For the Stars, you think to yourself, as one by one you look over the fleet's vessels, the FTL drives on their aft's burning like flairs in the night sky. It was about four hours ago when you picked up the signs of a possible incursion into the Neutral Zone, the region between your faction, the UCS, and the Coalition, another human faction, who are expansionist, and see armed conflict as the cornerstone of their existence.
Needless to say, a fleet was dispatched right away, consisting of three UCS cruisers, the Olympus, the Ares, and the Odyssey, alongside with eleven escort frigates. The Odyssey being your vessel, the Ares the leader, commanded by Admiral Dewey, and the Olympus another escort. You have to admit, in your heart, you always wanted to be an admiral. You feel like you deserve it, despite that you are only twenty-seven years old, and you already have command of a cruiser. Yes: Admiral Jennifer Valentine. It sounds just right in your head.
"They are closing in." you can hear Ensign Lawrence's voice. It might have been a possible incursion that you set out to investigate. But when you arrived, there was nothing. Suspicious of a trap, Admiral Dewey ordered a jump back UCS space. But the moment the jump was about to commence, every vessel had their FTL drives blown up. The explosions didn't compromise the ships' structural integrity. But it meant that Admiral Dewey's suspicion was correct, and now you were sitting ducks for your attackers.
It took only a minute, and your sensors could already pick up a Coalition fleet heading towards you: in the form of five assault carriers, eight cruisers, thirty-eight escort frigates, and whatever the hell else they wanted to bring to the party. You have to admit: Against such a force, victory is impossible. Yet somebody, somehow, needs to make it back alive. Not because of the ambush. Even if everybody dies here, it will be pretty damn simple for the UCS to conclude what happened. It is because of the FTL drives. Primarily the way the enemy disabled them.
The UCS doesn't have the technology to blow up an FTL drive without crude intervention. But neither does the Coalition. It is only the corporations of the Zeta Sector who have this technology. Another human faction the UCS has its quarrels with. And if the two of them decided to team up in order to kick the UCS out of Sol, you have a serious problem on your hands. The Coalition would be trouble enough to deal with due to their massive fleets. And the zetans would be a pain also because of their advanced technology. But the two of them? At the same time? With the UCS caught off guard when the assault commences? They will be drinking champagne in New London by the week's end.
So yes. Somebody, somehow, needs to get back. Admiral Dewey's plan is to launch boarding craft simultaneously to a number of enemy frigates, and hope that you could jump at least one of them to friendly space before the enemy blows them all to pieces. But if you want to make it happen, everyone will have to do their best. And that means that you will have to stay on the bridge, your command skills utilized to their best extent in order to give enough time for the boarding craft to achieve their objectives. But this means that you will have to die a hero's death. A price that you always knew you might have to pay. Yet you never truly expected it to happen.
"They are... here," you can hear Ensign Lawrence gasp. For a moment, you are unsure what caused his reaction, but then you can see it: a Coalition assault carrier that FTL'd in the middle of your formation. Her guns at the top already blazing, you can see an UCS frigate, the Dalmatia, blown into two distinct pieces. Then another frigate follows, you are unsure of the name, this time below the giant, blown apart by the eight guns the behemoth has at the bottom of her hull. In parallel, you can see the hangars on the assault carrier's side open, and dozens of strike craft emerge, your fleet unprepared to face them in such short notice.
"Open fire!" Desperate, you give the order, as you can see other Coalition vessels appear among your ranks. But it's strange. You do not see any frigates, or any smaller FTL capable vessels. And that's when it finally clicks: the bastards were one step ahead of you the whole time. And they decided to hold the smaller ships back so you couldn't board them. That means you have no choice but to take one of their larger vessels. A task that might sound impossible. But you have to try regardless.
"Open a channel to Admiral Dewey," you turn to Lawrence. But from the corner of your eyes, you can see another thing: one of the Coalition cruisers FTL'd next to the Ares, Admiral Dewey's flagship. And now it rams itself into the vessel, both of them to perish in fire in the following seconds.
"New plan: Select one of the enemy cruisers at your convenience, and launch the boarding craft." You turn back to Lawrence, still determined. However his face looks strange to you. As if he was facing an execution.
"Enemy cruiser on collision course!" he says finally. And you too feel yourself as a shell when you hear it. You turn your gaze to the sensor's screen, and you can already see it: another cruiser that just arrived from FTL, headed right for you.
"Evasive maneuvers!" you order. But by that time it is too late.
The cruiser slams itself into your vessel. The moment of the impact you can feel your body flung from the floor beneath you -- unlike most captains in the UCS, you detest the idea of strapping yourself into your chair, or even sitting for the matter --, and your head collides to the bridge's wall. Admiral Jennifer Valentine. Sounds just about right, you think to yourself, and the entire world goes dark around you.
When you wake up, your head hurts like hell. Your hand shaking, you touch your scalp with your fingers, and you can feel a layer of clotted blood on your skin. You open your eyes, and you look around the bridge. The emergency lights barely work, but you can see enough to determine your surroundings. There is smoke everywhere and there are torn cables around you. To your shock, you can see Lawrence's body in front of you, with a burnt hole from a plasma gun in his chest. But the plasma is strange to you. Such weapons are only used by the zetans.
You look over the other corpses. And they too bear the marks of plasma weapons. You also note that some of the staff is missing. But that too serves to reinforce your theory: you are now up against the zetans, and not the Coalition. The biggest problem is: it all makes perfect sense. The zetans showed the Coalition how to overload FTL drives from a distance, and in return the Coalition gave the zetans the coordinates. It is one of the shocking factors you've seen growing up: the zetans view slavery as convenient. And therefore whenever there is a space battle, the crews of the winning party board the defeated ships, kill everyone who dares to raise a weapon, and sell the rest on the slave market.
