[Fic] Hallowed Be Thy Hills, Chapter 1
May. 16th, 2011 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deegeeakTitle: Hallowed Be Thy Hills
Pairing: UsUk, CanPru, and other assorted pairings.
Genre: UsUk LJ Com's Spring Ficathon
Rating: R
Summary: Federation of United Planetary Nations is the order of things now. After a bitter twenty year war - the War of Re-Conciliation - the Federation has defeated the opposing factions, made up mostly of various systems and planets along the outer system clusters. After the outer system cluster alliance had been roundly defeated at the Battle of Brussia, and one of the last Brain Stations wiped out, the Alliance had sued for Peace. Nearly every Planet signed the treaty within a year of the Battle. Only the Rus-1 System Cluster has yet to sign the treaty binding every planet, system cluster and station to one united entity.
Two years into the fragile peace, Captain Arthur Kirkland of the FUPNS E3BH receives order to report to the FUPNS Iso B3 Station in the EU-2 Cluster System for further orders and mission details. He is unaware of why - and suspicious of the possible reasons. He knows only that he and his crew, nearly all of them former pirates, rebels, and other undesirables, are highly unlikely to receive orders favorable to gaining glory, fame or money. What he is about to find out is the fates have a way of laughing at humanity's best laid plans - and the hidden secrets of the Federation of the United Planetary Nations are about to come to light.
Arthur Kirkland has a chance to save not just himself, his crew and his ship, but the whole galaxy- that is if he doesn't kill Alfred F Jones first
Notes: I suggest listening to 'Barton Hollow' and 'O, Death' while reading this. Oh, and "You Lie".
Chapter 1: The Battle of Brussia And the Surrender of the EU-2 System Cluster
In all human history only one planetary system has ever been systematically destroyed in a war - Brussia and the sole Brain Station of EU-2 Cluster, Teu 2NC Station ('Teutonic').
Brussia was one of the sole holdouts, and eventually, it was decided to make an example of the planet.
The entire EU-1 and EU-2 Cluster fleets gathered in the Brussia system. The combined fleets numbered almost 30,000 different ships, including support ships, battle ships, cruisers, med ships and supply ships. After giving the system one last chance, the fleets moved into position and began bombardment.
Prior to the bombardment, the Brussian government began to evacuate the young, women and their brightest to the Teo 2NC station, who had declared himself neutral in the conflict. He accepted them as refugees from the conflict and refused the FUPN demand to keep them as prisoners of war. The plan was for the refugees to unload and for him to retreat to the system's edge, where ships from the sister system were waiting.
However, as Teo 2NC began to retreat, one war ship, The Ession, issued an order to stop and prepare to be boarded. The crew had orders to not allow anyone escape, and after the admittedly brutal attacks by the Brussians on several planets, were not about to allow the refugees to escape. Teo 2NC refused and continued on his way. The Ession fired, crippling the station.
At this point Teo 2NC, began to evacuate the refugees he had on board to the few ships that made it past the incoming barrage. On board was nearly three million refugees - less then half that made it off the station before one of the Ession's missiles hit Teo 2NC's core, causing it to go critical and destroyed the station, and all the refugees left on board.
Meanwhile, back on the planet, the remainder of the Alliance forces (about 10,000 ships) had been destroyed, or taken prisoner. The commander of the fleet gave the command, and within six hours, the fleet had destroyed the planet. The atmosphere was on fire - and the land had gone molten. An estimated three billion people died on the planet, unable to escape before the final moments.
There after, the rest of EU-2 surrendered unconditionally. All the surviving refugees were taken in by the RUS-1 Cluster, who had demanded either unconditional surrender or destruction of Brussia after the massacres along the farming systems of UKR-2, UKR-3 and UKR-4. Recently it has come to light that the survivors were not only abused, but most have disappeared, vanishing into the systems of RUS-1. Many people are suspicious of the new RUS-1 AI product, claiming it is to 'human' to be a true AI. While no one has accused the government of RUS-1 of turning the Brussian Survivors into Brain Stations or Ships, it is quietly suspected of being true.
-“The War of Re-Conciliation and the Ensuing Cold War: A Personal History” By Professor Matthew Williams-Beilschmidt, University of Terra Prime, Year 5060
*~*~*~*~*
For longer then he'd been alive, Arthur Kirkland had been fighting. He'd been born in the midst of a space battle, his mother dying even as she gave him life. His two brothers had been too young to raise a brother would have left him to die, but couldn't let what was left of their mother go. Instead, they'd given him up to the old engineer shift lead on the ship they worked on. His teething toys had been old worn out ship parts; the sounds that rocked to him sleep the noise of the engine. He grew up mostly ignored by his brothers, all too busy learning the ropes of a ship of the line, and was raised mostly by the grim eyed engineer down on F deck.
As he grew up, he traveled up the decks, learning new skills with every deck he came to. When he was six, he was kicked out of F deck by the engineering crew – he wound up on D deck after the E deck's cafeteria refused to deal with him. The D deck was mostly made up of the communication crew who were appalled at his lack of being able to read or write. Four years after that, he was sent onwards to C deck, where they needed an extra hand in helping tend the wounded. After that it was to B deck, where he learned to fight. He stayed the longest on B deck, learning tactics and strategies and ways of surviving in an environment where he was not only the smallest, but also often the least wanted.
When he was fifteen the E1BH was shot down in a fire fight in the skies of a nameless planet in the EU2 Cluster. He ended up on her sister ship, the E2BH and the Captain of the E2BH found in him a sort of prodigy. He spent the next five years at Captain Pangea's side, learning politics and diplomacy. How to get his way without appearing to get his way; how to appear to be something you were in fact not.
By age nineteen Arthur Kirkland was Captain Pangea's right hand man, and a pirate fighting on the side of the Alliance.
When he was twenty-one, the Alliance saw fit to gift him with the E3BH, a sleek mid range survey ship equipped with a fantastical AI who adored Arthur as much as he did her. They quickly became one of the top fighting ships the Alliance had, harassing and harrying the Federation ships without mercy.
When he was twenty-two, the battle of Brussia happened. He wasn't part of it, but he responded to the distress signals and the bloodbath he found there. He and his crew didn't sleep for a week, horrified by the slaughter, the death. No one had ever destroyed an entire planet before, turned it to molten rock, but the Federation had.
Three days later the Alliance surrendered and then, five weeks later he was suddenly a Federation Ship Captain.
That had been two years ago. Now two years had passed and while Arthur's crew of mostly former Alliance supporters were still viewed suspiciously, the more time they spent out in the black, the less people remembered they'd been rebels.
Still, it was the last thing he'd expected to get orders taking him off the exploration mission to report to the ISO B3 as soon as they could lift off from their current target – (Planet Earth-like, Resources Negligible was what the landing crew was calling it). Old Captain Pangea had always told him to follow what his gut told him and his gut was screaming this was not a good idea.
Still, as part of the peace agreement, all crew members who became part of the Federation military were considered to be just that – citizens of the Federation and would not be prosecuted for actions taken in the war. He also wasn't likely to receive orders that would lead him or his crew into earning enough money for an early retirement either. Say what you like, the Federation military did not treat the former Alliance members as equals and usually reserved the better paying missions for those who fought on the winning side.
The flight officer looked over at him as he walked into the bridge of the ship, the E3BH's hologram appearing next to him. Bess, as with all AI ships, appeared as a female to her crew – she changed her appearances as she liked, but seemed to enjoy the sort of twenty-first century steam punk look lately. When they'd surrendered, she'd gone around gray eyed, pale skinned and thin as a bone with two shackles around her feet. But mostly these days she went around appearing as the sort of woman Arthur thought he'd rather fancy – thick red hair and a strikingly handsome sort of features.
“Set a course for ISO B3,” he ordered, ignoring the way the Federation sponsored Internal Affairs man lifted his eyebrow at him. “New orders. I want us there as soon as the survey crew gets on board.”
“Aye aye sir.” Around him came the hum of life as the crew leapt to their tasks of getting Bess ready for a quick jump to the ISO B3 Brain-station. Arthur dropped himself into the captain's chair and stared out the view panel. Something was up and he did not like it one bit.
“This is unusual and alarming Captain,” Bess whispereded to him. He nodded carefully.
He didn't like this one bit.
*~*~*~*~*
The ISO B3 looked like a sparkling geometric shape suspended among the stars like some sort of glittering diamond against the black back drop of space. She was a sentient station, one of the very last of her kind; a left over from Old Earth That Was. Her real name was Isabelle, and she had been a child of royalty. Her family had long since been forgotten to the annals of dusty history, but as with all Brain Stations, she had been born with enough of a genetic issue to have made her life outside of Brain Box a living hell.
Arthur had once seen a still-picture of what Isabelle looked like as she was and what she might have been. The two images gave him nightmares. One was of the Station as almost a living skeleton, but one with such severe deformity that he couldn't imagine how anyone could have brought the poor soul to life. The other, of what she might have been without the genetic deformity was what she generally chose to appear as (when she did anyways); it was a slender, young woman with sea glass green eyes and straight mahogany hair. She was nearly a thousand years old; had been entombed when she was only six. The sheer amount of time she had lived was frankly scary to think of - or of how long she could live.
And she was all but alone. The ability to make a Brain Station had been lost when Old Earth That Was exploded into a holocaust. AI's regained their prominence in the world afterward, as the pool of Brain Stations shrank with every passing year. At one point the ISO B3 had been one of a million different Stations with hundreds of thousands of smaller, younger Stations to call her family. As time went on, they died off. Some went mad, some vanished. And some, like the TEO 2NC had been annihilated during conflict. There were four of them left now; just Isabelle, Mei in the AS-1 cluster, Keiv in Rus-1 cluster and Joe in the Noram cluster. The older a Brain Station got, the bigger it got, adding layers on layers onto itself. There was a rumor that no one really spoke of, for fear it was right, that one of Rus-1 cluster planets was a Brain Station – just one so old it had collected its own atmosphere.
Frankly, it made Arthur's skin crawl sometimes when he caught sight of Isabelle, hovering quietly behind her Station Captain. Life as a Brain would drive him insane and to live through the things she had? He pretty much could bet he'd do what one Station had done, right before the War. Dumped all his people off at the nearest planet and piloted himself into a Sun just to end it all.
“Docking complete, Captain.” Bess's hull softly bumped onto the docking post in they'd been assigned, and the bridge crew let out a breath of relief. A Station meant R&R, and a Brain Station, especially one as old as the ISO B3 was, meant there was a lot of R&R that could happen.
Arthur leaned back. “Gently now,” he ordered. “No need to rush.”
His pilot gulped a little bit. For all that Bess was an AI and not a Brain, Arthur and his crew still felt she was almost sentient – they hated causing her harm for whatever reason. A scratch on her paint meant the poor sod would be out there in a 'suit fixing it..With a toothbrush. “Yes sir.”
“Will, let the crew know they may take leave in their normal shifts; keep at least a skeleton crew on Bess at all times.” His second nodded quietly. He liked that about good old Will. “We may be 'home' but no surprises now eh?”
Alpha shift would, as tradition dictated remain on board as Beta took it's leave. Given that they were likely only going to be here for a short time, Arthur had authorized Will to let Beta Shift go as well. Alpha would go on its shore leave with Delta, thereby pairing the more experienced crew members with the least; similar to how he liked his crew to work on board. However he'd be going on station earlier as to get his crew's new orders and to take care of any unpleasant business that needed to be taken care of while he had the chance.
Fuel needed to be bought, logs needed to be offloaded, samples taken to the right labs. As Captain he'd have to authorize the intake of goods, exchange of the few crew members leaving and those coming on board. Even though his orders read “immediately” it would still take him at least a day to get through the red tape before he'd be able to.
Still, with Will helping him, he managed to get it done in less time than expected. There hadn't been too much to do all things said and done – the E3BH had been less than a quarter of the way through her tour and it showed. The reports had been as expected – nothing exciting. No planets of major interest (or potential bonuses pay-outs), no run-ins with former fellow pirates or rebels, no real accidents. And the only crew members leave the ship, were all retiring to a well deserved retirement. His Information Officer for Alpha shift was unfortunately one of them, though he couldn't justify keeping Kerry on much longer.
“Sir?” Will asked quietly interrupting his brooding. “I have the on-coming crew manifests here for you.”
Distractedly, Arthur reached for them without looking. “Thank you, anything I should be aware of?” Bess's Captain wasn't expecting anything too outrageous.
“I, I'm not sure sir.”
He leaned back in his chair to get a look at his Second. Will was frowning at his own copy of the incoming crew, like it was saying something he didn't expect or like it. “Will?”
“There's two officers filling Kerry's place, sir,” he explained. “And get this – according to this, both are from the NORAM cluster. No one's joined the FUNPs out of NORAM for what? Decades?”
“Old Earth that was, was in that cluster,” Arthur said thoughtfully. “I believe the last serving member of the NORAM cluster was fifty years ago; right after the new capitol planet was declared.”
“Twin brothers by the looks of it. Each raised by their respective parents, on different planets. Major Williams is the older of the two – and isn't his record interesting.” Will's voice sounded almost grudgingly impressed. Arthur waited. “Half of it is blacked out; classified. He's been in and out of all sorts of trouble hot spots with the Diplos. The brother..” The Second's voice trailed off in horror.
“Yes?”
“He's also Diplo but, sir!”
“Out with it,” Arthur ordered.
The Second took a breath. “He's trouble, with a capitol T. Half the hot spots Williams gets into, it's his brother Jones who starts it. Look here!”
Arthur glanced down at the dossier. Major Alfred F Jones, Diplomatic Services. The picture was of all a tall, bright blond. Blue eyes that looked eager with a smile that promised all sorts of wicked things. The young man filled out his uniform well. He wouldn't've expect such a person, especially from NORAM Cluster to have a record as long as he did. Comments such as, “Brave, but stupidly so.” and “If his energy can be harnessed properly, there's nothing he cannot accomplish, however getting him to focus is an issue.” littered his former commanding officer's reports. He was highly decorated, but after all those interestingly blacked out classified incidents he ought to be.
They looked interesting, but not for Arthur and his crew. These were people to whom things came handed, and to who trouble was on a first name basis. He didn't need the latter on Bess. His goal was to remain under the radar for till he retired; and the same for his crew.
Those two would cheerfully ruin that plan.
“Let the quartermaster know I'll promote within the command structure. Kerry's handpicked one of her little proto-officers to fill her shoes. No reason why we should take these two on when we can do that,” he decided. Best to leave the trouble makers alone and not on his ship.
He had no idea that he’d shortly be given no choice in the matter.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-05-17 02:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-17 06:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-17 02:41 am (UTC)And well, well. This is interesting.
*can't wait for the first meeting between Arthur and Alfred*
no subject
Date: 2011-05-17 06:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-17 07:17 am (UTC)*pause and starts trying to guess* Star Wars? Babylon 5? Battlestar Galactica?
*ponders more*
no subject
Date: 2011-05-17 09:13 am (UTC)The one may be a bit old - I think I dated myself by using it, but the planet of one of her most famous series is used. The other hm...Again, dating myself with it, but it involves a bunch of Russian descendents having themselves a space Empire, but with one particularly special one.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-17 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-17 04:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-17 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-18 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-17 11:20 am (UTC)Love the story, love the universe - I'll be stalking this fic like whoa. ♥
no subject
Date: 2011-05-18 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-18 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-18 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-18 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-18 02:43 pm (UTC)That said, I'll surely be on the look out for the updates. <3
no subject
Date: 2011-05-18 09:56 pm (UTC)