A/N: Back around 2003, there was show that aired. Similar themes and aesthetics to Star Rail in some ways, interestingly enough. Tragically short-lived, but remains a cult classic despite its brief appearance on the airwaves. More to the point, the opening lyrics includes the line:
"Burn the land and boil the seas/you can't take the sky from me."
Caelus' name means "sky". And the name of the show is "Firefly". Not sure if that was intentional reference or not, but that is how I will take it for the purposes of this story.
The first draft of this was written while waiting for 2.1 to finish updating. Unfortunately, I procrastinate entirely too much, and there were still some side quests that I thought might be relevant to the execution of this idea. I wound up rewriting the first chapter from the ground up a half-dozen times. But that also meant that I got to spend some more time thinking the story over and catching a Firefly reference to form the main theme around.
So, here we are. Waiting for 2.2 to finish updating and me hammering this thing out as fast as possible. And until FFN adds Firefly to the character tags, I'll just leave Caelus' name on the billing.
Chapter One: take my love, take my land
They had just been scouring a planet of a Swarm infestation when they had come under attack. Squadrons had been deployed to counter the attack, driving them off for a time. And then they would come back. Again, and again, and the attrition began to mount. Parts needed replacing, warriors were lost as the Antimatter Legion kept giving chase, relentlessly hounding them each jump they made.
One such jump, they had been made to flee through a broken moon to get enough distance to make a clean break. IC-Z0626 had just finished stowing away her company or an emergency. Just before settling into her own stasis pod, one of her fellow wing commanders
"See you on the other side, Firefly," he said, clambering into his own pod.
Firefly gave a stiff nod, and replied, "Same to you, Bonecrush."
Both locked themselves in for the transition, not knowing if they would ever wake up, hoping that the next time they emerged from slumber once again, it wouldn't be to blaring alarms and a mad scramble to arms.
[HSR]
Glamoth Republic Service Vessel, Abaddon. Mission Update: Interstellar Transit Terminated due to engine failure. Rousing crew for emergency repairs… ERROR: Command Staff unresponsive. Determining fault
Captain… Offline due to stasis failure
Executive Officer… Offline due to stasis failure
Searching for Ranking Bridge Officer… No data available. Initiate Emergency Command Protocals…
Cavalry General… Offline due to stasis failure
First Battalion Commander… Offline. First Battalion Executive Officer… Offline
Line after line played, each coming to the same conclusion. Then went down the next tier in search of a ranking officer until it had gone through many of the Wing Commanders.
Wing Commander IC-Z0626, callsign "Firefly"… In Stasis. Attempting to reactivate… ERROR: unable to reactivate IC-Z0626 at this time due to software failure.
Reestablishing contact with the Empress… Error: Connection Unavailable. Determination: time elapse [Ship Time: ERROR READ] indicates previous Empress' demise. Initiating Overlord Protocol. Uploading interface to IC-Z0626. Passcode: "For the Glory of the Empire"
…Transfer Complete. All parameters stable. Maintaining Standby until contact.
[HSR]
Glamoth Republic Service Vessel, Abaddon. Mission Update: contact off of ship's aft. Alerting Empress… ERROR: Empress is unresponsive. Analysis: ship degradation critical. Hardware compromised.
Continuing to reactivate Empress from stasis…
WARNING: intruders have breached cargo hold. Priming Self-Destruct protocols, Passcode: "Until paradise burns"
[HSR]
Firefly awoke, the shift indicate an emergency reboot rather than a command from the central hub. This was followed by a jolt as the moorings failed, dropping her pod to the floor. Awareness sharpened as the effects of stasis burned away to consciousness. Mission computer was not updating. Disconcerting. The bounce from the impact also indicated a technical failure of the ship's gravitational field.
Outside of the pod was a trio of intruders were prodding the casing when the pins popped, releasing the lid of her casket. When the first of the intruders peered inside, Firefly's foot lashed out, eliminated them in a single strike. The restrains were broken, and Firefly leaped out, taking stock of her foes.
No uniform. Tools indicated salvage team, all substandard. Ramshackle arms and armor. Probable pirates. Intruders all the same. There is no active mission, and no other allies have responded to the breach to the ship's interior, but there are protocols. Protocol dictates action, so Firefly acted.
The next pirate was sent flying, confirming the absence of artificial gravity as he crashed against the hangar entrance. The first's shattered faceplate indicated primary life support is similarly out of commission, gases cooling in the vacuum. Rounding on the third pirate, a single punch across the head snaps the opponent's neck, dropping him to the deck.
All hostiles eliminated.
The relative calm is disquieting. The hangar was cold and lifeless, far too much for a long distance transit. Someone else should have been able to respond to the intruders besides herself. And then the flood of data began pouring in. Or rather, the sheer absence of it simply slammed against the back of her mind as she tried to determine the fault. All around her were thousands of lifeless pods, the occupants terminated by power failures, time putting them past the point of recovery.
The central computer was barely intelligible.
Then she saw it, hiding in the corner on the hanger's uppermost landing. She almost didn't notice it if not for the scanners. Golden lights dimmed against the black armor made it blend in with the rest of the ship, and gave barely any thermal emissions. What was apparent was the armor of the Antimatter Legion. Once again, Firefly attacked.
Unlike the pirates, the Legionnaire leaped away, letting Firefly crash against the bulkhead and spring off again. No air, no flames. Firefly could adapt.
So could the Legionnaire, dodging or flat out absorbing the strikes as they came. Any impacts against the black plates failed to show any kind of damage, so Firefly sustained the assault against the head, this offering more satisfying, albeit irritating results as it led her on a chase through the hangar, weaving through the storage racks and up and down the lengths of the room.
Stranger still, no reinforcements emerged. For any side. The Iron Cavalry were beyond any kind of assistance. The pirates had to have heard the commotion. And Firefly had never seen the Antimatter Legion move anywhere without overwhelming numbers and force. Some dull reverberations against the ship's hull indicated some kind of battle going on outside, but the Abaddon was not the intended target, merely the backboard.
The Legionnaire lunged forward, slamming into Firefly. Just close enough for her to try flash-frying him with a focused plasma blast. Its armor melted at the intense heat, only to immediately regenerate and the Legionnaire to slam Firefly against the wall. Once, then twice, Firefly twisted in its grasp, kicking away in the zero-G environment, determined to reach the armory.
Unfortunately, the previous battle with the Legion had sapped her power reserves.. So instead of a prolonged fight throughout at entire ship, emergency shutdown kicked in, and Firefly slumped over into recovery mode. And instead of going for the kill, the Legionnaire picked the fallen knight up and hauled the inert form up to a nearby ship.
[HSR]
A jolt of life shot into the armor, and the consciousness inside, and Firefly woke up to a purple-haired woman with strange eyes sitting on a crate in the hold of a ship. Dressed too fine to be a common pirate, but too well-armed to be a civilian contractor on a salvage trawler. Lacking any sort of badge or company insignia hints independent and her mode of dress doesn't match the ramshackle feel of the ship, hinting that it was stolen, and manned with less than a skeleton crew.
Neither said a word for a while, Firefly's instilled discipline holding out in wait until the Legionnaire appeared again. His helmet was gone, showing off ash gray hair done in a trio of braids the fell partway down his back. Golden eyes bore into her faceplate, unblinking.
The exchange did not go unnoticed, and the woman chuckled a little, echoing in the massive landing bay.
"Don't mind Obi," the woman said. "Teaching him some social graces is a work in progress, but he means well."
"He's Antimatter Legion," Firefly retorted.
"Ex-Antimatter Legion," Obi shot back. "And it's kind of hard to say if I was ever a part of them in the first place."
Firefly's eyes never stray from the Legionnaire. And without ceremony, he placed a plate of warm food before them. A complete steak dinner, with potatoes and gravy, steaming mixed vegetables, a slice of cake, and a bottle of some kind of beverage.
A distant, neglected sensation flared against the senses. In a word, Firefly was hungry. Fortunately, the armor was meant to process food for the organic components while in the field to negate the need to return to base more than strictly necessary, so it was a small matter of consuming the contents of the plate, even in armor.
"Interesting," the woman said, smiling slightly. "The name's Kafka, by the way. And I have to say, not many were ever expecting to see another Swarm Annihilation Machine. The Iron Cavalry's been out of contact for a few Amber Eras now. Most thought you had all died out after the Glamoth fell, and even those in the know figured fuel or supplies would have run out with no base to work out of."
Food processing stops as Firefly looks directly at Kafka. "Show me."
[HSR]
Sike, the crew's self-styled "chauffeur", waited in the archives and pulled up the relevant articles. The Swarm Disaster, the Glamoth Empire – no, the Glamoth Republic, and the Iron Cavalry. Aeons that had risen and fallen in the steady march of time. They flash by, but Firefly's eyes take it all in during the moments they're on screen. Provided they weren't doctored or damaged, the picture they painted was grim.
The Swarm Disaster was ancient history, as was Glamoth. There never was a grand, glorious empire, as their Empress had routinely reiterated. Only a republic that managed to burn itself to nothing in the desperate straits of fending off the Swarm, which, unfortunately, was very real. All of this transpired several Amber Eras ago.
Looking out of the observation port, Firefly saw the Abaddon floating in the black. At some point, the transport had been torn in half, possible from one of the Antimatter Legion's weapons, exposing many compartments. Time had seen further degradation of the hull, flayed and splintering apart as it slowly spun around. All the information was loaded into her onboard computer. No one else had survived. Or if they had, they were beyond her reach.
In the end, they salvage what they can in terms of parts and supplies, and then scuttle the wreck, sending the material remains of the Iron Cavalry into oblivion. And while watching the final flash of fire that served as a funeral pyre, Firefly turns to Kafka and ask,
"What do you require of me?"
Kafka smiled, and answered, "Our employer is putting together a team, and we believe your skills will prove useful in the times to come."
"My capacity for destruction."
"To prevent oblivion. If you're not convinced, we can arrange a meeting. If you decide what you want nothing to do with it, we'll drop you off at the next port and let you be on your way."
The deck below is the only ground available. Civilization was light-years away, and there was no way the knight could cross a fraction of that in their current state, and no telling what the reception would be if the could.
"I will accept," she said.
[HSR]
In the end, there was little choice in the matter. No real alternatives, either. A bargain is struck. One that might allow Firefly to escape an otherwise predetermined demise. Firefly emerged from the comms center, finding Obi and Sike were standing around a makeshift coffin.
"Who was he?" she asked.
"A friend of ours," Obi answered. "He got cornered while shutting down some of the pirates. They blew open the door to get to him. He died soon after."
"Best way anyone could ask to go," Sike added. The mustachioed blond took a long drag of a cigarette. "With boots on, eyes open, facing the end with a smile on your face. And he got the last laugh in the end. That blast rebounded into the hall. Killed the entire merry band in the process."
If Firefly's face were visible, they might have seen her frown. Talks with Destiny's Slave had yielded a number of facts and information points. Including the means and time which she would die, though she did find herself agreeing with Sike to an extent.
The three of them stood in silence until Kafka returned. Her eyes settled on Firefly, smiling as she offered out a hand.
With a moment of consideration, she clasped the woman's hand, giving it a slight shake. Whatever the course might be, if the Stellaron Hunters could hold up their end of the bargain, then she would burn to ashes and glass whatever stood in their way.
"Welcome aboard, SAM."
A/N: I'm sure there's going to be plenty of information that'll come out during 2.2 which will contradict or invalidate what goes on here. If that happens, I might doctor it up a little to bring it a little closer to canon, or I may just slap the good ol' AU tag onto it and maybe write another story once we have more of the facts to work off of. In the absence of such at the present moment, here's some of what I whipped together for the purposes of the story.
For instance, there will be a couple of OCs (Sike being one of them) will be in place, because Blade and Silver Wolf didn't join the Stellaron Hunters until *after* Sam, and the Trailblazer is implied to have accompanied Kafka before even Sam's induction.
Aside from that, much of Firefly's narrative design and psychology is going to draw heavily from both the Clone Troopers from Clone Wars as well as the SPARTAN-IIIs from Halo (for the uninitiated, that's the generation that most of Noble Team – minus Jorge – was sourced from for Halo: Reach). This is entirely deliberate.
Speaking of Halo, the design of Obi's armor is derived from the MJOLNIR armor (namely the Mark 5, seen in Halo 1) and the Praetor armor (from DOOM 2016), with maybe some hints of Voidranger motifs woven in. As for Obi himself, without beating around the bush, he's Caelus as he was long before the start of the story. Functional, but still needing some teaching from Kafka before the notion of his getting aboard the Astral Express is feasible, let alone necessary.
Beyond that, we'll see how things go down in the new update, which I'll probably play sometime this weekend.
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Laughter on where I missed the mark or astonishment where I, however statistically unlikely, might be unwittingly accurate? Let me know in a PM or review. Constructive criticism is always appreciated.
Until next time!
Winterman, out.