Resurgence - Magistracy of Canopus

== Magistracy of... Death? ==
(Colonel) Sang-Shao Adan (F)
(Major) Sao-Shao Lanfos (M)
(Captain - Jumpship) Sang-Wei Vinaha (M)
July 3152
“Some allies they turned out to be.” Scoffed Sao-Shao Lanfos. He stood near the vessel’s ‘Captain’s Chair’ on the bridge as Sang-Wei Vinaha approached his seat. “I agree, sir, we should be driving into the invader’s forces and slaughtering them.  The three of us are on a diplomatic mission now of all times, on top of this worthless ally not responding to our calls for aid?” Vinaha added, now standing next to his chair, looking across the deck with Lanfos. 
These two officers had worked together for a long time and built a strong friendship. Each could instinctively rely on the other. However, they made sure that the Sang-Shao was not on the deck before discussing such topics.  Sang-Shao Adan was originally from Canopus and she was both embarrassed and worried about the situation, given the revelation of their attackers in the Confederation.
For a nation as big as the Magistracy to go silent was deeply concerning. They, themselves could be under attack or worse. It was their mission to find out what was going on. This was a small entourage with a single jumpship, two dropships, and an aerospace escort.
Weeks of fighting had already passed by the time they were barely reaching Claybrooke. Final preparations for the jump there were being made and the Sang-Shao would soon be joining them on the bridge. 
“What do you think she will threaten them with to uphold their end of the alliance, sir?” asked Vinaha.
“There are likely Maskirovka agents already on Canopus, Vinaha, should they refuse to honor our alliance, I would guess there will be very painful times ahead.” Responded Sao-Shao Lanfos with a nervous chuckle, knowing what the Maskirovka were capable of.
Just then, a woman in pristine dress uniform emerged from an opening hatch. “Officer on deck!” shouted a marine posted at the entry to the bridge. In unison, all personnel snapped to attention. 
Sang-Shao Adan walked to the center of the bridge and loudly stated, “At ease, let us jump when your vessel is ready Sang-Wei.” She stood still, looking over the various staff manning the stations. In preparation the three officers braced and the jump was initiated by a button pressed by Sang-Wei Vinaha. 
Space folded around the bridge as they departed Capellan space for the first stop on their travels to the Capital world of the Magistracy. The seconds passed as they emerged in the Claybrooke system. Immediate proximity alarms and automated emergency maneuvers kicked in. 
Continuing to brace themselves, the jumpship and dropships attached jerked hard to starboard to dodge a massive piece of wreckage. It was a miss by less than 75 meters. However, the debris field continued on. Sang-Wei Vinaha had already jumped in the Captain’s chair and was shouting orders regarding their evasive maneuvers.
Hitting the comms to the flight bay, “All fighters deploy and help clear this debris field!” Vinaha yelled. As he finished the statement, a large piece of debris scraped along the port side of the bridge view Ferroglass with a heinous shriek and dragged along the hull for a few seconds.
External viewscreens showed multiple waves of fighters departing the vessel, barrages of laser fire melting large pieces of debris.  Autocannons and missiles were used to great effect, their kinetic energy deflecting larger pieces.  Moments later, weapons fire was beginning to impact pieces ahead of the jumpship, sending them off into space and out of the ship’s course. 
Scans of the debris field showed various spacecraft of Canopian origin but, there were no escape pods.  However, scans also revealed unknown debris.  Running checks to ensure hull integrity and waiting for the fighters to embark took a fair amount of time once they were clear. 
“Sang-Wei Vinaha, prepare your jumpship to recharge, Sao-Shao Lanfos and I will take our dropships to the planet. As we prepare to depart, scan as far into the system as you can, see if there is any additional conflict going on.” Sang-Shao Adan ordered as she moved to depart the deck with Lanfos following close behind.
“Yes, ma’am, beginning now.” Responded Vinaha.
----Seventeen days ago the Capellan dropships departed from their jumpship, moving fast towards the planet.  The two vessels contained a company of Combined arms elements should their allies need assistance.  However, as the planet came closer and closer into view, something seemed off…
“Sao-Shao, you’ve visited this planet before, correct?” asked Adan.
“Yes, ma’am.” He said, while continuing to check and double check readiness reports from the Company. 
“When you visited… what color was the planet?” she asked, nervousness sneaking into her voice.
Lanfos had a quizzical look on his face as he sat upright and turned to see the screen Adan was standing next to, just behind him to his left.  As he turned, he saw it too.  His audible gasp sent shivers down Adan’s spine. 
“I’m guessing, not that color, correct, Lanfos?” she asked.
“The world is supposed to have a green tint to it.” He quietly responded. 
Both of the officers looked at the screen in silence.  Adan hit a few selections on the touchscreen and the readings showed what they suspected. Poison.  The world was dead, the entire thing.
----Another day passed as they arrived at the atmosphere of the planet.  It was a putrid orange color.  A single lance of aerospace fighters deployed to the surface to get a visual on the ground. Their atmospheric sealing would keep the pilots safe.
Both dropships were at a standstill as the crews watched the descent to the surface.  It was nothing but orange fumes, no clouds at all.  The objectives were to survey the major cities of both continents.It was a ghost town, covered in corpses, millions and millions of corpses.  There were occasional fires from wrecked vehicles, or burning power stations.  It was clear though that the fumes were extremely corrosive. When zoomed in to look at the corpses they were contorted and half melted.  The buildings appeared to be eaten away.  Any foliage like forests were long gone, nothing but dead trees. 
“Oh shit!” shouted out of the comms on the bridge of the Command dropship.  Half of the crew present jumped.
“Report!” shouted the Sang-Wei of this dropship.
“Emergency egress from the planet’s surface!  My canopy just cracked!” yelled back the hysterical pilot.
“Solid copy, get out of the atmosphere!  All pilots!  Out of the atmosphere now!” ordered the Sang-Wei.
He checked the vitals to find one other pilot was entirely unresponsive; switching to the external feed, the aerospace fighter was incredibly low to the surface and dropping.  Switching to the cockpit feed caused a handful of personnel to vomit. The pilot’s suit visor was entirely melted away and the skin and eyes melting down the pilot’s face.  On the rear camera, it showed the front of the Ferroglass shielding had dozens of tiny holes with orange streaks coming through, however, looking past the glass, the crew could see a building for a split second before it went black from the impact.
“Fighter 2 is down!  1, 3, 4, get out of their now!  Maximum velocity!!!”  shouted the Sang-Wei.
Just then, 3 went offline, the feed already dead.
“This is Fighter 1, I have escaped the atmosphere but my vessel is continuing to have more and more issues, I will need pickup! Over!”
“Solid copy, sending them now, be prepared for decontamination procedures.”  Responded the Sang-Wei again.
With that he moved the cameras to fighter 4, relieved to see the craft was exiting the atmosphere, moving toward the dropships. “Fighter 4, what is your condition, is your fighter holding together?”  the Sang-Wei received no response. “Fighter 4, respond.”  Nothing came back. 
Checking the trajectory of the fighter moving at maximum velocity, it was going to impact the dropship!  “All fighters, take down fighter 4, now!  It is going to hit the dropship!”
Evasive maneuvers were not going to be fast enough to get out of the massive craft’s path.  Waves of weapons fire from the second dropship were reaching out to take down Fighter 4.  A lance of aerospace blew by Dropship 1 so close to the hull, it shook.  Waves of fire enveloped the fighter, disintegrating it.
Only a handful of pieces were left to bounce off the dropship’s hull.  All eyes were now on fighter 1.  Sealing his jumpsuit, he ejected the canopy and pushed out of the cockpit, using his suit thrusters to move towards the rescue craft.  Thankfully, all went well on his rescue and he was brought back on board. His fighter fell back into the atmosphere and disintegrated; anything remaining hit the surface and would be unusable. 
A warning beacon was prepared and dropped into orbit.  There wasn’t much else they could do.  No one was answering on any frequencies, there were no distress calls, no active wavelengths, there weren’t even satellites in orbit to see what may have happened here.
“Sang-Wei, let us set our heading to the jumpship.” Stated Sang-Shao Adan. 
“At once ma’am.” The ship’s Captain began giving the orders and the pair of dropships and escorts changed course to leave the system.
----Back on the bridge of the jumpship, the planet’s condition was shown to the crew, so they knew what was going on.  It horrified them.  Some crewmembers decided they would never set foot on a planet again. 
After a situation report where the Commanding Officers were brought up to speed, plans were made to jump to the next planet. The course would lead them through Thurrock, Fanardir, then finally to Canopus.
However, the trip was nothing more than a horror show on repeat.  In both Thurrock and Fanardir’s systems, the habitable planets were blood baths. Thurrock was a sickly green from its usual Terra-like blue.  Fanardir was purple, when it should have had a reddish hue. 
Like Claybrooke, there was debris, but nothing to show what happened or any survivors.  Finally, it was time to jump to Canopus.  The expectation was death and destruction.  However, the only way to find out was when Sang-Wei Vinaha activated the jump sequence…
----The second they emerged from their jump a signal was received.  “Who is in command of this vessel and what are your intentions?!” came a female voice followed by hoarse coughing.
“This Sang-Shao Adan of the Capellan Confederation, we are a diplomatic fleet meant to make contact with our allies in the Magistracy.”
“We sent word months ago that we needed aid and this is it?  This is it?!” the female voice screamed.
“The Capellan Confederation has been trying to contact the Magistracy government for months with no response, we just found Claybrooke, Thurrock, and Fanardir all dead.  What is the status of Canopus?”
“There is no Canopus!” this time the outburst was followed by sobbing.
A video feed went live, sent from the mysterious woman’s ship, a combination of stitched together BattleROMs and news feeds. It showed a massive space battle, incoherent background radio chatter ranging from yelling to screaming.  Then the feed cut to the planet itself, showing space vessels drifting into the atmosphere and falling to the surface. Aerospace fighters were flying by shooting satellites down, clearly, Spectrals. 
When the fighters banked and took out the satellite that was recording: a new feed from a shipboard camera showed missiles raining down on the planet.  Mushroom clouds were forming as flame filled shockwaves radiated out from the impact sites, one of which was the Capital.  Various pockets of colors exploded in the upper atmosphere, drifting in all directions, some were the same shades as the worlds Adan had already visited.  Flashes in space could be seen as well as additional nuclear warheads detonated against Canopian space vessels.
Pushing through being clearly emotionally distraught, the voice continued, “Again, I say there is no more Canopus.  There is no Magistracy.  The Blakists failed before but, they learned their lesson and won this time.”
“Please, who am I talking to, is this part of the Centrella family?  Is Ilsa alive?” asked Adan in response.
“You don’t get it do you?  Look at the debris field, it stretches from the jump point to the planet.  There was no ground battle, hundreds of thousands of troops died without firing a shot. We mobilized the entire MAF here, if any of our worlds are not ruined, it is because they were conquered without contest.”
“You are saying the entire MAF was destroyed here? At Canopus?” Adan asked in horror.
“Take the video with you back to Sian, the tales of the Word of Blake’s horrors are nothing compared to what they have become after their defeat.  We killed dozens of ships, including warships and they still kept pushing.  Anything left of the MAF would be garrison strength at most.” The voice said in despair, choking back tears. 
Sang-Shao Adan thought it would be better not to disclose the event at Sian, so she switched back to trying to find out who she was talking to, “Again, who are you?  Where are you?  We can come pick you up.”
“No, we have a functional jumpship.  We will rescue any that we can and seek aid from my uncle. This is Serin Centrella… They arrived from the Rimward Periphery… Farewell in the battles ahead…” the line went dead and outside, a flash, from a jumpship a few thousand kilometers away, went off.
“Chart us a course home Sang-Wei.” Adan said solemnly, still staring at the blank screen. Her mind raced.  She hoped that she would be able to bring back companies or battalions of help and that the lack of communication was just due to the HPGs not working and communications being delayed.  Instead, she found an allied nation on the brink of extinction.  
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Category:Resurgence
Category:Works by Minis&Dumbbells