Star Force: Trailblazer (SF4)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  “I know,” Wilson agreed. “We’ve got our work cut out for us…but at least we’ve learned something today.”

  “What?” Gent asked.

  “They just taught us how to blockade a planet,” the lead trainer said with an obvious note of respect. “Now we can take that and make it more intense.”

  “How?”

  “I’ve got a few ideas already, but once we bounce it around with the design team I’m confident we’ll come up with something…interesting.”

  “After the other nine teams get through with this one, you mean?”

  Wilson looked away from the window and across his shoulder at Gent. “My condolences,” he offered sarcastically.

  6

  One month later…

  Morgan sat in a simulator pod, one hand on a control board roller and the other on a joystick as she fired off medium-sized rail gun rounds at semi-distant moving targets. A hit counter glowed in red numbers in the upper right hand corner of the display screen, counting down from 500. The individual challenge would end when it hit zero and would be scored according to time, with a par of 22:35 needed for passing.

  Morgan’s counter currently read 167, but there was no clock to keep track of the time, so she had to shoot as fast and as often as she could, slipping into a time-distorting zone where nothing existed aside from her trigger finger and the targets. She was peripherally aware of the count, but tried not to get distracted by it or anything else, knowing that a mental lull would cost her precious seconds. She kept the sluggish targeting reticule moving constantly, predicting where the distant dots were going and firing ahead of them as they crisscrossed the screen on random headings.

  Fortunately for this challenge all the target spheres, each the size of a bus, were moving along linear tracks…meaning they weren’t maneuvering and their courses were predictable. The main problem with tracking the spheres was that the rail gun, a magnetically accelerated metal bullet the size of her arm, had a delay from trigger pull to impact. This meant she had to lead her targets, which were spaced at varying distances.

  The larger the sphere, the closer it was, and vice versa, meaning a short delay for the big ones and a multiple second delay for the tiny ones, which were the hardest to hit. The roller underneath her left hand controlled the zoom function, with her using it constantly to pull in and out as she alternated between close and distant targets. All together, her hands were constantly busy, moving about in the jerky twitches typical of most action-oriented video games.

  This ‘game’ though was based on a real weapons system that Star Force had quietly been field testing at one of its orbital facilities. The medium sized slugs were designed as a basic ship to ship weapon, with the smaller, more conventional ‘bullets’ used in a rapid fire device primarily used for short range defense. The large slugs, each the size of an Olympic bobsleigh but without the hollow core, were a heavy weapon prototype that had only undergone minimal field testing at low speeds, but enough data had been gathered to extrapolate the dynamics of the firing system and create the gunnery program for the trainees to familiarize themselves with.

  Morgan hadn’t gotten to the large slug challenge yet, but had already passed the light rounds, using them to shoot down incoming missiles in the simulation. The spheres that she was currently shooting at were designed to represent small ships and a single hit from one of the medium slugs at 890 m/s would be more than sufficient to core all the way through the hull and out the other side of an unarmored ship, while significantly damaging or even destroying a hardened one.

  The weapon system had a fire rate of 5.4 seconds, though for this challenge she was shooting from a quad battery on sequenced firing, giving her a shot every 1.35 seconds. Still, to beat par time she had to average 2.7 seconds per kill, which kept her firing constantly with an unlimited supply of simulated ammo.

  Her screen was full of moving dots but they were spaced out, some on the far left and right, but also some way up and down, meaning Morgan had to continually tilt the turret using the joystick to even be able to see all the targets. Random as their movements were, they appeared in clusters, and after the first two tries she had established a dance-like pattern to her targeting movements where she would zoom in on an area, fire off several shots ahead of where the dots were moving, then roll her view back to a wide screen view, select another dot filled area, joystick her way over to it, then zoom in again.

  This left her not even able to see if her shots hit the targets or not, because by the time the simulated slugs got to the spheres she was already firing at others.

  Which was why she occasionally glanced up at the hit count to make sure she wasn’t missing. She had to trust in her accuracy…which was usually spot on…but given the varying distances, angles, and speeds of the spheres she had to make a mental recalculation almost every shot she took, though that wasn’t altogether unlike the other marksmanship challenges she’d gone through, but these new naval gunnery simulations were the most target rich environments she’d seen to date.

  Her high score on the light rounds currently had her in 8th place, though that could change as others went back and tried the challenge again, as she might if time allowed, but for the moment the best gunners weren’t in the overall top 10 rankings, save for Jason who currently sat in 9th, but he wasn’t a real points threat to her lead at the moment, given that Morgan’s other gunnery scores traded off with his, keeping her overall lead intact.

  Prior to the rail gun challenges Morgan had worked her way through the other two space weapon systems currently available to Star Force…lasers and missiles, though they too were primarily in the developmental stages. After going through all three varieties, Morgan found that she highly favored the lasers for their accuracy and range, even if they offered the least kill power. There was no visible lag from trigger pull to impact with the beams traveling at the speed of light, unlike the slow moving slugs that she was currently firing or the even slower missiles.

  In fact, it was Morgan who had insisted on the 6s using laser weapons to pass their first naval team challenge less than a week ago. The 2s had passed the blockade challenge early on, but the other teams had spent two weeks trying to figure it out before the 8s finally found a way. Morgan and her 6s had been almost the last to pass, beating out the 1s by a day, and having to use an extraordinary amount of resources to do it…which incurred a heavy points penalty.

  Her team had eventually come up with the tactic of saturating low orbit with thousands of small armed satellites over the target zone…which thanks to the mechanics of this challenge could be accomplished by placing them in the appropriate orbital positions at the beginning of the simulation instead of having to deploy them around the entire planet. It was a bit of a cheat, but Morgan and the others knew that passing and moving on to the next challenge was the bottom line, so they’d pulled out all the stops and threw everything they had at the endeavor.

  Using missiles to track and down the blockade runner had been their first tactic, but the gaps between satellites had been too large and the speed of the fleeing ship nullified most of the missiles’ usefulness unless they were pre-fired towards an estimated intercept point…which had been their second idea.

  After days of repeated failure Morgan had insisted that they try long range lasers and ‘sting it to death’ with the low powered weapons. After working on the firing program and filling the area with as many satellites as the simulation would allow, which pegged out at 5,643, they ran through the first simulation, watching as the satellites auto-fired on the target with no manual input or flying required.

  The blockade runner flew through the satellite field and escaped in short order, taking a few hits in the process. Morgan and the others ran it again and again, making alterations in the distribution pattern of the satellites and tweaking their designs until, on the 36th attempt, their defense grid succeeded in getting a lucky hit on the aft end of the cockpit that triggered a small internal explosion which destabilized the
thrust and sent the blockade runner spinning about erratically…granting them a ‘win’ on the scenario.

  Their points score was extremely low, as were those of all the teams save for the 2s, who had succeeded in snatching the overall team lead by tripling the 7s’ score and besting the 6s’ by a factor of 5. They had, not unexpectedly, been mum as to how they had achieved such a high score and moved on to the second team challenge, and then the third while the others struggled just to pass the first.

  As of now, there were four available team naval challenges, all of which the 2s had passed, and while they waited for the trainers to release the 5th they were wisely using the spare time to go back and try to scrape up additional points on the completed challenges that allowed for multiple retries, some of which were more than a year old.

  Morgan envied their success, which she had heard was due in no small part to Paul, who had been besting everyone in the individual naval challenges, save for the gunnery drills, which Morgan was using to negate some of the points bleeding. He had risen from 10th to 4th in the individual ranks in less than a month, and even as everyone else began to get accustomed to the space warfare simulations, Paul still maintained a considerable skill gap on everyone else, which was more than compensating for his lack of swimming skills.

  That meant trouble for Morgan, though she still maintained a sizeable points lead, because the naval challenges would take up a significant portion of the run-up to their final stage of training, which was due to start in a couple months if their current progression held, though with the setbacks everyone but the 2s had been experiencing, that timetable might get delayed.

  They were still going through a myriad of other challenges simultaneously, but if Paul’s and the 2s’ dominance in the naval disciplines held up, they’d run away with the team title and he might even knock her off the individual lead…which meant she had to buckle down and grab as many points as she could in his weak areas, or in this case his slightly weaker gunnery skills.

  Paul’s laser scores were currently lower than Morgan’s by about 11% and he was currently working on the small missile challenge, which they’d dubbed as ‘intercepts’ for the little spitballs’ ability to track and take down larger, slower moving missiles. Her score there had been average, and she didn’t think he’d be able to easily beat it, but she was planning on going back to it and the others later if need be to scrape up some more points.

  Right now she was ahead of him in the individual challenge cycle, progressing through simulations that he hadn’t worked up to yet or had chosen not to tackle at this stage. Each of the trainees were on their own personal schedule, but Morgan had made a point out of getting ahead of the others so she could take the time if need be and double back to try and raise her old scores, much as the 2s were doing now as a team.

  Then again, if she scored extremely high the first time through she wouldn’t have to go back again, which was why she was hammering this particular challenge. Though there was no clock to go by, she could feel her targeting mojo flowing and tried to dive into it as much as possible. She was so focused and, to be honest, slightly numb from the constant targeting, that she didn’t even realize when she’d finished and visible shook when the targets suddenly disappeared and her stats popped into view.

  It took her a good three seconds to realize what was going on, then smiled slightly when she noticed her time was 19:47…the best to date by any of the trainees, and a score that she doubted Paul would even come close to.

  Morgan rubbed her eyes as she assessed her current condition. She wasn’t brain fried yet, but her hands were a little numb from gripping the controls with such intensity. She pulled up her watch in front of her face so she could see in the dim light, confirming that she had time for another two runs.

  Taking a slow, calming breath, Morgan reset the terminal and readied herself to jump back into the targeting frenzy. If she was going to earn top honors then she needed to stick it to Paul as much as she could, and that meant getting back into the zone before she lost the mojo so, bleary eyed or not, it was time to keep cracking.

  She restarted the program and picked up from where she had left off, nailing the first dozen targets quicker than she had the previous time, she thought. There was something to be said for not taking breaks during training, because the body and mind adapted to the task at hand, whatever that may be, and right now it seemed she was adjusting into a rail gun zombie…which was exactly what she needed if she was going to improve over her last score.

  Power-napping worked wonders for recovery, but it also would take one out of the zone, which was why Morgan rarely rested during the day and forced herself to stay active until the evening, while most of the others would catch a quick nap during lunch or in between sessions if they finished early. It had been painful for her at first, but she believed that it now gave her a wiry edge to her focus, emotions, and senses as well as an increased ability to delay fatigue when it arose that the other trainees lacked.

  That was one insight that she had kept to herself, and no one else had appeared to take notice of her mildly atypical behavior, which was fortunate. If she wanted to be the best of the best…which she very much did…then she was going to need to use every trick in the book to stay ahead of her fellow trainees, for they were truly beasts, in every aspect of the word. Morgan didn’t have a single top score in any of the subcategories, with her best being a 7th in agility drills.

  No matter how proficient she got in one area, there was always a dozen or so trainees that would best her, even though she tried diligently to outwork them, though not always succeeding, but even when she did it was never enough. They were too good in their specialties for her to match, but she never completely gave up trying.

  The single most important reason she was leading in the overall points race wasn’t that she came into the training with a load of skills, but that she learned and adapted faster than the others. Second most important was the fact that she didn’t appear to have any weak areas, unlike Paul who had swimming as his Achilles heel. Most of the others had at least a couple areas where their scores dipped significantly, but Morgan didn’t, due in part to the fact that she worked hard on every new discipline until she mastered it. Passing a challenge wasn’t enough for her…she felt that she had to conquer each one to the point where she became confident and comfortable in her skills.

  Morgan was nearing that point now with the rail gun challenge, though to attain true confidence she needed to be able to pass the par time repeatedly and not just get by it once or twice out of sheer luck. Though she didn’t know it, she did rank first in another stat…that being number of individual challenge attempts. She was running a good 30% higher than the others because no matter what was thrown out before her, she obsessively had to beat it, learn from it, and then own it.

  When she eventually ran out of time for this individual challenge session, she left the simulator room bleary eyed enroute to the training parks and another team challenge in the jungle zone. By the time she got to the equipment room she’d shaken off the screen-staring haze and was ready to have at the turret-laden gauntlet run, completely focused on the challenge at hand and not the 36 seconds she’d shaved off her rail gun challenge.

  Dwelling on the past was something Morgan didn’t indulge in, and celebration had always seemed to fall into that category for her. She preferred to live in the moment, with an eye towards the future and the challenges that lay beyond…always in motion and never stagnant.

  With paintball rifle in hand and personal shield slung over her back, Morgan and the rest of the 6s headed off down the connecting tunnel towards the jungle park and the dense foliage that easily hid the annoying turrets, setting her mind to the task of getting past them to the end of the course, scoring more points for both herself and her team.

  7

  Paul took a seat in one of the desk-like simulator pods, sealed the hatch behind him, and brought up individual challenge F-5C. The lighting turned dim and
the wide screen in front of him displayed a large space station similar to those currently used by Star Force, but one much more compact with the rotating disc plate nearly obscured beneath blocky add-ons, most of which were covered with thick armor plates.

  It was a defense station…and Paul’s mission was to destroy it as efficiently as possible given unlimited resources. On a popup menu at the bottom of his screen was a choice of different ships, weapons, and fighters he could select for his attacking fleet, but he ignored them all and studied the station closely. The key, he knew, was in identifying the defensive capabilities and tailoring his forces to exploit its weaknesses.

  He smiled approvingly as he noticed several upgrades to the trainers’ designs. Placed on multiple corners of the blocky double-pyramid shaped structure were weapons pods…two heavy lasers coupled with a light chain gun for point defense.

  A week ago Paul had passed another individual challenge in which he had to design a small station to defend against incoming missile attack, and that triple weapon pod had been part of his solution. Now it seemed the trainers were going to use his own adaptations against him. He felt a bit of sarcastic pride at having taught them so well.

  He rotated the camera view around the station, identifying more weapons emplacements. The designers had gone to excessive lengths to make this a difficult target to take down, equipping it with not one, but two heavy rail guns which would knock a hole in any capital ships that Paul chose to deploy. Furthermore, the defense station had enough medium rail gun batteries and quad laser turrets peppering the hull to rack up heavy damage against any large scale attacking force.

  They’d even covered against a drone attack by placing point defense light lasers and missile intercept clusters at strategic positions around the station to avoid any blind spots that the tiny, remote-controlled weapons platforms could hide in. He’d heard that some of the 3s had wreaked havoc with the little devices in the second team challenge when the trainees had been tasked to hijack an armed convoy. They’d successfully chewed away at the escort vessels with their small lasers from blind spots in the ships’ firing zones, and based off this station’s defensive schematic, the design team had guarded themselves against that tactic being employed again.