Star Force: Cascade (SF73) (10 page)

“So Paul just shares it with everyone,” Vortison said
as if it was obvious.

“For the trailblazers that’s not an issue,” Rio
explained. “But going forward when there are thousands of titans he can’t be
pinned down playing Yoda.”

“You’re reserving it for titans?”

“Actually,” Paul said, thinking ahead. “I think we’ll
stick with
Sav
as the titan upgrade. We haven’t
discussed it in detail because it’s the only Tier 3 trigger we had, but I think
we should save Jumat for the next level.”

“Which will be?” Vortison asked.

“We haven’t named it yet,” Rio answered, but his eyes
were on Paul. “There are 8 Tier 3. You really want to divvy them out one per
level?”

“The padawans have their hands full getting all the
Tier 2s, some of which we’re still waiting on the triggers for,” Paul said
irreverently.

“I can’t give you triggers for abilities that you
haven’t unlocked,” the geneticist pointed out.

“I’m referring to the others, but fair enough. They’re
going to have a lot more to learn than we did, then they need to spend their
mage years mastering them. Add
Sav
at titan and
everything changes again. We take it for granted because we’re still learning
its effects, but if we throw too much at the second gen they’ll skip and
piecemeal their way forward. What we need them to do is grind it out and
develop techniques that don’t directly affect their levels.”

“Like Ginsi,” Rio pointed out.

“Exactly. She’s narrow focused. We don’t want to
encourage that, so spreading out the Tier 3s is probably a good idea.”

“500 levels to integrate
Sav
seems like an overkill.”

“And to continue developing the Tier 2s,” Paul added.

Rio considered that, assuming that they did eventually
unlock them all. “Ok, I’m sold. So long as
I
get Jumat before then.”

“We’re always exempt,” Paul said unnecessarily.

“Why is that?” Vortison asked, his focus mostly on his
displays.

“Because we have to figure out how everything works,”
Rio explained, “so we can write the instruction manual.”

“And the writer’s block is real,” Paul added.

“That…is something I totally understand. After all
these centuries I’m still trying to catch up with what the V’kit’no’sat geneticists
know. The learning curve, even with the abundant data we have, is massive.”

“It ought to be for a civilization that persists
millions of years,” Paul pointed out. “But don’t let that be an excuse to
sandbag. Rio wants that trigger ASAP.”

“Yes he does,” the trailblazer agreed.

“Impatient twerps,” Vortison mumbled. “Lucky for you
I’m one too. You’ll have what you need shortly, then it’ll be up to you,” he
said, pointing at Paul, “to replicate the necessary stress levels.”

The titan smiled. “Challenge accepted.”

10

May 27, 2894

Solar System

Earth

Paul flipped backwards, landing on his hands and
continuing to flip over to his feet again in sequence, doing a line of some
100+ back handsprings with such a fluid grace it was almost boring. When he
reached the end of the line he paused for a moment, just long enough to turn
around and head back the other way on Balboa Lane and finish his 18th lap.
Halfway down it the tiny biomonitor on his head chirped a series of
Artoo
beeps but Paul didn’t stop and continued with his
gymnastics tumbles.

He went ahead and did two more laps, then shook the
dizziness from his head as he jogged through the sanctum and took to a climbing
wall at speed, knowing that he needed to push his stress level higher than the
trigger required. Last time he’d pegged out he’d stopped and called Rio, but
the stress levels diminished enough in the next few minutes that by the time
the trailblazer got to him it was too late. He’d tried to get it back again
shortly, but for some reason he couldn’t and he thought it was probably a chain
effect.

That meant a sequence of stress hits some hundred or
even thousand long, which if broken would have to start all over again.
Unfortunately this time he didn’t have the luxury of an ascension prompt that
could linger on after the stress diminished, so he had to get himself up to
proper levels and then go beyond it so that he’d have some extra to lose
without taking him low enough to turn his now pointless trigger off.

Pointless as far as the V’kit’no’sat were concerned,
for they had no idea that there would be a way to cheat the process.

As Paul climbed the wall he got another series of
electronic bleeps telling him that he’d just ratcheted up another level.
Switching actions, he’d learned, helped increase the stress whereas if he’d
just stuck with the tumbles he would have become immune to it after a while,
plus his fatigue would have diminished his movement speed. By switching to
another activity that used his muscles in a ‘fresh’ way he would get more bang
for his buck and cause his stress levels to skyrocket…so that’s what he had
been doing these past few weeks, with his biomonitor now programmed to tell him
how far above the trigger he was.

It also sent out a signal on its own telling Rio to
get his ass over to Paul. This one happened to catch him while he was sleeping,
so by the time he got out of bed and over to the sanctum Paul was a half mile
into his never-ending wall climb and busy grasping and throwing himself up a
meter or two at a time from the knobs and ledges, forcing the pace so hard he
was almost falling, but with little danger there considering he was only 3
meters off the ground as he fought to stay ahead of the vertical treadmill’s
safety slow that would activate when he got within a meter of the ground.

I’m here
,
Rio told him telepathically, standing off to the side as he watched his peer
climbing the moving wall with such recklessness it was a mix of comical and
awe-inspiring.

Five more
minutes. I want the cushion.

I’ll be ready
when you are
, Rio said, sitting down crosslegged and clearing his mind as
he ran himself through the basics of the twin link again. It took a few seconds
of calibration each time he tried it with someone and he hoped to shave one of
those off if he could with a little preemptive mental alignment. Paul was of no
help to him right now, but he could reach out and sense the other to a degree,
allowing him to create a mental handshake that was ready and waiting when Paul
suddenly flipped backwards off the wall and landed on the floor feet first,
only to be dumped backwards by the momentum and his weak limbs.

He got up and jogged over to Rio, sitting down while
mentally establishing the twin link between them as he felt his repetitive
numbness begin to diminish as the rest break ate into it. A moment later he
could sense what Rio did, and vice versa, but in order to get the trigger to
transfer they had to share a specific section of their biotelemetry, and in
order to do that they had to go deep. Since they couldn’t cheery pick very well
they had to go broad spectrum and link as much of their minds together as
possible, accomplished via continuous transmission rather than battlemeld…for
that was the only way the cheat could work. Battlemeld was designed to not
activate triggers, but the twin link was an anomaly that let one think that the
other’s body was actually theirs, if they got the bond strong enough.

Both Paul and Rio had done this many times before with
their padawans and others they were sharing abilities with, but this was the
only one they had a countdown on, for the other ‘temporaries’ required an
internal alignment they could produce while sitting there, whereas stress and
fatigue had to be garnered through physical activity. They’d practiced many
times over the past weeks after workouts, trying to shorten the connection time
and by now they had it down to a step by step process that brought them closer
with each connection. After a few seconds the two began to lose their
individuality and think as a pair, with Rio’s biomonitor popping up to 3 green
soon thereafter.

Rio could see it through Paul’s eyes, so there was no
need to talk. Their twin link was now unnecessary, but they held it up until he
reached 1 yellow, at which time Paul broke free and Rio concentrated
internally, though the other titan did establish a regular Ikrid link to help
him stabilize the growing storm inside.

“Patience,” he urged. “You’re not going for it this
time.”

“Killjoy,” Rio said as he fought to keep the storm
brewing inside him without snuffing it out entirely. The plan was to stay in
yellow and not hit red, allowing his body to start prepping for the flash
growth later so to avoid the cascade that Paul had experienced, though with an
extra Tier 3 to his credit, Rio’s would probably be even worse. “I got this.
Just stand by in case I lose it.”

Paul withdrew his deep stabilizing presence and just
observed what was happening. Unlike his own, Rio’s ascension prompt started
stronger, but still weaker than the other psionics. Perhaps that was because their
bodies knew the toll that this was going to take under the cascade or perhaps
something just unique to Jumat. Either way, Rio had to go against his standard
operating procedure of pushing for red and this time try to avoid it and make
the process linger in order to prep for the transformation later…and by later
he meant not today, which Paul knew would require him pushing himself to the
trigger again tomorrow or the next day, and perhaps several times more to get
Rio where he needed to be.

After about ten minutes, with Rio still holding his 2
yellow bars, a rude
Artoo
bleep indicated that Paul
had slipped beneath the trigger level.

“I’m out,” Paul said.

“I’ve got it from here. Go ahead and get back to
normal training.”

“Training? I’m going to get some
Mariokart
action in then head to bed. I’m exhausted.”

“Don’t rest up too much. I’ll need you to hit it again
tomorrow.”

“Two days…don’t push it.”

“Fine,” Rio grumbled.

“Don’t go red,” Paul warned, standing up.

“I won’t. Thanks, buddy.”

“I’m serious. Don’t go there yet.”

“Dude, I’m not lying. Playing it the wussy way.”

“You don’t want that cascade, trust me.”

“Last one was bad enough, thanks. I’ll take the slow
route this time. Just don’t like having you trash yourself over and over again
to get at it.”

“It’s a tradeoff. My skill work is sucking, but it’s
getting easier to reach this level. A century or two from now I’ll probably be
hitting the trigger in daily workouts without trying, so I’m guessing this is
as hard as it’ll get.”

“Still think you’re going to catch Morgan?”

“I am going to catch her,” Paul said firmly. “In about
7 months if I don’t have too many guests come looking for psionic handouts.”

Rio smiled. “I’m not going to be able to pass it on,
you know.”

“I know, but as long as Morgan is out there fighting
she’s losing ground to me. This overload training is useful, but it won’t
factor into the scaling until down the road. I’d prefer to get top spot back soon,
but I can wait as long as necessary knowing that I’m pulling ahead of her off
the charts.”

“You are one badass
muther
.”

“
Ya
mon,” Paul said,
accepting the compliment and walking off to let Rio spend as much time as he
wanted, or could, in the ascension…which amounted to a good hour and a half
until his grip slipped and he started to head up into red uncontrollably, at
which point he forcibly ended the ascension, with the mental storm disappearing
and Rio left with a bit of a headache.

By that time Paul was gone so he let him be and went
back to bed, letting the prep work soak in and getting back to his own training
the next day. No calls came in for him, just as Paul had said, and he wondered
if his fellow trailblazer wasn’t pushing himself to that level or had just
turned his calling device off. Either way, Rio got in a good day’s training and
entered his next sleep cycle, which was offset from Paul’s given that they each
had a different length of training day.

That meant he was woke up in the middle of his night
again when the call came, with Rio happily getting out of bed and tracking Paul
down inside the sanctum. This time he was running laps on the halo track, so
Rio jogged over to the transition incline and ran up onto the ‘wall’ and took
off to the right, disappearing into the tunnel that ran a complete circle more
than mile wide. It’d taken some reworking into Atlantis’s architecture, but the
standard quarter mile oval was no longer useful to the trailblazers. The speeds
they ran at were hampered by the sharp turns, hence the halo track had been
developed that had no turns, rather they ran in a straight line that gradually
bent upward and looped back on itself, with artificial gravity allowing them to
run horizontal around the inside of the hoop while feeling as if they were
upright.

With that large of a track it took some time for Rio
to catch up to Paul, but he had taken off the opposite direction so to meet up
with him as quickly as their paths crossed rather than trying to race to
overtake him the hard way. When he eventually did see Paul’s feet appear far
ahead he slowed to a stop and let the sweat-soaked Archon come to a stop next
to him. Both sat down off to the side of the road-sized track and linked up,
with Rio’s body/mind thinking Paul’s status was its own and the trigger popping
him into another ascension.

“I’m going to take it slow, but I’m going for this
one.”

“Big surprise,” Paul said, releasing the twin link.

“Might be a good idea to get a medical scanner on me.”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “That it would. Can you walk
or do you want a ride?”

“I’d rather stay on top of this,” Rio said, with him
already 3 bars into the yellow.

“Turn inward and I’ll get you there without any
bumps.”

“Hopefully they’ll learn a bit about the cascade when
I’m fried,” he said before blocking out most external stimuli and turning
inward as Paul suggested.

“Let’s hope it’s less this time,” the level 134 titan
said, telekinetically lifting Rio off the ground on an invisible plate that
allowed him to still sit crosslegged. He started walking forward with him in
tow, then got tired of it and just ran. It looked weird, but Paul’s Lachka was
more than strong enough to do it, and he even added a wind shield around him so
Rio wouldn’t notice.

When he got to the nearest track entrance, for there
were many on the giant hula hoop, he transitioned back into a walk and headed
through the sanctum and out into Atlantis’s corridors drawing odd stares from
everyone he passed with his floating passenger in tow. He got Rio into the closest
lift car and transitioned to the medical wing where Vortison was busy at work
on something when he entered the main lab. He saw the man do a double-take from
his office, then jump up from his console and come out into the larger work
room.

“He’s working on his second ascension,” Paul
explained, “and is going to push it through to completion. Thought you’d like
to get some active sensors on him.”

Vortison nodded. “We never have seen you guys actually
go through the process. Put him on that table,” the medtech said, pointing to
one of their work stations, “and we’ll bring the equipment to him. How long
does he have?”

“I’d guess he’ll be working on it for an hour or so,
but there’s no way to tell. When your control slips you either have to push it
through or cancel it.”

“Quickly people,” Vortison said with a snap of his
fingers and his team splitting up like an angry hive of bees as they moved
around to grab whatever tech they required.

Paul set Rio down on the workstation, which was at the
moment deactivated so his butt wouldn’t be pressing any buttons, and left him
there just as he had been on the track, turned inward and processing. He gently
grabbed his wrist and took a peek inside his head while noting that his
biomonitor was at 4 yellow.

We’re here and
the medtechs are setting up. Can you give them a few minutes?

I’ll be at this
longer than that. As much as I want Jumat I don’t want my head to explode.

No promises. You
can still cancel out and go for it on a third try.

No, I’m going
for it this time. Need a baseline to figure out how much processing others will
need to go through to avoid the cascade. If I cut it too short we’ll know what
not to do.

Well that’s
brilliant.