Newbie Galactic Combat II - Story Thread

[Ruatha]

I pasted this whole story, all three Versions into word using 10pts fonts. 83 pages so far!

Here is the first hmtl Version (will try to get them inphase later and put headlines etc):
Newbie Galactic Combat 030307 Collected works.

[ March 08, 2003, 09:21: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

[mlmbd]

CaptRR, I like it. All of you are cooking! Very nice!

Ruatha, Really good stuff. Do you name all your ship's? You all will have enough work by the end for a great book!

mlmbd

[tbontob]

Originally posted by Ruatha:
I pasted this whole story, all three Versions into word using 10pts fonts. 83 pages so far!

Here is the first hmtl Version (will try to get them inphase later and put headlines etc):
Newbie Galactic Combat 030307 Collected works.

I really like the idea of different colors.

[Ruatha]

I put it up on the Emergency site and that means tha it won't be on-line all the time, it's predominantly up when there's trouble at the PBW site.

[Ruatha]

Weyrling Empire 2406.5
------------------------

The plan had worked as expected initially.
The Weyrling fleet had passed the Sladden wormhole at high speed, initiating the thrust needed to diverge from the wormhole at the Last possible point.
Also as expected the Terrans did nothing, they where still sitting with their fleet guarding the wormhole, this was a disappointment.
After a couple of days it was also obvious that something was horribly wrong.
The Draven fleet wasn't heading for the designated rendezvous sector, they where heading for the wormhole.
There was nothing Elyssandra could do.
The Weyrling fleet was fast, but it couldn't defy the laws of nature. They would have to cancel their momentum before they could head back towards the wormhole and then they would arrive about a week after the Draven fleet. By then the battle would be over.
Elyssandra had serious doubts of the outcome of that battle.
Space combat was difficult. You had to match speed and course with the target, otherwise the battle would be over after the first few rounds of the weapons and the ships would loose contact with eachother. This had been tested but had never been any success.
If you however matched speed and course correctly you couldn't back off. To increase speed or alter the course to take you away from the enemy would take days. If you hadn't won by then you had propably lost. Ties weren't common. What the Dravens where doing now was an attack approach, and Ely could see that they where doing it well.
They where constantly deaccelerating as they headed towards the wormhole, when they arrived they would virtually have no speed left and the combat would commence.
In combat ships moved around each other and fighters went about in a furious speed. To the combatants it usually appeared as the fighting ships where moving freely in every direction, but actually they where just deaccelerating and accelerating in one general direction, and when heading away from the general direction they altered their true course by a minimal degree. Still, it was merely theory when you where in battle, you fought and manouvred relative to the other ships. You didn't think of terms of accelerating and deaccelerating, you though of survival and death, the other ones death!
What it all came down to was that the Draven fleet was on its own.

The tension aboard the Weyrling ships increased for every day that the Draven fleet closed in towards the Terrans. Matters weren't improved by the strict communication silence that the Draven fleet where keeping.
Elyssandra had tried to contact the Dravens at the Alliance HQ and succeded with that, but she shouldn't have bothered.
They had absolutely no idea what was happening in the Kuat system. They insisted that Elyssandra had command in the Kuat system, so if the Draven fleet was heading towards the wormhole it must be Elyssandra that had ordered it, and then why was she bothering them?!

Finally it came about.
The Weyrling fleet was to far away to see any details, but from the long range strategic sensors they could tell it wasn't going well. They couldn't see the individual Terran ships, only the gravitational anomaly from the combined Terran and Draven fleet. But they could see the friendly object beacon signals from the Draven ships wink out one after another. After a day there was no Draven ship left that could transmit it's beacon signal.
Still the wormhole continued to emitt a gravitaional disturbance, telling the Weyrlings that a fleet was still present.
It was stunning. The Terrans had took out a fleet twice it's size, and with propably very few losses to themselfs!

Elyssandra was furious.
She finally managed to get through to the Draven homeworld but wasn't allowed to speak with Yalare himself.
But one of his staff told her that the Dravens weren't planning on sending any more ships to the war atleast for another year.
Elyssandra couldn't belive it. She knew the Dravens had a large reserve of immensely big powerful ships, bigger than the biggest Weyrling ship ever constructed.
This war was fought on the behalf of the Dravens, and now they wanted to sit it out. And propably send in some colony ships afterwards to claim the planets the Weyrlings would fight for.

Elyssandra was very tempted to cancel it all. Take the fleet and head home towards Weyrling space. Let the Dravens fight this war when the Terrans brought it back to Draven territory, she thought.
But from what she had seen today, she also belived that Dravens would loose. And after conquering the Dravens the Terrans would surely remember the Weyrlings, and then the Weyrlings wouldn't have the Dravens by their side, only the Thermolians. And how much have the Thermoilans contributed to the Alliance?, she though with a bitter mind.
No, the Terrans must be defeated in Terran space, that was obvious.

Elyssandra called for a staff meeting in the strategy room.

"-Admiral Gryt. I will leave the fleet with the Indestructible and meet with the Draven ship Troikens Pride at the wormhole leading to Lasat. From there I will go to the Alliance headquarter and bash some Draven heads. I will bring the Draven fleet back with me to finish this war.
In the meantime your order is to survive.
Avoid all direct confrontation with the Terran fleet. Destroy as much of the Terran production capacity as you can. Glass all planets that aren't too heavily fortified. This will lead to massive losses of Terran civilians, but we have no options I'm afraid.
have you understood your orders admiral?"

"-Matriarch. Yes. It won't be pleasant but we will do it."

"-Good. Now patch me through to Admiral Tbon. He is currently at Kalzeron prime with the Hammer fleet."

"-Matriarch", the communication officer responded immediatly and pressed the appropriate buttons and knobs.
The commuication screen flared up and Admiral Tbon's white fur was projected upon it.

"-Matriarch, what is your orders? The Hammer fleet is ready!"

"-Tbon. I want you to open a wormhole from Kalzeron into the Sladden system. Lead the Hammer fleet in. Occupy the main Terran planets and glass all minor planets. You must destroy their industrial capabilities. We can't allow them to build up their fleet while I fetch the Dravens.
Are the orders understood?"

"-Matriarch. Yes.
About this wormhole though. It will present a major risk for our own homeworlds. The Terrans will try to send a fleet through and do unto us what we are doing to them. May I suggest we close this wormhole as soon as we have passed. I don't belive we will be needing any escape route."

Elyssandra wasn't sure about what Tbon meant by that Last remark. Was he so sure of victory? She was afraid he might be too cocky. Or perhaps he didn't belive in success? Which was worse she didn't know, so she didn't question him.
"-Yes, close that hole as soon as you are through. And while you're at it. Send through all Planetary killer drones we have ready at Kalzeron prime.
Elyssandra out."
She didn't want to talk to Tbon anymore, that very short discussion had been disturbing enough as it was. She gave the communication officer order to close the commnication and he did so.
"I'll be leaving immediatly. So Admiral Gryt. Transfer fleet flag to the battle cruiser Carl Gustaf. The staff will be spread out on 5 ships, conferences will have to be arranged through com links. We have done it before and we can do it again.
I wouldn't take the Indestructible if it wasn't our fastest ship, speed is of essence here."

The staff went to their quarters to pack their gear. The Indestructible would be an empty ship during the travel to Acamar and the alliance HQ.
The Indestructible was a battle cruiser arranged for a large crew, mostly strategic personal and tacticians. Fully crewed there were almost 200 people on the ship. Of those about a hundred would be leaving the ship to remain with the fleet.

The next day the Indestructible left the fleet and started it's journey.

At Kalzeron prime;

Ilian couldn't do this anymore. The burden of two lifes ruined was too much.
During one of his visits to Marit he told one of the staff at the hospital that he had heard of a similar case at the Eastern hospital, could there be any connection? He had asked.
After that things happened quickly. The doctors on the both hospitals talked and the cleaner jon was transfered to the same hospital as Marit within a few days.
When they rolled his bed into the same ward as Marit, Weyrling society shook in it's foundations.
All of a sudden all Weyrlings in the hospital froze in their movement, all tension in their faces disappeared. The effect was spreading rapidly, within a few seconds the surroundings of the hospital, another second the entire Kalzeron prime and half a second later all Weyrlings in the galaxy froze in their movements.
"I....am...who....am....I....?"
Billions of brains started working coherently, acting as one intelligence.
The One had awakened.
To the One it seemed like eons passed as it was getting a grip of the situation. It tested the sensorical input from billions of bodies. Strange sights, sounds and smells. It felt pain receptors signalling as people in bad positions frooze up and got hurt. As an example it felt the bodies of the freeclimbers as they fell to a certain destruction on the cliffs beneath the cliffwalls.
Thankfully most of the transportations where fully automatic. Otherwise the toll would have been much higher.
It started probing the countless of memories and understood what it was, it was The One. It had once decided that individualty was better than itself.
When seeing what had taken place during the three generations it had been dormant it saw that it had made a correct assumption.
The One had an enourmous capacity. It could keep billions of thought patterns going simultaneosly, testing different solutions to problems. But it didn't have much feelings. It took logical decisions. Decided the best course of action and followed that. It didn't test and try different solutions, that would be a waste of effort and it couldn't force itself to do that.
The individuality of the Weyrlings had brought astounding progress. Individuals where geniouses, the One was a large supercomputer.
Realizing this didn't in any way bother the One, individuality had been the best solution so it had been forced to take that path.
But now it saw something that it couldn't have foreseen before it went dormant!
The Weyrlings were meant to be a collective. As individuals they felt immense loneliness and eventually they would all succumb to it and the Weyrling race would die out.
The one thought about all the possible solutions and decided which was the best.
It eased it's grip on the minds of the Weyrlings, letting the individual personalities up from their dormant state.
"I am the One, We are the One. You are not alone anymore!"
It had found that the Weyrlings needed both, individuality and collectivness.
"I will always be here for you!", it directed it's voice to each individual, and each individual felt the truth in the voice and knew they weren't alone anymore.

From the time the first Weyrling froze up in the hospital it had taken five seconds before they all snapped out of their condition. Marit and Jon also sat up in their beds.
The one had seen the inplanted alien devices in their central nervous systems and deactivated them. It had found 1,115.231 functioning devices inplanted into the Weyrlings, all had been deactivated. The devices had been the key in awakening the One. When Marit and Jon was brought close to the device Ilian had made the device had functioned as it was meant, and activated the Celia Vortex in them . Unfortunately one Weyrling wasn't powerful enough to make other brains harmonize with it, but thow of them in close contact was enough to start a cascading effect.

The Weyrling society had taken another step in their evolution.

Aboard the Destroyer Responder;

Thurya was about to order another training drone to be launched when everyone aboard froze where they where.
After a few seconds they came to again and stared with a smile on their faces at eachother.
"-WE AREN'T ALONE! WE ARE ONE!", They all said in unison before they started speaking their own thoughts. It was chaos. But it was a happy chaos. Thurya had never felt such a joy in her entire life, she wasn't alone! It was ecstasy multiplied and raised by infinity! SHE WASN'T ALONE!!
She joined in the hugging and kissing that went on around her.
During all this they could all hear the One talk softly to them, cautioning them not to show the aliens that they where One. The aliens wouldn't understand, they would propably be afraid and turn against the Weyrlings.
The one didn't understand the aliens at all. But it knew it didn't understand them , so it had decided that caution was the best strategy.
Thurya ran down towards the turret where Try was unstrapping his buckles. She ran into his embrace and soon they where on the floor rolling around and tossing their clothes. They could hear eachothers thoughts, both knew what they felt for eachother, they also knew that it was alright. The rest of the crew knew all this and approved. All this they now knew. Things where so simple, why complicate it.
All over the ships strange encounters where happening. Anselm Jugg and crewman Jon where embracing. There had been bitter feelings between them for months now, steming from a misunderstanding. Now they both knew it was a misunderstanding. They where One!

Aboard the Battle cruiser Indestructible Elyssandra could feel Ilian's thoughts and feelings, even though he was an enourmous distance away. The contact was simultaneous. They now knew that it had all been pretend, they where One , and they where in love.
The One was trying to have conversations with alot of these individuals, millions of them at the same time. It was somewhat puzzled. It didn't understand their reaction and had a hard time getting them to react to the contents of it's words.
Elyssandra paid some attention to the inner voice and understood what it said;
"You are still Matriarch, Elyssandra. I am One but I do not know how to rule an empire. If I take over we will be lost. You will always have my guidance, I will tell you the best logical solutions to your problems. I can tell you what the rest of the Weyrlings think in different matters. But you must make the decisions. You have things that I don't; Feelings, intuition, guts and alot more which I see that I lack, therefore I am inferior to all of you, all of me. We are One, but we are also many. Things will never be the same again, yet they will still be the same!"

Elyssandra knew the meaning of these words and accepted ithem, but she was mostly focused on the love that went between her and Ilian who was so far away, yet still so close.

And the ship was slowly approaching the Lasat worm hole where captain Jalan awaited in the Draven light cruiser "Troikens Pride".

[Ruatha]

Yep, I now got more than 100 ships with individual names. Altough some of them might nor be very imgainative.

BTW.
Thank's for your continuing support

[mlmbd]

Ruatha, lots of really great story, there. Evolution, amazing!

mlmbd

[Raging Deadstar]

Hey, i used to read this story a lot but i kind of lost track of it, but i managed to sit down and read about 2 hours of this story (i than ruatha for this because of his long stories )

Well just thought i'd say i really am enjoying this, the humour and seriousness compliments each other superbly, keep up the good writing!

*Appluads!*

[Ruatha]

Thanks for the feedback.
It is really appreciated as these are the first stories we are writing aa we're taking our weak steps towards fame as authors

[mlmbd]

Ruatha,

Originally posted by Ruatha:
Thanks for the feedback.

You are more than, Welcome!

Originally posted by Ruatha:
It is really appreciated as these are the first stories we are writing aa we're taking our weak steps towards fame as authors

If these are 'WEAK' steps, then the Sci-Fi world had best look out!

mlmbd