He would have to start by killing off the artificial nerves on his right side in order to fit the new prosthetics. What more, the patient would have to be awake, it was the only way to make sure they got all the nerve endings. And it was important to do so because if they did not there was a high chance of a bio-electric feed back loop when they attached the new prosthetics. Scanning the rest of the file he looked for a reason they wanted such a drastic measure was being taken. There didn’t seem to be a one. As a matter of fact there was nothing more than a scan of his body and the work order itself.[strange even for the military]
With nothing more he could do here he went to see the patient, leaving orders for his surgical team to prep the operating room as he disconnected from the terminal.
Arriving in the patient’s room after a short walk he sized up this nameless man who was leaning on the exam table where a large metal case was sitting. Well built for a human, no marks of scars on the parts of his skin that were visible around the hospital gown he wore. Only a pair of eyebrows that narrowed as the light from the hall spilled in to the room.
“You are patient 5836?” he asked.
“Yes.” the patient responded evenly.

“I am sorry about the light, they are anti-viral and rather harsh.”
“Understandable.”
The doctor couldn’t quite put his finger on it but something about this man put him on edge. “There are several things I have to go over with you before we start. These ARE formalities, but I ask that you not interrupt or try to hurry through them for legal and moral purposes.”
“As you see fit doctor.”
He paused trying to see something, some twitch or tic. Usually there was some thing moving on a person. An eye, a finger, a blink even but it was as if every part of his body was fully under his control. Taking a breath he went on. “First, I will tell you, as per planetary law, exactly what operations will be performed. First the removal of your current prosthetics. Once the larger portions are removed your vital functions will be transferred to an external automatic system. Then your artificial internal organs will be removed. After this will be the painful part. We have to kill off your current artificial nerves in order to implant the new ones.” he stopped a moment. “I would be careless if I didn’t tell you that doing so all at once is not required. It would be far less painful if we took our time and did the nerve removal over a few weeks.”

“No. It must be done by this time tomorrow.”
[What is he?] not a change in breathing, not even a blink. If he didn’t have a full biometric scan of the man he might think he was an android. “As you wish.” he said instead. “After the nerve removal we can regrow them while we implant the nanite generator. This is the most dangerous part. If you have held anything back in your case history it will kill you. The nanites will be programed perfectly to the information you have given us. If you have even a scar that you have not mentioned they will kill you. Have you withheld any information?”
“No.”
Still that same even tone. “After the generator is in place the rest is easy because the nanites will help the healing process. At this point we will install the prosthetics which, I presume, you have brought with you?”

The patient reached for the case sitting on the table. Flipping open the latches he turned the case toward him. Inside were the new prosthetics, looking robotic without the biotic skin that would grow over it later. Right arm and shoulder assembly, right leg, and right eye along with a miliary grade nanite generator and several smaller implants the Doctor could not immediately identify. The components were laying open with their structures revealed and they surprised him. Reaching in and taking the arm he examined it. It was some of the best work he’d ever seen, quadruple redundant systems and the most ioatic nerve conceptions in one limb he’d heard of. There were four bundles of them, each with several thousand nervous system connections. The ioatic connections were the most important part of any prosthetic, they were what actually interfaced with the body, the more you had the more natural the limb would be. When implanted they would secrete a biotic gel which would grow, using the host body’s DNA as the guide. It was they that actually made the prosthetic as good, or even better than the original. When fully grown the limb would be indistinguishable from a ‘real’ one. As he inspected the arm he noted that it also had only one external port, a plug for setting an interfacing device into the shoulder. Most replacements were fitted with at least five. People figured that if you had a fake limb you minus well use it to hold all the myriad of devises that one needed to keep up in the modern world.

tl;dr

[Strange] he thought as he placed the arm back in its slot in the case. But he instead said,
“All seems to in order here.” He went to the wall where a scanner hung from its bracket.
“After the installation you will be scanned and observed for an hour to verify the setting of your prosthetics, at this point you will be allowed to install what ever enhancements you may desire. After that there is another hour of observation. Have you under stood these processes and do you agree to undergo these procedures?
“Yes, I understand. I am ready.”
“Remove your garment so I can verify the scans we have on your chart.” The patient did so without word.
After a quick scan the doctor left the room and went to prepare the O.R.

* * *

The operations had so far gone off without problems. They removed the old equipment and had killed off the artificial nerves. After that rather painful process they attached the nanite generator to the remains of the right kidney where it could inject its microscopic machines directly into the bloodstream.
[an internal nanite generator.] he thought mentally shaking his head.
Nanites were used everyday, the built everything from starships to replacement blood cells. But the construction of nanites was dangerous unless you had the proper safeties, an ion-field harness, particle condensers with proper shielding and the like. But in order to put all this inside a living host you needed a level of micro circuitry that was hard come by even in this day and age. And if there was a problem during the installation, you couldn’t just turn off the power because by the time you knew there was a problem the nanites had totally infiltrated the host system, not a problem when the host was a machine shop, you cleared everyone out and activated the decompiler. And you couldn’t use a decompiler on living tissue because it would kill that tissue. Harsh, but better than then letting a colony of runaway nanites get loose. In the doctor’s entire forty-eight year career this was only the second internal nanite generator he’d ever installed because of the risks associated.

After placing the generator in its place, where the right side of the liver would be if the patient had possessed a normal liver instead of the bio-neural replacement.
Holding it in place with one hand he paused and spoke to the patient, “This will hurt, it will take several minutes for the nanites to adapt to your system. Toward that end they will explore your nervous system among other things. This process will provide the ‘map’ that the nanite generator will use to maintain your bodily systems.”
The doctor didn’t know what he was expecting as a reply, patient 5836 had been totally silent during the nerve removal process where he had basically used a powerful form of radiation to burn away the nerve endings in the patients right side.
The patient nodded his understanding as the doctor removed a tag from the implant allowing it to power up and the only sign that it was working was the left hand of the patient curling into a white knuckled ball.

***

>>7928798
Illiterate.

All procedures had gone exactly by the book. The patient was resting in a recovery room and the doctor exited the secure area of the clinic for the first time in more than twelve hours.
Sitting back in his chair his rest was interrupted by an aide entering his office.
“Sir, what do you want to do about all this?” he asked.
“About all what?” responded the doctor.
“What do you mean Sir? Its all over the planetary net.”
The doctor replied testily, “I’ve been in surgery for the last thirteen hours, no transmissions in or out of the operation bay during use.” he recited.
“Then sir, you should see this.” the aide walked over to the vid-screen on the office wall and turned it on.
The reporter on screen was in the middle of a sentence, “-us all. We’re going to transfer images back over to the space carrier Ulysses.”

F5

The screen showed a ship hull and fighters launching off a ready line. The camera panned and widened the angle just in time so show a huge explosion rock the vessel as a pair of strafing ships fired their load of warheads.
The reporter broke in, “We have audio now, this is Commander Thaddious Blake of the Terran Confederate Navy, Commander?”
“I don’t have long, my flight is about to leave the planetary surface. But I can say that the force attacking now is only the first. If the enemy stays true to course there will be an invasion fleet right behind them. I want to reiterate what the Admiral said earlier, stay calm, the evacuations are proceeding smoothly, and they will only as long as the schedule is adhered to, we will be able to get most of the noncombatants out of the system. The emergency bunkers can hold the rest.”
“Commander is there-” but he was cut off as a siren sounded.
“Sorry.” said the voice of the commander, “I have to go now.”
Waiving at the aide to turn off the screen the doctor slid back into his chair. [Now what] He thought.

***

Patient 5836 was recovering in a large room, a gaping hole in the place of his right eye where they had removed the old one and burned out the old nerves. Large windows let in the afternoon sun which shined onto a stack of large crates piled beside the door on a cargo mover filled, things that the patient had brung with him, personal effects, the doctor had supposed.
“ . . . so you see, there is time to move you to a transport and get you out-system.” the doctor was saying.
A soft ‘no’ was the reply, then, “The cases I brought, bring them to me, will you?” It was the longest sentence the patient had said so far and the first question.
Curious, the doctor activated the lifting mechanism and brung the pile over to him. As he did so the patient opened one of the cases the new prosthetics had come in and removed a small devise, a thin green piece of metal no bigger than a small finger and ending in a small ioatic jack.
Taking the jack the patient inserted it all the way into the plug on his shoulder, his face becoming blank for a moment as he did so.

Nodding as the doctor moved the crates near the bed he hopped off and opened the top one reaching inside and pulling out a tightly wrapped package. [artificial eye ] noted the doctor as the patient removed the wrapping before inserting it into his empty right eye socket with an audible ‘click’ and blinking a few times to set it in place.
Reaching further into the same case he pulled out a small thin strip of what looked like silver metal with a small positron computer chip at one end which then itself ended in more ioatics. Not pausing the patient drove the end with the ioatics into the top of his right forearm. A few seconds later the metal strip was implanted in his arm, looking like a line tattooed there. Looking at it the patient flexed a sequence of muscles and a half-meter blade shot out at a forward angle running right along his arm, up over his knuckles and ending about twenty centimeters past his balled fist.

Leaning back in surprise the doctor analyzed this new appearance, [a memory metal Shisari arm blade? ] for the umpteenth time that day he asked him self, [who IS this ?]
"Doctor, you have less time than you think, the first lading craft hit the atmosphere several minutes ago, in moments the city will be crawling with enemies. I suggest you gather your remaining staff here." he said pausing and pulling up a hologram of the building schematics which he projected from the shoulder implant. The room he indicated was a store house, it was hardened with plasteel and electromagnetic armor to protect the sensitive equipment stored there.

***

Seems interesting. Please continue writefag

It had been only five minutes since the whole remaining staff, twelve members, had gathered in the storeroom, but by then the whole city had been overrun with the enemy. They came like they always did, their bio-fighters, huge living organisms that spewed superheated plasma carving a lading area for the dropship that was right behind them.
And ‘dropship’ was term that he used loosely. It was a mass of chitinous plates and oozing coolant fluid. It struck the city with the force of a bomb, spewing its living contents from opening hatches. They were huge, four meters tall with four huge armored legs and large triangular torsos that glinted blue in the late afternoon light. Thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands from twenty of the tulip shaped dropships landed around the planet, three for the major city and the rest to control the entire surface of the planet. The official name for them was Phalnxor-Gregorus but like many enemies throughout history the were referred to by a slang name: bugs. There were many known types if bug, pilot, builder, soldier, but these, these were the most feared, their slang name was ‘killer’. It was well earned.
The first mistake most rookie Terran soldiers made was thinking the bugs were just that. The ones who survived never thought that again. The bugs were the most adaptive intelligent life in the galaxy, the could literally change their genetic make-up to fit almost any environment, including the vacuum of space.

One would think that this would mean there was plenty of room in the galaxy for the bugs and every one else to just get along, but all attempts to negotiate, or even understand the raidopathic speech of the bugs had failed. The only ones the bugs would talk to were the Grroud, vicious bipedal dog-like aliens who, of course, thought hunting Terrans was great sport. Well, thought that until the Terrans kicked their asses into the far reaches of the Milky-way. Twenty years after the last Grroud war they had come back out of nowhere with their new friends. That had been almost a hundred years ago. That may seem along time but war in space took time, even with warp drives, jumpdrives and . . .
[oh no] thought the doctor. [the station] This planet was a hub for the regional trade routes, slow tramp freighters would bring their wares to here where massive jumpships would instantly ‘jump’ to Alpha-Centauri. The reason for this method was two-fold, one, the massive jumpships were expensive, both to operate and construct. Second, it was hard to make a warpspace jump, one needed massive amounts of power and the exact gravity ‘shadow’ projection of the solar system one was jumping too AND the one you were jumping from. It took years to map a star system to the degree needed to teleport across lightyears. So jumpships would hop across entire sectors, while the warpships cruised ‘the long way’ from system to system.

But one did not need to be a tactical genius to know that if one could just ‘pop’ into an enemy stronghold, bypassing entire fleets, would give a great advantage. By Confederation wartime law no system could have more than one jump point calculated, and no ships were allowed to carry, in any form, the calculations needed to jump from one system to another. There were exceptions, jumps to Earth were calculated to no less than five other systems, but no one violated the second part. If the enemy found the calculations needed to get to Earth, too much would be lost. That was why the jump calculations were stored in only one place, an armored space station in each solar system with jump points. Each time a ship jumped a one use chip was installed in the jumping ship’s navigation computer, after a jump was done it would burn itself out.

The doctor had lost track of Patient 5836 and looking around he spotted him in a corner and-
There were many sorts of armor-personal armor that is-navy officers wore a light ballistic membrane, pilots wore a vacuum resistant carapace, marines had kinetic dampers and plasteel combat shells and even powered exo suits sometimes, but this, no, this was far more that any of that. And then, seeing that armor the doctor knew who his patient was. He said it aloud.
“Combat Technist.”

>>7928988
TACTICAL GENIUS

Continue, OP

The Doctor was member of that elite organization, the Technists, all the best scientists and engineers were. The group was a guild, they raised money through sponsors and through patented technology then funded research in order to expand knowledge and the sciences. They only had few overriding rules: one may not harm another sentient for research purposes and members may never interfere with politics. But all this power they wielded, the knowledge they gained, it was made public, in every major planetary system there was a Technist library, and in each of these libraries three was an armored vault that was the real purpose of the Technicians: to preserve technology for future generations. It had happened once already, for nearly a hundred years after the third world war, the eighty years dark it was called and then, the Shis’ari landed. Their ship was old, battered from the two hundred year trip through space, meant to hold nine hundred thousand it housed twice that number. These ragged survivors had barely escaped their own world’s destruction and had stumbled upon Earth. While they gathered the remains of their ship a small group of humans, remnants of a club called the Starlighters, decided to try and understand the new arrivals. In the end, Human and Shis’ari became one, who now referred to themselves as Terrans and formed the Terran Confederacy which slowly began to relearn what they had each lost.

F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5!

Six hundred years. That’s how long it took for the Terrans to pull themselves from the mud. In the end they were stronger, these two races, but it had cost one world and nearly another for this strength. What followed was more than a thousand years of peace and exploration. Earth first, then as the technology allowed, the galaxy itself. But always the Technists were there, pushing everything to the limits, and seeing to that Terrankind never lost itself in the dark ages again.
And then there were the combat technicians. They were the only division of the Technists that was limited in size. While most Techs focused their talents on growth and creation, the combat technicians, or battle adepts focused upon one thing: destruction. Technists always had access to the best and most powerful of technologies, and so their militant arm was feared. The innovation that found how to regrow limbs, transform worlds, destroy entire planets, focused into one person. According to the rule of the Technists they could not raise an army, for that would be political, so the Combat Adepts work under two major rules; there could never be more than one hundred of them at any one time, and though they were trained and equipped by the Technists, they served under the authority of the Confederacy. But even with these rules people still feared them and their capabilities.

OP you best archive this. I say the OP should do it instead of me going to suptg and doing it myself is because I haven't read it yet and thus wouldn't know what to tag it as, or what to put as the description.

Overall very good, but it feels a bit disjointed. Maybe it's the format, but the tangents are distracting. Try decompressing this story, it sounds like it deserves a whole book in which you could explain your setting at a more reasonable pace.

So, this man, Patient 5836, finished putting on his blacked green armor, picked a weapon from a crate and turned to the Doctor.
“Keep your people in the corner, behind cover. Do not run unless I say or you may be caught in the crossfire.”
“I will do so, Adept.” he replied and waved his shaken subordinates to the back of the warehouse. But the Doctor watched as he retreated and hid with the others.
Holding a plasma rifle in one hand the Technist reached and touched a disc on the armors neck guard and a helmet slid back from over his head with swift ka-chunk as it locked in place. He moved near to the bay door that led to the surface and the ground street out side. Then he kneeled.
Inside his armor the Technist spoke softly, “Begin initialization. Check all systems.” The display fed directly into his neo-cortex by way of his artificial eye, nanites reproduced exponentially, reenforcing his muscle and bone structure wile keeping them flexible. Others formed new glands to secrete anti-toxins and reenforce his immune system. Several went into the implants the Doctor had installed earlier, one was a communications device, another would help dissipate plasma buildup, and another was a kinetic damper which would render him immune to most ballistic weapons. More of the microscopic machines entered his brain and formed new pathways to control these new functions. But it was the last few nanites that activated what really made him dangerous. It was called a Plasmatic bioscan array. And normally it would take up an entire floor of a hospital. A bioscan was an incredibly useful diagnostic tool, it could scan down to the DNA of target with the push of a button, among other things. But this one was different, and not only in its small size. This one could detect and even control bioelectricity.

So far, every known form of life had some type of bioelectricity as part of their makeup. And like all forms of plasma it could be controlled with the right application of energy. With this device, a combat adept could ‘see’ living matter in all directions at once. It was this along with several other devises which allowed the Adept to control his own bioelectric field at will which in turn allowed the Adept to seem to predict his opponents every move. It was not foresight, or some mystical power that allowed them to do this as some more theatrical people thought. No, it was simple magnetics. By allowing his electric field to move to the opposite of whatever he was fighting, the combat technician was literally drawn to counter his opponent’s moves. This combined with the best tactical and martial training is why they were the most deadly killers ever known.

You better only be, at most, 25% done.

Because you got through a good intro and some good exposition, and are only now getting to the good bit.

75% more to go!

For the record, things like this are part of why /lit/ exists.

Gogogogo Writefag!

>>7929146
Blow it out your ass, retard.

>>7929160
don't get mad at him- he's not sageing

it's obvious he's from /lit/ and would like more quality traffic over there

Patient 5836 had prepared himself for this change for the last twenty years, gone through every type of special training available, he had gone through officers training in each of the military branches, gaining rank in each. He learned how to fire every weapon known, was taught to use blades in close combat, how to pilot craft of all sizes and then he had been equipped. The armor he now wore was made from kenisium, an ultra hard alloy that had more in common with crystal then metal. This armor was as costly as a cruiser to construct, and no one but he who it was made for could use it.
The suit senors told him the enemy was approaching, not that he needed it to. He could feel them. The way they trembled the ground. Several thousand of them had broken off and scoured this part of town, searching for prey. Locking the suits control onto the cargo gate motors he opened it and stood waiting for the bugs to catch the sent of the hospital personnel behind him. He didn’t have long to wait. The weapon he held was based on a simple theory, tear apart matter at the subatomic level, forming plasma, then fire it at the enemy. Its range was short, the plasma dissipated quickly, but for the narrow entrance ramp in front of him it would suffice.

rolled 2, 5, 6 = 13

Watching with great interest. Continue, please.

>>7929146

Oh really, so now that /lit/ exists, /tg/ should suddenly pretend books don't exist?

Ciaphas cain. Get out of here. That's a book. /tg/ isn't about books!

They came. He fired. The twenty bugs in the lead ceased to exist as the bond holding their molecules together were broken. Then the next twenty died, and the next, ten shots were fired before the bugs halted. The transceivers in his armor picked up the radiopathic ‘conversations’ of the bugs, he could not understand what it was they said, buy they planed something. He couldn’t have that, a confused enemy was easier to kill. Dropping the plasma rifle and commanding the bay door to close he launched himself out just before they closed all the way and rolled into the late afternoon light, drawing a pair pistols that barley deserved the name. A normal lasrifle was powered by what amounted to a battery that burst fired charges into a capacitor that then expelled the a beam of ‘light’ that was really a light plasma charge. These guns though, the used a small charge of antimatter contained in two millimeter ‘rounds’. The anti matter was delivered by a plasma charge, but by adding the antimatter armor that normally helped protect against plasma discharges was rendered useless as it was converted into energy by contacting antimatter. These ‘pistols’ could take out an old fashioned tank one well placed shot.

>>7929146
Silly anon, /lit/ is for Twilight, Ayn Rand, and the Wheel of Time, with occasional Stephen King hatred.

I'm getting the feeling that OP is writing this as he goes. It's always better to have your ducks in a row first, OP.

Shooting up the ramp the lead bugs were surprised as this figure in greenish armor, not dissimilar in look to a insect itself, pointed these two small weapons at the ones communicating and fired. Each shot fired preceded by the snap-whir of a magnetic accelerator charging and a four sided jet of light escaping from the grooves at the tip of the barrels. The visible effect on the bugs was barely noticeable, a small hole appeared in their armor and they would shake and fall over, dead as the Technist placed his shots directly into what passed for a brain in each bug. Enhanced muscles flexed, supported by the additional strength of the suit and he pushed off the ground leaping ten meters over the lead bugs and landing right in the middle of large group. The bugs were confused, this was not normal behavior for the mammals, they normally ran and killed from distances, but that was all that they had time for, that one thought was transmitted between them like wildfire.

>>7929224
I read that as Dicks in a row.

I need to go to bed.

>>7929224

Writefag is one damn fast writer then

Bringing his pistols up the Technist pointed them straight out from his sides, he did not aim, not in the normal sense of the word at least. If any had been able to see him it would seem his arms were moving of their own accord. Thump-thump, his heart beat steadily, dead-dead, two bugs dropped, thump-thump, two more, his wrists shifted and he leaned slightly to the left, thump-thump, drop-drop. A bug moved to spear him with a fore-leg, his left arm shot around to his front, thump, drop. Another, to his rear. Right arm snapped back, thump-drop. He took a step froward, allowing his body to drop further into a stance, one that looked impossible, and indeed was if not for the increased mobility in his joints thanks to the nanite reconstructions. His right elbow actually pivoted backwards for a moment, thump-drop. His left shot straight forward twisting to hold the gun sideways, thump-drop. And then, for a heart beat there was nothing, the suits senors picked up only the wind and obediently transmitted it directly to the part of his brain that cared about such things.
In ages past, firearms that could select fire had to be set manually, but that time it took to flick a selector with one’s thumb, that was an eternity to a combat technician, no, he simply willed it to happen, and the suit, faster than thought sent the message to its gloves and through the connectors into the guns and a small plasmatic relay switched to automatic.
Twisting his body on one heel, he spun around carving a radius around him with rapid fire, at one point he allowed his arms to cross, pointing both pistols straight ahead towards the center of the bug horde cutting a path of broken chitinous bodies.

During all this a part of his mind had watched the battle above, as the fleets exchanged blasts of death, there was one group of fighters that had strayed close to the planet while engaging enemy fighters. In any other soldier there might have something like pride or joy as the fighters escaped the enemy and blasted them with ship to ship missiles. But it was not their victory that had the attention of one Technist on the surface, it was what the readouts next to the icons on the plot in his mind, those fighters were equipped with plasma storm bombs. They were not as powerful as the antimatter, dirty nukes, and bomb pumped lasers used in space warheads, they were like the napalm bombs used in previous centuries, perfect for clearing out large units with out hurting structures too badly. Here also was difference the Technist had with other warriors, he needed to clear the city, if the fighters had neuron bombs he would have used them anyway. Yes it would have killed every living thing in the city except him, protected as he was with his kenisium armor, but this is what he had and the thought one way or the other never even entered his mind; this what he had so this is what he used. It was all a simple equation to him, nothing more. Only the numbers changed in each battle.
And that is what caused even the ones who gave orders to the Combat Adepts to fear and despise them, the way they carried out every order, never breaking down, they neither hated nor loved what they did, they merely did it. I ages past they might have been called sociopaths and been driven to the fringes of society, even becoming psychopaths in the process, but now they were given weapons and told to defend Terrankind will all force.
Such things mattered not to Patient 5836, as he hacked into the fighter squad’s comm channels. And gave them new orders: bomb the planet, target beacon first.

>>7929208

This is the literary equivalent of someone tripping over his own feet.

***
Squadron three of the first wing had just mopped up a squad of enemy fighters that had slipped through into their patrol space when the order came.
[Attention: Commander Henke;THZ0301-GQ54/30: you are ordered into gravity well of planet 2 here you are to release ground attack payload onto designated target. Priority:~achilles-alpha~ Comfermation: 554D0-CO_MAST]
Confirming their orders went quickly, even though they didn’t know where they came from. As they dove into the planet’s atmosphere they saw the damage done by the aliens landing and a fierce battle being played out on the outskirts of one of the major cities, but they had only enough time catch a glimpse before they would be on their target point.
The beacon was small, the size of a pin, the Technist had dropped it as soon as he engaged the enemy in close combat. There were too many of them, even for him, so he had kept them out in the open, where the plasma bombs would effect them better. His ammunition had run out. So he used his blades, each was half a meter long and extended eighteen centimeters horizontally from the top of his forearm and paralleled his arm for nearly a meter. It was formed from memory metal had a mono-molecular edge capable of slicing through all but the most dense of materials. He had sliced his way to the middle of a thousand bugs and now, he ran. His blades had retracted back into his arms and now dodged and weaved, moving inhumanly fast, bending in ways unnatural as he sped around the beacon, drawing the bugs closer and closer, until. . .

***

The after action report would say that the defense of the Karakai system went ‘smoothly’. Nowhere was there a mention of a armored figure protecting a small group of survivors in the west end hospital district. Nowhere was there a readout about a strange black craft, not showing on any sensors, that swooped down right after a fighter squadron bombed a city on orders that no one could find record of. Also, there was no report of that black ship covering the area as an evacuation transport landed and took on thirteen passengers from an equipment shed near a clinic. And since this was the case, that same recordless ship did not blast a hole through the enemy fleet as it left the system thereby allowing the Confederation fleet to retake Karakai. No, nothing like this happened. There was only Patient 5836 who showed for an appointment, and left. Nothing interesting at all. Nothing.

Please archive this, as is great, but i cant finish it.

>>7929330
Archiving . . .

OP here. So what do you all think?

rolled 3, 4, 3 = 10

>>7929456
Needs more hyperatomics.

Other than that, pretty good. Would read again.

rolled 2, 3, 6 = 11

>>7929456
If you don't mind my asking, what gave you the idea?

>>7929480
>Ok. Same setting, but this one is shorter and more to the point.


Space churned, bubbled and warped as three small scout ships popped out of their warp tunnels and paused, they didn’t know it but they were not alone. Hidden in their own dimensional pockets were three other ships, bigger than the twenty-five meter scouts these hidden predators watched through their sensor pods as the minnows probed the area with their own sensors. Finding nothing they started towards a planet where two fleets of leviathans were throwing great storms of death at each other.
The predators let these minnows go, their threat only being their eyes, if they had spotted them, they would have warned the true prey. And that wouldn’t do, not to these predators; their claws were powerful but short, so they hid until the enemy was in range. They had not long to wait, as six of them, twice the size of the predators with nearly a kilometer of death packed into a rather ugly conglomeration of blocky structures and weapons ports jutting out at odd angles. They were Grroud battle cruisers, the most numerous of the enemy ships and more than enough to flank the Terran fleet fighting near the planet. The battle cruisers turned orienting themselves to the local gravity well and started to accelerate toward the fight. It was then that the predators fired.

>>7929456

Was slightly disappointed when it ended. Therefore it must be good.

>>7929456
interesting, but it reads very dense.
Seems like a piece of work that needs to be gone over a few more times with ample use of trimming and the addition of some exposition or something here or there. It feels like you have a novel's worth of detail work in a few pages.

9/10 content
4/10 delivery
10/10 worth improvement.

>>7929509
> little bit of everything. But the original seed was the last scene in Battle for the Planet of the Apes. I wondered what the dynamics between two races that chose to live together would be and it grew form there over the last, oh, ten years or so.


Each warhead was five meters long and attached to a fifteen meter drive section with a launch sheath that extended another ten meters down the aft. Two predators fired eight of these ‘torpedoes’, one fired six for total of twenty-two. Normally a missile that large would have a far greater range and more powerful warhead, but most of its length was taken up by the drive systems that allowed it to be fired from a dimensional pocket. Inside each one was a small scale singularity generator that extended the dimensional pocket created by the mother ships. It was this stretching of the pocket that was both the limit and the advantage of these weapons. The limit was that the pocket could only be changed so much before destabilizing so the effective range limit for these weapons was barely a quarter million kilometers, point blank range in the vastness of space. But within that range these weapons were almost guaranteed a kill on anything smaller than a cruiser because they were outside euclidian space, they didn’t ‘exist’ until exiting into normal space, inside the enemy ship. And once they materialized inside a space their containment went. The only reason larger ships might survive was because of their mass, dreadnoughts and battleships just had far to much of it. It had been quite a bright idea, to use the missiles own power source as the warhead also, but when you had to cram a singularity reactor into the thing anyway, well, why bother with regular explosives when just letting a black-hole out of containment was enough.

But even these weapons had errors, so two were usually fired, if both scored a direct hit on a single battlecruiser, it would be quite ineffective in a fight. But that was secondary to the predators, these were just the vanguard it was the other ten torpedoes that exploded in a radius around the enemy ships which caused a huge gravity well in real space to form and the real enemy to appear.
Space was very resilient. There was not much that could change its shape. However, ten subnuclear isometric grav-pulse inversion fields, which were caused by ten point-singularities, could. Each only existed outside their containment fields for a millionth of a second but it was long enough to rip the fleet hiding in the warp to be pulled into real space. The surprise was total, the Grroud formation, centered on a dreadnought mass ship reacted quickly, the dreadnought launched its fighters and the escorts turned to point outwards, away from the dreadnought, forming a sphere with their forward shields.

Fighters shot from the three predators as they smoothly appeared in realspace. They didn’t have many, most of their mass was taken with the equipment needed to hide and fire their torpedoes, but the five squads of fighters they launched were reinforced by bombers and frigates that had been laying in wait with their engines powered down.
The Terran bombers launched their payloads into the enemy shields, taking them down allowing the gunships and frigates to close and take out the enemy weapons while the fighters from the three predators preoccupied the enemy fighters. The predators themselves moved in between the enemy fleet and the rest of the system, laying down covering fire with their close defense weapons.
Then one of the predators, the one that had only fired six torpedoes, suddenly fired its fusion engines, burning massive quantities of fuel for a quick boost in speed, it sped away from the battle and launched a single under strength squad of bombers that turned and kept formation with the larger ship.

***

It happened so suddenly that the one watching had to turn the holo viewer back a second time to catch it; a single Grroud heavy destroyer had slipped in behind a piece of debris, a chunk of rock left over from the creation of this solar system, and had laid down a single marker buoy that sent out a set of gravity pulses. A homing device. Whatever was being called with that thing was bad for the Terran fleet and the third predator, marked on the replay as the T.C.S Unseen, UC-0404, Captain Harrow Unti Commanding, fired its main guns causing the destroyer to veer off as the bombers it launched fired missiles at the buoy, obliterating it and the rock behind which it hid. Then the Unseen fired a full launch of torpedoes, all six of its fore tubes at the destroyer as it tried to engage its warp drive. Without being in a dimensional pocket the expensive weapons were no more than huge clumsy bricks, but they did the trick with good old fashioned kinetic force and the destroyer was no more.
Pausing the playback, the watcher leaned back in his chair and spoke, “That one.”
In the back of the darkened tactical plotting room a well built man in plain uniform responded, “Harrow’s ship?” he shook his head. “The Unseen was damaged in the pull-out from the Sias’ska system. And seventh fleet has been running low on supplies, it’s under staffed and under equipped.”
“Yes. I know. It will do.”
I hope so, was the other man’s silent reply, I hope so indeed.
`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-`-

Done.

OP again.
It was always my intention to make all these(and I do have a lot of them) short stories into a full on book. i just thought I'd see what the compac/t g/uys had to say about my setting. I couldn't think of a good way to introduce the setting, so I just decided to post a story or two and see what came.

rolled 5, 4, 1 = 10

>>7929600
The shape of space is changed by even the most minute mass.

Guy who suggested /lit/ here - it was actually because I've noticed it has very good criticism when people actually write stuff. Poetry especially, but prose too. At the very least, it's worth crossposting.

Basically it goes thus:
At some point in the future there is a third world war. It is fought with al the heavy stuff, neutron bombs, plasma and good old fashioned nukes.
BOOM, enter the dark ages of a Mad Max earth.

Some eighty years into this dark age there is an event that changes everything for humans and earth.

Some two hundred+ years before, in some distant star system another race, whom I call the Shis'ari, a more or less humanoid species(originally cat-like until I found it being over done everywhere-so that's up for change)

Anyway this race had done the same thing to their planet except more extensive, they had burnt off their atmosphere and some few million or so escaped on a sub-light ship bound for a system where they thought there might be a livable planet.
On the way they intercept raido and then TV transmissions: they now have a choice, continue to where there might be a planet, or go to where they know one is, they don't have the fuel for both.

>>7929691
Good plan. These are definitely worth rewriting into a full book. As others have said, decompress them. Have friends/family look over manuscripts (I've done so for a couple of friends) and make comments.

>>7929698
thats a small 'warping' in the presence of matter, i think OP means changing the FUCKING(<added for emphases) shape, like twisting it insideout.

rolled 6, 6, 4 = 16

>>7929869
Probably.

so, any way, its all fun and games as the two races meet for the first time as teh Shis'ari crash on earth and I thought I'd throw the curve and have them NOT fight to the death, but get along with humans, more or less.

A few more dark years pass and then enter the Technicians. A pair of guys who come up with a plan to rebuild the technology level to what it was before the war. These two figure that if they save what tech is left, and store information, they can rebuild everything in about 600 years. This would mean as many peple as possible getting along and sacrificing the comforts of the present to give each successive generation an improved standard of living. Eventually this group gets enough followers to enact the Plan and more or less 600 years later they achieve the goal.

>>7929839
You would do a great service to your book if instead of making them a humanoid animal of any sort, you made them humanoid but bizzare and grotesque and, well, ALIEN.

For instance: One large eye in the center of their head, surrounded by a dozen smaller ones. Their mouth is at the base of their neck. They're hairless and hard-skinned. They don't have hands the same way we do; their legs are bent the wrong way.

And yet somehow, we don't see them as a hideous monster. Something each species can notice in the other makes them think "brother." And together, they conquer the stars.

Then the singularity generator in invented, bringing on the onset of the SciFi part of this whole thing.

By introducing a small amount of dark matter to a gravity focusing lens, a Quantum Singularity can be produced.
Once the singularity is contained it can produce a nearly infinite source of power by introducing a small amount of ‘regular’ matter.
In a standard generator a stream of Hydrogen is ‘shot’ into the event horizon and a great amount of plasma is generated as ‘exhaust’. It is this plasma that produces that enough electricity to power cities.
Hydrogen to plasma raito<1 ppm into 100 Kilovolts>

In order to release the plasma from the singularity, graviton beams ‘;pull’ the ‘rear’ of the singularity apart which releases the plasma. The only problem with a singularity generator is that too much power is produced, shields and fail-safes are built into each generator so to contain the amount of power that is produced. It is the weight and size of these shields that truly limit the amount of power produced.
To contain the plasma takes shields with a power 30 megawatts for each 100 megawatts produced. 100 megawatts is about a what a lightning strike produces. And that may sound like a lot, but it takes 5 zettawatts, that’s 5 Sextillion watts, to power a space drive.
And that’s only to contain the actual electric energy, to contain and manipulate the singularity takes about 900 megawatts per minute.

What you have is a machine theoretically capable of infinite power production, as long as 1/3 of that power goes right back into maintaining that power flow. So the real limit to the power produced is the quality of the shielding mechanisms used.

1 A singularity, standard, closed and contained. A cross section view. The event horizon is the left side, it is there that regular matter is pulled in by the incredible gravity.
2 the singularity is pulled open by grav-lenses and plasma comes out the open end.
3 the singularity is pulled further, areas of intense gravitational lensing form. These areas actually distort space/time.
4 now the gravitational lensing increases and the singularity begins to destabilize.

And here I go on a technical tangent again.

arrg.

>>7930142
Sounds like it would make some good gay porn.

>>7930158

Whoever saved this thread on sup/tg/ did a horrible job of naming and describing it.

anyway. The angle I want to tell story from is that of the combat technist i call Ajax.

Now if you read the first story, you know that the combat techs are feared. I will explain further.

The internal nanite generator they are all equiped with make them more or less immortal as it constantly repairs their cellular structure. It also makes them stronger, faster; increases their reflexes, every thing about them is now superhuman.

They are made into the prefect killing machine, mentally and physically. Now previously, when a combat tech survived his twenty years of service, he was just retired and sent somewhere to live out his few remaining days. But now that the Techs are more or less immortal its changed. The techs keep a core of retired combat techs who all live in a, some sort of monastery somewhere, who acts as a military think-tank and strategic planer.

>>7930240
well fix it then

rolled 4, 2, 3 = 9

>>7930304
What provides the raw material for the nanites? Just whatever the Technist happens to have eaten recently?

rolled 5, 4, 3 = 12

>>7930323
Name, description, and tags cannot be changed once the thread is archived, except by one with the keys to suptg.

>>7930330
More or less anything. What more, unlike 'normal' nanite generators the combat tech can control his, he can change his apperance(within reason) though this is a more useless tactic against totally unhuamanoid aliens.
The control is useful for toning down his abilities when not needed, removing trapped limbs (then regrowing said limb) and more or less controlling his own body at the molecular level.

Anyway, up next . . . the aliens.

First the Shis'ari. Whatever they end up as, they like humans have a martial culture, except their developed into more ritualistic combat akin to the Clans in Mechwarrior. This was eventually upset by leaders who didn't follow the rules and ended up causing the whole planet to be rendered uninhabitable.

They have distinct sub-races, even more so than humans. The cold 'northern' race is large and can survive in extreme cold, even unto withstanding very short vacuum exposure.
The 'plains' race, built for speed and sometimes still possessing tails(<back when they were to felineoid)
The 'jungle' race who are strong but still compact.


The whole race is on average stronger than a human, and the 'northern' ones a lot tougher.

The shis'ari tend to fall into stereotypes more often than a human, but they complement the humans with their stoic sense of honor. They might be not quite as adaptive as the average human, but they check our tendency toward selfishness.

Then there are the Cristalax.
They average one meter tall, three-quarters of a meter wide and about three-hundred kilograms. The first half meter or so of their height is a dense porous grey rock from which juts a reddish colored translucent crystal with five or six sides. This tapers off after the next half meter. They are totally immobile in their natural state and were first thought to be a geological formation.
Theses creatures have no real name for themselves due to their strange syntax, or lack there-of as it were. They communicate through extremely informative burst information transmissions. The comm speed lag is nonexistent anywhere on their planet, but begins to slow at an exponential rate about a million kilometers from the surface of the planet. This has resulted in a sort of hive structure, but individuals can 'turn off' their transmitters if they want to be alone.

They become mobile through launching 'shards' of themselves into living creatures, on their world the preference is for strange eight limbed 'chipmunk' things that posses opposable thumbs, four of them.

When the first terrans found them they thought some of the 'spider-munks' just had weird growths.

It was found later that the Cristalax could naturally interface with almost all computer technology, at instantaneous speeds. But this ability allowed them to incorporate themselves into specially constructed robot frames. And as they are basically living super computers, there are institutions that make use of their talent which they exchange for the ability to be mobile.

Cristalax continued

They reproduce in with the same 'shard jets' they use to take over creatures. Basically they can consciously shape their body into a fine point which they then build a pressure behind and then release, launching the piece of 'themselves' off into the distance. For reproduction this is a new interdependent piece that may or may not grow into a new Cristalax. For taking over a body they simply stay connected to the shard through their link.

Cristalax are highly inquisitive, and love anything they haven't encountered before.

good night all. I'l check the archive for questions.

Sounds good, OP.

However, I'd avoid obviously animal aliens, mainly to keep the furries off and to attract those who are fond of hard SF but loathe the furries. Feel free to make them humanlike, but don't make them too obviously animal either.

Multiple eyes and a nonstandard number of limbs will help.