NationStates Jolt Archive

This is the combat ring for the Flagship Contest.

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=470765http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=470765

I want the contestants to post their arrival before the fighting starts.

--JOSEPH QUETZAL Node Online
--Tripartite Sequence Initiated
--ID has joined the Convo
--SUPER has joined the Convo
--EGO has joined the Convo

EGO: Congratulations are in order, I believe. Joseph has survived his first combat mission, simulated it may have been.

ID: W00t.

SUPER: Oh dear. Did we have to?

ID: Pussy. You'd rather lose?

SUPER: Well, no, but still, even simulated violence makes me nauseous. Well, it would, if I had a stomach...

EGO: ...Pussy.

ID: ...

ID: ...

ID: ...I love you?

EGO: Moving on. I have taken the liberty of instructing the Guilders to door Joseph to the proper battle location. Combat will hopefully begin shortly. Id, I expect you to be assisting again. Super... just stay the hell away from the ship, won't you?

SUPER: Well, I never...

--SUPER has left the Convo

ID: Well, you can count on me, boss. One dead- er, sim-dead enemy SD coming right up. You want fries with that?

EGO: Funny. Just stick to the book for the most part and things should go well. Au revoir. QUETZAL, --end convo--

--EGO has left the Convo
--ID has left the Convo
--Tripartite Sequence Disengaged
--Program CODENAME AVATAR initiated
--COMBAT MODE ONLINE

OOC: Ah, QUETZAL. Without a doubt my favourite character from all over NS.

IC: The enemy was there. The systems check ended abruptly, and lights flickered, engines whirred in the sealed environment of the ship, and a high-pitched whine signified one of the older defense mechanisms being activated. The Kitten was prepared.

It flickered a wave of faster-than-light energy across the enemy ship. It knew it. The Joseph, the ship it faced, dwarfed it utterly. The enemy ship was estimated to be approximately twenty times larger in physical size than the Kitten.

Nonetheless, not to matter. Globs of neutronium were held in containment, slowing down the ship immensely. When used, they would easily divert any attack with sheer ease, however, the single use they warranted would make them a simple surprise, and hardly a battle-winning tactic.

It made its decision. The immensely heavy material was ejected out of the Kitten at massive speeds, bound together, flying towards the Joseph. It would not harm the enemy ship, but it was best to... 'keep your enemy on his toes', so to speak.

The simple size offset allowed the enemy to carry a monumental amount of firepower compared to the Kitten, but it doubted the enemy ship could match it at sublight speeds, nor at FTL maneouvering. The antimatter 'cannons', little more than boxes transferrable to any part of the ship, were whipped to face the Joseph. Surprise was vital, here. A long-drawn out battle could be one, but the Kitten could afford one mistake, at best. The Joseph could probably afford ten.

The laser weaponry slid out of the hull, and fifteen cannons fired, again, and again, at lightspeed, as lasers were won't to do. Of course, laser in this situation was quite misleading, as the projectiles themselves emitted no light whatsoever, and were built to dissipate shields, and corrupt cellular structures.

Over six hundred shots were fired, gliding serenly towards the Otagian craft. There was little chance they would hit, but every advantage that could be gained, must be gained, if it was to win. It floated in inertia, unmoving, at least, not counting the endless movement of the universe itself. The cannons were retracted, and the Kitten sat, and waited...

The Kitten belched out a small jet of flames from its underside. Many of these flames were purple in colour, before they were extinguished in the vacuum of space.

Is this still going on or should I declair a forfeit?

Since HT posted last, they would win.

OOC: Whoops, didn't see that he'd actually posted. I should have one up by the end of the day.

Now fully in control of Id, Joseph's colors began to shift, the brilliant rainbow shades of his hull twisting and warping into graffiti-like splotches, neon red dominating the black background of his new skin. The newly repainted vessel saluted its foe with a quick flash of its shields, and then was gone, hidden behind its pitch-black shell.

The lasers that slashed out from the Kitten impacted in a broad spread on the shield, flashes of cherry red flaring where they impacted the accumulators, before the shield evened out to black again. Angry now, Joseph flung out its drones, hundreds of thousands of tiny Eyes of the Fates streaking out into space, positioning themselves around the field of battle, establishing a sensor grid between the Kitten and Joseph. Flying past, a full barrage of SCCAM torpedoes and Paris II combat drones soared towards their target, the singularity driven cylinders attempting to encapsulate the enemy dreadnought in a wall of emerald event horizons.

Well, this is going nicely. Bastard hit me a couple times, but that shouldn't be a problem... Let's see. Hrm, maybe a bit of music... QUETZAL, --run program IDPLAYLIST (http://www.debauchery-band.de/mp3/Debauchery%20-%20Torture%20Pit/Debauchery%20-%20Torture%20Pit.mp3)--

Move. Now

The voice echoed through the ship, and the ship shifted. Or perhaps the universe did. Anything near the ship would've experienced an unsettling, wrenching feeling, for the briefest of moments.

The Kitten skipped across the surface of another dimension, like a pebble skipping across a pond, before it sank easily, and emerged 'above' the enemy ship. Assuming the Kitten and Joseph had been facing one another on a 180-degree line at the beginning of combat, the Kitten was now above the Joseph, and prepared once more. Against a ship so much more powerful, the only real means of defense was fleeing. It had only narrowly escaped then, and escaping again would be harder. It would have to take the fight to the enemy.

Bolts of energy seared once more down towards the Joseph, followed by a relatively weak set of EMP mines. They would serve to sever the Joseph's drone network, hopefully, or at least give the Kitten an advantage at a vital time.

The Kitten shifted again, firing bolts in different directions, each one aimed at a probe, calculated to hit if they continued moving in the same direction.

It shifted again, and didn't fire. It wasn't prepared to loose any of its finer weapons as yet. The neutronium would take some time to hit the enemy, quite possibly hours, however, it could be used well at a tactical moment.

The Kitten amused itself by waiting, preparing FTL engines to move at a moment's notice. The waves of energy the enemy had fired before would harm it badly, it could not afford a single mistake... The sensors it used were still weak from the backwash of the FTL jump, but in a few moments they would recover fully, and it would be able to detect any incoming fire with ease once more..

OOC: Apologies again for the wait. RL has been a very large hassle, complete with blunt force trauma. Oh, and apologies for any offensive content to the following post, it's just Id being his usual asinine self.

IC:

Id snarled as another series of blasts impacted Joseph's shields, a few minute burn-throughs splashing the hull with fire, raising its temperatures by a degree or two. The shields subsided to a dark red again, swelling slightly from the power influx, the increased surface area serving to bleed off energy faster. As the EMP mines went off, the shields flickered to a slightly brighter red as they absorbed the blasts, leaving Joseph and its drones unaffected.

That's IT! I've had enough of this goddamn skipping about!

Joseph blinked a microsecond behind the Kitten, waiting until the sensor probes had confirmed its new location. The massive ship opened fire, swarms of singularity-driven torpedoes flooding towards the smaller warship. MAC turrets launched massive projectiles towards the Traveller vessel, accompanied by another barrage of drones and sensor probes.

Joseph, as soon as you detect that that annoying peice of shit vessel trying to go FTL, slam on the dimensional barriers, strand it in this dimension or pull it right the hell back. I want to shoot this thing, dammit!

Jump

Nonono!

The decision was made a second too late. As the Kitten prepared for another jump, it felt a flicker of energy preparing to stop it. It halted, and then.. it was a moment too late. The ceased FTL jump had also left the Kitten more defenseless than it normally would've been, the shields flickering to full power mere nanoseconds too late.

A mass of energy ripped through the lower decks, those kept for some of the sublight power, and a large amount of the Kitten's machinery was there. Suddenly, holes gaped into the side of the ship, six, or perhaps seven on them. A few brief flickers of fire consumed the oxygen within the Kitten's innards, before the holes were automatically sealed off.

Damn

Well... if the enemy wanted to stop it from escaping, it would have to play rough. Even kittens had claws, after all. A large amount of fusion weaponry sat within one of the holds, preparing to be fired. It was time to play.

The fusion weaponry glowed briefly, and was shot into Truespace, preparing to materialise within the Joseph's hull. No doubt they could stop it. Nonetheless, it would buy the Kitten time. Not to escape, oh, no. To attack.

As the ordinance was shot into the other dimension, the Kitten also moved. One or the other, the Joseph could no doubt counter. Two, however, or, if they wished to be specific, thousands, could not be countered with ease, nor with the power the Joseph could wield on the moment, hopefully.

The Kitten blinked to the underside of the Joseph, and fired a barrage of weaponry, all focused on the one specific point on the hull, and on the shields. The hull-damaging weaponry would arrive a few moments later, penetrating the hull, which should've been exposed due to the effects on the shielding. After that, a barrage of slower-moving antimatter weaponry would hurl itself into the hopefully broken hull.

The Kitten was prepared to fight, and, although it might lose, make sure its opponent knew that small claws were still razor-sharp..

If neither of you post by Monday morning at 1201 AM Central, the last to post will be considered the winner by default.

OOC: Just call it for HT. While I personally think I'm winning (no offense, HT), my RPing time has gone down the toilet, and I'm going on vacation Saturday. So, congrats to HT, you're moving on. :D

OK.

HT gets the win and I will edit his name into the standings sheet Sunday.

OOC: Just call it for HT. While I personally think I'm winning (no offense, HT), my RPing time has gone down the toilet, and I'm going on vacation Saturday. So, congrats to HT, you're moving on. :D

Yeah, I think you were winning as well, but, oh well, the Kitten jumps around people annoyingly in yet another round!

...is that before or after it tries to go asleep on the lap of the nearest cat-hater or person alergic to cats?