Darkness Looming in the Night

by Wristan

A great threat has come to threaten any and all who stand in their way of conquest and greatness. A long war that spans out of thousands of years, with billions and trillions of lives being lost over its course. Many race would come together to try and combat this threat, but would they be able to succeed in doing so and would they be able to do so in time?

Well it's been a while since I did any sort of story and long story short, I've just been kind of down and just haven't had much motivation to write anything. To be honest, I'm not sure how long I'll continue this story for. It was on a whim after creating a campaign setting for Starfinder(Pathfinder in space). I GM a game for a couple of friends and it kind of didn't go well. I didn't want all that effort I put into the story I had, so seeing as the campaign flopped I decide to write a fanfiction for it.

This isn't going to be for everyone and I know the first part maybe kind of long, but I didn't feel right breaking the Prologue into two or even three parts. So I'm just going to leave it as is.

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It began over nine-thousand years ago a great threat know as, "The Dominion of Black" any and all race that opposed them would be purged from universe. As time went on more races came together and would later be known as, "The Coalition of Galactic Harmony." The war completely one sided war and Billions lives would come to be lost over the next thousands of years. The Dominion of Black's technology being far superior left everyone feeling hopeless and that they would all soon meet their end sooner or later.

Nine of the largest and most technological species that banded together put their best and brightest to hard grueling work to find some means to fight back against this threat. Every year more and more lives were lost and hope was dwindling even farther, but after around a century of work a beacon of hope was born and it was a ship called, "The Divinity." During all this time though other species had pledge allegiance to the Dominion which left no time for live test, they had to gamble that what they created worked like it did in the simulations.

A crew was need and with the an Androffan Captain taking charge of the Divinity, she formed a crew of from the other eight races and began preparation to launch. Everyone was nervous and she knew it, but she knew the crew was the best in the fleet. With final check, the Captain gave the order to clear orbit and they set out to find the first Dominion of Black ship they happened upon.

It only took them a few days before they encountered the first dreadnought class battleship of The Dominion of Black and weapon fire was exchanged on both sides. At first the Dominion Battleship had the upper hand, but the Captain order the crew to bring the front maser cannon online and fired. In a single shot, it pierced though their hull like tin foil. They watch as the ship exploded before them and the crew celebrated their victory. They knew it was only one ship, but that one ship was the push they need to press on.

The Captain was ready to test out the new Gate Drive, an experimental engine system that allowed the ship to create a worm hole and be anywhere in the know universe in mere moments. The came out upon an enemy outpost and open fired, the outpost had little chance to launching a counter-attack with the sudden appearance of the Divinity on top of them. The outpost and any ships nearby were dispatched and after minor repairs they moved onto the next target.

This went on for a few weeks, the Divinity's crew confident that nothing could stop them, until they saw what was in front of them on their next Gate jump. The ship, it was beyond anything they could've imaged and the size made them feel like a gnat. The entire crew was stunned by fear and unable to comprehend how something so massive could exist. The Captain gathered herself despite he mind telling her to, "Run."

She raised a hand and open comms to all decks, "All hands, prepare to engage the enemy. Bring all weapon to full power and shields to maximum. Helm, take us in." with that the crew began to focus on the orders instead of the dread of facing such massive foe. Deciding to open with the maser cannon, feeling their other weapons wouldn't have any effect the Captain gave the order, "FIRE!" the beam of energy ripped through space and towards the enemy vessel and what happened next brought the dread back to the crew.

The maser cannon made impact, but didn't even phase the enemy shields. This was not good and the Captain knew they need to leave and now. As she ready the order the crew noticed a light coming from the enemy ship. It change almost every spectrum of light before settling on a bright blinding white. At the last moment the Captain knew what was coming, "HELM HARD TO STARBOARD!" Still stunned at what they're seeing they reacted to slowly to the order.

Though the ship dodge most of the massive blast, the port side took heavy damage. Light, Alarms are sounding and the crew was thrown about from the force of the blast. The Captain got up slowly, taking some injuries and pretty sure she fractured a rib, checked on other crew members. Everyone on the bridge are fine, but reports that those on the port side were lost in breaches or severely injured. It was definitely time to leave.

This multi-planetary sized battleship made it's way slowly forward and the crew of the Divinity expected another blast to finish them off, but instead the front of the ship slowly began to open and it looked as they it was going to swallow them whole. Captain Upland had enough of this, "Helm, bring us about and engage the Gate drive."

"Aye, Captain."

As the system began to power up and the ship turned about, the Captain's comm line on beep. "Captain, its Dubinsky in Engineering, the Gate Drive isn't at a hundred percent after that hit. I can probably only give you one more jump, but anymore damage like the last and we're a sitting duck."

"Understood Dubinsky. I want you to redirect any energy you can to the aft shields just in case they do decide to take another shot at us."

"Aye, Captain. Dubinsky out."

As they finish coming about and begin creating the worm hole another shot is fired, barely missing them. The Divinity begins moving into the worm hole and this time the ship is rocked by another hit. This one not as strong as the first, but isn't helping their situation. The aft shields manage to take the blast, but displays show that shield power is now at zero. Captain Upland doesn't plan to stick around long enough for that to happen.

"Helm, Give me everything you got and get us through that worm hole."

"Aye, Captain."

Another shot makes it's way to them, but arrives too late as the worm hole closes behind them and the Divinity is gone. The Divinity somehow manage to get back to the Ankou in the Gretok System where they launched from, if barely.

The ship is in bad shape as they hail the outpost, "Captain Upland, the Divinity looks to taken a beating, what happened?"

"I'd like to explain, but I rather not do it over open comms. If you could send a couple of tows to bring us in, I've much to discuss with the Counsel. I'm afraid we're going to need a new plan."

"That doesn't sound good. I'm sending a couple tow ships to you now Captain. For now, just sit back and catch your breath." The channel closes and a few minutes two ship lock on tractorbeam and pulls the Divinity into space dock. Captain Upland makes here way to a chamber were nine members sit. They wave her in and to have a sit.

She takes a sit at the table and begins to explain to the counsel what happened, "Ladies and Gentleman of the Coalition, as I have submitted the Divinity preformed beyond what I think most of us had hoped, but it seem we have over-looked the true power the Dominion has at their disposal. We assumed their Dreadnought class ships were the biggest in their fleet, but we were wrong. As you see in my report, we encounted a ship that could easily be ten to fifteen planets in size.

"We fired the Divinity's maser cannon and it didn't even scratch the shields. I'm not sure what we could do against such a ship if the Divinity can dent it. Even if we took every ship we had in the fleet at it, we'd all just be committing suicide going up against it."

One of the counsel speaks up, an artificial humanoid, "Captain Upland, we agree that from what we read in your report with our current weapons we're no match for the ship we are classifying as, "The Obsidian Reaper." Though what we have in mind as our greatest assist is not a weapon, but the Gate Drive system which will be how we'll stop not only The Obsidian Reaper, but the Dominion of Black altogether."

"Currently our only issue at the moment is a plan to bring the majority of the Dominion force all to three major location, but we'll need every ship we have in the fleet to make this work. To be honest Captain, if this doesn't work, then there won't be anything left to stop the onslaught that will rain down on countless worlds."

Captain Upland just scratching her head at this point, "I'm a bit confused, how is the Gate Drive going to help defeat our enemies?" Another member stout, rat-like humanoid speaks up, " I'm glad you asked Captain, in the time you were away we have manage to equip 11 other ships with the Gate Drive system, what we plan to do is creating a subspace prison of a sort. We going to have 3 groups of 4 ships draw as many of their ships into large concentrations and focus the Gate Drive around them.

"What it will do in theory is pull them into a pocket of space and trap them their for all eternity and restore peace back to the universe. Since your ship has had contact with their flagship, you and the Divinity will lead the charge on that front. With a third of the fleet mobilized behind you to bait their ships to where you'll open the worm hole and trap them in subspace. That's is the primary objective for each of the four Gate Ships the will be divide to the three sectors we picked out."

The Captain is face-palming at what she's hearing, "The hell is this crack-pot plan, In theory my ass. You're going to bet not only the lives of my crew and the lives of the entire fleet, not to mention if it fail the universe on a Maybe. Are you FUC-"

A women, tall with antennae, dark skin and yellow eye, cuts off Captain Upland before she can finish that sentence, "Captain, we have consider many possibilities, but each one had a lower success rate then the last. The best odds of beating our common enemy was the Gate Drive and though a theory and maybe not full fleshed out. You must remember the Divinity when launched was not fully tested itself.

"Yet you are here before us, alive and with a higher success rate then we hoped to come out of the Divinity. So our option are to sit here and slaughtered like Yairi or we take

our one chance to end this conflict once and for all."

Any counsel member jumps in, "Look none of us like the plan, but you've demonstrated that you are able to handle tough situations. Captain if this is not to your liking we'll understand and we can assign someone else to the Divinity-"

Captain Upland stands up, slamming her hands on the table, "Look here, I've fought long and hard with my ship and crew and I'll be damned if I'm going to allow you all to replace me with someone else. If this suicide mission is our best option, so be it. I rather go down fight then sitting in my quarters knowing people are out their fighting and dying and I didn't do anything to help them.

"If you want someone else on this mission you'll have to pry command of the Divinity from my cold dead body."

Everyone on counsel smirks and then chuckle, "That's won't be necessary Captain. We rather have you on this mission along with all able hands. In the meantime, until the repairs of the Divinity are complete I recommend getting some rest and relaxing while you can. We don't need an exhausted Captain on the battle field. Is there anything else anyone wants to say before we adjourn?"

Everyone looks around and doesn't say anything, "Very well, you're all dismissed." As everyone heads out the Androffan leader on the Counsel stands, "Captain a moment." Captain Upland stops and turns to face him, "Can I help you Sir?"

"Captain I shouldn't have to remind you that kind of tone before the counsel is unacceptable, even if what you said it true. I hope you keep a cooler head during the mission for everyone sake."

Captain Upland give a salute, "Yes Sir, I apologies for my outburst. With everything that's happen I'm just a bit on edge. I promise I'll do everything within my power to make this mission succeed."

"I know you will Captain and we're all on edge, but that doesn't mean we can go off the handle like you did. Get some rest, you have a few days before the Divinity is repaired. So make the most of them. You're dismissed."

With that Captain Upland returns to her quarter and she begins taking off her uniform. With just her undershirt and panties left on she walks over to her desk and picks up a holo photo of her family, Her husband around forty-five years old, who stands at 6 foot with light tan skin and graying hair and her son, around ten years old, brown hair, blue eyes and posing with his toy pistol, "God I hope you're all doing fine. After this is all over I can't wait to see you again."

Over the next few day and some communications that the counsel purposely wanted to be intercepted by Dominion forces seemed to have worked. The enemy ships we pull a number of ships where the Coalition wanted them to be. The communique were false battle plans where their ships would be entering from and attack strategies, but they would be entering from a different location.

All the fleets were at the ready and waiting to moved out.

When the signal was given ships equipped with Gate Drives began to open worm holes and allowed the other ships in the fleet to go first. This wasn't something they able to do at first, but improvement were made on the drive while the Divinity was away. All the ships end up at their destination are in formation as they waited from those in charge of each of the three fleets to give the order to commence attack.

Captain Upland looks upon the enemy fleet from the enhanced image on the view screen. Seeing The Obsidian Reaper again sent shiver down her spine as she did her best to shake away the fear and anxiousness she was feeling. She reaches to the control console on her chair and opens comm to Coalition fleet, "To all ships, this is Captain Upland. I know the sight before you all must be terrifying, but remember that everyone back home is counting on us to see this though.

"To all fighter, engage the enemy and lay down fire to incite them to follow you to the objective point. While our fighters are doing so, our long range support ships will be laying down covering fire. Cruiser will move in if need to draw enemy fire away from the fighters if we're taking heavy losses. Don't try an be a hero and do anything that isn't required, our job isn't to defeat them, but to draw them in so that the Gate Ship can do their job. On my mark, all fighter begin their assault."

Captain Upland closes the channel and presses another button on the console and the fighter head forward towards the enemy fleet. They preform hit and run maneuvers, doing very little damage and none of the ships seem to be breaking from their positions. The support ships added fire doesn't seem to be making much of a difference either. Captain Upland seeing this decides to take action.

"Helm take us forward til the maser cannon is in range, tactical, prepare to fire a sweeping arc through this area of the enemy ships. Comms open a channle."

"Aye, Captain." though they seem taken by surprise by the actions they follow her order out. "To all ship currently engage, fall back to this coordinates." The fighters begin to disengage taking some loses as they do so. Any cruisers the moved up to help out also do so as well. Support ship continue to lay down fire to help out the fighters and cruisers. Once they're clear the Captain orders tactical to fire.

The maser cannon sweeps across the enemy fleet taking out about ten dreadnought and cruiser class ships. The enemy fleet begins to move to the Coalition fleet. Captain Upland give a toothy grin, "That got them riled up. Helm, return the Divinity to it original position in the fleet."

"Aye, Captain."

As they wait for the ship to get into the designated spot for the Gate ships to do their part. Captain Upland makes sure all Gate ships begin charging their Gate Drive and bringing the forward arrays online. It was a challenge to sit here waiting for the enemy fleet to get within range, all the while watching more and more ships being lost. She hated sitting on the sideline and was more of a women of action. She grinded her teeth all the while, gripping the arm rest of her chair tight.

Finally her tactical spoke up, "Captain, enemy ship within range and all Gate ships stand ready and awaiting you command." She stood up, "Finally, comms open a channel. To all Gate ships, move forward and wait until my mark to engage all Gate Drives." All ships chime in and Acknowledge this and waiting to the right moment Captain Upland gave the command, "MARK!"

With that space around the enemy ship started to distort as the Gate ship wrapped the worm hole around and watch as the ship disappeared from sight, except one, The Obsidian Reaper. It was fighting against being drawn in the net they threw over the Dominion fleet. Captain Upland being annoyed at how this ship seemed to be able to thwart everything they threw at it.

She was about to contact engineering when a familiar bright light ripped through space hitting a good portion of the Coalition fleet. When the light cleared reports came in that about one-third of the fleet was destroyed along with one of the Gate ship. The worm hole size decreased and the Obsidian Reaper was slowly breaking free. This was not good, they had to do something and fast.

They crew at a lost turned and began asking Captain Upland question like, "Captain what do we do? Captain we lost a Gate ship, how are we going to pull in that ship now? Captain, should we retreat?" She slammed down her fist on the chairs arm rest, "Get it together people, we've come to far to give up now." She open comms to engineering, "Lt. Commander Dubinsky is the anyway to compensate for the lost Gate ship?"

"It's possible Captain, but it'll be risky and we could lose the other two ships by doing so."

"At this rate Dubinsky we're going to lose much more then two ships. What do we need to do?"

"The remaining three ships are going to have to go over the safety limitation of what their ships can handle and put the output to two-hundred percent. Doing so should not only cover for the lost ship, but give double what we have now. So if all ship do this we'll equal that of six Gate Drive ships, but that kind of output our sister ships won't last long."

The Captain stares down with a cold expression on her face, "I understand Dubinsky, please begin to prep the Divinity to divert all power to the Gate Drive." One of the ensign speaks up, obviously scared and frighten the way they're trembling,

"Captain, this is suicide. We should join back up with the rest of the fleet and-"

She walks over the the ensign and hits them across the face, "Get a grip on yourself, if you unable to handle the current situations you're are relieved of duty." The ensign stand back up slowly and goes back to their station."

Going back to her chair she sits down, "What are you waiting for Dubinsky? I gave you and order, tell the other ships what they need to do so we can win this and go home already." Solemnly Dubinsky replys, "Aye, Captain" and with that the channel is closed. Receiving the information and after receiving order to follow them from Captain Upland, there's a brief pause before they acknowledge he command.

All ships increase the output of the Gate drive and the worm hole mass triples in size and the gravitational pull from it starts drawing the Obsidian Reaper back in. In a desperate attempt to stop this the Obsidian Reaper fires, but the laser fired are normal and blocked by Coalition ships that fly into the path of them. Remaining ships form a barricaded around the remaining Gate ships to protect them.

The Obsidian Reaper is currently diverting most of its power to engine to prevent being pulled in. Then an explosion is seen as one of the Gate ships goes critical from the increased output of their Gate Drive. The field of the worm hole decreases, but not in time for the Obsidian Reaper to escape.

Seeing the worm hole close before them they Obsidian Reaper hacks into the Divinity's computer system. The crew attempt to stop the with counter-measures, but it was too late. The virus had been planted and one the worm hole closed the other Gate ship exploded. The virus went to work infecting ship after ship, and rewriting every electronic device across the universe.

The Divinity on the other-hand had it's AI rewritten for other purposes. Their Gate Drive engaged and inverted around the ship, transporting it to a remote sector of space. Captain Upland didn't know what was happening, but then symbols of the Dominion of Black began appearing on the screen and the crew was losing control of the Divinity. Everyone tried doing what they could, but then the AI of the Divinity appeared, "All who oppose the great Dominion of Black Empire shall be eliminated."

Captain Uplands console chimed, "Dubinsky, what's going on?"

"Captain those Dominion bastards planted a virus in the computer AI. We're losing control of systems and reports of the robots on board have began to attack the crew."

"Can you shut it down?"

"No, I've been trying, but it's beyond hope for the ship."

"Can we self-destruct the ship?"

"I'm Afraid not, critical systems have been locked out. Though I maybe able to get you enough control to helm, but I'm not sure how much that would help." Captain Upland mutes the channel for a moment and brings up the view screen and sees before them a planet. "Well not the ended I had hoped for, but it'll have to do." She unmutes the channel, "Dubinsky, I have a plan. Get me control to helm."

"Aye, Captain." She move towards helm control and relieves them of their post. She begin entering to steer the ship into the atmosphere of the planet. After a moment she has control and punches in the heading. She then opens a channel to the entire crew, "All hands, this is the Captain. Make your way to the closet escape pods and abandon ship."

As the bridge crew begins to leave the bridge a face of the computer AI appears on the screen, "Cleaver Captain, somehow that meatbag of an engineer manage to gain control of the engines. It seems you manage to lock in a direct course into the planet atmosphere, but though I unable to gain control and escape out of the gravitational pull of the planet. You and your crew won't be going anywhere either HAHAHAHA!"

With that multiple images of the escape pods being launched from the ship and drifting away from the ship is shown. The Captains heart drops knowing that theirs no way to get her or her crew to safety and they going to be going down with the ship. The Captain returns to her seat and opens the comms one last time, "To all hands, it seems though we won the war over the Dominion of Black, they left us with a final gift before begin locked away.

"Currently the ship has been infected with a computer virus and is under control of the Dominion virus. All the escape pod have been injected into space and there's no way off the ship. It seems we'll be take the last Dominion influence left in the universe down along with us, but you should be proud knowing that all you families back home will be safe due to our efforts her.

"I'm sorry I couldn't get us home like I hoped. It was an honor serving with you all, you're a hell of a crew." In the last moment, the crew shared a final look and some a final hug as the ship entered the upper atmosphere and burned across the sky. The ship split apart and different section went plummeting towards different area of the surface of the planet. Though this planet wasn't uninhabited, though more primitive then their own, civilization of different people and races stared up at the sky as that would be known as, "The Age of Darkness" falls upon them.

The aftermath of the war was fought with the remain Dominion allies and they began to flee at the sight of the Dominion of Black defeat. The viruse left behind would cripple societies for centuries to millennium to come. It deleted all information and employed all electronic devices to give off an EMP. Technology was crippled and if any did escape unscathed then it was fought over. Knowledge passed down of what happened would have Gaps and would soon be referred to as, "After Gap" or AG for short.

What the Dominion of Black had done was a universal reset sending everyone back to the dark ages. Not even the Dominion Allies were spared this fate. Though that of old and forgotten would come back into play. Magic had become know in the next generations to come and though slow going Technology was also begin restored. Some have even come together to mix the two together in to a hybrid between Magic and Technology.

When races finally restored space flight and began to find one another again it was a great moment. They search the universe for lost technology and the greatest lost to be looked for was the Divinity, but after many centuries of looking with no clues found about its whereabouts, the search was called off. Though peace was restored, a dark seed laid sleep, waiting for its chance to set a plan into action. It one day it's slumber would soon be disturbed.