NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: Yar. This be an RP for the Vah, and myself. I figured first contact is always good.

IC: It amazed him how fast Earth's factories, coupled with the space elevator, could churn out ships. Six days, and they'd bolted together two light frigates, prepared for duty in Earth's military.

The politicians, or whoever was in charge now, had left the people their luxuries, but had levied new taxes on the more expensive goods, liquidated the assets of the richest and most powerful, and used this to build ships.

The wartime notice had been given out all over the planet; it was said that Earth was now at war. Apparently a distant, and unaffiliated colony had come under attack, they weren't sure how, or when, the men in authority knew, but he was a lowly pilot, one of the few not in the EarthGuard.

He'd been conscripted into service, mainly because his ship had been refitted to serve as a 'missile freighter', its cargo bays turned into massive missile decks, making it one of Earth's more potent battlecruisers.

Of course, the promise of three times the value of his ship back, and double wartime pay kept him there; that'd make excellent capital for starting up his own shipping business. Jol, as he was known, figured that the risk at war wasn't much more than the risk of pirates, or corrupt customs men, or mechanical failures.. all those things were a given, and, in war, his chances of survival were pretty good.

He had twelve EarthGuard members on his ship.. now, he respected them, and all, but their devotion, no, their obsession with humanity and Earth bothered him. Of course, he was no longer the captain, just the navigator. Good navigators were hard to find, and, instead of shipping one up from Earth, they'd just recruited him.

It was strange; even Mars had joined Earth on this strange war of theirs. They only had a tenth of the forces Earth had, in space, and even less on the ground, but it meant one less enemy to deal with, and one more friend on their side.


However, he'd been assigned a mission. As navigator, he figured it was pretty safe. A star a fair distance from Earth, and from the war, to boot. However, some strange photographs had been sent back.. of ships that weren't recognised in the least. Only one ship, though, so the Republic was sending three.

Two light frigates, the EMS Blade, and the EMS Obsidian, armed only lightly, as they were only a few times larger than a fighters, three hundred metres, dwarfed by the six-kilometre cruisers that defined Earth's military. His ship was two kilometres long, and it was filled to the brim with explosives. Not nuclear ones, for the most part, they were too expensive, and too deadly. Tonnes of explosives, and railgun ammo filled his ship.

Sheer acceleration, the magnetic guns they'd built to make the acceleration, and depleted uranium was a combination that was made to last. For the most part, railguns were seen as ineffective, after all, could you attach an impromptu FTL drive to a railgun projectile? Still, they were cheap, and were the first weapon to have been pulled out of retirement. Attach a cheap atomic generator, and you had yourself a gun.

They'd also fitted a rift cannon, but, unlike normal warships, they hadn't had time to install a seperate fuel supply. They'd attached it to his fuel supply instead, so, if he fired it too much, he'd be stranded. It was an immensely powerful one, too, he knew that. A prototype of some kind, one that didn't just make the matter speed off into millions of little rifts, wreaking hell on the ship it hit, but that made the matter go faster-than-light into one place, the centre of the rift blast. Boom, instant black hole.

Of course, it could use normal blasts, but he doubted they'd use it. It was rigged up as an emergency weapon; to be used if they came under sudden attack. After all, his ships didn't even have shields, nor did it have anything even resembling heavy armour.

He hit the button, and the ship trembled, as the rift sucked it in. It was technically something to do with a wormhole within a wormhole, or something else that sounded ridiculous and impossible to him, but it didn't really matter how it worked. What mattered, is that, within a few hours, they'd arrive at this system where the strange ship had been sighted, before they'd lost contact with the probe..

A few hours later..

The trio of ships emerged from a rift, unceremoniously dumping their matter back into the universe. "Well, it appears we've got nothing, boys. We'll turn on the taychyion sensors, and have a look!"

Jol had no idea why the EarthGuard man had mangled his words so badly, nor why he was feigning a nonchalant attitude. As the sensors whined up, Jol realised that there were bursts of data heading in, supposedly from different directions, and different places, all horribly messed up, and strange..

He looked at it in sheer amazement, as something showed up. It was emitting more power than any rock had a right to, and.. he wasn't sure what it was. The data bursts were exactly that, bursts, and reading them was nearly impossible..

He waited for a moment, leaning back, as he waited to see what would happen on the sensor output..

In the Command Center of the Research Station“We're losing it!” exclaimed One-Who-Ponders, gazing at the wildly fluctuating data displays. It could see the Betas deftly tapping keys and twisting knobs while the Alphas twittered excitedly; they were trying to stabilize the system, but the Vah scientist knew that they would not succeed.

Then all of the instruments shot up to their maximum readings, red-lining; an instant later they dropped to nothing. One-Who-Ponders didn't have to look at the wall display to know that the experiment was over.

The test-bed apparatus had been destroyed, along with the asteroid where it had been set up.

Had One-Who-Ponders looked up, it would have seen an dazzling burst of light followed by a rapidly expanding glowing sphere of superheated debris. As the sphere expanded, it cooled, gradually fading from view, although the command center's telemetry was still showing a huge ball of shimmering gas, emitting infrared radiation of ever-decreasing radiance. There would be a storm of charged particles out there, but sitting in a chamber beneath the surface of a rocky moonlet well within the magnetic field of the large butternut colored gas giant filling a full third of the sky below them, they were in no danger at all.

“What happened?” asked Glittering Dagger, clearly peeved.

“The same thing that always happens,” One-Who-Ponders told the Gnich*. “As we extract more energy from the vacuum, the system becomes progressively unstable.” It looked chagrined, having hoped for a better demonstration. “We still have a lot of work to do.”

“Well,” said Glittering Dagger slowly, “At least it makes a good bomb.”OOC: I'm assuming that the gas giant is blocking our view of your position - and that whatever remote sensors we may have in system are temporarily blinded by the surge of radiation from the blast. In a moment, of course, they'll recover. But that does give you a chance to make the next move.

FYI, the experiment was an attempt to tap the so-called “zero point” energy of the vacuum itself; the blast you have just witnessed is a miniature version of the Big Bang!

"What...is that?". Jol spoke, as he got used to using the strange 'burst' sensors, or the 'tachyiyion' sensors, as the men on his ship had said. It appeared to be a.. massive wave of energy. Powerful, too. The tiny flickers of it that had been transported back by the sensors were actually damaging them, strangely enough.

"We've got something.. strange, sir. I advise investigating it immediately".

The Earthguard member looked at him, and sighed. "We'll hail it. We were sent out here to see if there were allies to make, not to prod and poke some friendly interstellar race. Use every means of communications, sensor-boy".

Jol sighed. That would mean every damn type of electromagnetic wave capable of transmitting a signal, which, in turn, meant every damn type of wave. It would just be the same pattern, over and over again, the same energy, in multiple forms. Anyone that figured out space travel could surely understand that uniform patterns of different types of energy waves was sent by some sort of intelligence..

He began transmitting, starting with radio waves. There wouldn't be a legible message, but he'd send precisely the same message, as close as he could, in any case, with ultraviolet radiation. Then infra-red.. He sighed, and began, the waves beaming off towards the strange anomaly..

In the Command Center of the Research StationIt took several minutes for the proton storm to subside, during which One-Who-Ponders continued to brief Glittering Dagger on the status of the project. As it did so, the Ylii scientists and technicians continued to pour over the data; they would no doubt be eager to try again as soon as they digested all of the telemetry collected in this pass.

All the while, Glittering Dagger was biding its time, waiting for the storm of radiation from the failed experiment to pass. It had learned all it needed to know to make its report to its Gnich*ah, Triumphant Destiny: no, the research was nowhere near completion; yes, the research nonetheless had potential and ought to be continued.

Just another few minutes, it thought.

Then the klaxon went off.

One-Who-Ponders bit off its words in mid-sentence, startlement written all over its brows. Mumbling, “Excuse me,” it hurried back up to the control room; Glittering Dagger turned to follow, and in doing so saw the chok'aav coming down the hall to meet the station's Director. One look at the soldier's face told the Gnich* all it needed to know: something very serious was happening.

“... a repetitive signal broadcast across multiple frequencies,” the chok'aav was saying. “We have no idea what is being broadcast, only that it is obviously of artificial origin.”

One-Who-Ponders turned to look over its shoulders at Glittering Dagger, as if to ask for advice, but whether that was actually what it sought or not – after all, the scientist might just be waiting to see if its high-ranking guest was going to step in and take over - the Gnich* remained silent, passing authority back to its host. The latter did not wait for further invitation. “Launch a probe,” it ordered. “But straight away from the gas giant; have it arc into view of the signal source at a distance of several million kilometers, moving back in at a much slower speed than it can manage and from a direction that suggests an origin elsewhere in system.”

The chok'aav's mouth-flaps tightened in understanding; seeing that it need elaborate no further, One-Who-Ponders continued: “Prepare the fighters, but load no ordnance until we have more data; keep the crews in the ready-room where they can receive information from our probe as it becomes available.”

"Something's.. coming, sir."

Jol spoke, and the EarthGuard man roughly shoved him from his seat, and he was jarred into a nearby wall. The other man took the controls, his fingers moving furiously, as he tried to identify the unknown.

The EarthGuard spoke. "It's artificial, we know that. Fire up weapons, prepare the rift cannons. The two escorts we have here are prepared, however, if it makes anything vaguely resembling a hostile movement, we're going to blow it to all hell".

Jol grimaced. He was only a navigator, and, really, his only duty was using the data that he received intelligently; so, if need was that they had to blow something up - well, they'd blow something up.

At a strange woman's command, her hair cut short as to not get in the way of her eyes, her fingers motionless on the neural-link pad, weaponry prepared for an attack. He had been moved aside on the spur of the moment, the EarthGuard obviously far better at combat than he ever had been.

He looked around, confused, until a pair of strong hands roughly pushed him into a combat seat.

"Get prepared. We've got I-pulse missiles, ones we can control remotely. If anything larger comes in, we've got the missile prepped, but you'll need to use the maneuvering fuel it has to make a FTL jump near the target, and take it out. These ships are expensive, we can't take the risk of losing one to an unknown enemy. Understand, civilian?!"

Jol felt a burst of resentment. It was his ship, not anyone else's. Being ordered around like this ruffled his fur the wrong way, so to speak. He was as loyal as any good Earth citizen, but the way these.. soldiers treated him, it was rude, and downright insulting.

He spoke back, grudgingly. "Yes. I understand. Fire the missile, use the FTL jump".

"Good. Now, get ready..

In the Command Center of the Research Station“How big?!?” asked One-Who-Ponders with unconcealed shock.

“The largest ship is 2,175 meters long; the two smaller ships are 315 meters long. In all respects, these last two appear to be identical,” intoned the furry Beta technician.

Glittering Dagger swayed back slightly. “So,” it said, “Two super-battleships and whatever that thing is. Our lucky day.”

One-Who-Ponders creased its brows; its pedipalps waved uncertainly. How to meet this threat? it wondered. We only have half a dozen fighters – and Glittering Dagger's courier vessel, but its armament isn't much better than a two or three of more fighters. The scientist was not happy. Yet it knew that it could not show indecisiveness in front of the Gnich*.

“Our chances of prevailing in this battle are small,” observed the station director at last. “Therefore we must think in terms of key objectives.” Glittering Dagger's mouth-flaps closed in agreement, so One-Who-Ponders continued. “First, we must tell Triumphant Destiny of this. Next, we must make sure that the data we have collected here does not fall into the hands of an alien enemy. But we also must not lose that data ourselves. As you have noted,” the scientist finished, “At the least our efforts have given us a good bomb.”

“And so how do you recommend we do this?” asked the Gnich*

“I think you and your ship should prepare for high-speed departure,” One-Who-Ponders replied. “And I think that you should take with you most of our scientists and technicians and all of our backups – including copies of all the telemetry that we just collected. In addition,” the scientist said, “You should take two fighters as an escort; in the worst case, as they are warp-capable, any of the three of you who manage to escape can get word of this to the Gnich*ah.”

“As for us,” it continued, “We'll rig this station and its computers for demolition. You,” One-Who-Ponders said, turning to the chok'aav, “Will prepare a defense of this facility from any force of enemy soldiers sent to occupy it and carry off our data. The fighters we will use to stage a diversion to help the Gnich* escape.”

“I approve,” said Glittering Dagger, “With two amendments. The first is that we should try to remain undetected for as long as possible, or – failing that – try to draw the enemy into an ambush. The second is that you come with me.” Before One-Who-Ponders could object, Glittering Dagger made his reasons for this last point clear. “R*grk'h,” it said, glancing at the chok'aav, “Is better equipped to command the defense of this facility. You, on the other hand,” continued the Gnich*, “Are needed to complete the work you've started here. Your concerns to the contrary notwithstanding, I believe you have made important progress here, even if you still have far to go before achieving your goals.”

“R*grk'h, launch a second probe, taking care to keep it out of sight of the alien force. Have this second probe take a position further in system and begin broadcasting simulated ship-to-ground traffic.”In the Ready Room of the Research Station's Hangar ComplexOutside, Vah workers and machines hustled about, preparing the courier vessel for departure. Trunks and equipment were hastily packed and Ylii technicians and scientists were hustled aboard the vessel. Two fighters were prepared for launch as well, being furnished with extra fuel and loaded with countermeasures to aid in evasion.

Nearby, more ground crews and machines were pouring over half a dozen more fighters being prepared for action, pumping ultra-pressurized liquid hydrogen into their fuel tanks and bringing their battery systems and capacitors up to full charge. Diagnostics were being run to verify the full operation of the fighter's magnetohydrodynamic turbines and stutterwarp systems; this might well be the last mission these spacecraft ever conducted, so they had to be in perfect shape.

All of this activity was visible through the large bay windows from the ready room, the hangar's blast barriers being presently lowered. Within the room, two dozen Vah fighter crewmen were busy pouring over the telemetry from the probe they had sent out, trying to locate hard points and weapon mounts on the alien vessels, as well as to identify potential vulnerable areas that might be attacked.Millions of Kilometers Away, In Deep SpaceThe Vah probe accelerated slowly toward the three alien vessels; its radar systems sweeping space before it. Data was being collected across the electromagnetic spectrum: infrared signatures that might locate powerplants were recorded and sent base to base; radio and microwave sources were identified to pinpoint where communications and radio systems lay; magnetic fields were measured to determine shield strengths and configurations; gravity waves were detected to fix mass, velocity, and inertia.

The signals being emitted by the alien vessels, on the other hand, were utterly ignored. What was the point of communication? These were aliens, and aliens were adversaries.

At the same time, the approach was not made at a speed or in a way that might give the impression of an attack run. The longer the probe survived, after all, the more information it could collect. OOC: BTW, Vah vessel class names are unknown (at least to humans). Humanity therefore assigned arbitrary names to the spacecraft they saw. Thus “Alpha” and “Bravo” were used to label capital ships; escorts became “Echos”, fighters “Foxtrots”, landers “Limas”, transports “Tangos”, and so on.

OOC: Got it. Oh, and what exactly are pedipalps?

Also, my ships tend to be.. large (in terms of what is actually feasible in reality), but the majority of this space is taken up by fuel, and structural reinforcement.

IC:

A shock rippled through the ship. Jol flinched. "What was that?!", he said, trying to keep his concern somewhat hidden.

"One of your cargo sections. It's collapsed. Shoddy merchant ships like these ones have no structural integrity, I swear..". An EarthGuard finished his speech with a touch of anger.

Jol cursed under his breath. The idiots had no idea how to handle a cargo ship. You didn't just throw a few support beams in here and there, toss in some nuclear weapons, and fly gamely off to face a new enemy. The ship wasn't built to change direction, let alone use masses of fuel to launch a missile.

He cursed again, this time out loud. The probe was approaching. In anger, he pressed the button. The missile shot out of the ship.

"Idiot! What are you doing?!", a man shouted. Jol ignored him. The problem with guided missiles was, of course, that their aiming was based on a projection of where the enemy might be, not where the enemy was.

The missile sped foward, and.. vanished. A blast of energy, invisible to the naked eye, would reach the probe after, hopefully, it was vaporised. The missile itself was one that had been used in the 20th century, one that could level a city.

As Jol grimly hit the button, the man who had shouted likewise grimly hit him on the back of the neck, knocking him out. "Damn civvies. Don't know what the hell they're doing. Can we cancel that missile, Sara?"

The woman who was looking at a sensor output swore. "Fuck! We can't. It's going to hit. Just.. well, let's get ready for combat. Lock the civ somewhere. Maybe one of the pods we set up for sleeping, but make it only openable from the outside."

She stopped speaking momentarily. "The I-sensors are taking a massive toll on our reactors. Drop them. We'll slow down, and prepare for combat. We'll raise the shields so far as we can reasonably do so, and.. well... do what we can."

He grimaced. Human shields were built for a specific purpose - to hold off a single barrage, whilst returning their own. They weren't really expected to hold off a series of nuclear blasts, or even something weaker, but the fact was, tough armour, good structural integrity, and shields had generally let them deal the killing blow - and negate the element of surprise, from time to time.

They were prepared, however. Chances were, whatever they met would be an enemy. Scillanting shades of red and blue ran up and down the panels, displaying energy output, shield strength.. his face seemed to locked into a permanent grimace.

As Jol was dragged off the bridge, the nameless EarthGuard man raised one finger. The man dragging the unconcious Jol immediately stopped, and waited. The nameless man, who's name had been lost in the mists of time, and now merely called himself Sergeant, spoke. "Soldier. If he puts up any trouble, feel free to execute him".

The man saluted, and shouted. "Sir! Yes sir! Understood, Sergeant."

The sergeant smiled for the first time. The traitor, at the very least, would no doubt get what he deserved.. As he smiled, a klaxon sounded. He'd had them installed, as they tended to evoke humanity's activity. "Prepare for combat. Prep missiles and mag-guns. This ship isn't a warship - if we're hit, chances are we won't survive to get hit a second time...."

OOC: What are pedipalps, you wonder?
ped-i-palp, n. - One of the second pair of appendages near the mouth of a spider or other arachnid that are modified for various reproductive, predatory, or sensory functions.Inside the outer protective layer [the labia] are four pairs of pedipalps, segmented organs which are kept folded inside the outer covering when not in use, but which can extend out of the mouth when the outer layer is opened. These pedipalps range from approximately five to eight centimeters in length for the lower pair, to 15 to 20 centimeters in length for the upper pair, and are never more than one centimeter thick.

Kafers appear to be capable of fine coordination and control with their pedipalps, to the point that they has been observed using them for delicate adjustments to machinery, for examining captured human tools and weapons, and for manipulating and examining the limbs and faces of human prisoners. Pedipalps appear to have evolved as a means of manipulating food. Autopsies have shown that the pedipalps have the greatest concentration of sensory nerves.

When a Kafer uses its pedipalps, the labia and outer mouthparts generally fold back out of the way to such an extent that the Kafer's entire face appears to be splitting open.Aren't you glad you asked?

Millions of Kilometers Away, In Deep SpaceThe probe observed the alien leviathan launch a single missile; it recorded the dimensions and heat signature of the missile, dutifully sending these details back to the Vah research station turned command post. No evasive action would be taken; this was a simple reconnaissance probe, with little maneuverability, so there was really no point in it.

Not that it would have mattered – especially after what happened next.

The enemy missile vanished .. and then, a moment later, reappeared just a few dozen kilometers off. It closed the distance in seconds and then detonated, its nuclear warhead erupting into a ball of plasma, a burst of hard radiation, and a rapidly expanding sphere of charged particles. Long before the plasma struck the probe, its electronic systems were fried by x-rays and shorted out by electrical fluxes far beyond their tolerance for such things.

But by then, the data it had captured on the stunning capabilities of the alien missile had long since been sent winging back to base at the speed of light.In the Command Center of the Research Station“Did you see that?!?” exclaimed One-Who-Ponders excitedly. “It's obvious that they fitted that missile with their version of a warp drive, but it didn't move at all the way ours do; it jumped!”

Glittering Dagger was dismayed. “It means that we can't predict where they're going to be based on their speed and trajectory at any given moment; that will make targeting next to impossible - and formations or maneuver largely irrelevant.”

One-Who-Ponders considered this. Finally, after a moment, it spoke. “Then I would say that we have to do exactly what you have suggested. We have to lure them into an ambush.”

It was R*grk'h who then spoke. “I believe that I know how we can do that.”Several Million Kilometers Away, In Orbit Around a Terrestrial PlanetThe second Vah probe had taken up orbit above a cold, arid world with a thin atmosphere much closer to the system's dim red primary. Here, it began to broadcast signals simulating radio traffic between a ship in orbit and a ground control facility. The signals were intended to lure the enemy past the large gas giant, where the research station lay concealed inside its rocky moonlet.

But now it was decided that more was needed to bring the aliens into position, and so the courier vessel Swift Wing rose out of the hangar, lingered a moment while its fighter escort joined it, and then darted inward towards the chatty probe and the deserted world below it. The three vessels made no attempt at concealment, but instead simply fled at maximum warp, not yet able to break light-speed due to the stellar primary's close proximity, but still traveling at an apparent velocity that was quite surprising for ships that had, just a moment ago, been at complete rest.OOC: As I have mentioned repeatedly, the Vah do not enter “hyperspace” or anything like that; they employ a form of phased quantum tunneling to break the light barrier in normal space. The presence of even a minute gravity field significantly reduces the effectiveness of their warp drives, to the point where they can not break the light barrier in system, but can still reach appreciable percentages of the speed of light all the same.

BTW, the courier is less than 80 meters in length; the fighters are less than 25 meters long. My ships tend to be very small compared to other people's.

OOC: Considering the fact that our ships have trouble reaching a fraction of c that's easy to say in conversation, we are way, way outmaneuvered. Our entire military strategy is based around having really, really big guns, and shooting them lots.

"Idiot. One of the most expensive pieces of military hardware in existence, and he wastes it on a probe..."

The sergeant sighed. They had two more of those missiles. In a cargo hold that contained enough firepower to turn the surface of Earth into a smouldering wasteland, those were worth as much as the rest of the missile combined. In space, a void vast enough that it would scarcely notice the destruction of a galaxy, missing was very, very easy. So hitting was expensive.

"Move in. We're going to rift. If we're going to maintain a level of inertia allowing us to function effectively in combat, it's going to take us hours, maybe even days, to reach whatever it is we're looking for. Fire up the retro-boosters to maximum capacity - we're going to need to slow down. We'll be looking at a pre-warp period of at least forty-three minutes, and another four minutes to reach a suitable velocity from which to initiate combat."

He finished speaking. As he had done so, massive flares ignited themselves on the front of the ship - the basic retroboosters, installed in most merchant ships. Normally, it would've taken them a quarter of the time to slow down, but, even with the ship's capacities working on full - the ship was so big that slowing it down would take near an hour, and it surprised him that they could do it that quickly.

He smiled. Combat was something he was good at. He didn't know exactly how he'd been locked into the course of fighting, but he didn't really care, either. Earth could take care of itself, no alien, no xeno, and no spacer would tarnish its near-perfect beauty.

"They're moving out, sir. Repeated I-scans are showing a definite move away from their original location. I believe they're retreating. We may not need to fight, in any case."

The sergeant tapped his fingers on the palm of his other hand thoughtfully. "Investigate what they've left. It might give us an insight into their culture, and, hopefully, their technology."

He didn't mention the low likelihood of the aliens using binary codes to encrypt their data, or even using electricity at all. For all he knew, they were psychic beings who used spooky mind-powers to run their ships. But any insight they could gain was a good insight.

"Oh, and prepare the I-scanners for when we move in. I want a detailed look at the alien architecture, and maybe we'll be able to take chemical samples from their abandoned base, if they are abandoning it. Stay frosty, though, boys."

And that was that. The orders were given. An hour to make an in-system trip wasn't extravagant, of course, one of the features of the rift drive was that it was hardly the most accurate object known to man, and most of their time was spent extrapolating data - when travelling through space, chances were you aren't going to hit one of the many objects there, but chancing it wasn't really an attractive option.

The larger ship shot foward as the two smaller ones slowed more gracefully, their slim bodies, built almost specifically to withstand a hit from heavy weaponry, easily slowing, their mass a mere fraction of that of the larger ship...

OOC: Considering the fact that our ships have trouble reaching a fraction of c that's easy to say in conversation, we are way, way outmaneuvered. Our entire military strategy is based around having really, really big guns, and shooting them lots.OOC: Yes, I expected that; it's the usual trade-off between “hyperspace” and “warp” drives. It'll be an interesting fight.

I like the way this is going for a first contact; misunderstanding and mistaken perceptions on both sides!

In the Command Center of the Research Station“They're not pursuing Swift Wing,” proclaimed the Tactical Officer. “They're decelerating.”

R*grk'h clicked in mild surprise. “They must be bleeding off speed to stay in system. Can you project their course?” asked.

The Tactical Officer performed some calculations, furrowed its brow, and the checked its numbers again. The new station commander – for he was in charge, now that One-Who-Ponders had departed – grew impatient and snarled, “Well?!?”

“They're not on a course heading anywhere; if they continue decelerating at their present rate, they'll go ballistic in less than half an hour¹,” replied Tactical. By ballistic, it meant that the the craft would begin plummeting toward the system's primary along a cometary orbit, like any other chunk of ice.

“They're not heading towards any body in this system,” the Tactical Officer said in puzzlement. “I don't understand.”

V'aak – R*grk'h's second in command – cut in. “They're bleeding off enough velocity to jump into orbit, using that drive of theirs.”

The senior cho'kaav thought about it for a second, and then tightened its mouth-flaps in agreement. “Of course,” it said. “How long until they reach a velocity that will drop them into orbit around the planet below?”

The Tactical Officer studied its display. “The battleships will be down to the proper velocity in minutes; that huge leviathan of theirs should reach the right speed in a quarter of an hour.”²

R*grk'h turned to his second in command. “V'aak, launch the fighters along with four missiles; park them someplace where they won't be seen.” It then turned to its Communications Officer. “Signal Swift Wing. Tell them to break off and dogleg out of the system on our cue.”A Few Minutes LaterSix Vah fighters and four missiles took up positions in the gas giant's ring system, powering down to lower their radiated signature. Among the rocks and ice chunks orbiting the huge world, the fighters would virtually invisible.

All they had to do now was waitOOC: Our missiles are more like unmanned drones than photon torpedoes; they can power down and wait (or drift along a ballistic course) until they are needed. Also, you'll find that they aren't “contact” or proximity weapons; they're standoff devices, as you'll see.

Again, I like the contrast between our weapons and systems. We're building a very realistic first contact! :D

¹For the Vah, an hour – one twelfth of a day on Ka'va!'ah – is 111 minutes 7 seconds in Terran time.

²Again, this is in Vah time; in Terran terms this would be about 25 minutes.

OOC: Heh.. My EarthGuard are supremely-trained, gene-modified, cybernetically-enhanced fighters. Of course, they're only human, and have the squishiness and weaknesses of normal humans - like severe allergies to claw/other various sharp appendages to the face.

"Seven, six..". She spoke, and the ship roared. The sound was not one that was caused by compression of particles, it was one born of the dimensional wall being torn asunder, something that moved the eardrum, and the ship around with repeatedly, strangely in exactly the right way to induce a high-pitched squealing.

"Five, four, three.."

The ship's engines fired up. They began to shudder foward. Or at least faster than they were before. A premature jump was about to be made, a jump that seemed strange to the sergeant. Nonetheless, both navigators, and the computer assured him that it was fine. After all, they were only early by a few minutes - the waiting had been hard.

The jump would take mere seconds, and- hrthruhuhkhuhk!

It sounded like the noise coming out of an alien mandible. However, it was the noise of one of the younger women trying desperately, and failing, to restrain her stomach's violent wish to remove its contents. The sergeant looked at her with concern.

"T-Yotta, are you allright?". He spoke, not using her real name, but her training one. Most recruits were trained to respond expertly to the use of that name, so he figured it was a safer choice. She snapped to attention, as much as one can do in zero-gee, and saluted, her bile still floating in the air. The sergeant sighed, and used the touchpad to interface with the ship's automatons. It only took them a few seconds, and the sick was vacuumed out of the bridge.

One of those little safeguards he had put in place, but they were actually designed to filter out poisonous gases and foreign materials - he hadn't really expected to put them to such a use.

Meanwhile, while he was attending to that, the ship had jumped. And, while they had jumped.. they weren't as close as he'd expected. "Damn. We missed the jump on these fancy alien-boys. Ah, well. Prep weapons on all ships, get ready to move."

The two battleships on the outside were prepared, jetting foward already. Luckily, they could slow at will, allowing the Ivainson to catch up to them at need - but, since the Ivainson, the two-kilometre long freighter was hardly a fighterplane, with the ability to dodge if needed.

As they moved ahead, two squads of twenty men each were prepared, prepared to board the alien craft. Suited up with breathable air, standard rockets, and a set of weapons that would've sexually aroused most normal soldiers, they were good to go. As the two ships moved foward, leaving the larger one behind, missiles were prepared to fire, and even another valuable rift missile was prepared - blowing things up was an EarthGuard speciality, and they rarely missed an occasion to show off the good sides of their personalities...

In the Command Center of the Research Station“They've jumped,” announced the Tactical Officer, and looking at the display before it, R*grk'h could see that this was indeed so. The two super-battleships began to rapidly decelerate, allowing the gas giant's gravitational pull to swing them deeper into its well; above, the leviathan that the Vah believed to be some kind of monster-battleship decelerated at a slower pace, one that ensured that it would remain at a higher orbit, at least for a while.

“Into orbit,” appended the Station Commander – for that is what R*grk'h was now that One-Who-Ponders and Glittering Dagger had departed the facility. “What are their ranges?” it demanded.

“All are within 150,000km of the planet's outer atmosphere, but they are dropping quickly,” replied Tactical. “The leading vessels are almost within range of our missiles in the rings, but the larger one is still quite some ways off.”

R*grk'h growled deep in its throat. “All right, work out a targeting solution for the missiles lying in the rings; split them between the two vanguard ships, but do not fire or even aim until I give the order. Are the next four missiles ready to launch?”

“Yes,” answered Tactical.

“Are we just going to wait for them to see us – or to get close enough to fire?” asked V'aak.

The senior cho'kaav knew that its subordinate asked this question to stimulate thought. It clicked thoughtfully for a moment, and then said sharply: “No. We must present them with a lure.”

Turning to its Tactical Officer, the head Vah barked out an order. “Have one of the polar communications satellites – one approaching the equator and close to our position – squirt out some random data on one of the microwave channels; choose a lossy one, so they'll pick it up. I don't care what you send – a weather report for the planet below would do fine. Just as long as it's not important.”

It's not like they'll understand the signal anyway, R*grk'h thought, just as long as they hear something and go in to investigate.OOC: Ah, I love fighting in gravity wells. The maneuvers get so very interesting.

Millions of Kilometers Away“They're not giving chase,” intoned Swift Wing's Beta. “They've displaced into orbit.”

Glittering Dagger paused for a minute. The word “displaced” triggered an odd thought. “Do you know anything at all about these creatures?”

The diminutive Y'lii responded immediately: “We have no information in any of our historical databases on such a species.” Then, sensing the Gnich*'s implication, the furry alien added: “There is, on the other hand, much archaeological evidence to suggest that other, now-extinct civilizations once employed displacement drives like what we have seen here. However,” he continued, “We ourselves have never been able to figure out how such a drive system would work. Space-time metric engineering is simpler.”

“Very well, then,” the Gnich* said, its suspicions allayed. “Continue on our present course until combat begins,” Glittering Dagger told its Helm Officer.

A moment later, the Y'lii spoke up again. “We are getting a transmission from one of the station's communications satellite. It's ...” The small creature broke of, inclined his head in an oddly birdlike way, and then continued, as if his findings made sense to him. They didn't, of course.

“It's an old weather report,” the Beta said.

A low, throaty snarl of pleasure emerged from Glittering Dagger. I made the right choice is leaving R*grk'h in charge of the station. Too bad it will probably die.In the Research Station's Hangar ComplexThe last weapons and ammunition had been distributed to the ground crews in preparation for the station's defense; all were now in hardsuits to protect them against depressurization. Since the hangar complex was the only practical point of entry for attacking forces, the Vah were busily working at making it a veritable killing ground. Vvesh luch* were scattered in nooks and crannies across the complex on automated mounts, three missiles per launcher; they would be more of an annoyance than a genuine threat, since their fragments wouldn't stand much chance of penetrating a hardsuit – but at least they would distract and confuse an attacker, not to mention requiring considerable time to locate and deal with them all.

Of far greater lethality were the heavy minigun emplacements, all of which were sited to provide good lines of fire across the hangar floor – and from multiple directions to boot – and none of which could easily be seen or dealt with from outside the hangar complex. The attackers would have to expose themselves to fire in order to destroy them.

Small strike teams were organized with various heavy weapons and numerous light ones in support; booby traps were set and tunnels sealed off to create a very deadly maze of passages sprawling out in many directions. Some of the passages were dead ends, and some were concealed to allow for infiltration by the defenders back into secure areas. The Vah were prepared to make the aliens pay for every square meter they took.

Finally, the atmospheric pressure throughout the station was increased considerably; this atmosphere was also made much richer in oxygen. This guaranteed that - at least within the confines of the station - explosives would really explode.OOC: I expect to lose - but this is going to be fun.

"Sir, we've scanned the object. Although we're not entirely sure what it's explicit purpose is, it's orbiting the nearby world. I assume you want it taken intact?"

The sergeant sighed theatrically, and spoke, his voice laced with sarcasm. "No, soldier, I want you to wear some pretty pink underwear, and disarm them with your intricate charm. Of course I want the goddamn station taken intact!"

He spoke again, looking at the man's shocked face. "Ready some sort of EMP. Since we're not really big on collecting computer data at this point, burning things out, or wiping them isn't our concern here. If these creatures are anything like humanity, they'll have defenses in their stations. And unless they can use spooky mind-powers to work them, they'll be using some form of electromagnetic wave, plain old electricity, or.. Damnit! Why I am telling you this? Get to work!"

"Yessir!". The man, one he hadn't noticed before, began working on something. Probably some half-brained plan to route power from somewhere in the ship to a cannon, or something along those lines. The sergeant didn't really care. A massive discharge of power, coupled with the space dust that they'd be accelerating at high speed into the station, was probably enough to level any resistance. He was at war again, and he was happy. It'd been fifty-three years since he'd seen combat, and, even with his symbiont-enhanced lifespan, it was a long time.

"Sir, we've got a transmission of some kind. Codified waves, at the very least. Do you want us to send out a probe?"

"Yes, soldier. Investigate it. Just keep a tight leash on that thing, those probes are very expensive, and if you screw up, the new probe's coming out of your paycheck".

It was interesting how old Earth grammar and pronunciation had survived so long, he thought. The probe was let off, the smaller Obsidian releasing it into space - probes were expensive, however, the advanced scanning and the like was something that was almost never fitted to a missile.

He couldn't take the Ivainson into orbit, the slightest miscalculation would tear the ship apart. Hell, just being close to a gravity well like that could do the ship in; thanks to the adjustments that had been made to make it combat-worthy.

"Investigate, and ready a combat team. Two or three men should do - once we fry the station's insides, you go in and have a long, good hard look at the thing. Got it?"

The team, on various radio channels, agreed with him. Of course, they didn't really have a choice. He decided to take a bit of independent action - bang the station up a bit first.

"We've got a mini-magnetic gun on remote control here. I'm going to fire it at the station - enough to perhaps pierce the outer plating, if we're lucky. I just want to see what kind of reaction we'll get."

He smiled, and hit fire. The big red button was standard on most ships, mainly because the designers of said ships had been fans of terrible shows, and partially because it was easy to understand. Lumps of depleted uranium, still one of Earth's choice materials for firing at people, probably because of the low price, sped towards the station.. of course, they were only a few centimetres in diametre. Hardly enough to push the thing out of orbit, or to blow it up - but enough to get them a reaction, if anything was to happen...

OOC: Just to get us all on the same sheet of music, the station is buried beneath the surface of a rocky moon (I was basing it on Amalthea, one of Jupiter's moons):GIF of Amalthea (http://www.solarviews.com/raw/jup/amalthea.gif)
Animated 360º View of Amalthea (viewable through WinAmp) (http://www.solarviews.com/raw/jup/vamalthe.mpg)Although the Vah conceal such facilities as best they can, I don't doubt that you can see it if you look hard enough. You might want to edit your post slightly to reflect this.

On the Moonlet's SurfaceBrilliant flashes of light erupted across the crated landscape as the Ivainson's barrage of depleted uranium “slugs” hit home; rock and dust sprayed everywhere, and reverberations shook the satellite from end to end. Then a great puff of gas and gas-borne debris blew out of the ground where the first of the railgun projectiles finally managed to pierce the outer doors of the hangar complex; from space, the Ivainson's spectrographs couldn't possibly fail to take note of the chemical composition of the eruption: nitrogen and oxygen mixed with minute quantities of trace gases – breathable atmosphere.In the Command Center of the Research Station“Cut all power to non-essential systems; drop to minimal lighting,” snapped R*grk'h. “V'aak, go to the hangar complex and take personal command of the troops who await the alien attack; you can use the secondary environmental control station there as needed. We'll seal ourselves off as soon as you leave.”

V'aak closed its mouth-flaps in acknowledgment and raised a fist in salute. “Good luck,” it grunted; then turned and left with its escort.

“Good luck, chok'ah,” replied R*grk'h softly. Then it motioned to its guards to seal the blast doors, checked its vved luch*, satisfied itself that the weapon was ready to use, and turned back to the expectant faces of its command staff.

“It begins,” the cho'kaav declared. “Fire three of the missiles at the super-battleship.”In the Rings of the Gas GiantOn a signal from the station below, three of the four missiles lying powered down and drifting in the icy debris of the gas giant's rings suddenly came alive, power surging through their systems. They swung around to face the Ivainson and then leaped straight at the alien leviathan, accelerating to almost .17c in under a second.OOC: I figure that your total window for reaction here is about a dozen seconds from power-on to ... well, not impact, but ... ;)

OOC: Gah! I'm not sure what's with my profile, but it didn't bring this up when you posted. Weird. In any case, here's my belatedly late post.

IC:

"What in all hell...?". The sergeant spoke, and, as he did, tiny objects began accelerating towards them. "Shit. Missiles of some kind. That's what we're getting."

He swore again. They were moving fairly fast, towards the planet. If they slowed down.. they'd simply make themselves an easier target for the missiles to hit. Whatever speed the missiles were accelerating at, it dwarfed anything he could do. The Ivainson didn't have enough time to jump - and at these speeds, and so near a gravity well, it'd most likely tear them apart.

But that wasn't the worst of it. The fact was, the Ivainson had a mass of missiles aboard - normally ships were sectioned off, so a single hit, provided that it didn't damage the engines or the life support, wouldn't destroy the ship. The Ivainson, however, was like a paper bag with a mass of flammable gas inside - and a trio of matches headed straight for it. Normally, it'd survive, with major damage.

However, the wish to carry enough firepower to devastate any opposing fleet was one that would no doubt lead to their downfall.

"Jettison the missiles! Jet-i-son!", the sergeant yelled, identifying the danger quickly. Everyone froze for a moment - and then sprung into action. Sections of missiles; sections of the ship were detached, and thrown backwards into space. They'd been 'marked', so they could be picked up later. Missiles tumbled out of the ship - the powerful warheads inside of it would prove a thousand times enough to scour the trio of ships from the universe. They had point-defense, but not enough to make keeping the missiles a safe thing to do.

"Start spewing chaff out of everything we can!"

The missiles were getting closer. Much closer. The sergeant, with the last breath he took, spoke into the comm system. "Blade, Obsidian, get the hell away from us. We're hoping tha-".


And then the world exploded. Figuratively, of course, but the sergeant was thrown violently into something hard - and metal, and knew no more..


OOC: If you want to RP where the missiles 'hit'. I know your missiles aren't impacting weapons, (thus my chaff was ineffective), and keeping in mind my merchant craft isn't built to withstand a bit of bending from a gravity well, let alone missile impact, it's probably not going to be looking that good after impact.

Strategical differences versus tactical ones, eh? Ah, the joys of actually playing with someone who doesn't have uber-troops.

Strategical differences versus tactical ones, eh? Ah, the joys of actually playing with someone who doesn't have uber-troops.OOC: Indeed!

Above the Gas GiantThe missiles never hit Ivainson.

They weren't designed to.

Three huge thermonuclear fireballs erupted in space as the missiles detonated. The yields were tremendous, but in a vacuum there were no shock or heat effects. Hard radiation fluxes in the lethal range only extended out a few thousand kilometers – nowhere near enough to reach Ivainson.

But then again, they weren't designed to.

In the moments before detonation, metal lattices swung into position, training on Ivainson. In the instant before detonation, they were charged, producing a magnetic field.

And then the antimatter-boosted fusion warheads went off, and gamma rays poured out of the inferno like a flood.

In the instant before the charged metal lattices were vaporized, their magnetic fields focused and collimated that initial burst of hard radiation, aiming it all at Ivainson. The result was a shotgun spray of coherent gamma rays, thousands of laser bursts extending towards Ivainson in a cone – or rather three distinct cones, all converging on the hapless transport's position.

The conic spread of the laser – or more precisely, “graser” - beams was intended to maximize the chance of a hit. Most of the beams – there were hundreds of them – would zip past the human ship, some by hundreds of kilometers. But the sheer volume of fire was designed to put at least a few high-energy beams directly on the hapless vessel's position. She'd be tattooed with lased gamma rays, and if the hull and shields couldn't stop the radiation, humans and circuits that were caught in the cross fire would be utterly fried.OOC: I'll let you decide where you took the bullet. Makes for better RP, after all.

The way 2300AD handles this is that each missile makes one targeting roll against a huge target and – if it hits (which two if not all three will) – gets seven damage rolls at double strength (ouch!). Ivainson will probably survive, but the hull will certainly be breached in multiple places and the vessel crippled. If there's any blessing here, it's that the sheer size of the vessel means that many of these strikes will hit empty cargo sections, and those cargo sections can probably be sealed of; hopefully, none will break the vessel's spine (or “keel”). If it were a smaller ship, it'd be toast.

Your nuclear warheads won't detonate, even if struck directly – but several will have their electronics fried and some will get blown to pieces by the sudden internal heat buildup should they get hit hard enough.

As for your chaff, it will dissipate and deflect some of the beams – but not a lot of them. Small comfort, I know, but every little bit helps.

Whatever else happens, though, this is what military people call a “mission kill”. Thank G_d I won't have to worry about that infernal rift cannon (but then, that only gives you an ace up your sleeve for our next encounter!)

In the Command Center of the Research StationThroaty clicks and growls of pleasure filled the air as the detonation lasers erupted. But R*grk'h wasn't ready to declare victory yet. Not by a long shot.

“Steady!” it snarled. “Let's see what we did first.”In the Rings of the Gas GiantThe detonation of the first volley of missiles was the signal the six Vah fighters had been waiting for. Each of the vessels fired up its systems and began accelerating away from the rings, spreading out into attack formation, three on each alien super-battleship. In moments, they were hurtling along at .20c, coming at their enemies from three directions at once.OOC: We're waiting to see what we've done to your “leviathan” before we send in any more missiles (we have four more loaded and another four ready to load, but that's likely to be it for our missile stocks). We also have one more missile powered down in the rings; that will likely be aimed at one of your “super-battleships”, but I imagine it won't do anywhere near as much damage when I cook it off.

OOC: If it were a smaller ship, it'd probably be fine. The problem with having a larger ship, is that you need an expotentially greater energy yield to shield it. Thus, the Ivainson only shields the life support systems and the 'living areas', as doing more is nigh-impossible. Oh, and keep in mind that most of my craft are equipped with rift cannons - the Ivainson one was a prototype which worked a little differently.

IC:

"Blade, this is Obsidian. The Ivainson appears to have taken heavy damage. The lack of outer shielding.. well, the ship certainly isn't in good shape. Engines are down, the sergeant luckily had the foresight to stop accelerating, and.. that's not good. At their current speed, they'll be torn apart by various gravity wells, and planets in a few minutes."

The captain swore. The Ivainson had jettisoned a mass of missiles, which was lucky. He wasn't sure what'd just hit it, the navigator hadn't had the time to communicate the readouts to him.

"Shields are online. We're running on lightspeed sensors, and we've got inbounds. Moving at ridiculous speeds, unless they've been accelerating for hours. Fire missiles, and prepare mass drivers. Fire at will. The targeting computer will display their real position, sofar as it can calculate".

Chunks of depleted uranium, still a cheap material on Earth, sped out of barrels, so to speak. Going at the speeds they did, the prediction made by the computer was fairly inaccurate - it had only been designed to predict ships going half that speed.

"Blade, we've both got three bogies. Dispatch them."

A trio of missiles was released from Blade, an anti-fighter missile. They were the same in concept as the Vah missiles, except for the fact that they simply detonated, without the focus - few would accuse Earth of spoiling their soldiers with things like controlled-fire missiles.

"Fire those lasers! The beam ones!". The captain was not a scientist, he was an inspiring leader, however, when he wasn't showing his remarkable lack of scientific knowledge. The 'lasers' in question were the rift cannons. Expensive, but deadly. Against a large ship, such as the Ivainson, it was quite possible that the pressure would disassemble nuclei, although unlikely, provided enough matter was there.

The rift 'fuel' that was being fired was contained within an electromagnetic field, it would go faster-than-light as soon as it was 'detonated'. A hit would be relatively hard to obtain, but a hit would without a doubt destroy the tiny enemies they faced.

The computer decided. The fighters were getting closer - and the optimal attack was now. At once, the missile tubes in both ships, the magnetic cannons, and the rift cannons fired, simultaneously. It predicted it could hit four out of six, if the predictions it had made based on the speed of the ships were accurate. If not, one or two would be lucky. Nevertheless, the smaller ships would scarcely survive their tiny masses being accelerated into themselves - that was one of the reasons Earth-built ships had a mass of armour, so that rift cannons were less effective.

The simple fact was that rift cannons ate at the armour and parts of a ship effectively - they were adjusted so that the entire craft wasn't teleported away, only a portion of it. They moved at near-c speeds, not as quickly as masers, or grasers, or any other type of 'asers', but with enough speed to hit the incoming fighters. It was a given that whoever hit first won - humanity had taken the tactic of having a lot to hit with, but these enemies seemed to swing the other way; not having much that could be hit.

"We'll investigate Ivainson later. Hopefully we can tow it back into a safe area of space. Take down the fighters, and keep damage minimal. If they fire any more of those laser-missiles, we should be able to distribute the damage over our shields, but don't take anything for granted. Prep your rift-missiles, and fire at will if anything else comes at us."



Meanwhile, on the Ivainson. The sergeant was still alive. His back was broken. His arms and legs wouldn't move. He could move his mouth, but barely. He was conscious, however. With a supreme effort of will, he spoke. The cabin was dark, but there was still air. There was still pressure. Apparently, they'd survived, or at least he had. "Me-men?". It was little more than a whisper, but it rang through the silence easily. Another voice spoke out. "Sarge. I'm alive. I'm fine. We were hit. I managed to get myself into a zero-tau chamber before we were hit. So did Lily, but something hit us, and it malfunctioned. She died. I think everyone else did as well.

The sergeant sighed. He willed the symbiont to provide energy to his vocal chords, leave the job of healing the rest of his broken body alone for now. Even with the multiple cybernetic enhancements he had to make his voice louder and more penetrating, it was difficult. "Soldier. Get... get the backup systems online. See if you can check the ship."

"Can do, sir!". The soldier ran his fingers down the touchpad, and sighed when it didn't work. The sergeant heard the sounds of an old-fashioned keyboard tapping, something he'd had installed on the ship because it was less sensitive, and thus, harder to damage. He'd given it enough failsafes, and it was a fairly well-covered piece of equipment, despite the fact it took ten times as long to operate.

Sarge, the main generator's down. I think the third and seventh engines are working, as well as the majority of our retrorockets. Life-support and oxygen recycling are off, but we've got enough emergency power and air to see us through for another few hours. The last sensor feeds are frozen on the screen, and.. carry the two, divide and then multiply by... we've got six minutes, sarge, give or take a few. I'm firing the retro-boosters now, but I don't think we have enough.. well, engines, we probably have enough power from the independent generators. We can increase our time until impact from six minutes to thirty-four, running at maximum capacity. Hopefully the other boys will bail us out. I'm setting the engines at near-maximum, and rerouting.. shit. The rerouting equipment was smashed. We're not going to be able to feed any more energy into the life-support systems. We've only got thirty minutes, sarge. Just sit tight. I've got a nanopack around here in the medical supplies cabinet, I'll use it on you."

The man was businesslike, as he'd taught all his soldiers to be, but the man was only holding back his grief through the pall of shock, he could tell. He spoke again, or at least tried to, but instead faded back into unconsciousness..

In the Command Center of the Research Station“Multiple hits scored on the leviathan!” called out Tactical. “Atmosphere venting, power output irregular, exhaust flow diminished, multiple hot spots scattered across the ship. I'd say its been crippled.”

That was too easy, though R*grk'h. Maybe that wasn't a combat ship after all. Still...

“Aim the last missile and detonate it at the leading vessel; fire three missiles at the trailing one,” the cho'kaav barked. It decided to hold one missile in reserve. “Reload the launchers as soon as possible.”In the Rings of the Gas GiantThe last of the prepositioned missiles powered up in a matter of seconds, turned to face Blade, and detonated. The range was a little longer than with Ivainson, but still within the weapon's design limits.On the Moonlet's SurfaceThree sets of blast doors cracked open, clearing the way for the magnetic launchers within to catapult their contents into space. A moment later, after all three payloads had cleared the surface, their stutterwarp drives came to life and all three missiles leaped at Obsidian, seeking to close to within firing range.Above the Gas GiantJust as the two alien warships opened fire, the Vah fighters veered off into two groups, each of three fighters. One group jumped Blade immediately, following a standard tactic: one fighter swung across the vessel's bow while two more arced around to strike at its engines in the rear.

It was a tactic that failed horribly.

The two fighters attempting to come up behind Blade flew right into the growing cloud of uranium slugs before they knew it was there. One disintegrated with a flash into a mass of shrapnel; the other lasted a second longer before exploded into a fine spray of metal, plastic, glass, and gases. Fortunately, the fighter seeking to distract the big warship saw what had happened to its fellows, detected the expanding sphere of projectiles, and peeled off at the last moment. With alacrity it looped around and made a firing pass at Blade, firing its twin bow lasers at the vessel from a respectful distance.

The other three fighters, approaching Obsidian, had the advantage of seeing their comrades get ripped to shreds by the alien railguns; they responded by fanning out and strafing their quarry at long range. The uranium slugs posed little danger as long as the Vah fighters kept their distance, and this also made interception by the slow-moving alien missiles unlikely as well.

But the plasma cannons – or whatever they were – posed a much greater danger; the huge balls of energy they spat out traveled at speeds high enough to make targeting far easier simply because they didn't have to lead the circling fighters by thousands of kilometers. The slower rate of fire, on the other hand, reduced the chances of taking the Vah out quickly. Eventually, of course, they'd pick off the attackers one by one, but in the meantime the Vah were going to do their best to wear the defenders down.Over a Hundred Million Kilometers AwayThe Beta looked up from his instrument display. “Three large thermonuclear detonations – probably our missiles going off.”

It has begun, thought Glittering Dagger. “Change course immediately,” the Gnich* ordered its Helm Officer. “Take us out of the system.”

A moment later, Swift Wing turned, its fighter escort following it, and with no further fanfare streaked away from the system's primary, heading for the limit at which the trio could break light speed.

OOC: Just a question with your stutterwarp useage in-system, and below c. Does it follow standard Newtonian force.. well, forces? For instance, does a fighter travelling at 0.2 c due to a stutterwarp drive have as much force as a object travelling normally so? ('cause you'd be looking at some REALLY powerful mass drivers in that case..) Oh, and, interestingly enough, my ships tend to have a fair bit more accelerative capacity then they seem - but the gravity generated by accelerating has a tendency to kill people when they go fast.

"Got two of them, Obsidian."

As he spoke, a pair of beams impacted on the shields. Of course, he couldn't see them, but they were there. The readouts had changed. The shield level had dropped thirty-seven percent - and quite a few electrical failures where they'd hit, luckily enough. What people termed 'shields' were nothing like the sci-fi shows of the twentieth century. Essentially, a 'field' of energy sprang up around the craft, kept in place by what was mainly technological wizardry, and a set of projectors. These same projectors could be used as beam weapons if the need came to hand, but they weren't accurate, and were rather inefficient.

The shield 'level' was simply the strength of the field around the craft. It was restored instantly, provided that the generator continued to supply power to the projectors. Of course, when enemy beam weaponry hit it, since armor wasn't as dense as it could be, you'd see the shield momentarily fail, and the beam continue through, and wreak havoc on the insides of the ship, via merit of the energy transferred through the armour.

He looked at the screen. Six projectors had failed, a tiny amount, considering his craft had more than two hundred, but they were all in the same area. The electronics behind them had been fried, melted into a glob of hot plastic and metal, and trying to push power through them could have all sorts of nasty unexpected results. Another hit there wouldn't have anything softening the blow - but he was hoping that the fighter would be destroyed by the rift cannon.

EMS Obsidian

"Damn! Three bogies still attacking, captain. We've experienced heavy shield damage - but I think the extra layer of armor is paying off. Our projectors have suffered minimal losses, we've only lost eighteen, although another four are malformed, and might fail."

The captain on the Obisidian swore. Apparently, the aliens had decided to take him out first. That, or he just had plain bad luck. Three missiles were inbound, and he'd seen what the first three had done to Ivainson.

"When those things close as far as they did to Ivainson, cut all power to engines, and life-support, and reroute it all to the shields. I think we'd survive, but I don't want to hazard our lives on a guess."

He spoke quickly, as the crew prepared for the fighters to swing around and attack them again. "Chaff. We don't need to kill them right now, but keeping them off us before those missiles hit us is vital. Disperse smaller bits of chaff everywhere we can - if it takes out a missile, good. If not, hopefully it'll force them to hit us with slightly less firepower. Secondly, prepare to roll. If we can spin, they'll be facing the more defended side of the ship. We haven't be utilising tactics as well as we could've - and that's about to change. Once we're hit on the underside, flip back over. We may not have their maneuverability, but we use what we've got. On my mark, focus the shields, and fire energy bursts."

The command was long-winded, but simple. Chaff, then fire energy, then flip. Chaff came first. Chaff spewed out of the various places it came out of, mainly to form a protective 'cloud', to stop the enemy getting as close as it had.

Secondly, came the energy. For a brief moment, every 'projector' that was facing a fighter, or a missile, fired. The strength of the beams were all but non-existent - enough to cause a few electrical problems in a fighter, or enough to perhaps damage the guidance system in a missile, but they were widespread. Chances were that they'd hit, and so they'd delay the enemy fighters a touch, perhaps just enough to make them a bit warier.

"Prepare for impact! Into the zero-tau chambers, NOW!"

The inertialess chambers were a miracle of humanity's science; something that, like the immaterial drive, was scavenged from Mars's discoveries on their forsaken planet. They required no external energy to run, and, unless cracked, or damage, would see the people inside completely safe. Of course, they were completely sealed off from the outside world - and Earth had no idea how to modify them. Reproduce them from the base design, yes. Understand the underlying mechanics - no.

The crew made it into the chambers, and sealed the doors. The computer could take care of targeting, once certain targets had been identified for it. The weapons would continue to fire, and the orders previously made would be carried out.

They waited, in their chambers. There wasn't much else to do. Moving at the speeds they did, despite their vastly enhanced strength and resistance, and various cybernetic enhancements, took a toll on their bodies. It was one of the reasons that EarthGuard members were the ones who served as crew for starships - gravity.

As they waited, space swirled around them, fighters, missiles.. right now, it was up to hope, and hoping that what they'd done would suffice. If not.. well, being a member of the EarthGuard was a high-risk occupation.

OOC: Just a question with your stutterwarp useage in-system, and below c. Does it follow standard Newtonian force.. well, forces? For instance, does a fighter travelling at 0.2 c due to a stutterwarp drive have as much force as a object travelling normally so? ('cause you'd be looking at some REALLY powerful mass drivers in that case..) Oh, and, interestingly enough, my ships tend to have a fair bit more accelerative capacity then they seem - but the gravity generated by accelerating has a tendency to kill people when they go fast.OOC: You know, I've never considered that...

<ponders>

No. Newtonian momentum and quantum pseudo-momentum are distinctly separate things; only the first of these can impart any real kinetic energy.hen again, the fact of the matter was that it'd hit in aCut off in mid-sentence? ;)

Above the Gas GiantThe blast of gamma radiation directed at Blade had largely missed, just one beam skimming the vessel without doing any discernible damage; likewise, the sole fighter sparring with the huge vessel wasn't landing very many strikes, although one or two bursts had appeared to hit home. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, it was over: one of Blade's plasma cannons caught the small craft, disintegrating its tail half instantly with a brilliant burst of vivid blue light¹. It was as though a giant had taken a huge bite out of the fighter, leaving the remaining portion to spin wildly, out of control, venting fuel and gases. A moment later one of its fuel cells erupted, shorting circuits igniting its contents. Metal and plastic flew away in all directions, leaving a shattered husk to pinwheel through space.

Behind Blade, Obsidian fought for its very survival. The expanding halo of railgun slugs was suddenly augmented by huge quantities of chaff, forming a glittering sphere around the vessel. Then the whole mass rippled as though a puff of air were swirling through it – which was, of course, impossible in space. This was the shield projectors diverting their force outward, causing a ripple in the very fabric of space-time itself from the passage of so much electromagnetic energy.

By the time the wave reached the Vah, it was too weak to cause any real damage; it did, however, cause considerable buffeting and – more importantly – momentarily disrupted their stutterwarp drives. Fortunately for the humans, that momentary disruption was all that they needed to even the score.

The fast-moving fighters had been taking advantage of the fact that their quantum pseudo-momentum was less of an impediment to maneuver than their Newtonian momentum was; changing course was mostly a matter of bleeding off angular momentum, and there were numerous ways to do that with ease. Consequently evading the alien homing missiles was child's play; the fighters could pull a 180º at .2c in under 30 seconds without subjecting anyone or anything inside to any G-forces whatsoever, a feat the pursuing missiles simply could not match But when their stutterwarp drives cut out, these same vehicles became slow-moving ballistic objects, tracing easy arcs through space, making them sitting ducks for those same pursuing missiles.

Fortunately for the Vah, most of the incoming missiles were still thousands of kilometers behind them, and many of them were speeding towards points where they expected their quarry to be; these missed their targets wildly and could not turn around in time to correct the error before the fighters' stutterwarp drives returned online. One fighter, however, drew the short straw: an incoming missile running up behind it just happened to be on a perfect course to intercept. It streaked in and detonated right on top of its target, vaporizing it instantly. A moment later, the other two fighters regained control and swerved to avoid any missiles they were dodging before resuming their attack.

As for the missiles launched from the research station, the wave of expanding force and the subsequent temporary loss of warp capability was just enough to throw off their aim. All three exploded, but much further back from where their targeting computers had expected them to be, a problem worsened by the fact that Obsidian had now begun to tumble; consequently one missed wildly while another was slightly off its mark. The third, however, was dead on.In the Command Center of the Research StationAs R*grk'h had expected, the fight was becoming increasingly difficult now that the element of surprise was gone. It swore under its breath as the last of the prepositioned missiles barely missed the leading vessel and the watched as the fighters following up on that attack were quickly dispatched; it saw with some pleasure how the other three fighters were landing solid blows on the trailing ship, marveled at the fact that the aliens weren't doing anything at all to intercept the three approaching missiles – even knowing the damage they could cause – and then was shocked to see the pulse of – what was that, some kind of energy shell? – momentarily freeze its attacking forces in place and throw off its missiles' aim.

It couldn't see what damage its missile attack had caused the leading vessel; the spheres of ionized plasma erupting from the detonation lasers temporarily blinded the station's passive sensor arrays. From the attacking pilots' data transmissions, it knew that the ripple of energy had somehow destroyed one of its three remaining fighters. With only two fighters and five missiles left against two largely undamaged battleships, it suspected the battle was lost. It could only hope that the multiple shotgun blasts of gamma radiation had wounded one of the two remaining alien attackers badly enough to give the Vah a chance.

“Target the leading ship and fire two more missiles,” R*grk'h snapped. “Load the remaining missile and prepare to launch on my command.”

Its three digits closed around the vved luch* lying on the console next to it. It seems, my old friend, R*grk'h thought to itself, that I will be needing you after all.

¹The brilliant blue emission is, of course, Cherenkov radiation (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/cherenkov.html). Here's a nice picture of the phenomenon (http://reactor.reed.edu/images/cerenkov_jb.jpg). It's the luminal equivalent of a sonic boom.

OOC:
Cut off in mid-sentence?

Yeah, I generally accidentally write a few of those, and then go and edit them out just before I post. Guess I missed one ^_^;
By the way, is a vved luch* a weapon?

Oh, and there's another question. Does time dilation occur under stutterwarp drives?

IC:

Obsidian's shields sputtered, and were gone. The missile had enough power to devastate them, but, luckily, not enough to cripple the ship. It had been only seconds - and then the crew stepped out of the zero-tau chambers. The captain, however, didn't.

A jagged spike of metal stuck through his neck, apparently his chamber had
been damaged. His, ironically enough, was the medical chamber, the chamber that was used to help the wounded - the spike was a medical tool.

The irony was lost on the crew though, they had no time to help the captain. He was like the rest of the EarthGuard - he had the symbiont within him, cybernetic enhancements, and even nanobots running through his veins. There was little that they could that would save him, apart from surviving themselves.

Luckily, the main systems were still online. "Tannan, Roybar. We've got major shield failure on the upper-left-foward portion of the ship. Engines are fine, life-support is fine. We've got two of these damn aliens left, and if we let them, they'll cripple us. I guess.. we just keep firing. Tannan, I want you to fire a rift blast at that installation on the moon. Maybe that'll dissuade them from firing missiles at us. Ah, hell. Fire a nuke at it. Show the alien bastards we mean business"

He didn't have much of a choice. As Bridge Officer, he had to make quick decisions. But he didn't know how many more of those missiles they had in that installation - a few more could destroy Obsidian. The rift blast would most likely play havoc with the door of the installation, and maybe take a bit of air with it.. but the nuke.. that was what would take the aliens out. The original plan to take the station had failed. Right now, ensuring that Obsidian survived was far more important. The rift blast left the cannon, followed by a missile. It'd detonate upon reaching a suitable distance from the station, that might stop the other missiles from hitting them.

Blade, however, was scarcely damaged. "Hah! Three down! Allright, we're running low on missiles, unfortunately. Four left. Firstly, I want you to fire mass drivers around Obsidian; covering fire, if you will. Continue firing at the fighters, but leave off the rift cannon. We're going to tow the Ivainson. It's doesn't have much time left, and we need to get it out of there. That I-sensor system is important. Get up close, and we'll slip in front of it."

Blade moved off, slowing down to intercept the leviathin Ivainson, firing around the Obsidian all the while. It wasn't a superb tactic, but, considering the fact that many of them were dead, and that the enemy appeared to have been mostly dispersed.. all of their cards were on the table. It was time to see if they won the pot..

OOC:Ugh, that was a short one. My writing vibe is off today. :(

By the way, is a vved luch* a weapon?Oh, yeah... ;)Oh, and there's another question. Does time dilation occur under stutterwarp drives?No, it does not. I'll describe the physics of it in my factbook shortly.

Near the ObsidianBoth surviving Vah fighter commanders saw the destruction of their companions; each realized that the odds had turned very badly against them. But both also saw the shield failure that left Obsidian vulnerable. They likely wouldn't be able to destroy the alien super-battleship, but perhaps they could damage it severely enough to take it out of action. Behind them, the largest alien ship, the leviathan, was obviously crippled, perhaps to the point where it would not survive, and that was a huge victory. Damaging a second vessel might just give their comrades moonside a chance.

Consequently, they began focussing fire Obsidian's forward areas, taking care to remain well away from either alien vessel and the growing debris field building up around them, mostly comprised of railgun slugs. This meant taking shots at less than optimal distance, but even so they hoped they might still land a few more blows before being destroyed themselves.On the Moonlet's SurfaceOnce more missiles were hurled into space by the station's magnetic launchers; two more went streaking toward the largely undamaged Blade. Then two things happened in quick succession: a huge burst of brilliant blue energy erupted directly atop the missile launchers, shaking the moonlet violently as a large chunk of its surface simply ceased to exist. A continuous series of moonquakes rippled throughout the small body as it rang like a bell from the reverberations; passages and rooms throughout the underground facility caved in under the many convulsions.

A moment later, a brilliant explosion light up the sky above the scientific outpost. It had very little effect on the small world's surface other than bathing it in hard radiation - but since the Vah facility was almost entirely underground this meant very little. It did have a couple of other important effects, of course. The first was that it took out the station's sensor arrays, overloading them with a storm of hard radiation and - seconds later - charged particles. Toghether with the circuit failures stemming from the damage done by the alien plasma weapon, this was more than enough to down the station's power grid down for good.

The second was that this very same burst of radiation took out one of the two missiles the base had just launched, frying its circuits from close proximity to the blast.

As for the other missile, it continued hurtling towards its target. There was still time for the crew of the Blade to destroy it, but only if they acted immediately.In the Command Center of the Research StationAfter a long moment of darkness the station's emergency lights went on. Small flakes of dust hung thickly in the air, and the room looked eerie under the black lights of the backup system, but R*grk'h scarcely cared. “Status?” it barked.

“I can't tell,” snapped the Tactical Officer in frustration. “Everything's offline, and I doubt we can get it up and running from here.”

“All right,” the Station Commander ordered, “Double-check that all of our systems here are wired for demolition. Then get your weapons and follow me.”OOC: My take on the nuke is that it wouldn't do much to a buried facility without striking the surface, and it looks like that's not what you intended; the rift cannon, OTOH, seems like a much more powerful weapon to me, especially if it creates a local gravitational distortion at the point of impact. But I'll correct this if you think I've got it backwards.

OOC: Indeed. But a massive amount of radiation will generally black out any aiming systems, and screw up missiles and the like.. and nuclear weapons are still ingrained in the human psyche as devastating weapons. Keep in mind that what I typed in my post was what my officer thought - and when you've used nuclear weapons in-atmosphere, they're the weapon of choice, and when you're a stressed second-in-command.. well, you can see where that train of thought came from. (Yes, I was watching a crappy Hollywood movie in which someone gets nuked ^_^;)

IC: "Obsidian, keep them away from you. We've got a single missile inbound, but we'll do what we can for you. I believe we've got a second rift missile somewhere in [i]Ivainson's loads. We've tagged it, so we should be able to release a manned suit, and pick it up. Hopefully you should be able to take care of those two, but we'll pick that missile up just-in-case."

As the captain of Blade spoke, he was mentally outlining his plan. He'd send Johann out in a mech-suit, and get the mech-suit to pick up the missile. They'd have to slow down to the Ivainson's speed, but, six fighters and as many missiles had already crippled the war-freighter, and damaged Obsidian quite significantly, in terms of armour and shields. The ships they used were one of a few of Earth's destroyers, and cruisers. They weren't the unimaginably big battlecruisers, like the Arthur, but.. seeing how these aliens fought, new tactics would have to be adopted. The larger ships would suffice against them, but their fighters.. he'd considered launching his own fighters, but they'd be hopelessly outmaneuvered, and, without the shields and armour-plating of the larger battleships, they'd be only so much of a flying bullseye.

He smiled grimly as the missile came towards his ship. "Sonofabitch.. Let's take it down. Fire the rift cannon at it, and.. nuke it. I doubt our missiles have the strength of theirs, but enough radiation from a nuke should screw with its targeting system".

His orders were carried out, rift blasts speeding accurately towards the missile, and one of his few missiles moving towards it as well - as soon as the missile was getting 'within range', so to speak.. they'd detonate the nuke. Of course, with the varying speeds, his missile would be close enough his ship to fry a few shield emitters - but it was better than being hit by one of those hellspawned laser missiles.



On the Obsidian, however, the commander didn't have a choice with his fighters. "Launch the fighters. Anyone who thinks they're fit, get in. We're experiencing major shield failure.. and we can't launch our remaining missiles. They're not in the correct tubes. Here's what we'll do. Cut engines, redirect every ounce of energy we can to everything we can. Our two fighters will provide a small amount of cover while we try and fend them off - and I'll need someone, preferably someone rad-immed, who can switch a missile between tubes. We can't do it automatically."

He winced. "All of those missions are suicide ones. If you go down to the missile tubes, you'll be killed by the excess radiation if you stay too long. If you go in the fighters, they can easily outmatch you. But.. if we don't try, we're all as good as dead."

The soldiers knew what they had to do. Nobody wanted to die. But a life of careful mental conditioning, coupled with the symbiont's mental effects.. not trying would've been harder then simply sitting, and waiting to die.

Two swam off to the fighter 'bay'. They weren't even factory-made fighters, they were older models, ones that had been recommissioned for this mission. A mission which was meant to be relatively safe. They were sitting ducks, and they knew it. The Bridge Officer wiped his eyes as they ran off, he knew two of them. Nobody, however, had volunteered for the missile task. He sighed. "Keep the bridge against my return. You probably work better without my command. I'll go and exchange the missiles."

He turned around, and felt his way along the walls, moving easily in the zero-gee environ. It wasn't something he relished doing, but it was something he would do. All he had to do was to get down to the missile bay, through most likely failed electricals, and take out a missile which dwarfed him, and gently put it in another tube, while resisting heavy radiation. He grinned. He'd always been told he'd die at eighty and in bed. If he was going to die, he was going to win a few bets while he did...

Obsidian fired again, and again.. the shots getting slower as they did so. The damage the fighters were inflicting was taking their toll, and they simply didn't have the arsenal they had at the start of combat. It was down to luck, now.. they'd probably win the battle, but the crew would all die unless they did something..

So two fighters spun off, out into space, firing wild laser blasts all the while. Of course, they weren't visible, but.. with few targeting systems, the fighters were the equivalent of men with spears fighting off orbital bombardment. The odds weren't good... and so, as they fired, one of the men spoke a prayer, and the other bit his lip.. They'd both expected to die like this, but not this early.. the battle spun through space, ignoring emotions and hopes, fears, and humanity itself with serene rage, the lives of those who fought in it nothing to the destruction that would be wrought..

All of Obsidian's weapons fired at once. The endgame had begun. They were in check, but were not without power to fight back...

Near the Frigate BladeThe Vah missile leaped at the its target as the warship put up as much fire as it could. A bolt of plasma energy erupted a few kilometers behind it in a burst of vivid blue light, too far back to harm its target.

Then a bright flash – like a huge flashbulb going off in space – erupted just in front of the incoming missile. The hard radiation from the blast bathed the Vah missile's circuitry, frying its electronics and knocking its stutterwarp drive offline. When the light subsided, the missile was drifting through space where it had been hit, instantly reduced from .2c to just a few kilometers per second, in a rapidly decaying orbit that would bring it tumbling into the atmosphere of the gas giant below in just a couple of hours.

Blade had dodged the bullet.Near the Frigate Obsidian!G'krrr saw the alien fighters catapult out of Obsidian's hanger bay. “Fighters!” it snapped. “Engage them at once!” It was a standard Vah tactic – and a huge mistake.

At least Vrch*kgh, !G'krrr's pilot, had the good sense to crank up the power on the fighter's navigational radar. It was a dangerous move, especially on such a close pass to the alien warship, but for some strange reason the aliens didn't have lasers or particle beams, preferring that strange plasma gun of theirs – which gratefully appeared to have a low cycle rate and didn't strike at relativistic speeds - along with those infernal railguns and their nuclear-tipped missiles. Vrch*kgh figured that it could dodge the latter, but only if it knew where they were. As for that plasma thing, the aliens seemed to be lacking in the tracking department. Still, active radar emanations would make them a better target, akin to hoisting a big blue neon sign shouting, “Here I am! Right here! Blow me to atoms!”, but it was safer than blundering into whatever it was that the enemy was using as railgun ammunition.

In the gunner's seat, Ch'dah trained its twin lasers on the rearmost fighter. As they streaked in, it noted with satisfaction that the alien was taking its time accelerating following catapult launch. It would be child's play to nail the hapless fighter and then retrain its weapons on the lead craft as !G'krrr slipped in behind it. Absolute child's play.

Ch'dah punched the firing button.A Few Thousand Kilometers Away“!!’rr*chk!” Th'aarv exploded. “What are those gnakshik! doing?” !G'krrr was taking its fighter in close to the alien super-battleship. Granted, the vessel was clearly damaged; its shields were collapsing and its energy levels were dropping – or at least they were having problems charging that plasma cannon of theirs. But the risk still wasn't worth taking; what were a couple of fighters compared to the possibility of crippling an alien capital ship?

“It's up to us,” the cho'kaav declared. “Line us up for a series of shots directly at their bow; I want to put as much energy into the most vulnerable part of their vessel as we can.”In the Command Center of the Research Station“That's it,” announced the Tactical Officer. “The last explosives are in place.”

“Seal the door,” R*grk'h ordered. “Then weld it shut.”

Quickly, a pair of technicians complied. As soon as they had finished, the Vah cho'kaav barked, “Increase pressure within the room to maximum, and then destroy the controls.” A moment later, sparks arced from the control panel as one discharged its vved luch* into it. It then examined the ruins of the panel, hefted its weapon and smashed the box twice with the butt of its vved luch* before grunting to R*grk'h in satisfaction.

The Station Commander then turned to its Tactical Officer. “Take everyone but ... you, you, and you,” it ordered, pointing to two of the station guards and one of the technicians. “Go to the hangar and tell V'aak that it's now in command of the facility until I return.”

“Where are you going?” asked the Tactical Officer, opening its eyes slightly in surprise.

“To the missile launchers, and then the power plant,” R*grk'h said.

“But they've been destroyed,” protested the cho'kaav.

“I'd like to make sure of that,” replied R*grk'h. Then, turning to its troop, it commanded: “Let's go.”OOC: Getting down to the nitty-gritty. Man, is this fun. :D

"Shit! Shitshitshitshit! Can't sha-"

That was the end of Corporal Verren. A pair of lasers burst through the protective shell that kept him away from the vacuum, and, as the fighter collapsed, the pressure that kept him intact collapsed as well. It was hardly a pretty sight, his body disintegrating as vacuum took its toll. Of course, there wasn't anyone to see it, so it didn't matter as much as you might've thought.


Joshya wasn't having altogether that much more luck. "Aw, fuck. If I survive this, the BO owes me a new goddamn house.". He spoke, and as he did, he smiled. Fighters this old were hard to pilot... but he had Obsidian on his side.

He opened up his radio channel - nothing. Too much radiation from the shields, he supposed. He was mildly surprised a fighter still had radios - they were hardly the best means of communication, especially in battle. Ah, well. He wasn't a half-bad pilot himself.

Of course, he was flying all but blind. The radiation from the battle was growing from annoying to ridiculous, but.. ah, there was a target. Thank whatever god was in fashion right now that they'd upped their sensors. He didn't even have active sensors, and so finding the enemy was hardly easy.

He nudged his fighter around, and fired. This fighter, apparently, used some form of relativistic beam. He sympathised with that. Rift cannons were military-only weapons, and so most old civilian fighters wouldn't even see something half as advanced. In this situation, however, it'd work to his advanced.

After all, Earth military tactics were devised to fight.. well, Earth. Their powerful rift cannons were the result of superbattleships, massive ships that could shrug off any number of laser blasts with ease. Of course, having the biggest gun didn't matter when you couldn't aim it.

"Gotcha", he said with a smirk. He fired. He still had a half-decent targeting computer, and a few adjustments had let it calculate the trajectories of those other fighters. Since they weren't expecting him.. he doubted they'd be expecting his attack. He didn't have much of a choice other than to attack. Trying to be defensive would get him killed. They had to die before he did, it was as simple as that. And a lucky shot might just buy him his life.



Onboard Obsidian, in the access corridor

The Bridge Officer sighed. Like most captains, or sergeants, his name was erased from every mission in order to make him less of a personal figure. The chain of command had to be followed precisely, and friendships among the men were good to cultivate. Indeed, respect and friendship from his men was another good thing to gain. But too many casualties could be gained from casualness.

He was there. The missile room. It wasn't really a 'room' as such. He'd had to crawl to reach it. Well, he would've done, if the ship had been accelerating enough to make him the subject of G-forces.

He shuddered. The radiation here was more than deadly. It was horribly lethal. He was in, however, and he had a job to do. He grunted, and grabbed the back of a missile in one of the tubes. He pulled. He hurt. He felt strange, but he still pulled. His suit would protect him from radiation for a time. He grunted louder, and, with a clean motion, the missile came out. He grinned. It would've taken a hundred men to lift that back on Earth. He looked at his suit's various gauges - he had an immense amount of fuel.

He jetted over, and began hauling the missile over, using his suit's jets to help him. It moved over easily. He positioned it behind the tube, and jetted again, pushing it in. He grinned. That wasn't nearly as bad as he'd expected. He felt a bit dizzy, but otherwise completely fine. Most of the stuff they said about the missile room was probably just a lie to keep the newer recruits out of it. Of course, he didn't know that all sorts of radiation was floating around in the room - enough to jumble whatever he said.

He spoke into his radio, sending a message to the bridge. "I'm fine. Don't worry about me, ok?". He was still holding onto the missile as it fired. His body, and the suit, was dragged out of the tube, his arms shattered from the speed it left at. Of course, that initial burst of speed given by the tube wasn't going to be all they needed. The missile needed to maneuver. And that still gave out a lot of heat.

He was fried before he had a chance to let go.

The bridge of Obsidian, at the same time as the previous events

"Fire. Don't worry about me, ok?"

They were dutiful. They assumed he'd left. Of course, the idea that radiation had jumbled the message the tiniest bit didn't cross their minds. They didn't have time to think. It had simply been one blocked missile tube, luckily for them. Two more remained, and the computer would fire them, as there was no missile in a blocked tube. They never even noticed the man as he flew out with the missile.

It was a good shot, though. Considering the distance the enemy fighters had closed to - it might even hit. The navigator on-board smiled, and fired the rift cannon. The trio of firepower was something the enemy would have trouble countering. And then, of course, there was Blade.



Blade needed that missile. That was what crossed Johann's mind as he leapt into vacuum. Of course, it was a simple mission. It would take mere seconds, not even a whole minute. Jump out, use suit to retrieve missile, bring missile to docking bay. He'd done similiar spacewalks before - just not in the middle of a raging battle with aliens travelling at impossible speeds. He breathed deeply, and inhaled oxygen. It felt good, a little touch of reassurance. He wasn't connected to the ship, so, if they moved off..

He swore. Blade was on the move. "Change of plans, Johann. Obsidian is taking heavy fire. Secure the missile, but, more importantly, land on the freighter. If you can effect emergency repairs with your suit's gear, that's all the better. If not, well.. Just see if anyone's alive. Ivainson is the only ship capable of carrying all of that cargo home - that's a major supply of missiles you see there.

Johann spoke. "Bastard. Chuck me out here, eh, and then give me a different set of orders? Ah, you owe me one, just remember. Buy me something nice for Xmas, kay?".

It wasn't as if the suit was hard to maneuver. He had more than enough fuel, and.. there. He'd got it drifting into Ivainson, but wasting too much fuel wasn't wise. It'd be a tradeoff between fuel and air. He moved in closer.

On Ivainson, not much was happening. Air was being conserved, the engines were slowing it down. It'd need towing, but it had been shot to all hell, the other ships would probably help them. The battle raged in front of them, and they were safe, for now.



Obsidian was about to meet Blade. Well, it was the other way 'round. Blade was moving to intercept Obsidian, firing the rift cannon all the while. The enemy wouldn't last long under the sustained barrage of fire the two ships could put up. In fact, with their superior speed, the captain of Blade was wondering why they hadn't fled already.

Was it the installation that was so important? He didn't know. Since they fought so hard to protect it, it was probably worthwhile. He smacked one fist against the other. His men had died, and so had many others. There wasn't much more to say about it.

It was a battle that was almost over, and in his favor. He wasn't sure if it was worth the cost, though.. he winced, and gave the order to fire. To hell with the cost. The aliens would all die for what they'd done.

OOC: I'd just like this opportunity to say holy fuggin' shit. I figured we've written a fair bit, so I took the IC bits of every post, and copied them into a OpenOffice document. TWENTY-SEVEN pages at Times New Roman, Size 12, and a nice round total of 15273 words.

OOC: Ah ... well ... sure, why not? I was going to lose !G'krrr and its crew this post for the gnakshik!'s stupidity (I'll hold off on translating that word for a while [several more threads, as a matter of fact] because we'll have fun with it later; for now, all you need to know is that you don't know that it's an insult Vah use against each other), but I'd being planning on letting a rift cannon do it. But why not give Joshya a gold star for an assist, eh?

A Brief History LessonThe Vah had been flying for almost a thousand years; in that time a great many things had been learned about combat aloft; but a great many things had been forgotten as well.

The earliest heavier-than-air craft were fragile constructs of wood and cloth, with the odd bit of wire here and there. Engines had very little power and propellers were inefficient, which meant that wing surfaces had to be increased to produce sufficient lift to get off the ground. This was done by doubling or tripling the number of wings the aircraft had.

Of course, increasing the overall wing surface meant increasing drag, and so these early vehicles were remarkably slow, barely able to match the velocity of a speeding locomotive (if that). Since speed conferred an advantage on the battlefield, aircraft designers rapidly developed more powerful engines and better propellers, eliminated all of the extra wings, and replaced the wood and cloth with lightweight metals for improved structural strength, thereby rendering the earlier multi-wing flying machines obsolete.

It is, however, a military reality that “obsolete” doesn't always mean “no longer used”. The new aircraft couldn't always be had in sufficient numbers to allow for the complete replacement of older models. This forced most military organizations to keep their multi-wing aircraft in service, albeit relegated to secondary roles. In theory this meant that the older planes would never have to fight against the newer ones, but reality is seldom that accommodating. On numerous occasions, monoplanes engaged bi- or triplanes, with the usual outcome being the expected one.

Yet a surprising number of these lopsided encounters ended up with the monoplane losing. How did this happen? In the simplest possible terms, it happened because the monoplane pilot forgot that its minimum (stall) speed was higher than the enemy's maximum speed – and that even if it wasn't, the multi-wing could always drop its speed further than the monoplane could. More than one pilot came up behind a bi- or triplane, in the perfect position for a rear shot, only to have its quarry “slam on the brakes”; the hapless monoplane would then overshoot its target and find their relative positions reversed. For many of these pilots, this became their last mistake in life.

Monoplane pilots eventually learned to come at their targets from the side, executing a series of “slash and turn” attacks that, given enough time and space, could always be counted on the produce a kill with maximum safety for the faster combatant. Lesson learned. Simple.

But as time passed, aviation technology became aerospace technology, aircraft became spacecraft, and then stutterwarp came along to change all the rules. Speed and maneuverability were no longer antagonists; in the new world of inertialess systems they went hand in hand*. The old lessons about power curves and momentum were forgotten, if only because they no longer applied.

At the moment that the Vah and humanity came into contact – and conflict – with one another, inertialess fighter combat had been a reality among the former for almost three centuries. Warning a pilot to be careful not to overshoot an enemy was about as useful as telling a soldier to keep its powder dry or a Gnich* to site its heliographs on highly visible hilltops.

Unfortunately, technological differences meant that this was a lesson Vah pilots were going to have to learn all over again - from scratch.Near the Frigate ObsidianEven before the alien fighter exploded, Vrch*kgh knew it was in trouble.

It had expected the lead alien to accelerate up to warp speed as soon as it was clear of its parent ship – or at least as soon as it had cleared the main debris field. But it didn't.

And so even as Vrch*kgh moved to reduce their warp cycle rate and keep the enemy in front of them, they overshot their target and found themselves in the alien's sights, rather than the other way around.

Vrch*kgh knew instantly that it had messed up badly. The best way to avoid getting hit was to randomly vary its cycle speed, but that wouldn't work against an enemy dead astern; no, it was going to have to veer off in a random direction, all the while avoiding those slugs of – what was that stuff, anyway, depleted uranium? - and trying to keep from getting hit by that ion cannon while lit up like a fireworks display.

It knew time was against it; its pulse was racing. The excitement, the thrill of being so close to death, was almost unbearable. Keep calm, don't get too excited, Vrch*kgh thought. It scanned its heads-up display, saw the best path through the debris, and turned hard - as hard as the fighter could turn.

Stutterwarp drives are inertialess, allowing nearly instant and arbitrary velocity changes; to change direction, however, spacecraft must do so in normal space. That means losing angular momentum, spinning the craft on its axis, and other maneuvers that – unlike velocity changes – take time. Had Vrch*kgh merely wanted to streak straight away, it could have done so instantly; turning, on the other hand, consumed vital seconds.

In this case, it consumed too many such seconds.

The alien fighter's particle beam clipped the rear of the Vah fighter, causing it to shudder. Its warp field didn't collapse completely, but it did lose efficiency, slowing the craft tremendously as it tried to turn away from its erstwhile prey. A second particle burst from the tiny alien craft went wide, but it didn't matter. The super-battleship had achieved a lock on the all-too-visible fighter with its plasma gun, and a moment later, with a flash of brilliant blue light, Vrch*kgh, !G'krrr, Ch'dah , and their spacecraft all suddenly ceased to exist.Several Thousand Kilometers AwayTh'aarv swore as it saw !G'krrr's fighter vaporized. It knew what it had to do; there was no other course of action left.

“Break off!” it snarled.

“But...” its pilot, Ch*'vok, protested.

“Do I have to climb up there and beat some sense into you?!?” the cho'kaav roared. “Break off! Now!!!”

Ch*vok pulled up and the fighter heeled over in a half loop, shooting away at the top with nuclear flashes and bursts of blue energy following them all the way - and yet they made it out of danger,

“Where to now?” asked the disgruntled pilot.

“Fly by the station,” Th'aarv ordered. Turning to its gunner, it said “'Rghik, bring up a display of the area around the station as we pass. I want to see its condition.”*Bizarre, but true: with stutterwarp, the faster you go, the more manueverable you can be!

"Gyahaha! You worthless sonovabitches!", Joshya screamed. The others were breaking off. One enemy fighter left - hardly enough to present him with a challenge. He was twenty-one, the youngest EarthGuard member in space at present. Arrogance was one of his defining traits, but it was hardly unwarranted. He was the best fighter pilot most knew, and he could outfly anyone he knew, in-atmosphere, or out.

"Hey, thanks for that, boys. Let's head in on home."

And that was what was happening. They'd pick up Ivainson, and go on home. There really wasn't as much as they'd hoped left to do. However, they had something to do, first.

Almost every commanding officer was dead. It was a sad state of affairs, but Obsidian's commanding officer wasn't. And he didn't have much of a choice. Most of his men needed medical attention, alien artefacts could be retrieved later. Once they ripped apart the station.

"Blow the moon. I want a constant bombardment on the xeno installation. We don't have time for an investigation. This is going to be war. Luckily, we're far enough away from Earth, and, from what I've seen of those alien drives, they can't go a tenth as fast as we can between stars. Earth is under martial law, as well, so we'll be able to muster enough troops to launch a full-scale invasion when we get back."

It was strange, how a threat turned them into killing machines. However, the symbiont, an alien organism mutated part of the brain in a strange way. They had a devotion to the planet Earth, and humanity in particular of all the species who lived upon it. Mars-born humanity was of no event to them, as was the Belters who inhabited the asteroids of Sol. A simple threat gave them cause to commit genocide on another sentient species without mercy - otherwise, they were virtually ordinary human beings, the physical enhancements notwithstanding.

"That fighter's heading for the station. Blade, you've got engines working, from what you've sent us, and no main systems are damaged. Your shields are shot to all hell, but that doesn't matter. Slow down Ivainson. We're going to need it. Also, we're sending out our fighters to pick up the jettisoned missiles, they didn't jettison them all, luckily, they didn't have time. But many of the more powerful ones were thrown out, but we should be able to pick them up. Slow Ivainson down, we'll take care of the remaining enemy. We're firing all weaponry at that station, too. A few hundred blasts will teach the xeno who humanity truly are."

As he spoke, it happened. It was if his wish was the ship's command. Perhaps they'd hit the fighter, that was good, too. But the aliens all had to die. He knew that now. Of course, the fallacy in that thinking didn't occur to him. The ship fired. A mass of energy shot towards the installation.

It was going to kill the enemy, he knew. It would probably damage valuable information, but it didn't matter. He held one of the best bonds with the symbionte - that was, in part, why he had risen in rank. Kill them, kill them, kill them.. the voice of his conscience pounded between his ears.

He obliged it. Mass drivers raised, and fired, pummeling through space towards the installation. It wasn't much a threatening attack in terms of scale - but, like a siege, even a moon would collapse, given enough time, and enough energy. His face was twisted into a sick smile as he fired, his fingers entwined, writhing angrily.

"Sir, are yo-"

"Do as I command!", he screamed at the unfortunate who had spoken. She gulped, and nodded. His face was twisted in anger for several moments, and he only put it in order again once he realised it - his reactions were delayed, and his strength was enhanced. At this point, he had the ability to rip a metal door off its hinges, and quite possibly eat it, and shit out mass-drivers with which to kill the enemy.

That is to say, he was really angry. The ship showed it, bursts of frantic energy screaming towards the enemy, mass drivers ripping along behind them...

Above the MoonletThe Vah fighter streaked past the moonlet's surface, its imaging systems busily collecting data. Inside the cockpit, Th'aarv and its crew gazed at the holographic projection of the area around the science station.

The regolith above the system was battered from multiple mass driver strikes. The place where the missile silos had been was now a huge crater, but one without ejecta; apparently that alien plasma weapon of theirs had taken a good-size bite out of the moonlet's surface. Th'aarv thumbed the tight-beam voice transmitter and said, “Dagh*d Base, respond.” After a moment, the request was repeated; but only silence followed.

“More fire coming!” snapped Rghik.

“At us?” asked the cho'kaav.

“No, at the base,” replied the gunner. “Probably preparing for a landing.”

Th'aarv's mouth-flaps tightened in acknowledgement. “Take us around behind the gas giant,” it told its pilot, Ch*'vok. Then to Rghik, it asked: “Can you patch us into the orbital satellite constellation? I want to be able to see what they're doing after we've ducked out of their line of vision.”Within the Corridors of the Research StationR*grk'h and its charges clambered over debris as they picked their way through shattered and partially collapsed tunnels en route to the missile launchers. Above, the first impacts of what the cho'kaav believed to be a pre-assault bombardment began to hammer the surface.

“We can't go further in this direction,” said the technician. “All of the tunnels appear to be collapsed.”

“Can we get to the surface?” asked R*grk'h.

“Not here,” the technician said. “Do you want to get to the surface?”

“Yes,” said the cho'kaav. “What's the fastest way that hasn't collapsed yet?”

“Through the powerplant,” replied the tech. “We were planning on going there anyway.”

R*grk'h hoisted its vved luch* over its shoulder. “Let's move, then.”OOC: What, no landing?!?

OOC: Yeah, a landing would be fun, but I feel that it's easier to take things slow between two alien races. We've had our first contact, and leaving it as a relatively simple combat makes for more fun. Oh, and synider is
synthetic spider', in essence, although the stuff is stronger.

Ivainson shuddered, and slowed. The ship next to it was slowing it down, synider-silk tow-cables pulled taut. Of course, the ship was simply stabilized by the cables, Blade was attached to it fully.

It had not taken long - but Ivainson was slowing. The combat was over. It was time to salvage what could be salvaged, and head for home. Ivainson, luckily, had a partially operable rift drive. It'd be able to jump back to Nova, and undergo repairs.

Nova was a station in deep space - essentially a midpoint between Earth and the only colony Earth possessed. It had been constructed because of the lack of anything near it, making it both convinient to reach, and hard to find. Of course, the name was cooked up by your typical politicians - something lulling for the people.

But now Earth was gearing for war, martial law had taken effect. And, strangely enough, they had been ordered to destroy any aliens in the area. Of course, there were the political directives - seek out intelligent life and greet it. Of course, the EarthGuard knew the basic rules of alien behaviour. The first being that only the toughest, smartest species made it to the top of a planetary ecosystem. The second being that they prized their own survival over humanity's. And the third being that the aliens assumed we abided by those rules.

Military doctrine had told them differently. Of course, they had to kill the aliens before the aliens killed them. The aliens knew the rules, or otherwise they wouldnt've survived interstellar travel. And, of course, there was the added bonus the sergeant on the Ivainson hadn't known. If there was a war, there was an EarthGuard rule on Earth. If there wasn't - Earth reverted back to the corrupt politicians and mob rule.

The war kept them powerful, the captain knew. He had been taken aside before the mission, and spoken to. "Kill the aliens. Make it look like they hit first - if they're too powerful, claim they're preparing to attack Earth. Xeno scum are nothing, nothing compared to the survival of Earth.

And this was why he fired, now. His anger at the threat was immense, and it suited him to act so. Of course, he probably couldn't have controlled it if he tried.

"Continue firing", he said. And they did. The rift cannon spat plasmatic death at the moon, and the mass drivers fired their slow, but powerful rounds after them. It wasn't an inspiring sight - against the size of space, it wasn't even a significant one. Well, not to space. But it was to the aliens inside the moon, he had no doubt. Their little installation was going to collapse.

He smiled. Johann had apparently got inside the Ivainson, and was conducting basic repairs. They'd be able to get out after all. His rage subsided, leaving him still furious, but what good soldier wasn't angry? "Johann, slow Ivainson down as much as you can. If anyone's alive, which I doubt, well, check for life. Once we've managed to sear the aliens out of their little hole, we'll be leaving. We need to report back to Earth immediately, although Ivainson will need repairs at Nova.".

It wasn't much, compared to the bloody excitement that had tempered the past few minutes, but it was enough to keep them occupied. Constant bombardment of the aliens, and getting their ships out of there. "Obsidian, you have permission to withdraw from the battlefield. From what I understand from your last report, the majority of your weapons are either out of ammo, or non-operational. Return to Station Nova, and receive a new supply of rift fuel, and then report to Earth. We'll guard Ivainson's retreat."

The command was given, and Obsidian began accelerating, the damaged ship's engines flickering from time to time, as it ungracefully turned around, and began accelerating away from the gravity well. It only needed a few minutes to make an effective rift jump, that was one of the things about rift drives. Without spatial anamolies such as planets, and suns getting in the way, it was immensely easy to go somewhere. System-to-system was generally easier (and thus quicker) than to go planet-to-planet, to give a brief idea of how such things worked.

As the ship juddered away, Ivainson began to slow, while Blade fired relentlessly, again, and again, and again. The beauty of the mass drivers was that they slowed the combined mass of Ivainson and Blade, allowing them to slow even more quickly. The moon's surface 'blinked', as if a thousand different shades of colour had suddenly appeared upon it. That was strange, but the physics behind rift drivers were something humanity did not understand fully, lacking the mental capacity to conceive of such a thing.

It reverted to its normal colour instantly, the 'blinking' having only occured around the rift blast. That was strange indeed. The captain wondered if something had happened inside the station to react with the blast, to have such an effect...

(Yeah, I know, cheap. "Cannot comprehend" has gotta be the lowest way out in using a form of FTL drive, but, since I'm not really a well-taught student of physics, I have no idea how it might work in the slightest - I'm still struggling with the notion of quarks. Or maybe they're tachyons, in any case, those little things smaller than electrons and the like...)

OOC: Shifting gears...

At the Research Station's Power PlantThe airlock to the surface was still functioning, surprisingly enough. But clearly, under the hammering the moon was receiving, travel across the surface to the missile complex was going to be difficult. This begged the question: was the complex even there any more?

R*grk'h turned to the technician. “Can you rig the reactor to blow itself up?”

The technicians pedipalds waved inside its helmet. A moment later, it responded: “Yes. I can overcharge the plasma bottle and then drop containment at the moment fusion is initiated. It won't compare to a fusion bomb, but it will destroy all of the circuitry and wreck the reaction chamber. Will that do?”

“Yes,” responded R*grk'h. “How long to set it up?”

“Fifteen minutes,” replied its subordinate.

“Do it,” came the order. “Take one of these two,” R*grk'h said, waving to the soldiers, “If you need help.”

After the tech had wandered off, a soldier in tow, the cho'kaav turned to the remaining soldier. “Let's go see what's left of the missile complex.”Behind the Gas Giant“They don't appear to be getting ready to land,” called out Rghik. “They're just hammering the station.”

Th'aarv was puzzled. If I were in their place, it thought, I'd go down there and take the station just for the intel. Don't they care about that?

“Take us back into the ring system and cut power,” the cho'kaav said. “Continue to monitor the situation; we'll lie low until things change.”In the Power Plant's Airlock“Give me that,” said R*grk'h, reaching out for the periscope. A primitive tool, but still a useful one. The cho'kaav hefted the instrument and stretched it out the airlock door; it the proceeded to pan the periscope around until it saw the missile complex. The facility was damaged, but not destroyed.

“Bring up an elevation map,” R*grk'h ordered; the soldier plugged its handheld into the hardsuit's data port, and then worked the oral keypad swiftly with its pedipalps. A moment later, it grunted and passed the device to its boss. Gazing at the display and comparing it to what the periscope revealed, R*grk'h quickly identified a series of gullies it could follow to reach the complex. Tracing the intended route, it showed its subordinate the path it intended them to follow. “Get the others and bring them here when they're done. We'll get moving the minute they arrive.”Twenty Minutes LaterR*grk'h and its troop clambered down the slope, keeping to low ground so that material flung away from the surface by the mass-driver impacts shot safely over their heads. The lack of an atmosphere spared them the danger of getting injured or killed by shock waves; the only real danger was of suffering a direct hit by one of the projectiles or energy blasts the aliens were hurling at the moonlet's surface, or from getting buried in a landslide. Not that these were trivial dangers, but R*grk'h was fairly confident that someone from their group would make it to their destination.OOC: There's some debris from shattered missiles and spacecraft floating around, along with some bodies. Were you planning on picking anything up? An autopsy/analysis thread would be interesting.

OOC: Analysis, riight after I get my ships outta there. After all, we have no idea how many ships or missiles you have, so getting out the damaged ships is paramount. After that, we'll get a research ship in, and start checking things out.

IC: "Blade, we're preparing to make the rift jump. We'll leave in four minutes. We're far enough from the battleground to be able to contact Station Nova - we're relaying the transmission they've had from Earth now."

The captain smiled. For the first time, he had proper orders. Obsidian would've relayed all the information they'd gathered from the battle, and Nova would give it all to Earth. Ah, here it was. A burst of information shot up onto his viewscreen -

[Orders: Eliminate all alien craft and installations. Permission to kill granted, but if aliens surrender, take them alive.]
[We're sending the TMSS Nightfall, which is currently playing host to a on-board laboratory, and extensive hydroponic labs. Stand by until it arrives, and try and rescue the missile freighter.]
[We made a mistake in sending such a vulnerable, expensive craft. We're docking three repair shuttles with the Nightfall now.]


The gist of the message was sent first, and more and more bursts of data sent afterwards. He obeyed the orders, after all, what else could he do? "In twelve minutes, we'll have Ivainson turned around. The alien installation should fall soon."

He smiled. The aliens would soon know the true might of Earth - a six kilometre behemoth of a cruiser, with hundreds of troops. They'd soon have the manpower to storm the installation, and take what they needed. His clenched fists relaxed, and a beautific smile graced his face. He was a man of simple pleasures, and exterminating alien scum with a dreadnought was one of them.

He raised his hand, and spoke. "Stop firing. I have a better idea. We still have those old fighters, yes?"

Another man spoke. "We do, sir."

"Very good. I want two volunteers to take them out, and clear the installation's front of debris and bodies, or kill any aliens left alive. You, and you. Congratulations on volunteering for this mission. I'll put your names in for a commendment once this is over."

No-one had volunteered. The captain didn't work that way. 'Volunteers' were mainly the people who had either volunteered stupid comments, or hadn't volunteered enough of their effort otherwies. The two people chosen, both men, saluted, and swum off, to the door. A commendment was worth about as much as being told you'd cleaned your bunk nicely, but it was worth something.

It was going to take them perhaps ten minutes to get their fighters ready - after all, it wasn't an emergency, and system checks needed to be done to ensure safety.

Meanwhile, the Ivainson shuddered, and slowed. A small section of the ship crumpled under its own weight, and another recycling tank was crushed. It wasn't looking good, inside the ship. 'Emergency repairs' were one thing, but getting the Ivainson out would require a dreadnought-sized rift drive. It was a good thing, then, that such a thing was coming..

At the Research Station's Power PlantFive ... four ... three ... two ... one ...

The reaction chamber was abruptly filled with brilliant white light as the fusion reactor's lasers compressed the heavy hydrogen contained within it to the point where it began to fuse. This had happened millions of times before in this particular reactor. This time, however, things were a little bit different.

The lasers had been set just to deliver more power than was optimal, and the chamber was charged with more gas than should have been there. The magnetic containment field had also been increased in strength, so as to hold the hot plasma created by the laser burst together for just a little bit longer than it was supposed to.

The result was that the ignition of heavy hydrogen produced more heat and radiation than it was supposed to. Normally, this would have only caused a reactor malfunction, with the system shutting down immediately to avoid damage to the reactor. But because the chain of events at work here had been set up as part of a deliberate plan of sabotage, that didn't happen. Instead, the reaction was allowed to build to an unsafe level as additional hydrogen gas was pumped into the chamber. Then, quite suddenly, the magnetic containment field was simply turned off.

The hot plasma did what hot gases do: it immediately expanded outward, mingling with the hydrogen gas that filed what should have been a vacuum. This created a shock wave that slammed at the containment vessel, breaching it in several places. Hot hydrogen gas escaped into the surrounding maintenance areas where it mingled with oxygen.

And that was when things really started to happen.

Fusion reactors don't really blow up very easily; unlike fission plants, they're not would-be bombs balanced on the razor's edge of criticality. But fusion plants employ hydrogen, and hydrogen is very explosive. For that reason, most fusion plants maintained a vacuum between the plasma it used as fuel and the air that its technicians needed to breathe.

For a moment, the fact that the hydrogen existed in the form of a superheated plasma prevented any combustion from occurring. But as the plasma expanded, it cooled, mixing with the oxygen-rich atmosphere all around it. At the point where the gas temperature dropped to the point where it could condense into a gas, it did.

At which point, hot enough to burn, it did. Explosively.

The ignition of the two mixed gases blew most of the area around the containment vessel apart. Supporting walls collapsed, followed by the ceiling. Gas vented out into space as tons of concrete, fused together from raw regolith, came thundering down on top of the equipment that had once been responsible for generating power. The plant wasn't leveled the way it would have been if the reactor could have been turned into a fusion bomb, but it was quite effectively destroyed all the same.OOC: I had to think long and hard about whether it's even possible to destroy a fusion plant by overloading it. I'm not sure that what I've done here is realistic, but for now I'll (reluctantly) ride with it.

A Few Hundred Meters Away“There goes the power plant,” said the technician, looking back to watch the roof of the complex collapsed as hot gases jetted off into space.

“We're not at risk from radiation..?” began R*grk'h.

“No,” replied the technician. “Strictly a chemical explosion.”

“But we are taking radiation,” observed the cho'kaav, glancing at its dosimeter. It didn't really need to look to know that something was happening; a gradual fatigue was beginning to fill its muscles.

“Yes,” agreed the tech. “It's from that plasma weapon or whatever it is that the aliens are hitting us with. I think it's giving off synchrotron radiation as part of that blue flash we're....”

Suddenly the ground shook violently as a bolt of plasma hit the ground less than 100 meters away. A wall of rocks and regolith surged down a nearby incline, lifting up the technician and one of the station guards and slamming them into an opposing incline just a couple of meters away. Dust flew everywhere, and R*grk'h could see little flecks on its faceplate from the scouring its hardsuit had taken in the avalanche.

It took a few minutes for the cho'kaav and the other guard to dig their companions out of the sea of dust and debris that had covered them. The technician was largely unharmed, although it had been badly battered by the incident. The guard, on the other hand, was not so lucky; its faceplate had shattered from impact by a large rock and this had caused its suffocation, since it had not been able to take any action to save itself while half buried. R*grk'h took its equipment and passed it around to the others, keeping the dead soldier's Vved Ch*ich for itself.

It checked its dosimeter and then, when the tech had recovered its breath, continued their interrupted conversation as though nothing had happened.

“Is there any risk that we will receive an incapacitating dose of radiation before we get to the missile complex?” R*grk'h asked.

“No,” replied the technician. “We'll feel pretty sick, but I'm pretty sure we'll make it.”

“Good,” replied the cho'kaav. “Let's keep moving.”Amidst the Rings of the Gas GiantThrough the constellation of satellites orbiting the gas giant, Th'aarv observed Obsidian's departure, and then watched as Blade worked to save Ivainson and its cargo. Its crew were getting impatient, but the cho'kaav knew that the time to act had not yet come.

“I want you to perform some calculations while we wait,” Th'aarv told its pilot, Ch*'vok. “I'm going to tell you what I want to do, and I need you to tell me if we have the fuel to do it.”OOC: Marking time waiting for your “ZOMG-it's-f_ck_ng-huge!!!” cruiser (Nightfall) to arrive. Th'aarv is waiting for you to attempt a landing; it figures that it can make one quick strafing pass at your transports as they go down to land, after which it plans to break off and ... well, you'll see.

OOC: That's the other reason I haven't attempted the landing. My OMFG-huge battleships aren't really dedicated battleships - you're looking at hydroponics, repair bays, extra generators, docking bays.. as such, they don't wield that much firepower for their size. I think I'll be lazy and skip ahead a bit - after all, the insanity that is the rift drive states that opening a rift is equal to your power generation divided by the longest dimension (height, width, breadth) of a ship.

IC:

"Nightfall moving out, sir. We're ten minutes from the defined system. EarthGuard spacer teams are prepped, sir, and we've got enough firepower to level any damn planet you choose. We've done all system checks, and we're ready to follow out our orders. Yessir. I understand, sir".

Commodore Lorain smiled. She was quite pretty, as she understood it. A woman of twenty-six, the youngest ever to receive such a command rank. She'd only just received her first dreadnought command, and she wasn't going to waste it. She was one of the best strategists, and possibly the best tactician in the navy - after all, she'd had enough time honing her skills.

Her 'commander' was the admiral, the man who, she privately thought, was a hard-arsed bastard. Of course, she'd never say it to his face, but he was fairly old. And fairly bad-tempered. However, this command was important. After her defense of Belt Station Three, she'd been promoted, mainly due to political expediency - she didn't deny that her looks made her more desirable for the EarthGuard as a public face. But still, if she didn't screw this up, she wouldn't just be on necessary probation, as all commodores were when they were promoted. She'd be a commander of the EarthGuard's finest, defending Earth, and fighting for its freedom and survival. And she'd probably make admiral before she hit fifty.

She laughed, and prepared for the rift. [Rift/Nine/XXBL8]
She hit enter on the somewhat strange command screen - it was a typical screen brought up when ordering a rift to somewhere they'd never been before, and it meant little. The rift opened. For a moment, she was somewhere else. Her head was full of swirling sounds, strange as that was, the world spiralled in front of her. From what she'd heard, the rift affected everyone differently. She personally thought it was damn weird.

About a second later according to the commodore, and perhaps ten to twenty minutes in what is actually time

And then they were there. In the system. The I-scanners picked something up - the Blade. The other ship was presumably the Obsidian.. no, it was larger. Probably that civilian freighter they'd sent with the taskforce.

She laughed, and opened up a communications channel with Blade. With the latest military hardware, lots is possible, and what they were doing now was one of them. "Blade, this is Nightfall. We're ready to kill anything that comes near us. We'll assist you in removing the freighter, and then we'll.. send teams down to capture the alien installation, according to your request. We've got three hundred elite soldiers here, and, as such, you can go to Nova for repairs when we take over."

The captain of Blade sighed in visible relief. His boys in the fighters still weren't ready to go - he'd be putting their names down for an inspection, rather than a commendment. But it didn't matter. The combat was over, and the predictably late cavalry had arrived. He smiled. What did the xenos think of Nightfall?

OOC: Let's give it a bit of time for you to go OMFG-huge, and see what works out. A bit short, but I've got an assigment to finish.

Amidst the Rings of the Gas GiantThe Vah quite literally do not know fear. That does not, however, mean that they are incapable of experiencing shock.

“What ... is that?” asked Th'aarv. The cho'kaav did not need to say what that was.

Rghik studied its instruments, and then just opened and closed its mouth-flaps in resignation. “I have no idea. Mass is ...” The gunner paused, checked its instruments again, then hesitated before it finally said: “... over a billion metric tons.”

“We can't fight something that big,” Th'aarv clicked softly. There was no emotion in it; it was just an observation. “All of our ships combined, we couldn't fight something that big.”

“Perhaps it's like the other one?” offered Ch*'vok hopefully. Ivainson had appeared to mass over five million metric tons.

“Unlikely they'd be so stupid,” replied Th'aarv dismissively. “That leviathan was probably some kind of armed merchant – see how it scrammed its cargo just before we hit it? No,” the cho'kaav observed. “They saw us chew up their transport and badly damage one of their super-battleships; this ... gargantuan ... is most likely a capital ship.” It paused for a second, almost in admiration. “That makes those smaller vessels we've been dealing with mere fighters in their order of battle.”

That remark brought nothing but silence.

Th'aarv broke the reverie. “Estimated time for the aliens to reach orbital velocity in preparation for a jump to our vicinity?”

“About five minutes at their present rate of deceleration,” replied Rghik.

“What about our station? Any activity?” asked the cho'kaav.

“The fusion plant just blew up; chemical reaction following an apparent containment breach,” replied the gunner. “No further radio traffic,” it continued, “And the enemy continues to pound their position.”

Th'aarv weighed its options. It had hoped to launch one more attack on whatever shuttles or lighters the aliens might send down to storm the station, but once this new warship was in place there were be no chance of such a strike enjoying success. The station would fall – of that, Th'aarv was certain. R*grk'h and its charges would give a good accounting of themselves, but they could not win: there could be millions of alien soldiers in a vessel that size, and the base had only started this fight with 83 guards and technicians available for its defense.

A few dozen – or even a few hundred – less alien invaders would make very little difference.

That left the cho'kaav with only one militarily useful thing to do: escape. Not to save its craft and crew; it made little difference whether they traded their lives for the enemy's now or later. In that sense, today was as good a day to die as any. No, the reason to flee was far simpler than that: they had useful intelligence on enemy weapons and capabilities, and the need to get that back to the rest of the Vah outweighed all other considerations.

“Power up,” it ordered its pilot. “Break away from the ring system and take us further in towards the primary.”

Ch*'vok tapped a few buttons, and the displays flared to life. A moment later, the fighter surged away from the icy ring and shot around from behind the gas giant, hurtling inward towards the small, rocky worlds that orbited this system's dim red sun.At the Missile ComplexR*grk'h and its two subordinates passed through the broken airlock doors without too much difficulty. Inside, all air had vented into space and the facility could not be repressurized. There were spare tanks of breathable air they could use to replenish their supplies, so they had the ability to linger here for several hours.

Not that we'll live that long, it thought.

Supplies and equipment in hand, the trio made their way down to the missile silos. Two were utterly collapsed – one with a missile in it – and a third was badly damaged. The fourth was more or less intact, as was the missile it contained, but launching anything was out of the question: without a controller, it was essentially useless.

Well, almost useless.

“Open all the lower access doors,” R*grk'h ordered the guard accompanying it. Then it turned to the technician. “Do you have access to the weapon schematics?”

The technician keyed the heads-up interface for its handheld, and then answered curtly: “Yes. You want me to rig these to self-destruct as well?”

“Yes,” replied the cho'kaav. “But on command.”Ten Minutes Later“Done,” said the technician.

“Good,” replied R*grk'h. “Now let's get back to the airlock.”

The technician's mouth-flaps opened slightly, and then closed. “I ... I don't think we can survive another trip outside – not with all the radiation out there.”

“Of course not,” the cho'kaav said. “But we can defend this complex for a bit if attacked.” Noting the tech's puzzlement, R*grk'h tapped its suit comm link and spoke to their third companion: “!Th'vch*, gather up all of the explosives and heavy weapons you can find and meet us at the airlock.” Closing the link, it said to the technician: “Let's prepare a welcome for our alien friends.”Five Minutes After ThatThe two Vah had thrown up a makeshift barrier and established some cover from which a crossfire could be established covering the missile complex's entrance by the time the guard trundled up with a dolly filled with ordnance. R*grk'h was pleasantly surprised by the amount of material that !Th'vch* had found, although there was no way they could use it all.

Quickly, R*grk'h instructed its charges on how and where it wanted their weaponry situated. Then it flipped on its short range radio and quickly scanned the various bands. On a couple of them, it heard bleed-through from other, non-standard channels. These must be the ones that the aliens were using.Blayed thes es Nayetfawl. Weer reddy tu keyll eneethang thet cums neer os. Weel asest yoo en reemooving tha frayter, end than weel.. sennd teehms dawen tu captyoor tha aleeyen enstallashun akcording tu yoor reekwest. Weev gat theree hundered ayleet soljears heer end es sach yoo kan gow tu nowva fer reepyars wen wee taek ohver.The alien speech was strange; it bubbled and gurgled horribly. R*grk'h couldn't imagine what kind of mouth parts it took to make that kind of speech.

But if it could hear them, R*grk'h reasoned, then they could hear it. That would serve its purposes well. It opened a short range radio channel to V'aak back in the hangar. It didn't know if its second-in-command was alive, but there was always hope.

Besides this message was less for V'aak than for the aliens. They would pinpoint R*grk'h's position almost immediately from the signal

Boosting the power up all the way, it said:This is R*grk'h. I am in the missile complex. Do not attempt to relieve me. Maintain radio silence unless the enemy opens a path to the control room. If this happens, broadcast the code word “Arrach*”. And if you hear me broadcast the word “Arrach*”, take cover.

Do not respond to this message.R*grk'h hoped that the aliens would take the bait.OOC: To human ears, Gah sounds like an dying tarantula trying to speak German.

OOC: Just keep in mind that in terms of length and breadth, my ships are very skinny and short. As a rift needs only be powerful enough to engulf the smallest side (thus, one dimension of my ships tends to be uber-long, and the other two are made as short as possible), long ships that are very thin for their size tends to be the norm. Oh, and I've just taken a vague guess at what you said, after all, I don't speak Gah.

IC:
R'hll*gh R*grk'h. Gch'nylet ms'yy*l p*styo'ng. Gg'rrch, y'gr t'mil. Aa'rac*h k'tan. T*y'l gr'ch “Arrach*”. T'yl R'grk'h gr'ch“Arrach*”, c*vagg.

"What..is that?". The commodore looked at the man who'd asked the question disdainfully. "Soldier, it's an alien transmission. We know where's it's come from. Apparently, the aliens are as incompetent as they are pathetic. I want you to lead a strike team of every man vac-suit capable, and exterminate them, and take anything worth taking. We'll centre on that transmission."

It was a good plan, sofar as she knew. The ship she was in was huge - but the majority of it was life support, and generators. After all, the Nightfall could feed itself, if it needed to. Then again, dedicated warships were expensive, and virtually useless in peacetime. She found it somewhat surprising that none of the cruisers stationed in Sol had never been into any form of major combat - it didn't bode well for future encounters.

However, that didn't matter all that much. What mattered right now was getting alien data. The Blade had done what it could, and, from what she knew, six alien fighters had crippled the Obsidian. She supposed, that if they'd ignored Ivainson, they both could've gone under.

"Men, arm yourself with whatever KE weapons you can. I personally advise a savage-blade, for use inside the facility, and any form of armor-piercing gun.We can't shield vac-suits, and, chances are, if the aliens get the jump on you, you'll die. Stay alert, and only use the suit's radar if it's vital."

She smiled, and the team she was addressing, through the ship's intercom, got to work. Three hundred men and women, the best of the best, Earth's zero-gee troops. Fifty had EMP grenades - deadly in spacesuit combat, especially considering a fried sensor system was the least of your troubles. Most of them had the deadly savage-blades, the reforged and resmelted steel that had tiny blades, powered by their suits. The mastery of the rift drive had led to many other discoveries, the least of which was the ability to compress.. well, almost everything. Of course, it could only be compressed to a little less than the density of gold, but the blades themselves were remarkably effective at cutting through nearly everything.

Most of the others had some form of heavy-gun, as they were known. A heavy-gun only had a few shots in it, but what it did have was remarkably dense. Almost ridiculously slow. Heavy-gun bullets were as rare as the guns themselves, which were for use against heavy armor. Essentially, the guns had a massive amount of recoil - and they took some time to fire twice, an interval of almost six seconds per shot. But, against enemy armor that resisted what a normal bullet could do, they were remarkable, armor-piercing almost every time they hit.

And perhaps a tenth of them carried normal guns, sofar as automatic rifles counted as 'normal'. After all, you could never tell when such things might come in handy. It took them minutes to embark into their shuttles, ready for the attack on the facility. They'd be shot out, like tiny missiles, and slow down, impacting in the facility, slowing down before they did. The shuttles weren't built for re-use, although the main shuttle, carrying two hundred of them, would be able to carry them all back when they were done.

"Let's go, boys. Anything that moves is a xeno. Shoot at will. Make sure that you capture whatever you can intact."

The commander of the 'ground' troops smiled, as he stepped into the transport. What was it about combat that excited him? He didn't really know. Then again, he didn't have to. He wasn't a psychologist, although his second-in-command held two degrees in head-shrinking. Of course, the relative safety of the mission was good enough in itself. If Lorain decided that they could die, the woman would see her grip on the chain of command slip instantly. He saw the initial pods streak past, screaming towards the installation - if they were fired on, they'd be dead. It'd take them a few minutes to reach it, at which point..

He fingered his heavy-gun, and smiled. He'd always been a hunter back on Earth, but hunting the relatively tame game of the hunting preserves had always seemed boring to him. Hunting twelve-foot aliens had an allure all of its own...

OOC: Just keep in mind that a lot of deaths here are quite fine - a court-martial thread for my commodore could be fun, after all, I've been longing to detail my military system a little more in-RP.

Hundreds of Thousands of Kilometers Away“They're not pursuing us,” Rghik observed. “We may just get away.”

“We'll see,” replied Th'aarv. “In the meantime maintain an evasive course.”

As Ch*'vok complied, Rghik asked another question. “Shall I shut down all communications from the probe?” By this, the gunner meant the probe they had sent off to transmit data from orbit above a terrestrial world in-system (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=11462905&postcount=8), an attempt at setting a decoy to draw the aliens away from the research station.

The cho'kaav considered this, and then told its gunner, “No. If we turn if off now, we'll provoke suspicion. We'll shut it off when we get there.”In the Missile Complex of the Research StationThe bombardment stopped.

R*grk'h waited a moment before speaking. Then chambered a hard rubber round into its vved luch*, aimed at one of its charges, and fired. The shot smacked hard into the back of the Vah soldier, who snarled. A moment later, a second shot clocked the technician. Half a minute later, they were fully alert.

“People, I just want you to know that you're going to die,” the cho'kaav said softly. “So make the most of it.”

“Thank you for saying that, R*grk'h,” replied !Th'vch*.

This was not a joke. !Th'vch* was sincere.A Note on Vah PhysiologyThe Vah know no fear. This is simply because they find danger exciting; they feel most alive when at the very brink of death. This is not to say that the Vah seek death; they don't. It's better to live than die, but living on the edge is the best of all – and so the prospect of death is an incredibly stimulating thing for one of them.

So what do members of this species do when faced with the certainty of death? They embrace it. You only die once, so you need to get as much out of the experience as you possibly can.

Good cho'kaavs, then, tell their charges that they are going to die when the moment comes to lay down their lives for Vahshrrrgh (literally, “love of the race” [sometimes also interpreted as “for the good of the people”]). It is a sign of respect for their subordinates; by alerting their charges to the immanence of death, they allow the entire command to experience ch*ahch* (a word meaning something like “shared joy [or destiny]”, with the connotation that death awaits at the end of the experience).In the Missile Complex of the Research Station“Have you readied the dead man switch, 'Vghrrr?” R*grk'h asked.

“Yes,” the technician replied. “It's a thirty-second loop.” It then explained how to use their suits' comm links to reset the timer. “When you see it get down to just a few seconds, reset it. Thirty seconds or less after the last of us dies, so do our enemies.”

R*grk'h smiled. It could not ask for a better end. “Douse everything but the black lights.”In the Hangar Complex of the Research StationV'aak looked around. The bombardment has stopped, which meant that the aliens were drawing near; his charges had to be ready to fight. Looking around with its thermal imaging goggles, it counted about twenty of this companions – maybe a few more than that.

“Black lights only,” it signed. “No communication until the firefight starts.” Then, as the lights went out, V'aak reached over and closed its fingers over the trigger of the minigun. The gunner started, but the cho'kaav moved its hand up the soldier's arm and patted it affectionately. The minigunner relaxed, understanding that V'aak's hand was there to signal it to open fire when the moment was right.OOC: Are you really going to walk right into a trap? ;)

BTW, it's interesting that we both use slugthrowers. Most FT armies use blasters and whatnot.

OOC: Slugthrowers are awesome in close-range combat, after all, we're not looking at relativastic speeds, so they'll always be more efficient. Until I can shove little fission generators in my rifles, it'll probably stay that way. Also, considering the fact that you've blown up the generator (no massive kaboom, but still enough to register on sensors), is enough to alert us to the fact that you're probably all dead. That, and we're not going to gently fly into your station. We're going to hit it dead-on, at the highest speed we can reach without dying. And if the dead-man switch goes off, well, people die in war.

IC: "Ten seconds till impact. Nine. Eight."

The computerised, annoyingly sweet female voice echoed throughout the shuttle. None of them could speak, the G-forces were hurting. They were, however, accelerating rather quickly. It was virtually a suicide attack, apart from the minor point that they didn't die.

Commander Jyos would've smiled, if he could've spared the effort. They'd hit, and it was quite probable some of them would die. However, as they screamed into the installation, anything hit by them.. well, it sufficed to say that they'd be dead.

"Two, one"..

The ten impact pods, each carrying ten men, screamed into the installation. As they did so, one edged in behind the other, and, as it impacted, crushed the already weakened pod to nothing. Ten men down, because of a tiny miscalculation.

Nine more pods flew towards the station. They were shaped like missiles - a solid tip, rife with the space equivalents of shock absorbers, to lessen the impact. If any of them failed, chances are that the sudden deaceleration would kill them.

The men inside them knew unconsciousness. They'd be awakened by a mix of hormones, and a touch of eletricity, about two seconds later. The pods were basically a large door, and could be opened in a variety of ways - it depended on how much of it had been mangled by the impact.

They'd have ten, maybe twenty seconds to get up. Then they'd fight. Jorus awoke first. It had been five seconds. He groaned as he used the clumsy neural interface in the suit - every time he used it, he'd be looking at a blinding headache a few minutes afterwards.

His heavy-gun was readied. He looked down, his thermal imagery telling him that everyone was there. Hopefully, no-one had died. He knew where the easiest egress was - and he went for it. A single flicker of radio waves found their way to the door's commands, which released the locks.

He raised his foot, and accelerated it into the door, the jets on the suit supporting him. It had been weakened by the impact, and it simply fell off. There were no hydraulics there - the door's commands ignited a cutter flame, which sliced the 'door', which was really just a thinner portion of armor, open.

He switched through several modes of vision. And then he saw one. It was shaped unlike anything he'd ever seen before - not even a giant cockroach sufficed for description.

He fired his heavy-gun, his hands slick with sweat, shaking with nervousness, as he did so. Today was a good day to die - but a better one to kill.

OOC: Keep in mind that I'm only ensuring the attack of this one man - I'm assuming that the Vah would be a little shocked by what are effectively kinetic harpoons with men inside them flying in to attack. If you want to gain the surprise on the other pods, feel free.

OOC: Well, that's one H_ll of a way to make an entry!

I'll assume that some (or maybe even most) of the pods landed in the station proper and not the missile complex, which is off to one side. That way I won't kill all of your people when I blow the place.

Decide how many of your people arrived in the vicinity of the missile silos versus the rest of the station. There are basically six areas where you could come down: The missile complex


The hangar complex


The power plant


The main station


The physical plant


Somewhere outside the facilityCave-ins have cut off the missile complex from the rest of the facility. The power plant is the closest point of entry to the facility proper, although it's been wrecked by the recent (non-nuclear) blast. There may be partially collapsed passages from there to the station proper, but they'll have to be cleared of rubble.

The physical plant is on the opposite side of the hangar complex; it's a rat's nest of tunnels and storerooms, eventually leading to the CLSS (closed life support system) and hydroponics. The hangar is a large open area with adjoining rooms and bays.

Current areas accessible from the surface are the power plant, the missile bay, the hanger bay, and the physical plant. The hangar doors have been cracked open; the physical plant can be accessed through a small garage (whose airlock must be blown). Smaller airlocks open into the missile complex and the power plant. There are a few large access tunnels for vehicles leading from the physical plant to other areas, but most are caved in.

I will allow one pod to have crashed into the missile complex, which would put your people behind R*grk'h and its comrades, although you'll have to pick your way back to their position (which will be hard, because you may not know where you are without maps). Do your people have locaters to find each other?

Also, I will permit limited (thermal or miniaturized radar) mapping of the station by each team, but it shouldn't extend more that 10-15 meters. Emergency lights will be on in areas where we haven't doused them, but they're black lights rather than what humans are used to.

Finally, all areas but the main station and the physical plant have been breached and are airless, so there's no sound. Also, the Vah are all in hardsuits, so details will be sketchy. Suit color is a slate blue (RGB 483D8B [72 61 139] or thereabouts; for reference, you can find web color values on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors)). Under the black lights, this will probably look like medium slate blue (RGB 7B68EE [123 104 238]).

Physically, the Vah stand 1⅓ meters (4' 4½”), but you will quickly realize that they move hunched over, hands close to the ground (like knuckle dragging Neanderthals). Fully erect, they stand 2 meters (6' 6¾”) and mass about 180¾ kg (398½ lbs – they're built like fullbacks[!]). They move pretty fast for their gait and size (although low gravity is a real minus for them in this regard).

Long arms are large caliber assault rifles (caseless ammo) and automatic shotguns; rifle rounds are 8.4mm, shotgun rounds are 19mm. Weapons are equipped with radiators for use in a vacuum or trace atmospheres (the glow is only RGB 230909 (23 9 9), but I'd imagine that it's stronger under infrared).

I'll assume the pod you wrote about came down in the maintenance area, maybe 30m from thr hangar. There are maybe seven Vah in that area, scattered in ones and twos.

Good luck.

In the Physical Plant of the Research StationThe alien's round slammed into Thrrr'gk's right shoulder, and the force of the projectile spun the Vah around and slammed it hard into the wall. Fighting to overcome the pain and finding its right arm useless, it grabbed its vved ch*ich with its left hand and tried to raise the weapon; but without its right arm to steady the assault rifle, its burst of three shots went wild, ricocheting down the corridor.

The alien soldier's second shot caught it full in the face, shattering its helmet and blasting its head into a fine red and gray mist.OOC: A cursory examination of the corpse will reveal that it carries a number of clips on a pair of bandoleers and a number of cylinders that look like grenades; these have no pins, however, so the detonation mechanism is unclear.

At its waist you will find something that looks like a cross between a hatchet and a mountaineer's pick; since there is nothing like a bayonet, this is clearly a weapon for use in hand-to-hand combat.

In the Hangar Area of the Research StationV'aak and its comrades had felt the multiple impacts from quick barrage of alien kinetic energy weapons, although these seemed less powerful than the initial set of impacts. Dust stirred from spalling in the moonlet's minuscule gravity, and the settled slowly back to the ground.

Then, as quickly as it began, this second bombardment came to a halt. What was that, a last minute volley to cover the alien's landing? the cho'kaav wondered.

Thirty seconds passed, and then V'aak saw a fluttering flash – weapons fire. It gripped the arm of the minigunner next to it, a signal not to fire yet; as it did this, it lifted its vved ush in its left hand. A flare grenade had been fitted over the mouth of the pistol; its brilliant magnesium light would illuminate the hangar interior well enough to see the enemy. V'aak aimed at a corner, maximizing the chance that the flare would provide effective back lighting.In the Missile Complex of the Research StationR*grk'h and its fellows waited for the first aliens to come through the ruined airlock. It had loaded a 19mm rifle grenade in the chamber of its vved luch* and took careful aim at the chamber's ceiling; it hoped that the dust and debris from the small explosion would blind or at least confuse the enemy.

The cho'kaav then glanced at its HUD (heads-up display). The timer was running out: eight ... seven ... six ... It tapped the reset key with one of its pedipalps and saw the display reset: thirty ... twenty-nine ... twenty-eight ...

And then it waited for the enemy.OOC: Bring it on! ;)

OOC: Damned, damned writer's block. Well, not so much writer's block as noisy, numerous, small children. Which amounts to external writer's block. I only just jumped on to post this, so, hopefully it shouldn't be too bad.

The teams do indeed have locators, however, using one in combat is like pinpointing their location exactly to the enemy. The suits I'm using have the ability to detect ultraviolet radiation, (as well as infra-red), in a limited fashion. However, these are user-controlled options, thus, the black light won't be detected until someone decides to turn their uv-detection on, which generally doesn't happen all that much. It's annoying, but.. urgh. I really don't think I could pull off a post with any kind of quality right now. I'll definitely post tomorrow, however, (as everyone is leaving, which should at least give me a relatively silent environment to write in), instead of trying to pull off something bad today.

OOC: The black lights are emergency lighting, so they're visibile to the human eye. I'm thinking that they look blue to the your people, like the fun house lights at Cedar Point (if you've ever been there). Or bug lights...

Eventually, you'll figure out that the Vah see further into the UV and not as far into the visible red, pretty much like insects do. A red laser dot is invisible to them (you'll have to find that out on your own); in contrast, they use a blue laser dot (which you can barely see).

To get a feel for this, just shift everything up a notch or two: red is invisible, orange looks red, yellow looks orange, green looks yellow, blue looks green, and UV looks blue. Or something like that - I'll compare the color of humanity's stellar primary (Sol) to theirs (Gamma Serpentis) and come up with a better color mapping.

(For example, I'm figuring that Vah hardsuits look dark slate gray (RGB 2F4F4F [47 77 77]) to their eyes; under the emergency lighting, they look like a pale aquamarine (RGB 69B2B2 [105 178 178]) or something similar. See what I mean?)

OOC: Guess flares won't have much effect, then? Arghhh.. writing is really, really hard right now.

Phyical Plant

"Beyo's down! Repeat, he's down!"

The marine fell, his suit cracked, before he even made it out of the pod. They began flooding out, firing as they did so.. a strategy that was born of confusion. Despite their reputation as elite soldiers, none of them had ever made the fabled 'drop' before, indeed, most of those who had were dead. A few, like the commander, had, but, other than that, the situation they had been put in was.. somewhat different from basic training.

A second marine fell - they didn't even have time to adjust their viewscreens. It was very dark within the station, and trying to make out the enemy was difficult. "Damn. Damn, damn.". The soldier spoke to himself, and dropped, lying horizontal to the ground, firing as he did so. Hopefully, it'd make him harder to hit. After all, there was gravity here, at least. Zero-gee combat was hard, and..

He fired. And again. And again. And.. he was out of bullets. The heavy-gun had an auto-reload option, of course, but that took some time. He decided to activate his flare. Hopefully, it'd blind the aliens as much as it did them. Pure,dazzling white light shot through the area, as he fumbled with his gun.

Missile Complex
"I can't see, sir!"

The man was worried. He fired, and then decided against firing again. He didn't know how many men were dead; and.. he couldn't see. He jumped to the left, and landed lightly on the ground. He just.. couldn't see!

He decided to use the EMP grenade he had clipped to his utility belt. Well, it was a belt, for lack of a better word. It wasn't as random as you'd expect such a grenade to be - he threw it, and, in such an environ, it would certainly reach the enemy. It would detonate after.. three seconds. He threw it, and started walking back.

He didn't know where they were - so he decided to turn on his radar. A single burst of active radar would reveal at least some architectural errata, although it would no doubt reveal where he was, as well. He grimaced as he pressed the radar switch, and closed his eyes briefly, holding his gun, prepared to shoot..

OOC: You might want to clean up that last post... ;)

In the Hangar Area of the Research StationThe flare lit up the far end of the hangar bay; in its light, V'aak could see a prone biped with a longarm of some kind. It was fumbling with the weapon, apparently trying to reload it; there was no point in waiting any further.

The cho'kaav slapped the minigunner's arm twice.

Instantly, the vved!ch*i erupted, splattering the far end of the hangar with a hail of bullets. Tiny jets of nitrogen gas spurted out of pinhole apertures in the weapon's cooling jacket and immediately crystallized; the gas – liquid nitrogen coolant boiled off by the weapon's tremendous heat – was being fed into the jacket by a thin hose which led to a insulated cannister clipped to the side of the weapon.

No sooner had the weapon opened up than the rest of the Vah began firing as well. Eighteen soldiers, located behind various improvised barriers and each armed with a vved ch*ich (assault rifles), began opening up in small bursts of two and three rounds apiece¹. The senior officer in charge of the flight crew – now V'aak's second in command – also started firing its vved luch* after having switched magazines to be able to fire solid slugs.²

As for V'aak, it hesitated. Scanning the hangar, it wanted to see if its flare should be used somewhere else now that the aliens were accommodating enough to provide a light of their own. The cho'kaav noted that their flares weren't all that bright; perhaps that was to allow them to be deployed within arms reach, in the fashion of this particular alien.

OOC: Just to get things moving, I've assumed that your trooper stumbled into the hangar and lit his flare up there. He's prone, so he might just survive the hurricane of lead coming his way. Anyone tumbling through the door behind him probably won't be so lucky.

If you see something else happening, let me know and I'll amend this.

In the Physical Plant of the Research StationThe quartermaster, 'Ch*kk! knew it was in trouble. The bombardment had apparently hit its kaffach* hard; only two of them were still reporting. It had joined up with one, while the other was fighting nearby. How the enemy had infiltrated the plant, it had no idea: the vehicle doors had not been breached, and they hadn't come through the hangar bay. How had they gotten in?

However the aliens had entered the area, there were far too many of them facing 'Ch*kk! and its subordinates. The small force that had been positioned in the physical plant had been intended to strike the aliens in the rear as they entered the hangar area and engaged V'aak's larger force. But now it looked like the enemy would sweep the plant and pour into the hangar bay unmolested.

So the three of them fought a desperate blocking action, trying to hurt the enemy as much as they could before they were overrun. Except for the furious pace of firing, the scene was almost surreal: guns were blazing but emitting no noise in the vacuum; chips flew off the walls and then drifted to the ground like !!kah'grr seeds; soldiers on both sides half bounded and half drifted along the corridors, scrambling for position in the moonlet's meager gravity.

But that was what combat in these conditions were like. 'Ch*kk! had experienced it before, as had most of its peers; fighting among the Vah Gnich*ah was commonplace; most Vah were veterans of some sort or another by the time they reached the age of twenty. These aliens, on the other hand, didn't seem to have much experience at this; they were fighting in uncoordinated fashion, getting in each others' way and moving awkwardly in the dark, in vacuum suits, and very nearly weightless.

Yet they were still effective enough; on its comm channel !Ch*kk! Heard Vrrr!gh grunt like it had taken a punch in the stomach; calling out, the quartermaster got no response. Then, right in front of it, Ghirgh went down, a large caliber slug tearing a huge hole in its chest. !Ch*kk! chambered two grenades in its vved luch*, firing one right after the other. It doubted the projectiles would do any damage against hardsuits, but they would cover the cho'kaav's retreat as it scrambed back towards the hangar, where V'aak and its people were waiting.

For the quartermaster knew that by himself, it could no longer hold back the onslaught. The physical plant belonged to the enemy.In the Missile Complex of the Research Station A burst of static filled R*grk'h's ears, and then its radio died. At the exact same instant all of the black lights went out, plunging the complex into darkness.

Only one thing could kill the lights and the cho'kaav's suit radio at the same time; an electromagnetic pulse. Well, that leaves us roughly fifteen seconds. Best make the most of it.

R*grk'h grabbed a flare from its belt, twisted the end, and hurled it into the airlock. It hoped that this would allow them to see the enemy before they saw the Vah; at the very least, it gave them some light by which to sign each other.

Are your radios out as well? the cho'kaav asked them. They both signed back in the affirmative.

It is time for arrach*, my kaffach*, signed R*grk'h. It is with joy that we embrace death.

That was when the alien soldier stepped through the doorway behind them.OOC: You can drop one of my people, but not R*grk'h. It gets a more spectacular death.

Now all I have to do is figure out how not to incinerate us all in the next post... :eek:

¹Assault rifle using 8.4x43mm caseless ammunition; similar to human hunting rifles (suitable for use in bagging bear or elk) of Terra's 20th Century.

²Semi-automatic close assault shotgun firing 19x58mm solid slugs or buckshot; also capable of firing a 19mm rifle grenade and a non-lethal 19mm rubber round. This is an officer's weapon.

OOC: Bah, another load of assigments coming my way. Keep in mind that my 'schematic' will just be bursts of radar mapping out as much of the physical plant that they can.

The Hangar

"Ohhhhh, ohhh, shiiiit!". The man swore, as lead pierced his suit. It had penetrated the back of the suit - at a strange angle. Of course, this strange angle.. well, it sufficed to say he had very little air left. The system had automatic safeguards, and it was sealed. But he didn't have hours of air. He had minutes.

He stood, boosting to his feet, as he felt impending doom dog his footsteps. A minute of life.. he needed to get some of the emergency supplies they left in the capsules. As he did, slugs ripped through the remainder of his armor. He felt pain for a brief moment, before he died.

Behind him, another man caught a stream of lead, and died before he knew what was happening. His torn body gave the man behind him a moment to move. They fired, but carefully, almost unable to see the aliens, wherever they were. "Switch to ultraviolet detection". The man who had spoken to his men so gasped. Vision swum into his eyes; he could see! The aliens were made out.. far more easily. He smiled, and spoke into the radio.

"UV vision seems to be working better. Get into that end of the spectrum, we have a chance now. Return fire."

It was a strange scene, only the tiniest amount of gravity acting upon those who were there. Almost like a fight in slow-motion, the men moved slowly, trying to stay out of enemy fire as best they could. Of course, the bullets weren't in slow motion, which changed the nature of the fight from slow, to surreal. The people moved slowly, agonisingly moving their hands down to their weapons to reload, as the bullets blinked past them, smashing into walls and suits alike, a man's suit torn as a single bullet smashed into his visor - the weakest part of any suit.

"Fall back, and reload. Move back as far as you can safely. If any aliens come into firing range, any men with still-loaded guns, feel free to fire."

The command was simple. They were out of ammo. Generally, they won fights before they were even started. Of course, this time, they weren't fighting humans. And that counted for a lot; tactics had to be adapted on the instant. And not every tactic was a good one. The commander, Yllis reached up, and grabbed a dead suit. A bullet tore its way past his hand, perhaps a centimetre away from hitting his suit. He boosted, and pulled the suit back with his jets.

He flicked a switch on the bottom of the suit's feet, and mumbled a brief eulogy for the dead man inside. "Good soldier. You're a hero". It wasn't much, but, as he activated the jets, sending the dead man flying towards the enemy. Hopefully, that'd distract them. He winced, and looked at his suit. The jets had discoloured his 'fingers'.

Physical Plant
"It's cleared, sarge. Repeated, cleared. All unknowns are dispatched. The area is all but secured. Over."

The sergeant gave a grunt of acknowledgement, and bent over his gun, busy reloading it. After a few seconds of busying himself with the gun, he spoke. "Soldier, I want some lights in here. Since it's clear, light it up. And whoever has a working photo-unit, I want you to give me a schematic of this entire room, as well as some pictures. We might be needing it, other soldiers might have to storm hellholes like these."

They were strangely calm. Like the calm after the storm, the sergeant supposed. Of course, the calm after the storm generally saw everything ruined and destroyed - and that fit this room just fine.

"We don't have any sort of scientific equipment. Just get us a schematic, and put it in memory."

Of course, one of the aliens had fled. He knew that. "Regroup and reload, boys. We're going after that ugly sonovabitch as soon as we're ready to go."



The Missile Complex
He shot. And the alien fell. He smiled, and shot again. The bullet plunged through the creature's head - that is, if that really was it's head. Of course, he couldn't see. The pulse he had released had played hell on his sensors.. and it was completely dark. He stood there for a moment, smiling inside the grey-black suit. And then he remembered. There wasn't just one alien...

OOC: Killing the soldier is fine. If you want R*grk'h to have a dramatic death, it's always nice to be the last man standing, or something along those lines.

In the Research Station's Missile ComplexEverything happened in slow motion – or so it seemed to R*grk'h in the grip of its adrenaline rush. The alien had appeared behind them. It had raised its gun and fired, striking !Th'vch* in the side; its second round had blown off the soldier's head. Then the alien had just stood there for a moment, seemingly admiring its handiwork. Or doing whatever else it was that aliens did.

R*grk'h didn't give it time to do anything else. It raised its vved luch* – and then realized that it had chambered a grenade in the weapon. Well, that won't do, the cho'kaav decided. Recalling that it only had about ten seconds to live, it decided to enjoy itself.

The cho'kaav threw itself at the enemy.

The Vah had evolved on a world where normal gravity was 1.2G; this, combined with their greater mass, meant their legs had to be three times stronger than a human being's. And, in this case, those legs were hurling a 180 kg body at a 75 kg creature who wasn't expecting it.

As it sprang, R*grk'h raised its vved luch* up over its shoulder to deliver a butt strike to the creature's head. It felt a satisfying if silent crunch as the hefty weapon slammed into the side of the alien's helmet; this was followed a second later by an equally satisfying impact as they both struck the opposite wall: the cho'kaav could feel alien body parts giving in ways they had not been intended to. Then R*grk'h, coming back down on its feet and not being one to do things halfway, dropped its vved luch* and snatched its combat hatchet from its belt. Spinning the weapon around to expose the end that looked like a mountain climber's pick, it buried the spike into the alien's head; it saw black liquid splatter across the inside of its enemy's helmet and knew that it had won its last battle.

For a moment, the cho'kaav stood over its foe, lungs sucking air and chest heaving with the exhilaration of victory. Then it froze for a second.

Has it been fifteen seconds? It must be, thought R*grk'h.

Then why am I still alive?

It counted slowly, waiting for the instant it would cease to exist... fifteen... fourteen... thriteeen... twelve... eleven... ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five... four... three... two... one...

It looked up at the technician, then signed quickly. What happened? Why has the missile not gone off? the cho'kaav signed.

The EMP must have fried its circuitry, replied the tech. What do we do now?

Set a gah erech* above the arch of that doorway, said R*grk'h pointing at inner airlock door. Rig it to go off using a tripwire. As the tech moved to do this, the cho'kaav returned the hatchet to its rightful place, hefted its vved luch*, went to extract the grenade from the weapon's chamber, though better of it, and then slung the longarm over its shoulder in preference for its vved ush. Clipping the pistol's ring grip to its arm, it reflected that then aliens' armor didn't seem too tough to take a 14.1mm¹ round without signficant damage.

It then hefted !Th'vch*'s equipment harness and extracted the remaining flares and gah erech*; it also chose to snag the dead soldier's vved ush as a backup. Twisting the end of a second flare, it tossed the burning object down the hallway that led back to the missile silos.

Turning back to the airlock, it noted that the technician hadn't finished rigging the booby trap yet. Grabbing a piece of debris off the ground and hurling it at the fellow's back to gain the latter's attention, it signed: Hurry up with that thing!. The technician raised its chin in acknowledgement and quickly finished arming the trap.

R*grk'h tossed !Th'vch*'s harness to his last surviving subordinate. You bring up the rear. It then handed its shgah'vv to the technician, showing it how to loop the device's strap over its arm and how to fire a pellet. Remember, I can't hear you if you need to get my attention, so shoot me in the back with a pellet if something happens, the cho'kaav signed rapidly. I don't want one of those things sneaking up on me from behind after picking you off.

The tech nodded. Satisfied, R*grk'h stepped over the burning flare and began the trip back to the missile silos – and its destiny.In the Research Station's Hangar BayAutomatic weapons fire lit the hangar bay as the small Vah contingent fired at the enemy. The fight lasted only a moment; then the aliens – obviously not expecting serious opposition – fell back into the physical plant. In the light of the dying flare, V'aak could make out only two or three bodies, their jet black vacuum suits motionless, some with thick black blood boiling out of their wounds.

They'll be back, thought the cho'kaav.

But before it could respond, something strange happened: an enemy soldier came flying through the door. V'aak realized with shock that the alien was using some kind of jet pack!

You have got to be kidding, it thought. Who are these people?!? Apparently they had little experience in low gravity combat.

The alien was flying across the hangar, not especially aiming at anyone. Its arms were floating out away from its sides, and it was starting to spin slowly about its long axis. It was already dead! A diversion, V'aak supposed.

The minigunner swung its weapon around to open up on the creature, but V'aak seized its arm. No! the cho'kaav signed. Keep covering the door. Before it could signal the rest of its charges, however, they had already begun to fire upon the corpse, spinning it around with multiple bullet impacts. It struck a near wall, bounced off, and then slammed back into the wall a couple of times before getting turned around in some other direction and starting to fly around the room like some kind of macabre balloon.

V'aak waved its hand. Hold your fire! The members of its own squad – the station's guard – stopped firing immediately. The technicians and flight crewmen continued to fire for another few seconds until they got the message.

Check your ammo, signed the cho'kaav, and cover the other entrances.

It was then that V'aak saw the soldier – not an alien, but another Vah – emerge from a different entryway into the hangar; hugging the wall and keeping its weapon trained behind it, the soldier begin to make its way around to their position.

V'aak saw the fellow's vved luch* and knew this must be an officer; who it was, however, V'aak had no idea. Lowering its own vved luch* and snapping its shgah'vv into its left hand with a practiced flip of its forearm, it squeezed off a pellet at the retreating officer, rapping it sharply on the arm. The fellow glanced over, saw V'aak, and observed the signed order sent its way: Get over here and report!. The officer raised its chin in acknowledgment and continued around towards their position.

The aliens were clearly taking their time to secure the physical plant before attempting the killing ground of the hangar floor. That meant they would have a little time to kill before the attack. V'aak hoped the aliens didn't take too long; if they did, it might be hard for the troops to maintain their focus.<A minute or two later>The retreating officer turned out to be 'Ch*kk! , the station's quartermaster. We've lost the plant, it signed. Only four of us survived the preparatory bombardment, and they overwhelmed us.

You saw the others die? queried V'aak.

Just Ghirgh, the other cho'kaav replied. I heard Vrrr!gh take a hit over the comm channel – or I think that's what it was, anyway. I can't account for Ch*irch*, it finished.

If Ch*irch* was over by the machine shop, signed V'aak, referring to the area from which the initial alien advance had begun, then it's dead. 'Ch*kk! raised its chin slightly in agreement; Ch*irch* had apparently died there after all. So the enemy has the physical plant, the cho'kaav thought. It's a loss, but not a huge one.

Then V'aak thought to ask something else. How did they come in? Through the vehicle bay?

No signed 'Ch*kk! emphatically. They must have found some other way in. It sat puzzled for a moment, and then tentatively signed: Through the roof? Is that what those last few explosions were?

V'aak was suddenly very concerned. If the aliens had blown their way in from above, then they could be anywhere. Including behind us.

It waved one of its experienced soldiers over. Take two others from the guard troop and six technicians, it ordered. Perform a sweep of the main station complex, V'aak continued. And use a couple of gah erech* to knock down the passage from the power plant.

The soldier looked hesitant. What about R*grk'h? it signed.

R*grk'h won't be coming back, V'aak replied simply. So I just need you to make sure the enemy hasn't gotten in behind us. Then get back here – but use caution, in case we've been overrun.

And the control room? it asked.

V'aak looked over at the dead Tactical Officer ten feet away, killed in the bombardment shortly after arriving from there. The cho'kaav remembered what he had been told a few minutes before the other had been killed.

R*grk'h took care of that for us, V'aak signed. You won't have to get in there and check it out.

I hope, it thought to itself.¹.56 caliber

OOC: At this point I have two people heading for the missile silos, nine conducting the interior sweep, and thirteen (with a minigun) defending the end of the hangar that adjoins the main part of the station (the labs, offices, and quarters). This would be a good time to storm my positions, as long as you're clever about it (hint, hint).

I expect R*grk'h and the tech to make it to the silos; although you could certainly detect their passage and follow them (or follow the trail of flares like cookie crumbs to the gingerbread house...). When they get there, they will discover that the EMP surge has damaged the warhead enough to keep it from firing properly, although it will probably still be possible to get a nasty “fizzle” out of it.

Once we resolve the situation around the silos and you break through my front, it should devolve into a running fight back to the control room (which is where all of the computers are). The battle should culminate there, and you'll be free to examine the ruins to find anything interesting (a separate thread).

OOC: Sometimes, reality is annoying. It's really annoying, especially when I can post in other threads - but whenever I try to in this one, I have to think a lot more, and that screws me up something proper. Again, this is the second of these I've had to post (something I find embarrassing), but..yeah. We only have three terms this year to learn four terms worth of stuff. And this is the rushed, hyperactive end of schoolwork in which we're running around like headless chickens, and sleep is a commodity that can be bought and sold with coffee beans.. So, yeah. I'm not dead, merely in a state somewhere between death and carthatic rage against all assigments.

Millions of Kilometers Away“Ch*'vok, set the proximity alarms, put the craft on autopilot, and take a sedative. Rghik, take one right now,” Th'aarv ordered. The gunner and pilot both complied – it would be a long voyage in a very tight cockpit, and sleep was better than boredom. A few minutes later, both were dozing.

Th'aarv performed some simple computations, grunted with satisfaction, and then powered down the fighter's primary magnetohydrodynamic turbine to reduce their radiated signature and conserve fuel. The stutterwarp drive could run at maximum efficiency on the secondary turbines, so there would be no need for a reduction in speed.

Then, for a couple of minutes, Th'aarv observed the receding gas giant on its cockpit display. The brilliant blue flashes produced by that infernal alien plasma weapon had stopped. Their soldiers were probably down on the surface by now. Th'aarv hoped that R*grk'h and its charges were slaughtering the interlopers in droves.

Unable to do anything to help, however, and feeling its mind begin to cloud as the danger became less acute, the cho'kaav set the timer on the wakeup alarm, took its own sedative, and quickly drifted off into a light, dreamless slumber.OOC: Better than a bump. Take all the time you need, HT; I'll be ready when you are.

OOC: A week without... assigments. A week without exams. A week without... anything to study for, anything to do, anything I could fail... And, of course, next weekend will involve me cramming as much information as possible into my head for the exams, but right now... It's writin' time!

IC:

The Missile Complex

The body crumpled, and floated off. That was the trouble with low-gee environments, it was hard to tell whether someone was alive, or dead, especially in this sort of light.

The suit's lights blinked dimly, still working. Of course, it didnt' do anything, but the red light on the outside blinked, again, and again, and again. The light was simply to let those in other suits know that something had been detected not working - in this case, it was almost everything.

The Physical Plant

Three radios not working. The radios were not protected as well as the life-support, and they'd been damaged, some merely by chips of rock from the battle. The sergeant cleared his voice, and then spoke. And then he realised some of his men wouldn't be able to hear him.

He decided to go with the simpler solution - tapping out his message. He yelled into his radio, shouting "Look here, boys!", in an almost obnoxious manner. The way in which they all turned their heads was strange - they looked, almost uniformly, the wrong way. He sighed. The radio's speaker, inside the helmet, was on the left side. He was on the right side of his soldiers. He hadn't been in any sort of major space-ground combat - ever since the incident on the moon, troops were trained in space-stations, but the difficulties you faced when the enemy had real guns, and were trying to kill you were... different to those in a nice, padded training-room.

He waved his arms around. Some men turned around to face him. He continued waving his arms, wildly, and randomly, as more men turned, slowly, but surely, the majority of men turned around. He began tapping on a nearby surface. The sound itself was not important, as there was no sound in space, or even on most moons. But each series of taps he gave were simple.

Tap. Taptap. Taptaptap. Tap. Taptaptap. Tap.

Can't see, stay behind. Come with me.

He spoke into the radio. "Those of you who can hear this, come with me. We're going to need to form up, and attack the aliens while we still can. I want any wounded men, or any of you with damaged suits to stay behind - we'll try and get the xenos out with guns, before we actually go in there."

He was prepared to fire. And so he peered carefully out towards the aliens, before firing quickly into where they'd built up their defenses, and ducking back into cover. It wasn't a good strategy, but, then again, it was better than attacking blindly. It wasn't a good place to storm, and it would be easier to wear them down, rather than storm the place - they'd lost enough lives already. He took in a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. With just a touch of support, they would be looking at a far easier attack.

Unfortunately, he didn't know where the ships above him were. A single, well-placed pellet from a mass-driver... he cracked his knuckles, a difficult task to accomplish with your hands inside your suit, and thought. If he could just.. he smiled. He knew there were radar kits within the impact pods they'd come down in. He'd thread his way back to one of those, and see if, by some chance, they'd had some of their systems left intact. No doubt he could spend a few minutes cannibalizing it, at which point they'd be able to shoot the aliens down with superior line-of sight.

He spoke once more. "Use your radar sparingly. Try and get bursts of the area ahead, and fire if you think you can hit a xeno. Otherwise, hold the area. I'll be back"

OOC: I could assault the area, but we honestly have no idea how many of you are left. It'd be more fun to assault the area blindly, I must admit, but trying to make my character fit the situation (Go try and cut out one of the [virtually] modular radar systems out of the impact pods they came down in, in order to save his men's lives) not only makes him seem humane, it also gives R*grk'h a trump card - we're fairly inexperienced in this area, and training doesn't have a tenth of the impact that experience does.

In the Depths of the Missile ComplexThe flare bounced into the silo room; a second later, R*grk'h followed it, vved ush tracking back and forth. Then the cho'kaav raised its hand. Clear, it signed. Come on.

A moment later, the technician bounded into sight, the barrel of its vved ch*ich lowered but ready to come up in an instant. As it drew to a halt next to its commander, R*grk'h grasped its arm to gain its attention.

I will cover the room, it ordered. While I'm doing that, blow the missiles.

I'm not sure I can, replied the tech, glancing looks about the room warily as it signed. If the EMP fried the circuitry...

Then use gah erech*¹ and gaaach*², commanded the cho'kaav. I have one gah erech*, it continued. How many do you have?

None, signed the technician. I used mine on the airlock. It raised one of its palms in a gesture of resignation. At least I stil have a few gaaach*, it signed.

R*grk'h grimaced. Use a couple of gaaach* on each of the two damaged missiles, R*grk'h ordered, pointing at the tubes in question. Save the gah erech* for the undamaged one. We can't let the aliens get their hands on these things. I'll cover you, the cho'kaav finished.

The tech signed affirmation, took the proffered gah erech*, and began to lope off towards the missile silos. R*rgk'h checked its weapons and ammo, preparing to make its last stand in defense of the silos.

In the Research Station's Hangar ComplexV'aak cursed softly to itself. Where were these infernal alien monsters? They're certainly taking their sweet time securing the physical plant, it fumed. If they take much longer...

A fusillade of flashes erupted from across the hangar. His charges returned fire, flash suppressors reducing – but not eliminating – the telltale light from their weapons.

“Conserve ammo; make your shots count,” the cho'kaav hissed. It didn't like using the suit communications system much – there were too many ways that the enemy could use your transmissions against you – but when you were engaged this close the benefit often outweighed the risk. At least their frequency-hopping protocol would minimize the chance of a fix by the ships overhead – as long as they kept their chatter to a minimum.

This sniping back and forth is annoying, but at least it keeps us sharp, V'aak admitted to itself. Still, the cho'kaav decided that if things tapered off, something would have to be done. When the sweep of their rear was completed and the soldiers detailed for that purpose returned, a small sortie could be mounted. Anything to goad the enemy into attacking.

A couple of gentle reverberations sounded through the rock and some dust floated down from the broken ceiling. Hopefully that was the tunnel to the power plant being blown. If so, Gh'aar! would be back before long, and V'aak would be able to breathe easier.

Or a little easier, anyway.Near the Research Station's Central HubGh'aar! felt satisfaction as it saw the wreckage its technicians had wrought with their gah erech*. The passage leading in from the power plant was pretty much impassible. Still, it thought, it would be nice to make...

Suddenly, its face split from brow to chin in a grin of sheer joy.

Finish the sweep, it signed to its charges. I'll be along in a moment.

When the last of them turned the corner, it sauntered back to a point as close to where their blown the tunnel, boosted the power on its radio set, chose a frequency the aliens were using, and boomed into the mike:

“Flanking assault in place. Repeat, flanking assault in place. All stragglers, rally to my position. Gh'aar! out.”

Then it turned and loped back down the tunnel towards its charges – and relative safety.On the Bridge of the Courier Swift Wing, Near the Superluminal Threshold“Approaching tensor limits,” called out the Helm Officer

Glittering Dagger's mouth-flaps closed in acknowledgment. It turned to One-Who-Ponders and said, softly: “Well, at least we will be able to report what we have seen to Triumphant Destiny. That alone is worth whatever price we've paid this day.”¹Satchel charge(s).

²Grenade(s).

OOC: With the escape of Swift Wing, I can now begin a thread aimed at dealing with my (strategic) response to your incursion - kind of a response to your thread (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=11576305#post11576305).

"Got it. Ugh. This thing is so - hard to pull out!"

The sergeant fell backwards, as the radar unit came out, throwing him backwards, twisting to the ground as he did so. He smiled. He could use it to send a message, at the very least. Of course.. He didn't know how much power the battery inside contained. The impact pods had hardly been used, but still... he hoped it'd be enough.

The plan was simple. A quick, blinding radar burst, followed by as many as he could use. Attack quickly, and decimate the enemy. He shivered. The adrenaline of the combat had begun to sink away, and he felt doubt claw its way into his mind.

What if they attack Earth? The people? The families? How could we defend against such a quick foe?

He grimaced. It was good practice to think ahead, but not that far ahead. He lugged the unit along, cords trailing along behind. Luckily, the units were designed, in some small way, to be detached - the designers of these shuttles thought of damn near everything. If the sergeant had been a technician, he would've shuddered at the expensive unit he'd just cut out of an equally expensive shuttle. Then again, he was a soldier, not a budgeteer.

After a few minutes, he managed to drag the unit along. He hoped that it would give them the edge. He didn't really know the alien's capacity, and he was hoping, just hoping that this would give them the win. They were fighting a foe who probably knew their situation was hopeless. Whether or not he won here, it changed nothing about the fate of the aliens.

He reached his soldier's position. He decided to do things simply. He opened up the radar unit, and raised his hand. Every man was, in some small way, watching him. They were scanning the area, but.. they were watching him. Their next orders would be vital ones. And then.. he realised. The radar unit wasn't wired to the radio system. A simple mistake. A simple, simple, simple mistake - it meant he'd have to look at the output to see what was happened. Or.. well, it'd do. He gestured, and a few men clustered around him, crouching, to watch the screen.

He pointed his arm straight up in the arm, and brought it down, as he prepared to press the button. No... even better. After all, it transmitted radio waves. And the radar systems were designed to pick up on radio waves. He began running, shielding the system with his body, gesturing wildly. The burst of radar would no doubt blind the enemy's radar systems, if they used such, and give them a valuable first sight into the attack..

The plan was going well. Until a bullet slammed into his leg. Cracking through the lightly armored joint, and smashing through his knee, the automated systems cut in. Blades sliced through the one place they were designed to - halfway through his thigh. Hot, to cauterise the wound.. he screamed silently. They weren't given stims for these sort of operations, and.. his mouth was frozen in a rictus of pain, his finger pressed down on the button. Bursts of radar showed the position of the enemy; for the most part. His brain took over, and gave him sweet unconsciousness.

After all, the sort of emergency systems they had were well-designed; but, in a battle in vacuum, it was generally assumed you weren't going to survive if you were hit. The sealing was there for a simple reason - to save the valuable gear on the inside of your suit, some of which wasn't attached as strongly as it could've been.

His men opened fire, compressed pellets flying in both directions. The battle for the hangar complex had begun. The sergeant was knocked to the ground by a friendly soldier, the men spreading out quickly, trying to find cover where they could..

In the Research Station's Hangar Bay

V'aak cursed loudly as the storm of static filled its ears; almost instantly, it keyed down the volume of its radio receiver with two of its ten pedipalps. The loss of tactical communications was not unexpected; in almost half a millennium of warfare since the invention of the radio - and hard on the heels of that, the development of jamming techniques - the Vah had learned to fight without it. The cho'kaav surveyed its troops and saw that they were all alert and ready for action; it trusted that their training, experience, discipline, and growing awareness would see them through to the end.

It was an end that V'aak knew would come soon enough.

For now the aliens were upon them: fire erupted simultaneously from both entrances opposite their position. The cho'kaav launched its illumination grenade, and then followed that with three more, dropping two self-oxidizing flares into each of the opposite corners of the hangar bay; any enemy who tried to cross that open space to get at their position would be nicely silhouetted against the searing light.

The defenders fired in short, quick bursts; the attackers, on the other end, replied with single shots. Apparently these aliens' weapons weren't fully automatic, but the slugs they fired were powerful: V'aak saw the quartermaster, 'Ch*kk!, get its arm completely torn off by one shot, even through its hardsuit; in the next few minutes, two more of V'aak's charges went down as well. That left just ten of them – including the cho'kaav and the minigun crew. Individually, the Vah were laying down much more fire, and it was definitely taking its toll – but the enemy had a significant edge in numbers, and the defenders weren't going to be able to hold their position for very much longer in the face of an assault of this magnitude.

It was time to withdraw.

Nearby, V'aak saw the soldier charged with the task of assisting the minigunner get hurled back sharply as its head exploded in a spray of dark liquid and flesh, mixed with chunks of gray ceramic. Instinctively, the cho'kaav clapped a nearby technician on the shoulder and signaled for the fellow to take its dead comrade's place. A few seconds later, the replacement loader was at work, feeding belts of ammo and liquid nitrogen cannisters to the manic gunner, who was totally absorbed in the slaughter.

Then, almost scrabbling on all fours, V'aak broke for the main exit tunnel, darting from cover to cover. It got close to its destination before its luck turned; a spasm of pain tore along its right side as a large slug clipped its abdomen. Staggering back, the cho'kaav looked down.

A decimeter over and I'd be dead, V'aak mused. At least I get a few more minutes.

It threw itself back upright with a grimace and reached the tunnel mouth a long heartbeat later. Surveying the situation, it saw that another of its soldiers was down - not dead, but clearly dying - along with its last subordinate cho'kaav. Not counting the minigun crew, there were now just five of them left. V'aak signaled the last surviving veteran to lay down covering fire and then motioned the three armed technicians to fall back to the next set of pressure doors.

Looking back out over the hangar bay, it saw the aliens advancing. As they did so, they entered the field of fire of the half dozen vvesh luch*¹ launchers the Vah had sited to cover the hangar floor. Almost simultaneously, a brace of missiles tore across the open space, detonating among the alien invaders and forcing them to drop for cover. V'aak's mouth split open in a grimace of joy; the weapons' “shoot-look-shoot” programming would guarantee that they kept the enemy pinned down for a few more minutes at the very least.

With the techs now safely up the tunnel, it was time to move back to the next defensive position. V'aak slapped the soldier holding their rear to join them in retreating. The minigun - and its crew - would have to be abandoned, but that had been expected when V'aak had made its plans.¹Anti-personel fragmentation missiles, similar in effect to the infamous German S-mine (a/k/a the “Bouncing Betty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouncing_Betty)”) of humanity's Second World War.

OOC: Unlike humans, we do leave our people behind - and they expect it. The Vah have a very hard-nosed attitude when it comes to these things.

Except for the minigun and its crew of two, as well as the six automated rocket launchers, the hangar bay is now yours. You'll find a large number of dead at our end, many half-buried (which you may surmise was from your earlier bombardment). You'll also find three or four who are still alive (barely) and will try to make their last stand as you overrun their position (more on that below).

The automated launchers are tucked away in odd corners of the hangar bay; they have a significant heat signature, so you ought to be able to find and destroy them with infrared gear, although you'll probably have to expose yourselves to their fire in order to do it. Each has three rockets and uses (as indicated above) a “shoot-look-shoot” system, stopping to see if its target is dead before launching a second (or third) shot. If you're lucky, you can use this delay to nail the launcher while it's looking (which is usually why they're deployed in groups).

Once you get used to seeing vvesh luch* launchers, you should be able to deal with them relatively easily,although you're going to learn to hate it anyway: it's a standard part of our defensive setup, and we generally try to deploy them in such a way as to require you to expose yourselves in order to take them out.

In the Silo Room of the Missile Complex

R*grk'h felt the tremors from the gaaach* as they detonated inside the two silos containing damaged missiles. It had watched approvingly as the tech used two or three charges on each missile, checking the damage between blasts to make sure that the contents of each silo were suitably mangled. Then the technician moved up to the undamaged missile. It pried the faceplate off the control system, peered at the circuitry, and signaled the erstwhile base commander.

The circuitry may not be completely fried, it signed. I might be able to get the first-stage charges to ignite, although I'm certain... It paused while it glanced at the circuitry again. ... I'm certain that I can't get all of the charges to go off at once. We'll get one charge going off first, and that will destroy the rest, so we'll never get second-stage ignition.

R*grk'h knew what that meant: the hydrogen bomb that powered the missile - with its 2MT yield - would blow itself apart rather than achieving fusion. But the first-stage booster charges - the ones meant to compress the lithium deuteride to stellar temperatures and pressures - were boosted fission devices and the tamper was made of U-238. If even one went up...

How big a yield will that be? the cho'kaav asked.

Between 0.5KT and 5KT, depending on its condition, replied the technician.

Better than a miserable gah erech*, quipped R*grk'h. Do it. But be ready to blow the thing like the others if we get interrupted or you can't get it to work.

And with that, the cho'kaav settled back into overwatch.

OOC: If you're going to storm the silo room, this would be a good time.

In the Hangar Bay, Near the Minigun Emplacement

Vosh knew that it was dying.

It dragged itself half upright by propping its torso against the body of one of its comrades, watching the vvesh luch* scream across the hangar bay and explode over the heads of the aliens. I hope the gnakshik! die cowering in their p_ss, it thought as it dragged its vved ush free and clipped the weapon to its left arm. Then it pulled an incendiary grenade from its harness with its right, broke the plastic cap with one finger, and slapped the charge hard down on the concrete floor. That same finger securely over the stud at the end, it pulled the device up into a position where it would naturally fall to the ground and roll when death loosed its grip on the charge. Let them eat phosphorus, it thought. Even if their suits protect them, the dust will make them easier to see.

Then Vosh settled back, lay the heavy revolver across its knee, and waited.

A few meters away, K!gaaar noted Vosh's preparations with approval. It lay on its back, legs unable to move do to a bullet lodged near its spine; its arms, however, were still working, and so it pulled out two fragmentation grenades, broke their seals, slammed them down on the floor to arm them, and waited. When the aliens overran their position - and that would be soon - K!gaar would follow the lead of its cho'kaav and toss both charges into the air.

And then it would be happy.

OOC: As implied above, you can finish the assault. If you've got a heavy weapon, that would be a good thing to use on the minigun. Then you can take out the missile launchers, swarm the improvised defenses, deal with the one or two severely wounded and dying Vah who stagger upright (or attack while prone) with combat knives or hatchets (or bare hands) and try to maul one or two of your people hand to hand (you know how big we are; since our homeworld has a surface gravity of 1.2G, we're pretty strong, too; work out their success on their own.). Then Vosh will try to shoot some people with that horse pistol it has (in fact, that's the 2300AD human slang for the thing (i.e., “horse pistol”) and drop its incendiary grenade when it dies. Somewhere in there K!gaaar will attempt to imitate a “Bouncing Betty”, after which the position will be yours.

This is typical Vah behavior. Just think of it as one final thrill before achieving Ch*ah². You'll quickly learn to check every corpse to make sure their really dead and not just “playing possum”. This is, in fact, how a great many human causalities are suffered: actually claiming ground taken from the “bugs”.

If you perform a body count, you'll find 11 dead in the plant area and 38 dead in the hangar bay. Most died in the bombardment. A lesson to be learned, that.

After that, you'll find a corridor leading into the main complex, past a set of blast doors. There are offices at this end of the complex as well as the ready room, but they're all empty.

Except for the booby traps, of course.

²One's ultimate face-to-face encounter with death, in which enlightenment is finally achieved.

OOC: Bah. What with exams, followed by house-moving, I completely missed this reply. I'm really sorry for that, but I was just looking through my old threads, and I'm definitely back on track. Just moved the computer into my room today, which means replies will be coming more frequently then ever! Hurrah!

IC: "It's.. strange, mate. The more we shoot at them, the better they get at shooting back! They keep on getting faster. Well, in any case, the sarge is down. I want everyone to advance! We've got air for awhile, but we need to take the area. We can't risk any evac until all the aliens are dead."

The soldier fired, and fired again, each bullet flying into aliens with a surprising amount of precision. His men were dying around him like flies.. Earth military strategy was predilected on vast superiority from above, and using elite military units to capture vital objectives. Their armor was designed primarily for movement, and to allow troops to survive for quite some time without any support from above.

The enemy fire was devastating. Men were mowed down around him - he had.. perhaps twenty, or thirty left? He didn't know. Enough, he hoped. Chances were that they weren't going to get any support for quite some time. He crashed to the ground, as a flicker of movement caught his eye.


A missile flew over his head, detonating nearby a nearby soldier. The initial wave of missiles caught them unaware - six men died, and more were wounded. The soldier bit his lip. He hadn't done well. But... he had an EMP grenade. He wasn't sure if it was still operational..

But he'd seen the missile launcher. The grenade was thrown, and with a flash that he didn't see, the launcher died. It was.. satisfactory. Then again, who would've expected to have missile launchers with more than one missile loaded? You learned new things in war.

Another wave of missiles shattered the second of peace, the groans of the wounded the only thing that could be heard on the radio. Three missiles launchers had been destroyed, now. The gently descending rubble and wreckage showed that.

And the third wave.. they were not unprepared for it. But the minigun's blasts, and the aliens had left them weakened, unable to react. It was strange, when confronted with danger and a threat to one's life, a human would freeze up in panic. Even the most battle-trained of soldiers had trouble overwhelming such instincts. Their enemy, on the other hand, relished the threat, and gained intellect from it.

The third wave of missiles, however, were almost a slaughter. Twelve men, now, had died. A mere eleven remained. Hardly a force to be reckoned with. But they continued on, warily. A spatter of bullets from the minigun, followed by.. no fourth wave.

"Soldiers, here's the plan. Move in. Shoot anything, living or dead. We've all seen what it takes to down one of those sonovabitches, and we don't want be caught with our pants down!"

A total of thirty-three men left. A landing force of one hundred. Earth's finest, their most elite, slaughtered like so many cattle by the alien warriors, who, despite being bombarded.. it was horror. He led the force in. Bullets flew down into bodies, alien corpses moving, and...

They were dead. It was over in the blink of an eye. Compared to the horror of the last half-minute, the killings were a mercy. He stepped among the alien bodies, and looked at one. He spat, contemptously, his spittle absorbed into his suit's systems.

And then the world exploded around him. Fire and death from everywhere, burning, crackling.. he was flung backwards, over the alien fortifications. And yet he was not dead. He was not.. not even harmed, from what he could tell. He reached for his gun, and... his arm. Ah. He didn't have it any more. A scream ripped through his suit as he felt the pain..


Outside the Missile Complex

"Well, there's twenty-two of us, men. We need to attack. Most of the commanders are down, and, as we know, there's no evac until we can verify the security of our position. The enemy are through here. It's simple. I've been looking at these aliens, and they don't get frightened, apparently. They just fight harder. So, what I want you to do is simple. We're going to sneak in, so far as we can. Kingpin, Don, you two go in first. Approach slowly, and attack if you can. We'll follow you in."

The sergeant there sighed. They had enough men. They had to enter now, after all.. he didn't want to tell his men, but he'd reviewed the report they'd given the officers. It said that the facility they were in now fired missiles. Ones potent enough to cripple the Ivainson. He'd seen the hulk of the ship, and he didn't wish to let the aliens detonate one.

They hadn't found a missile complex yet, by the looks of things. And it appeared they were entering one now. And that complex.. well, from what he'd seen, the aliens were as smart as they were. And in a situation they were in.. he'd be rigging the missiles to explode. The problem was, of course, was that he couldn't afford to request evac if there was a missile there. And if there wasn't, it was his duty to secure the facility for further research.

He grimaced. And pointed his troops towards the complex. They were probably going to die, he knew that. But he'd take possible life over death any day, and today, he reminded himself, was certainly no exception...

OOC: If you want to RP the two first troops entering the complex, and seeing them (decide whether they become losses, as well), that'd be good, as it'd hasten up the end. And if we get bogged up in trying to determine who's where, and the tinier details (ones that could be vital early on), it can really have effects on a good climatic ending. I'm sorry again for missing this, as this is without a doubt the most enjoyable RP I've engaged in for months. ^_^

OOC: Bah! Failed broadband router, but fixed now.

I'm going to cut you a break; after all, you're supposed to win this thing.

In the Research Station's Missile Complex

Two tall, thin shapes appeared in the airlock – aliens. Weapons leveled, they advanced cautiously. Then one stopped the other by placing a hand upon its shoulder, and they paused for a moment, probably communicating by radio; pointing the barrel of its weapon towards its companion's feet, it traced out the tripwire that ran just above the floor. The alien who had been about to set off the trap backed up carefully, allowing the other to come forward and examine the obstacle. Gently, this alien reached up and felt for the charge above the inner hatch, found it, and disarmed it. They then continued their cautious advance into the room.

It didn't take long for them to find the dead soldier, shot twice – once in the chest and once in the head. Nor did they miss their own; one of the aliens bent down, examined their fallen comrade, read the writing on the front of the creature's chest, and then looked at the hole in its head. The squatting alien then turned to the other and they paused silently for another second, once more in conversation. They seemed distressed by this development, either understandably upset over the loss of one of their own, or troubled by the way in which it had been killed.

Whichever it was, they weren't happy.

Further inspection revealed that the room was empty; the aliens did, however, locate the spent flare a few meters off, down a side corridor – it was still hot, after all, and therefore showed up nicely in the infrared. They peered with some apparent consternation into the blackness further down the hallway from which, they decided – correctly, it turned out – their peer had emerged before meeting its untimely end, and down which the defenders of this complex had apparently moved off as well.

Those two conclusions appeared to make them unhappier still.

Soon more aliens – another twenty of them – entered the room. One appeared to outrank the others, and began gazing at the others and pointing in various directions. Not long after that, the aliens began to start moving out, hoping to find their comrades and eliminate their enemies.

OOC: Go ahead and take it all the way to the silo room. You'll find 10 dead in the complex itself, and one about 100 meters outside the complex, half-buried in a slide. There are also 7 dead in the power plant. All but one of these (whom you have already found) were killed in the bombardment.

Now it's time to cut you another break.

In the Main Station, Near the Hangar Bay

The access tunnel running from the hangar to the main station hub was about 50 meters long; at the hangar end were a pair of blast doors; at the hub end were a pair of weaker pressure doors. A third set of doors – pressure doors also, like the ones adjoining the hub – were located in the middle of the corridor.

It was here that V'aak stopped, taking up a position next to the door controls. Turning, it saw the bright bursts of several grenades, the last attack of its dying comrades. Maybe that will give us the time we need, the cho'kaav thought. Flipping its shga'vv up into its left hand, if fired a pellet into the back of the soldier who was laying down covering fire, seeking to get its attention.

Feeling the pellet strike its back, the soldier turned; V'aak signaled it to retreat along with everybody else. It complied, firing off the balance of its clip, and then skating backwards with that odd shuffle they'd all been trained to use in low gravity; as it retreated, it switched magazines to be ready for the next alien push.

Meanwhile, Va'ak had released its shgah'vv and transferred its vved luch* over to its left hand. Ignoring the stab of pain as it raised its right arm, the cho'kaav stabbed the button to close the pressure doors. This was part of the plan, the next nasty surprise they had in store for these interlopers.

The door didn't close.

Va'ak cursed, and stabbed the button again. Nothing happened. Not wasting time trying the controls once more, it seized the emergency lever and yanked it. No joy; the door had worked after the initial railgun bombardment, but apparently the second and more intense bombardment with whatever it was these aliens were using at that point had damaged its mechanism - that, or knocked its batteries offline.

The cho'kaav turned to head for the next set of doors when it felt itself struck by a pair of hammer blows, one to its already damaged side and another to its knee. It went over like a bowling pin, hitting the floor hard and tumbling. When it finally came to a rest, it saw the other soldier moving toward it to help. It attempted to wave the fellow off, but could not move in time; a shot caught its kaffach* in the back and - before it could fall - a two more shots spun it around and sent it flying up against the wall; its vved ch*ich tumbled end over end like a baton until it struck the ceiling, and then fell back softly to the floor.

Va'ak was dying; it knew that. In excruciating pain, it rolled over onto its back and tried to signal its remaining charges to close the pressure doors, only to find that it could not longer effectively sign. Might as well go out fighting, it thought, and with that attempted to slide its vved luch* around to where its weak right arm could at least pull the trigger.

Seeing chips fly off the wall from ricochets, it hoped it would have a little time before being hit again – or before losing consciousness from blood loss. Coldness was beginning to take hold of its body, but the cho'vaak fought it: arrach* should not be quick. Finger finally on the trigger, it fired off the rest of its 8-shot magazine, and then – unable to draw its vved ush - tried to pull out and arm a gaaach*.

But here its time and strength finally ran out. It could not strike the base of the grenade down against the floor with sufficient force to feel it arm; and as it kept flailing, the cho'kaav was finally recognized as a target and shot repeatedly until it lay still.

Near the Research Station's Central Hub

Gh'aar! knew that the main alien assault had begun it is absence, and hurried its kaffach* along as fast as it could. Rounding the corner to the point where it could view the central station hub, it saw two soldiers firing back up the access tunnel towards the hangar bay, apparently trying to hold back the enemy; even as it watched, one of them fell, joining another on the floor who had apparently been taken down a minute before. Swearing loudly, Gh'aar! ordered four of its charges to rush to the doors and close them; it took the other four and backtracked to reach a cross-corridor, hoping that – should the door fall anyway – in would get to the command center before the aliens did.

OOC: Gh'aar! is now the highest ranking soldier (not even a NCO, BTW – just a veteran) in the main station complex. There are just 10 defenders, in two groups of five, all with assault rifles (I'm assuming that two of the three technicians holding the entrance to the hub bought it after Va'ak and the vet covering the retreat fell. For your body count, that leaves two dead in the tunnel and two more in the hub (bringing the total to 71 dead, if you had time to take a body count, that is [maybe later, huh?]).

As far as the door, you can either give us time to close it and then either have to blow or cut it open, or presume that you manage to take it and force your way into the hub. In the latter case, the last fight will be against Gh'aar!'s detail of five soldiers (two vets and three techs) making their final stand in front of the command center doors.

In the Silo Room of the Missile Complex

Ach!aaar wasn't sure it this was going to work. Trying to hot-wire a hydrogen bomb to do something even modestly destructive should have been easier than this, but the electrical damage to the weapon was extensive. The technician had already bypassed the kryton and was simply trying to spark any of the fission implosion charges, working from one to the next in quick succession. One in twenty has to work, Ach!aaar thought

It was not having very much luck.

It shifted position slightly so that it could see if R'ghik was firing at anything; if shooting started, Ach!aaar was simply going to arm its gah erech* and drop the thing into the missile's access panel, hoping that the blast would trigger an internal explosion from the hydrox fuel cell, or at least leave the missile so badly shredded that no one could ever figure out how it worked.

OOC: Time to end it.

Missile Complex

"Sir! We've uncovered eight bodies. We believe there may be more - and we've taken the recommended precautions, although I feel it wastes ammo, sir!"

"Good, soldier. We're going to have to move quickly, now. Keep in mind that any alien, no matter how dead it seems, gets shot again if it still has limbs or a whole torso. They're tough buggers, and it seems that they're not very good at dying."

"It's probably a good thing we're good at killing then, eh sir?"

The sergeant failed to crack a smile at the soldier's joke. It wasn't funny. Not any more. Most of his men were dead. They'd had some luck, but.. who would've thought an enemy would've been so tough?! Other men had been through here. A symbolled 'pad, a piece of glowing plastic that can be dispensed by accordingly fitted suits, had three symbols on them. "Enemy. Forward. Missiles."

The sergeant swore. "Move! We don't have much time left, damnit! Move!"

Power Plant

They entered the power plant, two bullets finding their way to flickers of light through virtue of fear. But the enemy were dead. "Sir, we've found some bodies. I think it'd be best if we..."

"Shut your trap, private. We're going to continue moving. Frankly, I don't give a damn if these aliens here are actually Santa's elves - they're dead, and we're hoping not to be. Let's make that hope come true, eh?"

Entrance of the Silo Room

The sergeant was getting tired. His arms felt like lead - the low gravity could only do so much for him. Moving around hundreds of kilos of suit with little aid was hardly easy. But he kept moving. He looked, in almost abject horror.

It looked like a missile. He spoke into his suit. The voice-recognition system was on, although it was somewhat inefficient at interpreting his commands, but, as the sergeant, he had the luxury of such things.

He steadied his voice, and his gun-arm at the same time. "Last image. Ivainson. Left. Left. Left. Left. Left. Correct. Magnify image sixty times. One-twenty. One-fifty. Correct. Remove."

The computerised system he used was only good for storing image data - but, at that, it was remarkably good at doing so. They were certainly missiles. Of course, he had already suspected that was so. But they were the same missiles that had crippled the Ivainson. The sergeant wasn't stupid. The difference between a two-kilometre behemoth of a ship, and a two-metre tall human adult was palpable. If the Ivainson hadn't survived it from a distance, there was no chance in hell of surviving it up close.

He pointed. They advanced, and there, they saw the enemy. And they fired.Bullets streamed through the air, aimed at the two xenos they saw there - the enemy, perhaps, had fired first. But their numbers - their numbers would win them the battle here...

Near the Central Hub..

The men fired. The aliens fell. What they did here was of utmost simplicity. They'd just been told that there was some kind of missile in the area. They didn't know where it was. But, that was not important. Simply enough, the destruction of every alien within the facility would allow them to capture it - and the possible valuable data on alien technology, and allow them, given time, to decipher their language.

Those concerns, however, were not tactical. The concerns the men had, were. They charged forward. And they attacked. It was a simplistic strategy, but, at a time where hesitation meant certain death, it was a good one. The doors, however... they moved towards the doors. They had seen the enemy enter them.

And now they tried to close them. A bullet scythed towards an alien, smashing it, knocking it to the ground, sinking slowly towards the bloodied, dusty floor of the facility. A second. This is easy.., one of the men thought. It was, in fact, proved, when another slug flew directly into his faceplate - where they were, aiming was easy. Both ways.

But now they had more firepower than the aliens, who were trying desperately to close to the door. A third bullet, and a fourth, and a fifth! The third alien was down. And there were few more bullets. A last bullet came in, and struck the door, another striking the alien. It fell. And the door began to slowly, juddering, close.

"Damn!", the self-appointed leader of the group, Junas, spoke. "No charges. A couple of grenades. We need to open that door. Now! I want every grenade, every explosive we can find, and... Yill's body. We should be able to take some of the volatiles off his suit. Perhaps they'll help us blow the door."

He stopped speaking, and, without further adieu, they began working. Guns were armed, grenades strapped together. They walked over, quickly, not running, conserving their energy, piling their explosives against the door. No shaped charges perfect for smashing doors. Luckily, they did have a few grenades with remote-detonation.

They walked off. And further back. And further back. And then Junas hit the button. A silent roar emitted from the door, and, as they walked back towards it.. the door was smashed. Not fully open, but.. perhaps enough for them to slip through, provided they took their time. Junas motioned the few soldiers he had left on ahead. They had to get through, had to stop the aliens' plans to destroy the facility.

Or die trying...

OOC: This should be the second to last post w/re to events at the station. There may be additional posts pertaining to the last surviving fighter (see below).

In the Silo Room of the Missile Complex

R*grk'h had just prepared a flare to replace the one that was sputtering out when it saw the first alien enter the silo room. The creature was cautious but alert, weapon tracking across the room.

The cho'kaav didn't hesitate. It fired its vved luch* at the entryway, emptying its clip of eight 19mm¹ rounds in a matter of seconds, and then hurled the flare toward the enemy. This was a standard tactic: place a bright light directly in front of the enemy and force it to cross the area of illumination, where it would be easily silhouetted.

Ejecting the clip and slapping in another, R*grk'h resumed fire, trying to keep the enemy pinned down with little concern for its ammunition supply. An occasional rifle-propelled fragmentation grenade helped. All the while, it glanced toward the access hatch to the silo that contained the last surviving missile, where Ach!aaar struggled to set the warhead off. What is taking so long?!? it wondered. I can't hold them back forever.

Near the Research Station's Central Hub

The small band of Vah defending the central hub succeeded in getting the blast doors closed, but at the cost of three more lives – including the veteran leading the defense - and a couple of minor wounds. Not wanting to be too close if the aliens blew their way through, the senior-most tech split the survivors up, one to each flank and one in front. All were under cover and well away from the doors when the aliens broke through and charged into the complex proper.

The short, sharp firefight that ensued lasted only about 90 seconds; by then, the tech in the way of the alien onslaught was dead on the ground and the two at the flanks were retreating. Two minutes later, they'd been chased down and killed as well.

The aliens, badly bloodied but seeming to sense that victory was finally in their grasp, surged forward toward the control room. It was here that Gh'aar! and its kaffach* were waiting, preparing to make the garrison's last stand.

At the Access Hatch to Silo Containing the Last Intact Missile

Ach!aaar's first clue that the aliens were upon them was an explosion of dust erupting from a nearby wall. It turned and looked back at R*grk'h and saw the cho'kaav firing. Ach!aar knew that it had very little time left; in its current position it was sheltered from the door, but if the aliens advanced at all they'd see the place where it was crouching.

The tech looked at the hardware in front of it. Come on, how hard can this be? It saw R*grk'h keep glancing its way, as if urging the tech to do something. But each attempt to fire off a fission warhead failed.

At last, it looked at the gah erech* it had prepared. It's time, Ach!aar thought. It grasped the charge and hesitated. Stutterwarp or warhead? it asked itself.

The aliens would figure out how the warhead worked. There were no secrets there. But there was always a chance that the satchel charge would detonate something else, if not one of the fission charges.

Finally, it decided. Stretching out its arms, it prepared to plant the bomb next to the warp drive - the one piece of equipment is this entire station that the enemy could not be allowed to capture. It was then that a bullet tore through its shoulder.

The gah erech* tumbled into the open access hatch, coming to rest next to the fuel cells. Straining against the pain, its vision blurring, the tech threw its upper torso into the hatch and stretching its injured arm forward, its fingers grasping the detonator. It twisted the arming knob and pulled the safety pin.

In its lasts seconds of existence, Ach!aar basked in the ecstasy of arrach*.

The charge blew the fuel cells open, igniting the hydrogen and oxygen they contained - nearly a ton of it; the charge also set off some of the plastic explosives surrounding the warhead's fission charges, spraying plutonium throughout the silo, although very little radiation leaked out into the silo room. The all-important missile was torn up very badly - but not entirely destroyed.

It was left to R*grk'h to finish the job.

Emptying the last clip from its vved luch*, the cho'kaav tossed the weapon aside and launched itself toward the silo. Some nearby equipment provided cover, and - halting there for a moment - it took advantage of the opportunity to seize two gaaach*. Snapping the plastic safety cpas and slamming the bottom plates of the two grenades together, it tossed both into the open access hatch and leaped away.

R*grk'h felt two more thumps, and was satisfied that it had done its job. Drawing a pair of vved ush, one in each hand, it rolled out from behind the obstruction that had covered it from alien fire and took aim at the enemy. Both revolvers blazing, the cho'kaav finally met its end, mowed down by alien fire.

¹.75 caliber.

OOC: I just had this image of R*grk'h going out like Butch Cassidy...

The missile is destroyed (I couldn't let you capture working copies of my drives just yet). As for the final body count for the missile complex, it's 10.

Outside the Research Station's Control Room

Gh'aar! and its kaffach* met the enemy attack head-on. A furious firefight erupted, lasting about five minutes. One by one the Vah fell, until at last Gh!aar alone was left. Knowing that its end was near, it decided to pull one final nasty trick on its killers.

Charging across the corridor, it took up a position next to the control panel that opened the doors to the control room. Then, making sure that an alien could see what it was about to do, and then turned its vved ch*ich on the panel and emptied its clip into it.

The alien soldier observed Gh'aar! yank the spent clip from its weapon and reach for another. Stepping out, the creature aimed carefully, and shot the Vah veteran in the chest.

Struggling, Gh'aar! continued to reload its weapon. More slugs hit it, but somehow the soldier remained on its feet. It raised its assault rifle to its waist and then pulled the trigger, firing uncontrollably as it stumbled and fell to the ground, dead.

All in all, 83 Vah had given their lives on this small, barren moonlet whose sole asset had been its isolation.

OOC: The control room is booby trapped. I'll RP the blast that demolishes it, and you can reply with a final post or just note total casualties OOC.

As for me, the final body count for the main station area is 14. The final body count for all parts of the station combined is
(as stated aboce) 83. There are another 15 bodies in space, less the ones that were vaporized (but a few might have survived for you to pick up and study).

I'll start an autopsy/analysis thread, if you don't mind me creating a few human characters for it (a xenobiologist, a military analyst, and a physicist). You can keep them afterwards if you like.

In the Inner System

Th'aarv awoke with a jolt – the electrodes on its wrists literally shocking it into awareness. It saw Ch*'vok and Rghik stir as it checked the telemetry: they were fifteen minutes away from the small, dessicated planet.

When Ch*vok was fully alert, Th'aarv ordered: “Get us into orbit; perform a decelartion burn on the opposite side of the planet”. Stutterwarp could move a ship at blinding speed, but turn it off and you were basically in free fall; thus, if a vessel wanted to enter orbit, it had to change its inertial state to match what the orbit required. Stutterwarp could be used to change a ship's position in orbit, or change its orientation, but at the end of the day it was necessary to live within the rules of orbital mechanics.

When at last the proper orbital speed was achieved, the fighter changed its position in orbit in a matter of seconds to get within a few hundred meters of the automated probe. A couple of small warp maneuvers and a standard burn or two later, and they were side by side with the unmanned vehicle, just a few meters away.

“Rghik, kill the signals from the probe and fire off a low energy radar pulse. I want to know if anything is near us,” Th'aarv ordered. It hoped that anyone detecting the radar burst would see it as a catastrophic malfunction.

The gunner complied. A moment later, it evaluated the data. “Nothing. We're alone.”

The cho'kaav grunted. “Ch*vok, keep station. Rghik, you and I are going EVA.”

OOC: It's up to you if you want to pursue these guys or let them be. If you let them go, you might want to indicate whether you're going to stay in this system or abandon it after your attack. There's little of value here (it's a binary containing two cold M-class suns and a handful of rockballs/iceballs); there's a jovian world and a superjovian, both with well developed ring systems and plenty of moonlets. The overall economic value, though, is minimal.

Anyway, I'll wait to see what you post before posting any more.

Silo Room

Bodies fell, bullets flew, and.. the alien fought like a demon. The men who had entered the room had the advantage of numbers, but the alien scythed them down as easily as though they were wheat. Fragments of stone and metal settled towards the ground, suits flinging themselves this way and that.

"..my god. What is this thing?". The EarthGuard man knew what they had to do. If they didn't kill the damned thing, they'd all die! He raised his gun, a bullet spinning towards it. And.. it moved. The cover it had found was nearly impenetrable, it seemed. They advanced. His fists were clenched around his gun, his face twisted in a rictus of pain. Everyone who had died.. everything that had happened..

He roared, and rushed towards the alien. A bullet smashed into his suit, cushioned by one of the non-jointed, heavily armoured areas. A sliver of metal penetrated his leg - and rage proved to be a potent painkiller, perhaps moreso than drugs. Falling to one knee, he fired once, and then twice. The alien near the missile fell. He grinned - and then the explosion came. But it wasn't enough.

Not enough to kill him, nor his team. His face quivered, and then he lost control. "You evil xeno fucking sonovabitches!", he screamed. "Kill THIS!". Bullets flew from his gun, another two smashing into the cover the last alien was behind.

A man, and another, fell behind him, as he fired again, barely noticing the screams of the men over the radio. His rage somewhat contained, he smiled. "You've killed quite a few men, you crafty little.. alien. And now it's time for you to die. Say goodnight."

The man was cliched, but war did not demand literary brilliance. As the alien leapt out, he fired. And the gun clicked. The remainder of his pent-up rage released itself, as he flung his gun towards it, the augmented strength of the suit manifesting itself finally, as the heavy, reinforced rod-like object spun towards the alien.

It twisted, and dodged. The soldier looked on in disbelief. And then the bullets smashed into it. The gun hit a wall, harmlessly bouncing off. Another another hail of bullets. The alien still stood! Six bullets to the abdomen, and it shot! As it tottered, another rain of bullets descended upon it, legs and arms disabled, what passed for a head, and what was perhaps a groin crippled by the latest rain of bullets.

It fell to the floor, unsupported by its unworking legs. As it fell, a last pair of bullets smashed into his torso - the handguns proved too weak to pierce his suit. He looked with disbelief at the corpse - and another volley of bullets, and another, and another came towards it. His men wanted to make damn sure it was dead. Finally, as the ichor-spewing corpse became an ichor-spewing dessicated corpse, they stopped. They had no more bullets.

The sergeant spoke. "This is sergeant Ryan, men. It's dead. And the threat of the missile is ended, apparently. I've got a radio. I want to radio the ship..". His voice sounded rusty, trying to overcome emotion as he was....

The Control Room

It was almost a foregone conclusion. The men surged forward - the cover was minimal. Bullets and slugs flew from one side to the other, back and forth, as each side tried to finish the final act of the long, and bloody play.

For a minute, it was even. For the second minute.. it became an advantage to the EarthGuard. It was not superior firepower, nor superior tactics. It appeared to be the only advantage they possessed at such close quarters - numbers. The aliens were smarter. They were stronger. And, by whatever deity the men believed in.. they were a hell of a lot tougher.

Two men had died. Two aliens. The dead soon outnumbered the living in the control room. But the aliens had fallen. It had not taken as long as they had expected. With a few cursory shots, making sure every dead alien truly was dead, they advanced.

And into the control room itself. An alien stood there, and, as the private looked at it, it shot.. but not the man. It shot the control panel. If there was ever proof that these aliens were horrendously intelligent, this was it. A ruined, crackling heap of electronics was all that remained of potentially valuable information.

But the man didn't see it that way. The alien.. perhaps it was the enemy. But it was an enemy that.. that had just rendered what they had done worthless. He would've done the same. But that thought didn't enter the man's head, as a stream of lead and compressed uranium struck the alien down..

Fifteen minutes later, EarthGuard Main Landing Area

The eighteen men who remained stood there, looking stoically at the bodies of their comrades. None of them could bear to show any emotion. Not yet. There was a mission to finish. They had a radio up. There shouldn't be any more aliens.. they hoped. It was enough, though. They'd done a sweep of the station, keeping in constant contact. No more living.

The sergeant cleared his throat, and opened radio contact. Nightfall's frequency was difficult to pinpoint, but he had it, once he managed to get the clumsy fingers on his suit working beyond his anger. "Nightfall, this is Group Invader. All teams are here with me. Requesting evac. Over."

On the Nightfall, a worried radio comm sighed in relief. They'd been in there for far longer than expected. But, with the EarthGuard, perhaps it was to be expected. After all, their military precision was hardly something that could be thrown together in minutes.

"This is Nightfall, Group Invader. Evac cleared. We've got a transport shuttle with fifty coming down, who'll take you back. It has a hundred spare spots."

The sergeant's voice became even rustier. "Negative, Nightfall. Over."

An incredulous voice came down into the radio. That of the Commander, Lorain. 'What?! I thought you needed evac? What's wrong? Over."

The sergeant gathered himself, and, with a voice bordering on that of mad rage, and broken-down sorrow, he spoke. "There are less than twenty of us. Over. Requesting smaller evac."

Lorain spoke again. "That.. less than twenty?! That'd mean.. eighty of you-".

Due to the short distance, the communication lag was virtually nil. Thus, the sergeant had the oppurtunity to cut the commander off. "Yes. Eighty. Of. Us. Are. Dead. Damn you! Send down some evac!... Over."

The commander sat there, in a state of shock. They were the EarthGuard! The alien fighter-craft had been dangerous, that was true, but.. Fear welled up in her for the first time. She was a member of the EarthGuard, but not a member as they were. They were the elite, the best of the best in space combat, but... She shivered. "Roger that, Sergeant. We're sending the shuttle, empty. We don't want to let this spread. This is now classified. Over."

She cut off communications. The sergeant had little more to say, in any case. But they had an on-board lab, and.. she needed to recover the alien bodies, and, more important, the alien technology. Anything she could salvage from this.. she was suddenly aware of just how fragile her career was. And just how much of a sledgehammer that had been swung into it.. She had no choice, though. Send the recovery team down, and bring the remains of the attack team back...

Her reverie was broken by a nearby tactician. "Ma'am, I have something important to tell you."

She snapped back to reality. "What is it, soldier?"

"Well, ma'am.. judging by the acceleration of the craft, and what we've judged, it could reach another system within an.. appreciable amount of time. Possibly days, if it keeps up the acceleration, although we're not sure just what speed they can reach. We need to get everything out of the station we can. If those aliens come back, and with a real force.. You can see the obvious as well as everyone else, ma'am."

"I can, yes. Now, send the teams down, along with a series of support shuttles. I want the Nightfall's labs, and quarantined sections more ready than anything else in this mission has been!". Suddenly aware she was speaking to a tactician, and not to a comms officer, she balled her hands into fists, hard enough to turn them red.

"Communication officer. I want you to give those orders I just gave to the tactical officer to all of our science teams, and I want them given now. If we don't have palpable data on the alien physilogy by the time we need to return to Sol, you can go down and get the data yourself. Without a vac-suit."

The man saluted sharply, and began relaying the orders. The battle was over, at least. But the war had only just begun...

OOC: Wow. This RP has been epic. I'd say it's novella size, at the very least. This has been awesome fun, though. Without a doubt, the groundwork we've laid here for a war could lead to ten RPs as fun as this one! Whew... It was a lot of writing, though..

Edit: I know it's a little petty counting words, but we've written thirty-five thousand words here. I've never had an RP that I've written half as many words in..

OOC: Last post.

In the Inner System

Th'aarv and Tghik worked quickly, tearing out unnecessary electronics to lighten the probe's mass. When they had ripped out everything they could, they filled the unmanned vehicle's fuel cells from their own tanks and programmed it to fly at a speed that would maximize fuel economy. A subroutine was placed in its stripped-down computer to begin broadcasting a homing signal when it approached its target system; if it got to within a light-week of its target before running out of fuel, that would be enough.

The two Vah then installed a data storage unit containing a full record of the space battle with the aliens. This was the whole purpose of their journey: to let Triumphant Destiny and its faction know what they were up against. It was worth the risk of death – which they would face now, trying to survive until rescued on a hostile world.

Finally, the probe was ready to fly. The fighter moved off to a safe distance; then Rghik triggered the probe's stutterwarp drive. The vehicle moved off at a significant percentage of light-speed; soon it would reach the tensor limit and begin its week-long interstellar voyage. With luck it would arrive and the data would be retrieved.

As for Th'aarv and its charges, they began the process of taking their fighter in for a landing on the cold, dry world beneath them. They would find one of the abandoned mining outposts on its surface, blow up their fighter to prevent its capture, and then try to eke out a difficult existence until help came – if it came.

Whether they survived or died remained to be seen.

A Few Light-Years Away
One Week Later

“It's a homing signal,” said one of Swift Wing's Betas, “From a probe drone.”

“Any identifying information?” asked One-Who-Ponders. Next to the scientist, Glittering Dagger listened attentively.

The diminutive alien checked its instruments. “It's the probe we left behind as a diversion.”

“What's it doing here!?” exclaimed One-Who-Ponders with surprise. “I don't see how...”

It stopped.

“We need to retrieve it immediately,” One-Who-Ponders told Glittering Blade. “I think I know what it's doing here.”

A Few Hours Afterwards

Swift Wing warily approached the probe, both its fighter escorts deployed nearby.

“Probe design confirmed,” intoned the sourier's Beta.

“Send in one of the fighters to investigate,” the Glittering Blade ordered its Tactical Officer.

Tactical issued the order, and a few minutes later the rendezvous had been accomplished. The vessel's gunner exited its craft and drifted over to the probe. Five minutes later, the call came back. “It's the definitely the probe we left behind; I can see that from the markings,” it said. “But its guts have been stripped out. And...”

There was a pause, and then the message continued.

“...It looks like something's been added. A data storage unit...”

OOC: On to the next thread!