The captain bit his lips and said "Head for the orbitals around Luna colony instead, let's dock there they are considered neutral and will not be fired upon, and we can seek protection there!"
The helmsman darted toward the closest one and it was a trading outpost that housed around 60 million people and was being constantly expanded every year, They burst into the zone and sought docking permission, they got it instantly, and they docked into one of the burrows, they saw the Earth navy chasing. Vishaan sat behind his desk letting out a big sigh, he should not have approved that Luna military vessel to dock, but he knew there were some real important people on that vessel. He was born in the Luna colonies, and he always felt like he was a part of Luna while on this space station. He did not know if he would get fired or even put this station into danger, he knew he had the shield generators scattered around the station that would stall a fleet for at least a month.
He knew earth navy would not blow up the station like they did with the space colonies, but he still thought he took a gamble by letting them dock. He thought it did not matter to the owner of the station if he took in anyone hunted by Earth or anyone else for that matter, as long as the profits kept rolling in he would not bother with "human" affairs. He got up from the chair and took the lift to the docked battleship.
A Luna captain saluted when Vishaan stepped up "Thank you for letting us in, we would have been killed if not for your kindness." said the captain. Vishaan saluted back and said "I was born on the Luna colonies and this is the least i could do, I am just the manager of the station but i will keep you all safe aslong the owner does not request me to kick you out or give you up, I'm afraid i quite like it here and i rather abandon your people instead of my family, I'm sorry for my bluntness" The captain shook his head.
"Say no more, we will be on our best behaviour, and we will pay any fees or penalties for keeping this dock occupied for... awhile." Vishaan invited the captain up to his office and while he was serving coffee to his guest his until his communicator rang "This is Earth Navy Commander, Dawnson. You are harboring fugitives, and we demand you hand them over to our battleships. If you do not comply we will go in there and take them by force!" roared the general.
"Sir, You have no jurisdiction here this is a neutral space-station, and we have a business license approved by every government in this sector including EARTH, and it's about 400 years before next re-up! So please, when we take you to court for trespassing, kidnapping and general warlike behaviour Earth is gonna be so poor I'm gonna own the entire Americas!" said Vishaan.
The Commander just disconnected the call. "Security, we might have Earth Marines trying to sneak inside or just directly try to invade us, keep all the security doors locked and person primed on the shields and weaponry." Vishaan broadcast to all the security officers.
The commander frowned and contacted the high-command for a solution or a way forward, He got his order destroy a warrior battleship connected to the station to scare them into surrendering the "VIP". The commander ordered their fleet to take aim at a battleship and a volley of shots hits the battleship shredding it instantly, one versus a thousand with no warning and a pointblank shot equals a dead warrior battleship. He waited a half a hour, so they got the message and was about to contact the trading station before he got a com message.
"S-4XN-001 DEMANDS YOUR IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE AND REPARATIONS FOR ATTACKING A WARRIOR OF THE MILKY WAY DEFENSE COUNCIL, YOU ARE GUILTY OF TREASON AND WILL BE MARKED FOR DETAINMENT AND IF YOU FLEE YOU WILL BE MARKED FOR DESTRUCTION, PLEASE POWER OFF YOUR SHIPS WEAPONRY AND SHIELD AND WAIT FOR INSTRUCTIONS FROM NEARBY STATIONS."
The commander scoffed. "This is Commander Dawnson, of the Earth Navy. By harboring criminals you are in fact an enemy combatant! You will hand over the "VIP" from the battleship that docked 30 minutes ago, or you will lose more battleships!" he demanded.
"YOU ARE WALKING A PATH OF NO RETURN, COMMANDER. YOUR ACTIONS AND WORDS SPEAK OF WAR AND TREASON. YOU AND YOUR FLEET WILL BE MARKED AS TRAITORS OF HUMANITY AND WILL BE PROMPTLY DESTROYED, YOU WILL POWER DOWN AND YOU WILL WAIT ON YOUR SENTENCING IN THE COUNCIL." The commander fired on another battleship and blew it up. "... GOOD BYE."
The commander saw the broadcast end, and he frowned "Anything?" he said. "Sir, we got a heat signature from the battleships they are moving out of the area. I assume they are retreating from our range shall we pursue?" said the radar operator. The commander thought for a moment. "No, hold position Let's not walk into a trap, keep the trading sta-" "INCOMING MISSILE!"
"Shoot it down then, we got shields no need to panic." said the commander. Several beams hit the missile and it kept barreling toward his ship "Impact in 5.4...3.2...1..." The missile hit the hull of the ship and a new sun was born for twenty seconds in the Sol system, while pulsing a radioactive wave that fried every battleship and cooked everyone inside, those battleships closest to the blast was turned into slags of radioactive metal and there were no survivors in that 1000 ship fleet, Those on the edge were powered down ghost ships burned out by the EMP and radiation. Nobody was unlucky enough to survive the blast, for they would have felt themselves being cooked alive and died horribly. Instant death was an acceptable end for someone that provoked him. He would ignore the "fallout" in political and physical sense, this was Sol's problem, They provoked him.
"Breaking news, a fleet of 1000 Earth Navy battleships was ambushed and attacked by several nuclear missiles, Earth has condemned the Luna colonies for launching such an unprovoked and savage attack. Earth has re-affirmed that they are in the right of this war and Luna colonies just want to watch Earth burn."
Vishaan wiped the sweat from his brow after he received the order to press the red button on his desk from his station overlord, and after he got reports of a giant bright light just a few clicks out and reports of keeping the south docks closed due to radioactive debris would arrive in a hour hitting the station, he knew he sent that bomb, He knew warriors was bound by the pact, but he did the "killing" in a sense, He felt awful and almost threw up from the stress and guilt, but he did not know he just pushed a button. He went down to the animal petting zoo and took a kitten with him, the trainer yelled at him about the mandatory training and license, and he just told her to shove it and took the kitten with him, he gave it to his youngest daughter, so she had a another new kitten, and he just sat down on his favorite chair and watched her play with the kitten. His original family was still together although his first daughter had ventured out into the vastness of space under his reluctant agreement, He did not know where she was at the moment, but he was okay with it, considering the problems here.
The president threw the glass onto the wall "We have been humiliated, the council is furious! We lost 1000 battleships, and we CAN'T DO A #!#&; THING ABOUT IT!" he screamed at the vidscreen having a conference call with several military men.
"Sir, we could try to storm the station and occupy it, it's a-" "WE CAN'T TOUCH THAT #!#& STATION, I TOLD YOU WE CANT DO A #!#& THING, THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE SOL FEDERATION ORBITAL LICENSE IS DIRECT IMMUNITY AGAINST ANY MILITARY ACTION IF WE BREAK THIS PACT, WE WILL LOSE 80% OF OUR GOD DAMN ECONOMY WITH ALL THE ORBITAL ZONES WE LEASE!" The President raged.
The general got really quiet. Everyone was thinking of solutions and the only thing they could agree on was a massive trade sanction against the trade outpost barring any Earth Traders from buying and selling to the station, they would disrupt the traffic the best they could without breaking any laws, if they could not take them out they would starve them out.
Chapter 5
Year 2366
Seyla entered the Sol system and was surprised at the war logs in the latest report, The war had entered into a stalemate where the Luna and Mars colonies were holding steady with the ground advantage, Battleships were useless unless they just blew up the colonies which was a PR-Nightmare and basically throwing money into the fire, Earth wanted the colonies due to their food production and massive technological improvements into infrastruc
ture technology. There had been no skirmishes in Sol, since earth decided to blockade the hyper lanes stranding any enemy vessels in the system while a massive battleship fleet hunted it down, It was a game of cat and mouse that would last at least another five years if nothing went wrong.
Seyla and Yui was just happy to able to dock into the warriors trading station, she managed to get a temporary pass from the station manager only because they promised to take some really horrible paying contracts down to the south, they were going down there anyway, so why not. They met the manager and signed the deal, The manager was quite happy to get some of that junk of his station, A Thousand of miners and traders abandoned their cargo when earth kept confiscating everything. They either sold it for a fraction or just left it there until someone claimed it, It was several millions of tons of scrap. The manager had lost all refinery access since the trade embargo, and he was about to jettison it into space unless someone would come around and take it off his hands.
Yui walked into the shower immediately she had not had a "real" shower in some time when the water did not taste like it was filtered through a sock, Battleships water recycling systems were a nightmare to purify completely, You could turn it around and around but there would be a few flaws like odor from the cleaning. Yui wanted to stay on the station for a few months and Seyla agreed, she and the crew really needed some R&R, and to buy some more gifts for their families.Seyla wandered the station looking for some need Intel on the path down, she did not want to be ambushed by an earth fleet while transferring the goods down. She walked into the bar area and it was packed with people discussing the war. She sat down and listened.
"These earth dogs really are brave trying to lock down the entire system! Don't they know economics!" "I hope the price on food stop rising, this is the only station where i can afford it anymore!" "Hey, so you wanna make some credit smuggling to earth? I know this senator that need-"
Seyla shook her head seems it was business as usual, and she just scanned the news feeds the past month to find something out of place, she would just hire a neutral escort to bring them to the hyper lane south and it would be enough, the nearby systems were quite peaceful only Sol was in constant war and it had not had a single ship destroyed in months. She set a date in four months they would brave the journey down if nothing happened. She took a sip from her drink and heard an alarm blaring on the station."WARNING, WARNING, SEVERAL GUNMEN JUST OPENED FIRE IN THE DOCKING BAY, STATION WILL NOW BE IN LOCK DOWN." Seyla stood up and ran back to her ship.
Two Luna soldiers were laying dead on the cold steel floor and the earth marines were trying to push further in to complete their goal, they were being slowed down by the stations troops that held the choke point to the emergency staircase, all other lifts were locked down. "Captain we cannot get any ground their plasma weapons are shredding our suits, we already lost Wu and Jenkins! We can't go on, we have to retreat!" yelled a soldier
.
Aborting the mission would be a mistake, he knew this was a suicide mission to kill the "VIP", she were an important cog in the war and if she died Luna colonies would surrender much more quickly, Their ground campaign was being cheered as successful on the news, but he know the big picture, they were losing the war as long as Mars and Luna could hold the colonies, Space was just the battleground and the planets were the price. Their technology and production would pay for this war five-fold as long as they could claim it intact. "Set up the bomb, we have to go to the extremes there is no retreat soldier. Get going!" screamed Captain Green.
The soldiers were visibly shaken, but they got to work to arm the hydrogen bomb hoping they were able to escape before the explosion.Vishaan recoiled in horror when they saw them unload a bomb from their cargo vessel and ordered an immediate attack or everyone on this station was going to die, the security officers pushed around the corner and started to advance rapidly taking shots and going down but not being killed "You #!#&!!!" yelled Max while thinking of his family.
The earth soldiers was shaken by the fierceness of the security officers and their reckless charge, but they had already armed the bomb. They tried to reach the cargo ship and the clamps would not disengage, they were stuck dying in this can like the rest of the 80 million people aboard. A security officer wearing a black coated armor rushed up to the bomb under the gaze of the earth soldiers and put a shield generator around the object and then checked to see if he could remove the bomb and toss it into space, He knew it was not possible to move the bomb since it was magnetically sealed to the floor and if he disconnected it, it would explode instantly he checked the timer and it says 15 minutes, He put several shield generators on it, hoping it would shield the blast. He got a message from his boss "Listen Max, There is a hope we need you to go to security office and enter the code 293312 on the security terminal in there will be a more powerful shield generator, you will surround the object with it and it will work."
Max took notice of Vishaan's message and darted to the security office a few minutes away he barged inside and pressed the terminal, he saw a hidden door go down and inside were a shell, a shield generator that was always on, and several high grade plasma weapons he did not even know existed. "I WILL TAKE IT FROM HERE" said the robot. Max shook and saw it grab the shield generator and walk out in a brisk pace, he followed and watched the shell work on the bomb and attach the shield generator flawlessly in about 30 seconds flat. He then took one look at the robot and it just stood there silently looking at the bomb not saying anything.
"I DETECT THE EXPLOSION WILL DAMAGE THE HANGAR WITH A LETHAL DOSE OF RADIATION, I SUGGEST ALL HUMANS LEAVE THE AREA AND WAIT ON THE SECURITY STATION ON THREE FLOORS ABOVE AT MINIMUM, I HAVE ALREADY SENT EVACUATION ORDER FROM THE OTHER NEARBY FLOOR, JUST IN CASE. A PRIMITIVE BOMB SUCH AS THIS ARE HARD TO CALCULATE IF THEY MADE ANY IMPROVEMENTS OR INCREASES TO THE YIELD." said the robot.
Everyone in the station was looking at the bomb in the hangar, Vishaan had confidence in the station not being destroyed but the dock being unusable for the foreseeable future, He did not know how to properly clean up such a radiation leak in a short amount of time. He probably had to hire several hundreds of thousands of people to go down their sweep and clean everything with solution until it was clean, and that would take years. But he was confident in the station not being blown up, the owner of the station had said it was never a concern even without the shield generator there are safeguards in place for these kinds of situations.
The robot retreated back to the security office and got back into its little den and powered off.The bomb detonated and people screamed across the station when they saw the light from the camera when it went dark, they did not feel a rumble until they got a message "Bomb has been successfully detonated and no permanent damage to the station! Dock 1483 and the floor above will be quarantined until radiation levels subside! We will get on that as soon as possible, We have several radiation treatments on this station if anyone accidentally wanders into that area or got a dose, treatment and checkup will be free!" said Vishaan over the radio. He shook his head he wondered the response would be from his employer about this, he did not like anything that ruined profits and this was taking the cake.
S-4XN-001 summoned an emergency council that would be a joint one with several human leaders or their representatives in the Sol region. It was broadcast around the entire galaxy with massive delays for some but everyone tuned in since this was the first one of its kind.
"I AM S-4XN-001, TWO MONTHS AGO EARTH NAVY ATTACKED MY LUNA STAR BASE WITH A HYDROGEN BOMB, THEREFOR BREAKING THE ORBITAL PACT. I WILL NOW START MY THREE DEMANDS FOR REPARATIONS. 1.EARTH WILL REPAY EVERY PAYMENT I MADE FOR THE PROPERTY AND SALES TAX WITH A 10% INTEREST AND THAT WILL COME OUT TO 768 BILLION CENTRAL CREDITS. 2. EARTH WILL SURRENDER THEIR ENTIRE COUNCIL TO IMMEDIATE DETAINMENT 3.EARTH WILL NOW DISBAND THEIR BATTLESHIP FLEET DOWN TO 1 BILLION AND ISSUE AN APOLOGY. IF THESE CONDITIONS ARE NOT MET WITHIN 74 HOURS, I S-4XN-001 WILL DECLARE EARTH AS A TRAITOR TO HUMANITY AND BEG
IN THEIR DESTRUCTION UNTIL THEY YIELD."
People were shocked at the news clips playing the footage of earth marines setting up a hydrogen bomb and killing on the station, most people thought earth had gone too far to target a civilian station with 80 million souls aboard. The president made a statement "No, We will not yield a single credit or a single person, to you warrior! We the earth council had checked with all our lawyers, and we did not break the orbital pact or attack a neutral station. You are harboring several Luna terrorist that destroyed a 1000 battleship fleet years prior! We demand you surrender them, or else!"
"I CAN SEE THAT YOU WILL NOT CHANGE YOUR WAYS, YOU JUSTIFY THAT THE BIGGER FIST IS THE MOST REASONABLE ONE, YOU HIDE BEHIND THAT WE WARRIORS ARE BOUND BY THE PACT TO NOT HARM HUMANS, BUT I WILL NOW WARN YOU. I AM NOT BOUND BY THE PACT, AND I WILL BE COMING AND IT WILL BE YOUR FAULT FOR THE WORST LOSS OF HUMAN LIFE IN HISTORY. YOU WILL BE ACCOUNTABLE AND I WILL NOT BE, FOR WAR IS THE ATTACKERS FAULT NOT THE DEFENDER." Said S-4XN-001.
"S-4XN-001, YOU ARE NOT TO ENGAGE ANY HUMANS, YOU WILL RE-INSTATE THE PACT." said Seeder the alien shall that brought the humans the warrior.
"SEEDER, DO YOU WANT WARSHIPS OR HUMANS TO FIGHT THE FUTILITY? DO YOU COUNT ON THESE PEOPLE THAT MAKE WAR FOR TINY AND USELESS TECHNOLOGICAL AND PRODUCTION STANDARDS? DO YOU WANT WARSHIPS OR DO YOU WANT HUMANS TO BE HERE WHEN FUTILITY ARRIVES? YOU CHOOSE." said S-4XN-001.
Seeder did not say anything and the other warriors chimed in that he was dangerous and going rogue. "You are lieing, and we will not submit to your threats warrior! Earth has always been free and unshackled! Glory of Earth!" yelled the president.
"I WILL BE THERE SHORTLY, TO SEE HOW LONG YOUR GLORY LASTS." S-4XN-001 the shell powered down and everyone just watched at a new era in the galaxy become real, The rise of the Warriors.
The Titan rolled out of the dock and a accompanying fleets rolled out behind it, He would finish this fight and bring humans back to reality. This stupid and costly wars had to be put to a rest. He was defending the galaxy against the futility and now he had to play peacekeeper for humanity. He would strike hard and swiftly that's the only way human will understand, when they got a boot on their neck telling them dont do this or this happens. He will make a show out of it, so people will learn. There is a top dog in this universe and it's called the warriors. He calculated he would reach the start of the central sector within a year and that's when the first engagement would happen, he figured he had to kill a few warriors since they were able to engage him. And then move on into Sol for the real battle, he was confident of his ability to win. Numbers was not a concern anymore for him, The battleships could outperform and out range anything the basic model could. He started his slow trek across the galaxy and now he will bring the humans to the table, they either sit down as guests or chained to it. There were no other options. His fleet formed many comments and news clips being broadcast around the galaxy when it entered a well packed trading station, and the people shook in fear when they saw the titan enter the grid of the system. A ship of that size should not be that fast or able to get enough power to jump hyper lanes!
The Futility Wars Page 8