Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (29-32)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  It was a race of dissipation, with Paul barely winning out. In the computer monitoring program the degrees in the wall continually and slowly ticked up, though there was no hologram for Paul to monitor it with. He was completely on his own, and had to guess how close he was coming based on the ‘feel’ through his magical barrier…which was very tenuous at this point, so he just kept creating and pumping heat into the wall and hoping it would be enough.

  His concentration slipped twice, with a hot spot quickly forming on his index finger the first time, then his thumb the next. He got the barrier back into place almost immediately, but he knew he’d have a couple of burn marks afterwards. Cursing himself for his lapse, he concentrated as hard as he could without shaking himself and kept at it…eventually reaching the 110C/230F mark that resulted in a completion tone.

  Paul pulled his hand off immediately and vented the remaining excess heat out of his body like releasing the air from a balloon. The internal constrictions he’d been using to contain and move it where he wanted disappeared and the heat flushed out to his skin and began to vent in the air…along with beads of sweat breaking out across his body. Oddly enough, his natural cooling mechanism had been deactivated somehow in the heat redistribution effort, but now that he’d released it his internal thermostat had reverted back to normal function.

  Paul swiped his forehead with his right hand as he examined his left, seeing the two red marks from where the heat had bled back onto his skin. He held still and closed his eyes, ignoring the statistics popping up on the console and taking the opportunity to practice his healing trance as well as wanting to get rid of the annoying pain. It wasn’t much, but the sting was annoying.

  In mind’s eye he deactivated his hand, locking it up rigidly in its current posture and essentially putting it into hibernation as he mentally forced a calm energy into it, or at least that’s what it felt like. The database said it wasn’t a type of energy, but rather an excited state being induced in the cells, causing the tissue to regenerate faster than normal. Paul could partially understand that, but it still felt like an energy surge, and he wasn’t going to completely discount his senses in favor of the V’kit’no’sat notes.

  “That puts you where?” Ben-5449 asked as he entered the small training chamber.

  “Level 11,” Paul said, feeling the first few whisks of cool air on his neck as his heat plume finally dissipated. He held his hand still in front of him but turned his head to face the other Archon.

  “In what…a year?”

  “8 months,” Paul corrected him, still holding his localized Sesspik trance. For that psionic, at least, failure in Rensiek provided extra training opportunities, painful as they were.

  “You hurt your hand?”

  “A couple of small spots. Just trying to get a head start on the healing process. A couple of minutes and I should be good for the rest of the day.”

  “Can you do that walking?”

  “So long as it’s just my hand, yes,” Paul said, thinking. “If I don’t bounce too much.”

  “Message came through for you. Some guy named Tennisonne wanted to see you as soon as possible. I didn’t want to bother you with it until you’d finished.”

  “Thanks,” Paul said, stepping back from the now cool wall thanks to the internal heat sinks that had activated as soon as the test was complete. “All yours.”

  “Appreciated,” Ben said, toggling the control panel and dismissing Paul’s completion emblems, then selecting the parameters for his own training/testing session.

  Paul walked out, keeping his hand fairly rigid and energized, and made his way out of the training sanctum. He paused for a minute or so next to the mongooses outside, then deemed his hand pain-free enough to grab the handle bars, deciding he’d finish healing the damage later when he took a nap.

  Paul drove across the command deck and down the ramps, moving lower in the pyramid until he came to the Oso’lon section. Inside those large rooms he found another mini Star Force cityscape that held a local research and development facility where the upper level techs were continuously working to crack the secrets of V’kit’no’sat technology.

  Paul wove his way around several of the buildings until he came to a smaller complex and parked outside next to three larger mongooses designed to carry four passengers. He went inside and grabbed an elevator up to the 15th level where one of the small scale fabrication labs was located.

  “Mr. Stark,” Paul said loudly as he walked in on Tennisonne with his head buried in the side of a mechanical monstrosity, “what have you for me today?”

  The man wearing a dark green uniform with 5 gold stripes running down the sides pulled back out and stood up, frowning in Paul’s direction. “Grand Admiral Thrawn…nice of you to finally show up.”

  Paul returned his frown. “Don’t call me that.”

  “Don’t call me Stark,” Tennisonne countered.

  “Stark is cool,” Paul argued, walking over to the man and having to navigate his way around equipment trays and other random projects to get there.

  “And he has toys compared to what we’re working with,” the master tech said, pointing across the room to a small booth. “I need you to try the mental interface again. I think I’ve got the feedback connection powerful enough this time.”

  Without a word Paul walked over to the booth that was a compact version of the command nexus the Archons used to control their fleets and organize ground battles from afar. There was a control pedestal, as usual, but the walls were so close it almost felt claustrophobic…or would have if the back side hadn’t been cut out, though once he stood inside his peripheral vision didn’t extend far enough back to notice the gap, making it appear that he was inside a vertical tube.

  In addition to the usual control board there was a central sphere sticking out a foot or so above the board and recessed into the wall to keep it out of the way. Paul pulled it out, bringing it to chest level in front of him, and placed his hands on it.

  “Ready.”

  “Just a sec,” Tennisonne said, walking around the backside of the chamber and fiddling with something. “Ok, give it a try.”

  Paul closed his eyes for a moment, finding the telepathic receiver in the sphere and extending his Ikrid energy into it remotely, just as he’d done a week ago, making a mental link with the device.

  “Anything?” Tennisonne asked.

  “Just a connective tone…no sequence,” Paul said, ‘listening’ with his mind.

  “Well…I didn’t think that would work anyway. Give the tactile interface a go.”

  Paul severed his mental connection with the receiver and shunted his Ikrid over to physical ‘hacking’ that used his nervous system as a conduit for the Ikrid energy, increasing the efficiency dramatically. The material of the sphere had been designed to allow the energy to pass to the receiver in the center, similar to how another person’s nervous system allowed the physical transfer to the mind via touch, establishing a bridge between the two while bypassing the ‘wireless’ linkage that had been disabled for all Zen’zat.

  The type of interface that Paul was attempting required 2-way communication to access information, and with all Zen’zat configured to only be able to transmit information at will an individual could receive all kinds of external control influences, but the return part of the neurological ‘handshake’ would never return, thus blocking the connection. If you couldn’t link with the target all you could do was blindly transmit, which in the case of a message was all you needed. If you wanted to remote control someone’s mind or dig into their memories for information that wasn’t possible with Zen’zat, save for physical contact…which then bypassed the transmission blockage due to the fact that the person’s own nervous system was being used to get in through the ‘backdoor,’ so to speak.

  The sphere in front of Paul was supposed to operate the same way, allowing him to link with the receiver to not only send signals but get return information.

  “2…3…1…1…
5…4…2..3…”Paul said, counting the beats in his mind.

  “Good, good…” Tennisonne said distractedly from wherever he was working on the opposite side of the curved wall in front of Paul. “Here we go, switching to full access.”

  Suddenly Paul’s head froze up with shock…but it quickly bled off as the information coming in began to process. It was all scattered at first, like watching a video screen that was malfunctioning, but his mind started to pull bits and pieces of it apart and he could sense certain areas as being distinct from the others.

  “Well?”

  “I’ve got something. What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Power up the screen, Admiral,” Tennisonne said sarcastically.

  Paul frowned, then reached over with one hand and turned on the hologram, with the walls around him disappearing as they were replaced by status displays and charts. As soon as they did the information in his mind seemed to process, and he could feel icons for many of the things he was seeing, as if the telepathic signals were overlapping with the visual ones.

  “Much better,” Paul said, ignoring the tech’s jibe.

  “Do you see the program?”

  Paul looked around a bit, then saw the start function directly in front of him…with four options.

  “What do you want me to run first?”

  “Doesn’t matter, just pick one.”

  There were four labeled icons…A, B, C, D in front of him, so Paul mentally reached for ‘C’ and, to his surprise, was able to press the telepathic button, despite the fact that he didn’t know what it was that he was really doing.

  “Eureka!” Tennisonne said. “There’s four months of hard work being put to use. Keep running with it as much as you can. I’ve got a diagnostics program measuring your interface, so even if you screw up it’ll be beneficial.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Paul said as a tactical program popped up. It was a watered down version of a videogame, with icons for mechs and vehicles of Star Force make aligned against a similar force of Nestafar units…and they began engaging each other without Paul’s prompting.

  He concentrated, highlighting a single mech in his mind and feeling three ‘growths’ appear, as well as seeing three new options pop up holographically over that mech. He ‘touched’ one of them, with another branch of four options appearing. When he mentally chose one of those the branches disappeared and the mech in question veered off from its current target and began tracking the strongest one.

  “Not bad,” Tennisonne commented. “Thought you’d have more trouble than this. Have you mentally selected targets before?”

  “I’ve tracked the turrets, but never had to interface with them.”

  “How are you pushing the buttons?”

  “Um…not quite sure. If they were a box, I’d be shaking it every which way until it did something.”

  “Randomized action then,” Tennisonne said thoughtfully. “Good thing I went with isolated commands. Binary would probably have been too hard.”

  “Binary?” Paul said, moving another mech around on the map, this time to a specific point he highlighted, mentally dragging a ‘mouse’ icon to the spot he wanted and ‘clicking’ it.

  “On and off. Right now you’re just hitting a button. The receiver can read different signals, so I can set up an ‘on’ switch and an ‘off’ for lots of things. Pushing ‘on’ twice won’t turn it off like it does now, because all your options are one command, like a handheld controller with only one button to press.”

  “I get it, I’m just glad I can finally press a button.”

  “Well, the mechanics of it aren’t that complicated, but our fabrication techniques for some of the components are still crude. This should have worked last time, but there were some impurities that I had to refine out. The Nerantium is tricky to work with. It wants to pick up hitchhiker molecules whenever possible. I’ve got it coated in a sleeve of aluminum now, but we’re going to have to redesign the manufacturing process. I can’t be manually refining each piece coming through because of sloppy processing.”

  “What do you need?”

  “The V’kit’no’sat processors,” he said scornfully. “I know the reason we’re not using them, and I agree with you, but it’s times like this that are damn frustrating.”

  “I’ve heard similar complaints from some of the Archons, wondering why we don’t use the Zen’zat weapons or armor. Bottom line is, if we can’t produce new ones, we’re not going to get hooked on using them.”

  Tennisonne nodded, knowing that both men were on the same page. “What I really need is a slew of new fabrication equipment, but I don’t have the time to design them with my current projects. We just don’t have enough level 5 engineers, to be frank. We’re rarer than you Archons, come to think of it.”

  “Mild offense taken,” Paul said, still practicing the telepathic control interface. “Not all Archons are the same. We’ve got our newbs too.”

  “Maybe that wasn’t a fair metaphor,” Tennisonne said, still on the opposite side of the chamber working his analysis equipment, “but we need more hands. Assistants can only do so much when they don’t understand the underlying physics. I know far more about V’kit’no’sat tech than it looks, I just can’t build it all from scratch fast enough. You’ve got the same problem with the military, I can imagine. Not enough trailblazers to go around leading war fleets?”

  “So what do we do about it?” Paul asked him.

  Tennisonne sighed. “Nose to the grindstone and work the problem. Like always.”

  “At least we’re of the same mind there...what are these other programs?”

  “Different applications of the interface. I need you to go through them all.”

  “This is getting easy. You might want to go ahead and work up a binary.”

  “Have it for you by the end of the week,” Tennisonne promised.

  9

  November 22, 2410

  Solar System

  Earth

  Paul pushed his complaining quads a bit further, coming to the second to last lap on the training track within the sanctum. His holographic marking ball was getting ahead of him, but he’d managed to keep within a couple meters of it and now he was within half a mile of the finish, nearing a new personal record at the 5k distance and another tick up the speed charts…so long as he didn’t let it slip this lap. He knew he’d have at least a little kick at the end, which meant this lap was the key lap, so he squeezed just a bit more energy out of his legs and aching chest, ignoring what it would do to him on the last lap if he held the effort that long.

  The trailblazer knew all he had to do was focus on the pacing marker, but over the next 100 meters it inexplicably inched out even further ahead of him, despite the increase in speed he’d already made…or rather thought he’d made. Coming into the backstretch he accelerated up into a low sprint and ate up a meter of the four he was behind, regretting it instantly as his already aching quads tripled in complaint. He felt his form starting to swim but held the effort, eating up another half meter by the 200 mark and feeling his tank emptying, but if he could only keep it close he’d have a shot at the end.

  The next 100 meters was a wash, keeping him 2.5 meters back of the glowing marker running ahead of him. Had it not been for the tracker there was no way he could have hoped to have gone this fast, and it was one of the more important, yet underrated pieces of technology in the sanctum, in that it allowed the Archons and other Star Force personnel to really work themselves into collapse so long as they could stubbornly stay with it.

  Paul inched up his effort again once he hit the straightaway, but the marker pulled back out ahead and he crossed the finish line with one lap to go being 3 meters back, at which point he pushed beyond all sanity, knowing with his legs being as wobbly as they were he couldn’t wait for the last 100. With his subconscious mind knowing he wouldn’t have to be retracing his steps again on the 400 meter track, it loosened up what was left of his energy reserves an
d he began closing in on the marker, eating up a full meter over the next 100 and pulling almost even with 200 to go.

  At that point he knew he had it, but he couldn’t mentally relax otherwise he’d fall back a bit. With his steps pounding a bit as his form suffered, he started stepping ahead and through the holographic marker.

  When he hit the final straight his form returned just a touch as he stretched out his legs, no longer having to hold the tilt in the turn, and the marker disappeared behind him as he accelerated up into as much of a full sprint as he could manage, gaining another 2 meters of distance on the marker over the final stretch.

  Paul coasted to a stop past the finish line, staying on his feet even though his legs were thoroughly gassed and he was feeling the downside of an ambrosia deficiency. He didn’t need to look at the clock, knowing that he’d breached a significant milestone just by beating the marker to the line. The other Archons who’d respectfully cleared out of lane 1 when he passed them by knew he was flying, but they didn’t understand how fast or how far he’d gone until they saw the clock, with jaws dropping in sequence as they worked their way around the track and found his finish time alongside the dozen others still counting on the virtual display board on the inside of the track.

  “Damn, Paul,” Addison-673 said as she ran by.

  Paul raised a hand to acknowledge her, but was too busy breathing to mouth a reply.

  What was your time? another Archon telepathically asked from across the track.

  Paul didn’t recognize the ‘voice,’ nor could he tell who the guy was who’d asked out of the group on the backstretch, but he did have the mental signature locked so he sent a quick reply on what he thought of as a ‘tight beam’ transmission.

  10:59.22

  Where’s that put you?