NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: First off, this is closed. Nobody but me or The Kadell. No do-gooding ships, nothing. Too many closed RPs these days get invaded. Thanks.

IC: The Cap'n snarled. He was limping, due to a pulse rifle wound in his left leg, and casually backhanded a crew member standing too close to him, and kicked another. As he kicked out, he winced, and swore loudly. He knew that the crew would probably attempt to kill him, but he was an old dog, and one that knew too many tricks. He turned around, and smiled his near-toothless smile at one, and spoke, a rasping, low voice, which sounded cheerful, covering the deadly undertones. "Arr, laddy-buck! Ye feel a bit angry at this ole man? I wudnt come any-whar near me tonight, me boy, or ye may find that I'm a tougher dog than ye'd reckoned!"

He limped into the bridge, and sat down. His pilfered cruiser, the Bloody Bounty, was wounded as well, and the main left engine chugged loudly as it attempted to output the amount of propulsion required, and failed miserably. The only reason he lived right now was that a nearby star had simply died, well, it had gone out, no explosion or anything, and the enemy had been recalled to investigate.

His ship had been crippled by the impeccably turned-out Realm crew, and his precious supply of Nargstar Torpedoes had little effect. From now on, he vowed, he would turn his attention to easier pickings.

"Cap'n!"

The Navigator, his third-in-command, came running up to him. Normally, the Navigator didn't leave his cabin, so the Cap'n turned around immediately, and asked, in a hushed tone, "What is it, matey?"

The Navigator, holding a chart with hundreds of readouts on it, smiled. "Cap'n, I found us summat to git! Me old mate, I'll show ya!"
He pointed to two lines on the chart, and began speaking excitedly again.
"See all thems scans and shields?!"
The Cap'n nodded, and waited for the Navigator to continue.

The Navigator, not even waiting for him to nod, spoke on. "Y'see, them lines ind-indicayte the shields and scans, as well as warpons frequencees! That one thar, it's waaaaay different from the rest. Came from a long way away, not well shielded like our newer scans, matey! It's a alien scan! And we knows where they be at!"

The Cap'n leapt to his feet, forgetting his wounded leg, until it was too late. "ARRRRRGGH!", he screamed, and promptly sitting back down again, wincing.

He yelled out to everyone on the bridge, his voice hoarse with excitement, and tremulous, as well. "Arrrr! Mateys! The Navigator has gone and found us a xeno people! One with teckknowledgee! We c'n go 'n take all their stuff, and be rich! They ain't go tech-teck... stuff like us, and we can make 'em knows it! We'se gonna be rich, and own a whole planet! Whaddaya say to that, maties?!"

The crew cheered happily, and the men down repairing the engine got on it double-time. A few hours later, the ship was nearing Kadell, which it convieniently happened to be near. The battered craft ungainly tore its way out of Truespace, and sat there, a few planets away from the populated planet, and they tried to set up their jammer.

"Arr lads! Get on it! The Cap'n wants us to get this up, so we can jam the xeno bastards, and plunder 'em!"

The First Mate whacked a lazy pirate around the head with his bit of metal pipe, and watched as they turned it on. Unfortunately, they'd put it on amplify, as opposed to jam...

"No, ye idiots! That's amplifier! Get it on th' bloody jam mode, or I'll tear your head off! Cmon! Move, damnit!"

This time, with the huge, half-obsolete jammer assembled correctly, they turned it on. "G'job lads. We gotta wait for them to investigate, so we can gets some hostages! Lets buckle down, and catch some shut'eye, eh?!"

The First Mate strolled off towards his cabin, knowing that these "Kadell" would probably act in exactly the same way as most alien races, and, if they didn't, well, the Cap'n'd take care 'o that...

OOC: I am so looking forward to being whooped/whooping these kinds of space pirates, arrr!

OOC: apologies for being long-winded, I thought it would be important to try and cram as much detail as possible to make for a more coherent plot setting.

There were two unusual features of The Kadell, on was that it had a greater gravity field then expected for the mass of the planet, a blessing for those provisional settlers 400 years fresh from the home world. The other was that The Kadell was in fact a planetoid in a vertical based orbit around a gargantuan opaque gas giant, Lumendria.

Around the south pole of Lumendria the northern axis of The Kadell was pulled toward the planet, casting an intense sky show as the two magnetic fields charged up against one another. In the south the summer evening had been long and drawn out as the sun had desperately blurred out along the horizon casting an intense orange evening glow before indigo darkness swallowed up the skyline.

Kallaktria Urban, the centre of the Commonwealth, seemed to open up in the warm evening air of summertime. Clotheslines ran between the crafted apartment buildings sagging with the evening’s humidity. Young and old people alike strolled along the well lit streets, moving from cinemas, enjoying alfresco dining or visiting friends for lively cups of gomo (a bitter mildly alcoholic drink). Still others stayed at home and read the newspaper, listened to the radioweb or ate an early dinner. It was a pleasant time, the heat and stress of the day was being pushed away by the descending cold air drifting from the mountains. It was not a time or a place with what was to come in mind… or was it?

The Pan-Kadell Building was a palatial mass of Imperial era architecture representative of the old life long ago deserted and long ago lost to a war almost held as legend. Inside the lay the heart, sole and mind of the Commonwealth. The Assembly of The Kadell, the Supreme Court of The Kadell and various departments were all housed in one massive building. It was also the centre point of a global and extra-terrestrial information network and inside the heart skipped a beat as it detected the arrival of a UFO.

OOC: to be continued on, I’m off to bed!

OOC: No problem! We only RP to read other's RPs, after all!

IC: "Arr, Cap'n! They gone and detected us'ns! We should git the blasty cannons online, orright?"

The Cap'n, still nursing his wounded leg, although more now out of habit than out of hurt, spoke up, his crusty face splitting into a wide grin, as his rough voice dragged itself through the words he spoke. "Yar! Goodjob, matey! Charge up the shields, and git some power to them cannons! Jist wait until they come oot 'ere, and then we'll show 'em what pirates like us'ns can do!"

The Navigator and the Captain, although mutually hating each other, did work well together, and the Navigator was a technological genius, and was essentially the reason the Bloody Bounty had taken as much booty as she had. He'd already registered Kadellian (Kadelli?) scans on his detector, and, to his surprise, found them adequate. The Navigator tapped impatiently on his keyboard, waiting for the scanning jammer to come up. It didn't.

"Damn! Damn! Damnit!!! Them bloody idiots have screwed up the goddamn jammer! The scan blocky thing doesn't work, Cap'n! They c'n find us, and we can't stop 'em!"

The Cap'n, incensed, calmly pulled out an energy rifle, and shot a nearby pirate, a rather stupid pirate, the one that had misplaced the amplifier. He shot him in the groin, three times, his eyes cold as the pirate screamed, and rolled into a ball, clutching his groin. The Cap'n walked over to him, and started kicking him, his steel boots cracking bones and nose alike, and bring out torrents of blood, as the unfortunate pirate attempted to roll away.

At last, he stopped. The Cap'n hauled him up, and shoved him towards the door. "Git 'im down to sickbey. He'll recover, but 'e gets no share of the booty this time!"

Like an electric shock at the base of the spine the news shot up the intelligence hierarchy of the Commonwealth Intelligence Service before reaching the assembled nucleus of the Secretary General Kanvan Tellos, the Elected Administrator for the Defence Department Gannah Meimso and the Operating Administrator of the CIO, Jevell. Meeting in Sandston Hall, the official residence of the Secretary General they began conducting an urgent meeting.

“First how come they caught us with our pants down like this? I’ve had to defend that very costly program of yours to monitor what direction alien merchant ships are travelling and now we get a two minute advance notice that there might or might not be something coming?!” a touch of anger twinged the last words of the Secretary Generals question directed at Jevell.

“Actually it was 8 minutes when we first detected something but we’ve seen plenty of phenomena passing through, you know that, and at least we new something was approaching.” Jevell’s words were flat and clipped unlike the rising and falling pattern of the secretary General, indicating his fierce loyalty to defending the CIO from revoke.

Kanvan paused trying to calm himself. Since the first settlement Kadell society had been historically conditioned with a paranoid perspective towards the outside realms. It was almost a primal conditioning, a fear that one day the lost children of empire would also be swept away by the great bloody wave that had thrown their ancestors across the stars. It was also impossible to deny that an undercurrent of xenophobia still existed even in this modern society.

“Alright… we can’t waste time debating past policy for current events, what is happening is happening now and needs to be dealt with.” The door to the meeting chamber pushed forward and in stepped Noron Klare, the Prime Leader of all The Kadell and followed by him was the Elected Administrator of the Interior Ministry Betxam Hogavaan and the Vice Prime Leader.

“I want the TKDN (The Kadell Defence Network) brought down to level two. We’ve been looking at the information collected by the satellites and it’s a rust bucket!” An expression of something like joy seemed to finish the Prime Leaders sentence. “Before you start objecting they’re still about a million kilometres away, there’s no way the can attack or they would have opened with all guns blazing. I don’t think they would have much better then a 0-gee pistol.”

“Bloody Hell!” exclaimed Jevell rising out of his chair, hands clenched. “Did the peace freaks perform a lobotomy on you on the way over here?” he said indicating at the Vice Prime and the Interior Administrator. “This is standard protocol, we don’t know who they are or what they are!”

“And are you about to tell me they’re Republican troops sent to exterminate us in a rusting tin bucket of a ship?!”

“SIT DOWN, EVERYONE” the Secretary General’s voice boomed. The three new arrivals pulled up their own chairs, sitting opposite to the Jevell and the very quiet Gannah.

“With all respect Prime Leader going to phase three is part of the protocol regardless of what or who we think is out there. Until we can find out exact details about who they are where they’re from and what they want we have no right to deviate from policy – but – I do appreciate your concern, this is an intense experience for all of us.”

“What does our Defence Administrator have to say?” Gannah shifted a little uneasily before speaking “We-ll obviously we have to investigate and as according to protocol a probe was automatically launched… Um” he looked at his watch “it will arriving in abut twenty-three minutes. I think and I know some of you will disagree, that we should issue a public announcement now.”

After a few moments of discussion it was agreed that they would wait until more information was brought to light before issuing a public announcement. Out into space a small craft sped towards the alien vessel growing larger as the two bodies approached on another. On board was a sophisticated array of monitoring devices but the central payload was the AI-bot onboard prepared for to encounter the unknown species, the prelude to any manned encounter.

OOC: well obviously you wouldn’t throw a crew on board an alien ship if you don’t know what atmosphere they breath/ wether the consider you a delicacy/ what diseases they might have. Just act the friendliest you can muster and diplomats will follow [;)]

"Arr! They be sending oot a probe! Git to yer stations! Activayte th' traictor beam!"

A thin green beam flew out, and attached itself to the probe. Hopefully, it would prove sufficient to pull the probe in, otherwise, they would have to use force.
Already, the Navigator had scanned it, and got a decent idea of how to speak Kadell. He hadn't really given his computer an idea of the grammar and sentence structure, but it was otherwise fine.

He began typing a message, and transmitting it.

"Greetings. Goods pirates surrender we. Give stuff now all. Food engines machines. Repairs. Need stuff! You give no die you!"

(OOC: Ask if you want a translation...)

The ship blasted with two Pulse Cannons, the tiny pricks of light travelling towards a heavily populated unit of housing on Kadell, ready to expode with volatile energy, and cause devastating casualties, simple to prove how serious the pirates were...

A huge panda floated through space, and bumped into a moon. And chaos reigned.

OOC: harhar, friendly indeed!

OOC: Bump

OOC: uber-apologies, please read my TG if you haven’t already.

The military had already been placed on alert since the arrival of the ship but the brazen attack was almost hysterical, every sleeping nightmare for the children of the holocaust had jolted alive as the two tiny green specks thrust towards the planet. Far above the green hillsides and great cities 75 missile platforms swam in orbit around The Kadell like guardian sharks above sacred ruins beneath the waves of constant white clouds. The energy blasts automatically activated the defence system of the nearest platform, too slow to launch and fire into the energy beams three O.M. Meoin Missiles launched towards the ship.

Beneath those crashing white waves that flowed across the sea of air around The Kadell sirens began to wail across the landscape of Kavannaa a thin sliver of land cutting through the ocean famed for its mild weather and being sun-soaked nine months of the year the capital, Xeruna Urban, had blossomed into a Kadell metropolis of nearly two million people (one of the top ten largest cities of Kadell civilisation). The twin lights magnified into a direct explosion on the city-centre and for a moment time seemed to pause across The Kadell.

In a second the city centre had become “oblitgask” with a violent fire storm thrust outwards from the igniting oxygen drawn in by the vacuum of the explosion. The green light was said to have been seen from both ends of the island and the sound carried across the ocean to nearby Ise Hemael. Within minutes satellites relayed the tragic events across the globe as the missiles gained on the alien enemies.

was this being continued or not?

OOC: Huh? My post didn't go through... Bah. Stupid auto Jolt-loggy-out thing. Now I'll have to rewrite it. In about 5 hours, I don't have time right now. I could've sworn it went through...

"Yar, sir! They dyin'! They be firin' back, however!"

A pirate, looking quite worried, had ran up to the Cap'n, and started talking to him.

The Cap'n looked up, and casually backhanded the pirate, who's name he didn't even know, sending him sprawling across the dirty grey-ish floor. He spoke, his voice calm, and even, although the rasp was still there.

"Ya idiot. I knows, ya think that the cap'n of a ship durnt know when she's under attack? Git back to yer station, and get th' men on th' plasma turrets!"

The pirate looked blackly up at him, his face contorted with rage, and then he saw the look on the Cap'ns face. His face blanched, and he said, quietly "Yessir."

However, down at the plasma turrets, which were, in truth, a strange mix of some substance the pirates had stole from a scientific faciltiy, heat, and energy, (they called it plasma because it glowed) and began firing, with instant results.

Two bolts of the 'plasma' sped towards a missile, dissolving into nothingness, the pirates firing the missiles cheering, and slapping each other on the back. Of course, this was a lucky hit, seeing as most of these pirates were simply criminals, and most had horrible, horrible aim.

Secondly, a pirate, K'var by name, opened fire, with a delicate and deadly aim, ready to obliterate the missiles flying towards them. Unfortunately for him, the 'plasma' came out the wrong end. He screamed, and his body lit alight for a brief, horrible moment, before he was burnt into his component particles.

The two pirates nearby him had also spontaenously caught fire, and were rolling on the floor, annoying the other pirates, who, to the best of their efforts, trying to fire. Unfortunately for them, as they probably would've lived, the strain put on the armour of the ship was too great, and the rusty plate between them and the vacuum outside ruptured, and was pulled away, six more pirate screaming as they flew out, along with a great deal of air.

Fortunately, though, the emergency systems were still online. Two sheets of metal flew down, one ripping through yet another unfortunate pirate on its way down, splitting him neatly in half, a second before the half on the inside began to spew out blood, and all other sorts of nasty things.

This was enough for the pirates on this gunnery deck. They scrambled to their feet, and ran, ran for the relative safety of the inner decks.
Two of the plasma cannons continued to fire their deadly load randomly out into space, one, by sheer dumb luck, hitting the inbound missile, and burning away its tip, sending it spiralling off into the void.

Of course, once was luck, twice was coincidence, but three times was skill. Unfortunately, while the pirates may have had both of the first two on their side, they certainly didn't have the last.

The Cap'n snarled. The engineers had decided to take apart the shield generator, and play with it, and see what they could make, and see if they could improve it, Naturally, it now worked sporadically, turning on for brief bursts, if it did at all.

The shield generator, however, had decided to be tempermental, once again. It was working perfectly, and the Cap'n grinned... up until the second before the missile reached the ship. For no reason whatsoever, it cut out, and the missile hit the first gunnery deck; the one that had already been damaged, and it exploded. Luckily, the inner armour didn't crumple, as well it shouldn've, as the shield came on... for once, after the missile impacted. Although the walls were covered with melting metal, the Cap'n was glad he'd spent that extra week in the 'black market planet', Zorrmathor.

The gunnery deck, however, was history. Nothing left. There were only four gunnery decks, and the other ones were nowhere near as well outfitted as this one. Of course, they had the larger guns, but that gunnery deck was what they had been relying on to destroy those big platforms they'd seen.

The Cap'n swore. It was time to try negotiating. No doubt these... Kidael, or whatever they were called, would prefer to give them some raw materials than die. Of course, he'd kill them after, anyway, but they wouldn't know that.

He opened a channel. "Greetings send we. Weapon... malfunction?... no, no, there was no word for it in the translater... problem, sorry big much. Broken ship, pilot to hard. Apologies. Talk now we?"

He smiled. Naturally, the military types on the planet would advocate killing him, but, so long as they had negotiators, they would probably not try to kill him again. "Yar, me lads! We gonna come down, and take them leaders of them aliens hostage! After that, we gonna own this world, and take booty, plunder, and whatever we want! YARHAR!"

OOC: once again, pirates, space-pirates, simply brilliant but also incredibly unfortunate…

800 meters beneath the Pan-Kadell Building an emergency meeting was being held in the hub of an underground network that webbed beneath the capital.

“The law says to declare martial law. Section 28 of the Emergency and Disasters Act states” and at this Jevell read from the page in front of him “in the event of hostile alien invasion or occupation martial law is automatically enforced.”

“You’re not even elected” screamed Gannah Memso at the Operating Administrator of the Commonwealth Intelligence Organisation.

“Both of you SIT DOWN” retorted the Secretary General. “There is only one ship at this time and our missile destroyed its firing deck. Whatever weapons it had onboard was destroyed…” Tellos paused as an incoming report blinked on his screen. “Terrible…” he mumbled, “I have terrible news everyone, the representative for Kavannaa was in Xerunda when the weapon hit, in fact” and his voice softened as he read “he was staying at the Glacean Hotel, the Ground Zero of the strike”.

The meeting room was peopled by a few executive officers of the bureaucracy, military, emergency services and a handful of elected representatives who weren’t being represented on the large wall-penal, all fell silent at the news.

Continuing again he said: “There is only one ship, it’s been disabled and now they’ve begun broadcasting a plea for negotiations. This hardly sounds like an invasion force and moreover our armed forces are on full alert should it be a ploy or they think of attacking again. We need to approach this situation calmly and rationally. I put it as a motion under the Emergency and Disasters Act that we send an envoy to the ship, I believe that the Aerospace Defence Corps already has a ship loaded and ready.”

Pausing to allow for objections the Secretary General tapped a button on his consol to allow the other assembled representatives to vote electronically. The motion passed unanimously.

“I know we would like to see them pay with their lives but that isn’t our way. We’re the elected champions for law and order and upholding civil conduct. We’ll see that these criminals face their day in court like any other.” The meeting resumed to organising the emergency response for the devastated city.

Away from the capital and far up and out beyond the atmosphere Captain Ober was strapped into the seat of the Pangaea, a stout ship fitted for immediate travel to any settlement around the sun in need of arbitration, negotiation and jurisdiction. Chief Negotiator Ambel was also aboard what she humorously called her “faithful steed” along with crew including xenolinguists, xenobiologists, and xenothropologists. The news over the livewire was bad, 15,000 presumed dead in the immediate strike, the blast wave had engulfed the western half of the city probably killing another 25,000. “The bastards” he thought as the ship was directed via autopilot away from the platform.

"Ahhhhh, Cap'n?"

An engineer was standing behind him, and spoke quietly, very so.

The Cap'n looked at him coldly, and asked "Yes, matey? What do it be?"

The engineer gave an involuntary shiver, his muscles twitching in anticipation, and spoke again. "Cap'n, sir, why are we goin' down to get in range of their missil's? We could just fire a Nargstar, and it'd raze whole cities to th' ground. They'd have no choice but to remember."

The Cap'n continued his cold glare for a moment, and the spoke, his voice icy, but, at the same time, patronizing. "Well, y'see, you damned idiot, we need to get in range. Them missile platforms caint fire once we're inside them, fer risk of hittin' the planet. Then we c'n just ransom the planet, and repair the Bloody Bounty, get some booty, and mebbe women, and take off again. However, that shuttle they're sending out is annoyin'. I'm gonna head into meet it, and I want you to 'fix' the retrothrusters so that we slow down too slowly, and stop in low orbit.

Message:

We coming in. Stop nearer orbit, in case ship fall apart. Mu- mu.... damnit, damn translator! No word for mutiny!... rebels on ship, fire .... bah. Damn Navigator. He needs to git a better computer.... shoot-object at planet if we not up give. We weapons own no. Happen? what

(Easy OOC translation: We're coming in, stopping in nearer orbit in case the ship falls apart. Mutiny aboard, the mutineers fired at the planet unless they surrendered. The people sending the message didn't fire the weapons. What happened?[of course, it's all a lie!])

The garbled messages from the alien ship was deciphered as being related to one of the many languages that had been recorded coming in from distant stars and the near-by routes of various space freighters. The automatic translation devices would become more fluent as the crew spoke more. Captain Ober’s blood boiled when he heard the message, his realist instincts told him that the mutiny never occurred, what psychopaths would fire on an alien world and especially without making demands? He would have to wait to see just what type of killers they were.

Chief Negotiator Ambel was preparing the negation room for its arrivals. The heavy table in the centre of the room was a deep-cherry red and of course bolted to the floor. At each of the sleek ergonomic seats a glass of water was placed next to the wafer-thin and flexible computer mats, the high-tech cutting edge of the indigenous polymorphic technology being applied. A high-arched roof was illuminated with hidden lighting along the ceiling ledge and at one end a great pair of wooden doors of the same type as the table was decorated by a perimeter of green textile. At the other end a large frosted glass panel was coloured with a shifting glow of light.

It was a beautiful room and the insulated feeling gave it a sense of inner-peace and stability so necessary for delicate negotiations. Of course outside the door a pair of aerogaurds would be guarding the door the whole and the rest of the ship. A soft chime came across the intercom announcing that the Pangea had docked with the alien vessel. She strolled through the ship to the airlock and waited for her first confrontation with an alien…

The great chrome airlock swung open and before her stood the most rag-tag bunch of space desperados she had ever envisioned. The leading creature of the delegation seemed to almost shout an obscenity at her, the translator interpreting something about “your combustible goldfish” obviously it needed more input. She greeted them by placing her left arm in front of her and lifting it upright the formal peaceful greeting. Captain Ober standing next to her thrust the ear-piece translators towards the aliens who hesitantly accepted them.

“Please follow me” she instructed them plainly before leading them through the corridor towards the negotiation chamber.

OOC: OK I thought perhaps we’ll assume the pirates put their story forward, who they are, where from and what of this ‘mutiny’ before I make my next move.