AN: Up to 20 Advanced Chapters on my Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/cw/Crimson_Reapr
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Congratulations!
You have received:
MRE x30
Vacuum-sealed, flavorless bricks of survival. Not fine dining by any measure, but when the void of space or the backwater of a broken world leaves you with nothing else, thirty meals could mean thirty days of respite.
K-972 Energy Pistol x1:
The K-972 is the standard-issue military sidearm of the Coalition Forces. It's compact, efficient, and terrifyingly reliable. It was designed for combat zones where ballistic weapons risk igniting oxygen-rich atmospheres or ricocheting in tight quarters. On starships, in trenches, or amid zero-G hellscapes, the K-972 delivers precise annihilation, even in a child's grip.
Pistol Magazine x5 (20 shots per recharge)
K-272 Energy Rifle x1:
Considered as the workhorse of the army and marines by many, the K-272 has proved itself in over 37 planetary conflicts, quickly becoming the military's primary energy rifle. The K-272 is a weapon forged from war doctrine, crafted to balance raw destructive power with adaptability. Its frame was modular, built for endless customization, and yet sturdy enough to be tossed from a shuttle bay, scraped off the ground, and fired again without complaint.
Rifle Magazine x3 (45 shots per recharge)
Solar-Charged Cargo Rover and Trailer:
Built with resilience in mind, designed for autonomy, and powered by the rays of the stars themselves, the Solar-Charged Cargo Rover is the unsung backbone of every outpost, mining rig, and battlefield logistics hub across the stars. With over 10,000 horsepower being sent to its wheels, its 24-meter-long trailer is pulled with ease, allowing for large hauls over long stretches. Its self-stabilizing suspension allows it to traverse the sketchiest of terrains, ensuring ease of mind during transport.
Ever-Shifting Uniform x1
With a near limitless number of customizations, the Ever-Shifting Uniform extends from its pendant form, allowing its wearer to choose what they would like to wear. From normal everyday clothes to formal gatherings and even EVA (Extravehicular Activity) suits, whatever the wearer wants, it will become.
Captain Mark Shepherd's Memories
Would you like to assimilate the memories?
Yes / No
Mark contemplated the words before his eyes for a second. "Well, shit. I don't know anything about where, when, why, or what the fuck I'm in... But I do know one thing, I'm flying blind right now... and if this doesn't at least help fill in the blanks, I'm screwed. Just... please don't be like those novels where they get a brain-melting migraine. RN Jesus, let it be more like the others, where I just unlock the memories or something."
Mark hesitated a bit longer, his thumb twitching involuntarily against the floor. He mentally steeled himself before simply thinking of the word. "Yes."
Unlike Mark, the system didn't wait after confirmation.
Memory will be assimilated in 3... 2... 1...
A searing pain shot through Mark's body from top to bottom. He felt as if every single atom that made up his being was being split, and an overwhelming amount of pain was concentrated on his head.
The pain forced Mark's left arm to jerk outward, increasing the already intolerable pain. His right hand curled up into a fist that would've drawn blood if not for the strength of his EVA Suit.
He let out an agonized scream and just as his eyes had begun to roll back into his head and his consciousness waned, the overwhelming pain subsided.
Mark gasped for air, his breath rattling wetly, and his ribs screamed at him as his lungs buckled, forcing him to vomit. The taste of iron filled his mouth as blood mixed with the contents of his body splattered across the shattered ceiling light below him, sizzling faintly against some sizzling circuitry.
Mark's vision danced, a new image plastered in his memories as shadows bled into light and the color in his vision fractured. His eyes were wide open, bearing witness to memories that felt both foreign and familiar.
He blinked once and found that he was no longer in the wreck of the ship.
The world was golden, clean, and vast. Grand halls echoed with the sound of boots in perfect synchrony. Light filtered through vaulted ceilings into sharp rows, slicing the air like blades. Every movement was precise. Every man and woman saluted with extreme discipline.
And before them all, there he was.
Mark Shepherd, standing tall and proud, cloaked in a Bracing-blue officer's coat trimmed with silver thread and badges that shimmered like stars.
The IUC, Imperial Union of Celestine, a galactic power stretched across almost a hundred systems, had made him one of their own. And not just anyone. A graduate of the legendary Stellanova Naval Academy, with top marks in theoretical fleet maneuvers and zero-G combat drills. A rising star in the IUC Navy. His sight, sharp as a goddamn scalpel, could see it in people's eyes. The fear and respect that he commanded.
The scenery before his eyes shifted as a cacophony of Railgun fire and a field of orbital debris painted the emptiness of space. He barked orders on the bridge of someone else's ship, fresh out of the academy, his voice crisp with determination and fear. He watched himself survive the ever-so-often clash with the VIC, the Volnar Intergalactic Coalition, lead a single ship out of a pirate-infested asteroid field in the Kelsari Expanse, and wrestle with the moral knots of chain-of-command during the campaign against VIC-sponsored rebels in the Burning of Cindara IV.
His mind had just finished taking in all of the details when the scenery shifted once again. This time, he stood before the Council of Fleet Commanders, a crowd of ancient admirals who looked like they had been carved from stone, and with their freezing gazes. They handed him the black-and-gold keycard of command, a keycard that was specifically necessary to activate a ship's reactor, and with it, his first unsupervised assignment:
He was given control of the Heavy Frigate Perseverance.
She was old, retrofitted throughout 137 years and outdated by 4 generations, her plating scuffed, her drives temperamental, but she was his. A heavy frigate from a different era, more armor than agility, more soul than polish, and as rectangular as a block of butter. The newer ships had slightly more angular armor and reactors that didn't need as much maintenance; meanwhile, the Perseverance had duct tape, chicken wire, welded dreams, and the bones of men who'd died in a ship that had been shot to hell and rebuilt more times than an engineer signed his own notes.
And yet, against everyone's expectations, he had made her dance.
He remembered fighting with her, piloting her, living in her, bleeding into her floors after taking a blow to the head, and sleeping beneath her flickering emergency lights after barely managing to survive battles that should've been his and his crew's end. Most of his crew adored him, and though some hated him and his reckless maneuvers, they all followed him. Because Mark made them feel alive, because he had earned it. Not by being the smartest, or the fastest, but by being the man who refused to let them die, by being the man who had guided them out of hell after diving headfirst into it.
Amusement welled up in the eyes of Mark before the scenery changed one last time.
"Drive countdown at 90 seconds," came the call from Carlos.
Mark didn't answer right away. He stood at the CIC's cracked tactical display, watching red icons multiply like rot, blooming across their position. Every warning klaxon, every blinking hull status alert, it all screamed the same truth: they had been expected and had already been fired upon.
"Bring the Wellspring and Cradle One into flanking positions," Mark ordered. "Frigates in a hammerhead wedge. Let's high-tail it out of here and back to the jump point before their rounds reach us."
"Yes, sir!"
Mark wasn't delusional. Fleets such as his weren't made to slug it out while being heavily outnumbered. They had been sent here with the sole purpose of doing some reconnaissance on what was supposed to be a pirate hideout on an unmapped planet, and from there on out, the choice was his. But just as he gave the order to turn around and retreat, new signatures appeared on their radar behind them, causing dread to fill his heart.
They had been expected. This was an ambush.
"Fuck it, punch a hole now into the nearest jump point."
His navigation tech raised his voice in concern, "But sir, that would be suicide."
"No, that would be stranding us, Schrewder. Staying here would be suicide," Mark retorted.
Schrewder nodded and sent out the call to the other ships, who tried to call for a different course of action before they noticed multiple ships in trajectory to intercept them at full burn with their weapons systems pinging them.
"Jumping in 3, 2, 1.... JUMP FAILED! Sir! Our jump drives are being jammed."
A look of panic plastered itself across Schrewder's face as their jump sequence was jammed.
Mark didn't need to announce the fact that they had just walked to death's doorstep and attempted to ding-dong ditch it. A quick glance around the bridge informed him that his crew felt it too. The fact that this was the wrong intel, very fucking wrong intel. There was no doubt that they had been set up.
Mark didn't need to remind anyone to get ready to fight, but he still spoke over their closed channels.
"Fuck it. Attention all vessels. Let's try to get that planet between us and them. You are clear to engage, weapons free. Let's try to buy enough time distance to hopefully escape their jamming field while our drives come back online, and needless to say, jump the fuck out of here."
"This is Captain Altre aboard the Vigil's Light. We are targeting the approaching corvette. They're launched missiles, launching countermeasures."
The Vigil's Light darted forward, its weapons firing on the missiles, destroying them before they could do any damage. They then trained their railguns on one of the incoming corvettes, whose unmistakable paint scheme was plastered on the Perseverance's screens. The white and golden paint scheme of the VIC.
The corvette shifted its heading slightly, a rookie mistake that allowed it to be peppered by Cradle One's forward batteries. Two seconds later, it exploded into shrapnel and a blue flame that quickly dispersed.
"Score one for us," murmured someone, bitter and breathless.
A blast rocked the Perseverance as the railgun rounds fired from the ships that were further out slammed into the Perseverance's bow, but Mark barely flinched. The Arclight and Wellspring broke formation to cover their flanks, drawing two more VIC corvettes into pursuit. They released their ordinance on the chasing corvettes as soon as they came within range.
Arclight's auto-turrets stitched a line of metal slugs through one of the approaching corvette's engine banks, sending it tumbling toward the red planet they had closed on. Wellspring let out a volley of railgun rounds into another's hull, splitting it open in a bloom of venting oxygen and disappearing fire.
"Two confirmed kills," said the tac officer, voice strained. "Three if you count the one Cradle took earlier."
"They still have more to spare," said Mark, watching a VIC destroyer detected by their radar as it rounded the planet's orbit into firing position.
"Drive online in twenty... 3... 2... 1..."
"Jump failure again!" came the scream from Schrewder. "There are multiple jamming signatures!"
This confirmed it. Mark no longer had any doubt about the idea that someone from their own side had set them up.
Mark's breath caught, just for a second. He already knew they might not make it out of this one after the first failure to jump, but there was still hope. Now the weight of their imminent death was starting to dawn on him.
"…We're not getting out," he muttered.
"Orders, sir?" his second in command, asked with a hint of panic in her voice.
Mark exhaled. "If we are damned to die on this cursed day, then we will drag as many enemies as we can down with us! All ships, turn to fully engage, burn everything you've got. Make them regret ever thinking we'd be easy pickings."
And with that, the fleet roared its final war cry.
Cradle One was hit, her weapon's operating systems knocked offline. Her crew pushed her engines to the limit, rapidly accelerating in a collision course with another VIC corvette that was approaching.
"This is Captain Ramon Colaroza. It's been one hell of a ride serving with you all... FOR IN THE TIME OF DEATH, I SMILE. FOR MY SACRIFICE, MY LAST ACT, AND MY GREATEST HON-"
Captain Colaroza's words were cut short as the VIC corvette continued its barrage, its rounds finding their mark on Cradle One and ripping through its bridge. The ship shuddered and its lights turned off, but its engines kept pushing, ramming the VIC corvette at full thrust before detonating her own core.
Arclight wasn't faring too well either. With half its systems offline, it had somehow managed to disappear from the fight and reappear close enough to the enemy destroyer to unleash the last of its torpedoes. Just seconds after unleashing its load, a direct shot from the destroyer's main batteries tore through Arclight's hull, turning her into a field of drifting debris. All three of the fired torpedoes found their mark, hitting 3 of the destroyer's 4 engines, essentially crippling it.
"We only have three ships left," said someone, "including us."
They were still fighting what appeared to be a never-ending onslaught of VIC ships when all of a sudden, a new signature appeared on the CIC console just like the destroyer had done. It was the signature of an accelerating dreadnought that had also been offline on the other side of the red planet, but was currently making its way over to get a piece of the pie, and it was minutes away from arrival.
Mark's fleet kept on slugging it out, but the dreadnaught didn't waste any time once it got line of fire, its weapons already online and primed to shoot. Mark recognized the ship in the split second that it was on his screens. Its markings, along with the pattern of its white and golden paint, marked this dreadnaught as one of the VIC's most decorated ships. The Liberation. Its main battery, a 150-meter-long rail cannon, trained its sights on the Perseverance while the rest of its railguns focused on the other 2 ships.
"Shit-"
The blast hit the Perseverance like a hammer slamming into cold steel, the brutal impact causing everything to shake as a third of the 325-meter-long vessel split off, and it was thrown into an uncontrollable spin. Its tail section had been sheared completely off, the shot just barely missing the reactor's housing. It crashed into the drifting husk of the Wellspring in a brutal, scraping impact.
The impact had been so violent that it had knocked Mark out.
Before him on his CIC terminal, a red line of words blinked in and out:
"Critical systems compromised. All access is denied. Captain's authorization code required."
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Mark's scenery then returned to his previously destroyed bridge, and a confused frown spread across his face as he started contemplating his new memories, or would they be considered old?
He spent some time analyzing what he had seen once the memories had assimilated and came to the conclusion that he had either taken over the body of his alternate self, or he had always been this universe's Mark Shepherd, and what he had actually awakened were his memories from his previous life.
His musing was interrupted by warning screens rapidly filling his vision.
System Error Occurred.... System Error Occurred....
System Being Overridden....
System Failure.... Critical System Failure....
Greatest Fleet Commander System Offline..... Greatest Fleet Commander System Deemed Obsolete..... Greatest Fleet Commander System Erased....
New System Integration Initiated....
System Integration ETA: UNKNOWN...
All System Functions Null.... Recalibrating..... System Inventory Active....
Mark's brows furrowed even more as he started panicking.
"No, no, no, no. It can't be, my system! What the hell happened to it? Do I have to survive on this damn planet and find my own way off? How the hell am I supposed to do that? For fuck's sake, I only have 30 MREs. I'm gonna fucking die out here. I'm gonna fucking starve to death... fuck, only if I don't die of thirst first."
In Mark's desperation, he forgot he had a broken left arm and struck the ship's metal ceiling with his right fist, an action that caused movement in his left arm and for pain to come shooting through his body.
"Argh... hmm... hmm... hmm... fuuuuuuck!"
He slowly lay on the ship's ceiling and closed his eyes, cursing his shitty luck.
"Worst fucking transmigration ever..."