NationStates Jolt Archive

The war had been brief, and long. For years the invaders had assaulted the outlying systems of the extensive, and largely uninhabited, Everlasting Empire. Their fleets had arrived armed and seeking war, expanding always with weaponry in hand.

The Onarrím had let them. Had allowed system after system to fall over the long years, quietly and patiently waiting for the enemy to become overconfident, strung out. Weak. For one thing they have always had is territory. The sheer number of uninhabited solar systems in the galaxy has ensured this.

Finally, in this twelve-world system, they had struck. It had been sudden, quick, and vicious. From nowhere came the fleet of cloaked warships, emerging only after firing weaponry that crippled the invading host’s prize warships. It was over in moments. Not one escaped.

The fleet, under the command of the Young Rose, had advanced without stopping even for the briefest of victory celebrations…before news of the defeat had reached their enemy’s homeworld the Flower Houses had found its location from the star maps of the destroyed and emerged.

An unconditional surrender had followed.


But this is ancient history now, a war that was fought a thousand Terrestrial years ago. Drifting through the gloom of space the hulks remained of warships rent apart by the unexpected, perfectly executed strike, left to drift in orbit around a yellow sun in mute memorial to the pinnacle of Onarrím tactics. Appearing in the wake of their enemy’s engine output, most of the foe had not even had time to fire back.

A single ship of the Young Rose’s fleet had died that day, and it circled now around the fourth world from the sun, its side torn apart, its hob, muffled by the war cries of its fellows at first, now too quiet to be heard across the Wall. It cried to itself, reliving the memories of that day, never knowing whether the crew, its precious blooms, had died for nothing.

For a thousand years, it waited…

Brigadier Thomas Harrington of the Battleship HMS Victoria looked up from where he was sitting on the bridge and sighed deeply, almost with the air of someone who has just completed a particularly challenging crossword. Colonel James Butler, sitting on the Brigadier’s right hand-side looked up from a diagnostic report on the engines, “anything the matter Sir?”
“Hmmph, quite the contrary Colonel” Harrington half said, half snorted, “I have in fact just completed this rather challenging crossword, it’s taken me two days to finish this one you know, bit of a challenge but got there in the end.”

He snorted again, causing his rather prominent mustache, which was now slowly greying with his advancing years and very nearly covered the entire bottom half of his face, to flare outwards and bristle slightly, he looked again at the folded newspaper in his lap with the now completed crossword on it, picked it up and set it down on a table to the side gently, silently saluting a worthy adversary.

“What’s the ETA of our arrival at Sector 48QZ-Alpha?” he enquired at the navigation officer, “ETA is now less than four minutes Sir” came the reply from behind a large row of sensor, communication, navigation and weapons systems.

“Ah, perfect timing” Harrington beamed; he turned to Butler, twisting slightly in his chair as he did so, “can I interest you in a spot of tea? Earl Grey perhaps?” “Of course Sir, don’t you always?” Thomas Harrington then did a full 180 in his chair, now facing the other way, and addressed the young officer standing just behind and to the left of his chair, “two Earl Greys would you Jenkins? Quite strong and a sugar each.”

As Jenkins saluted and left to deal with the tea, the patterning nodes in the prow of HMS Victoria suddenly increased their energy output exponentially for a few seconds, causing massive strain on the fabric of space-time and punching a hole back into the universe, the nodes then lowered their energy levels in a programmed sequence and the gap sealed behind them. HMS Victoria then streaked in-system at sub light velocities in Sector 48QZ-Alpha, the ship and crew had been sent to investigate a weak but unknown energy source that had been fluctuating since Command had first found it over six weeks ago, Victoria had been dispatched eight days later and had made good time since then.

“Full sensevise, give me the location of the source when you have it,” Harrington barked at the sensors officer, suddenly all business. A star map appeared in his vision, a representation of the space around them to a distance of one hundred and fifty-eight thousand miles; the map was being constantly updated from the ships sensors, streaming into his neural nanonics, giving him a bird’s-eye view of the area. Suddenly a new ping appeared, some distance in front and to the port of the ship, though the distance was closing fast.

“Got it Sir,” called the sensors officer, the ping disappeared, then re-appeared, then disappeared again. “Come on Hawkins what are you doing, get a proper lock on it,” “I can’t Sir, it’s almost impossible for sensors to distinguish it, thermal is nil, radar is nil, magnetic disturbances are barely reading, ion fluctuations are minimal and radioactivity is only registering background stuff. It’s almost completely invisible Sir.”

“Hmmph, not very sporting, it advertises it’s presence for anyone who cares to look and when someone arrives it wants to hide, hmmph, well get closer to it, maintain a distance of fifteen thousand miles minimum at all times.” Harrington half turned to see where Jenkins had got to with the tea.

Colonel Butler then opened a channel to the ships intercom, “away team one prepare for departure from hanger six, full thermo-suits.”

HMS Victoria cut its engines at twenty thousand miles distance, its maneuvering jets gently nudging it to the desired position, always keeping its broadside to the ship that the source was emanating from. Full sensor sweep information was being streamed directly into Harrington’s and Butler’s neural nanonics, there was an extraordinarily large amount of debris, most of it made of a carbon-titanium alloy, clearly pieces of a ship or several ships, the source of the energy had no taken on a more definite form as they had closed the distance, the shape was sleek, very slim, with no right angles, every surface was curved and smooth, the material was unknown, either scanners couldn’t penetrate the hull of the derelict or it was a completely new material.

At that moment Jenkins arrived with a pot of tea and two cups on saucers, all were of fine white china with blue oriental designs, with them was a small shallow dish with slices of lemon and a sugar bowl and silver spoon, the tray he was carrying them on was also silver. Also at that moment the shuttle carrying away team one left hanger six, arriving at the blown out section of the hull sensors had noted as the two COs were adding a slice of lemon and a spoonful of sugar to their teas, clasping the handles gently but firmly, little fingers pointing out slightly as they drank.

Harrington opened a channel to the away team, “this is away team one, we have entered the vessel and are proceeding down what appears to be a main corridor, most of the power systems appear to be out, we are heading aft towards the energy source,” there was a few minutes of silence, punctuated only by the steady controlled breathing of the officer in charge of away team one and the occasional grunt and scrape as they appeared to be moving obstacles from their path.
“The interior of the ship is similar to the outside, there appear to be no right angles, and sensors still can’t get a fix on the composition of the hull,” a pause, “we have now reached the aft section of the vessel, the energy source is less than three hundered feet from our current position, there is a faint glow, proceeding with caution and switching to full sensevise.”

Immediately Harrington’s and Butler’s vision was overlaid with the scene that the CO of away team one was looking at, “source is now at two hundred feet, energy fluctuations and intensity increasing, magnetic disturbances climbing. One hundered feet,” the glow had been growing steadily brighter, but it was pulsing rapidly now, and appeared a sickly red, growing more intense by the second. “Magnetic readings reaching hazardous levels,” suddenly the sensors officer called out, “Sir, massive energy spike detected from aft section of the vessel, magnetic, ionic and thermal reading climbing rapidly, hazardous levels will be reached imminently!” Harrington began issuing a series of commands into the ship’s computer via his neural nanonics, engines began powering up, forward weapon systems trained on the aft section of the alien vessel and he ordered the away team to make an immediate withdrawal to the shuttle for return to Victoria.

Before the away team had made it out of that chamber, energy levels peaked, some off the scale, the data stream from them to Brigadier Harrington went dead, all life signs were gone and the alien vessel went nova, molecular-binding force generators placed within Victoria's hull struggled to maintain the hull’s integrity but thankfully the tiridium hull held against the sudden hammer blow of radiation and heat. In the alien vessel’s place was a wall of shimmering colour, as if the Aurora Borealis had been captured and forced into a two-dimensional shape.

“What in God’s name is that” Butler whispered, almost to himself, the engines officer and the navigation officer then both yelled out at pretty much the same time;

“Sir, we are drawing closer to the phenomenon, distance is now seven thousand miles and closing, we’ll hit in less than two minutes!”
“The engines can’t hold the ship in position Sir, I’m giving them full power, I don’t have enough Sir, I don’t have enough power!”

Slowly, inexorably, despite all the engines could do the ship plunged headlong into that shimmering veil of light, passing into it but not coming out the other side, at least not into the universe we know. So, high above the fourth planet orbiting a largely forgotten star HMS Victoria disappeared with the loss of all hands, no trace was ever discovered, no wreckage of the ship nor any of the crew. After weeks of extensive searching Command declared them MIA presumed dead.

With an almighty crash that shook the ship to its core HMS Victoria crashed down onto solid ground, the ship sank several feet into the earth and then settled, listing slightly to port. Brigadier Harrington was thrown from his chair, sprawling on the floor, picking himself up with as much dignity as possible he glared around the bridge, “Hawkins! Bring the sensors to full resolution, on screen, where the hell are we!”

The screen situated on the front wall of the bridge flickered to life, displaying a blue sky flecked with white clouds, a deep brown, rich earth beneath them, with rows of plants, hedgerows, trees, flowers and several herds of what Harrington assumed were animals in the distance. There was complete, stunned silence on the bridge, all eyes riveted to this impossible scene,

Brigadier Thomas Harrington stretched out his left arm, still miraculously holding his fine china tea cup on it’s saucer, “Jenkins,” his voice was slightly hoarse, he being as stunned as everyone else but trying not to show it, “another pot of tea will you?”

Then…

Men in protective suits step through the gaping hole in my side; I can feel them touching my decaying body. It’s been quite some time since I felt anything alive. Oh, it feels so glorious, they’ve come for me? At last?

No.

They are not Us. I cannot feel home in them, there is nothing of the Boundless Realms in these false-things, non-beings, mortal figments of this dream-place.

It can’t be real. The Violets wouldn’t just leave me! I have…had…their child aboard, couldn’t leave her here, couldn’t leave me, not me, not me, not here, not so far from home…

…I can feel these non-things touching me. They’re walking through my insides, they blither and blather and mutter and stutter and it all seems so vague…I can’t think straight. I think all curvy-topsy, upsy-wavy…

They can feel my easp-drive…I know it. Footsteps, pitter-patter through my veins. They want to come through, break the wall, tumble-down, falling universe-bricks! Maybe it’s them again, little invading darkling things…but its been so long, we won didn’t we, did we not, surely so?

But has it been so long? Can’t be real, just a dreaming-dream, because the Violets wouldn’t leave me here…leave me so long lonely-alone…

…They can feel me waking, stirring from sleep, and they want to go through, through the wall-of-walls, want to steal the easp. They can go through…them and that big-bulky-large-metal-crude-savage darkling-invading thing…

Open the drive; make a big door with the latch-drive! Big hole and a shiny gate and an end to me.

Maybe I’ll wake up?



Now…

The ship’s sensors don’t seem to work properly – apparently they are seven hundred miles in the air, two thousand feet underground…outside temperature is minus seventy, wait, make that nineteen above…the radio screams static, voices just about audible if people yell…the lights are flickering on and off, struggling to hold their own in a place where conventional physics is not meant to be…life support? Struggling at the very least. Even a compass does not work as it should…there is no north, no south, nor east or west – at least, not in the normal sense of it.

Fields stretched as far as the eye could see. The eye could see a long way. Come to think of it, there was no horizon, no curve to the earth. Here, today, the star shone down upon an endless land with fields, forest and rivers stretching ad infinatum. Beneath the battleship the soil was dark and rich, the kind of perfect farmland that never seems to actually exist…hedgerows spread in seemingly haphazard fashion, or perhaps a pattern that human eyes cannot seem to understand.

There are flowers too, flowers everywhere, so many violets peeking through hedges, growing amongst the crop. There are other blooms, but none as prevalent as those five-petal flowers in rich purples, blues and even yellow.

Up a gentle rise off the starboard side of the ship a stag watches the battleship for a moment…he is huge, beautiful, an impossible twenty-pointer – when twelve-point antlered deer are named “royal”, and sixteen “imperial”. The majestic creature turns and moves away down the other side of the soft rise, vanishing into woodland and followed by a half-hidden herd.

Perhaps a mile off the port bow is a small herd of silver and white creatures, appearing as something between the size of a horse and a deer. Sunlight sparkles off their foreheads.

Far off in the skies are broad-winged raptors and smaller, less aggressive birds – all scattered from the unexpected arrival of Harrington’s ship. Small, varicoloured winged bipeds watch cautiously from trees some distance away and in the distance behind the ship brownskinned creatures flee, running in a jerky and uncoordinated fashion as if they had too many joints and badly formed muscle.

The silver and white herd had approached the ship. Its voice dry, one drawled:

“Wow. Very talented these people, not only do they miss their harbour, they get the wrong side of the Wall. Very professional astral education. Obviously going to be a major spacefaring power.”

Sipping on his second cup of tea in as many universes, Harrington allowed the chaos on the bridge to sweep through him for a moment, gathering his wits, putting on the air of command.
“Hawkins, I want a full sensor report, both interior and exterior, give me force generators and life support status. Scottie, I want a full damage report on the engines,” then almost as an afterthought he turned to Jackson, the navigation officer, “oh, and be so good as to find out where we are would you? Much obliged.”

As the bridge staff began to jump to their respective tasks a semblance of order began to re-assert itself on the bridge. Harrington began to datavise an order to the medical teams when he found that his neural nanonics were barely functioning, the electronics were behaving erratically, one moment barely registering, the next coming dangerously close to shorting out and overloading, he cancelled all non essential programmes and sealed and encrypted those sections.
“Sir, sensors are…not working very well, they’re going haywire, its like we’re plugged into a giant magnet, external temperature, altitude, pitch, even the composition of the external environment is ambiguous, I can’t even be sure its air out there. Interior readings are slightly more reliable, life support is just holding but I can’t say how much longer for, over three quarters of the force generators are offline but there do not appear to be any hull breaches…” he trailed off and glanced again at the display, “I’m reading life signs outside the ship, but it’s almost impossible to tell how many or how large they are, or even if they’re human.”

As Harington listened to the reports coming in from Scottie that the engines had had to be shut down to prevent them overheating and damaging themselves and Jackson saying that in short he hadn’t a clue where they were the life support system panels began blaring warning claxons, announcing a drop in efficiency. Hawkins came back yelling “life support systems down to 63% Sir, at this rate they will only be able to support us for another four and a half hours!”
“Hawkins, Jackson, Scottie, Richards you’re with me, I want you in full military dress in thirty minutes, get your second command team up here,” Harrington turned to Butler, “Colonel you have the bridge, assume full command until we return, but your first priority if the safety of this ship, all others are secondary.” Butler nodded once and began bawling orders and queries at the now slightly calmer crew. Harrington meanwhile hit the intercom, getting a blast of static in his face, “I want first company by port airlocks four, five, six and seven, full combat gear in twenty-five minutes, potential hostile external environment. That goes for you too,” he added at the fours officers accompanying him.

Exactly twenty-four minutes later Harrington strode into the corridor past lines of boosted British Unified Forces soldiers, he found Hawkins, Jackson, Scottie and Richards standing by the airlocks in question, each man commanded one quarter of the troops, 20 each, with Harrington in overall command. He himself wore his black trousers and red tunic displaying his regiments name, his rank and a lot of gold buttons a few medals on his left breast, he fished a small pocket watch out of his right pocket and glanced at it, at least the mechanical mechanism was working properly putting it back he popped a monocle in his left eye, stuck a pipe in his mouth, already emitting a cheery glow and stuck his swagger stick under his arm. On his head was a white conical shaped helmet inlaid with silver, also displaying the regimental crest, fixing his mustache one more time he punched in the override for the airlocks one by one, they hissed open, sliding upward into the hull, thankfully, due to the list of the ship the exit was only a few meters above the ground.

It took a surprisingly long time to disembark, everyone seemed to spend a time getting their balance, on what appeared to be firm ground, but eventually everyone was assembled, standing to attention in groups of twenty with Harington in front, he warily approached the group of creatures the sensors had picked up, there were around fifteen to twenty of them, silver and white in colour and clearly not human. Three paces behind Harrington stood 4 of the boosted soldiers, only vaguely passing as humans, standing over six feet tall with a dark grey skin, a grille in place of a mouth, no ears, only the eyes appeared normal. Each one had large muscular upper arms which split into two lower arms each, one set having the normal hands, the others were currently equipped with kinetic high caliber rifles, and there were a series of lumps around each of their waists.

He stopped roughly fifteen meters short, plenty of room, he reasoned, for the soldiers to intervene should anything go wrong, his pipe began issuing smoke a lot quicker when he realised some of them were talking to each other. Feeling somewhat idiotic talking to a bunch of pimped up my little ponies, he snorted and coughed impressively, drew himself up slightly,
“I am Brigadier Thomas Harrington of the B.U.F, representative of the Victoria Rex Empire, and Captain of the ship HMS Victoria, tell me, what nation is this, whom do you represent?” He glanced around at the landscape feeling giddy as he did so, taking in the swathes of purple, yellow and blue flowers, “you’re not French are you?” He didn’t have the foggiest idea if these white horses could understand a word he was saying but he had heard snatches of conversation between members of the group and some of the words were the same or at least very similar, although there was an archaic quality to the speech, it flowed gracefully, besides, he figured it was better than nothing, he tapped out the tobacco in his pipe, which had gone out and handed it to his ever present aide Jenkins, who immediately replaced the empty hand with a cup of tea.

The herd watched the first of the wealh* move carefully out of their ship in a manner vaguely reminiscent of shellfish being teased out of their shells.

A snide comment to this effect went around the herd.

More of the peculiar grey creatures came out and started lining up like a child’s toy army, forming neat little rows. Humans came out with them and the white creatures seemed slightly reassured – humans were at least familiar, if strange and alien beings.

More of the grey not-humans came out of the ship. Then some more. One of the white quadrupeds, the same one who made his derisive comment about the navigator’s skills, spoke quietly and sarcastically to his fellows:

“I can see that their commander is a ‘big’ man, obviously not overcompensating for anything there.”

There was a quiet chuckle/whinny from those of his companions, a few affirmative comments.


These creatures are slightly taller than roe deer and half-hidden in the midst of the herd are foals, ungainly and too long in the leg to be properly mature. Those who are fully grown hold themselves with a poise and confidence that one rarely sees. Their eyes are a pale grey flecked with gold and are far, far too intelligent for these to be considered as mere animals. Their fur is a brilliant white flecked through with silver; quite fine and short save in the mane within which trinkets of precious metals and stones are braided. Perhaps most startling is the twelve-inch bone spike protruding from their foreheads. The spike appears to be bone with the same flecks of silver throughout as upon the coats of the unicorn herd.

A confused silence. One of them asks:

“French?”

One of the foremost answers with a nonchalant drawl.

“Gaullish, Frankish, Merovingian”

This one moves forward, stopping about ten feet away from Harrington.

“No, we are not Frankish, Buff Brigadier. Well, Brigadier Harrington, you are standing on the soil of Stars Shining Forth district, territory claimed and held by the First Lord of High House Violet. An Ealdorman who would probably look rather askance upon a few score foreign soldiers walking all over his crops.”

The unicorn’s eyes harden, just daring Harrington or his companions to comment upon his next bit of speech.

“We are of the nation Silver Charging Against Wind, I am this herd’s lead stallion, named Sparkle upon foaling by her whimsical ladyship Æbbe vail’Rose.”

His eyes seem to be saying go on…just you dare make a joke about it.




*Foreigners

"Buff Brigadier?! Brigadier Thomas Harrington of the B.U.F if you dont mind. Stands for British Unified Forces don't you know!"

To say that Harrington was surprised would be quite an understatement, he sipped rather more hastily on his tea than intended, slightly burning his mouth in the process, by this time the four other officers had finished disembarking the soldiers and had moved to stand just to one side of the unusual meeting.

"Sparkle 'eh? Weel it's a very..." Scottie kind of wilted under the glare he got from the unicorn, "literal name, aye, very accurate..." he faded away and hunched over slightly.

Harrington flicked his eyes at Scottie, silently telling him to shut his trap if he didnt want bad things happening to the lot of them, then returned his attention back to the dazzling horse.

"Anyway my good sir i would appreciate a little respect on your part and i shall do the same for you. I apologise for the number of troops but our life support is having a few problems and i needed to relieve some of the strain on it" he gestured behind him "the vast majority will return when the ship is in better working order, only standard recon strength will remain disembarked."

Glancing around him (again getting that feeling of giddyness as he did so) he surveyed for the first time the large deep gash Victoria had made in the landscape, whilst the number of soldiers out was not improving matters.

"Hrmph, yes...Sparkle," he managed to get that bit over without the slightest change of expression (which he was rather pleased with), i will of course make a full report to his Lordship upon our meeting, is was not our intention to intrude on his land and do not wish to offend. Common courtesy dictates it."

He half turned to Richards, tactical and weapons officer, "standard secure perimeter around the ship will you, and send the rest back on board, minus recon strength of course." Whilst Richards ran off to follow Harrington's orders, he turned back to Sparkle, thinking he must have got a lot of stick for that at school...or whatever these ponies went to. "Can i interest you in a drink perhaps? Tea?"