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Jason Moore II -- The Untold Tale of the Tundra - Zapp - 08-30-2008
![[Image: JasonMoore.jpg]](http://www.dropfiles.net//files/2246/JasonMoore.jpg)
Jason Moore I
Previously on Jason Moore...
There it was. The door to the command center of the LNS Tundra. Behind it was probably Chris Murray, whatever state he was in. He had to get him. He had taken a care crossing the rest of the ship, listening harder than when he had first boarded. The ship had turned into a death trap, everything pointing at a setup meant to kill Jason. But he was alive so far, and that was what mattered. And he intended to come out on top.
He contemplated the door. It seemed easy enough, walk up and open it, but there was more involved. What would happen? Would he get shot down by someone waiting for him? Would a Nomad or five jump out of nowhere and rip him to shreds, if not possess his body and take him back to the Legion to infiltrate them? Would there be anyone alive left aboard? There was no window in this door, and no way to know.
Sighing, and realizing he was getting no where with this worrying, he moved to the door and opened it, gun going through first. It was empty, devoid of life. At least he hadn't been killed as soon as he opened the door. Cursing, he was on the point of leaving when he saw another door off the bridge, to his left. The Captain's office, briefing room, whatever you want to call it. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he walked over and opened it.
Behind a metal desk in the shape of a half-circle sat Chris Murray. He had a Liberty Navy uniform on. He was medium build, with brown hair and blue eyes. Soft skin.
"Ah, I've been waiting for you Mr. Moore. You and I have thing we have to discuss."
"The only thing we're discussing," Jason said with a gruff voice, gun pointed at his head, "is what the hell is going on, and who Robert Foster is."
If Chris was perturbed by the gun to his head, he didn't show it. "Mr. Moore, you'll find that toy useless. What happened here was that 'Nomads'" he said, investing scorn in the word, " have taken the ship. And as to the identity of Mr. Foster, I can only give you another hint."
"If Nomads have taken the ship, why are you still here and not with your crew?"
Chris tsked below his breath. "Come now, Mr. Moore, surely you are smarter than that? When they took the ship, only me and my command crew was conscious. The Navy was running deep space experiments, very top secret stuff, and couldn't afford it to be even close to anyone else."
"Wait a minute... if this is top secret, why are you telling me?"
"Because, Mr. Moore," he started, eyes glowing blue, "I'm not Chris Murray."
Jason took a step back, but if 'Chris' noticed, he did nothing. "You see, Mr. Moore, the gun was useless. Now, Robert Foster. Yes, Chris knows of him. Here is what he knows: your next hint would be on Planet Kyushu, in a seedy starport bar. That's it. Now, you'll find that quite useless," three Nomads bounded to the door, "as you're not leaving this ship alive. At least, not as yourself."
"Chris's" laughter flogged a stunned Jason.
As the three Nomads practically materialized in the doorway, he spun into action. At the height of his boxing career, Muhammad Ali could through a 90 mile per hour punch. Jason was no Ali. He could only do 70. With all the force he had, the fist traversed the two feet separating him and Chris, smashing his face in. Jason spun and started shooting. Bullet after bullet ripped into the Nomads, and apparently they didnt like the MOX-tipped rounds so much. Unfortunately for Jason, he didnt know that while he may have killed Chris, the Nomad inside of him wasnt dead.
Gun out of ammo, he moved to holster it, but was hit from behind with enough force for him to lose his breath. Rolling over, a fourth Nomad was reaching out and grabbed his head. Jasons vision blurred and he tried to yell, but his lungs were out of air and his throat was too tight to emit any sound anyway. Some force moved his left fist into the side of the Nomad, which snapped off of him like a barnacle coming off the hull of a ship, which is to say it resisted tooth and nail. The force that almost imploded Chris skull only made the Nomad roll over, hands coming off of Jasons head.
Jason rolled over and jumped on the Nomad, punch after punch landing on what appeared to be an unconscious lump. It didnt fight back. Why didnt it fight back?
*****
Looking in the rear-view cam, a small screen to his left, he saw the Cruiser power to life and engage engines, missiles launching from the turrets. Cursing, Jason slammed right on the controls, and waited for the missile to get closer before jinxing left hard and launching a counter-measure. Missile evaded, quite a few more to go. Apparently the team had seen him and managed to power up the cruiser. Jason sighed; these guys were professionals. Then, the most unexpected thing short of a Rheinland Battleship decloaking in front of him happened. A Nomad Battleship decloaked behind him. It launched weapons on the cruiser and disabled it. Then, it kept flying forward, on an intercept course, appearing to prefer a kamikaze to finishing it off with its impressive guns. The two ships collided in what should have been a massive crash with explosions to boot, but the only thing that happened was that the battleship kept moving, dissolving around the cruiser. It stopped, and the cruiser was now sitting halfway inside the battleship.
Jason Moore II -- The Untold Tale of the Tundra - Zapp - 08-30-2008
Captain Gary Jenson had just come across his command aboard the LNS Mexico, and it was a major step up. A positioning in Alaska was a huge climb in the ranks. Even though technically he wasn't any higher than the other Captains stationed elsewhere, the experience found set him above and beyond any but those in the Navy Guard. And of course the first day on the job he was given the task of patrolling the edge of the system - sometimes dangerous, sometimes not.
Gary, as it was his first time in command of a Cruiser, was very by-the-book. Every 'i' was dotted and every 't' was crossed as far as the manual went, and that, in the end, very likely prolonged their collective life span by about five minutes.
As he sat in his command chair, overseeing the crew do their various activities, the man that was on sensor duty said, "Sir, we have a contact bearing down, dead ahead."
"Hmm? What is it?" he said, perking up. Only thing this far out was Nomads, but he had to make sure.
"Liberty Cruiser, the Tundra sir." There was a pause, then... "That can't be right... the Tundra was lost 7 months ago."
"What?"
"Yeah, records just say 'lost', no details."
"Take us in slowly, and open a channel..."
Jason Moore II -- The Untold Tale of the Tundra - Zapp - 08-31-2008
"Channel open sir," the comm operator said as a slight hissing sound came over the speakers. Gary, with no little trepidation, spoke:
"This is the LNS Mexico to the Tundra, do you read?"
Only silence greeted him in return. He tried again, with much the same result. Then he spoke aside, to the sensor operator.
"See anything over there?" A negative reply was the result, as they were as yet out of range. Gary thought a moment, then told them to contact High Command. "Let's see if they can't tell us the circumstances of its disappearance seven months ago."
The communication was sent, and only a few moments later the screen lit up with the incoming transmission of one of the Admirals himself.
"Captain Jenson, you are to get as many scans as possible and then get the hell out of there, do I make myself clear?"
"Yes sir," he replied, then hesitated and added, "but what is it?"
The Admiral looked skyward for a second before responding in a tired voice, "It went missing in Alaska, Captain. Do the math." The screen went dark.
Jason Moore II -- The Untold Tale of the Tundra - Zapp - 09-01-2008
Captain Jenson was obviously shaken, but he ordered full speed ahead, and that they would stop as soon as they entered sensor range. Seconds, dragging as minutes, passed, and even the buttons on consoles seemed to sense the somber mood and quiet down. A voice broke the seemingly sacred silence:
"Getting scans, sir..." After a moment of study, he looked up. Scared, to say the least. "The entire interior of the ship has been modified, sir. I'm getting Nomad signals all over the damn thing."
"Well get us the hell out of here," Gary spat, the way he sat almost implying that he was going to will the ship to move.
An 'aye sir' came from the helmsman, but was quickly displaced by an expletive and 'they cruise disrupted us!'
Ordering all weapon batteries set to autofire, Gary braced himself as the first salvos of Nomad heavy guns pounded the Mexico.
Jason Moore II -- The Untold Tale of the Tundra - Zapp - 09-02-2008
Agent Paul Carr of the LSF swiped his security card on the small terminal mounted on the wall next to the door, stuck his thumb on a small screen, and scanned his eye using an optical device that was next to the screen. Needless to say, it was a high security room. He had a file under his arm, a thick manila folder that was full of reports.
Inside the room, there was a long bureaucratic table that was laden with similar files, but his made a resounding sound that caught the attention of a certain nameless man in his forties that remained nameless to all but his superiors. The other LSF agents jokingly referred to him as 'Big Brother', as he was their only connection to the higher-ups. Carr himself was a man in his mid-thirties, wiry with brown hair and piercing eyes. Eyes that remained completely neutral, betraying nothing of his inside thoughts. He was universally known by other agents for that poker face, that he held even though he had seen his fair share of atrocities. He had worked cases on Phantoms, Nomads, the Order, Wilde, and had seen everything.
Big Brother opened the folder and gave a cursory scan of the contents, then nodded to himself.
"Good work Agent Carr, you're reassigned to the Tundra. First things first, find the debris of the Mexico... after that, it's up to you."
Jason Moore II -- The Untold Tale of the Tundra - Zapp - 09-03-2008
Alaska, unknown coordinates
Carr's Raven Claw idled next to the slowly expanding debris field, as the various chunks of what had once been the Mexico drifted away and towards other stellar bodies. The scans indicated the use of Nomad weaponry, though there was every now and then a few Liberty cannon marks detected. It was a tad unnerving to hear of a Cruiser coming back from the grave as a Nomad-infested ship, but he had a job to do.
Reporting back to HQ with his findings, he scanned for a trail and found one leading deeper into the unknown fringe areas of Alaska. Sighing, he followed it with much reluctance, knowing that he might be flying to his death. About thirty minutes passed, and he was slightly dozing. A beeping brought him to full alert, and he looked out his cockpit to see...
Jason Moore II -- The Untold Tale of the Tundra - Zapp - 09-05-2008
America Base, Vespucci
Jason Moore sat at a table in the dingy bar on Vespucci, two cards face down in front of him. A few other men sat around the table, each with small piles of credits in front of them. It had been a long game, and most of the bottles around the table were down to their dregs. One after another folded and left, but Jason stayed at the table after they left, thinking. He did that a lot of late, stare into space. He had a pronounced growth of stubble, and he distractedly massaged his face with one hand.
It was in this state that his commlink went off. He ignored the incessant beeping for awhile, but then broke down and answered it, slurring slightly. As the voice went on, he went instantly alert and was out the bar in five seconds.
Jason Moore II -- The Untold Tale of the Tundra - Zapp - 09-08-2008
... a Liberty Cruiser, apparently derelict and drifting. It appeared normal at face value, but if one looked closer he could see patches of glowing purple material on the hull, as if the ship itself had a cancerous disease that was slowly eating it from the inside out. All systems appeared powered down, but Carr took no chances. If being in Alaska didn't have him on edge enough as it was, the Tundra just made sure he was cautious as hell.
Taking and relaying scans back to HQ, Carr was in his most alert state, so when the Cruiser powered up and started firing, he reacted with lightning-quick reflexes and managed to dodge most of the salvos. Turning around and heading back to New York, he sent the latest developments to the LSF. Hopefully they could make something of it.
Jason Moore II -- The Untold Tale of the Tundra - Zapp - 09-22-2008
LSF HQ was pure pandemonium. Quite literally, house of devils. Comm lines were ringing off the hook, specialists poured over the scanner data, Admirals on a conference call were positioning battlegroups in Alaska, and more than a few supervisors were coming in wearing business suits slapped on or pajamas. Carr, who had recently returned, was debriefed no less than five times, each time by someone of a higher rank, all asking essentially the same question.
What the hell was it?
Scans showed that well enough - the Tundra had been transformed into an unholy mix of human and Nomad technology, as if the ship itself was infested with the plague. Also showing were multiple Nomad consciousness 'hubs', individual creatures and control creatures.
The LSF had to plan a course of action, and fast.
Jason Moore II -- The Untold Tale of the Tundra - Zapp - 09-24-2008
While the LSF was lurching through a decision-making process that usually crawled, Jason Moore was taking leaps. Unfettered of the ineffecient bureaucracies, he just left. Climbing into his trusty Sabre, Cassandra II, he launched from America Base and was at maximum speed the entire trip to Alaska, even recklessly rocketing through Zone 21 (which had heightened security, due to the new threat). The tale of the Tundra had, for Jason at least, ended a long time ago, with it being eaten by a Nomad battleship. The implications of it returning were simply too great.
In Alaska, Jason met up with the full brunt of what the Navy had been instituting to combat the Tundra. An entire battlegroup was by the gate, three dreadnoughts and numerous cruisers, gunboats, and fighter squadrons. A lesser man would have wet himself.
Jason merely groaned inwardly.