16 SEPTEMBER, 2056
03:08:18
Twenty-four stations, each a gigaton in mass, stationed every fifteen degrees round a greyish-blue super Jovian world.
With something somewhat unusual at its rocky core.
“Even quantum radar's having trouble penetrating to the interior of the alien structures on the surface of the core,” Yasmin reported, as Commander Draco Kirk downcycled to norm five hundred klicks from one of the orbiting mega structures, vaguely resembling something out of The Jetsobs, except all gunmetal grey.
“What I can tell,” Yasmin added,”without vectoring in drones for a closer look, is those structures bear a strong resemblance to the ones found on the surface of Io,Thalassa and Kobol.”
Draco's eybrow went up at this, as, with a thought, he killed all Enterprise's forward velocity, and flipped ship so thar she pointing her tail at the station.
“Ragnar Anchorage Station #12 comming us,” Rhonda reported.”We are cleared for decel burn and docking at Arm #115, say again Docking Arm won-won-five.”
“Acknowledge, Radio,” Draco replied, starting his deceleration burn, while Yasmin continued her report:
“Definiely an artificial singularityat the center of the core, sir, looks to be on the same scale as the one powering the portals on Io and Kobol.”
“Radio,” Draco asked, while guiding the wedge-shaped 225-kiloton aromored cruiser into a pair of docking clamps along the station's outer rim,”are you still maintaining a constant tactic transmission to [l]Rio Grande?[/i]”
“Yes, sir,” Rhonda replied.
“Send to Sentinel, “ Draco decided, figuring further investigation took precedence over not ruffling feathers.”'Sentinel and drone screen to orbit brown dwarf, investigate alien structures at its core.''”
“Sentinel acknowledges,” Rhonda replied,”vectoring itself and its drones screen toward orbit with brown dwarf.”
On the tactical holoproj echoed to the helm, Draco watched the twelve Picadors and the ship's 150-ton E4J Sentinel battlespace control platform veer away from Enterprise, and vector themselves toward orbital insertion round the brown dwarf designated Ragnar I.
At the same time, with a pair of gentle clank!s, the ship slid into the docking arm.
“Ship is docked and locked,” Ava reported.
“Anchor watch to stations,” Draco ordered, as he rose from his chair.”Intel has the conn; all hands, liberty call, I say again, liberty call; liberty parties to form up in the gate room, and stand by. Radio, if you be so kind as to comm the station authorities, and request permission for shore leave.”
“Station sends:” Rhonda promptly replied,”'No more than ten at a time, to be supervised by a chief petty officer or equivalent rank; all visitors must sinmit to medicae examination.'”
“Acknowledged, and wilco,” Draco, stretching himself til his back popped, replied.”Intel, keep me in formed; I'll be in the wardroom.”
“Aye, sie,” Yasmin replied.”I have the conn, sir.”
259-69M2
03:08:45
Damage control parties from Hecate and Flame of Purity continued working on the wreckage of CIC, while Fisk stood at the plot table, and watched silently, thinking over Adama's ranting, before he'd been removed from the command deck.
The commto Fleet Command had not gone out, but MAMSPA fanatics were everywhere, and one of them was certain to have made a wireless call, whether to Fleet Command, who Zarek had spent the last six years stacking with his bootlicks, or to anothet true believer back home.
Either was all it would take for ten and one-half thousand families, circles of friends, neighbors, xo-workers, and even casual acquaintances to suddenly be outed as Cylon sleeper agents hellbent on the replacement of real humans and the sestruction of the Alliance.
From there, more vigilance committees, more lynching, more poor frakkers dragged off to slavery, and, for what?!
Fisk studied the data slate before him.
Four thousand, nine hundred twelve of Hecate's 10,500 crew were still alive, the rest either whiffs of dissipating plasma in sections of the ship gutted by relativistic fragments, or whiffs of dissipating plasma in the cold void of space, their Vipers and Starhawks blasted from the sky in droves by flak bayyeries and air-to-air combat with other fighters.
He'd relieved Adama of command, to save this relative handful of men and women from being so uselessly slaughtered, and it didn't seem enough of a good reason to risk the lives of countless thousands more men, women, and children back on the Twelve Worlds.
Not to mention the uncertain future these survivors had to face.
The blood on all their hands for which they all had to answer.
For, when Zarek, three weeks ago, had screamed for the Grand Arbites and all the other “rigged, Cylon-infested, weaponized, kangaroo courts” on Athens to be utterly removed from time and space, Hecate, her officers, and crew, had obeyed, without ever asking why, all 360 of her 18” macrocannon, and her four 36” ptow macrocannon driving projectiles into the surface of Athens at near-light speed, nine and one-half billion Athenians following the law courts into oblivion, all their arcology spires, libraries, universities, parks, nearly two millenia of toil and struggle reduced to a series of glassy, smoking craters in less than fifteen minutes.
Nine and a half billion fortunate souls.
Because a ranting, shrieking Zarek, when teleported abaof Hecate's CIC, wouldn't allow the fifty thousand survivors to live in peace, and try to rebuild shattered lives.
No.
The armsmen had to be sent down into the hellscape of Hecate's own making, butchering the old, the babies, the young boys, leaving girls on the cusp of puberty to be taken as slaves, precisly as Monothiest Scripture demanded.
The Ctlon womam presently at the helm gently guided the savaged four and a half megaton Leviathan into a docking clamp somewhere on Ragnsr Anchorage.
Fisk sighed.
Second time in his life, when given a chance, he'd fought for the wrong side.
Part of him hoped those still loyal to an Alliance which had stood for millenia, which had come up out of bondage to the High lord of Kobol, would not be as lenient this time around, that the Monothiests coild never be brought bavk into the fold, as the Senate so optismistically had thought twenty-eight years ago, that the Monothiests didn't want to be part of a humanity that wasn't writhing and howling under their boot.
That they needed to be ended, to the last generation of them, before they ended all those who just wanted to live, work, and play in peace.
If that mesnt him facing a firing squad, or, worse, an airlock, and his last ninety seconds suxking vac in the dark...he'd made that fate for himself, not them, and it was long past time he answer for all he'd done.
After that, he'd stand before the Throne, and report to the Empror in person, before being cobdemned to sn eternity in the Warp.
A pair of armsmen from Flame of Purity now flanked him.
“Admiral Cain's orders, sir,” the decurion, senior of the two, said apologetically,”that you be confined to quarters til the tribunal.”
“Of course,” Fisk replied with a nod of his head, as he was led from Hecate's shamvles of a command deck.
16 SEPTEMBER, Y169
03:11:10
In the barycenter between the sullen red giants Crone and Ragnar, a grey, bullet-shaped, stub-winged, squarish-nacelled 225,000-ton heavy raid of the Ckuster Carter lurked.
But, no longer.
“We've gathered all the intelligence we can,” decided EltStalker Of the Void, with a low growl, the massive Kzinti, all three meters and five hundred kilos of sable fur, fangs, and three and a half meter tail of her, dominating the Orion pirate vessel's cramped bridge.
“Vector for home,” Stalker of the Void further ordered,”maximum quantum warp. The Patriarch must be informed.”
“Of course,” [iBhat[/i] Kargh-sutai Mo'kai replied, with a slight nod of his swarthy Klingon head, before relating his Elt's instructions to the helm.
With a thought, Rules of Acquisition's helmsman, Navigator Maria Craig, fired the ship's twin torches, and boosted the craft toward escape velocity from the twin stars' gravitational influence.
“Engineering,” Yazzook 2nd Lieutenant Ferdahlu, a member of a minor cluster species, the Yazirians, reported,”reports reactors on line, full power available, quantum warp motors on line, awaiting order to upcycle.”
“Very good,” Kargh replied, eyes locked on the main viewscreen, and the sullen red giants, whose bonds Rules was gradually slipping.
He would have his own report to make, once the ship was in quantum warp, for, unlike others of his race, renegades and outlaws amongst their own, he was loyal to the Steel Throne and his masters in the Galactic Reserach Unit, and they would be just as interested in the appearance of these Others from what was beung called the Second History amongst the rebel Alliance Humans as the Earther now claiming the Patriarchal title and his masters in the now-Terran Dominion.
More of interest, however, to both parties, and their allies, were the readings Rules']/i] science officer had been gathering, over the past three weeks from the interior of the Ragnar system's brown dwarf, buildings of pure neutronium, the same material comprising the hulls of the Juggernauts which still occasionally plagued the Galaxy, on the surface of its rocky core, and, at the heart of Ragnar I's core, an artificial singularity promising great power; in particular, the power to shift between realities, similar to portals in the Earther home system's Io snd in the outer edges of the Leebyahh system, in the former Neutral Zone between Imperial and what had been Fed space, until the beginning of an ill-advised and disastrous war which had seen victory snatched from the grasp of the Empire of Steel, the Deep Space Fleet all but broken, and the Sacred Planet, Klinzhai itself, under siege by Earther warships with the same capabilities and power as all the new construction undertaken by Imperial shipyards with the aid of Humans from the Royal United States.
And, not just the Earthers.
The Roms, and their cursed Tholian allies, in spite of themselves facing certain defeat and assmiliation by the Earthers, had smashed their way through the Empire's eastern border, advancing on the Sacred Homeworld with warships armed with powerful weapons of their own design, in particular these plasmatic pilse projectors which combined the lethality of Rom plasma torps with the longer range provided by Tholian beam weapons technology, and these plasma bolts didn't dissipate with range, unlike conventional plasma torps, whose magnetic bottle generators lacked the power to contain the plasma at full strength for more than a hundred thousand kellikams, before said plasma naturally, gradually, escaped into the surrounding void.
“At escape velocity,” the navigator, whose slave markings from top to bottom only mader her more attractive in the Klingon's eye, reported.”Quantum warp in five, four, three, two, one, warping now!”
With a whine, the Rules' twin quantum-warp generaators began a rapid, faster than eyeblink, series of entries and exits through a one-thousand kellikam-long quantum tunnel which would havem them at the WYN homeworld in a much shorter time than the now-hopelessly outmoded warp engines, even at dash speeds and output doubled, could ever have hoped to achieve.
“On vector for Wynhome,” Navigator Craig, ultimately destined for the slave markets, sane as all of her kind, by thee will of the Patriarch, reported, unaware of her eventual fate.
“Very well, Navigator,” Kargh, who was aware of her eventual fate, and had been saving up his share of prize money to take full advantage of it, calmly replied, before turning to face the towering Kzinti, whose place had been promised to Kargh, and said,”ship is on vector to Wynhome. ETA,” he consulted his BCI chip,”twenty-seven seconds at max q-warp.”
“Very good,” the unsuspecting Stalker of the Void growled softly, as Kargh thought of the cape he would make from that soft, lush, void-black pelt.”Send a signal to Homeworld announcing our arrival.”
Krgh nodded, before turning to Comms Specialist Grisabel, relaying his erstwhile Elt's orders to the tortise-shell patterned Lyran, using his BCI to add his own report, to his true masters, to the outgoing comm.
03:08:18
Twenty-four stations, each a gigaton in mass, stationed every fifteen degrees round a greyish-blue super Jovian world.
With something somewhat unusual at its rocky core.
“Even quantum radar's having trouble penetrating to the interior of the alien structures on the surface of the core,” Yasmin reported, as Commander Draco Kirk downcycled to norm five hundred klicks from one of the orbiting mega structures, vaguely resembling something out of The Jetsobs, except all gunmetal grey.
“What I can tell,” Yasmin added,”without vectoring in drones for a closer look, is those structures bear a strong resemblance to the ones found on the surface of Io,Thalassa and Kobol.”
Draco's eybrow went up at this, as, with a thought, he killed all Enterprise's forward velocity, and flipped ship so thar she pointing her tail at the station.
“Ragnar Anchorage Station #12 comming us,” Rhonda reported.”We are cleared for decel burn and docking at Arm #115, say again Docking Arm won-won-five.”
“Acknowledge, Radio,” Draco replied, starting his deceleration burn, while Yasmin continued her report:
“Definiely an artificial singularityat the center of the core, sir, looks to be on the same scale as the one powering the portals on Io and Kobol.”
“Radio,” Draco asked, while guiding the wedge-shaped 225-kiloton aromored cruiser into a pair of docking clamps along the station's outer rim,”are you still maintaining a constant tactic transmission to [l]Rio Grande?[/i]”
“Yes, sir,” Rhonda replied.
“Send to Sentinel, “ Draco decided, figuring further investigation took precedence over not ruffling feathers.”'Sentinel and drone screen to orbit brown dwarf, investigate alien structures at its core.''”
“Sentinel acknowledges,” Rhonda replied,”vectoring itself and its drones screen toward orbit with brown dwarf.”
On the tactical holoproj echoed to the helm, Draco watched the twelve Picadors and the ship's 150-ton E4J Sentinel battlespace control platform veer away from Enterprise, and vector themselves toward orbital insertion round the brown dwarf designated Ragnar I.
At the same time, with a pair of gentle clank!s, the ship slid into the docking arm.
“Ship is docked and locked,” Ava reported.
“Anchor watch to stations,” Draco ordered, as he rose from his chair.”Intel has the conn; all hands, liberty call, I say again, liberty call; liberty parties to form up in the gate room, and stand by. Radio, if you be so kind as to comm the station authorities, and request permission for shore leave.”
“Station sends:” Rhonda promptly replied,”'No more than ten at a time, to be supervised by a chief petty officer or equivalent rank; all visitors must sinmit to medicae examination.'”
“Acknowledged, and wilco,” Draco, stretching himself til his back popped, replied.”Intel, keep me in formed; I'll be in the wardroom.”
“Aye, sie,” Yasmin replied.”I have the conn, sir.”
259-69M2
03:08:45
Damage control parties from Hecate and Flame of Purity continued working on the wreckage of CIC, while Fisk stood at the plot table, and watched silently, thinking over Adama's ranting, before he'd been removed from the command deck.
The commto Fleet Command had not gone out, but MAMSPA fanatics were everywhere, and one of them was certain to have made a wireless call, whether to Fleet Command, who Zarek had spent the last six years stacking with his bootlicks, or to anothet true believer back home.
Either was all it would take for ten and one-half thousand families, circles of friends, neighbors, xo-workers, and even casual acquaintances to suddenly be outed as Cylon sleeper agents hellbent on the replacement of real humans and the sestruction of the Alliance.
From there, more vigilance committees, more lynching, more poor frakkers dragged off to slavery, and, for what?!
Fisk studied the data slate before him.
Four thousand, nine hundred twelve of Hecate's 10,500 crew were still alive, the rest either whiffs of dissipating plasma in sections of the ship gutted by relativistic fragments, or whiffs of dissipating plasma in the cold void of space, their Vipers and Starhawks blasted from the sky in droves by flak bayyeries and air-to-air combat with other fighters.
He'd relieved Adama of command, to save this relative handful of men and women from being so uselessly slaughtered, and it didn't seem enough of a good reason to risk the lives of countless thousands more men, women, and children back on the Twelve Worlds.
Not to mention the uncertain future these survivors had to face.
The blood on all their hands for which they all had to answer.
For, when Zarek, three weeks ago, had screamed for the Grand Arbites and all the other “rigged, Cylon-infested, weaponized, kangaroo courts” on Athens to be utterly removed from time and space, Hecate, her officers, and crew, had obeyed, without ever asking why, all 360 of her 18” macrocannon, and her four 36” ptow macrocannon driving projectiles into the surface of Athens at near-light speed, nine and one-half billion Athenians following the law courts into oblivion, all their arcology spires, libraries, universities, parks, nearly two millenia of toil and struggle reduced to a series of glassy, smoking craters in less than fifteen minutes.
Nine and a half billion fortunate souls.
Because a ranting, shrieking Zarek, when teleported abaof Hecate's CIC, wouldn't allow the fifty thousand survivors to live in peace, and try to rebuild shattered lives.
No.
The armsmen had to be sent down into the hellscape of Hecate's own making, butchering the old, the babies, the young boys, leaving girls on the cusp of puberty to be taken as slaves, precisly as Monothiest Scripture demanded.
The Ctlon womam presently at the helm gently guided the savaged four and a half megaton Leviathan into a docking clamp somewhere on Ragnsr Anchorage.
Fisk sighed.
Second time in his life, when given a chance, he'd fought for the wrong side.
Part of him hoped those still loyal to an Alliance which had stood for millenia, which had come up out of bondage to the High lord of Kobol, would not be as lenient this time around, that the Monothiests coild never be brought bavk into the fold, as the Senate so optismistically had thought twenty-eight years ago, that the Monothiests didn't want to be part of a humanity that wasn't writhing and howling under their boot.
That they needed to be ended, to the last generation of them, before they ended all those who just wanted to live, work, and play in peace.
If that mesnt him facing a firing squad, or, worse, an airlock, and his last ninety seconds suxking vac in the dark...he'd made that fate for himself, not them, and it was long past time he answer for all he'd done.
After that, he'd stand before the Throne, and report to the Empror in person, before being cobdemned to sn eternity in the Warp.
A pair of armsmen from Flame of Purity now flanked him.
“Admiral Cain's orders, sir,” the decurion, senior of the two, said apologetically,”that you be confined to quarters til the tribunal.”
“Of course,” Fisk replied with a nod of his head, as he was led from Hecate's shamvles of a command deck.
16 SEPTEMBER, Y169
03:11:10
In the barycenter between the sullen red giants Crone and Ragnar, a grey, bullet-shaped, stub-winged, squarish-nacelled 225,000-ton heavy raid of the Ckuster Carter lurked.
But, no longer.
“We've gathered all the intelligence we can,” decided EltStalker Of the Void, with a low growl, the massive Kzinti, all three meters and five hundred kilos of sable fur, fangs, and three and a half meter tail of her, dominating the Orion pirate vessel's cramped bridge.
“Vector for home,” Stalker of the Void further ordered,”maximum quantum warp. The Patriarch must be informed.”
“Of course,” [iBhat[/i] Kargh-sutai Mo'kai replied, with a slight nod of his swarthy Klingon head, before relating his Elt's instructions to the helm.
With a thought, Rules of Acquisition's helmsman, Navigator Maria Craig, fired the ship's twin torches, and boosted the craft toward escape velocity from the twin stars' gravitational influence.
“Engineering,” Yazzook 2nd Lieutenant Ferdahlu, a member of a minor cluster species, the Yazirians, reported,”reports reactors on line, full power available, quantum warp motors on line, awaiting order to upcycle.”
“Very good,” Kargh replied, eyes locked on the main viewscreen, and the sullen red giants, whose bonds Rules was gradually slipping.
He would have his own report to make, once the ship was in quantum warp, for, unlike others of his race, renegades and outlaws amongst their own, he was loyal to the Steel Throne and his masters in the Galactic Reserach Unit, and they would be just as interested in the appearance of these Others from what was beung called the Second History amongst the rebel Alliance Humans as the Earther now claiming the Patriarchal title and his masters in the now-Terran Dominion.
More of interest, however, to both parties, and their allies, were the readings Rules']/i] science officer had been gathering, over the past three weeks from the interior of the Ragnar system's brown dwarf, buildings of pure neutronium, the same material comprising the hulls of the Juggernauts which still occasionally plagued the Galaxy, on the surface of its rocky core, and, at the heart of Ragnar I's core, an artificial singularity promising great power; in particular, the power to shift between realities, similar to portals in the Earther home system's Io snd in the outer edges of the Leebyahh system, in the former Neutral Zone between Imperial and what had been Fed space, until the beginning of an ill-advised and disastrous war which had seen victory snatched from the grasp of the Empire of Steel, the Deep Space Fleet all but broken, and the Sacred Planet, Klinzhai itself, under siege by Earther warships with the same capabilities and power as all the new construction undertaken by Imperial shipyards with the aid of Humans from the Royal United States.
And, not just the Earthers.
The Roms, and their cursed Tholian allies, in spite of themselves facing certain defeat and assmiliation by the Earthers, had smashed their way through the Empire's eastern border, advancing on the Sacred Homeworld with warships armed with powerful weapons of their own design, in particular these plasmatic pilse projectors which combined the lethality of Rom plasma torps with the longer range provided by Tholian beam weapons technology, and these plasma bolts didn't dissipate with range, unlike conventional plasma torps, whose magnetic bottle generators lacked the power to contain the plasma at full strength for more than a hundred thousand kellikams, before said plasma naturally, gradually, escaped into the surrounding void.
“At escape velocity,” the navigator, whose slave markings from top to bottom only mader her more attractive in the Klingon's eye, reported.”Quantum warp in five, four, three, two, one, warping now!”
With a whine, the Rules' twin quantum-warp generaators began a rapid, faster than eyeblink, series of entries and exits through a one-thousand kellikam-long quantum tunnel which would havem them at the WYN homeworld in a much shorter time than the now-hopelessly outmoded warp engines, even at dash speeds and output doubled, could ever have hoped to achieve.
“On vector for Wynhome,” Navigator Craig, ultimately destined for the slave markets, sane as all of her kind, by thee will of the Patriarch, reported, unaware of her eventual fate.
“Very well, Navigator,” Kargh, who was aware of her eventual fate, and had been saving up his share of prize money to take full advantage of it, calmly replied, before turning to face the towering Kzinti, whose place had been promised to Kargh, and said,”ship is on vector to Wynhome. ETA,” he consulted his BCI chip,”twenty-seven seconds at max q-warp.”
“Very good,” the unsuspecting Stalker of the Void growled softly, as Kargh thought of the cape he would make from that soft, lush, void-black pelt.”Send a signal to Homeworld announcing our arrival.”
Krgh nodded, before turning to Comms Specialist Grisabel, relaying his erstwhile Elt's orders to the tortise-shell patterned Lyran, using his BCI to add his own report, to his true masters, to the outgoing comm.
Statistics: Posted by WillDexter — 2024-06-13 12:10pm