Against All Comers - Theocratic Terra

[Shadowsage]

Hey guys, just an update; the Computer runs like a champ. Sent in my support ticket about getting those Distant Worlds downloads again, and when I do I'll fire up the old workhorse laptop one last time and transfer the savegame. Theocratic Shenanigans will resume shortly.

[Wild_Bill]

Sorry, I just got here. Excellent writing Shadowsage! I've enjoyed reading your story. KUTGW!

Speaking of comps, I'm having to get a new one. DW won't run on this 12 year old Pent III.

[martok]

ORIGINAL: Shadowsage

Hey guys, just an update; the Computer runs like a champ. Sent in my support ticket about getting those Distant Worlds downloads again, and when I do I'll fire up the old workhorse laptop one last time and transfer the savegame. Theocratic Shenanigans will resume shortly.

Glad to hear it Shadowsage! Looking forward to more. [&o]

[Shadowsage]

Yeah, working on it as we speak. Can't believe how illegibly I write notes.

[Setekh]

Enjoying the story, hoping for more soon.

[Shadowsage]

Shadows blacker than space flitted between stars. Their presence was marked by the disappearance of entire constellations from the skies of outer worlds. At first, they were but an idle curiosity for a Church fully engrossed in other, more immediate challenges and natural phenomena. There were hundreds upon hundreds of anomalies among the stars that seemed much more relevant to the interests of humanity. Much like hundreds of times before, there were those who proclaimed the end of the world(s) when the skies darkened. But as the months wore on, nothing happened. The doomsayers were quietly removed from society and life went on.

Everything changed in an instant.

The Empire of Terra had deployed dozens of sensor platforms as Constantine had declared necessary for safeguarding the faithful. Over the course of several hours, one by one the stations reported flocks of contacts. What came next was much, much worse than any could have imagined. Images of great armadas emerging from the interstellar blackness beamed back to Terra. Shining silver ships cloaked in great fields of blackness belched energy weapons that far outstripped those of the Church. The story was the same across the breadth of the frontier: almost contemptuously they ground through armor plates and silenced weapons emplacements one by one. Boarding pods forced their way aboard the stations full of many-legged abominations. The only exposition offered by those shadows was chilling to the core.

“Fear is the most ancient emotion of life. We will teach you fear.”

But space is vast, and for all the terrifying power of the Dark Ones (as they were named, following the mythos of the Ancient Guardians) it took time to travel from system to system. As outposts and mining operations leading towards the inhabited core were silenced, the Church drew up a cordon and declared there would not be one step back. Thousands of ships were built on the backs of tithes long accumulated, and billions of volunteers crewed not only their many weapons but the ground forces that were raised on each and every planet. Civilian contractors were paid handsomely to construct dozens of fortified positions across each moon, each planet in the inhabited systems. Even Holy Terra changed to meet the threat; the last untouched continent was ravaged for its' resources and then heavily industrialized with the factories to produce weapons of ever-growing power.

Even as the technological gap closed, the Dark Ones swept inward like a wave smashing a sand-castle. Whole fleets were broken and reformed in a desperate bid to hold the line, and yet satellite systems providing resources to the population were wiped out sequentially. For every invading destroyer broken by the Church, a dozen of its' own were left drifting in space. Millions died aboard vessels daily to hold the howling night away from their fellow man. And so it went for months, where titanic conflict was the norm.

Thousands of ships broke hyperspace on the outskirts of the Kantras Gula system, where dozens of hyper-deny platforms were deployed thick enough to prevent invasion from many vectors. This halted the invaders for the few minutes required to blast the platforms into oblivion and recharge their warp drives. Conflict snarled across the system as Home Fleet fought desperately to defend each bastion from destruction. In a hideous caricature of a countdown, the Dark Ones attacked each planet in turn, until none was left until Holy Terra itself. The legions of hardened soldiers and billions of militiamen mustered nervously to repel the coming invasion from the worshiped soil of Terra herself. It was all for naught. An absolutely massive ship broke through from warp just outside range of Nexus Base's weaponry bearing the hideous colors of the Dark Ones. Slowly, energy readings from the bowels of the massive ship built up to unthinkable levels. The moon-sized ship broadcast a single transmission across the system, the second received from the invaders during the entire war.

“The darkness is the only way. We have returned.”

The massive ship fired at Terra itself.

–

Commodore Nikolais woke up screaming, drenched in a cold sweat. He looked around in stark terror at the shadows in his room. The panic-induced haze over his mind gradually eased, and he was able to realize that his dream was exactly that. As he sat in the bed, his mind raced frantically through the vivid scenes he had envisioned; all of it seemed so real. The blight across the stars, the slow encirclement of the Empire, and the lightning blitz into the heart of the Church itself when the slightest hope of surviving had surfaced.

'We have returned...' he thought to himself.

Why did it sound so familiar?

(A/N: Trying to get back into the swing of things; played a what-if continuation of the game where expansion was severely limited and all attempts at communication by the other races were ignored. This, combined with lackluster research due to the stratified Church resulted in a horrible attrition struggle across multiple systems where hopelessly outclassed ships tried to break down shields. I poured all my cash into crash research at that time and managed some decent railguns, but just as those new designs began replacing the hundreds of cannon-fodders ships fighting almost continuously in a couple of defense fleets and two bigger reserve/reaction fleets, the Shakturi AI pulled something really smart and went straight for the heart. Possibly the best game I've ever played.)

[Modest]

Wow! That was great! At the begining I was thinking that You simply decided to end Your AAR and have written this as an ender... It was a surprise! Great!

[Shadowsage]

Move up to college is complete... Resuming writing in 3, 2, 1...