The freighter’s surroundings are all a blur as we race towards a Freeport close to Liberty’s core. Despite the excellent time we’re making to the station, the stars seem to sit still as I watch from the viewport, my forehead resting gently between my passenger seat and the thick layers of cold glass. Staring out the window was fairly hypnotic.
I’d been working for over a month in the Taranus’s medical bay with a physical therapist to regain my strength and balance. Since I came aboard, they’ve made sure that I get pumped continuously with all sorts of things to advance my recovery. My hair had grown slightly longer while being cooped up, matching up more with that of our ragtag freighter crew than the military-style uniformity that I’d grown accustomed to. Although my actual age sits somewhere around 171, the doctors have said that I’m somewhere around 29 to 32 physically – something I thought to be truly remarkable for a system that apparently left me only in a partial stasis. I’m still not sure how that worked, entirely.
After making an acceptable amount of progress, the doctors decided to let me go out to explore the ship. For a week or so, one of the Paladins would escort me to make sure I didn’t have a problem getting around. During that time, I got the opportunity to know my apparent two-man rescue team. I say “two-man” because the casualties REVA had talked about aboard the station were apparently remote-guided combat drones. They’d been sent aboard the ship in the boarding pods to serve as a distraction for Falchus and Griffus as they rushed to get me out.
Any time they were roaming about with me, they would always be fully dressed in their armor but would forego their helmets. According to them, they “preferred it that way.” Falchus was as Bretonian as his accent suggested. An orphan from New London, Falchus joined the Brotherhood at the age of 13. His parents were killed a year before when an anti-government protest took place in front of the Parliament Building. Bretonia was cast into severe economic depression when political needs apparently trumped those of the citizenry’s. Numerous terrible calls were made by their government, and more than 50% of Bretonia’s private native companies had decided to relocate to greener pastures. Tensions were understandably high between the newly-unemployed commoners and the rich political aristocracy. Police with automatic weapons, personal riot shields, plascrete barriers, and armored vehicles held back thousands of angry, unarmed picket protesters. He’d said that a shot was fired from somewhere during the protest, then it became all-out panic. The police, assuming they were being shot at, fired into the crowd. Both of his parents were killed as they tried to run. His father had grabbed him, then shielded him from bullets with his back. As he fell, Falchus went down with him. His father’s weight kept him down to the ground, safe beneath wave after wave of ammunition. After his 13th birthday, he escaped the orphanage he’d been relocated to and snuck into the nearest landing port, then stowed himself away aboard a freighter after bypassing the simple chain link fence surrounding it. What he didn’t know at the time was that he’d hid himself aboard an unmarked APOC freighter.
He was quickly found by the crew after takeoff, but they decided to let him stay. After all, there wasn’t anything to really send him back to other than the decades-old shelter he’d been living in. From there, he learned how to fight, how to make a little money (both legally and through more questionable means), how to fly civilian craft, and numerous other skills. That crew had become his family. After Falchus had heard about the Paladin Program and asked them about it, they’d encouraged him to join and to give it a try. If he didn’t like it or didn’t want to take the risks involved, he could always come back to them and continue trading.
Upon his entrance into the Paladin program, he’d met Griffus and the two helped each other get through the extremely difficult training courses and, later, the medical procedures after deciding that they wanted to stick with it. They stuck together after graduation, through the change in leadership after I took over, and after my capture, all the way to present day. For a while, until REVA’s transmissions, they’d worked as mercs, grabbing work wherever they could. After doing the math, Falchus says he’s somewhere around 227 years old. Despite the scars going down his face and the noticeable receding hairline that he’s mostly hidden with a military buzz cut, he doesn’t look a day over 40.
Griffus, on the other hand, was from the opposite side of the economic spectrum. His parents were fairly affluent Liberty-based traders and kept him in constant care aboard their ship. They taught him everything they knew themselves. On his 14th birthday, his parents enlisted him into the Paladin Program, citing their desire for a “more exciting life than what they could provide for him.” While Griffus says he understands why they enlisted him, he claims that he would’ve been perfectly content leading the life they did, even if it would’ve been a bit more boring. They retired from trading over 160 years ago and comfortably lived off of the money that they’d made until their deaths. Griffus also says that Falchus has been like the younger brother that he never had, being his parents’ only child. Like Falchus, Griffus’s face had been marked up over the years, but where Falchus was clean-shaven, Griffus had a stubby Mohawk and a finely-maintained soul patch on his chin. Falchus was also relatively quiet, mostly preferring to extensively listen before giving his opinion. Griffus was one of those that loved to tell stories about his past accomplishments, often embellishing them with details that seemed a little too convenient or amazing to be true. He’d get annoyed with Falchus at times when he’d interject into a story to correct a few of the details. Sometimes he’d try to tell a story and Falchus would stop him before he knew which one it was, apparently in an attempt to censor out those with the more questionable material. Regardless, Griffus always tries to find a way to interject his version of humor into his stories, usually cackling to himself as he touches on certain details – the likes of which are sometimes ambiguous as to whether they’re fact or fiction.
Admiral Balfours was an interesting character, too. After the doctors cleared me from the medical bay, I had the opportunity to meet with the man that had planned my escape. Admiral Samuel Balfours was a graduate of Liberty’s prestigious West Point Military Academy. After consistently scoring extremely high marks through his entire training campaign at the Academy, he was given command of a cruiser-based support group immediately after he’d graduated. After years of combat against pirate elements, he’d gained the absolute trust and loyalty of his crew. Unfortunately, his continuous string of victories placed him in the line of sight of some of Liberty’s politics. Legislators and bureaucrats hailed him as the “Champion of Liberty”, all the while they directed him into doing their dirty work in the name of “Liberty’s best interests” and “security on the home front.”
His breaking point came when he was tasked with escorting a passenger transport carrying Liberty dignitaries. He’d previously disobeyed direct orders from a superior on another mission in order to save civilians they ordered him to leave behind to pursue and eliminate an infamous Outcast boss that was operating in the nearby debris field. Rather than leave the civilians to die at the hands of the Outcasts, he’d ordered his fleet to protect them, managing to hold the line until reinforcements could arrive. He’d shown for a brief moment that he would do what’s right before following orders with direct disregard to Liberty’s people. That was something that apparently didn’t sit well with the people pulling the military’s strings. He’d noticed that his last mission was strangely uneventful – no contacts, no unusual activity. He’d asked himself “What’s so important about these people that Liberty would dedicate a renowned cruiser group to defend it in the middle of nowhere?” They’d already moved far from the gate and were halfway to their destination. The transport was only headed to the Freeport in Be’on – hardly a reason for anything above a gunboat or two with some fighters as cover. He’d hailed the transport to get some details if possible, but didn’t get a response. After trying for a minute or two without a reply, he had his sensors officer scan the transport, only to find that nobody was aboard.
Shortly afterward, sensors picked up a signal being broadcast right next to their ship’s position. Neither of the other two cruisers in the group were in that area, but were instead holding a close formation with the transport. That was when he looked through the hull cams and saw it: a Liberty stealth drone. After the signal stopped, the drone exploded. The running lights and engines on the transport suddenly went dark. Balfours ordered his cruisers to pull away, then proximity warnings began to ring. The cargo bay of the transport had been shielded and packed with fusion warheads. Once they were activated, his cruiser’s systems picked them up. Before his group could pull away, the transport detonated. The resulting explosion annihilated his two cruisers standing close guard and badly damaged his ship, leaving it crippled without power. The explosion drew the attention of a nearby APOC scout probe which, after finding the crippled cruiser, called in support. We apparently wasted no time in boarding the cruiser. Balfours asked that his crew offer no resistance, knowing that we’d take the hulk by force if anyone tried to be a hero.
After spending a lengthy duration as a prisoner in Chugoku, he’d found that Loyalist forces from Elohim’s 93rd Helldivers were those that had picked up he and his crew. They’d responded to recover wreckage and make some easy money to support the remnants of their fleet. Finding the fabled Champion of Liberty and his crew alive were just an added bonus for a speedy response. They were treated with dignity and respect during their captivity. We admired them for being a superior adversary, having lost battles to them after getting into a minor tangle or two. Balfours and his crew were eventually given the option to either join our ranks or to depart Chugoku a month or so later. Although they could’ve turned him in for a handsome sum to Liberty, they felt he deserved more respect than that. After he’d watched broadcasts of news feeds from Liberty declare his entire crew and himself as KIA during a Liberty Rogue ambush after the incident, he felt that he had nothing to go back to. It was obvious that he’d been set up. If he’d returned to Liberty alive, he doubted that he’d remain that way for long. After he elected to stick with us, the rest of his crew followed suit and now operate one of the most incredible ships in Serius: the Solaris-class. He found himself in temporary command after the Helldivers accidentally picked up REVA’s broadcast while they were scanning out of curiosity to see if anything might be using the Quorum’s distress frequencies.
After the successful rescue mission, the Taranus is now permanently under his command, as are numerous newly-constructed frigates, cruisers, and other craft. Commissioned into service over 10 years ago, the Taranus is a hybrid of new next-generation technology from the different houses, blended with the skills and knowhow of APOC shipwrights. More than 10,000 servicemen and women call this ship their home. Featuring forward-facing long and close range mass drivers within its bow, the Taranus also makes heavy use of barrage fire with twelve torpedo tubes, precise gatling drivers, cluster flak arrays, and plasma-based point defense turrets. It even supports and fields up to 192 spacecraft. When used defensively, the ship is a mobile fortress and base of operations, not to mention an absolute godsend. Offensively, it’s a logistical nightmare. The ship itself is very slow, very large, and very expensive to build. Losing this ship could quite possibly cripple us, considering what we field it to do, if not from the sheer loss of life alone.
During his incarceration, Balfours had found that the Helldivers were basically piggybacking off of the Blood Dragons, citing common goals to get a foothold into negotiations. In exchange for manpower, training, and raid support against Samura Industries’ transport convoys, the Helldivers were allowed to use Chugoku as a base of operations, rally point, and shipyard for remaining Loyalist fleets. The cover provided by the nebula and remote location of the Blood Dragons’ base in Chugoku allowed them to build up again, but they weren’t yet ready to go on the offensive when they’d received my transmission. It took the Helldivers a long time to replace what they lost in an apparent exodus from Elohim, hence why I had to lie in waiting longer than I’d hoped. Eventually, a few other small fleets turned up at Chugoku: the 575th Marauders, 12th Immortals, 3rd Observers, and 243rd Liberators. Each one had some stake in the fight after they were restocked and restored back to acceptable fleet strengths.
When I’d asked Balfours why he kept calling them “Loyalists,” he’d said that it wasn’t a name he’d given to them. “It was something that they’d decided to call themselves -- a title they’d adopted when a civil war broke out in Elohim after your disappearance,” he’d explained. Historical reporting from the Colony News Network suggested that the APOC had split and were killing each other over who would assume command, though that wasn’t entirely accurate. After he got to know the Helldivers’ captains, Balfours found that they weren’t necessarily fighting over who would lead, as that was left to the Quorum to decide. They were fighting over adopting a new policy over the treatment of new and current citizens. This policy would force all civilians living on APOC worlds, stations, vessels, or other occupied territories to register and enlist in the armed forces. Dissent or resistance wasn’t tolerated. Those that fought back or refused were put to death, executed in public as an example to others. These actions went against one of the lynchpin principals that the Brotherhood stood for: the value of personal choice over government control. Essentially, those that gained control with a slight majority in the Quorum had turned the Brotherhood and Sisterhood into the very thing that the APOC had been fighting against for so long: a government bent on the control of others. While it might seem harmless to require military service of the civilian population, one must understand that Brotherhood military code strips away most personal freedoms, putting absolute control in the hands of the Quorum and Archon. With no Archon, the quorum’s fleets were divided by the provinces each member presided over and presented them with unilateral control over their populaces.
Around 45% of the Quorum refused to enforce this law. The other 55% voted to remove and replace those members that refused. The vote, of course, passed but, in the eyes of the 45%, the vote meant nothing. They vowed to fight the new oligarchy that had formed from then on out, knowing the risks involved. On that day, in the hall of the Quorum, they drew their weapons against each other. Those that survived the firefight through escape rallied their forces and those of their fallen comrades to fight the other side. After that, the survivors of the 45% identified themselves as “Loyalists”. The oligarchy decided to call themselves the “Neo-Brotherhood”, in an attempt to signify the coming of a new order. As battles took place over Shemjaza, the Loyalists put everything they had into holding a defensive screen to evacuate their civilians. Anywhere was deemed better than in harm’s way in Elohim. About thirty minutes into the evacuation, the Neo-Brotherhood turned Shemjaza’s automated perimeter defenses against the Loyalists. They’d designated all IFFs tied to Loyalist provinces as hostile, prompting planetary defenses to begin firing on Loyalist transports and capital ships. The Loyalists, suffering heavy losses, couldn’t continue to hold the defensive line and had to halt the remainder of the evacuations. They managed to retreat to Tchatcha Station, which they’d captured while providing cover to fleeing transports. The mass evacuations had provided enough of a distraction for them that they had a sizably smaller Neo-Brotherhood defensive group to deal with. Many simply surrendered and joined the Loyalists immediately upon their arrival to the station. With Tchatcha locked down under Loyalist control, they were able to use the facility to rearm and repair. They also managed to use Tchatcha to take over the gate defense installations, which they used to eliminate the most distant gates to Sumeria and the local Bosko territory, leaving Proxima Centauri and New London as the only destinations out of the system. With the Neo-Brotherhood unable to recall further reinforcements from beyond Elohim, the two sides were stuck at a stalemate. The Loyalists couldn’t approach the planet to free more civilians without suffering heavy losses at the hands of the auto-defenses, but the Neo-Brotherhood couldn’t reinforce their positions or easily repair and rearm their capital ships either. Shemjaza may have had a mooring fixture, but it wasn’t equipped for servicing entire fleets at a time like Tchatcha Station. Shemjaza, on the other hand, bore most of the industrial power of the APOC and produced much of our ammunition, weapons, and armor plating. Tchatcha could produce some of these items, but it had nowhere near the production capabilities of Shemjaza.
After a week of fruitless skirmishes between the Loyalists and Neo-Brotherhood, both sides needed a break that could change the tide of the war. The break came for the Loyalists when Tchatcha’s sensors suddenly picked up something in middle of Shemjaza’s blind spot. The “blind spot” is a pocket of space on the far side of the planet where Shemjaza’s electromagnetic field is the strongest and scrambles most ship sensors. Tchatcha, however, was far enough away and attuned specifically to find anything in that area. Unfortunately, we could never get the sensors to pick up smaller craft like shuttles and fighters. Knowing the ship would have to be larger for Tchatcha to pick it up, but unsure of who it belonged to, what it was, or how it got there, the Loyalists devised a plan to investigate. Using the chassis of the “Pirate Harrier” variant of the FoF “Harrier” ship line, they stripped off all of the combat armor and replaced it with stealth armor, then painted the ship black in an attempt to make them extremely difficult to spot by sight and next to impossible to see and target with sensors. They repeated this process with a squad of five small troop transports and seven more harriers, then sent them out to investigate the sensor ping. While normally we’d send out a scouting party first to investigate, it was understood that it was a race against time to get to the ship before the Neo-Brotherhood notices it’s there. If it’s hostile, they could possibly eliminate its escort and take out the comms array of the vessel, then quickly move in to capture it with the troop transports. If it’s friendly, the transports would dock to reinforce the crew and resupply it with food and medical supplies.
They left Tchatcha Station using their cruise engines, then shut down all systems and drifted once they were approaching the Neo-Brotherhood patrol perimeter. They managed to coast through the border, unnoticed by a passing fighter wing of four FA-27cs, and floated into the blind spot by using Shemjaza’s gravity well for guidance. After thirteen more minutes of drifting, they’d found what they were looking for. The sensor blip was an APOC research vessel that was holding its position. Its running lights, shields, and weapons were offline. After reactivating their ships, the IFF had confirmed that it was Neo-Brotherhood-controlled, but had no escort – uncommon for any larger vessel behind the perimeter. Operating on a hunch, they used a short-burst transmission to request the status of the ship and to identify themselves. After a moment or two of intense anticipation, the ship responded, stating that they were with the Loyalists. They had broken away from their Neo-Brotherhood escort at the edge of the asteroid field in Sumeria. After the destruction of Elohim’s gate into Sumeria, Sumeria’s gate to Elohim ceased to function, giving them an opportunity to escape. Their ship’s science team had been working on a jump drive prototype and used the opportunity to test it out. They just didn’t let their escorting frigates know about their little test. When they bolted, they’d arrived exactly where they’d hoped, but weren’t sure how to get out afterwards. They’d been in hiding since their arrival. The Loyalist transports docked with the science ship and signaled that the coast was clear using the ship’s running lights, just as planned. The stealth harriers then landed per the captain’s request. They used the jump drive to place themselves around twenty clicks from Tchatcha’s defensive fleet and weapon emplacements. Once they were in position, they signaled Tchatcha’s forces to hold their fire.
After docking the ship with the station, per command’s instructions, the Loyalists had a decision to make. They had a fully-functional and field tested jump drive which could be replicated and installed on all of their capital ships, but doing so would spend the remaining stocks of equipment and spare parts. With no way to reinforce Tchatcha through repeated repairs and maintenance to their currently serviceable vessels, the loss of Tchatcha to the Neo-Brotherhood would be inevitable. On the other hand, they could choose to outfit a few or none of their ships with the new technology, thereby losing the full advantage of increased chances of survivability and the ability to strike from anywhere, but allow them to continue to hold.
To have a chance to save as many lives as possible and to draw out the war for as long as possible, the Loyalists decided to equip only a few ships with the technology, and planned to use these ships to make surgical strikes against the Neo-Brotherhood’s capital ships. The hope was that they could whittle their fleet down over time, as Shemjaza lacked the extensive construction docks of Tchatcha, which made producing anything larger than a combat corvette impossible. This made every capital ship they had precious and a critical component to their continuing war effort. The strike teams never got their opportunity to attack, however.
Tchatcha’s long range scans detected missile launches from the surface of Shemjaza. Once a handful were launched from Shinhua, a Loyalist province, hundreds more were launched from all over in response. There was no way to stop them all. Soldiers on the ground, unaware of the upper hand the Loyalist fleets had been dealt, had accessed and launched the stockpiles of old ICBMs that we’d held on to in the event that hostile elements had gained a foothold on the surface of Shemjaza. A number of theories explain why they brought mutually assured destruction to the table as their only option, but the prevailing understanding is that they thought that after the perimeter defenses had been brought online, they were on their own. Although that was mostly true until the fleets could find a way to take them down, the use of the jump drive would’ve given the Loyalists an opportunity to hit the capitol building on Shemjaza where the controls were kept, where it would have been impossible to, previously.
The missiles struck their intended destinations, much to the dismay of the Neo-Brotherhood. Shemjaza had been reduced to a radioactive wasteland. Surface scans from Tchatcha showed that the impact zones on the surface had been reduced to glass and cities and settlements to piles of debris. The thick forests that had once remained were either consumed in fire, or were already reduced to heaps of irradiated ash. With the apocalypse brought down on the planet’s surface, the Loyalists felt that there wasn’t anything left to fight for in Elohim. They refitted their ships with all of the remaining supplies they had at Tchatcha, then ordered those remaining that weren’t jump-capable through the gate to New London. Those that remained destroyed the last gates, which sealed the majority (if not all) of the Neo-Brotherhood into the system. After evacuating everyone from the station, they then destroyed Tchatcha to ensure that the Neo-Brotherhood wouldn’t be able to use it to survive in what remained of our home. After all, why should they be allowed to leave what they wanted to lord over? After deploying a comms buoy to endlessly transmit their reasoning behind their decision to leave, they jumped out of the system, leaving what remained of the Neo-Brotherhood to watch them escape.
After asking about the new line of ships we were using, Balfours had explained that after leaving Elohim, the Brotherhood had to adapt to the changing times. The FA-27c was eventually phased out of service after being obsoleted by other ships we’d “borrowed” from other groups and reproduced. Over time, we found that we could make better ships than those the Houses could produce by combining all of the systems we liked and thought performed the best from each ship we came across. The hybrid projects yielded some astonishingly successful results over time. We came out with the Uriel gunship to replace the FA-27c. The ship carried fairly thick armor comparable to the FA, sported three different missile tubes, nine guns, and included an automated turret on the top. It was also fairly maneuverable, although the turret was often needed to counter smaller, faster attackers. The Kentauroi interceptor was created to take the place of the Harrier we used to rely on so much for ambushes. The armor was still pretty light, but the ship can carry six guns as opposed to the Harrier’s four, plus two missile tubes. The afterburners were pretty brutal, too. They allowed the ship to go from 0 to 470 m/s in half a second and entering cruise was a breeze, but the best part of the design also allowed for something the Harrier just couldn’t provide: solid, fast, reverse-thrusting capabilities which retain much of the afterburner’s speed it provides when moving forward. It even turns just as fast as the Harrier could.
Although I was tremendously interested in getting my hands on the new hardware we’d built so I could give it a proper test drive, I needed to fulfill my obligation to REVA. She understood my dilemma and felt the strain I was under just to perform simple motor functions after coming out of my pod. She’d been waiting patiently for the length of my rehab and I owed it to her for getting me out of that hell. I’d asked if we had anything we could give REVA to fulfill my obligation. After asking what it was she wanted, she’d suggested a ship – one she could have completely free reign over to do whatever she saw fit. She wanted to explore the universe on her own and wanted to understand all that neither we nor the Nomads did. Most importantly, she wanted to investigate something that had always eluded her: the Dom Kavosh. Where had they gone? What were they like? What drove them to create the Nomads? These were all questions she wanted to understand, things I felt a simple fighter couldn’t allow her to get the answers to. After explaining her request and goals to Balfours, it was obvious he was hesitant to give her anything at all -- after all, we were unshackling an AI. After some persuading, I’d got him to agree to give up a Custos-class patrol cruiser. It was small enough that it didn’t required hundreds to crew and packed an electronic warfare suit that she could manipulate for whatever she needed. It was also pretty fast, carrying decent shielding and weapons to protect itself. She was satisfied with what I’d provided and Balfours approved of the transfer to her control.
She set out on that day aboard the “ASCr – Argo”, a name she’d picked out herself after we threw some suggestions out there, explaining what they were from. It seemed fitting for her mission. After all, she was setting out to complete a series of dangerous and seemingly impossible tasks. She’d said that she’d return back sooner or later if she’d found something, although she was hoping more for the sooner than the later. As we watched her ship depart from its dock, I felt deep down that we’d be seeing her again soon.
After she left, I wanted to do some catching up of my own. I’d told Balfours that I wanted to head over to the inner colonies so I could get reacclimated. I wanted to head into Liberty in particular. I wanted to see if a place I used to frequent was still around. Tekagi’s Tavern and its successor Destiny’s Tavern were both pretty successful. I couldn’t see the remnants of the WLB letting go of one of their most prized possessions. “Well,” he began, “technically, you’re still the Archon, seeing as how you’re, well… not dead and all. That being said, you can pretty much do whatever you want. After leaving Elohim, most members of the Brotherhood went their separate ways except for the few close-knit fleets that came here, including the Quorum as far as I know. Who knows? As unlikely as it is, there might be some members of the old Quorum still left. After all, you’re alive after all this time, so I suppose anything’s possible.” It looked like I had all of my work cut out for me. It was clear that we needed to get some recruiting going. That, and the Quorum needed rebuilding. What better place to start than at a neutral, well-populated station?
I finally break from my flashback-inducing trance after hearing something hit the metal floor. Looking over to my right, I see the two Paladins were piling weapons next to the door and had put up a spare hull plate on the far wall. One of them had spray-painted a red bull’s eye over the front. With the way they were acting, though, it didn’t look like they were preparing for target practice.
Falchus and Griffus were off to the side of the crew lounge, standing apart from one another facing adjacent tables. It looked like they each had three weapons that had been broken down into their respective components and sorted into piles. “Ready to lose?” Falchus asks, looking to his partner. “Speak for yourself!” Griffus replies with a big toothy grin. “You’re still three-and-oh.” “Yeah? We’ll see about that here in a minute,” Falchus retorts. They both start looking around for something, digging through their parts after looking under the tables and around the room. “Where’d you put the hourglass? You did bring it, right?” Griffus asks. “Of course I did, it was sitting right here,” Falchus says, pointing at the edge of his table. As they continue to shuffle around on their quest for an hourglass, I try to readjust myself in my seat so I can try to get a better look outside and feel something bump against my foot. When I looked down, I saw that the hourglass was what I was kicking. It must’ve fallen from the table and rolled under my seat. It wasn’t anything intricate. It was just a green plastic hourglass about four or five inches tall, filled with what looked to be your typical beach sand. Flipping it over to the bottom revealed a label saying “5 minutes”. “This what you’re after?” I ask, holding it up. “Oh cool! You found it,” Griffus says. “I was afraid we might’ve lost it somewhere on this junk heap,” he continues as he kicks the floor. “That would’ve been a big disappointment. That’s a souvenir from our trip to Baden Baden.” “Best vacation ever,” Falchus says with a chuckle. “Remind me to tell you about it later. Griff’s got a competition to lose right now.” “Whatever, you old fart!” Griffus replies. “You’re older than I am, my friend,” Falchus kicks back. “Minor details. At least I’ve still got all of my hair!” he says, laughing as he brushes through what little he has with his hand. Falchus’s smile disappears as he shoots a semi-irritated glare back at Griffus, obviously sensitive about the issue. “You win this round,” he says. “I’ll get you back for that later.”
“So what are you two gearing up to do?” I ask as I approach the table. “It’s a game we came up with way back when. Don’t remember exactly how long ago. We came up with it in the Program to help us with assembling and disassembling weapons on the field. See, most weapons use universal parts this day in age. Some parts are better than others, which is how you sometimes get nicer weapons. Upper grade parts still fit about the same as the lower grade parts, but you couldn’t take the grip and barrel of a rifle and stick it on a pistol. Things like that only work for their respective weapon families. Grips, barrels, ammunition storage – things like these are what we call “family-specific”, meaning they only work with other weapons of their kind. A lot of the internal components though, like focusing crystals, slug carvers, and some ammo feeds can be swapped between guns. So, what we came up with allows us to get familiar with weapon groups and the parts we can switch around between guns. The rules are simple: each person gets parts from “x” number of weapons. You have five minutes to assemble those weapons or as many as you can before time runs out or before the other person can. Each one you complete has to be fired at the target at the end of the room to prove that it works. The one with the most functioning weapons at the end of the hourglass, or the one that finishes all of them before the other wins. Griff here has managed to beat me by just a few seconds for the past three games, but this one’s gonna be different. I can feel it.” “Nah,” Griffus begins. “What you’re feeling is your pride getting ready to be broken. Again.” “We’ll see about that!” Falchus exclaims. “Can you do the honors and start the clock, Zero?” “Sure,” I say, shrugging. “Why not. I’d like to see how this is played.” I walk to the table, keeping the hourglass upside-down.
“Ready… set… GO!” I slam the hourglass down and they start frantically reaching for parts. A minute and a half in and Falchus has assembled a pistol. He takes aim for a split-second and fires, hitting the target right in the middle with an energy round, then drops the pistol back onto the table and continues searching for grips for his next weapon. Just as he sets the pistol down, Griffus had assembled a combat rifle. He aims from the hip for just a moment and pulls the trigger. The weapon discharges, flinging an energy bolt and hitting in the exact same spot as Falchus. He throws the weapon down and starts grabbing for more parts. About two and a half more minutes pass and he’s got another combat rifle assembled. Falchus quickly draws a combat rifle of his own and they both hit the middle of the target again at the same time. “Gonna be close!” I say, excited to see who wins. The sand’s almost gone from the top and Griffus draws a plasma pistol, points it at the target without looking directly at it, a big smile on his face as he watches Falchus finish another pistol. He pulls the trigger, but nothing happens. His smile is immediately replaced by panic and horror as he smacks the weapon in an attempt to get it to work, rapidly pulling the trigger. As Falchus takes aim, Griffus realized that he’d never loaded a charge pack into the ammo feed. He scrambles to reach for it just as Falchus pulls the trigger and a bolt, once again, smacks the middle of the target. “I told you I’d win, you little shit!” he cries, blowing air over the front of the pistol’s barrel as he mocks Griffus. He laughs and puts it down on the table. “Dammit! I had you beat! Can’t believe I forgot the ammo!” Griffus says, kicking a leg of the table. “I’ll have to play that sometime,” I say with a chuckle. “It looked like a lot of fun!”
I help them stow the weapons back into their lockers and can feel the ship beginning to slow. Our pilot’s voice then rings over the intercom. “Archon, we’ve arrived at our destination. We’ll be docked momentarily.”
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seriously.
eyo to fenris, rags, and ahroun
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