by Aer-ki Jyr
Paul rolled his eyes as she walked off, but didn’t follow her. “One other thing, Ryan and I did some more digging. Turns out the swimmers sent a deactivation signal to the pyramid as they were leaving, ordering it to power down. That’s why everything was off when Davis originally found it.”
“Not everything,” Greg pointed out.
“I meant via sleep mode, not a power off.”
“Well that answers that question,” Jason said, referring to one of the last bits of the mystery surrounding Humanity’s origins on Earth. “Has Lens reported back yet?”
“Not yet,” Greg said, having kept in contact with the Archon responsible for their underwater operations. After discovering that the swimmers had infrastructure underneath the ocean that the Rit’ko’sor couldn’t get at, he’d been the first to head back to Atlantis in order to start an expedition to find, secure, and reclaim those locations for Star Force use. “They can’t travel that fast, so it’ll take at least another week.”
“Don’t suppose any of those super-squirters are still operational?”
“We know the ones to the mainland were knocked out, but the rest might be salvageable. Lens wants them, but wasn’t going to hop right in. He was concerned about bashing his ships against the sidewalls during transit and wasn’t sure how they avoided the problem.”
“He’ll want to set up his own network if they can get the bugs worked out, I assume?” Paul asked.
“If he can, it’ll expand our underwater colonies exponentially.”
“Paul, let’s go!” Morgan yelled from the back of the open Mantis.
Paul waved distractedly at her, but kept his focus on Greg and Jason. “How’s he set for Europa?”
“Game as always, but they’re having some trouble adapting to the cold,” Greg told him. “He thinks it’ll be another few years before we can transition to manned vessels.”
Paul nodded as another Mantis, this one a heavy model, slowed to a hover over a nearby landing pad and slowly dropped down to the surface. In the distance he could see several others approaching through the snow, carrying more of the construction supplies for the new sanctum…which also meant his Mantis needed to clear the pad.
“Better get going,” Jason suggested.
“I’ll get that personnel manifest to you by the end of the week,” Greg promised.
“I’ll hold you to that,” Paul said, backpedaling towards the boarding ramp. He threw his fellow Archons a two-fingered salute then jogged up the ramp and into the personnel compartment where Morgan and three support personnel were waiting.
“You are way too chatty,” she chided him as he sat down next to her. She handed him a datapad as the boarding ramp closed and the pilot lifted the small Mantis off the pad and accelerated away from the factory and back towards Atlantis.
Paul grabbed the pad and activated the external feeds, watching a heavy Mantis take their pad and begin to offload supplies and personnel before the snow obscured the camera view.
“You’ll be back again,” Morgan promised.
“Not for a while. I’m heading back to Venus and it looks like things are going to be accelerating from this point on. I’m going to have to leave the playground to the rest of you.”
“Not me. I’ve got work to do too.”
“Gotta keep pushing the limits so the rest of us can’t catch up?”
“Always. I’m still camping out at the main sanctum, but I’m trying to train an Archon strike force using only the second gen. I’ve got 53 going through preliminary drills. Hopefully at the end I’ll have three or four I can work with.”
“Strike force?”
“They need the help, and I was feeling generous. I’m basically trying to replicate one of our teams using my experience in place of the ingenuity they don’t have.”
“53, huh?”
“And?”
“They volunteer?”
“Yeesss,” she said with a strained voice.
“Oh, I’d love to watch that,” Paul said, cracking a smile. “They have no idea what they’re in for.”
“I’m starting them off slow. The point is to teach them, not break them…yet.”
“You’re all heart, Morgan.”
“Kurt and Will are doing the same thing,” she protested.
“Ah ha! That explains it. Gotta be number one and have the best team.”
“You’d be doing the same if you weren’t stuck off planet,” Morgan pointed out.
Paul considered that. “True. Is it just the three of you?”
“For now, but we’re getting so many new Archons that we don’t have enough field assignments for them and they don’t know what to do with themselves.”
“Train,” Paul said pithily.
“We would, but they’re not us. They need a competitive focus, so we’re going to start developing one.”
“Competitions?” Paul asked, his curiosity involuntarily spiking anytime that subject came up.
“Right now it’s experimental, to see if we can get them up to where we used to be before we all split up, but the theory is to split apart into ‘clans’ and battle it out to keep each other sharp.”
“Clans?”
“A la Battletech,” Morgan explained.
“Just hand to hand?”
Morgan hesitated. “I hadn’t thought about extending it further, but there’s no reason we couldn’t include pilots…and of course the mechs. Huh, I had a better idea than I thought.”
“Naval too.”
Morgan smiled. “Want a piece of the action?”
“I think we all will if this is going where I think it is.”
“A little side project in our spare time?”
“100 teams?”
“One for each of us…oh, I think I like that. Annual competitions? No, that’s too often. We can have team to team matchups periodically, but getting everyone together at the same time would be problematic. We can station each team out of the sanctums, which will keep people on hand in case of emergencies.”
“I can put one together on Venus easy enough. Think I’ll grab some volunteers on my way back there.”
“Alright, Khan Paul, let’s set this up formal like.”
“I think I liked Admiral better,” he said, blanking his datapad so he could begin filling it with notes as his head likewise filled with ideas. Competition had always been an essential part of their training, yet it had been lacking in any formal format since they’d graduated from their basic training. “Hand to hand, flying, naval, and mechs?”
“Lens will want aquatics too.”
“Not exactly my area of expertise,” Paul said, adding the fifth category.
“Which will force us to adapt,” Morgan said gleefully.
Paul smiled. “Point. We’re going to need more simulators in the sanctums, and predetermined challenges for the hand to hand…”
From there on the two Archons went on a nonstop planning binge for the entire trip back to Atlantis, then spent another three hours together setting up the logistics of their first ‘Clans,’ with Paul choosing the name Saber and Morgan electing to tag her already existing group Clan Ninja Monkey.
Paul bust out laughing when she told him that, but after a stiff forearm to the chest and a moment to think about it he admitted it was a good choice, even if it was a bit humorous. Then again, his Clan Saber moniker might also elicit some laughs when they saw that their symbol was going to be three crossed lightsaber blades.
He knew that those two names, as well as a host of other things they’d incorporated into their plans were going to spark a friendly, but intense internal war between the trailblazers…and he was eager to get a head start on the rest of them.
When Morgan and him finally split up Paul didn’t hop the first flight back to Venus, instead he headed across the ocean floor to their main sanctum that held more than 5,000 Archons in various stages of training. Given that Morgan had already chosen her core group, but had done so on the basis of a strike team,
that meant the best flyers, mech pilots, naval commanders, and the limited aquatics specialists were as of yet unclaimed.
Grinning from ear to ear Paul started sorting through their rosters, selecting the ones he wanted. The naval officers were easy to choose, given that he’d trained them all…but to be fair he didn’t snag all the top talent, picking two he knew were among the best then selecting a few younger Archons that showed good potential, giving him 5 there.
Then he went and selected 8 pilots, choosing them based on their attitudes as much as their training scores. A few had field experience, which was a plus, but he was more interested in choosing individuals that would fit into this overall plan for Clan Saber. With those he wanted added to his roster he went through the much harder task of choosing aquatics specialists.
Lens had the best ones working with him in the field, so there weren’t many stationed in the sanctum for Paul to scoop up and take back with him to Venus before the others had a chance to object, so he had to pick through what limited scores were available. Only 58 individuals even had an aquatics ranking, so Paul picked two of them and was looking for a third when an epiphany struck him.
He pulled up the files on all of Lens’s people, then started to stereotype them as much as he could, looking for trends in their other scores and eventually getting some partial results after two hours of study. Taking those, he selected 9 individuals he thought could be trained into the aquatics discipline by the experienced pair…and himself once he brushed up on Lens’ field notes.
Next he chose 6 solid hand to hand specialists, followed by 10 mech pilots. That left him 9 slots to fill, choosing highly skilled multi-taskers that had displayed an ability to adapt well. That gave him the core 50 he and Morgan had agreed upon, with the balance of the remaining Archons either to be assigned after the core teams had been formed or left unassigned for field work or additional training, which all new graduating classes would be shunted into.
43 of his 49 fellow Sabers were currently in the ocean floor sanctum, with the others already on Venus or deployed elsewhere off planet, which he would divert back to the Venus sanctum as soon as their current assignments allowed for it. Before Morgan or anyone else could stop him, he rounded up all of his new Clan and pulled rank, assigning a Cougar in low Earth orbit to come pick them up and carry them out to the high orbit starport. From there they would catch a inter-planetary starship out to Venus…which Paul had just given orders to delay its departure and wait for them to come out.
Being the unofficial fleet commander did have its privileges, after all.
Roger and Liam probably would have done the same thing, but they were still playing back in the pyramid and had no clue what was going on, and Paul was going to stick it to them while he had the advantage.
While his new recruits were packing he had a load of simulator equipment collected from Atlantis’s stores, extra sparring gear, and 14 support staff with trainer credentials, including one cranky old miser by the name of Jenkins that insisted on bringing his wife and kids along, wanting to have relocated to another planet for some time but never truly feeling comfortable leaving Atlantis. Paul had convinced him to come out of ‘retirement’ to help his Clan kick some ass, and that was something that Jenkins simply couldn’t resist. He immediately volunteered and informed his family of the sudden move, eliciting a cheer from his six children, who’d long romanticized living in space.
Paul stopped by to see Davis before he and the others shipped out, informing him of their grand scheme and how he was getting a jump on the others. The Director shook his head approvingly, not the least bit surprised that they’d had another brainstorm that would make the Archon ranks even more efficient and powerful than they already were.
When Paul laid out the Battletech example they were copying the concept intrigued Davis. He pried him for more information and Paul saw a gleam fill his eye, after which the Director suggested that they take the project one step further and set up Clan infrastructure to accommodate the training groups and give them a greater sense of internal identity. In the case of Venus, they’d add another wing to the sanctum, maybe two if another clan wanted to set up there.
Paul took the offer happily, knowing that Davis had something else up his sleeve but dismissed the suspicion to the recesses of his mind as he didn’t want to spend any more time in Atlantis than he needed to. Normally he liked visiting the city that he called home, but right now all he could think about was getting back to Venus and start building his new Clan.
Davis could see the eagerness as well, so he didn’t hold him any longer than necessary. After Paul left his office, the Director put in a call to one of his requisitions officers, asking for any and all material from the now obsolete Battletech franchise that he could track down.