Broken Stars (Universe on Fire Book 1), page 6
“Thank you, Nadia, but can you tell us why we are here? We have a lot of things to do still,” Kane said. His team had been pretty disgruntled when they had been summoned to the facility. They had been in the middle of simulator training, but the summons were top priority. They still had some time before their mission began. The alien flotilla had only just arrived in the system.
“Of course, of course, follow me, Commander.” She led them away through the room and into a smaller one.
“What are those?” Jane asked as the four of them entered behind the m-tech.
“New magitech combat suits, we are calling them the Combat Enhancement System, or CES suits for short,” Nadia said. “We’ve been working on them for quite a while now, these versions have just been cleared for production. And I have been instructed to make sure that the first ones go to your team.”
Kane looked at the four suits with interest. They were almost all black, and had a very streamlined look to them. He walked over and knocked on one of the chest plates. “What are they made of?” he asked.
“They are made out of a composite of carbon fiber reinforced plastic, aramid, and kotarium-aluminum alloy. Very heat resistant, temperature retaining, and shock absorbent, while being extra lightweight and malleable,” Nadia said.
“They look thin,” Jane said as she approached.
“They are,” Nadia responded.
“They look fragile,” Jackson added as he too joined Jane in studying the suit. “The battle armor we used to use looks like it could punch right through this.”
“Trust me, they are sturdier than they look,” Nadia said. “But you are partially right, your old battle suits were made for a different use, and they did give you a level of greater physical ability than what these ones are capable of. With the old ones your strength was increased almost four times your normal level. These can manage maybe half that.”
“How are they better then?” Jane asked.
“Aside from the fact that these are magitech units, they are rated for vacuum operations up to an hour, with their own air supply.” She kicked one of the suit’s legs and continued, “They also have magnetic soles, heat regulating gel, various system upgrades, as well as a hell of a lot more. And that is all without accounting for the magitech systems. And they are far more durable. They can absorb up toward to around a hundred percent more kinetic energy, are so heat resistant that they can survive short laser strikes, and are far lighter, allowing you better control and maneuvering ability.” She finished hotly, annoyed at Jane for insulting what was clearly her brainchild.
Kane raised his hand in an effort to appease her. “Can you tell us a bit more about those systems?”
Nadia narrowed her eyes at him, but the prospect of speaking about something that she clearly cared a lot about won out in the end. “Alright, the suit is powered by two MGa-17 power supply cells.”
Kane raised an eyebrow at that, the MG-17 power cells were what powered the mech-frames and the fighters. The MG cells were rated for powering spellscripts, their containment units had scripts to increase their power as well as to convert that energy into one usable by spells. This had to be a smaller version of the same cell.
The suits were placed on circular platforms and Nadia turned one suit around, showing them the back. “Here and here.” She pointed to the two plate-covered places on the lower back, indicating where the cells were.
“One of the cells powers the suit’s standard systems, the other is used for magitech systems, although both could cover either role. In case of one being damaged the other would take over.” She turned the suit back around and reached for the datapad on her hip, putting it against the suit’s forearm. After a few clicks a piece of the suit’s forearm raised open and she pulled a small rectangular plate from it. “This here is a spellscript, and this,” she pointed back to the gauntlet looking thing on the forearm, “is the firing system.”
“The firing system?” Jackson asked.
“See here.” She showed them the small plate in the palm of her hand. “This contains a spellscript, laser engraved and silver reinforced. Most of the spellscripts that our magitech uses are small like this, with our technology it was easy for us to miniaturize them. The Ethorrians have some pretty impressive engraving techniques, but theirs don’t really come close to what we can do. This chip contains a spellscript for a shield spell. And there are a few more inside the firing system. The firing system draws power from the power cells, which we have adapted to serve as magic-wells.”
“A what now?” Jane asked.
“Ethorrians like to store magical energy in materials that can absorb and hold it, it’s why they don’t really care for materials that have no magical affinity. In any case, we’ve managed to adapt the MGa-17 power cell to serve as something like that for the users of the suits. When you put them on you will be able to draw on the power cells’ power on your own. But since our knowledge of spell casting is severely lacking, we designed this firing system. It can only be fired by someone with magical potential, but other than that it doesn’t really need anything else, it will draw power from the cells.”
“So it’s like our implanted scripts?” Ishanvi asked slowly, speaking for the first time since they had entered the room.
“Kind of, your scripts were largely experiments, and they draw power from you personally. These ones don’t need to draw on a person’s innate power. But they can be cast like that as well.”
“That is… useful,” Kane commented.
“It also allows us to switch out the spells inside depending on the mission. There are two firing systems, one in each forearm; each can hold three spells, with one being active.” She turned the suit’s forearm so that it showed the bottom part, and then she pulled a section revealing a small rectangular screen.
“Here you can change which spell is currently active, just swipe and it will cycle, replacing the chips in the system above. But you can also program the system with specific commands or macros. Hand gestures, key words and the like for each spell.”
“So which spells are available?” Jane asked eagerly.
“For now we have just the basic six, we are still testing the other scripts. You have a telekinesis spell, forward shield spell, limited invisibility spell, lightning spell, magic-bolt spell, and teleportation spell.”
“Limited invisibility spell?” Kane asked before his teammates could.
“It will hide you from the visible spectrum by bending light around you, but it does almost nothing for most of other sensors. Infrared, sound, and so on. I don’t see how useful it can be, you are hidden somewhat, but you can still be noticed.”
“And the other spells?”
“Telekinesis is self-explanatory—you can grab things, throw them, etcetera. Shield spell likewise, it is the upgraded version of the spell you have in your bodies. It’ll stop most any attack, but it is a power hog, don’t keep it on for extended periods of time, only in emergencies. Lightning is the most powerful spell you have, it does exactly what it says. Fires a lance of lightning directly forward. Be warned it is exactly like real lightning, meaning you can expect thunder and it will fry almost anything that it hits if it isn’t isolated, maybe even then. Magic-bolt—a bolt of magical energy which explodes upon contact with solid matter, violently. And teleportation spell—we had some problems adapting it. Your cells at full power could give you maybe six blinks all together, so again use sparingly. We’ve adapted the spell so that it will teleport everything around a small bubble around you, we had to make sure that you don’t cut your arms off when you blinked. That also means that anything within an arm’s reach of you will get teleported with you.”
“Damn,” Jackson said, “that’s a weapon in itself.”
“Aye, note that it will teleport you in the direction your forearm is pointing in, and it will blink you for ten meters. Make sure that you don’t end up inside a wall please.”
“Inside a wall?” Jane squeaked out.
“Yes, inside a wall.” Nadia nodded gravely. “We’ve… had accidents. You don’t want that to happen to you, trust me.”
“Why only ten meters?” Jackson asked.
“You won’t use this out in space, where you have a lot of room. At most you can use it within your visual range. And the power cells in the suits hold far less charge than the ones powering your mech-frames and the fighters—you could blink for longer distances, but you will probably burn through all your power.”
Jackson nodded.
“And there is one last thing.” She walked over to a crate on the other side of the doors and pulled out a black rifle.
“Here we go!” Jane said excitedly.
“This is the magitech RS-7 rifle, the newest assault rifle from the magitech department. It is a powered rifle, meaning it cannot be used without an outside power source.”
“Outside power source?” Kane asked.
Nadia nodded, “We’ve been trying to develop security measures to prevent these kind of weapons from being used by anyone other than the troops equipped with them. Especially now when we will be going against aliens. We are not really confident enough that they won’t be able to hack into and disable any digital systems we put in them. So we went another route.” She took a magazine and slid it into the side. Then she turned the gun at Jane and pressed the trigger.
“What the hell do you think you are doing!” Jane yelled out as she jumped back.
Nadia grinned at her. “As I said, it can’t be fired without power.” She turned it sideways and showed them the handle. It had a small round patch-like surface right where the palm of the hand would go. Then she turned the suit’s hand and showed them a similar patch on the palm there. And Kane noticed engravings on the patch, meaning that it had a spellscript. “Once the rifle is in hand it will make the connection here, and it will be able to fire. We have a few other attachments that could be added so that it has its own power supply but for now it will be powered by the suit.”
“What can it do?” Kane asked as she gave the rifle to him. He immediately felt its weight, it was at least fifteen kilograms, and it was bulky, wider than he was used to, and longer at about a meter and thirty centimeters. It was clearly designed to be used by a person wearing a powered suit. It had two magazine slots, one on each side, and it had two barrels, one above the other.
“As you can see, you have two magazines at the same time, meaning that you can have two different types of ammunition, and you have a switch which allows you to choose which barrel you want to fire out of, or if you want to use both at the same time. Note that the recoil from firing both at the same time is considerable. There are also several velocity options. The rifle is a mini rail-gun, it can’t be fired without a suit because the recoil is too great for human bones. In truth, we cheated a bit, the recoil should be much higher than what it is, but we managed to reduce it with magic, as well as increase the firing speeds.”
“What is the top speed of the projectiles?” Jackson asked as he took the rifle from Kane.
“Fast. Let me just say that the fire tests we did at max speeds superheated the air around the projectiles as it flew through it.”
“Really?” Jane asked, impressed.
“Yes, it is a powerful weapon. Actually it is a scaled down and adapted version of the rail-gun cannon we designed for the mech-frames. But it was also made to be adaptable, there are various settings. I would advise you not to use the max setting unless you have no choice, and it does reduce your firing rate significantly. You should familiarize yourself with the lower speeds.”
“Noted,” Jane said.
“Also we’ve been experimenting with various types of magitech ammunition. You will have the standard bullets of course, but we have had some success with what we are calling plasma bullets. Small cartridges filled with gas and spellscripts that ignite them after they leave the rifle, though we didn’t have room on the bullets to engrave any kind of containment, so they lose integrity quickly. That means that they are best used at short range, no more than fifty meters, after that the plasma spreads too much and loses effectiveness.”
Kane nodded, he knew that the plasma missiles used by the fighters and mech-frames had large spellscripts intended to keep the plasma contained after it was fired. And he knew how difficult it had been to make it work. He was impressed with what they had managed for something as small as a bullet.
“The rifle fires 15mm by 20mm bullets, there are no cartridges since it is accelerated via the rail. But the rifle can fire some cartridge packaged ammo, we’ve designed a buckshot as well as a few other things that can be equipped based on mission objective. It’s semi-automatic, but it does have an auto mode, one which I recommend you use only if you need to shred a tank down. You won’t need it otherwise, and the recoil will be hard to control even in the suit.”
“It looks great, but…” Jane started but then thought better of it when she glanced at the m-tech.
“But you expected a space gun,” Nadia said, shaking her head. “Soldiers,” she huffed. “That thing is the most advanced handheld weapon humanity has ever designed. It can rip apart a tank like it was nothing. And you want a space laser gun…”
“No, no, this is fine. Good, the best actually, I wouldn’t take anything else even if you offered it to me,” Jane said.
Nadia just glared at her, and Kane stepped between them.
“Thank you, Nadia, this is great, we all appreciate what you and your team have done to help humanity fight back.”
She looked at him and nodded. “Alright, you should gear up and get a feel for them. I’ll send you the manuals so that you can study them. You have only a short time before you deploy, better get used to them.”
“Right,” Kane said, then he turned to his team. “Let’s go.”
***
Commander Kane Reinhart stood in front of a podium looking at the faces sitting in the briefing room. The alien flotilla had left the system only hours ago. The ship in orbit now had replaced the one that had been stationed here, that would hopefully be an additional advantage. Command didn’t know much about the Qash’vo’tar, but hopefully whoever was now above them knew little about humanity.
They had spent the last sixty years studying the ship in their orbit, and this new one was the same class. Hopefully it didn’t have any additional upgrades. But even if it did it wouldn’t matter. They knew little about the Qash’vo’tar warships’ capabilities anyway.
The plan was to attack tomorrow morning, less than twenty-four hours from now. And now Kane held the last briefing before they began the assault.
“Well, boys and girls, it looks like we are about to attempt something that will either be remembered as the brightest idea anyone has ever thought off, or the dumbest one.” He heard nervous snickers, and some cheers. But they were few, and Kane knew that his people were scared.
“Listen up, I know that we have been going through the mission plans for the longest time. And that all of you have sat through hours of briefings, as well as simulations. We’ve got this, people. But in case some of you blockheads have already forgotten, here is a reminder.” Kane turned toward the screen behind him and swiped his fingers across his datapad, and the image changed.
“Here we have a Qash’vo’tar warship, we have no idea what class it is nor do we know for sure anything about its full capabilities. What we do know comes from our observations of their ships, the detailed visual study of their hulls, and the recordings from the times they have taken action.” He changed the image to a representation of the attack on the Humanity’s Gift. “Based on their attack on the Humanity’s Gift, we know that the range of their primary weapon— a high-powered high-frequency laser beam—is at least one hundred thousand kilometers, a third of a light second. The scientists tell us that it could very well be more, but not by much. The power of the weapon is unknown, other than what we can infer from its effects. It burned through the Humanity’s Gift in moments, destroyed it in a single shot. Granted, the materials used for the Humanity’s Gift were far weaker from what we are using now, and the beam hit the ship’s rear end, probably igniting the fuel and the drives.
“In any case, it is doubtful that their primary weapon will be of much use against us. Our scientists reckon that we will be too fast and too hard to lock on to. That puts their strongest weapon out of the equation, half the job already done.” Kane grinned. A few more of his people returned the grin now.
“Next, we know that they have missiles, they have launched plenty at Earth and our orbital assets. Our fighters at max speeds should be fast enough to evade them, although that is situational based on trajectories and half a dozen other things. Their missiles are in our opinion extreme long range weapons, it is doubtful that they will deploy them against our fighters, not at the ranges we will be engaging with them. That is if they even see us coming and realize what our craft are. The last known asset of the Qash’vo’tar warship are their point defense systems. The ship has twenty-eight point defense laser turrets scattered across the hull in order to cover every avenue of approach. We don’t know their max range. They’ve used them to take down our missiles fired from our orbital weapons and from the ground. But that was at a much shorter range than what we believe the weapons capable off. We know that they have less power than their primary, so we assume the range is somewhere in the range of twenty thousand kilometers, which is just outside our engagement range. We believe, however, that they, while dangerous, would not be able to take us out in a single hit. The last thing we have no idea about, we have noticed four turret-like objects on their hull, but they have never used them, so we don’t know what they are or what they can do. Hopefully we won’t find out.” Kane changed the image again now to show the Qash’vo’tar warship.
“We will blink from the surface on the side of the Earth away from the tether and straight into the exosphere at max blink range,” Kane said. The max range for a blink was five thousand kilometers; of course it could go more but it would burn through their supplies like crazy, so the range was capped. It could still be adjusted down to up to a kilometer. “That blink should put us behind most of their satellites in orbit, but just to be safe we will immediately orient ourselves toward the warship’s side of the planet and blink again in their direction. The warship is keeping a stable geostationary orbit alongside the tether, and we will proceed toward it at thrust. Hopefully they will have missed our blinks, which should allow us to surprise them. Once we are close enough we will close the range with our final blink and engage. Depending on the situation I will give to orders for one or two blinks prior to engagement. But we will close the range to five thousand kilometers, fire our missiles and then reorient around the warship and execute a double blink to get away.
