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The PALADIN SSF Chronicles; The story behind Humanity's greatest..
Topic Started: Feb 21 2006, 07:13 PM (373 Views)
{Advent Horizon}
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The Retired One Man Army
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Chapter 1

Chapter 2


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--The P.A.L.A.D.I.N. SSF (Post Advancement “Light” Artillery Damnation Integrated Navigator Space Superiority Fighter) Wraith Squadron log: Day 25: 00:01:53 Hours

Introduction: This is the year that the PWS is going into the carnage of war, along with all the other paladin fighter personnel. The war against the House of Aurelius was raging during its first stages. The Common Wealth’s first goal was to secure the outer system of Extruvious, a key outpost system against the inter-galaxial war that became unleashed when our colony ships were sent out to what we had gotten readings of “desolated” space. Humanity has survived from the brink of extinction after seven World Wars, the geography of the Earth forever altered and government boundaries altered in great ways forging seven superpowers. Humanity however has learned to live in peace and work for a common goal of expanding its own boundaries…or in this case, defending them.

This is the story of one division nicknamed “The Rebellion.”


It seems as just yesterday that we were back in high school and that we were recruited and sent into the SSF pilot training where our group was isolated from the rest. It was by a mere stroke of luck that our small squad which had known each other for most of our lives stuck together in one group with no displacements, we even got some apprentices under our wings.

Our story goes back to the early years of our lives. Our fighter squadron number is of twenty-five strong and we go way back to our junior high years, well for most of the six of us.
- - - -

I met Timothy when I entered public schools in sixth grade where he offered me some college-ruled paper and from there our long journey began. We passed the evenings roaming around the suburbs and outer rim of the city where our parents would usually have to go pull us out of some trouble that we would usually find a way to get into. He was of average height, spiked hair, partially tanned and very athletic for anything that involved running (he had set the record for our elementary school for any type of sprint in his sixth grade year for the whole school so he was pretty good.)

The next year we found ourselves in Mr. Zyle’s home room for seventh grade year. In that class our duo doubled to include two more members, the non identical twins Kurisutofaa and Axitsuke. The two were exchange students from the Japan-Pacific Alliance that now covered coastal China and absolutely all the islands in the pacific except for part of Australia and the ex-Alaskan archipelago which is under the control of the Canada-Britain Merge but part of the Americas-Greek Incorporation. Both of them were in the Symphonic Orchestra and part of the school’s Freestyle Wired Ensemble. I remember precisely what it was like that year when the two of them started the ensemble. Tim and me would be off playing the keys or outside in some type of sport and we would hear the rapid paced improvisation pouring out from the speakers of the electrical lead violas belonging to both of them and the ever-booming bass of the four cello players behind them with their instruments hot wired to whatever speakers were on hand.

The golden year before we got into high school we met the key addition to our group. His name was Jonathan and all we knew about him was that he had a passion for sports of all kind and all type, yet he still had that spark of intelligence and intricate balance for a usage in computer related things, that ingenuity for technology that most people lacked. Yet none of that played a role as much as something else in his life. He was what we call a gamer too, but people didn’t remember him for that rather than the all-round athlete he was.



“Perfection.”

….That was the only word that coursed through our heads on our freshman year when we saw her walk through the faded, gray colored door of the English classroom that year. Rich, long, dark brown curls with some blonde highlights went from her hair immediately on the sides that was a bit longer than her shoulders to her upper back. Her stature was a few inches shorter than me but she was wearing some small high heels so it made her seem like up to my nose height. She had something enchanting about her in every part of her body. Her eyes were a dark hue of purple and they were natural, no contacts lenses. Her skin was light, not pale, not tanned, but just fair skin with incredibly few, barely noticeable blemishes that added to the effect of what we saw in our minds as a glow that emitted from her heavenly like body. She was wearing a black blazer outfit with a white dress shirt underneath with only the top button undone, unlike most of the school’s girls with their skimpiest outfits.

“Is this English 1 Room 506?” She quietly asked after knocking on the open door.

“Yes, yes it is,” the teacher answered. “You must be…” He checked his cluttered desk for roster sheets. “Oh, you must be Raine. You are the incoming student! Well welcome to my class. Take a seat wherever you wish and we’ll continue with today’s lecture.” The old man finished.

All we did through out the whole introduction was just admire her. Then she started walking and picked my row of desk and walked to the desk farthest back which was the one directly behind me.

Jonathan shouted, “HEY! IT’S MY SISTER!” and Kurisutofaa, Axitsuke, Tim and me froze and without moving our heads made our eyes follow the direction of where the voice trailed from, for we knew that he wasn’t lying.

At that precise moment, Raine was sitting down behind me and she leaned over and whispered in my ear, “You know…it’s very impolite to stare at a lady, no matter her attributes. Tell you and your friends to stop doing so please.” Then very quietly.. ”Treat me with respect...” and then she giggled.

That sent shivers of enchantment through my body and I jumped in my seat with a tingle in my neck.

Shaylor the teacher glanced under his trifocals and delivered his trademark piercing look of seriousness that would usually shatter the concentration of anyone in the room,

“Anything..” he paused to add to his sarcastic effect “…wrong Mr. Sirus? Did I disturb something important that you had to do or say?”

I had to shake out the shivers before regaining my composure and playing his game. “Hmm.. Let me think about it sir.” I paused for several seconds. “No, nothing that I can imagine. I’d say that you are free to continue your lecture…on whatever subject it may be..”

He then snorted and got back to writing extensive notes on the board.

His looks didn’t affect our little group. We had honed our skills of perceiving people’s personalities and their manners. We had learned to be unaffected by the many people that tried to intimidate us into submission, and Shaylor was one of them.

Well, the day after that I learned that Jonathan was very protective of his sister…the hard way.
- - - -

“If I asked you what you were doing I would be ignoring what I’ve clearly seen already, and what my sister told me already.”

I stuttered. “Well.. eh, is she older or younger than you” I was nervous, I had to shift my gaze away from his that was drilling into mine.

“What is it to you? I thought that you would know better than that by now.” He took a couple of paces towards me but I took half the number backwards. “She is younger than me by a year, yet that doesn’t matter because I am older than you by three months.”

What he said was correct, and if I had remembered about it I would probably have never even tried to get near Raine.

“Now, sorr-” He cut off before I even had the chance to realize what was going on, yet my reflexes took over and sidestepped an incoming uppercut to my stomach, then I flew through the wind at him to try and pin him down before he had anything else in the matter to say…physical wise.

We tried to land several strikes against each other, doing what we could to gain the advantage, weather it was to fling each other by the shirt to the brick wall or some other kind of advantage. I most likely would have gotten annihilated if it hadn’t had been for something that I like to call “divine intervention.” It turns out that Raine had been watching us the whole time from up a tree in a dark green pilot suit. Turns out that she likes to wear the most random outfits every day. She jumped down and landed beside us.

“Jonathan!” she exclaimed, which gave me the open time gap in which I doubled him over with a kick to his stomach. Raine smirked but still scolded me as she went over to my side.

I pronounced slowly between gasps for breath. “Thank you, and sorry.”

“Oh no worries. Don’t be sorry..” She quickly spun around and knocked me down when she kicked my knees with one swift, low, spin kick. I was speechless and rather surprised. Jonathan laughed but then had to clutch his sides from the pain. Raine smiled and helped me up, Timothy, Axitsuke and Kurisutofaa came out from the school in time to watch the fest and were truly shocked.

From that day on, Raine was part of our group. For life. She was the link that our group needed to be complete and for us to be inseparable. She was the only choir member amongst us and yet she was the most rebellious out of all of us. She had that spark of rebellion that we all had but she showed it more than all of us in her own manner by fighting the system from the inside, unlike all of us that did it from the outside and really never got far.
- - - -

Now we were at the grand ceremony of the inauguration of our squadron. Us six would be leading half the P.A.L.A.D.I.N. SSF (approximately 45,000) into the crushing of the House’s already weak control of Extruvious, the planetary system closest to their galaxy. We had just finished the three week extensive training in which over three fourths of the applicants to be a SSF fighter pilot quit and went back to the standard issue bomber and fighters. The only way that people survived through the hell training was sticking together in groups. Luckily we all went together and we stuck together to help each other.

We now stood together on the podium amongst our squadron, our ledge a bit higher than all of them. Axitsuke and Kurisutofaa on each end with Axitsuke on the left end and Kurisutofaa on the right, Timothy next to Axitsuke and Jonathan next to him. I was next to Kurisutofaa and Raine was in my arms leaning back on me and looking up into my face smiling. It seemed as if it were from a dream that we would’ve had back when we met each other. Together past high school, basically done with our university hours and in some experimental military program sent out by the Chamber of Sages, which in this case turned out to be very well for us.

I smiled and kissed Raine with Jonathan laughing remembering the time where she whooped up on me…and another twenty or so times that the same happened but in different ways. Then the talking and all activity ceased that Thursday of November when the intercom came on.


“Welcome to the Pilot Academy Inauguration. You all have earned your wings well Paladin SSFs!”


We all grinned and looked up to the central chamber to see our fleet master doing the announcements.

That day changed our lives forever…


[note: none of the names of the characters depict any real life people]
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Stupid bug, you go squish now!
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The Assassin {MM2}
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*teh gasporz* BST can write?

Nice, got me hooked.

On a side not, sorry, but the banner is better than the story. lmao. Both are great though.
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99.9% of all New Nsiders are idiots, if your one copy and paste this into your sig...
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{Advent Horizon}
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*Changed Mingan's name to Axitsuke*
-------------------------------------------------

--The P.A.L.A.D.I.N. SSF (Post Advancement “Light” Artillery Damnation Integrated Navigator Space Superiority Fighter) Wraith Squadron log: Day 31: 00:12:39 Hours


The sages were a whole race all on their own… no one knew much about them but a few had seen them during several conflicts against small rebellious systems. Each was said to have complete domination over one type of energy or element and their own special way of fighting. How many there was no one knew and at one point it was thought that they had been conducting their own military program. That rumor however hasn’t been put to rest and some say that the whole inter-galactic fleet was their idea and their program.. No one knows but hell, it worked out for the better of us.

The day was a Saturday now and we had partied for a day after the ceremony. The group that we had originally trained with went along with us to the fifth and final Harbringer-class base in existence. What made these bases special? They were of pure PALADIN personnel and equipped as if the base was a fighter itself, they even slightly resembled one. Rail gun emplacements lined the bottom of the “ship” along with an entrancing perfectly lined number of torpedo tubes. Dual heavy turbo lasers seemed to dot the railing above the base while the wings concealed weapons that we ourselves didn’t know were there.

When the time of peace reigned on these base’s the armor would vanish and be replaced by a crystalline protective aura. We would able to see the stars and the still enchanting solar bodies that we couldn’t help but be captivated with every day of our stay there. Timothy once asked if life degraded when we were in space. I told him that if it did, I liked what it felt like.. It was as if the base itself was a huge city. We had houses, gardens, pools, labs, everything in a military city except that with comforts. Yet, these were for time of peace ..and this was no time of peace so we spent the time in the bottom floor of the base.

Now was our fourth day on the base half of us were asleep while the other half was in that thin line that defines sleep and awareness. The intercom’s introduction drone made us all wake up with curses snared in-between our teeth and a death wish for the speaker, but this was quickly overtaken.

“All pilots report to docking ports by five minutes ago. There is a class three inspection an-”

The support crew announcer didn’t get to finish right away. He gagged for a couple of seconds and then somehow managed to grab the strength to continue and sputter out the remainder of the message.

“…and a sage on the flfl-oor..”

As if the base had been cued, the Fallen Sun [our base’s name] fell into utter silence, only broken by the usual machine equipment all along the base. Of course, after one or two minutes the murmuring and bickering started up throughout the base. Axitsuke was shocked. He had read all the books on the history of the Sages, whatever had been written or had been vaguely known about them he knew.

Jonathan however was unimpressed, he didn’t believe the stories and was more of a “I’ll believe it when I see it” person…

“..An actual Sage?” He gave an uncaring look. “Feh, it’s probably just a fancy rank..”

He would soon see though, and be forced to believe.

- - - - - -
A rapid attacking voice echoed through the halls of the base as we rushed to the docking ports in the hangar while still dressing and putting our uniforms on, straightening the hair and putting shoes on. We entered as the voice was half way through her rapid fire speech against the pilots.

“..I am promised the best tetra-legion that has ever stood up against the face of war and this is what I get? Slackers that take two minutes to ‘rush’ down here? I find this to be pathetic, if I had been an enemy then you would’ve all been dead. You might all excel at space combat yet your base can not man itself without you. I am here to teach you about the enemy, their tactics and their abilities… oh, and as an added little bonus I get to turn you into half-decent fighters worthy of the rank of Tetra-Regiment.”

Of course, we would have all been un-phased by such a speech, yet you tend to usually listen when the speaker seems to be a crazy pyromaniac with fire emanating from herself into colossal wings that made the metal of the base itself cower before the heat…

I glanced at Jonathan and his eyes were wide with bewilderment. I could tell that his senses were REALLY about him.

“My name is Ariel and I can see you are all clearly shocked to see that the legends are real, all so far has been a mere light show. Report to Training Meadows at 02:00 in the morning, not before, not after for the start of your training. I expect great deeds from you and I will give you all a rare second chance to give me a good first impression.” She then burst into silver ashes that no one dared go near to and that our squadron stood there watching as everyone started filing out. We half expected her to burst out of them again for more insults.

-------
Not one member of the 250 KM base had ever been in such silence. Not one word was uttered in the remainder of the day and not because of fear or anything of the sort, just hurt to their pride as Paladins. The next six hours till 02:00 hours were the most pensive ones that anyone could have ever asked for. We kept the base afloat and that’s all that anyone bothered to do. No one had the will to do anything else, and at 02:00 in the morning we all filed into the meadows where Ariel was looking down into a sphere that seemed to make tears dwell up in her eyes.

…a lone pair of tears then streaked across her face to leave crystalline trails of water that made her face shimmer in the moon light and she turned away to put the sphere in a container.

With her body turned away from us she wiped the tears off with a slight sob and then spoke softly with a slight quiver to her voice. “I.. I was there four years ago. I was there to see the massacre of my people.”

She paused as she had to control her breath and then continued.

“I was there to see my little brother who was merely five years old be slain with their gruesome cruelty. I saw the blood trickle down my best friend’s white dress onto her black high heeled shoes from her pierced neck. I saw her but she didn’t see me.. I heard the screaming roars from our elders as they tried to hold as many as they could back so we would have a chance to evacuate the village…” Her voice cracked as she gathered her breath and put her hands to her face. “I.. I saw how my father and mother were put facing against each other and how they tortured both of them, my mother screamed and then she was sheared in half. My father broke through the bounding and killed one Aurelian but then more rushed in and severed his limbs one by one.”

“..and I could do nothing…”

We all realized at that moment that this sage wasn’t the heartless beast we had portrayed her to be back in the docks. There was a secluded being beneath that flaming outer exterior, a being that was dragged into this war not by choice but by need. That need however made her show that ruthless exterior.

She finally calmed down and spoke a bit louder. “In my hands I have the only record of the beginning of the war. Forget what the media has told you about how it started, forget what propaganda has been said. It all has been a mixture of over exaggeration and lies. If you have no serious motive to be in here then I must ask you to leave.”

Not one person moved. We all stayed glued to our spot. The tale of her village’s massacre had captivated our awe and anger yet it was still nothing compared to what we saw as the transmission started.

-----
Viewpoint: Axitsuke

The transmission started and we all flinched at the sight of the destruction. There was tall Aurelian warriors in yellow-black armor with their lances pointed at cowering villagers that had taken to hiding behind fallen rafters made of burning wood and whatever they could find to have a brief place of hiding before the inevitable. I tried to glance over at Timothy but I couldn’t. This sphere was causing me to feel the agony of the recorder, the fear, the pain, and their despair. It was as if I were the user…

The recorder this time was a mother who had just lost a child and was desperately looking for him before the enemy got to them. I felt the panting of her breath as she was running through the thick, thorn strewn brush trying to find her only child. I felt the staggering of the legs and how they burned from running desperately for quite a while now. I felt that rush of blind bravery that she felt as she ran into the village after looking for him in the outskirts of the forest that made half the border of the village and falling by the riverbank to try to find him even if it meant her death. The last skirmishers from the village were seen forming a circle as their eyes reflected a mixture of anger and sadness and they were fighting off the oppressing red armored enemies of the demolition faction from the Aurelian Royal Militia. The recorder dashed through to desperately look around for a second before she was surrounded by their mounted lancers. During that second we felt her lack of air as she looked around her and saw their path of destruction through the village. Rooftops were on fire and thick, black smoke was pouring out of the doorways. A lone wailing scream was heard and then she realized that she was the only living person in the village.

…She was alone for the first time in her life. Memories of her husband and family flashed in and out of her vision as she peered into the cold, icy, blue eyes of the lancers. She slowly looked down to the floor and burst into silent crying as memories of her husband, family and life flashed through her field of vision. Her first crush, her graduation, her wedding day, the day that her son was born, and the day’s morning… a morning that she thought would never end, a morning which was calm as all the others had been but a special one nevertheless.

…for she had just learned that a second child was going to come her way.

She let out a last sob in which her whole life and feelings were poured onto and her life ended along with the transmission.

-----
Ariel removed the sphere from the displayer and put her in her brown, leather pouch that was strapped across her. No one said anything at all and then she started speaking again.

“Now… I ask of you just one favor. Help me make these bats find their way back to hell.”

Not one person in the base disagreed with her words. We had seen the scenes, we had felt the fear that had been instigated into the woman’s head. We had seen the brutal murdering of the villagers and we had been galvanized to the common goal of repaying the House of Aurelious like they had treated that first village in the war.


..this was all however was about to be tested in the following moments. A full fleet of assorted battle cruisers, frigates, destroyers and fighters exited warped space 50 clicks from our station to make the emergency sirens wail off and send everyone scattering to their stations and fighters.

This was the first test that our squadron would face and I wasn’t sure how any of us would fare, or how much stress Kiyoko would have to face to lead our squadron into the fight…
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