Epilogue - Patch Notes 14.X

(Virtual Room in NERV HQ)

Morgan looked over to Isaac, frowning. “Can we really use copies of the TV shows in the game?”

Isaac nodded. “Cleared it with legal. As long as they are ‘historical archives’ that require work to obtain, and we pay a corporate-level subscription to a streaming service carrying the titles, then we’re golden. Our corporate Amazon Prime account was enough for the old stuff. That new one, though, is only on the network’s proprietary stream, so no joy on that.”

“Fine. I never watched that one, anyway. No way I’m buying a streaming service for one show. So, how’s the fallout from his adventures messing with the Senate?”

Isaac shrugged. “Tough to say right now. Black Star will likely be in as good a position or better. Probably better, since he’s building new ships, actively recruiting, and even has new designs coming down the pipe. They’re going to start work on an actual battleship! First player-owned battleship in the game. It’ll be nasty as all hell.”

Morgan frowned at that. “But so far he’s done fine with the ships he’s had. What’s changed?”

“Apparently, he didn’t like getting smacked around by the X’thari. And he’s got a whole address book of addresses that can be checked out, but the X’thari are probably on the other side of at least a couple. So he wants to have more ‘boom’ before doing serious exploring.”

“All right, that’s fine. But with him being the first mercenary company to have battleships, and even be able to throw down at the same level as actual militaries in a fleet action, that’s going to cause some people to start complaining more and more.”

Isaac shrugged. “Tell them to get off their butts and build themselves a battleship, then. Nobody handed our boy his toys. He went out and took them, or made them himself. “

“Oh, and I’ve gotten another set of complaints from one of the players that has crossed his path before. You know a player that goes by ‘Lord Kickass’?”

Leaning forward in his seat, Isaac smiled. “Really? Oh, this should be good. What did the idiot do?” At Morgan’s questioning look, Isaac shrugged. “The guy was a complete moron. Remember, he’s the one that Mollen framed for the Major’s murder way back when? And since then they’ve run into eachother once, and Kickass got sent down some rough roads because he kept making bad choices, until he finally reset his character. So, what happened?”

“Apparently, his notion of a good idea was to get work as soon as he had reset, and then enslave the people he worked for, spacing the men and keeping the women as sex slaves. When he saw that Mollen was on the same planet as he was, he freaked, and tried to attack him. Mollen’s people took him down, and then kept him drugged until he woke up in an escape pod already entering the Amazon planet’s atmosphere. He’s trapped on the Amazon world, same as all the others, and he’s trying to say Mollen cheated.”

“Well, I guess idiots are the same all over. Did Mollen actually cheat?”

Morgan shook her head. “No. He simply didn’t fight fair. Instead of a freighter to freighter smuggler battle like Kickass wanted, he had Shadowdancer watching in stealth for anyone to be stupid, and they took down his ship without blinking.”

Isaac nodded sagely. “Proper planning is not cheating. Sucks for Kickass, but the idiot should have known better. Anyways, tell him that he will be eligible for a reset in three months, real world time. Until then, there are Amazon women available for snu snu.”

Morgan snorted. “Ok, maybe I won’t say that last bit, but yeah, his complaint is getting denied. So anyways, on to better things. What is the situation with the dungeons?”

Isaac leaned back in his chair, and propped his feet up on the table. “People couldn’t be happier. There has been too many people with traditional MMO expectations and nothing to vent them on until now. The Ihm dungeon is already popular enough that the outpost is growing into more of a small town. Which is hilarious since it is on top of a mountain, and Ihm are generally cold-blooded.”

“And other than that one?”

“A second dungeon has been discovered in the Ihm Imperium, three in the Empire, two in the Free Worlds Alliance, and two in the Confederacy. That’s for inhabited systems. There’s 2-6 dungeons per polity that haven’t been discovered, either because they’re in interstellar space, or in uninhabited systems. We’re also seeing divergence from the Deus and human clones routine in the newer dungeons, which are being blamed on ‘corruption’ in the code caused by whatever reason, allowing there to be different enemy types in some dungeons.”

“That’s great! I can make sure that people know that there are dungeons which are variants, which will get people out there, exploring more, and bringing in new stuff.”

“Yes, I can’t wait until someone goes and finds the Chimera homeworld. That will be an eye opener, and make no mistake!”

“Chimera homeworld? They’re all artificially created! How can they have a homeworld?”

“Well, it seems that after the last war were chimeras were used (and were declared to be off limits by pretty much everyone) some managed to escape quarantines and containment zones, and they banded together in order to survive, moving out away from established colonies so that they could live without being hunted. The more unstable ones all got themselves killed, while the smart ones stayed hidden on their homeworld.”

“But they can’t breed! Wouldn’t they have all died off by now?”

“Well… it turns out that Chimeras with functioning anatomy are capable of breeding, but the rate is something like two percent of normal human fertility rates when breeding with other chimeras. When doing cross-species pairings, that jumps to 30% of normal human rates. They’re the only species in the galaxy that has more trouble procreating with their own species than with an alien species.”

“Oh my. I can only imagine the problems if they get discovered. When do you think that will happen?”

“Considering that there’s a dungeon on their planet’s moon? Probably sooner than we’d expect.”

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The Kalipshae Affair (A First Contact Short Story): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0739V6R6T

Chapter 140 - Shadowdancing

(BSN Shadowdancer, Amazon System)

The exercise was just starting, and already Slave-Captain Theylnn was leaning forward in her seat in anticipation. This Confederate ship was almost identical to her Shadowdancer, except for a few minor differences that they’d left out when making versions to sell to the Confederate Navy. But Shadowdancer was the first of the Assassins, and her crew was the first to ever man the ships. The Shinokage might be the flagship until the new ships come in, but Shadowdancer’s crew took pride in being the First. The Black Star Navy began with this ship, and that meant they had a reputation to uphold. Nyna wasn’t about to fail, even in an exercise.

She looked to her sensor operator. “Anything on the EM or Grav scanners?”

Both were passive, lightspeed sensor systems. While it was faint, an Assassin under power had a distinct EM signature that someone who knew what they were looking for could find and track. If you were close enough. The same was true of the Gravity sensors. Despite the reduced mass from the nonmetallic hull, an Assassin still had mass, and bent the fabric of space around it, if only slightly, even when coasting with no acceleration. Reading those sensors and coming up with a track for an Assassin in stealth was as much an art as it was science. For reasons no one understood, a human or knelfi trained on the sensors with computer assistance had a 21% better detection threshold than the computer alone. One operator said it was like seeing something out of the corner of your eye, and just knowing that there was someone there.

“Three possibles, Ma’am, designating Echo 1 through 3. Two small ones, but the EM is high enough that the computer is tracking it. The other one… might be the Gilrie, but I can’t nail a fix. Tracks on screen.”

Nyna looked at the plot showing the probable tracks of possible targets. She knew that these Confederates had a lot to prove to themselves. They surely felt the pressure of being told that Shadowdancer, a mercenary ship, was going to test their skills, with them being official navy and all. Their Captain wasn’t an idiot, either, so how was she going to try and play this?

“Tachyon pulse from Echo 1! Sensor ping, we’ve been lit up!”

“Match to the tracks on Echoes 1 through 3! Do we have enough for a fix on the target?”

“Negative, captain. But three target confirmed, and in the right area for our readings. Echo 3 is now designated Tango 1. That’s the Assassin, has to be. Echo 1 and 2 look like shuttles, ma’am.”

No way that they would just give away their position like that with a locator ping. There had to be a plan in place. “Adjust course, take us towards Tango 1. Minimal thrust, vector our emissions directly away from the target. I want to be leaning the right way when whatever they’re planning hap—”

“New tachyon pulse! Echo 2 pulsing this time! Captain, I think I’m seeing something in the ‘shadow’ of Echo 1. Unknown objects.”

Slave-Captain Nyna Theylnn’s eyes widened. Triangulation! Of course! That meant that the next pulse would be…

(CSN Luvon Gilrie, Amazon System)

Captain Zylna took a deep breath, and said, “Are the missiles ready?”

“Yes ma’am! Missiles are in space and ready to launch as soon as the tachyon pulse lights up the target. Estimated course and speed likely heading towards us due to the last track.”

“All right. Both shuttles, tachyon pulse on my mark. One, two, three, MARK!”

Both shuttles fired tachyon pulses, and in that instant, twelve shipkiller missiles fired off their drives, seeking to target that had just been painted for them.

(BSN Shadowdancer, Amazon Space)

Nyna leaned forward in her chair, waiting for the moment to come. The pride of Black Star’s first ship rested on the next few moments, and she refused to let her ship, or her Master, down. This would work. It had to.

“Tachyon pulse!”

“EXECUTE!”

(CSN Luvon Gilrie, Amazon System)

Zylna leaned forward in her chair, waiting for confirmation. She was the youngest captain in the fleet, and she needed to prove herself, both to the Black Stars, and to the admiralty back home. The time was now. The Shadowdancer would never see it coming in time to save herself.

“Missiles away! We have good launch on all twelve missiles. Tracking to target…”

There was a flash of light, as suddenly the Shadowdancer appeared on their scopes, visible due to their active shields, but they were in TWO PLACES AT ONCE? How?

Before she could yell out an order, the lights flickered, and died, going to emergency lighting. The controls locked, and on the main display an image of a red X replaced the tactical readout, signifying that their ship was ‘dead’. “S-sensors? Do you have anything on what happened before we died?”

The sensor tech shook his head. “It happened too fast. The light from the event was difficult to interpret. Best guess? The Shadowdancer decided to jump right on top of us, and hit us while the shields were down for running in max stealth.”

Her XO looked deathly pale at that thought. “A jump that short? Without knowing what was ahead? My gods, what madness would prompt them to do something like that?”

Zylna sighed, and said to Leoven, “They’re Black Stars. This is the kind of people they are. They like to take insane risks and make it work for them.” She shook her head. There wasn’t any shame in losing against someone better than you, so long as you learned from it. And she would learn from this. But for now, there were responsibilities she had to take care of.

“All stations secure from exercise. Send recall codes to the missiles, and have the shuttles pick them up. Open up a line to the Shadowdancer, and offer Slave-Captain Theylnn my congratulations on her win.”

“Incoming transmission from Starlight Raven. Captains’ conference in ten minutes for a debrief on the exercise, and analysis of our performance. Vid conference only.”

“Acknowledge it. I’ll be in my ready room when it is time.”

(BSS Starlight Raven, Amazon Space)

When I conferenced in Nyna and Captain Theylnn, I noticed that each of them had their first officers with them. Well, I had Raven with me, so that was fair. “Well, Ladies, Gentlemen, I would like to start by saying that this was a very informative exercise. Nyna, pass my congratulations to Shadowdancer’s crew for never failing to surpass my expectations. Captain Theylnn, it is my pleasure to say that your ship performed far better than expected, which is a testament to the training you’ve given your crew. Now, we’re going to do a simple debrief, so we can figure out what went right, what went wrong, and what can be fixed. Any questions?”

Nyna shook her head. “No, Master.”

Captain Theylnn chuckled darkly, and said, “If that was better than you expected of us, then I am slightly afraid of what you were thinking would happen.”

I looked over my shoulder to the android body standing there, and grinned. “Raven?”

Raven looked at the screen, and said, “Captain Theylnn, your ship engaged stealth protocols well enough that automated sensors were unable to detect your ship until the tachyon pulses, and even then they were not of a sufficient strength or duration to get a weapons lock. You were traveling without shields to minimize your EM profile, as well. These are points in your favor. Given records available to Black Star as a registered mercenary company, and experiences during the war, we concluded that there was a 18.54% chance that you would act in some manner similar to how you did, actually taking into account the information that had been provided to you and acting accordingly. Another 43.89% suggested that you would fail in some aspect of the stealth approach, including items like excessive maneuvering or raising shields. There was a probability of 12.63% that you would fail to find a way to attempt to detect Shadowdancer until she had found you. The remaining 24.94% was that you would allow pride as a naval commander of a national military vessel to blind you and cause you to make mistakes out of arrogance.”

Captain Theylnn slumped in her chair, and said, “Well, I’m glad we beat those odds, but it is a little frustrating that our getting slaughtered was the most likely outcome if I didn’t get stupid or prideful.”

I shook my head. “You are an untried crew going against the most experienced crew on your ship type in the galaxy. I literally threw you up against the absolutely best I had to offer. There was always a chance you could have pulled out a win, if you got lucky or outfoxed Nyna, but it was an uphill battle for you.”

I held up my hand to cut off any further talk along that line. “Now, on to the debrief. The use of the shuttles to provide triangulation while keeping your emissions low was a good idea. However, you and the shuttles were maneuvering too much, and showed up on the Shadowdancer’s sensor screens as indeterminate energy spikes.”

“WHAT? We were sure they would be under the detection thresholds!”

“Ah, Master, if I may?” I nodded, and Nyna continued, “The readings were indeed under the normal detection thresholds for the computers. Well, the shuttles strayed into the ‘marginal’ range as they were setting up for the pulses. But the Luvon Gilrie was under the threshold for the ranges we were at. However, our sensor technicians have had years of practice reading the emissions track of an Assassin or Reaper under stealth. Our computer classified you as background noise from a pulsar, but our tech tagged you as a possible and was working a general track before the first pulses went off.”

I cut back in. “These are the kind of things this exercise was meant to find, Captain. Find the areas where you’re strong and weak, and work on them. Frankly, your idea to use missiles remote launched from halfway points by the shuttles to reduce response time was inspired. I assume you were doing that to keep from risking the mass of the Gilrie tipping their scanners at closer range?”

“Yes, we didn’t know about the computer not being able to read the sensors as well as a person, so we figured a tachyon pulse was the only way to show up a stealth ship that we wanted found. But to ensure a kill, we needed to fire more missiles in a shorter amount of time than we were able to do, so this was the solution we came up with.”

“Well, tell your crew that Raven and I have gone over the numbers, and your plan would have worked under normal circumstances. You executed perfectly, and with exact timing. Against a less experienced enemy, that would have worked.” I paused, and then went on. “But as I said, you weren’t against an inexperienced crew, but the longest-serving crew in the Black Star Navy. They know the Assassin better than any other crew in the Galaxy.”

I looked to the screen Nyna was on, and said, “That said, Nyna, where in the infinite abyss did you get the idea for doing a microjump in the middle of combat, going from one engagement zone to another like that?”

Nyna looked sheepish, and said, “Well, while we were in the Empire during the Civil War, the Valkyries ‘liberated’ copies of some old Earth science fiction shows. We’ve been doing viewing parties ever since. The other night we were watching one of the shows, and there was something like this called the Picard Maneuver…”

I smiled wryly, and said, “Well, until anyone says different, we’ll be calling it the Theylnn Maneuver, a variant on the Picard Maneuver for stealth encounters. And you are ordered to ensure that copies of those shows are distributed to the fleet, and the company net, so people can see if they can’t get any ideas from ancient TV shows that are so crazy they just might work.”

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Be sure to read my published works!

Frozen Soul series (Sci-Fi Supervillain story):
Frozen Soul https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R125QT
Tales of the Void Traveler https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ52G37

Rules-Free VRMMO Life (Dark Fantasy GameLit):
Volume 1 - Tutorial
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071VPRNDB
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Book I - Game Start https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071LT5WGL
Omnibus I - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077X2KR7Y

City of Champions Online (Superhero GameLit):
Issue I - Origin Stories https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075SHXQS1

Lewd Dungeon (Dungeon Core GameLit):
Book 1 - Welcome to the Apocalypse https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BB34DHF
Omnibus 1 - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FBPF6HR

The Kalipshae Affair (A First Contact Short Story): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0739V6R6T

Chapter 139 - Hunting Practice

(CNS Luvon Gilrie, Amazon System)

Captain Zylna looked up from her desk in the small quarters afforded her as Captain of the Gilrie as the door chimed. It was more space than the average crewman had, certainly, but no one would mistake it for luxury. She sent the signal to open the door, revealing Lieutenant Daelen and her XO, Lieutenant Tanyl Leoven. She nodded to both of them, and motioned to the two folding chairs in the small space. It was ‘cozy’, but this was the Captain’s space, which meant they could talk plainly here, without the burden of rank. Both men took the offered seats, and the bottles that bore the mark of a local brewer.

“Gentlemen. I trust the crew has recovered from their bout of shore leave? I was worried when I didn’t see any calls for us to pick up sailors or marines from the local authorities.”

Leoven laughed. “I was wondering that myself. There’s always at least one sailor that gets a little too drunk and ‘overzealous’, and ends up in the care of Shore Patrol. I had half a mind to call down to the infirmary, and see if there was an epidemic running through the crew that I didn’t know about.”

Daelen snorted in response to that, and took a swig from his bottle before saying, “Well, the way I heard it from my boys, the fact that the whole place was mostly women looking for… companionship and eager to actually buy Marines drinks instead of the other way around meant that any male on the crew was promptly whisked away from the bar the moment they were inebriated enough to pick a partner, and they was enough choice that no one went home disappointed. Free beer and easy women make for very happy Marines. Happy Marines don’t cause trouble, because then someone will come to make them very unhappy. Same for your sailors, I expect.”

Leoven nodded. “True enough. The few women in the crew, though, apparently were not pleased with their lack of prospects while on leave.”

Zylna smiled, remembering some of her adventures on shore leave, back before she was a Captain. “Even if the girl has no intention of going home with someone, it feels nice to be fawned over, you know? Makes her feel wanted and special, when most of the time we have to be tough to get the respect of our crews.”

Her XO nodded. “Yes, I heard the same as I came across Ensign Hunt as she was leaving one of the bars. She was drunk enough that she didn’t recognize who she was talking to until I’d gotten her back to the shuttle. She just saw the Navy uniform, and that I was a man.”

Zylna raised an eyebrow. “Anything I should be concerned about?”

“No, just the same things any sailor who has been drinking and striking out all night might say if a female shipmate was helping them back to the shuttle. I asked Doctor Ivesly to impress on her the dangers of overindulging. Officially, I am not aware of any incident that happened.”

Daelen leaned forward, and said, “And what about you, Captain? Did you enjoy your tour of the Black Star facilities before we left?”

“Not much to enjoy, to be honest. The things they’ve done with the Nightforge are incredible, but in the end it is still a mobile shipyard. The tour of the X’thari carrier was very informative, or it would have been if I was fluent in scientific minutiae. The most interesting thing was watching the yardies begin construction on a new ship. The person I asked said it was going to be the new flagship for the Nuevo Edo Navy once it was finished. They were calling it the Wrath of Susanoo. Apparently, it was named after an old Earth god of the sea and storms.”

Leoven shrugged. “A cruiser like the Reapers the Black Stars have would definitely be an improvement over an assassin, but calling it the ‘Wrath’ of anything, much less a storm god, seems presumptuous.”

“Oh, it won’t be a cruiser. Black Star has apparently decided to start trying their hand at building battleships.”

Daelen winced. “The Senate is just going to LOVE that news.”

Zylna shook her head. “I doubt Admiral Mollen actually cares that much about what the Senate thinks. The intel department agrees with my assessment that he’s attempting to make himself a figure that one cannot ignore, but actually attempting to take him on forcefully will leave you so bloody that even if you win, you’ll be open to fresh assaults. And since it is impossible to permanently kill a Nomad without doing things that calls down Exterminatus orders, he’s banking on the fact that, soon, he will be too dangerous for people to simply try and push him around.”

“So if that’s the case, why are we on this mission, basically being welcomed spies in his organization?”

Zylna looked over to her XO, and answered, “Because he wants to prove that he can be a good neighbor to those who work with him, but a terror to those who move against him. Intel says he did the same thing with Dimiya’s underworld, except he was less diplomatic about it. The pirate hub in the Badlands was destroyed, along with several other installations, just because those groups had not told the pirates that attacking Black Star was a bad idea.”

Leoven nodded. “So, he makes himself stronger, and discourages those who might be against him from taking direct action. Not bad, not bad at all.”

Zylna grinned. “Any way, now that we’re through the gate, we’ve got ‘skills testing’ with the Shadowdancer. They want to test us and see how good we are with the new ship.”

Daelen nodded. “My team has already been doing sim battles against Black Star teams for squad-level combat. It has been an interesting experience. Their Black Star Marines are every bit an experienced military unit, and those fights have been some good ones. But against the tactical teams from the Assassins? It is like pitting marines against commandos. We can win if we pin them down, but they are slippery as hell, and ruthless. We’ve won as many as we’ve lost, but it was always a blowout either way. Not the even fights we had with the Marines.”

Zylna smiled at her fellow officers. “Well, our job is a bit more challenging. We are going to hunt and ‘kill’ Shadowdancer without getting killed ourselves.”

Leoven frowned at that. “How are we supposed to hunt a stealth ship? They’re damn near invisible to passive sensors unless we happen to get lucky and they block a star’s light from us, and going active would reveal our position, long before we found Shadowdancer.”

Zylna leaned forward. “Well, I had a thought about that. But we’ll need the help of the shuttle pilots to make it work.” Now that she had their attention, she said, “Here’s what we’re going to do…”

(BSS Starlight Raven, Amazon System)

Space combat involved a lot of waiting. That wasn’t so different from when I was in the Navy, but it got a lot harder to wait when you weren’t even an official part of the exercises going on. Since I wasn’t going to just sit back and do NOTHING while I was waiting for the exercise to begin, and I couldn’t just haul one of the girls into my cabin for a quickie, since the exercise was coming up and I was ostensibly in charge of it all as a referee, I decided to amuse myself with ideas for how we could make better use of the Amazon world, now that the technological base of the planet had been consumed.

Naturally, if they wanted any of the resources on the planet, they would have to find a way to cleanse them of nanites before they got to any tech we wanted to keep. Oh sure, the shields of our ships could be modulated to the frequency of the ‘fence’ used to block Greenwave, but that only kept nanites away as long as the shield was up. If you opened a hole in the shield to pull in resources, or brought nanite-infected resources inside the shield, then you killed yourself.

Killing the nanites was easy, if you didn’t care whether the thing the nanites was on was dead and glowing from the radiation. But anything you nuked so badly would be useless for most tasks until it wasn’t so radioactive. So even ores and gems wouldn’t be worth the hassle to pull out of the Amazon planet. Otherwise, it was a case of ‘wait until the nanites run out of power’. That’d probably be sometime in a few decades. And that just wasn’t going to work. Unfortunately, the anti-tech weapon had been designed to resist tech-based measures…

Wait, what if it wasn’t pure tech, but part organic? If we could make it so that something made technorganically could resist, maybe even eat Greenwave, we could set up collectors, and then… Yeah, that would work, if we could figure it out, but the mass wouldn’t just disappear. Could we turn it into something? And that still didn’t solve the problem of collecting resources outside the barrier, unless we went with some kind of organic collector? Yeah, sending those thoughts to the tech heads and scientists, let them play around with those questions.

“Captain, I believe the exercise is beginning.”

Raven’s voice brought me out of my thoughts on how to properly exploit the riches of a world filled with tech-killing nanites with mad science, and into the present. Both Shadowdancer and the Luvon Gilrie had disappeared from our normal sensors over almost two hours ago, as they maneuvered to starting positions. The Gilrie was on their first test against a stealth ship that knew how to evade detection. So how would the Confederates try and even the odds?

“Tachyon pulse detected, coordinates marked. Identifying… source is shuttle Gilrie 1. Momentary contacts on screen, lost now.”

A tachyon pulse was the space version of sending out a sonar ping to look for submarines. And like a sonar pulse, it did not care one way or the other about who was a friend or foe. Worse, it would show literally everything in the system, which made quick analysis difficult in battle, unless you happened to be in a nearly empty section of space like we were here…

I smiled to myself. It would appear that the Confederates chose a captain who thought she could duel Shadowdancer and win. The shuttle was exposed, but the letter of the exercise had nothing against it. A moment’s exposure wasn’t enough to give Shadowdancer firing solutions, but the same was true of the Gilrie. They would need to have multiple pulses, so that they could track targets in real time, or they’d need to get a lot closer, so that they could launch weapons fast and the enemy couldn’t evade. So why tip their hand now?

“Another tachyon pulse, new location. Designate shuttle Gilrie 2.”

Ahh, now it was making a little more sense. Two pulses, offset of each other in position, could triangulate the position and course of Shadowdancer. It was a good tactic, but how did it get past the fact that the enemy could triangulate their position as well when the next pulses came?

I double-checked the numbers on the brief fix we’d gotten on the two ships. About a light-minute apart? But wait a minute, what was this? “Raven, analysis on highlighted section of tachyon sensors.”

“Analyzing. It appears that several small objects have been jettisoned into space in the area of the shuttles. Tentative identification is a missile, currently inactive.”

“Oh, you clever girl. She plans to use the pulses to guide a missile spread activating in areas of ‘dead’ space. It will definitely cause a few pants to turn brown on Shadowdancer. Raven, have you confirmed that the missiles are training rounds?”

“Affirmative. The Gilrie sent us a tightburst message once the first pulse went off. The missiles are set to standard training packages.”

That was fine, then. Training rounds wouldn’t do any actual damage to the ships, and if they weren’t destroyed, they could be recovered and refueled. No sense wasting money out here.

And that’s when things went crazy.

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Be sure to read my published works!

Frozen Soul series (Sci-Fi Supervillain story):
Frozen Soul https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R125QT
Tales of the Void Traveler https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ52G37

Rules-Free VRMMO Life (Dark Fantasy GameLit):
Volume 1 - Tutorial
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071VPRNDB
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rules-free-vrmmo-life-stuart-grosse/1128941349?ean=2940161995297

Omnibus 1 - Volumes 1-4
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0774T354X
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rules-free-vrmmo-life-omnibus-i-stuart-grosse/1128953195?ean=2940162052081

Into the Black (Sci-Fi GameLit):
Book I - Game Start https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071LT5WGL
Omnibus I - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077X2KR7Y

City of Champions Online (Superhero GameLit):
Issue I - Origin Stories https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075SHXQS1

Lewd Dungeon (Dungeon Core GameLit):
Book 1 - Welcome to the Apocalypse https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BB34DHF
Omnibus 1 - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FBPF6HR

The Kalipshae Affair (A First Contact Short Story): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0739V6R6T

Chapter 138 - Liasons

(BSN Dykhaniye Smerti, Nuevo Edo Orbit)

Captain Zylna stepped off her shuttle with Lieutenant Daelen, the head of her Marine detachment. The Black Stars apparently used what they called ‘tactical teams’ for their ship-board security and ship-to-ship or ship-to-ground actions, but the Confederate Navy used their Marines, probably because they had a lot of them, and needed to put them to good use somewhere. Taking a moment, she looked around to get her bearings. It was still amazing that a group like the Black Stars had been able to capture a fully-functioning Imperial carrier during the civil war. Of course, it probably had more to do with pride than anything, with a captain not wanting to surrender to his ‘brothers’ and face the shame of admitting they’d chosen the wrong side, or some crap like that.

It was still an impressive sight to see, however, with the Imperial flight deck filled with the fighters of the Black Star ships, especially those new Dragon bombers that had made such an impact on the Fleet chat nets when their existence was disclosed. Poor pilots were bemoaning the thought of being stuck in a bomber, while commanders were quietly freaking out about the destructive capability of the Dragons with those torpedoes of theirs. There were people saying that this may mean a change in fleet tactics overall over the next couple decades, as carriers became more important than dreadnoughts for fleet operations.

Taking a breath, she turned her eyes front, and stepped up to the officer in the black uniform of the Black Star Navy, and offered a salute. “Captain Faylen Zylna of the Luvon Gilrie, and my Marine commander, Lieutenant Kuskyn Daelen, requesting permission to come aboard?”

The officer returned the salute, in a style that was not quite Imperial or Confederate, but was its own style. Her background reading identified it as the same style used by an old blue-water navy on Earth long before the humans ever reached space. This ‘US Navy’ was apparently a major power in the world’s oceans before the wars that eventually lead to the planet’s unification and the birth of the Terran Empire.

“Captain Zylna, I am Slave-Captain Scott Cook, and both you and Lieutenant Daelen are welcome on the Dykhaniye Smerti. If you will follow me, the Master wishes to meet you both, to go over the details of these exercises.”

As they fell in line behind the captain, Daelen asked, “Were you stationed on the Smerti when it was captured during the war?”

Slave-Captain Cook winced at that, and said, “First, that is a… sensitive topic with many of the crew, and those of us who are still on board don’t like talking about the war. We were following the orders of our commanding officers, who we trusted. Unfortunately, it became clear that there were many of the upper echelons who were deeply complicit in crimes against the Empire. I was the second officer aboard the Radiant Dawn at Edena. With our fighters either on mission or destroyed, we were helpless against the enemy fire. Carriers of our type simply are not designed to do more than hold off aggressors until other fleet elements or their fighters take care of the threat.”

“The Slave-Captain of the Artemis stripped our shields with a shot from their primary weapon, and once they were hitting us with ion cannons, the systems that hadn’t been knocked offline by impact were quickly disabled. The Captain and First Officer both elected suicide rather than surrender to ‘privateers’. I was given the choice of either joining them, or surrendering to Black Star, once it became clear that the fleet would not be able to rescue us.”

Captain Zylna gave Daelen a look to discourage more questions on that specific line, and said, “As someone who has seen Black Star tactics ‘up close’ from both sides, what is your opinion of their effectiveness? I heard that the casualties in the battle against the X’thari were quite high.”

“That they were, Ma’am. But that is what happens when a force designed for intercepting light craft and organizing quick attacks from stealth are forced into a position where they cannot simply fade away and strike when and where they please. They managed to nail us to a point where we had to defend, which made us go against most of our ‘doctrine’, but we gave better than we got. Since then, the word is that the big brains have been designing some new ships that would allow us to anchor a defensive line if we need to.”

Zylna blinked at that. “Already planning for another war?”

Cook simply laughed, and said, “The X’thari will be back, they always come back. So we’ll be ready for them next time. And the X’thari aren’t the only threats out there, so if Black Star gets called in to help ‘negotiate’ between two sides in a conflict between, say, two Alliance worlds, then we need to be able to do the job properly.”

By then, they stepped through the doors that led them to the flag deck. The man in charge was immediately apparent, even with everyone wearing black uniforms, due to the way he was standing at a console with others coming up to speak to him, before returning to their duties. Slave-Captain Cook snapped to attention and saluted. “Master, the Captain and Marine commander of the Luvon Gilrie.”

The man looked at them, and Zylna could see how this man could get the ladies, even without wealth and power, which he definitely had. For a second, she wished she HAD been given orders to try and seduce him, but quickly put that thought out of her head. The intelligence report also suggested that he had some kind of Mental Psy training, and skill at using it subtly, without the targets knowing.

“Thank you, Captain, you are dismissed.” Cook nodded, and headed out the door, while the man looked them over, “I am Admiral Mirikon Mollen, at least while on one of my warships. Yes, they ambushed me and made me get the upgrades that would make me an Admiral. If I’m out of uniform, I am either Captain Mollen of the Starlight Raven, or Mr. Mollen, owner of the Black Star Company. With that said, the purpose of your ship joining Black Star for these exercises is to learn to properly use the ship we’ve made for you, using tactics that your Navy acknowledges are of questionable sanity but unquestionable effectiveness. So I will be treating you as one of my crews until the exercises are concluded, understood?”

Zylna let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. Looks like the ‘notorious womanizer’ wasn’t going to immediately start flirting with her, which was a good sign. And he was taking these exercises seriously, which was also good. “Understood, Admiral. What is the format of the exercises going to be?”

“We’ll start you off with the training simulations we gave to the Nuevo Edo Navy. Some of these things will be refreshers for you and your crew, but the tactical advice will constitute a core part of why you are here. Additionally, I’ve taken the liberty of sending you some reading for your free time. Black Star uses a lot of tactics from blue-water navies of the past, especially submarine warfare tactics.”

Zylna nodded, and said, “Why submarine tactics, sir?”

The Admiral chuckled, and said, “Because an Assassin is the closest thing to a submarine as you’re likely to find in the blackness of space. Quick, quiet, and able to strike without warning. Devastating against fixed defenses from ranges that are insane, even when talking about space, since all it takes is time and math to hit the target on a ballistic trajectory. And when you’re closer in, it offers a devastating first strike, to the point where a group of Assassins working together can take down a superdreadnought with ease.”

Daelen cleared his throat, and said, “Anything special for the Marines, sir?”

Admiral Mollen shook his head. “Fortunately, a Marine’s work on an Assassin is the same as anywhere. We typically use a tactical team based on the ship for boarding actions, and any ship-to-ground actions. The big change for you, compared to a more traditional Navy ship, as I’m sure you’ve already noticed, would be in EVA operations. Non-metallic hulls mean that magnetic boots do nothing for you, so climbing around the outside of the ship is done with grav-boots or grav-belts. I trust you’re already trained on those?” When the Lieutenant nodded, he continued, “Excellent. In that case, you’re already caught up. The Navy are the ones who need the tactical primer. However, I know that there are sims with various Marines running small-unit tactics competing against each other. For bragging rights only, of course. And as the owner, that is all I’m allowed to ‘know’ about that.”

Daelen nodded. “Understood, sir. My men will look forward to having someone new to test themselves against.”

“Well, let them know that their window is a short one. Now that you’ve arrived, the Luvon Gilrie will be shipping out with us as we provide a primer on anti-piracy tactics that we’ve found to be useful, after a quick tour of the Amazon system, to make sure no one has been naughty and found a way to set up areas on the planet that would be immune from Greenwave, and warn off any tourists that might be trying to do something stupid.”

Zylna nodded. “Who will we be grouped with, sir?”

“Starlight Raven will be the ‘bait ship’ for this mission, with Shadowdancer being the primary. You’ll be shadowing her, and learning from their crews. Once we’ve done a basic skills evaluation in the Amazon system, we’ll return to Confederation space via Desolace. And before you ask, the reason we’re going through Desolace is because the gate is within reasonable distance of several populated worlds, but there isn’t anyone there, and Assassins are still very visible when they come through the Gateway, just like any other ship.”

Zylna nodded her head again, and said, “I understand. When will we be leaving, Admiral?”

“We are scheduled to ship out in two weeks, so you may consider rotating your crew through the Spaceport for shore leave. That is at your discretion, of course. And Lieutenant, I’ve sent you a comm code for Major Khan. He will be extremely happy to have some ‘fresh meat’ to throw his people at in the ‘friendly’ sims.” The Admiral looked at both of them, and said, “Any further questions? Then you are both dismissed.”

As soon as they left the room, Lieutenant Daelen shook his head. Once he’d made sure that they were alone, he said, “I don’t know what I was expecting, but that man is nothing like what I thought he would be.”

Zylna chuckled at her Marine commander, and said, “Oh, what were you expecting? The roguish outlaw, the relentless womanizer, or the mad genius that gets victory from certain defeat? I’ll admit that I had not expected him to be acting like a professional mercenary commander, or even an actual navy man.”

Daelen frowned, “Well, he’s a Nomad, and they have lives they lead outside of our world, and there’s been scuttlebutt through the Marines that his Black Star Marines were all Marines in their world, before they retired or left the service for various reasons. So it may be that being put in command brought out some training from his other world.”

Zylna considered that for a moment. “That would fit with the information the intelligence people worked up on him. They say there’s a high likelihood that he is former military of some kind, even before enhancing his skills with his experiences in this world. His knowledge of naval tactics is more than just someone picking it up as he goes. He has to have actually studied ancient blue-water navy tactics, and worked to convert them to space. The design of the Assassins was clearly intended to play just the role he put them in.”

Daelen considered that. “Do the intel guys know anything about the person who created the Assassins?”

“Lost on Jagloth, to the Legion Plague. Still, they’ve heard some reports that the designer was a Nomad, so there may be a way to find him.”

Zylna’s comm beeped, and she checked it to find out that she had a new message. She read it through once, and shook her head. “Well, it looks like the reports weren’t all wrong. ‘Captain’ Mollen invited me to dinner at a restaurant in the capitol of Yokosaki tomorrow night. And tonight I have a request to meet the Confederate Ambassador for dinner at the Embassy.”

“Captain Mollen, hmm? So civilian clothes. Well, I’ll have the squad standing by in case of trouble. Just don’t do anything the politicians want you to.”

Zylna laughed at that as they walked back to their shuttle. “If I did what the politicians wanted, I’d be all but stripping for him in the middle of the flag deck. Thank goodness the Intel side was more sensible and put a stop to that.”

Previous Chapter                                       Table of Contents                                     Next Chapter



Be sure to read my published works!

Frozen Soul series (Sci-Fi Supervillain story):
Frozen Soul https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R125QT
Tales of the Void Traveler https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ52G37

Rules-Free VRMMO Life (Dark Fantasy GameLit):
Volume 1 - Tutorial
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071VPRNDB
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rules-free-vrmmo-life-stuart-grosse/1128941349?ean=2940161995297

Omnibus 1 - Volumes 1-4
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0774T354X
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rules-free-vrmmo-life-omnibus-i-stuart-grosse/1128953195?ean=2940162052081

Into the Black (Sci-Fi GameLit):
Book I - Game Start https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071LT5WGL
Omnibus I - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077X2KR7Y

City of Champions Online (Superhero GameLit):
Issue I - Origin Stories https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075SHXQS1

Lewd Dungeon (Dungeon Core GameLit):
Book 1 - Welcome to the Apocalypse https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BB34DHF
Omnibus 1 - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FBPF6HR

The Kalipshae Affair (A First Contact Short Story): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0739V6R6T

Chapter 137 - Design Theory

I smiled widely at the doctor, and made ‘gimme’ motions with my hands. “Well, let me have it, Doc. What mad genius things have you and your team come up with to make our enemies wish they were never born?”

The doctor did not disappoint, and pulled a set of rough blueprints up on the main screen. “Well, we’re at a middle ground between the Assassins and the Reapers here, in terms of size. We’re tentatively calling this ship class a destroyer because of that. We are using the X’thari lance technology for short-range fire, and for stealth attacks. Because of the space needed for that and the secondary weapons, we won’t be able to have the rail guns on them. Just no room for them.”

“So, an escort ship to go along-side our Reapers when they’re in combat, leaving the heavy assaults to the assassins?”

Bazalgette shrugged. “The designer pointed out that the Assassins are really wasted in fleet action. Sure, they can fight in formation, but they’re really best at sneak attacks and wolfpack tactics, even as detached forces going behind enemy lines or hitting pirates. The Reapers are clearly the focus of our fleet’s firepower, once we get into a brawl, so if we had each Reaper with a few escorting destroyers, and the gunboats buzzing about, that would free the Assassins to do hit and run tactics for better effect, or sneak past to hit whatever our real target is.”

“All right, I’m liking this so far. But the lack of stand-off weaponry is not something I’m comfortable with. Getting in close and slugging it out with people in our weight class or higher is what hurt us last time. What options do we have for that?”

“Well, we have missile launchers amidships, and torpedo tubes fore and aft that are capable of fitting both the Dragonbreath and the Starbolt torpedoes. That will give them some extended range, as well as giving them attack options that don’t include pointing directly at the people they’re trying to kill or getting in close.”

“Very well, that will do for weapons. How are they defensively? If they’re going to be charging into fire, then I’m going to want them to be coming out the other side.”

“X’thari ships use a technorganic hull structure that has many of the benefits of our current hulls for the Assassins and Reapers. Our materials people have created an alloy of the two materials, which we would be able to produce with our fabricators. Well, technically it wouldn’t be an alloy, as the two materials aren’t metals, but the process is similar enough that the materials people are calling it one. Preliminary reports indicate that hull strength increases by 30%, and is less prone to fracturing than our typical hulls, but the stealth profile is reduced by 10% and mass increases by 10%. Costs increased by 12% on initial runs due to the materials used, but over the long term, it should be cheaper, once you’re in action.”

“Hmm. Not something we’ll worry about with the Assassins or other small craft, then, since the Assassin mission profile emphasizes stealth. And the gunboats… thirty percent won’t do anything for them. What would it cost to convert the Reapers to this new hull material?”

“A week and a half in the yard, starting with stripping the old paint, infusing the existing hull with the mix that will cause it to ‘fuse’ the two materials, and then repainting. It would give both the Reapers and the destroyers a significant boost to their survivability.”

I clapped my hands, and smiled at them. “You guys have done excellent work on this. Transmit your findings to Raven, and the team at the Dimiya yards. If they agree with your assessments, then add the destroyers to the build lists. The new destroyer class will be called the Knight class, since these will be jousting with enemy vessels, it seems. Raven, do you have an updated target fleet group manifest?”

“Yes, Commodore.”

The view on the screen shifted from the schematics of the proposed Destroyer and an ‘order of battle’ emerged.

Standard Black Star Navy Fleet Group:

2 Reaper-Class Cruisers

6 Knight-Class Destroyers

8 Assassin-Class Corvettes

16 Gunboats

1 Smerti-Class Carrier

1 Large Freighter (Logistics)

I looked over to Raven, and said, “This is the standard plan we want to build up to for First Group, and the new Fourth and Fifth groups, right?” When she nodded, I turned back to the screen, and said, “All right, I’m generally happy with this, as we can break it down into lighter groups if we need to, sending a group of Assassins with a Raven as support if needed. Most of the logistics for the small ships is in food stores and repair materials, since the ammunition for an Assassin’s main gun can be manufactured easily wherever there’s an asteroid with enough metal in it. But the fighters and bigger ships have munitions that need to be refilled when they’re used. We haven’t had a problem about missing a fleet train until now, because we haven’t had extended fighter operations of fleet battles, but it is better to plan for it now.”

Raven nodded. “The Pocket carriers like the Vicious Return will be phased out of standard fleet formations as they are replaced by standard carriers. However, I have had a request from Major Kahn for a pocket carrier to be assigned to each of his Marine Assault ships, along with a trio of Crow-Class assault ships. As you know, the Crow-Class is a modified version of the Raven-class freighter, with the freighter cargo compartment replaced with mission-variable setups, and increased armor and weapons abilities, making them effective trans-atmospheric gunboats with the Dragonbreath torpedoes to give them enough hitting power to make them a threat. That would allow his Marines to conduct independent operations without relying on the Navy for constant support.”

Hmm. A single pocket carrier could only field one squadron of fighters. So which of the three designs would the Marines want? “What kind of fighters was the Major looking to have on those carriers?”

“Thunderbolts, for the most part, with Marine pilots. We’ve been discussing it, and the Thunderbolts are as close to a general-purpose fighter as we have right now, capable of performing multiple roles. Anything too large for the capability of a squadron of Thunderbolts, the Assault ship, and the Crows, and they ought to have Navy assistance to begin with.”

That suited the Marines fine then. Still, something was still bothering me, though. That outline of the projected group manifest just didn’t look right. “The Reapers are going to need some serious revision if they’re going to become fleet command ships. They just aren’t designed for that kind of detail. Oh sure, they’ll work in a pinch, but they’ll need upgrades if we’re going to have that be a standard part of their mission. Do we have any plans for a command ship?”

That the doctor was happy was no surprise. But when the others started grinning like loons, I knew something was up. “Let me guess, someone decided that they wanted to design a command ship while we were designing my new destroyer?”

Raven politely cleared her throat, and said, “Well, I just so happen to have lifted the schematics on all current Imperial ship designs back during the war, so we had something to go off of already. And since we were going to be expanding the fleet, it was put forward by several groups that we needed a true command ship for the different groups. Plus, the Nuedo Evo Navy will be wanting something more than a corvette or cruiser to hang their hat on.”

I shook my head. It was good to have good people, who knew what they were doing, but sometimes I wished they hadn’t picked up my sense of showmanship. “Well, all right then, hit me with it. What have you guys cooked up?”

A new schematic appeared on the screen, and my first thought was this was one big sucker. It was clearly no mere cruiser, even a Heavy Cruiser, but an actual BATTLESHIP! I turned, and looked at the smiling group, and said, “Really? I know we’re expanding an all, but do you really think we’re at the point of needing fucking battleships? Sure, it isn’t a superdreadnought, but that thing is a helluvalot bigger than any ‘mercenary’ company other than those Kul’tiras guys have.”

Raven simply shook her head. “Well, ‘Admiral’—” I glared at her, and she smiled, “Oh yes, you’ll find that the upgrade kit has been delivered to your room already, waiting for you to use it so next time we go into a fleet action, we get more bonuses from it.” I shook my head. My people were really too good for words sometimes.

Raven continued, ignoring my mental musings, “We actually started the design process for it, since the Nuevo Edoans were going to need an actual flagship at some point, once we’d built them up to the point where they can stand on their own. But we wanted something leaner and meaner than the superdreadnoughts you normally see.”

I sighed, giving up on the argument for the time being. “Fine, fine. So tell me about this beast. I can see the ‘leaner’ part, since it doesn’t have nearly the bulk of a superdreadnought. But how about the ‘meaner’ part?”

“Well, the shields and engines are all superdreadnought strength, and the armor is actually 10% stronger than the typical Imperial superdreadnought. Of course, it has less point defense because of it, and it has a flight deck equivalent to the Reapers, instead of the larger deck on an Imperial ship.”

“Crew complement is smaller as well, due to the smaller size, and the primary weapons taking up a significant area of the ship. The primaries, by the way, are four forward-facing railguns equivalent to the Reaper-class guns. In addition, we have more than a few missile launchers and X’thari lances, scaled up to battleship strength, for close fighting, and eight torpedo tubes on each side of the ship set up in a ‘broadsides’ configuration. It may be small, compared to a superdreadnought, but it can definitely bring the pain.”

I nodded slowly. A ship like this would solve a lot of the problems we’d faced at Nuevo Edo, but it would require much more of a crew to keep running. Still, if they were going to go with his plan to push into the gates and start seriously exploring, then they would need something like this.

“Then the Wrath-class Battleship is officially part of the Black Star Navy. Add it to the build lists.”

(CNS Luvon Gilrie, Nuevo Edo Gateway)

Captain Faylen Zylna leaned forward in her seat as they passed through the Gateway. She was young to be the Captain of a navy ship, she knew, but the Assassin ships were entirely new, from the Navy’s perspective, and they required a certain kind of thinking that older, more experienced captains didn’t always have. In short, they needed someone who was willing to do insane things, like the Black Stars did.

Of course, her being young and having fresh ideas wasn’t the only reason she’d gained this posting. She had been told as much by the Admiral when she’d met with him and a Zumrora from Intelligence. The leader of Black Star was a notorious womanizer, and she was attractive and single. At the very least she wouldn’t get sent away as easily as an older man. And the Navy needed this exercise, to know how to use the ships they’d bought from Black Star.

Thankfully, she hadn’t been ordered to do anything so stupid as to try and seduce the owner. The Admiral had wanted to put an intelligence asset on her crew who WOULD have had that mission, but Zumrora had apparently shot that down, saying that the owner would see through it, and who knows what would happen. But she had been pointedly told that while there was no order for her to seduce him, there was also very much no order for her to avoid his advances, if he made any. She felt like bait in a trap.

“Captain, Nuedo Evo Navy ship Santiago is challenging us.”

“Send the response we were given, with the orders we were given to rendezvous with the Black Star forces here. And get send the greeting package to the Black Star ships.”

Time to get this ‘exercise’ started, she thought.

Previous Chapter                                       Table of Contents                                     Next Chapter



Be sure to read my published works!

Frozen Soul series (Sci-Fi Supervillain story):
Frozen Soul https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R125QT
Tales of the Void Traveler https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ52G37

Rules-Free VRMMO Life (Dark Fantasy GameLit):
Volume 1 - Tutorial
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071VPRNDB
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rules-free-vrmmo-life-stuart-grosse/1128941349?ean=2940161995297

Omnibus 1 - Volumes 1-4
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0774T354X
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rules-free-vrmmo-life-omnibus-i-stuart-grosse/1128953195?ean=2940162052081

Into the Black (Sci-Fi GameLit):
Book I - Game Start https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071LT5WGL
Omnibus I - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077X2KR7Y

City of Champions Online (Superhero GameLit):
Issue I - Origin Stories https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075SHXQS1

Lewd Dungeon (Dungeon Core GameLit):
Book 1 - Welcome to the Apocalypse https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BB34DHF
Omnibus 1 - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FBPF6HR

The Kalipshae Affair (A First Contact Short Story): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0739V6R6T

Chapter 136 - Catching Up

(Yokosaki Spaceport, Nuevo Edo)

Doctor Wellington Ehyu looked around the spaceport as he stepped off the Starlight Raven, and nodded slowly to himself. “I see you went with one of the standard spaceport profiles when setting this place up. What about the walls? There any animals I should know about?”

I laughed at that, and said, “Well, only if you count the legions of sex-starved women, Doctor. Until recently, this planet was over 80% female. Men were in such small numbers that they literally had to keep them in government ‘breeding centers’ in protective custody so that certain groups wouldn’t assume control of the colony by controlling all the men. There were some legitimate concerns about being able to control traffic to the spaceport so that there wouldn’t be any… incidents. Even with the controls, there were enough women that they were wearing my poor Marines out.”

Ehyu laughed, and said, “Well, that certainly sounds like a lovely problem to have. Still, the mad rush must have slowed down a bit by now, right? I’m not old, but I’m no young marine, either!”

“Oh, don’t worry. Once the local government got trade deals going, and were opened up for immigration, the urgency of snagging one of the few men went down substantially. So you’ll still be a hot commodity, but not exactly at the level where you’ll be needing protection just to walk down the street.”

Ehyu nodded appreciatively. “Good, good. And what about work? It was part of our deal that you’d help me get set up, after all.”

“Well, as you know, I’m fairly visible here, so engaging in anything against the local laws is something I’d have to avoid. However, I have done two things for you. First, I had Raven send out a few discrete messages that you were someone with contacts elsewhere in the galaxy that may or may not have always been on the shady side of the law. So you may be contacted by the local groups to see what you can offer them.”

“Good idea, that. This way, it will allow me to reveal as much or as little as I choose, without having to compare to whatever lies or information you might have told about me.”

I laughed, and said, “A wise man once said to keep your lies as simple and consistent as possible. The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”

Ehyu smiled. “Truer words were never spoken. And what is the second thing you’ve done?”

“Ah, well, your tablet will have a listing for a decent building where you could start a private practice as a doctor, with living quarters attached. If you register at the spaceport as both a male and a doctor who is experienced with treating multiple species, then you’ll find yourself with quite a bit of work in short order.”

“What, these people don’t have doctors?”

I shrugged, and said, “Oh sure, they have them, but the tech they’ve been using is about a hundred years old, which puts it at slightly better than the general level you’d have on kisArra, but still not good compared to the rest of the universe. They’ve also spent their whole lives only treating humans. While that’s fine for, say, a broken bone, when dealing with more complicated matters, that can be problematic, since they don’t know what to look for. So if you set up with tech from Known Space, and a knowledge of how to treat aliens, you’ll be in line to make a good bit of money.” Then I leaned in, and said, “Plus, you know as well as I do that there are some people that would rather have a man as their doctor than a woman, especially when talking about certain ‘sensitive’ topics.”

Ehyu grunted. “Had more than my share of those talks on kisArra, thank you very much. Why people don’t learn to take the preventative measures before sleeping with the spaceport whore, I will never know. Still, it will allow me to get established, and that will be fine enough. Thank you, Captain, and I hope to see you again, under equally pleasant circumstances.”

I shook the doctor’s offered hand. “Happy to be of service, Doc. Just remember Black Star if you ever have a wish for items from home, hmm?” It was good to have some business that ended pleasantly for everyone involved.

(BSS Mewtwo, Nuevo Edo Orbit)

I stepped onto the Mewtwo with Cali and the person I wanted my latest crew to meet, and was greeted by the slave crew waiting on me just inside the airlock. They all looked better now that they’d been fed up a bit, and were in jobs where they weren’t basically being that asshole’s sex pets.

“Captain Crowley, good. I promised you that I would provide you a pilot, and I make good on my promises. This is the Nomad, Samantha Michaels, and she was formerly the slave pilot of a freighter with the unfortunate name of Precious Harlot. The ship was attacked and damaged by the X’thari during a scouting mission, and the rest of her crew was killed. The Harlot was salvaged by Black Star, and the rest of its property sold off, along with the ship, which the new owner then paid us to repair and bring into service. However, I retained ownership of Samantha here, until I had a ship to put her on again.”

I then looked at Samantha, and said, “This is Captain Crowley and her crew. You’ll be included in their arrangement of splitting pay for jobs. Should you pay one hundred thousand credits to me, then you will be freed, and the ship will be on the fifths pay scale, with you as part of the crew.”

When she nodded, I looked back at Lorna, and said, “While I know Myriam is a solid engineer, you may consider talking with Samantha about any upgrades to your gear or seeing what tech you might be able to add in. She was trained as a pilot, but she was originally in Gauz space learning to be a technician of sorts. I don’t care what side businesses you get up to, so long as it doesn’t impact me or the company, and the pay is split same as the ‘official’ runs.”

Everyone seemed happy that they were on a ship where they could work their way free. Sam was happy that she was with a  group that weren’t going to treat her like shit, and the other girls were happy that they had a good pilot. I decided that it would be a good idea to leave them some gifts, and let them get on their way. At my nod, Cali pulled out five sets of gear, and distributed them to the women.

Looking at the ladies, I said, “What you have here is the standard kit for Black Star freighter crews. Skinsuit, weapons, armor, and some other basic supplies. Anything you want above and beyond that? It is on you to buy and maintain it. Captain Crowley, the tablet in your gear has information on a couple jobs you and your crew can take on, headed into Imperial Space. And with that, I’ll leave you ladies to start getting acquainted, and figure out what you need to do. Good luck, ladies.”

(Black Star Shipyards, Nuevo Edo System)

It had now been almost four months since the Battle of Nuevo Edo, as some were calling it. The shipyards had been working with three shifts, nonstop since the battle, trying to get the surviving ships repaired and refit so that they’d be available to defend the planet if the X’thari came calling again. I hated to do it, but it was time to pull some of the project leaders away from their work so I could get an update on everything that had been going on.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I know you’ve all been busy as hell, and I want to pass on to all your people my thanks for their hard work. The Navy may get most of the recognition, but you better believe that those who know, know that your groups are just as important to our success as they are. Now, I’m sure you all know Elduin Fatoris, head of shipyard operations on the Nightforge, and Yao Da, head of the Nuevo Edo shipyard. What is the status of the yards?”

Da spoke up first, the little Chinese woman who I’d poached from the more… restrictive environment of the Dimiya commercial shipyards. She’d been rather vocal about her thoughts on the male (specifically knelfi male) dominated leadership of the yards, and so had jumped at the chance I’d given her to do more. When we came to Nuevo Edo, she was the one I put in charge of the permanent yards, just as soon as they were under construction.

“Well, the good news is that we’ve cycled the damaged gunboats through the yards pretty quickly. Because of their size, anything that really damaged them was almost certain to destroy them, so they’ve been easy to get fixed. Because of that, and new builds, the gunboats of Third Group and the NEN are back to where they were, pre-battle.”

I nodded, “And the larger ships?”

Fatoris sighed, and said, “Well, taking First Group back to Dimiya to be worked on there was a big help, since the Assassins were able to take more damage without being destroyed. That means they need more yard time to be brought up to pre-battle conditions. The three surviving NEN Assassins have been repaired and returned to service, and we’ve been rushing to repair and refit Second Group’s ships. With the help we’ve been getting from the Navy’s engineers and crews helping out with the labor, we should be able to have Second Group back to full pre-battle strength in another two weeks.”

I looked over to Fothak Smelttoe, the Gauz who was in charge of our manufacturing site. “What about replacement fighters and gear for new recruits?”

Fothak nodded smartly. “Factories have already produced enough gear for all troops, and replacements for lost gear, guarded by standard protocol. Fighters and bombers have been produced to replace losses from the battle, including the NEN losses. We’re now starting on increasing the numbers, so there are replacement fighters ready for pilots who manage to eject, or are Nomads.”

I turned, and addressed Doctor Raphaëlle Bazalgette, who I’d poached from the Mars research labs the moment we’d managed to confirm that the X’thari carrier wasn’t going to blow up in our faces. “Doctor Bazalgette, what are the reports from the research on the X’thari carrier and fighters?”

The researcher was practically giddy to discuss the topic, “Well, the initial research from the—” she made some weird kind of chittering noise that I was sure would be the X’thari name of the carrier, and I held up a hand to stop her right there.

“We’re going to get along badly if you keep chittering at me like that, Doctor. I’m not even going to try and make sense of those sounds. Does that noise have an approximate translation in English?”

The doctor sighed, and said, “Fine, yes, it translates as the Defiant Bringer of Glorious Death to Inferior Beings and Many Wounding Biters to Worthy Prey. That is a very approximate translation, of course, as there are concepts in X’thari that don’t translate exactly into human languages.”

I nodded. “Right. In that case, we are officially renaming the carrier to be called the Defiant, so we can discuss it without my ears bleeding, without ignoring the Doctor’s work on translating it. Anyone have a problem with that?” The only one who looked like she objected was the doctor, but she at least was mollified by my using part of the ‘true’ name in the ship’s new name, so didn’t make a big deal out of it. Seeing no objections, I said, “All right, so what are we learning from the Defiant, doctor?”

“Well, we can reproduce their weapons easily enough. Their fighter lance weapons are effective against small craft, or even frigates or a light cruiser, but the only advantage they have over the Dragon bombers is extended ammunition capacity. The torpedoes the Dragons carry are far superior in destructive potential and range. Reviewing battle footage, when they’re in a tarpit and have to advance at sublight speeds to get to their targets, they are far easier to take down than our fighters.”

“However, there are some exciting prospects that we’ve considered for our heavier ships, adapting X’thari lance technology to our systems. They represent a good ‘middle ground’ between the typical secondary weapons present on Assassin-class corvettes and Reaper-class cruisers and the primary weapons. We could modify the Gunboats to carry them in place of their primaries. They’d suffer a range decrease of 45%, but an increase in damage of 30% with a 15% increased rate of fire.”

I shook my head, and said, “No, that won’t do at all. The little ships are fragile enough that they need something to hit at range with, especially when we’re in tarpits. What if we scaled the tech up? Could a cruiser like Breath of Hades use it?”

Bazalgette shook her head. “Too much of the Reapers are given over to the primary weapons. However, one of the ship designers on my team came up with an idea for something new…”

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Be sure to read my published works!

Frozen Soul series (Sci-Fi Supervillain story):
Frozen Soul https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R125QT
Tales of the Void Traveler https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ52G37

Rules-Free VRMMO Life (Dark Fantasy GameLit):
Volume 1 - Tutorial
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071VPRNDB
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rules-free-vrmmo-life-stuart-grosse/1128941349?ean=2940161995297

Omnibus 1 - Volumes 1-4
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0774T354X
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rules-free-vrmmo-life-omnibus-i-stuart-grosse/1128953195?ean=2940162052081

Into the Black (Sci-Fi GameLit):
Book I - Game Start https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071LT5WGL
Omnibus I - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077X2KR7Y

City of Champions Online (Superhero GameLit):
Issue I - Origin Stories https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075SHXQS1

Lewd Dungeon (Dungeon Core GameLit):
Book 1 - Welcome to the Apocalypse https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BB34DHF
Omnibus 1 - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FBPF6HR

The Kalipshae Affair (A First Contact Short Story): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0739V6R6T