Ambrosia Software Web Board: Chapter 4: Space Race, the opera - Ambrosia Software Web Board

"Sucker." Darkk whispered quietly.
The UEC fleet was firing on the automated batteries, unaware of the fact that the base they were protecting had been dismantled and what was immobile destroyed.
"Should we leave them with some reminders boss?" asked the sensor opp.
"Yeah. Have the main fleet follow Wizr and Sarah out, I'll give them something to remeber us by."

Wind of Blades accelerated towards the orbiting fleet, dodging and skirting the asteroids as though they would move out of the way of their own accord.

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"Sir, one Human HVD incoming!" one of Sackler's aides shouted.
"What can it do to us? Shoot it down." Sackler had read the specs - his ships should be able to kill it before it caused significant damage.

But things didn't go according to plan. Darkk dodged and whirled, concentrating firepower onto one of the large battleships, destroying it with one of his last photopulse shots.

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"Well boss, what do we do now?"
"Escapade will link up with us, then stop over in Ishima for some shopping and leave. The carriers will go to Hydrae Beta, they'd arouse too much suspicion."
Darkk superlighted out to the jumpgate, and was gone.

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"Only one ship down, thank goodness."
"Yeah, but that was a battleship. Levt will not like this."
"It's ok - you take losses now and then."
"Let's go down there and see what they left..."

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Formerly-Rampant Human-Coded AI

Sackler watched the Transport dive into the Planet's atmosphere. It casually dropped into the landing shaft that lead down to what was left of Darkk's Base. He was not pleased. Already, salvage crews were swarming over the hulk of the UES Lalende, trying to rescue the hundreds of crewmembers sealed inside the pressureized compartments deep within the ship. A salvage might have been possible, if not for the cursed asteroids.

The same asteroids that had stopped his ships from chaseing down the traitor and giving him the slow painful death he deserved. Even now, in the relative safety of the upper atmosphere, his ships were still having to dodge occasional meteors that plummeted into the atmosphere. He only hoped the marines would bring up something worthwhile from the base.

------------

Wizr had called in the Excapade, and was haveing the intelligence commitee prepare false registration for the ship, and forged documents for its crew. He was also arrangeing for Sarah Darkk to visit a few of the large engineering schools on Ishima. However, those were relatively easy. He had to get some of his aides working to cook up evidence from the Salrillian Simlab that had supposably held Myrk all this time.

As Wizr wrote messages furiously, the Ishiman Heavy cruiser sped along near the Mariposa and the rest of the DEF ships while the Darkk Asteroid Navigator took them through the maze and out to safety

-------------

The ATR made a pass over the wrecked flight deck, sweeping it for threats. It then proceeded to touch down on the charred concrete. The two teams split up, and began searcheing the area. Lieutenant Harrison lead his six man element through the four storage hangars that had been collapsed, and towards the control tower.

It had been thoroughly cleaned out, and was teetering on the verge of collapse.Finally, the team approached the Elevator shafts that lead up to the main base, several thousand feet above. They had been thoroughly caved in by the blast high above. The team tried to shift the rubble, but to no avail, suddenly, the second squad leader's voice crackled over the intercom.

"Umm... Harris, this is Mike. You'd better come see this. We're out on the tarmack. follow the redline in."

Harris could hear him chuckleing to himself as he 'rogered' and started moveing out. They found to the other team in a circle with several other humans, staring at several Salrillians who had been gagged and bound with large red ribbons. Lt. Mike rose was holding a card, which he passed to Harris.

"A few souveniers from the simlabs: To Levt with love,

-William Darkk"

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Faris eck Vaenar Maletena-Wizr, Trey'ish of the Ishiman reestablishment comittee.
"I don't think I'm alone when I say that I'd like to see more and more planets fall under the ruthless domination of our solar system."

[This message has been edited by Trey'sh Maletena Wizr (edited 02-26-2001).]

He was running down the burning hallway, carrying the limp body of his wife, a large and bloody gash down her face. There was weapons fire all around him as UNS Marines locked in mortal combat with the Audemedon EVA Drones and the Salrilian troopers who slid and slithered into the interior of the ship. Screaming, burning, explosions, he looked at the marines to find skeletons with pistols, shooting at the Audemedons, who were on fire like spiders under a magnifying glass.

He tripped and dropped his wife, a large piece of steel fell on him, and he clawed at it helplessly trying to free himself to get to his wife. A Salrilian slid into view, not noticing the man, and gutted his wife; a lesson in human anatomy right in the midst of battle! The man opened his mouth with the intent to shout curses, but no sound came out! Screaming, swirling, dizzying whirlpool of fire and brimstone....

Levt woke up from the dream in a cold sweat. A memory that had always brought him to tears, yet each night he was forced to relive it. And each night he lived it and played it, hoping that each time he could save Samantha. And each night she died like she had a year ago aboard the Chimaera.

And each night Levt would scream a thousand curses to the heartless unemotional Salrilians, who toyed with human lives like a child would with a beetle. Running cruel and inhumane experiments on them, then tossing them aside after they were done.

But in the back of his mind, Levt felt something strange. A nagging feeling about the distant star of HP-51626A. He pulled at his memory for the system's significance. Then he remembered and a tear welled up in his eye. It was his wife's grave lay. Something was calling him to that system.

He punched the comm set on his bedside table. "Commander Pitts."

A tired voice answered back. The commander on night-shift was doing his best, though, to sound composed. "Yes Admiral?"

"Prep the main fleet, we leave in three hours."

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It's all fair and good to say everybody's equal, everyone's innocent untill proven guilty, but as the UNS learned so painfully at the end of the Audemedon Wars, there are those who will take advantage of that system and bring massive destruction upon others.
-High Commander Gerald Z. Levt
United Earth Confederacy

[Sorry I haven't posted. It's been an incredibly busy week for me. ]

The Mariposa escorted the carriers in the the Hydrae Beta system. The powerful jamming equipment installed on the battleship kept it and the ships hidden. Secrecy was important here, especially after the UEC raid on Darkk's old base. Spann recalled the harrowing flight out, with a pair of gunboats chasing after that put no small scare into the pilots of the ships. Poor piloting of the gunboats lead to collisions with large lumps of rock.

Levt's letting his pilot training slip. I'd never had let pilots like that fly.
A wry grin passed Spann's face. He took every chance he could to nitpick Levt's forces. It kept him hopeful.

"Sir, your shuttle is ready. You should leave soon, Darkk is expecting you shortly."

"Thank you. Warm up the engines, I'll board now."

Spamo walked off the bridge of the Mariposa and to the small shuttle docked. The craft jetted away from the battleship on a course that would take Spamo to a meeting with Darkk. There they would plan the next move against Levt.

[Ambiguous, yes. It'll get better once I'm back in the loop.]

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Ne Cede Malis Sed Contra Audientor Ito

William loved Ishima. The bright lights, the bustling orbital traffic, the giant stations, the great food, the heavy industry, the great shopping, the grand universities...
He knew his sister would like Ishima too. Wind of Blades and the other light combat ships were hidden deep within the massive bulk of the Escapade.

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"So, Wizr, do we have a deal?" said Bizz.
"Let's see. I get together the things on this list. Darkklight Entrepenurial Federation pays me for them plus extra. I get you access to some stuff at Ishima National University. You pay me."
"That's the gist of it."
"I'll see what I can do..."

[more tomorrow]

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Formerly-Rampant Human-Coded AI

The HP-51626A system seemed the quake. There was a massive flash and a ripple as normal space took hold where the brief rupture was. The large UEC fleet emerged with a slight shudder from quasispace, folding directly into low orbit over the blackened and scarred planet.

Levt had once been on a UNS archeological team here before the Ares War. Apparently, many milleniae ago an advanced civilisation had inhabited the planet, and indeed a good number of others, however some sort of nuclear war had wiped them all out, leaving nothing but smoldering ruins and a radioactive ring circling the planet.

The perfect hiding spot for an Audemedon Base: High mineral concentrations, no corrosive atmospheres or hydrospheres left (boiled off into space), and a cold-core. Levt knew it. The sudden arrival of the powered UEC fleet, readied and aimed for orbital bombardment, had caught the Audemedon homeguard completely by surprise, and in the four minutes it took for the Audemedon Computer core to power up the planetary defenses, there were no longer any planetary defenses to power up.

Troop transports containing elite UEC Marines landed on the outskirts of the base, as the Rapid-Deployment-System-Satelites launched by the fleet began their cybernetic assault on the Audemedon Computer Mainframe. In minutes the frame had been hacked and the defense shield surrounding the base was deactivated. Squadrons of fighters scoured the Planetary surface, dropping advance charge bombs on the perimeter, and the marines poured into the base. Fifteen minutes of sniping and shooting were all that were needed for the remnants of the Audemedon Base computer to run it's surrender subroutines.

The Audemedon drones all throughout the base ran those subroutines: falling onto their backs, folding their robotic legs inwards, and deactivating. A single shuttle touched down in the openyard in the center of the base. Inform all squad leaders that the Admiral's shuttle has arrived.

- - - - -

Levt and his ministers were touring the grounds, observing the Audemedon Drones who had once been fighting against the humans, but now were self-reprogrammed to serve under their new masters. The captured drones would prove most useful to the UEC, and were being bolted onto the outsides of the troop transports for their transportation to the fleet.

"The Audemedon Core Unit has erased itself and all Audemedon forces in the system have reverted to our control, Admiral, including a group of their space-fighter drones."

"Good work commander. Have we searched the area for anything important?"

"All but the power core have been searched and salvaged."

"Good. Return to the command ship." Levt motioned to a collumn of marines. "You and you, come with me." They began walking into the tunnel to the base's underground power core.

------------------
It's all fair and good to say everybody's equal, everyone's innocent untill proven guilty, but as the UNS learned so painfully at the end of the Audemedon Wars, there are those who will take advantage of that system and bring massive destruction upon others.
-High Commander Gerald Z. Levt
United Earth Confederacy

The tunnel was dark and cold. Aside from the occasional scurrying of zerbilite larvae, the planet's only feral lifeformes, the footsteps of the marines and technicians echoed loudly and alone. At the head of the marine collumn, Jerry Levt stepped silently. He looked somewhat out of place with his battle vest on and gauss rifle in hand, yet he bravely strode ahead into the darkness at a pace that the marines had to hurry to keep up with.

Finally they reached a fork at the end of the tunnel, where two hallways had been dug and constructed for maintainence drones to pass into the power core. They halted. Levt pointed to the engineers and the frontmost marines "Proceed to the terminal junction, the rest of you: scout and secure to Power Core for orbital extraction." The company split down the two halls, leaving Levt alone.

He stood there and stared at the wall ahead of him, examining the etchings in the wall. Milleniae old, those scratchings were all that remained of the Civilisation that inhabited the planet. From the herdmaster's scripts of Ishima to the traditional tribal weapons of the Cantharan Chiefs, Levt had always been fascinated in archaeology of other races. It helped him learn more of his enemies and how they thought. It was dead silent. Levt began to feel nervous.

"Your report Captain?" He yelled down the hall, expecting a reply from his chief of marines. None came. "Squad leader, report!" He yelled again, more irritated this time. Still there was no reply. Suddenly the laser torch Levt was holding was knocked from his hand by a blast! Now there was a laser torch fused to the wall next to Levt, a slight violet glow where the rock was still hot!

He turned around and whipped out his rifle, pointing into the darkness. "Gllllllad you could joinnnnnn us." A femenine robotic voice echoed throughout the cavern, and a quintet of tall Audemedon legs stepped into the light the fused laser-torch cast upon the ground.

"What?" Jerry exclaimed. "Surrender or I will shred you, drone." He meant it too. His rifle could blast through sheet-rock, if needed.

"What manners are those?" The Audemedon said in a cackly voice. "You wouldn't shoot me, would you?" The Audemedon stepped fully into the light and Levt gasped in horror at the sight of the human head and torso bolted onto the Audemedon quintapod.

But it was not the sight that disturbed Levt, for he had seen many members of his crew assimilated in such manner during the Audemedon War. It was the identity. "Samantha what have they done to you?!"

"Samantha I was, Samantha I am no more. I am Audemedon unit 7694 magistrate sam'Levt." A look of helplessness was in her eyes, yet her voice lavished the words that made Jerry suffer emotionally. She fired a metal bolt from her skull, dislodging the Gauss rifle from his hand,and lept on him, a robotic knee firmly planted on his chest. He could only Lie there, panting in shock.

"Please...." he stammered as she raised her metal scythe-like blades above his neck. "Samantha...." She only grinned, enjoying watching him squirm, at least on the outside. Sweat and tears poured from Jerry as he gazed up at his imminent death in the eyes. She brought the blades down hard. "Samantha I love you." The blades stopped, hovering a hair's breadth above Jerry's throat, digging ever-so-slightly into his flesh.

Somewhere deep inside her, a scrap of humanity had taken hold. Her face twisted into one of sorrow and dispair. She gazed into Jerry's eyes and her jaw shook. The robotized human voice stammered out. "k-k-k.... kill.....meeeeeeee." She begged him, fighting her programmed instincts to butcher the hated Admiral, fighting with all the good and humanity left in her. "please." she begged, straining to restrain herself, as the battle deep inside of her waged: her human side versus the machine.

Jerry reached for the pinned Rifle and dislodged it from the wall, jabbing the barrel at the underside of her jaw. "No... I can't."

"You must....." She pleaded, but then her eyes glazed over and her facial expression changed from that of love to one of extreme anger and hatred as the machine side finally reaffirmed itslef "....dieeeeee...." The robotic voice droned. The blades raised again and began their descent. Jerry pulled the trigger.

- - - - -

There were bullets and blood sprayed on the wall, and a bloodsoaked Admiral stood up and emitted a howl of anguish, which quickly turned into a shriek of hatred for the cold-hearted Salrilians that had forced him to do this. Pure hatred.

The Salrilians had intended for Audemedon unit 7694 magistrate sam'Levt to be the Assassin that would kill the enemy Admiral. But they had done much worse than kill him. They had hurt him. They forced him to spend the rest of his life with the knowledge that he had killed his own beloved wife.

The Salrilians had hurt Levt emotionally. And Levt swore that day that he would exterminate every last one of them for it.

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It's all fair and good to say everybody's equal, everyone's innocent untill proven guilty, but as the UNS learned so painfully at the end of the Audemedon Wars, there are those who will take advantage of that system and bring massive destruction upon others.
-High Commander Gerald Z. Levt
United Earth Confederacy

[I think a Jumpgate is a path through quasispace. As for not paying attention, he's going to pay for it now ]

4 hours after the UEC main fleet left Sol, an intruding fleet chose to make their entrance. Halfway between Io and Ganymede, 29 ships appeared and almost instantaneously vanished.

-------

"Commander, sensor readings indicate a jumpgate opening in Jovian orbits."
"Dispatch two squardons of X-19s. Nothing could get in here that they wouldn't take care of."
"Dispatching..."

-------

The cloaked fleet began hyperlighting towards Mars, flying past the two X-19 squardons. Noticing, the Gunboats altered course. Finally settling on the other side of the station, the escorts decloaked, and set off their holograms, recloaking.

-------

"My god, there must be 50 of 'em! Call in a capital fleet!"

-------

As the X-19s began engaging the apparent "escorts," the actual ships brought to bear on the station again. All simultaneously fired and set back into hyperlight.

A faint shimmer was seen in the orbit of Jupiter.

[You realy must be more careful about what you do with a main fleet, Slug]

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-=MoC 94:19=-
"Cheaters don't really win, and winners don't really cheat. Unless you're talking politics." -Durandal
"Fate protects fools, children, and ships named Enterprise." -Riker to Bridge Crew
[This message has been edited by Pallas Athene (edited 11-27-2830).]

The meager patrol forces in Sol were easily dodged and soon the Obish Escort Cruiser Squadron was in orbit over Mars. They engaged the Battlestation with nimbleness and deception, as both the automated and manned defenses were fooled as hundreds of escorts seemed to appear and disappear after firing their rounds.

Massive amounts of firepower were being poured into the attacking enemy "Fleet", but the shredder bolts grabbed only empty space. Pulses of protomatter seemed to come fron nowhere as the real escorts lowered their stealth fields briefly to loose their salvos, then engaged them before the automated defenses were able to lock on.

The strike was going well. Too well. The escorts found themselves running out of ammunition, and their energy reserves were reaching critical levels. One by one they broke off formation and began their return to Obain.

The battlestation had sustained a massive amount of damage. Whole sections of plating had been blown off here and there, the command dome and all the defenders within were annihilated, and the defensive emplacements were choked with debris. Over half of the station was completely inoperable, and the outer hull would remain smouldering fiercly for days to come.

Try as they had, the Escorts had been unable to breach the hull and inflict their flame onto the soft and vulnerable object the huge exoskeloten had been constructed to protect.

However, along with the considerable damage they had inflicted on Levt's shipyard, the Obish Squadron had discovered their key to the defeat of the UEC. The human capital world was undefended and vulnerable. The Alien Alliances would be pleased to know this.

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It's all fair and good to say everybody's equal, everyone's innocent untill proven guilty, but as the UNS learned so painfully at the end of the Audemedon Wars, there are those who will take advantage of that system and bring massive destruction upon others.
-High Commander Gerald Z. Levt
United Earth Confederacy

[I was wondering how you would take that. That's a satisfying resolve]

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-=MoC 94:19=-
"Cheaters don't really win, and winners don't really cheat. Unless you're talking politics." -Durandal
"Fate protects fools, children, and ships named Enterprise." -Riker to Bridge Crew
[This message has been edited by Pallas Athene (edited 11-27-2830).]

"sam'Levt failed. We shall turn this over to the bombardment group."
"Our spies and connections on Obain have informed us Earth's defenses are at an all time low. We will send the Sterilizer and the 2 warheads completed so far. What are the expected yealds?"
"The first is between 25.982 and 45.361 terratons, and the second is between 45.072 and 46.085"
"That is sufficient. They are ready."

Srith'nama stared at the Sterilizer as he prepaired to take it to Earth. 6.421 km of the Salrilian's finest technology was invested in it - but it was no helpless gateship. The Salrilians long ago had wanted a method to annihilate a particually troublesome species in one fell swoop. Thus, the Sterilizer had been built for the purpose of sterilizing the homeworlds of the enemies of Salril. It was an old ship, older than most of the carriers in the fleet, but it had just been refitted with the latest in enhanced T-bolts, upgraded multi-bolt, multi-directional, continuously updated angle models called 'scatterband guns' in the official military nickname. [In Hera terms, they're bolt object to object beams, fired in groups of 5, and have vastly increased damage.] In addition, it carried multiple wings of gunships and cruisers.

But those weren't the important weapons. Deep in its belly were the launching tubes for the fluctuation missles, the most powerful warheads in the universe, capable of rendering planets uninhabitable. The Sterilizer would get 2 shots. Srith'nama considered that plenty.

[Here's to an epic, multi-post battle sometime soon ]

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Formerly-Rampant Human-Coded AI

[There is absolutely no possible logical reason why a drone that doesn't value its own existance would surrender itself to an enemy rather than self destruct. Surrender is a foreign concept to something that's primary goal is not self preservation.(only Audemed could make such a decision) And why would a base leave any external dialin connections that wern't in a DMZ, separated from the base defences?]

Audemed felt the flicker and immediately knew what had happened. Core unit 4509-2546, a distant base that had been cut off from his power had fallen back on it's Imminent Overrun protocols. It had sent out final burst transmissions to its drones, burst transmissioned its records over subspace, and promptly deleted itself. For some reason, the Salrillian programmers hadn't forseen any attack, and hat not seen it necessary to overwrite these protocols, so the core unit had still dumped its logs, revealing its subspace beacon. Audemed immidiately dialed in and, finding the server empty, dropped a scout AI onto the core. It quickly scanned the sub processors, and returned its report.

The Salrillians had rewritten the entire servers, opening gapeing windows for Levt's hackers. Also, they had added a "surrender" function to their server in an attempt to lure Levt in without bombarding the base, destroying their assasin. The scout AI reported that Levt's men were working on the core unit to figure out a control configuration for the captured drones, and Audemed had found his opportunity. He dropped false interfaces onto the incoming uplinks, and launched another set of trojans up the line, encoded in the returns from the false interfaces. The Trojans instantly duplicated themselves in millions of files, spreading across the UEC network, doing nothing but duplicating themselves and hideing. It took seconds, and the entire operation went totally unnoticed.

As the Programming team began sending instructions to what they thought was their newly captured Audemedon army, Pharris immidiately began following the instructions to a T, marching them calmly into the dropships, and letting them be flown back to the huge Marine Landing Ship in orbit. As they were marched off to storage, Pharris suddenly took over. The 10,000 marines on board the ship were caught entirely unawares. By the time they realized that anything had gone wrong, the drones had already vented a large portion of the ship to space, tearing bulkeads open, killing marines where they slept in their bunks. By the time EVAT teams had suited up to actually fight the Audemedons, it was almost too late, the drones had torn quickly through to the crew quarters, killing two shifts of men while they slept or sat in the rec rooms. They then made their way to the Engine room, where the EVATs finally caught up with them and finished them off, but not before they had disabled the ships power and atmospheric control systems.

The UEC Marine Landing ship rolled lazily through orbit in the center of a large cloud of vented gas, debris and dead bodies. Down below, the half extracted Power core flooded with power and went critical, turning what was left of the large compound into a tremendous smouldering crater.

A flight of Audemedon fighters dove into the fleet that was furiously rushing to aid the derelict Troop transport.

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NEW NAME FOR THE DREADNOUGHT
The Hard-Boiled Egg
Why?
Because she cant be beaten!

[They were bolted to the outside of the dropships]

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It's all fair and good to say everybody's equal, everyone's innocent untill proven guilty, but as the UNS learned so painfully at the end of the Audemedon Wars, there are those who will take advantage of that system and bring massive destruction upon others.
-High Commander Gerald Z. Levt
United Earth Confederacy

Grinning. They all grinned. Every alien commander in the Galactic Arm grinned, or at least gave the equivalent of a grin. They had been synchronizing with each other. Soon the UEC would fall.

------------------
It's all fair and good to say everybody's equal, everyone's innocent untill proven guilty, but as the UNS learned so painfully at the end of the Audemedon Wars, there are those who will take advantage of that system and bring massive destruction upon others.
-High Commander Gerald Z. Levt
United Earth Confederacy