Greetings! It's been aeons since I last explored the PG universe, and I've gotten a little better at writing since my last 2 attempts. I have started work on a short story, which I hope you'll find entertaining. Here's chapter 1, enjoy 
Severed Network.
A Pirate Galaxy Short story.
Chapter 1- Narrow Escape.
Sayaron Sanctuary, Sol System.
“Command, this is Dock master Hammond. We have a friendly vessel approaching at high speed. Sensors indicate severe damage to several systems.” General Trench snapped his head up to the v-screen in front of him, forgetting the trivial paperwork in his hand. The ship was registering as The Judicator, flown by Captain Daniel Nash, the grandson of the legendary Sergeant who gave his life to defend Aurora against a Mantis invasion 50 years ago.
“Get that hangar bay open! Medical teams at the ready immediately!”
“Command, this is gonna be a messy landing, advise immediate evacuation of the area!” Trench stared aghast as the STAM-S tank screamed through the one-way shield to the hangar entrance, and slammed onto the ground. The few remaining engineers and staff leapt out of the way as the 50-meter long starship skidded across the length of the hangar, leaving a shower of sparks and debris in its wake, a piercing screech echoing through the massive chamber. The ships slowed, finally coming to a halt just a few meters away from the blast doors. There was no sign of life from the cockpit. In the following silence, the hull of the ship creaked and groaned, having obviously been exposed to tremendous heat. The ship itself was a wreck; whole sections of the hull had been blasted away, power conduits and coolant pipes charred and useless. Fire and smoke billowed from the wounded beast, and still no signs of movement from within.
Trench stared intently as heatsuit-clad medics rushed over to the stricken ship, extinguishing the flames as they went. The Chief Medic gave the cockpit hatch a once-over, then produced a plasma cutter from his utility belt. After a tense 10 minutes, a limp, badly injured Captain Nash was dragged from his ruined ship, either unconscious or dead. Trench bowed his head as the man was rushed to the nearest infirmary on a stretcher, then pulled himself together to give orders to an officer.
“I want technicians to analyse every inch of that ship, see if they can find out what happened. Try to recover the black box, if there’s anything left of it.” The officer rushed out of the control room, leaving Trench to ponder the fate of the unfortunate man who seconds ago had screamed his way into his hangar.
***
3 hours earlier.
Draconis Stargate.
Captain Daniel Nash was not a fan of stargate-guarding shifts, and this was his third one of the week. Since the relative lapse of Mantis activity across the galaxy, the New Solar Union had relaxed its stance towards a standing military, instead opting for a small defence fleet to be stationed on each of its many stargates. The old Terran Empire had long since been overthrown, and with it came the near-collapse of the mighty Mantis. The human race, along with its allies the Methanoids, finally united against their common foe; pirates, soldiers, merchants, traders, civilians all fighting to free the galaxy from the grip of evil.
The period that followed was one close to peacetime, and though some Mantis attacks were still being recorded, it was clear the galaxy was now under control of the free humans at long last. Now stood the task of maintaining order and building a solid infrastructure for a shattered society to prosper in. Devastated systems such as Gemini and Vascaris demanded the majority of the NSU’s resources, leaving little time for massive fleets and war-loving attitudes. Some called it complacency; what if the Mantis found their strength and continued their destructive campaign? Mere sentiment, however, could not provide the energy or the cryonite needed to maintain half a million starships, and so the decision was made to decommission a huge portion of the vessels under NSU ownership.
The war had ended when Daniel was a young child. But he still remembered the nightmare of conflict, always running from an enemy whose name he knew well, but whose face he had never seen. A life in the military seemed the logical choice, and he quickly rose through the ranks, showing an enthusiasm to do what he could to help the rebuilding of civilisation after the Mantis and Imperials were routed.
And now he was stuck here, watching a gigantic, incredibly ancient device built by an impossibly advanced race of godlike beings, which was currently doing absolutely nothing. There were plans for small stations to be built around each gate to do the work of monitoring activity, but for now pilots such as he were tasked with doing the job.
Daniel was just about to request a break to his commodore, when all of a sudden his early warning system went haywire.
“Gate activity! Mantis ship-no, multiple ships!”
Despite being taken completely by surprise, Daniel kept his composure and alerted his wingmates. Keeping as calm as possible, he switched to combat mode, charged weapons and powered his shields. Several seconds later, over a hundred Mantis ships poured through the gate. The orbital defence platforms opened fire without hesitation, and Daniel joined the frenetic barrage of firepower, despite being outnumbered five to one.
It was of course hopeless, and within minutes he was one of just 4 ships left standing. His energy batteries were almost drained, his ship practically wrecked, but he had one last card to play before he was ready to give up. He looked at his command console, and pressed his finger down on CMD NO.8. As quickly as humanly possible, he gunned the engines, and entered his destination into the stargate mainframe. His almost ruined ship shot forward through the remaining Mantis, still taking fire as it flew towards the massive gate. Daniel pushed every bit of reserve power he had left into the shields, relying on momentum alone to get him through the gate. The entire area behind him was consumed in a gigantic fireball as his aggrobomb detonated, taking most of the Mantis with it as he reached the periphery of the gate and shot through. The shockwave rocked his already crippled ship, and his life support system gave out, though now he had bigger problems. Usually gate travel was instantaneous, but now he seemed to hover within the gate field, going nowhere. The fire from the Mantis was blocked by the void field of the gate, but Daniel was stuck there, going nowhere. Before he could even process what was happening, a massive surge of energy shot out from the edge of the gate, and blasted his ship, causing even further damage. Daniel yelled in pain as sparks shot out of his console, scorching his exposed skin. Finally, he began to dematerialise, and within seconds, he was through into the Sol System. Daniel had just enough energy left in him to set the autodock on, then collapsed out of consciousness as The Judicator sped to toward the Sayaron Sanctuary at high speed.
***
Sayaron Sanctuary, Beta Infirmary.
“How does it look, Doctor?” asked Trench upon entering the infirmary. The chief medical officer frowned and looked at Nash’s chart, shaking his head.
“Not great, General. This man shouldn’t even be alive, let alone breathing on his own. He’s got severe burns to his face and hands, oxygen deprivation, three fractured ribs, and major internal bleeding. I’m also reading high levels of thrassian radiation in his cells, which frankly makes no sense at all.”
Trench was taken aback. “Thrassian radiation? But that’s…”
“Stargates emit thrassian radiation, but only tiny amounts. And I’ve never seen it present in a human body before. This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.” Trench walked to stand over Nash, pitying the battered Captain before him. Medical technology meant he could be saved, and his burns would be healed within a few days, but there was no telling yet if there was brain damage. Trench needed to know what had happened, and quickly.
“Get him back on his feet, Doctor. That’s an order.”
Several hours later, Trench received the report salvaged from The Judicator’s black box, and received some troubling information. The box recorded the Mantis attack out of nowhere, Nash’s desperate escape, and the incredible blast of energy that had affected the ship upon travelling through. Scientists seemed at a loss, but they did have one troubling theory; that the gate had somehow ‘rejected’ the ship, akin to a body rejecting poison. Gates were often theorised to be far more advanced than conventional technology, and showed some evidence of biotechnology in their makeup, but the idea that it could behave like a living thing seemed absurd.
Over the next few days, however, strange events began occurring across the galaxy. Mantis attacks had taken a noticeable upswing in several regions, but stranger still were the reports of alarming gate behaviour. Human ships were being assaulted with a high-density energy beam each time they used stargates, causing major damage to the ships and even killing several pilots and crew members. Confusion swiftly followed panic, and within a week the galaxy began grounding to halt as the events did nothing but spread and increase. Mantis ships seemed unaffected, leaving the human military with a major disadvantage. People began to rely on hyperdrives for interstellar travel, but it was much slower, and trips that normally took minutes or hours turned into days or even weeks.
In just a few days, the human race had become almost completely vulnerable to attack, a weakness that the Mantis were only too happy to prey on.
Chaos reigned inside the Sayaron Sanctuary, reports flooding in of planets under siege, gates attacking human ships, and an almost total inability to take action against the current crisis. The station had already fought off several Mantis attacks, though its large reserve fleet allowed it to fare better than places such as Mizar, where defences were minimal and underfunded.
Captain Nash had regained consciousness after his dramatic arrival onto the station, and recounted his tale to the stunned Trench. He could reach only one extremely worrying conclusion, and so convened an emergency meeting with the senior staff of the Sanctuary. Nash was present, despite his condition, along with two fleet admirals and the head science officer of the station. Trench wasted no time in getting to the point.
“I am being led to believe that these events are being engineered by the Mantis themselves. It’s obvious they knew the gates would act in this way, and I believe they are responsible for it. It’s possible the first attack was a test, and that what we’re seeing now is the main phase of their plan.” The silence that followed was thick with astonishment. The idea of a species sabotaging stargates was insane. Terrifying. The science officer, a man by the name of Alexsei Ivanova, cleared his throat.
“General, the stargates are the most advanced machines we’ve ever come across. They are thousands of years beyond anything either we or the Mantis have. Are you suggesting the Mantis have found a way to interfere with their functions?” Trench simply nodded grimly in reply. Ivanova blinked, and looked down at the table, stunned.
“Whether this is true or not, I think it unlikely this is simply a case of gates malfunctioning. This is the first time it has occurred in the 1500 years humanity has been exploring deep space, and gates predate humanity by literally millions of years. That leads me to believe it was deliberate, and that it is not going to stop. We need to try and get on top of this, and lead an effective counterstrike”.
“How are we gonna prepare ourselves?” croaked Nash. “We’ve got no way to call in extra fleets. We try and go through that gate, we’ll get fried.” Talking clearly exhausted the Captain, and he fell silent, breathing heavily.
“I know, but we have two things in our arsenal that no one else has.”
“And those are?” demanded one of the fleet admirals.
“We know exactly where the Mantis Hive is, information we’ve kept to ourselves. And we also have a small number of captured Mantis ships.”
“Where are you going with this, General Trench…?” asked the other admiral, though Trench saw comprehension dawning on his face.
“We need to launch a mission to the Mantis Hive. There we will assess the cause of this crisis, and seek ways to end it.
Severed Network.
A Pirate Galaxy Short story.
Chapter 1- Narrow Escape.
Sayaron Sanctuary, Sol System.
“Command, this is Dock master Hammond. We have a friendly vessel approaching at high speed. Sensors indicate severe damage to several systems.” General Trench snapped his head up to the v-screen in front of him, forgetting the trivial paperwork in his hand. The ship was registering as The Judicator, flown by Captain Daniel Nash, the grandson of the legendary Sergeant who gave his life to defend Aurora against a Mantis invasion 50 years ago.
“Get that hangar bay open! Medical teams at the ready immediately!”
“Command, this is gonna be a messy landing, advise immediate evacuation of the area!” Trench stared aghast as the STAM-S tank screamed through the one-way shield to the hangar entrance, and slammed onto the ground. The few remaining engineers and staff leapt out of the way as the 50-meter long starship skidded across the length of the hangar, leaving a shower of sparks and debris in its wake, a piercing screech echoing through the massive chamber. The ships slowed, finally coming to a halt just a few meters away from the blast doors. There was no sign of life from the cockpit. In the following silence, the hull of the ship creaked and groaned, having obviously been exposed to tremendous heat. The ship itself was a wreck; whole sections of the hull had been blasted away, power conduits and coolant pipes charred and useless. Fire and smoke billowed from the wounded beast, and still no signs of movement from within.
Trench stared intently as heatsuit-clad medics rushed over to the stricken ship, extinguishing the flames as they went. The Chief Medic gave the cockpit hatch a once-over, then produced a plasma cutter from his utility belt. After a tense 10 minutes, a limp, badly injured Captain Nash was dragged from his ruined ship, either unconscious or dead. Trench bowed his head as the man was rushed to the nearest infirmary on a stretcher, then pulled himself together to give orders to an officer.
“I want technicians to analyse every inch of that ship, see if they can find out what happened. Try to recover the black box, if there’s anything left of it.” The officer rushed out of the control room, leaving Trench to ponder the fate of the unfortunate man who seconds ago had screamed his way into his hangar.
***
3 hours earlier.
Draconis Stargate.
Captain Daniel Nash was not a fan of stargate-guarding shifts, and this was his third one of the week. Since the relative lapse of Mantis activity across the galaxy, the New Solar Union had relaxed its stance towards a standing military, instead opting for a small defence fleet to be stationed on each of its many stargates. The old Terran Empire had long since been overthrown, and with it came the near-collapse of the mighty Mantis. The human race, along with its allies the Methanoids, finally united against their common foe; pirates, soldiers, merchants, traders, civilians all fighting to free the galaxy from the grip of evil.
The period that followed was one close to peacetime, and though some Mantis attacks were still being recorded, it was clear the galaxy was now under control of the free humans at long last. Now stood the task of maintaining order and building a solid infrastructure for a shattered society to prosper in. Devastated systems such as Gemini and Vascaris demanded the majority of the NSU’s resources, leaving little time for massive fleets and war-loving attitudes. Some called it complacency; what if the Mantis found their strength and continued their destructive campaign? Mere sentiment, however, could not provide the energy or the cryonite needed to maintain half a million starships, and so the decision was made to decommission a huge portion of the vessels under NSU ownership.
The war had ended when Daniel was a young child. But he still remembered the nightmare of conflict, always running from an enemy whose name he knew well, but whose face he had never seen. A life in the military seemed the logical choice, and he quickly rose through the ranks, showing an enthusiasm to do what he could to help the rebuilding of civilisation after the Mantis and Imperials were routed.
And now he was stuck here, watching a gigantic, incredibly ancient device built by an impossibly advanced race of godlike beings, which was currently doing absolutely nothing. There were plans for small stations to be built around each gate to do the work of monitoring activity, but for now pilots such as he were tasked with doing the job.
Daniel was just about to request a break to his commodore, when all of a sudden his early warning system went haywire.
“Gate activity! Mantis ship-no, multiple ships!”
Despite being taken completely by surprise, Daniel kept his composure and alerted his wingmates. Keeping as calm as possible, he switched to combat mode, charged weapons and powered his shields. Several seconds later, over a hundred Mantis ships poured through the gate. The orbital defence platforms opened fire without hesitation, and Daniel joined the frenetic barrage of firepower, despite being outnumbered five to one.
It was of course hopeless, and within minutes he was one of just 4 ships left standing. His energy batteries were almost drained, his ship practically wrecked, but he had one last card to play before he was ready to give up. He looked at his command console, and pressed his finger down on CMD NO.8. As quickly as humanly possible, he gunned the engines, and entered his destination into the stargate mainframe. His almost ruined ship shot forward through the remaining Mantis, still taking fire as it flew towards the massive gate. Daniel pushed every bit of reserve power he had left into the shields, relying on momentum alone to get him through the gate. The entire area behind him was consumed in a gigantic fireball as his aggrobomb detonated, taking most of the Mantis with it as he reached the periphery of the gate and shot through. The shockwave rocked his already crippled ship, and his life support system gave out, though now he had bigger problems. Usually gate travel was instantaneous, but now he seemed to hover within the gate field, going nowhere. The fire from the Mantis was blocked by the void field of the gate, but Daniel was stuck there, going nowhere. Before he could even process what was happening, a massive surge of energy shot out from the edge of the gate, and blasted his ship, causing even further damage. Daniel yelled in pain as sparks shot out of his console, scorching his exposed skin. Finally, he began to dematerialise, and within seconds, he was through into the Sol System. Daniel had just enough energy left in him to set the autodock on, then collapsed out of consciousness as The Judicator sped to toward the Sayaron Sanctuary at high speed.
***
Sayaron Sanctuary, Beta Infirmary.
“How does it look, Doctor?” asked Trench upon entering the infirmary. The chief medical officer frowned and looked at Nash’s chart, shaking his head.
“Not great, General. This man shouldn’t even be alive, let alone breathing on his own. He’s got severe burns to his face and hands, oxygen deprivation, three fractured ribs, and major internal bleeding. I’m also reading high levels of thrassian radiation in his cells, which frankly makes no sense at all.”
Trench was taken aback. “Thrassian radiation? But that’s…”
“Stargates emit thrassian radiation, but only tiny amounts. And I’ve never seen it present in a human body before. This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.” Trench walked to stand over Nash, pitying the battered Captain before him. Medical technology meant he could be saved, and his burns would be healed within a few days, but there was no telling yet if there was brain damage. Trench needed to know what had happened, and quickly.
“Get him back on his feet, Doctor. That’s an order.”
Several hours later, Trench received the report salvaged from The Judicator’s black box, and received some troubling information. The box recorded the Mantis attack out of nowhere, Nash’s desperate escape, and the incredible blast of energy that had affected the ship upon travelling through. Scientists seemed at a loss, but they did have one troubling theory; that the gate had somehow ‘rejected’ the ship, akin to a body rejecting poison. Gates were often theorised to be far more advanced than conventional technology, and showed some evidence of biotechnology in their makeup, but the idea that it could behave like a living thing seemed absurd.
Over the next few days, however, strange events began occurring across the galaxy. Mantis attacks had taken a noticeable upswing in several regions, but stranger still were the reports of alarming gate behaviour. Human ships were being assaulted with a high-density energy beam each time they used stargates, causing major damage to the ships and even killing several pilots and crew members. Confusion swiftly followed panic, and within a week the galaxy began grounding to halt as the events did nothing but spread and increase. Mantis ships seemed unaffected, leaving the human military with a major disadvantage. People began to rely on hyperdrives for interstellar travel, but it was much slower, and trips that normally took minutes or hours turned into days or even weeks.
In just a few days, the human race had become almost completely vulnerable to attack, a weakness that the Mantis were only too happy to prey on.
Chaos reigned inside the Sayaron Sanctuary, reports flooding in of planets under siege, gates attacking human ships, and an almost total inability to take action against the current crisis. The station had already fought off several Mantis attacks, though its large reserve fleet allowed it to fare better than places such as Mizar, where defences were minimal and underfunded.
Captain Nash had regained consciousness after his dramatic arrival onto the station, and recounted his tale to the stunned Trench. He could reach only one extremely worrying conclusion, and so convened an emergency meeting with the senior staff of the Sanctuary. Nash was present, despite his condition, along with two fleet admirals and the head science officer of the station. Trench wasted no time in getting to the point.
“I am being led to believe that these events are being engineered by the Mantis themselves. It’s obvious they knew the gates would act in this way, and I believe they are responsible for it. It’s possible the first attack was a test, and that what we’re seeing now is the main phase of their plan.” The silence that followed was thick with astonishment. The idea of a species sabotaging stargates was insane. Terrifying. The science officer, a man by the name of Alexsei Ivanova, cleared his throat.
“General, the stargates are the most advanced machines we’ve ever come across. They are thousands of years beyond anything either we or the Mantis have. Are you suggesting the Mantis have found a way to interfere with their functions?” Trench simply nodded grimly in reply. Ivanova blinked, and looked down at the table, stunned.
“Whether this is true or not, I think it unlikely this is simply a case of gates malfunctioning. This is the first time it has occurred in the 1500 years humanity has been exploring deep space, and gates predate humanity by literally millions of years. That leads me to believe it was deliberate, and that it is not going to stop. We need to try and get on top of this, and lead an effective counterstrike”.
“How are we gonna prepare ourselves?” croaked Nash. “We’ve got no way to call in extra fleets. We try and go through that gate, we’ll get fried.” Talking clearly exhausted the Captain, and he fell silent, breathing heavily.
“I know, but we have two things in our arsenal that no one else has.”
“And those are?” demanded one of the fleet admirals.
“We know exactly where the Mantis Hive is, information we’ve kept to ourselves. And we also have a small number of captured Mantis ships.”
“Where are you going with this, General Trench…?” asked the other admiral, though Trench saw comprehension dawning on his face.
“We need to launch a mission to the Mantis Hive. There we will assess the cause of this crisis, and seek ways to end it.