NationStates Jolt Archive

>Alert on intelsat observation networks: ICEL 1 Naval Battlegroup sighted in South Atlantic.<

[OOC: More to come.]

OOC: Is this involving me somehow?

OOC: Is this involving me somehow?

[OOC: Nope, not unless you want it to - the IDF, that is, Imperial Defence Forces have been around ever since my nation began... be glad that they're not sueing you ICly. ;)]

IC:

1 'Vanguard' Naval Battlegroup, Exercise Copper Wiring Hurts Your Guts 4-4-7-1 (CWHYG4471); Approximate global position: Thirty-five point seven-three-three degrees west by twenty-one point six-three-seven degrees south; Rio Grande Rise, South Atlantic Ocean

The Battlegroup was spread out over a one hundred mile radius, at what was referred to in the IDFN as a 'full tactical spread'. Small, tiny white wakes are visible here or there, at the outer edge of the circular formation; they are the submerged elements of the Battlegroup, and only a few are likely to be at a depth high enough for their wakes to be visible to the eye, naked or otherwise, at any one time.

Further in, at the seventy-five and fifty-two mile area from the center of the formation, lie six hefty-looking frigates. The fact that they are frigates is apparent from the lack of offensive weapons: their upper decks are oddly shaped, 'humpy', even, but they're quite hard to spot as they're very low in the water. They look like submarines, actually, but without a conning tower. Small glassy-looking things dot the hull here and there, and the upper appears to be composed entirely of anti-missile defence systems: ranging from tracer cannons to countermeasure deployment units, with the Commonality-trademark electron-flux cannons now mounted both in PDEF beam emplacements and larger, twin-axis automated pivot-cannons - the cannons are a new design, as are the frigates. These are clearly new warships.

Just inside thirty-mile area, scattered between thirty miles and twenty miles in, are some fifteen Devastator-class warships: heavy cruisers, designed for long-range offensive assaults - protected by a line of frigates and the submarinal defence net, they need only worry about air attacks; and naturally, the upper deck is criss-crossed with those odd scratch marks that indicate high-energy PDEF beam clusters, capable of knocking out guidance systems or melting small objects into inoffensive slag - or even hitting them hard enough to divert them away from the ship, in short bursts. The PDEF beam system is known to have defects, however: it is energy-intensive... Hence the need for the frigates.

The heavy cruisers do not have any protrusions on the upper decks, however. Their kinetic artillery devices, the low-arc ballistic modern equivalent to the old cannons fitted on earlier warships, are not deployed, and are presumably stowed beneath the primary upper deck. Comms and detection units are primarily deployed on the upper deck, making the cruisers look somewhat 'hairy' on low-resolution images. That 'hair' is, in fact, numerous transceivers that maintain constant communication with the six MISATs that move with the fleet at all times, providing overhead views for thousands of kilometres around - and giving an early-warning system to augment those that are carried on the ships themselves.

In the very center of the formation, however, sits the mightiest surface warship ever built by the Commonality: the IDS Vanguard, designated as a Vanguard class Air Dominance Cruiser, the second to bear the name in modern days, and she has clearly had a full refit, for everything about her shines with that just-left-port gleam. She now carries fixed electron cannons (rather small, stubby things, but very distinctive in shape - somehow, the ugly black things have been shaped gracefully, the prongs coming to stubby but sleek curving ends) on her bow, although those would probably sap her electrical reserves rapidly. No personnel scurry on her decks - in fact, no people are visible on any of the ships. Nor do there actually appear to be any hatches, for that matter...

But the Vanguard is clearly the true strength of the flag fleet of the Commonality IDF Navy: she is, like all of her class, over a mile long. All of her upper deck plating is known to be entirely reversable, giving every deck plate a dual purpose; she has a so-called quadratic superstructure - meaning that she is four complete ships in one, on the outside. One of her class proved the durability of the design in the Knootian War, surviving for far longer than a normal sea vessel would have against overwhelming odds - yet that ship was destroyed.

The ship is a symmetrical teardrop when seen from above; the bow end issues forth an eerie pale blue glow. That glow is known to be light from the hangar deck inside the ship, where her aircraft are stowed and launched from. Every inch of upper deck space is utilized for defensive and offensive weapons, communications and sensory devices - so the aircraft launch from beneath the waterline, stowed in the massive space below. The ship only carries thirty-six crew - she is largely automated, and much of the space inside the ship is devoted to ordnance, superconductive electrical storage devices, her two nuclear power plants, and her two massive supplanting MI cores. She is known to be capable of carrying close to a hundred M# interceptors, slightly more K# fighter-bombers, around one hundred and twenty X# fighters, or thirty-six G# heavy-bombers; she is known to be capable of reaching a speed of 19 knots - the fastest she has been seen to move thus far, at least - and she is known to be capable of turning faster than most ships her size, thanks to a combination jetstream/MI propulsion system. She is also exceptionally visible to anything and everything; for when she moves, her wake is supermassive-

But she is not moving now.

And deep within her belly, at the very centre of the ship, sat the bridge. And in the centre of the bridge sat the Nest, and the commanding officer, and acting commander of the 1 Naval Battlegroup.

He was a bald man, an old man. He had been a sailor for a hundred years; he had seen the rise and fall of the dreadnought, the rise of the aircraft carrier elsewhere, and he now commanded the end result of the marriage of three disciplines: the submarine; the aircraft carrier; and the battleship.

His ship was all three, to some degree. She was so low to the water as to be considered semi-submersible, really; she carried an entire squadron of airmen; and she could match any ship - or fleet - that equalled her mass; indeed, in some cases, she could probably best a ship or fleet that surpassed her mass.

Still, he was nervous. This was not an official mission, after all; they were not really here, according to the civilian reports, but still at anchor just on the edge of the Commonality economic exclusion zone, two hundred miles south of the Turath Tip, the southernmost part of the Commonality. It was bound to become public knowledge rapidly... But not yet. There was a subversion notice on the news for seven days - allowed for military operations, but only for seven days. The reason for the silence would also be published...

"Damnit," he murmoured, scratching his jaw.

Day Four: 1 'Vanguard' Naval Battlegroup, Exercise Copper Wiring Hurts Your Guts 4-4-7-1 (CWHYG4471); Approximate global position: Thirty-five point seven-three-three-two degrees west by twenty-one point six-three-seven degrees south; Rio Grande Rise, South Atlantic Ocean

Alluri suited up yet again. It was the sixth time in four days; he was starting to feel rather tired, really. But it was needed. He glanced over at his new partner, Sele - an apt name for so lithe a swimmer, he decided as he allowed his eyes to sweep over her alluringly elengant, sleek frame - and again reflected on the reasons for the removal of his original diving partner, Halur. Halur, like Alluri, had been Human - a House Dth'gar member, just like Alluri. Alluri Eiyep-Dth'gar and Halur Sareth-Dth'gar had been a long-lasting partnership...

So why had the military sent Halur away?

Alluri had no idea, and that wasn't satisfactory. He did know that Halur had been on a solo dive just before he was ordered away, and sent back to base in a flitter.

Alluri sighed; he was sure he would find out, eventually. It was only a matter of time... even with all these stiff naval types around. And the IDF N was stiff. He had decided that when he had first gained the diving contract with them; their divers were excellent, second-to-none, he suspected - but...

They were boring. Unendingly, stifling disciplined men and women who were there to do a job and nothing else - he suspected they became real, living beings when they were on leave, but who knew?

Some were more lively than others, of course, but it was all a matter of degrees. Talking loudly in the officer's mess on the Vanguard was considered to be causing an 'uproar' in some quarters, he understood; silence was preferable.

He strongly believed this was because the officers came from a 'breed' of families that had spent the last hundred and fifty years or so providing the Navy - previously the IOAF, the Imperial Oceanic Assault Force - with their sons and daughters... and all of those sons and daughters had served on submarines, not surface vessels. Surface vessels, in the opinion of the IOAF, had been rendered useless by the rise of the submarine...

Until foreign aircraft carriers were sighted, and the Illuvauromeni realised: they had fallen light-years behind the rest of the world. While they wallowed in tincans under the waves, mighty warships that could hit targets a thousand miles away were cutting through the oceans...

Spurred into action, the IOAF - and then it's replacement, the Imperial Defence Forces Navy - had moved to find a way to co-opt foreign designs into a more Nenyanized warship.

The result, after fifty years of research and development avenues, and after some seven generations of warship ranging from the ancient LMK-Type destroyers to the more modern-day PT-Type battleship and the YT-Class aircraft carrier - the predecessors to the modern Illuvauromeni warships - the end result was the meeting of all of the naval disciplines in the modern ships.

Given time, they did what all good laggers do: they surpassed those who they had previously lagged behind, Alluri knew; the Vanguard-class ship was superior in every way to either an aircraft carrier or a modern battleship. It could fight longer, harder, hit further targets... Actually, it had global strike capacity, but it was rarely used due to strange mores regarding honour and being within visual range of an enemy whenever possible. Alluri didn't pretend to understand; it was a Nenyan ideal, not a Dth'gar one. The Dth'gar believed you killed your enemies; the Nenyans no longer did.

Alluri had been taught that Nenyans were not entirely trustworthy - but entirely to be loved. He did love them; their culture was vibrant, gorgeous to behold, and wonderful to be wrapped up in. Warm, comfortable - they did indeed know how to make a place feel homely, as they had with their only native city, Nenya. And Alluri had been blessed enough to visit Tumnore, the pocket-Kingdom. He had been mightily impressed; he suspected that that little island amidst the Commonality was stronger and more powerful than it looked - after all, the High King was technically the true ruler of Tumnore, even though he didn't claim that right. And if he had risen so high, it implied an underlying strength-

Alluri realised that he was being spoken to, somewhat belatedly. The Nenyan woman had cocked her head in the most amazingly cute manner; she wasn't actually all that pretty - in fact, she was rather plain. Her nose was too big, her chin too angular, and her cheeks too flat - at least for his taste - but she had a way of moving that caught his attention. He took delight in movement, and she looked every bit the swimmer and diver that he had heard she was. She had a musical, singsong accent and voice - but that was true of the entire species, really. Something leftover from the Elves, Alluri reckoned.

Aptly, he only caught, "-are you even listening?"

"No," he admitted. No point lying to an empath, after all. "But now I am. Sorry."

She didn't appear bothered; another advantage of being open and honest with an empath is that they can't really fault you for it. Especially when they can guess why, and the reason is quite complimentary. "I see," Sele replied with a twinkle in her vibrant amber eyes, "then perhaps if I shall repeat we will all be understanding one another more properly."

Her Dth'gar was awful, Alluri realized; he switched politely to Nenyan Common. "Please do."

A grateful dip of her head indicated her pleasure at the switch, and then, like her crewmates, she was off and running again: business, business, business. At least she seemed alive, though, Alluri reflected.

"It is not a simple thing to describe what Halur discovered," she began.

Alluri looked at her sharply; he had been straightening his boot, but now...

Sele spoke the words Alluri had waited for for thirty years, and his fathers fathers fathers for countless generations before: "Halur had discovered that which we seek; the movement of the 'group was not in vain. The Stone is there."

* * *

Sele felt alive, vital, awake as she awoke and slipped from beneath the covers. She dislodged an... artifact... as she did, but that was quietly slipped into a draw set beneath her pillow and nobody in the spacious crew living area noticed. Everybody slept here; no private quarters for men or woman on a warship. Not a Navy warship, she corrected herself.

She dressed in silence, not wishing to wake anyone. Indeed, she politely made herself as undetectable to the sleeping occupants of the room as possible - quite a simple task when dealing with a sleeping mind, or even fifteen sleeping minds - and then stole away to head up to her rendezvous with fate.

Actually, down, she realised. Unlike civilian vessels, her sub wouldn't launch from the side of the boat. No, it would launch from inside the boat. She didn't see the logic entirely - even being a Navy diver for the last hundred years, she hadn't used the launch facilities on a modern ship yet. She was quite unused to them, in fact, and they made her uncomfortable. A Nenyan diver is a rarity - but she loved the sight of the waves, unlike the vast majority of her kind. The sea tends to make Nenyans nervous - well, other Nenyans.

And so her companion, when she reached him, wasn't a Nenyan. He was a Human; to make matters worse, he was House Dth'gar - high-ranking in their hierarchy, too. And Sele was a low-ranking House ux-Rihad member; that made them blood-enemies, under the Ancient Laws. That didn't matter today, but she was uneasy as she made her way to the sub they would use as a diving platform.

So she tried to lighten the mood, at first. "I see you are remembering to wear gloves," she remarked light-heartedly, well aware of his reputation at the Academy: he had often forgotten to slip his gloves on, she knew. It was in his report. They put the strangest things in those reports...

But he wasn't listening. Annoyed - but complimented at his honesty, and also at the admiring way his emotions had spiked when he watched her move, she feigned good humour as best she could...

But she blurted out the most important detail of the day, anyway, despite her best intentions, with no effort to soften the blow:

"The stone is there."

Day Four: 1 'Vanguard' Naval Battlegroup, Exercise Copper Wiring Hurts Your Guts 4-4-7-1 (CWHYG4471); Approximate global position: Thirty-five point seven-three-three-two degrees west by twenty-one point six-three-seven degrees south; Rio Grande Rise, South Atlantic Ocean

They stared at each other. "It's there," Alluri breathed.

"Yes," she said simply.

"Why... why didn't they bring it up," he wondered aloud, lifting a hand to rub his chin before he slipped the coiled unit around his neck and tightened it, tapping the seal with a small metal rod. The rod threw a charge into the coil, which rearranged itself, sealing his bodysuit to his 'helmet', which would extend at the touch of yet another slender rod.

"Bring it up? I guess they wanted me to tell you," Sele responded, distracted for a moment by her own thoughts. Why would they not tell him, she wondered... unless he knew something she didn't? She resisted the urge to attempt to listen more closely to his emotions; it was tempting, but it was also rude. Ish.

No, it was rude, she decided. He was Dth'gar; they were different from the Menjda and other Humans in the Commonality. They still harboured unfortunate prejudices, she understood. She wondered if such thoughts were tantamount to reverse-racism, and, ashamed, listened more closely anyway.

There was no resistance to her reach, so she understood he did not mind. He was not blurring his feelings, which was possible, she knew. Dth'gar children were still trained to do so, although the Menjda and others were more accepting of the psionic arts - in that they did not practice that training any longer.

Alluri studied her, as he felt the tickle in his head that told her she was 'listening' to his emotions. Not his thoughts, though, as that was illegal without permission of some kind. The law was literally as vague as that, though, Alluri knew - but nothing he had done could be seen as such permission. Yet, if she were a telepath - he did not know for sure - he was not entirely sure he would her in his thoughts. The idea seemed... appealing, somehow. His eyebrows hiked up at her response, though, surprised at it. "I mean: why did they not fetch it from beneath?"

She tried not to notice how stupid her response had been as she replied softly, "I guess they wanted us to."

* * *

The sub itself was quite spacious - in comparison to a tin of sardines. If the tin of sardines had a whale in it, that is, Sele reflected.

The inside of the submersible was indeed spacious - but not at this particular moment. Sele was pressed up against her Dth'gar companion - not out of lust or passion, but because there was no other room with the giant payload they were supposed to deliver whilst out there.

The entire sub could split open, in fact, along a seam, allowing it to deliver its payload; the payload was, oddly, an automated sub. The automated sub would do recon on the surrounding seabed, searching for more of what was coldly referred to as 'the wreckage'.

But their faces were pressed against the visiWall. They stared out at the shape of the thing that was referred to as the wreckage with a mixture of awe and fear; it was pure white, shimmering in the bright white light from their vessel like pure gold - and the main mast still stood proud, reaching up at least a thousand feet.

The ultrasmooth silk-like material that had comprised the sail had been recovered the day earlier; it had astounded the science officer of the Vanguard, who had never seen such finely-woven material. He wasn't sure what it was made of, yet, either.

The ship itself bore no name, which was, according to legend, why it had sunk. It had been the boldest ship ever built - mighty beyond all comparison, undefeatable. Unsinkable. She had sailed the seas for six months without challenge, gone to lands unknown, and had sailed proudly into the edge of the Bay of Turath just under fifteen hundred years ago...

But despite being sighted, one of the storms that are so typical to the region erupted out of the calm day, and she was lost to sight amidst spray and rain and tossing waves. But those ashore did not despair; she could not be sunk by any mere storm!

Yet when the day entered its longest hour, and the sun fell beneath the horizon unseen for the bleak black sky, she had not returned to her port. And as time passed, she did not ever return. Lost forever, the unnamed ship had vanished without trace...

And despite years of searches, she had never been found in the Bay. Yet here she was, far from the Bay of Turath - it was odd, to say the least.

Sele knew they still had no idea how she had been sunk. She had been so vastly tall and her hull so stupendously strong that it was not believed possible that even the well-studied - amongst the Iluvauromeni, at least - phenomenon of non-linear waves could breach her. Icebergs were not a likely cause, either, as no actual hole had been found in her hull in the current explorations. Of course, they'd only been here four days...

The sub blarped at them; Sele touched the pertinant rod to her throat, saw her companion do the same - felt it, actually, they were pressed together so tightly. She felt the helmet extend over her face, but wasn't aware of any change in her vision; the internal visiVisor was working perfectly. She did feel ever-so-slightly nauseaous for just one instant, though; apparently it affected Humans in a worse manner, if they weren't given anti-nausea treatment prior to use of the visiVisor helmets. Her eyes were better adapted for fast data acceptance, however - usually. When she felt tired, she knew, she would feel a whole lot more nausea from using the helmet.

She braced herself against the bars provided on the internal skin of the sub; felt the prickling warmth of the weak mini-Barrier that sprung into place to protect them from the negative pressure shift by altering the pressure downwards slowly inside the submarine.

Several long minutes swept by...

And then the automated sub tumbled out and away as water was jetted out of the bigger submarine; the submarine sealed itself again, and began the process of reinflating the interior to the previous pressure, thus removing the water through an intricate plumbing arrangement. The outside of the damned sub was almost bigger than the inside, Sele realised - she hadn't seen the sub from the outside, really, as she'd never looked back at it. 'Never' meaning not on this journey - she'd never gotten to use such sophisticated materials before, and she was particuarly thrilled to be on this expedition...

And scared.

She pushed away the stories that bubbled up from her youth regarding the Stone...

* * *

He pushed at the hatch seal, opening it once it had bonded to the seal on the old naval vessel. This ship had been the first entirely sealed surface ship built - mostly built by the Elves, actually. He still had no idea what this tough material it was built out of was, but he had his suspicions.

The air was filthy, his scanner unit informed him; microbial life had flourished here, according to the scans. It was so prolific that an ultraviolet sweep of the room actually made some of the little buggers visible to his eye - or maybe that was just dust. He couldn't quite understand why there'd be so much microbial life, however. According to the scans he had seen, the microbes varied from bacteria to fungi to viruses - and even the most tiny microbe ever found, the viru, was prolific on board this ship. No wonder that there were no bodies - every scrap must have been broken down over the last thousand years in this hot, humid environment. The temperature inside the ship was, for some reason undetermined to the previous journeys on board, a blistering 312K. The radiators in their bodysuits helped, thankfully, but it was still warm: his internal temperature guage informed him that it was a warm 295K inside his suit. Still, that wasn't any worse than a hot day in Tek or Nenya or Turath or any other damned coastal place in the Commonality. Living in the tropics had few advantages - except for the lack of snow.

At least at sea level, anyway.

He plunged forwards down the corridor, Sele beside him; she seemed completely engrossed in her own readings...

[OOC: SCREAM! I HATE AD-AWARE!

Okay, rant over. Lost a whole damned post... *rewrites*]

IC:

The corridor grew colder. He did not feel it so much as see it; the readouts on his scanning apparatus changed considerably, revising the temperature downwards as they progressed towards the cargo hold. That was odd, but Sele still gazed at her readouts, transfixed; Alluri decided not to bother her.

He wondered how she could walk and work at the same time so... effortlessly. He tried not to admire the way she walked - or, rather, didn't want to admit that was why his gaze lingered - but he was certain he would walk into something, were he to devote that much attention to his readouts rather than to mobility. He was better in the water than on a ship, walking on solid ground; he had always felt clumsy on dry ground. It was probably psychological, he knew...

But that didn't help him walk and work at the same time, now, did it? He returned his eye to the readouts after but a moment of lingering, noting that he couldn't really walk into anything if he tried... probably. The wood-constructed corridor was most certainly bare and empty; there was nothing to walk into save the walls, which wasn't likely.

No consoles or electronic devices here, either. They hadn't been invented yet - at least not by the Iluvauromeni. Tumnore had probably had electronics even then - at least according to the legends. Not that the legends said anything about calculators or computers, but some of the stuff Alluri knew that the Tumnorean Nenyans had built would have needed such technology... assuming those legends were, in fact, true, and not Nenyan propaganda left over from the old days of the often brutal Empire of the Eternal Flame.

But hadn't the old Imperial Assault Force been rumoured to wear 'flashing shields that protected them from all but the most savage of assault', as far back as five hundred years ago? Nobody knew, because such a tight lid had been kept on the finds from the dig beneath Nenya - so far, anyway.

[OOC: Just a little 'hook' here in case certain people want to continue that dig. I'd love to, now the forums actually work properly!]

IC:

Alluri concentrated on the portal before them. It was an iris variety, clearly metallic, like the outer hull of the ship. He tapped it, and it swirled open unexpectedly.

"Damn. That wasn't in any of the reports," Sele noted with some degree of surprise.

"It sure as hell wasn't," he agreed, his hand stupidly falling to his belt where his non-lethal mkI wand sat. He had worried when they had issued them; this part of the ship had already been explored, and, really there was no chance of needing them - the crew was long dead. Except...

The crew shouldn't have been long dead. It was conceivable that they could have held out for some time; possibly enough time to fathom a method to get out and back to the surface. That would have left access hatches open; none were. Nor were there any bodies...

A shiver ran down his spine.

"Did you feel that," Sele breathed, moving forwards faster, her scanner arm falling to her side. She moved quickly towards the dullest part of the hold; their shoulder lights did not seem capable of penetrating the gloom that far ahead.

"Careful! We don't know what's fallen down. You sure don't want to break your ankle, Sele. - And feel what? It's just a little cold."

"No," he heard right in his ear, "I felt in here..."

And when the fist - it felt like a fist - smashed into his mind and caterpaulted him across the deck, he wondered faintly why he'd decided to wear his red bodysuit today...

[OOC: And yes, that is a reference to 'redshirts' in Star Trek being cannon fodder. :P]