Breachstorm Narrative - Chapter 01 - "Farstar"

I'm pleased to present early access to the first entry in the ongoing Breachstorm storyline. We plan on introducing the ongoing narrative of the setting in two parts; anthological tales from the universe that will expand on the lore, characters, and locations, as well as ongoing storylines that will leave lasting impacts on the game and universe as they develop. This short story represents the first part of Breachstorm's persistent narrative... enjoy!

Timestamp: HRU609.13

Gharakh’vel, or Farstar (when translated from the Mu’rhasan dialect of the Zhre’laq, or Hunter's Tongue), was a relatively lonely and unremarkable star system.  Perched on the fringes of Pride Mu’rhasan territory, its small star had collected an eclectic smorgasbord of rocky planetoids, not yet formed into larger planetary masses.  Still, its wide belts of asteroids were rich in easily accessible heavy elements, and entrepreneurial pridemembers had established mining claims throughout the system; operations largely serviced by schools of massive spaceborne processing vessels that ground and refined the collected space debris with hungry iron mouths of rock grinders and separator stacks.

Suspended in orbit on the edge of Gharakh’vel’s distal asteroid belt, the Khiri’var gravitic telescope was a massive structure; a kilometers-long stack of counter-rotating cylinders crowned by fan-like arrays of gravity-wave sensors, defensive weaponry, radiator sails, and long-range communication equipment that spiderwebbed out from either end of the stack like some form of esoteric and ostentatious ornamentation.  Hidden within the structure's vast compartments were a winding maze of control stations, technical bays, and enclosed hangers, concealing a small fleet of couriers and quick-response interdiction craft assigned to intercept aggressors into Mu'rhasan space.

For several hours the post had been tracking a spatial distortion emblematic of the action of an incoming Hre’raq engine - the vessel’s compression drive corrupting the very spacetime around it; projecting a ripple effect through reality itself that inspired the gravity wave sensors of the Khiri’var array to bleat persistent warnings to its monitoring crew.  The craft was slow and large, boasting a drive signature consistent with that of a human vessel. A large freighter was the most likely hypothesis; although the spatial differential field projected by its drive was imperfect… suggesting system damage.

No expectation of incoming traffic from the human Confederacy had been relayed to the listening post’s crew; but such trade was not uncommon within the Gharakh’vel system.  As such, the vessel’s unassuming disposition had not raised undue alarm, and the Zhiri’var stationmaster had ordered the vessel monitored, but not intercepted.  The Zhren’thrar officer’s lackadaisical attitude was apparently rewarded when the vessel dropped its compression fields, returning to the harsh reality of uncompressed space, and initiated a deceleration burn towards the Garakh’vel system proper.  Sensors, partially blinded by the ship's bright engine plumes, detected damage on the human vessel’s hull, even noting that debris had apparently been ejected from its drive field upon translation into the system.

Nearing the station’s proximity on a trajectory uncomfortably close to the Khiri’var’s wide orbit, the human crew began broadcasting worried distress messages; loudly requesting assistance in a broad range of Mu’rhasan frequencies; worried reports in neohegej and poorly translated Jhiraki that reported structural damage and imminent cascade failure that the Khiri’var was neither able nor disposed to repair.  A flurry of return signals warned off the freighter; demanding heading changes that would take it deeper in-system, and away from the station’s restricted space.  Whether the human freighter’s subsequent refusal to comply was the result of system failure, shoddy message translation, or simply a panicked crew hoping to find a Samaritan within the ranks of the listening post’s technical staff did not matter much to the stationmaster; who ordered the array’s weapon systems activated.

Largely intended to destroy debris threatening to impact the station, Khiri’var’s weapon pods were not particularly well-outfitted, boasting clusters of small plasma cannons and magnetic accelerators; but the station’s crown of assembled sensor arrays disguised a single, high-power ion lance.  With the freighter closing quickly, this weapon activated and took aim; powerful magnetic fields compressing a stream of accelerated ions into a focused beam capable of separating vessels neatly into their component parts.  A single ignition sent a brilliant beam of plasma flashing through space several kilometers ahead of the embattled freighter - a shot across the bow that couldn’t possibly be misconstrued by the ship's clearly second-rate communications software.  The freighter’s response was immediate, unexpected, and abrupt.

It exploded.

In a blinding flash of reactor overload and expanding shell of gas and expelled reaction mass the titanic craft broke apart into huge, metallic chunks; bullet-like debris fired from the detonation streaking away indiscriminately.  Preserving most of its forward momentum; the largest collection of debris continued unabated towards the Khiri’var station at concerning velocity; now missing the decelerative impulse of its recently-destroyed engines.  The effect was like that of two intercepting icebergs; the enormous bulk of the freighter and the kilometer-long breadth of the station inseparably drawn to one another by the terrible physics of inertia.

Before questions about the exact mechanism of the freighter’s destruction could be raised by the Khiri’var’s crew; defensive weapon arrays were automatically targeted; white-hot bolts of ignited plasma and the staccato pulse of mass drivers sending shaped explosives into the center-mass of the largest chunks of wreckage.  The station briefly erected a particle field; captured ions held in magnetic containment to form a shell around the structure that turned aside the smaller particulate, but collapsed quickly once larger pieces of the freighter’s original hull impacted its molecule-thick surface, bearing down inexorably onto the station.  Now their turn to be panicked by the ever-present dangers of space occupation; the Khiri’var’s crew watched helplessly through external feeds as the cratered mass of the freighter’s drive system hurtled past their habitat; missing the array’s extravagant sensory protrusions by what seemed like bare meters. To the relief of the Khiri’var’s crew, the combined firepower of its defensive systems were enough to successfully turn aside the remaining mangled remains of the destroyed human ship; destroying each piece or redirecting its motion to miss the enormous telescope array.

Fur raised in apprehension, the Zhren’thrar crewmates within the command module let out a roar at surviving the ordeal; praising the gods for their good fortune even as a second set of alarms bleated its insistent call throughout the station.  This klaxon was different; not the incoming compression field of a vessel travelling faster than light; but a new proximity alarm triggered by the ignition of an antimatter rocket within the outpost’s immediate vicinity.  Wreathed by its stark white drive plume; a stealth corvette burned out from the heart of the retreating freighter’s wreckage; particle fields flashing as they turned aside the debris left behind by the Khiri’var’s defensive weapons in a rapid ascent to the station’s position.  A ripple of gunfire flashed across the corvette’s matte, heat-coated exterior as it decelerated; railgun turrets across its surface sending high-density modular rounds into each of the Khiri’var’s defensive weapon clusters and unseating the ion lance from its gimbal at the station’s apex; leaving the array to watch helplessly as the warship; emblazoned with the burnt red trident of the Confederate Naval Corps; pulled alongside to dispatch its true payload.

Micro-rockets flashing from the corvette’s open ordnance bays as a series of breaching pods slammed into the rotating monoliths of the Khiri’var’s habitat section.  Breaching charges and laser cutters went to work opening holes in the station’s shell while a locust swarm of bulky, armored figures borne by multi-armed thruster packs maneuvered their way to airlocks, hangar doors, sensors, and external communications equipment.  Detonations flashed across the surface of the listening post as charges were ignited simultaneously; leaving the station blind, dumb, and helpless.  A thick smoke choked the labyrinthine halls of the Khiri’var’s rotating habitat cylinders as M-TAC fireteams disembarked their breaching pods and detonated blackout charges; filling the internal atmosphere with a choking particulate that limited the defender’s visibility and wireless communications.  Vanguarded by the hulking APEX armor of MANTIS operators and swarms of agile sensor microdrones, Confederate teams quickly fanned out throughout the structure; trussing surprised station artificers and technicians at gunpoint.

While outnumbered and reeling by the rapidity of the attack, the onboard Mu’rhasan security team coordinated a tenacious defense.  From the command module, the stationmaster locked bulkheads and jettisoned sections of the station to restrict the movement of encroaching human teams, and atmosphere was vented in non-essential sections to reduce the effectiveness of M-TAC’s particulate attack.  Outfitted in void-sealed battledress, the station’s resident Warpack mobilized immediately; setting up ambushes within the Khiri’var’s extensive technical bays and across internal hanger decks before being flanked themselves by M-TAC troops who simply detonated walls and locked bulkheads with autonomous breaching drones.

Within hours, the Khiri’var station was under the near-total control of the occupying Confederate task force; its internal spaces scarred by plasma fire and explosive ammunition and habitability ruined by successive explosions and demolition.  Locked in their command module, the stationmaster watched helplessly as a single masked human entered the array; wearing only a light un-marked exoskeleton, carrying a handheld computer and dwarfed by the armored suits of the M-TAC troopers surrounding them.  Face hidden behind a specialized rebreather unit, and flanked by the broad bulk of a MANTIS team, the figure descended into the station’s quarantine hangars to a singular craft; a 10-meter long torpedo-shaped vessel capped on either end with powerful engines and the sleek angles of a high-speed Arquebus drive.  The ship was a data courier; an autonomous drone that relayed information and sensitive material across interstellar distances; its blocky, human design sat at odds with the distinctly alien architecture of the hangar bay surrounding it.  Portions of the drone's outer hull had been removed; protecting plating peeled back to reveal the complex internal electronics housing the vessel’s data storage and computers.

The agent wasted no time in clambering gracefully atop the drone; reeling a cord from their handheld computer to an open port in the courier’s computer core.  They spent only moments studying the resulting readout before stowing their device, leaping down and nodding tersely to the assembled MANTIS team; who wordlessly began setting demolition devices at around the perimeter the vessel.

Moments later the shipmaster watched the occupying humans leave the ways they came; breaching pods detaching from the station’s hull, and rocket-borne MANTIS units returning through destroyed airlocks to the open bays of their waiting corvette.  As the CNS vessel pulled away, engines burning hard to put distance between the small vessel and the Khiri’var array.  The station rocked as the set demolition devices vaporized the confederate drone deep in the station’s hold, and the stationmaster allowed themselves a moment to envision the bloody havoc they would demand wreaked upon humanity for this act of blatant aggression.

That was before an engineered breach in the Khiri’var’s onboard antimatter reactor triggered a massive cascade failure; ejecting a stream of reactive antimatter from the safety of its containment fields.  In a burst of light and intense radiation, the station vaporized; leaving an expanding cloud of debris and gaseous remnants as the corvette responsible hard burned its engines, racing out of the Farstar system.