Those who were around during the final days of WON/SIGGS, I am sure you will remember my old clan. Below is obviously a fictional representation of those last few days on WON, from the presepective of one clan.
It was years before that they stumbled across it. Structures buried deep below the planets surface. Left over from the original colony. Perfectly preserved just waiting for the people to return and restart the systems.
When they had found it they had been called the Elite Guard, the last vestiges of the Eden Colony Guards. Left behind when the Eden Clipper made its hasty launch for the Starship. Since then a lot had happened, many had died, or disappeared. The Blight slowly and inexorably continued its crawl across the surface of New Terra.
Now they were known as the Âlpha Ðefense League, they had built not one, but 5 ships since then. Each one more sophisticated the last. Yet still a handful remained behind on New Terra each time. Now there would be no new ships. The Blight surrounded them almost entirely. Slowly marching across the planet. Norad did not understand it one bit.
He did not understand any of it. He was not a scientist by any means. He was a Commander of the ÂÐL, A military man tried and true. He did not understand why the Admiral did not call for a ship to come and rescue them. He did not understand why he and 150 others including the Admiral had to stay behind on a planet and die at the hands of the Blight just so someone could protect a few dozen Tiger Thors. Every time he asked S3 the answer was always the same, “We must make sure.” That or, “Just make sure they are placed on or below level 3.” Great, Wonderful, lets hide a bunch of Thors, on a planet where there is no one else left to take them and do anything with them.
To make matters worse, 3 days ago his Savant Specter informed him that both the Luxitania and the Leviathan were in orbit above the planet. At 1st he felt a sigh of relief; obviously the Admiral had called them here to make a last minute evacuation. That relief lasted all of the 20 seconds it took him to turn around in his Command Center chair and tell the Admiral they were there.
“S3, The Luxitania and the Leviathan are now in Geosync orbit, directly above our position.”
“Good, thank you Norad.” Said the Admiral then turned to his personal Savant and began issuing orders to the automated system of the 2 ships. “Nemesis link with Luxitania’s and Leviathan’s systems. Place them into guard mode; have them guard this site until otherwise informed by me. Their going to be watching over us for a very long time.”
Nemesis had been sluggish and slow for a long time now. Some years back a brief war between the Elite Guard and Clan Wolf had flared up, and the Savant had been caught in the blast of a dieing Advanced Lab. Why the Admiral kept nemesis instead of getting a new one was mind boggling at best. Norad had once overheard Red Sonya ask why he kept Nemesis despite hundreds of newer models that where perfectly functional, he did not even think, simply said “Nemesis has forgotten more then any Savant in existence will ever know.”
Never the less Nemesis slowly began his work, when he was finished he stated in a clipped but slow accent “Interface completed, Guard mode set for Luxitania and Leviathan.”
“Thank you Nemesis.” Said S3, then he got up from his chair, and swiftly moved to the front of the Command Center. “Everyone, may I have your attention.” He waited a few moments until he had it. “I know I have been keeping you all in the dark for a long time now, and that I have asked you all to give more then I really should have asked. I know full well that you are putting your very lives on the line for what you perceive to be no reason at all.”
He coughed once briefly, and then kept going. “9 weeks ago, the last of our planet based science staff proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that not only will the Blight over take us in 3 to 4 days from now, but that despite prior information, does not enter deeply into the soil of the planet. As we all know it was designed originally as a terraforming agent. In short it was designed to reach down roughly 12 to 18 feet. Recently however it’s only going down about 5 to 6 feet, if at all. The reason is its running out of steam. That’s right as you all know the Blight has been slowing down for some years now. Initially when it was released it traveled at an exponential rate. Nearly as fast as a Tiger can travel over dozed terrain. However it quickly slowed its growth after only a month’s time, and after 6 months time, before Eden departed, it had slowed to what amounts to 1 kilometer per day extra coverage total. Since then it has been fairly stable at that speed. However we also know from experience that it is no longer nearly as potent as it once was. We have seen many of our vehicles enter it and sustain no damage at all. We have deliberately sent vehicles into it in recent months that are even now completely active and under our control.” “What none of you are aware of, is one of those vehicles has found evidence of survivors inside the Blight.”
Virtually everyone in the room took in an audible gasp. “As a result I had several of our Command Center Savant’s work up a model of potential survivability with in the Blight. The results were astounding. Based upon telemetry data from vehicles inside the Blight at varying positions, the Savant’s have predicted that Humans could conceivably live inside the more recently infected areas for 15 years before the begin to suffer effects of the Blight, 20 before anything serious sets in, and 25 before death or serious irreversible damage sets in.”
Again he paused briefly to let those numbers sink in. “What’s more is according to predictions, the Blight will phase its self out before 10 years has passed. Of course we all have known this for a long time now. The data originally collected by Eden from the infected labs of the original Eden Colony said as much. Based on all of this information I have been forced to make a decision to remain here and keep those of you here with me until the threat of the blight has passed. As such we will in 3 days proceed below level 3 and enter cryogenic suspension, to wait out the Blight. There are 2 main reasons why I have come to this decision. 1st, even though our name has changed, we are still all that remains of the Eden Colony Guard, as such we must fulfill our mission and protect all Eden tech from looters, and if possible the Blight. Secondly, this is the ÂÐL’s base of operations. All that we are is due to this planet. There was of course a third consideration. We still do not know in which direction the Eden Starship set out. As I am sure many of you recall, that data was lost to us when the Colony had to quickly be abandoned. The Damage done by Plymouth’s last attack was extensive and the Blight was on our heals. It was only with shear luck that we managed to scrape together a Command Center, Structure Factory, Agridome, and Ore Smelter before we lost control of the Colony. As a result, it’s entirely possible that someday those from the Starship may send back a probe of some kind to see if anything survived. I would very much love them to find us here and doing well.”
Well that was 3 days ago. Other members of the group were happy, Norad was not. He had begged and pleaded with S3 for hours after that speech to forget this foolishness and to abandon the planet. Despite the Savant’s assurances, Norad was all too certain that they were all going to die. He even had tried desperately yesterday to break the Admiral’s control codes and cease control of Leviathan. It was after all the ÂÐL’s Command ship and he was the ÂÐL’s Commander, specifically head of the Intelligence Division. Despite his and Specter’s best efforts Nemesis kept a tight hold on those ships. An amazingly tight hold considering Nemesis wasn’t really up to speed on much of anything these days.
He also had Specter run the figures, and Specter had just now finished them. Obviously working alone there were only so many calculations he could run at one time. It was obvious from the data that Specter had made a lot of guess’s, and speculations. One of his cubed faces showed the projections that the Command Center’s Savants had come up with, and 3 other sides show variations of his own calculations. Only 1 promised a long and happy life. The other 2 showed various awful prolonged deaths. Silently he cursed Specter for not giving him accurate data. It was all his own fault though. He had Specter built specifically to run scenarios and give multiple versions with likely percentages of occurrences. For battles it was great, it allowed spur of the moment changes. For times like now Specter was as useless as a Rare Ore mine inside the Blight.
He heard the sounds of an ore truck behind him. He turned to study it. “Hmmph that’s odd, I thought they were all inside already. Specter, interface with that ore truck and have it move to its birth.”
Quickly the 4 light up faces blinked out and vehicle control screens came on. After a moment Specter spoke. “I’m Sorry Norad, but I am unable to interface with that ore truck, it is not on my registered systems database.”
That’s when Norad noticed the symbol painted on its door; clearly it had been there for a long time. 1 3 quarter circle surrounding the outside, 3 pieces of a pie, and 1 large piece of pie. The Eden sign. It was in that moment that Norad noticed where the truck was headed.
“Norad to command!”
“Go ahead Norad, this is Sonya.”
“Red evac command, were under attack.”
“What? Norad you and I both….”
She was cut off as the truck hit the out wall of the Command Center and self destructed.
“What the Hell” Said Red Sonya after she got up off the floor. “Norad can you hear me?”
“Red there are more of them closing in on command. Get everyone out of there; we don’t have any Vecs left up top to defend with.” As he spoke he was running for the nearest tunnel entrance. As he got there his communications gear lit up like a Christmas tree. One took precedence over the others. He double blinked at the flashing icon that looked like an old earth sea going battleship, he was instantly greeted by the sound of the Admiral, obviously in full Admiral mode.
“Status?” Said S3.
“Mine or yours, or who’s?” Asked Norad.
“Yours.”
“Making a break for the tunnel.”
As soon as S3 began to speak again he heard more explosions rocking command, “Make it fast I have Leviathan powering its weapons.”
“Ad! Are you crazy, its going to tear the Command Center to shreds.”
“Better we do it, then who or whatever is controlling those trucks.”
At that moment Norad was sealing the tunnel hatch behind him. “I’m in.” He said, but he knew he was not heard so he yelled it a second time. “I’m in!”
No more then a heart beat later he heard through his comm. Implant, as well as the bases speaker system and through Specter’s comm. Panel the Admiral’s gravelly voice. “Leviathan commence fire.”
Leviathan was the Command ship of the ÂÐL. So much more then a Starship. It had been designed on another planet, and built on another planet. It was part carrier, part Battle Ship, part Transport, and all around hell on anything that pissed it off. Unfortunately it was not designed for pinpoint accuracy. Its smallest ground attack weapon was not only capable of taking out whole command centers with one blast, but it also wasn’t very small. Its blast radius was about the size of an Advanced Lab.
Norad saw a bright light behind him, and then he remembered nothing at all before he woke up in the underground medical bay. He looked around, and at 1st thought he was alone, then he heard S3 say, “About time you woke up.”
Norad tried to ask how the CC was, but was having a hard time talking; he tried several times before he finally choked it out. “How’s Command.” God his voice sounded awful.
“Its still there, I sent a repair vec up top to take care of the damage. Leviathan has been instructed to destroy anything that come with in one mile of this place.”
“What happened?”
The Admiral reached over to a large pitcher and grabbed the spoon that hung out of it. He put some ice chips onto the spoon and gave the spoon to Norad. “One of the beams from Leviathan pierced the tunnel you were in. It collapsed; we had to dig you out. Thankfully Specter lead us to you.”
“God I’m so tired S3.”
“No problem, soon as our better Sonya and I will put you into cryo, then I’ll get Sonya settled in, then I will go last, and have Nemesis watch over us.”
“Where’s everyone else?”
“2 days ago they went into cryo after the Blight closed the gap to 60 feet from the CC’s walls.”
“2 days ago?”
“Yeppers, you’ve been out of the loop for a few days now.”
S3 left the room, with out saying anything else. He was like that sometimes. Sometimes he would sit around and chat endlessly, other times he would barely say anything at all. Sometimes he was like a father, doing oddly nice things like handing a sick man a few chips of ice, but always making them actually put them in their mouth. Norad long ago stopped expecting S3 to say goodbye, or see you later when he left a room. On those rare occasions when it happened Norad always made it a point to acknowledge the Admiral.
Norad had Specter replay the last few minutes of the Battle above ground for him. He clearly saw what Leviathan had been aiming for. 3 RPG tigers were closing in on the CC, just as they rolled over the Tunnel, Leviathan opened fire. Just one small edge of its weapon was hitting the tigers. He viewed the same shot again, this time as if he were on the bridge of Leviathan. He saw the battle computer lock onto its targets, and then oddly he saw the target lock flicker, then fire. He watched it a few more time before he finally caught it. The computer had locked on and was about to fire, but someone switched it to manual control moved the weapon a few degrees and then fired, only a half second or so slower then it would have been.
The next day Norad asked the Admiral about the oddity. S3 didn’t even blink, just looked directly at Norad and said “Sometimes Savants can be wrong, sometimes I can be wrong, but Nemesis is never wrong. Even if he is keeping certain people out of Starships they rightfully should be on.” Norad was momentarily stunned, not only did he owe his life to a Savant that he would have bet only seconds before wasn’t really suitable for a salvage truck, but that it had also reported who was trying to break the Admiral’s code to S3, and he wasn’t going to do anything about it. What’s more he wasn’t even mad.
S3 stood quietly outside of Norad’s cryopod, just looking at him knowingly. “Good night Norad” he said and activated the controls.
Norad quickly fell under the hypnotic spell of the cryopod. Shortly there after Red Sonya, and then S3 where sealed in their own pods. Nemesis waited patiently at the foot of S3’s pod. Quietly watching as the days flew by. Waiting for the day when at long last the Blight would be gone, and he could safely wake the people he had sworn long ago to watch over. For now though he would remain vigilant, together with Leviathan and Luxitania he would watch over this planet, and wait silently for the day when he could be used again.
