"In the Year 2751, following humanity's recovery from a nuclear war in 2118, humanity established diplomatic first contact with an alien civilization, the Beralox Divine Dominion. The Beralox, much like humanity, are native to the Orion arm of the milky way galaxy. However, unlike humanity, the Beralox haven't had to recover from nuking themselves back to the stone age."
"This tiny difference manifests in the form of a vast technological gulf between the two civilizations, and soon enough, humanity has become just another vassal component of the Beralox Dominion, serving as the dominion's bulwark from the wider galaxy. Of course, we humans are stubborn creatures and aren't quite too fond of being subservient to another species, so we fight."
"We fight so that we may one day cease to be beholden to a civilization that is not our own. We fight so that out children are never forced to fight for our foes, so that they are never forced to do the things that we have had to in service to our overlords. Some are content to remain shackled to our overlords, and that is fine. They believe that what we gain is worth more than what we lose, and will thus sit idly by while others struggle, I do not fault them. "
"To fight in a war is a frightening thing, even for one such as I, and to rebel against the status quo requires just as much bravery. It is a daunting foe we face. However, I believe I speak for every veteran of Sirius when I say this: No more."
"No more will I be beholden to the Beralox. Never again will I be forced to fight their wars. I refuse, as do many of my comrades, to perform atrocities in the name of "quelling a rebellion". I reject the thought of allowing our people to remain beneath the boot of the Dominion."
"That is why I fight. That is why we have rebelled. And though our enemy may be great in scope and power, I will continue to fight, until I can fight no more."
"Until the last breath leaves my lungs, upon the battlefield, or upon the homeworld of our species long after we are freed."
"That is all." - Speech by Sirius Insurgency leader "Haytham".
_____________________________
Adam sat in a silent bridge. He was the only person on his ship's bridge. In fact, he was the only person on the entire ship. His ship, the Wisp, was a mostly automated courser-class vessel. It was designed for silent missions, scouting and spying in enemy space and beyond, and thus only required him to be present.
The role of a scout-captain was not one that was coveted. He often found himself lonely and isolated, going long stints without speaking to anyone but his three pet razorback hounds, who weren't intelligent enough to respond to his chatter anyways.
His most recent deployment had seen him away from a friendly port for three consecutive months, the longest he had gone so far. He was glad that he had but one mission before being ordered to return to a port.
He simply had to survey the system that he currently found himself in, something his ship could do automatically. So he sat back and watched the survey readout as his ship cruised through the system's asteroid belt.
He could see why this system required surveying. It was exceptional. Three habitable planets in one system? A rarity beyond rarities. The fact that the system was hidden within a nebula that would easily block most sensor systems only made it more valuable in his eyes. He could see why it had already been renamed to refuge.
The planets themselves were gemstones in the rough, too. Hathor, a beautiful green jewel sitting pretty in the fourth spot from its star, its terrain seemed to be mostly plains and steppes. Proteus, a blue sapphire of an ocean world that wasn't really a planet, because it orbited a gas giant. And Manann, which seemed to him like a second Earth in all its bounteous pre-nuclear splendor. All it lacked were the great swathes of dry land and desert so often present on Earth.
Not that that was a negative, in his eyes, seeing as he personally despised sand for the irritant that it was. The time he'd spent deployed to Santigar to quell the planet's rebellion remained one of his most miserable deployments for more than just his having had to deal with embedded Beralox Nobility "Commanders".
He remembered having wanted to strangle one of them every second he'd spent around the irritating bugger. That noble had likely been the only thing more irritating to him than the sand. Something that wasn't helped by the blasted "aggression management" bracer that he'd been forced to wear when around any of the bastard aliens, which shocked him like a damned dog every time he'd thought of harming one of them, which, of course, led to his hatred for them intensifying.
A beep from the system readout drew his eyes to another screen, where the status of the wisp's sensory probes was displayed. One of the probes in the asteroid belt had gone dark. It was possible that it'd been impacted by an asteroid, but he doubted it, each probe was more than maneuverable enough to avoid an asteroid. He took over navigation and engaged the ship's hardpoints, beginning a stealthy approach.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
The Wisp, like every other ship of her design, was extremely stealthy. She'd been designed with the express intent to create the stealthiest ship possible with modern terran technology... and what they'd been able to steal from their overlords. For the purposes of stealth, she'd also been made mostly automated. The less crew she had, the less emissions and power-consumption would be produced from her life support systems.
The saved energy could then be diverted to additional stealth functions, like her concealed heatsinks, which could minimize the heat she'd produce on a thermal scan. Alas, she was not large enough to support a Terran cloaking field generator, which meant that any idiot with windows and eyes would easily spot her. Even if she was painted to match a patch of space. After all, patches of space didn't tend to move.
His current approach vector would take him right above the probe's last known position in under a minute, but he decided to dive out of the asteroid field and dive back into it just adjacent to the probe, a risky maneuver which would undoubtedly surprise any enemies. Not that there were any enemies when he arrived. In fact, he found the place completely devoid of anything, even any trace of his missing brobe, which had seemingly vanished.
He felt the impact before he heard the alarms begin to scream. His neural interface allowing him to feel as something directly impacted his ship's aft and sent it rocking. He immediately began evasive maneuvers and turned his ship to face the threat.
He wasn't the best pilot, but he'd already had a neural interface and command experience from his days as a power armor company captain, so he'd been given his current positions. Even then, he could likely win a dogfight with any opponent that didn't have a neural interface, simply because of the advantage in maneuverability and processing power that it granted. Though even with that processing power, he struggled to make sense of what he was seeing.
The "ship" before him appeared to be an asteroid with undulating masses of color-changing crystal. Crystal which quickly grew and shattered, sending the shards hurtling towards his ship. He rolled his ship out of the way and watched as the shards exploded against an asteroid. By the time he'd turned his eyes back to his foe, it was gone. The blasted thing was invisible to his ship's sensors.
He began to dive out of the asteroid field, it would be far harder for it to hide in the open void. As expected, it followed, and he rolled out of the way of another blast of crystal shards. The second blast, unlike the others, tracked him, and impacted against the Wisp's aft. He was certain the ship had a fairly large dent already forming, the shards were as fast as the Wisp's railgun rounds, and there was only so much damage that her hull could sustain, even with the standard kinetic shielding.
Fortunately, his opponent was slow, though how it could maneuver at all was a conundrum, seeing as it had no visible propulsion. Either way, once they were in open space he began to fly circles around his foe. His railguns cutting into his foe's rocky surface and blowing off chunks of stone.
In open flight the difference in speed became more obvious than ever before, he was even capable of outmaneuvering the tracking projectile shards, which rapidly began to lose speed after a minute or two. Of course, he noticed how the enemy had ceased to launch anything other than the tracking projectiles, and he noticed how they'd begun to speed up, but there was little he could do about that, and the effect was minimal.
Then the asteroid broke, revealing more crystal, which rapidly began to shift. It took on a far more dynamic shape, and began picking up speed, as did its attacks. His previous routine of running circles around it changed, now it had become a proper dogfight, the two vessels dancing around each other, firing off their weapons. The speed gap had been closed, and he was in trouble now. The crystal was more durable than his ship, and the gap he'd formed through evasion was being closed quickly. He had no doubt he'd soon start taking hits again.
He sighed. He'd set out from headquarters with six torpedoes, he had one left. If he encountered an enemy patrol on his return journey, he'd certainly be in trouble. Still, he launched the torpedo. Better to live and possibly regret it than to die because he was stingy on the munitions. The torpedo flew, performing minor course corrections as it did, and the crystal didn't even try to evade.
He watched as it was torn apart in the ensuing explosion, differently-sized shards hurtling away in the aftermath. Command would undoubtedly want samples and scans, so he deployed his remaining probes and disengaged the hardpoints and allowed the automated systems to take over navigations. The engineers would not be happy about him getting his ship damaged, but command would be very happy with the knowledge of these crystalline entities, seeing as it might prevent any casualties to ambushes once they figured out how to detect them.
Of course, Murphy, ancient Earth's god of misfortune, looked upon his hopes of going home and laughed. The crystalline entity wasn't quite so dead as he'd thought it to be, and a large shard of it somehow latched onto his ship as it passed through the debris field. By the time the alarms sounded, the crystal had already begun digging through the aft's hull, directly towards the ship's jump drive.
By the time he'd thought up a reasonable course of action, the crystal had completely taken over the core. At least the power generators weren't in the aft. It made his next course of action far more palatable. He took control once more and launched the ship towards the nearest habitable world, forcing the thrusters beyind their normal acceleration capacity, which caused them to start melting. Not that that mattered, considering that he wouldn't need them where he was going. He detached the ship's aft, and set the emergency landing mode, securing himself to his seat with the inbuilt safety harness.
He knew what came next, he would activate the ship's "colonization procedures", start getting the lay of the land, and wait for a couple of months until rescue came. Assuming he survived the crash after atmospheric entry, which, considering the speed and angle he was entering at, was highly unlikely. Or as the shipboard computer put it: "Probability of surviving emergency landing, twenty percent. You will be gladdened to know that the bridge will be the first section to be destroyed, and you will be unlikely to suffer.".