Star Force: Sav (SF51)

1

September 30, 2538

Megatron 1
System

Inner Zone

Bo-065 sat in the command chair onboard the
Bowser
, a
Warship
-class jumpship leading a fleet of two others and 16
Mammoth
-class cargo jumpships through
orbit around the black hole that Star Force had affectionately labeled
‘Megatron 1.’ It was the only gravity well in the system, meaning that moving
around it to get to their preferred jumpline was taking time as they had to
pull on one side of the dense mass as opposed to the center line and that gave them
very literal lateral movement as high up as they were.

A slingshot approach was faster, but then they’d have
to stall it out on the far side to hit their jumpline anyway, so Bo had ordered
the Captain to take it nice and slow as they monitored the traffic as best they
could. Sensor signals traveling in near the black hole got funky with the event
horizon completely shutting off anything from inside and slowing those
reflections near it to worthlessness, making the area around the EH a sensor
blind spot.

The Telaris sensors the Bowser was using reduced that
blind spot considerably, but didn’t eliminate it…and they noticed quite a few
starships dipping down into the EH and coming back out as they cut close
orbital tracks to get to the far side quickly. With proper IDF and gravity
drives there was no danger for a ship going in that close, for the black hole’s
gravity was their best friend and able to lift them away from the mass at the
center almost effortlessly given that only a small energy expenditure was
needed to reverse the massive pull into anti-
grav
to
keep the ships in orbit.

The trouble was if there was debris in the area or you
ran into another ship, but with Megatron 1 there was nothing left that the
black hole hadn’t eaten up and given the size of the thing the chances of
ramming another ship passing through, even with the high level of traffic they
were seeing now, was low.

Bo didn’t like low, and preferred ‘no,’ so they were
making their way around in an orbital path that still allowed their sensors and
beacons to be partially functional. They were declaring their position while
scanning for others to avoid collisions as they got closer and closer to one of
3 hot zones.

Those hot zones were the jumpline links to 3 other
distant black holes and had traffic coming and going from races that Star Force
was mostly unfamiliar with. Everyone seemed to give each other space, not
wanting to interact and just going on about their journeys, but the closer the
Bowser got to the jumpline the more congested it became…and there were no
stoplights to keep everyone organized, more of an impromptu ‘get to the head of
the line first’ situation that was more than a bit hectic.

Then there were the ships coming in on the jumpline.
Fortunately most of them were transmitting beacons so their signals arrived
ahead of them, hyper-compressed from the speeds they were traveling, but able
to be detected if you had your sensors calibrated correctly. That let outgoing
ships know where not to be on the jumpline and allowed them to move around with
a decent certainty that you weren’t risking your life on the off chance of a
collision.

That said
,
there were some
ships popping up with no preceding signal. That worried Bo, but it couldn’t be
helped. As his fleet finally moved into position there were seven ships ahead
of them on the line that had just jumped into the system at a much higher
orbit. The Star Force convoy waited for them to move off, looked for incoming
signals and saw they had a gap,
then
made their
slightly staggered jumps off the black hole’s gravity well and accelerated far
faster than any traditional jump.

Soon they were out of the system and drifting across
the stars towards the black hole on the other end on a trip that would take
them better than 2 months. As soon as they were away and on course the small
Star Force fleet set themselves into a drift to the right, getting them off the
jumpline so to avoid ships coming at them from the other way. Still there was
always the possibility of collisions, which was why someone had to be at the
helm constantly monitoring for incoming beacons so they could move aside if
necessary.

Bo had them taken well off the jumpline to reduce that
possibility,
then
nulled
out
the drift with tugs on the distant stars to keep them headed in the correct
direction. When they got near their destination they’d drift back up to the
jumpline and run the traffic gauntlet again, but for the interim it was
hopefully going to be a silent, steady trip as the jumpships moved like bullets
from one black hole to the next.

The trickiest part past them, Bo left the bridge and
headed to the sanctum where he spent most of the next two months training, for
there was little else to do while they waited to make the passage.

When they eventually arrived at the exiting black
hole, which they’d designated as ‘Megatron 2,’ Bo oversaw their deceleration
and movement off the jumpline over to a stellar one, bouncing off the black
hole with minor power in order to move at a safe speed that could be
successfully
braked
at their destination star, whose
gravity well was infinitely smaller.

From there they made another six jumps, hopping from
star to star on a path that Yori had trailblazed years ago until they arrived
at another black hole, this one much smaller but still producing a gravity well
far larger than any star. It was labeled ‘Megatron 5’ and took them another 120
lightyears out to Megatron 6. From there they had to travel star to star until
they eventually ended up in the Lothlorien System.

They were still well within the Orion arm, which was
approximately 10,000 lightyears wide, but they were the farthest rimward Star
Force had yet expanded, more than 1,000 lightyears away from Earth. In
contrast, the ADZ border terminated at about 100 lightyears, leaving the Lothlorien
System far outside everything that they knew…and knew them.

Which was the point.
As
invested as Star Force was in the ADZ they also knew that their distant future
would probably involve running from the V’kit’no’sat if/when they ever found
them. To do that they’d have to have some place to go, and Lothlorien was one
small stepping stone out into the true rim of the galaxy where the V’kit’no’sat
had no presence or maps. They were in the wilds now, as far as their
progenitors were concerned, and the further they got out there the better.

Bo brought his fleet out from the central pair of
stars to one of six planets major planets in the system. Three were habitable,
in atmosphere only, and there was no other presence within the system. Star
Force had mapped out the surrounding area, finding a more or less dead spot on
the local starcharts to set up camp and begin terraforming one of the rocky
planets by introducing plants onto a world that had none.

Bo could see the first little bits of green on the
surface below when they made orbit, clustered around the single city colony
that Star Force was in the process of building and to which the supplies he was
escorting were going. The warships would be remaining here, save for one that
would be taking Yori and the empty cargo ships back as Bo switched places with
him and took over control of the planet, named Legolas, as well as all other
operations in this small region of space that included multiple mapping
missions that were even now ongoing.

Already there was another warship in orbit, along with
a few construction projects. The one operational station was a defense platform
equipped with a large cleansing beam that was covering the construction of a
shipyard and other key infrastructure pieces, for the goal of this colony
wasn’t to rely on shipments from the ADZ but to become self-sufficient as most
Star Force colonies were. That was even more important in this operation, given
that if the ADZ was cut off by an invasion it would have to supply itself and
any future colony expansions rimward on its own.

Which was why a trailblazer was needed here at all
times. There were too many uncertain factors in play and the delay to get a
message back to the ADZ took 7 months one way, making this colony truly on its
own. Until it was better developed it had to be watched and grown carefully, so
as boring as this sort of thing was Bo knew the importance of it and how it had
to succeed in order for them to start further extending the chain out into the
rim.

As the cargo transfer began in earnest Bo hopped
onboard one of the descending dropships and rode it down to the big city that
was all that currently existed in the colony and eventually found Yori waiting
for him in the spaceport. The two shared a hug then headed over to the local
sanctum as they filled each other in on current events, then began a long
series of workouts knowing that the cargo transfer was going to take days to
complete.

Catching up on missed time and using the opportunity
to press each other in training, the pair of trailblazers worked through some
very long sessions taking breaks to tour the infrastructure so Yori could get
Bo up to speed on what he’d built since last being in contact. In addition to
the obvious stuff on the surface he’d added a considerable amount of
subterranean structures, plus various sites around the planet for resource
collection, including two new ones on other planets. The material being
collected was just beginning to snowball, which would make Bo’s job of
continuing the effort much easier now that Yori had done the hard part getting
it all up and running.

Coming in the convoy was also an abundance of new
personnel, with only a handful transferring back with Yori, giving the colony a
new population of 55,000, up from the 42,000 previously. The extra manpower
would help greatly, Bo knew, but more would be needed as operations escalated
and have to be shipped in with the following convoys. People couldn’t be grown
as fast as infrastructure, let alone those with the skillsets required, and
that was the major drawback in the self-sufficiency goal. Lothlorien was going
to have to grow quite large in order to have enough people to take care of its
own needs, and by large he meant in the billions.

That day was far into the future, however, and would
be overseen by someone other than Bo. He was taking on a 6 year stint,
then
would be replaced by another trailblazer or high
ranking Archon, based on what the situation was then. Having that fixed
endpoint helped him focus on the mission ahead without getting lost in the
utter isolation. The mission was temporary and necessary, but after his part in
it was completed he’d head back to the ADZ where all the action was at and get
back in the flow of things.

In the meantime he was going to do like all the other
trailblazers did…focus on his training in his off hours. There were a few other
Archons with him that he could spar with but no other strikers, unfortunately.
They were too valuable and assigned elsewhere, which meant there was no one
around that could even come close to pressing his limits the way Yori was.

After his fellow trailblazer left Bo set himself to
the task of singular workouts and the unique challenge that they posed while
overseeing the construction efforts and making a few tweaks to what Yori had
been running…and the person to follow Bo would probably do the same. Neither
person would care, for they were only here to carry out their part of the
operation and what they left behind then became the responsibility of the
other, who was right to customize it as they so
chose
.

Over the next 6 years the city on the surface grew in
size, with Bo adding another two small ones elsewhere on Legolas and a fourth
on a neighboring planet to further facilitate the corovon mining operations
there. The subsurface expansion that Yori began Bo continued, but not with as
much fervor. This colonization wasn’t clandestine, nor meant to be like the
circuit worlds were. This was supposed to be a full-fledged colony, complete
with economic and diplomatic links to the surrounding area where applicable, so
hiding wasn’t the point, though having some infrastructure tucked away that no
one knew about was always a plus.

Three years in and the first of those economic ties manifested
itself in the form of a trade agreement with a neighboring race that Bo’s
mapping expeditions came across. They were a single planet civilization that
had yet to achieve interstellar travel, known as the
Furrens
,
who were amicable enough on contact to open up formal relations with. Bo had
Star Force build a starport in orbit of their world and start work on a bit
more infrastructure there to facilitate the mining/trading of a rare material
their planet possessed called
Shema
.

Originally it was a compound that Star Force thought
had to be synthesized and as a result had never delved into its production
heavily, though it was useful in making advanced armor when you didn’t have
corovon flakes available. Since it was naturally occurring on the
Furren
homeworld it was of significant value, not just to
Bo’s colony but to Star Force in general, and using his diplomatic skill and
experience the trailblazer set up a mutually beneficial relationship between
the two…the first of many such local links that would be established with their
neighbors in coming years.

The rest of those would be created by others, for by
the time Beck-061 came to replace him the Lothlorien colony had yet to meet any
other races of note, preferring instead to keep things quiet until their
defense fleet grew to decent levels…with Beck bringing an additional two
warships with him that would stay behind in the system.