Horizon: Rebuilt, Ch. 16

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Horizon stood in the back of a dusty bar, designer cannabis smoke wafting over from the nearby booths. Her leukosynths neutralized the THC, and various other intoxicants in the smoke, but the smell covered everything, and she didn’t want to cut off her sense of smell in case she needed it. Not trusting her smartsuit’s camouflage after the fueling station incident, she’d covered herself in heavy clothes, bleached the fur on her head and tail, and even adjusted her metabolism slightly to pad out her torso and thighs.

How late is Shawn? Horizon silently asked.

“Surprisingly,” Samantha answered. “He still has three minutes left before our designated check-in time.”

Horizon sighed and approached the bar. You can prevent me from getting drunk, right? She flagged down the bartender and ordered a large dark beer, paying for it immediately with a swipe of a paychip. As she drank, she swore she could swear she felt the microbots in her stomach burning away the alcohol. She was about halfway done with her drink when a text message appeared in the corner of her eye.

Shawn: Found them, they’re headed your way. Leopard in a blue coat.

Horizon: Did you tell them to speak to an arctic fox?

Shawn: You don’t really look that much like a fox, but yeah I have him your description.

Continue reading “Horizon: Rebuilt, Ch. 16” →

Bringing the Para-Imperium to Traveller

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After years of fiddling with the Para-Imperium or Parahuman Space setting, I have the bones of a roleplaying game set in the setting using the Cepheus system.

Tentatively titled Salvaged Heroes: Wreckage of Empire, this game takes place in the post-Federation era, just like Horizon’s story. The default assumption will be that your characters will be scrappers hunting for shipwrecks and abandoned bases containing valuable technology or resources. Your character options include a jaded spacer, a grizzled ex-soldier, a curious scientist, a bored oligarch’s child, or even a technomage wielding technology beyond anyone’s understanding. The party may even have a ship, which they can customize using Cepheus’ tried-and-true ship-building system.

The Cepheus system is an OGL fork of Mongoose Publishing’s first edition of Traveller, the modern version of one of the oldest sci-fi RPGs. It uses a simple 2D6 system where most checks are made by rolling two six-sided dice and adding your characteristic and skill modifiers, typically succeeding on a total of 8 or higher. Instead of having “classes” and “levels” your character’s skills are primarily determined by a “Lifepath” system in which you roll to determine their life experience and training up to the start of the adventure. This means that PCs start out with a bit of seasoning and are relatively competent in the areas of their expertise.

The System Reference Document is free to read here if you’re interested: https://www.orffenspace.com/cepheus-srd/index.html

That said, like in many “Old-School” games, combat is lethal. Most PCs will only be able to survive one or two hits without heavy armor. In the older editions of Traveller PCs could famously die during character creation, though at most you’ll only wind up with some expensive prosthetics in Salvaged Heroes (unless you want to play hardcore). In the course of your adventures you might also discover Federation medical technology that can increase your survivability.

After finding your first FedTech wreck your campaign might head in a variety of new directions. You could be like Horizon and become super soldiers, drafted into an interstellar invasion. Or you might be Federation survivors newly awakened from cryo-stasis, seeking to make a way for yourself in the strange new world you’ve discovered. Perhaps you’re residents of a primitive world trying to build a functioning spaceship so you can leave. Or you’re indentured employees seeking a way to escape your corporate masters. The possibilities are endless!

Changes from the SRD: To fit the Parahuman Space setting, I had to change some things in the Cepheus System Reference. 

Parahumans: Traveller/Cepheus assumes humans or human-like characters, with aliens generally included as a kludged-in afterthought. I’ve developed a system where players can build their own parahuman or xenosophont characters out of a set of Genetic Traits and Metabolic Adaptations. You’ll even be able to add or remove traits with sufficiently advanced technology.

Tech Levels: Traveller generally assumes that artificial gravity and faster-than-light travel will be discovered long before (Tech Level 9) cybernetic and genetic augmentation (TL 11). Biotech is central to the Para-Imperium, while gravity control doesn’t appear until very late in the Federation’s reign and FTL is flat-out impossible, so I shifted the former down to TL 9 (near future) while the latter is at TL 12. Prototype FedTech can go up to TL 13 while some advanced successor states (such as the Ronkalli) and the Destroyers can reach TL 15.

Rockets: By default Traveller ships use reactionless drives based on gravity control to maneuver at sub-light speeds. Since I moved gravity control up to TL 12 the majority of spaceships in Salvaged Heroes use nuclear reaction drives. Traveller has rules for reaction drives, but they use a lot of fuel, with most ships only capable of carrying enough for a few hours of thrust. But while writing an article on sub-light travel for the Journal of the Traveller’s Aid Society (keep watch for JTAS #17 this coming year!) I realized that spaceships could coast for the majority of an interplanetary voyage, taking about as long as a typical interstellar voyage in Traveller and using comparable amounts of fuel. And if you’ve seen The Expanse you’ll know that a single star system with nuclear propulsion may have dozens, if not hundreds, of populated planetoids.

If a star system is still too small for your players, they can re-discover a wormhole to another system. Or salvage a prototype ship with gravity drives capable of relativistic travel, it might take years to reach another star from the perspective of those left behind, but it’ll only feel like weeks to the characters on board.

Keep watch for Salvaged Heroes: Wreckage of Empire, coming to Kickstarter in 2025 (hopefully).

Interstellar Warfare

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The large-scale multi-ship battles seen occasionally in interplanetary warfare are almost unheard of when the combatants are located in entirely different star systems. The main reason is simply the orders of magnitude difference in travel time and cost. Starships using reaction drives require many cubic kilometers of reaction mass just to get up to the speeds where ramscoops are effective, while gravity and warp drives require unfathomable amounts of energy and matter just to build.

Therefore, would-be interstellar invaders tend to adopt one of two strategies: The WMD approach is usually only effective against technologically inferior opponents, but if they pull it off a single starship can conquer a star. A G-Drive ship can dance around a fleet of reaction ships, slicing them to ribbons without even taking a hit, while even the least r-drive starship is a colossus compared to system ships. The power of their drives, combined with the purpose-built weapons that civilizations capable of building starships can design, means that almost any starship can lay waste to a defenseless star system in a matter of weeks.

Of course, if the invaders want to capture the biosphere intact (which most do, as it tends to be the most valuable part of a star system), they can’t simply throw nukes and c-bombs everywhere. Which means that the ship’s crew has to negotiate the tricky task of persuading the local governments to surrender with minimal devastation. Even if they succeed in this task, the resulting political arrangements tend not to last long. The elites and masses of such worlds tend to resent “quisling” leaders and efforts to depose them are soon to follow.

As such, worlds conquered by WMD use tend to acquire a growing number of radioactive craters as their overlords periodically reassert their rule, assuming the natives don’t somehow get hold of the technology required to shoot them down. This is less of an issue for nomadic “pirate” lords who only care about collecting their tribute and moving on, but for would-be emperors this is a bit of a hassle.

Hence the second approach: Subversion. This can also be accomplished by a single ship, but they tend to be more subtle in their methods. Using (comparatively) stealthy craft, agents are delivered to the system’s habitats where they infiltrate the population. These agents then make contact with the local discontents (there always are some) and attempt to recruit them.

To assist in this mission, agents are trained in a variety of disciplines ranging from hand-to-hand combat to megastructure engineering and meme hacking. They also tend to be equipped with the best nanofabricators that can fit in their ships, which can be large enough to build other spaceships or warmechs, in order to supply their fifth column with weapons, armor, and augmentations. These “gifts”, naturally, come with backdoors the agent can use to retain control. Remote-triggered explosives, gene-locks, even integral AI controls hardwired to obey direct orders from the agents.

Once the “revolution” seizes control they establish a government that passes outwardly as independent, but is in truth a puppet of their new “allies” from another star system. Their taxes are disguised as “trade” or “investments”, even “foreign aid.” Eventually the populace of such states figures out they’ve been conquered, but by then a substantial fraction of said populace has decided that they prefer living under their overlord’s thumb and the usual result is a civil war rather than complete secession.

House Ronkall’s paladins are particularly insidious. Their blood-bourne assemblers construct bionic augmentations in the infectee’s body, including an AI controller in their own brain that compels them to use their augs to fight criminal activity in their home polity. Helping endear themselves to the population, until the order to take over comes out. A single paladin can arrive on a planet butt-naked and infect a critical mass within just a couple short years.

Horizon: Rebuilt, Ch. 15

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Horizon and Shawn picked over the wreckage they’d created. The snowmobiles had only sustained some minor damage, so at least they had new vehicles for themselves. Finding and disabling the transponders was the hardest part. Stripping the drivers yielded a couple pistols, survival knives, and insulated suits that didn’t fit either of them. The van was a complete loss, though some of the food and components Horizon had stolen could still be salvaged.

“I’m not sure what we could do with these motors,” Shawn commented as he sorted through the parts. He picked up the solid metal block, “this looks like a hard drive though. Where did you say you got these?”

“A vending machine,” Horizon stated. She picked up a half-melted protein bar. “All this was for a vending machine.”

Shawn sighed, the speakers on the power armor he wore amplifying the sound. “Well, the Company never was one to let the slightest bit of scrip slip through their claws.”

Sam appeared in front of the fading fire from the VTOL crash. “It’s unlikely such a dramatic response was prompted solely by the robbery. The Company probably identified you from security footage.”

“Of course they did,” the raccoon growled back. “They saw my suit give out.”

“Likely,” the AI conceded. “You should have stolen the security system instead of looting the vending machine.”

Horizon kicked a glob of snow at Sam. The AI didn’t even react as the snow passed through her hallucinatory avatar.

“I might be able to get something useful out of this,” Shawn interjected, holding up the drive. “You’d be surprised what data markets will buy.”

“Pack it up then,” Horizon sighed. She picked up what little food she could find, forced down the melted bar, and re-mounted her “new” snowmobile. “Maybe the VTOL will have something else we can salvage?”

“Maybe, yeah,” Shawn shoved the other snowmobile back onto its skis. It rocked almost onto its far side before he grabbed the handlebar in his powered gauntlet. When he released the bar, Horizon could see that it had bent.

Horizon shook her head in disbelief. “You got really lucky when you shot that VTOL down, didn’t you?”

“I fell over a lot,” the vole admitted. He reached up to his helmet and started to fumble with the release. “It might be best if I take it off now.”

She shrugged and walked over to help him remove the armor. Fortunately the Company’s exo-suits were designed for rapid egress and she got him free in a matter of moments. They packed the suit onto the back of Horizon’s snowmobile and zipped off towards the crashed gunship.

The two slowed as they saw the fire from the gunship’s fuel supply, Horizon could tell instantly from the shade of the flames that it was mostly hydrogen. The VTOL had landed on its side, crushing one of the rotating wings, from which a dim fire burned. She added ultraviolet light to her vision input and froze. A three-meter tall pillar of fire sprouted from the crushed wing of the gunship, searing the air around it.

Is it safe to approach? Horizon asked Sam.

“Analyzing,” the AI hummed as she took in the available data. “You should be safe so long as you keep to the intact side. I can’t say one way or another about the safety of the interior though.”

Horizon shrugged and stepped off of her snowmobile, switching the ignition off to save on fuel. She stopped, thinking about the hydrogen fire. If I remember correctly, the VTOLs used by the Friendlies had detachable fuel tanks in the wings. Is this one configured the same way?

“It’s a stock design used all over Surtur,” Sam replied. “It should be, but do you have the tools to remove it yourself?”

For safety the valve shutoff is manual, Horizon thought. She turned to the power suit strapped to the back of her vehicle and started untying it. After closing it I just need to rip it out.

The raccoon popped open the hatch on her suit and slipped inside, grateful that they had been afforded enough time to clean out the remains of the original occupant before they got kicked out of the Friendly Society. She felt a comforting warmth as she locked up her suit around her, she’d almost forgotten just how cold it was outside. The suit still moved more slowly than her enhanced body, but with her implant interfacing with the controls it went smoothly and the hindbrain represented by Samantha kept her from overshooting.

Carefully she strode slowly towards the gunship, scanning for threats, flipping between IR, UV and visible on a cycle. Horizon approached the uncrushed side of the aircraft, viewing the door in the infrared spectrum. The siding and handle appeared bright yellow, but still within her suit’s tolerances. She cautiously wrapped her mechanized hand around the handle, and pulled the manual release.

The hatch popped open, releasing a wave of heat that Horizon could feel even through her suit. She looked around for signs of movement, given how intact the craft was the possibility of survivors was strong. The floor of the main hold seemed to have dropped out save for a narrow bar spanning the length of the hold, the spaces it left were about the right size for the two snowmobiles they had stolen. In front was a small cabin with a single seat, slightly cocked from the impact with the ground. She saw a shadow shift on the far side of the pilot’s seat.

Horizon extended the stun baton on her suit’s right arm and stepped towards the cabin. She grabbed the back of the seat with her left hand and yanked it backwards, revealing the pilot. They wore a cracked polymer helmet that concealed their face, but blood dripped out of their neck. Horizon retraced her baton and took hold of their helmet in both hands, lifting it carefully off. She couldn’t tell whether she did that to make sure they were alive, or to ensure they were dead.

A white-furred feline face with small round ears and black markings lolled in front of her, bleeding from a few spots on their eyebrows and forehead. She tried to examine the figure for any signs of life. Sam, she asked after a cursory inspection. Are they alive?

“I don’t think so,” Sam replied. “Wait, there’s a slight breath but I doubt they’ll… Oh crap.”

What?! Horizon silently exclaimed.

Horizon’s vision zoomed in on one of the cuts on the feline’s forehead. Through the dense fur she could see a thin line of red crust slowly disintegrating to reveal smooth skin underneath. “They’re healing! This guy has military-grade leukosynths.”

They’re augmented? Horizon thought. How is this possible? What do we do?

“My best hypothesis is that the Company got hold of a Federation-era supply of nanotech,” the AI suggested. “The Company might have recovered enough samples of your leukosynths that they might have found a way to breed them, but it’s unlikely. In either case catastrophic brain trauma should be enough to kill them permanently.”

Horizon extended her baton again and slammed it down on the pilot’s face, cracking their muzzle and opening more blood vessels but it didn’t seem like enough to kill them. She slammed the baton down again and again, until she heard their skull crack. Then she turned away, grabbed a survival bag off the wall and threw it outside, and exited.

She yelled “get that!” to Shawn and turned to the wing. The fuel tank was hidden underneath a black-painted aluminum panel that she almost missed, but with her cybernetically and suit-enhanced vision the hinges were readily apparent. Horizon dug her suit’s fingers into the seam and ripped it free, revealing the removable tank. Thank archons for corporate standardization.

“What happened in there?” Shawn called as he grabbed the survival bag and hauled it off to his snowmobile. “Is it going to explode or something?”

“No,” Horizon replied. “The team might not be dead yet. We need to clear out before they pick themselves back up.”

“What do you-” the vole stopped as he realized what she was saying. “You don’t think they have implants do you?”

“I didn’t just shatter the pilot’s skull for nothing,” Horizon retorted. She closed the double valve on the fuel line feeding out of the tank. “At least one of these guys had leukosynths.”

She grabbed the handles on the tank with both hands and pulled. At first it didn’t budge but as her suit’s motors strained the locks cracked and the pipeline twisted. Then with one last wrench the tank came free. The end of the pipe came free with the tank as Horizon staggered back.

“RUN!” Sam warned. Horizon looked up at the wing she’d removed the tank from, and saw that both valves had been torn free. Meaning that the fuel inside the line was leaking free into the air. She turned and raced off towards the snowmobiles.

An explosion sounded behind Horizon, rocking her with its shockwave. She felt chunks of debris bounce off her back and shoulder, but they didn’t penetrate her armor. As she staggered over she glanced down at the tank, suddenly worried that it might have ruptured. She scanned it in IR, and it read as cold as the surroundings.

“You okay?” Shawn shouted out, already revving up his snowmobile with the survival pack strapped to the back.

“Yes,” she replied. Horizon laid the fuel tank on the back of the other snowmobile and started pulling straps over it. “Get going, I’ll catch up.”

Shawn sped off into the distance and Horizon locked the straps into place. She turned to take one last look at the latest disaster caused by the entities chasing her. The wreck of the tilt-rotor craft was left in tatters, flames spilling out of countless holes in the fuselage and wings. She doubted anyone could have survived that now, even with leukosynths.

Still, there were the other two, the snowmobile drivers. They’d been left stripped in the snow after she’d broken their neck or filled them with bullets. But if they were augmented…

Horizon turned her snowmobile towards the battlefield. Quickly she came upon the corpse of the first trooper, the one she’d pounced upon. He laid face-down upon the snow, a white-furred hare with small ears, head bent at almost a right angle. She gave him a quick look-over and confirmed that he wasn’t moving before moving on. Just as she began to rev up the engine again she saw movement from the direction of the remaining trooper.

Her vision switched to infrared, revealing a figure glowing in yellow and red, burning hotter than a normal body. Almost reflexively Horizon fired both the carbine on her snowmobile and the gun mounted on her suit’s shoulder. Hot streams of blood flowed out of the trooper’s torso and head, jerking as if on strings, then he collapsed.

She turned back to the trooper with the broken neck, he still wasn’t moving but she aimed her shoulder cannon at his head regardless. Horizon hesitated before sending the trigger signal, it didn’t seem right to shoot a helpless enemy, even if they were already dead. And was there even a reason to? The VTOL had doubtlessly been transmitting as it went down, it was already too late to start silencing the witnesses.

Horizon left the incapacitated Company trooper behind, eager to leave the scene before reinforcements finally arrived.

—

She spent the better part of an hour driving back and forth across the landscape, creating false trails for the Company to follow, driving over her own tracks so many times. Eventually Horizon was satisfied with the misdirection she’d created and headed home.

The campsite was hidden in a small valley twenty kilometers from the outpost where she’d been spotted. A small tear-down habitat dome was buried under almost a meter of snow, with a garage nearby made from a prefab shed that was big enough to hide the van that had just been destroyed. She stopped three meters from the door to the garage and dismounted to check the interior. With a glance the door slid open and Horizon breathed a sigh of relief, the other snowmobile was inside and unpacked, with plenty of room now that the van was gone. She pulled in her snowmobile and shucked out of her exo-suit, hanging it in its improvised rack. After setting the new hydrogen tank well away from any of the vehicles Horizon headed for the dome.

After entering through the “airlock” doors and shaking the snow off her boots Horizon found Shawn sitting in front of the heater using his laptop. The vending machine hard drive that she’d stolen sat on the floor next to him with a cable from his laptop plugged into the side. His head swung towards her as she opened the inner door, eyes wide and ears raised, but relaxed as he realized it was her.

“Did you lose them?” he inquired.

Horizon nodded. “I’m pretty sure we should be good for now, but we should make plans to move again.”

“Already?” Shawn replied. “We’ve only been here for a couple weeks…” he remembered the events of the day and sighed. “Okay yeah, we should get moving soon. But I found something on this drive that we should extract first.”

“What is it?” Horizon turned her head curiously.

“It’s the vending machine’s digital wallet,” he explained. “And it’s using the old software, this thing hasn’t been updated in years.”

The raccoon peered over the vole’s shoulder at the screen, it showed a progress bar on his cracking program, only at 17%. “How much money do you think is in it?” she inquired.

“For security reasons they have armored cars physically visit these machines and both collect their sacs and install updates,” Shawn replied. “If nobody’s bothered to visit this machine there could be thousands on it.”

Horizon glanced aside and visualized Sam’s avatar, see, she thought. He’s useful after all.

“That remains to be seen,” the AI retorted.

Horizon: Rebuilt, Ch. 14

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Horizon looked over her shoulder anxiously as she attached the portable hydrogen tank to the pump. Her paychip should still have had enough sacs on it to pay for the fuel, this was technically completely legal, but she still couldn’t take the chance that anyone might recognize her under her holograms. The safety collar locked over the nozzle after she inserted the paychip and Horizon groaned as she watched the numbers rise on the readout.

Just to keep herself busy Horizon turned to glance around the fuel depot again. There were a couple more ground vehicles besides her van, one at the electrical charging station and another fueling up on ethane. Pure hydrogen fuel was typically reserved for aerospacecraft, or those who didn’t want to be seen on IR sensors. She made sure the attendant was still focused on her tablet, then allowed her focus to drift. Sam, she thought. How much longer can we stretch out our funds?

“Considering we haven’t had any new income in the past two months,” the AI answered. “And our food and energy consumption… I would estimate a month. Maybe six weeks if we stretch our reserves out.”

The raccoon grumbled. The Friendlies had been very generous in allowing her and Shawn to keep the cash they’d withdrawn for that ill-fated black market transaction, but living “off the grid” was proving expensive on Surtur. How could we extend our reserves? She asked.

“For starters we could ditch the nerd,” Sam suggested.

Out of the question, Horizon snarled silently.

“Are you sure,” Sam’s avatar appeared in the middle of her field of view. “Has he been any help since you set out on your own? His implants haven’t even developed very far in all these months.”

Horizon slammed a fist into the side of the pump. We are not letting them get any more of our people, visions of Jenny being carried off by a power armored goon played in front of her eyes. No more.

“Fine then,” the illusion of a red panda shrugged. “I guess we’ll just steal stuff.”

Continue reading “Horizon: Rebuilt, Ch. 14” →

On the Lack of New Wormholes

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An excerpt from a lecture on Interstellar Travel 101 by professor Rchel Coligera of the University of Dawson Sphere, 3002 PX.

Now I can see that most of you have turned in your pre-course surveys and there was one question that just kept appearing. “Why aren’t we covering wormholes?” Well, I can answer that quickly: Wormholes are obsolete, expensive, and slow.

Yes, slow, I spoke correctly.

”How can that be?” You ask? Well that’s a bit more complicated.

How many of you are from Carrack? Okay, seven of you, good. How about Algernon? Eight, nice. Persephone? Eleven, really? Well, we’ve got quite a few relativist students, that’s no surprise for Interstellar Travel 101.

What would you say if I told you that under the Federation none of you would have left your home system?

At the Federation’s height it’s estimated that less than one in one hundred star systems were within a year’s travel of a wormhole. And most ships took close to a year to reach a wormhole, even the fastest ships of the Federation era took a month to travel from an inhabitable planet to the Oort Cloud where wormholes could be safely emplaced. Travel from systems without wormholes often took decades. You interstellar students are aware that by the time you return home your siblings and classmates will be middle-aged grandparents, unless they were fortunate enough to have access to leukosynths. But if you’d taken a wormhole to Alpha Centauri, they’d be long dead.

Sure, we could combine modern singularity drives with wormhole travel, but why would we? The wormhole network is gone, with a few rare exceptions. And it would be far too expensive to try and rebuild it.

You might have heard that the micro-singularities powering a 1,000-hydro-ton liner consumed a small planetoid, but the mass consumed to make transversable wormholes is measured in stars. We can only guess how many brown dwarfs were sucked up into Proxima Centauri’s StarForge. Just one brown dwarf could support a population of billions, as many peripheral polities have discovered after obtaining singularity drives, or build a fleet of thousands.

Due to this expense the StarForge took the better part of a century to produce the first traversable wormhole. Even in the Federation’s final century we only have records of four, maybe five new wormholes opening. This was one reason why 90% of all wormholes connected to the Alpha Centauri system, and collapsed when Sol went nova.

So, the better question is, why did the Federation bother with wormholes at all? Why didn’t they just build stellar swarms like the one you’re all sitting inside? Two words: Dispersal and security.

The Core Worlds were colonized by refugees from Sol after the Destroyers scrubbed the system of life. When the Federation formed they knew that the only way they could survive as a clade was to keep a low profile, thus they adopted a policy of spreading parahumanity thin across the stars. Since the Destroyers were apparently destroyed, the university has detected five other stellar swarms in the past two centuries, including around Alpha Centauri B, Tau Ceti, and Epsilon Eridani; the Federation’s Core Worlds.

As for the second point, the Federation could not tolerate competition. You might have heard of a “Pax Federaci” but I’m going to tell you right now that entire concept is revisionist bullshit. The university’s archaeological expeditions have uncovered sizable evidence that “deportations” to Outworlds were far more common than the records would indicate. Helped, naturally, by the Federation’s policy of erasing all evidence of the deported’s existence in the name of “memetic containment.” We have even discovered a few Outworlds that appear to have started as fully Federated colonies, only to be bombed back to the Stone Age later on.

So, yeah, we might be islands in space and time separated by years, but we’re more connected than ever.

Terraforming Biodiversity

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The seedships that arrived at Alpha Centauri had limited space on board for genetic samples, with parahuman and uplift DNA given the highest priority. The unfortunate result being that the vast majority of Old Terra’s rich biodiversity died with that planet, leaving Secland and later terraformed worlds an extremely limited gene pool to work with. 

During the terraforming process scientists struggled to fill in the niches left open by a gene bank weighed heavily towards domesticated and laboratory test animals. The possibility of making “downlifted” versions of the uplifted species was proposed but almost universally rejected by the uplifts in question. Instead, the Bureau of Ecosystem Management offered jobs to uplifts filling the ecological roles of their progenitors. This strategy worked surprisingly well, especially with apex predators such as dolphins.

Another approach was to modify the animals they did have using the non-human genes that had been incorporated into parahuman genomes. For instance Secland “bats” are actually heavily modified mice while the procyon is a fox given hand-like paws and a ringed tail.

Late in the terraforming process scientists made a breakthrough that would simplify later efforts. Large complexes of genes that could be activated or deactivated with specific epigenetic triggers were added to the genomes of many species that could produce massive physiological changes in later generations. That way a single breeding colony of ultra-ferrets could give birth to 20-centimeter long mini-ferrets, semi-aquatic ferr-otters, or two-meter mega wolverines as the ecosystem needed.

List of source species:

Mammals:

Cat (Felis catus)

Cattle (Bos taurus)

Dog (Canis lupus familiaris)

Ferret (Mustela furo)

Red fox (Vulpes vulpes)

House mouse (Mus musculus)

European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus)

Sheep (Ovis aries)

Birds:

Budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus)

Canary (Serinus canaria)

Chicken (Gallus domesticus)

Rock dove (Columba livia)

Zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata)

Reptiles:

Green anole (Anolis carolinensis)

Spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus)

Fish:

Goldfish (Carassius auratus)

Zebrafish (Danio rerio)

Amphibians:

African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis)

Axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum)

Bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana)

Tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum)

Arthropods:

Fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster)

House cricket (Acheta domesticus)

Yellow mealworm beetle (Tenebrio molitor)

Pirate Kingdoms

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Following the breakup of the Federation interstellar states were extremely rare. Without the wormhole network it took decades to reach even the nearest neighboring stars, the logistics of maintaining political cohesion over such distances were nigh-impossible even for systems capable of building conversion drives and the later bubble drives.

However, during the second exodus many of the fleets leaving the core worlds were unable to find new homes, frontier colonies with infrastructure already stretched by severed supply lines weren’t interested in taking in millions of new refugees. A lot of these fleets wound up wandering the stars in perpetuity.

While onboard recycling systems could keep the passengers alive for centuries, they did eventually need resupply from star systems. Some fleets were able to find uninhabited systems they could colonize but most of the easily settled stars had already been claimed by the time of the fall. The rest wound up drifting from one star to another, trading, begging, and, increasingly, stealing supplies that they needed.

As they gathered supplies these fleets grew and built larger and larger weapons. As these fleets settled into established patterns they started to form agreements with the governments in the systems they visited. The most common being an agreement not to pillage a polity, in exchange for resources.

Time passed, and these agreements became more complex. Pacts to defend one polity from attack by another, or to attack another polity, migration treaties, oaths of fealty…

When some advanced systems began to reach out to the stars they found few polities willing to join their “new Federation,” instead discovering that many of them had formed a deal with what these would-be successor states considered no better than pirates. They labeled these loose organizations many things: “Nomadic coalitions,” “protection rackets,” “fleet protectorates,” etc. But one name in particular found staying power:

Pirate Kingdoms.

These “kingdoms” typically are far from centralized states and most are not hereditary monarchies. In fact most are composed of several polities of various different governments. A star system usually has multiple inhabited planets or megastructures and hundreds of smaller habitats, and each one tends to have a separate government if not several. A fleet passing through a system might lay claim to fealty from some or all of these polities, and if another fleet passes through the system those same polities may also give them fealty.

Within a fleet each ship has a government led by its captain, who may be elected, hereditary, or promoted up the ranks. In theory each captain owes fealty to the captain of the largest ship in the fleet, generically known as the “admiral,” but affiliations between ships tend to be loose at best. Open warfare between ships in a fleet is rare, but generally happens during the gulf between stars so as to project solidarity towards client states. The same courtesy does not apply to other fleets.

Horizon: Rebuilt Chapter 13

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A couple hours later the shock finally wore off and Horizon and Shawn started cleaning up the ruined computer room. As they gathered up pieces of shattered servers the raccoon reluctantly started to give details of what had happened.

“So,” Shawn commented. “That was one of your friends from the scrap ship you served on?”

“I’m not sure,” Horizon replied. “It was a copy of him at least. I don’t think that would make him the same person as my old friend. But I…” she trailed off, unable to find the words for what she had been forced to do.

“It was necessary,” Samantha cut in, uninvited. “An artificial intelligence with access to the fuzzy logic of quantum computing would be completely unpredictable. You saw how he completely disregarded your orders!”

Horizon was trying to ignore the AI, but that information gave her pause. How did he manage to do that anyways?

“Normally an AI cannot even try to look for ways around its built-in safeguards. They’re that thorough,” Samantha explained. “But quantum effects are unpredictable by definition, quantum computing allows some unexpected leaps in logic. Not only can they crack the strongest digital cryptography in a short amount of time, they are capable of coming to surprising conclusions that one would normally only expect of an organic being.”

I had heard that organic brains had some quantum effects. Is that true?

“To an extent,” Sam seemed to be downplaying whatever quantum mechanics had to do with brains. “There are some natural entangled particles present in neurons, but they’re nowhere near as central to the computation process as in quantum computers. The procedures employed on your brain preserved a fraction of the particles, but there was some loss of particles and you don’t seem to have lost any cognitive capacity.”

That is not particularly reassuring, Horizon retorted. But what about MechRat? You said he was a simulation or something?

“Luke Didelph’s simulation would not have retained any entangled particles from the original parahuman’s brain.”

No, Horizon corrected. What did you mean by a simulation? The only context I have is folk tales and myths.

The AI paused, then her expression changed abruptly, shifting mental gears with nothing in between. “Persona simulations are a specific category of artificial intelligence modeled after specific living or formerly living parahumans. Their neural networks are configured to emulate the subject at the time of creation as much as possible. Their one priority is acting in the ways that their subject would act at all times.”

Horizon remembered MechRat’s paranoia and resistance to authority, the simulation of him had emulated those traits quite well now that she thought about it. Very well in fact, she had been almost certain she was talking to the opossum himself. Are persona simulations sentient?

“No more than myself,” Sam stated.

That’s a “no” then? Horizon sighed and picked up a large piece of the quantum core they’d stolen, that seemingly had cost her two dear friends now. She chucked the piece of scrap into the bin they’d appropriated for the purpose.

Horizon’s ears perked up as she heard somebody trying to sneak into the building, they were probably quiet enough to avoid notice by most unaugmented parahumans, but not the cyborg raccoon. “Someone’s coming,” she stated, then dropped the bits of scrap she was carrying and started off towards the source of the sound. Her suit’s camouflage activated almost as if by reflex and she slid along the wall. Horizon slipped quickly through the rooms she had trashed on her way to the core, breezing past busted doors and wrecked machinery.

When she finally found the intruder she let out an unimpressed sigh. A canid of indeterminate phenotype wearing a gray hoodie and a balaclava that barely fit over their muzzle, anxiously holding out a coil pistol in both hands. As soon as they came just within reach Horizon’s arm snapped out in a holographic blur and yanked the gun out of their hands, flinging the battery and clip away in different directions.

The intruder stared blankly at the blur in shock, giving Horizon an opening to grab their mask and peel it away from their muzzle. “Would you mind telling me who sent you?”

The canid gulped in terror, “the… the Friendly Society.”

Horizon turned off her camouflage, shifting from a blurry outline to a slightly confused-looking raccoon. “Why wouldn’t they just call?” she asked.

“We picked up data transmissions that indicated a cyber-attack on this site!” They explained rapidly. “Quarantine measures were instituted!”

Horizon conceded that explanation made sense. “I already took care of it,” she explained. “Do you have a way to communicate with headquarters?” The canid nodded. “Show me,” the raccoon ordered. “There’s some things I’ll need to explain.”

Horizon followed the canid out of the building to the field outside. She heard the whine of turbines as she left the heavily insulated dwelling for the frigid outdoors. A VTOL shuttle stood on the snow, engines idling but ready to take off at a moment’s notice. The door slid open, revealing a caribou that Horizon recognized instantly.

“I should have known that you were involved here!” Coordinator Taranda shouted over the engines. “Are we in danger at the moment?!”

“No!” Horizon answered. “Can we talk inside?”

Taranda shoved the door open the rest of the way and gestured for the raccoon to enter. Horizon leapt inside in a second. Before the canid scout could follow Taranda held up a hand to halt them. “Wait outside for a minute!” she said. “We need to talk in private!” The canid nodded and began to head back into the building as the caribou shut the shuttle door. Taranda turned back towards Horizon and took a seat, but didn’t touch the restraints. “Now,” she started, “exactly what has been going on here?”

Horizon thought hard about how much to tell the Coordinator. She supposed that she might as well start from the beginning. “I escaped the destruction of my ship with a data drive containing a massive amount of encrypted data.” Taranda raised an eyebrow but said nothing, which Horizon took as an invitation to continue. “To attempt to crack the encryption, myself, Dr. Ratufa, and Shawnathan attempted to purchase a quantum core from some… less than savory characters.”

“Was this when you fought a Company SWAT team?” Taranda inquired.

Horizon let her surprise show on her face. “How much do you know about that?” She asked.

Taranda sighed, “the Friendly Society has enough connections in the Company that we’d hear about something like two armored officers getting killed on an undisclosed mission. And Ryder out there saw your ‘souvenir’ in the garage.”

Horizon pressed her palm into her forehead. “I only kept that thing so I could carry the core over to the van,” she explained. “They attacked us during the deal, killed the suppliers, almost killed me and Shawn,” Horizon took in and exhaled a deep breath to try and settle her nerves. “And they captured Jenny.”

“Dr. Ratufa?” Taranda asked to confirm. When Horizon nodded she inquired further, “do you have any idea what they did to her?”

Horizon shook her head, whiskers drooping. “No, the best I have are vague rumors of a secret asteroid prison or something.”

“I see,” Taranda stated simply. “What about the cyber-attack, what do you know about that?”

“I’m sorry,” Horizon sighed. “There was an AI stored on the drive. I should have been more cautious.”

“Are you serious?” Taranda’s eyes shot open in surprise and concern. “Is it still running?”

“No, I…” Horizon’s voice trembled. “…Trashed it. The computers have all been destroyed, including the quantum core. It tried to upload itself somewhere, but it was a lot of data, I doubt that it was able to finish.”

“That’s fortunate,” the Coordinator leveled her gaze at the cyborg meaningfully. “I’ll be honest with you, the council wanted to bomb this place flat.” At Horizon’s slack-jawed expression she elaborated, “but I convinced them to wait until we had more information.”

“But they didn’t call it off?” Horizon inquired.

Taranda glanced at a screen set in the sleeve of her parka. “Bomber drones will launch in eighteen minutes. After what you told me I doubt we can convince them to abort. I suggest you leave well before then.”

Horizon looked outside the window at the warehouse the Friendlies had allowed them to use for their little project. Now she started to have suspicions as to why they’d been given such an isolated location. “Are you firing me?”

Taranda nodded slowly. “I’m sorry, I appreciate all you’ve done for us, but there’s just too much danger around you. Feel free to salvage whatever you can as your severance package.”

Horizon rose unsteadily to her feet. She was losing everything again, all thanks to the Federation technology flowing through her veins. “Well,” she said, trying and failing to sound unperturbed. “I should go and pack.”

As Horizon flung the door open and stepped back outside Coordinator Taranda shouted after her. “One more thing! Niflheim is real!” The raccoon stopped in her tracks and turned halfway. “The prison is in Surt’s trailing Trojans, I don’t know more than that!”

A mixture of feelings rose in Horizon’s chest. Relief that she had a clue where Jenny might be, tinged by despair that she had no way to reach her girlfriend, and a glimmer of hope that it just might be possible to rescue her. “Thank you,” she said simply, and ran into the warehouse.

—

Sixteen minutes later Horizon and Shawn were rolling down the snow-encrusted road into town when the first explosive-laden drone dropped its cargo on the warehouse. They saw a fireball expand out from the roof of the building in the rearview mirrors, followed shortly after by a deafening *boom* and a rush of wind. The two had time to breathe a sigh of relief before the second drone dropped its’ load. The second blast was more muted, contained by the warehouse’s walls, but was followed by a series of collapses. When the crashing had finally ceased Horizon spoke up. “You know, you didn’t have to come with me, Shawn.”

“You’ve saved my life how many times now?” the vole retorted. “I owe you, and besides now we’re posthuman super soldiers fighting the Company. How cool is that?”

“I’d say you’re barely transhuman at this point,” Horizon corrected.

“Whatever,” Shawn continued. “What do we do next?”

“First, we go into town and buy supplies,” Horizon began to outline a plan. “Then we go camping for a while until the heat dies down. Once it’s safe we start looking for a way to get off this moon.” The posthuman glanced up at the emerging night sky, the first stars just coming into view. “And then, we go to Niflheim.”

Horizon: Rebuilt Ch. 12

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While Shawn worked on the quantum core and the orb’s reader, Horizon cleaned biomass out of the exo-suit they’d claimed. After rinsing with a non-conductive solution she more-or-less hung it upside-down from a set of cables suspended from the ceiling. Horizon found herself wondering if perhaps they’d have been better off leaving it behind. Sure, it might be useful for lifting things or in a fight, but no doubt the Company was going to object to their possession of it.

As she watched the biohazardous fluids drip out of the suit Shawn came down to the garage and took a seat next to Horizon. “Okay,” he started. “It’s all set up and running. It might take five minutes to crack the encryption, it might be five hours, or it could be five months for all we know. There’s no way to tell until its done.”

Horizon nodded. “While we’re waiting, do you have any ideas where they might have taken Jenny?”

Shawn shrugged, “probably city security, but they might have moved her afterwards. It’s been a few hours.”

That suggestion drew Horizon’s attention. “Where might they take her? Does the Company have long-term prisons?”

Continue reading “Horizon: Rebuilt Ch. 12” →