Chapter 1
"Why am I here..." I asked myself once more. I was in my armor, in the drop tube of one of the new Marine frigates prepping for a major assault on an enemy ship.
Normally, I was assigned to the rear formation where I was just mop up, but the Assault Leader saw that I had experience in battle, and decided that I should lead a battle formation. For experienced Warriors, this would be a great honor, killing Vaygr face to face is much different from slicing open their ships from the larger ships in the fleet, it has much more honor. I had never been in the front line, and I had fear. The death rate of line troops in ship combat is horrific, though nothing compared to the horror of watching your friends and family being vaporized in ship to ship combat. I preferred bringing honor to Kiith Somtaaw in other ways.
Of course, being a Marine frigate, the ship that we occupied were considered a bigger risk than even the mighty "Wrath of Sajuuk", the first Battlecruiser that Fleet Command ordered built. Battlecruisers are a mighty foe indeed, armored with two long range, double ion beam turrets capable of burning through Vaygr armor in seconds, and Battlecruiser armor could withstand almost the same amount of beating that a Bentusi trade ship of old could take, though most of the Bentusi disappeared after The Beast rampaged throughout a good area of civilized space.
"Officers, your troops are ready for battle. Never lose focus. Never surrender. Never give up!" That was the official preparation talk for the officers, and being a common Warrior, I never keyed my helmet comm to listen. Now that I was an officer though, I was forced to listen to the Mission Officer rant on and on about duty and such. I developed an instant loathing for him, and as I listened to him bellow encouraging words, I realized that he did not believe that any of us would survive. He knew we would all die. Then it hit me, the fear of death is nothing like the feeling one has when he knows he is going to die. Our capture target was the Dreadnaught that the Vaygr had stolen from the Karos Graveyard, it is identical to the one that Fleet possesses, but we were going to capture it anyways. These Dreadnaughts are more powerful than most of the ships in any fleet today combined, way more powerful than our Battlecruisers.
The entire Fleet had assembled at rally point beta, I watched on my suit helmet's tactical display as the opening skirmishes between Hiigaran and Vaygr fighters started to go awry. The Vaygr had launched their Hyperspace Gates toward our formation of capital ships, and bombers had been dispatched to deal with the Gate before it could do open up and dump fighters and corvettes into the battle. The Gate stopped suddenly and opened up, a green haze permeating the space between it's outreached beams. Vaygr Interceptor class fighters Hyperspace signatures were detected, and Gunship corvettes were launched to counter the threat. That's when I noticed that our small group of four Marine frigates were in position, and that the rest of the Vaygr fleet had moved to attack our Battlecruisers, which were burning Vaygr frigate class ships like so much dry paper at the time.
"Vaygr Battlecruisers are out of effective support range, they can still hit us with their missiles though." I heard a crewman say over the comm.
"Order the battlegroup to attack." Replied the captain of the frigate calmly. I had never met the man, but he had always managed to bring his ship back home. I prayed he would do the same this time.
One of the crewmen noticed something on his screen "Captain Soban! We have been identified!" he shouted.
"Hold her steady." was all he would say.
I sighed and asked the Mission Officer if I could brief my troops, and he nodded his permission. I left the bridge in mild panic.
Hiigaran Marine frigates were very Spartan compared to the Pride of Hiigara, the gigantic mobile construction yard slash warship that housed a great deal of our population. The Pride of Hiigara housed more people than Hiigara's capital city, over 60,000 bodies inhabited the massive vessel, working and living, and most importantly, fighting for their homeworld. I was very proud of her.
I stalked into the main hold of the large frigate, mostly dedicated to housing supplies and the massive powered armor that make the marines so powerful in armed combat, and tongued my squad on the comm.
"Marines, suit up!" I barked. It surprised me how serious I had become, normally I was pretty nonchalant. It was the fear.
The Marines rushed to their individual suits, open and gaping against the suit rack and began to step backwards into the armor. Marine armor is state of the art, closed combat tactical armor, able to turn chemical projectiles, pulsar beams, anything that infantry could throw at us. All of them black as death, the suits scared hell out of friend and foe alike, their nonreflective black surfaces seemed to suck out what little light had been emitted by the glowtubes.
One of the Marines, to my left seemed to think this was all a joke, an easy mission, and he said so. I stared him into silence, not believing what he had just uttered. He had faith in the MO, in captain Soban. Damn it but I wanted to believe.
I could feel the acceleration of the ship, charged plasma feeding electricity to the huge ion engines that take up the back half of the frigate, and blasting the resulting free ions straight behind the ship. In the old days, during the great Homeworld War, my father served aboard the first destroyer ever created in Fleet. He used to tell me stories of how he keyed the final ion beam that destroyed the Taiidan flagship in orbit around Hiigara, during the very last battle for the Homeworld. He died about six years ago.
I shook my head from such daydreaming, Drop was scheduled in less than two minutes. I needed to stress the importance of this mission, the screen on the left side of my helmet's display had a checklist on it. I decided to ignore it. Drop was looming up ahead, and I feared.
"Never surrender, never lose hope!" I shouted as the blue light seemed to fill the chamber. Really, the light was just a warning, but my subconscious mind screamed danger, and the fear grew. The ship had positioned itself above the target's hull and had anchored itself with the bright blue beam that I had always assumed had magnetic properties, but never thought to ask about, and then drop tubes irised open and dumped my Marines and I onto the hull of the Dreadnaut. Next step was to cut a hole in the thick hull of the ship, which wasn't difficult given the range. I thought the Marine frigate looked magnificent against the stars, lit up by the distant ion beam flashes made by our Battlecruisers.
The frigate fired short range pulsar beams in a large, armor sized circle, pulsars were purple, and almost liquid-like, they only fired in short bursts and took about one second to fire again. They are very similar to the ion beams used by larger ships, but are considerable less powerful and lack the range, but are very useful for killing Vaygr. I myself had a pulsar rifle, mag-clamped pointing straight down on my back, awaiting the command from my armored hands to release.
My helmet display flashed green, indicating that I should lead my squad into that glowing hole that had just been cut. "Go." I said calmly. I leaped, as well as anyone can in space, into the incision. The room I had entered was fairly spacious, I could tell that it had at one time been a supply room, now it had nothing in it. Immediately, Chemical projectiles impacted my black Marine armor, deflecting harmlessly and spreading the damage over my entire suit, but draining my suit's power just a bit. Our armor has self sustaining power, and is able to completely regenerate all of it given time, but oxygen and nitrogen levels were completely dependant on the level of power remaining in our suits, as they use a very advanced and complicated rebreather. We all know how to repair armor in the field, not that we wouldn't be dead within seconds of exiting the armor.
I reached over my shoulder and grabbed my pulsar rifle, swung it around, and proceeded to slag the area where the shots had emanated. Red globules of blood slowly spun out of where I had shot a Vaygr crewman in the shoulder, instantly puncturing his pressure suit. He was dead before I fired the third shot, and the fear diminished somewhat.
"Sir, your bio-signs are reading erratically." our squad's medtech blurted out.
"I know that, don't worry about it, I'll be fine." I said shakily, knowing that I wouldn't be fine.
The Vaygr had sealed off this section of the ship already with very hastily constructed hatches over the doorways. This ship had been tampered with, I could tell already; some of the doorways had been forced open and hatches constructed very hastily had been thrown up so the Vaygr did not have to mess with the ship's minor systems. I toured Fleet's Dreadnaut when we first captured it, I was one of the last of the Marines onto the great ship and ours was much cleaner than this mess. The Vaygr apparently had not even figured out the ship's artificial gravity controls either, as I had been floating about until I clamped my magnetic boots onto the hull.
The point Marine kicked in the hatch with a resounding thud, which was immediately blown back out towards us, the room it connected to explosively decompressing and blowing debris all over our entry point. I could see the ship on my tactical display moving off to put down more Marines in different spots, later we would all rendezvous at rally point zulu.
Before these thoughts could gain momentum, I was shot once again, but this time with a pulsar rifle. The Vaygr use a substandard type of pulsar, requiring about three seconds to recharge and are generally weaker. And it gave away his position. I snapped a shot straight at the source, red gore spattering the hallway we were in. That made my stomach turn, but being a Marine, I endured.
Some fool threw a grenade, and I screamed "Get down!" at the top of my voice, those things could rip a frigate to pieces if thrown inside... I hoped the grenade wouldn't damage any of the Dreadnaut's subsystems. I counted three seconds, then I felt a powerful blow to my entire body at once. I think I was saved by the body of the Marine in front of me, shielding the worst of the blast with his body. He died instantly. A great hand squeezed my limp body, and I seemed to float. Then I must have passed out, because the next thing I remembered was our team's medic messing with my wrist computer, typing in the command that injects a type of painkiller that also focuses one's mind. I felt the needle stab me in the thigh, I moaned and attempted to move.
"Do not try to move sir, you're suit is pretty drained. You took a bad hit with that grenade, and you are extremely lucky to be alive." He shook his head.
I tried to speak, failed, then tried again. This time I managed to rasp, "Casualties." It was not a question. It was an order for him to tell me how many of my men had been killed.
"Two dead, three critically wounded." He replied evenly.
"Damn." I said. I rolled onto my side, and typed on my wrist computer. From the relay we positioned outside our drop point, my tactical display could keep up with ship movements, but I was using it to figure the status of my team. It confirmed what the medic had said about our casualties.
"What is the status of our survivors?" I asked.
"Bad, we all took some pretty bad beatings, I think you are the worst off though."
"Great."
I risked a glance at my remaining power level, it read eighteen percent. Not good at all. I could bleed off a pulsar charge from my rifle, that would screw up my suit's power functions, as in not allowing me to gain more than eighty percent power, but I needed more power in order to move at all. I tongued the necessary switch inside my helmet, and an entire pulsar charge dumped into my armor's power cells. That shot the power up to fifty percent, and finally allowed me to move again.
The fear gained momentum once more as I realized how close I had come to being one more casualty in the Campaign. The Hiigaran brain is amazing, or so I learned while still in the universities of Hiigara, It can suppress intense fear through an odd chemical reaction in the brain, bleeding the released glucose directly into one's muscles. I felt this reaction occur with an odd tingly feeling throughout my body, my fear slowly dissipating.
I felt confident, and more importantly, I felt powerful. Strong. I knew what I had to do. I turned toward my squad's combat medic. I think his name was Hraal. "Where are the Vaygr entrenched." It was not a question.
"As far as I can tell, one junction that way," he pointed without looking up, he was busy trying to save a critically wounded Marine.
"I'll be right back." I said. I dragged myself off of my backside, and sprinted with all of my strength straight towards where the Vaygr had bored slits in the barrier they threw together across the hallway, pulsar muzzles and chemical projectile guns pointing straight at me. I slammed into the barrier at over one hundred and fifty kilometers per hour with the shoulder of my armor, splintering metal, shattering bones, killing Vaygr. One threw a gren in his dying panic, but by then I had powered past them, unlatched my pulsar rifle, and killed two of them around a bend in the passage. Then the gren exploded, or more accurately, imploded. Antimatter grens use a very minute amount of antimatter, which mixes with an intensely dense form of matter, and creates a very small singularity which then implodes. I was thrown backwards from the force of the implosion, which oddly enough sends a shockwave, and I blacked out yet again.
Some time later, I came to.
"Geez, we thought the phased cannon array blew!"
I tried to clear my head and said, "Antimatter gren."
The combat medic shook his head, "These Vaygr scum have no honor."
My only concern was killing Vaygr. I cursed in frustration, all other emotions suppressed by the fear reaction.
"I think you'll be fine. You just got hit by the shockwave."
I left, disgusted by the lack of combat, and proceeded to scour the area for Vaygr. The darkened hallways of the massive alien dreadnaught beckoned to me, I crept through them, hoping to catch some Vaygr off guard. My adrenaline levels suddenly spiked, sending energy screaming through my nervous system. I keyed a suppressant so that I could fight more effectively.
The command frequency squawked at me from my helmet's built in speakers, something about losing a battlecruiser. I did not care, and switched off the comm system as I kicked a Vaygr crewman in the spine, his spinal cord ripping loose off his body and clattering to a stop a few yards from his body. I sensed Vaygr up ahead, and I dashed off towards the small fortification, my limbs flailing in a controlled blur, killing Vaygr. There was no honor in any of the slaughter that day, none at all.
I was shot up pretty bad by a portable railgun, the magneticly launched slug wrapped itself at mach seven completely around my chest, pinning my arms to my side. My suit's integrity plummeted to fifteen percent, and I watched helplessly as a soldier with a rudimentary set of armor welded a set of restraints straight onto my black armor.
Anger surfaced, and promptly grew into a fury. The anger grew, and built upon itself, and grew and grew until the sheer level of fury inside of me threatened to destroy my mental stratus, alarms and safety programs screaming for attention inside my helmet, and they finally broke. I ripped one of my arms loose of my bonds, also tearing a muscle completely off of the bone, but despite those pains, I latched my vice-like hand around my captor's neck. His neck snapped almost immediately, and I threw him with all of my might at his pals who had gathered to watch. Such was the force with which I threw his body, that it punched through to the next section of the great ship.
An enraged Vaygr security officer pointed his enormous chemical rifle at my suit's faceplate at point blank range, and he pulled the trigger.
The armor barely held, and in fact, the faceplate caved inwards a little. They took this as a sign that I had died, and I played along with it, going limp and lifeless. They promptly tossed me inside an airlock, shut the gate, and that's about when I decided to hell with it, but it was too late. The one Vaygr I could see pushed a button on the gate opposite myself, and the chamber began to depressurize. I howled with rage, and bashed on the gate, to no avail.
I felt dizzy, probably from my suit's oxygen levels seeping out of a small rent in the armor which was sealing automatically. I tried to grab a handhold, but this was alien technology I was dealing with, and had no idea where one would be. I was sucked right out of the airlock, and that was when I realized I had no means of getting back to the ship, or even if I did I would have no way of getting back inside! The thought of dying from starvation and thirst sent a shiver down my spine. Slowly, over the course of several minutes as I drifted aimlessly outside the massive alien Dreadnaught, my breathing slowed and my mind slipped out of it's fear reaction.
I was not at all well, as my suit had lost a whole lot of functions due to the point blank shot to the faceplate, but the fear was gone! It was like I had made my peace with the universe, and was now waiting to die. It was the expectation to die which kept me sane at this juncture, floating amidst the wreckage and slowly spinning dead ships as I took in the sheer beauty of the ship that I had recently vacated.
The Dreadnaught, the key to Sajuuk, was holding position as thousands of Marines poured into various points on it's angular hull, the ship is almost as long as the Mothership is tall, but that's not what impressed me the most. What impressed me was the deadly nature of this ship, it was built specifically for war, Hiigaran tests had proven that on Fleet's Dreadnaught. There was room for maybe four hundred crew, and half the space for scientists or soldiers or whatever fancied the ship's captain at the time.
These Projenitor relics, like Sajuuk, which hung lifeless in space just a few hundred kilometers away, or the Dreadnaughts which were designed to open the huge hyperspace gate to Balcora, the center of the Galaxy, were so old that no recorded history of anything Projenitor remained intact throughout the ages. Much technology had been "borrowed" from ancient Projenitor wrecks, but where did all of these wrecks come from? I mused.
The Dreadnaught almost resembled a super capital ship sized pulsar rifle to me, all one would have to do to an existing rifle is weld on some thruster vanes, blunt the nose a bit, and add some ion drive engines onto the rear of it, and you would have yourself a Dreadnaught in miniature! There was even a boxy protrusion that housed communication relays and a super massive docking port that looks almost exactly as if it could be used as a gun handle for a god! But enough musing, I thought to myself, time to evaluate my situation.
There was nothing I could do, short of venting my armor into space and killing myself, but I couldn't do that just now. I was afraid to send an emergency ping into space for fear of capture by a Vaygr patrol ship, but what other option did I have? I sighed, and switched on my thermal imaging just in case there was anything I missed. The multi-colored screen barely functioned from the damage my helmet took earlier, but it gave me a good idea of what was going on. I had missed a probe, thank the gods! Probes, whether from the Hiigarans or the Vaygr enemy had a one shot use fusion drive, similar to the ones used by fighters and corvettes, but because of the severely reduced mass of the probe, it had a much greater effect. Probes are very basic pieces of machinery, and are basically a shell stuffed with sensors anchored securely to a fusion drive. This is how I was to escape my predicament.
I started hyperventilating intentionally, pumping oxygen into my system, steeling myself for the inevitable explosive decompression. I aligned myself as best I could, and blew every molecule of air in my armor straight back, right as I exhaled as deeply as I could. One needs to exhale when entering a vacuum, otherwise you would explode from the pressure difference! I could already feel my blood beginning to seep out of the pores in my skin, but I continued with my eyes shut as tight as I could get them. Seconds later, my suit began to repressureize, and the distance to my target had been cut in half.
I was very faint, the air level indicator in my helmet had been flashing and beeping annoyingly for the past few minutes, but there was nothing I could do about it.
Arms outstretched, I attempted to angle my body as best I could to face the probe, overcompensated, and spun a little too quickly for my own good.
"Oh crap." I understated a split second before my armor slammed into the sensor housing on the probe.
I flung out with my armored gauntlet, desperately trying to slow myself to a reasonable speed. I caught the casing with my left arm, which tore a gouge into the smooth metal and caused small debris to spin out of the long tear, and also served to slow me enough to latch onto the rest of the probe with my hands and feet. As soon as I had recovered from the decompression sickness, with the help of specific drugs designed to help with that particular type of nausea, I activated the mag-clams on my boots so I could walk on the casing. The probe was of Hiigaran origin, I could tell already, which could defiantly be a great deal more on the safe side for me, I've heard gruesome stories of scout pilots being barbecued by Vaygr boobytraps. Why someone would mine a probe with electricity traps was beyond me at the time, but I knew that I had to get back to a ship somewhere.
A deep, heart stopping pulse echoed throughout space straight from a source somewhere deep inside the ancient dreadnaught.
"That's impossible!" I gasped, clinging onto the probe. I frantically made my way to the far side, where I could see the dreadnaught in all its glory. I witnessed one of the Marine frigates detonate, shards of plassteel and tetrafocium tossed in a rapidly expanding sphere of death and ruin.
A large slab of armor plating cracked past my helmet, its dust wake giving the sharp crack as it slapped across my face.
Damn. I had friends on that ship! I shook my head and resumed the task at hand. I slowly made my way by mag-clamp boots to the rear of the probe, it's bulky shape no bigger than an escape pod, barely able to hold six fully grown Hiigarans inside it's bulk. I made my way, one step at a time as I was forced to keep one boot stuck to the hull so I didn't float out into deep space, and after several minutes of this, I came to the aft section labeled "Engine Storage".
Vaygr Interceptors were speeding towards the little blip on my helmet display which bore the markings of a Hiigaran probe. I cursed, and then resumed my task. I had broken into the main computer controls for the engine, but there was no power remaining. All power was consumed with lighting the first and usually only fusion burst from the tiny engine. I weighed my options carefully, on one hand I could manually dump power from the sensors into the start up igniter, but then my suit couldn't tap into Fleet's sensor network. I had no choice but to dump a pulsar charge directly into the system. Again, as in my armor, this would probably cause irreparable damage, but I had no choice. I jiggled the pulsar rifle from its cradle on my back, and dislodged it from the damaged cradle. The armor bleeped an alert on my helmet display, indicating that a new crack in the armor had formed when I wrenched the thing loose. I murmured a curse word as I shut down the alert.
I was finished dumping power into the exposed circuitry, and I waited for the final ignition sequence to start.
"Maker, wherever you are, please guide this probe straight and true" I pleaded. I had never been much of a religious person, but one had to admit that you could take great comfort in knowing there is a higher power protecting you.
I felt a tug as the probe bucked a little, and then a light blue glow filled the aft of the tiny probe I had latched onto. That wasn't right... oh crap! I thought just as the probe rocketed forward, the G forces threatening to tear me off of my now precarious position.
The probe shot towards the looming figure of the dreadnaught, straight at it I realized with a start. The G forces were quickly building to the point where I could not cling to the fuselage any longer. I was torn from the probe, my armored body aimed straight at the rapidly approaching dreadnaught. I heard screaming, I think it was mine. An airlock, I was aimed straight at an airlock! I instinctively curled into the fetal position, arms locked around my legs, head ducked. I have to say, I am very glad that Hiigaran armor is so strong.
I wonder what the Vaygr saw when I slammed into the one airlock that would lead straight to the bridge, I wonder what their final seconds were like. Most of all, I wonder how in all of creation, I survived punching through an airlock and about six bulkheads only to be stopped by ricocheting multiple times around the inside of the besieged bridge.
I awoke to find sparking panels, smoldering bodies, and shattered skeletons strewn about me. My armor had suffered almost no damage whatsoever, and as I rolled to one side so that I could check my wrist computer, Hiigaran Marines stormed the bridge with drawn weapons.
"Bwuh?" I said blearily.
The Marines took a few minutes to clear the bridge and lock it down, my query was left unanswered as they took care of business. One in a maroon tinted armor grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. "Marine, how the hell did you manage to do this!?" He motioned towards the smoking ruins of the bridge. "You must have single-handedly killed the entire bridge crew, soldiers, and officers! I want to know every Fing detail you can remember!"
I was stunned, more so than I already was. Cursing like that was practically unknown to the Hiigaran peoples, but maybe he wasn't Hiigaran at all, I cleared that thought from my head the instant it formed. Dangerous thought, that.
"Well?" He said impatiently.
"Sir, I... I think that I ricocheted around the bridge, killing everyone."
"You think!? You had better do a whole lot more than think when I see your report!" He bellowed.
"Yes sir." I said meekly.
"In the meantime, there are still corridors to be searched. We now control the bridge, and ultimately, the ship itself. Now go, I don't want to see you again until you have a full report ready for me to read.
I realized that the Marine I was speaking to was the MO! He actually came on a mission for once, I thought bitterly. He must have been with the last detachment, but this was unprecedented! To the extent of my knowledge, this Hiigaran had never left the safety of his ship.
I meandered towards the hole my armor had created, and promptly exited the bridge. I could feel the change in the atmosphere of the ship, it was just a bit less evil, though signs of Vaygr occupation were rampant. I poked my head around the corner I had approached, looking this way and that. Nothing. I decided to move on down the corridor, checking rooms as I went along. Hours passed, and I was joined by another, a far less experienced female Marine.
"Hello, were you assigned on S&D as well?" She asked.
I stared at her for a moment, the question seemed so ridiculous, that it took a moment to process. I finally answered her, "Yes, I am on search and destroy right now." A lame answer, but I didn't care.
"Let's get going then." The female said.
We wandered the hallways for a while, periodically pausing to check on Fleet updates. The only Marine frigate to survive taking the dreadnaught was captain Soban's ship, the one that had Dropped myself and my team. The dreadnaught was charging its massive phased cannon array, which had the ability to fire a golden beam of death and destruction many kilometers into space. The whole ship needed to be facing the threat to fire the main cannon, but with the power to vaporize battlecruiser class vessels in seconds, the decreased mobility is well worth it.
I suddenly felt another pulse, another of the universe's fibers being strummed. That is the only way to describe the feeling, and in a way, it was beautiful. Then we heard the screams. I can never forget the screams as they echo through the whole of my being.