Space wizards, corsair pirates of old and lots of fancy sounding bad guys - A zine submission short story
Europa Internal Security Service - Department of Truth and Freedom
Form ID : 26701-C
Form Name: Request for clearance to publish sensitive or potentially sensitive information
Applicant information
Name: Jack Rakman Citizen number: 40166575-58438675
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Core World Of Birth: Britannicus Social Credit Rating: Unsatisfactory Financial Credit Rating: Outstanding Height: 190cm Weight: 150kg Build: Burly, barrel chested Hair: Brown and thinning Eyes: Blue Memberships and affiliaitons: Enlightenment League (Treasurer), Knights of the square table (Member), WSTC bowling club (Secretary, Excommunicated), Shipping of Heavy Indurstial Technology (SHIT) advisory board, (Honorary board member) Natural Social Relaxation (NSR) corporation (Contributing writer)
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Jack Rakman is a man of many talents and affiliations, he's also gone off the deep end ever since he finished his service. He refused a lawful order to participate in the Royal fleet due to supposed "medical" issues which is quite frankly the same as detonating one of our ships himself. He's sailed the stars for a number of decades and has recently started to try his hand at writing and wants to try "improving" things around the place. He's on his last warning from the perspective of the EISS.
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Improve Morale [] Enhance Patriotic Fervour [] Reduce stress levels [] Demoralise deviant citizens [] Other (Provide detail) [X] To inform all citizens and institutions of impending dangers
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Recommendations of Captain Jack Rakman to protect the Europa shipping industry - Former Vice Admiral Of the White Star Trading Corporation (WSTC)
Shipping in our current era
The core worlds of the Europa system enjoy a prosperous trading relationship with the planets in the neighbouring Levantine system. The hulking cargo ships of my former employer, the WSTC, are the main travellers of these well-charted interstellar shipping lanes. The professional, strict and hard working captains and officers hail from the finest families and institutions in Europa. The crews are of course made up of Europaâs lower classes, with a significant number of them being hardened criminals, vagabonds and rogues.
The titanic 'WSTC' emblazoned vessels, in crimson red and white hulls, haul vast quantities of industrial heavy machinery and projectile weaponry outward, returning with the finest flavourings, foodstuffs and jewels. Itâs a profitable enterprise for the Europa nobility who jointly own and operate the WSTC. Their heirs get some stories to tell, and upon finishing service (and paying the relevant consideration fee) are destined for a prestigious commission as an admiral in the Royal Fleet.
As everyone knows, being appointed to the Royal Fleet brings great honour to the family name and gives the newly appointed Admiral a sense of pride and accomplishment. They've more than earned that and the respect of Europa's civlian population in my opinion. A cabin for an entry grade WSTC officer is a mere 100 metres square, with one servant and rarely more than three options for desert! The young appointees often cry that such conditions are inhumane but I think it makes them tougher in the long run.
The draw for the lower class crew is that they get two nutritious meals a day, somewhere to exist that they wonât be constantly accosted by morality constables and an escape from whatever caused them to end up there in the first place.
The shipping lanes arenât dangerous from a navigation and seafaring perspective, it's pretty safe work all things considered. Asteroid belts are well documented, the Royal Fleet patrols regularly to sweep up pyrates and the fact that our cargo ships travel at sub-light speed for most of the voyage, means they can easily navigate around upcoming obstacles such as ancient satellites and other celestial trash.
This is how things used to be. This is how I'd have described things a few years ago, just as I was finishing my service in the WSTC but before I became a soon to be acclaimed writer.
The mysteries of our recently missing ships
There are tales of ships that never return from their voyages, but are talked about in every spaceport tavern in the core worlds. There are people who have lost loved ones and friends, with no explanation from their employers. They are simply marked as "missing" in perpetuity.
The families of these missing sailors quickly stop asking questions, friends stop turning up at the taverns to rabblerouse and tell tall tales, then life goes on and we all just accept that they're gone. Then the next incident happens and the cycle repeats itself. A "missing" member of the crew is only determined to be dead after 500 years without update.
Planet Dwelling armchair admirals have been saying, that the ships must have experienced communication failures and drifted beyond the safety of the shipping lanes, into the unknown and ever changing danger filled abyss that sits either side of the charted paths. Never to be seen or heard from ever again.
The academics and learned technical folk of our great universities, whoâve never left their ivorsteel towers say theyâve probably had engine meltdowns and gone supernova, vanishing from existence and leaving behind only specks of hull, blood and bone.
The Royal Fleet public affairs officer Sly Jarbon, offers yet another explanation which is that the crew must have mutinied, turned off the planned route, and headed for a life of debauchery and crime in the wayward new colonies beyond the reach of our forces.
The supposed reason for the uptick in mutinies is that the lower classes that make up the crews are simply predisposed to such actions. Sly goes on to say that "Discipline is maintained by fear, and the crews have forgotten who is really in charge. From this day forward, all brig sentences are to be tripled, Lashings quadrupled, and the list of crimes onboard a ship deemed capital, will increase ten fold".
We were told that these reforms would stop any further ships going missing. That statement was given two weeks ago, and just a few days ago a hauler missed it's expected date of arrival, and is now missing. My personal belief is that the Korsairs, the raiders and slavers of long ago, who used to terrorise our forefathers, and are believed eradicated, have resurfaced.
The battle of MiddleWay and previous Korsair interactions
This is an extract from a recently discoverd Journal of one of my long distant ancestors, outlining Korsair warfare practices and ship technologies.The language used is indeed ancient and requires a significant time to decipher but I'm confident that within a few years I'll have all of the volumes done. These will then be published (for a reasonable number of credits) for all (who lawfully purchase the material) to read.
I canât see her first name anywhere in the journal, just her full title and the last rank she held which was - in full:
âSpaceLord Ravenite,
Western Command AKA the "Celestial Rats" ,
Commander of the Hammer class heavy cruiser âOlympusâ ,
Tasked with providing heavy gunnery and tracking capabilities to the counter Korsair taskforces of the Royal Fleet"
Beginning of extract (Translated)
The Korsairs donât use man made projectile weaponry of various calibres like we do. They use pure, concentrated light energy that cuts our battleships in half, turns our men to ash and rips our fighters apart. They can sweep it around like a searchlight and fry entire squadrons of fighters and bombers with a single pass. The range of it is less than our guns, but whenever you can detonate our shells mid air with a sweep of it, what good are the long range shells anyway.
They donât use conventional space capable engines like us, they bring space towards them seemingly - appearing right beside our command ships in an instant when previously both ships were stationary and many days light speed travel from eachother.
There is no sign of communication between korsair ships, at least not in a way that any of our Xeno-signals experts can understand, no signals are emitted from their ships, even when weâve just struck them a blow and theyâre beating a hasty retreat or (presumebaly?) doing damage control and requesting covering fire.
Those bloody pyrates have been harassing our merchant and military ships for years, abducting our crews, regardless of age, pleas for mercy and whimpering offers of surrender. Is it the heavy equipment they want? The projectile weapons? Maybe it's just for our human flesh?
Nobody knows what happens to those brave children of Europa who fall into the grip of a Korsair, but Iâve given firm orders to everyone under my command to destroy any life pods which are at risk of being captured. Iâd rather kill the crew myself and be judged by the almighty than let those "things" get at them.
âEnd of extract
The celestial rats were part of the task force that destroyed the last of the Korsair ships in the famous âBattle of MiddleWayâ many thousands of years ago. Whilst we remember the Battle of MiddleWay and celebrate Europaâs stunning victory over the Korsair menace every thirty three years in the festival of civility, itâs generally not well understood exactly how the royal fleet was able to win so easily. We know the Korsairs used Advanced technology of some sort (which some ill educated crew at the time used to call "Majika", according to the journal). I'd never really questioned how their "advanced technology" (or Majika?) didn't cause us any problems on the battlefield.
As I'm sure any reader can attest, we all learned that the battle of Middleway was a stunning victory with no casualities on our side. For those who need some revision, the story goes that the Ragnarok, the largest ship in the fleet, rammed the Korsair flagship the "Purple Pearl" and broke it clean in two, with remaining Korsair ships being mopped up by our boys and girls in blue (and sometimes purple! Commander's used to be able to choose).
This journal seems to suggest that EVERY battle was a bloody one, ESPECIALLY Middleway. In pretty much every battle, thousands of crew and Europa's most prized ships fell victim to the Korsair onslaught. It's hard to research the Korsairs and the battle properly because nothing is written down about them, it's all just stories that are passed down and fed to us during "Truth and Freedom" Studies in school.
It seems that the Royal Fleet's public archives have only fleeting mentions of Korsairs. Despite repeated questions to the scribes in the archives, all I get in reply is wishy washy CuriousCarlBot generated slop answers forwarded to my DataPad. They sometimes even leave in the part that says "Consider checking important details", what am I supposed to check against!? Those DataPad wrangling idiots with their stupid little friend CuriousCarlBot will be the death of knowledge - I swear to it.
No longer will this situation be the bane of researchers of the Korsairs such as myself however! My hope is that with my continued research of these journals, we as a society can begin to more widely understand Korsair technologies and our own history. This could result in scientific breakthroughs and a bettering of life for all Europa citizens!
If the SpaceLord is to be believed, the battle of MiddleWay was only won by the skin of their teeth. Many ships had already been broken apart, had their magazines detonated and dozens of wounded ships were scattering in all directions. Even her wife didn't survive the battle - she was a captain whose Atlas class corvette went supernova after it's rear engines took a direct hit. SpaceLord Ravenite recounts with great sorrow the feeling of loss and hopelessness after witnessing that event.
Her logbook says that the battle was won by a lucky shot from an overheated TurboCannon located on "Knockout", a foundering Dreadnought class cruiser - which hit the underside of the Korsair mothership, blowing it back to the stone age. The resulting explosion took out all of itâs supporting frigates and destroyers in rapid succession, as well as some of our own. In short, we got EXTREMELY lucky. The battle was won by amazing amounts of sacrifice of man and machine, luck, and the sheer detemination of a Royal Fleet sailor not to go down without a fight. Were it not for that lucky shot, we might all be Korsair test subjects right now.
This journal clearly contradicts existing understandings of the battle where the Royal Fleet was victorious with no casualties. It also opens up a new way of looking at the past which could help us respond better to a resurfacing Korsair threat.
Whats going on with those missing ships then?
Weâve lost two Leviathan class hauling vessels this year, in the previous fifty weâve only ever lost one.
Weâve lost six Titan class haulers, four light cruisers, two heavy cruisers, five destroyers and over twenty civilian transport shuttles - all in the last year.
As you dear reader know all too well, losing more than five ships in a year is considered a VERY bad year, and losing ANY Royal Fleet ship is supposed to be a once in a decade occurrence.
Can this all be down to communications issues, engine supernova explosions and mutinies? That explanation to me, is simply ridiculous.
Reccomendations to improve safety and shipping
My firm belief, as a former Vice Admiral of the WSTC, is that all vessels must be accompanied by a battlegroup from the Royal Fleet for the foreseeable future, cost and resource constraints be dammed.
The days of safety and Europa being on top of the world are over. Iâm unable to take up command in the Royal Fleet but Itâll be a cold day in Londinium if I'll just sit back and watch while there is a clear and present threat to our way of life emerging from the abyss. A threat that nobody alive today has ever seen, studied or understood.
The Noble families may tell you thereâs nothing to worry about, this solution is too expensive, if a ship disappears, itâs their children and family fortunes that will be lost - that may be true. A few dozens noble heirs will die should a hauler or royal ship be lost and the death of a noble is always a mournful event. Thousands and thousands of crew are going down with them though, people we've trained, schooled and shaped into decent, hard workers who may go on to do great things whenever they get out of their contracts, and their lives are being wasted.
Even the criminals and reprobates among them, after a few years of full bellies, stern discipline and trust to do their job, can come out relatively well mannered and of good character. I'm privelleged to count a few of those former reprobates among my aquantainces to this very day. I generally do not like their kind and find their humour quite primitive and distateful, but I wouldn't see the hard work and investment of officers like myself and those of the Royal Fleet be wasted.
-Jack
For licensing opportunities and business enquiries regarding this article, the journals of SpaceLord Ravenite or other tales of adventure from my days in the WSTC please contact me via telenet information systems using Citizen Number 40166575-58438675.
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Detection and reporting of deviant thoughts and behaviours judged by Major Al-Hassan
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Overall Application outcome
REJECTED FOR PUBLICATION DUE TO CONCERN FOR SECURITY OF THE REALM