NationStates Jolt Archive

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Master Theos Ensor grasped the note from Doctor Silaco.

What could be so secret? Why would they need so much ultra-tensile cable? Ah, well, no reason not to comply. Sunset wouldn't do anything despotic with it. Besides, it'd look good to the other Trium members, assuming Doctor Silaco tells them.

Theos put out bids to several companies, claiming it was an Imnsvale project. No other reason was needed, although it was somewhat clear that it really wasn't for domestic use. Cosmospatiaele won the bid in the few microseconds it took each company to decide. As of noon tomorrow, Cosmospatiaele would be pulling out all the stops to manufacture this cable. Their cyborg workers would work around the clock like usual, only for longer stretches at a time.



Dear Doctor Silaco,
We hope you will be satisfied with out products. We believe you will not be disappointed with our cables, made to the exacting specifications laid out for us. You can expect the first shipment in three to five days.

A simple orbital transfer - a cargo pod carring what the shipping manifest described as 'rope' detached from a freighter making the Earth-Mars run and was picked up moments later by a freighter heading for Sslaa IV through the Aurora gate system. After that frieghter dropped it's cargo pods and picked up more it headed back through the gate - presumably to Titan as it's flight plan documented - and emerged in Ares orbit. From there it was transfered to an SDF freighter, the cargo transfered from pod to pod aboard that freighter, scanned, and the old pod ejected into a pod cloud in orbit to be re-used.

----

The boring machine had finished it's work long ago and now the tunnel stood open, yawing and dark, in front of Silaco. This was the first and the most important and she would make sure it was perfect.

"Is the tunnel lining ready?"

The android standing close behind her, a personal assistant of sorts, spoke in a gentle female voice that seemed to be instantly absorbed even in the echoing space.

'Yes. The cross-braces are ready as well and the finishing crawler has been tested and prepared. Do you wish to examine it?'

"Of course. Let's go see it."

After an examination that consisted mainly of much checking and double checking of diagnostic readouts the crawler was put to work lining the tunnel, boring holes to mount additional securing pitons, and pulling the incredibly strong cable made in Imnsvale behind it. Already another tunnel was under way in the depths of the planetoid.

With the completion of the central shaft and the large chambers that would house the core machinery for the colony the primary focused changed to installing that infrastructure. From the solar array in Ares machinery flooded in the massive drives, power cores that would feed them, and the huge recycling facilities that would provide services to the inhabitants.

Inside the now complete central shaft massive gates were install, closed, checked, and tested again. With these closed the moon would be, from all indications, just that. Special care was being taken to carefully shield all the equipment in order to eliminate background electromagnetic radiation of all kinds. Another security precaution, just in case someone got through the massive locks, was begun as well.

Huge sheets of nickle iron were rolled and placed around the inside of the shaft. These were then carved by more of Silaco's creations to resemble the vessels that would rest inside as well. An alloy that also coated the other devices was then layered over the carvings - more than enough to give any sensor scanning it a false indication of what it was and where it came from.

Work did not stop on the vast central chamber all though Silaco had altered her design somewhat. Now the central area would be linked to the outer shell by fourty eight huge supports that would also function as redundant service and access routes as well as the central sections of fourty eight huge arcologies. These pyramidal structures would each be shaped a little differently with their shape not impacting light coming from the central sphere.

It too would be changed - rock surface covered with yet more plating and yet more alloy as well as the massive arrays of lights. This meant that Silaco would need to refinish her office again and she devoted a whole fifteen minutes to it's design.

----

Metal scrapped on metal and the sargeant winced in anticipation of seeing whatever the hell it was for the first time. Now the squad was sloshing through shin deep water, slowly and carefully moving forward as their boots slide over the unseen surface. He had tripped already - triggering the noises they now heard - and had laid out flat in the water. Now the cloth that covered his armor glistened and squeltched as he slowly moved forward.

The IR beams from his helmet and gun lights created two moving circles of crisp vision while the scattered reflection from the water created odd moving patches off to the side. With the addition of the six other beams they had to move slowly or risk losing some detail that would possibly kill them.

Another corner - a sharp left - lay ahead and the team bunched up before the sergeant swung his rifle around it and nearly screamed as he saw what lay beyond through the camera on the weapon. His finger brushed the trigger but he did not fire though every instinct was screaming for him to eliminate the horror.

"Corporal... We are gonna go around that corner in a second and you and the private's are to check the rest of the room. Doesn't matter what's right in front of you. You hear me?"

"Yessir."

The four rounded the corner and IR beams stabbed through the darkness illuminating the object. One private screamed and the Sarg was sure the other probably wet himself. Eight beams focused on one wall where a man - a soldier - hung on the wall itself. He was clearly still alive somehow though he had become fused to the wall. A myriad of tubes flowed smoothly from the metal of the wall into his body, their metallic bronze mass occasionally writhing and causing him to move in agony. His lower jaw and throat were gone and in their place was some kind of device that seemed to wrap around his throat and nostrils.

All up and down one arm were a seried of small objects analogous to saws and drills and hooks and occasionally one would snap down into fresh skin with a silent whir. Blood would flow and the man would writh again. The other arm, as well as both legs below the knee, were gone. The arm had been replaced by some kind of tubing and device that attached directly to the bone itself. One leg was a tattered mass of hanging flesh and muscle tissue, the other a clean cut that already seemed to be covered in new flesh.

Covering his waist and genitals from one side was another device that seemed to wrap around them. The sergeant could guess the probable function of this device as well but he had paused far too long. The beams were still locked on the poor man and time was wasting.

"Sweep the room - NOW!" he roared as he himself turned to check for other entrances and whatever might have done this. They seemed to be at a dead end for now. Two structures that might be doors were on either side but both were closed.

"Secure those doors and the hallway. I'll see what I can do for the poor bastard."

If they made it back up to the basecamp he was going to recommend a full invasion of this place.

----

With the information flow between Mars and Ares being one way only there were occasionally some strange moments. One such moment was when Sy Greenblum, CEO of Gravship City, appeared on tri-d one day talking about his company. There certainly wasn't a location near them and some people wanted one of these shiny gravships he was advertizing. Of course the Menelmacari who witnessed this outside tri-d stores and the like just shook their heads and moved on to their destination.

----

"Margo - do we have any pluspirin? I'm feeling a little funny..."

Omar walked through the simple house in Metropolis and stumbled down the stairs, nearly tripping over one of his son's toys.

"Stupid hoverboard..."

A kick sent it spinning across the room where it would have hit his wife had she not deftly caught it.

"Mmm, Omar, there should be some in the bathroom in the medicine cabinet."

"Yeah Dad - where do you think it would be?" said his son, making an appearance. "In my shorts?"

"Mart... why are you wearing shorts? You always wear shorts. It's twenty degrees out for goodness sake." Margo complained as she set the hoverboard down.

Omar ignored the backtalk as he stumbled into the bathroom and pulled out the bottle of pluspirin.

"Just what the doctor ordered... Doh! Darn child proof caps..."

Finally the bottle opened and Omar went to pour a glass of water to wash down the pills. In the kitchen he found his daughter Majie playing on the floor with a knife in each hand.

"Heh - you better give those to daddy before you get hurt..."

Reaching down he tried to take one from her but she slashed at him with the other and he pulled his hand back.

"Why you little... Give that to me now!"

His hand went for the knife again, but she scooted back and he advanced on her.

"Come'on Majee - give Omar the knife... give it to me..."

Majee held the knife in front of her menacingly but suddenly it shot from her hand, whistled through the air, and impailed itself right through his hand.

"AAAAaaaaa!"

----

Around the city of Metropolis events both similar and not played themselves out as Ambrose's brew took effect. Soon there was utter chaos as emerging powers proved themselves useful or harmful both for people facing them and for their owners. The news spread rapidly and Ambrose sat in front of his tri-d watching the whole thing. A gleam entered his eye and he stood sharply sending the chair flying.

"It works! It works! Muhahahahahahaa!"

Master Ensor grasped the addendum from Doctor Silaco.

Monowire? I guess we can make some, I hope they don't need it to be strong...


Dear Doctor Silaco,
We can provide monowire in a matter of hours, however, it won't be able to hold more than a few hundred kilograms. Is this acceptable?

Reply to Master Ensor,

Quite. Have you by chance any 'intelligent' versions of this marvelous cabling? Not nessecarily in monowire varieties but perhaps in extremely thin variants? If it's not something you currently stock perhaps a joint effort is in order. I can think of a dozen uses for the material off the top of my head and I know a couple very skilled researchers at a classified facility who would love to help.

Erika Silaco, Phd.

----

"I wonder what this Master Ensor looks like - I should take a flip through the archives..."

----

Silaco stood in her labratory that adjoined her office on the colony moon looking over a holosphere where an insectoid predator spun idly in the air. Through the glass in an armored chamber used for testing her creations a pair of the things danced and weaved. Scything claws and taloned hands lashed out at each other as the two tested every joint, every move, and every system.

Part of Silaco was monitoring the instinctive intelligence cores that guided the two androids. In order to achieve what she felt was maximum potential for innovation and later use she had used two extremely advanced cores normally meant for starships. These cores were the latest - only found normally on the Venture-E's that were just now coming off the lines. Off the shelf they had a good twenty five percent chance of achieving sentience. In the short time they had been in use all the Venture-E's were now host to a sentient system.

This would cause a problem if the robots developed sentience then destroyed each other - she was in the business of trying to advance her species, not destroy them. The chances of these two cores turning was smaller however. They had been loaded with the 'combat' abilities of hundreds of insect species and had been programmed to turn those into a fighting style while helping Silaco refine the design. If she got the materials she wanted from Imnsvale they would be nearly unstoppably lethal.

In a small sphere on her desk another model turned - this would be her own personal chassis. As the administrator of this place she might one day have to put in an appearance. While she loved her human chassis and all the systems she had built over the years it certainly wasn't theme.

“You called, Curutano?” Glorfindel strode into the testing range.

Curutano jumped, startled. “Yes, milord… you snuck up on me. Again.”

Glorfindel chuckled. “You know I can’t slack off on the skills. They might have me riding an awful lot of desk these years, but I have every intention of getting in a few field operations now and again. Anyway, what have you got for me?”

“Your prototype, milord.” Curutano stood up and placed a device in Glorfindel’s hands.

Glorfindel peered at it. It was, essentially, just a pistol grip and a receiver. Every surface of the device was covered in traceries and Valarin inscriptions of power. The entire thing was smaller than an M1911. “It’s half done.”

“No, milord, it’s not. I think it’s basically finished, though there’s a few kinks still to work out of the design.”

Glorfindel shrugged. “There’s just a grip. Where’s the rest of it?”

“We abandoned the rifle form. This one, we found to be more concealable – you can fit it into a pocket. It’s also more versatile… for whatever reason, we were only able to offer a full range of options in this format – the magic didn’t seem to like being forced into a particular form. Here, put in this cartridge here, you’ll see what I mean.” He offered it to the Warlord.

Glorfindel turned it over in his hand. “TKR?” he asked, reading the letters inscribed on it.

“Telekinetic rifle, that. The force bullets I suggested as a possible application. I’m not sure how it’ll look. These things manifest a little differently for everyone.”

Glorfindel blinked a bit. “Manifest?” he asked, but he plugged the magazine into the slot.

The device crackled, and lines of light and energy extended out from the protocaster, forming a shape that grew and extended out, not unlike in general effect watching a computer render an image. The end result, reached in less than a second, was a translucent and faintly-glowing image of a large rotary cannon, not unlike a minigun but still possessed of sleek, elegant elven lines. Curutano had been right, though… this was very different in appearance and mechanism from the weapon originally proposed. Every now and again a bit of energy crackled along the form of the cannon, which incorporated the protocaster’s pistol grip into its form.

Glorfindel blinked. “I like this. I like this a lot.” He stepped up, raised the weapon, aimed it. “Takes some getting used to… one expects a large gun to have mass, but…” He placed one hand on the foregrip for better control, finding with some surprise that it seemed solid, and squeezed the trigger.

The weapon roared, and barrels spun, and a target downrange was promptly torn to unrecognizable shreds. “Yes. I like this a lot… and I suspect my troops will as well… what else can it do?”

“We have a range of cartridges providing various forms of offensive magic, holding sufficient energy for fifty to one hundred shots each. There are also a number of non-combat applications… scanning, for example. Equally useful for scouting and also for concealment… if you have someone undercover, and anyone asks, your man can just pop in a scanning cartridge, an appropriate looking (and working) device will manifest.”

“Incredible…” Glorfindel fired off the protocaster again, continuing until he’d drained the magazine… promptly, the cannon’s image faded in much the same way it had appeared. “Yes, I think we should take it to the next stage…”

OOC: This post should have gone up two weeks ago. Being as we all now know what this thing is, what it does, and how it works, further posts will simply be repetitive. So I’ll just say that the ‘playtesting’ phase and production phase have occurred in those two weeks, after which it can generally be assumed the protocaster will be available to all Mornahossë units, and may even be their primary weapon, replacing the PPR-41 Elenárë (Starfire) (which the infantry already uses anyway). After all, the protocaster can do plasma if the soldier wants it to and has the right canister for it.

The entire process will have therefore taken three weeks real time, which is the same amount of time it takes me to build an entire fleet – if a spacedy-nation can’t develop and produce a rifle in the time it takes to build thirty capital ships, it’s probably got some problems somewhere. Official designation will be the VTP-57 Minyacuruvar (Protocaster), VTP standing for Variable Thaumaturgical Projector.

Energy sheeted away from the Cincinnati as she jumped the distance between Ares and the comet circling nearly 20 AU out from Athena. This far from the star the comet was decidely ugly. A ball of frozen carbon dioxide, methane, and water mixed with chunks of ferrious rock mixed in. When it neared the sun again in a couple hundred years some of the materials would melt and vaporize and the comet would again have the distinctive tail that made such an ordinary object extraordinary. In the meantime it, along with dozens of other comets and long orbit objects, were being visited by Venture-E's on shakedown cruises as they came off the production line.

Captain David Manuel sat in his command chair with the pins designating his new rank and command sparkling on his collar. This was quite a change - he had been on a long range cruise aboard a Venture-C that had just returned to the system. It was on its way to the mothball yards and his old captain had recieved some admiral bars and now he along with half the bridge crew had their own new commands. A new bridge crew sat at their stations now and most were unfamiliar to him. It was time to put them through their paces and see how they did.

"Commander Pennington, I want you to work with engineering to get the outpost prepared and deployed."

Pennington, a tall lanky woman with redish blond hair in a tight ponytail to her waist, stood and nodded as she headed for the bay where the outpost was stored.

"Yessir..."

Manuel looked over to the helmsman - his old position - and reminded himself that this person was highly trained and knew their job. He would have to remind himself not to micromanage this position.

"Lieutenant, put us on a matching course and speed with the comet and bring us within a hundred kilometers."

"Aye aye Kaptain."

The ship leapt forward as the artificial gravity hill formed aft and the ship fell forward as commands raced through the ships navigation systems. Soon course and speed were matched and the helmsman brought the ship within the hundred kilometers with a smoothness Manuel was unsure he could match.

"Nicely done - why don't you take the chair while I get some dinner and see what Pennington is up to?"

"Thank you sir, yes sir!"

Manuel headed off to dinner and the ship went about its business. The outpost and its inhabitants were deployed to the surface of the comet where they dug in and spread out. Antennas were laced around the surface and after a week the Cincinnati headed off to the next comet. The outpost would remain as the well camoflaged long range eyes and ears of the SDF in Ares.

----

Dozens of additional layers had been added to the now gargantuan array orbiting the south pole of Athena in the time between Silaco's last order and the completion of her newest. The two projects worked virtually hand in hand now; Silaco ordered equipement and materials and the engineers who ran the array grumbled about it. They recieved their own rewards however...

"A solid gold suit of armor."

"A test - nothing more. I needed to check the matrix heavy atom combination abilities."

"Uh huh. Then why did you make a suit of armor? Why not a nice solid block?"

"Err... The tests came out fine. It's working perfectly."

The engineer fixed his collegue with an unbelieving look. He's have to go through the entire array log now - he'd seen the man's quarters and had wondered how he had been able to afford an ivory inlay pool table.

----

Light washed over the rough rocky interior of the sphere as Silaco walked through the huge open space. In the distance two structures rose, as they had steadily done for the last month, towards the center sphere where massive banks of lights now hung. These would reinforce the outer shell and along with the other safety precautions keep the shell from breaking up under sustained bombardment. These would also form the cores of massive arcologies that would house much of the eventual colony population.

"Ok boys and girls - time for some show and tell!"

Captain Hoya stood at one end of the table with a whole line of hardware running down the hardwood to the other end. Everything from pistols to rifles to flamethrowers and beyond was laid out. Around the outside of the room company representatives waited next to crates of weapons ready to break them out when Hoya was done with his short presentation. The rear wall of the facility looked out over a firing range and the troops would get their chance to peel off a few hundred rounds soon enough.

"All right - first up is every marine's best fiend the assault rifle. The X-45 isn't a huge jump over the X-44 but it is an improvement and it has a couple things we have all been looking for. It's environmentally strippable - you can take it down to basic components and put it back together underwater or caked in mud. Wash out the reciever in a mud puddle and good to go."

0700 Hours,
Ares, Camp 0 ('Nowhere')...

The hovercar quietly whisked through the outskirts of town towards the city center. Rain dotted the tinted car windows and ran in tiny rivelets along the silver trim and off the rear of the glossy black finish from the rain shower that had seemed to follow it all the way from Metropolis. Rain also pit-patted against the windows of Samantha Granger's house as she stood drinking her morning coffee and considering the day ahead. The car left her field of view and she walked over to the table and pulled up the traffic monitor - an admiral had privledges after all.

'Sector 8... Three officers and one civilian... Never heard of this Arthur Dent fellow.'

As head of SDF Intelligence it was Sam's job to coordinate the work of thousand of field agents and analysts - the analysis portion of her career had been a decade ago. Still the old habits died hard and she pulled up what they already knew on this Arthur Dent.

'Age 36, not married, no children, employeed as a manager at a Stuffer Shack... Sounds boring. Hmm... What's this? Suspected super-human powers?'

Digging deeper she searched the news services and intelligence reports for any more mention of A. Dent. A data miner utility expanded on this and dozens of reports of odd activity began to pop up in and around Metropolis. Apparently someone was working on this already as a research case file popped up 'Situation: Metropolis' along with detailed notes and vid files from agents in the field. Granger set the whole thing to audio playback as she went about the rest of her morning tasks.

0915 Hours,
Ares, Camp 0 ('Nowhere'), Sector 8...

It has been a very boring drive to wherever they were now. Leather seats, a quiet ride, and the tinted privacy windows were all very nice but with no conversation from the three well-dressed agents who sat quietly in the car and no outside view thanks to the tinted windows Arthur Dent was now quite bored. He really wasn't up on what all this was about either. He had been sitting at home enjoying a nice cup of tea when the doorbell had rung. A flashed badge and some quiet instructions to pack an overnight bag as well as something about national security had been all the warning he had gotten before being hustled through his bedroom and out the door by the agents. Admittedly they were well dressed and this alone was enough for him to see what was what but undoubtably the cat was now up on the table drinking his probably lukewarm tea.

"Mr. Dent? We are there. Remember that anyone and anything you see here you didn't see."

Arthur sat for a moment and considered that last statement. Either these men were mad or there was something secret up - for now he was leaning towards the latter as the former tended to make him nervous. The agent who had been driving got out and opened his door for him while the other two exited on their own. Arthur climbed out of the car, narrowly avoiding not getting his sleeve trapped in the door as it swung shut. A yank and the comfortable sweater was out but stretched miserably out of shape - just his luck.

"Follow me, Mr. Dent. If you wander away you will probably be shot."

"Err - shot?"

"Yes. This is a high security area. Until we get you a badge and an ear tag you won't be allowed to roam free."

"Err - ear tag?"

There was a snigger from behind him but Arthur failed to catch it like every ball that had ever been thrown at him.The agent turned and walked away down a long corrider with large exposed pipes that Dent was sure were carrying some kind of important secrets. The large painted 'cold water' and such were just a ruse.

'Secrets lurk behind every door in a place like this...'

1310 Hours,
Ares, Camp 0 ('Nowhere'), Sector 8, Room 290b...

"Care to explain Mr. Dent?"

"Explain what?"

The agent rewound the recording of Dent winging his way through the skies over Metropolis in apparent pursuit of a very frightened pigeon. Buildings whipped by and the towel that Dent was apparently wearing as a cape snapped smartly behind him.

"Explain why you are flying through the Metropolis airspace apparently unaided and in hot pursuit of a member of species Columbidae."

"Err - it's a long story. Are you sure you want to hear it?"

"Yes."

"Well fine then. Can I have some tea then?"

The agent who had been doing all the talking nodded to the agent who had been opening all the doors and he in turn nodded to the agent who had been getting all the paperwork that scattered the table in front of them. The second agent opened the door and the third agent left in apparent search of tea, his footsteps fading away in the corridor before being ominously cut off as the door swung shut.

"Go on, Mr. Dent."

Arthur sat up straight, grabbed a stylus off the table, and started twiddling it as he began.

"It was Thursday I believe - might have been Friday. I'm horrible with dates like that. I had the day off and I was washing my car in the street. The landlord won't let us wash them in the drive and I'm already a week late on my lease. She's an sharp old battleaxe and if I'd used the driveway I'm sure I'd find a pink slip on my door the next morning. You know she once kicked someone out for taking a cat in for the night?"

The agent who did all the talking coughed obviously and Arthur moved on - though this was because he didn't want to talk about his landlord anymore. He wasn't sure he had the money to pay the rent and didn't want to think about the hassle of moving apartments and arranging his furniture again. Especially his bedroom - he never had enough room for the dresser and bed and was always climbing over the bed to get to the top drawer...

*Er hum!*

"Oh yes. Anyway I was washing my car in the street and I had just gotten done and picked up the bucket and sponge when there was a plop behind me. Well wouldn't you know it a pigeon had just pooped on my car. Not just on my car - right across the rear window. You know how you can peer around one on the front? Well when it's on the rear you can't. It just completely messes things up. So I was standing there with the bucket and sponge and looking back on it I could have just wiped it off - it was still wet after all - but I just snapped! It looked so smug - perching there on that lightpole. I'm not exactly sure what happened then but I jumped at the pigeon, towel in hand, and I didn't just fall, twist my ankle, and go inside in a huff."

Erika Silaco, the head of Special Projects, has slipped into Jon's office first thing in the morning before any of his other appointments. In fact, she had slipped in before he was done with his morning paper. A neat trick considering she was in her office on the moon Lost Harbor and he was in his suite on the super-dreadnought ThunderChild. The wonders of the virtual office. Now he looked at her sitting across the desk from him, well dressed as always and with a face that men of a different persuasion would find instantly appealing in many ways.

"Erika - what brings you to my office this fine morning? No problems I hope?"

"None actually. Mostly just a little status report in person."

"Mostly? Which part do I get first? The mostly or the lesser?"

She smiled and fixed his eyes firmly in her own. "Business first. Progress on the Array is at 67% and rising by the hour. Though it is actually lagging behind my main project mostly due to diverted resources. Lost Harbor is at 74% and advancing rapidly enough I can say for certain we will be done well ahead of schedule. Thanks to timely delivery from our suppliers the outer shell is 90% done and the inner core is where most of our time is being devoted. I must remember to thank certain people when it is done..."

"Short enough - and nothing I couldn't read for myself. I have a feeling the lesser bit might be more important in the short term."

Erika looked down and up again, her eyes bright. She had been studying human emotion and appropriate physical response lately and the action felt genuine. "I've decided to reproduce."

Jon looked at Erika over his glasses. He wore them as an affection - genetherapy having long erased that kind of problem - and they were excellent for increasing the effectiveness of a reaction. "And who might the father be?"

He smiled slightly, waiting for a response, and she replied with the same look over her own sunglasses. "The father? A manufacturing plant in Long Island I suppose." They both laughed and she continued, "This is important because I intend her to be my successor in many ways. If by some means I am destroyed or I decide to retire at some point she will have all the nessecary information and training to continue without me. I suppose you might consider her a backup copy - though the personality will be different. I don't really need permission to do this but you should know about it. Katryna will also need to live as I have and have the same opportunities. Some of the things she will undoubtably want to do will take orders from the top to allow."

"You sound so sure - sure you know of what your daughter will want in life."

"Unlike a human parent I can run simulations and those indicate that she will want to surpass me in many ways. There is a 98% certainty that she will want to join the SDF and command both a warship and an explorer. While both are risks she will be her own person. There are other things as well - with a digital sentience she has all the time in the world. For instance there is a 50% chance she will want to study magic."

"Magic? I don't see much chance of that happening here. Among our allies perhaps - but we are among the minority that doesn't follow such things in the Triumvirate. Psychics? Yes. Things we can study and test? Yes. And you know this."

"I do. It is only chance. Detailing her entire probably life would take weeks and I see you have an appointment in five minutes. I'll leave you to finish your paper."

----

In Doctor Silaco's labratory a holosphere silently floated with the image of a young woman hovering in the middle. Unlike Silaco she had asian features - delicately almond shaped eyes, a small nose, a slender jawline, and black hair. But blue eyes looked out from under carefully crafted eyebrows and a pair of ears that were carefully pointed to match her eyes peeked out from under her hair.

Another marine transport dropped towards the surface of Shiva to join the dozens already on the ground. They were there on the words of a single team of marines that had crawled from a crypt less than a week ago covered in blood and missing half their numbers. They had brought out one of their own as well - one who appeared to have been subjected to numerous alterations and perhaps experiments by whatever dwelled under the surface. Now the crypts were being swarmed by marine fireteams backed up by combat androids as well as more specialized units.

----

The crack of plasma fire mixed with the dull crack of old fashioned shotguns as a fireteam tangled with an unknown enemy in the darkness.

"Watch it!" A marine gestured with his rifle and a flashlight that had caught a glint of something in the darkness fell on a mass of copper tubing and rapidly expanding metallic limbs that framed what could only be described as a maw of some kind. Thoughts became action as the shotgun in his hands bucked twice and lead splattered off the copper-colored metal covering the creature. "AaaaaAAA!"

A tentacle, unseen in the murky water flooding the tunnel, had burst from the darkness and spiked into his body. Body armor had parted like paper with the tentacle digging deep in a wash of blood.

"Get it off! Urk..."

"Petey - get in there!"

Marines opened up on the creature and energy, both directed and kinetic, lashed against the thing with mixed results. Some of the writhing limbs were sheared off while narrow hits somehow ricocheted into walls and the water where they left scant mark of their passage. Through the marines charged one of the combat androids that had been assigned as heavy support and into the fray. The marine was being hauled towards the maw and it simply stepped on the tentacle pinning it to the floor. More lashed out and it was quickly enveloped as well but it kept fighting and with a metallic ripping sound the tentacle holding the marine was torn in half.

With a splash the marine fell and was immediately pulled back by a pair of marines who had been pouring fire into the beast. Finally something critical was hit and lighting shot from the center of the mass to the walls and water. Marines went down like bowling pins from the sudden but short jolt and the creature collapsed.

----

"Sub-commander, we have completed our scan of the fourth planet and detected a large number of facilities there."

The Therian sub-commander sat back in his command throne and considered the data. His ship, as well as dozens of other scouts, had been pursuing the pirates who continued to occasionally intrude in Ares-space. The energy readings from the facilities were similar to those records at other facilities they had found - but were they the same?

"Start the scan of the third planet and cut after three ticks. Set us on an irratic course to avoid their scans."

"Yes Sub-commander."

"We are pushing our luck already - if they are here they should have detected us. Prepare to jump and keep your claw on the trigger."

Radar and more advanced sensor pulses leapt away from the scout to cross the minutes between the scout ship and the third world. While they went out and bounced back the ship would move seemingly aimlessly waiting for the first returns.

----

Numbers crawled ever higher but it had taken a while for someone to notice. The nation was ever closer to crossing the four billion mark. Four billion sentients - humans, elves, foxgirls, therians, electronic intelligences, and dozens of other species now inhabited the nation. Clearly this was a special event as few nations had survived to this point and fewer were looking forward to five or even six billion people. Something must be done.

"A statue?"

"Two of them. Big ones."

"How big are we talking?"

"How big can we get em?"

Soon the titanic construction project began with titanic being the key word. The base would be a gigantic setting sun with six huge statues looking out along the remaining rays. These would depict three of the most famous founders and three of the greatest presidents. This statue would not stand alone - the same statue would be built on Mars as well.

Despite what seemed to be frequent military actions and the public attention those drew there was another side to activity in the Ares system. Even with warships orbiting overhead and marines scouring the crypts under Anuke much of day to day activity continued as normal amoung the regular population. Industry churned out new products by the tens of thousands while in virtual offices dreamers of every type laid out the next generation of products both consume and military. Some were simply enhancements of existing products, while others were all together new.

----

"Body welding?"

"Body welding. It's the latest body modification fad. We've had tattooing, piercing, genetic sculpting, additional limbs, dermal replacement... now it's body welding."

The two designers walked through their virtual office - it was a techno-nightmare bar where the thump of music and the chatter of patrons seemingly made it hard to think. Given that both were heavy recipients of the previous mentioned fads the environment more served to infuse and inspire them. One sat, putting his arm around a woman whos skin had been modified to resemble tight black leather with zippers and studs accenting her stunning body.

"Instead of replacing or implanting something in the body we can bond it directly - carbon to carbon. Killer stuff that just became public. Military has been using it for years. Medical technology you know. So we make a nice pattern and bond it directly to the skin. As long as it has the right percentage of carbon in it."

"Ok. So we get in ground floor on this. Any ideas? We gotta bring something to market."

"You ever seen a 19th century wrought iron fence? All whorls and bars? How about we dress Zamantha here out in that and see how it looks?"

----

Outside the factory the old fashioned supply chain continued. Transports still brought refined ore from the mines outside Chandra El though they did the refining in transit. When the robot transports arrived they unloaded their materials into the factory where they were transformed. In this case they became missiles destined for the battleships and cruisers of the SDF.

In the end there were few humans involved in the whole process. Robots mined the ores needed, robots transported them, robots shaped and machined them, and robots inspected and packaged them. For this particular factory there were only a dozen humans involved directly with the process - the owner, the plant supervisor, and ten technicians who oversaw the work of the maintenance robots.

Shareholders had provided the massive amount of capital the plant required for startup. Nearly 35% were owned by the government which was enough to allow the plant to produce classified designs alongside runs for civilian interests. The designs were not created by the plant; Those came from the massive SDF research labratories and design facilities located who-knew-where.

----

In the streets a new product revolution was underway and flying under the radar of the corporate executives in their massive towers. A plain hovervan went from business to business making deliveries but the only place it picked up was a central supply depot where a large vat of liquid polymer was loaded. The van contained a medium sized rapid fabrication plant that was normally found in a factory and used to create plastic parts in medium quantity. This plant was modified to allow rapid design changes and could deliver a product on demand without a giant warehouse of products in stock. Within a year 25% of the medium value products in the market place would be delivered this way.

----

"Sub-commander, the sensor returns are showing a high level of inhabitation and industrialization on the third world of the system. The computer estimates that there may be up to one and a half billion sentients based on the data."

The sub-commander leaned to one side and wrapped his long tail around to his ankle. His skin was starting to turn blue - a sign of excitement among Therans - however his voice did not betray this as he spoke.

"A model, even one created by those of Sunset, is only so accurate when dealing with the unknown. That is why we are here."

"In order to refine the data we must get closer to allow direct observation sub-commander. This will be much more dangerous."

"Yes. They will undoubtably have sensor satillites and those of their ships watching for intruders. Take us closer - we do not live for peace."

"As you order sub-commander..."

----

"Alright corporal - let's take a look at that wound."

The marine who had been wounded in the crypt was being treated by a doctor in a field base at the mouth of the crypt. A medic had patched him up but the wound was deep and needed further treatment. Now the medic was gone and the marine lay on the hover-stretcher watching the doctor examine the wound in his side.

"You have some damage to your spleen - we can take care of that no problem. At this point I'm more concerned about the blood loss and risk of infection..."

The doctor continued to examine the wound while a numbing agent kept the marine from feeling any of it. It was torned and ragged but the doctor was sure it would heal just fine.

"Scar or no scar?" The doctor poked aside a flap of flesh with a probe while the marine considered this. "Hold still a second..." Something had distinctly slithered away from his probe. Something metallic and coppery. "Nurse! Get this marine into isolation and x-rayed. There might be a fragment of the thing that wounded him in there. Given the circumstances I don't want to take a chance that it might be somehow 'alive' in there."

"Status report Major?"

Colonel Mccartney had been expected but he hadn't been expected to get right down to business. Major Anderson stood there fingering his notes while the Colonel strode across the room and poured himself a cup of coffee.

"Well Major?"

"Scouts have reached what they believe is the bottom of this particular crypt and they report that there is a command center of sorts down there. They are holding positions while a strike team gets down there. We've had nearly two hundred casualties so far but few losses. We do have a situation with some unknown technology in the hospital that is causing some problems."

A situation was an understatement...

----

"Over there!"

Guns swung and barked as a pair of metallic tentacles raced around a corner and were met by sabot and slug rounds from both marines and nurses. They had pulled weapons from the armory after the thing had spread through the wounded marine in minutes killing him and multiplying in size. Now the coppery tentacles raced the hallways and haunted the rooms while marines and nurses stalked them and watched over the doctors taking care of the wounded who couldn't be routed to another facility.

----

The assault shuttle tore through the atmosphere, sonic booms trailing behind it, and alien avianoids rose up in flocks from the jungle below to greet it. The world was not their own though as far as they knew no one else owned it either. Most of the plants and animals contained a potent neuro-toxin that was absorbed through the skin and killed in minutes. Settling down in a convenient clearing it disgorged marines who hit the ground and unslung their weapons. The roar of chainsaws echoed through the jungle for perhaps the first time in millenia.

The marines were not the only people on the ground - researchers were also taking the chance to grab samples as the marine transport completed a circuit of a dozen alien worlds to harvest a present between leaders and peoples.

Across Mars, Ares, and a handful of other worlds a massive party raged. On Ares the party was held on the vast open plain south of Neo Vancouver, the city that was the unofficial capital of the system. Nearly five million people young, old, rich, poor, single or in groups, gathered to witness the unvealing of the titanic statue that towered above the plain. The golden sunset that graced the flag was reproduced in detail from native stone carefully arranged like a mosiac. A ring of pillars that would frequently be mistaken for abstract art ringed the pedestal spelling out from the air Sunset's official name. Standing on the massive pedestal were six statues - three of the most beloved founding figures and three of the most beloved presidents. Each towered over the crowd below standing posed in stone as they had been in life.

"and with this we mark the continued growth of a nation dedicated to moving forward and advancing the cause of liberty."

Jon's unveiling speech had been stirring but the roar from the crowd was obviously caused by the massive curtain falling away and unvealing the faces beyond. As it fell a similar curtain fell on Mars where the massive statue stood on the shores of the Vallis looking over the cold deep waters. On Bright Morning it stood in the middle of a habitation dome where the tempurature outside made construction there impractical. Water washed over the statue on Sslaa IV where it stood on a tiny spit of land with a massive colony a kilometer away. In Atlantis the statue stood in the Acropolis where any could enjoy it. Finally on Hillary there was a much smaller statue - the floating colonies had to be careful of the weight.

For days the parties continued with some growing as they continued. When they finally died out relationships, partnerships, and in some cases businesses had been formed. Already some were planning for the five billion mark and the inevitable party.

----

"Confirmed sub-commander. Shipyards in orbit of the third world are producing ships identical to the pirate craft so far encountered."

With these words the next era in Sunset history began much as the previous had - with war.

Around Shiva an armada began to gather. Combat and battle groups summoned from Mars joined those gleaned from the Ares defense fleet. These were again joined by half the fleets from Sslaa IV and Atlantis. There was no wormhole gate protecting Hillary thus only a single battlegroup could be spared from that world. Around Shiva the marines were slowly withdrawing and preparing for a new fight. For this battle they would all be needed. The last of the marines would be pulled from Mars before the strike force left for the target system.

----

The full senate was in session and in the chamber with them was the president as well as the rest of the secretariate. Doctor Silaco had been pried away from her precious moon and had with her her daughter Katryna. Ambassador Penguin had arrived with the Camp David from Earth and he was monitoring the other event that would happen while he was here - the replacement of the Camp David with a new station cruiser. Admiral Wick was there as well and busy too with the fleet gathering in the system. The reason for the meeting was vitally important though the consequences would not be felt for a century or more.

"As you all know this session of the senate is meeting behind closed doors to discuss the future population needs of the nation. We are now a people four billion strong and growing. Over half the population now resides in the various out-system colonies that were founded under the initiatives of President Villanova. What shall our future be?

We have security and thanks to the efforts of many here that security will only get stronger. Looking forward we have several possible paths laid out for us - which shall we chose?"

Doctor Ambrose was screwed - completely and beyond recovery. His implanted control words and recognition worked completely and utterly but there was another more obvious problem he had ignored. The first had been confirmed during his class that morning. It had been the first day of class and he had just started introducing himself to the class.

"Good morning. I'm Doctor Stephen Ambrose and this is chemical biology three oh three."

"Doctor Stephen Ambrose!"

Ambrose looked up from the synopsis he was preparing to read from. A young man, short and squat, stood pulled up at attention. Around him his classmates were sitting quite normally and staring up at him. Some were giggling though he was straight faced and looking ahead unerringly.

"Young man - what is your name?"

"Marcus Gray, Sir!"

Ambrose was starting to have his suspicions about the young man's behavior so he continued to question him dispite the distraction it presented to the rest of the class.

"And what city are you from?"

"Metropolis, Sir!"

"Take your seat then Marcus - though I'd like to speak to you after class."

"Yes, Sir!"

The rest of the class had proceeded normally with Ambrose detailing the course, textbooks, assignments, tests, homework, and all the other information that would be needed to successfully complete the class. After the class he had questioned the young man and discovered that he was indeed a recipient of the genetic modification unleashed on Metropolis. Sadly it appeared that it was only the conditioning that had taken.

Now that he knew the process had worked the problem was trying to take control of the army he had created. Visions of a tri-d broadcast quickly faded - there were over five thousand channels and there was always something on. Even then most people would be doing something else somewhere else. He might get one or two but this was hardly the army he had hoped for. Now there were people running around the city with essentially super powers some of whom would likely never know about it.

"Allright girls - time to know thine enemy."

The 41st SDF Marine division was gathered in the briefing room aboard their transport for the first of many intelligence and mission briefings they would recieve before the armada left Ares for the pirate system. Even now a SEG was probing the edge of the system and setting up a VLA to keep an eye on their presumed foe and get as much information as possible. They were also busy sending care packages in-system - most IntelX assets to get that valuable on-the-ground intelligence.

"So what we have here is your basic pirate. We don't know their name for themselves yet so that's gonna be the term used instead of tango or charlie. What we do know is what we have recovered from their vessels and long range photography."

A holosphere flicked on with one of the aliens standing in the middle. It appeared nearly human except for the four arms and an unusual head shape that would normally be written off as some kind of body sculpting.

"The most obvious feature is the four arms. Notice that one set is smaller than the other by about one third and set under the primary arms on what is our rib cage. You'll notice that that too is more tapered than our own - even the men have an hourglass figure. They are shorter than the average human as well at one point five meters tall though their muscles are denser so they can carry approximately the same loads. The face has the same basic configuration except the eyes are wider apart and the head is shorter again giving a short first impression.

The skin is fine and smooth - moisturizer must be a prime industry. The color doesn't appear to be artificial either and it runs from a midnight blue to a cobalt. Eyes, nails, and body hair are a shade of grey with the hair on the head being a natural circle set far back on the skull. Physiologically they are far different from us - distributed circulatory and respratory system with the primary nervous system being in the spinal area instead. They are tougher because of this but they are likely slower to think things through because of the distance between the primary information gathering organs and the 'brain'. Reflexes are still really good though and they can effectively use all four limbs."

The sphere changed to show a dead alien in some kind of clothing though it was impossible to say if it was military. Large portions were destroyed and it was hard to make out the whole alien from the image.

"Based on this and other recovered specimens we know that they seem to favor small arms - what we would consider pistols and sub-machineguns. This allows the two smaller arms to use the same weapons as well as reduce recoil when all four arms are in use. They don't seem to be equipped for melee combat so you are going to want to watch the ranges. Their ship weapons are more advanced than their personal weapons with low caliber firearm equivalents being the most common. Hypervelocity stuff mostly - mach four in one case."

The briefing continued for the rest of the day before they broke for training. A lot of focus was put on effectively operating with the combat androids - the commander kept hinting they might be taking something new along with them and this would be important if they did.

----

Indeed there was something special in the works though it would need to be completed quickly to join the forces in the field. Some thought had been given to the relatively low numbers of SDF ground forces and while the fleet was still at the top of the pile ground combat was looking to be more and more important. The marines knew their stuff but the general population wasn't overall healthy enough to provide a large land force if it was needed. Because of this the brass was looking at a new type of android that could be manufactured in huge numbers if need be.

What they were looking at so far was nearly all weapon. A rough humanoid frame mounted a power plant, grav-pack, powergun in one arm, grenade launcher in the other, and several short range missiles in the rear torso. The design was by no means finalized but already they were leaning at a felinoid body shape - low, lean, and effective.

"So here's what we have so far. Long range sensor sweeps of the pirate system have given us enough information to indeed confirm they are pirates. Orbiting the third planet we observed this yard which you will note is full of ships - a lot of coming and going actually."

The holosphere showed an a-typical construction yard in orbit of a very blue world. A gridwork frame tied together dozens of modules where many different ships were docked. Many had battle damage but nearly all were swarming with worker units. Some were also clearly warships but others were freighters and in one slip there was what looked like a passenger liner given the number of observation domes as well as the fluid shape.

"Time-lapse shows that over a period of two months dozens of new ships come in. Nearly all are damaged in some way and most are scrapped in the yard. What is significant is that ships with only minor damage that would be easy to repair are sometimes scrapped. All of the damage appears to be battle damage of various kinds and in fact we also have recordings of pirate warships coming in escorting many of the ships.

We thought it might be just a large teardown and scrap yard until we saw this..."

The sphere showed the multi-spheroid shape of a Gen'Mokai ship being escorted in. The sphere zoomed in to show a segment of text on the upper hull in the slashes and dots of the Gen'Mokai alphabet.

"We forwarded this through allied intelligence and they confirmed that this ship was lost to a pirate raid on a seed colony nearly a month ago. The local pirate cluster was since destroyed in the action where the 49th was lost but they seem to have gotten away with this ship. Over the next three weeks it is systematically gutted and scrapped though the engines and weapons seem to have been removed intact."

One of the other intelligence officers stepped forward while the other sat down. The sphere again changed to show the whole pirate system in an enlarged scale format.

"Given this information plus information from intel sources on the ground that have recorded local information broadcasts we feel confident in the assessment that the whole system seems to be involved. Information broadcasts show pictures of ships and their crew along with pictures of ships newly arrived in the yards. In many cases those watching these broadcasts let out exclamations of what we take to be joy and in some cases the local currency changed hands."

"Betting then - and betting on who brought in the biggest prize."

"Yes sir, we believe so. We feel that violence is central to the culture and in fact that the claiming of prizes is also part of this violence. A IntelX unit entered a sporting facility and recorded this event..."

The holosphere showed a gladitorial arena of sorts with nearly a dozen competitors shooting it out in an enclosed sphere. Obstacles were placed seemingly randomly that provided cover for the competitors. Most blazed away with weapons resembling pistols and submachine guns, typically using the smaller arms to brace the larger or reload a weapon. As they fell other competitors swooped in and stripped them of their weapons, ammunition, and some kind of jewelry that all wore. Some seemed to be only wounded while others clearly died but the wounded seemed to live or die by the roar of the crowd and the whim of the person who claimed their gear.

"We have also recorded broadcasts of similar events involving vehicles, animals, and melee weapons. The culture seems to share one trait with our own - nearly everyone is armed. We have witnessed several fights break out and blood drawn with no apparent consequences except the gaining of wealth."

"So an invasion might face massive opposition. What kind of numbers are we looking at here?"

"Based on the expanded data from our survelliance of the system we are guessing around three hundred and fifty million. They seem to reproduce rapidly but they keep their own population down through violence. No idea whether the young aqquire the habits through environment or if it's natural."

"I certainly hope it's not natural Major - it would be like a world full of Allaneans. We already have enough idiots running around without this lot getting loose."

----

Gravel crunched as the massive hulk strode over the training ground leaving deep footprints behind it. Massive in comparison to the power-armored marines who faced it though it was under the size of one of the 'gears that stood waiting to face it next. The marines had surrounded it and were pounding away at it with 'plasma' and 'grenades' though both were only training versions. It in turn was firing back with the massive autocannon mounted on the torso. A marine dropped, his suit froze up due to 'damage' and the machine sensed an opportunity to break out.

Suddenly it was airborne with no flare of rockets or jets betraying it's position. Right now the capacitors that fed the gravy drive stolen from a StarStrike II could only power if for a few dozen seconds before they needed to recharge but this was enough for it to swoop outside the circle and back off where it could sweep the marines at range.

----

"Halt evildoer!"

The sudden voice behind Edzard made him drop of the tools he had been using to frag the lock on the hovercar and it skittered under the vehicle.

"Damnit Tim - if you do that again..." He whipped around, expecting the laughing form of his friend Tim to be standing there but instead found himself looking at nearly seven feet of muscle and lycra. "What the hell do you want?"

"You should put down the tools of your foul trade and come along with me young man."

"Yeah - sure. Why don't you just keep moving before someone gets hurt Captain America." Edzard reached inside his jacket and pulled out a cheap powergun but before he could aim it a fist the size of a chicken shot out and crushed the weapon like a paper tube. With a sudden yank he found himself in the air and looking into the face of the asshole who was trying to stop him. He was cleancut and except for a symbol of some kind welded on his cheek - a symbol that matched the one on his chest - was unadorned by tattoos or other body modifications.

"So it's force now? Well then I must carry you to the authorities restrained."

"I don't think so chummer - drop him."

Tim had returned from the Quick-E-Mart and was pointing his own gun at the costumed freak. A pair of soydogs and two bottled drinks were tucked under his other arm.

"I kinda wondered why you hadn't popped this one yet Ed. Came to take a look. Who the hell is he?"

The costumed do-gooder seemed to have eyes in the back of his head for as Tim stepped closer to get a better look he spun and knocked the weapon flying. Tim only briefly saw Edzard come flying at him as the costumed person knocked him flying as well in a cloud of soy-dogs and soda. Both were soon hauled into the air and the man stood there for a moment, dramatically posing in the street.

"I'm The Marshall - and you boys are headed to jail."

----

"Multiple sightings were reported today of the costumed hero calling himself The Marshall. Witnesses all discribe him the same way - tall, cleanshaven, and wearing a costume with 'The Marshall' written down one side and half of a badge on the other. He also has a stylized marshall's badge welded onto one cheek. No cape has been spotted though some report that he has taken to wearing a western-style pistol belt with a large revolver in the holster. No reports yet on if he has used this weapon."

"Well it does seem to confirm our own suspicions Admiral. Why would an asteroid belt essentially rich in minerals be essentially untouched? Statistically the trailing trojon asteroid clusters are only down by an average of one to four percent over what we have settled on for an average both on a galactic and local level. There are some installations in the trojans and we are recommending they be added to an initial strike list but they don't seem to be as important as ship 'harvesting' seems to be."

Admiral Decker sat back in his chair and rubbed his chin for a bit. He had really made up his mind earlier but he wanted to give someone a chance to chime in with something new.

"Well ok - we will go with that. I'll put a cruiser on each sizable installation to ensure their total elimination. What about counter intelligence? We are giving them every chance to see us coming - what have they done?"

"It does look like they have noticed the attention, yes. The SEG's are far enough out that they get plenty of warning and scram before the pirates arrive and the one time they tried to jump in from another system the Hudson destroyed two raiders before the third ran. They have taken a toll on long range observation though. Anything other than a ship that goes active gets destroyed by long range kinetics. They have a ring of mass drivers, the same we have seen before, orbitting their world as well as a few scattered around."

"And what about their fleet? I've already got ships assigned to the mass drivers but you haven't told me much about their fleet."

"Well, uh... We don't completely know where it is yet. If they even have one. Surveys of the surface have show their ships to be scattered around with some landed in the middle of cities, some in orbit, and some land in the water. These could be government forces or the world could simply be a true anarchy with factions forming as they need."

"I need to know this before we can launch any attack. Right now I've got a bloody armada in orbit running all kinds of drills but they don't have any idea how many they are gonna be fighting or how cohesive they are."

"Once we get their language translated it should be easy to determine but right now they tell me that there seems to be something missing."

"Well light a fire under someone's butt and find out. If we can't go soon I'm gonna have to call this a very expensive excersize and put everyone back on station. At least it will have confused the Ardans or something..."

"Well boys - there you have it - the Mark 1 UHCV. I hope you like it because they are very expensive and you are not going to get very many of them just yet."

The marines looked at the colonel, looked back at the shape in the holosphere, and then back to the colonel. Finally one spoke the question many of them were wondering.

"Sir - what is it?"

The colonel looked at the marines, the marines looked back, and the colonel looked away and started checking his pockets like he lost his notes or something. Finally he saw the remote for the holosphere on the desk and picked it up. At first the holosphere went from the dark and somewhat blurry images that were playing to a documentary on the Mangalan political system. 'Voice of the Council is the public representation of the Imperial...' then to an adult entertainment channel. 'your pizza here. That will be twenty bucks.' 'Oh, I don't think I have that much, can I maybe pay you some other way?' The colonel seemed to stay on that one for far too long before switching over to another internal feed.

"Ah - here we are. Nice schematic first here. The UHCV, Unmanned Humanoid Combat Vehicle, is the latest infantry support platform for marines in the field. The chassis is three point eight meters tall at the shoulder. As you can see it is armed to the teeth with a bunch of different weapons. The default configuration is a pair of stowable one hundred millimeter CAM burst fire cannon on the shoulders, a twenty millimeter CAM rotary cannon in the chest for anti-missile defense and infantry suppression, twelve variable munition short range missiles in the shoulders, a magnetic assisted fourty millimeter high-explosive rifle, and an internal HOBD generator for close quarters battle.

It retains traditional hands and feet for manipulation and ground movement but it also features a standard gravy drive. Yes, this thing can fly. Power plant is a CIDES unit and a couple dozen kilo's of lead. The head is only partially mobile and mounts one of three redundant sensor clusters."

The colonel switched to footage of a unit that was obviously a much earlier prototype moving through an asteroid field using a combination of leaps and full drive operation while engaging a series of drones with the various weapons.

"Now as you can see the early prototype looked nothing like it does not - the drive only had enough power for quick jumps, the armor was aluminum, and the weapons were not nailed down yet. But don't think this is the final version either. You twelve are just enough to pilot the twelve alpha versions we have right now. Early versions were only piloted by an II core since the DNI was still being set up. You twelve will be piloting the DNI version in conjunction with the onboard II cores. That doesn't mean they won't be able to pilot themselves though - a gestalt of three II cores run these babies with one on movement, one on weapons, and one on sensors and comms.

You will be piloting Alpha Three through Alpha Fourteen - One and Two are lab models. Your input is going to lead to the production version hopefully in about a year. You'll be split up - half will be running simulations while the other half get to run real-world with the first simulations likely comming on Mars in a couple days versus the tyranids. Alpha Eleven through Fourteen should probably brush up on their Mangalan customs as you will be the team on the ground in all likelyhood."

----

"So are we calling this thing off or are we gonna hit the little bastards?"

Decker sat in his chair at the conference table with a unlit cigar clamped in his mouth. A virtual cigar of course - and the taste still wasn't right. Other admirals were clustered around the table including Admiral Wilkens who was in charge on Mars for the time being.

"It depends on how the orbital battle goes and the first ground action. If they don't make any decent headway the fleet won't be needed, and if they are demolished on the ground the marines won't be needed either. So it's on hold."

"Yay."

----

Silaco walked not along the cold rock now but along patterned concrete streets with ornate center dividers and light posts stretching high overhead. Further on she could see a group of her robots working on installing more while behind them even more labored to construct one of the massive spires that would link the outer shell to the core. A color scheme had been decided on and rich patterns of bone, brown, and gray were going up all over the rust brown metalwork. The moon's infrastructure was essentially done - the last of the super cable from Imnsvale had been delivered and payment made and the massive drives and power plants had been installed as well.

Now her small army was working day and night to get it ready for it's first non-robotic inhabitants. Then the character of the inner world would forever change from the harsh metallic and rock it was now with the addition of a sea of green. Plants would be needed both for foot and to provide a cheap method of recycling the air and the colonists would bring them. What of the colonists though? She was yet to make a decision on that issue.

Someone would be needed to prepare the hidden world for long term sentient inhabitation. Perhaps it was time for another round of 'Who wants a chance to live outsystem?' A population of around one hundred thousand people would be needed - people willing to work their entire lives to prepare a world for a possible massive influx of refugees. But how to word it so people didn't know what was going on? Hiring - must sign NDA and be willing to never see family and friends again? She was essentially looking for a hundred thousand hermits and she knew it.

"So what is it?"

The docotor finished loading the device and activated the controls. The recruit slowly dropped onto her back as the armature that would actually perform the procedure swung into place.

"It's a cornea - though not a replacement. Though if you had any vision problems I can take care of those two if you like."

"What's it do?"

"Practically everything. It has IR, micrometer radar, and a host of other receptors. Pretty much anything in the EM spectrum that can be recieved it picks up, turns into a visual spectrum image, and shows you that image on the reverse side. You get two of them."

"What about controls? I don't wanna be looking through someones clothes all the time."

"Right through the datajack - which we will be replacing your civilian version right now as well. You pull up your internal menu - which will be a little odd at first as you will have stacked images - and turn functions on and off. You'll be getting a couple other things too of course. Clock calender function, weapon link, the usual toys. You ready?"

"All ready."

She was out within seconds and the machine went to work first injecting the new cyber-cornea then removing and replacing her datajack with a mil-spec model as well as giving her a bunch of other functions and the usual ident bands around bones in her arms and legs. All part of the recruit process - though everyone else was getting updates as well as part of their physicals.

----

Inside one of the Mallbertian arcologies on Phobos dozens of researchers were hard at work decyphering the riddle of their mysterious technologies. All were suited up and extensive precautions were being taken to ensure that whatever had happened to these people didn't happen to them.

"All right people - we are gonna need to pack it up and wrap it up."

"Err - what?"

One of the researchers, one Orv Iverson, looked at the hardsuited figure who had appeared in the doorway.

"Command wants to get this place cleaned out and ready. You boys get to go home and take this fun stuff with you."

"But we don't..."

"Know how dangerous it is - yeah, I know. But they want us to get everything out of here before they lease it out. Only thing we can leave is the life support units. So get moving - we have a month but that's a lot of cleanup to do."

"Ladies and gentlemen, evolution is being forced upon us."

The audience of admirals, generals, senate division leaders, and not a few chief executives watched from their comfortable chairs as the new head of SDF research and development began to bring up holo after holo on the stage until he was walking in a forest of them. Many were uncomfortable despite the surroundings - either old guard who wanted to do it the traditional way or old money who didn't like the risk. Paying particular attention but not at all uncomfortable attention was Katryna Silaco - though very few knew who she was or why she was there.

"We are looking at a rapidly changing threat environment. An environment that I feel will outpace our own change in less time than we think unless we go forward with major reforms. It was at one point in time the only thing we worried about - Arda. And Metus. But that situation has changed and will continue to change dramatically. We were once worried about an attack by numerically superior but technologically inferior forces. Wave attacks that would wear us down like the rock at sea. But like the world of the 21st century that is changing and we must change as well or despite all our precautions we might not survive to see the next.

A large part of that is the types of forces we will be facing. The admirals and generals lead but it is my job to give them the tools to do it. Major change is needed through. Where we have focused most of our efforts on killing vast numbers of common infantry we are now looking at a mixed bag. Some of our potential opponents have a sea of tanks - others have a sky filled with aircraft. The fields of soldiers still remain as well of course but they are no longer our primary threat.

On a one to one basis we can destroy most every similar vehicle with one of our own - but we are looking at a situation where we are overwhelmed with numbers along one particular vector but that vector could be one of a dozen. What I'm proposing for the next step in the evolution of the SDF is a fighting machine that can fight along each of those vectors. The UHCV is a first step in that direction but it should be seen as merely a step in the evolution. That is what I hope comes out of our offices soon - that is what will save us in the evolving future battlefield."

----

Status Report, SDF Volga
April 1st, AFY2734

We have completed the last array deployment and we are awaiting the arrival of the station and it's cruiser complement. In the mean time we have been informed that we will be reassigned to some espionage work. Some of the crew are getting antsy - it's been a long time in space without any planetside activities. The next near-terran planet we reach will recieve the pleasure of our company or we'll have a small mutiny on our hands.

"This really wasn't what I meant by planetside..."

The Volga was currently docked, if the term was stretched, with an arcology in the Stickney Crater on one end of Phobos. Her crew had been excited to see Sol again but they were somewhat on edge as they were assigned to obtain samples of the technology of the previous inhabitants, secure it, and then take it to a secret facility elsewhere. They didn't even know where the secret facility was yet and the fact that this was Mallbertian group-mind technology made them wary.

A couple fights had broken out and this hadn't help matters at all. The crew was degenerating and they needed a break soon. Captain Walters was wracking his brain for an idea but he was in the same shape. Perhaps it was time to check some outside resources.

"Hmm - tourism. We need somewhere isolated. Low tech even..."

The search engine started to spit out results and one caught his eye.

"The Mearclanda of Freod... See our lovely villages, picturesque vales... Hmm - definately low tech..."

Walters looked over the virtual brochure for a few more minutes. It was located on the Ring but this too would be perfect. The Ring was so large as the crew would have plenty of space to spread out and get away from each other. In a month or so they would be done with their job then they would take a break. He composed an annoucement to the crew and posted it. Now what to do about those foreign scientists he had aboard?

----

It is often said that war is ninety nine percent sheer boredom and one percent utter terror. For the marines on the Hector that statement would be proven true or false shortly. For now they went about their preparations - weapons were cleaned, loaded, tested, and stowed, gear was checked, rechecked, and stowed, power armor powered up, donned, and tested. Chemicals began to flow through the bodies of those who were not assigned power armor as they all activated their chemical augmentation rigs in their body armor. Emotions cooled as reflexes increased and muscles recieved increased fuel flow through widening veins.

Their operation had been planned while the fleet waited for word of the tyranid invasion of Mars. A surgical strike - a test of their opponents defenses. Intelligence had identified the source of the leak and it was frightening familiar. An asteroid had been laced with sensors far outsystem and had been dropped in to join the ring around Hachiman. There it had sat and watched until an observant prospector had noticed the equipment on it and informed Intelligence.

Careful probes had determined that the platform was unmanned but a couple IntelX assets along with knowledge gleaned from the pirate's computer systems had allowed Intel to break in and find the location the platform sent it's data. It used a tightbeam tachyon stream to pulse the data out at FTL speed to a nearby system where it was probably re-transmitted. IntelX assets had been slipped onto that planet by a Therian scout and the base had been found, penetrated, and scouted by a dozen black rats who now sat in the housing for the base's sensor array and a half dozen other key locations.

In ten minutes the marine transport would jump from Ares and begin an attack run. The marines would drop at the bottom of the run and hit the base while their shuttles and gunships provided covering fire. The rats would take out the critical systems seconds before the transport came out. Marines would grab computers, personnel, and get outta there. Quick and clean, right?

----

While the new Research and Development director had some evolving solutions in mind systems still needed to be updated and replaced. Such was the case with the marine's aging MoonSilver-Class Gunship. While it was still a capable and superior craft the marines needed bleeding edge not just superior. Thus over the southern ocean on Ares a new craft was being put through it's paces. It would probably be called the MoonSilver II but it looked nothing like the craft it would replace.

The design came out of Liquid LLC but it had been subjected to the same modifications the SoulSteel had - engines upped to mil-spec rather than corp-spec, cockpit replaced by a virtual unit and triple II cores, weapons upgraded, and other refinements made it generations ahead of the mass market version that would be offered on Mars. The shape remained the same though - an advantage in numerous ways.

----

The latest SDF rifle also spun on a designers desktop, though he had no way of knowing this yet. It was a radical design for a radical weapon that had been sitting in his head for years. Soon enough it would be sent around to the manufacturers - including one covertly owned by SDFIntelligence.

President Thorgardson put his feet up on his desk and sat back in his chair. His real desk and real chair this time - he was in one of the state rooms aboard a dreadnought in Ares orbit rather than the virtual government that was his normal domain.

It had been... quiet lately. He was rather enjoying it really. No wars, no major conflicts, no alien attacks... Nice and quiet and indeed perhaps boring. News shows had taken to local news rather than the non-existant dramatic events in Sol. In fact the only noteworthy thing was the lack of noteworthy events. In a half hour Doctor Silaco would give a status report on her projects and then he would probably take a nap. Having a clear schedule was a near miracle - a near miracle he would take advantage of.

----

A status report was forthcoming and at the appointed hour it arrived.

"Simply enough both projects are complete. The VMMCA is done with a full point zero one percent solar coverage and it is producing at the projected capacity and efficiency. Most of that capacity is being dedicated to special projects currently but we are looking at moving some thirty percent of the capacity to regular military production.

Refuge is essentially done as well. The remaining problem is the population to prepare it for a massive group of refugee's. I've only managed to get about ten thousand people to immigrate - I need at least one hundred times that number to prepare the whole moon before my predictions for discovery of this system take place. Which brings me to another issue."

"Moving Refuge?"

"Yes - when and where. Based on intelligence gathered we have found that several other nations have colonies or home systems relatively nearby. I'd like to move it as soon as possible and as far as possible. Preferably into the Vast. That's the safest place with tens of thousands of years required for the radiation from our jump to reach this galaxy."

It is often remarked that some family members - mothers and daughters, twins, close siblings - often have some kind of unseen communication where they can sense the emotions and occasionally the events the other is feeling or experiencing. Sometimes fathers to be have birth pains and twins know when their twin has been hurt or is feeling intense emotions. In the case of Katrina and Erika Silaco the communication was not the subtle and unproven emotional link but simply just another electronic system buried in their sentient electronic cores.

Between the two raced large volumes of information concerning their respective jobs. Doctor Silaco constantly conferred with her daughter about her duties as head researcher, bouncing off ideas and error checking, while her daughter consulted her for advice on how to be a better officer and interact with humans more effectively. But now was one of those times when the communication type was at least partially reversed...

"Mom..."

"Mmm - yes dear?"

"I had this idea on an expanded use for the inter-dimension refuge system I want to bounce off you."

"Ok. Go ahead."

In the world of electronic communication the preceding and of course the subsiquent conversation took place in less time than it would take to place a period at the end of a sentence. But it resulted in a fundamental shift in strategy. It had always been known that the SDF was not a large enough force to 'block' an attack and was more in place in Martian orbit to disrupt one instead. The reason it was always in orbit was simply the way the tesseract drive worked with the need of a specific recharge time based on the distance travelled.

Because of the way the drive worked one could not simply put two on a ship - you might as well have two whole ships. Katrina's idea would change that and open up a whole range of deployment options. That first jump would no longer be accomplished by the ship's own drives but by an array of satillites positioned in Ares orbit and in various other stragetic locations. Of couse such a network was going to take time to build...

----

"What we have done is taken the basic design of the UHCV and enhanced it to reflect these studies."

An image of the SDF's now standard UHCV appeared in the holosphere in the center of the briefing chamber - itself a holographic enviroment where the thousands of researchers and officers managing SDF research and development could meet without meeting.

"We have pulled one of the shoulder mounted weapons and replaced it with a more powerful single weapon mounted on the left side first of all. Studies show that the single more powerful weapon is better for a first shot kill than the less powerful but higher volume double weapons. We have replaced that weapon with an anti-missile system and removed the torso mounted version due to the inferior coverage of the torso mount and the newly avaliable space."

The image zoomed to the lower arm and that became translucent and various systems began to highlight in red.

"Another change has been the introduction of a dual purpose close range high tempurature weapon system - IE a flamethrower. It has two different modes of operation. The primary system is the standard flamethrower where an extremely high tempurature flaming material is sprayed over the target. This is useful for imparing or killing units in body armor or similar. The second function is basically a very high tempurature hair drier. It superheats air from the environment and blows it onto the target. The tempurate can be controlled to make it effective for crowd control or for eliminating large numbers of un-armored opponents without fuel use."

The briefing continued and more system changes and additions were discussed for quite some time until the audience sensed the meeting was near the end.

"And that's it for the refinements to the UHCV. Now before we end this meeting I'd like to show you a teaser of what we are working on for next year..."

An image of the MKIII SDF combat android came up on the sphere.

"This is the MKIII as you well know. Despite our refinements to the II it still doesn't have the flexibility of a human mind in combat situations. Well this next version is going to change that. Because we are putting the human back into the combat android. I'll see you all in two weeks!"

For Captain Walters the bridge of his latest assignment was at once famlliar and not. Through the information that flowed across his optic implant HUD he could see his command crew also sitting at their stations, hands moving over controls to confirm instructions that were mostly given from directly nueral interfaces. He also knew that none of it was real and that yet it was real. His second, a curvy blonde by the name of Cindy, was not really sitting at that station but yet she was. She was really laying in a virtual environment pod where her mind was connected to the II core of an android that occupied that chair on the ship that was far from their real bodies.

The ship itself was one of a new generation of warships that heralded a change in direction for the entire fleet. This ship was an explorer - the new front line explorer as it were. A ship one-fifth the size of the Venture-Class ships it still retained all of the capabilities and more because it completely eliminated all crew quarters, recreation facilities, and similar crew related functions. The crew was all androids linked to the crew that resided safely in a facility deep under the surface of Ares.

There were still Venture-Class ships of course but this was a lot cheaper and safer. These new light explorers would push forward surveying and cataloging the hundreds of generic systems that populated the galaxy while the heavy Venture's would follow up to do detailed studies, make contact with new civilizations, and similar more complex activities that needed a body for whatever reason.

This same change was slated to happen to the warships as well through the change would be far more dramatic. The ships would not become smaller - they would simply become heavier armed and armored. Weapons that could not be carried previously because of the risks to the crew would be mounted in the future - and the reduction in risk would allow them to take more aggressive action as well as more radical defensive moves.

----

One point five billion on Mars. Two point nine billion in the Ares system. Three hundred million scattered amoung the various other colonies. It was time for another expansion in the places the population of Sunset lived. The depths between the stars and the places ..between.. were considered. What shape these dwellings would take was still up in the air and the question was no longer why, but when?

----

In a nation where non-human sentients walked and in some cases crawled the streets the Alien Cults that had sprung up in the early half of the 29th century were among the oddest social trends of all. Body modification to look like the classic 'grey' was common in these cults as was veneration of objects retrieved from the dig sites on Anuke and Shiva. How these objects had become avaliable was a question of enormous interest to SDFIntelligence but to the worshippers they were more holy than the Ark of the Covenant.

----

"No more fighters?"

"Nope - why bother? Ultimately the UHCV's have the same armament that a fighter had and have the same manuverability. It won't mean anything as far as carrier design goes - in fact we might stop making them in the next generation. Add a UHCV launcher as a kind of weapon blister to existing warships and each can carry twenty."

"No need to carry pilots... They can be used for external repairs..."

"Next generation - I'm telling yah. Within a hundred years we won't have any live bodies on the front line."

~Random hallway talk between two designers at LiquidLLC

In the vast expanse of stars where the vast majority of humanity makes its home there are an uncounted number of places where life has already tried and failed to make a foothold. Sometimes it never goes beyond simple protozoa or ugly little lizards sunning themselves on a blue sanded beach. In fact, on the whole, it never goes beyond that simple stage of life. A comet made of some noxious material slams into the planet; the star, tired of watching this play out, goes nova and snuffs out the planets like cotton balls in a candle flame; a human explorer unknowingly steps in a pool of water and destroys three million years of evolution.

Never is a null word in the great uncounted depths of space however. Twenty thousand years ago 'never' is a decidedly humanoid species piloting now-primitive chemical and nuclear craft between the planets of their home - and only - star system. As is often the case these advancements were made possible by war and violence inspiring new and better ways to kill each other. Another such advancement, a quantum leap really, is about to be made that will make their own atomic bombs and chemical explosives pale in comparison.

A species who has not yet mastered the forces of gravity is about to try some tinkering on a grand scale. First a tiny experiment that results in a discharge of energy powerful enough to consume their world in a heartbeat. No damage done though the other nations sit up and take notice. Peace talks are initiated in the face of this tremendous new weapon by those nations sensible enough to realize they face ultimate annihilation. There is however that footstep in the puddle that ruins three million years of evolution.

A trio of nations considers this the best time indeed to strike and so mushroom clouds burst over citys and fields as billions are snuffed out. The red banner of war is still raised high though and once again this tremendous power is unleashed and a planet is shattered. As with many things invented for war those who hold the power do not yet understand it's full implications and they attempt to use it like a surgical instrument to remove a tumor. When your instrument is the largest fusion furnace in existance there is nothing surgical or predictable about the results.

Cutting a long story short another chance at life in the galaxy is snuffed out spectacularly. The light from this event has already arrived on Earth and been forgotten by early civilizations who cowered in fear as another star the sky shone brightly through the day and then winked out forever. Now, as our knowledge of the galaxy expands with the ever increasing numbers of exploring vessels, this place bears the unremarkable name of GEC5601. For the crew of the ship that surveyed the odd nebula and discovered the shattered worlds, floating ships, and frozen bodies, it has its own name though...

Armaggedon

Despite the vast array of forces working against life - entropy, life iteself, etc - it manages to come back again and again despite tremendous odds. Some have pointed to this as a sign that some intelligence greater than our own is out there guiding and shaping life and enabling it to continue through miracles and the like. In some cases this is absolutely true...

----

The labratory was crowded with the usual mish-mash of exotic testing devices, displays, models, projectors, glass bits, and the like. If one looked at it for even a brief moment it became apparent that all of this was focused on a murky grey tube at the end of the room. Floating inside this tube as in a scene from nearly all mass-market sci-fi films was a humanoid shape. Just like in any of these films it was impossible to make out the complete features until one got very close. If one did get very close they would be under the impression that the being inside was about to leap at them. Close to the truth really.

----

Generations had come and gone since the discovery and cataloging of the Armaggedon system. Until now the only people who had cared were the technicians who monitored the string of satillites laid in the system when it was surveyed. They watched for the usual signs of pirate activity, checked to see why a particular satillite had gone offline, and in some cases repair it remotely. Often it was a simple micro-asteroid strike and notes were made to replace it when the whole network was down by fifty percent.

Though they had known it was coming the technicians had watched with interest that day several years ago when a small convoy of ships once again entered the system. The satillites were replaced as a matter of course and then they started to move in to stay. The planets were shattered as was the star but this did not make the system unliveable for those with the know-how. One planet near the center of the nebula that was the majority remains of the star had been chosen and now recieved all the attention of a socialite's house the night before a party.

----

The being stirred in the tube and came closer to the glass. An observer - there was none - to the event would have seen hard scales like ancient armor with short, stiff hairs just poking out from under them coating a leanly muscled torso and arm. Most of humanity would not call the being pretty. In fact most would consider it feral and predatory. Some might appreciate the coloring though if not for the smokey glass obscuring the purples and greens. It was altogether appropriate for a jungle hunter though the species had moved beyond that thousands of generations ago.

----

A city had been built in the bottom of a crater that had been scooped out by an unknown weapon thousands of years ago. A crater as large as a continent. There was only a very weak gravity field now which allowed the construction of a large tripod over the crater. At the center was placed an artificial sun that was fed from matter gathered from the nebula. This was also the framework for the expanding industrial sector of the colony. Mining a world missing a large chunk of it's crust was easy and metals flowed out and into refineries built on this structure.

Not all the sturcture was industrial of course. A labratory had been built in one area near the beginning of the colonization by a scientist who had come to study the life forms that had first conquered the system before conquering themselves. The best way to learn about life is to observe it however and before long the dead bodies had given up their building blocks and now they were coming together once again.

Life had returned to the system and soon the original life would return as well.

"Captain? Might wanna take a look at this..."

Andrys split his helmet display in half with a thought and switched over to that of the alert LT with another. Just as rapidly it went to a full size display as he lost interest in his own view. The seven man team had been on-world for only a few hours and they already had what hundreds of teams had failed to find on other worlds. Sentient life and losts of it.

At the base of the hill, straddling a creek and obscured by vegetation analogs, was a collection of "Mud huts. And a metric f-ton of bipeds. Fing odd looking bipeds."

Each was short for a human with the average being one point one meters though there were both taller and shorter specimens. They seemed hunched over with a protructing face and that feature drew considerable attention.

"Is it just me or is their head not the same as their body?"

"Maybe they are wearing clothing of some kind..."

This didn't seem probable to any member of the team though. The body looked ropey and the first thing that sprang mind for many was a walking plant. The head - or what they thought was the head - was far different. It almost looked like a rock. A lumpy rock with slits that might hold eyes or a mouth if one had the imagination.

"Maybe we are being too human centric here - maybe that's not a head. Maybe it's a hat. Or a decoration of some kind. Masks..."

"Check the right flank Cap'n. Masks my ass."

Bodies shifted and displays focused on three of the beings that were walking back into the village after an apparently successful hunt. Each was carrying a dead creature or a bunch of plants over a shoulder or swinging loosely at the knee. Two carried clubs and the third a spear with a throwing thong on the end though these weapons only attracted momentary attention. One of the three was wearing a mask or some kind of armor over their face. This one was walking in the center and looked back and forth at the two beside him though the directional microphones on the explorers suits couldn't pick up anything in the human audio range.

"You know what this is lieutenant?"

"An opportunity to grab them before they get to the village? I'll fire up the probe-u-lator..."

"Hilarious. Send a rat down the hill to the other side of the village. Let's get some close ups. Hell - send two."

The captain continued to watch the hunters as they walked towards the village as he kept one eye on the rat's eye view in the corner of his display. The LT rolled over from deploying the two rats just as two children - he guessed they were children - ran out to meet the hunters.

"What the fing!?"

"They ain't got no heads sir. Neither of em."

This was indeed true. Both of the children ran up to one of the hunters and began clinging to him forcing him to hand off his catch to one of the other hunters. Scooping both up in his arms he held them for a moment before setting them down. The hunters had reached the village by now and handed off their weapons and goods to others and entered one of the largest huts.

"Should get one of the rats inside that hut I'm thinking."

"Yes sir. Might wanna look at this one though. Is that an abacus?"

The rat was well inside the village now, darting from hiding place to hiding place, and it had apparently found a small market area. A dozen of the beings were sitting on logs with goods on flat rocks in front of them and in the middle of the group was one who sat at what looked like a scale and abacus both made of wood and highly carved and decorated. One of the dead animals that had been brought in by the hunters was being weighed by comparing it to small carved stones and the weigher was flipping wooden slides around as it looked from person to person.

The captain, knowing what an abacus was but not knowing exactly how they worked, had brought up that information on his HUD and skimmed it quickly.

"It's not an abacus but it's really similar at least in form. Have to talk to one to find out."

"Talk to one? We can't even hear what they are saying. If they have mouths. Or eyes. I'm still stumped by the lack of heads on those kids. If they were kids. They look like shrubs."

----

Professor Quellan, chair of the sentient studies department at the University of Ares, was really enjoying himself for once. It had been a long time since he had taught a class about a new species and he was really getting into the lesson.

"It's a silicon based lifeform that lives in a symbiotic relationship with a carbon based form of vegetation. An evolved form of course - you could call it's predecessor a cousin to the terran venus fly trap or the manstalker vine found on delta-zeta-four. In it's natural environment it is an omnivore though many of the plants have animal characteristics and vis versa. Near as we can tell the silicon lifeform is the sentient part. It absorbs nutrients from the carbon lifeform and in return 'controls' the carbon based form through a network of tiny rootlike structures that grow into it's body."

Quellan brought up a picture of the species both with and without the silicon form and the silicon lifeform by itself. Focusing on the silicon form he continued.

"This half of the lifeform, if we want to think of it that way, appears to be wholely responsible for what we would consider the actions of a sentient creature. When un-attached the other half exhibits far more instinctive behavior than when attached and does not create anything, hunt, or similar activity we associate with sentience. It's possible that they sit there and think deep thoughts I suppose but it doesn't seem likely.

Unfortunately right now we can't talk to one and find out. I've been waiting for a month now for more information from my collegue inside the SEC but he has told me that because of security concerns information from their planet of origin is not forthcoming. Now let's take a look at this fascinating footage from inside a village that was taken by the survey team..."

----

Villages were burning again that night as they had done every night since a month after the survey team had arrived. Captain Andrys was certain it had something to do with that rat the LT had lost inside the village. He wasn't sure how one 'lost' a rat equipped with an anti-tampering thermite charge but that village had suddenly gone nuts afterwards.

He swore he could hear the hammers on the anvils through his helmet all day. They had started using swords - crude weapons by any standard - by the second week. Slaves taken in raids had been put to work mining the hillside his team had been on. Now they watched through more rats from the safety of a cave deeper in the hills. He was considering moving again though. The natives had begun bringing dung into their village and processing it and he was sitting on a large supply of it in the cave.

"You know Cap'n, you get some charcoal and refine some..."

"Yeah, I know. Gunpowder. Just tell me that isn't a cannon carriage they are making. I think I need to talk to the rat designer about just how much 'comparative data' those things need to carry."

----

'Accessing training preferences... Initializing training matrix... Establishing virtual world...'

Vasquez knew it had probably done all those things before it had finished with the letter A but he didn't complain. Humans need to be eased into things sometimes. Even '0' Division operators.

'Welcome to the SDF UHCV mark three familiarization and training simulation. The purpose of this simulation is to review the features of the new system, it's capabilities, and train the individual operator in their use in the field...'

Of course he had read the manual last night before bed. The mark two had been a step forward from the mark one but this was a running long jump. Vasquez settled in for the long hall and paid attention to the program.

'replacing the twin shoulder mounted particle cannon is a single integrated variable particle cannon in the right shoulder. This has reduced the number of missiles avaliable but this can be compensated for by inclusion of a number of...'

----

It was almost like poking an ant hill Jon thought. Except it was more like there were odd sounds coming from the neighbors garage at night and weird lights were flashing in their basement. He enjoyed watching the speculation from the Sol media as regarded the lack of SDF presence over Mars and around the solar system as well as the frequent answers to probing questions. 'Ask them' and 'No comment' were common but occasionally someone who wasn't up for re-election or who didn't care would say something like 'Fing if I know - maybe they are off fighting aliens.'

The press didn't seem to notice that SDF recruiting offices were still open on Mars and all public colonies and trainees were still being accepted by the thousands. Perhaps because they were more interested in the unknown - and unknowable - they didn't look at the section about the possibility of lack of communication for long periods with friends or family. Hadn't cost them recruits either. Most simply assumed that meant duty with the SEC and left it at that.

Deep in the Vast the demi-world known as Refuge floated serenely by itself though this lonelyness was not to continue. Behind it like a vast curtain hung the disk of the Milky Way. Currently Refuge was sitting eighty seven degrees galactic north by twenty three degrees east and a few thousand lightyears down from galactic center and the view from Doctor Silaco's office was spectacular. Essentially because she could she had begun moving the moon around in order to view different events in galactic history over again. On a lark she had taken the moon in close once and observed the first Martian war and then popped back out once it was over and watched it again from a different angle.

Now she was about to take more steps to keep the moon secure and ready for use. The moon used extremely large and powerful tesseract drives to manipulate space but the cooldown on the drives was extremely long given the distances moved. Thus the moon gained eight new sattilites as one by one they were set into orbit by her own guardian warships. These would form a cube around the moon that would allow it to jump twice in quick succession though this would leave the moonlet's behind if this was done. Of course these would not be normally used to move the moon as they would, if used, annihilate most of their own mass to fuel the jump.

Right now the population was at one hundred thousand humanoids of various forms and a few dozen electronic sentients that had formed a kind of gestalt control over the moon's systems.

----

Volleys of muskets had cracked for nearly a week before the symbiotic plant-rock bipeds had advanced beyond napoleonic warfare to a pre-world war one technological level. This, however, was not the major concern of the survey team at the moment. Another week had passed and they had moved yet again - this time into orbit. Adaptive optical camoflage on the survey vehicle 'probably' protected them from the eyes (did they have eyes?) looking towards the heavens through primitive telescopes on the ground. But for how long would orbit be safe?

Just outside the village which was now essentially the capital of a rapidly growing carnivorous vegetable empire a space had been cleared, leveled, and a concrete pad erected. Parts of what the computer identified as a possible but primitive V2 launch pad were being erected. This told the survey team two things. The first was that the sentients were definately planning in advance and second that they might want to call in reinforcements just in case.

Industry took time to construct - especially industrial revolution era industry - but once it got up and running the speed at which these things could advance might be unlimited. If they continued their warlike tendencies they might be looking at a serious threat within a year. The limiting factor now was the current planetary population and the survey team didn't have a hard estimate yet. This was the current goal - see how close they were to the estimated fifty million needed to sustain a 1960's era spaceflight civilization.

"I've got good news and I've got bad news and I've got more bad news. What do you want to hear first?"

Admiral Derik James looked at the leader of the survey team and weighed the three options for a moment. Which one he heard first might set the tone for this whole debacle in development. That he already considered it a debacle also weighed into the decision.

"Let's wade right in - bad news and more bad news."

"Yes sir..."

Information started to pop up on the various screens and holospheres that dominated the virtual meeting chamber on the Tigeress. The warship was currently orbitting a gas giant in the outer solar system while the subjects of the meeting duked it out a few orbits inward. Numbers streamed by and were mostly ignored as it was just a representation of the data being deposited in long term memory by cybernetic implants.

"The bad news is that the locals have doubled their holdings in the past six months. Since they launched their first short range cruise missile about a year ago they have since successfully mounted a warhead and used it to terrorize hundreds of villages and even a couple allied groups into joining their camp. We snuck a rat into a missile before it was used to intimidate one of these alliances by destroying their presumed capital. Take a look..."

An image of the inside of a primitive liquid fueled rocket appeared in a holosphere from the viewpoint of one of the omnipresent IntelRats. The admiral watched as it moved through the device until it poked it's little furry head out a hole near the rear nozzle. Still watching he asked the team leader to continue with the bad news.

"The other bad news is that they don't seem to be slowing down their advancements. In a way it's good news though - they are pushing technological advancement faster than their industry can expand to support it. Much like the technological advancements of the late Soviet Union they can make fancy toys but they don't have the means to mass produce them. However this is more bad news as we have spotted what looks like a heavy water production plant under construction."

"And the good news?"

"Their growth isn't sustainable based on our gathered data as far as their numbers go. If every sentient on the planet is eventually put under their sway they will have less than twenty million sentients. The only worry is whether they realize there are other sentients out there and whether they will try to expand to control them as well. Information on other sentients is out there but the only location it knows is the location of Sol and that only because of the image of the copper plate contained in the Voyager probe.

We think this might spur them to develop inter-stellar travel for purposes of conquest but they will need to stop fighting and start growing again. Again, based on our estimates from orbital imagery we think about 1/10th of the population was killed in the current warfare. Our primary concern is a lack of information about their reproductive cycle. If they have a reproductive cycle."

Gloved hands picked up shards of rock and tossed them roughly into the hopper of a mechanical monstrousity that slowly lumbered it's way across the most recent battlefield. A primitive village on the very edge of the new civilization's sphere of influence had fought back with spears and clubs but this had done little good. They had been absorbed into the empire now and that involved cleanup operations. Vegetable mass was picked up and tossed into another hopper - this was usually shattered and torn apart by the heavy rounds they were forced to use to kill each other.

The plant mass would go to feed new bodies. All that was important was the sentient cores that still lived though in a hibernation of sorts. In a way the battles and the shattered crystal matrix's were good for the empire and not simply a waste of dwindling resources. Each fragment of a matrix would regrow into a new, nearly blank, whole given time. Already vast caverns filled with the minerals they needed to grow had been hollowed out in the center of the empire and these crystal shards would be seeded there.

Bodies would be needed but those would come later, if they came at all. Already the information experts had begun to order construction of false matrixs like the one they had retrieved their information from. These simple soldiers who wandered the battlefield could not know it but they were gathering the remains of one of the last generations who might yet have the traditional vegetable body.

"What in the hell is that?"

Captain Xantheris sat up in his command chair and took a closer look at the object that was now projected into the center of the command deck. The ship - or as it liked to be called, Milli - was looking at the same thing and already had an answer.

"It's a ship imbedded in an asteroid Captain. The ship is five hundred twelve point nine two meters long with a beam of... Perhaps your question would better be phrased as 'Why in the hell is that?' with the addendum of 'ship in that asteroid?'"

"I liked the first version better Captain," said Lt. Custard. Several crew members rolled their eyes at this, and since Lt. Brown-nose couldn't see his face the captain did too. This earned him a look from his XO who didn't see a problem with an over-eager crewmember trying to please a superior officer. In her quarters. After the shift was over. In leath... Anyway...

"Does anyone have an answer to the new question?" The captain's question sent the crewmembers back to their stations and the data that was rapidly flashing by as the sensor arrays on the Venture D-class ship worked the target over like a three hundred pound prize fighter on a punching bag. An expert and experienced crew coupled with a sentient starship quickly returned an answer.

"Nope." "No idea." "Clueless." "Not enough data to form a substancial analysis." This last was not from the ship, but from the lieutenant who hadn't caught on that his only promotion would be from backup to primary bunkmate for a leather fetishist. "Now if we were not looking at that thing from all the way across the solar system I might be able to tell you a little bit more about it Cap'n. My resolution is good, but I still can't read the newspaper the angel dancing on the pin is reading. Permission to move closer?"

"Alright - let's move closer then. Nice and... Whoa!"

Milli, who created and put plans into action far faster than the meaty captain, had already initiated a micro-hop to what she considered a safe distance (optimum firing range) and they were now close enough to really put the sensors to good use.

"Hmm... Right away I can tell you that the mass of that asteroid has decreased by a tiny but measurable percentage in the time it took the sensor data from out there to get here and back and the time it took the sensor data from here to get there and back. And the ship increased in mass by a certain amount. Not the same amount so I'm assuming they are using the asteroid's mass as a power source as well."

"They?"

"Yes captain. As the lieutenant was just about to chime in with there appears to be both external hatches of some kind as well as sufficient difference between volume and mass to indicate interior compartments."

The lieutenant's jaw dropped and he looked over at the captain just long enough to miss a digital face of a young girl appearing on his console and sticking her tongue out at him. She also changed the default music in his room to 80's porn classics but that was the work of but a moment.

"Err - what she said Captain. Sir."

"Very good Lieutenant. Looks like we have several options on our hands - let's get all the data we can in fifteen minutes then have a quick meeting to decide how to proceed." The captain turned to his own console and started working - his specialty was propulsion engineering - before the lieutenant could put in another word. Still the young brown-noser did notice the XO looking lustily at him and running her tongue around her lips. He sighed inwardly but smiled back as his fingers tapped in the commands to make an appointment for a soon to be needed physical. He has heard that getting a promotion through the XO was rough - very rough.

Practice.

----

The sound of artillery shells bursting overhead and shrapnel ripping into the forest was like the sound of a huge sheet being ripped straight down the middle. Though if it had been real sheets the linen section of the local super-center would have been issuing rainchecks after the first ten minutes. Orbital insertion had allowed the marine division to land within ten kilometers of the capital safely but the geo's - marine slang for the silicon/vegetable sentients that inhabited the world - had spotted them and artillery fire had started shortly after. At first it had been in pulses as they had come within range of the outer batteries but now they were close enough that it was a constant barrage.

Despite the constant shelling the marines moving forward at a brisk pace and soon were engaging their first opponents. Supported by the heavier UHCV's the combat androids and powered armor units moved forward to flank and destroy enemy resistance as it cropped up. A lull in the artillery barrage alerted the marines to a new threat as aircraft launched from the city hit them in a large wave. These were top of the line craft for the geo's - roughly equal to a WWII jet aircraft - and they blazed away with cannon and machine gun fire.

For the most part it did nothing. Jacketted rounds glanced off the armor of the advancing units or simply flattened if it hit a flat surface. Gyros and mass kept the smaller units upright and the UHCV's could only be knocked backwards on their grav's. Here and there a heavy cannon or ground burst artillery shell took out a smaller android or battlesuit but the marines were still right on schedule.

----

The real thing.

----

"So will we have to fight them?"

The president sat back in his chair staring at the ceiling. He wasn't worried about losing - he was worried about the cost of winning. With everything unmanned these days there were no letters to write and no bodies for the evening news. But there was a budget to consider and whether or not other projects would have to be delayed.

"Hard to say. Their numbers are increasing faster than expected but their technological progress has slowed to a 1960's level. We think they might try a moon shot pretty soon and zero div has been talking about grabbing the craft in orbit to get our hands on some of their cutting edge stuff but that's besides the point. They are still expanding though that has slowed as well."

"Yes - your report says that their infrastructure problems have caught up to them. But how long before they get that in place and can start looking outward again? And what's the solution if we do fight them? Wipe them from orbit? Come in and install a pro-Sunset state? We don't even know if they can be a republic physiologically. Could be a hive mind or something."

"That's kind of an ethical debate isn't it? Planetary lockdown is doable but we would be leaving the problem there for someone else - and if we wipe them all out we would be violating our own principles of respect for sentient life. After all not all of them are gonna be bad - are they?"

"It's a good question - too bad they don't have TV."

One of the admirals who had been laying on the couch playing with a globe of the world in question stood up and began to toss the globe between his hands like a basketball. Given that he - it - was a trilat and had three arms this was almost a blur of activity as the ball shot from hand to hand.

"Well Jon, maybe we should pull a little gray men. We have some around you know..."

"Little gray men? As in?"

"Flying saucers, short guys with large black eyes. Cattle mutilations and disappearances. ArAreBeens..."

Branches creaked and snappled in the darkeness as the soldier slowly walked forward, rifle at the ready. It was a simple weapon - bolt action, magazine fed - but it served the same purpose as a baseball bat or a half-brick in a sock. Nerves steady for the moment he pushed forward again brushing aside a cluster of hanging vines before stepping over a large protruding root. His partially vegetable nature gave him a somewhat instinctive link to the forest but whatever it was that lurked at the edge of his vision had no such attachment and this scared him. Even fire was part of the forest but this...

Suddenly silvery light washed over the forest like a wave of water and he saw, for a moment, them. The silverly light was behind them and it obscured all details in shadow but he could make out spindly arms and legs and a bulbulous head. Fear raced through his body and the leaves on his hands and feet shook like he was in the center of an unseen storm. More appeared from behind trees though his vision was rapidly tunnelling to focus only on the one in front of him. The one that was walking forward and holding some kind of object.

The woods were as silent as a crypt for a moment as the thing brought the object up level with it's chest. Silvery light began to eminate from one end and there was a sharp crack. Time stood still for a moment and the soldier felt a jolting pain in his body. Realization dawned and he looked down at the rifle where smoke was still slowly drifting from the barrel. Looking up he watched as the thing picked itself up off the ground and again raised the object in it's hand to chest level.

"Bugger that hurt - you are definately going on the probe-u-lator you vicious bastard..."

----

Report #557-8883-2285-333
Subject: Operation Longhorn
Commanding Officer: Adm Chestyr Thom
Reporting Officer: Lt Cmdr Wil

Admiral Thom,

Operation Longhorn is proceeding well and with all due haste. Abductions of lifeforms from the planet designated GEC3005-7 have begun and in large part due to the expertise of the contracted ArAreBeen companies have been a complete success. It does seem they are experts in such matters - something that would concern me if this wasn't suddenly our objective as well. In line with what they call 'Best Practices' they have been moving the sentients captured to a secure facility in the Ares system while non-sentients are either kept for cataloging purposes or humanely kills before being mutilated in some fashion and re-deposited on the planet.

Sightings of the ArAreBeens have been carefully scripted to maintain a cohesive 'Look and Feel' - another one of their own terms - and similar events now seem to elicit a large scale response from the sentients. The ArAreBeens assure us that this will assist in their efforts as they can use a false event to disguise a genuine abduction or cover an aborted operation.

There are two things that you need to address specifically before the next phase of operations Admiral. One is the method of payment. While they are willing to take slush fund di-coins they have expressed interest in perhaps keeping some of the abducties for a long period of study. They assure me they would be kept in suspended animation so they would appear to not have aged at all. One told me that they like to do this because 'It's funny' but I'm unsure as to their real motives for this.

The other issue is one brought up by the 0 Div operatives that have been working with the ArAreBeens directly. They are suggesting that an operation be mounted to either kidnap the leadership of the sentients or perhaps 'make contact' for manipulation efforts in the future. If this seems reasonable they have indicated plans are already on record for this under the operation codenames 'Star' and 'Enquirer'.

Regards,
Lt Cmdr Wil

----

"Mr. Odenhal, after reviewing the documents presented by both your defense unit and those presented by the government I find you guilty of the charge of grand theft. Because I like to be thorough and because of the rarity of these types of crimes I had the case forwarded to the appeals court for review - they as well found you guilty. Ah, the wonders of fact checking sub-AI's. Fortunately for you this trial took a whole fifteen minutes so I only have to charge you for that as well as the time it took the government to prepare it's case.

Now for the nasty bit. You have been convicted of stealing goods equal to five hundred and fifty three thousand di-coins in value. In keeping with our legal traditions you now owe the company you stole those goods from three times that amount. How do you wish to pay?"

Mr. Odenhal looked down at his hands for a moment - it had been pretty stupid of him to think he could just walk off with that dog - and looked up at the judge.

"Do you accept SunsetExpress your honor?"

"Fellow sentients and gathered near-sentients, I'd like to introduce to you the latest warship to join the Sunset Defense Force!"

http://www.sunsetrpg.com/images/SDFCohortIVf.jpg

"This is the Cohort IV-Class Heavy Cruiser - the next generation warship that will keep our nation secure in the coming years. Some of you might recognize the name and you are correct. The Cohort series was the first of the original SDF warship lines and this reincarnation is the fourth in that honored series. Much like the original Cohort series vessels it is designed to fill a multitude of roles in the fleet - light carrier, front line combat, diplomatic, and light exploration."

More images of the new craft including some 'action' shots came up on the holo-sphere. Shots were exchanged at point-blank range with an exotic and menacing looking alien craft before the starship engaged it's space-warp drives and shot off in a blaze of light.

"I can't go too far into technical details but I can tell you that this craft calls upon a huge number of Sunset industries simply in order to be created. Thus it's not only the warship that will keep us safe but also yet another part of our booming economy.

But perhaps you are wondering - how can I see it up close? Right now there is only one way to see this ship in any way other than your final moments! Are you adventurous, patriotic, intellegent, and physically fit? Join the SDF today! If you are good enough you can serve on an SDF starship - perhaps even this one! It's the only way - join the SDF today!"

----

Katrina Silaco sat at her station, fingers moving over the console in front of her, as she mentally entered commands and send out orders to other systems. She was still 18 - or at least her metal and plastic body looked that way - but she was far older now. Her mother had promoted her to her own old position as head of Special Projects after Katrina's stint in the SDF had ended. Now her mother was a full time advisor to the President as well as the Senator from Senate District 87 - a district that included Refuge and a number of other classified and semi-secret facilities and worlds scattered around.

As always Erika was always there if she needed her but Katrina had evolved beyond the need for communicating every nano-second with her. She still called of course but now her mother was focusing on her work and on her new brother. If she had been flesh and blood Katrina was sure that kid would need counselling in a decade or two but with a near-sentient AI patches could work wonders.

Katrina completed the project she was working on - ordering the Cohort IV's that would be manned through a number of civilian contractors and ordering the VLMTE array to begin production on the unmanned versions - and turned to look over her tiny kingdom that was Refuge. It had certainly changed in the years since she had taken over. Plants - alien species from worlds the GEC would possibly never see - now hug over balconies and decorated terraces. Among the hundreds of thousands of people walked alien species that would probably never touch the soil of Mars or Ares.

Katrina had changed the way Refuge operated to make life a little more interesting for the inhabitants. Scout ships of the same alien designs that were used for the defense fleet were dispatched to random stars for a survey. If the system was uninhabited by a space-faring civilization and far enough from other systems that the massive energy signature that was Refuge wouldn't be noticed they jumped in and did a complete survey.

This gave the children of the designers and engineers who had come to Refuge something to do besides maintain their world. Sure there had been the occasional problem but it had all worked out thus far and the world within a world was now a thriving and diverse colony. In fact it was almost time for another jump and a new system to explore. The resource crews were just finishing their recovery of an asteroid for reaction mass and she would hold a vote shortly since there were three possible systems to explore.

She herself was leaning towards the third system. It was a rare system where two forms of sentients had evolved on two seperate worlds and one set of sentients had advanced to the point where they were engaging in the slow conquest of the other world via chemical spaceships and interplanetary stragetic nuclear attacks. Refuge could step in and have some fun using the defense fleet and it's marines as well as experimental models that were just fighting it out i the labs right now.

Turning back to the console she leaned down and watched the progress of the recovery crews as they moved huge chunks of asteroid into the docking tunnel that ran through the center of Refuge. Any time now guys...

The layers of the vaults under Anuke had been peeled back slowly like an onion under the hands of a rough chef. Layer upon layer of defenders, traps, false passages, and areas that were simply beyond classification had been gradually exposed to the marine division assigned to probe it's secrets. Many in their ranks had commented that it was like a video game with each level getting harder and harder. Some thought it was a test, but a test for what? There was no answer yet but they had finally reached what many were convinced was the core of the whole complex.

Titanic doors now barred their progress and each was somehow different. Some were simply blown open while others had to be dismantled or bypassed. Even this was dangerous however as some doors exploded when tampered with and others were defended by treacherous emplacements that only showed themselves once a number of troops were gathered. The risks were minimized but marines still disappeared or were attacked in seemingly secured areas. These attacks only increased as they breached more and more of the doors and most speculated this was because some controlling intelligence was becoming desperate.

There was some worry that when the final door fell and the last chamber was revealed that a self-destruct would be activated. Plans were made to pull all of the troops out and have the final door be breached by a team of UHCV's and combat androids so that there would be no risk to sentient life. How whatever - if indeed there was anything - was beyond the door would react was simply something they couldn't worry about.

----

"Dear, take a look at this piece... Isn't it marvelous?"

"Why - it's fantastic..."

The couple stood examining the scuplture for a bit. Both were clearly wealthy - designer outfits, designer bodies, and a designer pet following them obediently around the art gallery. They were looking for a new bathroom today and the one they were standing in looked like it would be their choice. This was the latest trend in art: Whole Room Sculpture. This gallery was the most trendy of the 'washroom art' galleries and it was filled with the finest examples of lavatories on the planet.

"Mmm - I just love this wood... Tell me, what kind is it?"

The artist, a retired SDF Officer who had used his connections to secure supplies of exotic materials, stepped forward. His own clothing was just as fabulous as those of the couple though he wouldn't dare admit he only had a half-dozen such outfits.

"This would be Hon'ko Wood. I can't tell you where it's from but this would be the only art piece made of it that is known to exist."

The couple continued to look at the various fixtures, sculptures, and mosiacs that decorated the room for another hour before deciding to purchase it. The finally price was negotiated - it was considered in bad taste to set a price before someone decided to buy it. With the sale concluded the couple left and the artist began packing up the room for shipment half-way around the world.

----

"Ooh and Johnsyn takes both barrels to the face! Tear up those tickets folks cause our number one pick just ate it!"

The crowd roared and betting tickets with the name of the poor gladiator who had just had his head blown off fluttered into the wind. Despite this upset the action continued fast and furious. Contestants armed with anything from strange gun-halberd combinations to generic handguns raced from cover to cover lobbing grenades, rocks, and even the occasional throwing knife back and forth. Before the body of Johnsyn could even start to cool the gladiator who had killed him had fallen to one of a pair of grenades chucked by a gladiator named 'EvylOne'. The crowd roared it's approval for a moment before the other grenade landed in the cheap seats and exploded.

Dismembered bodies flew over the railing into the arena but few seemed to care. Some even cheered louder as blood and entrails splashed across them. One fan, driven to bloodlust, grabbed a dismembered arm and jumped into the arena where he began flailing away with it. Camera's pivotted to catch this and the crowd burst into laughter as one of the gladiators ignored a blow to pick him up by the shirt collar and riddle his body with bullets before throwing him into a gladiator who was trying to sneak up on him with a knife. A quick burst of gunfire punched ragged holes in both of the fallen men and a buzzer went off. Standing tall the gladiator found himself alone in the arena as the crowd roared it's approval.

"I'm Buzz RT here in the locker room with tonight's number one pick - Johnsyn. Johnsyn, you caught a couple shots quick that put you out of this one. What happened?"

"It just wasn't my night Buzz. I was expecting ICWiener to come out with his usual paired MP5's and that double-barrelled shotgun caught me offguard. The first round missed me but he reloaded quick and caught me as I was coming around that obstacle."

"Thanks Johnsyn. Now let's go to tonight's VirtArena winner - EvilAss...."

"War Banner? That sounds like a big target name."

"Well that's kinda the point. War Banner's will be basically all shields and armor with a big electronic emissions suite. That and totally unmanned though no one will know it. A smart opponent who is trying to knock our command and control will go for them until they realize they aren't doing jack to CnC and by then it should be too late."

"So what's the new fleet rundown?"

"Cohort's are gonna be the front line warships, then War Banners around a to-be-named class. Emperor or Ceasar - though the first is pretty similar to the Supreme Emperor and the second is kinda odd-sounding. Then we will have some Cataphract fast cruisers for fast strikes and raiding. There is some talk of creating a Catapult or Ballista class bombardment ship kinda like the Hand of God class in use by the Shogunate. But that might just be talk."

It had been an odd day already and Admiral McMarinn had a sense that it was about to get even more odd. The door - or was it a sphincter? - flapped open in front of him as he slowly walked the semi-ovular passage that led from the air lock where he had boarded the ship to what he presumed was a command bridge. Thick chitinous plates lined the floor in a regular pattern that was small enough to allow good traction for his size twelves and larger plates seemed to both brace and line the passage to the sides and overhead in an interlocking pattern. Some sections of the walls were nearly transparent and beyond them McMarinn could see what looked like veins pumping various different colored fluids both slowly and rapidly.

----

The target - as far as system survelliance was concerned it was only that - had appeared at the edge of the system nearly two months ago and had been at first classified as a long duration comet. As it had gotten closer and sensor resolution had improved it had been reclassified as derelict wreckage. Given that the sensors in question had a classified range and resolution it was decided that the ship, if it was a ship, would be allowed to enter civilian sensor ranges before a ship was dispatched to intercept it. Given the small size and apparently lack of activity this was considered a reasonable risk.

----

The chamber was small. A human crew would have been two or three people but the crew was clearly not human or present. In fact there seemed to be no crew stations at all though there were a pair of narrow 'chairs' on both sides of the command deck. In the center of the deck was a singular ridge and there were no obvious external viewscreens or crew interfaces. There were three people in the room already though - two marines stood on either side of the door and a technician was examining various features.

What drew McMarinn's eye was the ridge that ran through the center of the room and pointed directly towards the doorway. This seemed to be moving though if it was it was so subtle as to be inobvious. One of the marines, a combat cyborg, was directly facing it and as McMarinn looked over to it it nodded in the direction of the ridge in confirmation.

"Commander Hallison..."

The technician looked up from his work and pulled himself upright as he noticed the Admiral standing there.

"Ah - Admiral. Nice to meet you. Captain Tailor thought you might want to see this."

"See what?"

"Well..."

----

Protocals for contact with anomalous debris had been in place for a long time - centuries of exploration had seen to that. The recovery cruiser closed to sensor range and began to scan the debris as it slowly moved closer. Once within precision targetting range the ship stopped and tried to contact the target debris with known communications methods. Normally debris didn't respond but this bit of presumed space garbage did. The response came in the form of radio waves along various frequencies that followed a simple pattern. A challenge-response routine initiated and the two systems began to negotiate a common language for communication.

It was rapidly apparent that the system on the opposing craft was just as sophisticated as a language was quickly established. The first coherent message from the opposing craft was simple and yet meaninful: I come in peace.

----

'Admiral McMarinn, welcome...'

In a single smooth action the ridge that ran down the center of the chamber split open along the edges and a sinuous form stretched up. Armored plates rippled along a ridged spine that split into four slender arms and a slender smooth featured head. A single arm extended and pointed to one of the chairs which expanded as the thing gestured to a more appropriate human size.

'Please - have a seat. I'm sure you are longing for an explanation.'

Prolog

"Each unit is linked to two other units to form an octagon. These octagons can either be linked to a central unit for stacking as would be used in an orbital station or placed on the ground on their own for use as a lunar base. Now initially we would like to place a number of these octagons in Lunar craters and then cover them with a mylar 'blanket' and then layers of lunar soil to protect against solar radiation. The external connections you can see here would be connected to solar panel arrays. On a station they would be secured directly to the side but they can also be linked via umbilical cables and secured directly on the surface."

The presenter paused and the men and women gathered around the table looked around at each other before looking to one man who sat quietly at the end of the long table. He had been leafing through the folder of materials provided at the beginning of the proposal meeting but now he closed it and tapped it on the table to straighten the contents.

"It's a fantastic idea. If we had the money and the American people had any interest in such forward thinking endeavors I'd bump this to the top of the list but the fact is they don't. We'll get in touch if things change but I don't think they will."

Epilog

Massive streamers of dust rose from the surface of the moon Perseus around Ares as a gravity drive equipped tug manuvered another section of the pre-fabricated city into place on the surface. Each section was huge - nearly a kilometer on the long side - and there were one hundred twenty eight in the massive ring that would form the new corporate owned city of Harryson Meadows. The city would dominate the dark side of the moon though it would share it with several other mega-cities that dominated the whole planetoid. The designed was descended from the first structures built by Sunset citizens on the surface of Mars - no thanks to the shortsighted nature of the American people at the beginning of the 21st century.

----

"An explination? I hope it's a very thorough one or I'm going to have a lot of questions at the end."

The being - there was no other term for it - settled into what could be described as a sitting position and folded it's arms across it's sinuous lower torso.

'I will attempt to be thorough but you will still have many questions at the end. Perhaps I should start with where I came from and what I am. Then we can move on to why I am here and what I intend to do.'

"Ok. Please begin."

'I am a biological spaceship created by a secret organization within your own government two centuries ago. This portion of my form was genetically modificed from a baseline human and...'

"Excuse me!? I already have a really important question!"

Admiral McMarinn had a shocked expression on his face but was doing his best to pull himself back together. Shock was already starting to be replaced by disbelief in his mind but the being continued without seemingly noticing his interuption.

'Implanted in an amagamation of minerals where I began to slowly absorb and grow into the current form over the next century. When this organization was about to be revealed to the world I was moved to a nearby system to continue my growth. This was a mistake as while the organization - which still seems to exist - was not revealed the resources they had devoted to my creation has crippled them and they were not allowed to resupply this extra-solar outpost.'

----

"Professor, if you were to make a prediction about the future evolution of humanity what would it be?"

"From a biological perspective the answer is simple. Withered arms and legs, an enlarged cranium, increased mental processing capacity, a reduction in the effectiveness of normal senses... But not in all cases. I predict a diverence of humanity into two or three specialized branches that seemly depends on the tendencies of their nation of origin. High technology societies where much of life is conducted, like this lecture, in virtual reality will tend towards the first branch. The second branch will result from the ultra-warlike nations that focus on physical strength and agility to power their war machines. Super-soldiers will become the model for the general population and this cultural trend will lead to this being bred into their being."

Professor Ambrose finished scribbling the important points on the board and put down his marker.

"I can tell you right now that this is not as much a fantastic prediction as an informed conjecture. My own studies of random samplings of the Sunset population has show that the individual is descreasing in size though their head is increasing in size. Limbs are shortening and fingers are becoming less flexible. Granted the tendancy for males to favor large breasted women seems to have continued and if this does not change the average female breast will soon dominate their body mass by percentage."

The war had started again in a tremendous volley of long range ballistic missiles that reached around the small green sphere like grasping tentacles to descend on hundreds of villages and towns. Water had once seperated two continents and divided an empire from the unconquered frontier but now it was divided no more. Long range transports and massive gunships supported by flocks of smaller fighters roared over the churning blue waters and began to descend on their targets one by one. Coastal villages that were home to simple tribesmen suddenly became beachheads where spear fought machinegun in a futile battle. Even as the massive transports touched down with a splash to deploy their cargo of soldiers and engineers others continued on to new objectives.

It was as complete a route as any general could hope for. Casualties were few and most of their opponents simply emerged shaken from their villages to be led away in long lines. More slaves for the empire, more slaves to encourage the outward growth that would allow them to reach up and see if the beings that their scientist-priests said were out there were out there. If they were they too would be absorbed into the empire.

----

War in space is not the beautiful thing of motion pictures. There is no epic fleet battle with both sides delivering broadsides and shuddering under the pounding blows delievered by their foe. In space war is total and quickly fought and it is rare that a wounded ship simply limps away. Neither must fleet fight fleet though the admirals would have it differently. This is no skirmish between two ships over a resource rich outpost - this is a war of domination, simple and sudden.

----

He had to be prepared for the possiblity that they knew he was coming. Intelligence gathered on the target system - a billion lives was now a 'target' - was voluminous. Given the effort expended to gather the data as well as the time it had taken there was every chance that they, despite every precaution, had learned about this plan. Were they preparing a counterstrike? A trap? Thoughts like this had weighed heavily on his mind as his fleet had entered the last weeks of preparation. Plans were in place for the forseeable but it was always the unknown that could bite you from behind.

Even as the last few seconds ticked away he sat there and ran through everything in his head. Had they covered this option? Could they possibly boost some defen...

The mighty forces involved in a tessaract jump interupted his thoughts and brought him back to the reality at hand. The fleet had moved in an instant from a long accelerating solar orbit to hundreds of different positions in the target star system. The first strikes were already taking place with a speed that would dazzle anything but an AI or a direct-linked mind and as he sunk rapidly into the tactical network he realized he had missed the big show.

Tens of thousands of tons of iridium sliced through steel, aluminum, and numerous alloys like they were so much paper as the super-heavy ramship hit the orbital shipyard edge on. It had come out of it's jump barely a thousand kilometers away and had hit the operations center before any alarm could have been sounded. Now as it plunged through girder, support, ship, and workers alike it began to lose metal in long streamers as the friction of it's passing rapidly vaporized the iridium nosecone. This too was part of the plan and as the first spar punched through into the interior the robotic juggernaught detonated in a cataclysmic explosion that left the few remains of the shipyard pinwheeling away in all directions.

There were no orders given - there was no time to give them as the cruiser flashed past the mining installations and long range sensor stations that dotted this section of the outer solar system. Yet as it passed certain pre-set points orders were followed and torpedos flashed from their tubes to continue forward and away in long sweeping chains. Deep in the bowels of the ship more ordinance swirled into launch positions and the ship twisted slightly to prepare for the next target. Behind it the glowing remains of it's passage could be seen as pulverized asteroid bases spiralled away and vapor clouds began to drift apart.

These events had been repeated a hundred times around the system with both admirable success and regretable casualties before the next phase swung into action. Above the planet's southern hemisphere the bulk of the fleet suddenly appeared and just as suddenly tremendous crimson lances began to sweep orbital space of defense satillites, weapon platforms, and stray patrol ships even as thousands of torpedos plunged through the atmosphere in glittering strands. Detonations rocked cities and countryside alike as the ground defenses that were supposed to protect against invasion were ripped apart. Most had just started to charge their batteries but a few screamed defiance and fired blindly before they were consumed in fire.

The orbital bombardment continued as ships switched from their ruined targets to secondary opportunity targets. Pirate warships on the ground, transportation hubs, and anything that drew large amounts of power from the electrical grid were targetted and destroyed. Despite the suddeness of the strike opposition was already rallying and on the far side of the planet a ragtag fleet of pirate corsairs was gathering.

----

'One of the paradoxs of the ultimate free society is that there will be individuals and groups in this society that will seek to forceably restrict the freedom of others. This cannot be prevented or else the society is not truely free. The Sunset government has sought to prevent this through many measures but these too must be examined in the light of a free society. By being physically unavaliable is there not a risk that the President might seek to control our society through his control of the military? And is this not a restriction on our freedom to meet with our elected representatives? How do we balance freedom and safety? Is one secondary to the other? In the first half of the American republic years it was observed that the president was replacable but as the second half continued the president began to accumulate more and more power and thus importance.

Are we in the first half or the second half of our own society? Is our own government becoming less responsible to the people through their increasing isolation? Or is this the inevitable result of the larger responsibility placed on officials who administrate a government that watches over the freedoms of six billion individuals?' ~Political Scholar, Circa 2986

Centuries had passed and the land to the south had laid stagnant but now activity had resumed. Ships of at least a neutral registry had landed and there was some activity near the great landed hulls. Being as it was neither an enemy nor an ally there was some discussion as to what, exactly, to do. There was also the question of Platonic. Well, what had been Platonic. An entire nation of socialists had been absorbed without barely a whisper. How well would they react to the erection of static defenses along their border? Of course, who said they had to know about it?

The first potential problem was solved easily enough - robotic 'survey vehicles' plodded along the border completing a variety of scientific surveys including the removal of some thick core sampled. The holes were filled and plugged - couldn't have anyone stepping in them, now could you? At the bottom of each was a standard HOBD generator powered by one of KarmaCorp's wonderful little black boxes. Next came the problem of an entire utopian socialist nation.

They decided to leave it alone. It simply became the State of Platonic and the normal fees for border crossings eliminated. Given that it was a convenient place for all those college kids who thought socialism was the greatest thing ever and that Sunset was the perfect place for all those college kids who wanted to get ahead in life the exchange worked reasonably well.

Now what would they do about Delgados? Or properly the Triumvirate Protectorate Territory of Delgados? Apparently there was some mad queen in a sky palace still floating around over there...

Fortunately the survey robots did not find it odd when they were sent out only a short time later to re-survey the ground in preparation for a new occupant. Said occupant didn't really need to know about the mines they were removing either. Some did find it odd when the government started erecting markers in front of the entrances to the various arcologies that said 'Welcome to New Vancouver, Sunset' or whatever arcology they happened to be though. What else were they going to do with thousands of extra mines?

----

Battle raged in orbit as it had for the last few hours. Warships raced around in an energetic cloud that resembled the high-energy plasma that lanced through space from one ship to another. Both sides used fast, nimble ships and solid hits were rare. In the virtual battlespace where he directed the battle the scene was constantly shifting as the targetting cones of his fleet and the ragtag pirate fleet shrunk, elongated, or dissappeared all together.

He was not in direct control of his own ship - it was his job to identify the linchpin of the enemy fleet and destroy it. If he could find out who was keeping this mob together he could break it as easily as one might snap a twig. Of course there might be someone on the other side trying to do the same...

More ships disappeared and several new ones appeared. These were the ships from out-system that had already savaged their resource gathering and monitoring stations. A quick query and he plotted out snaking courses through the cloud for each as well as points where they would fire what ordinance they had left. What physical ordinance they had at least...

----

Bulkheads groaned, ripped, and crushed as the attacking warship screamed past the tiny pirate corvette. On the few undamaged monitors the cause of the damage was quite clear - a massive gravity well had brushed the ship as it travelled ahead of the onrushing cruiser. The ship was 'falling' both into the well and away from a gravity 'spike' that followed it closely. Twisting back and forth it was winding through the chaos like a spiralling firework. As interesting as this was there was no one on the corvette to comment on it - the crew was a jellied mass splashed against various solid objects.

----

There it was - and there it went. The ship itself was reasonably unremarkable as far as pirate ships went, but he had had the AI do a little backtracking. It had come from a landing pad near a very large mansion - a mansion that seemed to consume an inordinante amount of power from the local grid for such a residence. It had also been heavily visited according to archival footage and this probably meant it was someone very important. Or had been someone very important.

One of the Hades-Class dreadnoughts had jumped in behind it and the results were predictably messy. Some kind of black cloud - he didn't want to know what it did - had enveloped the ship and it had shrunk like a raisin. Now it drifted quietly while the other ships that had been nearby raced away in a dead panic. It had given chase to one and now energy coursed from node to node along it's hull before discharging in a crackling burst that blew the target to splinters.

Things were definately getting up close and nasty now and he was again busy trying to isolate and destroy enemy ships. They were now frenzied - some trying to escape and others trying to take someone with them. Disabled ships moved to ram and many that were only lightly damaged sprinted away. He knew he could not catch them all - and each one that escaped was another frieghter lost or secret uncovered.

----

Every nation has its backwaters. Cities that seem forgotten in time or so run down as to seem to have surrendered to entropy. Algaz Station, on the other hand, would be what the backwater would drain into. There were not enough derogatory terms to do it justice though some had tried writing all of them on the few flat surfaces in the ancient station.

Once it had been a marvel though no one knew when that once was. Theories about where it had come from and who had designed it were everyday gossip to the fourty seven souls who called it home. There was one sentient on the station who knew its history, but it didn't have a soul and was mad as a hatter anyway. But the station was a convenient place to escape to for those with something to hide - a place no one had heard of and fewer cared about.

Which was why Nick Carter, SDFIntel agent and hard-boiled detective novel fan, was there...

"In order to do this calculation we need to know the potential acceleration of the target ship in all possible directions - as well has how fast it can decelerate. We also need to know the drive type as well as output of the target craft - those that use gravity well generators will need additional information like the shear of the gravity well or spike, gravity curve, and similar. Of course we also need the range to the target, our speed, and the accuracy of our weapons. Taking all of this into account targetting a ship at a range of one hundred thousand kilometers and hitting it with a single shot is extremely unlikely."

Lecture on Space Combat ~ Hynry Rosenbaum's 3rd Grade Class

----

Armor and bulkheads compressed, ripped, and burst outward as the suicidal corsair plowed through the forward saucer section of the Dawn-Class dreadnought. It had been enveloped by a small cloud of the remaining pirate vessels and despite it's best efforts it was being nibbled away at by dozens of smaller vessels. Now they sensed a mortal wound and plunged to the attack, eager to finish it off and take some small vengance for the attack on their world. Hands of plasma and more exotic energies reached out to slap away the attackers but there were simply too many of them.

Comminications with the afflicted ship were already sporadic as power was lost, rerouted, and lost again but it had apparently gotten the message about help coming as it ceased firing along it's upper hemisphere. The pirates, seeing another opening, moved to cluster along the spine where they could pound away without risk. More and more of the ship went dark as the hull began to resemble swiss cheese.

The sudden appearance of another ship right above the pirates must have been startling, but most didn't have time to do more than blink. The smallest ships were crushed like insects against the heavy shields of the recovery cruiser while others were 'bounced' off to the sides. One ship, it's crew responding quickly but poorly, shot down away from the oncoming cruiser and through the dorsal torpedo bridge. Fortunately all physical ordinance has been long ago expended but this did not stop the smaller ship from exploding and knocking the dreadnought akilter.

Grappling arms from the recovery cruiser swung down and clamped on to whatever they could find until the two ships were locked tightly together. Shields from the recovery cruiser snapped up around the two leaving the crews of the smaller ships roaring their frustrations as they continued to blaze away at the linked vessels.

----

"There is a huge difference between destroying a pirate fleet and occupying a whole world! We simply do not have the manpower to do it. And what if something else came up? With all of our ground forces deployed on that world we would have little to contribute to any joint effort aside from some farm animals!"

"Then what do you propose we do instead? If we do not secure their world they will simply re-build and go on as before - with a particular grudge against us I might add. And no, we cannot simply wipe them out. Or bomb them back to the stone age."

There was no immediate answer from the floor and a silence spread over the chamber.

"Quarentine?"

"And leave a tenth of the fleet stationed in the system perminently? Ripe for an attack by another power? Don't forget the armada that was forming to come investigate our system - such could easily be reformed. In fact, it's only due to the efforts of our Therian friends that such has not happened."

A lot of the senators in the chamber were starting to get the impression that this military jaunt had been a 'bad idea' and one finally put the question out there.

"So why did we do this?"

"To avoid a similar situation happening to us down the road. It was projected during planning that they would tear themselves apart trying to fend off our attack and leave their infrastructure demolished. That has not, yet, happened."

"Yet? Then why are we having this discussion? Why not wait until they have been conquered before we decide how to deal with the long term."

"If we don't we won't be able to rally what we need in order to prevent the problem from re-occuring long term. Give them twenty years and they will rebuild - and during that time we could be attacked by Ardans or worse. Need I remind you of the briefing on the 'White Nile' situation?"

"Which some of us are hesitant to believe. Only one ship has reported the presence of these 'Harvesters' - how can we know that what they say is tru..."

"Don't muddy the water. The problem is still what to do about the current situation - not something thousands of lightyears coreward."

A smile spread across the Admiral's face as he watched the transmission that had been sent from the President's Office. A transmission that was presented by the head of Mangalan Intelligence in the Ares system. 'At least someone has been thinking about how to bring this to a successful conclusion. Vicious, but successful...' Considering his words carefully he prepared orders to place communications bouys in the upper atmosphere and pull the fleet back to bombardment range.

----

'In two planetary rotations we will begin surrender negotiations with your leader.'

The message was simple and any questions were answered by simply repeating it. For a planet ruled by a variety of pirate clans it presented a singular problem or opportunity, depending on the temperment of those who saw it. For those who were more interested in their own survival in the face of certain destruction it offered the chance to survive and perhaps find a powerful new friend. For those who preferred to go down fighting it was a chance to rest, repair, and re-arm. For others it was an opportunity to find freedom while their masters were distracted...

Throughout their history the clans that shared this world in a tenous peace had survived by raiding their neighbors and taking slaves in a cycle that ensured only the strongest survived. Now the strong were comparatively weak and many of the slaves now looked at each other with hope in their eyes. Guards were being pulled away to fight the other clans or to prepare to fight the enemy that now held orbital space above them. A sacrificial rush, a shiv in the stomach in passing, or a carelessly swing hoe and on the outskirts of the cities more power blocks were forming.

In orbit anxious eyes watched all of this as more of their own preparations were made. A powerful leader quickly emerging would be a bad thing - better to keep the chaos going and allow them to spend their strength on each other first. Plans were laid to land operators of various kinds on the surface to sabotage the powerful and encourage the weak as well as gather even more information about the various forming power blocks.

Penguin, Martian (Aptenodytes Forsteri):
The martian penguin is a sub-species of the terran Emperor Penguin that resides exclusively in the Vallis Marineris region of terraformed Mars. It is distinguished from it's terrestrial cousins in that the white feathers on the breast and other areas have developed a red coloring due to the high iron content of their diet. Medium to large flocks inhabit every area of the Vallis, but are most abundant in the western portion where solid ice is more common.

The penguins were imported as part of a park creation program initiated with the ex-nation of Platonic. They feed on the fish of the Vallis which are themselves terran in origin and they form part of a specific 'antarctic' food cycle in the Vallis region. Currently the martian penguin is flourishing but this has lead to concerns that it might over-fed and destroy it's own food supply. The government, in its usual manner, has taken a hands-off approach to the situation.

----

The SDF White Nile (Venture-E Class) had been surveying the vast emptyness of space for a decade before it had finally come across... something. Space, by definition, is vast and empty, but this was different. There was essentially nothing in a long tract of space the crew had begun calling the Dark. No systems, no asteroids... Nothing. There were stars - dying stars - and little else.

Then the little ship and it's four hundred souls had stumbled across... it... and had gazed upon the dagger pointing straight at the heart of civilized space. It was not describable nor would a picture do it any justice. One could only have been there to comprehend the scale and enormity of it and for those that were there it had been enough to shake the very foundations of their existance. Crystalline yet fluid it was semi-transparent with vast swift-flowing veins of energy that seemed to pulse rythmically in a pattern that was deceptively soothing.

Between it's vast squid-like mandibles a planet writhed under its hostile caress. The world had been a swirl of reds, greens, and yellows but now under the assault it was quickly breaking up and breaking down. Though there was no physical link between the two there was still physical action taking place. Vast tracts of land were swirling upward as though flowing down an invisible drain and at the end becoming streamers of energy that flowed into It despite the crystal barrier that seemed to surround it.

Watching the process the crew couldn't help but be mesmerized by it. First forests, jungles, and plains and now swamps and rivers and mountains disentigrated before their very eyes. Works that had taken eons wiped out in a moment, reduced to their collective molecules, to go into that... thing. Then it was gone. An energy tendril had been detected moving towards the ship and the AI had initiated a jump based on a solar-flare level threat.

Reports were filed, conferences were initiated, and... little was done. What could be done? 'More information is needed' said the brass though the crew knew that this was more a sign that nothing could be done. They searched the tip of the Dark for more of... them... coming back to the one to find it suddenly dormant. A vast form that occasionally flickered deep in the core - a flickering that warned the crew that it was not dead. Merely... sated... for the time being.

It had been a cold comfort that had not lasted. Survelliance satillites deployed to watch it still showed the vast form floating there serenely but the White Nile had pressed on and found more of them. Not many to be sure - less than a dozen - and these were smaller than the others. Some were found - perhaps truely dead - floating between stars while others were actively consuming the inner worlds of dense planetary systems. Doubtlessly billions if not trillions of sentients had been consumed by these... things... in their passing.

After mapping their path it was clear now that they would, if they held to their current course, plunge straight through the densely inhabited area near Sol. Sol - birthplace of humanity - would be a delicate morsel to be consumed as a side treat when they reached it. How and when were still questions to be answered and risks to be taken. Crew were rotated out, mass was taken aboard, and once again the ship shot into the unknown to find whatever awaited it at the other end of the dagger pointed at civilization's heart.

Erika Silaco, the new President of Sunset, had been standing beside her desk looking out over the southern plains of Ares when Ambassador Penguin had waddled in. The visit had not been arranged but it was not unexpected either and she didn't bother to turn to greet him. Clasping his flippers behind his back in a rough parody of her pose he stood next to her and asked the first question that entered his mind.

"Why?" Penguin looked up at her, beady eyes shining. He had been in another system when the statement had been issued due to ongoing negotiations with the natives.

"Various reasons. The most important reason being that MIDAS II has proven itself to be extremely ineffective and easily manipulated. The incident with Valinon should have been enough to trigger our withdrawl but Jon was stubborn about making it work."

"True enough - but what of the implications of our own pull out? What will our allies think?"

"Let them think. Our larger obligations are the same and lesser treaties remain. If anything this aids them in the long term and makes us less vulnerable to being pulled into a war we shouldn't be fighting."

The penguin sighed and looked out the window. It was late autumn - or the Ares equivalent - and the grass was mostly brown with only tiny blotches of green remaining. Snow would be falling in a few weeks if he was fortunate.

"When will we finalize our withdrawl?"

"Probably a week and not more than a month. Which means we have a couple of security issues to take care of. I'll want you on Mars for the final announcement but you should be ready to leave immediately."

----

Katrina Silaco, Secretary of Special Projects, floated in the inky darkness of space looking over her first major project. From her current position it looked like a vast tiled sphere with a titanic cluster of antenna at each pole. As she moved towards the sphere more details were made clear. Massive airlocks were mounted in the center of some tiles while others were titanic weapon arrays. Taking the whole in her hands she began to carefully pull tiles away and examine them.

Each was in fact it's own independent craft with it's own self-contained systems. They were also connected to the whole - worlds within a world. All of the plates had the same connections in the same place allowing one plate to substitute for another. This would also provide another measure of security - a damaged plate would not compromise the whole and could be removed for repairs.

Each sphere would have a diameter of fifty kilometers when completed though the timeline for completion was non-existant. It was entirely dependant on ourside forces as to when and if the project would get underway - forces that were being investigated by the White Nile. In the meantime she would prepare several different options for saving the people of Sunset and hopefully as many other sentients as she could.

----

At a classified facility in near-solar orbit a new pair of constructs were taking shape. Two of the large Aurora-class wormhole gates were being constructed with some additional systems with the help of a small group of Ravenspire technicians. While they were by no means the oddest species in the system they were one of the most uncommon and there was not a little interest in the foxgirls and their smooth silvery ship among the complex personnel.

"Who does he think he is?!? He's already used up 90% of the manufacturing capacity here for the year!"

The chief engineer shot to his feet and started pacing the command center while his assistant looked on with a somewhat bemused expression.

"Granted this new project is much, much simpler... But he wants fusion! Fusion power plants! We haven't made one of those in... Decades?"

"More than two decades Ralph."

"More than two decades! It's a lot to drop on my plate..."

Ralph got a sudden grin on his face and walked over to his assistant, draping an arm over his shoulders in a fatherly fashion. "My boy - this will be a great opportunity for you..."

Despite his protests Ralph eventually prevailed and the second pair of gates began to come together - but not at the solar facility. Most of the construction was sub-contracted out to over thirty different companies who rushed to put together the docking facilities, power plants, living facilities, and all the other things that would turn a plain metallic hoop into a kilometer-high transit loop.

Ralph's life was significantly easier as well now. Villanova's new orders had mentioned that they would only need 1 new Aurora gate - not 2. He just hadn't mentioned that to his assistant. Since they were sectional - assembled completely then broken up into 8 sections for transport - he would just have the two partial systems assembled into one. As long as his assistant didn't notice he could just sit at the command console and sip mai'tai's.

----

Of all the crews on all the ships in all the Triumvirate fleets the crews of the Nemesis-Class ships had to be the most stir crazy crews in the fleet. At least on long range patrols the crews could expect new sights, regular contact with home (wherever that was) and a regular chance to return home. Nemesis crews could expect... nothing. For long lengths of time. No contact from home, no new sights in the empty vastness between stars, and a duty term of up to a decade.

----

The situation on the ground was chaotic to say the least. During the last twenty four hours three wars had broken out between various power blocks, eight slave revolts had merged into a single revolt that was rolling through the outlying areas, a dozen cities were burning, and it looked like it was going to get worse. He was quite happy.

There had been a few attempts to restore some of the orbital weapon batteries, but this had served to draw fire from the fleet still in orbit. It had also served to cover the insertion of hundreds of different intelligence assets in various forms. Now sleek feline forms stalked the alleyways of cities on missions of sabotage and assassination. The local urban predators soon learned to avoid the cats that fought back with claws and fangs that sliced through skin and bone with equal ease.

Sentient assets were also on the ground helping to keep the chaos moving as well. Slaves found crates of weapons amoung the crops or a slaver barracks wiped out by unknown, seemingly untouchable, beings. There was the occasional fleeting sighting of a pair of black armored forms streaking away over the countryside.

There was the soft sigh of air rushing into the void and the whispered clunk of metal hitting metal through layers of hull material and insulation and the ship was free.

'Free to do what? The Khrrck have done their job - and how guilty do I feel about it? They lost what wasn't theirs and their neighbors are safe. The balance is restored.'

Major Donaldson sat in the command chair of the tiny craft as it summoned the energies needed to perform the tesseract jump to Ares. His thoughts were interupted for a moment as the craft moved from here to there in an instant. A tap at his console and the identifying codes that would keep his little boat intact streamed to a monitoring station. It was answered by a quick confirmation as well as a piggy-backed video link.

Donaldson took a quick look at the ID and shot up in his seat. Sometimes the best laid plans have the most obvious flaw and he was just now realizing it. Billions transferred around for covert projects, condensed into one account, transfered some more... But he had, in all the rush to accomplish his mission, forgotten the mission he had been sent to accomplish.

"Major Donaldson - it's good to see you back." Admiral Chestyr Thom, his superior and commander of the Exploration Group responsible for the geo's sector of space, was now looking at him with a blank expression that didn't match his greeting.

"Thank you Admiral."

"I had expected a progress report on the SEC-9843a situation but apparently you have decided to make it in person."

"Yes sir. Once I reach orbit I should have the whole thing prepared. A day, day and a half maybe? Just to make sure it's complete."

"Make that a day Major - we have been quite anxious to hear the results."

The link snapped off and Donaldson closed his eyes and reclined in the seat.

'He knows - how does he know? It doesn't matter I suppose...'

It could be just paranoia or it could be real but Donaldson didn't want to risk the wrong type of reception once he reached orbit. But they didn't want him dead or a cruiser could have just come over and blown him to atoms. This was a good start - a little leeway.

First he needed a plan. His trip in-system would take him past Menhit - a conventient place for an accident and to hide out. The gas giant was one of the few places in the system where there was little to no government presence. He started a sensor sweep of the space around the planet and started fiddling with the safety overrides on the ship while he waited for it to come back.

The camoflaged sensor station nestled in the back would be his salvation. Thom would undoubtably have the area searched once his ship exploded - ramming an asteroid at high speeds could do that - but the sensor station would let him shoot away unnoticed. Then he would contact the people he had dealt with in the Crown to make his illegal transfers. He couldn't trust them, but they might think he had more money for them and that was enough.

Ejecting a camoflaged sensor array from a ship travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light on a ballistic path sounds just about as hard as it was. It was even harder when the flight was one way - the small courier slammed into an asteroid a moment later.

Donaldson sat back and closed his eyes. He was alive, for now, and shooting towards the Crown on a course that would bring him through the asteroid field in a week.

He hoped.

His preparations had been simple. The passive sensor array was to activate a location beacon when his impromptu craft reached the area and he should - should - then emerge from chemical stasis. If he missed... There was a good chance he would drop into the sun, or maybe circle around in a decade or so.

----

The first attempt at an answering transmission had triggered an invasion of the originating location by what appeared to be three different nearby factions. Even now the area was still burning as factions allied, betrayed, assassinated, and fought in the streets. This had only been the first attempt - dozens of others had been made and had either been ignored because they were from an embattled group or just because he had been watching something else.

So far they hadn't caught on to the fact that the idea wasn't to talk to the leadership of the most powerful faction, but to make sure that the most powerful faction quickly came under the attack of several others seeking the position. Who he would ultimately talk to was still up in the air. The slave revolts were a good option, or perhaps a business coalition if such a thing existed.

Underneath the chiselled, modified, tattooed, and exotic forms of the average citizen you might meet on the street was the truth. The truth was that you never meet them on the street, at least not a real one. In the cities and towns of Sunset there was a definate hierarchy to things. In the middle on the lowest levels one would encounter the vast corporate apartment complexes where the majority of people lived.

These were generally small, owned by a mega-corporation that then leased them to the corporation that the resident worked for, and sparsely furnished. A bed that doubled as a virtual reality couch, a kitchen, and a bathroom. Some were even more simple - a mass of tubes to sleep in and shared kitchen and bath facilities.

These were occupied by the everyday worker. The everyday worker was, effectively, dying. No excersize, a preference for quick non-nutrious meals, and little to no exposure to the sun. Some had not even left the apartment complex where they had been born: Corporate baby-farms churned out thousands of people for families that raised them in batches.

It wasn't unpleasant by any means. In the virtual environments where they spent most of their time they were gods if they chose to be. Sculpting their environment was second nature to most and most chose to make their jobs as pleasant as possible. Secretaries spent their days in sunny meadows scratching appointments on pieces of parchment with quill pens while artists sat in crowded bars watching the sea of humanity pass while doodling on napkins.

The virtual briefing chamber where Colonel Burton stood was crowded already. Looking over the rows of seats filled with at least one representative from every species he could not find a single empty seat. Of course this chamber was a representation of attendance - there were only one hundred seats when he was supposed to be briefing approximately one-third of the force today. Presumably there were dozens if not hundreds of 'him' being split off to wander the various custom environments used by the people he was going to be briefing.

"This briefing is scheduled to begin at thirteen-twenty Ares-time and since it has now reached the appointed hour I'll begin. I'm Colonel Burton and this will be the introduction to the latest personal weapons issued to all SDF personnel. This introduction will last fourty minutes and cover the following weapon systems: VEW/R revision two and VEW/P revision three, HVEW..."

----

Accompanied by the sharp electrical crack of energy weapons fire the tree ball next to Gills burst into flame. A bright red line with an arrow at the end appeared on his HUD in the direction the fire had come from and he threw himself behind some partial cover before turning to check it out. Three moving hotspots - tall and somewhat gangly - were spread out on the right flank of his two man team.

"Kawi - right flank. Three of..."

"Already see em!" Kawi was short for something long and relatively unpronouncable. She was also a trilat - which made for some very odd looking powered armor - but meant that her situational awareness was generally better than a human and having a third arm was useful as well. One rifle, held snug against the body, hosed the general area down while a second was steaded by the remaining two arms for precision shots.

More energy crossed the intervening space between the two parties and more fires flared. A pair of grenades thumped from Gills' launcher and he raced to the right on his suit gravs while Kawi kept them pinned down. One, unaware of the opponent it faced or just hasty, rose from cover long enough for the trilat to put a round into it's chest. Flung back by the blast the shattered body hammered into a tree stalk.

With the remaining two distracted by the death of their comrade Gills made his move to attack from their flank. A grenade meant for one missed and exploded against a boulder face but the alien still threw itself foolishly into the open. Three rounds from Kawi's weapon and a single shot from his own tore it apart.

The last one, still under cover, turned and began to run. Gills looked over at Kawi and shrugged. "This is our chance to get off this rock - let's get a captive!" The two black battlesuits leapt into the air and raced after the fleeing form leaving the two cooling corpses to the local carrion eaters.

----

She - breasts typically implying female but one could never be certain - was quite attractive if one was into non-humans. A narrow face, delicate eyes, and ears that were somewhat elfin but narrow and curly at the tips complemented a slim but tall build. Briefing materials were one thing but having the real thing on your hands was another and Gills took a moment to examine the placement of the second set of arms. They were smaller, just under the primaries, and were very similar to human arms in that they had a limited range of motion. Good to know that they couldn't fire both forward and backward accurately.

Securing her required some additional thought. One couldn't just put both sets behind her back and tie them. With a mental note to tripple up on binders he tied the small pair in front, the large pair in back, then ran a third binder between the two pairs between the legs. Uncomfortable but the ride out was an assault shuttle - not a limo.

"Looks like we are going to have a hot LZ in about fifteen." Kawi consulted her tactical map and began to look around for some heavy cover. "Slick reports some armor headed our way. Looks like a light tank and two LAV's."

Gills turned their captive over and finished securing her. "Maybe we have someone important then. Or they just really don't like us." The two operators had been working on the outskirts of one of the major cities 'supporting' the slave uprising in this sector. Most of the heavy armor had been pulled into the cities to support their factions but apparently Gills and Kawi had drawn some special attention.

"Any chance of the slick getting here a bit sooner?" "Nope - they said they have to take the long way to avoid a couple outlying orbital batteries that still have active local defenses. Which is also where our armored friends are coming from so they should get here around the same time."

Gills sighed and looked around. "We stash her under cover for the slick crew and we'll go delay the armor long enough for them to come grab her. I guess we won't be getting off this rock today after all..."

----

Katryna's plans kept changing and she was understanding more and more why her mother enjoyed this job so much. But Katryna didn't like modifying her own plans. Something about how much processing time that wasted erked her.

A digital sigh escaped her lips and she turned back to the holosphere where the latest incarnation of her plan floated. A much reduced plan. The sphere in front of her was no longer a sphere, but rather a twelve-sided object. The plates had changed from squares to triangles and now pentagons. Each was a smoothed object that would float in concert with the other plates. Flexible umbilicles would join the twelve together enough to allow them share resources but avoid damage to each other.

The reason for the new refinement was simple - no one wanted it. Wanted the old one that is. Corporations were uninterested in maintaining building new corporate headquarters and floating cities to meet an undefined threat. She couldn't very well go up to them and say "Look - there are several undefineably powerful vessels of unknown manufacture making their leasurely way in the general direction of Sol who will eventually consume every scrap of rock between here and there." Not that they would laugh - but they would want more data. More data that she couldn't give them.

Thus the refinements to her project. Still she was thinking long term - additional floating city plates could be created and added into the mixture. Right now each station would have two command centers, two Nemesis-class stragetic units, two docking units, two fabrication units, and four combat platforms.

These would split into two groups if they needed to accept more housing units but until then they would function as fleet facilities. The first would be a mobile command base for the SEC - a good fit as this would fulfill the mobility needs of the Nemesis platforms as well as allowing the fabrication units access to exotic materials.

Still she wanted to demonstrate the utility of having mobile corporate cities. Perhaps she could funnel something of her budget into building one and operating it as a kind of mobile recruiting and training center for the SDF...

"And you are?"

The penguin dressed in charcoal grey fatigues with a headband pulled down low over his eyes and a silenced pistol held casually in one flipper looked up at Gills. "Solid Penguin, who else?"

Gills sighed. IntelPenguins tended towards the odd for some reason and this one was no exception. He and Kawi had managed to destroy one of the LAV's and lose their pursuers and move into a smaller city. A smaller city where they were supposed to meet an SDFIntel agent to coordinate their next actions.

"You look like Gills and Kawi. Don't be shocked - the third arm gave you away. So you are the backup huh? Well let's get started then. You two can start by attacking the barracks and I'll sneak into the..."

"Wait a second!" Gills interrupted. "We are supposed to be here to coordinate - they didn't say anything about a frontal assault."

"Oh."

"How about you tell us about the situation and we'll do some planning then?"

The penguin sighed and looked around. "This is a lot easier when it's just me you know. Sneak in, kill the leaders, blow the place up, and escape in the bad guys own helicopter. You just have to make it difficult, don't you?"

----

Conciousness returned to Donaldson and he became aware that he was in darkness, likely still in the sensor platform. Something had to have happened to awaken him unless he had somehow missed everything and slept for the last twenty years. Rolling over he tried to locate the sensor controls but his hand was still numb and he only managed to trigger a small voice that prompted for a recognized command to be entered.

A minute passed and the feeling returned. The display lit up and he could see what the external camera could see - the dense asteroids of the Crown spread out in front of him. Somewhere in that mess was a ship. A ship crewed by men and women of dubious character who would be more than happy to get him to his next destination, no questions asked.

Mechanical energy stored in a spring was released and transferred into chemical energy as explosives detonated. These too transferred their released energy into a slug of uranium that was propelled towards another slug. The energy stored when the bomb maker had set the spring trigger was finally released as a crude but effective atomic bomb ripped through the heart of one of the largest southern cities.

The observers in distant orbit sat up and took notice of this. Though such a crude weapon was little threat to the warships waiting there the destruction of the city seemed to indicate a new phase in the modified guerilla war. Large coalitions were forming and there seemed to be little that their forces planetside could do to stop them.

'Perhaps it is time to openly back one faction or another. Or should we back them?' He knew that if they backed one faction openly there would be long term resentment. 'But why breed resentment when you can have adoration?' It would have to be carefully done - he had the ships, he had the time, but the setup would need to be carefully handled or there would be too much suspicion.

----

"I'm Sara English and this is 'What's Hot (For the Next 15 Seconds)'! Neo-Amish construction - that's whats hot. Simple wooden furniture with all the goodies carefully tucked away. What else is hot? DNI for pet! Dogs, cats, and all manner of housepets running around the net! I'll see you again in fifteen minutes and tell you 'What's Hot (For the Next 15 Seconds)."

----

Carter leaned back and took a drag on his cigarrete. In the movies the hard-boiled PI's always smoked and despite the fact that air on a small station like this had to be relatively precious he had lit up at the first chance. After taking a deep drag he dropped the foul thing on the decking and ground it out. Feet clanked on decking and he turned to look at the newcomer.

"Just the guy I wanted to see..."

<Student143> The idea of sub-AI's 'evolving' because of close interaction with other sub-AI's is an aspect that we should explore in more depth. It's reasonable that, like children, sub-AI's require exposure to sentience in order to develop it themselves.
*** Signoff: Student557 (Timeout)
<Student143> Given this would it be reasonable that gestalt systems (for example a gestalt of insect sized sub-AI's) would have a higher chance of developing full sentience over, say, an IntelKitten that performs most of it's duties solo?
<ExchangeStudent887> Hmm. I'd say yes.
<Student143> Despite the greater processing power avaliable to the IntelKitten as opposed to the IntelBugs?
<ExchangeStudent887> They'd have more, um, aggregate processing power (I assume) and a greater amount of total subjective time experience.
<ExchangeStudent887> I'd say the time experience is more important that just processing power, once you get past a certain point (and anything designed to operate mostly independent is probably past that point).

~Transcript of chat logs in an AI Studies class

----

"Just the man I wanted to see..."

The short, greasy looking man had slunk over to a door that opened into the corridor and was fishing around in his pockets. Without turning to look at Carter he grunted, "Eh - talking to me?" A key was retrieved and he inserted it into the lock, punched in an access code, and the door began to slowly grind open.

Nick stood and moved closer and the man put his free hand in his pocket while holding the key with the other. "Someone told me to come talk to Greasy Poke. That you?" The hand moved deeper into the pocket and Nick looked away for a moment. "Yeah - that's me. Who?" "Kayrla, works the pole at..." "I know who she is. Come inside. Slowly."

Poke walked inside and stood next to the door, hand still in his pocket, and Nick ambled through surveying the dingy room as he went. The place was filthy: Garbage, clothes, and more garbage was everywhere. On one side of the room a terminal glowed and on the other there was a table covered with notebooks, pens, and scraps of paper. The room was clearly not intended as living quarters either. Pipes, their markings faded, ran around the walls and across the ceiling. Across the back of the room a spacers hammock hung from a pair of sturdier pipes.

Several of the conduits had been severed though and one continuously leaked steam that flowed across the ceiling like a river to a duct that led elsewhere. One section of the wall had been removed and now hung askew - cables snaked from the terminal into the dark space beyond.

"Kayrla tells me you can make things slip through the cracks. That true?"

Poke didn't even offer a seat - not that there were any without a layer of garbage on them - but instead he took a seat at the terminal and began skimming whatever was on the screen. "Greasy - get it? What do you need?"

Extrapolation...

"Modification of the Aurora system could allow a reduction in the size requirements for warships. It could also be used to increase firepower and actually reduce costs. Combine this with the new variable emitter technology being added to the existing network and we could potentially replace the functionality of a half-dozen weapon systems with a single unit while reducing costs and increasing firepower."

The discussion was an odd one but not because of the subject matter. Ms. Silaco was supposed to have conversations like this with up and coming designers and engineers. What was odd was that the conversation was being held on a beach under the blazing sun that lit the alien world. A vast ocean world dotted with island chains it was inhabitted by what were essentially sentient otters.

There hasn't been much of a stir when a new moon had arrived in orbit and even with a large tribe-clan living nearby Katryna had no problem with allowing large-scale visits to this island. Add a tiki bar and some straw huts and you had a nice vacation spot. The AI didn't mind mixing business with pleasure since as far as she was concerned they were one and the same thus the conversation continued.

"Mmm, yes. In order to construct such a system we would have to miniaturize the existing system and build planetary facilities to support it."

"Instead of lowering the size of the ship we could also use the gained space for additional armor. Increase overall survivability."

Katryna flipped onto her stomach and looked at her forearms. This was also a chance to test the new skin design her mother was looking to introduce. Artificial melanin glands should allow her to 'tan' normally in reaction to sunlight though future models would probably integrate direction skin control for androids and body-replacement cyborgs who wanted to go from pale to bronzed in minutes.

"It sounds reasonable. We should start by successful miniaturizing the Aurora system and then move to integrating that with an ordinance transfer system."

"We could be looking at other benefits as well. While we don't require an endpoint to create a wormhole using the Aurora system we could drop the miniature versions into the middle of target fleets using Nova's and sew some chaos using the alternate weapon systems. Naturally we wouldn't do this in a restricted scenario but we could have it in reserve for using in a scaling combat."

Katryna nodded and looked to her right. They were spread out in a line here, some of the top systems designers in the SDF, and not all were human. To her right was a near-human foxgirl recruited straight out of university where she had managed to construct an emergency dimensional beacon through creative use of household appliances.

"That does bring up an interesting idea - mounting the miniature system directly on Nova's or redesigned Nova's. It would be an option that would allow 'concealed' but high-powered attacks on stragetic targets. We could add some systems that would disguise the nature of the core system to conceal it's origins."

"What about FTLi though? While system-wide fields would clearly be instantly overpowered there would be the risk of localized interference with system operation?"

There was a snicker up and down the line at the mention of system-wide FTLi fields but this was ignored by a male elf further down the line from Katryna. His measured tones marked him as one of the oldest of the designers but Katryna had more than a little appreciation for his sculpted form.

"A miniaturized system should minimize this interference. There would be more energy in a smaller area. At worse this could be overcome by increasing the power from the planetside location. Planetside locations also do not suffer from the energy restrictions of warships due to the amount of mass readily avaliable for annihilation."

The meeting, if such a casual event could be considered such, continued throughout the afternoon with more ideas bouncing around like the beachball being tossed around by the children playing further up the beach.

Refinement...

Whap!

The volleyball arced over the net and hands went skyward in an attempt to intercept and send it flying back over the net.

"You know, we could mount the armory on the VLEMA!"

This was pronounced velma by the engineer who watched as his opposite jumped up and sent the ball flying towards the backfield on his side.

"Why?"

"I see mounting thirty plus multi-kilometer coil guns on a terrestrial body as a problem. Gravity, friction, and energy needs."

"Point!"

Players changed positions and the ball went over the net.

"Fourteen-Seventeen-Service!"

"A terrestrial facility would need to have specialized facilities to ensure maximum acceleration - which is expensive."

"So is building a multi-kilometer facility in space. I thought the point of the system was to lower the costs involved in mounting large ordinance based systems on warships. A warship isn't that much different from a station."

Sand sprayed as the elven engineer dove for the ball and sent it flying up for a successful spike by Katryna. As he rolled to his feet she took the chance to check him out a little more.

'Mm - nice ass. I wonder what mom would think...'

'I'd think he's a fine physical specimen of a male elf. I'd also think he's too old for you. Wait until a few centuries isn't that much of a difference at least...'

Katryna smiled and returned her concentration to the game and the conversation.

"The idea sounds like a good one but I don't want to combine two vulnerable facilities and make one even more vulnerable facility."

"We could build it into Refuge. We have the space after all."

"That suggests other possibilities as well. We could mount the coilguns and gates in a radial pattern. Build some external hatches and we have another potential weapon system at our disposal. But that does create the same problem as the idea of mounting it on the VLEMA."

"Less vulnerable though - since it is a lot more mobile than the velma. It would also be built in an existing facility so we wouldn't have to worry about infrastructure."

"Point and match!"

Game over the players wandered over towards the bar while the ball was quickly snatched up by a pair of young otterkin who had snuck through the bushes to the edge of the beach.

"It does bring up another potential worry - once it becomes clear we are using modified Auroras our enemies and marginal allies will be looking to track these systems back to their origins. Right now it's not possible to determine the exit point without travelling the system but it's possible that this could be done. This would compromise the location of Ares, Refuge, and any other worlds linked by the system."

"Just like other existing systems limits will need to be placed on their use then. Some systems restrictions as well - ships cannot use more than a 'normal' load of ordinance unless certain orders are issued, etc."

Drinks in hand the group took seats at the tables that had been set up around the bar. While the waiter circled among them taking orders they watched a group of children, not all of them human, first discover then integrate the two otterkin into their play.

'If only international relations were so simple,' Katryna thought while sipping her drink.

'If that were true you would be out of a job Kat - though I wouldn't mind it so much myself.'

'If only it was that easy...'

Erika sat at her desk feet up and with a cup of coffee in hand. A screen hovered in the air off to one side playing an interview on MNN with a new species that had entered Martian orbit. That wasn't what had caught her attention - it was the apparent nature of the species that interested her.

'Copied sentience? Or have they found a way to move a conciousness from biological hardware to mechanical hardware?'

Uploading a person wasn't a frequent process in Sunset. Mostly it was because the current process didn't really move the person - it copied them. The duplication was reasonably accurate but there was still a person on the uploading side when the process completed. If these people had learned how to do it completely it wouldn't hurt to see if they were willing to share.

'Ambassador? Don't check out yet - I want you to get in contact with this 'New Frontier' and see what you can learn.'

'Obviously or covertly?'

'As covertly as possible. I'd rather you take command of the operation but don't involve yourself.

'Yes Ma'am. Anything else?'

'Do you happen to know what I can do with three hundred fifty million four armed pirates?'

Erika took a sip and considered the situation on the world the Fleet had taken to labelling Quatra. There were now about a dozen factions of note and if she let the situation continue it would probably fragment a little but continue to collapse until there were two or three.

She could let them keep fighting until one took center stage, then bomb it off the planet. Not exactly ethical. She could also decide to support one faction directly and create a sort of 'puppet' nation that had it's interests aligned with Sunset. This was a gloss manipulation of free will though - was this something she could do in good faith considering her position?

Before there was DNI and virtual space there were CRT's and CAD programs. Before that there were slide rules and drafting tables. And before that?

"I'm thinking we go back to the design system we had before the CohortIV - saucer, drives, and a secondary hull between the two."

Bernstein swished the stick around in the wet sand by the water's edge and the shape of an SDF warship, crude but legible, appeared in what was likely the first surface used to design something on Earth. A tangible link between a world a thousand lightyears away and this place.

"We need to cover the six primary vectors so we place units here," the stick scratched out a cut in several places while he erased some lines with his foot, "Here, here... Hand me some of those ovoid shells, will you?" The local sanddollar equivallent was placed in various positions on the sand drawing to represent his proposed system placement.

"We forgot something!"

The two engineers looked up from where they were now arranging other shells into the positions of other systems to see Katryna walking down the beach towards them. Both noted that she seemed to be... moving... a bit more than was nessecary. She stopped and seemed to pose a bit as she stood over their drawing though her gaze was clearly on something behind them. One looked back and saw another designer gliding up the beach on a surfboard and turned back and gave his friend a nod and shake of the head back towards the designer.

He had already picked up his board and was headed back out though her attention still seemed fixed. Both of them looked at her for a moment before going back to arranging shells. "Maybe there is a logic loop..." one whispered, making the other laugh loud enough to shake her out of her daydreams.

"Ah, yes. The Cohort... Cruiser strength weapons platform and medium carrier platform!"

"Oh right - UHCV's and 'Strykes. Actually..."

"After the gates are installed it's a huge potential savings. Since we don't have to build carrier facilities for them we can just base them planet-side. Don't have to worry about the same things as the ordinance launchers either since they provide their own power."

"True. Startle the crap outta the first fleet to see fighters coming out of the same system that scrapped something as a gravy gun a minute earlier..."

"Speaking of scrapped, what about redundancy? Running some quick numbers the smaller the gates are the more efficient they are, but if we mount 2-4 in every position it will up the cost substancially."

"Maybe two in every arc? Or two on everything except the forward arc which would have three? This would also give captains more tactical options - one gravy, one ordinance, etc."

The three designers continued to chat about possible ways of blowing things up and killing people while further up the beach another trio were having a related conversation, but not about weapons.

"You know... If we are going to put these in place as weapon systems maybe we could also use them to reduce our logistics network. Since most of the power would be supplied by the planetary end we could place one in an isolated portion of the ship and use it to move annihilation mass, food, parts, etc through to target ships in the field."

"Right! We could cut back on supply ships and centralize our logistics stations... Katryna!"

The two turned and went jogging back up the beach towards the engineers who were now building a dorsal slice sand-warship. It didn't strike any of them as particularly significant but when they left and the model, protected by a miniature seawall, was discovered by the natives it would fuel some interesting speculation as to the religion of these outsiders. That and why two of the tribes pups were missing.

With a click a storage bin in a recently arrived shuttle opened and a pair of pointed, whiskered noses probed the air outside. All around the shuttle technicians, both robotic and biological, casually went about their duties. Several were cleaning a thick layer of grim off the bottom of the craft with high-pressure hoses.

"Look at this - there are barnacles in this cowling!"

"Yeah! Who decided to use a shuttle for watersking?!"

Water hissed and a mix of salt water, shellfish, and seaweed blasted out and all over the hangar floor where drains waited to swallow it and flush it into the recycling system. Inside the shuttle low yelping barks were exchanged and two lithe forms slipped up to the rear doors. Whiskers twitched and a couple yelps were exchanged between the two otterkin as they looked back and forth.

One by one they dashed from shuttle to shuttle looking for an empty place in the cavernous bay. Racks and racks of spare parts were a good hiding place but the two were hungry and anxious.

'We should ask for food...'

'They might eat us!'

'Their pups didn't. I'm starving!'

'Hold on - here comes one of the shiny ones!'

A maintenance robot rolled past and lifted a part from the rack next to them. Emboldened by hunger one of the otterkin darted out and tugged on it's leg.

"Kern ka esq!"

The maintenance unit turned and looked down at the pup who was pulling at his leg while the other dashed under a stack of parts until only the tip of it's tail was visible.

"Your request was not understood. Please repeat."

"Kern ka esq?"

"Please repeat your request."

The pup jabbered at it for several minutes, made eating motions and fishing motions, and grew more and more frustrated as the unit, unequipped with any kind of translation system, simply repeated 'Please repeat your request' over and over.

'It's stupid! Let's try one of the others!'

Two humans, a male and female, walked past and the braver pup ran up to the female and tugged on her leg.

"...you left your bag in the shuttle!"

"Yeah yeah... I bet you've never locked your keys in the car before... What's this?!"

"Kern ka esq?"

The two humans looked at each other and down again at the otterkin.

"This isn't good at all. What do you suppose we should..."

"Do? Call security in case there are more of them then... Dunno. Do I look like a xenobiologist to you?"

----

"I've had Totality-Class suggested by one of the designers and it seems appropriate based on it's capabilities and the new weapon system. Now about the modified Nova-Class... Hold on a second."

Katryna hit accept on the incoming transmission and the female engineer - Hosk if her memory served - appeared in miniature on the desktop projector.

"Ma'am - we have a situation down in the shuttle bay..."

The engineer panned the camera over to the side and the young otterkin stood there blinking. Katryna sighed and sat down with her head in her hands.

To: Captain S.H. Yeshar
From: Doctor Joames Loang
Subject: Autopsy Report

The examination of the bodies of the survey team has been completed and I have the following to report:

All of the bodies are physically unharmed. All organs are intact and there is evidence only of the common cuts and bruises which might occur in the field.

Examination of combat recordings has revealed a drop in electrical activity in the brain and a complete lack of activity as the cause of death. Unfortunately the monitoring system is basic and only monitors activity levels in general. There is no way of knowing if certain areas were affected first or any other details that might help reveal the source of the disruption.

Several of the mental activity logs show anomalous spikes in activity where the brain activity seems to exceed all normal activity. This activity sometimes doubles the normal brain activity and again is unexplained by other recordings.

I have listed their deaths as 'Under Investigation' and for now this is the only reasonable option. Please forward any additional information found to me so that I can change this as soon as possible.

Doctor Loang

----

Katryna had had the whole moon searched and they had, fortunately, not found any other otterkin. The two pups were now in the care of a xenologist where they were apparently integrating nicely but it was still a problem she would have to deal with.

'Option one: Send a ship to drop two lost pups on a world and have the risk that their tribe might have already moved on. Option two: Keep them and start building a pond. Option three... throw that engineer out an airlock.'

"What I'm proposing is a radical departure from existing SDF designs, yes, but there are good reasons for it."

The design engineering team was meeting in one of their virtual playrooms - spaces where they could tinker with designs, zoom them around the room, and similar creative activities. Models of ships, planets, bases, fighters, and miscellanious other items sat on desks or the floor or were being handled by the engineers who played with them like one might play with a model plane.

"I dunno - why fix what isn't broken?"

"Cause it's boring? Oh look - a saucer, some bits, and two naceles. Not very imaginative is it?"

"Can't just switch design philosophy because you are bored with it..."

"Ok. Let's figure out why we should switch then. I would posit that the shifts in weapons technology and crew technologies would suggest a shift in hull technologies to take advantage of them.

The forward tri-talon design would allow us to use the superior placement of the gravetic drives to greater effect. We could use their output to create more complex gravity sheers when using gravetic cannon, or we could use them to create 'mazes' of gravity wells to make targetting and firing on our ships harder.

The radical design change also means we can more easily enter into military matters without our direct involvement being revealed."

Exploitation...

"Keep moving! The faster you get your miserable carcass' to the end of this road the sooner I can get paid. Being paid makes me happy. Slow skinny aliens make me sad. You don't want me sad, do you?"

The black clad trooper didn't expect a response and none was given but the long line of shackled aliens continued to march slowly down the dusty road. At the end of the road they would find a warm bed in a crowded bunkcomplex, three meals a day supplimented with nutrients designed to make them more efficent workers, and of course work. Not that they would be paid for their labor - at this point they were essentially slaves.

Well monitored and cared for slaves, as the SDF logo on the combat android that stood slightly behind the trooper assured, but slaves none the less. This was not the slavery of 17th and 18th century America but the cold, corporate slavery of a conquered world. Instead of stationing a majority of the fleet and marine forces in-system for a century or longer the pacification and explotation of the world had been sub-contracted out.

A quick mineral and labor potential survey had generated enough interest that a conglomerate of companies had made a bid to not only manage the planet but pay the government for the right to do so. Their exclusive monopoly on the labor and natural wealth of the planet was ample compensation for the costs incured in hiring, moving, and maintaining a large mercenary force to garrison the planet.

Not everyone was a slave of course - only those who had directly opposed the attacks and were thus monitarily responsible for losses incured. Piracy being a criminal act they were thus responsible for repaying three times the damages sustained in conquering them. It sounded worse than it was really - the Sunset justice system focused on repayment of damages as a punishment rather than the concievably more ludicrous idea of paying for criminals to sit and watch TV all day.

"Move it! Your labor debt isn't getting any smaller you know!"

It would have taken only a moment to look up the current labor debt for the enslaved portion of the population but he had done it a dozen times already. In three decades or so he would be out of a job and these people would become citizens of Sunset with their debts cleared.

Like many of the guards hired he was once a slave though his slavery had been poor luck rather than a result of willful action. When the slave revolts had finally coalesced into one single faction the conquest of the world had been deemed complete. They were now one of the partners in the managing conglomerate and supplied most of the manpower.

~~~~

Invention...

"It's a morphic variable resistance material. You can alter how it responds to various types of energy in order to accomplish different effects. For instance if I do this and hit it with this laser..."

The material - a thin sheet mounted in a frame and sitting on one end of the table - turned transparent and the laser passed through it to hit a piece of Ardan currency glued to a tile. The face of Melkor melted and ran like butter and the laser was switched off.

"Now you will observe that the material is still cool to the touch. Despite the energy used to melt the coin it was not affected by the energy that passed through it. Here is another fun aspect - it can still transmit other forms of energy in this morphic state. Like say... electricity."

A rod of the material was laid across two conductors which were energized. A massive spark jumped the gap between two spheres and the rod turned clear. Again the laser was turned on and another coin melted away.

The small knot of judges gathered around the table poked at the material, ran the tests themselves, and took some measurements with the tools they had avaliable.

"Thank you Mister Miller - we'll be judging the projects later but yours is very impressive."

For a science fair project it was very impressive indeed. Thus it wasn't that suprising that one of the judges who had a friend at a large research labratory was already placing a call to this friend. By the end of the day the project had disappeared as had Mister Miller. In it's place was a project on creating zombie tadpoles that didn't even win a ribbon.

"This... this is the work of..."

The pirate 'slave' was having a hard time displaying his distaste for the work he had been assigned. It wasn't manual labor, or fighting to the death for the amusement of his captors, it was simply... technical. He had been assigned to monitor the progress of a mining unit based on his test scores.

"This is the job of a unsuccessful warrior!"

His coworker, another ex-pirate, nodded in agreement.

"Why could we not fight their wars as slave warriors, or slay their enemies as assassins with bombs in our heads? I am as one punished by my captain for poor performance, not as one taken in battle!"

For many of the ex-slaves turned taskmasters the situation was just as odd. Many came from plantations and mines where labor was done by the hoe and pick. Their lives were still better than the lives of their former masters, but there were some who felt that the punishment didn't exactly fit the crime. The government was quick to point out that those who had actually owned slaves would remain here for the rest of their lives while those that had fought were simply there long enough to repay an economic debt.

This didn't keep a small group of people from taking a more active approach to the percieved unfairness and they began to try to change this in a way they had not been able to until now: They started an initiative drive.

~~~~

The two young otterkin splashed and played with a group of Sunset children (human, elf, etc) in one of the virtual water parks aboard Refuge while several xenobiologists watched from their labs. It had taken several months to get to this point - languages established and learned, biology studied and reproduced, and finally a pair of custom DNI units carefully installed. Now, like the children and adults aboard the station, the otterkin could directly control and 'inhabit' much of the station's equipment and infrastructure.

Discussions with the two about a desire to return to their home had proven fruitless. Since the people aboard the station were apparently not going to eat them, sacrifice them to a diety, or skin them, they were perfectly willing to go wherever Refuge went.

"We know they come from a 'clutch' - multiple mates all raise their pups together in the same age group. These two now seem to consider any children of about nine years old in human maturity their clutchmates."

"I don't think we can assume these two to be atypical for their species though - we had two that snuck aboard, not twenty or more as they claim is the typical clutch size."

"Agreed. What about their future though? Their genetics seem solid - inbreeding is not a problem - but we have two males here. Should we, ethically, clone them and tweak some genes to make a pair of females? Would it be best to do so now so they grow up with their clutchmates or would it be better to wait until they want to mate?"

"And why does that sound a little creepy? Like we are setting up a breeding program for dogs?"

"Sorry - I can't think of a more diplomatic way to put it yet."

~~~~

"Lieutenant Miller, welcome to Station Fourty One. I'm Commander Admunson."

Matthew 'Matt' Miller shook the offered hand though it wasn't really a concious decision on his part. It had been a whirlwind few days and he was on autopilot now. First the owner of a prestigious research labratory had called him and offered to fund his further research as well as provide the facilities for it. Then another call had come in asking him to reject the first offer and come work for their labratory instead.

He wasn't sure how the second firm had known about the first but when an armed assault shuttle had touched down on his lawn and two officers had knocked and asked to come in he had gone a little numb. Their offer was a little bit more direct - he, his family, and his project would be taken then and there to a secure facility, he would be commissioned into the SDF, and he would make a lot of money while continuing his project.

An officers commision and a bleeding edge science background was a quick way onto a frontline explorer. He knew that much and had jumped at the opportunity. For now a 'secure facility' was a government complex downtown in PersiCity but it looked like the start of an interesting ride for Mister Miller.

E=MC2... Strike That... Reverse It...

~~~~

Energy flowed through cables, conduits, then circuits as it was routed, stored, and finally shaped in the VLEMA that, were it on a equatorial instead of polar position, blocked .01% of the star's light. Instead it took that essentially useless energy and did something with it. It was a lot of energy but as any school age child knew the amount of energy needed to create a turkey out of pure energy was a metric f-ing ton. This was several orders of magnitude higher.

The VLEMA, capacitors emptied, ended it's work and a crew went aboard the newest Totality-Class to join the fleet to finish the job. FTL comms were installed and initialized and secured, an existing electronic sentience was plugged in, and the newest SDF warship did a sort of rolling shake in space as she tested her drives out. They didn't have time for a proper christening so the last person out the hatch scrawed the new name across the unmarred surface with a grease pencil.

'I... am... Bane? Well doesn't that sound all menacing!'

The ship giggled and the other ships that shared it's portion of the inter-linked tactical network looked at it. Distance was representational in this space so the nearest ship was a sister ship. Cataclysm (someone had woken up on the wrong side of bed that morning) looked over, culled his memory banked, and replied appropriately.

'Bane - are you a poof?'

'I should say not!'

~~~~

Erika didn't like this - not one bit. The media was probably already watching this Antaran situation as it developed and so was she though her channels were a bit more realtime. There were a lot of well-laid plans that could be forced into the light of day by these events and a certain level of power that she didn't want others to realize was at her command. If people were going to keep up with the Jones she would rather the Jones looked like they lived in a trailor park.

Developments...

----

To those fortunate and unfortunate enough to have seen a Hades-Class Dreadnought they, if they were of the correct cultural background, immediately reminded them of the works of H.R. Giger. Sweeping sections of ribbing, nodules of unknown purpose, sweeping spars that appeared to be tendons, and ridges that looked like they could be the bones of long dead predators roamed over the hull. A hull that was, in it's essential shape, the familiar saucer and nacelle design of generations of SDF warships transformed into some inky black predator from the Abyss.

Despite their age they were still one of the most advanced designs in the SDF arsenal. Built using a technology that was still little understood they were crewed entirely by the cloned Kal-En-Venshos, or Trilats as they were still commonly known, who seemed to have some kind of genetic knowledge of the technologies. Even they were unable to explain every aspect of it however and there were limitations.

One large limitation was that the actual crew had to be Kal-En-Venshos and their drones. A cloned species they only chose to reproduce occasionally and this had been just enough to crew the ten Hades-Class and the few Trilats who had joined the broader nation. However recently several members had taken a particular interest in refining their own cloning process and there had been a population boom. Now there were many more Kal-En-Venshos than there were Hades-Class berths and there was a need for either more of the very expensive ships or for something else.

The Admirals of the two Hades battle groups had come up with their own propose for President Silaco. Approval had been given and now dozens of small frameworks grew beside their larger parents as their children were slowly born in the atmosphere of the gas giant Menhit.

"We will take the design of the Warbanner-Class and grow it into our own. Your mythology tells of a beast called Cerebus who guards the entrance to the underworld and we will name it thus. They will serve us much as they did the lord of the underworld."

----

"Here you have the basic armor suit - penguin shaped of course - with flexible legs and arms. On top of that we add a variable particle cannon, a missile launcher, anti-missile system, and some sharp bits for close combat. Powered combat armor for our penguins!"

Katryna sighed. The suit that waddled around the desk in front of her was impressive, but it was also... cute. Not at all menacing.

"Why? Why build power armor for robotic killing machines!?"

"I want one!"

Katryna looked over at the penguin who had suddenly shown up in the holosphere on her desk.

"When do you -ever- go into combat Ambassador?"

A flipper rubbed the back of his head and he blinked at her. There was a long pause before he replied, "Well, I might..."

"There are advantages - extra armor, additional firepower, and some measure of deception. After all... why build power armor for something unless it's relatively vulnerable and thus flesh and blood? Our enemies will make that assumption when they see one."

"If they see one. We don't tend to field IntelPenguins in public operations."

"Consider strings pulled Katryna. I want one - make it a hundred. What harm could it do? Though the design will need some refinement."

http://www.sunsetrpg.com/images/SDFOpusPowerArmor3.jpg

"We've made some refinements to the original design and come up with this version Ambassador. There are refinements to the leg and foot armor, electro-adhesive pads in the flippers that allow it to pick up metallic objects..."

"Like swords - I like that. And the war banner."

"Yes - and smartlink so they can use any SDF personal firearm. The right shoulder mounts a heavy variable particle cannon, the right has four missile tubes and the standard anti-missile system."

"Good, good..."

"And of course there is an ultra-light gravetic unit in the back for high-speed mobility."

"In case it falls over. I do notice you took out the blades in the flippers - in exchange for the electro-adhesive units?"

"Yes - and combat statistics show that mounted melee weaponry isn't as effective as hand or flipper held weapons."

"Great! So when do I get mine? And can I get a custom paint job?"

"Well, that will take some time. We are still looking for a manufacturer with avaliable capacity and..."

"Screw that! Once you get the designs finalized send them to me and I'll take care of it."

"But sir - we've already had some interest from Cetagandan and Menelmacari intelligence in aqquiring these and IntelPenguins for their own..."

"Fine fine. Then shop the allied manufacturing side to one of the Menelmacari manufacturing firms on Ares. I'll just slip my order into the next Totality constructed with the VLEMA, muhahaha!"

OOC: Opus Power Armor are only avaliable to the Triumvirate of Yut, a military secret, blah blah blah. Even though they are diabolically cute.

ANN:
'The major manufacturing cartel Eros has announced it will be releasing it's new
commercial-grade FTL drive based on the Grupe-Sachs model. They hope that once the public overcomes it's apprehension about Grupe-Sachs theories it will embrace the new Grupe-Sachs Drive wholeheartedly.'

----

One of the most notable aspects of SDF military strategy has been their reliance on bleeding edge technology over large fleets, large ships, or large numbers of weapons. Some of the more advanced weaponry in use by Sunset's allies, like gravetic cannon, are typically mounted on very large ships like the Sky Marshal System Defense Fortresses while it has been confirmed that they are mounted
on every SDF warship, no matter the size or purpose. Given this one must then
wonder what exactly the SDF is mounting on it's 'super-ships'. Speculation on
this has focused on everything from the meta-magical weapons used by Reploid Productions on it's Hand of God planetary bombardment ships to super-kinetics or even dimensional weaponry.

One thing that many of these speculators seem to forget is that we have never seen a SDF warship over five hundred meters since the very first
dreadnoughts. The average now is around four hundred meters and this would suggest there are some limits to the weaponry that they could mount.

~Portion of a lecture on SDF warships by Professor Hayn at the University of Ares.

----

"So I was thinking... Why don't we make them smaller?"

Katryna looked at the engineer with a single raised eyebrow. She had discovered a show called 'Star Trek' in the archives and the expression fascinated her. To use another common expression.

"Wouldn't that be stretching things a bit? Totalities are coming in at just over four hundred meters as it is. If we start putting two hundred meter warships into our frontline combat roles people are just going to laugh."

"Not if we are actually putting six or eight hundred meter ships in that just -look- like two hundred meter ships."

"And for your next trick you are gonna pull a rabbit out of my ear?"

"No - I'm going to remind you that most of the volume of any object is fundamentally empty. Atoms, even in solids, still have a considerable amount
of 'space' between them. On an atomic level of course."

"Right..."

"Right. So we set the VLEMA to create artificially denser ships by applying a universal atomic scale reduction once the design is completed. The VLEMA takes the design and just makes it smaller."

"Wouldn't you run into critical mass issues with that? Like building a warship out of uranium?"

"Not if we use the right atoms and the right scale. But according to my test models we could do this already with the existing Totality design and reduce it by half. A two hundred meter warship with the firepower of a four hundred meter ship and the relative firepower of a four kilometer ship. This would also increase it's combat effectiveness substancially as it would have a larger relative targetting cone due to it's reduced size."

Katryna leaned back in her chair and thought for a moment.

"Ok - but not with a Totality. Not yet. Work with the fighter design team and we can use the VLEMA to produce a couple mini-fighters. That should be a sufficient testbed."

"Well, I still have issues to work out with fuel systems and power distribution systems..."

"Yes - once those are worked out then. Make sure you have a version built for a two meter penguin before shrinking. I'm sure we will get requests."

*Report Accessed*

Presidential Defense Summary

Current Issues:
Mangalan interest in turning the Discouri system into their homeworld is the single largest threat to the security of Ares. With the majority of the citizen population residing here, as well as two important defense assets, these moves will likely compromise Ares secrecy and thus security. However due to the time Ares has been developing we can expect passive discovery shortly and this seems unavoidable. Our recommendation is to help the Mangalan government move operations to Discouri as well as keep them more fully appraised of local threats.

Martian politics continue to be a threat to our Martian population. The Osage and Auman in particular continue to create problems that may initiate military action. While both are minor powers we feel that both deserve an additional allocation of assets. We suggest increasing the readyness of auxiliary fleet assets as well as directing SDF intelligence to devote more of it's assets to monitoring these two nations.

The situation in the system dubbed Booty Bay has stablized but there are still roaming pirate ships that pose a threat to both shipping and planetside assets. There have been issues as well with citizens who have paid off their war debt and acts of sabotage against debt recovery facilities. The planetary government should be able to handle these but it bears watching.

The White Nile situation is still the single greatest threat in military terms to both Sunset and all other local sovereignties. However additional data has been slow in coming and we are unable to recommend anything other than additional resources to research the situation.

Deployment:
Most of the fleet is currenly deployed in Readiness Areas though there are some fleet assets deployed in Booty Bay, the GEC-42 system, and in support of the various Triumvirate colony planets. Marine deployment is mostly confined to the Ares system with some hot deployments in support of SEC operations. SDF intelligence continues to be focused on Sol with some secondary missions in support of SEC operations alongside Marine operations.

SEC operations are currently focused on completing a rimward survey with a focus on habitable systems due to the White Nile situation. Long range exploration is trying to find other entities like those encountered, specifically looking for clusters of dead stars where they may have travelled.

Future deployment should follow this trend. Replacement cycle warships will continue to be deployed Elsewhere and into Readiness Areas for rapid response. With more potential for violence in the Martian sphere we are recommending covert deployment of forward observation units in this area.

General Recommendations:
Refuge is the only current mass evacuation method we have avaliable. Given the potential for trouble and the continued spread of Sunset and Triumvirate citizenry throughout local space we strongly recommend augementing Refuge with either another similar system or something else with a similar function.

Captain Silaco,
Ambassador Penguin,
Grand Admiral Glafka,
Admiral Edge

*Report Deleted*

Facility: Black Halo
Location: Classified
Project Classification: Ultraviolet

The being in the cage screamed and died, death wails pulling on the souls of those who were observing the fight. It was no sentient being - merely a test animal - yet it had struke a cord with every scientist there as it died. As though it's soul was being ripped screaming from it's body. Recordings were taken and analized and many looked at the second being in the cage with worry in their eyes. Black and purple mist surrounded it and it itself was shadowy and indistinct. Due to some particularity of it's physology one could literally see right through it when it was surrounded by these mists. Another unexplained aspect of it's nature.

----

"Ultimately if Mangala wants to make their system a new and open homeworld we can't do much to stop them, and I don't know if that would really even be nessecary. We've been out here so long pumping out radio emissions that someone with some decent recievers could figure out where we were five centuries ago. First grade math takes care of the rest unless they don't teach Newton in school these days."

"So what are you saying? Open up Ares to everyone too? It's not completely our decision you know... We have allied colonies here. What about them?"

"What about how much money we would effectively be wasting trying to disguise our presence from those in the Discouri system? That's going to be even worse! The average Mangalan is not the average Ardan gape-jawed nose-picker. And I doubt their control is as complete as ours is. We have contracts and clauses, they have eager colonists who know exactly what they are getting into."

Katryna Silaco stood and began to speak before the previous senator could respond. In the intervening years since she had last appeared in the senate chamber she hadn't aged a day: A fact that they were not oblivious to but discounted as mere virtual vanity.

"The senator from New Hanover is correct! Why waste money on security that is no longer needed? His own observations aside it should be known by this committee that all classified SDF military operations have been removed from Ares. What would our enemies and marginal allies gain by knowing the location of this system? Nothing more than it would be harder than ever for them to strike at us.

I'm not saying we should broadcast the location to every Ardan without a tin ear, but why not just make it an open secret? Give their intelligence corps something to do while we accomplish more important goals elsewhere?"

----

The middle of elsewhere. It had taken decades of cooperation between Ravenspire and Sunset scientists to accomplish the goal of moving an Aurora elsewhere but now the deed was done. All around the massive gate the vast expanse of nothing spread out like a grey cloud. There was no horizon, there were no stars. The scientists aboard the station still were not sure exactly what they were looking at out there but it definately met one objective of the project: No one would ever find it.

Energy spiralled outward from the gate as another ship came through to join the throng already on the other side. Another Totality-Class. These were the only ships that didn't need to be refitted to move in this vast elsewhere. Ships without specialized refitting didn't do more than float in the center of the Aurora until they were pulled or pushed away by it's tractors. The scientists knew what caused this particular effect but they were not sure why it occured. Still - more security. An invading fleet would find themselves stuck in the middle of elsewhere unable to do more than chuck energy around.

The SDF's goals here were two-fold. First to understand Elsewhere and it's significance cosmologically and second to build a secure facility to serve as yet another refuge. All around the Aurora spidery gantrys already sprawled. For now they served as docking points for the small armada of Totality-Class that called this home but they would also serve as the framework for the future sprawling complex that would be built as resources became avaliable.

----

"Will you look at that?! This guy is just unbeatable!"

"Having four arms will certainly do that for ya Wyll. Look at that coordination! She just reloaded that submachine gun with a secondary arm while shooting last years champion, Rayzooor, in the face with her offhand pistol! Where do
they find these guys!?"

"I don't know but Murder isn't going to be the same again!"

In the virtual arena the carnage continued. One by one the female alien picked off the rest of the contenders until she stood alone in the center of the arena surrounded by rapidly cooling corpses. The fans were silent for a moment before erupting in cheers and yells as the timer for the next match slowly ticked down. For the next several days betting on the four armed alien was heavy until the other contestants learned that she was the first priority.

In a labratory somewhere long lines of cloning tanks stood silently tending their growing charges. Floating quietly in each was a child, nutrients slowly pumping through their bodies. While they appeared human they were not proper homo sapien but a purposefully devolved form that was decidely non-sentient. An animal that looked like a man.

Around the long lines of tanks white-clad technicians moved checking readouts and running diagnostics. High above them the 'parents' of these children watched silently while they too checked the progress of their charges. There was nothing illegal about what they were doing. Ethics, well, ethics could be debated.

For these scientists the only important thing was what was growing inside of these children. For centuries most of the citizens of Sunset had been implanted with a DNI unit (commonly called a datajack) in their first few weeks for use in accessing the internet. DNI - Direct Nueral Interface - had always been a purely mechanical and electronic interface until now. At least these scientists hoped so.

Some additional DNA sequences here, some modified chains there, and inside of each of these children was 'growing' what they hoped was the first bio-mechanical DNI unit.

----

Elsewhere. Not a very elegant name - like calling a fleet of mystery ships 'the black fleet' or a unit of psionic operatives 'psicorp' - but it would do. One of the things about elsewhere was that it was very hard to navigate once you got there. There were no pulsars, there were no radio emissions that could be used to triangulate, there were no unusual galaxies or stars or really much of anything. At least as far as the SDF was concerned there was a single Aurora-Class gate, the rapidly growing complex around it, and a large fleet of bleeding edge warships that stayed very close.

With no waypoints to guide them ships had to rely on radio triangulation and red-shifting to figure out where everything was. Which meant that navigation was restricted to sub-c only and an insignificant fraction of c at that. Go too fast and you stood a good chance of missing those radio waves that would guide you home if you got lost. Not that there was a lot of places to get lost at...

----

"Morphic psuedo-biological constructs."

"Ooze."

The thing on the table in the center of the lab was a redish-brown splash of semi-solid liquid that seemed to slosh around the table as the two researchers watched.

"It's basically a bunch of inter-connected sacks that can alter their function based on need. Like the nano swarms used by Eniqcir except on the micro rather than nano scale. Nearly as flexible but a lot less expensive and time consuming to build."

The splash of liquid squeltched around on the table then suddenly pulled into a perfect sphere at the touch of a control. The surface changed color, lines and ridges formed, and a baseball rolled towards the table edge.

"The control still isn't fine enough to allow us to form a logo or threads in the stitching. Yet."

----

"Shouldn't an issue this important be voted on? Compromising the security of five billion people shouldn't be something we should just do on a whim. Let's put it in front of the people of this system and let them have their say!"

Four hundred kilos of what was the 30th century equivalent of Semtex ripped through the rocky wall of the underground vault with unstoppable force. Beyond yawned darkness though the woman standing there knew there were things moving just beyond the deepest shadows.

For a moment there was nothing and the silence was punctuated only by the patter of loose rubble sliding to the floor. Then there was chirping, barely audible, and the rasping of plates sliding over one another as muscles tensed in the pitch black recesses of the cave. Her hand went to the two meter long sword that hung on her back and the whine of the servos in her armor seemed an answering call. The two guards beside her stirred at this, synthetic muscles moving metallic bones in smooth motion, as they also readied themselves for the fray.

With a single silent leap their prey - or were they the prey? - were upon and among them. Gaunt shapes of sinew, muscle, and chitin leapt to the attack as the sweeping blade arced out. Filters snapped up as cyan lightning tore one of the creatures apart moments before it's brotheren slammed into the guard on her right, bearing it to the ground.

Perhaps they could sense the flesh, riddled as it was with cybernetics and other augementations, beneath the thick armored carapace that she wore. Perhaps they sought to isolate her, remove her from her protective skin, and devour her such was their focus on her guardians.

The blade, light as a feather in her augemented fist, flashed down and through one before sharply veering away and through another in a spray of blood. Blood that splattered and hissed gently as it slashed across rock like a line of paint thrown from a brush. Her onslaught drew their attentions and some leapt to the attack. Turning aside she swung again and brought the sword overhead before burying the massive edge in a stray boulder.

Disarmed for the moment they sensed their moment and attacked again while their fellows tore at the robotic guardian beside her. Another blast of lightning and another fell but those remaining leapt again. An armored fist swung and caught the lead creature fully in the head, smashing it completely into the torso. Landing on a pauldron one sought purchase as it began to seek the weak points: The joints and thinness where it could get at the meat below.

Snatching it's thrashing tail the guardian pulled it away and sent it smashing into a wall. Visera sprayed and it stagged with sensory organs destroyed but the desire for flesh still surging. As it staggered around the chamber in search of it's prey blades and talons flashed until it alone of it's fellows still stood.

It could do little but hiss unknowingly as the armored human wrenched the sword from where it had lodged and brought it scything through the beast in one smooth motion.

----

There was ...testing... and then there was Testing! This was definately the latter. Grand Admiral Glafka walked through the passage, blood and other fluids dripping from her armor, as she made her way to the observation post. Behind her limped one of the two combat androids that she preferred as bodyguards. One leg had been damaged but it still had enough strenght to haul the mangled remains of it's cohort with it.

Clearly some of the Marine ethos had remained, she thought, as she swung the sword onto her back. Electro-adhesives grabbed it and held it firm as she shook her arms and legs causing bits of the creatures to spray around the room. Across from her two of what she was working to replace stood watching, their heads turning back and forth as they went about unknown tasks behind their faceplates.

"Test successful and complete. Though you might want to have that guy looked at..."

Servos hissed as the suit, a brand new Reaver Diaklaive Powered Battlesuit, split and opened to allow her to exit. Behind her the suit closed again automatically and technicians moved to hose it off while the two Diaklaive suits moved to watch the chamber entrance, weapons unslung.

She appeared to be a young woman, perhaps in her late twenties, and quite attractive if one could ignore the electrical hum that indicated she wasn't completely human anymore. There were two types of flag-level officers - those who achieved their rank through time and experience and those who achieved their rank through bold action. The Grand Admiral was the latter. Field testing a new armored suit against live opponents was likely to get one killed: She viewed it as another chance to test her skills and push those around her to improve their own.

Polling...

"President Silaco has done a good job keeping us out of international conflicts. With all the violence out there I'm glad we are safe here and that she isn't regularly launching us on the kind of military adventurism that seems so common among other nations. Though I am concerned about our weakening political freedoms - seems like the incumbent senators are getting in over and over despite the protections in place." - Vilma Gorgenson, Young Sentient Caregiver

"I'm frankly dissappointed in the government's performance. In my opinion we have lost much of the respect we had on the international scene. If we want the power to influence events in our favor we will need to be more involved. That might involve some risks but it can't be helped. A non-involvement policy only weakens our nation if we are ever attacked." - Amarado Higgen, Political Scientist

"Right now people are out there starving. We have all this money, and all this food, yet somehow we are still letting people die from a lack of food. How can we as a nation let this go forward? We need a massive shift in public policy towards caring for our people!" - Ronald D, Jobless

"I think we need to use our military power to go do some good out there. Knock off some dictators and free some people you know? Booyah!" Josh Matt, Retired Marine

"Mars is just a mess. I mean, have you seen the news? Terraforming is completely shot, violence is a heartbeat away, and it's just not our world any more. We should either get our people off that rock or cut them loose to swim on their own. We've been doing it out here for a long time - might be their time too." Hack Johnson, Business Owner

'Mom...?'

'Yes Katryna?'

'I want to have a baby.'

There was silence for a moment in the virtual network that connected mother and daughter across the lightyears of space.

'Given that you are my daughter I'm going to assume this is something more than a question about the construction process. What are you planning?'

'I've got two ideas. Cellular robotics or bio-mechanical generation. Both would be an interesting challenge though the second would be easier. Just building on the work of CellData really. Though it would be a little special.'

'Uh oh. I'm going to do some extrapolation here and guess that there is a father involved. Which one is it?'

'Mom! The engineer of course - good looks and brains in one package. Can't have it better than that.'

'Mmm. I often wonder how you ended up with an appreciation for the cellular type. It definately wasn't in my schematics.'

'Says the sentient who built penguins. And kittens. Both of which are very cute according to the cellulars.'

'Practical designs that fit their operating environment. Back to the baby. Anything else I should know?'

'I want to have the baby. None of this construction stuff. So call that part one - I gotta figure out how to either fit a baby-in-a-box or fabber unit under these abs.'

Another moment of silence. This time it was much longer, milliseconds perhaps, before Erika answered.

'Sorry. Apparently New York and Jersey has decided to invade Syskeyia. Had to devote some processing power to outcome predictions. Back to you now. Why would you want to do that? Unless you plan on having more. You are not thinking of doing that are you?'

'No! Well, maybe. I was considering doing both options and going for twins.'

'... I'm not going to say anything. If you want my advice I suggest starting with option one. It's an unexplored field and you would have a lot more fun developing it in my opinion.'

The two continued their discussion for hours of virtual time. While they did Katryna issued orders placing several engineers in a working group and had construction begin on a specialized research lab aboard Refuge. One with pastel wallpaper and a basinet.

----

"Check this out..."

The researcher picked up a pile of parts that was vaguely gun shaped and pointed it at a watermelon he had placed on a pillar.

"Now you have seen the plans for building an electromagnetic field compressor into the Totality-Class right? Make it smaller, hard to hit, etc?"

"Yeah. Someone figured out they couldn't do it with the velma after the fighter disentigrated. So?"

"Well I figure if we can do it on a starship level why not on a weapon level?"

"A shrink ray? You built a shrink ray? What is this, the 1930's?"

"EFC based weapon, thank you. Now watch..."

He pulled the trigger and the other researcher threw his arm up to shade his eyes as a brilliant beam of energy shot out of the weapon. With a wet 'ploink' sound the melon suddenly gained a somewhat oblong hole right through the center with a mushy mass held suspended in the center. The beam disappeared and the pulp expanded with a wet 'ploof' as it sprayed all over the table.

"Now it's going to need some work, but I figure we can submit as an infantry weapon. Maybe scale it up to capital weapon level."

"A pity you can't control it more. Make it so things don't go 'ploof' when you turn it off."

"Nothing stopping you. Maybe you could actually get some work done around here."

"Say, could I see that shrink ray for a minute?"

----

"Unity-Class. Basically we are looking at a lot of the technology used in action over Mars and building a ship around counter-measures. Both Order and Concordat. It will follow the same design scheme as the Totality-Class though we are looking to move production from the VLEMA to a second array located outside Ares once construction is completed."

'Katryna, have you ever thought about how odd this idea of yours is?'

'Whassat? What do you mean?'

'Think about it. How many sentients are able to remove their own brain, put it on their desk, and then rebuilt their own body using a second body. It's just weird. Oh - and so they can have a baby that will be a mix of biological and mechanical. Which will also be part elf.'

'Arn't we Mr. Conservative today Ambassador? Arn't you a penguin? Calling me weird...'

'It's easier for the weird to recognize the weird my dear. And you're it.'

----

"VEW/P MkI. That would be Variable Energy Weapon, Pistol, Mark One for the acronym challenged. Check this out..."

The presenter picked up a weapon clip from the table in front of him and threw it to one of the troops gathered for the demonstration.

"It's a rock."

"Right in one. It's a rock. Not even painted. Instead of using a traditional power cell the voop uses something called a CIDES unit to convert that to energy. Basically any similarly shaped object you can jam into the slot can be used to power the weapon. You could, if you needed to, use a clip from an enemy weapon to power your superior weapon."

He picked up another clip and stuck it into the weapon and pointed it down the range behind him. Taking aim he fired at first one target and then another each time with different effects. One burst into flames, one blew violently apart, and another turned into an expanding dust cloud.

"Variable. Default is a particle blast suitable for just about everything but you can change the setting both through the smartlink and manually via this slider. The slider has fewer options though. It's also..."

With a twist of the wrist he removed the barrel from the reciever and grip.

"Upgradeable and modular. If some bright chap figures out a way to make this thing make waffles we can re-issue new barrels without replacing the whole unit. Because these things are very expensive. Very, very expensive. Which brings up another point... Don't lose it. You can locate the weapon a number of different ways as well as perminently disable it a number of different ways. Try not to have to resort to either."

"All right boys and girls it's time to go over a new toy in the toybox. I know how much you all love toys!"

This was the planetary headquarters for the elite Sunset force known as '0 Division' and the instructor, one Major Jabardi, was getting ready to review a new system they would probably be putting to use shortly. Located on the planet known as 'Booty Bay' these elite squads were routinely familarized and issued the latest equipment months and sometimes years before the regular marines got access to it. It would likely be years if not decades before those outside the Triumvirate even knew it existed unless the unthinkable were to happen.

"This is the Reaver Daiklaive. It is fundamentally a major overhaul of the existing Diaklaive personal powered armor. This suit will fully replace your Daiklaive revision three and Grand Daiklaive revision two suits in the next two weeks. It is designed to fulfill the functions of both suits and work more effectively alongside UHCV's and combat androids. This suit will have three series that you will see in the field."

A holo of a large powered armor suit, black with cobalt blue and urban camoflage sections, appeared in the holosphere on the stage. Two aids also began to pass out what were essentially action figuresl: Miniature versions of the suits labelled with their major systems. Major Jabardi continued...

"Series one is the standard model: What each of you will be wearing in the field. Unlike previous models these suits have several built-in weapon systems as you can see. They also have eight of these ports which you can see on your models. These ports are dual purpose. They can serve as connection slots for optional equipment like additional sensors. They can also house one of several different types of small independent drones. These drones can be things like hovering anti-missile units, heavy weapons, or intelligence gathering devices.

By default all suits come with two spherical anti-missile drones and a single large heavy weapon 'pod' drone carried on the right shoulder. This 'pod' drone has a single large variable energy weapon and a missile launch system above it. While it is nominally fixed it can detact to move on it's own - a feature you should take advantage of!

Each suit also has standard flight capabilities as well as a new 'remote energy transmission' system that is used to provide auxiliary power to the drones and any melee weapons you might be carrying!"

The Major finished covering the details of Series 1 and moved on to Series 2 and 3.

"Series two is your friend when you need something stupidly risky done! It is basically a combat android version of the series one. It can also house a brain-box unit for cyborgs or a cyber-brain for AI's. No need to house a meatbag so more armor too. Remember that when you are deciding who to send through the door first.

Series three is the catch all. It covered specialty suits for trilats, quads, and other non-baseline sentients. Any questions?"

'Mom?'

There was a long wait this time. Almost toe-tappingly long in the time of virtual space.

'Sorry dear. I was finishing a meeting with some executives from CityDome. They need a place to put a few billion refugees long term.'

'Yes, the Mars thing. Any idea where to put them?'

'Well, Refuge flashed through my mind but it would be a last resort option. It might be needed for more urgent evacuations depending on how things go elsewhere. We could bring them here but there is the problem of bringing them back. The Senate still hasn't voted on the secrecy of Ares yet. I'll worry about it later though. What did you want?'

'I was just going to go over my results so far. How the development process is going...'

'Go ahead, I'm listening.'

'Well, I've built a fabber and designed some basic muscle, bone, and joint units that can be expanded to allow the body to 'grow'. But I've found that like the human brain the AI brain is harder to modify in that way. It tends to result in a seperate semi-sentient construct mind forming rather than an expansion of the original mind. I'm going to have to have the whole unit there on construction instead of an appropriately scaled unit at least for the time being.'

'While makes sense. Though you could try adding smaller units to the original - units not enough room for a full mind to form. Though that would increase the complexity needed for the fabber.'

'Speaking of which I've also got a problem with the power supply. During the 'pregnancy' power is supplied via the mother unit but I've thus far followed the packaging and not opened a CIDES unit up to find out how to fabricate one. This means installing it after the birth.'

'Not exactly the objective is it?'

'No. I'm wondering if this 'Will Cause Perminent Mental Defect if Opened' bit applies to AIs as well. I don't know how it could but I also don't know what is inside the box. I'm also worried about ordering an II to open it since examining what happpened would involve getting inside it's head. If it somehow corrupts the II it could spread across the system.'

'A good point. Perhaps the best idea would be to ask the engineers who designed them. Apparently they all went mad but they might have tested that question already. I'll see if I can track down a way to contact them.'

'Thanks Mom.'

"The audio portion of the attack is actually just a byproduct of the physical process. This visual distortion on the other hand... We are still not quite sure what causes that."

Images flowed across the holosphere as the researcher showed a clip of the shadowy creature stalking some prey in a simulated natural environment. When it had cornered the small pig it stopped and the green-black distortion appeared around it. For a moment the piglet froze before charging madly around the small clearing in the tall grass where it had been cornered. The scenes stopped and the researcher stepped into the sphere to walk around the pig.

"Something else we have noticed is that occasionally the creatures prey will panic like this - sometimes without the creature even being visible to it. Given that the attack is a directional attack on the electrical signals running through the brain it is possible that the creature has a second form of attack. One that induces fear or panic. We have been looking into this but as I said - it doesn't happen all the time."

The clip continued and the creature reared back and unleashed a terrible death wail at the piglet which immediately fell over. It's legs twitched wildly for a moment but then it was still and the creature moved over to begin feasting on it. As it did the shadowy aura fell away to reveal the creature again. A terrible imp-like form it almost skittered as it moved, fleshy spikes on it's back bobbing as muscled lumps that resembled vestigle wings rippled.

"The last question, and so far the hardest to answer, is 'Is it intelligent'? So far the answer is no but they seem to be possessed of a cruel, almost malicious animal cunning that likely served them well in their more hostile home habitat."

----

Even as the firestorms raged through the western continent where the silcon-based sentients has concentrated their power life began to re-appear behind it. Plants protected from the firestorm by falling debris, geography, or just plain luck began to grow and push fresh tentacles out into the ash-choked wastes. Wastes where beings still wandered.

Some were half-melted and maddened by the blasts while others were singular survivors, fortunate to have been deep in mines and in bunkers when the atomic fire ripped through the jungles that covered their world. Small villages formed and some individuals put down literal roots to stay alive while they waited for others to find them.

In the deep caves that served as hatcheries the chips and flakes of the dead began to re-build their crystaline matrix and think dark thoughts. They were not wholely unaware of what has happened on the surface. Nest guards, refugees, and visiting parents spread the word of the fire from the heavens.

In the primitive villages that had been on the verge of conquest tales were told as well of the salvation that fell from the sky. New cults and religions formed until the Path of the Burning Light came to unite most of the remaining villages and towns.

Once again war began to sweep their world as the Path sought to force all to the straight and narrow...

----

"There! In that puddle!"

For weeks the survey team had been crossing and re-crossing the dense marshes that covered this area of the planet in an attempt to catalog the native flora and fauna. Numerous times they had come across small ponds and large puddles where carefully woven reed nests had contained stocks of near-fish, fleshy plants, and what appeared to be tools of some kind. Though they had been careful any inhabitants had either fled or hidden carefully and they had been unable to observe any of these presumably sentient creatures.

"Where? Oh..."

The ensign was pointing at a long worm-like creature with a cluster of tentacles along it's hind length.

"Ensign - We've seen dozens of these things. These are not it."

"How many have you seen wearing a flute?"

The researcher looked again and sure enough, laced to a tentacle by a leather thong, was a short reed and wood flute. The creature looked at him for a moment, looked over at the ensign, and then dipped the rear of its body into the puddle and shook it around a bit. Waddling up onto the bank on a pair of thicker and flatter tentacles it took the flute and plunged it into the center of the tentacles.

"Is it..."

"Right in the ass Sir."

At least they were pretty sure it was the ass. They had seen them eating near-fish using a pair of the longer rear tentacles but they hasn't witnessed any waste disposal yet. Tentacles wrapped around the flute and it puffed itself up a little and began to play. Warbling music wafted through the marsh as well as a very unique smell. As the two stood there watching and listening the tones began to repeat.

"Do you..."

"Think its talking? Yes. With a butt-flute? Yes."

"Excuse me..."

The ensign ran from the village again; nearly stepping on several young 'hooters as he headed for a cluster of reeds. The two researchers as well as the remaining ensign could all hear him retching back there but paid little attention. The elder - they guessed it was an elder since it was very wrinkled - had begun to play again and they were carefully recording it.

Creating a translation profile between two human or near-human species was usually easy. Members of the subject species would speak normally and the software would recognize sentence structure and words based on environmental interaction. In the first few days there would be the odd mis-step but after several weeks the translator would be nearly perfect. In this case not only was the target species not even close to human but their language apparently changed depending on who was playing it.

Add the very unique and unpleasant smell and it was becoming very difficult for the researchers to concentrate on their work for long periods. They had tried translating human basic into the language of the 'hooters but they had been forced to move to this village after apparently offending the previous village.

The elder stopped playing and looked up at them. The translation that came over their helmet speakers was very rough but was basically 'who are you and why are you standing in my garden?'.

"Oh, excuse me."

Shuffling into another patch of what looked like mostly identicle churned mud they started the recorder again and pointed at various objects. The goal wasn't the traditional 'I'm Bill, and you are...?' but to get a wide sampling of speech (or music in this case) to give the translation software more to work with.

----

"Madness!"

"It's perfectly safe. If the localized repulsion field, the outer electro-magnetic field, and the inner field all fail there is still the suit armor to protect you while you transfer yourself to another device."

"Another device? Abandon my chassis? Do you see these feathers? Armani!"

Katryna looked at the Ambassador for a moment then sighed.

"Fine then. Don't test out the Lava Penguin for me. So what if you can sling fireballs around and burn things to a crisp with a touch. If those feathers are that important to you I'll just have a flat II core installed instead."

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

The scene is that of a white marble courthouse. A reporter stands on the steps with people flowing up and down the broad steps around him. It seems real until one notices that there are no unattractive people and no bad hair days.

"Despite the overall success of our law enforcement departments in preventing and solving crime there is a small section of the population that produces most of our reported criminal activity: Young adults. The reasons for this are varied but are generally unpreventable. Thrills, jealousy, and greed are the common motives and indeed the common motives for many of the activities of older, more mature, adults. But what discourages these young offenders from repeating their crimes?

I'm here today to review that process with Judge Malcolm McDowell. He is one of the most experienced judges in the New Hanover Juvenile Justice Division."

The scene fades between the courthouse and a well appointed office. The reporter takes a set in a chair opposite a middle aged man with flecks of grey at his temples.

"Judge McDowell, would you take us through the punishment process?"

"Certainly. As you know most youth crimes committed in Sunset are crimes involving personal property - theft, vandalism, and similar. Once the individual is caught, and nearly everyone is, they are brought here to undergo a standard trial. Once their guilt has been established we go on a little shopping trip. The value of the item stolen is established and multiplied by three. That is now the amount the criminal owes the individual or individuals they committed the crime against.

Unlike certain societies we believe that victims should not be re-victimized by a failure to repay the losses. Thus this amount is levied as both repayment and a measure of compensation for their time and involvement. The next step is to determine how the criminal will repay that amount. This is usually a cooperative process between myself, the criminal, and the victim. Some criminals have jobs and can simply pay it off as a regular monthly bill. Others do not or do not have a job that could allow them to reasonably pay off this debt.

In these cases the labor of the individual is often sold by the victim to one of several large companies that need unskilled labor for various projects. In most cases the labor is relatively easy and is quickly completed. Occasionally however we will run into someone who has either incurred a debt too large for a normal job or who is unwilling to work to repay their debt. In these cases we have several specialty firms we call on. They have need for labor under more... adverse conditions.

If the prospect of laboring in a boiling desert clearing alien cacti doesn't change their minds they often change them quickly enough once they are placed into the environment and realize the fastest way out is to work as quickly as possible."

----

Katryna hummed to herself as she worked. Laying on two side-by-side workbenches were two clones of herself with their guts strewn all over the place. Electro-plastic 'bones', myomer clusters, and cabling 'nerves' were scattered around the labratory and she often shoved them aside with a foot as she walked around the two chassis.

"What I've done is modified this version of 'me' with a miniature fabrication unit of my own design in the abdomen. I also modified the structure to reflect the physical changes that happen in a woman when she is pregnant - enlarged breasts and some weight gain. I also modified the pelvis to allow 'normal' birthing of the 'child' if that's what I want."

"And what about the pain of normal childbirth? Do you have a unit to simulate that as well?"

This time there was no communications lag because her mother was there. A Dawn-Class Dreadnought carrying her had made the jump to the current location of Refuge an hour ago and she had been given the tour before ending up here.

"I'm cheating a little - most women don't endure the pain now either."

"Technically most women don't have children. The Baby-In-A-Box unit in the closet does that."

"Stiil - there are some. That's the 'baby android' chassis. This one is the 'cyborg baby' chassis and I'm not even close to done there. The structural changes are easy but the question of just how much of the child will be cybernetic as opposed to flesh is still up in the air. I've made modifications to the sexual organs to allow DNA extraction but how it will 'make' the baby is up in the air."

http://www.sunsetrpg.com/images/COREStationSmall.jpg

"A maintenance ring?" Erika asked her daughter Katryna incredulously. The construct in the holosphere was a little larger than a simple ring. By her calculations it was more massive than Refuge itself.

Katryna didn't look up - she had designed it with the help of her engineering team and knew it inside and out - but continued to tinker with the guts of one of her mechanical 'clones'.

"It's ambitious, sure, but I think the construction can be completed using just the resources of Refuge. With some modification of the existing structure in Elsewhere this can be the primary trans-shipment point as well as Fleet base."

"Fleet base? Each of these docking arms has enough umbilicals for two Battle Groups. Eight multi-hundred cubic kilometer drydocks? We don't even make ships larger than a kilometer. You do realize the total construction and maintenance capacity of the station is enough to house the entire TYCS?"

"That's kinda the point. Refuge is the ultimate evacuation vessel and it needs to have somewhere to evacuate that population to as well as someplace for evacuation ships to repair and rebuild. Given that the TYCS has the largest lift capacity the eventuality should be prepared for."

"And how long is this little project of yours expected to take?"

"Six decades, give or take."

----

"Aim... Fire!"

Twenty one bolts of cyan energy streaked skyward in salute and the marines and naval officers snapped their weapons back to attention. This was repeated seven times in the small cemetary in southern Ares and thousands of times throughout Sunset as they honored those who had died in the service of their country.

"For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb; and in lands far from their own, where the column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart."

For an instant space around the SDF Colorado tore itself apart as the complex fields emitted and manipulated by the tesseract drive deep in her hull moved her from a position hundreds of lightyears away to her new location. Space snapped back to normal if one could describe normal as deep in a stellar nebula laced with streamers of blue and green gases slowly pinwheeling towards the center.

"Put it onscreen..."

Captain Victoria Chalmers straightened in her command chair then stood, as did several of her crew, as the object in the center of the nebula appeared on the central display. There had been a briefing but until she saw it with her own eyes she had mentally relegated it to the realm of imagination and disbelief. Now it floated in front of her ship and her eyes swept over it trying to take it all in.

Plasma flowed lazily in dense strands of blue around the vast curving toroid that both dominated and slowly consumed the nebula. In the center was a vast opening the size of a typical blue-white star and inside of that...

"Secondary display - close up of one of the stations..."

Another display appeared alongside the primary with a singular looking station - assuming it was a station - floating in the middle. It looked like a titanic Y and from the viewing angle they could all see the titanic constrained star slowly churning behind it. Whisps of plasma which were really flares thousands of kilometers long whipped off the toroid but never connected as it somehow continued to control and move the energy of the massive near-star.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Ghostly at first but then perfectly solid another person, a rather bland looking human male, appeared next to her. Turning to him she extended a hand and they shook with the manipulated hologram transmitting the crushing grip she knew was that of a cyborg.

"Captain Andorov. As you know the Dawnward discovered this object just about three days ago. I'm somewhat suprised SEC has dispatched a second ship already."

Chalmers knew why the Colorado had been dispatched though she tried to be polite about it. The Dawnward was a Venture-Class vessel. No -A, and especially not a -E like the Colorado was. It's mission to explore this region of space had started before anyone except some elves on her crew had been born. Refits were one thing but for something of this magnitude the capabilities of her ship, not six months done with it's shakedown cruise, would be needed.

"Well yes. For something of this magnitude Command wanted to make the best possible equipment avaliable to your crew in it's studies of the object."

"We are to be staying here then... Good. My crew has been concerned that you would come to replace us. To be frank Captain, this is our chance to be recalled and re-posted to something besides charting star systems in the Orion arm. I'd like my crew to take the lead on this as much as possible with your crew providing the technical expertise on the newer systems."

She thought about this a moment and then realized that Andorov was in the middle of her bridge. A quick check of the datastream from the Dawnward and she realized why - Andorov had subtly set the verbal component of the datastream to route to her only after his greeting. She was hearing this in her head thanks to the datajack lodged in her skull while her crew thought the two captains were simply standing silently enjoying the view.

There was enough glory in this for both crews if they found something significant. The fact that both ships were floating several million kilometers away from a toroidial confined star was significant enough for every member of their combined crews to get a major find noted on their records. It would probably also go down rather well on her record if she deferred to the more experienced Andorov as long as she clearly kept up with him.

"Certainly. I've served my stint on survey as well and I know how it is."

"Excellent."

The person-to-person link severed and he spoke aloud to the whole bridge crew.

"Let's stop sight-seeing and get down to work then. I've asked my XO to take care of liasons with your crew on my side and I've prepared a briefing on what we've learned so far."

"Ma'kam?" Chalmers looked over at her executive officer. The grey-blue aquanoid looked over to her and nodded. "I'll take care of that as well."

"Then let's see that briefing Captain. Lt. Westfield? You have the bridge."

Chalmers took her seat as the hologram of Captain Andorov faded away. There was no movement towards the door as instead every crew member who wished to view the briefing leaned back and closed their eyes as they faded into the shipwide network.

----

Like Andorov the meeting chamber was plain and decidedly unlike the open Greek ampitheatre she preferred with it's view of the Aegean and mossy broken marble columns. This could be unfavorably compared to a middle school gymnasium filled with folding chairs. She was sitting dead center with the chief science officers from both ships flanking her and the rest of those crew who were interested spread out by division and rank until the last row where the enlisted technicians sat with their feet up on the chairs in front of them popping chewing gum.

Andorov walked onto the stage and nodded quickly before beginning. A large image of the near-star appeared on the screen though from a different angle. The massive blue-white strands were flowing faster than she had observed and flares flickered out like bolts of lightning in a midwestern sky indicating this was a time-lapsed recording.

"The object we have here appears to be either a 'starter' star or possibly a whole artificial constructed object that fills the function of a star. If it was a 'new' star it has been seperated and constrained to this toroid presumably by these stations which you will observe on the interior edge of the toroid. It is also possible that they were built and started the build process themselves. Either way the technology involved is extremely advanced and only theoretically possible using our own especially on this scale."

"We have already determined four things about this object. First that the stations cannot have orginated inside this nebula. The few scans, and I'll get to that in a minute, that we have been able to take of the hulls of these craft have been less than detailed. These have indicated metals that are not found in any concentrations if at all in this area."

"Second this object is moving. Or more properly changing it's shape. Though it is hard to determine from the time-lapse image we have here we jumped a probe out about three hundred lightyears and observed it there. Noting the subtle changes in shape we moved it inward and you can see the changes here."

The image changed to that of the nebula as a whole slowly growing larger as the probe was moved closer and closer. The toroid appeared to twist subtly and slightly within until the image was that of the object in it's current state.

"What we don't know yet is whether the star is changing shape based on it's own changing gravity fields or whether the stations are initiating these changes. Given the technology involved we think that the stations could keep the star in one particular shape and we are unsure as to why they do not. Which leads to three."

"The nebula itself is being subjected to not only the subtle gravity field of the toroidial star but also to a wide ranging and shifting gravity field emitted by the stations themselves. Gravity maps of the nebula show distinctive lines of force coming from the station and slowly pulling the nebula into the star. These are not the only manipulated energy fields coming from the stations however. We have determined that these streamers of gas spiralling into the toroid are being created, subtly, by the stations though we are unsure as to how."

"Finally we know that the star is dying. Not rapidly, but we have studied old images of this area of space from Terran sources and determined that the nebula is shrinking rapidly on a stellar scale. If the current rate of consuption continues the nebula, and thus presumably the fusionable matter that powers the system, will be gone in approximately thirty thousand years."

The briefing continued as Chalmers and the rest of the crews took notes, disgested the information, and occasionally asked questions. The one question to which there was no answer and which was on everyone's tongue was 'who?'

"We don't know. Construction style comparison has drawn similarities between the C'tan, Kal-En-Venshos, and even Menelmacari building styles. Unfortunately they seem to have some kind of sensor baffle system in place and we have been unable to take a deeper look. Hopefully the systems on the Colorado will be able to punch through it. We also haven't been able to detect any communications attempts using any known methods though again we hope to make some progress there. On that note let's end the briefing and get to work."

----

Chalmers sat up in her chair as the briefing ended. The object was still on the screen through Lt. Westfield had set one secondary display to a tactical display of the area while the other showed various nearby planetary systems as he poured through the Dawnward's databases. He was running a metalurgical analysis by the looks of it - he had probably been listening in on the briefing and was looking for possible sources for the stations.

"Captain..."

"Continue your work Lieutenant. Conn?"

"Yes Ma'am?"

"Time for a closer look. Take us in!"

WyldStryke fighters were the cream of the crop when it came to aerospace fighter craft or at least that's what Captain McMichaels had believed until four hours ago. His craft, capable of taking on and destroying any similar sized combatant, had been systematically outperformed by this new Aggressor (http://www.sunsetrpg.com/images/SDFAggressor.jpg). In open flight and confined spaces it darted around like a hummingbird while it constantly lashed out at him with it's variable energy weapons. Hit after hit was scored by the simulation computer while he had been able to 'destroy' it only a handful of time.

Perhaps it was time to put in for a transfer...

----

"Test log for project Ghost Dragon, unit testing for E-Drive miniaturization, test three nine two four..."

Katryna looked out over the two forward, as yet uncompleted, mandibles of CORE station to where a tiny platform floated between the two in the vast grey emptyness of Elsewhere. The two forward arms would eventually house a large number of energy projection and manipulation arrays for use in large scale experiments but for now only two were operational. Attached to the slowly thickening spiderweb that was the station's expanding frame they were perfect for this situation.

"Starting test..."

There was a brief crackle as energy surged through the unit centered on the platform before the whole thing suddenly exploded from a pinprick of light to a glare that caused the screen to slightly polarize.

"Test failed. Dispatching recovery units and storing test data for later analysis."

She knew 'why' the test had failed already. Miniaturizing the E-Drive - the field generator that allowed ships to move into Elsewhere, through it, and out again, had proved to be an unstable undertaking. Her fellow scientists, some of the brightest minds from across Sunset, Ravenspire, and other Triumvirate nations, assured her that it could be done but that manipulating that large of scale of energy on such a small scale was unstable. She was determined to make it stable and viable for use on single-man powered armor.

Unfortunately she also had a lot of other things to do as well. She had decided to move into active testing of one of her new chassis and the thing growing in her belly required a lot of new materials. While she was eating she could review the test data or she could review the design specifications on the Singularity-Class design or she could read the huge amount of back logged new species data from the SEC. So much to do before her nightly call to her mother to see how the rest of the nation was doing.

----

The Colorado nosed closer under the careful guidance of her helmsman as the combined crews looked on. Over the last several days she had carefully and cautiously closed the distance to one of the stations inside the torus. Close was relative for something of this scale. Each of the stations was the size of a large moon or small planetoid but even at a range of three AU details were hard to make out.

On their scans the hull looked... fuzzy. The twin sensor arrays of the Colorado linked to the arrays of the Dawnward and carefully filtered by the computer system had only slightly sharpened the images.

"As near as I can tell something is constantly emitting interference around the hull of the stations Captain. We've tried to have the computer match and filter the main emissions but these appear to be secondary and completely random."

"Keep at it. Captain Andorov?"

Chalmers moved away from the sensor station where the young officer was working away in growing frustration. He was off duty shortly though and Chalmers knew it was best to just let him work through it. She had encountered her own frustrations moving through the ranks and it had made her who she was today.

Captain Andorov was a lot different in the flesh. The hologram had been manipulated to make him slightly less creepy. He was an old-school cyborg with metal bits showing here and there and the occasional diagnostic light flashing under his uniform. The weapon scanners had gone nuts when he had shuttled over from the Dawnward and she had taken a look at his personnel record. Ex-marine, wounded in action and volunteered for partial cybernetic reconstruction, transfered to SEC after three decades of classified operations work with an excellent record.

He was now standing stiffly behind the operations officer while his adjuct, a bored looking trilat, sat at a secondary station. All three were looking over the operating specifications for a standard shuttle like the one that had brough him aboard and the technician was tinkering with various simulated power settings.

"I think we might want to dispatch a shuttle directly to this station for a closer and hopefully more detailed inspection Captain. Your technician tells me that it has a good chance of surviving the trip and landing a remote probe directly on the hull.

"Yes..." the technician, a young woman from the engineering section, said as she fiddled. "But I'm unsure as to whether the QE link will be maintained. Running a quick simulation showed that the systems maintaining the QE commlink aboard the shuttle might be disrupted by the fields emitted by the station. The same also seems to apply to a comm laser, conventional radio, and possibly the drone telepathy used by the Kal-En-Venshos."

"Nasty stuff..." muttered the trilat, Lt. Commander U'wanna'tak, before looking up at Chalmers. "I would be willing to dispatch one of my drones however if my command is severed it may malfunction in a variety of ways."

"We could also dispatch a single sentient operator but the risks to them at this point are unacceptable. A non-sentient probe seems the best option at this point Captain - we just need to determine how." Andorov said.

Chalmers nodded. "Why don't we get our engineering heads together and let the tech guys bash something out? Ensign, make sure you send the simulation data over to the sensor station. That QE interference data might help him sort it out."

"I already did Captain. I'm not sure it helped at all actually."

"Blinking lights?"

Chalmers looked at the engineering techs who were gathered around the probe all of whom nodded and looked back at her like she was some odd alien animal.

"A light array Captain. We are mounting these sixty four lights on the outside of the probe which we can use to relay information back to us at a rate of sixty four BPS."

"That's blinks per second."

The techs giggled and Chalmers sighed. It was time for some rest but she wanted to stay up and try to make some early progress. Andorov had already retired for the night though and she didn't want to make him look bad.

'Better to get the rest now so we are both on an even footing when we start tomorrow...'


Fitfull dreams had filled her sleep. Dreams of ghosts calling out to her from the depths and beyond them the star. Then in the midst of it all had been a whistle. A whistle which had blown and blown until she woke up and realized that it was an alert coming through the comm system in her room.

"Chalmers here. What is it?" Sitting up she pulled a robe on and looked at the clock. It was still effectively the middle of the night.

"Medical bay Captain. We've got Captain Andorov here."

"What's going on?" The robe dropped to the floor and she began pulling on her duty uniform.

"He came in an hour ago with a brutal headache. Apparently he'd been up all night with one until it became painful. Once we got him in we found that he's getting some kind of random interference from his cybernetics. I finally had to sedate him just now Captain."

Walking into the medical bay minutes later Captain Chalmers found the night shift doctor standing next to a bed where Andorov lay, apparently unconcious. Standing next to the doctor was an engineering tech who was going over something on the holosphere display next to the bed.

"...from the cybernetics but from an outside source. No suspicion needed - it's probably the star or the stations. We've been steadily getting closer throughout the night and you say his headaches have been getting worse. Normally cybernetics like these are really well sheilded against outside interference but these are second and third gen stuff. Civilian quality nowadays. Captain."

The doctor, Sihg if she remembered right, and the tech turned to her as she walked up and peered over their shoulders. The holosphere held a map of Andorov's cybernetics with technical formula next to each that she recognized as signal strength and frequency.

"And none of the shipboard systems seem to be affected?"

"Yes and no. All navigational and tactical systems are fine. One of the other guys has been running diagnostic tests for the last few minutes and nothing seems out of sorts. And it's not affecting current generation cybernetics or else I wouldn't be listening to him right now either. However it does seem to be affecting our sensor systems more than it was at our first position."

The tech paused for a moment and the holosphere switched to a technical readout on the information currently being received by the sensor arrays.

"They are still looking at the initial station and the images are more distorted than previously in all spectrums. The random interference seems to have increased as we have gotten closer. In fact when we tried to increase our active output to compensate it jumped even more. Right now we are running the array at minimal output and it's looking better but still getting worse as we approach."

"Which means for Captain Andorov we can either back off, send him to the Dawnward, or find a way to shield his cybernetics."

Doctor Sihg looked over at his patient and nodded. "Yes Captain. Though I'd rather replace those old clunkers anyway. I don't have some of those particular implants in stock but until engineering can build them I can always disable them. Especially that imbedded field manipulator..."

"Yeah. The diags show that it's the largest source of interference for whatever reason. I'd like to pull that out of him and play around with it and see why myself."

Chalmers nodded. "A good idea. I'm going back to bed, but I'd like recommendations as to the best course of action when I get up. The most important thing here is Captain Andorov so if you can figure out how to get his input you have my permission to take reasonable measures to do so."

----

"...test completed. Closing test log three nine seven six and transferring test data to analysis systems."

Katryna sat back with a satisfied grin on her face. That had been the fourth successful test of the miniaturized E-drive unit and it was looking more and more like a fully stable unit. She would run a few hundred more for statistical purposes but they wouldn't need the re-manufacture and setup time that the others had needed. She hoped.

"Bring up the Ghost Dragon chassis in design mode. And bring me my evening meal."

Mentally she set to work on the chassis for the new powered armor. Other designers had been working on it as well in the last week and she could recognized the characteristic design styles of most of them. Thus she knew who needed a little extra checking and what parts could be ignored or only minorly checked just by looking at them. She wanted the Ghost Dragon in full production in a few months - several upcoming operations could use the advantage it would provide.

----

Despite the massive power projection, logistical capabilities, situation analysis, and political and personal acumen possessed by the Triumvirate of Yut and her member nations sometimes all they could do is clean up afterward.

Five ships, a Venture-E and four Cohort-V's, appeared in orbit above the blue-green world in a sleet of radiation that was exceeded and in fact dominated by the radiation crawling through the atmosphere of the planet below. Point defense systems flashed as pinpoint particle beams vaporized the satillites in nearby orbits with good reason. Over the horizon a trio of orbital weapon satillites launched their remaining nuclear missiles at the intruders which promptly destroyed them as they entered line of sight.

The planet below had been a world of billions. Nations had risen and grown, trade had crisscrossed the globe, and civlization had slowly risen until... Until one nation with a grievance, petty or serious, against another had lashed out with first conventional forces then nuclear weapons until the whole world was drawn into the conflict.

There had been nothing the SDF could have done. The survey ship had arrived as the conflict was ending and the last mushroom clouds were slowly drifting away on the winds. Fallout had already ruined most of the farmland and every major city on the planet was a fallen ruin. The orbital survey had only found enough infrastructure left to assure the survivors a lingering death. Extinction was possible though that didn't matter much. Help was dispatched and the survivors would make their first contact with alien life under the most adverse situation possible.

Salvation for the lucky few.

"Ma'dam President?"

Erika looked up from her desk at the unexpected interuption. An underling - the liason officer from SDFIntelligence - was leaning through her half-open door with a folder in her hand.

"Come in. What is it?"

The liason crossed to her desk and opened the folder, marked 'Ultraviolet' in front of her.

"Communications from Sol section Ma'am. We are picking up increased signal traffic and miltary activity from a previously inactive sector and we thought you might want to take a look at it."

Erika read for a moment and then pushed the folder away. The liason snapped it up and closed it.

"AMF and the Five Kingdoms are going at it. Which seems to indicate that the Five Kingdoms have emerged from their civil war. The Ardans have been inactive for a very long time and we've been somewhat lax in our monitoring of them. This and reports of cross-traffic with the Ordo... Perhaps we should use this opportunity to renew our intelligence efforts on that front.

Send a message back to Sol division that they will be allocated more resources to use in upgrading the monitoring status for Arda. Give them select access to Intel assets that are currently in Ares as well as experienced operations assets that can be re-assigned from our extra-solar missions. And make sure my daughter contacts me as soon as she has reviewed this."

"Yes Ma'am."

----

Katryna Silaco was understandably busy at the moment. The birth of her baby hadn't been painful but it had been long and there had been complications. Though having engineers there to repair the damages was quite different from the normal biological method. She had been walking her labratory with her baby boy on her hip when the information from Sol division had come through and she continued to walk among her many experiments in progress as it was read to her.

"Stop playback. Insert a note here to deploy assets specifically to gather information about the native animal life of the Five Kingdoms. This should be relayed to fabrication for production of native-specific IntelX products. It should not be assumed that our information is current though a limited run based on standing information is acceptable."

Continuing through the report she kept making notes concerning one aspect or another. The important work would happen in the field in a few days however. This electronic intelligence was a good foundation but without confirmation from assets on the ground as well as their interpritation of the data it was just nearly useless numbers.

When she finished the report she walked over to the crib and put Eryk - named for her mother - down for a nap. Though a nap wasn't the proper term. It was a chance to recharge his internal power supply as well as dispose of waste material.

----

"Let's finish this system up quickly people. I've just gotten orders for us to return to Ares for some refit and shore leave!"

Smiles spread around the SDF Yaulo River. Re-survey missions were not fun. They weren't even boring. It was one of the most miserably dull missions an explorer could draw and it was strongly rumored punishment or revenge duty for something a command officer had or hadn't done. Their job was to visit systems previously surveyed in the past fifty years or so, re-establish the local network of communications and survelliance satillites, do a quick check for any secret bases or visits from friendly or rival exploratory assets, then move on.

Given the SDF had the largest exploration arm of any of the Triumvirate services and the Triumvirate had the largest space arm of any Sol-based nation it was highly unlikely they would find or do more than lob more satillites into orbit. A chance at R&R was relished by all aboard.

Once the Yaulo River pulled into orbit around Ares though it found itself in a line of sorts. Dozens of other SDF starships, from explorers to recovery to warships, had been recalled to Ares for hurried refits. Variable weapon mounts were bodily removed and replaced by units taken from ships further up on the assembly line and refitted with new modules. Headlining these was a new particle module from Tiburon with the rather long acronym of UHEQGR.

----

Like many of the other pilots who had put in for a transfer to an Aggressor squadron, Captain McMichaels withdrew the request when he learned he wouldn't be seeing any cockpit time in the new remote-operated fighter. Despite it's age the WyldStryke was still a superior fighter and he wanted a chance to go stick-to-stick with an opponent rather than the simulated danger of a remote cockpit. Unlike Aggressor pilots the pilots of the new GhostDragon powered armor suits were getting plenty of time in the chassis...

"I show two targets inside. Range is thirty meters, no clutter... Activating e-drive for a tactical jump!"

Bursting from cover the medium armor suit known as 'GhostDragon' raced forward before disappearing in a shimmer of energy. A moment later it re-appeared inside the structure facing the two hostiles. Forearm weapons blazed and they disappeared in a cloud of metallic debris before the walls behind them blew out as well. More GhostDragon units exploited the holes to enter the breached structure and began sweeping room to room using their stealth and e-drive abilities liberally.

Most of the operators, all members of the elite '0' division, stuck to the weapon systems provided by the suit but some carried portable heavy weaponry as well. These were usually heavy projectile weapons such as autocannon and rocket launchers that would suppliment the variable rifles built into each forearm.

So far in the testing there had not been any malfuctions of the cylinder-shaped e-drives that projected off the back of the armor but these were still carefully watched by Katryna's handpicked technical team. As the GhostDragons returned to their maintainence bays the stubby cylinders were detached and readied for future disassembly and testing.

Most of the comments concerning the suits themselves were positive though they all contained some caution or suggestion concerning one system or another. The most common negative was the shift between here and there and the gray expanse that spread out while they jumped. It was disconcerting and the men and women who wore the suit felt it needed to be changed.

----

CORE Station, Elsewhere...

Gantrys and frameworks sprawled along one of the middle sections of the skeletal station like veins surrounding an organ. This would become one of eight massive docking bays and the scale was already apparent. Fully inside the framework and docked with one of the few complete drydock facilities was a massive multi-kilometer frieghter that was in turn dwarfed by the maze of gantries surrounding it. Pre-fabricated sections of the docking bay were being unloaded by a small army of construction drones that then whisked them away to be welded into place.

----

"One of the issues we are seeing with the bio-cyberware units is a certain amount of randomness to their placement and internal structure. One of the benefits of the human genome was it's flexibility but that seems to be a drawback in this instance. Because there is no 100% uniform placement or configuration of the bio-cyberware it is making it more difficult for our doctors to diagnose and correct problems as they arise. A lot of the work is being done on the spot without a definative plan in place.

This has led to some complications and in one case the death of a subject. I'm recommending we proceed cautiously as this could be problematic if someone raises ethics concerns."

The director raised an eyebrow and looked across the table at the lead researcher.

"Wouldn't that be futile at this point Doctor? We seem to be, according to your own report, ready for sentient experimentation and application. Is there something specific that would lead you to believe that an ethical debate in the media is coming? Or at least a larger debate than already exists?"

"Nothing concrete, but an image of a dead baby is a powerful one, even if the baby wasn't strictly speaking human. Show that to a group of parents and they will be screaming for some kind of controls on our experiments."

"Which the government will not put in place. We all know our government is far too liberal for that to happen. But a media frenzy is bad for stock prices and capital investment. It might be a good idea to cover our butts a little and start working on some 'life saving' implants. Get the media on our side quick if it looks like something is going to happen."

Sunset Defense Technologies Quarterly
The ONLY Official SDF Technologies Newsletter!

It's a big issue this quarter and there is a lot of ground to cover. No need to fill space this time so lets get cracking!
~The Editor

>Martian Forces Recieve New Assault Craft
In it's continued buildup of Martian forces the SDF has begun to deploy a new upgraded model of Liquid Design Corp's Mk38 GravShip (http://www.sunsetrpg.com/images/SDFMk38r5.jpg) to planetside marine divisions. The craft, designated Mk39 (http://www.sunsetrpg.com/images/SDFMk39.jpg), incorporates all of the standard and latest SDF technologies including variable cannon and tubes for tactical HDMs. The standard r1 model is a marine transport gunship with a two-armored-platoon capacity. Rumors of an r2 model in development hint at a heavy transport model designed around orbital insertion of the new 'Bulldog' Heavy GravTank as well as a mounting system for TYCS-standard Loki pods.

>'Bulldog' in Final Design Testing
Speaking of the 'Bulldog' (http://www.sunsetrpg.com/images/SDFHoverTank.jpg), we've obtained a picture of this monster in operational testing at a research complex known only as 'Rime'. Weighing in at 1,473 tons this thing looks to be a levithan but our source says it handles like a kitten. Apparently there are mounts on the underside for something called an 'E-Drive' but our source couldn't find out anything except that Special Projects was somehow involved. If this thing already handles like a kitten maybe this new drive will make it more like a hummingbird!

>Outlaw Biker... Marines?
Yet another toy (http://www.sunsetrpg.com/images/SDFHoverBike.JPG) for marine scout units... Though our rumors say that this one is already undergoing a redesign based on field duty. Our question is: What field duty? Take a look at the Deployment Section and you'll notice a lack of known combat deployments which means we don't know something. Trust me, we'll find out!

"...what in the hell do you think you're doing doing there Corporal?"

The marine shot to his feet, the crude object that he had...

"Are you... That's just gross kid. Really, really gross."

"Well I thought that if we tried to communicate with them in the same manner it might make it..."

"By shoving a wooden flute up your ass?!"

The sergeant looked down at the wooden flute and gingerly nudged it over with his foot. It wasn't all wood apparently - there were was the glint of metal around the 'mouthpiece' and the valves had been covered by a quick and dirty system of servo-controlled valve covers. Perversely, his attention focused on the 'mountpiece', or properly in the case of these aliens and the inventive corporal, the buttpiece, and it's odd shape.

"Did you... How did you decide on that particular shape..."

"Measured it sir. Carved the whole thing myself outta native wood last night on the Euphrates then had De Haan in engineering help me with the valves and DNI..."

'Oh Lord, what have I done to deserve your humor?' Sergeant Yuang silently thought. "Well..." He certainly didn't want to admit it but the idea was sound. Soundly disgustly too. "All right. But I'm gonna have you assigned over to research and get someone else in here to replace you on security. Don't ever, ever, ever let me catch you playing that thing in front of me either. Ever."

"Yes sir..."

The corporal picked up his instrument and shook some of the mud and water off it. Hitching his pants back up he walked over to where the researchers had set up their instruments in the village. Yuang watched as the corporal explained the purpose of the device and two of the researchers dropped their instruments right in the mud. Yuang was no bigot and he loved seeing new alien species just as much as the next guy but there were certain things a man just didn't do.

'...and jamming a bio-mechanical flute up yer kester just isn't one of em!'

'Alright, fan out and keep your ears open... Report anything unusual, anything.'

Virtual nods all around and the section broke up into three teams which began to press their way carefully through the ruins. Frontline exploration was fun and interesting for the science types that got to poke around in the ruins after the marines cleared them, but for the marines it was tense and a little nerve-wracking. Ensign Araceli Moreno knew the same stories as everyone else and she wasn't exactly thrilled with Lt. Taylor for assigning her to lead the clear instead of doing it his own damn self. It also didn't help much that she had the joy of working with four of the new-model HitMarks (http://www.sunsetrpg.com/images/SDFHitMark.jpg) on one of their first live missions. Who knew what kind of quirks they still had to work out?

'Guinea pigs, gotta love it...'

'What was that Ma'am?'

'Nothing. Press on marine.'

Moreno looked over at her 'partner', one of the afor-mentioned HitMarks, and moved slowly down the rubble cluttered hallway. It was a pretty good bet that whatever civilization had built these was long gone and that the only inhabitants were the local psuedo-primates. All the orbital survey had found on the northern continent were ruins deep in the central jungle. All of the native cities were clustered along a wide grassland on the southern continent except for a series of fortress strongholds across the narrow penninsula that seperated the two.

Crouching as she moved, rifle forward, she stepped around and over fallen and crumbled stone covered with moss and fungus analogs. Behind her the HitMark clumped up to cover her while mimicing her movements. The combat android was designed to learn from it's environment but she still felt it unnerving to watch it exactly follow the marine in front of it. Except of course where it did the job better and far more carefully.

Ahead the hallway opened onto a central courtyard. A fountain, statue, or some kind of decoration sat in a sunken pit to one side with an array of chairs or stools facing it. At one time the ceiling had been open to the sky but now it was nearly completely overgrown with jungle vines and creepers. The arrival of the marines and their noisy assault shuttle had silenced the local wildlife but now they were active again. Several swung, crawled, and skittered through the overgrowth with accompanying cries.

'Unit one, move into the chamber and place yourself to cover the eastern entry. Unit two, western entry. Go.'

Her HitMark and the second in her team moved into the chamber swinging back and forth as they covered various entrances and ambush points with their forearm weapons. As they crossed there was a low noise from the eastern hallway and the sounds of something moving. Hanging vines and rubble obscured whatever it was and Moreno switched to thermal while she trained her rifle on it. It was tall, about two and a half meters hunched over, and as it shouldered it's way through the hanging vines several caught on the long boney blades that wrapped around it's shoulders before tearing away and bringing a small cascade of debris down on it.

Roaring it looked upward only to recieve a second dose right in the face. Enraged it leapt sideways into the chamber where it's full form became evident. It resembled at least the natives on the southern continent. Except for the scything bone blades that jutted from shoulder, forearm, and thigh and the decidedly savage look on it's face that was. There were more noises in the hallway and a dozen more hunched shapes emerged from behind rubble and piles of vines.

'Well I guess we know why they moved south. Bad neighborhood.'

Sunset Population Breakdown (3660AFY/3/2134AFM)
Location and Population Summary Covering Locations with a Population of 10,000,000+ Sentients.

The Martian Territories:
With the removal of the population cap for the Martian Territories the population has risen steadily. Much of the growth has resulted from the absorbtion of the New ArAreBee territories and the flood of citizenships granted to the inhabitants of these areas. This, combined with the steadily decreasing population of these territories, has resulted in Sunset citizenry making up a larger and larger portion of that population. Combined with the current population of the home territories, approximately 1.6 billion, this brings the overall Martian population to just under 2 billion sentients.

Phobos and Diemos combined add only twenty million to this total with most being naturalized Ravenspire expatriots.

Sslaa IV:
Because of the uncertainties regarding the Antaran situation the colony on Sslaa IV has been one of the slowest growing of any of our territories. In addition it also has a large seasonal population and thus variation. Non-seasonablly Sslaa IV is home to 290 million people scattered among dozens of small to medium floating and seabed arcologies.

Atlantis:
Atlantis and the GEC-42 system in general are one of the most minor of Sunset colonies. Even after some recent expansion in the resource extraction sector there are just over 72 million citizens in the entire system.

Bright Morning:
Because of it's proximity to several classified testing and experimentation facilities Bright Morning has been a focus for defense and scientific manufacturing. Most of the population of 80 million is focused around this or resource extraction.

Shiva:
Shiva is the 'barely made it' of this list and only because of the absorbtion of New ArAreBee citizens. Just over 10 million citizens call this noxious mining world home.

Ares:
The vast majority of the Ares system population is spread between it's namesake world and Anuke. While extensive open areas still exist the planet is home to over 6 billion people with 5.6 of these being Sunset citizens.

Anuke:
The secondary colony world of the Ares system, Anuke has seen explosive growth since full-scale colonization was initiated. Just over a billion citizens call Anuke home.

----

The question was how exactly one went about contacting a Phoenix-Lord of the Eldar. Katryna wanted to take a close look at one of the webspinners used by the Warp Spiders but it probably wasn't a good idea to send a team to grab a warpspider for vivisection. Allies being allies and all that. Other than the off-chance of picking one up in a flee market the best option was to ask. Apparently the Phoenix-Lord Yvressie was the man (They thought it was a man at least) who could satisfy her curiousity.

After all, how else was she going to create monowire spinning and spitting spiders of doom?

A messenger was thus sent to both the Exodite world in the Ares system as well as to the leadership of the Martian Yvressi holdings in a suitably flowery script. It requested help contacting the Phoenix-Lord though it didn't quite mention the exact reason why. Of course this would have all been easier if the Yvressi would allow embassies on the Craftworld but she did have to respect their paranoia.

Salodath was unsure, on some level, why exactly the Council, and more importantly Iyanna, had decided to acquiesce to the request from Katryna for his presence, but he departed anyway. Unlike the average Exarch a Phoenix-Lord had a greater degree of independence, he wasn’t a committed to Yvresse soldier, rather a free agent who had attached himself to the Craftworld, still while he remained there he would follow the requests of Yvresse’s leadership.

So it was he exited the Web, years ago the Sunset and Yvresse governments had established web gates within Sunsetian territory making his arrival a simple matter, and a hidden one. It was therefore unlikely many would ever be aware of his presence. Those that did see him through where unlikely to forget the experience since, while Salodath had to be present, he didn’t need to like it, and with the instincts of a Exarch, everywhere he went the four closest Mon-keigh had to suffer the attentions of the Webspinners twisting to face them, hinting at barely contained violence.

The chamber was large and nearly plain with the web gate and it's accompanying structures being the only objects in the vast gallery. A track on the floor led from the heavy bunker door on one side to the gate itself and all around the perimeter were the shuttered covers of the capital weapon emplacements that prevented the unwelcome from accessing these gates. Aside from the warlock who maintained the gate the only other person in the room was a young woman in the uniform of a SDF officer.

"Phoenix-Lord Yvressie?"

Salodath paused to look at the woman a moment, all four 'arms' turning to point at her. For a moment he seemed to consider if answering her was worth his time before speaking.

"Salodath."

He might have gone on but the chances of the woman speaking Eldarin seemed small, and he would not deign to speak their native language, or at least not to her.

"My name is Katryna Silaco," The rank tabs on her sleeve added 'Admiral' to this, "I'm the head researcher and designer of our Special Projects division. I'm working on a project and I've been told you are the one who can help me the best."

For a moment he seemed to consider this somewhat further then turned to the Warlock on duty. If Katryna spoke the language of the Eldar what followed was a basic instruction for the man to follow them and act as interpreter. It seemed clear from the fact he did not ask for a translation that he understood the language being spoken. Still what followed came through the Warlock.

"This is acceptable, for now. The Idains of Yvresse requested my presence, still it should be made clear from the start as a Asurya the final decision on granting you my aid is mine and the Idain cannot order me."

She nodded and continued to address the Phoenix-Lord directly. She understood the language and could speak it as fluently as any machine translator but it was better to avoid springing anything on her guest.

"I understand. Welcome to Sunset, Lord Salodath." She hoped that was the proper form of address - there wasn't exactly a manual.

The armoured figure merely nodded at the title used. It wasn’t a perfect fit but several millennia had taught him to make allowances for the Mon-keigh in small ways and his current host added to this knowledge.

"The details of what I was requested for... Autarch?" The word was used questioningly as if trying it out. "Were limited. I am, I admit, confused as to what you think one of the Asurya can help you with."

"The details were purposefully left vague," Katryna replied. "What I am about to show you is normally considered a state secret. We have trusted the Yvressi in the past and this is a small secret compared to others we keep for each other."

She walked over to a small workbench where a display was on and a test pattern was slowly revolving. Another image appeared in the holo-sphere and a spider, fist sized according to the scale, filling the meter wide sphere.

"I am attempting to construct an artificial spider which spins it's own monowire webs."

Salodath stood impassively for a moment at this announcement then walked over slowly to pay closer attention to the design being shown.

"I see. And you wish my knowledge of Mono-Filament or of the Spider? The crystalline entities from which I drew my Path from seem similar in nature to a spider. If one were seeking to replicate their behaviour I could aid in this. If you are seeking knowledge of Web Spinners this too I can help with. Although a copy of the device would have to be provided by the Council - my own are not for examination...

I would also recommend the Kiss of the Harlequin's. In it’s single strand it has much to recommend it for any truly compact design."

Despite himself he was interested if only for seeing how such work might aid his own path. Approaching his skills from another angle might advance his knowledge and mastery of the ways of the Spider after all.

"Both would be appreciated though my source of interest is in the webspinner itself." She manipulated the display mentally to show a cut-away of the abdomen of the spider and the mono-wire 'factory' contained within. "I can make that but I cannot yet construct a webspinner. If the device had the ability to project the wire as your weapons can it would add a very useful ability to the design."

After a moment he nods his head in assent. "As I have said my own are not for examination, but I shall instruct my Children to make available one from the Shrine upon Yvresse."

"What about the Kiss of the Harlequin?" It took her a moment to find out what a Harlequin was. The only notes she had on contact with Harlequins was the report of Admiral Villanova's contact with the actor-warriors during the performance of the Fall of Khaine.

"The Harlequins use a more limited form of the Web Spinner. Rather than utilising the many strands we do the Harlequin's Kiss fires a single strand of the webbing. Obviously therefore the weapon is smaller and more likely to be useful in a compact design, especially in the early stages."

"True. What about the crystalline entities you mentioned earlier? Do you have any examples of these and what are their abilities? Perhaps there is little need to re-invent the wheel."

Pausing now under his helmet he smiled grimly. "The Aspect my Children follows are inspired, guided and taught by the little protectors of the Craftworld. For ease of communication we shall call them True Warp-Spiders. They appear..." He gave a strange cock of his head as he spoke as if searching through something, which he was; he was looking through the memories of his current host, "To be a mix between what you would call ants and spiders. They serve to purify and protect the Infinity Matrix of the Craftworld, and are living entities.

I would think the council could easily procure a specimen for you but I am unsure what direct aide it could give you."

"So they do not have the abilities of your Aspect? While I would like to learn about them it would seem unreasonable to seperate them from their natural habitat. Perhaps a documentary if one exists?"

Again at the unfamiliar word the Asurya fell silent and gave the curious head tilt, yet here for a moment it seemed the host was unable to present adequate answers as he turned to the Warlock for an explanation. Eventually he nodded.

"Ah, the natural habitat can be replicated, but no it seems unlikely it could be of much aid. The True Warp-Spiders are defenders from creatures of the Immaterial. We are inspired by their methods rather than using them as a direct guide. I would of course say that for one to understand the ways of my children, one must understand the teacher, but you are not trying to make the teachers or my children so this seems unneeded.

As for a documentary, such things are rare, why would one need to record the habits of something you see everyday? On the Craftworld they are a common creature, they are everywhere, and so recording their behaviour is unneeded."

She smiled, "Not for me. I spend much of my spare time learning as much as possible about as much as possible. As much as I'd like to explore the Craftworld personally I doubt that this would be possible. Beside the point though. Would you be able to recommend an expert on the workings of the Web Spinner and Harlequin's Kiss that could assist me? And what can I do for you to repay your time and trouble?"

Salodath considered the question and gave a small gesture. "All the workings of the Spinner and the Kiss would be known to many a Bonesinger. To construct it with their song they must know what they bring into being. I am given to understand this through a previous host. As for reward, maybe when you have finished this project I might study it for how it might serve my Children and all Keigh."

Katryna nodded and the display disappeared. "I can have as many as you want made. I thank you for your advice and information Lord Salodath. If there is every anything you need..."

"I shall consider this Autarch. I cannot know what future demands and the needs of the hosts may bring through."

"That's fine. Do you plan on returning to the Craftworld or remaining on Mars after this?"

"That will depend upon you. Should you feel you need my continued presence I shall remain else I shall depart to continue preparing the Children."

"You've answered my questions and I would assume that a Bonesinger would be able to answer any questions about the design just as well. Return to the Children with my thanks. If you will relay the request for an expert on the webspinner to the Idains they will tell you when I'm done."

Salodath gave a small bow of assent then turned to depart, taking only a few steps before teleporting himself to the Web Gate and disappearing into the twisting maze.

The creature turned to face the tunnel entrance as the IntelCat (Type 0, Experimental) approached. Loose rocks and litter covered the path between it and the creature and it decided to risk alerting the creature to it's presence rather than a potentially damaging fall. As near as it could tell the creature was sightless - nothing matched any kind of visual sensory organs in the SDF's vast archives - but the slowly shifting cowl of tendrils around the slightly club-shaped head suggested a sensory organ of some kind. Accentuating the club-like appearance of the head was a long neck that led down to a lean body and corded limbs.

It could only compare it to a Terran newt or salamander in general body form though it was bipedal and moved with more the hunched over stance of an ape. The caves the IntelCat was exploring were completely dark and this creature, like many Terran cave-dwellers, was completely colorless and in some areas, particularly the fingers, toes, and neck, partially translucent. It also wore a baldric of translucent hide which was strapped across at the chest and held several pouches as well as a sword down the back.

As it moved closer the creature shifted and looked nearly directly at it and it paused to assess the situation. Tactically the creature probably posed little risk. Both were in the dark and the IntelCat had far more sensor options available to it as well as a potent energy weapon and mono-molecular claws. That and it's half-meter size and blinding speed should allow it a reasonable margin of escape...

There it was again! Sound waves in the ultra-sonic (for humans at least) range were being transmitted and it was easy now to identify the creature as the source. All along the neck minute translucent patches of skin were fluttering and tiny organs just beyond were pulsing rapidly. Observation led to intuition and it timed the flutter of the organs as well as the fluttering of the tendrils shrouding the head. There was a small chance it was wrong, but echo-location was promptly entered as the primary sensory method used by the creature.

It moved forward again and the creature emitted a pulse again followed by a randomly pitched series of pulses. Or perhaps language - the cat recorded it all anyway. A slender three-fingered hand went to the sword and drew it out with a smooth rasp and the creature held it forward though not at all steadily. Perhaps it was inexperienced or just scared of the unusual thing that stalked it's caves but when the cat repeated back the same sequence of ultra-sonic tones, minus what it guessed was the echo-location tone, the creature nearly jumped right out of it's skin.

The sword fell to the tunnel floor with a clatter and it turned and raced off screaming wildly. This too was observed with interest by the cat as it sat there. It was not ungainly nor was it slow but it wasn't constantly using it's echo-location either. Perhaps the creatures had a very well developed sense of spacial location.

Silently padding over to the fallen blade it sniffed at it before sitting back and carefully looking it over. The chemical receptors in it's nose told it a lot about the weapon but it wanted more information about the weapon. That it carried one at all told the IntelCat that the creature's society employed violence which was good to know. How it employed it would have to wait for more data but the weapon was already yielding more.

It was a bronze-like alloy, polished and oiled, mounted in a sturdy oval shaped handle with three worked rings mounted on it at pommel, guard, and a second smaller ring mounted slightly above the guard. Some kind of leather wrapped the handle and the IntelCat sniffed it and compared it with the catalog of creatures it had encountered thus far. The leather was from a worm-like creature that nested in cracks and fissures in the wall. Carefully harvested one could probably provide all the leather needed to wrap the handle.

The guards were interesting as well - the cross guard was pierced with what the cat decided was a decorative pattern. It was too small for fingers or the blade to slip between. The other two guards were smaller and of the same design. Close enough in fact to indicate they were likely created from a re-usable mold. Another important detail to stash away for later.

As it moved around the sword to examine it something on the opposite wall of the tunnel caught it's eye. It hadn't been able to see it earlier but now it could see some kind of device sitting on a little rock shelf. Abandoning the sword for the moment it walked over to the shelf, gathered itself, and jumped up to the shelf with all the grace of it's feline origins. there was nothing but the device on the shelf and it slowly moved around to nose at it.

constructed of a framework of bronze plates it had all the hallmarks of a primitive radio receiver and transmitter. A clay battery - perhaps less primitive than it looked - powered the device and an speaker made of very thin leather provided the output. A second cone next to it was probably the microphone.

Like the sword before it the cat put aside it's interest in the device as something else caught it's ears. More of the monotone echo-location sounds accompanied by a lot of pounding feet and clanking metal. It positioned itself on the edge of the shelf, ready to jump and run, and watched a small squad of the creatures come barreling back into the room. In the back was the sentry, hiding behind three others who were wearing similar baldrics but this time over some light leather armor with re-enforcing plates at the shoulders and running half-way up the neck.

All three had their swords out and the manufactured similarity was now obvious. the largest one advanced, sword out, until it was a bare foot from the cat's nose...

DocType: Technical
Origin: Special Projects
Security Designation: Classified (TYCS C+)
Summary: Technical Specifications and Description for IntelKitten Type 0 (Special Operations)

Description:
The Type 0 model of the IntelKitten was designed as a purely tactical unit as per SDFMilSpec1904402.24.09.3777. It's primary features are increased survivability and lethality as compared to the base model with an emphasis on speed and flexibility.

Notable changes are an upgrade in musculature resulting in a densely muscled appearance, the addition of armor plating to the bone structure resulting in additional mass, and the upgrading of the bone-battery material to compensate for the increased power requirements. While this model retains the fur exterior it appears markedly different than previous models and more like a densely muscled wild felinoid rather than a domesticated cat.

Additional features to this model include a pair of arms built into the chest, variable geometry joints, hardwired energy and data transmission ports, and a secondary data storage location.

The additional pair of arms built into the chest are a three fingered human analog designed to allow this model to directly manipulate objects. These are build into the ribcage and are positioned behind folding armor panels and a self-sealing skin flap designed to conceal them from a cursory inspection. These arms, combined with the variable joints, can allow the IntelKitten to assume a bipedal stance for extended periods.

The hardwired energy transmission and data ports are built into the neck and are there to provide non-wireless access to the standard collar accessory. This accessory consists of a fine sensor mesh and a small variable emitter.

Additional data storage has been built into the hindquarters above the storage pouch. This is provided for operational redundancy - data obtained and stored in the primary storage has been notably lost on several occasions due to the destruction of the head.

Technical Specifications:
Dimensions...

"It's pouch rot. Or 'G'sqck'ga'ro' if you prefer. Take a look..."

Doctor Filippo Paschke stepped back from the Taog Ensign Po'fleat'pssh and Lt. Commander Reza Hodge stepped in for a closer look. Up and in really - Hodge was an Otterkin and the highest ranked member of that species in the SDF. He looked over the Taog and then over to the monitor that showed a holographic representation of what was happening inside of one of the ensign's many pouch-organs.

"That's disgusting!"

His whiskers pulled back sharply against his muzzle and he turned to the side. Fortunately he had been just about to go to lunch when the ensign had triggered a medical alarm and he had been nearby. Which means he only felt like purging his bowels instead of doing it. The Taog were generally hard enough to look at - most people used an augmented reality filter to replace them with something at least marginally pleasant to look at. Otterkin actually ate things that looked like the Taog so Hodge had no such filter.

A Taog was, nearly literally, an inside-out goat, and the being that was laying on the exam table was basically a mound of organs and pouches arranged around a central stalk. Two bits that looked somewhat like curved horns were a protective casing for the brain but aside from those it completely lacked hard body structures and basically oozed around from place to place. Consequently they spent a lot of time by themselves, at least in meatspace, and Hodge hadn't really seen a whole lot of Ensign Po'fleat'pssh even though he was technically part of his division and thus under his command.

"Mmm, yes. It's a little gross. Still - it should be easy to treat now that we know about it. It's a byproduct of their bio-synthetic organs. Something like human appendicitis. Waste builds up in the organ until an infection develops. I'll need to go in there with a hose and..."

"Urf... Say no more Doctor. I'll leave him in your capable hands..."

"All right then. You should really read up on their medical problems Commander. It's quite fascinating. For instance the rare 'Kas'kfa'we' where the reproductive organ will fall off and..."

"Fall off?!?" The otterkin backed away, wide eyed, and headed for the door. "Thank you Doctor! Keep me appraised of his progress!" Hodge's voice faded as he raced away down the passage.

----

"...no external access hatches so far. There are what I'd call seams where plates in the hull join together but they appear purely random. There is some slight variance in the external design of each station, but I'm unsure as to whether that is aesthetic or if it's functional. At this range the sensors on the probe are so unreliable that I'm more certain of the physical measurements taken with the arms than the active sensor data."

The probe in question had been launched earlier with a towed BLA (Blinking Light Array) and was slowly making it's way over the station as it investigated areas of interest. Not that there were any. The hull of the station was essentially one unit with no external hatches, emitters, sensors, or even decorations. At least that the probe could find.

"One of the things that interests me is that the composition of the hull appears to vary from place to place despite a uniform appearance. The majority materials are the same but minor elements vary as much as ninty percent from place to place. According to the sensors, which are..."

"Unreliable. Right. Well, keep working on it Lieutenant. Engineering is gonna have two more probes built by this evening. Then we can get some cross-data for comparison."

Chalmers turned back to her own work but mentally she was still worrying about Captain Andorov. During the night they had moved him into one of the heavily shielded areas of the ship - the II core space actually - and that had helped a lot but he was essentially trapped there until the Colorado moved away from the toroid star.

Religion was one of those odd and hard to understand things for most of the people of Sunset. For the scientists and researchers of the Sunset Exploration Command, which had seen and explained some truly unusual and nearly unexplainable things that could be called supernatural, religion was still something a little abnormal. Belief itself was not the question, but more the belief in something that could not be proved. There were no facts to rely on and no theories to test.

Most of the religions the SEC encountered, like most of the civilizations, were transitional. Some were short term processes that helped a population ease through a traumatic event while others were longer term but still ultimately transient. There were some examples of extremely long-term religions that were still going strong - the worship of the Illuvatar of the Menelmacari Elves, the Ctan and their Necron death cult for example.

This was another such rarity which was why, in the middle of a simple city, dusty streets, and a teeming market, Lt. Commander Enrique Joyner walked the streets dressed in the printed brown and yellow sarong of the natives. A pair of small camera drones constantly buzzed around taking holos of various scenes but other than that there was no sign of the usual technological accessories usually carried by a field researcher.

He, and a dozen other researchers, had been slowly working their way through the city trying to catalog all of the various aspects of the dominate religion of this planet. Dominate was perhaps the wrong word really - everyone shared the same belief. Everyone. No schisms, no wars, no variations... Everyone. Every day at the same time every single person, awake, asleep, in the bathroom... walked outside and performed a simple ceremony where they slowly swept their hands from their waist to the sky, looking straight up.

It was a simple ceremony and the answer he got whenever he asked about it was that it should be done. Should apparently related to must with the natives - every serving utensil should have a diamond shaped hole in it, every plate and bowl should have the same painted on it on one edge. Simple rituals like these were associated with nearly every object and behavior from washing the hands to cutting food.

The most unusual thing about the religion was the length it had existed. According to what records they could find - there were no libraries or books as such - it had always been the religion of the natives. Modest statues of important individuals had been dated by the researchers to over three hundred thousand years old. What was even more surprising was that there were very few of these statues, usually one per city or town, and that these were meticulously maintained but not worshiped. Their stories were told as examples to the young but no prayers were given, nor sacrifices made.

----

"Still haven't found anything that might be an entrance Captain. No bays, airlocks... Nothing. It's like a seamless whole."

Chalmers looked over the displays from the other two probes in a futile effort to spot something the techs hadn't. The three techs sat side-by-side on the bridge of the Colorado looking over flat displays showing slowly panning views of the station along with various graphs from the other sensors the probes had. It had been nearly four hours and there was nothing at all.

"So... how did they build it? How do they repair it? Micro-meteorite damage, strong solar flares... Things just break down..."

"You know Captain, that does suggest an idea..."

Captain Andorov wavered to solidity beside her. The hologram turned and looked at the various displays before turning back to her.

"Perhaps we should provoke a response. Trigger whatever repair systems they might have in order to establish a method of making contact with the builders. Hit it with a hammer."

Dink dink dink, dink Dink dinkdink, dinkdink dinkdink dinkdinkdink...

The robotic armor on the probe tapped out it's rhythmic message on the hull of the alien station for several minutes with no apparent response. Captain Chalmers couldn't decide if it was deliberate, but the station seemed to be ignoring her. Or she was going crazy.

"Perhaps your engineers should try a more common mathematical progression series instead, Captain..."

Andorov looked over at the station where the technicians were monitoring the probe through the BLA and frowned. Chalmers looked over as well - one was snickering a little and he quickly looked back to the display and began some adjustments.

"Certainly Captain Andorov. Standard mathematical progression model... starting now..."

"What was..."

"Super Mario Brothers..." Lt. Commander U'wanna'tak interupted before she could finish the question.

The technicians giggled and continued to watch their displays while Chalmers glared at the back of their heads.

-

"Still nothing. We've tried several progression models, tapping, scratching, pressure... No response. We are starting to consider the option that we may need to do actual damage to the station before it, or whatever sentients might be inside, will respond. But we don't know if that might provoke a response against the Colorado itself."

Lt. Commander U'wanna'tak brought up an image of the whole star on the screen.

"It's possible that they might be able to control the star beyond it's shape. They could initiate a solar flare for example, or perhaps their technology is sufficiently advanced to somehow direct the entirety of the solar wind at us. If we were to back off we could probably survive or avoid such an attack but..."

"But we would look hostile in doing so. And deliberately so." Captain Andorov interrupted and Chalmers nodded in agreement. "So we don't want to do that unless we have no other choice."

There was a sudden 'bing' from the comm system and the officer on bridge duty interrupted the meeting the various department heads had been having.

'Captain to the bridge. We've lost the probe.'

"Lost it? How?" Chalmers was already on her feet and moving to the doorway that lead into the corridor to the bridge. The trilat followed her but Captain Andorov simply wavered out of existence to presumably arrive first.

"Unknown. The probe's systems were showing a lot of interference and we ran a diagnostic and attempted to re-orient the probe to put it's shielding directly between it and the star, but we suddenly lost communication through the BLA."

Chalmers walked onto the bridge, U'wanna'tak right behind her, and took her command chair. Various displays popped up around her as she pulled the data she had missed while in the meeting.

"It's been out of contact for ten minutes now. You've tried accessing it remotely..."

"Yes ma'am. We sent a reboot command through our BLA but it seems all the probe's systems are offline. It's currently drifting..."

"Captain - take a look at the telescopes! What is that..."

The probe appeared on the main screen. All of the external lights were now on and flashing apparently randomly but the blinking light array drew everyone's attention. The mass of lights which made up the array were on but not in the normal on/off state that had been used to relay information from the probe. Now it was a constantly shifting display as the lights varied in intensity, going from just on to bright white in a shifting, almost fractal, wave pattern.

"Sensors?"

"There is a distinct increase in low-level field activity around the probe. The source is unknown. Too much interference. The station is showing more field activity as well, though it doesn't seem to be directed at the fields maintaining the star. Or at the probe."

They all watched as the probe slowly drifted around until suddenly it fired one of it's maneuvering thrusters for a second and began to head right towards the station. It only took a moment to cross the distance before it hit the side of the station, wiping out a whole section of sensors but leaving the hull unmarred. The BLA blinked off for a moment but then came back.

"It's starting the reboot cycle Captain." one of the technicians observed as lights flashed in a distinct pattern. "It's done..."

Then the lights went back to the same wave pattern before though this time it was generally much brighter and moved faster. After a moment another thruster fired and the little probe went spinning away from the station towards open space. More thrusters fired, seemingly at random, but the probe continued on it's twirling flight into the void.

"Catch up to it Helm. Let's see if we can grab it."

"Aye Ma'am..."

The Colorado began to move towards the little tumbling probe and it continued to fire thrusters at random and lights continued to flash even as bits of the ruined sensor clusters tore free and flung outward.

"Captain! Sensors show three low-level fields have stopped moving with the probe. They are drifting in open space to starboard."

"The probe is responding to commands again Captain..."

----

It had happened during the morning ceremony and Lt. Cmdr Joyner was still reviewing the recording over and over.

The young man had been standing in front of Joyner, arms upraised, when he had suddenly fallen to his knees. Everyone around him turned to look but kept their arms upraised, almost as though they knew what was happening. There were no looks of surprise on their faces as they watched the whole thing happen and no one moved to help or hinder. His skin began to ripple though he did not cry out in pain. His skin began to glow and he stood tall for a moment before resuming the ceremony.

While Joyner looked on he began to float a few inches above the ground, skin still slowly rippling. Suddenly six 'flaps' opened on his back, two more at each ankle, and two more on his forearms, and brilliant white tendrils of energy emerged and began floating behind him like a slowly shifting halo. Those to each side slowly spread out to give him room, but where they were too slow the tendrils passed completely through them and left their skin glowing there as well.

From his vantage point, and thus the vantage point of the recording, Joyner couldn't see what was happening now but the computer had elaborated. In the air in front of him a small diamond shape had appeared and began to enlarge until it was nearly five meters tall and wide enough for the young man to pass through unimpeded. From his angle Joyner couldn't see through it, but he could 'feel' through it. It was like a palpable wave of peace and tranquility - like laying in bed on a warm day with fluffy blankets all around and nothing to do.

Those around the young man turned to look at the diamond and many smiled softly, especially the elderly, before he began to silently float up and through the diamond. Joyner could only call it a moment of ascension but what had really happened was unknown - the young man was simply gone. He had gone back with a hand scanner and there were some residual traces of energy but not a lot to go on. Everyone he asked said the boy had simply left. When he asked if he would return they just smiled and went about their business.

The SDF, as a general policy, does not seek out conflict. As far as our government is concerned two warring civilizations are free to duke it out however they like unless said conflict is heading towards or has actually harmed it's interests or those of it's allies. That is not to say that the SDF has some kind of Prime Directive - it definitely does not. As long as it doesn't directly violate the political policies of the government you are free to cheat, wheedle, and interfere with whatever and whoever you like as long as you don't bite off more than you can chew.

That could be at the top of the list for any officer - Don't Bite Off More Than You Can Chew. Of course that would seem to be opposite for the captains of the SEC. Remember that the SEC has the highest losses of the SDF - fully one-half of the ships commissioned are not expected to reach their de-commission date. Much of this can probably be attributed to over-enthusiastic crew who are willing to try anything and go anywhere.

-Excerpt from a lecture at the SDF Flag Officer's College on Shiva.

----

DocType: Non-Classified Sentient Species Datasheet
Subject: O-Eid (Humanoid, Amphibious)
Section: Overview
Authors: Various (See Attached)
DocStatus: In Progress (3805AFY)

Overview:
The O-Eid are an amphibious humanoid species that is currently isolated on one planet in the 74 Theta Arcturus system. Their civilization is currently at what has been deemed a 'pre-FTL' technology level though this has been degraded due to a recent conflict with another nearby pre-FTL civilization (See Related Documents). Contact with the O-Eid has been friendly and a diplomatic and scientific outpost has been established in their capital city.

Physical Overview:
O-Eid are interesting that they are both an amphibious and single-sex species with multiple distinct life-stages.

The average adult O-Eid is 1.6 meters tall with a slight build, scaly skin that ranges from a light green to a light blue in shade. To a human they all appear female though this is deceptive - all adults have four non-sexual feeding glands that are mammary analogs as well as a 'feminine' facial appearance. They also have two fins on their heads as well as a mass of thick scaled tendrils which resemble human hair at a distance.

Notably the O-Eid do not have ears nor ear sockets. These are replaced by a pair of tendrils which drape from the shoulder blades and serve as both aural sensory organs as well as a crude electric field sensor similar to those possessed by some species of Terran sharks and fish. These are also the primary erogenous zone and are used during sexual congress to transfer genetic material. The tendrils are long - nearly 1.9 meters on their own - and are prehensile with two pairs of tapering fins on the end.

As a sexual organ the tendrils are a particular taboo of the O-Eid. Other adults should not touch them in public and it is considered particularly dishonorable to specifically target them in any kind of conflict. One of the particular issues in their interstellar war was the taking of O-Eid tendrils as a trophy of war.

As previously mentioned the O-Eid go through three distinct life-stages. All O-Eid are born as helpless spawn that bear a certain resemblance to a Terran starfish. These spawnlings are generally born in large groups during the native 'spring' and are herded together as a 'school' by the elder O-Eid. For the next six to ten cycles these spawnlings appear to be non-sentient and spend all of their time eating and sleeping and growing.

During this time they are growing the rest of their adult body in a flexible tube that hangs down from the central mass. As the spawnling matures the ratio of mass changes - when it has hit the O-Eid adult norm the spawnling goes through a brief metamorphosis where it sheds the outer protective layer from it's developed form and apparently becomes sentient. Up until this point the spawnlings are treated as animals on the level of housepets. Some deaths from predators are expected and the average 'elder' is expected to only care for four to twelve spawnlings at a time.

Adult O-Eid are responsible for the day-to-day running of their society. Once they become sentient the O-Eid are incredibly fast learners, to a point. It seems that their ability to learn is greatly enhanced for the first four to six cycles but then drops dramatically to a near-human level. This seems to be a physical limitation - even using the advanced learning techniques available to the SDF the O-Eid have not been shown to learn beyond a certain level of progression.

Adult O-Eid are responsible for carrying spawnlings to birth but the elder O-Eid are actually responsible for carrying for and feeding the young as well as providing the source of genetic material. While they do not mate for life each elder has a 'stable' of four to six adults that it is in a relationship with. It prefers to keep one of these adults pregnant at all times - usually relationships end when the adult has given birth and wishes to switch partners. The elder is almost always responsible for raising it's genetic kin - usually only the death of the elder will change this.

Adult O-Eid become elders in a process roughly equivalent to human female menopause. When an adult has depleted it's supply of eggs a chemical change takes place that allows the O-Eid to feed spawnlings and transfer genetic material to adults during sexual congress. In the modern O-Eid society sex is not strictly for reproduction and is a more casual affair though it is still usually only happens between the members of the elder's 'school'. As is in most civilizations thus far encountered sex is used for pleasure and as a tool of physical and emotional manipulation. However since adult O-Eid cannot impregnate each other it generally has fewer consequences on a physical level though there are certain diseases that can be transmitted in this manner.

Both the adult and elder O-Eid are fully amphibious though both seem to prefer to spend as much time as possible in the water. Their atmospheric requirements are roughly equal to human and they do not need any special environmental consideration. They breath through a set of gill-analogs on the shoulders that open when in atmosphere and close for water filtration when on land. Their vocal apparatus is unique in that it is fully capable of transmitting sound both underwater and on land and as with humans they use the same orifice to consume nutrients. All O-Eid are herbivores and have thus far had no adverse reaction to sample extra-terrestrial vegetation.

(Full Document)(Related Documents)(Authors)

----

Captain Arakaki twitched a little in his sleep then slowly pulled his eyes open and looked around the room. It was a makeshift hospital; That much was certain from the mats on the floor and dozens of other sleeping and wounded figures laying on them. He closed his eyes for a moment and dredged his memory for whatever had come before coming up with only a brief flash of light and incredible pain as he had been thrown against something by a blast. Sitting up on his elbows he looked around and a nurse noticed and made her way over. She was one of the O-Eid - a good sign - but when she put a hand on his shoulder and spoke it was the tonal language of the species. He tried to activate his implanted translator but he got an error from his implanted cybernetics.

'Damn... Must have been damaged,' He thought and he just nodded at the nurse who indicated with a little pressure that he was to lay down. As he sunk back onto the thick mat he continued to look around the room. He couldn't determine who or what most of the other patients were but those nearest him were all O-Eid. Two wore the form-fitting camouflage fatigues he'd seen earlier while another wore what was likely civilian dress. He had been helping to set up the research station when the attack had come which explained the mix, but he was suddenly concerned at the absence of the other crew members who had been with him. He felt cut off without his cybernetic communications and tried to reboot them over and over mentally until a humanoid figure appeared in the rough oval doorway and called out to him in English.

"Captain Arakaki?..."

"While the population is growing it is clear that the majority source of the new population is outside sentients. This has had two clear effects - first it has separated the Martian population from their out-system cousins due to the racial disparity between the two, and second it has served to expand the actual holdings of the Republic in ways that, in hindsight, do not seem to be intended. While many of these populations are a few million to a few hundred million at most and do not make a significant percentile difference to the overall population these numbers do still add up. This also adds up in terms of territorial acquisition. Indeed, if the Republic had added an additional planet for every race they had integrated or that was in the process of integration it would have well over a hundred worlds outside of it's main systems."

----

White energy plowed through armored hull and out again leaving behind a jet of debris and yet another torpedo-shaped craft tumbling through space. The Snake wheeled only slightly in response before cutting loose with another volley to destroy yet another of the oncoming craft in a brilliant explosion as it's warhead detonated. Not that it mattered much - there were literally hundreds of the small craft coming into the system at once.

There were just too many for the Snake to destroy by itself and that was ultimately the point. When the heavy explorer had first arrived in the system the only inhabited world had been under attack by a small flotilla of primitive spacecraft. Captain Arakaki had been swayed by the pleas of the natives but now he was on the planet with the ship's marine detachment fighting a desperate battle to hold off the attackers which left Commander Davis in command.

That first flotilla had easily been destroyed faced with the firepower of the superior Venture E-class warship but it was only a single ship and now the alien attackers had switched tactics. The concentration of firepower in one vessel was now to their advantage as they sent massive waves of smaller craft to attack the planet. Each was ultimately a simple inter-system missile with a moderate warhead and a detachable landing pod - simple and effective. Those that made it past the SDF warship launched their warhead and headed for the surface.

It was clear they were engaged in a war of extermination. The warheads were atomics, crude and dirty, and the troops that made it to the ground killed anyone they found until they were stopped. Already most of the major cities, underwater but close to the surface, were drifting ruins and those that survived were mostly thanks to the frantic efforts of the remaining planetary forces and the assistance of the two fighters the Snake carried.

Now the targets were the smaller cities and towns that dotted the bottom of the planet-wide ocean in inverted archipelagos. Captain Arakaki was doing what he could to wipe out the landing forces before they could inflict any damage, but even the advanced power armor and UHCVs could only do so much in their limited numbers. The O-Eid didn't have the manufacturing capability, or indeed the materials, to produce similar craft.

Thus the only option was a desperate cry for assistance from the main force of the SDF but that itself was unlikely. The Snake was far from home - on the opposite side of the Milky Way - and sending the fleet there would leave the SDF weakened at home for years potentially. Thus the ship and her crew were fighting a battle they were slowly losing and they knew it.

"Drifting? Energy fields don't drift."

Commander Ma'kam, Chalmer's executive officer, looked over from his station at the two senior officers. His long neck was all that really turned, and his deep blue eyes blinked at her as he gave her a questioning look.

"Unless they are being moved by the generator of course..."

"These fields are clearly drifting," the technician continued. "While relatively stable they are moving by up to ten percent of their own volume every second. And they are now moving away from us towards the station..."

"Get that probe secured - what do you mean, moving?"

"I mean moving. They are accelerating towards the station at point-oh-nine gees. One is moving a bit faster than the other two, but they are staying together. Their field intensity is fluctuating more now and they are picking up stray gases from the nebula which is giving them some mass."

"Why don't they just turn off the generator?" Ma'kam mused while turning back to his own station and switching it over to show the EM sensor sweeps of the area. "Unless it's a limitation of their equipment... But I'm not seeing any particular point on the station that matches these fields."

"Is it possible they are being generated by a different station?" Captain Andorov asked.

"Well, it's possible..." The technician pulled up the EM sensor logs for the nearest two stations, each well over two thousand kilometers away, and ran a quick data comparison.

"It's possible, though not with any technology we have. The field strength is both too coherent and too low-powered for a generator to create at this range. It would be like using our sensor arrays to sort through a pile of coins. We'd melt the coins, but we couldn't move them."

"The probe has been rebooted and is two minutes from Docking Bay Two Captain..." Another technician interrupted.

"All right - I want it gone over with a fine toothed comb."

"Yers Ma'am..."

Chalmers turned back to the display just in time to watch the three fields pass into the hull of the station and disappear into the clutter.

"Captain, I think we may be looking at a paradigm shift here. It is possible that the method the inhabitants of these stations use to create and manipulate EM fields is so dramatically different than our own that we cannot understand it without working from the base up."

Chalmers nodded at Andorov in agreement, "You are possibly right, but we can't very well do that without taking a closer look at the stations from the inside. Their positioning still suggests they are responsible for the creation of the star..."

----

While the attackers had a viable plan for obliterating and attacking the remaining cities on and under the surface, they seemed unused to the idea of attacking the underwater cities directly. While this allowed the O-Eid to defend them relatively easily there were still plenty of attacks on 'tidal' cities to deal with...

-

Another of the alien gunpods whipped out from behind a building and tossed off a spiraling volley of unguided rockets at the O-Eid soldiers and lone SDF marine that had responded to this attack. Energy crackled and rockets detonated as the marine's power armor brought down as many as it could with it's own point defense, but several still landed and exploded. Shrapnel ricocheted around and through the cover the defenders were using and there was an ugly scream that ended in a quiet gurgle.

One of the defenders leaned out and attempted to get a lock on the flier with a shoulder-launched missile but the craft ducked back into cover while another came out to spray the area with gunfire from the machine gun mounted under the cockpit. This time it got a lock and there was a whoosh of white smoke and a deafening crack as the missile detonated right in front of the gunpod. It's rotors shredded it pinwheeled into the ground to land on the cockpit with a crump.

The other gunpod turned and ran, whipping away through the spire-like buildings as the defenders moved out of cover and gave chase. Several rushed over to the downed gunpod and began to pull it apart and the marine stayed with these to watch in case the other pod came back. The pilot was dead, crushed in the crash, but they pulled him out anyway. To prevent, or at least slow, the O-Eid from just killing every captured or wounded attacker they were offering a bounty on any alien. Dead or alive though alive was worth more. The dead would be studied and the live ones were put into camps and interrogated for whatever they could get.

Scaled hands produced tools and began to remove the weapons and intact systems from the pods as well. Weapons were harder and harder to come by and the O-Eid troops were armed with a motley assortment of their own weapons, those of the attacking alien, and occasionally an SDF weapon from the armory on the Snake. The attackers clearly had an exponentially larger manufacturing base and the O-Eid now had several craft specially designed to incorporate common salvaged components.

Sparks flew and the catamaran hulls of the gravtank shuddered for a second before the whole thing fell to the ground with a dull clump. Snow and toys sprayed up from the impact of the monstrosity before hitting the thin layer of ice that covered most of the snowfield and skittering away in a widening semi-circle. The whole experiment was being conducted on a planet known as 'Reason' though the name itself didn't have much of one. Just that it was located next to a planet named 'Rime' specifically because it too was a cold iceball and someone thought it would be cute. There were no other planets in the system which suited the one inhabitant of Rime just fine and the experiment team on Reason just as well.

Apparently at some point in time a stricken interstellar freighter had visited the system and crashed into the frozen surface of Reason. Which explained the toys. The ruined hulk of the freighter, while not salvageable, was being used as the test monitoring station. Some welding here, a bulkhead there, and while the floors were at an odd angle it was a respectable housing station. Various antenna and sensor clusters had been strewn around the exposed portion and a heavy shielding system had been installed to prevent accidents.

"Great. What happened this time?"

A trio of technicians and engineers cautiously approached the grounded Bulldog and plugged a cable into an external port. The little green light behind the access panel that would normally indicate the system was online wasn't red or yellow, it was just out. Which was bad. As in...

"Looks like the whole power system is fried. Who's been using railroad spikes for fuses again?"

One of the technicians clambered into the open turret and pulled open another panel. Inside the fuse box was a mass of melted metal and plastic and the inside of the tank filled with acrid smoke as something continued to burn.

"It wasn't a railroad spike, but enough current jumped through here to fry everything."

"Which means we are going to have to re-wire the test unit and put it on a new hull. Great."

The weapon tests were already months behind. Whoever had decided to move to real-world testing was in the hole for a lot of kit already thanks to several other failed experiments. One of which involved an entire tank and test weapon disappearing entirely - they were still searching for it but the weapon tended to disrupt the tunneling quantum entanglement communications links the SDF used. Still, despite the losses the whole idea of an Aperture Cannon sounded cool and sometimes cool was enough to justify spending billions.

Time for some end of the year upkeep. Sunset is, as of Dec 31st, six years old. 10.838 billion citizens, and much of those six years spent as an anarchy according to the filthy UN. Hopefully it will spend much of the next six as an anarchy as well. This thread was started on 09-27-2003 and now individually chronicles much of what has happened in Sunset through short stories, random abstracts, and news events. Hopefully during that time it has stayed close to the important themes of Sunset and revealed some new ones.

What's next for the future of Sunset? I suppose there is some debate in my mind as to whether Sunset has outgrown the possible resources of Ares or if there is still more than enough territory for it to continue to grow. Perhaps it is time to start looking for a new system out there to get ready for twelve billion, perhaps not. I guess we'll find out over the next few months...

~Sunset

"Class, it is time for show and tell! Is everyone ready?"

"Yes Sir!" rang out in chorus and the instructor smiled.

"All right, Ensign Murph will start us off. Ensign?"

The young officer in question, a ropey mass of vines with what looked like a rock where a human's head would be, stepped out of line and up to the head of the class where he held up a table lamp. The vocoder fused to the rock squealed to life and he began to move the lamp through a variety of motions in demonstration.

"A table lamp, filched from my roommate's desk. Against a human opponent the cord can be used as a..."

The rest of the class payed close attention as the mineraloid went over a half-dozen ways to kill or incapacitate a human with a table lamp and another half-dozen ways to use it versus various non-human species, including his own. To hear a dozen young officers eagerly discussing show and tell in the hallways of a marine barracks might seem strange until one realized they were talking about improvised weapons and competing to find the strangest object and the newest way to kill someone with it. Show and Tell typified SDF hand to hand training: Practical and bloodthirsty.

There were no forms and no levels, no belts and no uniforms. Tournaments decided the best and the worst and the best were then put into the same class as the worst, sometimes as the instructors. Tips were shared freely and there were no allowances made for cyborgs, multiple limbs, or even silicon-based sentients. Part of being a marine meant one might end up fighting nearly anything.

Show and Tell was also Show, Tell, and Use. In the classroom the objects were recreated as hard foamrubber simu-aids but in the virtual classroom there were no such alterations. Fights there frequently ended as bloody brawls with one man left standing.

"So what is it?"

Goez picked up the little cylinder that sat on Katrina's workbench and flipped it over and over in his hands. There were buttons on one end. Two actually, one that ran in a circle around the outer edge and one larger one in the center.

"Looks like a grenade. Not a big fan of them myself but..."

"It's not a grenade. We already have rather good grenades. I haven't put that on my to-do list in a long time. Tactical Dynamics has a really good design staff and I don't really think I could make any improvements."

"Well then what is it?" Goez asked again, setting it back down on the workbench.

"It's a personal E-drive. A rescue drive of sorts. The units on the Ghostdragon and our other systems are powered by the system's internal power supply. This has it's own independent unit. Rotate the outside button then press the inner button and the unit moves everything inside a two-meter radius to a pre-programmed position here. Then it burns out. But they are expensive, even for the VLEMA."

"Whyso?" Goez put the little unit on a scale and read off the weight. "A little more than a kilogram. Matter is matter, isn't it?"

"The devil is in the details. The VLEMA can produce large things very easily - a ship for instance - but small things with even smaller things inside are more prone to failure. Since you can only use an E-drive of this size once before it burns out you can't exactly test it like you can a warship. If it fails, it fails in the field. So you need to make it with a very precise manufacturing system."

The lieutenant nodded. "So I'm not going to get one of these, am I?"

"You might. I can't justify the expense of giving them to every member of the SDF or even just 0-Division. As much as I like you guys. For the time being they are only going to be issued to 0-Div on a 'really, really, needed' basis and there will be one issued to every Secretary and every Admiral."

"So if you added a timer..."

"Yes," she sighed, "It would be a grenade. A very, very expensive grenade."

"Good for kidnapping people though."

"You've thought about this, haven't you?"

----

Chalmers swiveled her chair back and forth in that way that said 'I'm bored and frustrated and there isn't a lot I can do about it.' Which was starting to be true of everyone aboard the ship. Going over a probe inch by inch was boring. Running the sensor logs over and over looking for whatever you missed the first time was boring. Life on an explorer was generally pretty interesting - either there was work to be done, new research to understand, perhaps even a new life form to interact with or cut up, but this was boring. Though she had only been bored for a few hours. Perhaps the abundance of excitement in the course of their normal activities made the current stretch of boring seem all the more boring. Maybe she was just slacking off and was justifying it by calling it boring. The technician walking up to her with a smile on his face didn't seem bored...

"Ma'am, I've found something interesting!"

"Alright... what is it?"

Her malaise seemed to put him off for a second but he recovered quickly and she paid more attention. If he was interested perhaps she should be, or should at least pretend to be.

"Well, I was taking a look at the information from the probe. Most of it's memory has been corrupted by something and is not very reliable but I decided to take a look at what we recorded the probe doing instead."

He pushed her a stream of the probe during the time it was out of their control as well as an additional analytical stream.

"The BLA seems to be the important thing. I've done a careful breakdown of the varying light levels displayed by the BLA and there is a pattern. I think whatever is on board those stations could have been using those EM fields to try to talk to us. It's not a very coherent pattern."

Various heads on the bridge turned and Chalmers could 'feel' people grabbing the streams and taking a look at them either on their own mental displays or on various physical screens.

"It's waveforms actually. A bunch of them intermixed with various starts, stops, and drop-offs. But there is a pattern. I found the same set of overlapping waveforms present in twenty-three instants. Too much for random noise."

"Or it could be random noise. Some kind of odd interference from the fields. They are relatively coherent Lieutenant..."

That was one of the science staff sharing his dismal opinion but Chalmers really didn't care.

"It's something. Something to go on. How about this - how about we put two probes next to the station with their BLA's facing each other. Maybe they use some kind of light-based visual communication. Then we will replay the signals we've recorded then start doing a standard language translation method converted to a visual method."

"That will take some time Captain. I don't believe we have anything like that ready."

"Well, get some people on it. Both ships. And get both probes ready. One should be configured exactly the same way the first one was so they, assuming there is a they, already know how it works."

----

'Oh lord, why me?'

The marine sergeant watched the tiny figures move around the tiny depression through the vision magnification afforded by his powered armor for a few more minutes. He, and the ship, had moved on while a small team of researchers (including the Ensign with the clever notions for communicating) had stayed behind with what were now dubbed the 'butt-flute aliens'.

"So, what do you think Sarge?"

"I continue to ask the Good Lord why I was sent to this soup-bowl to look at what appear to be ambulatory ping-pong balls Ensign. And then I wonder why you are asking me what I think."

Sergeant Yuang knew exactly why he had been assigned to come take a look at these particular aliens over other vastly more qualified candidates from the pocket protector division aboard the Euphrates. Other more qualified candidates were already investigating other interesting sites with other more interesting alien species. This was both low priority and required just as much experience as the pencil-necks figured the Sergeant had.

Apparently the Corporal (Ensign G-3 technically. The marines tended to be more informal except when it came to pay,) had made the big breakthrough on establishing basic communications with the butt-flute aliens and was now some kind of nerd hero. Which still didn't mean the Sergeant approved of putting anything, no matter how useful it was in the pursuit of science, in one's ass. Just like his belief in a higher power Yuang was very traditional about some things.

"Well, they don't look hostile. No weapons..."

"No arms Sarge. I suppose they could stab you a good one though."

The Sergeant looked over at the Corporal (Ensign G-2 out of 4) who, like Yuang, was laying there in a suit of power armor that could be easily described as 'monolithic'. The ping-pong's came, perhaps, up to his waistline and the only way they could stab him a good one was if he was laying down. Trying to appear nonchalant about it the marine rose and gestured towards the aliens.

"Let's go and take a look then. Hopefully we can cross them off the list and get back aboard and out of these tin cans."

The marines were wearing the large suits for two reasons. The first was that this particular soup-bowl was, almost literally, just that. The atmosphere was a thick brine of small life forms ranging from bacteria to algae in size and approximate function. The few other life forms tended to be small and these ping-pongs were right in the middle as far as size went. It seemed nearly everything that couldn't float around fed on things that did.

Second they were all out of the regular suits. The Euphrates only carried so many of the light powered suits that were also environmentally sealed and these had been assigned to the science nerds. Apparently they felt the faceless look was less intimidating than the large, heavily armed, and obviously not-the-person-underneath Daiklaives. Still it did mean Yuang got to carry a rifle that was the size of his body and one could hardly go wrong there. It did mean he was conflicted as to whether to recommend that more light suits be carried for just this kind of situation or not though.

"Assuming you've read the manual Corporal, what exactly are we doing here?"

The question was a quiz. Not that the non-comms were encouraged to quiz their sections but Yuang had split up his group and sent his regulars off to look for other interesting things while he and the newbie took a closer look at the main objective. Technically they had spent an hour just looking at the main objective so perhaps it was time to check in with his two squads.

'Anything interesting out there?'

The question was basically there to provide some kind of log that showed he was doing something with his time other than just standing around and scratching his ass and that he was, in some way, performing some kind of command duty. The two squads knew that and seemed to have already prepared answers.

'Forty-two.'

'Roanians boinking.'

Since it was an open line there was the usual follow up questions and answers from the other section members until things quieted down. By the time it was decided that a Roanian copulating with one's mother was the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, the Sergeant had moved to within a hundred meters of the round critters and had hunkered down behind a useful rock to take a further look-see.

This mostly consisted of working his way through the various spectra available to the suit's sensor suite while looking this way and that over the gathering. Initially he had almost compared the gathering to a copse of trees because, all in all, they just didn't do much. Occasionally one would amble over to another, move around a little bit, then settle down and just stand there like it had been born there. In the whole hour they been watching them the Sergeant had not seen one eat another or eat anything else, nor had he seen them stab any of the miscellaneous critters that had wandered past so he felt safe in assuming they were not prone to aggression.

Now that he was this close it was a lot easier to make out the fine details through the miasma that was the local atmosphere. The torso, if it could be called that, was a round ball with a dangly bit on the bottom that he assumed was some kind of rectum or other form of poop-chute. Two legs on meaty thick bits left the torso suspended between them though the legs looked like a pair of big claws that were only barely mobile. On the front of the torso was a fairly big eye of the vertical slit type which was probably very useful for seeing pretty much anything and on the back were a series of flaps or perhaps gills that fluttered open and closed from top to bottom to show a tiny flash of purple.

The only color the Sergeant, a cultured man who had once seen a painting but swore he'd been looking for pornography, could use to describe their coloring was a kind of greenish pink. Not the most appealing of colors but there it was. On the outside of their leg-claws they had some kind of thick chiten or armor or perhaps it was some bone under the skin. He couldn't exactly cut one open (yet) but it was colored a bit differently, generally a darker sort of greyish-greenish-pink. What little one could see of the eye was white with a single black pupil and no iris. Or perhaps the white bit was the iris. Again, he couldn't cut one open and find out.

"No weapons, no cooking pots, no huts, no nothing. Unless you want to take a closer look..."

"If there isn't any sign of sentience the manual says..."

"Get a sample, right. Go get one kid. Make sure it's one you can take home to your mum."

This was, of course, what newbies were good for. Aside from setting off traps in ancient ruins of course. The Corporal, who had been crouching just behind Yuang and looking over his shoulder, put down his rifle and moved towards the group. Since the suit had enough mounted firepower to destroy an entire bronze age civilization the Sergeant didn't see fit to mention this lapse.

'...but I do wonder if he's gonna make G-3. Oh Lord, protect thy servant in times of trial...'

By servant he clearly meant himself as he picked up the weapon and trudged off after the Corporal with a resigned sigh. The Corporal, in a fit of unexpected intelligence, began to work his way around the outside of the group as soon as he reached the edge before carefully making his way towards a smaller one without looking too threatening. Well, as threatening as a two-plus meter suit of death-armor can look. Some of the critters looked at him and then at the Sergeant and then back again and sometimes at their neighbors but there didn't appear to be a general scramble to get out of the Corporal's way.

Then he grabbed one. It scrabbled a bit and tried to get some purchase on his armor but the spiked legs that normally kept it upright in the mushy ground didn't help at all. A general rush ensued but instead of rushing away the critters mobbed the Corporal, gathering around him and looking up at their captured comrade who continued to try to escape without success. Finally it did try to stab at him with it's claw-legs but the fielded armor took it and laughed.

"Looks like they like you kid... Wait a minute..."

The Sergeant wasn't exactly an oblivious man. Yes, he was a man who liked to shoot things and generally make a mess, but that didn't mean he didn't have a certain attention to detail. And when a bunch of ping-pong balls on stilts suddenly begin to make distinctly similar lines in the muck by standing on one leg and swirling their free leg around... Well, he knew a written language when he saw one.

"...put it down. It looks like we might be here a while."

'Why me?'

'You have got to be kidding me...!'

The good sergeant sighed and looked over to where the Captain of the Euphrates stood looking down at the latest joke the Good Lord was trying to play on him.

"What business would you have with the WindChaser?"

The question was a formal one and coming from the meter-and-a-half tall female centaur (http://www.sunsetrpg.com/yappa-ng/index.php?album=%2FPowerarmor%2F&image=CentaurArmor.jpg) standing just in front of the Captain it was also a bit comical. The crew hadn't even needed one of Yuang's fortunate coincidences to discover this species - as soon as they had entered the system they had been hailed by a dozen different nations, all apparently inhabited by centaurs.

"We seek to treat with the WindChaser where all can hear. Inform him that Captain Merhygan of the Sunset starship Euphrates and his advisors and guards wish to approach."

The conversation continued and Yuang tuned it out as it started to come down to minutia like the number of mares that would be present and the amount of water that would be needed. Apparently the centaurs lived in hundreds of 'herd-nations' that used extremely complex formalities to prevent conflict between themselves. Further complicating the situation was the fact that the Captain wasn't male and wasn't married so there had been a lot of offers to add her to a particular herd-nation for favorable trade or military relations.

'Three systems within five light years of each other...'

'What's that Sarge?'

The newbie was still alive and kicking despite his own efforts otherwise. During a solid week in the previous system both on the soup-bowl and off he had managed to get himself into enough near-deadly scrapes that the sergeant had run out of fingers and toes to count them on. Nearly decapitated himself exploring the ruins of another alien civilization the ping-pongs looked to as gods? Check. Nearly got himself smooshed by a landing shuttle that had come to take them off-planet? Check...

'Just going over the numbers in my head.'

'I thought you didn't do numbers Sarge...'

'I don't. Which is why I'm thinking out loud so you can run them for me.'

'Ah, right. So three systems within five light years of each other...'

'All with sentient life. All of which apparently don't know each other. All on worlds in the habitable band... Well duh. They are inhabited. But what are the odds of three habitable zone planets within five light years of each other? It's gotta be billions to one...'

'Eight.'

'Eight to one? You gotta be...'

'No Sarge. Eight habitable zone planets within... ten light years of each other. I'm looking at the long range sensor logs right now.'

'A weeks pay says they are all inhabited. What is this? The Zoo Sector?'

'I'm not taking that bet.'

"Welcome aboard, Senator TeeTooTri..."

Admiral Dakov shook hands with the thin blue ArAreBeen and turned to walk with him towards the reception deck that sprawled at the end of the terminal corridor. All around them were workers, both drones and sentients of every race, and none of them seemed to pay much attention to the pair even through the Senator would soon become the Governor of this particular outpost of civilization.

"Construction seems to be proceeding at an admiral pace. I noticed that number four ring has arrived already."

"That's right..."

Dukov gestured out one of the huge 'windows' towards a towering slab that was slowly obscuring their view of the binary star system the station was being built in.

"We had to. Resource consumption is spiking and is expected to exceed what we can bring through one and two before three is operational. We tripled our workforce as you requested during your last visit and things are rocketing along."

The senator nodded enthusiastically. "I told you. Minimum workforces are for minimal powers. Sunset is not and shouldn't act like one. Forty thousand people is for chumps! Now... How about my office?"

Project Eight-Five-Seven (This goes on for a bit, Sunset had a lot of projects) was, essentially, a public version of Refuge. A combination of an Eldar Craftworld, a ZMI MegaCity, and any number of alien monoliths it would be the eventual home of nearly four billion sentients. Eventual because the station was designed to be inhabited as it grew and to grow as it moved around from system to system harvesting the common resources it would need to grow. As it grew it's reliance on certain manufactured resources would also decrease as the manufacturing for those resources was brought into the station. Eventually it would be self-sustaining but that was, at this point, perhaps centuries away.

Even though the project was currently Admiral Dukov's responsibility the station was and would be a civilian project. The Senator was more than an elected official, he was also a former board member of CityDome, Hendrick Bros, and still currently sat on the boards of a dozen other Fortune-500 companies. Some of which were involved in the project and some of which were not. Which is why the Admiral was in charge of vetting the bids and contracts rather than the Senator. Backing them up was an entire design firm's worth of staff from ZMI's MegaCity division and hundreds of roving inspectors from various government divisions.

----

In the end there had been little his one ship could have done to stave off the inevitable. It was too much, too fast, and too determined. Aramaki had made the decision to try to evacuate everyone possible when the attacking aliens - parasites really - had destroyed one of his two fighters. It didn't seem like a lot but the damage was clear from the numbers. More missiles were getting through, more cities were being destroyed by atomic fire, and the survivors were losing more and more of their capacity to resist.

They had fought a holding action for as long as they could and now it was time for a fighting withdrawal. What limited production capacity the O-Ied had was shifted to building ships - primitive by nearly any standard - that would serve as life rafts for whoever they could get off the planet. Instead of weapons they built Black Knight FTL drives. Rugged and simple they were also highly inaccurate and Aramaki knew that every ship fitted with one had a one in eight chance of just disappearing the first time it was activated. Better than the one in one odds they had of dying here though.

Captain Aramaki wound his way between the small knots of refugees that littered the corridors of the Snake as he made his way from the main docking bay at the aft of the ship towards the bridge that was nestled in the core. Behind him was the matriarch of the O-Ied, which apparently wasn't really pronounced the way it was written, but figuring out the best way to write their name down in english hadn't been a priority for anyone in the past month. She had been the last of their race to flee the planet and it had taken some serious arguing on the part of Aramaki and their central guiding body to get her to leave.

There were still millions left unfortunately. Since the decision to evacuate had been made there had been a mad dash to build the motley fleet of ships that now spread out below the Snake's protective position in orbit but they hadn't even come close nor reasonably could they. The single explorer-cum-warship had to protect the unarmed transports and the unarmed transports had to be near the largest center of population in order to speed evacuation.

The remaining smaller cities had built and contributed what they could, but with their cover gone those cities on the opposite side of the world had slowly fallen and a trickle of refugees with their last belongings on their back had slowly swam into the Capital. There they had certainly found a welcome and work to occupy their time. Outlying buildings were torn down and brave teams of salvager's ventured into what was now hostile territory to gather materials.

As soon as one component was built it was lifted into orbit and hurriedly put together with others to join the motley fleet. No two ships were alike aside from three points - all were unarmed, all mounted the long transmission spines of a long-antique Black Knight jump drive, and all had the whirlpool flag of their people proudly painted somewhere on their hull.

The Black Knight drives... Now there was something Aramaki was worried about. There had been many reasons they had been replaced but one was reliability. Even with the high standards of Triumvirate manufacturers they were still just plain unreliable due to the method they used. They could just not work at all, come out radically off-course, or rarely, not come out at all. And that was with high manufacturing standards. With the limited manufacturing available to the natives the normal one-in-one-thousand chance of having a problem was now something more like one-in-eight. One in eight, and spread out below the Snake were forty three ships. Not exactly the best odds for the last hundred and sixty-thousand-odd surviving members of a sentient species.

Still it couldn't be helped. The aggressors seemed to want to make sure it was zero surviving members and while the scientists aboard hadn't figured out why exactly, it was Aramaki's mission to make sure they didn't succeed.

He took his seat and the matriarch took hers as well. It was a ceremonial chair and now that it was out of the water for the first time in hundreds of years it smelled like rotting fish and moldy seaweed which meant the bridge smelled like rotting fish and moldy seaweed as well. Her assistants gathered around her, standing and in some cases sitting at her feet and he waited until they were settled before beginning.

"Fleet status?"

"All ships report ready..." By radio was unspoken but it was yet another thing to worry about. They had no problem with radio, but many of the crews were barely trained with the most competent put in charge of operating the jump drives. If there was a problem it might not be reported until it was too late.

Keeping the worry off his face he turned to the matriarch and nodded. "That's good. All ship, initiate course alpha and increase speed to full."

"Yes Sir."

In the three dimensional display of the main holo-sphere the tiny green arrows representing the individual ships of the fleet began to move as they broke orbit at various speeds depending on the reaction speeds of their maneuvering thrusters and their crews. This had the effect of breaking up the small cluster of ships into a long trailing fleet as well as signaling their intentions to the encircling aggressor fleet. While he had timed their departure for the safety zone between waves there were still enemy ships out there and the red arrows that represented their ships began maneuvering as well.

"Double check that all ships have their jump drives pre-programmed. All ships are to jump as soon as they reach safe distance."

"Aye aye. Orders relayed..."

There was nothing to do now but wait for the last ship to leave orbit and follow it. At the front of the ragtag fleet was the remaining fighter that the Snake had carried. Piloted remotely, it was there to destroy any ships that tried to get in front of the fleet and prevent them from reaching a safe distance. The Black Knight drives needed a gravitationally stable area or they wouldn't work or if they did they would arrive far off course. Even the relatively small alien attack ships could interfere but not if they were floating scrap.

And for the city below there was now only waiting as well. The Snake would defend it as long as it could but it would need to leave as well. Those who had to stay behind were even now building what defenses they could and taking shelter in deep bunkers but their survival was unlikely. Even if they survived the initial bombardment... There was nothing Aramaki could do. His ship was crammed with survivors as well. The fighter would double back but if the attackers went for the Capital before it arrived they could annihilate the entire city with a few well-placed bombs.

"The first ship has reached the jump point Captain... Incoming message from the captain... 'Good fishing'."

The main screen switched to a fore-view of the jump ship and everyone on the bridge watched as energy crackled along the transmission spines as the glow faded from the primitive fusion torches that had pushed it this far. Space rippled around it and it was gone. There were cheers from the matriarchs assistant's and smiles from the SDF crew members but Aramaki knew there were many more to go and so it continued. Second, third, forth, fifth... Then it happened. Two in a row failed to jump.

"Order them to move to one side and recharge for another attempt. All ships are to continue moving up to the jump point. If any others fail to jump move them off and give them the same instructions."

Another problem. Black Knight drives took an inordinately long amount of time to charge up for a jump, far longer than the Tesseract drive on the Snake took to recharge from a jump of the same distance. It was more time that the ships were vulnerable and while engineering felt it had a backup plan it was risky and would only work with two or three ships. If one was stuck it could try to run but they only carried a few days worth of supplies. Maybe a week if they stretched it. Barely enough for the torches to get them out of the system and it was years to the next habitable star.

Fortunately the next ship jumped out just fine, and then they were on a roll for the next twenty two ships. That was the three. Fortunately the only three, at least as far as Aramaki knew. It was possible that ships had disappeared, exploded as soon as they came out, or any number of nightmare scenarios, but at least there were only these three remained. Now it was time for the last part of Aramaki's plan. The part he hadn't bothered to mention until now for a variety of reasons.

"Helm, bring us to fifty kilometers of the remaining ship. Send the fighter back to protect the Capital and bring us about to face the planet..."

This last part was risky. It would leave the Snake without it's most powerful offensive weapons but it would buy those remaining a bit more time and it would hopefully make the attackers think twice about trying to follow them.

"Tactical, bring all tubes online. Establish a VDA around the planet, all ordinance, configuration at your discretion, set it to 'Very Aggressive'."

"Yes Sir!"

In the bowels of the ship bays of torpedos began to spin as the hatches on the forward tubes iris'ed open. Volley after volley left the tubes, flung into space by the accelerator rails as to conserve their own propulsion for when they were called to attack incoming ships. Soon the bays were empty and as they spun down the tactical officer worked to initialize the VDA.

"All set Captain. This will give 'em hell."

"Excellent. Order the remaining ships to clump together. Helm, put us between them. Say your goodbyes..."

Beside him the matriarch nodded and quietly spoke to one of her assistants who went over to a console and touched the controls. A pre-recorded message of mourning and loss went out to her remaining people and she sat back in her seat, head down, as the Snake maneuvered into position for it's own jump.

"Everyone close enough?"

"Ten seconds..."

The seconds ticked by and the ships now surrounding the Snake drifted closer and closer. Then it, and they, were gone.

'...don't blame us Captain. Thin arms and legs and a large head appear to be a relatively common xeno-type...'

The holo-RRB that had popped up in one corner of Commander Teal's HUD disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared and the kitsune shook his head briefly before turning back to the carved stone sphere that he had been carefully examining.

"...so you say that these are the creators? The originators?"

He pointed at a carved image of what looked like a spindly humanoid with a large head that was surrounded by stylized versions of the little round alien that had guided him to this particular monolith. They had proven to be smart little buggers and had rapidly picked up several english symbols which they used for rapid communication with the newcomes. Such as '?' which generally meant 'Why are you talking at me you moron. I don't have ears.'

"...oh right. I forgot... Again."

The first team to work on translating the purely written language of the little aliens initially dubbed ping-pongs by some barbarian marine had worked with their fingers, then sticks, ergonomic stylus, then finally a portable holo-sphere that they had rigged up with an optical recognition sensor to read and translate the language for the researchers and vis versa. But one still had to remember to use it.

^Yes, it is the originator. That self-stone indicates it. There is also an unlike-stone that indicates it came to the mother stone nearly ten thousand rotations ago. We counted.^

He looked closer at the little pictogram and carefully wiped some slime off of it with a sponge to reveal a little more of the details. Like most of the things on this planet it was covered with a mixture of mud and an organic stew. Since there wasn't a freeze-thaw cycle at this latitude the monoliths were mostly intact but usually really dirty. The natives could pick out the general shapes with their enormous eye but his eyes were apparently not as sharp despite his canine origins.

^So what's this?^

The little alien shrugged. It had picked that one up too. Teal was pointing to a little triangle shape on the humanoid's face. Given it didn't have eyes or ears he figured it must be reasonably important to have included it.

^I don't know. Maybe one of the other old one's knows. I could go ask.^

'...looks like a horn. We don't have horns. Though that ring below it looks like a torq or maybe the seal ring on a spacesuit...'

'That would be a more logical answer than some guy wearing a huge golden torq who goes around creating random xenos. Could be a horn I suppose. Maybe there is another picture.'

^Is there a picture of the originator in profile?^

^Again, I don't know. I could ask.^

----

"Well we used to have some carvings around here somewhere, but they sunk into the mud..."

"Crap..."

Acting on a wild-ass theory that the young Ensign had heard from his former Sergeant the researchers were searching the marsh and questioning the elders of each village looking for something that would tie all of the sentients they had found in the local octette together. Here it was proving something of a problem though. The marshes tended to absorb everything heavier than wood after a couple days and the land-squids only lived in the marshes that dominated the temperate southern hemisphere.

"And get out of my garden. What is it with you humans and trampling on our gardens?"

"Sorry." He shuffled around until the slimy brown alien stopped tapping one of it's tentacles in squishy reproof. "Have any of you ever gone to the mountains or down to the sea perhaps?"

"There are some who have. They were probably eaten..."

"Pleasant."

"Well, they did leave the marsh. Their own fault."

"Cheer up Sarge! You probably ain't the first marine to have 'Interstellar Incident' listed in their file."

Yuang scowled and took a long sip on his beer. At least the rookie was buying cause he was going to get good and drunk before the night was through. It had all started off so well too...

--

The Sergeant brushed some of the long grass to the side and looked up and down the stream before stepping out onto the bank and surveying the other side. Not that it was a long jump or even a very large step, but it was a navigational hazard and potential tactical obstacle as well. If they ever found any of the natives and they turned out to be hostile that is. Right now the whole 'finding the natives' part seemed to be a problem.

There had been plenty of the typical signs of a technological society visible from orbit. Smog, pollution in some of the larger rivers and lakes, mine tailings, and the other less-than-pleasant signs were all there. But no natives. It was like the moment the Euphrates entered orbit they had all up and left. And despite the signs of progress there were still scads of native plants and animals to make searching for the natives a very tedious task.

Tedious tasks involving possibly hostile native sentients naturally fell right into the lap of the marine contingent. Well, fell into the lap of a committee which then decided that the science staff was sufficiently busy with other things that didn't necessitate them running around in body armor through the mud and muck. Apparently, after the marsh world and the soup world, the thick-rimmed glasses community was looking for the beach world. Too bad for Yuang.

--

"Still, at least you are still a Sergeant. I heard the Captain was breathing fire!"

"Yeah, well, she couldn't breath too hard. Anyone could have made the same mistake really. Who knew it was a dominance ritual..."

--

'Sarge? Delta reports they found something...'

'Oh, really. That's too bad.'

Yuang couldn't really feel too bad though. Discovering two new sentient races looked really good on one's record. Three might look like you were taking credit for someone else's work. And it was less paperwork to fill out.

'Yep. No three in a row for you. Looks like they were able to follow a trail from some mine workings and found a little town built into one of the larger trees. First images are coming through now.'

The Sergeant took a look at the feed out of tactical curiosity. The aliens were small - about the size and general shape of a Terran weasel - and certainly didn't look very aggressive. They had a yellow-orange beak that looked like it could give a fairy painful bite and instead of ears they had two antenna that looked like they were cut off a newt and glued onto their head. They could apparently walk upright and run on all fours with the same gallomping movement of a weasel. The forepaws were dexterous with a semi-opposable thumb and a nasty looking spur on the base of the 'hand'. They also had a flattened tail and their body was mostly covered in brown-orange fur of various shades. Dark patches around the eyes, paws, tail, snout, and underbelly served to help distinguish one from another.

'...they are actually kinda cute.'

'Sarge?'

'You heard me. Like a weasel or ferret. Too bad they are sentient. I could see a big market for a new exotic housepet.'

The sergeant turned and began tromping through the brush towards Delta team.

'Well, let's go take a look rookie!'

--

"...all I did was pet one."

GrrrawrROOO!

The marines looked at each other and raised their weapons a little higher as they worked their way down the canyon gorge. It could have been the wind: A deep throaty roar echoed all through the area, bouncing off the boulders and scree that lay everywhere. The river that had carved the area had long ago dried up and they stuck to the sandy bottom rather than the rougher edges. More exposed, perhaps, but quicker and after all the odd noises they were definately interested in faster.

GrrrawrROOO!

"There it is again!"

"Yeah, I heard it too. The scientists say there are some big thermals up ahead though. We gotta check it out."

The pair moved ahead, another pair behind them covering them and scanning the canyon walls and debris until they were a good fifty meters ahead. Then they stopped and the other team moved up. It was slow going but they were nervous.

"How big were those thermals again?"

"Couple meters."

"That's like an elephant..."

"I don't think we are gonna see any elephants here. Not enough plant life to support any kind of large herbivores."

The Ensign was right. Though the planet could support life much of it was desolate, including the canyon regions that dominated the equator. Due to the rotation of the planet and it's angle the northern hemisphere was very cold and the south very warm. Rivers flowed between the two and between the weather and the water the canyon mazes had been carved out over millennia.

The first team came to a sharp bend and stopped there flabbergasted as they peered around the rocky outcropping.

"Holy crap! Come and look at this!"

One of the marines motioned frantically for the other team to join them and there was another loud GrrrawrROOO! as they moved up.

"What in the hell is that thing!?"

'It' was huge. Roughly a hundred meters away, in an open area of the channel, sat the source of the thermal bloom rooted in the center of the sandy channel. It had a roughly squarish body with what were likely four huge sphere-shaped heads positioned around the top in shallow depressions. Around these were clustered a number of tentacles that dropped to the ground like tree roots and sunk into the soil. Aside from the tentacles it was covered in rough, pebbly blue skin.

"Look at it's face... What are those? Eyes?"

The face was definitely a face. It was covered in a number of U shaped flaps that occasionally opened and closed. One, at the bottom, was certainly a mouth as a tentacle would sometimes whip out of the ground with lightning speed and deposit something in that flap before shooting into the ground again. Others would also open - some rythmically and others seemingly at random. The first had narrow, dark slits and the second had veined purple orbs under them.

"Looks like it. At least some of them. I don't get it... Was this thing designed by a committee?"

Monolith Station (http://www.sunsetrpg.com/yappa-ng/index.php?album=%2FMiscellaneous%2F&image=MonumentStation.jpg)

While there was still the issue of the name, the true scale of the project was becoming more and more apparent as construction continued on Monolith - or was it Monument? - Station. According to the plans the Senator had laid out the station would be completed when the population of the Republic reached approximately thirteen billion sentients. Since this was not an unlucky number for the RRB and instead just frequently associated with one's mother in law there would be a grand ceremony and the station would open for business. Of course, that was nearly one-point-seven billion people away so he had some wiggle room.

Right now the majority of the work was focused on the central spire. That would contain the most important infrastructure on the station and it's completion was essential before the deadline. The massive shaft would contain the resource recycling systems, much of the food production areas, the massive power plants, and the tesseract drives that would supposedly move the monster from system to system.

The very middle of the spire was literally the hub of the whole operation. That would house the operations center where he would oversea everything from his office. But he would live in the Needle. Probably the bottom one he thought.

The Needle, or Needles, were two huge structures that on a smaller station would look like antenna. On a station this size they were nearly a kilometer across though and were designed to be the most exclusive real estate on the whole station. These would be the homes of the very, very rich as well as corporate headquarters of both the local and galactic type. When his penthouse at the very tip was done he would be able to look out and see the whole station spread out below him as the Needle slowly rotated on it's axis. He had thought up the rotating idea on his own. Expensive, yes, but when compared to the cost of the station...

The outermost curtain would contain the largest industrial areas with the most need for access to open space. There would also be housing - lower class housing - for those who worked in those areas as well as some commercial areas for serving local needs. The outer curtain would also contain the operating systems for the four massive Aurora sub-gates that would help move resources in and out of the station.

The next curtain section would be more commercially oriented and contain both a large number of compact industries, large commercial offices, and quite a lot of lower and middle class housing. All of which would be leased.

Actually, almost everything would be leased. The Monolith Station Corporation would own the physical structure but, in typical RRB fashion, every service, every property, every need, every space, would be leased to a different corporation which would then be responsible for maintaining it. Which of course they would likely contract back to MSC since they had the specialized equipment that had been built just for that task.

Then he, as a nearly two percent shareholder, would rake in a lot of money. His salary was only one hundred thousand di-coins or so a month but that looked good on the balance sheets while ignoring the fact that he would make more money every day than his actual salary. He was ignoring the other interests for the moment of course. Sunset had something like a twenty-five percent direct stake, a conglomeration of Sunset corporations had another twenty-seven, there was a seven percent stake by the Menelmacari (The pointies had their fingers in everything) and a number of other Triumvirate and allied nation-states had anywhere from a two to eight percent stake.

Along with a lot of little requirements that he was in charge of implementing. Like emergency housing for twenty million people. A Fleet maintenance base. A dry dock that could house a Busu. And there were several areas that had been leased by the SDF, immediately blacked out on his station schematic, then he had been told to never even ask about. Which was odd because several of them were only the size of a broom closet.

----

A group of men were gathered around the water cooler in the usual manner of lazy office workers everywhere...

"So, you guys seen the new guy yet? I hear he's interesting. Got a lot of stories to tell apparently."

"Oh yeah? Where's he from?"

"The Basin apparently. Chimera. Fun guy."

"Chimera? Oh really? What's he got going..."

"Hey - here he is!" The worker turned and gestured to someone who had just walked into view of the alcove where the water cooler stood. He was dressed in the usual business casual - slacks and a long sleeve button down shirt - and he had two octopus tentacles coming out of each sleeve as well as a single stubby one that hung over his lower face.

"Hey guys, this is Jeremy Wilkins. He's the new guy in advertising on the Cholestra account."

"Hey," One of the workers stuck his hand out and Jeremy shook it. "Nice to meet you. Chimera, right?"

"Brulargle!"

"That's great! My great-uncle was a chimera. Had a bit of horse in him. Octopus, am I right?"

"Bflargle," Wilkins responded and shook hands with one of the other guys at the cooler.

"That's great. Say, did you catch the tournament last night?"

"Ssnar grfllarg nargle, gosf flarg narg."

"Yeah - that was a great shot by Porter. Though you have to admit that the guy who took Porter out, what's his name..."

"Gnarfga..."

"Oh yeah. That was the best..."

The Snake emerged into real-space to find a scene of chaos and confusion barely less muddled than the one it had just left. Ships were everywhere and there was a trail of debris right through the middle of the fleet. One of the ships had apparently emerged from it's jump too close to another and collided. Poor training and sub-standard equipment had struck again. Fortunately their relative velocities had been apparently close enough that both ships were still marginally intact aside from the long tears down their hulls and the missing spines on one. Missing jump spines. Which meant that ship was immobilized.

There were some gasps from the Matriarch's advisers but Aramaki ignored them as he looked around the bridge. Clearly they realized that those tears meant that there were now hundreds, perhaps thousands, fewer of their people to continue their species.

"Contact all ships and get them on the same relative heading. Get the bridge crews of the damaged vessels into conference so we can figure out what happened... Helm? Get us closer to those two ships. We'll get engineering crews out there to patch up the damage and recover what we can. Science? What do we have?"

Technically he knew what they had. Little to nothing. But he wanted to get it into the open so everyone knew what they were looking at. With a jump radius of thirty lightyears they didn't have many choices for targets and they couldn't chose anything with an obviously habitable world. That's where the aggressors might have come from.

"Not a lot Captain. Binary star system, three gas giants, nothing in the habitable band. Sizable Kuiper-belt though. Lots of loose comets around. I suggest we find a nice large icy ball and head there. We will need water first."

And food, but that was in larger supply than water. Hopefully they would find someplace to get food before their supplies ran out.

"A comet would also supply reaction mass. Some of the ships need to refuel already..."

Aramaki nodded, "Ok. Find us a good one and point the fleet there. I also want frequent and intensive sensor sweeps just in case we have any unwelcome visitors."

"Aye Sir."

"We need to find someplace to go long-term though. Food will be an issue in less than a week..."

"Captain Aramaki," The Matriarch spoke, "We must also find a place to lay our young. Many of the adults will be pregnant and we cannot afford to lose a generation of our people if it can be avoided."

"Which narrows down our choices. We need to start looking for a habitable planet within two jumps of our current location that has sizable bodies of water and non-hostile plant life..."

"Captain," One of the science officers interupted, "I have another possible solution. I've been checking our comm relay network..."

The Snake, like all SEC explorers, carried a supply of communications and surveillance buoys that they placed in orbit around every planet they surveyed. This extended the reach of the Triumvirate's communications and surveillance networks. Unfortunately the Snake was extremely far from home and the rest of the network but this didn't mean they hadn't been laying the buoys.

"...and it looks like a ship entered one of our previously surveyed systems two months ago and stuck around. The buoy didn't initiate contact, but passive sensor data shows significant mass as well as drive and power plant emissions that roughly match Weyrian specifications. Old Weyrian specifications. I recommend we initiate contact and see what help they can be."

"How far away are they?"

"Forty nine lightyears... Two jumps."

"All right. Contact them. Very general though. They could be pirates or worse."

"Yes Sir, general request for assistance..."

The message was very general and broadcast from a nearby buoy on general radio frequencies with no voice overlay or encryption.

Vessel Matching Mass and Energy Output Specifications:

SDF-Snake requests general operations and registry information regarding possible assistance to be rendered to SDF fleet operations. Please respond with personnel capacity and available facilities.

Two figures staggered forward through the sweeping snow that blotted out everything more than a few feet from their helmeted faces. One carried a rifle clutched close to his chest and the other a scanner clutched even closer. The snow had been drifting higher and higher over the past hour and the two were forced to plow their way through drifts and stumbled occasionally as a foot sank deep into some unseen pit.

'Join the pee-ee-cee, see the world... I can't see anything!'

'You didn't get a choice to join either. Let's keep moving. The faster we find whatever the science goons are looking for the faster we get outta here.'

'...and onto the next one. I've seen the statistics. Ninety seven percent of the worlds they send us to are miserable hellholes...'

'Miserable hellholes? Is that a technical term?'

The first man ignored the question and continued, '...and the rest are hellish deathworlds. Meanwhile the SEC is exploring the beaches of yet another tropical paradise.'

'What if we find sentient life? The reward for that... Or we could go native, live like kings...'

'With a half-dozen trackers in our ass? Even if we did find it do you really think they would pay us? Nothing to stop them from dumping us on another world and 'accidentally' leaving us there? Or landing a shuttle on us?'

'Being a little paranoid arn't you? The PEC isn't a bunch of mobsters. Hell, what did you do? How do I know you arn't a mobster?'

'...well, I...'

The question was valid, of course. The PEC - Punitive Exploration Corporation or PuExCo - was another one of the many corporations that used debt labor to lower the costs of it's operations. For the most part these were dull, boring, or dangerous jobs that would normally command a high pay rate. By using debt laborers, also known as criminals, they were able to save a lot of money on payroll.

The PEC specialized in follow-up exploration. That is, they re-surveyed systems that had been tagged as 'marginally interesting' by the Sunset Exploration Command or Galactic Exploration Command (SEC/GEC) but not interesting enough to do more than take a look from orbit. The PEC would come in, take a longer and more detailed look, and hope to find something that would make the trip worthwhile. Mineral resources were a common discovery, but very occasionally they had found life forms or artifacts. Or the debt labor explorers who landed had been eaten by life forms or de-constituted by artifacts. That was just the cost of doing business.

Planets were ultimately mere specks when compared to the vastness of space and some were again specks when compared to the other planets that also floated in that vastness. What made one planet more important than another, what made one planet more worthy to harbor life than others, what made some of those planets worthy enough to harbor sentient life than just another collection of single celled organisms...

When things like distance from their primary star, orbital period, and other raw data were stripped away there was still a whole lot of what seemed to be randomness involved in what worlds would have life and what wouldn't. Indeed the search for this 'why factor' was one of the reasons the various sentient races scattered through the galaxy and the universe sent relatively fragile ships full of fragile lives out to take a look around. That and to kill each other off of course.

It did seem that one of the many factors involved in whether there would be sentient life on a planet was how interested it's evolutionary predecessors would be in killing other life forms for food or fun. That particular bit of data was usually glossed over when out looking for more sentient life though. Humans, at least, were very optimistic people generally. They didn't want to think about the fact that there was a good chance that any other intelligent life they happened to meet might just look at them as the next dolphin or whale.

Good for dinner and what were those amusing squeaks and warbles all about?

----

The Euphrates settled into orbit around the next target world and almost immediately made a u-turn and zipped across the solar system at teeth-rattling speeds to drop into orbit around another world with all the enthusiasm of a teenager up at make-out point on prom night. There was almost as much rocking about and clothes being rapidly discarded as well. Fortunately the explorer didn't have windows to fog up and it had definitely brought a condom.

"Will you look at that..." The captain said in awe, looking at that while mentally toggling the controls to wake a lot of anxious fathers up to come check on their little girl.

The ship was now in orbit of a pleasant looking blue-white gas giant that was orbiting square in the middle of the habitable zone but, while the giant filled a little more than half the view sphere it was the smaller moon sitting smack in the middle that was everyone's object of interest. It looked like nothing more and nothing less than a planetary corsage hanging off a galactic rear-view mirror.

Gigantic flowers hung high in the atmosphere tethered first to an titanic halo of leaves and then to a trailing stem that presumably held them down to the moon below. The flowers were in all shapes and sizes but none were less large than the homecoming football stadium and all had dozens to hundreds of brightly colored fronds radiating out. This not being Earth the leaves were not purely green but were also many different colors, generally darker, though there were some brilliant greens and reds scattered around.

Between the various flowers there was little to see. Dense white clouds obscured the planet below though here and there they could see glimpses of tiny flowers winding their way up the stems with their leaves open wide towards the sun.

The captain sat back in her chair and took a look around the bridge as more and more people suddenly found a reason to be at their posts despite the fact that they should have been asleep.

"All right... Who's coming with me to take a look?"

----

A bright spot appeared in the sky and a half dozen of the tiny aliens raised their heads to watch it streak across the night to disappear past the horizon. For them the occurance was random chance, an opportunity to look at a pretty light that would distract them from the everyday tasks of preparing food or cleaning out their burrows. Some, who were mating, saw it as a sign that their children would be born lucky. Others took it to be the end of the world and spent the next few days indoors until it was clear that a giant bird wouldn't scoop them up.

For those aliens near where the spot landed the experience was slightly different. Here, and on a half-dozen other worlds in nearby space, the light slowed until it became an object. A squat black and white cylinder with four prong-like feet on the bottom that slowly hovered a hundred feet in the air until it was over a nice clear patch of ground and then carefully dropped to the ground with an eye to avoid any of the moving creatures that were sometimes already looking at it with interest.

As soon as it landed - in the mud, on the grass, with a squelch in the garden - and the outer surface had sufficiently cooled a pair of panels swung out and slide aside to reveal a nice pair of sliding frosted glass doors. A black roundel was embedded in the glass with first a blue triangle then three silver stars and a golden ray printed over it. Inside could be glimpsed a central desk, counters around the outside wall, some odd cylinders in the back, and hanging up near the ceiling were a number of cloth flags.

The first alien to approach was one of the little round aliens on the world now known in the catalog as 'Soupbowl'. Tiptoeing up to the doors it approached close enough to trigger the door's mechanism and they began to slide open. This caused a little bit of a draft as the local atmosphere was sucked into the station but it stopped quickly enough and the little alien looked inside with it's enormous eye. Since it didn't have ears it didn't here the little building talking but it did see a little holo-avatar similar to itself flicker into existence a few seconds later.

'...initializing avatar. All systems initialized. Welcome to your local Triumvirate of Yut diplomatic office and general service consulate...'

The DOOD repeated it's opening greeting in a dozen of the most common languages but already it's systems were adapting to whatever had first walked through the door or was at least getting up the courage to do so. Though at least on one world it couldn't really receive guests as the guests were larger than it by a significant amount. Not that it was too concerned about this - the giant plant-pod-tentacle-thing's language hadn't even been successfully translated yet.

On the first world a holo-screen flickered to life and the avatar turned to look at it, prompting the new arrival to do so as well. It ambled over and, following the instructions, began to write out it's responses on the convenient touch pad that had been installed on the floor of this particular office. While it continued to fill out the questionnaire it turned and watched as a slot opened under a nearby desk and a dozen small disks shot out and began to vainly move around the floor of the office. While the orders for this particular DOOD had mentioned the alien's particular method of communication they had apparently quite forgotten to mention that cleaning the place would be nearly impossible.

----

Chalmers was going mad. Not literally - the ship had a very competent psychiatric and medical staff aboard and her last checkup had been fine - but definitely figuratively. A week to write up a program, from scratch, to put the output from the BLA through into their translation software and then back out again as well as write the various sub-routines that the translation software would use to try it's various methods of establishing vocal translation in a visual manner. The two probes had been done in a little less than six hours and she had spent a lot of time just looking at them and trying to figure out a way to make sure the whole process was working and they were not going to end up with random gibberish.

A buzz of conversations greeted Sergeant Yuong as he entered the virtual conference chamber and took a seat in the tiered seating that ran around the outside of the room. In the center there was a round table with a holosphere in the center and there seemed to be just as much conversation happening down there as there was in the hundreds of seats that surrounded it. Most of the people in the upper tiered seats were regular ship's crew, though some were on-duty officers keeping a virtual eye on things or the rarer researcher or scientist from around the Triumvirate logged in over the GEC's long-range communications network. These had notable latency at this distance and he could occasionally see the system make jarring corrections to their position within the chamber. Sliding into the seat next to him, the rookie put his feet up on the chair in front of him and leaned back.

"So, you think they will mention you in all this Sarge?"

"I hope not. I doubt it anyway. Basically they just want to get everyone together to see if the evidence gathered on each world matches and will help move things forward."

"There is the Captain..."

"Looks like they are getting started then..."

Both marines sat back and watched as the Captain walked up to her seat at the table and stood there as a chime sounded. The conversation started to die away and she turned to the table where a virtual representative of each newly encountered species sat, wriggled, or stood as was appropriate. These were there thanks to the DOODs which had been dropped by another cruiser on it's way out to it's assigned survey area.

"Can I have your attention please? Thank you... Now, as you should all know this meeting is an opportunity for the members of this rather unique community to meet and compare notes on the creator or founder, in some cases, of their race."

She touched the controls on the table and a half-dozen images appeared in the sphere in a circle that corresponded to the race at each position. There was a stone sphere, a carved tree something like a totem pole, a vast hillside carving much reduced, and what looked like some random scribbling on a hut wall.

"Now what we have been able to determine based on the gathered evidence so far is that this guy is probably to blame..."

A last image appeared in the center of the sphere: A male humanoid about 1.8 meters in height, heavyset, with shoulder length hair tied back and a goatee. He was wearing an old-style space suit with a metal ring collar with no particular identifying features though it was an orange color.

"Based on the information we have so far we think he might be human, though how humans got out this far two thousand years ago is a good question. Past that we don't really know anything. Why did he do this, how, and when?"

The meeting went on and on for hours. Much of the discussion came back to just who this person was as well as speculation about where he came from. Lost colonies and alien abductions figured heavily in a lot of the theories and as things went later and later the theories became wilder and wilder. By the time the Sergeant left they were blaming neolithic humans that had been abducted by aliens with vast genetic engineering skills, escaped, conquered them, and, as the lone survivor, the originator had decided to repopulate the galaxy based on nothing more than what he had figuratively pulled out of his ass.

Planet Ares, Ares System, Sunset...

Just as it had for the past many hundred years rain fell in Culver Canyon and washed off the sides of the buildings in rivulets to pool in the open streets or percolate through the grass down into the ground. Seeping past basements, sewer tunnels, and subways it eventually seeped down into a network of caves and passageways that had existed for thousands of years before the first Sunset explorers had entered the system and for even thousands of years before the unknown apocalypse that had destroyed the previous civilization.

Deep under the surface of Anuke they had left the Vaults - secret research and military facilities filled with arcane technologies and traps for the unwary - but those were not the only things they had left. Despite the best efforts of the Kal-En-Vashos something moved in a small pool rimmed with deposited calcium. It was one of thousands of tiny larva that had just hatched from tiny eggs laid at the waterline by it's progenitor.

And like it's progenitor it was just a little bit different from the previous generation of it's species. Not different due to evolution but different due to raw genetics. Each generation moved it another step forward towards the final form stored deep in it's DNA.

----

"Both probes are in position Captain... Everything is being recorded and checks on the data logs are positive."

Chalmers cheered inwardly and hoped that whatever intelligence they were dealing with would jump out and just start talking. As unlikely as that was.

"All right, keep an eye on the logs and let's just hope they are still curious!"

Whether they stood silently on the grassy plains of Ares or perched on a windswept rocky hillside on Mars the cemeteries that contained the honored dead were still much the same. Long lines of white tombstones with names and ranks deeply carved into their surface spread out around lone columns inscribed with the names of those who had been lost among the stars.

'...No Matter Where, No Matter When, Never Forgotten...'

In some the inscribed columns played backdrop to ceremonies on this day. Families gathered to remember those lost, comrades in arms met to commemorate those who died. Salutes would be fired and planes would fly over with one notably missing.

"Freedom's ultimate price can only be completely paid by those who freely pay it."

Excerpt from Sunset Defense Magazine Monthly:

'The Equinox Heavy Cruiser has been designed as an intermediary between the smaller Cohort V cruiser and the larger Dawn dreadnoughts. Presumably this will mean that the Equinox class will enter service in lesser numbers than the Cohort V all thought there has been some speculation that it will be in matching numbers. Some observers have pointed to the fact that fleet numbers seem to be the same while overall volume is rising while others point out that the SDF has numerous other projects underway which could be using significant resources.'

SDF 'Equinox' Class Heavy Cruiser (http://www.sunsetrpg.com/yappa-ng/index.php?album=%2FSpaceships%2F&image=SDFEquinox.jpg)

----

'Captain, we've lost control of the first probe!'

Chalmers nearly dropped her plate as the duty officer's call came through. She had been walking to her table for dinner but now she turned and headed for the door slurping down her drink as she went. By the time she got to the bridge and swung into her chair Captain Andorov and most of her primary staff were there as well as a half-dozen holographic avatars from Andorov's staff. On the main screen the fuzzy image of the two probes and the nearby station sat though they didn't look like they were doing very much.

"What's happened?"

"Nearly nothing that we can see. We lost control of the probe three minutes ago and since then it has fire it's maneuvering thrusters a couple times but the BLA is still transmitting a test pattern."

"And the datalogs?"

"Whatever activated the thrusters seems to have done so directly. While the logs show the activations they do not show commands being sent to activate them..."

"...confirmed." The officer at the sensor station turned to Andorov who was standing next to him, though he was directing his comments to both captains. "We've confirmed that a similar EM field has been detected inside our probe to the three that we recorded last time."

"Just one field this time?" Andorov asked, looking down at the console through his holographic avatar.

"It looks like it. The resolution is a bit fuzzy due to whatever interference we are seeing but it also looks like this field is being generated by whatever generated one of the previous three fields. The signatures are mostly the same within a variance that allows for signal degradation."

"Was it generated directly inside of the probe?"

"No... It seems to have moved out from the station to the probe though I can't confirm that. The signature emerged from the interference around the station and entered the probe in less than a second."

"How long since it last did anything?"

"Three minutes now."

Chalmers sat back in her chair and started eating. It was better than sitting there waiting again.

----

Rampant speculation aside the crew of the Euphrates settled into the hard work of figuring out just where this 'originator' had come from. By now it was somewhat clear that they were not human. Or at least they didn't think they were human. Or ArAreBee. Various dating techniques had been used on the various monoliths, carvings, sphereoliths, and anything else they could find and it appeared that, while the species appeared to originate over a period of several thousand years, it was probably not the same being.

"Or it is the same guy and he spent all his time travelling from world to world at .99c..."

From their places on the hangar deck far below the two technicians watched as the two fighter-craft slid forward on their docking rails and then lowered until they were facing the wide bay doors. They were both stowed for travel: Wing spars tucked in, panels slid forward to cover the other panels and the bulky missiles launcher / generator assembly that formed the base of the wing spars. Each craft slid into their launch position with a final clunk and the two technicians walked around them for a final visual inspection before stepping back.

"Oh-one looks fine. Ready here."

"Oh-two is the same. Go for it."

'Initializing combat deployment. Stand clear...' The voice of the hangar boss echoed through the open space and the two technicians stepped back as a twisting, flashing red and yellow light on the docking clamp played light around the chamber. Both of the stowed Super Aggressors (http://www.sunsetrpg.com/yappa-ng/index.php?album=%2FSpaceships%2FFighters%2F&image=SDFSuperAggressor.jpg) seemed to shrug as they opened their spars and extended their panels. Normally this would be a much faster process but this was the first time this ship had even deployed it's fighters and the hangar boss was anxious to make sure it went smoothly.

'Combat deployment completed. Repeat the visual inspection...' The technicians nodded and walked around the craft again checking to make sure all the spars and panels had fully deployed. While they did the boss ran them through a quick movement diagnostic which made the spars twitch as the various joints moved and slid over each other.

"All good here..."

'Preparing for launch then. Hangar doors on standby... Prepare for hangar door opening...'

As soon as the technicians were safely inside their sealed booths the doors opened to reveal the vastness of space and a high orbit view of a blue-green world far below the Mohawk-class warship. If one moved to the very edge of the bay they could just see a larger Equinox-class warship above them and a half-dozen other warships orbiting in the distance. Even smaller specks could be seen zipping around them occasionally - fighters or assault shuttles that had already launched their complements of sub-craft. The whole thing was a planetary assault exercise as well as equipment shakedown for some of the newest ships in the wider fleets.

'Launching...' Both fighters dropped free of their launch arms and hovered there for a moment before slowly moving out of the bay and edging through the field that kept the atmosphere inside. As the doors slid shut the technicians exited their bay and went over to the next craft to be launched. The larger Jade II Assault Shuttle sat off to one side and the marines that would be participating in the exercise were already flowing into the hangar to stand waiting next to their gear. In actual combat the technicians would be wearing the same armor the marines were so that they could launch their craft without using the time consuming booths and keeping the bay doors open but it was safer this way. Sudden decompression could send them tumbling out into space and a search and rescue operation wouldn't look very good on the hangar boss's record during a combat exercise.

----

Katrina sat on the grass watching her little twins toddle around among the flowers while she ran her hands through the grass and fiddled with a shimmering virtual design console that hung in front of her. A dozen other families shared the park with her, some enjoying the plants, others feeding the (Intel)Squirrels, and others watching and playing with their own children. Some were working too: Virtual consoles shimmering in the air or traditional hand held computers sitting in their laps. On Refuge work and play were almost the same thing since most of the 'work' was design and engineering. The creative brain worked best when it was allowed freedom to follow the white rabbit as far as Katrina was concerned.

Musings aside, Katrina watched her twins, who had now found a squirrel, attempt to pet the small creature while it continued to scamper just outside of their reach. Reasonably she could force it to come close enough to pet but that might build an unreasonable expectation that every squirrel would do the same. Still they followed it through the flower beds and under the trees that shaded splotches of the park from the artificial sun high overhead. Other parents were forced to get up and follow their wandering children to make sure they were safe but she just high-jacked the squirrel's senses and tied them to yet another virtual console. This did give her an idea though.

'Mom? You busy?'

'Not enough that I can't spare you a few cycles. What's on your mind?'

'Another idea,' She related the situation regarding her twins and the wandering squirrel and finished with her idea. '...so how about cyber-pets that can keep a remote eye on their charges?'

'Good idea. Easy to implement as well.'

Later Katrina sat in her laboratory twisting a flower pot in her hands as she pondered it and her experience in the park. She had been inspired to pick up some flowers and make her lab a little less sterile but something else was nagging at her now.

"Hmm... Bring me one of the remote sensor strips and fire up the fabber..."

Her assistant nodded and went off to retrieve the requested equipment as Katrina set the plant down in it's place. Retrieving a scalpel from a drawer she cut off a hidden stem and laid it out under a microscope and began to cut it apart. Leafs and petals soon spread out over the bench and appeared in the holosphere in the center of the room as she scanned each one into the virtual engineering console. Reasonably she could access the specifications of every plant the SDF had ever seen from here but she liked to do things by hand. Who knew where an idea could spring from?

"Here you are. And a couple spares."

"Awesome. That's all I needed..." The assistant nodded and went back to her own experiments and Katrina pulled one of the strips out of the dispenser and laid it out on the bench. As soon as she was done cutting up the flower she turned to the strip and began marking areas with a pen that were then reflected in the holosphere. Tiny sensor meshes were carefully marked up and cut out and layered over individual petals, small antenna placed on leaves, and much of the control circuitry was layered over the center of the bloom. An hour later and she had a disjointed IntelDaisy spread out over her desk while the completed model floated in the holosphere.

That design was sent to the fabber for replication and once she had her first batch of a half-dozen in she would then send them out to some of the other engineers and technicians for testing while continuing to refine the design herself with their input. The question would then be who would use them?

"What is Anathema? Well..."

'Smith' held his hand up in front of a scanner which beeped as a light flicked from red to green and the door beside it slid open. The dark-suited agent and his guest stepped through and into another hallway virtually identical to the one they had just left. Nearly a hundred feet away was another door and 'Smith' continued as they walked.

"There are certain things which we, as a society and as a government, hold as anathema to our very way of life. Things like kidnapping, assassination, brain washing... You get the idea, right?"

"Sure..."

'Smith' nodded and opened the next door. This one opened onto a larger chamber with a number of doors leading off from it and several stairways and elevators leading up and down. Finally there were other people - more dark-suited men that looked nearly identical to 'Smith' though he was somehow able to tell them apart.

"Johnson..."

"Smith... New recruit?"

"Yes. Just giving Gibbons here the big picture chat."

"Gibbons? My name is..."

'Smith' interrupted before he could continue. "Gibbons. One of the things you will need to know about our organization is that we are all on a last name basis. And that none of those last names are our real last names. In fact, most of these are not our real bodies. The next time you come to work you'll be using a remote body just like mine. And Johnson's."

"That's right. Everyone here is using a tele-sense body and virtual link. Much of our security lies in our anonymity. Most of us are not even human, though I can't tell you who is or isn't. Don't know, don't care to know."

"That's right. And we are the controller group. The operations group is even more dedicated to secrecy. Literally they will get a message or a phone call or a bum on the street babbling nonsense and they will follow those instructions. No matter what they are. That's how we operate and that's what we do. Like a chain of domino's..."

"A crate of fruit goes missing from a wagon. The merchant can't pay his taxes. The local lord seizes his business. The merchant's son kills the lord in the streets. The good guys win because a murderous bastard is replaced with an educated son..."

"Not that simple, of course, but you get the drift. This is no simple conspiracy. But one crate of oranges can save the world if it's the right crate..."

"One of the many things that often confuses visitors to the Republic is how a government that is distinctly hands-off can manage to maintain law and order in what would be, by most definitions, a near-anarchy. What one must remember is that while the government itself only maintains a small national level law enforcement organization that organization really functions as a clearing house for the dozens of smaller police forces contracted or controlled by the major land owning corporations.

In a phrase, market forces dictate that the consumer will seek a safe environment in which to live. A case in point is the government's policy on civilian weapon ownership as opposed to the reality within a given arcology. First it is important to note that Sunset's laws on weapons mostly originate with the old terran United State's weapons laws. And I quote...

'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'

While the interpretation of such may have changed during the lifetime of the United States the Republic still sees this as one of the core rights of it's citizens. However this is also tempered by the rights of private property owners to restrict the activities of those who use their property. Through most of Sunset the percentage of the population that actually owns their own land is small. Only on fresh colony worlds, some communal enclaves on Mars, and on the terraformed worlds of the Ares system is private property an everyday reality. Most individuals and families live in corporate owned and operated cities or arcologies.

Since these corporations have both a responsibility to their employees and to their shareholders to provide for the safety of their property they are free, as property owners, to use any means desired to secure that property. In most cases this comes down to extensive monitoring of open areas, rules restricting the transport of certain classes of weapons through their property, and similar measures. Certainly they cannot restrict the actual ownership of weapons but they can refuse to allow someone transporting weapons entrance onto their property.

While certainly some corporations have very strict policies that do not allow any weapons at all this is tempered by the market forces possessed by the consumer. In most cases a balance has been struck between the corporate need for security and the individual desires for weapon ownership. For example CityDome, the largest single property owner on Mars, allows individuals to carry most personal weapons on their property after a simple declaration. They actually use this to their advantage financially as well as in a security sense by contracting with PTek to place vending machines containing firearms of the allowed type on their property.

While this may seem odd to visitors this actually makes sense if you realize that these weapons both fit within their own security policies and that they are making money from the sales to offset the increased spending required for their security contracts in the process. This also reduces the perceived need of individuals to bring weapons into CityDome's property.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the national level police service essentially serves as a liaison organization for these disparate corporate police forces and the various private security contractors they employ. They track local rules and regulations, criminal records - as well as what is considered a crime where - and all the other data-heavy activities. And by providing this service the national police can then mine this information to establish trends, watch for suspicious activity, and the like."

"It is quite beautiful, isn't it?"

Lieutenant Frankie Angel nodded at his host who was looking around the chamber carved out of the heart of the deep blue ice.

"By carefully shaving or melting the ice we can create various shades of white and blue. The machines that carve everything can do it automatically but we've got several artists who can create wonderful murals and statues by carefully working the ice. But I suppose that's not why we are here, is it?"

Frankie shook his head and hunkered deeper down into his faux fur jacket. Tabitha Kerr laughed at this and moved on. She was somehow only wearing a thick looking sweater and a pair of jeans despite being over a kilometer deep in the vast glaciers and ice sheets that covered this world.

From orbit and the small Curiosity-Class Explorer that Lieutenant Angel commanded one could hardly see the entrance to the under-ice facility, much less determine it's full extent. A visitor might mistake the landing pad and shack that stood on the surface for a long-abandoned monitoring facility but below the surface the facility sprawled over nearly a hundred miles of tunnels and chambers with a total population of nearly ten thousand. Most of these were miners and technicians who worked hard extracting the unique natural resources the world had to offer but there was also a good sized scientific community dedicated to exploring it's secrets.

The two climbed onto a transit car which whisked them along rails set hard into the ice itself. Behind and in front of them other cars moved: Some loaded with materials and machinery and others carrying miners on their way to the various dig sites. Once they arrived their car moved onto a siding with a row of others before Angel and Kerr climbed off. This area was far less traveled than others and they didn't encounter anyone else until they reached the set of solid doors set deep into the ice.

"Couldn't someone just melt their way around them?" Frankie asked as Tabitha held her hand up to the scanner mounted in one wall.

"Security theater. The doors are mounted in housings that go ten meters into the ice on both sides, but they are mostly there to slow someone down. Though why someone would want to break into here and steal a bunch of frozen fish is beyond me."

"Frozen fish?"

Kerr nodded as the door rolled shut behind them. "That's right. Most of the samples we have in here are aquatic creatures that we've found frozen into the ice. It's a really good example of how quickly the environment changed. As near as we can tell this world went from an earth-like environment to a frozen ice-ball in somewhere under a century."

Long lines of metal crates sat stacked on either side of the huge chamber and Kerr pointed out various samples as they walked along. Some had windows or were simple metal frames around large chunks of ice and occasionally they stopped to look at one or another for a moment. There were the occasional technician or scientist working in the chamber as well and Kerr nodded at some and greeted others by name. Finally they arrived at another tunnel, this time sealed with a large impressive looking door with a large 'SDF' painted on.

There wasn't an armed guard or an obvious scanner but Angel could swear he felt a tingle as he and Kerr stood there for a moment before the doors slid open to reveal another pair only a few meters beyond. The first pair slid shut before the second opened and the two found themselves in a small chamber filled with sealed crates all labeled with 'SDF' and numbers which left no clues to their contents.

"Well, here we are. I'm not authorized to ask if you are authorized to know what's in this thing, but here it is. You are authorized to transport it outta here though and personally the sooner the better..."

She gestured to the large octagonal crate that stood in the center of the room. Lieutenant Angel didn't actually know what was in it but since it looked like a coffin he was inclined to assume it was one. The walls of the container were molded to keep it rigid but these mold lines were fitted with additional bars and brackets for added strength.

"Are those to keep us out, or whatever is in there, in?"

"that would probably be telling too much. There should be a gravsled around here somewhere..."

Kerr hunted down a gravsled while Angel went over to the door where the controls for the loading crane were located. The crate was still hooked up from when it had been loaded and he quickly raised it so Kerr could slid the sled under it.

"She's all your's now..."

"She?"

"Figure of speech Angel..."

After hauling the crate back through the chambers and corridors of the facility and up the lift to the surface Lieutenant Angel finished loading it onto his ship with the help of Kerr and his crew.

"Still no hints Tabitha?"

"Frankly Lieutenant, if you are not authorized to know you probably don't want to know."

As the ship lifted off and Kerr rode back down into the facility she wondered if he really wasn't authorized to know. And where the object in the container was destined. She did know that before Angel had been sent to retrieve it there had been some discussion of calling in HELLSING and just letting them deal with it...

----

"So what's the silly idea of the day Katryna?"

"Hey now..." Katryna stepped back and the image in the holosphere rotated. "I'm not really much of a fashion designer. Maybe we should kidnap one and bring them in..."

"What!?"

"Joking."

"With you, I just can't be sure..." Katryna's assistant, a green skinned, black eyed alien named Sterlyn, walked around the holosphere looking at the contents. It appeared to be a poorly designed pair of slacks and a turtleneck with a comfortable looking jacket over it but the scrolling listing next to it said it was something else. "Accessories for the IntelFlower?"

"No... But that's a good idea!" Tapping the controls she motioned and an IntelFlower positioned itself on the jacket lapel. "Specific functions for interfacing with IntelX assets... That's going to be pretty useful."

'Waaah!' From an adjacent room the sound of a crying baby could be heard and Katryna hurried away.

"Wait, what is it?"

"...low profile power armor for intelligence officers..."

"Yeah... Definately gonna have to kidnap a fashion designer..."

----

It was time for a leap forward and with the new generation that leap forward happened with the appearance of a number of flailing flagella. Now the larva looked like flattened gelatinous centipedes that moved rapidly through the water hunting the remnants of the previous generations for their dinner. Voracious predators they quickly finished them off before turning on their own in a process designed by those who had left them there to weed out genetic abnormalities. But as with all such processes time and the environment played their part and some abnormalities survived.

Perhaps in another thousand generations these abnormalities would disappear, or perhaps they would prove stronger than the original design. When the original single celled organisms had been seeded deep underground ten thousand generations ago they had been designed to save their species. Now there was the question of whether they would even resemble their species when they finally emerged...

The question of what it was was soon answered as the crew stripped away the container from the object in the middle of the open cargo bay that would serve as an impromptu labratory. That didn't answer the question of what the object -was- or what, if anything, it did. Most questions than answers were in fact asked as the ice slowly melted away around it, filling a hastily set up basin.

Lieutenant Angel's guess that it might have been a coffin or corpse was clearly incorrect, or was it? Not everyone buried their dead in a neat wooden box though this would be one of the oddest interments the SDF had seen if it was.

The base of the object was a rounded plinth covered in stylistic cracks and fractures that made one immediately think of frozen ice. Several chunks of the plinth were missing but it was hard to tell if this was on purpose or simply the ravages of time. Here and there, sometimes with their whole shape occluded by the missing pieces and sometimes not, were strange symbols carved into open spaces. Those who looked closely swore these tended to creepy around over time though whether this was simply a trick of the eye or something more was of secondary interest to the rest of the object.

Spiraling and sprouting out of the top of the plinth were what might have been thirteen or thirty seven arms that twisted up into hands that might have had three or seven fingers. These meshed together tightly with another set of arms that descended down from above to form a rough oblong form of twisting arms. The question of exactly how many arms were present was a question of much debate: One could try to count them at the base but they were maddeningly arranged so that somehow, even when observed through the computer's sensors, the arms seemed to cover each other and obscure their number.

By counting the number of hands there seemed to be only thirteen arms for each wrist wore a bracelet but yet there were hands that did not have a wrist but yet connected seemingly to an arm that in turn somehow connected to a wrist that bore a bracelet. These bracelets, thirty seven in total, drew the immediate focus of the crew. Each was inscribed with a language, all different and yet all somehow terribly the same. For those that they could read they soon discovered that they described part, but only part, of a terrible ritual. It spoke of dark chanting and sacrifices dire and while they did their best to transcribe it somehow the next bracelet seemed to change the whole to something darker.

They were sure the object contained something though. Their hand scanners, though powerful, showed nothing but an empty void inside though they could not 'see' the far wall. The more powerful ship's scanners simply disappeared into the void returning nothing at all. It seemed that whatever was inside would only be seen when the object was opened assuming it could be opened. There was speculation that perhaps the ritual was not one of opening but was one that closed off something foul that was best forgotten. Something that should have been lost under the ice of a million year glacier...

Even for those in the scientific and educational fields who do not like the risks associated with space travel there are significant advantages to working under the umbrella of the SEC. One of those advantages is having nearly instant access to reports on newly discovered worlds. Certainly most of the worlds the SEC/GEC surveys fall into one of a dozen or so general categories but occasionally there is that fantastic gem. These briefings are often intensely popular...

"...discovered as part of a long range 'spot' survey by the Curiosity-Class Light Explorer Descartes. In it's majority this world can be compared to Venus or other high pressure / high density rocky bodies but it has one outstanding feature. As you can see the atmosphere is host to thousands of these huge floating 'islands'. This is not a technological phenomena but is completely natural in origin though we are unsure as to how it started.

Each of these islands is a floating 'deposit' of small rocks that are akin to pumice. Ejected from the volcanoes that dot the surface these rocks contain a high percentage of helium which, combined with the dense atmosphere, makes them buoyant. The average piece of ejecta is neutrally buoyant at a height of approximately two thousand meters with a reasonable variance of five hundred meters depending on the size and density. Currents in the atmosphere cause the formation of the larger islands.

It gets even more interesting... These floating islands are the only place we have found anything more than the most marginal of organic life. In an interesting process the most complex organic lifeforms on this planet both make these islands their home as well as lead to their eventual destruction. As organic life spreads over a island it affects the buoyancy of the island until it slowly crashes or breaks up due to the stress.

At this point much of the gas that held the island aloft is freed but there is some detritus that floats upwards again. These pieces can either join existing islands, acting as seeds to spread organic life, or as 'seeds' for new islands. Occasionally islands are also destroyed in volcanic eruptions although this seems to be rare - most of the atmospheric currents flow around the mountains preventing this."

Curiosity-Class Light Explorer Descartes, High Polar Orbit, Tsubasa:

Having near-instant access to Sunset Exploration Command (SEC) reports was all well and good but there were certain issues with such rapid access. Sometimes the initial reports were incomplete, inaccurate, or even wildly inaccurate. In the case of Tsubasa they were merely incomplete rather than wildly inaccurate. Much of that was due to the very nature of the discovery. Even a stark naked human would plunge straight through one of the floating islands much less one in the atmospheric armor that would be required to survive in the dense atmosphere...

"Take a sniff up that one, why don't you?" Senior Lieutenant Thao Miyoko suggested to Ensign Naysmith. On the main bridge screen the crew members that were sprawled around the bridge were watching an IntelRat wander over one of the larger islands. The IntelRats were the only things small and light enough to move over the floating islands without significantly damaging it.

"Sure 'nuf Skipper..." Dorothy 'Dot' Naysmith punched the controls on a virtual console that hung in the air off to one side and watched with the others as the rat went scurrying up the trunk of a tree-analog. Taking a long pull on her shake she looked over to one of the two floating screens which showed a two dimensional view of what two small remotes were looking at.

Aside from the IntelRat and a half-dozen others that were exploring other islands on their own initiative there were also a few of the small black point defense spheres that were normally attached to suits of power armor. Since they didn't have any IntelBirds - an unfortunate oversight - aboard their engineer had cobbled together a base station and control rig from spare parts. The spherical drones were currently zipping around the largest island as well, taking a look at the underside and the interesting 'sky caves' that were located there.

"Huh. Take a look at this..." Dot pushed the feed from one of the drones to a sub-screen on the main screen as well as into the holosphere which started building a three-dimensional representation of the sky cave.

"It's fruit." Which, indeed, it was. Lt. Miyoko studied the feed with interest as the drone zipped around a 'hanging' bunch of orange-yellow fruit. They were not hanging so much as floating with the twisting vine-like stalks of the plant hanging from them. "Huh. Floating fruit. Wonder how it tastes."

"I'd guess it makes you sound like a chipmunk. Half-assed guess says it's full of helium. We'll need a sample."

"Gonna need a lot of samples I think. Piechowski?"

The engineer appeared on the summoned virtual screen, "Yessir?" On a larger vessel the chief engineer would be a full Commander or Lieutenant commander but in the case of a Curiosity-Class a mere Lieutenant had to do. Which meant they had to be creative and very smart, even with the simpler systems of the smaller ship. Which also meant that when Senior Lt. Miyoko had asked him to build a completely new drone from spare parts and what they could fabricate he'd simply shrugged and gotten to work.

"How's that drone coming along?"

"Ugly. I've got an armature with a motor and a couple arms so far. Haven't even had time to install a control rig yet."

"Alright. Well, work as quickly as you can. And scavenge whatever you want. Give us an excuse to head to... Um..."

"Yessir..." The engineer closed the connection while the Lieutenant quickly looked up something.

"Huh. We aren't really near anything, are we? Probably have to hook up with the Yellow River for resupply..." The lights dimmed for a moment before flickering back on, "...and maybe repair."

----

Katryna pointed to the now moderately stylish suit in the holo-sphere and it exploded into half a dozen different garments and accessories. Making it even moderately stylish had taken a half a day and two dozen interviews. Apparently a whole space station full of engineers wasn't exactly the best place to go looking for a fashion designer or even a fashion wanna-be.

"So the central garment is, as you can see here, basically an enhanced undergarment."

A piece of clothing that looked like a snug-fitting 1920's men's swimsuit was highlighted. Unlike said garment it left little to the imagination even through it covered the upper legs and upper arms. Obvious seams ran along the cuffs and at the joints of legs and arms with connecting seams between them.

"It serves as the central control unit for all the other components as well as an environmental control unit to keep the wearer warm or cool. When it's fully active the system gives off a good amount of waste heat so this is a definite necessity. The obvious seams serve as the control paths for the outfit..."

Next she highlighted a pair of slacks and a fitted long sleeve shirt.

"The pants and shirt are what provide the enhancements to speed and dexterity. Instead of providing mechanical enhancement they instead hyper-stimulate the muscles in specific areas in order to allow the wearer to run faster and longer, jump higher, and other similar 'feats' of athleticism. Ultimately it will only push a normal person to perhaps one and a half times their normal ability but this should be a significant advantage when used correctly."

A belt, shoes, gloves, and jewelry were now emphasized and she covered each one.

"The belt is going to be the primary source of protection for the user. Combined with the sensor strips embedded in the shirt and pants, or with any cybernetics the user might have, the belt can generate a high strength but low duration energy field to protect against projectile and energy weapons. It won't handle the output of a higher-end weapon like our own VPW's but it can take a generic power gun or other basic directed energy weapons. The wearer can also wear an armored jacket over the top for some additional kinetic and energy weapon protection.

Both the shoes and gloves are equipped with electro-adhesive pads to allow nibble climbing, hanging from ceilings, and significant advantage when grappling. The gloves also contain shock pads for quickly disabling an opponent. All of the jewelry also serves various purposes - control for IntelX assets, concealed weaponry, specialized sensors, and other similar applications."

----

While the engineers aboard Refuge or CORE were often the most likely source for any given SDF innovation there were still dozens of other SDF research and development centers scattered throughout the Triumvirate. One of these centers, located in the Shogunate, worked specifically on countering what the Republic referred to, with no small amount of distaste, as 'magic'.

Energy blasts, gusts of wind, fireballs, and many of the other components of traditional 'war magic' could be directly countered with good old fashioned hardware. What the SDF was mostly concerned with was the meta-physical aspects of magic: Mental control, domination, suggestion, and manipulation. That and the ability to suck someone's soul out but that didn't seem to be a very commonly used form of 'magic'. Not that they didn't have a center trying to figure out just what this 'soul' was and how to keep it firmly where it belonged.

"Well, what we are trying to do is find a way to make our diplomats and politicians immune to what the Roanians call 'glamour'. This 'glamour' seems to be, according to the Shogunate thaumaturge's, a field that allows the Roanians to mentally manipulate an individual and make them more susceptible to emotional manipulation."

The researcher put up an image of a human skull with a typical hindbrain cybernetic implant.

"Initially I'd considered an implant that would 'tell' the user when they are acting outside of their normal behavior or would watch for certain pre-programmed behavior and notify the user that they were being manipulated. At that point one of the Reploids on the staff pointed out that as an implant it was susceptible to being overridden by the user either under the command of the Roanian or in their own altered emotional state."

A second image appeared, this time a standard cyber-pet with it's own hindbrain implant.

"So instead what we are going for is a 'trusted' assistant that will be able to both cybernetically and physically tell the user when they are being affected by 'glamour'. This will also allow us to build a specific 'glamour' field detector into the cyber-pet as currently these units are sizable thanks to the components needed in their construction. This has also led to the suggestion of a specific 'anti-magic' version of the most popular IntelX intelligence assets. Due to their specific military application and usage they can justify the cost of miniaturizing the components needed. Of course this will require working directly with the Shogunate since many of these components are 'magically' manufactured.

Now that we've got the basic model constructed we are going to need to do some field testing of course. The Shogunate can only approximate the 'glamour' effect but apparently the Menelmacari intelligence apparatus has access to a Roanian specimen that we can use for discrete testing. That's the next thing on the agenda."

----

BlackRain. A simple name for a complex project. The idea was simple enough when it came down to it. Why use one easily intercepted missile, or even a thousand, when a million, a billion, a trillion could be used? A trillion... Sure sounded like a lot. Except that when you had a trillion two kilo missiles moving at .99c you had a lot of kinetics at a relatively low energy cost.

Part of the BlackRain project was an outgrowth of the Martian (and now elsewhere) Planetary Ring project and part of it was an outgrowth of the Rapid Reaction Force's standard 'long fall' operating procedure and yet another part was the Aurora gate network. The idea was to have a 'figure eight' racetrack in deep space where the individual projectiles would slowly pick up speed as more and more were added. An asteroid-based manufacturing unit in the center of the figure eight would add more kinetics and an Aurora in the center of the second unit would act as the delivery system. This could put millions if not billions of high-c kinetics on target in a matter of seconds nearly anywhere.

The potential applications were devastating. They could be used to counter drone spam, missile spam, massed fleets, or planetary bombardment or even destruction...

Not everyone who watched the SEC's live report network were the social anthropologist or pencil necked geologist type. More than a few engineers and designers watched the feed too. Some were purely out of interest in the unknown and the new while others were looking for that one niche they could fill. Which was why when the Descartes showed an obvious need for a dedicated hostile exploration drone rig the SEC had a modified version of the SDF's standard combat drone sitting in it's inbox in a couple days.

The normal drone, a lumpy sphere two-thirds of a meter in diameter, was normally paired with either powered armor or one of the other types of combat drones as additional firepower and point defense. The modified version replaced the main weapon, a variable particle cannon, with an enhanced directional sensor cluster tied into the general sensor cluster on the upper part of the spheroid. The designer also pulled out the missile tubes and replaced them with launchers for a mixed bag of IntelX assets - some 'rats and 'birds.

Around the midsection of the drone was a point defense array, which stayed, and a pair of medium manipulator arms were added below this and behind the new sensor cluster. These were designed along the same lines as the human arm - not too delicate, but not too strong either. A larger floodlight was also mounted on the bottom of the drone and the interior space freed up by removing the missile reloads was replaced with a pair of storage bays for collecting samples.

It would have to be approved of course but since it meant a nice new military contract for someone it would likely roll right out to the SEC with some minor interest from the SDF and allied militaries.

----

"Well, we knew it was going to happen. The question was 'when' and 'when' is apparently now."

Erika Silaco, President of the Republic and generally busy woman, sat back in her chair and pulled some packets out of her desk which she then pushed across to the people sitting across from her. These were the various governors of the various planets in the Ares system and the SDF Grand Admiral that ran the SDF's operations in the system.

"Much of the groundwork has been laid already but we should finalize all of our preparations and make sure there isn't anything we've missed. At this point my most important concern is the safety of our citizens in this system once non-Triumvirate travelers start arriving. Which means we are going to need an improved focus on security and proactive intelligence gathering. I want each of you to liaison with the corporate security forces and the various citizen militia organizations."

"Ma'am..." One of the governors spoke up. "At this point our biggest problem is that we don't really have a whole lot in terms of defenses. Secrecy has been it until now. Most of our cities don't have any kind of shielding or physical domes."

"I realize that. And I know it's going to be expensive. In light of the leaking of our existence I'm authorizing proportional access to the emergency slush fund for all defense projects in Ares. We'll also be hurrying production on Rings for every major inhabited body in the system. Admiral..."

"Mmmhmm. The VELMA is finishing a production run of Equinox Heavy Cruiser's right now but as soon as it's done with that we'll work on more Ring stations. There has also been talk of producting a heavier variant of the station... The current Martian situation has proven the Ring's effectiveness and we're looking for ways to capitalize on that."

"Something to bring up with Katryna then. I know the second VELMA is still under construction but I want that hurried as well as construction started on a third. I want you to divert all SDF resources that are being used on the construction of Monolith Station to this project as of now. Monolith is only half done but we don't have the need for the population capacity either. We need the production capacity of a third VELMA though, especially if things go rotten around Mars."

"Yes Ma'am..."

"If anyone has any ideas for getting things sped up and they are half-way feasible I want to hear them. Opening Ares up isn't going to be a flashy event but it is going to happen."

'Katryna', or at least the smooth aluminum chassis that was the current extension of her intelligence, carefully moved through space towards the smooth copper and ceramic teardrop that sat in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a variety of passive and active sensor platforms floating in space. There was a small change recorded by one of the sensor platforms and then...

----

'Katryna', or at least the smooth aluminum chassis that was the current extension of her intelligence, carefully moved through space towards the smooth copper and ceramic teardrop that sat in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a variety of passive and active sensor platforms floating in space. Except that this time the chassis wasn't aluminum but instead was made entirely of a special non-reactive polymer suitable for the deep nothingness that was Elsewhere.

Sensors could only tell you so much, especially when the target was actively trying to keep you from figuring out how it operated, and sometimes one just had to open the thing up and take a look at it's guts. Which sounds like fun until one had been blown up trying to take an exotic bomb apart. Presumably there was a way to disarm it but Katryna hadn't been able to determine a manufacturer in (this) universe and no one had kindly taped an instruction manual to the outside.

There was the question of the outer shell of the missile. Ceramic and copper were both decorative and functional but this design steered more towards the decorative. A teardrop shape wasn't needed in space and the resulting oblong 'pearl' that floated just out of reach wasn't exactly efficiency in action either. There did seem to be a seam along one side where there didn't need to be and Katryna bent her attention to this first. A short range x-ray scanner revealed an inner mechanism that seemed to be triggered by a special thin 'tool'. Perhaps a disarming mechanism but perhaps also a trap for the unwary.

Katryna moved away from the seam and began checking for other seems and openings as well as anything else that caught her eye. Meanwhile she began a simulation to determine what the mechanical effects of triggering the unknown mechanism might be as well as a fabricator to working on making the proper slim tool. She only had five more chances at this and she was willing to take her time.

Like many of the peripheral colonies that had been founded by the more adventurous citizens and corporations of Sunset, Casablanca was colonized to exploit a singular and unique resource found few, if any, other places in the galaxy. These were the unique crystal plants that grew wild over the entire surface of the hot and arid world. Hundreds of varieties in a profusion of different shapes and colors grew here and there in numbers both vast and minute. These were carefully harvested - more because of their fragile nature than any desire to preserve the environment - and either shipped off to the larger centers of civilization or carefully worked by local craftsmen into fantastic pieces of jewelry and art. These commanded a high price on the galactic market with their mixture of mineral and organic styles.

While the organic-crystal industry was dominant Casablanca had managed to become a semi-notable center for another semi-important industry as well. With three reflective moons, a solar orbit that put it in the inside edge of the habitable band, and large amounts of the right kind of minerals, it had also become an important research and development center in the field of solar power cells. While solar power wasn't seen as 'the future' with an abundance of cheap power plants that could provide nearly unlimited power for base load applications, it did have it's uses. Solar cell 'cloth' was often carried as an emergency power source and there were a variety of survival and outdoor uses that justified research into expanding the limits of solar technologies.

There was also a fair bit of lateral research done on Casablanca as well. Notable among these research companies was Casablanca SunLab. Like most of the other larger businesses it was installed in the central facility of Neo-Cairo where it would be protected from the periodic sandstorms that ravaged vast swaths of the planet. These tore loose pieces of the crystal plants and sent them flying around like knives. This not only explained why all of the planet's fauna were burrowing creatures but also why each of the seven cities that dotted the surface were build around a central hardened structure. These then had a variety of low buildings sprawling out around them - low to avoid the worst of the storms - built when space inside had become too expensive.

Aisha Laurine, Vice President of Marketing for SunLab, sat in her office looking out over the sizzling mid-winter landscape. It was sixty five degrees outside and the rooftops were visibly shimmering in the heat. Those who dared to go outside were dressed in the voluminous robes common to desert dwellers; though in this case they had built-in air conditioning units. The solar-cell fabric that powered these units had led to SunLab's latest development and in turn to Ms. Laurine's current conundrum.

In the laboratories some of the technicians were playing with the lab's latest development. Combining solar cell fabric with the SDF's particle array technology as well as some sensor kit had produced what the boys were calling 'weaponized cloth'. Her job, as she and the soulless minions of Marketing everywhere saw it, was to figure out a way to sell this material to the largest number of people for the largest amount of money. Normally a pan galactic advertising campaign targeting every legitimate military, mercenary corps, and pirate armada would be the best solution but there was this problem of legality.

Legality and morality being, of course, the Great Enemy of marketing. Certainly the weaponized cloth was interesting but it had a low rate of fire because it basically depended on sunlight for power. It also wasn't too fashionable since it was about the thickness of soft leather. Coarse soft leather. And it used highly proprietary technology which SunLabs only barely had the clearance to utilize, much less sell on the open market. Which meant she might have to actually go through the proper channels!

Lt. Jameson shifted inside the bulky environmental suit that had been provided to him by the factory rep, clearly uncomfortable with both the clumsy nature of it and that it wasn't even close to approved by the SDF. Their own environmental armor was lighter, more comfortable, and likely vastly more expensive than this antique but the SunLabs rep had asked that he wear it, as he himself was, in order to enhance the demonstration.

"So, as you can see, the unit has been deployed and is now ready to set up. All it needs is some clear ground - a beach, an open field, anything relatively clear of large obstructions will do. Brush and slight irregularities are fine..."

The lieutenant, along with a half-dozen other potential purchasers or agents thereof, walked around the 'unit' following the factory rep. It was just about the same size and shape as a regular forty-foot shipping container. Carefully made to exactly that size, as explained in the brochure, to allow easy transport in a galactic standard package.

"If you'll all follow me over here I'll begin the deployment. As you can see there is a convenient remote in this compartment although deployment can be triggered from either end in an emergency. Safety is paramount though thus the remote..."

Once at a safe distance the rep took the remote, which was over sized and perfect for someone wearing a clumsy suit, in both hands and pressed the two buttons labeled 'Deploy' in big bold letters. With an audible 'thump' the sides of the container fell down to reveal a somewhat spongy looking mass in the center. Lights along the edges of the panels began to flash yellow and there was an audible alarm as well though it changed to a slow keening after a minute.

"On one panel you can see the power unit for the whole system. It's a hardened solar generator that can withstand hundreds of gees of shock and has a standby life of a decade and an operation life of nearly fifty years. It's most robust than the system needs actually and it's mostly so you can plug in your hair dryer..."

This got a few chuckles from the assembled...

"Or a whole array of modern medical systems. One of the primary uses we envision for this system is as a portable medical facility for remote and hostile environments. It's got a Class Five NBC rating - you can set the whole thing up on the same ground that's just been hit with a low-grade atomic and suffer no ill effects."

"Now on the other side you can see the atmospheric processing unit... The way this works is that the solar generator takes the power from the solar cloth used throughout and in turn uses that to power the atmospheric processor. That takes the atmosphere - hostile in this case - and separates it out into hostile and beneficial elements. You can see one of the structural ribs puffing out now..."

One whole side of the unit had started to bulge over the panel holding the power generator and several thick-looking pieces were slowly filling out into tubular ribs.

"These ribs are being filled with the hostile components of the atmosphere while the breathable components are being used to fill the interior spaces. The system automatically compensates for the ratios of each gas present and adjusts the fill time accordingly. This may result in a longer or shorter fill time but it's necessary for the unit to shape itself properly."

The rep kept up a running banter as the unit slowly filled and pushed out the two end units until the whole unit filled the hundred meter space. The whole structure was a central dome with two slightly smaller domes and the airlocks on each end along a number of smaller semi-domes along the sides of each larger dome.

"Now the system will maintain this shape as long as it has power. As long as the sun keeps shining. It stores power - you can set the local day and night cycle with the remote - and regulates the power flow to maintain as many systems as possible."