For those not immediately aware of who or what the Âlpha Ðefense League is, I would recommend you read this thread 1st.
Click Me !He slowly came to consciousness, aware of a constant beep. As he rose from he sleep the sound became more clear, louder and more defined. He quickly opened his eyes, aware now that the beep was not merely a beep, but a full blown alarm. He remebered where he was, a cryopod on level 3 of the old ÂÐL complex, he also knew what the alarm ment, Something had gone wrong, terribly wrong. Something Nemesis could not handle alone.
The Cryopod opened, and he climbed out. His legs week from being asleep for so long, he hit the floor, but crawled towards the foot of another tube. reaching up he grabbed the small black cube.
"Nemesis, whats wrong." Asked Norad.
Nemesis slowly blinked, and the Alarm faded. Years before Nemesis had suffered extensive damage, and often was slow to respond. Finally the comm sounded, and Nemesis's strange voice issued forth. "General Norad, I have lost contact with Leviathan, and Luxitania."
"Define loss of contact?"
"Unable to comply, no reason known."
"How long have you been out of contact with Leviathan and Luxitania."
"Unknown."
The response was troubling enough to bring Norad fully awake and to his feet. Nemesis was many things, but unsure and unknown were not words it had ever used before. Nemesis was the oldest savant on the planet, and as the Admiral had been known to say, Nemesis had forgotten more then any Savant would ever know.
"Nemesis run a diagnostic." Said Norad, and as soon as he said those words he realized something else was very wrong with this picture. Why did Nemesis wake him instead of the Admiral? He glanced down at the smooth surface of the savant, now reading 41:13, the time in minutes and seconds until Nemesis would complete his diagnostic, until then the cube was of no use. He placed it back in its holder at the foot of the Admiral's cryopod and slowly walked to the storage lockers.
He got dressed and retrieved his Savant Specter, "Specter, access colony command and control."
Specter was a much newer model of Savant then Nemesis, faster, sleeker, much more efficient, however the old krafty nemesis could and would always win out in any challenge the Admiral put forth between the 2.
It took only a moment for Specter to come to full power and access the systems Norad had requested. "Access restored, all systems appear operational."
"Date and time?"
"Today is April 18th, 3017. 15:11 earth standard time."
Norad swayed at this information, 90 years had passed. 90 years and they had slept through it all.
"Specter, access communications logs, and check for inbound transmissions from all sources."
"Checking.............. 1611 inbound transmissions recorded."
"Isolate transmissions directed at Leviathan and Luxitania, as well as those for Admiral S3 and/or Nemesis."
"Working................ 614 Messages found."
"Play last message for Leviathan"
There was no acknowledgment from Specter, simply one of the cubed faces light up, and played a video transmission from ÂÐL Command on Cydonia.
"Leviathan this is Admiral Atlas, access code 2111GH011V3, acknowledge."
There was a delay as Leviathan accessed records and verified the code, then an image of a snake appeared, the image that represented the ships main computer. "Thisss isss Leviathhhan, Code Acknowledged. ssss"
"Return to Cydonia Command."
"My ordersss are to remain on sssstation and guard thhhe Admiral and hissss crew matessss."
"Those orders are here by revoked. The Admiral has not checked in, and is well past his allotted check in point we have to assume he and his crew died due to the Blight plague."
The computer took this into account and suddenly became very serious. Loosing its normally playful hiss in its voice patterns.
"I am unable to confirm this theory of yours Admiral Atlas. Nor am I unable to deny it. I do know however that Admiral S3 out ranks you even in death. Thus his orders stand until I am no longer able to do as he last ordered me to. Additionally I am still in contact with the Savant Nemesis as are you your self. In the Absence of the Admiral and his command staff of New Terra, Savant Nemesis holds the rank of Commandant of the ÂÐL, it assures me that the Admiral and his staff are alive and well on the planet."
"Leviathan, in a moment Nemesis will be turned off, and then you will be forced to do as I have ordered."
On the screen Admiral Atlas looked to the side, and typed in a command. Norad knew full well what he had just done. Issued a shut down command to Nemesis, a fail safe built into all Savants, just to ensure that they could never get out of control. Somehow though Nemesis had switched back on. He had seen enough of this, "Specter end transmission play back."
The screen went black. Norad thought this over for a moment before issuing new orders to his savant. "Specter, run full sensor sweeps of the planet and its atmosphere, run system wide diagnostics on all system in the colony, and check as well as report any anomalies present."
"Working." replied specter.
Norad flipped the cube over in his hand, finding the side that was light up with the estimated time to completion of task timer. He noted how long was left, and set the black cube down on the desk. He then walked to a command terminal and began accessing the other messages.
To his horror he found that some sort of interplanetary civil war between factions of the ÂÐL had erupted some years prior. Sometime in the past 50 years, exactly when however was a mystery, with out a savant to track the time codes. Why was yet another mystery, one that may never be solved if they could not get off of New Terra. What he did note was that shortly after Leviathan and Luxitania left orbit of New Terra, almost all ÂÐL systems stopped sending reports. However not all at the same time. Many of the last reports included statistics of battles, however a handful included video. Some of those video's had images of ships engaged in battles high above planets. Many of them showed scenes of Leviathan firing on other ÂÐL ships and even planets.
His thoughts turned to the others left in their cryopods, and he accessed those systems. All seemed fine, but again why did Nemesis wake him and not the Admiral. He accessed the Admiral's pod, and set the system to bring him awake, then he did the same to Red Sonya's pod as well. With in an hour the Command staff of the ÂÐL would be awake, all 3 of them.
A chime sounded someplace behind him, he turned and saw that Nemesis was finished with his diagnostic. He walked over and picked up the small black cube. "Nemesis I figured out what happened. However what caused you to turn back on."
"Protocal 1." Stated Nemesis as if he was ordering lunch.
"Protocal 1?"
"Installed by Admiral S3, Protocal 1, in the event of a forced shut down not initiated by Admiral S3 himself all systems will reactivate if at all possible with in a pre-set and predetermined ammount of time depending on the code used to force the shut down. The code came from a ranking military member of the ÂÐL."
"Yes I know some Admiral named Atlas."
"Correct."
"Why did you wake me instead of the Admiral?"
"Do to damage I sustained many years ago, it requires a long time to interface with some forms of technology, yours was the 1st cryopod I could access thus given the state of things I decided any command staff member was as good as any other, and the sooner the better."
"Nemesis why do I feel like your not telling me everything."
"You have not asked all the questions, nor allowed me time to supply additional data."
"Ok, what else is wrong."
"I have detected a ship inbound to this planet. It was the 1st information I could access when I was able to turn back on."
"A ship?"
"Yes a ship, which would be why I tried to reach Leviathan and Luxitania to alert them and alter their stance, as well as have them search for FOF codes and more date."
"What kind of ship?"
"I do not have sufficient information to answer that."
"Show me this ship."
The screen on the large wall behind him came on, displaying a large vessel. However it was very far away still and the planets sensor grid could not make heads or tails of much of anything about the ship other then it was headed towards New Terra.
"Open a communications channel." After a second Norad heard a small chirp indicating that a channel was open. "Approaching Vessel this is the Alpha Defense League New Terran command center. State your intentions and your reason for visit."
He waited a few moments before repeating his message. When he still received no response, he asked Nemesis if they were transmitting.
"Yes General."
"Are you sure."
"Yes General all communications systems are operational and transmitting."
"Transmit on all frequencies and all known languages."
"Transmitting."
"I know this is a stupid question, but we are still able to receive correct?"
"Yes Norad we are."
He could never decide if Nemesis used his name to be funny, snide or annoyed, however he did long ago learn to not berate the machine for doing it. Instead he rolled his eyes and then said "Available weapons systems?"
It took several moments for Nemesis to respond, he was about to ask the question again when Nemesis finally responded with "Sorry general, power levels are too low presently to use any weapons currently under our control. We appear to have lost several MHDs over the past few years, and the Geothermal taps are just now spooling back up. It will be several hours before we can bring the weapons systems online."
At that moment Specter spoke. "I have completed the tasks you have issued General Norad. Other then the damage Nemesis has pointed out with the MHDs all colony systems appear intact and operational at this time. However we have some developments I think you need to be aware of."
"Developments?"
"Yes sir, there is a new colony about 85 KM to the south, south west of us. It seems to be inhabited, and they do not respond either. Additionally there is no sign of the blight. However it seems the terriforming agents of it were less then successful. Only about 18% of the planet is truly hospitable for human life. The rest is well in varying stages of terriforming, Although water is now in a fair abundance."
Norad could not get past the colony. 85 KM away on what he knew as a dead planet. In what he knew was blight covered territory. "How populated is this colony?"
"I do not have sufficient data on that at this time."
Nemesis let out what might have been a chuckle if it came from a human, "Satellite imagery indicates a small settlement of roughly 80 to 100 people. They appear human."
...................................................... to be continued.
