Some of these events occurred during the event this last weekend (June 3rd to June 5th) but not all of them. I.E. the Nephilim wasn't actually destroyed in Omega-7 but for the sake of the story, it was added. This is a post detailing the end of the ZDF project that I had started. It just didn't work (just as people said it wouldn't) but I wanted to use this chance to do something different and grow the characters I used for the ZDF in a different way and possibly grow something else out of it.
I understand more now as to why it wouldn't work in this current "climate" on Discovery.
Thanks to those who supported me with the attempt. It became something less than fun and more of a stressor and I'm not going to stress myself out in a video game. Not for anyone, not even myself. It's safe to say that I probably won't be making any more attempts on starting a faction of any kind. I leave that to the others who have more time and "tolerance" for that kind of thing.
Enjoy the story, feel free to tell me what you think in my review post for my stories.
~Leo
Kasumi Ito
The stillness of space was disturbed by the warping of reality as a Zoner Fearless class Cruiser appeared. On the hull read the words |ZDF|F-Paradise Lost. It had once reflected the IFF of the powerful Zoner vessel...but not anymore. It's Captain, Kasumi Ito, had since had it changed to something that better reflected her mindset.
She'd left the Zoners because her faith in them had been misplaced. The entire sanctity of the Zoners had been tarnished by the actions of those who would rather place profit over freedom. Days ago, she'd been forced to leave a Zoner station by someone from a House military. Her ships guns impotent and unable to achieve their intended goal of roasting those bastards alive while they sat at their command stations. Shortly after her departure, the communications from Gran Canaria carrying the ZDF flag had ceased without warning. There were reports of the White Rabbit, Zane McAllister's Nephilim and the ZDF flagship, being destroyed in Omega-7. From the reports, it got caught in the crossfire between Rheinland and Bretonia. The news was making the rounds even as she began the docking procedure with Freeport 11. Kasumi had assumed that Zane had interposed himself between the house capital ships and a defenseless Zoner transport. That seemed like something that he would've done. He died as he lived, protecting those who couldn't protect themselves. It appeared that the Zoner Defense Fleet was no more. Dead before it had even begun because of the House systems corruption...because of other Zoners hubris and complacency.
Zane had been a class act. He had been a stern man, but wise beyond his years. He had a plan to ensure that Zoners everywhere would be protected, but the House systems had put an end to that. Intentionally or not, they were to blame for this. They were the cause of all their problems. All of their troubles. She punched the console as the ship came to a rest on the mooring platform. She kept hitting the console until it's glass cracked. Until the digital display warped and distorted. When she stopped, her hand was a bloody mess and the console was no longer operational. She screamed in rage. She was unable to change her fate, she was unable to change her destiny. Destined to be a woman without a home. Destined to always be under the thumb of governments that wanted them to do things their way. First it had been Kusari, now it was all the others.
She stopped, out of breath and panting. She collapsed against the wall to her right and slid down the wall until she was seated. She covered her eyes with her hands and collected her thoughts. She felt the blood from her shattered hand running down her arm as she did so. It helped focus her thoughts, she focused on the pain, on the warmth of the blood. She let the rage in her chest coil; she began focusing it for a purpose. She held it tight until it burned her hand.
"We will have our revenge." she said in a calm and cold tone. "They will pay for their betrayal. They will pay for their hubris. I'll see to that personally if I have to. Even if it takes me decades, I'll see them all pay. I swear it."
Zylar Vespertine
Zane tried to protect the transport that was under fire from the House battlecruiser but the Nephilim just wasn't suited for this kind of combat. It was a colony ship after all and not a battleship. Zane watched as the transport made it away safely, but now the full might of a house military was focused on his ship. He felt the ship begin to shudder under the merciless onslaught of weapons fire. This was it, this was how he died. All he had wanted to do was protect the family he had found after decades of fighting in wars and battles. All he'd wanted to do was to protect them and keep them safe...and this was his reward...back fighting again in battles where he was outmatched and outgunned.
He ordered the crew to abandon ship as warning klaxons began to sound; the ship was coming apart...his father's ship was going to be destroyed but it was going to be destroyed protecting those that couldn't protect themselves from the bullies of the house governments. He watched the console on the bridge as the escape pods launched. All had managed to get off the ship, he was the last one on board. He hoped that the house military outside would spare them and allow them to return to their families but if he knew the house systems, they'd probably spend years in a jail cell.
He snarled in rebellion. One last roar from a dying, proud man. He stood tall and stared into the face of his death. He'd always known it might happen like this...he wasn't afraid. He was pissed.
"You fuckers won't break me. You hear?" he said in a defiant tone. "I won't let you take me. I'll fight you until all I have left is my teeth! You hear me? I. Will. Not. Break! You might destroy my ship! You might strip me of my weapons and my ability to defend myself from your inhumane ways but I will always. Have. My. Pride!"
Zane stood proudly on the deck of the White Rabbit as the ship splintered into pieces, explosions going off from fuel and other devices onboard overloading. The House fleet turned and continued their patrol. Uninterested in the debris that remained.
The Zoner Defense Fleet was no more.
Kasumi Ito
Days had gone by but they felt closer to weeks...months even. She knew that she had to make a plan soon. After she scraped off the old ZDF tag on her ships hull, she spent a few days rebranding the ship to it's current IFF. "Katakiuchi". It meant revenge in her native tongue and she couldn't think of a better name to name the ship after it's previous name. It had been named "Paradise Lost" before, named after an ancient Earth poem dictating the fall of man. Now, all she had on her mind was revenge...and now even her ship was named after it. After she finished that, she spent her days hunting down Nomads for the station administration. They were a real problem out in these parts. Hunting them helped to focus her rage and clear her mind. She had no direction, no plan, and no way to implement one even if she did.
She had just finished another patrol when her comm. Pinged with a missed message. She opened it expecting more bad news but got the shock of her life.
Zylar Vespertine
Even after the White Rabbit was destroyed, Zane still clung onto life...somehow. As the ship had come apart, it's command deck had managed to remain intact for the most part. When he came to, he had a gash that ran from his forehead down to his jaw. He winced in pain as he stood up and swayed on the deck.
"Definitely a concussion." he mumbled to himself. He looked out the window of the command deck, seeing pieces of the once proud Nephilim Colony Ship floating past. They were each moving deeper into the cloud, soon to be forever lost to the ether.
Zane balled his fists up in anger.
"I thought I'd found a different path...but even here my destiny falls back onto the same path that I had intended as before. Well fine. I guess I'll follow my original plan after all." he went to the emergency cabinets and pulled out one of the Zoner VAC suits. After putting it on and sealing himself with an audible hiss, he began the long trek down to the docking bays.
When he arrived he saw that most had fallen out of the back of the forward section of the ship that was now free spinning in the cloud of Omega-7. He moved carefully around the debris that littered the interior of the ship to find one Osprey pinned against the wall by some bulkheads. He carefully moved around the pieces of metal careful not to get a hole in his suit. He climbed up onto the hull of the fighter and opened the cockpit. He skipped the preflight check and engaged the engines, pushing the pieces of metal away from the ship and exited from the back of the forward section.
As he flew around the forward section of the ship inspecting the damage, he saw how much damage the House battleships had truly done. The ship was in three pieces, each cartwheeling away from the other into the depths of the cloud. He could barely make out the rear section, it's engines still partially firing and flying away from the other pieces far faster, it's engines the only thing seen in the dark dusk of the Omega-7 cloud. The domes on the sides of the middle section were completely destroyed, the parks and gardens inside withering from the exposure to vacuum and the corrosive materials in the cloud. Zane took one last look at the ship and felt his anger returning. There would be payment for this in blood. He opened his communicator and keyed in a contact.
"Kasumi, this is Za-" he started, but corrected himself midway through saying his name. He was no longer Zane. He would never be again. That was his Zoner name. He wasn't going back to that life. He repeated his communication. "Kasumi, this is Zylar. You knew me as Zane but I've left that name behind just as I've left the Zoners behind. Transmit me your location and standby for my arrival. I have need of your ship and I have need of you. We're going to make these bastards pay.
Freeport 11 - One week after the destruction of the White Rabbit and end of the ZDF
Zylar's Osprey touched down on the landing pad inside of Freeport 11. He had only been out this direction a few times on patrols during his time leading the ZDF. Delta was quite a bit away from Omega-48, so his stays here had been brief, usually just making sure that all was well with the station administration and then moving on from there. He pulled the key out of the Osprey and collected his belongings. He wouldn't be coming back to the fighter. He stepped out of the landing pad and headed for the bar where he was supposed to meet Kasumi.
Kasumi was a firecracker for sure, he knew that when he initially brought her into the fold a few months ago. He knew that she'd left the ZDF before it had fallen but he didn't hold that against her. He'd read the brief report from her shortly before the events in Omega-7. Forced to leave Freeport 1 because of a deal that had been brokered with the Bretonia Government. If that had happened to him, he might've done the same thing. They'd signed away their rights to police their own station to the very house that had stolen Gran Canaria from them and killed their people. It was disgusting. It was possible that they were pressured into it by the Bretonians; that they'd come along and strong-armed them into it. It seemed like a tactic they would use, after all. Things like that were going to change though if he had his way. They would all pay for their evil in various ways, but the first way they would pay was in blood. He was sick of the Houses getting away with all the shit that they did to others.
Zylar wanted to believe that he had a foolproof plan to make them pay, but he didn't. He had the framework of a plan but nothing concrete. It would take patience and a serious amount of credits to pull off but he was willing to put in the effort ot make these bastards pay for all their wrongful deeds.
He came into the bar and searched the crowd. Eventually, he saw a Kusari woman hunched over a drink near the window of the bar. He remembered when he had first met her months ago on the stolen Destroyer she was flying. She'd looked younger then; brighter. Now, she looked smaller and less bright; almost dulled. She'd been a Dragon before fighting against the Kusari Government. Then a Zoner who were taken advantage of by all of all of the Houses...and now she wasn't really anything anymore. He understood her anguish. He understood her pain. He had found the Zoners after a lifetime of disappointments and anguish and now he was right back to where he started.
He was going to change all that though, he hoped. He would make them pay.
"Kasumi." he said speaking up. She half turned her head towards his voice and then faced back forward.
"Not dead then?" she replied. Her voice no longer carrying the lilting tones he was used to hearing from her.
"They tried their best." he said taking a seat next to her.
They sat in silence for a while, each harboring their own feelings towards what had happened over the past week. The realization of the fact that the Houses really didn't respect the Zoners, the destruction of the White Rabbit and the death of the ZDF...all of it. He glanced over towards her. Her right hand was wrapped in a bandage, the color of blood barely visible seeping out from the cloth. Seems he wasn't the only one with anger issues these days. Somehow, the thought of that made him surprisingly happy.
"You said we were going to make them pay." Kasumi said speaking up finally. "These are House systems though. Governments. How can two people hope to make them pay for what they've done? What they're doing?" she said her voice slowly becoming tinged in anger.
"I don't have the specifics worked out. I only have the very basis of an idea. You and I won't do anything initially. We will earn money for odd jobs. We'll disappear from memory. Let the memory of the ZDF fade into obscurity as well. We'll build a nice nest egg of credits; a war chest if you will. Then once we have everything set and ready, we'll begin our plan. We'll use others to achieve our goals without them realizing. They will be cells of a plot that they have no idea they're participating in until it's too late. Then we'll pull the trigger and none will be the wiser that we are the culprits."
Zylar had never said his idea out-loud before. Hearing it made him sound like some maniacal mad man...like a terrorist. But he supposed that was what he had become. What he'd been forced into. Kasumi turned to face him. Her eyes full of anger and rage but also glee.
It had been weeks since the end of the Zoner Defense Fleet. Kasumi was still pissed off but not nearly as angry as she had been right after coming here. She'd settled into a routine here at Freeport 11. Each morning she would wake up after a short sleep, load up her ship with ammo, batteries, and other items and set out into the system to take care of things. Mostly, that involved cleaning up the Nomads or their friendlies that routinely caused problems for passing traders or the like. Recently, there had been some AI spritzing out attacking passing transports, so she'd added that to her list of things to watch out for at Zylar's request.
Over the past week of being in Omicron Delta, he had completely lost his drive for revenge and had begun hunting Nomads and other things out here as his primary goal. Kasumi hated to admit it, but she had too. Initially she'd been so focused on getting revenge on everyone who'd wronged her but overtime she began to understand that these things out here were much more of a threat than the Houses implementing their stupid laws. If they didn't draw the line in the sand here, or if they failed to stop them here, then all of that was moot. The aliens would overrun everything and destroy or enslave humanity. That was not something she was keen on leaving to chance. Even if she had to fight to the last, she would.
Secretly, she'd been thankful to find a new purpose. It had taken her longer to acquiesce to it than Zylar had but she'd grown to accept it. The line had to be drawn here lest the monsters out here take that as a sign of weakness. The truth of these things shook her to her core. She didn't even know the full story about them yet, but they still scared the absolute shit out of her and she wasn't going to let them get their way.
Zylar Vespertine - Captain of the Eventide
Zylar knew that what he was doing was right. Over the past few days the veil had been lifted from his eyes. He had heard of the Nomads and their kind before. But he never realized the true threat they posed. He heard rumors here and there. He heard stories from some Order Agents that probably shouldn't have told him anything considering their secrecy. However, as a direct result of that, it had changed his entire outlook and path. Instead of going after the Houses and their sins, he would go after what no one really ever considered more than stories: The Nomads. He had picked up the Cheshire from Kappa after it's completion, he had outfitted it with the best technology that he could get his hands on. Developed by the best and brightest minds that had ever graced the cosmos. He had the ship reinforced and rebuilt from nearly the ground up. It had cost him dearly in the end but the ship was ready for combat. With it's new name Eventide emblazed on the front of the ship, he had set out into Omicron Delta to bring the Nomad to their knees where ever he could.
If one Freelancer and a group of Order could stop the Nomads when he was still a babe, then he could do the same with a Carrier, a Destroyer, and a group of great people. Zoners who believed in the same things that he did: Stopping the Nomads here and now. Preventing them from taking another step and pushing them back. They would.