Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

The marine waved another person aboard the shuttle. It was a young mother carrying her daughter. That had set the tone for many of the survivors here on the moon. Most of the survivors were women and children, more children than anything else though. It painted a bit of a picture on what happened here on Luna. Just a picture, nothing more though.

He gestured for the next person in the line to step forward. It was a young man this time. His partner with the datapad inquired, “Name?”

The tired, and dirty young man replied, “Hikaru”

His partner tapped that in, and didn’t bother to ask for a family name. They would get that later. “Thank you. Any dependants with you?”

“No sir.”

“Thanks, you may board. The quartermaster will ask you more questions when you arrive on the Enterprise, and get you settled.”

As the man boarded, another woman stepped forward. Behind her was a young girl, maybe around twelve, shyly sticking to her. Both of them were barely dressed in torn clothing, and covered in soot and dust. It was a sight the Marine had seen too many times. On too many colonies, too many places.

His partner maintained his professionalism and asked for her name. She gave him both her family name, and her personal name. Along with her daughter's name without being asked. Names that were promptly added to the passenger manifest. That was all they were making right now. A proper register is what the quartermaster would be making later. As he was the person responsible for finding a place for everyone. That was a job the marine did not envy. There was not anyone on the ship that envied that job. Things were already getting cramped aboard the ship, and now they were going to be worse. Thankfully, someone up top was thinking, and working on making sure there was space for everyone. Otherwise, he would be worried about them hot bunking. That would not be fun, and it would also be ridiculous for a capital ship the size of the Enterprise. She was 5020 meters long, had 194 decks, and the saucer was 3800 meters wide. The ship was originally designed to carry a crew of 5000 and some 15000 troops. That meant roughly 20000 people at most, and they were about to take on that intended number, in refugees alone. After they had already taken on survivors from the fleet, and according to rumor were going to be taking even more. The marine had to wonder how many more the ship could fit. Although since he wasn’t an engineer, he couldn’t be sure.

What he could be sure about was how many more people would fit into the shuttle. The shuttle already had more people than recommended aboard. Although they could fit a few more. It was a short hop to the Enterprise from here, and they could deal with being packed to the bulkheads for a little while. It helped that the survivors had precious little to bring with them. Only what little they had carried with them into the shelters. Still, these folks could be considered the lucky ones. As many never made it to the shelters, and some of the shelters were even destroyed in the bombardment.

The young lady and her daughter boarded, and the next person stepped forward. This time it was just a young girl looking frightened and holding what little luggage she had. Her clothes were also filthy, and torn. He even noted a few minor injuries. His colleague took a slightly different approach, while he kept an eye on the crowd.

The armored man knelt, “Well hello there sweetie. Where is your mother?”

She cried. It took a bit of coaxing, but they quickly learned that she hadn’t seen her mother or father since the bombardment. Nor had she seen anyone she knew. The poor girl couldn’t have been more than ten, but it seemed she might be an orphan. He sighed, thanks to the war there were too many orphans. His colleague did get her name and personally escorted her aboard. He memorized the name, making a mental note to look her up later. The young marine wanted to make sure orphans like her were taken care of. Then an idea occurred to him, maybe he should adopt one like her. He had always wanted a family.

His colleague came out of the shuttle signaling that she was secure before closing the hatch. The shuttle was full. That meant it was the hard part. People, especially refugees like this, wanted to get off-world as quickly as possible. Seeing the shuttles leave was always painful, as they feared being left behind. First, he was going to need to clear the hanger. He discreetly double checked that his rifle was set to stun.

“All right everybody back. Clear the hanger, nice and orderly.”

That was when everything went into chaos. A few refugees decided to rush their position. Likely thinking they can get on one of the already packed shuttles bound for the ship before they could take off. One of them charged him, he fired. A crackling blue pulse slammed into the man. He crumpled. Elsewhere a few more flashed as others were stunned.

The demonstration of a few being shot was enough to quiet the crowd, and after that clearing the bay went smoothly. The young marine ended up carrying the man he shot to safety. It was that kind of day. He slipped into the shuttlebay’s overlook, an area designed for people to wait in and watch the shuttles leaving and arriving. Especially since Luna didn’t have an atmosphere so a place like this was needed for people waiting for a decompression cycle to complete. Thankfully the air pumps could do that fairly quickly.

Battlemaster’s Log ISD 1412-34.6:

It has been a few days since the disastrous battle at the Human world of Earth. Of a fleet of sixty thousand ships only seven hundred remain. Most of which are heavily damaged. A fact that has greatly slowed our progress out of the system. I have been stuck babysitting some of our damaged battlecruisers. As boring as it is, this has given me more time to consider what I will say when we finally get back to the Empire.

As the last Battlemaster of the fleet, I will have to take responsibility for this failure. Unfortunately, the one truly responsible for this failure had the audacity to die under the guns of an Earth cruiser. Depriving both me and the Empire of the chance to punish him for his stupidity. We were supposed to take the planet, not bombard it into extinction. The Great Warlord will not be pleased when he hears that billions of new slaves were killed instead of captured. Thanks to this failure we have wasted two years on this campaign and have little to show for it.

The Battlemaster paced his bridge. The last few days had been trying. This damn system was a nightmare to navigate. Thankfully they hadn’t been harassed by any surviving Human warships, but they had been plagued by other problems.

A warrior looked up from his console. “Sir, the Kresh’mal is reporting engine trouble.”

Speaking of problems it looks like another happened. At this rate, it will take them weeks to reach the asteroid belt, and months to get back to the Empire. It didn’t help that it was virtually impossible to make the jump to warp in the Inner system due to the extensive debris fields.

He lashed his tail, and glared at the console. That was not the first ship to suddenly report problems. “Define engine trouble,” he barked at the young warrior.

“Her combat damage was more extensive than previously thought. Her primary thruster manifold has failed.”

He cursed. Thanks to this vast debris field, that piece of hardware was key right now. The debris meant that they were constantly making course corrections to avoid collisions. The manifold itself was a type of thruster assembly used with their hyper plasma engines to vector thrust where it was needed. The use of manifolds allowed a ship to mount fewer engines without compromising speed or maneuverability. Leaving more space for other systems. It also allowed the engines themselves to be mounted deeper, but if the manifold failed those engines would be useless.

Although it was better that the manifold failed now than if that happened while they were in deep space. If it had happened at warp, their options would have been fewer. Failing at warp would have been more likely though. That was because the spatial fields used to fold space also generated a pressure wave that would act upon a ship traveling at warp. This wave acted as a counterforce against forward momentum forcing a ship to continuously use her main sublight drives. A factor that forced modern ships to carry large amounts of fuel so that they could safely make the trip between stars. It reminded him of another reason for this war.

Human sublight engine technology was vastly superior to their own. Not only were ships equipped with it faster, they were also more maneuverable, and expended significantly less fuel. The Great Warlord had wanted the secret of those engines for himself. Of course, after two years, they now knew how they worked. Unfortunately replicating those drives had proven impossible. They required a substance that was impossible to synthesize, and the Empire knew of no natural source. Obviously, the Humans must have the technology to synthesize this ‘Rydium’ as they call it, but no such technology had been acquired during the campaign. Now there was likely going to be no chance going forward for it. Thanks to that idiot who had the audacity to die.

He glanced at his view screen, his tail lashing again behind him. There he spotted the wrecked remains of a Human carrier. It was a massive hulk of a ship that dwarfed his own battleship by nearly double. The humans were good at large-scale ship construction like no one else. Many of their ships tended to be larger than their Cathamari equivalents. The Battlemaster knew the ship was likely boobytrapped but it also represented the only known source of Rydium left. Who knows, it might even have an intact engine onboard. It wouldn’t be compatible with his ship, but that could be fixed with a few modifications. The main problem was that the engine wasn’t designed for Cathamari power grids, an adapter would be needed to convert the generated energy into a form the engine would accept. It was the same for all human technology. A fact that was only to be expected, they had developed completely independently of each other afterall.

Dreading the answer he inquired, “how long will it take them to repair the manifold?”

“They say they can’t. Insufficient spare parts to repair the damage.”

His tail lashed, he had been afraid of that. Unfortunately, spare components were something they were running low on. There was only one thing they could do. They would have to sweep the debris field for compatible parts. Not an easy task mind you since the Humans have a tendency to booby trap these fields. Anything they didn’t take would almost certainly be trapped, and they were very creative when it came to traps.

He was going to lose quite a few brave souls, but he had no choice. The human ships around here likely wouldn’t have what he needs, but there are a few Cathamari wrecks mixed in. One of them may have an intact manifold. If it does, it’s likely trapped. He prayed his engineers were up to the task or they would be forced to abandon another ship. He gave the order.

Countryman smiled as he listened to the latest status updates. Other than a few minor incidents the evacuation was proceeding well. If things continued this well, they would have the colony evacuated by the end of the day. Even better was the news that they had recovered an intact gene bank on the colony. One of the local genetics labs had escaped the bombardment unscathed, and it had a complete gene bank. The lab had a number of useful pieces of equipment as well, that he had ordered transferred aboard ship. It might prove useful to them on the journey. Even if it didn’t, he knew that they would want to introduce earth fauna and flora to whatever world they ultimately selected. That lab had been studying new cloning techniques for the rapid growth of animals and flora for the Venus Terraforming project. Countryman considered it being intact a stroke of good fortune. It would be of great value for any colonization plan. Although he could think of a few other uses.

Then his mind considered the orphans and children they were bringing aboard. The orphans would need someone to look after them, and the kids something to do. Hmm, it might not be too difficult to put in a school. Figuring out where to put the orphanage might be a little more difficult. He decided to talk to Megumi Richards about that. Together they would be able to come up with something. This was something they would need to take care of quickly. Another question that occurred to him was who would be teaching the kids. Maybe Greyman would have a few ideas.

As for the Memorial project. His engineers had already begun work turning one of the ruined domes into a Memorial. One that would not only honor their fallen, but leave a record of what happened here behind. The crew had also heard about it, and from what he heard. Many of them approved of the Memorial being made. He was glad about that because he knew morale was going to be low. After the defeat that had been handed to them, there was no way it was going to be anything but low. Little things like a Memorial would help. As captain, it was not only his job to keep them alive, but to make sure they were as happy as could be given the circumstances.