Sci-Fi Itinere Ad Tenebris

Tom said:

PCorp Directive: ALERT ... Anomaly Signature Detected in Quadrant 226/Nalmanacy System

Admiral Harris Eyes Only: Take Unified Tenebris To Coordinates and Investigate Anomaly Re-post Findings to PCorp ASAP...Highest Priority.

Personal Note from Chancellor W.T. Remus to Jack Harris:
Jack, this anomaly has an exact opposite signature as Tenebris. So much so, I thought it was you but you were having some kind of power fluctuation happening? Thing is, I detected your Tenebris at your present location normally. Be Careful Jack...We haven't been able to figure out what this thing is but it could be as powerful as the Tenebris. You have full authority to act as you determine. Just be careful.

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Tom said:

Jack noticed something about his opponent that he didn't catch right away...
His opponent was doing the Exact Opposite of what he would do?

"Think Jack, Think... What is the exact opposite I would do right now."

Jack gives the order and a series of missle volleys are launched around the enemy's position with a proximity detonation.

The force wave of exploding warheads forces the opponents ships to collide in the center. He noticed a few of the ships being destroyed and damaging others.

"Ha, take that you bastards!"

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Alexandr Kopecky said:

As they approached the anomaly, Admiral Harris turned on the comm, “Identify yourself or face annihilation. You have ten seconds. One… Two… Three…,” the other end picked up, “Four… Five… Six…,”

A sound came from the other end as a vaguely human shape started to form in the video feed, “I… am...,”

“Seven… Eight… Nine…”

The feed cleared and Jack saw a splitting image of himself staring back at him, save for a deep gash clear across the forehead, “You,” A barrage of missiles then shot from the craft ahead of the Tenebris.

“Fire and dissolve!” Jack blared on the alarm. The Tenebris fired a wave of missiles and split into 254 different ships. Only one, Ultimum 174, was hit. The ship was grazed by the explosion and seemed immobilized. “Link up into Quinn formations!” 50 groups of 5 ships and 1 of 4 formed out of their collapsed ship. Jack turned his attention back to the projectiles.

The missiles approached their target. 5km, 4km, 3km, 2km, 1km. The missiles kept going. Not a single one hit its target. But the light from the backs of the missiles revealed the terrible truth.

Admiral Jack Harris was now fighting against an exact copy of the Tenebris. The enemy formed into Sept formations with two groups in Oct formations. The enemy boosted suddenly, in unison, at the tenebris fleet. “Attack!” Jack instructed. The Rammers at the front fired the first volley, and in a single moment, all Hell broke loose...

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sci-fi-dude said:

Say Alexander, are you making a book, and even a movie from this? If so are you selling it on the I-net, or better yet, at a cool bookstore, if so ill purchase one.....

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Alexandr Kopecky said:

I'm honestly just a hobbyist. I' not sure where this is gonna go if anywhere significant, but I hope that it does.

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Alexandr Kopecky said:

Here's a story about a Jack Harris you don't know and a Tenebris that was never brought to full light. Without further ado, I give you:
Defense From the Darkness

Helgi could smell the hot iron as he burned the rust away from the massive shoulder plating. A massive hunk of metal, battered and pummeled by a swarm of razers. The pilot had let his guard down for just a moment, and they had struck. He would have been dead if not for an EMP blast set off by another Titanic. The issue was that it had also shut down the metal monster it was used to protect.

The drones had taken it away in the heat of battle to come back to Titan 1 for repairs. Helgi wished that he could be there. Since he first saw an ad on the web for Tyrus, he had known it was his calling. Since that first day, he had longed to be in the fleet. He wouldn’t have minded if he had been put in a jumper or even a border guard, but the thing he wanted most was to be with the Titanics themselves.

In the hundreds of years that he’d been on Tyrus, he had seen every one of the battle tapes. The massive iron monsters fighting the imminent black swarm against all odds. EMP missiles hitting the cloud of death did next to nothing, flamethrowers barely kept the darkness at bay, and yet still they moved on. In Helgi’s eyes, they seemed to be the most heroic people in the galaxy. And yet, like him, they were barely people at all.

They were cyborgs, in a way. Their bodies in chambers within a robotic exoskeleton. A myriad of machinery attaching nerves to the walls of the chamber, allowing the pilot to manuever his/her mech as they would regularly move their own body.

Helgi was a mechanic. A 16 ft tall robot with retractable tools coming out of each hand. His job was to scrub down and repair the Titanics who were injured on the war front. Cleaning up one of them might take days at a time, but the Titanics didn’t feel a thing. When they were in repair, they were put into hibernation.

“Helgi!” Brunhofer screamed in his deep, metallic voice, “You done with that shoulder-plate!?”

Helgi replied, “Yes sir!”

“Sparkling as usual! I swear Helgi, you’re the hardest worker in this wretched old warehouse. You may not be the most skilled, but if I had to trust anyone with this old hunk-o’-junk o’ mine, you’d be the first on my list.” Brunhofer commemorated, referring to his own mech, a slightly larger mechanic build. He blared a deafening, horn-like sound from speakers on the sides of what would be his head, signaling the daybreak of the week.

At the noise, over twenty mechanics came roaring past them, metal clinking together as their bodies crashed into each other. Once the flood of steel bodies had stopped, Helgi turned to Brunhofer, “SIr, I was going to head to the arena to train, but if you need my help, I ca-”

“Nah, Helgi, it’s your break. I’ll see you in a day. I think this Titanic’s done with his repairs already,” Brunhofer responded.

“Thank you, Sir,” Helgi told Brunhofer as he was already walking down the hall.

********

“All crewmembers report to bridge!” Jack blared over the PR system. Within 5 minutes, all 237 crewmembers of the Tenebris were standing in front of Jack, spotless as usual. Jack pulled the microphone closer to his mouth, “As you know, we are on our way to the planet of Tyrus, home of the Titanics. What you may not know, is why. The Perennis corporation has sent us here in order to end the war.

“Our first goal is to end it diplomatically. If that doesn't work, we are to choose to take the side that will finish it quickly. The Perennis corporation and others are loosing money from the endeavor of funding the Titanic efforts. As of now, it seems to be the Razers, but who knows, maybe the Titanics have a magic kill switch or something.

“My point is, we aren't gonna base this off of prior knowledge, we find out what's happening here and now and end it at all costs. Now let's go say hi to some giants. Gary, get us into orbit.” Jack sat down as the ship jumped forward. Jack was pressed against his seat as the ship jerked. After a bit, the ship slowed down, easing the pressure. “I'll head down to the Titanic base with Erfan. Vencel, you go down to the Razer base with Corbeighner.” Jack got out of his seat and walked toward the halls, Erfan following in his lead. The halls were a series of passageways that you could walk through for hours on end. They went in a circle around the central spire of the ship, giving the illusion of gravity. However, while a regular person would get lost in the many pathways and corridors, the crew of the Tenebris were no regular people.

They were, in a way, robots. Every bit of their essence flowed through their entire bodies thousands of times per second. Their human bodies had long since died off, destroyed in pools of acid back on Earth. In many ways, they were like the Titanics. Immortals attempting to survive in a world where the immortal are constantly challenged and attacked.

********

Helgi staggered toward the arena, a towering structure that looked like the Colosseum from Earth. But unlike the one on Earth, this one was made of massive walls of rusted metal and fallen Titanics. It reminded everyone who fought that the Titanics were the big boys of Tyrus, and nobody was to mess with them.

As he stomped through the entrance, Helgi noticed that there were a lot of jumpers in the arena. All of them looked like they were constantly watching him, with their single sensory device on the end of a long, craning neck. They were all about 12 ft tall, give or take a foot. Jumpers were used back when groups of Titanics fought on Tyrus. However, since the beginning of the war with the Razers, they were next to useless in battle. They were simply too small, and too weak, to fight the swarm. Helgi got into the line and waited for about an hour until he was at the front and ready to go.

The speaker above him blared, “Next!” and he lumbered out into the arena. Waiting for him there was a rather large jumper, almost as tall as Helgi himself. The jumper was painted jet-black with a sensor lit up bright red.

“This will be fun,” the jumper said in a raspy sounding tone.

“Fight!” the crowd of mechs chanted, bets being shouted out by metallic voices.

The jumper ran at Helgi like a bullet train. It jumped up into the air, spinning like a buzzsaw. As the enemy came down on him, a drill came out of Helgi’s arm and dug straight into the jumper as it hurled itself at him. The jumper scuttled back to safety, a massive gash left on its back.

Now it was Helgi’s turn. He started bounding towards the jumper with long, mechanical strides. The jumper was ready and leaped out of the way, but Helgi was ready, too. As he jumped in the air in an attempt to land on his opponent, Helgi launched a knife out of his forearm and it hit its mark, the jumper’s leg. Once hit, the leg blew a fuse and the jumper fell to the ground, defeated.

As the crowd roared in appreciation, Helgi got ready for his next opponent.

********

As the four falcon ships launched out of the hangar with blue thrusters burning, Jack spoke over the radio, “Now remember, Vencel, we want to do this peacefully, not forcefully.”

“When have you known me to be forceful?” the hotheaded mechanic sarcastically questioned.

As the four ships descended on the planet, Jack’s windshield filled itself with orange flames, courtesy of air resistance. Jack’s ears filled with a shrill static until his ears adjusted to the noise. As the ship levelled out over the vast forests, the pairs of ships departed from each other. The other two ships disappeared into the distance, so Jack scanned the horizon for the base of the Titanics. Then he spotted it. A massive field of cylindrical towers that looked more than 200 ft tall, joined together by rectangular pipes the size of redwoods from earth. Everything was rusty, every inch of metal brown from oxidation.

Jack marvelled at the sheer size of it all before remembering to look for a landing spot. There was a runway at the other end of the towers, giving him one last chance to stare at the magnificence of it before he would be on the ground, unable to see the entire field of towers. He dropped the wheels as he landed on the airstrip, Erfan following suit behind him. They both drove around for a bit, looking for a place to park their ships that wasn’t in the way. When they finally found an open area way in the back, they unboarded, “Hey Erf, can you check where the main headquar-” Jack stopped speaking as he saw one of the massive towers opening, two giant metal plates pulling back to reveal a humanoid machine almost as tall as the tower it had come out of.

The Titanic took a step, and the ground shuddered as if it was afraid of the monster who had laid its foot upon it. When it was fully out into the midday light, Jack saw that it was armed to the teeth. It had what seemed to be rocket launchers on it’s shoulders as well as thousands of small holes on its fists. With a loud “Whirrrr!” a massive headlight on what would have been the beast’s face illuminated. It turned its head, observing everything around it. “Check, check,” the behemoth assured in a voice too deep and resounding to be human, “Beginning weapons’ system check.” With that, the giant’s hands lit ablaze.

********

Vencel flew at a leisurely pace, searching for anything that resembled a man-made base in the forest. Suddenly, a bright light and deafening noise caught his attention. As he turned to look, he saw a black, snakelike anomaly rising up from the ground where the light had come from, and, on closer inspection, realized something.

Corbeighner wasn’t behind him. He instinctively turned his gaze from the tentacle to watch where he was going. The last thing he saw was the black swarm.

********

It had been a long day for Helgi. He had won all of his battles until he had to face a border guard with a taser on his arm. The arrogant son of a gun had fried Helgi’s arms and then knocked him over so that he had to crawl to the exit where a fellow mechanic had helped to prop him up to get to the repairs station.

After all repairs were completed, Helgi was still feeling crappy and started on his way back to the towers when suddenly the alarm sounded, “We have Razer forces approaching, I repeat, we have Razer forces approaching!”

Tens of towers opened up, revealing the Titanics in all of their glory. Helgi jumped out of the way as one Titanic, ready in advance, vaulted toward the North Wall, where Border Guards were already starting to fail as the wall of darkness crept above the top. The Titanic swung at the darkness with a blazing fist and the darkness receded, but there were still other spots where Razers were invading the home base.

Now, all Titanics fit for battle had been released from their silos. The ground shook as they ran in bounds to combat the Razer swarm. EMP missiles fired at the wall, slowing the advance of the attackers.

One Titanic hopped the wall and when he landed, was engulfed in bright, orange, fire. Then, a moment later, the fire ceased, and the Titanic was left standing there, not a single spec of the Razers’ darkness anywhere near him.

Another one was holding what seemed to be an assault rifle in its massive, metal fingers. However, when it pulled the trigger, a massive missile tore through the air and hit a section of the wall, heavily damaging the Razers’ advance. The massive creature fired many more rounds until it seemed to be out of ammunition and the Titanic dropped its weapon. At that point, fire shot from the giant’s forearms, and it ran into battle.

The entire fiery spectacle of the battle was mesmerizing to Helgi. It was the first time he had ever seen anything like it up close. After a while, his sensors started hurting from the light and heat. He turned away from it for a bit, and in that short period of time, he saw the dark cloud of Razer-filled death breaching the South Wall.

Helgi ran. He ran to warn the Titanics about the oncoming swarm. He ran to save himself from it. He ran, and yet the darkness continued to creep up on him. He swung around and attempted to save himself by firing his plasma-cutter at it.

But the darkness kept moving. And suddenly, like a guardian angel, a massive foot at least twice as large as Helgi himself stomped in the way of him and death. Suddenly, streams of fire shot from what would have been the Titanic’s toes, if it had had any. The darkness receded.

Two more Titanics came to fight off the Razers coming from the south, but Helgi didn’t see them, he was running back to the closest thing to home he had, silo 38.

********

Jack had found out the devastating news before they had struck. Vencel and Corbeighner had been shot down by Razer forces.

This wasn’t what he had signed up for.

wasn’t what he had signed up for. When they joined the Ultimum project, they hadn’t thought that they would ever have to worry about dying again. After all, they were impervious to disease and could be repaired at a moment’s notice. A gunshot wound wouldn’t kill them.

But a swarm of metal, tearing at anything in its path? Yeah, that might do the trick.

And then, of course, there was the fact that everything around them had gone to hell shortly after they got to the government headquarters.

“Breach on segment 29!” an alarm blared.

“Breach on segment 91!” another alarm shouted.

Razers were attacking every inch of the Titanic base and, for once, Jack had no way of stopping it. He wasn’t in charge here. He was just the representative of a vague, far off company that wasn’t supposed to exist.

Now, he was sitting in a room, sharing his sadness with Erfan at the loss of two of their greatest crewmembers. “I remember once, Vencel told me that he thought this entire thing was a hoax, that we would die, same as anyone else, and that the Perennis corp. solution was just a way to delay the inevitable,” Jack shared.

Erf chuckled, “I guess he was right.”

“Breach on segment 56!” the speaker projected.

“I guess he was,” Jack smiled

********

Helgi sat out the rest of the battle in Silo 38. It was an old Titanic silo that had been unused for a century. Helgi had found out about it in his free time and had gutted it out, turning it into his own personal retreat. He normally felt at peace here.

But not tonight. Tonight he was scared. Scared that the Razers would find him here. Scared that they would rip him apart. Not just his robotic exoskeleton, but the Ranchorian body inside. He was born a Ranchorian. Not a mechanic, not a Titanic, just one of the many races that had evolved since man left his humble beginnings back on Earth.

After hours upon hours of hiding, Helgi heard something he hadn’t heard in a while, silence. There were no more alarms or ground shaking steps or explosives detonating. Just silence. Helgi opened up the Mechanics Door for Silo 38. First, he saw that it was dawn. Second, he saw the carnage that had taken place. Massive piles of ruined metal lay strewn about. Remnants of destroyed Titanics.

Ash was covering everything as well, the residue of destroyed Razer forces. But in spite of all the destruction, in spite of all the death, at least 30 of the 70 Titanics in the fleet had survived.

They had won. Once again, against all odds, the Titanics had achieved victory. One Titanic with massive webbed protrusions on his shoulders produced a horn like noise. A victory call. A way to tell the enemy, as far off as they were, that the Titanics were still standing.

********

“I do not care whether or not the war will end quickly! I

whether or not their deaths are avenged!” Jack screamed.

The man on the screen tried to negotiate, “General Harris, it is not in our interests to prolong this w-”

“No! It's not in

interest for us to

this war because you’ll lose money. I’ve already had Erfan check the numbers. If the Titanics win, you will have to keep paying them war reparations. If the Razers win, you don’t have to do anything. You’re just a greedy little-”

“General, please be reaso-” the man’s chat was cut short.

“We are winning this war.” Jack said to Erfan. He walked out of the room and headed to the meeting room, “Tell your general that we have weaponry, explosives, anything he needs. What I need from you is numbers. I need a Titanic army that can take out the Razer base in a week, tops. Got it?”

“Yes sir, thank you, sir,” one of the jumper leaders assured Jack.

“Let's get to work,” Jack stated with a sly grin.

********

“Welcome to the draft!” general Saden said in his booming, Titanic voice to the hundreds of jumpers and mechanics below him, “We have spent all night discussing which forty of you will be joining our ranks for the upcoming invasion. If you would not like to fill the position, say so and you shall not be chosen.”

General Saden went down his list, some chose not to fight but most were ready to take up arms. After about 23 names, the moment Helgi had been waiting for arrived, “Helgi, will you take up arms against our god-forsaken foe?” the general boomed.

“Yes sir!” Helgi announced, wishing he could smile.

A few days later, he was put inside his new body. He had helped prepare it himself, decorating it with the same type of paint as his old body to remind him of his past. The entire time leading up to the point where he became this beast, he felt like the body had an air of familiarity about it. When the doors opened, he stepped out and tested his foot flamethrowers.

It hit him. This was the body of the Titanic that had saved him the night of the first invasion. It comforted him to know that the person who may have given their life for him, did it for a reason.

For the next three days he trained, day and night, to be ready to fight. He figured out every use for every weapon in his arsenal, he met others who had become Titanics in the draft. One of them, with the name of Pedro, was the Jumper who he had battled the day before what became known as do-day: the day where the Titanic army got its stuff together and got prepped to end the war.

Pedro still had a jet-black body and a massive, red headlight. But this time, his hands could ignite to fend off hundreds of Razers at a time.

Today was the day. The day that the Titanics would walk up to the Razers and destroy them, annihilate them. They started to march out to the battlefield, “So, you nervous?” Helgi asked Pedro.

“Just a little bit,” Pedro replied, comically. It had become a joke between them that they were both just “a little” scared about facing a swarm of flying metal that could tear you apart if you let your guard down for a few seconds. Pedro stopped, “Oh god.”

Ahead of them was a massive spire of black, reaching into the sky, “Well, I guess this is it,” Helgi muttered.

“I guess so,” Pedro replied.

********

“What the hell?” Jack muttered as he stared at the video stream coming in. It was as if they were preparing for an attack. Suddenly Jack realized why.

“Sir, how could they have known?.” one of the leaders questioned.

“I’ll tell you why. We ran on a predictable schedule. Exactly one week after they attack us, we attack them. We got so caught up in planning that we simplified our plan too much. We didn’t think that they’d realize that we were coming today, but clearly they did.

“Lucky for us, the part that can’t fail isn’t the element of surprise, it’s the barrage of weaponry. The only way that we can win this is by out muscling them. If our goal was to beat them with strategy, it wouldn’t work. They move as one. Hell, I wouldn’t even be surprised if- holy mother of god that’s it,.” Jack realized.

“What is it?” one of the war commanders asked.

“They move as one. The only way for them to do this would be to think as one, and therefore

one. I need you to tell your men down there to push towards the center. I think I know how we can win this.”

********

The order came blaring through Helgi’s brain. The Titanics were to push towards the center by any means possible. As they neared the front, Helgi saw the EMP missiles knocking out waves of Razers, as well as regular missiles blowing holes in their advance.

One Titanic had what looked like leaf blowers on his body. The air blew back the Razers. Suddenly, a stream of fire shot from his head and he ran into the hole that he made with air and fire.

Helgi advanced toward the darkness with Pedro, firing at the Razers as they got closer. Before they breached the wall of blackness, Pedro turned to Helgi, “See you in Valhalla,” and plunged into the tornado, fists ablaze.

Helgi turned on all of his flamethrowers and ran into the darkness after Pedro. The Razers stayed away from the firey parts of him, but Helgi had to continuously shoot fire at his own head to shoo them away. He could vaguely see Pedro’s red light through small gaps in the darkness.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a stream of Razers flooded in to attack Pedro. They drilled straight through his leg and destroyed it, causing Pedro to fall to the ground.

“Hang on!” Helgi screamed to his friend over the sound of thousands of Razers. Pedro’s light was out, and the Razers had destroyed his arm, but his torso was still intact. The part of Pedro that held his real body was still intact, and Helgi would make sure it stayed that way.

Helgi thought about the message, “Push towards the center by any means possible,”

“Too bad,” he said to himself, “I guess that’ll have to wait.”

********

Jack observed the screen. It was almost working. The weapons were almost making it all the way through the spire of death. Holes were being created in the spire, and they weren’t always closing up. Sometimes, what seemed like part of a building was showing through.

“How high and mighty do you feel now, one man army?” Jack smiled.

********

How could it all go so wrong so fast? Clemencia had prepared it all from the start. She knew when they were coming, how they were coming, and why they were coming. How could she lose? She had an army of bots that could eat through diamond. They had old hunks of metal and fire. How could her superior Aragorian intelligence fail her against these buffoons? How could she die here? On the planet that not so long ago had seemed so easy to take for herself? Perhaps having numbers was her issue. Maybe she should have tried to negotiate peacefully with the Titanics. If only there was a way to go back.

********

Helgi had been standing over Pedro, guarding him from the Razers, for at least an hour. The swarm would strike, and Helgi would burn them. They would strike from another direction, and Helgi would burn them. The problem was, Helgi was already half out of gas for the flames. Hopefully somebody ended this before the Razers ended him.

********

“Yes!” Jack yelled as he watched the missile arc toward the building at the center of the towering spire. Behind it trailed a white stream., “Ironic,” Jack said to himself, “as nobody will be surrendering tonight.”

********

A hole in defenses here, a hole in defences there, this was going to be the end of Clemencia, she just knew it. She had too many things to do for even her mind to handle.

“Oh my god,” she verbally spoke as she realized that there was a hole in her defenses right where she was, and that there was a missile going to that hole.

********

All of a sudden, the Razers stopped, frozen in midair. All attacks stopped and instead, the Razers fell to the ground, revealing the sun, oh the glorious sun of Tyrus. Helgi had never been happier to see it. In the light, he saw a massive tower in the middle of the battlefield.



, he thought. At that, he lifted up Pedro, and started to make his way back to his home, the home of the Titanics.

********

Today was departing day for Jack. He would miss Tyrus, but he had to solve another conflict on another planet in another solar system. He just had a few words to say to the residents of the one planet he had been able to relate to after all of this.

“Everybody, you may not know me, but I know you. My name is Jack Harris, and I have been here since the night that the Razers attacked. I was sent here to end this war, and I think I helped to accomplish that. Since I learned about your people, I have related to your cause. You all know the pain and suffering of immortals. Well, so do I. I am the captain of the Tenebris, a ship filled with a crew who was told when we left Earth that we would be granted immortality. I learned that this was not entirely true about three weeks ago when two of my crewmembers were killed by the Razers. That day, I swore to myself that I would finish this war. Not the easiest way, not the quickest way, the right way. And here we are now,” Jack walked down two flights of stairs to get to the bottom of the podium as giant metal hands clapped for him.

As he started up his ship and left along with Erf, he looked back, “Long live the immortals,” he whispered to himself.

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