I have decided to revamp the story and add a few things i had planed to from the start but had not put in for what ever reasons, mainly in this chapter i have added more to the back story to help make it easier to understand whats going on and why. Things in italics are flash backs to the past of kade, and will also give you and idea whats been happening and allow you to learn more about kade.
This my first story ever, and it only got written thanks to zutarafn1 telling me i should go from just reviewing to writing. I owe a lot to her, and she helped me as well, so i would like to thank her first. Now to the story it is an idea i had floating around my head after i blended a few games and a TV show or two together, along with my love of Final Fantasy X. So please read and tell me what you think of it.
Disclaimer: Of course i don't own any of the stuff in this story it all belongs to there respective company's.
Chapter 1 Arrival
"Lt. Commander Stier what is the reactor out put of the dimensional drive?" the captain said glancing my way. After checking the readings in front me, "Sir the drive is at 100% I have green lights across the board, we are ready to start the test." Sitting back in his chair, "open a line to the station, this is the TNS Battleship Leviathan we are ready to start the test of the dimensional drive." After a few moments the lead scientists appeared on the main monitor, "this is Aegis station we read you Leviathan, we are ready on this end. We will monitor the readings from here, you may begin when you are ready, good luck and we hope to see you soon."
As the screen closed and went back to the TNS logo the captain stood up activating the ship wide com. "All hands today we are going to enter the history books as the first humans to transverse the dimensional plain! We do not know where we will end up exactly, but it should be similar to our current time. With any luck we will find a place free of the Vardrags, our orders from the Terra Central Government are simple we are to find a new home for whats left of our people. Its only a matter of time before the Vardrags find our few remaining colony's and destroy them like they did Earth. This mission will determine the survival of all mankind." Closing the com and turning to me, "Lt. Commander Stier when ever you are ready."
I started typing and punching buttons, "reactor stable, field is stable, dimensional window is opening, every thing is still green, transferring helm control, thrusters at station keeping. The window is at maximum aperture, I am taking us in." The captain sat down in his command chair, "all hands brace your selves."
The massive 200,000 ton battleship slowly started moving forward in to the aperture. Spinning around in my chair and pushing buttons left and right as the ship shuck and rattled. "Sir we are in, eta 37 seconds till we are threw!" 10 seconds in there was an anomaly, "sir something is trying to pull us out of the field. If it keeps this up the stress is going to...." there was a loud explosion and the ship jarred violently. The bridge lights dimed as the klaxon sounded. "Report!" captain Wright yelled as he pulled him self back in to his chair. Pounding on my flashing panels, "Sir the primary power conduit failed, the field is failing! What ever was pulling has destabilized the field, we going to drop in to normal space time, and the drive is off line. Every one hold on to some thing this is going to be ruff." As if on queue the ship began shuttering and shaking violently. "Structural integrity is at 7% breaches are forming in the hull! Normal space time in 5!" As the 2,000 meter ship emerged back in to normal space time it was dark and floating dead in space and venting atmosphere.
The bridge was a mess there was debris every where, wounded mean and women where trying to recover or help those worse off. I pulled my self up and pushed the debris off my consoles and tried to get what information I could but the ship was on emergency power and all the main systems seemed to be off line. Looking around quickly there where only a few that made it out unharmed. "Report!" I yelled coughing at the same time. As I made my way to where the captain was Ens Richmond spoke up from ops, "Sir I am receiving reports now. There is damage on all decks, main engineering is reporting main and secondary power systems off line, no eta on when we will have any power back. They also say the new drive is badly damaged no eta on it. Medical is reporting casualties on all decks so far no fatalities." As I push off a fallen beam and find the captain hurt and unconscious but still breathing. "Get a med team up here now!"
Sitting him up against his chair I return my attention back to the matter at hand. Standing up and taking a quick look around seeing every one getting back to there stations. "Some one get the commander up here on the double!" Right now I was in command and that was not some thing I was really trained for, the rank was mostly a honorary thing most people my age wouldn't even be a LTJG. But then again its not all that uncommon since the war started. Now days any one willing to fight is given a gun no matter what age, or put to work some where. Tho at age 19 who would have guessed I would be here. Quickly dismissing these thoughts I got back to work. "Con can you tell where we are?" Ens porter worked on his console for a moment before turning around. "Sir the best I can guess is if we where still in our "time" we would be about 200 light years away from where we started, but we aren't so I have no way of telling we could be in a different galaxy for all I know. My sensors are mostly offline at the moment." Before I could replay Ens Richmond spoke up. "Sir I have received word that the commander was found dead on deck 26, add that to my latest update and we have 14 dead 189 wounded."
Sitting down in the now empty captain's chair, "First things first seal off all the breaches in the hull then get power back on line. Is the hanger bay still serviceable?" Ens Richmond typed away on his consoles while I managed to pull up the master display which was being updated from stations all over the ship. "Sir the port side hanger is still useable but the starboard ones main doors have been damaged." As he said that he showed it on the master systems display. "Good, get a squadron of gemini fighters out and have them scout around, see if there is a plant we could set down on once we get the power online."
After about 45 minutes we had managed to seal most the major breaches and work was underway to get the power back online. Structural integrity was only up to 12% and there where still many areas of the ship that where still sealed off. The geminis where finishing up there sweep of the system and on there way back to dock. I made my way to the hanger having just left engineering, or more exactly had been thrown out by Lt. Commander Keys. I entered the hanger right after the fighters had finished docking. A rather large man with noticeably red hair came walking towards me. He stopped in front of me and fired off crisp salute. "Sir, I am Lt. Michaels leader of alpha squadron." Returning it quickly, "I am Lt. Commander Stier, so what do you have for us?" As we talked we walked in to the polite briefing room where he pulled up the information he had gathered.
Pulling up the new map for this system he said, "I have some really bad news, then some really good news. The bad is that the ship is drifting in to an asteroid belt. At present speed we will hit it in about 50 minutes. The good news is there is habitable plant in the system, it is mostly covered in water but there is large land mass that is surrounded by islands. I have marked the best places to land. The first is a large grassy plain like area in the north. The second is a large desert island to the west." He showed each area with detailed pics and over view map. As I studied it closer I noticed some thing odd. "Lt. is that a city just south of the plain?" As he zoomed in on it, he explained. "Yes Sir, tho the people seem to be at a pre-industrial tech level we picked up a few interesting readings from a few places one being that large city you pointed out, the other two also appear in cities. One is in the far south of the main land and the other is on the desert island. And there was one other, it is in the far north, in what looks to be a long destroyed city. But we will have to go back and do a low orbit scan to know more." Standing up and looking over the map one last time. "Do it learn every thing you can about this plant but try not to get spotted, while you do that ill work on keeping us out of the rocks."
He saluted and head back to the hanger. It would take around 30 minutes to get the details and get back, till then we had to get the engines back online or we wouldn't need a plant. Not even the thick armour of the battleship could handle a bombardment form an asteroid belt with out her shields. Worse yet right now the hulls integrity was low and had patch work all over it. I made my way to the nearest com and called up main engineering. "Lt. Commander Keys, how long would it take to get the secondary sub light drives back online?" There was a momentary pause then she came back with a hostile tone. "I thought I told you I was working as fast as I can down here! Now stop asking me a bunch of questions…" I cut her off before she could keep on ranting. "Answer my question commander! Can you get them back on before we hit the asteroid belt in 40 minutes!?" She stopped midsentence and got quite for a moment. "What asteroid belt? Never mind if we work only on the less damaged secondary power conduits we should be able to restore power to the sub light engines in a little over a hour." I was starting to get annoyed with her and worried at the same time. "Grrrr…. Get to it you have 40 minutes to get me some sort of control to this ship or were all dead." She snapped back, "The best I can do in 40 is get you thruster control!" Great I thought, as I headed back for the bridge, all that will let me do is change the angle we go in to the belt. The thrusters just didn't have enough power to stop the ship. I entered the bridge and sat down in the command chair.
"Dose any one have any good news for me?" I asked off handily not even really excepting an answer. When Ens Richmond piped up from ops. "Well we got most of the sensors back online, and we have managed to restore power to most of the bridge systems. And I have an updated ship status report, we lucked out most systems are fine so once we get main power back online most every thing else should be back to working order." Thinking about that for a moment then an idea struck me. "What about helm control?" Ens porter turned around and answered. "Mostly restored the problem is we have nothing online to use at the moment." Turning to Lt. March the tactical officer, "What is the condition of the weapon systems?" She answered me with out even looking at her display. "Most gun batteries are fully operational but off line do to lack of power, as are the rail guns and flack systems. How ever the main cannon has taken some minor damage but is other wise offline due to lack of power. Hull integrity is at 25% and shield systems are fine but lacking power." Just as I thought, to bad if we could power just one of the systems then we could make a path threw the belt. As I thought about it some more I had another thought. "Lt. March how many squadrons can we deploy at this time?" She looked at me like it was the strangest question she had ever heard. "We can deploy 1 gemini fighter squadron, and 2 squadrons of praetorian gunboats at this time but it will drain the last of the reserve power in the hanger to do it, so once there away they wont be able to dock again till we restore power." With that in mind I went a head and threw my idea out there. "Ok here is what I am thinking, using the thrusters we angle the ship so it goes in bow first, we place the fighter and gunboat wings in front of and ahead of the ship to blow up any rocks that are big enough to do damage to the ship. That way they can clear a path, and with any luck we could make it threw with out taking to much more damage." Every one was quite for a moment then they started all making it happen. The klaxon sounded and the pilots scrambled.
A good 4 minutes later the gunboats and fighters where taking off fully loaded and ready to blow up some rocks. As the last fighter took off Michael's gemini landed in the hanger. He said he had found some interesting things. So once he got to the bridge we went to the back of the bridge where the main hologram table was and he loaded up every thing he had gathered. "First off this is an odd plant, in some places they live no more than tents and huts and others live in cities that are 100s of years more advanced than the rest of the country. The strangest thing is the largest city here in the far north, its nothing but ruins now but analyses show it to be on a tech level not to far from our own. Further more it appears to be thousands of years old, now the largest city still around is the one south the grass plain. From the out side it doesn't look that its much pass 18th century tech, but underneath it is a massive energy readings, and it appears that there are caverns under the city. There is some thing very strange going on there. Moving on the city in the south has only one really odd reading and its coming from this large stadium like building. But its just a small reading, now the city in the middle of the desert island simply put dose not belong with the rest of the plant. It has power reading like one of our small cities. I picked up electronic signatures coming from the city as well. They also have a large under ground system, including some thing that looks like a small hanger. There are two other things of note one is faint power reading from the ocean here south of the main land. The last thing is unconfirmed but we picked up one massive bio sign, and it was moving, it was also emitting some other strange readings. But we lost soon after finding it, so no idea what it was."
Studding the maps, and letting it all sink in for a moment, I have thought of so many questions but I wasn't going to get a chance to ask them. The klaxons sounded and Lt. March piped up. "We have entered the belt, I estimate it will take 3 minutes to get threw it. The fighters have started clearing a path." I returned to my chair as the sound of rocks hitting the hull reverberated threw out the hull of the ship. "Mr. Porter keep us level and on course! Mr. Richmond let Miss. Keys know any time she would like to give use some power would be great." After a minute of this slow and ruff ride, the collision alarm went off. "Report!" I yelled above the noise of the ship getting hit with rocks and the alarms. Lt. March answered up first, "Sir there is a large rock 1.4km in size 9,000 meters dead a head, the fighters don't have enough firepower to blow it up! Impact in 45 seconds." Spinning back around, "Helm hard to port!" Ens porter replied instantly, "No can do sir, we have no where no move and no means to move!" Lt. March started counting down till impact, "30…..25…..20" Her ominous count down was interrupted by commander keys voice. "Secondary engines are coming online now!" Not even waiting for her to finish I bellowed, "Full reverse now!" Mr. Porter was all ready typing away like a mad man on the helm controls. The ship jarred and shuddered as the engines kicked in and started applying reverse thrust. I just hoped it would be in time to stop this leviathan. Lt. March still running the count down, "10 seconds till impact, we are slowing 10kph… 5kph…. 4 seconds till impact…" In the next moment the ship give a final shudder as it came to a full stop. "0 kph… we are stopped, 100 meters off the asteroid." Lt. March said happily. Every one else heaved a sigh of relief, another second and we would have been eating that rock. Sitting upright, "Good work every one, and thank you Miss. Keys!" She appeared on the screen with a smile or was it a smirk I couldn't tell with her. "You're welcome, main power should be back online in 2 hours not a second before." And with that she disappeared off the screen, turning to my helms men. "Get use out of this belt and set course for the plant, best speed." He replied happily "would be my pleasure."
On secondary engines it was slow going; it took 10 minutes just to get out of the belt with the help of the fighters. It was going to take another 2 hours to get to the plant at this speed; the up side was hopefully the main power should be back online by then. Till then I was going back over all the data Lt. Michaels had gathered. A hour later with ever one working on repairs the ship was starting to get back to normal most of the secondary power was back online and the bridge systems we all most back to 100% . We had restored the power to the port hanger and got the single ships back. There was even more good news the captain was in stable condition and was expected to make a full recovery with time, until then I was left in command of the this giant ship and all 4,000 of the naval and marine personal on board. That was a daunting thought in of its self; I just hoped I was up to it.
Once we where 30 minutes from the plant main power was coming back online and all the systems we restarting and coming back online, there was still a lot of work to be done but the good news was now at least we where back to some form of normalcy. I decided to call the senior staff, minus Miss. Keys, to the hologram table to decide where to land this ship. Sadly some of the repairs couldn't be started or finished unless we landed, this included the new drive and the hull, and we would need to land to fully fix both.
Once every one was there I got right to the point, "In order to fix every thing and find out what went wrong with the drive we are going to have to land on the plant. The FTL drive was damaged so we can't leave this system, long story short we are stuck here till we can fix one or both drives. After going over the logs and data from the accident it turns out that some thing from this time or dimension some how caused the overload that got us stuck here. First things first we need to secure a place to land this bird, to that end I am sending a company of marines here to this large desert island to secure this northern section here. I believe that the island is the best place to sit down for now because it so far removed from the rest of the land mass, but it's not uninhabited there is a large city to the south of the proposed LZ. Readings show that there are at least 1,700 people there, further more they also seem to be the most technologically advance of the people on this plant. We may need there help to, so we are going to drop in and say hello after we land. Should some thing go wrong we will be well with in firing range of the Leviathan's guns so they can provide cover if we need it. Prep the drop ships I am sending Bravo Company down to secure the LZ, once the ship is down they and Delta Company will pull guard detail around the ship. Alpha and I will take 4 drop ships, I want them carrying 2LRVs and 2 M808MBTs and a squadron of gemini flying cover, to meat our new friends. Will sit the dropships down 2 klicks east of the city, then move in on foot from there. Any questions? Lt. March was the first to speak up, "Sir we are still in a weakened state, and we need to re-power the weapons system and test them, also we need to test the shield. Also the main cannon is still needs to be repaired." Thinking over it for a moment, "How long will that take?" She changed the screen to show the different angles of the ship, and all the weapon placements lit up and details started streaming next to them. "Well sir, most of them are ready to be brought back on line, but as you can see besides the Type IV Heavy Siege Laser (Main Cannon) being damaged, 12 of the 50 rail guns are in need of repair before we can bring them online, and lastly 1 of the 4 Silverlance Heavy Lasers is badly damaged, the rest of the weapon systems seem ready to be brought online. The repair time on the rail guns is about a day two at the most, the laser will take about 3 days." Skimming over the data on the screen, "Ok Lt. bring what we have online, including the shield, and get me a status report in 25 minutes. Once we land we will start repairs on the damaged systems. Ok any more questions? Good people lets get to it we land in 30 minutes!"
With that every one got down to work, the ship was a buzz of activity. The hangers were full of marines and equipment loading up in the drop ships, and pilots where prepping to take off. A few minutes later my tactical office piped up and told me bravo was ready to go. Standing up and walking to the front of the bridge to look out the window, "Ok kick the door." With that the large hanger doors where opened and 5 drop ships took off and went screaming past the bow of the ship headed for the plant, I watched as they disappeared in to the atmosphere. As I watched and hoped I hadn't sent them to there deaths... shaking my head, there was no time for such thoughts. A good 12 minutes latter the drop ships returned and docked, reporting the place looked deserted. A few minutes later the leader of bravo gave the all clear signal. Still looking out the window, "Ok Mr. Porter take us down nice and easy." As the ship readied to land the landing klaxon sounded and ever one started strapping in to land. Reluctantly giving up my window view I went to the command chair and strapped in as well, the main screen changed to show the trajectory the ship was going to take on its landing approach. We where going to pass over the small island that had tents and a small stone building then ocean and finally cross over the desert island from the south coming to a rest on the northern end. There was no way to hide a 2,000 meter 200,000 ton battleship so any one that looked up was going to see quite a spectacle as we came in to land. At first we would just like a meteor but as soon as we got with in 2km of the ground the fire ball would turn in to a giant battleship. The ship could operate in space, and inside atmosphere so we could take off and move around the plant if we had to for some reason, with out first going to orbit. Which was one of the few upper hands we had over the vardrags, there ships were unable to follow our ships in to atmosphere. We used this a lot to help maintain ground control longer, but it was only a delaying tactic, used mainly to help to buy time for evacuation.
Sounds of gun fire and explosions mixed with the screams of people, in a city mostly destroyed after days of fighting. Over head a TNS Destroyer providing fire support while trying to hold off raptor gunships. The war was in its 10th year by the time the vardrag had found its first inner colony... Arcadia. On the ground was the remnants of the Arcadia defense force, now little more than a ragtag militia comprised of every thing from kids to old men and women. The few that remained where scattered around the city, the last remaining city, a small city but it still had a spaceport and we had to hold it till all the refugees made it on board a ship.
militia officer: "We have got to hold this space port a little longer not all of the refugees have made it out yet. It is our duty to hold till all of the ships are loaded."
A then 6 year old stier with the "rank" of private carrying a gun that was about half his size, mud, dirt, blood, and grime covering him and wearing a torn uniform of sorts "but sir we are all most out of ammo,food, and water and where are the reinforcements you said where coming?"
The shout from con brought me back to the here and now, "Sir we are starting our decent, sir are you all right?" Waving my hand dismissively "Yes I am fine, my mind just wandered for a moment." Turning back to his station Ens porter got back to work, the rest of the bridge sat oddly quite as the large shipped nosed over and started its decent into the atmosphere, as it started the heat shields closed over all windows, the shield doesn't work in reentry so we have to rely on the hull and heat shields. The other thing about reentry was, it was going to get hot. After a few minutes of the ruff reentry, we started slowing down to the point of normal flight and the heat shields where raised. I got out of my chair and went back to the front of the bridge and looked out the window, we where flying 400 meters over the ocean striking across at 250kph. We zipped past some ruins hat looked like an old temple, then over a small ship, followed by the small island with tents. In a few minutes the coast of the desert island came into view, and the ship started to slow down for final approach, and landing struts deployed. When we where just 4km from the shore bravo team burst across the radio, "Sir we are under attack by unknown creatures, I repeat the LZ is hot! They are easy to kill but there are just so many of them!" Before I could even respond my tactical officer cut in. "Sir there is a massive bio sign coming up from underneath us, sir it is keeping pace with us and is going to impact in 10 seconds at this rate!"
Forgetting about bravo for the moment I turned my attention to this new threat. "Helm hard to port! Full power to shields and weapons, I want a visual now!" As the monitor closest to me changed to show the creature, I watched as it come up out of the water and stopped once it was level with us. It seemed to be checking us out, so I thought we do the same. "Full sensor scan now, keep a lock on it if it makes any hostile movements open fire." The response I got from ops was not encouraging. "Sir it's deflecting our sensors I can't get a good reading." Helm was next, "Sir it's forcing us on to a new heading that's going to take us straight over that city in the center of the island." This day just keeps getting better and better I thought. "Lt. March lets give it a hint that we want it to go away, fire a single shot in front of it." One of the large main guns turned and fired, one of the silverlances streaked across its nose, not hitting it of course. It seemed to have got our point, because it stopped following and retreated back the way it came. At the same time bravo came back across the radio and said the things that had been attacking them where all retreating. Turning back around to look out the window, "helm get use back on our right heading before we get to the…" I stopped mid sentence because it was to late as I looked out I saw the city looming right in front of us. At this point we where only doing 40kph so every one in they city got a good look at us as we lumbered by. A few minutes latter we reached the LZ and sat down, and sent out 3 more company's of marines to secure the area. Turning around and sitting down in my chair I talked to no one I particular. "Man what a day….." A voice from behind me made me jump, "indeed, but I think you have handled it very well, Commander."
So ends chapter one. So please review tell me what you thought good or bad. Ill also awnser any questions any one has.