Bridge, Tuatha de Danaan
Unknown Grid Location
Void Space / Shattered Universe
Merlow looked at the crew of the Tuatha de Danaan, the Flag Ship of the Liberty Navy. It was flanked by a large fleet of ships, Liberty and Zeta. It had been a long time since his days as a Lieutenant in the First Fleet, fresh from a new universe, under Fleet Admiral Cerun's command. Now, he had more field experience than most commanders in any universe. He had rebuilt the First Fleet after it had been torn apart by the tantrum known as a black hole. It had flung the First Fleet in all directions in yet another universe. Yet they had persevered, and had been reborn. Unfortunately, the Universe they had adopted was beginning to fall apart, literally. Jump holes began engulfing entire worlds, and nebulae were turning into deathtraps. The Badlands were emitting such radiation that it began to destabilize the star in the center of the system, flinging Liberty into disarray. In a desperate attempt, the Four Houses decided to create sleeper ships once again, this time to escape the universe. It was decided that the First Fleet were to take the entire Sleeper Ship fleet, including Liberty's sleeper ship the Liberty's Destiny into the safest hole they knew of: The Interstate Hole 002, the second FF created Artificial Jump Hole. They had redialed the coordinates to another universe in order to ensure their survival.
He looked at Tessa, who looked up from her command chair, those piercing blue eyes staring up at him. She looked at him questioningly, practically reading his thoughts.
"Tessa," he said softly, "I can't believe we're doing this again."
"Yes, but this time we have the help of Zeta Technology and the Zeta themselves to help guide us through."
"Too true." He looked to the helmsman, and gave the command, "Helm, lay in a course for Interstate Hole 002. Transmit the coordinates to the fleet and engage."
Forward the ship glided, followed by the coalition fleet, into a new universe, a new Life...
Commander in Chief of the Migrant Fleet / Former Fleet Admiral of the Liberty First Fleet Second Survivor of the Mentat Program. We must give and take with good measure. Give too much, we become complacent. Take too much, we incur the wrath of our own. Tread Lightly. --Supreme Bashar Robert Merlow--
Kimiga sat in the chair as the ship rocked through subspace. The massive black and red ship sat flying behind the smaller human one that Merlow was on. Subspace wasn't a smooth transition, yet she had done it almost twice now. She was suprised that the Human body could take this much of a beating, although, the human ship had Zeta technology now, so it didn't surprise her that they were able to keep 'a float' in subspace.
"Admiral Merlow, this is Kimiga here. My science officers do not have an exact placement for the end of the subspace rift, it may be 6-7 hours off your port bow."
A large subspace tear illimuminated the world around the small planet. An ancient hypergate was spinning and in it was Raziel, holding the rift open. Sweat dripped off his brow as he strained to hold the rift open. Several of Merlow's friends helped him take a majority of the weight off, but it wasn't easy to keep the gate open. His two sons, Janzt and Trehern were helping him as well, but still, even then, it wasn't easy.
Don'Kavosh were attacking the crash site almost on the hour and every hour, Janzt or one of the other Zeta would take them out. I had yet to see the Zeta/Nomad Hybrids again, prehaps they were saving them for something bit. That worried Raziel more than anything. The Don'Kavosh wern't stupid enough to put all their aces on the table like they had with the Zeta and Nomad before. The Don'Kavosh were planning something...
A creature sat in the darkness, it's blue eyes glowing in the darkness. He looked up from the darkness and brushed the blue hair out of his face and rattled the chains that held him and his fellow Setanta. He looked up from the darkness and smiled at the Don'Kavosh in the Hazsuit in front of him.
"It begins." he said.
"Did that thing just talk?" said the Don'Kavosh. Before the Don'Kavosh could get fully turned around the Setanta put his hands on the wall and his fingers lit up blue. The entire transport rolled to the side and slammed into the wall as it passed. The Transport ripped open and the Setanta ripped off his chains that held him. He looked to the other escaping Setanta.
"Cause chaos, destroy everything. Leave nothing alive. I go to aid our common ally...Abaddon."
Merlow grabbed hold of the railing in front of him as the Dannan made the transition into void space. This was the first time that a human dreadnought ever made the harrowing transition into void space and survived the rigors of entry. Tessa sat in the chair next to him, digging her nails into the reconstructive nanite material. She was nervous as a high schooler going on her first date, she was liable to rip the cushions right off of the armrests had they not been constructed and composed of nanites.
The crew was quite rigid, trying to focus on staying in place more than keeping the ship in line. Merlow walked over to the scanner control officer and personally took some readings. He was amazed at the readings, utterly dumbfounded. It contradicted everything he knew about void space. Tessa simply looked in Merlow's direction, confused at how he was able to keep himself upright and completely relaxed in this space.
After another few seconds, the ship suddenly stopped it's violent upheaval, the bridge becoming calm once more. Everyone looked at one another in silence wondering what the hell just happened.
"Sir," Tessa asked tentatively, playing with her long, silver ponytail, "What exactly just happened here?"
"Tessa, welcome to Void Space," Merlow replied with a smile, "We are in the outer-reaches of the universe, beyond normal existence," the crew raised a collective eyebrow to that comment, "I know, it sounds a bit Twilight Zone-ish, but that is the truth. I can't put it in better terms than that."
Commander in Chief of the Migrant Fleet / Former Fleet Admiral of the Liberty First Fleet Second Survivor of the Mentat Program. We must give and take with good measure. Give too much, we become complacent. Take too much, we incur the wrath of our own. Tread Lightly. --Supreme Bashar Robert Merlow--
Sayne juggled with his datapad as the ship rocked and jostled around. It fell out of his hands and slid under a bed just as the ship stopped rocking.
Cursing his luck, Sayne slid underneith the bed and grabbed the small datapad. Satasfied with his accomplishment of getting the datapad he jumped back up with a smile on his face. He scanned through the avaliable data of the universe they were preparing to pass into. Similar to his home universe and that's when he realized...this was an identical universe to his old one.
"Hey brother of mine." his sister said coming up along side him. "What you got there?"
"Scans of the system we're coming up on. It's identical to our home universe." Sayne replied.
His sister gasped in surprise.
"Would that mean-"
"I know what you're thinking, and maybe, if we would be able to kill our different counterparts and take their place, we could take over where we left off as it were."
"Interesting idea...I'm going to eat dinner, I'll catch up with you later. You might want to eat too while the ship is still stable."
"I might, I'll see you later Jess."
Sayne turned towards the hallway leading to the bridge and walked down it towards the door at the end.
The crew settled down, finally focusing on their jobs rather than the space around them. Merlow saw that the crew was finally back in their comfort zone, pressing a few buttons on Tessa's command console situated on her right armrest. He bent down, whispering in her ear.
"Tessa, to the Sit Room. This is important. Bring Mardukas and Kalinin." With that, he swiveled around and made his exit.
Tessa sat there for a moment, pondering. We've been through the worst of it. What could he want now? With a shrug, she pointed at Captain Richard Mardukas and Commander Andrey Kalinin motioning them to follow her out. They nodded silently, following their Commanding Officer. They walked through the halls, men and women moving quickly out of their ways, rendering salutes as they walked by. They neared the Sit Room, noticing the rather strange shimmer in front of the door. They entered, surprised to see what seemed to be the full Convention of Twelve roster and then some. Merlow motioned to three empty seats near Section 9 Commander Jonathan Wright. They sat down, the holographic imager in the center of the circular table flaring to life. It displayed an image of the Liberty Insignia, surrounded by the insignias of the other five houses. With this, Merlow began.
"Good, everyone is here," Merlow said, clapping his hands together, "Now, this is a situation that we've never had to deal with before. We're transporting the remnants of an entire universe with us. The only thing standing between what is out there and these sleeper ships are us, a few ships from the other houses and the Zeta. Where do we begin?"
Commander in Chief of the Migrant Fleet / Former Fleet Admiral of the Liberty First Fleet Second Survivor of the Mentat Program. We must give and take with good measure. Give too much, we become complacent. Take too much, we incur the wrath of our own. Tread Lightly. --Supreme Bashar Robert Merlow--
Sweat dripped off my brow as I held the rift open, I was starting to run out of energy and wasn't sure if I could hold it open much longer. I fell to one knee, still holding the rift open. Two feet appeared in front of me and I looked up to see one of the Nomad/Zeta hybrids standing in front of me.
For a second, I paniced, then it closed it's eyes and I felt energy coursing through my veins. I stood up and felt like I could hold the gate open longer. More of the creatures showed up giving me more energy.
"Now you take our place." I said to the creature "Fight them at every turn my ally. Destroy them. They are evil in every universe I have been in. They are the epedimy of distruction. They cause hurt and anger...
"Kill them."
The creature nodded once and got close to me.
"I will take this over now. You go." and it shoved me into the rift. I felt as if I was being torn to pieces...thrown into the void.
I stood on the bridge of the Zeta Flagship. Nothing had been happening for several hours now, but Merlow assured me we were moving. Didn't seem like it, all I saw was blackness, like space with no stars.
The bridge shook very hard and I looked around startled.
"Everyone ok?" I said.
"Almost..." said a voice at my feet, I looked down to see my father. "I'm going to need a minute." he said smiling.
"Well, first off," started Jonathan Wright, Director of Section 9, "where do we settle?" he asked, looking around the table, "We have been tasked with bringing everyone that we could from the last universe and settling down, but where? We can't bring them to the houses, that would cause over-population. We have to look and look pretty damn hard to find ourselves a place to settle."
Former FF FADM Cerun spoke up, "Why don't we create a world? We have the technology to accomplish this in a matter of years. We can keep the ships on ice 'till then. In that time, we could probably make ties with the houses, see what supplies we could get..."
"No, I don't think that's all that feasible, Sir," Rear Admiral Teletha Testarossa said, shaking her head, "It can take near half a decade to get a planet created, not to mention another few decades to get the requisite flora and fauna growing and acceptable to human tolerances. There are plenty of planet and planetoids that we could populate. I mean, there are the Taus--"
"And what?" interrupted Marine General Thomas Serov, "Do what the Kushani did? Take Harris by force, declare ourselves our own nation, and live in constant fear that Outcasts, Bretonians, and Kusari on going to constantly be at odds with us? Now that's just suicide. Even with Zeta ships in the fleet, who says that they're not just going to pick up and leave as soon as we emerge from the other side?"
"You would like that, wouldn't you Serov?" said a voice from the door. The meeting members turned their head towards the voice, finding a Kimiga Dark staring back at all of them, "Look, we really can't leave you guys out there alone, can we? It would simply be foolish. We need you as much as you need us."
"Kimiga's right on this one, guys," Merlow said, "They really have no where else to go. We need them if we are to stand a chance of forging a home here. If we don't work together, our lives could be forfeit."
A strange black hole emerged on the floor of the room next to Kimiga, fluctuating with strange energies. Out of the hole rose a humanoid figure: tall, black hair, red eyes. This figure materialized as the familiar...
"Raziel." Merlow said with a ghost of a smile, "Didn't think you would actually make it here with us."
Commander in Chief of the Migrant Fleet / Former Fleet Admiral of the Liberty First Fleet Second Survivor of the Mentat Program. We must give and take with good measure. Give too much, we become complacent. Take too much, we incur the wrath of our own. Tread Lightly. --Supreme Bashar Robert Merlow--
"To be honest Merlow, I didn't either. The masters have been left behind in the previous universe. Their new creations will destroy them. I know not if they will follow us through. If they do, I don't think they will pose a threat to the Zeta or Humanity. They broke the chains of slavery just as the Zeta did all those years ago.
"However, they are currently holding the rift open, and I don't know their strength so if we don't hurry through here, it's a possibility we could get stuck in void space, and if that happens, well...I don't think you want to know."
"My father is right," Kimiga said. "Void space isn't so 'void'. Back a few hundred years ago we send some vessels into void space, hoping to take it over, but those ships vanished for reasons unknown. We believe that there is a race here. We nicknamed them "Phantoms". They're only dark energy spheres, but cause a terrifying amount of damage. You all have never been in void space for this long of a time. I believe the Phantoms are pushing the exit point of Void space further back, so that they can attack the vessels. We need to start pushing the engines harder, engage hyperdrive if possible, because if we don't they will surely attack us soon."
"Damn," Merlow muttered to himself, rapping his fingers on the table. He leaned forward, resting his chin upon his closed hand, "I've never had to deal with such being, and I've traveled through Void Space many a time, traveling between universi in my Winter and Typhoon fighters."
"Ah," Raziel responded thoughtfully, "They probably saw a few fighters as no threat or a target worthy of their attention. We're bringing through a convoy, Robert. The Phantoms are attracted to energy like 'moths to a flame,' as you humans would say. With this much power flowing through these ships and so many lives in such an area, we're literally beacons in the dark."
"That would explain the extremely strange readings I received on the scanners. How about combat, how do we fight these things off?"
"I couldn't tell you," Kimiga said, scratching her neck, "as I said, we haven't seen the ships we sent in here since."
Merlow thought to himself a moment, contemplating the next move for the fleet. He looked around the table, glancing at the eyes of everyone in the room. He knew he had a responsibility to his people, and he had to fulfill that role.
"We'll slip into hyperspace, then." he said with finality in his voice, "If we can't fight them, we have to outrun them. We really have no other choice."
There was a general murmur of consensus, agreeing with Merlow's order. They all looked at Kimiga and Raziel for their response.
Commander in Chief of the Migrant Fleet / Former Fleet Admiral of the Liberty First Fleet Second Survivor of the Mentat Program. We must give and take with good measure. Give too much, we become complacent. Take too much, we incur the wrath of our own. Tread Lightly. --Supreme Bashar Robert Merlow--
"That's the thing." Raziel said. "I don't know if your hyperdrives will work in Void space. It's a blurred line really. If you can, good, if not, my people will work on a drive of some sorts, we should be able to come up with something if your Hyperdrive systems do not work.
"In the mean time, conduct continous sweeps of the area, keep an eye out for what was reported as strange metalic looking dark spheres. That is what the Phantoms are in."
(The Phantoms in this RP are not the same as the faction on the server, sorry for any confusion)
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