OT: Hell is For Heroes.

[AgentZero]

I can do intrigue? Cool, I never knew. Anyway, here's Part 3, and hey, something big blows up!


The Tauran battlecruiser Zehkleck slipped unnoticed into the Narf Trinary System. Not thanks to any kind of stealthiness, the Taurans wouldn't know the meaning of the word, but due to the simple fact that nobody monitored the Narf System, because there was nothing left to monitor. There had once been a number of thriving colonies in the system, built in the ruins of a dead civilization. But in the dying days of the Earth-Tauran War, a colossal battle had been waged here. A Battle To End All Battles they called it. And when it was over, the Narf System was dead, every scrap of life extinguished from the surfaces of it's worlds.

However, First-Among-Fourths Plaetek had no interest in Narf's scorched worlds. It was far more interested in the wreckage it's ship's sensors had detected two light minutes out from the system's main star. The floor plates rumbled under its feet as its navigator brought the ship up to full sublight.
“Second,” Plaetek spoke to the officer beside it. “What do your eyes see?”
“Very little, First,” came the reply. “Distance still to great. Our ships, definite. Another, near certain.”
“Advise when near certain is definite,” Plaetek instructed.

Several hours passed before Plaetek's Second spoke again. “Another definite. Wreckage now. Survivability probability minimal.”
“Identity?” inquired the First.
“Transponder functional,” replied the Second. “TSN Galahad. Definite.”
Plaetek nodded slowly. “Destruction of our ships, most ungood. First-Among-Seconds will be not-pleased. Loss of target, double ungood. First-Among-Seconds will be double not-pleased. But destruction of Galahad, double double good. Redemption likely.”
The Second nodded in agreement. “Return?” it inquired.
“Return with haste,” the First instructed.
The Second returned to its station and began plotting a course back to the jump nexus. The First settled back on his hind legs to observe it's tactical plot. Tauran plots were a series of two dimensional screens, unlike the Humans 3D holographic 'tank'. Tauran minds did not function well when more than two dimensions were involved, and all their information about the three dimensional space around them was relayed via two dimensional displays. Noticing something odd, Plaetek leaned forward and tapped the tactical plot with a thick knuckle.
“Malfunction?” asked the Second, peering over the First.
“Probability high,” agreed Plaetek. On the tactical plot, the icons representing with the systems three suns were steadily growing larger, even as they moved further away. Plaetek moved to the primary command deck and requested the rest of its officers to report similar malfunctions.
“First!” one of the Thirds cried suddenly. “Malfunction probability zero!”
Plaetek's seven eyes whipped back to his plot just in time to see the three stars seemingly shrink into nothing, then expand again with terrifying speed.
“Flee!” the First ordered desperately, knowing already that it stood no chance of escaping the raging storm of destruction racing towards them. The Zehkleck was a third through her emergency turn when the combined fury of three supernovae ripped her to pieces a split second before ship was vaporized.

Two days later, James Thereaux, sleeping aboard the decommissioned assault cruiser Daedalus was woken from a most pleasant dream by the spectacular death of a star system.

[Ragnarok]

Wow. Most excellent story I must say. Keep it up!

[narf poit chez BOOM]

YOU MANIAC! YOU BLEW IT UP!

[El_Phil]

BLAM! Sweet, beautifull BLAM.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Wonderful

More please

[AgentZero]

Sorry Narf, but you should take solice in the fact that the name Narf will live on forever as the official scientific term for a triple supernova: A Narfsplosion. More to come when I'm not so sleepy.

[TurinTurambar]

Loving the story.

My my. Suddenly a plethora of phan phiction. (<--artificial alliteration... handy ain't it?)

I especially like the alien feel of the communication between the First and the Second. Mind your modifying pronouns in there though m'lad. Coupla slip-ups.

Excelsior!
Turin[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon42.gif[/img]

[AgentZero]

Right, well I got myself nice and drunk and made a bit more progress on the ole story, so here it is. The following has been edited for language, and following segments will need to be edited for both language and content, but a complete version may get put up onto Spaceempires.net, as long as I don't get too naughty. Anyway, forward, not backward, upward, not downward, and always twirling, twirling towards freedom!

Two days later, James Kagan, sleeping aboard the decommissioned assault cruiser Daedalus was woken from a most pleasant dream by the spectacular death of a star system.

The shrill squeal of the ship's alarm brought him suddenly to full consciousness.
“Status report!” he barked before realizing he was alone on the bridge. Nonetheless, the ship's AI obliged him by activating the main view screen with the ship's cameras centred on the source of it's concern. Kagan,'s brow furrowed as he stared at the star field shinning in front of him, trying to establish what had caused the AI to rouse him from his slumber while he tried vainly to ignore his parched mouth and pounding headache. And then, suddenly, the cause of the AI's concern became blatantly obvious as the entire bridge exploded into brilliant white light. Kagan cried out in pain and pitched out of his chair.
“Filters to max!” he cried, writhing about on the deck in futile attempt to escape from the piercing whit light. “Filters to bleedin' maximum!”
“Filters already at maximum capacity,” the AI informed him emotionlessly.
“Then turn the damn screen off!” he shouted. “View screen off!”
Kagan released an almost orgasmic sigh as the bridge was plunged into blissful darkness, illuminated only by the faint light of command consoles. Slowly, he dragged himself back up to his command chair and activated a communications channel.
“Kaelan, you see that?” he asked, transmitting to the destroyer holding off his port side.
“Jasus, I'm still seein' it, mate,” was the groggy reply.
“So you didn't slip something in my drink after all,” Kagan replied with considerably more relief than he felt.
“Would I do that?” Kaelan replied indignantly.
Kagan let the silence drag out until Kaelan added, “Again?”
“I was hoping you learned from the last time,” Kagan replied with a small grin. “How's the arm, by the way?”
There was a chuckle from the speaker. “Well, I can amuse meself and abuse meself and let's just leave it at that, shall we?”
“So, what are your sensors telling you?”
“What are yours telling you?”
“Mine can't tell their arse from their elbow, that's why you're tagging along.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Got Me Own Assault Cruiser, and here I was thinkin' you had me along for my brilliant wit and unparralled sense of style.”
“I could have brought along a drunk chimp with a learning disorder that'd have more with and style than you, Mr. O'Shea, now make yourself useful.”
“Right so. Looks like the Narf System is after blowin' itself up.
Kagan paused, not quite managing to comprehend what he was hearing.
“What?” he asked. “The stars in Narf were all midlife, and none of them were big enough to go nova. Check your instruments.”
“There's nothin' wrong with me instruments,” was the displeased reply. “All three stars just went nova, and if they didn't do it themselves, then someone else did it for them. Few Nova Bombs and Bob's yer uncle if you ask me.”
“But there aren't supposed to be any nova bombs left,” Kagan replied, confused. “Let alone three of the Divine-forsaken things.”
“Well if you got any idea what would make three midlife stars go pop that doesn't involve Nova Bombs, I'd love to hear it,” said Kaelan. “Probably give you a bleedin' prize or a medal or somethin'.”
“I'm sure,” Kagan replied dryly. “Listen, you head back to Pellus with those sensor logs. I'll meet up with you at Fyron's Star, OK?”
“You sure you'll manage with them bolloxed sensors of yours?” asked Kaelan, managing to sound genuinely concerned.
“I'll be fine,” Kagan told his friend, “As long as I don't run into any anomalies in dire need of a good scanning.”
Kaelan barked a laugh. “Only you could make that sound filthy, mate,” he said. “Take care, and I'll see you in a few days.”
“Cheerio,” Kagan replied with a grin.
On his tactical plot, the small icon representing the destroyer Defiant pulled away from the Daedalus and accelerated quickly back in the direction they'd come from. After a moment's contemplation, Kagan brought his sublight drive to full power, and the converted warship thundered forward. If there were people around here blowing up stars, he mused, then around here was not a good place to spend to much time. Three hours later, he received a message from Kaelan informing him that he and the Defiant had safely made the jump to null-space. Eight hours after that, the Daedalus was approaching the jump nexus when the communications console began chirping insistently, the tone and pitch indicating an emergency message. Kagan hurried over to the comms console and attached the ear piece to the obvious orifice.
“-ello?” a female voice inquired. “Can you hear me big ship? This is little ship to big ship, can you hear me?”
“I can hear you alright,” said Kagan. “But I can't see you.”
“I'm over here.”
“Where?”
“Over here. I'm waving.”
“That's not going to do me a lot of bloody good, now is it?”
“Well, what should I do?”
“Does your ship not have a transponder?”
“Dunno.”
“You don't know? How can you not know if your ship has a transponder?”
“Well, it's not really a ship. More of a pod, I guess.”
“Like a life pod?”
“Dunno.”
“Were you on a big ship before?”
“Yup.”
“And you got shot out of it in a little ship?”
“Yup.”
“Then you're in a life pod.”
“Great.”
“You lookin' for a rescue or would you prefer I jump out and leave ya here?”
“I think I'd rather be rescued. Um, what does the transponder look like?”
“It's a square orange thing, about the size of your head.”
“How do you know how big my head is?”
Kagan pinched his nose in frustration. “An average person's head, OK?” he snapped. “You know most people try to make it easy to get themselves rescued.”
“Sorry. It's cold and I haven't eaten for a few days. I'm feeling a bit odd. I see the transponder thingy now, so what do I do?”
“Open the lid and press the big red button.”
“OK. Oh, and one thing?”
“What?”
“My head's not square.”
Any reply was cut short but the sudden appearance of a life pod icon on the tactical plot, and the corresponding shrill alarm.
“I see you now,” he said. “I'm sending out a recovery drone now. We'll have you nice and warm and fed in no time.”
“Thank you very much, big ship.”
“You're more than welcome. Although most people just call me James.”
“Thank you, James, then. My name's Alice.”
“It's a pleasure, Alice,” Kagan replied. “Now you'll feel a bump in a moment, but don't worry. It's just the recovery drone latching on to your pod.”
It took a total of thirty seven minutes to get Alice out of the life pod. Ten minutes were taken up getting the pod back to the ship. Twenty minutes were devoted to decontaminating the pod's exterior, during which James hastily showered, dressed in his uniform and administered himself a hefty dose of De-Tox. Five minutes were needed to to heat the pod's outer surface to an acceptable level, and the last two involved Kagan ensuring his hair was in order and all insignia were attached properly, just in case. The pod door opened, the girl stepped out, and Kagan was suddenly very glad he'd taken the time to clean up. In an age of life-extending therapies, it was impossible to determine her age, but chronologically she seemed to be in her mid twenties. She was petite, neither tall nor short, with shoulder length shockingly red hair and large green eyes that she cast about the hanger bay with great interest.
“This is a very nice ship James,” she said before pitching forward and landing face down on the hanger bay floor.

[dogscoff]

*dogscoff dons his "I am a rabid HifH fan!" T-shirt, then straps on his bumpin' boots and does the laces up reeeeal tight.

Ker-BUMP!



BTW, what kind of editting did you want? I'd love to be involved. I've done a fair bit of writing myself, as well as some translation/ editting of other ppl's work on xenology.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I also read this.

[AgentZero]

Point taken. Enjoy!


“So, what do you think?” Kagan asked.
Himself, Alice & Saraea were in the galley of the Daedalus. The two women were seated at a small table, while Kagan slouched against the wall. The Daedalus was currently cruising across the vast expanse of space between the Victoria system’s two main jump nodes. The trip would take nine days, traveling at the maximum permitted speed designated by the system’s authorities. They’d just finished a leisurely dinner, during which Kagan had filled Saraea in on what had been happening, interrupted with great regularity by Alice who provided additional, although seemingly irrelevant details. He’d just gotten to the part about the explosion on Kolis Station.
“Well,” Saraea said slowly. “It sounds to me like someone’s trying to kill you.”
“But why?” Kagan asked.
Saraea shot him a meaningful glance. “Aside from the obvious?” she asked sweetly.
Kagan made a rude gesture at her. She made a ruder gesture back. And Alice made a much ruder gesture at both of them.
“Where in the civilized galaxy did you learn that?” asked Kagan.
“Nowhere,” she replied innocently, tucking both hands underneath her.
“As I was saying,” Saraea continued. “Whoever tried to do you in obviously didn’t much care about innocent bystanders, had access to state of the art equipment, an extremely skilled operative or operatives, and likely had an inside man on the job, too. Which leaves one of two possibi-“
She was interrupted as Alice suddenly jumped up, knocking over the table. “We’re under attack!” she shrieked.
Saraea and Kagan looked at her in puzzlement. “No, dear,” Kagan assured her. “For once we’re not-“ The remainder of his platitude disintegrated into the sort of language he’d been telling himself not to use around her as the ship lurched violently, throwing him to the ground. He scrambled to his feet and took off running down the hallway with Saraea in hot pursuit, only to find Alice already seated at the sensor station on the bridge.
“Three bad guys,” she informed them. “All of them bigger than us.”
“Any ideas on who they are?” Kagan asked.
“Um, yes,” she replied. “The ones with the funny spikey things on their heads. Kinda yellow greeny?”
“Taurens?” Kagan exclaimed. “What the hell are Taurens doing out here?”
“That’s the ones,” Alice replied. “Taurens. Terrans. Taurens, Terrans, Taurans, Terrans. It’s all good. Or bad. Yes, in this case it’s definitely bad.”
Kagan ignored her ramblings, something he was getting really quite good at these days and moved to a weapons station, while Saraea took the helm.
“Looks like three battlecruisers,” he said nervously. “Not familiar with the exact class though.”
The ship lurched again as their pursuers managed to land a couple hits, despite Saraea’s best evasive maneouvers.
“Oh no, we’re all going to die!” Alice exclaimed.
“More than likely,” Kagan replied as he began plotting in a firing solution that would hopefully slow the Taurens down enough for them to make an escape.
“Oh dear,” she replied. “I was being flippant.”
“No time for that now, the shooting’s starting,” said Kagan as his first missile salvo tore through space towards its targets. The battlecruiser’s point defense swatted the missiles down effortlessly, only allowing one through, and it was unlikely the huge ship even felt it. He made a few adjustments to the engine ignition sequence for the following salvo. The missiles would burn out a lot faster with the new configuration, but at this short range it wouldn’t matter much. The Daedalus trembled gently as her second salvo tore free, and this time the Tauren’s point defense only managed to stop a pair of the missiles, and the recipient of the salvo definitely felt it this time. The battlecruisers slowed their approach, increasing the distance between them and the Daedalus, which meant that the same trick wouldn’t work twice, but it at least pulled them out of energy weapons range. That victory, however was short-lived, as the three warships returned fire with their own missile salvos.
“Missile separation, we have incoming!” Kagan shouted.
“On it!” Alice shouted back, flinging herself across the bridge to land heavily at one of the defense stations. Her hands flew across the controls with blinding speed, and between her efforts and Saraea’s stomach-churning evasive actions, they managed to evade the first round of missiles entirely, but by the time the last of them fell victim to the Daedalus’ guns, another two waves were rapidly approaching.
“Time to jump node?” Kagan called out.
“Four days at present speed,” Saraea replied. “Though we could make it in twenty-seven minutes if we were to go to maximum acceleration. But that would attract-“
“Frack it,” Kagan snapped. “Max acceleration, now!”
The Daedalus surged forward, abruptly increasing the distance between themselves and the Taurens, and their missiles. The green-hides hadn’t planned on that, Kagan noted, as their missiles, realizing that they no longer had the power to reach their target, simultaneously detonated. Their burst of speed had temporarily pulled them out of even missile range, but Kagan knew that wouldn’t last as the battlecruisers began to accelerate.
“Tachyon spike!” Alice called out. “Looks like we’ve got more company. And I haven’t cleaned the good silver.”
Kagan looked up at his display as three icons representing Victorian in-system cruisers popped into existence on an intercept course. As they lacked in any sort of null-space drive system, they relied on Perth Nine’s massive null-space catapult to hurl them about the solar system. While this limited them to operations within one system, it also meant that the cruiser sized hulls packed considerably more shields & firepower than the three battlecruisers behind them.
The comm. screen flared to life and the uncompromising face of a Victorian captain stared out of them.
“ITS Daedalus,” he said sternly. “You are in violation of Article Twelve, Section Seven, Sub-Section Twenty Four, Paragraph Eighty Four of-” his head suddenly snapped to something off the screen. “What the hell is that?” he demanded.
On his display, Kagan saw the three cruisers break off and begin to accelerate towards the pursuing Taurens. Moments later, missile salvos erupted from both sets of ships.
“Phew,” Kagan breathed. “Looks like we’re gonna make it ok.”
“Well, not really,” Alice informed him.
In response to his questioning raised eyebrow, she gave her display a meaningful look. “We’ve been fined,” she told him.
“Have we now?” came the rhetorical reply. “Inform them that we will be happy to pay the fine at upon our next docking with Perth Nine.”
“Happily?” Saraea inquired. “When have you happily paid for anything?”
“When am I likely to be back here again?” Kagan countered.
“Touché,” she replied. “Now, captain, my captain, we are coming up on the jump node, so do you have any particular destination in mind, or shall I just jump randomly and let the Fates decide?”
“Hmmm,” Kagan mused. “As appealing as the centre of a sun or event horizon does sound, I’m afraid we’re going to have to pick a destination beforehand.”
He pulled up the local starchart on his display, and Alice’s finger went immediately to one particular sector.
“There,” she said insistently.
“There? Nothing there but-”
“There there there there theretheretherethere!” Alice began to stamp her foot and then bang her fist against the console so hard that Kagan was compelled to grab hold of her to make her stop. Getting dents out of permaplast was difficult & time-consuming, after all.
“Ok,” he agreed. “We’ll go there and see yer frackin’ nebula. Happy?”
“Yes,” she replied in a relieved sigh, before bouncing out of his lap and heading for the exit. “Now all this excitement has gone and made me sleepy, so I’m going for a nap.”
After she left, Kagan turned his eyes towards Saraea, only to find her staring back at him. “So,” she said. “She does tantrums now.”
“This does not bode well,” he replied dryly.
“For your relationship?”
“For civilization in general.”
“Heard that!” Alice’s voice drifted in from down the hallway.
With a look of astonishment, Kagan mouthed the word ‘How?’ to his friend.
“Heard that too!”