For those who wanted the crash of mars event to have its own chapter, here we go. Thanks for all the support and this is my gift to you! Sorry this took so long, I've been busy.
Martian Colony, Solar System
Rover Hanger Section
August 8, 1997
Jake always enjoyed a quiet geological survey of the surface of Mars. The trips were usually peaceful, and gave him time to simply enjoy the view while doing his job. Using his land rover, he drove towards an already stationed geological relaying device a few miles from the colony.
His rover could reach speeds up to six miles an hour, he reached his destination in merely a few minutes and followed the trail of already made tracks from his previous trip.
Standing at a nice six-two, he wore a buzz cut, which always reminded him of when he was in boot camp during his military years. He had dark blue eyes and his skin was much more tan colored from the sun's rays. His reddish-brown hair matched the color of the relay, which also had shades of blue so it could be spotted better.
His suit currently carried three hours of oxygen, which was plenty of time to do his work and have time to spare. He had one of the easier tasks, he would program the survey antenna, read the numbers it gave off, and type them into the rover's schematics for the trip back, which would then download the information to the colony's mainframe.
He waved towards a probe rover, which had just come back from a standard trip, collecting samples from the ice caps on Mars, and he knew the scientists inside the colony base couldn't wait to work on the probe's findings, while he would simply wait for his next task. Soon they would map out miles of Mars, and hopeful to find any amazing new discoveries from the red planet.
Smiling, he looked up to the sky and the international space station behind it, thinking about how far they had come.
Republic space,
Orbit of Christophsis
Droid commander DC-192 had been scanning the area for hours. His masters and creators, the CIS, had assigned him with a small fleet to look for worlds they could use for resources and labor. The clone wars had just begun, and the need for materials was high.
Over the world called Christophsis, he stood in the deck as more ships jumped from their bases and began to set up a blockade and invade the world. His forces from the other vessels were quick at work, and within hours, the planet was practically under their control.
But, unfortunately for the droid, the Republic was quick to intervene, and the attacked their blockade.
Many of the B1's shrieked in terror and panic, and DC-192 was no tactical droid, so when the large and much more powerful fleet of the Republic arrived, he nearly panicked as well.
"Fire! Fire!" He yelled, but his subordinates weren't paying attention. "Fire!" He screamed, and finally they listened and fired upon the Republic. Squads of vulture droids flew from their hangers and began to start attack runs on the Republic, only to be intercepted by the Republic triwings.
Even with superior numbers, the vulture droids were outmatched by the Republic fighters and could only get a few kills of the more capable pilots.
The vessel shook from the fury of the attack.
"Uh sir, the shields are dropping fast!" A droid yelled. The ship shook again, louder this time, as smoke and fire spewed from the ship's hull.
The battle seemed hopeless, and the holotable activated, and the body of Admiral trench, a spider-like humanoid, and said, "Pull from the system immediately, then return with the Republic's backs turned and we can catch them in a choking point."
"Roger roger!" DC-0192 nodded as he relayed the orders to the bridge crew.
"We've taken too much damage!" A droid shouted in his high pitched voice. "The hyperdrive navigation systems are glitching, we're locking on a random set of coordinates!"
But the warning was too little too late, and the battle hardened ship shot into hyperspace, not knowing where they went. The trip into hyperspace have off bright beams of blue and white as they soared through, without any real destination. The droids were in high confusion as to where they were going or how long the trip could take.
"Where are we going?" DC-0192 asked, not sure of what to do in this situation. Droid's raised there hands and shrugged them. "Pull us out of hyperspace so we can find out then!"
"Roger, roger." The droids simultaneously said, and went to their work.
They worked quickly and followed standard procedures, and within a few moments the ship returned to real space. In front of them, layer a large belt of asteroids and debris, and at the rate of their speed, their only hope was to try to survive it.
"Fire cannons at the space debris in front of us! We need to figure out where we are so we can make it back without any problems."
"Roger, roger." They replied simultaneously.
For a standard droid commander, DC-0192 was a bit of an 'independent thinker'. There were many cases of droid's like him, where standard B1's had what people called, common sense. At one point, he actually 'wondered' things, like why the war started. He once asked a super tactical droid about the matter, who seemed surprised at his question.
DC-0192 thought back to the occurrence in his memory banks, when he discovered more about the bad quality things the Republic have done, and that they have an unfair and overall ineffective government. DC-0192 understood why so many people wanted to leave the Republic. And what was the Republic's response? They ruthlessly attacked Geonosis and started a bloody war, destroying millions of credits worth of property.
DC-0192 was careful not to show off his surprisingly human-like brain, not very intelligent, but was capable of learning. He heard about B1's and other droids that were sent to 'program filtration', and he didn't like the sound of it.
Boom! Asteroid fragments began to pepper the droid ship heavily, and turbolasers and defense laser turrets worked tirelessly to try and take them out. The pieces collided with the shields of the ship hard, causing them to drop fast under the pressure.
"Boost the engines!" DC-0192 said, remembering something he saw Republic venator do, rushing through an asteroid field to avoid major collisions and hope for the best.
"I hope we don't die out here." A droid muttered. Hope. DC-0192 remembered tactical droids talk about it. What an interesting concept. Truly, he was hopeful. Hopeful that he would continue to learn and fight the tyranny that was the Republic.
"We're coming out of the asteroid belt, and we have a planet on our long-range scanners." A droid said to DC-0192. "We can jump to it in a few minutes if we can fix the hyperdrive."
After a moment to 'think', and analyze their current situation, DC-0192 decided against it. "No, spend as much time as needed to fix the hyperdrive, but meanwhile, we need to run full diagnostics of the ship and see how many units we still have onboard."
"Roger, roger. Analyzing," The droid paused as the display computer listed off everything that was aboard the ship, "we have thousands of B1's, B2's, spider droids, and several squads of vultures that we were supposed to be drop off onto Christophsis before we left the system. We have several hull breaches, teams will be sent to repair them as much as possible."
"Roger, roger. How close are we to the planet?" DC-0192 inquired.
"At this speed it should take a standard hour." The B1 droid replied as he continued working on his computer in front of him, checking for any other problems on the ship.
"Good, keep the engines running fast and at high power, with some units to make sure its fine and operational, what can go wrong?"
UN Mars Colony Base
Main Control/Communications Center
5:31 AM
Inside the heart of the colony, a patient Jason Romero waited with his friend and colleague, Matt Pike, for the signal of the approaching supply ship to enter the orbit of Mars after a jump from the Earth. Jason and Matt could easily be mistaken for brothers, with their matching dark brown-black hair that really made their brown eyes pop out.
The two had worked together for NASA for years, and each jumped on the opportunity to work as system 'commanders', as they were nicknamed. They were tasked with basically making sure everything was functioning, on task, and that the schedule terms were met.
And as they waited, Matt couldn't help but look out the viewpoint, which made it easy to see everything from the ISS that was in orbit, and an astronaut driving the martian rover towards the mapping devices they had planted to map out the surface and beneath.
As Matt looked back to the screen, he reached for his second cup of coffee, and as he took a sip from the reenergizing drink, the control room's sensors started beeping wildly, which meant that they could pick up a ship on radar.
"Is that the Destiny-four?" Jason asked with a yawn.
"No it's too big to be it, and the Destiny-four isn't scheduled to arrive for a couple more minutes." Matt paused as he read the size of the blip on the screen. "It could be an asteroid."
"According to these charts, it's too big to be any asteroid that would float towards here." Jason, eyes widened, furiously typed commands on his computer, then an image was shown of the object. Zooming in, he could see the mysterious object in detail. It had two long pieces stretched out of it's skeletal-like features for no particular reason, had a curved front cut into two pieces, and a deck of some kind, with bright yellow squares.
"It is a ship!" He gasped in surprise and worry. As he shook his head in disbelief, another dot blipped on the screen, signifying that the Destiny-four had arrived.
"We need to tell them!" Jason nearly fell out of his chair as he was about to run to the intercom room next door. Even though Matt couldn't help but stare as the image of the alien ship grew closer, he could still mutter words.
"I think they already know." He pointed to the screen as the unknown ship grew closer at an alarmingly fast rate.
CIS Munificent Star Frigate
Main Deck
"Commander, we've picked up a signal of some kind of small ship that jumped from hyperspace." DC-0192 heard one of his subordinates say as he was 'thinking' about his life.
Looking out the viewpoint, he could see it through his optics. On it's side, carried strange symbols of a language he couldn't recognize. It had two small, and flat sets wings, with a black nose-like end on its front, with several viewpoints along its hull.
Definitely some kind of light cruiser or a transport. "Why are we still going at high speeds?" DC-0192 said as he noticed that they grew really close to the desert-like planet. "I thought we sent repair teams to the reactor?"
"Uh, sir. These readings show the reactor is overheating fast from the engine boosts through the asteroid field, we can't slow down fast enough!" A B1 said as he checked the readings on his terminal with worry.
The damaged frigate shot towards the planet like a rocket. Rushing past the strange transport-looking ship and into the atmosphere. Fires bursts on the sides of the frigate, and it began to slow down from the drag by the atmosphere. The ship's shields dropped rapidly and failed to protect the occupants. The ship's hull took on heavy stress, and it shook hard.
A sudden THUD signified the crash, following the massive dragging across the surface.
UN Shuttle Concordance
Orbiting UN Mars Colony Base
Above Shuttle landing zone
Commander William Phillips was, at the very least, stunned. It was supposed to be a standard supply drop. But instead, the most unthinkable thing occurred.
First sighting of a real, unidentified ship, from outside this system.
William was wide eyed as he and his crew fell out of apollo-space, the name given to the new means of fast travel. The ship was huge, and easily dwarfed their shuttle. He blinked twice, just to be sure he wasn't simply daydreaming.
"What is that thing?" The shuttle pilot, Douglas Shepard, exclaimed as he couldn't keep his eyes off the strange looking ship. "Looks like something straight out of star trek or halo!"
"Whatever it is, it's coming by fast!" the young commander said in astonishment.
As he spoke, the munificent class star frigate by the CIS, flew by at high speeds without any sign of stopping. The frigate quickly rushed past the much smaller shuttle and descended through the atmosphere of Mars, and rammed into the rocky surface.
"This is the UN shuttle, Concordance, to Martian colony command, do you copy me? What was that thing?" Douglas established a connection to the command center of the colony.
"This is Matt Pike, colony communications technician, I cannot confirm the identity of that, thing." Matt sighed over the channel as he continued. "Resume your current course and prep you and your security team to meet up with the rest of us"
The crew went on to what was to be their standard, uneventful mission. But that changed quickly. The crew, and everyone in the colony, had focused on the ship that everything else felt gone, or insignificant in comparison.
The shuttle bay had two large doors, one having a large letter of U, and the other, a large N, symbolizing its property being of the UN. As the two doors opened widely, the Concordance landed smoothly, and as the roof returned to its normal state, the room quickly repressurized. An atmosphere similar to that of Earth filled the chambers, and the crew of the Concordance were able to safely unload their hundreds of pounds of food and other various supplies, and walk off their ship. The commander, pilot, technician, and two security personnel walked off one by one, each with mixed looks of curiosity, excitement, and worry at the same time.
The atmosphere of the hallway felt cold as they walked through a decontamination zone.
Breaking the silence, William asked but one one of the many questions on everyone's minds. "So, are we going to try to make contact?"
"If we get approval, yes." Security officer Lieutenant David Smith said with a firm tone, as he felt his sidearm, a SIG Sauer on his right leg. "For now, we need to contact the UN or at least the White House."
"Why the White House?" Fellow security officer, Edward Dietrich of Germany asked. "Just because the United States put a lot of work in this project, doesn't mean they can call the shots."
The group of four finally reached the communications room, as other astronauts followed them from their duties to listen to their orders in dealing with the first-contact situation.
"Can it Ed, it doesn't matter, we're getting a connection with the UN headquarters." Matt interrupted. The main screen switched on, and faces of multiple world leaders began to pop up, one from the US lunar base, and one from the second ISS.
So far, the world leaders currently present were the US President Colin Abrams, the UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, the President of China, Jiang Zemin, the Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, and several other various countries. Each had faces of absolute seriousness, as if nothing otherworldly was going on, in order to keep everything in order and not chaos.
"Let's get down to it." Tony Blair of Britain started. "You're sure this is actually an 'alien' ship?"
Pausing to take a small breath, Matt looked to the many others cramping themselves into the room. "Mr. Prime minister, it is without a doubt, nothing we could make in years."
"Where is it now?" Boris asked in heavily accented english.
"The, ship, crashed down several kilometers away from the base, and we believe it sustained some heavy damage, from what, can only be guessed." Matt scratched the tip of his beard as he sat back in his chair and waited for the second of no doubt many more questions.
"Mr. Pike?" The US president, Colin Abrams started to ask. "Can you please show us a clear image of the craft?"
Nearly falling back, Matt quickly went to work at the president's request. Typing in several commands into his computer, after a few seconds, a recorded image from the orbiting ISS over Mars was displayed. Most of the faces from the world leaders were wide-eyed at the image.
"How soon can we send a scouting team to investigate?" Tony Blair asked calmly.
"What makes you think that would be a good idea?" Boris argued. "We don't know anything about it, especially if it is hostile."
The rest of the world leaders began to argue over the course of action that was needed to be taken, many sided to send a team, while others argued it might not be safe. The room seemed to be divided. That is, until the young US president spoke through the chorus of voices.
"We don't exactly have many options on this matter." He started. "We need to act now and fast, if they are hostile, it would be best to get to them before they have had time to recuperate from the crash."
"I agree." Jiang finally spoke. "Now is the time."
"Mr. Pike, how soon can we send your security forces to check out the ship?" Colin was young for many presidents. At age forty-four, he had dark brown hair and piercing blue eyes. He won a landslide victory of the election last year against Bill Clinton. Colin greatly strived to improve security and military capabilities of the United States, and helped forge strong relations with Israel, Japan, and the UK in particular. He and his cabinet had worked hard involving numerous secret projects with said countries, like the new HEL laser, which has shown to be very capable against aircraft, ground vehicles, and rockets.
"The rover is still fueled up pretty well, shouldn't take that long." Pike answered.
"We'll send another shuttle with more security forces just in case." Lunar Base Marshall Kyle Ford said calmly as he had a chance to speak.
"Then let's get it going."
Rover Hanger
The four security units geared up with what weapons they had, and extra breathing tanks incase they needed to stay outside longer than they planned. Each carried a loaded Sig Sauer, the only guns permitted to be carried. Each quickly dressed in their suits and prepared for the trip.
"So Lieutenant," Mars Security officer Kyle Schneider approached his superior, David Smith, "what do you think we're gonna find? Little green men?"
"How about giant bugs? Or some kind of reptile?" Fellow young officer, Jackson Willis asked jokingly.
"Whatever we find, I hope it's friendly." Was all David said. "Cause if these guys can create such an advanced ship, who knows what else they have."
The group continued their conversation for a while, until the next security team arrived, except they had standard M-16 rifles, and Sig Sauers. The group now totally consisted of eight. Two were chinese, three were Americans, one German, two British, one french, and an Israeli. Each was trained to deal with terrorists after an incident on the first ISS. Everyone remembered the attack and it forced the UN to establish the security forces to prevent it from happening again. And so far it worked.
"Alright, let's get moving." David addressed everyone in the room. "Pressure suits on, oxygen tanks are attached. Weapons are loaded and rovers are prepped. ETA to crash site, twenty minutes at full speed."
"Copy that." Kyle replied as he took a seat at the driver's controls. David and the rest of their team sat inside, each eager for their assignment. The rovers exited the hangar and drove across the barren and rocky surface, kicking up dust as they pushed to full speed. Overhead, one of the newly designed NGF-07's flew past them, and slowed down as it closed in on the crash, until it was placed into hovering mode.
Just a precaution. David thought to himself. I hope we don't make these guys think we are a threat. He chuckled to himself at the thought of them starting a galactic war, since it was something straight out of a movie.
"Alright boys, once we secure the area, our friendly fighter will blow open a weakened part of the hull so we can make our way in, once we establish contact, we bring in several high-level the officials to meet with their leader."" David read their orders aloud from his communications tablet.
"And if they are hostile, sir?" Security Officer, Daniel Johnson, asked as he checked his pistol for the third time. "What do we do?"
David took a breath as they finally reached the crash site.
"We do what we have to."
The NGF-07 warmed up his HEL laser, and after a few seconds, a burst of heated light destroyed a piece of the unshielded frigate, allowing the group to move in.
The eight men and women marched in, David, being in charge, lead the way with his pistol drawn and ready. The group spread out in what looked like a damaged storage room, full of random advanced machinery.
"Guys check this out!" Daniel exclaimed as he shined his light towards what he was addressing. As the group looked, each were shocked or surprised at the sight.
"What the?" Kyle couldn't believe his eyes. The sight was impressive and shocking, at least to them. Rows and rows of some kind of deactivated robots straight out of a movie. Each were deactivated, thankfully, and didn't seem to be any threat to the team.
"Press on." David whispered, and walked past the rows of droids. "No, Johnson, take Abigail and Charlie and investigate the storage containers around here, the rest of us will keep looking for survivors."
"You sure that's a good idea sir?" Kyle asked, who was clearly getting nervous about the situation.
"Well what else can we do? There isn't exactly protocol for this." Johnson replied.
"Let's just go." David was getting annoyed. He wanted to continue his mission fast incase things were to go south, and if they did, he would hope to get some information on whoever or whatever these people are.
The group didn't need to respond, they simply followed their older leader and walked towards some sort of door. But just as they were planning how to open it, said door slid open, with two of the robots standing their, each armed with strange looking guns.
"Intruders!" One yelled.
"Blast them!" The other said, and they both simultaneously pulled up their weapons, ready to fire.
Reacting quickly, David popped off two shots from his pistol, 'killing' them both. As he went down to examine them, his eyes focused on the large, dented holes in their heads. While the bullets couldn't go in all the way, the force behind them seemed to be enough to disable them.
"Those things speak english?" Kyle shouted in surprise. "How is that possible?"
"We'll figure it out later Kyle, first we have to make sure we have the advantage here and find any officers." David replied.
"This doesn't make any sense-." Kyle muttered, but was cut off by David.
"Check your fire." David said quietly. "They seem hostile, but maybe we can sort this out once we find the deck of this ship."
"Copy." Kyle nodded, grabbing one of the robot's guns, examining it carefully.. "Should we take the bodies as well?"
"Later, we need to continue the mission." David activated his link to the control center. "Control did you see that?"
"Yes we did, these guys appear to be hostile, get your team and find some kind of control room while the UN forces arrive. We are taking their ship by force if we need to."
"Copy that."
With that, David wasted no time in stepping over the droids and walking forward. The group continued on, so far not finding any more of what they assumed were some kind of security drones.
"Hold it." David raised his hand right as a set of alarms went off, gesturing the group to stop. After a moment, the clanking sound of heavy footsteps grew loud, and several droids ran past them chatting about things unclear to most of the humans, not taking notice as they were not in the droid's view.
"Any guess on where they were going?" Kyle whispered to David.
"Same place we are." David muttered. "I heard one say something about a bridge deck, sounds like the most logical place for officers to be located."
David started to jog after the group of droids, careful not to draw attention. The droids marched forward at a steady pace, until they reached a sort of elevator in the hall. David saw them press on a single red button, which opened the door and allowed them to walk in. After a few seconds, the door closed and they went up through the shaft.
"Elevator." Daniel said out loud, as he checked around the corner to see if any more of the droids would appear.
"Thanks captain obvious." Kyle smirked at his little joke and walked up to the elevator's controls. "Seems pretty basic, this red one-" He pressed onto the large rectangularly-shaped button, which sent the shaft back down after several seconds, and the door opened. "brings the shaft down." Kyle happily went in first, feeling a sense of pride as he was able to figure out the controls relatively easily.
"I'm pretty sure this top button will send us to the deck, be ready for anything." David licked on his earpiece and continued, "Johnson, we're heading towards the main deck, keep in contact just in case anything goes down."
"Copy that, sir." Was his response, and David finally squeezed in with the rest, each having their weapons ready for whatever would lay ahead.
The door shut, and after Kyle messed with the controls carefully, they were on their way up smoothly. The elevator hummed lightly as they ascended up fast, and after only a few moments, the door opened up, revealing a large control room, full of the same looking droids, with the exception of one with orange paint, most likely an officer.
"Take out the guards!" David ordered, popping off multiple shots first, followed by his comrades. The droids weren't fast enough to react to the bullets, and were gunned down relatively quickly, leaving only a few unarmed ones left.
"Michael, Jorge, keep tabs on the elevator."
"Copy." The two said simultaneously, each reloading their pistols and kept their eyes on said elevator. The rest of the team had spread out, rounding up the only droids there in the center of the room.
"Since these things know english, maybe we can ask some questions?" David asked no one in particular as he looked at the a more V-shaped faced robot next to a yellow-painted droid. "You." He pointed his gun at the droid. "Are you in charge of this ship? Who are you? Why are you here? Where do you all come from?" David continued with many more questions, and stopped only when his comlink on his headset activated.
"Control center to Lieutenant Smith, do you copy?" Pike, the communications expert's voice poured through calmly.
"I read you control." David asked, backing up from the droids to listen in.
"A cargo shuttle is going towards your location and will try to land in one of those docking bays, load up the droids and some equipment for immediate study. We've seen a lot of useful information through your video camera systems in your suits, and we think we can figure out how to obtain information through their robotic systems."
"Makes sense, we'll try to open a docking bay for you." David cut the line, then turned back to the droid. "We're taking you to our base, cooperate and open a docking bay."
"I am DC-0192, commander of this ship, and I ask you, are you with the Republic or the Separatist?"
"I have no knowledge on either, open the docking bay, please." David pointed the gun at DC-0192's head, not making another sound.
Washington D.C, United States of America
Oval Office, The White House
President Colin Abrams sat in his chair, sighing as he stared at several forms and documents he had spent the last hour reading over and signing. He was anxious for news on the events on Mars, news got out faster than he thought, everyone on earth that was somebody had all gathered around their televisions to see what news the media had to offer.
Colin looked up to see the doors open, and his secretary walked in with a stack of folders and a computer in her hands.
"Sir, you're going to want to see this." She said calmly, handing Colin the laptop.
Colin opened the laptop, the black screen was soon replaced by the sweaty face of a clearly stressed, middle aged man with glasses.
"Mr. President, I'm Vice Director Cole, have I got things to explain!" He said excitedly.
Colin looked from the screen and looked at his secretary, then back to the screen. "Fill me in, Mr. Cole. What happened up there?"
"Sir, the things we learned already is phenomenal! These aliens, they're robots, right? They crashed after some kind of battle or something. We're interrogating some robot officer, he seems to be the most intelligent and is answering cooperatively. We've spent hours and hours going through the ship, a lot of things are smashed or broken, especially most of the robots. Our guys in engineering and tech labs have been downloading information from some of the disabled robots." Cole took a moment to breath. "They have tech we've never seen before, this is a goldmine of new equipment and technology we could use."
"You said something about a battle." Colin interrupted. "Who, or what, were they fighting?"