Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]




Add Reply
Radiance Reclaimed
Topic Started: Oct 26 2012, 02:26 AM (70 Views)
Crimson Six
Member Avatar

As the Fleet reassembled on the other side of the Federation jumpgate Argus fleet had left behind, he thought about how he’d left. The Sera had come from nowhere. No warning, no hint of trouble, until they burst forth from the ground to assault an underdeveloped and unprepared Empire. The Atrix had only compounded the catastrophe, sewing chaos and crippling his desperate attempts to contain the situation. He’d escaped, but only just.

The Exploding Suns Fleet and Mobile Infantry were at that point primarily focused outward. His years in OCONI and pursuing the ghost had taught him to be wary, but he hadn’t expected the Sera to already be beneath his feet. He hadn’t expected that Fed ship either, nor for the file it carried to be related to what he now suspected it was. If he had, he would have been ready for the damn Sera. Well, more ready at least. There had been a lot of them.

On that fateful day, the capital world of Nova’s Heart lay undefended, the ESMI First “Vanguard” Division being off world overseeing the construction of an orbital elevator with the Fleet in orbit overhead. Dawn himself had been on the planet, but his attention had been in orbit, and on the medium. At nineteen-thirty local time, shortly after that curious file from the downed courier ship had been downloaded to his AI Core, the Effortless Expansion interface he had somehow acquired during or after the cataclysm interrupted him to report that three of his reactors had been lost. “Lost?” he’d thought. “How is that possible?” He’d immediately brought up satellite imagery of the capital only to see several thousand Sera crawling all over the ruins of his reactor complexes and busily digging in. Fuck.They always seem to be there whenever we…I have to know what’s in that file. Thermal imagery had showed even more beneath the surface and within the rubble. They’d turned the place into a warren that would have been a lethal threat even if he’d had the forces to do anything more than try not to be annihilated. Still, at the time he’d he could get under control once he recalled his forces from his other worlds. He’d dealt with Sera before. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

He’d immediately ordered his fleet to load up and make for Nova’s Heart ASAP. He’d ordered his shipyards to roll out bombers, and begin loading the tanks of Vanguard Division. Calm and collected, he’d been sure he could deal with this threat. Time and the Sera would prove that confidence to be misplaced.

Once Vanguard Division was loaded up, the fleet had made a short hop though the medium to Nova’s Heart. The Mobile Infantry had made a hard drop, forsaking shuttles for the far faster and less vulnerable drop pods, cutting still more time off by delaying firing the brake thrusters until absolutely necessary to avoid destruction. He’d deployed Vanguard and ordered the fleet VI’s to provide bomber support. As he begin rolling tanks into the affected area with the walkers not far behind, Dawn saw one of his hundred ton plus Neutron Main Battle Tanks that he had sent up the rubble for a better picture of the battlefield than his low quality, outward-focused Effortless expansion satellites could give him get blindsided by one of the eldritch horrors that had been hiding behind the remains of a reactor blast door nearby. It leaped as it was about a meter from the tank, its armored head hitting the barrel right as the tank fired at another of the creatures that had evaded several rounds already, dancing about in the open as if taunting. An ambush? He’d always suspected these things were smarter than they seemed, and it had been devastatingly effective. The barrel bent, reinforced titanium alloys nearly snapping in two. The resulting explosion as the round found no exit reduced the tank to a flaming wreck, yet seemed only to faze the creature. Miserable wretches. He desperately tried to lure them into an open area where the Neutrons’ superior firepower and range might stem the tide, but he was heavily engaged amongst the twisting ruins and narrow streets where they struggled against their more agile foes and now found it difficult to extricate himself. The Corona Combat Walkers scarcely fared better. Though less constricted by the urban environment, they were more vulnerable than the tanks due to their thinner armor and vulnerable joints, and they were still not nearly nimble enough, especially on the loose rubble. Indeed, the monsters seemed almost perfectly built for this fight.

Hour after hour, shot after shot, he found himself being pushed back, constantly trying to fight off encirclement and annihilation, something at which he was not always or ultimately successful. Why are they here? What is in that file? Was the TCF pursuing our research after all? Maybe the OCONI skeleton crew was able to influence them. Even if he’d had air support, little though he could have scrounged up with the Fleet so young, it would have only slowed them down. But Trafalgar and the Exploding Suns “Fleet” were beset by Atrix, also returning from the void to haunt him. No help was coming, and who knew what else would yet spring forth from the void to further overwhelm the overstretched and outmatched Empire, already crumbling under the assault of a relentless foe. There were other things out there, and who knew what the ghost could accomplish, if it was even behind the Sera and Atrix. It wasn’t impossible they were intelligent with goals of their own. The few remaining companies of the Mobile Infantry were now split into two isolated groups, one desperately trying to defend the AI core containing himself; some anti matter he had abandoned his last attempts at a unified line to collect; and that damnable, cursed file that may have proved useful if only he could have gotten it offworld and had time to decode it. Or found someone who could, that had never really been his niche. But that was appearing to be increasingly unlikely as the freaks battered the line around the orbital elevator, his last link to the outside world and last hope of escape, finally shattering it and beginning a direct assault on the elevator itself. Damn it, I have come too far to die now! The elevator would be down in mere moments. Forced to admit he could not handle this on his own, and desperate to crack that file, Dawn sent out a call for help. “Argus, I seem to be under assault by Ser…some strange and abominable eldritch monstrosities here. What the hell are they, where did they come from, how do I kill them and can I get some help here" He lied, feigning ignorance and fear as he was unsure if Argus fleet would even be aware of them and not wanting to expose his own knowledge. Seconds later, an FTL messenger drone launched itself into the medium, and then the elevator was down. He continued to desperately fight on alone, hoping for rescue. Eventually, his hopes were realized. After a fashion.

Many hours later, though it seemed like days, he had finally escaped the system. The entire system had been lost, he had been very nearly pushed into the AI Core itself, most of the file was lost - it had been impossible to move or transmit in time – he hadn’t even gotten to see if his trap had gone off properly and he’d been forced to pull back ships from far outsystem quickly, no easy feat when he couldn’t directly control the ships involved but instead had to issue orders to a VI and with “Effortless Expansion" shit vastly inferior to what he’d been used to using when doing that, and even that had been strained pulling those stunts, particularly when the Eta Carinae operation was terminated in a spectacular fashion. Damn it, Alatos. You gave us the Jumpgate, and the drones, even if they escaped what you intended for them, why did the protocol you gave them have to be so worthless. That day had set him on the path he now believed would forever define him whether he liked it or not. They’d had mere minutes of warning the star exploded and lethal amounts of radiation and plasma reached them. No time for sublights. Jump in almost blind right on top of his human compatriots on the world below, load them up, jump out as the dying star boiled away the planet. It had even followed them into the Akita Superluminal Medium, stellar fire flowing like water through the window as the magnetic field generators sent them speeding away at many times the speed of light and the window eventually closed. One of the most beautiful things he’d ever see, its implications continued to haunt him to this day it seemed.

It had been too late for one of them when Argus fleet had finally come. The Sera had infested every world he’d had, killing the elevators on his undefended colony world that had been left to wither so that the Heart might not die in moments rather than hours. And so when the Atrix had annihilated the Fleet and the orbital defenses, the entire system had been lost. He’d learned of this only as his transports reached orbit, not having asked VFO when he arrived as he had been more concerned with the immediate situation on the ground, the true fury of the Atrix threat had been lost in his frantic struggle to survive. Certainly the scale of threat had taken him by surprise, surpassing anything they’d thrown at him before. Had they grown stronger? Or was what he had built in the frenzied flurry of expansion in the days and months after finally being once more liberated from those wretched, invasive, humiliating command and control restrictions simply not equal to what had once been available. And a price had been paid with the loss of that file. Never again. I of all people should have known just how insanely dangerous a place the universe can be after all I’ve seen. Atrix, Sera, and whatever else is waiting out there. Whatever comes, I’ll be ready. I’ll carry on OCONI’s mission and spirit, he’d sworn.

And now he was back to make that oath a little more true. Not willing to risk close combat with the Atrix, he simply jumped the frigates ESFV Solar Storm , Solar Flare and Magnetosphere into the medium at maximum sublight acceleration, bringing them out only a few thousand kilometers from the solar array facility orbiting the system’s star the Atrix had chosen for their home after annihilating the Fleet in the First Battle of Radiance, course correcting the Solar Storm at the last minute to aim for the remnants of the carrier ESFV Gamma Ray’s Wrath whose reactor’s were apparently functional enough to induce the Atrix to nest there, it’s .15c impact obliterating the ship and its inhabitants as well as nearby arrays and theirs. Rest in peace, old friend. The Solar Flare and Magnetosphere , spaced for maximum coverage, took care of the most of the rest. Parting coilgun rounds as the rest of the Fleet burned madly towards Nova’s Companion took care of the surviving Atrix.

He continued the hard burn as he approached the world, disgorging Dawn class bombers and Fusion troop shuttles on the in run before using the planets gravity to aid deceleration and falling into orbit. The Nova class carriers ESFV Hypernova , Gamma Ray’s Wrath , and Luminous , having been reinforced and expanded based on his revised estimations of enemy numbers took up a geosynchronous orbit over the only region of the planet his sensors could detect evidence of the Sera in, ready to recover and rearm bombers as they returned from their runs. The escorts, led by the Brown Dwarf class destroyers ESFV Ion Burst and Solar Spot but composed largely of frigates - though many more than he’d possessed the first time – took up position between the carriers and the nearby gas giant Nova’s Companion was technically a moon of. The bombers rained fury down on the Sera – for the lack of a better word – mound for the better part of the two minutes it took the transports to descend relatively safely to earth, bunker busters intended for reinforced durasteel penetrating to the beating heart of the mound and ripping out to a dull thump on ground-deployed seismic sensors and geysers of dirt and rock and blood. As the transports neared the surface, they switched to fragmentation rounds, shredding the Sera now swarming over the surface.

The tanks swarmed out onto LZ’s several kilometers from the Sera, Deuterium seeing no need to send the Mobile Infantry into suicidal close combat around the ruins of his infrastructure if he could avoid it. The region was otherwise mostly plains, perfect tank country. The Neutrons engaged half a dozen kliks out, picking off the Sera with high explosive rounds and the benefit of continued air support. If only I’d been prepared. So much could have been avoided came the thought once more unbidden to his mind. It would sometimes take two or three rounds to kill them, but he had the numbers and he had the range this time around. Even these eldritch beasts could only cover so much ground so fast. As the leading elements secured a secondary LZ about three kliks out the last of the transports bearing the Flare walkers and Bowshock heavy artillery landed behind them, the artillery opening fire immediately, the walkers remaining to provide protection in case the Sera yet had something up their proverbial sleeve. Incendiary and high explosive rounds rained down upon the mound, the bombers dropping their remaining ground penetrators before returning to rearm and the tanks spewing a constant stream of fire from both their main barrels and secondary plasma turrets. Soon the mound stirred no more, and shortly after heavy rounds from the Starquakes finally collapsed the remaining support structure in an enormous cloud of dust and ash. That was one enormous mound. Must have run miles deep. Too easy to kill. . He ordered his bombers to return, risking them in slow, low level flights to be absolutely certain the world was clean. But they found nothing. This world’s infestation was simply relatively minor and the terrain favorable. The ruins of the far more developed and battle scarred Nova’s Heart would no doubt be an altogether different monster.

Once the bombers and transports were once more aboard, he approached Nova’s Heart much more cautiously. The escorts surrounded the carriers in a sphere, Sunray drone fighters deployed to assist. Motherfucker. That antimatter sure did the trick. Gazing down upon the world, the core of his former capital was nothing but a blackened crater, no sign of any remaining infrastructure. He rained down fire from the destroyers for ten full minutes prior to sending down the shuttles. Bombers made constant runs on mounds far too close to the LZ’s for comfort while the transports disgorged themselves and the MI raced for their targets without the support of artillery too cumbersome and vulnerable to be deployed amidst the rubble. He saw motion flickering at the edges of the thermal views, ordered a split second too late for the VI’s to engage, then found his forces once more surrounded and isolated, this time pressed from within and without as they surrounded the mounds and were surrounded. He lost several hundred walkers and fifty three tanks before intensely concentrated air support allowed him to form his units into hollow diamonds, the tanks protecting the more fragile but more useful in urban combat walkers. He slammed these wedges hard against the inner ring of Sera, knowing he’d likely lose most of the MI but hopefully deliver an uncertain victory by killing the mound. The van and rearguards of the wedge blazed with main guns and secondary plasma turrets, the midpoints mostly relying on the secondaries, squeezing off a few shots with the mains when they could get a clear view. The Sera preyed upon this weak point, breaching the formations as they came within range of the round. He ran the rearguards right over them, losing about half but taking a sadistic pleasure in the broken corpses none the less as he formed a defensive line with his tanks, charging the walkers right up the mounds behind the lead tanks. Sera leaped from the rubble, hitting the vulnerable undersides of the neutrons and sending the wreckage flying back into the oncoming formations.

An incandescent storm of battle raged at the crest; tanks engaging the Sera only with their defensive plasma weapons, main guns aimed by his single minded determination to bring down those mounds; walkers turning furiously trying to track the sera while firing missiles and rockets into the caldera, legs being torn out from under them, turrets ripped off, desperately firing even to the last, hot lead and pulse lasers blazing and killing but far too slowly. As the last of his units were overwhelmed and beating into mangled scraps, Dawn unleashed a storm of hellfire, targeting the mounds with tactical nukes before searing what was left of the planet with his few precious city buster nukes, thankfully with not much work to do beyond the mounds thanks to the fact that most of his former capital was now apparently ash on the bottom of the crater. Hard enough on the way out, knew it couldn’t be easy coming in. They must have come from here. Companion wasn’t infested on anywhere near this scale, even after VFO and my surprise got most of the capital. He left his former home burning, deploying a few orbital defense platforms to keep watch and firing off a messenger drone to Argus before returning home via the jumpgate. “The system I have re-designated ‘Radiance Dimmed’ now appears to be clean. Just thought you’d want to know. Will begin attempting to recover the rest of that data immediately. Thanks again. ”

Edited by Crimson Six, Dec 1 2012, 08:15 AM.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Join the millions that use us for their forum communities. Create your own forum today.
Learn More · Register Now
« Previous Topic · Characters · Next Topic »
Add Reply