Date Point: 12y1w4d AV
Starship Racing Thunder, Interstellar Space, Confederacy Territory
“Upgrades?”
Shipfather Yefrig duck-nodded by way of replying in the affirmative, though the set of his ears was… not embarrassed, but certainly less than completely happy.
“The consultants from the Royal Navy had much to say,” he explained. “Most of their observations are not the kind of thing we can implement without a full overhaul at a shipyard, but some are simple programming changes to the shields.”
“Things like radiating the ship’s energy output in a coherent beam away from anything that might see it,” Regaari guessed. It was the first trick he’d learned that human warships had up their sleeves, having witnessed it in action aboard HMS Caledonia in the aftermath of the battles at Capitol Station and the planet Garden.
“Yes, that’s right,” Yefrig agreed. “We’ll never be as stealthy as a human destroyer, not without that special surface material they use, but that trick alone has made us much quieter, and it’s just one of several we…” he cleared his throat “’learned’ from them.”
Regaari knew where the hesitation came from. Pride was one of the great traits of the One-Fangs, and Gaoians were a naturally proud people anyway. The unspoken subtext to the word ’learned’ there had been ’we could have thought it up, of course, but we were doing things differently’.
He couldn’t quite resist the way his ears wanted to flick, just for a second and by millimeters, into a Gaori ’I-told-you-so’. Fortunately, Yefrig either failed to notice or else showed impressive restraint and elected not to react. Whichever it might be, Regaari mentally chastised himself—while antagonizing the *Racing Thunder*’s shipfather was not completely out of the question if there was something to be gained from it, right now there was not. To the contrary, he needed to be in Yefrig’s good graces.
He could sympathize with Yefrig’s mild chagrin, however. Humans had been figuring out steam power at around about the time that Gaoians had perfected quantum computing, and it was natural to feel off-balance when a species with a technology-lag like that turned out to know your own business better than you did. It was almost like seeing a Father receive a lecture from a precocious initiate who was completely and demonstrably in the right: There was no course of action the Father could take that didn’t leave at least a few hairs rubbed the wrong way, and a lingering feeling of having lost face.
Besides, mostly their advantages came from… tricks. From using things in previously unconsidered or unorthodox ways. There was nothing special about the idea of coherent emission as opposed to omnidirectional radiation—indeed, it was actually the less effective way to get rid of waste heat—but the idea to use it to minimize detection in combat should have been obvious.
Human tricks were like that: Irritatingly obvious, in hindsight.
Still. Sometimes, the Gaoians got to flex their muscles and the Whitecrest answer to an EV-MASS was one of those occasions.
Just like the EV-MASS, the Suit was an unpowered spacesuit that provided pressure for the wearer mechanically rather than through an internal atmosphere. And like the Humans’ suit, the wearer needed to be exceptionally tough, well-conditioned, and strong. The design rationales were sound and there was no reason to reinvent the wheel, as Great Mother Nitae would have said, so Whitecrest decided to target the design for high-quality recruits who had completed a military Clan’s most intensive training: recruits like Regaari and his Brothers, who easily met the requirements.
As did Daar in fact, but he wasn’t going to be a full-time member of HEAT. Stainless had other plans for the massive brute and Regaari was not yet privy to them. A shame, really. With Daar’s incredible body and with advanced Gaoian technology…
But…no. Daar was far too big and noticeable to fill the same role as the Whitecrest Brothers. He would be much more like the Human Defenders in function—in fact, that role was what he was being trained for, and what aligned with his existing skills—but a Gaoian was not a Human and not even a singular specimen like Daar perfectly compared. He was strong and fast and tough as an old Keeda tale, but the Humans of HEAT were tougher still and had better endurance, amongst other advantages. What Daar’s role would be, Stainless wasn’t telling, but Daar was actually excited by the prospects and that was enough for Regaari.
That meant the Suits were designed more with Regaari and his Brothers in mind. They represented something much closer to the Gaoian mean and that made the suit good for lean and small operatives as well as Stoneback brutes. And since Human males tended to be hugely robust and heavily muscled compared to Gaoians (Brothers like Daar aside), a copycat design of the EV-MASS was untenable, so Whitecrest and One-Fang kept the premise of the suits themselves but reworked every other aspect of the design. The result was significantly lighter, a result driven by different priorities (speed over safety, because speed is safety) and vastly more advanced materials. The Suit was barely heavier than an ordinary security or military shield harness, in fact, but the improvements it packed in were impressive.
First, they had borrowed some armor concepts from the Humans and developed a reactive material that hardened into a rigid shell when struck, thereby dispersing the energy of a kinetic pulse hit across the whole body. They had tested the Suit by having Righteous hit it as hard as he could with a softball bat, and the testing dummy had recorded no significant injury despite being smashed across the room by a blow that had bent and broken the alloy bat.
Then the Human Brothers got competitive and had started to really abuse the dummy, attempting to inflict maximum damage. They tried weapons, combative techniques, tossing it off the water tower, all sorts of things. Righteous looked like he was going to win the impromptu competition but a full-strength, loudly thudding straight punch from Warhorse had definitively knocked him into second place.
Righteous had given his friend a complex look, then crossed the room to examine the way that the dummy had actually become wedged in the drywall. “…You’ve been holding back on me, bro. Damn.”
Warhorse’s face had gone crimson and he had grumbled incoherently for a bit, but whether he’d been holding back or not turned out to be irrelevant: The dummy had survived it all with nothing worse than perhaps a simulated cracked rib.
With kinetic pulse weaponry taken care of, the shields had been re-tuned to deal with high-velocity projectiles like bullets and shrapnel. Rather than put up a single strong shield which tried to stop the hit outright or burn out in the attempt, the Suits instead put up a nested quadruple layer of weaker shields that robbed incoming projectiles of their momentum and deflected them rather than stopping them outright.
It wasn’t perfect. .50 cal punched right through the shields, as did the longer-barreled marksman version of the GR-1d used by Murray and Blaczynski. But as Rebar had pointed out, there was no such thing as a perfect defense and even the HEAT Operators obeyed the general rule that the best armor was not getting shot in the first place. The Gaoian Suits were providing a lot of protection for a fraction of the weight of an EV-MASS, and that was the important part.
Besides: when it came to not getting shot in the first place, the Gaoian Suit arguably had EV-MASS beat. The lightweight construction left the wearer free to benefit from his natural agility and nimble speed, but even better was the camouflage. Gaoian technology had permitted them to coat the entire Suit in a layer of context-mimicking pigment nanites that could closely imitate the pattern of their surroundings. This was supplemented by a metamaterial sheath that bent and blurred light through the edges of the Suit, fading and breaking up its silhouette. The system took a second or so to perfectly adjust to its surroundings, but a motionless Whitecrest could stand next to a wall and reasonably expect to go unnoticed.
They were absolutely perfect for the infiltration, scouting and spotting that were the Gaoians’ roles on a HEAT unit, and a fully functioning spacesuit capable of the same exo-atmospheric drops and EVA as an EV-MASS.
Different species called for different approaches. A lot of work had gone into making those approaches complement and synergize with one another.
And then, intriguingly, their first real mission wasn’t going to involve the human side of the team at all. This had prompted Regaari to quote one of his favorite human movies: ’Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.’
He ran an eye over the information that Shipfather Yefrig was surveying. It was less arcane and impenetrable than he’d feared—the One-Fang Father was almost certainly getting more out of it than Regaari would be, but clarity and brevity of communication was essential on any warship and he knew enough about piloting and navigation to read the basics of what Yefrig was seeing.
“We’re doing well,” he observed.
“We’ll continue to do well,” Yefrig replied. He indicated the formation of Guvnurag ships up ahead of them. “We’re using their ALV drive wake to hide ours. Our emissions are all being aimed away from them, and at a distance of a tenth of a light-year they would need to stop and take some very careful measurements indeed to spot our albedo.”
“I wasn’t expecting that ship to have such a heavy guard…” Regaari mused. Three Guvnurag Ganwundurag-class escorts was quite a lot of firepower, but Yefrig didn’t seem to be concerned.
“This ship could tear all three of them to pieces in the first strike,” he promised. “Disabling them Human-style should be no more difficult.”
“Good. Admiral Knight was quite clear on the subject of casualties.”
Yefrig duck-nodded solemnly. The One-Fangs were under pressure to prove themselves just as much as the Whitecrests on this operation, if not more so. And while neither Clan was inclined toward needlessly violencing civilians, the Humans were absolutely dead-set against it and had been very clear indeed on what consequences would descend in the event of a needless slaughter.
The laws they imposed on what was and was not permitted spoke of alarming paranoia on their part…paranoia of the equally alarming darkness that Regaari had seen lurking in their history. They were scared of themselves, and that should not have been a comforting thought.
Then there was electronic warfare. Human warships were laden with “weapons” that existed to disable and blind an enemy ship rather than damage it, and it was hard sometimes to tell which rationale lay behind that doctrine—the desire to avoid unnecessary enemy casualties, or the desire to ensure that the foe could not meaningfully fight back and could be dismembered without risk.
Both, hopefully. Depending on contextual ethical considerations too situational, protean and intuitive to be easily defined from a Gaoian perspective. Regaari made a mental note to request an anthropological study on human moral codes. Personal experience was one thing, but the Gao needed to understand the issue more broadly if the two species were to have the kind of special relationship he was trying to engineer.
“I should get my Brothers ready,” he declared. Yefrig duck-nodded by way of agreement and the two of them grasped each other’s’ paws briefly in a mutual gesture that said ‘good luck’ and Regaari ducked through the hatchway out of the bridge.
That was another modification the Brothers of the *Racing Thunder*’s crew had installed after discussing things with the Royal Navy: Regularly-spaced pressure doors in addition to the containment fields already laid across bulkhead passages, built from the same titanium alloy that was enhancing the construction of Armstrong Station. It wasn’t perfect—it couldn’t be, not without a refit. Nor was it without consequence, as the doors slowed well-trained crew movements and the extra mass added to energy requirements, which lowered available power, which increased heat…
It was definitely a tradeoff of safety and survivability versus raw performance of both crew and ship, but the Humans had shown how much that safety could matter. In any case, perhaps it wasn’t truly a concern. The Racing Thunder was easily the fastest and most powerful warship of its kind and was the envy of all the Galactic fleets, Humans included. She was designed with speed and range first and foremost and all other factors secondary. But even with that slight dulling of her edge she was still the keenest blade. The Humans’ ideas enabled new capability and the ability to survive long and brutal fights, so why not?
The crew had rapidly adapted to the new doors and associated damage control procedures, which did much to satisfy Yefrig’s concerns. And besides, if the USS San Diego was any example, with its hugely over-rated reactors and its emphasis on power above all else, the Humans were learning from the Gaoians, too.
Enough. Regaari—Dexter—had a mission to worry about, and more importantly, he had a Suit to don. It was always the Suit and went by no other name. They had no acronym for it because acronyms were a Human enjoyment that Gaoians in general and Regaari in particular did not share. Here, he would allow the Humans no claim. The Suit may have been Human inspired but it was Gaoian designed, Gaoian made, and Gaoian worn. It was theirs.
But the best part was how it was worn. Their system had only two layers versus the Humans’ three. Instead of clunky docking collars the Suit’s armor and environmental layer split and joined seamlessly down the back and legs. Regaari arrived at his station and simply stepped into the Suit’s back after having dropped his clothing and equipment.
Well. He did need to slick his fur down in key places to avoid chafing and sadly, Gaoian anatomy did not allow for certain…*conveniences*…granted to his Human teammates. That meant he had to insert an exquisitely uncomfortable catheter instead of rely on a custom-made receptacle, but he’d discreetly handled that bit before his meeting with Yefrig. Fortunately, neither of the waste tubes remained bothersome for long.
Standing alongside for educational purposes was Petty Officer Dean Hargreaves, one of Warhorse’s suit techs. He watched the much quicker and far less onerous donning process, and could only shake his head enviously at the relative ease compared to EV-MASS.
“That looks nice and easy, ‘Dex.”
[“I am certainly not complaining!”] Regaari preened a bit in Gaori for his tech’s benefit, since implants were forbidden and they didn’t have a translator handy. [“Even if I could wear an] EV-MASS [I’d prefer something like this. The human suit is too much of a blunt instrument, Gaoians are built to hit fast, hit hard—”]
[“Hit once,”] Hargreaves finished with a chuckle. He’d come along on this educational jaunt in part because he was the most fluent in Gaori among the SOR’s technicians, even if he did have the unique Human “accent”. The tech chittered along as he reached between Regaari’s legs to connect the waste tubes and nestle things comfortably into place.
[“And if you can, avoid detection as—!”]
Regaari completed the thought just as his tech cinched the tubes into their positions, which caused Regaari to hold his breath and wince, cringing at the cold petroleum jelly and desperately remembering to trust his tech. Alas, that was the nature of it and not all indignities could be avoided. Full-service environment suits of any kind were like that the Galaxy over.
Hargreaves caught the tech’s eyes and they shared a resigned moment of common misery.
[“Did you ever think you’d be fondling another male’s] bollocks [for a living?”] Hargreaves asked sympathetically. The tech chittered resignedly while Regaari shot Hargreaves an annoyed look.
[“Do not belittle him. Maintaining these Suits is important and worthy work!”] As uncomfortable as such things were for Warhorse and Regaari, their techs weren’t exactly reveling in the experience, either.
[“Oh, I know! Come on, I have to juggle Warhorse! If he wasn’t about the nicest bloke alive I’d swear it was a cruel cosmic joke. Also,”] Hargreaves leaned against the wall and folded his arms with a cheeky grin, [“who are you to talk? Don’t you sleep in his bed when you’re on-call? You do know the story of how he got his nickname, yes?”]
Regaari combined a sigh with a chitter as his tech cinched a flat cooling tube around his waist. [“Better than you do I wager. But it’s not been a problem. Close contact doesn’t bother us, we prefer it anyway. We’re not as hung up about that as your kind apparently are. And in any case, space is limited until the fourth floor is complete, you know this. Which, I’ll note, hasn’t begun construction. It makes me wonder what games your bureaucrats are playing…”]
[“It’s called] ’Silly buggers’, mate.”
It had taken Regaari some time to unravel the essential cultural differences between the Americans and the British, and there were still a few knots in there where they thought alike but used quite different terminology to describe the same concept. For example: “buggered” as opposed to “fucked in the ass”. Either way, the imagery was truthful enough to make Regaari chitter.
[“Please don’t give Warhorse any ideas, I’d prefer to survive his mornings intact!”]
Hargreaves laughed while the tech swiveled his ears in a scandalized manner, but he said nothing; interspecies humor was always tricky. Instead he tucked Regaari’s tail between his legs and up towards the front, greased things liberally, stood up and then ran his paw down Regaari’s spine and legs to slick down the fur with the last of the petroleum jelly.
Petroleum jelly. The humans had discovered it accidentally while drilling for oil and over many years the heavy, greasy byproduct had accumulated a litany of odd and unexpected uses. It clung powerfully to fur and wouldn’t wash out easily, but it also didn’t bind or clump and nothing seemed to work as well. It was hypoallergenic, too. After all, It wouldn’t do to have Regaari’s fur trapped in the Suit’s seal, itching and inflaming everything. One last inspection and the tech pronounced the suit ready for sealing.
He stood back, Regaari held himself in the neutral position with arms up and feet planted wide, and the Button was pressed. The undersuit zipped itself up at the nanoscopic level, joining and weaving itself into a single molecularly perfect garment. There were absolutely no visible seams anywhere to be found because in a practical sense there were none.
Once the suit was sealed the expanding innermost layer activated and firmly squeezed down. The cooling system powered up, and those same motile nanites which sealed the suit performed minute self-adjustments across Regaari’s lean, muscular torso. This part was especially welcome given the HEAT’s arduous training and the gradual and continuous improvements across his body. It lessened tech time for adjustments, too. An EV-MASS technician was constantly fine-tuning the dimensions of their operator’s suit by millimeters, whereas Regaari’s Suit could handle those adjustments itself.
Within a few seconds the Suit was essentially a part of him. It felt less like he was wearing it than like his fur had grown thicker and heavier.
None of that was lost on Hargreaves. “Wish we had some of this tech. That nanoseal up the back of the suit would make things a lot easier…” he mused in English.
Regaari sighed as he tugged on his footwear and gloves. [“We can’t share that kind of technology,] Hargreaves, [you know that.”]
He fiddled a bit to seat them comfortably while Hargreaves watched; the rapid-response metamaterial at the clawtips was still a little fiddly, but it did mean that any of the Gaoian HEAT operators could effectively extend their claws through the suit without compromising the seal. The suit automatically coated the claws in an almost molecule-thin barrier and formed a very tight seal just above the quick, and could respond so quickly that it was no worse than extending claws through work gloves.
Regaari got his gloves seated, gave the claws a quick test, then moved onto his footwear while the motile seal closed. Hargreaves looked on wistfully.
“I know, I know… You can’t exactly blame me, though, can you?” Hargreaves trailed off as Regaari’s tech ran final checks and reached for the oversuit. This was much like the EV-MASS in design and execution, though it was also more advanced in material and camouflage. Hargreaves lent a hand and in just a short moment, Regaari was encased in his Suit: just over twenty kilograms of the most advanced combat and hazardous environment protection anywhere in either the Dominion or the Alliance. Many Clans participated in its design and execution, along with some especially eager and envious Human input. The Suit…
…It was a marvel.
Like the Humans, the Whitecrest opted for role-specific tactical loadouts, and that meant Regaari had the lightest and least bulky suit. Given that he was also one of their fittest specimens, that made him (maybe next to Daar) about the deadliest Gaoian alive.
Heady stuff, but mundane matters demanded Dexter’s attention. He helped the rest of his team into their suits as best as he could, and taking a healthy sniff of Human-style paranoia, checked, re-checked, re-rechecked, and had Hargreaves help verify all was ready and proper.
Thurrsto was the last to shoulder his heavy medical pack. He really was impressively big for a Gaoian and could almost be mistaken for a strong Ironclaw laborer, were it not for his huge crest and superior fur. He was their medic and a close friend with Baseball…which lead to his callsign.
[“Ready,] Carebear?” The rest of the team chittered amusedly.
Thurrsto grumbled, [“I hate that callsign…”]
[“I am named after a psychotic serial killer so you will understand if my sympathies are short.”]
Thurrsto grumbled but held his peace. Regaari flicked his ears in mild sympathy and touched noses to reassure his medic, which helped instantly. Gaoians weren’t exactly like Humans; leadership needed to show affection and that was something Regaari was keenly aware of. He went to each of his claw-mates in turn, exchanged little confidences…and they were ready. As one they padded towards their staging area while Regaari placed a radio call.
[“SHIPFATHER, DEXTER. We are ready and at your pleasure.”]
[“Thank you, DEXTER. We go shortly.”]
Regaari made a satisfied duck-nod and settled back to wait as the techs and Hargreaves cleared the deck.
Something told him he wouldn’t be waiting long.