Star Force: Headstrong (SF72)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  If Clan Ninja Monkey was going to survive this they’d have to do it by becoming far stronger than they were now, and Morgan relished that make or break necessity. As much as she liked training, she felt she belonged on the battlefield where the outcome mattered to more than your stats. Winning and losing here affected people’s lives and the balance of power in this swath of space, and Morgan intended to stake out her little piece of the border so those systems on the other side could develop in peace and contribute to other fronts while Clan Ninja Monkey took the heat here.

  So far the rest of the coreward border was quiet, with Morgan having succeeded in drawing the lizards’ attention to her little piece, for that’s where the extra resources and troops were going. In that way she was protecting a far larger border than just her handful of systems could cover. It was a taunt that was getting more of a response than she’d imagined, as well as having the bonus effect of being able to fight the lizards when they were trying to win. She feared everyone else was getting soft in their expectations on the fronts they were winning on, for the lizards didn’t truly expect to hold those.

  Here it seemed they thought they could and were actually trying, and potentially succeeding if Morgan couldn’t beat them. That meant this combat would give her troops far more experience than any other front, and that fit right into her plans. She just hoped the lizards didn’t come so hard at her so fast that she’d have to retreat and pull back to a couple of systems. If they were playing the probing game then she had time, and that was what she expected to get. A few systems here or there didn’t mean a damn to the lizards. They were focusing here for other reasons, and she expected them to give her just enough resistance to see how much her Clan could and couldn’t do.

  Keeping her hand concealed so they couldn’t push her past that limit was the trick, and the longer that time went on the harder it would be to do that.

  Morgan went through all the recent reports then shut down her terminal and slid into bed. This wasn’t a game, and it certainly wasn’t a walk in the park. She knew she was going to have more difficulty here than on any other front…which meant this was exactly where she was supposed to be.

  Twelve hours from now she’d be back down on the planet hunting more lizards being dropped from orbit, but for right now she let herself disconnect from everything and just rest. This was going to be a long war, with her ability to sustain herself and her Clan being the key to victory. Get wore down, even a little, and it would snowball into defeat.

  Rest was a weapon, and one Morgan had learned to make full use of a long time ago.

  After seven minutes of pillow time she slipped into sleep, her mind quiet and her body numbing to the regenerative process. When she woke the next morning she’d snap back into action, with that polarity being a skill that most Archons never fully mastered.

  2

  February 2, 2848

  Anivia System (Delta Region)

  Frostbite

  Busy? Taryn’s mental voice asked.

  Come in, Ginsi answered a moment before the trailblazer walked through her quarters’ door, though she remained at her comm terminal reading.

  “What are you working on?”

  “Nothing,” the newly minted padawan said as Taryn walked up behind her chair and scoped out the flatscreen display. “Just reading a message from Mina.”

  “You two still keep in contact?”

  Ginsi nodded. “She’s a friend and I’m feeding her workouts. You’d be surprised what kind of nonsense is floating around out there despite people having grown up in a maturia.”

  “You have no idea,” Taryn said patiently while Ginsi finished up. Her apprentice typed back a short reply and sent it off, then spun around and looked up at her.

  “What’s up?”

  “Something big.”

  “I like big.”

  “The reason we came here for training wasn’t for the view,” Taryn said, referencing the frozen wasteland that was Frostbite. “We’ve been given a long term assignment, and I’m going to want as much input from you as possible. You’re not just here to tag along.”

  “What is it?” Ginsi said with a frown. The ‘long term’ part threw her.

  “We’re going to uplift a ward.”

  The padawan’s eyebrows raised. “A ward?”

  “The Hepcha, actually. They’ve been climbing in status for a long while and we felt it was time to bring them fully into the fold.”

  “Do we need to? I mean with the Protovic we’ve already got a huge upgrade to our lineup underway.”

  “We can multitask. The Hepcha have earned this, and it’s up to us to incorporate them as best we can.”

  “What’s there to do? They already have a Star Force society.”

  “We have to make them independent and combat capable.”

  “They’re avian, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many of them are there?”

  “Right now there are only 1.2 billion, but we’ve been keeping their population low by choice. They’re egg layers so it’s not an issue, save for now we’ll be boosting those numbers considerably.”

  “Aren’t there other races better suited to ground combat that we could incorporate? The Lacvamat haven’t exactly been all that helpful.”

  Taryn tapped Ginsi on the forehead with her finger. “You’ve got your head stuck in hand to hand combat. Avian is different, and while there are a lot of weaknesses they do have advantages. We’ve got to tailor the Hepcha to make them effective.”

  Ginsi shrugged. “If you say so.”

  “Not overly thrilled, are you?”

  “You know I prefer combat.”

  “But you’re my apprentice, and I’m taking this assignment…therefore you are as well. There’s more to being an Archon than just fighting, though if that’s your aim there will be plenty of opportunity for that to come. Look at this as a peak into an area that you’ll probably never otherwise see. And if it helps your mental outlook, consider what we’re going to be doing as crafting living weapons. The Calavari weren’t that good on the ground before we got through training them. Don’t count the Hepcha out just yet.”

  “If you say so. They’re one of the wards in this system, aren’t they?”

  “Yep.”

  “So we’ll be living with them?”

  “No, they’ll be living with us. There’s a generic colony that’s been built on Preen for our purposes. We’ll expand and reconfigure it as necessary, but it’ll be built for both Human and Hepcha by the time we’re done with it.”

  “What’s it built for now?”

  “Axius design so we could be flexible from the get go.”

  “An extra they had or specifically for us?”

  “Axius built it…for us.”

  “Ok then, where do we start?”

  “After morning workouts we’re transferring over there along with a team I’ve been assembling. Work like this has no roadmap, despite others having done similar things with other races. Each one is unique and we have to troubleshoot our way through it.”

  “Don’t you mean trailblaze?”

  “Or that.”

  “Who oversaw the Lacvamat elevation?”

  “Connor. I’ve read through all his notes and I’d suggest you do so as well, I’ve already given you access, but don’t make the mistake of assuming all avians are the same. Hepcha have four wings and feathers. The Lacvamat have two and are flesh. That right there is going to make their movement capability different.”

  Ginsi held up her hands. “Alright, alright. I hear you. What exactly do you want me to do?”

  “Think outside the box and find a way for these guys to kick ass.”

  Ginsi’s frown turned into a smirk. “You do know how to press my buttons, don’t you?”

  “Perception isn’t about lies, but rather the best way to approach a situation. You see them as they are, I see them as for what they will become.”

  “Honestly I don’t know cr
ap about them other than what I read through in the maturia a long time ago.”

  “No rush. This is going to take a long time. First things first, though. Our training doesn’t end, we just cram it into a long morning session and extend our days out to 36 hours. That’ll give us plenty of sleep and the necessary hours to tinker with the Hepcha civilization.”

  “That’s still a cutback.”

  “If you’re measuring by volume, yes. But it’s a far less cutback than we’d see if we were out fighting the lizards.”

  “You have a point there.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll still have a chance to soar up through the ranks.”

  “Only if you teach me the psionics I need. Without them I’m capped.”

  “Academically. No one is physically capped.”

  “You know what I mean, and…”

  “No, I’m not giving you all of them first year. One at time, youngling.”

  Ginsi growled. “Yes, master.”

  Taryn pointed a warning finger down at her. “Don’t call me ‘master’ or I’ll go Vader on you. Get dressed and meet me in the sanctum. We’ve got a lot of work to do here and I’m going to make you pay for that comment.”

  “I like more workouts,” Ginsi countered as she stood up and walked over to her quarter’s closet and began taking off her casual uniform to replace it with more appropriate workout attire.

  “I didn’t say more workouts, I’m just not going to hold back as much as normal. Be prepared for a few bruises,” Taryn said as she walked out.

  “You’re all heart, mast…” Ginsi whispered until her throat suddenly tightened up from a telekinetic chokehold.

  Not funny, she told Taryn who was still walking away in the hallway outside her quarters. The titan held her until she got out of range, then the invisible grip disappeared and she could breathe normally again.

  “Prick,” she said as she pulled out a jog bra and put it on. And to think she’d been thrilled when a trailblazer had taken her on as an apprentice. Right now that didn’t seem like a good idea, for there were days when she really wanted to kick Taryn’s ass…but she was far too strong for her to do that, and the titan didn’t mind flaunting that fact from time to time.

  “One day,” she said, pulling on her running shoes and snugging them up before heading out and down to the sanctum in the Axius colony where they were staying…and soon to be leaving.

  Ginsi sat down in the command center they’d just claimed and put her feet up on a station as Taryn took center stage amidst several dozen support personnel that she’d chosen to head the Hepcha ‘uplift’ process. The padawan had ultimately decided just to play the support banana on this one and learn what she could in the process, because it really wasn’t something she was interested in. Her focus was on her skills and her skills alone for that day in the hopefully distant future when Star Force went up against the V’kit’no’sat…and she intended to be the one fighting them, not an army of Hepcha.

  “The work that has been done with the Hepcha thus far,” Taryn began as she pulled up a hologram of the race that floated larger than life midair above her head, “has been commendable, but it’s been based around the fact that Star Force would provide them everything they needed rather than them providing for themselves. This is necessary in wards, as well as a way to help them detox from whatever life they lived previously…which is usually a pretty bad one if we’re taking them on as wards.”

  “There’s word floating around that there are a few other wards that are teetering on reaching elevation status, but none have accomplished as much as the Hepcha have. They are eager to join our ranks and that is why we’re here. We’re not forcing this, so let’s just guide the flow and let them find out how far they can climb. Biggest drawback we have is their lightweight frame,” Taryn said, pointing above her.

  “Good for flying, but little else. The feathers are also problematic. Lacvamat just use conical capture to achieve flight, but the Hepcha filter it through their wings on the upbeat. Armor won’t allow for that. We can armor their midsection and put extra strong shielding over their wings, but it looks like an anti-grav component will need to be added instead. That won’t leave much armor volume, so we’ve got a challenge to solve there.”

  “They’re smaller than the Lacvamat and barely bigger than a cat, but experiments with growth enhancements derived from the drugs that the Knights use have enlarged a segment of them to about 2/3rds Lacvamat size. I intend to keep this binary divide in their society and make use of both advantages. The smaller Hepcha will have combat uses, we just have to figure out what those are. They will probably be support oriented, but you never know. Axius has some very clever ways to make the smaller races combat viable, and it’s our job to copy, steal, or invent our own for these guys.”

  “Neural interface is going to be key, because they have very little button pressing capability, which essentially comes down to their talons…which they have to stand on…and their beak. We’re going to look to Scionate designs for inspiration there, given that they also use a lot of backup mouth controls. We need manual backups, of course, but we also need manual interfaces for civilian applications. Save the neural links for combat. Some work in this has already been done under the ward system, but I’ve looked through what they’re living with and it’s too damn inefficient. Way better than what they used to have, but not good enough for me.”

  “One thing that we are creating new is glide corridors, and I’ve already got the techs working in a section of the city on prototypes. Due to their small size we should be able to carve out tunnels above the Human walkways for them to move through. Since they need to be small, we’re going to have repulsor buffers in them so they can just dive in and coast. They won’t hit the walls or have to flap their wings, just ride it through like a one-way waterslide.”

  Ginsi raised a hand to get Taryn’s attention. “Is there such a thing as a 2-way waterslide?”

  Rather than getting mad the trailblazer considered that. “I don’t think so, but now that you’ve mentioned it I think we have to build one…but not here. Water is a no go around these guys. Wet their feathers and their flight capability gets chopped. They can manage it, but it’s like putting a heavy backpack on before you go running. That said, aquatics is still a go because they won’t ever be swimming without gear. Some of the preliminary tests that Lens ran indicate they have good aptitude for maneuvering in currents and at high speeds, which is probably pathetically slow to what they’re used to doing in the atmosphere. We are developing an aquatics division for the Hepcha, and there are currently zero people in it right now, so we’ll have to build it from scratch.”

  “What they do have is a significant aerial division, piloting skeets, Valeries, and a few other craft. Nothing original to them, so that’s going to have to change. They also have a handful of individuals fighting with Axius on the ground, and we want to look through those combat records very carefully. They have no naval or mech divisions, and the first thing we want to look into is getting them a cargo fleet. I’m going to bring in some Kiritak to help with that and run what we set up so they can get some experience without the entire operation being a newbfest.”

  “But first priority is this colony and the infrastructure. We’ll tolerate it as is, but we need to come up with firm designs before we start building elsewhere. That means theorizing, creating prototypes here, and testing them with the population we start to pull over from the wards. We are doing nothing on theory, and everything from practical experience. Clear?” she asked, getting a few confirmation nods.

  “These guys are looking to us for guidance and we’re going to give it to them. Don’t make guesses, and bring anything unclear to me. I’d rather not give them something than give them something faulty that we then have to replace. Every step they take is one forward, we’re not having them go backwards. Trust is a commodity that you can’t replace, so don’t squander it. Route everything through me except where I say otherwise. I�
�m the face of this transformation so feed into that. You’re just my little minions working behind the scenes…save for the big minion over there that is my mini-me.”

  “Mini?” Ginsi asked, for she was almost exactly the same height and weight as Taryn.

  “You and I will be on the same page, so you’ll be able to speak for me to the Hepcha. We’re a team, but the rest of you will be disconnected from them as far as image holds. You’ll be integrated with them on projects and living side by side, but you’re the hired help. I’m the one that has to get this done. Don’t take that as an insult, because it’s not. You guys can come and go as needed. You can be reassigned to another system or leave the project entirely. I cannot. I’m in this for the long haul. So we’re going to structure their social understanding of the conversion down to me and my padawan. We’re the figureheads…and actual ones…leading this. The rest of you have your work, but you’ll be nameless and interchangeable. Focus on your tasks and I’ll take the hero worship. I’m told that it happens with all the races that we uplift and I don’t want you getting involved in it.”

  “What I said may not make sense now, but just remember it and in time you’ll understand. Don’t let it become personal. I’ll give you tasks and you’ll complete them. You are not becoming part of the Hepcha community like an Axius colony. You’re separate. You may cross paths with them but don’t let yourselves become standard bearers. Don’t let them get to know you or else they’ll pattern off of you. Let them focus on me and Ginsi while you analyze them. Keep your distance or your perception might slip. We have to make changes to them in order to get them up to speed and I don’t want you empathizing with them because they’re, as some people have already stated, cute.”

  “Cute or not they want this and we’re going to give it to them. That means a lot of work and training on their part. If they see you making excuses for them they’ll think that’s acceptable. It is not unless I say it is, so let them get their cues from me. You just remain pleasantly neutral.”