My current opus, and I'm really enjoyed writing this so far. I'm looking for positive and negative comments, constructive if possible.



Loquor Asteroid Detention Center
International Day: 2503, August, 12th 0240.
Military Investigation Chief Grail interrogating Prisoner AF-4395

Record on AF-4395: 2m 50cm. Black Hair. Blue eyes. North America. White. Commodore, War of Polara. Tattoo of anchor on right shoulder. Scar on arm, wrist, thigh. 30 Earth Years.

Prisoner 95: I just wanted to kill someone.
Grail: Excuse me?
Prisoner 95: To actually feel the life drained…
(Grail interrupts)
Grail: You committed so many murders, but you had to finish it with actual strangulation?
Prisoner 95: Ah no, I simply snapped her neck. Simple, jaw back, shoulders forward.
Grail: Snapped neck, strangulation, drowning, whatever the case is. Why kill?
Prisoner 95: Its simple, to feel the life drained away, sucked from their body. Actually kinda satisfying. No one does it the old fashioned way anymore, all lasers, blasters, rockets, mines, impersonal stuff. Nothing like the hunt, the kill. With the cool twist and push, she was dead. Simple, uncomplicated.
Grail: Simple?
Prisoner 95: Of course.
Grail: But, why? It doesn’t make sense. Why does a PRF Commodore kill so many civilians. It wasn’t simple.
Prisoner 95: It actually was. Just impersonal.
Grail: The sheer destruction totaled in the trillions, and the human loss was enormous. To end it with a neck snap, its so strange. It wasn’t that simple. You had to have gotten permission from someone.
Prisoner 95: One thing you may never learn at an Academy, College, University, that’s what I’m about to tell you. Its not a life secret, its rather simple. Some people strike you the wrong way. A deeper voice says “Death to them.” In older times, they were killed, dispatched to a desert, a forest, the wilderness. Now, ever life is precious. The weak, raw, untrained are kept and trained to feel special. There is no natural selection, there is emotional selection. I have no problem with a poet, a writer, an artist. Hell, I played the violin! A musician. But some people are just weak.
Grail: So, your saying that the elimination of nearly a million people is ‘natural selection’? Are you the blaster of God?
Prisoner 95: I’m no angel of death and destruction. Far from it since I’m atheist, there is no God. I deal in science, facts of life. Cynical, maybe. I’m not saving the infected for later generations. Destroy them, and let the past be that, the past.
Grail: The people on Polara had no qualm with you, they weren’t ‘infected’ with anything.
Prisoner 95:(Chuckles) I’ll say this once. The conspiracy theorist had it right this time. They were infected with a disease. Epidemic like Bubonic Plague, AIDS, whatever you chose from history. They were eliminated, the disease going with them.
Grail: You just didn’t cause the death of a hundred thousand, or a million. You cost the PRF servicemen, ships, soldiers. God, I don’t have the figures, but I can tell you it was enormous. That war was four years ago, and they’re still talking about it. You didn’t just kill those civilians, and lead to soldiers deaths. You imprinted a generation with this war.
Prisoner 95: I cut the weak from the crop. Pull away the weeds, the weaklings, pretenders. The battles for Rawa, Canal, Baul. All of them, they were natural selection, but a little more brutal, or maybe a little less brutal.
Grail: Lets start with this man, Richard Kiln?
Prisoner 95: Richard Kiln, the one and only one. Damned genius, strong, the ideal human.
(Grail shuffling papers)
Grail: But you killed him with a neck snap. You were about natural selection, the death, destruction. Everything, about weaseling out the weak.
Prisoner 95: My only emotional selection. Listen, I’ll tell you the story. Maybe you’ll understand what the judges called “madness”. Just turn off that recorder, and you’ll understand.
(Recording cuts off)


Tigranes was a special location. Between Ankara System and the Armenian System, which in itself rendered no benefits. The system was a solar system, one sun, smaller than the Terra standard, it provided a little to the system at large. It didn’t matter. One planet, about 400 km in diameter, it had a loose ring of asteroids surrounding it, .503 AU from the sun . Tigranes I. The planet had an error when forming. The outer crust had hardened to quickly, spewing the magma out of the central core. The magma quickly solidified, forming a ring of stones around the planets equator. Tigranes II was 5000 km in diameter, a small gas planet. Red clouds surrounded the small inner core, the planet was 2.452 AU from the sun.
The system was relatively new, and special. Special because no one but the Pelop Royal Navy had access to the system. Any passer-bys could see the planet, but were either eliminated or escorted out of the system. Even if it was a Pelop navy ship, it had to provide the codes, four of them, to enter the system.
The reason why the system was special was simple. Prototypes required materials, and testing grounds. They also required secrecy. In the minds of the Pelop navy, the easiest solution was to lock down the Tigranes system with a flotilla of warships, and build a shipyard and technical labs on Tigranes I. Use the gas planets resources to provide fuels and the mineral and metal asteroids to build the prototypes. The Tigranes system was the testing ground for the new weapons of war. Old warships were often brought in, used as targets, training material, the forge upon which the Pelops forged their weaponry. Quite a promotion from scrap metal.
On June 23rd, 2499 the Archon was leading the flotilla. Two PRN cargo ships had entered the system, carrying “food and supplies”. Code for something special. Nothing the Archon’s captain had to worry about. The Archon defended, didn’t ask. The warship was one of the early ‘paddle’ model warships. The ‘paddle’ warships were like other warships. A diagonally cut front bow, with the bridge on top. The engines were in the back, making the 500 meter warship not very imposing, quite average. The difference was the ‘paddles’, two wheels on the side of the warship. They were blue-green wheels, with lead spokes covering the wheel, and a lead rim on the wheel. The wheels could generate massive amounts of energy for use. The ‘paddles’ could open slits in space, or provide a particle shield for the length of the ship.
Archon was a Pelops Royal Navy cruiser, anything under 400 meters was a destroyer, and anything between 700 and 1000 a heavy cruiser. The Archon lead the flotilla of two cruisers and four destroyers. Each one was a ‘paddle’ warship, able to jump 100 light years, a meager distance in the grand equation of mankind’s expansion. A battleship, for instance, could jump 1000 light years, and still have some energy reserves to jump around in-system four or five times.

The Archon now sat at the edge of the security zone, preparing for their newest arrival. A cargo ship, leading the Remray, an old battleship. 1405 meters in length, 100 meters in length. A behemoth of the older colonization days. The frontier was harsh. Asteroids that needed to be demolished, comets averted, supplies to be delivered. The first warships were also humanitarian ships, carrying supplies for the frontiersmen. Then, the colonies developed, expanded, and could defend themselves. Then, the warships fulfilled their belligerent nature. Eliminate the rebels, destroy these pirates, disperse these fanatics.
In the Archon’s bridge, the First Lieutenant spoke up, tapping into the bridge speaker net from his seat. Checking his computer, he then spoke confidently, approving of the punctuality, and the veracity of who was entering the system. The navy was punctual, and the cargo captains were the most stringent, and the identity of the ship kept it from being blown apart as soon as it entered the system.
“Captain, I have a slit opening, at 4.53. Alert the engines to make ready?”
Captain Schmidt nodded, the grizzled navy captain knowing who it was. The cargo ship, but it was almost entirely across the system. Not where they were supposed to be. Captain Schmidt was a grizzly veteran, though he never showed it. He wore no beard, and kept his uniform crisp and white. Clean to the very last fiber. Captain Schmidt was reliable, strong, quick, and intelligent. The able captain.
“Open all engine ducts, prepare for inner-system jump. How long until the cargo ship in-systems?” The captain hoped the warships could get there quickly enough. Procedure must be followed, and the cargo ship inspected. It mattered, Captain Schmidt knew. Or they wouldn’t have created the procedure.
“I have eight minutes until the slit opens. We can get there in four minutes. Prepare for inner system jump?” The lieutenant hovered his hand over the jump switch. The jump wouldn’t instantly activate, but it would begin the command code for the AI to plot the jump, ready the engines, and then actually open the inter-space hole, and let the Archon slip through space to the cargo ship.
The inter-space hole was created by the matter drives, which sucked in a massive amount of matter, allowing it to create a slit in space. The slit would depend on the drive, and the drives attached to the ships were always to specification. A cruiser couldn’t get through the slit of a private yacht. The cargo ships and others had more massive drives, taking up a large part of their bulk, allowing them to pull large objects, such as battleships, through their slit.
The slit was the portal to secondary space, one that could be bent, cutting years of travel to a month for long jumps, weeks for medium jumps, and days for short jumps. This one would take only a few seconds.
“Fire the engines, lieutenant.” Captain Schmidt ordered, then switched to fleet net.
“Flotilla Tigranes, jump to point 4.53, prepare for pre-entrance check of cargo ship and Remray.”
The captains computer console projected the Tigranes system, and other relevant data, including six dots that were red. They all almost immediately flipped to blue. The other captains acknowledged the orders. A yellow timer appeared, marking the time till the jump. It was only thirty seconds. Then, the ship would be in secondary, and then back in regular space.
The timer counted quickly, and then the matter drives roared to life. A black envelope encased the ship. The description from outside of the ship was that of a black sleeve pulled around the ship. Ghostly in quality, it rippled and wavered like a mirage, and then in was gone. The ship was in secondary. Then, the sleeve dropped away, and the Archon appeared at point 4.53 of the security zone, and there was empty space. It was a lapse of maybe two seconds.
The six other ships appeared four seconds or so later. The sleeves dropped away, and they were there. The wheels were shimmering like a mirage, the massive energy radiating from the hubs of the matter generator.


Dropping out four minutes later, a cargo ship, with the battleship Remray in tow. The cargo ship could’ve been called odd shaped, with two massive wheels, and a bullet shaped hull. Stretching from the battleship were hundreds of titanium and magnetic lines, keeping the battleship attached to the cargo ship.
“Cargo ship requesting communication link,” the communication technician spoke up, sending the link to the captains computer. Opening the link, the face of the cargo commander appear. The thick black haired man, with the dark brown Indian skin. Black eyes, with strangely obvious white eyeballs.
“Cargo Captain Ali-Jarir, requesting the Archon leave Tigranes system immediately.” He spoke rapidly, his voice calm and educated.
“Captain Schmidt here, Pelops Flotilla commander. I ask you stand down. I have no orders to leave the Tigranes system, and I will remain here until you stand down.” Captain Schmidt touched the weaponry armament button, ordering the rest of the flotilla to prepare the rocket pods, mostly EMP bombs to disable electric circuitry.
“Captain Schmidt, I suggest you do not arm your weapon systems. Stand down.” Ali-Jarir added a slight smile to his message. Then the link cut off. Slightly stunned, Captain Schmidt struck the alert button and yelled out to the crew.
“Battle stations, all ships open fire. Open fire, fire for full effect!” Captain Schmidt flicked on the particle shield generator.
“Deploying into C formation, opening with all rockets,” the cruiser captain of the Othello said, and the screen showed the battle deployment. Archon and Othello in the center with the destroyers spreading out to either side, and the last cruiser to follow the Archon.
Flying by, hundreds of rockets trailed smoke and flame, spiraling into the cargo ship. A thousand rockets or more sheared from the destroyer rocket pods. They all flew into the particle shield of the cargo ship.