Equitum Sidereus chapter 4
AUTHORS NOTE- IT'S GETTING COLDER! Can you believe this shit? I mean it was warm for like 3 days; In California of course, land of sunshine and shit, earthquakes radiation and tiny tsunamis. God rest those lost to the earth in Japan, that bitch will get hers someday.
Well here we go again, I hope you guys read these author notes, because eventually I'm going to sneak important stuff here to throw you off. And if more people don't vote on the poll, I'm going to do whatever I choose to do.
Originally this chapter was going to be posted in late February, and only include the after two year's later section. I fully intend to kill this story and maybe start a sequel after chapter 20, maybe I will continue pripyats cry at some point, but that's not for a while; I got inspired to continue writing this chapter because of the music from the crew over at OCremix.
By the way, is it weird that my main character seems to have an addiction to root beer? Aahh root beer… wait a minute I'll be right back…
""Dialogue/ writing (in bold)
THREE WEEKS LATER
I wake to the blaring din of my alarm clock, then jump out of bed. I am eager to start the day today, even the boring part were we are all forced to sit through classes to learn all about tactics, military etiquette, and various jabber that doesn't interest me in the least. I can't wait until I get to see the mechs again.
Pulling on a coat and some insulated winter forest camouflaged pants I stumble out of my room and into the kitchen in the back. Where Instructor McGrath stands over a sizzling cast iron pan, I sniff the air and decide he is either doing something odd to the pan or cooking something I do not recognize. Deciding not to question it and just see if everyone else is awake I grab a bottle of root beer out of the refrigerator and find my way to the living room. To see as always, Hale being the only other kid awake before me. Sometimes I have to wonder if he even really ever sleeps.
"Morn'n." I yawn out as I grab the space in the couch I always sit in, and pull the cap off the bottle of root beer using the buckle of my belt, nothing better in my opinion than a good root beer first thing in the morning. "Not even six am and you're already drinking all of that sugar? Why not try tea or something not soda for once?" Hale asks before picking up a bottle of pineapple juice, and downing the bit that was left in it. I scoff at this bit off hypocrisy and decide to call him out on it.
"Your one to talk, that stuff you drink is almost pure sugar by my standards. Besides I like root beer, it makes me happy." I smile as I finish talking and return to enjoying the carmely sweet goodness that is ATLAS root beer.
"Ok I get your point; I'll let you win this round… I wonder what concoction McGrath is burning in there. Never smelled anything like it or seen anything like it either… What in god's name has gravy in it that you would eat in the morning?" Hale asks after conceiting to defeat once again. Moments later Miala shuffles into the room, half asleep and still wrapped to her neck in a gigantic puffy comforter.
"Morn." She sleepily says before loping over the couch and piling onto it next to me. I wonder if she sleeps too, why else would she be completely dead tired every morning when the rest of us are usually ready to go early on.
"You should go to bed earlier if you're going to be this tired every morning. It's not good for you, almost as bad as me and hale's sugar intake and Nils's falling over himself." I jokingly say as I nudge the giant blanket off of my section of the couch. I fall over on the couch as she suddenly jumps on top of me in retaliation; somehow still keeping the blanket wrapped the exact same way.
"Shut up or I'll sleep right here and not let you get up." She says happily, telling me that I probably should shut up but… nah I think I'm in the mood to play this through to see what happens. I move around to try and get my arms out from under her so I can shove her off but to no avail. She has me trapped… I look over to Hale for some assistance.
"Sorry man; you're the one who got himself into this, so you're the one getting you out of it, besides this is funny." He replies while shaking his head and smirking. He must find this oh so incredibly funny to see me humiliated like this.
"I hate you…" I seethe to him and then increase the fervor of my struggle till I work my arms out from under the laughing evil girl on top of me. I then shove her off of me and onto the arm of the couch. I quickly roll away from her so she can't jump on top of me again and stick my tongue out at her in a move of immaturity that would certainly be expected of this situation."So, that's what you kids do when I'm not around to watch you!" Instructor McGrath's voice booms in a teasing tone, my neck heats in response to the embarrassment I feel. "N-No! Well not usually but…" I draw off, my embarrassment rising as I notice the jolly jokester like smirk coming from the instructor.
"I'm just playing with you. Come on, I got something brewing in my cauldron that I want you guys to try. I think you're going to like it." He says while ushering us into the kitchen, five steaming plates of meat filled white gravy on top of some kind of biscuit sits on the counter.
"Um… What is it?" I ask, looking at it and trying to remember if I had eaten anything similar to it at any point. "It's biscuits and gravy, with a spicy sausage in it. Just eat it; we do not have a lot of time left to mess around today. The academy is having a parade for all of last year's graduates, so we gotta go. I'm going to wake up the sleeping one and tell him to get moving fast." He answers before turning and walking from the room to wake up Niles.
Once Niles is ready, we quickly find our way out of the residential section and to the parade grounds, were the parade was just beginning.
Hundreds of people in tanks, a few in sets of steel medieval knights armor and a fair portion of mechs trot around the parade grounds. I look on at the huge congregation in respectful awe before I see something I haven't seen before.
Several very large men standing on the back of a flat bed mech transport, the transport flanked by Black knight mechs with what looks armed robots sitting on their shoulders and hanging from the torso of the mechs. "Who are they?" I ask, pointing at the seven foot tall men and the robots on the Black knight's.
"Those are our legionnaires, the Battle armor units of our company. They actually stay at the academy instead of branching out to parts unknown so they can be ready on demand at any time. The Battle armor hanging from the battlemechs is Longinus heavy battle armor, new design helped out by the friendly scientists over at Comstar" He finished his speech, answering all of the questions I didn't even have to ask, and giving me more information than I thought I would get.
"So they are part of the Starlight?" Niles asks whilst standing on his toes to get a better view of everyone in the parade.
"Essentially yes; you see once we deploy after you guys are all ready to go they will be coming with us to keep any battle armor we run into off of your mechs." McGrath explains while we all watched the final procession of mechs in the path stomp off at a slow pace, the house Marick flag waving on the back of a black knight as it steps through the massive iron portcullis of the parade grounds walls.
TWO YEARS LATER MECH TRAINING SECTOR 7 LOWLAND HILLS.
I stomped out of the Archeus union class drop ship and onto the soft grass of the hill covered terrain. The Highlander belonging exclusively to the knights starlight training division, was quickly becoming one of my favorite Mech to stomp around in. and so it was also the one I chose today for the simple accuracy exercise we are carrying out, having its load out set for only a targeting laser and two light gauss rifles, it wasn't going to pack to much of a punch. But it is enough for what I'm using it for.
"Heckler; you can go now, bring the Archeus to waypoint Charlie, this shouldn't take too long." I say over the radio in the helmet I have strapped onto my head. Then I flip up a large toggle switch on the side of the helmet, a wave of nausea comes over me as the neural interface connects with my mind, the mech instantly steadies, and the onboard computer reads off a series of checklists, confirming that the mech wasn't going to blow up on me.
"Lance leader; what's the plan?" Niles voice asks over the radio, his huge catapult coming to rest beside me. The missile pods locked closed with thick plates keeping dust out of them.
"Just cut a few holes in the tanks on the way to Charlie, then get in the drop ship and go back to command. This is probably one of the last exercises they're going to have us do before tossing us out to do some real training." I answer, slowly accelerating my mech until it was going a steady stomp of 65kph, Niles matches my speed and we soon crest the first hilltop.
"Lead; this is support, going weapons hot." Niels shouts over the radio, I look over to his mech, and watch him flick the giant arming toggle for the two lrm 20- thunder warhead missile launchers. The two meal plates lift up, and then slide back to rest above the launchers and out of the way.
I release my own weapon safeties and prepare my mech to fire. The two light gauss systems arm and the targeting laser flicks to life. The computer bleeps in acknowledgement at having the weapons ready to fire. My radar bleeps as it reads the images coming from the six disabled myrmidon tanks spread throughout the valley below the hill, as well as the radar signatures of three aerospace fighters flying towards us from the east.
"Aerospace fighters? Support; target those aircraft and ping them for Iff. We're supposed to be the only ones out here; hopefully they're just doing a flyby to take a look at what we're up to. " I say, wondering out loud about the fighters approaching us.
"Got it… err, IFF tag received. They're from the academy, unarmed. The IFF has a message tagged to it, sending it your way." Niels says, a simple order flashes across my heads up display, reading "Training for today cancelled, emergency situation class-delta, all trainees return to your drop ships and report to commanding officers for orders concerning the situation, order under Atreus academy president/ advisory general Kayon Minerva, all inactive units report to the nearest command post for further information." I sigh and cancel out the message, well this sucks. I didn't even get to shoot anything today, the emergency is probably just someone got lost somewhere and the recruits are going to get sent to look for them in scout mechs again.
"Niels drop the dust covers on your missiles, weapons cool. We gotta go to the drop ship; some jerk messed up and got us a new job. This is happening a lot lately don't you think?" I say over the radio, disabling my radar system and the weapons computer. I point my mech to the south directly at waypoint Charlie and set the autopilot to stomp me over there at 75kph.
"Yeah, must be some problem with the navigational systems. Comstar was supposed to start sending out new nav data a couple of months ago; Strange that they didn't, usually there spot on with their work. Ya know, maybe something's going on that they're not telling us." Niels says as the dust covers for his missiles lock back into place. His mech quickly catches up with me, pulling alongside me he looks over waiting for a reply to his last sentence.
"I don't even want to think of any weird shit happening, excuse my language. But the last time something weird like that happened, the clanners came to town and taught us how inferior our technology really was. That's not something we want happening again." I say, thinking back on all of the old news reports from the clan wars my father used to read aloud to us at the breakfast table. What if something big was going on, that's something I don't want to think about.
I pull the Archeus's radio channel up and send a signal telling the pilot of the ship to warm up the fusion drives so we could scoot out of there the moment we arrived, and laid back in my command couch.
It doesn't seem like I'm getting much learning in since I graduated from the officer school. This was supposed to be the first uninterrupted practice since then, and the officer school was all paperwork and pencil pushing, not my kind of work at all. Now this pops up, taking away from my practice and leaving me itching to destroy something.
We soon arrive at the Archeus and quickly shuffle the two mechs into its mechbay, then take off staying in our mechs for the short twenty five minute flight back to the training camp. When we arrive, we immediately pull the mechs from the drop ship and walk them back to their mech hanger. When Niels and I depart the mech hangar, instructor McGrath is waiting for us in a fully armed Moltke main battle tank.
"Get in; there has been a situation. I will explain on the way." He hurridly orders Niels and myself into the tank, which quickly rolls off the grounds of the main training center, onto the main military highway. The highway is packed with military equipment moving at an almost frantic pace towards the direction of the spaceport.
"Carl!" I shout to McGrath over the deep rumble of the tanks huge treads crunching against the pavement below it. "What the hell's going on?" The huge movement of heavy military Armor is really starting to worry me, Niels Might be right, something bad happened, something really bad.
"A large force of organized space pirates has been raiding planets on the outer shield of the free world's league. They have captured Hammer, and we know that there main base is on the planet of Tarminn in the periphery. Most of this force is heading to Hammer to liberate it from the pirates, but we are going to the periphery to hit them in their heartland. As well as tear them off of any planets they have taken on their way Into the sphere." He says over the constant rumble of the tank, we are almost at the spaceport. We soon pass the now open military access doors of the spaceports massive security walls, then head towards a grouping of drop-ships bearing the Knights starlight insignia.
There was a giant conquistador troop ship, a large force of Union class drop ships and two Hannibal class drop-ships. This wasn't a normal force that could be carried by the average free worlds league jump ship, this is an armada.
The tank rolls into one of the waiting Hannibal's, one names Summers dawn . McGrath, Niels and I dismount from it and step onto the steel decking of the ship. We are quickly ushered to the command center onboard the Summer by a waiting pair of technical officers, when we arrive Miala and Hale were there to meet us.
The summer takes off and docks with a new ship that is of a design I've never seen before. It bears the name Equitum Sidereus-01; it must be the Knights starlight jumpship. A Battleship and two destroyers flank it as it floats orbiting Atreus.
"Wow, Is this our new ship?" Miala asks in awe. The rest of us just shuffle through the airlock as we look on at the shiny new titanium plating that makes up the interior of the ship.
"Yes, this is a new, experimental prototype from Atreus's shipyards. Capable of multiple jumps before requiring a solar recharge. It is also the only multirole jump ship in the FWL arsenal, being that it is armed as an assault class battleship, carrying a forward mounted dual coil assist 600 millimeter hypervelocity Rail gun, and twelve naval ppc's as its primary weapons." McGrath says as we reach the elevator to the bridge level of the ship.
"Yes… I am quite proud that I am assigned to operate this fine piece of naval technology." Comes a voice I haven't heard since the days of naval tactics and small arms training in the space station.
"Instructor Tallow! You're going to command the jump ship?" I say as I eagerly greet the aged instructor. He hasn't changed at all in the two years since I started out my journey as a mech officer.
"That's captain Tallow to you cadet officer." He says in mock seriousness before breaking into laughter.
"It's nice to see you, sir. It's been ages since we were in the space station learning from you, really puts my mind at ease to see that you're going to be our captain." I say to him as the elevator reaches the center of the ship, the long flat corridor containing all of the ships operational equipment and the end of which contained the bridge itself, a massive thick sheet of Plexiglas separating the pressurized deck from the hostile vacuum of space.
As we walk towards the bridge section of the command deck, various technicians begin to start up their personal work terminals; a hollow whine of the reactor in the ship starting up comes to meet everyone's ears.
Captain Tallow takes his seat in the command couch for the ship captain, perched directly in front of it a massive hologram screen showing the map of the Atreus system, with every single space borne craft noted in green blocks of different sizes.
"Alright crew. Let's see what this boat can do!" Tallow announces as he taps in a series of password commands, undocking the jump ship from the space station. The ship drifts away from the station propelled by small thrusters located on its belly, and as soon as the ship was far enough away; Tallow orders the jump engine to be test fired, a whitish colored block of space generates just in front of the nose of the ship, and swirling light blue vortices coalesce inside of the wormhole.
We drift into it, marking two great moments that change my life, my first jump ship jump, and the beginning of the real knight's starlight.
A quote from an old codex from the clanners' ilkahn history comes to my mind at the event "Though the stars bear much pain, the will of humanity to branch out and adventure is too great for it to be anything but extraordinary for those who are to appreciate it. For once man has ventured out of his shell, an entire universe of discovery and strength awaits him."