The Core failed. There had been three Colonies dedicated to the station. One Core was nearby, its death-signal being broadcast by all its components. The undirected ones were from the third Colony, which indicated that its Core had either been destroyed too rapidly to transmit a death-signal or removed from the vicinity.
The Colony pulled itself together inside the station. Fires flickered around it, and it detected millions of undirected Components drifting around. The Core reached out, attempting to reach another Core.
The Core failed. There had been three Colonies dedicated to the station. One Core was nearby, its death-signal being broadcast by all its components. The undirected ones were from the third Colony, which indicated that its Core had either been destroyed too rapidly to transmit a death-signal or removed from the vicinity.
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As usual, Aetna was.
On an analytical level, he understood that most AI did not spend the majority of their time online. That had always surprised him slightly—they could do most, if not all things better than Terrans, but they had a strange aversion to allowing Aetna’s kind to perform even the simplest tasks for them. Dolor was one of those worlds. The ones that, for no real reason, no-one really wanted, and therefore was allowed to rather go to rot.
First off, there was the atmosphere. It was largely composed of a chemical that bore a strong resemblance to ricin. That was supposedly problematic or something. A Warrior-class Carrier was, arguably, the most complex object that the Terran species had ever created. Armed with over five hundred drones, possessing a complement of a dozen Ictarid- and Lepid-class gunboats, escorted by a four-ship Destroyer Squadron. The Carrier itself was built to be capable of functioning as a massive railgun due to its unique twin-needle design, and equipped with an antimatter loom in each bow, it could deal out any level of destruction its commander thought necessary, from hunting down enemy starships, destroying in-system defenses, levelling a city, or hurling an asteroid at a world at half the speed of light.
“The Phantom’s been in service longer than you’ve been alive, kids.” the Coronan said, shaking his head knowingly. Commander F’vor’s UTF uniform had the word ‘PLANKOWNER’ stitched across the back in faded gold letters, a highly unofficial modification. “She was the lead boat of her class, the first Human ships to use cloaking technology.”
Seth stiffened as the man said the word ‘Human’. While it was technically synonymous with Terran, its meaning had become, over the past few decades, equally synonymous with the Imperiata and its doctrine of ‘Soleon Supremacy’. The news was filled with noise. Makoro hadn’t experienced anything like this in the past thirty years, since he was eight and the Xon war had ended.
That had been a troubled time, filled with uncertainty. The two factions that had formed out of the ashes-The United Terran Fleet and Hazzard Technology joined together under the banner of the Republic, the old Imperius Sol and several large planetary navies under the Imperiata’s-had waged war across the stars. Eventually, the Fleet had won. As in the Xon war, they owed their victory to a small number of leaders-indeed, many of the same leaders-such as Julian Shishani or Killian Hazzard. “Greetings, Pilots, and welcome to your final exercise before being assigned your Fleet Schools. You’ve all been through several V-Day simulations before, so you’ll be familiar with the general idea. However, this one will be different-instead of the advanced, in-system SDF Battlestations, complete with then-modern drones, you’re going to be controlling the group that began the engagement. The Cutters that made first contact were outmoded, and equipped with single-seat, low-g, crossover fighters. As I’m sure you all know, these Cutters were quickly destroyed, along with the outlying planetary defenses. Your mission is simple-extract as large of a toll from the Xon invasion force as possible before your inevitable destruction. SolCom out.”
The Rotorcraft flew in low over the ocean, foam practically touching its bottom. Seabase Reisangarde was visible, barely a few miles away, a black monolith rising from the sea.
“Rotorcraft Creon-11 to Reisangarde, stand by for landing.” Governor Tyrion Abrams’s pilot said into his comm, a secured one-time-pad line-the R-Bomb was secret, especially from the UTF Government. “Reisangarde to Creon-11, standing by to receive on Pad Three. Chamber 113?” “Affirmative, Reisangarde.” Celia tensed, clipboard in hand. No electronic data about Reisangarde ever went to the mainland, and the paper ones were always under the supervision of a member of the Governor's family. Deb Chambers lounged in the passenger seat of the truck, a rifle lying casually across her knees. Danny Ermine, a childhood friend, was in the driver’s seat, going well over the speed limit for the road between Vale and Hilard. The Syndicate was running something or other between the only two things that passed for cities on Tantaline. Given the fact that this was, in fact, Tantaline, it was probably food or medical supplies or something-the official Republic shipments, while free, were few and far between, in addition to being generally bland. The Republic typically tolerated these illegal operations, or at least, didn’t think it worth their time to put a stop to it. There had been rumors lately though... Someone new had taken command of Tactical in the last few months, and they were aggressive as hell.
Kimberly Shan had time to kill, in a major way. It was the start of summer vacation, her fourth year of university. She had completed multiple courses of study, all paid for by the state. She now held multiple degrees in Astrophysics, Quantum Computing, and Ansibilics. And none of it interested her.
Kim tapped her fingers over her phone’s screen, bored. Kayley was going to arrive in a few minutes, but, well, that was a few minutes from now. The klaxon sounded at 0400. No-one actually thought that it was a real alert, but its shriek was inescapable.
“All hands to battle stations! Enemy starcruiser at 37 degrees elevation, 22 degrees bearing. Acceleration 10g, distance five light-minutes. All hands to battle stations!” That damn message was blaring over the intercom, in far too calm a tone for there to actually be anything hostile in the system. Still though, Commander Ervin Norton was a pilot on the UTFS Warden-the best of the damn best. Sadira’s job was hell sometimes, but it never really sucked. For instance, she’d spend all day in Antaril’s pouring rain, trying to track down a group of natives, before realizing that She’d been the quarry all day long. That kind of day ended in dead Corpsmen, as they didn’t engage with the natives.
Oh, they weren’t forbidden to fight or even kill the natives-they had never even been registered as sentients by the Republic, which was why they were allowed to explore it on the ground in the first place. There was a code among the Recon Corp though. The planet has inherent worth. Without careful management, intervention will become net negative. Knowledge is net good. And finally, you can’t learn from orbit. Jae fell.
The planet was marginally Superterran-as were most worlds-so his acceleration was faster than 1g, but he had operated in worse. Join the Fleet, see new worlds. Join the Marines, see the next one. Join Tactical, see bits of it unfit for human consumption. Jae thought, thankful for the fact that his armor filtered ambient noise-otherwise, he’d be assaulted by the noise of wind the entire length of the drop. Cassie stood over her father's coffin, looking down into his face. She felt a disconnect there-she could still feel him, but he was dead.
I must sound insane. She thought, running a hand across his face. It was pale, clearly dead. It was hard to remember that a human mind had once lived inside it. Until Cassie had set it free. He had been dying-she had ended the pain. Ten’s arm hurt like hell. Her mother would hate to hear her say that, but, well, her mother was light years away, wasn’t she?
Ten frowned. Where was she? It was dark-no, her eyes were closed. How had she missed that? She opened them. They were heavy, barely capable of any movement, but she managed it. Something in front of her was bright. Jane lay back, in the dark, jumpsuit too tight against her skin. The fleet did not have any modicum of fashion sense.
The bulkhead door slid open, and someone slid in. Apparently at one of her new crewmates was done with their watch. A moment later, the light flicked on, and Jane cringed. The woman who stood in the doorway had skin darker than Janes, dark hair, and brown eyes. She glanced down at where Jane lay on her bunk, then away. The crowd roared as the Midfield bot made the pass. The ball was almost intersected by one of the opposing team’s Defense bots, a nasty flyer that Chase could swear was eating most of the Dragonets allowed Control time.
The regional Splice finals had been... Interesting this year. The final match had come down to the Dragonets, the previous years champions, and the Reavers, a team that had been, quite literally, the single worst-rated at the start of the last season. The Warden’s Hangar was, in actuality, no different than the single other time Richard Tvorik had been there. Admiral Hazzard had, after ordering the Warden to Flank Speed, addressed the ship and requested calm as they assessed the situation.
That had been three hours ago, and the ship was making its way across the system of Innes Star, at full speed. Massive cranes removed the dummy warheads and fighters from the Warden’s gunships, and replaced them with the real deal. “First field op?” Agent Red asked, glancing at Maria from across the shuttle. That was actually his name-Jonathan Red, and, apparently, he was tired of being asked that by new recruits.
“Yes sir.” Maria said, not particularly nervous-she was familiar with the numbers, and the last Trainee to be killed, or even seriously injured on their first op-always specially selected to be relatively routine, after all-had been years ago. |