Chapter 8: Protoculture in the New Age

—November 20, 2017—
—04:40 GST—
People who bore easily like Sam Bennet are rarely sent on search and destroy missions, just as women as emotionally unstable as Sarride are generally frowned upon as being commanders of large scale combat action groups. Yet both of them were deployed to the Kaladan system on one of Lacul's all-time favorite wild goose chases, the search for long lost planet Vorhalas. Even now, Sarride was the only person alive who had ever been there who still believed in its existence. Her last act as a free woman had been as an effort to liberate this planet from the property of the Supervision Army, but after the "cleansing" of her mind all she could think about was conquering it again. Taking Vorhalas intact would be a turning point in the war effort, as it would not only provide the Supervision Army with a base of operations but it would also provide them with a wealth of advanced weapons they could use, not in the least of which were fold weapons. Lacul's factory was still damaged, so the only working fold weapon they had was the one Kraken had found in this system almost a year ago, but if one of those little planets really was Vorhalas, the universe would soon experience one very large series of bangs.

The search was planet by planet, and Sarride personally surveyed every one of them to confirm that this world was or was not the planet they were looking for. But one world caught her attention in particular, a rocky roughly 16,500 km in diameter, much smaller than Gallaron but almost the exact dimensions as Vorhalas once was. Bennet's fleet deployed battlepods with fighter support to secure the planet after a two-month survey of the surrounding planets and made planet fall literally hours before Sarride's ship entered orbit and began to scan from above. Once there, she knew where she was going, she knew exactly where she was. This was Vorhalas, the home of her childhood.

Bennet is a man who bores easily; after several days of apparent tedium while Sarride checked and rechecked her findings, Bennet waited for something to do. He had resolved to leave Sarride alone with whatever the hell was bothering her right now, but after three days of waiting enough was enough. He took a shuttle to Sarride's command ship to speak to her in person, desperate for something that could be called a conversation with a person who's personality was still marginally intact. He arrived at the bridge of the command ship to see Sarride slouched in her chair, staring at a projected image of the planet bellow with a lost expression on her face. "Sarride," Bennet began. "Is this Vorhalas or not?"

Sarride nodded slowly. "Yes, this is Vorhalas."

"Then why don't you fill me in on this whole deal since I'm the only one in this fleet who doesn't know what's going on."

Sarride turned slightly and faced Bennet just enough for him to see half of her face, the other half hidden in shadow. "Half a million years ago, the protoculture unleashed Lord Gepernich and his followers on the universe with their mistakes, and Gepernich in his wisdom saw the impurity that ravaged the galaxy and starved the billions of people across the stars. He set out to purify the souls of the protoculture by absorbing them into his own divine being, cultivating them, harvesting the best of them until he could restore the spiritual balance to the galaxy. At the height of his war, he attacked the protoculture's home world and purified its inhabitants to strengthen his armies of light. But rather than allow their world to fall into the hands of the Supervision Army, the protoculture built the first fold weapons and used it to destroy their world and much of our armies with it. It was a devastating blow to both of us, but they recovered faster and the tide began to turn."

"What is Vorhalas?" Bennet said, suddenly more interested.

"When their world was destroyed, the protoculture used their largest moon as an escape vessel to carry the survivors away from the system. They used a fold system, similar but much larger than the one used to transport factory satellites, and they moved the moon to another location far beyond the reach of our forces. They moved it two more times so we wouldn't be able to track it down. And then the Zentradi started fighting us for the first time and we no longer had the resources to look for it."

Bennet shifted his weight back and forth. "I remember Lazuli said something about that. Why did they wait so long to get involved?"

"We don't know." Sarride looked out at the moon again. "After the collapse of the Stellar Republic, Vorhalas was a safe haven for protocran refugees from all parts of the galaxy. But at some point, billions of them scattered throughout the galaxy in colony ships and small warcraft. Most… well probably all of the surviving protoculture descendents come from there."

Bennet looked at the holographic image behind her. "Let me get this straight. Vorhalas is actually a moon of the protoculture's home planet?"

"It was, a long time ago…" Sarride looked down at the display again, focusing the image on a spot she'd apparently been waiting for. "I was born right there." She said, pointing. "There's the ruins of an old city down there. I lived there my entire life. My sister and I married Sarron, and we had four children between us… and then Gepernich came and showed me the path." She stood up from the chair and walked to the front of the bridge to the tactical control panel there. "I was afraid, and we tried to escape with the others on Vorhalas. But a Supervision scout team got to us in time, they took us to Gepernich and he cleansed us of our impurities…"

This was interesting. Bennet found the shuttle trip anything but wasted now. "What happened to your children?"

"I disposed of them a long time ago. They were a distraction, an object of impurity. Whenever I was with them my purpose became cloudy, my thinking became sinful. It's like that with Sarron too, but Lacul's has helped me work through it."

"Good to know." Bennet said. He made a note to keep an eye on Sarride and her ex-husband. If worse came to worse, that would provide some worthwhile entertainment. "Why is Lacul so interested in Vorhalas anyway? Aside from fold weapons, which he can make more of once he…"

"Vorhalas has a very extensive manufacturing base, as well as a great many old ships that could be salvaged for combat use. Not only that, but the legends say Vorhalas possesses the greatest secrets of protoculture. We know that many of the inhabitants from this planet went to Gallaron when they abandoned it and we know they destroyed everything they didn't take with them in case we might find the planet some day, but there's always the chance that something valuable could be there. Kraken did find a fold weapon floating in space nearby, we're certain there is at least one additional device somewhere on the planet."

"Also good to know." Bennet noticed Sarride's fingers moving over the control panel to the weapons systems. "I'll send word to Lord Lacul to begin moving the fleet into this system and to start fortifying the planet… what are you doing?"

"What? Oh nothing, just wanted to check on the secondary dimension cannons." Sarride entered a command code and the small cannon on the belly of the ship started to power up. She tapped in the last program and pushed a small lever…

The beam ripped out from the underside of her ship and descended on the planet, striking the geometric center of the old city and plowing hundreds of meters into the ground before finally converting all the matter of the area into pure energy. A thunderous nuclear fireball consumed the entire city and everything within 10 miles of it, sweeping displaced atoms into the atmosphere in a rising mushroom cloud. The place where Sarride was born, where he children were born, the same place where her family home had only moments before still been relatively intact was now a crater in the ground 3 miles wide. "Secondary cannons working perfectly." She said under her breath. "Inform Lord Lacul to start sending moving the main fleet."
.

—December 12, 2017—
—23:57 GST—
Gallaron officials are well acquainted with the value of high morale, especially among high-ranking fleet officers who made most of the tactical decisions. Dr. Varcus didn't see any particular problem with Broli's proposed joint operation with Corina's fleet and could even see the tactical benefit it would have, provided the two understood that they couldn't operate together forever and that before too long they would have to go their separate ways again. Then something amazing happened. Captain Matheson had gotten the idea into her head that the SDF-2's holographic display system had not been fully un-installed from when the ship was converted from colony ship to a battleship. Her engineers modified the system for use outside the ship, and Broli's fleet commenced decoy operations in the Zjen-Kari system where the enemy was expected to begin a renewed offensive. Corina's ship projected the rough image around itself of a small asteroid and moved into a position near the battle zone. Broli's fleet masterfully maneuvered a group of enemy ships into a position near Megaroad-01, and none of the enemy ships even knew what hit them. All 50 of them were blown to dust in a matter of minutes.

Victory after victory had followed the start of Broli and Corina's joint operation, and as a reward Dr. Varcus decided it would be in the best interest of everyone if they continued to work together to take the fight to the Supervision Army. Their war had seemed to indicate an at least temporary chink in Lacul's armor, and the entire GSDF was now mobilizing to further exploit it. Gallaron now went on the offensive. Staff meetings for top officials were suddenly cheerful occasions, as for the first time there were signs of hope returning to the fleet that they might be able to seriously damage their enemies abilities to threaten them.

The most common tactical display on SDF-2 was now a close-up of the Arturo sector and the surrounding space. A cubic section of the galaxy, a thousand light-years across. Looking at the display from above, the center of the galaxy would be near the bottom of the display or "Galactic South" as Earth astronomers used to say. Earth was on the opposite side of core, about forty-five thousand light-years farther south, but the Supervision Army's main stronghold of Bokata was towards the top of the display, in the Bokata system almost 750 light-years galactic north of Gallaron.

Megaroad-01 and SDF-Phoenix were towards the bottom left of those charts, holding position in inter-stellar space eighty one light-years galactic north of Gallaron. The fleet commanders, husband and wife, milled over intelligence reports and action summaries sprawled out on the table in Captain Matheson's office on SDF-2 with a pot of coffee brewing in one corner on top of Shikari's evaluation of the Supervision Army's new variable powered armor. Broli's mind had already gone blank; he knew they needed to strike the enemy's position but he had no idea where. Tactical information wasn't very forthcoming all of a sudden. "General Hallas is moving up the eastern flank…" He said, reading off the charts looking for ideas. "Shikari's fleet is to the galactic northwest, seventy five light-years deeper… where's Misa now?"

Corina had been spaced out, staring at one of General Hallas's dispatches on enemy troop movements, but after a moment she punched up a code into a keyboard and one of the stars on the map started pulsing. "The Monitor and her group are advancing behind Shikari on the western front. Barzam and Grel's fleets are holding the center with the defense grid."

That didn't help them much. They were right back in the position they had been in weeks ago, a stalemate with no obvious next move. It was like trying to place chess with nothing but pawns… suddenly, Broli remembered that they would soon be getting a new game piece. "Where will the Victory be deployed?"

Corina typed in another code and a thin red line appeared between Gallaron and a double star system close to the front. "The Captain Elensh and her group will be about here when they launch, just a little to the west of General Hallas."

"There've been a lot of attacks in that area recently…" Broli said. He sipped his coffee and looked at the charts more closely. "It's mostly quiet in the center section…" An idea was forming in his mind. Victory was just another ship coming into the front with just another fleet, but having it would free up valuable resources if they wanted to try something new. "Kitten, I say we make for… Jikanna Delcaan and try to establish a beach head. We're gonna draw a lot of flak when we get there so let's just hope Victory's as tough as everyone hopes it is."

Corina highlighted Jikanna on the charts and frowned. "That's a little far out isn't it? You don't think we're getting over-extended?"

"Define over-extended." Broli said. "By the time we're in position, the Victory will be arriving in the battle zone as reinforcements with fifty warships and a full fighter compliment. Besides, look at enemy behavior lately. They've gotten less and less aggressive with each battle, even the ones we lost. Remember right after we lost the Gulara Corridor? They halted their larger-scale operations all over the front for the better half of the month. The largest battles were by that hunter-killer unit that's been harassing Shikari on the other front, but aside from that they've been less and less active in their attacks."

Corina could see where he was going with this. "And so far the only contact with their fleets are small scout vessels or patrol craft testing the defenses for weaknesses…"

"…Which isn't consistent with their usual tactics." Broli added. "Normally they'd just roll over us with a huge armada just like at Gulara. The only reason they'd be taking their time like this is if they didn't have a choice."

"So you think they're having some kind of resource problem?

"That or the Botoru fleet on the opposite side of the sector's putting up more of a fight than Lacul expected."

"That could be," Corina paused a moment to refill her coffee mug. They'd been at this for almost seven hours now, trying to plot their next move. All either of them wanted was to crawl into a hole somewhere and fall asleep, but there was still far too much work to be done.

"Anyway, that's pretty much the leading theory on the Phoenix," Broli refilled his own mug and took a massive gulp, waiting for the buzzing sensation that would sustain him for at least the next three hours. "If that's really true, there won't ever be a better time to strike than now. We have to press forward towards Lacul's home territory, wear them down before they can recover from whatever troubles they're having."

Corina leaned back on the couch. "Are WE that much better off? C'mon you know what's happening back home, the transport divisions are working day and night bringing asteroid fragments to the factory satellites and the assembly lines are at max capacity, and we're still churning out new weapons at a snails pace. We're in no position to try and exploit their weaknesses if we can't even cover our own."

Broli rubbed his temples in anxiety. He was perhaps the last person who needed to be reminded of this. "Let me ask you this, if we see this opportunity, but play it safe and let it pass us by, will there be another one?"

His words played on the one insecurity all of them had about this situation. They all knew that if the Supervision Army managed to get their act together before too long, they would be right back in the middle of a loosing battle with hell between them and the end. The war had dragged on longer than any of them had ever anticipated, so much so that every ranking officer had the distinct impression that they were all living on borrowed time. "We'll give it a shot, Broli," Corina said finally yielding to instinct, "What's the worst that can happen anyway? We get wiped out, we take hundreds of them with us, the Victory's fleet mops up, right?"

"Exactly." Broli sank into the couch a bit and tried to relax. Just thinking about going into another battle made him feel heavy.

"You tired?" Corina said.

"I'm okay. I think we ought to get something to eat."

"You're in luck. Someone opened a King Lao's in the city block last month. They'll deliver to anywhere on the ship, even the bridge."

Broli smiled. "That sounds good... by the way, I didn't know you guys rebuilt the city block. It's damn impressive if you ask me."

Corina smiled proudly. "Some of the Mobile Infantry set it up last time we were in port. There was all this extra space leftover when they put in the main cannon so they basically crammed a bunch of buildings into the top level and left the bottom open for development. Any space that was left over got reserved for businesses. The first one in line for the permit was Lao Fei Chan."

Broli could feel his energy building up again, probably the result of a convenient caffeine rush. "In that case, let's just go out."

"Out?" Corina looked around the messy office with papers strewn about the room and sighed in disapproval. "No, let's just stay in...

Broli grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards the door. "C'mon Kitten!"
.

—December 13, 2017—
—09:50 GST—
"C'mon, dammit, keep up with me!" Ensign Monty screamed into the headset, to no avail. Jerry's fighter was falling too far behind, and with the next evasive maneuver, Lieutenant Arriaga managed to sweep in above him and put him out of his misery with a burst from his gunpod. "Aw, shit!"

"You're all mine, Monty!" Arriaga passed over the debris from the slain Valkyrie, zigzagged into his six and squeezed the trigger. Monty switched immediately into gerwalk and tried to fly over it, but one lucky shell passed through his right engine and he began to tumble towards the jungle below. "Gotcha!"

"I hate you, Francis! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you...!" Monty pulled the ejection leaver, but at just the wrong time; the fighter was upside down when the seat fired and the simulated pilot was launched head-first into the three line at two hundred miles per hour. The holographic monitor flashed a red light indicating his death.

Colonel Ichijo's laughter rolled out on his radio as the computer counted off the reload time to drop him back into the simulation, "For crissakes, Monty, that's the fourth time he's killed you!"

Monty growled indignantly. "He's in a zone today, Colonel. I swear to God I'm gonna toast his ass!"

Hikaru was watching the simulation play out from his monitor in the control room; so far Lieutenant Arriaga had scored kills on all of them at least twice and been shot down only once. "You know the only reason he keeps beating you is because you're all going after each other. If you would just gang up on him for a little bit he wouldn't be able to drop you like that."

The simulation reloaded, and Monty found himself back in the action, starting off at thirty-thousand feet above South Ataria Island as the dog fight continued bellow him, "That's exactly what he's doing! He's not fighting anybody he's just sneakin up on people when their heads are turned! I think that's cheating!"

"It's every man for himself. There's no rules, you know that." Hikaru watched Monty's fighter dive out of the clouds to plunge back into the battle, in a gleeful bloodlust that at once made him feel both old and young. The pilot side of him wanted to jump into an empty simulator pod and join the fruitless melee just to show his young pilots how the game was played, but the squadron leader he had become was more curious to see how his men performed when the gloves were off. It was a rare thing in reality when a pilot was free to just fly, no objectives and no fears, nothing to defend and nowhere to go. They'd been at it for an hour already and every minute that passed, he learned more about the men and women under his command.

Out of nowhere a new fighter loaded into the simulation under Skull-11's login. Hikaru grinned at his pilot's enthusiasm. "Well, well... I guess you're not as sick as we thought, huh Batista?"

There was no answer on the radio, and Hikaru left it alone. Skull-11 followed Monty's lead as he plunged into the air battle over the Island, but to Hikaru's complete surprise the Valkyrie immediately lined up Monty's plane in its sights and fired a long burst into his engines, sending the Valkyrie crashing in flames to the ground and plunging the pilot right back to oblivion. He heard Monty give a shriek of anger on the radio, but now it was Batista's performance that held his attention. That's interesting... maybe Jose's gonna step it up today?

Skull-11 rolled out from its kill, at once banking to one side in a clumsy maneuver and then reversing the turn back in the other direction. Jerry's Valkyrie dropped onto his six and opened fire with the gunpod, but the shots were too poorly aimed and Skull-11 dodged them easily. Then in a quick maneuver the Valkyrie snapped into battloid and rose straight up, firing down on Jerry's plane as it passed underneath him. The shots missed by a wide margin, but as Jerry came back around in fighter mode the battloid dropped out of the sky unpowered and descended into the jungles below, out of sight from his guns. Jerry followed the gesture and transformed to battloid, but in the half second delay it took to complete the transformation, SKull-11 rose out of the jungle just behind him in gerwalk mode and shredded his torso with a short burst. The Valkyrie tumbled out of the sky and exploded beneath the treeline.

Batista snapped back into fighter mode and banked upwards into the clouds, immediately picking out the next target: Lieutenant Arriaga was right on Ensign Madison's tail.

"He should be sick all the time if he's gonna fly like that," Hikaru said with a chuckle.

Madison rolled over and dove for the ground, but switched into gerwalk as she did and came to a hovering stop in the air as Arriaga rushed past hier in an overshoot. The evasive maneuver would have saved her life, if only Skull-11 hadn't descended from above with a long burst from its gunpod, blasting the fighter to bits where it lingered too long in the sky. Without even hesitating, Batista switched into fighter mode and dove in behind Skull-3. Lieutenant Arriaga saw the attack coming well in advance; he switched into gerwalk and darted up and out of the path of Skull-11. To his surprise the fighter didn't overshoot him as he expected, but tilted the nose up and flared in the air, transforming to gerwalk mode and firing another long burst in his direction at increasingly shorter range. Now it was his Arriaga's to run; he tilted the nose towards the ground and fired the afterburner, trading speed for altitude. He pulled out of the dive at close to Mach 3, but glanced over his shoulder just an instant before a single shell from Skull-11's gunpod sliced through his left wing, tearing it off at the root.

The Valkyrie started to tumble at it's high speed, and in a panic Arriaga transformed to gerwalk and cut his velocity, then dropped into the jungle below in soldier mode. The instant his feet hit the ground, the battloid Skull-11 appeared directly overhead, dropped in above him with gunpod drawn. It landed directly in front of him and started to fire, but only by a split-second reflex Arriaga managed to sidestep the line of fire, reached out and grabbed the battloid by the arm. With one quick movement and a sweep of the feet, he slammed Skull-11 to its back between a pair of tall trees, then leveled his own gunpod to finish him off...

A burst of fire from above tore through the canopy above his head. Arriaga dodged to the side from Monty's gunpod, then fired back as the battloid circled above him. The twin streams of shells passed each other in the air, but Arriaga's was more accurate; most of Mony's shells missed their target, but good part of Arriaga's cut through Monty's cockpit and shot the Valkyrie from the sky once again. The battloid fell to the jungle floor in flames, but too late Arriaga looked down again and found himself staring down the tri-barrels of Skull-11's gunpod. "Aw shit..."

Batista's gunpod cut Skull-3 apart where it stood, scattering its parts across the jungle floor. Skull-11 sat up against the tree and started to heave back up to its feet, but no sooner was it standing erect again did a single gerwalk burst out from between the trees, the shells of its gunpod hitting their mark. Skull-11 just managed to fire back with its own gunpod before it met its fiery end; both Valkyries simultaneously erupted in explosions.

Hikaru laughed out loud as three of the simulator pods popped open and their enraged pilots climbed out onto the deck, and laughed even harder as the rest of the squadron likewise climbed out to see what the fuss was all about. Monty led the charge, with Madison, Arriaga and Jerry right at his sides as the other pilots gathered behind them for what they were sure would be a rather amusing non-simulated fight. "Batista!" Arriaga shouted, "Get outa that simulator! I'm gonna run your ass up a flag pole!"

Still laughing, Hikaru stepped out of the control room and joined the others in the crowd, watching from the opposite side of the simulator pod as the canopy lifted and the pilot climbed out, enough anger assembled to match all three of theirs. But something was immediately amiss; instead of Batista, the squadron was greeted by an angry snarl as a four year old girl leapt from the cockpit, stomped across the deck and sharply kicked Jerry in the shin. "Jerk!" She shouted, and stormed out of the room in frustration.

All twelve pilots watched Miko in stunned silence as she stormed away, then looked to each other in confusion as if expecting to find the answer on each other's faces. Jerry rubbed his head in confusion, staring back and forth from the door to Batista's simulator, "What'd she kick ME for?"

"Because you're the one who shot her down, man." Arriaga said, suddenly remembering. "She's mad because she didn't see you coming."

"What! She killed all four of us, what's she got to be mad about?"

"C'mon, you know how kids are..."

"Colonel," Madison stepped forward, her voice a mixture of fear and anger, "Where the hell did she learn how to do that?"

"I don't know and I don't care." Hikaru was fighting the urge to collapse on the ground laughing. He counted his blessings; if Roy had seen this, he might have been hospitalized from laughing too hard. "The important thing is the four of you let yourselves got shot down by a kindergartener. What do you suppose we do about this?"

All four of them stared at their feet in shame. "I guess, we... could run more simulations?"

"Yeah, that'll be the day." Hikaru laughed to himself as he thought of a perfectly fitting punishment. "Well here's your penance: for the next five months, all four of you are gonna take turns babysitting."

All four of them looked up in shock and anger.

"Oh, c'mon!" Jerry shouted, still rubbing the sting in his shin.

"C'mon nothing! I don't take this from my squadron! You get blown out of the sky by a four year old, there's gonna be consequences!"

"That's not fair, Colonel!" Madison was almost pleading by now, "You've been teaching her all the trick moves and you know it!"

"Yeah, that's right!" Arriaga, said, shaking his fist, "She pulled the Wild Turkey maneuver to get on my six! You're the only one on this ship who knows how to do that!"

Hikaru chuckled, "Okay, so maybe I did teach her a thing or two... but she's just a little kid. It's not like it was me flying against you in there."

All of them fell silent, exchanging another round of nervous glances. Arriaga stared at the ground and answered cautiously, "Well you know... for a second there..."

Hikaru knew where this was going, and unsure whether to take it as an insult to him or a compliment to Miko, he decided to steer clear of the entire conversation. "The mess is serving up lunch in twenty minutes. You all go stuff your faces, and if you still wanna fly a bit I'll open the room again later tonight if we don't have a sortie."
.

—11:35 GST—
Boris checked his dials again and pushed down on the feet. Both legs and the main back thrusters fired at once, lifting the suit a few inches above the ground over the test platform. He was eternally grateful he had learned how to balance this thing by now; no more bruises for him today. But the temperature reading in the main engine manifold was a problem; every time he fired his thrusters the reading shot through the roof. This time was no different; the suit was only airborne for ten seconds before the thermal reading hit the red line and the computer ran an emergency shutdown program and began venting reactor coolant in all directions. The suit set down on the platform again with a thud and Boris watched the core temperature begin its tedious drop back into operating levels. "It's no good, Major. Every time we fire the rockets it burns right up."

Kai Chan walked up the platform with his safety goggles on his forehead and looked over the thruster pack. "Think we ought to change the reactant mass?"

"To what? We're already using the lightest stuff we got. We go any lighter and the suit won't even get off the ground. And even then, it'll STILL melt down every time we use the damn verniers!"

Kai Chan found himself completely stuck now. They had worked through thousands of problems with this suit in the past few weeks, redesigned almost every square inch of it and reconfigured half of the major systems one by one until they were perfect. He thought for sure the new control boards he had finished that morning would solve the problem. "What does it look like on the computer? Not enough coolant getting to the core or what?"

"I'm not sure." Boris opened the hatch and Kai Chan plugged his handheld into the CPU on his HUD system. "There's plenty of reactor coolant, but the thermal output is way too high. This shouldn't be happening like this... maybe the reactor's too big or something?

Lieutenant Beecher seemed to appear out of thin air next to him with a notebook in hand and looked over the data briefly. "I just got off the phone with the think-tanks at Macron Industries. They said this is the smallest turbine they've got. And their nuclear specialist said the output doesn't even matter at this size, there's just no way to slow the reaction rate enough and still hit critical mass. You go too slow and you're just grinding ions."

Kai Chan groaned in disappointment. It was madness to think they had come so far just to be stopped by such a ridiculous technical fluke. "I don't buy it. There's got to be a way to control this thing. My computer says that reactor's putting out enough energy to drive the suit to Mach 7 or more, now all we have to do is figure out how to harness that energy."

All of them stared at him sadly, wishing so badly they could do think of a way but knowing full well that the laws of physics had already stopped them in their tracks. Impossible was impossible, there was no going around it. But for a man who couldn't spell the word "impossible" even on a good day, the answer seemed plainly obvious. "Why not jus use heavier fuel? I reckon we already tried dat lahter stuff, and dat aint working..."

All three of them looked at Forest with a childish expression. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm talkin bout fuel. What's da heaviest reactant mass we gowt?"

Beecher thought for a moment, going through the list of fighters and missiles she knew of. "Berrenaug Salanitz, I guess. That's what the battleships are using."

"Well dat's gowta have a higher specific heat, raht? And we aint getting nowheres wit the lower energy mass, raht? Well, we put some'pn heavy in it wit a higher density and a higher specific heat, reinforce da feed pumps to da reactant chamber, it'll soak up dat extra heat, an maybe give 'em an extra thousand kilos o thrust too, I reckon."

All three of them stared at him for almost a minute before bothering to say anything else, and when they did, Boris was the one to break the silence. "What exactly did you do to get kicked out of high school?" It wasn't something he ever thought about, but suddenly he was curious.

"Well... I had me alittle accident wit muh third year science prowject. My pyrotechnics display blew up the east wing o da building..."

"That figures." Kai Chan turned to Beecher and Boris and sighed slowly. "What the hell? It's worth a try isn't it?"
.

—19:40 GST—
Varcus looked over the blueprints again with certain disproval, not entirely disliking the designs he was seeing but somewhat offended that these designs actually existed to begin with. He had a responsibility to keep Alpha Factory's production steady in order to keep up with the outpouring of volunteers from the planet's population, but this new weapon being manufactured behind his back seemed like a serious insult to his efforts. "So, to clarify," He said to the Protocran standing in his office, a perky little woman wearing what appeared to be an extremely shabby protoculture Naval uniform thousands of years older than the woman who wore it. He would have laughed at her appearance if he wasn't so annoyed by her presence, "you used your father's political connections to buy space on Omega Factory to build these three prototypes without consulting me or anyone else on the matter, then you went ahead and borrowed five destroyers from my assembly line—also without my permission—just to help test the new systems, and now here you are asking ME to evaluate these new weapons for mass production. Does that about cover it?"

"Yes, sir, it does." Sekkai said with a broad smile. "I'm not really asking you to take some time out of your busy schedule to check out these prototypes, I mean you've got enough to do already. Actually, I came here requesting that you deploy one of the three vessels to the front line as a… think of it as a field test. We'll let the soldiers on the front decide how they like the design, organize a full report and you can decide based on that."

Varcus quickly warmed up to the idea. At the very least it meant that this walking bag of smiles and her little pet project would be out of his hair. "You have a crew assembled and everything?"

"We've been training some officers on Kaderak-Three for several weeks now since the prototypes were released from the factory. One of them is combat ready and we do have a full crew compliment, though we will need a fighter attachment and a few mobile infantry units."

Varcus rubbed his eyes. "Dumokai Verten is a quick learner for a man who's never been in space before."

"That's what I said, but he's adamant that the program proceeds." Sekkai said.

Varcus had to pause to make sure he wasn't missing something. "You almost make it sound like this is all his idea. What did YOU have to say about it?"

"Well… we've been investigating the wreckage of a downed Supervision Army destroyer for years, even before the Megaroad arrived here. With all of our equipment finally restored we were able make incredible leaps in our investigations… and of course my father borrowed the designs for the Victory class cruisers to augment the combat capability of the vessel."

"Yes, I can see that." Varcus said, glancing at the part of the blueprint outlining the vessel's transformation sequence. "Well, the Dumokai's intentions seem perfectly clear on this matter and I'm not about to get myself in MORE trouble by alienating a member of the Elder's Supreme Council. Which ship are you sending in with the 7th fleet?"

"Nupesiet-Draenitz class destroyer Zjendiel, the one I arrived on sir."

At the mention of the subject, Varcus suddenly made the connection, the reason why this woman seemed to be wearing old protoculture naval colors. He couldn't put his finger on it, but there was also something weird about the way she was wearing it… either way, once she got into space with the new ship, the other officers from the former UN Spacy would probably get her squared away. "You're going with it aren't you? As an observer?"

"No Sir, as Captain."

"Captain?" Varcus dropped the papers on the desk and slouched in his chair, "How much combat experience do you have, Sekkai?"

"I did a six-month stint as commander of ARMD-034. I did get one commendation from Fleet Command for my performance in that raid two months ago."

"I see." That's something to work with, but... "You don't think it would be a good idea to put a more experienced commander in the Captain's chair?"

Sekkai shook her head. "I don't really have a choice, Mr. Varucs.If this project fails, my father promised to cut me out of his will and sell me to slave trader. At his age I don't know if he'll really do it, but I don't want to take that chance. Can you understand that?"

"Can I understand?" The statement seemed to be one aimed primarily at Zentradi, but it wasn't especially surprising. He remembered the shriveled carcass of a man sitting in his seat at the head of the Elders Council. He was one of the oldest chair holders in the entire Republic, and by far the wealthiest. He wasn't sure what Sekkai feared most, being sold as a slave or losing her inheritance. "Just be careful out there, Sekkai. If this gamble works out I might look forward to working with you on in the future."

"Thank you, Sir." Sekkai bowed slightly and turned to leave the office.

"One more thing Sekkai," Varcus said, stopping her in the doorway. "Your father makes no secret that he's unhappy about me being in charge of Alpha Factory, and I think this whole situation with you gun-destroyers is a perfect example. Just out of curiosity, how do YOU feel about me?"

Sekkai turned around and smiled again. "Well… I do think you're very well engineered for your position."

"Thank you for the compliment but that wasn't my question. Be honest with me now, Captain, how do you feel?"

Her smile faded for the first time since she'd been in his office. Finally, Varcus was starting to see her true face. "Okay. You know, I was a candidate for the Production Manager of Alpha Factory to replace General Hallas. It angers me, quite a bit actually, that the council chose you for this position instead of me. I don't like you, I don't respect what you stand for or where you come from, and the only reason I can even stand to be in the room with you is because of the fact that when this war is over and everyone comes back to their senses, you'll be sent back with your own kind and I'll be first in line to replace you."

Varcus stared at her uniform again and finally figured out what it was that seemed so odd about it. He looked her over in more detail, then he smiled. "Thank you for your honesty Sekkai. By the way, have you ever worn a naval uniform like that before?"

"Ummm… well not like this one, I got used to the GSDF uniforms. But my father used to tell me stories about how our people used to roam the stars…"

"Right, right. Well, you have a nice voyage. I'll see you again in eight months." Sekkai bowed again and ducked out of the office. Varcus watched her go, then chuckled to himself at this wonderfully absurd woman who seemed so eager to be rid of him. For just a moment he felt guilty, but then he amused himself with the idea that she would find out for herself that her pants were on backwards.