《Future Warfare》 Chapter 1: Future Warfare Chapter 1: Future Warfare I was at my computer screen building my newest design, the Bulwark Mark 7. It was shaped like a hammer but backward with large missile pods inside of heavily armored plates that rotated horizontally towards the main body. The main weapons are gravity weapons. But, rail-guns and coil-guns are secondary weapons. They are lined forwards to back from the top and bottom of the main section with some of them on the hammers heads on the side. The Bulwark Mark 7 is moved by a combination of gravity plates, ion thrusters, and hydrogen boosters. It turns by mostly gyroscopes but gravity plates help accelerate the turning process. Its bridge is located right next to two large fusion reactors capable of outputting most of the power needed to move and fire the guns. I copied armor plating around the reactors in a square pattern and added extra plating around critical parts. This was technically the Mark 4 in long-range control but it still needed a couple of people to man it. Since I¡¯ve researched FTLC or Faster-Than-Light-Communications most of my space fleet and other branches have this tech built-in. ¡®Future Warfare is a game I play in. As the name implies it¡¯s in the future! Or about a thousand years into the future. There¡¯s still navy, air, army, and the new space! Plus, this game is around Fortnight in popularity. I was the number one player in all those categories. Although, I didn¡¯t have much land and Wow, I can¡¯t believe this is the same game I fell in love with around 5 years ago. I started with around a subdivision of land and with the most basic of weaponry. 3 four-wheel jeeps with a machine gun strapped on top and a small patrol boat. The game has mostly stayed the same with minor updates to the tech tree and graphics.¡¯ ¡®Around me are three screens. One with Derpcord but nobody is connecting to my channel and the other has some music playing. Right now it was some Irish mixed in with Viking or something. On the main screen is the game Future Warfare. And in the game is my ship. Or an almost completed design. I¡¯m using it to attack the aliens or any other faction that tries to destroy me. The aliens in the game didn¡¯t attack you until attacked. Passive-aggressive. And they generally have some good loot or resources. Stop wandering off Lucas. Focus on the frigging ship I say to myself. I add some hallways to the ammo compartments and add some heavy blast doors. Near the Bridge, I add all they need to survive. There¡¯s only going to be 3-2 people manning the ship so it doesn¡¯t need much. Plus most of the pace is going to be filled with metal rods or just metal bullets. No explosives, maybe the missiles or the hydrogen tanks. Wait, I should make a system that saves you from dying. Hmm, the ship is far in so maybe armored tubes with repurposed missiles. I would want just one small enough to fit one person and some cryo stuff.¡¯ ¡®There, that should be it. Only a bit of lighting, antennas and all that stuff you need to make it look cool and bang! There it is, a General-Assault-Light-Cruiser or GALC. Wait, that¡äs a pretty cool name! Ha, yeah! Although it technically is a heavy or just a cruiser I have different standards than the rest of the factions and that name is way too good to be changed. But, before I finish I should make sure it¡¯s all good to go. There, a conveyor for ammo that would be blocked. Fixed! This looks all good to go. All I need to do is add my crest on it and it¡¯s ready. And plus add it to my private discord with some of my friends.¡¯ ¡®My crest is somewhat of a weird one. A cross between a Nazi and Russian flag. With the Nazi symbol on the right and the Russian symbol on the left with both their colors. And in-between is a 2D drawing of my old Mark 1 Cast which was a space battleship and the first design I ever designed. I¡¯ve designed a ton of everything and I¡¯m pretty much the number 1 design dealer. Many factions use my ships of course but at a cost. First is money, and they have to join my alliance which is a group of factions. I built the Bulwark because many newer factions were trying to invade me, and I was getting pretty angry.¡¯ ¡®So, I designed a ship that can annihilate lower level units. And what do you know?! It¡¯s great against the aliens because they use a lower level or just a lower tech. Also, they have a significant amount of armor and mass produce ships. That¡¯s why I have the bunker buster missiles and it''s mostly galvium steel and just a tiny bit of HE to clear out the aliens on that deck.¡¯ ¡®Galvium steel is basically what the aliens and many lower tech factions use due to its robustness. But when a high-velocity galvium missile hit it. Well, it reacts the same way when a gravity plate overloads and blows a giant hole in it. Soo, I rush them and board the ship, so I can take it and recycle the entire body. Superior weapons and robots make it much easier. Plus they only use real people on their ships to man them instead of automated systems. I made the boarding ships fast so they can act like a harpoon and a boarding ship. And without it, you get hailed by the amount of car-sized steel bullets and you¡¯re dead. But, there¡¯s a limit to how fast you can make a ship go. I use mostly hydrogen because then I can pick up people on the ground and I use gravity plates to go faster. But, when you need to go faster than LS or light-Speed then gravity plates are your best bet. I can¡¯t fit many hydrogen tanks on it since it needs to carry troops and kinda be smallish so it can fit on the Bulwark and other ships. And when you try to go faster with hydrogen the amount of thrust you get from pumping that stuff out gets lower and lower. But, when you go into FTL or Faster-Than-Light with gravity plates there''s this thing called a rebound.¡¯ Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. ¡®Lesson time! So, when you need to go light-speed you use gravity plates to do that and propel it there are three methods. Or rather two if you count switching the direction of gravity another method. One if firing a wave of gravity and riding that wave. The wave is so powerful it bends spacetime and space itself. And to ride that wave you need to power it and use your own gravity plates to stay in line or else you get set into another direction and get ripped apart by the G-force which is bad.¡¯ ¡®That¡¯s why factions or well people and aliens don¡¯t like those kinds of FTL since humans and aliens like to mass-produce them, and they don¡¯t have FTLC, so they have to man them. And mass-producing things makes imperfections in the gravity array which makes warping impossible and does the same thing if you don¡¯t ride the wave right. I use that method and make my ships nicely and not quickly and I use mostly robots to help make them quality.¡¯ ¡®And there¡¯s the other method. This one is slower and has one disadvantage: rebound. When you are using this method and you go above 3 LS you get rebound. And when you go to that speed and at a certain distance you get rebounded with around half the force as the bubble collapses outside your ship and sends you the opposite direction of where you came from at around half your speed.¡¯ ¡®Yay, my Mark 7 is complete. This should protect my cargo fleet heading to another system. But, all I need to do is construct it. And luckily I was building it as I went along so it only needs around a minute or so to add the rest and test fly it. All I need to do is load all the mining and other equipment onto the cargo ships and head them to a system so I can get resources. This ship was built on an analog for Ceres and there are two cargo ships already loaded with all that stuff so when it finishes let¡¯s go. I don¡¯t want to give anybody ideas and I need to keep this secret for a month or so. And that¡¯s because I need to work out all of the bugs¡¯ I move my screen over to the analog Ceres and look at the Mark 7 that¡¯s almost done ¡®Time is usually accelerated to around 24 seconds in Future Warfare per 1 second in real life so it¡¯s pretty fast. But when you arrive in a new system is changes to 1 to 1 until you make a port.¡¯ The body of the ship and everything on it is almost built. Small construction drones are spraying paint onto the body and larger ones are putting steel girders and small cosmetic antennas in place. I look over to the cargo ships. ¡®They are like a large 3D triangle with a rectangle at the end to hold all of the propulsion and everything you need. The entire front was meant to hold much cargo and to hold equipment for whatever you needed. The size of the Argos is 500 meters for and a width of 100 meters and a height of 150 giving it ample room. Argos was mostly powered by gravity plates because it needs to go fast to carry stuff back and forth. With all of the stuff at the full load of 5,000,000 tons, it can go up to 500 LS and that''s insane!¡¯ ¡®Ooh, yes, it¡¯s finished. It¡¯s about the size of a Mark 1 Cast but has a tone more firepower and speed. At 750 LS this thing mops the floor. It is 25% larger than the cargo ships for good reason. A single volley will destroy, well everything smaller than a battleship class ship.¡¯ Beautiful spikes of red and blue come out of the hydrogen thrusters why the gravity plates emit nothing but force. Both of these kinds of thrusters pull the Bulwark Mark 7 out of the construction bay and into the fleet including 1 Bulwark Mark 7 GLAC, 2 Argos Mark 6 HCS (Heavy-Cargo-Ship), 3 Facil Mark 6 LDF (Light-Defense-Frigate), and 12 Anglos Mark 5 HASFB (Heavy-Assault-ships-For-Boarding). ¡®Where should I send this fleet? There¡¯s a bunch of stars that haven''t been explored around 5 LY away. And that takes around 1 second. Whoa, I didn¡¯t realize how fast my ships are¡­ And why haven''t these systems been explored? Oh, wait, 5 LY is further than the 5 LS limit when you¡¯re using the non-wave method so you can¡¯t go there without being rebounded a bit and then you have to do it again which takes a lot longer. Plus, there are not many wave method ships out there not including me.¡¯ The fleet which was in a triangle formation starts its short jump to the closest system in that 5 LY bubble. The large gravity plates on the propellers start to spin and the ships accelerate. My screen moves with the ships on the ¡°UP.¡± axis even though there is no ¡°Up.¡± in space. In a few seconds, the screen moves with the ships and a small box says ¡°Done with the jump. This is system U+2650 ?. Please click ¡°Okay.¡± to continue.¡± ¡®Well, duh.¡¯ I click the ¡°Okay.¡± Button and then look around using the camera. The ships are currently near a large asteroid belt with two sides. Four gas giants in the outer system and four rocky planets on the inside. The third one caught my eye though. I moved my ships closer to the planet close to a moon-like satellite orbiting it. And then I looked at the planet and moon. ¡®The moon looked like, well, the moon! It has mostly light-gray spots around it but some dark-gray around small little craters in the surface. Well, there are a bunch of them!¡¯ ¡®But the planet looks like Earth. The landmasses and continents are there, and they are the same shape! Oh, well, nice discovery. At least the devs had some brain and put in Earth and Sol so, cool. This could make this a nice tourism spot and other things. But, let¡¯s not share this right now. I do want to savor my discovery a bit. But, this is the end for now. It seems like this is a good spot to end and maybe think this when I¡¯m watching TV or something.¡¯ I shut down Future Warfare and then the other apps I have open. Then I click shutdown in the start bar and watch it turn off. The screens flicker and then go completely dark while the PC under the desk stops humming. ¡®Good thing this is after my work shift, so I have a ton of time before I go to bed. Might as well just watch some TV and then go to bed. I wish my designing in the game will pay off everything but that won¡¯t happen. Ugh, I remember when I was a child and I played this game a ton. Well, I¡¯m 19 so that doesn¡¯t matter. Plus, I better grow up since I¡¯m an adult.¡¯ I walk downstairs and turn on the TV in my living room while sitting down. Then I turn on my favorite TV show. (Timeskip: After 3 EPs of that show.)¡® The show was great. But, there are two plot hangers to fix. That show ended way too soon since I watched the last episodes of it. Well, no crying over it. And that system that I found in Future Warfare. The thing I found can wait for tomorrow so the main thing is the news. And that¡¯s to see what was happening today or see what the weather is like. No harm is done because I still get 9 hours of sleep before I have to go to work if I watch another hour.¡¯ I turn off Flex and then click on my ¡°News.¡± macro. Chapter 2: Alien ships? Chapter 2: Alien ships? The screen flickers and turns on the news. ¡°Breaking news: Alien Ships?.¡± is on the red rectangle and a reporter is talking. ¡°Many satellites detected large masses near the moon at approximately 9:15 GMT. Upon closer expectation, the alien ships or fleet appears to stay geo-synchronized with the moon and are facing us. There are three confirmed ships in a triangle formation but it seems there are smaller ships around them. Now, over to Miguel.¡± The screen switches to another screen with a picture of the moon and a closer picture of the ships on a wall next to a person named Miguel. The man on the screen waves and then turns to the photos. He wears a black suit with a small nametag on it. ¡°Hello, I¡¯m continuing. I¡¯m from Nasa and I¡¯m the head scientist. It¡¯ll be around one or two days until we get more information about these alien ships. But, we can say that these ships aren¡¯t doing anything. The lead ship or the bigger one is in the shape of a hammer while the other two ships are triangular. Also, when those ships arrived with a large wave of space distortion that flowed over us even though it was tiny.¡± ¡®Wait, What? Those look like my ships. That looks exactly like my ships and I left them there in the same position. I better check on my computer. Plus, I need to get a station down. Usually, the protocol is to blow a hole into the planet or moon and then start a base to mine and make ships and resources to send back. I can probably blow a hole in the moon and start a base there while making a base in the asteroid belt so I can mine all those goodies.¡¯ I tune back into the screen and watch. ¡°This could be a space-faring species and all of those ships are approximated to be over 500 meters. There could be three reasons for them to be here. One is resources, second our planet, third is they want to colonize or talk to us.¡± ¡®Yeah, I¡¯ve got to get my PC. I run and turn it on. You know what? It would be better to build a spaceport that isn''t on the moon but in space and then I could make it orbit Earth or whatever that planet is called. And then make a mining station near the real Ceres so I can mine resources. Also, this is crazy. Like even the ships there prove it. Well, since I¡¯m skeptical I might as well start building them and bring an almost finished station over here. And bring some of my major fleets over and just build up more stuff.¡¯ Sitting down I open the live news and the game up. The game shows a loading symbol under the title and then goes back to what I was doing before Future Warfare got turned off. It shows all my ships in the formation I left it in staying still. ¡®Okay, I¡¯ll allocate all of my cargo ships to starting a mining station near Ceres and then send 2 of my 3 Facil Mark 6 LDFs over there to help protect.¡¯ I select the ships I need and a blue circle appears surrounding them. Then I click a position near the asteroid belt. Before I pick yes I move my cursor the ¡°Build Mining Station.¡± button and click it. After that, the ships gravity propellers start moving and they disappear. A moment after that the camera moves again and shows the ¡°UP.¡± side of the ships. Nearby asteroids are orbiting the sun and the ships are firing thrusters to keep them in one place. The two cargo ships open their bowels and blow out the construction drone and resources that were there while the Facils circle them with their hydrogen thrusters in a display of blue and red as they wait until the ions kick in. ¡®Okay, not that I¡¯ve got some of the tasks being completed, I need to get a space station in orbit so I can dock ships.¡¯ ¡®Let¡¯s see. If I build a station here that would take days and I need to communicate fast. Plus stations have their own gravity drives to move so I don¡¯t need to build one.¡¯ I open the galaxy map and click the system that everybody starts from. ¡®Hmm, there are no completed stations but there¡¯s a military/research one that¡¯s 90% complete with only the drive and some paint needed. You know what? There¡¯s a major fleet right there that I can use to move it. Since there are no disadvantages to jumping when connected I could just use that!¡¯ I click the fleet nearby and bring it right next to the station. The large fleet composed of 1 Dido Mark 6 VHB (Very-Heavy-Battleship) which looks like a flying rectangle with a large trapezoid bow and many gravity guns attached with lots of smaller ships in its hanger bay. The ship was an enormous 3000 meters long with it being around 750 meters wide and 500 meters tall. 7 Cast Mark 6 Bs (Battleship) look like the Dido but smaller and two large Star Wars like Tie fighter wings on the side. These kinds of ships were 1000 meters long and 500 by 500 meters wide and high. And 5 new Bulwark Mark 7s with 21 Facils and a bunch of other assault ships. ¡®In all total, this fleet is around 150 ships.¡¯ The Dido was going to carry the station. Which looks like two thick pancake shapes with a plus sign in the middle strutting out and acting like huge docking bays. On the ¡°Pancakes.¡± were large structures for holding resources and FTLC. ¡®Yeah, I better get this over there so I can protect that system. After that, let''s think about this.¡¯ I click the lock button. The Dido which is about the same size as one of the pancakes docks on one of the struts and I see arms as big as Facil¡¯s grab it and pull the Dido closer. In the background I hear a chime and then ¡°Docked.¡± and then make them jump to Sol. They all disappear and I appear in the Sol system with all of the ships underneath me. ¡®Wow, I have so many ships that I didn¡¯t even notice.¡¯If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡®Soo, let¡¯s think¡­ Why are my ships from Future Warfare real!? Heck, a single assault ship will blow the heads off of the scientists that work so hard to find out stuff. And all of the ships at Vorgos (The name of the planet in Future Warfare.) amount to around 1000 Cast sized ships above mark 5. Wait, let¡¯s think before we do anything else. How do I communicate with them? Or well us? I remember that the flying thick pancake had tons of FTLC and other things in it and that¡¯s what I really call my stations. If I were Nasa or somebody else I would be S****** my pants at even that scout fleet! A light fleet will completely render them unconscious.¡¯ ¡®And what or who would want us to control their entire nation. Well, faction. I¡¯ll think about that later. First I gotta or they have to communicate with us. The screen in front of me showed the station near where we first jumped. On the ¡°Down.¡± side it had large dishes and antennas sticking out each about three football fields in length. Hmm, isn''t there a tab for that stuff. There are three trapezoids stitched to the side of the screen each with a word for it. Each tab has a couple of sub-tabs and then it gets down to business. I think the station does have some communications for older tech. And by that, I mean radio or Wi-Fi. But, I need two-way. Not one-way stuff since that can¡¯t send anything.¡¯ ¡®Soo, I have to get that thing in-orbit but luckily there is an orbit function in this game. You can¡¯t have a space game without orbits otherwise that is a very bad game. And I would have to find an area so I can get communications. And more luckily you can switch on a bubble that shows where you can get stuff once you¡¯ve scanned whatever you¡¯re scanning. Okay then, which one will I choose? NASA or CNSA, both of them would be the most capable in space travel and they have the best of things and resources to do stuff. Wait, I have an idea. What if we don¡¯t have to go into a geosynchronous orbit and just be a very large satellite for forward operations so I could talk to us. Or them.¡¯ ¡®Before that happens, I need to send some ships over to the asteroid belt and help them construct a tinier version of this space station. And then I think a bit about all the things that are happening.¡¯ (Now, I¡¯ll stop with the interface thing, and all that clicking so I give you what is going on.) The ships start to turn towards a tiny gray ring in the background that is only taking up around 3 pixels in diameter. The propellers start spinning with blue light coming from within the ship. These propellers take power from the fusion reactors inside while the gravity plates that help make an Earth-like gravity stop Inertia from killing the people inside the ship. A large chunk of the fleet ships back end shines brighter than the star to the left with a blue intensity that rivals the hottest stars. ¡®Hah, that¡¯s the concept of all of my weapons. If a single bullet from an AK-47 goes light-speed and hits something then it¡¯s gone. That single bullet going light-speed is equivalent to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.¡¯ ¡®And all of my missiles and gravity gun bullets range from a car to three houses stitched together and all of them may go at LS or even faster. And I can imagine what kind of damage these things can do. But, sadly there is a treaty in the game that the players made since those are too powerful and may cause factions to be gone in one little bullet or missile. This limited the speed to 0.25 LS at tops so it didn¡¯t destroy anything totally. The aliens are not included but I did use it for them because their ships could be recycled and reused so there is no need to obliterate them.¡¯ ¡®That¡¯s why I still use coilguns and railguns even though they are outdated. Most of the gravity propelled guns are rated at 3 LS and tear through even the most heavily armored ships and are very good at orbital bombardment.¡¯ Now the chunk of the fleet¡¯s gravity drives are all starting to slow down the spinning and the blue plasma-like electricity is gone. All of the ships are under me and I see that they are now near the other ships that were sent here before the news. ¡®Huh, these guys or ¡°Aliens.¡± work really fast. Before I arrived with these ships they were only just beginning to unload all the cargo and mining equipment.¡¯ The structure was taking form. Many little heavily refined metal rods are sticking out making the base of the station. ¡®Now that I¡¯m here I¡¯ll let them do their work and go back to the rest of the fleet. Sooo, how would I send messages to them? There¡¯s a message thing in the game where you can record audio or video and send it to people as long as you are in a certain area and they don¡¯t block you. Yeah, let¡¯s put it into a geosynchronous orbit so that way I can dock and they can launch stuff to the station easier.¡¯ The Dido attached to it starts to jump to the place I wanted it to be. The entire fleet turns with the station and Dido to Earth. The fleet turns into a blue haze and it disappears revealing that the ships are gone. But, as soon as the haze disintegrates my view changes to the planet right beside me. I change to the system view and select the Bulwark sitting there doing nothing. ¡®Yeah, that¡¯s bad. Wasted protection and resources is a very bad thing. Plus, my faction is one know to be the best recycler and reuser. Heck, I repurpose old Casts and even some alien battleships as ammunition or I melt them down to make newer ships. Sometimes I upgrade them and repair them so I can send them to my friends or help with anything they can do. Anyways, why don¡¯t I put it near the new station to guard it.¡¯ The ship jumps over there and I go back to the minor fleet. The Dido fires its hydrogen thrusters a bit to get the station into an orbit while I look at Earth. The blue marble is just sitting there around the size of an apple on my monitor slowly turning. Earth shows its clouds just above the surface and the many small hurricanes sweeping across the ocean. I look under all the clouds and zoom in. For a millisecond it shows a small satellite covered with gold foil and two Rectangular solar panels jutting out. After that, I look below the clouds and see Earth. A shape resembling North America is under and I see a bit of what I could call Africa. I zoom back out and look at the altimeter. It says 35,845 KM HIGH and the screen shows the orbit trajectory of the station. But to me, it just stays in place. The Dido detaches from the huge arms and cables running along with them. The arms close in making the very large hanger on the arm airtight. Small thrusters push the Dido to a safe area so it won¡¯t collide with the station. ¡°Ding.¡± A filled in circle with a 1 on it appear on the communications tab.