Lodossian Arythia
05-06-2005, 16:10
Somewhere in the Western Atlantic
The captain of the Fenwicki mapping ship, Hermes, watched as the coastline off his bow grew increasingly larger. For some reason, the massive stretch of land wasn't marked, unless they were massively off course and somehow already approaching the coastline of one of the American continents.
"Mr. Meredith, are you sure that we're still on course?" he asked the navigation officer.
"Aye, Captain. Even with that storm we ran into yesterday, we couldn't be approaching either of the American coasts. This looks to be an uncharted island, albeit a rather large one," the navigator replied, circling the area where they were supposed to be.
The Captain clasped his hands behind his back as he turned to his bridge crew. "Well, mark the chart and we'll see if we can get a rough sizing of it to send back to the Emperor. I'm sure the Kurita family won't mind us putting off our little sonar mapping mission if we give them a new settlement."
"Aye." Mr. Meredith smiled. "Looks like lovely land too."
The captain looked out over the mist covered island before them.
"We'll see, Mr. Meredith, we'll see."
---
One Week Later
"This is amazing. I've compared the charts for the size of the island and Fenwick... the island is almost as big," Meredith stated in awe. "I recommend we send the statistics home, encrypted of course, and then send a crew ashore to do a little recon and plant the flag."
The captain smiled at the enthusiasm of his crew; no doubt this would be a wonderful addition to the Commonwealth, not to mention the bonus they would net. "Well, I wouldn't get to hasty. The cartographers back home will make sure that no one else has charted it, but I figure we can make our own little claims on it later."
Meredith nodded. "Yessir. I wonder what they'll name it...."
---
The information was transmitted to the Commonwealth Bureau of Exploration, where a report was formulated and then presented to Emperor Eric Kurita.
"Interesting..." he stated as he leafed through the report, including the description of an active volcano near the center of the charted island, several smaller island chains surrounding the mainland, and descriptions of small wildlife, not to mention the local flora seen near the coast. "I assume that we've checked and no one else has laid claim to this or even charted it?"
"We do not believe so, Emperor. From the information we have, it appears there is no human life on the island and it does not appear on any other charts."
"Good," he stated, handing the reports back over to the Exploration Bureau's representative. "Have the Bureau put together a small colonization party. Have them take the traditional communications devices and have them clear an area in one of the harbors for the temporary shelters. Send a exploration team as well. I want the island scouted for natural resources, iron, coal, oil, gold, that sort of thing."
The Bureau representative bowed. "Yes, Emperor. We'll be started on the island within the month."
---
Within the week, a small convoy of ships sailed for the new found islands. Onboard were medical supplies, food rations, seedlings, livestock, and materials needed for temporary housing and storage shelters. Government contracted workers accompanied the ships, their job: to clear the trees in the area then set up temporary log cabins and storage areas.
The basis for the colony was to be set up on the shores of the main island, then await the first group of actual settlers. The expeditionary group had moved up into the center of the island, accompanied by two squads of marines.
One couldn't be too careful when moving into new and uncharted territory....
---
It had been a few weeks since the first group of settlers had moved into their shelters on the new island and began planting crops and herding cattle that had been imported as a food staple, but the expedition into the upper elevations of the island's northern territories hadn't returned yet.
Flights over the area showed no sign of them, or much of anything else for that matter, other than the forest below, then the small volcanic moutain range.
Their long delay was at first blamed on the potential discovery of some new creature or a valuable mineral deposit, but speculation of native inhabitants, even monsters, became more and more frequent. Large coyotes were seen roaming at the edge of the settlement, but had not attacked either the settlers or their cattle. After a few days of trying, a few were coaxed into the settlement and fed scraps of meat. After that, the coyotes would come each day, near the sunset, sniff around the town, then depart, almost as if they were soldiers doing daily patrols.
---
Time passed and it had been nearly a month since the scouts had been reported missing when communications abruptly ceased from the island.
The Emperor thought nothing of it, as a rather strong tropical storm had been reported by a routine convoy of cargo vessels, which were naturally delayed until the tempest subsided.
When the convoy arrived, there was nothing left of the settlement, save for a few collapsed cabins, which appeared scorched. What was even more strange was the lack of bodies, as one would assume with a devastated colony town.
The sailors scouted the surrounding area, but found nothing but ruins.
---
It was early morning when he awoke, startled awake by something crawling on his face. Charlie shot up from his spot on the ground and frantically wiped off his face, his skin prickling almost as if the insect were still on it.
He stopped a few moments later and sighed. "I hate bugs..."
Deciding it was time to get up, Charlie rose from his rolled out mat and headed over to the jug of clean water they still had. With the storm a few days ago, their shelters had been destroyed, some burned down from the cooking fires that had spread during the evacuation to the caves, nearly four miles away.
It would probably take days, if not months, to repair the colony's buildings and almost all of their medical and food supplies had been destroyed. Their doctor had sustained a wound on his leg and was limping around the camp, trying to tend to the others.
"Hey Rosenberg! I'm gonna go see if I can get a signal fire lit. Let the crews know we're still alive when they show up," he shouted, after taking a few drinks from the water container.
Rosenberg nodded. "Alright, but be careful. We don't know what's living here yet, except for the coyotes."
"Alright, I'll be back as soon as I can." He looked to one of his friends. "Hey Jon, wanna come with me?"
Jon looked up from the radio transmitter he was working on. "I guess... I mean, I can work on this there and it might be more useful towards where they're looking for us." He yelled to Rosenberg, "I'm going with Charlie, gonna see if I can get anything on the radio!"
"Good, see if you can find some food when you get back there," Rosenberg shouted to them as they walked out of the encampment.
---
Charlie and Jon walked down the beach, heading towards where their former homes had been, discussing the transmitter Jon was working on.
"Well, you see, when they dropped my bag it snapped the wire that acts as a conductor between the battery housing and the switches. It's a vital part of the wiring and I need to find a something that would work between the circutboard and the battery casing."
"And then you'll be able to send the signal?" Charlie asked.
"In theory." Jon stopped for a moment and looked down the beach, the sun glinting off of something. He turned to Charlie. "Did you see that?"
"See what? I was kinda watching the dolphins out there." He pointed at the pod off the shore.
"I thought I saw something down the beach..."
"Like what?" Charlie inquired, picking up and casting a rock out into the waves.
"Not sure. Let me have a look." He ran off down the shore, leaving Charlie, who sat and resumed watching the dolphin pod.
Charlie zoned out, the sound of the waves and the wildlife of the island acting as quite a relaxant for him. He eventually came to the realization he had been sitting there for quite some while, and Jon had not returned yet.
He shook his head and stood, brushing the sand off of his pants, then followed Jon's footsteps up the beach, where they disappeared off into the jungle. He looked around for a few moments, then shouted Jon's name. He waited a few moments, then shouted again.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted once more. "Dammit Jon, where are you?!"
He trekked into the foliage, shouting every few hundred feet.
After almost an hour of searching, he still hadn't heard or found his companion from earlier. However, he did find something that chilled him to the bone.
While walking through the brush, he felt something crunch beneath his feet that didn't quite sound like a twig or a stick. He took a few steps back, then kneeled. Brushing the low-lying plants aside, his hands brushed something metallic. He pulled the box up out of the mud and discovered that it was the transmitter Jon had been working on during their walk. Even more disconcerting was the fact that it looked as if someone had beaten the front of it with the buisness end of a hatchet.
At that point he decided to return back to the camp and get a larger group to go back to the colony's ruins.
When he arrived back at the camp, he found it empty, save for the shredded remains of some of the temporary shelters.
Like the convoy's sailors, he found no trace of the settlers that he had landed with.
---
When the Empire's investigation teams arrived, they found a man matching the description of one of the colonists huddled in the corner of one of the burned out cabins on the beach, muttering over and over to himself.
When they entered the cabin he started to scream incoherently and did not stop until they tranquilized him and carried him to the landing craft.
---
Eric Kurita looked over the expense reports for the Atlantia colony and was quite displeased. It seemed to him that this place was quickly becoming a money pit. They had already lost two settlements and a goods shipment to storms, not to mention the third colony that had mysteriously vanished. The investigation team wasn't able to get anything out of the only survivor, the poor man had gone completely insane.
"I don't like this. Perhaps we should try a new approach. I don't really like the thought, but maybe we should flatten the area we intend to settle before moving in. Send one of our carrier battlegroups with this group of settlers." He looked up from the expense sheet. "I want to know what happened to our settlers. Have the marines search the island. If they find nothing, pound the area flat, then we'll start again, this time with a military presence."
---
Once they arrived, the marines searched in a ten mile radius from each of the settlement sites, but found nothing but ruins. If the colonists had left tracks or some sort of markers to set a trail, they were long gone.
Finally giving up on the search, the marines made their way back to the shore, where the commanding officer radioed the Thanatos.
"Thanatos, this is Lieutenant Krymchanskaya. Area shows no sign of human life. If they were here, they've moved to another part of the island. Reccomend sending PT boats to investigate the various islands surrounding the mainland."
One of the soldiers came running up and reported that all their soldiers were accounted for.
"Thanatos, you may start your bombardment. Please start with grid Charlie-One-Delta-Three."
"Acknowledged, Lieutenant. Bombardment commencing."
Captain Nomi Snyder nodded to her fire control. "Fire on coordinates as follows, Charlie-One-Delta-Three. Comms, make sure that the Victory's aircraft stay clear of the arc."
The sailor at the controls nodded and confirmed. "Charlie-One-Delta-Three, aye. Turrets two and four, fire."
On the deck of the massive ship, the second and last turret rotated, their guns elevating to fire on the given coordinates. Once in position, their muzzles flashed, belching fire, smoke, and high explosive rounds.
"Two and four, reload. One and three, fire."
Once again the ship shook with the power of her massive guns firing off, laying waste to the island in the distance.
On the shore, the marines watched as the muzzles flashed in the distance, then moments later as the jungle erupted with the detonation of the dreadnaught's HE rounds.
---
The construction crews moved in once the navy's bombardment ceased, bulldozing the stumps of trees and filling in the craters left from the shelling. Once their task was completed, they set about building shelters that would be more weather resistant than the prior colony's.
As they worked the agriculturists started plowing the fields for planting, assuming the makeshift slash and burn fertilization would help the crops.
Six weeks later, the final Atlantian colony was finished. Homes were long and limited to one story, not to mention covered with lightning rods to prevent strikes from the frequent storms. Crops had started to grow, but were nowhere near ready for harvest.
The colony still remained dependant on monthly food shipments, but that wouldn't last for long.
The Thanatos, the Victory, and their complete battlegroup stayed to protect the colony and the surrounding waters until ordered otherwise.
The captain of the Fenwicki mapping ship, Hermes, watched as the coastline off his bow grew increasingly larger. For some reason, the massive stretch of land wasn't marked, unless they were massively off course and somehow already approaching the coastline of one of the American continents.
"Mr. Meredith, are you sure that we're still on course?" he asked the navigation officer.
"Aye, Captain. Even with that storm we ran into yesterday, we couldn't be approaching either of the American coasts. This looks to be an uncharted island, albeit a rather large one," the navigator replied, circling the area where they were supposed to be.
The Captain clasped his hands behind his back as he turned to his bridge crew. "Well, mark the chart and we'll see if we can get a rough sizing of it to send back to the Emperor. I'm sure the Kurita family won't mind us putting off our little sonar mapping mission if we give them a new settlement."
"Aye." Mr. Meredith smiled. "Looks like lovely land too."
The captain looked out over the mist covered island before them.
"We'll see, Mr. Meredith, we'll see."
---
One Week Later
"This is amazing. I've compared the charts for the size of the island and Fenwick... the island is almost as big," Meredith stated in awe. "I recommend we send the statistics home, encrypted of course, and then send a crew ashore to do a little recon and plant the flag."
The captain smiled at the enthusiasm of his crew; no doubt this would be a wonderful addition to the Commonwealth, not to mention the bonus they would net. "Well, I wouldn't get to hasty. The cartographers back home will make sure that no one else has charted it, but I figure we can make our own little claims on it later."
Meredith nodded. "Yessir. I wonder what they'll name it...."
---
The information was transmitted to the Commonwealth Bureau of Exploration, where a report was formulated and then presented to Emperor Eric Kurita.
"Interesting..." he stated as he leafed through the report, including the description of an active volcano near the center of the charted island, several smaller island chains surrounding the mainland, and descriptions of small wildlife, not to mention the local flora seen near the coast. "I assume that we've checked and no one else has laid claim to this or even charted it?"
"We do not believe so, Emperor. From the information we have, it appears there is no human life on the island and it does not appear on any other charts."
"Good," he stated, handing the reports back over to the Exploration Bureau's representative. "Have the Bureau put together a small colonization party. Have them take the traditional communications devices and have them clear an area in one of the harbors for the temporary shelters. Send a exploration team as well. I want the island scouted for natural resources, iron, coal, oil, gold, that sort of thing."
The Bureau representative bowed. "Yes, Emperor. We'll be started on the island within the month."
---
Within the week, a small convoy of ships sailed for the new found islands. Onboard were medical supplies, food rations, seedlings, livestock, and materials needed for temporary housing and storage shelters. Government contracted workers accompanied the ships, their job: to clear the trees in the area then set up temporary log cabins and storage areas.
The basis for the colony was to be set up on the shores of the main island, then await the first group of actual settlers. The expeditionary group had moved up into the center of the island, accompanied by two squads of marines.
One couldn't be too careful when moving into new and uncharted territory....
---
It had been a few weeks since the first group of settlers had moved into their shelters on the new island and began planting crops and herding cattle that had been imported as a food staple, but the expedition into the upper elevations of the island's northern territories hadn't returned yet.
Flights over the area showed no sign of them, or much of anything else for that matter, other than the forest below, then the small volcanic moutain range.
Their long delay was at first blamed on the potential discovery of some new creature or a valuable mineral deposit, but speculation of native inhabitants, even monsters, became more and more frequent. Large coyotes were seen roaming at the edge of the settlement, but had not attacked either the settlers or their cattle. After a few days of trying, a few were coaxed into the settlement and fed scraps of meat. After that, the coyotes would come each day, near the sunset, sniff around the town, then depart, almost as if they were soldiers doing daily patrols.
---
Time passed and it had been nearly a month since the scouts had been reported missing when communications abruptly ceased from the island.
The Emperor thought nothing of it, as a rather strong tropical storm had been reported by a routine convoy of cargo vessels, which were naturally delayed until the tempest subsided.
When the convoy arrived, there was nothing left of the settlement, save for a few collapsed cabins, which appeared scorched. What was even more strange was the lack of bodies, as one would assume with a devastated colony town.
The sailors scouted the surrounding area, but found nothing but ruins.
---
It was early morning when he awoke, startled awake by something crawling on his face. Charlie shot up from his spot on the ground and frantically wiped off his face, his skin prickling almost as if the insect were still on it.
He stopped a few moments later and sighed. "I hate bugs..."
Deciding it was time to get up, Charlie rose from his rolled out mat and headed over to the jug of clean water they still had. With the storm a few days ago, their shelters had been destroyed, some burned down from the cooking fires that had spread during the evacuation to the caves, nearly four miles away.
It would probably take days, if not months, to repair the colony's buildings and almost all of their medical and food supplies had been destroyed. Their doctor had sustained a wound on his leg and was limping around the camp, trying to tend to the others.
"Hey Rosenberg! I'm gonna go see if I can get a signal fire lit. Let the crews know we're still alive when they show up," he shouted, after taking a few drinks from the water container.
Rosenberg nodded. "Alright, but be careful. We don't know what's living here yet, except for the coyotes."
"Alright, I'll be back as soon as I can." He looked to one of his friends. "Hey Jon, wanna come with me?"
Jon looked up from the radio transmitter he was working on. "I guess... I mean, I can work on this there and it might be more useful towards where they're looking for us." He yelled to Rosenberg, "I'm going with Charlie, gonna see if I can get anything on the radio!"
"Good, see if you can find some food when you get back there," Rosenberg shouted to them as they walked out of the encampment.
---
Charlie and Jon walked down the beach, heading towards where their former homes had been, discussing the transmitter Jon was working on.
"Well, you see, when they dropped my bag it snapped the wire that acts as a conductor between the battery housing and the switches. It's a vital part of the wiring and I need to find a something that would work between the circutboard and the battery casing."
"And then you'll be able to send the signal?" Charlie asked.
"In theory." Jon stopped for a moment and looked down the beach, the sun glinting off of something. He turned to Charlie. "Did you see that?"
"See what? I was kinda watching the dolphins out there." He pointed at the pod off the shore.
"I thought I saw something down the beach..."
"Like what?" Charlie inquired, picking up and casting a rock out into the waves.
"Not sure. Let me have a look." He ran off down the shore, leaving Charlie, who sat and resumed watching the dolphin pod.
Charlie zoned out, the sound of the waves and the wildlife of the island acting as quite a relaxant for him. He eventually came to the realization he had been sitting there for quite some while, and Jon had not returned yet.
He shook his head and stood, brushing the sand off of his pants, then followed Jon's footsteps up the beach, where they disappeared off into the jungle. He looked around for a few moments, then shouted Jon's name. He waited a few moments, then shouted again.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted once more. "Dammit Jon, where are you?!"
He trekked into the foliage, shouting every few hundred feet.
After almost an hour of searching, he still hadn't heard or found his companion from earlier. However, he did find something that chilled him to the bone.
While walking through the brush, he felt something crunch beneath his feet that didn't quite sound like a twig or a stick. He took a few steps back, then kneeled. Brushing the low-lying plants aside, his hands brushed something metallic. He pulled the box up out of the mud and discovered that it was the transmitter Jon had been working on during their walk. Even more disconcerting was the fact that it looked as if someone had beaten the front of it with the buisness end of a hatchet.
At that point he decided to return back to the camp and get a larger group to go back to the colony's ruins.
When he arrived back at the camp, he found it empty, save for the shredded remains of some of the temporary shelters.
Like the convoy's sailors, he found no trace of the settlers that he had landed with.
---
When the Empire's investigation teams arrived, they found a man matching the description of one of the colonists huddled in the corner of one of the burned out cabins on the beach, muttering over and over to himself.
When they entered the cabin he started to scream incoherently and did not stop until they tranquilized him and carried him to the landing craft.
---
Eric Kurita looked over the expense reports for the Atlantia colony and was quite displeased. It seemed to him that this place was quickly becoming a money pit. They had already lost two settlements and a goods shipment to storms, not to mention the third colony that had mysteriously vanished. The investigation team wasn't able to get anything out of the only survivor, the poor man had gone completely insane.
"I don't like this. Perhaps we should try a new approach. I don't really like the thought, but maybe we should flatten the area we intend to settle before moving in. Send one of our carrier battlegroups with this group of settlers." He looked up from the expense sheet. "I want to know what happened to our settlers. Have the marines search the island. If they find nothing, pound the area flat, then we'll start again, this time with a military presence."
---
Once they arrived, the marines searched in a ten mile radius from each of the settlement sites, but found nothing but ruins. If the colonists had left tracks or some sort of markers to set a trail, they were long gone.
Finally giving up on the search, the marines made their way back to the shore, where the commanding officer radioed the Thanatos.
"Thanatos, this is Lieutenant Krymchanskaya. Area shows no sign of human life. If they were here, they've moved to another part of the island. Reccomend sending PT boats to investigate the various islands surrounding the mainland."
One of the soldiers came running up and reported that all their soldiers were accounted for.
"Thanatos, you may start your bombardment. Please start with grid Charlie-One-Delta-Three."
"Acknowledged, Lieutenant. Bombardment commencing."
Captain Nomi Snyder nodded to her fire control. "Fire on coordinates as follows, Charlie-One-Delta-Three. Comms, make sure that the Victory's aircraft stay clear of the arc."
The sailor at the controls nodded and confirmed. "Charlie-One-Delta-Three, aye. Turrets two and four, fire."
On the deck of the massive ship, the second and last turret rotated, their guns elevating to fire on the given coordinates. Once in position, their muzzles flashed, belching fire, smoke, and high explosive rounds.
"Two and four, reload. One and three, fire."
Once again the ship shook with the power of her massive guns firing off, laying waste to the island in the distance.
On the shore, the marines watched as the muzzles flashed in the distance, then moments later as the jungle erupted with the detonation of the dreadnaught's HE rounds.
---
The construction crews moved in once the navy's bombardment ceased, bulldozing the stumps of trees and filling in the craters left from the shelling. Once their task was completed, they set about building shelters that would be more weather resistant than the prior colony's.
As they worked the agriculturists started plowing the fields for planting, assuming the makeshift slash and burn fertilization would help the crops.
Six weeks later, the final Atlantian colony was finished. Homes were long and limited to one story, not to mention covered with lightning rods to prevent strikes from the frequent storms. Crops had started to grow, but were nowhere near ready for harvest.
The colony still remained dependant on monthly food shipments, but that wouldn't last for long.
The Thanatos, the Victory, and their complete battlegroup stayed to protect the colony and the surrounding waters until ordered otherwise.