EV/EVO Chronicles: Slaying the Tetran

(Posted on 11-06-2000)

“Hello, Personnel Number Five-Five-Three-Two,” the electronic voice greeted me. “Your craft is ready. Please choose a departure time.” Suddenly, a holographical dialogue box flashed up in midair. Hologram technology was old, but still useful. Oh-twenty-seven hours Centauran Time, you choose. Midnight was as good a time as any to leave Centauri. After all, there's not much difference out here.

I loaded up my Neutron gun, the weapon of choice for most bounty hunters, and drove by hover car out to my ship. In case you don't know, I'm Mathew Fierano, occupational bounty hunter. I live up there, in between the stars. That is, when I'm not on "shore leave," which is whenever Admiral Hefrosh is not ordering me around. Then, I usually drop down to Earth or Rigel IV. I only came to Centauri, the first planet from the star Rigel, because the Admiral dropped me a line to say it might do me good. It didn’t. I met a very dark skinned man, most likely a Teraken. He directed me to make a sublight-speed call to 444-3725, and mention that Sorrke Fansha told me to call.

I got to my ship, and immediatley made the call. The response was stunning. “Admiral! ” I cried. “What in the Confederate Galaxy are you doing on Centauri!?” “Just listen,” he said. “The Tetran, an incredibly large spacecraft, has been raiding several ports and bases located in the Sol Asteroid Belt. We’ve lost Valrys Base, Freelander’s Port, Movia’s Port, and Severity Dock Anti-Piracy Station.” I was stunned. Severity was a top-notch military base! “Listen, I know it’s a big job--and you probably won’t live--but I want you to take it on.”

The next morning, early but not bright, earlier than a decent person should be up, I got off the stasis bed, a miracle of modern technology which allows you to stop aging during any period which you are on it, and yawned, heading for the pilot’s room. I blared the signal and in five minutes we were ready to leave Centauri. I sat in the anti-acceleration chair, staring into space--literally--trying to figure out what I was going to do. I had had to go undercover for my last assignment, some covert operations for Narok Deutronium Shipping... So all I had was a skeleton crew on a low-capacity, weakly armed light freighter. I’d upgraded my weapons, converted all my cargo area to fighter bays, and taken out half the navigational computer’s interstellar drive to save energy. Still... we were weak! Weak, weak, weak, weak. I couldn’t do anything! I decided to send it on to the ship’s first mate, Joano. Maybe he’d have a solution.

He didn’t. Joano was as hopeless as I was on the matter. However, we agreed we’d better start searching. A quick sweep on the Sol Sector turned up no trace of the ship, except a trail of ionized hydrogen that only extremely powerful ion engines leave, and we traced it to a large Anti-Pirate craft. For about a week we hyperjumped from system to system looking for the Tetran before Joano mentioned that it could take years to find the thing. If we did a sweep big enough to find the thing in one scan, we’d be left drifting with nothing but emergency life-support power, and maybe we’d lose that too. We launched the hawks, replacing their missile banks with sensor arrays, but found it useless, as the hawks didn’t have enough energy to scan and hyperjump at the same time. Just as we were about to give up, I picked up a transmission from Severity II, garbled and jumbled but still understandable:

"This i- the stat--n Sever--- II, we have just -een atac--d by
Te-r-n raid-r, ple-se assis--ccchhhhhhhhhh..."

Severity II was in NNI-3978. We instantly hyperlinked to the sector, and popped in just as the Tetran winked out, but we existed in the same area at the same time long enough for us to scan them quickly, and determine their heading.

NNI-0294 was a small dock called Freeman’s StarDock. It was a protected place to go if you were someone not wanting to be found, a criminal, perhaps. I dared not follow it there. We headed back to NNI-3978 and aided the Severity II station during reconstruction for several days, and soon they were operational again. They thanked us for our help, and asked how they could repay us, something that only a Confederate Navy owned base would ask, as only a CN base would be polite enough. I almost told them that no pay was needed, but a thin smile touched the edge of Joano’s mouth, and he appropriatley worded a sentence for me to give them. I turned on the holo-communicator, and we asked for "assistance in eliminating the greatest threat to mankind since the Great War, the ship that mauled your station." They agreed!

I linked to the Node system, NNI-3979. It was a neighbor to Sev II, and contained a Node. Nodes were old technology, but were still effective. We used it to scan the entire area of space controlled by the CN government, and found...Bingo! A sliver of bright white light shimmered into view on the old radar-like holoscreen. We magnified, and got the idea. It was huge, perhaps four miles long, bristling with gun turrets and missile launchers. Along the top of the hull, three gigantic particle beams loomed into sight. Particle beams! They could rip your ship to shreds before you even knew you were being targeted. We’d have a tough job ahead of us.

We were h-linking to the system of the Massivius, when Joano mentioned that we should have shields and weapons armed in case there were fighters, too. I agreed, and had our energy deflectors and proton turrets armed before we linked in. As we popped into existence, twenty-five Confederate frigates and three gundrones popped in as well. We comm-rung the Tetran, and they did not respond with anything but a brief laugh.

“Gundrones, target the Link drives. Do not engage. Cruisers, target its weaponry. Hold back five frigates. Fierano out.” For a moment, I considered. Then, “Drones, go in. Cruisers, go in. Hold back five of your number, frigates.”

They proceeded forward, and instantly the dark void between our wave of ships and the Massivius glowed a bright blue. They were firing back and forth, the drones slicing again and again at the shields, eventually taking them down.

“Hold-back frigates, assist me with anti-fighter ops.”

A wave of bright red dots rushed toward me, and we all opened fire. Rocket after blazing rocket lanced forward from my Rocket Launchers. Beam after beam of bright blue Proton-Wrap cannons slammed into the wave, and it slowly disintegrated. As the line of fighters dissapeared, the Massivius became clearly visible, and we could see that its dorsal weapons fin had been torn of completely, and was flying off into space. A lone Confederate Cruiser jumped in, opening fire on the Tetran. It glowed a bright, bright orange, blinding me, and then vanished, rolling our ship with the shockwave. Then everything vanished as I fainted from exhaustion.

My visitor in the hospital was none other than Hefrosh, come to congratulate me.

I guess I did take it down.

(This message has been edited by moderator (edited 11-06-2000).)

YOU took it down? What about that Conferate Cruiser?
Does this take place in a EV parallel universe - almost like EV, but not quite?

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Cool story. It's been a while since I've seen any EV stories -- most of them are for Override.

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You could stretch out the physical drama a bit...but great tone, very professional. And as skyblade said, always good to read an EV story. Wish it had been longer. Would like to see more. Well done!

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PlanetPhil
if you lived here, you'd be home by now

Very good. Are there going to be anymore chapters?

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