Star Force: Ascension (SF27) Page 10

  Its one use was for navigational purposes, and Morgan’s fleet had been here before. Using its gravity again they gently floated further towards the edge of the star system, traveling several hours before using their conventional engines to null out their momentum. There they found the Hycre jump cradle they’d used to enter the system on, along with two drone destroyers they left behind to shoot at anything that approached it.

  The Red Ranger reassumed remote control of those two ships and brought them aboard, then the warships carefully maneuvered their massive tonnage around and into alignment beneath the cradle on thrust-based engines alone. All four parked in a square underneath the spindly device, then the jump cradle made physical connections with the ships before extending its considerable inertial dampening field around them all, creating an invisible bubble that would carry them together across the stars.

  Using the tiny gravity wells of other large, floating rocks out further in system the jump cradle gradually created forward momentum, eventually bringing it back to the 18th planet, swinging into orbit then jumping back towards the star. From there they fell into a low stellar orbit and waited to come around to the proper jumpline, then with a massive burst of speed the jump cradle sent the four warships and itself out and away from the Brokal System and its ongoing micro-war, heading them back to rendezvous with another portion of Morgan’s armada and continue picking on the smaller enemy deployments across Calavari territory.

  Morgan took a quick break from her training exercises and walked over to the satchel she’d left by the entrance to Balboa Lane. She pulled out a couple of ambrosia wafers and chewed them up quickly, having learned over the past 2 weeks of nearly nonstop training while traveling in the jump cradle that she couldn’t wait for ‘meals’ to refuel.

  This new ability, which she’d dubbed ‘concussive energy,’ seemed to suck the ambrosia out of her body almost in realtime and she’d learned that having snacks on hand would help increase her workout longevity…for when she ran out of energy she literally ran out. It wasn’t like a typical workout where she could continue at lower intensity and/or greater difficulty. When her concussive energy emptied out there wasn’t much left afterwards to try and work with, hence the necessity of the snacks.

  Her ability to produce…and subsequently suppress…the ‘tingles’ had gotten much better, almost to the point of being predictable, though there were still some nights she’d wake up, half uncover herself, and throw a blast up towards the ceiling in what she called a ‘concussion wave’ just to bleed it off. That would usually relieve the pressure on her internal buffer until morning, which allow her to get back to sleep.

  She didn’t know, biologically speaking, how the energy was being contained, but purely from workouts and self-analysis she’d determined that she had a ‘buffer’ of energy inside her that she could draw from, and that it was constantly filling. When it reached capacity she’d get the tingles whether she wanted them or not and would have to discharge.

  Morgan had intentionally pushed that barrier several times just to see what would happen if she held it in. She found she had some leeway there, and with effort could force her buffer to hold more, but it was always a matter of time before she relented and bled off the excess energy. To her it felt similar to having a full bladder and trying to hold it in…sooner or later it was coming out whether you liked it or not.

  The Archon had also noticed, both through guesswork and the measurement systems in Balboa Lane, that her buffer was increasing in size, allowing her to store up more energy for either larger concussion waves or greater numbers of smaller ones. It seemed to work much like some of her favorite video games, aside from Halo, where you had a limited supply of ‘magic’ or ‘force’ to use on various skills that would gradually replenish. Trick was with her, she had to keep eating to get it to recharge quickly, prompting her to pack ambrosia wafers by the hundreds to take along with her to training sessions…or on future missions.

  This new ability was definitely changing things for her, but she liked it…a lot.

  After her snack she gave her body a few minutes to process the ambrosia into her bloodstream and for her little nodules to soak it up…or at least she assumed it was them. Biologically they were the only anomaly detectable, aside from her eyes which they still hadn’t figured out and Morgan hadn’t been able to induce any superpowers from yet.

  After the snack she took the time to do some contortion-level stretching exercises, already having been warmed up. Her range of motion wasn’t all the way back to normal yet, but it was close, and she wanted to get it back there as soon as possible, prompting her to include extra stretching workouts throughout the day. Once she got it fully back she’d start focusing on other areas, one at a time, until she got her entire workout routine back to where it had been pre-gravity trap.

  When she figured she’d waited long enough she pulled out of a languid side splits and sat down on the floor to pull her shoes and socks off, then she walked over to the single punching bag-style target in the giant room and set herself. As she had been doing earlier, she summoned up the tingles along her spine and sent them down her right leg and into her foot. From there she kicked her leg out towards the target, coming up about a foot short of making contact and released the energy.

  The holographic display to the right showed a 13, confirming that she’d hit the target despite the fact that she couldn’t feel the impact. More often than not, when Morgan released a concussion wave her eyes were closed in concentration, so without the system’s measurement she’d be hard pressed to know if she was succeeding or not.

  She reset herself and did the same thing twice more, then switched to her left leg and likewise went through three practice rounds. Getting the energy to go to the body part she wanted was like having to shovel snow. Once you got it off the ground you could move around as you liked, but try and go somewhere new and you had a lot of digging to do.

  Morgan had gotten her arms pretty used to the transfer and was now working on her legs, though she still felt like she was losing a lot of energy in the transfer, not to mention the release. She’d pulled up two more targets and set them beside the primary before and had picked up just a hint of concussive spillover on them, meaning her attacks weren’t point precise, hence the concussive ‘wave’ moniker. She thought she could trim it down more with practice, but how far was something she’d have to figure out in the long run. Training took time, and with this being a brand new ability she was going to be a newb for some time to come, like it or not.

  After several more rounds of kick-launched waves Morgan went back to eating more wafers and more stretching/agility runs while she waited to recharge. It didn’t seem to matter what she did in the meantime so long as she didn’t pull on the buffer’s energy.

  After several repetitions of this practice/recharge cycle Morgan came back from a 2 mile run on the track and decided to try something she’d first attempted yesterday with partial success, but it was a power hog so she hadn’t tried a second time.

  At least partially full of energy, she stepped away from her satchel and pulled her shoes and socks off again, leaving them in a neat pile on the floor on top of which she added her clothes. She ran a short length past the target to get into the clear portion of the Lane, having as much room around her as possible, then she stood still in the center between the two walls and raised her head up, half staring at the ceiling while she spread her arms and legs slightly wide and flexed every muscle in her body, trying to maintain a hold on her self-control.

  Feeling the energy just below the surface she tapped into it, drawing forth as small a set of tingles as she could and feeling it manifest along her spine again…except she kept pulling on it, causing more tingles to come forth in a gentle cascade. She tried to spread it out through her entire body, but only managed her left arm at first. With some coaxing she got it going down her right as well, then she added her legs and finally her neck up into her head and she could feel her hair begi
n to lift up and tug on her ponytail.

  Morgan reached up and pulled her hair tie out and tossed it aside, then closed her eyes and focused on smoothing out the energy flow as it gently dispersed from various points on her body. She held the effort for nearly 20 seconds before upping the flow, feeling new body parts begin to discharge that hadn’t before. She kept patiently pushing it out, focusing on new areas of her body with her mind until they became saturated in energy and began to discharge, creating a gentle wind flowing out from her naked body in all directions.

  The trailblazer could feel the ‘snow’ melting away and kept the energy flowing steadily as long as she could, feeling sparkly inside as the tingles began manifesting not only along her spine but a few other points in her body as well. She hoped it would escalate further, but Morgan started to feel her buffer running out of energy so she decided to go for a finishing move.

  Pushing as much of a surge of tingles as she could get, she yelled and let loose a much more violent stream of energy flowing out from her body in all directions over the course of 1.5 seconds…then she dropped to a knee and her straight hair fell back down over her shoulders as she blew out an excited and relieved breath, feeling herself once again out of energy.

  She reached up and pulled some of the now frizzy strands out in front of her face so she could see the hair, ironically wondering if it had gone blonde, for she could have sworn she’d been close to going super saiyan.

  Still taking a knee and in no hurry to move, Morgan glanced down at her naked body. It looked normal, but on the inside it felt like she was absolutely glowing.

  “Now I just have to figure out how to do that with clothes on,” she said, adding that to her mental list of future training priorities, along with several other potential applications of the concussive energy that she was eager to begin experimenting with.

  Morgan stood up and walked back over to her satchel, pulling out a couple of wafers to chew on while she got dressed and hoping that drills like that would help her increase the size of her buffer considerably, because as it was she didn’t have even a shred of the energy reserves necessary for some of the crazy training ideas she was coming up with.

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