Star Force: Sav (SF51) (9 page)

“Agreed.”

“Then we have to take it up a notch. I mean
Goku
in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber training. I’m not going
to feel comfortable doing any less with people fighting and potentially dying
out on the front.”

“You read my mind, but you know that’s not going to be
easy to do. We’re going to have to cut off all outside connections, including
war news.”

“If that’s what has to be done so be it,” Bo said, a
fiery determination entering his stride that had him inching ahead of the
hologram. “And I want exclusive training facilities. I don’t even want to see
someone else working out around us.
Food in our quarters…no,
shared quarters.
We stay together for everything.”

“I like where your head’s at…and I’m wonder why we
haven’t done this before.”

“We did back in basic. Since then we’ve had a military
to lead.”

“Point.
Any
suggestions on who to draft?”

“We need Aaron for Ikrid. No one is better than him.
And Sara…for sex appeal.”

Jason blew out a laugh between breaths, not expecting
Bo to throw in a joke at the moment…but then again he should have known better.
Sarcasm was almost as dear to Archons as sugar.

Bo coasted to a stop near the start line and
deactivated his hologram, cutting his workout short and drawing a raised
eyebrow from Jason. “Let’s get our team set now, before they have a chance to
take off.”

“Paul’s already on his way to orbit,” Jason told him.
“I’ll find
Aaron,
you grab whoever else you want…or
can.”

“Go,” Bo prompted, restarting his run as he headed for
the exit. The pair split and literally ran off through Atlantis, tracking down
as many trailblazers and strikers as they could in person or remotely,
including those in the pyramid and elsewhere in the system.

Jason was able to convince Aaron to stay, thankfully,
but Sara and Greg were already gone and Riona, naturally, had
went
with Paul. A few others that hadn’t heard yet Jason and
Bo got to, but they all declined, knowing how important it was to get to the
front ahead of the Skarrons so they weren’t late to the party. Ultimately they
were able to find a handful of willing and eager volunteers…though none of them
liked sitting back out of combat, but they all understood the importance of
what had to be done and committed themselves to it fully.

In the end there were eight of them.
Jason, Bo, Aaron, Emily, Kiran, David-441, Rikku-452, and
Vermaire…who sought them out after he heard what was going on.
With
Wilson’s blessing they kicked the trainees out of a small piece of Atlantis and
cordoned it off giving only the 8 of them access save for a handful of couriers
who would bring in foodstuffs, training gear, and whatever else they needed
while they were busy and drop off the crates for them to use later.

The restricted zone included a small number of
quarters, with the 8 of them choosing those neighboring each other, literally
keeping them within a few meters of each other down the same hallway. They
deactivated the terminals in the zone and kept a handful of datapads around so
they could send out requisitions and correspond with Wilson, who occasionally
stopped by to offer insights or to monitor their progress. Other than that they
put themselves into a complete blackout and focused on their workouts and team
camaraderie…for they knew well and Wilson emphasized…that in order to really
press their abilities, psionic and otherwise, they had to calibrate each person
into the team unit which until now had never existed.

They had to form bonds, learn tendencies, and spot
weaknesses in order to strengthen the group as a whole, and doing that took
time, meaning they would be training both their individual selves as well as
each other into a workout and sparring machine…which would need challenges.
Lots and lots of challenges.

Wilson volunteered to see to that, ordering a slew of
new construction in the surrounding areas of Atlantis to facilitate their needs
so the 8 of them could focus on beating the challenges rather than designing
them. That was the role Wilson had always taken, and did so now gladly, knowing
that an individual had to fight the challenge from a fresh perspective rather
than knowing beforehand how to beat it. It was a blind spot that he wasn’t
going to let them have…which could very well result in them coming up with new
ways to best the challenges that he hadn’t intended.

That kind of unexpected growth is what they needed, so
the Archons and Vermaire went from being the masters back to being the
trainees…though very advanced trainees at that.

Wilson knew it would be a challenge to stay ahead of
them, but like the Archons he reveled in challenges and this was one he was
going to go at full bore, suspending most of his duties with the infantile
trainees and focusing on the advanced ones in order to give them the tools they
needed to go to limits that he wasn’t going to be personally testing for the
next few centuries.

He couldn’t help them as a peer, but he could help
them as support and as a nemesis, so he set out to design the hardest, damn
near impossible training regimens and challenges to the point that he wasn’t
even sure that they could handle it. But even if they failed they’d gain from
the experience.

And if they did somehow pull a rabbit out of the hat,
again, and make it…then they were going to see a whole new level of Archon, and
that thought alone was ample incentive for Wilson to sink his teeth into his
new and ultimately important assignment.

What was old was new again, and about to be better
than ever.

9

August 3, 2546

Solar System

Earth

Bo beat Emily back across the sparring ring, moving
his arms slightly faster than she could and being well aware of the precise
movements he was making while she was flailing with most of her blows, trying
to keep up in the punching/blocking match they had going. Every now and then
one of them would throw a kick in, but both Archons were trying to find a way
through the other’s arms so they could land a torso hit, with Bo’s Sav giving
him a considerable advantage.

But then suddenly Bo went back again, him being the
slower as Emily threw in another Yetu burst and her arms threatened to
overwhelm him with movements. He could see her blurry arms and mentally track
them just fine, but moving his own to intercept was the problem with him
backstepping
to give himself some more time, forcing her to
move forward as her limited Yetu burst came to an end.

Then it was back to him being the faster and her
retreating. The two danced around the ring like that for some 30 minutes before
Bo finally wore her down and landed a stiffened palm to her chest. That knocked
her back and for a split second left her vulnerable. Bo jumped on the
opportunity and didn’t let up, punching and kicking her back to the edge of the
ring and knocking her down on the boundary line.

“Took you long enough,” Emily said from the floor, looking
up at him.

“Those speed bursts are annoying,” he said,
telekinetically helping to pull her up to her feet with a firm grip on her
waist.

“Your consistency is annoying,” she countered,
dropping into a slight combat stance as the two reset to the center of the
ring. “But I’m going to find a way in.”

“You will try,” Bo said, taking a step back with his
left foot and waving the fingers on his right hand, motioning her to come at
him.

She did exactly that, but instead of going back to the
punching game she activated another Yetu burst, feeling the small reservoir of
strength in her flow out as she darted in to a punch towards his face to get
him to block high, then she dropped low and kicked at his knees, catching his
right and knocking that leg back.

Already under him she pelted his abdomen with three
quick punches before he got an arm in the way and began twisting out of
line…then he suddenly spun back the other way and knocked her arm aside,
grabbing her wrist at the same time and pinning her long enough to get a kick
of his own into her hip.

Emily went back as he released her and Bo came after
her, cycling through another round of arm to arm combat before he slipped
through and knocked her out of the ring…this time with her staying on her feet.

They both moved back to center again, this time
without any comments, and began again. Both trailblazers were a flurry of arms
and occasional kicks, with Emily pressing Bo through her Yetu and him pressing
her through his consistent ‘semi-Yetu’ that his Sav gave him. Bo won out on
most of their head to heads, but Emily got him enough times to give him a
feeling of where he was weak, as well as giving him a wealth of practice just
moving that fast.

Everyone else was always slower than him and would
fatigue with time, mainly from them being punch drunk, but her ability to come
back at him and put him on the defensive also allowed her a moment to collect
herself, thus extending their sparring to the length that both of them gained
considerable experience from.

Sweat soaked to the point of dripping onto the mats
and making them slippery with tiny puddles, Emily finally raised a hand and
called it quits when Bo motioned for her to come at him again.

“Enough for today,” she said, standing up straight and
pulling her hair tie off. Several strands had escaped it and she put them back
into place, reforming her telltale short ponytail.

“Slacker,” Bo joked, but his arms were starting to get
a little sore anyway from all the blocking. “Where you headed?”

“Pool.
My swimming scores are
pulling down my levels. Aquatics
is
my bane right
now.”

“I’m headed to the simulator for the next hour. Aerial
is pulling me down and I’m sitting on level 99 by a hair. I really want
padawan.”

“Same here, but I’m still at 98,” she said, referring
to the change they’d made in the Archon ranks. What had been mage was now
padawan, with it being required before any sharing of psionics would take
place…except for the trailblazers and some of the higher ranking second gens.
The idea was that when you hit padawan you’d be paired with a mage or higher,
which would be the next level up, but since there weren’t any ‘masters’ to
train the
padawans
they were making exceptions for
themselves.

Such was the roll of a trailblazer. You never had
anyone to learn from, you were always the ones doing the figuring out and
building…with those that came after you reaping the benefits. And in order to
make those advancements the trailblazers needed the sharing now, even with only
12 of them having earned the padawan rank and its dark brown armor, with the
dark blue being shifted up with the mage rank. That had been Greg’s little
wrinkle, which Paul heavily applauded due to it being the color of Jedi robes,
all of which had happened before they’d left and the eight of them had sealed
themselves away to focus on this exploratory training.

The up side was that they expected to catch up to the
existing
padawans
, and earning that title was the
first step towards doing so. Intense training trumped field work training any
day, which meant that Emily and Bo were going to be catching up to Paul and
Morgan eventually…or at least that was the hope. Right now they were just
getting started and still strikers, but the furious pace that they were
developing was going to start eating into their lead, and for Bo he was nearing
the transitional threshold already…with Aerial being his weakness and the
Archon levels being measured strictly by your weakest area, making them a gage
of multi-tasking ability rather than strengths.

Bo’s hand to hand scores were already padawan level
23, and some of the other trailblazers had even higher marks…such as Paul’s
naval scores. All the Archons wanted to advance their levels, which meant
training in all areas, but some of the second gens skewed their efforts towards
one area, creating a strength that was on par with some of the trailblazers
while neglecting others. Bo respected that approach, but wouldn’t emulate it,
for he hated weaknesses.

He also wanted the new armor, which while he wouldn’t
have much use for in training he knew he needed to get used to the telepathic
interface. The striker armor was remaining the same, save for a few tweaks,
while the brand new armor that was still in late prototype stage was coming out
to them. That was another wrinkle in the ranking change. Originally they were
going to hold off on it and just offer the two options to
padawans
…which
was still the plan, but for the trailblazers they were going to give themselves
the new prototype telepathic armor.

Being the tip of the spear did have a few privileges,
plus they needed to work it out and troubleshoot the tech in the field before
the second gen got to it. The few that had already been working with the techs
to develop it, namely
Vitor
and Olivia, had said it
was more or less ready to go and had already used it on a few light missions
with no problems.

The trailblazers had decided to give themselves access
to it when they hit padawan, adding a little carrot to their own progress for
those who weren’t there yet. Bo knew the armor was heavily Ikrid linked, with a
setting that had the Archon creating a small, continuous link to the technology
that transmitted biotelemetry to the powered function and gave one much more
agility and grace despite the thick armor. Olivia had said she could literally
dance in it, despite it being the
most dense
corovon
lacing to date and causing the Archon’s weight to more than double when wearing
it.

They could have made it even heavier, but how far you
sink into the ground when stepping was something that couldn’t be mechanically
countered, so there were limits to how heavy they could make them…short of
including a permanent anti-
grav
to compensate, which
would never work with the way they moved, at least not to the efficiency levels
they wanted.

Bo needed just a few more marks to get there, three of
which were in Aerial, so he’d been making sure to get more simulator time in
and use it as rest breaks between his physical training. Already he’d adjusted
to a 36 hour day, as had the others save for Vermaire, who was already pressing
48 hours. That man was a beast and Bo was very glad that he’d insisted on
joining them, for he was definitely competition that was tapping on their egos
and driving them on even harder than they normally would be pressing.

When Bo and Emily split he headed over to the small
simulator room and locked himself away in an isolation pod that cut out all
exterior noise, light, and vibrations…giving him an exact replica of a skeet
cockpit that, since it used holograms in lieu of windows anyway, was
essentially the same as being in a real craft, allowing him to get whatever
practice in he needed without having to be in an actual aircraft.

There were always some differences, but the programs
the Archons used to train had been developed to such an extent that they were
almost indistinguishable by now, as far as rookies were concerned, but veteran
pilots knew that wind was one thing the computers could never get right because
of its chaotic nature, though by now it did come close.

The trick with Aerial, Mech, Aquatics, and Naval
advancement versus Commando was the lack of an abundance of physical skills.
Aquatics had swimming, but the other three were strictly remote control of
machines which didn’t allow for training increases the way the body did. Paul’s
naval skill was pretty much the same as it had been 100 years ago because he
couldn’t advance when his ‘body’ was the machines that he was controlling.

So the Archons had developed experience points,
requiring repetition of high scores that focused on making their great, once in
a lifetime scoring
sims
normal affairs…as well as
giving them an opportunity to pick up more tricks along the way. What Bo had to
do to get to the next level in Aerial was, for this particular piece of his
division
score,
hold out against an unending wave of
enemy fighters that never exceeded 9 at a time. When he killed one another
would fly in to replace it, meaning he had to last as long as he could.

Now, while that score could go up basically forever
the idea was to not just have one lucky day but rather to put in multiple
impressive runs. Bo had to last at least 10 minutes and kill 150 fighters for a
1 point score, with higher levels incurring more points. In order to advance
from striker 99 to padawan 1 he had to have 1200 points on this one scenario,
meaning that any bad runs wouldn’t count as anything. In comparison, an adept
level 10 had to kill 2 fighters to score a point, with the same difficulty
level being used.

Another challenge scenario that he had been working on
had him going head to head against a single fighter, with the
computer-controlled craft having an insanely difficult setting. The goal there
was simply to kill it…which was nearly impossible. To advance to the next level
he had to kill it 141 times, no matter how long it took him. That same scenario
would be used to advance from padawan 1 to padawan 2, except he’d have to do it
another
144 times.

That was how Archons trained in skill areas, always
looking for minor improvements once they became really good at something, but
measuring their level advancement by experience…whereas their physical skills
required progressively higher and higher performance, given that they were
essentially customizing their bodies while they couldn’t do that with their
fighters, mechs, and warships.

That said
,
Bo’s naval scores
had jumped 6 levels since he’d attained Sav, for he simply had better mental
processing capability now. Those six levels hadn’t even required any training,
he just racked up the scores easily enough and would be much higher in the
coming weeks as the experience points came in, for he was getting through what
had previously been ‘hard’ challenges that would usually end in failure, in
bunches per
hour
.

That wasn’t the case for the skeet training, for he
was only flying one craft at a time, whereas with naval a lot of the challenges
were in ‘Admiral’ mode and had him controlling a large fleet. Already he was
noticing improvements across the board in all five divisions thanks to his Sav,
and he’d barely begun to even train the ability, making him wonder just how far
he would advance until he plateaued and came back to a normal advancement rate.

He wanted to catch Paul and maybe take the lead, but
he knew that was a lot easier said than done. Both Paul and Morgan were beasts,
and even while they were fighting on the Skarron front they’d be training their
asses off, he was sure. He liked the challenge of the situation regardless, and
as long as Bo had an advantage he was going to milk it for all he could get.

But that was almost a secondary concern now. He and
the other 7 in his training team were beginning to accomplish some pretty
impressive things working together, with David already having triggered another
ascension, this one being
Hanme
, which gave him small
nodules throughout his body that stored up oxygen and acted as a backup supply.
It was something that only 3 other Archons had achieved to date, with all of
them being Aquatics specialists.