(DS Lore) (Thanks to Carbon and Stant for your cooperation and inputs)
"Vivid Memories"
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~20 Years Ago........
With a fast pace, A young Setsuan headed down a long corridor dressed in formal military uniform. His shoes clinked with every step on the metallic floors, soon his fast paced walking became a full out sprint towards a pair of automated doors. Sliding to a stop just as he reached the doors, he quickly straightened out his uniform and entered the room. It was full of military officials from TEC and officials from Setsuna's home world, huddled around a stellar grid with several blue icons and a swarm of red icons. The topic of discussion was how to repel a Vasari fleet that is closing in on Setsuna's home world.
Setsuna was late for the meeting, his father clearly upset passing him a angry glare before returning his attention to the TEC fleet commanders that have come to offer their aid to defend Meiji and its sister planets in return for exclusive trading rights in the system. Setsuna quickly rose in the ranks in the military academy to become captain of his first ship "The Linx". Having dealt with only simulated battles prior, this will be his first real encounter against a new enemy.
Quietly heading over to the area of the room where all of the captains stood, he moved to his place bumping into the person next to him accidently.
"Sorry." whispered Setsuna.
"Hey, no problem. Overslept and rushed on over here?" said Carbon with a slight smirk.
"Sort of." replied Setsuna.
"Ha, you know your wearing different colored socks by the way, thats a punishable offense." said Carbon with a slight chuckle.
"Carbon, lay off of him" said Miyuki as she elbowed Carbon hard in the ribs.
"Oww, geeze alright already...you know I think I suffered several broken ribs from you always jabbing me there." Rubbing his side from where Miyuki had just hit him.
"Just be glad I dont aim lower." replied Miyuki.
"Touche." said Carbon. Setsuna trying to refrain from laughing.
Miyuki and Carbon had been friends for a while now, she served as his second in command ever since Carbon became captain. Only recently has she been promoted and received her very own ship called the "Juniper", a newly built Sova Carrier. Carbon on the other hand has a ship which has seen multiple battles, an Akkan Battlecruiser named the "Event Horizon."
After the commanders finished finalizing their plans, they turn their attention towards the captains who all stood straight in unison prepared to receive their orders. A TEC admiral stepped up towards the line of captains prepared to give a speech. During this operation the admiral was given full command of all ships from TEC plus those from Meiji.
"You are all here together as a unified force in the fight against a scourge that is encroaching on the Trinity System. The government of Meiji has requested the aid of TEC forces to fight along side their fleet against the Vasari." said the Admiral, pacing slowing back and forth as he continued his speech. "Look to your left and then to your right...you will protect them and they will protect you. You will all fight together as a cohesive single unit, much like the Spartans in that ancient classical movie you've all seen. You will fight together and you will win. Understood?"
"Yes Sir!" Shouted the captains, saluting just before they were dismissed and filed out of the briefing room.
Everyone went about their own way, Setsuna headed out towards the local bar on the TEC starbase where all ship captains are stationed at. Going straight to the bartender ordering up a couple of drinks, he headed over to a empty table with a view of his home planet just below the starbase. Setsuna was taking a drink when he was jabbed in the side causing him to cough up his drink.
*Cough cough cough* "Hey what the f--" Setsuna was interrupted by a giggling Miyuki, sitting down infront of him with Carbon pulling up a chair to sit as well.
"Hey there, sorry about this guy here before, he just likes to pick on random people." said Miyuki gaving Carbon a punch in the arm.
"Heh, its no problem...so im guessing since I dont remember you at the academy, you two must be from TEC?" asked Setsuna finishing his first drink setting the glass down.
"I've been captain for quite some time now and this jab friendly girl here has been a captain for about a year." replied Carbon. Signalling the waitress for three beers.
Miyuki realized she had forgotten to introduce herself and carbon. "I'm so sorry!!, I totally forgot to introduce ourselves. I'm Miyuki and this is Carbon." said Miyuki with a bright smile.
"The name is Setsuna, nice to meet you two." raising a glass to them before taking another drink.
"Wait...Setsuna? Aikawa Setsuna? Your the son of the leader of the Trinity System." Grabbing the bottle of beer handed to her by the waitress.
*Sigh* "Yes, thats me..." Setsuna seemed to despise always being associated as such.
"I figure someone in your position would be off somewhere on your planet doing some political thingy and not up and out here on the front lines" asked Carbon, downing his first beer already and ordering up another one.
"Look, when you grow up in a world where everything is just handed to you sometimes, no one will know you for your achievments and know you only as who your father was. I was sick of that and wanted to do something about it." said Setsuna glancing out the window to the view of his planet.
"Haha, your not alone in trying to make something new with themselves. Personally my parents are both scholars and joining the military was the last thing they wanted their precious little daughter to be doing" Miyuki pushed a few stray strands of hair from her face, tucking them behind her ear. "Carbon over here has plans to be paragon some day." Poking Carbon.
"Thats right, first you get the power, then you get the ladies." said Carbon proudly, looking over to the bar where two young cadets were chatting, giving them a drink.
"Looks like we are all pretty ambitious." said Setsuna with a smirk finishing his second drink.
"Wait, I have a quick question....remember when the admiral mentioned how we are suppose to fight like those spartans in that classic film....well...if I remember correctly...didn't they all die???" asked Carbon.
"Ummm....yeah...lets not think about that" said in unison by Miyuki and Setsuna.
It didnt take long for the trio to become close friends in the following weeks. Carbon eventually suggested to Setsuna and Miyuki to start dating since the two had been flirting with each other often. Setsuna and Miyuki grew closer while Carbon continued to date and flirt with several female cadets and female aliens. While not on their personal time, they had been prepping their crew and running simulated battles waiting for the enemy. Preperations were mostly complete and defense turrets were all on line just within days before the arrival of the Vasari fleet.
The red aleart signal sounded across the whole starbase causing everyone to scramble to their stations and respective ships.
~Red Alert! Red Alert! Incomming Vasari ships! All crew report to your ships and prepare to engage!~
Miyuki, Carbon and Setsuna were the first to undock their ships and move into formation to engage the enemy. While everyone had been training for this very moment, they werent prepared when several Vasari capital ships had been spotted behind their defensive lines and closing in fast. As a result, the Phalanx formation was useless. Several ships were late to undock and some were confused due to the early arrival of the Vasari. Three Kortul Devastator ships were first to come within range of the first few Kol Battleships, they immediately exchanged fire with more Kol Battleships moving in to engage.
The gauss cannons on the Kol Battleships fired salvo after salvo into the shields of the Vasari Devastators. Their shields fluctuating against the onslaught of TEC weapons fire and weapons fire of ships from Meiji. It didnt take too long before the Vasari shields flickered red before collapsing entirely. Once their shields failed, the gauss rounds easily punched through the weakened hull of the Devastators destroying them. The unified fleet celebrated at the destruction of three Vasari capital ships but that celebration was short lived when several Disruptor beams hit two front leading Kol ships overloading their antimatter reserves causing a system wide shut down leaving them powerless. The disruptor attack was quickly followed by several beam weapons fire which did considerable damage but was saved only by the quick manuvering of Carbon and his Akkan, the "Event Horizon" to shield the Kol ship from further hits.
The "Event Horizon" immedately returned fire with its laser cannons across the next wave of incomming Kortul Devastators. The rest of the TEC fleet moved into the frontlines making the total number of capital ships now to 20, some of them breaking formation to engage clusters of Vasari ships approaching from different vectors. The "Linx" moved to flank two Devastators currently occupied exchaning fire with 3 Kol Battleships.
"Arm all weapons! Focus your fire on the closest Vasari ship." said Setsuna as he reviewed the data feed he was receiving on battle conditions.
"Yes sir, preparing to fire all weapons sir" replied the weapons operation crew member.
The "Linx" two foward plasma cannons fired consecutive bursts onto the port side of one of the Devastators, its shields rippled against the hit. A volley a missles launched from the "Linx" managed to cause enough damage to the shields for it to fail. The combined cannon fire from the three Kol Battleships made short work of the shieldless Devastator. The second Devastator in the engagement moved to retreat now that it was out numbered four to one, but it wouldnt get too far before a hail of missles rained down onto the ship stopping it dead. The "Juniper" captained by Miyuki fired several flak rounds into the bridge of the now disabled Devastator as it passed close by, quickly moving away just before the Devastator exploaded into scrap.
"Haha, take that you bastards. These guys are no match for all of us" said triumpantly by Miyuki as she was setting up a vid com with the "Event Horizon" and "Linx" on screen. "Hey you two, I've bagged three so far, what about you two?"
"Two here." replied Carbon.
"One so far for me." replied Setsuna. The "Linx" manuvering to take on the a Jarrasul with two Kol battleships. Before the "Linx" or either Kol ships could fire, they had unknowingly flown into a blob of nano-disassemblers that immediately began to eat away on their hull.
"Captain! We are receiving ship wide reports of hull integrity failure!" relayed a crew member.
"How is that possible! Our shields are up and we havent taken any weapons fire yet!" said Setsuna, checking his scanners to find the reason.
"Looks like nanites from the Vasari mothership, they seemed to have mined the area just ahead of them full of nano-disassemblers." said defense operations crewmember.
"Damn it, alright get a crew together and go to engineering and work with them to figure a way to get these things off of us quickly." ordered Setsuna just before he turned his attention to an incomming weapons fire alert. Before the "Linx" could react, it was hit by a Gravity Warhead damaging the ships engine drives and anti-matter reactors. The two Kol ships near by providing the "Linx" with support suffered the same fate.
"Engineering here! We have no propulsion and our anti-matter reactors have been completly put out of sync." reported the engineering crew member as sounds of minor explosions occur in the background.
"Captain, its about to get alot worse for us!" said the defense crew member bringing to the captains attention four Skirantra Carriers sending a full contingency of strike squadrons.
"Alright, we may not have engines but we still have our weapons so lets not give up just yet." said Setsuna. Turning towards his com officer. "Send a message and request for squadron support immediately."
"Immediately sir." replied the com officer.
"Captain, we have a solution for the nano disassemblers, but you might not like it." said the engineering officer.
"What is it?" said Setsuna.
"We need to polarize our hull to short circuit those nanites. To do so, we will need to covert energy from our shield converters which will drastically weaken our shields." explained the engineering officer.
Setsuna sighed weighing the options, should he risk reducing his shield strength or risk having multiple hull breaches from the nano disassemblers. Once a hull breach was detected he knew what he had to do and gave the engineers the go ahead to polarize the hull. The shield strength started to drop drastically as a surge built up in the shield generators. In a brief flash the energy was released spreading over the hull of the ship burning off the nano-disassemblers ship wide. One of the two Kol ships also dealing with the nano-disassemblers was not as lucky. It's shields had started to fail due to the nanites eating its way into the generators. At that time the strike squadrons were already ontop of them like a swarm of wasps dealing ship wide damage. To make matters worse, another Devastator was approaching with the support of several skirmishers.
"Setsuna, were on our way" said Carbon, the "Event Horizon" approaching fast along with the "Juniper".
"Glad to hear that, we got several more targets comming in on us and we already have our hands full with that Vasari mothership and these pesky strike squadrons" replied Setsuna.
"Dont worry, you know we always have your back. Let me take care of those annoying strike crafts." responded Miyuki. Her ship "Juniper" just so happens to be a Sova Carrier and her own strike squadrons are the best around. Her squadrons quickly launched and drew the attention of the enemy strike crafts allowing the "Linx" to focus its attention on the Vasari mothership, Devastators and the skirmishers.
The "Event Horizon" pulling up just beside the "Linx" its laser cannons destroying skirmishers as they tried to do a attack run. The "Linx" fired wave after wave of missles at the encroaching Devastator with it firing a swarm of explosive nanites across both of their ships exploading on contact with the shields. The shield on the "Event Horizon" shrugged off the hit but the shields on the "Linx" held on just barely down to only 10% strength. Before the Devastator could attack the pair again it was struck in the side hard by missles from the missle batteries Miyuki managed to deploy from her carrier.
With the Devastator now weakened by repeated missle strike, the "Linx" main cannons were able to punch two direct blows through the nose of the capital ship. The impact caused the ship to twist slighty before it was engulfed in an explosion.
"Woohooo, and boom does the dynamite." cheered Setsuna watching the colorful explosion of the enemy infront of his ship.
"Setsuna! watch out!" shouted Carbon as three skirmishers punched through the firery mist towards the "Linx" on a collision course. The "Event Horizon" quick reaction fired all of their autoturrets in quick succession easily taking down all three skirmishers but the wreckage slammed into the shields of the "Linx" with one huge chunck of it managing to slip past the shields as it flickered from the impact. The wreckage slamming into the bridge section of the "Linx". Setsuna watched the piece close in on his bridge window, crashing in sending glass and metal flying everywhere.
The impact would wake him up from reliving that part of his past, his hand instantly reaching up to the right side of the face which remained a scar he received from that very same impact. Blinking a few times he sat up looking around sensing several minds on his ship and ships within his fleet that were new. Rubbing his head he pulled out a weapon and aimed it towards Casey.
"Ugh....okay....identify yourself." His eyes regaining focus as the effects of the radiation began to wear off. Setsuna stood looking around spotting some of his other crew members missing"
Focused on the console infront of her, Casy responded. "You can put that weapon down now, were not your enemies, were here to help. We received your distress signal not too long ago and we responded."
Setsuna lowering his weapon and holstering it before he headed over to the console Casey was standing by. Looking over to Roesh who was working on a different station on the bridge before he looked back over to Casey. "Thanks for responding....who are you with and where are we by the way?"
"Your located in a region of space called Distant Stars and we are the Free Traders here. If you require celestial data for this region of space, we can provide it to you." replied Roesh.
"Im guessing none of this help will be free?" said Setsuna, checking the status of his crew and fleet.
"Well, its not but we dont ask for much. All we request are the rights to salvage any dead ships you may have." Casey responded as she finished up the diagnostics.
"Hmm... I'll take that into consideration, but first things first. I need to get my crew in order so that we can have all systems fully operational." said Setsuna as he reconnected the minds of all crew members from each ship who became conscious.
It didnt take long before the fleet was up in full capacity. The shields and hull strength were first to be optimized as more able advent crew members awoke. Engines were being worked on but at only half capacity with only half the ships in the fleet. Some where still dead in the water but alot of progress was made with the help of the free traders. Once sensors were full operational they detected another fleet of ships quickly approaching.
"Friends of yours?" asked Setsuna as he brought up the long range scans of the fleet that was approaching for Casey and Roesh to see. Setsuna recognized the Ue_ designation but couldnt quite remember why at the moment.
