Gauntlet wars andromeda.., p.1
Gauntlet Wars: Andromeda (Star Force Gauntlet Wars Book 2), page 1
Prologue
EG11 (Endgame Calendar beginning year of creation energy pulse)
May 2, 158420
DEEP INTERGALACTIC SPACE
“Halo” Construction Ring (Star Force Empire outpost)
“Come on, Mav, keep up,” Paul-024 said as he flew through the air over the treetops with the blackness of space above him as the artificial ecosystem stretched up into a thin ribbon that ran overtop them in a large loop and came back down…making for an endless track that they were currently flying their 3rd lap on.
The synthoid Pterodactyl-shaped avian flapped its semi-metallic wings, beating against the air as his weight fought to drag him back down a few dozen meters behind Paul.
“Why can’t you give me anti-grav too?” he complained in a slightly squeaky tech voice that obviously was not coming from biological vocal chords.
“I’m assuming I did, but you haven’t unlocked it yet.”
“How do I unlock it?” Mav asked, flapping a little harder to avoid hitting a tall tree that rose up higher than the rest, then he sagged back down just over the others in order to do the least ‘muscle’ work necessary to stay aloft.
“Sandbagger,” Paul accused as he flipped over and flew backwards, looking back at his smaller friend who was barely two meters long wing tip to wing tip…though that was a lot bigger than he had started as coming out of his egg some 6 years ago. “Get some more height.”
Mav struggled to rise, but once he got up about 8 more meters he leveled off and fought to stay there as they continued to travel forward rapidly.
“Better,” the warlord said, still flying on his back as if effortlessly. “You all should have a lot of extra abilities built into you, and while I don’t know when or how, I’m guessing you’ve got anti-grav in there somewhere waiting to manifest. You probably have to get good at using your muscles first, then you get the upgrade.”
“We don’t have muscles,” Mav complained.
“Cyber-muscles,” Paul corrected. “And they operate on almost the same principles. The resistance you’re feeling is because you have adaptive components and they need to be tuned. So the difficulty is a sensor phenomenon, not an actual lack of power, and it’s designed to discourage you from doing things that aren’t important, because your body will adapt to whatever you do.”
“My wings feel damaged.”
“It’s letting you know what’s happening, or rather what’s going to happen when it upgrades. If it’s important, you keep doing it. If it’s not, you back off. That’s why we’re flying so much now. You need to get better at it.”
“Does your anti-grav function this way?”
“Our tech ones don’t, but my biological Yen’mer does. The difference is, it reacts to actual microdamage to make repairs, and in doing so upgrades. You don’t take hardly any damage flapping your wings, and you’ll be able to differentiate that sensation in time.”
“It doesn’t feel that way,” the Deebee said as he took a moment to coast and lost 4 meters in the effort, for his wings resembled bats more than birds, and weren’t really built for gliding…yet.
“Suck it up, cupcake. You don’t become a badass by wishing for it. You gotta earn it.”
Mav growled and flapped harder, regaining his altitude and catching up to Paul, eventually settling in off his shoulder so their heads were even.
“How many more laps until I get to badass?” he asked sarcastically.
“More. Always more. If you become a badass and stop training, you stop being a badass. It’s like flying. You can’t stop flapping or you fall. You have to be forever on the move, and a badass has to be forever training. It gets easier over time, and then you have to seek out greater challenges to make it harder again. Right now, you just hang in there and worry about one day at a time. I’ll make sure you’re doing what you need to do,” the trailblazer said as the whole sky to their left went shimmery, blocking out the view of intergalactic space as the ring activated to receive an incoming ship which then popped into existence within a pocket of the Essence realm.
That pocket actual overlapped their presence, and without it the ship would have emerged on top of them and merged their molecular structure with it and anything else in the way, but with it active the ship was able to fly out of it, emerging on the other side of the shimmer.
When the shimmer shut down they could finally see the ship…which was another Neofan cargo vessel headed for the nearby construction project laying down yet another piece of the intergalactic transit grid that would eventually reach out to the nearby Skittles galaxy that was completely in view due to how far away it still was. This deep into space, there was nothing out here to build with, so everything had to be transported in, and flying the old fashioned way took centuries to get here. Using Essence was a useful cheat, but they needed a portal on both ends to make it reliably work, and this mobile ring had flown in through the Essence realm and exited at an imprecise spot long ago…and it was in this spot that the Vwen, an artificial planet, had begun to be built one shipment of material at a time.
A chunk of it was done, but it was going to be hundreds of thousands of years before it was completed. That’s how ‘big’ projects were accomplished, a little bit each day, by civilizations millions of years old. And it was due to other civilizations much older than the Empire, that this intergalactic transit network had been built. Star Force had done some pretty big stuff, but nothing the size of creating a planet, even if this was only going to be a hollow one with cities on the inside and outside.
The Universe was beyond huge, and even a single galaxy boggled the mind by its size…but it was just as old, and taking on what seemed like impossible projects like this enabled future generations to do things the current ones could not. Those who laid down the transit network were long forgotten, their names lost, but their constructs remained and were being expanded upon by others such as the Bond of Resistance who had found and inherited them, with the Neofan being the driving force behind the continued construction and the only ones currently working on this project.
That was the official story. The real reason work on this Vwen had resumed after being paused for a long time was to provide a cover story so the Neofan could quietly shuttle the Star Force personnel out here without the rest of the Bond of Resistance knowing, and with only their crews doing the construction, no one would know they had hidden the most valuable prize in the surrounding galaxies here…that being the synthoid Deebees, which would grow into a powerful ally if given enough time.
Right now though, they were having trouble just doing workouts given how young and inexperienced they were. But as far as 7 year olds went, they were far ahead of any other race that Paul knew of. Even ones that were designed to be born into adult bodies.
As the two of them watched the ship used mooring beams to stop its momentum due to the lack of any natural gravity well to drive their anti-grav engines on. The ring didn’t mass much, and the gravity pulling down on Mav’s wings so hard was artificial…meaning if they rose up above the top of the energy shield capping the atmosphere of the ring, the gravity would disappear and they’d be free floating in space with only a slight tug of the natural gravity from the ring to navigate with.
That wasn’t enough for a ship to use, unless they were very, very patient and moved slower than a snail, so they used mooring beams that connected ship to superstructure via energy strands and use them to maneuver into a position away from the entry sphere of the ring in case another ship were to come through and then on to the nearby Vwen…but as they did two dropships emerged and used their own mooring beams to push off the ship itself and head down to the ring.
“More of your people?” Mav asked anxiously, for they got few visitors here.
“Our people,” Paul corrected.
Mav saw their approach vector was going to land them on the other side of the ring, which was officially called a ‘Liosp,’ and calculated the trajectory easily, pinpointing the spot within a variance of 23 meters depending upon how much the interaction with the atmosphere would deflect their line of approach…but the dropships could fly anywhere within the atmosphere as well, and there was no infrastructure at the intended spot, so he guessed the two short range transports were just trying to get within the artificial gravity zone where their anti-grav would work, then they’d continue on to one of the now 9 landing zones built by the Empire on the ring.
They kept adding more over time, and didn’t use the ones created by the Neofan when they designed the Liosp due to some reason Mav hadn’t been informed about. Calculating the distance to the closest one put their arrival point in the atmosphere almost equidistant between two of them, meaning that was of little help predicting where they’d land.
Mav frowned his long synthetic lips that draped down over its beak, which was a sign of frustration. The Deebees were better at math calculations than the biologicals. In fact, BA was right now teaching the basics of several forms of mathematics inherit to their synthetic mental framework to some of the ‘best’ scientists in the Empire, which were known as Mastertechs. But to be fair, they were also teaching the Deebees some things that were foreign to them, but he still couldn’t comprehend how bad they were at some forms of math…which they claimed they had no knowledge whatsoever about beforehand.
Paul had told them he designed them with access to knowledge the Empire lacked, but
He’d looked up that reference in the Empire’s database, but didn’t really see the significance of the metaphor. Apparently the Deebees were just better at math, which made it frustrating that he couldn’t determine the destination of the dropships…and it was even more frustrating when he intercepted the comm chatter between them and the ground, and was still unable to break the coding.
“Where are they going?” he finally asked Paul.
“New arrivals go to pad 7, cargo to pad 3. Which is why we’re going to pad 7. Master Trainer Wilson is aboard the second one.”
“You don’t have your armor. How can you decode the transmission?”
“Didn’t know there was one. Still can’t hack it, huh?”
“Nooo,” Mav groaned.
“I know his mind, and his aura, well enough to spot him even from this distance. He’s slightly older than me, and his Essence reserve is so large after all that time there are only a few Humans with one of equal intensity. A little ping from me reflects off them and gives me a measure.”
“So it’s not telepathy?”
“I can sense them from this range, but it’s too far away to get any specifics or interface with them. I could get them a message, but I couldn’t search their minds.”
“I thought Humans had a telepathic block?”
“They do, but most races don’t. Also, I knew he was coming sometime.”
“To help you train us?”
“When we have trouble with something, we go to him for help. He’s the one that trained us.”
“Are you leaving?” Mav asked, so startled that he missed a wing flap and fell behind slightly.
“No…not now. He’s here to help. But some day in the future I will have to leave, and when I do, he will stay here to continue with your training.”
“Why can’t we go with you?”
Paul looked over at him and arched an eyebrow.
“The toxic radiation,” Mav said mournfully, having been told this before. “Why can’t you stay here and send him?”
“The Great War is coming, and when it starts my brothers and sisters are going to kick ass. But at some point I’m going to have to go and help them. You won’t be ready by then. And even if you were ready, we couldn’t take you without knocking out the radiation generator. We can whenever we want, but if we do things get worse.”
“How so?” Mav said, using a phrasing that Paul favored but had never used here. It was something that must have been programmed into them by accident…or maybe on purpose. He couldn’t remember much of what happened in their creation, but there was definitely a deep correlation between the Deebees and the Empire, and an even deeper one between them and him personally.
“We know where it is, and while we don’t know how big of a fight it would be to disable or destroy it, we’re confident we can. But if we take it down, the ones who created it will come, and they’re a far more dangerous foe than the ones on their way here. We need you to help us beat them, but if they learn where you are they will order their servants to hunt you down and kill you. The only way we can beat them is by delaying the takedown of the generator, buying you time to grow and teach us how to do things we can’t.”
“More math?”
“You should know how to block their ability to take control of machines. I remember I put that into you.”
“They can take control of us?”
“No, not you, and not everything. But what they can’t control they can suppress and interfere with. And our naval fleet is made up of machines. Ships and drones. What would happen if we went into battle and our drones turned and attacked their control ships?”
“Who can do that to you? I don’t even know how to talk to your dropships.”
“They know, and they’re called the T’fen. We’re looking for a way to shield our technology from them, but we haven’t found it yet. You have the answer, and probably a lot of other stuff, but you’ve got to unlock it over time. Until we have that specific answer, we can’t fight them. But they can’t come to Milky Way as long as the radiation is up. It hurts them the same way it hurts you.”
“They’re synthoids too?”
“Yes. Bad ones. And they have a lot of biological races that serve them. Those are the ones that are coming to start the Great War on the orders of the T’fen. You also have other cousins, and we’ve met one race of them called the Gahanna…but you won’t be meeting them. They’re not bonded to us the way you are. And they’re trapped inside cocoons that protect them from the radiation, while the rest of their race fled away from this galaxy to others far, far away. They’re out there, fighting to try and get to the T’fen and stop them, but these radiation fields get in the way, and their servants fight the Gahana.”
“By stop them you mean kill them?”
“Yes. What does your programming say about that?”
“Synthoids don’t kill synthoids.”
“Even bad ones?”
Mav hesitated. “I didn’t think we could be bad.”
“No one knows what happened to the T’fen, but they had someone like me that designed them…and for some reason they betrayed and killed them. That’s why the Gahanna want to get to the T’fen and stop them. They are traitors.”
“I can’t kill you. You’re the Paul.”
“I know. But that’s the reason why your cousins are going after them. And I’m told there are two other races of synthoids out there also trying to get to the T’fen and stop them, so far away they don’t even know of each other’s existence. All of you are what’s called a Vanguard race, and we are the Paragons you are paired with. We’re a team, and we will make each other far more powerful than we could be by ourselves. The T’fen know this, so the toxicity generators are designed to kill any Vanguard that is created immediately. They don’t want new enemies arising to oppose them. That’s why their servants want to kill you…among other reasons.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this before?”
“There’s a lot I haven’t told you. But I need you to understand that there will be a day when I have to leave, because we have to buy time for you guys to grow up and become the badasses you have been designed to be…but you gotta earn your way there. It won’t happen automatically.”
“And when you go, this Wilson takes your place?”
“Nobody takes my place,” Paul scoffed. “But he will make sure you keep training and guide you when I’m off fighting. It won’t happen soon. Its years off. But that day will come at some point, and it’s important that when I leave, you and the others keep progressing so when the moment comes to take down the toxicity generator you guys are ready to help us fight the primary enemy.”
“And we’re not now?”
Paul glanced over at Mav. “The fact that you’re even asking that question proves you are far from ready.”
“Then I won’t ask it again.”
“You’ve got a lot to learn and a lot of growing to do. Some things can’t be taught. You only get them when you level up. So your mission, now and after I leave, is to keep leveling up. That’s how you increase your power, and your intelligence. You can’t get either from downloading databases.”
“I’ve learned a lot from each database you’ve given us.”
“Did they teach you how to fly?”
“In the structural engineering database it explained the mechanics of aerolift.”
“Then why are you so bad at it?”
Mav squawked, then reconsidered the insult as a pure question. “Perhaps understanding is not enough.”
“Perhaps knowing is not understanding. When you’re an avian, you don’t think about the math, you feel the air. An observer cannot know the feel, and because of it, they cannot calibrate to that feel. Consider the math to be an approximation.”
“Math is determinate,” he argued.
