Star Force: Trailblazer (SF4) Read online

  “Hey,” she greeted him as he fell into step outside her as they moved into the first turn. “Congrats on breaking into the top 10.”

  “Thanks…what are you set at?”

  “7:15…I’ve only got three laps left. Don’t usually see you down here at this hour?”

  “Darth Mo has a busy schedule. I had to skip my morning run,” Paul said, keeping on Morgan’s shoulder and subconsciously trying to avoid stepping on the green running lights moving along the lane 1 boundary lines, visually marking where she should be on the track to maintain the desired pace. The moving square lights were buried in the track with nothing above the surface to trip on, but for some reason Paul didn’t like stepping on the continuously moving dot.

  “Your challenge scores in that area are solid,” she said with a note of approval. “Are you going specialist or trying to scrape up a few more points?”

  “I’m just tired of getting my ass kicked by the Black Knight. Don’t worry, your points lead is safe from me,” he said with a joking smile.

  “At least until you learn to swim,” she argued, not entirely kidding. Had his free swimming scores even been average, his overall rank would have easily been in the top 3.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Paul said with the intentional pun as they swung out into lanes 2 and 3 to pass by Sam who was following his own pair of blue light markers, set probably at 8:00 pace if Paul had to guess.

  “Where did you just come from?” Morgan asked, her short ponytail whipping back and forth with each step.

  “Simulator room. We finished up a few minutes early.”

  “Have you heard the news?”

  “What news?” Paul asked, frowning.

  “I’ll take that as a no…they just announced an hour ago that all the naval challenge scores are going to be nullified and we’re going to have to start over again.”

  “No, I hadn’t heard that. I don’t like them reneging on the points but it’s about time they did something. Did they give any specifics?”

  “Yeah, there’s a brief posted. Looks like they’re going to give us access to the sims so we can design our own ships to meet mission requirements.”

  “Really…did they give any examples?”

  “They gave the rundown on the first team challenge, V-4A. It’s a recreation of the Naboo blockade. We have to figure out how to lay siege to a single surface city from orbit.”

  Paul’s curiosity immediately perked up. “Now that sounds better. Anything about the individual challenges?”

  “Not yet. They said they’d have more info within the week, but we’re scheduled to start the team challenge on Thursday.”

  Paul sensed a hint of concern in her voice. “You worried?”

  “If it’s fair, no…but my confidence in their workmanship is lacking at the moment.”

  “If they’re resetting the points, how does that affect your total?”

  “Negligible,” she said, allaying his own rising concerns. “We all got nearly perfect scores so no real points gain or loss should occur.”

  “So what’s eating you?”

  Morgan glanced over at him, surprised that she was letting it show as much as his ability to pick up on her mood. Her 6s teammates knew her well, but the others not so much. “I don’t like them changing things up as we go along. Makes me feel like they don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “They don’t,” Paul declared as if it was common knowledge, which in the case of the naval challenges it was.

  “They did until recently…either that or they hid it really well.”

  “With our help they’ll get it sorted out sooner or later,” Paul assured her.

  “That’s just it, they shouldn’t need our help. They’re supposed to be training us, not the other way around.”

  “Why is that a problem for you? I mean, besides the obvious.”

  “It makes me wonder if what we’re doing is important or just playing games. Until recently I’ve believed that each challenge we’ve faced had a purpose behind it, but when the naval challenges started it all started to feel wrong.”

  “Just the naval, or are there others too?”

  “No, just the naval, but it makes me wonder about the wisdom in the design of the others.”

  “Gamer/designer issue?”

  “Exactly.”

  Paul considered that for a moment and didn’t respond until they completed the homestretch. “I suppose the problem might lie in the fact that we’ve…by we I mean Earth…have never fought in space. They have no reference material or experts to call on, so we probably know as much as they do.”

  “You’d think the V’kit’no’sat knew a thing or two about it,” Morgan differed.

  “True dat,” Paul said colorfully, figuring the Aussie wouldn’t catch the reference. “But until they give us records access or cover it in class we have no way of knowing what’s really buried under the ice.”

  “I wish they’d let us inside,” Morgan complained. “Even if it was just for a day or two.”

  “Same here,” Paul said as they approached the finish line for the second time.

  “Last lap for me…you want to keep the pacer?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “All yours,” she said, accelerating into a hard run when her foot hit the line and easily pulling away from Paul. He watched her accelerate again on the backstretch 100 meters later, then again at 200 meters before finally reaching a full sprint over the last quarter of the lap. She coasted past the line, arcing around to the right and slowing down to a walk, leaving the track before Paul even caught up to her.

  The pair of green lights flanking Paul eased ahead of him a few centimeters as he came into the first turn, prompting him to accelerate slightly to catch back up. 7:15 mile pace was a challenge for Paul, given that his normal cruising speed was 7:30, but at the moment he was feeling good and decided to stick it out for the remaining 22 laps of his 10k with him being the fastest trainee on the track now that Morgan was gone.

  Ego aside, he always seemed to have a little more energy available whenever he was the top dog, and he certainly didn’t mind showing off a bit when it resulted in a better workout.

  4

  The ‘Naboo’ challenge started out completely different than anything Paul had gone through to date, with little more than a mission objective to begin with and as much time as the team needed to ready themselves. The thing of it was, they couldn’t run through it the first time until they’d designed their force deployment, all the way from tactics to individual ship designs, meaning that this new naval challenge was going to involve a lot of theoretical design work before they would even begin to get to the action.

  The basic mission was to blockade a single city on the surface sufficient to stop one ship from escaping the planet. Within the simulation that they were given access to there was simply a point on the surface and a termination ‘line’ in high orbit…everything else they had to design, making the whole exercise feel less like a challenge and more like homework, furthering Morgan’s sentiment that the trainers didn’t know what they were doing.

  The other 2s didn’t take to the simulation with much enthusiasm either, but as always they were game for more point scoring opportunities and used their first 2 hour block of ‘challenge’ time to brainstorm ways of implementing a blockade and getting used to the physics engine. When they eventually broke for lunch they left more confused than they’d entered, and equally disillusioned.

  They’d gone along with the movie guidelines and created basic ships, little more than block-like markers with weapons on them, and began to run a few simulations against the single ship preprogrammed to rise up from the city and try and break through the blockade…

  Problem was, the Star Wars version of a blockade was laughable, which was made evident when they tried to repeat the ‘tactic’ in the simulator, finding it impossible to form a ‘line’ of ships in the sky. First off, closure speeds were so fast that a ship lifting off fro
m the surface, by the time it made orbit, would fly right by any blockade in the blink of an eye, and unless there was an accidental collision, the blockading warships were of no use at all.

  Second, there was no reason for the fleeing ship to fly up to that particular point in the sky when it had thousands of miles of orbit to choose from, meaning that even if sitting ships could stop the ‘blockade runner,’ they’d have to have a fleet numbering in the tens of thousands, if not millions, to lay a coverage net large enough to cover the orbital tracks over that section of the planet. And the idea of covering the entire planet was downright insane. Paul found himself reluctantly lowering his appreciation for George Lucas’s work as he began to see the outright ridiculous concept for what it was.

  So where did that leave them? Was this an impossible challenge that the trainers were throwing at them ignorantly…or was it something difficult, but doable in the long run? Paul took it on a leap of faith to be the later and downloaded a simple copy of the physics engine into a datapad for him to work on during his downtime, as did a few of the others, but it was Paul who was soon consumed with working out the mechanics of it all.

  Two weeks passed, with none of the teams even attempting a run, having made little or no progress in coming up with a viable strategy, until Paul finally came through with a breakthrough, staying up late that night and pounding on Jason’s door at 4:07am.

  Being a light sleeper Jason woke on the first knock and quickly pulled himself out of bed, wondering what was up. When he opened the door Paul tossed a datapad at his chest and walked in.

  “I think I’ve got something,” he said as Jason fumbled the toss but recovered quickly enough to keep the device from hitting the floor. Then he noticed that Paul was still wearing the same clothes he’d had on in the evening.

  “Have you slept yet? We’ve got that bunker assault in,” he checked the clock on the datapad, “less than four hours.”

  “I’ll manage,” Paul promised as Jason looked through the information. A few seconds later his head came up, now fully awake with adrenaline creeping into his veins.

  “Have you…”

  “38%,” Paul answered before he could finish the question, “but with us doing the piloting instead of the computer, I think it’ll give us a 50/50 chance.”

  “I’d settle for 10% right now...this is genius!”

  “I have my moments.”

  “No, I’m serious…I’m already seeing additional modifications that we can make.”

  “It does open up a lot more possibilities, especially when they get around to having us stop more than one ship.”

  Jason finally looked up from the diagrams. “Well done, Admiral,” he said, shoving the pad back into his chest. “Now go get some sleep, if you can.”

  “I doubt it,” Paul said, smiling as he left. Jason was so pumped that he doubted he could get back to sleep either.

  After the door closed, Jason sat down on his slightly heated bed and let the significance of what Paul had just designed sink in. Multiple wheels of thought began to spin as he planned out different ways they could use what Paul had just given them, knowing that this could very well be the key to taking the lead away from the 7s.

  After more than an hour of planning, Jason forced himself back into bed and tried to get what sleep he could, but his mind never fully adjusted to the task. He got back up an hour later to begin his normal morning routine, starting with a quick shave then a 10k run over on the track, then a shower and a bit of breakfast before meeting up with the rest of the 2s in one of the desert parks for their bunker assault run.

  The Black Knight showed up again and spoiled the challenge, as usual, but even that couldn’t quell the anticipation the entire team had for the afternoon session. They followed up the failed challenge with more showers, then another Dino class before spending most of their lunch break quietly refining Paul’s plans and readying themselves to make the first real attempt at the Naboo challenge.

  The first hour of their 2 hour block was spent programming as they uploaded Paul’s ship designs and tactical formations into the simulator’s mainframe, along with making a few modifications they’d mutually discussed. After that they all entered their individual simulator booths and closed the hatches behind them, cutting off any non-comlink communications, despite the fact they were barely two meters away from each other.

  Inside the booths was a simple command chair and control board, with a large display screen taking up the majority of the inner space, making it appear almost as a tiny personal theater. On the board were a variety of controls, allowing multi-tasking options for a wide variety of craft. Paul reconfigured the board, rotating a joystick down on the moveable panel until it was directly in front of him. He could have used the keys, nub controls, rollers, or any of the other interface devices, but he preferred the joystick, given that he was going to be one of the ‘hounds’ today.

  Once he had his controls set up to his liking he thumbed the ‘ready’ button and waited for the others to do likewise. A few seconds later his screen lit up with a 10 second countdown timer overlayed onto a picture of a simulated Earth. When it expired the planet seemed to shrink until it no longer filled his screen, leaving him looking down on the globe from a distance.

  Paul experimented with the controls and rotated the view of his ship, thrusting slightly to port. The screen spun slowly, with the Earth passing across in front of him until it disappeared against the star field. Paul nulled out the turn and set his ‘interceptor’ tail down to the planet.

  In the lower right corner of the display screen was a sensor display, which showed the position of three other interceptors nearby, though several thousands of kilometers apart. Paul toggled the sensor controls and expanded the view, zooming out until several other dots appeared in a familiar grid.

  He and the other three interceptors were arranged in a square, sitting in geosynchronous orbit over the target city on the surface of the planet. In the center of that square was a larger ship, full of sensors and communication equipment, which was piping out the navigational data to all of the others, allowing them to track and coordinate their efforts against the tiny ship now beginning to rise up from the surface.

  Four other ‘control ships’ were situated in geosynchronous orbit around the Earth, staggered so that they could track all objects in orbit and have clear lines of sight between them for transmission. They were one of Paul’s brainstorms…taking the long range ‘radar’ equipment out of the other ships and using a data uplink to give the ‘hounds’ the necessary information without having to tote the extra weight in equipment, making them faster a bit faster.

  And the speed of the interceptors was critical, given that the blockade runner was little more than a ballistic missile, capable of achieving significant acceleration and with a massive fuel supply. Also, it wasn’t constructed as a normal ship would be, with an out and back design philosophy. It was simply a one-way device, and if it expended all fuel putting it on an outbound trajectory from Earth and could never get back, so be it. The point of the mission was to break the blockade…not what would happen thereafter.

  The ‘break away’ point was high orbit, meaning that even if an interceptor was right on the heels of the blockade runner, the mission would end if the ship hit that particular altitude, which was too far away to worry about, well past the moon. However, if the blockade runner got a significant lead, and the computer calculated that an intercept was mathematically impossible, the challenge would immediately terminate, saving hours of needless waiting or requiring the trainees to quit the scenario, which was something that they never wanted to do on principle.

  Paul had thought a long time about what Morgan had said about the trainers not really knowing what they were doing, and it’d bothered him why they had set the termination line so far away from the planet when a blockade was something up close near the surface…until he discovered the truth of the matter, something that the trainers designing the program obviously
had been aware of.

  An up-close blockade was a fools’ errand, given the speeds involved, thought that had been the 2s’ aim from the get go. They’d been referencing science fiction guidance in how to go about setting up a blockade and had suffered a psychological blind spot because of it. Star Wars and others, he assumed, had taken their blockade philosophy from history and used a water navy as an example. Reasonable, from a certain point of view, but totally inadequate. A space navy, as Paul was quickly realizing, was another type of beast entirely.

  For starters, ships couldn’t just float above the planet…at least not anything that Star Force had available. That meant all ships had to be in orbit, which meant lateral speeds far exceeding the rotation of the planet unless you put them in geosynchronous orbit, which was about 35,000 kilometers away, or just a little shy of a tenth of the distance to the moon. So the idea of sitting ships in space above a target city to blockade it was totally absurd.

  The 2s had attempted to bypass this fact by placing orbiting ships in sequence around the planet, so that one would be passing over or near the target city at all times, but one ship was hardly a blockade, and even if they had 10 or more, the 100+ kilometer high cone of atmosphere that sat between them and the target would allow a huge area in the lowest possible orbit for the blockade runner to evade them in.

  Missiles were the next logic step, using the low orbiting ships as launch platforms to fire at the escaping ship, but again the math didn’t work out and there was just too much area to cover, not to mention that the direction of orbit made a huge difference in missile launch. If the blockade runner took off in the opposite direction, then the latent speed of the 2s’ ships would essentially make missile closure impossible, even if the blockade runner passed within a few kilometers.