A Tale of Two Captains

Everyone has gathered near the launch platforms, according to status and function. You can each see the colors of the other officers around you: blue for navigation, orange for engineering, green for science, white for medics, yellow for comms, and far to the right, black for security, as well as a sea of crewmen and women in gray uniforms behind you. There are about 300 officers present, and more than 3,000 men and women total.

Meanwhile, it's been a long morning. Admiral Ackilo has been droning on for the last two hours, and he's the third speaker of the day. Thankfully, he seems to be wrapping up, so you force yourself to tune back in, in time to hear: "...make... us all... proud." He peers out at the crowd from under his bushy eyebrows, and a tired but hopeful smattering of applause breaks out.

From his seat on the stage, Captain James Montegue Harrison III, Earl of Shaftesbury, steps forward, salutes Admiral Ackilo, then replaces him at the podium. There's a bit of a groan as everyone realizes they have to sit through yet another speech. He begins: "Welcome, Officers, crewmen, and passengers. As you well know, we are journeying into deep space, on a mission to map the stars. If we are indeed successful, we will be the first of many to cross Dark Space. Our mission will face grave danger, and untold wonders."

He clears his throat again, raises his fist in the air, and shouts, "Greatness awaits!"

There is a moment of uncertain silence, but the confusion is quickly discarded when everyone realizes they don't have to stand through another two hour droning lecture. The applause is deafening.

After the ceremony, the gang was sent on an escort mission - bring a large number of citizens to a covert base in the middle of nowhere, to protect them from the upcoming crisis. The trip there was largely uneventful; their ship landed in one piece, and the citizens were entirely unharmed. That was only the beginning, however. The next part of the mission required driving the civilians in old, beat-up hover trucks a good few hundred miles away. For the most part, the mission went well, and they avoided anything too nasty - or, things that were too nasty got the hot end of a flamethrower. After finishing off a few creatures, they ran into a pirate barge; their highly skilled sniping managed to finish off most of the crew, and the few left died when the ship fell out of the air, courtesy of a couple missing engines.

After fighting off a trio of multi-legged lizards, they finally got the civilians to their base. After a quick escape, they made their way back to earth... only to learn that Smooth Criminal's girlfriend had been captured!

Free from their mercenary responsibilities, they rolled up their sleeves and did a bit of investigating. In the girlfriend's apartment, they found a jack-booted Al-Sec agent, one Captain Daneel Kaspar. He, of course, turned out to be a hologram. Somehow managing to stay legal, they shot up an automatic turret, stole a car, and left most of their illegal gear in a parking garage. Later, they returned to collect their stuff - after the cops had left - and headed towards their next lead.

Finally, they made it to a black-ops bunker, built inside a warehouse of some kind. After fighting a few goons (and a turrent inside a polie car), they pushed farther inside, splitting up to cover more ground. The West crew found a tech, manning some monitors, and decided to save his life; the East crew surprised a room full of goons, and left a grenade behind. The tech, of course, ended up being one of the bad guys, and after nearly killing one of the West Crew, was laid to rest in pieces. The East crew, somewhat perforated by a minigun nest, finally met up with the others to face a large robot and another hologram of Kaspar. Though one of the crew died in the mission, Smooth Criminal's girlfriend was rescued, and Kaspar's plans were once again foiled.

Gus and Guy

Hangovers eventually dealt with, John Smith returned to give a mission:

Losing a bit of paperwork for a certain android that would be essential to an upcoming mission.

The facility was made up of three buildings: a rather dirty manufacturing building, a spotlessly clean building, and a fairly ordinary building connected to the other two. After dealing with the guards (and kidnapping one of them), they headed into the compound.

Attempting the third building first, the sniper made a door through the wall via explosives, and wandered around until they made their way onto the manufacturing floor, where android bodies from the dirty building were being fitted with electronics from the clean one. Finding a worker, the group bullied the poor man until he gave up the location of an engineer; tracking down the engineer, they made enough noise to convince him they were from the UEA. He pointed them towards the document storage facility, in the body-manufacturing plant.

Inside, they quickly realized there were a LOT of documents. Shrugging, Flamethrowerette walked to the back and started hosing down the files with her flamethrower. Which, of course, kicked off the sprinklers. The sniper stepped outside the door and took a shot at the pipe feeding the sprinklers, cracking it open. The water inside splashed out onto the wall as the overhead sprinklers dribbled to a stop.

After a good ten minutes (and most of her ammo), the room was a towering inferno. Job done!

On the way out, they came across a delivery truck, full of androids. "Hey - buddy! Hey, you  know where I'm supposed to drop this load of Gus-designation androids?"

They did not.

With Gus the Android set up to be returned to service without a full overhaul, the party was sent to the most important mission yet: removing explosives from one of the exploration ships. The other ships had been cleaned, but that one had shipped out to be stocked before they had time to get to it.

Inside, they swept the corridors and rooms, removing the bombs where they found them. Finally, they located a bomb on the jump drive - and while trying to get assistance in removing it (from a certain Guy Gift, moving in with his family, Madge, Guld, Frank, and Myrr), they ran into a new infiltrating force from AlSec! The fight was over quickly; the few injuries were dealt with, and the ship finally cleared of bombs.

Outside the ship, Captain Seth Grainer met them - he lead them to a missile bay on the station, and loaded the bombs inside. They watched the ship launch; Grainer smiled a bit sadly. "It's strange to think that these could have lead to such destruction are being used for good, now... How odd the way that targets just seem to change. It's a fitting name for this ship, then, isn't it? 'Shifting Horizon'."

After a thoughtful silence, he turned. "Now, I believe we have a ceremony to attend!"

The Quern War: An introduction

July 17, 2889

In 2424, the planet Melga was settled by some of the first human explorers. However, in 2463, a mere 39 years later, Melga was attacked by the Duul'Tlak as the first known act of interplanetary war in the galaxy. For the next 70 years, Earth fought a few light skirmishes against the Duul'Tlak. However, in 2533, the Duul'Tlak reached Quern, and immediately set up a blockade. Quern was the only Jump-route connecting the rest of the known galaxy. That attack and blockade began a 160 year cold war, ending only in 2693 when the Kchk'Trrs helped the Earth forces break through the blockade. By 2741, the Duul'Tlak had been beaten back to their homeworld, and the war was over.

It was not, of course, the only war; AlSec's coup, followed by the great battle of 2880 was a terrible war, but removed the subversive AlSec from Earth and the other planets, thanks largely to the crew of the Shifting Horizon. The events that took place before, during, and after that war were released under the watchful eye of Emperor Julian and the crew of the Shifting Horizon, in an effort to maintain transparency. Of course, compared to the 230-year-long war against the Duul'Tlak, the information relating to the uprising of AlSec and the overthrow of the Earth is still fresh in our minds; few remember the final salvos of the Duul'Tlak war, let alone the opening ones.

But the Quern War and the Battle of Melga may not have been all that the history books had written. There are rumors that something else entirely was at play.

Excerpt from presentation on anonymous J-Web message board, 2855:

So the Duul'Tlak discover Jump Drive technology only a few years before declaring war on Earth, right? As far as we could tell, they never left their own system - no Jump tech. However, the seven years they even know about the tech, they managed to not only start replicating the tech, they were able to fully duplicate it! It wasn't perfect, but we're talking about technology that took hundreds of years for humanity to engineer that was rebuilt in under a decade. I think you'll agree that there is no chance of that happening. In aptitude tests, the Duul'Tlak are no engineers - warriors, yes, but not engineers. How did they copy our drives? Stranger still, there is no trace of the original Duul'Tlak technology. Their assault made it as far as Quern, and held there. It wasn't until the Kchk'Trrs helped us assault Quern that we even made it that far. What happened to our superior numbers? Superior tactics? Superior firepower? You've read the same summaries I have. The Duul'Tlok are great warriors and tacticians, but they couldn't stand up to our forces! A bare handful of worlds against all the resources of Earth? Really?

End excerpt

The document fueling these rumors of conspiracy is a single transmission, received during one of the major offensives on Quern. Much of the document is redacted; furthermore, after only one more offensive, Earth forces stopped most major offences, resorting to maintaining the existing battle line, and only devoting a trickle of forces to the war at large.

Scan of a military communication, circa 2538.

Though the redacted portions of the scan have yet to be uncovered, it is believed that General Acetus, aboard the Sturmmund, had perished, leaving his troops under the command of Lieutenant Commander Lars Thawaar. LtCmd Thawaar held out at Quern Military Outpost 7, though they were cut off from the main fighting force. Any further information about Thawaar and the forces at Quern Outpost 7 has been lost to time - or, if the conspiracies are correct, hidden from the public. What really happened at the battle of Quern? The world may never know...