"LUNAR: Tales From Crystal Tokyo"
LUNAR:
Tales From Crystal Tokyo
By
Daryll Pung
Episode
2-18: Badgering the Witless
Rated:
R
Somewhere
in deep space, in Dark Kingdom territory, 31 May 2738
The
SLS Bahumat
"Well?" Acting Captain Shelia Thompson asked.
"Beginning detailed scans," came Sailor Vulcan's voice over the
speakers.
"It's opening," Sorcerer Derrelli said, gazing steadily at the
screen. On it, a greenish ripple
filled the span of the gargantuan spaceborne ring-shaped structure, spiraling
into a conduit.
"What are we seeing?" Shelia wanted to know.
Derrelli narrowed his eyes, and zoomed screen four in.
"That fleet of ships is entering the conduit," Derrelli's eyes
widened.
"Yeah..." Sailor Cygni's voice came through.
"I think we've discovered the source Gate.
We've also got a little something else on long range sensors."
"What's that?" asked Wizard Duke.
"We think it's a shipyard."
Approaching
the Dark Kingdom Gate, somewhere in the Alpha Zone, 31 May 2738
The
SLS Destiny
"Highness, we've just received a report from one of the advance
scout ships," the duty comm officer spoke up.
Princess Serena turned from where she had been studying ship status
reports and placement. "About
what?" she asked.
"Apparently the Gate is opening; we have live feed relayed,"
the comm officer replied.
"Screen three," Serena ordered, pointing a finger at that
screen. It blinked on to reveal a
storm of DK starships issuing out.
"Oh, damn," Sailor Eos muttered.
"Couldn't have said it better myself," Reeni sighed. "Looks like we're going to have to step up our
plans."
"The SLS Pisces reports the ships are moving into positions
to fortify the area," the comm officer continued.
"They'll keep us informed."
"What's the enemy ship tally, at the moment?" Reeni asked.
"Two hundred eighty five mixed classes; including five suiciders,"
tactical answered promptly.
"Just keeps getting better and better," Diana muttered.
Somewhere
in deep space, in Dark Kingdom territory, 31 May 2738
The
SLS Orion
"We're able to scan through the opened Gate," the Orion's
science officer said. "Probably
because it's the Source Gate."
"That's the funny thing about opening subspace tunnels," Sailor
Cygni nodded. "As far as the
surface structure of the galaxy is concerned, distant places are brought
near."
"Yeah, well, on the other side is a pretty massive DK fleet. And guess where the other end is, spatially speaking?"
science asked.
"Lemme guess," came Duke's voice over the link.
"Where this little escapade of ours started."
"That would be it," science acknowledged.
The
SLS Bahumat
"So close, yet so far," Shelia murmured.
An air of dejection marked her.
"So, doesn't that mean we can now accurately chart our
location?" Derrelli pointed out. "Not
that we didn't already have a good reference from the Orion."
"Your point?" Shelia said, turning slightly to face him.
"Well, it's just that I don't think a shipyard- if that's indeed
what it is- would be sitting in the middle of nowhere by its lonesome,"
Derrelli continued. "I'm
rather of the opinion we're onto something big, here, and the DK as of yet has
no clue we're here. Not to
mention," he paused, indicating where yet another fleet of ships was
entering the Gate, "a rather large quantity of their ships seems to be
bound for the Alpha Zone."
"So?" asked Duke slowly, trying to perceive what Derrelli was
getting at.
"Logically, that would mean there are few ships are left to guard
this area," Sailor Vulcan stated.
"And if the DK is set up anything like us, a vulnerable structure
like a shipyard would be near other, important things... and a well-defended
area," Sailor Cygni concluded.
"Like maybe their home system," Shelia gasped, eyes wide.
"A fair hypothesis," Sailor Vulcan said via the link. "I must emphasize this:
if they are organized like us."
"Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves," Duke said, shaking
his head. "We should sneak
about and confirm our suspicions before going any further."
"Right," Shelia nodded, calming down.
"This is all just unfounded speculation.
Sailor Cygni, we will remain right here and keep an eye on this gate.
Could you go on and find out what's out there, and come back in an hour?
If you're overdue, then we'll come looking for you."
"Sounds like a plan," Sailor Cygni's voice replied.
"Be back in an hour!"
The link went silent as the Orion, invisibly, spun about and
headed away. Shelia took a deep
breath, and glanced at Duke. "Move
us in closer," she commanded. "Enough
so that our sensors can get a detailed scan of that Gate."
As Duke complied, Shelia turned to move to her seat.
She noted Derrelli's intense stare at the screen.
"What is it?" she asked, softly.
"Well, I'm a little rusty," Derrelli muttered, "but I
think I can give us a quick way home. All
I need is to bone up on DK computer algorithms."
A faint grin began to stretch across Shelia's face.
"By all means," she nodded.
Derrelli turned towards the lift, already talking quietly to Neo.
Shelia gratefully sat down in her chair, the apprehension she felt slowly
turning into anticipation. Her eyes
twinkled with an inner humor over the irony of the situation.
All she could do at the moment, though, was wait, as the doors hissed
shut at the back of the bridge.
Down in Engineering, Derrelli leaned over the master system monitor, a
thoughtful expression on his features. "Neo,
you're sure this doesn't bother you?"
"I have no problem with this plan," the Bahumat's AI
replied.
"Well, I must admit, it'll be the first time I've ever used an AI
for the actual hacking," Derrelli chuckled.
"Oughta make it a cinch."
"Translation algorithms complete," Neo reported.
"Excellent. Time to
craft a plan, then... and do some probes," Derrelli said.
"We'll have to move in closer to avoid detection of the carrier
signal," Neo reported after a second.
The AI was slightly apprehensive about this hacker, but up to this point
he'd been an excellent engineer, and he appeared to have scruples enough to
leave GM AIs alone... presumably unless the situation required it.
Neo devoutly hoped it never did.
"How close?" Derrelli wanted to know.
"Within ten thousand kilometers," Neo replied.
Derrelli blinked. "Whites
of their eyes range, huh? Right...
Derrelli to bridge. To do a
little prep for this hacking, we need to move within ten k, if you would
please."
"Moving now," came the response.
"Okay," murmured Derrelli, frowning in concentration as the
displays all around him lit up. "Get
your game face on; it's time to party."
Soon, he was so engrossed in his work he noticed nothing of what was
happening in his vicinity.
Precisely fifty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds later, a beep on the
bridge of the Bahumat signaled the return of the Orion.
"Welcome back," Shelia said.
"Anything interesting?"
"Oh, this and that," Sailor Cygni's voice replied.
"A shipyard, and it's rather fascinating how they grow and craft
their ships. Orbital defenses up
the wazoo, starbases, listening posts, orbital laboratories that scans revealed
were for genetic tampering and are the birthplaces of Slashers, Infiltrators,
and every other unpleasant Dark Kingdom troop we've ever faced, and the stuff
that's next. Some rather nasty
stuff in the pipeline, although we haven't finished going over the data.
Did I mention that the place was rather unguarded?
We only noted a couple dozen or so ships."
"You said orbital?" Duke broke in.
"Yeah, orbital. Yellow
G-type star, similar to our own Sun. Six
planets, all of them extensively terraformed and defended," Sailor Cygni
answered.
"And?" Shelia asked slowly, putting a wealth of emotion into
that one word.
"Intercepted ship-to-ground communications prove that we have
discovered the home system of the Dark Kingdom," Sailor Vulcan answered
matter-of-factly.
"By the Crystal," murmured Shelia.
"I think we need to back off and make some plans," Sailor Cygni
said seriously.
"Agreed," Shelia replied, recovering her composure.
"Let's head a few AU's out, and then we'll bring you in."
Derrelli walked through the open door with a frown on his features, and,
as the door hissed shut behind him, took a seat.
Sailor Cygni smiled brightly at him, and he couldn't help but reply in
kind, before both turned serious. Sailor
Vulcan, Shelia, and Duke were also present, as were all the department heads of
the Orion and the Bahumat.
Once Derrelli was seated, Shelia nodded to Sailor Cygni and rose. There had been some good-natured arguing over who was in
overall command, but since the Bahumat was the bigger, more powerful
ship, Sailor Cygni had pointed out, it was Shelia's show, and Sailor Cygni
simply promised to back her up as much as possible.
It just wasn't Sailor Cygni's nature to take away from Shelia what she
had so capably earned, and was capably demonstrating.
"Now, I'm sure you've all heard by now what we have discovered. Extensive poring through of all available data, acquired
through subtle scans and, thanks to the DK, extensive signal leakage, has
revealed some rather interesting facts about our situation.
We can all bless the fact that DK SIGINT and ELINT technology is simply
awful; it makes it a hell of a lot easier to find things out from them without
their notice." Shelia paused;
behind her, the screen lit up with a spatial diagram. "This is what we know so far about local area of space.
Besides the source Gate, we also have discovered eight starbases, two
shipyards and dockyards, twenty orbital laboratories, thirty-three ships, and
several hundred orbital batteries, listening posts, and defensive platforms.
The system, which we have agreed to call Hell, has a yellow G-type star
only slightly less luminous to our own Sun, at an approximate age of three point
six billion years. The planets
range from Mercury-sized to Venus-sized, and are all terraformed to Earth-like
conditions. Estimated population of
the system is 300 billion."
Shelia turned to tap a few controls, and the screen moved through the
system, cycling and highlighting various points and structures.
"From what we can tell, the seat of government is on the closest
planet to the Hell star. It is
highly defended; and the area is littered with so much detection gear even our
cloak could be penetrated."
She gazed over the gathering. "Now,
the big question is, what do we do? We
have a few options. One, we could
simply turn back. We now have
detailed knowledge of where we are; we can head back for GM space the long way
and let everyone know what we found. This
is no small feat in itself. Two, we
can attempt to do something about this rather unique situation we've found
ourselves in."
"What can we do, though?" asked the chief medical officer of
the Orion. "Granted, we
do have the firepower to bring down thirty-three starships, but the
rest..."
"Ah, but we'd have to make sure they couldn't reinforce," put
in the Bahumat's tactical officer. "And
we've confirmed that Gate is two-way. We've
watched six hundred ships pour through that Gate in the last few hours; the
Alpha Zone is about to become a huge battlefield, even if there is nothing left
here."
"Well, it is good to know they're finally stretching themselves too
thin, and we finally have the historic advantage of knowing where they sleep at
night," Duke added. "But
the point is, they could always call all of those ships back.
This system would be a tough nut to crack even without them."
"Logically, we will accomplish nothing by brute force," Sailor
Vulcan spoke up. "Our best
approach should involve guile and guerrilla tactics."
"No problem," said Derrelli.
"I've already gained complete access to their Gate's computer
system."
Utter silence and disbelieving looks followed that statement, with a
smirk on Shelia's face. "I
take it everyone forgot about the foremost hacker in the GM?"
"It was easy," Derrelli shrugged.
"I'm used to the far more sophisticated and much better protected GM
technology; the DK simply pales in comparison."
"Wait a minute," Sailor Cygni interrupted.
"How come you couldn't hack the first Gate, then; the one in the
Atlantis system?"
Derrelli grinned. "I
didn't know the language, for one; and I didn't have Neo to serve as a hacking
platform. The first time compared
to now is like comparing a Fokker Triplane to the SLS Destiny."
"A Fokker Triplane?" Duke wanted to know.
"A German aircraft from Terra's World War 1," Neo said.
"Well," Sailor Cygni replied, looking thoughtful.
"So, I guess the question is, what do we do with this?" Shelia
asked the gathering.
"You mean, how can we use this to totally stymie our enemies?"
Sailor Cygni elaborated.
"Sorcerer Derrelli," Sailor Vulcan broke in, "you said you
have total access to everything. Does
this include the back-up computers for vital systems like life support and
reactor controls?"
"What back-ups?" snorted Derrelli.
"The DK takes too much on organic weaponry and magical power;
they're babes in the woods technology-wise." He paused, narrowing his eyes as he picked up on what she was
saying. "There are no
safeguards against a skilled, directed, preprogrammed assault."
"You two already have an idea?" Shelia asked.
"The beginnings of one," Derrelli said.
"A multi-faceted worm program."
"To what end?" asked Bahumat's tactical officer.
"Simple; destruction of the enemy facilities is easy; I can simply
bypass all safety systems and induce a controlled breach of their core by
overloading it. We also add in a
program to wreck the command pathways after the damage is done so they can't
recover the system before it explodes," Derrelli began.
"But we can do so much more; especially since I have at least two
people who can help me program it."
"Being myself and Sailor Vulcan," Duke said.
"Yes. Further input
from various science department experts would also make it even more
deadly," Derrelli confirmed.
"Well, we have an idea already," spoke up the science
department head from the Bahumat, indicating himself and the senior
science officer of the Orion. "How
about having it transfer via subspace in a local spectrum, via
communications?"
"And furthermore," added the Orion's chief science
officer, "multi-stage it; after the initial virus is purged, have the
remainder of the worm seek out anything about us, genetic research, technology
research, et cetera, and erase it. Thus,
once the Gates are destroyed, they would also lose everything they know about
how to build them; and odds are, with the research facilities blowing up, the
people who originally figured this stuff out would also be eliminated.
Not to mention, no more Slashers, Infiltrators, et cetera... aside from
what's currently out there, anyway."
Derrelli let out a deep breath. "Whoa,"
he whispered. "That's good
stuff. We're gonna need a few hours
just to figure out what to program in this hydra-virus.
After that, it'll take maybe five, six hours to program depending on what
we put in; then we can set stuff in motion."
"How do we infect them?" asked Sailor Cygni.
"Simple: I already have
access to the Gate. So, once we're
ready, we upload it there, perhaps with a slight time lapse; then, we have the Orion
decloak just long enough for the Gate to yell.
And we use that method to continue the infection, all around their
defenses," Derrelli said. "Which
reminds me: I'm going to set up a
scan program, a harmless system analysis sort of deal.
While we get our ideas together, we need to know that all their computer
systems share the same vulnerabilities."
"I think we can handle that," Sailor Cygni grinned.
"In that case," Shelia concluded, "we all have work to do.
Get to it."
The meeting broke up with remarkable alacrity.
Approaching
the Dark Kingdom Gate, somewhere in the Alpha Zone, 31 May 2738
The
SLS Destiny
"Say that total again?" Reeni said incredulously.
"Eight hundred eighty-seven ships; ten of which are suiciders,"
tactical said slowly.
Reeni sat down, her hand on her head.
"Mother of Serenity," she groaned quietly.
"Where do they get them all?"
Sailor Eos stood silently behind her, moving a hand to her shoulder; she
gave her a gentle squeeze.
"Doesn't matter," Reeni sighed.
"We still have to deal with it.
Battle formation. Prepare to
launch fighters. Comm, get me the
fleet."
"You're on, Admiral," the comm officer announced after
pressing her panel.
"This is Admiral Tsukino speaking," Reeni began.
"I'm sure the news of how many ships the enemy possesses has reached
you all. I must now remind you that
those numbers do not matter. We
have faced long odds before; we have triumphed over those odds.
Remember, we are not fighting just for the purpose of closing this Gate.
We are fighting for our peace; we are fighting for our homes, for our
loved ones. We are fighting for a
happy future. Keep this in your
hearts; keep this in your thoughts. If
the fight gets difficult; if things do not go exactly our way, remember these
facts. Draw strength from them.
Draw from each other's strength. Draw
it when you need it; for the battle starts, now.
Here's to victory... and a happy future.
Good luck. Task Force One...
go to Red Alert."
Around her, on every ship, lights dimmed to red, and sirens blared as
each ship's AI announced battlestations.
Engines glowed fiercely red; bluish arcs were barely seen springing into
existence. The various ships began
shifting their positions; the resultant formation appeared almost as a fork.
It charged ahead, with the core of each tip being a small group of
battleships, and the Destiny's group behind that, surrounded by even more
ships. Yellowish prefire charges
could be seen racing along blaster arrays; proton cannons glowed fiercely in
their readiness.
They swept inexorably towards the enemy.
The
Mauler
The lead DK battleship, the Mauler, was a scene of feverish
activity as orders were passed from ship to ship, divvying them up into their
respective forces and destinations. The
captain of this ship sat indolently in his chair, leaned back, arms crossed,
yawning with boredom.
Until his tactical officer spoke up.
"Lord! Reading a
massive inbound fleet, GM in origin! Sensors
tallying the ship count... looks like three hundred ships!"
The captain leapt to his feet. "What!?
Alert all ships; prepare the suiciders.
Break formation and create a defensive net!
Battle Alert!"
The
SLS Destiny
"They've seen us," reported Diana.
"They're breaking up to create a net."
Reeni shrugged. "Fleet,
increase speed to max, sublight. Launch
fighters just outside of DK weapons range.
Here we go!"
Tactical overlays popped on screens four and five; tactical looked up. "We're ready," said the tactical officer.
The
Mauler
"They're now approaching the limits of weapons range," reported
the Mauler's tactical officer. He
studied his display a bit longer, bringing it up on one of the secondary
bio-screens. Each of the larger
blips now had a group of smaller blips issuing from it.
"What are those?" snapped the captain.
"They're shuttle sized, but heavily armed and shielded,"
tactical reported.
The captain's eyes narrowed. "Fighters,"
he growled. "Clever.
Why is it we can never keep apace with GM technology?"
The
SLS Destiny
"Now in weapons range!" tactical called out.
"Fire at will," Reeni ordered.
"Order the scout ships to close and assault the suiciders from
behind, and then to recloak and get the hell out of here.
Fighters should carefully pick targets so as not to get blasted by their
mother ships."
The first yellow beams crisscrossed with green; the first red and white
torpedo barrages were exchanged with black; and a massive salvo of death ray
fire slammed into the DK ranks. Shield
arcs flared dark purple and light blue.
The Battle Of The Alpha Zone was joined.
Near
the Source Gate, just outside of the Hell System, 31 May 2738
The
SLS Bahumat
Nine hours since the Orion had returned, Shelia thought.
She was trying to sleep, knowing it wouldn't be long when she may have to
be awake for a while.
Unfortunately, it wasn't working.
"Derrelli to Shelia," she heard.
She sat up, clad in merely a nightie, and tapped the panel next to her
bed. "Go ahead."
She swung her bare legs over the side.
"The Unraveller hydra virus is complete," he reported.
"Ready to transmit on your mark."
Shelia grinned, adrenaline already flowing.
"I'll meet you on the bridge in a few minutes!"
She hastily flung the nightie aside, grabbing for her uniform.
The time had finally come for the Bahumat to strike back.
And what a devastating blow it was going to be!
STAY
TUNED!