New Member Test #1: Diggledom

Vigilance – Shield Class Space Defence Platform
Solar System – 50 AU orbit from the Sun

The first sign of the impending attack was a slight change in the local gravity field, assessed and then automatically ignored by the machinery. The slight change in the gravity field had been caused by a pair of objects dropping out of jump space. Each of the objects was a small jump generator, attached to a small stealth engine. They both edged through space, their reactionless drives gently guiding them towards the massive space defence platform. They were both less than 2 meters in diameter, manufactured with the latest in stealth designs.

The first person to recognise the danger that they were in was one of the sensor technicians. The sensors had picked up a sudden build up of energy, but by then it was too late. The first generator powered up, instantly transporting a massive bite of the defence platform into jump space. Throughout the platform bulkheads slammed closed, airlocks sealing the various sections in. The platforms had been designed to withstand wide scale damage, but even so, the sudden loss of so much atmosphere, as well as the damage to the surrounding structure caused by the sudden venting to deep space had stretched the limitations of the damage control system. Alarms were sounding throughout the platform, technicians and soldiers waking up to red lights, screaming sirens and the general panic that came with a completely unexpected attack like this. Barely a minute after the first generator jumped out-system with a large portion of the platform the second generator activated, this one in the crater that the first generator had caused. This second generator completely gutted the platform, jumping out-system with almost the entire inner structure, the generators, the bridge and a large proportion of the platforms munitions.

The sudden loss of the communication feed from the defence platform was noticed immediately, as it dropped off the defence grid operating in the solar system. Due to the recent rebellion a pair of cruisers were automatically dispatched, but no-one believed that General Amundsen would actually be foolish enough to attack Earth itself; it was put down to a comm. system error, comm. systems failed on occasion, it was simply a fact of life. The two cruisers that were dispatched were chosen as they were the fastest vessels in the solar system, a pair of Aurora Class patrol cruisers. The Aurora class fitted the cruiser designation perfectly; they were designed to be fully self sufficient for an extended patrol, their high speed meaning usually they were deployed outside the Solar system, the only reason they were in system was the refit that they had just gone through.

They both had a full crew, 690 people all told, a mix of experienced and inexperienced crew. The higher ranks were all experienced crew members, the section heads and entire command staff of both vessels were veterans from the frontline of the rebellion, all redeployed from the dreadnaught “Bravery” who had limped back to Earth having been the only survivor of the largest battle of the rebellion so far, the battle for Ilsa.

Bravery had jumped back in system, heavily damaged, the only survivor from a full battlegroup. Leaking atmosphere, leaving a trail of debris behind it; the return flight was already the subject of a tri-d thriller. The bearer of bad news, the rebellion had spread further and faster than had been expected, entire squadrons defecting to join General Amundsen and his forces, the Bravery had reported insurrection among the crews of the battlegroup, a mutiny starting just minutes before the Generals forces dropped into real space, slaughtering the still loyal ships and sending boarding teams to help the mutineers.



Spur – Aurora Class Patrol Cruiser
Solar System – 50 AU orbit from the Sun

Commander Fuhrmann scowled as he watched the holographic display show the two cruisers slow approach to where the defence platform should have been. Long range sensors had already picked up on the floating hulk, the massive damage clearly shown, their approach slowed by the caution caused by the visible destruction that had already been sown. He looked around his bridge, catching the eye of his communications chief.

“Open a channel to the Delight, full encryption. Route it directly to my office.”

The communications chief looked up, he was one of the experienced crew members, having worked with the man who was now his commander for nearly ten years. He trusted him absolutely, even with the situation as bad as this was quickly becoming. He nodded once and began to arrange the communication link.

Commander Fuhrmann sat down in his office, sighing deeply. The comm. link opened with the face of Lieutenant Commander Morton of the Delight, the younger officers face heavily scarred, flash burns having changed his once normal appearance to a nearly immobile mask, surgery would fix it, but he had simply not given himself the time required for the surgery. His face twisted into an approximation of a grin,

“Ralf, you finally ready to get this show under way?”

Despite himself Fuhrmann found himself grinning in return, there was something about seeing his old friend, someone that had lived through the same battles, survived the same accidents and was still standing that always made him feel more content, happier with the situation, whatever it was.

“I am. What about you?”

“As I ever will be, lets do this then.”

Fuhrmann nodded, cutting the comm. link and starting the record function of his console.

“I am Commander Ralf Fuhrmann, the Captain of this vessel. Some of you have served with me before; for some this is the first step in what I hope will be a long and rewarding career in the Protectorate Defence Force. As you may know, our mission has been to check in with the defence platform Vigilance and to ascertain the reason why they haven’t been in communication with Earth or the rest of the defence net.
The politicians didn’t believe this could be an attack, so they have only sent two vessels to check why a defence platform, with its thousands of crew and hundreds of weapon systems may have stopped transmitting. Normally this would be the first of hundreds, if not thousands of betrayals forced upon those of us who serve the Protectorate by the politicians. The lack of funding, the lack of supplies, the lack of training, ignoring our advice, the breathtaking ignorance demonstrated by politicians across the Protectorate when it comes to the men and women serving the Protectorate, laying our very lives on the line. Enough is enough I say! I have held colleagues in my arms as they have died, due to the very lack of training and equipment we have advised them about. I have seen funding for vital equipment cut so that a politician could look good for the press.
No longer! General Amundsen experienced the same betrayals as the rest of us, he led us in campaigns to have our voices heard by the politicians, we marched, we voted, we explained our views and we were ignored. General Amundsen spoke out publicly and for this he was disciplined for bringing the service into disrepute. Those of us who have served on the front line, away from the self publicising politicians and the glitz and glamour of the Presidential guard will know what I mean when I say; I have had enough! Too many betrayals to count, too many times I have been let down by the very people that look to me to protect them, by those I look to for my support.
If you don’t wish to follow my example, so be it, but I will not tolerate anyone acting against me. If you don’t want to follow my orders then report to the brig, but if you begin to act against me then I can guarantee that you will end up dead. Make your choice, I have made mine.”

He finished speaking and stared straight into the camera for a second before stopping the recording. He was reasonably confident that most of the crew would follow him, but he was definite that the section heads and the rest of the veterans would join him. He had never asked them out right, but had spent enough time with them, in enough bars, spread through the Protectorate to be confident of his judgements about his men.

The new recruits were the ones he wasn’t so sure about; they were yet to witness the harsh realities that were included in his heartfelt speech. Even so, they appeared to respect and trust the more experienced members of the crew, he simply hoped that the bonds that formed between crewmembers would be enough to make them trust his judgement.

He sighed, what was done was done, no amount of second guessing his decisions would do him any good. He opened one of the storage lockers mounted on the wall and withdrew his personal sidearm, a standard issue Protectorate Navy Gauss pistol, still in its regulation issue thigh holster. He carefully attached the holster, hanging it on his right leg, over his duty suit. As soon as he was confident that it had been properly fitted he reached back into the locker, this time removing something that certainly wasn’t standard issue, at least, not to a Commander in the Protectorate Defence Forces Fleet arm. It was a modified Protectorate Marine Gauss SMG; it fired the same ammunition as the pistol, though from a larger, 50 round, magazine. Due to the extreme rate of fire that it was capable of it had a built in gyro-stabiliser and a small data point, so that it could be linked to a HUD if one was available. The one that the commander was holding had also had a reflex sight added to it, as it had been designed to be used ‘dry’ with no other electronics to support it.

He pushed the magazine into the feed mechanism until he heard and felt the weapon lock onto it. With a quick movement he fed the first of the 4mm darts into the chamber and then rested the SMG on the desk in front of him. He checked his watch, just over a minute to go before he was due to release his speech to the crew. He cast his mind back, across the faces of the crew that he had served with before.

Doctor Jenna Harkin, her face partly obscured by her long hair, laughing over a vibrant green drink. Where had that been? Some dive bar somewhere, Egeriz! That was it, one of the spacer’s bars, just outside the Fleet base. He had told some terrible off colour joke and she had burst out laughing, the both of them still young in service, part time lovers, but prepared for the inevitable break-up when they were posted to different crews. She had died less than a year after that, posted to one of the older Trajectory Class frontier ships, still in use, despite the well known problems with their jump drives. She was pronounced lost in space, along with the rest of the crew, when the ship didn’t re-emerge after a routine jump.

Cadet Hansen Thygesen, originally from Denmark back on Earth, sitting in the cockpit of the fighter that would one day kill him, the Cobra already bearing the hand painted patterns and shapes that he had done himself, seven hours of dedicated effort. During one of the routine training flights his starboard engine had flared out, sending him spinning across the sky and finally dumping him at nearly three times the speed of sound into the side of a mountain. There hadn’t been enough of him left to put in a coffin; they had to weight it down with a metal frame for the funeral.

The faces began to speed up, just flashing through his minds eye. Kara O’Brien, another from his cadet intake, died during a skirmish on the rim of the territories. Archie Sutton, Michael Whitehead and Teodros Efrem, all dead for some pointless peacekeeping action, their ship bracketed by both sides when their captain forced his way into something that hadn’t concerned him. The faces continued to accelerate, before they were just blurs.

He wiped his eyes, pushing his sadness back inside, replacing it with the cold anger that he had been living with for what now seemed like years. His watch beeped once, the slight electronic tone seeming to echo through his mind. He reached out and hit the button that would transmit his speech throughout the ship, his face appearing on every communication screen, his voice echoing from the public address system.

Fuhrmann needn’t have worried, although there were some of the crew who didn’t agree with his idea, when they realised that all the senior staff, the entire of the security section and the ten man marine detachment onboard all supported the commander they surrendered without a fight, giving in to the inevitable.

The two cruisers stayed on station, observing as in front of them the space was torn as ship after ship made the transition from jump space to real space, emerging in the home system; ready for what they hoped would be the final battle of the rebellion.

The first ship-to-ship battle in the Solar system occurred three days after the Generals fleet jumped in system, his forward picket engaged and destroyed a loyalist corvette that was in the deep system protecting a mining facility. The battle took slightly over three hours; the outmatched corvette launched the initial attack, a spread of high yield missiles fired towards the lead frigate. The flare of their older, reaction based, thrust systems attracting the attention of the vessel straight away. The missiles were casually swatted by the Frigate, the corvettes feeble attempts at jamming and electronic warfare easily ignored by the larger frigate. The frigate launched its own attack, massive beam lasers stripping great swathes of the corvettes armour off, before breaking its spine with a pair of anti-matter warheads, delivered by the frigates railguns.

As the fleet advanced in system they began to spread their tendrils, fighter squadrons slipping out to launch specific raids, cutting the communication systems that linked the defence network together. Occasionally a couple of vessels would slip away, with their supporting fighter elements to stand guard over the larger colonies spread through the solar system. By the time the fleet reached Earth the entire solar system expected what came next.

The battle for control of the solar system was not the high octane, adrenaline filled space battle, so beloved of entertainment producers throughout the Protectorate, instead it was characterised by a series of skirmishes, some deep in-system, but most isolated stations or bases spread through the outer reaches, each with their guard ships, usually a corvette or two. Most of the vessels in the Solar system were quickly pulled back to defend Earth itself, spreading themselves neatly in orbit, presenting their most dangerous weapons to the oncoming secessionist fleet.

The secessionist fleet was less than a third of the total Protectorate Space Defence force, but the fleet was more than large enough for the task that faced it. The rest of the Defence forces were spread through the Protectorate, having to remain in place to counter the threat of further rebellions, so the only loyal forces deployed in system were the aging guard ships and the Presidential Guard Squadrons. The guard ships presented no real threat, but the Presidential Guard were always the best and latest equipment and manned exclusively by people intensely loyal to the Protectorate. The only weakness that was obvious was their recruitment procedures. Unlike with the regular Defence forces, to become a member of the Presidential Guard you had to be connected somehow, sons and daughters of politicians, administrators, high-level bureaucrats, so on. This meant that they never went into dangerous situations; this would be the first time they would actually have to go up against anything that might actually be able to threaten them.

The final battle, in the orbit over Earth was witnessed by everyone on the planet. Waves of missiles were exchanged; hyper-velocity missiles swatted from the sky by bursts of coherent light, autocannon rounds cutting through missiles. Both sides took casualties, the better equipment almost matching the skills and dedication of the veterans, but the end result was never really in doubt. The Guard squadrons were outnumbered and outgunned, trying, desperately to defend a fixed point in space; they were faced by a larger, better trained, more experienced fleet, who were free to manoeuvre, with enough vessels to ensure that none could be picked off individually, enough to let them swarm the enemy defences, to launch enough missiles to ensure that some made their way to the targets. It took almost two weeks for the battle to finish, debris falling to the surface as the Guard ships were slowly demolished.

As soon as the Guard Ships began to engage the Ground Forces began to deploy, spreading out from their bases, deploying mobile planetary defence batteries and digging in. Each battery consisted of eight weapons, each of the massive particle cannon systems being made up of four vehicles, the cannon itself being transported independently, there was also a large sensor vehicle doubling as a command vehicle, a defence vehicle and a large generator truck. Each gun was accompanied by a platoon of mechanised infantry, forty soldiers and five armoured vehicles. They spread across the world, digging in, camouflaging themselves as best they could from orbit.

Staff-Sergeant Lauren Craig had joined the secessionists after fighting through a number of skirmishes along the borders, as far as she was concerned they had been caused by the Politicians back home, and so they were directly responsible for the death and destruction that had followed. She was sitting in the troop compartment of one of the landing ships, surrounded by the rest of her company. Each of the troopers was ready for the drop, armour already on and weapons stowed, and all that remained now was the waiting. The insertion ships weren’t designed with comfort in mind, they were designed around the drop capsule racks, the transported troops boarding directly onto the launch deck, squaring all their kit away, before being allowed to relax and spread themselves around the deck. In ideal situations they weren’t meant to be on the deck for longer than a few hours, but this was hardly a routine situation. For the past few days the secessionist fleet had been launching drone missiles to engage and destroy the Loyalist tracking stations, but they weren’t confident that they had got them all and the larger ships were too valuable to risk, at least initially. They had chosen to launch the insertion vessels instead, letting them slowly slide up to the planet, before deploying their decoys and troops into the atmosphere.

The plan revolved around the elimination of the Earth based planetary defence system. It had long been accepted that anyone with true space superiority around a planet would win, either by inflicting so much damage that the world capitulated, or simply with the threat of the damage. General Amundsen had planned for this; the Rapid Interface Battalions were the key to his plan. As each insertion ship arrived in orbit it would deploy a number of decoys, all at approximately the same time across the orbit. If the enemy troops were deployed as per standard procedure their weapons would be on automatic, meaning they would begin to engage what they perceived as targets. By doing this they would give away their positions, allowing the Interface Battalions to engage and destroy the defence grids, winning the battle for the General.


The ship containing Staff Sergeant Craig had been deployed over England, monitoring an area over the middle of the country. The decoys were released during the night, which was almost instantly lit by three separate firing points across England, one along the south coast, falling outside their operations area, the second was pretty much from the centre of their area, the third being further up north.

The sensors quickly locked onto the energy bursts being released, multi-spectrum scanners pulling in as much information as could be gathered from a distance. Each of the drop pods had a briefing computer fitted so, as the troops pulled themselves into the pods, they attached themselves to the pod itself via neural link.

As each solider stepped into their individual drop pod they connected themselves first to the pod, via a small neural jack and then began to strap themselves in. As soon as the crash web had safely cocooned them they activated the pod itself via the neural link. The pod itself was run by a virtual intelligence, designed to be able to take the pod out of orbit, through defensive fire and land at a specific point on the planet surface. While the pod was deorbiting, the soldier inside was fed the briefing information through a full neural link, meaning that when he emerged from the pod he was fully briefed, saving time and effort for those missions that required rapid deployment and limited time for briefings.

The launch went without a hitch, the 122 man company being launched in less than a minute. As well as the manned pods decoys were launched as well, a mixture of sensor jamming systems and pods designed to split as they entered the atmosphere, presenting the ground forces with hundreds of extra targets. The decoys were designed to be more important targets, appearing larger on radar scans, warmer on thermal scans and generally more enticing than the normal drop pods. The elaborate designs weren’t needed in this case; repeated passes by the secessionist fleet had eliminated the fixed air and space defence weapons, leaving only the mobile systems in one piece, but mostly too scared to mount any effective defence.

Staff Sergeant Craig emerged from her pod less than a second after it had landed, the training having drilled into her the requirement to move away from what was sure to be a target as soon as possible. Her armour vest was tightly cinched, done up so that it wouldn’t shift, however much work she did. Over the top of her vest she had arranged the modular pouches, magazine pouches, grenade pouches and even pouches for the various electronics that had become commonplace on the battlefield. As well as the armoured vest itself, she was wearing the extra armour components, drop down thigh and shoulder pads. She was carrying the standard weapon for the Rapid Interface Teams, the M3 Individual Combat Weapon; a dual purpose weapon, designed with the requirements of the Interface Teams in mind, the primary system was a 4.73mm caseless rifle, with a secondary 16mm grenade launcher, fed from its own five round magazine. Heavier weapons were spread through the rest of the company, a mixture of machine guns, missile launchers and other weapon systems.

The platoon came under fire almost immediately, their pods had been aimed at a slight depression, so that they would be able to deploy without instantly coming under fire, but it was expected that they would need to enter combat as soon as they were able, so they had been expecting nothing more. Two squads took to the lip of the depression, firing out towards the enemy, while the other squad skirted out, trying flanking out and around the enemy positions. It took slightly longer than they initially expected; four hours worth of brutal fire fight before they managed to silence the orbital battery. The concerted attacks had done the job, breaking the back of the orbital defence systems.


The battle for the Earth had been won.

Black Raven Private Military Contractors Forward Operating Base
Earth
2223 Local Time

John Strachen bumped the door open with his hip; the door, like the rest of the facility, was aging, the hinges sticking, requiring an extra jolt with his hip before opening properly. He had a tray of self heating coffee canisters in his hands, yawning in the pre-dawn gloom that encompassed the airfield. Rain was sweeping across the hardcrete landing pads outside the “ready” hangar, so he tucked his head down and jogged across to the hangar. The door to the hangar was in better condition, opening easily as he tapped it with his toe. His arrival was greeted with a round of cheers, before being mobbed with people grabbing at the coffees he was carrying. Within seconds he was holding a completely empty tray.

“For fucks sake guys! One of those was for me!” He shouted, trying to be heard over the heavily synthesised beats of some new wave dance track pumping out over a jury rigged speaker system at the back of what was optimistically referred to as the ‘Ready Room’

“John, over here mon!” The deep voice with its distinctive Jamaican accent was coming from a table towards the back of the room. John began to snake through the tables towards the origin of the voice, an ex Royal Marine, Brian. The massive man was distinctive, even among the diverse group in the ready room, standing easily over 6’10”, dark black skin, a bald head and a physique that Jonathan believed had just as much to do with biochemical and medical assistance as it did with old fashioned working out. He was stretched out on one side of a table, his body armour on the floor beside him, boots up on the table and a pair of the coffee canisters in front of him.

He pulled over a chair and sat down; ripping the tab of one of the coffee canisters back and hearing the liquid inside begin to bubble as the mechanism heated it up. He had managed a single sip of the coffee before the siren sounded; the brief moment as everyone in the room paused, disbelief threading through their minds. Before the siren hitched in its first breath and started the upward whine again everyone in the room was on their feet, heading for the weapon racks mounted along the walls.

A brief struggle with un-lubricated catches on the weapons rack and John had one of the superannuated M7 carbines in his hands; he slung it over his shoulder and snagged his helmet from the table even as he headed for the dropship spooling up on the hardcrete outside the hangar. He was one of the first to the drop ship, so as soon as he was safely webbed in he began to sort his equipment. He spent a couple of seconds fighting to get his tactical vest secured, one of the medical sensors kept coming loose before he jammed it into is storage pocket. It wasn’t like they had the control systems that could incorporate full medical link-up, at best they probably recorded the heart rate of the staff, not all the extraneous information that the advanced vest could record.

By the time he had stopped fighting with his vest the drop ship had taken off, the rear loading ramp had closed and the briefing had begun, the voice of one of the mission controllers back at the airfield they had just left sounding through their ear-pieces.

“This is an urgent call; I say again, this is an urgent call. We have an orbital burn failure, followed by deep incursion. No combat is expected, I say again, no combat is expected. Mission objective is to locate landing zone of incoming craft, then contain area and provide search and rescue crews for any crew members in the craft. Full biohazard requirements, though no evidence of biohazard infection, this is a purely a safety procedure.”

The announcement about the biohazard requirements was met with a chorus of jeers; no one liked wearing the full face masks, sealing themselves to the limited air supplies stored on the back of their suits. The rest of the briefing was fairly standard, the organisation of the three different squads, each spread across their own drop ship. Johnathan filtered most of it out, listening to his place in the plan; point man, first into the craft; and the extra little details, radio channels and so on, before checking the seal on his face mask.

It didn’t take long for them to get to the crash site; within an hour they were hovering over the largest part of the wreckage he looked down, trying to piece the remains together into a single craft. The largest piece of wreckage was floating with less than a meter between the water and the top of its super-structure, with the occasional wave breaking across the top of the dull white dome, eddying around an open hatch. Johnathan frowned, he had never been a spacer himself, but he knew from the VR training they had all gone through as the training for the job that normally any survivors of the crash would wait in survival pods until they were rescued, not try to get out of the craft on their own.

The dropship floated down, hovering barely ten meters above the water before they deployed the rope. Johnathan slid down, covered by the guns of the other two dropships. He had to crouch to avoid falling with the unsteady movement due to the waves, awkwardly staggering forwards until he was next to the hatch. Black scorch marks surrounded the hatchway, where the explosive bolts had blown the hatch out, probably somewhere near the bottom of the ocean by now. He risked a glance into the hatchway, looking around. Even with the damage caused by the explosive bolts it appeared in relatively good condition, an anti-septic white colour, with a single multi-purpose display flicking through its preset screens mounted on one wall. There was a pool of water in the bottom of the airlock, sloshing from side to side with the movement of the wreckage, but nothing else out of the ordinary.

“I am entering the craft now; entry hatch has been blown, but appears to be due to explosive bolts.”

“Acknowledged, continue with the mission.” The cool tone of a commander placed miles from the unfolding situation did nothing to calm his ever increasing level of tension.

He reached down and grasped one of the handles mounted on the inner airlock door, moving his feet through the water so that he had a firm footing before heaving the door open, the water draining into the interior of the ship. He ducked down, activating the torch on his rifle and using it to sweep the inside of the ship. The inside of the ship was meant to be the same clinical white as the air-lock; instead it was streaked with dark red marks, darker impact craters and on one wall a line of three deep scratches.

“Command, there is something very wrong down here. I can see structural damage that doesn’t appear to be due to the landing. Request permission to extract.”

“Denied, continue with the mission.” The reply was almost instantaneous, prompting another scowl.

A bigger wave hit the side of the wreckage, jolting the inner airlock door. The movement caught his attention, making him automatically reach to try and catch it, leaving him leaning across the open hatch, desperately reaching for the door. When the ship dropped over the crest of the wave it rocked enough that he lost his balance, falling towards the open hatch. He tried to grasp something with his free hand as he fell, but only succeeded in spinning his body enough that his head clipped the hatchway as he fell through it.

“Fuuuuuuuuu...” He began to say as he fell, before being silenced as he hit the ground, his rifle adding another blow to the side of his head on its sling and his shoulder protesting at its rough treatment.

As he looked up towards the hatch he realised he had landed softer than he would have expected, he tried to look around, before realising the torch on his rifle had died. Cursing he fished a small handheld light out of his vest before looking around again. This time he saw exactly what he had landed in; disbelief and nausea swept through him, swallowing hard against the urge to vomit he reported his new finding to control.

Protectorate Internal Security Service Office – London Office
Earth
0238 Local Time

William Morgan stretched as he got out of the taxi that he had been forced to hire to get to the office at such short notice. His car was somewhere out of the city with Sarah, she had gone to some late night office party and hadn’t been at home when he had been woken by the vid-call from the office. He had a can of amphetamine cola, trying to wake himself up enough to actually be of some use in the situation. Despite the drink he was still tired, yawning even as he tried to maintain some semblance of coherent thought. Another taxi pulled up in front of him and out stepped Martha, she too was holding a can of amphetamine cola, her face pale with lack of sleep, but even so he felt a faint stab of jealousy for her new boyfriend. He and Martha had spent a while flirting with each other, but he had been given a six month assignment one of the Lagrange stations and when he had got back she had a partner.

She looked up and caught sight of him, smiled and raised the can in welcome.
“They called you in to then Will?” She asked, walking over to join him at the entrance to the office.

“Yeah, it had better be something important for him to wake us at this time of the morning.”

It took nearly five minutes for the two to get through the security measures and make their way to the operations room. They made their way into the room; already a number of the staff were there, setting up displays, talking quietly among themselves or just trying to wake themselves up, some with coffees, others with amphetamine colas and a couple popping stim-tabs.

There was a sudden swirling in the air at one end of the room, what appeared to be a face made up of cloud coalesced, looking down on the staff in the office below it. The sudden appearance of what appeared to be a sentient cloud didn’t alarm anyone, the overall commander of the London office was an AI that went by the name Tempest and regularly appeared as a storm cloud, floating above the operations room, seeming to watch over everyone’s shoulders as they worked.

“I am sorry to summon you all at this time of the morning, but we have something that requires our urgent attention. At twenty-two twenty-five local time the cargo freighter Ephraim Hart suffered a catastrophic navigation failure and crashed in the Atlantic. As per standing operational procedures contractors from the Black Raven Corporation approached the vessel, when they made contact they discovered that the crew on the vessel were dead and that it appeared somebody or something had left the ship between the landing and them arriving on scene.”

On one of the office walls a map appeared, showing the position of the crash, the route that the mercenaries had taken to the crash site and then a further series of red crosses, leading from a town on the south-west coast of England towards London itself.

“Since the landing a series of events have raised our attention. Three bodies were discovered in the town of Barnstaple, all three of the bodies were found around the waterfront, in areas that are covered by surveillance systems. For some reason the systems have failed to record any image of the assailant, one of the victims was a night guard at one of the docks, he managed to draw and fire an electrolaser, a civilian issue one. Normally this would automatically trigger a three minute recording, but in this case the recording system failed. We have three eye-witness reports from the area, but their details are patchy and inconsistent. They all claim to have seen something that resembled a large lizard, the exact details vary, but they all agree on a few points; namely, it is approximately two meters long, it has a series of blades growing from its back, moves primarily on all fours and has a tail approximately half the length of its body.”

Three separate pictures flashed up on one of the wall screens, broadly similar, each displayed an artist’s rendition of what the witnesses were describing.

“For some reason this creature appears to have some kind of control over our computer systems, we haven’t managed to get an image of any kind of this creature, the three bodies were unrecoverable, their mind-stores degraded beyond usefulness and the speed at which the creature is moving indicates some kind of transport link, possibly our own. Due to these problems with our computerised systems, we have been given a tasking by Security Central Command. All agents with active field experience are to be formed into hunt teams, a number of possible intercept points have been computed, each four person team will be deployed to a single point.”

A map of London appeared on all four of the walls, three specific points flashing in green.

“Each hunt team will be accompanied by a combat robot; you will all have access to police communications, though the local police departments have all been briefed to stay well back from any conflict. We will also have a rapid reaction team in the air, ready to move on any location within a couple of minutes, we just need you to hold the creature in the area before we can get some support in there for you.”

Besides each flashing green deployment point four small pictures appeared, each picture from taken from identity badges, indicating which agents would be going to which points, with a pair of gunships to one side of the map, each listing the twenty agents that would be deployed in each vessel.

“If there are any questions please ask using the standard computer system, if not, please collect your equipment from the armoury and move to your positions.”

William was assigned to one of the gunships, he was with a pair of undercover agents he had worked with before, three Internal Affairs officers he recognised, a four man detachment from the office security team and twelve people that he knew worked in the office but wasn’t sure of any other details about.

He quickly hunted through the photos and saw that Martha was deployed on the other drop ship; at least he wouldn’t have to try and force small talk while they waited for something that might well not happen. He looked around and spotted one of the security officers, Craig Evans, who he was deployed with. Craig was an Ajax Class bio-roid, a reinforced skeleton; a hormone boosted musculature, enhanced neural system and sharpened reflexes, combined to make him a genetically designed soldier, but one that appeared, superficially at least, to be human. Even with the negative press that some of the Ajax class had received after one was involved in a high profile crime spree William always felt better when Craig was around, his intimidating size and appearance being offset by his more gentle personality. The two of them began to head towards the armoury, the first step in them preparing for the upcoming mission.

It wasn’t long before they were skimming over the city, the twenty agents standing in the back of the gun ship and the two crew safely ensconced in their crash-webbed seats in the cockpit, communicating with the troop compartment through a pair of mounted speakers. The compartment was relatively relaxed, some murmured conversations, a couple of people leaning against the back wall were looking at a small foldable computer screen and one of the security officers appeared to be sleeping in the corner of the hold.

This all changed when a panicked voice came over the radio, piped through the mounted speakers. It was heavily distorted, random overlays of static obscuring the voice, but even through the interference the panic and terror was evident.

“Engaged! I say again ...... target appears to have some ...... equipment failing ...... projectiles.”

A sudden extra loud burst of static made him wince, when the signal came back there were no coherent words, screams and a gulping sobs. The pilot flicked a switch and routed his voice back into the troop compartment.

“We have a location, our ETA is less than two minutes at full speed, prepare for full combat drop.”

Another couple of controls and the gunships weapon pods flicked open, a pair of chin mounted railguns, wing mounted missile launchers slid into firing positions and a pair of hatch mounted gauss miniguns deployed, automated gunnery systems taking control of each weapon system. Whatever had managed to land on the planet was going to be welcomed with an awful lot of firepower if it appeared to present any threat to the Protectorate agents heading out to meet it.

The gunship hovered to a stop at the largest of the capitals transport terminals, a number of magnetic levitation tracks led into it, a number of landing pads for airborne transport and even a runway for any older aircraft wishing to land at the terminal. Although it had been evacuated when Tempest had predicted that the mysterious visitor would be likely to pass through it the lights and automated systems had been left active, mass transports floating through the system, drones carrying out their pre-programmed instructions and the occasional un-manned cargo transport silently pulling up, ready to be unloaded by the tireless efforts of the drones. The twenty man team dismounted and began to make their way into the facility, even as the gun ship took flight again, its weapons swinging to cover the facility as it took a covering position, ready to provide support if necessary.

The scene inside was faintly surreal, bearing more similarities to a tri-d horror than reality. Blood splatters and weapon damage covered the 1st floor arrival zone and there were even some shell casings near one of the pools. A pair of the station cleaning ‘bots were slowly making a dent in the mess, but even so there was ample evidence of the slaughter that had taken place within the last few minutes.

The first sighting of the creature was as it attempted to leave the southern entrance of the transit station, unluckily for the creature it attempted to leave just as the second gun ship was arriving. The right hand minigun began to fire, ice beginning to form along the outside of its cooling sleeve even as it began to spit the 4mm darts out, the first burst lasting less than a second and firing over a hundred shots. Even as the gun fired a slight thermal updraft through the targeting off, most of the needles passing too high, but three punched through the bony plates running along the creatures spine. While this didn’t do any significant damage it did alert the creature to the impending attack, making it duck backwards into the building. The gun ship dropped towards the ground, swinging to bring its railguns into play, the two 40mm railguns beginning to pump high explosive rounds at near supersonic velocities into the front of the station. The rounds detonated with muffled explosions, each blast cratering the wall and flinging bits of ceramic wall out into the street around the entrance. The twenty man team deployed into an extended line and began to advance, aiming to push the creature back towards the first hunt team to be deployed.

The sound of the explosions reached William and the team he was with, spurring them onwards. They moved forwards, weapons raised; hunting for their target among the waiting rooms, inspection offices, administration departments and cargo handling areas that made up the massive terminal. It was a surreal experience William thought, even as he moved forwards; normally thousands, if not millions of people would pass through here every day, but here they were, stalking through an entirely abandoned facility, the only signs of life the blood and damage to the walls. After the short burst of firing from the other side of the building there had been no more sighting of the creature, instead it had settled into a standard hunt scenario; clearing a room, closing and locking the entrances and moving onto the next one.

The next engagement lasted for less than three seconds, as two men entered one of the stations security offices. The first one in was holding a close assault weapon, in effect a fully automatic gauss shotgun, able to empty its twenty round magazine in two seconds of firing. He died before he could fire a shot. The creature had been attempting to hide from the hunters in the room, when he entered the room it swung its clawed hand towards him. The combat equipment he was wearing was designed for policing actions, where large scale combat wasn’t expected, it could have protected against firearms, fragments from grenades or other explosives, even taken some physical force out of attacks, but the clawed hand hit his head, slamming it into the ceramic wall behind him. The helmet itself distorted under the shock, with its occupant’s skull taking enough force to shatter, killing him before he realised what happened.

The man standing behind him saw the claw come from behind one of the walls and began to fire. He was holding a standard 4mm Gauss rifle, capable of firing darts out at slightly under 5’000 feet per second. He squeezed the trigger, aiming at the wall to the side of the door where he thought the creature was likely to be. On any normal wall the darts would have easily punched through, shredding anything the other side of the door as it suffered multiple hits; but this was one of the security offices, instead of being a single wall it was layered, designed to dissipate the force of any attack, whether energy based or kinetic. So instead of the darts penetrating the wall and hitting the creature they were stopped by the wall. This wasn’t to say they did no damage, the walls were an old design and the sheer amount of energy that the new rifle designs could bring to bear managed to fracture the inner wall, before spalling effects filled the security office with ceramic slivers. These slivers didn’t do enough damage to actually kill the creature, but covered it in superficial injuries, dripping blood from a couple of the heavier injuries, one still with a 2 centimetre sliver of wall sticking out of its leg. It still managed to escape from the shocked survivor, smashing through the door and flinging him down the corridor before turning tail and running for an exit.

The blood trail was enough though; the survivor from the attack was quickly joined by William and the rest of the team. They followed the trail into one of the cargo handling areas, a large warehouse, filled with sealed containers. It didn’t take long for them to close down the entrances, sealing them in place with dabs of contact adhesive, enough that it would be loud and obvious if anyone tried to get through.

As soon as they were locked in they began to search, splitting into three teams, each team with at least one close assault weapon and one of the light machine guns. William and Craig found themselves on the same team, hunting through one of the storage areas for containers holding what appeared to be some kind of clothing. Craig was the first to see it, his enhanced reactions swinging his weapon to bear and beginning to fire even as the creature attempted to dodge behind one of the metal containers. His burst blew a hole through the container, filling the air with brightly coloured shreds of clothing. One of the newer agents, probably the first time in a truly dangerous situation, began to fire too, swinging his rifle across the container the creature had dived behind. The noise of the impacts covered the sound of the creature accelerating, before diving around the corner of one container and across the open space separating two of the stacks and back into cover. The tail end of the patrol was doing his job though, even as the creature dived into view he squeezed the trigger of his light machine gun, trying to swing it fast enough to bring it to bear. He didn’t manage to get it squarely on target, but two of the needles he fired hit the creature’s tail, the kinetic energy almost tearing the appendage off the creature’s body. It screeched, a weird noise, seeming to resonate within the bones of the men present, enough to put them on edge.

The firing from the back of the group was enough to distract the in-experienced agent, who turned away from the area he was meant to be watching in order to see what was happening. As silence descended on the group again they could hear the faint sounds of claws on metal, as one they looked at the three high stack of containers the creature had hidden behind, somewhere behind that stack the creature was doing something, though they weren’t going to wait to find out. They began to file towards one end of the box before another hissing scream broke the air, followed by louder sounds of claw on metal.

Craig was the first around the corner, pausing in surprise at the scene before him. The creature’s tail lay on the floor, next to a strip of metal that had been torn from the back of the container before being used for the crude surgery. A pool of blood was spreading from the tail and there were smears of blood leading up the side of the container, he quickly looked up and saw the creature disappearing over the top of the stack, heading away from them again. He suddenly changed direction, his enhancements coming into stark regard when compared to the reactions of the un-enhanced humans surrounding him. They were moving as if trapped in amber, while he dodged through them, heading back towards the original side of the container. He had made his way through the group before the first one started to follow him. He grinned inside his helmet, it was moments like this that made him feel so good, deep down he knew it was because it was programmed into him on a genetic level to enjoy the thrill of combat, but on the surface he didn’t care, he never felt so excited with anything bar combat.

He reached the front of the container in time to see the creature begin to slide towards the ground. Easily enough time to raise his rifle and begin to fire, he aimed at a point on the second container, in line with the direction the creature was travelling, then, holding his finger on the trigger, he began to raise his rifle, walking the line of darts up towards the creature. There was barely enough time for the creature begin to screech before the darts walked up and through its body, blood spraying from the holes the small darts punched through the armoured skin of the lizard. The controlled descent became a free fall, followed by a sickly crunch as the creature hit the floor, folding into a pose no human could ever hope to copy.

William managed to round the corner in time to see the end of the hunt. Craig approached the downed creature, weapon raised, eyes scanning for any signs of life. There was a sudden twitch from one of the creatures legs, already covered in blood, but there was no hesitation by Craig, he fired another burst straight into the leg, blood, muscle and what appeared to be bone spraying out across the floor before he turned his aim to the creatures head. Instead of firing a burst he switched to single shot, punching two needles straight through the brain and into the warehouse floor. The creature slumped even further, the little remaining tension easing out of its muscles. It was dead, but it raised more questions than it answered, it was something that had never been seen before, something that appeared intimately familiar with Humans, but made no attempt to communicate with them. All in all, it raised more questions than it solved and certainly didn’t do anything from inter-species relationships, even with the aliens that obviously weren’t related to the lizard creature.

OOC:
Well, there we go, not amazingly happy with the end but I couldn’t really think of a better way to finish.
Incidentally what is happening if the board shuts down? Do our efforts get redirected somewhere else?