Star Force: Cascade (SF73) Read online

  Lens didn’t think there were any thefts of material or schematics occurring, but what one individual learned they could always share with others. It was their personal knowledge and Star Force didn’t try to clamp down on such things, though there were sensitive items, like comm systems, that the individuals involved with knew not to share. A single leak there could lead to disaster, but as far as how to build better aquatics craft or engineer training drills was knowledge that was best shared within the Star Force community that included empire members and associates.

  Though there were also a number of known links to less than friendly races who coopted former Star Force personnel for a price. Again, there was no theft going on there, just organizations and nations looking for a quick way to jump the learning curve by recruiting talent. It was a form of competition that Lens could appreciate, for he and Erin were doing the exact same thing by bringing in Elarioni, and he was still kicking himself for letting her get to Ariel first.

  But that was behind him now and the landscape was set. Clan Aquaman would pull people from every race available to gain an advantage, and as of now he had some 19 different aquatics races and 4 non-aquatics under his command, all of which were working together to up their power ranking and further develop their little pocket civilization within Star Force. They had bits of territory on six other planets that had water and 4 that didn’t, with those 4 all being in Sol, but this Ocean was entirely theirs and where Lens was putting most of his resources into building a stronghold that even the V’kit’no’sat would have a tough time conquering.

  19 miles of water made for a decent shield against orbital bombardment, though he knew some weapons would even be able to get through that, but the extra defense always made sense to him, which was why he put his largest city at the deepest point in the Tear Drop. Other infrastructure was spread out through the middle depths and the shallows, with one more recent addition being within half a mile of the shore but unconnected via subsurface tunnels.

  That was a security issue, requiring one to swim to get to the location. Lens often chose to go the direct route rather than finding a ship to hop a ride on, with him wearing nothing but a wetsuit and breath mask today, preferring to feel the water on his skin rather than be insulated from it in a suit of armor.

  As he dove beneath the surface he passed by schools of fish and other sea creatures, none large enough to try and eat him, but there were a few races in the depths that could. They normally avoided the shallows and anywhere there was infrastructure, but to be on the safe side there were barrier nets surrounding the shallows cities. The energy barriers allowed the water to flow through but not solids unless you had an access code. That allowed ships to pass through but the dangerous wildlife, none sufficiently advanced to actually talk to, were kept out and the miles of ‘safe’ territory had been screened thoroughly to make sure none had been missed.

  That said, free water swimming was frowned upon outside the safe zones while not being technically banned. He trusted his people to know the difference as to when was a good time to go and not, but as for him he wasn’t concerned, even if this had been deep water. His psionics allowed him to detect and deter even the largest of the aquatic predators if need be. It was the low level and non-Archons that were at risk, including the Elarioni, for some of the wildlife could match them in speed, which was quite alarming.

  Some had questioned the wisdom of setting up in an unfriendly ocean, but Star Force had done it back on Earth originally and Lens wasn’t too concerned here. Yes, there were other bodies of water without predators or even wildlife at all, but this was the one that had become available to them via trade and he’d taken it, challenges and all, and his Clan was flourishing as a result…save for the competition from Clan Alterra.

  Knowing that he wasn’t going to beat them at their own game concerning Elarioni recruitment he’d been searching for other angles and had finally found one…or rather created one, in a crazy co-op with the Dvapp to help them develop a new kind of aquatics technology. That was insane, given that the Dvapp didn’t live underwater, but his apparent stupidity was beginning to show merit as a recently developed and quiet research facility had been built along the shore in the shallows and had Lens working there most days of the week.

  Today was no exception, so as he swam by a few schools of tiny fish he dolphin-kicked his way down to an entrance and passed through a waterlock into the interior that was air-filled. Most Clan Alterra facilities were now water-filled, given their number of Elarioni, but Clan Aquaman was about 60/40 air to water. A lot of his aquatics races were also capable of air breathing, so he didn’t have issues with needing a lot of water-only structures. That said, his air-breathing ones often had submerged compartments or tunnels, with swimming from one location to another being as common as walking.

  That had been deliberate to encourage casual swimming to further their skills through use rather than exclusively workouts…but Humans were still groundpounders and needed to live in that environment, as did the Dvapp who were working in this facility with him.

  There were 329 of them here, and while they could move about under water it was a new experience for them. They didn’t breathe via lungs, but rather ‘soaked’ oxygen in through their crystalline bodies. They didn’t need much, and could get enough from the water if the concentration levels were high enough, but their swimming skills were still in their infancy and right now he needed them comfortable and focusing on their tech rather than struggling to get around in water-filled infrastructure.

  So when Lens passed through the waterlock he entered a facility that was air-only save for the hangar bays where their prototypes were berthed and the lap pool where he was trying to teach some of them to swim, though with their amorphous bodies they had virtually an infinite number of propulsion possibilities. The Dvapp were intrigued with the idea of developing their own aquatics division and had agreed to help Lens advance his in exchange for them sharing the results of their research.

  Lens pulled off his breath mask and retracted it into a small pouch behind his neck on the collar of his wetsuit, then walked with bare feet down the hallways as most of the staff did while the Dvapp moved around either in bipedal form or as long snakes wriggling to and fro. One of them coming down the hallway Lens was in stopped about ten meters in front of him and squished together into a thick puddle of what looked like white crystal mush, then it rose up from the center and resolved into a stocky biped with two arms, two legs, a stubby head and no facial features whatsoever.

  “We have good news,” it said in English, though the pronunciation was coming from body vibrations rather than vocal chords. That gave it an echoing sound, but the words were spot on. The Dvapp, like most races in the ADZ, had incorporated English into their cultures given that it was the trade language that all others used. The old one had receded in prominence, though it and many others were still used in various sectors, but the Star Force language is what bound everyone in the ADZ and expansion regions together, with the Dvapp realizing that they needed to learn and master it in order to facilitate their interconnection with the overall community, though that was still limited to very restricted activities, for they preferred their privacy in most cases.

  “Tell me it’s the form shift?” Lens almost pleaded with ‘him,’ though technically Dvapp didn’t have a gender.

  “It is,” Ga’rel confirmed, vibrating his body in a ripple that sounded like metallic clinking and was a sign of excitement for them. “An adjustment made last night compensated for the tension issues. The new crystal slurry is maintaining rigidity throughout under level 18 pressure.”

  Lens pulled a slow, silent fist pump, knowing how significant that sentence was. This issue had been plaguing their research for the past 11 months and been holding back a whole line of experiments that could now begin. “Well done.”

  “We knew we would solve the riddle eventually. Your formula is new to us, and its impressiveness will not deter our applying applic
ations as we familiarize ourselves with it.”

  “We just took yours and upgraded it.”

  “You altered it in a way we had never considered. Now that we are becoming accustomed to it, I anticipate several more breakthroughs in the coming years.”

  “I’m hoping,” Lens agreed. “Is the dart ready for its run?”

  “It is as of 15 minutes ago.”

  “I’m headed out then. Carry on.”

  The Dvapp leaned forward and fell onto the floor, melting back into a snake and moving on down the hallway and around a corner. A lot of them chose bipedal form as a form of courtesy when talking with bipeds, but it seemed a lot of them preferred to move about as snakes. When he’d asked them about that earlier they said it was just a personal preference, but about two thirds of those assigned to this research mission were inclined to do the worm rather than walk.

  Lens passed a few more as he navigated his way through one chamber to another enroute to one of seven hangars. It was the one meant for external use rather than construction, and in it were several of the sea-worthy prototypes, including the Dart-class speed craft that he’d helped design to replace the traditional streak that Star Force was still using.

  Right now it didn’t look very speedy, for it sat bobbing in a cubical berth with an energy net set across the open side that connected to the communal pool, on the far side of which was a tunnel that led to a much larger waterlock, though this one had shield pass-through capability rather than double doors so traffic wouldn’t back up. It had doors as well, and right now they were closed, for very few missions were active. Most of their research was still unfortunately in the development stage.

  The dart was their most capable design, and the smallest, with it sitting in the pocket of water with an exposed seat on top. It was designed for a biped, which the Dvapp could accommodate to and therefore useable by both Star Force and their race down the road.

  Lens hopped into the water beside the craft and swam a couple of meters to get to it, then climbed up the side using a series of handholds that were basically depressions into the rock solid goo. The artificial gravity drive had already been powered up, so the ball-like glob didn’t spin to the side when he climbed. Rather it compensated for his weight and only wobbled a few inches as he leveraged his way up on top and sat down in the bathtub-like depression.

  The cockpit was made of traditional materials, as far as Star Force was concerned, with the bulk of the craft being the amorphous crystalline formula that the Dvapp had mastered over the course of their development and which Lens and a team of Star Force techs had upgraded, crudely, far beyond what the Dvapp had ever considered. Most of that upgrade had to do with compatibility with the water, though there were some higher level sciences involved taken from knowledge in the V’kit’no’sat database and transferred to the Dvapp tech, for which there was no matching counterpart in the records.

  There were many shape-shifting technologies, but more like what the Voku used. The crystalline slurry was something the V’kit’no’sat hadn’t seen much of, and nothing on the level that the Dvapp used, so Len’s techs didn’t have the luxury of just copying and pasting the data…they had to figure this one out for themselves.

  What they’d come up with they’d given over to the Dvapp, who were the real miracle workers here. The crude formula Lens gave them had been refined considerably given their experience with the technology, enough to form the bulk of the dart that he was now sitting in. When he hit a button on his control board the depressions in the outer hull that he’d used to climb up with melted and disappeared. Simultaneously material from the bulk sitting below him in the water rose up around him, eventually climbing over his head with the wide tendrils touching and meshing together, completely sealing him inside a bubble that kept both water, air, and light out.

  Internal illumination took over, with the crystalline structure actually glowing blue, though his control board was already lit up enough for him to see by. He remotely deactivated the energy gate and trolled the now covered blob out into the wide communal pool, getting several meters of distance away from the side walls before he triggered the transformation.

  When he did his cockpit bulge sank, partially submerging as the white crystalline material stretched out into a thick, but pointy needle giving it the ‘dart’ moniker. The thickest point was in the rear, where the solid cockpit now sat with a bit of material behind him that tapered down into a much shorter point for streamlining purposes.

  Lens grabbed the steering wheel/joystick and moved the dart forward, turning to the right with the straight needle-shape of the craft bending to facilitate the turn. Even though he was moving at creeping speeds the agility of that bend was one of the glaring reasons why this tech was better than the rigid hulls that Star Force aquatics had used for centuries. Bendable tech could be fashioned, and had been in the past, but nothing like what this little baby was capable of.

  His dart literally wrapped itself around the curve he ordered it to make, then it straightened out again as he headed through the short tunnel, triggering the doors to open and exiting through the protective energy fields that were keeping the hangar separate from the seawater and the wildlife outside. He kept his speeds low to avoid crushing any of them, then he went ahead and sent out a telepathic signal to cause them to move out of his way. They might not have been able to talk to him, but he could still communicate with them to a degree, which ironically allowed him to live up to the Clan name he’d chosen even before he knew psionics existed.

  Trolling across the shallows ‘safe’ zone, he headed for the sea barriers beyond where he intended to put the dart through its next round of field tests in the open water.

  6

  June 1, 2890

  Jartul System (Calavari Region)

  Daka

  Mark-084 jogged across the hangar and jumped up into the open cockpit of his prototype skeet, sliding down onto the pommel and closing the canopy with a thought. The telepathic interlink allowed him to control the basic functions from range, but now that he was inside and placed his hands on the control bars that option was nullified, routing his control through his physical Ikrid. That way an outsider couldn’t telepathically override his controls and open the canopy or power down the craft in flight, as well as allowing him much greater control through a nexus-like interface.

  Mark dived into it, submerging himself into an overall view of the hangar rather than looking out through the holograms that now covered the interior of his canopy. He didn’t even see them, for he was looking through the interface as he lifted the heavily armored skeet off the ground along with 9 others. They were all visually identical on the exterior, but inside they had no cockpits, save for a collapsible one in case Mark needed to fly a drone down to pick someone up, at which point the skeet would grow a bulge to carry the person or cargo.

  But that was a side point. The purpose of these skeets was to fight remotely and use the internal space for additional equipment, while Mark’s skeet was the reverse. It only had limited weaponry and was far tankier than any skeet that had been developed before. Its flight characteristics were identical to the others, so it lacked nothing in agility or speed, but its purpose was to house the pilot for the squadron without visually giving away clues as to which craft he was in.

  The drone skeets were also prototypes, and not in the traditional version. Mark and others had used computer programmed escorts to fight with before, but those were more like weapons that were pacing nearby that could be used to do limited fighting. They were useful in a wide variety of situations, but this new neural interface had allowed Mark to create something more. He was no longer mentally pressing buttons within a nexus, he was directly connected to his skeet as if it were an extension of his body…along with the other nine as well.

  He was flying them as if they were all the same craft and his mind was suspended between them with no bias as to the one his body was actually in. In experiments he had been able to fly and fight wi
th up to 21 before seeing a steep performance reduction, so taking out a standard squadron of 10 was well within his capabilities. Sav-enhanced he had no trouble lifting all of them up off the deck and flying them out through the open hangar door and into Daka’s thick atmosphere, but this test wasn’t so much about what he could do, as it was preparing a new generation of non-Sav pilots for what they could do…which meant he needed to refine the tech and tactics prior to bringing them into the new training program.

  He had to get the bugs out, and the best way to do that was to run live missions against computer-controlled targets. Several ranges had been constructed on Daka for just this type of thing, and though they were live fire capable he wasn’t going to be using that function. He needed the prototypes intact so he could run them through the gauntlet ad nausea without having to worry about replacing components every time he made a mistake or the course got the better of him, for he’d designed it to be challenging.

  Putting pilots into aerial craft or mechs had always been an issue, because it put them in harm’s way unlike a naval pilot who flew his warship by remote, sitting inside a well-protected jumpship and able to fight his battles in a way that wasn’t concerned with the survivability of the drone. Star Force didn’t use them recklessly, but they could push combat in directions that couldn’t be achieved with living personnel. That said, aerial craft and mechs had to have pilots in them, for drones just weren’t effective enough.

  Star Force had compensated by creating safeguards like the armored cocoon surrounding the cockpit that would allow a pilot to usually survive a crash, losing the craft but giving the person a chance to stay alive. Same was true of the mechs, though they always carried far more armor than aerial craft did. While drone tech had now improved to the point where Mark could sit inside a city and fly a drone skeet from within it he didn’t like relying on that option. Line of sight communication issues were always in play, limiting range, as well as the possibility of signal disruptions from countermeasures or compromised emitters.