Kress cast his eye over the ship that floated below him. it was a fine ship, a bullhead class cruiser, one of the best ships ever made in the omicrons. it was just over 300meters in length, the biggest ship he'd ever seen in space. bigger then the huge trains operated by some of the corpirations in liberty and rheinland, bigger then a fair amount of space stations, bigger then some public buildings on planet denver.
"'s looks amazing" he whispered to himself as light reflected off the bullhead's newly created hull.
"if only it acted that way in combat...." the person tasked with showing him the ship muttered.
"how can something this size lose?" Kress asked in amazement.
"the corsairs have some ships that can eat one of these up in a matter of minutes." the man replied.
"really? that cant be possible....." kress replied.
"lets hope you dont need to learn the hard way." the man said as he walked away from the veiwing area.
As their observation ship flitted around the massive bullhead, kress took in the sight again.\
"i still think it's a damn good ship" he said softly to himself as he walked to the lavatory.
' Wrote:<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>
Kress stormed down the corridor to the bridge, fuming silently.
"What is the meaning of this?!" he yelled at the startled workmen who were installing the control panels on the bridge.
"This is my damned ship, and i dont care what you have been ordered to do by the stationmaster. I want the best for this ship, and i intend to have it, with or without your help."
"What's wrong sir?" one of the workers asked, the rest watching silently.
"Wrong? WRONG?" Kress yelled.
"Whats wrong, is that you Idiots plated the hull with destroyer armor, armor not fitting of a bullhead Battlecruiser!"
"Sir, armor is decided by the engineers and the station master, we dident choose it...." The worker said meekly.
Kress glared at him before storming off the bridge.
' Wrote:<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>
The Asgard shuddered as a torpedo impacted on its shields, knocking over one of the officers on the bridge.
"Dammit, fire stern batterys at the bomber, and batterys at the recon cruiser. Ensign smith, get your gunners to charge the morters, i want to see them charged within thirty seconds, that'll fix these order basterds."
The young ensign nods and starts yelling at two of the men at the consoles on the bridge, trying to be heard over the noise of the battle raging around. Another gunner incharge of the point defenses yells as a torpedo is blasted open a hundred meters from the bridge, exploding fuel propelling shrapnal against the ships hull, the rapidly expanding plasma from the explosion creates another tremor that rattles through the Asgard.
"I dont want those torpedos impacting, set the AI's priority range to five hundred meters for torpedos, and one thosand for bombers." Kress says after the Asgard stops tembling, and he can stand without grabbing onto a railing.
"Sir, incoming contacts" one of the men manning the radar consoles says. " Nomads"
"Damn it to hell!" Kress yells.
' Wrote:<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>
A huge antimatter round passed a dozen meters to the side of the Asgard, It's wake buffeting the ship. Alarms rang out on all decks, adding even more noise to the noise of countless inpacts from small peices of debris and other jagged peices of metal created by the battle that raged in the ice field's of delta. Close to a hundred fighter craft attempted to destroy each other, and their enemys bomber wings before they can close to torpedo range.
Some make it.
Some dont.
A brilliant flare signals the distruction of another fully loaded bomber, a bomber that will never have a chance to unload its devistating supply of nuclear, and antimatter weapons on the core's cruisers and battleships. All this is seen by both sides through hundreds of scanners, optical sensors, and human eyes.
"Perfect, they wont be able to threaten us with their bombers much longer with those loses" Kress mutters to himself as he orders one of his comm officers to tell the Asgard's escort wing to intercept another bomber wing that is attempting to build up speed and power for a shot with their antimatter cannons.
Then, the third party descends into the intensely complicated war that rages among the icy rocks.
The Nomads.
A Core cruiser that is attempting to charge its antimatter morters explodes in a blinding flash that creates a ball of fire a hundred thosand kilometers across, blowing away a gunboat and over a dozen fighters. Both sides seem to freeze for a moment, while a monsterous alien ship begins to become visible, dwarfing the combined human fleets. Uncountable smaller craft, all the same off blue color of the larger, swarm around it, forming a protective layer, while some larger, yet still small compared to the human craft, brake off and begin to move to attack the out numbered humans.
One of the hunter ships Transmits a message over all channels, urging the human forces to take a stand, and work together against the aliens.
It works.
One by one, the combined fleet's individual ships open fire, pounding at the alien intruders untill the shield of flesh begins to waver.
The alien supership opens fire with a lance of energy a thosand times more focused then anything the humans have, ripping right through an osiris battleship. It seems to hang there for a second, flame trailing a hundred meters into space in the path created by the beam, before it's reactor overloaded from the damage, and ignited its remaining fuel, creating an even larger explosion which ripped through the human forces nearby.
"Engineering, torpedos loaded?" Kress intones into his handheld comm unit
"Roger that sir" A voice crackles out of it, heavy with static."She'll get em good."
Kress smiles and then replies "Good, get more ready, full charges on those warheads."
"Yes.. sir..." the person on the other end replies slowly. "But.. thats a hundred and thirty megatons when full... "
"Just do It!" kress yells before clicking off his comm unit.
He looks through the scratched and pitted glass that hasent been blurred beyond visibility for a few long seconds, ensign smith looking at him with a glint in his eyes.
"Ensign smith, fire torpedo racks two and four on my mark, and not a second sooner. Comm officer Franklin, inform the fleet that the Asgard will need full bombardment against the largest hostile in one minute thirty seconds. Tell them to spare nothing." Kress paused a moment while the comm officer began sending off rapid transmission to the combined forces of humanity in local space. "Engines full ahead, point defense only, Ready the morters."
Kress turns away from the glass, a tear forming in his eye.
"Mark" He exclaims through gritted teeth one minute and thirty seconds later.
' Wrote:<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>
Racks descended from the Asgards hull, Whisps of vapor trailing away as the condensation evaporates into the void. The torpedos lay there, four to a rack, gleaming red in the light from an alien sun, hundreds of lightyears from where humans first took to the stars.
The eletrical impulses traveled down the miles of wiring that lay behind steel walls and plastic alloy panels, heading for its inevitable target, the torpedo bays. It is routed around a length of wire that was severed when the Asgard's shields fell the first time, and a missile blasted a small hole that was quickly repaired by the nanobots that the ship carried for just such damages.
Ignition.
"Torpedos one through eight away" Ensign smith yelled to the bridge as the eight torpedos burst away form the ship with an explosive start that rocked the Asgard, almost causing one of the comm officers to smash their face into the consoles they sit at. Small clouds of combustion byproducts expand in the wake of the torpedos, still accelerating at the nomad supership.
Suddenly, a huge chunk of the nomad supership's living shield detatches form the main body, and moves to intercept the torpedos. Kress sees this and orders the gunners to switch to Ai assisted manual pilot of the torpedos, with their success being prioritized over defending the Asgard from the nomadic fleet's bombers and other large ships.
Kress detatches his comm unit from his belt and raises it to his mouth, issuing a warning to his gunners.
"Listen up, These torpedos could vary well ensure not only your survival, But of Humanity's. And over that...
the survival of the Guild Core!" Kress bellows into his comm unit. "I will not tolerate any failure, on anyone's part here. Remember your training, and remember, the guild core pays well for prime nomadic specimens. Dead or alive."
Kress Clicks off his comm unit and clips it back to his belt before striding over to the main screen that dominated the Asgard's bridge, A Samura IT-650 five meter screen, with holoprojection capabilities ranging out over the entire bridge. It was currently displaying a projection of the entire battlespace, the Asgards AI was calculating every last detail, down to the smallest ice crystals that could impact the amount of thrust a missile or torpedo needed. And to the largest scale, displaying the radius of the multiple sun's coronas,the planets gravity well's, and intersteller gravitational fluxuations. And the entire view was overlaid by the secondary projectors images from the cameras and sensors that adorned the Asgards hull.
Kress walked into the projection, a slight aura of unfocused light forming around him. He tapped several points with lines extending from them, and with a few swift hand gestures, and muttered verbal commands caused them to disintegrate under the focused firepower of the entire Core fleet. he Encircled a small cluster of points with his fingers, eight points in total, and subvocalized a command, causing the computer to enlarge the image inside his hands to expand to fill the space around kress. He looked at the lines of text being displayed that were now large enough to be readable. He frowned, leaning over to change his view point slightly.
"Computer, chance of full impacts?" he asks the air around him.
"One Point Niner Seven Nine Precent Chance of full impact. partial impact Niner Fiver Point Seven One five Percent Chance of partial impact of At Least One Of T Dash One Two Three Four Fiver Six Seve-"
" Thank you computer" Kress cut off the computers cold metallic voice, leaving the bridge strangly quiet.
"Lets hope this works out." He mutters to himself.
' Wrote:<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>
The third largest fleet humanity had put together in eight hundred years, Dwarfed only by the fleets that Rheinland had wasted in the gas pockets of the sigmas, And the massive fleets that Rheinland had forged, and sent to kusari under the control of the infested goverment.
Insufficient.
"Sir, getting readings of intense energy forming on the alien supership. i've notifed fleet comm, but that cant be right... More energy then Manhatten produces yearly... focused in a few square meters......" The young man at the console trails off. "Not... possible..."
"Get a hold of yourself boy!" Blasted from the speakers set into the paneling all over the bridge, knocking the crewmen out of his daze. "Sorry sir." he yells over the rumble of the ships engines, struggling to supply the ship with enough energy to survive in the chaos that surrounded the ship.
"Thats better." Kress says into his handheld comm unit. Light from the hologram displayed in the bridge gives his eyes a blue tinge, turning them into a sharp brown in the shadows that danced across his face.
An explosion blows apart an alien fighter, sending chunks of flesh in all directions.
"Target down!" One of the gunners exclaims as his shell hits home. "Switching to next target." he adds as the lights on his targeting HuD change from an eye watering red, to a dull green. He lines his sights up with the small alien craft spitting blazing green-blue bolts of energy at one of the Core's fighter craft.
He taps the firing section of his HuD, which the computer translates into a signal for the ships cannons.
Two shells explode in a violent burst of light, ripping through the alien craft like a chainsaw through butter. A half second later, two plumes of flame erupt from the port side of the Asgard, causing it to jerk.
Kress watched in silence as the torpedos slowly closed on the massive supership. A huge slab of the ship, far larger then the Asgard, was slowly blasted away by the combined fire of the fleet, just in time for the torpedos to streak through. "Too close..." he mutters to himself as one of the torpedos is struck by a peice of the slab. "NO!" he bellows as the torpedo spins, and then explodes, blowing away several human ships that were too close.
' Wrote:<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>
Kress stared at the projection as the torpedos one by one exploded, sending shimmers through the entire projection as the computer strained to calculate the strength and dynamics of each explosion that erupted.
"damn it...." He whispered to himself as his hand began to shake slightly.
"What was that sir?" one of his ensigns asked.
"I SAID GODDAMMIT YOU COWARDS!" He roared at the entire bridge, forcing several officers to flinch.
He paused, then picked up his handheld comm unit from the ground where he had dropped it moments before.
"Ensign smith. ready the morters. Fire all torpedos save designation red seventeen. And....Pray."
Kress walked away before the ensign could respond. a tear began to form in the corner of his eye as the ensign hurridly gave commands to his gunners.
A slight glow began to shine from the barrel of the morter, reflecting off a few ice particles. The glow slowly intensified untill the morter was fully charged, and the glow was a beam of light, produced by the antimatter anihilating with the steller medium. Then without warning, the glow vanished, and was replaced by a blinding white sphere of antimatter, shot out of the morter at enormous speeds, trailed by a wake of bright green plasma.
It passed through a moderate sized alien ship blasting it apart and continuing on its course. It impacted against the Supership, blasting a huge crater into the surface, and expelling millions of tons of the alien's flesh into space.
A second morter impacted, digging a tunnel deep into the alien vessel, which slowly ozzed back into the shape it had held before the second impact.
One ship after another began loosing torpedo's and antimatter against the alien intruders, slowly blasting huge quantities of mass from the supership that dominates the battle space.
The supership changes shape slightly under the barrage, and then emits a huge magnetic pulse that disables several human battleships and cruisers. it causes the ice particles to spin slightly as it passes through space, forming an expanding bubble as it travels.
Another mortar impacts the alien ship, sending up another cloud of vaperized matter.
' Wrote:<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>
"Sir, If you'll direct your attention to page 478, paragraph three. Just the lower half of the page sir. I'm afraid you'll find that the quoted text there from my initial report of the battle of omicron delta absolves me from criminal blame sir. There is no way a fault in my leadership could have caused these losses, hell, I'm not even in charge of the fleet that engaged the order. Now sir, If you'll pardon me, I'm fed up with this bull****."
-Captain Cay, Commander of the Asgard, 810 A.S.
"Will someone find me some evidence of him ****ing up? The core has enough losses without ******* wanna-be heros like him smashing the **** out of our ships."
-Nathen Hiyashi, Guild-masters assistant. 810 A.S.
' Wrote:<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>
Cay absently twirled the knife in his hands, a gleaming piece of polished metal that'd cut through anything up to fourteen centimetres of thickness - the length of the blade - if the proper blow was applied to the hardened carbon super alloy, a varient steel alloy too brittle for ship building, but more then supple enough for a handheld weapon. He was sitting upon the bunk in his quarters on the Asgard, waiting for his mandatory downtime to end so he could get back to the bridge.
He was not content to sit around, despite spending more then eighteen hours a day on the bridge, and inspecting the ship. Cay was a man of action, sleep rarely came to him, and when it did, never for long, he had things to do, and reasons to keep moving. He'd taken some psychology courses during his youth, he understood what drove him to excellence as a captain, he knew that deep down, he wanted to keep moving because he was afraid that he'd lay down one day to rest, and never get up, even though the statistics were against that demise.
He expected to end his life as a statistic among the guilds records; "Captain Bartholomew Cay, Deceased." He muttered silently, wishing that something in his room could hear him, offer him some guidance to help keep his outwardly cold demeanor. He had seen his Guild psychological profile once when he had been given temporary unrestricted access to the Core's personnel lists for the purpose of recruiting a crew from existing guild members, the psychiatrist who had interviewed him had commented that Cay "Should be watched with extreme caution, due to anti-social tendencies", while also marking him down as a resource to be tapped for a command position. A vary bizarre contradiction that made perfect sense to Cay, given that he knew his limitations better then he knew the Asgard, and he knew the Asgard from bow to stern, he could recite the latest weapons calibrations from memory, and while off duty, micromanaged the engineers in charge of maintenance on the ship, barking orders as if he was on the bridge.
His crew, while obedient to the last, resented him.
' Wrote:<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>
"SHUT THE HELL UP!" roared Senor engineer Hutchkins as he hurled an electric power wrench at the dock worker, who received the tool directly in the side of the face and went tumbling over in the zero-gee that presided over the ship as it lay dormant in Alabama shipyards. He stared at the droplets of blood slowly covering the entire chamber, merging and twisting into larger spheres of dark liquid before bumping into something and sticking to it. his face losing it's red flustered anger, quickly replaced by a look of panic stricken dread.
"Well great..." He said quietly to himself. " You had to go and do it again... first on pueblo, now here..." he shook his head, batting away a droplet that had floated too close to him. he watched the newly formed micro droplets soar away from him, hitting the wall and leaving dark stains, much like his life had become, he mused, convinced that he was going to find himself hurtling at a wall of some kind, sooner or later.
After thinking over his options, he went and found a vacuum cleaner to pull in the blood droplets, and a rag to scrub the walls with, making sure to smear on some grease that he had wiped up earlier, leaving the walls dirty enough that a cleaning crew would need to go over it. That'd wash away the evidence, he told himself.
Now for the body, which would be a little harder, but he had an idea...
' Wrote:<span style="font-family:Century Gothic">Violence is Golden</span>
![[Image: Supernova.png]](http://i663.photobucket.com/albums/uu360/darthbeck/Supernova.png)