Foreword.
The border war stalemate between the two major species in the galaxy, has lasted for decades and spanned numerous star systems but now it has erupted into a full-scale invasion and a fight for survival of the human race.
The Hegemony of Mankind Nations was formed in the year 2400 when several splinter factions of the Mass Expansion Era decided to join forces after contact with new alien species became a regular occurrence, some not so peaceful. A mighty empire was born just in time for the first contact with the warring armadas of the ruthless and violent Mensoid species.
The series of stories is based in the universe of a game called Stars! from Microsoft, an advanced interstellar strategy game published by Empire Interactive in 1995.
Different character from different areas of the H.M.N. will be introduced in the form of several linked short stories in the same universe, each revealing a little bit more of the vast Hegemony culture and its inner worings.
The prologue consist of a few journal entries from the initial major characters to set the scene for the first short story of about 13 pages with about 5400 words. The first story is a fast paced adventure in a race against time with some character profiling and a lot of Hegemony technology and term explanations.
Ps. Here is the welcoming message to the game from the game help files:
Welcome to Stars!
It's a Relatively Small Universe, After All
Somewhere out on the edge of the Universe, two great races (the Sznip, a race of crustaceans, and the Fermis, a race of nuclear plasmatoids) have destroyed themselves and the chance for all remaining sentient races to evolve and expand into (nearly) infinite space. Once upon a time there was a Theory that said the Universe was made up of interconnected bubbles of space/time. The Sznip and the Fermi War proved it. The detonation that destroyed both these super races also caused these bubbles of real space to pop (actually a simultaneous replacement of real space with null). All the bubbles but one. This bubble of space/time, your bubble, is all that remains. And it's small (too small) and full (too full) of sentient species, each on the verge of colonizing other planets and traveling between the stars. Each race hungry to control the little bit that's left.
There's bound to be trouble.
What You're Doing Here
Fortunately, the element found in the terrible weapons of the Sznips and Fermis does not exist in the Universal Remnant. So there's a limit to the trouble you and your opponents can cause. During your first year, you'll be ready to build your first simple space ships. Eventually you'll build interstellar cruisers and planet bombers, freighters the size of small moons, and weapons that will make your opponents tremble (or shrug, depending on their confidence level). You'll colonize world after world as quickly as only your race can. You may get lucky, and find artifacts left by those ancient races that catalyze your research efforts, or encounter transdimensional beings offering you knowledge that only they possess, and at low, low prices. By the time the space dust settles, 100, 200, perhaps 500 or more years will have passed, and either you or one of your undeserving opponents will be calling the shots. Or, shot up, war-scarred, and with too few resources to continue, you'll call a halt, shake hands and all settle down for a foot stomping game of Fizbin.
It's the 2400th year of the Planetary Era. Your world is resource rich and bustling with technological development. Your political leaders are giddy and, with much fanfare, have just declared this as the first year of the Galactic Era. Your people are looking for a real leader.
You are the Master Strategist
Use the Stars! control panels to command your capitol worlds and fleets, to seek out strange new worlds and new civilizations, to boldly help your neighbors understand their role in the doctrine of Manifest Destiny.
Prologue
Personal Log Entry:
Header Meta Data wc866
Subject:
Captain Lee Flanders
- GSR Merchant Division
- Corporate Sub-Contractor for Trans-Galactic Haulers Inc.
- SFF-24 TGH - Staff Ferry Fleet TGH-Trans Galactic Haulers
- 'The Messenger' CSSx42 - Corporate Speed Shuttle
Time:
HMN.yr 2677.3 - The Mensoid Wars
Location:
Garnet System
- ID Designation : 423
- Location: GER-Dqs1
- Grid: 1913-1423
- Population: 1.025M
Start recording...
The CSS ship was a beauty, state-of-the-art, the fastest in the Hegemony and so utterly expensive, only big Corps and High Council or Nexsus, top leaders had access to them. The fact that I had been summoned and picked up by a CSS showed the severity and importance of the new assignment they wanted me for, a mere cargo hauler captain like myself.
The other indicator was that they had given me and open-ended reward value on a binding contract. There were big plans brewing and somebody wanted me to be part of it. No doubt it had something to do with the recent developments in the Mensoid war. What exactly that was, was anybody's guess and if Corp HQ didn't want you or anybody else to know, not even the High Council or War Nexsus would be able to pry the secret open.
I had been in cryo-sleep for three months instead of three years as the CSSx41 danced through Warp space towards from the Garnet system which housed the Corps main dispersal and construction yards. But with the hi-tech gear they had on this ship, I hardly noticed the side effects normally associated with Warp travel. I had been roused a few hours before we were due to arrive at our destination.
I oozed into the comfy-sofa, which molded around my shape for support. Then I switched on the wall-unit to the HNN-Hegemony News Network and watched a synth-rep preparing for the news broadcast as the vid-cam zoomed in.
"Hi, I'm Hall Trinity for HNN News, welcome to the headlines at 8...
Things are getting worse... The latest war statistics released by the Hegemony War Nexsus, showed a rapid increase in invasion fleets crossing the GER, Galactic Eastern Region borders. But what is most alarming is the fact that the Mensoid Battle Armadas had slipped through the defensive proximity-detonators grid unnoticed by the inter-systems scanner-lattice and at apparently impossible speeds. As a result, another orbital Habitat was destroyed in minutes, killing 1.7 million Hegemony citizens.
Rumor has it that the Mensoid Hierarchy's technologists might have discovered advanced technology to enable such feats of deception and speed. What does the Nexsus plan to do about it? Lets find out as we speak to one of the senior representatives in the Nexsus Admiralty..."
The sound muted and a soft soothing voice spoke over the PA audio.
"Thirty seconds to disengaging traction fields, sixty to exit Warp-space..."
I activated the view portal to watch re-entry into normal space or at least the visual representation of the outside. Warp-space was a sub-dimension layer above normal matter-space that had no visual wave lengths or visible light. It consisted of pure energy clouds that gives off micro-x waves. Warp-space ships relied on sensor cells that were sensitive to these waves frequencies to build a visual representation of the surroundings so that they could navigate Warp-space safely.
The walls on either side of my cabin shimmered slightly before dissolving into a blackish landscape. A sea of choppy black wavelets raced beneath the shuttle with six pulsing traction beams suspending the craft above it as well as pulling it along the surface. A black bubbling canopy of smooth clouds formed an impenetrable ceiling above with bulbous, churning columns of black clouds, a raging power storm loomed in the far distance. Contact with either of these entities meant instant disintegration by the mind-boggling vast quantities of pure energy that pooled into these congealing masses.
Even the 'empty' space between these masses were wrought with sub-atomic instability that would tear the fabric of normal space objects apart in milliseconds. This meant that all normal space vessels had to be enfolded in a oscillating integrity field that nullified the destructive harmonics of the Warp-space fabric. This copious amounts of energy had more than all the ships and planets in the entire Hegemony could generate in a century. That was also what the traction field was used for, ciphering pure energy from the warp sea straight into the integrity field with secondary, filtered spill-over, charging the ships normal systems through an insulating induction field.
I watched as, the traction fields was diverted to a dense penetration integrity-field in front of the ship, then it slowly started to nose dive towards the wavelets that hungrily lapped upwards, as if pulling it in. Acceleration increased as the attraction pull of normal space beneath the wavy sea and normal matter of the ship strengthened. Until at last, the penetration field made contact with the wavelets, tearing a gaping hole with blindingly brilliant light, gushing upwards from normal space before the ship was sucked through and the tear sealed instantly behind them.
We emerged into the complete silence of normal space, on the outer fringes of the Halsey system which were the centre of the Hegemony territories and the home world of the Mankind Nations. Dozens of targeting signals instantly locked onto us and a quick burst of identification signals were exchanged in a picoseconds as the various ship navi-processors interacted and gave friendly handshakes.
For a while, 'The Messenger' drifted lazily in space before its main plasma drives ignited, blasting the ship forwards towards the inner planets...
End Log...
Personal Log Entry:
Header Meta Data wc464
Subject:
Captain Lee Flanders
- GSR Merchant Fleet
- Corporate Sub-Contractor for Trans-Galactic Haulers Inc.
- SFF-24 TGH - Staff Ferry Fleet TGH-Trans Galactic Haulers
- 'The Messenger' CSSx42 - Corporate Speed Shuttle
Time:
HMN.yr 2677.4 - The Mensoid Wars
Location:
Cassiopeia System
- ID Designation : 536
- Location: GER-Bqs3
- Grid: 1413-1223
- Population???
Start Recording...
I knew it! Everything was just too good to be true and this proves it! We had left the Garnet system a month ago after I had foolishly accepted the contract even though my gut instinct had told me to stay as far away from it as I could.
Barely out of Warp-Space, we were intercepted by a Mensoid Armada. It was as if they had been waiting for us at that exact entry point!
The Corp Special Projects officer had told me that the War Nexus had suspected some sort of intelligence gathering by the enemy which had leaked various pieces of key vital information in the past but the CSP guy was adamant that there were only three people who knew the details and destination of the contract.
Either he lied or the Mensoids had found another way of finding and tracking us.
Either way, we were under attack and our only defense were the speed of 'The Messenger'. Our only chance were to get to a planet and wait for a rescue. The pilot had jettisoned the Warp-capsule as soon as he detected the Armada. It had its one, mini disposable Warp-drive which was basically a one-shot trip through Warp-space to the closest HMN Fleet outpost with our emergency message.
Our speed saved us as we pulled away from the Armada and its fighters, but as we reached the atmosphere, another Armada appeared right on top of us from the dark side of the planet.
We almost made good our escape once more, but a stray shot from a wild volley, nicked one of our Plasma drives to rip it open and rupture the plasma feeder lines, debris of which also damage its diagonal opposite drive.
With two functional Plasma drives we could still continue, but the ruptured feeder line were a big problem. It had to be fixed before we could travel again, IF we could survive re-entry and not ignite the entire Plasma bladder.
Anxious moments ticked by as the heat-shield warmed up and started glowing, then sprouted licking flames that turned into hundred metrans raging infernos that trailed the shuttle.
I had never prayed as much and as intensely as I had during the twenty five minute descent. But we made it, for now. The pilot had found a suitable spot near the only mountain present in the desert landscape. Suitable spot... in the desert... that was a contradiction in terms if I ever heard one. Not that we had much choice in which area of the planet we could land with the useless Plasma drives, leaking feeder lines which had been sealed temporarily, still... and the Armada forces bound to trace us down to the surface.
I rattled off another hasty prayer as we prepared for impact...
End Recording...
Personal Log Entry:
Header Meta Data wc433
Subject:
Commodore Edward Herbert
- GER Defense Fleet
- Commander of the NC-283rd Hegemony Defensive Fleet
- ('Optical Illusions' NCC14e - Nubian Cloak Class density masking vessel.)
Time:
HMN.yr 2677.4 - The Mensoid Wars
Location:
Cassiopeia System
- ID Designation : 536
- Location: GER-Bqs3
- Grid: 1413-1223
- Population???
Start Recording...
Cassiopeia... what a bleak system. Nothing but desert planets with virtually no life forms at all. It had only been scanned superficially by a passing Astrogation Intelligence team searching for system routes to be used for Warp-controlNode mapping.
Warp-space travel was currently limited by the accuracy of our Astrogation equipment, which necessitates the need to drop from Warp-space at one month intervals to get a new star-fix and recalibrate the Warp-naviComps before calculating the new parameters for the next leg of the Warp-jump. These one-month-interval points were designated as the Warp-controlNodes.
A distress signal had been received near the outer GER-n Listening Fleet, a group of NC-class density masking vessels with powerful sensors and stealth cloaks. The emergency sub-quantum message stream had an ID and locale of the sender Warp-capsule belonging to the troubled ship which pin-pointed the last controlNode exit point for the rescue fleet.
My 283rd HMN Defensive Fleet had been tasked with the retrieval mission because it was behind enemy lines... very far behind in fact. I had read the SitRep reporting on the situation and were surprised that a Merchant Fleet contractor had been involved in an obviously sensitive SpecOp.
No names or specifics were given, just the reference clause 'technology acquisition' which meant Hegemony Intel going after Mensoid secrets. My group had been involved in many retrieval and evac mission, mostly civilian and military withdrawals but also HI operatives extractions on occasion.
The 283rd had built a reputation for their successes right under the noses of the Mensoid Armadas and undoubtedly the reason for my assignment to this retrieval. And the fact that we were a few Warp-space hours from the distress signals origin.
It made me wonder though, what was so important that an unknown civilian group had been used instead of HI SpecOp forces? I had not heard any rumors in the Intel circles of anything special.
"Approaching exit controlNode, commander." A yeoman reported in.
"Battle stations! Engage full stealth mode!"
Klaxons wailed and crews scrambled to their posts and moments later, the group of ships emerged from Warp-space...
"Full stop, zero emission status! I want an immediate passive scan of the sector. Tell me what we're up against..."
"We have four standard Armadas in orbit around the closest planet, no active scanning directed towards space but scanner scatter patterns are rampant."
"They're searching the planet...", I whispered to himself.
"Al right, take us into a non-obtrusive orbit near the northern latitudes but stay outside the density-masking proximity detection distances, we don't want them to know we're here and prep tForce One for standby."
"Yes sir."
'Lets see if we can salvage this mess...'
End Recording...