Yeah, the free time the devs gave me has, sadly, run out. I roleplayed my way in, so now I'm roleplaying my way out. I'm glad that I've managed to create a guild that will survive me as a player. [UPK] is popular--more popular than even I thought it would be. I leave it in my replacement's capable hands, and will be watchin, if only from the sidelines, with great interest.

In the event that I one day return, and I dearly hope that I will, I'll be digging this up again. Until then, I'll just let you keep guessing at my cryptic remarks--cause its way more fun that way. -_o

===

Clank, clank, clank...

The disharmonious sound of groaning metal as Nikan Hardrive, fifth-rank Peacekeeper Captain, Command Division attaché to the Enlisted Division, and general all-round "nice" guy, paced around on the uncarpeted command deck of his assigned Trident disturbed his concentration.

Of course it wasn't really his Trident. His ship, the UPK Vestal, was scheduled to undergo a refit about now. This ship, the UPK Sondri, was miserable krait without all the creature-comforts of his rightful command. The Sondri had been ahead of the Vestal for retrofit, but most of the crew had been transfered to one of those newfangled Teradon frigates. The Sondri was on-loan to him, and all of the 'after-market additions' that the previous CO had installed had been removed by ignorant TPG mechanics--most notably the carpeting.

'God only knows what they're doing to the Vestal's upholstery,' He thought grimly, grimacing slightly at the thought of what sins were being committed against his beloved light frigate.

He really only thought best when he was on the move, but he really couldn't think at all with all the racket that said moving was making. It was a conundrum to be certain, and it irritated the good Captain greatly, but it was really the least of his problems right now.

When, just over a week ago, his superiors asked him to organize an enlistee division to bolster the Corps' ranks in such a short time--during his shore-leave no less--he'd thought they were out of their minds. In fact, he told them so personally. However, he understood their reasons for choosing him for the job. The Corps was, after all, small. Small enough that he knew every commissioned officer on a first-name basis, anyway, and that was not a hard thing to do. And if anyone knew how to put together a merry band of misfits and turn them into an organized force in a few days, it was him. After all, he'd done it before, three years ago, when he'd helped Erik Christianson (then alias "MonkOfAkan", who was anything but) put together the Ceberes Defense Council mercenary organization.

Nikan reflected fondly on those days, when he was supposed to have just retired from active duty. Things were just starting to look up, and then the Neural Spike happened. He'd gotten involved, if only peripherally, and Intel had panicked, reactivating him to active roster and shipping him off to dominion space in one of those stealth/reconnoissance "spydent" Tridents with orders to data-mine their commnet...just to keep him out of the way.

'And they kept me there for three years,' he thought, letting out a deflated sigh. 'I guess even the remote possibility of Lecter coming back and trying to make another one, having worked with the device before, was enough to keep command on-edge.'

Of course, during the long interim, the defense council had dissolved, reorganized into another guild with a similar name, dissolved again and had its members absorbed into the Sigma Shipping Company. The NSI itself had been destroyed, and the universe had turned its attention to LeberMac/Lexicon and poor Mogul Velaio and his family. And then the SYN-CLM pirate-war, and a thousand other events which he had missed. Events he would rather been present for, like his friend Erik's wedding, or giving him one last goodbye before he and his wife Joyce went off the grid and disappeared into the aether.

He'd missed a lot last time, and, judging from the apparent urgency of his superiors when he'd been recalled to Attus Command to "report on his progress", he was about to experience an encore.

It really wasn't fair. He'd spent his life in devotion to the Union and the Peacekeepers, like his father and his father before him, and all he ever got as a reward was more work for it. His tireless persistence devotion met with an ever more crushing load. But, perhaps...perhaps his work was its own reward, in a way. The continued safety of the nation he loved to be compensation enough. So he'd put up with the admirals and their squawking, logistics with their ceaseless assignments, and even intel with their insufferable paranoia. Because he knew he could.

A sudden jolt threw the Captain off his feet. It was the sort of twisting, yawning motion, barely compensated for by the inertial dampeners, that only happened when a ship was hit by a flare or caught in an ion storm, and since it would take an avalon torpedo to knock a ship this size off-course, he presumed that it must've been the latter.

"Why have we hit a storm?" he addressed the helmsman as he picked himself up, confused.

"You said to make best possible speed to headquarters, Captain," the helmsman explained, seemingly puzzled at the Captain's confusion.

'Great,' Nikan thought, sighing bemusedly, 'They sent me a rookie.'

"Get us out of here, now!" he barked, "Before the bots eat us alive!"

"I don't know what sort of junk-pile you've been flying Captain," the helmsman rebuked his superior, turning around and abandoning attention to his console, "But this thing is equipped with shields. The bots would never be able to..."

The ship was, once again, rocket violently, cutting the impertinent helmsman off. Nikan was a little more prepared this time, and managed to catch himself from falling. This time it was a different sort of jolt, but one that he was no less familiar with.

'The moron finds a bot-infested storm just so he can ram us into a 'roid,' He thought with an exasperated groan.

The ship tumbled for awhile, its engines apparently on turbo-lock, and it managed to hit another 'roid, and another. Eventually, the inertial dampeners gave out, having long since passed their intended design specifications, exposing the occupants to the full nauseating experience. In their death-throes, they overloaded, greatly overtaxing the ship's undersized reactor. Its dying whine could be heard as the overtaxed power-plant cut out, leaving the crew in the dark except for a few emergency lights.

"You were saying?" Captain Hardrive asked his insubordinate subordinate.

The dim helmsman was in no condition to answer.

Not feeling that yelling at the helmsman, even if it would make him feel a bit better, would help very much, the Captain stayed quiet. Even as the sound of cutting torches eating through the hull echoes throughout the ship, he remained silent.

Before his eyes, the cutting lines became visible on the far wall. They were cutting straight through the xi-rich hull-armor, straight into the command deck. Eventually the cutting stopped, and the ship again went silent. For a long time, the air held a pregnant pause and the unsaid question of why they were not yet breathing vacuum, and then the metal whined as it was strained by something behind and fell backwards, revealing the expanse beyond.

He expected to die. He expected the helmsman's stupidity to have damned them to a future existence as cargo crates. He expected that a fleet of rogue hive drones would swarm in to replace the evacuating atmosphere.

What he got was far, far worse. Behind the bulkhead was not the anticipated void of space, but a balding man of sharp features and unremarkable stature standing in such a way that only a man who can't be arsed can.

Oh God. If only he had been spaced; hard vacuum would have been far more forgiving.

"Operations Martial Svaet," Nikan hailed the figure, scowling grimly. "I could've known."

Terrance Lemuel Svaet; spy of spies, spook of spooks. Hardrive did not need the uniform or the rank insignia to recognize the absolute and undisputed ruler of the Corps' intelligence division. Nothing escaped Svaet's notice; if knowledge was power, then a god he was, surely. He was just the sort of person to arrange for you to be ambushed in an ion storm just because, for him, it was convenient. Just the sort of person who would cut through the hull of a freshly-overhauled Trident just because he couldn't be bothered to open the airlock. He gave the logistics division nightmares, and everyone else a splitting headache.

And now...now he was here. Here on his bridge. Damn.

"Captain Hardrive," Svaet returned the greeting neutrally, stepping forward.

"What is it you want, Terrance?" Nikan asked unamusedly, abruptly abandoning all pretense of rank or subtlety. He'd endured this routine before--several times--and he knew humoring Svaet would get him nowhere.

"Straight to the point, eh?" the Ops Martial replied with a chuckle, clearly more amused than the Captain was, "I want you to oversee a certain project of mine thats...sensitive in nature."

"Going to ship me to Sercoland again, are you?" Nikan mused pessimistically, anticipating his expected assignment. "Why? Want me to check if Akan is rolling in his grave?"

"You're familiar with the Sundiver Project, yes?" Svaet asked, seemingly payed him no mind, smiling that damned knowing smile that betrayed that he already knew the answer to his question--and perhaps to several which had not yet been asked.

"I helped run supplies for the project back in 4420," the Captain replied, a little confused. "I was informed that the project was canceled because it didn't pan out during testing."

"Who says that wasn't what we wanted everyone to believe?" Svaet replied with a smug grin. "You know as well as anyone the potential military applications for hardware of that nature. What if it were to fall into the hands of the Dominion? Akaneese Terrorists? Or--God forbid--Corporate interests?"

Hardrive's blood went cold with this revelation. "You have a working prototype," he said, fear more than a little evident in his voice.

"Oh yes," Svaet returned. "Now we just need to build the full-scale version."

"And you want me because I already know about the project," Nikan surmised, connecting the proverbial dots.

"More accurately, I need you and your entire skeleton crew" the Ops Martial replied. "Took me an eternity to put everyone associated with the project on one ship."

The Captain cursed inwardly. The Ops Martial had set him up, and he'd walked right into his devious superior's waiting hands. Now Svaet had him where he wanted him, and Hardrive knew it. Although he didn't particularly want to spend God-knows-how-long isolated from the universe, again, Project Sundiver, back from the dead, was not something that he could simply ignore. The infamous Itani Neural Spike Implant was nothing compared to the destructive potential from this. Intel had gone through an awful lot of trouble to keep it buried, and now they wanted him in on it. How could he say no, really? Heaven only knew what they'd do to him if he said yes, but he was pretty sure what his fate would be if he declined.

"What'll the official story be?" Nikan asked. Damn it all, if Svaet was going to operate under the assumption that he was going to say yes, then so was he.

"Official UPK roster will show you and this ship's skeleton crew to be MIA. 'Third Party' investigators will assume you all KIA. Only Intel and your replacement in the enlistee division will know you're alive, and only about five people outside of the project--including myself--will know what you're up to."

Captain Nikan "Nice" Hardrive gave one last defeated sigh. Svaet had this all planned out. There was no way he was going to back out on this.

"Very well, sir," he said, knowing he really didn't have a choice in the matter. "I accept."

ill be seeing you man.
hopefully you'll subscribe since i never got to really fly with ya. come back soon dude