[OT] - Story thread: Xenology Resurrected

[dogscoff]

Far out on the outskirts of an uninhabitted system, a ship drifts. To a casual observer- if there can ever be such a thing so deep in space- it would appear lifeless: No movement, no lights, nothing. However, if that observer were to listen in on certain frequencies, they would soon realise that life has not yet given up on the unfortunates within.

Not yet, anyway.

"If I dump it straight onto the speakers, you can tell it's clearly an audio transmission." She did so, and a scratchy, undulating garble filled the bridge.
"That's just noise, could be anything," the Captain grimaced.
"No wait," the subordinate said hurriedly, "keep listening."
The garble continued, but suddenly the unmistakable clang of metal on metal could be heard. Then a hissing, spitting sound that could easily have been a welding torch. The garble continued over the top of it all.
"Hmm." Said the Captain, much to the relief of his subordinate. "Do you think it's some kind of alien language? They must be trying to communicate with us."
"Yes Sir." The subordinate replied. "Well, maybe sir." The Captain shot her a sharp look at the contradiction, and she rushed to explain herself. "What I mean is, they might be trying to communicate with anyone. we picked up the signal the second we warped into the system and it hasn't stopped since, so it doesn't seem to be directed specifically at us. They might not even know we're here."
"Any idea at all what they might be saying?"
"No sir. The design and markings on the ship are similar to a ship that appeared near one of our colonies Last year, but they just warped away again, and there's been no contact since. We don't know their language."
"Hmm." Said the Captain again.
"However," said the subordinate, looking rather pleased with herself, "The warp point they are sitting on looks a lot like the ones that have damaged some of our ships in the past and they haven't moved at all since we arrived."
"So you think they're damaged?" A new expression came into the captain's eyes. "That would explain the sounds in the background of the transmission- if they were making repairs."
"Yes sir, I think you're right sir." The Captain looked at the screen a little longer, then to address the rest of the bridge.
"Very well, take us over there. I want to see if they really are damaged."

A week later, two ships drifted at rest relative to one another. The huge, insubsantial potential of the warp point glowered menacingly above them both.
"Definitely damaged, sir," shouted a voice across the bridge. The Captain turned to the owner of the voice with urgent eyes. "Great big holes all over it, and debris everywhere."
"Bring us alongside. Get the crews suited, we're going over there. There's no time to waste. I'll be leading this personally."

The larger of the two ships disgorged a hundred tiny shapes, which maneuvered their way over to the smaller vessel and explored every possible ingress. When none was apparent a number of compact, mobile airlocks were fitted to the ship's torn and dented skin and holes cut behind them, allowing the suited figures to enter. The first airlock party to breach the hull reported an unbreathable atmosphere, and fitted nose-breathers as they slid out of their suits.

The captain was the first to enter, and the first to encounter one of the aliens. It was about two metres tall, angular, slender-limbed and a dark-brown in colour. Its entire body seemed to be riddled with technology, which spouted aggressively from every part of the creature as though some kind of electric wasp had laid an egg within it and now its young were eating their way free. Although the creature's features were unlike anything the Captain had ever seen, its alarm was obvious at the intrusion. His species had an instinct for recognising fear, distress and weakness and it was instinct that dictated his next action.

He sprang like a striped arrow, his red and yellow markings nothing more than a blur until he struck the creature in its middle, boring and digging into it and as it struggled and screamed. He ploughed on regardless, wrapping his tail around its limbs for purchase and tearing aside the computerised implants wherever they blocked access to his victim's organs. Captain Shreekep heard the screams, muffled by the creature's own meat, and realised with triumph that the garbled sound in the transmission had indeed been the voice of one of these aliens, no doubt issuing a warning or calling desperately for help. More of them came running at the sound but they were too few. They were larger and heavier than the attackers and when they managed to organise an armed defence they laid waste to them by the dozen, but for every blood-crazed raider that fell writhing to ground there were two, three, five more, each one a frenzied tube of tooth and muscle with no purpose other than to kill and to feed.

The battle Lasted less than half an hour, culminating in a grisly bloodbath on the bridge, following which Captain Shreekep proudly curled himself in the blood-soaked command seat and writhed in victory. The ship was beyond repair with the facilities available but he could make a decent amount selling details of the ship's location to a repair and salvage operator he knew. Furthermore, he had managed to keep a few of the creatures alive, and they- along with the remaining frozen carcasses of their fallen comrades- would fetch an excellent price as exotic delicacies back home. Finally, his own dead would keep his ships food stores stocked up for months- after all the laws against cannibalism weren't strictly enforced out here, and with plenty of meat on board he would have no trouble attracting crew members to replace the 40% losses he had suffered in the boarding action. He didn't think it too much, after all, life is cheap to the KanesS.

******************************

That's right, those sneaky snakes are back. Welcome to the Xenology: Resurrection thread. On the marvellous initiative of Unknown_Enemy, we've restarted the game and the story will continue more or less where it dropped off, minus a few players. Expect some continuity-wierdness, as things haven't progressed quite as they did the first time around, but rest assured Kleesh, Shrikeesh and the Eden Overmind have not been forgotten.

Click below to read the beginnings of these stories:
Xenology - Original thread

[Atrocities]

Thank you for posting this great read. More please.

[Simeron]

Nice intro, look forward to more also.

[Raging Deadstar]

Ahh great to see this return, very well written. I can only wonder how this is going to turn out.

[sachmo]

Very nice!

[Unknown_Enemy]

Fire and Ice

After Hawks of Eden annihilated a strong Xi'Chung fleet at Gentika warp point, the Overmind began to feel more confident. The parasites were still outnumbering Eden on the sole ship numbers, but their swarm of fighters were slaughtered, and their warships could not outmanoeuvre Eden’s children. At the moment, the war was at a stop due to resuply duty and lack of enemy warships in the vicinity of the frontlines. Soon the Overmind would have to preserve a sample of Xi'Chung's gene pool before eliminating their threat to the natural order.

However, to the south of his homeworld, the Mind found some very strange races : the Xiati and the KaneSS. Both had developed fascinating concepts such as political systems or trade. While completely useless, these inventions proved the marvellous diversity of life in this quadrant. Looking at the KaneSS, this aggressive cannibalistic race was a wonder to observe, despite their hopeless demands to sample organics products for their consumption. On the other side, the Xiati were not only as aggressive as the Kaness, but they were developing some weird time based technology. They were watched closely, but peacefully.

Then, in the center of the quadrant, an aged Hawk of Eden was destroyed by a new foe. The enemy ship was lifeless. It moved, fired, dodged but no living beings were detected despite the full scan it endured. Immediately, a son of Eden volunteered to pursue the attacker. This particular child was already a war veteran, bearing scars of numerous battles.

I was grown with instincts of a predator.
I am the son of a Tiger, born for speed and murder.
The slow brother that is following me will soon be out of sensor range. He will just stay half way to the combat zone, waiting safely for my return to feed me when I'll be starving for supply.
I am chasing a prey.
It is said that no one can hear you in space.
That is false.
I can. I hear my prey near.
Let the dance begin.


The Overmind waited.
Months later, while the Xi'Chung war had resumed, he perceived the triumphant mewling of his hunter. And to the Overmind's surprise, the Void-Tiger came back with two very different preys. The first one was from a specie called Drukasha, and seemed to be some sort of mineral based life form. Communication intercepts showed they developed individuality, and also same alien concepts such as trade and political system. But the second one was the mystery. It was armed and fought until the bitter end, and only the Tiger's combat experience allowed it to prevail unscathed. It seemed the whole ship was a crystal, but not an artificial construct as Xi'Chung's, Drukasha's or KaneSS. It was a living being like a Hawk or a Tiger of Eden. It lived by the void in the same way as a son of the Overmind.


The Overmind called them Cryslonite.

[dogscoff]

More writing from me soon. For those who never heard of/ want to recap the original Xenology thread while waiting for the next installment, here it is:
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...3;t=009160;p=5

[ June 10, 2004, 10:57: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[dogscoff]

Kleesh was on the up again. As Minister of Galactic Domains, she had taken direct responsibility for every failure of the colonisation projects, and there had been many failures. For a while she had been forced into virtual exile by the propaganda and machinations of Shrikeesh, her scheming sister, who had worked her way up to become the current favourite for the crown while simultaneously pushing Kleesh down a few dozen places. Kleesh had retreated for a few years to one of the more comfortable colonies and hatched a small brood of around 70 with one of Shkimsk's sons. she had decided that if she couldn't take the throne legitimately, she would have to take other steps to secure power and respect for herself and her line. As a result she had begun to raise and educate the brightest and fiercest four-dozen of her offspring to take their eventual places as planetary governors, and had begun building shipyards and military training camps.

However, the situation had begun to improve since then, partly through Kleesh's own shrewd maneuvering and partly as a result of blind chance. It all boiled down, as everything does with the KanesS, to food. Despite the catastrophic delays caused by the slow progress of the colonisers, the exploration of other planets and their ecosystems had eventually led to an explosion in the exotic foods market and Kleesh had been in a prime position to capitalise on the exports now flooding back to the homeworld. Every KanesS everywhere wanted to try the latest meats from across the galactic domains, and she and Shkimsk had found very profitable ways of managing exports. More importantly though, she had managed to tie her own image tightly to the influx of delicacies. The average KanesS saw her as the direct source of their new cuisine and gradually they were learning to love her for it. Shrikeesh had tried to compete by buying food from various alien governments, but she simply couldn't provide the sheer variety that came from the colonies. Despite this however, KanesS still wanted to stay at home to enjoy having the benefits of expansion brought to them. Colonists had to be press-ganged from the lower classes, and only a very few desperate or enterprising souls went voluntarily.

But then the Xiati arrived, and everything fell into place. It all began with the boarding of a stranded Xiati exploration craft on the Pruli/Marak warp point. Shreekep, The captain of that craft, returned to Catia with a hold full of exotic meats- some of it still alive- and made a packet from selling the captured hull to a salvage firm as well. Xiati meat wasn't particularly tasty, but it was hugely popular. The thought of eating something intelligent fuelled an ancient hunger in the KanesS that hearkened back to the good old days before the Red Plague and the ban on cannibalism. True, the occasional Cue Cappan had been eaten before now, but that had been different. The Cue Cappans were allies, and as such they were strictly off the menu under similar penalties to those for cannibalism. The Xiati though- it was open season on them, and a veritable frenzy ensued. Shreekep became an overnight folk hero. Orders for suitably-equipped scavenging ships soared, and suddenly every entrepreneur, every adventurer-aristocrat wanted to prowl the frontiers, scouting for damaged or under-defended craft.

And this new enthusiasm didn't stop at piracy: Suddenly the colonies themselves were seen not as harsh and inhospitable hell-holes but as gleaming new worlds, bursting with excitement, opportunity and adventure. The colonisation offices were inundated, and if more than half of the starry-eyed hopefuls who boldly migrated were unable to cope with the stark chasm between their expectations and the gruelling reality of colonial life, then at least there was always another transport right behind them, full of yet more hopefuls eager to try where the others had failed. In this highly competitive, high-turnover environment it was inevitable that cannibalism would reassert itself on the colonies and the transports invariably went home empty. This only served to enhance the romantic perceptions of the colonies as a wild frontier where one could still find old-world values and plenty to eat, and Kleesh eventually relaxed cannibalism regulations somewhat to reflect the actual state of the new societies she ruled.

For those who remained at home frontier-chic was all the rage. Suddenly it was fashionable for comfortable middle-class parents to order their homes tunnelled in the vertical zig-zags favoured by the colonists of Catia IV, where tidal activity and frequent ice-breaks made such water traps an essential feature. Others used the 'accented' sonar that colonists from Daran II had employed to counter the crawler-mimics that infested their tunnels and interfered with their signals.

The public mood was swinging confidently in Kleesh's favour, and she was shrewd enough to capitalise on it as soon as possible. She organised an expedition to the tiny moon of Pruli VIa, upon which a small Xiati outpost had been discovered by Captain Shreekep. She advertised for willing combatants on the homeworld and within just a few tenths had almost fifty thousand hungry KanesS, all of them gripped with frontier-fever. She organised them into fighting units under her own household guard and loaded them all onto a specially-built invasion craft, along with a handful of adapted tunneling machines.

Apart from the core of professional soldiers, her makeshift army was largely untrained and armed only with whatever weapons the troops could provide for themselves- in most cases this meant nothing at all. She had expected to take heavy losses, but the Xiati were completely unprepared for the assault. The colony had several million inhabitants, but none of them were armed and it was clear they didn't know what the KanesS wanted their Xiati for, because they surrendered with only just enough resistance to satisfy Kleesh's bloodthirsty rank and file. She knew that if left on the planet her troops would rampage among the local population and slaughter every inhabitant in a matter of days, so she had the vast majority of them herded back onto the transport, paid handsomely for their efforts and shipped off to Catia to be trained into a properly armed and disciplined fighting force. She left most of her experienced soldiers on Pruli, where they kept control of the population until the arrival of the transports.

Pruli VIa was now a KanesS colony, and the colonisation offices back on the homeworld had been advertising land there for tenths. All the colonies so far had been on ice worlds, where the KanesS could dig their tunnels and feel at home, even on those worlds where alien atmospheres made it necessary to construct air-tight domes over the tunnel entrances. This moon, however, had no ice-sheet to speak of, it was solid rock. The Xiati had overcome this by building strange little structures on top of the rock and putting their homes and facilities within them. Every KanesS who bought space on the colony was to be given one of these structures. It seemed an unnatural, unpleasantly exposed way for to live from any KanesS' viewpoint, and ordinarily Kleesh would have had to give such endesirable properties away. However there were near-riots outside the colonisation offices as KanesS clamoured for the limited places, because the Xiati-built homes for sale included not only the structure but everything- and everyone- already in it.

[dogscoff]

swear your playing as this race with Hannibal lecter as your race pic to scare your opponents

Nonsense, now hand me that Chianti. Thfthfthfthfthfthfthf...

[Unknown_Enemy]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
Xiati-built homes for sale included not only the structure but everything- and everyone- already in it.

Bon appétit mes amis.

Your best KaneSS story so far.