NationStates Jolt Archive

From the deep regions of outer rim space, a distress beacon was heard. Transmitted across most frequencies, it was a sublight signal, meaning that it had traveled for hundreds of years.

Floating in space was a cargo container, roughly 4 meters long and wide, by 2 meters tall. With what would appear to be stasis equipment inside if it was scanned. The outside would show signs of corrosion, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary. The container floated patiently through space, waiting to be found by someone, anyone really. It was simply waiting for its time, however long that may be.

>Colonial Force Command, Milky Way Division Contacting S.I.V. Lamea, CSEV-16-1045
>Please Respond, new orders from New Port.
<This is the S.I.V. Lamea, what are the orders?
>Priority 3, a frigate passing through co-ords x, y, z have picked up a jarbled distress call, unknown origin. Orders are to track it down, if survivors do what you can to help but don't reveal yourselves.
<If no survivors?
>Orders are to retrieve beacon, check for biocontaminates first, then to bring it back to New Port for study.
<Roger C.F.C., relaying orders to Commander Vegas now.

The Lamea was nearby the beacon, well, nearby by space standards. While it was the closest scout cruiser in the area she was still just over one-hundred light years from the darn thing, a full half a days trip! Still, it wasn't any different from her usual orders to relay and govern a small fleet of frigates tasked with scouting that particular section of space, so it was actually somewhat of an improvement. It also finally gave the Commander something to do besides yawn in his chair.

11 hours, 14 minutes, 37 seconds after confirmation of orders

The 650 meter long cruiser dropped out of Drift, it's form seeming to appear in Real Space as a mass of golden, glowing particles that would flow togeather - coallesing into a solid form. It was a slender, somewhat blocky design, and dozens of sensor array could be seen pushing out from its thick hull. Right now those arrays were busy at work, locking onto the small container.

The result was that Commander Vegas was now looking at a high resolution hologram of their target. There was no nearby star, asteroid belt, or other thing that might have warranted a ship to drop a beacon, which meant the item was either floating through space for a really long time, or it was dropped out here for no reason. Sensors couldn't gleam much though, the D-OMSAs confirmed that there was something inside of the container, but the image was, so far, to blurry to confirm anything. "Are you sure there's a distress beacon coming from this thing?"

"Yes sir," the tactical officer stated, her eyes once again going over her screen. She tapped away at a few keys on her keyboard, trying to boost the resolution, but no matter what she tried all she got was a blur. "Whatever it is, it's old. Could be worth cracking open."

"Hmm... Any Artrix EM waves?"

"None sir, already looked for that... Still, could be worth checking out. I doubt anything in there could get through our hull."

"Agreed... Bring us about and wrap a grappling hook around it. Hopefully once we've got it anchored to the hull it'll be easier to scan."

"What is this?" came the sharp voice of the signal coordinator

Commander, it seems a ship has just atomized in our local trade corridor

Have you traced their origin?

Not yet, but from the looks of the particle trail i'd say quite far away

Trace their Radio signal and prepare for a recorded message

Yes sir

The large screen flickered with static noise. The commander tapped his fingers impatiently on the side of his metal chair.

Radio signal found. Attaching transmission

"This is Commander Reginas of the Dexos Battle Cruiser. We represent the most Holy Empire of Jinaquai. This space is occupied. State your name and your home coordinates."

The commander listened as the clicking of the signal coordinators fingers sent the message out to the strange ship.

The container, secured to the hull of the sertian ship, continued to mindlessly transmit its weak distress signal. Not really able to do anything else.

The ship’s plasma thrusters fired, slowing the vessel down so that it was moving at the same speed as the beacon. The grapples were secured, tightly clenching the device to the scout cruiser’s thick hull, while the light from the thrusters cast an eerie glow on the mysterious pod.

“Commander Vegas, we have a long range transmission from people who claim to own this system, orders?”

“Seems like we’ve been found…” the Rip’lard spoke, his reptilian mouth curling into a small smile. “Well, you know the drill. We’re just a heavily armed freighter for the Serigate Plasma Trade Federation.”

“Yes sir… Sending text transmission now.”

<To the Dexos Battle Cruiser, this is a freighter vessel working for the Serigate Plasma Trade Federation. On our way on the edge of this system we detected a distress beacon and came to investigate. We first believed it to be an escape pod, however we can’t detect any movement from within and it appears quite aged. I don’t suppose it could be yours?

“Now that that’s done,” Commander Vegas spoke, “I want full sensors on that thing, and I want a damn clear picture of the inside.”

“Sir, we could take it in one of the hangers, vacuumed of course to prevent any sort of contagion?”

“After we get a clear sensor reading, I don’t want to bring something that can explode within our hull.”

It was quiet, too quiet. Even the birds had gone silent- his stalker had made his first mistake- upsetting the surrounding area. All doubt that he was being followed was quickly extinguished when a flock of birds suddenly burst from the tree-tops, crying out with annoyance at their resting place being disturbed. His attacker was close now. The warrior cursed to himself, wishing he had his team with him. They had been ambushed a few hours ago, spears and arrows piercing through the tree line with deadly accuracy. They had disperced, one member getting an arrow strike straight through his leg and burst out the other side. As the man would have expected of all his squad, the injured man grunted slightly at the wound but kept on fighting, loosing off his own hail of fire into the trees ahead of them. That was when he had last seen them, he had been forced to lose his attackers by losing his squad. And now they were looking for him. Weighing up his options, he waited a moment more, and then burst through the foilage. It would be at this point a normal man would have realised that this warrior was no average human being. Standing at almost eight feet tall, and having a massive, barreled chest, this warrior would tower above the heighest of men. The man had very short cropped hair, and numerous scars across his face, and he raced across the clearing in speed that defied his great size. As he sped past the fast few trees, he heard a tremendous crash behind him as his attacker entered the glade. The warrior could hear his hunter rushing towards him, and it was gaining.
As the man reached a smal ledge up to another patch of trees, he heard a whistling upon the wind. Suddenly, several arrows sped past, inches from his face, thudding into the ledge in front of him. Taking on a renewed vigour, the warrior leapt up onto ledge, despite it being taller than even him, the man easily reached it, and ran on, without even breaking his stride. A second behind him, his enemy also cleared the ledge in a single bound. It was too close. It was time to end this.

Spinning on his heel, the warrior unsheathed the knife at his thigh and slashed it upwards, his eyes fierce but his face calm. But his follower was ready and he swayed under the attack with unnatural speed, and slashed out with an attack of his own, spearing the warrior's arm with an arrow, serrated and sharp. The man grunted with annoyance, and flung himself away from the enemy, taking a glance for the first time at his opponent. His enemy was at tall as he was, if not more. His head was bald, but his face was smooth and untouched. Strung across the man's back, was a large quiver, filled with arrows, and he was holding a large bow, which he was twilring about his head like a melee weapon. Like the warrior's, the man was wearing nothing but a loincloth, and also had a knife strapped to himself, although this one was attached to his waist by a thick vine. His enemy side-stepped, swaying from side to side as he went, still twirling the weapon. Suddenly stopping, he lashed out a hand, and beckoned. And then warrior hastened to comply. Making complex movements with his knife, the warrior charged. But instead of moving away, his target also charged, thrusting the bow as if it were a lance of some sort. Swatting the bow away with a swipe of his other hand, the warrior continued his attack with his knife, aiming at his enemy's face. His enemy swayed back, the knife missing his eyes by an inch. Preparing to start another attack, the warrior started to pull back, but his foe took hold of the arrow still lodged into the man's arm, and twisted it painfully. The warrior roared in pain, but the attack by his opponent had opened him up to attack as well, and the warrior's hand shot out, grasping his enemy's neck in a crushing hold. His foe grasped for another arrow from his quiver, but the warrior lashed out again, taking hold of his other hand. They grappled for a few seconds, before the warrior pulled his enemy to the ground, and struck his head against the floor. The warrior snarled and continued to struggle, but the warrior was relentless and he continued to strike his foe's head into the ground again and again before it went limp. Then, everything was quiet once more. The warrior straightened, and rolled his shoulders. Taking a deep breath of forest air, he slowly exhaled, letting the sounds of the animals take over again. Then, the quiet was shattered once more, and a siren sounded, making the birds fly from the trees once more.
Then, a voice sounded over the forest trees:

"Live Combat session over. Any injured soldiers report to the medicae immediately. ."

Looking over into the tree line, he saw a robed figure, slightly shorter than he was but a giant nontheless, stride into the clearing. "Well done Captain. That session was a slight more eventful than the last, I must admit."
"That's good to hear, Chaplain." The warrior replied, tossing his knife net to the downed figure.
"I'll call the servitors." Said the robed man, nodding at the figure. "For now, a signal has been intercepted. It seems to be a distress signal."
"Very well, tell the Navigators to enter the warp as soon as possible."

"An escape pod?" the Commander asked himself. He rose slowly from his chair and moved forwards to the large viewing window that looked out into space. A small red planet lay to the left of them, it's surface riddled with craters and cracks.

"Signaller?" he shouted roughly over his shoulder. The signal coordinator walked into the dark steel room.

"Yes Commander?"

The Commander turned and ran his fingers throgh the short dark hair that lay atop his head.

"Tell the crew to set the ships engines. Use the nebula drive."

He turned and faced empty space once again.

"We're going to where the vessel atomized. No hostilities, approach as friends."

The signal coordinator nodded and turned, quickly moving from the room.

The captain sighed and sat back into his chair.



(OOC: star eaters, are you planning on copying alot of stuff you talk about from warhammer?? i mean servitors, chaplain, entering the warp? have a bit of originality :))

"An escape pod?" the Commander asked himself. He rose slowly from his chair and moved forwards to the large viewing window that looked out into space. A small red planet lay to the left of them, it's surface riddled with craters and cracks.

"Signaller?" he shouted roughly over his shoulder. The signal coordinator walked into the dark steel room.

"Yes Commander?"

The Commander turned and ran his fingers throgh the short dark hair that lay atop his head.

"Tell the crew to set the ships engines. Use the nebula drive."

He turned and faced empty space once again.

"We're going to where the vessel atomized. No hostilities, approach as friends."

The signal coordinator nodded and turned, quickly moving from the room.

The captain sighed and sat back into his chair.



(OOC: star eaters, are you planning on copying alot of stuff you talk about from warhammer?? i mean servitors, chaplain, entering the warp? have a bit of originality :))
OOC: My nation IS warhammer- they are space marines

OOC: oh right i get it then :P I was just wonderin thats all :)

The pod, after being secured to the ship for a few minutes, suddenly stopped transmitting the distress signal. power readings spiked as energy lanced across the pod in the form of red charged plasma. The electricity like plasma arcing across the hull of the scout cruiser, leaving red streaks behind it that began to rapidly spread. Inside the ship, the sensors would start screaming biohazard warnings. The ships computer begining to lock itself out from manual input system by system, spreading rapidly from where the pod was. The Bio-mechanical entity had found a host. The virus spreading, warping the crew in the infected area's into organic control relays.

“Well, that’s odd…” the communication officer stated when the message stopped playing. “The pod, it just shut down…”

“We’ve got power spiking… I think something’s wrong comman-”

“Cut the grapples, now!” the Commander stated. The officers replied, clicking away at keys that ordered the immediate severing of the grappling hooks. Even as the infection started to attack the hull, there was enough time to do that. The cables came loose and the emergency beacon was left to float in space.

“We’ve got some sort of contaminate on the hulls Commander, it seems to be spreading though… It’s attacking the hulls! Integrity is at 86% and falling at 3% per second, we’ve got little less than half a minute before whatever it is gets through. Sensors detecting more breaches forming!”

“Damnit, full alert - prepare for anything. Vacuum the decks that are about to be compromised, get everyone into gear! Put the self destruct in stage two readiness if we can’t contain it!”

In the twenty-eight seconds it took for the organic nanites to eat their way through the thick hull of the Sertian ship, the crew was, well they were pretty prepared for them. It would be to the infections glee that it would find that the ship’s power system was an advanced form of plasma, and if they could survive the huge electric charge running through the power system it would be free to spread quickly through the ship. But infecting the corridors and people would be troublesome, the vacuum left by the ship venting it’s atmosphere would eliminate a transfer medium for any sort of spores or airborn infection.

“We’ve got multiple- damnit, sir it’s spreading inside the ship! I don’t know how, but it no longer needs to move through our hull! It’s impossible to vent the atmosphere before it spreads!” the tactical officer swore now, just before his screen brought up another warning. “Firewalls have detected a hostile program trying to eat through… Damnit, it’s an adaptive program, it’s learning how to get through!”

“Wake up the damn Shadow Warrior!” the commander spat as a holographic representation of his ship came up. Red areas flashed where biohazards were being detected, yellow where information nodules were being infected. Black spaces indicated areas that had their atmosphere vented, and more importantly, blue dots represented people, most of them dressed in their air tight armors and, more than likely, had time to get weapons to shoot any tendrils that tried to attack them.


Shadow Warrior Daniel awoke to the alarms of the ship, and more importantly, the beeping from his ARMLET united. “DUKE, what’s going on…” the Rip’Lard said as he got to his feet, his reptilian eyes looking around.

“I’d suggest getting into that armor they provided you Sir, this deck is to be decompressed in seven seconds. The hacker swore before jumping to the other side of his room and opening a variety of lockers, doing his best to get the armor on before the precious air he was breathing was sucked away. As it was, he only just put his helmet on as he heard it being vented.

“Now then, DUKE, what’s happening…” he said, making his way over to where his computer was waiting for him.

“The ship is under attack by some sort of infection, decks are being vented to slow it down - but it appears to be spreading quickly by some other manner. It has been detected that it’s also attacking the computers. You’ve been ordered to assess whatever it is, and attempt to counter act it.”

“The situation looks pretty bleak,” he said while moving to his seat, opening the laptop and powering up it’s systems.

“It does, the self destruct has been put on priority two. If you don’t find a way to stop this thing, this ship might be the biggest fire cracker since the Resistance War.”

The cargo pod never drifted from the ships hull, having fudes with the hulls empirium alloy, it continued to adapt, its bio-machines spreading from the walls of the infected decks, the nanites leaping from the walls in a cloud of red, subsuming the crews suits, and then their flesh, adding to the colelctive conciusness with every passing second as the entity rushed to grow to its new limits. It had been trapped in that box for so long. Too long. The virus spread through the ships hull, infecting the crew as it went, some being spared by the decks venting, the rush of air carrying away the bio-machiens before they could attach themselves.

The creatures sensed that its new body wasnt yet under its control, its spres diving into the power conduits, channeling throughout the ship and causing power to re-rout away from normally critical systems, like bridge controls and communications arrays.

“What the hells going on!” Pilot-Soldier Alex cursed as he made his way through the now vacuumed decks with his plasma rifle neatly in hand. Whatever it is, the vacuum gave an eerie silence to the whole ordeal, the only indication of anything wrong (besides the vented deck) was the red and blue lights that flashed throughout the corridor. Two red, one blue, the signal for a biohazard emergency.

Whatever it is, he had to carry out his standing orders from the bridge. The self destruct sequence was set to priority two, that meant activating the plasma missiles in the missile racks, as well as anything else that could be used to go boom. Still, he hoped he’d run into someone along his way there, being alone in such a situation just… didn’t seem right.

Meanwhile, Somewhere Else On The Lamea…

“Incredible from a computer code,” he said with a slight whistle in his suit. It wasn’t hard to detect the intrusion in the ship’s systems, mostly for two reasons. The first was that it was an incredibly invasive program that didn’t care about remaining undetected, the second being that it was utilizing binary.

“It’s not a typical computer virus… It’s not taking control of our systems, looking through them at all… It’s, deleting them,” he said mystified as he brought up an image on the computer, prompting a hologram to pop up that represented one particular subroutine that was being attacked. Blue numbers represented the code for the system that should be there, but as he watched what looked like a wave of red numbers moved through it - replacing what was there with another program.

“Damnit… Bridge, this is Shadow Warrior. Whatever this thing is, it’s not trying hack our systems! It’s taking control of them deleting what we have on it and replacing it with something else! Bridge..? D.U.K.E., what the hell is going on!”

“The bridge is not responding, it appears that systems are starting to fail throughout the ship. Intership Communications are down, and life support is being compromised. It’s unclear how long systems such as weapons or power will last, but indications seem to point to not long at all.”

“Damnit… Alright,” he quickly switched the frequency of his transmission, instead paging every personal communication device on those still alive. “This is Shadow Warrior, the bridge is most likely gone. Whatever this thing is, it’s taking control of the ship. Therefore, I am finalizing the Self Destruct protocols. Priority One destruction, those that can’t get to a position to enact the Self Destruct are ordered to evacuate with whatever… uninfected escape pods or fighters there are left.”

“That seems out of character for you Daniel,” the program said to its owner.

“I know, but… It’s hard to explain,” he said as he started to type something into his computer. He thought it was unlikely that whatever this entity was, that it was reading or copying the information on the computers. But if it was, it was the Shadow Warriors duty to protect that information.

“The main computer core is still uninfected… good,” and with that he uploaded his own virus into the computer’s systems. It was a nasty thing, a computer code that functioned much like the infection that was running through the ship now. With impunity it would rewrite any uninfected software with itself, growing exponentially as it erased whatever was in it’s way. By the time it clashed with the infection’s data, most if not all of the Sertian’s computers information would be gone, and the Shadow’s virus would have enough strength to seriously start combating the infection’s data. As fast as the infection would rewrite the viruses own data, it would corrupt as much as it lost.

Now the one responsible for putting a damper on the beast’s plans just needed to make his way to one of the escape pods. Luckily, the area of the ship he was in wasn’t infected… yet.

Main Engineering

Lieutenant Advanced Sarom remained at his station despite the vacuuming of the main decks, although even he was confused about the happening events. His only consolation at the moment was the handful of people in the room with him, some of them monitoring the main fusion core - making sure that it’s overload system was in place for when the self destruct order came, if it came… And the plasma pistol in his grip, but he doubted this would be an enemy he could face in a firefight… Whatever it was moved to fast for that.

And then the order came in from the Shadow Warrior, bugger of a thing. But there orders where clear, he could already see one or two engineers moving to the keyboards to activate the overload program…

And then he heard one of them say, “What’s this growing on the keys?”

"Cut the engines" ordered Commander Reginas. The battle ship drifted slowly towards the small cruiser. Reginas turned to his technical crew.

"Send them a message, I want to know exactly wha-"

"Errm, commander?" interrupted one of the signal crew members "there appears to be no outwards signs of radio transmission. It seems they've shut down all long range signals. I'm not getting any frequencys and the radioscope shows a blank"

The commander sighed and moved towards the blue radioscope screen. He saw the crew were right. Where one would usually expect a large amount of frequency from the multiple scanners onboard the ship, there was instead a empty screen.

"Do they still have an inside intercom system?" asked the commander.

"It seems so, though that too is fast dissappearing" answered a short stocky man.

"Right then, quickly send a message over the intercoms. Ask if they are experiencing any malfunctions, or if they are just conserving fuel and power. If this is the case we would be more than happy to send fuel or any other power supply."

"OK, im sending it now." his fingers tapped away at the keyboard and then he turned. "The message has been sent commander and should arrive onboard shortly, if not a bit garbled."

Reginas nodded and turned back to his seat.

"Oh wait" he said suddenly getting up from his chair "has the distress beacon disappeared?"

"Seems that way captain, shall I scan for any traces?" asked the short man.

"No, leave it. We could come off as being to invasive"