Exiled!
Kajal
13-04-2007, 04:12
There are, upon this world (more specifically, that world named "Earth",
subject to so many alterations and seemingly insane conglomerations and
fractures), a great many surprises. Entire realms cease to exist
entirely or suddenly and abruptly appear, while further still occupy the
same physical space and yet flights between the two are regularly chartered.
The rather fickle nature of this planet in particular lends itself well
to hiding objects, or enclaves otherwise unknown, and, for some, the
pacing had been entirely too slow for their liking.
On the upside, of course, it had given ample time with which to attempt
to recapture lost glory.
Verion Alsance, Sorana Terioss, AD1987
Dievan yawned, leaning back in the high-backed chair attached to one of
many stations within the Alsance Hall of Records. The room itself
contained several such stations, arrayed within a central corridor along
the length of a massive mahogany table that stretched towards either end
of the corridor itself. There was no particular mastery of holography
present, or even ubiquity of interactive panels. Each station itself
consisted of a matched pair, an input device of practically archaic
design, and a slim display that hung suspended on a deceptively thin
arm. Such items were, themselves, commercially available from a number
of sources, though given the relatively low population of the small
archipelago, such things were not needed in grand numbers.
The far end of the corridor was occupied itself by a large, circular
desk, currently unstaffed but normally occupied by the Attendant of the
Hall, and branching off from the main corridor were alcoves hemmed in on
either sides by the massive servers that contained all extant data
concerning the Sorani, and their exploits upon this Earth.
There was a time, long ago, when they had come into contact with a group
not unlike themselves - immeasurably advanced beyond the majority of
civilizations the Sorani had bartered with, though frustratingly unable
to render assistance in the matter decreed most important.
Remnants still remained from that day, buried within the sides of the
small mountains, scattered across the seabed, and, in some places,
intact in large sections, corroded and jutting unnaturally from faces of
rock and soil.
There were a few who still remembered that catastrophic day, though
Dievan was not among them. Those who had survived landfall had largely
done so in the escape craft, watching in horror as their only means off
this planet smashed itself against rock and died.
There had been 287 of them, the records said, and over a thousand years
ago they had fashioned out of the remains and limited supplies that had
survived a civilization that, however small, existed yet today.
The Attendant, an older woman, going grey but otherwise healthy, tapped
Dievan on the shoulder, having returned to the hall without a whisper.
"Dievan, it's morning," she said. "You've been here all night?"
"I know... It's hard, sometimes, trying to make sense of all this..."
"The data from Serion? Lords, you know how little of that even survived
landfall..."
"Well, yes... It's just, so few people remember how we got here in the
first place... It has to be in here, somewhere."
"What, exactly?"
"Why. Why we're here."
"By the local calendar, it was the year nine hundred and forty seven,
when the Serion fell out of the heavens..."
---
Klaxons blared, as red light filled the command cabin. Something was
horribly wrong, though no one knew what. For all they knew, it could
have been Mejari sabotage, but no one in the Sorani chain of command was
even supposed to know about this mission... Whatever had happened had,
however, damaged the Serion heavily, and the command cabin, like most
others aboard the ship, was rather distressed.
"Damage report! What the hell was that?"
"Unknown, sir... I've got scrambled reports from all over the ship..."
The commanding officer, a relatively young man, swore at the reports
that streamed in over the ship's datastream. "Verun, any idea where we are?"
Verun, one of the tactical officers, returned the captain's query as
best he could, though it was obvious that he was somewhat rattled by
this turn of events. "External sensors are badly damaged... I've got a
few cameras showing starscape, but with serious interference..."
Serion continued to shake violently as she began to plow through the
atmosphere. Few, if any of her crew had any real idea of what was
happening, and those who did were quick to act on what little
information was available to them. The ship had been thrown - though the
means of which were specifically unknown - several hundred light years
from home, and it had the great luck of being caught in a gravity well
to boot.
The ship itself was quite large, for the era, measuring slightly over
two hundred meters in length, though she grew smaller at the moment as
frames collapsed and entire sections burnt away. She had been reassigned
from line combat to this mission, in what was largely believed to be a
last-ditch effort to attempt to force a stalemate in a war that had been
ongoing for the last few decades without interruption. They had found
artifacts before, of course, but the large device in the ship's hold -
engraved itself with numerous patterns and text that was only most
crudely translated, had been discovered only six months prior, and what
little they could decipher told of objects of great power that, if
obtained, may have indeed been able to sway the course of the war the
Mejari had started.
There had been odd happenings aboard ships after they had hacked the
device into Serion and her systems, and some of the crew had viewed them
as portents, as the amount of power the device required caused lights to
flicker or to fail to illuminate altogether, while computer systems
behaved increasingly more erratic.
But, as the engravings on the device said, it was a key, and with it the
might of the heavens may be unlocked and wielded.
No one ever considered that they had misinterpreted the writings on the
device. They had, of all things, one or two fragments of pottery, and a
cartouche from a burial site with other examples of this particular
writing, each of which was subject to the same extreme uncertainty.
It could have been the key to heaven, but it seemed that the gods had
punished Serion, before she could even attempt to steal fire from them.
And now she was falling into the sky of this alien world, with all the
stars in the wrong places, dim and distant, as if they had forsaken this
world entirely.
"All hands, this is the captain. We've failed. Abandon ship. I repeat,
abandon ship... and gods speed."
Escape pods detached with frightening ease, even as panels of armor
covering them were stripped away from Serion by friction, and those more
sheltered were discarded. Deep within the stricken ship, the ancient
device remained, unchanged for ages except for the crude interfaces
Serion's crew had fashioned for it.
"I've got a bead on a small island chain... Most of the escape pods are
headed towards it..."
"Try to land us near it... We'll need whatever we can save..."
For many different peoples, there would doubtlessly be stories of a
great fireball in the night sky, falling out of the heavens in the east,
disappearing over the horizon to the west, and for those closer, a great
explosion as it finally disappeared over the edge of the earth.
Escape pods would later wash ashore, and for those that had survived the
descent, fragments of Serion that had been torn from her jutted from the
canopy of the forests covering the islands, while along with the escape
pods, fragments of her hull, and smaller devices also washed ashore.
The majority of Serion lay deep underwater, the ancient device still aboard.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kajal
11-02-2009, 15:45
Kajali Embassy, Verion Alsance, Earth. Present Day
On a normal day, the embassy was not particularly busy. It wasn't even
very large. Located within a modest glass tower, the only other
occupants of note were the staff of the local Menelmacari consulate.
Today, though, it was bustling, communications devices saturated with
requests and calls.
"What do you mean, you can't get through to homeworld? It must be a
problem on your end. No, I haven't tried. We're not in regular contact
with Homeworld here."
"No, I haven't been able to get through to Homeworld. Mars says they're
monitoring a subspace disturbance. These things happen, it should clear
up soon..."
"I already told you, we haven't been able to get through to Homeworld
all day. There's too much subspace interference. No, I can't use YutLink
for you unless you can prove that you are a member of either of the
Combined Services or a member of the Kajali government."
"...What do you mean the Menelmacari can't contact Homeworld?"
"YutLink to Homeworld is also inoperative? They can't all be down. Try
SYSNET again."
"...No, for the last time, we can't contact Homeworld on _any_ channel.
Yut, Kajali, or anything else. Nothing works."
---
Council of Yut, Some time later...
"As some of you may have learned, as of 0732 hours local time, we have
effectively lost all contact with Kajal. We have been unable to raise
the central government or any elements of the Homeworld Defense Fleets.
Furthermore, we have been unable to raise any elements of the Pleiades
Border Fleets since 0735. Before we lost contact with the Border fleets,
a single file was distributed to Combined Federal Services facilites in
Sol."
The speaker brings up a small file. It's simple cartographic data, and
looks normal enough. It's obviously a picture of the locations of the
four Core Worlds of Kajal, though with one notable omission.
"As you can see, Kajal itself is missing. Based on the fact that not
only is our home star not visible, but several other stars within
Pleiades in the general vicinity are also missing, that some sort of
artifical gravitic event has occured, creating a bubble approximately
one light year wide, through which no signal - not even subspace
communications - can escape. Subspace scanning confirms that this bubble
appears to be centered upon the Homeworld, and also suggests severe
gravitic disturbances that may affect the entirety of the Pleiades cluster."
"As you know, aside from fleet elements orbiting Mars, the majority of
the Kajali fleet is stationed near the Homeworld. If elements not
initially within the disturbance responded as dictated by Combined
Federal Services protocol, we can assume that the majority of the
Combined Federal Services has been trapped near or within it. The
Federated Imperium has been rendered essentially defenseless."
"There have also been reports," the representative continued. "Of
devices believed to be of ancient Kajali origin "turning on" throughout
the extent of the Imperium. One of these devices has been recently
located to Camp R, after Menelmacari forces discovered it on the ocean
floor north of Menelmacar proper. We believe it to be some sort of
interstellar drive, as it was found mounted within the wreckage of a
primitive starship that has been confirmed to several hundred years
before the founding of the Old Kajali Imperium."
OOC: Of course, anyone that does any regular trade with Kajal would know
about this by now. Sorta difficult to miss that everything from that
area has stopped entirely.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kajal
12-02-2009, 14:07
TYCS Camp Restricted
"Have you figured out what this thing is yet?"
Dr. Kavaan's team (and a few persons wearing purple and neon yellow
jackets with MELTA emblazoned across the back) looked up from their work
for a moment.
"We have a theory..."
"Oh?"
"The device itself has been nearly impervious to conventional scanning
methods. That said, it did have a few, uh... cracks, and we were able to
get some small cameras into it."
Small is an understatement, of course. The largest casing crack was a
little over three hundred nanometers across, and they had injected the
thing with a tube of basic nanomachines that circulated around inside
for a bit before being recalled to the entry site.
"We were able to get a basic image of the interior structure, and from
that we've presumed that it is some sort of faster than light drive. The
mechanical design has similarities to numerous extant drives... But we
haven't been able to determine exactly how it operates. When it first
arrived it was emitting a generalized power signature, no good for
actually figuring out anything, just that it was on. But when we hooked
it up to a diagnostic terminal through this port over here..." The
researcher taps a device bolted onto the outer shell, which is quite
obviously much newer than the rest of it, though still primitive. "The
power signature changed entirely. We were able to pinpoint a few
specific power sources within the device, but the rest of the internals
seem to have gone dormant."
"Oh, don't forget what happened when it changed."
"Right. At first it changed color a little, got shinier. Then there was
this... song, I think, and that GFG over there..." of course, the
scientist points at it. "...freaked out."
"...that was a gravity field generator?"
"...uh, it was, yes. We had it on to contain anything like, uhm...
explosions."
"...and it turned into a crumpled ball... how?"
"Oh! Right, right. This device, it causes an effect that we're not sure
how to define, and we think it must be generating a field of some sort.
As near as we can tell this field is only detectable by the effects it
has on gravity, whether it be natural or artificial. It seems to behave
as antimatter does when combined with matter, though with a few more
quirks."
"Quirks. Such as?"
"Well, in a natural environment it doesn't seem to do much at all. The
laws of physics still operate like you'd expect, down is still down
towards the local mass, etc, except by all conventional measurements and
scanning devices, this room should be in zero G right now."
"...You mean..."
"Ah, yes. We think. We're pretty sure that this device is designed to
operate using the antiforce of gravity. We'd call it an antigravity
engine but people don't think of the right concept when they hear that."
"Wouldn't that mean that... annihilation events.... borders..."
"Oh, no, near as we can tell it compensates for that in some way. The
further away from the source the less severe the effect becomes, and the
two forces combine to maintain an otherwise normal effect in an area."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Ctan
13-02-2009, 08:45
The senate chamber was one of three, this one outside the capital for
reasons of continuity. Nonetheless, it was difficult to tell who were
where, as the summons simply directed senators to head for the most
convenient location. Many, as such, were simply appearing at the
location via long range holography, and those who were physically
present at the other two sites were visible too, both sets of holograms
indistinguishable, unaided, from physically present people.
Charles Braimen frowned from the back row of the chamber, his own
various insignia of office draped from the computer terminal before him.
He glanced inward at the news feed in his mind; there was complete
uproar. Not long ago, contact had been lost with Kajal; and now,
scheduled Kajali ships had not arrived.
Sensor examination, it was said, currently suggested that the entire
region had collapsed. Perhaps this would shed some light. He knew that
billions were watching the events of the senate floor more avidly than
ever, now. This was no secret information; though the erisavedran
permitted such senate hearings, they were exceedingly rare, and a matter
of such importance as this would require an extraordinary justification.
An expectant hush swelled in the chamber as a figure stood at the
presentation podium; the Void Dragon himself, it was not particularly
surprising, but it was surely graves. He was not part of the senate, but
nominally its servant. And such a servant as always brought either bad
news, or triumph.
?Come to order!? barked Princeps Dean, (there were several jokes about
his name) the current presiding member of the body. It was an
unnecessary formality, but a comforting one, ?The representatives of the
necrontyr people are assembled, herewith to act in their name and their
name only.? As he made this benediction, the guards of the senate,
skull-faced blood-blue armoured figures with crimson trim to the robes
that hung from their armour, retired beyond the chamber?s ever-open
doors, crackling cerulean-glowing warsycthes held horizontally before
them. There was symbolism in that ? the doors were never closed on the
people, but just as surely, the guards, both ceremonially and
practically, ensured that no one would be permitted onto the floor who
would disrupt its business.
?Senators,? the Dragon said, speaking, of course, in necrontyr, the
body?s official language, ?I have to report that we have officially lost
contact with the home-worlds of Kajal.? There was uproar, but only
briefly, as everyone in the chamber let loose a torrent of inquiries,
speculation and curses.
?We do not believe this to be a fractality phenomenon at present. Our
long-range instrumentation detects a space-time-discontinuity
surrounding the Kajali home system, superficially similar to the Enemy?s
geomantic englobements in the War. Other systems are affected to lesser
degrees, and even now, our smaller ships are embarked in stutter jumping
around the area to map the range of the communications disturbance. We
will be attempting to approach the affected systems themselves within
the next few minutes.
?We summarize from this that the home system of Kajal is cut off, and
may even now be under attack. Consequently, I request the Senate?s
approval for a Pending Anathema of Hateful War upon any sapient agency
found to be knowingly responsible for this act, should that transpire to
be the case.
?Alternately, we may need the senate?s endorsement of a mobilization
call, to provide transport, relief, or other aid, depending on the
situation we find,? he was interrupted by Lord Senator Braimen leaping
to his feet with a most undignified call of support.
?You have it!? he shouted, quite simply.
It was beyond even him to be dispassionate when he knew that his wife
was presently on Kajal Prime, after all. In their name only was the
benediction; but, well, she was one of the people, after all...
As one, discarding their normal civility, the delegation rose and
cheered their approval, mentally authorizing and dispatching their
votes, pounding on the wooden surfaces of the great chamber in anger and
frustration. The anger and determination was quite simply unprecedented
in modern history, reminding some there of the wars against the Old
Ones. Across the nation, the call was taken up, and an authority beyond
the senate, as was needed, proclaimed that same call to arms...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kajal
13-02-2009, 15:16
Kajali Border-regions, Far Edge of Pleiades from Sol
Something odd had happened here. This particular region of space was
host to one of a small number of border stations, an artificial
monstrosity twelve kilometers tall, and home to a number of starships.
It had not been placed within a solar system, and while it technically
orbited the star cluster as a whole, one thing it should never do is
drift relative to Pleiades.
It, however, was. When Necron vessels first arrived on the scene it was
evident that the station itself was without primary power, and oddly
enough, drifting into the cluster. Only a few vessels remained alongside
to defend it, the majority apparently gone to defend the Homeworld.
Curiously, subpsace was unexpectedly chaotic in the region, and as
vessels would find in other areas around Pleiades, it appeared that the
anomaly had an effect on subspace similar to opening the drain of a
large basin. In some regions, this effect was so strong as to begin to
exert tangible effects upon physical objects, especially against those
objects that themselves were able to artificially isolate themselves
from conventional space-time for faster than light travel or other means.
While all of the border stations were apparently experiencing the same
general effects, only one appeared to have actually come under attack.
The structure itself was intact, though no power sources, of any
magnitude, were detectable. Whatever vessel or conglomeration of such
had passed nearby had rent great sections of the hull free, and without
access to what recorder systems may have been active aboard it, there
was no way to tell if any had survived. The remainder of the fleet that
had been deployed alongside it was disturbing. In many cases the
majority of the vessels were simply missing, as if disassembled at a
dockyard, and used for other purposes. what pieces did remain were
either of foreign manufacture or suitably common throughout the region
to be worthless, though nothing showed signs of any damage. It was as if
the attackers had absconded only with pieces of value, and only those
pieces that would allow them to be identified.
Nearer to the anomaly, Necron ships had encountered more elements of the
home fleets, though these too appeared to be abandoned. Many smaller
ships were simply drifting, completely dormant though undamaged. Larger
craft were conspicuously absent, though perhaps for a reason. With each
jump closer to the anomaly, the efficiencty of even Necron drives seemed
to jump higher without explanation, but any attempts to move away from
the anomaly itself would take longer and require much more energy to
complete than normal. The size and location of abandoned vessels varied
with distance from the anomaly, and with few exceptions, it was quickly
obvious. The closer to the anomaly one travelled, the more difficult it
would be to escape it. Those vessels left behind had ventured too far,
and had found themselves unable to generate sufficient power to escape.
Those that had escaped...
They had yet to be found.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Ctan
14-02-2009, 08:04
Telvaid sat in the command throne of one of the smallest ships used by
the Necrontyr, and fired another volley of scarab drones against his
target. His target was the faster than light drive section of a Kajali
Nightingale; the little ship (albeit bigger than his glorified patrol
boat) it had come from had disappeared, but for whatever reason, its
inertialess drive remained.
The smaller craft of the necrontyr fleet had been tasked with this
little piece of housekeeping; there were some seventy such drives, and
not one of them could be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.
Fortunately, finding them was quite easy, and this was the last on the
border posts. Destroying them, on the other hand?
That was difficult. The standard drive was an enclosed cylinder almost a
hundred meters long. The scarabs would fly with it a safe distance from
the damaged border post, and then explode, each with a potent blast of
atomic power, synchronized around the middle of the device to break it
into two. While whole, the device was difficult to destroy, when broken,
it became exponentially easier to destroy it. The ship?s energy weapons
fired, blasting one piece apart into hundreds of fragments, and then
bathing those in further successive bursts of power until the strange
exotic matter broke into pulses of radiation and matter, chiefly iron.
He had no irritation at this task; preserving the secrets of the
Necrontyr was amongst the most noble of callings, and he would ensure
that not a single atom of the forbidden machines escaped to be
discovered by those lesser in the Necrontyr?s respect than the Kajali.
Despite his contentment with his task, he did wonder, though, how the
immortals that had boarded the wrecked station were getting on...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Ctan
10-03-2009, 05:13
The necron lady and her escorts appeared on the surface of a dead world.
It had taken them hours to get here, even at the full speed of the
already fast Shroud-class light cruiser. There were scant few stars
visible in the sky above, and no real details on the crater-pecked
gritty plains of the world?s surface. What they sought could barely be
seen, a few deactivated monoliths, mostly buried under the surface, like
icebergs, were the only signs of necron presence on this world. A tomb
world, this, it was one of several that had never seen the breath or
touch of life forms, placed in galaxies where organic life did not
thrive, in this case, due to terrible levels of radiation.
The group of fifty immortals arranged around her were part of a
Ressurection War Cell ? a group formed to awaken just such dormant
machines. They were not only her bodyguards, but signal repeaters. She
stood on a spur of worn-down rock, climbing atop it and lifting her
staff-like weapon high above her head as her escorts fanned out, alert
for who knew what threats.
The ship had doubtless moved on, leaving the group to their own devices.
This world only contained part of what they had come for. Others would
need to awaken and supervise other worlds in this sector.
She sent the signal, a tangle of encryption keys and commands, to begin
the process of calling this small, isolated tomb to life.
There would be, she knew, a total of just under ten thousand necron
bodies ? around five hundred minds ? here, left behind by the aeons.
There were countless such places ? the active Necrons having left the
majority of their kind to slumber ? the work of rebuilding their
civilization was in its infancy. To awaken too many Necrons would be to
call them into existence without the means to support them in the
lifestyle it was agreed was desirable. This was something that had been
planned millions of years ago, the immortal Necrons had become nothing
if not patient, and after the fall of the Enemy, they had known it might
take thousands or millions of years to fully awaken once more and change
the universe to their liking.
Nearby, a squad of maintenance scrabs appeared. It would take some time
to get what she wanted from this world. But it would happen.
Charles Braimen was being operated upon by Doctor Watson; or rather, he
was being operated on by a starship avatar who happened to look like
that fictional character. It was quite disturbing to see the positively
antique methods, but he had to admit that there was no real problem. It
just looked crude.
Both the famous detective character, standing on the opposite side of
the lounge-cum-observation deck, and his medical companion, were avatars
of the Barrow-type tomb-ship Jalkalaissatana, one of the most senior
ships of the fleet.
Charles? arm was sliced open, deep between his bones, the cut not
bleeding due to restraint fields, as a field generator was placed into
it by a slim pair of brass tongs. The process wasn?t painful, but it was
laborious, so he sat back in the deep armchair, waiting for it to be
over. When it was complete, he would have the full suite of internal
effectors, shields, gravitics, lasers, further improved musculature. He
had asked to be housed on the incident-coordinator ship, and this was
it. It seemed only prudent to prepare himself to fight.
?We have cleared our secure shipyards, and begun building new vessels.
We should have another engagement element from them within a little over
a month ? we?ve also begun dispatching excavation missions,? Holmes
explained, ?that should bring another engagement element online within
two to three weeks, giving us a total of thirty four new ships.?
?What?s that?? Charles said, pointing with his good hand, at a slim
shape displayed through the false, magnified window.
?That,? Watson said, ?I deduce to be the Light of Truth. It is a vessel
of the Old Ones. Almost a hundred million years old ? it is essentially
a demon ship of considerable age. It defected to us in the
Ninety-seventh Centennial Battle of Ulmaran, after being ordered to
exterminate the population.?
?I?ve heard of such things, but I didn?t think any such vessels still
existed,? Charles asked, leaning forward, earning a tut from the surgeon.
?Most of our convert-craft were destroyed with the downfall of the
Enemy. Unfortunately, they were vulnerable to the vacta overload effect
and the resulting swarms. However, the Light of Truth, was one of the
few that was able to seal off its links in time, and protect itself with
its fields. It has been slumbering until now.
?Given that this effect has some similarities with what we?ve previously
encountered, we woke the Light and asked it to take a look. I can put
you through into communication if you? Holmes stopped suddenly.
?I?m receiving a hyper-wave signal of considerable power, needle-beam,?
Holmes said, ?from within the blackout zone. It appears to be from the
Erisavenus.?
?One of our lost ships??
?No, the Erisavenus is one of our cruisers. Currently in Sol. I?ve just
pinged it, and it?s still there. So this may be a forgery??
?Or it may be the same ship from a different perspective??
?Quite,? Holmes said, not seeming terribly surprised, ?an impressively
swift deduction. I am planning to head for the origin of the signal,
with my escorts. If you?d like to remain here, I can transfer you to
another vessel.?
?No, thank you,? he said, ?I would like to find out what it is too? What
did the message say??
?Nothing of note. It was merely a location. Curiously, there?s something
interesting about that? I?ll just finish with your arm, and we can go
take a look. I?m standing up my ground forces complement, and setting
course for Solanna.?
?You won?t be waiting for Asirnoth??
?No. He may travel with me, but I do have considerable independent
capacity, you know!? Holmes said, sounding a little annoyed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kajal
19-03-2009, 20:13
Border Station
For a station that had been so gravely damaged, the interior showed
precious few signs of damage. No doubt, the station itself could be
restored at far less cost than replacing the installation, though it
would require a great amount of time to do so. Still, environmental
systems were entirely non-functional, and the internal temperature of
the station was only marginally higher than that outside. While the
artificial gravity systems were also offline, though the corridors were
devoid of any items resting in the air. It would seem that the systems
had been shut down rather than interrupted, as throughout offices,
recreational spaces, and even kitchens, objects were at rest and
motionless, making everything encountered seem pristine.
There was, unfortunately, a complication concerning the station's
central command centers. Primary locations had been rent from the hull
by unknown means, though several data centers were still intact. Given
the total lack of power, accessing any data contained within server
racks would be... difficult.
Solanna
Solanna, being the site of the second oldest continuously inhabited
Kajali settlement, was also quite close to the homeworld, astronomically
speaking. At the time of colonization, Kajali vessels were not yet
capable of travelling faster than light. A colony ship had been purpose
built, capable of travelling at a fraction of the speed of light that
allowed for a transit well within the lifetimes of even humans. Solanna
had been surveyed from afar by robotic probes that had taken
considerably longer to arrive, stretching the limits of their primitive
gravitic drives to arrive first within a handful of decades.
Still, while hostile, many had wondered about the convenience of
discovering a world - even one as marginally habitable as Solanna - all
of 1.031 light years distant from the homeworld.
Even the Enemy had pondered this, upon arriving in the system. It was
ancient enough to recognize Iu's work, and had glimpsed it from afar.
Indeed, the Enemy believed that the core cluster, as the Kajali called
it, was an artificial creation, stars nudged and planets moved to create
a safe haven for the Kajali within the heart of a bright and hot
formation. No habitable planets should have developed here, not
naturally, and even artifical means would not shield them from the
intense radiation that the young blue stars of Pleides would bathe them in.
For everything, of course, there was an explanation, and the Enemy was
capable of detecting such things even while Kajali remained unaware.
Solanna, like the other core worlds, possessed an exceptionally strong
magnetosphere. Kajali were of course aware of this, theorizing that the
environment within Pleiades had predisposed planets to forming such
fields early in their lives, due to the vast amounts of energy they were
bombarded with promoting and accellerating the development of core dynamos.
Theoretically, it was possible, though unlikely. Iu, or a force
preceding him, had constructed installations deep within the planets
that were responsible for such things. The Enemy had detected one such
installation buried deep within Solanna's crust, several hundred miles
below the sands. When it arrived to claim it, the discontinuity had
appeared. Solanna lay on the outer edge of the discontinuity, her star
dimpling the surface inwards. At any given point the discontinuity could
be found to be perfectly opaque, disallowing even the passage of
tachyons, yet, here, at Solanna, and unlike near those few other stars
that also dimpled the surface, those same particles were permitted to pass.
This system, perfectly sited, could only be one thing. Solanna, in
Ljosai myth, Na'Solla, was a gateway to a closed realm, a realm held
sacred and to be visited only by the children of Iu.
If it were possible, the Enemy would smirk. Iu's texts had contained
vast amounts of information concerning both his realm and the
machinations within it. Modern civilizations simply did not believe that
the texts were anything but a fantastic tale, or metaphor.
How wrong they had been.
The defense forces of Solanna had fought valiantly, slaughtering many of
the Enemy's own, and while the vessels in orbit had been destroyed, the
people below remained staunchly secure. Still, whatever their beliefs,
they were not the target, and deprived of their vessels they would lack
the ability to oppose him across the entire planet.
The Enemy dipped low, skimming above the sands far from the single
massive city of Solaan. Iu's undoing lay out here, deep below the dunes,
and while they would no doubt be accessible by ship, the Enemy's bulk
was too great for such a venture.
No, it would wait. It could not gain access to such a facility directly.
Others were coming, others untainted by corruption and, with some
intuition, capable of accessing the facilities themselves.
It mattered little if they were younger or older than Iu, as long as
they hadn't the taint of the Enemy upon them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scolopendra
21-03-2009, 18:16
The disappearance of a good portion of the Kajali Imperium is...
troublesome, to say the least. A lot of trade goes through Kajal. A lot
of foreigners visit Kajal. The Combined Services and Special Services
coordinate a great deal with the Combined Federal Services. This makes
it, as they say, relevant to everyone's interests. The initial chaos
hits everyone, from the Triumvirate superfederal government to the
average citizen making a long-distance call. The first and most severe
warning comes when a regularly-scheduled on-the-second handshake on the
secure quantum entanglement links between the Kajali CFS and the
Triumvirate of Yut Combined Services Headquarters fortress in Port
Aurora doesn't occur. After three in a row don't come through, automated
warning systems trip.
Central Communications (aka "The Switchboard"), TYCSHQ, Port Aurora, Titan
Officer of the Watch, Central Communications (OWCC) is an acronym'd
title for an extremely dull job, at least as far as Lieutenant James
"Joe" Bloggs was concerned. He'd asked the other officers in the Central
Communications department what they thought, and they all agreed. It was
really only the high-and-tights and the broomstick spines who insisted
it was a serious, important, all-your-attention-all-the-time job: the
Switchboard is, due to the physical limitations of QE networks, the
bottleneck of the Combined Services' first line of communications and
only truly and perfectly interception-proof communication method. If Sky
Marshal Rico needs to send a message from Valhalla Station to Sky
Marshal Farentino in Sslaa oh, sure, he could use the HPG or send a
courier but more like than not he'll want to use the secure QE link. QE
links are two-way between only two points, so that means that the QE
station at Valhalla needs to send it up the line to TYCSHQ, where the
Switchboard transfers it and sends it back down the line to the Galactic
Antispinward Colonial Theatre Headquarters fortress on Sslaa. Responses
such as "well, why don't they use the redundant trans-theatre links"
only garnered a cold stare and the lecture that every QE linked piece of
equipment, every single one, had one link to the Switchboard. No matter
the disruption in the chain of command, every part of the TYCS can
communicate to every other single little cog and spring part through the
Switchboard if necessary. The Switchboard ensures the best access to
communication and information through the entire Combined Services. It
is the lynchpin of the fleetnet that joins the various theatre and
component tacnets into one coordinated whole and allows the efficient
and effective execution of the Combined Services "centralized command,
decentralized execution" doctrine. Yes, there were redundant systems.
The theatre switchboards can talk to each other and form a gestalt
fleetnet if need be, in the explicit case of a decapitation strike on
Titan. If the Switchboard breaks, there are redundant connections in the
CINCTYCS' various mobile and static offices, in secure bunkers in
undisclosed nations, and at national capitals of Trium members. That
doesn't mean the Switchboard isn't important; that just highlights how
important it is: it's backed up.
This is all well and good, in the lieutenant's mind, but it doesn't
change the fact that when you're OWCC your job consists of watching
screens all day. There are the various summary readout screens,
executive and technical readouts of connection status, and line-by-line
coded screens thrown in for the mechanoids who wanted to see the
patterns behind the communications; these last scroll so quickly that to
Bloggs' unaugmented Mark One Mod Zero human eyeballs (and his lack of a
built-in encephalon brain-speeder) they were just blank white screens.
They were good to read by, at least; in fact, he uses one now to light
the pages of his Magnus Hesche comic book as he leans back in his chair,
feet propped up on the console--turned over, of course, so he doesn't
press any buttons or toggle any switches--set up on an articulated
cantilever arm extending from the base of his chair, just like on
starships. Technicians, junior officers, and enlisted sit at their
stations, occasionally doing tweaks when prompted, but otherwise just
waiting for things to go wrong. The centerpiece, though, is the Central
Communication Visual Control screen, also known as "Jason's Technicolor
Lawn Art" or "The Psychadelic Christmas Tree" depending on who in
Central Communications you asked. Taking up a screen that wouldn't be
out of place in a movie theatre is a visual representation of the entire
TYCS QE network, with millions upon millions of connections denoted by
the lines of a branching fractal tree. Each branch was a link, each link
has a little box on it to make it easier to see. The tree is
three-dimensional, extending towards the inside of the room, to show all
of the redundancies in the system and forming a sort of pine tree shape;
at the point of the christmas tree is TYCSHQ, with very transparent
little spiderweb strings connected to everything. Each thin line is
colored; normally green, but occasionally going to yellow when bandwidth
is maybe half-used, orange when bandwidth is completely full, and red
when the line is broken. Hence, tiny little lines in the tree constantly
flicker between green and yellow and occasionally orange, the patterns
always changing as the Switchboard, and its smaller bretheren in each
theatre command and starship, adapt and work to level-load communications.
Those with a background in meditation have been known to stare at it for
their entire shift. One or two guys claimed that they'd had epiphanies
in watching it; they were immediately sent down to Psychological, who
cleared them, but they were still weird. Bloggs had thought of maybe
bringing a little bit of reefer in one day and getting stoned to the
Psychadelic Christmas Tree, but psychoactive depressant and
hallucinogenic drugs were patently illegal by TYCS regulations and even
the shrinks wouldn't be able to save him from the ass-chapping he'd
inevitably get as he passed through the body-scan security into the
Switchboard.
Anyway. Magnus Hesche had captured the ZMI corporate hive minds and had
just evaded their Internal Security forces in a smashing car chase when--
--the world exploded. Or, at least, you'd think it, listening to the
alarm klaxons based on the best psychological response research the
Combined Services could get its hands on. The worse the problem, the
more effective the klaxon, and this was a very big problem. Startled
from his relaxation, the lieutenant looks at the biggest, brightest
thing in the room, just like the psychologists who helped design it
predicted. Jason's Psychadelic Lawn Art remained, as it usually did,
mostly green with flickering bits of yellow and orange.
Except for the two long, thin Lichtenburg figure-shaped gashes of red;
one along one edge of the cone, the second a little more in the middle,
near that edge.
That's bad. Obviously bad. Bloggs recalls that things along the edge of
the cone had to do with peripherals; connections to other agencies and
such. His eyes trace the pattern back to the source at the base of the
tree, sitting on the far wall. It seems pretty localized. If it's
localized, then he glances over at one of the executive screens. Theatre
connections, all green. Ground Forces connections, all green. Component
connections, all green except for one glaring red: the Guard fleet
stationed in Kajali space. National connections, all green except for
one glaring red: the Federated Imperium of Kajal. Military connections,
all green except for one glaring red: central command of the Combined
Federal Services.
They'd told him, in training, that if an emergency happened he'd have
plenty of information to start making decisions at a glance. He hadn't
trusted that, but had followed along dutifully anyway. Even the drills
didn't convince him. Now, with something having actually gone wrong and
quickly pointed out, he felt a little better and started to give orders
more calmly than he expected to. "Technical section, get me a status
report on our links to Kajal, check for local hardware failures first.
Communications section, start going through the contingency books and
raise Kajal through secondary methods."
As the ratings go to work, the lieutenant leans back a bit and stares a
little more closely at the tree. In addition to the frozen-lightning of
red, all of the other little spiderweb threads that link those
Kajali-related connections to anything else in the network are also red.
The problem is therefore probably on their side, but a status check on
the TYCS side won't hurt either. Flipping his console over, he toggles
the hot button to the Commander In Chief, TYCS, takes a moment to work
around his dry throat, and reports in.
* - * - *
TYCS Fleet Conference, the Fleetnet
The CINCTYCS stares eyelessly over his folded hands, large MacArthur
aviator sunglasses reflecting the spaceless conference table and the
projections of his Sky Marshals in their color-coded places at the
table. His elbows rest in the rectangle of white light that delineates
his section of the virtual conference table, and artificial white rays
of light that have no effect on the hue or specular of the bits and bobs
of his uniform spotlight down from above him. "At TST 0732 hours," he
begins in his deep and yet quiet voice, lowering his folded hands to the
place-setting in front of him, "we lost all contact with everything
within one light year of the Kajali home star, including the entirety of
the Ninth Triumvirate Guard Fleet stationed in the Pleiades." He glances
over towards the man sitting at the red-lit station.
Sky Marshal Gregor Pandousco recognizes it to be his cue to speak and
does so, one hand idly drumming on the red rectangle in front of him. "I
dispatched the 130th MCRC to investigate but, when they attempted a
tesseract jump, got a jump unsafe error. The canary link system in their
jump engines denied the jump and reset the system. They were still the
closest to Kajal and so I authorized them to go to their backup
tesseract and go on an assisted warp towards the Pleiades. They decided
to consider the one-light-year area of signal loss as a hard limit and
thus stopped at the distance of the remaining core system, knowing it to
be safe, to take readings. This is what they came up with." Pandousco's
drumming becomes meaningful, his fingers tracing and tapping the red
placemat in front of him. The previously featureless rectangle resolves
into a user interface at his commands, and in the middle of the
conference room a three-dimensional sensor return appears; in the center
is the rounded tip of a cone which extends to the far end of the
spherical projection. Around the cone, there are nebulous clouds and
lighted points. Inside the cone, there is nothing. "That was their first
return: some sort of large spherical object casting a sensor shadow. To
confirm the shadow, they changed position and..." A few taps later, and
the image updates to one mostly filled in, except with a black and
roughly spherical chunk in the center. "There does appear to be a
spherical... something where the Kajali core worlds used to be. It
rejects all electromagnetic and FTL sensor returns and looks, for all
intents and purposes, like a hole in space. It doesn't match up with any
weapon system we know of."
He sighs and removes his green officer's cap long enough to brush a hand
through his curly hair. "There are some gravity readings coming from it,
but they don't make sense. Rimward Fleetmind has been poking with the
numbers a bit and she thinks that if she runs numbers for pushing
gravity it may make some sense, but it's obviously not her area of
expertise so she doesn't trust her results. I've put the entire Rimward
Theatre on alert and currently have the 130th, 123rd, 91st, and 87th
medium cruiser components patrolling the volume around it. As far as we
can tell so far, though, it's outside of our context."
The CINCTYCS nods slowly. "And the status of the Ninth Guard?"
"Completely uncertain, sir." Pandousco sighs. "We tried launching some
probes into the... sphere but they splatted right on the surface.
Mushroomed into flat sheets a few microns in thickness that are now
floating away. We then tried launching one in high distort; it detonated
on the surface, and the energy return suggests no energy whatsoever got
into the sphere. It's like whatever's happening is completely isolating
the inside from the outside." He frowns and shrugs. "Whatever it is,
sir, if there's a military solution we don't have nearly enough
information to enact it."
"Recommendation?" the white-lit Chinese man asks simply, from behind his
mirror-black MacArthurs.
"Get the scientists in on it. I know Gec's never been very happy with
acting as our unofficial reconnaissance service, but there has to be
some professional journal papers in this one. Other than securing the
area around the sphere, there's not much we can do at the moment."
The CINCTYCS nods. "It will be done. Sky Marshal, coordinate with the
local SPIR chapters in your Theatre and contact the Scolopendran
Civilian Defense Corps; they'll probably want to arrange aid packages
for any survivors. Blair," the head of the TYCS turns his head towards
the blond man sitting at the blue-lit station of the table, "you help as
well. I will address the Council and inform them of my recommendations."
He allows a short pause for emphasis. "Does anyone else have any ideas?"
* - * - *
Council of Yut, Yut Building, Port Aurora, Titan
"The Combined Services confirms the Kajali delegate's statement." The
CINCTYCS in reality looks just like he does in cyberspace: greying and
age-worn, shortish but stockily built and with a definite Chinese
heritage about him. He wears his signature dark sunglasses just as he
does in virtual reality. "We lost contact with the Ninth Guard Fleet
supporting the Kajali homeworlds at the same time we lost contact with
the Kajali central government and military command, although we have
established links with the highest-echelon survivors as per our
contingency plans. The Galactic Rimward Theatre Fleet has been put on
alert and so saying that the current Kajali remnants are defenseless is
perhaps something of an overstatement."
He never was much of a politician.
"We have begun to secure the volume around this event, which we are
designating Large Spatial Anomaly One. Our initial reconnaissance
indicates that LSA-1 is slightly more than a light year in diameter and
perfectly opaque to electromagnetic and FTL signals. Attempts to cross
the boundary of LSA-1 with probes have failed, but our data currently
indicate that LSA-1's boundary may have a gravitational quality of a
kind we have not seen before. Therefore, I have directed the Galaxy
Exploration Command to assist in analyzing the anomaly and to work with
the scientists of the Triumvirate to develop countermeasures or a way to
reverse it."
* - * - *
Triumvirate of Yut Research Ship-Research Cruiser Armstrong, Titan Orbit
Captain Stephan Pelagetti rubs his temples, leaning against the wall of
the personnel displacer compartment while his science staff and a few
marines prepare to hop down to the surface. "Wonderful. Deputized by the
Combined Services. This is a perfect day." He is a brown-haired man with
statuesque features and blue eyes. A very thin layer of baby fat rounds
out the corners of his face just a little, adding to the androgyny of
his character; while he'd never be mistaken for manly, in most cultures
he would be considered quite beautiful. Unfortunately, this quality is
slightly wasted by the fact that he really doesn't care how he looks so
long as he is in regulation, and while no one can complain about his
hygiene, with the occasional hair out of place and bit of eye crust he
doesn't look anything like the movie star he potentially could.
The nearest marine shrugs. The 'security' forces aboard GEC ships used
to be Mobile Infantrymen; now they're generally either second-line TYCS
Ground Forces personnel or people who joined the GEC directly to become
groundpounder-explorers. "It's in our contract, sir."
"Hmpf. Well, we may as well go steal what we need to defend the glory of
the Triumvirate." He steps into the spherical displacement chamber and
arranges himself with his chief science officer and the two marines.
"Okay, let's go." Fields gently raise the four above the deck plating by
a few millimeters and
Triumvirate of Yut Camp Restricted, Kajali Team Area
they drop a couple of centimeters onto the ground in a momentary gentle
breeze as the atmospheric pressure equalizes to meet them. The captain
steps forward from the group and looks around the laboratory
momentarily. "So, ah, which one of you might be in charge? I'm Captain
Pelagetti of the GEC, and apparently we're supposed to save the galaxy
together."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kajal
21-03-2009, 19:36
Border Regions, Far Edge of Pleiades from Sol
It had been quiet here for the entire duration since the arrival of
Necrontyr vessels, at least, until now. There had still been no sign of
any crewed Kajali vessels belonging to the Home Fleets, and while larger
vessels would be able to retrieve those abandoned ones currently
drifting at some point, those larger ships would first have to appear
somewhere.
It would be, at least to some, startling, though the ships of the
Necrontyr had witnessed this phenomenon before. It started slowly, a
small occultation forming at what was normally defined as the station's
"jump point". Such an anomaly was initially similar to that currently
ensconcing all of the Kajali core worlds except for Solanna, though
rapidly degenerating into a much more recognizable, and understood, event.
As it expanded, stars peeked through a cloudy hole in space, obviously
spilling their light from another location, and around it, there were
brief flashes and pinpricks of blue.
Abruptly, as it usually was, the remnants of the Third, Fifth, and
Eighth Pleiades Theatre Defense Fleets appeared. Their numbers were
dauntingly reduced, the combined remnants barely comprising a single
Expeditionary Fleet. As their individual jump points disappeared from
view, they maneuvered deftly away from the still present anomaly
indicative of a much larger vessel, and the distinctive, if simple, form
of something much older slid through. The Home Fleet vessels were,
understandably, dwarfed somewhat, appearing as if to be the gigantic
vessel's escorts. It had been discovered years ago, orbiting an
artificial planetoid. A Cartographic Division vessel had indexed the
planet decades before, from the system's outer boundary, but when a
small cruiser had mis-jumped nearly into the rings of the outermost
planet, things got interesting.
That incident had ended in another system, classified, of course, and of
which there were few records. Even more, the incident had seemingly
erased that particular system from the galaxy. Those who were aware of
it had sent probes regularly, and observed only an empty expanse.
Present within the remnant fleet, was one vessel that not even Kajal's
closest allies had likely yet seen, itself having emerged only very
recently from Kajali shipyards.
Her current commanding officer had been fortuitously lucky in her choice
of touring dates. Aras i Kajur had slipped moorings and burst forth into
the unknown for a pleasure cruise mere hours before the anomaly
appeared. Of course, this meant that she had barely as much as a
skeleton crew aboard, though she had taken on a great deal of personnel
from smaller craft as a result. At Titan weight class, and carrying a
flag officer, she had taken command of the remnant fleets and ordered an
outbound jump, best possible speed.
A single link - perhaps the only active link from Kajali homespace -
would turn green on the Tree as Avatar, as she was referred to by nearly
all of her crew, placed a priority call to Sky Marshall Pandousco. It
was a bit outside of normal procedure, though given that CINCCFS was
unreachable, and also given the situation, logical.
"This is Avatar-actual, commanding elements of the Third, Fifth, and
Eighth Combined Naval Services Home Guard Fleets. Undoubtedly you are
aware of the... event currently in progress. We have as of yet been able
to locate any elements of the TYCS Ninth Guard, though we received a
garbled transmission from SDF Matariki. Elements of the Third Fleet were
also able to make contact with Solanna Theatre briefly before an
apparent equipment failure on their end. We are transmitting it and all
data gathered so far now."
The data from Matariki appeared to be comprised of routine
communications, abruptly cut off. Data from Solanna, on the other hand,
was comprised primarily of battlespace data and varied imagery, most of
it corrupted heavily. The last image that had made it through was of a
large vessel, far outside of the range of planetary defenses. It was
elongated, though with a spherical "core" set within it towards the aft
third of the ship. Battlespace data suggested it was operating in some
sort of command capacity, though it was quite obvious that it wasn't
something familiar. It was also apparently quite large.
---
Camp R
"By Iu'... uhm... never get used to that... That would be me. I'm Dr.
Kavaan..."
The artifact is, of course, sitting contently in a large, uninteresting
crate, ready for transport. Whether it was at Camp R, or aboard a
Research Cruiser, it could still be poked.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scolopendra
22-03-2009, 06:01
Stephan scratches the back of his head and sniffs quietly as he nods to
his science officer, who walks over to the crated device with the
marines and starts checking it over for shipping. "Yes, well, sorry to
surprise but billions of lives and trillions of monetary units are at
stake so we're on something of a schedule and the displacer's the
fastest way, isn't it? There's already a Scarab on the way to pick up
the device but this'll let us mutually brief each other so much more
efficiently. Now if you'll stand right here, yes, thank you, and...
Armstrong, are you reading this?"
"-Yes, Captain,-" replies a voice coming from the steel communications
brick on Pelagetti's belt. "-Ready to displace.-"
"Okay. We'll all jump on three, then. One, two, three." Everyone hops up
into the air
TYCS-RCR Armstrong, Titan Orbit
and lands on the curved floor of the displacement chamber back on the
ship. The instant after his feet touch deck metal, Pelagetti is already
off in a brisk walking pace. "There's already a ship-wide technical and
situation briefing scheduled for after we finish taking the device
aboard and while we're cruising towards the Pleiades." He glances over
his shoulder to see if Kavaan and his people are keeping up. "How much
do you know, or have already been told?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
