So far our two pronged attack on the soft spot of the NEO blockade
around Mars was going fairly well, although we did lose Akira in his
flag ship and one of the other two Martian capitol ships. At least
Trist was still fighting in the Minnow. Most of the NEO Exo’s were
destroyed and their remaining capitol ship was in bad shape.
Unfortunately, most of the remaining Exo’s were surrounding Conrad,
Toby, Toby, Jackson, Jacob and myself. I was starting to move in to
help Toby and Jacob, but three of the enemy Exo’s swarmed me. I shot
two of them down, then noticed that Cowboy was about to be obliterated
by a massive swarm of missiles, so I kicked my suit into overdrive, and
hurtled to his location and shot down every missile about to hit him.
Unfortunately the use of my power booster’s overheated my Exo, and my
fire control system is acting up. Oh, better that then losing Jackson.
I told Cowboy to turn his big gun to help Conrad, who had come to my aid
just as I took off to help him. Just as I turned back to face the big
ass Exo in front of me, it was blasted into a thousand pieces! I swung
around and there was the Minnow, it had finally made it to this sector
of the battle. Just about then, we picked up numerous enemy ships
heading our way. The enemy ship that Toby freed from the AI control
closed in on us, and Carta Vie invited us on the ship so we can get the
hell out of dodge, I took him up on the offer. Who knows, maybe we
could find a way to take over the ship.
We docked in the Excalibur, and the cavernous bay was empty except for a
few of the Razorclaw Exo’s. As the atmosphere was restored, we locked
down our Exo’s and formed up, I slung on my sub machine gun just in
case. And I am glad I did, because the large doors at either end of the
hanger opened up, and 20 armed marines came marching in, followed by
Carta Vie, and 3 others, one was Kikuchi that I remembered from the CGA. Well,
this pissed me off.
“You bastard, you invited us in here as allies and now you are going to
ambush us! I started to swing up my gun, just as the marines snapped to
attention and shouldered their rifles in salute. A little sheepishly, I let go of
my gun.
Carta Vie told us that something had taken control of their ships, and
the Excalibur appears to be the last NEO vessel under independent
command. “Good, this ship will make a great flagship for my fleet!
Let’s go talk about the details for our next step.” Carta turned a
little green around the gills, but simply nodded. Carta and his
followers led us into the ship and to a conference room with one hell of
a table. It looks like it is some sort of holographic viewing device.
Carta began telling us the story about how NEO developed such advanced
technology.
ALIENS!! NEO is using fucking Alien technology that was buried deep
below the surface of Venus. They have been experimenting with this
technology for dozens of years, but about 20 years ago the Emperor
started acting strange. At first it was reassigning high ranking
officers to out of the way garrisons, then it began escalating to
executing officials for alleged plots against the government. As the
war began, the human Exo pilots were being used as guinea pigs for
testing out each new generation of automated Exo’s. Of course all of this
culminated with a signal that seems to have originated from the ancient
alien ruins on Venus that took control of every ship and Exo in the NEO
fleet. The only surviving ship is the Excalibur, thanks to Toby’s agile mind and quick fingers.
“Okay Carta, I need you to let every one on this ship know that I am in
charge, and they need to follow my orders.” Carta nodded, and hit a few
buttons on the table, and a camera popped up in front of me. “Attention
crew, something has happened to the rest of the fleet, and our
government has turned against us. From now on, you will follow any
orders from Kyle Dison as if they came from the Emperor himself.” As
soon as the camera turned off, Carta pulled out his side arm and blew
his brains out. At least now I don’t have to worry about him causing
trouble in the future.
“Well, since I am now in charge, you had better take me up to the bridge
so I can let the rest of the Mars fleet know what is going on.” We
reached the bridge, and they patched in Trist and Charlotte. As soon as
Trist heard my voice, she screamed out, “what is going on over there
Dison? We saw you go into the enemy ship and then nothing.”
“Everything is fine, we have taken over the ship, and her and the crew
have joined us. So you can start calling me Admiral Dison.” There was a
polite cough behind me, and Kiriko looked a little uncomfortable.
“Actually sir, you are the acting Emperor.” Well, that put the biggest
smile in the galaxy on my face! “Emperor Dison, that has a nice ring to
it.” I told Charlotte and Trist we planned to head to Luna and gather up their resources. Charlotte pointed out that going to Omerta first makes more sense, as Luna doesn’t have much left. I agreed, and we set a new course.
I turned to Gios, the commander of the command deck. “You had better patch me into the crew. Attention crew of the
Excalibur. As you already know, I am now in charge of this ship, and as
your new Emperor, I plan to organize any remaining NEO ships, and form
an Alliance of all free Humans, and stop this alien takeover. I expect
all of you to do your best, and understand that your war with the rest
of the Solar system is now over, and the remnants of the Martian fleet
are now our allies. Our next step is to go to Omerta, and gather as
many ships as possible, and head towards Titon. Once we have gathered a
sufficient fleet, we will return to the inner solar system and put an
end to this alien threat.”