Chronicles of The Omniverse Archived The Cryo System

[Tiko]

as written by Lobos

The birth of a new age should always be announced in the flames of the last. From destruction comes life. Such is the circle.

Such was the message carried in the central intelligences of the swarm hurtling through the tunnel through space and time, under the propulsion of their Hades drives. A message repeated thousands of times a second, within the brains of the drones, their simple logic paths and intentionally minimal designs leaving them pawns. Extremely smart within their own field, but pawns. Expendable. Indeed, desired to be thus.

The thousand ships that sailed at superluminal speeds barely qualified the title of ship. A few dozen thousand tons of nearly solid carbon nitride nanotubes, the Hades Drive, reactionless thrusters, a few superluminal sensors, a broadcasting comm, and the guiding cortex inside of them. They had but one mission, a single one way trip, to deliver a message, a package. A cry of war, and they were that cry.

And the time had come to speak.

As one, one thousand drones curbed their velocities, dropping to precisely 90% the speed of light. Reaching that velocity, they exited the non-space tunnel they traveled, the first hundred of the swarm coming into real-space on terminal vectors, within 15cm of 539626424 meters to their goal. Immediately broadcasting the message on the wide-bands they carried, a fervent scream of electronic noise that was a message crunched within static. The first wave of the ten within the swarm would strike their target, the Aschen Watchtower within the Cryo system, within a scant two seconds.

That was all the warning that they had been instructed to give.

Each and every one of them carried the potential to end a world's life, at their mass and velocity.
Each and every one of them had but one target to kill.
Each and every one of them would die to destroy it.

Timed to hit fractions of a second one after the next, after the next and the next and the next, they were a chain of destructive potential that was horrific, and they came on, to slay themselves and all they touched in the release of power their simple impact would bring. All the more terrifying was the vector they came from.

The direction of Langara and the inner core worlds.

Contained within the message for those who witnessed to hear, was the harsh, grating voice of the sender of this message.

"You Aschen have grown stagnant. And we have come to burn you for it. Prepare yourselves if you wish, but you'll fall to the slaughter nonetheless."

 

[Tiko]

as written by barney_fife

The First dozen impacts rocked the massive station nearly to it's core, each ship impacting against Kanvium armor, one after another. The Crew was shaken and taken completely by suprise, the Watch Officer's coffee fell to the ground with a clang as the Scanners lit up.

As each drone impacted the armored hull, it's kinetic energy was dispersed in a fluid like fashion by the Kanvium hull. It was this that allowed an emergency subspace beacon to be broadcast to the entire Empire.

Moments went by and the Watchtower's superstructure began to fail, chunks breaking apart from the station, but everything culminated into what could essentially be a brilliant flash, something described as igniting with the glow of a thousand suns.

The first ionic shock-wave shot outwards in all directions, anything within 50 AU of the immediate explosion would be vaporized. Fortunately that excluded any major planets in the System. Immediately following this burst of energy was a brilliant ultraviolet flash, and then Gamma radiation was released outwards in all directions before dissipating.


---

Commander Adams, and the rest of the Imperial Military in Cryo would recieve a second automated message from the central command AI on arastel; it was an order to fall back to the Gaelian Watchtower and await further instructions, one by one Aschen ships in the system began to jump out, leaving the Cryons to their fate.

 

[Tiko]

as written by Tiko

The destruction of the watchtower was complete before the military vessels stationed within the region even had the opportunity to muster a response.

The CIC of the Reverence S, Blackbird, could only be described as organized chaos as Adams received the automated hail from the Gaelian Watchtower.

"All personnel, action stations!" he barked into a comm device that was transmitted throughout the ship. "Get our FTL drives spooled up," he instructed the communications officer.

"Sir, there are millions of people in this system. Are we just abandoning them?"

"We don't have a choice, this wasn't a battle," he bit out between grit teeth. "The Empire is the target here. With any luck, once we clear out, they'll follow suit."

"And if they don't?" the XO asked.

"Then may the gods be with these people," Derek answered grimly.

There was nothing more they could do here. Only a sparse handful of patrolling ships still dotted the system, and the brunt of their assets had been destroyed along with the Watchtower. A minute later, the Blackbird vanished from the Cryo System.

 

[Tiko]

as written by Lobos

And the nest was kicked, and the ants scurried.

Contacts that would have alerted the local watchtower advanced into the system with smooth precision. Dozens of moderately large vessels, angular blades slipping among the stars, approached with casual confidence, flanking two ships twice their size. Obviously of the same design as their lesser cohorts, these two vessels were...minor in stature, when compared to other entities which traversed the stars. Yet they smoothly decelerated as the armada entered the confines of the system, lashing the surrounding space with active sensors operating at superluminal speeds.

Around the invaders vessels, space seethed. Thousands upon thousands of bizzare drones scurried about their larger brethren like a cloud of flies. And among this fleet...

Not a single being breathed.

A collective intelligence, a network of AI entities from the lowest drone to the twin sword-ships. Communication was a flurry of superluminal static, operations, dialogues, processes in the thousands occurring within each moment they drifted further inwards.

One such sword-ship abruptly turned it's heading, accompanied by an escort of a dozen of the dagger ships. Moving towards the space once occupied by the watchtower, with the intent of perusing for any remnant wreckage that may have survived the destruction.

The other maintained its inward course, till it entered the orbit of the second planet in the system. Dispatching some of its cohorts to approach Cryo itself, the dreadnaught left them to their own devices. They knew what was expected of them, as did it. Everything proceeding according to plan.

And so the attention was turned towards the world it hovered above, as pods discharged from its underbelly towards the surface. Guided, they braked through the atmosphere, cycling around the surface to points determined within the analysis of a mere few seconds.

 

[Tiko]

as written by barney_fife

Some time later...

The iconoclast class ship, the Apocalypse and the fleet tender found themselves in high orbit over Cryo, jumping in and getting their bearings, they locked onto the ship below.

"Four condors, with an assault team, clear and secure the ship. From there we'll get it into orbit and hooked up with the fleet tender." The commander ordered as the men prepared to secure the ship below. They checked their weapons one last time before they boarded their Condor Dropships, and deployed towards the surface.

 

[Tiko]

as written by Tiko

The decision to take a team planet side came with its risks. Cryo was a lawless planet that owed no true allegiance to anyone. Their loyalty to the Aschen Empire extended only so far as their profits did.

More than one government official that had set foot upon the barren wasteland of a planet has simply never returned - another nameless casualty written off as being claimed by the elements.

As the Aschen assault team was military rather than law enforcement, they fared better odds of garnering the cooperation of the locals. A fact that would likely be needed as they closed in on the Kobol's Gleaming.

The ship was nestled within the heart of Lochcrest, in a large scrapping yard and it was crawling with Cryons. Most of the ship's systems were already offline, and Kathryn's attempts to remotely lock the ship down had little result with much of the ship's internal systems already gutted.