DNV Loch Morlich: The Lonely Sentinel (A Starsector story)

HarakoniWarhawk · Jan 24, 2021

This is something I've been meaning to delve into for a while now. I've always loved Starsector and it's got so much potential I just had to do it.

I'm really only doing this because of a nasty dizzy spell making Tales untenable at the moment, so this probably won't get many updates.

Space is, funnily enough, mostly empty space... pardon the pun.

It's a nugget of wisdom that's been passed down ever since humanity took their first steps into the void, on Long Lost Earth. Most Grounders never understood that fact, media and fiction presenting the incorrect assumption that planets were abundant, even the rare Terran types. Reality couldn't be any further from the truth, most worlds were airless rocks tumbling through space, surface lashed by meteorite impacts and scarred by the lashing tongues of the solar wind.

Even the Domain of Man, who's technology was capable of terraforming entire worlds in a mere century more often than not chose worlds close to the result they wished for. Just like any other colony expedition, the Perseus Sector was established on the worlds chosen by the Domain, people shipped from across the galaxy to colonize these untapped systems and their resources.

Supplied by the megastructures known as the Gates, the worlds of the Sector grew and prospered, their appetite for manpower and tech fed by the corporations who'd established breach offices there. Of course... when the Gates shut down with no warning, the Sector was cut off from the very things that let it survive. As the years passed, wars were fought, blood was shed and worlds died, begging the uncaring void for help that would never come.

What people nowadays know as the 'Core Worlds' represents at most a tenth of the planets, moons and habitats colonised in the Perseus Sector. Beyond systems where the remnants of Tri-Tachyon's drone fleets roam, where automated beacons provide navigational data for worlds long fallen silent, where the hulks of lost ships tumble through the void... there exists a body orbiting a red dwarf.

The planet was never named by those who discovered it, represented on bureaucratic records as merely an alphanumerical string. On the very edge of the habitable zone, sub-zero winds scoured the tundra that composed the thin strip of barely-liveable land around the equator. The people who called it home had fled from civilized space and travelled an incredible distance to land on this frozen hellhole.

They named the world Seonaidh's Folly, perhaps because naming the planet with oceans buried beneath kilometres of ice after a sea spirit was suitably ironic... the reasons why are lost to history as the people are. The fleet of civilians vessels and decommissioned warships they arrived on were nearly all scrapped and converted into housing and other necessities. Nearly all is not all though, for one ship remained intact and under power in orbit.

It was joked that the Tyrant class Fast Battleship was won in a drinking game with a Domain Sub-Commander who detested having the relic in his fleet. Of similar vintage to the venerable Legion and Onslaught, where those ships were the pride of fleets even to this day the Tyrant was an oddball at best, a mistake at worst.

However it came to be orbiting Seonaidh's Folly, the people knew her as Loch Morlich, though in respect for her history she kept the heraldry of the Domain Navy. Despite the expense of keeping her operational, Morlich was a favourite posting for young men and women wishing for a taste of life in space. Kept in geo-synchronous orbit above the colony, it was a common trend late at night to find the faux-star hanging overhead and thank the ship for her protection.

Of course, there was never any enemies or foes for the old warship to fight, not this far out from the hub of the Perseus Sector. In the end, the Colony's fate was that of many other worlds across the sector, a slow death by starvation when the gates shut off forever. Trading transplutonics for food, when the convoy failed to arrive on schedule there was little alarm. Delays were common and the people had stored extra for situations like this.

But as the months went by with no sign of relief, the handful of FTL capable vessels they possessed was sent one by one in search of help... none returned. In desperation, they turned to Loch Molich, but her FTL drive was centuries older than anyone alive and finicky to power up. As the world died below them, the Tyrant's crew did their all to get the drive operational... but it was too late.

While the majority of the crew departed to be with their loved ones in those final, bleak days, a bare handful stayed behind to keep working. Even those hardy souls succumbed to the crushing weight of dying alone and forgotten, choosing a short trip out the airlock without a suit or more sudden means to end it all. But one remained, even as the air grew thin and the scraps of food dried up, a young woman who was barely out of her teens.

Clad in a timeworn Domain Navy engineering voidsuit, the girl, through means unknown, managed to power up the FTL drive before succumbing to exhaustion and falling asleep. It was a slumber she never woke from, passing into the night as the final living soul of Seonaidh's Folly gave her last breath and died. Spacers are always fond of saying that ships had souls as surely as any person, touched by the lives of everyone who served aboard them. When the last human in the system died fixing the old Tyrant, it had an effect that none could have predicted.

Maintaining her orbit with automated course adjustments, Molich kept her vigil over the world that had looked to her as a protector. The ship wasn't sentient, but the centuries spent holding vigil over a dead world while being forced to listen to the cries for help from long-dead people transmitted by automated beacons... well, it was not pleasant for all involved.

That vigil was unbroken for three-hundred and six years, with not even a single visit from a ship of any kind. The warship slumbered, quiescent but rousing every few years to scan the system for any signs of life. The sole jump point, beyond the red dwarf's heliopause, warped and flared with exotic energies when something in Hyperspace forced the point open to permit exit into reality. Particles with names that required multiple doctorates to be understood erupted from the jump point as a ship emerged,

The Lasher class frigate had at one point served in the Domain 14th fleet, the legendary (Or infamous, depending on who you asked) fleet that had founded the Hegemony. Burning in-system with a speed that implied a lack of time or desperation, the frigate was picked up by Molich's sensor sweep. Recognizing the buried Ident codes in the Lasher, an automated handshake was sent and received by the tiny ship. In their haste to flee for the dubious safety of the system's asteroid belt, they missed the frigate's computer accepting the signal and transmitting a recording of the distress signal the crew had tried to use before being forced to escape whoever was chasing them.

The message itself was short, the man's panicked voice unknowingly mirroring the long-dead colonists. "If anyone is out there, please, help us!" Hounded to a dead system far from any kind of authority, the crew never expected anyone to hear their cry.

One ship heard their distress call, the hysterical and panicked words echoing through the battleships' bridge. In a cruel universe, the message would have prompted no response... but those eight words roused something never seen by the eyes of men. The figure in an engineering voidsuit slumped on the captain's chair twitched, despite having been dead centuries. Once might have been a fluke of the environmental systems, but as a second and third twitch shifted the body, something else was happening.

Vibrant golden eyes snapped open as what had been a desiccated corpse drew a shaky breath. Brain flooded by sensations both familiar and foreign, the young woman's gaze snapped towards the empty sensor pit where the distress call was being broadcast from. Unbidden, memories of thousands of similar and in some cases identical messages battered her mind, the voices of those she'd failed to protect coming back to haunt her.

Instincts at once familiar and alien had her bringing the Tyrant class fast battleship online, fusion reactors coming to life as powerful magnetic fields leashed the captured suns in their hearts. As the ship came to full power for the first time in over three hundred years, an unsteady hand touched a button on the chair's armrest.

Archaoetech transmitters gave voice to a message that harkened back to the days of the Domain of Man. "This is the Domain Navy Vessel Loch Morlich. Distress call received and acknowledged."

Marvelling at the impossibility of having a human hand, nay, a human body, Loch Molich was suddenly must less confident in her ability to help. Drawing from memories of her previous captain's lent her voice steel, but the enormity of her new existence came crashing down like a KEW strike. Her body seemingly reflected the state of her ship body, limbs tingling as subsystems received power and ran through checks.

Her ability to move was hamstrung by the need to bring her engines online slowly, lest the entire assembly rupture from superheated reactant mass being forced into a cold engine. It would be many hours, perhaps even a day before she could move, though only half that for the Lasher to receive her message. If they acted in time, the crew could reach her before whatever was chasing them arrived.

She'd failed the people of Seonaidh's Folly, these humans would not die, not if she had anything to say about it.

"Oh sure, Lennuel, let's accept the shady man's offer to secure an AI core in a dead system, what could go wrong!"

The four other people in the cramped bridge of Hot Rod, a dubiously acquired Hegemony surplus Lasher, groaned in unison. The pilot, Lennuel, had been saying variations of that for the last six hours ever since they'd jumped into this system. For all that the spacer was right about how things had gone tits up, nobody appreciated the sentiment repeated ad nauseam, let alone when they were being chased by automated ghost ships that shouldn't exist.

Resisting the urge to curse through sheer force of will, Captain Andrea Quasar kept her voice mostly level. "Len, shut up or man up. Your whining isn't helping us escape those things!" She regretted accepting the strange man's offer now, but at the time having all their debts wiped was a ray of hope.

Lacking a dedicated sensor station, the gangly young man's hands flew over the console in search for any sign of life. Sadly for the other crew, he could complain and work simultaneously. "We escaped that destroyer and its escorts by the skin of our teeth, but this system is even deader than..." Pausing his frantic button mashing, the spacer was looking at something on his screen in open-mouthed shock.

Curious but unable to see the screen with his body in the way, Andrea wanted answers. "You find anything? Those drone fucks catch up with us?"

In lieu of replying, Lennuel pressed a button on his console, the voice that came over the bridge speakers bore a strange accent and said things that were impossible. "This is the Domain Navy Vessel Loch Morlich. Distress call received and acknowledged." Everyone on board had been born in the Perseus Sector and knew not even the Hegemony navy identified themselves that way.

"I-It's gotta be a trick! T-The drones! They musta been waiting for us or something..." Len's babbling was cut off by a cuff to the back of the head, the Captain regretting the move as she shook her stinging hand.

"Panic later, details now!" Andrea knew she was being harsh, but shit was fucked any anything that could save their ass's needed identified sooner rather than later.

The old computers were playing up between sub-standard repairs and operating at full power for over a week, but the pilot managed to get a return on something. "S-Sorry Cap... Got a contact around the same planet the transmission came from, but it's too far to ident... Ludd's Beard." If it had been physically possible, his eyes would be the size of saucers. While the short-range sensors on the Hot Rod couldn't identify the source, the Lasher's warbook had done just that and spat the results out on the screen.

Struggling to control his trembling hands, Lennuel's smile was nigh-hysterical and creepy for Andrea to witness. "The Rod's sayin the ship it came from is a Tyrant class fast battleship... a Domain Navy warship!"

Piping up from the gunnery station, crewman Pike wasn't liking it. "Bullshit, the Domain's been gone for centuries, the hell could ah active warship be doing out here in the arse end of nowhere?" His question fell on deaf ears because the Captain was watching something on the sensors with dawning horror.

Throwing herself back in her chair, Andrea hurried to buckle in. "The destroyer just jumped in-system with friends, our only chance is to punch it and hope whatever's in control over there recognizes the Hot Rod as Domain fleet." Following their captain's example, everyone made sure their straps were secure before they began accelerating. "If it's hostile, we die... but the Drone's will kill us too. I'd rather die in a blaze of glory than get cut apart and hunted down by ghost ships!"

The old inertial compensators on the frigate protested the sudden burst of acceleration it underwent. Pressed back into their seats, the thirty-person crew of the Lasher prepared for what was to come in their own ways, most cursing the Captain for picking a shitty job. If the compensators held up, the ship would reach the second planet barely an hour before their pursuers, if that.

Despite knowing it was nigh-useless, Andrea began transmitting their distress call on every band their systems could reach. Maybe Ludd would have mercy on her ship for once, rather than being a spiteful asshole.

In the end, Loch Morlich's estimates were both correct and wrong simultaneously.

She'd regained control over the manoeuvring thrusters just in time for the Lasher to come into sensor range, but her main engines were still struggling to power up. Thankfully, while she couldn't move with any great speed, the ship could adjust along the X and Y axis, which meant her weapons could be employed. The only issue was she didn't recognize what half of them were.

While she could 'feel' the weapons somehow, bringing up the console's readout of them helped her visualise their roles. Thankfully, her Anaximander MRM launcher was intact and showing full magazines, with nanoforges standing by to replenish those with feedstock. The Vulcan PD network was all green and operating at 100%, tied into the fire-control provided by her Widowmaker Flak cannons, as was the wing-mounted Harpoon launchers.

Looking through the bridge windows, the trio of white-plated cannons looked out of place next to her Navy-issue paint scheme. While no manufacturer was listed, all three shared similarities that clearly meant the same company had made them. The pair of either side of her nose was revolver cannons loaded with smart-fused explosive ammo, though how it performed in combat was unknown. The centreline mount was similar in that it was also a revolver, except it was an electrothermal weapon firing some kind of long-rod ammo?

She didn't need to check the sensor console to know the frigate was still burning hard towards her, staying just out of range of the trio of unknown ships pursuing it. Just from looking at them, Morlich knew they were bad news. No human ship could pull that kind of acceleration while also staying completely comm-silent, it just wasn't done. It had taken studying them on passives to notice how precise the unknown's were in their movements, even their sensors modulated with a precision only a machine could match.

She'd fought during the Proxima Drone Wars, memories of similar vessels burning worlds to ash driving the embodied warship to finish her checkup before they got into range. Secure in their inertially-compensated barbettes, her pair of Gauss Cannons sent back the all-clear. The weapons were her heaviest armament, launching massive slugs of nickel-iron at velocities that would strain even the shields of Domain Ships of the Line. Of course, the abominations would detect their power up nigh-instantly... but the traverse mechanisms could run off mechanical backups and let her lay the guns in without drawing attention.

Hopefully, these new drones were as reliant on sensors over optics as the Proxima variants were, a thread of thought that brought her attention to the drones sitting in her hangars. The cameras were showing two squadrons of Broadsword fighters ready for launch, but her sensors and the strange feelings from her body said otherwise.

Both agreed the fighters were in fact automated themselves, the cockpit torn out and replaced by a relay hub. The weight saved from removing everything needed to support a pilot had been dedicated to an integrated light autocannon which supplemented the machine guns and flares of the base model. The only thing stopping Morlich from ejecting them into space and fragging them with the Vulcans was the sense that they would only obey her... not that she knew how that worked.

Her internal thoughts meant the desperately accelerating frigate was nearly on top of her hull, well within the range of her new revolver cannons. Holding a breath she didn't need to take, the ensouled Tyrant fast battleship waited for the drones to get close enough that escape would be impossible. All she had to do was wait...

"Cap, the drones are getting closer." Lennuel was starting to worry, Hot Rod had been fast enough to reach the battleship before their pursuers, except the warship wasn't doing anything!

Elation at seeing the powered up Tyrant had faded to concern then desperation when it never reacted to their coming into weapon range. Andrea furtively glanced at the bulkhead behind her, knowing the ghost ships were slowly but steadily gaining on them. She'd served with this bunch for too long to try and hide her fear for long, but she did suppress it to give them a little more hope.

On that front, the spacer pilot was giving her a panicked look, which she needed to nip in the bud. "Len, I know things look bad, but can you get us behind the envelope of that ship's shields? If they come online..." Thinking of it staying dead was a path she didn't need right now, so the woman squashed it hard. "When they come online, I don't want to bounce off like a pinball when our shields merge with theirs."

If that happened, their Flux cells would overload and leave them a sitting duck in space, while also blowing out the shield generators from the backlash. Giving her a shaky nod, Lennuel turned back to his controls and focussed on putting every spare erg of power into the engines, anything to keep them alive a little longer.

In the immortal words of a person long dead, 'When shit hits the fan, it tends to get messy'.

The threat sensors in the Lasher went wild as the Tyrant went to combat power, the alarms nearly deafening the over-stimmed crew in the process. Every weapon system on the Domain warship roused from their stupor, mechanisms whirring as barrels elevated to track the trio of automated ships. The Beta core directing the Fulgent class Droneship had believed the battleship was silent, the Remnant's reconnaissance of this system having been performed when the ship was slumbering at minimal power.

In the two seconds it took for the Gauss Cannon's capacitors to charge, the Ripper Flechette Guns hurled streams of smart-fuzed shells into the paths of the escorting Glimmer frigates. The fragmentation rounds hammered at the shields but did little to strain them, only momentarily blinding their sensors from the backwash. The Beta core tried to warn its Gamma core escorts, but it came too late for the frigates as each received a nickel-iron slug nearly as long as they were.

Like all Remnant ships, their advanced shield generators were akin to a human vessel of a size category above them. But no destroyer in existence could tank a hit from weapons meant to pressure capital ships, the rounds punching through the barriers with barely any resistance. As the escorts detonated from runaway fusion reactors going critical, the Fulgent was the target of all the other weapons.

Intended to cripple the engines of larger ships, nine MRM's roared from the Anaximander at point-blank range. As the EMP warheads pressured the destroyer's shields and Flux cells, the Whistler Jetfire fired a burst of penetrator ammo into the stressed barrier. At such close range, even the PD network was turned towards the drone, a dozen Vulcan PD guns firing as one in a deluge of kinetic fire, the proximity-fused shells from the Flak Cannons blowing chunks from the Fulgent's engines.

Watching their inexorable pursuers get shredded by the Tyrant, Captain Andrea Quantum couldn't help but give a cheer when two squadrons of Broadsword fighters came screaming out of the wing hangars and poured fire into the battered destroyer. That proved to be the last straw for the Remnant vessel, the fragmented hulk barely holding together by the time a pair of slugs spread it across the planetary orbit.

Parents told their children of the Domain and their fleets of all-powerful warships, fleets which the Hegemony could only muster a pale shadow of these days. Having come to a stop behind the warship, the crew of the Hot Rod watched on with awe as the Tyrant's engines lit with roiling plumes of orange before she ship began to move.

Light from the red dwarf illuminated the faded heraldry of a navy long gone and thought lost forever, yet, somehow, there here was one, dozens of light-years from the Core Worlds. While she wasn't particularly religious, she still joined in when Lennuel began a prayer to Ludd of thanks, even if the prophet most certainly hadn't been the one to save their bacon,

As the fast battleship completed its manoeuvre to point nose first towards their tiny frigate, everyone onboard held their breaths. Even the PD guns could shred their little ship without a few seconds of fire, anything larger would turn them into free electrons and memories.

Noticing the incoming transmission light was blinking, crewman Pike reached over and slapped it in place of a catatonic Lennuel. While the voice was a match for the one who'd responded to their distress call, the woman sounded more confused than anything.

"Sorry if this sounds stupid... but why is a 14th Battlegroup Lasher all the way out here being chased by Droneships? Wait, nevermind, I've left a hangar door open for you to park in, there's more than enough room! The air's a bit stale, so bring your own suits, please."

Sharing looks with the other crew, Pike grinned from behind his visor. "So, which one of ya wants to tell the nice lady that we're not 14th Battlegroup?"

I was feeling like shit most of the day and couldn't muster the energy to write a chapter of Tales, as that requires plot and I don't want to disappoint people.

Instead, I spent five hours writing something that's existed in one form or another since I first played Starsector. The ships changed, the concept changed, but the idea was always similar.

Starsector has so much going for it, including the room to add my own things which I have done.

krahe · Jan 24, 2021

All this happened, because someone haven't heed the wise words of the old man Sseth

WarGamesHyp · Jan 24, 2021

Well considering the AI running rampant everywhere a shipgirl isn't that out there for starsector. And luckily she now has a crew she can adopt to sell the fiction that she isn't a prototype ship AI.

Though she is less of a shipgirl kancole style, were there is only the ship in the shape of a girl, and more like Arpeggio of Blue Steel where the ship has an shipgirl avatar while also still having a ship body.

Also that lasher captain sound a like a player avatar that took the AI core mission way to soon. Usually that is best saved until you have both fleet that can fight drones and enough money to start a new fleet if that one is destroyed.

HarakoniWarhawk · Jan 24, 2021

WarGamesHyp said:
Well considering the AI running rampant everywhere a shipgirl isn't that out there for starsector. And luckily she now has a crew she can adopt to sell the fiction that she isn't a prototype ship AI.

Though she is less of a shipgirl kancole style, were there is only the ship in the shape of a girl, and more like Arpeggio of Blue Steel where the ship has an shipgirl avatar while also still having a ship body.

Also that lasher captain sound a like a player avatar that took the AI core mission way to soon. Usually that is best saved until you have both fleet that can fight drones and enough money to start a new fleet if that one is destroyed.

To be totally fair, the AI fleets are supposed to be eliminated according to the Hegemony COMSEC department, they can't really admit they failed to catch them all.

And Andrea is basically the really hard start, piles of debt and one dodgy Lasher to her name. She figured she could escape any ships that might be guarding the cache, the only issue was the Remnant didn't break off pursuit and thus they had to flee deeper into the fringe systems.

korat56 · Jan 24, 2021

Running a capital ship without a fuel ship well good luck with that.

I'm assuming the fast battleship has a lot in common with the conquest.

guisniperman · Jan 24, 2021

korat56 said:
Running a capital ship without a fuel ship well good luck with that.

I'm assuming the fast battleship has a lot in common with the conquest.

It's a Shipgirl. Just feed her to obtain the same effect.

Darik29 · Jan 24, 2021

Also also, there is a dead colony beneath them. I have a feeling the Tyrant has a full fuel store, which while likely not enough for distance travel, should be enough to get to a nearby fringe colony for resupply.

Starsector is my current greatest addiciton, and you writing this story gives me All of the good feels! Excellent work boss!

also also. Going by her loadout, and that she's a tyrant, i recognize Vayra's Sector, DME, and uh.

Not sure about the Gauss Cannons, to be honest. And the AI controlled broadswords with what look like Delta cores hardwired in seems like something awesome, but still.

Can't wait for more!

Edit:

oh my god i am the biggest gods damned idiot. Gauss Cannons! Fucking hell, its been so long since i actually used capitol ships i've forgotten what they're armed with naturally! Fuck me!

Warer · Jan 24, 2021

Thank you for reminding me about the game and I hope we get more of this story. Spinal Kinetics for the Win!

HarakoniWarhawk · Jan 24, 2021

korat56 said:
Running a capital ship without a fuel ship well good luck with that.

I'm assuming the fast battleship has a lot in common with the conquest.

She's basically a Mastery Epoch version of the later battlecruisers and fast battleships, so older than the Conquest and Oddesy by a few centuries at least, if not far older.

Darik29 said:
Also also, there is a dead colony beneath them. I have a feeling the Tyrant has a full fuel store, which while likely not enough for distance travel, should be enough to get to a nearby fringe colony for resupply.

Starsector is my current greatest addiciton, and you writing this story gives me All of the good feels! Excellent work boss!

also also. Going by her loadout, and that she's a tyrant, i recognize Vayra's Sector, DME, and uh.

Not sure about the Gauss Cannons, to be honest. And the AI controlled broadswords with what look like Delta cores hardwired in seems like something awesome, but still.

Can't wait for more!

Edit:

oh my god i am the biggest gods damned idiot. Gauss Cannons! Fucking hell, its been so long since i actually used capitol ships i've forgotten what they're armed with naturally! Fuck me!

I've got so many mods loaded and played so much with mods that I'm not actually sure what's Vanilla or not anymore, but here's her loadout anyway.

Darik29 · Jan 24, 2021

Ohhh, i see Dissassemble/Reassemble, DME as i thought, and HMI as well! Domain Resurgent is one of there late game enemy faftions that turn out to be a Bitch to deal with properly if you aren't hilariously OP when they show up!

Out of curiosity, do you have ARMAA? Cataphracts would work Wonders for this build, some of the best fighter's i've had hands down so far! And they are combat mechs, with a special that lets them help in ground engagements! Really fun to mess around with, and watch them kill things dead!

Lord Derp · Jan 25, 2021

I have but two things to say. MOAR!!!!... And, Wonderful.. Please more of this.

Darik29 · Jan 25, 2021

Given how rare it is to find Starsector fanfic, and well written fanfic at that, i have to ask.

Any chance i could talk about this story over on the Discord? It may have just started but it has hooked me my friend, hooked me something fierce!

Edit:

I apologize. I let excitement get the better of me, and blabbed about the story already.

good news though, uh. I think i just stunned the entire thread into silence, because people don't actually think Fanfiction gets written for Starsector. So yeah, i anticipate some more people coming over to take a look soonish.

Lord Derp · Jan 25, 2021

HarakoniWarhawk said:
Loch Molich was suddenly must less confident

Should be "much" not "must".

HarakoniWarhawk said:
but shit was fucked any anything

"any"... "anyway so anything"?

HarakoniWarhawk said:
there here was one

I think "here there was one" would work better... but that's just my opinion.

Dukem · Jan 25, 2021

I've been playing too much Rimworld, so when I see "glitter ships" and "archeotech" I'm immediately thinking rimworld stuff. Looks great tho, watched.

Hatter · Jan 25, 2021

[QUOTE="HarakoniWarhawk, post: 4046213,
Snip.
[/QUOTE]
Gauss cannons but no integrated targeting unit? What is this? You can afford it if you drop caps a bit.

Great concept, nice execution. The long dead memory of the domain returned just fits so well with how the spectre of the domain hangs over the sector. I thought this was going to be a single woman adventuring across space in an antiquated battleship, but then she died the next sentence, smh. Sentient ship is fine too. The crew corpses might be awkward.

Darik29 · Jan 25, 2021

one thing i am curious about though, are you dead set on those Broadsword variants? Broadsword Mk 2's are better, in my opinion anyway, because they have missiles in there empty missile slots. Highly recommend using them if you can!

HarakoniWarhawk · Jan 25, 2021

Hatter said:
Gauss cannons but no integrated targeting unit? What is this? You can afford it if you drop caps a bit.

Great concept, nice execution. The long dead memory of the domain returned just fits so well with how the spectre of the domain hangs over the sector. I thought this was going to be a single woman adventuring across space in an antiquated battleship, but then she died the next sentence, smh. Sentient ship is fine too. The crew corpses might be awkward.

Most of the crew left before dying, all bar one took trips out airlocks or fed themselves to the nanoforges

As for the ITU, I'll fuck about with mods and get a proper fit for Morlich.

Darik29 said:
one thing i am curious about though, are you dead set on those Broadsword variants? Broadsword Mk 2's are better, in my opinion anyway, because they have missiles in there empty missile slots. Highly recommend using them if you can!

[/QUOTE]

Ah, but this is a story dear Ser, who's to say the Drone Broadswords don't have hard points for ordinance?

They actually do have hardpoints for such, it's just Morlich doesn't have anything to put on them.

HarakoniWarhawk · Jan 25, 2021

I got ideas, hence writing this.

That's literally how all my writing goes.

Music for the chapter, though it's more like Angel with a Gauss Cannon.

Seconds after inviting the crew of the Lasher onboard, Loch Morlich realized her mistake; She had nothing to wear. Well, her hull could really do with a fresh coat of paint and a number of the running lights were bust, but this new-fangled human body needed better garments.

From her very first captain until the... last, each had their own way of dressing that stretched from the double-breasted uniform jackets of Captain Malleakev's time to the power-armour of Captain Elita's era. While every memory of those officers differed in how to dress for greeting a fellow Captain, all agreed that a ratty and undersized engineering voidsuit wasn't suitable. With her engines online, the battleship's stride was steady as she made her way to officer country in search of an outfit. While she wasn't quite sure how this body came about, the voidsuit's smart-fabric had broken with time and left it unable to adjust to her form.

Taking the turbo-lift from the Bridge to the larger quarters took mere seconds, it wouldn't do for a Captain to run across half the ship in case of an emergency after all. It was quite disorientating having human senses while also tracking her own progress with internal sensor networks, akin to seeing a imagine ever so slightly overlapping. Having ditched the busted helmet back on the Bridge, shaking her head to clear that disorientation caused the weirdest thing to lash about; her hair.

Unlike the majority of her body parts, the knee-length copper-coloured strands of keratin had no ship analogue which was badly throwing her off. Stopping to run her hand through some of it, Morlich had to agree it was very pretty and smooth like a plasma conduit. Her last owners had never had much need for this section, merely pumping out the air and leaving the contents untouched, which hopefully meant there was something that would fit her.

She could have easily scanned all the quarters with sensors and only chose one when she'd found clothing, but the urge to try her new form stopped that. The first stop had been Lieutenant Ivanka Helios's quarters, she'd been a skittish cyborg whose family traced their lineage back to Pluto. Using the manual override rather than remotely opening it, the room beyond looked little different from when it had last been used, nearly five centuries ago. The quarters were minimal as fitting a Domain Navy Lieutenant, the bed, small dresser and a fold-out table giving way to a tiny washroom at the very back.

Morlich's attention was soon drawn to the lockbox at the end of the bed, hopefully still containing duty uniforms of some kind. The latch took a few attempts to open, the novelty of having fingers slowing her progress slightly. Throwing open the lid, the sight of an armoured dress uniform had the embodied battleship grinning. Giving the long-dead officer thanks for packing the wonderful garment, she pulled the burgundy jacket, pants and boots from the chest. Rather than the heavy, external plates of older times, Ivanka's uniform had the flexible, composite plates concealed by the fabric.

Best of all, without air to damage the mechanisms, the smart fabric should still work... hopefully. Before she could try and wear it, the voidsuit had to go. Centuries sitting in the, admittedly, thin air of the Bridge had left it badly degraded, the clasps having frozen solid and rusted in places. That revealed another facet of this body, while it looked human, something told her that her durability and strength reflected her hull... and she was a Tyrant fast battleship. Tearing the suit was as easy as giving it a hard tug and the armour rent like taffy in her hands, the discarded remnants being chucked into a corner for reclamation later.

The boots were easy to get on, though she had to use the room's sensors to see her feet for those. There was a fair bit of difficulty getting the pants on, most of that caused by putting on her footwear first, like an idiot. After that little fuckup, she was now proudly wearing half of a gunnery Lieutenant's dress uniform, time for the jacket!

Holding the garment up to eye-level, the battleship had to admit she was more fond of the frills and puffy arms of Admiral Tennyson's time on board, the court dress decadently fashionable for that time period. Slipping into the armoured jacket, the smart fabric adjusted perfectly to everything except her... bow? As a Ship of the Line and a Flagship at that, the crew who served on board had been the height of physical capability and were more often than not cyborgs for the higher ranks. None possessed a... what was the human word for it? bustline like hers, though her memories did include a few assistants with similar figures, though they'd been hired by the more corrupt officers. Thankfully, those stains on her honour were few and far between, even if their time onboard gave her a vague idea of how pleasing to the eye her new body was.

Five minutes of paint-stripping cursing had the jacket sealed over the lower third of her chest, a fact which annoyed her quite severely. A quick check showed the frigate was still entering her port hangar at a glacial pace, which gave Morlich time to find something to cover her bust. It wouldn't do to appear to a fellow Captain looking like some kind of... of harlot after all.

Leaving the room brought quite a lot more bouncing than entering it had, a fact which had her scanning the other quarters for an overcoat to help support things. Finding what she was looking for, Commander Yankovic's quarters opened for her and waiting there on the bed was a relic by his standards but a blast from the past for the battleship. The Navy greatcoat still had its tassels intact, the lengths of fabric swishing as she snatched the garment off the bed. Throwing it on, the top part did a better job of securing things, but there was still far too much movement after a bounce.

Frowning, she played with her hair while thinking of a solution, perhaps... the sub-armoury on this deck! Like most of this section of her hull, it had been kept sealed by locks her last owners never could override, which meant the gear should still be intact and not looted. Mindful that her guests were steadily approaching the ship cradle, her pace swiftly ate up the distance until she found herself entering the armoury. Ignoring the racks of ordinance and Marine Power Armour, the equipment belts and bandoliers on the walls were her destinations.

A bandolier went over each shoulder, which after tightening worked wonders in keeping her chest in one place. Just to keep things symmetrical, Morlich threw on a pair of pistol belts, though her hips were too wide to layer one above the other. In the end, she picked up a Magpulse sidearm in each hand and holstered one on each hip. Appearances were important after all and a battleship should be a show of force for friends and enemies alike. Just in case the newcomers were hostile, a dozen AM grenades went onto the bandoliers, alongside extra ammunition for the pistols.

Pausing as she was about to leave the armoury, a memory of Captain Kirrahae and his love of melee weapons prompted her to snag a Nano Cutlass from the racks of similar weapons, the weapon resting between her shoulder blades. Despite all the equipment and weaponry, the weight was so light as to be unnoticeable, though it did rattle when she left the room. Honestly, it was getting annoying that she'd gotten all this done and the Lasher still hadn't docked yet, Morlich had gotten dressed, swept local space and began using her repair bots to sweep the debris fields, all at the same time!

Muttering a few choice curses about slow-ass pilots, it was time to snag a bottle of micro-gravity moonshine that her... fourth crew stored away in a disused maintenance space and had never been found in the centuries since. Given the pocket was as airless as the rest of the passages, the stuff should still be good... maybe. She was a battleship, not a drunkard after all... though a few of her Captains had enjoyed their alcohol quite a lot. After a few minutes experiencing the novel feeling of being too developed to fit in some of the tighter places, Morlich grinned in triumph as she pulled out with a bottle of clear liquid in hand.

Clothing mostly sorted, even if her chest was forced upwards far too much, weapons secured and a bottle of alcohol to exchange in hand, Morlich took a scenic route towards the port hangar. As she walked, she fired off Admiralty-tier codes to unlock the systems that had been shut down when her last owners had purchased her hull. Using those codes while not being an Admiral was technically a violation of Code 291, subsection J, paragraph 8; On the usage and possession of restricted codes, but she was the ship so those didn't count. That did raise the question of what rank should she assume to her fellow Captain, under some very liberal interpretations of Navy regulations she could rightfully claim to be the ranking Domain Navy officer onboard... though that had baggage, like paperwork. Shuddering in disgust at the cursed word, any and all memories of that hellish task were locked away in the darkest hole in her mind.

Feeling the blasts of warm air on her skin while keeping track of the rising oxygen content didn't raise her mood as she'd expected. Rather, the embodied battleship felt remorse that she hadn't been awake to activate those systems for her last crew, even her nanoforges could have produced food in bulk if the locks hadn't been engaged. She'd been built back before the nanoforge had been created, so as a Flagship she'd gotten the very best of such tech after its invention and deployment across the navy. So many of her systems had been operating at perhaps 50% effectiveness when she'd been sold off, some like her hydroponics bays hadn't been functional at all.

Those dark thoughts soured her mood as she entered the port hangar, the enormous blast doors open to space to allow her CAP a speedy landing should the need arise. The sight of the battered Lasher in incredibly faded 14th Battlegroup colours brought a smile to her lips and a bounce to her step. The frigate looked worse for wear, a large strip along her starboard side lacking armour entirely while the engine bells were decidedly non-regulation. All in all, things must have been going very badly for Grand-Admiral Concorde's fleet if he let his screen fall into such disrepair, but a friendly face was a good one right now.

She lamented the lack of air in the hangar if only so the speakers couldn't play the Navy's anthem when the humans disembarked from their ship. Banking on her crew's memories to get this right, Loch Morlich assumed a parade-ground perfect stance, glancing at the rear wall where the flag of the Domain of Man was projected from a massive screen. If everything went well, both parties would turn and pay their respects then she'd formally welcome them aboard.

The urge to bounce excitedly as the airlock cycled very nearly drove her crazy, but an iron-will kept her boots firmly planted on the deck. The first figure that emerged was the heavily-armoured bulk of a Domain Marine; their Uriel pattern Power Armour bearing marking and tallies from a dozen campaigns. While she didn't recognize them personally, the 14th were assigned to an entirely different part of the galaxy so the lack of recognition made sense. The Marine paused upon seeing her, the shotgun in their arms kept lowered, the momentary freeze passing as they took the steps down two at a time.

Morlich smiled as she noted how clean their movements were, betraying decades of experience which said good things about the crew if their Marine compliment were that skilled. The woman who came next wore a shipsuit that was in the same shape as the frigate, which was to say bad. A tiny niggling doubt in the battleship's mind suggested that if this woman was the Captain like she suspected, then something must be terribly wrong with the Navy to let things slip this far. Despite their ratty outfit, the woman's azure eyes never left the Tyrant's body the entire way down the ladder. She could detect transmission between the Marine, Captain and the ship, but avoided cracking the terrible encryption out of politeness.

She managed one step forward on her way to greet the pair when a third figure emerged from the airlock. Dressed in a voidsuit that was undeniably civilian, the man took one look at Morlich before going mad. More accurately, he saw her standing there in dress uniform, screamed into an open mic and ran back into the frigate, the airlock slamming shut behind him.

Frowning, she opened a line to the Captain's shipsuit with her radio, hoping the woman knew what just happened. "My apologies, Captain, but is there something wrong with that man? Also, why would you have a civilian onboard, an inspector perhaps?"

The tiny doubt about things being wrong grew enormously when the woman facepalmed and began making rude gestures towards the ship. Morlich could hear their sigh before they turned back to face her, a raised eyebrow framing bloodshot eyes. "My pilot is very... superstitious, but for once he's right about something... not that I'll tell him that." That last part was whispered under their breath, but the battleship was too busy digesting the fact the civilian was the Lasher's pilot! "Lady... whatever you are, you do know humans can't breathe vacuum... right?"

Of course human's couldn't breathe hard vacuum, but she was a fast battleship which most assuredly could operate in space! "There's no need to state the obvious, even the lowest Rating could tell you that. I'm Loch Morlich, Tyrant class fast battleship, it's a pleasure to meet the crew of a ship from such a distinguished fleet as the 14th!"

The humans shared a glance, the Marines' body-language radiating confusion before the possibly not a Navy Captain sighed into her mic again and spoke. "Ludd preserve me... I think we need to do a lot of talking, is there anywhere we can crack these suits open?"

While the pair might not be from the 14th fleet, the laws governing guests still insisted she treat them properly. Beckoning for them to follow, there was one thought on her mind as they left the hangar; Who the heck was Ludd?

Several hours and a very long conversation later, Loch Morlich had learned a number of unrelated, but interesting things about her body.

One: This form was fully capable of crying to the tune of literal waterworks, having done so when she learned about the destruction of the gate network and the billions dead across the Perseus Sector.

Two: Trying to drown her sorrows in alcohol as Captain Evan did just made the gut-wrenching despair far, far worse. That segued into finding out her tolerance for the literal reactor fuel that was Engineering's moonshine was so high she hadn't found it yet, even after a dozen bottles.

Three: Her body was strong enough to shatter the battlesteel table like matchwood, which she found out after lashing out in anger about the previous news. The human's had quite rightly panicked at getting pelted by shards of ship plating, but recovered by the time a new room was found and pressurized.

Four: By the end of their incredibly depressing and kinda uplifting history of what happened after the gates shut down, the Marine had become relaxed enough to question her choice of clothing. That was how Morlich discovered this body was 'smoking hot' by human standards, a description that seemed a tad odd; human body temperature was nowhere near high enough to generate smoke and if it did the results would be fatal.

Divested of the majority of her equipment on account of lack of need, the Domain warship found the dress uniform to be surprisingly comfy to wear. Sure, the human's were avoiding staring at her chest for some reason and went red whenever she stored the moonshine bottles there, but she was long past the point of caring. Pouring another shot of moonshine, she rolled the glass between her fingers before downing the liquid.

The Captain of the Lasher, one Andrea Quantum, followed her moves with an amused expression, the smile vanishing when Morlich focussed on her. " So the Domain is gone, as far as anyone can tell?"

"Other than the 14th Fleet showing up sixty years after the gates shut down; then the 9th a few decades after that, pretty much." The lack of any real upset in their voice had the battleship grate her teeth, but it was old history for everyone but herself. That didn't make the empty hole in her chest any smaller though, the void a constant and painful reminder of her failures.

"And sometime after the Hegemony became established, Tri-Tachyon violated the Terra Nova Accords?" To think the same people who'd designed the most powerful warships ever constructed by the Navy would stoop so low as to break the ban on AI warships... it was sickening. Trillions had died during the Proxima War and here were corporate suits thinking they could succeed where the finest Domain researchers had failed.

Her disgust at their hubris was nearly enough to miss what Andrea said next. "The official story is that the Hegemony and Knights of Ludd defeated the autonomous fleets during the First AI war and wiped them all out... but there were always rumours of strange ships in dead systems far from the Core Worlds." There was a tremble in the pale woman's hands as she took a drink of her own moonshine, likely related to her run-in with the supposedly destroyed AI warships. "I always figured they were just that, rumours... but the fuckin evidence chased us across thirty lightyears and is spread across half the system by now."

"Hear Hear." Raising his own glass in a salute, the Marine whose named turned out to be Pike spoke up, having kept quiet for most of the discussion. "We always called those things Ghost Ships back in the Navy, it's fuckin fitting another ghost comes and kills those assholes."

Clinking glasses with her subordinate, Captain Quantum turned to question Morlich. "You still have no idea how you became... that?" Glancing down, the warship couldn't see what necessitated the emphasis in that; the only thing she could see was her substantial chest and the bottle stored there.

Not knowing the answer herself, she shrugged. "The first thing I remember is your distress call and responding. I have memories of my time as a ship, but the strongest is of my Captains. I really don't know how I became a human while still being the ship at the same time." She deliberately didn't mention the memories of her final crew, their fate was something best kept for a time when she could shut down for a month... or six.

On the topic of ships... the Lasher in her port hangar was something that needed to be clarified. " You're free to stay on board while your engineers work to fix your power plant, I have more than enough quarters free given my... lack of crew." Despite them not being Navy at all, the need to have her decks ringing with the sound of a crew was stronger than the distaste of having mercenaries on board.

Andrea winced at that, but her expression stayed apologetic. "I know most don't want to stay on a literal ghost ship, no offence, but if you've got space for us two, that would be appreciated. Lennuel will be impossible to live with for however long it takes to get back to civilization, I'd rather avoid that if necessary."

Considering the hysterical pilot continued to respond to her radio queries with prayers to this Ludd the humans had mentioned, Morlich was fine with that. "I'll get the cleaner bots to ready the Admiral's quarters then! By the time they're done the last of the Droneship wreckage will be recovered and we can jump." While the thought of pieces of those abominations on her deck made the battleship sick, the knowledge to be gained outweighed her feelings on the matter.

The talking continued for another while, the humans eventually heading back to the frigate to get their personal effects. Left alone, Loch Morlich made her way back to the bridge and sat in a chair that really should seat someone much greater than herself. It felt heretical to be sitting in the Captain's chair of her own hull, but leaving it empty would have felt far worse.

The decision to leave her post was a heart-wrenching one, but as she looked at the view of Seonaidh's Folly retreating into the distance; she knew it was the right one. While the people who'd called it home gave the dead reverence, the living always came first and that tipped the scales in favour of leaving. As the distorted ball of space-time that was a jump-point crept closer, she kept her sensors on the twenty-five humans that now resided inside her.

Refusing to leave her post and leave these people to die alone like her home had was never an option, not now and not ever. When she reached the jump-point and triggered her FTL drive, the warship took one last sensor picture of Seonaidh's Folly before the world twisted and her hull left the system behind... forever.

She was Loch Morlich; a Tyrant fast battleship laid down in the long-destroyed shipyards of Terra Nova for the defence of the Domain of Man and all of Humanity.

Her duty was clear; Defend the innocent and destroy the Abominable Intelligence where it hid in the shadows. Ploughing through the higher realm of hyperspace, Morlich swore to never stop until Proxima was avenged, even if it took a thousand years.

Her conscience demanded nothing else.

Yep, I wrote another chapter.

If it wasn't evident by now, Loch Morlich is very curvaceous for a ship avatar. She's not all that tall like an Oddessy or Conquest would be, but she's got hips for days and a very large bust.

Just look at her hull, she's wide as heck with tons of engine power while packing a lot of firepower too.

WarGamesHyp · Jan 25, 2021

If your still trying to make a representation of an archeotech ship then you could try making a godship with cheats, though probably nowhere near as far as I went with it.

The last time I played starsector (many months ago) with literally every mod I could fit(while keeping it below 6GB) I would start each game by cheating to max level/all skills then increasing ordinance points by 5000. Doing so can make incredibly powerful ships as you can add every non exclusive ship mod, while also adding ruinously expensive endgame guns and fighters. Said super ships can take out entire remnant fleets with much smaller numbers of ships. (and the fleet of super Drovers can destroy anything)

Heck, for a capital super ship anything that is not a remnant capital ship just melts when you combine all of the Combat boosting skills with unlimited ordnance points... So near the end of my play time I had fun just spawning larger and larger enemy fleets to fight, to the point where the battle even with fast forward seems to never end because dozens of reinforcement waves.

HaloKitsune · Jan 25, 2021

This, this is gud. I liky

HarakoniWarhawk · Jan 25, 2021

WarGamesHyp said:
If your still trying to make a representation of an archeotech ship then you could try making a godship with cheats, though probably nowhere near as far as I went with it.

The last time I played starsector (many months ago) with literally every mod I could fit(while keeping it below 6GB) I would start each game by cheating to max level/all skills then increasing ordinance points by 5000. Doing so can make incredibly powerful ships as you can add every non exclusive ship mod, while also adding ruinously expensive endgame guns and fighters. Said super ships can take out entire remnant fleets with much smaller numbers of ships. (and the fleet of super Drovers can destroy anything)

Heck, for a capital super ship anything that is not a remnant capital ship just melts when you combine all of the Combat boosting skills with unlimited ordnance points... So near the end of my play time I had fun just spawning larger and larger enemy fleets to fight, to the point where the battle even with fast forward seems to never end because dozens of reinforcement waves.

I'm trying less to make Loch Morlich stupidly OP and more trying to show what a mostly pristine Domain tier warship is like.

Morlich cheats by having none of her advanced systems torn out when she got sold, so her nanoforges are the closest to universal as you can get.

Anything that the Domain Navy had perpetual licences for, she can produce. If it's Civilian or propriety designs, so won't have those unless a LPC is loaded, same as any other nanoforge in that regard.

Her inspiration comes from the Spinward Fringe series and the Triton carrier from that. With enough resources and time, she can return to full power and kick well above her weight.

HaloKitsune said:
This, this is gud. I liky

Cheers, this is just something I'm doing for fun while the upcoming dark chapters in Tales brings my mood down.

Things are gonna get are lot worse before they get better.

Darik29 · Jan 25, 2021

Now i am reminded of the Notre Dam, or the Infernal Machine quest starts. A ship either worn down by sheer age, or barely spaceworthy but still crippled by the action that sank it.

only, instead of needing shitloads of money and access to the best shipwrights in the sector, all Loch needs to get back into shape is time and feedstock. She has an onboard hydroponics and Nanoforge, i bet the only thing she'll ever have issues with is fuel! Unless she has an Antimatter Centrifuge installed in her somewhere...

regardless!

i am overjoyed to see this continued, and can'r wait for more! Keep up the excellent work boss!

and hey, who knows. She may well be the first, but if it happened once, it could happen again. And i bet there are any number of ancients sleeping around the sector that Loch might just stir back to wakefulness...

Lord Derp · Jan 26, 2021

HarakoniWarhawk said:
but an iron-will kept her boots firmly planted on the desk

"desk"? I think you mean "deck"... But a funny error to imagine lol.

Hatter · Jan 26, 2021

Darik29 said:
Now i am reminded of the Notre Dam, or the Infernal Machine quest starts. A ship either worn down by sheer age, or barely spaceworthy but still crippled by the action that sank it.

Not familiar with the Notre Dam. Got a link for it?

HarakoniWarhawk said:
The boots were easy to get on, though she had to use the room's sensors to see her feet for those. There was a fair bit of difficulty getting the pants on

How can you put on boots and then pants? Like, not morally capable, but physically capable.

HarakoniWarhawk said:
human's

s'

HarakoniWarhawk said:
Captain Quantum

This is a great name.

I forget how much Morlich remembers about the colony dying, but being told 'yeah, that happened pretty much everywhere' makes all of the planetary ruins and abandoned stations sitting around deep space so much worse. Bonus points if Morlich can match up a destination with her data banks and pull long-forgotten names and history.

Darik29 · Jan 26, 2021

This story is based onthe video game Starsector. The Notre Dam is a unique start for one of the Starsector mods, giving you command of an ancient Hub class Explorer ship. They are very, Very big, very Very slow, and are designed to allow for multi generational exploration trips through the stars. And the one you own still has all of its original fashionings rather than the bastardized conversion process the Luddic church put those it captured tbrough, which gutted there cargo and fuel capacity and just tried to shove in more guns. And failed miserably.

HarakoniWarhawk · Jan 26, 2021

Darik29 said:
and hey, who knows. She may well be the first, but if it happened once, it could happen again. And i bet there are any number of ancients sleeping around the sector that Loch might just stir back to wakefulness...

No spoilers, considering I haven't actually planned this story, but there's any number of such vessels... even if not all of them are from the Domain.

Darik29 said:
Unless she has an Antimatter Centrifuge installed in her somewhere...

That piece is kit is very much not something you put on a warship, far too much a chance that the stresses of combat will cause matter to meet antimatter and once that happens? Boom.

Hatter said:
How can you put on boots and then pants? Like, not morally capable, but physically capable.

Navy issue Smart Fabric uniforms and not knowing how the whole human things works mostly.
Morlich is damn stubborn and not being able to see her feet doesn't help either.

Hatter said:
I forget how much Morlich remembers about the colony dying, but being told 'yeah, that happened pretty much everywhere' makes all of the planetary ruins and abandoned stations sitting around deep space so much worse. Bonus points if Morlich can match up a destination with her data banks and pull long-forgotten names and history.

She remembers what her final crew did, which is everyone slowly dying of starvation and many committing suicide.

It'll come up later, but while she was sold off, all those locked away systems were still linked into the Domain Navy network, which included taps on all the Comm/Sensor/Navigation Buoys.

Her information may be out of date by a few centuries, but she's probably got the most accurate map of the Perseus Sector in existence, ironically enough.

HarakoniWarhawk · Jan 27, 2021

Here we go, because I've got writer's block for Tales and it's hitting me hard.

Music for the chapter as always.

Having a crew again did more to lift Loch Morlich's mood than anything else in the last... two days, seventeen hours, eleven minutes and thirteen seconds! Pulsars, the most accurate clocks in the universe and perfect for telling the time... at least if you had the equipment to pick up the radio emissions from them of course.

Well, technically only two of the humans were actually residing in her hull, the others still inside the Lasher in her port hangar. She knew they were trying to repair their reactor which had scrammed not long after they'd docked, but that would be impossible. She'd taken scans of it on approach and the entire power plant was toast, to use a quaint human term. If by some miracle they got enough power to use the engines, the certainly wasn't enough for FTL, a fact which the battleship was kinda happy about.

On the one wing, it would mean more people, which meant more crew and that was always good. On the other wing, it would also include the crazy civilian who prayed to this 'Ludd', whose religious significance she was still trying to discover. Lennuel was more than happy to chant verses from the Church of Galactic Redemption's holy book, which was how she discovered their prophet had been arrested by the security services and deported not long before the Gates shut down.

Personally, she thought it sounded like a huge scam, not that she'd tell the humans that. Of all the religions followed by her crews over the millennia, the Spirit of Man of the Stars faith was the one she felt closest to. Captain Talon had been a strong believer in the faith and always took time from his day to say a short prayer to whatever star they were orbiting at the time. Keeping one eye and her sensor array on the surrounding pseudo-space of Hyperspace, Morlich allowed herself to drift down memory lane to happier times.

Despite knowing to the picosecond how much time had passed, her new body very nearly fell off the Captain's chair when the turbolift docked at the Bridge. Thankfully, this form's generous proportions meant it would take a bit more force to dislodge her hips, a fact that let the embodied warship swivel the chair to see who was coming. She could have checked the sensors of course, but experiencing things the human way was still novel and quite fun, no wonder her old crews loved to do these things!

The doors opened to reveal Andrea Quantum, the tall woman picking uncomfortably at her freshly-forged Navy-issue Voidsuit. Morlich thought it suited her, her rank and surname flash-bound onto the right chestplate while the four-pointed star of the Domain was proudly emblazoned on the opposite side. On Pike's urging, they'd chosen an older pattern Voidsuit, in truth light Power Armour.

Giving the human a wave, she was delighted to get a smile in return, just like the old days! "Good evening, Captain! It's currently seventeen hundred hours; Terran time."

"You are one strange battleship, you know that right?" By itself, the words could be insulting to some, but Andrea's mouth was quirked upwards in a slight grin, the woman picking a chair at random and sitting down.

The Smart-Material of the seat moulded to her body, Morlich quashing the subroutine that would extend jacks for cybernetics the human lacked. Spinning her chair solely for the thrill factor, the embodied warship let her hair whip around before slowing to face the tall human. "I'm just happy to have a crew again, even if your pilot is very rude. He seems to think I'm an AI!" Being compared to those made her angry, her hull reflecting the emotion with a microsecond fluctuation in her tertiary power grid.

Lacking the means to detect her anger, Andrea sighed and did that weird human thing of looking to the ceiling. "Lennuel is the best pilot I've ever known, but he's radical by Church standards." Keeping a few dozen microphones on task to listen, the battleship began to check the conduits above her head for whatever drew the human's attention. "I'm pretty sure he'd be in the Path if I hadn't broken his scrawny ass out of a Tri-Tach prison transport, hopefully, he'll come around..."

The Captain didn't sound very confident about that happening and Morlich found herself agreeing. On the topic of humans, what was her second favourite one up to. "How is Mr Pike enjoying the armoury? Most of the nanoforge time is going towards restoring my systems, so I can't restock it yet." For some reason Andrea was giving her a look which her memories identified as disbelief... that or they was afflicted with Valaxian gutworms.

"You've got more war material onboard than an entire Hegemony Assault Cruiser and you're saying it needs to be restocked?" The warship didn't understand their confusion, did Hegemony warships not carry a battalion of Marines onboard?

Any further questions on that topic got derailed by a communications request from the Hot Rod! Accepting the handshake, she cast the transmission onto a nearby holoprojector to give Andrea something to watch. The image took a few seconds to resolve into something legible, converting a 2D signal into a 3D hologram took time after all. When it cleared up, the person on the other end wasn't Lennuel as she'd expected, but the hulking mountain of cybernetics that was the Chief Engineer.

The twin clusters of green optics flashed rapidly before the floating head turned towards Captain Quantum and spoke in a surprisingly high pitched voice. "Cap'n, for the love of all that's holy please let us come onto the battleship! Ah can't take another second of hearin the Luddies chantin for protection from spirits, it's drivin us mad!"

In the time it took Andrea to speak, Morlich had already pressurized the hangar bay and cycled the airlocks. "Fuck me... right, come aboard and please shut everything down before you leave. The last thing we need is Lennuel trying to make a bomb to 'save us from the abomination'."

The Cyborg flashed a thumbs up even as their head bobbed in time with their movement. "Way ahead of ya, the Rod's ammo bins are sealed and the reactor is fucked so he's not got anythin to do with it. Please tell me ya got somethin better than sludge in there?" Some things were universal it seemed, like Cyborgs calling the biological regeneration fluid they ingested to keep their squishy bits intact sludge.

Wresting control of the transmission, she gave the Engineer a smile with plenty of teeth, just like humans did! "If you head to the Messhall, there'll be a container of strawberry flavour waiting for you." As the official flavour of Gunnery Lieutenants everywhere, strawberry was loaded up and dispensed inside a minute.

The poor quality signal from their end made their expression difficult to read, but they sounded happy. "Ah'm sorry for callin you a creepy fuckin ghostie, yer a star, Lass!" With that the hologram cut off, her sensors tracking the group that emerged from the ship in a rush.

Biometrics showed only three life signs remained aboard the Lasher, being the pilot and other Luddites most likely. As the remaining crew followed the freshly repaired navigation signs towards the Mess, the embodied battleship was over the moon... not literally, they were in Hyperspace after all. She couldn't wait to hear boots ringing on the decking and sense human's drawing oxygen from the air, she could almost see th...

"Uh, Morlich?" Slowing her revolving chair, she wondered what had Andrea interrupting her fun. Facing the human, their face was all red, either embarrassment or a fever. "Your jacket is slipping... a lot." Now that they mentioned it, the uniform had shifted again, darnit!

Modulating the Smart-Fabric got it supporting her chest again, thankfully before all the stuff she'd stored in there got loose and fell out. While it was quite annoying getting stuck in tight places thanks to it, her bust made a perfect space to place things that didn't fit in her pockets. She wondered why the Captain didn't do the same, though looking at their much smaller chest perhaps she didn't have as much room. While she wasn't a hospital ship, her onboard medical facilities could remedy that problem with a simple surgery or three, maybe throw in some balancing too.

The part of her mind that kept track of the input from her sensors noticed something that didn't match the background frequency of Hyperspace. It was flickering in and out of range, the rhythmic pulses of a beacon of some kind briefly cutting through the interference. Shifting from a broad sweep to a narrow scanning beam cut through the hash and show a Domain standard warning beacon.

Creating a composite image from her multi-spectrum sensors on the holoprojector, Morlich question her human companion. "Do you recognize this? My charts may be out of date, but a stable A-class star shouldn't need an avoidance beacon in only a few hundred years."

Andrea's face paled, the blood fleeing for parts unknown. That was the cue for something that had her heart racing. "T-That's the same kind of beacon that was outside the system where we got ambushed. I think it's a system where the drones lurk."

With a thought, Loch Morlich adjusted her course to head towards the beacon, intent on cleansing the system. Andrea noticed the move but chose to stay quiet for the moment, which the warship appreciated. A faint tremor went through her hull as she plunged into the roiling pseudo-lightning of a Hyperspace storm. When it came to autonomous fleets, time was of the essence and the tiny strain on her FTL was worth it to cut her travel time in half. Enough of her past Captain's had performed storm-riding for her to have picked up the skill, even if her hull wasn't suited for it as a smaller ship would be.

Hyper-focused on the beacon, she nearly missed the arrival of Pike onto the Bridge, the Marine greeting his Captain before seating himself in the Gunnery section. Unlike his crewmate, the man possessed the necessary implants to accept the link-jacks, which let Morlich experience synching with a human for the first time in this new body.

Gunnery officers were a breed of their own, bonding with their ships to the point they missed the connection. The Navy called the condition Link-Sink, but while it was officially a condition that would earn a discharge, in practice crew with it were kept on for their skills. That chain of thought was derailed by the feeling of a human mind brushing her own, her shock mirrored by Pike. In reality, it manifested as a brief tremble in their bodies before the contract was finalized and settled down.

Trying something new, the battleship thought out loud. 'Can you hear me? If not just say... wait, that won't work, dammit...' A sensation akin to laughter filtered through the link, Pike's mind radiating amusement.

'Never expected a ship to ramble when I jacked in, that's one for the books. I can hear you just fine, Lady, no need to overdo it.' The gentle admonishment worked to centre her thoughts, many, many memories of similar events bringing a blush to her cheeks that must be confusing Andrea.

'Just... just perform system checks on the PD network, the Widowmakers aren't relaying the targeting info fast enough for some reason' Getting the equivalent of a salute from Pike, she turned her attention back to the beacon.

Anchored in the calm space exerted by the star's gravitational field, what she'd taken to be a Domain standard model was lower-tech than she'd realized from range. It still had a power source that would last a few hundred thousand years, but the transmitter was woefully underpowered to ensure the transmission would punch through Hyperspace. Whoever emplaced it didn't even take the time to spin up a defensive station... though perhaps they didn't have the tech to do that these days.

Regardless of the worrying level of tech degradation in the Sector, the battleship drifted close enough to pick up the looped transmission clearly enough to decode. The carrier signal was in Domain common, but there were numerous signals hitching a ride that repeated the same message in different languages. Her brief admiration of the builder's thoughtfulness died a bloody death when she actually read the message.

DANGER: This star system is known to contain potentially active autonomous weapon systems. Access to this system by unauthorized parties is forbidden by Hegemony Navy diktat 224.34

"Well, that proves the Navy was lying their ass off about beating the fleets back during the first war. Fuckin COMSEC." Pike's words summed things up pretty well, given there wan tangible proof of AI war fleets lurking in that system.

The Fringe Jump-Point was showing all clear on the micro-probes she launched through the gap, local space showing no active signatures. With that in mind, the warship turned to address the humans on her bridge. "Strap in and brace yourselves, we're hotdropping."

Automatic restraints snapped across the seats as she triggered the General Quarters alarm. In every room onboard, the voice she'd chosen, her voice, rang out. "All Hands, Man Your Battlestations!" The order was useless as the humans on board didn't have Battlestations, but it felt good to announce it regardless.

This next bit would require a hell of a lot of concentration, so she focussed all of her attention on her hull, specifically the FTL and sensors. The roiling ball of space-time that was a Jump-Point loomed before her, the interaction natural weak point into Hyperspace allowing entry to the star system. Standard drives allowed a ship to emerge in the centre of such points, being the safest and most predictable of emergence points. Devoting the majority of her navigational sensors to sweep for gravitation eddies, if you had a powerful enough sensor network and enough brute force, it was possible to arrive outside the calm zone.

Good thing she had both in spades, Flagship grade sensors and FTL drive allowed her plenty of wiggle room for a hot-drop. If she was right, the Drones would follow standard protocols and leave pickets with their passive sensors facing inwards, maybe a platform or two for extra strength. But if she played this just right, she'd arrive back to realspace in their blindspot and have a few extra seconds to shatter their abominable hulls.

Her human body's fingers dug into the armrests as she waited for the right moment, thrusters easing her hull forwards at a steady pace. Wait for it, wait fo... there! Morlich's stomach lurched when the FTL dumped its stored energy into forcing open a rift back to reality, her fusion plants ramping to War Emergency Power to give her a little extra speed.

Holding station around the Fringe Jump-Point, the small Remnant fleet had zero warning as a Tyrant screamed from Hyperspace ready for a fight. Caught with their metaphorical pants down, the Ecstacy Lancer Cruiser AI had just enough time to rouse from storage before a pair of nickel-iron slugs cored its hull through and through. With her main guns recharging, Loch Morlich tagged the cruiser's escorts with her secondary and tertiary batteries, the Fulgent on the port side raising its shields just in time to eat fire from three revolver cannons and promptly Flux out and then explode shortly after.

Spared destruction and targeting by dint of being on the far side of the wrecked Ecstacy, the Shimmer Droneship carrier had time to raise its shields and sortie its complement of fighter craft. To face the four squadrons of Sparks was two overstrength squadrons of Broadswords, Remnant strikecraft meeting Domain interceptors in an orgy of violence amongst the cloud of debris that was all that was left of the Fulgent.

Faced with twice their number of shielded enemies, the Broadswords lack of shielding began to take its toll, but Morlich's craft gave as good as they got. Watching and feeling her fighters get shot down one by one, the battleship was cursing herself for not loading them with missiles before the engagement. Her forward shield bore the debris strikes with ease as she plunged through them at flank speed, intent on shattering that carrier before it tried to jump away. Jacked into the ship, Pike was helping optimize the PD network, decades of experience and intuition allowing him to guess where hostile strikecraft would be better than the computers could.

Sheer numbers had worn down the interceptors to a half-strength squadron when help arrived in the form of 3.6 Megatons of pissed off fast battleship. While her main battery spoke in anger towards the fleeing Shimmer, the slugs followed by a salvo of MRM's, her smaller weapons fired indiscriminately into the mob of fighters around her hull. The direct link to the Broadswords allowed the unshielded craft to skirt around streams of fire that sought out Sparks with unerring accuracy.

A feeling which an organic would have identified as fear began to infect the Beta Core's circuitry, the latest Gauss Cannon salvo stressing its shields to the breaking point. The connection to the last of its fighters died as the unfortunate craft got run over by the hostile battleship, a star briefly forming as it's reactor exploded violently. The nanoforges were struggling to produce any new LPC's given all its power generation was dumped into the engines to eke a few extra gravities of acceleration out of them. PD lasers homed in on the MRM's chasing it, which proved to be a lethal mistake as the missiles masked the remaining Broadswords from detection just long enough.

In a move that would have had Morlich Court-Martialed if her fighters were crewed, the five remaining craft redlined their engines before slamming into the Shimmer's painfully weak shields. Hitting with the force of a standard pattern Heavy Autocannon shell, the impacts tipped the Drone's Flux banks into the red and forced an automatic shutdown. Left defenceless and drifting, the AI could only watch as the Domain warship's primary battery erupted in a pulse of electromagnetic energy, the slugs crossing the distance between the two ships to smash into thin armour plate.

While its shields were cruiser grade, its armour was comparable to a destroyer which did worse than nothing when getting hit by Gauss rounds. Holes the size of a Mercury shuttle were blasted through the centre of the Drone, spaced close enough it nearly cut the ship in half, the still-firing engines completing the job a second later. Before the two halves could drift more than a few hundred metres apart, another salvo of fire reduced what was left to pieces ranging from car-sized chunks to finger-sized shards.

With sensors picking up nothing with a power source in the immediate vicinity, Loch Morlich allowed herself to relax. As her hull worked to dump waste heat into the deploying radiators and shunted ammo casings back towards the nanoforges, her body was coming down from an adrenaline high. The only reason she knew that was the medical sensors built into the chair she was using, until that data came in, she'd thought she was dying.

Leaving the sensors to sweep on automatic, the warship stuck her trembling hands between her thighs, needing to do something to halt the jitters racing through her body. Colours began to look washed out and her vision wavered, the 'crash' after a fight something her medical records described but were little help now she was experiencing the phenomenon. Dimly, she directed the sole Broadsword that didn't participate in the suicide run to return to her starboard hangar, the little fighter limping back on one engine and missing a chunk of its wing.

While her eyes caught Andrea getting off her seat and walk over, the warship's attention was hyper-focussed on a sensor ghost drifting on the far side of the Jump-Point. She wouldn't have noticed it if not for scanning a large chunk of Drone and getting a return from behind the debris. Cutting back on her broad sweeps to direct more power towards the small vessel, the result was something that had no right being there.

Visually resembling a shrunken Eagle class cruiser, the Alastor class frigate bore the signs of repeated micro-meteorite impacts across its hull. It wasn't the fact a Domain Navy frigate was lying derelict in a system occupied by Droneships that surprised her... it was the burgundy with a gold trim paint scheme that had her speechless.

Her warbook helpfully provided its results at the same time as her hull got close enough to scan the frigate with optical sensors. Loch Morlich had last seen the little ship half a galaxy away preparing to depart as part of a convoy escort, shortly before she'd been sold off.

Running lights helpfully illuminated the name of the Alastor, DNV Buttercup... of the 3rd Fleet... her old fleet.

Today's chapter is brought to you by me trying to write Tales and hitting writer's block, trying to write Candi and then hitting writer's block then writing this.

I'm really gonna need to start planning these if my writer's block for Tales keeps up longer than a day...

zebrin · Jan 27, 2021

Interesting. While I have the game, I am kinda bad at it. Seems you are mixing Starsector with some Kancolle/Azur Lane stuff in what with the shipgirl... Possibly Arpeggio's Mental model.
You have an interesting start going on. And Morlich might just be the start of things as she has run into her old fleet. Who knows if she might just jumpstart the Buttercup's awakening or something.

Darik29 · Jan 27, 2021

Huh, so she's 3rd Fleet original? Neat!

And hey, it looks like a number of her old fleet were either sold off as surplus or lost in poker games and ended up lost in the Sector when the gates collapsed! That or were just caught in transit, among other things.

it continues! And Tyrant demonstrates how hilariously terrifying the level 3 nav skill can be without game limitations!

Now to see if this isn't an orange or red system, and if a Battlestarion is present...

Lord Derp · Jan 27, 2021

HarakoniWarhawk said:
that or they was afflicted with Valaxian gutworms.

"they" should be "she".

Also great chapter! Poor poor AIs, they got runover by a angry fast battleship. Get any good loot from them?

DNV Loch Morlich: The Lonely Sentinel (A Starsector story)

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