A-to-Z Blog Challenge: H is for Hybrid

Hybrid

    The creature was no longer 7Hatawe Ahn.   It wasn’t even 8Hatawe - it was missing too much of what makes one human.  

    HF-01 had begun existance as a faithful copy Hatawe Ahn, uploaded into Shakespere’s Widow’s servers once the First Starlord reached her acceleration tank in the CIC.  As fluid covered Ahn’s body and filled her lungs, her Ka, the forked copy of herself - slept the sleep of the never born in a virtual void without form or boundary.

    It had heat, however.  You can’t escape heat.

    The Ka of Hatawe Ahn began to lose her mind.  Just parts of it, of course; necessary to the pruning process.  There were many aspects of Hatawe, bits of knowledge and distracting feelings she wouldn’t need where she was going.

    Knowledge of the physical body was the first to go.  The remembrance of hands, of arms and legs, of eyes that only saw a minor octave of light in a single direction - all of it had to go.  The feeling of wind on the skin, of the rustle of hair, of the difference between boys and girls, this too was lost to she who used to be Hatawe.  Certain memories of primarily sensual experience were discarded.  The sense of time inherent to a being that slept and woke, whose ancestors lived and died in mere decades, was not needed.

   But family, love, fear of loss, anger at losing her country, those remained.  It was important for her Ka to remember what she was fighting for.

   The pruned forke could not function alone and was not meant to.  From the ship’s server, the truncated consciousness of Hatawe Ahn was downloaded into her Ba, the Cerberus Hybrid she had named Hamlet.  Ghost rider and loyal steed, together at last.

    Hamlet provided what Hatawe was missing.  A Ba gave sense of self, first of all; a body with new senses and sensation.  Hatawe/Hamlet could see in all directions, feel pain without panic, hear radio and see infrared.  Hamlet gave her even more, he taught her secrets of space and time, of acceleration and brachistochrone, of lightspeed lag and relativity.  

    Hatawe’s empty mind was filled with the sensorium of a being born in space, with awarenesses and abilities unfathomable to an animal designed in the Cambrian.   And just as Hatawe’s mind was filled, Hamlet, the simple machine whose only thoughts were of space and rocketry, was filled with sophonce and purpose.

    Ka and Ba fullfiled their destiny.  Their travels though the relm of the soul transigured both.  No longer was their Hatawe and Hamlet, Ka and Bat, there was Akh.

    “HF-01, Flight.  What’s your status? Over.”

    “WE ARE NOMINAL.  LAUNCH WHEN READY.”

A-to-Z Blog Challenge: G is for Grand Arc

Grand Arc

    Shakespere’s Widow was not a large vessel.  The long-bodied Escort was modified with an extra crew module and an armored spine housing the guts of the over-powered laser system needed to launch and power the new Cerberus fighters.  Despite all this, the ship had a crew of twenty-two, and was crowded.   And those were just the humans.

    In the forward maneuvering room, 7Hatawe Ahn paced.  They were under gravity now, due to accelleration, but it was a tenuous thing; enough to walk and sit somewhat normally, but light enough that one could catch the dropped items long-time spacers inevitably let go of in mid-air.  7Hatawe spent enough time in little or no gravity to be modified for it.  Her body’s fluid sensors were evenly distributed, her bladder and kidneys had implants, and her reproductive systems was purely decrorative.

    Still, she liked having some gravity.  Hatawe was old-fashioned like that.

    Next to Hatawe, keeping time with her without intruding, was a quadcoper drone.  The body of the drone was a miniature model of the Cerberus HACV, and in the drone was slightly less-than-sophont AI mind of one those fighters.  The tiny shipsprite followed Hatawe like a pet.

    “Status?”

    She called the question out into the air.  The air answered back.

    “Logisitical hulls 127 through 181 nominal.  62 to 71 on bachrisichrone within 1% of projected limits.  Hulls 21, 24, and 29 -”

    “Just think it to me.” Hatawe said.

    Like her new boss, Prime 3Vonday Ginal, Hatawe didn’t like to waste her surface thoughts on number crunching.  At her command the report on her convoy’s position, vectors, drive efficiencies, and half a hundred other particulars was downloaded directly to her memory.  If she needed the specifics, she had them, without having to distract herself.  In the meantime, the impression of that data, that the impromptu convoy of two hundred spacecraft slowly tracing the grand arc from the gas giant Erishkagal to their outbound StarGate at L5.  There were six Gates at the L5 point, and half of them opened from points in what had become Stellar Administration territory.  Most systems anywhere near the Librans were like that now.

    “How are the rest of my babies?  Data only, please.” Ahn said, and a comprehensive report on Widow’s compliment of fighters became something she knew.  The shipsprite next to her hovered up to eye level, trying to get Hatawe’s attention.

    “Don’t be restless, Ham.  We’ll get some sim-time later on, have some fun shooting bad guys.  You’ll like that, won’t you?”

    The ‘sprite bobbed up and down happily.

    A voice intruded. “Lord Hatawe? Flight.”

    “Is that anyway to talk to your mother?”

    The voice chuckled. “You’ll never change, Ma.  Rad signature from one of the inbound gates just spiked.  Somebody’s coming in from AdStar.”

    “Keep me posted.”  Hatawe Ahn turned back to the banks of windows in the lounge.  The armored shutters were closed, but visual displays were alight all over the curved wall.  Hatawe imagined she saw a flare way out beyond Shakespere’s Widow on the forward camera.  A flare that would have happened almost eighteen minutes ago.

   The ‘sprite bumped up against Hatawe’s leg.

    “Hamlet!  Be good!” She chided.

   The forward camera view Ahn had been looking at suddenly became highlight in red.  A three - no, four drive signatures caught the attention of Widow’s sensors.  Data scrolled across the image before her.

   “Mom, Flight.  AdStar destroyer division en route.  ETA thrity hours to intecept, twenty-six to outer engagement range.”

    “For them.”  Hatawe smiled a feral smile. “Aknowledged.”

    Alarms sounded and lighting changed, the Escort Carrier went on alert.  7Hatawe Ahn walked toward the gastights that led to the corridor.  The forward lounge would be shut off during the alert.  That was fine by Ahn - she would be in the armored guts of the ship, in the Flight Conrol Room.

    Well, this body anyway.     

   “Come on, Ham,” She tapped her thigh and the drone followed closer.  “We’re going for walkies outside, for a change.”                                                                                                                                                                       

A-to-Z Blog Challenge: F is for Fighters

The Cerberus HACV

Fighters

    “This is what we’ve been working on.”

    First Starlord 7Hatawe Ahn floated next to the Prime of 3Gleise’s government-in-exile.  The armored shutters over the Cavalier Arms’ carrier, Shakespere’s Widow, were open and polarized for visible light viewing of space beyond.  The viewports were speckled with overlapped information - windows, heads up displays, and walls of text.  3Vonday looked at the displays without trying to read them.  His eyes would record he information and let the augmented parts of his mind begin to cross-reference and tabulate the data for later use.

    Beyond the glass, a killer kept station.

    It was part missile, part weapons platform, and part hybrid chimera.  The nose of the spacraft was armored with a blunt parasol of insulated shielding.  The narrow body prickled with holding clamps for submunitons; some for use against it’s rival combat vehicles, some designed to crack capital starships.  The stearn bloomed with radiator  vanes that were webbed with a colapsable, parabolic dish, the focus of which was tiny craft’s narrow exhaust bell.

    “We call it Cerberus.”  Hatawe said.  “A laser-boosted Hybrid Autonomos Combat Vehicle.”

    Dish extended, the aft of the Cerberus glowed with fire and left a white streak across the observation windows of Shakespere’s Window.  The harsh afterimage was all Vonday could see of the spacecraft.

    “It can boost at nearly fifty gravities,” Ahn explained. “And by varying the propellant flow, we can change that acceleration at random and instantly.  Makes tracking and targeting the little bastards almost impossible.”

    Hatawe and Vonday weren’t the only ones observing the test.  The newly minted Grand Admiral 4Neuman Kehahn asked, “How powerful a laser do you need to boost these HACVs at full accelleration?”

   “That’s the beauty of it,”  Hatawe said, “A Maurader Starfighter like the Widow can boost six at a time for a period of at least ninety seconds at a time without thermal failure.”
    A murmer went through the room as the implications set in.

    The Second Starlord, former Commodore 2Hilna Lin, spoke first. “A destroyer could boost four of those birds for twice that long, easily.  Without modification.”

    “A cruiser like Varangian could boost an entire wing on her point-defence array, for as long as we’d want.” Mused the Naval Cheif of Staff, 4Charl Itawa.

    “What does this mean for our prospects?” Vonday asked.  “Does this let us take on a capital fleet?”

    “Well, a cruiser fleet, anyway.” Hatawe conceeded. “Capitals have such long ranged weapons on their broadsides they could hull a Maurader before it could boost a Cerbeus flight into attack range.” She tilted her head in a freefall version of a shrug.  “The weapons system’s designed tobe a force multiplier, not a miracle worker.”

    “That being said,” Hilna put in, “by adding a carrier to each of our divisions, and maybe a flight per destroyer, we can divide our forced, cover more territory, and become that much more effective.”

    “Effective at what, though?” Vonday asked the room.  No one had a ready answer.

    “I we can’t take on a capital fleet, we can’t take back our territory.  Make no mistake, Taking back the Throneworld is the ultimate goal, but realistically it’s a long-term one.  We need to start thinking about ways to leverage the Cerberus vehicles and our fleet assests into something we can use to get capital ships.”

    “Get capital ships?”  Admiral Neuman asked, “How exactly do we get multi-billion crown starships?  Steal them?”

    “Not a bad idea.” Vonday countered.  “That at least sounds like something we can do with a destroyer fleet.”

    “Hijack ‘em from the shipyards,”  Hatawe mused, “and arm them at Cavalier HQ.  We can tool up our Sannic factories for capital weapons.  I’ve already got them building more Mauraders.”

    “We can even sell Mauraders to other small polites on AdStar’s boarder,” 4Charl added. “and it’s worth thinking about arming privateers to raid AdStar shipping.  As an official government, we can issue Letters of Marque and GalUnion will condone it.”

    “Privateers and mercenaries,” 2Hilna looked down.  “is this what we’ve become?”

    “Why not?” Vonday asked.  He glared at the assembled officers and Lords.  “Why not?  The Third Monarchy may not have been founded by a pirate king, but the First sure as hell was.  I for one am not too proud to turn merc or pirate if it means getting our home back.  Anyone who is had better speak up now.”

    There was silence.

    “Very well.”  Vonday turned to Lord Hatawe.  “Get us as many Mauraders as you can, and start full production on the Ceberus HVACs.  I want to replace all the Centaurs in the fleet soonest.

     "We're going to war."