NationStates Jolt Archive

Ten years ago...

Chaos through warfare. Evolution through victory. Perfection through bloodshed.

The words, the wisdom hit her. Permanently.

She hadn`t the smooth, elegant form of her smaller sisters, who were build for battle, to destroy the enemys ships, to kill what can be killed.

She was more.

She felt it in her body, it`s black, shifting skin, it`s beauty and perfection. She carried a power far greater than that of her sisters. A power that extended everything else in the universe. A power not meant for battle, not meant to spread the proper state of the universe, not meant to spread the truth of entropy, but to do something else.

To mercilessly destroy the enemy. Utterly, totally destroying it. To destroy anything existing, their lives, their homes, their future, their past.

Their planets.

She felt the cloud around her.

And she heard the warcrys of her sisters. Felt them, rejoiced with them, ready to celebrate an oratorio of bloodshed.

The red current of hyperspace flowed around them, embraced them, as they moved forward, preparing to bring utter destruction upon their target.

Then they came. Suddenly, fast.

Of course, they had detected them, but for some reason, they couldn`t act... a few of them, yes, and the first ships of the approaching force were sliced apart, crushed, destroyed.

But more came, and the pressure on her thoughts, the pressure on the thoughts of her sisters became stronger, stronger... too strong.

Another one was sliced, exploded in a red ball of destruction... but at the same time, her sisters payed the price. One after another fell apart, their tendrils destroyed, their very existence eleminated, eradicated.

Impossible.

This is impossible.

We can`t loose.

We are perfect. perfect form, perfect control...

Another of her sisters fell, crushing into a part of her, exploding, wounding her...

She screamed out, her head exploding, or so it felt.

And this was her rescue. Suddenly, her mind was free again. And she felt it, the pain. She was hit.

By one, two, three... more ships. More of them. Her sisters had been destroyed. It was impossible, but it was true.

They shot at her. She had a perfect body, but she felt it´s wounds, and she felt how more and more bits of her were wounded... she could feel her death.

No.

This can`t be.

No.

In a last, desperate action, she slips out of hyperspace, her guns firing at the enemy, hitting four of them. Their end doesn`t satisfy her, but at least it`s something.

Hours later. Or is it days? She doesn`t know.

Where am i?

She calculates her position from the stars she can see.

The periphery of an irrelevant, primitive system. About eleven billion km from the local sun.

She is wounded badly. Obviously, nobody did follow her.

Jumpengines don`t work... Energy reserves limited... weapon systems 50% operational.

She can`t send a distress signal. The system is primitive, but the people are space- faring. In her current state, the possible results would be... horrendous.

Still, it`s unlikely that she can be detected. So she has to wait.

Time to sleep... time to sleep for a long time...

---

[ooc: Yes. this is a planet destroyer. And no, i do not intend to use it. Especially not with this nation, as i don`t plan to let them come back, They`re just the source.

Anyway, the outcome is predefined: The planet destroyer (shadow cloud) will be destroyed. Anything else is as of yet unknown. Naturally.

Thats all.]

Ten years later...

The vastness of space. Always a breathtaking view. Even if you watch it for the tenth, the hundredth time.

Melissa went away from the screen. As beautiful as it was, after some time, it got boring. The sun, a tiny dotin space, she knew it, she knew it all.

THat was the problem with this deep space missions. The pilot controlled the ship. Entirely. He didn`t need any help.

Which meant that half a dozen IPX employees literally died of boredom while playing poker for half a year.

Really... the advertisements claimed so many things... 'Be in space! Experience adventures! Find new technologies! Visit colonies at the edge of the solar system! Io`s volcanos wait for you!' Along with many, pretty pictures...

Unfortunately, reality was something else. Yes, it listened good: 'IPX: Exploring the past to create a better future!'. But it was, in fact, horribly boring. And considering the fact that the long journeys made normal relationships like other people had them... well, impossible, they were underpaid as well.

While walking to the canteen, she noticed the ship altering it`s course.

What the.. But the ship, it`s pilot, already connected to the rest of the crew, and informed them.

In her thoughts, she saw it.

It was big.

No, not big.

A giant.

And the closer they came, the bigger it became.

How comes you didn´t notice it earlier?
It`s gravitational field is extremely small. It has a small core, but most of it seems to be little more than gas.

Melissa connected herself to the ships external sensors.

A considerably high amount of carbon... bioorganic tech.
We will stay here, this is of considerably higher importance than our search for profitable asteorids. I send an encoded message to mission control.

---

24 hours later.

DA, Mönchengladbach, IPX headquarters:

This is... interesting.
It is. The footage, as well as the non- visual data proves that this discovery is of extreme value for us. However...
It is necessary to keep this strictly internal. If the other corporations hear of it, we will be in trouble.
Not to mention foreign competition.
Indeed.

Hours later, the heavy exploration ship Voice in the Wilderness started from it`s docks in earth orbit to 'reinforce' the Ikarus, which was somewhat ill- suited for such an operation.

However, what the IPX officials didn`t know, was the fact that they had been bugged...

A few hours after the ship left, soldats had been informed, thanks to the incredibly low payment one of the IPX cleansing ladies received.

Unfortunately, said cleansing lady didn´t exactly believe selling the information to one customer could satisfy her salary demands... So, half an hour after soldats had been informed, she entered a small vegetable shop in south- Mönchengladbach, for a short moment watching a few children playing on the street, dreaming of a better past.

"The usual. Oh, and a few extras."

Andreas Lorenz was an odd sort - well trained, sixtyish, military bearing, seamed face pale from too little sun under the ruddy fogs of Mönchengladbach. And he too never ceased to feel a certain melancholy at the streets of Mönchengladbach.



When he came to the city the first time he was singing like a bowstring on combat drugs, seeing everything as targets. His battallion was second insidethe perimeter, moving in after the Bracelet EMP strike. Like everyone else, he was a combatant first but he was also tasked with intelligence work.



Including field-expedient interrogations.



So there is the street where he lost a chunk of bicep, there is the building where he called in an artillery strike knowing full well from thermal signatures that the enemy support team were surrounded by civilians , and underneath that school he'd disabled a shot-up Bracelet commando's pain editor with imprompty tools and worked the woman over with a file until she gave up tactical data.



There is a penance factor in volunteering for a work where even major enhancements will only keep him on the horribly uncomfortable side of active unhealth.



Bloody industrial wasteland. It's halfway to being as bad as one of the Territory's industrial domes.



He flashes through these thoughts for maybe the millionth time and smiles as machines adjust his neurochemistry. He smiles and slips a negotiable debit card into a newspaper and puts it down on the counter and asks Certainly what will it be today for the ten thousandth time and knows that he looks ever so much the tired handsome veteran of defending this city rather than tearing it down...

"Just a melon." the woman answers, looking bored while reading the newspaper. Discretly, she takes the card, and slips a small datachip into the newspaper, where the card was. "Nothing new, i see... SNAFU."

Taking her vegetables and the melon, she leaves, having earned her next vacations in White-X.

---

Meanwhile, Althena is discussing the matter at The Manor, slightly concerned about the corporations always following their own agendas rather than looking at the common good of all of DA.

She listens to her minions discussing the problem, petting her purring kitten.

"We do not know what exactly is out there... just that it seems to be quite interesting."
"The exact location is unknown as well, it just says 'In the Kuiper belt'. Thats not exactly... much.
"True. We need to follow them quickly."
"No. No we don`t." For the first time, Althena intervened. "We have ships at Triton, Neptun. We have more than enough time to prepare."
"Well... true. So?"
"First of all, we will try to get more information. Can`t be that hard to get it, can it?"
"No... no, not really. We will have it early enough."
"Good. Then, lets go to work. May god guide us."

---

Meanwhile, the Voice in the Wilderness arrived at a position just about 400000km from the thing.

Seems to be dead, eh?
Yeah.
It`s scary.

That it was. It`s vastness made it it impossible to see the stars behind it, it`s blackness seemed to consume it all...

So... going near would be a bad idea, right?
Yes. We should use a shuttle.
Wonder if it even has some... entry.
We will find out. Melissa, you go?
Heck, i`m the Xenobiologist, and it seems i`m needed here, ain`t i?

She smiles, and heads towards the shuttle bay.

This should be interesting.

Still, she has a feeling that this wont be all that easy... somehow, she is frightened by this thing.

Lorenz clucks at the forgotten newspaper. Puts it to the side in case the woman returns for it. He's a serviceminded grocer. Makes the customer come back.

That and a headcase.

Chip into sanitized reader. Data content into implants and backup one-use transmitter in case he can't make the drop for... some reason.

On the bus, Lorenz and a woman sit side by side. Implants discreetly exchange data. Unlike him, she is in a position where transmitting large datasets isn't unusual. Plenty of volume to hide the chip's contents in.

Hours later, the data dump reaches former North Rhodesia. Amber flags are raised.

TSA Headquarters Mindscape



"...and quite probably a prehistoric artifact. So, what do you think?"



"I think we should keep close tabs on this affair. Close tabs, and overall see what can be done about threats in the Kuiper and Oort. What with the Veganian system, the possible selfreplicators and this, it's becoming a trend. Still, right now we can not maintain anything like decent surveillance. That leaves us with tracking transports and human intelligence - the der Angst datanets remain fairly tight."



"Well, we could point some locals in the right direction. Also, comms at that range would call for pretty exotic hardware, so we'll see what we can see. Elevate this matter to prio 3?"



"Prio 3, aye."



"Aye."



Space



A small drone spread launches from CV Werther de Goethe after a der Angst transport heading for Mars. The drones are set to keep their thermal dumps pointed away from the DA vessel. In case of a direct challenge, they are to claim being a routine antipiracy sensor sweep.



Near Mars, a frigate and its picket consorts move into position to follow the transport at a great distance.



Sensor logs are scrutinized for hints as to where der Angst might have pointed communicators able to reach the Kuiper. No real hope there, even if der Angst is watched more closely than most actual enemies.

Tag for later post

The Voice in the Wilderness has the pride of the IPX exploration fleet.

400m in diameter, a perfect sphere, unlike this ugly military vessels with their turrets that destroyed the beauty of the sphere.

It was now near mars, still accelerating, heading towards the kuiper belt.

Anna, that was her name. She led the expedition. And, as a metter of fact, she was quite excited about it.

An unknown alien vessel, giant size, unknown technology...

It was perfect for her. She couldn´t wait until they would finally arrive.

The beauty of the stars struck her. They were... fascinating. Although she had seen them quite often, although she was... used to them, she still loved them. Loved space. It`s sheer vastness was... reliving. Very much unlike the overcrowded DA. It meant... yes, it meant freedom for her.

Nothing unusual was happening. Traffic as normal, which, in the vastness of space, meant 'very thin'.

It would be a pleasure, this journey... Beautiful and interesting... or so she thought.

The only problem was this group of rather strange passengers they carried with them... people she didn`t like.

But that was a part of the job, or so she thought.

---

[ooc: Now i SHOULD RP soldats getting more information... will do that later...]

The longscan net keeps doing its nominal thing, feeding navigational data to anyone who asks for it. Quite decent sensors keep working - of course, this sort of thing mainly depends on ships keeping their transponders turned on. Far superior sensors feet into the net's distributed nonsapient AI.

The unknown vessels have triggered quite a few alerts, though. One lightspeed datafeed reaches a comms relay assigned to WG Withered Flower after just a 45-minute lag. The intelligence shift tries to make heads or tails of the data, debating with the home office through limited QE comms.

The officers who finally manage to convince TSA that investigation is a priority fail to convince Command to detach the SATD-equipped vessels from the group to investigate. Frustration abounds... Withered Flower and its consorts are in dispersed formation, heading outsystem at relatively low velocity, drone-net spread to spot a nominally-allied craft probably due to pass through the volume covered.

The Wall Group's sentence to tedium not reprieved, it drifts serenely on.

Lasers spew a fragmentary mission briefing at a SATD courier drone drifting in the Ring ecliptic. Space twists...

The drone reappears fourteen lightyears away, lightdays from the brown dwarf nicknamed Murk, among debris and mines.

Lightseconds away, among the gravel, metal and diamondoid and fragile flesh hover in great thermal shrouds. Five ships, hulls swollen with power storage modules, take their leave of their bases, powering up and accelerating to match a velocity decribed. Thermal dumps flare as their hulls drop toward absolute zero. Space twists...

Five heavy ships emerge, bracketing a large fragment of Shadow gunboat drifted far and fast from the battle volume.

While this happened elsewhere, not too many things happened back in sol...

The Voice in the Wilderness was still on it´s way, soon... soon it would arrive...

Right now it was at Neptun, stopping for a day or two, being refueled. A tanker would join it here, just to make sure they could return... so would a cruiser, just in case someone would look after them... after all, DA expeditions to the Kuiper belt weren´t exactly common.

Soon, they would start again... Anna was still enjoying the rather... strange environment of Triton. It was... fascinating.

I should have come here earlier...

However, the next day, they would start again, this time making the final jump to their aim...

Strangely enough, the last time the crew that was already there had send a message to Triton was... a week ago.

Of course, they had been advised to talk as löittle as possible, to keep this a secret... but this was a bit too little...

Well... we will find out soon...

She stepped away from her platform at the outer dome perimeter, from where she looked over Triton´s surface & nitrogen volcanos, and headed back to her ship...

It had been fun ehre, for the little time she spend on Triton...

[ooc: 11billion km=~73.5AU. Is it safe to assume that the Planetkiller would be coming further in system over time? Also, where would it be relative to Pluto, Quaoar, Varuna, or Ixion?]