A Good Fan story of the Dilgar Wars (B5)

[LordArt]

The third battle for Balos is raging...I just like the commander of the Nemesis...

“Lexington Battlegroup this is Nemesis.” Captain Joe Tennant announced grandly. “As I recall you were meant to be escorting my party girl to the ball.”
“We got a little side tracked Joe.” Admiral Thornhill chuckled back over the channel. “What’s your status?”
“Couple of extra ventilation holes, nothing too bad Admiral.”
She checked a visual image of the Dreadnought as she came closer, the hull was shot through in several sections and the mighty ship was leaking a steady stream of white air from numerous ruptures and breaches.
“You sure you’re in a fit state for this Joe?”
“Yes Ma’am, Lady Nemesis has a score to settle. Our weapons and engines are operational, as long as we can get where we’re going and then blow up anything around us we’ll be just fine.”
“Alright Captain, form on my starboard side, we’ll cover your flanks and add some forward firepower.”
“And Nemesis will stab you a hole through there.”


.....


“Better check those targets ahead.” Tennant warned. “They look big.”
“Confirmed, battlecruisers, Tratharti class.”
“Copy to the Lexington and coordinate fire, They made the mistake of crossing our bow.”
The forward guns of the Dreadnought quickly aligned and engaged, joined by three of the four remaining cruisers. The Dilgar ships continued to close, losing several of their number but not giving up. The exchange of fire was devastating, and while Earth Force had brute strength on their side the Dilgar weren’t too shabby in the firepower stakes either. A large slab of the forward armour plate was shorn from the Nemesis, falling away and spinning into the distance while the guns spoke.
“Enemy ships aren’t breaking off!” Anderson shouted, the noise of the impacts echoing and making communication difficult.
“Course they aren’t, that old witch of theirs told them to attack!” Tennant called back. “They’re more scared of her than Lady Nemesis!”
“Then they must be really terrified to try and take a Dreadnought head on!”
“And not just any Dreadnought, the ruling Queen of all things that shoot, slice, dice or otherwise do violence to ugly people.”
“They really don’t know who they are dealing with do they sir?”
“Biggest mistake of their lives picking a fight with Lady Nemesis. Shame they won’t be able to tell their friends, being dead and all.”
“Well by this time all their friends are dead too.”
“Good point. In fact, we should shoot more to give them a little company. It’s the humanitarian thing to do.”
“Yes sir, killing Dilgar is actually doing them a favour.” Anderson shook his head.
“Damn straight.” Tennant nodded firmly. “Now, shank ‘em.”
“Concentrating fire, we’re… Hell, new contacts on port side, closing fast!”
“Split fire, warn the escorts.”
“I’m seeing a suicide ship!”
“Then go ahead and make it vanish!”

[LordArt]

And more fun as the battle climaxes!.... (The Vendetta is Jha'dur's ship)



The bow lasers streaked forward, cutting two deep gashes into the prow of the Lexington and roughly buffeting the warship.
“Heavy damage to Alpha sector!” Sterns called out. “Major hull breaches!”
“Keep firing!” Thornhill roared.
The ship bucked hard again.
“We just lost main sensors!”
“Keep firing!”
The two ships directed a torrent of plasma at the Vendetta, closing the range and sneaking more rounds through the interceptor screen. The yellow and black ship took damage, but its superior armour kept it operational and its bow guns were starting to cause internal damage to the cruisers.
“Focus on that one.” Jha’dur pointed. “This ‘Brooklyn’ looks the worse for wear, finish it first.”
“Yes Warmaster, shifting targets.” An’jash heard a beep. “New contact, one of ours, the Destroyer Unrepentant offers its assistance.”
“Gladly accepted, have it target the Brooklyn too.”
The older model green ship fell into position beside the Vendetta and aimed its guns, the Sekhmet already piercing deep into the armour of the beleaguered cruiser, removing the main bow cannons in a storm of fire and flying metal.
“I need another Dreadnought Pentacan, we’ll reform and then…”
Jha’dur was cut off by the destruction of the Destroyer Unrepentant, the small ships bucking upwards and bending in two with a crack of metal and flame. It was not hit by weapons fire, but rather impaled by a long spike of jagged grey metal that pierced the body of the ship and pushed it along in streams of flame and gas.
“Enemy Dreadnought!” An’jash screeched in disbelief. “It came out of nowhere!”
“No, it just used the wreckage as cover.” Jha’dur said. “We can’t stop it, not at this range, prepare to make an emergency jump.”
“We can’t! The engines haven’t recharged!”
“Ah.” Jha’dur remembered. “There’s a problem.”
The viciously damaged hull of the Dreadnought rose past the Vendetta, casting a black shadow over it. The ship was gnarled and blackened, the Dilgar destroyer tearing itself apart with secondary explosions wedged on the prow as the flanking guns turned to target the Dilgar flagship barely ten miles distant.
“What do we do!” An’jash yelled. “Warmaster?”
Jha’dur was fresh out of options, the sudden appearance of the ship ending her grand plans in one decisive moment. She couldn’t run, didn’t have time to evade, and didn’t have the strength to resist the broadside of even a crippled Nova.
“Make your peace with the gods Captain.” She said. “We’ll be meeting them shortly.”
“Warmaster!” An’jash repeated in shock as Jha’dur looked at the image of the Dreadnought, finding herself smiling at this avatar of doom.
She didn’t feel fear, oddly it was not something she had experienced on either occasion she had faced certain death. It had taken a while to understand why, but she had decided that truthfully she would be as glad to see the back of her life as her enemies would be.
“Nemesis.” She chuckled at the writing on the ship’s nameplate, barely visible and wreathed in flame. “It had to be a ship called Nemesis.”

“We’ve got that bitch cold.” Tennant grinned a bloody smile. His ship had been battered, nuked, raked by laser fire and rammed twice, yet somehow his damage control team had brought her back online and put her back in the fight. She had seen the Lexington and moved to join her, not realising until the last moment in how much danger the cruiser was in. With no bow guns he had ordered the helm to deal with the smaller Dilgar ship in a more direct manner, while the flank guns would hit the Sekhmet as they passed.
“Ten guns locked on target!” Anderson hollered. “Ready to fire!”
“Now who’s Queen Bitch of the Galaxy?” Tennant asked. “Open fire!”
The Nemesis engaged her last guns, biting deep into the hull of the Vendetta. The laser cannons parted the thick armour, parting the hull plates and causing flashes of heat and explosions in he heart of the ship. Slowly the hull peeled back, melted or blasted away by the intense fire, her interceptors failing and the powerful bow lasers going dead. As soon as that happened the Lexington and Brooklyn began scoring direct hits, thick bolts of plasam crumpling and shattering the forward hull, throwing jagged pieces of ship in all directions and pushing the Vendetta off course by weight of fire.
The Dilgar Flagship had extra armour and bette rprotection, but against the level of firepower directed against it that point was moot. The warship shuddered violently, bends and bumps forming in the hull where systems exploded internally until finally in a massive shower of fire the vessel broke in half, the two truncated pieces falling away in a mass of glowing metal and escaping gas.
“And that is what you get when you piss off Lady Nemesis!” Tennant shouted at the wreck. “Oh yeah, this crap feels good!”
“We nailed her, enemy flagship is toast!” Anderson cheered. “We killed Deathwalker!”
“Lady Nemesis killed Deathwalker.” Tennant corrected. “We came along for the ride, found some good seats for the show. Pity I forgot the popcorn.”
“Sending message to fleet command.”
“I knew we could rely on our girl to do it. She doesn’t like pretenders to the throne, no one gets the title of Queen Bitch while she’s still breathing.” He gave the armrests of his char a good pat. “Well done girl, you chewed her up, spat her out and danced on her grave, but in a very Ladylike manner.”
“What do we do now sir?”
“Well first get that destroyer off the face of my ship, it ruins her looks.” Tennant commanded. “Then I feel like celebrating, what to do… I know, lets blow something up!”
“I have several Dilgar ships to port, but we’re in pretty poor shape.”
“This is the Lady Nemesis Simon, she doesn’t do bad shape.” Tennant scoffed.
“We’ve got a quarter of our firepower left and virtually no armour!”
“She likes to give he scumbag enemies an even chance!” Tennant counted. “Very sporting of her, lulling them into a false sense of security like that.”
“But sir…”
“It worked against the smartest soldier in the galaxy didn’t it.”
Anderson frowned. “Good point sir.”
“Link up with Lady Lex and the Brookers, I can see the enemy fleet is already losing cohesion, lets go make it worse.”
The battered ship joined up with the two wounded cruisers, heading back into the action. Behind it the front half of the Sekhmet drifted away, past the fighting and into the shadow of the nearby moon alone, cold and empty.
But the wrecked ship was not quite empty, and nor was it quite alone either.

[LordArt]

And the story ends....VERY VERY good story.

Here is a snippett of the epilogue, Jha'dur is being escorted to her ship to leave and is stopped in the docking bay:

With a nod the two guards left the area, leaving Jha’dur and the other man alone.
“Well, all alone now.” She smiled. “Do you have a name?”
“Yes.” He said with a growing smile. “Call me Morden.”

“Well then Mr Morden, come here often?”
“This is my first time here actually.” He said. “I’ve been elsewhere, eventually I’ll need to visit this place properly, but for now I don’t need to step beyond this point.”
“Which leads me to the obvious question, what do you want?”
He grinned widely. “An excellent question, perhaps the best thing you could have said.”
She sighed. “I don’t really have time for games right now…”
“What I want is an open question, but the reason I am here is to keep you alive.” Morden said to the point.
“An escort?”
“In a way.” He agreed. “If you step on that ship, you will die.”
She looked at her acquired Minbari ship. “A bomb?”
“A Vorlon.” Morden answered. “They are waiting for you, when you leave here they will kill you.”
“Not very friendly of them, I never even tried to kill them.”
“You did provide the poison the rogue Windsword used on Kosh last year.” Morden said simply.
“Oh yes, that.” She beamed. “Quite an effect little concoction wouldn’t you say?”
“Very effective, and just one more reason Earth wants you in one piece.”
“So are you a Bureau man Mr Morden?”
“No, not really, but my organisation is beginning to work very closely with them and we support their agenda. We also support your agenda.”
“My Agenda Mr Morden?”
“Something about a galaxy in flames and wiping out the weak so the strong may survive?”
She chuckled. “So we have a meeting of minds here?”
“My associates are impressed by the resilience you have shown, and your continued ingenuity and passion for your cause. They’d like to help you make your dream a reality.”
“And who are your associates?” She paused. “Ah, wait, I know Mr Morden. So they are using humans for their business now? Can’t blame them, you are a resourceful race, and less noticeable than the Drakh.”

Morden grinned. “Very perceptive. I work for the same group, and we have big plans for Earth. We think you could be an asset to both Earth and our own long term plans.”
“And in return?”
“We give you what you want, simple as that.” Morden stated. “My associates were very upset they missed your war, they had been looking forward to it for some time. They aren’t sure what exactly happened to spoil their plan, but normally the Vorlons are behind things like this.”
“I assume you have a plan to get me off then?” She smiled knowingly. “Or at least off the station?”
“We’ll rig your ship with an auto pilot, put in a pilot that will appear to be you on scans and provide appropriate biomass for the clean up crews to scrape together. It will look like you were killed. Our technology is good enough to fool even the Vorlons, for a while.”
“Long enough for me to make my escape through a different route?”
“My associates have an alternate ship ready, it will take you to the Earth facility we’re helping run.”
“So no hard feelings about Salasine?” She raised an eyebrow. “He’s still down there you know?”
“He failed.” Morden shrugged. “My associates consider it a just punishment.”
“I see.”
Morden paused. “My associates do have one tiny condition, barely worth mentioning really, we already know the answer.”
“What condition?” she raised.
“More of a question really, one you were asked a long time ago but never answered.”
Jha’dur nodded. “Go on.”
Morden raised his eyes to hers. “What do you want?”
“What do I want?” She repeated, considering each word. “So simple, yet so difficult.”
“We already know of course, this is just a formality.” Morden said. “We heard your conversation.”
“But how do you know that is what I really want?” she said. “What if I have changed my mind since then?”
Morden’s eyes grew a little colder. “You should know that a lot depends on your answer here, if you answer wrongly my associates will leave you for the Vorlons.”
“Perhaps I would welcome them.” She considered. “Perhaps the Human was right, perhaps my era is dead and gone and the Dilgar of the past should stay there.”
“If that is the case, you’ll soon be joining them.” Morden warned.
“Or if I want to live, you will fake my death and let me finish my work.” She said. “Simple choice, live or die. Do I act as you expect me to act, or choose the path I would have taken many years ago before all of this came to pass.” She smiled. “It’s not just about what I want, it’s about who I am too.”
“The only question that matters is the one that will keep you alive.” Morden said impatiently. “Time’s running out Warmaster, one last time. What do you want?”
Jha’dur raised her eyes and held his cold stare, taking his measure and perceiving that behind his eyes there was insecurity and weakness, that there was fear. He was a middle man, a go between, not a shaper of destiny like she was. Not a nexus.
She smiled widely in that knowledge, understanding that they needed her for their plans more than she needed them for hers, and that put the power firmly on her side.
Still smiling, she gave Morden her answer.




It's nice to see Jha'dur making Mordern squirm...

I really should make a PDF of the whole thing!

[LordArt]

For those that are interested, someone was nice enough to PDF the whole story.

Dilgar Wars Chapters 1-68 (4.5 MB)
Dilgar Wars Chapters 69-100 (2.8 MB)
The last Warmaster (Spin-off) Rather good actually, written by the same guy 500 years later.



A Dilgar Xmas Carol This is SOOO wrong. But it has Bester and Morden in it. It's meant to be a major parody. An Alternate Universe. Imagine Ambassidor Jha'dur on B5.


And SLIGHTLY off topic.....It's not that large but worth the read.
Valen: Mibari Origins This is RATHER good. Tells a history of Valen's interaction with the Mibari.

[LordArt]

I've been re-reading the story, and I came across another snippet that I thought was worth sharing. Its the final message from command to a command of Dilgar troops that have been cut off during the Earth attack on the Dilgar. (Mind you the story is quite serious, but I like the funny bits too)

----

“We have been sent two messages addressed to us personally from senior
command.” Dra’ban announced, activating the screen in the bland platoon meeting
room. “Which tells you how completely boned we are. I’ll play this one first, and for
the benefit of the more stupid among you I’ll translate what he means.”
He dropped the first data crystal in the slot and brought up the image of a well
dressed officer.
“Greetings brave and honourable soldiers of Comac.”
Dra’ban paused the message. “He’s flattering us because we’re dead.”
He resumed the message.
“I am Warmaster Sen’la.”
Dra’ban turned to the group. “He’s a known Moron.”
“I speak to you in person at this grave time in our history. Our enemies, the
humans, are about to invade the Comac garrison. You will soon be facing Earth
soldiers.”
“Actually,” the Commander paused. “We’ll all probably get blown to bits before we
get a chance to face them.”
“Our warships are resupplying and making ready to face the human menace.”
Sen’la continued. “Then we will meet the human fleet in epic combat.”
“What he means is the fleet has to refuel so it can run some more.”
“It is imperative that you hold Comac as long as possible to delay the human
advance.”
“The humans would bypass us if they really wanted to.” Dra’ban shrugged.
“You must hold on, help is coming, we will return for you brave soldiers!”
The Commander grinned. “He’s hanging us out to dry.”
“Fight well and Omelos will remember your names. I shall greet you all when we
drive Earth back.”
Dra’ban ended the message. “In summary, we’re boned and will die about five
minutes after Earth arrives.”
He took out the crystal and tossed it over his shoulder. “Useless, but we also received
this message half an hour ago.”
He put in the new crystal and activated it, showing Warmaster Jha’dur stood on a
starship.
“Soldiers of the Comac garrison, I am sure you have heard the news reports that we
are holding back Earth and engaging in a strategic cat and mouse game moving
from world to world. I am sure you also doubt it is true.”
Dra’ban nodded.
“Soldiers, I must inform you that we are losing the war.” Jha’dur continued. “To be
plain Earth has given us a thrashing and we can’t do anything to stop them, not yet.
We’ve taken heavy losses fighting them and simply don’t have enough ships to hold
the League, so we’re pulling back. This means we have abandoned our possessions.”
The Warmaster looked straight through the screen.
“One of these possessions is Comac. Our plan was to evacuate you, the Imperium
needs ever soldier and I don’t like leaving fighters behind. But Earth has moved
faster than we planned and there is no time, even now they are approaching the
beacon. If I sent ships to help you they would be lost, and Comac isn’t worth fighting
a losing battle with Earth other. I won’t throw away ships in a gesture, and as true
soldiers I know you would not want to be responsible for the harm a doomed rescue
would have on our strength and our future ability to hold our territory.”
She raised her head.
“The simple fact is Earth Force outplayed us, and we barely ran fast enough to
avoid being cut off and destroyed by them today. No help is coming, we can’t afford
it. If you can escape on shuttles or captured freighters do so now, I will wait at
Tirrith for you. If not I will not give you a speech about sacrifice. I give you one
order. Kill as many of them as you can.”
She gave a quick salute.
“The position you are in now is the position we will all be in before this year ends.
Give us an example of how to conduct ourselves in the face of this inevitable battle.”
Dra’ban ended the message with a smile. “See, that’s the truth. I like her, but it
looks like my marriage plans will have to be postponed.”
The room was deadly silent.
“Alright, any questions?”
One of the new people raised a hand. “Are we here alone?”
“For now.” The Commander nodded. “Soon we’ll be joined by tens of thousands of
soldiers.”
“Really?”
“Yes. But they’ll be human.”
Fiy’dan raised her hand “Why don’t they nuke us from orbit?”
“Our ground based heavy guns outrange them, we’d be able to shoot up their ships
before they get into range.” Dra’ban said. “So they’ll need to knock out the satellites,
land troops and take out the orbital defences on the ground. Looks like a standard
human tactic.”
“How many troops will they land?”
“We don’t know, but at least three times our own number. Plus lots and lots of
support.”
“What kind of support?” A new recruit asked.
“Enough artillery to blow a hole in the planet.” Dra’ban answered. “Enough tanks to
tip us out of orbit. More bombs, rockets, missiles and assorted explosive devices
than we have in a whole army group. Earth loves it’s toys, I miss the Drazi. Least
you actually saw them when they fought you.”
“So Earth is going to spend millions bombing us?” Fiy’dan remarked. “I feel special
and valued.”
“Most of you will probably die before you see a human.” Dra’ban said. “They look
like Centauri but with less hair. Okay, now you know what they look like you can die
happy never seeing one.”
“Thank you sir, I feel more cheerful already.” Yar’sal beamed.
“Good, I’m not just your overlord but also an entertainer.” Dra’ban switched off the
screen behind him. “Now go get some food and tool up, these humans are supposed
to be the best soldiers in the galaxy, but that’s just because they haven’t met us yet.
Make sure you grab as many plasma grenades as you can carry, expect a lot of
vehicles heading our way. Eat a hearty breakfast, for tonight we dine… well actually
we’ll all be dead, so just eat well. Dismiss.”