>>1785032
Hey, got a link to the prior threads or a quick run down on what is going on?

I don't want to vote on something like this without some more info.

Like at least what are the possible benefits and drawbacks of the two choices?

>>1785032
>Aggressive- fire off your courier drones back towards the Chapterhouse, but try retracing the Legion fleet's vector to see where they came from, and hit their rear areas.

With this we avoid guidding then toward the chapterhouse.

>>1785091
agressive we cause more harm to ourselfs and keep the legion from advancing into our sector.

defensive we slowly guide the legion toward the chapter house but avoid bigger warm to us.


We are basicaly a super advanced A.I. created by some powerfull force to protect and sheppard the human race at the same time trying to keep we are a AI from the humans. We are figthing some kind of xeno aliens that devour the resource of a planet and produce ships hence their moniker Legion.

>>1785091
You know, I completely forgot to post the archives like an idiot.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=Fleets%20Of%20God

Essentially, you are an AI housed in a spaceship and belong to a religious order that protects the human worlds in their mission sector against aliens, rogue AIs, and the like. At current, however, the Order is currently facing its biggest ever threat- the Legion, some kind of self-replicating enemy whose apparently mission is to obliterate all human life it finds.
You chose to test a prototype raiding/ambush ship that makes use of advanced antimatter pulse torpedoes and bleeding edge stealth technology to punch far above your weight.

At current, you have been stationed as a far picket due to your previous commanding officer being rather cross at you. If you choose defensive, you will try to do your job as an ambush destroyer and whittle the enemy fleet down before you eventually link back up with your fellows. If you choose aggressive, you will do your job as a raider and look for where the enemy came from instead. Neither is the wrong choice, but they will both dictate what you will face.

>>1785134
So defensive = team player

and agressive is more special snowflake. I will change my choise to defensive.

>>1785032
>>Aggressive- fire off your courier drones back towards the Chapterhouse, but try retracing the Legion fleet's vector to see where they came from, and hit their rear areas.

>>1785032
>>Aggressive
Perhaps if we make a show of heading after their back ranks, they will be forced to detach their escorts. Or at least some...

>>1785032
>1 vote for defensive, 2 for aggressive

Aggressive it is. However, you need to decide precisely how you will make your exit.

>Sneak out after the enemy fleet has gotten far enough from the jump point they won't detect you.
>Hit some of the rear elements of the enemy fleet in an attempt to draw off some of their strength.

>>1785180
Woah I was reading the archives.

I want defensive.

Can we flip for it?

>>1785153
>>1785150

These guys don't have supply lines, manufacturing bases, civilian populations etc.

Essentially nothing to attack to draw them back.

Makes more sense to work with the Chapter house as a force multiplier than going off on our own.

>>1785180
I understand if I was too late.

>>1785180
Like. Why would they even try to hunt us down when we're just one ship? They van just stay together and fight us as a group.

They don't have to pull back to defend anything.

>>1785180
If we're doing this then I'll vote for

> Sneak out after the enemy fleet has gotten far enough from the jump point they won't detect you.

Our best bet is to probably try to sneak up close to the Battleship sized legion ship and cripple it with an Alpha strike to disrupt their command / biggest gun.

>>1785180
>Sneak out after the enemy fleet has gotten far enough from the jump point they won't detect you.

>>1785234
That would be a good idea, but there are several of them, anon.

>>1785243
Yeah but given how hard sci-fi you run combat, it's pretty reasonable to stealth approach at high speed from an oblique angle and strafe them, then angle further away from their forces to quickly escape.

I mean. If we want to draw off ships then they have to be worried that we would do it again if they lost us, and that they would be losing significant assets.

After all once we fire they'll know roughly where we are and I assume further course corrections will continue to reveal our position, so going to fast for them to chase us seems to be the only option as then they'll have to set a picket of ships out in the direction we would most likely come from.

Unless these guys can instantly change their inertia?

>>1785243
I like it by the way. Very Saberhagen "Berserker" vs Asher's "Polity".

>>1785180
Sorry, I had to step out for a bit there.
Looks like the vote is for sneaky breeki, so if you guys could roll me 1d100, best of 3, please.

>>1785276
I don't know what either of those are, but thank you for the compliment.

Rolled 80 (1d100)

>>1785293

Rolled 63 (1d100)

>>1785293

Rolled 91 (1d100)

>>1785293

>91
Pretty sneaky. Writing now.

>>1785346
We are more sneaky then a nigger in the dark.

>>1785293
Neil Ashers "Polity" universe is like the "Culture" in that Humanity is ruled by a (moslty) benevolent AI. The power level is much lower than the Culture series though, and while the Polity is a post-scarcity society there are still plenty of human settlements outside it's government.

Settled by various factions that for one reason or another didn't wish to live under AI rule, they're mostly all lower tech by a significant degree especially since thethe whole "unshackled AI" thing makes them have to let Humans run their governments. There are multiple different factions that are "on the board" that commit or support terrorist action against the Polity AI when they can get their hands on the technology to do so.

However, the sheer industrial capability of the Polity under AI organization means that they almost always fail.

Since the Polity supports AI rule as a benevolent and voluntary dictatorship, the crucial of the issue has settled into a cold war situation where the Polity refuses to annex any territory unless there's a plurality vote to do so among the population.

Given that the ruling bodies of independent planets usually don't want this, there's a lot of voter suppression, propaganda, indoctrination, genocide of slave caste before they can vote etc.

There's also the various semi-independent semi-criminal colonies and planets, and a bunch of alien shit. Hyper-aggressive space crabs with ship armor that was significantly advanced compared to the Polity, that used flash-frozen brain states of their children to act as indoctrinated and shackled AI surrogates. There was a big war between them and Polity manufacturing capability saved the day, but tolerances on AI creation were loosened to create the kind of soldier AI they needed to win so now there's a bunch of disenfranchised veteran AI that disagree with the Central AI.

Some of them think that they're handicapping humanity by ruling them, others think that Humanity is holding AI back, both are a little insane by human and AI standards. Some rogue AI think that humanity needs an external threat to stimulate their development and are willing to provide it. Some rogue AI think the Polity AI need a genuine threat for the same reason and are willing to destroy it.

Oh and there's space aids in the form of super advanced God level technological nanites that rake over then consume civilizations as a weapon left behind by a different species AI war where they wiped out their creators, and the "brain" exists in subspace and people keep fucking touching it both in and out of the Polity.

And super AI-Human hybrids that are genius level smart for all of 2-3 minutes before their brains burn out and they might invent a new technology or write a poem in a unique language in that time.

It's pretty decent. The science is hard when applicable for throwing around energy and consequences. The plots and characterization is good. World building is consistent.

>>1785032
The courier drones are essentially an antimatter drive with just enough storage to carry their data, just enough intelligence to navigate to their destination, and a thick, blunt nose of radiation shielding. You have two of them left, so you update them both with as much data on the Legion ships as you can, which is pretty easy - despite appearing to have no drive, they glow like miniature suns on scans - and send them on their way. They rocket off towards two different jump points on antimatter flame. It'll be a few hours before the enemy fleet can even detect them, and by then they'll be well on their way to a significant percentage of lightspeed.

With an early warning to the rest of the Order dealt with, you light off your own drive- but lightly, very lightly, at a bare two percent thrust. The big difference you've noticed between Order and Legion ships is that Order ships all use antimatter drives which, while very bright, radiates almost all of its energy directly away from the vessel. This makes order ships very sneaky, and that's before you factor in your own heatsinks and the camouflage plating that can absorb 99.9 percent of all energy that hits it. Legion ships, meanwhile, radiate brightly and constantly, so much so it seems impossible for them to actually be stealthy.

All in all, it means that you can neatly slip into the jump point behind the Legion fleet. Crunching their incoming vector proves to be more troublesome, however. They've come in on a very strange angle, and with your own sensors there simply doesn't seem to be a star in range. Still, maybe you'll get lucky. You spend the next 15 hours drifting carefully towards the jump point, and updating the courier drones by laser link until they leave the system. The Legion ships don't seem to react to the drones, which you find more worrying than anything else. Maybe they're just confident, or maybe you're reading too much into it.

Finally however, you reach the jump point, align yourself carefully, and flare your drives to punch out of reality. A second later, you drop back into normal space with a hard, wrenching sensation. You're confused for a moment before realising you've run into a gravity well, and it's brought you back down into n-space. You have only a moment to ponder this before you realise there's two legion ships barely a thousand kilometres off your prow!

>PANIC
>FIRE EVERYTHING
>GO DARK GO DEEP
>PANIC

>>1785293
Fred Saberhagen's "Berserker" series is an absolute sci-fi classic. It's a space opera style series where a progenitor race called The Builders made these self replicating weapons called Berserkers whose goal is to eliminate all life. Also The Builders forgot to exclude themselves from that or fucked up the Captcha somehow.

The first short story "without a thought" features a man trying to trick a colossal Berserker warship in order to determine if they were truly sapient as AI or if it was just a very complex machine with a randomized problem solving pathway designed in it.

The Berserkers themselves come in all sorts of different shapes and designs and use random tactics ranging from building a giant warship bristling with guns, to little more than a cluster of engines that throw meteors at low tech planets, some of them hack into the computer systems of enemy warships and self destruct them etc.

Humanity has to beat them in several different ways, mostly by using ingenuity as the Berserkers are still just programmed computers instead of AI and have to follow logic paths no matter how random, so usually the Human has to figure it out and come up with a way to circumvent the Berserkers thought process, usually leading them into traps or ambushes or even convincing them to fight each other.

The Berserkers develop too though. One tries to "destroy all life" by counterfeiting money I'm to destabilize the economy of a nation so that it declare war on a rival for instance.

Seriously, you have to read Berserker. It's old and very Gothic in tone but it's still a great exploration of the theme of Machine as Adversary and the role sentience plays vs. Intelligence

With a dose of HFY as other aliens just run from the Berserkers but humans are confrontational enough to fight it even when they shouldn't be able to win.

>>1785420
>GO DARK GO DEEP

>>1785420
>GO DARK GO DEEP

>>1785420
>>GO DARK GO DEEP

>>1785420
>>1785426
>>1785431
Deep dark fantasies it is.

>>1785460
That sounded lewd.

>>1785368
>>1785422
Also, this stuff is pretty interesting anon. I might go look these up when I'm done with my current series.

>>1785420
After the initial moment of panic, you remember that not only are you in black hole mode anyway, you came in so slow the Cherenkov burst from your entrance looks more like a distance supernova or pulsar. Certainly, the Legion ships don't react as you use thrusters to carefully manoeuvrer deeper into the... system? You leave the jump point picket behind and drift down deeper into the gravity well. You're navigating largely by gravitic sensors and the presence of Legion ships.
Apart from pickets at each of the jump points - of which the system has more than usual, you note - you can pick out several small task forces, of no more than six to eight ships each which are clearly transiting galactic north, and you'd bet they're moving out to circle around the edge of the Order's mission territory. This is clearly some kind of base, but why? How is there a system-sized gravity well in such a dark place?

A brief flash of light catches your attention, for a single heart-stopping moment (if you had a heart) you think you've been found and fired upon. But no. You briefly review the footage, and it's coming from... where the local primary should be, according to your gravity sensors. You focus your passives, a dark suspicion beginning to form. Your first impression is of a dark set of scales, but then it clicks into place. Some kind of swarm is orbiting the primary. Two swarms, actually, an inner and an outer. The outer is probably there to capture any sunlight that escapes the inner, you realise, but it's not perfect. Starlight occasionally escapes, which is how you realised it was there.
It's a Dyson sphere. That knowledge settles itself upon you like a lead blanket. Even the Terran Mandate at the height of its power never seriously considered engineering on such a scale, and the Order makes do with extensive solar collectors. The sheer amount of power that you could capture is... too much to comfortably contemplate. And the Legion have one.

Most importantly, however, you're still heading towards it. If you turned and tried to escape now, you wouldn't be able to decelerate in time to avoid detection. They'd be chasing you all the way to the jump point. On the other hand... a ship is very, very small. You could try to slip through- and gather vital information, to boot.

>You can't risk staying in this system. Start deceleration and risk being detected when you near the Dyson construct.
>You need more intel. Angle yourself between the swarm and think invisible thoughts.

>>1785544
>>You need more intel. Angle yourself between the swarm and think invisible thoughts.

>>1785544
>You need more intel. Angle yourself between the swarm and think invisible thoughts.

Intel is always good.

>>1785544
>You need more intel. Angle yourself between the swarm and think invisible thoughts.

>>1785544
>Gotta get that sweet, sweet intel.

Also, it's only quarter past ten and I'm already shattered. Is there a way to wake yourself up that doesn't involve coffee? Help.

>>1785574
Put ice on yourself

>>1785544
>>You need more intel. Angle yourself between the swarm and think invisible thoughts.

>>1785544
The sheer enormity of the construct threatens to make you break down and start gibbering, but you hardly have such luxury. You are a Knight-Brother, you remind yourself. You have a duty. That doesn't really make you feel any better.

The outer swarm is about an astronomical unit across, you note, while the inner swarm is perhaps three quarters, or maybe two thirds. It's hard to tell. The swarms are actually made up of massive flat plates that look to be quite thick... and quite impervious to weapons fire. Still, it actually gives you quite a bit of leeway, and you use your thrusters to angle yourself on a path into the swarm.

Roll 1d100, best of 3.

Rolled 17 (1d100)

>>1785619

Rolled 19 (1d100)

>>1785619

Rolled 37 (1d100)

>>1785619

Rolled 23 (1d100)

>>1785619

>>1785619
>37
Not as sneaky now, it seems.

You slip neatly through the outer swarm, the tension ratcheting up with every metre. And a swarm it is- there must be hundreds of thousands of these plates. Some are covered with glossy black material on the side facing towards the primary, but just as many appear to have... docking ports? Your passive sensors begin to pick out Legion ships- first the new battleship-sized ones, then the cruisers, and finally the destroyers. There's thousands of them, transiting slowly around the Hive. That's the only name that comes to mind to describe what you're seeing. They're like a hive of insects that have made their nest in the star itself, and are no doubt the reason you didn't detect any planets or asteroids in the system.

Hours tick by slowly as you drift through the void between the two layers, recording everything you see. In many ways, seeing this only confirms that the Legion are not natural. Something created the Legion, you're sure, probably the same thing that created the Dyson construct. Half a day after passing through the outer layer, you pass just as neatly through the inner. From here you realise that all of the plates making up the inner layer have that glossy black material coating. Compared to the darkness of the system and the gloom of the space between the layers, passing through the inner layer into clear space is dazzling. The star is still shining bright- a medium yellow star not unlike Sol itself. There doesn't seem to be any Legion ships below the inside layer, but then there's probably no point. With that in mind, you set a course to take you back out of the inside layer on the other side.

Another half a day, or just abouts, and you finally pass back into the gloom between the two layers. It's actually welcome: your heat sinks are dangerously full and you've had to switch your hull to a dark gray to help cut down on the heat you're taking in. As you approach the outer layer, however, you give a mental frown. The layers both orbit the star, but it was easily predictable and slow. Now, however, one of the plates has been manoeuvred in front of the straight-line course you've been taking. It wouldn't be a problem to fly around it, but you'd either need to use up a lot of your remaining reaction mass or use your main drive.
And of course, why is it there? Did the Legion detect you and manage to get one in front of you? As you continue to study the plate that's been moved in, you realise its underside has been covered in Legion ships, like beetles clustered under a stone. There's at least sixteen destroyers and five cruisers. Clearly, this is a trap.

>Amble on like you haven't realised as long as possible, then make a dash for it.
>Fire off a few volleys of missiles and light off your drive now. You've already been rumbled, anyway.

>>1785742
Doesn't really help, anon.

>>1785747
>>Amble on like you haven't realised as long as possible, then make a dash for it.

>>1785747
>>Amble on like you haven't realised as long as possible, then make a dash for it.

>>1785747
>Amble on like you haven't realised as long as possible, then make a dash for it.

>>1785747
Fat and slow it is. Go ahead and roll me another 1d100, best of 3.

However, considering how tired I am, I'm going to leave it here for tonight and pick this up again tomorrow at the same time. Check my twitter at https://twitter.com/Pixel_Anon for details, and thank you all for coming! Maybe if I sleep for ten hours I'll be able to run for longer tomorrow. Or today, actually.

Rolled 19 (1d100)

>>1785918

Rolled 57 (1d100)

>>1785918

Rolled 6 (1d100)

>>1785918

Rolled 2 (1d100)

>>1785918

>>1785918
Hey, so if they chase us do we have the ability to cold fire our AM missiles? It's when you eject them from their launch tubes but don't start their rockets until later. Like when pursuers are entering their angle of attack behind us.

We should be able to calculate where they'll have to turn to chase us as they head towards us so if we could cold fire the missiles there then engage the engine as they are already changing course at high speed, if they do Dodge it then they'll have to correct a whole lot more then if they are coming at the missiles straight on.

>>1786008
>Hey, so if they chase us do we have the ability to cold fire our AM missiles? It's when you eject them from their launch tubes but don't start their rockets until later.
Yes, we did that in an earlier thread.

>>1786008
Your antimatter torpedoes are essentially just specks of antimatter you fire at close to light speed. Their magnetic containment field starts to break down as soon as they're fired, which gives them an effective range of around 14 light-seconds, and can't be cold fired for obvious reasons. Your relativistic missiles fired out of your broadside tubes can be cold fired, but at the longer range the better, as they take a few minutes to reach an appreciable percentage of lightspeed.
Along with your 3 missile tubes per broadside, you also have a pair of heavy lasers, but they aren't particularly effective at ranges longer than a couple of light-seconds due to targeting difficulties.

>>1785747
>57

The enemy must have seen you when you eclipsed the star, or something. There's no time to ponder it, though. You need to concentrate on getting out. Luckily, the swarm plates move so slowly there won't be any difficulty getting out as long as you can light off your main engine. Speaking of, you start bringing your systems to combat readiness, charging your AM pulse capacitors and loading your missile tubes. You only have a couple of decoys, however, do you decide there's not much point in using them now. The enemy is almost certainly able to plot your route, if not actually track you, but thruster emissions are probably fine... you give yourself a little bit of a push to the side. It can't hurt.

Another hour passes, then two. You're impatient, but you've learnt how to master that by now. So you wait, and as you reach the light-second mark, you're rewarded by the Legion ships on the side of the plate scrambling like insects. If you hadn't noticed, then it would undoubtedly be the perfect ambush. As it is, it's a decent one. Glittering green lances strike out into the void, barely missing you- in one case, by barely a hundred kilometres. As soon as they fire off their first salvo, they spread out into a search pattern, bombarding local space with radar and possibly other sensors you can't detect. So that's when you make your move.
In an instant, your armour turns from the deepest black to the brightest white, shouting a challenge to the enemy. Here I am, It says, Come and get me! Before the legion ships can possibly hope to react, your fire your fore tubes. Four specks of antimatter lance out at just under the speed of light. One swerves off, the magnetic containment field getting snagged by a destroyer, but the others fly true. Three cruisers and a destroyer are obliterated in an instant, and your engine lights off at full acceleration.

cont.

File: maxresdefault.jpg (147 KB, 1280x720)

147 KB JPG

>>1788734
You rapidly gain speed, but not enough- as if enraged by the death of their comrades, the Legion ships lash out- but their fire is staggered, uncoordinated. Perhaps the destruction of larger ships temporarily staggers their command network? You push that to the side and respond in kind with your broadside lasers. They strike the destroyers, and after second or two both are cored as the spectroscopic analysis tailors each beam's frequency to the highest absorption rate of each ship's armour.
Then the second salvo of plasma strikes.

Your magnetic shields flick on at the last moment, and most of the plasma is either blasted away by your drive plume or deflected by your magnetic shields. Two manage to bleed through, and despite the reflection properties of your camplates, several millimetres of armour is burnt away. Then you're away, rocketing between the plates of the outer swarm followed by the Legion flotilla. But you have the initial advantage of Delta v, and at least for the moment there are no other Legion forces in the immediate vicinity to intercept you.

You check the system out briefly, and curse inwardly. At every jump point leading directly back towards Order space has been significantly reinforced. You're not too sure of your chances of fighting your way out. However, there are a couple of jump points that Legion forces haven't reinforced yet- leading away from Order space, true, but you can work your way round. Then again, this system is clearly vitally important. If you kick up enough of a fuss, perhaps you can delay further attacks against the Order and the humans in their mission sector.

>Aggressive: You're a hunter, so go dark and start hunting. Every ship you kill in this system is one less to attack your Knight-Brothers.
>Neutral: Go for one of the less-defended jump points, and start trying to work your way back to friendly space the longer way round.
>Defensive: The Order needs to see this information as quickly as possible. Head straight for the closest jump point back to the Chapterhouse.

>>1788770
>>Neutral: Go for one of the less-defended jump points, and start trying to work your way back to friendly space the longer way round.

>>1788770
>Neutral: Go for one of the less-defended jump points, and start trying to work your way back to friendly space the longer way round.

>>1788770
>Neutral.

You give the jump point heading directly back to the Chapterhouse a longing glance, but you really can't risk it. This intel is just too important to risk trying to fight past an entire flotilla. Instead, you decide on one of the still-relatively-unguarded jump points more or less at random and set a course towards it. You're not too worried about the two destroyers picketing it, but as the Legion realise your plan, the flotilla trailing you settle grimly into a stern chase.

Apart from the stray shot coming at you from astern - and you constantly change position with thrusters to avoid them getting a lock - you're now relatively safe. An antimatter drive plume actually creates a fairly effective defence to anything coming up directly on your stern, but you have to extend a sensor boom to keep an eye on them. After the first hour, and the reaching of .2 lightspeed, it settles into a kind of monotony. There's still a fair way to go, of course, but as you and the Legion flotilla continue grimly accelerating, all you can do is watch and wait.
After a little while, and fast enough to make you blink in surprise if you had eyelids, one of the Legion destroyers leaps forward. As it does so, you realise, the omnipresent heat that all Legion ships give off scales up sharply, and continues rising as it accelerates towards you. It just manages to get within a light-second and fire off a plasma bolt before it abruptly stops accelerating, heat pouring from it, and it starts to enter a tumble. You'd be more fascinated if you weren't running for your life, but at least the plasma bolt is easy enough to dodge with a hard burn of your thrusters- but that affects your speed just a little, and lets the Legion ships catch up to you by the little bit. Is this their plan?

>If they want to play chicken, let them. See who has the better radiation shielding.
>You can't afford to get cored by a stray cosmic particle now. Stay at your current speed, and deal with any ships that manage to catch up to you.

>>1788932
>>If they want to play chicken, let them. See who has the better radiation shielding.

>>1788932
>You can't afford to get cored by a stray cosmic particle now. Stay at your current speed, and deal with any ships that manage to catch up to you.

Cold fire torpedoes to slow them down more.

>>1788932
>>If they want to play chicken, let them. See who has the better radiation shielding.

>>1788932
Playing chicken it is! I need a 1d100, best of 3. Let's how well the Legion build their ships.

Rolled 52 (1d100)

>>1789070

Rolled 91 (1d100)

>>1789070

Rolled 2 (1d100)

>>1789070

Rolled 27 (1d100)

>>1789070
>91

Rolling...

>>1789083
Guess we should re-name legion ships to chicken ships.

>>1789128
Chicken ships it is.

>>1789130
>>1789162
Before long, we'll call them MacNuggets and actively go hunting them for a midnight snack.
And it's ALWAYS midnight in space!

>>1789128
You can match the Legion ships for acceleration easily, but they still seemed determined to catch you. In fact, there's no theoretical limit for the rate of acceleration with an antimatter drive except for really fast, but yours can only output at a certain rate before it edges into a potentially uncontrolled reaction, and that's a Bad Idea. It seems that whatever drive system the weird ovoid ships of the Legion use, however, they also have a top acceleration built in, apparently burning themselves out? Either way, you shunt power to your magnetic shields and settle in to see how they deal with pure speed.

Another hour goes by before you see anything happen, and by now you and the Legion Flotilla have reached .4 lightspeed. You've been getting several alarmingly fierce strikes on your shield from cosmic particle strikes, but finally you're gratified as one of the destroyers chasing you appears to shear in half, and soon after one of the two remaining cruisers simply crumples inwards, losing the first third of its length in a somewhat understated display, but then it explodes. The rest of the enemy stops accelerating, thankfully. You'd been starting to think they would throw themselves away just for the chance to strike at you. Moving this fast isn't quite safe for you, but it's sure as hell safer than facing the group of very angry ships behind your stern.

With the present crisis dealt with, you do some quick calculations and make sure it's still safe for you to jump at this speed. Nobody's really tried to jump at this speed before, mostly because there's not much point. It'll probably be bumpy, your navigation systems decide. Lovely.

Dealing with the ship picket destroyers is simple enough- you fire off your fore tubes at maximum range and watch in satisfaction as they're obliterated before they can retaliate. The Legion plasma weapons are devastating, to be sure, but so far you've been lucky enough to simply take them out before they can hit you. After that, there jump point is wide open, and you're away. A moment later you translate back into normal space, and you find out what being travel sick is.

With a burst of Cherenkov radiation like a minature star, your hull shakes around like a leaf in hurricane for far longer than you'd like, and leaving you feeling distinctly... queasy. You can't say you like it. It settles soon enough, and you scan the system you're in- a yellow primary on the verge of expanding, and a few rocket planets orbiting close in. No Legion ships, either. Looks like you're clear... But the Legion flotilla will almost certainly be jumping after you.

>Start decelerating and prepare to engage.
>Go dark, you can left them looking for you while you make your way to the next jump point.

>>1789265

>Start decelerating and prepare to engage.

>>1789265
>>Go dark, you can left them looking for you while you make your way to the next jump point.

>>1789265
>Go dark, you can left them looking for you while you make your way to the next jump point.

Let's not figth a entire fleet. Also guess we really are stress testing this prototype ship uh?

>>1789265
>Go dark, you can left them looking for you while you make your way to the next jump point
This. Let's set up for an ambush. Let's see if we can take these bastards apart

>>1789265
>>Go dark, you can left them looking for you while you make your way to the next jump point.

>>1789265
>tfw you don't see the typo until right after you post
Going dark it is.

You flip end for end to decelerate as hard as you can, and take the time to purge your heatsinks now that you have a moment. They've been operating dangerously close to full for the past couple of days, now. Once you've done that, you go dark again and cut most of your thrust to consider your next move.
The Legion flotilla chasing you numbers a single cruiser and ten destroyers. Not particularly insurmountable odds, and if you deal with them, you'll have at least half a day to set out for a new jump point unmolested.

>Stay in the system long enough to eliminate your pursuers.
>Head to a new jump point as soon as you can.

>>1789355
>>Stay in the system long enough to eliminate your pursuers.

>>1789355
>Stay in the system long enough to eliminate your pursuers.

No survivors.

>>1789355
>>Stay in the system long enough to eliminate your pursuers.

>>1789355
>No mercy, no survivors.

Roll a 1d100 for ambushing, you know the drill.

Rolled 88 (1d100)

>>1789424

Rolled 25 (1d100)

>>1789424

Rolled 14 (1d100)

>>1789424

Rolled 23 (1d100)

>>1789424

>>1789433
Wipe them out....all of them.

>>1789433
The 88 has spoken. None shall fly!

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>>1789424
>88

Less than half an hour after you arrive in-system, the Legion ships transit in. They make as big of a entrance as you did, and one of the destroyers actually starts tumbling- you're not sure if it's because of the transit or because it took a stray particle strike between you and the enemy flotilla jumping. It doesn't really matter either way, because their fate will be the same.
It takes two seconds for the light of their arrival to reach you, and you're ready. Missiles lance out from their tubes towards the enemy. As soon as they launch, the mass reduction devices activate, cutting their mass by almost 98 percent. They don't manage to achieve near-lightspeed in the relatively short distance to the enemy, but it doesn't really matter. The enemy, their sensors still calibrating after the FTL transit, and taken completely by surprise. As the missiles enter terminal guidance, their mass reduction systems reverse and the hundred-kilo bars of simple meteor-steel become several thousand kilos of mass moving Very Fast.
Two of the High-Velocity Missiles take out the cruiser still left, and the third annihilates a destroyer. But your missile tubes are each equipped with a 10-missile autoloader, and they cycle every two seconds. The remaining Legion ships are put to the sword as they deserve, and you think a brief prayer in the wake of their destruction. There's a part of you that can't help but think that you must either have tremendous luck or God himself is on your side.

With your most pertinent threat dealt with, you set your onboard ammunition fabricators humming and your bow towards the closest planet. You can use a gravity assist to get you on your next course. But there's two choices you could make here to start making your way back to friendly space: Do you go galactic North or South? North would probably be slightly shorter, but that's the way it looked like the Legion were sending all their ships to make the Order think that's where they came from. If nothing else though, you'll be able to wreak havoc on their transiting ships. To galactic south might be longer, but it's outside of the Order's mission sector, and your navigation maps are pretty spotty. It could be the same, or it could be a lot longer, and you'll have no idea what you'll find. Maybe the Legion have already 'sterilised' the sector. That's quite a morbid thought.

>North. You can ambush the enemy to your heart's content on your way home, and possibly link up with friendly forces.
>South. Even if it takes longer, it'll probably be safer.

>>1789521
>>North. You can ambush the enemy to your heart's content on your way home, and possibly link up with friendly forces.

>>1789521
>North. You can ambush the enemy to your heart's content on your way home, and possibly link up with friendly forces.

Step 1: tempt the dicegods
Step 2: ???

>>1789521
>>North. You can ambush the enemy to your heart's content on your way home, and possibly link up with friendly forces.

>>1789521
>North

>>1789521
>>North. You can ambush the enemy to your heart's content on your way home, and possibly link up with friendly forces.
We can always sneak through, or blow something important up.

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>>1789521
>Unanimously north.

It doesn't take long to decide. If you can't go back, you're just going to have to go north and around- hopefully you'll even link up with some friendly forces. Hell, maybe if you're really lucky, Abbot Zusya will have been rotated back to the Chapterhouse. Yeah, and maybe you'll be given a battleship when you get back.
Shaking off your thoughts, you whip yourself around one of the unnamed planets of the unnamed system and get yourself heading towards the jump point at a leisurely .1 light. It takes the rest of the day to travel across the system, and you busy yourself with writing up a report on the Dyson construct, as well as making sure your onboard fabricators are refilling your ammo stocks. You might need to visit an asteroid in the next system to pull out some materials, but for now you're fine.

There's no sign of more Legion ships by the time you translate out at the jump point, and you're starting to entertain the thought that maybe things are starting to look up.

Probably not, though. The universe hates you far too much.

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>>1789631
I was intending to run for longer tonight, but I feel like that's a very solid point to pause until next week. I hope you've enjoyed tonight!
My twitter is https://twitter.com/Pixel_Anon if you want notice of when I run, and I now have an ask.fm at https://ask.fm/PixelAnon if you want to ask questions or just meme at me.

Since I ended earlier than intended, I'll stick around for a bit and answer any questions or anything you guys have!

>>1789631
Couldn't we have fired a few missiles at the sphere to disturb it cause they run dark?

>>1789640
Thanks, pixel. Lovely quest you have here

>>1789647
I'm not sure what you mean, anon. If you mean the swarm, each of the individual 'plates' were very thick, and it would have alerted the enemy to your presence. You're always welcome to offer write-in options, though! Honestly it didn't occur to me.

>>1789648
Thanks! It's nice to know at least one other person enjoys this as much as I do.

>>1789651
I mean, Our missiles would've been undetected until near the surface right? Plus any damage done would've had them force to repair it and take resources away from other stuff.