| Author |
A Compilation of Short Stories. |
Deltabacon
Fleet Admiral
Joined: August 17, 2007
Posts: 395
From: Liverpool, Great Britain
|  Posted: 2011-06-28 05:55
Shadows in the Dark:
It was an eerie sensation, even for the enlightened beings that had created it, to be onboard a cloaked ship. The walls seemed to ripple with an intensity close to being random spasms, much more so that when the organic ships were in normal flight. The crew seemed subdued as well, going about their duties with a certain hesitation that simply wasn’t the case normally. The workers who regularly impeded the ship’s growth beyond normal limits traveled slower, with a heavier expression on what could be seen as their face. This was the case on this particular vessel, which was for the most part, alone in the dark.
Having been engineered to have lesser armor to allow the addition of another auto-repair ability, the sleek ‘Scale’-class cruiser was able to travel deeper behind enemy lines than any other ship of its size. Naturally, K’luth scouts had penetrated to the innermost systems of the human factions. One with their struggle for freedom being a beacon for the radicals of the species, welcoming refugees from the militaristic and bloated empire, which served as the other faction.
The ship glided through space easily, its faux-aerodynamic hull slicing the dark as it’s cloaked profile displaced the stars behind it. It was approaching a planet with just two tiny moons. It appeared to be a gigantic hub of military activity, with what must have been at least 20 ‘Dreadnought’-sized ships. The fleet that they were the centerpiece of could have torn through the stars with a light even larger than that divine one that the K’luth heralded. The leader of the vessel, an aging space traveler gawped, his powerful form suspended in disbelief. Then, as suddenly as a ship exited a jump, the ship rocked from side to side.
A small human vessel similar in size to the organic scouts that the beings themselves used had buried itself into the exoskeleton of the cruiser. It’s cloaking device screamed a shrill tone before overloading with the effort of cloaking the dual-engine form that now protruded from the craft’s hull.
Suddenly faced with the prospect of that entire, impossibly large fleet engaging the craft, the crew did what they could. The enlightened beings ran.
With the engines squeezing out as much power as possible, the ship turned and rolled in an attempt to evade sensors by moving about as well as saturating the local area with ECM. It’s arrow-like yet now imperfect form cut a striking silhouette against the yellow star of the system, it’s shadow sneaking across the brushed metal of the ships above the planet. Gases leaked from the scout ship’s cracked and mangled forward hull, and bled out of the cruiser’s hull in a blue mist, before it engaged it’s jump-drive and made it’s escape with a haste that was too slow for the crew of the vessel.
Onboard the Command Station Dauntless a few days later, a pair of ensigns were talking in the gigantic mess hall:
“Hey, did you hear about the Corvette that went missing last week?”
“Yeah, crashed into some unmarked debris as it jumped, didn’t it?”
“Probably. They never did find the ship or it’s crew apart from some reactor coolant that was free-floating in the space…”
---
Cavaliers of Night:
It was with a hefty amount of trepidation that a commander signed up to lead a corvette squadron. The small craft were manned only by the most foolhardy personas in the entire navy. That said, the power of a corvette squadron was considerably more than the sum of its parts. Able to disable large targets and annihilate lone cruisers, the corvette squadron was the equivalent of a 21st century airborne brigade. The ‘All-Americans’ of the USA during that era was the single most powerful political tool under America’s disposal, other than the threat of a nuclear warhead.
Cavalier squadron, the 3rd squadron formed by the ICC’s admittedly large navy was perhaps the most capable. Comprised of a dozen stealth corvettes which harbored five fusion torpedo bays each, with a variety of other support ships which kept the strike force operational including a supply ship bristling with communication arrays, the squadron was able to establish an airhead in a system, and disrupt trade to entire planet clusters prior to a fully-fledged invasion fleet. As such, commanders were fighting for leadership of the squadron, in spite of the frail nature of the diminutive ships.
It was a stone-faced and lean commander who led from the front of the assault force. Captain Kaymer could have pursued a cushy destroyer patrol or a simple supply ship duty, but everyone knew that the knife-edge corvette squadrons were the single best way to get noticed by the Admirals of the fleet. This was of course, a secondary thought as his ship sliced through the Luyten jumpgate to be greeted with the iconic ‘Luyten mist’. His command crew flooded the airways around the jumpgate with electronic counter-measures, creating their own arbitrary mist of static. The supply ship which acted as a command relay ship exited the gate last; it’s large, bulbous figure settling amongst the array of assault ships which were in formation around it. As one, the formation turned into the mist, and began to set up an airhead.
An analysis after extensive reconnaissance of the system indicated that the planet closest to the binary stars, a lone rock called Izhack was the best candidate for an airhead. The first step towards its capture was the cutting off of supply routes. The egotistical UGTO had been arrogant enough not to post escorts with their transport ships, which would be a critical error of judgment in a system so close to the borders of both the ICC and the insectoid K’luth.
Leading a wing of 4 stealth corvettes, Kaymer approached a shipping lane between Izhack and Mycopia. The binary stars prevented direct travel in between the two planets, allowing an ambush to be placed rather easily. He was surprised that a K’luth dreadnought had not decided to deny the UGTO of these resources. Cloaked in their own field of ECM, the corvettes all stopped simultaneously at the point where all the transports were known to converge to power their jump drives. Patience was not required, because before long a pair of the transports from Mycopia exited their jumps and changed course. Barely before the bright flashes dissipated from their displacement of space did Kaymer key the wing frequency and order the attack. 20 fusion torpedoes raced from their tubes to impact on the thinly-armored transports. A second or so passed with nothing visible, and then the torpedo explosions lit up the dark, as the first transport’s hull was rocked and split open by the torpedoes. Lights blinked on and off as it’s power systems faltered, and as the final projectile exploded at a considerable depth within the hull, the ship tore itself apart, the engine section spinning away wildly as if it had yearned to be free from the forward hull, which smoldered and shook under the pressure of secondary explosions which rippled down it’s side.
The corvettes had sped up at this point and twisted towards the second transport, which was bugging out extremely quickly. Its weaponry was hot but the crew had no targets, and the torpedoes which arced towards it gave them only an inkling of where their aggressors were, before they met a similar fate.
Kaymer half-smiled. His first act as commander of cavalier squadron had gone off without a hitch. The ships turned away from the wreckage of both vessels and raced to join the rest of the squadron.
Several hours later, a reconnaissance scan of the space around Izhack showed that the defense force there was considerably diminished. Evidently the defenders had been pulled away to assault Epsilon Eri or more likely to investigate the wreckage of two vital transports. It was a perfect time to hit the planet hard. Having sent word to the waiting armada in Tau Ceti to move into luyten and make a beeline for Izhack as soon as possible, now was the time to strike. Every corvette was ready to demolish the station and two dreadnoughts which lingered around the planet and the two sensor frigates that had reconfigured their systems to throw out ECM were also prepared to attack. Forming up prior to the jump, with Kaymer’s vessel at their head, the formation was drowning in anticipation. The order buzzed on the squadron frequency, and the fleet raced out of the red mist which had swallowed them, screaming towards the planet.
Exiting the jump, every single ship activated their electronic countermeasures and the only clue to their existence other than the blinding flash of light which emanated from the void of space was the 60 torpedoes which ripped the support station’s armor to smithereens. Fire roared from the station’s bulbous upper hull as the torpedoes exploded, displacing the molecules which made up its hull and expelling them into space. The station fired blind, hoping to destroy the seemingly massive fleet which had just targeted it and scored a single hit, enveloping the corvette in a shroud of flame and plasma before regurgitating it as charred hulks of burnt metal.
Another volley of torpedoes split the void between the two factions before entering the hole in the station’s hull and tearing the heart out of its power systems. Its lights failed and the weapons fire which the dreadnoughts had added to faltered. The station slowly drifted from its orbit, propelled by the sheer force of the blasts. It turned slowly in space, its hulking form now a corpse of a ship. This went un-noticed by the combatants as cannons exchanged fire with torpedoes. A quartet of UGTO assault corvettes entered the fray, managing to track and engage the force which had just crippled the vital station which the defenders had relied upon for logistical and material support. Breaking formation, the remaining corvettes including Kaymer’s vessel twisted and turned, focusing fire on the dreadnoughts and making them capsize in the dark, their artificial wounds leaking plasma and crew like blood from a vein. They turned their attention to the other corvettes, focusing fire with their single chemical lasers, but succeeding in disabling and destroying them all.
The space around Izhack had been taken within eighty seconds, at the cost of three corvettes.
A multitude of flashes around the planet four hours later signified the arrival of the invasion force proper, comprised of Devilray and Sea-Cat squadron as well as the standard fleet. It was time for the Cavaliers to go home, the psychotic squadron of foolhardy pioneers to return to Fargo Rock for repairs and resupply, before doing it all over again. Captain Kaymer got his promotion, but never left the squadron. Who could, when it did in eighty seconds what a standard navy and six months failed to do so.
The Cavaliers became legends, and like the 21st Century ‘All-Americans’, you could probably call them the single most powerful tool in existence, only this time they weren’t second to a weapon of mass destruction.
----
*The 'All-Americans' are the American 82nd Airborne Brigade, based on a Tom Clancy book from about two decades ago.
There is more stories to come, at some point.
[ This Message was edited by: Deltaflyer on 2011-06-28 06:05 ]
_________________
|
Fatal Afro Man *NCO*
Marshal
Fatal Squadron
Joined: September 09, 2006
Posts: 201
| Posted: 2011-06-28 07:00
I really enjoyed these, excellet work!
_________________
[Signature size too large, please resize. (600x200x100kb)
|
*Obsidian Shadow*
Grand Admiral
Joined: January 03, 2010
Posts: 316
| Posted: 2011-06-28 13:51
brilliant fan fics my friend... even if the corvettes are slightly over powered but i'm not sure if 120 torpedo's will kill a station or not >_< i will have to test this theory at a later date
_________________
|
Blackjack [DBL]
Grand Admiral
Faster than Light
Joined: February 25, 2011
Posts: 344
From: The land of venomous reptiles.
| Posted: 2011-06-28 20:11
Quote:
|
On 2011-06-28 05:55, Deltaflyer wrote:
Shadows in the Dark:
I
A small human vessel similar in size to the organic scouts that the beings themselves used had buried itself into the exoskeleton of the cruiser. It’s cloaking device screamed a shrill tone before overloading with the effort of cloaking the dual-engine form that now protruded from the craft’s hull.
---
[ This Message was edited by: Perseverance *FCA* on 2011-06-28 20:14 ]
|
|
So thats where all my scouts are going.... and these are good short stories.
I wish my stealth vette was that epic
_________________
Names I used: Da Bes Loser, Perseverance, Loyalty.
|
|
English
Deutsch
Nederlands
)
