Tag Archives: Nick

Stardock: Part 11

Lim continued, “We’ll be using the strategies and tactics we practiced yesterday, so you shouldn’t have had time to forget them yet. There will be one additional wrinkle. We’re already evacuating Stardock just like we are the rest of the city. That means that if we do decide to blow Stardock, we won’t be looking for you to evacuate the people below. We’ll need you to watch out for each other. Don’t leave anyone in your unit behind.”

He paused, looked us all over, and then, when we thought he’d finished, he said, “There’s one more thing. Stardock isn’t the only alien technology in New York City. We fought the Abominators in the 1970’s, and we collected everything we could find. I’m not going to tell you where it is, but none of you should be surprised to discover that we’re studying it, or that we’re doing our best to reverse engineer it. When you fight, you need to use tools that can do the job. Our own tools won’t, so we’re getting better tools.That’s why we may redirect a few of you if we have to blow Stardock. Don’t hesitate if we call you in. Trust me, it will be important.

Continue reading Stardock: Part 11

Stardock: Part 10

I wondered what Lim thought we’d even be able to do. Sure, Izzy might be able to redirect part of a planetary bombardment on her own, but she wouldn’t be able to handle all of it. She’d be kind of redundant to whatever Guardian and the various Defenders units were likely to manage. The ones that couldn’t fly in space had ships made at Stardock to work with.

With a slightly sick feeling, I wondered what Haley hoped to do. The jet might be able to destroy or redirect asteroids. For that matter, Camille could control gravity, and I didn’t know what her limits were. If she was anything like Sean, her half brother, she might be extremely powerful.

Lim’s voice broke through my thoughts. “Everyone! Now! I’ll brief you when you’re done.”

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Stardock: Part 9

With that debacle over, we went back to our dorm, changed out of costume and ate. I could write more about hanging out in our rooms that night, but there’s not really much to tell. Sunday morning allowed time for people who wanted to attend worship services to do so, and then we spent most of Sunday afternoon practicing first aid.

By five, we were all waiting in an airport somewhere near NYC. I hesitate to say a “secret” airport because it was clearly used, but it definitely wasn’t commonly used by passenger planes. I don’t think I saw any, but I couldn’t be sure because we rode there in a cargo truck with no windows–just seats in the back. The roof was made of a partially transparent, but not clear, plastic.

We unloaded the truck inside the hangar. I happened to look through the mirrored windows on the door as we waited for our plane to arrive. Even though it wasn’t snowing, it still wasn’t warm. A Fedex jet landed on the runway as I watched, but it didn’t taxi in our direction afterward. I decided that watching for our jet was probably more akin to waiting for a pot to boil than it ought to be, and considered finding someone to talk to.

Continue reading Stardock: Part 9

Stardock: Part 8

Whether I liked the people I was with or not, however, it was time to practice. Brain Gang ran us through multiple scenarios and exercises, and we were okay if not brilliant. They were all based on the assumption that we had to hold off invading aliens long enough to evacuate and blow up the base. In short, we’d already lost, and it was now a question of how we’d deal with it.

At least that was my take. Basically, it was Star Trek’s Kobayashi Maru exercise but with specific orders on how we were handle the problem.

So far as I could tell, our orders required us to die a lot, but at least we won most of the time–assuming your definition of winning didn’t necessarily include personal survival.

The last exercise didn’t even go that well.

Continue reading Stardock: Part 8

Stardock: Part 7

Brain Gang, a short man with dark skin and short, black hair, stood in front of the group of us. He wore a green suit (with matching mask and hat) that to my eye appeared to include material similar to that in my stealth suit. The material on the outside seemed normal, but the suit appeared to be stiffer and just a little thicker than normal material.

I recognized Brain Gang’s name. I’d heard it from Grandpa. Either this was a descendant of the original Brain Gang, or the original was still around. Given that this guy appeared to be in his thirties, I leaned toward descendant.

The parking lot held no cars, and for good reason. If you were going to be training a bunch of college students, many of whom were still learning to use their abilities, would you want to have your car where a stray blast of energy could destroy it?

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Stardock: Part 6

“Uh…” I tried to think of a response that would calm the situation down. The honest response, “Yes, Daniel explained it to Haley and me, but not you,” didn’t seem likely to do that.

Izzy let out a breath, seeming to deflate as she did it. “Look, I’m not going to–” She paused, not saying anything. “I’d like to talk about this privately. Do you have a good sense of when we’d be out of his range?”

I had a pretty good guess as to whose range she meant.

Go ahead, Daniel told me. It’ll be okay.

Izzy raised an eyebrow, and gave a half smile. “He’s talking to you, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” I shrugged. “Sorry. I think we’ll be out of range in a minute or so, but I’ll want to get my jacket.”

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Stardock: Part 5

Sean’s faced tightened up, and he said, “I still didn’t do it, and besides, he didn’t hurt you or anything. It was just a stupid prank.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Based on what happened last fall, anyone who looks at this is going to assume you told Jody to do it, and you’ll probably get kicked out. I know you didn’t. That’s why I’m not going to say anything unless it happens again. If it does, I’ll report it, and I’ll tell them about this one too.”

Sean gritted his teeth, and said, “Then let Jody go, okay? I’m done with this. Jody, you leave him alone.”

Jody held his hands in the air. “Okay, you got it.”

The Jenny nearest me said, “I’ll let him free,” in the same tone of voice that she might have used to say, “It’s your funeral.” Continue reading Stardock: Part 5

Stardock: Part 4

Sean wasn’t all wrong. When it came down to it, he really could be useful fighting anybody using advanced technology. One big electromagnetic pulse could take out computers—assuming they weren’t protected. The robots we fought were pretty resistant to EMP’s, as I remembered it. They weren’t entirely resistant though, and it might be that he could put more energy into a pulse than a roachbot had available.

For that matter, if the ships were made even partially of metal, he could throw them around, or possibly make them structurally unsound.

The only reason I wouldn’t put him on the front lines is because they could take him out practically instantly.

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Stardock: Part 3

Jaclyn followed Izzy in through the door. Izzy said, “Hi” as she moved out of Jaclyn’s way, and met people’s eyes as she did it–including Daniel’s. I didn’t hear any anger in her voice either. She did talk quietly, but she always did that when we were together as a group. My theory was that she still didn’t quite feel comfortable with everyone.

All the same, the fact that she was here at all hinted that whatever they’d talked about last wasn’t irreparable.

She’s not just nervous about being with the group, Daniel thought at me. It’s more complicated than that.

He glanced over at her. What’s going on with us is complicated too, but I don’t want to go into that right now.

Jaclyn lifted up her print out of the plan, a small sheaf of paper. “We’re here to talk about this, right? What did you think of it?”

She caught my eye, “What do you think of it?”

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Stardock: Part 2

Isaac led us through the facility, explaining generally what was going on on each floor. I would have asked a lot of questions except I knew better. He didn’t know anything worth knowing about how anything worked. Sure, he could tell us what the major activities on each floor were, but I could guess that.

What I wanted to know was what techniques they were using and if they’d made any advances over the Alliance’s standard ships.

I didn’t need Isaac to figure that one out either. All I had to do was to observe. The spaceships around me in various stages of construction weren’t quite designed to human specifications. Take the big spaceship at the bottom of the hole. When we walked through it, it was obvious to me that whatever race it had been designed for was on average about seven feet tall. Bearing in mind variation, they’d designed the size to allow people (beings?) as large as eight feet tall.

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