Jump Chain 12 - BTVS 4

Part 16

Space Hulk. Halloween Dimension.

In order to make our way to the cluster of humanoid life signs that were very deep inside this fused together mess of starships, an alien sphere, and space debris we had to make our way into the Ork roc, the asteroid with engines that had crashed into a sphere at some point in the last couple of years.

With me were Veronic and Triss, who I often took on dangerous missions with me as while they were not powerful companions, they'd proven to be effective soldiers when under my command as they were used to battling dangerous foes in firefights as well as up close, and I could easily predict their actions, this was very important in a combat situation.

Another factor was that I didn't engage in sexual activity with either of these women, nor did I see them as daughters figures, and this made it easier for me to send them in potential danger as I had far less of an emotional attachment to the two of them. That didn't mean I wouldn't care if they got harmed and I respected them both greatly, but it was natural for a male such as myself to feel more protective of mates and family than people who just friends.

They were the other people with me who weren't visible. Cortana my personal AI occupied my Omni-tool and all three suits of Power Armour that the humans of the group were wearing. As she was an infomorph, a being made of information rather than physical matter she could spread herself over many electronic systems and still be highly effective.

Cameron was here as well with her cybernetic dog/gun princess. She would remain out of phase unless needed or called for. She understood that while I could handle most threats it would be good if I had someone to watch my back who could remain unseen by any attackers.

Triss owned a cyborg dog, that wasn't a gun, but that animal joined its human in stasis most of the time, and this would change in the future as I would be removing the limits on companions in the next Jump and when that happened no longer would I have to put companions in stasis to free up others.

While the sphere had caused ships and other things to wrap around itself it had not done this evenly as such the Hulk was itself not spherical it was more elongated, and the asteroid that made up a lot of its bulk was riddled with tunnels. This meant that we had to pass through the big space rock before reaching the borg probe that we would need to traverse in order to make contact with the humanoid life signs who could be friendly.

We did encounter a few orks along the way and with my new staff I blasted them with raw psychic power, normally this would be tiring even for a near-ascended human, as human bodies simply aren't made to handle so much energy, but the staff in my armoured hand was both of way of directing that energy and boosting it thanks to the special crystals that were mentally attuned to me. This staff was too large to be used when not in power armour, but I had other ways of channelling my power.

Thanks to mapping that our probes and scans were doing for us Cortana was able to plan an effective route for us through the Ork roc and as we moved we quickly made our way to the ship our scans had identified as a Borg probe by my ships sensor systems.

As it turned out someone or something had blasted its way into the Borg probe and that hole was unexpectedly guarded by more drones. There was a kind of sentry gun that had been set up by the Borg and it fired enough energy to make it unwise to charge the sentry gun despite our formidable defences.

"They must have set it up to keep the orks away" I figured.

Before this could be discussed I took action. Using my powers I created a barrier of energy around me and then let the sentry gun open up at me for a moment until I pushed the barrier forward, an act that knocked over the two drones and the sentry gun. Then it was a simple matter to blast the knocked over drones and gun with my wrist-mounted storm bolters.

After that, we headed inside the probe and for reasons I could only speculate about the drones did not ignore our presence and let us go about their business. This wasn't typical of borg behaviour, but we had just blasted our way in, and becoming part of Space Hulk would cause the drones to behave differently.

"WE ARE THE BORG YOU WILL BE ..."

I didn't let the booming voice that filled the air and our comm channels finish what it was saying as I lashed out at the drones with my psychic power and bolters an action which massacred the drones. Then when Veronica and Triss opened up with their bolters we made an awful mess.

As we moved through the Borg ships I used my staff to unleash my mental powers as bolts of lightning and like with the explosive bolts unleashed by our weapons, the Borg simply couldn't adapt to such brutal attacks. This was why I'd always worked to ensure that my group had a such a great variety in weapons and powers. If we ever ran into an enemy that could neutralise one type of attack that we used, then we always had plenty of other methods of doing damage to call upon.

Once we were done fighting here what passed for circuits and wiring on a borg vessel were exposed all over the vessel, and while normally the Borg could easily regenerate such damage if the hole in the hull was anything to go by they didn't have the resources to do that here. Not that it really mattered to me as if needs be I could wreak all of their stuff again on the way out.

DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA.

I rapid fired my way through several more drones before taking an exit out of the other side of the Borg ship, and this leads us to another vessel which was between us and our goal. The Borg probe must have tried to dock with the IOM vessel since they couldn't have beamed over, and the Borg would have wanted to assimilate the Imperial tech, however, they'd not totally managed it and had gotten tangled up with another ship.

"This is an Eagle from a science fiction series called Space 1999," I said to anyone who was listening to me "It's a short-range craft, I wonder how it got all the way into the Expanse".

Ships such as this were the primary form of transportation for the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha. A multipurpose craft, it was divided into three basic sections; the command module, the service pod, and the superstructure. Capable of speeds up to 23,700 miles per second, or 15% of the speed of light, it was powered by four nuclear fusion rockets and it carried fuel reserves for 48 hours of flight. As such it couldn't have gotten far from the Moon Base. But while this was a mystery I had no desire to solve it, this universe had been formed by chaos magic and as such, it didn't need to make sense, and right now I needed to focus as this was not a safe place.

By now we were inside the Imperial Battleship, however, that didn't mean we didn't have some distance to travel before we encountered the humanoids as ships like this were more like city-sized mobile space fortresses than anything else, and given the heavily religious nature of the Imperium of Man, many parts of the ship looked as if they could be a temple on a planet. Yet other parts of the ship were as crude as they were practical.

An example of this was what we guessed to be a series of workstations on one level that had stone statues and stain-glass windows, had computers built into wooden desks that were set up in front of the kind of pews you'd find in a Church. While the corridor leading into that space was all metal and exposed piping that was a common sight on a military base.

When in the Church room, I linked up to one of the workstations and discovered that this room was used to direct repair teams and to arrange the work of the maintenance teams, as well as to control how energy and other resources were moved around the ship.

Because of these consoles, I was able to get a copy of the schematics for this very powerful Battleship. I doubted that I would ever build ships such as these as they would cost too much in the way of resources and required very large crews, but the blueprints would help me defeat such massive vessels in the future, and they could have secrets that were useful to me when it came time to build more ships for my own fleets.

While looking around the Imperial Battleship some more, which seemed to be devoid of all life, we came across an armoury full of weapons such as baton, shotguns, assault rifles of some sort and a lot of laser weapons.

The first tool of killing that I inspected was an Autogun a fully automatic rifled that fires solid-slug ballistic rounds at the intended target in rapid succession. Cheap, rugged and reliable, they were also appreciated for there decent damage and accuracy. The only disadvantage of the guns such as these were the nightmarish logistics problems faced in ensuring a stable supply of ammunition, this was why most advanced civilizations turn to laser weapons when they become practical and then to particle weapons. While those weapons require more maintenance and more can go wrong with them its a lot easier to charge a power pack or replace it than it is to lug around metric tons worth of ammo.

My group got around this by either not getting involved in long-lasting firefights or simply by using replicators built into our armoured suits to provide us with fresh ammo, this can make the suits heavier, but on the plus side dampening fields that can render energy weapons useless have no effect on projectile weapons, and when it comes to fighting enemies like Orks and the Borg energy weapons are also if limited use as Borg adapt and many kinds of energy weapons are meant to kill cleanly as possible and as such don't do enough damage to creatures like the Orks.

They are somewhat effective against Orks as if you vaporise them then they can't release spores when they die which led to more Orks growing after a time as they are fungal infection of sorts. However, unless you're willing to drain your power pack quickly and leave yourself with a weapon that can't fire, then this isn't very effective.

The IOM did have to supply troops across the galaxy and so the Autogun was eventually phased out as the standard weapon of the Astra Militarum in favour of the Lasgun by the Departmento Munitorum in the early 32nd Millennium, as both weapons were roughly equal in efficiency and ease-of-use, but the standard Power Packs that powered the Lasgun could be easily recharged in the field were as crafting more ammunition for the Autoguns proved to be rather arduous.

The shotguns stored here were mostly the Vox Legi-Pattern Arbites Combat Shotgun employed by the Adeptus Arbites. Imperial Navy starships carry Shotguns for their crew to use during the rare boarding actions, or more frequently, against uprisings by the often mistreated crewmen aboard the ship.

These particular Shotguns fired shells made specifically for combat aboard a spacecraft. The shells are packed with twists of metal wire and shards of broken glass, ensuring that a shot will shred soft flesh at close range, but will not puncture the ship's hull. This made them useless against people such as myself who had kinetic barriers and power armour, but most people serving on a starship don't even have body armour.

There were more exotic weapons here as well. An example was the Ripper Gun a heavy, automatic combat Shotgun built to the massive scale of the Ogryns who served in the Imperial Guard. The Ogryns (Homo sapiens gigantus) are a huge and physically powerful Abhuman mutant subspecies of humanity, often employed by the Imperium of Man as shock troopers in the Astra Militarum's Militarum Auxilla. Ogryns possess many traits prized by the Imperium; they are brutally strong and completely loyal, although extremely limited intellectually, which restricts their battlefield role to simple and direct assaults.

They hailed from a series of cold and barren planets across the galaxy that possessed high gravity, which is why they are larger, heavier and bulkier compared to baseline humans. Ogryns compensate for their stupidity with overwhelming physicality, the brutish creatures stand around ten Terran feet tall and can shrug off wounds that would kill an Imperial Guardsman several times over. These qualities mean that Ogryns make exceptional shock troops, and are often deployed on the front lines of battle by Imperial commanders.

Compared to other Imperial weapons, the Ripper guns weapons are fairly simple, somewhat akin to the Ork Shoota. A Ripper Gun was a short-range weapon that fires several shells at once to compensate for the poor aim of the average Ogryn. Ripper Guns usually can fire either a single heavy shell or a hail of shot in each burst and possesses a hard-wired burst limiter to prevent the Ogryn from simply emptying his weapon the first time he pulls the trigger.

By design, the Ripper Gun does not have a long-range because of an Ogryn's instinct to always favour close combat. Ripper Guns are intended to be fired to soften up the enemy before the Ogryns charge into close combat, and are built particularly robustly so that they can stand up to the Ogryn use of them as clubs in melee.

Ripper Guns can also be fitted with Ripper Saws. A Ripper Saw is, as the name implies, a saw blade that is attached to the end of a Ripper Gun which is intended to provide the Ogryn with an effective close combat melee weapon once they close with the enemy, and that can very effective.

While these guns were unlikely to ever be used by anyone in my group we would take these weapons because the more we had to study over the Santa Jump the better. However, my interest was more in the laser weapons than the slug firing ones

The Lasgun, also sometimes referred to as a Lasrifle, is a directed-energy antipersonnel weapon used by the military forces of the Imperium of Man, and it is the most common and widely-used type of laser weapon in the galaxy. This is because Lasguns are reliable, easy to maintain and to produce, and are readily available on most Imperial worlds. A Lasgun or Lasrifle has a longer range than a Laspistol, but is nowhere near as powerful as a Lascannon nor does it possess the rapid-firing qualities of the much rarer Multi-Laser or the Hellgun.

The Lasgun uses a small portable capacitor power pack to produce a focused pinpoint laser beam which is strong enough to take an ordinary human arm off with one shot but is not as effective against the more durable alien bodies and stronger types of personal armour. A Lasgun's beam also cauterizes the wounds it inflicts due to the immense heat is given off by the shot. The Lasgun is effective when used en masse, and considerably less effective when used alone.

It is a relatively unimpressive weapon when compared to many of the other high-technology weapons available in this galaxy and others, but a well-focused laser beam is capable of cleanly severing limbs and potentially even piercing the Power Armour that I was wearing but if they did the energy-absorbing materials would handle the shot, and first, it would have to get passed my personal shield.

Once we had finished raiding the armoury, which we'd been able to find thanks to me downloading the ship's schematics, and using my powers to force the door open, we moved on deeper into the ship.

"Captain Gothic, if these blueprints you recovered are accurate then the humanoid life signs are grouped around one of the battleship's plasma reactors," T'Pol reported.

That made sense as the reactors here were active. They would be able to provide the humanoids with light, heat and energy. If they had any food replicator or something close they'd only had survived this long by having enough energy to power the devices.

"There appears to be a large group of Orks heading towards the cluster of humanoid life signs" T'Pol was now saying "You may wish to aid them".

This would be a good idea.

"Double time it" I ordered, "We need to make contact with these humanoids before they get themselves wiped out".

With that, we picked up the pace.

(Line Break)

Space Hulk. Halloween Universe.

Under other circumstances, the many races that lived around the massive plasma reactor would have been eager to fight each other, but when their ships had ended up fussed with the Hulk they'd needed to learn how to work with others in order to survive. This hadn't removed all hostility, but no one had much time to act on it as keeping this little community alive took a lot of effort.

Council Spectre Ashley Williams had never cared much for aliens, even those who could pass for human, but there were much worse things on this floating deathtrap than other humanoids. Those cyborgs, for example, they were worse than the greenskins as at least those xenos would simply kill you in a fight.

Humans, and those who could pass for humans, made up the bulk of the people inside the Imperial Battleship as a lot of them had been the dregs of the crew of this battleship. When Ash had first arrived, after the cargo ship she'd been travelling on, had somehow ended up within the Expanse by accident and then somehow gotten fused to the Space Hulk.

She and a couple of System Alliance officers who'd been travelling with her had been the only ones to survive the crash into the Hulk, and they'd very nearly gotten converted by those cyborgs, thankfully the drones didn't handle kinetic attacks very well as the System Alliance armed and armoured the military rather well.

Ash and the SA officers had joined up with the other humanoids, and since then they'd been working to keep things together so that everyone could survive. The Imperial humans were far more xenophobic than even Ash, but they'd mellowed out a lot since most of them had been killed by Orks and they'd been forced to work with the humanoids, who all looked a lot more friendly when compared to the Orks. The real hardliners, who were very devoted, had thankfully died very quickly during Ork attacks.

It helped them none of them had been very devoted to their faith, and who could have blamed them given that they recalled getting press-ganged into serving on a battleship because of what were rather minor crimes. From what Ash could tell the society of the Imperium seemed to have been designed to make life as crappy as possible for the poorest of them by keeping them downtrodden and exploited.

The Spectre was now returning to the main part of the community, which was made up of storerooms and workshops of the long-dead Tech-Priests who'd tended to the reactor. As it turned out a lot of the maintenance those priests had gotten up to when the ship was in Imperial hands could be handled by the remaining servitors once you stripped away the anointing with holy oils, prayers and candles.

"Lt-Commander," said one of the humanoid aliens who'd lived within the Expanse before the small vessel he'd worked on had become fused with the Hulk "We're picking up some chatter between a nearby ship and someone called Captain Gothic".

For a moment the name 'Gothic' stirred something in Ash's mind, but she dismissed it, some people in this insane universe could remember more than one life, and while most of Ashely's memories made sense, there were a few that seemed as if they must have come from versions of her that had lived in universes somehow written by some fanboys with far too much free time on their hands. She was fairly certain that she never would have a threesome with Liara.

She recalled once meeting a former Starfleet security officer who could recall dying hundreds of different ways, and because of this, he refused to ever leave the ship on an away mission, going as far as accept a position looking after a ship's waste recycling system.

"I think they're looking for us" the humanoid, who was an engineer, then told her "one of the sensors we placed is tracking them".

A while back the more technical in the large and diverse group had come up with small scanners that would alert them if anyone or anything got to close to what passed for a home for them.

"The readings aren't clear, but I fairly sure that they are human," said the engineer.

Sadly this didn't mean that they were friendly, but it did mean that they wouldn't be shot on sight.

"Can you figure out which corridor they'll use to get to us?" Ashley inquired.

The engineer worked at his computer for a few moments and then brought up a map of the ship with the corridor that the newcomers were travelling done highlighted for her.

"Alert the sentries in case this is a trick" Ash ordered one of the officers "I'm going to take a squad and met our guests".

If they proved to be hostile then she'd deal with.

"Lt-Commander," said the near-human "There's something else on the scans. It just appeared".

If the sensors were working right then a large group of orks were heading for them. A group that was larger than anything they'd face before.

(Line Break)

Space Hulk. Halloween Universe.

Due to the sense of humour that most of the known parts of existence seemed to have, or because of a Perk I'd picked up during the MCU Jump, we arrived just as the humanoids who'd been living inside the Hulk came under attack by a huge group of Orks.

"Waaagh!"

There was no time for me to process the fact that a version of my long-ago ex-girlfriend, Ashley Williams, was leading the defence, as we had to fight and were doing in what seemed to have once been a mass hall of some sort. Once this room would have provided meals to hundreds of crew, if not thousands of them, at the same time. Now it was only serving as a place to get piled up with corpses. Who I am sure would have tasted better than the food.

"Waaagh!"

The Orks were able to yell this so loudly that it could be heard over the sound of gunfire and me using my powers. It wasn't just noise, it was something that came from the collective will of the greenskins, and I could sense the amount of psychic energy the group of hostile aliens was producing. They generated this because Orks possess a strength of purpose. Each and every Ork on a battlefield is unified into one singular purpose: war.

As dangerous as these Orks could be, they died as we opened up with our bolters, Cortana ensuring that our weapon's fire did as much damage as possible, and this combined with the efforts or new allies, the humanoids we'd come here to find, we were able to gun down most of the greenskins in short order.

Of course, something went wrong and we took losses when an Ork psyker appeared. These Orks, known as Weirdboyz, seem to act as lightning rods for the power of the WAAAGH! drawing it to themselves unconsciously, and unleashing it with devastating effect.

This one soon started hurling bolts of crackling green energy, some of which killed other Orks, and other attacks took down the defending humanoids. As my advanced mind worked to make sense of all that was going on I saw bodies crushed with telekinetic might even as other exploded due to having a blast of psychic energy.

I'd read that Weirdboyz were a terrifying display of Orkish power. These rare Orks do not relish their power, rather they fear it. It is an uncontrollable and dangerous thing, and most are driven mad by it long before they could learn to channel it with any measure of safety. In some instances, the Weirdboyz are simply incapable of containing the overwhelming mass of coruscating energy produced by their fellows. Most are able to hurl a bolt or two of green lightning towards their enemies before they are overcome, their heads bursting in a ball of green flame, or vanishing altogether with a clap of otherworldly thunder.

When such a great WAAAGH! gathers, most Weirdboyz either flee altogether or get caught up in the mob enthusiasm of it all and are driven into a suicidal frenzy, becoming terrifying figures with the destructive power of a battle tank. The more cunnin' Ork Warbosses have been known to enslave Weirdboyz and to force them onto the battlefield against their will, knowing full well the danger they represent.

As a rule, these Weirdboyz have little control over their abilities, and as the potency of this energy increases with the number and enthusiasm of the Ork Boyz around them, so does the power that a Weirdboy must endeavour to control. Even when they manage to contain this violent and erratic force, bizarre phenomena commonly accompany Weirdboyz, ranging from flashing lights and strange noises to tremors and random fires.

Should they fail to dispense, direct or emit this energy in some controlled manner, a Weirdboy may cause even more dramatic phenomena, such as the explosion of nearby Ork heads. However, while not even the most capable Weirdboy can ever truly hope to control the power of a WAAAGH! in full force some learn a measure of control and can direct their power at least in the right general direction, and this seemed to be one of those Ork psykers, and he was a menace.

My sensors recorded him as he spewed mighty bolts of ectoplasmic energy in the general direction of the defenders who were using tables and chairs as barricades. Not that this was providing much protection as the Orks had crude bolters and big axes.

Ectoplasm was basically the closest thing that the soul had to a physical presence, it was what ghosts were made up of, soul stuff, the Warp itself, and this psyker had just vomited so much of it that if I'd not focused my power into a strong shield it would have killed everyone in the mess hall, and it did kill every Ork aside from the psyker, who was somehow able to withstand using its great power.

"Leave him to me!" I ordered.

The humanoids here were happy to do and began to fall back, those of them still alive to do so, and the wounded were dragged away. The EMH on the Phoneix would heal them later if they didn't bleed to death in the meantime. I knew that I wouldn't save anyone if I tried to everyone so I just did my best at times like these.

"Go set up the transporter enhancers" I commanded the companions with me.

While I'd been planned to open a portal to my ship's sickbay for anyone we found living within the Hulk who could be trusted to behave on my vessel, in case that didn't work I'd brought along transporter enhancers so that we could beam people out. Veronica could set them up.

As soon as the room was clear the crystals in my staff began to shine as I lifted tables and chairs so that I could telekinetically throw them as the Ork psyker. This powerful enemy made a shield of its own, one that stayed up even as I unloaded a storm bolter at it.

Knowing that trying to brute force my way through this barrier would be pointless I focused and summoned a Daedra that appeared behind the Ork psyker, and the demon-like creature drove a claymore into the back of the Ork, an act that ended this fight very quickly.

"Where the fighten" something yelled in broken English.

A huge Ork warboss came charging into the room and batted the Daedra aside with a swipe of its megaclaw before it unloaded its massive shoota at me. I raised a psychic shield to block the projectiles. Then I had to block a powerful physical blow with the shield, and the sheer power of the blows broke the shield and knocked me on my ass, a very impressive feat that must involve channelling the power of the Waaagh, and it might have lead to me getting hurt if this wasn't when Cameron appeared and jumped on the warboss's back while stabbing him with that I knew to be a combat knife.

This did little more than distract and annoy the big alien, and that was the point as it bought me a moment to gather my power, and I unleashed it. With a spoken word and a lot of magical energy going through my staff I began to turn the creature to stone, this process took a few moments and worked its way up from the feet, and when it was done I was looking at a massive stone statue of an Ork that had a dagger stuck in its back.

"I'm so keeping that," I said.

It would look great in a garden somewhere, however I no time to think about that I was suddenly under attack yet again, this time by what seemed to be a clown of all things.