Your daddy was just a 10-week wonder when they found the Magellan, or what was left of it. Everybody had watched the whole search from boot, and then from Forceful Arbitration Academy, and some stellar fisher spotted the Schenk two days after Grad. Poor guy was an Indean, somewhere near the Crab, and superstitious as they come, so he wouldn't go near the ship. SecGen's office ordered him to park ass until a team showed up to recover.

My detachment was nothing but greens, except for Sergeant Carter. Carter was at least eighty, and he had been around for the Union Wars, when the States were finally abolished and absorbed into the UHC. They always put a vet in with a toon full of greens, so some idiot fresh out of Academy doesn't get a bunch of boys killed over something stupid. Most officers weren't trained for combat any more - if you give an officer a combat license, the logic went, he'd just go out, pick a fight with an Independent, and then you'd

have Indeans filing a grievance against the Commonwealth Council faster than c. So the vet sarge was there to pull greens out of a fight alive, sure, but he was mostly around to keep babyfaced idiots like me out of fights in the first place.

We weren't ready for what we saw on that wreck. Damn Squirmies had torn the crew apart, then spiked em to the walls. Blood everywhere, splashed as high as the ceiling. Then they tore holes in the hull and ripped the field generators out so NulVac would preserve the remains. Sarge took in the scene like a champ. Sarge had grit. Sarge was good for anything. He still had scars from the biokem strikes on the capital, right at the start of the Union Wars. He wasn't gonna run from a little blood. Brought two squads of rooks, thinking it would be a cake walk on an empty boat. I was cocky, and I had something to prove, so I went on board first.

I wish I hadn't.

First thing it did was come out of who-fuck-knows-where and shoot some kind of beam shit right out of its eye. Melted Private Chisolm's head on the spot, then bounced off the wall and took me and Rafley out of action. Rafley didn't make it. Half our boys went stray hen right there, and the ones that stuck around didn't make it. Last thing I saw before I fainted was Sarge throw a knife at the thing, puts it right through the thing's peephole. Found out later that he had bagged the goddamn thing all by himself while I was passed out on the deck. Lost his hand during the fight, had to get one of those fancy artifact jobs. Painted his middle finger blood-red. I never let him shake my hand again, 'cause Sarge would crush your fingers and laugh about it. That was Sarge. Grit. We kept an eye out for the things, but at that point we had assumed it was just some kind of wandering zooxeno stowed away before the fleet left ground. A couple of those things on every ship and no wonder the expedition went haywire.

We were god-damn wrong, boy.

The next fleet that got hit was a Forceful Arbitration fleet, two dozen vessels stocked with freshies and using materiel with sixty years of dust on it. They put up a fight, to be sure. By the time we got there, there was one squirm ship floating, powered down. The hull was still intact - the only thing that had done the ship in was a lucky shot on a life support pylon, but in the hour between that hit and the ship finally giving in to NulVac and NulGrav, it crippled thirteen boats in the FA detachment.

My unit was called into action again, since my team was the only thing with anything resembling experience. They promised the troops under my command would be better off this time around. They had instituted combat drills just in case another "anomalous incident" happened. We sent a boarding team, headed up by Carter. Fifteen solmins later, theship explodes. Bastards set us up for a god-damn bomb. Vaporized half my greens. That's right, kiddo. Not even bones left.

I thought the whole team was done for and I was getting ready to make the jump when who should show up in a god-damn alien shuttle but Carter himself, carrying twenty men and between them one captive Squirmy. Ugliest sons of bitches I'll ever see if I live to a millenium. Carter, though, I thought he was a goner. Torn in half. One side of his face ripped clean off, but his artifact hand was locked around the thing's... uh, neck, I guess, with a knife at its eye in his free hand. Couldn't have gotten out of that hold with a mining charge. Just about all the flesh on his legs was gone; I dunno how the mother fucker kept walking. Sick bay patched him up as they could. Left him wired to a chair, permanent, but Sarge didn't give a shit. Never paid for a drink the rest of his life. Absolute fucking grit.

We learned a lot from that first live-cap Squirm. They were bioweapons of the kind that our lab boys have wet dreams about. They were merciless. They were numerous. They had killed damn near everything they had come across, starting with their own creators at home and working right up until they met us. But they were rigid. Preprogrammed. Had we looked at their tactics then, we could have won within a year Solar. But in our ignorance and, yes, our fear we ignored their tactics, and thought only of how we must improve ourselves to beat them. So began the body artifabrication trends that are so common now. Artilimbs and all that shit. I'll stick with flesh-and-blood, myself.

Those first few solanns were tricky though. The Squirms had every advantage, technologically. They were aggressive. They were unbeatable in open space. They were winning, and SecGen knew it. So he puts every remaining FA fleet on home defense protocols, Scorched Earth style. Defend as long as possible, then torch the whole fucking thing and fall back.

Then, the Exodus. We thought we were done for. Civilian Protection started sending out hab ships and putting the whole crew into sus-an, so that in a thousand solanns, or ten thousand, or a billion, they would happen upon a new, less hostile galaxy. Some of the best and brightest got shipped away, right in the
iddle of the war. Fucking madness.

SecGen, he ordered a giant battlefleet, even resurrected the title of United Human Navy, a military title, for the occasion. Military, son. Can you imagine a bunch o people with no reason in life but to fight? Damn right we got rid of that shit... but those days, we needed it. So the SecGen, I think his name was Lans Harker, he commissions this battlefleet. Pulls together a thousand goddamn ships. Can you even count to a thousand, boy?

Then they finally came for our planets. Lucky me, the first system they came to, Cancer Gamma, was mine. My home. I had seen what they did to captured ships. I had seen the brutality they visited upon us. Me and Carter and our boys, we did interviews that they showed all the time, here even more than the rest of the Commonwealth. So when they came, every citizen was ready to take up arms. But the first battle was to be fought in space, to keep the aliens from laying a single filthy tentacle on our soil. Once they got down there, among the civilians, it would be all over and we knew it. I was aboard the Sir Francis Drake, one of three dedicated FA boats we had in the system. One of the thirty FA boats left in the entire goddamn commonwealth. Three military vessels and two dozen converted pleasure liners, Cartog ships, and even one space fisher just loaded to cap with high-yield Fission-Fusions.

We parked inside the asteroid belt and waited for days while the ships searched and probed. They just parked on the periphery and waited. Drove Admiral Farragut mad.

Finally the Admiral gets impatient, sends the fisher out - you know, the bombship. Nobody crazy enough to pilot it but I-shit-you-not Sergeant Carter. That dusty old son of a bitch slips his ship out of the belt and turns on every beacon that ship has. IR, Radio, UV, even the gamma transmitter. Lights up our screens like he's got another god-damn battlefleet. Well, they took the bait. In they come, half a dozen ships. One of them, a giant fucking thing, latches onto Sarge's ship, and the crazy motherfucker just detonates it. Thermonuke right on top of it. Ripped a hole in their ship the size of one of our Battlecarriers. That caught them off-guard as sure as a girl you meet in the Betelgeuse system is a three-eyed hooker.

Well, Sarge, God-rest-him, Carter was gone for good this time. Everybody in the fleet saw him go, and I swear there were tears in every eye. We poured a drink to honor his sacrifice and then we laid into those goddamn Squirmy ships with all the wrath of God on our side. See, those sensors they love so much were designed for deep-space fights. Throw in stellar bodies and suddenly their signals get all crossed. They're shit for close-in detection, so there we are zipping away with popguns, barely denting their armor, but they can't tell de difference between an ass and an asteroid. Admiral has us all aim for life support pylons, seeing as it worked last time around, and next thing I know we've taken down another Squirmy ship.

Well, they see that and they start running. Only trouble is, those superlum engines they were so damn dangerous with in outer space weren't designed for maneuvering around celestial bodies. Two more ships got pulled off course by all the gravity they were fighting, crashed. One of em nails an asteroid, the other one I-shit-you-not crashes into the goddamn star. I guess for all their skill and all their programming, they were never meant for close-in ship battles. Couldn't explain it to you if I tried. The last squirmy ship manages to make it back out into deepspace, and they never come in-system again. Just fly around in the dark zone in superlum and wait for somebody to fly too far away from a star. I dunno how, but they got the message out to the whole fleet. So we're sitting there, collecting our wits, still trying to figure out what happened, and then the alert goes off. Something has gotten in to the command deck airlock. I pull my pistol and I'm practically shitting my pants and they call a lockdown on the whole ship. Two hours we sat there on the bridge, no communications, nothing but that red light and that awful siren. Finally, there's a banging on the door. I know this is it, I'm about to eat a nebula, 'cause there's no way anybody on the bridge is good enough to kill a Squirmy. The door opens a crack and what do I see there but an artihand working the door open. An artihand with the middle finger painted blood red.

Goddamn motherfucking Sergeant Grit Carter. I shit you not. He never did tell me how he survived; I swear he was on that ship when it blew. Eh? The story? Keep your britches on, I'm almost done.

So that's why we don't do deepspace any more, kiddo. Are they gone? Fuck no they ain't gone. Ain't you listened to a goddamn word I told you? The whole reason behind spacebore engines was so we could cross distances without leaving the safety of systems. They're still out there, kiddo. All that talk about gathering together a New Navy to get rid of 'em? That's a load of shit. I dunno how many are left, but if there was a thousand of 'em, it would take us a thousand years to kill. They killed more of their own number than we've ever done. They killed more of our ships than we ever did, even in the Union War. So if you ever hear some asshole telling you to enlist in a fleet, that they're gonna take Deepspace for humanity once and for all, just remember that story, boy. If you forget everything else your grampa tells you, remember the Squirmies.

The end!

Strange love alll the way

>>6065321
holy shit...

I made that demotivator a couple months ago.

That make me so happy!

I enjoyed it.

Nl_WrA

>>6065330 got any more?

This magnum opus got started on the H;FY thread like a week ago (the one that started a chain of HFY threads for the last 6 days or so) but it's taken me that long to complete (after various chunks being rewritten, changed, and tossed)

You ask, I deliver!

I had more, but can't remember for the life of me where I put 'em...

It was a good read OP, though I think the idea of any human society that maintains a space navy not being used to war is silly. You'd be better off writing it more realistically. In real-life space battles won't look like naval engagements and the vessels used won't resemble them either. The real thing chances are would be rare and small scale... anyway...

>Civilian Protection started sending out hab ships and putting the whole crew into sus-an, so that in a thousand solanns, or ten thousand, or a billion, they would happen upon a new, less hostile galaxy.

I've thought this would be interesting fluff for some kind of setting sometime.

9/10

A few too many future-slang words (units of measurement, etc.) and i had to re-read a sentence or two, but overall a great read.

thank you so very much i just got this movie like 2-3 weeks ago i can get enough of it

>>6065469
> In real life
> space battles

Found a few

>>6065469
Well, the idea was that Forceful Arbitration was a navy in all but name, but they also did national guard style stuff (helping with disaster relief and such)... but the Forceful in Forceful Arbitration was meant to be similar to the "police" in "police action".

As for the measurements, they're not abstract, just renamed. Sorry if it caused confusion :(

lum = light
sol = solar
ann = annu (year)

Guess I'm not genocidey enough for H:FY threads. Anybody got moar writefaggotry or similar?
Some comments/criticisms?
Some X-Com image dumps?
Some -4str?
Shameless self-bump, people.

>>6065222
> Old. I already read this on http://www.anantalk.com/ (anan = anon) last night.
Lots of weirdos here...

Well, the bot didn't like it, I guess...

>>6065765

The bot doesn't link to OP anymore, but to other posts.

>>6065789
oh, wow, good call. Clearly I need to click on bot links more often.
sarcasm.jpg

cool story bro

Not what I expected, but I liked it.

>>6066424
I almost added an ending about them creeping out at night to eat misbehaving children. Would that be awesome y/n?

>>6065738
Other than my criticism about fighting battles in space, no.

>>6066918
Fair enough. This wasn't written with hard sci-fi in mind, but if I ever redo or expand it, I'll keep that in mind.

>>6066901
Adds an urban legend feel that would kind of damper the whole thing. Special the survival of Sergeant Carter.

I can dig him surviving through some crazy fluke, but that would just make it feel too made up.

>>6067069
oh my... I didn't even think of that. Thank you!

So this is officially a Sarge Carter: Fuck Year! story.

Maybe I need to writefag a prequel about the Union Wars...

I enjoyed reading it, OP.

>>6065238
shit, Daddy ought to be Granddaddy. I edited that in my hard copy, but didn't translate it to the compy. My bad.