Guest: It was a refrence towards a fictional nation in one of my (scrapped) concepts that got written out on notebook paper like 3-4 years ago, one that specifically featured the Kingdom of Alaska (got a nice ring to it) as the nation where the cast resides. Given that it might never see the light of day I decided to include an Easter egg to it (also, I'm a hardcore monarchist. Lol).
CrazedBureaucrat64: Technically the definition of 'formal' or 'casual' outfits is kind of subjective to the culture of the nation one originates from.
For example wearing an apron dress with a bow-tie would be casual wear in the United States, culturally wise, but if my memory of Japanese anime culture and German historic attire dosen't fail me, then Illya's outfit would still be closer to a formal outfit reserved for business or school (it's a common uniform design in many Japanese private high schools). And given how she originates from a totally different country than the United States, one founded on distinctly Asian and Central European culture (US original nationalities non-withstanding, a large chunk of the refugees came from German decent), I'd say it's as legit...as my weabroo side says it as so (lol)
btw when I wrote that chapter I was also drafting a few concepts of a variation of Illya's outfit as the standard Kaiserliche Marine/Marinekorps uniform (for girls obviously), which might buff it's 'legit level' by a significant bit lol
Sure, ablative armor works (as seen during the battle scenes whenever a Rapier hits the target, and the ablatives kinda boil off due to the sheer heat). However, they don't regenerate like shields or kinetic barriers, which essentially makes them a 'one hit, one use' type of defense roughly analogus to ERA used on today's tanks to defeat HEAT warheads on ATGMs. They may be able to stop a shot, but their ability to counter damage otherwise would be compromised, and to add to that, their ability to stop kinetic impacts (unless they're unobtanium alloys MUWAH) should be limited, thus increasing a ship's vunlerability to hostile fire if it's barriers are down. In further addition, the armor may be already damaged when that instant comes around, further aggravating the situation.
In short, ablatives work, they're just sub-optimal
Given to that, though, the refugees were mostly Americans of 'German and British decent', as explained in the codex entry of Chapter 2. The Germans established the German society, and the Brits came up with the concept of a monarchy. And as they were the majority of the refugees (for plot reasons), the founding of the Kaiserreich would have been inevitable (just to satisfy my monarchist passions lmao)
Guest #1: The Hegemony directly funded the Blue Suns (the Terminus PMC) for this operation, and deployed some of their assets directly in it (BCH Wings of Glory) as well. They're thus liable
Guest #2: Fleetgirls are common enough that even if humanity tried to keep them a secret, it'll kinda leak out eventually. All it would take would be literally one tourist who could speak any human language to go onto Wikipedia 2250 and bam, the secret's out. It's kinda like hiding the existence of cannons when the UK makes contact with India (historical inaccuracies non-withstanding). Yeah, it's literally an impractical enough task that it'd be much better if they just made a clean breast about it right off the bat
If a fleetgirl turns off her 'ship mode', then she's still vunlerable to damage as other normal human beings. Although they'll still have superhuman reflexes and speed, as well as being bulletproof (damage model dosen't really scale properly. Because, well, fleetgirl magic. I myself don't know the exact full-on lore and mechanics of fleetgirls in KanColle)
And as Fubuki once mentioned, the recipe to BioGel is kept secret already (a bit like how they didn't patent WD40). Only a handful of human companies know how to make them, and even then, they don't even know exactly how. Only Nakasuga Industries does, and they guard that secret very closely.
Cooldude101011: "Things involving shipgirls that are no longer allowed"... (lemme see)
Adding Halo to this AU crossover (an AU version of the UNSC) might be considered down the line, probably during the Sovereign arc (probably, as I've no idea how to just...spawn them in without breaking the balance) or whatever.
Also, related to the subject of turian fleetgirls (they do have a proud naval history like the British or Japanese), I toyed around with the concept for a while before, but even now I'm still at a total loss as to how to properly craft them. Blue-skinned humans with flaming red eyes or turian dinobirds with mecha backpacks? (I personally lean more to the latter lol, blame my weabroo side)
A minor TL:DR explaination for why the US went nuts: I doctored it to mirror the collapse of the Soviet Union irl.
America's pretty much already tearing at it's own seams right now, one can just watch the news and all the debates between political parties to get a decent picture of what's going on. What AI and a whole variety of other things did was to merely aggravate the situation and light a fire underneath the already thin cables holding the United States together, and for tensions to eventually and fully escalate into civil war (a bit like how the prelude to the Civil War irl was initially political parties bickering, but it then spread to the people and escalated out of control). Only this time, it was between AI and humans, and lathered in a quintuple dose of steroids, set in space, and advanced by 400 years. Mirangal, the direct trigger to the conflict, would be analogus to Hungary's departure from the Warsaw Pact, only to be crushed months later by the bane of the Soviet Army. Only this time the defenders had international support to back them up and actually fight back.
時雨、ありがと。。。すべてに。
Alliance Parliament Building, Vienna, Austria, Earth, October 2nd 2257 0900HRS Coordinated Universal Time
"Sein oder nichtsein: das ist hier der frage."
"You seem to be in a cheerful mood to-day, Fleet Admiral."
Fleet Admiral Karl Lütjens, Chief of Naval Operations of the Systems Aliance Naval Arm, merely sent back at the Chancellor a nod of confirmation as he turned back to look out of the windows of the centuries-old building and out at Europe's capital of culture, once home to one of the longest-running monarchies in history and now the seat of the government of humanity itself as a whole, the first out of two nations with the other a prosperous monarchy. "You called this meeting to discuss the recent developments between us and the Citadel, right?"
The Chancellor merely shrugged and nodded towards the assembled generals present in the meeting-room. "Field Marshal Hunder, how about you bring us up to speed for a change?"
Field Marshal Arleigh Hudner, General of the Alliance Ground Corps, tapped the end of his cigarette against the ashtray to get rid of any excess burnt material before presenting his case. "It's a real-life HFY that we just found ourselves in, Chancellor. Our ships outclass theirs by a good margin, our vehicles superior, our small arms roughly equivalent to what they have but as both sides use completely different technology trees, it'll be a hard time to make an accurate estimation of their capabilities and gauge them to ours. Honestly, though, this is the most advantegous first contact we had so far—we all know how our first contact with the Abyssals went. Not well, to say the least."
"ONI's current estimates say that the average Citadel fleet would need a three-to-one numbers advantage in order to defeat one of our or the Kaiserreich's fleets," Lütjens agreed, returning his gaze back towards the holographic display in the center of the room, currently displaying a simulated battle between an Alliance fleet and a Citadel one. "There's a catch, however—they do have a 3:1 numbers superiority. Our wartime order of battle with all eight fleets mobilized to full wartime strength would be able to bring to the fight some 3,200 capital ships of varying classes combined, while the Navy of the Hierarchy of Palaven—it's peacetime fleet, mind you, not wartime—has 3,500 dreadnoughts, and that's not counting the asari or salarian fleets, for that matter. While it is true that their ships are significantly inferior compared to ours, that dosen't mean much if they just swarm us harder than the Abyssals during that last war we had roughly forty years ago. If push comes to shove and we find ourselves in a state of war with the Citadel, if it's us and the Kaiserreich, we would beat them, but the casualty count would still be staggeringly high, for both sides. And that's if they don't develop new generations of warships to replace their essentially obsolete ships already in their arsenal. The Council's biggest dreadnought, the ARH Destiny Ascension, is roughly the battlefield equal of our 2nd-rate battleships, such as the Kongō-class battleships, although it's wierd design means that it could only focus a quarter of it's combined firepower in any given direction, but it's still a major threat nonetheless. If they start to develop new technologies and newer and better warships—which I guarantee is exactly what they're doing—the balance of power would once again shift back to them come the turn of the century."
The Minister of Industry nodded. "They not only vastly outpace us in terms of manpower and resources, but also industry. Ours is far more automated and spread out, allowing us to maintain production even when constant attacks against supply lines are underfoot as well as allowing us to allot our manpower reserves towards other sectors of warfare, but they can still nonetheless sustain brutal attrition ratios with us, in terms of raw manpower, resources, and industry alone. We can take those out, but even then, they're still numerous enough to make things as rough for us as the Second Abyssal War. They're the equivalents of us, more or less, in terms of raw industrial power, and their manpower means that they can just throw bodies at us until our ranks break."
"Setting aside the matters of getting the batarians and the others responsible for Shanxi to stand trial," the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yoshida Ayumi, spoke up, steering the conversation towards other, non-military subjects, "We also have a number of rules and policies that fall afoul of those of the Citadel. Leaving aside the Treaty of Farixen, even in it's updated format, there's the Council ban on genetic engineering and research, which I'm pretty sure nobody making Med-Beds or BioGel would like, their, umm, brutal regulations on prosthetics and other similar shit, alongside more than enough other banned things to, if we wrote them out on paper, make a list that would be six miles long. Quite hilarious, really, if you ask me."
"We could get them to grant exceptions for those sort of things," the Minister of Industry, Wilhem Schlossman, mused as the Cabinet pondered themselves over the developments.
"That's only the icing on the cake," Ayumi nodded, acknowledging her colleague's proposal. "And now for the nasty part: they completely and utterly ban AI in any shape or form whatsoever, and this is a rule that they enforce zealously and mercilessly, and don't grant much exceptions for."
Silence.
"The...what?" Schlossman demmanded after the information had been processed enough to be logged in his mind, he had family members who were AI as opposed to organic, after all. His wife, even.
"Apparently," Ayumi continiued, fiddling around for a bit with the 'antennas' on the sides of her head, she was also a member of CLub Synthetic herself, after all. "Around three hundred years ago, the quarians got into a war with their own AIs, the Geth, and while the exact details are unknown due to time and wartime propaganda, the quarians nonetheless lost 99% of their population, their homeworld, and their colonies, reduced to living on a garguantuan fleet of ships like space Mongols. The Council aquired their deathly fear of artifical intelligence after that, and AIs were pretty much banned since then."
"They have a very strong bias against AI," Lütjens nodded. "Not without reason, mind you, the quarians did, indeed, fuck up badly when they created their Geth, but it's nonetheless a huge hurdle to overcome. We do have a good number of AIs as citizens, after all, and the same goes for the Kaiserreich. We'd be spooking them all out of their skin when we let our census data leak out to them; there's literally ten AIs for a normal human walking all over Vienna. And both us and the Kaiserreich have a similar population ratio between them and their AIs as well."
"How are they supposed to deal with their own spaceflight and colonization if they're that afraid of AIs?" Yoshida wondered, turning towards Lütjens.
"VIs, mostly," Lütjens said. "They're basically AIs on a budget. They don't think, they don't feel, they're just programs running on computers. There are exceptions, of course, and not all VI programs are created equal. Most VI programs are dumb as a box of rocks, and are basically used for manual labor, while the better ones can handle some basic thinking and planning, akin to the level a young child would possess. They're basically just glorified calculators that can be programmed to do some stuff by themselves. The more expensive VI programs are used by the Council, or by some of the species outside of the Council, while the cheaper, more basic ones are used in more menial and dangerous tasks, such as operating machinery."
"It's almost like they're trying to emulate a society similar to that of the early 21st Century," Yoshida commented, and while it was true that the Systems Alliance had some elements from the early 21st Century, they weren't that bad. They had, for one thing, actual universal suffrage and equality between men and women, as well as a fair degree of respect for other people's ethnic backgrounds and cultures. They weren't perfect, but they sure as hell were a lot better than the Council, especially when it came to their treatment of their own synthetics. Or the way they looked down upon quarians, for that matter.
"What about their weapons?" the Minister of Justice, a man by the name of Jurgen, spoke up. "Have we analyzed them yet? Do we have a good idea on how to counter them?"
Lütjens nodded. "Our initial analyses have been confirmed: the Citadel uses a system of mass accelerators and lasers. Their mass accelerators are basically big cannons, and they work by firing a large amount of kinetic energy in the shape of a slug or a spike and then using it's momentum to hit the target, almost identical to how our MACs work, but the primary difference is that they use a system of mass-effect fields to hurl the projectile as opposed to our usage of magneto-plasma fields to achieve the same effect. It does, however, give the rounds a slower acceleration velocity, and they have a lower velocity when compared to our MAC rounds. It does come with the advantage of better cooling efficiency and thus, rate of fire, however. It also removes the need for a specialized barrel and ammunition casing to fire the round, unlike us. Instead, they fire the rounds using the same kind of gun barrels that you would see in an ancient revolver. Our MACs can fire both solid and explosive rounds, but the Citadel's can only fire solid rounds, but that might be a decent trade-off in my opinion, given how the physical rounds themselves are designed to splinter and cause damage after piercing armor like a hollow-point round."
"We can just design new ammo types and better MACs for our ships and vehicles, right?" Schlossman asked. "The same goes for their laser weaponry, no? Those look like the ones we have, although it does look a lot better-integrated."
"They are, however, still fundamentally the same," Lütjens confirmed, gesturing towards the holoprojector, the image now displaying a Citadel-designed laser, and the Systems Alliance one side-by-side. The latter was still a prototype in testing right at this point, but the former had already been in service for decades and looked far more developed. "However, unlike our own lasers, theirs are more akin to a weaponized mass-effect field. While ours use magneto-plasma and a focusing field, theirs instead use the same mass-effect field that they use to hurl the bullets from their mass accelerators and focus them in a narrow beam to deliver a focused shot of energy to the target. It is not only more energy-efficient, but also produces less waste heat, allowing them to fire at a higher rate. It also solves a large chunk of the diffraction issue that our own systems had been facing, allowing them more or less the same effectiveness as the bullet-based point-defense guns we already use in our fleets ever since the First Inner Planets War. Albeit with an aggravated overheating issue, however, as you can't liquid-cool a laser focusing node the same way as you'd cool a gun barrel."
"So basically," Lütjens summed up the current state of affairs, "We've got ourselves in a situation where the enemy outnumbers us three-to-one, can probably match us in a three-to-one fight, has a tech tree that is vastly inferior to ours but could possibly overtake us with better technologies and new weapon designs, and we've got a number of rules and regulations that we've been forced to adapt and work around and have a number of differences in culture that will have to be overcome, not to mention the fact that our relationship with them is a bit strained right now."
The Chancellor, Andrew Blackwood, halfway though lighting his cigarette, sighed. "I was hoping that our first contact would have been a little more amiable and peaceful. Not like this, at least."
"To be fair," Field Marshal Hunder chimed in, "This is the most amiable first contact we've ever had with any sapient species. I'm honestly surprised we didn't get a full-scale war the second we stepped onto their stage. It's either that or the universe finally decided to give us a break and not have the Citadel declare war on us the second we showed up. Honestly, I think the second possibility is more likely than the first, all things considered. The Citadel is a lot more...tame and peaceful compared to the Abyssals, after all."
"...returning to the primary subject..." Yoshida nodded, motioning at the non-military section of the files, "...how are we going to deal with the AI ban? They'd flip out if they find out there's literally ten of us for one of you, Chancellor, and at the same time, it's a secret that'll leak within hours if we tried to put a lid on it. All it'll take is one dude with a laptop—and that's it. Bam, secret out."
"We can always negotiate on the subject," the Chancellor said. "But we have to make it clear that we're not giving up the AIs or our research and development on Synthetics. We'll also have to dispute everything else that we find unreasonable or otherwise would be crossing our internal red lines. And we'll base our arguments of our own historical contexts, too. Was signing the Citadel Conventions a must for opening an embassy on the Citadel?"
"Yes, Chancellor, it's at the top of the list, even."
"Then we'll have to dispute it. Yoshida, prepare a list to send to our diplomatic team for submitting. We'll ponder the other developments in the meantime—"
An aide cut them off with a slight apology as he approached the gathered Cabinet and handed a note to the Chancellor, a piece of folded-up A5 paper sealed with purple wax. He broke it open wordlessly and ran his eyes through it, before he folded it back up and handed it to Colonel Yang-Wen-Li.
Seventh-in-line of the Systems Alliance Naval Arm's Emerald-class fleet carriers, SSV Enterprise.
A pair of flaming scarlet eyes fluttered open with the color shade of a dying star as the fleet aircraft carrier gradually awoke from her decades-long slumber, her cryso pod opening with a gentle tug of the release handle to allow her to exit with a gentle hiss and a transparent pod cover flipping open. Her hair flowed all the way down to waist level, white with a purplish tint to it, waving around slightly as she stepped out of her pod and towards the nearest locker to where she was, coughing up the liquids that fed her whatever was needed to sustain life for a normal human during crysosleep the whole time, grunts and curses otherwise the only sound to be heard as she opened a locker, one with the letters 'CV-117' scrawled across it in a faded shade of marker ink, before pulling out from it a set of neatly folded clothes and underwear, donning them all with the slight rustle of fabric on fabric, after which she removed an emerald hair-clip and pinned to a lock on her loosely hanging hairstyle, the jewel embedded into the clip giving off a distinct green reflection under the dull emergency lighting that was otherwise the only light in the entire room. Rubbing her hands together and blowing onto them with her foggy, condensing breath to warm them up before grabbing a pair of gloves off the locker and putting them on, she then took a quick glance at her wristwatch before something, or rather, someone else, caught her eye.
Fifth vessel of the Phoenix-class light carriers, SSV Spirit of Fire.
Her outfit, consisting of an olive green folded skirt, a matching necktie and blazer worn over a light gray collared shirt coupled with black assymetrical stockings wouldn't look out of place in a Japanese or European high school during the 21st century. A pair of burning, golded irises greeted her, burning with naught but pure intensity not unlike her name, a pair of golden firey eyes in the darkness not unlike the dying stars of her own. Light blonde hair, meant to flow down past her waist if given free reign but was instead tied into twin-tails at either side of her head with light blue ribbons made themselves known, and as she noticed that her companion was awake, she waved over to her with a gentle flick of her hand. Which did make her well-balanced 'ballast tanks' bounce a bit, however.
Enterprise wordlessly sat down next to her newfound companion even as the latter began to pull up quite a number of files on a folding phone that Enterprise had no idea where she got it from. "Can I be told on what is going on?"
"Yeah, sure," her companion responded even as the moving contacts on the display were starting to move back and forth, their paths overlaid onto the ship's map, as if they were searching for something. "I'm SSV Spirit of Fire, fifth vessel of the Phoenix-class light carriers...and something has happened, Captain. We've a bunch of unknowns who are definitely not human who are swarming the ship as I speak...no idea who they are, though, really. They're all armed by the looks of things, my best guess so far would be some pirate raiders who are scouring the ship for anything of value, methinks."
Enterprise cast the display, now that the phone was turned around for her to see it, a blank look as she ran her fingers through her hair. "So...they're not Abyssal, just a random bunch of aliens who are here for unknown reasons and are all part of Club God Knows Who, eh? Seems kinda legit."
"The ship's running at the bare minimum amount of power necessary for it's systems to function," Spirit continued, handing her the phone and getting up from her position, Enterprise's own pair of 'ballast tanks' not exactly doing her any favors either as she did the same, the phone in one hand. "Which means that all the main reactors are down and that only the auxiliary power unit is working, but not much else. We can't launch any fighters, for starters, and the energy barriers that are keeping the atmosphere inside are gone, leaving the ship's internal spaces exposed to the vacuum outside, not to mention the fact that there's not enough power for the guns to fire."
"How about the hangar deck, then?" Enterprise inquired.
Spirit shook her head. "It's also been opened to the vacuum and has had it's power supply cut, although I could probably fix the former problem. That, and the power lines have been severed, meaning we'll need to physically link the auxiliary power unit up to the bay before we can use it. And the elevators are gone, too, meaning that our best bet would be to just seal it off entirely and hope for the best. As for the guns...we'll need to find a way to restore power, but not before we take out those intruders...or find a way to talk to them."
"Do we have any spare weapons on-board?"
"The armory's right next to us. Doors should still be working, although after all these years we've been adrift, anything could be wrong with them. And I mean anything."
"Well, only one way to find out, no?"
"Yep."
"Then let's get going," Enterprise said, handing her the phone. "I'll see you outside."
"And the same goes to you, Captain."
It was the same kind of armory that could be found aboard most warships built during the Inner Planetary Wars or when the 23rd century rolled around the corner, rows of shelves stocked with weapons and ammunition boxes of all types and calibers, the lights overhead dimly lighting the room in a dull, red shade, but it was nonetheless a familiar sight that brought a smile onto her face as she took in the nostalgic scent of oil and iron, before grabbing a spare SA18 assault rifle for herself alongside ten magazines and an extra to load into the gun, and two boxes of 7.62x40mm Mikasa ammunition for loading into the magazines. She had no idea if the rounds would work, or if the rifle itself would even shoot properly after all the time it spent stored away, but she wasn't going to go in empty-handed. She checked the weapon's functionality by cocking the charging handle and dry firing it, it worked, rather surprising for a rifle that had been stowed away for well over three decades.
She had to give it to the engineers at Nagoya Arsenal—they clearly didn't fool around when making this sort of product.
Walking outside while partway through the process of sliding a few five-round stripper clips of 7.62x40mm rounds into the first magazine, she was greeted with the sight of the Enterprise, a holstered pistol of sorts sitting at her hip and carrying an assault rifle similar to her own, except painted a flat, matte shade of brown with an integrated underslung flamethrower. And a boxy-looking shotgun in her left hand.
"Found it inside," the latter said.
"You'd look like a meme if you ran around with that armaments setup on you," Spirit said at once. "Hans, get me zer flammenwefer, bitte."
"Why do I have the feeling that the rest of your crew's the same way, then?"
"Because the rest of my crew is the same way."
"Oh dear..."
"You got the plans for the ship, right?"
"I'll just bring the phone along."
"Let's go, then," Enterprise said.
"Wait, one thing," Spirit held a finger up. "We've got a nasty-looking ship logged on passive sensors that looks just like a giant bird for no apparent reason at all, and I'm pretty sure that thing's where the boarders are coming from. If push comes to shove and we get ourselves into a firefight, just remember that that thing might be coming down upon our asses."
"Understood."
"Alright. Then let's move."
Spirit was the first to open the door leading to the next room, her gun aimed towards the ground and her finger hovering above the trigger. The corridors were deserted, as expected, as there was literally nobody else aboard save perhaps them and the boarders a few hundred yards away in at least a few dozen extra turns and such. The auxiliary power unit's location wasn't very far, but she wasn't going to be taking chances.
"How are you holding up?" Spirit asked as she turned the corner.
"Just fine," Enterprise nodded, before she noticed the presence of something that did not belong in this place.
"Hold it," she held a hand out. "Something's coming. Though we'll have to get through the emergency manual airlock to meet them."
Orek Bab'salok kept the barrel of his rifle pointed downrange as he and his squad proceeded down the interior of the abandoned vessel that was already nearly the size of an asari superdreadnought, peering into a corner that presented itself to him while his fellow squadmates covered his flank and rear. The past few days for him and everyone else who was part of the crew of the Blue Suns cruiser Golden Glory were a series of fairly boring days, in fact, jump after jump finding exactly nothing of note, save perhaps a few pieces of wreckage here and there that seemed suggestive to a trail. Their luck did get back to them just earlier this morning when after searching for half a week, they chanced smack across the exact vessel that they were searching for, if the debris trail was to be of any indication, chancing across a giant, drifting, abandoned vessel that looked like it had been that way for years. One of a size rivalling the largest dreadnought in the galaxy, even, to boot.
The interior, while being the home of many a strange-looking alien that he was unfamiliar with, was nonetheless fairly large and spacious, a good chunk of the rooms being larger than an average cargo hold. Not to mention the fact that this ship's design was more or less completely alien, a testament to how far the species inhabiting it had progressed compared to the Citadel's, although they were still primitive compared to the Council. Apparently. The ship's design was closer to turian in terms of it's robust, angular, nasty-looking design than most, but even after the tech experts had reconstructed a digital rendition of the ship as it was supposed to look like when it was aflight, it was still a nasty, ugly vessel with absolutely zero thought on aesthetics whatsoever. And it had a large deck completely open to space for no apparent reason, coupled with a sealed deck directly below it that was linked to the upper one through a series of elevators, almost as if the ship was on giant flying hangar bay. Which made exactly zero sense for a military vessel, but it was a nice bonus all the same, because it meant that any valuables or equipment could be salvaged far more easily, not to mention the fact that it meant that the boarding parties could have a bit more freedom when exploring the ship's interior.
"This thing is huge," a batarian named Zaek grunted as he and his fellow squadmate, a turian by the name of Arak, swept their rifles back and forth in tandem, covering their respective corners as the rest of the squad walked behind them.
"Tell me about it," Orek agreed. "I haven't seen a ship this big before, even the Citadel's super-dreadnoughts are nowhere near this size."
A left turn brought him to yet another deserted corridor, still bearing marks of fights that had unfolded during what was most likely the ship's final battles before being stranded adrift with nobody on it. Scorch marks on the floors and ceiling, holes in the walls, and splatters of a brownish residue that looked like the dried blood of the locals who built and crewed the gigantic ships like this one in particular, all splattered everywhere, as if they had just come across the aftermath of a killing field. The ship's interior was also entirely more or less exposed to vacuum, consequences of having all power systems knocked offline or otherwise at least rendered inoperable. Keeping his rifle trained towards the front, he peered into a corner, a dim light at the other side, before noticing that it was merely a wall light that had switched on as a result of his movement, before he returned back to his previous position, only to notice a flash of metal that had caught his eye.
It was a pair of red irises, burning with the intensity of a dying star.
"Oh Spirits, it's a trap!" his turian squadmate, Arak, practically screamed over the commlink as he hefted his weapon and prepared to fire. "OPEN FIRE!"
Enterprise ducked underneath a fallen crossbeam that had provided a little cover as she reached for the assault rifle on her back just in the nick of time as fire from enemy weapons whizzed overhead, impacting probably against some unlucky door behind her while Spirit of Fire rushed over towards another place that offered decent cover and concealment, flicking the safety off the weapon that looked just like a Morita with a thumb-hole stock and flush magazine, a shot pinging off a nearby wall showering her in sparks as it did so. "Damn whatever god's up there! Why the fuck are these guys shooting at us now!?"
Welp, there goes the route of diplomacy, Enterprise thought to herself in a rather satire tone. "Probably because they saw us and panicked, thinking we're their enemies. I've had more than a fair share of encounters like these in my lifetime."
"Alright, I'm on it—" Spirit said as she squeezed two shots of .300 Mikasa downrange from her assault rifle, only to be cut off short when a shot pinged off a fallen crossbeam and showered her in a fresh round of sparks. "Shit! Warning shots or shoot to kill?"
"Shoot to kill!" Enterprise shouted back as her mind kicked into full N7 gear, aiming almost on reflex at the head of one of her opponents and nailing him with a clean headshot, leaving his ruptured faceplate to spew oxygen and nitrogen into space as the suit with a very dead alien inside depressurized and with the magnetic boots gone given how it's battery got pierced by the shot as well, the suit began to float backwards, almost like a puppet with all it's strings loose. It's not every day that you get to see the effects of vacuum on a body.
Spirit followed suit and nailed her own target through the chest, his armor cracking open and leaking a cloud of vapor into the vacuum, the poor sod probably dead from the sheer shock of being shot at. Or dead from a broken rib piercing a lung, who knew.
"Fuck!" Enterprise swore. "I hate shooting people in EVA suits!"
"You and me both, Captain!" Spirit concurred, firing a single burst at the nearest guy's faceplate, the rounds punching through the thick glass and spraying blood and bits of skull all over the interior of the suit and the surrounding air.
"Well, fuck." Enterprise grunted, squeezing off a shot into a turian's unprotected thigh, his suit exploding in a cloud of shrapnel, vapor, and blood. "They're wearing armor and EVA suits, we're not."
"Don't remind me," Spirit growled, nailing her last opponent right in the chest, sending him stumbling backwards and knocking him into another one of his buddies, both of whom were left spiraling as floating bodies in the null-gravity environment, their suits hissing and spewing out gas and fluids from the wounds caused.
"Spirit, can you remotely bring the power back online?"
"Negative, Captain, the power lines are all cut. And while my repair drones can function, hopefully, the power lines leading to their pods are also similarly gone, and there's nothing nearby that can remotely repair the power lines leading to the pods, either. We'll have to get to the cables and snap some back into place before the drones can take power and do a hard reboot, or else we're stuck welding the breaches together by hand. Which will take forever."
"...that would suck then."
"There's more. We're running off emergency power, so once we somehow boot up the repair drones, if the even work in the first place, then...did I mention emergency power won't be able to provide enough power to boot them up? Someone'll have to head off to the vehicle bay and find one of the many spare power cells that are scattered here and there, make sure if they still work after being left to chill for a decade-plus amount of time, and plug that in to boot one of the drones, which'll then head off and fix enough cables to boot up aux power, after which we can get the remaining drones into the fray and bring Fusion 3 back online. And before you ask about the other two reactors, well...they got wrecked. Sorry."
"How bad are the other two?"
"Reactor 2 is completely toast. They're going to need a new core. Reactor 1 needs no further explanation, it's fucked. We can't repair them with anything on hand, and I mean anything. Best the drones can do would be to patch up the fuel lines leading to Fusion 3 and bring it back to 75% of normal capacity, but it's better than nothing. You'll find the route to the vehicle bay on the map you already have with you, now let's split up and let me head off to the drone pods and do my thing. They'll work, hopefully."
"Understood. Anything else?"
"Internal sensors show plenty of hostiles clustered around the hallways leading to the bridge, although you'll have to take a slight detour to get to them, but I'd ask you to take them out nonetheless. I've sealed the bridge off from outside access for now but we'll have to bust through them one way or the other if we are to keep control of this thing, the CIC got trashed last time I checked, it's pretty much useless now."
"Damn, they trashed your combat information center? What about the CDC?"
"It's open to vacuum, Abbies literally blew open a whole through my armor that pretty much trashed it alongside the CIC during Alpha Rendara all those decades ago. Engineering; I need not to explain, it's fucked. Now get going before those fuckers bust through the door!"
"Alright!" Enterprise responded as she floated past the half a dozen or so corpses floating in either mid-air or space, depending on the interpretation, floating past one corpse in particular that had an intact face and looked into it, finding herself staring into the face of a half avian, half lizardy creature with his eyes open in shock from what most likely was the bullet that took his life. "Jesus. Who are we up against...dinosaurs? Or walking space chickens?"
"Just don't ask, Enterprise," Spirit rolled her eyes, the ship's internal communications systems crackling with static. "Just don't."
Either that the ship he was on was haunted or it was a trap set by the asari commandoes oftentimes sent here to ambush them with a trap, Orek thought to himself, as he rushed down the hallways of the dormant vessel as fast as the magnetic boots on his soles can allow him to, the squadmates he had come in here with all being either dead or severely wounded, he couldn't be bothered to check or care.
It wasn't the first time that he had lost men, nor would it be the last, but he had never been on the end of a one-sided ambush such as this before, not even in his younger days. And the fact that the rest of the ship was still in total darkness was not helping his situation either. The rest of the squad was also on the run, or otherwise in the process of finding a safe route off the ship and back onto the shuttle that had brought them over here, the sound of the chaos that was unfolding over the intercom only serving as another reminder that this was not a ship he wanted to be in for any longer than necessary.
The BGM of screams of the dying as they got gunned down in rapid succession over the intercom only helped matters further.
Whatever Commando hunting them down through the maze of corridors that was this ship was clearly an experienced veteral at their job, as shown by how she had been able to quickly and effectively hunt down a large chunk of the boarders and reduce them to bloody, gory messes, the occasional burst of radio chatter that he and his fellow squadmates got in was often cut short by the sound of the radio going silent with a few grunts and groans and the like. The rest were all either dead or were currently busy trying to find their way out of the ship without being cut down.
The same was not the case for him, however, as he had managed to evade capture so far.
He sped and navigated his way across and around a maze/obstacle course to head outta the place and back towards the waiting shuttle before they all got mauled down the seven layers of hell, his boots clanking and hissing against the metal flooring below, the lights overhead flickering, his breath misting up the inside of his helmet as he breathed and ran, his suit's thermal layer keeping him from freezing to death, his eyes darting around to catch any signs of an ambush as he rounded the corner. He wasn't alone, however, his turian squadmate, Arak, had survived the firefight, although the same couldn't be said for Zaek, their batarian squadmate, as the latter was dead, shot through the chest by an unseen assailant.
The lights came on moments later, illuminating the hallway and revealing the presence of yet more corpses lying strewn about on the ground, almost as if they had all been dropped into a giant meat grinder, a lot of them also having a large hole blown into their back or their chest, blood splattered everywhere on the walls and floors. Which had to have meant that the ship's power had come back online, somehow.
"We've got to get out of here!" Arak shouted over the commlink.
Orek nodded. "I'm aware of that! Just keep moving!"
The pair of them rushed down the corridors and passageways of the ship, not caring where they went, all that mattered was getting the hell out of here before they got gunned down in the exact same way that their fellow squadmates had been. Although, judging by the amount of carnage, it was most likely a one-man slaughterhouse, and not a group effort.
Whoever was hunting them down was not fucking around.
Another corridor was passed by and the pair were greeted with the presence of yet more bodies floating in zero gravity, this time in a hallway that was actually lit up properly, the corpses floating and spinning as if they had all just been dropped into space like they were balloons that someone didn't want anymore and had just let go of them. It looked like a scene straight out of a horror movie, only this was real, and he was very much in danger of getting gunned down in the same way.
Not even a number of troops lined up with machine guns aimed at their assailant the moment she rounded a corner into view even as a hailstorm of shots laced out from their barrels and rained all over the place, shots pinging off walls, ceiling, and crossbeams like raindrops striking a metal roof-tile. It did at least buy them some time to make a run for the door, as the sheer amount of rounds prevented their attacker from sighting onto them properly and open fire, but not for long. By the time he had made it across the hallway to where the shuttle was waiting to whisk them all off to safety, sprinting across what looked like a hangar bay that happened to be open at both broadsides of the ship it was on that just got trashed by an earthquake or something equally catastrophic, their assailant—clearly someone who knew exactly what she was doing—had regained her bearings more than enough to deal with the situation while she threw herself down behind a fallen piece of metal that got cocked upwards at an angle after other debris wedged in and jammed it into position, shooting out the nearest pair of turians who got turned into swiss cheese in a matter of seconds.
By the time he made it a third of the way though, the first machine gunner was dead in a mess of gore being expelled from a ruptured suit, and by the time he made it another third, a second gunner went down more or less the same way, and by the time he had made it enough to be able to get onto the shuttle, the third and final gunner was dead as well, a cloud of gore and bloody flesh floating around the place as a good chunk of his head was gone already—he didn't need a genius to tell him that, the fact that half of his helmet was missing told him off easily enough.
He could only thank his lucky stars that he managed to step foot onto the shuttle before his and everyone else's attacker gunned all three machine gunners down with happy abandon, breathing a sigh of relief as the shuttle's doors closed and locked them all behind it's metal shield of safety; others weren't so lucky. The fact that an entire squad trying to get to the shuttle as well got gunned down all in rapid succession moments before he made it was more than enough evidence to prove it. A turian and an asari managed to make it onto the shuttle and out of the carnage that might just as well be their graves, and the moment they did so, the doors closing behind them, the pilot took the shuttle airborne and hauled themselves out of the entire place without anything as much as a second thought.
Deep space, Antares system cluster, October 2nd 2257 0700HRS Coordinated Universal Time
Berlin-class heavy cruiser SMS Prinz Heinrich
The heavy cruiser veered to the left moments after she left the void of FTL, with antimatter torches alight with glowing blue fury leaving behind trails of exhaust in their wake, the flying 130 million tons of raw armament, armor, and equipment pushed forwards gently via the thrust of her engines, a distinct Iron Cross symbol on her sides alongside the black-red-gold-with-an-eagle flag right next to it, the historic war flag of the Reichsflotte, now the national flag of the GroßEdelweiß Kaiserreich, a symbol hoisted to the top of the flag-pole in 2176 and remains so to this day. Said emblems and symbols were illuminated by a series of lights placed neatly underneath to light them up clearly for all to see, the nameplate being one of the things illuminated by them as well, the letters SMS Prinz Heinrich lit up under the lamps shining as brightly as all her Prussian glory could let her shine.
The Reich's latest contribution to the navy was one that was, as usual, the very best that the Germanic superpower could offer to the war, and would serve the Reich for decades to come.
The cruiser's bridge was superimposed over her dorsal side, laid out in a half-octagon with windows made out of transparent alloys framed inside meters-thick plating of the ship's SmartSteel armor. Anti-reflective coatings on the windows allowed a clear and unimpeded view of the stars outside, and on the inside, apart from the many consoles that kept the ship running and the optics emplacements that allowed the ship to be piloted in the case of a total power or sensor failure, there was present an old-fashioned helm control telemotor as well as eight engine order telegraphs that looked like they were stolen straight from an early 20th-century ocean liner, complete with German lettering to mark the various output levels of the engines, the dials currently rung to 'Voraus Standard' to bring the ship along with engines outputting Ahead Standard.
Granted, combat-related functions and controls (as well as steering) was placed within the deep, internally armored confines of the CIC, while command-and-control was conducted from the much more purpose-built CDC that was the ship's command center for coordinating formations in battle, but the bridge was a much better option for navigation, fine maneuvering control, as well as docking and landing, or being just a conveniently-placed observation deck to view the stars. The former, because a view outside was essential to maneuvering around without bumping into something (or someone, or perhaps crash into the ground), especially when docking with other vessels or landing, the latter, because the bridge had a panoramic view that was essential for a nice, scenic view.
A panoramic view that was being taken advantage of by one man in particular, standing in the middle of the bridge, with his arms behind his back and his hands folded together as he was gazing up at the stars, looking out towards the blackness of space and the many twinkling stars that made up the starfields, and the faint red glow coming from a nebula not too far away.
"What's the status of the ship?"
"All systems are operating normally, Herr Kapitän," came the response as the ship's XO, an officer in the uniform of the Kaiserliche Marine, stepped up to him. "Nothing unusual has been reported, sir."
"I see," Kapitän Karl Weir responded with a nod, the rank of Kapitän and a four-line oak wreath on his lapels denoting his position as captain, the commander of the vessel. He was clad in the traditional black-white-and-silver naval uniform, with gold buttons and the white pants and leather boots to match, alongside the golden, silver, and red insignia, and the Iron Cross pin on his chest.
"Engines are running at peak, Kapitän," another officer reported as engine dials were being adjusted on the engine order telegraph, with the corresponding numbers and letters shown. "Main antimatter drives are at 70% capacity. Forward torpedo tubes are loaded and ready, all guns are fully charged."
"Good," Karl said with a nod, looking at the view before him. "Sensors, report?"
"Negative contact within scannable regions," came the response. "I can head off to the cementry in the dead middle of the night and find more things there."
"Receiving a broad-band transmission on AM and FM frequencies!" the communications officer reported as another report came though on his workstation.
Now that was something out of the ordinary, Kapitän Weir thought to himself. "Comms, report. What does it look like and what does it say?"
"Transmission burst originates from region of space designated as 'Terminus sector', estimated source 27.812 degrees to starboard by 47.192 degrees to ventral. Multi-frequency burst, encoded in binary. Broadcast on constant loop and has been picked up four times in a row already. Transmission burst consists of only one audio message; playing it now."
"Thank you, comms," Karl thanked the officer.
The speakers then came to life, with the broadcast message playing through them:
"SSV Spiri...t...f...re...rdcasting on...nnels...sting immediate...very...over."
A/N:
A minor TLDR as to why the mercs opened fire on Enterprise the moment they saw her: Humans, especially girls, are visually similar to asari, with the sole differences being largely the lack of crests and instead hair as well as skin color (obviously). However as the region was kinda frequented by asari Commandoes hunting down pirates and the dimly-lit conditions only served to ake things worse, the mercs mistook her for a Commando sent to arrest them and opened fire. Had the lights worked properly as they were supposed to (Spirit of Fire was basically running off emergency RTGs at that point), there would've been no firefight and instead there would've been a lot of questions that needed to be asked, but Enty would've used her magic to break down the language barrier soon enough. And the SoF would have returned to human space all safe and sound after they found out about the whole FCW incident btw
Also apologies for the wonky update scedule, my family came back to the countryside for the Tet holiday and I spent quite a while sitting on a plane, longer than I'd like. Didn't mean I didn't get barred from writing, however. Just casually used a notebook