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The Armageddon Project
_It was many years after the Earth-Igadzra War. During those five long years of war, we lost many good people and ships to the war, and we couldnt involve ourselves in another major war unless absoultly nessacry. We needed a solution should something similar to the last war happen again. Though we won the war and won the Second Battle of Sol and knew that none of the other Strands would dare not make an assault on us, we needed to be ready. We needed something that could go head to head with ships of the Crescent and win.
Thus was born the Armageddon project.
It would become our most secretive project as well as our top priotity. Our goal was to build a ship that could overcome those of the Crescent races, a feat that would indeed turn into a long and difficult road. In order to succeed with the Project, we would need our best minds in on it, to make it their top priority so we did just that. From New Taranto, we pulled from the Dreadnuaght Design the twenty year old Linsy Balashova, the youngest and brightest daughter of an aging Anna Balashova, a spitting image of her mother when Anna herself was young; we tracked down a still young Elizabeth Reid on Station Pybin, who was on a galaxy-wide tour; and from mystical and distant Naboo, we recruited Liam Vasin, a half-Kisan eginer and technological whiz who could build amazing prototypes for the inhabiting Tryakk while having little or no knowledge of their technology; and lastly myself, Major Will Donalds, an officer of United Earth Navy, a born pilot and head of the project. With their help, President McPhearson ordered the Armageddon Project officaly a go, with full funding from the limitless UEs purse. This project would be based from the forest and meadowed moon of Fu, a moon given to the UE by the Hinwar, in a compound with three hundred workers to help with the heavy work. All we had to worry about was an old grouchy Voinian wanted to be left alone, despite Voinas fall.
To say that we succeded in the first phase would be saying that Anna Balashova was a total idiot with no eye for ship building. We encountered various degrees of both success and failure in the long run. We had to go through two major phases before our final project and it was a bumpy road. However our first problem was, quite franly, with ourselves. Linsy was like her mother in a few ways, charming, beautiful, a keen intelligence and a superp ship designer; however, despite these qualities, she did have a bit of a rouge side. She had expertice in many things and was brought in as our general leading tech. This proved somewhat difficult as Linsy tended to be very independant and not follow orders and tended to make it hard working with her. However she did do her share of the work, and her designs were exellent.
Elizibeth was somewhat more cooperative and because she was an old friend of mine. Liz was the leading systems tech in the Project, having done major work in the past for the UE. She was somewhat orderly despite her erractic comings and goings over the past decade. I am still amazed at how young she looks and acts, as if she were no more then thirty at the most. Anyways, she tended to clash with Linsy over how to do things the right way instead of the wrong way. Hard to figure out why how we finally got everything to work.
Liam Vasin is kind of hard to describe. He was our leading weapons and defense tech and designer though his recruitment file said he designed more mudane things like farming equipment and simple replication systems. Liam is half Kisan and seems proud of his heritage, and with reason. The Kisan are an advanced and culturly rich race who dwell on the fringe of Crescent space; they are remarkably simalar to humans in many ways and the only physical thing about them are the vertical nose ridges; they hold great value in art and story and we have made a great ally in them. Liam seemed to take their culture to heart and yet seems to act as human in doing so. Yet he was distant and although he worked as hard as any of us and spoke up when needed. Linsy seemed driven in cracking through the tough exterior, and she was perhaps the closest one to Liam.
Then there was myself, Jim Carter, no relations to the famed Aesin Karter. Im a major in the United Earth Navy and a born pilot, top of my class at Knox Academy in piloting, starship design, and my knowledge on many ships of human, Crescent, Miranu, Emalghion, and Voinian design; and my experince in evalutating and holo-testing ships was needed as well. I was brought in because I had the reputation of being a foremost expert in the scientific coomunity and because the UE wanted an officer on the job. I came from a long line of officers and respected authority and followed orders as long as they were sound; thus I had some problems with Linsy and Liam as they seemed doing things their own way. Ive worked with Elizabeth before and we got along, and it was the same on this project as well. In all our differences, we came together to finish this project with great success and some failure...
Our first part of the project was modifing a UE destroyer instead of building a new ship design. We were given the UES Ark, a newly commisioned destroyer, only three weeks out of drydock and armed with standard armament. We changed that; we removed the rockets and their launchers, giving us much room to improvise. We input a fighter bay with twin fighters into the destroyer in hopes of giving us an advantage in combat. The blaze turrets were removed as well, adding more powerful versions of the weapon, designed by Liam before his dissapearance into the F-25 galaxy years ago. Elizabeth updated the systems of the ship by replacing old sensors with new, introducing an enhanced combat software into the computer system to help annayleize enemy ships and defeat them.
Linsy helped develope a more sophiscated engine system and ordered a plating of the hull with newer armor. The shields were also redesigned to shift back and forth in frequency with every hit, a prototype developed by Liam in this phase. I evaulated the design and tested it thoroughly in various holo programs as well as compared it to many other ships it was most likely to come up against and put it through many war games. It seemed to past the test, or so we thought.
On the ships first true combat mission, the Ark was taken to see how it could compare against renegade vessels. Given to the famed Captain Richard DeSota for the mission, the Ark was tasked with destroying three renegade Turncoats and a few Helians, more then enough challenge for any standard destroyer to take on. Out of us four, only Linsy Balashova opposed the idea, saying it was suicide even for an advanced ship like the Ark, even if commanded by an officer like DeSota and the UE was condeming the fates of one hundred people in doing so. She was overruled by the Senate members who knew of the Project and the mission went as planned; however it failed miserably.
During the middle of the battle, the Ark had taken down two of the three turncoats and their fighters and even a helian. The destroyer herself had taken only minor damage, seeming that the ship was doing well when something went wrong; in the reverse shielding there was a small but fatal flaw that was overlooked even by a skilled tech like Liam, there is a very short, three second interference near the rear shielding which causes an undetecable breach, caused when the shields transfered every third time, allowing weapons fire to go through. Out of luck was the last Turncoat captain able to figure this out and he relayed this information to the other remaining ships, telling them the right time to fire and who much time they would need. At the right moment many of the remaining ships came about and fired everything they had into the breach and even a remaining krait pilot did a kamakasi manuver through the gap before it closed, which did considerable damage which in turn destroyed the Ark. Of the hundred people onboard, only thirty-five survived.
After this incident we briefed by the select Senate members on the situation, and told there had been plans to shut down the Armageddon Project should this loss happen again, and further more, our budget from the UE would no longer be unlitmited but severely dropped to 70 million credits a year, while the rest would have to come from our own pockets. This would prove a somewhat disadvantage as I knew neither Linsy nor Elizabeth had much in their accounts, despite theire status and the wealth of a UE majoris not very high. Of Liam I did not know so I didnt bother to ask. We were also given one other thing; a new member of our group, one Captain David Connor, infamous hero of the Earth-Igadzra War as a combat consultant.
With our new member onboard, we started from scratch all over again; this time we would be careful. Connor seemed like a pleasant type, and his fame was renowned in all human space as part of the driving force in the war. Yet he seemed somewhat bitter when he talked about the Voinain and Igadzra Wars, and just talking about many alien races in particular. This seemed to have been to the fact of the loss of his family during the Voinian war decades before. Connor seemed to be somewhat rude and disrespectful towards Liam, because the weapons tech was half Kisan and Kisan were of the Crescent; after I gave him a warning, the captain seemed to cool down but he still stayed his distance from the lad. I had great respect for Connor, but my fears of him being a bigot seemed to help me veiw him in a differnet light. His relationship with Linsy and Elizabeth were touchy at most, like most coworkers. His reactions towards me was that of military wise; I was the higher ranked officer and head of this project as proclaimed by President McPhearson and Admiral dErlon, and he obeyed orders.
Our planing was more careful this time, to avoid the past failure of the Arks lost. This time we decided to implement changes on a UE Cruiser, which would cost us twenty million of our seventy million credits. We were given the UES Draner, a six year old crusier which had seen many battles and come through winning and one that had a proven record. We went to work carefully and more slowly, knowing we has a somewhat short budget and had to ration our supplies. During this phase we had done considerable research and progress in developement.
Elizabeth made great advances in her systems, adding combat styles and sensor systems which could cut through much of the interferance caused by nebule when in deep; but her most amazing thing was the internal cloak which could operate and not draw fuel and an internal fuel scoop that could replicate fuel in twice the time two standard fuel scoops could.
Linsy had found a way to strenghten the ship hull by combining the alloys with a thin particle energy field. In effect and theory, the field would have to collapse first before hitting the hull itself, thus saving time for the ship. This was a breaking point in hull protection but would not be released for much time to come. She then reworked the engines to make the response time and speed much better, giving the the Draner a perfect edge in combat.
Liam had been quietly observing notes on weapons specs and designing his own prototypes; he tinkered with both Voinian neutron weaponry and phase weaponry then succesfully combined them with great advantage, the combined energies would help bring down both shields and armour although range would be somewhat shorter then a neutron turret. He also tinkered with SAD modules and found a way to create a weapon that could generate balls of energy similar to SADs without need of the actual module, though it did kind of drain the fuel supply. However Liams shielding idea was perhaps his most creative idea at that time; he used the idea of Linsys particle field and reworked it to create particle shielding which recharged faster then would be expected for a crusier the size of the Draner.
Connor looked at the ship through and through to appraise its combat role and he approved greatly of it, saying that should a conflict break out again with another alien race, this cruiser would be the first in to respond. I thought Connor was losing his sanity over the time we worked together, but my weekly reports went unanswered when I questioned his sanity. Anyways, I holo-tested the Draners every modifacation, testing how she could stand against a lone Igadzra as to four Zidara and the like. The ship proved great in these sims and as I compared her to the other ships I had knowledge of as well as the Draners manuevering skills to see if her systems could allow a pilot the things he needed. It all proved to be exceptional. The Draner was ready, we all said, and we scheduled for wargames and a true combat mission.
Unfortunately, three days before the last wargame could be held, Captain Connor was put into a three month psychological evalutation when he proposed before the entire Senate and McPhearson himself the idea of deploying an Arada into Igadzra space to hide and wait to see if the Igadzra moved against us once more. If so then the Arada would deploy a toxin into their homeworlds atmosphere. That had done it for me, this once famous captain was now a biggot who just wanted to start another war for the hell of it. I had him kicked off the team and he was put into rehabilitation.
We continued on with the Project with success and eventually the Draner performed flawlessly in combat against a massing Strandless renegade fleet. But we were jiffed when the Navy took the ship from us and decided to use it in another project and we ordered to come up with something else although we got a months leave...under the condition we did not leave Fu. In that time the Draner came to be stationed on Fu as our defense. During that month, many things changed, for the better I might add. Throughout the entire Project, Linsy had been trying to crack through to Liam with little success; but during this month that changed and she learned much about the half-Kisan as he shared it with the rest of us. I dont record it here for respect for Liam. I can say though that a romance sprung between Linsy and him and has done much good for them both. Elizabeth had taken to long walks in the forests of our encampment and I occasionly went with her. For her, the nature of Fu changed her attitude somewhat, causing her to losen up somewhat. As for myself, I had taken to the trails to vist the old Voinian, one Ferdren who lives near the compound, just beyond the din of noise. It would seem that he is quite the story teller and seems not to mind a human visiting him. Hes not insane, just a little grumpy and lonely.
After leave, we turned back to working on the Armageddon Project, with a fevour at that. We carefully thought up many designs and then scrapped them. It was like this for two months, until we were assigned a person to our team, David Connor out of rehab. All four of us vehemotly objected this due to Connors past attitude, but the Senate said the orders came straight from McPhearson himself. So it was that Connor was once more combat consultant; little did the Senate realize what would happen in five months.
Anyways, one night I had dream of a ship in flight, blueprints that burned into my memories. A ship that invoked strenght and speed and power. When I awoke, those images were still in my head. I quickly put them into my database and call a conferecnce to discuss this. When we all met, it seemed that the others had had dreams similar to mine, except different things to add to a whole. All of us had these dreams...except for Connor who had none save his usual nightmares of the wars. He just ignored this and put in that we start to work imediatly and indeed we did.
Linsy had dreamt the same as mine, of ship design but also with blueprints of an advanced hull by just using the avalible material to do so as well as . She set about doing this in such a fevoured pitch that the lot of us couldnt keep up, even adding the idea of adding a fighter bay with twin UE fighters carried. Elizabeths dreams were of her systems within the ship, helping in many ways and with that developed much new software and systems for this phase as well as enhancing her design of her fuelscoop, creating one and a half times more fuel. But once again, Liam surpassed us all as always.
The young tech had dreamed of weapons and defenses in plenty and went into seclusion, talking to no one save Linsy. He developed new weaponry; a wholy new particle weapon that could do considerable damage to both hull and shields alike. We named it the neutron turret, to fool those outside the project into thinking that we placed Voinian turrets instead of Liams new design. His second weapons system was something akin to what the Draner had, except Liam designed it to fire some type of energy that held a silvery-white color, so we named them whitefire torpedoes; to top it of they used no fuel and seemed to feed from their own small power core, even firing simutaniously if we put three launchers and cores in. Liams shielding design however seemed to be amongst the best things in the project; he developed the phasic-particle shielding, which would change frequency everytime it was hit and recharge faster then most other warships. This time Liam checked down to every little detail and was rewarded.
We then ordered for the construction of the ship and all the designs we had created for this project plus a few others like the cloak that drained no fuel. It had costed us our entire budget to design a new warship class and implement our ideas as well, but it would be worth it. Indeed it costed us much more then seventy million credits; I had speant my entire account, over seven-hundred thousand credits, Linsy had speant one and a half million, Elizabeth one million and even Liam had speant six million credit, and still we were short five million to do so. That was when Connor gave us those five million credits without a word and was off before we could thank him. With that, we were able to build the first ship and see how it fared. I did my damn best in holo-testing it in many battle scenarios, evalutaing it to virtually every ship we had on file while Connor seemed utterly awed at the results of its designing in combat. We scheduled three war games and the ship passed everyone of them.
She was almost done and she was a beauty; one hundred ten meters in length with 18 decks and a crew of one hundred fifty, her hull sleek black. It was decided to call the ship class the Armageddon-class Kestrel and name the ship the UES Raven, the first to be made. We heard of a rouge Voinian crusier from our hermit friend coming this way and decided to test our ship in her first true combat mission, just us five against that ship. When the battle was finished the Raven came through winning, her shields down to only seventy percent while the Crusier was disabled and ready to be towed to the surface of Krotun by the Hinwar to be tried as crimanals. After three years on a project, it was finally over with. The Armageddon Project had been a success.
That very evening of the Ravens victory we celebrated on Fu, aboard the Raven. There I had the honor of wedding Liam and Linsy as husband and wife in a private cermony, with Ferdren and Elizabeth as the witnesses. Of all the team, only Connor wasnt there, saying he was tired and wanted to rest; little did we know what would happen in those hours. After the wedding, we opened a bottle of Saalian Brandy (year 2199 a good year indeed), a gift from Admiral dErlon himself for us completing our Project though it cost most of us our entire savings; but it was worth every credit to build such a ship like the Raven. In the middle of the celebration, something sounded, like a ship taking off for orbit. It was the Drane, the only other ship on this world other then the two UE fighters that would go into the Ravens bay.
We were told later that David Connor had left a short vidmessage to the Senate, stating that not only the Igadzra but the other Strands and many of the lesser Crescent races and the Querrin were a danger that the United Earth could not see. It was believed that amongst the workers were seventy undercover officers and former navy personell who were extremly loyal to Connor and shared his views. It would seem this would prove to be a deadly time for the Crescent and we knew something had to be done, but our work was finished. The Senate ordered the secret building of the new Armageddon Kestrels and tasked the Raven with a special mission to find the now rouge Connor after they found the right Captain to command the Raven.
In the time after this incident, we of the Project decied to go our sepreate ways but made a vow to meet on Fu every three years if possible. I stayed here on Fu with my friend Ferdren to wander the moon and explore it fully, thanks to a full years leave. Both Linsy and Liam plan on making the long trek back to Naboo to live their lives in peace until our next meeting, first stopping by New Tarronto so Liam could meet Anna Balashova, Linsys mother. I last heard from Elizabeth that she was heading for Pareen to visit the memorial of the famed Captain Aesin Karter and then onto Station Pybin for a scienctific convention.
It will be a while since I shall see my friends again. Until then, I set aside my pen and set out to travel Fu...
Major Jim Carter United Earth Navy_
(This message has been edited by moderator (edited 09-24-2001).)
Even though I did not like this quite as much as "A Fighter Pilot's Memory," this story was not bad. A reminiscence much like the previous work, which is fine - though a little more action or dynamism would have spiced it up a bit. I think maybe this story requires a little more familiarity with EVO (more than I have) to really get into it.
The relationships in the story are really well drawn, and just as important as any action you might come up with. Nicely done characterization; commendable. The spelling thing bears closer attention - I shan't harp on it, except to say that misspelling only distracts readers from the good stuff you're doing here. And you don't want that.
But dude - no more long stories in italics. Please.
------------------ world keeps turning