Dolls and Devils

 French Resistance sent a bizarre tale to Allied Intelligence. A French doctor, a Vichy traitor, was collaborating with the Third Reich. Doctor Le F. had spent some years out of the. country after several scandals. On returning law enforcement was about to take him in for questioning in several disappearances when Germany began their invasion.

Dr. Le F. had conducted amazing experiments in the reduction of living things. Under the occupation he was sent to a secure facility near Vichy and set up with a well equipped and guarded lab. Spies in the Resistance reported he had a two stage process. The first stage would reduce a human being to 1-2 feet in height. The second stage could reduce them to six to 12 inches.

At great risk one of Le F's assistants escaped with lab notes, serum samples, and amazingly, a foot tall female subject designated Mini-Marie. In the course of their experiments the Nazis determined that the first stage of reduction often resulted in emotional issues and psychosis. Most of these subjects were kept confined or used for further research. A few could still follow orders and were used in surveillance. Some of these still became psychopaths later. 

Subjects reduced to 12 inches or less became extremely passive, as if their brains became simpler. they would often sit still for long periods and most were mute. Their handlers soon. realized the tiny humans possessed a form of ESP and could work on their handler's thoughts (or anyone who knew the trick). They were adept at dispatching larger, clumsier humans with a poison needle. A number of mysterious deaths in the resistance immediately came to mind, as well as some Allied officials found dead.

Animals had a strong aversion to both types. even trained attack dogs were likely to balk from attacking a 'doll person.' They could not be made to track them. It was unknown whether this was a separate treatment or a side effect of the reduction serum. 

Most personnel of both sexes found Mini-Marie enchanting. The tiny human had an innate and almost hypnotic charm. The assistant insisted that was the case with all the second stage subjects. In the case of the first stage subjects, the small people were gifted with an aura of menace, despite their shrunken stature and had no problems intimidating much larger individuals. Supposedly a Wehrmacht Colonel screamed at the sight of one practicing knife fighting. 

The British and Americans decided against recreating the process, viewing it as inhuman and an atrocity. The information was not made available to the Soviets. A u-boat may have transported La F. to Japan in the last days of the war. 

A Doll's small size lets it strike with surprise most of the time unless it is extraordinarily stupid or unlucky. First Stage subjects have a 4 in 6 chance of attacking by surprise if alone. Second Stage Subjects have a 5 in 6 chance of attacking by surprise if alone. The creatures typically use a poisoned needle that does does negligible damage (and might not even register if they strike with surprise). The poison does 3d6 damage, 1d6 with a save. Some dolls have used a drug that paralyzes on a failed save and leave their victims alive and aware for further torment. Some victims die of fear. 

A Doll has almost no need of food and rink if it is not active. The smaller dolls remain comatose unless commanded by their handlers and can even survive several days in a closed container.

Some have speculated that the misshapen and demonic imps and familiars of folklore were humans who underwent earlier, and primitive versions of the process. More disturbing was Le F.'s claim a related process caused unrestrained growth. Le F. believed people experimented on might have given rise to the legends of giants and ogres.

A human given First Stage reduction receives a -4 to their Strength and Wisdom. A Second Stage subject receives an additional  -4 to Strength (-8 total), and a +4 to Charisma. Both subjects use the same hit dice per level as reduction tends to make human tissue more resilient. 

Level       XP          HD             BHB             ST        
1          2,500          1                  +1              14          

2          5,000          2-1              +2              13          

3          7,500          3-2              +3              12          

4         10,000         5-4              +4              11          

5         15,000         6-5              +5              10      

First Stage Dolls are -2 to be hit with ranged attacks, and a -1 to be hit by melee attacks. Second Stage Dolls are -4 to be hit with ranged attacks, and a -2 to be hit by melee attacks. In addition many items such as furnishings provide full cover to Dolls.

Operatives have found the most effect way to deal with Second Stage Dolls is to attack their handlers. Once they are knocked out or killed, their tiny minions become passive and harmless. Usually handlers are within one hundred feet of a target. Killing a First Stage Doll's handler is disingenuous as the creature will fly into a murderous rage for 1d6 rounds attacking with a +4 to hit and doing 1d6+1 damage with their chosen weapon. 

We Has Met the Enemy Part Five

The Earth Defense force’s first attempt to build a battleship was classic Dunning-Kruiger effect. They had never built a battleship before. They had built a fine series of cruisers, typified by the Luna. The Terrans though building a battle ship was simply a matter of scaling it up.

Of course several bureaus submitted designs. The design the Terrans chose initially was a monster, over four times the size of the Luna series. Engines delivered double the thrust. Four outrigger style secondary hulls to hold huge stores of ordinance for long duration battles. 

Megan Detwiler had registered strong doubts about the feasibility of the battleship design, the Electorates decision making powers, and the future of the human species. Soon after a succession of disasters involving gun turrets, field emitters, airlocks and the self esteem of a number of engineers, the Electorate ordered the designers to start from scratch. 

In a quandry, they turned to Admiral Buckner for advice. In the Admiral’s opinion, the Martians merely constructed battleships to goad the Terrans into building their own, rushing the job and wasting men, material. and time. In that regard they were succeeding brilliantly. War was coming, soon. If earth wanted a battleship they could have it but the design produced had better be built fast. Admiral Buckner said, “Get off your asses, figure out the biggest ship you can build in … eight months. Batter to have a ship than a prototype or plans on a drawing board.

The admiral’s words struck a chord. In fact they spurred the greatest alliance in earth’s history as structural avionic, weapon, propulsion, and operations engineers worked together!

The hull was the first consideration as it was the single largest expenditure of materials and time. One of the interns, Cornelius Chen, pointed out the Luna series used a standardized decks with the various conduits and wiring trunks lined up. The system was designed to allow easy modification of future cruisers for specialized roles. Why not merely place more decks in a stack for a longer more massive ship?

The intern was quickly put in his place as a mere intern. A longer ship would have the same cross sectional area, meaning engines would need modifications to be larger and longer. The ship would require larger heat radiators but the hull was already crowded and the tractor design of the thrusters would make placing such radiators difficult.

Regardless, they proceeded as using the existing standard deck system would save an enormous amount of time. There were existing decks in storage that could be diverted to the Triumph project. The intern was snapped up by Admiral Buckner. Intern Cornelius Chen was made an ensign and given further training under the Admiral’s mentoring.

Larger engines were already designed and prototypes built. A newer generation of radiators, with a higher operating temperature, was rushed to completion and testing. The center mounted R-field generator coils were replaced with four smaller field coils each atop an engine. Besides providing some redundancy, the coils also enhanced engine performance and could redirect the thrust to a limited extent.

The bad news was that there was a maximum size of engine that could be produced quickly, meaning that the triumph’s maximum displacement would be twice that of the Luna. On the other hand, it was unlikely larger hulls would be ready for the start of hostilities or even by the end of them. 

The ship was capped with a newly designed sensor and command center deck that was unceremoniously torn from the first uncompleted hull. A set of new airlocks with extendable tubes was installed as well since they were a modular design and could easily be removed from the hulk and reinstalled on the new design. Docks for fighters were supplied against the protests of what some engineers called mission creep. However, fighters were proven to work as ground support, moving in close where a ship would be endangered and wasting propellant. 

In the end several newer decks were designed expressly to hold additional fuel and engines.

Against all odds it hung together remarkably well, apart from the usual plumbing, electrical, and temperature issues. The crew didn’t not like the engines and R-generators being much harder to access, requiring spacesiited work for major repairs. The engineers were pleased they could lose a generator and keep going. The radiators were also problems requiring constant adjustment to avoid melting. This was not predicted to be a problem in combat as a meltdown would take longer than most combats would take. The crews chose to view this as a sign of trust in their battle prowess.

Firing arcs were still a mess. The only fixes for this involved some fancy maneuvering to turn the ship to fire a broadside at the enemy, then turning to minimize its target area. The pilots were elated at having more to do in combat. Humans were harder to second guess than computer programs. 

The Electorate was not as dim as the engineers had imagined. Battleships were largely a symbol of power and prestige. The Martians had three, Earth had to have at least one! More importantly, Mars was a world depending on shipments of foodstuffs, water and bioengineered life forms to maintain its fragile terraformed ecology. This meant many merchant ships shipping goods from Mercury, Venus, and the Belt. In the event of a war, Earth would certainly begin attacking these merchants. Defending the merchant ships required cruisers and smaller craft to be as many places as possible. This was the opposite of the battleship role in war: sit in port, train, sortie, blow-the-crap-out-of-something, return to port—repeat.

When the Terrans began their battleship program, the Martians panicked and commissioned three new battleships. This took away resources that could build three squadrons of destroyers or six to eight cruisers. As a result many Martian convoys were badly defended.

As for the Triumph and her sister ships, they were using resources that were quickly shifted back to cruiser builds. Admiral Buckner saw to that. Mars started the very short war with three battleships, and lost one of them almost immediately. The three under construction never saw action and were never completed. Where the Martian battleships flew, they reigned supreme. All two of them

Those Terran upstarts just hit the Martians every other place.

The Diselpunk Post

I like dieselpunk a lot. I want other people to like it. Having said that, the major hurdle is to make it look retro in a way that appeal to people in the Twenty-first Century. That isn't much of a hurdle to be honest. The artwork of the period and the machines have their share of fans. There's a ton of reference images and there is a slew of wild inventions and vehicles documented and photographed.

There are a few problems though, like the Solar System. from what we know of the Solar System it's pretty darned hostile. Earth itself, our home wrold, is pretty darned hostile and can kill you in a number of ways! Consider 90% of the population is crammed into about 25% of the land area. There's a lot of deserts, tundra, and places with bears!

If you wanted dinosaurs on Venus a/o weird elder Martians in a steampunk game, you had to just go with it and say it was an alternate universe where life sustaining planets were the norm. For some reason disbelief is still suspended, even though a lot of physical laws and biological principles have to be disregarded. Dieselpunk doesn't seem to have that luxury. By the 1930's people knew a lot of steampunk ideas would not work. Fortunately, you have another option: terraforming. Yes terraforming could take centuries or millennia. Set your calendars accordingly or hand wave it gently away into decades. Don't be afraid to put the fiction in science fiction.

We knew jack about atomic power when dieselpunk started in the 30's. We know a bit more now (Heinlein's torch ship drive remains magic). You could specify a type of fusion for 'atomic power' these days and not raise any eyebrows. I prefer to go with boron to hydrogen reactions. It's a very clean energy source without many pesky neutrons.*

Dieselpunk doesn't have the information managing electronics we take for granted today. No smart phones with computer functions. Slide rules ... rule. This retro future never experienced, or forgot, the Information Age (how is that for irony?) Computers weigh hundreds if not thousands of kilos. Books are on microfilm or ... books. Space fighter pilots make sense! A computer that can replace a man would weigh far more than the man even with all his life support. It would probably suck, too. Just because something with the power of a Cray computer could fill a warehouse, doesn't mean they don't have them. They can use them for all manner of experiments and experimental simulations. They won't be toting these monsters on most ships though.

Technology is far beyond ours in areas of energy generation, as I said, and materials technology. Light alloys, super explosives, giant electromagnets and engines we can barely conceive are all possible. They remind you you're in a future. It is a future dominated by square jawed, steely eyed rocket pilots (and those are just the women!)

*Plus I get to throw out thermonuclear fission and yell "Aha!" and cite Atomic Rockets when someone tries to call BS.

We Has Met the Enemy Part Five

With General Buckner en route to the Triumph, Megan Detwiler sought to make the most of his carte blanche. The Flying Dutchman base had a number of tractor/ repulsor engines studding the surface, the better to aid docking and ping stray asteroids away from more expensive equipment. She quietly began supplying these with independent power cells, and it wasn't long before the engineers in the power department noted her activity. That and the fact she wanted them working triple shifts to get it done NOW! The other preparations were by the structural engineers who were Megan's old crowd. She knew them and scared them and they kept their mouths shut even as they worked.

The Martian battleship Enforcer approached the Flying Dutchman from a highly inclined trajectory. It had swallowed a lot of its heat to get that far that quietly. It also banked on beamed power from Mars. They picked up the metal beast while it was a half hour from weapon's range. The Triumph was 45 minutes out, but space battles seldom lasted that long.

The strategy of the Martians was clear -the base was the highest priority. Knock out the fuel and repair facilities and you would cripple the Earth Fleet. If the Enforcer had sustained little damage from the attack it would turn on the Triumph, which would be in need of refueling and unlikely to fight a lengthy battle. Chasing their new prideful warship away would teach the Earth and Moon dogs to stay in their kennels.

Commander Oyade was the acting commander of the Dutchman, a high honor he would rather not have. He desperately wanted the Triumph to have a base to return to. He raised repulsion fields and alerted all personnel to get their heads down as Martian drones were reported inbound. Earth flak guns and pressor beams did their best to keep missiles from hitting surface targets,

The attack wasn't the knockout blow the Martians had hoped for. Docking bays were damaged, fueling masts crippled but the Martian commander knew the real facilities were far underground and he needed a full strength nuclear strike to reach those. He brought the Enforcer close enough to the base's defense shields to begin overwhelming them with the power of his own engines. The pyrotechnics were incredible to behold, The Terrans didn't see it they were otherwise employed,

Next to Commander Oyade, Megan looked over several readouts and nodded. Oyade shouted, "Power up! Disengage supports! All hands to shelters!"

On the surface the Enforcer was treated to a final flash of light as the base's Feld powered down. then several more flashes of light from the asteroid's surface. The base commander can be forgiven for thinking for a moment that they were missile impacts. Then he realized something was wrong as a dozen heavy tractor/repulsor beams turrets detached from the base. Locked on the Martian battleship they closed the distance rapidly, gaining speed and momentum by the moment. The small caliber missile defenses of the battleship did not amount to much against a multi ton armored turret and each turret's power supply was brutally sufficient. The Martian might have lived to fight another day if he immediately tried to pull away and max out his acceleration. The Enforcer was turning to do just that when the first turret hit. Much like the old prototype lasers, they didn't have to work as designed. You just had to drop them on the enemy.

Six turrets hit the Enforcer with the force of  bombs. One penetrated the ship entirely. Flying Dutchman would not have simulated gravity for quite a while in its outer sections. A number of docking and fueling facilities were offline but the Martian goal of total destruction failed. The unspoken goal of not losing your damn battleship was also shot to the ether.

Even the most hardened military types had to admit the engineers won this one. The few surviving Martians swore to it

Commander Oyade summed it up," The Martians merely had a battleship. We had a woman with a Masters in Engineering."

Just Chilling with my Yeeps

Last Friday night I had a great time with the Gamer + group on the Discord server at Tenkar's Tavern. It was momentous for me as it was the first playtest of a system I devised and will release soon. The title is Universe Unleashed. This first game was SF. I like having Unleashed in the title because it is a very fast rules light game that gets out of the way and lets you role-play. In fact I think the game system is a success so far. The players were all a little confused at first but quickly got up to speed and it turned out no one had time to read the rules before but were learning on the spot with one or two examples in play. there were two standouts in this first game.

The first was a player who came by and asked to join on the spot. Since it was an initial game I ran a scenario that was a dungeon crawl through an enemy base and an alien ship that was docked. The new player mentions as combat is joined that he is wearing and eco-skeleton and has to move last in a turn. Okay, I didn't set limits on equipment. Amused I went along with it. Then he mentions he is wielding a brush cutter, essentially a sword. I ask him what department he's with and reply is "I'm a scientist." I immediately christen him 'Doctor Chainsaw. He goes me one better and says his nickname is 'Tex'.

The other stars of the evening were the Yeeps. Yeeps were small alien animals looking sort of like blonde ferrets with Fennec fox ears and toes similar to a chameleon's. All but one character liked them immediately (the one wanted to kill them with fire IIRC). A friendly NPC exobiologist insisted they were harmless creatures. In  fact they were not, but they were definitely on the side of humans and proved their yips (or 'yeeps') could harm or kill some non corporeal creatures who were hostile. A major complaint to their handler was her lack of imagination. She said she was too busy researching them to make up a clever name.

Some odd facts about Yeeps:

Their pulses are very closely synchronized. All the time.

Their body temperatures are exactly the same.

A Yeep will bond to a human fairly quickly. They keep an eye on humans who are hostile to them. Dolph, the security man, noticed whenever he stole a glance at them they were all looking at him.

They are very good at coordinating efforts.

No cage or enclosure seems to hold them for very long if they want out. They do like to be crated -especially together. But sometimes they will get up and leave somehow. Exactly how they do this is unknown. They are just somewhere else.

They refuse to be separated more than 100 meters from each other, becoming agitated first and then simply 'being' closer to their pack. So far this has happened with the estranged Yeep being carried in a crate and then reappearing elsewhere. Sometimes the mechanism securing the crate opens and sometimes the Yeep vanishes from a secured crate.

So far all tests have been minimally invasive. But the Yeeps have several anomalies. They have a  nervous system and several ganglia, but no discrete brain mass. Similarly they have a circulatory system but no central heart to do the pumping. There is no sign of a reproductive system.


**************************************Spoilers*************************************

The Yeeps encountered so far are all parts of the same organism. the prime life form is multidimensional (it has at least four spatial dimensions). Picture a human interacting with a two dimensional world. This world is like a plane the human 'hovers over. If they stick their arm through it, beings on that world would perceive it as a circular mass.

In this analogy, the six Yeeps encountered are fingers, toes or tentacles. The multidimensional being is dabbling in our world. Like tentacles, they can perform different functions. Being fourth dimensional they can leave an enclosure almost as easily as humans stepping out of a chalk circle (by 'pulling themselves free of our world/plane). They don't do it lightly as it seems to require some expenditure of resources (energy, stress or what have you).

The Yeeps are all attached, like fingers on a hand and exhibit similar behavior. They may have individual minds and some autonomy, We don't know. The prime creature might be intelligent or not. Higher dimensional nature doesn't mean you are intelligent. Most three dimensional creatures are not intelligent.

Encountering more Yeeps may tell us more about their nature. Are the new Yeeps another creature or another 'hand' of the same one already met?

I have not worked out the exact abilities of Yeep-Kind yet. Can they be killed, or is shooting one like cutting your finger? Are there always six? Can they survive in hostile environments? Vacuum?

My gut feeling is that they aren't hard to knock away or stun. Killing one is harder. If one Yeep is in an Earth like environment then they all have access to breathable air. Poison or drug one and it will affect them all in time.

The prime creature is intersecting our dimension but we don't know how far it extends beyond it. Are the Yeeps merely fingertips or a meaty cross section of a finger or tentacle or arm? Is destroying one a  minor injury or an amputation?

Yeeps have little or no protection against harm, despite being hard to really hurt. Hitting one with minor damage (hand weapons, fists, sticks) is usually ignored. Moderate damage (large melee weapons, firearms) seems to hurt and will make one disappear for 1d6 minutes. Hitting one with severe damage will make it retreat for 1d6 hours. Heavy weapons might 'kill' a Yeep, amputating it (3 in 6 chance). It also has a 1 in 6 chance of making all the Yeeps disappear for 1d6 hours.

Yeeps are poison to psychic or energy based beings. Their cries will stun them unless they pass a saving throw (Constitution/Endurance based) and cause them to retreat or take 1d6 damage.

The Gravity of Our Situation

Passenger: Glurrrrgh. I can't be space sick! I paid for a first class transit!

Steward: You got it. You're not space sick. you have Downer sickness.

Passenger: But ... Urk ... artificial gravity?

Steward: This is your first exposure to it? Right. No one reads the disclaimer. See mimicking a fundamental universal force without lugging a billion tons of mass around or melting the ship is hard enough. Making it indistinguishable from gravity is a little much to ask for.

Passenger: ...

Steward: See we pulse the field a few hundred times per second to reduce power consumption. The field also obeys the inverse square law like any sensible phenomena. That means your feet experience slightly more 'gravity' than your head. Not a lot but it does affect your blood pressure and circulation. This all raises hell with some people's inner ear and kinetic feedback. Basically your body is telling you you're in motion but your eyes are not. Spacers are used too it and can adapt or they don't stay spacers.

Passenger: Well ... what am I supposed to do?

Steward: We have medicine to help with the nausea. We also have a well we keep in zero gravity if you prefer ... I guess not! We can also put you out and let you hibernate the six weeks till we make orbit.

Passenger: I did not invest in a whole new wardrobe to sleep through my <Bluuuuuurgh> ...

Steward: I didn't even explain how the field ... sometimes acts on the brain and causes hallucination ...

Passenger: My hands are staring at me! My fingers are eyes!

Steward: Medical alert. We have another Downer here! Prep the hibernarium! Next time sweetheart ... book passage on a low continual boost ship. No artificial gravity and you could really get the most out of 10 centimeter heels like the ones you just ruined.

We Has Met the Enemy Part Four

With the Triumph en route to the Flying Dutchman, the Martian Admirals saw an opportunity to at once cripple Earth's Asteroid Belt operations and destroy their new flagship. The decision was made to attack the Flying Dutchman base and facilities and destroy the Triumph as well. This would leave the Earth without a major warship or facilities for other ships in the Belt.

Admiral Buckner meanwhile had given Megan Detwiller carte blanche to modify two Thunderhead fighters at the base to operate from the Triumph. Two was the limit since the battleship had two suitable airlocks. Every dog owner was familiar with that reasoning: hands, two leashes, two dogs on a walk.

Ensign Cornelius 'Wings' Chen was promoted to Lieutenant and given one of the modified Thunderheads to fly. Admiral Buckner figured he had less to unlearn about flying the new style fighter. Chen had also handled a drunk Megan detailer and the only way he'd top that in Buckner's mind was to disassemble a working nuclear reactor by hand.

The other modified Thunderhead was to be flown by Lt. Rita Elora, who had the most experience on the base. Buckner figured 'an old hen makes good soup.' He didn't say that to Rita.

As the Triumph neared and nerves frayed like a bargain store throw rug the Admiral announced he would fly out to it to show his support for the battleship's test crew and thank everyone who had worked so hard on his project. He poo poo-ed the idea of the Martians hitting the Triumph. Even if they were to do that it would have been outside effective range of reinforcements.

He climbed into the Thunderhead banging his head, knee, and shoulder. "I'd rather be flying on a shuttle!" he complained to Chen. Wings gave him a thumbs up and answered, "I'd rather be flying with a gunner, sir. But I am game if you are!" That got a laugh, no dope slap.

Now, the Big Brains had not allowed compact electronic computers for centuries, and might never again. They hated competition. With the limited processing systems onboard a fighter, the pilot had an inordinate amount of work to do. A fighter pilot needed the math weaponizing skills of a sniper, the reflexes of a gunfighter, and the persistence of a cartoon canine. In fact even with all these things the odds were heavily weighted against a fighter pilot actually hitting a ship with any effect.

There was an old truism of war: wounding an enemy was better than killing them. Dead enemies merely needed a mortician and a hole. Wounded people required a great many trained medical personnel to heal and rehabilitate. In recent years it was determined that convincing an enemy to be a fighter pilot was even better than wounding them! The number of trainers, instructors and administrators necessary to produce a pilot was huge, as were the personnel necessary to build and maintain a fighter in combat ready condition. All those people could be assigned to training a great many ship's crew and producing ships!

Mars had encouraged Earth to develop fighter tech for years, smaller reaction drives, better fuel cells, smaller sensors. Some of it was through investments, some was by funding media that constantly touted the fighter pilot as the dashing hero. It was a brilliant move that totally bit them on the ass.

The average Earthman was unconcerned with solar politics and not ready to fight a war off world. There were already rogue nations, warlords and mad scientists to contend with at home. The fighters, however, were quite good at dealing with threats at home and seized the public's imagination. The Martians laughed (presumably evilly with hand wringing).

Then a Special Forces team operating out of the Kingdom of the Golden Vale on Mars ran into trouble. The Vale was a warm and comparatively well watered area of Mars. The Polar Kingdoms had a long history of plotting against it. Earth ships regularly called there and missions were run from it to collect intelligence on the Polar Kingdoms.

One mission ran into a large force of Polar regulars. They were pinned down and surrounded. To their credit they did not break radio silence to call for help. Vale sensors intercepted the Polar transmission reporting the action. The Vale wouldn't send help. Its neutrality was mostly a sham but it was still useful.

The Vale was hosting several Earth ships with many 'advisors' including a small fighter force training the kingdom's pilots in the latest Thunderhead fighters purchased from Earth and now two thunderheads took off (without orders or permission as the Earth would later claim). The Thunderheads engaged the Polar ground forces in several passes, clearing a way for the Terran team and making sure the Martians kept their big heads down. Most of the team got out alive.

More importantly they got out with recordings of the ground and fighter action.

Earth was incensed at the Polar Kingdoms attacking earthmen engaged in practice maneuvers in neutral territory. They were stirred by the images of their fighters engaging the enemy, because they were all certain Mars was now an enemy, and driving them off. The Vale denied any knowledge of these actions and in fact confiscated the fighters (that were already bought and paid for).The fighter pilots were placed on suspension, transferred back to a media tour on Earth and later quietly reassigned back to the Belt. One was Rita Elora.

The damage was done. Earth was ready for a fight. In fact many demanded it for good or ill. Worse, Earth had shown that their media sensation fighters had a purpose: home support was an important mission. Looking good for the people watching the news was another. There would soon be other uses found for them.