Wow. Today marks the first time in 365 days that I have even been on this website. Quite the hiatus. Funny thing, it's taken me a year and a half to write this one shot, and it's nowhere near what I had hoped it would be. Anyways, this story is inspired by Nomadeagle's story Undying Heroes and one other story about Pacific rim and something else that I can't seem to find anywhere. I have borrowed their intro style to a degree, so that the setting can be presented in a way that doesn't forcefully push itself upon the reader *cough*chapters dedicated to timelines*cough*. That being said, today in thanksgiving. Also, I know how few Supreme Commander stories there are out there, and wanted to add one. So, with further ado, let's get down to business (to defeat the huns)(sorry, I just can't help myself).
What do we know about the harvesters? Well, that's a complicated question. You spend four years in primary school learning about them, and that's enough for most people. There are always a few people who say we know nothing about them. Scientists, ACU pilots, a good portion of the people you see everyday on the street, and heck, even my brother. I'm not one of them. I prefer to acknowledge the facts about what we know of them. We know that they're a hive mind, with some sort of queen at the top. We know they are technologically inferior to us, yet that they can overwhelm us in firepower at the same time. We know without a doubt that these aliens want to wipe the human race off the face of the galactic map. We fought them for an entire year, and they brushed off our every assault, shattered every defense we fortified, and pushed us to the brink of devastation. Most importantly however, we know that they are still out there, and they will not forgive.
-Dr. Sweeney on the Harvesters
Cooper hated his job. He had signed up to fight aliens, be a hero, and all that stuff. He was a true patriot, through and through. He had known there was no way he would get into the Commander program, no doubt about it. Hundreds of new ACUs had been build over the past twenty five years, but still only one in a thousand military personnel would get pulled into the program. Yet, of all things, a listening post?
It's not that he didn't understand the importance of his job, he'd taken the same courses in basic training as everyone else, it's just that there was nothing to do. While originally, these outposts were bustling with personnel and docked warships, the last quarter of a century had done a lot to make the alien threat seem less... well, threatening. They changed from a terrifying reality to a kind of a boogeyman, a story told to kids to make them do what their parents told them.
That's not to say that humanity had forgotten the horrors of the invasion; too little time had passed for that. It's just that everyone had waited for years for the next invasion, kids joining the military and scientists working on overdrive to create more and more powerful weapons. Yet, the aliens never came. While most people believed they were still out there, some began to believe that perhaps they'd been scared off. Either way, funding and manpower had been shifted away from the distant listening posts that were meant to allow humanity to prepare when the Harvesters returned.
And so it was that Cooper found himself watching a monitor on a Cybran space station, bored out of his mind along with the thirty other technicians that currently called it home. He likely wouldn't have even noticed the readouts on his screen if his replacement for the next shift hadn't spilled her coffee on his keyboard as Cooper's shift ended, causing him to swear and check his screens for damage.
He paused for a moment, blinking as he tried to understand what his computers were telling him. "Hey Sasha, are you seeing this? I just picked something up on our outer sensors." he asked his replacement, who's Cybran origin gave her a much better understanding of the equipment than he could ever hope to have. "Its like there's something the size of a moon coming at us, but at the speed that thing's moving, it should be on us in minutes.
She peered over her shoulder, eyes widening as her cybernetically enhanced brain raced through possibilities and arrived at a conclusion. "Captain, we have a contact at the outer sensor relays heading straight for us! At this rate, it'll be on us in two minutes sixteen seconds!"
The bridge erupted into chaos as half asleep officers rushed to their stations, preparing the station for battle.
The station powered up, batteries turning and fighter craft emerging from their fighter bays. The ship didn't even stop, the station shattering against its colossal hull as it continued towards its final destination, leaving nothing but scrap and a message floating through the void.
"They have returned. May god have mercy on our souls."
So, this story is pretty bad. Sorry, that's on me. I'm obsessed with numbers and had to post something exactly one year after the last time I was on . That being said, I'm horribly out of practice and this one shot is atrociously written. So, by the end of July, I will re-write this story and replace the old version.