Star Force: Ghostblade (SF67)

by Jyr, Aer-ki

  “Isolation has its advantages.”

  Davis pointed at her. “That’s something I didn’t fully appreciate until I became an Archon, along with many other things. What exactly is the isolation offering you?”

  “Focus,” Oni said without hesitation. “While I still keep a sizeable team here for the Trials, everyone else is either off fighting or exclusively training, and I’ve tightened the requirements a bit to compensate. My people have adjusted to a higher level benchmark and our overall skill set has improved faster than a few other Clans in certain areas, though we’re still bottom of the barrel in most cases.”

  “Paul?”

  “I’d add that they have a greater sense of purpose now, given the all-or-nothing course she’s set her Clan on. We instituted the Trials so the Archons would have a chance to gain combat experience outside of a war, but also to stave off boredom. We need to have mission objectives, and rebooting her Clan seems to have added an element of fervor to the Snowstorms that the rest of the Clans lack, giving them at least a temporary advantage.”

  “Not enough to catch the Sabers,” Oni commented.

  “Who can?” Paul scoffed, but his merriment was cut short as Sara jabbed him in the ribs.

  “I follow all of the Clans very closely, and have done so even more the past year,” Davis said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back slightly as he swung one leg freely. “What you’ve done with the Trials and expanding them out beyond the Archons and into every facet of Clan civilization is beyond impressive. It’s something that I could never have conceived of, but I have found a flaw in it.”

  “Do tell,” Greg prompted.

  “It’s all for the lower levels. You don’t have a program for the elites. I know you’ll say that most of your time is spent fighting the lizards or pulling duties with Mainline, but the strikers, padawans, and especially mages don’t really have any internal system in place to test and hone your skills. What you’ve done with the advanced training group shows how fast you guys can really improve if you go all-in on it, but you don’t as a matter of course. Its bits and pieces here and there when you can. You need to do better.”

  “What would you suggest?” Liam asked.

  “I’ve been asking myself that question for a while now, and I don’t have a full answer. You’ll have to figure it out, but I do want to lighten your burden, as far as the Clans go.”

  “Wait,” Megan stopped him. “If you’re suggesting we abandon the Clans…uhuh. We’ve put way too much work into them to turn them over to subordinates or administrators.”

  Davis smiled. “I had thought about that, then nixed the idea for the same reason. No, when I say I want to lighten your burden I mean to take the younglings off your hands. I’ve learned well that the company you keep has an effect on you. That’s why you created the sanctuaries early on to train in without having newbs and what not slowing you down. I think the same principle needs to be applied to the entirety of Star Force, with the Clans remaining as the highest tier, one that you can further sculpt into a more efficient and effective civilization.”

  “You want merit standards for citizenship,” Rex guessed, “rather than people simply being born into the Clans.”

  Davis nodded. “I know that differs from your current mandate, but when we first created the Clans we never intended for them to become anything like this. You wanted them as competitive teams and I added the civilian side to things, both to see what tweaks you’d make and to train high level administrators with the autonomy they afforded. We’re past that now, and a single Mainline system is more complex an operation than running one of the original Clans. Some are even more complex than running one of them now. Clan Dark Knight has the highest population of 2.2 billion, and there are 29 Mainline systems with populations greater than that.”

  “Yet yours are interstellar civilizations, for the most part, which is a different situation entirely. And they are the home to all Archons, save for a few neutrals, such as myself. No, I’m not taking a Clan affiliation or participating in the Trials. My training will continue in isolation as a private side project, and though I’m tempted to go full Archon I know my place is still being Director, though I did appreciate the vacation.”

  “Just do both you slacker,” Larissa quipped. “We do already.”

  “Granted, but I’m nowhere near your league. There’s also a much larger problem looming on the horizon that I have to tackle, and reworking the Clans is only a part of it. Star Force is growing so large that our previous methods are becoming strained. There are successes across the board to be proud of, but one thing that going through Archon training has done for me is that it erased the past. With everything that we have done over the years, we’re the oldest Humans in existence…V’kit’no’sat aside. We remember what it was like before Star Force, and a part of me was always comparing the now to the then and seeing what a huge leap forward it has been.”

  “I think that was because I was never a part of Star Force. I created it, guided it, molded it, but I was always the teacher, never the student. You all have been the guiding force behind the military and many other facets, but you began as cadets, in this very room, with me telling you what was coming. I’ve always been the leader, having to come up with new ideas and then pass them on to the benefit of others.”

  “But when I went into basic I had none of that. I was the newb learning from the efforts of others. It was like finding a stack of presents under the Christmas tree and opening them as fast as I could, learning things I could never have figured out on my own. For the first time I felt what it was to be a part of Star Force, and having to earn my way into it. No one knew my identity, so I was literally a clean slate. That washed away the past from my mind, and good riddance. Now that it’s gone I’m seeing cracks and flaws everywhere within our structure that I had been blind to before. My standards were set too low because they were being dragged down with the memories of the past, but no longer.”

  “Problem number 1 is Axius. There is a core group there that is holding all the rest together, but the balance of their population is nothing but slackers. This cannot continue, for the simple reason that people who are on the fence about what to do going forward often look to those around them for cues, and if they see laziness and apathy they are probably going to reciprocate it. We can’t, and never will, force someone to work. People have to have the freedom to do nothing without repercussions, but they need to earn their place in society. To date, Axius has just been a big party that people born there don’t have to earn their way in to above and beyond their maturia training.”

  “I don’t think the maturia training needs to alter. We’ve got that pegged down pretty well for the early years. Canderous has pushed that about as far as it can go without negative effects. Anyone know otherwise?”

  “I think the Human maturias are pretty solid,” Aaron answered. “The others not so much. We still need to dial in what the different races are capable of rather than just copy and paste off of our profiles. We’ve done that to a point, but there still needs to be a lot more improvement there.”

  “A valid point, but is there anything new that is required, or just calibration?”

  Aaron whistled softly. “I would say calibration, but I’m not the one to ask,” he said, looking towards Larissa.

  “We still haven’t tapped the Bsidd’s full potential, but we’ve been allowing them to make adjustments on their own since we don’t have their bodies to experiment with.”

  “That’s a mistake we have to correct,” Davis said firmly, to nearly everyone’s surprise. “We have to probe what they’re capable of and use our experience to troubleshoot. Anything they can add from their perspective is wanted, but we can’t waste time letting them tread the same ground we did. We have to use our experience to their immediate benefit. Same goes for the other races, right down to the wards. Axius is the worst, because they have so many races that are not part of Star Force, and the individual maturia pro
grams are lacking.”

  “I can see that now because I’m an Archon. I can do things that my old self never considered possible. I was a civie, pure and simple, and didn’t have what it took to be an Archon. That was stupid thinking. Everyone has the potential to do everything, it’s just a matter of each person finding their way there. Most won’t, because they don’t care or aren’t intuitive enough, but the potential is still there. We need to lay out a path for them to follow if they choose, whether or not we think they’re capable. Civilian life should not be the norm in Star Force society. It should be the B-team.”

  Jason nodded. “And you want to strip the B-team elements out of the Clans.”

  “More than that, but yes, for starters. I also suggest that all adepts and acolytes not be assigned to a Clan.”

  “Make them earn their way in too?” Paul asked.

  “I’m not sure about a lot of these things, so just treat them as works in progress, but I think we need the Clans to be the super elite, and not just in Archons. Military personnel down to techs. Everyone has to be operating at an insane level of skill and output just to keep their position. If they can’t handle the workload they may only be in a Clan for a year or so, then transition over to Mainline and bring the skills and experience from the Clans with them, further enhancing Mainline. But the Clans will have to operate like your advanced training group, only on a much larger level.”

  “We have an opportunity now that we’ve never had before, in that we have numbers. From general population all the way up to Archons which are creeping near that million mark, and virtually all of them have survived to this day. We’re gaining depth, but we’re not tooled for it. We need to make adjustments, and we need to establish a top tier to Star Force in all departments that you guys can play in with peers, more or less. The Clans should become the sanctums of Star Force.”

  “Oh, I’m liking this already,” Greg said, theatrically rubbing his hands together.

  “Good, then I’ll pause there,” Davis said, hopping down off the edge and walking up the aisle towards the rear entrance. “Discuss amongst yourselves for the next half hour, then I’ll be back to continue this conversation…with donuts.”

  The trailblazers watched him go without saying a word, then when the door closed Jason glanced around at the others, seeing they were thinking the same thing.

  “Damn, he really has gone Archon.”

  6

  “Ok, Christmas lists people,” Davis said as he finished off a donut as he sat on the edge of the stage again, this time next to a stack of mostly empty boxes. “Oni, let’s start with you since you’ve already got a head start on everyone else.”

  “Our construction crews are good, but not good enough,” she said immediately. “The lizards still build faster than we do, and that’s become painfully obvious for my Clan. The Voku also build faster. I’ve looked into some ways to make improvements but haven’t come up with anything big enough to close that gap.”

  Davis crossed his arms over his chest again. “To my knowledge, they build round the clock with excessive manpower on well prescribed tasks that are utilized everywhere. No customization, just replicative redundancy.”

  “They do, but when I’ve tried to have my crews do the same thing we still don’t fully catch up. We’re building better infrastructure, but that shouldn’t matter. We have better tools than them, yet we’re still lagging behind.”

  “We don’t have much intel on their building process because we haven’t stuck around anywhere long enough to monitor it,” Paul pointed out. “I’ve been through their internal procedures that we captured previously, and there’s nothing there we haven’t already explored and done better. What they’re doing current day to increase productivity I can’t put my finger on either.”

  “I can,” Randy said, tossing a crumpled wrapper at Paul’s head. “The Clans use Human workers. Lizards are better.”

  “They shouldn’t be,” Paul said, telekinetically catching it and compressing it down into a tiny dot that he tossed off into one of the open boxes.

  “They’ve been genetically engineered for specific tasks, Humans have not. Their standard variants aren’t designed as soldiers, they’re designed to be workers. Toting guns around and firing them isn’t much of a stretch, and the way they fight should tell you everything you need to know.”

  Roger raised an eyebrow. “Kiritas?”

  “Bingo,” Randy confirmed. “They outwork our Human techs by a mile because they’re good at completing one task and seamlessly moving into another with nearly unlimited repetitions. When you’re doing the same things over and over again you don’t have to troubleshoot, just get the work done reliably and fast. Our techs are trained to be quick but cautious, and our cities aren’t carbon copies of one another. We can build fast if we want to, but the races that are naturally more industrious are going to have an advantage.”

  “They’re also using cheats,” Devan said. “They’re not building their big structures that quick, they’re basically constructing transitional infrastructure first to get their colonies established. If we took the same approach I don’t think they’d have an advantage. We build ours to last, they build theirs to function and function quickly to spur their snowball effect.”

  “Do you want the Clans to remain all Human?” Taryn asked Davis.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Some of you have a handful of non-Humans in your ranks already. Care to comment?”

  “It’s not any different than the Mainline troops,” Rex answered. “They met Human standards so we let them in. No reason not to.”

  “Most of Star Force is now not Human,” Morgan pointed out. “Granted, we have psionics and they don’t, but if you’re wanting the Clans to be the upper tier we’ve got to have one for them as well, otherwise we’re cutting the legs out of our own plans.”

  “If the ultimate focus of the Clans is to be on the V’kit’no’sat,” Jason added, “then we need to keep it all Human. Zen’zat are what we’ll be fighting against, and we have to be used to engaging on that level. I hate to say it, but every other race in Star Force will have their asses handed to them if they go up against Zen’zat. If we’re serious about building into anti-Vik, we have to stay separate.”

  “The size of the Calavari and Bsidd are lost against the V’kit’no’sat’s larger massed races,” Paul added. “We can theoretically survive because of our nimbleness. If we went Bsidd against even one Hjar’at they’d be slaughtered.”

  “For now,” Larissa countered. “I think I can find ways to get a few of them up to speed while negating the disadvantages. But you’re also thinking just infantry. I don’t see any downside to mechwarriors so long as they have the skill.”

  “It’s all about the requirements,” Greg said, cutting to the heart of the issue. “What makes a person Clan-eligible or not. And I suggest we each write our own, taking what races we want, in what circumstances we want. For the bulk of the races, and even the other Humans, there has to be another tier just below the Clans for them to excel in. Actually, I think there needs to be multiple tiers, which I think Davis was hinting at earlier.”

  “Yes I was. I’m just not sure how to structure them.”

  “Start at the bottom. What do you want the civilian party zone to look like?”

  “Preferably under 20% of the population, though I’m not sure how doable that is, nor how soon it could be accomplished.”

  “Hold up,” Tyr said, raising a hand to add emphasis. “Are we going with Archon rules here? If you go soft you lose your placement, or are these tier advancements permanent?”

  “I want there to be considerable lag with a person losing what they’ve obtained, but there has to be an active component. If someone really quits trying they’ll eventually land back in the bottom tier.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Taryn interjected, “but that’s not how you currently have the system structured, as far as quarter allotments and stipends are concerned.”
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  “I know. I’m going to have to rework it. Within the lower tier there will be some things kept for keeps after they earn them, but those things won’t transition them up to the next tier. In fact, let’s just say all advancement within the bottom tier…which we’ll just start calling the ‘civilian’ tier, will be permanent. The aspects that will allow a person to advance to a higher tier will run parallel with them and be perishable, say after a decade. That won’t put pressure on individuals who have setbacks, but it will clear out the stagnant and not allow them to poison the water, so to speak.”

  “I’d suggest making the second tier a light tier,” Liam said, thinking ahead. “Will these be in the same colonies or separate?”

  “There has to be separation in order to make these tiers distinctive. Not so much as in different planets, but the communal areas have to be located in such a way that transit isn’t banned for the civilian tier, but the most convenient places to eat and shop are separate.”

  “How light?” Paul asked Liam.

  “Those who are working for Star Force, even in a small application, so long as it’s current.”

  “Not enough,” Greg differed. “Everyone should start in the civilian tier when they come out of the maturia, then have to work their way up. We don’t want it to actually become a collection bin for only the stagnant.”

  “Greg is right,” Davis agreed, “but the Star Force work angle needs to be present. Say 5 years in a minimal position gets the bump up, faster if they land a higher caliber slot. Individuals will also be able to buy their way in with credits, giving the business class access. That will mean a disproportionate part of the people with credits to spend will be living in the second tier, so let’s just call it the ‘economic’ tier. This pair will make up the non-Star Force population, with the third tier reserved exclusively for experienced in-house personnel.”

  “Are these tiers going to extend to the other races?” Megan asked.