Chapter 140

The Daedalus Academy

Y: 2143 - M2 

Daedalus Financial Position: -46.3M bitcreds 

<break>

“We can’t discuss this at the spiral AGM. Closed or not,” Leo Vardy, the CEO of DaVinci, stated firmly. He was in a secure virtual meeting with both Svarski and Huawei. As the major shareholders of the spiral corporation, they were the real decision makers and knew that the more that were included would lead to a diluted result. 

Except of course if the apex group was going in a direction, you disagreed with, which is what was happening now. Huawei was at odds with both Svarski and DaVinci.

Jung, the current CEO of Huawei repeated himself, “They are taking far too much capital from member corporations. A wider vote will demand action.”

“Ahem,“ the Svarski CFO interrupted. “That is not accurate.” He brought up a screen depicting a ledger filled with numbers. “They are injecting more than they are currently removing.”

“Your argument should be reversed if this is Huawei’s main concern,” Mister Vardy stated.

“It is not our only concern, but these latest numbers come as a surprise. It will quickly reverse as they sell more anti-matter,” Jung retorted. “We have evidence of them training the wider citizenry.”

Mister Vardy laughed dryly, “We never gave them access to the treaty. How do they circumvent it so well?” He looked sceptically at his counterparts.

“It is not our concern what happens after we leave. Only before we leave.” Svarski agreed. “Unless they begin to move population off-planet they will not cause us any issues with the treaty.”

“And any wars will hamper our efforts. We are not keeping to the timetable,” Mister Vardy stated.

“We should begin construction on the second elevator cord now,” the Svarski CTO stated. “Forget keeping the Antarctic base secret and build it. We can defend both bases easily.”

“If this gets us back on schedule I agree,” Mister Vardy stated. “Work up the proposal and we will send to the board for a vote.”

“You will regret not taking action on Daedalus now. While they are weak,” Jung warned.

“Someone leak to them not to send any people off world and the peace will remain stable,” Mister Vardy requested.

“We can do that,” Svarski CFO replied. “We have regular business dealings.”

“Now the truth is revealed,” Jung remarked.

“Your profits are neither our concern nor jurisdiction,” Svarski retorted.

“We will keep a close eye on them,” Jung stated.

“Our organisation is fulfilling that role,” Misty Vardy replied. “Do not jeopardise the peace. We have much work to do. You’d be better off directing your efforts into exploration and mining. Forget this planet. We will be gone in a few years.”

“How do we do that economically without the elevator?!” Jung exclaimed in exasperation.

Mister Vardy peered at the Huawei CEO, “You work it out. We are not your advisors.”

“Pfft,” Jung scoffed, “You are purchasing anti-matter.”

Mister Vardy laughed, “Of course.” But he stopped himself from adding that he was also searching for Arkernite. The Daedalus patent had ended up proving useless without the ark material. They had to revert to purchasing antimatter from Daedalus. The troika reactor could not be recreated without the refined Arkernite. And the aliens were certainly not going to help. It seemed only the rebel aliens lent assistance. Their side never lifted a finger.

“Any other urgent matters?” Mister Vardy placed sarcastic emphasis on urgent.

No one spoke. Although allies in the exodus they kept their cards close to their chest otherwise. Huawei were sure to get up to something - they couldn’t help themselves.

<break>

“We are keeping the name squad zero,” Vannier announced as the group watched the new cadets try and kill themselves and each other in the gauntlet. All thirty arenas were converted into gauntlets for the first week. And it was more than enough to tire them all out in eight hours.

“For the mechs?” Barran asked and Vannier nodded.

“Who is going to be in the Mech team?” Axel-Zero asked.

“The seven best mech pilots and a tactician,” Daedo answered.

Barran laughed, “Good one. Nailing down tactician. You won’t have to compete at all.”

“Neither should you with the limited access to mechs,” Mace replied.

Kang scoffed, “We don’t have one yet. It ain’t gonna be easy to get one which can handle ten percent of what an anti-matter reactor can pump out.”

Daedo clarified, “We should bring out a limited prototype soon. Then we can all practice.”

“How long is soon?” Vannier asked.

Daedo shrugged. “When we’re happy with a design.”

Kang scoffed again, “You’re never happy.”

“That’s a good thing,” Mace said in Daedo’s defence.

Daedo looked up and away from the thirty screens, “We’ll settle on one soon. We are testing thirty now and that will come down to three actual prototypes. Once we finished testing and tweaking a version one will be the result. We will then limit the reactor to what it can handle including a small safety margin.”

“Small?” Axel-Zero asked.

Daedo nodded.

“He doesn’t care if you break it. We make ‘em,” Kang said and chuckled.

They watched the cadet’s progress in the Gauntlet. Vannier had called them all together and would continue to do so on a regular basis despite them going separate ways with new squads and projects.

“Whose idea was it to have cadets play the monsters as well?” Barran asked. He was excited by the change.

Daedo answered, “I asked Master Haddad to make it more realistic. His Game AI is good, but, it's too predictable. He improved it and I still thought it was predictable. They were all stumped until Master Picard said why not get the kids to be the enemy as well.”

Axel-Zero said, “Only you find the AI predictable. You’re hardly a good judge.”

“This scenario expands their thinking. It improves their game theory,” Daedo added.

Barran pointed at his squad of seven, who were without him, they looked like bugs in augmented reality and they were creaming any squad that came up against them.

“My squad love it,” he stated as they massacred yet another team.

Kang laughed, “They need two exos each. They always have one in for repairs.”

“Barran,” Daedo said, “when they are isolated in the field there will be no spare exos lying around for them.”

Barran protested, “Like I can tell them anything. I’m not even squad leader. Lewinski is.”

“Your squad leader in the system,” Vannier stated.

“Like they care what the system says. They barely follow directives from Game,” Barran replied referring to the AI which gave all the cadets their tasks and schedule. Master Haddad had continued with the same entity and AI that Daedo had developed while in his merged state.

It wasn’t a cybernetic AI, it was a CPU hosted. But it was able to direct and assess cadets extremely well. The Game AI was the Academies administrative backbone for internal and external cadets. And it was one which Daedo and Myrmidon understood very well.

“They will need to learn how to field-repair their exos,” Daedo stated and messaged his father and Master Haddad.

Daedo: Master Haddad, when are crazy squad scheduled for exo repair training? Can we bring it forward? 

Ikaros: we have plenty of kits in stock. Will I do the training?

Master Haddad: I’ve been monitoring their progress. Game will inform them after this match. This squad can be quite troublesome, are you sure you don’t want an AI to train them?

Ikaros: bah. I can handle a few kids.

Daedo: train an AI father. We have thousands of cadets. You can’t train them all.

Ikaros: let me do it once. It will give me a feel and the AI can watch.

Daedo: I will leave it to you two to work out the details. OUT.

“Barran,” Daedo said, “you will need to ensure your cadets don’t disrespect my father.”

“Eh? How? And why?” Barran asked.

“He will be training them in the proper use of the field repair kit. They will begin to repair the damage they cause the exos now.”

Barran groaned. “What did I do to deserve this?”

Picard laughed, and when she finished, she said, “Karma.”

Vannier peered at the screens, “They’re good and improving but -,”

“But you want to show them how it's done?” Axel-Zero finished.

Daedo suggested, “We could combine arenas one, two and three and set-up a wave event. Release two squads at a time against us seven.”

“Just two?” Barran asked.

“Three make it three,” Mace suggested.

“Squad zero versus the insects,” Vannier said happily.

“It could be ready by morning. But we will need to close the three main arenas from 17:00,” Daedo said. “I’ll message Haddad now.”

“What will our loadout be?” Barran asked.

“PPC with sword and board as backup,” Daedo replied.

“The new PPC?” Barran asked.

“Haven’t you used it?” Vannier asked.

Barran shook his head.

“You’re in for a shock,” Picard said. “They have a slow rate of fire but pretty much one-shot everything.”

“That’s not what I see here,” Barran observed looking at the screens.

Mace disagreed, “Yes you are. They are not rotating fire effectively and their accuracy is under fifty points. Their motion prediction is below par.”

“It’s because their AIs are still very young,” Daedo explained. “You forget how bad we were in our first weeks.”

“If that why you used grenades?” Barran laughed.

Mace retorted, “Daedo’s AI has always been accurate.”

An announcement came through their HUD system from Game. 

Game:

Cadets. Please rest and prepare for a battle at 0700 tomorrow. Arena 1,2 and 3 will be unavailable from 17:00. All squads will be pitted against the former squad zero. You will be the aliens and your goal is to kill squad zero. Do not take this mission lightly.

Some quotes from squad zero: Why are they so shit - We were never this bad – We need to show them how a real squad fights – This will be good - It will be like stomping on your five-year-old brother.

Barran laughed, “I only said half - those things, I swear.”

“Master Haddad is motivating them,” Vannier stated.

Kang spat, “They hardly need more motivation. It's gross already.”

They watched the cadets for another hour. A screen would show the top down 2D representation of the battle. If one of the members of squad zero wanted to get closer to the action, they could enter a 3D virtual representation using their helmets and follow a cadet or free roam. Whatever wasn’t covered by sensors would be extrapolated and supplied by the augmented reality AI as one of its standard features.

“Barran,” Daedo said, “head down to the mech bay now. Your squad is on its way.” Barran replied in the form of a snap salute before heading down to the mech bay. He was not looking forward to the stupid things his squad would get up to while Ikaros attempted to teach them.

“Barran,” Ikaros greeted him upon arrival. “Your squad is first. Well done.” He had two damaged exos on the ground and a repair kit at the ready. There was extra material on hand to supply the repair kit.

Barran’s squad filed into the bay in their typical fashion. Pushing, shoving, insults and retorts flying between them.

“You can suck me if that’s what you want,” Dary informed Rodriguez.

“Pfft,” Rodriguez replied, “you wish. Your cock is way too small. It’d get stuck between my teeth. And I don’t like the taste of shit.”

“Ahem,” Ikaros interrupted the banter. “Are you here for a lesson?”

“You’re a bit old ain’t ya?” came Chica’s predictable reply.

Barran waved for calm. “This is Ikaros. He’s a civvie and chief mechanic. If you want good gear, you will be respectful.”

“Bah!” Dary said. “If I want good gear I will take it.”

Barran knew he made a mistake. Advice that seemed like a threat was not the right strategy.

“He’s right,” Sly said. “Be nice to the old man; it makes it easier for us. Please continue Ikaros.”

Tank chuckled at Sly. “Okay.” And he stood in front waiting for the lesson blocking everyone else’s view.

Lewinski skipped around to behind the old man and Barran fretted. Out of all of them, she was the most unpredictable.

Ikaros began to talk and his squad froze. Barran looked around their faces trying to work out what happened.

Ikaros continued, “When in the field you will need to find metals, plastics and ceramics and feed them into the hopper here. The inbuilt AI will work out what the material is and dump anything useless out here. You need to clear this material and do not feed it back in again. That is the recycling part. And if you can, use material that was broken off the exo. You will carry extra hydraulic fluid. But it's important to cap any leaks as soon as possible to preserve it. 

“If you replace with melted plastics the efficiency will drop quickly. Repair the mech filaments first like this.”

A polymer fibre tube pushed out of the repair kit and an arm sliced and embedded it into the damaged mesh. A cadet would have little to do in the way of technical work. Barran could see immediately that the repaired exo did not look pristine. But it would work.

He looked at his cadet's faces again, and they were quiet as church mice. Their heads were bent and they looked at what Ikaros was doing without a sound. No smart remarks. No dumb questions. They were mute.

“The ceramics are the easiest and you can let the robotic arm to spray or do it yourself. I prefer to do it myself,” Ikaros declared. “Now it doesn’t look like it did when it was new. But its job is to stop thermal and particle type weapons. That’s what matters. Not what it looks like.”

“Any questions?” Ikaros asked politely after he had finished.

Silence.

Then suddenly a long-exhaled breath came from a couple of the cadets. Tank and Sly looked towards the west entrance. Barran looked behind and nothing was there.

“Thanks, Ikaros,” Barran said. “We can practice on our gear now.”

Hoverbins were arrayed behind the cadets where they retrieved their exos, laid them out on the floor. The squad was assigned two repair kits. There was some push and shove to be the first as they had almost returned to normal.

“I’m first,” Chica stated.

“I’ll show you how it's done,” Rodriguez said confidently pushing aside Dary. Sly and Lewinski hung back, as usual, waiting to see what the others would do. Tank was big, but he didn’t throw his weight around. He watched Chica mess her exo up royally before taking his turn.

“I’m glad he left before seeing this,” Chica said.

“Who left?” Barran asked. Ikaros was still standing there offering sporadic advice or correcting a mistake.

“It was him,” Zerg said.

“Daedo?” Barran asked perplexed.

“Daedalus,” Tank corrected him.

“No. His name is Daedo,” Barran stipulated.

“He’s so rich,” Chica said wistfully.

Barran scratched his head. “I’m rich?”

Chica shook her head. “It’s different.”

Barran was struggling with the concept of how rich could be different between two people. Rich was rich.

“He beat CyberMech at ten,” Zerg offered another.

“He built all this from nothing,” Dary said with a wave of his hand.

“You do know I own the second largest share of Daedalus,” Barran said while failing to mention it was now Daedalus Military which controlled everything.

Rodriguez shook his head. “It’s not the same. You just follow him. And now so do we. We’re the same as you.”

Barran sighed. It dawned on him that in a sense Rodriguez was right. “You know something else,” Barran said inspired, “this is his father. He was here to ensure you showed respect.”

“Shit!” Dary said. “Why didn’t you say?”

Barran shrugged asking himself how could he have known the mere mention of Daedo would have this effect. He didn’t need to worry anymore at least. His squad were on perfect behaviour.