Pharris strode along the exterior window of the colony. This was one of the older, larger colonies, so it had no artificial gravity, only a spin. It roared through solar orbit halfway between earth and Venus, but at an opposing orbit. Deacon Pharris was watching the solar side. Venus was, in fact, just now eclipsing the sun. Barely. It was a dime-sized dot on the huge glowing ball of the sun. The windows were heavily tinted, but it still hurt his eyes to watch for prolonged periods. He turned away, contemplating what he had just learned.

as head of the exquition, he only reported to four men above him in the quisition. He thought carefully. If the enemy had such willing troops, it would be difficult to match their faith. Except, of course, for them...

Deacon Pharris thought for a moment, then walked from the viewing room towards the elevator, leaving the spinning starscape behind as he rode the elevator to the non-spinning landing bay. He boarded his shuttle and told the pilot where to take him, then went to his chambers to pray. It would be a long flight in the sublight craft, but he wanted to see them before they were called to duty.

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NEW NAME FOR THE DREADNOUGHT
The Hard-Boiled Egg
Why?
Because she cant be beaten!

(I chose antimatter because there's few real ways of detecting it. Magnetic fields that small are fairly hard to detect.
I bloody well know what elite means, I meant that I considered "elite" to be "very elite".)

(Notes: Heaven's Gate is a wormhole maker that does not rely on P-tech to form a wormhole from any location with a certain kind of transponder to another location. The second location's accuracy is inversely porportional to the distance from the source to the first location added to the distance from the source to the second location.

Defletor fields and Certainty fields can only be maintained for 7 minutes. Running both at the same time means there's almost no power for weapondry, and only one weapons system at a time can be used, aside from fighters.

And now a demonstration of those fields being used to maximum effect. Feel free to work on countermeasures, or look for a less advantagious situation (battles over 7 minutes). Note that at the moment only the Paraguay has a deflector field, although all carriers and crusiers have certainty fields.
)

Irwin Romal looked out the window. It wouldn't be long until fighting started. He hoped nothing unexpected happened.

Something did.

The massive blue flash of a NSL Heaven's Gate filled the window, and tinged his vision blue for the next few hours. Off to the side of the fleet, a giant NSL carrier sat.

Irwin knocked down 13 people on his rush to the bridge, although he didn't notice any of them at all.

When he got there, the communications officer shouted "We're getting a priority zero signal."

Priority zero meant 2 things and 2 things only. Declaration of war or surrender.

Irwin accepted the transmission. Denver appeared onscreen. "We of the NSL spit upon your craven attempts to cow us. Reap retribution!" Then the channel was cut.

Denver's ship immediatly raised both its deflector field and its certainty field. Then it fired its main engines. And started to turn. But it didn't stop firing its engines.

It did, however, start to fire its railguns.

The Paraguay careened through the enemy fleet like one of the horsemen of the apocalypse. Unable to raise shields, the enemy could do little but wait for the railgun hits to them. With the deflector field up, the Paraguay could weather almost anything thrown at them. Enemy ships colliding with the Paraguay glanced off the deflector field, with severe damage.

By the time Denver had expended every single railgun slug aboard, time was almost up. The gate formed, and the ship was gone.

But not forgotten. Irwin Romal looked out another window at his fleet. Over 1/4 of it had been destroyed in this horrible ambush, and another 1/6 had been damaged. Irwin Romal shook with fury. He must avenge this. But not now. His fleet's morale had dropped to zero. He'd need to regroup. Sol would not be invaded anytime soon.

In Sol, shipyards were working harder than ever. Mercinim's invasion had been beaten back, but not stopped. All the ships that could be had were needed. Additionally, refits were called for. Somebody had to find a way to fit in enough capacitors to run a field longer than 7 minutes.

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"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois

I didn't understand that. Please explain in detail in the Info Booth.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

After they'd finished their various jobs, the crew of the Rabid Elephant had stayed at a Reinhoff hotel. Reinhoff was an international hotel corporation. Not a very good one, but hey, it was cheap.

Mag was woken up in the middle of the night by a ping on the datapad he'd been given. Screw it, he was tired.

ping

Bah. Mag slowly sat up and rubbed his eyes, some. People weren't meant to wake people up in the middle of the night after a long day.

ping

Mag started looking for the atrocious thing.

"Whoever's that is, turn it off," Pete said, in that slow, tortured way people speak in the morning.

pingpingpingpingping

Ironically, Mag was able to find it, easier, with the continuous sound. He grabbed it and flipped up the screen. It requested an iris scan, so he pointed it at his eye.

After it was verified that he was, indeed, Mag Steelglass, the screen went to the text communication section.

sir, it's catalina

if this isn't important, i'll kill you, you know that

that cruiser we caught up to after our little battle wasn't irwin romal's

eh?

they switched it in, to lead us away from him

tricky

that means there's a good chance they know we're here and are looking for us

right...

i'll try to meet you at the corner of willow and rage

ah. we'll try to be there, soon

be careful, and all that stuff

whoa, a lack of formality

my deepest apologies, sir

Catalina killed the connection, making Mag's screen go black, again.

"What was all that racket?" asked Bob.

"It was Catalina. We've gotta go."

"Was I right?"

"About what?"

"Are we in trouble?"

"Potentially."

Mag explained what she had said while they packed.
------------------------
They snuck on down to the ground floor, and started making their way out. Six guys stopped them in the lobby, each brandishing a pistol or a knife.

"Hello, foreigners. I'll just cut to the chase: set your packs down, and hand over the codes to your credit accounts."

Mag didn't have time, they needed to get out of here. "We don't have time for this, sir."

"Oh, and why should your needs be of such high priority?"

"Are we going to continue with this silliness or not?"

"I don't like your attitude."

"Zephyr."

Each of the four crew members of the Rabid Elephant quickly drew their uzis and opened fire. Less than a second of fire, and all six muggers were down. The guy who had done the talking managed to get a shot off before he went down. It hit Pete's arm. Pete swore.

"You aright there?"

"I don't think it'll be too bad." Pete was clutching his arm and looking to be in some pain. Bob tossed his pack down, got out two temporary wound patchers, and applied them to the entrance and exit holes the bullet had made. They automatically sealed the wounded area off, and began applying pain relief drugs. Bob shouldered his pack, again, and they headed to the street. The glass that made up most of the front wall in the lobby had all been shattered by the stray bullets.

They stepped through, not bothering with the doors. Their motorcycles were in the hotel's garage, which needed codes to be accessed. Mag put the codes in, and the door opened. They jogged over the the motorcycles, hopped on, and headed off.

Their first turn brought them face-to-face with a Mercinim city patrol tank. It fired its 50mm railgun at them. Mag and Pete swerved around it to the right, Bob and Maria to the left. The tank quickly turned and pursued. It was built for city combat - it was fast, maneuverable, small, and had just enough weaponry and armoring to make it nearly invincible to anything relying on standard handguns. Which was most things found in the city. The tank itself was faster than their motorcycles. This would be an "interesting" event...

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"Vampiric chickens are spiffy. Bak bak bak ARRR!"

Deacon Pharris sat in the couch, being lifted and carried easily by two monks. The station was spinning to keep gravity in excess of four Gs, and the atmosphere was thin. The monks lived on a small, stubby ring, three miles in diameter, and a half mile across. that freewheeled in a low orbit over jupiter. The temperature fluctuated wildly over the station. It was one of the many penances that the monks had to go through.

They subsisted on foods that they grew, and they broke down waste by a series of biological water cleansing tanks. The monks, spent their days working their fields, studying in the libraries, and practicing combat. They trained hard to be both stealthy and powerful with their hands or with weapons. They disliked energy and projectile weapons, for a large part of their training involved using their resourcefulness to avoid being lowered to the use of unmeasured, brute force, but they were proficient with them nonetheless.

The life of a monk was hardship. They were separated from their families at a young age, chosen by the older monks for both genetic markers and for their performence during tests. Those that passed were sent through the most demanding physical and mental training that humans could endure. They were placed on a four gee, low oxygen habitat with temperatures that went from freezing to scalding over the course of the day, and where they were forced to live and work and study, for each monk had his specialty both on the field of battle and in the library. All monks knew the books of the prophets and almost all of their interperatations by heart. But beyond that, they each held the equivalent of high degrees in at least three areas of study.

This had been going on for generations, and the monks were often called by the septarch to deal with specific problems both those requiring delicacy and force, and the monks had always succeeded. It was what they did.

It was three hundred years ago, at the time of the sixth prophet, during the eight crusade, that the prophet had seen fit to bestow upon them their greatest gift... Louganis.

The monks were then given augmentations that gave them holy strength, and with it, they crushed the foes who threatened their faith at the time, and returned to their monestary.

They were given ferrous bones and enhanced nerves. They were given neural implants, and most importantly, they were given Louganis. The armor they wore gave them strength, speed and reflexes far beyond those of mortals. They were truly the paladins of the New Order.

The monks took these gifts as grave burdens, and as penance for being blessed with such strength, they each wore slung over their shoulders, six huge gold tiles from the roof of the old temple, each tile the weight of a grown man. Thus the Guardians of the Faith paid for their strength as they went about their lives on the monestary.

Pharris knew this, but he hadn't truly understood the nature of it until the two robed men, bent under the loads from their huge tiles, lifted him on his sedan chair and carried him easily onto the station. He was breathing oxygen from a mask to stay concious, and was wearing heavy coats, and was still cold, and was still being crushed into his seat so that he could not move.

He had merely wanted to see, but what he was forced to do now was experience. The men were huge and powerful. The more He saw them train, the more Pharris was sure that their small number would once again ensure victory for the NSL in the coming conflict. He had faith.

------------------
NEW NAME FOR THE DREADNOUGHT
The Hard-Boiled Egg
Why?
Because she cant be beaten!

Me, pharris, darkk, had a talk the other day. We are going to close the RPG, and start a new one. Learning from this one's mistakes, and mistakes of RPG's across the globe, we have reached several undisputable foregone conclusions:

1. The RPG will be more fun if it's all the players allied against some huge, impossibly difficult to defeat enemy
2. There will be less of cap on land battleships.
3. If you don't understand what a land battleship is, don't come hollering to me about it
4. That point above is not totally relevant

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.