What were supposed to do? Be sent back to Telkan where the next attempt on our lives would surely succeed?
No.
We went with the Mad Lemur of Terra, part of Decken's Irregulars.
And we fought. Fought to the bitter end. Fought in the ashes. Fought in the erging green of a new spring. Fought in the jungle of ignorance and barbarism.
We raised our voices and shouted "WE WILL NOT SUBMIT!"
And erged both more and less than we had been on that fateful day we went to see the Cathedral. -ditations on the Barrier War, Lancer First Class Imna, Free Telkan Press, 25 Post-Terran Ergence
Captain N'Skrek doublechecked his tunic before the lift doors opened onto the 'show bridge', which was at the 'rear' and 'top' of the massive siege engine ship.
While the primary bridge, the battlebridge, even the aux-con, were all in the middle of the ship and heavily armored, for so reason he felt as if it was only right for him to stand on the "show bridge" for what he was about to command to be done.
As he stepped out the crew on the show bridge did not turn away from their jobs. Contrary to popular dia, nobody yelled out 'Captain on the Bridge" or "Attention on deck!" or anything close to that.
N'Skrek knew the drill. They had all done a mic-check to ensure they could hear each other over the show-bridge com-channel, then over suit links, then over general coms. Then their consoles had been checked for function and connection.
Now, they were all busy.
True, there was a half-dozen consoles open with greenies working on them, green mantids that had been found frozen in cryo-bays in a section of the ship that nobody had found for the thousands of years the ship had been in operation.
New corridors, passages, storage spaces, berthing areas, manufacturing facilities, were being found and mapped every day.
N'Skrek cleared his head as he pulled a self-light from where his antenna rged with his skull, putting it between his mandibles and puffing on it to get the self-light to work.
LT (Junior Grade) Scarlet Strontium Sunset-6371992, the shipboard master digital systems control digital sentience, appeared in the holotank off to the side as N'Skrek headed to the main holotank.
"Nav-Int has suggested placing ssage torpedoes, multi-stage ones, to go to the missing systems, then backtrack back into Confederate Space, with recordings of everything that happened here," Sunset stated.
N'Skrek nodded.
"Additionally, at Nav-Int's suggestion, the computer systems in the fruit flies, torpedoes, missile pods, all show that they were launched from Weber-VII class missile wagons as part of a Task Force that was over here," Sunset said. She tapped a box in the holotank eight light-hours up and to the 'left' of the rings. "Just in case the enemy manages to sohow salvage viable non-volatile computer mory and storage."
"Excellent idea," N'Skrek said. He sat down and folded his bladearms in front of him, resting his chin on the armored and spiked 'wrist' joint. "What are Nav-Int's projection of how the artificial singularity will perform?"
"Anything out to a light week will be pulled back in. Everything out to a light month will be slowed by a large factor. Nav-Int estimates that if the artificial singularity holds up for at least six months anything within two light weeks should be pulled back and into it," Sunset said. "It should slow the other constructs down far enough that starvation effects should reduce their size considerably."
N'Skrek nodded, still staring at the holotank.
"Additionally, it will pull in and destroy any clusters that warp out from the previous waypoints in the re-energizing ladder," Sunset said.
"Any idea what wavelengths they're using to recharge the clusters?" N'Skrek asked.
Sunset nodded. "Yes. They're emulating standard cosmic ray output of a G2V stellar classification mass."
"My complints to Nav-Int," N'Skrek said. He looked it over. "Signal DEFCON to stage one. Wake up the fruit flies," he said. "We will execute the fire plan fifteen minutes after we get green on at least 80% of the elents."
Sunset nodded, able to feel the tension ratchet up on the show-bridge.
He was clad in a pressurized flight suit that held his body together. His visor was sealed and closed, liquid atmosphere moving through the tube implanted in his chest, so he technically didn't 'breathe'. He knew that his body was unfinished, mostly existing as a life support system for his brain, but he also knew that it didn't matter.
Clone War Lyfe, baby.
Rickytofen-773E6A, "Ricky" to his friends, closed his eyes as he went over his most recent mories.
Being launched as sothing called "Sucker Punch
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