Star Force: Captains Mint (Star Force Universe Book 70) Read online

  “It’s the beginning. Continue if you can.”

  Everyone sat up straighter and became silent, putting their private conversations on pause to see if Shoginar was going to be able to do it, but at the very least he’d come up with part of it.

  “We…Naval…exist in the void. No backup. No safety lines. We have no Archons to guide us,” he said, glancing at Kara who was sitting on the other side of the fire from him, before looking back at Nuomo. “No ground batteries or shields to run and hide behind. When we’re out here, alone in the galaxy, it’s just us. Our crew always has someone to look to, but we don’t. It’s us and the wilderness, and we have to be prepared for that role?”

  “Well done, but incomplete. Can anyone else add to that now that Shoginar has broken the ice, pun intended.”

  “There are no rules,” Han quickly added, finding his brain was working twice as fast now as it used to. “Limitless freedom and limitless problems with no support structure to fall back on.”

  “Quite right,” Nuomo said with a nod. “Now you know a little bit what it’s like to be an Archon, for in this small area we are their peers. When you stand in a line against the wind, there is always someone to help you break it…unless you are at the front of the line, in which case you must face its full fury and unpredictability. Look out there…”

  The fire suddenly cut out, dropping everyone into darkness except for the starlight…which became so vivid after their eyesight adjusted it was better than any holographic display.

  “That’s where we live. In the void. And so does everyone else, though they don’t realize it. Planets are in the void as well, but insulated by gravity, atmosphere, and sheer mass. When we take to the stars in our ships that insulation is gone and we deal with the raw universe…but our crews do not. They live and breathe as a small civilization whose borders are the hull of the ship. They rarely see what’s outside, and they don’t need to…but the Captain must not fall into the trap of becoming part of the crew. He must be their leader, not their peer. You must look beyond the ship to safeguard it, while they look inside to maintain it. And out there is what you must mentally calibrate to.”

  Everyone sat for a moment in silence looking at the galaxy and soaking it in. One often forgot the size, because it was so big the brain had trouble comprehending, but out here, with all distractions gone, Han and the others could feel it and how small they were.

  “That smallness is an advantage,” Kara said. “It makes you feel insignificant, but it also means you can hide really well in all that. You also need to remember one thing. Out there it looks big, but it’s made up of a lot of small things. Everything is small when local, so it’s not just you. We all play in a big sandbox, and this spot is no less important than any other. It’s where you are now, and that’s what makes it important. Your home is your body, and you need to learn to be comfortable with that even when abandoned to die in a desolate place like this.”

  “When you do,” Nuomo picked up, “your mind will clear and you will be able to maximize your abilities and your chances, but sometimes there is no way out, and rather than scrambling in a panic to achieve the impossible, you can focus on accomplishing something here in the short term before you die. And when you are a Captain that is not an optional skill. Your nerve must never break, for your crew relies on it.”

  “If you can’t win,” Kara continued, “hurt the enemy bad. If you can’t damage them, get a good punch or two in. If you can’t punch, then spit. If you can’t spit, insult. If you can’t talk, think mean thoughts at them. Do whatever it is in your power to do. Your mission is to win. Your duty is to fight. Can anyone tell me what that distinction means?”

  “We can’t control the universe,” Captain Dorogu answered. “There is very little we can control, because a fight is between two or more entities, and the outcome is a combination of their actions. We can control our actions, but not others, therefore we can’t guarantee an outcome. But we can guarantee our actions, and those actions are our duty. The outcome is the mission we are attempting to complete, but cannot control. Influence heavily, but not control. A Captain that believes he can control it will most likely break when confronted with a situation where he is going to lose no matter what he and his crew does.”

  “And a Captain can’t break,” Han echoed.

  “If you can’t save your own ship,” Nuomo added, “do some damage to the enemy that will help save another ship in the fleet. If you can’t save your entire crew, save some. You don’t have one single mission, you have thousands of them overlapping simultaneously. Work the ones that are within your reach and let the ones that are not go. You don’t have to like it, but don’t waste precious time and mental energy on lost causes. Sometimes you’re going to lose, but there is a difference between losing and being defeated. As long as you never give up, you are never defeated, even if you all die fighting.”

  “How can we let go of some missions without giving up?” Captain Stigari asked.

  “Letting go means setting aside for later. Later may never come, but no Captain ever gives up on any mission. To this day I still remember some from the past that got away from me, and I run them through my head trying to figure out if I could have done something different. Letting go refers to in the moment, but I don’t think any Captain will permanently let go of anything that was screwed up if they had an opportunity to go back and time and fix it. I certainly wouldn’t.”

  “So we don’t let go, but we acknowledge that we don’t have the Tardis that we need to fix it, so we set it aside?” Captain Biolom asked.

  “Precisely. And the longer you are a Captain, the more failures you rack up on that list, and it can be daunting. But while you are required to be able to operate in the void alone, one starship against the galaxy, you are also part of a fleet. A fleet of Captains. Now can someone tell me why you are here looking up at the seemingly endless galaxy above us?”

  “We are the fleet,” Han said as soon as the idea clicked in his head. “The Captains. Not the crews or the ships. The bonds between us are the fleet bonds. And we can’t allow ourselves to be permanently isolated out here. Because it’s ‘us’ against the galaxy, and we are its shield.”

  Kara laughed. “Close, but the idea of us being its shield is laughable,” she said, extending a hand upwards. “How does one shield all that, and shield it from what? The galaxy is the playing ground, and sometimes we have to fight against the playing ground itself, not just the players on it. So what exactly are we shielding?”

  “The empire?”

  “Tell that to the people on Earth when the Vargemma attacked,” Kara said, a little icier than she’d intended, so she raised a hand in apology. “Archons take the responsibility for the empire more personally than anyone, and we abhor not being able to defend it properly. Right now no planet is safe from a large scale Essence attack. If there’s a way to do it, we haven’t found it yet, so when we can’t actually shield anyone, what exactly are we doing?”

  “Playing the game as best we can,” Captain Orrin said as he clapped his fists together. “And protecting those that we can. Sometimes just by hiding them.”

  Kara pointed at him. “I like you. That’s a point I didn’t expect any of you to catch. Sometimes to accomplish a mission you have to run away from battle, and in a fleet, sometimes you have to run away to save your own ship. Each of you is independent, and you help the other ships out when you’re able, but when the shit hits the fan you gotta look out for your own ship first, and sometimes that means running away to live and fight another day…while firing at the enemy as you leave to do a little more damage and stack the odds for the rest of the fleet as much as you can.”

  “A fleet cannot act like it’s glued together,” Nuomo said. “It moves individually and in groups as it prefers, and it is perfectly comfortable getting split up and scattering. You must be capable of operating as individual ships and attack groups, and moving from one role to another second by second. All Captains are t
rained in the same manner, so there is familiarity when you meet another ship you’ve never encountered before. You can fight with them because their movements, capabilities, and tendencies are familiar, but not as much as those you personally know. Each ship is a Captain, and that Captain configures the ship and its crew to their liking. So think of the person commanding a vessel as its identity, and nothing else.”

  “When you leave here and get your first ships,” Kara continued, “reach out to one another when you can, as well as other Captains you’ve never met. And don’t be surprised if some of them reach out to you. All of you have been through the Captains Mint. All of you have learned the same lesson. You are not groups of a couple dozen Captains, you are one group of all Captains transitioning through at different times. Get to know the others, as many as you can. Share stories, upgrade ideas, bad things that happened, and brainstorm how to avoid them in the future. Work together, even if the messages back and forth take months to travel. You are one brotherhood of Captains. They are your family as much as the other Archons are mine. And together you will face that…” she said, pointing upward. “Have fun.”

  Han laughed, as did some of the others as they realized what she meant. The galaxy was so big they could become rock stars on one part of it and be completely unknown in another. And the fleet was going to be spread across all of it. What would bond them together through all of that? The Captains Mint. It was their induction into the fleet fraternity of Captains past, present, and future, as well as a reminder that no matter how alone they got out there in their single starship, there were millions of other Captains spread across the galaxy facing the same challenges as them.

  And when you realized that, you never truly would be alone.

  “To let the lesson sink in,” Kara said as she leaned back on her snow chair and put her hands behind her head to get a better view of the galaxy above them, “you’ve got another 10 days of chill time before you ship out. Get to know each other as well as you can, because the comm lag later will be a bitch. No more lessons from me and Nuomo. You know what you need to know.”

  The fire kicked back on and Han was able to see the faceplates of everyone sitting around in their armor, but not the people inside due to the reflections. These were his new brothers and sisters, and Kara was right to tell them to make use of their time here, for she probably knew better than anyone the isolation of command. How often did she see other Archons, as rare as they were?

  He’d talk to her later again before their time here was up, but right now he was going to do as instructed, so he got up and moved a couple meters to the right as others were getting up and transitioning around so they could group up and cram as much discussion as they could into the days they had left. Until a moment ago they had felt unlimited, but soon this very badly needed camping trip was going to be over.

  But 10 days out here was like a lifetime, and Han intended to live it to the fullest and worry about the future when it came to him, not before.

  7

  April 1, 128852

  Plucar System (Zavrex Kingdom)

  Idolo Wastes

  The group of Captains didn’t head back to the base like Han had expected. Instead they kept traveling across the wilderness to a new location every day or two as they continued to bond. When the final day came they were evaced by dropships from the Gauntlet-class cargo ship that had arrived in orbit to pick them and their mechs up.

  Han walked his onboard one of the dropships along with Captain Biolom and it took the pair up into space, with him both sorry and ready to leave. The future was forward, and he was excited for what would come next, but he also knew there would never be another Captains Mint for him unless he returned to take Nuomo’s role as guide, and that wouldn’t be a learning position. So this was it for him, but he was much improved for having gone through it, as were the others, all of whom ended up on the cargo ship anyway, but without their guides.

  When Han checked into his assigned quarters he flopped down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, taking stock of his thoughts and continuing to enjoy the mental clarity that Kara had somehow gifted him. If this was how all the experienced Captains had their minds structured, then he was beginning to understand better than the others how different the Captain’s position was…or maybe it was more of an elevated position that could occur at any level and not just Captains. Either way, he now had a transitional viewpoint that probably no one else had ever had unless they’d been skipped ahead in their development the same as him.

  Leveling up wasn’t just for practice sake. It really did have a huge effect on a person, but the changes occurred gradually and the person’s ‘norm’ reset along the way, so nobody realized how much they were actually changing.

  But Han did. And he really hoped this would stick, because he didn’t want to go back to the way he’d been before.

  A pinging got his attention and he half sat up, seeing the comm console blinking. He rolled over and off the bed, then pressed the button that resulted in a hologram of a Star Force symbol with mission update information underneath.

  Han sat on the foot of the bed and read it as it floated before him. It was a list of ship openings for him to choose from, though not all were individual vessels. Some were mission classes, probably because there were multiple vessels being built for the same task, but some were specific ships, which he guessed were not new vessels, but ones whose Captain had been transferred elsewhere.

  He’d expect a long trip with the assignments to come at their destination, whatever it was, but it seemed Star Force was wasting no time. He had to choose before their next waypoint, which was cited at approximately 18 days away, at which point he’d be rerouted to whatever assignment he chose.

  Han had options, but none of the really sweet assignments only veteran Captains could pull. Still, he could craft a bit of his own destiny here, so he had to take his time and think this through carefully…

  Suddenly his eyes went wide as he saw the very last opening on the list, and it was a Clan opening. No rookie Captain could ever dream of getting into a Clan. You had to be the best of the best to even get invited to crew on one of their ships, let alone command one, so he couldn’t believe his eyes as he stared at it to make sure it was real and not some computer glitch or his own imagination.

  Next to it was a small icon that indicated there was an attached message, so he reached out and touched the semi-solid hologram, with the button melting as if it were made of a thick cloud under the pressure of his finger.

  The message popped up just in front of the list and floated there saying only two words.

  Finders Keepers

  Han frowned, then touched the details button for the Clan assignment, seeing that it was a scout ship assigned to V’kit’no’sat/Zak’de’ron war reconnaissance from the Ghostblade fleet.

  That was Kara’s Clan, and when he saw that the message made perfect sense. If she really thought he was Grand Admiral material she was going to claim him for her own Clan before any of the trailblazers could find out about his potential.

  He smirked. He’d been totally played. Used actually, and he didn’t regret it a bit. Kara’s level of intelligence was far beyond his, and while his interest in her had been mostly physical, her interest in him had been much more complicated.

  So it wasn’t his newbish charms that had won her over. He was a toy she’d been playing with, and one she was now adding to her Clan collection. But for an Archon, ‘playing’ meant upgrading and teaching, with a little sexuality thrown in as icing.

  He’d never been more proud to be a plaything in his life, and quickly hit the ‘accept’ button on the Clan assignment, which removed all the other options and brought up the full post details for his review as well as additional information about where he would be going.

  It was a shipyard…a Ghostblade shipyard, which meant it was mobile and off the comm grid. His scout ship wasn’t even finished yet, and he would wait there until it was, with an entirely new
crew being assembled, but one of only 83 people. That was far less than he was used to after serving with thousands onboard the Hela’s Fury, but this would be 82 people of Clan level, and that was going to be a big responsibility right there…not to mention they were going to be hopping around a war zone monitoring the fighting between two of the most powerful empires in the galaxy.

  “Kara, you certainly know how to treat a guy right,” he said, beginning to mentally acclimate to his new assignment as he ran through several possibilities of crew alignment before stopping himself and just taking a moment to consider the situation and how the past few weeks had radically changed his life.

  “I’ve just found out I have a family of Captains across the galaxy, got flashed by one of the hottest women in the universe, then got virtually laid by said woman while she upgraded by mind and body without even asking permission. Then she just gave me an assignment I haven’t earned, all based on the assumption that I’m Grand Admiral material. This has been one eventful trip.”

  “Alright, Kara. I’m game. If you think I can be useful to you down the road, then I’m not going to disappoint. Challenge accepted. Now I just have to figure out how to grow into it before it squashes me flat…”

  Kara watched the mechs load up onto the dropships, including Nuomo’s, for they’d all be dropped off back at the base after the Captains debarked onto their waiting ride, but the Archon didn’t go with them. She stayed in her Neo and began the long trip back at a run, stomping the ice with her nimble mech’s feet as she needed some time to think apart from everyone else.

  The next batch for the Captains Mint was due in a week, two tops, and she’d have her mech back long before then, though right now she was standing inside the cockpit suspended by energy fields as her mind was only loosely connected to it. Not much focus was needed to run a mech in a straight line and navigate around obstacles, so she hung there as if in 0g except that her internal organs still felt the gravity as her naked body was supported on all surfaces by the soft energy field.