Moonlit Roses

Summary:
Dust; a miracle that birthed the dream to fly towards the void, to conquer the stars far above, and to leave the broken remnant of a dying home. But a thousand years later, that same miracle birthed war, and with war, a long forgotten horror followed. (A RWBY Space/Sci-fi AU)

RWBY belongs to Rooster Teeth, I own nothing here.

In the galaxy divided by four warring titans and swarming with space-born monstrosities, many people would question the life of a trader. Being the vulnerable little space treasures they are, trader vessels always paint themselves as targets of the many opportunistic and desperate. For a trader, a job well done is not when you take the lien from the hand of a buyer, but when said buyer doesn't decide to kill you afterwards.

But they don't understand; that even in an era of chaos, trade is still the lifeblood of a civilization. That when the trade lanes become dry, the galactic empires will struggle to breath. And when they do, well, everyone knows what the four titans are good at.

Namely, waging great wars in the endless expanse of the void.

That's why, even in a dark expanse where conflict is the norm and every move is a matter of life and death, Dominic Drake, along with his trusted trader vessel Till Dawn, venture forth without fear. For those looking outside, being a trader looks like a shitty job with high risk and low rewards. But for him and his crew, lets just say that they are not doing this for the money.

But in this dark times; for every honest merchant, exist hundreds of those metaphorical wolves and serpents.

"Sir! Unidentified vessel approaching us from the East, frigate size. Their speed indicates that they will enter comms range ETA 4 minutes." John Johnson, the new guy with a weird generic name, shouted. He is furiously typing on his keyboard, stopping only when the familiar display of the Till Dawn's scanner area flashed on the bridge's central monitor.

Dominic looked at his trusted bridge crew before staring at the single blot of green revealed by the scanner, deliberately ignoring the multiple numbers and words jutting out from the blot, and on almost every side of the screen. Leave the technicalities to the experts.

Even in the safety of the Vale sub-sectors' trade lanes, flying a single vessel, one as small as a frigate, is still a foolish endeavor. So the unknown is either a dumb civilian ship, a military vessel, a hunter craft, or on worst case scenario, a bottom feeder.

Now, while uncommon, pirate vessels still have their presence in trade lanes and occupied zones. Dominic knows that, and now that the border tension of the four titans are rapidly building-up, the galaxies scums are being bolder in their attacks, raiding even military supply vessels in their 'hunts'.

"Prime all point defenses, Maintain priority lock at the unknown vessels thrusters, and heat up the primary. If you detect dust buildup besides their shields and their engine, I want to see a warning shot fired-up immediately." His crew hesitated for a bit, looking at him with concern for several seconds, before moving to do his command.

"Sir, visual contact established. Multiple point-defense platforms identified." John confirmed from his seat, making everyone to hasten. "Visual of main armament confirmed, dust-energy based, reclassifying threat assessment from unknown vessel to combat class."

Looking at the visual of the now approaching vessel, Dominic is quite amazed on how the design prioritized elegance over anything else. A dagger shaped ship gleaming in the color of a slightly reflective silver, with two lines of glowing orange from bow to stern, ending at the engine and connecting at the ships front. On the back of the ship near the exhaust, springs three sets of FTL sails, the larger two facing down and the smallest one facing up. All of them are arranged in a wing shaped design, completing the look of the ship.

That thing looks like a fancy dart from those rich casino stations.

And in a dangerous space, where practicality and intimidation is more prioritized in a ship design, a ship throwing those things out in favor of a more aesthetically pleasing one is either owned by a dumb rich person, a Haven designed ship, or both.

And considering that they are in a Vale occupied sub-sector, the latter two is almost an impossibility. Which only make it more likely that the ship captain is one of those high-class people that look down on almost everything and everyone that doesn't wear formal attire.

But arrogant or not, a small ship stuck in the void means something happened. And a person in need is almost worth every scrutinizing gaze that he can possibly get.

Or maybe, knowing the dangers of space, the original ship crew is already dead, and the ship is being manned by pirates.

"Broadcast our intent for connection. Establish it as soon as they accept. If not, wait for 60 seconds, and then cripple their engines as soon as possible. It's better to be safe than sorry this days."

Dominic look at the center monitor on the bridge, showing a visual display of a small vessel before a Vale identification logo popped at the corner of the screen.

So, a native of this republic then.

"Unidentified vessel, this is Dominic Drake of the trading vessel Till Dawn. You have exactly sixty seconds to identify yourselves; inability to comply will result in force." Dominic said, watching as a red targeting marker centered itself on the ships' engine, before a 'weapons locked' confirmation with an accompanying ping followed.

Almost immediately, the broadcast radio comes to life. "Whoa, calm down. We're not here for trouble", a voice filled with what Dominic think was arrogance and a rather poor attempt of a Vale nobility accent filled the now silent bridge. "That oh-so-obvious weapon targeting is scaring the children."

Dominic frowned. The other persons' informal first contact attitude aside, being able to detect dust-energy targeting at that range indicates a high graded countermeasure equipment. First move and I'm already at a disadvantage. Also, children?

"Anyway, we're only here to trade. We got caught on in an energy storm, and now our dust reserves are almost empty. My ship's hold size is not helping at all. We need your supplies, and we have all the lien to pay you for." Continued the voice, ignorant of the captains worry.

Dominic though about it. On one hand, this is Vale nobility they are talking to. Those ungrateful bastards never appreciate help from anyone lower than them, and will rather shower you with lien and treat you like you are the one in their debt.

On the other hand, they are still people. One of the worst kind outside of pirates and barbarians, but still people.

"I'll gladly grant you a permission to dock, but first, protocols dictate that I need to ID your ship." Dominic replied, already making plans on how to 'make their welcome as satisfying as possible' for these assholes.

There was silence for several seconds before an audible sigh escaped from the speakers.

"Fine, I prefer not to, but if you insist. Ship identification 867C4-942K. Can I dock now?"

Great, much worse than a normal noble then. Only those in the knight houses prefer to hide their ship ID codes, and 'being able to witness their glory', as one knight once said to Dominic, means that you are 'worthy' of their presence.

"Permission granted." Dominic finished. Now, where did I leave my captains' uniform again?

The icon display shut itself down, but not before Dominic heard the contact saying killjoy before disconnecting. The screen changed to the view of the corvette again, and now that Dominic has a closer look at the ship;

The design looks like it is custom made, but somehow, it looks familiar to me. Looks like-

But again, he is interrupted by the audio reconnection from the other ship.

"Oh, before I forgot, I want to thank you for your generosity captain. You know how hard it is to find a single travelling trader vessel at this area of space?" The voice from before said again. But this time, the arrogance in his words is gone, replaced by amusement.

Dominic is greatly bothered by that cryptic line. But before he can command his crew to re-establish their weapon targeting, John, the person he assigned to search for the ship identification shouted to him in panic.

"Sir! Vessel registry identified as the Melodic Cudgel. It's the Torchbearers!"

Dominic can't help but curse. The Torchbearers are one of the most notorious of their kind. Infamous for being the master thieves that they have proclaimed their 'specialty', their acts are only shadowed by the inhumane brutality of the White Fang. But long before he can broadcast a command for a full battle station, several things have happened in almost an instant:

First, a sound of explosion boomed from the inside of his ship, causing the trader vessel to shake, throwing Dominic from his chair in the middle of the bridge.

Second, a blackout filled his vision with darkness, quickly being replaced by the perpetual red tint of the emergency lights, indicating that their ship is running on back-up power

And lastly, the complete panic of his bridge crew. Multiple shouts of status reports mixing to form an unintelligible blabbering.

If we survive this, I need to teach all of them the word discipline.

After getting his bearing right again, and hastily sitting back to his command chair, Dominic quickly commanded his crew to tell him the ship status one by one. He didn't bother checking the flowing blood and the pain from his forehead; his crews' and ships' safety comes first. "Crew, status report!"

"Sir! Our primary had been destroyed. The enemy vessel entered our shield dome before firing, completely bypassing our defenses."

"A burst of EMP discharge crippled our energy reserves. Our energy readings show that our ship is down on 13%. We are now running on back-up power; Engines, ship point defenses, and shielding is down."

"Scanners show multiple contacts coming at us from the east. Long range scans shows 5 ships, 4 frigate type and a single freighter in the middle of their formation. Their distance indicates that they are within our range for a while now, and are just hidden from scan by some means."

"Receiving crew status, none of them are in critical. Anders from near the bow area battlements is complaining from a minor bruising, nothing that can't be fixed with 'not being a pussy'." Angela, the person assigned to monitor the crew status, shouted from somewhere.

Dominic can't help but snicker at that. Under attack, and still finding ways to joke and talk trash of each other. "Connect to those pirate scums and inform them that we surrender. We will prioritize the safety of the crew first. And please, tell me that you have already broadcast a distress signal by now."

John visibly stiffens before sighing in relief. "Umm… Negative sir, some kind of area jammer is preventing us from broadcasting a signal." Then panicked, possibly realizing that being jammed is indeed a bad situation.

Dominic sighs, giving up on their predicament. This is really a bad day for me.

This is really turning out to be a good day for me.

Looking through the window of their 'rescued' supply loader that is rapidly approaching the trader vessels docking bay, Roman Torchwick looked at their latest prey, now silent and too crippled to bare its claws.

"Another success for the Torchbearers. And they said that those White Fang barbarians are the largest pirate threat in the galaxy." One of his fleet vessel's captain, Junior if he remembered correctly, radioed from the vessel Nightclub. Roman sighed, he never knew when his crew started comparing themselves to the Fangs, but the metaphorical dick measuring contest is slowly corroding his tolerance.

The Fang, well, while they proclaim themselves as a 'rising empire of equality', everyone knows that the revolutionary movement that they are spouting is nothing more than a fallacy, a self-justification for the dirty band of anarchists and pirate scums to do their barbaric acts.

'And compared to the elegance of the Torchbearers, those trash-bred animals are nothing but savages.' His crew always said, ignoring the fact that they are also doing the same as the White Fang. Except for the killing and the 'taking non-Faunus as trophy and slaves', Roman will personally execute them if they started doing that.

Entering the trade vessels' cargo hold, and feeling the familiar weight of the ships gravity field, Roman Torchwick quickly marches to his vessel's door, flanked by two of his troops. But not before dropping his signature hat, exchanging it for a featureless helmet that will hide his identity. Now comes the hard part.

The door hisses, blowing pressurized steam through the outside of the vessel. Opening to reveal his presence to those unfortunate merchants that they hounded for almost a week. Roman Torchwick extended his hands, gesturing for his troops to take position and check all of the ship crew for weapons, before stepping outside himself.

"Ah, brave traders from... some place. The great Torchbearer himself, at your service." Roman struggled to keep his voice leveled and arrogant sounding, feeling the familiar guilt bubble inside of him.

"Just take our lien and leave my crew alone, bottom feeder."

Looking at the direction of the voice, Roman saw an old balding male, his eyes almost closed, wearing a ragged outfit with a written 'Ship Captain' at the left chest area. His forehead is covered with a red-stained bandage.

Roman faked a laugh, deliberately ignoring the injury and focusing on the captains' attire. "Even in space, merchants still wear their precious employee badges."

The captains scowl turns into fury, but before he can make a move, Roman pointed his cane at the floor near the captain, and a loud sound of a gunfire echoed in the chamber. "Now, now, now. We're only here for one thing, and that is not your precious lien. Bring me all of your dust, and we will leave like nothing happened here."

The crew remained unmoving, looking at him with fear and apprehension. "Oh, good little audiences are you? Just watching until-". Roman took another shot, aiming at a small ice dust container, which explodes into a mist of cold, freezing smoke. The trade vessels' crew started moving at that, quickly turning into an organized chaos. "-the showman started doing his tricks."

Roman then focused on two of his soldiers. "And you two, I want all of this ships recorded information deleted, destroy their server room if you must". Looking at the now moving crews and his troops guarding them in case someone suddenly pull a smart idea, Roman can't help but sit down on a container and contemplate on their supposed 'luck'.

This, by the universal law of nature, is when things horribly go wrong.

It is when loading the last batch of pure dust, when something wrong happened.

The sound of a faraway explosion echoed through the trader vessels huge cargo hold, a simulated outside-broadcast of an actual explosion in space. Why it is still active in a ship running in back-up power, Roman has no idea.

But an explosion outside of the ship means only one thing; his fleet is under attack.

"Troops, our luck have run out. Leave the dust behind, we're making a run for it." Roman can't help but smile on it, hidden by his helmet. He now has a valid reason to pull out from the robbery, and the traders will still have several hundred boxes of dust left for them.

Running to the vessel, and being the one closest to it, Roman waited for all his troops to enter before firing the engines, exiting the trader vessel, and firing the cargo vessels point defense on the closest, still unpowered secondary of the trader ship.

In case they still want to try something foolish.

Not long after regaining visual contact with his fleet, Roman is unsettled by the view of his small fleet moving in chaos, desperately trying to avoid being hit by a continuous barrage of slugs being fired from the distance. He quickly radioed his fleet through the intercoms. "We've been spotted, just resume on your evasive actions, and don't engage. If your ship's hit, just power down and hail a surrender. I'll bust out everyone that will be captured here myself."

Several more minutes of watching his fleet fly in chaos, only broken by the occasional trail of blue caused by what appears to be gravity-dust accelerated slugs, and Roman is now sure that the hostiles are firing blindly in their approximate range. But before he can enter his personal ship Melodic Cudgel, Roman watches in horror as one of his frigates got itself hit by a direct impact from the slug, lighting up the ship in a bright flash of its Aura shielding before another follow-up impact hammered the frigates center mass uninterrupted, tearing the ship apart in a mess of metal and flames.

Quickly running to his bridge to signal a full retreat, Roman was interrupted by another simulated sound of an explosion.

"Broadcast a full retreat to the fleet. And I want a status report, now!" Now sitting at his command chair, Roman cursed as he saw the projected status of his fleet.

"The Treasure Hunt is a loss, and both the Nightclub and Backstabs' enginesare crippled on the first volley when our shields are operating on the minimum. They already powered down and hailed a surrender as your command-" The person informing him was stopped by another explosion. "-Status update, the Backstab is also a goner!"

Roman was shocked at that. Firing at a crippled ship, one that surrendered at that, is greatly scorned by almost everyone. "Then what in the name of Remnant are you waiting for! Plot for an escape trajectory, maintain a zigzag fallback away from the attackers while we build up our FTL. Where the hell are those slugs coming anyway? And why are we caught unguarded!?"

Roman might be happy for the opportunity to pull out, but is more enraged that his fleet is being torn into pieces, dying fast along with his long-time crew. Damn that snake! We should be doing a legal job by now and not dying, if not by her blackmail

His introspection was cut off by another report from his crew. "West of our position, from the other side of the trader vessel, the enemy is firing outside of our scanners range. The first salvo hit us long before we can reroute our power to the shields and engines."

This is bad, Roman though. Their scanners are top of the line, boasting a range of half a star system when uninterrupted. A vessel sniping them from outside of that range, and with that kind of accuracy, is a bad sign.

But abruptly, as soon as they started their retreat, the barrage has stopped.

Well, even if they are skilled, they can't hit us when we are retreating with this speed.

"55% build up for our FTL, we'll be ready to jum- Captain! FTL signature detected, coming on our midst." The panicked crew shouted.

"What!"

A flash of a red line flared on the bridges visual screen, before the red streak dissipated into the iconic colored transparency of a disturbed aura field, looking like a bunch of scattering gigantic rose petals in the empty void of space.

As the red aura field completely dissipated, the gigantic ship showed herself.

A large titan of the dark color of the void, patterned with lines of red on its many gun-ports and on its edges. A long rectangular shape with its horizontal mass on a much longer scale than its vertical size. On the upper stern of the ship, near the engines, lies a small tower which suspiciously looks like a pre-space travel ship bridge, while on its lower bow lays two arcing fins extending below, most likely its FTL sails.

Its sides sport several broadside turrets and missile batteries that, by their size, are at the very least can be considered as a cruisers primary. But the most worrying is the huge hole in the center of the bow, surrounded by four, much smaller holes slowly rotating in a circular formation.

In its center is what looks like a long spinal mounted accelerator cannon, on a fucking dreadnaught sized ship. Which coincidentally complete the image of the vessel; a gigantic bipod mounted sniper rifle.

Roman Torchwick, as a practitioner of the illegal arts, is well aware of several top-secret projects of the four military powers. And one of them, a prototype created by the Atlesian Navy, is a quickly abolished dreadnaught-grade artillery, which is cancelled for a reason.

While a spinal rail-cannon, travelling at magnetic accelerators lined up in almost a mile, can theoretically crack even leviathans and world engines in half, one major disadvantage weight more that its supposed advantage;

Prioritizing energy distribution at the spinal cannon will greatly lower the engine and shield power, add the size of the thing, and you have an immobile glass cannon in a firefight.

Because of this, the slow state of the artillery will prove the ship as a worthless asset outside the first salvo when enemy forces are still clearly out of range from the allied firing line, quickly losing its worth and proving its vulnerability as soon as the engagement reach its metaphorical 'melee', which, when it comes to the unending tide of the Grimm swarm, is as literal as it can get.

In short, a gigantic snail of an artillery looming at the center of your retreating frigate formation, is a statistical impossibility outside of a hunter vessels physics defying bullshit; a ship semblance.

If it is a semblance, then the impossibility will quickly become reality. In this case, a really fucked up reality.

"This is the hunter vessel Crescent Rose, disable your ships system and you will not be shot at. Those who will not do so, expect brute force subjugation." A weirdly cheerful sounding voice of what, if Roman guessed, belong to a young girl as old or much younger that his daughter was, flared from his ships speakers.

Ha! Brute force indeed. If a moving planetbase cannon doesn't scream overkill, then I don't know what the word actually means. Roman though bitterly. A show of force through presence alone, my daughter will love you.

"Ok Red, you win this time." A muffled reply of a 'Hey, my name is not Red!' blared at the speakers again, earning a small laugh from Roman. "We will power down our ships now. But before that-"

Sorry Red, I still have an adorable little ice cream to take care of.

"Sir, our FTL drives are ready now." Interrupted one of his crew, with a tone of glee Roman is very familiar of.

It is the general tone when his crew knows that their fleet is ready to pull a daring escape. And Roman can't help but be infected with that glee himself. "-Let me give you a little present!"

Several minutes later, Roman is silently watching his bridge screen as it shows the blue tinted 'waves' of the FTL 'dimension', whatever it is called. He and a small part of his fleet barely survived their brush with death, with a combination of their luck and the utilization of his ship's 'Solar Flare' module, missiles equipped with several high-grade targeting jammers and signal distributed electronic countermeasures.

"Crew, status on the Dust storage"

"We have secured-" before the personnel can finish, a message ping interrupted. "Umm, we have received a message, identification name phoenix, requesting for a meet-up of sort."

Roman tensed, and started walking towards his personal chamber. "Ask for the coordinates, and begin travelling towards the location as soon as it is given". Screw her and her fucking blackmail.

As he entered his room, Roman flopped at his personal work table, looking at the single item at his desk. A picture frame of two smiling person standing below the sign of a shop called 'Icecreams n' Umbrellas', one of them a middle aged male wearing a familiar hat and a cane on his hand, smiling gently at the camera.

And another one a small girl with a mess of a pink and brown colored hair, laughing from her piggyback position on top of the first person, in her hand a small umbrella that she is swinging in the air, and her face showing the naive innocence of a child. An innocence that I have sworn to protect.

Roman Torchwick grabbed for his personal scroll, dialing a number to leave a recorded message.

"Sorry Neo, dad's not coming home to celebrate your enrollment at Beacon."

-End-

AN:

-I have no idea on how to write space physics. So I just used 'dust-power' as an unexplained explanation to almost everything related to science.
-This is a one-shot, but I'll probably continue this if I can. But since i'm not good with actually putting and/or staying true to a characters personality, i'm afraid that I will mess up everything, making the whole cast a bunch of OOC robots. (That i'm afraid iv'e already done with my portrayal of Torchwick here).

Anyway, thanks for reading!