in my last vacation back to fanfiction, I did up a victor/Victoria swap alternate-of-an-alternate-of an alternate universe story that was a pile of vignettes and scenes. At the end of that, I realized I'd run out of all the right badguys and asked people what they wanted to see.
I won't say that revisiting the world the Hunted Tribes crossover with Hotpoint was MOST popular, because the suggestion pool was pretty shallow, but it started my brain-engines a bit, that, and Cawest offering to let me contribute to his take on the setting.
but what came to me, maybe didn't fit with what he is thinking, and it just felt like fun. (well, fun for me, anyway) since what surfaced wasn't what I expected, but instead, a sequel to the last chapters of "Black Jumpsails".
It doesn't help that I looked up a piece of classic urban legend, either-the Philadelphia Experiment.
Cawest, Hotpoint, anyone who's collaborated with me in the past? Guys, check this out and you're invited, I have NO IDEA what's going to happen...
Don't say that word, I know it's only fools,
who do not know their fate is just.
all the justice in the world,
is not enough to earn my faith and trust.
-Motorhead, "I don't Believe a Word"
Coast Guard Ship "Nueva Pueblo III", Sampan Mk III class, conducting Quarantine Enforcement, October 11, 3090...
Nicole Minh wasn't born on Kowloon. She wasn't even born 'Nicole', but genetic surgery in the Metis Coalition was more than a century ahead of the technology the Clans are so proud of, especially when it comes to replacing cosmetic surgeries. Commander Minh's real 'birthplace' was a records hack she paid good currency for, and her place as Senior Navigator and Commander of a Coast Guard ship was the happy result of a nightmare tragedy.
Most of her crew didn't know until she was hand-picked to transport a secret diplomat to the Metis Coalition. They're not talking, and she's not advertising. Her past for the Guard begins with a prison cell on Winter, with no power, no food, no fresh water, and a dead cell mate. Her redemption began with an act of cannibalism.
"what the hell is that?"
"Damfino." Linda 'Seether' Sithers would be Nicoles lover, if she would let her. instead, they are close friends. "Spectra's all over the place on the EM, Gravity wave and Thermal bands. it's like something twisted space."
'Do we have enough thrust to outrun it?" Nicole asked, quietly.
"velocity increasing on it, I'm honestly not sure we can."
"RTO, send our readings and imagery to Coast Guard command direct line, we've got a damn space anomaly an' it just ate a civilian jumpship trying to slip the Cordon." Nicole ordered, "engines, bring reactors to one-fifty, output thrust One twenty five percent overload, go ahead and dump fuel into the burners, if we can't slip past this thing, we're as corncobbed as those poor Heinies."
"Aye mum, One Fifty and one-twenty-five, burning at two Kilos pure H, one kilo Lithium."
"it's gaining on us, matching course and vector."
"aww ******..."
there was no way to initiate a jump-the gravity was out of balance, but Nicole's instincts moved her hand, and she tried a method both dangerous, and difficult, altering the jump field to create a 'false' equilibrium using the ship's own mass.
Discontinuity
She burned, in chains of ice.
Discontinuity
Nicole cowered in the corner, blood from her cellmate slicking her chin, as too-bright lights blinded her darkness adapted eyes.
Discontinuity
White armored thugs kicked her into the decontamination center, and burning napalm covered her body...
Discontinuity
Somewhere in detection range of New Circe, October 22, 3047...
The emergence wave was loud. Detectors on New Circe's surface set off frantic alarms, and both fighters and combat ships scrambled. The Colonials were the first on the scene.
but it wasn't a Sovetski Soyuz, or any of the large warships that SHOULD have made that emergence wave. The ship was small. Scorched, lightly armored and mounting barely-shrouded weapons blisters. Less than 250 meters long and obviously damaged. Where it wasn't scorched, the hull was a dark, haze-gray with a red stripe, a roundel showing an Orcinus orca, or Killer Whale, with a series of numbers.
on the flank, a half-burned flag shape was stenciled, a gold field bisected three times with red stripes, a blue star of David in the center, and in the center of that, the Lyran Commonwealth's armored fist.
her running lights were on, but nobody was answering hails.
Clan Wolverine military were the second on the scene, and the first to board.
Most of the crew were unconscious, a few were more than that. A man frozen halfway through the bulkhead, a woman fused to her console. two living bodies, screaming and somehow melded through each other.
twenty five personnel were recovered from a ship barely bigger than a large dropship, but equipped with a primitive core that was fractured lengthwise, the engine room was the worst. remains of fifteen people, some still alive...sort of. a man with no face, screaming...
a scene of outright horror, an abbotoir.
but twenty five crew were unconscious, in neural shock. It made pulling them out of the wreck easier, at least. identification didn't take long, the logs were recorded in an open format. The codebooks weren't, but then, the 'jump calculator' was nothing but an input pad at the Nav station. The most interesting find was the communication console.
"I have no idea what this is, or how it works." The ship's RTO could have explained it, if he was awake-though why anyone would explain Black Box commo to strangers is quite outside of sane military operations.
"Documents on board are in a mix of English, German...and Vietnamese." the homeport listed was Kowloon.
That raised more questions, which only got worse, when the date-stamps on the ship's logs were analyzed.
Kowloon...Coast Guard. semi-apocryphal, the world that declared war on Amaris before the coup, the world that sent hundreds of thousands of men to kill the Rim Worlds, not to save or avenge the Star League, because they hated the Star league slightly less than they hated the Rim Worlds Republic. The one allied group during the Amaris war that were expressly not invited to join the Exodus.
and the date stamps said it was twenty four years into the past. The ship had somehow misjumped into the past, across the distance of the Star League in the wrong direction, to show up within detection range of New Circe.
Strange days indeed.