+++ Data Transmitting +++
+++ Data Packet Received +++
+++ Decrypting... +++
+++ Decryption complete +++
To: Adam Calliger
From: IIA Head Directive Lewis
As you have no doubt become aware, a growing number of people, both in the army and without, are falling under the influence of an organisation calling itself the ├óÔé¼╦£Civilian Rights Union├óÔé¼Ôäó. The ├óÔé¼╦£CRU├óÔé¼Ôäó as it is more commonly known as, tends to affect / attract the young idealists. The war against the Tessarin invaders had dragged on for several years now, and our resources are beginning to run dry. This has, of course, had a major effect on the galactic economy and the stock market has managed to crash itself twice in four months. This has had a very detrimental effect on the living standards, particularly those in the poorer outlying sectors. This drop in standards has created a large amount of animosity against the current government. As the Governmental Elections are still several years off, those in the poorer communities have come to believe that they have no way of replacing the current government, and that if there is a new government system, this whole problem will go away. Which is of course ridiculous (the Tessarin are not going to simply apologise and walk off if we replace Chancellor Alckright with one of his political opponents!). These dissidents have taken up arms and are fighting a surprisingly effective guerrilla warfare against their local PDF forces. Indeed, the PDF regiments on several systems have actually joined the rebel forces! More worrying, however, is that the CRU fighters are surprisingly well armed. The industrial districts aren├óÔé¼Ôäót to blame, with their wages the workers there are quite content. The tales of rebelling PDF units are few and far between and the CRU have no real way of distributing their arms. Most planets also have some form of gun control as well, and most now-a-days have blanket-bans on all weapons because of the CRU threat. Yet still, the dissidents seem to be constantly gaining in terms of arms and support. My only guess is that they are being supplied by some organisation who├óÔé¼Ôäós interests lie in the destabilisation of the current government. We are calling you in because of your knowledge in espionage and your role in the discovery of the Rowans├óÔé¼Ôäó Conspiracy. You will arrive at the IIA Head Quarters on Terth the day after tomorrow, 13 pm, standard time. A shuttlecraft will be waiting for you at the Tenowan SpacePort in Lewershem. Good Luck, Mr Calliger.
Head Directive Lewis
+++ Message Ends +++
My reaction, contrary to what my above reply contains, upon reading that message could be best described as: ├óÔé¼╦£Oh, wonderful.├óÔé¼Ôäó As I├óÔé¼Ôäóm using the medium of paper and data slate for this, I cannot recreate the look on my face, so I├óÔé¼Ôäóll have to make do with the equivalent sound: ├óÔé¼┼ôAaaaaargh!├óÔé¼┬Ø. I should probably explain. I run (well, ran) a company named Calligers Incorporated. With the economic crisis described by HD Lewis, Calligers Inc├óÔé¼Ôäós stock went down the drain pretty damn quick. On the same day I received that fateful little tech-a-gram my son ran off to the army with a large chunk of the company├óÔé¼Ôäós profits. And now I was being dragged off to work for the IIA, leaving Calligers Inc to fester and rot. Makes you wonder if we brought this whole stock crash thing upon ourselves. Anyway, after reading that I spent about 15 minutes sulking before I did anything. I then got some paper and wrote up my resignation and a will, handed them to my secretary (who must have thought I was going to leap off the roof or something judging from his expression) and left the building, heading for my car. I drove to the Tenowan SpacePort, Lewershem.+++ Encrypting├óÔé¼┬ª +++
+++ Encryption Complete +++
+++ Sending Data Packet +++
+++ Data Packet sent├óÔé¼┬ª +++
+++ Data Packet received +++
To: IIA Head Directive Lewis
From: Adam Calliger
I will be there
+++ Message Ends +++
As HD Lewis had promised, an IIA shuttlecraft was waiting for me. Obviously a shuttlecraft couldn├óÔé¼Ôäót take me from here all the way to Terth, so I guessed it would be taking me to one of the long distance transports that went back and forth between Terth and here. I was correct. The ship, named The Alaskus was a medium-sized civillian transport, of the type normally used to shuttle away refugees from battle zones (especially now, with the CRU and Tessarin at large). Evidently, the IIA were doing their best to be low-key. The shuttle itself had no markings ├óÔé¼ÔÇ£ the only way I knew it was IIA was by the pilots, who wore the standard IIA jumpsuits ├óÔé¼ÔÇ£ a combination of light blues and greys. Most of the ordinary citizens were also giving them a wide berth. I took the lift onto the deck with the IIA and walked over, drawing looks from the onlookers. I walked to the nearest pilot. He nodded to me, and without speaking gestured to an open side-hatch. Once I was strapped in the two pilots entered their seats and all the doors and other hatches closed. With a roar and a rough jerk, the shuttle took off.
The shuttle was a small one, designed for taking men, or a drop team back and forth between a ship in high orbit. For this trip, however, the weapon lockers were empty. We shot upwards, breaking through the clouds and atmosphere and entered the inkly blackness of the spatial void. Hanging there, was the Orbital Dock. It contained several ships, including a TFC Dreadnought, which surprised me ├óÔé¼ÔÇ£ it didn├óÔé¼Ôäót have it├óÔé¼Ôäós usual escort fleet. It also didn├óÔé¼Ôäót look like it was in need of repair. The shuttle shot over it to reveal that one side had been practically ripped off. The was a large flotilla over repair craft of various sizes shooting back and forth between the smashed Dreadnought and a trio of repair ships. The Tessarin had definitely made their mark on that thing. The shuttle continued on towards The Alaskus.
The Alaskus looked like it had seen a few scrapes. Several plates looked like they├óÔé¼Ôäód been welded onto the hull like a patch of cloth stitched over a hole in a trouser leg. Several hull plates had large dents in them and a repair vessel was flying away from it and towards the stricken Dreadnought. Whether it had finished or simply decided that the Dreadnought was more important was impossible to tell.
There was a sudden flurry of activity and five repair ships launched from their pads and headed out. I was on the wrong side of the shuttle to see what had alarmed them, so I unstrapped and checked the opposite window. The shuttle pilots had obviously noticed and slowed the ship to watch. It wasted fuel, but we had plenty. It was a Battleship, Retribution class. It was limping back home, and it looked like it couldn├óÔé¼Ôäót stop.
Deep holes had been gauged out of it├óÔé¼Ôäós side and smoke billowed from two long cuts that ran across from bow to stern. Fires raged, sucking up the oxygen that was escaping and, upon a closer inspection, I noticed that the escape pods had all been launched. There were two cruisers following it, one on each side. I hoped they had collected all the pods. The cruisers were firing their forward brake engines to avoid smashing into the Dock, but the Battleship showed so sign of slowing.
All the repair ships were launched, even the ones tending to the Dreadnought peeled off to try and slow down the oncoming Battleship. But it was too little, and too late. The Battleship slammed into the Dock, smashing through a luxury liner and several storage vessels. Two of the storage ships must have contained ammunition or fuel, because they both exploded in huge fireballs encompassing a pair of Frigates and an unlucky repair ship. The luxury liner broke in two as the Battleship rammed it├óÔé¼Ôäós way through as it had been designed to.
I ran across to the previous window and the other side and watched as the Battleship slammed into the Dreadnought. Those ships that could drove off as quick they could, all sensing what would happen next and all unwilling to be caught in it. The Battleship plowed through the Dreadnought and ruptured it├óÔé¼Ôäós engines. Both vessels and nearly all the repair ships were engulfed in the ensuing explosion, which caused a chain explosion that ripped through the Dock.
The Security Deck went up in a sphere of flames and the Repair Dock disintegrated. All the ships that had failed to break off were caught in the death throes of the Dock as it slowly drifted towards the planet surface, dragging all those still docked down with it.
It broke apart in the atmosphere, but the pieces were still quite large and to the people below it must have been like an apocalypse. An entire continent was battered apart by the force of over a hundred ships crashing down at once.
The pilots and I watched in horror. The entire episode must have only lasted about ten minutes from when the repair ships first saw the oncoming Battleship to when the remnants cascaded ├óÔé¼╦£down to earth├óÔé¼Ôäó in a blazing silence. In space, no-one can hear you scream, or hear you be ripped apart by a large thermo-plasma explosion. Millions had died, and they had done so in silence.
The Alaskus, two repair ships, the pair of Cruisers, and about twenty other vessels of various kinds had escaped in time. One ship, and attack frigate, looked like it left it├óÔé¼Ôäós rear ├óÔé¼ÔÇ£ engines included, behind. It slowly crawled forward until it├óÔé¼Ôäós captain fired the Brake Engines to stop the ship (the onboard computers automatically gauged and ordered the correct amount of force to stop it├óÔé¼Ôäós ship ├óÔé¼ÔÇ£ or what was left of it). The pilots checked themselves and went back to their original mission of taking me to The Alaskus. Whilst we had taken off it silence, it had been a professional silence, whilst now it was out of pure shock. It was in the air.
Aboard the The Alaskus, the mood was much the same, and it took the captain several minutes to realise that everyone that would be coming aboard had done so. Even so, we started forward before anyone else. The Alaskus had probably seen many planetary evacuations during an oncoming Tessarin siege. The only thing that had stunned us into silence was the fact that a catastrophe had just occurred in what was perceived as a safe area. One of the cruisers broke off from it├óÔé¼Ôäós fellows and came alongside as we headed for Terth, whilst the other, along with any other surviving military vessels herded the remaining ships towards the lunar docks, towing any ship that couldn├óÔé¼Ôäót move under it├óÔé¼Ôäós own steam. I stopped watching the scene and pulled my face off the window, leaving the crowd and going to my room, wherein I simply sat down with a flop onto the bed.
Half and hour earlier I had been complaining of a small inter-town business that I used to own going under. Now it seemed distant and unimportant in the wake of what had just occurred. My brain simply couldn├óÔé¼Ôäót comprehend it, so I laid down to a fitful sleep and a rather rude awakening.
======================
Production Notes
If I haven't mentioned what IIA stands for (and I don't think I have) it means 'Imerial Intelligence Agency')
I've taken a little break from Soelis. Mainly because it needs a fairly major rewrite.
This is from the same universe as Soelis is set in, but it's several decades before the events in Soelis - This is set in the Galactic Human Empire, and they haven't discovered the Psychasi yet.
EDIT: Fixed the misspelling in the title
