Star Force: Headstrong (SF72) (5 page)

As the colony’s population surged a small trickle of
new infants came with it, which were put into a maturia on site staffed by the
same people who had been working the others and were now transitioning here as
those were being shut down stage by stage as they exhausted their supply of infants.
Brad couldn’t trust younglings to run the maturias so they had to be staffed by
professionals, but as soon as the local maturia had its first class assembled
the Protovic civilization was officially born and sustainable.

It would take another 20 years before any of those
infants cycled into the general population, but the sequence was underway and
Brad was careful to monitor all aspects of the new Protovic as they developed,
making adjustments where necessary and improvements where he was able to
fashion them. He kept his core staff around permanently, knowing that it would
be a long time before the Protovic were able to fly solo, but with each year
that passed they became more and more capable.

Brad didn’t open the door to the older Protovic
transfers until the 24th year, and even then he limited the number to only 10
the first month. He increased that tiny amount to 15 the next, then 25 and so
on to make sure that the individuals assimilated into the masses rather than
having a social division form between the old and the new. He wanted them all
to identify simply as ‘Protovic’ and made the transition gradual for that
reason.

Over time he upped the number, but by then there were
so many maturia younglings coming in that it didn’t truly matter and the
transitional ones were blended in with the new civilization as they all worked
to build and strengthen the newest part of Star Force. It would be a long time
into the future before they’d start fielding warships and armies of their own to
fight the lizards, but Brad worked patiently and diligently towards that end,
slowly crafting a new twist on classic Star Force protocol to make the Protovic
an effective and unique addition to the overall empire…and one that would
surpass the independent Protovic civilization in comparison, tech advantage
aside.

5

December 26, 2879

Aphat
System (Bsidd
Region)

Nym

Naisha set her bag down on the bed of her new three
room quarters. The design was slightly different than what she had been living
in on Onyx but basically the same third level allotment that she’d earned in
the transitional colony that was now in the process of becoming part of Axius.
More and more non-Protovic were coming to the world as a slow trickle of people
were coming out of the prisons. She didn’t know the exact number, but it had
only been a few years ago when the ‘survivor’ count had passed 500,000.

500,000 out of what had been 3 trillion people taken
prisoner. Naisha had been insulated from the rest of the Veliquesh
civilization, but she hadn’t expected it to be as thoroughly corrupt as that
number indicated. On the other hand, given some of the stories she’d heard from
other survivors it was amazing that anyone had come out of that mess of a life
sane. But all those she’d talked to were, for like her they’d come through the
transition process and earned their freedom. Naisha still didn’t know exactly
how that worked from a psychological or scientific standpoint…but it obviously did.

Most of the Protovic on Onyx were from the pools of
younglings that the invasion had rescued before they could be evaluated as
‘unfit’ and killed, making her and the other survivors a small minority, then
add in all the immigrants from other races and the planet had become a vibrant
mix of faces and cultures that washed away the last bits of Veliquesh from her
system…though she’d always retain the memories of how they’d tried to kill her and
nearly succeeded.

She never know who it was that had saved her, but what
she’d learned of Star Force told her that it had been an Archon, based on the
armor. She couldn’t for the life of her remember what color it had been, and
though she wanted to know she figured that was probably going to be one mystery
she carried with her for the rest of her life…which now that she’d attained
self-sufficiency could end up being a very long time.

Rather than spending her days in the colony lingering
about as she had at first and many others did permanently, Naisha had trained
as a generic worker, though for Star Force that was a lot more complicated that
it sounded. It was the lowest paid position within the organization but one
that still required extensive training. She spent over 8 months going through
drills and procedures that expanded upon what she’d learned during her days in
the prison…which she eventually found out doubled for what others went through
in a maturia.

The extra training ran her through all kinds of
variables and how to deal with them, giving her basic training in the food
supply division that was far more than she’d expected. Half of all Star Force
foodstuffs were prepackaged, with the rest requiring combination and prep
before being made available in the cafeterias. She began as a level 1 assistant
having had lessons in various allergies and the components that went into every
bit of food that Star Force provided free of charge.

Other food items were available for sale by private
venders, but Naisha hadn’t been allowed to work in a cafeteria until she knew
every single item Star Force served and how to assemble each of those that were
not prepackaged. That included the foodstuffs for Protovic, Humans, Calavari,
and every other race within Star Force. The foodstuffs weren’t labeled as such,
for some were palatable by several races, but they weren’t going to let her do
so much as lay out the packages onto the display cases until she was able to
spot potential problems, such as the wrong items going in the vending lines.

All the foodstuffs looked different, even if it was as
simple a thing as coloration, so people would know which ones were meant for
them and which were not, and it was the responsibility of every single person
on the staff to insure there were no mistakes made so the people coming in to
eat didn’t have to think about what they were grabbing off the racks.

It was important, as were all Star Force positions,
and that was made clear from day 1 of training. When she began her work the
tasks were simple, with her taking certain items from place to place and other
menial tasks that could easily have been accomplished without any training required,
but the difference was she wasn’t just following orders. She understood
everything that she was doing and saw each item as a puzzle piece in a larger
system that was recognizable to her.

Working in that position was her way of paying back
Star Force for saving her, though they in turn paid her a credit stipend for
doing so. She received an automatic 2.2 credits per day when she began and that
had risen to 2.9 by the time she’d petitioned and received permission to
transfer to the Protovic colony on
Nym
. After a month
of working in the cafeteria she had been given a quarters’ upgrade as default,
but she went ahead and purchased the next level up. That had cost her .7
credits per day and was deducted from her stipend automatically, which still
allowed her to accumulate a surplus to use on whatever she wanted.

There were further
quarters
upgrades available, but the next one up cost 3.5 credits per day and was
therefore out of her pay range unless she wanted to save up and pay a year’s
advance. That hadn’t appealed to her and the three room quarters were much more
luxurious than the basic ‘pods’ that she’d lived in. The bedroom was larger and
had several modular pullouts that she could configure as she liked. The
cleansing chamber was also slightly larger and included clothing storage, but
it was the auxiliary living space in the third room that made the quarters a
true luxury.

It had no specific purpose, but was more than three
times the size of the bedroom and contained a large vid screen across one wall.
The standard furniture was here, but Naisha could purchase additional pieces as
needed…or actually the correct term was ‘rent,’ for when she’d transferred to
Nym
her old furniture hadn’t come with her. Right now there
was a long couch and a stool stationed next to a table built into the wall.
Anything beyond that she’d have to acquire with credits.

Her credit account
did
transfer between factions, and all of Star Force used the same currency system
so she wasn’t going to have to start from scratch, nor was she going to have to
look for a new position. That had already been arranged prior to her transit.
There had been a long waiting line for the survivors to transfer to the
Protovic and priority had gone to those most qualified. Had she not been working
a job she’d still be waiting on Onyx, so even though she was on the lowest
working tier of the empire she still got preferential treatment over those who
simply lived without contributing.

Star Force had made it clear that that was perfectly
acceptable behavior, but Naisha thought it was unacceptably rude on the part of
the survivors to do so. They were alive and well because Star Force had rescued
them, then went to the effort to train them. Naisha wasn’t skilled in any major
way, but she was helping out where she could and didn’t care to socialize with
any of the others that did not…and she’d gotten into more than one argument
over that fact back on Onyx.

When her bag hit the bed she came down beside it a
moment later and just laid out. Travel between star systems wasn’t difficult,
but it did take her out of her routine and she found that to be exhausting.
Naisha closed her eyes and took a crash nap right then and there, waking up
some time later and beginning to unpack the few personal items she’d brought
with her. All the necessities could be acquired locally, so what was in her
pack was an assortment of novelties that she’d accumulated, including a small
collection of decorative statues.

Naisha arranged them on one of the pullout shelves
built into the living room wall and hit the activation buttons on those that
were so equipped, with the Dvapp-built ‘snowman’ beginning to oscillate through
his dance pattern as the crystalline material bent and flowed in a cyclical
pattern.

She’d paid 172 credits for it, but it was worth every
one and her favorite of them all. A few special items of clothing went into the
closet and a custom set of casual shoes dropped next to the bed, which was the
end of her unpacking. She stowed away her travel duffle and left her quarters
after reprogramming the security code to something new, headed to the nearest
equipment store.

There were several types in a Star Force city, but it
was the clothing one that she headed to first. Nothing there cost credits,
though there were temporal limitations to how much you could acquire at a time
so no hoarding could occur. The amount was actually rather high so Naisha was
able to fill out her wardrobe with standard uniforms and casual clothes on that
single trip, then would be able to replace worn out clothing at a recycle
station there and exchange them for tokens that could be used for more items.

The standard was 300 tokens for clothing, which
included shoes, but since she was working that stipend upped to 350. Likewise
there was a utility stipend of 75 tokens that allowed her to get a toothbrush
and toothpaste at another equipment store along with shedding kit and a few
other personal maintenance items, all of which could be recycled for a refund
of the tokens if they became broken or empty.

Naisha went to a third store and picked up some
training gear pulling from a third pool of tokens. Here she got a pair of
running shoes and some stretch bands so she could do some resistance training
in her quarters first thing when she woke up. She still had some tokens left in
all three pools but didn’t feel the need to burn them all, but she did head to
the civilian stores and bought a few things with credits, including a bag of
candy that was sold as being tailored specifically to Protovic physiology.

It was by far the best candy she’d ever had back on
Onyx and she wanted to keep a supply of it in her quarters at all times. It
cost her 1.4 credits per bag, but it was worth it when she came back from a
workout with a sugar low and didn’t feel like heading over to the cafeteria to
eat. Some people took prepackaged foodstuffs back to their quarters to store up
a small stockpile, but all of the warm foods were meant to be eaten on site.
Private companies made meals that could be prepared in your quarters using
modular cooking equipment, but Naisha didn’t care for those. A regular candy
snack was enough to get her by until she found enough energy to get herself
back over to the cafeteria to eat rather than work.

She wasn’t sure what would be different here, but
assumed that most of the procedures would be the same. The grace window she had
after transit was three days, but she went ahead and reported for work as soon
as she got herself settled that first day. She spent a 4 hour shift then headed
off for a workout in one of the local gymnasiums before allowing herself the
luxury to explore her new home…or some of it, for the city was massive.

She and the rest of the citizens pretty much had
access to everything, with only a few restricted sections for those with
clearance beyond hers. One of those was the shipyards, for the city had a
surface facility that was working in the open air beneath a shield dome to keep
the weather out. Naisha eventually found her way to an observation deck on a
tower that overlooked the shipyard and sat down on one of the bar stools
sipping a confection drink along with others that were there to enjoy the view
of the city or the broadcasts on the vid screens that were showing everything
from news to sports.

All the faces she had seen since arriving here were
Protovic and her red variety. Supposedly there were a handful of purple here
that had come from Axius and even the other Protovic civilization that was an
ally of Star Force, but they must have been so few in number to disappear
amongst the masses.

It was odd, for everyone was the same. She’d gotten
used to there being different races everywhere, but aside from the occasional
Human this colony was all Protovic. That brought up a few memories of the
Veliquesh, but things here were so different, so open, that the comparison
fizzed immediately.

Looking out the windows she could see the drone
warships she’d heard about. Rather than adopt the standard Star Force block
style or use one of the other factions’ blueprints the Protovic had designed
and begun to build their own version. It wasn’t much of a deviation, but they
were using triangular wedges that would come together in fours that would then
form a solid square, making for no wasted volume during transport onboard a
jumpship.

Right now there were three of the drones under
construction within sight, along with several starships that took on a more
unique design and incorporated the typical Protovic hammerhead motif into a blocky
back segment rather than the X-design. These starships, Naisha knew, were for
local transit within the system. Many more were promised to come, but the
Protovic fleet was only in its infancy. There were two other shipyards on the
planet and four more in orbit working to build that military and civilian fleet,
but it was going to take a long time to increase their numbers, for they were
getting no outside help in doing so.

Everything here was being built locally, which was
part of the draw for Naisha and the other immigrants. This was a Protovic
civilization, and while they were part of Star Force she found it appealing to
have a corner of it that was their own. That wasn’t to say she wanted to be
isolationist, not at all, but she did like the idea of them being able to pull
their own weight and eventually give back to the rest of Star Force later on
when they had the strength to really make a difference in the war against the
lizards.