Star Force: Nemesis (SF3) Read online

  1

  January 13, 2044

  Paul stood on the small square platform, looking out over the giant indoor pool surrounding him as he checked his breath mask one last time. The seal on his neck appeared to be in place, and the clingy material had a firm hold on his head, enough to cause a mild headache, but that was good. The tighter the grip, the less water would seep underneath the edges and up to his mask’s breathing chamber.

  He glanced around one last time, getting his bearings, then pressed the button on the start pedestal to his left. A tone sounded as the bright overhead lights cut out and dropped everything into darkness. Remembering where the edge of the platform was, Paul stepped off into the blackness and fell into the mass of invisible water a half meter below.

  Disoriented at first, Paul didn’t move until he got his equilibrium reset, which took several long seconds. Tiny bubbles of air exited four pinprick vents on the side of his mask, but he couldn’t see the bubbles race their way to the surface…or anything else for that matter. There wasn’t a single light on in the entire room, above water or below. Paul was going to have to navigate the first part of this challenge blind.

  When he was fairly sure that he had his head upright, he reached a hand up and felt for the line of bubbles. Using them as a plumb line he straightened his angle in the water so he was perpendicular to the floor and allowed himself to sink to the bottom some 18 meters down.

  Thanks to his thin and muscular build, sinking wasn’t a problem, but since he was on the clock he turned on his forearm thruster tubes and accelerated his descent. Waiting without anything to see or measure his progress by, Paul felt like he was swallowed up in the vastness of deep space, save for the lack of starlight. At the same time the vastness felt claustrophobic, and he was grateful when his feet finally touched bottom with a sudden jolt.

  He released the handheld thrust buttons and let them retract on their bungee cords back into the units and out of harm’s way. Bending at the knees, Paul reached down and felt for the floor with his bare hands. When he found it, he stretched out horizontally and began swimming about, stroking the smooth surface in a blind search pattern.

  After several meters of traveling along the bottom, Paul found one of the shallow ridges that ran out from the center of the pool like a sunburst. Trick was, did he remember which way to go or had he got himself totally turned around.

  He was fairly sure the center was off to his right, so he followed the ridge that direction, keeping his hands on it at all times. Even losing contact with it momentarily would cost him several seconds, and since this was an individual challenge, he was competing against the other 99 trainees for points and bragging rights…or in Paul’s case, just trying to keep up with the rest. He was one of the poorest swimmers in the group, ranking #98 on all unassisted swim challenges, which included surface laps in an Olympic sized pool.

  Fortunately this challenge wasn’t unassisted, and he had the use of the forearm thrusters to move him about, which leveled the playing field considerably, but considering how good his fellow trainees were in general, he couldn’t afford to lose precious seconds by being sloppy.

  Eventually Paul found his way to the center of the sunburst located directly under where the starting platform ‘floated,’ though technically it was connected by a low arched walkway to the side of the pool, but from within the water it appeared to be a floating island…or at least would have if the lights were still on.

  When he reached the center the ridges flattened out and led Paul’s hands to a shallow crater, in the center of which was a small navigational add-on for his breath mask. He felt for its dimensions and mentally pictured the angle it was at, rotating it around and lining it up with his right eye. The device snapped into place over the transparent panel, obscuring what would have been his vision in that eye, had there been anything to see.

  A small button press activated the echo-location device, and a series of small chirps were audible in the water. Each time the rapid fire sounds emanated from the device, a lingering blip would appear on screen with the computer processed dimensions of the pool and the objects it contained. It appeared to Paul as if he was looking through the rotating blades of a fan, but the greenish blue image gave him more than enough information to begin navigating around the pool in search of his first cube.

  He reached over to his left gauntlet and pulled out the hand control, which slipped neatly over his left thumb. Paul repeated the process on his right arm, passing over the small emergency wristband that held a panic button underneath a small plastic case. If for any reason Paul had difficulty with his breathing equipment, he could lift the case, press the button, and within 13.5 seconds the entire pool would drain out through hidden grates covering the floor.

  It was a reassuring backup for Paul and the others, and alleviated some of their discomfort at having to train underwater…that, and the equipment upgrades that they’d made three months ago.

  The trainers had started them off using standard scuba gear, with pathetic goggles, a breathing mouthpiece, and a pair of awful air tanks strapped to their backs. Paul had had the worst trouble, with water continually going up his nose, as it did every time he went in the water, but the subsurface drills didn’t allow for him to clear his airways like he could swimming laps on the surface, and as a result the first few training runs had been a nightmare for him and some of the others.

  Even the best swimmers were complaining after the first day. The equipment wasn’t designed for speed, agility, or any basic functionality aside from floating in place and looking at the scenery. After three days of complaints, which apparently echoed up through the Star Force ranks, Davis had come down to ‘trailblazer’ territory…the large sector of Atlantis where the trainees lived and trained…with a team of equipment engineers to assist the trainees in designing their own equipment.

  They’d self delegated the responsibilities for the designs to Ben, Mark, Jason, Zak, Ian, and Paul, the three best swimmers and the three worst out of the group, while the others would exhaustively field test the designs and offer feedback. All their underwater swimming training was suspended, with the allotted time redesignated for the equipment work. They spent a total of 24 days on the project, with the engineers planning out and fabricating their designs within a matter of hours using the wide array of industrial resources available to them in Atlantis.

  At the end of it all, they’d created the breath mask that Paul now wore, the vest-like air tanks that were smooth, form-fitting, and neutrally buoyant, the tube-like forearm thrusters, and even the echo-location device, among a variety of other equipment that Paul wasn’t using at the moment. In fact, the only other piece of equipment that he wore was a pair of black, knee-length jammers courtesy of Speedo. That was one piece of equipment they hadn’t needed to redesign.

  With the echo ‘eye patch’ in place and functioning, Paul pointed his right arm in the direction of a slowly swimming box taking laps in the pool at about 2/3rds depth, and partially depressed the soft trigger. Inside the tube attached to the outside of his forearm, six tiny fan blades spun up, creating a small jet engine-like effect to provide him with propulsion.

  Paul pointed his other arm at his feet and activated it in reverse, adding to his forward momentum with his arms offset, which would have looked like a superman pose had there been any light to see him with. He made minor corrections with the angles of his arms and goosed the speed of each thruster accordingly to intercept the automated underwater ‘rover’ that held his first objective.

  When he got to the turtle-like device he swam up over it, right arm held out and keeping his pacing, while he deactivated his left thruster and reached out to grab the small cube on the rover’s back. It was firm
ly stuck into a slot, and Paul had to put his foot on the rover’s back to pry it loose, but with a little pressure it came free, lighting up with a bright orange glow in the process.

  Paul’s left eye blinked against the light, while his right was still obscured by the echo-location device. As his eye adjusted, four fruit loop-like hoops lit up in the distance, indicating where he had to go next.

  Unable to hold the cube in his hand and thumb the acceleration button at the same time, Paul reached over and manually set the speed knob to setting 4 out of 5, then added adjustable thrust from his left thruster as he jetted away from the rover toward the nearest of the hoops, sliding through it with ease and twisting his arms to the left to make a sweeping turn.

  He about missed the second hoop and had to cut all thrust from his left arm, but he managed to swing through the second with the cube in his grasp, registering each passage and deactivating the hoop lights when completed. When Paul finished the quartet, a small pedestal on the floor near the north end of the pool lit up with an orange ring around its square top, and Paul jetted off towards it as fast as he could, kicking up his right thruster to 100%.

  That said, he couldn’t take an entirely straight line to the target. There were still many underwater obstacles in the way, visible only to his echo-location device, two of which he accidentally brushed up against. They held firm on their floor-mounted tethers, of which Paul also had to be careful to avoid. They didn’t show up on the echo-location device save for extreme close range.

  When he made it over and down to the pedestal, he saw an empty slot in the top for the cube he held alongside another identical one. He slid the orange cube in, with its light cutting out upon contact and the other simultaneously activating with a neon green glow. Four more hoops lit up the same color.

  Paul swam off and through those as well, cradling the green cube as he swam. After completing those four ‘hoop loops’ a green square illuminated on the underside of the starting platform. Upon reaching it and setting the cube inside the empty slot, a blue one activated and he repeated the process three more times. When he finally finished with the yellow cube hoops, the top of the rover lit up and he swam back over to it and replaced the cube in the single empty slot on top.

  When he did so all the hoops in the pool lit up and Paul, now without the cube to cradle, jetted off at maximum speed towards the nearest one, passing through it and another almost in alignment on the opposite side, with each deactivating as he passed through. Going for maximum speed, he began knocked off others, trying to line up ‘strafing runs’ that would hit two or three at a time, avoiding the painfully slow turnabout that would cost him several seconds for each reversal.

  As he swam about in a hurry, the lazy rover redirected from its predictable lap path and swam up a bit towards one of the hoops Paul had deactivated. When it passed through it, the green hoop lit back up…meaning Paul would have to pass through it yet again.

  “What the…” Paul muttered inside his breath mask when seeing the stupid rover turning the hoops back on. He had a small pocket of air directly in front of his mouth and nose, plus two expandable pouches just below each ear that would puff out as he exhaled, making his respiration almost normal inside the mask…as opposed to the ‘sucking air through a straw’ feeling of the original scuba equipment.

  “Damn it,” he said, speeding off to the next hoop, mentally plotting out the quickest route to get to the remaining ones. The rover seemed to be picking hoops randomly, which meant Paul wouldn’t have a straight-line path to go through to deactivate those for a second time. He was quicker than the rover by at least double speed, but he knew that forethought would be required to get all the hoops deactivated as quickly as possible. If he didn’t plan out his attempts, he’d chase individual ones at random and end up adding a lot of unnecessary time to his run.

  He was also worried about the power charge on his thrusters depleting before he finished, in which case the rover would become almost as fast as him, or maybe even faster if Paul had to hand swim the rest of the course. Either way it would mean additional minutes to his time, which was something he couldn’t afford and would have to quit the challenge and restart again…something that had become taboo for the trainees.

  Selecting the best course available to him Paul swam off, both arms extended before him, and rose up to the blue hoop almost at surface level, bending at the waist in a V-shape and grabbing the hoop to pull himself through and redirect his line of momentum back down towards a sweeping, descending turn of three almost aligned hoops of various colors.

  He deactivated those in quick succession, then turned around in one of the slow 180 degree turns, passing through one of the deactivated ones in the process. As he did so, it turned back on as well.

  “Doh,” he criticized himself, learning another wrinkle in the new challenge and swimming back through to deactivate it for a second time.

  2

  Staying ahead of the rover proved harder than he thought. The device was slow enough, but it maneuvered in whatever lines it wanted, thanks to four omni-directional propulsion pods. Paul, on the other hand, was using long, high speed turns to zip about, which ironically took more time to pull through than the rover doing a direct, thrust-reversing turnabout.

  It wasn’t until halfway through the set that Paul realized going full out wasn’t the quickest way and began feathering the throttle experimentally, saving full thrust for any long segment, but otherwise being as nimble jumping from hoop to hoop as he could be.

  He also took a cue from the Rover and tried a few direct reversals, either reversing thrust with the hand controls or just moving his arms from in front of him down to his sides and accomplishing the same thing. It killed Paul to do it because he felt so inefficient, but towards the end of his run he realized that staying as close to the hoops as possible was key and his big turns had just been wasteful.

  Paul followed the rover through the last hoop and deactivated it before the stupid machine could get to the next one. As soon as he did the floodlights came on and suddenly Paul could see everything in the crystal clear water with his good eye…the other one was still obscured by the echo-location device.

  He swam back up to the start platform and found a short, four rung ladder and climbed out of the water and back on top, prying his finger up under the edge of his neck-wrapping breath mask. Once he had a leverage point he stretched the thick, yet pliable material until he had a hole big enough to fit his head through, then wiggled his way out of it. He detached the O2 line and carried the black mask in his hand as he walked across the arch-like gantry back to the control station where a trainer and four of his peers were waiting for their turns.

  On a small scoreboard imbedded into the wall his finish time was displayed in red numbers.

  7:43.3

  Paul sighed. That was more than four minutes over par, hence the red numbers.

  “Wow, that sucked,” Jack said as Paul walked up.

  “Thanks,” he offered sarcastically.

  “Any suggestions?” Larry asked, about to make his first attempt.

  “Trim your lines and stay as close to the hoops as you can,” Paul said, sitting down next to Kevin and Steve as he pulled off his tank vest.

  “And pick a better line than he did,” Jack added, who’d already made par on the course another day and was coming back to try and up his score. “He was all over the place.”

  “Will do,” Larry said, heading out and closing the door behind him. On the wall of the control room was an array of display screens, all of which showed the underwater hoop configuration shifting to new, randomized positions as the trainer reset the course.

  “024…are you sticking around for another go?”

  “Yeah, sure, why not? I’m not due for my next session for another hour and a half.”

  The former Navy Seal nodded approvingly. “Give it some time and you’ll get the handle of it. Took me a while to figure out those damn gadgets you all made, but nifty litt
le things they are none the less. Wish we’d had those back in the day,” he said as the lights in the chamber went out and all the underwater cameras switched to nightvision mode as they watched Larry stumble his way into the pool.

  “Did I look that bad?” Paul said as Larry obviously struggled for some type of balance underwater in the pitch dark.

  “Pretty much,” Jack jibbed him, being the only one of his teammates present. The rest of the 2s were off tackling other individual challenges, with each of them progressing through their personal lists at their own rate. Some of the harder challenges had to wait until prerequisites were finished first, but otherwise each of the trainees could move through hundreds of different scenarios in whatever order they wanted. Given that they all had to share the same facilities, they tried to spread their attempts out as much as possible.

  Paul had taken to his strengths first, primarily running and agility drills, but he’d also gained an aptitude for some of the martial arts. After digging as deeply into those as he could, which took time regardless of how skilled he thought he was, he spread out his allotted training time to focus on his worst areas, in which all forms of swimming qualified.

  When looking at the posted scores of everyone else, he’d realized that he needed to gain more points in his weak areas than he conceivably could in his strengths, both because his strengths were lesser in number, and because he needed to diminish the points’ gap put on him by his teammates in his weak areas.

  After a year of training his individual rank had leveled out at 15th overall, with considerable point gaps above and below him. When looking over his options for advancement he’d concluded that his efforts would best be spent in tackling his weaknesses first and getting those out of the way early, not to mention trying to scrape up more points in the challenges he’d already made par on, such as Jack was attempting to do on this one.

  Paul still hadn’t gotten through half of the challenges yet, but he was nearing the end of the level 1 list, with this swimming challenge and three others remaining, along with a pair of marksmanship drills that he didn’t think he’d have a problem with. One trick he’d picked up from talking with the others was to pick one or two disciplines at a time to focus on instead of spreading out training sessions over multiple weeks. It seemed that they all learned better when there was less downtime in between bouts, hence Paul had been doing a dreadful lot of swimming in recent days.