Blood on the Stars Read online

  “When you feel bad, that’s Ring 10. When you’re happy, that’s Ring 10. It occurs in minutes and seconds. Effects that last hours are Ring 9. A day, you have Ring 8. So Ring 10 is going to fluctuate a lot, and it will never be fully conquered. When you are in the presence of an enemy, they will affect you in Ring 10, and you will have to constantly reset yourself, or that effect will seep into Ring 9, and deeper and deeper. Everything you do or don’t do affects Ring 10, and when you have repetition, you create stacks. Enough stacks affects the next Ring. Be angry for several hours, and you add up Anger stacks, and not all the same. Your anger will occur in different ways, at different targets, but the parts that are similar will stack, and it is those stacks that affect your deeper Rings.”

  “But when you make choices, you take actions, you also affect your Ring 10. And if you do certain things to create certain stacks, you can reprogram yourself from Ring 10 inward by controlling your environment. This is Training at its most basic definition. The boring things you do over and over again, like punching a target, create punching stacks that then affect Ring 9. Do it more during the day and you get to Ring 8 and it kind of sticks. Sleep and you reset your outer rings…but the stacks remain. Do the same thing the second day, and you start to make an alteration in Ring 7 by creating a software or hardware upgrade known as an ‘App,’ which is an old term for a very small computer program with limited function.”

  “This is how new Skills are learned. This is how muscular adaptation occurs. Your Body and Mind adjust and adapt, learning from stacks. The more you feed it, the bigger it will grow. And once you have an ‘App’ created, it will run itself, or at least feel like it. It is an upgrade that allows you to do something with less focus, because part of it is automated or the physical requirements have been reduced by specialization. The first time you handle a weapon, you are clumsy with it because you have no App to run it. When you create a very basic one, your stacks feed it and it grows larger, more accurate, and more efficient. Once it grows enough it stretches out like a plant’s roots and reaches into Ring 6. When this happens, it becomes a ‘Program,’ and Programs that become a part of your everyday life will eventually reach all the way to Ring 1, such as running. We do this on purpose, to make running as easy and efficient as possible.”

  “The deeper the Rings, the harder it is to remove Programs, or to change them, because it takes far more stacks to alter something in Ring 5 than it does to change something in Ring 6. So if you learn a Skill, develop a Program for it that reaches into Ring 4, then stop doing that thing…such as sword training. Your Ring 10 will blank after a few hours. Rings 8 and 9 will be cleansed after a good night’s sleep. Let several days go by and the piece of that Program in Ring 7 begins to deteriorate. This is what is known as becoming ‘rusty.’ If you completely lose your Ring 7 Program pieces but still have your Ring 5 and 6 parts, you can then regrow your Program from those parts if you start feeding it the necessary stacks. Because of this you can ‘relearn’ a skill faster than you can develop a new one as long as a piece of the Program is still within your Rings somewhere.”

  “This is why we practice all our skills periodically. So we don’t lose our Programs. Now, why do you lose them? It’s adaptation. Why would we keep around Skills that we’re not using? Our muscles can’t specialize for all movements. We have to pick and choose our priorities. You haven’t started swimming yet, but when you do you will find the muscle adaptations are counterproductive to running. If you do both, you will get better at both, but not as good as you will get if you only train for one. That’s called ‘specialization.’ Now, if you got really good at swimming and wanted to switch to specializing in running, but your body wouldn’t let go of its muscle swimming upgrades, they would get in the way. You’d have extra muscle tissue in the wrong spots. So your Body gets rid of it, just like it gets rid of Programs you don’t need. And you tell your Body/Mind you don’t need it by not using it.”

  “But some stuff is there permanently. They’re ‘Default Programs.’ Such as your Breathing Program. Now, you’re constantly using it, so it couldn’t be deleted from inactivity, but there are other things, like your Mating Program, that you don’t have to use. We don’t, and it seems the one you inherited from us is less active than the Human ones…but you still have it. And you will have it your entire life because it is a Default Program. Not something learned, but something that comes with your Body/Mind.”

  “A lot of races have a Predator Program default, and if your Core is a Warrior this is a problem. You have to fight against this Program, defeat and deactivate it. Some things can be deleted, but most Default Programs cannot be. So you…all of you…are now inside your own 10 Rings, and those Rings have Programs already in them. They may not be good ones, they may be neutral ones that don’t fit you, and hopefully some of them are good ones you inherited from us. You have to go through them all, sort out what fits and doesn’t fit, and change what doesn’t. This is a war. It will not be easy, and many people never win the War Within. They are run by their Programs, their Instincts, and by the outside environment that rewrites their Programs via Ring 10 and creates stacks in them that they don’t even want.”

  “Now, there is another way to change your Rings. I’ve told you about doing it from the outside in, but you can also change from the Core out. If you have a Default Program in Ring 1 that is incompatible with your Core, it will cause you discomfort immediately. You will sense a ‘wrongness’ that you can’t identify, but you can’t shake. Over time your Core will gradually erode that Program in Ring 1, diminishing it if not completely removing it. And in this way you can rewrite yourself starting at your Core and working out. You can do this intentionally by exposing your Ring 10, your Active Ring, to new things. When you find something that matches your Core, it will cause your Core to pulse, and that pulse will erode more in Ring 1, or 2, or wherever the blockage is. This is called ‘Calibration’ in the general sense, but these specific occurrences are referred to as ‘Sync Moments.’”

  “You figure out who you are, in your Core, through Sync Moments. What is a Sync Moment for one of you will not necessarily be the same for the person beside you. This is because everyone’s Core is different. There may be similarities, and you may have the same ‘Class’…Warrior is my class, and your Body’s are Warrior Body’s because you inherited them from ours, but if your Core is not a Warrior then you will figure out who you are through Sync Moments when you find one, and when you do you will want to repeat it over and over. This will create stacks and will start reprograming your Rings towards matching your Core Attributes.”

  “To win the War Within, you must completely own all 10 Rings. The stuff that cannot be removed, has to be deactivated. And when you don’t use it, it will pass on in a weaker state to your offspring, if you reproduce. You don’t need to, and we have your reproductive systems blocked for now so you can’t. Your priority right now is discovering yourselves and beginning the process of fighting your own War Within. Reproduction is something that should come far in the future, if at all. If you reproduce now, you’re just passing along the settings we gave you, without making any modifications of your own…more or less.”

  “But your Mating Program will bug you to do so. It will make you feel a need, and in essence lie to you. Now why would your Body/Mind lie? Technically it doesn’t, unless there is a malfunction. There is a need, but it is not your need. It is your race’s need to reproduce. But it feels like it is your need. This is very confusing, and also problematic, because your Mating Program is incompatible with other Programs. That’s why it can’t be turned on constantly. So it will shut off, turn on, shut off again seemingly without your control. The only way you are going to understand this is by leveling up. The Mating Program is very strong, because the continuation of your race depends on it. Be thankful, yours is weaker than Humans’. And by ‘thankful’ I mean thank us, because we don’t use it and that has most likely reduced its grip on you.”

  “
Now, that could be a problem if we weren’t in a galactic empire and were just struggling to survive in anarchy. A lot of your Default Programs are designed to get you to do things you don’t want to do, and if your Core doesn’t have enough ‘Willpower,’ your Programs will run you. Willpower is a Skill, and it takes stacks to level it up. All of your Apps and Programs have levels. New ones start at Level 1, and adding new experiences…not just more identical stacks…levels them up. Running at a faster speed is still running, but it’s not the same movements. Your stride is longer, your cadence is quicker, so your Running Program levels up and gives you what we call different ‘gears.’ The more stacks you put into a gear, the more efficient it becomes. You’ve seen some of my gears, and in comparison, your Running Programs are probably Level 3 or 4. Mine is probably around 50,000. We don’t have a scanning device to measure the levels exactly, but we can get loosely close through other means to figure out where you are and are not.”

  “Upgrading yourself is part of the War Within, but the necessary part of the War is conquering all our Rings. Even if you end up with Level 1 programs only, as long as those Programs are compatible with your Core, you are Victorious. If you conquer half, and upgrade that half mightily, you have not won the war, because part of your Body/Mind is incompatible with your Core, and you will continue to feel the conflict within you. When you are Victorious, there will be no inner conflict. Only conflict with the exterior environment as it tries to alter your Ring 10 through daily experiences.”

  “This is why we keep you locked in Training, so you can figure out who you are easier than throwing you out into places that will rip you apart and make it harder, if not impossible, for you to improve and fight the War Within. We do this to help you, though it is frustrating. You want to go fight battles, not realizing the most important battle is and always will be, inside of you. The War Within is your first and greatest challenge, and it is also the prerequisite to many other awesome things in your potential future. If you can’t win the War Within, we don’t want you on other types of battlefields alongside us, because your internal conflict may trip you up and make you unreliable. Until you win the War Within, you will always be a Newb.”

  “I don’t know how long it will take you, but fast or slow, becoming ‘One with yourself’ is the necessary objective. And the only way you figure that out is with Sync Moments. So as of today I am unlocking certain stimulation in the database for you to look through. Most of it is fiction that I and my brothers and sisters found Sync moments it, but there is stuff for non-Warrior classes as well. You may have been born into a Warrior Body, but we don’t assume your Cores are. Oh, and you can pick up additional Classes even if they aren’t natural, as long as they don’t conflict with your Core. You can’t be a Warrior and a Pacifist, but you can be a Warrior and a Healer. Or a Builder and a Teacher. There are many, and you can customize yourself as you wish. Including in bad ways. You don’t want to make yourself into something that is incompatible with your Core, and we won’t make you. But we will make you pick up some Skills even if you don’t like using them. Why? Because you might need them later.”

  Kent looked around at the younglings, not saying anymore and trying to judge their reactions until one finally spoke.

  “I don’t understand any of that,” Nami Kerio admitted.

  Kent sighed. “I know you don’t. But telling you is the first step. Sooner or later you will experience something that matches a piece of what I said, then you will understand that piece. But if I don’t tell you ahead of time, you may miss the opportunity to learn in that moment. So you don’t have to understand today. You just need to remember. And if you forget, this is explained in far more detail in your data terminals, with the War Within content now being unlocked for you. You can review it later. Enough talking for now. On your feet. Time to get some more running stacks, then I’ll show you a little peek at your future. Something called Jumat,” Kent said with a wink, then he started jogging and making the younglings catch up, which required them to sprint.

  Slackers would not be rewarded here, and as they all sprang up and raced after him, Kent saw that at least that lesson had already been learned…but it was going to be long journey before they got to the point where they could self-navigate their own lives.

  6

  December 26, 154971

  Web Wall Breach Point #6 (System 8)

  Cityship 18839

  Nellie Vicorsa was a Human. Not upgraded into a Zen’zat, or Saiyan, or any other special version. She had been born on Corneria before it fell to the V’kit’no’sat during the first war when Star Force had gotten its ass kicked day in and day out. Nellie had survived, moving from planet to planet as a civilian, until she’d finally had enough running. She’d gone to a recruitment office and asked what she could do to help. That had started a long journey through maturias and apprenticeships as she developed into a weapons tech, and now she was part of the secretive Ghostblade fleet, though not a member of the Clan itself.

  She’d been brought in to assist with weapons research as the Mastertechs came up with new versions of old weapons and occasionally a brand new one that they shipped out to the warfront for testing, but never in a battle where they would have to depend on it to survive. The weapons Nellie worked with here were all tried and true, but various adjustments could be experimented with to try and increase efficiency, and with the large amount of carnage that was required to battle the Hadarak, even a 2% adjustment to damage output against certain armor or minion types added up over the course of the very long battles this war was seeing. Thus, she had been sent with a few others to help the frontline fleet here tweak its weapon systems against whatever the Hadarak threw at them, with the possibility of encountering something new before the Mastertechs back in Star Force territory had a chance to analyze them.

  And lucky her, Nellie had got a front row seat to a terrifying new Hadarak weapon. They had come into the system on the back of a Lurker along with uncountable numbers of regular warship units, along with some carriers that gorged out the smaller minion swarms. No Wardens had come, and it was guessed that was because of the quick movement needed to respond to the Star Force incursion, but the warship versions of their mainline ships were now known to house a secondary purpose.

  Building materials.

  Whatever it was the Lurker brought and deposited on the main jumpline back to the next conquered system killed and devoured every warship minion that came near it, growing larger at an astonishing rate as it spread out like a net that resembled a tree’s root structure. Star Force had tried to get to and destroy it, but it was surrounded with a fleet being fed from multiple jumplines. The Hadarak hadn’t even bothered to try and get at the Ghostblade fleet and the cityships. They went straight to the primary jumpline and camped out there as they sacrificed some of their ships to feed the thing that was now blocking the jumpline.

  Several Star Force ships had arrived via that jumpline and missed the obstruction due to warning signals being sent out. The ships would veer off and corkscrew around the system to find enough gravity to stop, but once the new Hadarak net grew large enough the ships could not divert around it enough, and they hit. At first they tore through, shields down but survivable. Then as the strands grew thicker they took armor damage, until eventually they were destroyed on entering.

  Several ships had tried to move around the net and jump from beyond it on a slow route to the next system, but they never made it. The Hadarak fleet guarded the jumpline as high as Star Force tried to take it, blocking the quick route back to warn the neighboring system of what was happening.

  Before they could try again several scout ships returned from deeper in the Core, and the message was transferred to them as they veered off on other jumplines that would lead to heavily defended Hadarak systems that had not been purged of their growths yet, but if they kept their distance they could navigate around the systems. Until then, though, every Star Force ship that came through the jumpline wouldn’t h
ave enough distance to divert and would continue to be destroyed.

  And these were ships with people in them. Every time one came in, hundreds if not thousands would perish, and these were some of the best ship crews in the empire. All due to this system not being able to get a warning back in time to stop the flow of reinforcements that they badly needed, for the defense fleet in this system was being whittled down in terms of lost drones, while the cityships were trying to construct new ones from local materials. That was a losing game unless they could hold this location for a few years, and the Hadarak were pouring enough of their own reinforcements in that Star Force would eventually lose if they couldn’t open that jumpline again or go around it…but already four more growths were deposited on other major jumplines, with them gradually spreading out and blockading the system with the Star Force fleet still inside it.

  The Avenger-class ships with them had already made an attempt at the net, managing to damage it with their Essence weapons as well as getting some information on its composition. It wasn’t standard growth material. Something was making it charged, so that when a collision occurred an energy current was sent into the colliding ship as well, enhancing the damage. Nellie was trying to work on theorizing what it was and how to better disrupt or damage it, but with more Lurkers entering the system the Avengers had to pull back into defensive position to protect the rest of the fleet, for without them the Lurkers could destroy every cityship here and most of the warfleet given enough time.