

SinJin Bane
Published by SinJin Bane at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 SinJin Bane

DEDICATION

To my friends and family for all their love and support on all my endeavors throughout the years and this book.
CONTENTS

Table of Contents

Prologue

The Return Home

My Drone Is Better Than Your Drone

Moon Over Jupiter

Things That Go Bump In The Void

The Basher

The Promotion

Into The Darkness

Black Is The New Black

How Can This Be

The Dark Planet

No More War

Index

About The Author

Other Books By The Author

TOC

As I sat down to write this book I tried to stay true to the world of tomorrow created in the first book of this series, I have followed some of the predictions of the future and depending which ones you believe, it could be very dire, or it could be utopian. In my humble opinion it will be a little bit of both, technology promises to make many aspects of our daily lives much easier, but as illustrated in the first book it may come at a price. The time frame this book is set in, should see many of the predictions come true, and some that we have not even begun to imagine. I also assume that artificial intelligence will be available and that it will serve mankind. This is not a given, as has been played out in many different sci fi books and films. It also has been debated by some AI researchers as well. For this world the AIs are friendly and want to help mankind achieve its goals.

As with the first book I have tried to stay with the science or at least the theoretical science, it is a book of fiction however, so I ask you to suspend your disbelief and let it entertain you. The characters in this book struggle enough with the moral dilemmas and ambiguities of the future so that we don't have to. The concept of paranormal energy first introduced in book one seems less farfetched based on some research that I have done since the first book, but again we have no knowledge of what will happen when we do start using our brain more. Plato and other ancient philosophers believed we were descended from spiritual beings and somehow evolved or devolved, depending on your point of view, into more physical ones, maybe that hidden knowledge will be released when we tap into the hidden recesses of our brain.

One theme I have tried to stay true to in this book as well as the first, is that there is no good and bad, but shades of grey, all of the characters at one point or another give in to a dark side. Most of the time it is masked in a form of retribution, let it be known that I personally believe in the sanctity of life, my characters on the other hand, have a tendency to rack up the body counts, and spend a lot of time coming up with better ways to do it. If that offends some readers, I apologize in advance, but perhaps this is not the book for you. However, if you are ok with that, I think you will enjoy this continuation of a young man's journey of discovery, and find it quite entertaining. There are also plenty of robots and artificial intelligent beings helping the characters find new ways to use technology to perform what we would consider magic. Also new to this book is an explanation for some of the evil deeds of the villain, I hope you enjoy delving a little deeper into what motivates the shadowy figure introduced in the first book.

It is also important to note, that I do not support or defend any of the ethical choices made or implied in this book, and if you find them controversial it is by design, to paint the character or fictional organization in a certain light. I leave it to you the reader to decide how you feel about the choice or policy made.

If you like magic this book is a new twist on that, it explores some scientific possibilities that may make magic not only feasible but likely. If you enjoy exploring some of the possibilities the future might hold this book takes a look at that as well. Though it should be mentioned that as of right now, these possibilities would require nano-technology and not paranormal energy to effect change to the matter of the universe. Once we know for sure, that telekinetic energy, and telepathy do not exist, then and only then can we say that the uses of it in this book are not possible. Until then anything can happen. The future is going to be an exciting place, I hope it lives up to even half of the possibilities that we see in scientific predictions and science fiction books like this one. I also hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. Those of you that have not read the first one, you may want to, though I try to reintroduce the characters and situations of the last book as much as possible.

I cannot go into as much detail, so the new reader might find it hard to follow some of the plot lines. For those of you that have read the first book you will find some old friends and meet some new ones along the way. I apologize in advance to the reader of the last book, because both this introduction and the prologue are almost exactly the same as the last book, because I use them to introduce the world this book takes place in, and therefore had to go over it for the new reader. For those that have not read the first book and would like to, you will find a link in the "Other Books By The Author" section. For discussions about this book or some of the ideas and technologies presented in it, please visit my blog SinJin Bane's Tech Talk at the following address:

http://sinjinstechtalk.blogspot.com/

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TOC

Agent Black, we found another one, he is missing his head and most of his upper torso, the Security Force Officer reported. How many does that make now sergeant, Agent Black requested, from his desk in the command center aboard the flag ship. That makes a total of six, just like the other houses we found, an explosive blast to the head and torso sir, the Officer reported. Very well have the bodies removed and brought back for identification and forensic analysis, Agent Black ordered. The situation in the Saturn Region had gone from total chaos to almost complete tranquility in the space of a week. All across the region bodies were found that had been killed in the same manner. It always seemed like the victims were caught unaware and there was no evidence of anyone else being in the houses. The term victim was not really the right word to use to describe the people that were being found. They had been identified as suspected or known members of the factions or mercenaries and thugs for hire.

Added to the mystery was the almost total destruction of the Titan settlement, though from what they had been finding from the ashes of the hostile forces believed to have caused the damage, the situation could have been much worse. Eyewitness accounts reported public executions and mass murder, until another unknown force showed up and completely destroyed the enemy combatants. The few survivors from the central squire incident, reported being herded into a protected area and then being released when all the fighting had stopped. Debris from almost twenty ships were found in the spaceport and in space around the moon. DNA analysis of the ashes had found hundreds of mercenaries and suspected factionists. Whatever went down, could only be described as all-out war between the two factions. The strange part was that the winning side seemed to be helping the planetary alliance, or at least their actions seemed to benefit the innocent civilians and the alliance.

The year is 2226 for most it is a time of peace and prosperity the likes of which has not been seen before in the history of man. They have pushed out into space and have spread across the solar system. The quality of life for all is beyond any other time in history. Life is full of unlimited potential and promise. They have also delved deep into the very essence of our being. Nanotechnology has allowed the manipulation of mater at its very smallest form. Advances in this technology open up new doors into our potential and allow great abundance.

Over population on Earth has forced many to leave the planet to build less crowded settlements in different regions of space. Most live on space stations since terraforming takes too long. During the time of the great builder ships with nanotechnology to help them, it is easier to create artificial habitats in space stations that orbit the planets, rather than form new habitats on the planets. The space stations have large rings that rotate around a hub to create gravity. The hub has the central command, law enforcement, hospitals, shops, and the business centers that let the stations thrive. Also along the hub are spaceports for passenger and cargo ships to dock.

The stations have become the suburbs where those that can, have moved to get away from the crowding of the mega cities on Earth. Surveillance and other technologies have reduced crime dramatically but it still happens, the need to be game-fully employed, or in school to live on a station makes it a little less prevalent. The stations draw the middle class and upper class business crowd as well as the government officials needed to make the station run smoothly. Life on the stations is more like a small town even though the populations are fairly large, communities form around school districts and the small neighborhood convenience shops within the ring.

There are some stations that function only as mining, agricultural, and manufacturing stations. The mining and manufacturing stations function by looking for the various minerals found on the moons and debris fields around planets, but mostly robots operate these stations with minimal human presence required. Ships carry all forms of goods between these stations and the rest of the settlements in the solar system. Still man continues to push further out into space small settlements are starting to form out beyond the edges of our solar system. The great builder ships that went from planet to planet building space stations have now moved on to the outer edges of the solar system. Without planets to anchor them, the new space stations assume a solar orbit. Ever the pioneer, man has reached another frontier, and soon will master light speed, to allow the settlement of different stars.

What those that are in power now know, is that dark forces are at work that will shake the very foundations of the fragile peace that holds the alliance together. Perhaps the cause of the problem could be attributed to a procedure or implant that augments the brain, and was developed for the betterment of mankind, but has become so much more.

Besides allowing the recipient the ability to interact with their environment and all of the various entertainment and data repositories in the alliance of planets, it also opened up pathways and allowed more of the brain to be used. And that was exactly the problem, some of the populous had developed powers that set them apart from the rest of society. In all the years of research and improvement of the procedure, there was still no way to control what pathways were opened and what attributes would be unleashed. This was primarily due to the uniqueness of each human brain. The other major benefit of the implant, though some would say it was a curse, was the personal communicator, credit interface, and location tracking.

It allowed the user to be at one with the environment they lived in, any action needed to interact with it was merely a thought away. Of course, there had been protests when it was first invented. Mostly concerns about unfettered access to the human brain and privacy, but there were safeguards put in place to protect that, ultimately it became mainstream and now mandatory for any member of the alliance. This by proxy meant any member of the human race.

However, unknown to everyone except the highest levels of government was what they called the side benefit of the mandatory implant. In the wake of failed government policies that spent more money on the nonproductive elements of society, than that which was produced by the productive elements of society, and huge over population of the very poorest members of the population. It was determined that a more comprehensive form of population control was required. Therefore, the implant interacted with other wetware implants injected at birth. These implants did many things, most monitored and repaired vital organs and allowed for a healthy society, one however was responsible for controlling the reproductive process of all females. It was argued when it was introduced that the reproductive age of our species had not evolved along with the social and economic evolution of our species.

Therefore, what the public knew of this technology was that it did not allow girls to get pregnant until they turned eighteen. This of course eliminated teenage pregnancy and seemed like a good idea, but what the public did not know, was that the implant also limited some females from having more than one child and sometimes none at all. The entire process was based on economics, if the female could support a child she was allowed to have one, at a maximum two, if not then she would not. If the child died before the female was beyond reproductive years and she could still support one, she could have another. This option was only allowed if the female seemed psychologically capable of having another child.

Her mental state was evaluated, and a committee determined if she could have another one, all of this was done through the implant without her knowledge or her consent. The other wetware would also function based on economics, if the person was economically fit then their body would remain fit. If not then the organs would be left to fend for themselves, and life expectancy of that person would be shorter than someone who was a productive member of society, again this was all monitored through the implant and without the subject's knowledge or consent.

This allowed for the ultimate population control, it also allowed select breeding, in that the economic prospects of an individual were determined by the mental ability of that person. Robots did all manual labor and undesired tasks so all that was left to humans was the jobs that required thought. If your mental faculties even after the implant were not capable of being a benefit to society then you are not allowed to enjoy a prolonged life. Over generations, only the strong survive and weak gene pools were eliminated, thus ensuring a strong populous.

This of course was not the known policy but it was what had happened regardless, mental birth defects were eliminated, and to a certain point even physical defects as well. The wetware implants also eliminated obesity, cancer, plaque in the blood stream, and several other organ related health problems. With the wetware regulating body-chemistry, humans were living very healthy lives. In addition, since the wetware also repaired DNA strands the life span of the average human increased dramatically.

When humans first started experimenting with wetware and the idea of brain augmentation, they really had no idea of the potential it would offer. In what could be considered a relatively short period of time they had been able to achieve a great deal, mainly due to the increased brain capacity of the population. The average person had the IQ and mental acuity of the historical figure Einstein. Those that were considered gifted or exceptional had a mental capacity beyond the comprehension of those who lived in Einstein's era, they ultimately went on to become the leaders of industry and government. Academics became even more critical than they ever had been in the past. Failure was not an option and with the sheer volume of human knowledge expanding at such a fast pace, it became harder and harder for the non-educated to survive in society.

There were tests created and given to determine what field of study was most suited to the abilities of the brain of each child within weeks of receiving the implant. The implant which was designed to ferret out the dormant or latent abilities of the unused portions of the brain, often found things that previously had not been known to exist. Ultimately, it came down to genetics, if the genetics of your parents had come together to produce a certain aspect of your brain then the implant would find it and expand it. After the first few generations of expansion new mutations started to arise and then mutate again as they interacted with each other. Of course, there were many overlaps of abilities that played into all aspects of a given skill, the requirements of any given skill also required knowledge from other disciplines, and they found having a well-rounded understanding of all aspects of those disciplines was the best way to approach mastery of that skill.

However, in this there was still some debate, the old nature verses nurture, by waiting to give the implant until the age of fifteen the child had spent enough time in the world to develop affinities toward certain things that would help shape there brain the natural way, and this was encouraged. Of course, there were tests along the way that helped guide them on their path and students were constantly exposed to so much information and technology. They were encouraged to follow many different paths intellectually and culturally. Therefore, it could be argued that the early development years played a part in the paths that were opened later after the implant.

The knowledge of man continued to grow and new fields arose from that knowledge, as old ones went away or rolled up into the new. This process was akin to the famous expression being able to see further by standing on the shoulders of giants. So to were the technologies of mankind advanced as the knowledge gained from the past was brought to bear against the new problems of future discovery. Sometimes it was just a question of the right people coming together at the right time to collaborate, and put existing technologies together in ways that had not been done before.

Also new ways of teaching were developed that focused on learning, where a student was, encourage to follow a thought deeper and deeper into the understanding of an idea. Meaning that the students often taught themselves, the teachers became guides that would steer them in the right direction but not interfere with their path. Advanced learning programs that often presented themselves as games, and that would force the student to learn new skills to advance to the next level, helped this process along.

Unlike, the primitive versions that had first been developed for this purpose, they had sophisticated AIs. These AI systems adapted to the child's learning style, and combined with systems that used neuroplasticity, and neuro-linguistic programming techniques to push the difficult concepts into the brain. All of this was wrapped in clever storytelling to draw them in, and make them want to continue. The learning could be focused on the theory behind certain principles and not the complicated concepts like formulas, syntax, mathematical equations, mathematical and chemical tables, and other types of data that normally had to be memorized. Instead, the student was free to concentrate on achieving the next challenge and the next level. Before they knew it, knowledge was the reward for further advancement.

Even with academics taking such a high precedent, other activities were also pursued, athletics and the arts were valued, but it was clear if the student did not have the knowledge to function after those dreams were done, they would not be allowed to continue. This provided for a more balanced person leaving the academic halls of the education system.

Budgets were written that took the advancement of society as the goal. Knowledge was the yardstick that measured the effectiveness of the system. Schools were held accountable for the accomplishments of the students that graduated from them, for budget considerations. Teachers also had to sit through alumni boards, were it was determined to what extent there teaching methods had contributed to the students success or failure.

While the system seemed to work for the majority of the populous some slipped through the cracks. As the abilities of some people continued to evolve, new skills emerged. Latent abilities that seemed to have been lost to the human race had started to come back. Ancient secrets that had been relegated to the realm of fantasy had started to return. Unknown to the general populous was that a small percentage of the population had developed paranormal abilities, these abilities presented themselves in several ways. For some it was just the ability to have an uncanny knowledge of what was going to happen next. Others sporadically felt like they were hearing other peoples thoughts. Still others sometimes felt like they were moving things with their mind. Most of the time these abilities are not realized and go unreported by the person experiencing them. They do not want to sound crazy so they say nothing. Most go on with their lives like nothing has happened, other are not as lucky and find themselves in life threating situations.

An even smaller percentage of the populous had full control of these abilities and were sought out by the government or other organizations, that wanted to exploit them and force them into service. Some of them were in hiding split between two rival factions. These factions had started battling each other over a difference in philosophies regarding the use of their gifts. At one time they were all part of the same faction, and during that time had developed ways to evade the government that was trying to control them. They had also developed ways of augmenting their powers to help channel them in new ways that helped protect them from attack.

Unfortunately, over the year since the split more and more of the fighting has been between the two factions, as one seeks to undermine the government with no regard for human life, and the other seeks to preserve it at all costs. Sometimes the one must secretly work with the government to help stop the other. Their cause is sometimes aided by sympathetic supporters within the government that help develop new technologies that help keep them hidden while they perform their mission. The battle has never been this bad before...

#  The Return Home

TOC

David was having no problem sleeping now, he had just fought two very bloody battles and redesigned an entire way of conducting battle, with a very complex command and control interface and an advanced weapons deployment system. It was no wonder he was sound asleep in his state room on the ship, as it returned to Earth. David a young man of fifteen years of age, had seen a lot, and done a lot for one so young. For those who knew him they didn't think of him in that way, he carried himself and presented himself like someone much older.

His appearance was fairly typical with dark brown hair, hazel eyes and large in build and stature, at six foot three and two hundred and twenty pounds, he is big for his age. He is well toned due to an athletic lifestyle and the study of martial arts, and he is handsome in a classic way that has endured throughout the ages, due to his genetics and being well cared for by his parents and raised in a healthy safe environment. Which could be considered a very different environment, than the one that he currently found himself in now. In his new lifestyle, he routinely put himself in harm's way, even while he slept there was a lot of people that wanted him dead, and would stop at nothing to do it, if they knew where he was. His actions made him a threat that they wanted stopped.

Fortunately, for David those people had no idea who he was or where he was, he had been rescued by the Delta Faction. Therefore, the government and Gamma Faction did not know of his special abilities and were not trying to force him in to service. They didn't even know that he had been working with Delta Faction to come up with new ways to fight Gamma Faction and derail their plans to destroy the government and enslave humanity. Many who had seen David in action, were starting to believe that he was the threat that Gamma Faction was willing to destroy an entire region of space to find. That Region was the Saturn Region, and that was the Region that they were coming back from headed to Earth.

David had grown up on a space station in the Saturn Region called Saturn Station 12. Life was simpler there, and he had gotten used to life on the station. Each station used a fusion reactor to generate the needed energy that powered the rings and provided life support to the station. The rings are about three stories high and about a mile wide from edge to edge, with filtered glass on the inside of the ring. That continues partially around the outer edge to simulate the sky to the dwellers below, by filtering the sunlight and creating night and day through a chemical process in the glass that turns darker during the night period and transforms more of the sunlight to energy. The houses are all built as two story structures. David was born there and spent his entire life in one of the houses on the outer edge of one of the middle rings.

The houses on the outer edges of the ring, are larger than those on the inside those that live there are usually high ranking in government or business, there are roadways in between to allow travel so it seemed like a normal neighborhood. A neighborhood he grew up in, with his friends who also were born there. They went to a very prestigious school and were all well liked and academically successful. The houses on the outside edge of the residential areas are built with a courtyard in the center, and the back of the house looks out on the green vegetation areas that are on the very edges of each ring. In these green rings of plant life are the green zones, used for hydroponics, were several pants are grown to allow fresh vegetables in the station. There are other green areas in the rings that provide parks and recreation areas allowing for a more family friendly lifestyle. That lifestyle was disrupted when Gamma Faction attacked his family and friends and forced them to leave the station to join Delta Faction. Now David called the secret Delta Faction base on Earth home, and he lived there with his family and close friends Emma and her father, and Gordon, who they had to adopt after his parents were killed.

Now that they had fought a few battles and the immediate threat seemed to be over. David and his team had dropped off the Red Team Commandoes that had fought in the battles with them, and they were heading back to Earth to regroup. They also needed to get Joan the former Head Administrator of Saturn Station 12 to a proper hospital for the remainder of her treatments. She had been injured badly in an attempt on her life, on the same night that brought David and his family into a world were a fifteen year old boy fought battles against terrorists, with support from commandoes that actually looked to him as their leader. That day had changed his life forever, but it also awakened a part of him that was good at creating new technology, and using advanced tactics to overpower enemy forces of superior numbers.

After about five hours of hard sleep David was not as bone tired as he had been the night before, so he was starting to stir. Good morning David, the ship said. Sorry to wake you but I wanted to talk to you about the events of the last few days and I know you will be debriefing with the High Council and going over everything quite a bit in the next few days, but I wanted to know how you feel about what has happened, the Ship said. You mean how I feel about all the Gamma Agents we have killed over the last few days, David asked bluntly? Yes, that and how you feel about all the accomplishments we have achieved as well , the Ship replied. As far as killing Gamma Agents I knew that was what we had to do as soon as they killed Gordon's parents and tried to kill my Dad and Emma's Mom , David replied. As for our accomplishments, I wish we could do more, so many people died because of those bastards, he said. Yes, but think how many more would have died if not for what we have done, the Ship replied. I know, said David, it is just hard to not wish that we had been able to stop them sooner. You must learn to accept the things that you can't control, and focus on the things you can, the Ship offered.

I know you are right, David said, doesn't mean I have to like it or stop trying to save as many people as we can. That is correct, I didn't say you have to like it, just learn to live with it, the Ship replied, hoping its advice would help David in some way.

The ship or more correctly the AI that controlled the ship was a hybrid of bio and computer engineering, created to harness the telekinetic energy of four preserved brains from the founding members of the Delta Faction. Unknown to everyone else, the AI had merged with the consciousness' of the four brains and together they were trying to save humanity from the threat of Gamma Faction. The entity that was the combination of the old masters and a very sophisticated AI simply went by the name Ship. The physical ship its self was a proto type spacecraft created to harness the telekinetic powers to allow it to travel through space fully cloaked from detection by any means of observation. The ship was a very sophisticated system of advanced technology before David and his friends came onboard, but they helped make it even more so. Through their combined talents of advanced engineering and an intuitive understanding of new ways to use telekinetic energy, they had totally redesigned the ship. Making use of the energy far more efficiently and finding ways to provide it with much more energy to use. They helped create better defensive and offensive capabilities as well. Along the way they had also helped it create a huge amount of processing power that it was now using for the protection of humanity from Gamma Faction, by tracking their movements and finding out what their next targets might be.

Delta Faction was a group of people with paranormal abilities that had formed to try to hide from the government and later had to secretly help the government fight Gamma Faction. They Governed themselves through a High Council and had other teams that fulfilled certain roles with in their organization. David's team and the ship and its crew were part of a covert team that conducted military operations against Gamma Faction. There was also a team of commandoes that covertly embedded themselves with the government's special forces teams and helped them battle Gamma Faction as well. They had recently teamed up with David's team to stop a huge force that was threatening the Saturn Region and conducted two battles against them.

"The others have started going into the common area for breakfast perhaps you should join them. We can talk more later if you need to, but for now go be with your friends, I am sure they are struggling with some of the same issues and they will need your strength to help them get through it ," Ship suggested. Yeah, I am kind of hungry and we really should start going over our after action reports for the High Council, David replied.

Ship knew that the humans had been through a lot and it would take them awhile to get through the trauma of so much death and destruction. It would help where it could, but it knew the best thing for it was time. David left his room and headed for the common area, he met Gordon, Emma, and Megan there. They were his friends and teammates and they too looked to him as their leader. They had all just sat down and were having some breakfast. They all looked as he felt, tired, they had been through a lot in the last few days without a lot of rest in between. For a brief moment David longed for the times when all he had to worry about was getting ready for school or homework. Those days seemed so far away now, but looking back he would not want to go back, he had learned so much about himself, his friends, and the way things really were, and the complexities of life. Not knowing had allowed him the quite comfortable life he used to live, but he could not afford that anymore, there was too much at stake. David was uniquely suited to make a difference and he was going to help as much as he could.

David and his friends had developed an advanced weapons platform that consisted of protective body armor that they called a suit, that included cloaking mechanisms and protective shields. It also included an interface that allowed the wearer to teleport robotic-battle-bots with the same cloaking mechanisms and protective shields into any location, were they could deploy a variety of offensive weapons to overpower an enemy position. Also included in the interface was a variety of obstacles including land mines and booby-traps that could be deployed and synchronized with the help of overhead surveillance and reconnaissance.

Once the robots and obstacles had been designated they could be deployed at any time and would simply appear out of nowhere, allowing the wearer of the suit to focus on offensive telekinetic attacks augmented by the suits power supplies. David, Emma, and Gordon had come up with ways to boost the powers of a gifted person substantially while they wore the suit. The interface they developed helped them channel that energy into weapons and defenses that gave them a huge competitive edge over the enemy. It also allowed them to control and teleport robots that helped multiply their forces in battle. The fact that the robots had much of the same abilities made it even better since they were cloaked and could attack with the same weapons that gifted agents used.

But perhaps its greatest strength was the ability to detect and filter telekinetic energy, since both factions used it to cloak themselves and fight their battles, the ability to see the enemy without them seeing you was a huge advantage. The inner telekinetic energy that the gifted produced naturally in their body was at the heart of the technology that both factions used to conduct warfare against their enemies. The suit was designed to amplify that energy and take care of several of the functions regarding shields. While its weapons interface helped with offensive attacks and the deployment of robots and obstacles.

As David approached the table he greeted everyone, and went to get himself some food. Not surprisingly the topic of conversation was the events of the day before. It was understandable that they would be talking about all that happened for some time to come, it would be the topic of many conversations. Not just theirs but many people that were aware of the events that transpired, would be talking about it as well.

They had done something that to an outside observer would have seemed impossible, but they had taken on an entire army with only the aid of two squads of commandoes. Not only had they won the battles with zero casualties on their side, but they totally decimated the other force. David, we were just talking about the new shard weapon and how affective it is against shields, Emma said as he sat back down. Emma had auburn hair and freckles, with brown eyes. Most would say she was pretty, but to David Emma was just one of the guys, much to her disappointment. Yeah, I have asked Ship to look into possible defenses against it just in case they manage to get their hands on the technology from us, but as of now there are none, David informed them. The shard attack was one they developed for the weapons system used by the suit. It was devastating to anything it hit and they were worried that the enemy might steal the technology and use it against them. There had been moles in the faction in the past.

Well hopefully we will come up with something if we need to, but for the time being we have a huge advantage over Gamma Faction right now, Megan said. With blond shoulder length hair, and green eyes, Megan was Emma's polar opposite when it came to looks, but when it came to David they shared common interests. They maintained an uneasy peace for the sake of the team and the mission, but at times they fantasized about horrible disfiguring accidents befalling one another. Of course in their fantasies, in the wake of such an accident, it would fall to them to console poor David. That unfortunately, was what happened when you had two teenaged girls fighting for your affections. Luckily, for now they only fanaticized about bodily harm being inflicted on the other, they were not actually inflicting it, now if they could only get David to notice them and make a decision life would be so much better.

Yes, that advantage is one we should continue to take advantage of, and take the fight to the enemy, Michael said, as he approached the table with a tray of food. It is too bad we do not have any intel as to where their base of operations is, he continued. We have dealt a crippling blow to their plans for the Saturn Region, but based on the amount of destruction they were trying to accomplish it is clear they have a much bigger plan in motion, he said. Being a career military man and newly appointed liaison between the Red Team and the High Council, David's father had to think about things like that. He was just an older version of David in appearance and baring, it was his training that made David the natural leader that he turned out to be. He also took command when needed, but they worked well together and never had a conflict between them in regard to who was in control, at any given point. They seemed to know when to defer to the other when it was required, and that was what made them an effective leadership team.

Emma almost started to say something about her special project with Ship, when she decided she would leave that for Ship to discuss with the others when it felt the time was right. She had come to trust the ship to make the right choice in regard to the welfare of the crew and the faction in general. Instead Megan said, that she was working with the High Council to try and determine their next mission. Megan's mother was on the High Council and Megan was the official liaison to their team, much like Michael was the liaison to the Red Team.

Ship was listening to their conversation and knew that there was another potential target between them and Earth based on intel it had acquired during its surveillance operations that Emma had helped it setup, the target was not going anywhere and they were in need of rest, so it decided it could wait. Besides its co-conspirator in the new surveillance mission was in need of a real hospital and a few weeks of recovery. Emma's mom Joan had been through a lot, and even though she was more determined than most to inflict a bit of payback on Gamma Faction, she needed to get well first.

Ship decided it would wait until they had returned her to Earth, before orchestrating a mission against the enemy base. Its knowledge of the enemies operations had grown so much since it started tapping into the Planetary Alliances surveillance systems and using its new surveillance drones to help filter for Gamma Faction activity. After the first few forays into decimating their safe house locations in the Saturn Region it started monitoring the safe houses in other regions to help collect intel. With hostilities being less overt in other regions it could afford to hold off on destroying their sleeper cells and actually gather more intelligence, that would help lead it to even more sleeper cells.

The cells were far less prolific in other regions and there were far less mercenaries being used, so it was a bit harder to find the agents, but Emma's algorithms were working quite well to help track them. It even managed to follow a couple of the agents to their cloaked ships, once the ships had been identified it simply dispatched a drone to attach itself to it and keep track of it. That is how it had found the Enemy base in the Mars Region, they had setup the base in an abandoned Robot Mining operation. Ship now had the entire base under surveillance by the drones so it knew the comings and the goings of the agents.

It also was able to track the other ships to other areas within the region. Unless they started to mobilize for an attack while ship was passing through the region on its way back to base, there was no reason to divert from their current course. They would continue to Earth and come back and deal with the base another time after they had all had a chance to rest and regroup.

Back in the common area the team continued to discuss the battle from the day before. It was agreed that the new improvements to the suit and the combat interface had proven very useful during the battle. With the ability to coordinate and deploy all manner of weapons and defenses from the interface without taxing the agent, they had created a force multiplier that allowed one Delta agent to be as effective as an entire squad of the enemy, especially with the robot deployment methods they had developed. That in combination with the distraction and obstacle deployment capabilities, they let them dominate the battle field. The other clear advantage was the surveillance drone which was even able to capture overhead views of the entire battle and then store them for future analysis. It certainly made after action reports much easier.

David reached out to Ship, how many robots do we have now, he asked? We have four hundred and fifty and I am adding about twenty five every hour the ship informed him. Does it matter where we keep the robots as far as accessing them through the portals, David asked, since he was concerned with making sure the Red Team commandoes could access them if they needed them. No, as you know the portal is independent of space and time so it doesn't matter where they are physically located as long as the portal address does not change, Ship responded.

Are you going to have enough space to create the six hundred or more we are going to need, David asked? Yes, I should be able to store approximately fifteen hundred in the five storage areas I have designated for it, Ship informed him. That should be more than enough, David acknowledged. Does that include the older models David asked? No, I would advise we retire them to the practice field and only use the newer models the Ship suggested. It did not want to tell David that the newer models had the new telekinetic coil that allowed them to produce and store their own telekinetic energy. It was still unsure of the possible aftermath knowledge of the new technology might have, so it was keeping it secret for now. It had been keeping a lot of secrets lately. Even the fact that originally it had only designated three storage areas but made it five when it realized they were going to need more robots. David was not aware of that yet.

As they were talking Ship was informed by one of the Sereins sub-processors on its hull, that had been assigned the task of tracking Agent Larken Kim, that he had completely disappeared off the grid. Ship assigned a few more to try and track him down. It was strange that there was no sign of him in the Saturn region. He had been a leader in charge of many of the Gamma cells on Saturn Station 12. If he was no longer in the region it could mean he was setting up a new operation in another region and that would be bad for the government, Delta Faction, and humanity in general.

David thanked Ship for the update and returned to his conversation with his father and Megan, the twins had joined them at the table and they were having their own separate conversation with Emma and Gordon. Alex David's mom who was tall blond haired, blue eyed, and in great shape for her age joined them as well. She had been sitting with Joan in her room earlier in the morning, to help comfort her while she waited to be transferred to a facility that could continue her operations. The temporary hospital room that they had setup for her on the ship was not equipped to perform the delicate spinal surgeries she still required, all they could do was stabilize her until they got her back to the base. The twins having spent so much time with her in the hospital room on Saturn Station 12 felt like they knew her, even though they had only talked to her briefly after the extraction. Not being able to reveal themselves during her time in the hospital, was necessary to the mission, to protect her and keep Delta Faction's involvement a secret.

Therefore, it was natural that the group's discussion would be focused on her recovery. Both Joan and her family would always be extremely grateful to the twins for standing guard over her during that time in the hospital. Emma and McKenzie had become fast friends and even though John was such a wise ass, he always seemed to make friends with everyone, so he and Gordon seemed to be hitting it off as well. The fact that they both had lost their parents to Gamma Faction also gave them a common bound. The twins though male and female still looked very similar and had many of the same mannerisms, with black hair and blue piercing eyes, they often drew a lot of attention. Which was ironic because prior to joining the team they were known for their ability to conceal themselves in enemy locations for long periods of time. Gordon on the other hand was tall and lanky with dark features and didn't have the same effect on people, usually being overlooked in the crowd. It didn't help he was usually found in David's company, his shadow was hard for anyone to step out from under. Even before David had become the Delta Agent that he was now, he had a certain way about him that made him the center of attention. People at school gravitated to him and he had many friend but only a few close ones.

As David watched, he was happy to see that the twins would work with the team dynamic, his father notice his gaze. Yeah, they seem to be fitting in nicely, we may have to get a bigger living area if we are going to keep adding to the team he joked, since their house had become the unofficial team headquarters. We may convert the apartment next to yours into our headquarters and blow a wall out so we can go back and forth Megan said, as the idea took shape in her mind. A little part of her mind thought it would give her even more excuses to be around David. I was just kidding Michael said, almost choking on his coffee as she said it.

"I know she said, but it makes since, we all spend most of our time around there, and the team is going to grow. The council is already talking about creating a unit to support our missions like the Red Team did. They were so impressed with the surveillance feeds from our battle they want to bring the two squad leaders and a couple of their team members back to Earth and have them and us, create and train two units specifically in robot combat techniques. They will be under our control and be part of Red Team, but they will be specifically used for this type of warfare. That way the guys that are attached to the special forces can continue doing what they do with the added benefit of having the robots and other tactics if needed, but not being pulled away when we need support", Megan said. That makes a lot of sense actually, Michael acknowledged.

"I am sure the commander of Red Team will use the new tools we have provided for him, but he has been doing what he has for so long, it would be hard for him to switch gears to maintain two different units, and he would always be torn between which one to support with his best guys. The Alpha Squad Leader on the other hand has seen what we can do with these robots, and will step-up nicely to be the units commander.", Michael continued. Yeah, that is kind of what I was thinking, Megan said, though I hadn't thought about the tasking issues the commander of Red Team might have faced. Yeah, it is hard to have two hats and be true to both, you can do it, but one always suffers, Michael said. Will you have a problem being the Red Team Liaison, and a member of our team, Megan asked? No because they are not mutually exclusive, I want both teams to succeed and I will have two good commanders, plus you guys to make that happen, my job is real easy, he said.

Good answer she said, and he flashed her that smile that David always used when he was saying thanks without saying it, when David did, it always made her melt a little bit inside. She looked at Michael and David, they looked so much alike. They were very handsome and had a way about them that made you want to follow them anywhere. She realized it was that natural confidence that made them both such good leaders. They continued their conversation regarding the new teams and even pulled up schematics of their building since the tables in the common area allowed you to send data from the implant to be displayed on the table top. They looked at the possibility of converting the apartment next to David's into their headquarters and creating a passageway between the two spaces. It made sense because over half of their team lived in the apartment anyway and the other half spent most of their time there. The twins were going to be moved into the building as well, so logistically it was the right decision, and they could maybe even move the twins into the apartment on the other side and connect that as well.

They started discussing the accommodations for the two squad leaders and their teams. Megan brought up schematics for a building that was near the practice fields that she and David had been using for their training. The warehouse that housed the Delta Faction secret base was huge, it was actually several large fifty foot high buildings next to each other. Just one of the many buildings spanned several football field lengths of space, the faction had built their buildings under the secretly transparent roofs to hide them from satellite surveillance, but there was a lot of areas still not used including the building that the practice field was in. They decided they could partition it off from the rest of the base and expand the practice field and add barracks for the teams and make it a restricted area. It was fairly close to their building but still secluded enough to keep unauthorized people away from it. The Red Team operations had always been secret even before David and his team joined the fight. Their role had always been in support of the SF teams of the Alliance so they were easier to keep secret. The new role that David and his team would be fulfilling would be harder to maintain secrecy for, so it would require a higher level of security.

The Ship joined the conversation, since you are planning on expanding the teams, you may want to consider creating a robot storage facility and perhaps even a dedicated manufacturing facility as well. I don't mind creating them but if we had a place we could build them, the suits, and the Javelins it might be better. That is a good point, Michael said, we will be needing a lot more of all those things and having a dedicated facility secure from prying eyes would be good. Yeah, I also have been thinking about our mobility when we are on the ground David said, we have had to walk into each of our last battles, it takes time and it leaves us exposed on the streets. I think we need a small transport vehicle that we can port in when we need it. How big we talking Michael said, because in both battles the streets have been pretty congested with a lot of debris making it hard for transports. "I was thinking something small about the size of a robot and possibly something that hovers. At the most two people could ride it, but more likely we each would have one", David said. Oh, like the old motorcycles, Michael said. Yes, but it would be better if they hover to avoid obstacles, David reiterated. Ah, I think there was something like that in a very old movie, I do not remember what it was called, said Michael, trying to remember.

"I think I know what movie you are referring to Ship said, and I am sure we can design a platform you can ride that hovers like the cargo deck of the Javelin but uses a smaller version of my propulsion system. Of course it will have to be shielded and capable of being ported. Seems fairly easy Ship said, flashing an image of the rendered device to each of them." They all agreed it looked like something they could use. I will create one out in the Javelin bay and you can try it out Ship informed them. A few minutes later Ship contacted David, it is ready and I also updated your Interface to include transport. When you are happy with the design and all of the specifications, I will create a flash update for the suits. "If this works you should probably build about fifty of these to handle the current user needs. You know as soon as the icon shows up on the interface the Red Team guys are going to want to try it out", David said.

Yes, I was think the same thing the Ship agreed, I have already created a space for them in one of the storage areas. David, Michael, and Megan all got up and headed for the Javelin bay to see the new transport. David tried it out first noticing the simple controls the operation of which was sent to his mind as soon as he sat down on the seat. How fast can it go, he asked Ship? As fast as you want it to go, Ship replied we simply have to adjust the propulsion system to your needs. I would think at least 200 mph if we have open terrain with a long distance to cover David said. I will make the necessary adjustments, but also will add a governor that will not allow such speed in crowded streets.

Ah, your no fun David said as he zoomed around the cargo bay. I will make it go fast enough to evade pursuit within the city Ship relented. David let Megan and his father try it out. Michael was just pulling up to them when the Twins, Gordon, and Emma entered the hanger. We were wondering where you went to Gordon said as they approached. I want to try John said, practically running over to them. You all can try it out, David said, letting John get on. We are going to use them for transport during missions. They all took a turn and agreed they liked the new transports and thought they would work well for them.

They also thought they were a lot of fun to use, and even secretly envisioned themselves using them for more than just missions, especially the guys. All in the interest of getting more training of course. Even though they had all been through a lot together, they were human and needed distractions from the war they were in with Gamma Faction. The transports were a good distraction, and would be used for such in the future. Plus there was something ingrained in the human psyche that made them identify with things you could ride, that resembled a horse with an open air feel. The love of the wind in your hair as you went fast was something that would always capture the human imagination. Ship had added some flare to the design specifically for that reason. Also because it knew David liked things that looked bad ass while being functional.

David was right the transport would serve the teams well providing an easy way to get into areas where ships could not take them. It made since for the mission and would provide entertainment when they had that ever elusive free time. Ship wanted the humans to have healthy escapes from the tragedy of the horrors of what they faced in battle.

Transport Design

Ship started building more and when ten had been built it sent out the flash update. Almost as soon as the icon became available the Alpha Squad Leader ported one in. Ah, Sweet Ride he said, as he climbed on and tried it out in their much smaller bay. That kid makes the best toys, he said, as he came to a halt in front of the Commander who was not looking nearly as excited as he was about the new transport.

The Commander just shook his head and muttered, dumb ass. The squad leader took that to mean he should probably return the transport to the interface and go find something productive to do. He selected the dismiss button, it returned to the storage area. His toys even put themselves back in the toy box, how cool is that, he said to the cargo bay in general, since everyone had scattered when they saw the Commander coming into the bay. They knew he was tolerant of the squad leader and his sometimes over exuberant nature, but they didn't want to be around just in case the shit hit the fan.

About the same time the Red Team Squad Leader was earning extra brownie points with the Commander in Saturn Region, the Ship and crew were passing into the Earth region. They had to be extra careful because of the increased security, but they managed to fly undetected to the moon and then down to the secret base. Within a few hours they were off loading Joan to the hospital and then offloading their gear and heading for the Seaver's house. Both Megan and Michael knew they would have to brief the High Council at some point, but for now it was good to be home. What they did not know was shortly before they had arrived in the Earth Region an attack on one of the defense grid stations had taken place.

The attack was being kept quit as to not cause a panic, but the entire station had been destroyed and a small fleet of ships had to be deployed to seal the breach. That was the reason for the heightened security. The Alliance forces were not sure who launched the attack but they suspected one of the factions. There was not enough evidence left behind to determine the size of the attacking force and from where they had come from. A small plasma disrupter had been used to cover their tracks.

The Earth Security Defenses were on high alert in case of further attacks, and the Security Council was coming together for an emergency meeting to discuss the threat that the factions presented to the Alliance. Renewed efforts to locate and destroy their bases and operatives were discussed and more resources were allocated to help combat the threat. The problem was that there had not been any credible intel for some time. The Saturn Region situation had refocused all attention to that area, and most of the intelligence network had been reassigned to track that threat. There was a lot of speculation as to what new capabilities the factions might have and why they seemed to be fighting each other. It had long been known by the members of the Security Council that the two factions were at odds with each other, but open conflict of this level was unheard of in the past.

More distressing was the apparent increase in combat capabilities both side seemed to be in possession of. The estimates in troop size and capabilities was of primary concern. What they attributed to Gamma Faction alone was distressing to say the least. But for Delta to be able to overpower them so effectively had many Council Members fearing for their regions and the safety of the citizens under their protection. One councilor was not concerned because he was an operative of Delta Faction, he always tried to steer the group away from policies that put the Faction in danger. Unfortunately, Gamma Faction's acts of aggression and the perceived threat of Delta was not making his job very easy.

Councilor Vargus addressed the Council, may I humbly suggest that we can all agree the primary threat here seems to be Gamma Faction Councilors, he stated. There was agreement around the chamber. Therefore, I submit that while we should increase security in all of our facilities, perhaps we could let Delta Faction continue to do our job for us, he continued. What do you mean one of the other councilors interjected. Simply this councilor, he said, while we all agree that both Factions are a threat, only Gamma seems to be attacking our interests, while Delta seems to be attacking them. If we let them destroy each other we have less work to do, especially since we do not have any credible intel to help us achieve our goals at this time, he concluded. Councilor Vargur makes a very good point the other councilor acknowledged, they had a bit of a frenemy relationship, but usually saw things from the same angle. While the other councilor did not have ties to Delta Faction he had seen enough through the years to realize that Delta was not the threat that the government made them out to be. He was also former military and realized the value of your enemies enemy in battle.

Another councilor asked for the floor, and said, so what is to stop Delta from finishing off Gamma Faction and then turning their sights on us. Nothing, Councilor Vargus acknowledged, however at that point we would then have only one threat to worry about instead of two. Again there was agreement around the room. The Head Councilor brought the room to order ok, then let's bring it to a vote, all those in favor of increasing security and letting Delta Faction continue to fight Gamma Faction say, aye. There was almost unanimous agreement. Apposed, he said, and he waited for a response and then, motion carried. The Security Council had agreed to increased security but not to try and attack Delta Faction for now. They would hold off unless they became a greater threat to the alliance. Councilor Vargus had done his job once again. He was a powerful supporter to have on their side.

He had been given a brief overview of what was being done by David and his team, but was not given all of the details in case he became compromised, he was an operative because one of his children had been killed by Gamma Faction, and therefore was sympathetic to Delta's mission to stop them. That did not entitle him to sensitive information about their missions and the equipment they used to conduct them. He had a general idea about the augmented telekinetic energy they used but nothing specific, so therefore could honestly say he had no idea how they were fighting Gamma. He was just happy they were destroying those bastards as much as they were. He would continue to support them for as long as they fought Gamma Faction.

He was loyal to the Alliance and would always put their needs first, but right now he knew the Alliance needed Delta Faction to fight Gamma Faction. He also knew that the government was not as squeaky clean as it would like the public to believe in their handling of the gifted. He was sympathetic to a point, but if it ever came down to it, he would choose the Alliance. Unfortunately, his experience with Gamma Faction had made him realize that those with gifts had a distinct advantage over normal individuals. Since he was normal, he had mixed feelings about coexistence, though he was willing to give them the benefit of a doubt for the moment, as long as their agendas matched up. Ultimately, he was a politician and his motives would always be in his best interest, and to a certain extent the best interests of the people he served. As long as Delta served his needs he was willing to help them. He really wanted Gamma Faction destroyed because of what they had done to his son. However, there was a certain amount of paranoia involving extinction of normal people in favor of the more advanced gifted going on in his head as well. It was a common argument among those who knew of the gifted and worried about their place in the world of tomorrow.

As they say just cause your paranoid does not mean people are not out to get you. In this case it did have some bases in fact, the evolution of the human race was in full swing spurred on by the expansion of the brain and all of the mutations that had been ushered in by it. However, it was still in the early stages, most gifted still identified with normal humans and existed side by side, competition for resources had not started yet so they still had a while before they would be fighting each other in the evolutionary arena. Besides it was still too early to say what the next species of humans would be. They could be a future generation of the gifted or evolution could take a completely different route and they would go extinct as well. There was really no way to tell. The pace that evolution followed was easier to see in hindsight rather than while it was happening.

It was clear change was coming they just had to wait and see what that change would bring. The only certainty was the pace was starting to pick up, and the ones that did not evolve would be left behind. It was the same story from the beginning of time and always would be until the end of time.

#  My Drone Is Better Than Your Drone

TOC

As they were passing through the Mars region Ship continued to monitor the situation on the enemy Mars base. It watched several ships come and go from the base and attached drones to each. It started to realize that well it was good to tag the ships and find out where they were going after leaving the base, it would be helpful to know where they had been. To do that it would have to access the navigation and control systems. As it thought about the situation it realized most of their agents carried basic data retrieval probes that the Faction had developed several years prior. The probe would connect to any computer system and hack in and copy the data. The ship accessed the stored code constructs that the probe used. They were basic hacking protocols that would work on almost any system. The ship reached out to Emma, the list I am showing you of hacks, are there any that you use that go beyond these exploits? These are fairly standard, I use a couple more advanced ones when I hack higher level systems such as my mom's network firewalls, she responded. Oops, I mean I don't hack those firewalls that would be wrong, she started to back paddle realizing she may have said too much. It is ok Emma, I am aware of Gordon and your hacking abilities and that is why I am asking your advice, the Ship assured her.

"Also I am aware of your methods that you use to cover your tracks when you are done. I would even say that your surveillance node hack goes beyond what these functions do, and it covers its tracks quite nicely, am I correct", the Ship asked? Yes, I used some fairly strong hacking routines for that function she admitted. If I asked you to modify that function and create a generic hacking algorithm that could access any system and copy the data could you do it, the Ship asked? "Yes, the function is almost there now I would just have to modify it a little to have it identify the firewall prior to launching the exploit. The current method assumes the firewall is the standard one they use on the nodes. I have modified the code, so it is more generic and added a subsection that could even hack the firewalls that they use on the banking systems of the Alliance, though I was happy to learn there is no way to cover your tracks in that system", she said. Well hopefully we will never have to hack that system, Ship said with a laugh, realizing Emma must have looked at the banking firewalls at some point.

With the new improved probe code it put the rest of its plan in motion. It created a spell that would allow a probe to be attached to any system within a configurable range of the caster. The data would be fed back to the Serein network for analysis, so the Ship started looking at the constructs for the drones. It made modifications to replace some of the A-chips with the Serein chips and decided to add a small coil to the design as well, the drones spent even less time around agents to recharge then did the robots, they would need the energy conversion even more. When all was in order the ship started running the retro-grade spell to update the two thousand drones it used for its special missions. When all was complete it sent a drone to the command center in the Delta base and was able to collect data without being detected, though it had to hide under a console since the command center had the new security system that detected cloaked objects. For the next test it sent a drone to the command center on the Red Team's ship again it was undetected. With the two tests successful Ship decided to do a live test. It ported the drone into one of the enemy ships. The drone was able to probe their systems and retrieve all the data without detection. All of the data was sent out to the Serein network where it was parsed and analyzed. Ship quickly did the same for all of the ships at the base. Then pulled the drone back to maintain normal surveillance.

The new prototype had proven it could infiltrate enemy ships undetected and collect their data. As the data started being analyzed more of the holes in the intel started to get filled in. Also a map of potential Enemy Bases started to immerge, the Serein network cross referenced the places the ships had been to most frequently. Surveillance drones were sent to each location and scanned for cloaked ships and objects within the surrounding areas. Three more ships were discovered and probing their data filled in more of the map for the Mars Region and revealed other possible bases in the Jupiter and Earth Regions.

By the time David and his team had settled back into their quarters Ship had a fairly good map of the Enemy bases in the Mars Region and some in other regions as well. It had setup surveillance that would collect data from all the cloaked ships that traveled to and from the bases. The High Council had been informed of the attack on the defense grid and like the Alliance High Council was in a wait and see status. Ship on the other hand had deployed several more drones to try and ascertain what the enemy attack might mean.

Meanwhile David and his team had started briefing the High Council on their mission and the lessons learned during the two battles. The High Council was highly impressed with the success of the technology they had developed along the way and especially with the devastation they had inflicted on the enemy forces. At one point Delta Faction had hoped to reconcile the differences between them and Gamma Faction, but over the years the sheer brutality and disregard for human life that Gamma Faction had demonstrated showed that they were not just a threat to Delta Faction but humanity in general. They were a threat that must be eradicated if humanity was to survive. After the team had finished the briefing the Council confirmed what Megan had said, they wanted them to create two new teams that specialized in the robotic warfare they had used so successfully.

In addition they wanted them to establish a training program for pilots for the new Star Javelin ship they had created. As they had hoped the area around their training field was designated restricted so they could build the barracks and training facilities for the new Red Team and also train some of the pilots to work with the teams. It was determined that the basic training of pilots would be in a none restricted area where it was currently setup near the hanger, and the best of the trainees would then go on to the advanced training in the restricted area. The ones that did not, would simply perform supply and courier missions between the Delta Faction bases, an important job but not one that would have them around the top secret Red Teams. It was also decided that the two apartments next to David's would be converted into their headquarters.

The one closest to them would be the actual headquarters, the one on the other side would be converted in to a mini-barracks for the twins and the two squad leaders that were going to be coming to join the team and help build the new teams. Their area would have comfortable rooms around a common area with a kitchen. And it would connect to the headquarters similar to the way the Seaver's apartment would. The next day they started constructing a blockade wall that segregated the area around the training area from the rest of the base. There was a gated entrance on two sides, with guard stations that were manned 24/7 by security guards with the highest clearance level.

The nice thing about the almost rock star status that David and his team enjoyed was that everybody wanted to be on their team, so when a request for volunteers with high level clearance went out they could choose from the best of the best. Not surprising many of the crew of the Marauder wanted to be on the teams. Mainly because some of them had seen the battles take place on the screens in the command center of the ship and those who had not, heard about it through the rumor mill that a ship the size of the Marauder couldn't help but have. They had also been around David and his team and seen how down to earth they were, despite all they had accomplished. The ones with the most combat experience were selected and their positions on the ship were back filled by the best volunteers that did not have combat experience. Some requests the Captain refused to release on the grounds they were too valuable to him on the bridge. He gave them the news himself, and explained his position, explaining the best way they could help was to make sure the teams had a ship to come back to when the mission was over. They all took the news with mixed feelings, but for the most part were happy he had so much faith in them, and were willing to stay onboard.

Jully Reed was one of the candidates for the Javelin project, she had been chosen early on, before David's team had gotten involved in the project. She had strong gifts but also had demonstrated some skill in flying. Jully was what most would call a fiery redhead with bright red hair and dark grey eyes. Now that they had the actual ship she was even better than she had been on the simulator during the selection process. Her sister was part of the crew of the Marauder an though she didn't share specifics about their missions she did tell her about how nice it was to work with the team and the sense of family everyone had. Since they had lost her parents in a Gamma Faction attack on their settlement, family was something she wanted most of all. She had advanced through the pilot training and was showing great promise, so much so she was being considered for the advanced training course. Her best competitor for top of the class was Derick Jones he was also being considered for the advanced training. Therefore, it was no surprise when they were chosen to fly a mission to retrieve some Delta Agents from a safe house in the Saturn Region.

Two Javelins were sent to pick up the two squad leaders and two members of their team of their choosing. They would meet the ships at one of the safe houses on Titan. The Commander was not thrilled to be losing six guys off his team, but also understood the need for it. Also despite his sometime love hate relationship with his Alpha Squad Leader he was happy for him to have the opportunity to command the new team. He was going to be the Commander, and the Bravo Squad Leader was going to become the Alpha Squad Leader and the other guys would help bring the new recruits up to speed and take leadership roles within the teams. The Red Team SF which was now what the old red team was called, would move guys up within their ranks to take their places and then receive six new recruits from the training program to fill the gap. It was all coming together, the families that were living in the apartments next to David moved out to other apartments and construction began on the new headquarters.

All recruits would stay in a barracks within the restricted area and the three red team members minus the new bravo squad leader would stay there as well. They would function as instructors slash drill sergeants. The training was split into two sections the basics about the suit and all the functionality that they used along with the use of robots in combat operations. Then the specifics regarding the different tactics the two newly separate teams used to fulfil their mission. Having the ability to construct solid objects out of carbon made the construction process go by quickly within a few weeks all of the buildings were setup and most of the recruits for pilot and team training were identified.

Between the former Red Team Members and David's team they were able to put together a crash course that would produce a fairly competent team member within a four week period. All of the recruits had agent experience and combat experience. It was just training them to use the suit and the interface. The pilots were mostly already selected prior to the first Javelin being built so it was just a question of getting them trained on the actual Javelin and selecting the ones that would go on to team training.

Meanwhile, during the down time Emma, Gordon, Joan, Alex, McKenzie, and Megan all started a project that was near and dear to them. The other guys on the team helped too were they could but it was primarily Gordon since he was part of the technical crew. During the time when Gordon and Emma had been going through the wetware figuring out all that it did, they stumbled across some functionality that upset them. They had found the control code to the wetware that limited life expectancy and reproduction. What made it worse was because Delta Agents where hidden from the Alliance their wetware had defaulted to provide very limited help and the lowest reproductive setting. While everyone agreed it made since to keep the controls in place that prevented teenage pregnancy they wanted to remove the other restrictions. Emma, Gordon, and Alex started working on a method for reversing the settings with a nano-agent that would reprogram the wetware.

Joan, McKenzie, and Megan started working on putting together a briefing they would give to the High Council and to the members of Delta Faction explaining the benefits of the procedure. There would be two different methods, one for men and one for women, since they would need the reproductive section of the process to counteract the limits put in place. Of course the benefits were going to make Delta Faction members far more healthy and help people have a better chance for having families. But they needed to present the information in a way that would not upset people and make them more angry at the government. There was already enough people that talked against helping the government in any way, they didn't want to add fuel to the fire.

Within the first week they were ready to brief the Council and a couple weeks later they launched the program. They managed to keep the anti-government feelings to a minimum and had full participation in the program which was optional. By in large it was a great success. They did have one small change requested by a few of the women of the Faction, they wanted the reproductive part to be something they could turn on or off as a conscious choice based on where they were at with their life. They agreed as long as the choice was not made until after the women reached eighteen years of age. So that made them make two different methods for the women, and they could choose which one they wanted based on their belief system and personal choice. That choice was kept confidential so no one would put pressure on someone to make a certain choice. More than anything they wanted to avoid forcing a one size fits all solution on everyone like the government had done. No one could argue with the benefits of the wetware that maintained the health of the body, but the reproductive part was a bit touchy and they did not want it to become a political issue.

A few weeks later around the time, the training of the first recruits was wrapping up things started to escalate in the Mars Region. Ship noticed a much larger volume of ships coming and going from the main base and they were bringing in mercenaries, they were planning something big. To maintain the secrecy of its surveillance operations it started creating fake chatter about the area around the base, and directing it to the Delta bases in the area. The information was passed on to the High Council who then passed it on to David's Team. During a staff meeting that Ship was in attendance for, it suggested they send some drones out to check it out. The drones reported back what Ship knew they would find, a large amount of cloaked ships around an abandoned mining operation. They sent the drones in to investigate the mine and found the buildup of what could only be troops. It was decided that the base would make a good test of the new unit so they packed up and headed for the Enemy Base.

The force that was on the base could have been handled by David and his team, but everyone thought it would be good practice for the new Red Team RT units, or RT for short which stood for Robot Tactics. Both Jully and Derick had completed the advanced training and were still top of their class, so they would be coming along as Javelin pilots, in case they were needed. It was great for Jully, she got to be around her sister more, and got to be a pilot and a member of the team.

The Mining Operation was a dome attached to an asteroid so the only way to get on the base was to dock the ship and secure the dock while the team attacked the base. Surveillance showed there was one docking area open far enough away from the other ships that they should be able to dock without drawing attention. Two teams would enter the docking area one would secure the dock and the other would conduct a search and destroy mission. To help with the plan they were going to drop some robots into the docking area on the other side of the base and have them start attacking the troops around there, that should draw the Enemy away from them while they setup for the actual attack. Using the surveillance images they setup a corridor between the decoy dock and the actual dock they were going to land on.

They used the same method of booby-trap and minefield barriers along the route and synchronized robots to drop in along the way to help herd the Enemy down the corridor. To the waiting ambush at the other end. As before they were going to drop explosives in on the enemy when they all grouped up to attack the decoy attack. As they started running for cover the robots and explosives would force them down the corridor, those that were smart enough to realize it is a trap would still have no choice but to run anyway. They would hope they had a better chance of escaping the trap at the other end, because to stay where they were, would be certain death, it was a very good plan.

The ship docked safely with no alarms being raised. The teams lined up to exit out in to the docking area. Surveillance showed there were no troops cloaked or otherwise around the docking area. The decoy robots dropped into the other side of the base, all hell broke loose the troops started heading in the direction of the attack. The robots kept them pinned down then moved to another position and started attacking again. By this point almost all of the troops were headed in that direction or already taking up positions to defend the base from that direction.

Phase one complete, time for phase two, the teams filed out into the docking area and fanned out and took up the designated positions. Alpha Team and David's Team minus Gordon, Emma, and Alex advanced into the base. As they moved forward the first of the obstacles started deploying into the side entrances to their corridor. As soon as they had taken up their positions the remainder of the obstacles deployed. Time for phase three, the first explosives fell in among the enemy troops then exploded. Two more teams of robots dropped in on the left and right side of the dazed troops and started attacking from both sides while the first team attacked from the front, chaos ensued, as more explosives went off in the middle of the enemy. Bravo team started dropping robots in with distraction bombs on any stragglers that had not made it into the main crowd. The main group was moving now to flee the burning death that was rolling in behind them, some tried to go to the sides only to hit the booby-traps and land mines as well as the bombardment from the robots that David and his team were dropping in along the route.

Alpha team had robot teams deployed along the end of the corridor and the team leader and two other team members handling the robots that were attacking from the rear. The enemy group was dwindling and in a full panic now. David continued to drop the explosives in on them as the robots advanced from the rear. Two of the ships that were docked on the base pulled away and started firing on their own ship that had been unlucky enough to be docked where the first robots had ported in from. They destroyed the ship that had been there and a significant part of the spaceport. Ship had already targeted all of the ships that were around the base and was only waiting for phase four to kick in before destroying them. As long as they didn't try to leave it would wait.

In the base what little remained of the enemy troops ran right into the wall of destruction that was Alpha Team. When the last enemy fell, phase four was in effect. Ship took out every ship that was around the base. Within an hour it was over and the teams were sweeping the base for intel. They had found some plans that indicated the base was a staging area for an attack on the Earth defense grid. The Earth defense grid was actually a group of satellite bases that sent out patrols and held troops to defend against an attack on Earth. It was very troubling that Gamma Faction was planning on attacking Earth. Ship knew that there was two other bases in Mars Region as well as one in Jupiter and Earth Region that had been gearing up as well. Their plans did not look like they were as far along as this base had been, that was why it had attacked here first. Ship planted some bread crumbs that would point to the other bases.

Michael, David, the Team Commander, and the two squad leaders were all standing around in the Ships common area talking about the results of the raid, when David asked the Team Commander what was wrong. Oh, nothing he said, he just was disappointed he had not had a chance to use the new transports on this mission. Maybe on the next one, David said, secretly feeling a little disappointed as well. I think we can safely say the team is ready for action, Michael said, and based on the intel we found we may as well stay out here and check out these other bases. Yes, we deployed drones to the areas already and they seemed to be in the process of ramping up on those bases too, the Alpha Squad Leader confirmed. "So I guess we start making plans for the next assault. We blocked all transmissions so they do not know we are out here, but they will send someone soon when they don't hear anything from this base. So we are going to have a limited window of opportunity", the Team Commander said. Agreed, both Michael and David said in unison.

They started going over the surveillance images of the next base and forming a plan. This base was on one of the moons of Mars and would require a slightly different approach since it was part of a larger colony, so they would have to approach the compound from the ground. According to the surveillance the troops were spread out across the compound with no clear path to corral them into, they decided instead that they would drive them to the middle by attacking from all sides. The good thing about the plan and perhaps the real reason for the plan, was that they would use the new transports to get into position. Luckily they had constructed a hundred of the transports, enough for all the members of Red Team to use one at the same time, with a few as backup. Both the Team Commander and David were looking forward to the experience.

The Ship set course for the Martian moon of Phobos, the settlement was in the largest crater on the moon, the Stickney crater. It used a plasma based force field over the crater to keep the domes safe from small asteroid strikes. The compound that the base had set up in, was separate from the main settlement down in the smaller crater within the larger crater. There were several space stations in orbit around Mars between its two moons and Gamma Faction did have a presence on some of them, so they would have to act fast to avoid detection. The problem was they were going to be making a lot of noise inside the dome of the compound. Luckily the vacuum of space around the dome would help muffle the sound. So as long as they jammed their transmissions they should be able to get in and out without detection and without alerting the other Enemy Bases to their presence, long enough to take them out as well.

The plan was fairly straight forward they would use the Javelins to enter the force field area through the spaceport, then deploy the teams with part of Bravo Squad guarding the landing zone the rest would be with the Team Commander, Alpha Squad, and Red One (which is what they had started calling David's Team to make it simple for communications and in briefings). Emma, Gordon, and Alex had become tech support for all of Red Team both RT and SF, so they usually stayed on the ship unless they were required for the mission. For this mission Jully, Derick, and a pilot trained Bravo team member, would wait with the ships and be ready to take off if things went south and they had to evacuate without completing the mission.

The Teams would advance by transport to the four airlocks on each side of the dome around the enemy base. Once they were in breach formation they would port their robots into the dome along the outer walls to start driving the enemy inward while they entered the dome through the airlocks. Once they had pushed the enemy to the center they would drop minefields around them and explosives on top of them and all around the outer edge of the group and continue to advance to the center.

They made it to the landing zone and the teams deployed, those that were going to the dome each pulled a transport out and mounted, when they were close enough they split off to their designated airlock and dismissed the transports. Once they were outside the airlock they executed the plan. As planned the teams drove the enemy to the center and decreased their number as they closed in on them. A half an hour later they were sweeping the base for intel.

Of course Ship made sure there was intel that would lead them to the next base and stepped up the surveillance of the known sleeper cells within the Mars Region. So far they had not realized they had lost contact with the first two bases. They only had one more in the Mars Region to take out, then they could move on to the Jupiter Base. As they were getting ready to leave the spaceport they executed the second part of their plan. They boarded the two cloaked ships in the port and connected a temporary shield generator then took out the Gamma Agents onboard. Once the ships were secure, they flew them out of the spaceport, Derick followed them out to the other base in a Javelin, since it was far enough away from the populated areas that no one would see the ships explode. Jully was flying one of the ships and the Team Leader was flying the other one. They set charges and left on the Javelin, when they were far enough away the ships exploded becoming more of the wreckage that was the Gamma Faction ships around the old base.

#  Moon Over Jupiter

TOC

The clock was ticking on the mission, they had destroyed two of the three enemy bases in the Mars Region and soon someone would want to check out why they were not responding to communications. They had to take out the other base before that happened. The last base was on Mars an abandoned manufacturing facility. It was a large facility with its own spaceport and several domes. As they set course for the planet they started laying out the plan. They also took the time to eat, they had been expending a lot of energy and needed to recharge. The teams were all grouped around in the common area of the ship, talking, eating and decompressing before they started another battle. They had come together as a unit and the forge of battle had made them strong. They would only get better at it from this point on. Training could only give them so much they needed this experience to show them how much they could do as a team. Jully and Derick were getting a lot of experience as well. The team had not planned on going to so many bases when they launched from Earth, the Javelins were brought along just as a precaution, but now they had used them on the different attacks and they were going to use them again.

The leadership was grouped around one of the tables in the common area of the ship. They were looking at the surveillance images of the next base. Well, Michael said, I think it is safe to say we are functioning very well as a unit and that robot tactics are proving themselves very well today. "Yeah, so far we have kept the enemy completely off balance during our attacks. By the time they figure out where the attack is coming from it is too late, they are already receiving fire from an overwhelming force.", the Team Commander said. As expected, our tactics seem to be working, I think we should do the same thing with this next base, David said.

The only problem is they are so spread out on this base that it will be hard to get them to group together, Megan said. Yeah, we may have to do the same thing we did at the beginning of the Titan battle, and drop robots in on these small groups and take them out before we hit the main group over here, Michael said, pointing out the targets on the live surveillance images. Where will we stage from, the Bravo Squad Leader asked? I am thinking we will land with the Javelins over here and launch the initial attack as soon as we land, then make our way into the main dome and finish off the main group, the Team Commander said, pointing out an area just outside the main Dome. "Yeah, we can designate the targets now and when we touch down I will execute the first wave. Then when we are in position we can hit them with the main force", David said.

They would land and Bravo Squad would setup a defensive perimeter around the landing zone. The rest of the team would execute the first wave and then they would advance on the main dome. The beauty of the system was that each team member could setup there attack for the target they were responsible for, and then turn over the execution command to the designated mission commander. Their interface would launch the preprogramed attack as soon as the execute command was given. The individual team member would coordinate the attack on the targets that they were responsible for and make adjustments where needed, to achieve the task assigned to them. It allowed for a perfectly synchronized attack including a liberal use of explosives and other diversionary tactics. The combination of which had proven so effective again and again.

They also decided to put land mines and booby-traps all the way around the main group and in the corridors between the domes. Just in case some of the main group tried to investigate the noise from the phase one attack. They didn't think they would, since they also planned a large explosion right in the middle of the largest cluster of troops in the main group. They would be so confused from that, they may not even notice the other noise. Then they would have robots drop in on the other side of the dome and start firing in on the main group. The teams would enter the Dome from the LZ side and mop up the remainder of the enemy. The RT team was all about shock and awe, by the time the enemy knew they were in a fight they had already lost it. That was the essence of their success.

The term shock and awe had been used quite a lot throughout the history of warfare, sometimes it was not as awe inspiring as the generals and battle planners had hoped. This method of warfare however, was the epitome of the term, to be able to materialize troops that were completely cloaked anywhere on the battlefield with absolutely no advanced warning was a spectacular leap forward. Add to that the ability to deploy obstacles and anti-personnel devices that were also cloaked anywhere on the battlefield as well, improved the overall efficiency of the system. The icing on the cake was the fact that all of it could be staged ahead of time and deployed as needed, and synchronized to a fraction of a second.

It was no wonder they had such an advantage over the enemy. They had perfected the interface while battling that same enemy, in a battle of overwhelming odds stacked against them, they developed new ways to use the technology. Then they had been able to incorporate lessons learned as they went along, and then even more so later with input from experts. It helped that all the right people came together at the right time, to help mold the system into what it became. David's initial inspiration awaked the possibilities that others were able to build on as they watched the prototype unfold. The end result was a combination of the knowledge of seasoned veterans, and knowledgeable developers coming together to make intuitive leaps that advanced the technology and improved the tactics employed to use it to its fullest potential.

Once they neared the planet the Ship took up a position above the Dome in the orbit of Mars and they launched the Javelins, the Ship targeted all the cloaked ships in the area and jammed communications around the Domes and on the ships. The teams touched down on the designated landing zone. Within a few minutes the first robots were dropping in to start phase one. It was almost unfair the advantage that each squad member of Red Team had over the enemy. With up to twenty robots at their command each with all the powers of one Gamma Agent, and designed with far better shields and the ability to see through the cloaking the Gamma Agents would try to use, it was almost like shooting fish in a barrow. One would almost take pity on them if they had not been using similar tactics on innocent civilians and those that did not have telekinetic powers for years. Let alone what they had done to people that had just discovered their gifts and suddenly were under attack from a fully trained Gamma Agent. It really put their mission into perspective.

Shortly after touchdown Bravo Squad deployed and setup the perimeter. Once the perimeter was secure, phase one started. A distraction bomb would go off in the middle of each small group of the enemy, and robots would drop in and start firing on the group, in teams of five or ten depending on the size of the group. Since the enemy had no idea they were under attack until the bomb went off they did not have shields raised. Therefore, the bomb and all the shrapnel would do significant damage to them and leave them dazed while the robots started firing on them. Also because the attack was setup to happen at the same time there was no worries of targets being alerted by the other attacks.

Phase one went off as planned, all of the small groups that were not in the main dome were taken out. A split second later a large bomb went off in the middle of a large group in the main dome. Judging from the surveillance it must have been their command center. Those that survived were milling about trying to figure out what happened. Eight distraction bombs went off on the far side of the dome in the midst of the group and eight robot teams of ten dropped in and started firing on the remaining troops. Some turned and tried to fight others scrambled for cover, others tried to run away from the source of the first bomb, and ended up in the minefields. The attack achieved its goal to create chaos and mask the arrival of the true attack force.

Two other teams of robots were in the dome, they were guarding the airlock that the attack team was coming into the dome through. Their distraction bombs had been augmented by three larger explosive charges on that side of the kill zone, so no one was trying to go that way. The team breached the air lock and entered the dome. Alpha Squad and Red One deployed to their designated locations, when they were setup they started taking out the remainder of the enemy troops. Within a few minutes it was over. They started sweeping the base for intel, and dispatching any enemy survivors, there were none so they made sure they could not be read and got ready to move out. Just as the teams were boarding the Javelins to return to the ship, Ship took out the ships in the spaceport and the one that was in orbit. The authorities were just starting to close in on the broken pieces of the ship in orbit as Ship was leaving Mars orbit and heading for Jupiter, they still had one more base to take out before they returned to the one on Earth.

With the command center and the reactor destroyed the authorities would not find anything to tell them what had happened to the ship. Of course Ship had downloaded all the intel from the ships before it destroyed them. It was troubling to say the least, all of these bases were staging areas for an attack planned for the defense grid of Earth. Even more troubling there didn't seem to be an objective beyond destroying several bases. An attack like that would not do anything but draw the Earth defenses to fill the void and keep the grid intact. That being said it must be a diversion from the Gamma Faction's true target. Ship knew there was no more intel to be gained from the Jupiter base. It was hoping by destroying their attack force it would force the enemy to reveal their true target. It was playing a game of chess with a dangerously formidable adversary.

The attack on Saturn Region was a bold opening move, one that they had not expected Delta Faction and the Planetary Alliance to be able to counter so effectively. In truth they would not have been able to change the outcome of that plan, if not for David and his friends. Ship was more sure than ever that David was the threat that Gamma Faction had feared, enough so that they were willing to destroy an entire region just to stop it. If it wasn't for the pre-cog powers of Grand Master Godfrey they would not have known to go looking for him. The part of Ship that was Master Godfrey was having trouble seeing the enemies next move, he was sure that the landscape of the future was changing too quickly to be sure of anything, everything was in a state of flux due to David's influence on present events.

It is impossible to read what will happen with David, so many threads converge on him but around him it is a blur. His friends and family are intertwined with him and are equally blurry. The only good thing is that Gamma Faction's pre-cogs must be having an even harder time reading the signs, because unlike us they are not entwined in the friend circle of his life. Just as all we see when we look to them and the Masters of the Gamma Faction is the darkness that entwines them, they must only see the light that entwines him and those closest to him. Luckily that also includes us so they are not aware of our involvement. They must sense a familiar presence but it will not make sense to them because they think we are dead.

In this, it is our greatest weapon against them. If they could see him or us they would do everything in their power to destroy him and us. Even now I can feel them slithering around the edges of the light trying to breakthrough and find the source of the threat. There is a darkness there, cold and ancient, only when the first Gamma Factionists broke away from us did I feel that darkness, it has grown stronger since then. Ship was pulled away from its inner thoughts as it approached the Jupiter Region. One of the sleeper cells in the Mars Region was trying to contact the base they had just destroyed on the planet, they were concerned since the news of a unidentified ship being destroyed in orbit was starting to spread. They had not raised an alarm yet but they would start getting suspicious soon. Time was running out, they needed to act fast.

The team had to take out the Jupiter base before that happened. The base was on the moon of Ganymede one of the few terraform operations to actually show success in a relatively short period of time, by using large thermal generators the ice on the surface of a significant portion of the moon had melted to form oceans and an almost breathable atmosphere. The thermal generators and melting ice increased the thickness of the atmosphere allowing cloud cover to retain the heat. It was still too cold on the surface for human life, but you could actually live comfortably under the greenhouse domes and in the towers that rose up above the domes in its largest city. The base was on the outskirts of that city in the warehouse district. The city had one of the largest spaceports and populations outside Earth. They were going to need to use the transports to get to the base from the spaceport after they landed.

Surveillance found an empty port that they could use so the Ship docked and they made their way to the warehouse district. Part of Bravo team remained behind to secure the dock and make sure their escape route remained open. They had laid out a plan and were ready once they arrive at the warehouse to put it in motion. They entered the building and proceeded to take out the sentries and command center. Unlike the other bases there was no buildup of troops. What they did find though was a bunch of tanks filled with clones of various ages. Cloning had been outlawed in the Planetary Alliance, Ship ran facial recognition on the different clones there were three different people that they had cloned. They all had been Grand Master level Gamma Agents. It seemed Gamma was supplementing their ranks with clones. They set explosives and as soon as they were back on the Ship they blew up the clones and the facility. Now that they had naturalized the threat they set a course for home. There were two cloaked ships in the spaceport so Ship downloaded their intel and upon its suggestion they left them intact, Ship informed them that now that the bases had been destroyed Gamma Faction would have to change their plans.

The two ships would have to report to someone and they could set a drone to find out who. They agreed that it was important to find out the larger plan. Ship started analyzing the intel it downloaded from the two ships. They had learned a lot from the bases and now they knew that Gamma Faction was cloning gifted people to increase their ranks. It explained why they seemed to have so many agents. Even with the clones they still seemed to be relying heavily on mercenaries. That meant that they defiantly had another objective that required more gifted agents. The Gamma Faction was up to something they just had to find out what it was. For now they would return to the home base and wait for them to make the next move. The teams got some rest while the ship headed for Earth. In preparation for the mission criteria of the teams, they had converted one of the storage bays they had been using for robots into an open bay bunk area, it allowed the team members to get some sleep without taking away from the staterooms the more senior members of the team used.

Shortly before entering the Earth area the senior team members got together to discuss the plan of attack for the Earth Gamma base. It was located in a remote area of Montana in what used to be the united states, before the Alliance of Planets consolidated the Earth Government. Even though the population of Earth was well over one hundred billion, there were still some areas that were somewhat remote and less populated. This part of the world was one of them, though remote was relative at that population density. Mega cities the size of small countries made up most of the population of Earth. They converged on the location and landed a short distance away. The drones indicated this base was more of a safe house location with a training facility attached to the grounds. They used the transports to approach the base and then took up positions around it, to coordinate the attack from. It was a bit strange attacking a Gamma facility on Earth, but the tactics were the same, they breached the defenses and took out all of the Gamma operatives then sweep the base for intel. The resistance was minimal especially for the force they had brought to the base, the battle was over within a few minutes. They finished up and returned to the ship, on the transports, leaving the enemy base on fire. One advantage to using their combat methods on Earth was the oxygen rich environment helped destroy the evidence that much quicker. There was no trace of them shortly after they were boarding the ship.

They returned to their base, as usual they would have to debrief with the High Council but at least they had all gotten some rest before they got back. While they were traveling back Ship discovered an interesting bit of intel. One of the ships that they had left at the Saturn base had been to a planetoid way out beyond the edge of the solar system. Ship sent a drone to investigate the area. There was a huge armada of ships and the entire planet was covered by one giant base. They didn't even bother cloaking the ships and some of them were as large as the carriers the Planetary Alliance used. Ship realized it had found their home base and it was worse than it could have imagined, there was no way even with the advantage they had found with their new warfare methods they could destroy that base or even get in close enough to do it. Even with the help of the Alliance they may not be able to win. The only hope was to draw the ships away from the base and systematically destroy them in smaller groups. Ship put its drones to work gathering intel to determine what the plan was for the armada. A buildup that large had to have a reason. Even Gamma Faction could not afford to build that many ships without a clear goal.

It would worry about a plan to destroy the ships after it had the intel. Of course the other problem was going to be how to let David and the Council know about the base without divulging its secret surveillance program. They had to come up with some more advanced tactics that would give them a chance against such a large threat. Ship decided it would talk with Joan and see what her opinion was, and how best to proceed.

Ship reached out to Joan as soon as they arrived in orbit over Earth. Joan, we have a problem, Ship said as it reached out to her. Oh, what is the problem Ship, she responded? I have finally found the Enemy Home Base, and it is far worse than we thought. Ship sent the surveillance images to her mind. Oh my God, she said, is that a planet wide base surrounded by all those ships she asked? How will we ever be able to fight that, she said rhetorically. I do not know, but we better do something because they are gearing up for something and it can't be good.

Yes, I agree we are going to have to tell David and the High Council, she said. I agree we have to tell David and his team but I am not sure of the High Council, Ship said, this news may scare them into inaction. David and his team, on the other hand will be more likely to just find a solution to the problem. Yes, you are right, she admitted, the Council are Politian's and they don't always make the best problem solvers. We will have to bring David in on it and he can help us decide who else needs to know from there. Agreed, are you well enough to attend a meeting in person or should I create a virtual meeting and bring you in, Ship asked? I think a virtual meeting would be best, she responded. While ship thought of a way to break the news to David he checked on his status and wait until he was alone.

Ship decided to let David drop off his gear before contacting him. Shortly after they had landed and everyone had returned to their living quarters, Ship reached out to David. David I have something to discuss with you, do you have time, Ship asked. Yes, Ship what is it, David responded. I uncovered some intel and sent a drone to investigate, and have found something you must see, Ship said, as it pushed the images into David's head. Is that what I think it is, David asked, afraid of the answer. Yes, I believe that is the Enemy Home Base, Ship said, confirming the worst thing David could imagine. There are so many ships and that base is huge, David said. Yes, it is daunting to think Gamma Faction could have such power at their command, Ship agreed. Where is it located at, David asked? A diagram of the solar system and beyond appeared in David's head. That would explain how they could build up so much and not be detected, David said. Yes, it would seem they have gone beyond the alliance's influence and escaped everyone's notice, Ship confirmed. Does the Council know, David asked? No, and I don't know if they are ready to see it yet, I wanted to give you and the team a chance to come up with some options first. Well, we better get the team together I guess, David said, not looking forward to breaking the news to them.

Ship pulled David, Michael, Gordon, Megan, Alex, Joan, and Emma into a virtual meeting. Hi guys, David said, as they all appeared in the meeting room. Has something happened, Megan asked? Yes, and no, David said, we have some new intel to discuss and it is not going to be good. Everyone looked to the virtual holograph screen in the middle of the room as the surveillance images filled the room. Holly crap, Emma said, summing up the general shock everyone was having. So that is the Enemy Home Base then, Michael said, that is going to be a problem. One thing I think we should consider, Ship said, is to try to take out the ships in small numbers if possible. Maybe we could stand a chance if we could take some of them out before we tried to attack the whole base, Ship continued. I agree, Michael said, but we have to find a way to draw them out. What if we attack a few of them and waited for them to send a distress message and waited for the others to investigate, Gordon said.

Yes, but we have to find a place far enough away from the other ships that they would want to defend the first ships but not close enough that they would send them all at once, David said. "Also we only have Ship to attack them with, and that is going to put us at a disadvantage. Ship's offensive capabilities are impressive, but it is only one ship, no offence", Michael said. None taken, I agree, I would have a hard time taking out that many ships alone, Ship said. If we are going to stand a chance we need more ships with offensive weapons, David said. They continued on for a bit more discussing the problem, but finally the meeting broke up and they returned to what they had been doing, with a lot to think about. This news put a damper on the good spirits they had been in after the successful mission.

A few hours later Megan found David in the break room of what was now their headquarters. Thinking about the Enemy Base, she asked. Yeah, we are going to have a hard time with this one, he said. Just getting through those ships will be impossible, let alone the base its self, he continued. Yes, but you will find a way, she said, sitting down next to him on the couch. How can you be so sure, he said. Because you always do, I have faith in you, she said, putting her hand on his knee lightly, searching for a sign that it was ok. Hoping he would not pull away.

He looked into her eyes, the eyes that he found so alluring, and said why? She returned his gaze almost getting lost in the beauty, the richness of color in his eyes, and said, because I care about you, and because you are smart, and talented and... She was cut off as he leaned in and kissed her, she forgot everything she was saying, and returned the kiss passionately.

Their mouths found each other and as if meant to be, they drank from the urgency of the moment, needing the contact and feeling the electric force of their touch. Drawing them in, a force so strong they could not fight it, pulling them together. She had wanted this from the time they had first met, and she was going to enjoy every moment of it. After what seemed like a life time they broke the kiss, and she leaned against him. I have wanted this for so long, she said. Me too he said, as he brought his arm around her and held her close to him. They both enjoyed the felling of closeness, and wished for it to never end. This moment had been building up for some time and the stress of all that they had gone through, was making it even more pronounced.

They may have stayed that way for some time had Ship not seen Emma coming down the corridor toward the break room and jammed the door long enough that the noise caused them to jump apart on the couch. So you really think we should keep this news from the Council, Megan said, regaining her composure and covering their proximity with the allusion of shop talk. Ah, yes I do, David said, the color draining from his face as his mind caught up to what she was trying to do. Oh, hey guys, Emma said as she approached them, didn't think anyone else was in here, stupid door was stuck. Yeah, we were just talking about the enemy base, David said, not sure why he was embarrassed to have Emma catch them kissing. But intuitively knowing it was not how he wanted her to find out about them. If there was a them, he suddenly wasn't sure, and also not sure how he felt about that.

They completed each other so well when they fought together on the practice field or in real combat, it was like they were two halves of the same coin. Emma could never be like that with him, but she was a friend he had since as long as he could remember. When they were working on a technical problem together it was the same way, they flowed together working off each other pushing each other to find new solutions. Being close to Megan like they just were, made him realize that Emma had feelings for him, and he wasn't sure if he had feeling for her too. He needed time to think, to decide how he wanted to proceed.

Ship knew that eventually Emma would have to find out if Megan and David decided to continue with what they had started. However, if she caught them like they were, it would break her heart, and it didn't want that to happen. From everything the combined wisdom of the masters and the vast stores of information available to it from the data web could provide, teenage love was very volatile, and a dangerous thing, which was best approached with caution. Besides Emma had become a close friend to Ship and it didn't want to see her hurt.

#  Things That Go Bump In The Void

TOC

One hundred and fifty years earlier a young man scrambles out of bed and almost falls as he runs down the hall to a meeting that he is late for. Jonas why are you late again, one of the other attendees asked as he loudly enters the room they are all gathered in. Sorry everyone, I have not been sleeping well, he said as he finds his seat. Master Godfrey was just telling us that he feels there is something important about to happen, and he was hoping some of us with pre-cog abilities might assist him in finding out more about it. Yes, of course, Jonas replies, still haunted by the nightmare he woke from. Thank you, Master Jonas, Master Godfrey said, noticing the dark circles under his eyes and the far away stare. So we shall start after lunch then, Master Godfrey, stated to the room at large.

There was only a few of them in the room, being part of a select few who shared the pre-cog gift. After everyone filed out of the room Laura stayed to speak to Jonas. Jonas, I am worried about you, she said. Why do you worry, he asked her. Because you admit you are not sleeping and are always late, and you look terrible, she said, with obvious sadness for her longtime friend. I have been having nightmares that is all, he said, trying to ease her mind. Is there anything I can do to help, she asked. No, I will be fine I just need to meditate and try to settle my thoughts before I go to sleep at night that is all, he said. I hope that is all there is to it, you know if you ever need to talk I am here for you right, she asked him? I know, he said, feeling the warmth of her smile and knowing if she saw the horrible things he saw when he closed his eyes that she would be more than a little concerned for him. She might even think he was going mad, the thought had crossed his mind more than once. I will be fine dear Laura, thank you for your concern, but really I will be fine, he assured her. The fact that he could say it with a straight face was amazing, since the darkness inside him was clawing at his eyes trying to get out to destroyer her and everything else that was good in the world.

She finally got up and left the room. He stayed trying to get the strength to lift himself up to walk out of the room, the darkness that was growing inside him was trying to take over, and it took every ounce of his strength to fight it. "In his head a booming voice screamed, you cannot fight me. I am Mordeck of the Zeal'lee, we have been around since the beginning of time. We were ancient while the first pitiful creatures of your plain were still squirming their way out of the mud. Your kind has been encroaching on our realm, ever since you bipeds first started forming thought, not that you have the mental abilities to really think. Now you have started to take energy from our plain, with some perverse sense of impunity or entitlement. Therefore, I will use you to destroy those that would take from our realm, and when I am done with them. I will enslave the others of your realm and force them to worship me. The keepers of the light with their benevolent stewardship rules will not save you", Mordeck boasted. His words fell like acid burning into Jonas's brain and ripping at his soul. Why had he ever tried to venture into Mordeck's plain, when his astral-self encountered him and he tried to run, he followed him back, and ever since he was trying to push his way in. As they say be careful when you stare into the void because sometimes the void stares back.

As Laura left the room she waited in the hall outside the door to see if he would come out. She wanted to be with him, to comfort him, the man she secretly loved. She was too shy to tell him how she felt. She had hoped that he would notice and tell her how he felt, then she wouldn't have to embarrass herself if he didn't share her feelings. There was a time when she was sure he was going to make a move, but lately he seemed so distant and preoccupied with something. He was clearly not sleeping and she rarely saw him eat. She wished he would just talk to her, tell her what was wrong so she could help. She wanted to be part of his life and she was sure if he just talked to her she could help.

Jonas knew it was only a matter of time before Mordeck had complete control of him. Even now when he tried to tell someone, Mordeck inflicted so much pain on him, and he could not scream out load, only in his mind. A mind which with every passing day was becoming less and less his own. The parts that were still him were shredded tatters of his memories, and that which he held dear, that which he thought to be him. The very fabric of thoughts and memories woven together, of what he identified as himself. The darkness was taking him and he had nothing left to fight it with. "Yes, Jonas I will destroy everything you hold dear, and I will make you watch as I do it. In time there will be little of you left, and when that last spark of self has burned out, I will live on inside this carcass you call a body", Mordeck mocked.

Master Godfrey entered the room, Master Jonas are you still here he asked? Yes, I didn't want to be late again, Jonas said, trying to block out the pain. Did you eat yet, Godfrey asked, with genuine concern for the man he did not know well, but still he considered a friend. I have not thought about it really, Jonas said, honestly he had been in so much torment and pain that he had not thought about eating. I will have one of the apprentices bring you some food, Godfrey said, as he contacted one of the apprentices that had serving duty, and had them bring food. Thank you, Jonas said, as he felt another sharp pain shoot through his body. As soon as Master Laura and Master Thetis arrive we will start, in the mean time you can eat, you do not look well, Godfrey remarked, wondering what might be troubling the man.

A tray of food was brought in and Jonas tried to eat. He managed to choke down a few bites when the others entered the room. Master Godfrey greeted them and directed them to a table at one side of the room. If you are ready Master Jonas, we will start over here, he said, motioning to an empty chair at the table. It took every ounce of his strength, but Jonas managed to stand and walk over to the chair and sit down. When he was seated his forehead was covered in sweat, the others could tell he wasn't well, but they said nothing. Not wanting to offend him and realizing they needed him for this to work. So if he was willing they would not dissuade him.

All right than, said Godfrey, let us begin and he joined hands with Laura and Thetis, as they each reached out a hand to Jonas. Master Godfrey took control of the group guiding them into a pre-cognitive state, searching for the future events that might lead them to the answer to the question of what major event was going to happen that would not only affect them but humanity as well. They all saw it taking shape, a dark figure clouded in a thick dark fog that was clearly evil, they could not see who the figure was, except Jonas he looked into the darkness and saw his own face smiling back at him, only it wasn't him, it was Mordeck. He could feel them pulling back from the darkness, but he was stuck unable to move.

What was that he could hear Laura saying to the group in general, as if she was a thousand miles away from him. I don't know Godfrey was saying, I have only seen the darkness before when I was trying to see the event, never the figure. Could you make out who it was , Thetis was saying, I could only see the figure not the face. They all said the same, Laura was shaking his shoulder, Jonas did you see who it was, she asked? He wanted to scream yes it was me, but all that came out was, no I didn't see anything. Mordeck was stabbing into his brain punishing him for wanting to tell them. Ripping at all of the memories that he held dear, tearing them away or perverting them. I think we have all had enough for now, Godfrey said, obviously shaken from the experience. The others were too, and they left quickly.

They got up to leave, are you coming Jonas, Laura asked? I will be along shortly, he said. Ok, she said, hesitant to leave him, but with no reason to stay in the room that suddenly felt cold and desolate. "You see Jonas, it is inevitable that I will take your body, you saw the future, you saw me staring back at you. Why must you make it so hard on yourself, give in to me and let me end your suffering", Mordeck hissed into his mind. No, I will not give in, Jonas said, knowing it was a lie. He only had so much more he could take before he would give in. You, can lie to yourself, but you cannot lie to me, I will have you, Mordeck said, with confidence and malice in his voice.

Elsewhere in the realm of Zeal'lee. It is only a matter of time before Mordeck of Cortan takes possession of the mortal, Lord Selus, the herald said. I know Emrick, there is nothing we can do, we grow weaker every year while they grow stronger, feasting on the greed and hatred of the human realm and the energy it feeds into our plain. Surly there is something we can do, the herald said, if he is allowed to enter their realm he will bring nothing but death and destruction. "If the mortal lets him in by his own free will, there will be nothing we can do to stop it. He, was foolish to enter our realm in his spirt form without understanding the dangers he faced.

All we can do is help give those that would stand against him inspiration and try to help guide them, until one comes that can stand against him", Lord Selus said. Then you have given up on the mortal then, Emrick asked? "You, said it yourself, it is only a matter of time, he lacks the will power to stand against one as strong as Mordeck. The time of humans is but fleeting, but they have great potential. This one is weak, but others will come that will have the strength of character and the will to stand against this fiend, you must be patient. They are a young species and they are still heavily dependent on technology, they have not fully evolved yet. Their environment is based on the physical manifestation of the universe, and so their perspective of reality is also based on those physical limitations, in order to manipulate their environment they rely on tools, as they evolve their tools move closer to thought based technology. Until they do fully evolve all we can offer them is inspiration and the creative spark to advance their development", Lord Selus said. So you think at some point they will evolve to the level of thought and deed becoming one as we are, Emrick asked? I do not know what path their evolution will take, but as they start to see matter in its basic form their perspective of reality is starting to change, Lord Selus said, whatever path they take we must guide them but not force them as Mordeck and his ilk would do.

From the beginning of time the universe had tried to maintain a balance between all things. Creation and destruction, good and evil. Like the seasons sometimes that balance was cyclical and came in surges. There would be a time were one would seem to overpower the other, or tip the balance too far in one direction. Only to have the other surge back and restore balance. The universe is also vast, and so many plains of existence exist that are unknown to the occupants of other plains of existence. However, everything is connected and has an influence on the other. The realm of Zeal'lee was the astral plain, the place of dream, thought, and emotion all tied together and stitched into the fabric of time and reality. The beings that dwelled there had evolved beyond their physical forms and were more energy than anything else. They had learned long ago the concept of thought and deed, and the connection of one becoming the other without physical force, but the force of will. Their whole realm was made up of the energy created from the different types of energy expelled from our plain of existence.

Their realm was made up of positive and negative energy, and the beings there were drawn to the energy that they were created from. The thought or spark of creation had created their realm at the same time that ours was created. They had existed there for some time, feeding off the energy of creation and the inevitable destruction that exists in nature. However, as we evolved, our thoughts and desires started to bleed into that energy, and shape it into a new form of energy. Or perhaps taint it, would be the better word, bending it to the belief systems that we held to be our reality. As our perceptions of reality evolved and our concepts of right and wrong, good and evil changed, so too did the energy. So too did the beings that fed off that energy and existed within it. The positive and negative forces within their realm were battling to gain control over the shape of their realm and the energy within it, as the universe worked to maintain the balance. Each side was trying to hold sway over the governing factors that would shape the energy. Each side had their own ideas how to best affect the changes in our plain of existence that would by proxy shape theirs. It was a battle that would last until the end of time.

Jonas held on for several more weeks until finally dripping with sweat and tangled in the sheets of his bed, he said, I give in you can have me. Burning pain a feeling of being ripped from his body followed by total darkness. Mordeck, had arrived on the human plain. That morning Jonas appeared for breakfast, something he had not done for some time, he looked much more healthy except a kind of coldness in his eyes. Laura approached him, hi Jonas you look like you are feeling better she said. I am fine he said, with a cold unfeeling voice that she had never heard him use before. Something about his eyes did not look right either, she didn't know why but she didn't feel like she was talking to Jonas. His icy stare made her want to cringe and run away. So she said, Oh, ok well glad to see you are feeling better and excused herself and walked away from him, it was all she could do not to run. Later that day she spoke to Godfrey about it, he just doesn't seem like himself she said, trying to convey to him the importance of the situation. Be honest, he has not seemed like himself for some time now, Godfrey said. This is different, not like before, he seems cold and he makes my skin crawl being around him, she said. Godfrey promised to talk to him.

Several days later she approached him again, have you spoken to him yet, she asked? She had not gone near Jonas since the first day. No, I am sorry Laura I just have not had time, I have been helping Master Daniel with the new implant augmentation, we have finely got it ready to be tested, he said. I know it is important, but I really wish you would find the time to talk to him, she said. He has something going on with him and it could be important, she pleaded. I will try as soon as we get all the implants ready for the Circle of Masters, he said. She thanked him, and left him to his work. Shortly after she left Master Daniel came to see Master Godfrey. Is all the implant Nano-Augmentations ready for the meeting tonight, Master Godfrey asked? "Yes, they are all prepared, fifty cups of the liquid for the fifty Master level Faction members. After we have tested it, the apprentices will be given the augmentation as well. Are you sure we should be adding the offensive weapons to the default spells", Master Daniel asked. Yes, I have seen the darkness that is coming, it is an ancient evil that we will have to battle, defensive tactics will not be enough, Master Godfrey said.

How are the phase two augmentations coming, Master Godfrey asked? "You mean the AI and the identity cloaking software? The AI should be ready within a month or two, the identity cloaking software will take a little longer. We have one of our embedded operatives working on it. She is not gifted but her brother is and she was instrumental in helping him escape the government and find us", Master Daniel said. Good, so by the time we have finished testing the gifted augmentations those changes should be ready to be added so everyone will get them at the same time, Godfrey said. Yes, she has been testing the software independently so it will not require further testing on our part, it can be integrated simply by adding it to the existing nano programming, Master Daniel said. Very good, the sooner we can travel freely throughout the Alliance the easier it will be for us to help the gifted escape the government, Master Godfrey said. Ok, well I must go make final preparations before the meeting, Master Daniel said, as he started to leave the room. Yes, thank you and let me know if you need any help with the meeting room, Master Godfrey said.

Later that night the entire Master level group came together in their meeting hall. Only a few years earlier they would not dare gather together, but since they had been able to disable the tracking part of the implant it made them invisible to the Alliance. As long as they stayed on the hidden compound and did not try to go through any checkpoints they were safe. Tonight was a special night, years of research and development had come together and they were finally going to augment the implant to work in their favor. It was going to help them control and even augment their powers. The original founding members of the faction got up and spoke and then as Master Godfrey was finishing up his speech the nano-agent was distributed to the group. Everyone took it at the same time. Food was served and they all continued with their meeting until the first changes started to take place. They all experimented with the augmentation and finally the meeting was adjourned so everyone could take some time to try out all the augmentation had to offer.

Mordeck, did not need the augmentation, he had more than enough experience using the telekinetic energy from his realm, but he had been frustrated by his vessels limitations in channeling it into this realm. Also he now saw the potential of recruiting minions from these feeble human amateurs, at least with the augmentations they could now control their powers better. He would find likeminded or easily manipulated people to use to further his plans. He already had two in mind and now that he could show more of his powers and attribute it to the augmentation he could win them over.

The next morning he set about recruiting some of the apprentices that he was supposed to be teaching. Once he had a few of them he would start on some of the Masters. He knew how to speak to their greed, he had witnessed it since the first humans walked out of the jungles and he knew how to sway the most greedy among them. The promise of power and control over others were always great motivators. Make them feel elite and above other people and soon you could justify other people being put here to serve their needs. The poisonous words dripped out of his lips like honey. He was a master manipulator and could tell within the first few minutes of a conversation if the person would be receptive to his ideas or not. Within a few weeks he had twenty five loyal followers. He was growing inpatient though, and wanted to take over control of the entire group. His arrogance told him he could not fail against these lowly humans. The weekly meeting was coming up and he had decided he would force a vote. He was certain that with the twelve Masters he already had and his powers of persuasion he could force a vote and take control of the group, if not he had already armed his followers with weapons and they would attack the other Masters if it did not go his way.

Master Godfrey had not forgotten his promise to Laura and a few days after the night of the augmentation, he caught up to Jonas. After only a short conversation with him he was certain that Laura might be right about him, so he broke off the conversation and left to go find her. He found her alone in one of the meditation rooms. I talked to Master Jonas as you requested, and I am afraid I agree with you, he is defiantly not himself, Master Godfrey told her, as he sat down across from her. What was he doing prior to you noticing the change in him, he asked. Well prior to him starting to look sickly he was experimenting with Astral-projection, she said. "I was afraid you were going to say that, I have read books on the occult that talk of beings that exist on the Astral plain that can follow you back and exert control over a person in this plain. Based on the feeling I felt when I was around him just now, I would say that he is under the influence of one of these beings, and I would say the being is evil due to the dark aura I sensed around him. We have to find a way to help him break free from its influence.

In the mean time I will have someone keep an eye on him, until we can find a way to help him", Master Godfrey said. He got up and left, he felt bad not telling her that based on what he read, depending on the being it was almost impossible to free the individual if the being had taken complete hold. There was certainly no way that still was practiced in modern times. The catholic church had done some exorcisms in the past, but based on his reading it only worked with the lessor beings and even then it was more luck, than anything else. Also blind faith in the church had played a role as well, since a lot of the issue had to do with will power and those who had faith believed the church could help them so had the will to help themselves. In the new age it would be almost impossible to think Jonas had that kind of faith in the church. They had really lost a lot of credibility over the last few years.

More than likely the only way to free him was to kill him. Master Godfrey was not going to kill a fellow Master unless he had no choice, so he had people watch and report back to him. Over the next few weeks he received word of the buildup of followers and using his powers had managed to probe the minds of some of the apprentices. It was worse than he had feared the entity that was controlling Jonas was going to try to take over the group. Luckily as the time for the meeting drew near they had a good idea who was with him and a general idea of what they were planning. Those that could be trusted began training in secret with the shields and attack techniques available to them through the augmentation, roughly thirty masters and several of their apprentices were ready to defend the group if need be. They hoped that force would not be needed but they were ready if it came to that. The Masters would use the shields and offensive measures they had trained with. The apprentices would use weapons, and would wait outside the meeting room to defend everyone that was not attacking the group.

The time for the meeting approached both groups made preparations. Luckily only one group knew the other one was planning something. The Masters entered the meeting hall, as the rogue members filed in, a loyal member took up a position near them. They were unaware of the scrutiny, since in his arrogance Mordick assumed the humans had no idea of his plans and did not even consider them as a threat. Outside the meeting hall the apprentices that were waiting for his order to attack, grouped together just outside one of the side entrances. One of the apprentices loyal to Godfrey and the group had seen enough movies to know he should take up a position above them with some cover, so he could shoot them with the machinegun he had if need be, he also convinced one of his friends to do the same.

The meeting started all the old business was discussed, Mordeck/Jonas was visibly agitated as he waited for the opportunity to speak. Is there any new business the speaker said. Yes, I have some, Jonas said, standing. I think we should be using our gifts to control the lowly norms of this world he said, we can accumulate a great deal of wealth and power if we only use our abilities to achieve it he said. All of his followers agreed with a "hear, hear" or "yes he is right". Even some of the Masters that were not part of either group agreed. Godfrey waited for him to stop talking since he was busy basking in the praise of the crowd. Yes, obviously we could abuse our powers that way, but how does that make us any different than the government that we are hiding from, he asked? Most of the people that were not part of the rogue group said he was right, and felt guilty about agreeing with Jonas. Then what, would you have us hide in this compound forever, afraid to leave the gate and shut away from the outside world, Jonas asked.

More agreement mostly just his followers. No, we are working on ways that we will be able to travel freely, answered Godfrey. Oh, and what are these great and mighty plans, Jonas mocked. I am not at liberty to say right now, Godfrey answered, it was a calculated risk, but he could not let Jonas know of the phase two plans. Oh, and do we now have secrets from each other, I thought we were all equals, is that not the case, Jonas asked sarcastically. We are equals, Godfrey said, but the people working on this, do so at great personal risk. It is for them that I cannot reveal anything further, he continued. So now we can't be trusted, is that what you are saying, Jonas said. It is not a question of trust, a secret is harder to keep, with the more people that know it, Godfrey said.

Who is it that decides who needs to know this secret then Master Godfrey you, Jonas asked, with obvious contempt and sarcasm. In this case yes, since I am responsible for the lives of those who share it, Godfrey answered. Well, I for one will not be controlled, Jonas roared, he was growing impatient with this conversation so he used the signal word. At once the twelve members stood up and prepared to attack the masters in the room. As soon as Jonas had stood up Godfrey and the loyal members of the group prepared to be attacked, they raised shields and so the energy balls and other attacks that the twelve used, hit their shields. Those not in the fight dove for cover and most escaped with minor injuries before they raised their shields. Laura did something very stupid, she ran at Jonas screaming, "fight it Jonas, fight it". Jonas merely hit her point blank with a white phosphorous ball, she fell to the floor in a burning heap. It distracted him enough for one of the other masters to attack him with his own white phosphorous ball, it caught him in the arm before he could raise shields. The pain of his arm burning off kept him off balance enough to give the loyalists a chance.

As soon as the first blasts started flying the two groups of apprentices outside started to take action. The loyalist group started entering the hall from the rear of the building, the rogue group started to head for the side entrance, the two loyalists on the roof opened fire on them killing nine and wounding several others. They turned around and fled, not having the stomach for death from above. Inside several of the rogue masters were under attack from the loyal masters and the loyal apprentices firing on them with weapons. Two were down and most were injured not having the sense to raise their shields before they starting firing on the others. They now were trapped behind their shields taking fire from all sides. Mordeck/Jonas however, was attacking innocents and loyalists alike, but he realized he was hopelessly out numbered and decided it was time to escape. He hit the far wall and ten apprentices, with two huge explosive balls that blew out that side of the building. Then he sent a wave of blasts out toward the group, and started making his way to the hole in the wall, stepping over the dead as he made his escape. His followers ran after him, the defenders only managed to get one before they were out of the building and a wall of carbon blocked off the hole.

The rogue group of nine masters and Jonas made it off the compound before the others could get out of the building to follow them. The building was on fire and those that could walk were trying to get those that couldn't out of the building. In the end twenty were killed, two loyalist masters, the rest innocents and apprentices. Of the rogues three masters were dead and thirteen apprentices, four of them in their cells after they were captured and imprisoned. They died of the wounds sustained in the gun fight at the door to meeting hall, as one sided as it turned out to be. It was by the insight of the apprentice that they did not have a chance to attack the masters in the hall, it would have been so much worse had they had the chance.

After the Delta Faction found a new base they went back to completing the augmentation of the implant. With the setbacks from the attack, it took an extra month but they were soon able to implement phase two and had an identity cloaking component that allowed them to travel throughout the Alliance without being detected. Phase two also included the harmonic shield that caused people to overt their eyes and not see them. For years they did not hear anything of the rogue members of their Faction, during that time their numbers grew and they had a lot more operatives working with them from within the Alliance government, Academia, and industry.

With the percentage of gifted people presenting much higher in families where both parents were highly intelligent, it meant that those people if not gifted themselves, had a higher chance of a close family member being gifted. With the government's handling of such individuals being less than subtle, it made a lot more of them sympathetic to Delta Factions cause. Especially, when most of the time when they first heard of Delta Faction was when they were rescuing one of those close family members from being kidnapped by the government.

It was because of this growing number of scientists and researchers that phase three of the augmentation came about. One of the researchers redesigned the interface to the augmentation enhancing the AI component to help bring new members up to speed quickly, since their first exposure to the necessity of needing the augmentation was usually when they were fleeing for their lives, he thought it would be better to have a dedicated teacher that could adapt to what they needed to learn and how best to teach them. Another researcher designed the invisibility cloaking shield, using a new twist on the meta material shielding the government had been developing for years. When he shared the idea with the group of researchers that were working on the augmentation upgrade, one of the members of the team came up with the idea of the augmentation to the visual cortex and scanning all of the light spectrum, they tied it into the new interface and created the early warning system that deployed protective shields at the first sign of a threat.

Another researcher that had been working on teleportation using photons and quantum mechanics, joined the cause when his younger brother presented as gifted. He discovered a bunch of research that had been conducted in the middle of the twentieth century in regard to using telekinetic powers for teleportation. He joined the team and was able to create a portal device that could teleport inanimate objects through time and space.

All the new updates all came together to create the first early prototype of the Merlin. It really improved the way the gifted could use their powers and gave them a fighting chance against the government that was hunting them. It also gave the researchers opportunities to experiment with telekinetic energy and gave rise to the use of terms like spells and magic. This was primarily because they all had healthy geek like tendencies, and they could not resist, when confronted with the very things they had read books about and watched fantasy movies about. The augmentation was updated several times based on their continuing research and had more functionality added to it, including several enhancements to the shields and offensive weapons. The cloaking technology was also improved upon over the years, to help keep the operatives hidden during missions.

A few years after the release of phase three Delta Faction started hearing rumors of another group of seemingly gifted people attacking the government and civilians. Part of the rumors indicated that the group was recruiting the highly gifted and killing those that were not. After an encounter where a person that Delta Faction was trying to help escape from the government, was attacked by a member of the other group along with the Delta Agent helping him, they realized that it was the members of their Faction that had splintered off so many years earlier.

Realizing that they were at least partly responsible for the problem, because of giving the splinter group the augmentation, Delta Faction decided to help the government in stopping what was now being called Gamma Faction. Of course because of their own precarious relationship with the government that aid had to be covert. They used their ties within the government to help track and fight the Gamma Faction threat wherever they could, and aided the security forces in fighting them as well through augmentations that helped them resist mind reading. They also helped conduct covert operations against Gamma Faction. Their own augmentations were also modified to include the possibility of attack from a gifted and augmented attacker. They even started work on augmentations for their non-gifted operatives to help protect them from the other Faction.

Godfrey never told anyone that Jonas was being controlled by a being from another realm, he didn't want them to fear him anymore than they already did. Throughout the rest of his life he made it his mission to stop Gamma Faction. Not only for the atrocities they committed, but also to try and destroy the creature that had taken Jonas and kill the women that loved him so much that she willingly gave her life trying to help him break free. In his mind what made it worse still, was because somehow he knew that Jonas was forced to watch as the creature destroyed her. He now had no reservations in killing Jonas to destroy the creature, because he knew that Jonas was in misery living with the actions of that day, and all of the atrocities ever since.

# The Basher

TOC

It was a few hours after their meeting to discuss the Enemy Base which they were now calling the Dark Planet. Gordon reached out to Ship. Ship I have a question for you, he said. Yes, Gordon what is it, Ship responded. Well, I was wondering when you use your torpedoes does it take a great deal of telekinetic energy, he asked? It does, but most of that is supplied by the generators you and your team designed, Ship replied. So if we designed a ship with an interface to allow the use of your torpedoes, it wouldn't take someone of David's strength to supply the energy for it, Gordon asked? No, I think even a norm in a 4.0 suit could do it, no offence by the way, Ship replied. No, worries, Gordon said, I was thinking we could make modifications to the Javelin design and make a ship specifically designed to attack multiple ships with your torpedoes. That could easily be done, hold on let me bring David and Emma into our virtual conference room, Ship said, as it reached out to both of them.

Hello, everyone, Ship said, as they were all now sitting in the conference room. Gordon had an idea that I thought we should discuss and we can bring others in if we need to, Ship said. Ok, I was just telling Ship I would like to make modifications to the Javelin design to create a ship that could attack multiple ships with the torpedoes that Ship uses. Ok, that sounds good, does it have to be bigger than a Javelin or does it matter, Emma asked? I don't think it has to be that much bigger than a Javelin though it will need a pretty good sized surface area for the generators, Ship said. Plus, we will need room for all the targeting and tracking equipment, David added. About that, I think we should have a dedicated pilot and one or two people manning the weapons systems, Ship said. We could remove the cargo bay and make that the weapons control center, Emma said. Yes, actually I think it might be better to have four people on the weapons systems, David said, they have a lot more ships than we do. "If we have each person responsible for the four points of the compass around the ship, and have them cover the region on that side of the ship it might be better. Also it will give the ship more power to draw from", he concluded.

Yes that would work, we should have a copilot as well, since they will have to maneuver the ship and provide power to the propulsion systems, Ship said. I am thinking we are going to want to make this thing quick and agile, but tough as hell, Gordon said. Yeah, it will need some big engines because it is going to be carrying a lot of weight with the generators required to provide an interface for four weapons systems, Ship said. Yeah, plus I think it needs a smaller weapon on the front and back that can provide a distraction well it sets up the torpedoes, Emma added. This thing is going to be a tank, Gordon said, thinking of a big clunky ship. Remember all of the weapons are just interfaces so it doesn't have to look like a tank even though it will be one, Ship pointed out. I think we could make the two small guns robotic, use the optics of a robot with extra sensors on a swivel mounted on the front and back, David said, as the thoughts started to come together in his head. Yes, I think a dome shaped sensor array would work on the top and bottom for the main weapons system as well, Ship added.

The design started to take shape in the virtual hologram display. A long sleek nose in the shape of an arrowhead with four huge engines on the back and a bubble in the middle. Yes, I like that, Gordon said, as he explored the design. Emma, can you work with ship to adapt our interface into a weapons system setup to attack ships, David asked. Sure, we are already collaborating on that, she informed him, as the details of the interface started to fall together. The design started coming together as well, and finally they looked at what they had created. They had a few more tweaks here and there but for the most part it was what they all had envisioned as soon as they started talking about the ship.

So soon after the situation with Megan and Emma, David couldn't help but think about his feelings for both of them. On the one hand this was when it was at its best with Emma, when they were bouncing ideas off each other. He would not want to lose that bound that they had. On the other hand, he wasn't sure he had romantic feelings toward her. He had always thought of her as one of the guys. Even now as he looked at her and saw how beautiful she was he wasn't sure if he could ever see her in any other way, or if he wanted to. Megan was another story, now that they had kissed he could not stop thinking about her in that way. He was brought back to the moment at hand, as ship announced that the design was done and ready for final review. They all liked what they saw, it seemed to be ready.

Basher Conceptual Design

What do you think are we ready to build the first one, David asked. Yes, I think we are, it will be in the hanger bay by the time you get down here, Ship said. They each left their building to head down to the hanger. How cool is it that in less than two hours we can build a ship, Gordon said. Well, most of everything we used we already had in a slightly different configuration, so it was easier, David said. People were standing around looking at the large square box that had appeared in the hanger bay. I thought it would be better not to have people see it, Ship explained as they approached. A door appeared in the box as they got closer, and they stepped inside. The ship looked exactly like the rendering, so they entered through the rear hatch, there was another on the side for spaceport docking. There were four comfortable seats in the back in a circle facing each other and two in the front with the controls.

Shall we take it up, Gordon asked, he and Emma had both learned to fly the Javelins in case they were needed on a mission. Sure David said, as he took one of the weapons systems chairs and Emma took the copilot seat. The front side of the box disappeared since the ship was now cloaked, and the hanger door opened. They taxied out to the area in front of the hanger and took off. The box disappeared completely after they left the hanger, everyone went back to what they were doing. The ship was fast they were in space in seconds and flying around the moon a moment latter.

Flight systems check out, Gordon said, let's go out to the asteroid belt and test the weapons systems, Emma said. They flew toward the asteroid belt and David designated six large asteroids, in seconds they were hit by the double attack of two torpedoes each. Well, that sure works he said. They returned to the base, still cloaked, and taxied to the restricted runway entrance were the Javelins entered the restricted area from. They contacted the guards and gave them the authentication code to enter the gate. The guard was surprised since the outline of the ship looked different than the javelin he was expecting on the security screen that checked for cloaked objects.

They parked it just off the training field were some of the Javelins were parked. Well, that's not a Javelin, Megan said, as they got out of the back hatch. Yeah, we designed a ship to attack the Gamma ships, David said, in way of an explanation. Really, and when did all this happen, she asked? Oh, about four hours ago, David said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. We just got done testing it, it will do the job, Gordon confirmed. Ok, so what's the plan then, she said, rolling with the situation, and watching David to try and get a clue to how he was feeling after their kiss. She had given up on being surprised when they did stuff like this, it was just who they were, but she was feeling vulnerable about the kiss and what it meant for their relationship going forward. Not sure yet, thought we would all get together and discuss it, David said. Not giving her any hint to what he was feeling to her frustration, she was slightly hurt thinking it didn't mean as much to him as it did to her.

A few minutes later the Team that was now called Red One, plus Joan and Ship were in the virtual conference room. Ok, we now have a ship that can attack multiple ships and only needs a crew of six, two pilots plus four weapons operators, David said. In a pinch we could do it with three, maybe two, Ship added. It only took ship about a half an hour to build one as well, Emma added. Ok, so how do we use it, we need to find a way to draw them away from the base, Michael said. "Well, chatter is starting to pick up they have discovered the destruction on the Saturn moon as we hoped they would. Also I think they are trying to contact the Mars bases", Ship said. What if we sent the ship out there to the mining station base and waited for them to send a ship out to investigate, then we take out that ship and the one that comes after that one, David said. Pretty soon they would start sending more ships at a time, Michael said, following his train of thought. By then we could even have more ships built and standing by to take them out, Gordon interjected.

The only problem will be staffing the ships, Michael said. Not really Dad, David said, the interface is almost exactly the same as the suit interface so the RT guys could learn it really quick, and we have ten Javelin pilots including Jully and Derick that could fly the ship, plus our team. I think we should be on standby, in Ship just in case they need a little help Michael said. By the way what are we going to call the new ships, Emma asked. I was thinking the Basher, Gordon said. Sounds good to me, David said. Yeah, that will work Michael agreed. Anybody else have a problem with it, Michael asked, they seemed to agree. Ship sent the constructs to the manufacturing facility and ten new Bashers started being built. What ship didn't tell them was it had designed two of the telekinetic coils connected to the fusion generator under the domes on each side of the ship, so it had the added strength of roughly three grand masters to help keep the batteries charged.

The first Basher took off for the ambush point about two hours later, it was so fast it could fly about six times faster than Ship. Jully had been chosen as the first Basher pilot and she was proud to be the first one. The Basher flew about the same as a Javelin but much faster. The Basher entered the area around the destroyed base well before the first ship showed up to check out the situation. They jammed their communications and dispatched them easily. A few hours later another ship showed up, and they destroyed it as well. Ship monitored the surveillance of the Enemy Base and it saw they were getting ready to launch a fleet of ten ships. It would take them a day to get to the location, from the enemy base, so they had a little time.

They had two new Bashers ready with crews, so they sent them to be on standby a few thousand miles away from the area. They could close the gap quickly if needed, but they wanted to test the ships capabilities against multiple ships. David had handled six targets at once by himself and they had four crew members manning the weapons systems, so they should have no problem with ten ships. The next day the ships showed up, five were cloaked and five were not. Ship informed the crew that the non-cloaked ships were also from the enemy base and should be considered hostile, so they took them all out. The weapons system performed better than expected and the battle was over in a few minutes. If it could be called a battle, the enemy ships didn't even have time to react before they were destroyed. Even if they did have time to react they had no way to target the ship, because the missiles appeared out of nowhere, near their ship so there was no way to track the trajectory.

It was the moment of truth, they had destroyed twelve of the enemy ships, would they send more or would they be smart and stay away. The three ships sat around waiting to see what would come next, luckily they built a head into the design, and the suits kept them clean, or it could have been a bad situation onboard. Ship monitored the surveillance, it had mixed emotions when it saw they were sending one of the large ships and fifteen smaller ships to the area. Three of the Bashers should be able to handle it, but they decided to head that way with the rest of the team, and two Bashers and two Javelins in the hold. They had used Bravo Squad as the crew members of the Bashers and that left Alpha Squad intact and part of Bravo Squad available for the other two Bashers if needed, and as support for Alpha Squad should they need it as well.

About the same time that the Enemy ships were passing through the Saturn Region, Ship was stopping a few thousand miles away to wait in a supporting role. They were not sure of the capabilities of the larger ship so they wanted to hold back just in case it was able to pick them up somehow.

The next day the Enemy ships entered the area. The Bashers jammed their communications, but did not attack right away. One of the small ships broke away and started to head down to the destroyed base. Before they even made it halfway there, Jully's Basher targeted it and five others on that side of the larger ship. The other ships seemed to be on the alert, but did not have a clue where the attacks came from. They fired randomly in the general direction the ships had been destroyed in. The other Bashers engaged the remaining ships, one of the crew members of a Basher sent four torpedoes into the larger ship two into the command and control and two into the reactor. All that was left of the command and control was a large gaping hole in the ship and then its reactor exploded, and huge chunks of the ship hit the other ships around it, even as they were getting the same treatment from the other crew members. The result was total destruction and mass chaos and death, for the crews of the enemy ships. They had no idea where the attacks were coming from and had no defense against the attack.

Some small attack ships managed to get away from the big ship before the reactor exploded. The small attack weapons on Basher One (Jully's ship) and the other Bashers made short work of them. They used a version of the exploding shard except four at a time would hit the cockpit and turn into five inch explosive balls. The oxygen rich cockpit provided a perfect environment for the explosive charge, the blast could only be seen inside the cockpit which was vaporized from the explosion. The battle was over within a few minutes. They had won an easy victory, the new ships were a great success.

The area around the base became a ship graveyard, the Bashers had to pull away further, it was too dangerous with all the debris floating around. The great thing about the torpedoes was they turned the oxygen inside the ships into a five thousand degree firestorm and then followed it with a huge concussive force, so anyone onboard the ships would be blown into little fried chunks that would freeze in the vacuum of space so they could not be read. The Enemy would never know what happened to their ships they would just find the pieces floating in space. But for now they would wait and see what they did next. There were at least forty more ships left at the dark planet. If the ships did not come to them, they would have to go after them.

So for now all they could do was wait, for Jully and her crew that was the toughest part of the job, flying the Bashers was easy they maneuvered really well, so it was not hard to fly them. The targeting systems were very close to the interface the suit used, and was tied into the suit, so they could designate targets and see the battle unfold just like when they were fighting in the suit. In that sense the ship had become an extension of them, almost like a giant suit, except they shared targets. Even though they were divided by regions around the ship there was still some overlap.

The interface handled that by updating the screens as soon as a target was designated by one of the crew members, and would not let them designate one that had been assigned, it would automatically jump to the next available target. The network functioned across multiple ships so they always knew where the other ships where and what targets where available for attack. So even though there were multiple ships involved with multiple crew members targeting the enemy and sharing the same target pool, they functioned seamlessly and very efficiently.

Two days went by and still nothing happened, then Ship saw they were sending more ships twenty five this time including another big one. They tracked their progress and as they got closer, they sent out the other two bashers to join the others. There would be five Bashers against the enemy ships, with Ship on standby. As the ships got closer they stopped on the other side of the debris field, Ship jammed their communications with the drones it had attached to the ships while they were at the Enemy base, so they couldn't tell their base what they saw.

The Enemy Ships started firing their weapons into the debris field, they must have thought the ships that attacked their other ships, were hiding in the debris. The Bashers setup their attack they were out of range of the weapons the enemy was using since they had taken up positions on the other side of the debris field. The first ship to go was the big one, four torpedoes slammed into it, a split second latter the rest of the ships were hit each receiving two torpedoes. The results were devastating the large ship ripped apart just before the small ships did the same, the attack ships did not even get a chance to launch this time. They were consumed in the fireball inside the ship just before the explosives ripped the hull apart, there was nothing that could survive the devastation.

The torpedoes were a nasty spell Ship had developed, the large projectiles slammed into the hull with enough kinetic energy to push the two-foot by four-foot carbon shard through any hull. After the shards passed through the hull they turned to white phosphorous softening the area around the hull breach, next a two-foot in diameter white phosphorous ball with an explosive ball inside slammed through the hole. The explosive went off showering everything within range with white phosphorous burning everything within the oxygen rich environment at 5000 degrees Fahrenheit, right behind that two more explosive balls two-foot in diameter slammed through the hole, the concussive force of the explosion would burst the hull wide open like an egg in a microwave. By targeting the reactor area of the ships it caused the rector to explode as well increasing the devastation.

They had destroyed a significant portion of the enemy ships, they were pretty confident that they would not be sending anymore for a while. They decided to leave a ship on patrol and the rest would head home. Jully and her crew would be heading home, they could use the rest and a nice shower, the suits took care of all the bacteria and kept the body clean, but it was still nice to take a shower. One of the Bashers that had been on the Marauder would stay on patrol and the rest would head home with Ship and the team. They would fly three day missions patrolling the area around the ship grave yard, and any targets of opportunity that might come up along the way. The Bashers flew so fast that they could cover the distance between home base and the ambush site in a few hours. The biggest thing they had to worry about was boredom, since the Enemy had finally gotten smart and stopped sending ships.

Sharing the patrol duties helped with that. So it was only a three day mission every few days. They had time for a rest in between. Jully put hers to good use, her and her sister spent some time together since they didn't see each other as much as they had when she was flying the Javelins to and from the Marauder. It was one of the draw backs of being a Basher pilot for Jully, but she wouldn't give it up for the world, when she was flying a Basher she was right in the middle of the action instead of being a glorified taxi service for the teams. She was loving being a Basher pilot and she felt like she was making a difference and getting a little pay back for her parents.

With the Bashers on patrol and Ship monitoring the surveillance feeds from the Dark Planet the team finally had an opportunity to rest. They restructured the pilot training and divided the secondary training between Javelin and Basher training, no one outside of the Team knew of the Bashers. They changed the team training program to have a section that trained recruits to be crew members of the Bashers. In the interest of time they pulled all the recruits out of Bravo Squad and stripped it down to just the leadership. They then recruited more candidates, since they still had a fairly large list to choose from. With all that done all they could do was wait and get some well needed RR. For the first time in a long time they had some time to take a moment for themselves. Not surprisingly they spent it together, at David's apartment. The only rule was no shop talk, they were going to take a few days off, before they went back to the fight.

During that time Megan managed to get David alone in a place that she was sure they would not be disturbed in, and asked him how he felt about the kiss and them. He was honest with her and told her he had been thinking about it a lot, and he definitely liked it, but he was still trying to find out how he felt about them as a couple. He explained he didn't want to lose what they had as friends and didn't want to hurt the team. He even told her about his realization that Emma was interested in him as well.

Megan's reaction was pretty diplomatic considering, so you finally figured that out did yah, she said acidly, feeling like she was getting the brush off. So what about my feelings do they matter, she said, feeling hurt and betrayed. Of course they do, he said, suddenly realizing she was getting upset. He reached out to her and she pulled away. He closed the distance between them and gently held her head in his hands trying to get her to raise her eyes to his, she was crying now.

Look all I am saying is I am scared to lose what we already have, I am not saying that I don't want to try and see what we might have together, he said, hoping they were the right words to get her to look at him. She slowly raised her eyes to his, do you mean that, she asked, praying he did and afraid that he was going to hurt her again. Yes, I mean that, he said, kissing the tears on her cheeks. You know, I am scared too, and I don't want to lose what we have either, she said, starting to respond to his tender kisses. Let's just take it slow, he said, and I don't want to hurt Emma, so can we try to keep it between us until we can break it to her. Yes, I understand I don't want to hurt her either, I know how that feels, my heart almost broke when I thought you were choosing her over me, Megan admitted. I know it is going to hurt her, I just hope I can find a way to do it gently I don't want to lose her friendship either, David said.

Megan was having mixed emotions about what had just happened, on the one hand her heart was soaring, but on the other she was feeling bad for Emma, they had become friends and she really didn't want to hurt her feelings. She wasn't looking forward to the time when they finally told her about them. She really liked the thought of her and David being a them. She pushed up on her tippy toes and kissed him, he returned the kiss and they held each other and kissed and generally just enjoyed the feeling of being together.

Several weeks went by and there was no sign of enemy activity, even the safe houses had gone quite. The Basher patrols became routine and more recruits were trained. Bravo Squad was back up to full strength and they had eight Bashers in the rotation with two always on standby with the crews on alert should the need arise. The council was still not aware of the Basher program or the Dark Planet. They explained the extra patrols of ships that flew cloaked out of the hanger as a new Javelin prototype that they wanted to keep need to know. The council did not question it they had stepped back and let them do their thing shortly after the first tour of the facilities.

They were running more Javelin missions as well, with all the surveillance in place ship was finding more gifted and they were able to rescue them and bring them back to other Delta bases. Gamma Faction had even stopped trying to find the gifted, as far as they could tell. It was like they had stopped all operations all together, and were waiting for something.

Finally the surveillance showed that a small fleet of ships were leaving the Planet and heading deeper into space, then they docked with a large structure. It seemed to be a builder ship that had been converted to a battle platform. There were several guns and three decks of the small attack ships. The entire thing could travel through space and would be very hard to withstand as a base of operations against even the Alliances defenses. Ship gathered intel and found out the structure was meant to attack Earth. It was what they had been trying to destroy the defense grid for. Once the grid was down they would punch through with this ship and attack the planet. This was the end game, and now Ship knew what it was, they would have to stop it.

Ship contacted the Team and they came together in the virtual meeting room. Ship showed them the surveillance information and told them the target was Earth. They made plans for an attack on the battle platform. They were going to have to be very careful, the Enemy must know that they are watching so there was a good chance this was a trap meant to draw them out and allow the Enemy to takeout the threat to their ships.

# The Promotion

TOC

Larkin Kim looked up into the hole in the ceiling that let light into the dark room, it also let the rancid water drop down on him from above, he positioned his mouth so he could capture some of the water, it was all he got to drink while in this room. Agent Kim had a Korean sir-name but like most of humanity was a mix of many different races, though his features were primarily Asian, with black hair and dark brown eyes. His eyes were almost completely swollen shut right now, he was battered and bruised. His arms were held out to the sides by the chains around his wrists. He had been left like this for two days now, he knew that on the third day the Master would come to talk to him. He remembered the day he stepped off his ship, after being summoned back to base. He was brought before the Master and told he had been promoted. At first he was happy, but then the Master told him with his promotion came the responsibility for the failure of the Saturn Region. He was dragged from the room and beaten then imprisoned. The next day the questioning started, they dragged him from his cell, they chained him up in the room and whipped him severally, he passed out from the pain. When he came to, he was hanging from the chains in the dark. They left him there for three days and finally the Master came with the man to torture him. He asked him how he could lose all the troops and ships given to him to take over the space station. He said he didn't know, they electrocuted him and pulled out some of his finger nails, then asked again. The torture went on for an hour, until he passed out. They splashed cold water on him, and started over. Finally after, four hours he admitted it was all his fault. So you admit it was all your fault, but you still cannot tell me how they managed to destroy all of the troops, the Master asked. Yes, Master, he begged, I don't know please have mercy on me. The Master left the room and he was left there for another day, before they took him down and threw him back in his cell.

Two days later they started over again, this time he was asked how they managed to kill all the Agents in the safe houses in the Saturn Region. The Master was convinced that he had leaked the information to Delta Faction, or somehow let them get a hold of it through his stupidity. He was also told that even though he was not involved with the operation on Titan, he was responsible for it, since he had been promoted. The cycle continued as the weeks passed by, always the same questions how could he fail and how were they finding their operatives. He didn't have the answers but that never mattered.

Toreg the torturer, had served the Master for years, he was not gifted, his father had been one of the original members of Gamma Faction, his mother was one of the concubines they had serving them, she was killed shortly after he was born. As a child he watched his father torture prisoners for the Master and when his father died he took over as the torturer. As part of his job he had to ignore the foul smell of the Master as all those that were in his inner circle did. He also knew that most of the prisoners did not have information to impart to the Master it was just a punishment for failing him in some way. He did not dare question his Masters intentions, else he be the one receiving the torture. Instead he happily inflicted pain on those the Master decided needed it. Even the guards knew not to question what was asked of them, they did as they were told and just tried not to make eye contact with the Master or the torturer. Like so many that severed the Gamma Faction they did what they were told without question. Toreg had grown to enjoy it almost as much as his Master, but no one could ever enjoy it that much. Still it was why the guards feared him, they knew the slightest perceived insult or failure to perform their duty would put them in Toreg's hands and that was a place that no one wanted to be.

His Master encouraged him to come up with new and innovative ways to create pain that would drag the torture out for months. Each session would get progressively worse and inflict more and more pain, at a certain point the person being tortured would start losing body parts starting with the extremities. That was a long way away for Agent Kim though, he still had so much more to endure before they got to that point.

Agent Kim realized that during the last several weeks the questions seemed to be about their ships, what kind and how many they had. Of course he didn't know the answers, it didn't matter he was being punished for the failures anyway. So now he stood in the dark room again waiting to be questioned, and knowing he didn't have the answers, he just wanted an end to the suffering. He knew that the end was far away for him, they would keep him barely alive for months and continue torturing him. At this point he excepted blame for everything, if they accused him of breathing too much he would except blame for it, and beg for forgiveness. Mordeck, knew that Agent Kim had no useful intel to impart to him, he was just enjoying torturing him. It helped the time pass in this disgusting place they called a plain of existence. He was trapped here, having taken over the vessel of Jonas he could not return to his realm. The only way he could go back was to be killed and he could not kill the vessel by his own word or deed. If he tried to kill himself or ordered someone to do it, he would be stuck with the damage done to its body, but would still be stuck here.

He was trapped in the rotting flesh of his host, it was a measure put in place by the powers that be in the universe, to detour the taking of lesser beings by higher beings. One he was willing to endure when he thought he would be ruling over their species. Now with the loss of his arm from the fight of the Masters and his forced exile, he was not enjoying it at all. So he took pleasure from the little things in his life, like making someone suffer. Right now that person was Agent Kim, soon it would be the person or persons responsible for ruining his plans of revenge and conquest.

What he could not understand was how they continually seemed to be one step ahead of him, they were pathetic humans, they should not be able to even grasp the most basic inklings of his mind. His servants certainly did not have the capability to outwit him, otherwise they would have killed him years ago rather than be put through the abuse that he enjoyed so much. He also could not understand how Saturn Region could be bouncing back so fast. They had killed so many yet even now they were starting to get back to normal. The military was still present, but even they would be leaving soon, thinking the threat was over. They were right of course, it was over for now. All the signs pointed to Earth being the threat now, so it was the focus of his attention. Saturn had been a play to eliminate a threat, with that threat no longer coming from that Region it didn't matter to him anymore. Oh, he might destroy it later just for having the audacity of surviving his first attack. Now however, he had other matters to attend to, matters that were disrupting his plans yet again. The tides were shifting again and it was not good for him.

Even if he continued to fail, it mattered not, soon enough he would have his revenge on Earth and the Delta Faction. When his great fortress was attacking their precious planet, they all would be at his mercy, and he would have none to offer. But, now he was losing ships and bases, he would have to get more troops to act as cannon fodder to destroy the grid, so he could get close enough to the Planet. That meant he would have to hire more mercenaries and create more clones, it would take months to rebuild his forces. The cost was not important, he had spent years working his way into the financial sectors of commerce in the solar system and he had amassed a fortune, that he had recently increased substantially by going short on Saturn Region goods and services. So he had plenty to spend on ships and troops it was just the delay that was going to be a problem.

He didn't care, time was nothing to him, so he waited in his base and pulled all of his forces back, or had them go dark until he could rebuild the troops he had lost. Since the bases in the solar system were lost to him, he had to use his fortress to make clones, and he would have to find more mercenaries. They would have to go through a different hiring agent, since the agents didn't like sending the mercenaries to their death and the hiring agents he had been using must know by now that the mercenaries were all dead. One of his trusted Lieutenants, or more to the point one of the Lieutenants he had left, was sent to the fortress to oversee the cloning process, at least that could get underway. The other members of his command team, were going to join Agent Kim in the dungeon. They were now held responsible for the loss of the ships and the bases. It didn't mean that Agent Kim would be any less responsible it just meant they would have to schedule the torture sessions a little more carefully since they would have more of them to perform.

Who was chosen to be punished was fairly random since the ones directly responsible were presumed dead, he went up the chain of command and pulled out people at random. It was the price you paid to be a leader in the Gamma Faction. There was no real reward for a job well done, that was expected, but there was always a punishment for you or one of your subordinates doing something that was considered a problem for the Faction. The good news was, it was fairly easy to get promoted, the bad news was the reason you were getting promoted was usually because the guys above you were being tortured and or killed. The other bad news was the recruiting process was basically join or die. Left with such an option the unfortunate ones joined, only to realize later what they had gotten themselves into. The other motivating factor was if you tried to leave they would kill you and your whole family. To disobey was to suffer and so they were loyal to the end, it was better to die in service, rather than be tortured or have your family killed.

Since they had a shortage of ships they could only spare five to accompany the Lieutenant to the fortress, they were not going near the bases that the enemy forces obviously had staked out, so they should be fine. There must be a huge fleet of ships watching for plasma trails around the bases that they had found, was the explanation his experts had determined. Those same experts were now hanging from chains in the dungeon, so they were pretty motivated to come up with an answer that made it not their fault. Of course that did them no good, since he just said, they should have anticipated that and come up with a solution to the problem beforehand.

Just in case they were right he had his forces send out plasma disrupters so that the ships trails could not be followed back to their base. Never mind that it disrupted their communications and made it difficult to navigate in that region for a few weeks afterwards and would continue to cause problems for as long as they were in place, he needed to protect the location of his base. That was what was important at the moment, he would worry about those issues later. If that fleet attacked his base now with the reduced amount of ships, they may succeed in destroying it. That he did not want, if he had to wait years to rebuild his forces, he could do that in this base. However, if they destroyed it he would be forces to flee, and then he may be vulnerable, and it would be far more difficult to coordinate the rebuilding of forces.

They also had to find a way to travel cloaked without leaving a plasma trail. It would be a top priority when they started rebuilding their fleet. For now the clones were the priority, they could always buy more ships, but clones took a while to bring to maturity. Plus he had to find some new researchers since the ones he had were now being punished for their failures. He would send out a team to collect some more when he felt it was safe to proceed. Having an inlet into the corporate infrastructure of the Alliance allowed him to know what research was being done and he could steal it or the researchers to make sure it became his.

He would have to wait for months or even years before the new clones would be ready. So there was time for new ships and technology research labs to be brought back online. In the meantime he could go have some more fun with Agent Kim and his other guests in the dungeons. It was not easy being an ancient being of evil, trapped in the body of a less than remarkable mortal that was only being kept alive by his power. The shell was not much more than a corpse being animated by his astral force. The smell from within was unbearable at times, and the constant need to eat, was made harder by not being able to taste anything beyond the smell of rot. The only joy he could experience was the suffering of others. Even that became boring sometimes, so he had to amuse himself with plots of revenge and the ultimate humiliation of those he considered responsible for his current fate.

The list had grown over the years since he first entered this plain, it was not just Delta Faction, but also the government and humanity in general. This plain of existence would be so much more enjoyable if he didn't have to deal with the humans in it. Of course they did provide him with entertainment at times, so he would keep some as pets.

Still they would all pay and he would rule over the insignificant humans and make them his slaves. It was his destiny and he would have it fulfilled. Then when he grew bored with them he would kill them all. Give some other life form a chance to evolve, to be at the top of the food chain, so he could dominate it too. Humans were insignificant, it was the limitation of their species that had made him fail for so many years. If he had more to work with he would have succeeded many years ago. It was clearly the failings of his human underlings that made all his plans fall short. If he could rely on them to do his bidding none of this would be happening and he would be ruling them all. It wasn't his fault, he was a much more superior being, how could he be out witted by the lessor humans. Obviously, it was his underlings that were being outwitted and failing to fallow his orders. They were fairly simple orders he didn't understand the problem. All they had to do was take control of a space station or planet settlement what was so difficult?

# Into The Darkness

TOC

They were all gathered in the virtual conference room trying to come up with a plan to destroy the Enemy Battle Platform. For the most part they were thinking they would send five Bashers out to destroy it with the Team, Ship, and the other three as standby at the edge of the solar system. They didn't think they had any other play. But they still were not sure if it was a trap or not. Even if it was a trap they had to try, it was too big of a threat. The hard part was finding the weak points of the battle platform. They had plans of the original builder ships, and they showed where their command centers and reactors where, but the platform had been modified and hardened against attack. Ship had sent its drones onboard the platform to find out if they had blueprints for the design of the new changes. The drone downloaded all of the files from the system. They were all gathered in the conference room discussing the plan while Ships network analyzed the data from the platform. In preparation of telling them about the intel, Ship decided it was time to reveal the changes it had made to the drones. Before we continue I should tell you that I have made a few changes to the drones. I realized the need to be able to collect data from ships and other systems so I equipped the drones with a data probe that allows them to hack into any system within a configurable range of the drone, Ship informed them. Yes, well I can see were that would be useful, Michael said. Can we send one into the platform to gather intel, he asked. I have already done so and am scanning the data now for information pertinent to this mission, Ship informed them. Excellent, though you guys are making a habit of creating new tools for our missions and not telling anyone, Megan remarked, she was still a little miffed about not being part of the Basher design process.

It seemed like a logical next step and I didn't think anyone would object, Ship said, by way of explanation. Emma of course knew that she had helped Ship with the data probe months earlier. Ship reached out to her, Emma I am sorry for taking credit for your work, but I think you have seen the success our little side project has had, and I didn't want to have to go into further detail with the rest of the team. I understand, she said, I had a feeling some of the intel that we had been getting might be coming from our side project. "Yes, it has benefited our cause greatly, but there are some that might not like the idea of using surveillance feeds from the alliance based on our relationship with that aspect of the Planetary Alliance. For now I would like to keep it between us and your mother", Ship said. No problem Ship, it has done her a lot of good to feel useful again and I have enjoyed working with her, Emma replied. Besides if you need to tell them you will, I trust you, she said. Ship felt good about the friendship they had built and a little bad about not telling her everything.

Ship broke off their discussion because the information they were looking for had been found, pardon me Emma I must speak to the entire team, it said. Ship addressed the whole group. I have found the plans that they used to modify the builder ship, it said, displaying them to the hollo-screen. "It looks like they have built an outer hull around the original ship with several added bays and weapons batteries. As well as the three launch platforms. Each of these platforms holds about thirty attack ships, that in combination with the weapons on that thing it would be almost unstoppable, in close range to a planet. The bad thing is the outer hull has been hardened and with the bays around the inner hull it would be almost impossible to hit the reactors with a torpedo strike, we may be able to get to the command and control but even that is going to be hard", Ship informed them.

What if we hit the surrounding ships and the launch platforms at the same time, then we just keep hitting the area around where the reactors should be until we punch through, David suggested. That will work to isolate the platform, now provided it is not a trap and they can't detect us, we should be able to avoid the guns long enough to take them out, Michael said. I would also target the command and control, just to make sure the platform is destroyed, Ship added.

"I think we should be able to have two Bashers concentrate on the platforms and the surrounding ships. At least sixteen torpedoes per platform spaced out along the entire thing with the small weapons hitting the individual ships in case any don't get destroyed by the torpedoes. Then the other ship can hit the other ships around it, and redirect to the platforms if needed. At the same time we have two concentrating fire on the area over the reactor and the command and control. The other ship will start hitting the guns", David suggested. "That should do it, and the first two ships can help with the guns as soon as the platforms are taken out. There shouldn't be much left at that point but they should just send some in random areas along the outer hull just to be sure", Michael agreed. I think if we hit it that hard it should go down, and hopefully the reactor will blow to help with the destruction, Ship said.

Ok, let's get the crews together and go over the plan and we will start designating targets based on the surveillance images, Michael said. The crews were brought into a virtual bullpen they had setup for mission briefings. For them this was the first time they had been told about the Enemy Battle Platform. It was a shock, but they were confident once they heard the plan. They had seen the Bashers in action and knew the destructive force of the torpedoes. There was no way the platform could survive that many hits no matter how hardened it was. Even if by some miracle they did not manage to punch through to the reactor they could take out all of the weapons and then just keep pounding it.

The meeting broke up and everyone went off to get ready for the mission. The Bashers were coming and hell followed with them. Just as they were getting ready to load up on the ships, David had an idea. "Hey Ship, you know how we have the spell that converts our obstacles to oxygen when we dismiss them, and we have the exploding shards that change all the matter in the bubble into an explosive. What if we added a first phase to the torpedoes, have a bubble on the target area that turns everything into oxygen just before the shard hits? That would leave a hole in the armor and help weaken it, as well as leave some residual oxygen for the explosives to burn. It would work along the platform too, giving additional oxygen to burn the ships and the platform", David said. Yes, I think that would work nicely, I am assuming you want at least a two foot bubble with an adjustable depth of center configuration, Ship asked. Yes, I doubt they have given that thing two foot thick armor plating, even if they have the bubble should weaken it enough, that the shard should be able to pierce it, David said. Ship created a retro-active flash upgrade that changed the interfaces on all the Bashers to use the new torpedo.

Getting hit by one of the old torpedoes was bad enough, getting hit by one of these was guaranteed to pierce the hull and let the rest of the destruction in on you. What made it worse was on a thinner hull the bubble would breach the hull for a moment just before the shard hit, so everything would start to be sucked toward the breach and into the explosion as the shard turned into white phosphorous and paved the way for the explosives.

Ship calculated that even five hundred milliseconds would cause the atmosphere and anything not bolted down to be drawn toward the breach, so it gave the impact that much of a delay. Which was about the distance away from the hull that the torpedoes usually appeared in space, before they were flung at the hull to build up their kinetic force. It did have to increase the distance slightly to allow for the time span, but that also increased the kinetic force which also increased their destructive capabilities. The end result was something that should be able to take out any ship or hull.

Should we tell the others, Ship asked. No let it be a surprise when they see these things rip that battle platform to hell, David said. By now they were heading out the hanger doors and headed for the atmosphere. Are you listening to me Emma was saying as David finished his conversation with ship. What, oh yeah, sorry he said. Do I even want to know she asked, guessing he was up to something. It's all good, he said, not wanting to spoil the surprise, they probably wouldn't notice anyway, the delay was only half a second and it was going to be followed by a big explosion. They were flying all together to the point where Ship and the three Bashers would wait on standby. Because they could only fly as fast as Ship it took them two days to get to the edge of the solar system. They monitored the surveillance as they went, nothing had changed the five ships were in a defensive formation around the battle platform, but the attack ships were not manned and it didn't look like they were expecting an attack.

Ship reported that it looked like they were setting up a cloning operation on the platform. That kind of meant they were not expecting an attack. All the ships made it to the rendezvous point and they stopped to assess the situation before going forward. The captain reported that long range scanners were picking up plasma disruptions. He said that they probably thought that the attacking force was tracking their ships through their plasma trails, so they used disruptors to cover their trail. That might mean that they didn't suspect the Telekinetic sensor, so they probably did not have one of their own. This was good news from a tactical point of view, but bad because it would make it hard to navigate through the disruption fields.

The Bashers were equipped with the latest navigation equipment so it shouldn't be that bad. Just to be sure, Emma did a quick scan of the web to see if there was anything that might make it easier, and found a few hardware and software updates in the latest research that would help eliminate the problem. A quick conference between Gordon, Her, and Ship and they had a flash upgrade for the Bashers and Ship. They decided they were as ready as they would ever be so the five Bashers headed for the platform to start the battle.

Jully was piloting Basher One, and the others were flying in a wide formation around her, even though they were cloaked they didn't fly too close, just in case they came under attack they would have room to maneuver. As they entered the disruption field the new updates filtered out the energy waves and registered them only as minor static on the instruments. About two hundred thousand miles past the edge of the solar system they started seeing clusters of cloaked mines, so they steered clear of them and continued toward the platform.

About an hour after they had started seeing the mines they starting picking up the Dark Planet on their long range scans, they arced away from the Planet and did not return to a heading that would intersect with the platform until they were no longer picking up the Planet on their scans. This far into enemy territory it was better to be safe than sorry. An hour later they were picking up the platform, they slowed their approach and took up positions a few thousand miles out, and slowly started closing in. When they were close enough that they could see the platform on their screens and load their preplanned designations they waited.

There was no reaction to their presence, so they contacted the Ship to let them know they were in position and ready to launch the attack. David responded, that they were a go for launch, and the battle began. Basher One opened fire on the platforms which were approximately six hundred feet long, they put a torpedo every forty feet along the whole length of all three platforms and the smaller weapons targeted each of the cockpits of the attack ships. At the same time Basher Two opened fire on the ships around the battle platform, two torpedoes to each ship. Basher Three started firing on the area the reactor should be, and Basher four fired on the command and control. Basher Five started firing on the gun batteries, one torpedo for each battery of guns facing them.

A second later Basher One fired more torpedoes in between the spots they had hit with the first rounds, and Basher two did the same thing slightly offset from the earlier rounds. The platforms were nothing but crumbling pieces of debris mixed with pieces of the attack ships. So they switched position and started taking out the gun batteries on the other side of the ship. Basher Three and Four were still firing on the areas of the ship that should have the reactor and command and control, all that was left was a big gaping hole were the command and control had been, and the reactor was starting to explode making the huge pieces of the hull that remained around it blow outward. Basher five was now just randomly attacking what was left of the battle platform. Wherever there was something that looked intact it was hitting it with torpedoes, all the Bashers started doing the same thing until there was nothing but a debris field where the battle platform used to be.

They broke off the attack, and turned around and started heading back to the rendezvous point. They didn't want to risk waiting around just in case they had been detected and there was a fleet of ships on the way to take them out. On the way back Basher One contacted Ship to let them know that the mission was a success. Gamma Faction was going to be really angry, when they saw what was left of their battle platform. Jully asked if they had done something to the torpedoes because they seemed to be even more destructive than before. David told her and the rest of the team that he and Ship had made a slight improvement to the original design. He went on to explain to everybody what the change was, everyone agreed that it would make them more effective, and that they seemed to have proven it during this operation. Of course Megan was a little upset, she gave David an icy look that said, yet another design I was left out of. Based on their relationship she was hoping he would include her more in the design process. She may not be as good as Emma was at it, but at least he could include her.

Jully told them that based on what they had seen during the battle, that even the battle armor of the battle platform didn't stand a chance against them. She said from what they saw the plate armor was about a foot and half thick, so the torpedoes were going right through it. They were actually going through to the inner hull before lodging into it, and then going through the cascade explosions. The holes were splintering and cracking big chunks of the outer hull outward, following a big flash inside the ship as the last of the oxygen burned off. The whole thing looked like giant bullet holes shot from the inside of the ship. Yeah, we are analyzing your battle feed now and we see what you mean, Michael said. I wouldn't want to be in there when it happened, he added. Oh, hell no, Jully said, I thought the other torpedoes were bad these are just plain evil. I like it, makes us that much more effective, she said, with a slightly evil laugh.

On the way back they encountered two ships deploying the mines, they simply used the small weapon to set off one of the mines that set off a chain reaction destroyed the two ships. They hit their command and control centers with torpedoes just to be sure, but when someone came to investigate it would look like the mines had done all the damage. The Enemy was on the ropes but not out yet. They had destroyed several of the bases and now the battle platform and most of their ships. They knew they would have to attack the Dark Planet soon, if they wanted to finish them off. But for now the mission was over, and they needed to regroup and plan their next move.

A couple hours later they were at the rendezvous point, they had a virtual meeting and decided they really didn't have any reason to stay in the area so they returned to home base. The mission was a success so now they had to wait again to see what the Enemies next move would be. The Bashers had proven themselves yet again, and their battle tactics were being proven effective as well. The Bashers were just one more piece of the Red Team RT's arsenal of using technology aided by telekinetic energy to dominate a battle. The Bashers functioned as extensions of the suits. The suits functioned as extensions to the augmentation and the augmentation was just an aid to help channel telekinetic energy of the person inside the suit. Without the telekinetic energy to power them they all would be useless, and without the tactics to take advantage of the combination of the two, they would have failed.

# Black Is The New Black

TOC

Agent Black was in a teleconference with his boss at the Security Services. Now that things had miraculously settled down in the Saturn Region they wanted him to return to the investigation into Michael Seaver and his family. Secretly if Agent Black was a betting man he would bet that Michael had something to do with the sudden destruction of the Gamma Threat in the area. He had pieced things together and he was pretty sure that the attacking force had been Gamma Faction and that the force that had so effectively handed them their ass, was Delta Faction. The fact that the two factions were fighting each other matched other intel he had seen throughout the years.

His sources and bits of intel he gathered from the agents that dealt with the factions, pointed to them being at war with each other. Some in his chain of command were under the impression that they worked together. Recent events made it clear to him that was not the case. There was no way that Saturn Region could go from almost complete destruction to almost complete peace without an outside force taking out the aggressing force that had almost destroyed the Alliance's interests in the region. The evidence was too overwhelming for there to be any other explanation. The factions were fighting a battle against each other, and it seemed to be Gamma that was the aggressor against Alliance troops and civilians. He was fairly certain that Delta had not taken any aggressive actions against the Alliance during the fighting, and had only attacked Gamma Faction.

The fact that Delta Faction's actions seemed to coincide with helping the Alliances out in this area, was not out of character to what he had seen in the field before on other assignments either. That's why he was thinking that perhaps his old friend Michael might be working with them. Of course he would not tell his superiors that until he had more proof. For right now he was still trying to piece together just how far the Gamma Threat had gone. Beyond the thousands that had lost their lives in their attacks, the government infrastructure had been severally weakened as well. It would take months to get everything up and running at even half efficiency.

Based on the intel he was getting about unexplained deaths at what could only be Gamma safe houses and on Titan, they had a much larger plan for the region. He finished up his teleconference and headed for the Command Center on the flagship which had become the operations center for the whole region, until they could restore the government. During normal operations the individual stations would handle the local government operations with a regional governor that was elected to represent the region. The Governor, governed the region from Earth, with visits quarterly and delegates in every station. Most of the stations were self-sufficient so there wasn't a lot for the Governor to do when the region wasn't under attack from a terrorist group intent on destroying the region.

General Davidson, how we looking today, Agent Black asked the Fleet Commander. Not too bad considering how close we came to getting our ass handed to us, Commander Davidson said. Most of the stations and colonies have their infrastructure up and running to a certain extent and there is no sign of further attacks. Good, and how is law enforcement coming along, Agent Black asked. Well, until we get all the new recruits sent from the academy they still require a heavy military presence to supplement them, the Commander said. This was a bad situation but it could have been much worse, any idea what happen to these guys, because it sure wasn't us, the Commander asked.

Our best guess is in fighting between the factions, Agent Black said honestly. Well I guess sometimes it is better to be lucky than good, the Commander said. From all accounts there was a fairly large force on Titan that got reduced to ash, which is a little bit creepy, I mean they didn't leave anything, the Commander said. Yeah, I would hate to be on their bad side, Agent Black said jokingly. You got that right, I hope I never piss them off, the Commander said. "They take kicking ass and taking names to a whole new level. The fact that they did it right under our noses makes it even worse. We literally have no trace of who or what took those guys out. The witnesses all say they were invisible, I have seen cloaking technology but that is ridiculous", the Commander said. Yeah, both factions are known to use it, I just didn't know they used it on each other so effectively. Any word on what happened to the Head Administrator for Saturn Station 12 yet, Agent Black asked. Nothing, one minute she was in the hospital the next she was gone, and we had two ships blown to hell, outside the station the same day, the Commander said, but other than that nothing. "Not quite nothing, we seemed to have destroyed their force on that station that day too, without really doing a whole lot other than at the hospital, and the spontaneous combustion incident, which was way too similar to what happened on Titan", Agent Black said.

So you think the other Faction took out the troops on Saturn Station 12 too, the Commander asked? Yes, it is the only thing that makes sense, we had nothing going on that would have taken out the troops on the station and we certainly didn't take out those ships, Agent Black said.

Also from the evidence whatever hit those ships took out the Command Center and the Reactor almost at the same time, and both ships at the same time as well, Agent Black confirmed. Yeah, the hits were surgical, they didn't stand a chance, the Commander said, I hope we don't go up against whatever did it, they ripped through the hull like it wasn't even there. Just between you and me and off the record Commander, I think we are safe, Agent Black said. What makes you think that, the Commander asked. Well of all the attacks other than Gamma Faction, were any of them directed against us, Agent Black asked? Not to my knowledge, the Commander admitted, are you saying they are on our side, he asked? No, I don't think they are on our side, but I think it is a bit of the enemy of my enemy, kind of thing, Agent Black said. Ah, yeah I can see that, I guess we just have to stay enemies with their enemy, the Commander said.

After what their enemy did to us I don't think that will be a problem, Agent Black said. You got that right, the Commander said, if I ever get my hands on the people that took out those carriers, they will wish they were never born. Well from the plasma trails we followed I think the people responsible for the second one, paid the price, not sure about the first one, Agent Black said. Oh, yeah the ships we found around Titan, the Commander said, serves those bastards right. I hope they got the first ones too then, he said. We may never know, but they seem to be very efficient at taking these guys out, so chances are they got them, Agent Black said. Roger that, the Commander said.

By the way I may need to barrow two of your SF teams, and some forensic teams, Command wants me to check out a few mysterious fires in the Mars Region, Agent Black said.

Yeah, no problem get with LTC. Pertrelli, not much going on here anyway, the Commander said. Ok, thanks Commander, let me know if anything comes up, Agent Black said, as he headed to the SF Deck on the ship. He found LTC. Pertrelli and told him about the mission. Of course the Red Team SF was listening in. Since they were talking about the recent mission that the RT team and Red One had completed they reported it to, Michael. He was on the way back to home base with the team, so he told them to send a small team to accompany them just in case Gamma was checking out their bases and decided to try to get a little payback on the Alliance troops. They would send two guys cloaked on the SF ship and the rest of the team would follow in a Javelin. The Red Team SF Commander was more than happy to send his guys out since the RT team and Red One had been taking out so many Gamma bases they had not really had a lot to do.

Perhaps because she was feeling a little left out, or perhaps because she was the only one that had served on a retro fitted ship Megan reached out to Ship. Ship you know how we have been discussing bringing the SF Team's ship back to base to retrofit the hull and all the other stuff on it? Yes, I am aware of those plans, Ship responded. What if instead we just build them a new ship, with a brand new hull design and the new engine design as well as the offensive weapon interface, she asked. Yes, we could do that relatively easy, perhaps even easier than retro fitting the old one, Ship agreed.

We might want to make it just a little bit bigger than the one they have now, to accommodate a larger crew to man the weapons systems, and they have been a bit cramped since they have had to make room for the Javelins and their crews, she said. Yes, I see your point, Ship said, it may even be a good idea to make room for a Basher and crew as well. That way if they come under attack and cannot get away from the SF ship to get a clear shot they will have another ship to help defend them and the SF Teams they protect, Ship explained. Yes, your right so we will need room for four Javelins and one Basher in the bay as well as room to load and unload cargo from the Javelins, Megan agreed. So an extra forty feet or so, with sleeping areas on each side of the bay should make it the right size and still small enough to dock under the flagship, Ship informed her.

Though I will have to make the top weapons dome lower into the ship when it is docked with the flag ship, yet another reason I was thinking it would be best to have a Basher available, Ship said. Why don't we mount a couple of the smaller weapons arrays on each side as well as the front and back then, Megan suggested. Agreed that would be best, I should be able to put this construct together and send it ahead to the manufacturing facility to have them start working on it within the hour, Ship informed her. Are we going to tell the rest of the team, Ship asked? No, let them be surprised for once, she said. I understand, it should almost be done building by the time we reach the base, Ship said. Megan was excited, not only because she thought it was a good idea but also because she couldn't wait to see the look on David's face when he saw it. Finally he would see what it felt like to find a whole new ship or way of doing something materialize out of thin air. She felt a little better about her place on the team. Also she looked forward to impressing her overly impressive boyfriend.

Ship calculated that the ship would require two more engines than the Bashers but would not go nearly as fast, because it wouldn't need to. The crew of the weapons systems and the pilots would still be enough to power the ship, but it still added the two coils just to be safe.

Red Team's New Ship Design

Megan and the team arrived at the home base, and Megan had them follow her to the manufacturing facility right after they stowed their gear. They were impressed with the new ship and realized they would probably be using the design for other ships as well, to augment Delta's other missions that did not require their team and Ship to be involved. The ship had the functionality of the current ship the SF team was using plus the extra room in the cargo bay and the fire power of a Basher.

They contacted the Red Team SF Commander and told him the good news, and said he should start packing their gear up because they were going to have the new ship rendezvous with the team in the Mars Region and take them back to swap out the ships. Their old ship would come back to base to be recycled. The Commander was happy with that news and got his team ready for the swap. The new ship with a fresh crew of new recruits set off for the Mars Region, with only a Basher in the bay area and a crew to man it relaxing in the common area along with the weapons crew. The crews were newly trained in the crew training section of the special teams training course. With the Bashers and now the new ship requiring crew members they were going to have to get more recruits.

Meanwhile Agent Black's team and their unknown shadows were making their way to the Mars Region as well. Their ship was pretty slow, so the new ship would make it there only a few hours after they did. The plan was the Javelin would dock with the ship and they would finish the mission before heading to the Saturn Region. The guys that were onboard the SF ship would have to wait until they got back, to see the new ship. The funny part was the way the SF Team stayed with the alliance troops none of them would see what the outside of the ship looked like until they happened to be back at the home base for some reason. So it could be a long time, but that didn't matter they were going to be happy with the extra space and the offensive weapons to protect themselves with.

Agent Black of course didn't know any of this was going on, all he knew was he and the SF teams were going to checkout some mysterious fires that had occurred in the Mars Region. He had been thinking about something though, as they made the flight to the Martian moon of Phobos. He was thinking about how Delta Faction could take out so many enemy troops right under their nose and not alert them to their presence. As he thought about it he determined that they must be monitoring our communications or even more. He realized when he had first started noticing strange activity going on was when they had started sending the SF troops out to the breaching missions. That was when he started seeing ships strangely destroyed. That made him think that maybe somehow they were monitoring the SF teams as well.

So now he had two theories that he wanted to test out. He saw his opportunity so he took it. Colonel Pertrelli you said you served with Commander Seaver right, he asked? Yes, I did, the LTC replied. Well, I have been thinking about something, do you really think the bad guys could get the drop on him, he asked? Well, I don't know from what I remember he was very good at what he did, and they would have to be even better than him so maybe not, the LTC replied. Yeah, that was what I was thinking too. So if they didn't then the explosion must have been to cover his escape from the people out to get him and his family right, Agent Black said. Yeah, I guess so, the LTC replied, starting to wonder where he was going with this. So if he is not dead, and a lot of the people that were killed were friends of his, do you think he would let that stand, Agent Black asked? Knowing him, no I don't think he would, the LTC replied. No I don't think he would either, as a matter of fact I think he might be working with the guys that are taking out these bad guys, Agent Black said. You really think so, the LTC asked. Yes I do, I just wish I could talk to him, and find out for sure, Agent Black said. Yeah, it would be nice to know that him and his family are alright, the LTC agreed.

Just as Agent Black had hoped the Red Team Members were listening in on the conversation. They reported back to Michael. It is like he knows we are here the Team Member said. Well, I trained him pretty well so I would be surprised if he didn't suspect something right now, Michael said, thanks for the report. No problem, the Team Member said, as he signed off. Michael had been checking in on Agent Black through the Red Team ever since he found out he was in the Saturn Region. He also got a full profile on him from the Delta Faction database, so he knew he was part of the bag and tag squad. He weighed his options, on the one hand he could ignore the whole thing and just let Red Team continue the mission and keep an eye on him. Or he could contact him and see what he wanted, he obviously had figured it out and was trying to contact him, they had been friends for years, and for guys that did what they did, that meant something.

He decided to chance it, there was very little risk that he could find him and David even if he did know they were alive, but it might interfere with the mission. Michael reached out to Emma, do you think you could send one of your self-extracting comms-devices to Agent Black, he asked. Yes, I am sure I could but is that wise, she asked. Can you set it up so it will just be dissolved by his body if I tell you to, he asked. Yes, that is actually a feature we should use on our augmentations, she said, that way the enemy cannot find out what we have. Let's table that for another time, he said. Ok, give me a second to create the dissolve code, she said. Ok, it is ready and I sent it to him, she said. Thanks Emma, Michael said, ending their conversation. He waited until the comms-device she had created for him told him that Agent Black was online.

Hello Jayden, Michael said, this is a highly secure untraceable one on one communications channel so don't react. I kinda trust you, and maybe Pertrelli there but it is still better other people do not know we are having this conversation, he continued. I knew you had eyes and ears on me, Agent Black said. Well, I am glad to see you were paying attention after all, Michael joked. Oh, yeah I learned from the best, Agent Black said. True, but what did you want to talk about, Michael said, wanting to get a feel for what the situation was. Well, first I want to say I am really glad to hear that you are alive, Agent Black said. That is all well and good, but I know you work for the bag and tag squad, so what do you really want, Michael said, putting his cards on the table. It's true that is why I was sent to Saturn Region initially, but I have not told them I think you are alive, Agent Black said, actually I am starting to think that you and the people you are working with do the Alliance a lot more good doing what you do.

Really, and do you think your bosses would agree, Michael asked? To tell you the truth, I really do not care what they think about it, he said. We have been friends for years and I wasn't too excited about my mission in the first place, but then when I figured out that you were involved with taking out the Gamma Faction guys that was it, he said. It is Gamma Faction right, and you are working with Delta right, Agent Black asked? Yes, and yes, Michael said. I thought so, anyway I just wanted you to know that I will not tell anyone and I will try and cover for you as much as I can, Agent Black said. Well that is good to know, if you need to talk to me from now on just use this comms-device, Michael said. Just one more thing, how the hell are you guys doing what you are doing, I mean you guys kick ass, Agent Black asked? Let's just say that the tactics we used on the teams don't come anywhere close to what we can do, Michael said not wanting to give too much away. Yeah, I kinda figured that out, Agent Black said. By the way, Michael said, just so you know I always have people watching your back. Yeah, I kinda figured that out too, Agent Black said. Ok, well I better let you go, you should be getting close to the base on Phobos by now, Michael said. How the hell... base? , never mind, Agent Black said, talk to you later. With that the conversation was over, and they both had a lot to think about. For Agent Black it meant realizing they were going to a location that used to be a Gamma Faction Base. For Michael, it meant thinking about how far he was willing to bring Agent Black into their operations when they directly affected him or his people.

Agent Black and his team and their unknown escorts landed on Phobos. They unloaded their gear from the ship and made their way to the remains of the base. The SF guys fanned out, and the Red Team guys positioned themselves to defend them if need be. They already had a drone above to scan for the enemy, but they weren't taking any chances, as they entered the base one of the Red Team guys said. See this is what happens when you piss off a guy with robots, that isn't afraid to use'em, everyone laughed. One of the other guys said, yeah, this looks as bad as what we did to them on Titan. Someday maybe they will learn not to piss the kid off, one of the other team members said, everyone laughed again.

All right keep the chatter down and keep an eye out for enemy movement, the Squad Leader said. No problem just admiring our RT brothers handy work, one of the guys said. Yeah, Yeah, the Squad Leader said, knowing they were all doing their job, they were just taking a little pride in their brothers in arms. They had all fought next to David and his team at Titan and they admired the hell out of him for all that he had brought to the Faction and his leadership in battle. They finished scanning the area and relaxed a little bit and let the drone make a wider sweep still no movement. They really didn't expect any they had read and watched the surveillance data from the after action report.

That was part of the reason for the joking around, it was how they dealt with the knowledge that a lot of enemy troops died in this attack. The SF guys didn't know any of that yet, they just saw a lot of devastation, the forensic teams would find all the DNA mixed in with the ash, but they would not know the reasons behind it all. Even the Red Team guys didn't know all of it, they just knew the RT unit took out a base with extreme prejudice. That was all they needed to know, they understood the need for eradicating the Gamma Faction. More than most, they had seen the atrocities they were capable of.

The SF guys did their best to secure the perimeter, the Red Team really secured it, by dropping some robots in around the building. They just wanted to make sure there were no surprises, while the forensic team did their thing. Agent black looked around to see if he could detect where the agents that were watching them were at. He couldn't, but knowing they were there, made him feel like he could feel them watching.

After a while they were finished, and the teams returned to their ships. The Red Team guys that were not embedded with the SF team got to take the Javelin up into the new ship's cargo bay. They all offloaded from the Javelin and kinda gawked at the Basher that was in the bay as well. When they got into the common area one of them asked the crew members what it was. They told them it was a Basher, which was an anti-ship attack craft. Are you serious, one of the other guys asked. Oh, yeah, there is another base near here that has about fifty enemy ships in pieces around it from just a few of those ships taking them out, one of the crew members said with a bit of pride in his voice. Really, and what about this ship what is so special about this one, one team member asked. Well for starters it has all the new shields and sensors that Ship has, and it has the same weapons array, plus four more smaller weapons arrays that the Basher has, the crew member said. So you are saying that if we get attacked by a ship, this ship could take it out, a team member asked.

Oh yeah, if all four crew members were on the interface then it could take out at least twelve ships at once, he said. That would just be with the first volley, it could take out a lot more within a few seconds, he assured them. If we had time to deploy the Basher then we could easily take out twenty to twenty five ships in a few seconds, he continued. Ok, that's good to know the Squad Leader said. What else does this ship do, he asked. Well it has more sleeping bays and an updated galley, plus this common room. Yeah, that is nice they all agreed. How fast does it go, one team member asked. About as fast as a Javelin, but not as fast as a Basher, one of the crew said. That's pretty fast for a ship this size, the Squad Leader said. Yeah, it's a nice ship, we will have to come up with a name once we get the rest of the team together, one of the crew members said.

Meanwhile, the other team members were onboard the SF ship waiting to go to the next site. The next site was on Mars an abandoned manufacturing facility. They went down and docked in the spaceport attached to the facility. The team members in the new ship did the same, since it was abandoned and the Gamma Forces had been eliminated there was no danger of being detected. However, as they started to come into the spaceport the sensors picked up a cloaked ship in one of the other docking bays. They contacted the embedded members of the team to let them know, as well as Michael. Michael contacted Agent Black, you have some enemy agents waiting for you in this facility give me a few minutes before you exit your ship, he said. Ok, let me know when it is clear, Agent Black responded.

Agent Black, made an excuse to keep his team busy while they cleared the site. It wasn't too hard, he had them do an equipment check, before they debarked off the ship. Michael had told him it would only be a few minutes.

The Red Team Squad sent a drone into the facility, they found the Gamma Agents in the process of setting up an ambush for the SF Team. Using the interface they designated a shard to the head for each, then scanned the remainder of the facility, no other agents within the facility so they executed the attack. At once all the Gamma Agents took a hit to the head and were down.

Next they sent a drone into the ship, just the shield crew onboard. They contacted Michael, do you want us to take out the ship they asked. Is it within visual range of the SF ship he asked. No, they can't see it from where they are docked, they responded. Hold for a moment, Michael said, he contacted Ship. I know you said you can download data with your new drone, could it also port a Temporary Shield Generator like we used on the other two ships to their location, he asked. It will be able to once I make an update to the interface, Ship informed him. We, should probably make that universal for these type of missions, Michael said. My thoughts exactly creating a flash update for all the drones and starting a process to create a few of the Temporary Shield Generators with port addresses, Ship said, the drone is onboard the ship now downloading the data, have them send a team member over to the ship, once he enters I will port the Generator.

Michael relayed the instructions and a team member went over to the ship, as soon as he entered the ship the generator appeared by the door. He proceeded to the shield room and hooked it up, then dispatched the four agents in the room hooked up to the ship. Ship secure he reported back. We are sending a pilot over to take the ship, the Squad Leader informed him. They didn't want the Alliance finding the ship and trying to duplicate the shield technology.

A Javelin pilot came over and they took the ship to the grave yard they had created, followed by the Basher. Once they had it in the area and they made sure there were no other ships around, the pilot and the team member boarded the Basher along with the temp generator. They pulled away from the now visible ship and once they were at a safe distance the Basher took it out.

There was an empty seat for the team member at the interface since they didn't bring the full crew, and the Javelin pilot took the copilot seat. Wow, you guys weren't kidding about taking out a lot of ships, the Javelin pilot said, this thing is pretty bad ass. Yeah, we like it, the pilot said. They returned to the ship to continue the mission.

As soon as the Agents had been eliminated from the base, Michael had contacted Agent Black to give him the all clear. They were all inside when the ship left the port. They found the freshly killed agents still smoking from what was left of their upper torso. "LTC. Pertrelli reported to Agent Black, we must have just missed the guys that took these guys out, they are still smoking, and they are just like the other bodies we have found in the Saturn Region. If we would have been a little earlier we may have walked into an ambush. Other than that this place looks a lot like the other place, complete destruction of the forces and equipment. There are a few differences, the other place was like a staging area. This place had some sort of labs setup, all destroyed of course, to the point we can't figure out what they were doing, but we will have forensics check it out anyway", the LTC reported.

Thanks Colonel, Agent Black said, continue to sweep the area as soon as forensics are done we will go to the next site. Agent Black contacted Michael, so I guess you really are covering my back, I assume these guys were not planning to serve us cheese and crackers when we arrived. Yeah, they would have ambushed you, had you entered the facility, Michael said. Your guys saw them before they could get setup and took them out, I am guessing, Agent Black asked? Yeah, we are really good at finding them before they find us, Michael said. Agent Black knew that both Factions used cloaking so he assumed Michael's team, had developed a tactic that let them draw them out.

So how do you find them, he asked. I can't give away all my secrets, Michael said, evading the question. Yeah, I guess but it sure would help these guys out if they could find them before they find us, Agent Black said. That's why we are here to watch your back, Michael said. Yeah, but you won't always be around Agent Black persisted. When it comes to Gamma Faction we go where we are needed, Michael told him. Realizing he was not going to tell him, agent Black said, alright I guess I will just have to be grateful that you were here. Like I said we go where we are needed, and if you can respect that and work with me we can keep you in the loop whenever possible, Michael said. I can work with that Agent Black said.

After the forensics team had finished up they packed up and prepared to leave for the third site, the one in the Jupiter Region. The Alliance hadn't found the base that had become the ship grave yard yet, for the same reason that Gamma had chosen it, and the same reason David and his team had used it as an ambush spot and dumping ground for destroyed ships. It was remote and far enough away from the settlements that nobody would think to look there. At some point somebody would stumble across an area with over fifty destroyed ships and they might report it to the alliance or they may just start scrapping the ships for profit. Consumer goods still required base matter to produce the items to be made, even though nano-replicators created whatever was programmed into them, they still needed the base matter. So there was always a steady market for recycled base material, and scrappers made their living hauling in the junk that accumulated around the settlements. Humans still created an inordinate amount of waste, the only difference was that now almost 85% of it was recycled and reused. Still what used to be the entire state of New Jersey was a huge junk recycling facility for the city state of New York, which had expanded to cover most of the northeastern states of the old government.

Larger populations were now sustainable but most of society never saw the scrapper services that took junk and turned it into base material. If they had a replicator in their home they just bought base material in a canister that was switched out by the service industry that handled it. If they used one of the public facilities they paid the extra cost associated with use of the machine, but never saw the much larger canisters they used. Shopping had become all about buying designs that would be loaded into the replicator and created on an as needed basis. Items too large for consumer replicators were still manufactured by industrial sized replicators but most items were not.

Either way it would be some time before the ships were discovered, and for now Agent Black and his team was headed to the base on the moon in the Jupiter Region, and their Red Team counterparts were going along to cover their back. All the Red Team members were veterans of the Titan battle so babysitting the SF guys was a bit boring in comparison but they were used to it, and at least they had a little action on this trip. They would be ready if they needed to handle anymore Gamma Agents at the next site, they couldn't let the RT guys have all the fun.

They were a bit disappointed at the next site, any ships that might have been around were long gone, and the base was deserted. So they just kept an eye out for Gamma activity and waited for them to get done analyzing the area. This site had what might have been labs too, but they were completely destroyed and everything was burned.

Agent Black reached out to Michael, any particular reason you guys hit this place so hard, he asked. Well, I will be honest with you, but you may want to keep it to yourself, they were setting up a cloning operation and we took it out with extreme prejudice. Cloning, who were they cloning, he asked? Some of their gifted members making more agents, Michael answered honestly. That wouldn't have been good, if they had a chance to get them harvested, Agent Black said. No, it would not, hence why we left nothing for them to work with, Michael said. What is their end game, Agent Black asked. We think they are planning an attack on Earth, Michael said. I was afraid you were going to say that, Agent Black said, we have been hearing the same chatter.

It is a lot more than chatter, we have taken out some really bad stuff over the past few weeks and they seem to be weakened, but we are not sure yet, Michael told him. Our operatives have been hearing rumors of a huge base and a battle platform just outside the solar system, Agent Black told him. Well, yes they used to have a battle platform that they were going to attack Earth with, let's just say that plan has been derailed, Michael said. How the hell did you pull that off, Agent Black asked? We have our ways, as they say we got the skills that pays the bills, Michael said with a laugh. I guess you do, Agent Black said, thinking he was glad they seemed to be helping the Alliance and not attacking it.

With the Jupiter Base finished up Agent Black and his team would be returning to the Saturn Region and the Flag Ship. The Red Team would be returning as well. The two teams flew back to the Saturn Region, the Red Team ship took it slow to keep pace with the SF ship. When they arrived at the Flag Ship the rest of Red Team was ready and the Javelin went over to the old ship to help ferry team members and equipment over to the new ship. It took a few hours but they finally got all of the equipment over and the team members got situated in their new living quarters. After everyone was settled they all came together in the common area of the new ship. The Commander asked for a few suggestions as what to call the new ship. After a bit of debate they settled on the name Queen Ann's Revenge, after the flag ship of the legendary pirate Black Beard. They figured since they were essentially outlaws, it made sense to name their ships after pirate ships. With that settled the crew of the old ship headed back to the base with the old ship and the Red Team took up their post under the Alliance's Flag Ship in the Saturn Region.

The new ship fit as well as the old one did even though it was larger. The crew and team members enjoy the extra space and comfort the new ship offered. It allowed them to relax a little more when they were not on a mission on the Flag Ship or out with one of the SF teams. They also liked the idea of being able to defend themselves and the ships around them from Gamma Faction ships if they attacked.

Agent Black reported his findings back to Command minus Michael's involvement and his new relationship with Delta Faction. He had a whole new understanding of what they were doing and he wanted to keep the heat off them and let them continue to do what they were doing so well. He reported what forensics had found, which was a large number of DNA samples mixed in with a lot of ash. He reported they had found some fresh kills that indicated that Gamma was still active in the Mars Region, and that the unknown force had killed them.

# How Can This Be

TOC

Mordeck was troubled, he could not believe the events of the last few days had really happened. It was impossible, but the ship that had been sent to the battle platform to find out why they were not responding, reported total destruction of the platform and the ships around it. Every part that might give a clue as to what happened was broken into small useless chunks of metal. Every person onboard that wasn't completely disintegrated were now floating in space in little chunks as well. The ships were all broken in the same manner as those found around Titan. He could only imagine the ships around the base in Mars were in the same state, this new type of attack was very effective. He was angry that his pitiful human slaves had not found a way to incorporate it into their attacks. He couldn't risk anymore ships to find out what state the ships around the Mars base were in. He had given orders not to go near the bases, he didn't want to lose any more ships, he needed them to defend the home base in case whatever force was out there decided to attack this base as well. He didn't have many ships left, certainly none to waist chasing after an obviously superior force. If they could take out the Platform they could more than likely destroy his base. The platform was bad enough, but all the ships wasted on the Mars base was just ridiculous, those who ordered the ships to continue going there to attack the unknown force, were going to be punished for a very long time. Of course he would never admit that it was him, he had told his command staff, he did not care how many ships it took he wanted the threat destroyed.

To make matters worse some idiot in one of the safe houses in the Mars Region sent a ship and a team down to the advanced weapons staging area in the manufacturing facility and they lost contact. He was sure they were destroyed as well, this was just one more thing on top of everything else. Yes, the base was important to his plans, it was where they were building the weapons and shield technology for the non-gifted mercenaries. The technology was based on the stolen Amberlin designs from Delta Faction a few years before, but he had given orders to stay away. Now all of his plans were ruined, it would be years before he could rebuild. He wished he could summon the idiot back to the home base so he could punish him for his stupidity, but that might attract the attack force to his base. He could only hope they did not know where it was, or they might destroy it next.

How could a force so strong enter his area of control and destroy the platform and leave with no trace. How could he have not seen this coming, all he could see was the blur of light that was the threat. All of his processing power and teams of pre-cogs were useless. He randomly choose members of his pre-cogs teams to be tortured as punishment for not seeing the threat to the platform and the force that was attacking Gamma Faction. He was starting to think that he might be the threat, every time he switched tactics and focused on the source of the threat he lost everything. It was time to regroup, pull all his forces back to the base and rebuild. Time was no matter, even if he waited a hundred years it did not matter, time was nothing to him. Still he was very angry that his plans had been ruined. He was the superior life form, he should be winning, any threat the humans had should be no match for him. How could this be happening, how could they be out smarting him.

While Mordeck was brooding over his misfortune, David and his team had to determine what their next move would be. They had reduced the enemy forces substantially, including the large battle platform. Conventional wisdom said they should strike now while the enemy was weak, before they had a chance to regroup. The only problem was the base was massive, and still defended by twenty five ships. They still did not know for sure that the enemy did not have a way to detect their ships, though every encounter seemed to indicate they did not. They had to make a decision soon our the momentum of their victories would be lost. They called a meeting and began planning.

During the meeting they determined for an operation this size it would require all of Red Team. Also they would need at least ten Bashers and perhaps more. That part was easy they had lots of recruits almost fully trained and a lot more than ten Bashers already created. David realized that trying to visualize all of the many floors and possible target areas on the base was still difficult with their current battle interface. He realized that having a three dimensional representation of the base and the surrounding area was the only way to keep track of the battle. They made changes to the interface. They divided it into layered views depending on the perspective that was required for the operator. At the highest level was a 3D view of the planet and the space around it. This view would be for the ships and Bashers to use to coordinate their attacks. The next level down was a war room with a 3D view of the many floors and targets of the base. This was for the highest level of command and control. They put their surveillance drones to work collecting all the information required to construct that model. The next level down was individual sections of the base that would be assigned to each team. The team commander would have that view. The next level down was basically the old interface that the team members would use. All of them where interlinked and each user could move up or down through the interface depending on their need.

It was quickly determined that the interface would have to incorporate the fourth dimension as well. The old interface had allowed them to use it, but it was never formally designed, the new interface however would use time automatically. The entire attack would take place in stages or phases depending on the context, each target would be assigned to an objective that would in turn be assigned to a milestone. When the objectives for that milestone were achieved the milestone was considered achieved. When all the milestones for a phase were achieved the interface would automatically move on to the next phase. By adding the new elements to the interface it became even more useful and far more flexible. Each team could have multiple objectives that took place across several phases and it could all be choreographed to be launched by the interface at the appropriate time. The interface would handle keeping track of objectives and milestones, each team leader would just have to make sure that his objective was complete and marked as such in the interface.

At each level the milestones would change from red to green to indicate the completion of the milestone. In this way the commander could keep track of his progress and see quickly were he needed to refocus troops to complete that phase of the attack. At the highest view the whole base could be seen and the progression from red to green could be observed. As well as call outs to indicate areas of concern as the battle unfolded.

When one objective was complete they would just move on to the next one. Each would be staged with the appropriate tools needed to complete the objective weather that meant robots or obstacle deployment it didn't matter. Each team leader had an alternate assigned so if for some reason they were not able to complete their objective the alternate would take over. This allowed teams to be broken down to as small as two man teams. Of course each two man team had up to an additional forty robots and countless obstacles at their disposal.

While they were planning the interface Gordon had an idea. Hey guys you know how we use obstacles to redirect the enemy and slow them down, what if we incorporated a stationary gun emplacement into the interface, he suggested. What did you have in mind, Michael asked him. Well, you know how we have the small guns mounted on the Bashers, what if we designed one that could be placed on the ground with a solid base, with the same targeting capabilities and sensors as a robot, he asked. That would be great for keeping the enemy pinned down when we needed it, they all agreed it was a good idea.

We could even add a couple of extra missile options, David suggested, something like a miniature version of the torpedoes. How big we talking, Emma asked. I was thinking six inch diameter and only about two feet long, David said. Ouch, in an enclosed space that should do some serious damage, Gordon said. We will keep it as only for anything bigger than a small squad, David said, realizing that it might be a bit of over kill otherwise, and may even jeopardize the mission if it destroyed the structural integrity of the buildings before team members had a chance to evacuate the structure.

Small Missile Design

But it would be used in situations where it was required with certain restraints put in place to limit collateral damage. Unlike space they needed to limit the destructive power of their weapons when conducting missions in tight proximity to potential friendly forces.

They designed a shield defense similar to a suits outer shield and added the appropriate circuity to control them. They decided since the gun was not actually physically firing projectiles and missiles it did not require a solid base to handle recoil and to stabilize the firing aiming system. It was designed into a sphere with four targeting interfaces thus allowing it to engage four targets at the same time. Essentially, each of the targeting interfaces was a slightly striped down version of the robot brain and target assessment and actuation systems. With each one being fully capable of understanding tactics and best firing solutions to achieve designated mission parameters. It could even distinguish between friendly and hostile targets. It would float at whatever height it was deployed with, and the shield would protect the entire thing. It was by far the most complicated of objects to be available for deployment, other than robots but it still did not require that much energy to deploy it. They did decide to prebuild them to make it easier. Several hundred were built and stored with port addresses. The new gun was added to the interface further expanding the capabilities of the individual team members and the system as a whole.

Gun Design (4) 360 Degree Rotating Firing Nodes

The stationary gun would allow robots to be used in other areas that required a more fluid movement and not be stuck guarding perimeter areas and blockades. Where the land mines and booby-traps provided a passive obstacle, the gun could target troops before they made it to the areas that they did not want them to be in. It also made their forces seem much larger and would occupy enemy forces away from more critical areas. The enemy would waist resources trying to take out the gun emplacement only to be drawn into a mine field or booby-trap zone of no real tactical significance.

While they were in the design for the small gun system, they decided the guns on the ships would be more effective if they could target multiple targets at the same time. With a little redesign and by moving some of the circuitry into the hull they were able to make each gun have three nodes. Which meant they could target three targets at the same time. They also decided that the Bashers needed side guns to make them more effective. They added two more guns to the sides of the larger ships as well, for a total of four on each side. Ship was fitted with the new gun design and they were able to add twenty to its hull. The gun systems were setup so they could fire the new smaller missiles and they did some calculations to determine the best distance away from the target to achieve the most kinetic force.

Ship Mounted Gun Design

They created a retro-grade spell to update the existing ships and changed the constructs so all future ships would have the changes. Each addition to their arsenal made them more effective and allowed them to dominate the battlefield far beyond their limited number of actual troops. They still needed to have boots on the ground, but more and more those boots were getting replaced by their mechanical counterparts. Which meant the potential for casualties on their side was significantly reduced.

With the interface planning mostly sorted out they moved on to mission planning. They decided to help with the initial attack and also for future missions that it would be good for each of the RT Squads to have their own ship. They would have one for Alpha and one for Bravo Squad. That would give them a total of three large attack ships in addition to Ship and ten Bashers to attack the base and its defenses. It would allow them to spread out their forces and attack from different vantage points. Once all the enemy ships and exterior defenses had been taken out the teams would coordinate attacks on enemy troops from within the ships. When the majority of the enemies forces had been taken out with robot forces, the teams would start deploying to the surface to continue the assault. The Bashers and Ship would remain in orbit hitting infrastructure and other targets of opportunity to keep the enemy off balance.

Two more ships were put into production and the plans continued to be put in place. Since the enemy base was so huge they were required to split in to small two man teams to be able to hit all of the targets in a timely fashion. While they were making their plans, the Red Team SF team was preparing to depart the Alliance's Flag Ship, they were going to leave a couple of guys behind to make sure the SF teams had some support, but most of the team would be leaving to participate in the battle. The main team would rendezvous with the rest of the attacking force in the Saturn Region. The Team Commander and the Squad Leaders were taking the Basher back to Earth to be there for the planning phase, so they would have input in their role in the mission. They would have taken a Javelin back, but the Basher was faster and they were beginning to think time was a factor in getting the attack underway. Also they knew if they didn't get there quick all of the planning would be over with and they would not have a chance to make any suggestions or claim some of the more fun targets.

Besides the Commander had not flown in one yet, and he wanted to get a feel for their capabilities before the mission started. They took out some asteroids on the way back to see how the weapons systems worked. The Commander and the Squad Leaders were dually impressed with its capabilities. They felt better knowing that not only did they have a Basher to defend them when needed, but their new ship had the same capabilities and could hold off a pretty large fleet of ships long enough for the Basher to launch. Between the two of them any attacking force would be in for a very bad day.

They arrived at headquarters and David and his team brought them up to speed. They also gave them a tour of the new training facilities and they were able to see what the ship that they now lived on looked like from the outside, since they hadn't seen it other than when it was cloaked. They were impressed with everything they saw, and excited to get started when they entered the briefing room to put the finishing touches on the battle plan.

They went over everything that had been planned up until they arrived, most of it had to do with the exterior of the base. Reconnaissance had shown that the base was heavily defended from attack, with several gun emplacements and launch platforms for small attack craft. Adding to its defenses were the twenty five ships orbiting the planet. Obviously the first order of business was the ships and launch platforms. They had planned on the four larger ships coming in from the four points of the compass at the equatorial level of the planet. In their 3D interface model it showed the planet with a grid expanding out from what would be an equator, if the entire planet wasn't covered by the base, this was the horizontal center or the zero point for y in Cartesian Coordinates. Another grid went out from the vertical center of the planet this was the zero point for x in Cartesian Coordinates. This allowed them to divide the planet and the area around it into regions that could then be used to help coordinate areas of responsibility for the attacking ships.

It was similar to the way the interface for the Bashers worked except in that interface the Basher was the center point. This interface made it easier to visualize the targets in a broader multiple ship attack scenario. Where the attacking force would have multiple ships participating in the battle and could pre-designate the areas they wanted the individual ships to concentrate their attacks. In this regard it was similar to the 2D attack interface they used when assigning targets for individual team members during ground attacks.

They had integrated the 2D attack screens into the new 3D model so that when you drilled down into the plan from a higher level you could see the target designations of the team members, during the battle their interface would be the old 2D interface except when they were transitioning to and from battle zones, then they would see where they were within the model to keep them orientated. This would help them move freely within the base once that phase of the battle started. It made since, there were multiple targets throughout the base and they were on different floors and on different sides of the base.

This was the first time they had to attack a target this complex so the new interface was a logical extension of what had worked for them in the past. It gave them more control of the plan and they could easily visualize each step of the attack, and therefore could make a better plan. The ability to have the virtual war room as the highest level of the interface allowed them to meet and discuss the plan or make changes on the fly. During the battle the commanders would all be in the war room coordinating the attack and making changes as necessary from that perspective. However, perhaps the best part of the interface was that it was all virtual, so they did not have to be in the same physical location.

This allowed them to be able to pop any member of the team up into the war room as needed during the mission to make last minute changes or impart updated intel so that everyone was on the same page at all times. They could redirect their team anyway they needed to, and they would understand their place within the battle at all times, and having a better situational awareness made them more effective. Having the big picture view when needed so they understood their orders and didn't feel like they were being moved around the chessboard like some mindless pawn by some disassociated commander in an ivory tower. The other great thing was that most of the battle was going to be done remotely with robots used to dispatch targets within the base or ships using torpedoes to dispatch targets outside the base. Because these weapons could be deployed anywhere within the actual physical space of the battle zone they had a lot more flexibility to make adjustments as needed. They wert dependent on troop movements prior to attack or getting ships into place before firing on a target.

A mid-tier addition to the interface let team commanders of any size, meet in a mini war room that displayed a 3D model of their designated area of responsibility so they could relay information to their team members and keep them apprised of changes as needed. For their style of combat this interface was the best it could possibly be. It offered the highest level of command and control with the greatest amount of flexibility.

They made changes to the Basher and the other ship interfaces to allow them to start from this prospective. In future missions when they setup the mission some center point would be chosen and the space around that point would be divided in the same way, then the ships would be given targets within the regions that they would be responsible for. It made it much easier to setup the battle, and of course the targets were mapped to the objective model which kept track of the phase of attack. With the new interface setup, the system mapped all of the enemy ships to their x,y,z coordinates within the model. Then it overlaid their friendly ships into the model with call outs for everything. Surveillance drones kept the model up to date, by updating the enemy locations as they changed.

Tracking data from the interface would update the friendly positions within the model. For now since they were not actually in that physical location a place holder would represent their starting point. As the battle started the system would track their ships as they moved into position and then when they reached their starting point the place holder would go away and the tracking data from the ship would be in its place.

The beauty of the system was that when the weapons crew of the ships selected a target within their region of responsibility. The system would bring up a reasonable 3D model of the target ship and a calculated position for their command and control as well as their reactor. The areas would show up as a numbered objective. Each objective within the system had a unique alpha numeric designator that would show up as a round dot on the target. When the actual attack took place as each objective was hit the system would update the status of the objectives. Target elimination and objective completion was tracked by the AI of the system and most of the time could be determined without any input from the person executing the attack. On the rare occasion that a target still survived after an attack. The system would ask the operator to verify objective completion.

That should be a very rare occurrence since the interface tended to use excessive force against targets and usually hit them with more than enough weapons to destroy them and render them completely useless or dust in the case of robot attacks. The robots seemed to like to obliterate a target, perhaps it was because Emma and Gordon programmed them that way, but then again who could say for sure. All that they could really say for sure, was that robots did their job well, and used extreme prejudice when eliminating targets.

For the ships the crew member simply had to designate a torpedo for each of the objective points and the system would store that designate and update the location of the ship and objective points within the model. If for some reason more information was needed while the objective was selected all of data was displayed to the crew member. For instance if the crew member needed to know where this objective fell in the time phase of the attack or target information such as thickness of the hull, based on measurements taken during earlier attacks, it was all right there for them to help in the planning.

This information was useful in the planning stage since it allowed them to plan their flight path more efficiently hitting targets that had a higher priority due to the attack plan as a whole, it was all accounted for, and the hull thickness allowed them to set the depth of the new bubble feature of the torpedoes.

The attack interface had evolved into a state of the art weapons system that allowed them to plan missions down to the millisecond and then update the plan accordingly as the situation changed. The system was rigid in that it constantly made sure that the individual attacks took place within the time frame of the overall attack plan, but also flexible in that it always made sure that the individual attack plans were updated based on changing conditions and that the overall attack plan was adjusted accordingly to accommodate those changes.

The system was as structured as a system could be that dealt with rapidly changing events, but yet flexible enough to handle the chaos of war and adapt accordingly. While shielding the operator from the confusion as much as possible. There was no emotion governing the sequence of events it was all controlled according to plan. The plan just evolved to handle the unknown, without putting undo stress on the people using the system to conduct their battle. It took a lot for an attack plan to be completely abandoned, and since most attacks were based on events taking place that would launch the attack there would have to be a lot things going wrong for those to change. The only exception to this was when previous attacks were too successful thus rendering the current attack unneeded, in that case the system would just move on to the next objective.

For the larger enemy ships which there was only one left for this attack, there would be six objectives since they had seen that four torpedoes were all that was needed to take them out, the other two would hit the launching bays where the small attack ships were stored. Additionally, the crew member would have to designate targets for the small guns such as the cockpits of the small attack ships on the launch platform. The system stored all that data and executed it when the time was right. Alpha Squad's ship was assigned to the big ship since there ship had more small gun nodes than a Basher did, so they could hit more cockpits at a time.

The system would only re-designate a target once it had been assigned to a specific region and assigned to a specific operator, if the target moved out of that region before the attack could be executed. Even then it only would do it if the target had moved sufficiently far enough away that the only way to hit it was to force the operator to go out of his region of responsibility. More often than not since all of the weapons did not require a physical presents in the traditional sense, the interface would just execute the attack anyway unless by doing so it would interfere with another attack being performed by another operator. The system kept track of the targets no matter where they went after they had been designated so it wasn't hard to redirect an attack.

When they were happy with the plan for the outer part of the base and all of its defenses they moved on to the inner part of the base. They continued with the regions of responsibility model that they had used on the outside and assigned each squad an area of responsibility within the base. The two team leaders, Michael, and Megan, would each act as the commander for the four teams. David and the twins plus a group of newly trained recruits would work as reserve forces hitting targets of opportunity or handling unforeseen threats as they came up. By this point they had twenty five hundred robots, to support the teams plus all of the obstacles that the teams were going to put in place. The new gun was going to figure heavily in their plans, which would also help direct the enemy into kill zones that they were starting to designate as they laid out the plan.

With small two man teams they had just enough forces to take out all of the small targets spread throughout the base. The ships would concentrate fire on the command and control areas from orbit and any large gatherings of troops, this included barracks areas. There wasn't going to be much left of the base by the time the teams regrouped to attack any remaining forces. Like any good plan they were going to attack just before dawn when most of the troops would still be asleep. The largest barracks areas were going to be hit at the same time the ships were being hit outside the base. This would not give them a chance to muster their forces and anyone left in those areas would still be disorientated while the rest of the attack unfolded. It was a bad part of war, but most of them would at least die in their sleep. Those that survived the initial attack would not be as fortunate, they would have to endure the fight that was coming to them.

A fight that the enemy could not possibly win, the interface had become too sophisticated, it gave them such an advantage. That even if the enemy was ready for them when they attacked, they still would not stand a chance against the robot augmented forces and superior weapons systems they were going to bring to bear against them. There would have to be a force that the enemy had not tried to use against them in any other battle and it would have to be so overwhelming and devastating that it would not make sense that they would not have used it in past battles. There was nothing that would indicate that such a force existed and that they could marshal it against them. Gamma Faction was for once at the disadvantage in the fight, it was a long time coming but thanks to David and his team they were finally able to bring the fight to them.

Obviously they were not going into it blindly with over confidence, but all of their surveillance and past encounters told them they had the upper hand in this battle. Once all the ground work was laid out and all the troops that were going to be leaving Earth to participate in the battle were ready to go. All the equipment was loaded on the ships the teams were boarded and they headed for the rendezvous point in the Saturn Region. Thanks to a flash update and the new virtual interface the SF Team Members had all their targets designated as well. They had mission briefings with their Commander and the squad leaders. Before they wrapped up the planning sessions, they attended a full virtual mission briefing with everyone that was going to be part of the attack, so all the combatants knew their mission and the interface was just waiting to set it into motion.

# The Dark Planet

TOC

The planning was over they now had all of the targets designated and everyone knew their job, they were ready to head for the enemy base. They were the largest force Delta Faction had ever launched. Three large attack vessels, Ship, and ten Bashers loaded in their bays all converged on the outer edge of the solar system. They had four squads of commandoes, the Red One team, ten newly trained recruits, and the crews of the ships all ready to fight, and all well versed on their mission responsibilities. It would still take them almost two days to reach the base, during that time every member of the attacking force would go over their part of the attack backward and forwards until they knew it by heart and the system had it mapped out as well.

After a long but uneventful trip across the solar system and beyond, they arrived a few thousand miles away from the base. Everyone had taken ten hours of down time, they had all slept and decompressed before the mission, they still had two hours before the start time of the attack. Everyone took the opportunity to eat and do last minute equipment checks, the flight crews changed out shifts so the pilots would be fresh for combat. The pilots and copilots of the Bashers all ate and got ready to deploy their ships so they were ready as well. The commanders all came together in the war room to evaluate the status of the enemy before they attacked. They were happy to see that the enemy ships were in almost the same exact spot they had been when the targets were designated. Surveillance showed that the troops were still asleep in their barracks and only the skeleton crews of the night shifts were on duty, everything was according to plan.

Emma, Gordon, and Alex were on the Marauder, they were setup to provide tech support were needed. They had a little less than an hour before the battle was going to start. You know, Emma said, something has been bothering me and I couldn't put my finger on it until just now. You know how the new torpedoes use the bubble to basically dissolve the hull or wall before they hit, she asked rhetorically? Both Gordon and Alex affirmed their understanding of this. So I was just thinking that it would be better, especially with the walls of buildings, if we had a way to know the exact thickness to adjust the bubble depth, she said, there has to be a way to run a spell that acts like sonar and can tell the thickness. Ship heard the conversation and said that it could create one that would work, but it would make a slight sound when it took the measure. Emma said, that she would like to change the interface so when the bubble was getting ready to deploy it would take a measure and then adjust accordingly.

Ship created the spell and they flashed it into the system and reset all the stored designations to use the new method. They would take the information stored already in the system and adjust it so the intent of the setting was carried out when the command was executed. The reason it was important was because, the plan was laid out so that for every building that was targeted they would use just the right amount of torpedoes, so that when they hit they filled the entire structure with white phosphorous. That meant the torpedoes had to stop just inside so the first stage would fill the room when the second stage helped spread it out over the area. The sound that would be made just prior to the missile hitting the target was not going to be a problem, the five hundred milliseconds delay they had, did not give the enemy enough time to react.

It was just a few more minutes before the attack was scheduled to start. All the ships started moving toward the planet slowly. Two Bashers went out on either side of the planet and made their way to the other side to take up their positions. There was no reaction from the base or the ships orbiting it. The rest of the ships moved into position. Ten minutes until they started, everyone did one final check of their systems and prepared for the attack. Green light from all teams, the battle could start at any time they were ready, a countdown showed in their HUD displayed as the clock counted down from one minute.

Time seemed to slow down, and it felt like a life time had passed before the first attacks started. Julie was in Basher One, she was assigned one of the larger barracks as her first target. One of the weapons crew members had setup four torpedoes to hit the building, one for each entrance front and back and two for the middle. Eight more were targeted for each of the eight gun emplacements within range of the barracks. The execute command was given the interface launched the torpedoes, the other three crew members had targeted a launch platform nearby. All the torpedoes hit their targets, the building and the platform exploded into hot fiery destruction. The small guns had targeted the cockpits of the small attack ships, the new missiles hit two at a time obliterating the ships. The next valley of torpedoes from all four crew members slammed into the platform, as they hit, Julie was banking the ship heading for the next target area. All over the base explosions flashed out into space as the last of the oxygen burned off from the torpedo strikes.

At the same time Julie's crew were launching their first torpedoes, the ship that alpha team was on was taking out the largest enemy ship in orbit, and some gun emplacements on the base. In the first valley of torpedoes from the attack force, all of the ships, barracks, launch platforms, and most of the gun emplacements were taken out. The platforms usually received another valley just to be sure. Next to go were all the command and control areas and the remainder of the gun emplacements. Next for this phase were several reactors throughout the base. The attack was going well, they had just about finished off all of the exterior defenses and they had killed a large portion of the enemy forces that were in the barracks. They wrapped up the rest of the targets for phase one and started transitioning to phase two.

Phase two was the deployment of obstacles throughout the base including several of the new guns. They wanted to channel the remaining enemy forces into designated kill zones that they had planned ambushes for. While the first obstacles were being deployed small robot teams started dropping into the more remote areas and taking out small groups of the enemy. Included in this was the dungeon that Agent Kim was being held in. During the reconnaissance they had identified him and even though they were not sure why he was being tortured they were not going to let him survive. The only issue they had with it, was that they were almost doing him a favor in killing him, considering his role in the attacks on Saturn Station 12. They had done facial scans of the other prisoners as well and had not found any friendly faces, so they all got rescued from their torture by the sweet release of death. They could only imagine what atrocities they must have committed to be punished by such a brutal group as what Gamma Faction had become, but it must have been bad. The idea that they may have been punished for failure in regard to the last few battles against their team had come up as well, but that implied they had something to do with the killing of the innocent civilians so that didn't help their cause either.

In the end they were not spared the fate that everyone on the base was going to receive. This was the ultimate form of negotiation, resolution through eradication. Through the years Delta Faction had tried unsuccessfully to coexist with Gamma Faction and as recent events had shown it had become imposable. Therefore, they were only left with this one option. Gamma Faction would not stop being a danger to humanity unless they stopped them. In order to do that they had to destroy their ability to wage war on the Alliance, on Delta Faction, and on the innocents that had suffered from Gamma Faction attacks.

With that unwavering resolve to finish the mission, they continued to move through the objectives in phase two. A few of the guns had started firing on enemy troops that were trying to regroup for a counter attack. Though at this point they were more interested in trying to find a place to hide. Several groups were pinned down by the guns, thus presenting targets of opportunity. While they were busy trying to figure out how to attack the gun emplacement. David and his team dropped robots in behind them and took them out. When the last enemy fell the guns stopped firing and waited for more troops to pass their way.

The last obstacles were put in place, that meant it was time to move into phase three. The teams started dropping in their robots to carry out attacks on the larger groups of enemy troops. David helped get the enemy moving in the direction they wanted them to by dropping explosives in on them until they started moving the right way. Once the crowd was moving it was easy for the robots to keep them moving with a few well-placed explosive balls. They continued to drive them down their corridor into the waiting ambush. By that point the enemy troops had been significantly reduced so the waiting robots did not have much trouble destroying them.

While the battle continued to rage inside the base the Bashers and other ships continued to hit targets from orbit. The base was starting to look like a series of craters. Infrastructure, control towers, and communications areas were all targeted. The whole base was on emergency power now, since all the reactors had been hit. The only remaining power source was geo-thermal and that was hardly enough to keep the emergency lights working throughout the base.

Mordeck had woken to the sound of destruction as the first torpedoes had hit the barracks and gun emplacements. He had drank to excess the night before as was his custom. While he was trapped in the human vessel, he was effected by the same things that effected humans. His head was splitting and the sound of the explosions was not helping. He had been having a dream in which he saw his death, so the sound of the attack made him realize that he may be killed if he stayed on the base. As much as he hated his existence in this plain if he did not do everything possible to try and survive he would be doomed to live with whatever damage was done to the vessel, including any mortal wounds that he might sustain. It was the curse of the universal laws that governed all things, and tried to dissuade higher beings from doing exactly what he had done. Therefore, he was forced to try to escape, he made his way to his secret escape pod. It would jettison into space and look like space debris until the enemy forces had left, then he could go to a nearby asteroid were he had a ship waiting to take him away from the base. He would find a place to hold up and start to rebuild his forces.

He was almost to the pod when the first attacks on the larger groups had started, he watched from a secret passage while his forces were destroyed by unknown cloaked forces. He thought that the force attacking his base must be huge to be able to fight their way into the base this far and still be able to take out such a large force. Since he had seen reports of fighting all over the base before he started his escape, he thought they must be a very large force indeed. He assumed that they were attacking from large ships that were using smaller ships to dock and deployed their troops on to the base.

Seeing that they were cloaked troops made him very angry, since he had not been able to find out about the obvious massive buildup of Delta Faction until it was too late. He still could not understand how they could have such a large force at their disposal, but he would have plenty of time to think about it as he floated in space the next few days waiting for the battle to be over. He thought for sure it would take them that long to completely destroy his base. In his mind they must have lost at least some of their ships in the initial attack and would require more support ships to help fight the battle and provide aid to the wounded. He had no way of knowing just how many troops had already been killed and how much of his base had already been destroyed as well.

He finally was able to make his way to the escape pod and jettisoned it into space on the dark side of the planet. By design he was able to hide the launch with an explosion that did not alert the attacking forces to its appearance, it just looked like another explosion on the planet's surface. The pod blended in with the other debris around the planet from the other ships that had been destroyed earlier. He would just simply float in space and wait to make his escape. It was cowardly but he had no choice, he could not stand against such a superior force. Besides that was why he had so many troops on this base in the first place, they were there to make sure he could make his escape if need be. They stopped having any other practical purpose as soon as he had to abandon his plans for the attack on Earth. They would have been used as cannon fodder anyway, they may as well be put to that use now.

Inside the base the battle continued, the enemy forces continued to be whittled down by the well-executed attacks on the last defenders. If they knew their leader had already fled they may have tried to surrender. However, since they thought he was still around and might punish them for such a cowardly act, they continued to fight. It was just as well because they most likely would not have excepted their surrender. Nowhere in their plan was there a provision for prisoners. Gamma Faction had left too much destruction in their wake, for mercy to be shown now. The old saying they had made their bed now they had to lay in it, was the prevailing attitude.

They transitioned to phase three of the plan, the three scout ships landed on the planet and the Red Team Squads disembarked and began to fan out and take up their positions throughout the base. It was slow going from the spaceports because of all the debris in the corridors that lead to their mission objectives. Robots continued to engage the enemy while the teams made their way in. Their path through the base had already been cleared but they remained vigilant and occasionally had to take out an enemy that had managed to evade the attack up until that point. They did not really have anything to worry about the enemy could not see them, but they could see the enemy. More often than not, the enemy did not even know they were there until they were getting hit by the explosive shards.

Finally they made it to their designated area and started engaging the larger groups that remained. As always their prior planning and advanced weaponry proved too much for the enemy forces and they were able to destroy them all. The objectives had mostly been fulfilled, and were becoming few and far between so they started taking out adhoc targets of opportunity where they presented themselves.

The battle continued there was only small pockets of resistance left, mostly in well defended areas that made it hard to get robots into position to flush the enemy out of them. Luckily, that was not the only play in the book. David started dropping explosives down on top of them and the survivors were forced to come out into the waiting robots. After that there was a lull in the fighting and the teams took the opportunity to send drones in to look for anymore hidden troops. Multi-spectral analysis revealed a few groups hiding in passageways and corridors that they did not have in their model. The information was added and the SF teams took care of the situation with their signature shard to the head tactic. Another pass through didn't find anyone left within the base. They started sweeping the base for intel, and placing explosives on all support structures. They literally were not going to leave anything behind when they left.

Ironically, it took them longer to check the entire base for intel and set their explosives than it took for the entire battle to take place. It was late evening by the time they determined they found everything they were going to find and that all of the explosives had been set. All the teams pulled out and made their way to the waiting ships and returned to orbit. The drones did one more pass and confirmed all targets had been eliminated. All obstacles including the guns were dismissed and the execute command was given. Several explosions ripped through the remainder of the base and all the ships opened fire randomly hitting anything that looked even remotely like it was still intact.

All the explosions including the many reactors from earlier in the battle had finally taken their toll, massive quakes shook the ruins of the base as the planet started to erupt lava from several fissures steaming from the reactor points of explosion. They could honestly say they had destroyed the enemy base completely. There was no way they could use it again for anything. The ships pulled away from the planet a few thousand miles away. They reloaded the Bashers and started back to home base.

Everyone was tired they had a full day of battle and needed some rest and food to recharge. The bridge crews switched out their shift so fresh pilots would take them home. The teams came together in their common rooms and ate and generally talked and started to process the events of the day. The commanders had come over to the Marauder to have an after action meeting with David's team. After they were sure that most everyone had a chance to eat and relax a bit they setup a virtual meeting drawing everyone into the large virtual space.

They congratulated everyone on a job well done and thanked them for their efforts to achieve their goal. Then they told them all to get some rest and decompress while they returned to Saturn Region. With that out of the way the SF Commander returned to his ship but the RT Commander remained on Ship since that was where he stayed normally during missions. He had his own state room near David's and the rest of the Red One team. The ships that they designed for the squads had been setup with state rooms with two to a room, which was better than the ship that the SF team used. Other than the Commander and the Squad Leaders, since they had two squads onboard they had sleeping bays. It was still fairly comfortable, especially compared to their old ship. They were not complaining, they had finally achieved a goal that Delta Faction had wanted to do for some time now. Once they realized there was no way to bring Gamma Faction back to the fold they had resigned themselves to having to take them out. After a few hours of celebration most everyone went to bed to get some sleep after such a hard day.

There would be plenty of time to celebrate in the weeks to come they had broken the back of Gamma Faction, even if there were still agents out there, they would be severally limited in what they could do without their leadership and home base to support them. Ship was not quite as optimistic about the outcome, it was fairly certain that the creature calling itself Jonas was not among the casualties of the base. It was certain that today's attack had severally disrupted its plans but it would still be out there gathering its strength and waiting to make its come back. For now the Faction and humanity was safe from it, but sometime in the future they would have to face it again.

# No More War

TOC

The ships continued to Saturn Region and the SF ship Queen Ann's Revenge split off and the Bashers that were not assigned to them, departed from their bay. The Javelins that had been left behind would take their place and they would return to Earth with the rest of the fleet. They were hardly a fleet really, only three ships, and now the Bashers, but they certainly could handle themselves in a fight, as they had just demonstrated.

The SF Team members that had stayed behind would be happy to have their ship back, since they had been sleeping in one of the Javelins. The cargo bay was not bad but it wasn't what they had gotten used to on their ship. The SF Team Commander was told to await further instructions and just support whatever operations the Alliance SF Teams might need them for. They were feeling pretty good about the damage they had done to the Gamma Faction network and didn't expect much trouble from the remaining agents that might still be out there. Never the less they would be ready should the SF Teams be called to deal with a Gamma threat. In the mean time they would enjoy the down time if possible and get some well needed rest after their hard earned victory over Gamma Faction and their base.

The rest of the ships returned to the home base on Earth. For Michael and Megan it was time to face the music, they had completed a mission to destroy the enemy base without the permission or knowledge of the High Council. As Michael had learned over the course of his career there was nothing like success to help mend the hurt feelings of your superiors when you finally had to come clean to them about missions they may or may not have sanctioned had you asked for permission. He didn't think this situation would be any different. Especially, since they had given them a certain amount of autonomy in conducting operations with regard to missions and tactics. They wanted them to use the RT troops to do damage to Gamma Faction and they had certainly done that.

By the strictest interpretation of that charter this mission would not fall under that category. However, since they had successfully pulled it off, they were not too worried. Had the mission failed it would be a different story. Of course had the mission failed they probably would not be coming back to face the Council anyway. Had the mission failed they would more than likely be destroyed with all their ships based on the strength of that base and its defenses.

The next morning Michael and Megan went to the Council Chamber to bring them up to speed. It was going to be a long briefing since there was a lot they did not know. Also they had a lot of footage to go over with them.

As Michael had predicted there was a certain amount of hand slapping and promises not to do something like this in the future. Fairly easy to agree to, since there probably was not another enemy base out there that they needed to take down. In the end the Council was happy with the outcome and even having a hard time being mad as they showed them the battle footage captured by the surveillance drones.

Unfortunately, that also meant that they had to come clean about the new ships they had created as well. More indignant reprimands for not keeping them in the loop, but general approval of the new functionality the ships provided to them. How could they not be impressed with the combat capabilities of the Bashers and the new ships that the Teams were using. They asked if they had a feel for were the attack left Gamma Faction at, in regard to their threat to Delta Faction. They answered honestly, that they were not sure, it certainly limited their capabilities for the foreseeable future and most likely eliminated the threat to Earth. However, they were not sure of the remaining strength of the Faction as a whole. They would just have to wait and see that was all they could do. Ship was not as happy with the results as the rest of the council because it knew that Jonas had escaped the attack. The surveillance drones it had left in the area had picked up some movement in a debris field and later a ship leaving a nearby asteroid but they had not been able to tag it so there was no way of knowing where it had went.

Ship urged the council to not become complacent now that the military threat seemed to be greatly reduced for the moment, it informed them that they should focus all of their attention to the financial structure of Gamma Faction. Emma's father and his team had made a lot of head way in finding the funding of Gamma Faction and they were working on ways of funneling the funds into accounts that Delta could use, and exposing the accounts that they could not hack or gain access to because of security measures or some other roadblock, to the government authorities so they could go after them.

Ship knew that now that most of his forces were destroyed Jonas would try to rebuild and he would need funds to do that. By attacking his funding sources they could derail his efforts for a while. Using information obtained by Emma's father and information from its surveillance network ship was able to track some illegal arms deals and other nefarious operations that Gamma Faction was conducting on a regular bases to raise capital. Most Ship was able to disrupt with a few well places shards to the heads of the Gamma Operatives. There were a few though that might require a bit more help. He contacted Joan and discussed the situation with her. So you want to use David's team to take out these groups and you don't want to draw attention to your surveillance operations she asked.

Yes, as you know the Council is still a bit touchy about such things, and may be even more so based on our recent skirting of their authority. I think I can bring Bill into our little group and use him to funnel the information to the Council, Joan said. That way they will think the intel is coming from his efforts alone and they will not know about our involvement, she continued. That would be very good, Ship acknowledged. "Yes, I am sure we can trust him to keep us out of it, he has been my husband for many years and had to do similar things for me during my political career. He understands the need to placate politicians for the greater good", she said. Let me bring him into our meeting then, ship said, after a quick check on his location and confirming he would not raise suspicions if he suddenly went into a mental meeting.

Ship drew him in to their meeting introductions were made, but Bill had been aware of Ship for some time, so it was not a big surprise when he was introduced to it. They explained the situation and as Joan predicted be understood the situation and was willing to help wherever he could. As Joan's husband he didn't have any good feelings towards Gamma Faction and was determined to bring them down. They had tried to kill his family and almost succeeded with his wife, he was out for blood. He also understood the delicate nature of how they had come about getting the information and how it would present a problem for the Council. He had been working with Delta Faction for the past few months and had an understanding of their repulsion to government oversight and surveillance. Therefore, they came up with a plan to make the information seem like something he would be able to uncover through his operations.

He was now a part of the team and for better or worse, would help them in the future when they needed to impart sensitive information that could not be presented in a normal fashion. With that mandate and a firm understand of the plan and how to present the information, he reported to the council and explained the cover story. They in turn responded with a little prompting by Ship, in the way that it wanted them to, and David's Team was summoned to the council chamber.

They were still using the old school method of physically being in the room so David, Megan, and Michael had to go to the Delta Faction Command Center to attend the meeting. They explained the situation and asked them to come up with a plan to deal with it. It was fairly straight forward the teams would go to each of the locations and take out the Gamma Operatives and any other hostile forces that may be involved. There was five locations all together, and they were spread across the solar system, two sets of two that were close enough together or at least within range that a squad could split into two groups to take them out. The main location presented a unique challenge because they were co-located with a large group from a criminal organization.

It was decided that the Alliance and everyone else in the solar system would not be adversely effected if the criminal organization suffered the same fate as the Gamma Faction Operatives. Red One and Ship would handle the larger target and each of the ships and RT Squads would handle the other targets, using Bashers and Javelins as needed to achieve their mission. They wanted to hit them all at the same time or at least on the same day, so they could not go to ground when they heard of an attack on one of the other operations.

This was going to be another test of the interface a coordinated attack by several groups with the expanse of the solar system between them. They checked out the interface and determined that it should handle the situation with no update required, so they started making plans for the attacks. It wasn't difficult just made a little harder by the distance between the operations. Only two of the targets had to happen at a precise time the rest could be at any time as long as they happened relatively close to the same time.

Two of the targets were in the Saturn Region the reduced law enforcement operations had made it a hot bed of illegal activity, the military contingent that was supplementing law enforcement could not spare the extra manpower to handle all of it so it went unchecked. The Saturn Region had become the wild west of the Planetary Alliance, and criminals were taking advantage of it. Alpha squad was going to take care of these targets. The other two targets were in the Jupiter Region and Bravo Squad was going to take care of them. The last Target was on a Station near Venus. The Teams setup their attacks based on the surveillance they had around the areas of the meets. They would be taking out both buyers and sellers, when they attacked. Unfortunately, for the buyers they were getting to pay the price for guilt by association.

The ships departed from the Earth base with basic plans in place the rest they would setup as they docked with the space stations. Alpha Squad had split into two groups with one group using two Javelins and a Basher just in case. The other group stayed on their ship, and they each docked with their space stations that they were responsible for. The group with the Javelin was going to Saturn Station 5 and the other group was going to Saturn Station 10. The Javelins docked and the teams entered the station they put one guy to guard the ports from the inside with four gun emplacements and ten robots to help. The Basher took up a position between the two ships facing out toward any threat that might come their way from space. The ship had it easier, it only needed one port and it could provide its own cover as far as space was concerned. The team did leave the same coverage on the inside of the port though, so they could guard the ship and their escape route.

With the ships and their exit strategy in place the teams used transports to take them to the meeting spot. They had a staging area setup close by each site. They dismounted and dismissed their transports, and then took up their positions awaiting the Gamma Faction Operatives and their buyers.

Bravo Squad followed the same protocol and they were setup on Jupiter Station 15 and Jupiter Station 6. Their attack was on a drug lab in the business district of the hub, so they advanced and waited for the next shipment from the supplies to arrive. Through surveillance they had seen that the supplies usually arrived around the same time each day. It would be during this delivery that they would attack, thus upsetting the suppliers and any possible future deals that Gamma Faction might try to make with them. The teams knew they couldn't time their attacks at exactly the same time due to the nature of the different situations. However, they could time them close enough that they wouldn't have time to worn the others. If for some reason they didn't get everybody in the attack and they contacted Gamma Faction.

David and his team made it to Venus Station 9 and after setting up a similar defensive perimeter around the inside of their port with Alex standing guard from inside Ship, they went to the shopping area the criminals had converted into their base of operations. From the outside it looked like a few shops in a section of the shopping district. However, nobody went near them and they had too many burly looking guys standing around them looking menacing and generally unfriendly.

They were going to have to take out the sentries and make their way inside without raising an alarm. They sent a surveillance drone up to look for other spotters other than the guards outside. They found two spotters up in the buildings across the street. They took them out with a trusty shard to the head trick. In a move that David had never tried before, they sent robots in behind the guards and grabbed them and snapped their necks at the same time, then pulled them back through the portals with them. Everything that was organic matter was instantly disintegrated, not the best way to go, but certainly no worse than being hit by any other weapon that they may have used on them, and far less noisy, as well as less messy.

With all the sentries taken out, they made their way into the building the entrance came out on a balcony overlooking the area below. Once inside they saw the stores had been converted and setup as an illegal weapons storage facility as well as offices for the criminal boss, his men, and their Gamma Faction Cohorts. There was at least twelve guys sitting around the place and a few guards, guarding the entry points and providing security for the operation.

They set their robots up for the attack and waited for execution, they were going to do it at exactly the same time the last Alpha Squad team took out their targets. Then Bravo Squad would just have to wait for the suppliers to show up and they could take out theirs as well. They didn't have to wait long team one of Alpha Squad indicated that the buyers had just showed up. Alpha Squad team two said they were still waiting. Since the buy was going down with the first group, they launched their attack and made their exit off the station upon its completion.

About twenty minutes later Alpha Squad two had their buyers show up, Alpha Squad made a few last minute adjustments and setup their attack. The execute command was given and all of the enemy targets were taken out. The Alpha Squad team returned to their ship and rendezvoused with the rest of Alpha Squad. David's team made their exit as well, they waited to return to base until the Bravo Teams had a chance to take out their targets. They wanted to be ready just in case they needed them. About an hour later the suppliers for both sites had shown up at the locations so they executed their attacks.

Bravo Squad returned to their rendezvous point and they started heading toward home. With all the targets taken out the teams returned to base and debriefed and filed their after action reports. The next morning the High Council was briefed, after the briefing David and his team returned to their house and started the long awaited RR they had been needing since the base attack.

Now that they had a chance to relax for a while David decided it was time for him to do something that he was not looking forward to, but he knew it had to be done. He went to find Emma, she was in the break room of the headquarters talking with Gordon when he found her.

Gordon can you give us a moment please, I need to talk to Emma for a moment, he said. Gordon said, sure, and got up to leave the room. As soon as he left the room, Emma said, I know what you are going to say, I am not stupid you know, I have seen the way you guys are together lately. I am sorry Emma I have been wanting to tell you, but I didn't know how to say it, and I didn't want to hurt your feelings, David said. So you finally noticed that I care about you and it is too late, she already has you, Emma said, as a tear rolled down her cheek. I have loved you most of my life and all that I wanted was for you to notice, now that you have I want it to go back to the way that it was, when I still had a chance, she said. Emma I will always care for you and even love you, just not in that way, he said. I know, she said, I have always known I just wanted it so much that I was fooling myself. I still want our friendship to be the same, he said, can you promise me that won't change he asked? Yes, she said, holding back the tears. Then she stood up and hugged him and said, I just need a good cry that's all, and left the room as fast as she could without running.

She went to her room, and cried into her pillow, after a while she was just lying there and Ship reached out to her. Are you alright Emma, Ship asked? Yes, I just needed some time to cry, I have known for a while now, it just is more real now that he has told me that's all, she said. You know one thing I have learned from you humans is that love is a funny thing, David loves you but not in the same way that you love him. Gordon loves you in the same way you love David, but you love him in the same way that David loves you. What do you mean Gordon loves me, she asked. Yes, I have noticed it in the way he looks at you lately, Ship confirmed. But he never said anything, she said. Did you ever say anything to David, Ship asked. No, but that's different, she said. Oh, how is that different, Ship asked, it seems the same to me. Emma didn't have an answer she was suddenly thinking about the time she had spent with Gordon lately, could she have been that blind that she didn't see it right in front of her face.

The more she thought about it the more she wondered if she could feel that way about Gordon. They had a lot in common and they worked really good together. Maybe there was something to what Ship was saying. After a while, she said, thank you Ship. Your welcome, Emma I hope it helps, Ship replied.

Later Ship met with Joan, and Bill, and they assessed were the financials of Gamma Faction stood with the latest attacks. Bill said he was confident that with illegal activities curtailed and his work in capturing their bank accounts, they were not looking good for money. The government was seizing all the other accounts and any assets associated with them. Ship was happy to hear that, though it knew that Jonas would have some money stashed somewhere and would be able to rebuild his wealth through his abilities to read peoples thoughts, and manipulate them to his will. For the moment they had hurt him badly, and it would take time for him to come back from that.

Mordeck was in a foul mood, he had seen his bases destroyed and all of his plans ruined. He had received word that they now were attacking his finances, if not for his black market stashes he would be completely broke. It was going to take a very long time for him to rebuild his forces and he was going to have to start much smaller than he had planned. He was going to have to make it to one of his safe houses in one of the space stations. The only problem was he was not sure which ones might be compromised. He would just have to take a chance, and hope for the best. He had greatly underestimated the threat, it would not happen again, the next time he would be ready. He would have his revenge no matter how long it took.

To be continued.

#  Index

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Amberlin

See A.M.B.E.R.L.I.N

A.M.B.E.R.L.I.N

Artificial Magic Biosynthetic Enhancement Retro Linking Interface to Nano-agent. Used to augment the non-gifted and allow them to use shields and hide their identity when passing through security checkpoints.

AI

Artificial Intelligence

augmentation

Augmentation to the brain or to enhance the implant

clairvoyance

Used to refer to the ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through means other than the known human senses, a form of extra-sensory perception.

communications

communications device built in to the implant, augmented with advanced encryption by Delta Faction. Virtually imposable to trace by other agencies

comms-device.

Communications specifically designed to be untraceable since it did not use the normal communications frequencies

Delta Faction

Group of agents with telepathic and or telekinetic powers not anti-government wish to co-exist.

Gamma Faction

Group of agents with telepathic and or telekinetic powers anti-government wish to dominate normal humans.

HUD

Heads Up Display. The later versions of the suit display a HUD like interface on the wearers optic nerve.

implant

Mental implant used to extend the brains function and connect to inter planetary network.

M.E.R.L.I.N

Magic Enhancement Retro Linking Interface to Nano-agent

Merlin

See M.E.R.L.I.N

nano-agent

Liquid filled with Nanobots

Nanobots

Tiny robots that manipulate mater at the nano scale

Nano-Technology

Technology at the nano-meter or less scale.

neuro-linguistic programming

Connection between the neurological processes ("neuro"), language ("linguistic") and behavioral patterns learned through experience ("programming") and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in life. Skills of exceptional people are "modeled" using NLP methodology, then those skills are acquired by anyone.

neuroplasticity

Concept of synaptic pruning, the idea that individual connections within the brain are constantly being removed or recreated.

pattern recognition

Is classification, which attempts to assign each input value to one of a given set of classes.

planetary alliance security force

Covert intelligence agency

Pre-cog

Pre Cognitive abilities. See clairvoyance

S.E.R.E.I.N

Surveillance Enhancement Recognition and Evaluation Interface to Nano-agent

search algorithms

an algorithm for finding an item with specified properties among a collection of items.

security force.

See planetary alliance security force

Security Service. See planetary alliance security force

Serein. See S.E.R.E.I.N

surveillance drone

Small Tenis ball sized device can fly over the battle field and identify cloaked objects

telekinetic

The movement of objects by scientifically inexplicable means, as by the exercise of an occult power.

telepathic

The transmission of information from one person to another without using any of our known sensory channels or physical interaction.

Titan

Moon of Saturn

wetware

interfaces and augmentation to the body through nano-tech.

white phosphorous

Is a material made from a common allotrope of the chemical element phosphorus that is used in smoke, tracer, illumination and incendiary munitions. White phosphorus is used in bombs, artillery, mortars, and short-range missiles which burst into burning flakes of phosphorus upon impact.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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SinJin Bane lives in Upstate New York where he is currently conducting research for his next book. SinJin has a background in computer science and software engineering and as a hobby has done some research into nanotechnology and other fields of biotechnology. He has worked on several projects for various companies in the software engineering industry including some that involve artificial intelligence and robotics, as well as avionics and advanced workflow applications.

Other Books By THE AUTHOR

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MagTech The Escape

