Candle in the Dark - a decidedly different BTech ISOT

INDEX:
Part 0
Part 0.1
Part 1
Part 2
Part 2.1
Part 3
Part 4
Part 4.1
Part 4.2
Part 4.3
Part 4.4
Part 4.5
Part 4.6
Part 4.7
Part 4.8 coming eventually
Part 4.9

~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~

0: Invasion of the Saucer Men
The Inner Sphere
3022

Excerpt from “The Sixth World” by Dr. Sun-Tzu Liao (Capella Royal University Press, Sian, 3085):

“As long as there have been travelers, there have been traveler's tales. Often fanciful, sometimes fabricated, stories of what lies over the horizon have enthralled humanity for the entirety of recorded civilization. Stories moved along with the frontier: our distant ancestors told stories about the mythical tribes and beasts living beyond the mountains, or across deserts and oceans, and when the frontier moved up and away from Terra the stories changed. Alien civilizations became the stock and trade of storytellers through the first waves of Jumpship exploration. Every spacer had a tale to tell – usually over a drink, or six – about the non-humans he saw blasting off from some uninhabited rock in the middle of nowhere, or the gleaming towers of an alien city just a few jumps beyond the Periphery. Traveler's tales such as these have been with us for hundreds of years, and aside from the occasional intersection with the gullible, remained part of the great cosmic sideshow.

In the middle of 3022 the people of the Inner Sphere stopped rolling their eyes at these tales. Over the months of May, June and July sightings of unidentified spacecraft – verifiable sightings, backed up by sensor readings and telescopic photos – increased fifty-fold. These sightings happened everywhere in the Inner Sphere and the nearer Periphery, over major and minor worlds alike.

Initially, these mystery spacecraft were thought to be some top-secret project cooked up by one of the Successor Lords, but those who thought that were quickly disabused of that notion. The UFOs were too small, too fast and appeared in places where ordinary Jumpships and Dropships couldn't go by themselves. As the notion of a Successor State project started to wear thin, the next popular claim was Kerensky's Army is returning. Though we now know that to be false, the idea that the long-missing Star League Defense Force was preparing their way back to the Inner Sphere took hold throughout known space, to the point that multiple planets threatened to revolt in joy.

As the sightings continued, the wild claims, arguments and recriminations reached a fever pitch. No nation in known space managed to intercept one of these UFOs; always they managed to stay out of Dropship weapons range, and vanished before interceptors could reach them. The mystery invasion finally reached its crescendo on 7 August 3022, in the New Avalon system...”

~***~

It made an entry with a bang, blasting into the system riding a wave of electromagnetic energy as it plunged sunward, pushing towards a velocity nearing one-tenth the speed of light. Minutes later, the wave of energy displaced by the craft's entry washed up on the shores of planets, moons and asteroids. Sensors fired off automatic warnings of an inbound jump, alarms and klaxons blaring through command posts and bunkers. Technicians and soldiers hurried through their calculations, tracking telescopes and scanners to the calculated arrival point.

They saw nothing. Nothing but the same four Merchant class whales basking in the sunlight at the zenith point, recharging their drives as they had been a few minutes earlier. The first stunned transmissions came in moments later:

It was small, it was fast, rising a pillar of light and moving like a bullet. We tracked it going at a tenth light speed! An aerospace fighter with a KF drive!

The first report was dismissed as crazy. More alarms went off as the wave moved across the system at the speed of light. Thousands of tons of Jumpship couldn't just vanish into thin air. Commanders demanded results, or they demanded heads roll. Sometimes both. Telescopes searched, all sensor systems in New Avalon began tracking to this one point, determined to solve the mystery.

Ten minutes after its arrival the UFO was already an eighth of an AU from the arrival point and still accelerating, riding a glorious blue column of expanding gas.

Deep in the Fox's Den men were hunched over consoles, scanning and searching. Maybe it was an exercise? A sensor glitch. The generals debated informing the Prince. Not until we have more information! It might still be an error.

And then, a single voice cut through: “Incoming transmission! Wideband, it's drowning everything out!”

“Put it through!”

The radio crackled, hissing like an angry snake. It popped and crashed, riding a cacophonous clash that might almost have sounded like music. Over the top of it, a high clear voice sounded positively gleeful.

“GOOD MORNING, NEW AVALON!” A girl's voice, definitely a girl. “This is Radio KAOS, and we're here to ROCK. YOUR. WORLD!”

“Triangulate! Triangulate now!”

“Here's a favorite of ours, to all our friends on New Avalon. This is The Offspring, with 'Have You Ever.'”

A slight pause, and the Fox's Den was filled with a noise more stunning than any simple surrender demand. Military minds locked up, unable to process what was happening. The Marshal of the Armies himself was there to hear it firsthand, full minutes after it left the source.

Falling, I'm falling
Falling, I'm falling

For a moment, every person stood still in total confusion. It wasn't a demand for surrender. It wasn't a threat, nor a declaration of war. It wasn't anything sane and expected. It was...

Have you ever walked through a room
But it was more like the room passed around you
Like there was a leash around your neck that pulled you through?

...music. It had a driving beat. It had a catchy tune. It was like nothing anyone had ever heard before. It was ancient. It was fresh. A radar operator found herself smiling, nodding along to the beat. A stern look from a supervisor stopped her dead.

Have you ever been at some place
Recognizing everybody's face
Until you realized that there was no one there you knew?

Well I know...

It didn't take the command staff long to realize that this transmission wasn't just in their offices. It was everywhere across the planet, cutting across traffic reports and mobilization orders. Prince Hanse Davion sat stunned for a moment as it drowned out his briefing. At the Albion Military Academy, the day's order of business was drowned out by...

Falling, I'm falling

Have you ever buried your face in your hands
Because no one around you understands
Or has the slightest idea what it is that makes you be?

Someone had the sense to contact the New Avalon Institute of Science, trying to find some way to cut through the interference. The engineering professor insisted such a wideband transmission was impossible within the laws of physics, then determined to figure it out anyway. In the Marshal's mind, every single neuron screamed attack. There couldn't couldn't be any other explanation. In his heart, he had doubts. Anyone capable of doing this could do far more – and far worse – than play strange music.

Have you ever felt like there was more
Like someone else was keeping score
And what could make you whole was simply out of reach?

Well I know...

“It's on almost every frequency, Highness,” the pilot reported, cycling through the channels in demonstration while feeling just that little bit unnerved. “I can still get short range comms and transponders, but everything else...”

“Just get me to the Den,” Hanse ordered, doing his level best to sound calm and in control. “Best possible speed.”

The pilot knew his job. He pushed the throttles to the firewall, already angling the craft down towards the landing pad. This was going to be a hell of a landing.

Someday I'll try again and not pretend
This time forever
Someday I'll get it straight but not today
Have you ever

Falling, I'm falling...

A listening post on an asteroid not far from the zenith point picked up the signal. It was heavily red-shifted, enough that whatever it was coming from was moving at a fair percentage of light speed.

“Got to be an equipment fault,” the post commander concluded. “Nothing can move that fast.”

“Do I still report it?” asked the radio operator.

The commander was little more than a low-ranked greenhorn fresh from the academy. “Sure, what the hell.” He shrugged, then settled down for his meal.

Some days, my soul's confined and out of mind
Sleep forever
Some days, my darkest friend is me again
Have you ever
Someday I'll try again and not pretend
This time forever
Someday I'll get it straight but not today
Have you ever...

The post was far enough away that the report was picked up almost simultaneously with the song on New Avalon. The song's beat changed, giving the people in the Den a moment to breathe.

When the truth walks away
Everybody stays
Cause the truth about the world is that crime does pay

So if you walk away
Who is gonna stay
Cause I'd like to think the world is a better place

“That's the second one, Marshal,” the radioman reported. “Both stations report the target moving at...” he paused, then double-checked his screen. “Both estimate one-tenth the speed of light.”

Someone swore. There was no sense calling it a malfunction, despite the opinion of one of the posts. It was there, it was indisputably there.

“Where is it?” the Marshal demanded.

“Just under eight AU out. Let me wash it through the computer, I might be able to tell where it's going.”

The Marshal leaned over the man, staring at the screen as if he could will the answer out of it just a few seconds faster.

When the truth walks away
Everybody stays
Cause the truth about the world is that crime does pay

So if you walk away
Who is gonna stay
Cause I'd like to make the world be a better place

The First Prince was running. Appearances be damned if his world was under attack, especially if the enemy was close enough to flood the airwaves like they were. He burst into the Den riding a draft of cold air that forced everyone in the bunker to turn and face him.

“Report!” The word exploded out of Hanse, snapping them out of their momentary reverie. The music was still playing, the song winding down.

“Approximately seventy minutes ago an unknown ship jumped in at Zenith,” the Marshal said, doing his damnedest to maintain military composure. “It began broadcasting on wideband almost immediately. Based on the analysis of the signal by our listening posts, the ship is traveling at one-tenth light speed.”

The Prince gaped. “Surely not,” he said.

“That is what our sensors are telling us,” the Marshal confirmed.

“What do the sensors tell us about what it is?”

“Sir, my Prince,” the Marshal paused. “The warbook is calling it 'Unknown – Possibly Nonhuman.' Obviously that's wrong, but.”

“Yes, yes of course. And where is it going?”

As if he had to ask. Everyone turned to the radar control station, whose operator found himself in the uncomfortable position of sitting in the hottest seat in the planet.

“You Highness,” the operator said nervously, “it's on a direct course for New Avalon.”

When the truth walks away
Everybody stays
Cause the truth about the world is that crime does pay
So if you walk away
Who is gonna stay
Cause I'd like to think the world is a better place
I'd like to leave the world as a better place
I'd like to think the world...

The song rolled down to the final notes, the music's energy finally spent. “Eleven and a half hours until it reaches orbit,” the Marshal said. “If its speed holds.”

Hanse nodded. “Bring the AFFS to full alert. I want options for dealing with this thing before it gets here.”

The Marshal nodded. “Yes, sir. However,” he ventured carefully, “I'm not certain this is an attack.”

Hanse gave his highest-ranked general an odd look. “An unknown spacecraft is jamming planetary communications, and you don't think it's an attack,” he said. “Explain.”

“Well, they're not being subtle about being there, are they? Whoever they are, they want to grab our attention. The broadcast may be jamming some of out communications, but it's just music. No demands, no declarations, just... music. And if they're really moving as fast as our sensors say they are, they have transit drives far beyond the Star League, and they want us to know that too. Right now, they could be far more dangerous than they actually are, so far all they've done is be annoying.”

The Prince nodded. “I'll take it under advisement,” he said. “Still, I'd rather be prudent.”

“As would I.”

“Now for one of my personal favorites,” the girl's voice returned. It was hard not to imagine some grinning adolescent playing a prank on them all. “Next up is Iron Maiden with 'Different Worlds.' You're listening to Mel's Metal Hour on Radio KAOS!”

A crash of guitars marked the beginning of the new song. Hanse and the Marshal shared a glance. Eleven hours of this? It was going to be a long day.

You lead me on the Path
Keep showing me the way
I feel a little lost
A little strange today...

~***~

Excerpt from “The Sixth World” by Dr. Sun-Tzu Liao (Capella Royal University Press, Sian, 3085):

“The 'raid' over New Avalon was the last great UFO sighting of the year 3022. As quickly as they began, verified sightings dwindled away to nothing. Unverified sightings would continue for months and years to come, even well after the truth of the matter was finally made clear to the Inner Sphere. But the moment of revelation was still several years in the future; at the end of 3022 the puzzled inhabitants of known space were left wondering what, exactly, the hell had all that fuss been about.

No one in those early years of the thirty-first century truly believed that our worlds had been scrutinized and studied by intelligences stranger than man's yet mortal as his own. Having never met our equals nor our superiors in a thousand years of space travel, we busied ourselves with the mundanities of day to day life, with petty wars and conquests, secure in our knowledge that we were the pinnacle of life in our galaxy. Yet across the gulfs of space, intellects vast and warm and sympathetic regarded the empires we built with compassionate eyes, and slowly and surely they drew their plans against us. And so would come the great disillusionment.”

Dr. Sun-Tzu Liao is Seldon Professor of Psychohistory at the Capella Royal University. A member of the Capellan Union's former ruling family, Dr. Liao served in the Union Armed Forces with distinction during the War of Two Terras. At night, he's Batman.

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Fun Tyrant's Note: Well, this certainly is a thing, isn't it?. Inspired by (and will eventually steal liberally from) the unwieldy mass of "An Entry With A Bang", "Candle in the Dark" has roughly the same start conditions, but things are going to get weirder from here on out. Also like "Entry," this is a collaborative project between myself and a bunch of other people. We all hope that you enjoy the products of our fevered minds.

Who got ISOTed? That would be telling. We'll find out in the update after next. Suffice to say it's not the world of Tom Clancy though.

Well, it certainly got a chuckle out of me.
Looking forward to what's to come.:drevil:

I am confused, amused and intruiged.

I don't know, Sixth World? That screams Shadowrun to me.

Watching with anticipation...

Hmm, Battle Angel Alita?

it almost looks like he's crossing over space channel 5, and frankly i'm not sure if that's a bad thing or an awesome thing.

...


I almost laughed/shocked to death by Dr. Sun-Tzu Liao.


And now I am in a case of "... uh... what I just read?"



Also, I think someone just pranked Hanse Davion. Which takes guts.

Is this article 100% accurate, or was this just a joke? It's awesome either way.

This is one of the mysteries that will be disclosed later.

Got a few seconds to respond before I head out....

We aim to please, or we aim to wound... we're aiming, let's just leave it at that, shall we?

Heh. Heh heh heh.

There'll be a few Shadowrun references/shout-outs here and there, but it isn't a direct crossover. Just pay no attention to that extremely lifelike scuplture in Takeshi Kurita's throne room...

(Did I even mention that I think BattleRun is the greatest thing ever? Because I do, and it is. )

Someone did indeed prank Hanse, and it's going to drive him nuts that he can't return the favor just yet. When he meets the people responsible there will be words, yes indeed there will.

The neat bit though is that the prank was also a cover for another mission.

Well... nobody's ever proved that mild-mannered Professor Liao gets his kicks by dressing up in a bat suit and going out to terrorize the Forbidden City's criminal element. And yet nobody's seen Sun-Tzu and Batman in the same place, so it's possible. I suppose you could just ask him. Be prepared to duck, though.

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The next installment will be posted this evening MDT after I return from StarFest. Expect more questions to be asked, and probably none answered. We still haven't met the Mystery Guests yet, but their influence is running far and wide already.

BattleRun?

Isn't that that April Fools joke from a few years back? Where they released a book for a merged setting?

Um, while funny, there's a technical error that kept bugging me through the entire fic.

Namely, everyone was being amazed by the "10 percent light speed" thing. Problem is that BT ships are capable of far more than 10 percent light speed if they have the fuel for it. But they never get that high because they usually have to start decelerating before they get that high. IOW, BT ships accelerate constantly half way to a destination, and then turn around and decelerate the other half.

If I were one of Hanse's generals and a ship were doing a steady 10% light speed at New Avalon and was less than an AU out, I wouldn't even be thinking of it making orbit. I'd be worried about it HITTING New Avalon because no BT drive could possibly slow it down to orbital speeds before it reached New Avalon and either hit the planet or zoomed right past. Having a stupidly high acceleration (ie, the turn-humans-into-paste-from-the-G-forces high) would be more attention getting than having a 0.1c velocity.

Oh, and apparently the UFO was putting out constant exhaust, but was NOT accelerating. THAT is pretty physics breaking right there.

Perhaps the point is that it was already going 10% lightspeed moments after jumping.... Err...

Sometimes you need a little handwavium to make crossovers like this work.

Mal... I only have to say one thing about this...



At least it wasn't the Mysterions...

So someone Trolled The Fox? I really hope he gets to Troll them right back...

No. He will do something better.


He will invade them, somehow. Maybe during a Wedding.

Part 0.1: Kites
Strana Mechty
November 8, 3010

“There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already.” ~ Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea, The Illuminatus! Trilogy

~***~

The moment Severen's head hit the pillow, he knew he was this was no ordinary dream. He'd undergone the Rite of the Vision only once, but that one experience was enough to tell him this was a true vision.

Severen found himself standing at the foot of a green hill in summertime. It looked a little like a hill his sibko was fond of on Circe, in his youth. Only a little though, the grass was too green, the hill too smooth to be from Severen's past. He looked up, and any doubt vanished. Filling the sky was a great spiral galaxy, lighting up the sky in glory. He stared, astonished by the majesty of a hundred billion suns.

Laughter sounded from atop the hill, breaking his reverie. Severen climbed the slopes easily enough, and came to the top in short order. There he found a large gathering of children. Some were dressed in the colors of the Scavenger Lords, others in colors of the Periphery nations, and a small group wearing the symbols of the Clans.

Each child held onto a string, and attached to the string was a kite. Severen looked up, and saw the sky was full of kites, backlit by the galaxy. The kites were shaped like Dropships, Jumpships and Warships, as well as shapes he only recognized from children's stories. A tugging from his wrist distracted Severen; he looked down to find that he, too, held a string, his leading to a kite shaped like his Clan's flagship.

In the midst of the crowd of children a lone adult – a woman barely out of childhood herself – did her best to maintain order. She walked over to Severen and smiled at him. “Do you want to fly?” she asked.

Severen blinked. “Yes?” he ventured.

The woman nodded. “Well, if you want to fly,” she said, “you need to let go.” Severen opened his hand, but the kite string stayed stubbornly attached to his wrist.

“I can't,” he said.

The woman laughed. “No, silly,” she said. “You have to let go of the earth. See?” She pointed as a laughing child wearing Wolf's totem drifted skyward on a kite shaped like a silver shield. “If you let go, you can live free in the sky. It's not hard, but you have to play nice when you go,” she added sternly.

Severen blinked, now thoroughly confused. “Play nice?” he asked. “What does that mean?”

“It means play nice,” the woman replied patiently, as if speaking to a small child. “Be just and honorable, defend the weak, that sort of thing. You know, like a knight.” She gave Severen a very penetrating look. Time seemed to slow down, the children's laughter fading into the background.

“Would you like to be my knight?” The woman asked, and Severen suddenly understood that, whatever else this vision meant, this was the point he had to make a choice. He'd done it before in the Rite of Vision, and his future may hinge on his decision.

He didn't respond at first, giving the woman a long, calculating look, then looking back up at the sky full of stars and kites. “Yes,” he said. “I will be your knight.”

Time sped back up, and the woman smiled as brightly as the galaxy overhead. “That's great!” she said happily. “Now you need to learn to fly. When the time comes, I'll be there. Until then, you need to learn how. Take my hand.”

Severen took the woman's hand, and together they rose into the sky, the kite dragging them towards the galaxy, the great spiral growing brighter and brighter until the radiance washed out everything around them–

~***~

Khan Severen Leroux jolted awake, the vision ringing in his head. He had the sense that he'd just committed himself and the Nova Cats to something, though exactly what that something was, he wasn't sure.

The dream-woman asked him if he wanted to be her knight, and he'd said yes. That was the Clan dream, wasn't it? To be the stalwart defenders of the Inner Sphere against the predations of the Scavenger Lords? Any Clansman who knew the story of the Star League would've said yes. Still, there were many strange things about the vision, and though the Khan wasn't a complete novice to the Ways of Seeing he was no expert.

Quickly dressing, Leroux left his chambers in search of Maria Bavros, the Clan's Oathmaster and the one person on Strana Mechty most likely to find the greater meaning in his vision. Coming to the chamber door, he pressed the annunciator.

“Come in, my Khan,” the Oathmaster said. “You've had a vision, quiaff?” Bavros' voice was soft, as if she'd been expecting Leroux's arrival. The Khan wasn't put off by this, he'd had long experience with the Oathmaster's ways.

“Aff,” he replied. “And now I seek wisdom as to it's meaning.”

“Tell me, my Khan,” Bavros said. “When the girl-child asked you to be her knight, did you say yes?” Leroux stared at his Oathmaster, thunderstruck.

“How did you know that?” he asked.

“You didn't answer my question.”

The Khan's eyes widened. “You had the same vision,” he said. Bavros nodded.

“I did,” she said. “The hill, the kites, the galaxy shining down on all of us. And the question. You haven't answered mine yet; did you answer hers?”

“I...” Leroux sighed. “I said yes.”

“As did I,” the Oathmaster replied.

“But what does it mean?”

“The winds are the winds of change, and if the Nova Cats are to survive them then we’d best do as the girl said and learn to fly. What that means, I don’t know yet. I suspect it has something to do with the kites. They were almost all spacecraft, did you notice? Perhaps we should start putting more energy into our jumpship and warship fleets.”

“Mm, perhaps.” The Khan looked pensive as another thought struck him. “What about ‘letting go of the earth?’ That’s a statement with a lot of loaded meaning, quiaff?”

Bavros nodded. “Aff. It could mean that the Nova Cat destiny lies away from Terra, but let’s not jump to conclusions yet, my Khan. It could mean something less fraught with peril.” She paused, considering her next statement carefully. “And then there’s the question. It sings to something deep within our hearts: the Star League Defense Force were the shining knights of the Inner Sphere. It might also be said that when the Great Father brought us here, we abandoned our responsibilities as knights.”

“That’s a dangerous thought, Maria,” Leroux said. “Be careful not to express that where others might hear.” Bavros gave him a look half-pitying and half-irritated.

“I’m not a child fresh from the tank, my Khan,” she sniffed. “I know when and where I can speak of these things. Still, the argument could be made. And that argument, connected to the question, makes me wonder. Does this mean we will resume our former oaths and responsibilities?”

“Could we? The Star League is dead, after all.”

Bavros gave her Khan a mysterious smile. “There are always possibilities, my Khan,” she said.

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Fun Tyrant's Notes: Psychics are like canaries: when shit gets real, they're usually the first ones to notice. They don't quite know it yet, but to paraphrase the immortal words of Zathras, the Nova Cats now have a destiny, and that destiny is going to wreak allll sorts of havoc before it's realized.

This particular bit was inspired by a dropped "Entry" plotline involving a renegade Nova Cat pirate captain who had pretty strong visions of the Clancy-verse wrecking the Clans' shit. Here we've shifted it so that instead of one renegade having the vision, it's the Khan, the Oathmaster (my creation FWIW) and Xenu knows who else in the Clan. It was also an absolute bear to research, since there's like zero good data on what the Cats were like pre-invasion.

For extra credit, who's the first Clanner to lift off the ground? A Wolf, obviously, but which subset of Wolf?

Next time, our Mystery Guests will enter and sign in! Stay tuned, true believers!

Situation repeated.

The average maximum velocity for a merchant dropship traveling to Sol Zenith Point is about .01c, but that bugged me too. I'd think the first thing they'd think of would be a RKKV attack. Odds are it's been done before and 10% is in the lower end of about where you'd expect a battletech dropship to be if it was or was making an RKKV attack.

If I was a general on New Avalon I would suggest sending a request. What kind of music did Hans like anyway. I think there actual may be a cannon answer for that and given Hans is very much the future of the 80s man the answer to that might be metal.

It's Battletech.


Metal is obligatory. Seriously, its the best compliment to the setting..

Well the second song played was by Iron Maiden...

Although starting things off with The Offspring? Okay, now that's just way out there.

Its not the only thing way out there.

And the Fox is not going to invade the trolls.

And I guess Mel would give a troll grin after being called a troll...

This was a bit that was cut for flow purposes:

Just curious, but what were the speeds again, that usually were displayed by the UFOs (and later, the reverse-engineered stuff) in X-COM?