A/N
Yo AkumetsuAlucard here, a little on how my story came to be; I normally work nights for a solid week, and then have a solid week off. On my time off one week, I started watching space pirate captain Harlock, the original Japanese series. Well 6-8 episodes, two monsters and some rum. I end up laying in my bed at around 4 am trying to sleep. Then in my pseudo sleeping state it hit me, Brian Jacques x Captain Harlock. I spitballed it to my friend since we were thinking about tabletop role-playing the concept (Similar to D&D). When one said that it would make a cool story, why don’t you write it down. I don’t remember if it was Wolfe, or Bryan, but I thank both of them since neither of them remembers it either. It has grown from there.
This chapter does not have a fight scene, I am not comfortable enough in writing to write one just yet.
Spoiler :
Give me three chapters. I will have one in either chapter 6 or 7 *(crossing fingers) not a big fight, just a brawl in a where I can start figuring out how I can write it out to the best of my ability.
A millennia is a thousand years, so 2000 millennia = 2 million years
(Sorry for not replying to your comment dude, it slipped my mind til I came to post.)
Once again, I rushed the Edit, so Grammar mistakes will probably abound (It is not my strong suite).
Last thing, QCA is on a different circuit than the QMC and it is hard to hack one from another, just a note.
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“Greetings, we are here to destroy you. Hope you have no regrets and have had a nice life. Ghost, cut the field.”
“Dropping stealth field,… and done. Frank, just remember According to the princess’s Data, this is neutral space.
“Imoogi, this is the Thanatos class Dreadnought Knightstalker, Acting Cap‘n Frank Vergil at the helm, we will give you one chance to surrender and hand over your Dark matter drives, and ships computer logs, other wise we will have to take them by force.”
“How dare you talk to me that way, I am captain Yessicanda Rhiannon, Captain of an Imperial starship in the Dradarian Royal Navy. You would not dare attack our vessel; it would be an act of war.
Frank looks her in the eye over the comm. Circuit and says;
“I don’t care who you think you are, the fact that you were attempting to attack an unarmed ship already marks you as the one committing an act of war. Not to mention that you are currently in the unclaimed space buffer zone between empires. In other words you have no authority, now hand over your drives or else.”
Yessicanda, looks at frank, and then cuts the comm. circuit.
*Click
“…”
“Yo, Frank the bitch that just hung up on you is trying to run away”
“Thanks Bryan, however no one hangs up on me in neutral space.”
“Ghost, get us moving, start chasing them, tell Scarr and Wolfe to prepare to Board, and repel boarders in due fashion. Once we are in range have them fire the grappling hooks.”
“Aye, aye Frank”
“Bryan get down there with the boarding party, as soon as we engage you know what to do.”
“Sure thing Frank, also permission to make a music request for when we engage?”
“Go ahead; who do you want to listen to?”
“I want Back in Black by AC/DC, sound good?”
“Perfect, it even fits our situation, hey Ghost do you think you can manage to play it through the ships PA circuit for everyone since it is a good choice?”
“Yeah Frank, I can do that, but do I have too? You know what I think of Metal.”
“No buts Ghost, Last fight we listened to your bloody blues and it made the crew moody, we want pissed off firecrackers to fight the enemy, not hormonal angst filled Emo freaks”
“Blues do not make people Emo, it just makes them Emotional”
“…” Frank and Bryan stand there in silence for a moment until Ghost says;
“I think I will get back to work now that I have made a fool of myself”
“You do that Ghost, You do that.”
“Frank, you get the Comm.’s, I am heading down”
“Good luck Bryan, and happy hunting”
“Thanks skipper, but keep your luck I don’t need it”
“Yeah right, the last time you said that you were captured, remember?”
“Please, please, please, don’t remind me of that. And also don’t jinx it you egg head”
“Whatever, good luck scrub”
“Right back at ya skipper”
“Ghost route me through on the comm. circuit to the entire crew”
“Done skipper”
“Greetings crew, this is your skipper speaking, as many of you may be aware we are in a tight spot. The captain missing, we have been asleep for 7 thousand years, Luna’s fried, we have a runaway princess on board, Ohhhh and to top it all off we are running low on dark matter. So we are literally fucked over five different ways. However, there is a marvelous solution already neatly packed in a little metal box right in range, not to mention it was chasing the new ship mascot, the princess. So in order to set the mood for our awakening Comm. Officer Bryan made a suggestion. Ladies and gentleman the old classic by an ancient band known as AC/DC.”
“Ghost, hack their comm. Let them also hear our music”
“On it skipper,”
“Now crew, the piece which was suggested is a good start to our battle lets line em up, fire the grappling guns and queue the music. Let’s start this shit up right”
“Crew members, this is ghost, all hands to positions, they are locked down with the grappling guns and being drawn in. Hitting the play button as soon as assault crew lifts off.”
“ALL HANDS PREPARE TO REPEL BOARDERS, ASSAULT CREWS PREPARE TO BOARD. ALSO, BRYAN TRY NOT TO GET DISTRACTED.”
Off in the distance all that could be heard outside of people prepping for combat comes an echo
“Fuck you too Frank”
Crlunck*
“We have contact, open the board way, Defense crew ready hard light shields, Bryan you might as well get your creeping suit activated, good luck bro.”
“Thanks Wolfe, same to you. SCARR, where you at, I am supposed to follow your initial charge into the ship then we split up.”
“Right here, making sure my men’s hard-light suits are working in tandem with the nanotech gear. All right, we’re all set.”
“Care to do the honors of opening the hatch brother Wolfe?”
“It would be my pleasure brother Scarr.”
“What don’t I get any Honor?”
“Nope, you get to capture our first prisoner for a long ass time Bryan, consider yourself lucky”
“When you put it that way Scarr, I really want to sock you in the balls.”
“Hahahaha, Don’t worry Bryan, you aren’t the only one who has wanted to do that today.”
“Shut up Wolfe, and open the hatch, let’s get this over with.”
“Sure thing Scarr”
“Oxygen field is activated, Assault crew activate Nanosuit External Void Protection Gear under the Hard light suits”
The assault crew answered in unison;
“Aye, Aye SIR.”
“Frank, this is Scarr, Assault crew is launching”
“Godspeed and happy hunting assault crew, Good luck to you all out there.”
(Back in Black starts blasting through both ships speaker systems)
The airlock opens and the assault crew plus one jump out from the Knightstalker and drifts in space for a moment before nearing the Imoogi
“Assault crew this is commander Scarr, on my command activate Artificial Gravity boots (AGB) … and … NOW”
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Yessicanda POV
“How dare you talk to me that way, I am captain Yessicanda Rhiannon, Captain of an Imperial starship in the Dradarian Royal Navy. You would not dare attack our vessel; it would be an act of war.
………
“Ma’am you just hung up on them”
I turn my head and start staring down the Helmsman who was talking to me and I said;
“Did you even hear what that, that, that BEAST, said to me?”
I am a captain of the royal navy. Not even space pirates make demands form me, and then we answer this call from an unknown source that suddenly revealed itself, calling itself a Thanatos class. What a load of eggshrooms my awe at their act was quickly overpowered by my annoyance at the people on their communication circuit. All that they did was threaten us and make demands.
Now we have to flee from this ship in an attempt to draw them back into our own territory where hopefully we can find reinforcements amongst some of the outlying star bases. How the heck did such a standard mission go so very wrong in the first place? As I start caressing the token that I received from the prince, the Helmsman said something to me, which I did not quite catch. I turn to him and tell him,
“Say that again Helmsman”
“Well ma’am, maybe we should have listened to their demands, we still have our backup solar panels, and we could always receive more dark matter once we return to base. Sure it might take a few weeks, however what is that compared to our lives‘?”
I look him in the eye and tell him
“The fact that if we were to allow that to happen so casually without any form of resistance would sentence us to the death penalty as soon as we arrived back to our home systems. Better to be demoted than killed.”
Besides, I think to myself, I still have missions I must accomplish in the name of the prince. I rub the token again thinking of him when I hear some of my crewmembers panicking.
“Helmsman, give me a status report.”
The helmsman swallows his saliva, looks at his instruments while saying in a higher pitched voice than any male should be able to reach;
“Cap’n, we stopped moving.”
“That is preposterous, Comm.‘s man bring up the engine room.”
“Aye Cap’n, Engine room what’s your sit-rep? Over.”
“Comm.‘s man, we have nothing out of the ordinary to report, engine output at maximum with power levels showing steady. Gravitational pressure is in the green. Over.”
“Thank you engine room, this is Comm.‘s man Out.”
I turn to the Helmsman and ask him;
“If the engines are working, then why are we slowing down?”
“Cap’n, we are picking up a strange energy reading from that ship, similar to the void locking signals used by space stations”
“So, do you mean to tell me that the ship that is chasing us has a Void lock, and we are currently unable to flee?”
“Oh, and they are rapidly approaching”
I am surrounded by fools who do not seem to understand the situation. I turn to the Comm.‘s’ man, and tell him;
“Patch me through to the whole ship.”
“Aye, aye Cap’n”
“Crew, this is your captain speaking, we have a situation. We can either surrender to some pirates and die upon our return home for not fighting. Alternatively, we can fight honorably, with us surviving after we manage to repel them. Therefore, all hands to battle stations, Combat status is now at level 1. Prepare to repel boarders, if you can hold a weapon, then pick one up and get ready. Otherwise to your posts, and as soon as you are able, open fire.”
“That should show them not to mess with a heavy destroyer, also, Comm.’s man, have weapon officer Caboose send extra guards towards engineering, we wouldn’t want them to take our power source now would we.”
“Aye, aye Ma’am”
“Cap’n, all defense crew are reporting that they are unable to use the ships primary weapons due to the void zone making them unable to target the enemy”
“Helmsman, you are such the bearer of good news, aren’t you? Convert all ship weapons crews to defense crews on the double.”
“Aye aye Cap’n”
This is bad. We are in big trouble; they have us by the tail now the real question is where they are going to lead us. We cannot fire back. We can’t flee. All we can do is now pray that they are nowhere near as good when it comes to hand-to-hand combat. We Dradarians are known for our size and strength with the tallest of us reaching just over 7 feet, and we are all born with the innate ability to easily carry four times our own weight.
When it comes to Melee, our only real true rivals are those bloody bugs. Thank the Mighty Cosmic Drakon that they are pacifists otherwise that would quite honestly spell doom for my whole species. Back on point, we are probably going to repel them as soon as they arrive so I am going to need to;
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“Comm.‘s man, order half of the remaining unassigned defense crew members towards the air lock, with the rest protecting the way towards the Dark matter drives.”
“On it Cap’n”
I hope that they will not try to just cut their way in, that would be bad. We wouldn’t even get a chance to defend ourselves. So long as we manage to kill some and prove that we did our duty to till the last then maybe some of the crew will be able to survive. So much for my flawless military career.
(Back in Black starts blasting the ships’ speaker systems)
What in the name of the five Drakons is this blaring cacophony of sounds? Grhagh, it seems to be melting my brain. Come on I can get a grip over this, whew. After that initial shock, it is not so bad. Stop it Yessicanda, back on point.
“Comm.’s man, can’t you shut down this infernal racket?”
“I can’t Cap’n; they are overriding my commands whenever it comes to the PA system. In other words they have partially hacked our quantum comm. array, and there is nothing I can do.”
Gragh, at least it is only a sound, if they planned to slay us with that then they must think that we are weaker then we truly are.
Crlunck*
“What was that? Helmsman report.”
“Ma’am, we have been boarded by the enemy.”
“How? Their ship is still a solid 400 yards off”
“The only explanation Cap’n is that they must have men with artifacts able to casually transverse such a large gap in space”
“So we have Artifact knights crawling on our ships outer hull?”
“If it makes you feel any better, according to our sensors, there seems to be less than 40 of them”
“Helmsman?”
“Yes cap’n”
“We only have a crew of 100 men not counting the medical and engineering crews, those are 40 artifact knights”
“So, do you think this is the end Cap’n?”
“Depends on if they decide to just grab and go, or if they decide to rub it in.”
“Cap’n they are moving to the airlock and beginning to breach.”
“Thank you Comm.’s man”
All we can do now is wait and pray, while hoping for the best. As they begin their breach our sensor are able to pick up 37 signatures, all of them wearing artifacts and wielding pre-collapse melee weaponry. My thoughts were; whoever formed this force must have sunk several entire royal treasuries worth of interstellar chits into them, for they are too well armed and organized to be simple space pirates.
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“Yo Frank, this is Scarr, Checking comm. link we have breached their airlock and are in their loading bay.”
“This is Frank; give me a full sit-rep.”
“There seems to be token resistance, they might be running with either a skeleton crew, or they are not in current possession of hard light or nanotech”
“Can you subdue them without killing them, or at least minimize enemy casualties?”
“What the heck Frank, Why the HELL would we do that?”
“Ghost, please explain to Scarr.”
“Scarr, it is simple, if they are only offering token resistance they might have been expecting to lose in the first place. Which means there is a chance of them attempting scuttle their ship in order to defend any data or experimental tech that is onboard. If we leave some of their people alive then maybe they would hesitate to do so.”
“I get your drift ghost, I don’t really want to deal with the singularity from when anti matter collides with proto matter. I will see what my men and I can do, so knockouts and electro-paralysis work for you Frank?”
“Yep, however if your men run into anything that you would deem deadly then don’t hesitate to go for the kill.”
“Roger that Frank, and thanks for the heads up ghost. I will contact you boys once we are en-route back to the ship with the drives.”
“Roger that, Ghost and Solomon are doing their best to hack into their QCA so we can get a live feed and support your boys with Intel, once we get the feed up we will warn you if we notice any danger.”
“Thanks Frank, and you guys too, good luck to both of ya.”
“Frank, Solomon here, we managed to break in with the help of scarlet and are sorting through relevant data on their QCA.”
“Pull up the live feed… Crap…”
“Scarr, this is frank. They have heavy resistance set up by the Drives, about 40 or so, it might be best for you to have your boys use a couple of locking grenades to freeze them up, then just go straight to removal.”
“Are you sure Frank, would it affect the drives, and don’t they take one hell-aciously long time to make?”
“No, not if they are in a proper void seal, and if they aren’t then the only problem is that it would be harder to move them out of the locked area.”
“Roger, proceeding to move towards the ships core, oh, and by the way are you seeing this crap? They are not even using the automatic defense systems to attempt to repel us.”
“That might be Bryans handiwork, you know he likes to move fast and get his job done, besides if he accessed the nearest data port, that would explain how scarlet was able to help Ghost, and Solomon hack their QCA for us to get access.”
“While we are holding here, do you know if they know that we are in?”
“This is Ghost, I am going to say no because, otherwise they probably would have tried to do a hard server to the QCA hub, which would affect us one hell of a lot more than it would them at the moment.”
“So our present is going to be one hell of a surprise to them.”
“Yep, make sure to set the locking grenades to their max power, and a 2 hour time limit to ensure we have time to refill our drives and get out of here.”
“Roger, Out.”
Henry raises his hand, turns to Frank and says;
“Excuse me sir, I hate to distract you, but I have a question, about those locking grenades?”
“Go ahead and ask away, I know that they are marvels of technology and the result of 350 years of research done by the captain.”
“Well sir, what do they do, and how do they work?”
“Oh, I will let ghost explain how they work since it gets complicated, and still gives me a headache when trying to explain it.”
Ghost pops up on the Holo-deck wearing a luxurious bath robe seated in a large cushioned armchair with a pipe in his hand and an illusionary fireplace behind him.
“O my, younglings sit down and listen well; the locking grenade as we call it is not an explosive. In fact, the only reason we call it that is because we set it to have a limited range of effect, which we improperly call the blast radius. What happens is those grenades use traces of anti matter and proto matter, combine them and using the resulting energy convert the power to that of a miniaturized black hole. Which for one quintillionth to one sextillionth of a second exists, this amount of time is the longest period of time we are able to manipulate a black hole without it affecting our plane of existence. However the singularity effects an other plane, which the easiest way of describing it as time.
So it affects time for that small period, and when it does the collapsing matters energy is channeled directly into manipulating this extra dimension known as time. Since, as everyone knows, black holes do not only absorb light, but they also bend space-time, we in essence, control the event horizon. In other words once they go off, they are literally frozen in time until the effects of the singularity fades. Which means we can’t hurt them but they are also unable to do anything until the affects fade. Time travels on regularly for us however, it doesn’t for them. Therefore, for us 1 day, is only a fraction of a second to the affected. We did figure out how to adjust it so they are only able to stay in that state of chrono-stasis for a relatively smaller time such as 30 minutes as opposed to a literal 30 days or even 30 years.”
Henry and the princess look confused and unable to readily comprehend such reality bending technology. Frank notices their obvious confusions, and quickly jumps in saying;
“They temporarily freeze time, however they are extremely hard to make, due to the fact that we have to in essence fit a ships QMC into a ball the size of the princess’s fist along with both anti matter shielded with dark matter, and regular matter. It takes almost a month to make one. Luckily we have a lot stockpiled due to us never really using them”
“But would it not be a great revolution in the face of warfare, never having to risk your own men and easily being able to take advantage of theirs?”
“Not quite princess, tech that complex has a tendency to malfunction easily, and if we end up having an entire squad of our men get frozen on another ship, well it ain’t good. Besides, with this tech we are literally playing with fire, the first time it was tested it created a black hole which still exists today towards the core of the now uninhabited alpha-centarii systems”
“Which explains your lack of will in using it so casually.”
“Right on ya Henry, buddy. However we haven’t had a misfire on one for several millennia, and each time one occurs we find out what went wrong, and then improve the tech so that it doesn’t happen again.”
Henry and the princess turn to each other and begin conversing in hushed tones about those with the power to play god when Frank is contacted by Scarr;
“Yo, frank, we locked em up for 2 hours and are on our way back, Bryan should be almost done, once we meet up we will immediately evacuate and head on back, sound good?”
“You hit the nail on the head, so proceed as planned”
“Roger, and out.”
“Frank?”
“What is it Ghost?”
“Bryan’s signal is coming through; I am patching him in, and done.”
“Yo Frank, I bagged me their captain, and I took all their data, NAV and otherwise. When I was done, I wiped their mains, and backups. However, I am going to need an O2 pod, EVP mask, or a helmet in order to bring her back. As soon as I knocked her out she went stiff, which didn’t help me. I ended up having to knockout the rest of the bridge with a deadweight half-dragon woman in my arms. Nevertheless, the deed is done and I am on my way to the airlock. Just make sure we have it there so we can get out of here, this whole damn operation was too easy.”
“Roger, I will let Wolfe know, and he will send one over then roll out the welcome mat.”
“Thanks frank, this is Bryan, out.”
“Wolfe, Come in”
“What’s up frank?”
“I need you to send an O2 pod over to the Imoogi, Bryan needs it to transport their unconscious captain back here.”
“Roger, should I notify the med bay so they are prepared to accept her?”
“Go ahead Wolfe, and once everyone is back have them meet up on flight deck 1 for debriefing, also have 6 of your men stand by when Dende runs the checks. Two on the outside for her privacy from the rest of the crew, and four on the inside incase she wakes up violently and attempts to strangle Doc Dende. We don’t want a repeat of the Aoge incident.”
“Got it I will let my boys know, they are going to be bummed out that they didn’t get to see any action.”
“Also Wolfe, as an afterthought, confiscate everything she has on her outside of her clothes, who knows what could be disguised as a weapon these days and what she could bring aboard.”
“Roger and Out First mate Frank.”
Frank turns to Ghost, the Princess, and Henry who were still attempting to comprehend the concept behind the locking grenade and said to them;
“Mission complete, our boys are on their way back with the core and the cap’n of that vessel, now as soon as we are halfway fixed we will head out to our old base, and refit the ship properly. Now my princess the question is what do you want to do?”
“Well Mr. Frank, seeing as how we are now more likely than not marked men, it seems the safest place would be here in the belly of the beast. Besides much has changed in 7,000 years and you will need a cultural advisor to stop you from committing any Taboos with the races in power. So if you would allow us to take haven here we would be most appreciative.”
“Well princess, in that case until the captain returns and decides to overrule me, welcome aboard new temporary crewmembers of the Thanatos class dreadnought, the Knightstalker. When the others assemble, you 2 come with me to the flight deck for the debriefing.”
““Yes sir.””