"She was a Leviathan in the sky" the massive human male in the Hawaiin shirt and wide brimmed straw hat said rapturously. The captivated audience of children and the couple of adults who quietly watched with disapproving gazes was silent as his story began. "The Ark had no equal, not even a dozen Fillion Capital ships could match her for weight, let alone firepower. She was a continent floating silent through space." He reached behind him to take a sip from the large multicoloured drink that had been going down astonishingly quickly as he sat there. He delicately picked out the small umbrella and replaced it after taking a long draft. "Ahhhhh." He smacked his lips then went on. "But even with her might the war was sitting in a stalemate. AS we know, the Republic simply didn't have the numbers and the newly introduced Human fleets, despite all shiny and new were still far too few and far between to be able to cover all the space on the Western frontier at once. The Hegemony were simply too numerous for us to hold back and so we were busy..."
"'Scuse me Sir, but my mummy says they're called the Dominion not the Hegem... Heggeymo..." Cut in a small and largely tentacled child sitting at the front row, peering up with wide jet-black eyes. The man in the straw hat squinted at the interruption then took a thoughtful sip as the child tapered off from struggling to pronounce the complicated word.
"Well your mummy certainly has her opinions on the matter" he said darkly "Dominion feels like a bit of dirty word to me though so I'll be sticking with Hedg-e-mony" he pronounced it with particular flair that made the children giggle. “Either way the bastards were tough and they'd had millenniums more preparation time than the Republic. We may have had the brand spanking new tech from Jupiter but the Hegemony had fleets upon fleets of reserves and they quickly learnt that it was easier for them to avoid straight up confrontation and instead simply attack where we weren't, wait for us to get there and then shoot off and attack somewhere else. Had the Oan councillor not had the sense to pay off the Brokers to raid their northern borders as well then we would have been buggered from the beginning." A parent tutted at his language and he stuck his tongue out at the children, who giggled. "So yes, the war was going badly, and we were stuck playing catch up, engaging and beating back the Hegemony fleets only some time after they had entered our space and decimated colonies. It was a losing game of cat and mouse across the front. That is save for where the fighting was hardest." his eyes glazed slightly and a fond smile spread over his face "Save for where the legendary Seventh Admiralty Fleet held the Oan-Dyson spheres." He paused then for dramatic effect as the children crowded forward in excitement. Leaning back he tilted the last drop of his drink into his mouth and gestured for another. Everyone knew about the Seventh Admiralty, Humanity's spear point fleet during the Dominion Wars. They had been led by the Ark and it had been them that had decimated the Hegemony's Capital ships in a blaze of nuclear fire above the skies of Arcturas Prime, the tipping point at which the republic had began the slow march back from the brink of destruction. This arrival in fire and death had signalled Humanity showing it's hand to the interstellar table on the side of the Republic, despite expectations that they would remain neutral. From there it had been the Seventh Admiralty fleet who had gone on to hold the line in the Sphere fields where most other fleets had been lost or reassigned in the face of the sheer weight of enemy numbers.
"Yes, the Seventh fleet held, even when all around them was failing they held, and where the fighting was the thickest you could guarantee that you'd find the Ark Royal there, cutting a swathe of antimatter annihilation through even the toughest of the Hegemony cruisers." They were now grinning up at him as he painted the picture of the great ship. "God she was beautiful though. Brutalist architecture coupled with glistening reflector fields. There was no liquimetal back then either so she was held together with a rigid structure, fixed in position as a behemoth of broadsides coated with glinting manoeuvrable plates of tungsten. In size alone she was more than enough to contend with most capital groups and in firepower, well she could eradicate moons with a single volley." He took a sip and smiled, settling back and looking a little flushed, though whether from alcohol or excitement the onlookers couldn't tell. "They say that when she arrived at the defense of Arcturas Prime she blotted out the sunlight of an entire hemisphere before illuminating it again with her legendary fusion spears. Yes the Ark was Humanity's crowning joy and the figurehead of the Republic defence. Unfortunately..." He paused to take another sip and build the tension, a glimmer in his eye as he lent forward "she was also where one young reprobate had his first posting as a runner, and it was there that he took part in the Ark's most famous mission." He grinned and then a small frown fluttered over his face before he settled back to begin his story in earnest.
***
"What a marvellous day!" Shouted Admiral Ferris with a grin out to the vanta black of space in front of him, prompting chuckles and shaking of heads from below him. The expansive bridge window was a whole mess of holographic data, far too much of which was highlighted in red, not to mention the constant ongoing bombardment of enemy bombers blasting away at the forward shielding with luminescent annihilating orbs of magenta and white. That didn't seem to bother the somewhat eccentric admiral though, who was staring out with a content smile, as though he were watching waves breaking over a romantic beach scene. It was the fifth day of their engagement with what they thought was the Hegemony's ninth and fourth capital groups and although they had been making short work of the bulky cruisers that had headed up the group, he had lost most of his fighter escort and were now taking prolonged fire from the smaller enemy bombers. The distinctive bulbous green hulls of the Hegemony bombers pounded the massive surface of the Ark which stretched out before him beyond the vanishing point.
"Ablative shields diminished to 7%" came a cry from the pit beneath him. He leaned over the railing from his viewing platform, or 'the crow's nest' as the crew had taken to calling it.
"They're Ablative shields, they're supposed to be at 7%" he shouted back sardonically with a smile. "Maintain refresh rates and divert some power from the kinetic barriers". Below him was a sea of people frantically working at the vast array of controls it took to manage the Ark as she carried out her operation to protect the nearest Dyson Sphere group. They seemed in a good mood though, it was hard to have a grim outlook when you were in Ferris' bridge group.
"ETA on that fighter support reinforcement?" He called out. A short and frumpy looking comms worker shouted back
"None confirmed yet admiral, Dominion forces have begun a land invasion of Parenth which is drawing away small craft."
"Hegemony please, not Dominion." Ferris replied, as though telling off an irritating student. He frowned a little though, land invasions didn't make sense in a conventional manner for the Hegemony as they already held more than enough planets to maintain their resource requirements. It was a clever tactic though, as they knew that a land engagement sapped resources and vital fighter units away from the Space based engagements and it was in Space that this war would be decided. Really they should abandon the land battles to focus resources on their Capital battles but that probably wouldn't go down well with the local populations. Ferris chuckled to himself. How kind of the Hegemony he thought to himself, drawing resources away from him made his day just that bit more interesting. He stood tapping an upbeat tune on the railing and chewing his bottom lip absently as he watched the antimatter fire flow out from his gun batteries like orange rain into the crowded sky around them. "I'm siiiinging in the rain..." he sung to himself quietly.
"Fusion spears at 98% Admiral" came a shout from behind him. This brought him back from his thoughts and he clapped his hands together excitedly. "Ooo!" He exclaimed like an exuberant five year old. He turned and walked back off the suspended platform to where his seven weapons officers were sitting in a tight knit bunch around a central holographic board. Each controlled a different weapons group and was relaying orders down to the pit below where specific teams were poised to process and then carry out those orders.
"Right then my glorious team of weps, what's our situation?" He asked as he approached.
"All things considered we're in pretty good nick at the moment Admiral" said the nearest of them "though we could really use some dry dock time to get the forward batteries repaired, they've taken the brunt of the beating and are down to only 40% capacity."
"Don't be ridiculous, you only want to go back to dock so you can meet up with that lovely barman again" the man blushed and then looked sheepish "besides 40% sounds a whole lot better than being at 30% doesn't it?" Ferris smiled then frowned in quick succession and looked down at the hologram display of the battle as it was being played out. In the centre thousands of blue craft spun and whirled like a swarm of bees on the board, these were the small and manoeuvrable frigates – both Republic and Hegemony - each with a crew of about 100 whose task it was to mop up fighters and each other and generally defend their carrier and cruiser groups. The single pilot bombers and fighters were too small to register as single entities on the board and so only collections of them showed as blue smudges in the darkness. The Hegemony still had several groups of cruisers left floating in offensive formations on both their port and starboard bow, attempting to come into positions where they could bombard the Ark, but also wary enough to not come too close to her powerful broadsides and so they were mostly hanging back out of range, waiting for an opening. The Republic cruisers, depressingly only about a tenth in number of the Hegemony were putting up a brave fight, taking guerrilla tactics of harassment and rapid strikes on their opposites, utilising their more advanced propulsion systems to get in and out of range without taking too much damage. Sat back from the main hub of activity were seven large Capital ships though, all of them Hegemony and it was these that posed the true threat to the Dyson spheres, and it was these that it was their mission to destroy. The attrition was taking its toll on the Republic fleet and it was clear that without the presence of the enormous blue bulk of the Ark Royal, which took up the majority of space on the board this battle would have been lost a while ago.
"Right then Cherubs" He surveyed the board for a second then highlighted a group of enemy cruisers that were surrounding a smaller capital ship some 70 A-clicks to their starboard. "This bugger thinks he's out of range, target him."
"But sir you are aware that their lead ship is also within range, here" one of the officers in charge of the defensive Arc Cannons said cautiously as he leant over and highlighted the largest of the Hegemony capital ships on the Board.
"True Boris"
"My name is Henry sir," said the tired looking weapons officer
"I know that Boris, you've been my wep for two years now. Today you're acting like far more of a Boris than a Henry if you ask me" said Ferris, the others grinned. Ferris famously knew the names of every crew member on his ships and famously refused to use any of them. He scratched his thick black beard "See the thing is, if we hit the group around the lead ship we'd bring down their command down for sure, but they'd just delegate to the next biggest ship and all those cruisers - he pointed at the hive of activity that surrounded the highlighted Capital ship - would scatter. If we hit this ship here" he pointed back to his original choice, the swirling blue of the smaller ships was considerably more tightly packed "then there's a good chance we can take out all those cruisers with her as well. That creates a knock on effect of debris that's going to go surging outwards and destroy even more and more and so on. They're tightly knit, probably reinforcing one another whereas the group around the lead ship are sparse and would be able to get away from the wreckage and the little Sun we're gonna plop in the middle of them." He looked up at them expectantly as they mulled over what he had said. "Capiche?" They paused for a minute more, surveying the battlefield one last time before nodding in agreement. "Right then, aim for that cruiser, full burn Fusion Spears. God I love saying that." He grinned, of all the devastating toys on his juggernaut of a flying country, the fusion spears were his favourite.
Harnessing the power of the Ark's massive anti-matter/fusion hybrid engines they took days at a time to safely siphon off and store enough power to be ready to fire, yet they were a complete game changer when they were, so much so that most capital groups wouldn't come close to him at first, but they always got impatient, they always thought they'd be the ones to bring down the infamous Ark Royal.
"I don't suppose you'll allow the targeting computers to fire them sir? Or at the least a weapon's specialist who's trained to use them?" Shouted one of the officers after him.
"Bradley" he shouted back to the officer whose name was Harriet "what is the point in working all the way up to Admiral if I don't get to play with my own toys? Runner!" He shouted back, and the weapons team let out a quiet groan in unison. A young lad, barely old enough to have signed up joined him, standing a respectful distance back.
"Admiral?" He said hesitantly.
"Yes, Sampson isn't it?"
"Richard sir" the boy replied.
"Right then Sammy" he leaned over the platform again and looked down into the pit. "I want you to bring me the fusion spear interface. Don't go using it yourself now though, I'd have to send a note home to your mother. I will also need that enormous lump of brains and meat that is Comms Officer Mary-sue from that desk there" he pointed and the boy peered down before nodding as he recognised the enormous head comms officer who's actual name was Jothram. "Good lad, chop chop, get going." He sped off and the Admiral picked up the tannoi system. "Ark crew, it's a beautiful morning in this pretty tub wouldn't you agree?" There were chuckles and grunts of sarcastic agreement "Well it's about to get a lot prettier, take a step with me into paradise ladies and gentlemen and stock up on your Pina Coladas, Fusion spears firing in 5, please be so good as to make the necessary preparations."
The atmosphere immediately became charged as excitement bristled through them, anticipation of the spectacle to come was almost palpable in the air above the pit and he grinned as he watched it. "System, increase UV filter by 700% in 3 minutes" he spoke to his lapel. An androgynous voice in his ear replied
"Increasing UV filter. Advice: 1000% would be more suitable for Fusion Spear discharge."
"Advice duly noted and duly ignored." He smiled and looked out of the crystalline viewing window as it dimmed. The great shining surface of the Ark had begun to split as two enormous rails were lifted up from her depths by vast pistons and actuators. They resembled a pair of ancient Roman javelins, with the nearest half thick with the monstrous power capacitors and the conductive tips at the far end comparatively thin. They shone in the light of the nearby star as a faint whine began to grow in the background.
"Here you are sir" came a voice from behind him and he found the Runner standing there, offering out a pair of mechanised gauntlets. Behind him stood an enormous woman, even by human standards she was large, with bulging arms crossed across a massive chest and legs that looked better suited to a horse than a person. "What music do you like Sammy?" He asked as he took the gloves. The comms officer rolled her eyes but smiled. "Now now Mary-Sue, music can tell a lot about a man. Go on lad, don't be shy."
"Well sir..." The boy glanced at the Giant comms officer who nodded encouragingly "Well sir it depends on the mood really, I like different kinds at different times."
"Excellently evasive answer boy, never pigeon hole yourself on matters of the heart and never get backed into a corner by a question from a superior" he held his hands up and flicked a switch on each palm with his thumbs. Immediately the two rails burst into life in front of them, high accuracy accelerators and dynamos perfected in the engineering labs on the moons of Jupiter rotated and moved the two spears impossibly quickly, following the directions of his hands. He whispered to himself with a slight frown "now I am become death...". The boy shuffled nervously behind him as he carried out a few system checks. "Say you had to choose for right now though" the Admiral said quietly, squinting through one eye following the line of the spears, bringing the necessary targeting systems online on the large display window. The boy stared at the admiral. Everyone had heard of Hector Ferris, his reputation amongst humanity and now even the wider Republic was incredible but to be standing by the man was something else. He exuded an almost disturbing level of calm and yet at the same time had the touch of dangerous unpredictability that kept you constantly on edge. It was difficult to justify the man with the stories of incredible military heroism that were told in the canteens, stories of pomp and circumstance. The man before him resembled more of a particularly likeable barman crossed with a cage fighter.
"Right now sir?" He frowned thinking hard as his mind forgot every song he'd ever heard. He chewed his lip for a while as the admiral carried on with his checks. Then he smiled. "Right now, I'd want an old earth classic." Smiling even more as he thought of the perfect song he went on "something with drums, guitars, lots of distortion and a powerful voice. Something that makes you laugh but also makes you want to stamp your feet and scream with a smile on your face, a song that..." He cut off as the admiral spun his head to stare at him. His face was dark, his eyes stared into him and in one moment he felt himself being pulled apart by nothing but his gaze. Then Ferris raised one eyebrow comically and music filled the bridge, ringing out loud over the tannoy. It was exactly the song he had been thinking of. A grin burst across the admiral's face and the boy matched it.
"Good lad" he said as the music swelled. Down in the pit those not working on the Fusion spear interfaces jumped from their seats and ran to the viewing window to watch. "Mary-Sue, I want you to broadcast to as many enemy craft as you can, let's get them distracted listening along to the Boy’s most excellent choice of soundtrack." The big woman grinned and input a few commands on her wrist control. The enemy ships flying nearby visibly hesitated as the crashing drums and rising guitar joined a powerful vocal through their comm systems, the monstrously powerful cyber warfare systems on board the Ark briefly overriding their wireless communications. A wave of visible confusion went through the enemy fleet. "Here we go" smiled the Admiral and he raised his hands.
The two massive spears shuddered and rose with him. He gave them one last wave back and forth, then focussed in, squinting through his right eye he zoomed on the target capital group, aiming manually with his fingers as the weapons officers held their breath. The music was reaching a crashing crescendo, the crew that knew the song, and that was most, joined in the singing, the noise in the pit was of deafening, brilliant music causing waves of excitement and pure thrill to flow through them with every heavy bass drumbeat, so much so that they sang and screamed and howled along with it as the song built, the singing grew louder and the drums faster, raising higher and higher it all swelled to one great drop. The admiral grinned and suddenly looked down at the Boy.
"Bang" he said simply.
The music crashed in an explosion of sound as pure light flooded through the dimmed viewing window and the crew let out a roar of exultation. The power of the Fusion spears made the great ship shake from top to toe as the engines suddenly howled to compensate for the ferocious kickback that they gave off. Quickly the light fell away to show two long white streaks that could be seen surging off from the bow of the monstrous ship into the now natural view of space, sent on their way by the earth shattering chorus of the song. The admiral stood steady, holding the spears still as the metal glowed hot white in the blackness around them. "One... two... three" the boy heard Jothram count under her breath and in the distance a small burst of purple blossomed out from where the white streaks had disappeared to. It was small at first but then was coupled with a rush of orange, then green and blue bubbles expanded out, growing and merging in a menagerie of colour until all at once an enormous disk of shattered hulls and pure fusion energy fired outwards as the small star-like occurrence that had briefly burst into existence collapsed in on itself, making the bridge rock and the crew have to grab one another to remain upright.
"Capital ship destroyed" came a shout from one of the weapons officers behind them as the music thumped away “no… two Capital ships down”.
"Counting at least twenty-seven cruisers down, extensive damage likely to a further forty."
"Estimating thousands of enemy fighter casualties"
There was a pause as the crew marvelled at the colourful view through the display window. It bloomed out like a flower, petals of crimson and vermillion destruction unfurled on the black canvas of space.
"They're pulling back Sir, they've gone to reinforce" came a fourth shout. The holographic board showed the other capital groups slowly turning away.
The Admiral sighed deeply and stood up straight, the music was dying away now, the spears slowly sinking back into the depths of the Ark but the majority of the bridge crew was still standing watching as the darkness of space was illuminated with the fluorescent colours of the exploding enemy craft.
"'And they would all smile at the Beauty of Destruction'" whispered the Admiral again. The boy turned to Jothram and cocked his head in confusion, but the big woman quietly shook her head at him. Ferris pulled off the gloves and handed them back to the boy. He seemed slightly troubled, with a dark look over his features as though he was suddenly tired to the bone, even as the cheers and whoops of the crew continued from below as another cruiser could be seen to go up in flames, caught in the debris field. He caught the boy watching him from the corner of his eye and quickly shook himself, pulling up to his full height again he grinned and turned to the large Comms officer. "Right then Mary-Sue old boy, let's you and me have a pow wow, there's something that's come though the wires that I need you to take a look at with me." He winked at Richard, then took the Comms officer by the arm and led her back past the Weapons crew and away from the Bridge, turning his back on the devastation he had wrought in space behind.
End of Part 1.
