Chapter Two: The Var
The Bringsr Star Cluster is a cluster of thirty-nine star systems clustered together along the Outer Rim of the galaxy. In the distant past, the frontier of the galaxy-wide Protoculture led Stellar Republic and the last part of the Republic to fall during their brutal civil war. Hence, it was spared much of the more brutal fighting during the war, which saw much of the Republic's infrastructure to survive the war. Therefore, in modern times it has become known for its many intact protoculture ruins spread across several planets in the cluster.
Today several planets in the Bringsr Star Cluster had been colonized by the New United Nation Government of humanity, resulting in the formation of the Bringsr Alliance, a member state of the New United Nation Government. Like its distant protoculture predecessor, the Alliance serves as the frontier of human claimed space, therefore, are not all that important to the rest of the galaxy and human space. However, it also serves as the home of the tiny Windermere Kingdom and the expansive Voldor Empire, two non-human-led space nations that had emerged from the cluster. Along with several other more independent planets, either colonized by humans or Allied Cultured Zentradi but do not answer to the overall larger Bringsr Alliance.
Like the Zolan Nation and the Allied Zentradi Fleets, the Windermere Kingdom was once a vassal state of that of the New United Nation Government through its member state, the Bringsr Alliance. However, during a brief war for independence between the Kingdom and the New United Nations Government, it became independent of the human-led government, becoming its own nation along the northeastern border of the Star Cluster.
Meanwhile, the Voldor Empire is quite a rarity in human exploration, an active alien spacefaring nation when the first contact happened between humanity and a distant alien civilization. Most often, alien civilizations encountered by humankind in its exploration of the galaxy are advanced but pre-spacefaring races like the Zolans. In contrast, others are quite less developed races like the Ragnans. Therefore, when humanity encountered the Voldor Empire, many were quite surprised to find such an advanced spacefaring race. Currently, the Voldor Empire holds the southeastern border of the Star Cluster and now controls nine star systems with seven habitable planets between them all.
- Taken from The Galactic Atlas entry on the Bringsr Star Cluster
Asteroid Cluster Samui
Orbit of Al Shahal
Shahal System, Bringsr Star Cluster
April 19, 2067 AD
After leaving Windermere IV, nearly two weeks later, would find the form of the transport MV Giraffe Blues approaching the orbit of the desert planet known as Al Shalal. However, before the ship's crew could start their preparations for landing on the planet, they began to scream and thrash around, much to the horror of their two passengers as they were all gathered in the ship's mess hall to bid the two farewell. The two Windermere youths could only stare at the members of the crew in some concern and a bit of horror as the crew continued to thrash around in what looked to be in pain. It would be Dominic who finally gets what was going on with the ship's crew.
"Var Syndrome! My lady, we must move. Now!" Dominic said, grabbing the hand of Freyja and started to pull her away from the mess further into the ship itself. A moment later, the now berserker-like crew members began to chase after the two of them, much to their fear. The two then start a deadly cat and mouse game with the infected crew of the ship as chaos erupted outside of the ship.
-o-o-o-
Nearby a local New UN Spacy Garrison Fighter Unit, patrolling through the asteroid field, succumbs to the horror of Var Syndrome, and the unit starts fighting itself along with the handful of pilots not suffering from the Var trying to keep themselves alive. Soon a nearby second fighter unit tries to intervene in the fight. Still, they too succumb to the horror of the Var, and a sizeable confused-looking dog fight erupts throughout the Asteroid Field between the various NUNS Fighters. Meanwhile, on the planet itself, a series of so-called Var Riots started through the planets three main cities spreading further chaos. This included the vast majority of a visiting Allied Zentradi unit on the planet, which began to devastate the capital city and fighting against the city's tiny planet-bound defending garrison force.
It was into this travesty of a battle that a single large carrier ship suddenly appeared out of a fold sphere before launching a team of four fighters which was quickly followed by a pair of full squadrons of supporting fighters. The first four fighters raced into the asteroid field while a small pyramid-like feature rose into position on the ship's main deck while the two supporting squadrons took a defensive position around the ship. The Idol Group Walkure and their defenders of Xaos had arrived! It was then that the singing began, which was broadcasted throughout the battlefield through both regular communications and through the crystal-like Fold Quartz Amplifiers built into the four Fighters of the unit known as Delta Flight. These four fighters quite easily outflew and outfought the infected NUNS fighters disabling the majority of the attacking fighters. The few remaining non-infected fighters easily managing to rally around Delta Flight and assisting in helping quell the infected pilots. All the while, the singing of the four members of the Walkure Group from their base ship confused and, in several cases, calmed down the Var-infected pilots.
However, this success was about to be moot when eight fresh and brand-new fighters appeared out of a series of strange-looking pink-colored portals to muck things up with the operation to suppress the Var. These strange unknown fighters immediately dived into combat with the Fighters of Delta Flight and their handful of non-infected NUNS allies, much to their own surprise.
-o-o-o-
Onboard the MV Giraffe Blues, the figures of the two short-term Windermere crewmembers backed away from a cluster of fellow members of the ship's crew with the ship's captain at their head. The two Windermere were exhausted and tired from the constant chase throughout the vessel from the Var-infected members of the crew. Now they were back where they started in the transport's mess hall with its windowed dome giving quite a view of the battle outside. Dominic noticed nothing about this, for he was too focused on trying to figure out how he was going to protect his best friend and liege lady from being torn apart by the Var-infected members of the crew. He had tried to fight against them earlier, but the bruises and scratches that were spread across his body had shown it wasn't a great idea. Still, he held a large piece of piping in front of him as a sort of sword while Freyja hid behind him, shaking in fear. However, before anything else happened, something happened as music was starting to be heard coming from a radio strangely still perched on a nearby table. The Var seems to pause at this and begin to look confused, much to the surprise of the two Windermere-born youths. Suddenly something attracted Dominic's attention, and he looked up through the windows seeing a nearby asteroid sporting the holographic faces of four human young women singing. Dominic then realized what was going on from the rumors he had heard in the Academy. He eyed the Var and turned to look over his shoulder at his friend. She was now looking around in confusion as she, too, was hearing the singing.
"Freyja!" he called out to her, and she looked up at him in some confusion with a hint of exhaustion from the chase through the ship.
"If you want to join to Walkure! Now is the time to prove it!" he snapped down at her.
"What do you mean, Dominic?" she asked in some surprise and a bit of confusion at his statement before Dominic sighed and nodded up at the windows. Freyja, still confused, looked up and gasped in some sheer shock.
"Walkure!" she called out in some excitement as only now did she noticed the singing coming from the radio was singing from Walkure, her Idols. She excitedly started to hum along with the song being played on the radio. Dominic chuckled at this excitement before softly flicking the forehead of Freyja to get her attention.
"Owie. What was that for?" she asked in a huff before Dominic nodded to the still confused-looking Var-infected members of the crew.
"I had heard the rumors at the Academy about Walkure was able to calm and even cure Var Syndrome with their singing. I never even gave them any thought till now," he explained, eying the Var with a frown on his face. Freyja blinked at this before looking over his shoulder at the Var with a grimace.
"So my lady, if you want to be part of Walkure. Now it is time to prove it! Sing Freyja and show that you have what it takes to be part of Walkure," Dominic said, glowering down at her as she stared at him in shock. It was then that the singing came to a stop with some sort of explosion sound over the radio. The holograms being displayed on the asteroids outside seem to fuzz a bit and then stop making Dominic internally curse, facing off against the Var once more with his pipe.
"Damn it! Sing Freyja! Sing!" he growled out as the Var started to shake off the confusion from Walkure's singing and advance once more on them. It was only then that Freyja began singing softly at first before gaining strength as the Var once more seemed to pause in some confusion. Dominic sighing in some relief at this but noticed that while the Var appeared to be confused from Freyja's singing, it was not as potent as Walkure's singing.
"Uskit!" he cursed at this observation before grabbing Freyja's hand and dragging her out of the mess hall while the Var was still confused. As he did this, Freyja's singing stopped as she squealed in shock and the Var recovered, starting towards them once more. However, Dominic was already gone with Freyja, but the game of cat and mouse started once more between them and the Var.
-o-o-o-
Outside, the eight unknown fighters surprised the four fighters of Delta Flight of Xaos and their NUNS allies with their appearance. Soon another dog fight erupted between the two forces as once more chaos spread across the battlefield. A pair of the unknown fighters had managed to break through the defenses of the Xaos Carrier ship, the XS Aether, and launched an attack on the external pyramid-like stage that held Walkure. Only the intervention of one brave member of Delta Flight prevented the attack from doing anything more than damaging the stage's passive defenses. That Delta Flight member soon entered a dogfight with the two unknown fighters. However, due to the damages done to the stage's broadcasting equipment prevented Walkure from continuing their singing. Elsewhere the battle was at pretty much a stalemate with the NUNS fighters either destroyed or damaged by the unknowns leaving the fighters of Xaos alone fighting against the unknowns. Xaos soon tried to change this by sending in their Alpha Squadron into the battle while the second of their supporting squadrons, Bravo, finished cleaning up the lightweight Drone Fighters sent against them by the Unknowns. While the assistance from Alpha helped Delta catch their breath, the eight Unknown Fighters continued to battle against Xaos. It was at this moment that one of the Alpha Squadron Fighters picked up strange bio-Fold Waves coming from a civilian transport ship that they hadn't known had been in the asteroid field. After informing his superiors, the pilot, one Flight Sergeant Hayate Immelmann, moved to inspect the transport finding out that the bio-Fold Waves were coming from the transport. However, as he approached the transport, the bio-fold waves started to disappear. Even then, Sergeant Immelmann still boarded the transport to discover who had been giving off those bio-fold waves.
-o-o-o-
Back onboard the transport itself, the two Windermere youths had managed to get caught up with a trio of Var infected members of the ship's crew. Dominic was struggling on the ground with a pair of the infected crewmembers while Freyja was trying to shrink away from another larger infected crewmember that Freyja dimly recalled was the ship's chief Loadmaster. As Freyja tried to get away from the man, she remembered Dominic's earlier words and started to sing once more as her rune began to glow in time with her voice. Once again, the infected crewmembers paused in some confusion at this singing, allowing Dominic to throw off one of his assailants. Meanwhile, Freyja reached up and cupped the cheek of the Var-infected man that had been threatening her, who suddenly seemed to wilt as her song started its work on him. It was around this time that two things happened the figure of Flight Sergeant Hayate Immelmann had arrived tackling Dominic's second assailant, and two, Walkure once more, started to sing as the damages to their broadcasting equipment were repaired. This started to finally quell the Var along with the crew of the Giraffe Blues and the remaining NUNS pilots outside of the ship.
Meanwhile, the Var infected members of the population started to calm down from their Var-Fueled riots and attacks on their fellows on the planet itself. As the music of Walkure was beginning to be heard through regular communication channels throughout the planet. The visiting Allied Zentradi unit, just simply to the man, started to drop unconscious from the strain, much to the shocked non-infected members of the capital city's defending garrison forces and civil police units. The efforts of Walkure had managed to fight off the Var both in orbit and on the planet itself. Due to this, the unknown fighters disappeared into their strange pink-colored portals, leaving behind the remains of the chaos of the Var.
-o-End-o-
Post Chapter Notes
Well, here we go with the second chapter of Knight of Xaos. Sigh. Honestly, I am not all that much a fan of this chapter since not only is it kind of short, it really kind of bounced around a bit in some parts. Not to mention having a sort of third-person perspective for much of the fighting scenes did not work all that right, in my opinion. Still, the reason for it was that I did not want to introduce the Xaos characters just yet; therefore had this weird overview-like perspective for much of the chapter featuring them. Initially, I was going to have the overall viewpoint of the battle being done through an unnamed wounded NUNS pilot in the wreck of his destroyed fighter, but it wasn't all that much better than what I have here already. Shrug.
That said. We still got some interesting bits in this chapter, like our two young heroes Freyja and Dominic, getting their first experience with the Var. This will only make them even more willing to fight against it by joining their respective sections of Xaos, Walkure for Freyja, and Delta Flight for Dominic. We also got a few differences from the series itself. One of which is that this version of events is happening at Al Shahal instead of Ionideth. In both the series itself and the movie as well this series of events occur. However, I changed it because according to the maps in the series Al Shahal is literally right next door to that of Ragna, therefore a suitable place for our two heroes to disembark from their transport. Ionideth, meanwhile, looks to be on the opposite side of the Cluster from Ragna.
Another change I made is the way ships folds in this story. It is similar to that of my other Macross stories. Basically, ships in this story fold by expanding a fold sphere around their ship just like it does in the original Macross series with the Macross itself. This is later used as a basis for how Robotech uses Fold in the Shadow Chronicles movie. I like the whole white Fold Spheres better than the whole pink portal-like effect of a Fold shown by the modern Macross series, Frontier and Delta. That said, I am keeping the pink portals for the weird Fold abilities of that of both the Sigur Valens Protoculture Battleship used by Windermere as their flagship and that of the rest of the Cluster's Protoculture Ruins Fold Network. Yes. This is how the Aerial Knights were able to Fold their fighters in without using a dedicated Fold Booster during the series. The Sigur Valens itself further uses this in the last section of the movie, with it just appearing over the Protoculture Ruins on Al Shahal and then during the Final Battle directly into the skies of Ragna.
Cough.
Again, I really need to stop going on these little background information rants of mine. I do apologize for that, everyone! I just get hyped about something, and I just ramble on. Okay. Moving on! I do believe that is about it for this chapter's notes. I really do not have anything else to mention really about this chapter. Till the next chapter, everyone!