Jump 461: Homeworld - Deserts of Kharak

Jump 461: Homeworld - Deserts of Kharak
>Queen of Cups: A natural counselor and healer, one whose relaxed presence seems to embody deep love and spirituality.
>Age: 32
>Location: Kharak, 1106
Well, it's slightly better than Arrakis. No sandworms here.
>Identity: Kiith S'jet
>Drawbacks: (+600) Operation Skaal Brii
Apparently, there was a mission to retrieve the Guidestone some years before the game itself. I'll have to plan a way to make that expedition successful, because if not, I've failed these people and failed my chain.
>Scientific Aptitude (Free, S'jet)
>Fortune Favours the Bold (1400, S'jet)
>Inspired Advancement (1100, S'jet)
>Magpie (900, S'jet)
>Baserunner (One free)
Well, it doesn't hurt to have a baserunner. Wheels are always good, though, but this isn't a combatant. This is meant for support - field repair, jamming, unit hacking, and placing sensor nets as needed.
>Super Carrier (0)
Aaaand there goes the rest of my points. But that's okay, because it gives me a carrier that is bigger and badder than should even EXIST in this era, and I'm taking THAT to find the Guidestone. Arm it with cruise missiles, four assault railguns and four heavy railguns, set it up so it can launch turret emplacements, buy some artifacts like an H.R.A.S. targeting system as well as grabbing super-hardened EMR shielding, a fixed scalar matter compressor, and a meson stabilizer and then focus my production on heavy front-liners with railguns for maximum effectiveness. Artillery? Indirect fire? Screw that, just fuck that sand dune and everything on it.

Of all the things that could possibly happen, surviving a trip to the equatorial belt was not one that people expected. With the proper tools, it's entirely possible, and with the proper measures, dealing with the heat is indeed possible. Seventy degrees centigrade is nothing to a starship-grade heatsink, and that was just one among a truly vast number of artifacts that were unearthed during the expedition. Returning with so many artifacts that it was necessary to manufacture a whole fleet of sandcrawlers just to transport them back? Well, that may be due in part to the Kushan exploring such wrecks a bit more properly than just breaking them apart with explosives. Encounter suits with integrated cooling were designed and distributed early on, in the eighteen month expedition.

Either way, however, the primary source of issues during my time here didn't involve the expedition. It involved dealing with everything else that came as a result. The fact that life here began out there, and the path home was on the Guidestone. The fact that it was near the galactic core, not on the far end of one of the galactic arms. And just what an expedition would require if it was to go there.

While I help set things up appropriately in that respect among my fellow Kiith, I'm taking other measures as well. Missile defense platforms, hidden under the dunes in the deep desert, designed to trigger in the event of hostile attack on Kharak. Holographic nets to make it look as though any attack on the planet was successful. Pushing their science carefully in certain ways during my time here, to ensure that they have the means to defend themselves more adequately when the time comes.

Ten years really isn't enough to make all of the preparations that I want to make, not really. But I have enough backup measures and technological specs squirreled away in the right places that should ensure that the Exile fleet will be far better equipped than it otherwise would have been.

Actually... come to think of it, the Exile fleet that I worked alongside in my distant past seemed to be better than I thought they'd be, weren't they? And... I don't actually remember Kharak burning, just expecting it to be and not wanting to look.

Wait, did I accidentally create a stable time loop again?