(Psy Power Training Grounds, Soldier’s Dawn Black Star Marine Corps Base, Star’s Reach)
BANG!
Soldier’s Dawn was the name the Black Star Marines had elected to call their new base and training facility located over the access point to the Enrichment Center. The name had been chosen by a poll of the Marines and their families. After discarding names like Basey McBaseface from the preliminaries, Soldier’s Dawn won in the second round of polls, narrowly beating out Bastard’s Rise (despite the fact that the surrounding area was rather flat, with no rises anywhere nearby).
The Base was home of the Sixth Company of the Black Star Marines. After the Battle of the Rift, General Khan decided that a restructuring was needed. The main companies of the Corps remained the same, but the shipboard detachments to the varies Navy ships were reorganized into Fifth Company, instead of just being uncategorized parts of the Corps.
Sixth Company was the training and reserve company, based on Star’s Reach. This was where new recruits would be trained up, and where reserves would be stationed until they were needed, as well as being a primary defense force for the planet itself. With the rate that people kept joining up with Black Star, we’d probably need to go with a seventh company before long.
That wasn’t the reason I was on the training grounds, of course. I needed to train my abilities in someplace nice and isolated, and you couldn’t get more isolated than the Psy Power Training Grounds. As a rule, Black Star didn’t place too much emphasis on psy powers, either in the Navy or the Marines.
BANG!
This wasn’t an issue of neglect, but of practicality. Simply put, most psy powers were not that useful in group combat, or were made redundant by technology. Fireballs, lightning bolts, healing, body enhancement, and even mindlinking were all useful things for an individual, sure. No one argued that there weren’t uses for psy powers.
However, there were weapons that were more destructive, and didn’t fatigue the user as quickly. There were nanite medpacks that could heal better than most healing Psy, and armor enhancements that could do as well or better than body enhancement Psy. And the mindlink? A tactical HUD and battle network did it better, without the invasiveness of someone’s thoughts echoing in your head.
It was the old adage of using the right tool for the right job. Most times, the technological tools the Marines had were better for the task at hand. Certainly, the Navy did not get much use out of psy powers. The number of individuals in Known Space that could affect individuals or ships at the distances space combat took place at was effectively zero.
BANG!
Well, it had been zero. The recent changes had called that number into question. The question of whether the Empress or myself could use psy powers on a tactical level in space combat was still open. We were, after all, getting used to our new abilities. And the knowledge that there were other groups in undiscovered space made the possibility of finding individuals who could do that much more likely.
Even if that wasn’t the case, the Black Star Company was not one to go leaving useful tools on the table. Even if there were better tools for the job, the Company ran on the idea of ‘better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it’. Sure, there weren’t many situations where a fireball would be better than a flamethrower, or a grenade, but there might be, so those who had the ability were trained, so they had the options.
That was why the Training Grounds existed. Of course, it wasn’t limited to the Marines. Anyone in the Navy, or in the other areas of the Black Star Company, who had the Talent was allowed to use the grounds. Actually, the ‘civilians’ in the Company got the most use out of the grounds, since they had jobs where psy powers would make a more tangible difference.
Today, however, the grounds were empty, because, frankly, I didn’t know the limits of my powers yet, and I was still working on controlling some of the more… chaotic powers that had become available to me. Raven, Cali, and Jaynie were the only ones allowed on the field with me, though Shearah, Sheila, Carissa, and Sana were all in a nearby bunker. After all, the ones on the field with me were the ones that could come back, even if they caught a temporary case of being dead, either because they were just inhabiting a shell, like Raven, or because they were Nomads, like me and the girls. I wasn’t taking chances here.
BANG!
At the moment, we were doing a fairly non-destructive test. Shielding abilities were relatively common amongst psy users. However, they were rarely good for more than one or two hits before they broke down. Great for an ‘oh shit’ button when you realized that you were suddenly in need of cover, or if you saw that someone had lobbed a grenade at your feet, but not great for keeping you alive in a gunfight over open ground. Or in the open air.
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That was important, because the geniuses I had working for me had just come out with a new armor set for people who needed protection, but weren’t getting the full suite of upgrades that were being rolled out for the Marines, the Degurechaff Airborne Assault Armor. Like the Marines’ new Mark X Tactical Power Armor, the Degurechaff Armor was designed for increased defense and assault capability. However, while the Mark X was bigger, heavier, and boasted more combat boosting potential to go with the augmentations the Marines wearing it would receive, it was limited in terms of mobility, stuck on the ground unless the Marine used a specially designed jump pack to make short powered leaps.
The Degurechaff Armor, however, was a completely different beast entirely. Closer to the Front Line Master Suit the Empire used for their Imperial Marines in design, it was 5% larger than the older suit, using the increased mass to elevate the enhancements in the suit to true power armor status, giving increased strength, speed, reaction time, and agility, while at the same time slightly increasing the defensive properties. But the true focal point of the armor was the Flight Module, allowing the wearer to maintain powered flight for far longer than the jump packs of current Marine armor would allow.
BANG!
Of course, flying in the air made one a target, where speed and maneuverability were life. But predictive algorithms and volume of fire could still take out even a skilled pilot in even a fighter craft. Except that even interceptors had shields, to shrug off grazing blows. Shield systems there simply wasn’t room for in a man-sized suit of armor. Anyone in the Degurechaff armor was relying wholly on their own abilities to keep from getting taken down by typical anti-vehicle weapons.
So, while it was certainly an unprecedented system, and the creator, Doctor Adelheid von Schugel, was undoubtedly a genius, it wasn’t practical for rank and file military concerns. Fortunately for the half-mad scientist, I had happened to be looking into getting some new armor. Being able to fly was, well, definitely something I was interested in.
Which, in the end, is why I was here, now, letting Jaynie shoot me with ever-increasing calibers of weaponry, all while dividing my energy between flying and maintaining a psychic shield to keep the attacks from getting through. The systems in the armor were impressive, without doubt, but I was concerned with reliability and durability. It didn’t matter if a watch was so precise that its finely honed clockwork was perfect down to the millisecond if it was so delicate that the slightest jostle would send it out of alignment and cause the whole thing to fail. We were, literally, stress testing things, to see if I could use the armor in combat situations.
BANG!
Type-95 Degurechaff Airborne Assault Armor
Type
Power Armor
Rank
Super Rare
Made by the Black Star Company, the Type-95 is an experimental prototype armor model designed to be a trans-atmospheric assault armor for shock troops entering behind enemy lines. The Type-95 is designed for ship-to-ship, ship-to-ground, and ground-to-ship operations in three dimensions. Environmental seals allow the wearer to operate in hard vacuum or underwater to depths of 9000 meters. This also provides complete HAZMAT protection for as long as the dimensional air supply lasts (approximately 336 hours). Integrated nutrition and water supplies using dimensional space to keep the wearer alive for up to 672 hours. The same technology also allows for waste reclamation and disposal without compromising suit integrity. Psy-conductive wiring extends throughout the armor, allowing the user to better use abilities based on PP.
+100 to all Physical Attributes
+20% Reaction speed
150 Physical Armor, 150 Energy Armor
+40% Physical Resistance
+40% Energy Resistance
Power Supply – Runs on dimensional storage batteries, 1008 hour duration.
Life Support – Offers full HAZMAT support for 336 hours, basic nutrition for 672 hours, and environmental conditioning for 1008 hours.
Stealth Suite – Polychromatic coating gives wearer passive +20 effective rank with Stealth. When, combined with stealth settings allows the wearer to enter full stealth mode for up to 20 minutes. 1 minute recharge time.
Psy-conduction – All Psy Powers are 10% more effective, cost 10% less to use.
Flight Systems – Allows wearer to fly at speeds up to (CHA+WIS) m/s. Speed reduced in water. Requires 25 PP per minute to maintain flight.
Prototype: Actual results and tolerances may vary depending on conditions. Damage to armor may cause unknown conditions.
The stats of the armor were impressive, on paper. All told, it was a solid improvement over the FLMS I had been wearing any time I was going out on actual missions. However, that was all on paper. In experiments, it looked good, but there were power fluctuations and sensor drains that the team were still trying to fix as testing continued.
This, combined with the heavy PP requirements for actual flight meant that the number of people who could use the suit at all were not especially high, not in a combat environment. Sure, it was just under half my PP regen, as it stood now, and running that at the same time as trying to keep a psychic shield up wouldn’t drain me too badly. Worst case, I could probably keep flying for a few hours while under attack. The more PP I used to attack, however, the shorter my stamina for combat would become. And I was a fairly powerful psy user. Other people, who didn’t have my level of regeneration, would be struggling to fly and maintain a shield, much less fight at the same time.
BANG!
However, it made me the perfect one to test the tolerances the armor needed to perform under. The fact that I was a Nomad, and wouldn’t die even if I was killed, simply made it more logical. I had to keep telling myself that as I watched Jayne lining up another shot, this time with a shoulder-mounted anti-armor weapon.
She was clearly enjoying this more than a little. I was going to have to punish her when we got done with this. Still, the increases to my power were noticeable. We had just moved through the anti-vehicle weaponry, after all. I’ll admit that Jaynie wasn’t the only one interested in seeing what I could withstand now.
Jaynie aimed with the launcher. My enhanced senses could see her trigger finger tighten, the weapon glowing red in my HUD, signifying the threat it was. She started to pull the trigger, and I braced myself for impact…
Nothing.
I looked at my HUD, and was surprised to see the weapon flashing green. Friendly weapon. Jaynie looked just as surprised as I was. As one, we both turned to look at Raven, the only one who could have stopped the test.
Raven looked unapologetic. “Sorry to interrupt your fun, but there is a priority message from System Command. Refugees from the Ihm Imperium are coming through the Gateway.”
I sighed. “Well, guess the testing is over for today. Raven, approve the Type-95 to move to a production model. I’ll keep the prototype for my own until it is ready.”
"As you wish, Sir."