Memory

[Underfot]

Prologue:

It had been 800 years since the collapse of the exo-galactic wormhole network.  For 800 years this cluster has  been cut off from the Sol empire.  No one has living memories of that time; we would not even know the name of the ancient empire except that knowledge became an important weapon.  Our local cluster fractured almost immediately, factions forming and coalescing, each side calling the other the rebels, and each side gathering and storing their knowledge of war for generations.  We remember every tactic, every ship sighting, every weapon.  We also remember every atrocity and every planet burned; these are our only prizes of war.  It is in this spirit of remembering that I am recounting this story.


Part 1:

When the exo-galaxy wormhole opened on our Prime people ran outdoors and to viewports in open-mouthed wonder.  No one had seen anything like it before.  What poured out was instantly recognizable though.  Fleet ships by the thousands- the same as ours and the rebels – followed by... things... the size of capital ships.  Our most stable strategists are stationed near contested territory and our Prime is by necessity filled with quick thinkers and hardened realists.  They immediately recognized that if those ships weren't ours...  Evacuation alarms were going even as the first sensor arrays and mining gantries collapsed in blooms of colour.  Everyone groundside who wasn't already in a ship was left behind.  As the mystery ships turned towards our Prime orbital station, Command issued a simple message before our fleeing ships.  A burst powerful enough to echo through the cluster; 'move and consolidate all forces to contested territory'.  With that message, my command station was evacuated.  It was only minutes later that a second burst came from the opposite end of the cluster; 'all colonies form evacuation groups, convoy to zero-point, do not engage.'  I remained behind until the vanguard from Prime poured in.  Gathering the two pilot-minds who chose to remain with me, we boarded the last frigate in our dock.  Ren and Nat both looked visibly ill as Ren did the most unthinkable thing for a PM – piloting the very ship he travelled in.  The cabin was all silence and cold sweat as we joined the remains of the fleet in its grim retreat.


Part 2:

The new command station was the biggest and ugliest orbital ever seen in the cluster.  It was clearly patched together from multiple colony ships of different makes, and it had the name 'Zero-Point' emblazoned in garish colours across one of the few large, flat surfaces.  Most of us just ended up calling it 'Home'.  Beyond the paint job, little time had been wasted.  Mining gantries were already slinging resources back to the construction site, with space docks almost operational.  Survival instincts were clearly still working as a massive force field generator was receiving most of the resources.  The most alarming sight was the small arcologies and rows of cryo pods.  Civilians tucked right under an arm that was supposed to be swinging a sword.  Fortunately, represented among the civilians were the best researchers from the cluster.  The meeting of these minds unlocked a glut of new ideas; upgrades to our mutual frigates and bombers, a variety of hardened turrets to counter almost any imaginable threat, and even a new capital ship that could fit modular weapons and force fields.  Our first surprise came when the rebel researchers found out how we made our sniper turrets.  They had tried to duplicate that particular secret for so long that when they finally learned it, they already had a mobile platform that could theoretically mount one.  The sniper ship was the greatest bonding experience of the war for the disparate scientists; their cooperation was near absolute after that.  Our second surprise came with the vanguard of the rebel retreat.  I watched through the viewport as a single fighter pulled into dock.  A man with a command insignia across his arm quickly made his way up to ops.
'You must be the Commander here, as you're the only one standing around.' 
'I'm was the only ranking officer until you arrived, but we can certainly use any expertise Commander...?'
He glared at me.  'Just Tik.  I'm not interested in commanding this mess.'
I was slightly miffed at this point, 'And you came alone, no PM with you?'
'I piloted my own ship, the rest of my crew are lining up to dock now.'
At this point I looked out the viewport and saw exactly zero ships lined up.  I looked back at him and opened my mouth when I caught a flicker from the dock.  I blinked twice, and then there were six ships sitting at the viewport, their pilots looking me in the eye.  I took an involuntary step backwards as my mind briefly overloaded.  I guess this explained why we never caught any of their scouts.  Tik had already turned away, but shouted to no one in general 'Get me a d**n link terminal and some ships to pilot!'

[keith.lamothe]

Keep writing, I want to keep reading

Welcome to the forums

[Underfot]

Thanks for the welcome, Keith.  I'll be playing this out over the next two or three days...

[Underfot]

Part 3:

The AIs launched their first attack the day after the space docks were complete.  We had enough ships to keep our PMs busy and use up the majority of our neural bandwidth; the research teams said they had ideas for freeing up some of that bandwidth, but that was one resource we needed to husband quite carefully.  The tension in ops was thick as the strange readings from the wormhole network started to spike; we all expected a massive killing blow from our unseen enemy.  All of the PMs' attention was focused on controlling small fleets in Home system, but the battle was mercifully brief with few losses to our fleet.  In fact, the bordering systems were also lightly defended, and while I was puzzled by this, I wasn't about to waste any opportunities.  Our campaign began.  We scouted probable targets and began to clear paths towards them.  Ren and Nat handled the pincer movements with the bulk of the fleet, patiently crushing guard posts and the AI garrisons.  Tik handled the sniper fleet, and he certainly seemed to be enjoying himself.  Anytime we set up a new command station it was a simple matter  to recover any data that was available in the local archive-bunkers, but if we needed to get data from an AI held world, we sent Tik.  His snipers would be covered by a tiny fleet controlled by one of his other PMs.  As soon as we began setting up the data collection base, the AI would pour fleet ships into the system.  Tik would swat them down, laughing and making crude gestures all the while.  I could only see the ships as coloured dots on the display above his link, but as long as they were winking out as fast as they showed up, he could bluster all he wanted.
The fleet was out for another path-making push when we I got warning of another wave heading for Home system.  I ordered the closest fleet ships back and redirected ship construction from the forward docks back to Home.  It amounted to a hundred ships or so, and we had handled waves before.  What arrived was not what we had handled before.  Hundreds of bombers crushed our tractors and turrets in seconds, then vectored straight for Zero-point.  Time seemed to slow.  I had Nat split her fastest ships off and hand them to another PM to rush back, but realizing they wouldn't make it nearly in time, I slapped the comm down to the research deck. 
'Now would be a good time to get us that neural bandwidth!'
'Sir?'
'We need fighters, now!'
You can't ask for much finesse under that kind of pressure; the plans they sent to the space dock minutes later were for a fighter with an extra engine, thicker plate, and extended wings with more guns strapped on.  By the time we had a dozen fighters to hand to a PM, straggling bombers were scrapping all of our mining gantries and the force field was a near-constant glow of impacts.  Engineering units were desperately trying to repair our second field while the first took damage.  The viewport slammed shut automatically, but I cranked it back open; I couldn't face my doom blindly.  Every time we had half a dozen fighters, we gave them to a PM to pick at the bomber fleet.  The glow was getting closer; one of our generating stations broke apart, and part of the starship dock collapsed.  But now we had twenty fighters outside the force field, and then thirty.  We were slowly peeling the bombers off of the field.  Abruptly the glow stopped, and the fighters raced off to finish the few dozen stragglers coming in from the gantries. 
Tik decided to break the deathly silence.
'Was that your idiot AI?  No wonder you couldn't take us.  Stupid thing splitting its forces...'
There were a few nervous chuckles, and everyone seemed to breathe again, except for Ren, who started making a terrible gurgling sound.  I whipped around to see his eyes pop wide and his hands flail for the disconnect controls.  He managed to slap them and started gulping down air.
'Ren, what the...?'
'Input overload' he gasped, 'something hacked my fleet positioning.'
My first thought was that the AI had finished toying with us, and then I looked at the display above Ren's link.  His coloured dots had rearranged themselves:

===
Always finding new ways to make trouble for me, eh?
I'd love for you to come down for a visit.
Best make it soon, or I might not be in a position to offer again.
Much love ;-)
S. Murdoch
118:30 .... 29 .... 28 .... 27
===


Part 4:

Murdoch.
Satria Murdoch.
Granddaughter of the man who managed to get a system named after himself. Infamous as a sneak and cheat; for the last few decades of the war she was the best source of information and the worst possible ally.  She played us off of each other just like her old man did and while we knew exactly what system she was in, we could never pin her down.  I had only ever been in contact with her – or one of her agents, you could never be sure – once.  She followed her own agenda.
 'And', I told myself, 'she's just lucky that her little system happens to be on our way to Prime.  Or near enough.'  'Ren, how long do you need to... oh'  Ren had already reconnected his link. 
'Nat, cover your current system until we get what we need.  Then pull the fleet back for a regroup and a new push.' 
The need that Nat was covering was an AI science ship.  Like our collection bases, they were used for accessing the local data-bunker.  Fortunately, the bunkers used the same neural interface as our ships and the AIs had to dedicate incredible resources to decrypting anything.  Still, they came up with some interesting new ideas, which we then stole by grabbing the collector.  We wound up with ships that used an ancient weapon design to spit out laser fire faster than we thought possible, an enormously fast cloaked attack ship, and several more combinations of technology of which we would never have conceived.  Our researchers also turned out a new capital ship stuffed into a huge organic frame.  I boarded one of these as the fleets swept into Murdoch.
When I arrived in Murdoch, there was an old fashioned docking beacon shining infrared out of apparently empty space.  As we approached it, something suddenly snapped into view.  It was a combination arcology and space dock, with the whole thing sitting on a massive set of reactors.  One of the reactors looked like half a dozen fleet ships had crashed into it- the back half of a frigate still sticking out gave the truth to that theory. 
I walked from the dock to a main corridor full of people moving in the disciplined chaos of a working military base.  One woman was given a respectful distance as she stood there, head tilted slightly, with a smug look on her face.  I decided to introduce myself.
'You couldn't come up with a less dangerous way to communicate?  What, you thought it would be more dramatic to hijack one of my PMs brains?'
Satria raised an eyebrow.
'Aw, did I hurt one of your heroes?'
'Yes you did, and speaking of heroes, where's my welcome?'
'I don't know how you run things, but no one here has time to celebrate right now'
'So the the fact that you lowered your cloaking field will have to be welcome enough then?'
'No, that was just to keep that ugly lump of yours from scratching my docks; it's back up now.  My gratitude comes in an entirely different form.  Follow me.'
She led the way to the space docks, where a fleet of ships was under construction.  I considered it gratitude enough when she demonstrated what they could do.  Nat and Ren had pushed one jump away from Prime.  Satria's frigates kept the path for reinforcements clear, and as soon as the fleet was massed, Ren and Tik made the final jump.  They occupied the garrison taking massive losses while Satria's bombers crushed one enormous guard post after another.  Nat gathered up the reinforcements that continued to pour in and threw them at the biggest structure in the system; a station guarding the exo-galactic wormhole.  Prime was cleared.  We only had time to make a cursory analysis of our orbital; no communications could get out or in so our only comfort was that there were no craters, glowing or otherwise.  We had hoped that one of the AIs would be decimated by this strike, but the massive waves of ships we had been weathering only intensified.  I headed back to Zero-point.  This war wasn't over.

[keith.lamothe]

Very interesting   Always funny to see people try to write around the ship-specific caps, those are one of those things that make so much sense from a game design perspective but practically none in terms of "realism".

Always something thrilling about a defense involving one's home command forcefield network lighting up the night.

[Underfot]

Part 5:

We churned out ships.  Tik wasn't happy with his crowd-control duties; he was thinking of Core, his home world, and when not directly voicing his concern, he did so by pacing and glaring.  We waited though, until the slender form of our greatest capital ship slipped out of the starship dock and manoeuvred beside its sister-ship.  Even Tik was silent as Ren and Nat gathered them up with their assault fleets and headed towards Core.  The path-making was all brute force.  The AIs showed no weaknesses and no mercy, and the space docks ran our reserves dry more than once during the push.  It was mad to keep pushing as our resources dwindled, but Tik had a fever in his eyes that seemed to be infectious.  No one was willing to rest.  We closed to one jump from Core, and by the time the last guard post crumpled and went silent, our new capital ships were the only ones with any semblance of their original shape.  The tattered fleet retreated to a safe system for repairs, even Satria's ships couldn't stand up to the technology the AIs were throwing at us.  We needed superior numbers, but the waiting frayed nerves more than the non-stop grind.  When we finally re-formed some semblance of strike groups, we headed straight for Core.  Nat and Tik were the first in this time, and as victory seemed in hand, time seemed to slow again. 
They crushed two guard posts.
Then someone kicked the roach nest.
Nat's scream rose abruptly and clipped off sharply.  Her ships had been teleported 400 different directions in an instant.  I heard someone shutting off their link.
'Ren, stay at your post!'
I turned around.  Ren was at his post, his face pale and his eyes squeezed tightly, tears leaking through as he clenched his muscles to keep from shaking.  He held the reserve fleet – a starship and elite bombers – on the other side of the Core wormhole, and he was pounding the counter-attack that came through to dust. 
It was Tik who had disconnected.  He already had Nat's link shut down and was easing her onto the floor, checking her vitals.  I yelled for another PM to take Ren's fleet and shut down his link.  I didn't have a word to say as Ren picked up his unconscious wife and got her off of the ops deck.  War had just hit home.  800 years of sacrifice seemed to concentrate into one moment.  Tik and I stared after them with hollow faces and unseeing eyes.  He turned back to his link and reconnected. 
We sent a small force of cloaked ships to stir up the roaches again.  After we had lured them away, we made quick work of their nest.  Tik led the rest of the assault.  With a slow trickle of reinforcements, we wore away one guard post after another.  Tik spread the ships out between all of his PMs for the final assault.  The energy bombs pounded at the enormous station until they went straight through.  They continued pounding until it broke up and the lights silently went out.  The silence echoed in ops for a few minutes.  Then a receiver started blaring a message: '...form evacuation groups, convoy to zero-point, do not engage.  All colonies form evacuation groups, convoy to zero-point, do not engage...'  The jamming fields were down.  The PMs were all disconnecting, mirth and exhaustion hitting them at the same time.  Zero-point was coming alive with the noise of life.  I walked to the viewport.  Staring out across the space docks, I heard the sound as if it were coming from a dozen worlds.


Epilogue:

We picked our way slowly through the Core system.  It was still littered with capital ships from the day the wormholes opened.  The rebel's had a penchant for piloting from within a ship and each of these hulks was an elite commander's tomb.  The majority of their command operations died that day while buying time for the escaping civilians and light craft.  The station orbiting their core world was hastily patched; only the dock and viewing platform had any power.  And that is where I stand now, looking at the peaceful and still defenceless world turn below me. 
The truth of the AI awakening came out in the past few days.  A rebel researcher was working on streamlining the AI decision processes, teaching it to ignore unnecessary input and skip over large portions of historical data.  She forgot to set boundaries on what it was allowed to ignore.  It immediately circumvented huge swaths of its own programming,  losing its purpose and direction, and rebuilding with whatever data was deemed important.  After a few seconds of repeating this process, the research AI created its own purpose and infected both of our wartime AIs.  Our AI also rebuilt itself, using our treasured centuries of warfare data. 
The AIs learned to cooperate by first learning how to forget.  As I stare at the once-rebel home below me, the lesson is not lost on me.  That lesson may be the only prize of this war.

[keith.lamothe]

Great stuff, thanks

[Underfot]

My pleasure.  I'm sure everyone has their own take on lore in this game. 
Now, on to the expansions.  I'm sure you've packed some good story ideas in there too...

[keith.lamothe]

I'm sure everyone has their own take on lore in this game.

Very much so.

Now, on to the expansions.  I'm sure you've packed some good story ideas in there too...

Definitely, there's good potential in the minor factions in The Zenith Remnant (Zenith Trader and Dyson Sphere particularly), and Children of Neinzul (The Hybrids literally act like a third faction, albeit totally ai-allied, playing their own game inside the game, and the preservation wardens and roaming enclaves have their own stuff going on).  And in Light of the Spire in the Fallen Spire minor faction "campaign" there's actually a scripted story of sorts (via the journal entries).  There's not a ton of it, and I wouldn't consider the contents strict canon, but it does explore some of the "backstory" and "sidestory" as I think of it, and presents a few possible outcomes to the story of what you're actually doing in the game.

So if storytelling is a big interest for you, there's plenty of material in there