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Dhavaer
2006-11-26, 07:26 PM
Glossary of terms

Alpha-class: A type of A.I., capable of replicating human psychology in every way, except those innate to an artificial being (no infancy or adolescence).

Base Delta Zero: also BDZ. Extermination of life on a planet by orbital bombardment.

Battlecruiser: Heavily armed and fast ship with relatively light armour.

Beta-class: A type of A.I., capable of learning, but lacking ambition and personality.

Dark: Used as a verb, it means to employ weaponry using dark matter against someone ('Dark the bastards'), or to hide from sensors by powering down non-vital systems.

Dark Matter: Mysterious subtance used primarily in gravitational technology.

Europan Republic: Government that formerly controlled the moons of Jupiter and some of the asteroid belt. Conquered by the Sol Empire.

Feed: Colloquial term for a hologram. Compare to 'screen' for a TV or computer monitor.

Gamma-class: A type of A.I., one incapable of learning.

Gate: As a verb, to enter or leave hyperspace. Named for the large, circular entrance hyperspace engines create.

Hedonics: Psychological discipline. The study of pleasure and entertainment.

Hyperspace: Alternate dimension where faster-than-light travel is easy and safe. Breaching hyperspace enough to enter it requires an enormous amount of power, so only large ships can travel by themselves. Hyperspace travel is untraceable.

Lord Militant: Military commander of the Sol Empire. Possibly also its ruler, the functioning of the Empire makes it difficult to say.

Restoration: The terraforming of Sol-3 following the destruction of Earth by meteorite impact.

Sol: G class star with 8 planets. Considered a benevolent deity by the state religion of the Sol Empire

Sol 3: Third planet orbiting Sol. Previously named Earth, renamed Terra following the Restoration. A native of Terra is a Terran; the Terran capital is New Carthage.

Sol 4: Fourth planet orbiting Sol. Named Mars, it is the capital planet of the Sol Empire. A native is called a Martian. The Bureaucracy Headquarters is located in the city of Kuhn, the planetary capital.

Sol 5-6: Sixth moon orbiting the fifth planet orbiting Sol. Named Europa, it was the capital world of the Europan Republic prior to the discovery of hyperspace and the war with the Sol Empire.

Sol Empire: Governing body of almost all humanity. The Empire's supremecy in the Sol system was consolidated after the defeat of the Europan Republic.

Sol System: Collective term for Sol and the planets, comets and other celestial bodies subject to its gravitational pull.

Tohubohu: The collective term for rapid-growth crops that, when fed by high density fertiliser, grows to a harvestable state within days. This technology is one of the bases of the Empire's power.

Troiders: Partisan groups of former Republic soldiers and citizens living in the asteroid belt. Troiders occasionally attack Solar transports, so much of the Solar navy's time is spent hunting them.

Vape: To destroy utterly with excessive firepower.

Void: The vacuum of space. Colloquially, used in a similar manner to 'hell'. e.g. 'What the void is that thing?'

Dispozition
2006-11-26, 07:30 PM
Some of that reminds be quite a bit of a game called EV Nova...But that could just be me...

I look foward to the story though.

blackout
2006-11-26, 07:31 PM
Niiiiice. This wouldn't be a challenge to my story, would it? ;)

Dhavaer
2006-11-26, 07:35 PM
Niiiiice. This wouldn't be a challenge to my story, would it? ;)

I've been thinking about this for weeks if not months.

blackout
2006-11-26, 07:38 PM
Ok, perfectly reasonable answer. :) Still, I look forward to the story. Good writing!

Dhavaer
2006-11-26, 07:48 PM
Added the Restoration and a little more on Sol-3 and Sol-4.

Dhavaer
2006-11-26, 09:05 PM
Aliyah Navarre glanced up at the rosy midday sky for a moment before turning back to the kiss. Sunlight and soft hands stroked her light brown skin as she and her companions played lazily on the beach. She smiled as the kiss broke again; this was so much better than spacefaring…
*knock knock*
Commander Navarre’s eyes flashed open as she jerked upright, looking around. The beach was gone, just a dream; she was back in her cabin on the Lochinvar.
“Yes?” She yelled, and the door opened, revealing the pasty, balding head of her XO, Lieutenant Dowd. “If this is not of the highest importance, I will murder you brutally.” She informed him.
“Understood, sir.” Dowd replied, unfazed by her threat. “Long range sensors picked up three Troider ships. Two warships and a transport, we think.”
“Suitably important.” The Commander said as she left her bed, reaching for her coat. “Send a demand for surrender, and prep a line back to Zeus. I’ll be on the bridge in two minutes.”
“Yessir.” Dowd acknowledged. He saluted and left, closing the door behind him.
Navarre pulled her coat on over the underwear she’d worn to bed and slipped on her boots before hurrying to the bridge, buttoning the coat as she walked.

The sensor operator had brought a map of their location up on the hologram emitter in the bridge. Three asteroids, none less than eight times the Lochinvar’s size, floated around, too distant to be a threat and too small to hide a base. The battlecruiser itself rested in the centre of the map, a glowing, yellow dot. Moving towards it were three other dots; the enemy craft. Two were a dark red and the other, in the centre, was bright blue.
“The reds are Thug-class destroyers, blue is a transport of some kind.” The operator said as Commander Navarre sat down in the captain’s chair. The vague description of the transport didn’t worry her; transports were easy enough to build that even the Troiders could still construct them, but their limited materials led to a wide variance in ship designs that made class designations pointless.
“We’re chasing them?” Navarre asked, noting the shortening distance between the ships. It didn’t seem likely that they’d be coming towards the Lochinvar, the battlecruiser outmassed the other ships by more than a hundred thousand tons.
“Yes, Captain.” Dowd replied. “They started to run as soon as we sent the demand, I don’t think their sensors spotted us.”
Navarre nodded. “What’s the cargo on the transport?”
“Something radioactive, likely uranium.” The operator answered. “Their rad shielding is either mono-directional or faulty.”
“Right. Katz,” She addressed the operator, “get acquainted with the exhaust trail from those destroyers, they’ll either turn back and try to slow us or run, in which case you’ll need to track them. Markov, get gunners ready to fire in case the destroyers turn back, and prep the tractor beam to pull in that transport. Ready the bots to board it; favour suppressors, I want as many captives as I can get.”
“Captain, yessir!” Came the reply as the Lochinvar prepared for battle.

Dispozition
2006-11-26, 09:09 PM
That's great...If it were a full novel, I'd be buying it right about now...

Brickwall
2006-11-26, 10:42 PM
Well, it's a great bit of character insight, though I've learned that such introductions can be misleading. Keep up the good work. We'll be watching you.

Dhavaer
2006-11-27, 01:12 AM
Added Tohubohu to the glossary.

Dhavaer
2006-11-27, 04:07 AM
Navarre watched the map as the destroyers approached. As she predicted, the warships had turned back to give the transport time to run. Bad move, she thought. The transport was even slower than the destroyers, which themselves couldn’t outrun the battlecruiser. It was desperate, but it had a chance of working; the Thug-class mounted a missile launcher and Katz was picking up signs that the ship on Lochinvar’s right was equipped with a fusion missile. A lucky shot with that could potentially destroy the larger ship.
Katz started broadcasting jamming signals, trying to prevent the missile locking as Markov tried the same thing the old fashioned way.
“Open fire. Target rightmost ship.”
The battlecruiser turned slightly, facing the destroyer head on to make as many guns available as possible. Mass cannon batteries swiftly locked, aimed and fired, the simultaneous recoil of the barrels eerily silent in airless space. The projectiles were invisible to the naked eye; tiny drops of matter as black as the void. None struck home, the range was too great, but the destroyer shook violently as the intense gravitational pull of the droplets passed it.
Barely more than a second later the cannons fired again, but the destroyer had already launched the missile.
“Brace!” Navarre called, as the missile cleared the gap between the ships. There was a tremendous flare of light as the missile impacted, but a moment later when the glow had faded, the Lochinvar was untouched.
“Shields held at 75%.” Reported an engineer.
“Take us forwards. Keep firing.”
Lochinvar surged forwards again, the cannons adjusted and continued to fire. The destroyers evaded as best they could through the hail, but they were in proper range now, and a drop grazed the hull of one, soundlessly ripping away a third of the hull and sucking the crew into the void.
For a moment, Commander Navarre felt she could almost see the other pilot’s indecision. Continuing the attack was suicide; but his orders and the peculiar hatred that Troiders held for the Sol Empire would not let him surrender. The moment passed, and the destroyer banked left and accelerated. It began firing its lasers, but the range was too great and the beams dissipated, splashing harmlessly against the Lochinvar’s armour. Another shot from the mass cannons struck it in the nose, tearing the ship in half.
The Lochinvar accelerated through it, the fragments of metal washing along the magnetic shielding.

Dhavaer
2006-11-27, 04:08 AM
Writing space battles is hard. Also, the last line is in a different font and I can't work out why, or change it.

Jibar
2006-11-27, 04:10 AM
Daedalus Opolus is an old Gameboy game.
Random info for ya.

However, nice story. It is rather nice to be told what something means instead of working it out for yourself.

Brickwall
2006-11-27, 05:33 AM
I'd say that's one of the longer descriptions for that fragment of time for a space battle.

Incedentally, glossaries in novels are for wimps.

Baerdog7
2006-11-27, 12:58 PM
Bah, glossaries are fine, especially since Sci-Fi stories tend to incorporate a lot of new slang. Besides, he's not the first one to do it. Watership Down by Richard Adams (I think that's the author) had a glossary of terms.

Anyway, excellent work Dhavaer. Keep it up!

blackout
2006-11-27, 04:53 PM
So far, so good. :) I like this.

Dhavaer
2006-11-29, 12:18 AM
Added 'feed' to the glossary. Working on the next section.

Dhavaer
2006-11-29, 04:28 AM
“Transport sighted.”
“Manoeuvring to engage tractor beam.”
Commander Navarre watched the map as the blue blip approached the yellow. The lead the transport had gained wasn’t helping it now; Lochinvar’s engines were far more powerful, and its armour was much less of a burden. It wasn’t going quietly though; it rolled around constantly, taking away some forward acceleration but making it incredibly difficult to engage the tractor beam. Several times the beam grazed the side of the transport, making it shudder violently as its engines pulled it away before it was held fast.
“We can’t shoot its engines off?” Navarre asked Dowd without much hope. He shook his head.
“Any hit that’d take off its engines would shred the whole thing.”
“Computer, magnify image, one hundred.”
The hologram zoomed in on the two ships. Lochinvar was hovering almost over the transport, which was jetting back and forth with its thrusters.
“Unless they’ve got something we can’t see, they’re only prolonging the inevitable.” Navarre observed. “Can you put the sensor scan up on the feed?”
Katz tapped at his keyboard, and a translucent, cutaway image of the transport came up next to the weaving ships. At the current point blank range, the image was impressively clear; all the rooms, corridors and even crew were perfectly visible. There was nowhere for any mysterious superweapon to hide.
Even if there was, there was no time for it to hide. The transport’s pilot jinked left when he should have gone right, and the tractor caught dead on centre. It was drawn up rapidly as the engines strained to get away, stopping just before it struck the battlecruiser’s hull.
“Deploying cutters.”
The hologram showed the cutters descending; small, high-intensity lasers too short ranged to make a weapon but powerful enough to cut through anything not specifically designed to resist them. As it turned out, the transport was not. As soon as the glow of the beams faded, a section of the larger ship’s hull, the same size as the breached section, extended to punch into the transport. The Commander was briefly put in mind of insects mating.
“Deploying bots. Eight Morpheus units.”
Navarre grinned. “Sweet dreams.”

Dhavaer
2006-11-29, 04:28 AM
That font is still there. Strange, it's not even the same font as what I copy/pasted from.

Dispozition
2006-11-29, 04:36 AM
Well...YOu better be making this a proper book and giving it all to us...Because I want more...Please?

Dhavaer
2006-11-29, 04:41 AM
Well, I've certainly got a good deal more to write. We haven't even left the prelude yet.

Fat Daddy
2006-11-29, 05:17 AM
I like it. Can't wait for more.

Dhavaer
2006-11-29, 08:23 PM
The transport’s guards had moved in around the breach as soon as the tractor beam had pulled the ship in. They spread out against the walls, bracing themselves in the zero-gravity. When the battlecruiser penetrated the hull, the ceiling crashed to the floor, then bounced up again much slower. The guards held position, preparing to fire.
A projectile struck the rising section of hull, exploding and filling the air in a wide radius with a thick, white powder. Somnall was usually used as a medical sedative, but in the ‘sleep grenades’ it was a powerful nonlethal weapon. The guards’ were familiar with this tactic, however, and wore precautionary gasmasks. They were thus all conscious when the Morpheus bots came down through the roof.
There were only two of them, but even so they barely fitted in the tight confines of the corridor. Each bot was eight feet tall, with two rifles on each hip, a grenade launcher on its right shoulder, and apparently had some kind of clamps on its feet, as they had no problem staying on the floor. The guards opened fire, but the bullets slowed as they approached, deflecting off the bots’ armoured frames.
The bots returned fire, hip mounted rifles spraying a gooey, bright green substance over the guards. When it struck, it suddenly swelled to the size of a fist and spread over the area struck, hardening into a tough shell that stuck so tightly to clothing and skin that even breathing was made difficult. Within a minute, the guards were up to their necks in a green, chrysalis-like shell, and the bots had suffered only minor chipping. After a moment to survey the scene, the bots stomped down the hallway, clamps making an loud, ominous booming sound as they proceeded. Six more bots descended two-by-two from the battlecruiser, two following the original pair while four headed in the opposite direction.

Dhavaer
2006-12-04, 07:11 AM
Commander Navarre marched down one of the Lochinvar’s many corridors, flanked by four marines. Almost two-thirds of the transport’s crew had been captured, the rest had apparently committed suicide shortly after being boarded; a practice that Navarre found incomprehensible but which was quite common among Troiders. Among those captured was the captain, who the Commander wished to speak to herself. Happily, the boarding action had taken long enough for her to adjourn to her cabin and dress. Directing a battle in a coat and underwear was all very well, but carrying out an interview with a captured enemy so dressed was simply not an option.
The room in which the interview was to be carried out was in the fashion of all interrogation rooms dating back for centuries; small and brightly lit with a simple table and chairs. Next door was another room which looked onto the first through a one-way window, bolstered by a hologram in this instance. There were also several sensors and scanners that monitors the heart rate, oxygen intake, body temperature and brain activity, among at least a dozen other qualities of the first room’s occupants.
The Troider captain was already in the chair when the Commander entered. More accurately, he was propped up against the chair; the tangler goo had only been dissolved enough to separate man from ship. He was still entirely encased and unable to break free. He was also, Navarre thought, quite hideously ugly. Dowd might have a little too much belly and too little hair, but the Troider had open sores, a network of scars and an odour that overpowered even the chemical reek of the glacially dissolving shell of goo.
“What did that ‘droid stick me with?” He demanded, before Navarre had even sat down.
“Introductions first, captain.” She said mildly, after taking her seat. “Commander Aliyah Navarre, of the Lochinvar. You are?”
“None of your business.” He said sullenly.
“It is in fact my business, but it’s business I’m prepared to wait on for now. More importantly, where were you taking your cargo?”
“None of your business.” He repeated.
“Cooperate, and you get amnesty and citizenship, along with your crew. No strings attached.” Navarre informed him flatly.
He spat on the table. “And end up slaving away on some farm? **** off.”
Navarre raised an eyebrow. “No citizen has an obligation to do any more work than to show up for a monthly census. Hardly slaving.”
“You expect me to believe that? We didn’t buy your paradise bull**** before the war, and we won’t do it now.”
“Buy it or not, it’s true.”
He snorted. “If you don’t have to work, what are you doing on this ship? Your idea of a holiday, is it?”
“There are almost twenty billion people in the Sol Empire, captain. Do you really find it hard to believe there aren’t people who find the military fulfilling?”

Egiam
2009-03-06, 10:42 PM
Nice start! Now, this is your work, and your style, but... I would include more facial expression descriptions if I were you. but that's just my style.

Edit: Oh. I just realized that this thread is over a year old. Keep on going!