(Starlight Lounge, Starborn, Star’s Reach)
In the short time since its founding, Starborn had grown explosively, along with the Star’s Reach colony as a whole. Anyone could have predicted that outcome if they’d bothered to think about it. Sure, you had to become a citizen of the Black Star Company, and not all the services were up to the standards of the core worlds of the major polities yet, but Star’s Reach had something that none of those long-settled worlds could possibly match: Adventure.
There were always going to be people who were drawn to the Frontier. Maybe they were on the run. Didn’t matter who from, whether it was a crime boss, a debt collector, a lawman, or an angry spouse, sometimes the best way to deal with a situation was to run as far and as fast as you could, and hope that people couldn’t catch up and find you.
Or perhaps they were seeking fresh starts and new opportunities. No one cared about the scandal that rocked your home world when you were way out on the edge. And the ‘little guy’ could build himself into something big without having to deal with the competition from larger rivals. And once you had a name for yourself, you could be a success, without having to deal with the crap people in the core worlds dealt with.
Perhaps they simply didn’t belong in a ‘proper’ society. An Ihm who struggled against the castes. A human who was a little too enamored of his ‘waifus’. A knelfi that relished the taste of meat. A gauz who hated the restrictions of the Consortium and wanted to conduct their mad experiments in peace.
All of them and more found homes at the frontier, exiles, both willing and no, from their peoples. The frontiers, the edges of the map before you went off into the vast unknown, were where these people collected, and had been since the dawn of civilization. When the first villages and towns were formed, there would be some people who remained hermits out in the wild. When city-states gave rise to nations, there would be those who spread out to the borders. When the ability to leave one’s continent, or one’s planet, or one’s solar system came to pass, always, there would be people eager and willing to voyage into an uncertain future filled with unknown dangers, because that was where the frontier was.
When the new frontier of Star’s Reach was announced to the public, naturally those people began making their way to the new frontier. Some turned back when they found that the frontier was not open to those who wanted to simply take as much as they could, stripping a new world of anything they could get their hands on. More and more people, however, began spilling out from overcrowded core worlds at the news that the fate that had befallen other frontier worlds wasn’t going to be repeated here. And with the Black Star Navy providing the defense for the planet, it offered one of those rarities on the frontier: safety.
That promise of both being on the frontier, the ragged edge of civilization, while having a measure of safety had combined to spark the explosive growth of Star’s Reach. The initial settlement of five thousand, no small number for a new colony, had quickly ballooned up to over sixty thousand, and was continuing to climb. That growth was split primarily between Starborn and Star’s Vigil, with the dungeon town getting an additional share of ‘transient’ residents who came to challenge the dungeon.
All that combined to mean that Star’s Reach was desperately in need of entertainment. Into that void, many intrepid entrepreneurs had stepped forward to claim a spot at the table. One such visionary was Melissa Reed, the owner of the Starlight Lounge here in Starborn.
Major Khan was most appreciative for this, as his people were sorely in need of rest and relaxation, and for a marine, even one sitting in a video game, that meant alcohol, music, and companionship, often with a few fights thrown in. And, despite being in a video game (or, rather, because they were in a video game) the Black Star Marines were as eager as any to get into the mix when it came for R&R. None of that, however, went to explain why he was here, instead of one of the officer’s clubs closer to Fort Blackstone, which had been built to cover up the existence of the Enrichment Center.
No, he was here because there were requests for his time, as one of the ‘heroes’ of the Second Battle of Coldana, and there was no way in hell he was going to allow a reporter, especially a Nomad reporter, anywhere near that base. As if a normal reporter wasn’t bad enough, now they came in a form that you couldn’t just shoot them when they got annoying and expect them to stay gone. It was the worst part of being in a game world, to be sure.
It seemed that, even in a game, nature abhorred a vacuum, and several Nomads had quickly gotten involved in the news business, primarily as field reporters. Not being able to die permanently made them ideal choices to go out on hazardous assignments, naturally, and being able to control their appearances during chargen meant that they were almost always quite attractive, which was a bonus for any camerawork they did. But Vivienne Lane was, perhaps, the worst of the bunch.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Oh, it wasn’t that she was a glorified tabloid hack or one of those internet ‘influencers’ that often were bought and paid for by one of the people they reported on. And she certainly wasn’t one of the idiots who was so rabidly biased by their beliefs that the reality distortion field around their writing could give black holes tips on warping space. It wasn’t even like she was one of those people who looked for ways to tear down whoever was the popular ‘flavor of the week’. No, what made Ms. Lane the worst reporter for him to deal with was the fact that she was so damn honest, and believed in doing actual, old school journalism, and she didn’t let go of things once she smelled a story.
The woman herself smiled as she sat across from him at the table, a pair of drinks sitting between them. A trio of camera drones floated around them, providing an image of the two of them, and a closeup on each of their faces. “Major Khan, it is a pleasure to finally meet you. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it was for me to get this meeting to happen.”
He snorted at that. He knew exactly how hard it had been for her to get this meeting, because he’d thrown most of the obstacles in her way himself, even if he did it at one or two removes. “Well, Ms. Lane, I’m sure that you know that a commander, even in a private military force like the Black Star Marine Corps, has a lot of things on his plate. And talking to reporters is very often nowhere near the priority of ensuring that his people are properly taken care of, and have the materiel needed should we have to deploy suddenly. After our last job, we needed some time to properly repair and refit before we could be mission ready again.”
Vivienne smiled, and nodded amicably, though her eyes brightened as he mentioned his ‘last job’. “Yes, it is that last job that got the Confederate News Network’s attention, and why I came out to see if you could give me an interview. After all, the reports of the Second Battle of Coldana are still a bit fractious, as none of the fleets had reporters in their midst, and the few surviving news agents from Coldana itself were not able to see the scope of the battle. We have some basic facts about the battle in space, but almost nothing on the battle on the surface of Coldana itself.”
Chris Khan nodded, all business. Yeah, that was about what he had expected this meeting would be about. He answered simply, affably enough, without giving away anything. “Yes, I am aware of the news reporting of the battle, and the information released.”
Vivienne was undeterred. “Well, I was hoping that I could get an overview of the battle on the ground, from the point of view of someone who was actually there. Naturally, your name was the first one considered for this, since the Consortium is too busy rebuilding to allow access to their fighters on Coldana.”
Khan considered, and said, “I cannot go into operational details or technical specifications, but I can give a brief overview of the First Marine Company’s involvement in the ground battle.”
Vivienne beamed at his answer. “Of course. Now, for the record, were your troops originally slated to join the combined fleet heading to Coldana?”
“Yes, the Black Star Marines were always going to be accompanying the combined fleet when it went to face the Harvester. The mission originally was to infiltrate and capture X’thari command ships to possibly work on turning their forces against each other, and give the rest of the combined fleet a better chance of victory. Naturally, the early plans did not include dropping on Coldana itself.”
“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t that be something like a suicide mission? Without a full crew of trained sailors, a captured warship would not be able to compare to the rest of the swarm, right? Wouldn’t you and your men be going out to die?”
“Well, you have to understand that, from most perspectives, the whole combined fleet was basically going on a suicide mission from the beginning. A thousand ships against a hundred thousand? Even the wildest speculations forecasted casualties in excess of ninety percent.”
“But, if the odds were so stacked against you, why go in at all? Why not wait until more ships could be brought to bear, and make it a more even fight?”
“And let how many planets die in the mean time? To get forces in place to match the X’thari’s numbers, we would be looking at months of prep time, assuming that they didn’t just use the materials and biomass of the planets they consumed to further increase their numbers. That’s billions upon billions dead, on a low estimate. No, everyone knew that they had to strike, and soon. But they weren’t going to rush in without a plan. The original plan was to set tarpits and ambush the Swarm on ground of our choosing.”
“So, what changed?”
“Simply put? The Admiral in charge of the combined fleet wanted to get some updated intelligence on the status of the Harvester, so we could get some idea of how long we had to plan and prepare for the ambush. What the scouts found was that Coldana was still alive, and her people were still fighting.”
“I imagine that put a new spin on the situation.”
“That’s the understatement of the century. That had two big impacts on the planning. First, we figured that the Harvester must have been more damaged from the initial attack than we thought, which meant that we might be able to get in while it was still hurting, and finish it off. Second, that meant the Marines had a new objective, helping any survivors hold off the X’thari until reinforcements could relieve them, and Consortium Army units were added to the roster.”
“How did you decide on the deployment plan?”
“Consortium Army decided to land at the planetary capitol, and set up a beachhead that they could defend against hostiles. They had an experimental device with them that was supposed to work on the psychic link the X’thari are supposed to have, and drive them mad. Basically, the idea was to draw as many of the ground-based X’thari to them as possible, and take pressure off the enclaves that were under assault.”
He paused, and then continued, “Black Star Marines, on the other hand, were to land at the two enclaves under heaviest assault, and work to contain and repulse them, to save as many civilians as we could. The scouts were able to give us good targets, so we dropped on the two settlements that were in the most trouble.”
“Would you mind giving our viewers an account of what happened during the drop?”
“Sure, you see, we started with a hot insert. That means that—"