Chapter 1
So. This has won the poll on my Patreon to be ressurrected. Thus, does semi-crack fic live again.
Index:
Segment 1: Here.
Segment 2: Mass Effect/Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri | Page 2
Segment 3: Mass Effect/Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri | Page 9
Segment 4: Mass Effect/Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri | Page 17
Arc 2
Segment 1
Segment 2
AN: Because somebody on SB posted something that vaguely suggested this to my brain, and I decided IT MUST BE DONE!
Old note below.
((()))
“Zero-point Wormhole Construction Device activation in T-minus six days, thirteen hours, twelve minutes, eleven seconds.”
Ahh, Doctor Volinsky Federal thought, Nothing like the sound of progress.
Staring out at the massive edifice of a long-extinct alien race from the science bridge of the USS Zoloto Gold, the ranking member of the latest incarnation of the University's Trans-stellar Exploration team hummed happily to himself as he watched the artifact's Gravitic Manipulation Core come to life.
“Happy thoughts?” The amused voice of a woman called from behind him, and he turned to see an ebon-skinned beauty entering the science bridge, two mugs of coffee held in hand.
“Indeed,” Federal said, accepting one of the mugs with a smile, “Perhaps if you sprinkle me with Zakharium I will head out through the ZWCD, turn to the second star on the right, and go straight on to Never Never Land.”
“I'd say only children could go to Never Never Land,” The woman said with a smile, “But I think you qualify.”
“Ah, Ipse,” Federal said, holding a hand over his heart, “You wound me so! I'll have you know I'm two centuries older than you, young lady!”
“Oh, I am aware,” Ipse said, seating herself gracefully beside Federal, “But most all of the Universities top researchers I've met tend towards either child-like curiosity and enthusiasm, or towering ego. Those with a temperament more like yours are much more bearable.”
“Clearly,” Federal said with a mischevious smirk, “I must now sulk, so as to uphold your high expectations.”
Instead, he kicked his feet up, and began spinning on his chair, which he had had specifically had modified to allow full and free rotation. The rest of their watch on the Science Bridge passed much in the same manner, with small talk, good-natured wit, and a general lack of visible maturity.
((()))
“You look rather poorly, Doctor Federal,” Ipse said, gentle concern evident in her voice as she sat across from Volinsky at the ship's mess.
“Bah,” Federal said, waving a hand dismissively, as he concentrated on inhaling his food, and scrawling out notes via the archaic medium of pen and paper, not to mention speaking with his mouth half-full of food, “One of those fools at Morgan Interstellar destroyed one of their testbeds while attempting to apply my theories on multi-cored Gravitic Manipulation Drives, yesterday, and one of his competent assistants forwarded me their design schematics this morning.”
“By this morning,” Ipse said, “You do mean Thursday morning, yes?”
“Tuesday?” Federal said, clearly startled as he looked up at Ipse for the first time, “It is Tuesday, yes?”
“Thursday, actually,” Ipse said, raising a single eyebrow at him in a way that she knew infuriated him, since he could not do so himself, “Thursday morning to be precise, did you not notice that you were eating scrambled eggs and sausage?”
“Er, no?” Federal said, looking directly at his tray of food for the first time since he'd entered the mess, “It did seem a bit chewy for garlic bread, now that I think of it.”
“Here,” Ipse said warmly, passing him her coffee mug, “This should help clear your thoughts.”
“Thank you, Ipse,” Federal said, accepting the mug, “You're a lifesaver.”
He slugged the whole thing back in a single draught, before lowering the mug with a thoughtful expression.
Then he promptly fell face-first into his breakfast, getting egg in his beard, completely unconscious.
A small round of applause passed around the ship's mess, and Ipse took a graceful bow, before drawing her gravitic manipulator, and levitating the now-snoring Volinsky out of his seat.
“Off to bed now, Doctor,” She said, with no small amount of amusement in her voice, as she began conveying him out of the mess, “Well-rested scientists are more efficient scientists, and more efficient scientists are more profitable scientists.”
Several of the mess's other occupants, those wearing the Morgan Merchant Core uniforms, nodded at her words as she passed them by.
((()))
“Zero-point Wormhole Construction Device activation in T-minus three days, thirteen hours, twelve minutes, eleven seconds,” The ship's AI informed Federal, who simply nodded as he continued to spin in his chair.
“Any fluctuations in its Quantum Isolation Field, Beatrice?” Federal asked after a few minutes.
“None outside of accepted parameters,” Beatrice, the ship's Digital Sentience, said, “Scans continue to show less fatigue on this system than all Devices activated thus far, save Device 1.”
“Mmm,” Zolinsky said, reversing the direction of his spin, “Almost as much a backwater as the Sol system then, to whoever built the ZWCD's then.”
“Most likely fortunate for us,” Beatrice said with a touch of irony, “It has allowed us more time to integrate their technology, before encountering whatever it was that destroyed them.”
“Indeed,” Zolinsky said, abruptly stopping his chair's spin, “Speaking of which, where is Ipse?”
“Liason Ipse Morgan is currently asleep in her quarters,” Beatrice answered helpfully.
“Good,” Zolinsky said, nodding and pulling his notebook and pen out of one of his labcoat's pockets, “Time for Science!”
Fifteen minutes later, he would learn that Ipse had asked Beatrice to wake him when he began work again; not that she meant to stop him, simply because she wished him to know that she was watching him.
((()))
“Zero-point Wormhole Construction Device activation in T-minus, thirteen hours, twelve minutes, eleven seconds.”
“You're getting fidgety, Federal,” Ipse said, with clear amusement in her voice and on her face.
“Of course I'm fidgety!” Volinsky said as he stared out at the enormous artifact floating before the Zoloto Gold, “We're going to discover things! That is what science is all about!”
“Yes,” Ipse said, and a predatory edge worked its way into her expression, “But if you don't calm down, you'll wear yourself out, and need to sleep by the time the activation is complete.”
Volinsky looked at her.
Ipse responded by raising an eyebrow.
“Wench,” Volinsky muttered, then turned his chair away from hers, and began to sulk.
Ipse sat back in her own chair and smiled.
It's halfway between having a precocious nephew, and an eccentric uncle, She thought happily to herself.
((()))
“Doctor Federal,” Beatrice announced, roughly five hours before activation, “I've detected unscheduled inbound FTL drives, drive strength appropriate to large scale freighters, but moving at speeds more appropriate to a scout Frigate.”
“Show me one of the drive signatures,” Volinsky said, frowning, “I assume you've already alerted the command bridge?”
“Affirmative,” Beatrice said, as the Science Bridge's primary viewscreen came online, displaying an array of graphs, energy profiles, and statistics that Ipse recognized as a partial profile of an FTL drive, though comprehending the mechanics thereof was beyond her.
“No human built these drives,” Volinsky said after a few moments.
“That was my conclusion as well, Doctor,” Beatrice said, “Shall I patch you through to Captain Brehmes?”
“That would probably be for the best,” Volinsky said as he continued to study the energy profiles, pulling up another array of data on his personal console.
A moment later, the heavily bewhiskered and deeply tanned face of Captain Brehmes, one of the University's handful of competent naval CO's, replaced part of the melange of data on the Science Bridge's primary viewscreen.
“What are we looking at, Doctor Federal?” He asked.
“Well Captain,” Federal said distractedly, looking between the main display, and his personal display, rather than face the Captain, “There's no way in Hades that they're human, and I'm pretty damn sure they're not the race that build the ZWCD's either, the refinement on their fields looks to be a generation or two ahead of ours, but nowhere near the level of the artifacts we've recovered so far.”
“So,” The Captain said, “Blind First Contact?”
“Blind First Contact,” Volinsky said with a nod, “I'd recommend against provocative action, there's eight of them, and with the tech disparity, they could probably squash us like bugs.”
“Noted,” Brehmes said, “This is hardly a military vessel in any case. Bridge Out.”
The communication line cut, and the Captain's face was replaced by the graph it had briefly supplanted.
“I've called the Xenological specialists and linguists to the Science Bridge, Doctor Federal,” Beatrice said, “ETA on the alien fleet is approximately eight minutes.”
“Thank you Beatrice,” Volinsky said absently, “Could you be a dear and upload these drive signatures to the servers on Shanxi, and keep a live stream going? I'd hate to lose this data if something unfortunate were to happen.”
“Certainly, doctor,” Beatrice said, while Ipse shook her head at the doctor's prioritization of data storage over his own possible mortal peril.
Of course, she'd only been assigned as Federal's liaison for two months.
((()))
Eight minutes later, the unknown fleet dropped out of FTL, and responded to Captain Brehme's hail with a full barrage of kinetic weapons. The Zoloto Gold was a University Research vessel shaped more or less like a cylinder, poorly armed, but quite well shielded (a necessity with some of the more volatile projects the University sometimes worked on). The unidentified vessels averaged about a third of her mass each, and the opening volley from all eight vessels pounded her Stasis Shields, two of them punching through to hole the vessel across the breadth of the cylinder, crippling its Quantum Reactor.
The second volley, completely unimpeded by the Gold's now-defunct shielding, was targeted more broadly across the ship's length; unfortunately one of the hostile vessels was still targeting it amidships. The kinetic round changed the Quantum Reactor from 'crippled' to 'overloaded,' and in a flash of sub-atomic energy release, vaporized the ship in its entirety.
((()))
“Dammit Federal, can't you go three months without breaking everything you touch?”
Zolinsky blinked, as he woke up to a voice he'd rather not have heard for another T-year. Or ever, really. Scowling, he pulled himself into a seated position, and began detaching himself from the clone vat's rather invasive life-support systems.
“This was not my fault, Smith,” Zolinsky growled once he had the breathing tube out of his mouth.
“Sure it wasn't,” The short blond man in front of him said with a roll of his eyes, pacing back and forth in front of the vat agitatedly, “Just like it wasn't your fault when the Flyer Deluxe suffered from a core implosion because you just had to mess with the isolation fields on the first Zarkarium-powered FTL vessel fitted with a Singularity drive core in thirty years.”
He whirled in place to glare at Zolinsky, who had stood up, and was toweling the vat's suspension fluid off of his body.
“Spaceships aren't toys,” Smith growled, “And they're damn expensive, so stop breaking them!”
Zolinsky studiously ignored the shorter man as he discarded the towel, and began donning the bathrobe that had been kept on its usual peg beside the cloning vat.
“And clones aren't cheap either!” Smith growled, throwing his hands up in exasperation, “I just hope to god none of the Morganites decide to sue us for 'traumatic experiences.' Do you have any idea how expensive lawsuits against Morgan lawyers are, even when we win? Not to mention the basic cost of providing eighty-three clone replacements for the Zoloto Gold's crew in the first place!”
“It wasn't my fault,” Zolinsky said firmly, stepping out onto the heated floor of the cloning chambers, “A group of unidentified aliens showed up and-”
“Aliens,” Smith snorted derisively, turning away from Zolinsky and striding towards the exit,
“Suuure. You come up with more pathetic excuses each time I have to have your overpriced ass rezzed. Save it for the Expenses Committee.”
Zolinsky rolled his eyes, and followed Smith out of the cloning chamber.
((()))
AN: Madness I say, Madness!
For those of you who have actually played Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, while only the University and the Morganites have been seen thus, far, the Peacekeepers, Gaians, and Spartans, are also still around and kicking. Why not the Hive? Because socialism/marxism cannot prosper against a competent social/economic model. Why not the Believers? Because as a deeply committed Christian, I @#)(!*@$!*)( loath the total failure BS that the Believers represent. Not only does Miriam completely fail at having actual Christian beliefs, but they're an incompetent faction as well. Also, I usually play the University, so I had to deal with Miriam's BS in my face pretty much every time, until I wiped her out.
Index:
Segment 1: Here.
Segment 2: Mass Effect/Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri | Page 2
Segment 3: Mass Effect/Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri | Page 9
Segment 4: Mass Effect/Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri | Page 17
Arc 2
Segment 1
Segment 2
AN: Because somebody on SB posted something that vaguely suggested this to my brain, and I decided IT MUST BE DONE!
Old note below.
Also, this is not going to be a project I'm intending to spend much time on, this is something I'm writing because it's interesting and amusing, and will have no compunctions about putting on hiatus indefinitely, until I feel the whim to write on it again. So please enjoy, but understand it may not see completion soon, if ever. Further, I haven't bothered with formatting tags, if you want to see italics and such, wait until I post it on FF.net, most likely tomorrow night. (link to my FF.net page in my sig.)
((()))
“Zero-point Wormhole Construction Device activation in T-minus six days, thirteen hours, twelve minutes, eleven seconds.”
Ahh, Doctor Volinsky Federal thought, Nothing like the sound of progress.
Staring out at the massive edifice of a long-extinct alien race from the science bridge of the USS Zoloto Gold, the ranking member of the latest incarnation of the University's Trans-stellar Exploration team hummed happily to himself as he watched the artifact's Gravitic Manipulation Core come to life.
“Happy thoughts?” The amused voice of a woman called from behind him, and he turned to see an ebon-skinned beauty entering the science bridge, two mugs of coffee held in hand.
“Indeed,” Federal said, accepting one of the mugs with a smile, “Perhaps if you sprinkle me with Zakharium I will head out through the ZWCD, turn to the second star on the right, and go straight on to Never Never Land.”
“I'd say only children could go to Never Never Land,” The woman said with a smile, “But I think you qualify.”
“Ah, Ipse,” Federal said, holding a hand over his heart, “You wound me so! I'll have you know I'm two centuries older than you, young lady!”
“Oh, I am aware,” Ipse said, seating herself gracefully beside Federal, “But most all of the Universities top researchers I've met tend towards either child-like curiosity and enthusiasm, or towering ego. Those with a temperament more like yours are much more bearable.”
“Clearly,” Federal said with a mischevious smirk, “I must now sulk, so as to uphold your high expectations.”
Instead, he kicked his feet up, and began spinning on his chair, which he had had specifically had modified to allow full and free rotation. The rest of their watch on the Science Bridge passed much in the same manner, with small talk, good-natured wit, and a general lack of visible maturity.
((()))
“You look rather poorly, Doctor Federal,” Ipse said, gentle concern evident in her voice as she sat across from Volinsky at the ship's mess.
“Bah,” Federal said, waving a hand dismissively, as he concentrated on inhaling his food, and scrawling out notes via the archaic medium of pen and paper, not to mention speaking with his mouth half-full of food, “One of those fools at Morgan Interstellar destroyed one of their testbeds while attempting to apply my theories on multi-cored Gravitic Manipulation Drives, yesterday, and one of his competent assistants forwarded me their design schematics this morning.”
“By this morning,” Ipse said, “You do mean Thursday morning, yes?”
“Tuesday?” Federal said, clearly startled as he looked up at Ipse for the first time, “It is Tuesday, yes?”
“Thursday, actually,” Ipse said, raising a single eyebrow at him in a way that she knew infuriated him, since he could not do so himself, “Thursday morning to be precise, did you not notice that you were eating scrambled eggs and sausage?”
“Er, no?” Federal said, looking directly at his tray of food for the first time since he'd entered the mess, “It did seem a bit chewy for garlic bread, now that I think of it.”
“Here,” Ipse said warmly, passing him her coffee mug, “This should help clear your thoughts.”
“Thank you, Ipse,” Federal said, accepting the mug, “You're a lifesaver.”
He slugged the whole thing back in a single draught, before lowering the mug with a thoughtful expression.
Then he promptly fell face-first into his breakfast, getting egg in his beard, completely unconscious.
A small round of applause passed around the ship's mess, and Ipse took a graceful bow, before drawing her gravitic manipulator, and levitating the now-snoring Volinsky out of his seat.
“Off to bed now, Doctor,” She said, with no small amount of amusement in her voice, as she began conveying him out of the mess, “Well-rested scientists are more efficient scientists, and more efficient scientists are more profitable scientists.”
Several of the mess's other occupants, those wearing the Morgan Merchant Core uniforms, nodded at her words as she passed them by.
((()))
“Zero-point Wormhole Construction Device activation in T-minus three days, thirteen hours, twelve minutes, eleven seconds,” The ship's AI informed Federal, who simply nodded as he continued to spin in his chair.
“Any fluctuations in its Quantum Isolation Field, Beatrice?” Federal asked after a few minutes.
“None outside of accepted parameters,” Beatrice, the ship's Digital Sentience, said, “Scans continue to show less fatigue on this system than all Devices activated thus far, save Device 1.”
“Mmm,” Zolinsky said, reversing the direction of his spin, “Almost as much a backwater as the Sol system then, to whoever built the ZWCD's then.”
“Most likely fortunate for us,” Beatrice said with a touch of irony, “It has allowed us more time to integrate their technology, before encountering whatever it was that destroyed them.”
“Indeed,” Zolinsky said, abruptly stopping his chair's spin, “Speaking of which, where is Ipse?”
“Liason Ipse Morgan is currently asleep in her quarters,” Beatrice answered helpfully.
“Good,” Zolinsky said, nodding and pulling his notebook and pen out of one of his labcoat's pockets, “Time for Science!”
Fifteen minutes later, he would learn that Ipse had asked Beatrice to wake him when he began work again; not that she meant to stop him, simply because she wished him to know that she was watching him.
((()))
“Zero-point Wormhole Construction Device activation in T-minus, thirteen hours, twelve minutes, eleven seconds.”
“You're getting fidgety, Federal,” Ipse said, with clear amusement in her voice and on her face.
“Of course I'm fidgety!” Volinsky said as he stared out at the enormous artifact floating before the Zoloto Gold, “We're going to discover things! That is what science is all about!”
“Yes,” Ipse said, and a predatory edge worked its way into her expression, “But if you don't calm down, you'll wear yourself out, and need to sleep by the time the activation is complete.”
Volinsky looked at her.
Ipse responded by raising an eyebrow.
“Wench,” Volinsky muttered, then turned his chair away from hers, and began to sulk.
Ipse sat back in her own chair and smiled.
It's halfway between having a precocious nephew, and an eccentric uncle, She thought happily to herself.
((()))
“Doctor Federal,” Beatrice announced, roughly five hours before activation, “I've detected unscheduled inbound FTL drives, drive strength appropriate to large scale freighters, but moving at speeds more appropriate to a scout Frigate.”
“Show me one of the drive signatures,” Volinsky said, frowning, “I assume you've already alerted the command bridge?”
“Affirmative,” Beatrice said, as the Science Bridge's primary viewscreen came online, displaying an array of graphs, energy profiles, and statistics that Ipse recognized as a partial profile of an FTL drive, though comprehending the mechanics thereof was beyond her.
“No human built these drives,” Volinsky said after a few moments.
“That was my conclusion as well, Doctor,” Beatrice said, “Shall I patch you through to Captain Brehmes?”
“That would probably be for the best,” Volinsky said as he continued to study the energy profiles, pulling up another array of data on his personal console.
A moment later, the heavily bewhiskered and deeply tanned face of Captain Brehmes, one of the University's handful of competent naval CO's, replaced part of the melange of data on the Science Bridge's primary viewscreen.
“What are we looking at, Doctor Federal?” He asked.
“Well Captain,” Federal said distractedly, looking between the main display, and his personal display, rather than face the Captain, “There's no way in Hades that they're human, and I'm pretty damn sure they're not the race that build the ZWCD's either, the refinement on their fields looks to be a generation or two ahead of ours, but nowhere near the level of the artifacts we've recovered so far.”
“So,” The Captain said, “Blind First Contact?”
“Blind First Contact,” Volinsky said with a nod, “I'd recommend against provocative action, there's eight of them, and with the tech disparity, they could probably squash us like bugs.”
“Noted,” Brehmes said, “This is hardly a military vessel in any case. Bridge Out.”
The communication line cut, and the Captain's face was replaced by the graph it had briefly supplanted.
“I've called the Xenological specialists and linguists to the Science Bridge, Doctor Federal,” Beatrice said, “ETA on the alien fleet is approximately eight minutes.”
“Thank you Beatrice,” Volinsky said absently, “Could you be a dear and upload these drive signatures to the servers on Shanxi, and keep a live stream going? I'd hate to lose this data if something unfortunate were to happen.”
“Certainly, doctor,” Beatrice said, while Ipse shook her head at the doctor's prioritization of data storage over his own possible mortal peril.
Of course, she'd only been assigned as Federal's liaison for two months.
((()))
Eight minutes later, the unknown fleet dropped out of FTL, and responded to Captain Brehme's hail with a full barrage of kinetic weapons. The Zoloto Gold was a University Research vessel shaped more or less like a cylinder, poorly armed, but quite well shielded (a necessity with some of the more volatile projects the University sometimes worked on). The unidentified vessels averaged about a third of her mass each, and the opening volley from all eight vessels pounded her Stasis Shields, two of them punching through to hole the vessel across the breadth of the cylinder, crippling its Quantum Reactor.
The second volley, completely unimpeded by the Gold's now-defunct shielding, was targeted more broadly across the ship's length; unfortunately one of the hostile vessels was still targeting it amidships. The kinetic round changed the Quantum Reactor from 'crippled' to 'overloaded,' and in a flash of sub-atomic energy release, vaporized the ship in its entirety.
((()))
“Dammit Federal, can't you go three months without breaking everything you touch?”
Zolinsky blinked, as he woke up to a voice he'd rather not have heard for another T-year. Or ever, really. Scowling, he pulled himself into a seated position, and began detaching himself from the clone vat's rather invasive life-support systems.
“This was not my fault, Smith,” Zolinsky growled once he had the breathing tube out of his mouth.
“Sure it wasn't,” The short blond man in front of him said with a roll of his eyes, pacing back and forth in front of the vat agitatedly, “Just like it wasn't your fault when the Flyer Deluxe suffered from a core implosion because you just had to mess with the isolation fields on the first Zarkarium-powered FTL vessel fitted with a Singularity drive core in thirty years.”
He whirled in place to glare at Zolinsky, who had stood up, and was toweling the vat's suspension fluid off of his body.
“Spaceships aren't toys,” Smith growled, “And they're damn expensive, so stop breaking them!”
Zolinsky studiously ignored the shorter man as he discarded the towel, and began donning the bathrobe that had been kept on its usual peg beside the cloning vat.
“And clones aren't cheap either!” Smith growled, throwing his hands up in exasperation, “I just hope to god none of the Morganites decide to sue us for 'traumatic experiences.' Do you have any idea how expensive lawsuits against Morgan lawyers are, even when we win? Not to mention the basic cost of providing eighty-three clone replacements for the Zoloto Gold's crew in the first place!”
“It wasn't my fault,” Zolinsky said firmly, stepping out onto the heated floor of the cloning chambers, “A group of unidentified aliens showed up and-”
“Aliens,” Smith snorted derisively, turning away from Zolinsky and striding towards the exit,
“Suuure. You come up with more pathetic excuses each time I have to have your overpriced ass rezzed. Save it for the Expenses Committee.”
Zolinsky rolled his eyes, and followed Smith out of the cloning chamber.
((()))
AN: Madness I say, Madness!
For those of you who have actually played Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, while only the University and the Morganites have been seen thus, far, the Peacekeepers, Gaians, and Spartans, are also still around and kicking. Why not the Hive? Because socialism/marxism cannot prosper against a competent social/economic model. Why not the Believers? Because as a deeply committed Christian, I @#)(!*@$!*)( loath the total failure BS that the Believers represent. Not only does Miriam completely fail at having actual Christian beliefs, but they're an incompetent faction as well. Also, I usually play the University, so I had to deal with Miriam's BS in my face pretty much every time, until I wiped her out.
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What a way to totally give someone confidence.
