I-UU15
The Renegade raced towards the dreadnoughts that stood between it and the station. The dreadnoughts unleashed their fury against the small, nimble ship, but their large armaments were better suited for siege assaults against other capital and super-capital ships; the fast frigate was far too agile a target. Weaving amidst the assault, Roc Wieler’s ship drew closer to its objective, the Naglfars unable to even slow its course.
“Ceasefire!” blared the squad commander. “Release the Bouncers.” Sentry drones were often misused in battles; they weren’t as capable as heavy combat drones for search and destroy operations, but were extremely effectual for defensive screening. As each dreadnought released its full accompaniment of drones, five apiece, the squad commander felt assured of success; there was no way a single frigate could elude fifty drones, regardless of how skilled its pilot may be. Their victory was assured.
Roc locked five drones immediately, peppering the first with artillery fire and missiles. The drone didn’t pop immediately, but hastily fell to the powerful volleys as the ship maintained its severe velocity. He knew that slowing to orbit would result in certain death; he knew that if he even hesitated, the dreadnoughts would be able to track and destroy him. Instead, he pushed forward, never veering from his path, ignoring the constant sound of multiple target locks against him. A second drone fell to the weapons of the Renegade, but Roc knew even if his luck were to hold out, his supply of ammunition wouldn’t, nor would his overheated afterburner. That is when this current stalemate would end, and sadly not in his favour; but he could not, would not retreat; not while there was a chance his friend was still alive on the nearby station. Aura had performed a perfunctory scan of the station interior, all that could be managed with the amount of combat data occupying the system, and hadn’t found any life signs. Still, Roc would not be deterred. He hadn’t come all this way to turn back now until he knew for himself what the fate of Sam and VAF was.
A single notion nagged at the back of his mind, pulling at his focus; the station wasn’t firing. If there was anyone left alive on the station, there should’ve been some signs of a self-protective endeavor. There were no wrecks, no corpses. There were no engine trails, no damage to the station. Then there was the wormhole. Roc had no idea what its implication was, but he wagered that was where Mako, and the bulk of his fleet had gone.
Another drone’s hull fell away to his weapons; forty seven more to go, assuming they didn’t have more in their cargo holds.
Roc’s brow sweated copiously at the effort of his exertions. If someone had told him how suicidal assaulting a full squad of dreadnoughts with a frigate was beforehand, he would’ve heartily agreed. Now, in the thick of things, there was no thought to odds, only to moving forward one engagement at a time. When the end came, he would either be contemplating his folly from a fresh clone, or celebrating an unfeasible win amidst his crew and friends.
Either way, what would be, would be.
—
UNKNOWN WORMHOLE
General Mako could feel the strain on his ship’s hull, and knew the rest of his fleet would be suffering similarly. The sheer mass of his fleet passing through the wormhole had been almost beyond comprehension. Yet they had done it; they had passed through to the other side, having lost only three ships to structural tearing.
There were always sacrifices in every historic moment, Mako rationalized to himself. Achieving greatness never comes without cost.
He ordered a quick status report from the pod pilots of his fleet while he ran diagnostics of his own flagship. Within moments, the data was streaming through his neural interface: thousands of reports of weakened structure, systems offline, sick bay emergencies and the like, but the fleet was operational.
That is what Mako needed to hear this close to the end, this close to his monumental victory. It wasn’t that he cared about the survival of even one of his crew members; to Mako they were all dispensable pawns to be used towards a much greater purpose. The reason he was contented with their survival was because who would be there to speak of his celebrity should they all perish? What good is an extraordinary achievement if there are none there to witness its importance?
“General,” the long range scan engineer interrupted. “We’ve locked the unknown scout ship and scrambled its warp drive. We were going to apply a webbifier also but, well, sir, the ship isn’t retreating. It’s actually motionless but aligned towards us. Shall we proceed?”
Of course you proceed, you dolt, Mako thought to himself. Why wouldn’t you destroy your enemy when they’ve presented themselves to you as a gift?
“Yes, you may fire on your mark.”
Too late he realized his error, as they occurred so seldomly. His flash of anger at the incompetency of his underling had been enough to distract his intellect from seeing four moves ahead. A scout ship would never reveal itself, nor posture aggressively towards a superior enemy force unless…
“Battle stations! Condition Red! Combat pattern Mako-Epsilon-Seven!” His command was repeated throughout the fleet without delay, the hulking dreadnoughts responding with a promptness that attested to the wonder of capsuleer technology.
It was an instinct born from decades of military service, from an unwavering trust in one’s own gut feeling, from a self-confidence possessed from knowing you were superior to any and all you encountered.
The small unidentifiable scout ship exploded under the dreadnought’s guns.
Space itself fluctuated and shimmered in front of them; hundreds of ships reverting from warp at various ranges, in front and behind. Data from every dreadnought detailed the same entry; the entire fleet was outflanked, under attack and none of their equipment could identify a single ship configuration.
—
I-UU15
The Renegade shook as another glancing shot riddled its shields. Roc couldn’t divert any more power from the capacitor to the shield boosters while still maintaining this level of afterburner overheating. His frigate moaned as he threw her into yet another high gravity banking maneuver, and he could hear at least one of the marines losing his lunch.
His crew trained hard. They were the best he had worked with, and it was his honour to do so. They had never questioned him; never failed to obey an order. Roc’s Renegades were everything a commander could want; loyal, willing, dedicated, and capable. It was part of why he felt such a responsibility to his crews; they gave him their complete trust, and he would do everything within his ability not to lose that faith they placed in him.
He cycled down his weapons systems, pushing his engines even harder, diverting every available watt of power into the shield boosters and engine cooling systems.
“I’m taking life support down,” he relayed to the small team he had with him. There were four of them still on this long flight from Evati, two marines and his single remaining engineer. They had been through a lot together, and he was about to put them through a whole lot more.
The Renegade screamed as it shot straight towards the station at the upper limit of its thrust, straining to keep its bolts together. The dreadnoughts were directly in its path, still at a distance, with a screen of Bouncer II sentry drones in front of them.
—
UNKNOWN WORMHOLE
History was fickle; the telling of its recorded truth subject to the interpretations of the victor. There were countless beings, all an integral part of varied histories whom never received mention after their defeat; unsung heroes who died for their beliefs and ideals in the attempts to further humanity towards a greater tomorrow. It was unjust. It was unfair. It was human nature.
The commanders of each dreadnought struggled valiantly to keep their crews alive, to keep their ships functioning; each commander fighting for their very right to exist in the memory of time. They were capsuleers, and assumed that should they inevitably perish, as almost seemed certain in this moment, they would at least be able to continue on their legacies throughout another lifetime. Moreso, they were Mako’s Faithful, and they would fight to the bitter end as they had hundreds of times before, for the glory of the Republic, for the honour of serving this millennia’s greatest military mind.
Arrogance is a wondrous commodity. When we are full of pride, we believe there is nothing we cannot accomplish, that is, until reality comes crashing down around us, almost to spite us and remind us of our own frail and infantile existence.
As the dreadnoughts began to crumble under the combined might of the highly advanced fleet, reports filled the comms from surviving commanders of how Aura was consistently failing to transmit neural data packets correctly through the wormhole.
The brave capsuleers which had dedicated themselves to years of service within the glorious Minmatar Republic were dead, with certain finality.
General Mako bit down on his lip, drawing blood. He watched with impotence as each maneuver he engaged his fleet in was outperformed by this alien fleet. His anxiety grew tenfold when he learned of the inability to clone through the wormhole anomaly.
He would not perish here today; he was far too important a figure in history for that to happen. He ordered his fleet to turn, to engage in a full velocity push towards the wormhole. If they could break through the enemy wings flanking their rear and get back to familiar New Eden space, they would live to tell the tale of these ships; they would live to fight another day; they would live.
With less than half of his dreadnought fleet still operational, General Mako started calling targets, concentrating the firepower of his fleet on individual ships, edging ever so slowly towards freedom, towards salvation, towards the wormhole.
—
I-UU15
Roc Wieler ripped through the drone line as a bullet through glass. Drones spread out chaotically, coordinating their attacks with one another, plastering the Renegade with damage. Expertly, Roc maneuvered the frigate through the blockade, taxing his ship beyond its capacity.
He was less than eighty kilometers from the dreadnoughts when his afterburner exploded, sending the Renegade into a vicious roll. His velocity dropped dangerously, and he could hear the warning alarms of the dreadnoughts acquiring lock on his ship.
A nearby Bouncer stripped what was left of his shields, leaving the Renegade and its crew unlikely to survive the next few moments.
“Abandon ship. Abandon ship. All crew to the escape pods.” Roc Wieler hurredly spat out over the ship’s comm system. She had been a good ship. She had been a very good ship.
He took a deep breath, exhaling slowly, and then set the Renegade’s reactor to self-destruct. He angled himself towards the nearest dreadnought, beginning his suicidal run towards it. He was filled with regret, as these men and women were only following orders, but when you opened fire on Roc Wieler, you were no longer a friend. When you risked his crew, and his objectives, you were an enemy, and would receive his full wrath. If today was indeed the day he would die once again, then many more were going to experience death with him.
He listened as Aura counted the time to self-destruct. He watched as the distance between his target dreadnought and himself dropped from thirty kilometers, to twenty five, to twenty.
At fifteen kilometers, the Renegade shook violently. At first, Roc thought one of the dreadnoughts had scored a lucky shot, but they were still alive. A volley from a dreadnought would’ve incinerated them instantly had it hit. He checked his readout from Aura to find that a dreadnought had just exploded, and his ship had received damage from high velocity debris. Roc hollered with a newfound determination, and cancelled the order for self-destruct.
The station was firing on the dreadnoughts. Sam was still alive.
—
PyjamaSam fell back into the command chair with a sigh of relief. He had been struggling since the battle began outside to understand the intricacies of the station’s automated defensive grid. Turning it on was pretty straightforward. The challenge was in determining friend from foe. He had raced through the station’s tutorial programs on the subject, scanning for anything relevant that would assist him. He had tried to be expedient yet cautious; not the kind of thing you want to make a mistake with the first time.
He had watched in horror as his friend’s ship fought valiantly for survival, but he knew it was a losing battle from the beginning. Slowly, the Renegade was sustaining damage beyond its ability to repair; all it would take was one lucky shot and the ship would be erased just as easily as had it never existed.
With great anxiety, and when he couldn’t in good conscience wait any longer, Sam activated the defenses, silently hoping he had gotten the friend or foe configuration correct.
He was rewarded quickly as the first dreadnought was blown to pieces. Over the next few minutes he watched as the dreadnoughts slowly regrouped, turning their attentions towards the active and hostile station.
—
“Bring down those shields!” the squad commander bellowed as the dreadnoughts activated their siege modules, unexpectedly under attack from the station. All thought of the Republic Fleet Firetail had left his mind. They were already down two dreadnoughts, and it was going to now take them hours to destroy this station, should they last that long. The squad commander hoped General Mako would victoriously return from the wormhole long before then.
—
UNKNOWN WORMHOLE
It was a brutal and destructive back and forth as the Onslaught and its wings slowly pushed their way through the enemy ranks. They had sustained heavy losses, and were now down to less than twenty ships, but had inflicted substantial casualties to their enemy as well.
“All ships, prepare to enter the wormhole!” They were only moments from escaping this nightmarish hell, from returning to the paradise that was New Eden.
As the first dreadnoughts made their jumps, slaved to Mako’s ship, he realized too late his fate. Seeing their attempt to flee, much of the surrounding enemy ships were entering the wormhole as well, in pursuit.
As Mako’s ship entered the wormhole before he could abort the jump sequence, he could feel the ship crushing inwards, could feel the pressure from the collapsing wormhole. It was a simple matter of physics really. There was simply too much mass to allow the wormhole to sustain itself. Mako had limited understanding of science, but a very real understanding of his death, as his ship tore itself apart while jumping through the wormhole.
As he closed his eyes to embrace eternity, he hoped only to be remembered for the hero he was.
—
I-UU15
“Target the docking bays. I want nothing getting in or out of that station!” The squad commander knew his situation was dire. He continually checked for a signal from the wormhole, receiving only static as his response. He had to buy more time for the General to return. In a worst case scenario, they would die to the might of the station. In a best case scenario, they could destroy the station, and its few remaining inhabitants, thus thwarting the efforts of the General’s hated enemy.
—
Roc Wieler had to manually land his frigate aboard the station; the automated docking system had been disabled or destroyed. Few pilots practiced manual landings anymore, but Roc had always been one to routinely practice every aspect of flying. He was coming in far too fast, and the hole in his ship from where his afterburner blew was making it very difficult to fly in a straight line this close to the station.
His crew had returned from the escape pods, and was quickly trying to assist Aura in makeshift repairs to the ship. “Hang on!” he yelled as they collided hard against the hangar deck, and he could feel and hear metal sheering from the Renegade.
When he finally managed to get the landing ramp extended, and detach himself from his pod, he saw Sam already making his way towards them, carrying the limp form of a woman in his arms. The two marines quickly ran to his assistance, as further explosions rocked the station’s shield. It seemed to be holding for now, but there was no point in making a picnic out of their stay.
“C’mon ladies, hurry it up!” Roc yelled, waving his people back into the ship. He grabbed Sam by the arm as he ran by. “You good?” was all Roc said.
Sam nodded. “Yeah, I’m good. I got the box. It’s garbage, corrupted DNA. The woman is a corpmate, Lady Grey. She fainted. I’ll tell you all about it later. I think right now would be a wonderful time for us to make our egress.”
Roc nodded and withdrew into the Renegade along with his friend.
—
The squad commander was receiving activity from the wormhole. His heart raced as he watched the wormhole open, knowing that General Mako had returned, and that victory would still be theirs today.
But the wormhole was not hearkening the return of his commanding officer. In fact, just the opposite was true. In a brilliant display of colour, the wormhole expanded momentarily, then collapsed inwards on itself, disappearing from all sensors.
—
The Renegade catapulted out of the station, Roc already urging Aura to pick a place to warp to. Within moments, the stars outside the ship elongated, and they were away.
One of the marines was tending to PyjamaSam and Lady Grey, whom was beginning to regain consciousness. PyjamaSam quietly moved to be by her side.
“Where…where am I?” she asked, her voice weak and unsure.
“Shhhh, you’re among friends.” PyjamaSam replied.
“I’m Sam, you know me. Everything is going to be just fine.” He said with a smile on his face.
She closed her eyes for a moment in concentration, and then opened them again, looking at him with heartfelt appreciation. “Sam,” she said. “Yes, you’re right. Everything is going to be just fine.”
ROC'S RAMBLINGS 
Roc, what have you DONE? Is this the first story of Apocrypha? o.O
Hey.
I’ve been reading this blog for a while now, never commented. But after reading this entry, I feel like I must.
Roc, your work is AMAZING. This whole story-arc has had me checking back daily, waiting for the next segment. Kept the suspense up, leaving us readers in wonder as to how it would end.
Cannot wait for your next entry.
Fly safe.
o7
I believe I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: Roc Wieler should write the next EVE novel. I would pick that book up and forget entirely about life from page 1 right through the end.
But anyway, what an AWESOME “final” chapter…so cool, how you wove in the wormhole stuff. Great action sequences with the capital ships. I hope Mako really did die! I hope Sam and Lady Grey get married! I hope Roc…well, yeah. Roc. *le sigh* I have no idea what I hope regarding him beyond his safe return to his home base.
Brilliant, simply brilliant.
I am hoping for a prologue, a conclusion to what happens, but know what you do you will keep moving with Roc most definately.
I will be here waiting to read your next piece of art!
I was way too sleepy and tired but, what I meant was way to go! I am with Mynxee saying this is novel stuff. Which Lady Grey is she, does she even remember Sam like, at first sight? And Mynxee, Jedziah, Venom? Are you already using the wormhole stuff that will come with Apocrypha? No, this can’t be a coincidence, you ARE! Please do not let this be the final one, please…
That was probably the best (and maybe the longest) piece you’ve written so far.
I knew as soon as Mako entered the wormhole his pride and greed would kill him. Though Mako could have come back, at least partially.
I like how you detailed the Firetail’s maneuvers. Maybe Roc will get a bigger ship next, since the Renegade looks like toast.
Not shocking that Sam lied to Roc. Even Sam knows he’s dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight.
Superb work, as usual.