#Finally joined the Thargoid war

[grymkoena]

Elite Dangerous

[shatteredskies042]

Dangerous: The War Part I

BD+26 2184. A simple system, uninhabited in a corner of space. Not significant enough to warrant a proper name, no real resources worth exploiting. A pass through point for travelers, before jumping to more inhabited, interesting systems. The only object of note was a planet, a high-metal content world with a yellow surface and water atmosphere. In 3301, a Commander offered everything he owned to have a memorial for his recently passed mother. Universal Cartographics renamed this world McBrayer’s Rest. It was a place of peace, where pilots could pay their respects, putting aside petty faction differences to commemorate a single human life. In 3303, the Thargoids: a warlike race of insectoid warriors, returned to resume their war on humanity. They attacked the Federation first, at first it started with isolated convoys outside the bubble of human space. Then they came. Dozens of Federation worlds burned, even Sol, the heart of humanity, guarded by three Federal fleets, fell in short order. The vaunted Farragut Battle Cruisers fell in pitched battles, until only a few remained. These few ships hit where they could, but never fought a pitched battle against the invaders. Eventually, they were pushed to the edge of Federation space, and into the space that the Empire of Achenar controlled. As they retreated, the invaders advanced. September 19, 3303. BD+26 2184. The Farragut cruiser FNS Nevermore dropped from hypercruise around the memorial world of McBrayer’s Rest. She had undertaken an emergency jump when ambushed by a Thargoid fleet, suffering grievous hull damage in the process. Knowing they had precious little time, her entire crew went to work on fixing the damage wrought. The sections damaged by “Thargoid Green” would take time to repair, however, the damage done by explosive pods they used as kinetic weapons could be repaired quickly. The hull damage wrought by a weapon that destroyed electronics and melted the sturdiest of materials. Even crews from the detachment of Corvettes carried by the cruiser assisted with the repair efforts. The captain of the Nevermore had been in the Federation for the better part of half a century. He’d seen the Nevermore through the building of the vessel, trials, and combat deployments. The threat posed by the Thargoids, and the damage done to his ship, were things he had never seen before. Further complicating the Nevermore’s already precarious situation was the fact they were behind enemy lines, as it were. The Federation and Empire had been locked in a cold war spanning centuries, and the Nevermore would likely be engaged on sight if an Imperial ship spotted them. Even as genocidal aliens breathed down their necks, humanity remained divided. Hours passed, and while all their weapons were fully functional and online, the integrity of the hull in certain sections dipped to seventy percent. Then came the blips from the ships’ powerful sensors. Contacts zipping through the system in supercruise, most just skimming around the star on their way to somewhere else. One turned towards them. The Nevermore knew its cover was blown. The Imperials would arrive in force, and eliminate the invaders. Repairs were continued in haste, to try and be as combat ready as possible when the Imperials inevitably arrived. He did not want to fight, but that was what it would come down to. The Imperials never took kindly to the Federation being in their territory, even with the genocidal aliens rampaging through the bubble of human civilization. Repairs continued in haste, knowing time was running out. The Nevermore’s captain, despite pleas from his subordinates to rest before the coming battles, continued his vigil on the bridge. Then they came. “Captain, contact!” an officer watching the sensor board announced. “Massive signature, an Imperial capital ship.” “Multiple smaller ones,” another reported, “escorts, it’s a well sized battle group.” “Prepare two emergency beacons, one to Fleet Command, one to the general area asking for help,” the Captain ordered. “Open communications to the Imperial vessel.” “No need, sir, they’re hailing us,” a communications technician stated: “Federal warship, this is the INV Valiant. You are in violation of Imperial sovereign space. We kindly ask you leave.” “Signal back,” the captain replied. “INV Valiant this is the FNS Nevermore. We sustained damage in a fight against the aliens. It is possible an alien fleet is coming to finish us off.” “Message sent,” the technician replied. There was a pause, almost two minutes long, before a reply was received: “Nevermore. Do you know the story of this system. The world you orbit?” The Federal captain sighed, before a technician asked what the message meant. “Reply with this: I do know the story. Why?” “Today we are not foes. You are not Federation. We are not Imperial. The Valiant will stand with you as a human warship.” “Captain?” “Order the escorts, come off the Imperial fleet,” the captain breathed. “Sir!” the long range sensor operator reported. “Long range data shows possible scout ship in system.” If the aliens tactics remain unchanged, that contact would disappear, then more would appear at the same point in a few minutes, then finally the aliens would appear before them and the battle would begin. He figured they had about a half an hour. “Make a signal to the Valiant. We will encounter the alien fleet in no less than thirty minutes. We are going to broadcast for help from any Federal or independent pilots. Good luck.” “Sir? What would you like to transmit?” “All frequencies,” he ordered, waiting for the cue from the communications tech. When he was given a thumbs up, he began: “My name is Captain Lawrence Anderson, of the FNS Nevermore FDN-RD17. In approximately thirty minutes, a combined Federal and Imperial fleet will engage a Thargoid battle group. We implore any Federal, Imperial, or independent pilot to join our struggle. Our ideological differences are for another day, attached is the coordinates for our location. We wish any pilot who comes to our aid luck.” “Transmission has begun, sir,” the technician reported. “It appears the Imperial ship has done the same.” “All we can hope is that it is enough,” the captain mused fatalistically. “Bring all hands to general quarters, deploy our weapons and launch our fighters. Have the replacements ready for when they go down,” he ordered. “This is the calm before the storm.” The next twenty minutes were torturously long. The captain standing like a monolith on the bridge. So far, it had not seemed that the community of pilots had responded to their hail. The battle begun with something akin to a cloud: a mass of electrical disturbances tearing open a hole in space. Then the ships winked into existence, and the void came alive with fire: Lasers of every hue, hypersonic railgun rounds, tracers from kinetic weapons, bolts of plasma and the bodies of missiles and torpedos danced across the endless black. The makeshift human fleet was outmatched, but one would never tell from watching the melee. Fighters of human and alien origin dueled and danced, escort ships fired on one another. The strange biotechnological alien craft loosed their own cargos of kinetic bombs and exotic weaponry, seemingly unaffected by the volume of weaponry being hurled at them. As the battle dragged on, the situation of the human fleet became more tenuous: the Valiant took a direct hit from an energy weapon that tore her bow off, and half of her guns were rendered inoperable by alien weaponry. The Nevermore took hits of it’s own, losing a fragment of hull degraded by the green weaponry used by the aliens. The ship's heat relays began to falter, and the batteries of the Federal vessel had to lay off their fire as to not cook the cruiser from the inside. The smaller, escort ships of the human fleet fared no better: battles with the alien craft took a fearful toll, as the humans found themselves outnumbered with nowhere to maneuver, dying in the empty void. A few crippled ships drifted close to Thargoid vessels, before detonating their reactors to little effect. With fewer ships to run interference for the hulking capital ships, more damage was wrought on the massive war machines. “Sir!” came a cry from the Nevermore’s sensor pit. “Multiple long range contacts closing in!” “More-” the captain stumbled, an explosion rocking the ship as a weapons battery detonated. “Damnit. More Thargoids?” “No sir,” the operator reported, trying to figure out the signatures of the incoming ships. “Our sensors are damaged, we don’t have a good count of them yet.” More contacts appeared on the short ranged sensors, behind the alien battle force.