Collection 60

Collection

Chapter 60

-VB-

Primus Allen Rusenstein

Earth

3005 October 20

Allen sat tensely in his chair at the head of the First Circuit. 

It had been under his order, however pressured from the rest of the First Circuit, that the ComGuard Fleet had gone out to put an end to the Arlaoskas Union. Or at least make it clear to the Inner Sphere and the Periphery that some Leaguer hillbilly from a agriworld was not going to intimidate them into submission. 

Instead it became an immediate rout that showed exactly how powerful the Union was, how much further in technological advances the Union was, and how … ComStar’s arrogance had finally done them in. 

He felt … weak. 

Terrified. 

Because those warships? The very same warships that can move in FTL speeds within a star system and negate the entire restrictions of warfare that the entire human history has been bound to since the inception of the jump drive? 

Gone. 

Not just gone but a weakness. 

The Arlaoskas Union’s declaration of war struck like a hammer. Fear swallowed Terra and its ancient earthbound nations demanded answers from ComStar in a show of defiance against the natural order of things. 

Across the Inner Sphere, HPG Stations suddenly became a quandary for people to debate in public. Did they remove the HPG station or risk the wrath of the obviously powerful nation, currently the only nation with warships with technology surpassing the Star League? 

Questions rose up. Where had ComStar hidden their warships and this fleet? It didn’t matter what the adepts, demi-precentors, and precentors at major HPG stations told the people and the rulers; instructions were coming out from all of the major capitals, the same capitals that had the “FTL Comm Buoys,” to quarantine the HPG stations. 

Though only a few still believed in ComStar and its mission outside of the order, many still believed within the order… but just as many were breaking away. Periphery HPG stations were openly defying ComStar and the First Circuit. They declared themselves independent. In the past week alone, they have received more than a hundred such messages.

In other places like the Draconis Combine, HPG stations were outright being attacked. 

Everyone now saw that ComStar was too big of a threat to be left alone, and with an alternative method of communication shown and its technology freely shared, every Great House saw no reason to keep ComStar around. This had been the case before the attempted invasion where there was a degree of tradition and legitimacy. After the attack, everyone did away with the politeness.

ComStar as it was would disappear, one way or another. 

Then…

It happened. 

A precentor, a non-member of the First Circuit, barged into the meeting room, pale and sweaty. 

“They’re here, Primus!” 

Everyone in the First Circuit knew who “they” were. 

“Where?”

“A-At the edge of the system behind Neptune, Primus.”

Allen turned to the console in front of him and quickly input a few keys. The screens around them immediately connected to the multiple satellites and astronomy telescopes around the globe and the wider solar system. 

And what he saw … chilly him. 

There. 

A huge fleet sat in orbit of Neptune, and that was the chilling part. 

For information from Neptune to reach Earth right now, light needed at least four hours. 

Which meant that the disgustingly agile warships have been sitting there, intentionally.

And then they disappeared. 

“Where are they?” someone hissed. 

Allen didn’t care where they were. 

If the Union wanted to inspire fear, then there were only two ways to go about it, especially if they knew ComStar’s true capabilities. 

One, they would burn Earth from orbit. They would be condemned by everyone for it, but who was going to stop them and their several hundred warships? 

Or two, they would strike at Saturn, where the secret shipyards was kept. 

He doubted that even the SDS that ComStar managed to keep in shape would be able to stop them. 

“They’re over Saturn…!” someone hissed. 

See? 

The alarm inside the First Circuit rang almost immediately after. 

SDS being activated. The hidden warships begging for instructions. 

It didn’t matter. 

Now that they were closer and in visual sight of satellites and human eyes, the First Circuit got to see in person what was about to happen. 

The Union fleet was composed of ten large capital ships, at least a hundred smaller capital ships, and not a single dropship in sight. 

Saturn’s defense systems lit up. SDS began to activate.

For a moment, the Union fleet was too far away for even their capital ships to reliably strike the SDS drones. In the next moment, they were gone, having almost teleported in range of the shipyards and behind the structures and the drones. 

Their cumbersome capital ships turned around as the SDS drones too turned around. The turrets on the drones fired, their capital-grade weapons shooting lasers and shells that seared their way across space. 

And struck … some kind of wall of light? 

Whatever that had been, it didn’t change anything because the enemy ships had finished turning. 

Of the ten large capital ships, four of those were Onslaughts, and they opened fire with the same weapons that Arlaoskas demonstrated before. The SDS drones barely left their docks before the first wave of plasmas struck. 

They burned. Heavy armor, endosteel structures, and so much more just … burned. 

Then the next wave of plasmas struck the shipyards.

Allen closed his eyes as the shipyards burned. 

And as the carnage continued, someone shouted something. 

“They’re in orbit of Earth!” 

A few of the First Circuit members tried to flee. 

Allen didn’t. 

He knew that it wouldn’t matter. 

Seconds passed. 

Minutes.

… Nothing happened. 

“What are they doing up there?” he asked. When no one answered, he sighed and turned on the screens himself. 

He stared at the grainy screen. “What is with the quality of these images? Have they deployed some kind of …” he began but trailed off as he noticed a lot of discrepancies. 

First off, he saw that while the area around the Union fleet was grainy, the rest of the image was not. 

Second, the grainy effect he’d noticed had been effects but rather things that were hovering around the fleet. 

Third, those grains were coming out of the six carriers. 

He watched for a moment longer as the carriers began to continue to disgorge themselves. 

“... Oh my God,” someone muttered and Allen looked up to see Precentor Sian looking up at one of the screens. 

He looked up, too, and froze. 

One of the satellites had locked their cameras onto the slowest part of the grain cloud and had zoomed in. 

And he saw now that those grains were … things. 

A bulbous body with tentacles. All black-ish metal. Red lights for eyes. They swam and curled like swarming birds did except these things did so in vacuum like they were living things in the ocean. 

They were also small. Half the size of a Flea, but there were millions of them.

The carriers finally stopped disgorging themselves. 

And as if that had been what those creatures have been waiting for, they all swarmed together… and dove into the atmosphere straight towards Hilton Head.