat beverage, the ideologically favorite drink of all patriotic Bragulans.


Image

Bragga woke up after another horrible nightmare where he was drowning in a river full of skulls, a river that flowed straight to bloody hell. He whimpered, the first time he did ever since he was a mewling cub back home on Bragule so many years ago. As a small cub he was so frightened when it rained, because his family's one-room home was by the sea and whenever there was a storm the wind would make giant waterspouts made out of acid wastewater.

Now awake, he remembered something peculiar about his conversation with Agent Spozavik, the way he - and his Emerald Guard comrade - looked at him so oddly, slightly differently. It was strange. Something was wrong.

Major Skittles approached him with a horrible bedside manner, using his bear-sized bedpan as an ashtray for his puny unfiltered human cigarette.

"What did you do to me?" Bragga asked feebly.

"We did severe anti-radiation treatments," the Chief Medical Officer answered matter of factly. "We did first things first; so all that fur had to go. It was hot - been dusted with all kinds of really fierce radioisotopes."

"No... it can't be!" gasped Bragga. "Give me... give me a mirror!"

Skittles shrugged and obliged him, handing him a mirror so he could see his reflection.

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Fingolfin_Noldor
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Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1

Post by Fingolfin_Noldor »

Battle of Janus Colony

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“Order the troop ships to move into position at once. Admiral, order the fleet to assume orbital bombardment position. Sensors, give us target telemetry and scans. Cities that have been completely overrun by Karlacks, and not a single human life left; use nanovirus bombs or virus bombs first, followed by complete exterminatus with lance and plasma batteries. Order the troop ships in as well,” ordered Rus Komnenos.

“Aye, my Lord. Issuing the orders,” replied Admiral Gorshkov.

Turning to the Georgi Konstantin, Chapter Master of the Varangian Rus, and General High Militant Dzmitry Konev, Rus Komnenos said, “Gentlemen, let us go to the war room to discuss the matter of the ground assault.”

The trio entered the war room, where the Imperial Army generals and colonels of the various regiments and formations were present in the form of holograms. The Titan Legion Legate of the Titan Legio VIII Fire Storm. A hologram of the planet hovered above all of them, marking locations of the Karlack infestation that awaited extermination.

“Gentlemen, as you can see, some 4 cities still hold out against the Karlack infestation. The capital miraculously survives, if not barely. The militia of the Janus Colony fights a desperate battle for survival in these areas, and though we plan to bombard from space the sizable concentrations of the Karlacks, there are still plenty to fight on the perimeters of the cities, as well as inside.”

The hologram then focused on the four cities in question. Red and blue dots marked the attackers and the defenders. Karlack burrowers had burrowed themselves under the city and assailed the defenders within the city, forcing the defenders to spread themselves dangerously thin. The Strategos Primus proceeded to describe the battleground.

“It is to the credit of the defenders of the Janus colony that they are fighting as they are, despite the loss of the chain of command due to the treacherous scum of a governor. Nevertheless, most of the towns and cities are overrun and will be destroyed by orbital bombardment. Overrall command of the ground will be held by Titan Legion Legate Ptolemy, General High Militant Dzmitry Konev, and Chapter Master Georgi Konstantin. They will have your orders, and you are to follow them. Remember, we are here to save what we can. Everything else? Scorch burn. Dismissed.”

Turning to Georgi Konstantin, “Chapter Master, deploy the Varangian Rus as you see fit. I will join you when I am able.”

“It will be done, my Lord.”

=====

In high orbit, Imperial ships begun assuming bombardment positions and computing the necessary firing solutions. A rain of fire descended upon the planet. Virus bombs killed most of the Karlacks, though some obviously survived due to resistance to some of the latest virus bombs. Nanovirus bombs ensured those did not survive however. The viruses liquidified their victims, and Lances and plasma weapons vaporized the desolved corpses. Warp weapons were not used because of their obvious destructive effects that would leave more than destroyed cities.

Troop ships emerged out of hyperspace, bearing some approximately 1 million Imperial Guard troops, 2 million PDF as well as a Titan Legion. A fair amount of firepower to be brought to bear to liberate a backwater world. The Imperial ships began bombarding positions from space, destroying 2 cities that were regarded as lost causes, while clearing the way for the troop ships to land to deploy their cargo.

Countless city sized troop ships landed on the ground, firing weapons to destroy any errant Karlack that somehow strayed aimlessly into the landing fields. Upon landing, troops marched out in strict and tight formation and assembled while the artillery and armored units disembarked and gathered into formation. The Lord General High Militant Dzmitry Konev of the Imperial Guard disembarked his personal aircraft from the Tyrant’s Dominion bearing orders from the Strategos Primus to organize and lead the combined force of Imperial Guard and PDF to encircle the capital city and 2 other major cities and to take them by force. A Titan Legion would provide fire support, and the Lord General would liaise with the Legate of the Titan Legion Legio VIII Fire Storm to ensure that there was close coordination between the Legion and the Imperial Guard. Friendly fire incidents were always a troublesome thing when it comes with Titans and their huge weapons designed to level whole cities.

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The Imperial Guard and PDF began organising itself into 4 fronts, with Titans in close support. General High Militant Konev sat in his command seat aboard the Command Vehicle, one of six in the theater. These large monsters were charged with providing command and control to the some 1 million Imperial Guard and 2 million PDF on the ground, while providing the necessary communication connections to the Titan Legio VIII Fire Storm.

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While the troops organised themselves, the Astartes made their move. Large Thunderhawks swooped down on the landing area and high speed. Astartes used to use drop ships, but a decision was made that drop ships tended to be too vulnerable and the demands on the quality of the material made it such that they were incredibly costly. Thunderhawks on the other hand, could descend at incredibly fast, and then make a hard landing while laying down ground fire if so required. Some 100,000 Astartes were assembling on the field, off loading their armor and their heavy weapons. They were led by their Chapter Master, Georgi Konstantin who will lead the Varangian Rus in lieu of his liege lord.

The Imperial Army was like a gun that was uncocked and ready to fire.
Last edited by Fingolfin_Noldor on 2010-08-13 11:58pm, edited 2 times in total.
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