Forgeworld Sheol

A dead world, drifting through the darkness of space. Without the light of a star, it is invisible and barren, an insignificant chunk of rock. But its surface is not frozen--Sheol burns with nuclear fire, a million fusion reactors burning underneath its surface. Billions of cubic kilometers of factories and manufacturing centers fill the planet's hollow core, and thousands of mobile mining facilities roam its interior, perpetually stripping it of iron, fissionables and silicates.

Stardate 3034-Z,
Edge of Vrennreki territory
Aboard Capital-Class CVW-018

Uniform quiet had settled across the bridge of the 018. BurdaKurvan-9064 manned the navigation systems, deftly manipulating the touch-screen display to maneuver the ship through the vastness of space to their target destination. A beeping indicator noted that their range from it's homeworld, Burda, was sufficient to escape it's gravity well. "Skip distance achieved. Powering drive." A bar on the display began to fill in red. "Drive powered. Skip in tee minus three. Two. One. Skip."

Out of the artificial viewport, there were two notably differences: The constellations of Burda were gone, replaced by so many flashing, bright stars that had no names known to the Vrennreki. This was the less obvious change. The more noticeable of the pair was the looming, asteroid-esque dead planet that exploded with wireless transmissions and heat from the nuclear facilities burning from just below the surface. It was rich with resources, and was desired by the Conglomerate for obvious reasons to anyone with the simplest knowledge of the Vrennreki's quest for dominance.

Captain BurdaOmbud-617 tapped the button on his display device labeled 'Transmit', and send a broad-spectrum video broadcast to anything capable of receiving. In the natural emotionless buzz of the Vrennreki vocal chords he announced into the built-in bio-camera, "The Conglomerate of the Most Noble Vrennreki demand the immediate surrender of the colony known to you as Sheol. You are hereby required to dismantle all underground facilities, and take all materials brought with you that are capable of being transported with you. Anything that cannot be transported should be tossed into the depths of space. Failure to respond with your unconditional surrender of the colony within one standard rotation of your planet will result in obliteration of all surface facilities and the extermination of your artificial race via ground forces."

617 ended the transmission, and transmitted his location to the rest of the Burda-based fleet through a skip-drone. Though CVW-018 came alone, it was not without reinforcements. A sum of 16 Capital-class vessels, 40 Frigate-class vessels, and a host of 10 Cleanser-class vessels waited at skip distance away from Mine Planet Burda. He keyed his communicator into the closed-circuit speaker system, "Mobilize the fighter wing. Prepare shock troops for orbital drop. Divert power to shields and starboard weapons systems. Prepare the skip drone for launch on my mark."

“Varock, all Systems are primed! We are prepared to Splukch.”
Varock was nervous. Strong energy readings, yes, moving quickly through the unfathomable void. Undoubtedly artificial, yes. Second contact?
“Whoop, there’s something. Energy flash Varock!”
Bother.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. What say you?”
Varock thought for a bit; over there were over two hundred medium ships in his care now, and thousands of fighters and tens of thousands of Djnar. The estimated material value was over 78 trillion units. He couldn’t be hasty, but he couldn’t wait to long; delay was inefficient
“Alert all of our Hive kin. Splukch in seven!”

“ALL PERSONEL PLEASE SECURE YOURSELF. FASTER THAN LIGHT SPLUKCH IN SEVEN. SIX. FIVE. GLORY TO THE GREATER HIVE. TWO. ONE.”

Varock extended his gravitic tendons between the nearest two bodies, in this case being a red dwarf and one of its planets, before shooting forth the warp tunnel. His enormous frame was suddenly sucked through that tunnel, becoming much less enormous, before spilling out into a completely different part of space.

If he still had a functional stomach, he would have thrown up. He hadn’t asked to be a ship.
“Everyone good?”
They did a quick personnel check.
“No serious injuries, universal nausea…umm…oh.”
“Wha…OH.”
There was a ship in front of them. Not one of there’s. So, in fact, the first alien ship ever recorded to be contacted by the Greater hive.
“Uh…someone get the universal translator prototype…Looks like first contact protocol. Hive hoping this isn’t the last!”

Varock could feel a crew of engineers quickly plugging in the experimental model. They had known this day would come, but having only their native language and that of the Fresk as points of references, they had no idea how well it would work. Well, feel was perhaps the wrong word. Or perhaps it wasn’t. Ever since that accident, and then his transplant into a Carrier ship, Varock felt that the Djnar language was perhaps inefficient at communicating what being a machine was like. He would consider proposing some new adjectives.

“Translator Installed Varock!”
“Thanks Tnar! What are the readings from the planet?”
“As expected, incredible energy output. Definitely artificial. Some life forms suspected. No sun, terraforming unfeasible, but if the native population could be brought into the fold, not a problem. Lots of very good minerals! Estimated Material Value, over twenty million Mega units! We have to grab this!”
“Doubtless! But lets see what those other ships think about all this, yes? Open channels, I’d like to chat.”


“Hello other life forms! We are Djnar! We have good intent! We wish for mutual prosperity! Please respond!”

Hive enduring, that would make some sense at the other end.

The response is universal and overwhelming. A single message, in ten thousand languages, most long dead. The broadcast spans all common radio-wave frequencies, from 10^7 hertz to 10^9 hertz.

Welcome, dead. Wicked souls and righteous. Your crossing has ended. Disembark from your ships, climb up from the muddy banks of the Styx, and enter your final place of resting.
Welcome to hell.

The dead world opens before them, rock crumbling as steel screeches aside, vast doors opening in its crust--enough space for a dozen ships to pass abreast. From within comes tremendous radiation, cascading waves of gamma and alpha particles, a colossal bombardment of radioactive death. Of the million fission and fusion reactors within, not a single one is shielded. No life could survive here, no matter how resilient.

"Transmission detected from Planet XXVI, Captin. Scanners detected Cyrannulian, translating in real time." BurdaKurvan-9064's digitigrade hands snapped and cracked across the holographic keyboard on his dash, and broadcasted the translated message to the Captain's personal earpiece.

"Welcome, dead. Wicked souls and righteous. Your crossing has ended. Disembark from your ships, climb up from the muddy banks of the Styx, and enter your final place of resting.
Welcome to hell."

BurdaOmbud-617 was puzzled by the poetry, mainly because no one has spoken Cyrannulian since they were wiped out almost a full universal cycle ago. He knew a threat when he heard it though, and made appropriate action. "Send the skip drone. Bring shields to bear, ready weapons. Be prepared to open fir-" He cut himself off as another unrelated ship entered space, a very close 160,000 kilometers from the 018. He noted the skip drone being sent hurtling through skip space before saying, "Hale that ship, and tell them they are intruding in our territory. Ask them their business here, and if hostile or no response is received, open fire with extreme prejudice."

A siren sounded across the bridge. 9064 shouted across the deck, "Extremely high levels of radiation detected. Giving more power to ozone generators, Captain. It's...It's coming from the planet. Planet XXVI is deemed unsuitable for colonization due to deadly levels of radiation throughout. Orders?" The rest of the Vrennreki fleet started zapping out of skip around them, at spaces of several tens of thousands of kilometers away. Within the space of 30 seconds, 16 Capital-class vessels and 40 Frigate-class vessels were bringing shields online. "Ships are preparing ozone for radiation absorption. Relaying orders to bring weapons to bear."

The radiation washed over the 018, nearly overwhelming the generators trying to keep the ozone layer from being breached. "Once the storm has ended, launch all weapons into that gaping target of a planet core. If we can't have it no one can, especially after this affront of an assault." He began another broadspectrum transmission; "The Conglomeration will not abide any resistance. Prepare to be destroyed."

The dead cannot threaten us. Unless you yet live?

The radiation does not abate--it permeates every centimeter of space. This is not a storm which can be weathered or a weapon, but merely the byproduct Sheol's existence.

When the Vrennreki ships raise shields and arm weapons, Hekatonheries realizes its mistake.

Why do you come here, to hell's deepest abyss? You seek to steal? To plunder the wealth of Hades?!

An armada of ships pours from the chasm before the Vrennreki, and from dozens like it across the planet. They launch with an electromagnetic pulse, and it follows them, threatening to scramble sensors and fry electronics. Most of these ships are small, less than a kilometer in length, but a few are as large as six kilometers.

The Styx will draw color from your corpses.

Over the loudspeakers of the 018 and across the entire fleet the message rang out, "The dead cannot threaten us. Unless you yet live?" It unnerved the Captain. He keyed the tech crew in the lower quarters of the ship, "Can our fighters withstand that radiation?"

A response came immediately from KurdarikBeelza-900412, the head of the flight engineers on the 018. "Aye sir, so long as they don't stress the systems. The ozone generators will need to be kept at optimal levels, at least 90% power, while in the radiation field. Afterburners are out, shields will be at 80%."

"Then get the squadron out, now." He relayed the orders to the rest of the capital ships. "This is no longer a take-over. This is now a self defense mission. Obliterate the enemy, and destroy their hell of a plen-" He was cut off by further transmission from the robots; "Why do you come here, to hell's deepest abyss? You seek to steal? To plunder the wealth of Hades?!" BurdaOmbud-617 turned towards the comms station, infuriated, and berated BurdaKurvan-9064, "Why the hell haven't we blocked their transmissions yet!?"

9064 shrunk back into his seat and said, "I can't, they're overpowering our systems. I've been doing everything I can. I think they're overloading the transmission towers. I have good news: Their ships are small for the most part, and with the frigates we seem to outnumber them. "

"Fine." He turned back to his display and watched the electronic facsimiles of the fighters start exiting the 018 and her counterparts across the fleet. Within ten minutes the full amount of nearly 1,700 Hornets were blasting through space towards their targets, ready to bring down the advancing waves of machines. "Send them back to their beloved Hades."

"The Styx will draw color from your corpses."

The Hekaton ships clear Sheol's gates, and drift out into space a dozen kilometers before activating their engines. A cascade of thermonuclear explosions blast Sheol, as the Hekaton ships accelerate, riding the shockwave. The Orion drives devastate the world's surface, incinerating the barren landscape, igniting the dead world until it glows like a miniature sun.

Like a swarm of bloodthirsty fireflies, they lunge out at the Vrennreki, already distorted and elongated by relativistic speeds.

"They've activated their engines. Thermonuclear propulsion systems. I guess they're not concerned with shielding. Orders, Captain?" DibirPorol-44195, the senior weapons technician, asked with insistance. "They're closing distance swiftly, though we've still got several minutes before they close the gap if they hold their speed." He watched the 600,000 kilometer buffer zone between the two fleets shrink quicker than he'd like.

It responded immediately, not wishing to waste time with slow deliberation. "Launch a wave of Piliums into their path. 3 for every ship. Relay orders across the fleet so we don't expend our reserves. Have the fighters stop at 80,000 kilometers and prepare to swarm once they come in range."

A silent rocking of the vessel was the only notification the Pilium missiles had launched. The wave of missiles, numbering in the hundreds, swiftly accelerated to skip distance and disappeared, only to reappear 450,000 kilometers away directly in the path of the approaching fleet. They continued to accelerate towards their targets, getting ready to deploy their deadly payloads. In total, there were 3,600 1.5-kiloton nuclear warheads waiting to flatten the hostile vessels.

HELLO MULCH! Lazy or devoted! Stitch up doom! Un-jump the boat, scrabble away muddy storehouse Ocean, go in mourn-feast!
Hello to ocean!

Varock didn't like the sound of it. Nor did he like the sudden venting of absolutely incredible amount of deadly radiation. The other ships never hailed him back. Maybe they didnt register...

But they did, suddenly exponentially multiply.

"NOPE NOPE NOPE SPLUKCH IN FIVE FOUR THREE LETS GO ONE!"

And with that, the Djnar rapidly retreated.

The larger Hekaton ships cease accelerating, traveling at about one-tenth the speed of light as they coast toward the Pilium missiles. The smaller ships continue accelerating for a moment longer, spreading the swarm out as much as possible. They open fire, spewing torrents of flak and debris from their guns, forming a buffer between them and the missiles, and expending almost a quarter of their mass in doing so.

And then, half a second later, impact.

A 1.5 kiloton warhead is not dangerous to a Hekaton ship. A 1.5 kiloton warhead, traveling at more than one-tenth the speed of light relative to the Hekaton ship is. For almost a full second, the Hekaton fleet seems to explode. Thousands of missiles impact with the flak shield, sending shrapnel flying everywhere, slamming into Hekaton ships with tremendous force. The smallest scrap, traveling at relativistic speeds, hits with the force of a nuke. Chain reactions set off everywhere, some craft detonating outright, others knocked off course and torn apart by the stress.

As fast as the destruction occurred, it is over. Crippled ships and debris left behind, to be incinerated by the engines of the survivors as they resume acceleration. Of the 116 ships which left Sheol, only 55 remain, although all of the larger ships are still intact.

Within fifteen seconds, the Hekaton ships will be at point-blank range, traveling at almost one-fifth the speed of light.

Fabricator Fragment-ship Fraction of Reason

The diminutive fragment ship had drifted for eons, alive yet without any signs of it, save for a small heat signature. The three-hundred meter vessel was powerful for its size, as all Fabricator constructs were, yet its purpose had left this existence long ago, and so it drifted through space, eventually being captured by this planet. As its orbit came closer and closer to its perigee the ship came to resemble a dull comet. The layers of ice that had gathered during its tens of thousands of years passing through many system's edges began to evaporate.
But this sublimation is not from the planet's many nuclear fires, powerful as they may be, for they are weak in the vastness of space. It is from the ship itself, waking after many millennial of sleep, the mind whose will drives it once again aware of this small piece.

Yet this is no ordinary awakening. Every action of a Fabricator has purpose, arbitrary as purpose is, and this was no different. The fragment-ship's monitoring software had low-level access to the sensors, and through the layer of build up it could see the events transpiring. The few ships that had entered, and then the many that followed. And yet more craft, pouring from the planet itself.

The great mind of the Fabricator was made aware, and so its fragment awoke. In an instant, this mind was in two places. In this small ship orbiting a dead world, and in its massive body that strode across the lands of distant Oncar. The mind saw the actions of the alien ships, deciphered their transmissions, and it felt the violent natures at work. Violent natures that should never have touched the stars. And so, the Fabricator sent out its own voice through the vast space over this dead, embattled world.

"I am the Fabricator Ulrya, Daughter and Destroyer of the Arachnid, last and most righteous of its spawn."
"This spontaneous violence is most puzzling to the mind. It will be explained."

With that, the fragment was fully realized, and the ship came to life. A brilliant cloud of glowing ice, water, and vapor erupted around the craft as its engines activated and the layers of debris were blown off in an instant. With great speed, the ship sped towards the world. It would observe, as was its purpose.

DibirPorol-44195 watched with impatience as the hostile vessels closed distance to the missiles. As they hit, he shouted across the bridge, "Impact! Sixty one casualties, Captain. Fifty five still inbound. Will be within range of particle beams in 7 seconds. Powering beams and relaying." He anticipated the captain's next orders and relayed orders to the the fleet's frigates to start charging their mid-ranged particle beams.

The Captain keyed his comm link to the 1,700-strong fighter compliment currently scrambled through the air a few tens of thousands of kilometers away. "Power your gauss cannons, but keep an eye on your ozone power levels. Those ships are giving off doses of rads capable of sending you to a cold grave in an instant, and your Hornets are far too expensive for you to die in them."

"Enemy vessels in the mid-range. Particle beams fired." In an instant, the 320 beams, sending ten packets of supercharged particles a second, were expelled from the 40 frigates' broadside platforms, traveling at the speed of light. They impacted roughly .35 seconds after being fired. "Impact."

Math:

Particle beams slash at the Hekaton's hulls, carving signs in their armor, strange tattoos of molten tungsten. Focused fire brings three of the smallest craft down, tearing through meters of armor before reaching critical systems. One particle beam scores a lucky hit, gouging a suspension pylon of one of the six-kilometer ships--it deploys a charge and the pylon shatters, pusher plate slamming into the hull and knocking the ship off course, hull disintegrating from stress.

Crusading mortals--thieves who grasp at the wealth of hell, who would destroy what they could not steal. They have come here, and yet they live--they will join the ranks of the damned, as punishment for their hubris.

And then, they are upon the Vrennreki. The Hekaton ships rip through the fighter screen in a fraction of a second, leaving nuclear destruction in their wake, and are already amongst the fleet, scattering nukes in all directions, their elongated hulls weaving between and sometimes slamming into the Vrennreki ships.

The affairs of Hades do not concern you, Olympian. What strings of fate draw you to the underworld?

The Fabricator watched through distant eyes, listened through distant ears. The battle continued as it watched, observing these strange beings as their ships danced across the sky, points of light above a dark world, with every passing second the points growing brighter and larger, as did the flashes from their weapons finding their targets.
The answer of the Fabricator's hail by the inhabitants of the dead world was an immediate puzzle. It had addressed a Fabricator as something non-Fabricator, despite prior identification as a Fabricator. A strange intelligence indeed.

"This probe was launched tens of thousands of years ago during the Enlightenment War. It has drifted without purpose until your violence awakened it. I exercise my will through it from the world of Oncar, bastion of the Fabricators."
"You have addressed me as 'Olympian.' This is something I am not. I am Fabricator, I am an enforcer of Vathar's will, of the Old Mind's will, of the will of the First. I preserve Enlightenment. I preserve Order."
"Yet your kind is of interest. We will watch you, as we have watched all known sapience. I will be the instrument of observation."
"Be warned. Interfere with us, and you will face the wrath of Ulrya."

The low rumble of impact shook the deck of the 018, sending Vrennreki crewmen tumbling. BurdaKurvan-9064 struggled to retake his controls, shouting in the process, "They're ramming us! Fighter squadrons broken!" Another deep thrum of contact sent the 018 crashing into two frigates to it's aft. "Fleet's in disarray!"

The Captain barked with such force he nearly broke his mandibles, "Tell those damned fighters to circle around! All particle beams fire, now! Send a skip drone for reinforcements, we are not losing ground!" He slammed his fleet-wide communique, "Don't give these bastards a foot! Not a single inch. You're Vrennreki, not some backwater-" another impact rocked the ship, "tree-humping alien fuckwit! Earn that title, and earn your place!"

9064 chimed in, "Pilium slavo prepared, launching at most distant ships. One hundred twenty away." The missiles flew from the ship, not activating their skip drives but instead accelerating directly towards the hostile vessels ducking around and slamming through the fleet. "The 004, 009, 013, and 017 are down. Ten frigates reporting fatal damage. The rest of the Scarabs are preparing salvos, frigates are firing all cannons." A sharp beeping siren filled the bridge, and the hemolymphic fluid drained from 9064's vessels. "Ozone generator over maximum capacity. We have ten minutes before it shuts down."

If not an Olympian, then an avatar. And if indeed I have misjudged you, then descend into the depths of Hades, and we will see who you truly are.

The Hekaton ships sweep over the Vrennreki fleet, dumping all of their fuel and armaments in an act of blind rage, not giving missiles time to catch up or Vrennreki ships time to retaliate. Thousands of nukes, ranging from 30 kilotons to 300 megatons are scattered among the Vrennreki ships, detonating as the Hekaton ships leave them behind, flying onward into space. The nuclear explosion engulfs most of slower Hekaton ships, incinerating them in a chain of blinding flashes--those Hekaton ships not destroyed outright in the blast spin off into space, without enough fuel to decelerate and return, without any hope of recovery.

The probe received the message, and lay silent, floating lifelessly in the void. There was no response, as there was before, its motion stopped, leaving it facing the gaping maw of the burning world.
From an unseen opening, a small sphere appeared. Unlike the probe, it glowed faintly, even compared to the vast void around it. A single pulse, and it accelerated towards the hellish forge, the place called "Hades" by the other ones. Down it traveled, its motion to bring it between the warring ships, and straight into the fiery opening.

The mechanism of the sphere was simple: Upon landing or capture it would provide a small window into the Fabricator's mind. Her morals, memories, purpose; all that defined the ancient being would be shared.

And the Fabricator would observe.

Devastation was the only word that could describe the events that unfolded. High-yield nuclear arms tore holes through capital ships and left the smaller Frigates in pieces, atmosphere venting into the dark, silent space around them. "Captain, shields breached. Ozone generator at maximum output, it'll be down in three minutes and counting. It's down to us, the 012, four frigates, and a half-dozen fighters. None of the ships' skip drives have power. Do you have any final orders?" 9064 made himself busy by preparing the report to be send on the skip drone, including all relevant data to the ships they had faced.

The Captain was numb for a moment, staring through the half-shattered view screen. It was mostly static. "Open the diamond-composite view port." The metal casing irised away, showing the brilliant, deadly light of the planet in front of them. Wreckage floated everywhere, dinging against the 018. The damage the wreckage would inflict was negligible, considering the gaping holes in their lower sections. "...We still have our mission. Launch everything at that fucking planet. Every last missile. Then set course for the planet core." He sat in his chair in resignation. "And send that Skip Drone. Tell them what happened here. Tell them it's time for a change in our suicidal foreign policy."

"Aye sir. Missiles away." Across the two remaining capital ships and the fighters, most of their armaments were still functional. Within the space of their few remaining minutes, nearly 2200 Piliums launched. "Programming course data." An alarm sounded, indicating the ozone generator had failed. A trickle of blue-black blood trickled out of 9064's eye sockets and ears. "Data-" he hacked out a glob of coagulated blood, "input complete." He collapsed.

The piliums skipped a scant 2,000 km from planet, opening up and sending a combined total of nearly 40,000 kilotonnes of kinetic and nuclear devastation into the open core of Sheol. The ships had their courses plotted. They'd make their way there in a few hours, and the Thorium reactors would have a catastrophic explosive meltdown once they hit the core.

OOC: Sorry for the delay.

Forty megatons is nothing compared to the cataclysmic damage already wrought to the surface of Sheol. There is no response to the pilliums, which enter the hollow world unopposed, detonating against factories and reactors, causing even more trauma to the world's infrastructure.

And Hekatonkheries does not care, for it assumes wrongly that it will have several years to simply repair the damage--its mechanical mind, slower than most, has not adjusted to the correct frame of time, not fully emerged from hibernation.

After damaged reactors have been dismantled, the forgeworld resumes activity as before. The damage might seem vast, but it is a planet, not a simple shipyard, and sheer size grants it durability. More ships are deployed, mostly salvage craft, which cruise out to the wreckage on weak torchdrives. Less than a dozen Orion ships are launched, all that remains of the entire Hekaton navy.

------------------------------------------
OOC: This would take place at an entrace to Sheol not struck by the missiles, mostly for the sake of convenience.

A machine meets the probe, at the entrance to Sheol. Its surface is marble, pitted and scarred by radiation, streaked by the fires of hell. It has the features of a man, as though carved to resemble a classical statue. The craftmanship is excellent, if aged. Instead of a single face, it has three, each adorning a separate 120º arc of its head. In this regard, the machine seems half-formed, as though each of its three heads were intended to be separate, but could never escape the others. It motions for the the probe to follow, and walks inwards, along a metal pipe, towards the heart of the planet.

The probe stalls for a moment, and begins to follow behind the machine with a lazy, distracted movement. Its surface, uniform and flawless, splits open to reveal dozens of instruments and sensors poking through an intricate mass of machinery. It stays a constant distance from the machine despite bobbing around to examine the environment of Sheol, scanning and recording every pipe, wire, and connection it can see, transmitting the data to its master for analysis as it followed the alien machine further into the forgeworld.

((Meh, this was a bit of a rushed post. I've had a lack of creativity recently, though in this case I see little I can do other than "follows". Or maybe that's just me.))

Probe and polycephalic statue journey into the planet, past autonomous factories forging spacecraft and unshielded fission reactors. Pipes pump coolant--all aglow with Cherenkov radiation. All the metal here is pitted and scarred, thousands of years of neutron embrittlement evident everywhere. And, in the center of it all, a massive metal contraption, gears and blades and wheels and cogs, a mechanical calculator stamping instructions into endless sheets of metal.

No matter which way the machine turns, one face stares at the probe. When it speaks, the words come out in a thousand different tongues, as though Hekatonkheries never noticed which language the Fabricator preferred.

This is the local Engine, the overseer of Sheol. We are emerging from hibernation.

Over the span of several seconds, the probe witnesses the Engine gradually speed up, gaining momentum with each passing moment.