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Entrapped and protected by his suit, Clark, captain 1st class, looked on with abject horror as his escort exploded in a fiery ball of plasma. Oxygen seared clean the interior from the crew it had so long supported, before merging itself with the void itself.

He was just one of the thousands stranded, dotting the zero-gravity battlefield and barely distinguishable from the debris that his squadron had turned into. A spectacle of passion and violence would accompany their last moments far beyond the languid embrace of death they would meet at their respective planets.

Because this was the climax of a war hundreds of years in the making: fleets of the Silusids had mustered in a decade-long campaign, before bundling their forces in this one grand push to retake Earth. Their troops would overwhelm the defenses before the enemy had a chance to regroup.

“We need you in sector four.”
A computerized Voice notified the captain his life was not at an end. The collective still needed him.

The armada slipped away in the black void as he felt his consciousness being pulled through his skull and into the system. It led him through ships both familiar and strange, spaces he nearly could glimpse the classified nature of, and past rows of inert soldiers signified by minds primed for brutality.

It pulled him into a corvette near Neptune. The captain found himself in a new body, bound to an automatic stretcher that transported him to the bridge; his body still needed time to adjust to its new owner.

On the way, his new crew saluted him in a manner befitting his station. After four dozen faces, they blended into the background. The Voice demanded his attention.

“Welcome Clark, captain 3rd class, to your new station and your redemption. You are stationed near Neptune on the CMV Challenger, a third-generation corvette of the Ravager Class.”

Information and schematics beyond his previous understanding were imported to his hippocampus. Clark knew his ship within fractions of a second. It was made with the latest advancements in cloaking and electronic countermeasures in mind and its advanced ECM capabilities would prove particularly beneficial against this enemy. While smaller than his previous escort, the corvette proved to be maneuverable and ideally suited for hit and run tactics.

“Your goal is to break through the enemy lines. While the main vector of attack will stay on the defensive bases around Saturn and Jupiter, we’ll need you to clear the Trojan Asteroids for a second front that will cut off their supplies and open up their core defense.”

A map filled his vision, detailing current positions of the solar bodies. An abundance of explosions saturated the 5th sector: Jupiter and its moons. Clark shuddered at the mayhem and thanked God for his current station.

“Do not thank me. You’ll be given a green flotilla of fifty Ravagers to deal with the enemy positions. Global system scans show the enemy has mostly abandoned them to deal with our main thrust, but expect the remainder to be extremely fortified, shielded by the asteroid mass, and ready to defend it to the last machine.”

The map now zoomed in to better detail his task. Fifty green dots indicated his ships that formed a sparse line facing the asteroid mass. Three billion klicks separated them from their targets. Thousands of dots sat another three billion klicks further behind them, out of scanning range, yet ready to pounce on any opening he created. This flotilla acted as this fleet's vanguard.

“Your survival chances are calculated to three percent, Clark, captain 3rd class. But I have full confidence you’ll achieve your goals through your desperate genius. Your actions will perpetuate themselves into the infinite space and eventually, the divine.”

The captain’s eyes teared at the chance he had been given. He was determined not to disappoint the collective, and confident his commands would combine themselves into his final requiem. He would not fail.

Supervisor Melissa stood for an impossible task. The high command had taken away three-quarters of her ships, leaving her with just four carriers and their respective escorts to defend her sector: a sector that consisted of over a million asteroids packed in a dense fashion that allowed the creation of a defensive line filled with entrenched bases.

Under any ordinary circumstances, it would be an impenetrable barrier, yet conditions were far from ordinary. She sensed Sol’s situation once again, a schematic that was updated every microsecond from her scans; only latency thwarted a real-time view. Alien fleets threatened to overtake their bases at the jovial moons, a catastrophe on a scale never seen before.

But she knew it wasn’t their main point of entry. She had pressed high command to prepare the Greek and Trojan fleets, warning them of the danger an encirclement would bring. Her instincts and warnings were efficiently swept away with cold calculations. The sheer force of attack had dissuaded them from keeping any strategic reserve and her fleet was redirected for the Jovial moons.

So Melissa formed a course of action that would delay any enemy attack long enough for reinforcements to arrive. She ordered drone groups sixty-five to eighty to dispense their entire reserve on their allocated positions. These explosive charges would serve as a warning, with specialized cloaked mines clustered around tactical openings in the field to uphold respect. Her leftover carriers she would keep in reserve, inviting boldness and allowing her to gauge her opposition better.

Supervisor Melissa stood at the center of a network wholly dedicated to her support. Hundreds of the keenest minds had been conscripted and rewired to help her process the yottabytes of data. The left flank, closest to the Sol-Jupiter line, begged for more missiles. The center was uneasy, demanding a portion of her network to better plan eventualities Thèta and Omega, which she curtly denied. The supervisor’s attention drew to the right flank, where the primary sensor arrays lay.

They warned her of a multitude of anomalies. Alien masses were detected, possessing the classifications and densities close to the alien corvettes. The estimated arrival time sat between two and three hours.

Melissa immediately relayed the findings to her troops and ordered her drones back to their hangars. With a restock planned within three hours, she deemed it safe initiating deployment of the missiles. The aliens were well within the range of the latest generation.

Captain Clark cursed. Sirens popped up around the different stations within his bridge. His lieutenants messaged something he knew already: their cloaks had failed them. They were spotted and active scans dialed in on their position.

“Full throttle ahead. Let the first squadron mask the other four.” He hoped that the sudden outburst of their engine discharge would throw up a flare, blinding the opposition and masking the shadows that lay behind them.
“This is it. Let this attack be known as the one that shall lead us to victory.”
“Captain! Look at this!”

His panel slowly turned into a singular white screen, tens of thousands of objects flung towards them and overwhelmed the onboard systems. Early thermal readings indicated fission engines propelling them to speeds of one million klicks a second. His Silusid repressed a rising unease and allowed him to think with clarity.

“Those are missiles combined with their ECM. Order squadron one to perform an upward thrust. I want us separated from the other four. Wait with any countermeasures or electrical warfare of our own.”
“Sir they’ll-”
“Be here within thirty minutes. Yes, I know. I want squadrons two to five in total silence.”

By separating from the other squadrons, he risked further discovery. He simply gambled their sensors would direct their attention to the first squadron making all the noise. His unit would further continue the ruse and threaten to fly ‘over’ the asteroid belt, hopefully drawing the ire of the powerful gamma-rays that lay behind the machine’s preliminary defenses.

Meanwhile, the other squadrons would advance in silence, fully activating their cloaking devices. The increased power output would decrease their combat reserves and lower their entry speeds, but without the element of surprise, they were sure to fail.

"Take special care to mark any origin of the missiles and ECM. We'll beam it directly to our flagship for long-distance bombardment."

Luckily technology hadn't advanced enough to intercept waves of information moving away at lightspeed. At best they would have a single spot in the sky that would be dimmer than usual. The captain just hoped the admirals were smart enough to bombard both the Greeks and the Trojans alike to conceal his intentions further.

"Do we know anything about those missiles?" the captain asked while activating his magnetic boots. The gravitational forces changed with the change in impulse.
His lieutenant stood frozen for a moment. "Sir, allow me to upload our reports."
"Very well. Let's see what our predecessors faced."

Admiral Cheng received the signals from the flotilla XXV. On her map, new holograms were added, signifying enemy bases in varying degrees of certainty.

"What shall we do?" she asked to a deserted room.
"It's quite straightforward," the Voice responded with a modicum of barely contained annoyance. "Initiate a full-scale bombardment from our strategic reserves."
"That would mean we expose them to our enemy, provoking them into the next step."
"And that wouldn't happen when we penetrate their preliminary defenses?"

She had no response on that, started to formulate the thoughts that would unleash enough power to split open a planet. She knew by now they were no longer fighting for reclamation of Earth, the lush planet she remembered and coveted. The machines had long ago transformed Earth into a husk. They had corrupted the whole system, encapsulating their sun to draw upon its energy more efficiently to power their soulless networks. She was fighting for vengeance now.

"Make sure to pulverize the Greek line too; use our antimatter warheads for that. The impact of an explosion draws more attention than its accuracy."

So she added more directives, following the fifty dots with extra care.

"Will they survive the barrage?"
"They will. I designed those ships myself. Their ECM will render the missiles useless," the Voice declared with certainty. "Let me focus on the Jovian front.

That front wasn't looking good. The machines had mobilized faster than they had expected. In dealing with the outside bases near Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune, they had lost valuable time. The machines had installed the installations within weeks, using the orbits of the planets and moons to provide maximum coverage. In a frontal attack, they had lost ten flotillas. It had forced a retreat, losing valuable time.

"Their shields have so far absorbed our gamma-ray barrage. I fear they will do so indefinitely as long as their Dyson sphere stays functional."
"Should we destroy it, Sir?"
"No!" the Voice shouted, forcing Cheng to wince. A sharp jolt fried her nervous system.
"No," it continued. "The captain has given me an idea. We must open the third front. The cloaking technology has proven itself, order our third fleet to overwhelm them from above."

The prime nexus was bombarded with information. The aliens had simultaneously opened a full-scale barrage on the Jovian, Greek, and Trojan front, something that didn't match its predictions. Their firepower drained the energy reserves. Already it faced the tough dilemma in choosing which districts to depower, which people to let die for the greater good. How many lives were worth another minute of uptime for their shields?

Its answer was clear: as many as it took. A large portion of its military programming, the part that had assumed control in the wake of the invasion, was prepared to force the ultimate sacrifice not only upon themselves but also on others. The mining colony on Mercury and all its inhabitants went silent.

The nexus rerouted supplies and altered flight paths. It cut its reserves by half. Within hours the fronts would be bolstered by another thirty carrier taskforces. Simulations have shown their efficiency, staying behind friendly lines, and serving as a mobile defensive bastion against the incursion. It had supplied these carriers with the newest advancements in electronic warfare, predicting enemy maneuvers. Lastly, it had given warnings to the fronts, ordering them to dig themselves in.

Something big was coming.
They would stand prepared.

Inspiration from hell.

"Three minutes until impact, sir." The lieutenant started to fidget with increasing intensity.
"They haven't fired another salvo after the third wave, correct?" Clark asked, face set in stone.
"Correct, sir."
"The bombardment worked. Activate our defensive systems. Set the turrets at a 30-klick range."

Captain Clark started to pray. If the ECM failed, their mesons wouldn't have enough time to pierce their way through to safety. As he feared, the rocket decoupled their main engine halfway, splitting into four smaller -and harder to hit- missiles with just the bare minimum onboard.

"Two minutes, sir."

The sheer quantity of the things would mean a nigh solid wall armed with warheads was racing to his position. His Silusid further inhibited the activity within his amygdala. It gave him room to breathe and he gambled the mesons wouldn't suffice, forcing the release of the buoys. The timing would be critical. Too late and the warheads wouldn't be fooled by the identical signatures, too early, and the enemy could instruct the missiles to ignore them.

"Release the buoys."
"Aye, sir."

He felt the buoy's release like the excision of a deadly cancer. The floats were sure to distract the warheads further, allowing his defensive weaponry to perform its job. He allowed himself to think past his incoming doom. He had to change course; a powerful active sensor pinged his position.

"Full downward dive and activate cloaks."
"Sir?"
"Do it!"

He placed all his hopes on the buoys, transmitting identical emissions to the corvette. In performing the dive, his meson defense would require valuable moments to be recalibrated.

The floor gave way; the only thing stopping him from crashing into his panel were his boots.
"Activate circumstantial rotational gravity."
And, as the floor slowly returned to his feet, he saw the results of his maneuver.

Two of his squadron were too late in releasing the buoys. The missiles had locked their target, already too close to be fooled. Another corvette simply exploded, a powerful beam had split the ship in half. As he had guessed, the mesons were inadequate to cull the warheads. A wall of explosions inched closer to the corvettes until a few evaded destruction. The ships were doomed.

Seven corvettes remained. They disappeared from the radar, silently rejoining the other ships as the buoys emitted enough interference and viruses to dispose of the stray missiles.

The area would need to be marked as dangerous. Missiles that hadn't exploded now lay in wait, ready for another signature to lock on. Captain clark had left an active minefield behind him.

“Get ready for assault.”

Colonel Cain readied his drained marines. His regiment had rotated four times in as many days. Usually, he lost half of his unit before another took over the fighting. But last time his escorts had failed him: nobody returned.

“We all know our target. Base Tau at Titan still stands tall against our hammers. Let me show your last moments,” he continued as he uploaded disjointed memories of the few captains that had survived the ordeal long enough to get past the shields. The unit saw their ships shredded mercilessly. With no escape, they were systematically hunted down and dispatched.

”As you can see, the bastards had managed to get their guns online in the short lull of combat between rotations. So that’ll be our first objective. I know we won’t be able to bring antimatter explosives, but the admiral has deemed our unit fit to bring the latest mech’s.” An uproar of conflicting emotions interrupted his speech. “I’ll need twenty volunteers to pilot them. Beware though, once you exchange flesh for metal, there’ll be no turning back.”

Silence.

It was true, sadly. The shields interfered with any transfer of electromagnetic data. With the proper preparation and defensive measures, humans could slowly pierce the barriers. But any electronics were barred from entry, fried upon any attempt to cross the barrier. The men wouldn’t just inhabit the mech; they would gradually be remade, dendrite for dendrite and axon for axon, until man and machine would be inseparable. They would become an unholy abomination, closer to their enemy than their friends. He asked these men to sacrifice themselves to experimental doom for ultimate victory.

“I’ll do it.” A captain stepped forward. He was a valorous man, one that showed courage and skill beyond his peers.
“Thank you, Isaac.”

His sacrifice echoed throughout the halls. The volunteers were led through the halls and into the uploader. Soon their flesh lay discarded on the ground. Their resurrection would come.

The rest of his regiment split themselves into twenty companies. Each received their specific orders. As a whole, they would expand the breach, fight their way through the defenses to the cannons, and make them undone.

“We’ll go out in an hour.”

Supervisor Hebel observed the cursed humans who made way for another assault. He had learned their movements and their formations. The first wave consisted of corvettes, the gunboats with a tonnage of just two thousand. They would rush into close range and, armed to the teeth with point defense turrets and carronades, and they would engage his forward fighters. If he let them, they would once again pave their way to his last remaining Saturn base: Tau.

So he decided to throw them off guard and let the first wave approach the base unanswered. He looked observed as the corvettes entered orbit. They would pave the way for the dreadnoughts and assault ships to approach. Those were the targets he targeted. They were the pawns that would break his defenses.

His reinforcements would arrive in a day, making him comfortable in investing his whole force in this one strike. His twelve carriers would fire off eighty percent of their load, unleashing wave after wave of fighters and bombers to the battlefield. Enroute and hidden behind the shields, they would sneak up on the enemy fleet and overwhelm their defenses from all sides.

This plan would be his ace in the hole, resulting in a grand victory to contrast the last grueling weeks. He was sure of it.

Supervisor Hebel dispatched his orders.

Wow, still at this.

Here, have another commendation I guess.

I love the story as a linear story., maybe is too much telling and very little showing. But the plot seems interesting and Is understandable!!

“Get in! Get in now!”

Explosions drowned colonel Cain’s words. His regiment was under attack, and going off the digital clatter, his fellow regiments were too. His transport ship groaned and shuddered as a thousand bodies ran towards the drop pods. Sirens instilled a deep sense of urgency. Red lights showed them the delicate way towards safety.

“Put on your masks!”
“Sir! We’ve lost pods six to thirty of an explosion!”

The floor shuddered again under their feet. The red lights turned off.

“Fire off as many as you can!” the colonel yelled as he sped off towards the bridge. He dodged corpses ripped into bits and beams that blocked the entire corridor. Some parts of the ship lost gravitic support, forcing him to push from wall to wall towards his destination. At some points, half of the hull was shredded away, showing naked layers of armor and shielding.

Another ripple made its way through the hull. The colonel had to be fast. Luckily he saw dozens of pods abandoning their nest like panicked ants. He had to deliver the rest of his unit too.

The bridge appeared deserted. The crew had abandoned their posts.

With a roar, Cain threw himself upon the panels. He sensed the ship hadn’t long. All he had to do was redirect it towards the base, towards the shields that separated his domain from the navy.

“Don’t.” The Voice came through the panel.
“Like hell, I won’t. These are my men!”
“This is an order colonel.” The Voice allowed no transgression to his will.

Yet Cain was determined; he acted before he became conscious of his actions. With a pull on the lever and a quick command, he put the ship on ramming course. The colonel couldn’t trust himself, not any longer. He knocked himself out before he would make his actions undone.

He fell to the ground as the first effect from his commands became visible. Tau appeared in front of him.

It's less of an expanded version, and more of a sequel. And hopefully the tone'll be less mysterious and more in-your-face laser blazing. :)

This is in your face? You have to put a disclaimer that you need five major in Harvard to understand your games.

Damn. And here I though I strayed too far to the side of overdumping information.

Colonel Lamech had fought on Tau for a day now. The sky above him was as pitch-black as it was a day before and showed no sign of reinforcements.

“We’ll have to finish the Sods ourselves,” he said to the staff around him. In their diligent disarray, they barely heard his remark.
“Sir?” A lieutenant stood to attention.
“You heard me. Call off the retreat. We won’t be relieved any time soon.”

He paced around while his staff relayed his orders. The situation was dire with the Sods advancing from all fronts; they had superior numbers and weaponry. The previous plan was to outlast them in a battle of attrition, yet it seemed the navy had left him here to rot.

“Alright, give me a sitrep,” he asked his lieutenant. The short man’s eyes glazed a second.
“Our breach is shrinking by the minute. While our central position is now secured and reinforced, the Sods are advancing on all flanks. On the east, they have repelled our thrust on their orbital cannonry, and they are now slowly pushing our 3rd regiment back in a ferocious close quarter battle.”
“Good, that’s where they shine. Any reinforcements available?”
“None, sir. We depleted everyone an hour ago.”

It was terrible news. Without reinforcements, the colonel felt he had lost tactical maneuverability. They were reduced to the same situation as that of a cornered rat.

“Very well. Continue,” Lamech prodded stiff and terse.
“The western front had crumpled. I fear the antimatter generator is once again in Sod’s possession. Our troops haven’t had the time and equipment to blow it up. The Sods surrounded the 7th regiment, and any attempts to reach them have been countered with heavily armed resistance.”
“Is the south any better?”
“I’m afraid not, sir. Our men were steady in their defense. Their position remained the same our entire rotation, but now they have lost a key strategic cornerstone in their defense. Tower Eight is once again in enemy hands.”
“The north?”
“The north stands tall. Sod attacks have increased in frequency, but they are poking of nature rather than piercing.”

Colonel Lamech was a cornered rat, and like rats, he would strike while he still had the chance. The northern front had potential.

“Let them advance.”
“Sir?”
“Redirect eastern and southern forces to their fallback positions, and use the 5th and 6th to reinforce our attack on the northern hangars. We’ll move from there to relieve the 7th.”
“Very well, sir. I’ll send the orders right away.”
“And one last thing: you’ll stand at the front of the attack. Send me a replacement right away.”

Supervisor Hebel ordered the bombers to strike. His plan had thus far performed admirably. With the battle stretched into three dimensions, his fighters had managed to draw the enemy gunboats out of formation. The dozens of explosions showcased their efficacy.

With the primary defense cleared, the eighty bomber wings were clear to approach. They had rudimentary cloaking of their own and, while not as advanced as the reports coming in from the Trojan front, the tech had proved itself satisfactory. The bombers had slipped through the chaos.

The three dreadnoughts mobilized. Hundreds of turrets extended from their hulls. The turrets held fast-rotating X-ray lasers that started to track the bombers. Then they opened fire all at once. The older bombers didn’t stand a chance. A hundred men were lost within a second and yet they still had a billion klicks to bridge. Hebel had to act.

The supervisor now redirected the fighters from the ravaged gunboats to the three dreadnoughts. Long-distance lasers of their own promptly replied the enemy lasers, causing some turrets to be destroyed. Early reports indicated their armor was thick enough to withstand three direct hits. The fighters had to be lucky or resign themselves to simply buying time.

The newer bombers had activated their ECM to obfuscate enemy tracking. Previously accurate shots now whiffed thousands of klicks off target. The electronic disturbance spread like a cloud throughout the battle. Any ship - fighter, bomber, or gunboat - found within the vortex lost all communications to the outside world and soon meshed into the storm.

Soon all he observed was indecipherable and corrupted data.

Major Jabal found his 7th regiment cut off from the other units. His goal was obscured from sight, hidden behind several spires. His men held fast now, using the corpses of both their comrades and the Sod casings to fabricate makeshift barricades, but were heavily pressured.

“Shit. We won’t hold out for another hour,” he thought out loud.

Ahead of him, the barricade started to break. The squad that guarded it was ready for one final stand, brandishing knives, hammers, and small laspistols. The major aimed his gaussrifle at the point of most activity and appointed a fireteam to follow his example. The gun had just thirty bullets left. But the magnetic force propelled to such speeds he would shoot through the reinforced walls.

His unit had retreated to one single large hall just outside the powerplant. The central overreach offered good firing lines, and the thick walls withstood anything safe the most advanced weaponry.

“Here they come!”

Two coil rifles appeared above the barricade. The marines immediately jumped up and pulled the guns away. Meanwhile, the supporting team opened fire. Their impacts instigated fires that burned as hot as they were brief, illuminating hordes of Sods ready for attack.

“Fuck! We need grenades!”
“We haven’t any left!” The reply was barely audible above the ruckus that had now started.

He shot thrice at the dense mass. Five Sods fell to his shots; even more took their positions.

Meanwhile, his captains had redirected forces to the enemy breach. Eight more squads were called upon to even the local odds. They joined the chaotic fighting, where knives broke through steel and claws ripped through flesh. The marines fought valiantly, yet were felled one by one.

The Sods had claimed the barricade, and with that earned themselves cover against the firesquads. They had brought guns of their own and fired back with inhuman accuracy.

“Sir! We have to fall back!” a marine shouted.
“Fall back where! Stay your ground, marine!” Jabal yelled back. “We have to-”

Enemy gaussrifles pierced their cover, ripping open his comrades and dismembering his legs. Pain overwhelmed his senses before his Silusid kicked in and released the necessary neural blockades. It also made a timer appear in his corner, signaling he had five minutes left to live.

“Shit.”

With the utmost effort, Jabal crawled away from the compromised cover. Three minutes were left. He remembered there was one medic in the fireteam and slithered through his dead comrades in a desperate bid to prolong his life. Yet their armor was nigh unnoticeable beneath the blood and gore.

“Major!” a voice sounded far away.
“I’m… here,” the major managed to reply.
“Fuck! Medic! Medic!” One of his lieutenants had found him and pressed something against his legs. “Don’t worry, major. Help is coming. We’ve heard fighting near us. Even the sky itself broke apart.”
“It’s... cold.”
“Fuck. Ambient pressure’s decreasing. Medic! Get over here!”

Two minutes were left.

Colonel Lamech fought at the frontlines, driving retreating Sods ahead of him. Their droid warforms fell before the coordinated fire of his marines. As he stepped over a heap of them, he gave orders to flank the defensive bunker that lay at the end of this corridor. Their progress was steady, yet fear clutched his heart that he would be too late, that he would abandon his son.

“Make haste!” Lamech called. “And be sure to-”

The roof flickered, alternatively showing a black void and a battle with thousands of ships. Visible lasers and heavy ordnance created explosions that illuminated the silent painting of death. After several moments, Lamech saw the black roof of the base Tau break apart entirely, giving way to burning pods and the remains of a transport ship.

“Shit, the sky’s gone mad. Lieutenant, where will they crash?”
“Twenty klicks further north, sir.” He found the replacement much better.
“Shit.”

Lamech had to choose. Would he bet the reinforcements were combat-ready, or would he rescue his own? He felt a divine presence once again. The Voice pushed him towards the latter.

“What’s the situation at our homebase?”
“Stable, sir. The boys have dug themselves in and could parry all assaults.”
“Very well. The enemy knows our positions already. Light up the flares. We’ll give the lost their direction.” And so he concluded: “And the Sods a wall of bloody iron to crash against.”

His force spread over a front of just three hundred meters. The Sod counterattack could be any minute now: they had become predictable.

And they came like clockwork.

Using overlapping ranges of fire, the division created one large killzone. As the Sod came, soulless droids with six deadly limbs, they found themselves without cover and were mowed down.

After twenty minutes of heavy fighting, Lamech gave the order to advance the line. Carefully they moved forward; Every step paid for with countless Sods. They moved westward, against the tide and towards distant shouting, towards the valuable generator.

About what percent would you say you're at with this by now?

Around twenty I think. We haven't cracked the last of Saturn's bases yet, and then Jupiter and it's moons will have to fall before we arrive at the inner solar system, where Sod's concentration is the highest.

Luckily my madness is contained to this one thread.

Are you actually on some form of drug right now, or would you characterize this as more of a manic episode?

Is this going to be turned into a story game when you're done?

Probably some sort of mania in response to generalised enforced monotomy. I don't know; I know I'm having fun writing these things.

I also don't see how this can transform into a storygame. As this thread stands, it's more multiple storylines combining themselves into and enlightening a greater battle. If I would put any choices, a deviation of one little storyline will lead to an entirely different result and phase of the battle. It would lead into either a lot of tedious death links, into a lot of cutting, or into a lot of even sillier fake choices.

But maybe I'll get inspired again. I've been itching to try some of that arcane coding the wizards speak of.

Colonel Cain awoke in the mids of fiery debris that exhumed a thick cloud and reduced visibility to zero. Deprived of his normal sensations, he focussed inward. His Silusid retained a connection to his troops.

“Good. Means the barrier’s down,” he mumbled and felt out towards the navy. “Can I count on orbital support?”

He felt only varying degrees of distress. The answer was resolutely negative, so he reached out towards his troops. Roughly sixty percent had survived planetfall, and low laid scattered around the surface.

“That’s doable. What about the last division?”

He felt the distinct ruthless aura of colonel Lamech. The bastard was alive and, judging by his arousal, in combat. Yet he didn’t feel any of his men. Something had gone awry in the chain of command.

So the colonel crawled through the corpse of his transport, in search of any survivors. He knew the Sods arrived in force within half an hour. He knew he had to have a defense ready by then.

He retraced his steps as much as he was able. The wreckage had been deformed, the impact had compacted entire halls and ripped open hangars. Everywhere he went, he was met with the thick fog of destruction.

“Medic!” Is anyone here!” shouting came from a hall three compartments further. He reached out with his Silusid. It was a group of sixteen marines, part of his regiment, 4th company, and without an officer.
“This is colonel Cain. Stay where you are.”

And Cain made his way through the debris. A blocked passageway forced him to move up a floor to reach them.

“I am here, lad. What’s your status?”
“The 1st sarge has been hurt bad. A beam punctured his chest. There was our lieutenant. Got crushed by the impact-”
“How many combat ready?”
“We are with ten.” So there were six wounded. ”The others have been searching for medical supplies and other marines.”
“When will they return?”
“We would change every fifteen minutes.”
“Very well. Gather every able-bodied marine and rendez-vous at this point,” he said, sending the coordinates. ”I expect you’ll be there in twenty.”

The further the colonel ventured, the more groups joined his makeshift unit. He would need every single one for what was to come.

Admiral Cheng watched in terror as the Soulless ambushed her fleet. Her map showed the danger her forces were in; losses amounted to over thirty percent. While the three dreadnoughts held fast, they sorely lacked the support of their gunboat escorts, and their armor had been reduced to just twenty meters at some points.

“We should send in the cruisers.” she pleaded the Voice.
“We should.” Was the curt reply.
“We can still salvage this. If we pull out the two reserves, reattach the Guardians to the frontline and destroy Tau base, we can still come out ahead.”
“No.”

Cheng wanted to reply and reassert her plan of action but found her resistance crumbling.

“Have some faith.”

Cheng observed the battle in dismay, silently cursing the fact she could do nothing to contribute, any orders would be horribly outdated by the time they had reached their intended target. She had to have faith in the local rear admiral and the Voice. What a terrible position she was in.

“You could have died with the others four centuries ago, and yet you chose this instead. Do you start to have regrets now, now that we are so close to pulling back control of the system?”

Another explosion brightened the area near Saturn. They had lost a dreadnought. Only three remained. The remaining behemoths became a rallying point for spacecraft friendly and enemy alike.

“You’re throwing away our fleet. You’re feeding-”
“Haven’t you paid attention?”

So she looked once again, willing the hologram to bare its secrets.

“No, you haven’t, and I’ll have to depend on you soon.”

As the Voice spoke, her mind was overburdened with data stemming back to a small millennium. It showed her the strategies the humans had deployed around the carriers: from its first conception at the first world war to the refinements made throughout the next three, and finally, its evolution from the oceans of Earth to the void of space.

As much as the humans had prided themselves into beings of free will and unpredictability, they were a species deterministic to the core, a fact only exacerbated by their final leap towards the artificial. Finally free from nature’s unpredictability, the little mistakes that had previously reshaped destiny, they now calculated their way throughout strife. If the weight set to their variables were known, the response could be predicted.

And the weights were exactly what Cheng saw.

Rear Admiral Chang Xi had consolidated her forces. The damned Soulless had caught her unaware, a mistake she paid for with a dreadnought, but they wouldn’t again. Reintroducing fleet integrity was vital to stop the chaos the enemy shone in. In the past two hours, they had retreated from Titan and moved towards the cruisers. The front shortened by a hundred million klicks every four hours.

Her staff encompassed the entire bridge. The room, itself almost a kilometer long, was stuffed with machines, holograms, and small desks manned by unmoving members. It oriented around a single, three-dimensional hologram that encased the valiant stand near Titan.

For a room that busy, and that large, it was deafeningly quiet. Silusids had taken over verbal communications.

It would be another twenty hours before she could finalize reordering her forces. The gunboats were still entrapped in solidly held enemy space, each attacked from all sides by a dozen fighters. Her missiles were useless. By the time they would arrive, the craft had already scurried away towards other targets.

But everybody’s mind was on the second dreadnought. The CMV Pestilence was the second most forward of the three. And after her sister had passed away in a still supernova, she was next. The central hologram showed five waves of enemy bombers, each armed with antimatter torpedos. It was an outdated terminology. Nowadays, it bore its predecessor’s name for its tradeoff of less range and speed in exchange for a bigger payload.

And the combination of the fast and mobile launching platform with the massive payload made them ferocious enemies that had already claimed a third of its price.

With the gunboats out of position, the other dreadnought retreating, and the cruisers too far away to matter, CMV Pestilence had just its local escorts to parry the onslaught.

Twelve escorts. Warden class, more suited to face cruisers than the smallest of targets. They fired their missiles as blanks, in a desperate plea to intimidate the enemy into giving more time. Another ten minutes passed in the utmost tension as every pair of eyes laid glued at the central map.

The first wave bit down into the bait and performed evasive maneuvers that drifted it off course. And yet the missiles proved to be too well made. Some hit, forcing themselves into their targets, only to be glanced off without detonating. The bombers easily absorbed kinetic force. The next waves didn’t abandon course. They had won themselves ten more minutes.

The captains had exchanged their missiles for lasweaponry. Instead of using gamma rays, they had instead opted for red lasers. The increased wavelength would give them more leeway that the range and nimble targets required.

But the large waves couldn’t deliver their energy as efficiently as the more standard ones. Several shots were needed on a single target and had to be as lucky as to hit the same spot multiple times for it to break through the barriers. As the red light illuminated the room, Chang Xi was displeased to see only a few bombers disappeared.

And so the waves approached ever so closer, joined by fighters that had destroyed their targets. Just five hundred million klicks separated the dreadnought from the danger.

And close enough for the batteries to open fire. The area between the two parties soon filled with explosives, missiles, lasers, and torpedos. The first wave of bombers reduced to metal husks before they managed to get close enough, explosions signing their death warrants. The following waves split apart, eager to find and abuse a weakpoint within the defense.

Three hundred million klicks. The first torpedos hadn’t survived the CIWS defenses, but the reports flashed red. Targetting was at capacity.

Two hundred million klicks. Some torpedos slipped through all defense systems and bore themselves into the dreadnought’s shielding, leaving behind them a ripple that spread throughout the whole hull.

One hundred million klicks and the bombers were past effective range of the batteries. The CIWS stood between an impossible choice of defending its mothership from torpedos and attacking the spacecraft that launched them. In the end, it failed at both tasks.

Eighty million klicks and the shields were blasted apart. Pieces of the thick armor drifted away into the dark. Distress signals had to be blocked from the network, and Chang Xi knew she had lost another dreadnought.

Sixty million klicks and the solar system lit up in another nova.
CMV Pestilence and its escorts were lost forever.

Colonel Cain had repelled the first Sod scouts. They must be as overwhelmed as he was, for the resistance he met was less than he dared hope. His force pushed forwards like a snowball. With more marines under his direct command, his Silusid could leech enough power to attract even more.

He had crashed at their storage area. And with a small and mobile force, they could intercept the Sod advance before it gained momentum. His prime directive was destroying their reserves before the enemy could be booted online.

And so the force, now five hundred marines strong, moved through the complex, sweeping every room against the defenders. Eventually, they ran through halls leading into a central nexus. Thousands of dormant Sods lay within their tanks, stacked like building blocks both towards the sky and to hell.

Cain knew this reserve nexus was just one of many.

His unit fell silent for a moment, stunned at the sheer size of Sod’s reserves. At one point, the piles shifted, pods moving to a central releasing area.

“Block that door!” Cain thanked God he possessed a few mechs, strong enough to bend metal. “And set charges! I need this hive destroyed.”

In just ten minutes, the grand nexus detonated. Now was the time to finally face his son. Lamech was in the south. Both the flares and his Silusid attested to that. He had to plan how to breach through ten klicks of densely fortified Sod troops. God knew they were onto him now.

Did you quit because some dumb dog peed on your leg?

Using the distraction-free time to catch up to some work and studying that had to be done. I'll probably restart this tomorrow or late tonight.

Okay well don't take too long, I assume you'd prefer to get back on the server during the time that Corgi has no powers and anybody with a featured story can kick him.

:jerry:

I can't kick anyone :(

Another bright flare blinded private David, who was lucky enough to be underground at the moment the dreadnought exploded. His mission was deviously simple: scout for any passes between the two colonels in the damned maze that called itself Tau Base.

With him were his trusted companions Eliab and Samma, both decorated marines on their own. They moved through structures that would be the Sod equivalent of human sewers. Thick tubes, the three could comfortably stand shoulder to shoulder, connected different parts of the base. A gooey bioluminescent fluid filled the ground to their knees.

“Thank God for our suits,” Eliab remarked as they sloughed through a particular promising passage.
“You should have thanked Him earlier. His oxygen kept us alive ever since landing.” Samma pointed at the two tubes mounted on his back.
“I wonder if we’ll ever see our home again,” He continued more to himself. “Those flares meant bad business.”
“Knock it off, Sam,” David interjected. “We can’t lose with God on our side.”

It was the truth. David had heard the stories of the First. He understood how the Mausoleum had transformed the First refugees into conquerors under God’s leadership. He truly believed God was with them even now, and that faith gave him the resolution to perform.

“I don’t like these ripples,” Eliab interjected the silence that had fallen over them. “What if the Sods have sensors. We’ll be walking right into an ambush. Damn. I don’t like these tunnels at all.”
“That’s your fear talking, El.” The remark caused his cheeks to light up, sparking fire to his eyes.
“What did you just call me?” He squared up to David, who straightened his back in turn. Eliab stood a head taller and still barely moved the shorter man.
“Save it for the Sods, you wretches.”
A few moments passed before Eliab responded.
“Fine.”
“Notice the damned fluid sank?”
“Yeah, we’re going back to the surface.”
“You know what that means, right?” Samma responded. “Sods’ll be on our tails. Enjoy your peace, you wretches.” He rechecked his coilgun, looted from a dead Sod, and was satisfied. “We’ll rise to hell again.”
“Silence,” Eliab pushed. His hand shot up into the air, signaling the marines to get down. The goo rose to their helmets, only carbonfibers separating it from their bodies.

The tube widened into an antechamber ahead of them. Six long rows of machinery worked diligently in silence, their only clue being the thermal output. Sod workers moved between them. Eliab counted at least thirty of them, shaking his fist three times to signal his findings to his brothers.

He was right about the ripples. Only the brainless automation had prevented the workers from noticing something was amiss. The workers, he perceived, were as easy as a nonadapted human. They also took that form, only the shimmer of metal signaling the lack of any soul. They would have to be taken out. He knew the thick walls inhibited any signal, feeling his Silusid growing weaker by separation. As long as none escaped, they would remain unnoticed.

Eliab saw three exits, excluding the long and solitary tube behind them.
Three circling fingers. He would take the furthest exit. The others nodded their reluctant approval. That’s all he required.

David crawled around the Sod. It had strikingly human features: a soft face that exhumed serenity, with a small smile that was ever-present. It would die by his hands in three minutes. His Silusid counted the seconds he had to reach his goal. David couldn’t help but feel a wave of pity flooding his judgment.

As he crawled further, the feelings evaporated. God had ordered him to cleanse the Soulless from the surface. He wouldn’t falter. There was only a wicked determination all fanatics possessed.

Samma had only a minute left, and a measure of stress rose to his neck, spurring him to action. Ahead of him was a guard. He differed from the workers but luckily wasn’t as fearsome a warrior as the Sod soldier. It did prevent him from reaching his goal. He didn’t dare to leave the shadows prematurely.

So he scanned his surroundings once again, looking between the now familiar pathways for a new route. There was none. He would have to compensate this falling later during the execution of the plan.

Ten seconds. Through a mental link only those that had fought dead together possessed, Samma assured the others were ready. He shot the guard, straight between two of his armor plates and turned around to continue the surprise.

“Shit!” Eliab shouted. The shot had caught him by surprise, but he was ready. Rage bled through his eyes as he leveled his rifle to his first designated target. The metal golem fell like a sack of cans.

The three marines swept from the exits inwards, herding the workers as much as they killed them on sight. Samma grimaced as he delivered the execution. The poor Sods didn’t stand a chance.

Eventually, they met each other at the entrance, driving the workers to the pool they stood in ten minutes ago. David saw their soft smiles turned into quivering lips of fear. Some fell to their knees, begging the three intruders for leniency.

“It’s remarkable how dedicated they are to the perversion of life.” The cold voice of Eliab stigmatized any empathy.
“They are harmless,” Samma remarked. “Are two raised arms not a human sign of surrender?”
At this, Eliab kicked a worker deeper into the goo, trying to crunch the case between the metal of his boot and the rockhard ground.
“Would a human lose so much of his spirit to allow this?” He underscored his question with a shot. The shockwave winced through the captives. “No. A human would be desperate enough to save his life, to resist when death is otherwise assured. Remember Samma, these are Soulless. They aren’t capable of dying. We just have to disassemble the automation before it destroys us.”

A three dozen more shots rang out, and the group moved onwards. Their mission lay before them.

Captain Clark felt the shockwave of the first nova coursing through his corvette. From the limited reports he allowed to break his concentration, he gathered his fleet was losing at Saturn.

“All the more reason for this second front to pierce their ring,” he thought and saw the idea reflected by his crew.

Clark approached the Trojan Asteroids unopposed. Either their cloaks held up, or the bombardment was so effective, the Soulless had crumbled. His flotilla awaited orders.

By now, he was close enough to get a better read from his passive sensors. The previous ping made by enemy active sensory originated from the far left, almost near the end of the Trojans. Meanwhile, both bombardments and prior missile launches had mainly been at the center of the line. That left the right flank open for dangerous surprises.

That was the flank closest to the debacle at Tau.

And that was the flank he would attack first.

He expected to arrive in just thirty minutes. In solar terms, it was close enough to let a soft and warm breath down the enemy neck. It thus wasn’t long before the Soulless felt the hairs warn of danger. A powerful sweep bounced on his hull, telling him the enemy had once again spotted him.

Immediately enemy activity overwhelmed their system like a trumpet overwhelmed the ear that had previously been listening to the crawling of ants.

“Activate active sensors.”

It was time to abandon caution and fight fire with fire. He needed to know their positions for the targeting system to do their work. The whole flotilla screamed to the outside world its position, hearing their screams reflected at the defender’s positions.

And the forty and seven corvettes opened fire. Meson that had previously calibrated to intercept warheads, now sought and fired upon unnatural alloys.

“Sir. Soulless are firing back.”

The lieutenant remarked it just to follow guidelines. The captain had already foreseen the reaction and performed preventive evasion maneuvers. The seats now wholly enveloped the crew, forming a microcosm that shielded them from the worst of gravitational forces. All information now directly transmitted to the Silusid.

The captain waited until the sensors picked up explosions and a marked decrease in activity before ordering a retreat.

Forty and two corvettes retreated to the shadows.

Activate active sensors! There are really too much repeated words in this one and the flow is slow and very telling. When it should be a fast action scene

Visor Criasus inspected the massacre the aliens had left in their wake. The room of slaughter was a neglected processing vault, a romanticized leftover from the old era where the guns of Tau required many miles of workstations.

His district had regressed into turmoil. First, the alien invaders went about their invasion methodically, advancing orderly from their three beachheads. They had spread like a drop of oil on water, gradually developing and yet pushed in with every wave. There was a beauty to the system.

However, the battle had driven them desperate. They had crashed their ships, and their pods laid scattered about the surface. They had abanded whole districts they previously had died for by the thousands, opting instead to overextend themselves in suboptimal directions.

Moreover, there appeared to be a third alien army, one that traced its roots back to the cursed ship itself. They were the ones responsible for massacring these men and women, the charge he swore to protect.

Their bodies laid scattered about the floor. It seemed they were fleeing inwards, towards the toxic goo these old processors created. There he saw the most grueling sight of all. Three dozen Remnants, clutching each other in their last moments, before dying together in a mass grave.

And they were the most human of them all. They were the minds that had discarded the enhanced potential of the synthetic. They possessed rare minds devoid of ambition, the lust for progress, and instead focussed on the familiar. With the secrets of the universe at their fingertips, they instead opted to enjoy a life satisfied with the little things, and each other’s company.

Over the centuries, they had turned into a respected component of the renewed society, reminding the rest of their origins, cautioning from straying too far from their identity.

And now they had been slaughtered like animals.

Visor Criasus ordered three squads to find them. The memory of this place cried out in revenge.