Star Force: Fabrication (SF7) Read online

  “If they make it through to graduation,” Sara argued, “then they shouldn’t need any hand holding.”

  Greg looked over at her. “I would like to think that too, but are you willing to bet on that? If they were like us they would have already graduated 6 months ago. It’s taking them almost twice as long to get through the challenges than we did, so I’m not assuming they’re going to be up to par with us. And when they get here we have to incorporate them into some sort of structure because we’re not going to have the luxury of just ignoring them and hoping that they can train themselves. We’re the trailblazers, they’re not.”

  “By ‘structure’ I get the feeling you’ve got a recommendation?” Jason inquired.

  Greg nodded and dropped down into a crouch, placing a few fingers on the ground for unnecessary balance, bringing himself into eye line with the row of adepts sitting on the floor leaning back on the couches.

  “We have to make a decision right now not to hold back, or be held back, in our training going forward. Once things start heating up we’re going to be pulled in separate directions with conflicting priorities. We cannot let ourselves start making sacrifices. We have to be stubborn about our training because we’re the tip of Star Force’s sword. If we’re not sharp, we can’t expect anyone else to be. So rather than using us as do-it-all troubleshooters, we have to devise a different roll for ourselves, separate from everyone else.”

  Sam leaned forward in his chair. “You’re worried that intermixing with others will dilute our effectiveness.”

  “Yes I am,” Greg said, standing back up. “We can’t let their liabilities slow us down. We have to remain free to push the envelope if we’re ever to stand a chance against the V’kit’no’sat.”

  “You want us to be Spartans,” Kerrie summed up. “Problem is, we’re also supposed to be the Generals. How are we supposed to do both?”

  “That’s the dilemma,” Greg agreed with a nod. “Any suggestions?”

  There was a brief silence before Andy spoke. “I don’t really see the problem so long as we only have to do things once…like setting up a training program for our ground troops, whatever incarnation that might be,” he said, referencing the still undecided ‘Black Knight cloning’ program they all agreed was needed, yet hadn’t worked out the basics of yet. “We spend some time working it out on our downtime then hand it off to the trainers. They do the repetitive instruction and we’re free to move on to other tasks.”

  Megan looked over at him. “And what if there’s a time constraint? Say we have a week to get something done and not enough downtime to cover it. Do we skip workouts to get it done or fail the task?”

  “Neither can be an option,” Greg reiterated, “but we all know we’ll skip the training rather than see someone hurt by our failure, which is my point. We have to think ahead to avoid situations like that or there will come a day when there is so much to do, with so many lives hanging in the balance, that we’ll be forced to abandon our training…or at least cut it up into so many pieces that we plateau or backslide anyway.”

  “You want us to tell Davis we’ll only work part time?” Jax asked sarcastically.

  “We have to define our roll before someone else does,” Greg said as plainly as he could. “If we’re going to lead, we have to lead our way…and we better figure out what that is going to be before we have a military to command.”

  “You’re right,” Ian said thoughtfully. “And I think Davis knew it when he had this place built for us.”

  “It’s not enough,” Jason added. “Greg’s right, when we start going on missions we’re not going to have this place to train in.”

  “And even this place is starting to become inadequate,” Randy reminded him. “We’ve run out of room for expansion already, and we can’t expect Davis to keep cannibalizing nearby areas of the city every time we want a new training chamber added.”

  “Need…” Greg corrected him. “Not want, need. And that’s exactly my point. We can’t start thinking of our training as superfluous, otherwise we’ll end up cutting back rather than pushing forward. We need the freedom to add whatever training equipment we can think up rather than be restricted to a set few. Curtail our ingenuity and you curtail our advancement.”

  “You’re saying this could grow into a bigger problem than we’ve considered,” Rafa said, beginning to see the depth of the dilemma.

  “Right now we control everything,” Greg answered. “We can’t let that control slip due to circumstances. We have to anticipate and prepare for those circumstances so we can do what we need to do without compromising ourselves.”

  “Can we run everything from here?” Sara asked, doubt in her tone.

  “No, we can’t,” Jason answered. “Not eventually.”

  “So we have to build auxiliary training centers for us to use when we’re away,” Ben thought out loud.

  “That’s a start, but it won’t work in all situations,” Sara argued. “When we’re in the field we won’t be able to take along a building of equipment with us.”

  “Actually,” Paul said, an idea beginning to form, “it will for the naval branch…if we agree only to post ourselves to command ships and nothing smaller. We’ve already designed training areas inside the ship, no reason we can’t expand them into a compact version of our core training equipment. Sort of an inner sanctum within the ship reserved for us alone, in addition to the crew training areas.”

  “That’ll be one fat ship by the time you get done squeezing all that in,” Dan commented.

  “It already is,” Paul countered. “A little more fat won’t make much difference.”

  Greg pointed at him. “That’s exactly what I mean. He said if we restrict ourselves to being on the command ships. We need to decide what we will and won’t do, then make accommodations for the field work and missions we’ll accept, like Paul’s inner sanctum…I like the name, by the way.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Speaking of names,” Kerrie interjected. “What are we going to call ourselves? Trailblazers works as a nickname, but what about the next class and those that come after? If we’re going to define our roll we definitely need to define a name to go with it.”

  “Jedi,” Paul said distractedly.

  Jason looked over at him. “I think that one’s already taken, buddy.”

  Paul shook his head. “No, I meant that as an answer to Kerrie’s other question. The Jedi are both Spartans and Generals, as well as separate from the rest of the Republic. They have their own internal order as well as leading the Republic in times of need, otherwise it functions on its own.”

  “That’s a damn good metaphor, Paul,” Greg said approvingly as he mentally linked up all the similarities.

  “The clones?” Rafa asked.

  “Why not?” Paul answered. “They’re trained to fight on their own, but are just as easily commanded by the Jedi when one is present. Best of both worlds.”

  Sara looked at him slightly shaking her head. “Why am I not surprised,” she said mirthfully, which drew a few laughs from the others. “But he’s right. The metaphor is spot on. We train the military to operate independent of us, leaving us free to do as we please and intervene when needed.”

  Greg smiled. “And ‘sanctum’ could just as easily be ‘Jedi temple.’”

  Jason raised an eyebrow. “Scatter a number of training facilities throughout Star Force holdings which double as command centers and living quarters, including the naval control ships, and we’ve got a command structure that allows us to be near or in a training center at all times.”

  Kerrie nodded. “I think we’ve got something workable here.”

  “I agree,” Greg said, pleased. “Let’s see what we can make of it. We’ll continue this discussion in a week.”

  With a chorus of nods the adepts broke out of their seated formation and dispersed like motivated ants, each working the problem from their own angle. Greg let them go, staying put until only Rex and Kurt remained.
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  “That went well,” Rex commented.

  Greg smiled. “Never underestimate the power of the Huddle.”

  3

  Seven days later…

  “Do we really want one on the moon?” Rafa asked. “The low gravity is gonna kill us.”

  “Do we even want to put troops there?” Ian chimed in. “They’ll get so weak after a long stay it’ll probably be better just to post them on an orbital station and send them down as needed.”

  “No,” Sara insisted. “The troops need to be on the ground so they can get acclimatized to the situation. That’s an advantage we can’t squander. They can rotate up to a normal gravity station periodically for training, but they have to learn to fight in the environment they’re stationed to. We may not be able to do the same, but then again we adapt faster than everyone else. They have to be stationed on the surface.”

  “I agree,” Greg added. “But that still leaves the question of how much gravity are we going to require for a sanctum? Mars has 1/3 gravity. Venus is just a hair shy of full, and there are bound to be plenty of planets outside this system with gravity higher than Earth’s. So what’s our standard going to be? I agree we can’t put a sanctum in 1/6 gravity, but where do we draw the line?”

  “Or do we put it higher?” Yori pointed out. “In space we can set the artificial gravity to whatever we like, so we can have training sanctums at 1.1 or 1.2 as a norm. We don’t have to stick with Earth’s gravity as the baseline. Who knows what the V’kit’no’sat use on their ships. Earth gravity could be considerably weaker than the galactic average for all we know.”

  “An interesting point,” Paul admitted after a short pause, “but I think we should stick with Earth gravity as the baseline for all orbital facilities until we get a chance to experiment. I have a nasty feeling that cranking it up permanently would throw our rhythm off. That’d be fine if we were stationed to a high gravity world, but our fleet needs to maintain a standard, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t stick to what we’re already accustomed to.”

  “So you’re not against the idea completely?” Yori asked for clarification.

  “Centrifugal gravity isn’t exactly the same as real gravity,” Paul reminded him. “It isn’t constant and ballistics don’t function the same way, so if I was stationed on a command ship I might toy with the idea of cranking the gravity up a bit to increase the challenge and take a slight disadvantage and turn it around into a positive, but I’d still prefer to be on the ground.”

  “Whatever we do, we have to maintain as much consistency as possible,” Jason reminded them. “We’ll adapt to any situation we’re put in, we just can’t afford to constantly be switching things up.”

  “For our purposes I say we put all sanctums in orbit,” Morgan said slowly. “If we want to build additional surface facilities later we’ll always have that option, but we need to be able to be deployed to planetoids whenever necessary without it affecting our training, so let’s just take the whole gravity question out of the equation. Coordination with lunar troops can occur from an orbital command center, with occasional trips down to the surface as needed. Same goes for any other future ground operations.”

  “We’re still going to waste a lot of time in transit,” Rafa objected. “Probably a day at least without any training.”

  “Not if we have specialized dropships,” Paul pointed out as an idea struck him. “Sanctum transport ships reserved for our use only.”

  Greg pointed at him. “Now there’s an idea.”

  Paul nodded towards Rafa. “He’s right about the delay. We can’t be wasting hours of the day waiting in line for flights. We have to be able to move about at will, and the only way to do that is to have our own fleet of dropships.”

  “Add one more item to the design list,” Liam noted.

  “Two,” Roger amended, “if you also want dedicated starships to use as shuttles between stations.”

  “Two then,” Liam amended.

  “That may be fine for naval,” Cora interjected, “but we have to be on the ground. Regardless of whether we go with mechs or battle suits we can’t exactly train on a space station…unless you plan on building something the size of the Death Star.”

  “One thing at a time,” Greg said, holding up a hand then turning to Paul. “Are we good with naval on principle? I know we have a lot of testing to do, but are you comfortable with what we’ve got planned now?”

  Paul exchanged glances with Liam, Roger, and then Jason. “In theory, yes, we’re good to go.”

  Greg nodded. “Alright, so long as we have our linchpin set we can work on the others from that angle. If we have a command station in orbit everywhere we go, we can double up if necessary for the other divisions until we get the rest designed.”

  “You know something we don’t?” Sara asked sarcastically. “I don’t think we’ll be building anything outside of a design program for several years to come.”

  “True, but we have to know what we want before the engineers can even start their work.”

  “Point there,” she conceded.

  “If we’re designing the divisions to function autonomously,” Paul deferred, “we can work almost everything remotely. I think Greg’s original point was that we have to keep ourselves separate from the troops, so us keeping to the command stations and having them on the surface when needed won’t be as much of a problem as you might think, so long as we develop solid training programs.”

  “Exactly,” Greg agreed.

  “Easier said than done,” Cora argued. “We have to learn it first, and that means hands on. Training simulators may work for naval, but it won’t for mechs if we’re going to use our own balance controls. We’ve got to design the mechanics around us, and that means putting us in the low and high gravity environments.”

  “And zero,” Martin added.

  Cora shook her head firmly. “We don’t want to go there.”

  “Why not? It worked for Voltron.”

  “Whoa, whoa…” Paul interjected. “Unless you’re talking about walking around on something, a floating mech works the same as a starship and would be woefully outmatched.”

  Cora smiled. “Stepping on your toes too?”

  Paul smiled back. “There’s no point in all the divisions covering the same turf, so let’s stay specialized. If the dinosaurs start putting on space suits and thruster packs, our fleet will just use them for target practice. Their physical size and strength are only a threat on the ground, so focus your counter there and only there.”

  “Will do, Admiral,” Cora said, throwing him a mock salute, which drew a smirk from Jason.

  “There’s something else,” Lens said, drawing a curious eyebrow from Rafa.

  “What?” Greg asked when he didn’t continue.

  “Our naval forces…why are we only planning for space? Earth is more water than land, and until we can develop some kind of forcefield, the closest thing we have to a planetary shield is the ocean. Atlantis is a sitting duck to orbital bombardment, but if we put ships and habitats beneath the surface, the water would act as a regenerable shield. When it’s vaporized or pushed aside it’ll flow back in and recover the target, whereas a facility built underground on land wouldn’t.”

  For several seconds no one responded as the adepts exchanged glances, stunned. Lens didn’t say anything more, waiting for someone to respond.

  “That’s genius,” Morgan finally said, nodding to Lens in respect before looking at the others. “Why didn’t we think of that earlier?”

  “You want to sink Atlantis?” Ben asked.

  “Expand beyond it,” Lens clarified. “We can’t build anywhere on land without permission of the host country, but they have no say over the ocean floor.”

  “Actually they’d probably try,” Jason amended, “they just couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Rafa said, his face scrunching up as he tried to recall something from memory. “Didn’t Davis say something about part of t
he raw materials for Atlantis coming from the sea floor?”

  “I think he did,” Paul agreed.

  “Which would mean Star Force should already have some subsurface sites,” Greg pointed out.

  “More than that, they should have a fleet of submersibles,” Rafa insisted. “Has anyone seen anything about that in the database?”

  “There’s nothing, I already checked,” Lens said.

  Paul and Jason exchanged glances.

  “Come to think of it,” Ryan said, a suspicious look on his face, “have any of our V’kit’no’sat updates included any swimming dinosaurs, because I can’t remember any.”

  No one else could either.

  “Let’s find out,” Sara said, getting out of her chair and pointing up towards the ceiling, indicating that they should move up a level. The other 99 adepts followed her out of the lounge, up the small connective staircase, and spread out amongst the various workstations and began searching through the Star Force database.

  “There’s nothing here about anything that swims,” Jason said more than half an hour later, giving up the search.

  “Google says they were here,” Sam reported. “Fossil evidence of several species, though there’s some debate about which actually were and weren’t dinosaurs.”

  “Anyone find anything about Atlantis being built?” Paul asked.

  “Plenty,” Sara said, “but no mention of any seafloor mining sites.”

  “Something definitely isn’t adding up,” Jason said, hopping up and sitting on the touch screen tabletop as he looked out at the others. “Davis said he hadn’t turned over everything about the V’kit’no’sat to us, but that doesn’t have anything to do with Atlantis’s construction records, so why would he hide it from us?”

  “Unless there’s some connection that we don’t know about,” Paul added.

  “Let’s ask,” Greg said, glancing at Jason.

  “Let’s,” he echoed, hopping off the tabletop and opening a comm prompt about where he had been sitting. He typed out a short message and sent it, unsure of where Davis was or what he was doing at the moment. His prudence was unnecessary, however, as Davis responded immediately with his image appearing in a small square about the size of a book on the tabletop.