Star Force: Ghostblade (SF67)

by Jyr, Aer-ki

  The rest of the planet was more or less flat and covered with forest as far as Sophia could see. She’d run through the reconnaissance reports earlier, but seeing it here now, in person, was an entirely different experience. There was so much open space that it literally felt mindboggling, and for the first time since she’d volunteered for and acquired an advance slot on a construction crew did she start to wonder if Oni really did know what she was doing by orchestrating this move.

  And the planet, or rather moon…she wasn’t going to get used to thinking of it as such since it was way bigger than Arwen…had been given a proper Clan name of ‘flake’ rather than one assigned prior to their acquisition of the system. In fact, all the planets/moons were getting fitting names, which was another sign that this was indeed going to become home as soon as they set down proper roots…which she was seeing none of from orbit.

  There weren’t any cities whatsoever, and since her volunteering had occurred prior to any major construction reports getting back to Sol she didn’t know where they were actually heading. When the dropship decelerated and hit the thick lower atmosphere she was surprised to see them dart off across the water, leaving the land behind entirely and her wondering if her Clan had started with an aquatic colony. That would be very odd if they did, but at this point she and the others were just along for the ride and would have to wait and see.

  About 20 minutes later a dot appeared on the watery horizon that eventually grew into a large island, on top of which a few spires were visible. When they got closer Sophia could also see a large structure jotting off the side and into the ocean, which she recognized as an aquatics facility. Smiling, she realized that for a startup this was in fact the perfect location, giving all aspects of the Snowstorms a chance to get up and running immediately.

  As the dropship crossed over the wide beaches and into the vast interior it flew through a forest of pink with only a few dots of green here and there. Several more minutes and they finally came to an artificial clearing and landed on a dirt field, with instructions for the passengers to debark immediately. Sophia got up out of her seat with the others and moved out, having no personal belongings with her. As an advance team they couldn’t be burdened with extra cargo and wouldn’t have personal quarters, rather being bunked in a communal facility that would rotate people in and out.

  She’d have a room, but a tiny one. How long it would be hers she didn’t know, but as more people came in she expected to get moved around so she and the others would be living off the equipment rooms rather than their own collections of clothing and accoutrements.

  A trio of hovering vehicles stood waiting for them outside the dropship with the passengers splitting up for them as instructed. Sophia got in the line for the second one, noticing the dozens of other dropships and transports spread out on the field around them…and the proper spaceport beyond that was full of ships on the tarmac. This dirt extension had obviously been made recently, suggesting that her Clan was serious about getting this startup going as fast as possible, and she found herself beginning to share in that urgency and a bit of the excitement that seemed to be permeating the air.

  The gravity on the planet was a bit heavy, but as soon as she stepped into the vehicle the artificial gravity took over and returned the feel of her legs to normal. She found a seat along with the others and before long the ‘bus’ was on its way, taking them to who knew where given the fact that there were no windows and only a panel showing what the drivers saw. They were in a forward compartment while everyone else was in the back, protected behind decently thick plating, as was standard for all Clan Snowstorm vehicles.

  The ground transport moved off through the grid and eventually came to the forest edge, following a dirt road between the pink trees until they gained altitude a few kilometers later to overshoot a trio of construction mechs that were actively adding to the road. Sophia’s vehicle skimmed the treetops, flying the rest of the way out to a small patch of forest carved out of the mass of trees. There they found another dirt landing field settled up next to piles of crates and a few prefab structures.

  When she exited the vehicle there was a processing station, so everyone got in line and waited their turn. When Sophia got to the station that was little more than an archway with a holographic terminal attached, her ID was confirmed and the attendant gave her a designator chip, then pointed in the direction she needed to go. With that being all the handholding that was going to happen, the tech walked in that general direction while fingering the chip and activating the holographic interface.

  Watching to make sure she didn’t get run over or stepped on by some of the few mechs moving around, she ran through the instructions and saw that she’d been assigned to an excavation team that was carving out the bedrock at this site in order to establish the substructure of a mining station. She was going to be part of the material relocation rather than the actual digging, which meant she got to play with all the dirt and rock that came up.

  Finding an exact location that she was supposed to report to, Sophia got her bearings and began jogging towards one of the distant prefab buildings, feeling her shoes sink into a few patches of mud enough that it came up to her ankles. One time she lost her shoe entirely, having to stop and go back for it. Luckily she hadn’t been wearing any socks, otherwise they would have been dirty as hell by now.

  She slipped the shoe on and tried to do a better job of navigating around the muddiest spots, but with the trees having been recently cleared away there was no grass or moss or anything else to stand on until she got to her destination and stepped up onto civilization in the form of ground plates looking like huge, flat legos that had been connected together to create a solid base on which the building and several crate stacks had been placed.

  Sophia jogged across it, leaving muddy footprints that were far smaller than the ones the mechs had left, and was waved over by a woman standing near the entrance.

  “About time you guys got here,” she said, seeing a few more people trailing behind Sophia. “We’re half an hour behind schedule already, and that means the diggers have to wait until we clear out their transition piles before they can continue.”

  “Where do you need me?” Sophia asked, handing her chip to the handler so she could scan it and read her file on a datapad.

  “Equipment room. Get into a work suit and grab a bite to eat. We’re going to be pulling some long hours until we get more hands on site.”

  “Got it,” Sophia said as she entered through the small doorway and went inside, stopping to pull off her shoes and go barefoot to keep from spreading mud on the mostly clean floor. She followed the hallway until she got to the first intersection, taking a right and heading for the equipment room that was based on a standard design that she was familiar with, for she’d lived in one of these structures before during training exercises.

  She padded her way into the elongated bay and dumped her shoes in a cleansing bin where they’d be recycled into the communal closet, which she now walked over to and pulled out the items in her size, then took them over to a personal booth and shut herself inside. She stripped down and hopped in the shower, cleaning off all the mud before stepping into her clean clothes, first a set of underwear, then a thin shirt and shorts. From there she left her station and ran barefooted over to a nearby room that had a number of prepackaged foodstuffs. She grabbed and ate several quickly, finishing off with a bottle of water before heading back to her booth.

  She used the restroom inside then pulled on her armorish clothing. It was entirely flexible, but sealed against the outside environment from the neck down if need be. She left the gloves and helmet back on the racks, knowing just how warm it was outside. Snugging up the boots to fit the exact size of her feet and ankles, Sophia grabbed her ID chip and put it in a concealed pocket, then headed for the lounge/information center that was only a few running strides down the short hall.

  “Good to go,” she reported to the woman there.

  “Take n
umber 6 and get busy loading with these two.”

  “Let’s get to it,” she said, glancing at the two men who got up out of their seats to join her. “I’m Sophia Brent.”

  “Nathan Pergusson,” one said, giving her a slight nod.

  “Jarod Grembly. Looks like we’re driving. Try not to ding the rim.”

  “No promises,” she said with a smile as the three of them walked off and eventually out of what would be their home for the next few days at minimum. Outside there was a small parking lot nearby, in which there was a lot of open air cargo trucks and a handful of excavation mechs. She found the one with a big number 6 on it and climbed up the handholds on the right leg while the two men went to their trucks.

  “Been a while,” Sophia said to herself as she got past the waist on the huge mech and climbed inside the cockpit that was located on the chest between two huge arms. It was open to the air save for a thin layer of transparent material. Had this been a military variety that would never have happened, but given that this mech had no weapons or armor it was best to keep it as functional as possible, with its designed geared towards channeling all functionality towards earthmoving.

  Sophia slid into the seat and strapped herself in, for this variety didn’t have artificial gravity. It was a big, beefy workhorse that stood twice as tall as a thor, with it literally swallowing Sophia up inside its chest cavity.

  “Ok, big guy. Let’s get to work,” she said, powering up the mech and getting a comm channel from one of the trucks. She opened it and keyed to have all transmissions from that source automatically routed through to her cockpit, then did the same with the other truck.

  “You ready, sexy?”

  “So that’s how it’s going to be?” she asked humorously.

  “All we have time for, unfortunately.”

  “Awfully confident…mech checks out. I’m good to go.”

  “Take the lead.”

  Sophia blew out a breath and triggered the computer-controlled movements to begin walking the bipedal giant forward. The first few steps were jerky, but once a little momentum was built up it traveled smoothly with her turning on a heading towards the mountains of material next to the dig site about two kilometers off. She walked it over there, seeing not a single other mech in action, but noticing the drilling spigots silent as they held position over some of the mounds.

  Had everything been up and running they would have been pouring material out for her and others to pick up and load into the trucks, and while they were silent that meant no digging was taking place on the other side in the pit.

  “Time to get this show moving,” she said, walking up to the nearest mound and laying a waypoint down for where she wanted her trucks to position. The second one hung back, but the first one came up and sat square on the spot while Sophia positioned the mech in between the vehicle and the mound.

  She shoved the left arm into the dirt/rock mix and activated the rotary claws which fed the loose material into a conveyor that ran through the shoulders of the mech, over her cockpit, and down to the other arm. Sophia set it in the bowl-like truck bed and began pouring material into the deep bucket, seeing the hovering vehicle bob a bit with the extra weight being added.

  Using a hand control on the left, she swiped the receptacle across the nearest part of the mound in a line, then reversed direction for another before repositioning her giant metallic feet half a step closer as the material was being eaten up at a fast rate. The truck, however, was bigger than the mech, though only half as tall. It stretched out in a long rectangular barge style, and it took a fair amount of time for Sophia to fill up half of it.

  At that point the drilling spigots began working again, but only two of them. They began adding material to an empty slot two down from where she was along with an almost full pile, anticipating that there would be more room opening up shortly so they could begin low scale continuous digging operations. That meant they could only operate as quickly as Sophia could move the material out, so she was the pace setter as long as her pair of trucks could keep up with her.

  Eventually the first was filled and it signaled to her with a departure ping. Sophia shut down the feeds and lifted the arm up and out of the way, then pinged the truck back that it was clear. It floated off slowly, carrying a huge load, with the empty one sliding in right behind it to waste no time. Sophia began loading it immediately while the first truck headed for the forest edge where it lifted up over the treetops and carried the material several kilometers away to another clearing that a pair of mechs were in the process of expanding upon. Infantry units were in play and visible on the construction version of a battlemap, locating and chasing off any wildlife in the area so they wouldn’t get chopped to bits in the clearing process.

  The truck passed over them and headed for the small open section that had been cleared and leveled, then it opened its bottom doors and dumped the full load in the center of it. The vehicle shot into the air a moment before the anti-grav compensated, then it closed its doors and headed on the return trip as a third mech woke from its statue-like stance and headed over to the pile, intending to work it down into a meter thick bed, compacting it with a series of rollers in order to lay the base for an artificial mountain they’d be constructing.

  In the future that mountain would be cannibalized and eaten away by processing machines for raw materials, but right now those facilities hadn’t been built yet and wouldn’t be coming online for weeks at the minimum. Right now the digging crews from multiple sites needed somewhere to put the dirt, and this would be it.

  Over the next 24 hours there would be more mechs and trucks coming into play as the influx of personnel arrived to run the machines, which would also be added to by subsequent orbital drops. It would be awhile before surface factories started making any useable projects, meaning that right now it was all about earthmoving and setting up some basic, permanent facilities built from materials being shipped down from the jumpships sitting in orbit around the enormous moon.

  And there were sites like this all across the island, most of which were just getting up and running. Sophia really had gotten here at the outset, and while this planet was definitely still on the frontier and very wild, with every bit of dirt she moved was helping to make it into their new home. The feelings of unrest at having to abandon Arwen would never totally leave her, but now having a hand in the construction of this world she was able to put aside the constant worry and dive into the work, for helping her Clan was her foremost priority, and if this was the course that Oni wanted for them, then so be it.

  It might still be a stupid move but it was the trailblazer’s to make, and the Snowstorms would make it work eventually, no matter how much they lost in the transition.

  3

  December 2, 2783

  Frost System (Bsidd Region)

  Flake

  Marquis Sheen sat at her workstation onboard the jumpship Polar Veil, a Clan cargo ship that was already half empty after only a week of unloading, which was quite a feat considering its size. It was a product of Clan Humungousaur and had been traded to Sheen’s Clan along with a lot of other equipment and payment promises going forward for part of their territory on Titan. The cargo ship design was the largest within Star Force, but had a disproportionate amount of its bulk dedicated to engines, making it more maneuverable and a touch faster than your traditional jumpships.

  It wasn’t cheap, by any stretch of the imagination, and economically speaking you could have built 5 Mammoth-class cargo ships for the same amount of resources, which was why Mainline and most of the Clans had never bothered to go that route. As more technologies were unlocked from the pyramid the size of Star Force’s ships was getting larger and larger, but the Humungousaurs had taken the leap forward without the necessary tech and gotten around the lack thereof through innovation and by cannibalizing a good part of what would have been storage areas for additional engine power and other ship functions.

  The Island-class design definitely li
ved up to its name, and while there were only 16 in existence this one alone had brought in its holds enough foodstuffs and collapsed prefab buildings to set up the next expansion site on Flake by itself. The primary site in the ocean was progressing well, but now that Sheen was here with a much larger fleet they were going to start construction efforts on a number of other sites across the moon. All would be resource gathering operations while the ocean island was going to be the focal point for the influx of population and technology to come. She knew she had to get its factories up and running before the surge of raw materials began arriving, and so far everything was proceeding according to the schedule she and Oni had worked out.

  The trailblazer and several other Administrators would be overseeing the rest of the evacuation of their facilities in Sol while the Marquis was now here in Frost to stay. Oni had wanted her here early and she’d agreed that the events of the coming months had to come off without a hitch else they’d risk jeopardizing the transition. Cities couldn’t build themselves, and without proper infrastructure there wouldn’t be room to put Clan Snowstorm’s population when it fully arrived. As it was they were going to have to make use of a lot of prefab settlements just to get the people off the ships initially, with the permanent structures soaking them up as they eventually came online.

  Oni knew this was going to be a camping trip these first few years, and it was imperative that they hold to the evacuation schedules that they’d negotiated with the other Clans. If they had to delay the others wouldn’t penalize them for that, for the Clans weren’t cutthroat with each other, but they were professional and not meeting the deadline was something that just wouldn’t do. Each Clan had its own objectives within the Empire and would be making schedules of its own with regards to the new acquisitions, so if the Snowstorms couldn’t hold up to what they’d promised they’d mess up a lot of other Clans’ plans.