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para-imperium · 7 days ago

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Horizon: Rebuilt Ch. 16

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.

Horizon raised an eyebrow in the direction of the door as she took another sip of her beer, the consistency reminiscent of a fermented milkshake. After a couple more minutes a whitish-gray snow leopard came through the door, thick fur bursting out of a patchy blue jacket. Horizon didn’t react as they took a seat at the bar and ordered a hot drink. Once the bartender took their order and turned away the leopard held up a cupped hand towards the bleached raccoon, a data card in the center of their palm.

Horizon took out her paychip and handed it to them under the counter, allowing them to pass the data card in the same manner. The leopard slipped the chip into their pocket, collected their drink, and walked over to one of the booths. Horizon continued to watch them out of the corner of her eye as they unfolded a tablet and inserted the paychip. One of their eyes widened and their gaze shifted back towards Horizon for a moment.

“Something’s wrong,” Sam stated.

That could be, Horizon replied. But let’s not get carried away yet. We have what we came for, if they confront us, we run, but wait for my signal.

The snow leopard slowly returned to the bar, sidling up next to Horizon and setting their drink down in front of her. “We need to talk,” they whispered.

Horizon gave them a curious look as she felt her muscles tense in preparation to defend herself. “What is there to discuss?”

They held up their tablet, folded so that it would be difficult to read from the side but facing Horizon. It displayed a wallet app bearing a number: 4997.37.

Horizon stared back at the display for a few moments before she figured out what it was. “Oh, my bad,” she apologized. She held up her half-empty glass. “I was getting bored waiting and bought a drink.”

“And you used the same chip?” the snow leopard retorted.

“I had just the one chip,” Horizon explained. “Here, I’ll give you the rest.” She tapped the tablet with a finger, Sam near-instantly transferring 2.63 sacs from the wallet stored on her neural implant into the tablet.

The leopard pulled the tablet back to read it again, eyes widening and ears raised in surprise. “You’re a… borg?” they whispered.

Horizon started to rise off her stool, letting a hint of a glare appear on her face. “Is that a problem?” she inquired.

They started to inch back from the bar nervously. “No, it’s… fine. I just…” the snow leopard stood and ran for the door.

The raccoon glanced at the still-steaming mug they’d left, then shook her head and gulped down the rest of her beer. Horizon grabbed the snep’s abandoned mug and brought it up to her muzzle as she asked Sam what are the chances they’ll turn me in?

“High,” the AI replied. “I planted a virus on their device, would you like me to disable it?”

No, Horizon replied as she sniffed the drink, even over the cannabis smoke she could identify cocoa, cinnamon, and potato vodka. Just warn me if they call anyone. She was tempted to ask why Sam had planted a virus without asking, but by now she figured there was no point.

Horizon departed the bar, trying desperately not to look like she was in a hurry. In the back of her mind she reviewed the data from the card. It seemed to confirm her suspicions about Niflheim. There was some kind of ship or station in Surt’s trailing Trojan asteroids, Company public records claimed it to be simply a research base, but four Jord years ago a pirate had attempted to raid it. Some unknown weapons fire had vaporized the pirate craft in a burst of nuclear fire. Additionally, many had noted that certain augmented individuals had disappeared without a trace within days of the base’s monthly resupply by mass driver. Including Jenny.

The cyborg raccoon ducked behind a sign to read the data more closely without worrying about collisions with traffic. When was the next resupply? She found the list of previous launches and made some quick calculations based on the orbital data of Surt’s moons. Horizon tensed as she realized that the next optimal launch window would be in just twelve hours. Sam, she inquired. How likely would it be that we could break into the mass driver by tomorrow?

“Extremely unlikely,” the AI answered. “There are hundreds of armed guards, at least a dozen in exo-suits, biometric locks, auto-turrets, and air patrols. Even if you managed to hijack a launch pod, the Company fleet could just shoot it down, to say nothing of Niflheim’s own armament.” Images of the toroidal mass driver with its cannon-like launch ramp appeared around her panda avatar. Along with pics of the aforementioned security measures. “Maybe if we had a few months to gather resources…”

But we don’t, Horizon retorted. We have hours, at best. I need a workable plan of action.

“Tanya?” Horizon looked up to see Shawn running towards her. “What the Hel happened? I just got reamed on mesh by Searan and now they’re saying that they’re calling the cops.”

Horizon lunged and picked the vole up by the collar. “You didn’t tell me that your friend was a total borgophobe!” she snarled. “How did you even find someone like that? I thought your forum was all technophiles?”

“What?” Shawn looked confused for a moment as he thought back. “Well, they said some things about ghuls and liches, but it didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary… At least you got the data, right?”

The augmented raccoon swung Shawn around and flung him down the street. He flew far in the low gravity, five meters, ten, fifteen… far further than any un-augmented parahuman could be expected to throw him. The vole finally landed on the ground, skidding across the snow in a long line until he came to a halt.

Wary that her outburst may have attracted attention, Horizon peered around the corner of her hiding place. There, she spied a security officer tracing Shawn’s arc of travel back towards her, one hand on their dart pistol.

Time slowed as Horizon leapt for the officer, claws extended. They drew their gun, but barely managed to raise it before the cyborg’s titanium claws were on them. Horizon barely felt the dart stab her in the thigh at point-blank range, her leukosynths neutralizing the drugs it carried as quickly as they hit her bloodstream. She yanked the gun out of their hand, shredding their flesh in the process, and smashed it against a nearby wall.

Horizon felt the officer’s arm snap, satisfied that they were sufficiently incapacitated he threw him aside. The subsonic whine of rotors approaching drew her gaze upwards and she just barely dodged the net fired from the drone. Her peripheral vision caught sight of a few electrical arcs and pops where the net’s fibers contacted the snow. A stun net? she thought, perfect.

The cyborg ducked and wove at inhuman speeds while the drone tried to line up another shot. Two more drones approached rapidly. While she was distracted by the new drones a rock sailed through the air towards the first one, coming up a meter low. The drone turned its launcher towards the new target, a vole searching for another projectile to throw.

“Get out of here!” Horizon shouted at Shawn, but it was too late. Another stun net wrapped itself around him. Shawn was knocked to the ground, convulsing as the shocks pulsed through his nervous system. Horizon leapt to assist him, grabbing the net and attempting to tear it off even as it shocked her.

Current blazed through her fingers, but she managed to tear the net loose. Automatic fire burst behind her, bullets burying themselves in her back. Horizon muttered a curse; she’d let herself get distracted. She spun around, ignoring the expanding tears in her back muscles, and saw the drones take up positions around her. One of the new drones had a net launcher like the first one, but the other was armed with a machine gun instead. The machine gun drone hovered to her right, while the net drones flew to her left and ahead of her. While behind her an armored ground transport was just screeching to a halt.

Surrounded, Horizon chose to dive directly into the line of fire of the drone ahead of her. Its net caught her, too slow to dodge it with the bullet holes in her. She sprawled on the ground, under the net, unable to throw it off. Every time she tried to move a shock made her muscles convulse. She spotted a trooper in an exo-suit jumping out of the transport and stomp towards her, shoulder gun leveled.

Horizon’s current-numbed skin couldn’t feel the darts, but she heard them launching. The sheer quantity of drugs finally began to overwhelm her leukosynths, and her vision started to fade. The last thing she saw was Shawn starting to run only to fall again seconds later.

Whatever happened next was a blur. She could remember getting picked up and moved by people in exo-suits multiple times, being transported in the back of a truck along with a motionless Shawn, and then when the drugs began to clear out, she found herself strapped to a gurney propped up against a wall.

Her muzzle and extremities were enclosed in devices that afforded her no movement. Her every appendage was held down by some sort of restraints, her eyes the only thing she could move. Next to her she could make out a sealed crate clamped onto the floor, and a vole affixed to a similar apparatus to herself.

Before she could think of trying to speak to Shawn she was shoved back by a sudden force of gravity. The acceleration, she thought it felt like at least 4 Gs sitting on her chest like an elephant, continued for what felt like an eternity before leveling off. The weight pressing her down lessened before vanishing altogether. Now it felt like “down” was solely towards her stomach, null-G, they were in space again.

Horizon attempted to move her arm, nothing happened, she didn’t even feel the muscles tense. Sam, she thought, what’s happening?

The AI remained silent. Sam, what’s going on? Where are you? Still nothing. Did her brain implant short out? Was she now trapped in her body, paralyzed?

A snapping sound drew her attention, Shawn tossed aside a simple zip-tie cuff. Another few snaps and the vole stumbled out into the air, flipping over and crashing into the crate in front of him. Horizon rolled her eyes, the only thing she could do, at the newcomer to microgravity.

After several minutes he managed to right himself and reached out towards Horizon. “I’m really hoping this is you,” he commented, grasping at the mask covering her muzzle. Shawn fumbled with something on the sides of the mask, and eventually she felt it come off.

Horizon took a few deep breaths. “Thank you,” she managed to gasp out despite her breath’s refusal to come in.

“Tanya,” Shawn asked. “Are you okay?”

“I can’t move anything below my neck,” Horizon replied. “Thanks for removing the mask.”

“I tried meshing you after I woke up, but you weren’t receiving.” The vole leaned close to Horizon, eyes narrowed in concentration. “Huh?”

“What is it?” Horizon inquired.

“I’m getting some kind of signal interference around you,” Shawn poked at a panel in the side of the gurney. “Maybe I can deactivate it somehow.”

Horizon heard the click of several buttons being pushed, followed by an alarm buzz. Shawn swore and tried punching a few different buttons, with the same result. “Just break it open!” Horizon shouted after the third attempt.

“Okay, okay, I think there’s an access point here,” Shawn grabbed hold of something outside her limited field of vision and braced himself against her gurney. After a minute or so of grunting and wrenching something cracked and the vole went flying back.

A prickling sensation flowed all over her body, like her foot had fallen asleep but for everything but her head. In front of her a hazy outline slowly coalesced into the form of a red panda woman. “Connection… established!” Sam’s avatar shook herself off in exasperation. “Damn I hate EMP jamming!”

Is that what that was? Horizon attempted to tense her arm muscles, and this time she felt them respond. She yanked hard against her restraints and heard the satisfying snap of cables and bolts.

“Hey! Careful!” Sam cautioned. “I couldn’t heal you while those jammers were active!”

Horizon pulled her arm out in front of her, the entire forearm was encased in some sort of metal sleeve. She reached out with it towards the tumbling Shawn, and he grabbed hold. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean for you to get captured too. But if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to break free.”

“Yeah, good thing they zipped me up with such wimpy ties, guess they weren’t expecting me to be augmented too.” Shawn’s eyes twitched as he registered what she’d just said. “Too? Wait, you wanted to get captured?”

“Yes,” Horizon stated as she tried to find some sort of release mechanism on her sleeve.

“Why?” Shawn inquired, confused.

“Because,” Horizon answered. “We’re going to Niflheim.”

#sci-fi #fiction #transhumanism #horizon #scifi #sci fi

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para-imperium · 7 days ago

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Horizon: Rebuilt, Ch. 16

#Fiction #Horizon #Serial

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para-imperium · 1 month ago

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Captain Terryn Observing, by Alacran

An illustration of Captain Terryn, a relativistic trader I was planning to use for a serial story but never really got around to writing. Instead I'll be using this illustration in my Cepheus Engine RPG "Salvaged Heroes." Art by https://zcorpion.carrd.co/

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#sci-fi #furry #wolf #space #spaceship #ttrpg #rpg

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para-imperium · 2 months ago

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Bringing The Para-Imperium to Traveller

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).

#traveller #cepheus #TTRPG #sci-fi #fiction #transhumanism #worldbuilding #scifi #sci fi

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para-imperium · 2 months ago

Text

Bringing the Para-Imperium to Traveller

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…

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#Fiction #Horizon #rpg #Technology #transhumanism #TTRPG

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para-imperium · 2 months ago

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RPG First Draft complete!

I've finished a first draft of my Cepheus Engine RPG based on my Para-Imperium setting, specifically set during the Horizon: Salvaged Heroes era. The Cepheus Engine is based on Traveller, with straightforward 2D6+modifiers rolls and a lifepath system of character creation (I tried to make it less lethal), but under an open license. Campaigns take place after the collapse of an interstellar empire, and focus on salvaging the wreckage it left behind. Something like a cross between Hardspace Shipbreaker, The Expanse, Lethal Company, and Isaac Asimov's Foundation. Most characters will be the descendants of genetically engineered "parahumans" designed for colonizing space. I've created a system of traits and adaptations for building custom parahuman genotypes. If that sounds interesting, you can check it out at my Patreon on https://www.patreon.com/posts/rpg-first-draft-117229171?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link I'm still working on the title. How does "Salvaged Heroes: Post-Apocalyptic Space Opera" sound?

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#rpg #sci-fi #furry #para-imperium #parahuman space #traveller #cepheus

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para-imperium · 3 months ago

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Parahuman Space

While Stardrives is complete, I'm not done with TTRPG writing yet. I've been working on the @para-imperium setting for over a decade now and I'm almost ready to launch a complete RPG based on the Cepheus System derived from Mongoose's Traveller (but more open).

Parahuman Space is a furry setting, yes, of the genetically modified variety. It covers over 2,000 years, but the RPG will be focused on the period after the collapse of the big interstellar empire. When newly independent planets and systems are busy scavenging the wreckage.

Players will primarily be salvage crews venturing into hazardous ruined spaceships and stations. Braving haywire security systems, leaks of corrosive chemicals, and the dreaded Kessler Syndrome to retrieve valuable technology.

In other words, dungeon delving.

At present I am about halfway done drafting the rulebook, drawn heavily from the Cepheus System Reference Document that can be read online here. Once I'm finished and I have interior artists lined up I was hoping to bring it to Kickstarter.

Below is the setting's history, as written for the rulebook.

Timeline:

Most calendars in Parahuman Space are oriented around the launch of the first parahuman-built starship as the start of the exodus from the clade’s system of origin, Sol. On the Georgian calendar the year 0 Post Exodus (PX) would be in the early 22nd century AD. So the Federation would be founded in the 32nd century AD and collapse in the 45th century, or roughly the year 4600 AD.

-40 Before Exodus: Creation of parahumans. -24 BX: Parahumans emancipated and corporations that enslaved them dissolved. -17 BX: Events of The Pride of Parahumans. 0 Post Exodus: First Seedship, the Traveller, launched. 4 PX: Pallas launches second seedship. 10 PX: Earth destroyed by relativistic projectile, origin unknown. 14 PX: Second Pallene seedship is caught by berserker probes that destroyed Sol. Crew commit suicide first. 45 PX: Traveller lands on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A, creatively named "Secland." 48 PX: Vestan ship lands on opposite hemisphere from the Traveller.

115 PX: Ship from Ceres arrives at Epsilon Eridani to find a lifeless system. Instead of terraforming the new corporate government opts to build artificial habitats in the asteroid belts and beneath the surfaces of planets.

124 PX: A second Vestan ship discovers a garden world orbiting Tau Ceti. The crew decide to eschew technology after printing enough colonists in fear of Sol’s Destroyers.

150 PX: Sleeper ship carrying 1500 humans from Sol arrives over Secland. After an abortive attempt at invasion the survivors gradually integrate into Pallene society. 500 PX: Cold war between nations on Secland ends with the completion of terraforming. Biological weapons leave New Pallas the sole nation standing. 950 PX: New Pallas contacts Tau Ceti thanks to the newly developed conversion drive. Triggering political restructuring among the natives resulting in the kingdom of Schwarswelt under King Hideo Fink.

1060 PX: Stable wormholes large enough to move a spaceship through are produced and launched from Proxima Centauri to Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. 1100 PX: Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, and Epsilon Eridani form the Federation.

1150 PX: Centauri Grand Mayor Selkd de Argentum assassinated by Cetan partisans and succeeded by his more aggressive sister Lirdrill.

1200 PX: The Federation centralizes power in the office of the Praetor, first held by Lirdrill de Argentum.

1205 PX: The Outworld memetic quarantine and contingency program is established, forcibly relocating ideological dissidents to frontier worlds with limited technology.

1500 PX: After extensive lobbying by Centauran merchant houses and the Eridani Company, Federation Senate votes to allow limited trade with Outworlds, which now compose roughly half of all colonized planets.

1846 PX: Kershkans, the first extant xenosophont species, discovered. 1903 PX: Contact established with Kershkans. 2300 PX: Federal Guard destroys Sol with strangelet bomb, inducing a nova. Evacuation of Core Worlds begins. 2304 PX: Wormhole gates at Alpha Centauri collapsed ahead of the nova's radiation. The capital cut off, the Federation quickly begins to fragment. 2345 PX: The Emissary-Governor of the Tiere System, wracked by tensions between earlier colonists and new refugees, disables all nanotech in the system in an attempt to reassert control. He is lynched by an angry mob within weeks. 2590 PX: The self-proclaimed Imperator Ronkal launches Project Paladin, sending ships with new reactionless drives and augmentation suites to neighboring systems. 2600 PX: A Ronkalli ship reaches the Tiere System, only for interplanetary debris to kill the entire crew. The ship AI forcibly augments a crew of scavengers who come looking.

The Origin of Species:

The first parahumans were engineered from a blend of human and animal genes and bioprinted in corporate labs in high Terran orbit. They were designed to fill roles in asteroid mining that were too complex for robots but too dangerous to risk human life for. It took less than a decade for rebellions and strikes to start.

Fortunately, the parahumans found many allies on Terra and after the revolutionaries on Ceres worked out a treaty to maintain the flow of resources back to Terra they were essentially left to themselves. With their new freedom came disagreements over how to govern themselves. The guilds on Vesta formed a form of anarcho-capitalist feudalism regulated by the cloning guild that held the early parahumans’ sole means of reproduction. But then a Vestan scientist, a silver fox named Argentum, discovered a simple gene therapy to remove the genetic sterility imposed by their creators and their followers formed a breakaway colony on Pallas.

The Vestan guilds could not tolerate this loss of control and war almost broke out between the two asteroids. Luckily they found an alternative means of proving the superiority of their respective systems of governance. A space race. Exploration of other star systems had been proposed many times but there had been little interest with the abundance of resources right there in Sol system. But with the new nanofabricators it was possible for even a small asteroid outpost to construct an Orion-style starship with a small crew and the fabricators to print out an entire new colony, colonists included.

They couldn’t have timed the launch better. Just ten years after the first starship, the Traveller,was launched from Pallas towards Alpha Centauri, it received a frantic message from Sol:

“This is an automated beacon broadcasting what may well be the last message ever sent by the human race. Five years ago, our homeworld, Terra was struck by a 50-ton projectile traveling at 90% of the speed of light. The debris took out most of our habitats in Earth’s orbit, a few million of us survived elsewhere in the solar system. Then the rest of the invasion force arrived. Machines, vast machines kilometers in length that home in on any sources of radio transmissions, and annihilate them. We pray they are not intelligent and are simply weapons fired by a xenophobic alien race. But they’ve almost completed their work, we estimate that there’s only a couple hundred of us left in the system. We’re sending this message in hopes that there is someone out there who can hear it and beware. This universe is more hostile than we thought. They attack radio transmitters, dismantle whatever devices you are listening to this on before they find you.”

In total, five starships were far enough out to heed this warning. The Traveller, a Vestan ship also headed for Alpha Centauri, a second Vestan ship on course for Tau Ceti, a craft launched from Ceres to Epsilon Eridani, and the largest but slowest ship, a sleeper ark from Terra to Alpha Centauri.

Alpha Centauri: Sol’s Nearest Neighbors

Around Alpha Centauri A the Traveller found a Terra-sized rocky planet that had long been scoured of life by stellar storms from the trinary stars nearby. It was determined that this little rock could be reanimated with comparatively little effort and the crew made immediate plans to colonize and terraform the planet which they named “SecLand” (the landing on Pallas being the first land).

Just three years after the Traveller’s arrival, they were followed by their Vestan rival. Considering the horror they’d experienced since Sol’s last transmission they decided to set their differences aside and work together on terraforming SecLand, albeit from opposite hemispheres. This detente was strained at times, but the first real threat to world peace didn’t come until 150 years PX, when the ark carrying the last of unaltered humanity arrived.

By the time the sleeper ark arrived SecLand had a population of several thousand, the ark carried a mere 1500 passengers but over half were soldiers who’d entered stasis with orders to make sure that the first exosolar foothold of humanity was human, not parahuman. Or at least that was the plan, when word of what happened to their homeworld got out there was a mutiny and the victors immediately surrendered to the parahuman colonists, with most passengers integrating into the Republic of New Pallas. These newcomers brought a wide range of skills and knowledge, living knowledge, to a planet whose inhabitants up until then had primarily only known life inside their half-built habitat structures. The humans emigrated nearly equally to both colonies, over the centuries they interbred with the parahumans, with the net result being that many SecLanders have less fur or their facial features are closer to human than many further colonies. Today pure-bred humans, and parahumans (excepting uplifts), are miniscule minorities on SecLand with only a couple million individuals. The average SecLander resembles a blend of at least half a dozen species of Terragen origin.

For centuries the two colonies lived in relative peace, New Pallas breeding like rabbits while the Vestans cloned new citizens in bulk. But when the terraforming of SecLand had reached the point where colonists could breathe the atmosphere tensions re-established themselves between the two old enemies. With terraforming nearing completion some wondered what use New Pallas could have for the Vestans, on both continents. To that end the Vestans began to covertly build weapons in their Arcologies while New Pallas shifted their orbital satellites slightly. It all came to a head when the Vestans concealed a lethal virus in food shipments sent from their farms to the cities of New Pallas, thousands died in the months that followed. By the time the New Pallas government realized what had been done every Vestan arcology had unveiled surface-to-orbit mass drivers that could shoot down their enemy’s satellites. Even then, many arcologies were leveled by orbital strikes. Then the land battles began. The cybernetically augmented citizen-soldiers of New Pallas facing off against the bioprinted legions of the Vestans. The fighting raged on for months, then abruptly, it ceased less than a year after the war had begun. You see, the Vestans had underestimated New Pallas’s skill with biotechnology, crafting a virus that could be deadly to all the diverse inhabitants of the Republic had been difficult, but a dirty little secret of many 21st century regimes were the techniques to engineer a virus that had disastrous effects when it interacted with a specific gene or genes. And the Society for the Preservation of Parahuman Species had only used a couple genotypes for their army, and even fewer for their ruling priest-scientists. Once the virus had been grown any Vestan unit that came into contact with the enemy was dead within a week, in a month the ruling class had been reduced to a few paranoid individuals who had sealed themselves in hermetic bunkers. Specialized by repeated cloning into an effective caste system, and their soldier castes suddenly extinct, the surviving Vestan arcologies found themselves helpless against New Pallas occupation forces.

The medical advances achieved fighting the bioweapons led to the development of leukosynths, symbiotic microbots that could fight off nearly all microbes and repair the body at an accelerated rate. Even fighting off the advances of aging. When this “immortality” was proven to the public they clamored for the government to subsidize their deployment to the masses. Within the century 90% of New Pallas’ population enjoyed the benefits of leukosynths.

Among this chaos a new power emerged in the Pallene cities and settlements. Families all over the planet started giving birth to silver fox kits, reminiscent of their colony’s nearly-deified founder, Argentum. Some religious leaders saw this as a sign and exalted these silver foxes, propelling many into high positions in politics. The cynical suggested that the parents had modified their children’s genes in-utero, but after the plagues many people were desperate and willing to believe anything. Most of them were actually descendants of Argentum’s, but their progeny numbered in the hundreds of thousands by that point anyways.

An unintentional side effect of this bit of social engineering was a renewed interest in their origins out in the depths of space. And despite the terrors they knew awaited them they couldn’t help but wonder if any other colony ships had made it…

Epsilon Eridani

Ceres, the largest asteroid in Sol’s asteroid belt, was the main off-world base of operations for the corporation that created the first parahumans. During the revolution parahumans took over the local branch offices and largely continued to operate along the same lines. Their participation in the exosolar space race was almost an afterthought, an attempt at remaining relevant compared to the other two major asteroid civilizations in Sol system.

Upon arrival in the Epsilon Eridani system they found even fewer viable prospects for terraforming than those in Alpha Centauri. Instead, they opted to construct enclosed habitats in the system’s asteroid belts and under the surface of the larger rocky planets. Like on Ceres the colonists retained the corporate style of government that had served their forebears fairly well.

After about a century of this arrangement dissatisfaction among the lower ranking employees spread towards the shareholding class. A bloody revolution followed, after which the revolutionaries distributed the seized shares in the Eridani Company equally among the employees, granting everyone a vote in company elections and a share of the profits. Roughly a generation later a group of managers started buying up shares from others.

The third such regime made contact with a probe from New Pallas, trade began almost immediately.

Tau Ceti

The second Vestan colony ship took over a century to reach its destination, the star Tau Ceti. Along the way two generations of crew were decanted from the ship’s bioprinters to replace their predecessors. While the final crew were genetically identical to those who had set out from Vesta their commitment to the ideology of the Society for the Preservation of Parahuman Species had wavered, and with the news of Terra’s destruction some suggested that perhaps the best way to avoid sharing that world’s fate would be to lose their advanced technology.

That would require them to give up cloning as a means of reproduction, however they were unwilling to allow reckless crossing of genelines so they added genetic markers to prevent different phenotypes from interbreeding. Fortunately, unlike the other colony ships they discovered a lush world that wasn’t too hostile to Terran life which they named Schwarzwelt after the dark colors of the local chlorophyll analogue. They then settled each “species” into different “clans” in different regions of the planet. The clans grew in population rapidly, bumping up against the borders designated at founding in less than a century. War broke out.

Clans rallied behind charismatic warrior-nobles and weaker clans swore oaths of fealty to stronger ones to save their own skins. These wars continued until contact with the first probe from the Centauri system, realizing that there was another civilization out there and that they were capable of interstellar travel the clan heads held a council to decide what to do about it. The majority ruled that they needed a single man to represent their world when the outsiders came in person, they elected King Hideo Fink of the feline clan as the official ruler of Tau Ceti.

Birth of the Federation

While the first manned starships with conversion drives were still traveling to their neighbors, scientists at a research base orbiting Proxima Centauri, the small red dwarf star that barely qualified as the third star of the Alpha Centauri system, made a breakthrough. Using a newly discovered form of exotic matter a wormhole could be pulled from the quantum foam of the universe and held open indefinitely. Once they successfully sent a laser through a pinprick-sized wormhole from Proxima to Secland, the New Pallas senate approved funding for the production of wormholes large enough to send materials through.

A very expensive experiment proved that wormholes larger in diameter than a micrometer could be catastrophically destabilized by proximity to large gravity wells. It was decided that no traversable wormhole could be placed closer to a star than the Oort Cloud, but even then the potential for shortening an interstellar voyage from decades to months was too exciting. Proxima Centauri was enclosed in a small Dyson sphere dedicated solely to producing the exotic matter for wormholes and just over a century after contact the first interstellar traversable wormhole between Proxima Centauri and Tau Ceti was ready, Epsilon Eridani followed suit. Commerce and communication between the three systems exploded, and conflict with them.

While interstellar war didn’t break out, there were many in both Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani who suspected that New Pallas intended to invade them through their wormholes. Before long both planetary governments were dealing with armed insurrections. New Pallas was all too glad to provide advanced weaponry and vehicles, especially on Schwarzwelt where the military was decentralized and entire clans or houses were rebelling. Eventually Pallene troops and warships were stationed in the two systems to defend Pallene interests.

Seeing tensions rise Grand Mayor Selkd de Argentum came up with an ingenious solution, an interstellar government composed of representatives from all three star systems, as well as any new systems that would be colonized in the future. That way, everyone could theoretically have a say in interstellar politics. While visiting Schwarzwelt in 1150 to promote his vision, Selkd was assassinated by a sniper.

Selkd was succeeded by his sister, Lirdrill, who ordered the sniper’s family estates leveled by orbital bombardment as an example to the others. The ruling houses of other clans that had rebelled were rounded up and stripped of their noble ranks, then imprisoned in stasis banks. She continued her brother’s vision of a united parahuman government, but centralized around Alpha Centauri and the office of the Praetor, which would be held by her house.

Wormholes took a lot of time and resources to set up while probes were reporting back dozens of exoplanets that were inhabitable or easily terraformed, so the senate on New Pallas had been debating whether to launch colony fleets before or after traversable wormholes arrived at the potential colonies. As Lirdrill solidified the Federation, she made an executive decision. Wormholes would be spaced anywhere from 20 to 50 light-years apart, depending on resources and stellar density, and the stars between them would be reachable only by ships traveling at 80% of the speed of light or slower. Since leukosynths and cryo-stasis had become mature technologies by then the decades of travel were deemed acceptable.

Even then, there was some trouble finding enough volunteers to fill the colony ships that were being built. After a few suggestions of using rebels as indentured labor the Memetic Quarantine and Contingency program was established. The thousands of rebels held in stasis were to be shipped off to marginally inhabitable “Outworlds” light-decades from the nearest wormhole, and to make sure they didn’t draw too much attention, without any technology more advanced than the most basic steam engines. It was hoped that eventually they’d become “civilized” and submit to the Federation, or die off.

But, there was a secondary purpose to the program. The machines that had destroyed Terra were still out there, and if the Destroyers were to notice the Federation growing under their noses, perhaps they’d overlook those small Outworlds without radio.

The Traders

With the vast distances between most inhabited systems trade opportunities were limited. Most star systems had enough raw materials locally that shipping them from another star without a wormhole was simply not cost-effective. While nanofabrication meant that most manufactured goods could be produced in a small warehouse, if not a garage. For the first few centuries of expansion the only goods that were worth shipping interstellar were in the form of digital data, and most of that could be handled by laser transmissions, and the occasional courier.

Just over two centuries after the Federation was established, a courier ship operated by a branch of House Argentum decided to stop off at an Outworld. The captain decided to land a shuttle near one city-state established by the unwilling colonists to see what they were up to.

The locals were wowed by the great flying machine and the crew, having forgotten their origins already. They offered tribute to the visiting immortals, foodstuffs, sculptures, and textiles. The crew decided to take some of the tributes with them, leaving some inconsequential trinkets of Federation technology which were quickly replaced by their on-board fabricators.

When the courier next made port at a Federation starbase they showed off the unique goods they’d acquired, many of which were purchased at exorbitant prices by bored oligarchs. The Outworld’s inhabitants were rapidly diverging culturally from their forebears, far faster than the leukosynth-using worlds of the Federation. Those simple couriers had found something valuable to the nearly post-scarcity Federation, novelty.

Many houses and companies commissioned their own Outworld trade freighters while the senate debated whether it was even legal to trade with the “barbarians.” Eventually it was determined that trade would be allowed; but no weapons, vehicles, communications, or nanotechnology were to be given to Outworlders. Small starships with industrial nanofabricators would set up shop over Outworlds for years at a time, fabbing trinkets made from space-age alloys and exchanging them for cloth made with alien fibers. Many of these traders became fabulously wealthy during the next few centuries as the Federation expanded outwards and established more and more Outworlds.

It was fun while it lasted.

The Return of the Destroyers

The Destroyers responsible for Terra’s demise had made occasional appearances in the next two millennia. Zeroing in on sources of radio transmissions with relativistic projectiles followed by hunter-seeker probes that would scour the surrounding system of life. But it seemed they hadn’t noticed, or didn’t care about the Federation at large.

Then astronomers in the Federal core noticed something. Sol, Terra’s sun, was dimming. A few disposable probes sent back horrific images, a Dyson sphere, and it was almost complete. With the energy of Sol the Destroyers could incinerate the core worlds at the speed of light! A secret panel of the senate met with the Praetor to decide what to do about this unthinkable prospect.

The Federal Guard’s fleets were assembled at Proxima Centauri and dispatched for Sol. Never before had Federation technology been tested against the Destroyers, and no one wanted to underestimate them, so the fleet was loaded with the most advanced weaponry they could muster.

It wasn’t enough.

Quantum ansible transmissions reported massive ships that maneuvered without visible reactions and accelerated to impossible speeds in seconds. The Federal Guard was slaughtered in short order, but before they died one ship managed to launch an experimental superweapon at Sol itself.

A strangelet bomb, filled with the same strange matter that converted baryonic matter into antimatter in conversion drives, with catalysts for self-replication. They spread across the star in a matter of days, triggering a series of detonations that tore the star and the incomplete Dyson sphere apart.

When word came that they had a potential nova carrying strangelets in their neighborhood the Federation’s elites abandoned the core worlds en masse. Fleeing through the wormholes at top speed. As the secret mission to Sol and its destructive results leaked everyone who could afford a ship followed suit, departing for distant worlds that they hoped could bring salvation.

Then, just before the nova’s wavefront reached Proxima, the wormhole network was collapsed to prevent it from spreading to the far colonies.

The Collapse

Every star system that had a direct link to the wormhole network found itself swarmed by refugees from the Core. The remnants of the Federal Guard struggled to maintain order as refugees clashed with natives. Many refugee fleets were forced to leave for other systems that were less sparsely populated, a few even attempted to invade Outworlds. Other fleets became nomads, passing through inhabited systems without slowing down and trading for or extorting supplies as they passed.

As unrest reached critical levels many governors activated failsafe programs embedded in every Federation citizen’s leukosynth implants, rendering the star system’s entire population mortal. Most such governors were torn apart by angry mobs. On other worlds the population voluntarily gave up advanced technology in hopes of hiding from the Destroyers.

Three hundred years later the dust has mostly settled. Few star systems are politically united, with individual planets and megastructures using everything from wooden carts to gravity-manipulating starships. The Federation is ancient history, and its technology treasure waiting to be discovered.

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para-imperium · 3 months ago

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National Game Development Month

Instead of NaNoWriMo this year I’m participating in National Game Design Month and working on a tabletop RPG based on my Parahuman Space setting. The rules are based on the Cepheus Engine, an open content fork of the long-standing sci-fi RPG Traveller. It’s a fairly simple system reminiscent of the “most popular RPG” save that you roll 2d6 instead of 1d20 and you never get bloated with hit points, you stay a squishy mortal the whole campaign (I recommend some armor). You can read the full system reference document on this site but the final Parahuman Space RPG will include all the rules needed for play. The RPG assumes campaigns set after the collapse of the Federation, and instead of the typical tramp trader or mercenary campaigns seen in Traveller the default campaign will be based around salvaging wrecked starships. AKA “space dungeons.” Think Hardspace Shipbreaker or Lethal Company rather than Elite: Dangerous. So far I have the character creation and skills chapters, which I’ve attached to my most recent Patreon post for patrons. I needed to come up with a system for genetic modification of parahuman characters, but the skills are mostly unchanged from the SRD save for removing all references to gravitic vehicles. I also set career mishaps to non-lethal by default ;) I intend to leave the Combat chapter mostly unchanged as well. Psionics, though, will be replaced with Technomagic while the Equipment chapter will need extensive work for augmentations. Originally, I was planning to use a more “rules-light” system titled Faster Than Light: Nomad for this project, but the step system that used for building spaceships was not as conducive to tearing them apart for spare parts. Eventually I intend to bring this project to Kickstarter, I’m hoping that if even if you decide not to subscribe to my Patreon you will throw a few bucks my way once it launches.

Posted using PostyBirb

#ttrpg #rpg #sci-fi #furry #parahuman space #fiction #transhumanism #worldbuilding

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para-imperium · 4 months ago

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Interstellar Warfare

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.

#sci-fi #fiction #worldbuilding #sci fi worldbuilding

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para-imperium · 4 months ago

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Interstellar Warfare

#Culture #Government #Technology #War #Worldbuilding

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para-imperium · 5 months ago

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Horizon: Rebuilt, Ch. 15

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…

#Fiction #Horizon #Serial #transhumanism

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para-imperium · 5 months ago

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Horizon: Rebuilt, Ch. 15

“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.

#sci-fi #fiction #transhumanism #serial #horizon #scifi #superheroes #cyborg #sci fi

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