April 5, 2325
Asteroid Ida, The Asteroid Belt
Looking over the ruins of the Old Order depresses even a surveyor, one of the surviving products of the old order that continues to do its duty to record information.
Asteroid Ida, despite the 150 years has miraculously has avoided disturbance. The surveyor never questioned why, but it is now looked upon once more. At some point in the late 21st century there was a company who invested so much into this asteroid, not to mine, but to be made into something much greater than just another rock that gets mined away. The asteroid was meant to be a massive colony ship. What wondrous device that would have been to have!
Yet the surveyor of the wreck dates the artificial parts of the ruins, finding that its construction stopped two decades before the collapse of earth and the dark decade. The probe wondered of the colony ship. Why did the creators at their height stop building! Will they ever be able to attempt the creation of such craft again?
Did the investments just not pay off?
Was there is a technical difficulty?
Was it just too inefficient for the terrans?
All these questions became suddenly moot as multiple ships coming from both directions flared up in the surveyor’s sensors and so the surveyor thrust itself away from the ruins, banking on the possibility the approaching crafts wouldn’t destroy it for being in their way. The approaching ships targeted each other. Three of them Martian, two of them belter, the surveyor knowing its basic survival programming just let itself float far away from the scene while recording it without fear. For this was history being made, just as history was made so many times before in the belt and so many times before in the modern age.
And so the probe observed the Martian approach, one of the ships large in size and designed akin to an elongated pyramid if one takes into account just the basic shape, and clearly it is a ship designed to annihilate the enemy. The other two ships, smaller in size, couldn't possibly take a hit simply by looking at their hulls. Such ships, the probe inferred, likely were meant to be strike craft. Why they have ten people on them is beyond its own understanding.
The belter ships look like simple mining vessels. The surveyor however did notice that their mining lasers had anomalously high amounts of energy emitting from them for mining vessels. Could these vessels be here to strip mine Ida, despite being an enshrinement of human achievement?
The probe caught itself trying to wonder again, when it must now watch events unfold.
Spaceship Sylvia Rex, The Asteroid Belt
The captain of the ship saw the rustic belter crafts, of which likely well over a century in age approach his own on the map and under his voice breathed “Belters…”
He didn't know if these were military crafts, but any craft can in theory have powerful enough payloads to
damage even the sturdiest of spacecraft. The captain, using the comm instructs the mainframe “Take aim on the approaching belter ships, they are in unauthorized zones.”
“Action completed.” The ship logs back to the Captain.
One of the dozen other people on the large ship with the captain, the second in command, asks “Are we sure these ships are hostile? They are mining vessels.”
“I am certain they are hostile, any reason they are here is bound to amount to malice, especially with the heat readings coming from their ship. They are too hot to be typical mining vessels.”
“It could be just their stupidity or ignorance, my superior.” The second-in-command suggests.
The captain considers the possibility for a few seconds, before hastily telling the second-in-command
“Impossible, even the Belters should have the preservation catalogs stored on their ship’s database. If they truly are this incompetent, I attribute it solely to malice.”
The radar suddenly surges with requests to open communications, of which occurs. The message, pre-recorded due to the 30 light seconds between the crafts opens up on the information center of the ship, telling everyone in the ship “We are here to look at the ruins of civilization. We mean no harm.”
The captain is skeptical, and a bit confused by the message, conflicted on the validity of the message. The belter ships however, were still moving closer to Ida despite the . The other two ships sent messages to the main ship, stating "Civilian ships, we will await further orders."
"Take aim on the vessels and fire if they do anything suspicious." The captain tells the other two ships.
The captain interpreted this as a taunt by the pilots of the mining vessels. They do not seem to understand their violations. Instead of responding, the captain instead decided to destroy these ships. Knowing they may have begun launching projectiles or spewing lasers, the captain without any hesitation shouts “Fire on both targeted ships!”
“Action Completed” The ship tells the captain.
However, as the ship fired tension filled the room, no one knew if the arrays projected from the ship will hit their target, and uncertainty over if the belters fired as well made, the captain immediately proceeded to tell the computer "Shift the ship's trajectory".
And so the ship begun to thrust itself downwards while keeping its targeting systems trained on the enemy, shifting the movement of the ship below the line of attack, reducing the probability of being hit. The smaller ships stayed in position. The minute of panic gracefully ended when one of the belter ships shined bright as the sun itself for a second, before being reduced to debris. In a soothing voice
stated “Target neutralized.”
A couple members of the crew begun to feel relief, but the tense look on the captains face, with his eyes glued to the maps of nearby space quickly neutralizes the relief in everyone in the center. For the computer didn’t say ‘all targets neutralized’, and so the captain asks “Both of them?”
But before the computer could reply, the map begun to flare red repeatably as numerous panicking communications came ushering in from the crews pf the two other ships shouting "Critical damage send help!"
But these messages were in vain, and sent far too late, as two of the frigates suddenly fumed in plasma-like fire, the shock wave of which briefly surged through the Sylvia Rex itself and shattered into debris. Another beam passed by the Sylvia Rex, but missed the ship by a hundred meters.
There was then five seconds of silence and seeming despair, where the captain stared at the screens in complete and utter helplessness. As the captain stared in shock at the destruction of the strike crafts, the other belter ship vanished into a white fireball before fading into silence.
The computer affirms the destruction, stating “All targets neutralized”
The captain sunk into his chair, seemingly exhausted as the whole crew stayed silent, horrified at how this could have occurred. How did one belter ship manage to destroy two Martian ships? Luck? A secret weapon?
With grief, the captain tells the computer “Head back to Mars, dock at the Phobos port.“
The captain looks at the brightness of the flares, before turning around to the rest of his crew. Informally, he tells the crew “Belters further will see this incident. We must move away before other belters move in. This humiliation of the Martian Protectorate will be avenged, but not by me.”
“How were you to see that attack coming?” the second in command asks.
“It was obvious, the failure to destroy both meant that the other one had a window to shoot at all three of our ships. That belter nearly hit our ship as well. I believe the other two ships under my wing were waiting for me to tell them to make evasive maneuvers, but by the time I realized I missed one... Striker June and Striker Dimanche were neutralized.” The captain tells the second in command.
One of the crew members on the ship, a technician affirms the captain by saying “I've checked the systems, there was no failures on part of the ship's comms.”
The captain looked at the technician, before looking at the rest of the crew and telling them “Disregard any loyalties any of you have with me from here on out. I have failed to manage all ships of my squad properly, and now twenty Martians will forever be lost to the void of space, if not reduced to ash due to the obliteration that occurred. I have proven myself unsuitable as a captain by letting two strike craft fall to two mining vessels. I now shall resign from being Captain Auderii, as is obligated.”
The captain than just stood silent, as the ship begun heading back to Mars. In contemplation on what to do now that his reputation has been tainted.
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Nine years later
August 2nd, 2334
Utopia Plantia, Mars
In the reddish landscapes of mars, sterile of life as a endless desert, gleams the sun itself radiating as a pale white dot in the pale pink sky radiating a blue aura where it shines on the cold barrens. The terminating efforts slowly have heated the world, but it has not affected the landscapes themselves. As desolate the Utopian plains may be, a small mining base from the old order still functions with relatively little change in the past two centuries. It is stony, made of material from the Martian crust itself from the outside it blends in with the landscape as a artificial complex of drum-like structures that cluster around each other. The powerful dust storms have weathered away the derelict faculty, making it part of the landscape.
Violently zooming by, a silvery vehicle reminiscent of a buggy completely insulated from the carbon dioxide filled atmosphere of mars and the towering clouds of dust leaves its tracks inscribed into the Martian plains. The driver within is headed towards Elysium Mons, the site of meeting for the technocrats themselves. Of which, the driver is one. The driver in the buggy is distracted in thought, the anxiety surging through his mind being borderline unbearable. Thankfully, the Martian plains are easy to navigate for the buggy, its native Martian design specialized for the arid and rocky lands of Mars.
There, the driver knows shall be the last meeting of the technocrats. Looking once again at the message, he finds himself conflicted. It is the day that he has been waiting for, the day when the great project that has been laid since the creation of the protectorate will come to fruition. The day that tomorrow begins. The driver remains tacit, for he fears one thing and one thing only, and that is failure. Nightmares of his last failure in the Ida Expedition, of which lead to the death of those twenty Martians still haunt him deeply. Twenty dead Martians because of his failure, incinerated or left to die in the emptiness of space with their corpses drifting around the asteroid belt.
Auderii knows that many more Martian deaths will be inevitable, but unlike those in the Ida Expedition they must not be in vain. For the day he has grown up being taught of is here and unlike in the Ida Expedition, there is no room for failure. For failure will be death, and the death of thousands of Martians. That would be unacceptable. The vastness of the northern Martian plains when driving in a buggy are hard to overestimate, but all too easy to underestimate. Normally he would've taken a personal plane to traverse the desolate, quarry marked terrain of Utopia Plantia, however there was no planes left at the active mining complexes. Thankfully, even by buggy the destination will be reached in a matter of hours on a meeting that is just a day away from happening. He just needs to make sure that he makes it there uninterrupted as possible.
Auderii gets a message from one of his associative Technocrats, Michala.
“Auderii! We are going to Earth! I get so few opportunities to express true excitement, but now is the best time to do so. The world our ancestors lived on just centuries earlier before the terran collapse, we live in truly joyous times.”
Auderii, annoyed by the unprecedented enthusiasm by Michala, of whom he considers one of the least competent Technocrats he knows, tells her “There is no call for joy or happiness. Not until the day we inherits the earth can we be happy. We must make sure that our future is ensured, and until than your over expression will only cause disaster.”
The comm is for a bit silent, but Machala briefly says to Auderii “I will try to restrain myself better.”
As informally as he could be, Auderii tells Machala “Good. I am two hours from Esylium Mons, the rest of those of genuine importance will meet up there, including the leader of the people*. Be there or else risk the standard punishments. I will be blocking communications until then, good bye.”
Auderii shuts the communications off, instead preferring to silently start planning out how he will play his part in the liberation of earth itself. A planet that Auderii knows damn well he has never stepped foot on. Representations of earth exist all over, he has seen the pictures and even briefly used a virtual apparatus to walk on a fictional representation of earth. Yet he worries, as the gravity of Earth is much higher than that of Mars. There most certainly will be suits for those who have to go on land, but the natives of Earth will be numerous as they will be hostile.
The way to win Earth will have to be through the fleet. Any other way would be unattainable.
But any means to liberate Earth and begin tomorrow will surely be worth the end goal. There is too many people on Earth as is, and if he had say in matters of military operation despite his failures in the Ida Expedition he knows what he would do, as failure to act truly decisively will always lead to disaster.
The best way to win is to use all the tools at one’s disposal, not to play games with the enemy.
Yet, he has not enough merit to speak of this sentiment in public. He won't have much say at all at the meeting, but like his even lesser peer, he is obligated to meet at Elysium Mons and hear the leader itself. A privilege imposed indeed, as is the privilege he must have. How else will he be part of the liberation of earth?
*Hesitant to name drop here.
