The Tiacken Tribune

War!

This week saw the beginning of the second war that centered on the now infamous “Usube incident.” With galactic tensions mounting over the past few weeks, federation and empire fighters alike began infiltrating enemy territory. As the announcement of war reached the front, fighters leaped into action. The federation struck the first blow deep in the Empire homeworlds. Rookie pilots were victimized repeatedly as Federation light assault forces began to open fire. The Empire pilots, who had expected the strike to occur in the west pardus rim, scrambled to recover. They chose Ruby Legion stronghold, Enaness as their defensive point. The conflict between Ruby Legion and Red Cell is legendary, and it wasn’t long before the federation forces combined to attempt to break down the defenses holding Enaness. The result: slaughter. Most pilots were destroyed in the ambushes guarding the entrance MO’s. Those that managed to break through were swept up by Nanvel, who has received a bronze Imperial War Medal for his services thus far. All told, the number of valiant efforts made thus far is beyond recording. Untold pilots from both sides have been willing to fight and die for a cause. What, exactly, that cause is remains a mystery, but we’re sure it’s worth fighting for!

At the same time, in Nari, federation forces began to sweep the Imperial presence clean, ensuring greater profits for the federation in this time of conflict. The Imperial counterstrike attacked Aya, and trapped several high level federation units behind MO lines. So intense was the action during these first few days of war that even the galactic Cubes couldn’t resist getting involved. Baldur, for one, was spotted in Nari.

While the neutrality of the gods is above contestation, there is one other party in the universe who may hold the key to victory in their fist. The Union, inexplicably, has managed to weasel its way out of yet another war. If the Union chose to back either side, however, the wave of violence that would ensue would sweep the opposition away. Whether or not the Union remains neutral is a question for the ages. This reporter, however, hopes that he will be on the front lines when that decision is made.

Preserving History! (Sivrehn, Galactic Historian)

As a young lad, Sivrehn enjoyed running a sector of his father’s moderately well-to-do small corporation on Earth, which mostly involved trading commodities both in the planet and with interstellar markets. Most of all, he always enjoyed doing contracts face-to-face, haggling in markets, interacting and negotiating with people to find out what they wanted and then arranging mutually profitable solutions for both sides. Of course, this often involved riffling records, be they trade ones, court ones, civilian ones or other kinds, for often he had to deal with proud people, who didn’t even know, most times, what they wanted or why they wanted it.

One day, his father grew very sickly: the doctors claimed they didn’t know what afflicted him, that they couldn’t be sure on how to treat him.
He grew depressed, and barely went out to trade anymore, or to run his company. A few days later, he was called by one of his trader friends, Novah. He recognized the caller ID and was briefly heartened, for he had a very, very close friendship to her… he answered the call.

She was worried about him, and was dismayed to hear about his father. However, when he described the symptoms, she told him that her grandmother’s isolated settlement on Usube was once overtaken by a disease that appeared to be very much alike that one. And that a young doctor had managed to save most of the settlement, but had died soon afterwards in a vehicle accident.

“Could it be?” he wondered… He decided to find out. Leaving his father to the care of a nurse, he spent a considerable part of his savings on a ship and went as hurriedly as he could to the distant planet. Once there, he flew all around the planet, trying to find out the truth about the story. After three days: he was commed by the nurse: “Your father’s situation is deteriorating rapidly. The doctors have given up on him, and I’ve been instructed to only attempt to relieve his pain” He was disheartened, but kept on searching for a clue.

After a week, when he was nearly giving it all up, he found a copy of the doctor’s log on a optical disk in his old house’s basement. He urgently sent the disk’s contents to the nurse, and made three copies of it for safekeeping. He spent five more days without any replies, other than an acknowledge of receipt by his father’s caretaker.

He was dismayed by how little people remembered, even when this piece of the past was so recent. It reminded of all the people he had met who cherished old enmities and grudges without remembering why, the close family friendships who were disintegrated in a generation, the businesses that closed because new managements always forgot why the business had come about in the first place, and repeated blunders made times before by others: the records and memories simply seemed to vanish, or rather, be forgotten amidst the bustle of today’s universe. It made him want to cry.

After two weeks, he decided there was no more to search and decided to return to Earth. Tired, he decided to take a shorter route than the one he had originally taken, one that was decreed to be unused, but safe, by the traffic control of the nearest starbase. In the way, however, a pirate cut his illusion short and went in pursuit. As he tried to flee, he noticed several other pirates were appearing from nowhere and joining the chase. The ships looked like they had been there for a long time, their hulls were scorched by prolonged exposure to energy fields… “It appears I have stumbled onto a pirate den. And a very old one. Another flaw in the records…” he thought, angry and afraid. He was no match for the pursuing pirate fleet. Outgunned, outaccelerated, outmaneuvered. And crippled by a critical shot to his engine. There was a brilliant flash and he saw the light…

It was a cube. One of THE Cubes. It ripped through the pirates as if they were flies. In seconds, the battle was over. The blazing ship turned to face his ship, and spoke. Until now, Sivrehn doesn’t know whether he overrode his comms or just overrode his mind and senses, but this is what the cube said:

“Well met, Sivrehn. There are dire times afoot and we sense that the whole of Pardus can fall apart into stagnation, poverty and violence. For people have forgotten what they are and what their people are. Every day, thousands are lost in famine, dozens of pilots retire because the lack of order and lore dispirits them and millions of credits are wasted on repeating the errors of the past. Heroes go forgotten, heinous crimes go unpunished, glorious legacies fall into oblivion. Even the civilization that built my great vessel is now erased from all memory. You must go forth and restore the past, and so I command you. And I, in behalf of the Council, name you the Chief Historian of Pardus, for you succeeded once where few could.”

“Wha….” I stammered. It’s incredible how idiotic people can get when they face the closest match to a God in the known universe. “How did I succeed? And in what?”. The cube stood there, facing Sivrehn’s crippled ship, for a long time, in silence. The comms console chirped to life after a while and, reflexively, he put the call through, without noticing what he was doing.

It was the nurse. He said: “Sorry for holding this off on you, but the treatment suggested by the data you sent me appears to be working. By my estimation, your father should be fully recovered by the next month. I didn’t want to call before I was sure of his progress though.”. Forgetting himself, he jumped in his cockpit chair, whooping with joy, and then belatedly realized the cube was still in front of him. He thanked the nurse and turned off the comm, then he thought: “It appears I did succeed, didn’t I…” Out loud, he spoke to the cube: “I am yours to command”.

Immediately, a golden shining ring was teleported to his ship, clasping itself around his wrist. The cube said: “This is your mark. You will roam the universe and restore the past and uncover the present to allow Pardus a better future. In no instance shall you use this task or your knowledge newly found in behalf of an individual or group, you shall only use it to benefit the whole of the galaxy, of which you’re now a servant.”

Sivrehn, finding a new resolve, agreed. The cube vanished. He was lost in thoughts for the future, and only noticed the engines were back on when he was halfway to Earth. The cube, no doubt… He stayed in Sol for a few more days while his father recovered enough to run the family business again, and then jumped into his ship to face the mysteries of the galaxy, knowing that someday he would uncover them.

Editor’s Note: The Tiacken Tribune supports this attempt to preserve Pardus history, and urges all sentient beings to aid Sivrehn on his quest to document it. This is a long task, and will only be made harder by needlessly denying him access to sectors and information. Veterans of Pardus, please aid him.

The Ballad of Walkingrazor (Walkingrazor, Tribune Staff Writer)

Chapter 2
Prologue – A change of destination

I woke up sometime later and found myself in a small cabin aboard a ship. I touched the back of my head gingerly. A wave of black, sickening pain emanated from a serious contusion. Looked like I’d been put to sleep the hard way. I could feel scaly skin underneath my fingertips and the knuckles on my hand were skinned, so I had a feeling that I had been a tad difficult for my captors at some point during the journey. I choked back the urge to vomit and tried to pull myself together.

I groggily surveyed the room with a watery eye, but it was impressive in its sterility. No markings of any kind, no information or a sens/vid terminal, just bare zortrium hull ore walls and floor, a race-universal toilet facility, and a hard bunk covered in a Space Relief Agency blanket.

My head throbbed constantly. It was hard to think with the annoying and painful pulse of blood through my wounds. I decided to go through those last moments of consciousness again, to see if I could dredge anything to the surface. Nothing came in that constant pulse. THUD, THUD, THUD, each time with a bolt of white light and pain that seemed to burn the backs of my eyes.

I took a deep breath and sighed.

Closing my eyes once more, I began a series of deep breathing exercises, the first of a series of movements developed long ago on ancient Sol to reduce pain, heighten the senses and open the mind. As I completed each of the seven circuits, one for each of the human chakras, I felt my mind clear and though I was still in pain, it had lessened somewhat. I could still feel it in the interstellar mail, but there was no delivery robot asking for a COD, praise be.

After the five physical circuits, I began the ritual to invoke the final two mental enhancements. As I began the first of these, I felt my brain open up and a huge rush of information that had been stored in my subconscious flooded into my mind. My eyes closed and I thought back to those final moments with my Keldonian captors. I could see the deck of the docking port beyond the Marcus Garvey and I realized that we’d docked at a trade outpost. I’d become familiar with the one in Usube working a summer job to unload space freight and do zero-G welding about 5 years ago. Farther on, through a crack in the stacks of crates, I saw the unmistakable shape of an Interceptor.

“Pirates?” I thought to myself, confused… I still wasn’t sure. The image of the Interceptor in dock did help me though. I saw across the loading dock the shimmering green-grey of Zortrium armor and hull and that sight put me with all probability in the little ships bowels, headed for… What exactly? That was the puzzler.

I realized that the piracy theory was out. But why had that thought come to me? I drifted again into info retrieval and the rush: Because of the location of Usube, we got a lot of interstellar broadcasts from both factions, and on lazy summer evenings at the preserve, when everyone else was blowing money in town, I watched the sens/vid. One of my favorite shows was “Future Weapons of the Empire” a fairly well produced propaganda piece about upcoming equipment for the Imperial Army. One of the most memorable shows was about one of the Emperor’s elite personal intelligence squads and their use of the neural stimulator to gather intel on Federation efforts in the East Pardus Rim. My captors had the exact same insignia on their uniforms… My mind began to boggle. I made no attempt to stop it, I just let it ride.

I’d just managed to pull the pants up on my sanity when voices rose on the ship and I heard frantic movement. The Inty throttled up until her drives were nearly screaming in pain and the strange sound of anti-matter being converted into kinetic energy shrieked loud enough to make my teeth rattle. I heard the clomp-clomp of feet in battle suits running down the corridor and I knew the Keldonians were preparing for something seriously wrong. The ships klaxon began to blare and a moment later, a voice spoke: “Incoming Federation blockade patrol, prepare to be boarded.” I had enough time to marvel at one fact before the ship was slammed by something huge, throwing me across the room and putting the lights out again. The voice in the hold of the Garvey and over the ship comm… They’d been speaking Keldonian. And I understood it perfectly.

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