Starkindler (MechaVerse Series Book 1)

by Jeremy Cunkle

  He continued, “The cities will be the most resistant because of unions and empire mentality. We are outsiders with a better way of doing things, and that is going to make us enemies. So, that’s where we all gang up on the city, using sticks and carrots. The carrot is the extra tax revenue and jobs they will get, and we have to show that none of their fiefdoms will be threatened. LEADS is just an additional resource for them to provide for the citizens they are supposed to be taking care of. The stick is of course that we threaten to install our own candidate next time election comes around, and with the combined resources of everyone at that table there isn’t a way a Mayor can resist that kind of pressure.”

  “You proposed this as a way to make money. How exactly will that work?” Kurtis asked.

  “Once we identify a State and city to move into, we go to their Mayor or power broker and get them to institute a small recurring fee on all water bills. A household increase of five credits a month, commercial businesses will see an increase of twenty credits a month, and industrial businesses one hundred credits a month will be sufficient. We get the fees started a year before we move in so that the land we need to buy is already paid for, contracts for construction work are in place, and materials such as pipes, pumps, and glass are already being paid for before we even arrive. Each new facility can be built in about six months. The recurring fees will keep pace with construction because the facilities will be sized for the metro area they are servicing. In other words, a larger metro gets a larger facility, so the fee system pays for issues as they come up.

  Mikkhael continued after both of them recognized his logic. “There are only two areas to finance, and we already have companies that provide both services. The entire point of LEADS is for low-energy consumption, but there will still be a need for some offshore wind turbines and solar panels to power the water pumps. We will use size and scale on unwanted land to leverage volume during daylight hours when it’s warmest instead of running operations around the clock like other facilities. The sun is going to do all of our work for us as the process relies on mass evaporation, and we will get paid for it.”

  “After the city pays off the wind turbines and solar grids, then the recurring fees can be used to expand and maintain each facility. Three years after entering a city we can be break-even. Than we can sell a hundred year contract to someone for the cost of ten years of total fees, netting tens of millions of credits from each facility. The oil kingdoms will kill for this process. Add Mexico, Australia, Chile, China and all of Africa to our list of targets and we have hundreds of prime locations for future expansion. We can raise billions of credits in just a few years all through third parties doing the work for us while we sit back and finance the deals. And because we will be selling our already existing wind turbines and solar panels, we will boost those sales with high margins while getting our feet in the door for additional future sales. Fresh-water is a natural extension of what we are already doing.” Mikkhael said, out of breath from rushing through the explanation.

  “When you put it like that, it definitely sounds feasible. Count us in,” Kurtis said enthusiastically as he dug into the finer details of the project. Kiryl nodded in agreement, clearly already planning the idea out in his head.

  “Great! The other idea is simple as well. With wood being so expensive to come by and building materials moving to plastics and other non-renewable resources, we’ll start a factory that makes new pseudo wood products. We will need to hire teams of chemists and engineers, and where I want to start is taking bamboo and then shaving it down into a fine powder mixing it with powdered glass and maybe even keratin, say from clam shells. We’ll experiment with the formula, but basically a combination of those materials will all be taken and mixed together with glue, then put into a mold where it’s pressed and baked together just like bricks, but in the shape of traditional wooden beams. After the beams are baked, a sealant coating will be applied to make them nearly as fire resistant as traditional metal products. The coatings already exist they just aren’t used much right now, and then we sell our beams as premium products.” When he finished his explanation both Kurtis and Kyril were grinning in anticipation.

  Kurtis was the first to reply. “Vera and Alyona will love these ideas Mikkhael, we will get started right away. By the way, I have an update of my own. Aurora has managed to put everything together on her end, we just received clearance to open the Alice Springs base!”

  The three of them sat there in stunned silence at hearing the confirmation that their daring plan had just become a reality. From this moment on, there was no turning back, the solemnity of the decision weighed on them. “When can we take possession of the base?” Kyril asked.

  “We can head there right now, contractors have already arrived and are prepping it for our arrival as we speak.” Kurtis replied.

  “Well, we definitely need to call a team meeting then and it certainly won’t be dull.” Mikkhael said.

  Kurtis and Kyril chuckled nervously, the silence stretching for a moment before the three of them split up to prepare for the upcoming meeting and the enormous changes it would bring to their lives.

  * * * * *

  In the months that passed since their fateful decision, Kurtis quickly completed his hybrid super/quantum computer based off plans his parents left encrypted for him in a way that only he could crack. The unique computer system would be administered by an AI he named Aurora, which stood for dawn of hope. Now that she was completed, Aurora was one of the single most intelligent computational personas in the known galaxy, with advanced machine learning abilities allowing her to continue to evolve her skills and abilities according to new situations as they developed. Her initial role was to serve as the interface that bridged the gap between the group of friends, especially Mikkhael, and the Mech armor they built.

  Utilizing her abilities and combining them with their incredible financial assets, the group of friends moved rapidly in disseminating the technologies they found within the Alice Springs base. For her first mission, Aurora had been given the task of infiltrating the U.N.’s military network, inserting herself between separate UN bureaucratic branches that dealt with high-level operation decisions and a General with enough authority to authorize base level command decisions. The particular General they marked as their target was especially lazy in regards to his post, having attained the position via social connections and his ability to trade favors, not based off merit or skill. Therefore, the General over relied on his aides to perform the mundane duties of his position while he pursued other social interests, chiefly women and political power. In the inattentive General’s name, Aurora successfully petitioned for the base located on the outskirts of Alice Springs, Australia that their parents had worked at for years before they were killed to be successfully reopened, and then for the group of five to be commissioned as scientists at the base under incredibly detailed forged identities that she created.

  Although the UN military base at Alice Springs held many different functions, the primary reason for its existence had been the research center staffed by their parents and other scientists on their teams who were also killed in the massacre five years previous. In the infinite wisdom of politicians the galaxy over covering up abhorrent crimes that occur under their inattentive watch, the base had been immediately shut down in the wake of the scandal that resulted from the slaughter of 183 innocent civilians on that fateful day; without consideration for the work done up until that point. The equipment within the base had simply been powered down, covered with plastic, and then left in place to collect cobwebs. The UN military were desperate to forget the stain of that tragedy as quickly as possible.

  When the group took possession of the base, they found everything remained in essentially the state that it had been left in on the day their parents had last walked out, unaware they would never return. As Kurtis predicted, sky suits in every stage of completion covered vast amounts of the warehouses in the base, serving as the cover their p
arents used to research advanced Mech armor designs. The crown jewel to the entire operation they found in the half assembled state their parents stopped working on just before their deaths. In the largest clean room any of the five had ever imagined possible, behind so many layers of security they lost count, the five found justification for the future they chose. Seeing the suspicions they held of their parents true life’s work sitting nearly fully realized in front of them, the moment had revealed mixed emotions in each of them; for it meant that the group was able to pick up right where their parents had left off with only the learning curve required, which Aurora helped compensate for.

  They immediately set about getting up to speed, and with Aurora’s assistance, rapidly progressed through the final construction stages; uncovering their parents life’s work in the process, for the first time truly seeing who their parents were, the results of which were staggeringly unbelievable. As Kurtis deduced, their parents had split into small teams, working separately on individual components of Mech armor so advanced, the designs were generations ahead of what was currently available to the military forces on any planet.

  To achieve their goals, their parents formed an alliance with likeminded scientists on one of Saturn’s moons, Titan, and more importantly one of the half dozen places in the Sol system inhabited by humans outside of Earth or Mars. Scientists on Titan specialized in advanced technologies, becoming the galaxies new home for intellectuals free from persecution and the stringent government oversight that was increasingly crippling true innovation across the Sol system.

  In order to power their creation, the five conducted a technology swap with the government of Titan, the recognized leader in both miniaturized fusion technology as well as industrial scale; their scientists and engineers had been the ones to create the jump gates between Earth and Mars. The factories of Titan remained the sole human civilization able to forge the miniaturized fusion reactors that the advanced Mech armor the team were seeking to finish would require as its power plant. The energy cell reactors used by the Martian Planetary Defense Forces for their variants of Mech armor would be too underpowered for the pinnacle of technology they were creating.

  The human population that migrated to Titan was heavily comprised of scientists, artists and free thinkers. The receptive government that formed to welcome those enlightened souls became the modern reinterpretation of the ancient Greek city of Athens. On the other hand, the government of Mars Industries was the modern representation of every repressive totalitarian state frequently repeated through human history. Inevitably, the two disparate societies clashed repeatedly. With the proxy Martian government serving only to enrich humankind’s largest corporation ever created and the few on top who ran everything, the clashes between both societies gradually inched closer to barely concealed warfare as they fought in every arena imaginable for competing futures of the human race.

  The idea of common interests and mutual enemies was fact enough for the small team back in Alice Springs, Australia to find themselves allied with the interests of people on Titan, one which blossomed into mutual assistance with benefits for both sides who recognized the other’s potential as equals. With a miniaturized fusion reactor source established, the team set about final assembly of their Mech armor.

  Utilizing Aurora’s hacking abilities, activating and staffing the base in Alice Springs had been laughably simple. Once back in the place they once called home during better times of their lives, the five shed their guises entirely, working in the same hangars their parents toiled their years away in, secluded away from the rest of the minimally staffed base, shielded by impenetrably tight layers of private and military security. No one even questioned the group’s presence on the base; such was the ubiquity of government ultra-secret projects. The five remained under the radar, funding the project themselves, knowing that the easiest way to have attention paid to them and eventually be discovered was to ask for money from the government, and accept the accompanying oversight such credit infusions brought with them.

  Money itself was no object to the group of friends. The blood money they had been compensated with for the deaths of their friends and family had been wisely invested through the years, providing them with enviable returns, making them unimaginably wealthy by any standard. On top of their existing wealth, the vast investment the small group had made on the construction of the SkySail had been incredibly lucrative over the last few years, more than paying for itself. And once established at Alice Springs, the five had with some reluctance agreed to sell off their beloved home amongst the clouds, earning yet another outrageous fortune in the process. With a secure source of funding already established, the five took pride in every credit they spent, eagerly anticipating the day they would be able to use the corrupt governments own resources against itself in search of the justice that had been denied them all.

  Between Aurora’s new military contacts and their parents’ old reference list, the Mech armor they were designing rapidly took shape along with each of the supporting elements needed for combat superiority in any situation. Designs, materials lists, equipment, fabricating processes, armaments, sensors, and all the other advanced systems they could have had ever thought to include had been researched in detail by their parents who assembled everything only to die on the cusp of piecing everything together. Through their work, the team learned of their parent’s hatred for the corruption that infested the UN, as well as the Martian government that sought to benefit only a handful of people amidst a society of nearly a billion people and quickly growing. They reveled in the knowledge that their parents formed a pact, working together for over thirty years as they secretly laid the foundation for a revolution that they never lived long enough to see realized, dying on the cusp of its birth, but still managed in a roundabout way to pass the torch of those noble aspirations on to them.

  In their spare time, the group hashed out a plan of action using the simulator to anticipate world-level ripples of every future action they might take before it happened. In this way, Mikkhael would be able to best shape events when he arrived on Mars instead of simply responding to events as they occurred. They also used the simulator to test realistic combat scenarios, updating the environments in real time based on the specifications of parts used before they were installed. From the beginning, without any formal training or anyone to teach him, he learned by sheer repetition of actions, becoming infinitely adaptable. Because no one told him any particular thing was impossible, the only boundaries he fought against were his imagination and the simulated enemies he sparred against. Hours upon hours in simulated combat while piloting a constantly changing Mech armor undergoing continuous innovations meant that he was often forced to rely on non-traditional fighting methods just as much the capabilities of his unit. Not everything they built, changed, or added worked as intended, meaning that each day was an entirely new experience.

  Eight grueling months later, their parents’ design and all of the supporting elements were completed for the start of a new year that promised new beginnings the likes of which they would never have imagined even recently. The product of decades of their parents’ work standing ready to avenge their deaths. Alyona suggested naming their creation Starkindler, for the fact that Mikkhael’s mission was to reignite the Martian revolution until the slaves and rebels achieved freedom from the Mars Industries puppet government. The five immediately embraced the name and the ideal that it stood for.

  Now the only thing left to do was to thrust their plan into action, thereby hoping to change the fates of billions in the process.

  “Who are you?”

  “Me? I am no one. The more important question is what am I,

  What I represent.

  I am an idea.

  Immortal, relentless, tireless, I am righteous vengeance incarnate,

  I am untamed fury, ever vigilant, seeking those who deserve the finality of my wrath.

  Most importantly however, I am the idea that frees other ideas,r />
  I am Starkindler.”

  ~ Mikkhael Dreyfus

  Chapter 4 -

  Alice Springs, Australia January 2084

  “Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.” – Thomas Jefferson

  "It’s time," Kurtis said.

  Mikkhael looked around the small concrete grey room filled with decoratively uncomfortable chairs that only a government institution would buy, each of which was occupied by the friends he called family. The only ones left him in this world that he was preparing to leave. Alyona, Vera, Kyril and Kurtis had become much more important to him than any simple word could ever hope to define, and they surrounded him in those last quiet moments, having committed everything they were to their shared dream that he now personified. With their rapidly approaching irreconcilable act of soon to be violent defiance, the fives parents life’s work that they inherited and then placed their own stamp upon was about to pay off in the most extreme gamble they would ever undertake during their lifetime.

  Unbidden, the last eight months flashed through Mikkhael’s mind as he met each of his friends gazes one at a time; the time had passed in a blur of frenetic effort. Every waking moment since then they had spent working towards this one final moment. Each of them discovered a little bit more about themselves and their past in the process, only serving to harden their already firm resolve about what they were attempting. Having already performed the seemingly impossible task of fabricating a custom home for themselves; living permanently amongst Earth’s clouds without any need to ever land, the SkySail represented their proof of concept that they could accomplish the impossible. They already possessed the skills needed to attempt their latest shared challenge; a challenge they met head on and mastered; and now the result of their efforts stood nearby, patiently waiting to carry Mikkhael off to another planet where he would fight time and again not only for his life but millions of others.