chapter 4

Chapter 4

Will first noticed the red words on his helmet then the audio prompt. " notable blow to the head suit detects no concession would you like to continue say yes or no?" his head hurt a lot and he was tempted to take the offer but after a moment he thought how bad he'd feel leaving his friends by themselves. " I'm fine I'll continue" he spoke to the suit and the prompt disappear returning his vision to the dimly lit cargo bay.  " will, hay are you alright?" josh was looking down at him concerned. "I'm fine just decided to take a nap how long have i been out?" Will tried to joke thru his pounding head. " about five minutes give or take some people left already I was looking for you and raven " a box behind them moved " I'm over here a little help please?" raven said she was stuck between two large all purpose crates the guys quickly freed her " aww crap helmets cracked give me a minute" she looked around and spotted a "dead" recruit and took there helmet off and replaced her own. Raven knew in space combat removing your helmet is a bad choice the fact that the natural environment in space lacked an atmosphere was kind of a problem. But she figured walking around with a broken helmet was more dangerous then swapping them out so she did. The HUD updated showing that 20 of the recruits had left the ship in escape pods. Her father had been a marine not that many people knew that and she began to remember his stories he'd tell about the shipboard exercises and realized that no one had issued orders to abandon ship in fact no one had issued any orders at all! " we need to get out of here there's an escape pod on the next deck." josh said . The disaster was a three deck converted merchant ship the first deck was a massive open cargo bay  currently filled with boxes and supplies, the second level was where the crew quartered  it also housed engineering  and the ship's infirmary, the upper floor housed the bridge officers quarters and a small single shuttle hangar.  As the recruits had fled they used up the few pods on the cargo level first. Josh did an easy data search should of the 4 pods "launched" only the second one was filled fully with the 10 people the pods were designed to hold the other three had half or less one only showed a single person on board! "We can't" both Raven and Will said. Raven motioned for him to speak " last order in the buffer from command says battle stations so we got to go to our post". Josh looked at them for a moment and realized that of course it wouldn't be as simple as running away " ok well we don't have posts but we are all listed as crew and systems are reporting closed hull breaches" Will looked at Josh confused. " boarding pods" Raven shouted " my dad was a marine pirates and privateers often use them to take a ship they don't want exposed to hard vacuum".  Since the Shattering the availability of high tech equipment to the manticorians had not changed much as they were licensed before Shattering to produce these items ( at an insanely high almost non profitable tax rate) and while the machines quit working the people who knew how it worked didn't. Within a decade manticore had recovered most of the tech base what the didn't have was a way to leave the system. When the gates started reopening systems like manticore had an economic boom able to export not only old tech but stuff they invented as well. Some systems did not have the tech when the gates open but did have resources and rare elements especially and were able to trade their way back into the modern age. Some other systems were less fortunate. With such a disparity in economical and  technological levels this new set of third world systems (a term taken from old earth's third world nations) had no hope of catching up with their neighbors and no funds to buy up. And then they did, like from a age long ago someone decided that stealing was an easier way to make a dollar then back breaking labor first came privateers men and women who actually flew the flag of a system as they attacked other nations merchants. This time was actually good for a lot of people. There were few actual deaths as the privateers were acting legally and would treat prisoners well (it also helped that the major governments were willing to pay a "transport" fee for everyone of their merchants the privateers brought home unharmed). It gave tech to the some of the smaller systems to get there feet under them. As systems realized this threat to their shipping they were wholly unprepared for existed they began building warships to escort these convoys. The age of the privateer ended after only 30 years as the 2nd world systems that could actually afford privateers joined their betters and as easy hits declined. Also these privateers had mostly just been loyal men and women trying to do something to better their systems and themselfs and quickly became captains of these new warships that a lot of places could build and few knew how to actually fight. But the less idealistic were more then happy to keep doing raiding and the navy couldn't protect every shipper these people chose to hoist the black flag and followed no man's laws killing anyone who resisted and as the punishment for piracy became more strict any witnesses at all. Will shook off the history lesson "Josh arms lockers ,where?" josh's eyes lost focus as he shifted thru data on his helmet " here here and here" red markers popped up on his helmet's hud or heads up display the circles showed him on the map where the armaments could be found a small group of people had begun to gather around the only three people doing anything. Will turned to the gathered group "anyone here a Breacher 4 player?" the game Will was referring to was a modern virtual reality game rumor was it was developed by techs in the space marines to drive up recruiting while it did not simulate blood and guts or the actual weight of the weapons anyone who was even a halfway decent player knew the basics of inner ship small arms conflict as that was literally the intier point as two 25 person squads fought to eliminate the other team and seize control of the ships. The tactics used while not perfect were close enough to real life to give the players a decent shot against your average space pirate. 4 of the 12 around him raised their hand " good gather anyone you find and meet back here. When all was said and done 43 of the recruits had had been collected the rest couldn't be easily located in the immediate area. Will had gone with the first group back and raided the weapons locker the guns were heavier than he imagined but otherwise functioned the same as the game. " first things first let's organize" not including him and raven they had seven regular gamers in the group and ten occasional breach players. "Ok people four groups one regular in charge of each and spread the rest out equally" only one guy complained will didn't catch his name but he did hear "who died and made him king?" will normally would have agreed with the kid after all he had as much. Or more like as little experience as the rest of them but he had once had a conversation with an ex navy captain during school veterans and remembrance day project and a kid in his group had asked the man " why are MI Captains on ships MC /marine commander when on a ship" the old man had smiled and said "because son there is only one captain on a ship all the bad and some of the good fall squarely on his shoulders there is always and can only ever be one person in that chair". Will understood in that moment exactly what that old man ment. "Absolutely no one so if you have a better plan or wanna leave recruit go ahead otherwise I'd ask you to listen to the squad leader you've chosen to join with". The recruit shut up. They had chosen to break up into four eight person squads. "I would love to get to know you all but i doubt we have time right now so you're all gonna get letters ok?" the 4 people standing in front of him nodded squad designators weren't new to them. "Raven you lead alpha they'll be our point group" alpha was by far the easiest to identify counting raven it had three of their nine "professionals" a running joke that had started when the same recruit who made the king comment had asked why they were picked to be in charge and someone had shouted back " because they're the professionals  well they at least know which end does the shooting". The professionals had decided one halfway decent squad was good to have and the rest had split two a squad bravo and delta. Will was going to be a free floater and so charlie only had a single "professional" but it turned out one of the occasional players had a pretty good idea what he was doing and so became charlie's second member charlie also got the next most experienced the next five went to finish out alphas roster. The three least experienced went to bravo charlie and delta. Then the "greenies" ,a term the gamers used to refer to new players was quickly applied to the new recruits, were divided out to make four squads of 8. That still left him with ten personal milling about i was thinking about organizing them into a squad when josh came up to him with an idea." Will I'd like you to meet the group I assembled I think we have a way for us to be more useful than another set of inexperienced shooters."  Will tended to prefer having more than less especially when it came to things involving weapons however he also knew Josh well enough not to underestimate what trick he could pull out of his bag. He was fairly sure that Josh had somehow "assisted" some of Raven's grades so she could pass junior year without summer school but he didn't ask and neither of them ever offered. "Ok josh one moment" Will said turning back to the other group " alpha squad set up a perimeter" Ravens group spread out thru the boxes they had been meeting near forming a half circle that covered the stairwell to level two. There was two places the upper deck connected to the lower deck as there was rarely a need for someone to come into the cargo hold unless the ship was loading or unload one was near their location at the aft of the ship one was near the other hatch (equally sized to the one they had used to enter the ship) at about midship there was an almost 20 yard wide empty section. the spot was set up as a low g grav ball court. A element discovered shortly after humans left sol called Massmania, which was allegedly named by the 7 year old daughter of the the scientist who discovered it, this element shared a lot of qualities of steel it was solid and strong at most reasonable temperatures could easily bare a load and while uncommon in the early days had been found in quite a few places and was cheap enough to refine and produce into a finished product that almost everywhere a person wanted to walk in space used it. Its major selling point which the scientist had accidentally discovered by dropping a radio battery on a large deposit of it. The discovery revolutionized the human space program.

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 The story went that the scientist was exploring a plant for possible habitation and while walking across a unusual rockfield his radio battery began to die ( at that point in time a easily recoverable orbital satellite to handle communications handent been developed yet and no one wanted to provide the funding for a satellite that may sit in orbit of a useless plant if the scientist found something wrong with it so the old cheap ways were sometimes the best ways) the scientist herd a local herbivore in a nearby bush and was distracted dropping the battery on the rocks in which it fell and got stuck between two. What no one had noticed before or if they had they had not identified why  is almost all the native animals had short stubby wings. When the battery landed on the Massmaina or Mn'M (pronounced M an M) the positive and negative completed a circuit. The scientist was astonished to see the armadillo like plant eater begin to float the scientist was so enamored by this sight she failed to notice she to was floating and so were some of the smaller rocks around her only when she reached to her bag that was supposed to be at her feet to make a sketch the camera was of course recording it all but she enjoyed sketching the local wildlife life with an old fashion pencil to show her daughter. That she realized it wasn't at her feet looking down she realized it was still on the ground snagged on a rock and she was 25 feet in the air. The battery slipped free from the rocks and rose for a moment before falling and and connecting again with the strange rocks this began a ten minute nauseating roller coaster of her falling a little when the battery was off the rocks and rising again when it made contact. She noticed with a detached interest that the small animal had used the shifting gravity to re-orientate it self level to the ground the ground she on the other hand had only succeeded in getting her legs to stay in a general  downward direction. The battery in ,depending on how you look at it, lucky or unlucky instant finally landed on its back with its terminals no longer completing the circuit restored gravity to that planets proper 1.1 of earth normal the small animal gracefully deployed a small delta shaped wing from below its armoured shell and glided gracefully back to the ground and walked away. The scientist however was not as lucky and fell hard breaking her leg on a rock in a bit of irony right next to where the new battery had landed. Ever so carefully and with the amount of focus only revealed by someone defusing an active missile she carefully switched batteries noticing that the battery that was supposed to last her three day was down to about three hours battery life after only 15 minutes of being on the rocks. The medical team she contacted were able to recover her shortly after and she made a full recovery in a week. Over the course of the next few weeks the expedition switched focus to study this strange mineral  they found that it changed their understanding of physics. This mineral when pump with different voltages was found use the energy to mimic a change in mass effecting its localized gravity originally the results varied significantly depending on the concentration of the element within a rock formation the element while scientifically earth shattering was in practice to non uniform for actual us and was almost relegated to a footnote in history. Until the universe decided to be unusually charitable and allow humanity a break. The science mission was a four year process as a gate could throw you anywhere it was aimed but getting back was the hard part the scientist had come in 2 ships and the second had carried the materials to build a small gate just large enough for the smallest of earth's jump ships to make a trip back and forth. It would take 4 months to build and even then only be able to carry 50 of the 500 person expedition back at a time the ships the flew in on were specially designed to serve as habitats doing this made them impossible to use as starships again when all was said and done. even if on the first day they realized the planet could not support life it would still be over half a year before even the first person could return to earth. Plus with the smaller gate it would disables after each transit depending on the size of the craft so a evac shuttle would shut the gate for a time period between two to three weeks. It would have taken over a year before the last person could leave. As such to encourage scientist to go the earth governments at the time allowed and even suggested they bring their families most did and with a tiny messenger drone able to deliver emails and videos every twelve hours between earth and the mission it was still quite easy to stay connected. Brandon Miller was a bright and gifted young man. it was true that his family thanks to his mother's business was quite wealthy but his parents had also taught Brandon the value of hard work and those around him. Growing up he had attended a private school true but it was one that most middle class folks could afford if they made it a priority. He grew up playing with kids his own age and hanging out with people because of their personality not how much their parents made. He was at the end of his college requirements for a four year degree in manufacturing when his his father was offered the job to explore a plant in the deveron system that may be useful for further colonization. His mother had recently stepped down from an active role in her company's day to day operations and was now only really handling mission and vision stuff and she was sure she would be more than capable of doing that with a few emails a week. Again his parents wealth gave brandon a unique opportunity. he could have  easily stayed behind at his parents house and gotten his degree and joined his parents company or even started a small one of his own. But he was young and was only in his early twenties and wanted to go some where no one else had gone before. Plus there was a cute and single young blonde scientist going that he would love to get to know more. So having set a schedule to join the expedition shortly after the small gate was finished and take his last quarter of classes via email, back then having a student on another planet was still very uncommon and most academic institutions were willing to bend over backwards to claim one, he joined the expedition that would make his name remembered for centuries. Brandon had been on the plant for a few months and things were going well he had somehow convinced that blonde to date him and they had been going steady now for almost three months. He had only one thing left to do finish his degree a final project. He had to build and run a miniature refinery that produced a finished product of at least 15 units. It was a small 4 person project easily done with the kits the school had on hand. The problem was the schools and the kits were on earth and he wasn't. The assignment for that reason had been excused for him but it left a bad taste in his mouth this was supposed to be his way to show the world he was ready for this kind of management response ability and this was going to just not happen? If there was one thing the young kids had on davoren 2 in abundance it was time there  almost nothing for them to do there was no need to work as the expedition was government funded food housing and even a small discretionary fund was provided. Brandon had with the help of some of his mechanically inclined friends repurposed some of the cast off early construction stuff to build a small steel refinery his mother had lent her years of expertise to point out where some of their creative design might need some "adjusting" to keep from injuring them much like the volunteer experts at the college would have done but she knew he wanted to do this himself and so only interfered when it was a safety concern. Shortly after they had finished their last connections to his mom's safety standards his girlfriend Sharie came down to there factory from the nearby lab she had just finished assisting her mother running test on the local plant life. There conversation was light but it was work related brandon appreciated she had taken the time to get to know the basics of what he did he had tried to reciprocate but botany was definitely not a skill he possessed.  Luckily for him she had taken it with a smile and a small laugh at his expense. She then  had confessed she was more into geology and botany but her mother appreciated the help. That day the two of them and their other friends one an engineer the other an electrical technician had a conversation that somehow had never occurred before she brought up the Mn'M which had been the talk of the colony for the last four months and how it was frustration that no one could get control of it. Brandon had been thinking about that for a while and asked " how do the individual rocks get there  sitting  "mass"? If one group gets 20 volts  grav becomes .2 but another group gets 20 volts it gets 1.5 earth norm what gives?" Sharie replied " we think it's due to state changes whatever the charge was when it was a liquid cooling to a solid effects what the voltages do to it." the engineer and Brandon looked at each other immediately both having a seemingly obvious idea at once. The engineer instantly beginning to think of the machinery that was going to need to be acquired motioned to Brandon being the kinda leader of the group to speak.  "Why don't we do it again?" Sharie being a scientist and not an engineer or a steel producers kid hadn't yet caught onto the plan. "Why don't we slag the stuff again? Wouldn't we be able to melt it down and change the base charge?" Sharie slowly nodded but also saw a problem " what good would that do though each batch would be the same but that wouldn't be mass producible" the two young engineers heart sank of course they could get around an individual rocks problem it would still take more than one batch to make anything useful or a refinery with batches so large the factory would take up a huge area. "Umm guys no it doesn't" the little tech looked up from his datapad and shot the engineer a file "can you build that?" the engineer looked at it and nodded "I believe so not to overly complex if you are I assume welling to handle programing?" the engineer said looking up. "Of course i'll handle the programing, ok boss man" Brandon had technically hired the kid even if it was just letting the kid use some of his left over aloted data space on the drone to get newly released pad games from earth most were quite a bit over what was allowed an individual but people were freely allowed to trade space on the drone like any other commodity and  the kids skills had been very useful and retuning the automated computers to produce steel instead of what ever there were originally programed for. He had also taken to calling Brandon boss which he didn't exactly discourage it felt kinda cool having an employee. The tech paused to collect his thoughts "I think we can change the world in a two stage process if we use a conductive material like copper melt it into a liquid with an the right amount of Mn'M and keep a charge running thru it. we should be able to control the output MnM's charge setting. However copper is as you know not very durable so after it cools we use an acid to burn off the copper. Then we wash the Mn'M and let it dry and then smelt it with steel should result in a work able steel like molecular construct that also has the ability to  manipulate gravity with a  small enough charge that you could lay on it naked and not get shocked". It took the group two weeks of trial and error but eventually it worked they produced M-Steel which not only allowed ships to have a luxuries one standard earth gravity on board for the crew to do simple things like eat sleep and walk without it being a minor herculean task it also allowed ships to be able to do speed that would normally result in enough force to crush a human. The dawn of spacefaring age had arrived.    

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The Grav Ball court was a nice open area in the middle of the cargo hold and once  some spacers (recruits raised on ships and stations accustomed to gravity being more of a maybe the then planet born) had obscured the goals no one would realize they were walking into a no gravity no man's zone it wasn't a kind of trick that would stop an attack but they would see it coming. The immediate security taken care of  Will turned back to Josh "what do you wanna show me?" Josh called over to a short lady Will guessed she was she was 5'6 she appeared to be of southeast asian descent and the way she handled herself it was obvious she was a spacer "names Kenzie grew up on a merchie' ship similar to this one." she reached her hand out for a shake which Will accepted happily " Josh was telling me you plan to try to take back the ship?" WIll nodded as she paused for confirmation "well a little something I learned last year when pirates tried to board my parents ship theses containers all around us can stop just about anything that won't breach the hull i say you give me and my boys five minutes here and use of that container mover in the corner and we can build you a castle fit for a medieval siege" Will thought about it a base of operations would be nice but there wasn't any critical systems on the bottom floor to leverage destroying if the "pirates" decided to just vent them all to space. " I agree a good defence would be nice but the reality is we can't afford a defensive stance we got nothing they need." Will said shaking his head. Josh spoke up "but me and the boys" he pointed two other guys with him "have something we need which we can best do from here. We can make an impromptu CIC". the modern translation of CIC was Combat Information Center it acted as a secondary bridge on military ships and also was responsible maintaining a larger system wide view while the bridge handled the tactical problems of the current fight. Josh continued talking " I may have convience the ship's computer that I'm the highest rank tech on board and let's just say I have access to the internal sensors and cameras we can direct your teams from here." Will thought about this for a minute and decided Josh was right it wasn't likely they would find a better spot to set up. Will looked around at the recruits gave his team the hand signal to circle up and began to plan their next move.

( hello folks authors note here I've had a few projects kicking around and this is one of them. I'm terrible at editing and thought I'd release what I had if anyone is interested in seeing more of this work let me know and I'll dust it off)