Proving Grounds - Edited 11-9-2018

It had been two weeks since the new additions to the team showed up. So far everyone had at least given the new math a try. The researchers, engineers, doctor, and several of the techs had managed to pick it up, and we were making all sorts of advances in fields such as weapons development. The civilians were pleased to have something to do. It turns out that their entire drug ring was because of boredom. They had been at the forefront for so long before leaving Sol that being put into the Game was just boring. They didn’t get EXP the same way so they couldn’t afford to buy anything to run any experiments. I had the Marines learning the new weapons I had designed, which now also included a gas-powered combat pistol for fighting in certain environments where combustion could become an issue.

Qiti 5.56 mm Gas Pistol

Type

Kinetic

Rounds

15/15

Sight

None

Fire Mode Options

Single, semi-automatic

Weight

1.75 KG

Modifications

None

Range

50 m

Maximum

200 m

I was working on an idea for a mechanized assault suit, something that I would have to piece together once I could get enough of the concept in the separate parts figured out.

“Ma’am, we have a craft coming in. They claim to be a supply drop, but we don’t have anything on our schedule for today. How do you want us to handle this?”

“How did they contact?”

“Full video over a secured comms frequency.”

“Did they identify themselves? I mean other than that they are a supply drop?”

“No, ma’am. The craft fully matches the cargo transport ships that are part of our carrier group.”

“Well, I suppose we should have a welcoming crew there to help get everything unloaded. Get a squad of Marines to meet us there. Direct them to the old hangar.”

We had carved out of the asteroid another two hangars. One would be for the mining/refinery craft as well as another set up entirely for new ships that we were thinking of building. Marques and his group of Aviation Specialists had many ideas that, fortunately, no one ever consulted them on.

Instead of “supplies” what we ended up with was a Yeoman who needed to deliver physical orders. Somehow this was supposed to be more secure, even though it was taking place in a game where all the data could be recorded. As the Yeoman handed me the orders, he said something strange that made no sense to me.

“Ma’am, does ‘Second edition, revision 5.038’ mean anything to you? I was asked to say that bit as I delivered this.”

“No Yeoman, that… that just sounds like nonsense.”

I took the orders and returned to my office.

TO: Lieutenant Commander Jax

REPLY TO ATTN: NO RESPONSE

SUBJECT: Renegade Command: New Orders

Lieutenant Commander Jax, at this time you will find that your entire base and staff have been transferred to the physical Outpost Theta. It has been built out in its entirety over the last six months. The Sensor and Comm Arrays have a highly encrypted and secured communications algorithm. Ensuring data security. We have done this to provide you with the necessary autonomy needed for what we are about to order you to do.

You have been given this outpost so that we may have plausible deniability in the event this comes back to bite us. Any deaths will be considered training accidents. You are now, officially, a black operations group.

Your orders are to find the rogue Arks and either return them to the fold or destroy them.

Work with Hera, Cl4p, and Observer to determine the best technologies to use to accomplish the goals listed above. We will be delivering an additional staffing unit to be “Secondary” shift. They will be able to staff the outpost while you are away.

We will transmit the data on the trajectories in relation to our local space in a packet of various additional “research data.” All orders in the future that are transmitted this way will be encoded using a cipher determined by your training manuals. It is recommended that you have a physical copy printed up. The bottom right corner for the form numbers to determine which cipher to use.

Send a pulse reply with a status message containing the words “southern cross” to note receipt of orders. Send an order to CL4P so you can Thaw, when ready.

Well, now I at least knew what the Yeomans message was for. I called up my fabricator queue options and sent it orders to print up a hard copy of the Sol Combined Fleet Engineering Manual, Second Edition (Revision 5.038). While I was at it, I checked the other rates to see if there was a similar revision on any second edition training manuals, then printed those up as well, including the Approved Recipes for Diplomats book for the MS’s that happened to have the same edition/revision.

“Comms, send a message to the Ark. Subject repairs needed. Body: We need to do some additional work on the southern crossways before we can accept any additional supplies. Warehouses are to be remodeled after. Expect a lead time of two weeks. End message.”

I ordered some more bourbon from the system menu then called Torres, Marques, Jorges, Janssens, Turing, their Captain, a woman by the name of Fielding and had them meet me in the conference room next to my office.

“Captain, I am sorry to do this to you, but welcome to the inner circle.” I passed her a glass with some bourbon in it. As everyone else was taking their seats, they all accepted their drinks as well.

“Ma’am? What’s this about?” she asked, looking around as everyone else stared at their bourbon in horror. Probably remembering the hangovers from the day after we came up with our unit name.

“Simple. I am about to order you into a compromising position. Those here are already compromised as such. Then, you’re going to object; then I am going to show you it's all true and so on. Once all that is done, you will accept your lot in life, and possibly drink with us until you realize it was a mistake, and tomorrow you will wake up with a hangover.”

“Shit, not again.” Was the only response from anyone else at the table.

I took a long pull from my bourbon and then refilled my glass.

“What’s the bad news this time?” Janssens spoke up.

“Who wants to capture an Ark?” I asked. Everyone else swore or groaned. Captain Fielding was mortified.

Two hours later I had finally convinced her that what I was talking about was not about retaking Ark-5 but was in fact about getting the Arks back and out of control of whomever the third part it was. The final bit of convincing was when a data packet came in marked as “research data” that I was able to decode, and it had trajectory information for all of the Arks after we spun off and had our “tactical retreat.” Showing her the orders hadn’t been enough like it had been for Torres.

Surprisingly, no one got drunk. Probably because we were no longer onboard the ship with access to the direct manipulation that Yama had available to him. The new crew arrived two days later, and I gave the order to CL4P to ensure that the base was functional in the Real, then to thaw us out.

Sure enough, the seven of us thawed and then had to deal with the sickness that happened. Torres was able to get us connected to IVs, and then herself so that the full thaw procedure could occur properly. The area that the pods had been stored in was part of sickbay, and we were able to then start pulling everyone else out. We started with the Doctor and the Nurse. Once they were out, I did a walkthrough on the outpost to ensure that it was built identical to ours in-game. Except for the Virt-P storage, and the latest hangar which was still under construction, it was.

Once enough of the original “Team Jax” was up, I ordered the Marines to wake; then we decided to call it a day. The next day was dedicated to the “Aviation” crews, cooks, and so on. The last to “hatch” were the sensors and comms operators. This left the virtual crew managing everything in the game, and us leading things in the real worl. Fortunately, we had plenty of rations provided by the Ark as the cooks wouldn’t be any use for a couple of days. I called a meeting for the pilots and the Marines leadership.

“We have a good news-bad news situation.” I don’t know why, but I loved opening with that.

It just seemed like a “here, let me shit on your day” thing without actually being malicious. I waited for the grumbling to die down, then continued on. We are in the middle of designing stealth assault craft. We will be using both platoons of Marines as well as some of our IEs, myself and all of you to capture Ark-9.”

“The stealth craft have been under development for a few weeks, and I have been designing some assault suits, so we should be golden when it comes to defense. Landing will be the difficult piece. We need to design an assault plan to get in, disable their AI cores, and run a flash to secure their Neurals. For those of you who are unaware, the Neurals that we all had when we were put into Cryo initially were full of security flaws which could be used to take advantage of certain bits of the software to control us. The patch that you all received has fixed that flaw.”

It took a moment for everyone present to calm themselves down. My “team” had heard this a few times already and knew all this information, but those who had transferred in and were not part of Reboot were furious something like that could happen.

“We fixed the flaw in all of ours, as well as a similar flaw in Ark-5’s AI. Once we disabled the flaw in the last of the leadership, who happened to be the governor, that is when the other Arks turned on us. I expect something was going on with Arks 9 and 11 as they turned to flee instead of engaging us. So, they are up first. We are going to dock with the Ark, and disable their AI, patch it, then do the same to their leadership.”

“Once complete we can build a gate and jump back here. Ark-5 has already deployed the first of its gates, so we have a quick way back. With them having traveled at 98% of c, then accelerate since then, we have been able to determine a few possible locations that they would be. We will be creating a new communications relay in the belt as we build out the assault craft. This will have the benefit of FTL communications. We will be building a corresponding relay to deploy into Ark-9, as well as spares for all other Arks so that once the rest are located, we can do the same maneuver.”

“I am asking our IEs to build out a new AI during this construction period as well. This AI will brute force its way into the ships security systems and hopefully prevent our detection. It will also back up the data their AI has been using, working with and so on, so we can determine if their AI need to be destroyed or just patched.”

“I will be working with our AEs to develop a new engine that will be capable of short FTL bursts. With this, we should be able to catch up to the other Arks quickly once they have been detected. A secondary objective is to capture one of the Escort craft and determine what can be done to help any captives that are being held.”

I then explained about Observer as well as the strange request that came in over “game” lines, and how it just left more questions than it answered. I knew Observer could communicate with me in both because of the implant that he installed, but I wasn’t sure about how the rest of his people could contact me.

I introduced the pilots to Marques after that, in case they hadn’t met yet, and then asked him to review the designs of the assault craft with them. From there I wandered over to the Research facilities and plugged directly into Hera via CL4P and started working on the math for the engines, coached by Observer on what would be needed.

A month and a half later from my perspective, four days in the Real, I had the basics for an FTL skip drive ready and developed. I then headed over to another area of the base that “didn’t exist.” This was our skunkworks. The moment I knew about the additional orders I had the lab built up. Time to build and equip a drone with a “skip drive” and see what it could do. Simulations were a good thing to have, but if we were going to put this into our assault craft, we would need to know how it really worked.

Proving Grounds - Original

It had been two weeks since the new additions to the team showed up. So far everyone had at least given the new math a try. The researchers, engineers, doctor, and several of the techs had managed to pick it up, and we were making all sorts of advances in fields such as weapons development. The civilians were pleased to have something to do. It turns out that their entire drug ring was because of boredom. They had been at the forefront for so long before leaving Sol that being put into the Game was just boring. They didn’t get EXP the same way, so they couldn’t afford to buy anything to run any experiments. I had the Marines learning the new weapons I had designed, which now also included a gas-powered combat pistol for fighting in certain environments where combustion could become an issue.

Qiti 5.56 mm Gas Pistol

Type

Kinetic

Rounds

15/15

Sight

None

Fire Mode Options

Single, semi-automatic

Weight

1.75 KG

Modifications

None

Range

50 m

Maximum

200 m

I was working on an idea for a mechanized assault suit, something that I would be having to piece together once I could get enough of the idea in the separate parts figured out.

“Ma’am, we have a craft coming in. they are claiming to be a supply drop, but we don’t have anything on our schedule for today. How do you want us to handle this?”

“How did they contact?”

“Full video over a secured comms frequency.”

“Did they identify themselves? I mean other than that they are a supply drop?”

“No, ma’am. The craft fully matches the cargo transport ships that are part of our carrier group.”

“Well, I suppose we should have a welcoming crew there to help get everything unloaded. Get a squad of Marines to meet us there. Direct them to the old hangar.”

We had carved out of the asteroid another two hangars. One would be for the mining/refinery craft as well as another set up entirely for new ships that we were thinking of building. Marques and his group of Aviation Specialists had many ideas that, fortunately no one ever consulted them on.

Instead of “supplies” what we ended up with was a Yeoman who needed to deliver physical orders. Somehow this was supposed to be more secure, even though it was taking place in a game where all the data could be recorded. As the Yeoman handed me the orders, he said something strange that made no sense to me.

“Ma’am, does ‘Second edition, revision 5.038’ mean anything to you? I was asked to say that bit as I delivered this.”

“No Yeoman, that… that’s just sounds like nonsense.”

I took the orders and returned to my office.

TO: Commander Jax

REPLY TO ATTN OF: NO RESPONSE

SUBJECT: Renegade Command: New Orders

Commander Jax, at this time you will find that your entire base and staff has been transferred to the physical Outpost Theta. It has been built out in its entirety over the last six months. The Sensor and Comm Arrays have a highly encrypted and secured communications algorithm. Ensuring data security. We have done this to provide you with the necessary autonomy needed for what we are about to order you to do.

You have been given this outpost so that we may have plausible deniability in the event this comes back to bite us. Any deaths will be considered training accidents. You are now, officially, a black operations group.

Your orders are to find the rogue Arks and either return them to the fold or destroy them.

Work with Hera, Cl4p, and Observer to determine the best technologies to use to accomplish the goals listed above. We will be delivering an additional staffing unit to be “Secondary” shift. They will be able to staff the outpost while you are away.

We will transmit the data on the trajectories in relation to our local space in a packet of various additional “research data”. All orders in the future that are transmitted this way will be encoded using a cipher determined by your training manuals. It is recommended that you have a physical copy printed up. The bottom right corner for the form numbers to determine which cipher to use.

Send a pulse reply with a status message containing the words “southern cross” to note receipt of orders. Send an order to CL4P so you can Thaw, when ready.

Well, now I at least knew what the Yeomans message was for. I called up my fabricator queue options and sent it orders to print up a hard copy of the Sol Combined Fleet Engineering Manual, Second Edition (Revision 5.038). While I was at it, I checked the other rates to see if there was a similar revision on any second edition training manuals, then printed those up as well, including the Approved Recipes for Diplomats book for the MS’s that happened to have the same edition/revision.

“Comms, send a message to the Ark. Subject repairs needed. Body: We need to do some additional work on the southern crossways before we can accept any additional supplies. Warehouses are to be remodeled after. Expect a lead time of two weeks. End message.”

I ordered some more bourbon from the system menu then called Torres, Marques, Jorges, Janssens, Turing, their Captain, a woman by the name of Fielding and had them meet me in the conference room next to my office.

“Captain, I am sorry to do this to you, but welcome to the inner circle.” I passed her a glass with some bourbon in it. As everyone else was taking their seats they all accepted their glasses as well.

“Ma’am? What’s this about?” she asked, looking around as everyone else stared at their bourbon in horror. Probably remembering the hangovers from the day after we came up with our unit name.

“Simple. I am about to order you into a compromising position. Those here are already compromised as such. Then, you’re going to object, then I am going to show you its all true and so on. Once all that is done, you will accept your lot in life, and possibly drink with us until you realize it was a mistake, and tomorrow you will wake up with a hangover.”

“Shit, not again.” Was the only response from anyone else at the table.

I took a long pull from my bourbon and then refilled my glass.

“What’s the bad news this time?” Janssens spoke up.

“Who wants to capture an Ark?” I asked. Everyone else swore or groaned. Captain Fielding was mortified.

Two hours later I had finally convinced her that what I was talking about was not about retaking Ark-5 but was in fact about getting the Arks back and out of control of whomever the third part it was. The final bit of convincing was when a data packet came in marked as “research data” that I was able to decode, and it had trajectory information for all of the Arks after we spun off and had our “tactical retreat”. Showing her the orders hadn’t been enough like it had been for Torres.

Surprisingly, no one got drunk. Probably because we were no longer onboard the ship with access to the direct manipulation that Yama had available to him. The new crew arrived two days later and I gave the order to CL4P to ensure that the base was functional in the Real, then to thaw us out.

Sure enough, the seven of us thawed and then had to deal with the sickness that happened. Torres was able to get us connected to IVs, and then herself so that the full thaw procedure could happen properly. The area that the pods had been stored in was part of sick bay, and we were able to then start pulling everyone else out. We started with the Doctor and the Nurse. Once they were out I did a walkthrough on the outpost to ensure that it was built identical to our in-game, with the exception of the Virt-P storage, and the latest hangar which was still under construction, it was.

Once enough of the original “Team Jax” was up, I ordered the Marines to wake, then we decided to call it a day. The next day was dedicated to the “Aviation” crews, cooks, and so on. The last to “hatch” were the sensors and comms operators. This left the virtual crew managing everything in Game, and us managing things in the Real. Fortunately, we had plenty of rations provided by the Ark as the cooks wouldn’t be any use for a couple of days. I called a meeting for the pilots and the Marines leadership.

“We have a good news bad news situation.” I don’t know why, but I loved opening with that.

It just seemed like a “here, let me shit on your day” thing without actually being malicious. I waited for the grumbling to die down, then continued on. We are in the middle of designing stealth assault craft. We will be using both platoons of Marines as well as some of our IEs, myself and all of you to capture Ark-9.”

“The stealth craft have been under development for a few weeks, and I have been designing some assault suits, so we should be golden when it comes to defense. Landing will be the difficult piece. We need to design an assault plan to get in, disable their AI cores, and run a flash to secure their Neurals. For those of you who are unaware, the Neurals that we all had when we were put into Cryo initially were full of security flaws which could be used to take advantage of certain bits of the software to control us. The patch that you all received has fixed that flaw.”

It took a moment for everyone present to calm themselves down. My “team” had heard this a few times already and knew all this information, but those who had transferred in and were not part of Reboot were furious something like that could happen.

“We fixed the flaw in all of ours, as well as a similar flaw in Ark-5’s AI. Once we disabled the flaw in the last of the leadership, who happened to be the governor, that is when the other Arks turned on us. I expect there was something going on with Arks 9 and 11 as they turned to flee instead of engaging us. So, they are up first. We are going to dock with the Ark, and disable their AI, patch it, then do the same to their leadership.”

“Once complete we can build a gate and jump back here. Ark-5 has already deployed the first of its gates so we have a quick way back. With them having traveled at 98% of c, then accelerate since then, we have been able to determine a few possible locations that they would be. We will be creating a new communications relay in the belt as we build out the assault craft. This will have the benefit of FTL communications. We will be building a corresponding relay to deploy into Ark-9, as well as spares for all other Arks, so that once the rest are located we can do the same maneuver.”

“I am asking our IEs to build out a new AI during this construction period as well. This AI will brute force its way into the ships security systems and hopefully prevent our detection. It will also back up the data their AI have been using, working with and so on, so we can determine if their AI need to be destroyed or just patched.”

“I will be working with our AEs to develop a new engine that will be capable of short FLT bursts. With this, we should be able to catch up to the other Arks quickly once they have been detected. A secondary objective is to capture one of the Escort craft and determine what can be done to help any captives that are being held.”

I then explained about Observer as well as the strange request that came in over “game” lines, and how it just left more questions than it answered. I knew Observer could communicate with me in both because of the implant that he installed, but I wasn’t sure about how the rest of his people could contact me.

I introduced the pilots to Marques after that, in case they hadn’t met yet, and then asked him to review the designs of the assault craft with them. From there I wandered over to the Research facilities and plugged directly into Hera via CL4P and started working on the math for the engines, coached by Observer on what would be needed.

A month and a half later from my perspective, four days in the Real, I had the basics for an FTL skip drive ready and developed. I then headed over to another area of the base that “didn’t exist”. This was our skunkworks. The moment I knew about the additional orders I had the lab built up. Time to build and equip a drone with a “skip drive” and see what it could do. Simulations were great, but if we were going to put this into our assault craft we would need to know.