RPG Story:Death of the Devil

Desolace

RPG:

In a swirl of light that was quickly drawn back into massive gaping portal, a ship exited, its hull being visibly stretched as it left the threshold that led to another galaxy, bound to this one by the magic of technology.

It passed through a set of scanners which identified the ship through the markings of the hull. Although it had seen grave battles and was repaired, there was no mistaking the sorely missed emblem of the Unified Space Intelligence.

The identification of the Stealth Project Ship was logged as the ship disappeared into the intense nebula and plasma fields, leaving the range of the scanners.

The chime normally would have awoken Kerok. But like many others, he didn't sleep much anymore. With Tryst in the shape that it was, his LCM wasn't fully functional. Cina had left shortly after arriving in the Beta Spiral, leaving him feeling very alone. So the chime rang in his quarters, loud and obnoxious.

<"Major Admiral">

Seccour cringed. The title these days disgusted him. Titles were intended for those who deserved them. He was a deserter. Leaving his ships, his stations....leaving his people behind to fend for themselves in a Darkarian infested galaxy, to be hunted like prey.

No.

He was no more a man than the highest ranking officer of a once proud force that defied the greatest threat to humanity. He would change that. He vowed and swore oaths that he would change what happened.

Laying on the floor, he moved a wing and sat up from his bed.

"Yes," he said softly but quickly. It was a curt reply, and the officer on the other end could tell.

<"ETA Tryst is 45 Minutes.">

"Thank you."

Tryst. USI's graveyard. He didn't know why he was returning to Tryst. Maybe it was to find some hope that Mariah was still alive. Or even Catherine.

He closed his eyes again, her image was burned permanately there. He saw her when he was awake, he saw her when he slept. She invaded his dreams, and his thoughts.

But even so, he didn't know anything of her fate. The vile creature inside him gave him no clues. Was she Rayne these days ? Had they done something to her when they attacked ? Was she even alive...

These were the questions he asked himself nearly every minute of the day for the past year since they attacked. But even so, he couldn't shake the awful guilt that plagued him worse than the sorrow of the loss of his family.

Lilly.

The last mission on earth, the Darkarians attacked on two fronts for Seccour. Lilly was literally snatched right as the attack on tryst was commencing.

He regretted the order almost as soon as he said it. Leaving her behind on Earth with...

The thoughts made him nauseous. It wasn't what they were doing to her. It was that he left her to their cruel and perverse ways. He didn't necessarily leave her to die, he left her to suffer, to live in agony worse than any creature that had ever lived. This he was sure of.

Fully upright now he walked into his wash room and used a small amount of precious water. The ship refueled back in the Beta spiral but he wasn't sure of their next supply, if any. He had a few locations of unmanned Expletun stations that still had some supplies, but they still had to get there. All of this was of course contingent on a success of their mission.

The water did well to wash away the sorrow from his face, although his eyes could not lie. Taking a last look in the mirror to ponder everything, as He had done every day since that fateful day, he finally closed his eyes with a resolution and left for the bridge.

• • Bridge **

The doors silently opened. His small crew was on the bridge, dutifully working. They looked as he did, worn and tired. Their uniforms were dirty and needing repair. But they did their best to appear clean and kept.

The view screen shown nearly the same thing it had when they left, except this had no Darkarian ships. Looking away from it as he approached the command seat, he ignored what he already knew.

Desolace.

"Send Coordinates to the STNN for Galaxia," He gave the orders as he sat down taking his place on the bridge.

"Aye, sir." came the response. The viewer shifted to a magnified view of the STNN gate suddenly shifting and opening its corridor to the STNN near Galaxia.

NRPG: It begins. I will be posting more as well as Dale, who is helping with the coordination of this plot. You'll find your tags soon ;)

Major Admiral Kerok Seccour Command/Aegis Division USI Stealth USI-0001

Messaging the Eglanand

RPG: Bob had been busy in the intervening few months since the attack on USI. He had become less and less involved in the day to day running of Darklin Reach after most of the repairs had happened. Right now he was sitting in the station CO's office, which he had taken to be his own. He'd installed various additional displays in the office and the adjoining conference room to be used to coordinate fleet operations. Unfortunately, even the small staff who had been helping him hadn't even been able to know the full extent of surviving USI ships. He just couldn't risk the Darkarians finding out about the remaining USI forces or the fleet distribution. Not that the roughly one thousand ships he had contact with were anything near USI's former strength or around a hundred and fifty thousand ships. "Commander, someone here to see you. She's a Nephatsu diplomat," one of Bob's borrowed staff said over his LCM. And by diplomat, Bob was pretty sure his guest was a spy of some sort. He tapped a control, dropping the large holographic display floating in the center of the room, and changing all of the displays in the room to normal looking USI stuff. "Send her in," Bob said. Seconds later, the door opened and a Nephatsu female was standing next in his office. "A commander? I was hoping to see an Admiral here. I have some important information for you," she said, getting right to the point without any introductions. Like all Nephatsu, her skin colouring changed to show how she was feeling, something Bob had never understood and was never able to read. He did recognize that she was good at keeping what she was feeling veiled, which was something Bob could understand in this line of work. "I can assure you that I can act on any information given to me. If I deem it necessary. So, what can I do for you?" Bob asked. She looked around the room apprehensively for a moment as if to decide if this lowly commander standing before her could help her. "Well Commander, there is a USI ship crashed on the third planet in the Beta-Eridanii system. The ship is the USI Troublemaker," she said, pausing while Bob looked the ship up. He raised an eyebrow. She was one of the many ships he presumed lost, but that wasn't the interesting thing. she was missing with an Admiral and the Admiral's staff aboard. Without Tryst's computer, Bob and his staff had to painstakingly rebuild the ship database from fragmentary databases on the remaining ships. "Ah, I see you do have some pull. Well, then. I have reason to believe that that Admiral is stranded there," the Nephatsu said to Bob. "Thanks for the information. By the way, have we met before? Say during a certain 'incident' on Teleb-Three?" Bob asked, having figured out why this Nephatsu seemed familiar to him. "We may have. I consider the favour repaid," the Nephatsu said. "As do I," Bob said, smiling and walking her to the door. Once it was closed, he brought up the display of the Galaxy and where USI ships were. So, from the conversation, she knew for sure that the Admiral was on the ship. And keeping Admirals out of Darkarian clutches was important. He pulled up the area in the air in the middle of the room. Known Darkarian presence in the area was low, but getting there was a different story. However, the perfect ship was already in the area. Bob tapped commands into the computer to route his communications signal to the Eglanand. The computer returned an error message relating the insufficient capacity. Unfortunately USI's communications were currently very patched together and barely worked most days. He exited the office and walked into the outer office which, along with a bunch of lab space directly below it, was full of communications equipment. "I need a connection to the Eglanand. Please punch me through a priority communication," Bob ordered. "Ok, working on that now. Done, you should be able to get an encrypted message through now," the officer reported. "No real time communication?" Bob asked. "Sorry, but the link is very unstable. Text is all we can get with them that far away from any other ships," the officer said. "It'll do. I'll send the message when I'm done," Bob said, returning to the office. He sat down at the chair and entered his authorization code. -Message from Commander Young: acting fleet operations commander. Recipient: USI Eglanand. Authentication follows.- -Attention USI Eglanand CO, please proceed immediately to the Beta-Eridanii system. Please search the third planet for a crashed USI ship and attempt rescue operations if at all possible. Current intel is that Darkarian presence is light to non-existent in the area. However, getting there may be a different story, which is why I chose your ship. Go in as stealthily as possible and investigate. Unfortunately, given the nature of the officers stranded, this mission is very time sensitive and I am unable to get any suitable ships to the area to help you out in a timely fashion. Good luck.- -Message sending.- -Message handshake failed due to data connection loss. Attempting retry.- -Message sending.- -Message sent, waiting for receipt.- -Message delivered successfully.- Bob sighed. He missed the days when he didn't have to spend ten minutes coaxing USI's communications network into sending a text message to a ship.

Commander Bob Young Igerian/Psi Null Acting Fleet Operations Commander, Darklin Reach (Super-Expert Engineer)

Shaken, not Stirred

RPG: Weeks on in their makeshift camp, Neliah looked over at her companion as he came back into camp. Kealan had lost weight, not that he'd had much to lose, but whatever fat reserves either of them had had before crashing onto the planet were gone with all the physical labor they were forced to do each day in order to survive. Ice blue eyes smiled at her when he noticed her watching him, as he always did.

By unspoken agreement, neither talked about how long they would be stranded. The Darkarian attack on USI had been immense and vicious. If there were any USI ships left to rescue them, they'd be found ... eventually. Until then, the pair made the best of their situation.

Dense forest was quickly covering the wreckage of the USI Troublemaker that had cut a swath of destruction for miles on impact. Their small fire was contained within a circle of stones so that it didn't spread and they'd found a stream not too many miles away to fetch water from for boiling. Enough parts had been able to be salvaged from the USI ship that they had bandages and a few antibiotics left. Most of the highly technical portions had been burnt out by the crash landing, the main computing system having fried itself on impact, but they had managed to juryrig a kind of homing beacon. It wasn't strong, but it was steady and anyone looking for them in just the right place, just might come across it.

Neliah went back to her work of crushing the almost inedible roots and tubers. The roots, several inches thick, upon crushing released a paste like substance that eventually could be boiled for dumplings or fried for pancakes. She worried about her family as her arm muscles took over the tedius, if necessary job; had any of them survived the assault? Her homeworld, Windsor, had certain defenses, but they weren't built up to be the military strong power that USI was.

To be continued .... TAGS to Kealan

Admiral Neliah Fitzhugh

The Dawn of a New Day

RGP: USI Eglanand, Selaht Quarters

Serenity struggled to quietly roll over and, finally, lay still again as she watched her daughter sleeping in the bed next to her. Harmony had decided that it was important to ‘be ready’ for the baby to come. Part of that ‘being ready’ had taken on the form of Harmony sleeping with her for the past two weeks. Harmony decided she could be of more help if she was in the same room than if she were in her own room.

Though she was a bit reluctant, Serenity had agreed to it. She wanted Harmony to feel a special part of welcoming Chance, whenever he decided to make his big debut. Still, there were things about childbirth that a four year old didn’t need to know. Thus, Serenity found that she wasn’t sleeping as deeply anymore because she wanted to make sure that Harmony wasn’t in the room when certain things happened.

Chance moved again, this time putting a foot directly onto her bladder. She winced a bit, then moved from the bed and waddled to the restroom.

Minutes later, she was sitting with a cup of water in the small living quarters, Harmony still sleeping soundly in the bedroom. Serenity went over the plans again in her mind. Once Chance was truly on his way, Harmony would either stay at the education center with Gage or TK and Ellie would come over to stay with her. Serenity again found herself thankful for TK’s friendship. Harmony simply adored her and still wanted to be green when she grew up, so that she could be like TK and Ellie. For her part, TK seemed to adore Harmony right back. She had more than proven her friendship when she fought to keep Harmony safe during various attacks. Since Serenity wasn’t a great fighter, it was a great source of comfort to know that there was another set of eyes watching over her daughter.

Serenity slowly rubbed her extremely extended tummy, thinking about how much her life had changed, and how much more it would change with the birth of her second child. Roland was still foremost in her thoughts. It was difficult to think of having their son without him. Though she missed him greatly, there was a small part of her that was thankful he had died before the Darkarian attacks. Knowing he had gone peacefully was at least a little comfort. Had he died at the hands of a Darkarian, she knew the death would be even harder to deal with.

Before she could go much further down that train of thought, sounds from the bedroom brought her back to the current time. She struggled to push up from the couch and managed to just as Harmony can running from the bedroom, a smile on her face. Her large periwinkle eyes were round with excitement.

“Are you ok, Momma? Is Chance coming?”

“No Sweetheart. I just needed some water. It was almost time to get up anyway. We have another full day ahead of us. Go get ready for your shower.”

“Yes, Mamma,” she said, giving her mother a hug before starting to strip from her clothes, leaving pajamas thrown across the living quarters.

Serenity smiled, shaking her head, and worked at bending down to pick them up. Giving up, she headed into the bathroom to help get them both ready for the new day.

NRPG: Tags if anyone is interested – otherwise, just a bit to fill in before the plot really takes off.

Commander Serenity Jurre-Selaht Counselor/Ambassador Chief Medical Officer Jerrusian (Najen) /PR10 USI Eglanand/USI 1200 Lore Class Task Force Alpha