17th Parallel Bar - The Gehenna Incidents

[Manus Celer Dei]

Fighting inside the station was brutal, with heavy losses on both sides by the time Manus recieved Tern's message. His squad of IMG ground troopers were in a fighting withdrawl, covering the retreat of the rest of the combatants from the affected areas. Manus disengages from the combat and makes his way back to the bar, which has become somewhat of a makeshift command centre.

 

Turning to Jenneke, who has been struggling to maintain control of the computer network since the initial attack, he relayed Terns message. Jenneke looks up from the behind the counter of the bar and says simply "We're going to lose the station, the Teh Uber is on its way, they say they've come to help, apparently there was a series of ineffectual attacks along the border by these things, we think in preparation for this attack. EMP weapons seem to work quite well against them as well".

 

At that, Manus heads back down to the lower levels and continues to fight the Gehenna until reinforcements arrive.

[The Maurauder]

Maur opens a communication line to all frequencies,

 

"There are too many weasels! We need to conentrate our fire on that weapon! If possible, provide close cover for the ground forces!"

 

Maur cuts the link and flies under the Marathon, firing EMP bombs at the weapon barrel protruding from the ship's underside. After 3 bombing passes, he notices the blue sparks running the length of the barrel. Although his ship has taken several indirect hits, it shows no signs of damage. Suddenly, maur realizes what is going to happen.

 

"Get away from the weapon! The next time it fires, it is going to overload! Get away!"

 

Maur flies above the Marathon and opens a channel to the station.

 

"Raise the shields! Dow whatever you need to do, because that weapon is about to blow!"

 

Maur consults the ship's computer on the expected blast radius, seeing the results, he accelerates. I hope everyone can get away from that ship, i doubt any small craft could survive such an explosion. The station better raise those shields.

[Greased_Lightning]

Tern's ship finally arrives at the scene of the battle again and sees the wreckage of dozens of ships around the area. The station has severl obvious hull breaches where weasels crashed through. Careful to avoid hitting any wreckage he continues to close in on the main battle area. With cloak, weapons, and comm finally back online, he can actually do some good here now. The number of weasels remaining on the attack has been drastically reduced but at a high price of ships. The Marathon still seems relatively undamaged and is emitting a large amount of energy.

Scans are inconclusive as to the source of the energy but it can't be good. Station shields have been severely weakened by the onslaught. The situation onboard the station against the Gehenna is also dire. Even with the knowledge of how to disable the nanobots, implementing this has proved to be exceedingly difficult.

Suddenly Tern has an idea. He pilots his ship into the landing bay of the station and makes contact with the platform. He activates the portalling system on board and portals out to a point just off the Marathon.

The ultrasonic vibrations move through much of the stations hull, deactivating a great many, but by no means all, the nanorobots aboard. As he appears near the Marathon, he can only hope that the vibrations would be able to travel across the vacuum to affect systems on the Marathon. Before he can see if the plan has any effect, systems onboard already strained by action short out and leave his ship decloaked right off the port side of Marathon.

 

"-*BAD WORD*-"

[Aileron]

[OOC-Oh, I forgot to tell you, although the more scientific of you probably knew. Ultrasonic vibrations is a fancy way of saying high-frecuency sound waves, which don't work in space. Pretty obvious, but I should have stated it.]

 

Priority alerts from the battle of the station were heard through the whole galaxy. It became time for the next phase of action. The Exis fleet, equiped with the Marathon's weapon system, started to make their move on Terran space. The Kanatis fleets had been recalled to fight the nanobots that were now attacking off and on all over the place. Most of the Terran fleet was preoccupied with rescue attempts.

 

It was time for the SE to make their move as well. As soon as Ailius arrived, they rallied their new fleet, and headed for Ithkul space, using clever means of disguising themselves as refugee ships. They came accrossed a large convoy of the real thing, and joined their ranks. The secret SE base was still manned and left under command of Dr. Farson.

 

Suddenly the Marathon realised what happened to her weapons. EMP bolts disbled the weapon, and if she attempted to fire before the EMP damage was repaired, she would be destroyed. Although such an explosion could create enough infected shrapnel to win this battle, the bionanobots decided against it. However, they had already attempted to charge up for it, and the ship would be destroyed if that power wasn't put somewhere. Seeing the devastation on the station caused by a single portal, the Marathon diverted the power to the anti-warp system, which quickly overloaded. A massive energy wave covered the entire battlefield, which reaked havok to all Z-space and Portal systems, disabling all of them. Just to be sure, the other infected ships kept Anti-Warp on for the rest of the battle.

 

Meanwhile, a small Gehenna corvette was rerouted from a nearby raid. Its orders were to infect Teh Uber before it could arrive, and waited in ambush in her path.

[Guest Guest]

(OOC: sorry, went on holiday and forgot to say .)

 

Harper picked up the distress messages from the 17th station and put on full thrust towards it. even from his distance he could see the fighting flaring on the surface and the distinctive vapiour trails towards the fleet. Not to be one to p!@#$%^&* up a scrap, Harper loaded his primary weapon tube with the biggest bomb in his arsenal, a class 2, and fired it indescriminantly in the direction of the action. He winced as it missed the fleet and hit the ground near the station, setting the whole of 17th shaking from its impact.

 

Harper checked his speed, only .08c he would have to use his pod if he wanted to get there before the battle was over, with it having a speed of .9c, he'd just have to jack a fighter when he got there, he wasnt letting one of the best taverns in the area getting blown away, especially by the people who had already cast him out from their society.

 

Back in the cargo hold was a small container of the substance he had earlier transported, if it was so important, he wanted to have a see what it was, so far, initial scans hadnt been able to determine its origin, and were now firing pulses of energy through it to see what it responded to. Suddenly the beaker flashed and invisible waves of gas spread over the leviathan, on a table, Harpers sandwich disintergrated.

 

Harper was unaware of this as he fired off the escape pod, and left his ship drifting towards the station.

[Guest That was Arianax]

^----

[Greased_Lightning]

Tern works furiously to repair his ship's drive system as the Marathon is occupied with itself. He finally gets engines up to about 25% thrust and slowly moves away. Suddenly, a weasel comes from around the Marathon streaking on an attack path with his ship. With shields at low power, he cannot hope to win a battle and cannot move fast enough to maneuver. Tern turns his ship to face the weasel and fires full turrets directly into the approaching weasel. The weasel closes in taking the full force of the turrets finally exploding a short distance away.

 

Momentum unfortunately carries infected wreckage over Tern's ship and the nanobots begin infecting his ship. With Marathon and the surrounding ships engaging antiwarp, he is unable to use portals to rid himself of the nanobots. He sits the silence of space and listens to the nanobots converting his ship. While he still has computer controls, he erases all memory from it.

I can detonate an EMP bomb inside the tube and pray that it stops these things, but it will leave me drifting without life support. -*BAD WORD*- with it...If I go down I'm going down my way...

 

Tern closes the bomb tubes and manually fires two EMP bombs. The bombs stirke the inside of the ship and short out all electrical systems aboard. Luckily, it also seems to have stopped the nanobots as well, but has left life support offline. With nothing more he can do, Tern simply awaits the inevitable.

[Aileron]

The weasel fleet was beaten badly. Over 75% were destroyed, and there were not enough of them to use their swarm tactics. The Gehenna could defend their capital ships with the fighters they infected, but they needed reinforcements on the ground. Then, scans revealed a compound filled with ship parts. One warehouse was filled with decoys. An infected corvette hit the building with an L5 bomb.

 

Decoy greens were scattered throughout the battlefield. The weasels picked up some of them, and turned to targets on the surface. Deploying the decoys, the defense gunners had additional difficulty picking out proper targets, and the weasels hit various tactical targets.

 

By this time, almost all of the stations defenses were destroyed, as well as the attacking weasels.

[Guest Arianax]

somehow avoiding the hail of weasel fighters in the air, Harpers pod smashed into the station. Jumping out, Harper ran to the docks of the tavern, looking for a fighter ship, finally Harper saw a Javelin towards the back of the dock, running to it, Harper began cracking open its interface, to his luck, someone had pathetic security, and he was soon taking off towards the action.

 

The sky was filled with weasels, tracking one in his sights, Harper primed the gun tubes and fired.

 

-Click-

 

'uh oh' Harper uttered. as the weasel jetted towards him, Harper raised his hands instinctively and prepared for impact.

 

The weasel flew straight through his ship, 'phew' he thought. Calling up the ships info he found out why he had no weapons. '-*BAD WORD*-, I've jacked a tour javelin'.

 

Pulling off a few barrel rolls, Harper flew out of the combat area to see an opening for him to make some impact. on his way out of combat he struck an idle vessel, knocking it aside, he didnt catch where though.

[The Maurauder]

Seeing the massacre behind him, Maur had to fight. He spun the agile craft around and headed towards the battle. After disabling several of the enemy attack ships (the ones sent with the marathon) with a hail of EMPs, he noticed tern's ship. There seemed to be several hull ruptures. Should i waste the little time i have too help him? After secveral seconds he decided to help, Flying above tern's ship, he activated the teleporter and -*BAD WORD*-ed tern into the cargo bay, no time to check on him now though. Maur turend back towards teh marathon, and the beginnings of a plan were brewing in his mind. He darted oway from the battle toowards the scrap field, and opened a connection to the other ships.

 

"Try to find a way to take the Marathon's shield down, and make sure most of the turrets are destroyed! The station also needs to get its sheilds up."

 

Selectying an ancient abandoned power generator, he activated the weak tractor beam. It could barely hold this huge chunk of metal, but at least he could still move.

 

"Now to activate it."

 

He opened a channel to all ships.

 

"Does anyone out there have something that can interface with an old reactor without having to land?"

 

He flew towards the marathon, dodging bullets from its turrets.

[Greased_Lightning]

Tern opens his eyes finding himself sitting down on the deck of a ship he recognizes as the one Vreel tried selling him. He goes to the teleporter controls and sends himself back down to the station. He appears down in a deserted corridor damaged by heavy disruptor fire. He heads towards the docking bay to see if there are still any available ships then decides he should arm himself, stops at a weapons locker and gets himself a new disruptor.

On the way to the docking bay he passes the bar decides to see who is still alive down here. Upon entering he finds that it has been converted to a command center. He sees Manus working at the station defenses and nods at him before leaving.

Hmm... looks like a warzone down here... fitting.

He finally reaches the docking yard and finds only a few ships left that are worthy of the name. He find's Vreel's personal ship, a javelin-class attack fighter with a few modifications that he knows well as he provided much of the hardware. As he gets in, Vreel runs over.

"Thief! Get down you -*BAD WORD*-"

Tern turns and glares at Vreel, who backs down immediately. Tern activates systems, takes off and streaks towards the battle scene. As he passes, he sees his old ship slowly drifting away...Apparently someone hit it. -*BAD WORD*- Sunday drivers.

[The Maurauder]

Maur re-opens the communication link and powers down teh tractor beam.

 

"anyone with an outside interface and tractor beam, please activate the reactor at the coords 523,691 and send it towards the marathon, it will be impossible to destroy that ship with our weapons, we must overload the cannon, my latest simulations show that the shockwave wuill be powerful enough to flatten the outer areas of the staion. I advise everyone to get to the opposite side, or better yet, rotate the station if controls are accessible. Maur out."

 

He cuts the link and heads toward the marathon, targeting the gun turrets. With the help of several pilots, most of the turrets are eliminated, however there are still many weasels left. Maur heads toward the bottom of the Marathon to re-blast the weapon. The sparks have mostly worn off so he hits the barrel of the superweapon with 7 EMPs before feering away fowards the top of the ship. He notices a javelin heading his way

 

"Tern? How...?"

[Aileron]

Just a few lightyears from the station, Teh Uber was setting a grueling pace to reach the station in time. They did not have enough time to run proper scouting. She was moving far to fast to see the string of mines set in her path. While the field was set by a much weaker vessel, the hits were direct, causing a large amount of damage. Teh Uber's energy reserves were directed to the shields. The Gehenna corvette that laid the mines acitvated her portal, leaving her directly behind the Cruiser. She unloaded all her energy into her nanobot deployment weapon, just punching through Teh Uber's shields and infecting the ship's engineering compartment. The corvette had to use her rockets to flee before the cruiser's energy reserves recharged. However, the damage was done, and after the cruiser was infected, she continued on her journey to provide reinforcement for the battle at the station, only now for the side of the Gehenna.

 

 

Meanwhile, on the Ithkul-Kanatis border. The Gehenna made scattered raids on the border, so when human refugee ships showed up, border patrols let the SE fleet through. After inside Ithkul territory, the SE started to search for an abandoned station to serve as a base of operations.

 

On the Exis-Terran border, a handfull of Terran systems fell to the attacks made by the Exis fleet. While the Terrans were prepared for the Exis, they were not prepared for the Arbiter-style cannons that were installed just after Ailius sold them the schematics. The fighting was fierce on both sides, but between the new weapons systems and the lack of Kanatis support, the Terrans were eventually forced to withdraw from their border stations.

[Greased_Lightning]

Tern pilots his ship in close to where Maur's coordinates are and activates tractor beam on the reactor. He pulls away from the battle while interfacing with the reactor. 30 seconds later, the reactor is finally up and running and still in the tractor beam. Tern plots a course directly for the Marathon at maximum thrust. Firing heavy turrets at incoming weasels, they are no match for the powerful (and illegal) weaponry aboard this ship. Shields take several glancing hits but shields hold strong as the ship approaches Marathon. At 3000 meters, Tern pilots the ship in an upward arc and cuts the tractor beam sending the reactor hurdling towards Marathon.

 

Tern broadcasts over the comm system for all ships to get away immediately and goes full throttle. The reactor continues towards the Marathon, 3000 meters, 2500, 2000, 1500, 1000, 500.... until finally it strikes against the hull of the ship and detonates, engulfing the Marathon in the explosion. Her shields are no match for the awesome force so close to her and they fail instantly. The shock wave travels through the hull in milliseconds, causing all electrical components to explode and shaking apart weakened hull sections. Finally, a full 1/100th of a second after the initial explosion, the actual explosion meets the hull and shrapnel tears through it like wet tissue paper. The weasels and support vessels in close support of the Marathon are wiped out as well and all that remains are jagged pieces of wreckage covered with deactivated nanorobots.

 

But the fight isnt over... There are still the nanobots on the station itself and still ships that were not destroyed by the blast, station's defenses can easily handle the remaining threat. Sensors damaged by the battle do not detect that Teh Uber approaching.

[The Maurauder]

Luckily, Maur was far enough from the blast to take no damage. His shields flickered for a moment under the stress of the shockwave, but no damage was done to the ship itself. Long range scanners were damaged, but indicate some kind of object moving towards the staion. He dismisses it as a chunk of devris of some kind and heads toward the station. Finding docking bay 3 relatively undamaged besides burnt off pain, he lands and prepares for close combat. He draws his Tri-barrelled blaster and flicks off the safety. The gun vibrates rithmically as the liquid coolant is pumped along the length of the barrel.

 

"Manus, status report for teh area around bay 3?"

 

While waiting fro a response he opens the bay door and enters the dark hallway leading directly from the bay to the bar.

[Guest Arianax]

(OOC: gonna steal the whole italics thing )

 

 

Grounding the jav, Harper climbed out. Ive really got to find out whats going on before i go gungho into the situation At that, Harper was thrown to the floor by a huge blast, heat seared across his face as he turned to see the huge cruiser engulfed in explosions.

 

Harper ran towards the bar, to escape the persistant heat, once inside he regrouped himself, and readied his pistol. 'rough customers eh?' he joked towards the barkeep. This fighting seems precipitated by that Sanders guy, well I'll try meet him, tell him ive got a tiny bit of his cargo and want to know what it is.

 

Setting up the meeting in his mind, Harper was completely unaware of his Leviathan, still traveling at 0.08c towards the fighting. By now the whole of his supplies gantry had been decomposed, and the giant hulk now had a formidable suplly of bots.

[Aileron]

[OOC-BTW, I already did a quick dock with you. I picked up your cargo and paid in full.]

 

The defenders of the station began to breath easier, atleast those who weren't still fighting. The space battle was reaching conclusion, and reinforcments just arrived.

 

A powerfull cruiser, Teh Uber, just arrived. Those fighting the space battle gave a shout for joy. The battle had been won, or was it?

 

"All glory to the Gehenna! Annihilation to the humans!"

 

The remaining Gehenna ships rallied around Teh Uber, hiding in her cloaking field. The ship started to charge up her Arbiter cannons, and locked on to the station. However, the Gehenna wanted to capture the station, not destroy it. A new wave of weasels left the cloaking fields to reinforce the ground battle.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, Ailius had good reason to give a sigh of relief. The Ithkul's fleet was located almost exclusively on the border, and the SE fleet just past beyond their radar range. They now had an entire fleet deep inside Ithkul territory!

 

The SE leadership began to make their plan. The new strain of bionanobots were given protection from ultrasonic waves. More importantly, the second strain was programmed to be "dormant". They would still infect and spread, but they would leave almost no sign of their presence. That is until they recieve a special signal, at whihc case they go active. The SE began to secretly set these lose among the Ithkul population, and amongst ships.

[Greased_Lightning]

Tern watches as the Teh Uber finally arrives to reinforce the station. Well, better late than never I suppose...how convenient for them. Tern maneuvers his ship out of the Teh Ubers flight path and begins taking samples of the deactivated nanobots for further investigation.

These nanobots are of an identical design to the ones found in Farson's laboratory... It is time to find out just where this Dr. Farson is, and who he is working with.

Tern opens his communications system to check the situation on the station when suddenly all comm channels receive from the Uber, "All Glory to the Gehenna! Annihilation to the humans!" and weasels come out from under the Teh Uber's cloak.

"-*BAD WORD*-!"

Tern raises shields and prepares to take action against the renewed threat.

[Arianax]

(OOC: i know, i just yoinked a bit of the stuff for fun, bribable guards and all that)

[Aileron]

[OOC-Please get rid of Teh Uber quickly, that battle of yours is lasting way longer than I wanted it to. It was only supposed to be a diversion after all.]

 

Ailius began implementation of the SE plan. The Ithkul fleet was normally mostly stationed at the border, and with recent events, they reinforced their borders even more, leaving few ships in their core systems. However, any sign of SE action would change that. So, the SE was spreading dormant versions of the bionanobots on a mul!@#$%^&*ude of domestic shipping, colonies, and stations. The idea was to create a line of secret Gehenna which will activate themselves just as the SE strike the core planets, putting a barrier between the SE fleet and the Ithkul fleet. Their escape plan was to have the Gehenna on both the Kanatis and Ithkul sides sandwich a single system, and letting the SE out that way.

 

Right now, the SE were spreading the nanobots, and deciding what exactly to do now that they were deep in Ithkul territory. They had dreamed of being here for years, but there were too many opportunities for them to cause damage for decision to be made quickly.

[The Maurauder]

Maur has made no contact with anyone since entering the station, nobody knows exactly where he is.

[Greased_Lightning]

[OOC - I Guess its up to me to destroy it lol ]

 

Tern pilots his ship toward the Tan Uber, turrets blasting destroying weasels that are unlucky enough to enter his sights. Closing in the Tan faster and faster he activates bombs and locks in on the reactor and fires. The bombs impact against the Tan Uber's shields and cause a massive overload in the generators, causing their shields to fail.

Weasels are attempting to suicide against Tern's ship so he stays close to the hull of the Uber as weasels try hitting him and only succeed in smashing against the Uber causing multiple hull breaches. Finally, the Uber loses all control over its engines and begins a slow collision course with 17th Station...

[The Maurauder]

Maur has been holding his position outside Bay 3, Fighting off swarms of bianobots, he looks through a porthole in the ceiling and sees the ship coming straight towards them.

 

"Not this..."

 

He ducks inside bay 3 and jams the door closed. Maur then runs to his ship and opens a com link to Manus while firing the thrusters.

 

"There is a ship on a collision course with the station! You must evacuate! I am heading back out to fight some weasels, good luck."

 

With that he speds out of the bay and begins fighting weasels.

[Aileron]

Teh Uber was in a death spiral she couldn't get out of. However, this was not it for the bionanobots. She used most of her available energy to get directly above where the Gehenna had the strongest hold on the ground battle. She rolled over stern first, so that her weapons would be positioned upward and made a crash landing. A cloud of bionanobots was spread into space, and settled over many of the fleeing fighters and most of the rest of the station. The battle onboard the station became hopeless, as bionanobot spawned creatures and structures covered % of the station at this point. In some areas, the Gehenna had even set up landing zones and anti-fighter turrets.

 

Teh Uber was still operational, but would never be able to move again. The Ghenenna slowly began to replicate her systems through out the station. In the mean time, her weapons and cloaking field served as a stationary defense.

 

It was done at great cost, but the Gehenna got what they came for - 17th Parallel station was now in their possession.

 

 

Meanwhile, there was major outcry in international conventions over the Exis recent attack on Terran space. However, the Exis knew that this meant nothing. The Kanatis were busy fighting the Gehenna, and the Ithkul would soon have their own worries.

 

 

The SE leadership had finally decided on their targets. Using their miniature Arbiter cannons, they would strike at Feldeshon, the most populated Ithkul planet, Suprdonia, their major military starport, the trade planet of New Constantinople, and the center of government, planet Ithkul.

 

The last one was going to be tricky. The planet used to be uninhabitable. The first colonies here were located in a massive cave in which the first settlers had sealed the entrance. After technology for terraforming was practical, they did a massive terraforming project to make the planet habitable. However, all the major government centers used the same buildings they used for centuries in the deep cave.

 

If the SE merely did an Arbiter cannon strike, the survivors would flee to the anchient cave, and the old life support systems would be activated. Being too deep to strike directly, the SE could not use Arbiter cannons here like they would elseware. Besides, they were here to cripple the Ithkul government.

 

The SE needed to somehow infiltrate the caves and sabotage their life-support system first. This would be the ultimate test of Ailius' guile, as well as the shapshifting ability of his bionanobot body.

[Manus Celer Dei]

Arbiter cannons

(ooc) I take it your read the resource file . Keep in mind for the next rpg I'm gonna try and get everyone to stick to the description of the weapons in it, so "miniature" with regards to arbiter cannons will still require entire ships devoted to it, and that firing directly at hardened bunkers will completely annihilate them and everything else for at least 50 km (I'm thinking very seriously of keeping arbiter cannons as moderator weapons, rather than for general use), and that the Exis fleet in no way would have been able to refit their whole fleet with these, nor use them against moving targets like the terrans. But of course the weapons resource file doesn't apply to this thread, so you have complete freedom in this. (/ooc)