Prologue

UCDF Say My Name

Planet Ares >>IN TRANSIT<<

Ships Bridge 2000 HRS

March 1^st 2436

 

 

A single second for Chloe felt like an eternity. When you can process information at a thousand terabytes per second, the days went by slow. It has been roughly six days since the crew of the destroyer Say My Name went into cryosleep, and for Chloe it felt like an eternity, five times over. She had just finished going over the ships roster for the millionth time. All that checking still couldn’t make her realize how much of the crew was lost at Frio just a week earlier. Destroyer class ships usually contained about 750 naval and support personnel and at the most two full regiments of marines. Most destroyers also contained a platoon from an Orbital Drop Team or just simply a Drop Team, and on rare occasions a full Team. But at this point in time the ship held only 103 naval and support personnel and a grand total of 300 marines, seven of which were ODMs. All of them ready for the next fight. ODMs were the best the UCDF had to offer, and yet it still wasn’t good enough. The men of Drop Team Three had lost a lot of men that day; when they dropped they had a full team, not just a platoon like normal; 93 marines were gunned down in the battle. It was still a shock to Chloe that seven made it out of that hell. Chloe partly blamed herself for the death of so many of them, even though she knew time hadn’t been on their side that day. It was a strange thing for her to experience, usually emotions were blocked out of the programming of AIs so they wouldn’t over think themselves, but somehow guilt found its way in.

 

UCDF Say My Name

Cryobay 3

March 1^st 2436

2010 HRS

 

 

The after effects of cryo sleep always hit Captain Kate Robinson like a ton of bricks, even after 31 years in the Navy with at least 5 of those years in cryo. Cryo sleep was a necessary procedure during long trips like this, simply because the Navy doesn’t want its personnel to get bored and do something stupid during a Trans-Light jump. When in cryo your aging process comes to a near halt, making it so technically you should be 30 years old but with two years of cryo your body thinks it’s 28. Most Naval careers have a minimum of two years in cryo. As feeling began to reach her extremities the shock of six days frozen in a tube in the middle of space began to catch up to her. The brain was always the last thing to wake up for Robinson. Once her mental processes began to come back to her she began to realize how empty the cryobay was. She only saw about 20 tubes with someone in them, considering the fact that the cryobays are usually supposed to hold roughly 100 personal it wasn’t a whole lot. A lot of her friends were on Frio when the bombardment happened. The thought alone brought tears to her eyes.

“Are you alright, captain?” the soft childlike voice came on through the intercom.

“I should be asking you the same thing Chloe.”

“I’m an artificial intelligence, I can block out whatever I want to, including the emotions that I’ve been ‘programmed’ to experience.”

“Well we’re not all that lucky are we?”

With that her mind went to the report that came across her desk detailing how over 80% of all United Colonial Defense Force personal had some degree of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It began to become more noticeable in most of her crew. Especially since the last outer colony fell and the inner colonies began to fall just like the ones before. It was her duty to keep them down to earth, or so the saying goes, and she knew it and was not going to fail them now.

“Chloe get the bridge ready, I want a full report of everything that happened on Frio.”

“Right away captain.”

 

Author's Note

I wrote this about a year or two ago and thought I lost it, but I found it recently and decided to put it up here. Let me know what you think and if I should continue it.

Reviews

[Tevo77777]

Well, the intro is not to long and does establish the setting.

The writing is interesting so far, and it does stray far away from the inspiration to be it's own thing.

The problems that I notice are that the first and second paragraphs are very long. They induce eye fatigue and are longer then eight sentences, which is unheard of.

The other problem is that the inspiration source is very obvious. Perhaps changing a few more things up, adding realism/ taking it away, or perhaps finding a second inspiration to add will be helpful to you.

Will improve rating after the paragraph problem is fixed, will also improve the rating if any of your uploaded work seems more "varied" in inspiration.

[Kyle Wynn]

Thank you! And can I ask what you mean by varied, my other work on here 'The Curators' did come from a completely different source of inspiration. I will get the paragraphs edited when I have time to go in and do a more in depth revision!