Star Force: Consensus (SF43)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  “That’s how you know where they are?”

  “Yeah. The Skarrons didn’t mention them by name, and we haven’t worked out a translation program yet anyway, but there’s a force so powerful they won’t mess with it and keep a buffer zone between them and it at all times. Randy said it was the V’kit’no’sat and I’m not inclined to argue.”

  “What’s the talk going around?”

  “Skarrons are a big problem, but if we go super saiyan on them and kick their ass over the next millennia…”

  “…it could draw the wrong attention.”

  “Bingo. Plus we’ve still got the ‘small’ lizard problem rimward. Dakota has suggested that we start planning to run out to the rim and ignore the Skarrons beyond a battle line. The V’kit’no’sat are the real threat, and beating the Skarrons will mean nothing if we wake up the dinos in the process. What’s your take on that?”

  Yori tapped his teeth with his fingernail as he thought. “Have you downloaded the map files yet?”

  “I haven’t checked,” Steve said, sliding off the table and turning around to access the holographic controls. He dove into the city/planet’s database and checked the logs, seeing that they had in fact gotten a data transfer from Yori’s fleet. From there he went to the master galactic map, popping it up in holo between the two trailblazers as they bracketed the work table.

  “I got pretty far out this time, thanks to a Leggal map I picked up enroute. There’s a black hole 329 lightyears out that links to three others, two of which go low on the galactic plane. The other slides high, but is more or less a straight shot out past lizard space. I wasn’t sure how accurate we could make the jump, but the probe we sent returned so I risked it. Smoothest jump I’ve ever made. The gravitational base width of the well considerably extends our line control. We only had to make a tweak enroute, and the destination gravity well was three times stronger.”

  “How far?”

  Yori highlighted the lengthy jumpline on the map, a straight shot through territory that otherwise would have meant dozens, if not over 100 ‘normal’ jumps. “946 lightyears.”

  “Well that’s definitely a record.”

  “For us. We passed upwards of 10000 ships on the way out, and they weren’t holding to the right side of the road rule either.”

  “Any close calls?”

  “A few until we drifted well off the jumpline. We did get passed by several, and at considerable speed.”

  “Busy jumpline then,” Steve said, looking at the map and the region of new system data at the far end of the black hole link. “How long did it take?”

  “Point to point was a little over 2 and a half months.”

  “Faster than our relay network.”

  “There’s room to expand out there, but if we’re really considering heading to the rim we’ll have to go a lot farther I’d imagine.”

  “There’s been some debate surrounding that point, and it seems like if we are going to do this we’re going to do it in secret. No point in running from the V’kit’no’sat if they can steal a city and download our maps and find out where we’ve run to.”

  “Good point,” Yori agreed.

  “So some have suggested a handoff system with jumpships dedicated to a specific region so none will have the full map available. Another idea is keeping the rim maps exclusive to the ship Captains on a datachip so they won’t fall into enemy hands.”

  “With a dead man self-destruct, I assume?”

  “Yes. We’d also have to keep our allies in the dark.”

  “Allies or allies?”

  “We’d take Kiritak with us, for sure, but the others wouldn’t know where they went, and I don’t see a reason to take the Calavari, though in the extreme long term it might be useful.”

  “So we’re doing this or just throwing ideas around?”

  “Ideas for the moment, but if you know another option for staying clear of the V’kit’no’sat feel free to chime in…otherwise, we could use your thoughts on how difficult it will be to set up a chain of systems out to at least the next galactic arm.”

  “Very difficult, but possible if we have enough time and no one with a bad attitude notices us. How’s our anti-bad guy technology progressing?”

  “Still waiting on the Erruvium, but they’re getting closer,” Steve said, referencing the element that they would have to synthesize in order to produce a slew of next level technology, and developing the equipment to synthesize the ‘Arc’ elements was a milestone achievement that Star Force hadn’t yet gotten to yet, though the techs said they were getting close.

  The elements in question contained corovon, but they weren’t C-type elements. They had the same number of protons as standard and C-type, but their subatomic configuration was altered away from a clump of particles into a ring or sphere with an empty inner section. This alignment allowed the somewhat unstable elements to access a slew of properties that produced exotic energies and accessed smaller constituent particles down into tier 3 and tier 4…with protons, neutrons, and corovon occupying tier 1, which contained the largest subatomic particles.

  Yori shook his head. “Without the badass tech we’re not going to be able to get anywhere near the rim and keep our territory linked. Best we could do is a splinter colony…which I do not like.”

  “I agree, we need to stay in touch. Don’t want us spending millennia in between visits,” Steve half joked.

  “I can see us securing territory out to the black hole link, or maybe another if we can locate one, but that barely scratches the surface with the speeds the V’kit’no’sat can manage. This might be a good idea in the long run, but right now it just isn’t feasible.”

  “A few others echoed your sentiments, but most want to get started sooner rather than later, even if it is just baby steps.”

  “And you?”

  “Not sure yet. Either way we’re going to have to build up in Epsilon and that’s where my focus is right now.”

  “Only to abandon it later?”

  “That’s not clear yet. I see no reason to abandon systems because the V’kit’no’sat might find them, but I’d really hate not to have a backdoor to run out of if and when they show up.”

  “Then you might want to start your own secure network of bases off the regular map out here. Sometimes hiding in plain sight is the best bet.”

  Steve stared at him. “Now that’s something that hasn’t come up yet, and I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. Canderous especially.”

  That suggestion spurred another thought in Yori, which was how trailblazer to trailblazer conversations usually went down.

  “Public map system, with secure networks overlapped, maybe even in the same systems…outer edge sedas?”

  “Damn, why didn’t one of us come up with this sooner,” Steve said, lightly thumping a fist on the table and passing it through several thousand holographic stars. “It’d keep the V’kit’no’sat, Skarrons, and anyone else in the dark as to where we had our infrastructure. We’re pretty sure they knew where our Kiritak colonies were because that’s public knowledge. They haven’t done any scouting as far as we know.”

  “Pretty hard to rule that out.”

  “They hit us across a wide region, so they knew where to go. And given the short timespan between our involvement with the Protovic and when they hit us…”

  “Point taken.”

  “The mainline fleets would be more useful if they didn’t have to guard all our systems, and up until now we’ve been working off an upfront policy.”

  “Keep it secret, keep it safe?” Yori asked, quoting ‘The Lord of the Rings.’

  “Exactly. Why have we been so stupid?”

  “Because it’s not easy to hide a planet. If some cargo ship comes through and sees you’re there word will spread.”

  “So we go Rebel Alliance and build underground or in out of the way locations?”

  “Canderous can easy enough, but we’ll have to choose worlds that are less than appealing
.”

  “We have before, we’ve just gotten picky as of late.”

  “It’s those choice worlds that are of the most value,” Yori reminded him. “And if we have any large populations, how are we going to hide the jumpship traffic?”

  “Back to self-sufficient rules?”

  “When we need to build as fast as possible, not so sure that’s a good idea.”

  Steve nodded. “You’re right. Still, there are a lot of permutations to go through. Let’s write this up and get it out on the grid and see what the others come up with. You sticking around for a while or heading back out?”

  “I was going to head back out, but given the current circumstances I want to stay in contact for a while. Stars can be mapped later, and I need to change out crews anyway. They need some planetside gravity.”

  “Good,” Steve said, opening up a writing prompt on the table. “I could use someone to spar with that can keep up with me, more or less,” he said, throwing the trailblazer a sarcastic grin.

  Yori returned it. “Challenge accepted.”

  8

  December 25, 2467

  Hammer System (Core Region)

  Ironhold

  Cora-005 aimed the arms of her Morpheus-class mech using the harness control system in the cockpit and triggered two low powered laser shots that hit the moving target sled that stood twice as high as her mech. The sled hovered over the ground with only a few meters of clearance and returned fire with its own lasers, shooting up the chest of the morpheus and causing her to twist to the right and bring the vulnerable area out of the firing line.

  That didn’t keep her from getting another shot off as she accelerated up into a run that took her parallel to the sled and around the narrower back end, but several of the sled’s turrets were continuing to track and rack up simulated damage on her prototype mech.

  “Hurry it up, Kenny,” she said to the other Archon behind her in the oversized cockpit. “I can’t keep us in play for long.”

  Even as she said the words she hit and knocked out one of the turrets on the sled…which drew even more attention towards them as the five mechs in her star assaulted the moving target.

  “Working on it,” Kenny-927 said as he sat in a stationary control chair about two feet behind her harnessed, moving body. It was a tight arrangement, but still gave the pilot full range of motion without fearing hitting the coordinator in his/her seat. Using an unusual control board the secondary Archon was remotely controlling the other four mechs in the star, two of which were brawlers, along with a starfire and boxer.

  The other mechs were also prototypes, designed without cockpits and working like the drone warships the navy used. The increased internal space allowed more armor and weapons to be carried, as well as opening up new tactics given that there wasn’t a living pilot inside to jeopardize. The downside was, in this arrangement, that you only had to take out one mech, the morpheus, in order to disable the other four…more or less.

  They could be programmed for autonomous battle, say by linking them to a target like the sled and telling them to attack until it was no longer returning fire or showing movement. If there were other units in the area they could take over control of them, but in this exercise there was only the one control mech, meaning that Cora had to keep them moving and intact while Kenny coordinated the rest of the star.

  “Work faster,” the trailblazer said, reversing direction and ducking behind one of the brawlers, though the top of the mech still showed above the standard height mauler. Because the morpheus was more valuable, as well as carrying two personnel, it had been built oversized with a heap of armor…but not enough to make it a walking turret. That was the goal that Cora had set when Clan Scorpion had begun developing the mech, and now she had the responsibility of making it work on the practice field, else they’d have to do a third redesign, which was something she was hoping to avoid.

  The sled was programmed to attack the highest threat profiles, so it wasn’t going strictly for the Morpheus, but in order to beat it the five mechs had to rotate their attacks and recharge their shields, meaning that Cora had to bring the morpheus in and mix it up with the sled rather than standing back and coordinating…something she wasn’t going to do anyway. The purpose of the morpheus was to fight while carrying the coordinator rather than being the coordinator, which ran a fine line between combatant and VIP.

  Cora let the brawler in front of her block several of the shots coming in at her flank and torso while raising the mech’s arms up high enough to shoot over the shorter mech. Her weapons were simulated plasma streamers set to pulse for .7 seconds with each trigger pull while suffering through a 2.4 second recharge period, with the optional setting of switching to orb fire and plastering targets with an unlimited stream of plasma shots.

  The brawler was tagged with maulers, which gave it its name, for all of its weaponry was short range and its armor and shields matched. It was designed to take a pounding and dish it back out in close combat, which was why Cora didn’t mind taking cover behind it. Thought it was a smaller mech, its shields were slightly stronger than the morpheus’s, not to mention it carried thicker armor plates, given that it didn’t have a cockpit to accommodate in the design.

  “Got a breach forming, port side,” Kenny said, with Cora running around to the other side of the sled as it continued to glide across the grassy plain that was one of the practice fields that Clan Scorpion had on the planet. Ironhold had a varied climate, much like Earth’s, and it gave her Clan a wide variety of landscapes to practice its specialty mechwarrior skills on, along with developing new tactics and technology, to which Cora devoted most of her time in addition to training younger mechwarriors from the mainline units, Clans, Canderous, Calavari, and even a few Australians.

  Ironhold was the place to go to learn the art of mech combat, and Cora reigned supreme as the Queen of Mechs, despite some fierce competition in that department as far as individual skill levels went, but no one had such a comprehensive agenda as she and her Clan did, making her stand out above and beyond the others with more than 40 prototypes in the works at present, including an aquatics variant that she’d been trying to work out for more than a century, but had never quite got it to her liking.

  The morpheus was progressing better, and she knew the twin cockpit idea would work, but it wasn’t going to be a one size fits all tactic, due to the fact that it could be directly targeted. When and where to make use of it was going to be a judgement call, but like all things it was best to have options to work with, and this was one that Star Force needed badly, especially when engaging the Skarron walkers, who to date had made a mess of any mech units that dared to venture too close.

  Heavy walkers were of less interest to her, and she allowed other mech specialist trailblazers to tinker with them. She was interested in the bipeds only, and was really liking the drone mechs for the compact power they carried. They were like disposable chess pieces that she could position around her, or hide behind, without having to worry about their ultimate fate. Something she’d never do with a living pilot.

  Mark was doing the same thing with the aerial fighters, all the way out on Daka, but according to her information they were going to have to evacuate that planet soon, for the lizards were on the way and there was no way they were going to be able to hold out. Where Mark would end up she didn’t know, but most of the design aspects of the aerial division, if not industrial production, had been coming from Daka and the work Mark had been doing there, along with many alien influences. Losing that communal pilot training facility was a big hit to the Alliance, and it was just such an environment that Cora was trying to develop on Ironhold for the mech division, save her facilities were Star Force only.

  “I see it,” Cora said, laying two plasma streamers onto the position her HUD tagged as armor damage on the sled. The starfire came around from the opposite direction and pointed four continuous lachars at the same spot and held their beams on target as if they were never ending Star
Trek phasers. Both mechs received a lot of return fire, with the morpheus’s shields going down again, but Cora didn’t back off, instead she came in closer, walking two of the sled’s cannons out of alignment so they couldn’t track her mech.

  The sled then pivoted, swinging itself around 180 degrees and Cora had to dance the morpheus back so as not to get knocked over. She dove the mech forward so an impact wouldn’t occur, coming down on the left elbow and running her feet around in a third of a circle to get her balance again. She tucked her knee up near the elbow and leveraged the tall mech back up, feeling its top heavy weight pull more than she liked…but then again anything heavier than a neo she didn’t like, and with the larger cockpit the morpheus was never going to meet up to those expectations.

  As the sled spun around it opened itself up to the boxer, which unleashed a pointblank torrent of missiles from the four boxes on its shoulders that gave it its name, in addition to two plasma cannons in the tiny arms. 80 tiny simulated, self-guiding projectiles leapt out together, in perfect synchronicity, and rammed into the armor breach.

  Two seconds later the computer tagged the sled as dead, even though in real life it continued to hover above the ground unaffected.

  “Challenge completed,” Kenny said in case Cora didn’t see the readouts, busy as she was running the mech around, literally.

  “How’d we do?”

  “Yellow on brawler 2 and us,” he said, referencing the level of armor penetration. “All others showing green.”

  “Crap,” Cora said, bringing the morpheus to a standstill. “I was hoping we’d kept one in the blue.”

  “Negative.”

  “Set it up again, we have to do better,” she said, with ‘blue’ meaning no armor damage. The key to winning most battles was unit longevity, and the point of the coordinator controlling the star was to overlap strengths and defend weaknesses, taking down the sled in this case without any hull damage. Shields didn’t matter, for they could be regenerated, but armor couldn’t be replaced outside of a mobile field base or mech bay.