Dirk Landon's Story

For the love of...

Dirk Landon walked down the hallway of Wing City's Defense Network. The building was in a full on panic since nobody knew what to do, how to handle the situation. It had been way too long since these people had dealt with something like natural disasters, invasions, or anything of the sort. Well, they dealt with invasions rather often actually...but they weren't anything like they used to be. Often, and deadly. That's why this once beautiful city is now a shit hole and tourism has all but crashed. This is only going to cause that to get worse...

Why is that the one thing on Dirk's mind? Fucking tourism declining? Is he a dumbass?

Grunting he trudged through a few scattered papers, and found himself at his work station. A large reactor was malfunctioning, trying to use power that wasn't being directed to it. "The fucking shields..." He muttered, looking for the source of the power problem. Dirk checked the readings, made sure of the wires and...the wires! "Who the fuck unplugged all of the shield's wires?! And WHY is the dedicated spot for the shield being taken up by this for, -- what is this a fucking copier?! I'm going to have the job asshole who did this!" Marching over to the plugs he unplugged everything and gave the shields a moment to completely power down. Then after that moment was up he only plugged in the shields once more. The twin reactors began working and pumping energy once more.

"Jeez, these fuckin' people. They can't even get the shields going nowadays, it's like calling the plumber to unclog your toilet because you shat in it. You could just...y'know...use a plunger. Ugh."

Crossing his arms, Dirk watched diligantly, knowing the shields would take a few seconds before they'd be fully active around Wing City. Everywhere surrounding it? Eh, fuck 'em. So long as Wing City's safe, that's all he's being paid for. Might as well make sure it works so he doesn't have to sit here and recalibrate everything.

"These fuckin' people..."

Zoey arises from the ground yawning she opens her eyes seeing guards around her she "sighs" and walks into a cafe and orders a nice hot coffee

Calls rung out from Shard Incorporated's HQ. Riots in the streets, danger on Terra - their homeworld. Their headquarters could be under attack at any moment...and from what? The very people who tried offering protection to those on Terra and were now seeking to overthrow the regime for their own selfish benefit.

This wouldn't do.

Shard reached out to The 6th Order, their defense team and main benefactor throughout their military efforts. If Shard was taken down, The 6th Order was out of a job. If The 6th Order was taken down, Shard was in danger of being attacked. One of the few things they had up their sleeves to defend themselves was their affiliation to the suicidal and dangerous terrorist organization.

Within short order, The 6th Order officers replied to the distress signals being called out by Shard - the messages weren't even encrypted. They didn't need to be. It wasn't a surprise assault that they were going for, it was overwhelming numbers that encompassed their goal.

A group of 4 Tactical Command Cruisers made their jump from a nearby sector of space - abandoning their posts and leaving those unclaimed regions they sought to conquer unclaimed. Protection of their ally was the utmost priority. Terra did not concern them, however Shard and its continued support did and was the most pressing.

Above the horizon, the four TCCs finished their jump and sending a Low-Altitude Land Carrier for each Tactical Command Cruiser that had arrived, totaling four with many vehicles and troops within each - ready to fight. Accompanying each Cruiser was an Admiral, and with each Carrier a Vice-Admiral commanded the ground troops and ordered them to begin their defensive parameters. They'd need to be vigilant if they wanted to protect Shard.

It was a slow day at the Shield Repair Division, there was absolutely nothing abnormal going on...or wait. What the fuck was that on the radar? Beeping...intruders? Aerial combatants? Many different forces were going to turn Terra into a battlefield...

...Again...

Dirk had seen his fair share of combat, and he almost missed the volcano that nearly destroyed a decent amount of buildings. Grunting, Dirk leaned in on his chair and began flipping switches - pressing buttons to activate various shields. Sure, he could just press a button and pop a shield around the entirety of Wing City but...for now, he only activated the ones around the Capital Buildings in the center. This would provide protection against orbital bombardment while the battle raged on, as well as protect people who sought refuge there. After all...no use in killing civilians. They did nothing wrong. Dirk was just glad he was on the other side of the shield, not in the crossfire.

Because that would suck monkey dick.

While the chaos of the Imperium’s treachery began...

Alpha’s vision flashed as the words ‘neutrality Protocols engaged’, the robotic form shutdown and self destructed, its singularity core overloaded and eating the robot and its larger linked mech in the voids of space some trillions of light years away.

Only to awaken in Prometheus Station, taking his new body, and marching from the storage banks, in the PNC wing of the massive forge station, its normally white clean hallways shaded red as the alarms and lights whined, “this is not a drill, all personnel are to report to their project Directors for briefing, all combat ready A.I are to report to your designated Link and prepare for deployment” the tannoy system on repeat, Alpha pushed on, arriving at the hanger bay, and escorted to his new craft, climbed in and linked to the larger mech, integrating and locking in, taking control of the larger robotic body.



The Hanger as wide as twelve football pitches and as long as twenty-four, filled with these operational, filled with others like him, thousands and millions more in storage waiting for deployment.

Two minutes…

Going over operational checks and his own equipment, the freshly designed ‘Guardian’ Mechs seemed to be a mass-produced shell, little to no customized units as of yet, Alpha scrolled through the feeds on Terra and watched the chaos erupting due to the stupidity of one power-hungry faction. Though there was nothing new there.

“Civilians are at risk, do what must be done to end this and ensure Terra’s continued Neutrality”

Alpha felt the connection to a squad “deploy heavy shield generators within Wing city, protect key locations and the primary directive is civilian bunkers and parliamentary Positions.” Alpha spoke up into the shared ‘hive mind’ of the squad, the Matrix each squad had and he soon heard the confirmation from ‘Phalanx squad’.


“ALL SQUADS ENGAGE YOUR GATE KEYS!” the tannoy system blurted out and simultaneously across the whole hanger the mechs would begin to shimmer as a navy blue field of energy and plasma formed shielding the mechs.

“PREPARE FOR SHIFT!”

Alpha deactivated his controls and retreated from primary systems leaving his key engaged. Hanger one housing six thousand active mechs was empty in the blink of an eye.


In the skies above Wing City.
Across planetary sensors and in low orbit the six thousand mechs would blink into existent, transported trillions and billions of light years, in the blink of an eye. The energy repercussions for the Prometheus station would be felt for a long time yet.

The six thousand would activate and break into their squads, the mechs shifting shape and form turning into advanced fighter craft and breaking sound barriers and making sonic booms as they scatter across the sky, Alpha took flight towards the main central district of Wing city where the largest mass of Imperium Troops marched, scattered reports of the traitors attacking any and all defenders flashed across Alpha’s vision and so the order to search and destroy was given.

Valkyrie gunships would be the first to meet the wrath of Prometheus Corp. as the sonic speed craft of the robots strafed the much slower and biologically hindered craft followed by ground strikes, the AA Hydra tanks were the first targets followed by any spider AA platforms.

Mechs would shift from flight mode and drop from the sky, skidding through regiments of troops crushing them and reaping a terrible toll, even before the mortars on their backs opened up and the ship class light gauss cannons begin firing, shredding the armour support these regiments so desire and love.

The countdown began again, Alpha watched the five-minute clock in the corner of his vision countdown labeled WAVE TWO

Alpha shifted his mech from flight mode and landed ahead of a marching regiment, his shield generators kicking into life and surrounding the mech with a bubble of energy. Further along the route the heavy shield generators were dropped in by specialist support mechs and installed creating localized shield bubbles, like those used to contain the singularity cores that power Prometheus tech.

Raising his rifle and firing on a stormsword, its armour of little protection against a weapon designed for ship combat.

Seems like everyone these days wanted to get into some sort of brawl. All of these soldiers marching, heading for the Government Building put a bit of a damper on the spirits. Diana sighed, holding onto her bag of groceries with both arms while heading out of the Gates of Wing City. A grumble came over her lips as she shrugged past the men and tanks. It was not her fight...it was not her fight to get into. Her instincts told her that this was not a fight she wanted to get tangled into. Yet she stopped and watched the soldiers move in towards the City.

"I was out for five years...yet somehow I keep feeling like I am getting drawn back in again and again. No one can leave well enough alone. Always gotta be at each other's throats. First it was Corruption, then it was the Council...Now its these space trooper fuckers. Can't Terra just have one single day without some sort of attempted Coup?" She asked herself.

Closing her eyes, she took in a deep inhale then a small exhale.

"Welp...today, I decide to get out a little bit more"

Diana set down her groceries on the ground nearby a trash can and turned to head into the City, hand on her katana and ready to start in yet another brawl. She made a small prayer, all eleven of her tails waving in the air as she walked. Her ears flicked as she followed towards the sounds of marching. It shouldn't be too hard to find where the fighting was going.

Terra's High Orbit.

It wasn't long after the Aschen announcement, that the first waves of their strike began against Imperium targets all around Terra's orbit.

There was silence in the velvety blackness of space, but that silence was quickly broken by about a dozen contacts, dozens that quickly turned to hundreds of contacts, hundreds of contacts that in an instant turned into millions of contacts, millions of individual weapons signatures from the multiple-independently targeted warheads of hundreds of Thunderbolt Missile systems flickered into the space above the planet.

Each individual warhead, not counting the decoys carried a mixture of several different kinds of strategic weapons, they were predominately naquadah enhanced nuclear fusion warheads, each with a yield in excess of 10.5 Teratons of TNT, easily capable of cracking a planet's crust, overwhelming void shields with multiple impacts; and vaporizing even the most robust Imperium warship.

Missile impacts from these warheads culminated into blinding flashes of light in Wing City's sky, thousands of them, each as intense as the last, overwhelming sensor systems, and even likely overwhelming people's eyes.

The second variety were tricobalt weapons, each high-yield tricobalt warhead packed a spatial rending tear that threatened to consume nearby ships, tearing them in two, and drawing them into subspace, the warp, or alternate dimensions as the spatial tears generated by tricobalt detonations grew like a gaping maw, only to snap shut.

The third variety were thalaron warheads, of which shields, and starship hulls did nothing to protect against, entire swathes spanning hundreds of thousands of kilometers in breadth would be sterilized in a bath of green light, and in what could be described as an instant, those inside their ships would likely be unlucky enough to suffer a quick, and painful death as their organic flesh was attacked at the subatomic level.

The initial salvo lasted roughly fifteen minutes, and encompassed the entire area facing the origin of the attack, ships, space stations, fighter formations, all wouldn't be spared the sudden onslaught that came from FTL, and what happened next would give the remnants cause to either step back in awe, or run in fear.

---

Command Carrier Pax Infernal

"All hands, jump complete!" The XO Called out amid the cacophony of the CIC, while Admiral Nagala clasped the railing of the Command Carrier's console firmly, teeth grit in anticipation in the coming battle.

"All frag cannons target the remains of their defense stations, I want aegis fields mark two nine seven carom one one nine!" She called out, as the massive ship shuddered from the spatial flux of it's FTL jump.

The Pax Infernal was one of thousands of Aschen warships that began jumping in roughly 200,000 kilometers from Imperial positions, and those that survived the strategic missile bombardment would likely find themselves facing a determined foe.

Brilliant Aegis barriers shimmered to life, as Aegis, Gemino, and Hera class cruisers moved into position, throwing up ecm, chaff, and thick energy barriers to protect the jumping fleet.

Four Command Carriers, and seven Reverence IIs jumped into the fray, taking in a wide arc formation amidst the thousands of Aschen vessels that began to move into combat formation.


"All ships, this is Admiral Clegg, follow Admiral Nagala's lead and keep up the tempo... Reverences will provide long range support and target the stragglers, stay clear of the thunderbolts!"

"Second salvo inbound! All combat vessels prepare to break!"

Five minutes after the Aschen fleet jumped in, another several hundred more contacts flickered in, similar to the last ones, the thunderbolt missiles acquired their targets, and began their burn towards that likely remained of the Imperial fleet.

---

Groundside...

As violence erupted in orbit, Tech Con was working quickly, taking advantage of their relative anonymity in regards to Imperium activities, fortifying their position and using the flashes of the Aschen missile attack as cover to scramble Apollo fighters, Condor VTOLs, and heavy attack craft to meet the Imperium on the ground.

Mercenaries prepared their weapons, and climbed into their vehicles while security chief Henderson surveyed a large projection of the city before her.

"This ought to be interesting..." She muttered.

Gabriel Ereb, aboard a private jet, skimmed through several files on his tablet. There were numerous schematics depicting everything from weapons to spaceship parts.

Meteor zoomed high in the atmosphere above