Star Force #21-40
Author: Aer-Ki Jyr
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: Anthology containing: Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (21-24) Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (25-28) Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (29-32) Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (33-36) Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (37-40)
Publisher: Archon Lore
Rights: Copyrights as per source stories

Allegiance

1

July 3, 2331

Gadre System

Inner Zone

“Microjump in three, two, one, mark!” the helmsman of the Chimaera announced to the bridge crew of the warship-class jumpship before it pushed off from Gadre’s central star with limited power enroute to one of the planets in the system.

Liam sat a few stations behind him in the Admiral’s chair studying their position on a system-wide holographic map that encircled him. The dot that was the Chimaera accelerated up to speed within a pair of seconds then drifted along a straight line trajectory towards the planet tagged as Iracet. A second dot that had been coexistent with the Chimaera’s remained behind near the star, glossing over as realtime sensor tracking of its location became impossible at the speed the warship was traveling.

Within a minute the Chimaera arrived at Iracet, braking hard against the planet’s gravity well but not completely overcoming its forward momentum, exiting the jump well above low orbit and coasting inwards at a comparatively low speed, but one that would bring the massive ship down into low orbit within half an hour and slam into the planet’s surface a few minutes later if unchecked.

Five minutes after arrival the Chimaera’s sister ship jumped in behind them at a stagger. The Sebacean followed their approach vector with a slightly higher speed so that the pair of warships would rendezvous with one another again before reaching their target in low orbit.

That target appeared on Liam’s holographic map as another dot orbiting about 400 miles above the surface of the brown, grass-covered planet. Less than a minute after the Sebacean’s arrival he received updated coordinates which his map adjusted for, moving the point slightly to the right from where it had been as the Hycre transmitted the data to the Human ships.

Another hologram appeared on Liam’s right, this one of the Hycre symbol that they used in lieu of a flag. Along with it came a vocal transmission that the ship’s computer transcribed into Hycre text, then underneath which it translated the message into English as closely as it could. The program usually did well, but on occasion the Archons who could read the alien language would spot an inconsistency, which is why they’d deemed it necessary to display both the original and the translation in order to give the receiver the ability to troubleshoot any breakdowns in the translation.

Liam read the message and hit the reply button on the arm of his Admiral’s chair. “Target confirmed. We stand ready to engage and will do so upon arrival unless you have a reason for us to delay?”

A screeching reply came back in the negative, along with a promise that they’d be in position to attack prior to the Humans.

“Be aware, there will be some delay while we unload.”

The Hycre responded that they understood and would hold off their assault until they were in position.

Liam nodded satisfactorily as the dot that was the lizard orbital occupation station began breaking apart as it deployed cruisers and two larger battleships upon seeing Star Force’s arrival. The beehive grew on the hologram but stayed close to the station, waiting for the enemy to come to them.

Also on Liam’s map was the dot that marked the position of the Hycre warship in system. It was Destroyer-class, and accelerating out of its parking orbit at a rate no Star Force ship could match. The Hycre navy was far more powerful than the Humans’ and even more powerful than the lizards, but what they lacked was any type of effective ground troops, given that they lived in gas giants and were wholly incapable of surviving in a ‘normal’ environment. They did have some limited mining exoskeletons for use on rocky worlds, but nothing even remotely military.

That hadn’t been a weakness with regards to their self-defense, for the lizards were equally unable to assault the Hycre in their gas giants, and with their rival’s naval superiority the lizards got few chances to try. However, as time passed the lizards were growing more and more powerful, and while the Hycre could dominate them in space they couldn’t assault any of the lizard worlds. Yes, they had some orbital bombardment capability, but once the lizards established a suitably sized base on the ground it was next to impossible for the Hycre to root them out.

The other races that fought the lizards didn’t have much success in that department either, meaning that if they were to penetrate your orbital defenses and land on your world in sufficient numbers, then your planet was as good as doomed.

Iracet was one such instance, home to a race known as the Darlestik. 12 years ago the lizards had conquered their planet along with their inhabited moon, Kitla. Rather than annihilating the stocky bipeds they’d enslaved them in exchange for limited independence. There was speculation that this was due to the lizards not having enough available resources at the time to hunt down and destroy all of the 15 billion Darlestik on the pair of planetoids while others suggested that using them as a source of slave labor had always been their intention.

As it was, 2/3rds of Iracet was under the control of the lizards, while the other third was in contention by rebellious factions. The ‘pacified’ regions were working to supply the lizards with a massive amount of raw materials, most of which were being shipped outside the system as exports. Over the past 2 years the Hycre had been harassing those shipments and dropping aid packets to the rebels…but they hadn’t been able to dispatch a fleet large enough to take control of the system, only a ship or two at best and often only for a limited amount of time before it was needed elsewhere.

Unlike most other races the Hycre warships had gravity drives capable of jumping them from system to system without the need of a jumpship. This gave their fleet much greater deployment capability, but at the cost of speed. Though still faster than Star Force’s jumpships, the Hycre warships were slower than the lizard jumpships for the most part, with only a few specially equipped courier ships capable of outrunning the enemy.

The destroyer they had insystem had been on station for 8 months harassing the lizards in orbit as much as it could, but given their fleet strength it couldn’t assault the occupation station, which was a battle station in and of itself. The lizards had numerous bases on both Iracet and Kitla, as they had set up on Corneria, but this invasion had grown past what Star Force had seen there and the occupation station in orbit was apparently another step up the playbook as far as how they took control and subjugated one of their target worlds.

Their battleships were another addition that they hadn’t encountered at Corneria. They were considerably larger and more powerful than their cruisers and had no kirby docking points. They were also not sensor stealthed, nor was the station, suggesting that these were defensive/regular line forces rather than their expeditionary ones. About half of the cruisers weren’t stealthed either, probably because they’d been built on site after the planet had been subjugated.

There were similar occurrences happening across multiple star systems as the lizards continued to push their borders. The difference with this one was that the Darlestik rebels were fielding a legitimate counter-insurgency. They weren’t in a position to overthrow the lizards as of yet, but the lizards hadn’t been able to wipe them out despite their stronghold over the planet’s infrastructure and the developed state of their own.

The Darlestik were stronger than the lizards, hand to hand, and they also favored subterranean structures. This made them great miners, a fact which the lizards were gladly exploiting, but it also made it difficult for the Darlestik to be found and killed when they were constantly digging new tunnels. Far underground the lizards’ airpower couldn’t be brought into to play, nor could their vehicular army, meaning the only way to get at them was to go in and fight hand to hand…and the lizards had been expending millions of troops in order to do so, but after a few initial gains the ground war had morphed into a very active stalemate.

The Hycre were convinced that if they could weaken the lizards’ forces from space then the Darlestik might have a chance of mounting an effective counteroffensive…which is why they had asked Star Force for assistance, not only because they could spare only one ship to the system, but because the Humans had proven time and again how effective they were at orbital bombardment.

The Gadre System was 48 light years from Sol, located in quadrant three and well beyond the perimeter of Star Force’s territory, but with the upgraded gravity drives that they’d recently put into service it’d taken them no more than 2 months to zigzag their way across the stars from Epsilon Eridani out further rimward to the target system. This marked the furthest expedition by Star Force out into the galaxy, including their scouting expeditions. If something were to go wrong they would be getting no help from Star Force, and probably none from the Hycre either, which was one reason why Liam had insisted on sending two warships rather than one.

Both warships were about half the size of one of their cargo or carrier jumpships, designed for the sole purpose of delivering a fleet from point to point as well as acting as a control ship. Aside from the crew compartments and limited storage, the entire spine between nose cone and engine bank was made up of egg carton-like slots that held the rectangular cubes that were their drone warships.

They were stacked together tightly, maximizing their basic design to fit as many as possible within the volume dictated by the size of the nose cone and the inertial dampening field that kept them all snugly stable within the larger ship. The slots they fit into were actually docking arms that could reconfigure to hold whatever set of the giant ‘legos’ they wanted to squeeze aboard, but with these two jumpships they held mostly cruisers stacked in four rows around the thick central spine.

“Captain, take us in,” Liam said calmly, watching his displays.

“Begin braking maneuver,” Captain Leslie said from her own command chair just ahead of Liam’s. “Begin power up on all drones. Helm, coordinate with the Sebacean to keep us as close together as possible.”

To either side of the command platform in the center of the huge bridge were rows of stations containing 226 seats for an army of remote pilots. The Chimaera didn’t have them all filled, nor did they have 226 warships to control, but it had become common practice to assign more than one pilot to a warship, given the various weapon systems they contained. Computer controlled firing was useful if you were shorthanded, but Liam preferred to have each weapons battery manned by a live person, meaning that each cruiser had several pilots working as a group to fly and fight it. Some had more than others that would reposition to other ships when theirs was damaged or destroyed, meaning that the longer the battle continued the more operational control each ship would likely gain.

On the hologram Liam noticed that the lizard ships were beginning to drift out away from the station in the direction that they were incoming…as well as in the direction of the Hycre ship. All of their ally’s impressive warships took on the persona of sea creatures for some odd reason, especially given that there was no water on their gas giants. Whether or not they intended to copy the marine aesthetic Liam didn’t know, but the destroyer headed in to engage the lizard fleet definitely looked like a flat shark.

It even had fins coming out from three angles, plus two more that formed a sort of tail off the elongated aft end. The body of the ship was taller than it was wide, giving it a flat and narrow motif when viewed from the top or bottom. At the front of the ship, however, it jutted out considerably to either side, giving the ‘shark’ a bulbous head that increased the intimidation factor.

Then again, maybe Liam only thought it looked fearsome because he’d seen one of the ships in action before.

The Hycre destroyer was approaching the station at a good pace…with some fluctuations. Apparently they were trying to time their arrival to coincide with the Humans and had succeeded in dividing the guardian fleet into two groups, though the lizards didn’t let themselves get very far from the station.

The dots on Liam’s screen kept getting closer and closer until they suddenly stopped moving altogether as the Chimaera finished its deceleration in one final lurch that left it 8,000 kilometers away from the station. The Sebacean joined it a minute later, slowing to a stop some 60 kilometers away.

The Hycre destroyer did not slow down, however, until the last possible moment. Using both the planet and the moon’s gravity wells like giant tethers it yanked hard on both and ground to an almost stop 120 kilometers out from the rightmost defense fleet and drifted directly into their lines on an insanely fast strafing run. It activated its engines only twice for small course corrections as it passed into and through the lizard lines, blasting away at one of the battleships as it passed, gouging large portions of its shield matrix in the process with its white plasma streaks.

It took down the shields on two cruisers before it passed outside of weapons range, then took a solid hit to its own shields as one of the more massive plasma cannons on the station fired a well-timed shot at the shark-shaped ship. Its green plasma orb was caught and collapsed on impact, with a great deal of the plasma being diverted along the length of the ship rather than soaking it all up on the forward shields. Somehow they had the technology to choose how much to deflect and how much to absorb, but that was one secret they hadn’t included in the introductionary probe’s database…and it wasn’t something they’d shared since either.

As forthcoming as they’d been about many technological matters, the Hycre had been mum on their more impressive naval technology. That was to be expected, despite the close working relationship they had established with Star Force, given that their naval power was their sole point of power. That said, while the Humans’ tech was inferior in comparison the Hycre had noted on several occasions how impressed they were with Star Force’s rate of advancement.

When Paul had then let them in on the creation of a new weapon that could penetrate even the Hycre shields they began to forcefully inquire where they had obtained such technology, but the Archon had quietly and politely refused all such attempts to ferret out their source, citing that they also had secrets to keep.

If there had initially been a few ruffled mohawks over the revelation they passed after Paul had let them participate in a weapons testing exercise, during which both races exchanged data and defensive technology. They gave Paul the specs on a stronger physical shield than Star Force currently had, though nowhere near as powerful as those used by their warships, while Paul showed them the basics of how to create an energy shield, also more primitive than those deployed on Star Force’s warships in conjunction with their physical shields.

With that gifting the Hycre then had the ability to block Star Force’s new weapon…or at least dampen it somewhat, making both fleets stronger for the exchange. Lizard ships, they knew, only operated with physical shields, which was why their heavy lachar technology had been able to partially penetrate them. The new energy weapon, designated as the ‘Cleansing Beam’ in yet another homage to Halo, was a pure energy weapon and thus impervious to the blocking power of physical shields.

They were extremely expensive to make, power hungry, and didn’t like to be jostled…which meant the smallest ship on which the smallest version of the weapon was currently fielded was a heavy cruiser.

That said, those heavy cruisers were more than a match for the lizard cruisers. The trailblazers had been right in predicting that if they could survive against the lizards long enough that their rate of technological advancement, thanks to the V’kit’no’sat database, would close the gap. While it was true the lizards still held many advantages over Star Force they were no longer as great, and in some areas there had been a reversal of fortunes, with the Humans now the stronger. Overall the lizards still had a technological edge, but it was dwindling with every decade that passed…yet their territory was continuing to expand and the more systems they occupied/annexed the stronger they became.

Which was why the Hycre had been so animated about the need for this counterstrike. The Humans had been the only race in recent memory to have thrown the lizards off a world where they had successfully grounded and established a surface base. Word of this, spread to other enemies of the lizards by the Hycre, had instigated a more determined resistance to their previously indomitable advance and now they wanted to use the Humans’ skills for more than just defensive applications.

Because of Star Force’s ability to effectively resist the lizards, and their newfound popularity amongst usually disparate races on the lizards’ hit list, the Hycre had virtually adopted the Humans as an apprentice race, protecting and teaching them in the hopes that they would grow into a powerful ally capable of one day pushing back against their common enemy.

This mission was the first piece of that extremely complicated puzzle…and the first time the Hycre had ever asked for their assistance.

“We’re in position,” Captain Leslie said, waiting for the final go order.

“Detach,” Liam said without hesitation, glancing to the side to catch the attention of the Chimaera’s comm officer. “Inform the Sebacean to do likewise.”

2

Up and down along the central 4 kilometer stretch of the Chimaera’s hull drone cruisers began undocking in staggered sets, pulling away from the spine and filling the space around the jumpship. In the rearmost portion destroyers and heavy cruisers followed until all 64 warships had detached, leaving the Chimaera looking like the skeleton of a dead fish with nothing but thin ribs sticking out along its central spine connecting the nose cone to the engine compartment.

Likewise the Sebacean was disgorging its 72 warships, which included smaller cutters, frigates, and corvettes in some cases. Both ships had equal hauling space, it was just a matter of stuffing the slots full with as many of the cube-like ships as they could. It had jokingly been said amongst the fleet that in order to gain command of a warship-class jumpship a Captain had to have a high proficiency in Tetris.

“All ships are away,” Leslie confirmed from her bridge station. “Ship’s weapons on standby.”

“Let’s hope we don’t need them,” Liam commented as he stood up and hit a button on his command chair’s armrest. The seat broke apart into segments and disappeared into compartments underneath the floor while a podium rose up in front of him, converting his Admiral’s chair into a command nexus from which he assumed control of both fleets from the pair of Captains.

Along with the icons for their 136 drone ships he also had larger ones for both jumpships, which were armed to the teeth for defensive purposes. They also had some long range weaponry up front for use in limited offensive operations but for the most part the huge ships were designed to be mobile command and repair posts that doubled as a control ship in lieu of a battleship that they hadn’t brought with them. The triangular design of those ships made them volume hogs for transport, which was why the drone ‘bricks’ were the only warship designs incorporated into this attack fleet.

The two lizard fleets combined had 2 battleships and 18 cruisers…numbers that heavily favored Star Force even if they didn’t have Hycre support. That said, the lizards weren’t coming out after them, preferring to stay within weapons range of their station.

That was a smart play, because the station had a considerable amount of weaponry and if they intended to do as much damage to the attackers as possible they needed it involved in the battle…which is exactly why Liam held his fleet back outside of its plasma range.

With a flurry of key strokes he sent out orders to the pilots of the various ships, reforming them into a large, flat plane that stood vertically facing the station. Along the center he had the 8 heavy cruisers clustered together with the mass of cruisers surrounding them, then the smaller support ships scattered around the edges. When they were all in position he ordered the heavy cruisers to open fire.

8 dull white streaks shot out from the Human fleet and hit three separate lizard cruisers at the front of their lines, penetrating their shields with minimal disruption and burning into their hull plates with a violent white light. The beams lasted nearly a full second, with the relative motion between the ships causing the cleansing beams to drift on the lizard cruisers’ hulls tearing deep gashes into them, one of which crossed over an anti-air battery, destroying it immediately on contact.

Liam gave the heavy cruisers orders to hold position and fire at will, with more beams shooting out, but looking far less intense than they really were. The original design they’d pulled from the obsolete tech in the V’kit’no’sat database was for an invisible beam, given that it was pure energy and not energized particles that would glow on transit. Like a laser, the cleansing beam technology would only appear visually when it hit something. Paul had insisted on a minor design alteration to add the ‘tracer’ glow to the weapon discharge so one could visually track the weapons fire…as well as making it look more like the Halo version.

Liam agreed that invisible energy weapons didn’t set well with him either. There were ways to detect them, but that technology was so far beyond Star Force’s current understanding that it could take well over a millennia before they even scratched the surface of being able to replicate the designs. For the time being they were going to stick with tracer elements for their own weapons and make do against their opponents. Nearly all of the neighboring races happened to favor bright plasma weapons, with only a few utilizing lasers or laser variants, like their own lachars.

Though he knew they’d run up against one someday, the idea of a sensor stealthed ship firing off untraceable energy weapons was a recurring nightmare for the Archons, because energy weapon impacts didn’t behave ballistically and therefore their line of attack couldn’t be traced back to its source like, say, a rail gun slug could. Analyze the impact data, regardless of whether you detected it upon approach or not, and you could guestimate the route it came in by…but with energy weapons, they just heated a point on the hull to destruction, making it impossible to know where they were coming from within a given hemisphere.

Liam knew that attack technique could be turned around and used in Star Force’s favor, but for the time being they didn’t have any stealth assault ships and didn’t plan to. Paul, Roger, and Liam had mutually agreed that their fleet design was going to be open contact…meaning all offenses and defenses would be based around the enemy being able to track your position.

See, be heard, and ready to throw down at a moment’s notice…much as Star Force’s political strategy had been back in Sol from the beginning when they made their military program public knowledge.

Liam preferred it that way, knowing that they’d earn more respect, trust, and fear by being bold rather than sneaking around in the shadows. That was best left to reconnaissance ships, not line warships who needed to tailor every aspect of their hull design to maximize combat efficiency rather than minimize signal traces.

The lizards didn’t wait long to respond. As soon as the second salvo fired off they began to retreat back towards the station while the Hycre destroyer continued to make strafing runs in and out of the second fleet formation, frustrating the other lizard ships by its superior maneuverability and speed. Already three of their cruisers were damaged and the battleship was showing significant shield loss.

Liam typed out an order for all their attack ships to begin creeping forward in formation while the heavy cruisers continued to fire. As the lizards moved out of effective targeting range some of the beams missed while others scorched their hull having become slightly more diffuse, but the main problem was keeping the dot on their hulls in the same place in order to burn all the way through. That said, they continued to rack up at least some damage until all the lizard ships in the nearer fleet turned and ran back over to join the other, hoping to ambush the destroyer and knock it out of the battle before the Humans got any closer.

Easy, Liam thought to himself. They know what they’re doing.

He kept their formation moving forward, eventually drawing some extremely long range plasma fire from the station. The defense cannons on it were more powerful than those they’d encountered on the lizard jumpship, but no matter how well their plasma held together after leaving their weapons batteries it still diffused over distance, sucking the energy out of it before it hit the first cruiser.

More cloud than orb at this point, the first of the station’s shots to hit washed over one of the blocky warships, partially draining its shields but not penetrating or collapsing them. Liam pulled a sensor focus on the incoming plasma, which was coming in repetitive waves from at least 3 batteries, maybe 4, Liam couldn’t be sure at this range. Based off of visuals alone he guessed and drew a line across his map where it appeared the plasma was losing the bulk of its cohesiveness, then confirmed his estimates with sensor data being reflected back by the orbs…which actually suggested they were weaker than they looked.

Liam moved the line up a bit, then transmitted it out to his fleet for them to move up to. His own ships would be well outside of their plasma range, but the heavy cruisers would be able to tear into the station with their cleansing beams along with the heavy lachars scattered throughout the rest of the fleet. They weren’t nearly as powerful, but had far greater range than any of the plasma weapons in play, including those of the Hycre.

“Your move,” he whispered as his ships got into position and began hammering away at the station. More plasma started coming in from another pair of batteries, but most of it wasn’t strong enough to penetrate any of their shields, even with repetitive hits…and a great deal of it was going by their formation in clean misses.

Meanwhile the two lizard fleets merged into one awaiting the return of the destroyer which wisely slowed down its approach and angled off to the right, pulling a lazy curve that even the lizards could follow and headed off towards the Human fleet, pulling its pursuit with it.

Liam smiled, wondering if the lizards were being uncharacteristically stupid or if they didn’t yet comprehend how strong the Star Force fleet was. Either way they were coming straight at them, and about to get owned.

As he watched them accelerate to try and catch up with the destroyer, which was only going as fast as it needed to stay ahead of them, Liam suddenly got a sinking feeling in his stomach, which was confirmed by the speed indicators on the lizards which were gradually ticking up higher and higher.

“They’re going for an overshoot,” he warned the bridge crew as he typed out new orders to the fleet. “Prime defenses and fire as soon as they come within range…just make sure you don’t accidentally hit any of our own ships in the backdrop.”

“Yes, sir,” Leslie acknowledged, then started barking out orders to the Chimaera’s crew.

All of the Human ships in formation began reversing course, but thanks to their unique design they didn’t have to turn around to do it. Using their forward facing engines they accelerated to negate part of the lizards’ already accumulated momentum as they opened fire, first with the cleansing beams and lachars, then with their plasma as the lizard cruisers shot through the gaps in their formation.

A hail of blue spheres shot out from the Star Force ships, blanketing the lizards and knocking down half of the ships’ shields and doing some light hull damage before they blew past. The pair of battleships, curiously, had broken off and returned to the station. Liam hadn’t noticed when, but that made it abundantly clear that they were trying to make a run at the jumpships, probably knowing by now that they were controlling the fleet, and if they knocked out their transmitters they’d still have a chance of winning this fight.

A few moments later the computer tagged the deceleration profiles of the incoming 18 cruisers, all of which were heading towards the Chimaera.

Make that 17…the Hycre destroyer had just taken out one of them and was slugging it out with two more at close range as the others continued to decelerate up to the jumpship, intent on making a slow flyby as they blasted away at the ship’s shields, which were considerably weaker than Liam would have liked. Their shield technology had improved greatly over the decades but it was still weaker than that of the lizards, and the jumpship’s shields were weaker still due to the power requirements to generate a barrier large enough to surround the massive ship.

“Permission to dip into our fuel reserves?” Leslie asked.

“You’ve got 5 minutes worth to work with, no more,” Liam said, knowing that while they needed to defend the ship they also needed enough fuel left to return home…which was several jumps away, which meant several accelerations and decelerations, each of which burned a massive amount of energy that had to be generated and stored in capacitors for such a quick release. Those capacitors were nearly full again, despite the microjump, and Captain Leslie was about to dip into them for the second time.

On Liam’s monitor the shield strength for the Chimaera started ticking up, gaining about 10% every 1.5 seconds as the capacitors poured energy into the hundreds of shield emitters spread across the ship, which then took that power and transformed it into more of the thin energy matrix already spread around the jumpship. That energy matrix progressively thickened as the seconds  went by until the first green plasma orb was fired off from the approaching cruisers and hit diffusely across the forward shields, draining them of some of their energy as the plasma canceled out against the matrix.

The sudden boost to shield strength ended as the capacitors shut down, despite still holding a significant amount of power. The 5 minutes Liam had instructed the Captain to use was the amount of power created by running the power cores at 100% for 5 minutes, which was less than a full capacitor charge. That said, given the shield strength currently deployed, it was going to take a lot of hits to get through.

Unfortunately the lizards had a lot of hits to give. As the cruisers came up to pointblank range and flew along the length of the ship they pounded every cannon they had into the upper shield, swarming over it with a cascade of green plasma going down and a lesser amount of blue plasma coming back up as the Chimaera’s own defense cannons targeted the attacking ships. Unlike the old model weapons, Star Force’s new plasma cannons were able to concentrate and contain their plasma into a brief orb before it diffused, not unlike the lizards’ weapons, which Star Force had extensively studied and copied into part of their design.

Their plasma cannons were still inferior to the lizards’, but not by a lot. Two of the already shieldless lizard ships were destroyed on their first pass over the jumpship by concentrated firepower as the Captain tagged the weaker ones for the ship’s gunners to pick on. Never the less three sections of the Chimaera’s upper shield went down after the first pass, leaving the hull of the ship exposed.

The lizards didn’t hesitate to pull a 180 and come back over for another attack, hammering away at the ship’s plasma cannons and the portion of the shield that was still covering the main transmitter. One by one the icons on the jumpship holo displayed before Liam began to wink out, meaning less and less defensive options for the jumpship, though the lizards did lose another cruiser to the mass of plasma fire coming up at them before they created a semi-safe zone around the transmitter that made it hard for the surrounding cannons to depress far enough to target them.

They got that section of shield down just as the Hycre destroyer made a slow strafing run over their position, careful to shoot down at the enemy ships without missing and hitting the Human jumpship. The lizards ignored it and hammered away at the transmitter, knocking it out just before the smaller Star Force ships made it back and dove into the engagement.

It didn’t last long. By the time the trailing heavy cruisers arrived the 18 lizard warships were nothing more than debris…as was the Chimaera’s main transmitter, though most of it was still attached to the ship. Fortunately it wasn’t the only transmitter on the warship, but by losing it Liam had lost his ability for longer range control of his fleet, such as from one side of the star system to another. Fortunately even the backup transmitters had enough power to reach across planetary orbit, so this mission wouldn’t be affected, but once again the lizards had found a way to cause more trouble than Star Force expected them to, even if they hadn’t been able to deny them their objective.

The hologram of the Hycre symbol appeared again as an incoming transmission was translated into text.

STATUS OF SHIP DAMAGE?

“We’ve lost one of our transmitters and some weapon batteries, but we’re still operational,” Liam replied. “We’ll hit the station and their battleships as soon as we get our fleet back in range.”

WE WILL ASSIST.

Liam typed away at his podium inside the holographic nexus, reforming his fleet back into its vertical plane formation then advanced it towards the station, targeting it again with the heavy cruisers and their cleansing beams while staying out of effective plasma range. Once they’d racked up a significant amount of damage to the station the two battleships turned and fled the engagement, heading back down towards the planet’s surface.

“Damn it,” Liam swore, typing in pursuit orders then jabbing the transmit button for a line to the Hycre. “Stop them.”

He needn’t have bothered. By the time he transmitted his message the Hycre destroyer was already accelerating out ahead of the Star Force fleet and gaining ground on the battleships, which then split as they saw it was incoming. It pursued the one going to the right and intercepted it just before it reached the atmosphere and started to exchange green and white plasma between the ships with the first wisps of the planet’s air starting to drag on their shields as they were both headed on a trajectory almost straight down to the surface.

The battleship’s shields went down first, with the torrent of air flowing in and causing a portion of the hull to glow from the friction of descent, but the ship kept on fighting all the way down, finally punching through the destroyer’s forward shield that was also being stressed by the atmospheric friction. It stayed with the battleship until it had torn a huge hole in its hull, then it finally broke off and angled away into a long braking maneuver as it fought the planet’s gravity.

The more massive battleship wasn’t so fortunate. As it attempted to slow its own descent one of its gravity drives overloaded from the damage the Hycre had done to the ship and exploded, knocking out another small chunk of the ship and leaving it with less propulsive force than necessary to overcome gravity in the little time it had left.

The lizards tried to angle away as the destroyer had, but only managed to avert their head on collision with the planet by turning the impact into a long, scraping crash across the flat landscape. The underside dragged on the ground, digging out a deep furrow until the friction was too much and the ship’s nose caught and flipped the entire battleship head over heels, breaking it apart when the aft end smacked down in a shower of ship chunks that went twisting and twirling in all directions, plowing out smaller furrows of their own.

Liam monitored the impact site, noting the fact that there were at least 3 Darlestik cities in the area and doubting it could have missed all of them.

Meanwhile the second battleship got away, dipping into the planet’s atmosphere in a more controlled fashion and heading down to one of their surface bases and taking refuge beneath its shields. Liam tracked its position, noting that the lizard base was far larger than any they’d been able to establish on Corneria.

One thing at a time, he reminded himself, turning his attention back to the station that his ships were thoroughly chewing apart from range. He could have ordered them closer to finish it off faster, but he also knew they’d probably take some damage in the process which would limit his offensive capability for later. That meant his best bet was to take this slow and knock the station out from a distance, no matter how long it took.

Liam tweaked their lines and maneuvered a few of their ships around the perimeter to target backside weaponry, but otherwise he just stood and watched the station go down piece by tiny piece as the Hycre destroyer limped up out of the atmosphere and rejoined the Human fleet.

3

July 4, 2331

Gadre System

Iracet

Liam watched as the first rail gun rounds began to pass through gaps forming in the shields of the lizards’ largest base on Iracet…though ‘base’ was a misnomer, for this one had grown to the size of a city and had a shield both larger and stronger than any they’d encountered on Corneria. Fortunately the fleet that Star Force had sent had more than enough rail-gun equipped warships to deal with it.

Ammunition was limited in this assault, however. While the warships could refuel, repair, and reload at the jumpships there was only so many surplus rail gun rounds in storage and once they ran out their assault would come to an end…and there were far too many lizard bases on the planet to take them all out. With the increased shield strength they were showing compared to previous estimates, Liam was having to scale back their expectations considerably.

Taking out the largest base was the first priority, just to give the lizards and the Darlestiks the message that there was nowhere on the surface safe from Star Force’s orbital firepower. Hopefully that message, being delivered now in a horrific display of wanton damage as the lizards’ shields finally collapsed and all of the lethal rain began to get through, would inspire Iracet’s native population to greater rebellion, killing the myth of the lizards’ unchallengeable dominance, at least locally.

As Liam monitored the shattering buildings below he was simultaneously searching out their next target, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to get even a third of them all. He was currently torn between hitting those bases on the edge of the Darlestik contention zone and from trying to clear their inhabited moon of all lizard bases. He thought they had enough ammunition to do the latter, but most of the ongoing rebellion was occurring on the planet. The lizards didn’t have many bases on the moon because it had been mostly pacified, so if he cleared out those installations he wasn’t sure if there would be enough of a rebel presence to overthrow the scraps.

There was a lot he didn’t know about the situation. Star Force only had limited data provided by the Hycre to work with, which included a translation program but one that they hadn’t been able to dig into very deep on their own to verify. As it was, Liam didn’t have any Darlestik contacts on the planet to even talk to, let alone strategize with.

Which made this mission what he considered to be a ‘blind op.’ By that he meant that the help they were giving the Darlestik would be occurring without the natives’ knowledge. Obviously they would see the lizard city/base being wiped out, but how much communication those near the destruction had with those on other portions on the planet was unknown. It was possible that the rebels might not hear about it for some time and miss the opportunity for a quick counterstrike.

A planet was a huge place and without communications infrastructure one side of the world wouldn’t have a clue what was happening on the other. How much communications capability the Darlestik retained Liam didn’t know, but he doubted the lizards would have willingly left them much.

That question suggested a third possible plan of action…hitting bases in as widespread a pattern as possible, hoping to maximize eyes on target to spread the word. But was breaking the psychological stranglehold the lizards had on the Darlestiks the main objective, or was it breaking up the lizards’ infrastructure and supply lines?

Even still, should Liam call off the assault going on now after the shield generator was destroyed, which it just had been a few seconds ago with a beautiful centerline shot that gutted the tower in explosive fashion, and save ammunition to take down the defenses on more bases? Was it necessary to obliterate this base to send a message or was more widespread destruction the way to go?

Liam was leaning towards obliteration, but at the moment there were numerous contacts moving away from the doomed base, scattering in all directions now that they couldn’t hide underneath the shield…one of which was quite large and quickly gaining speed as it flew at low altitude across the landscape.

The Hycre hologram appeared and a pithy screechy transmission played out, along with the translation.

PAUSE ATTACK TO LET US PURSUE.

Liam frowned for a second, then realized that the angle that the battleship was escaping at put it directly opposite the base from the low orbit where the Hycre destroyer was waiting, meaning that a straight line pursuit course would bring it directly under the orbital bombardment.

Liam tapped a pair of buttons and all rail gun fire from his fleet ceased.

“You’re clear. Go get them,” he said, noticing that the destroyer had already begun its rapid descent. Even damaged it was far faster than any ship Star Force possessed, especially in atmosphere. He didn’t fully understand the shield modifications that let them cut through the air so rapidly, but given that their home environment was the high pressure atmosphere of gas giants he figured that technologically speaking the thinner atmosphere below them didn’t provide that big of a maneuvering challenge.

How the Hycre planned to take out the battleship with part of their forward weaponry destroyed was a mystery to Liam…but also something he was keenly interested in observing. The Chimaera was receiving a copy of the Hycre’s sensor data, both of the battleship it was pursuing and of the surface area of the planet that it was passing over. Both were far more detailed than what Liam had available from his own fleet, including the images of the damaged lizard base as the destroyer flew across it in hot pursuit of the fleeing warship.

“Map those images,” Liam told Captain Leslie, “and get revised targeting data out to the warships. I don’t want to waste a single round of ammunition by random firing if we don’t have to.”

“Yes, sir,” she acknowledged, relaying more specific orders to the bridge crew.

Liam left her to it as he watched the Hycre chase down the battleship…which was apparently trying to leapfrog across to another lizard base and take refuge there. When it was about halfway across the gap and discovered that it wasn’t going to be able to make it before the Hycre caught up it wheeled about and gained a few kilometers of altitude, intending to fight it out there.

The smaller Hycre destroyer didn’t hesitate or veer off course. It headed straight in, executing a hard braking maneuver and opened fire on the battleship as soon as it was in range, sending two long streaks of bright white plasma out towards the battleship as dozens of green plasma orbs were sent back in reply. The destroyer cut off its braking maneuver early, causing it to shoot ahead from where the lizard gunners expected it to be and making most of the enemy plasma overshoot.

The Hycre got off another hit before the destroyer flashed by at fairly close range then executed a long sweeping turn, taking it well away from the battleship with enough lateral momentum that the lizard gunners couldn’t track the ship until it came back at them straight on from the port flank, firing off another pair of streaks.

Then it held course, firing off a second salvo as it took hits of its own on its forward shield and top ‘fin’ on the shark-like design. That second pair of plasma lances broke through the battleship’s port shields and kissed the hull with minor damage…then the destroyer hit the brakes something fierce and came to a stop less than 1 kilometer away from ramming the larger ship. With its nose pointing straight into the side of the battleship the Hycre began blasting away with not two, but four plasma cannons that were now in range thanks to the wider profile of the target.

In addition smaller weapons on the ‘shark’ opened fire, adding damage to the unshielded hull as several pointblank green plasma orbs pummeled the destroyer’s shields. The two warships literally slugged it out like a boxing match until the destroyer took a hit on its port side and pulled up, accelerating over the battleship and away, firing its aft plasma weapons as it left and adding to the horrific gash in the enemy ship’s port side.

The battleship’s starboard weaponry hammered the destroyer for a few seconds as it fled, getting another hit through the gap in its shields but it didn’t take the ship down as most of the hits were absorbed by the ‘tail’ shields. The Hycre flew off on another long sweeping turn, pausing at extreme distance until their downed shields regenerated. Seeing the writing on the wall the heavily damaged battleship turned and began to accelerate towards the nearest lizard base, putting its still shielded starboard side in direct line with the Hycre.

To their credit the Hycre waited, pacing the battleship until their shields regained a measure of strength, then hit the lizards again before they could get within firing range of the defense towers at the lizard base. Instead of hitting the flank the battleship offered them, the Hycre flew around the aft arc at distance and came back in on their port side for another strafing run, landing two white streaks into the gaping hull breach.

Apparently the Hycre gunners weren’t just lashing out randomly at the enemy hull, because with the additional hits the front of the elongated battleship dipped down, falling underneath the rest of the ship and dragging it towards the surface. The lizards increased power to their aft gravity drives and the descent slowed to a stop, but the ship was hanging in midair, nose down, putting its aft conventional engines at the wrong angle to propel it on towards the base. In fact, it couldn’t fly in any direction other than straight down on those engines, making it a sitting duck for the Hycre destroyer to finish off.

Executing the only option it had, the battleship ran their remaining gravity drives to full power and began to lift the ship higher up into the atmosphere as the Hycre came around for another attack run and put two more shots into the hull, blasting out small pieces of the ship as it continued to rise up.

Before the destroyer could come around again the lizards shut off their gravity drives completely and let the ship fall towards the surface, using maneuvering engines to tip the nose progressively to the side, bringing its orientation parallel to the ground about halfway down. Once it passed that point and began to tip up the lizards kicked in their conventional engines and began to fly sideways, with every degree of angle added to their orientation adding more thrust to counteract gravity’s pull.

Liam watched the tracking data, mentally estimating their curve and not seeing how they were going to pull out of the dive in time. They did manage to get their nose to sky, but the speed they were dropping by was too great for their engines to counteract…then it dawned on him what they were trying.

Suddenly the tracking numbers shifted and the ship began to decelerate much faster…meaning the lizards were reactivating their gravity drives now that the ship had its nose up in the air instead of underneath them. This caused the ‘heavy’ top section to tip to the side, which the lizard thrusters tried to counteract.

They only slowed the tip over, but it was enough. The downward momentum was completely stalled out 4 kilometers above the surface and began to reverse. As it did they cut off the gravity drives and relied on the conventional engines only as the ship teetered to the side, gaining lateral momentum but losing altitude again as the thrust was angled to compensate for the ship’s center of gravity.

It all bottomed out at 1.5 kilometers above the surface, then the battleship ungainly limped up into the sky like a rocket and began to slowly fly towards the lizard base nose up and throwing out a massive amount of thrust to compensate, unable to use the gravity drives due to the angle of the ship.

The Hycre watched its tug of war with gravity, waiting to see if it would hit the ground. When it pulled out of the maneuver and began once again traveling toward its destination the destroyer came at it again making a series of several strafing runs, cutting into the vulnerable side of the ship until its conventional engines took a hit, dooming the lizards.

The battleship sank to the ground, hitting a Darlestik city while still maintaining partial thrust, blowing apart several buildings before it landed aft end down. The ship visibly crunched from the impact, then the top portion tipped over and flattened dozens of structures, killing who knew how many natives and lizards within the city.

The Hycre did a flyby, receiving no return fire, then angled their ship nose to sky and headed back up to orbit.

“Well done,” Liam whispered, belatedly signaling his fleet to resume bombardment of the primary lizard base. One on one, based on blueprints alone, the lizard battleship should have had a slight edge on the Hycre destroyer…but apparently they were as good tacticians as they were shipbuilders. Having stronger ships was important, but knowing how to use them was key, and it seemed the Hycre had both aspects covered.

They were definitely living up to their reputation of naval superiority.

Liam turned his attention back to the lizard base, seeing that Leslie had also sent his terminal the updated map of targets. After a quick glance at what they’d already destroyed he began tagging certain areas for additional hits and others as ‘clear’ zones, indicating that they didn’t require any more rounds fired. While it was impossible to precisely hit targets with unguided projectiles from orbit, Star Force had gotten good enough at the practice that he was confident that they could target specific areas of the city reliably, so he started to conserve ammunition while insuring that the base/city was thoroughly busted up.

Less than half an hour after the assault began Liam called a final halt to the bombardment, taking a few more minutes to survey the damage before ordering the fleet to redeploy to another location on the planet’s surface. Kitla, the planet’s moon, would have to wait. The active rebels on Iracet needed their assistance the most, not only in wiping out more lizard bases along the border of the rebellious areas, but in hitting the bases supplying the personnel, vehicles, and aircraft being used to try and subdue those areas.

The information the Hycre had given them included detailed maps and estimates of military production of all the lizard bases, dated as of 6 months ago. The destroyer had offered some updates upon arrival, but there were still three major centers of industry that Liam decided needed to go and it looked like his fleet had enough ammo remaining to take out one of them before heading back to the jumpships to reload.

Meanwhile 7 of the Star Force warships were already docked with the pair of jumpships and undergoing moderate repairs from the naval battle with the lizards. The large ships didn’t have full shipyard capability, but they had enough repair services to replace hull armor and swap out damaged components for spares they kept in storage, such as weapon batteries and shield emitters.

Once those ships were patched up they and their rail guns would be added to the rest of the fleet, and Liam intended to use every last rail gun round they had against the lizards before they left the system, hoping that whatever damage they managed to do would be enough to give the Darlestik enough of an advantage to survive.

4

September 13, 2331

Epsilon Eridani System

Inner Zone

The Chimaera braked hard against the Epsilon Eridani’s center star, ending the last leg of their return journey from Gadre without incident and with 11% fuel remaining. As soon as they slowed down their tracking data was immediately updated by the system’s navigation grid, relaying the position of all ships and stations with only a few minutes of signal lag.

The Sirius jumpline defense station was right where it should be…off to the side and monitoring all incoming and outgoing traffic. Next to it were two dozen or so drone warships ready to respond to any uninvited guests, a pair of SRs to deal with emergencies, and a halo of sensor stations surrounding the jumpline, but not on it. Even when a sensor stealthed ship like the lizards used jumped into a system there was enough of a high frequency reflection, or ‘jump flash,’ that could be detected moments before the ship arrived.

With the jumpship acting as a plow against the radiation coming out from the star, it would push the light back in towards the system with such a high doppler shift that the signal frequency shot well above gamma rays, giving the telltale sign of an incoming vessel even if it was only a minuscule amount of radiation being reflected.

That momentary warning was critical, however, for navigational purposes…and in fact all Star Force jumpships intentionally sent out an intense signal ahead of them starting at least an hour before arrival in order to alert the sensor beacons to their arrival point and trajectory, that way they could have at least a few minutes warning to clear the jumpline to avoid a potential collision. As it was, once a jumpship made the jump out of a system they had to veer to the ‘right’ and travel several hundred thousand kilometers off the jumpline to keep from potentially running into another jumpship coming the opposite way…then scoot back over onto the line for deceleration at the target system.

Granted, space was huge and collisions were extremely unlikely, but the more accurate a ship was able to hold to a jumpline the greater the chance of another doing the same and running into each other, hence the new travel protocols, which also included a weaker signal being transmitted continuously during a jump so that an opposite traveling jumpship could mark another’s position and move to avert an upcoming collision, again, moving to the ‘right’ as far as the galactic plane was concerned.

Trouble was, not all races observed the same protocols, though the Hycre had agreed to follow Star Force procedure when traveling through one of their 17 systems.

“Welcome back, Chimaera,” a voice sounded over the comm from the ‘jump station.’

“Thank you,” Liam answered back as the comm officer shunted the communication over to him as had become standard protocol when entering a system. “Any activity while we were gone?”

“Nope. All quiet here. Ship status?”

“We’re in the green.”

“Is the Sebacean behind you?”

“Should be an hour back.”

“No warnings or updates to deliver today, so you’re clear to proceed.”

“Thank you,” Liam said, ending the brief protocol conversation. “Captain, set course for Corneria. Moderate speed.”

Leslie nodded and began conversing with the helmsman as Liam accessed the insystem communications grid and logged a request for repair work on the damaged warships that both the Chimaera and Sebacean were bringing back with them. After waiting through several minutes of signal lag he received response, indicating that they should be taken to the A4 shipyard.

“Helm, how are we poised for a course correction?”

The man in the station in front of both Liam and the Captain swung around in his chair. “We’re currently trolling into a slingshot trajectory around the star enroute to Arcadia, but we can move into a lower orbit and redirect if necessary.”

“Keep the leg to Arcadia, then divert to Optimus,” Liam said, glancing at his own navigational holo.

“Shipyards?” Leslie guessed.

Liam nodded.

“They’re ahead of schedule,” she commented.

“That, or they’re partially operational. I’m just glad there were some slips already open.”

“Will you be staying onboard for the duration?”

“No…in fact I’ll bail out at Arcadia. What’s our eta?”

“8 hours, 34 minutes,” the helmsman offered.

Liam turned to the Captain. “The bridge is yours. I’m going to get one last workout in before I jump ship.”

When the Chimaera decelerated against Arcadia’s gravity well it pushed a bit on the star’s gravity to move it into an orbit around the desert planet using differentiated gravity drives. It was another step up the tech ladder, which allowed the gravity drive to focus on a single gravitational vector…meaning it could push against a planet or star to the exclusion of all other gravity wells present. With the jumpship containing multiple gravity drives one could then push against the star for some lateral movement while the others braked against the center of Arcadia, slowing the ship and neatly settling into orbit without having to use its thrust-based, fuel sucking engines.

Once it was tucked into orbit a shuttle was sent over from the planet’s one and only starport to pick up Liam, then the jumpship waited until its orbital progression put it on the jumpline between Arcadia and Optimus. Once there it made a microjump, traveling from the innermost planet in the system to the 2nd and cutting back close to the star to do it. It certainly wasn’t the shortest route to the shipyard but it was the fastest, given that a jumpship obtained ‘traction’ from pushing off between gravity wells rather than ‘normal’ propulsion. The arrival point into the system hadn’t been near any of the planets, leaving the jumpship a bit ‘adrift’ until it had gotten to Arcadia.

The jumpship had purposefully maintained a bit of their forward momentum when coming out of the jump so that they were slowly falling into the star, then the helmsman had used all of their gravity drives to push off of Corneria, which was situated behind them and to the left, to move them laterally over the course of several hours and into the slingshot orbit the jumpship had just come out of.

Ironically, the subsequent trip from Arcadia to Optimus would take less than 10 minutes, thanks to the direct line of flight between the planets.

Liam’s shuttle brought him back to the starport where he waited 2 hours before boarding an inter-planetary starship that flew him and a few other personnel out to Corneria using its own, smaller gravity drives. That route was actually a 2 leg trip, bouncing off the 6th planet in the system, a gas giant, and back in to Corneria, all of which took them 6 hours.

The starship braked early coming into the planet to avoid the infrastructure in low orbit. In addition to all the Star Force stations there were now 7 Canderian sedas and a scattering of Russian facilities servicing their large colony on the surface. Three of their warships, equipped with downgraded versions of Star Force plasma cannons, held close by for security reasons despite the fact that the entire system was full of warships far more powerful than the 2 cutters and corvette. Still, Liam appreciated their attitude and commitment to self-defense instead of leaving their security entirely up to Star Force.

They weren’t the only nation that had been given colonization rights within the system. Brazil also had been given a small stake on Corneria seven years previously, which was still in the early stages of development. They had about 12,000 colonists on site, but without being able to ship their own construction materials out from Sol their growth was tied to either expensive Star Force shipping charges or purchasing materials off the Star Force markets.

Following a nationalistic policy, Brazil wasn’t buying any prefab Star Force buildings, preferring instead to construct their own from raw materials bought from the market. Due to that their startup timeline had stretched out to more than 10 times what it had taken the Russians to get to a similar point of development, but slow as it was Brazil was making progress and bringing some of its own industry online, allowing them to produce more of their own materials. A few more years of growth and they’d reach the tipping point and see their expansion rate snowball, but they were definitely doing things the hard way compared to everyone else.

The only other nation within the system was Australia, but they didn’t have a stake on Corneria. Instead, Star Force had given them control over 90% of the land on Optimus, reserving the other small portion for its own spaceports and two medium-sized colonies that fed their underwater infrastructure on the waterworld. The planet’s surface was less than 1% land, but Star Force’s aquatics division was furiously expanding underneath the waves while they let the Australians colonize essentially their own planet, which had quickly become a gem of a resort world.

Tourism made up 63% of their economy, but they were also following the Star Force model and building up their local industry in a self-sufficient fashion. Already they had enough resources to survive without Star Force markets for more than 2 years and were pressing to increase that number with increased foodstuff production facilities, underwater mining sites, and a wide variety of factories producing everything from building materials to toothpaste.

They were also stockpiling other items they didn’t currently produce, taking no chances should interplanetary or interstellar trade routes suddenly be cut off, in addition to fielding a sizeable defense force of their own. They had a small fleet of 16 warships in orbit and more than 5,000 troops guarding their 1.4 million civilians and 250,000 annual tourists living on Optimus.

They weren’t the only non-Star Force residents within the system, however, for the Hycre had also been allowed to colonize Threshold, the gas giant that Liam’s starship had redirected off of. While the planet wasn’t nearly as hot as the Hycre liked, it was habitable to them similar to Alaska being habitable to Humans. Not the most preferred location, but given how few habitable planets there were in the galaxy, regardless of your species, it was still worth colonizing.

Their population numbers weren’t shared with Star Force regularly, but the last count they’d given had been 19.2 million. Liam knew they had a lot of structures beneath the cloud layers where Star Force sensors couldn’t see, but the Hycre also had three large stations in orbit with a fourth currently under construction. The largest one was a trade center in which the Humans delivered raw resources mined on Corneria and other rocky planets to the Hycre per the trade agreement they’d struck in their first diplomatic summit nearly 65 years ago.

They’d worked out an exchange rate, receiving credit for the various metals and other compounds that the Hycre had in short supply, then were given an equal amount of rare materials on Star Force’s list, including corovon, epiti, and large amounts of metallic hydrogen that the Hycre mined from the core of Threshold.

Surrounding the planet was a fleet three times as powerful as Star Force’s, but with less than half their number of ships. Ever since they’d made their pact, the Hycre had devoted a significant force to defending the Human system against lizards and others that began to show up once news of the Human victory began to spread. They didn’t have a presence in Sol or any other Star Force system, but had made a point of securing a safe ‘cradle’ for the Humans to develop in, as well as establishing a stronghold in a region of space that they’d historically not been present in.

Losses against the lizards had pushed them back in many areas, usually when another race’s system fell rather than their own, but none the less the lizard border had continued to expand and the portion of it that the Hycre dominated was continually shrinking. The ‘Human sector,’ as the Hycre referred to it, was their only point of pushback and they’d been investing in it heavily, establishing outposts and even two other colonies in nearby systems that Star Force had no presence in.

In addition to the 5 inhabited planets Star Force had in the system, it had also established a freestanding station in its own orbit around the star that served as an interstellar commerce zone. Thanks to the Hycre, Star Force had come into contact with 4 other races as well as having been exposed to many others that hadn’t made formal contact. The Babylon station served as a small city where those other races, including the Hycre, had small enclaves that served as embassies and outposts for their interests in the region.

As a result Epsilon Eridani saw a moderate amount of non-Human traffic coming through, some of which came for the trade market on Babylon, but many simply used the facility as a way station, renting out large cargo holds to use for their own transactions and resupply. Star Force had some rules regarding what they could use their station for…first and foremost was they couldn’t keep any live creatures onboard for use as food.

The Berss had thrown a fit when Star Force discovered they were keeping a flock of birdlike creatures in one of the holds to slaughter at will, and had even pulled out of Babylon for two years in protest before grudgingly asking permission to return. Star Force agreed, after writing out a code of conduct policy covering any and every contingency they could think up, not wanting to be caught off guard again.

Already the station had to be enlarged twice, which it easily could be thanks to the modular design Star Force had wisely implemented. Liam and the other trailblazers hadn’t been sure what to expect when they built and opened up the station to other races through invitations spread and endorsed by the Hycre, but the result had been a tiny amount of inter-racial trade that had brought a number of scientific breakthroughs as Star Force got a taste of new tech and, more importantly, new materials that the V’kit’no’sat had no record of.

That was probably because they were inferior to what the dinos used, but since Star Force was still eons away from catching up with them these lesser technologies and discoveries were helping to upgrade and expand the Humans’ technological capabilities, as well as gather information about more of the galaxy through simple commerce and communication with races that inhabited regions the Hycre had no presence in.

All of the 6 races that had enclaves on the station, counting Star Force and the Hycre, were enemies of the lizards to some degree, which offered a common purpose in exchanging intelligence they had on Cajdital, as the lizards were commonly called, though it appeared they didn’t care for that name…which was probably a major reason why their enemies used it. The lizards name for themselves was Li’vorkrachnika when you took out the varying screeches and whistles that Human vocal chords couldn’t master.

Star Force officially referred to the lizards by their common name of Cajdital when dealing with other races, but simply labeled them ‘lizards’ for their own records, given that the nickname had stuck early on and nothing better had arisen to replace it.

A special room on Babylon had been devoted to cataloging and sharing their common intel on the lizards, making Epsilon Eridani not only a growing inter-racial commerce hub, but a source for information brokering as well. Already two other races had sent requests to Star Force through the Hycre inquiring about the possibility of establishing formal relations with the Humans. One of those was all but confirmed, but the other was still being investigated as the Hycre were ambivalent concerning their request.

All said, while Epsilon Eridani was a Human system it was quickly gaining a rep for being an inter-civilization watering hole, upping Star Force’s status in the region and on the anti-lizard front.

When Liam reached Corneria he transferred off the starship and onto another starport, then traveled down to Corneria Prime via dropship where Mandy-512 met him at the starport with bottle in hand. He paused just off the boarding gangway and took a swig, sucking down the hot chocolate with care to get a good taste.

“Better,” he pronounced, taking another longer drink for ingestion’s sake rather than a taste test. “But I still don’t like the cinnamon.”

Mandy frowned. “I dialed it back enough that I didn’t think it’d bother you.”

“It’s tolerable, but not needed. Stick with mint,” he suggested as they walked away from the landing pads and further into the spaceport.

“And if I told you the Clan disagrees?”

“You’d be lying…what was the vote?”

“48%,” she said dismally.

“That’s up,” Liam said mock reassuringly. “Only 32% more to go.”

The Neon Squirrel’s frown leveled out. “How’d it go?”

“Well,” Liam said, taking the fork in the hallway that led to a city transit terminal. “We cleared planetary orbit and did a significant amount of damage to the surface, but there were still a lot of bases we didn’t even scratch…and we never even got to the moon.”

“Worth it?”

Liam nodded. “At the minimum it will slow their growth and give the Darlestiks more time. With luck they might be able to take the offensive.”

“So what now?”

“For them or us?”

“Both.”

Liam sighed. “We haven’t decided yet. The Hycre haven’t requested any additional missions, at least as far as I know.”

“Any chance of Neon Squirrel getting a shot?”

“We’re not putting down ground forces unless we’re moving in, and we’re not going to do that with a race we know almost nothing about.”

“Afraid of them turning on us after we kick the lizards out?”

“Possibly. Too many unknowns. Right now we’re playing a support role. Anything beyond that is up in the air.”

“You need anything?”

Liam sucked down the rest of the hot chocolate and handed the bottle back to her as they arrived at the transit terminal. “Nope. And don’t wait up on me. I don’t know how long this is going to take. I might not get back to the colony for a few days.”

“We’ll keep the lights on,” she assured him as he ducked into one of several small, pod-like cars.

When the curved door closed he zipped away on a mono-rail track, disappearing into a tunnel in the wall and off through the city to the command building where several of the trailblazers and Duke Hightower were waiting for his in-person mission debrief.

5

January 2, 2347

Epsilon Eridani System

Babylon Station

“Dak’tule, Ardvak,” Dakota-041 offered in greeting to the Critel ambassador as he sat down and slipped in an earpiece wirelessly connected to the module in the center of the commerce table. The gangly creature across from him made a buzzing sound with its X-shaped lips, which the translation module interpreted as a chuckle in a deep Human voice, followed by equally low toned words as the ambassador began to speak and the program translated with a slight delay.

“Your speech improves, Dakota,” Ardvak said, answering familiarly due to the ongoing dialog the two men had established. “I wish I had the skill to mimic your words, but my voice cannot bear the strain.”

“I’ve been practicing,” Dakota admitted, speaking English which the module translated into Critel and transmitted to Ardvak’s headband that wrapped around to cover the ear slits on his large, bald head. “What have you got for me this time?”

“An introduction. One of our merchants was contracted to bring an emissary to this station so that they might speak with you on urgent business.”

“An emissary from who?”

“They are unknown to me, but our traders have limited contact with them. They are a primitive race from the Iona System. Single planet, no space travel.”

“Do they speak Critel?”

“Partially, but their emissary claims to speak Human. It seems they’ve been studying you for some time.”

Dakota frowned. “How?”

“I wondered that myself and inquired. It seems they obtained information from our traders about many races, but particularly yours.”

“Interesting,” Dakota mewed. “Did he say what the urgent business was?”

“No, unfortunately. I tried to pry the information from him but he was adamant about maintaining diplomatic security and would not speak of the matter with anyone but a Human.”

Dakota leaned back in his chair. “You think they want to open an enclave?”

“I could get no read on this individual. His race is new to me and I haven’t been able to learn their idiosyncrasies.”

“What do they look like?”

“Smaller than us…both of us, I mean. Biped with a tail. Tough, grey/green skin. Three digits.”

Dakota held his hand up flat, then moved it up and down. Ardvak raised his long, pale gray fingers up to just under a meter in height.

“Really short,” he commented. “What kind of trading?”

“Various natural resources. The system is outside our normal trade routes, but some enterprising individuals managed to secure exchange rates lucrative enough to travel the extra distance.”

“Anything we’d be interested in?”

Ardvak made another buzzing sound, which the translator interpreted as indecision.

“They have nothing rare, but have significant amounts of palladium and tungsten, which I know Humans use a great deal of.”

“We use a lot of materials,” Dakota reminded him. “So you’re suggesting that any potential trade deals would be resource only?”

“They have little technology, from what I am told. What mining they do is labor intensive, but they have a high population so it balances out. My government does not feel they are important enough to establish formal relations with. I promised I would pass on their request for contact to you, but I made no promise of your response. I fully understand if they are not worth your time, but you have an interest in meeting new races, yes?”

Dakota smiled, picking up on some of the Critel politics involved. “Arrange a meeting for three hours from now, if possible.”

“They will accommodate you, I’m sure.”

“Do you have any other business with us?”

“Not at the moment. Have you any for us?”

“Not at the moment,” Dakota echoed.

“Thank you for your time,” Ardvak said, standing up and stretching out his long, thin body up to his 7 foot height. “I will set up the introduction.”

“3 hours,” Dakota reminded him, then walked out the door on his side of the table while Ardvak went out his.

Ardvak opened the door and walked into the commerce room first, then was followed in by another Critel and finally the smaller alien that almost bounced along with each step. Dakota was waiting on his side of the table that stretched all the way down into the floor, acting as a solid barrier between the two groups with no room to walk around either side, for it stretched out and connected with the side walls. There was no barrier above the table though, giving both parties an intimate, yet segregated room to discuss matters of state within.

Babylon had dozens of these rooms with the built-in translation programs for use by all of the enclaves and their patrons. Typically no more than a third were in use simultaneously, but as the station drew more and more traffic the commerce rooms had started to become popular amongst the other races that typically couldn’t speak each other’s languages. Many had translation programs for text messages sent between ships or their enclaves, but few had realtime translation programs that they could use in person.

At the moment two of the other rooms were in use by Human delegations while 13 others were in use by non-Human parties. The Human negotiators were all Clan Kirk, as were all of the Humans on Babylon. Dakota’s Clan had been given stewardship of the Babylon station, which included providing security for all involved. As the small alien passed through the door and it closed behind it when the motion sensors indicated that the threshold was clear, Dakota caught a glimpse of one of the two Knight guards outside, both of which stood as tall as the Critel, then the four diplomats were sealed inside behind privacy-lined walls.

“Dak’tule,” Ardvak offered in greeting as he attached his headband and passed one to the other Critel.

“Dak’tule,” Dakota echoed, his eyes falling on the other gangly alien.

“This is the Captain of the freighter that transported Kritas here,” Ardvak explained. “And this…is Kritas.”

“Greetings,” the small alien said in English, standing on the floor as its two towering companions sat down. Dakota remained standing on his side so the table wouldn’t block his view of the newcomer.

“Hello,” Dakota offered, reminding himself to speak as simply as possible. “I am told you learned our language?”

“We have,” it said, but did not elaborate any further.

“I am also told that you traveled a long way to speak to us. We will listen.”

“We are happy. We are also sad. We are ashamed. We seek your mercy.”

Dakota frowned and tossed a quick look at Ardvak, who shook his head…a Human gesture that he’d picked up, indicating that he didn’t know what this was about.

“Your name is Kritas?”

“Kiritas, yes.”

“What is the name of your people?”

“We are Kiritas.”

“What is your individual name?”

“I speak for all. I take the name of all.”

“Kiritas, what kind of mercy do you seek?”

“We die. We do not want to die. We ask for mercy.”

Mercy, Dakota thought, guessing they’d gotten the meaning a bit wrong.

“How are you dying?”

“We starve.”

“You seek aid.”

“We will compensate.”

“You wish to establish trade?”

“We seek mercy.”

Dakota glanced at Ardvak. “Can you try and define ‘mercy’ for me?”

The tall Critel, still taller than the Kiritas even when sitting, spoke in a series of warbles to the small alien that his earpiece also translated. When the Kiritas responded the translated answers were broken and jumbled, suggesting that its understanding of the Critel language was limited. After a few exchanges Ardvak turned back to Dakota.

“I think by ‘mercy’ they mean ‘help.’”

“Thank you,” the trailblazer said, looking back down at the angled head plate across the table that reminded Dakota of a hornless triceratops. “Why do you ask us and not others? Why not ask the Critel?”

“Humans are saviors. We have heard stories. You freed Darlestiks. You rescue Junlats. You can save Kiritas also. What is ours is yours. We want to die no longer.”

“You need foodstuffs?”

“We need many things. You have large planet. You no starve. Teach us not to starve. Teach us to travel the stars. Teach us to be like you. We need your mercy.”

Large planet…overpopulation.

“How many Kiritas are there?”

“2 trillion. Too many. Cannot save.”

Dakota’s eyes went wide. Did it get the number right?

Ardvak stepped in and asked in his language for a clarification of the number, but the Kiritas had to answer in a roundabout way because it didn’t know the Critel word for ‘trillion.’

“All on one planet?” Ardvak asked the Captain beside him.

“He speaks the truth. They are very overcrowded.”

“What do you trade with them?” Dakota asked.

“Various elements and compounds they mine.”

“What do you give them?”

The Critel hesitated a moment, then purred a bit, which the translator tagged as a gesture of shame. “Food.”

Dakota glanced at the ambassador. “That explains the profit margins.”

“Indeed,” Ardvak said, glaring at the Captain. “And not much of it?”

“They’re willing to trade for small amounts. They don’t even use most of the stuff they mine so they trade it away almost for free. They asked for little in return and we gave it to them. We’re businessmen. Why pay more than the client is charging?”

Dakota and Ardvak stared at him for a moment before the Human spoke again. “How bad is it?”

The Captain glanced to his left at the Kiritas, almost apologizing before he spoke. “Their world is out of control. They are not stupid, but they have no population control and have outgrown their planet’s natural resources. The foodstuffs we trade them feed thousands.”

“What do they eat?”

“We trade them kiporat.”

“It’s somewhat similar to your bread,” Ardvak offered. “Small cakes about this size,” he said, putting his fingers together to outline a perimeter slightly larger than Dakota’s fist.

“Cheap?”

“Fairly,” the ambassador admitted, “more widespread than low quality.”

Dakota looked down at the Kiritas. “You said what is yours is ours. What did you mean?”

“You set terms. We agree.”

“What do you think we will ask?”

“We die. It matters not. Save us.”

Dakota sucked in a deep breath then blew it out slowly. “Tell me more about your world.”

“It is large. Gravity more than this. Flat land, small water. We build big cities. Many cities. What else you want to know?”

“Do you have any maps or data?”

“Maps yes. Do not know word ‘data.’”

“Information,” Dakota clarified.

“Yes, Kiritas bring much. I translate for you,” it said, pulling out a handful of what looked like data chips from the vest it wore. Then it reached into another pocket and pulled out what looked like a scroll and with one quick movement jumped up on top of the table and laid the objects down for Dakota to see. It flipped a tiny button on the scroll and the stiff material became flexible and the Kiritas rolled it out flat and touched another button, powering up the flatscreen and plugging in one of the chips to a slot along the edge.

A planetary map appeared with what looked like surface images.

“Do you have objects in orbit?”

“Yes, they make these pictures,” the Kiritas said, zooming in to a much closer view, going all the way down to street level where there was a cluster of small bumps smooshed together into a giant mass. “This is my home. You can see all parts of planet on this map.”

Dakota leaned over and took a closer look at the flatscreen, tapping what he thought was the zoom out button, seeing that the landscape was littered with the building clusters. He continued to zoom out, realizing that virtually all of the land space on the planet was filled with urbanization.

“Where do you make your food?”

“Many places,” the Kiritas said, taking control of the map and moving it to another of the nub-like building clusters. “We make food inside. Not enough. Too few fields.”

“How many more would you need to feed all of you?”

“We eat as little as possible. Many are sick because of this. At this amount of eating, double the fields we need. We have no place left to build. We take down old buildings, make new field, more Kiritas born. We cannot feed all. Many sick. Cannot work. Less to build. ”

Dakota leaned to the side and tapped a button on the translation module, opening a slide panel to reveal a control panel. Using it the Archon brought up a holographic display of a star chart, searching out the Iona System.

As he expected it was coreward of Sol and outside the mapping range of the Hycre. Star Force had never been there, obviously, but it was 58 light years away and on the back border of Critel territory. That was still a long haul for Star Force, especially if they were considering regular food shipments, but it wasn’t too far away to rule out all assistance.

The star system on the map was only a dot, but when Liam hit another button it exploded out into an insystem view with dozens of planets that had been cataloged by the V’kit’no’sat. No other maps obtained by Star Force covered this area, which was indicated by a small red tag at the base of the hologram.

“Which is your planet?”

The Kiritas pointed to one of the outer ones. “This is Kirit.”

Dakota pulled up the planetary data, noting that there were no native species listed, which he found curious. “Do any of the other planets have people on them?”

“We do not think so.”

Dakota glanced up at the Captain. “Are there?”

“No, there aren’t.”

Dakota zoomed the Star Force map out again, looking at the available jumplines. Star Force had a 22 light year maximum jump limit on its most advanced gravity drives due to targeting accuracies. The farther away the target was, the harder it was to hit. Some adjustments could be made enroute via thrust-based engines but not much, meaning the jumpship had to jump off the departure star exactly as needed else they’d miss the target star.

There were also navigational hazards blocking the jumplines, such as nebula and other debris. Those had to be avoided, and given that Star Force hadn’t been to this region they couldn’t be sure which jumplines were still clear. Nebula weren’t bound to move a lot, but given that it had been millennia since the V’kit’no’sat map had been updated they couldn’t take the chance and send a jumpship out before they’d sent a probe ship. It would take time to chart new/old jumplines, but that too could be accomplished if needed.

“What route do your ships take?”

The Captain leaned forward and traced three long lines coming out of their territory with one of his fingers.

“These jumplines are clean?”

“Two are. This one has limited debris, but our shields are strong enough to weather the transition.”

Dakota saw him point to the middle leg, one that was out of their way anyway.

“Ardvak, I’d appreciate any updated charts the Critel can provide.”

“I’ll inquire.”

“You will give mercy?” the Kiritas asked, its tail twitching side to side hopefully.

“We will look,” Dakota promised. “How long can you stay here before you go home?”

“As long as needed.”

“Good. We will have many questions. Now, I need to talk with my brothers,” the Archon explained, looking over at Ardvak. “Where is he staying?”

“For the time being he is a guest at our enclave.”

“I’ll make sure he has private quarters by tomorrow. Can you see to his orientation and care until then?”

“So long as he is our guest, that is my obligation.”

Dakota nodded his thanks, then turned back to the Kiritas. “We will talk again later.”

“Kiritas will be waiting.”

The trailblazer threw one last glance at Ardvak then shut down the hologram and retreated out the door on his side of the room, heading straight to Babylon’s control room.

“Narri, we have a new race on the station, single individual. Get him quarters assigned, coordinate with the Critel ambassador. He’s staying with them as a guest at the moment.”

“Who are they?” the fellow Clan Kirk Archon asked.

“Kiritas…from coreward of here,” Dakota said as he walked to the comm terminal and stood over the shoulder of the on duty officer. “Get me a priority prompt and tag all trailblazers in the system and Hightower as recipients.”

“Video or text?”

“Text.”

The officer worked the terminal for a few furious seconds in a flurry of button presses then his hands fell silent. “Done,” he said, giving up his seat.

Dakota sat down and began typing out a short report, along with insisting that his fellow Archons get their asses out to Babylon asap.

6

February 19, 2348

Iona System

Kirit

Randy watched from the bridge of the MCV-class jumpship Forge as it made a slow approach to the planet Kirit, coming in above the asteroid laden rings on an approach to the clear lower orbits. Aside from a scattering of satellites there was no space infrastructure to speak of. No ships, no stations, no orbital tethers…nada. If it wasn’t for the planetary rings the orbital space around Kirit would have been absolutely desolate, with only a few dozen probe-like satellites buzzing around like gnats.

There was one other signal in orbit, but it didn’t belong to the Kiritas. It was the Chimaera, still packed tight with its drone warships, having arrived an hour earlier. A third Freighter-class jumpship was due an hour later and was already in the system, but given that Kirit was the 8th planet around a huge white star it was considerably far away from the jumppoint the Star Force ships had arrived at. It had taken the Forge 8 hours to transit from there to the planet, then another hour to cautiously approach lower orbit around the planetary rings.

Tom-008 was commanding the Chimaera on this mission while the Nebuchadnezzar didn’t have any Archons onboard. It was playing the role of cargo hauler, as it normally did, with its regular captain and crew. It and the Chimaera would be returning to Star Force territory shortly, but the question was would the Forge be doing likewise or remaining behind.

The foodstuffs the Nebuchadnezzar was carrying were going to the Kiritas, that much had been determined, but whether or not Star Force was going to take up the role of becoming caretaker of the planet was a decision in the making. There had been many discussions amongst the trailblazers as to what they could do and what they should do, but until they got on the planet and judged the conditions for themselves they’d be relying on secondhand information for an undertaking of massive proportions…which was something they weren’t willing to do.

However, if the Kiritas really were starving to death they couldn’t afford to waste time. Randy had been dispatched with the Forge to give him the option of beginning to build Star Force infrastructure immediately if they chose to go that route, while the other two jumpships would return as couriers with news and further requests for material and personnel. The Chimaera was present to make sure the system really was secure. Even though it was well outside of lizard territory they weren’t the only threats in the galaxy, and had the Kiritas been deceiving Star Force about the extent of their space technology it was possible they could have posed a threat to the jumpships themselves.

That didn’t appear to be the case, however. In fact, as Randy began to get surface scans from the Chimaera it was becoming clear that the primitive planet the Kiritas had described in detail was just that…highly urbanized and technologically unremarkable.

When the Forge made it to a low parking orbit Randy waited for the Nebuchadnezzar to arrive then rode down to the planet’s surface with the first wave of supplies on an assault shuttle from the Forge. It was armed, quick, and could carry a limited amount of cargo, perfect for security patrols or point to point troop transfers. The Forge had many of the craft onboard and Randy had dispatched more than half of them to fly escort down to the coordinates the Kiritas envoy directed them to.

He’d been expecting some type of spaceport, but as they flew over the surface from a few kilometers of elevation he saw a small lake in the distance and the narrow, dry beach that was to be their landing zone. Along the perimeter of the nearby buildings were thousands of Kiritas smashed into every street exit, balcony, and plaza within eyesight, but none of them were on the beach, keeping it clear for the dropships to arrive.

Randy turned to the Kiritas beside him in the hold of the shuttle. “Are they going to be a problem with the offloading?”

“No. They are here to help and to watch,” the diminutive alien said with its tail twitching rhythmically.

Randy walked a step over to the pilot and put a hand on her shoulder. “Pick a spot along the water and take us down…but give us a few meters of beach between ship and water.”

“You want me to wait on the ground or air?” she asked, beginning their final descent.

“Air. I’ll comm you when I want pickup.”

Randy watched from the cockpit monitors as the shuttle slowly set down on the angled beach, not feeling the tilt due to the inertial dampeners/artificial gravity. He half-expected the crowd to swarm them when they touched down but to his surprise not a single one of them moved. Carrying his helmet the trailblazer walked out the boarding ramp and down onto the sands of Kirit with two other Clan Star Fox Archons beside him. All three of them were armed with weapons on their backs, making for a formidable first contact party as they followed the hopping envoy up the incline to the edge of the crowd.

Randy noticed the steep incline to the beach, which he guessed was at least 15%, figuring that was going to make the cargo offloading a bit slower and wondering why the Kiritas had selected these coordinates. Surely they had some courtyard or airfield they could have set down in.

A few of the other Kiritas along the edge of the crowd came down to meet them and there was a brief conversation between the envoy and the others in their native language, then a loud cascade of elated chirps broke out that made Randy’s skin crawl. He guessed that was their version of cheering, but it could just as easily have been war cries by the sound of it.

The envoy walk/hopped back over to Randy with two others, both of which looked slightly larger than those in the crowd, but still very thin. He couldn’t see ribs on these two like those in the crowd, so he guessed they were higher placed in Kiritas society and had access to more food. He also noticed that most of the crowd was topless, wearing only thin pants opposed to the envoy who wore much more clothing.

The air was hot, which could have offered a partial explanation, but Randy also wondered if it might not have something to do with available resources given a population of trillions living on one planet.

“Human Ran-dai, this is Kiritas Lorni leader,” the envoy introduced. “I speak for them.”

“Hello,” Randy offered, looking down on the pair. From previous conversations he’d had with the envoy he knew that their clans were led by brood pairs, with both functioning as one individual within Kiritas society. “Where would you like us to deliver the foodstuffs?”

The envoy translated for him and got a quick response from the one on the right.

“Kiritas Lorni thanks you for granting mercy. They say to put supplies here and they will carry them where needed.”

“Alright,” Randy said, slipping on his helmet and giving the go ahead to the first dropship. Within 30 seconds one descended from the holding pattern that had begun to accumulate above the lake and set down beside them, its long wings filling the beach side to side as the Dragon barely had room to land. In fact, its front landing legs were sitting in the water with the nose of the craft sticking out over the lake in order to secure some acreage of beach between the main cargo door and the surrounding buildings to facilitate the offloading.

With the Kiritas hopping along behind him, Randy and the other two Archons headed over to the dropship and supervised the crew as they began to offload large pallets of boxed foodstuffs onto the sand.

“Can you move them this large or do we need to unpack them?”

The envoy translated again and got a quick response.

“We will unpack and carry by hand. Show us how to open.”

“Loader, I need a cutting tool,” Randy said, walking partway up the wide aft boarding ramp and into the dropship.

One of the crew retrieved and tossed him the device as they continued to haul the large crates out on tiny forklifts that carried far more weight than it would appear possible, looking more like sweepers than lifting gear.

Randy walked back out of the ship and down to where the Kiritas were waiting at the nearest crate, some of which were eyeing it expectantly. He cut through the straps holding the containers in place then pulled one of the bathtub sized boxes off the top, finding it a bit heavier than usual given the planet’s high gravity but it wasn’t anything his acolyte muscles couldn’t handle.

Setting the tub down on the ground he undid the latch on the sturdy plastic container and opened the lid, revealing stacks of packaged foodstuffs. Everything in this box was type C rations, specifically created for the consumption of the Kiritas with months of taste test help from their envoy back on Babylon. Each package contained 64 cubes, each of which held enough calories to sustain a Kiritas for a day, based on the minimum amount most of their population was surviving on.

The Lorni leader and the envoy conversed again, with the well clothed Kiritas looking up at Randy expectantly. “Can we take them now or do you want to set terms first?”

“Have at it, Sparky. Food first, talk later,” he told him, using the nickname he’d assigned the envoy months ago. The Kiritas naming system wasn’t very useful for the Humans, mainly because the little aliens rarely used it for themselves, preferring to be addressed by their race, clan, or at best their occupation. Familiar titles were used in private company only, it seemed, but Randy wasn’t having any of that and had named the envoy anyway, which it reluctantly accepted.

“Your mercy is great,” Sparky answered, then translated for the Lorni leader. They gave another round of instructions and the crowd suddenly moved forward and slowly swarmed around them, causing Randy’s senses to flash a proximity warning, but no trouble broke out. Each of them grabbed one of the packages and disappeared into the crowd, carrying the foodstuffs away to somewhere else.

Before Randy could take a few breaths the box was halfway empty so he pulled another one off and set it on the ground for the shorter aliens to get at, with the other two Archons stepping up and doing the same. Once the loading crew saw what they were doing they stopped bringing out more pallets and started opening the ones already on the beach and collecting the empty boxes for reuse later, slowing the entire unloading process down considerably but maximizing distribution out to the Kiritas population.

After getting the first dropship squared away Randy and his squad went around to the other dropships landing nearby on the beach and showed their crews what they needed to do, after which there was a round the clock beach party offloading a continual stream of foodstuffs. Randy opted out after an hour or so and called the assault shuttle back down to pick him up along with Sparky and one of the ruling brood pair while the other stayed on the beach. From there they took to the sky and supervised the offloading from above while taking a brief tour of the city.

“We need to set up another landing zone, or this is going to take forever,” Randy told him as he searched the city for any opening big enough to use. “How about there?”

Sparky looked up at the display screen where the Human was pointing then chattered away with the Lorni.

“Bad things happen there.”

“Have happened or will happen?”

“Both. Not safe.”

“What’s dangerous?”

“Starving Kiritas go crazy for food. Banished to this place and others. They hurt others to stay alive.”

Randy’s gut clenched, reading between the lines of what Sparky was saying. “Is there another safe zone?”

“We will make more when food is eaten. Less crazy Kiritas.”

“Will you send food there?” Randy asked, pointing again to the banished zone.

“Yes, but they eat last.”

“No,” Randy said firmly, realizing that ‘last’ on a planet of 2 trillion meant never. “They eat now. Pilot, take us down there slowly,” he said, then contacted one of the descending dropships, a smaller falcon, and had it divert to their location.

“Not safe,” Sparky repeated, looking back and forth between Randy and the Lorni.

“Do they have weapons?”

“They are crazy. They use anything for weapon. We die we go down there.”

“You stay inside. Same for him,” he said, gesturing to the clan leader as he walked back into the small hold and pulled up one of the seats revealing the store of stun weapons underneath. “Fellas,” he prompted, tossing stinger rifles to the other two Archons before grabbing one for himself and checking to make sure that it was loaded.

“Bad idea,” Sparky insisted.

“We feed all Kiritas,” Randy said, staring him down but not letting his voice go as dark as his emotions were. “Our terms.”

The two Kiritas had an animated conversation but Sparky didn’t offer any more translation, then both fell silent as the assault shuttle landed in the middle of some type of landing pad, large enough to hold several shuttles and with faded markings on the surface. That, combined with the light debris scattered about indicated that it hadn’t seen use in some time.

Randy led the other Archons out the back while the two Kiritas cowered up near the pilot, then Randy shut the ramp and signaled the shuttle to lift off and circle overhead leaving the threesome alone on the pad for a moment while the dropship was on approach.

“How many?” Randy asked.

“I spot six, hiding in the entryways.”

“Couple more up on the roofs.”

“Hold here and make nice. Not sure how rabid they’ll be, but remember we’re here to help them. Some head banging may be necessary to establish order, but be as gentle as you can,” Randy instructed.

“Permission to check the perimeter?”

“Go,” Randy told the Archon as the dropship drifted over the surrounding buildings, each of which were about 5 stories tall, and stalled out overhead.

“Ditto,” the other Archon said, heading out to the opposite edge of the pad after a confirmation nod from Randy.

“Bring her down and stay buttoned up until I give the word,” Randy instructed the pilot, then walked off to the edge as the flying wing of a craft floated down on anti-grav engines and opened up the belly hatches, extending its landing legs, then compressed them slightly as the engines powered down and the gray/white ship settled onto the roughly rectangular pad.

“Any movement?”

“Scurrying away,” one of the Archons reported.

“Alright, bring it in and cover the ship while I unload. Pilot, open her up.”

The main bay door opened and Randy walked up the boarding ramp, meeting the loaders inside.

“Just one for now and set it down at the foot of the ramp. And cut it open,” he ordered, glancing back outside as the other Archons took up guard positions on either side of the ramp, stun rifles held at the ready with their lethal weaponry still on their backs. He could see sets of eyes popping up in the shadows but they held back, unsure of what was going on.

After the first pallet was cut open Randy pulled a box off and walked it over towards one of the entrances and set it down on the ground. He opened it up and took out a package, tearing it open to reveal the small food cubes. He took one and tossed it into the nearest of the shadowy entrances beneath an arched overhang. For a moment there was no response, then he heard a scuffle and squeak before silence returned.

The trailblazer tossed out a few more, each progressively closer until the Kiritas had to come out into view to grab the food. Hunger propelled them forward in short, panicked runs, followed by retreats back into the shadows. When nothing happened they started to get bolder and come further out, then the group began to inch their way out into view and Randy could clearly see how near death they were. Their skin looked like tissue paper wrapped around bones and several of them had visible injuries, some splattered with blue blood.

Randy committed himself then and there to saving these people, even if they had to conquer the damn planet to do it.

He pulled out another three packages and opened them, sliding handfuls of food cubes around the area, both towards the entryway and elsewhere, then he stood up and walked forward, gesturing for them to come out.

Their need and curiosity overwhelming their fear, the Kiritas began coming out by the dozens, grabbing up what food cubes they could, some of which began fighting each other for the last ones. Randy pointed a finger towards one of the culprits and a stinger flew out from behind him and nailed the would-be thief, knocking him unconscious. He pointed at another and it was hit as well, then Randy walked back to the open box and pulled out several more packets. He opened one and slowly walked up to the crowd, which surged back and forth, wanting to run but wanting the food just as bad.

Randy picked out one cube and reached forward, offering it to one of those nearest to him. He pointed to it, then held the cube out palm up and waited.

Shaking, the Kiritas came forward and snatched it out of his hand and devoured it within a second…then choked as its throat wasn’t accustomed to so much food. It eventually worked it free and swallowed, then stepped forward hoping to get more.

Randy pointed to one next to it and held out another. When the first one reached for it he closed his hand and waved his finger in an ‘uh-uh’ motion, then held it back out to the other until it took the food. He repeated the process, establishing some semblance of order as he slowly handed out food cubes to all those who came…then more came, and more, their wildness suddenly gone as they saw the others calmly taking the handouts. Soon there were hundreds, and those hundreds became thousands.

Randy called in more personnel and expanded the auxiliary relief zone and kept it running throughout the day and into the night. Still more came, and they kept coming until the dropships ran dry.

7

March 2, 2348

Iona System

Kirit

With the Nebuchadnezzar gone, having unloaded its full cargo of foodstuffs onto the populace, Tom and the Chimaera remained behind to safeguard the Forge for a while longer, just in case any non-Kiritas ships entered the system. The 2 trillion member race truly didn’t have any space assets to threaten them with, but with at least the occasional offworld trade ship coming through Tom didn’t want to leave Randy uncovered.

The Forge was capable of remotely controlling a fleet of warships left behind, but given that they’d come all this way the Archons figured that it’d be a waste to turn around and leave so soon. Both of them had agreed that the situation on Kirit had to be dealt with, and despite their willingness to help the Kiritas undesirables Star Force was being given virtually unlimited authority on the planet. Randy had already met with all of the 287 clan leaders, using Sparky as a translator as his techs worked to upgrade their translation software with the Kiritas language, and secured permission to start reorganizing the planet’s resources and food distribution network into a more efficient system.

As to be expected they were finding and rooting out existing corruption with various individuals and groups syphoning off foodstuffs for themselves, but overall the Kiritas were doing well to share what little resources they had amongst each other, which Randy took as a good sign that they’d be able to work with their population. The less corrupt they were the faster their orders could be implemented, and given that the ratio of Humans to Kiritas was so low it was going to be impossible to provide sufficient oversight, meaning that if the Kiritas were going to cheat there’d be no way to stop them.

Fitting, considering it was their planet that Star Force was trying to save, that their fate would ultimately be in their own hands on as simple a matter as following orders.

The first of those orders were already being followed with a long line of convoys being routed to specified landing zones where dropships from the Forge were picking up loads of raw materials that the Kiritas were giving them to feed the factories inside the jumpship. Those specially designed factories were then constructing building materials for predesigned buildings, each engineered to perform a specific function that would allow the Forge to expand its shipboard operations onto the surface of the planet.

The Kiritas had evacuated several sections of their cities, turning over the buildings and land to Star Force to level and recycle while they moved out to adjacent areas, doubling up with other residents as dropship after dropship brought down personnel, equipment, and a continual flow of materials that quickly became familiar Star Force production facilities that clashed with the surrounding Kiritas infrastructure. To them the buildings were almost sacred…a promise of a better future that all Kiritas worked hard to contribute to.

Within 2 weeks the first hydroponic facility went online using seedlings that had already been started in their growth cycle onboard the Forge. The crops were staggered, with a new indoor field being started every week so that once the first came to harvest they’d be getting a regular supply of grains. Randy started them off with the fastest growing varieties and within only a few weeks the first of the output started flowing into the surrounding factories that Star Force was adding, along with more hydroponic structures.

Like a real-life version of an empire-building videogame, Randy added structure after structure using the resources the Kiritas were providing while Tom managed the Kiritas’ local foodstuff production and distribution network. Two months in and the Star Force foodstuff production facilities were adding a small but steady supply of food cubes to the workers in the mines and other Kiritas production facilities, knowing that the stronger those people became the more productive they would be.

Tom meanwhile used the Kiritas’ own production network to maximize and stretch their own supply while Randy gradually pulled more and more mouths to feed off his hands. They were still coming up short, however, and the death tolls coming in from starvation were in the millions per week, but Tom kept strict rationing on what they did have and saved as many as he could.

In order to do so he also had to order some drastic changes to Kiritas society, which saw mixed reactions. Those Kiritas who were close enough to the Star Force sites or the Humans themselves threw their trust to the aliens…but those in more distant locals were more hesitant, at least until the odd foodstuffs started flowing in, city by city. It was the vast majority of the planet that had no connection to Star Force that all but rebelled over the orders Tom was sending down the chain, prompting him to record a speech in the Kiritas native language, explaining who the Humans were and why the changes were necessary.

After that point most of the chaos was paused, with the starving natives waiting and hoping, desperately, for change…and deliver it he did. His first order was the isolation of separate sectors, for the urbanization on the planet had grown to such a level that one city flowed into another, essentially making the planet a less attractive version of Coruscant in which the world was covered in one giant city.

Tom didn’t trust the Kiritas so far as to decree imaginary lines not to be crossed, so he ordered a flurry of new construction projects, physically blocking off access points and securing separate zones in which he had a specified amount of foodstuffs delivered and distributed to each of the registered recipients to insure that not a single mouthful was wasted. How well it worked depended on the honesty of the Kiritas at the local level, but with each new sector added the local death rate dropped to near zero, so he assumed the Kiritas in charge of the distribution networks were doing their job.

Trouble was, they couldn’t add sectors fast enough and the foodstuffs going out to non-secured areas were woefully insufficient. Tom boosted the shipments as much as he could to keep those outside the zones from assaulting the barricades to try and get inside the contained areas. It tore him up inside to see so many dying and him having to decide who got the food and who didn’t, so he tried to cycle the shipments to hit all areas at least periodically, giving everyone at least a chance of survival.

The reports he was getting from the unsecured areas were sporadic and mostly unreliable, for those filing them were themselves starving, but the murders being committed were off the charts and the local security was so physically malnourished that there was little they could do but sit and guard certain sites, unable to go out and patrol or respond to incidents. So much of the planet was in a malnourished trance that they rarely left their dwellings, save for those who were at their wits end and turned violent, trying to secure what food they could, even if it meant killing and eating their neighbors.

Tom was relieved to no end when the Nebuchadnezzar returned with a full shipment of foodstuffs and two other Freighter-class jumpships with it. Those two had a mixture of foodstuffs and equipment that Randy and Tom had requested, along with bringing Erin-016, Logan-036, Emily-023 and a host of other Archons that they put to work immediately managing the planetary networks at a regional level with Tom still overseeing the entire non-Star Force areas of the planet.

The Humans ate the foodstuffs being produced on the Forge, with their caloric intake unrestricted. Tom and Randy had decided to keep the two supply chains deliberately separate so they wouldn’t be tempted to redistribute what they had to save more of the Kiritas. They needed to keep their own strength up, not to mention maintain their workout intensity and the high amount of foodstuffs that kept them going.

Humans ate more than the smaller Kiritas did anyway, so it was essential not to mix the two, which was hard seeing so many of the planet’s people in need, especially for those Archons managing the unstructured areas of the planet.

One of the more unpopular orders the Archons gave was for the segregating of the males and females. The females laid eggs regularly, which the males then fertilized in a jealous rage. Despite numerous attempts at population control in previous years the Kiritas could not check their extremely large and unstable growth rate. Tom was dismayed at the numbers he was getting on their reproductive capability, with even malnourished females laying 3 eggs every 5 weeks. If given enough foodstuffs, he learned from some of the clan leaders, a female could produce more than 100 offspring in a single year, and every three out of four eggs laid was female.

The starvation rate was the only thing that had kept their immense population in check, and even as the Kiritas reluctantly segregated and left their eggs unfertilized Tom assigned Logan to tackle the challenge of creating a stable societal structure that wouldn’t gobble up all of their available resources once Star Force’s production caught up to the planet’s needs.

To that end Logan, with the assistance of the other trailblazers insystem, began designing a Star Force occupation of the planet in which they’d essentially adopt the Kiritas and train them one by one, starting with the hatchlings, to speak and read English, operate Human technology, and learn from recorded Archon lectures similar to the structure of a Canderian maturia, only one customized to fit the uniqueness of the Kiritas.

With the help of many techs Logan began mixing what they learned of Kiritas technology and architecture with improvements from Star Force, resulting in a mesh that was identifiable as both. Training programs were instituted, which the Kiritas had never before seen the like of, for their lifespans usually ranged from 25-40 years in which replacement by successive generations was used in lieu of the advancement of the individual.

Logan changed all that, teaching the Kiritas as soon as they hatched from their softball-sized eggs that training was vital to their development and longevity. They matured within 3 years and as soon as they finished their basic training he began deploying some of them to work with Randy in his growing infrastructure to free up Humans to redeploy to other areas. These Star Force-bred Kiritas were given the clan moniker Kiritak, despite the fact that their eggs came from all across the planet.

Emily took over the training program as the Kiritak numbers grew and began to intensify their training, creating multiple societal paths for them to take, some of which were 10+ years worth of training in the making. Star Force medics, during this time, also figured out how to chemically suppress the females’ continuous egg production, allowing them to choose when and where to reproduce, which also allowed them to work in traditionally male-dominated sectors.

Within the Kiritak, like Star Force, each individual earned their position, not because of bloodline or privilege, but by their personal effort and achievement. The rest of Kiritas society was changing at a slower rate under Tom and Logan’s direction, knowing that the Kiritak would one day grow to replace all the other clans. They didn’t clue the clan leaders in on that caveat right away, but with the widespread starvation still an ongoing problem securing food was their primary concern and they pretty much let Star Force do what they wanted so long as the food cubes kept coming.

While Tom and the other Archons tried to secure and manage the unmanageable situation across the planet, Randy and his non-Archon staff grew their infrastructure at an amazing rate. As he’d expected, the more he fed his Kiritas workers the more raw materials they produced and once proper supply lines had been established he had more raw materials stacking up than he knew what to do with.

He had them stored in containers and stacked in crude ‘parking lots’ where he’d ordered the demolition of more and more Kiritas buildings. As they had before the locals obliged his every request, making more room for the Humans to build and use their planet’s resources to save itself. With the Forge’s well designed interior factories Randy was able to get 189 hydroponic facilities constructed and operational within the first year…with an exponential growth rate from there on out.

When other races’ traders came the Kiritas let Star Force renegotiate the terms of their agreements, using the surplus of raw materials to barter larger trade deals from the Critel and a few other races that Star Force hadn’t encountered before. The extra foodstuffs they brought in went straight to Tom for him to distribute, saving several million more lives, but it was a drop in the bucket compared to the numbers that were still dying.

It took Star Force 7 years before they finally got Kirit to the point of meager self-sufficiency while still relying on regular shipments from the Humans. A year later those became unnecessary but Tom and Randy kept them coming to help rejuvenate the malnourished population. Though they were surviving, they were still barely hanging on and even the smallest glitch in production would see hundreds of thousands starve to death…but the Archons were too skilled to let that happen. They kept a tight rein on the food supply while continuing to take control of Kiritas society and remake it into something that could sustain itself into the future.

Therein they encountered problems. While the vast majority of the Kiritas were extremely grateful to the Humans, if not downright obedient of their saviors, a small but growing minority was resenting the changes Star Force was making to their planet, and now that they had at least enough foodstuffs to survive they had, for the first time in decades, free time to occupy. As much work as Tom had the Kiritas doing to restructure their planet, 97% of their population was still unemployed.

Most were still recovering and doing small things to improve their planet on their own, but the spare time also lead to clan politics growing in intensity along with independent political groups sprouting up that crossed clan lines…none of which were anti-Star Force, for that was a quick invitation to a smackdown by the others, but they were issue-driven and fundamentalist, resisting the Star Force philosophy being imposed on them and their offspring.

The reproduction bans were also a major issue, which Tom hadn’t relinquished even after the starvation period had ended. There had always been a small amount of unregulated breeding, even with the sector barriers in place, but with their energy levels rising and hormonal urges escalating as a result, more and more pressure was being exerted on the clan leaders to allow the reintegration of the males into the female population, despite the threat that posed to the fragile food supply.

Tom was adamant that that wouldn’t happen, and had the Kiritas continually building new infrastructure to further isolate one sector from another, as well as the zonal restrictions within that kept males apart from the larger female population. He coupled this with a merit-based breeding system that supplied the eggs for the Kiritak training programs. That kept most of the mating urges focused into a productive agenda, but only for the 3% that were in the workforce. For the rest of the population they had to suffer through the reproduction bans, with their meager food supply a continual reminder of why the Archons had kept it in place.

Those who did not see the bigger picture obeyed because it was expected of them, but a small organization was forming that staged raids across sector and zonal lines. At first it was just for sexual reasons, if you could call egg fertilization ‘sexual,’ but these ‘code breakers’ eventually crossed into other activities in defiance of Star Force, forming an active criminal element that grew bolder as time passed on. More than once Archons had to go in and track down thieves that were syphoning off foodstuffs to use for themselves or barter for resources, some of which were weapons.

Fortunately the Kiritas didn’t have guns, but what they did have were blades and explosives. The blades weren’t a threat to the armored Archons, but the explosives were, especially the thrown ones. A la Goldeneye, the Kiritas used a form of remote mine that they would toss through the air at their enemy then trigger manually using a detonator when it came into range.

All weapon production facilities had been decommissioned on Tom’s orders and reworked into tool factories. Existing stores of weapons were rounded up and turned over to Star Force who recycled the raw materials, but not all had been secured. In addition the Kiritas were making more and trading them on the black market to be used against the security forces that were enforcing the sector borders.

Dissent was unusual for Kiritas society, but not entirely unheard of. Clan issues were expected, but rebellion was not. There were always deranged individuals that had to be dealt with and required security, but after the inter-clan rivalries had been abandoned over 200 years ago in favor of mutual cooperation to combat the planet’s many growing problems there had been no true security threats on Kirit. When starvation became widespread revolts broke out, but those individuals were banished into forgotten zones where the horrors that ensued were contained and out of the public’s knowledge. Other than keeping those zones locked down, the rest of the Kiritas virtually forgot they existed, maintaining a semi-functional society during their starvation-induced decline.

Such harmony, real or illusionary, was fading…and the Archons knew a larger confrontation was brewing.

As such, they began to make plans on how to fight their new opposition as the loyal Kiritak slowly grew in size, strength, and skill. They were the future, and Tom and Randy knew they could win this coming fight by playing for time. As much as they wanted to teach the old school Kiritas how to train and reach self-sufficiency they knew that most would not make it, and that most would not even try…which meant as time moved on the older Kiritas would die out and within 50 years or so only the Kiritak would remain if they could keep a lid on the unsanctioned reproduction.

8

December 1, 2360

Iona System

Kirit

Zoe-3482 stood perched on the edge of a rooftop overlooking a region of shorter Kiritas buildings, bracing her feet against the curve of the dome-topped roof so that she didn’t slide off and fall down seven stories to the street below…not yet anyway, for the time wasn’t right. She was stationed as backup as two other Archons and a Kiritak security team were about to raid a rebel stronghold that intelligence reports indicated was located in this building cluster and responsible for the production of the explosives that had taken down a convoy of ore trucks last week. No Kiritas had been killed in the attack, but the disruption to their supply routes was one of many in recent months as a matter of protest against the breeding restrictions.

Trouble was, they were destroying equipment that the planet needed to survive…and it was only a matter of time before one of the attacks left someone injured or dead. Good as the Kiritas were at using explosives, the overcrowded nature of the planet practically begged for collateral casualties. Zoe was impressed that they’d gotten by with it as long as they had, but with Tom’s refusal to rescind or even diminish the reproductive ban the sabotage attacks were growing in number, not to the point to jeopardize their planet-wide efforts, but they were starting to affect local production facilities when they couldn’t get the raw materials they required.

No foodstuff shipments had been hit, for that too would have drawn an immediate negative response from the population, but they were taking out related areas, hitting parts convoys, ore shipments, tool factories, vehicle factories, and anything else they could do to disrupt the Archon-led Kiritas production. The rebels hadn’t been stupid enough to hit any Star Force facilities, but with such a large planet to manage there were an inordinate amount of soft Kiritas targets to hit, most of which didn’t even have the Kiritak there as overseers, let alone as workers.

It was these remote facilities that the rebels preyed upon, trying to show that Star Force didn’t control everything and they weren’t helpless to stop their growing power, promising in sporadic propaganda showing up around the planet that they intended to prove that they could return the Kirit to its former glory on their own merits and were asking the public to allow them their own autonomous regions to prove the point.

Tom had laughed that off, but not the sabotage attacks. As much as the rebels were ‘requesting’ the chance to prove themselves they were also strategically hitting convoys around specific areas that the Archons predicted would become rebel controlled areas if they could isolate the local media and keep Star Force in the dark about it. To that end Tom had assigned surveillance teams to monitor the functionality of all non-Star Force and non-Kiritak infrastructure on the planet, looking for disruptions that might signal a quiet takeover of a specific region.

The rebels were being smart about it too, hitting one area while quietly moving to assume control over another. The key to it all was maintaining the foodstuff supply lines, and so long as those weren’t disrupted the local populations were more or less ambivalent about what else happened around them, trying not to stir up trouble as they eeked out a meager existence…surviving, for the first time in ages, but still only barely while Star Force and the Kiritak transformed the planet sector by sector, but with so much territory to cover most Kiritas would never see the changes come to their homes in their lifetime and they knew it.

So they made do with what little they had, tolerating the rebels so long as they didn’t go too far. The rebels realized this and learned just how far they could press and began to set up little anonymous empires around the planet, recruiting workers and followers with the promise of extra foodstuffs that they had begun producing on their own, the materials from which were apparently stolen from other sites but in such small number as not to make waves outside the local factories that noted the thefts.

Just last month Zoe had been part of a seizure team that took one of the illicit foodstuff factories down, finding the basement of three adjacent buildings having been turned into indoor fields where a type of grain known as zaka was being grown under small lamps scavenged from buildings all around. The makeshift setup was evident in the design, but the facility was functional and providing a pittance of food to the rebels…which they could then use as bribes to outsiders to bring more resources into the fold.

That facility had been confiscated and its materials removed for use in a proper factory…along with foodstuff bonuses for the Kiritas that had tipped the Kiritak off to the location. After several more similar incidents word got around about the rewards and numerous tips started flowing in, some of which had led them to this facility.

This was one of 18 simultaneous operations around the planet to ferret out rebel strongholds, and that was barely a scratch against the list of probable targets they’d been collecting. Kirit was notable as having the highest concentration of Archons after Sol and Epsilon Eridani, and that number was rising as the trailblazers dedicated more and more of Star Force’s resources to running the planet.

On the street below Zoe saw a team of Kiritak gather around one of the exits, dressed in full body flex armor that stood out in stark contrast to those Kiritas pedestrians that were topless, barefooted, and baretailed. Zoe could also see the tailor-made stinger pistols Star Force had designed to fit their three fingered hands. Their plate-like heads were uncovered, but otherwise they were sealed up from neck to tail tip in their signature aqua-colored garb.

Thirty seconds after they arrived the door was breached and they rushed in, with Zoe listening to their comm chatter as they conversed in their native English language. They also spoke Kiritas, but they’d initially been instructed in English for the sake of the long term development of their planet and interstellar relations.

Meanwhile other teams collapsed around the perimeter, spearheaded by a pair of Archons on the ground in search of a particular rebel leader they’d tagged as ‘Rebel Ace.’ She’d gotten away from a previous raid and was said to be the kingpin in this area of the planet. Zoe had been positioned up on the rooftop to insure that she didn’t escape again.

Inside the raid went extremely well. Most of the rebels submitted, but the few that were armed were quickly subdued with stinger rounds and those that tried to flee were rounded up by the Kiritak coming in the exits…that was until a few of them started to come out an upper story window and jump across the street to the flat wall on the opposite building.

They didn’t fall to the ground on impact like Zoe expected. Somehow they gripped the wall with their forearms and climbed up to the curved roof and began to flee through the valley-like trenches as one bulbous building top connected to another in a large multiplex.

“Son of a bitch,” Zoe said, triggering her comm. “In pursuit of 5 rebels fleeing to the north,” she reported before pressing the large button on her armor’s chest and jumping off the roof.

Instead of falling straight down she coasted level across the street, suspended in midair by the armor add-on she was wearing. When the top of the far building was underneath her feet she pressed another button on her chest and the anti-grav pack lowered her down to the rooftop where she shut it off and awkwardly began sprinting through the valleys paralleling the rebels that were several rows down to her left.

She passed through three sections then jumped up to her left, tapping her chest again, and used her momentum coupled with the pack’s limited lift capacity to vault her up to the top of one of the hemispherical bulges where she caught a glimpse of the last of the line of rebels now running off towards the west.

With the help of her pack and using a choreographed on/off sequence Zoe leapt from one bulge to another like a frog, barely keeping up with the rebels that were sticking to the trenches as they hopped down them, one foot landing on the angle to either side where a Human would have been hamstrung by the lack of flat foot space to land on…and they were making good time of it too.

When the rebels got to the edge of the multiplex unit they jumped across another street with ease, continuing to head west. Zoe jumped up as high as she could on the last rooftop bulge and caught her momentum at the peak, using the anti-grav pack like an invisible zip line that pulled her across the street and the next two rooftops before she had to cut it off before it ran out of charge. She landed on the top of one of the bumps and took three normal steps over the hilltop then jumped again, triggering her pack and releasing it over the next one and the next and the next, momentarily recharging the capacitor in the brief pauses.

She saw she was starting to gain ground on the line of five Kiritas as they slowed their hopping down to a less furious pace and hoped that they wouldn’t have the sense to turn around and see her coming. Another 20 seconds or so and she’d be close enough to take a shot at them…

Suddenly the leader stopped and opened up a hidden rooftop hatch, then caught a side glance of Zoe coming in at them just as the Kiritas beside it was hit by a green stinger and stunned into unconsciousness. The leader ducked inside as Zoe shot the others and pulled the hatch closed behind it. Zoe heard a click just as she landed in the trench, feeling her ankle roll sideways as her foot slid down to the center upon landing.

She stepped up onto one of the unconscious aliens and used it to stand on while she ripped the thin, locked door off its hinges with two solid jerks from her armored hands before tossing it aside and jumping in feet first in pursuit, logging a waypoint on her battlemap where the 4 stunned Kiritas were located so that they could be picked up later.

The tunnel leading down into the building was narrow and Zoe bounced around it as she fell, then landed in an equally small hallway that she had to duck down a few inches to run through, following the sound of another opened door to her left and around a blind corner.

The Archon shuffle/ran down the hallway and turned just in time to see her quarry duck down another hallway to the left through the open doorway. Zoe ran after her, catching up inch by inch as the Kiritas had to open doors in her way and the claustrophobic nature of the building didn’t allow the aliens their fast hopping gait.

The small confines slowed the Human down too, but like all Archons Zoe was a scrambler and tore down the hallways in a fast, yet almost comical fashion, running on her knees as much as she was her feet trying to negotiate turns and the tube-like shafts the jumping race used instead of stairs as the rebel seemed intent on heading down to ground level.

Zoe fired off several stingers trying to wing the Kiritas but she couldn’t line up a good shot because there were so many twists and turns in the architecture, enough to make her dizzy and disoriented as if she was back in school on a field trip running through a play maze at the museum. Fortunately she didn’t have to know where she was going so long as she stayed on the tail of the rebel, and it eventually led her out of the building and onto the typically crowded street outside where she got her first clear look at it.

Timing her shot just right, Zoe waited for its hurried bounce to carry it higher than the others on the street and fired her stinger pistol, splatting it on the back of the head underneath its cranial disk and dropping it to the ground where it was swallowed up in the crowd.

Those Kiritas around the Archon immediately backed up and gave her space, but there were literally dozens of people between her and her target so Zoe used her jump pack and leapt up a few meters into the air and hung from that position as her momentum carried her down the street towards where the target had fallen, but from her higher vantage point she could see that it wasn’t unconscious, but rather scurrying half numb along the ground.

Zoe fired three quick shots at it, one of which hit and knocked it the rest of the way out before she eased off the power of her jump pack and gently dropped back into a gap in the street below. When she got over to the downed rebel she saw that another Kiritas had been hit by her wayward shots…make that two if you counted the one with a limp heading off down the street in a panic.

“Seeco,” Zoe said apologetically to the Kiritas standing over the unconscious bystander, then she put another shot into the rebel for good measure and tagged the location on her battlemap for pickup. Dropping to a knee next to the female Kiritas she turned her over and got a good look at her face, realizing that this wasn’t Rebel Ace. Never the less she pulled out a genetic ID module and pressed it against her forehead to get a scan.

The results came back with a positive match, indicating a known mid-tier operative within the rebel hierarchy that had been tagged along with many others by informants.

Zoe waited with the pair until a team of Kiritak arrived and took the rebel into custody. The Archon borrowed one of their destunning injections and woke the unconscious bystander up and apologized for her bad aim before checking on the capture of the four rebels on the rooftop then heading back to base. As it turned out one of those four was in fact Rebel Ace.

Zoe accompanied Yarric-2201 into the interrogation room where Star Force was holding Ace where both Archons pulled off their helmets and sat them on a side table before stepping up to the physical energy shield separating their side of the room from the prisoner’s. Normally it would have been invisible, but the Star Force prison designs added a slight colored element, in this case blue, so that both prisoners and guards would know where exactly the barrier was located.

On the other side Ace was standing in an empty rectangular cubical…little more than a holding cell during the interrogations, which in Star Force’s case were little more than conversations. On the ceiling above the shield was a translation nub similar to the ones used on Babylon, except that this module had the Kiritas native language programmed in, despite the fact that most Archons on the planet had learned at least a basic understanding of the local language and dialects.

Yarric chose to speak in English, however, so the translator could accommodate a more precise conversation.

“Why?” was all the Archon asked, then stood staring down at the rebel through the shimmering blue energy shield.

“Why what?” Ace asked back, translated like an echo by the overhead device.

“The others we’ve captured usually have a reason why they turned rebel. I’d like to hear yours.”

“You feel a need to justify my execution?”

Yarric frowned. “You think we’re going to kill you?”

“Other rebels you’ve captured have not been returned. They disappear from Kirit. It is not hard to imagine what becomes of them.”

“They’re in prison,” Zoe pointed out. “Why would we release them so they could return to aiding your rebellion.”

“We do not rebel,” Ace said vehemently. “We protect. You are destroying Kiritas. The Kiritak are an abomination. You have twisted the minds of our young to serve you, while you reduce our population by denying all but your chosen ones the ability to breed.”

“Some of you still seem to manage it,” Yarric pointed out. “And I shouldn’t have to remind you that before we came this planet was starving to death. We saved you. I would expect gratitude rather than rebellion.”

“We do not rebel!” Ace repeated, not letting go the point. “You save Kirit only to make Kirit your slave. We do your bidding, you feed us…but only enough to keep us alive, not enough to grow strong. You control us with food, and when we seek to feed ourselves you take our crops away from us.”

“Those crops are being used to feed everyone,” Yarric pointed out. “We don’t sell food to you, we give it freely. You’re using food as currency. Who has Kirit’s wellbeing in mind?”

“We will reclaim our planet, Human. Kill me if you wish, but the loyal will grow, and as they do the shaded eyes will open. Kirit will be Kiritas again, I promise you.”

Zoe and Yarric exchanged glances.

“Guess this one isn’t going to be ratting out her buddies,” Zoe said, shrugging.

“No, I don’t think so,” Yarric agreed. “And I don’t see the need to waste our time here.”

“Nope,” Zoe said, picking up her helmet and heading out. Some of the rebels they’d captured had been compliant, telling them everything they wanted after a few misconceptions were cleared up. It was clear that that wasn’t going to happen with this one, so they might as well send her over to the prison and start working through the list of other leads they had.

“Believe it or not, we’re here to help you,” Yarric added after Zoe had left. “And we’re not going to let idiots like you ruin it for everyone else.”

“You do more damage than you help,” Ace said with a hiss, which the translator interpreted as an icy demeanor and incorporated that feel into the spoken words. “You’re killing our society. You’re killing our culture. You’re killing all Kiritas where the famine would only have killed part of us. You are worse than famine.”

“We’re changing your society, yes,” Yarric admitted. “Killing your culture…I certainly hope so. It’s what got you into this mess in the first place. As for killing all Kiritas, you’re alive and going to stay that way. Same thing for the other rebels. If you want to preserve your culture within yourself, go right ahead, but we’re showing the planet a better way and you’re going to have to sit on the sidelines and watch. Enjoy the show.”

Yarric left not caring what the rebel had to say after that point. An hour later the Kiritak came and transported Ace over to a Star Force run facility. When the transport carrying her opened up it was connected to a long, narrow hallway with no windows or openings of any kind and the transport was sealed to it, leaving no room for even thinking about escape. The Kiritak guards in the transport unbound Ace’s restraints and nudged her into the hallway, then a thick door slid out of the wall and cut off view of the transport…then that door began to inch forward, pushing Ace down the hallway.

She walked on ahead of it and came to a clear cube at the end. Once inside an equally clear door shut and the elevator car detached from the entry point and moved on a hidden track along the wall of a huge chamber. Ace had never seen so much empty space before, and there wasn’t a single person in sight. All over there were modules of various sizes interconnected by tubes, off on the far end just before her elevator car disappeared inside a wall she saw a crane lifting one of the modules off its rack and carrying it over to another location.

She didn’t know what that meant, but in time she’d realize that the wardens kept reconfiguring the interior of the prison so that there was a different layout month after month. The reason for doing so wasn’t for security’s sake, but to change up the prisoners’ routine and keep them having to learn and adapt to new configurations. Stagnation was one thing Star Force prisons did not allow, and a mobile interior helped combat that greatly.

Ace’s elevator car eventually brought her to another airlock-like door that she was pushed out of by the rear wall as it detached and moved her forward. From there another mobile hallway segment guided her into a Kiritas-style apartment…but one large enough to hold 20 of her people. There was no one else present, however, and by Star Force standards the prisoner’s quarters were standard size, though they hadn’t been downgraded to match the smaller Kiritas physique, so in that regard they were a bit larger than normal, but the idea behind the standard quarters was to get the Kiritas prisoners adjusted to proper living conditions and out of the claustrophobia they were accustomed to living in.

Many, including Ace, had trouble adjusting to the new environment and the amenities it possessed. It made no sense why the rebels would be given clan leader status accommodations, but then again nothing else the Humans did made much sense either.

After exploring the four rooms that made up her prison cell and checking out the few luxury items that were left as if presents for her a blinking light caught her attention just below the wall-spanning video screen set behind protective glass to reduce the chances of damage. A round button was the source of the light and read ‘information’ in the Kiritas language, so Ace pressed it and was immediately presented with an orientation video along with a menu of options. She ignored them and shut the device down, preferring to recheck the rooms for some chance of escape until a tone sounded and led her to one of the four rooms where a compartment had another blinking light that drew her attention.

Ace touched it and a tray with a pair of food cubes appeared. She took one and sniffed it, then gobbled it and the other down before the automated tray retracted and the compartment resealed. It would repeat the process each day, but always at a random time within a 2 hour block.

By the time the third day rolled around Ace was at wits end. Never before had she had this much room to herself, nor had she been separated from other Kiritas for more than a few minutes at most. Here there was no one, not even a cursed Human to talk to. She had more food than ever before in her life, her body was responding to it and pumping her full of energy and drive but she had nothing to do!

It was maddening, and eventually she began exploring the information database just to fight off the boredom, finding a newsfeed that allowed her to keep up with what was happening on the planet. Ace occupied herself with that for another week before finally looking through the orientation information…where she discovered various workout options and work tasks available to her.

At first she only complied to explore, hoping to find other rebels in the workout areas, but to her dismay the dreaded herding walls brought her out of her quarters and onto an empty track. She could only see two lanes, the inside of which were bounded by another wall, but after walking around she discovered that it was shaped in a large stretched out circle with no doors, windows, or other openings around the entire perimeter for her to potentially escape from.

Disgusted, she abandoned the track and the automated system led her back to her quarters, indicating that it would be another 12 hours before she’d have the option of using the track again.

One month into her imprisonment Ace finally broke down and started using the workout programs the Humans allotted for her, fearing that she’d go insane if she didn’t have something to do. She also began using the learning tools in the database, which taught her a great many things if she worked through the programs.

After that point Ace began to make progress in her solitude, not understanding why she was even trying. The Humans may not have killed her, but they were torturing her in a way she hadn’t known was possible. She was alone, well fed, and given luxuries that few Kiritas had ever known…and the worst part of it all was that she didn’t feel like a Kiritas anymore. She had no connection to her people, and had to think through everything herself.

They were forcing her to become an individual, and she hated them for it.

That said, she continued to learn and train despite her misgivings, erasing the rebel over time and eventually given a means to work her way to freedom. By the time she earned her way to release the rebel was gone, as was the world the rebel had been fighting to protect. Ace left the prison and reintegrated into the world she had been monitoring via the newscasts, living in an apartment the same size and specifications of her prison cell and working in a factory doing tasks identical to those she’d been earning her way to release on.

Her transition was so bizarre that she woke up for the next several days wondering if anything at all had changed…then seeing her door to the outside and the open button on the inside, something that had never been present in her cell. She opened it, half expecting to see the guide walls for days, but only found the exterior hallway that connected several of the local residential quarters together. The sight was an overwhelming joy each time she saw it. It was the taste of freedom, the one thing she’d been denied by the Humans in her pit of luxury, and it had finally been returned to her.

Only it hadn’t. She’d had to earn it back. She was so relieved to be back into the world that she didn’t bother to hate the Humans any longer, though they still ruled her planet. No, she was back and loving every minute of it, with any ideas of rebellion long since vanished.

She had to admit, though, that the Humans had succeeded in destroying her culture, just as the one had said they would do. And though it was all over now, it still rankled her a bit to know that the Humans hadn’t done it to her…they’d tricked her into changing herself.

9

December 26, 2384

Iona System

Kirit

“The last report is in, Archon,” a Kiritak said, walking up to Tom and handing him a datapad.

The trailblazer read through the summary of the transitional handover of sectors 4505-4608 to Randy’s reclamation team, then skimmed through some of the more detailed files attached. “I guess that’s it then.”

“It’s been an honor,” the Kiritak said, bowing its head slightly.

“Where are you being reassigned?”

“Archon Daniella’s staff, overseeing region 18, personnel division.”

“You’ve done good work here, Ika. Thank you.”

“Thanks are not required. Kiritas owe you. Our service is but a small repayment. Is there anything else you require?”

“Just make sure the command center gets decommissioned properly. I don’t want any equipment going missing in the transfer.”

“I will remain for the duration. May I give the word?”

“Pack it up,” Tom prompted, with the short alien turning about and scurrying out the door. The Archon flipped through a few more pages of the report, verifying that all was in order as the last of his planetary management team was turning over the last of Kirit’s unorganized territory. Everywhere else on the planet had been annexed by the reclamation forces, demolishing structures to make way for new infrastructure and Kiritak governing units.

Most of the planet still lived in the old dwellings, but the key facilities had all been replaced with the new designs, giving Kirit a strong skeleton upon which to feed and retrain the population…which had been dramatically lowered to 1.4 trillion as the reproductive ban’s cumulative effect snowballed. With the older generations dying out of non-starvation causes and the limited breeding replacing them the planet was gaining some badly needed breathing room as they worked to build brand new cities in a scattering of locations to hold an entirely new, Star Force-trained Kiritak population.

That was Randy’s turf, along with Clan Star Fox that had moved more than half its holdings into Iona. Randy’s Clan had even established an independent colony on another planet in the system, giving Star Force a claim to the region and allowing them to establish a permanent defense fleet along with the neophyte Kiritas version that they’d been building out of prototype stage over the past 5 years. That had been necessary, given the increasing number of trade ships coming through the system, in order to discourage the more unsavory elements from trying to take advantage of the primitive planet.

Star Force had even gone so far as to build another Babylon station in the system, which was tagged Babylon 2, in order to facilitate trade between the planet and others and it was quickly growing into a commerce zone of its own, given that the Iona system was strategically placed along three separate trade routes used by neighboring races. Most of them usually passed through the system without giving Kirit a second thought, but as Star Force opened up the system to trade by outsiders the word spread and more and more ships began showing up, most of an independent nature.

Whereas the original Babylon station was an embassy of sorts between civilizations, Babylon 2 morphed into a free trade zone where many individuals would come to skirt their own race’s legal code and taxes. Star Force maintained their own limited rules, keeping the venture from becoming a haven for criminality, but the Humans’ philosophy of economic freedom proved to be very loose by comparison with others, making the system a growing hot spot in the region.

New races also began appearing, most peaceably once they saw the fleet that Star Force had in the system, which grew the Humans’ contacts well into the coreward regions out from Sol, but no mention of the V’kit’no’sat was ever come across. Apparently they’d pulled back from Sol’s region within the galaxy, which was a relief to the Archons, but it begged the question as to what happened to them and where were they now?

Tom was leaving Kirit to join one of the mapping expeditions heading out anti-spinward from Sol, now that his mission here was finished. Randy and the others would be staying, though many had already cycled out to be replaced by others. Randy and Clan Star Fox were the regulars now, tackling the enormous task of restructuring the entire planet. Tom’s job had been to stabilize the chaos while Randy built and expanded, and now that starvation no longer choked Kirit it was time for him to leave the planet.

He’d become fond of the Kiritas and their world, but he didn’t want to get rooted here like Randy had. His moving a portion of Clan Star Fox here allowed him to keep a foot in both worlds, but Tom needed a change of venue, so he’d chosen one as different from his planetary post as he could…which was deep space exploration.

Others had been running Clan Skystrike in his absence, as most of the Clans now were, given the communications difficulties between systems, but Tom had been out of formal contact ever since he’d come to Kirit, only getting periodic, yet detailed reports from the rest of the Clan and issuing the occasional order when needed, which would take weeks to make it back to the nearest Star Force system.

Iona was still well outside their borders, an island in the stars so to speak that Randy was claiming for them. Only one other system had been annexed in his time here, given the amount of resources needed to sustain Kirit as well as those being consumed by the continuing war being fought against the lizards. Star Force’s jumpship fleet had expanded exponentially, but the large ships were still hard to come by and had to be reserved for specific uses, not allowing the wildfire-like expansion into the galaxy that you’d read about in scifi stories.

The systems that they did have they were constantly fortifying, not just against the lizards but against the growing number of races the Humans were coming into contact with. Anonymity had been a powerful defense in the past, but that was no longer a luxury as word of the Humans spread, meaning that everywhere they had a presence Star Force was likely to attract attention at some point. It was standing policy to make all of their colonies known to their allies and others, clearly establishing their territory while offering free pass-through privileges to interstellar traffic…with the one exception being Sol.

Star Force didn’t want anyone else going there, but by opening up the surrounding spacelanes to traffic most races obliged and kept clear of the Human homeworld. That policy of free travel also meant that whatever visible infrastructure or fleets Star Force had in a system was likely to be monitored by the passing traffic, meaning that the Archons couldn’t afford to have any weak systems that might invite predation.

The lizards were by far their primary enemy, but there were also a handful of other races that were either disinclined to have any relations with Star Force whatsoever or were actively hostile. There were no ongoing wars with them as there was with the lizards, but there had been a number of incidents in neutral systems that had made those races’ political alliances crystal clear.

The Zatoma were the primary minor threat, not in overall military might, but in the way of piracy. They had no known homeworld but their ships could be seen traveling the spacelanes all across this part of the galaxy and they’d been at odds with the Humans from the start after they jumped a mapping expedition early on and were barely fought off. After that the Zatoma avoided Star Force whenever they could, unless they thought they had the advantage. That was rarely the case and more often than not Star Force would intervene when the Zatoma would hit someone else.

As a result, they’d begun to sniff out weak areas in Star Force’s publically outlined territory. Finding none they kept their distance, but they were always on the periphery looking in, waiting for an opportunity to strike.

Tom left his command center for the last time and headed over to the neighboring block in the small Star Force annex within one of Randy’s rebuilt cities. This one was well away from the metropolises he was building and had been completely leveled early on in order to build a Kiritak facility for Tom to work out of. Starting with the Star Force buildings, including a small sanctum for the Archons to use, the city had expanded outward ring by ring over the years until Tom had a fully functioning Kiritak infrastructure to work out of as he managed the surrounding ‘lawless’ territories, as well as those spread across the planet.

He’d nicknamed the city ‘Solitude’ after Superman’s ‘fortress of solitude’ up in the wasteland of the north pole, and in a similar motif Solitude sat in the wastes of Kirit while both Star Force and Kiritak infrastructure projects were focused elsewhere. Tom had essentially ruled a shrinking planet for several long decades, and he was happy to turn over the final piece, his mission completed and mostly successful. Still, those billions that had died in the early years that he couldn’t save kept him from labeling it a total success.

Tom returned to his private quarters and packed up his gear, then hit the sanctum one last time for a solid workout before having a dropship run him up to orbit where a jumpship was waiting. It had offloaded its cargo and accepted return passengers three days ago, but had been held over for Tom to finish up the handover on the planet before leaving. As soon as he was aboard it adjusted its orbit until it hit on the jumpline that led to the system’s central star and made a microjump into the inner zone. From there it maneuvered onto an interstellar jumpline to leave the system and head back towards Star Force territory.

Eight months later and Tom would be outbound again, commanding an expeditionary jumpship on a mapping mission and settling in to his new assignment with ease. Archons were adaptable and multitaskers, and above all else they craved a challenge. The change of mission profile and lifestyle fell into that category and Tom took it in stride, satisfied with the completion of his mission on Kirit but with no qualms about leaving the planet and the Kiritas behind.

Randy was in the opposite position. His chosen mission was to stay on Kirit and help advance their race…a huge challenge and one worthy of an Archon, but he had to be careful not to get too settled into the local atmosphere, for as much as he needed to set an example for the natives he couldn’t let himself start thinking like them. He was the instrument of their change, not the other way around.

Him bringing in Clan Star Fox had eliminated that problem. Not only did he have more Archons with which to interact and train with, he had Star Force duties to attend to simultaneous with Kiritas ones because he intended to make the Iona system a firm part of Star Force territory. He’d chosen one of the rocky inner planets to set up shop on, an airless world much akin to Mars but larger. It had gravity slightly less than Earth and ample mineral resources, as well as a surface covered in sand and dust and made for a moderate building challenge, but nothing that his Clan hadn’t encountered before.

At present Randy had more than 2 million Clan Star Fox colonists on the world that he’d named ‘Horizon,’ due to their location on the edge of Star Force’s map. Though he didn’t live there, the trailblazer ran the colony along with all other Star Fox assets within the system from their enclave on Kirit that held another 100,000 Clan colonists.

It was the one location on the world that the Kiritas didn’t inhabit or co-inhabit, and Randy spent about half his time there and the other half moving about the planet from one facility to another dealing with problems and guiding the massive reconstruction effort while Emily ran the Kiritak training facilities, now numbering in the thousands, each of which was larger than a university back on Earth. It was here that eggs were brought to be fertilized, and like the Canderians the Kiritas offspring were born into the training programs and guided by older Kiritak through largely automated teaching systems.

More than a third of those systems were interactive recordings of Emily and other Archons explaining essential concepts while the rest was data oriented. There were very few recordings of Kiritas to teach Kiritas, so revered had the Humans become within their society. To them, Star Force was the bringer of knowledge, unity, strength, and hope…to Emily and the others involved in the training of the Kiritak they just wanted to make sure the proper instruction was given and found it was easier to do it themselves rather than to train an ‘actor’ for the role.

As such, every generation of Kiritak born entered into a world that was a mix of Kiritas and Star Force, and as the years passed and there were less and less original Kiritas left alive and more and more Kiritak entering the population a major shift occurred, in which ambitions began to rise for their society as a whole. They were not merely content to follow the orders of the Archons…they wanted to prove themselves worthy to the Humans, both by remaking the entire surface of their planet to wash away the scars of the past, meaning removal and replacement of all old infrastructure, and by expanding out into the stars.

To that end the Kiritas leaders, now all Kiritak, requested a ‘trial of advancement’ from Star Force, which both surprised and pleased Randy. He and Emily accepted their request and began creating a tiered achievement system that would have the Kiritas creating technology on their own, but having to meet prerequisite standards set by Star Force as they did so in a sort of quality control system that allowed the Archons to direct their advancement down a specified path.

For example, the first step they set them on was an improvement in their aircraft, followed by the creation of dropships, then starports, starships, shipyards, etc. Each had to fit within parameters defined by the Humans and had to be proven ad nauseum before they were allowed to progress to the next level. In this way it insured a mastery of the technology rather than the copying of tech bequeathed to them for use on the surface and retooled for orbital use.

The ongoing Trial of Advancement eventually resulted in the creation of the Kiritas’ limited naval fleet, then limited orbital habitats, given that most of their production resources were still being used to remake the planet. They built a few habitat stations, a few factories, warehouses, shipyards, and whatever else Star Force wanted them to learn how to build on their own, slowly grooming them into a space-based civilization while continuing to teach them how to maintain their enormous population.

It was a long, deliberate process that Randy was guiding them down, one that would found the basis for an alliance closer than any other the Humans would forge, for all the time and resources Star Force spent to save the Kiritas and teach them how to live, the diminutive aliens would never forget the debt they owed, and would forever be seeking ways to impress and aid their Human allies, some of which would be crucial to Star Force’s survival in the distant future.

10

July 29, 2389

Katerne System

Oel

The Hycre jumpship released the Star Force light battleship from its hold once it reached orbit of Oel, a world on the border of Bsidd space where the Hycre had been invited to attend an anti-lizard summit. Five of the most powerful races that were both enemies and victims of the lizards were gathering to discuss the mutual threat, of which the Hycre were one. Star Force’s ally had requested that the Humans attend as part of their delegation and had arranged for appropriate transportation to the distant summit.

Unable to travel on the Hycre ships due to their lack of environmental conditions suitable to Humans, Star Force had sent their smallest manned warship along as a diplomatic vessel, which the Hycre had then carried more than 650 light years around the periphery of lizard territory along with a small warfleet of their own.

As the Tenacity left the confines of the Hycre jump bay along with their own warships, Greg got his first good look at the planet beneath them, easily identifying the scattering of gigantic cities across the green surface. As the Hycre information had stated, the Bsidd kept a very strict line between urban and natural areas on their worlds, with their perfectly circular cities appearing as dots in the otherwise wild regions of the planet below. Greg could see three such locations in the world-spanning forest as the Tenacity and Hycre ships orbited around towards the night side, along with the glowing markings of another just appearing on the horizon.

The summit, however, would not be held on the surface. The course the Hycre transmitted over to the Star Force ship had them moving to rendezvous with a massive station in extremely low orbit, barely kilometers above the atmosphere. Why they kept it so close Greg didn’t know, but the technology used to create it was glossy to the extreme. He couldn’t visually identify a single edge to the construct, which looked like an octopus with its arms loosely wrapped around its main body.

Every tentacle on the station glistened with reflected sunlight on the day side, then glowed bluish/purple on the night side. Despite the very squishy aesthetic Greg got the impression that the Bsidd were highly technological, which was confirmed three days later when the Humans were given access rights to the station…or part of it anyway. There were 5 different sections, each with their own environmental distinctions, of which the Humans were given access to the oxygen zone.

When Greg and a party of three other Archons boarded the station they were taken aback by what they saw, feeling like they were walking into a movie scene. Dozens of different races were milling about, all of which were brand new to them, in what felt like a Mass Effect Citadel station. Half of them were floating around on anti-grav seats/sleds above the Humans’ heads while others were crawling along small tubes that lined the walls. The rest followed the footpaths, which Greg and company took as they began to explore the Bsidd station.

Holograms were everywhere, all written in the trade language that the Hycre had supplied to the Humans and that they’d studied in detail both before they’d left Star Force space and during the weeks that it took them to travel here. Greg had picked up enough of the language that he could read most of the signs at first or second glance and headed in the direction an information sign indicated was the way to the main promenade.

When they came to an up-ramp their feet suddenly stuck in place as an energy shield wrapped around them an inch above the floor and pulled them up as an invisible escalator. Greg’s feet came free at the top which he walked off from to allow others behind him to ascend, then he looked back down at the very shallow angle of the ramp, thinking the Bsidd were going out of the way for comfort’s sake.

“Is it just me or does this feel like a videogame to anyone else?” Jen-475 asked.

“Guess we really are the newbs out here,” Greg agreed. “And yeah, it does feel like a videogame.”

“Oh I want to try that,” Aaron-622 said as they walked out onto the promenade ring that surrounded a huge lower level complex that was a mix of shops and entertainment facilities. Crisscrossing the plaza was a series of zero g energy tubes that shot an individual from one side of the promenade to the other, apparently keeping you confined inside with little more than energy shields being emitted by occasional floating pylons.

“Easy,” Greg cautioned. “Everything around here seems extremely pedestrian. I don’t think they’d like us racing across.”

“Killjoy,” Aaron teased as he brushed shoulders with a passing ape-like creature that bounced him to the side on impact. Both the Human and the larger alien exchanged glances but kept on walking in opposite directions. None of the Archons had their armor on, nor were they carrying any weapons, and Aaron got a good feel for the toughened skin on the monkey as his shoulder bounced off what felt like armored plates.

“He’s lucky I’m on vacation,” Aaron said sarcastically.

“I think that’s the embassy wing,” Clint-274 said, pointing to one of many outer exits on the promenade.

“Gently cut across traffic,” Greg prompted, letting Jen lead the way as they crossed through the pedestrian flow, glancing up at the undersides of the hovering passerbys as they played frogger to get across the circus-like mix of races…and these were only the oxygen breathers on the station.

When they got to the entrance the traffic thinned, but they still had to part their four man formation to let what looked like a clear gelatinous blob float by on an anti-grav orb that it had somehow internalized. Greg didn’t know if it was surgically implanted, swallowed, or if the alien could take on varying shapes, but it was definitely one of the more bizarre races around.

Clint exchanged glances with him and Greg microscopically shrugged beneath his white uniform. Half of the aliens in sight weren’t even wearing clothing, while a small portion were covered in fabric or concealed within armored hulks.

Aaron whistled appreciatively as they passed one of the mostly nude species, the closest to Human form they’d seen. The alien glanced over at them in turn, but continued to walk out of the embassy wing as Aaron kept his eyes on ‘her’ mostly feminine form right down to her pair of uncovered breasts…yet her bluish/green skin was slightly ridged like soft armor, giving her a bristling, yet exotic look.

“Might want to think twice about shore leave for the crew,” he noted, turning his head back in the direction they were walking. “I get the feeling if some of the guys hit on her she might eat them.”

“Point taken,” Greg said as they saw another of the pseudo-females pass them by along with a hip height quadruped.

The dog-like creature did a double take then turned around. “Taru, ven a Sta For?”

Greg and the other Archons paused and did a double take. “Yes, we are,” he answered in the trade language, or as best as he could manage the pronunciation.

“Thank you for coming. We have much to discuss,” it said, walking up alongside of them. “Our rooms are this way please.”

Clint shot Aaron an eyebrow as he flicked on his earpiece, but the other Archon just shook his head. “This day is getting weirder by the minute.”

Greg and the others followed the hairless dog down a series of wide halls until they came to an ornate set of doors that led into one of the embassy suites that acted as both a national and corporate headquarters on the station, facilitating both trade and diplomacy for members of the embassy’s race as well as interracial relations.

“With so many newcomers to the summit, it’s an excellent opportunity to make new friends,” the alien dog said, its words being picked up and translated by the earpieces all of the Archons wore. “You come with the Hycre, yes?”

“Yes,” Greg answered, having to actually speak the trade language, given that the earpieces only worked one way.

“Tell me about your people, your planets, your customs. We wish to learn more about our galactic neighbors. I am Hartu of the Nevarsensta. Welcome to Oel, Star Force.”

“Nevarsensta?” Greg asked, frowning. “We were supposed to be meeting with the Elorav.”

The Nevarsensta clicked its muzzle teeth together three times in rapid succession. “Oh my, have I made a mistake? It seems I have. My sincere apologies. We have extended invitations to all new races at the summit. Did you not receive one…or did you not wish to meet with us?”

“We did not receive,” Greg managed, having to think hard to come up with the word for ‘receive.’

The Nevarsensta bowed his head and shook it side to side. “Shall we arrange a future meeting then? I do not wish to keep you from other appointments.”

“I can stay,” Jen offered Greg in English so the alien couldn’t understand.

“Alright,” Greg said. “Aaron, stay with her. Clint and I will go search out our other contact.”

“Two of us will stay,” Jen told the Nevarsensta as Greg and Clint walked back out into the embassy corridor.

“Excellent,” Hartu said, walking over to a pillow-like cushion on the floor and laying down. “Be seated,” he prompted, pointing a ‘paw’ at several similar cushions, “and tell me more about your race.”

Two weeks later the summit officially began. The Humans had a small booth with two chairs in front of a glass wall that looked in on a shallow pit, around which there were other booths of varying sizes. Immediately to their right and visible through another glass wall were the Hycre. It was the first time Greg had ever seen one of them in person, floating about in their own environment. The wall between them was double thick, however, so that the excessive heat from the other side wouldn’t bleed through and cook the Humans.

To their left was a race Greg and the others had never seen, but apparently they had been invited as a subsidiary of the Hycre as well as four others. Each of the five main races had lesser races with them, giving the total assembly a count of 27, most of which were visible from where Greg sat alongside Clint. Behind them Jen and Aaron stood and watched as a huge hologram filled the central chamber in a star map that outlined the full extent of the lizards territory.

“Shit,” Clint whispered.

“That’s a lot more territory than the Hycre knew about,” Greg agreed, seeing that the rimward regions extended farther from the lizard homeworld than the coreward ones did. A lot farther, in fact, giving the enemy a huge realm that stretched from the top of the galactic plane down to the bottom in the form of tendrils with the main bulk of their territory in the center. The map was by far the most intricate the Archons had ever seen and made it clear just how powerful the lizards were in the region.

“So they have been toying with us,” Jen commented as a voice in the trade language began to speak.

“Know your enemy,” a Bsidd said from a compartment to Greg’s right about a third of the way around the arc of booths. The alien was insect-like and very ugly, with a wisp of a frame but standing half again as tall as the Archons. It had pointy appendages everywhere but was mostly biped…though those other parts might have been able to pass for extra legs.

“They are larger and stronger than all those assembled here. Some of us have made small gains against them in recent years but that will soon be for naught. Some of you with territories on the rimward edge of the Cajdital’s domain know the truth, but for the rest of you I will show you the reason we are all still alive.”

One of the Bsidd’s stick-like appendages pressed a switch in its booth and the star map updated with a host of green dots illuminating rimward of the lizards’ sea of yellow ones. Star Force territory, on the coreward side, as a mere handful of off-white dots while the other races’ star systems were equally colorless but with different shades to mark their territories.

“What is left of the H’kar is shown before you now. They are the greatest threat to the Cajdital and have been fighting a war with them longer than most of us have lived. That war has tipped to the Cajdital’s favor, and they are now rolling through their star systems, destroying or annexing all they come across. These systems are what they have left,” the Bsidd said, gesturing to the green dots on the map. “When the Cajdital are finished with them they will divert the bulk of their military towards eradicating us.”

“The only hope we stand is to coordinate our efforts, share technology, resources,]transportation, and even some of our worlds. We must band together or the Cajdital will roll over us with ease, no matter how much success you’ve had against them in the past. All of us will perish, and the Cajdital will grow stronger on our carcasses. We must use our strengths against them, and armor over each other’s weaknesses. Here, today, we can forge an alliance, a true alliance that can turn back the tide of Cajdital aggression if we hit them now…before they are finished with the H’kar.”

“Politics must be put aside and we must band together…we must! When the wave of Cajdital ships comes, our worlds will be cut apart from one another, so we must make preparations now, before the storm. Otherwise you may as well return to your homes and live out your remaining days as you choose, for when they come they will come in numbers that will blot out the stars and you will have no hope of surviving alone.”

“To do this, we all must contribute, and the Bsidd are no exception. In order for this proposed alliance to function we must have adequate communication lines established, and no, I do not refer to courier ships. We are willing to share our interstellar communications technology with all who sign on to this alliance in order to establish a network of relays surrounding lizard territory and binding us all together.”

“As we do so, we must also take action in multiple ways. We must reinforce our defenses, establish shared outposts on currently uninhabited worlds and empty systems, places where the Cajdital will not know to look for us. We must also establish evacuation routes for when our worlds do get hit, so that we may preserve as many lives as possible in our defeats. We must also have places for these refugees to go, not only to escape, but to contribute to the alliance in a productive manner.”

“Simultaneously we must be on the offensive. We cannot let the Cajdital dictate every battlefield. We must choose some of our own, not just in defense, but to push the Cajdital back in key systems, denying them spacelanes and resources they need to expand with. We must keep them bottled up as we prepare, and we must keep them blind to our efforts. Their scouts cannot be permitted travel through your systems. You must seek out and destroy them when they try so that we can retain the element of surprise and unmonitored reinforcement.”

“We can fight the Cajdital effectively, but it will take a combined effort. Not a sham. Not a stunt. Not a deception. But a true alliance the likes of which the Bsidd have never known, and as I assume most of your races have never known. Put aside your conflicts with one another and forge the bonds of a united front. We either stand together…or we fall one by one.”

Augmentation

1

May 8, 2395

Jartul System

Daka

Mark-084 looked down on the planet of Daka from orbit, seeing the dark browns of the continents mixing with the pale green pair of oceans snaking their way around them in long fingers, but he was unable to make out any signs of urbanization on the planet, new as it was to the Alliance. Somewhere down there was a city, constructed mostly underground to be able to survive orbital bombardment but not necessarily for secrecy. The planet and star system were uninhabited, located a third of the distance around the perimeter of lizard territory from Sol, and as such were expected not to draw the enemy’s attention.

That was the reason why Alliance Command had chosen the system to establish their starfighter training center, where pilots from all the Alliance races could assemble, swap notes on the lizards, and start building better equipment and tactics to counter the enemy in the air and in space. It’d been operational for a couple of years now, but this was the first opportunity Star Force had to attend given the distances involved. More and more the Hycre were having to ferry them about to various Alliance bases given the limited capabilities of their gravity drives and this was no exception. It had taken two massive Hycre jumpships to carry over the 8 ships in Mark’s small taskforce that would be permanently setting up on the planet below.

From the bridge of one of his cargo ships Mark spotted the orbital infrastructure where the spacebound fighters trained, but that was one area that Star Force had not delved into. All their pilots were aerial pilots, tasked with in-atmosphere combat, leaving orbital maneuvers to the navy with their bigger guns and attack drones. The idea of losing pilots in naval engagements was abhorrent, which was why Star Force didn’t used manned craft. On the surface the pilots stood a chance of survival if they got hit, and their aerial craft were equipped with armored cockpits to increase pilot survivability, much like the mechs were, so that a defeat didn’t necessarily result in a death.

Other races weren’t so considerate and fielded large numbers of manned craft, sometimes little more than mobile weapon platforms. Putting armor or shields on a fighter slowed it down, as well as made it more expensive to produce, which was why some Alliance members had their starfighter forces comprised of largely disposable craft armed with powerful weapons…and treated the pilots to be just as dispensable as their craft.

Those races often used hoard tactics, just as the lizards did, to overwhelm a target by sheer numbers but the Calavari did not, and they were the leading Alliance member when it came to starfighters. They’d been the first to suggest the construction of this facility to train up the other races’ inadequate pilots, as they’d put it, in order to present the lizards with a more skilled, united starfighter front.

12 races were already here, with several more to come, making the Humans a latecomer to the scene. The Hycre had no starfighters at all, let alone pilots, so their presence in the system was purely as a defensive force in case the lizards did stumble across this system. Two of their destroyers remained on station permanently, while the jumpships that had just dropped off Star Force’s ships had left as soon as the unloading was complete.

There were a few other warships in the system but Mark had elected not to bring any of their own, instead using all of the available cargo space the Hycre had allotted them to bring materiel and personnel sufficient to establish a Canderian seda in orbit. For now, at least, Mark and his pilots would be taking up residence in the Alliance base on the surface while his army of techs began establishing mining outposts at varied sites across the planet that would, months down the road, supply the raw materials to construct the seda in orbit.

Of the 24 pilots Mark had assembled, including himself, 12 were Archons, 10 were Star Force regulars, and 2 were Canderians. Half of the Archons were from Mark’s own Clan Gunstar, with the others being highly skilled volunteers from the others. All together the trailblazer had assembled a good group of the best pilots Star Force had to offer…with the two Canderians thrown in as extra. Canderous had been begging Star Force to let them establish a starfighter wing of their military, but they’d been staunchly refused, and given that they had little in the way of surface operations they’d never had much need for aerofighters, so they’d made do with building armed assault shuttles for air support.

Mark had brought them along so they could see for themselves how stupid manned starfighters were when going up against warships, but also to allow them to learn from the other races and see what type of ground support operations they might find a niche in, considering that it looked like Star Force’s primary area of contribution to the Alliance was going to be surface-related and Canderous was heavily space-based.

Leaving his cargo fleet in orbit under the care of Baron Keller to begin setting up mining operations, Mark and his fellow pilots left for the surface in a dropship and traveled down to the northernmost continent and the tallest mount range on the planet…which was only several hundred meters high. Daka was covered in grasslands and extremely flat, with the Alliance base tucked into what little terrain the planet had.

When the falcon approached the coordinates that had been transmitted to the Humans upon arrival they did a flyby, seeing several squadrons of aerofighters performing maneuvers around what looked like a bombing range to the east while others were busy with dogfights to the west. The northern and southern approaches were clear for the moment, so the dropship pilot brought them in from the south and circled around until they spotted a large open door on the side of one of the more sheer mountains, exposing a huge hangar bay inside.

As the dropship approached it was literally swallowed up by the massive construct. Plains of open deck stretched out before them with hundreds of aircraft clustered in small groups sporadically spaced around the interior of the dome…with another massive, closed bay door on the other side, meaning that the hollowed-out chamber had to stretch from one side of the mountain range to the other. It was kilometers wide at minimum and was obviously designed to hold a great deal more occupants than it had at present.

A tracking beacon led the dropship to the area of the deck that was being allotted for use by the Humans, tucked up against one of the support columns rising up to the top of the dome to keep the mountain from crushing down onto the hanger deck. As they got closer Mark realized the column was much bigger than it appeared, and as they moved in to land a hundred meters away from it he also saw infrastructure imbedded inside in the form of doors and hundreds of windows stretching up the exterior.

Just outside the doors were a group of 5 people waiting for them to land, so once the dropship settled down Mark and the other pilots slipped their filter masks over their mouth and nose and grabbed the first of their gear from the hold before walking outside into the planet’s native atmosphere.

The world had plenty of oxygen to go around, up near 45%, but there were also a number of other gases mixed in that didn’t affect the Humans so well. If they needed to they could breathe the atmosphere directly, but after a few minutes of exposure they’d start to get a burning sensation in their throat and lungs that would build to painful levels, though it was said that it wouldn’t kill them.

Star Force had designed the small masks that wrapped around the back of their heads and sealed over their mouth and nose to be as minimally intrusive as possible while removing the hazardous compounds from each breath they took. As Mark led the pilots from the dropship and over to the column he saw that three out of the 5 people in the greeting team also wore masks of some type, though these covered their entire faces. One of the two that was unaugmented stepped forward and spoke first.

“Welcome, fellow pilots,” the four-armed Calavari said in the trade language, looking down at the smaller Humans. “We are pleased you could join us.”

“I am Mark-084 and these are some of the best pilots Star Force has to offer,” the Archon said, his voice muffled by the breather mask. “We appreciate the invite…and the chance to test our strengths against your own.”

“I am Vornac, and will serve as your liaison officer while you are here. This is Morhat, my wingman, and these three are Protovic pilots who were interested in seeing the newcomers.”

“Dash’ti’ki,” one of them said, taking a step forward and holding its hand up in what Mark almost thought was the Vulcan V-hand greeting, except that the fingers weren’t right. The middle two were together with the others splayed out, but concealed within the body suit and helmet the Protovic was wearing the Archon could have sworn he was looking at another Human. “You are Star Force?”

“We are,” Mark said proudly.

“You do look like us,” Dash’ti’ki said, glancing over Mark and the rest of the Humans. “We are interested in seeing if you fly as well. We offer a challenge, when you are ready.”

“Thank you. Once we get settled in and figure out how things work around here I’m sure we’ll be able to come to terms.”

“Come to terms?”

“We have rules of engagement that must be satisfied before we accept challenges, so I cannot officially confirm or deny until we get more information.”

“And that you will have shortly,” Vornac assured Mark as he gestured one of his arms back towards the column. “Let’s continue this indoors, shall we? I can see that your race doesn’t take well to this atmosphere.”

“Yours apparently does,” Mark said after nodding and following the aliens over to the door.

“It is tolerable to us but not to the Cajdital, which is why we chose this planet. If they find us here they’ll have to equip their assault forces with envirosuits and they don’t typically carry a lot of them in storage, which would diminish their numbers if they chose to launch an immediate attack.”

The triple-wide doors split apart, two pieces sliding laterally into the walls while the third middle piece disappeared up into the ceiling, giving them all easy access into a large empty room with a solitary terminal rising up out of the floor in the center. The internal architecture was all shades of red and orange, a stark contrast from the greys in the hangar.

Vornac remotely closed the outer doors before triggering a whirlwind that nudged Mark off balance as the air was rapidly exchanged through a series of filters hidden within the walls. As soon as the violent windstorm began it died out and a light illuminated on the terminal.

“The air is clear, with a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide remaining. I believe that is satisfactory for your race?”

“What percent of carbon dioxide?” Mark asked.

“Same as the planetary atmosphere, about .5% and our air processors keep that ratio internally.”

Mark slid his mask off and took a deep breath, held it, then released it slowly, feeling no ill effects. “We’re good,” he said to both Vornac and his fellow pilots that followed his lead and removed their masks.

The Calavari used the terminal to open the inner doors, revealing an ovoid hallway stretched laterally that was decorated in more red and less orange than the airlock chamber, but the colors were still bright and a bit overbearing, giving the whole area almost a carnival feel to it.

“This complex is for your use and is capable of holding 2,400 individuals. That’s how many quarters are present, though if you double up you could accommodate many more. We will accommodate you with whatever foodstuffs you require, though many races prefer to ship in their own,” Vornac said, leading them through the column to a three story tall room not far from the airlock.

“This is your control center and will allow you to monitor all chambers within this column, as well as communicate with others and tap into the base’s external sensors, communications, and other systems. Don’t be afraid to wander around the system, safety protocols are firmly locked into place so you won’t be able to accidentally cause any trouble. The systems are all encoded in the trade language, of course, so there shouldn’t be any language issues. On the far side are the cargo areas, which I imagine you’ll want to start loading up from your transport?”

“We have a lot more stuff to bring down, but only a handful of people. These are all the pilots I brought with me.”

“What, just these?” Vornac asked, a bit taken aback. “We intended to train you an army of properly prepared pilots.”

“These will be enough,” Mark said confidently. “We will learn and pass on what we know. Our territory is far from here, so we didn’t want to bring too many out on the first trip.”

“Yes, of course, I’d forgotten. My apologies. Just know that this facility is not the only one allotted to you. We have many more should the need arise, so do not hesitate to bring in as many pilots as you can. As far as your introductionary information is concerned, there is a program installed on this terminal that will explain everything, which you can view at your leisure.”

“If we want to go somewhere else, do we have to walk across the hangar deck or do you have an alternative means of transport?”

“You’re certainly welcome to fly across to other locations if you wish, or go by foot, but we do have access corridors above the hangar ceiling that connect all structures together. Also, there are communal structures up there for all to use. I suggest that once you get settled you take a while to explore the base before we get heavily into training. This is a home for all pilots and the Calavari want to ensure that everyone feels the same.”

“Well, we’ll definitely take the opportunity to explore,” Mark promised. “Are there any specific training sessions or meetings over the next few days that you want us to attend?”

“Everything is at your discretion. Join us when you feel ready. A full schedule of base activities and operations is available in the database, accessible from here,” Vornac said, laying one of his lower hands on a console. “You can also sign up for use of the Valeries remotely.”

“Valeries?”

“A type of starfighter that we have designed for the use of all Alliance pilots. You can, of course, use your own, but you’re also welcome to use a Valerie whenever you like.”

“Operating controls?” Mark asked, glancing at Vornac’s four arms.

“Modular to accommodate all races invited, except for the Hycre. They declined invitation so we didn’t modify any for them.”

“Modifications for each race or one design that all can use?”

“Forgive me, I misspoke. Had the Hycre attended they would have required different craft. The Valeries available to you can be used by everyone once you reconfigure the internal controls and environment to your race’s setting, easily accomplished within a few minutes.”

“Interesting,” Mark mewed. “And where are these Valeries located?”

“A neutral zone of the deck,” Vornac said, accessing the database and quickly pulling up a map and thrusting one of his four thick fingers at it. “We have several thousand available and do all servicing ourselves. The Calavari, I mean. That way other race’s pilots can focus on flying and learning while we handle the maintenance. We also offer fuel services for your unique craft, once we have the necessary formulas worked out. Some races prefer to keep that a secret, but the more redundancy we have in production across all our bases in the galaxy the better equipped we will be to fight the Cajdital.”

“Ours is mostly hydrogen-based. I’ll send over the formula later, though we do intend to fuel our own craft.”

“As you wish, but we will soon have a supply on hand should you require its use. We also are modifying the Valerie designs for construction by other races using resources plentiful to them and we will do the same for you if you wish.”

“We like our skeets well enough, but we’re always on the lookout for new ideas to steal.”

“A ‘skeet’ is your craft?”

“Atmosphere only, but yes.”

“What are your space-based craft called?”

“We don’t use any manned ships that small in space. We rely on our warships for naval combat.”

“Much as the Hycre do,” Vornac pointed out neutrally.

“Our motivations are different, but there is a coincidental similarity there.”

“What is your motivation?” one of the Protovic asked through its mask that it still had on.

Mark leaned again the edge of a console and crossed his arms over his chest, expecting this to turn into a bit of a pilot’s turf war. “We accept the loss of machinery in battle, not pilots. In atmosphere starfighter pilots have a better chance of survival, even if they get shot down, and usually the guns they face on a planet are far smaller than those of a navy in space.”

“The Cajdital have no such concerns.”

“And we’ve found ways to beat them,” Mark countered. “Their starfighters are no match for our gunships because we designed them to take the enemy’s advantage and turn it against them.”

“I would much like to see those battles,” Vornac said, “if you happen to have records?”

Mark smiled. “We do, and I brought copies to study. I hope all of you have done the same. I’m interested in how the lizards have adapted to fight you.”

“Lizards?” Dash’ti’ki asked.

“It’s our nickname for the Cajdital. We usually don’t use that term with other races, but since we’re all pilots here I figured you’d have some shorthand terms of your own.”

Vornac laughed with a booming tone. “I like you, Human. You speak like Calavari pilot. I hope you fly like one.”

Mark glanced across his shoulder at Boen-497. “We’ll find out soon enough. Our skeets are coming down with the next dropship. Any procedures we need to know about before taking to the sky?”

Vornac smiled, showing two rows of tiny teeth. “Our skies are free. Head out when you like.”

2

May 9, 2395

Jartul System

Daka

With most of their equipment unloaded and their skeets being transported down from orbit in small shipments Mark left their complex in Kara-317’s hands while he and Boen, Sam Grind, and Iren-844 headed up the elevator in the support column they were inhabiting and exited onto a wide, bridge-like arching walkway large enough for a mech. It was all but empty, with only two other individuals visible at the far left end and a junction a decent distance down to their right.

“Which way?” Iren asked.

“Let’s start with what’s close,” Mark suggested, walking off to their right. “There should be some structures down this way, if the map was accurate.”

“Guess we won’t have to worry about having to run around the flight deck in masks,” Boen commented, seeing the size and length of the upper walkways.

“No, but this shallow arch is going to be fun,” Mark said sarcastically, knowing that running up it would be a bear considering that it was so long. Running down it would also be tricky, as your body would want to go faster than normal and it’d be easy to over accelerate and trip up your feet…but then again, what Archon didn’t enjoy a challenge.

“There’s a door,” Sam said, being the non-Archon in the foursome, as he pointed ahead of them along the right wall where a small doorjamb jutted out a few inches as seen from the side. When the pilots got to it they saw it was closed but a small control panel held two crystal-like buttons, one red, one yellow, that according to their base introduction walkthrough stated was used in lieu of handles or latches.

Boen pressed the red button, finding the deceptively crystal appearance to actually be slightly squishy. It glowed when he touched it, but the door didn’t open.

“Twice,” Mark reminded him.

“Right,” he said, tapping it again with nothing happening. He frowned and hit it two more times in quick succession, then the door opened in another tri-split, giving them access to a high-ceilinged room that held rows of pods along with a central display hologram that activated automatically as they got within proximity. It appeared that no one else was in the chamber, not surprising given the size of the facility, but it did feel odd that such a tech-laden room had no one using it.

“This must be one of their simulators,” Boen said, walking over to one of the nearest pods and cracking it open…then quickly taking a step back and coughing as a wave of noxious gasses came out of the contained atmosphere inside the pod. “Oh…that’s nasty,” he said between coughs, trying to get the air out of his lungs and nose.

Mark wrinkled his nose as a bit of it wafted his way. “Ammonia?”

“That’d be my guess,” Boen confirmed. “Who else is nearby?”

“The Gnar have their quarters nearby,” Sam offered. “And I think I remember the databanks saying they breathed a combination of oxygen and ammonia.”

“The pods must have their own life support so the pilots aren’t encumbered by breathing gear when inside,” Mark suggested. “Just be glad that isn’t the communal atmosphere or we’d be the ones wearing masks everywhere we went.”

“You think this area is set up for specifically for the Gnar?” Iren asked.

Mark bit his lip as he thought, then walked over and opened another pod. “This one isn’t noxious, and the controls are different. Check the others,” he said, reaching in and adjusting one of the control bars. The pod itself was huge, but the pilot’s controls were situated on a series of mechanical arms coming out of the back wall of the pod but with no seat. The ammonia-laced pod had had one, so Mark looked around to see if there was a modular version he could bring up out of the floor.

He found a floor button and kicked it with the toe of his shoe, which broke open the floor beneath him and slid his body to the left as a chasm became exposed. Out of it came several more mechanical monstrosities.

“Got another stinky one,” Iren reported from the other side of the room.

“Clean up here,” Sam said from the second tier above them.

“This is interesting,” Boen said from across the hologram on the ground floor from Mark. “This pod is configured as a two-seater.”

“Y-wing?” Sam joked.

Iren turned around and frowned. “Why haven’t we ever built one of those?”

“We did,” Mark said, still trying to reconfigure his pod’s controls. “It sucked.”

“Why haven’t I ever heard about that?” Boen asked, shocked.

“Because it sucked,” the trailblazer repeated. “All bombers suck, so we don’t use them.”

“Do we still have one tucked away somewhere?” Boen pressed.

“Yes.”

The Archon gave him a ‘why haven’t you ever told me about this’ look and shrugged his arms up in the air. “Where is it?”

Mark sighed. “Along with the X-wing, A-wing, B-wing, and TIE fighter that we built. Paul’s got them stashed away somewhere.”

“Are you serious?” Iren asked, desperately hoping he was.

“Yes, I’m serious,” Mark said as his seat finally reconfigured into a chair design, allowing him to sit down as he adjusted the rest of the controls to his liking. “None of them worked as good as the skeets, and we’re not going to build inferior ships just because they look cool.”

“I wonder if Kara knows about this,” Boen said, throwing a glance at Iren.

“What else did you guys build?” Iren asked Mark.

“Optimus Prime,” he said deadpan. “Ah, there,” he said as the canopy on his pod began to lower down to cover him and the surrounding space big enough to fit a couch.

Iren and Boen exchanged glances.

“No they didn’t,” Boen said, with Iren nodding his agreement.

Inside the canopy it was dark aside from the illuminated controls until a hologram formed around the spherical covering that showed a decent representation of the grasslands outside, fixed in place rather than moving underneath him as if he’d been flying. Directly in front of his odd assortment of controls a menu flashed up written in the trade language offering Mark a plethora of options that he had to concentrate to read through, with some of the terms not registering in his mind.

When he got to the craft selection option he stopped there and began cycling through the presets, seeing that there were over 160 craft already programmed in. He sifted through them until he came to the Valerie, then pulled up the flight control schematics for the stub-winged fighter. While the mechanics of the craft were a bit different than their skeets, they still had the same basic functions and he was able to maneuver the control arms around into a more or less familiar arrangement, knowing that he could tweak it later. Right now he just wanted to get behind the stick…or in this case, roll bars.

On his holographic HUD another icon appeared, tagging a pod that had just come online. Mark tapped his earpiece and opened a comm line to the other three pilots. “Who else is in?”

“That’d be me,” Sam said. “Don’t know what’s taking the other losers so long.”

“Dude,” Boen’s voice came back over Mark’s earpiece, “you just called yourself a loser.”

“Did not.”

“Yeah, you did,” Iren confirmed. “Mark, you want us all in?”

“Yes please.”

“Why didn’t you say so,” Boen complained, marching over to an open pod. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back out.”

“I’ve found the Valerie,” Mark went on. “Everybody load it up and try to get the control arms situated so they’re useable.”

“Whoa,” Iren said, his voice raising in pitch. “They’ve got some sweet holos. Way better than ours.”

“What makes you say that?” Mark asked.

“The battle graphics are insane…or, wait. Maybe that’s a recording of outside the base. Actually, I don’t know. As soon as I got in it flipped into display mode and I’ve been watching about 25 fighters throw down.”

“What kind?”

“Valeries and Bsidd fighters, if I’m seeing this right. They’ve got some crazy weapon systems.”

“Oh?” Boen asked.

“Later people,” Mark said, cutting off a response. “Everyone get to the main menu and bring up a Valerie,” he said, tapping one of the now three icons present. Instead of data on that pilot he got a game prompt instead. After a moment’s inspection he realized he needed to choose a simulation before he could bring others into it.

“Ok,” he whispered to himself, selecting the default map of the base and the surrounding area, then he tagged the other three pilots, turning their icons yellow. One by one they turned red as they accepted the invite, then Mark set the simulation in motion without choosing any other options. Suddenly his view changed to the interior of the Valerie, which was hovering above their base looking down at the mountains below.

“Everyone else in the sky?”

“Right behind you, diamond formation,” Sam reported.

Mark looked around, then found his point detection sensor display, seeing the three other fighters sitting behind him in a ‘V’ formation, making him the tip of the diamond. “Got you. Break up and see if you can fly in something other than a straight line. We’ll play tag later.”

“Copy that,” Sam said, dipping down below the formation before awkwardly scooting forward and off to the left. The others broke away from Mark, who held position for a moment to let them get clear before he started playing with the anti-grav controls, finding that he could roll the ship front to back or side to side with ease as if the gravity drive was located dead center in the ship…or else they had some sweet computer control to balance it out.

Mark’s Valerie danced about in place for several minutes, then the dagger-like ship accelerated ahead with its reverse wingtips cutting into the simulated air making 4 brief contrails. As the ship’s speed rose its shields visibly altered shape, making the already aerodynamic craft into more of a needle, allowing it to slice through the atmosphere more efficiently. Mark thought the shields were computer generated rather than actually being visible, but when dealing with other races’ tech it was hard to be sure.

“Guys, are your shields opaque or invisible?”

“I haven’t deployed mine…not sure where the button is either,” Iren answered.

“I didn’t use a button,” Mark explained. “They must have auto-activated as I accelerated.”

“High speed shields?” Boen asked.

“Yeah, but I can see them. Not sure if that’s the computer or what they really look like.”

“Anyone else think these things fly weird?” Iren asked.

“Define weird?”

“Aft heavy.”

Mark turned his Valerie through a long 180 degree turn, then wiggled back and forth getting a feel for the craft. “I see what you mean. The nose seems so light it has a mind of its own.”

“Exactly.”

“Hold on,” Boen said. “There’s something here about balancing the anti-grav…yeah, there we go. You’ve probably got it all in the rear. The adjustment slider is on my left, if that helps anyone.”

Mark looked around looking for a slider and found one down by his right foot. He read the label and figured that was the one his fellow Archon was referring to. He adjusted it to the midpoint and found that the squirrely nose of his fighter settled down considerably.

“Good catch.”

“I have my moments,” he answered pithily as another icon lit up in the corner of Mark’s map in yellow alongside the three red icons for his fellow pilots.

“Looks like someone else wants to play,” Sam noted.

“I see that,” he said, reading the name tag he didn’t recognize. “Form up, we’re about to have company.”

Mark pushed the button, turning it red, and a 5th fighter appeared in the simulation.

“I see you’ve found one of our simulator rooms,” a voice said through the pod’s comm system rather than the Human’s earpiece. “Allow me to walk you through the basics. The Valerie is our standard fighter, but it has some uniqueness to it that takes a while to master.”

“Who is this?” Mark asked in the trade language.

“I guess you haven’t learned to read yet,” the voice said, laughing. “I am Lorsar of the Calavari. My user icon has my name and other data attached to it. I see you four are using generic templates.”

“We’re just exploring the system,” Mark explained. “We’re not up for any simulated combat yet.”

“I didn’t expect you to be, but if you’ll rendezvous at my position I can teach you some of our standard combat maneuvers, then you can adapt them to your liking.”

“Can you start with a demonstration? We’re having some trouble getting used to the controls.”

“As you wish,” Lorsar said, kicking his Valerie upside down and dropping towards the ground at high speed. From there he went through a series of basic maneuvering, giving the Humans a good idea of the ship’s movement profile, then he worked up into higher levels of flight, demonstrating that he was no average pilot and that the Valerie was a formidable craft to fly against…then again it had to be if they were supposed to counter the lizards’ nimble fighters.

From there they moved to basic paired flight and maneuvers, which showed Mark that the Calavari definitely had their tactics nailed down. Lorsar told Mark how to bring in computer-controlled targets, since he was the one who initiated the simulation, and they practiced a bit with the firing controls before enabling them to shoot back. The spherical targets fired off plasma bursts that registered as hits rather than damage, with a tally number in the upper left hand corner of the HUD.

Lorsar worked them up through the most basic of settings until they started encountering resistance, then he began giving them a few tips on how to approach the targets using the maneuvering capabilities of the Valeries. That got them up another two levels before they called an end to the simulation and cracked open the pods.

To Mark’s surprise there were several individuals from different races standing around, watching their progress on the central hologram. Among them were the Protovic, still clad in their full body suits. Across the hologram from Mark another pod opened, this one revealing a Calavari that had to be Lorsar. He stretched out his four arms and the Archon heard at least one joint pop in the process.

“They’re not bad,” he announced to the group of onlookers. “Once they get adjusted I think they’ll do fine. I saw their own ships on the deck this morning, front heavy, so cut them some slack.”

“We are merely here to observe,” one of the Protovic said. “Not to judge.”

Sam slid down from the second tier on the smooth side of two poles down to the floor and joined the other Humans in a tight knot while the rest of the crowd had them surrounded. Mark didn’t say anything, but just looked them all in the eye, trying to judge their demeanors.

“If you can get us the schematics of your own vessels, we can load them into the simulation,” Lorsar offered, “though I think in the long run it’ll be better if you learn to fly the Valerie.”

“We’ll do both,” Mark stated, crossing his arms over his chest. “But for the moment I’m going to take some of my other pilots up in the real air for some maneuvers. I’m sure there’s some cameras around here for you to monitor our progress. We’ve also got some target drones to deploy so we can have some live fire exercises. After that I’d be interested in hearing your assessments,” Mark said, gesturing to them all.

“You think your ships are superior?” a Protovic asked.

“Don’t know yet,” he answered honestly. “But I’ve put 300+ years into the design work, so I know they’ve got more in them than you’re assuming.”

Lorsar crisscrossed all four of his arms. “You helped design your fighters?”

“I helped create the original and have been refining the design ever since.”

“300 years?”

“And change.”

“How long do Humans live?” Lorsar asked.

“As long as we want,” Mark said evenly. “Those who don’t train last about 100 years.”

“How old are you?”

“377.”

“And the rest of you?”

“These two are over 300,” Mark said, pointing to Iren and Boen. “Sam is…”

“Only 121,” the Star Force pilot answered, “but I can still keep up with them for the most part.”

“That makes you three among the oldest pilots we have here,” Lorsar informed them. “The Kitot have 5 that are over 636, but I know of no others 212 years or older.”

“They don’t fly that well for being so old,” another Calavari noted.

Lorsar held up a hand to stop further comment. “Let’s observe them in their own craft first. I am interested in seeing what you’ve built, Human.”

“Happy to oblige,” Mark said, leading the other Humans through the middle of the group of onlookers and out of the simulator complex.

3

Mark climbed up into the open cockpit of his personal skeet, painted in the yellow/chrome color scheme similar to the Naboo starfighter from Star Wars, and slid his right leg over the pommel, feeling the familiar seat and chest rest as he straddled fighter and triggered the canopy to slide shut with the press of a button. When the internal atmosphere recycled, taking the harmful gasses out of the air, he pulled off his breath mask and tucked it in a small storage compartment underneath his right arm then gripped one of the ball-like joysticks in each hand down below the control board that was set just in front and below his chin.

Above that was the HUD, with both a video screen and a holographic display having replaced the previously see-through canopy. Now the pod was completely enclosed in an armor-hard carapace to protect the pilot and the visual navigation was all handled by relay from external cameras and sensors. It had been a bit disconcerting when Mark had implemented the design change, but they’d included more than 2 dozen micro-cameras around the hull, meaning that the most likely way a pilot would lose visuals would be if the craft completely lost power…during which they wouldn’t be able to maneuver anyway.

As soon as he powered it up the holographic display filled the entire cockpit, making it appear as if the skeet was invisible. Mark could see the deck beneath his skeet, which appeared as an outline before he flipped a switch and returned his viewing option to opaque. The flat T-shaped nose returned, along with the floor underneath his feet, making him feel more like he was in a fighter than a simulation. Other pilots preferred the wider view, but Mark liked to be able to see his engine pods and fuselage during flight, unless they were on a bombing run or other ground support role.

Visible over the ‘T’ of his ship were another pair of skeets, one blue and another yellow/chrome. The blue one belonged to Clan Saber, with Kara as its pilot. There was also a white/gold from Clan Mantle, an entirely orange from Clan Firestorm, two black/green from Clan Star Claw, and a dark brown from Clan Croft. The rest of the skeets were Star Force grey, both those for the regular pilots and the spares that they’d brought along. Mark could also see the pair of Canderian assault shuttles on the deck next to two gunships, two mantises, and a scattering of dropships that had remained on station rather than returning to orbit.

Sliding his left hand back into the spherical joystick he doubled up his fine-tuned control of the craft by activating both sticks…that way each directional motion was halved and if he wanted a full motion he would have to perform the same twist with both hands. This allowed him to fly one handed and manipulate the control board with the other, or to use both for precision control, such as driving around the flight deck.

Each joystick was a solid cylinder crossing from one point on the inside of the sphere to the other, allowing him to wrap his hand around it while burying his fist inside the compartment. On the outside of each there was a thumb notch with a trigger button. When using the weapons his thumb would rest there, when not his thumb would cross over to the other side and lay against the solid portion of the joystick to keep it from accidentally hitting the trigger during hectic maneuvers.

There were no other buttons on the stick, but it did roll, allowing him to turn left or right. The entire ball-like fist chamber also moved forward and back, allowing Mark to tip the craft up or down, while twisting his wrist to the side would roll the ship around on its axis. Opposite commands from the other joystick would cancel out and each one automatically recoiled to center position, with both deactivating when tactile pressure on the sticks was released.

There were other buttons inside the sphere, however. If Mark reached his fingers out from the stick they’d find four floating triggers that could be tasked with a variety of functions. That gave an available button for each digit, one of which Mark had tagged as a comm button. When he pressed his left middle finger down it changed the other 7 buttons over to preset comm channels, and deactivated when one was selected so the other button functions could be used while chatting.

Mark powered up his skeet’s anti-grav engines with another one, then brought his propulsive engines to an idle, insuring that all were functioning after their trip in the belly of a dropship. Retasking the roll of his right joystick over to anti-grav control, the trailblazer lifted his skeet up off the deck a few inches and retracted the landing get up inside the fighter, then pivoted around using minimal propulsion from his wingtip engines until he was pointed back towards the open bay doors and staring at the side of a dropship.

Triggering the comm, he hovered in place for a moment. “Report any problems.”

“Good to go,” Kara reported, followed by similar sentiments from the other 8 pilots Mark was taking up with him.

“Take it slow and watch out for traffic,” he ordered, rising his skeet up above the altitude of the top of the dropship then accelerating at minimal speed across it and over to the distant doors. On his sensor board he saw all the ships on the deck, along with the ones rising up behind him. They were tagged with ID signatures for his pilots along with damage statistics, all of which showed full green bars beneath. The ones on the ground showed no data at all, given that they weren’t currently powered up.

Mark pressed his right foot pedal harder and his skeet zipped across the mostly open deck and out of the mountain hideaway, upon which he pulled back on both joysticks and tipped the fighter’s nose up into the air and climbed with the anti-grav automatically adjusting to the change in altitude. Once he got up to 2km he held position and waited for the rest of his squadron to come out along with one of the dropships carrying their targets.

Once everyone was aloft Mark led the group out 50 kilometers from the base where they staked out their training ground and began to go through basic maneuvers, getting themselves reacquainted with their skeets after such a long trip out on the jumpship. As the dropship began dropping floating targets a few alien fighters began to come out of the base and head near to the Humans’ position but they kept a respectful distance, Mark thought, probably so they could relay sensors and visuals back to the base.

“Kara, you’ve got Deuce. Jenna, David, Wade, and Peter are with me,” Mark said, flying a lazy arc so the others could rendezvous and form up around him. “Standard formation drills, lachars set to tickle.”

“Copy that,” Kara said, flying off to another rendezvous point where the rest of the pilots would join her flight group.

“Wade, take point,” Mark said, setting himself in the center of the five skeet line. The fighters flew side by side parallel to one of the targets until they got a few degrees shy of perpendicular to it, whereupon Wade cut hard left, followed a few seconds later by David, then Mark and so on, setting up single attack runs from multiple points, each with their own firing line and a bit of a stagger.

Mark let David flash over the target, a large floating metallic sphere, before firing one shot from his lachar that splashed against the energy shield, which registered the hit that appeared on his skeet’s HUD along with the others being fired by the rest of the fighters in both groups. When he flew past the target he pulled up slightly then made a hard right turn after he was well past and accelerated to catch up and reform their side by side line, now heading back in the same direction they began after going through the S-shaped maneuver.

Once back together they made a long looping right turn and came back at the target from the opposite direction, making a reverse direction mirror attack of their first with each pilot easily landing their hits. Mark’s group went through several more runs before switching formations 5 additional times, with multiple attempts at each.

“You ready for playtime?” Kara asked after her group completed their scripted runs.

“Hunters and hounds?”

“Which are we?”

“Your choice,” Mark offered.

“We’ll take hounds.”

“Ha, your funeral,” the trailblazer said, toggling his control board and sending commands to one of the targets. He barely had time to configure the team protocols before Kara’s skeet broke off after the now moving target.

“Move it guys,” Mark said, pulling a tight turn and accelerating hard after her, “before she gets an easy one.”

Suddenly all the fighters snapped out of their lazy maneuvers and accelerated into combat mode, with half of them pursuing the erratically maneuvering target and the others pursuing them. The hounds scored points by shooting the target, while the hunters scored by shooting the hounds.

“Jenna and Peter, take Alex. Wade and David, Kevin or Liara, your choice. I’ll keep the rest off the target,” he said, firing off a few long range shots at Kara with his skeet’s lachar hoping for a hit that would knock her weapons offline for a few seconds.

That didn’t happen until she pegged the target, scoring a point for Deuce team, then she flew off before Mark could get close to her.

Once she was clear he turned his attention to Silas, a Star Force regular, who was also making a strafing run on the target, but the anti-grav unit in the device kept it bobbing up and down randomly as its conventional engines moved it across the grasslands in a zigzag pattern, causing Silas to miss his first few attempts before Mark hit him at moderate range, which knocked his weapons offline and took away the immediate threat to the target.

That left Liara as the only wild card. The other two pilots were occupied enough just trying to keep from getting shot by the pairs chasing them that they couldn’t mount an assault on the target, and soon a point for the Primes came up as Alex was hit, evening the score. Liara was trying to unbalance that by making a run towards the target from the opposite side, firing away repeatedly hoping to get a lucky shot in before Mark could get to her. Liara missed up until the point where Mark was almost in range, then he had to pull up hard to avoid Kara coming up at him from below.

That he hadn’t expected. Normally she would have gone in after the target, which was doing a good job of making itself hard to hit. Instead she had come over to cover for Liara which, now that Mark had to divert, was closing in on…

The score counter kicked up to 2 for the Deuces as Liara found her mark and swung off, suffering through the weapons deactivation that kept one pilot from sitting in place and racking up a high score in a matter of seconds.

Mark had to act quickly to get in close to the target before Silas could nail it. The trouble with going 3 on 1 meant they were likely to score several points, but at the same time his teammates would be racking up a lot of kills on the two weaker pilots they were picking on. He hoped that this way the burden of the victory would be on him, and he knew that all he had to do was buy time and the match would be won.

The trailblazer successfully got to Silas and killed him again before he could get to the target, but then Kara got in a lucky hit that knocked out his weaponry and allowed both her and Liara to make a move to score, but the pesky target only allowed them one hit before Mark’s weapons came back online and he shot Kara, whom he’d been trailing. She hadn’t gone evasive, hoping to get in a score before his weapons reactivated, but her gambit hadn’t paid off.

Suddenly the Prime’s score jumped to 3 as both of the weaker Deuce’s went down, but their aerial display didn’t stop. As soon as the brief pause expired the pilots would be live again and the Primes knew better than to let them out of their sights. Going 2 on 1 wasn’t exactly fair, but Kara had chosen hounds and Mark was going to make her regret that choice.

He took a short rest from guarding the target so he could track down Liara and take her out of the picture for a bit, then drove off Kara and Silas as the target ducked under him closer than he would have liked. The drone had non-collision protocols written in to it, but every now and then it came close enough to the fighters with a last second juke in one direction to spook them. That unpredictability made it difficult to target, but also kept the pilots on edge because it had enough mass that even a little bump would cause major problems.

Mark continued to guard the target, allowing only two more hits on it before his teammates brought the Primes’ count up to 10, which was standard for a short match. As he swung around in a victorious loop he spotted the alien fighters in the distance, suddenly remembering that they had an audience. Almost as soon as the skeets stopped their maneuvers a comm prompt lit up in Mark’s cockpit, which he activated using  a series of button presses within the joystick spheres.

“You fly better in real air than you did in the simulator,” Lorsar’s voice said with a touch of approval.

“We fly better in our own ships,” Mark countered.

“As most do. What is your drone’s defense?”

“It has an energy shield that registers our low powered hits.”

“How low?”

“Barely enough to scratch the paint if it did get through.”

“If I restrict the Valerie’s plasma to its minimal level, will that be too much?”

“Not sure what the minimal level is, but it’d probably be alright. You want to take a try at the target?”

“A simple demonstration of targeting efficiency. Perhaps you can use two drones and a time limit to compare one of the Valeries to your own ship.”

“We call them ‘skeets,’ and yes, we can do that. How long a timespan do you want?”

“43 seconds will be sufficient,” Lorsar said, referring to the basic unit of time in the trade language. Many races, he’d discovered, gave time estimates either in their own familiar units in translation or used the trade language ones. Mark always used minutes and hours and just translated them into the exact conversion mentally rather than trying to guestimate in terms his brain wasn’t used to using. So far Star Force had resisted converting over to the trade language units for their daily use, and Mark didn’t think that was going to change anytime soon.

“Alright, you ready?” he asked Lorsar.

“I will not be the one. Hesar, one of our junior pilots, will demonstrate.”

“Standby,” Mark said, switching comm frequencies. “Kara, take this one. I want to watch.”

“No pressure,” she said, flying over to the nearer target which was still zigzagging around.

“Begin on my mark,” the Archon said. “5, 4, 3, 2, 1…go!”

As soon as he gave the word the Valerie, which was already tailing the drone, dropped in altitude and got below eye level with the target, firing small plasma spurts that fanned out into a cone-like spray. The golden glow mitigated by the time it reached the target, but enough of it was still active plasma to register a hit right off the bat, with subsequent attacks hitting the mark about 50% of the time.

Mark saw the Valerie’s hit counter roll up continuously before topping out at a score of 64. Kara, meanwhile, had succeeded in scoring a decent 16.

“Damn,” the Archon whispered as she flew off from the target. “That’s one hell of a cheat weapon.”

“As you can see,” Lorsar’s voice cut in on Mark’s comm before he could answer Kara back, “the Valerie is a superior craft. Our engineers and pilots have worked hard to develop it into the premier anti-Cajdital fighter so that it can strengthen all Alliance races.”

“I’m impressed,” Mark admitted, “but we’ve got a lot of testing to do before we think about adopting it.”

“Of course,” the Calavari said genuinely. “No pilot discards their familiar craft quickly or easily, but in time I think you will see the wisdom in making the switch.”

“You’ve got an interesting weapon system there,” Mark said, putting a halt to the Valerie love fest. “Now let’s see how well it maneuvers. Are your pilots willing to play target so we can see how hard they are to hit?”

“How many do you wish?”

“Let’s start with one and work our way up from there. If ten of us can’t hit one of yours we’ve got problems.”

Lorsar laughed. “Very well, we will humor you with a small victory to begin, Human. Then we will see how effective your little ships are.”

“Good,” Mark said with a mock positive tone as he remotely deactivated the targets so they wouldn’t be dancing around the battlefield. “Do you have energy shields on the Valerie?”

“The shields are a combination of energy and physical shields, and I will play scorekeeper until our techs can interface our computer systems with yours. I assure you I will not falsify the numbers, to do so would be an insult to the Valerie.”

“Terms accepted. Let’s get at it.”

4

May 25, 2395

Jartul System

Daka

Mark pulled up out of a steep dive, firing off a plasma orb partway through his redirect and nailing the shielded target on one of the ranges to the east of the base with the small blue glob of plasma before flashing across the target then leveling out over the grasslands far beyond it, watching his altimeter closely. He had to stay under 50 meters or he’d be disqualified from the run and there were holographic obstacles ahead that he was going to have to weave his way through.

He was piloting his skeet, as usual, while he’d encouraged his other pilots to try out the Valeries. Over the past 2 weeks they’d started to get acclimated to the alien design and began making progress in the simulators vs. the scores of the other race’s pilots. Mark figured it’d be less than a month before they’d adjusted enough to hold par, then they’d get to really see who could outfly who.

As for the future of Star Force’s aerial forces Mark knew they weren’t going to use the Valeries to replace the skeets, even if they proved to be a better craft. With the wealth of data from the V’kit’no’sat pyramid he knew that they’d grow beyond the Calavari tech eventually so there was no point in making an overhaul to their forces, though he did admit that they might be purchasing some of the craft for limited use given how his pilots were responding to them. Their allies had done well in designing the craft, but Mark still preferred his skeet.

He was a trailblazer, after all, and if the skeets were underperforming the Valeries or any of the other alien craft on base then he was the one that was going to ferret out the weaknesses and make them stronger. First among those that he’d discovered were the exotic weapon systems the Valerie had, all of which were designed specifically to down the lizards’ lightly defended and highly agile fighters. He didn’t decry their designs, for they were highly effective, but Star Force’s true enemy was another matter entirely, and while they did need to make adjustments to fight the lizards they also needed to keep the bigger picture in mind, and the V’kit’no’sat fighters were heavily armed and shielded, meaning you were going to need a lot of firepower to take them down.

That was one reason why the skeets had powerful weapons on them designed for one shot delivery, another was the fact that Mark and the others didn’t like the idea of spraying the battlefield with wild shots hoping to hit your target. In a cluttered melee you could end up hitting friendly targets, not to mention it was just downright sloppy. Given the swarm-like nature of the lizard tactics he could agree that such weapons were effective, but Mark preferred precision to mass tactics and was never going to get comfortable with anything but a clean kill shot.

Rolling his wrists to the left in various amounts he scooted his skeet level to the left, passing by one of the holographic barriers then nudged it back right a hair before pulling hard left again, trying to keep his speed up as much as possible. The binary control joysticks allowed him more fine motor control than usual, which was very helpful at the moment, but also was the fact that he was flying a craft extremely familiar to him and low level maneuvers weren’t new to him or the skeet, which right now was more driving across the surface than flying.

Mark thumbed his right joystick and fired off a plasma orb into another target, juked left around a barrier and hit another, all the while modulating his speed with the foot pedals as best he could. One thing about the Valerie that he liked was its anti-grav propulsion unit that used differential technology to pull on various pieces of the planet to provide minimal to moderate thrust. It was something Star Force had been working on, but they hadn’t come up with a viable prototype that could fit on a skeet frame yet. When completed it would allow a ship to propel itself without any convention engines…assuming you weren’t in a hurry, given the reduced acceleration curves.

Right now Mark would have liked to have that as a forward brake, but all he had to work with was atmospheric drag because there was no way he could reverse thrust on his engines fast enough to make the maneuvers he was doing. He was having to smooth out the angles as much as he could, which also meant bleeding off speed. He’d seen a Valerie run through this course using hard decelerations and even faster accelerations when the anti-grav was used to boost its conventional engines, registering a time that he was nowhere near to competing with.

Then again that had been one of the better Calavari pilots. Mark and his skeet were actually ranked in the 89th percentile on this course, meaning that he’d progressed enough to beat a handful of pilots that were actually using the Valeries. Kara had gotten up to the 73rd percentile using one of the alien ships with several other Human pilots in between. Most of the pilots in the 96-100th percentile, the bottom of the barrel, were using their own native craft and not the Valeries, so overall Mark and the other Humans were still getting their asses kicked.

Two more targets and six more barricades flashed by, then Mark was out of the restricted altitude zone. Barely 100 meters past it and he pulled up hard, using both his skeet’s conventional and anti-grav engines to push him up into the sky at maximum acceleration as he closed with a distant target floating up in the thin part of the atmosphere. The fighter was environmentally sealed so air pressure didn’t matter, but go high enough and his conventional engines would lose effect, though his anti-grav was fully capable of propelling him up into space…where he’d become completely ballistic.

As Mark’s fighter climbed he kept an eye on the distant target, seeing his targeting reticule just below it and drifting up as his anti-grav pushed his skeet straight up while his conventional engines were accelerating the ship at an angle of climb. He lined up the lateral vectors then waited for the center of the crosshairs to cut over it. When they finally did he triggered a series of lachar bursts as he adjusted his flight line to hold onto that target.

The plasma was out of range, he knew, but ever since adding a lachar to the skeets they’d had the possibility of engaging targets at extreme range, though unless they were stationary it was virtually impossible to line up a shot. Even with computer-assisted micro-targeting it was problematic, but the weapon gave the skeet the ability to penetrate lizard shields where the plasma wouldn’t, yet the plasma was a far stronger weapon, even when confined to an orb rather than a streamer, and the skeets had been modified so they could produce both.

Mark kept firing off lachar blasts hoping for a hit as he approached, then finally flipped over to plasma when he came into the outermost range, firing off an orb with each trigger pull and racking up a few early hits that visually dropped the health meter on his HUD by a sliver. He kept firing until the target began firing back, at which point he veered off and decelerated in the thin upper atmosphere, using his anti-grav to stay aloft and his conventional engines with double thrust to maneuver around and avoid the lizard-sized kirby cannons.

Had this target been equipped with lizard anti-air it was unlikely he would have been able to attack it with a skeet. The Valeries had shields strong enough to survive their anti-air for brief moments, enough for a strafing run if they were quick about it. That was one upgrade he was going to steal from the Calavari, for their shield tech was better than what Star Force or the lizards were using, and they were offering it to all Alliance races freely.

That couldn’t be said of some of the others, such as the Kvash who had the strongest shields of them all, but there was enough tech sharing going on that the Alliance, as an overall front against the lizards, was growing in technological strength by leaps and bounds, the only question was how quickly could they get their new equipment into the field to replace the old. In fact, that was one reason why the Calavari claimed they’d developed the Valerie, so that they could sell directly to all Alliance members and handle the production themselves so the others wouldn’t have to build up production infrastructure prior to putting them into use.

Mark appreciated that, but Star Force was going to produce its own equipment. To do anything less would make them dependent on others and that was a quick way to a slow death. Sharing tech and equipment was fine, but tie your regular supply network to someone else and you were just asking for trouble. That was a lesson Davis had taught the trailblazers long ago and Mark had never forgotten it.

As he came around for another pass on the large shielded target, the Archon switched plasma cannon fire over to the old school streamer that fired a lance of plasma out like a squirt gun, except that it’d been modified to fire a very wide beam, allowing the skeet to dump a lot of damage on a stable target when needed in lieu of carrying bombs. The plasma wasn’t condensed like the orbs were, which gave them their extra explosive kick on impact, a trick they’d learned from the lizards, but it made up for the lack of concentration with pure volume, allowing Mark to scathe the target as he flashed past.

The health meter dropped by a third with that single run, eliciting a smile from the trailblazer. He guessed that was a little better than the Valerie could dish out, which also had a bombardment setting to its plasma cannons, but the dynamics of the skeet’s weapon had come from a watered down version of an insanely powerful weapon in the V’kit’no’sat database…that was listed as a minor model. It still galled Mark at how far behind them Star Force was, even with the treasure trove of data they’d recovered, making him ever more grateful that the dinos were nowhere to be seen at present. One of their fighters could take out every skeet in existence, if they were all thrown together in one battle, and Paul had confirmed that the same held true for their navies.

Mark had to wait for his plasma reserves to fill back up before making another deep pass, but he managed a few more orb hits in the meantime, trying to shave down that health bar far enough that two more runs would knock it out. It had a regeneration function to it, meaning that if he left it alone long enough the bar would start to refill and he could be at this forever.

He glanced at the clock on his HUD, seeing that he was still slightly ahead of schedule compared to his previous runs, then started his second pass even before the capacitors were fully filled. That occurred halfway in, then he dumped another full load on the target, getting winged by return fire that cut 18% off his own shields. He corkscrewed away, making several more shots miss, then circled wide to recharge for the last hit.

When he eventually came back in he nailed the target with a long stream of plasma that broke through the outer shield and impacted the inner one, signaling that he’d killed the target. The anti-air return fire ceased and Mark dove back down towards the planet, heading for the last section of the course. He switched his plasma back over into orb mode and linked his pair of cannons for simultaneous fire, knowing that the last targets would require more than one hit each to take down.

As he lost altitude the view of the mountain range that held the Alliance base grew in size, but the last section of the course was located in a plain to the southeast hidden between several peaks. Mark had the location tagged on his battlemap to insure he made the quickest trip there possible and eventually came down over several long lines of objects on the surface representing lizard vehicles. On his HUD a quarter of them lit up, indicating that they were active targets, along with a 112 second timer once he dropped to a predetermined altitude.

Mark dropped low to the ground and took a narrow attack angle to the first target, bottoming out on his gravity drives but tipping the tail up slightly higher than the forward engines so that his weapons would point down a bit. He held that hull angle, thanks to the skeet’s design, and fired off his first linked pair of blue orbs at the target…with only one hitting at range.

He knew firing from far away was difficult, but with the dual fire setting he had a pair of dots to shoot with, so if one missed wide it was likely that the other wouldn’t unless he was way off target, which Mark hardly ever was. As his skeet approached he got a few hits in, then the target flashed red, indicating that it was dead. The Archon switched to the next closest target as his forward momentum brought him up on the group in a hurry, but he had succeeded in taking out at least one before he had to slow his approach.

He got a few hits in on the second, then came to a drifting hover and blasted away at the targets from close range, two plasma shots at a time spaced apart a few meters with lachar blasts thrown in whenever he could manage. The main plasma weapon operated off the same draw as the orb cannons, so he couldn’t fire both simultaneously, but since the lachar was altogether separate he could add its limited firepower to the plasma now that he was close enough in to fire without spending too much time aiming. The targeting computer for the plasma factored in gravitational pull, which the lachar was unaffected by, so he had two reticles on screen and was snapping off lachar blasts with his left trigger whenever it drifted over the target while flying to keep the plasma zeroed in at all times.

Luckily there was no return fire coming from the targets, otherwise he would have been a sitting duck this close to the surface and moving forward almost as slow as a mech. One by one he patiently made his way up the line of targets, then came to a full hover while he poured shot after shot into the final target of the course, simulating a lizard structure. After about 20 shots it went down, ending the run and stopping the clock at 23:14…a full minute better than his last run.

Satisfied with his progress, Mark gained some altitude and flew up over the nearest mountain and back to base, setting his skeet down on the deck next to the others and pulling his breath mask out of a pocket in the cockpit before cracking the canopy and letting the foul air inside. Sweating a bit from the exercise, a cool breeze immediately caught his attention, prompting him to jog rather than walk back over to the Star Force annex.

“79th percentile,” Boen reported when Mark walked into the control center.

“I know. I was reading the statistics on the way back,” he said, sitting down in a random chair and stretching out. He preferred the pommel seats in the skeets to others, but after a while they got the body sore, even for those pilots used to them if they flew enough straight hours, and Mark had just finished off a five hour training session.

“Get her refueled. I want to go back out in a few hours.”

“Workout first?”

“A hard 10k around the roof,” Mark said, pointing above them. “Wanna come with?”

“I already got an easy 20 in this morning, so no. I can’t keep up with you anyway.”

“Not even a couple of kilometers?”

“If we had a track I’d give it a go, but I don’t feel like walking all the way back here when you leave me in the dust.”

“Just jog back.”

“Sorry, boss. I’m done running for the day. I’m going over to the simulators with Alex and Jenna for some head to heads with the Protovic in two hours anyway.”

“Valeries or skeets?”

“I assume they’re all using Valeries, but I’m going to try a Bsidd raider. Been working out the controls the past two days and it’s got a good aft cannon setup that I want to test out. I don’t think the Pros will be able to stick so close to it, and that might give us an advantage.”

“Let me know how it works out. I’ve been eyeing that ship for a while.”

Boen glanced to his left when a tone sounded. “Incoming message from Vornac.”

Mark smiled. “Right on time,” he said, sitting up in his chair and scooting it over to the nearest comm terminal. He pointed down at it with a finger and Boen routed it over to him. He listened through the recording, which was critiquing his course run, then he read through the attached datasheet, slowly nodding.

“What?” Boen asked.

“The lizards hit a Kvash border world, big ground assault with a lot of fighter combat. They had Valeries in the mix and Vornac sent over the performance sheets.”

“And?”

“16 to 1 kill ratio. The rest were at 2.3.”

Boen whistled. “They’re definitely living up to the hype. What was the battle outcome?”

“The war is still ongoing, but this engagement was a loss. The lizards hit them with a 47 to 1 fighter ratio.”

“Damn,” Boen swore. “They’re not playing around anymore.”

“Jason was right when he said the ones that hit Corneria weren’t line troops. If we’d faced these kind of numbers we would have lost the system.”

“So what’s the plan?”

Mark looked him straight in the eye, but kept his voice even. “We get better.”

5

January 3, 2396

Jartul System

Daka

Boen went flying back through the air and landed on one of the lounge chairs, flipping over backwards and rolling into a heap in the middle of the viewing promenade and 200+ other pilots.

“Ow,” he said calmly, kicking a chair out of the way as the other pilots stepped back, giving him and the newly arrived Nestafar pilot some space. He stood up and rubbed his neck, ignoring the miniature winged dragon that reminded him a bit of Godzilla as it fumed, huffing and growling as it flexed its muscular wings wide and flapped its short tail on the floor.

Boen finally turned to look at his attacker and smiled, uttering a half laugh. “You hit like a Cajdital.”

That elicited a roar from the pilot, as well as the two standing behind it. All three walked forward, intent on pounding Boen for the insult, as well as the result of the ongoing simulator battle that the assembled pilots were watching. Mark and five other Humans were teaming with an equal number of Calavari as they battled against the Nestafar and Protovic, with the trailblazer just having downed the best Nestafar pilot.

Given that the Nestafar and the Calavari were both primary members of the Alliance and traditionally at odds with one another…and add in the fact that the Nestafar were the only pilots on the planet that could actually fly themselves…the one standing next to Boen had become quite agitated when the Human vocally cheered on his peers as they took down the Nestafar pilots in the simulator.

When the leader got halfway to Boen the Archon released his ramrod-straight posture and ran forward two steps, lowering his shoulder and colliding with the abdomen of the slightly taller alien. His momentum knocked its spindly frame down, which Boen pushed off of to keep himself standing. The other two Nestafar came in swinging, but the Archon ducked under one then kicked the other back a step to get some spacing before he tore the two aliens apart with a flurry of strategically placed punches. Using some leverage he tossed their shocked bodies on top of the first one in a pile, then he stepped back and placed his hands on his hips stoically, looking around at the other assembled pilots.

“Anyone else?” he asked as a group of Calavari pushed their way through the crowd to get to the ruckus.

“What’s going on?” one of the four-armed aliens demanded, looking between Boen and the three Nestafar that were climbing to their feet.

“A sore loser,” a Bsidd pilot said, gesturing to the Nestafar.

The Calavari turned toward the three winged aliens. “Causing trouble already?”

“Bah,” the Nestafar bellowed, turning and walking away with the other two.

“Are you alright?” the Calavari asked Boen.

“More than alright,” the Bsidd interjected. “He took them down with ease.”

“Oh? That’s hard to believe,” he said, sizing the Human up.

“I’m not just a pilot,” Boen said, picking up and righting one of the chairs that had gotten knocked down. “I’m an Archon.”

“And what’s an ‘archon?’” a nearby Protovic asked.

“We’re trained in all forms of combat.”

“Such as?”

“Hand to hand, piloting, naval, mechs, aquatics, and a lot of specialized areas,” Boen said as his eyes flipped back up to the main display holo and the ongoing battle that the Calavari/Humans were clearly winning.

“You’re special operations?” the Protovic asked.

“That too,” Boen said, watching Mark go evasive as one of the Valeries dropped in on the skeet’s tail.

“What about the other Humans?”

“11 are Archons, 10 are pilots, 2 are Canderian pilots…which is a military civilization that lives primarily in space. They’re our lowest scoring pair, if you’d noticed. They’re not used to piloting fighters, so they’ve got a bigger learning curve.”

“Because you don’t believe in starfighters?” a different Calavari asked.

“That’s right,” Boen said, pulling the last chair up and sitting down.

“Arrogant twit,” a Gnar said, its mechanical voice high pitched coming through the metallic mask it wore connected to a small tank on the back of its head that provided the ammonia it needed in addition to the oxygen being breathed in from the air. “How you survived even a small Cajdital invasion is beyond me.”

“They had help from the Hycre,” the Protovic added.

“The Hycre,” the Gnar all but spat.

The lead Calavari waved a large finger at the shorter Gnar. “They may not have pilots, but do not underestimate their naval power. Their worlds have proven the hardest to hit, by the Cajdital…or others.”

“Is that an attempt at an insult?” the Gnar demanded.

“It is a fact,” the Calavari said, crossing both sets of arms over its chest, “that you took two small mining outposts from them, but when you tried to assault one of their gas giants you never made it into the atmosphere. Your starfighters were tore apart by their warships, I hear. Nearly total losses?”

The stubby alien pointed a finger up at the Calavari. “Do not open up old wounds.”

“Do not make new ones,” he countered, pointing towards the Human.

The Gnar glanced at Boen, then back at the Calavari. “So, you have adopted the Hycre scraps,” it said, walking off as the final statistics of the now ended battle flashed up in the air, showing that all 12 Nestafar/Protovic pilots had been downed with 5 Calavari/Humans surviving, Mark among them.

Another of the Calavari made an unpleasant noise and walked up behind the Gnar and kicked it to the ground before the other pulled it back by its left arms. “If you want to start a fight, do it in the simulator, you coward,” the Calavari said to the Gnar. “Are you a pilot or a politician?”

“I will personally shoot you down, Morshav, that I promise you,” the Gnar said, pointing up at the Calavari.

“What terms?”

“Since you think these Humans aren’t a joke, use their craft against our own. No Valeries.”

The Calavari hesitated, glancing at the other four-armed pilots around him.

“What? You’re not confident outside your special starfighter? A skilled pilot will prevail no matter what craft they use.”

“11 days,” he agreed. “6 or 12?”

“12,” the Gnar said without hesitation. “We will prove how weak both you and the Human fighters are.”

“Seeing as how you were insulting me,” Boen said from his chair, “I want to fly with the Calavari…or is that too much of a challenge for you?”

“Acceptable, but just you…and you will be their 13th pilot. An extra bonus, so that when we defeat them there can be no excuses.”

“Your funeral,” Boen said before the Calavari could respond.

The Gnar looked up at the taller aliens. “Do we have terms?”

Morshav hesitated, but the lead Calavari nodded its head. “We have.”

With that the Gnar walked off as another simulated battle began to play out on the hologram, this one without any Humans in it.

“Have you tried our skeets in the sim?” Boen asked, walking up next to the Calavari.

“I have not.”

“Name’s Boen,” the Archon offered.

“Gonstan,” the Calavari said, placing one of its hands on Boen’s shoulder. “If we’re going to fly together, we need to practice in your ships. Have you fought the Gnar yet?”

“No, but I’ve flown one of their fighters in the simulator, so I have an idea of what they’re capable of.”

“Good. You will instruct us in their use?”

“Happy to, as soon as you assemble your 12.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Done,” Boen said, looking up at the battle between the Bsidd and Fanset.

Mark spun his simulated skeet around to the left, flipping front for back while gliding across the surface on its anti-grav engines, then fired off a single blue plasma orb at the lizard fighters behind him, nailing one square on and dropping it from the sky. He kicked his conventional engines back in and accelerated towards the swarm, taking a couple hits on his shields along the way. He shot another two before passing into the clear, but his shields were hit with two small areas of damage popping up on his status display, floating in holo in front of his left shoulder approximately where it would have been in an actual skeet.

The tiny fight diagram showed two yellow marks on the starboard hull just outside the cockpit, indicating armor damage but no penetration. Mark mentally made a note not to try that maneuver again when he had more than 6 lizard fighters on his tail and flew off to the left as he swerved through a series of S-weaves trying to break up the hoard of fighters chasing him. When he got a partial split he acted, turning hard and cutting back across a piece of their ‘cloud’ and firing at one of their little wisps on the edge before flashing past.

The fighter icon on the sensor board didn’t disappear, meaning he hadn’t killed it but he was sure he’d at least winged the craft.

Unfortunately he didn’t have the Star Force battlemap in the simulator, nor did he have the normal straddle seat, but the Calavari had made similar augmentations that got fairly close. The feel of it wasn’t right, but Mark was a pilot and could fly just about anything and he’d adjusted the modular controls enough to be able to get his full range of maneuvering options back, despite the lack of spherical joysticks.

The trailblazer kept swinging his skeet about, not having any topography or other combatants to use to shake his pursuit. It was just him and what had been 26 computer-controlled lizard fighters. He’d trimmed that number down to 17 but he was running out of moves as the computer adjusted its attack pattern to compensate for his, according to noted lizard starfighter tactics. The Calavari and others had accumulated a wealth of data on the enemy, making these simulations some of Mark’s favorites…especially because they kept beating him every time.

He managed to kill 3 more before his skeet lost power from a plasma impact and fell down to crash against the simulated ground. The holographic display in the pod cut out the scenery and replaced it with battle statistics which he quickly ran through before moving through the menu to restart the simulation. Before that could happen he heard a ‘tap, tap’ on the pod cover, prompting him to exit out of the program and pop the seal.

“What’s up?” he asked when he saw a pair of Human feet come into view as the canopy raised.

“Need you to play bad guy tomorrow,” Boen said.

“I play that every day,” he mocked. “Just ask the Canderians.”

“I need you to do it with a group of Calavari.”

Mark spun around in his seat, unstraddling and sitting back down in a more conventional fashion facing backwards.

“What did you do?”

“The Gnar and Calavari are going at it in 11 days, but the Calavari have to use our skeets. I’m flying with the Calavari and need you to help me get them up to speed by exploiting the skeet’s vulnerabilities every which way you can.”

“Why are they using skeets?”

“Because the Calavari stuck up for us during a little spat we had. It’s going to be a 12 on 12 with me flying as an extra 13th. The Gnar use their fighters, the Calavari use ours.”

Mark whistled slowly. “I’m surprised the Calavari agreed to those terms. Even if they win the Gnar can claim they had an advantage…and if they lose that’d be a huge embarrassment.”

“If we lose it’ll be because the Calavari aren’t used to our ships, hence, I…we, need your help.”

“Oh, I’ll do more than that. We’ll run them through skeet boot camp in a week’s time, if for no other reason than to protect the rep of our ships. The Calavari are superior pilots, and I certainly don’t want them blaming our ships if they lose.”

“I’m good for at least 2 kills,” Boen declared.

“Have you flown one of the…wait a minute, defended us against what?”

“Well, when you were kicking the crap out of the Nestafar and Protovic one of the Nestafar took out his frustration on me, then two of his buddies joined in.”

“Who won?”

Boen frowned. “I did. The Calavari arrived late and shooed them off, but the Gnar started mouthing off in their stead, hence the challenge.”

Mark considered that for a moment. “The Gnar are in the Nestafar camp anyway,” he said, referring to the unofficial divisions within the Alliance. Each of the 5 primary races had brought their own allies into the group as the Hycre had done with Star Force. Some intermixed well, such as the Calavari and Humans, but a lot stuck to their political sub-alliances, waging a proxy war within the Alliance for position and influence. “But I didn’t realize the Nestafar had it in for us.”

“It may just be because we’re working with the Calavari,” Boen suggested. “Those two have never got along, from what I hear.”

“Which is why they stayed away from here as long as they did, according to Vornac. The fact that they finally showed up was seen as progress, but they might end up just causing trouble. Any of the other races join in?”

“No, but there were plenty around watching.”

“Where was this?”

“Pilot central.”

“Wow, they are bold. They as weak as they look?”

“The one got a decent punch in, but they’re easy to knock down. Low body mass and those wings make them easy to off balance.”

“Were the Protovic there?”

“Yes, and they stayed neutral, despite the fact that you were also whipping their butts at the time.”

Mark tapped a finger against his front two teeth. “I know they really don’t like the Hycre, but they seem to have been giving us a chance to prove ourselves. Agree/disagree?”

“They’re being cagy. Not sure what to make of their politics. The Calavari seem genuinely interested in raising the bar for all races’ fighter capabilities, but everyone else looks like they’re here for ego sake.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but I’d say that’s why the Nestafar and a few latecomers joined in. Vornac said more are coming too, which gives the impression that this training endeavor is turning into a political showdown, pilot style.”

“We playing?”

“Of course, but we’re here to learn and adapt, to both the lizards and our allies’ pilots.”

“Enemy of my enemy?”

“That’s what they’re probably thinking, but we’re playing this straight up. The Nestafar and Gnar may have us pegged as rivals because of the Hycre, but we have an opportunity to make a name for ourselves here and maybe reverse those stereotypes…which I’m guessing you accomplished quite well to begin with.”

“How so?”

“We’re not floating gas bags hiding behind a sulfuric atmosphere and warship bulkheads.”

“You’re saying they expect the Hycre’s apprentices to be as physically weak as they are?”

Mark spread his arms wide. “You just made my point. We’re not apprentices, we’re allies. We get along with the Hycre and we’ve been getting along with the Calavari, despite the fact that those two have a somewhat frosty relationship. The sooner the rest of the races see us as Humans rather than mini-Hycre, the sooner we can start establishing an understanding with them on our terms.”

“Understanding?”

“Such as don’t pick a fight with a Human.”

“You think that helped us with the Nestafar?”

“Possibly, or maybe not. Everyone reacts differently. Some timid races would be appalled at you kicking ass, while others, probably including the Calavari, would see it as a sign of strength. Either way, we start setting our own reputation rather than relying on gossip and hearsay. From reputation comes relationships, and from relationships come experience. This training center is a very good idea on the Calavari’s part, because it gives all of us a forum to interact with one another. You know the Archons in your trainee group better than almost anyone else because of the common trials you went through.”

“So we’re flying and fighting each other to root out everyone’s true colors?”

“And to show them ours, yes. We do need a united front against the lizards, but that doesn’t come from paperwork.”

“Seriously, does anyone even use paper nowadays?”

Mark’s eyes narrowed. “They did when I was born, so we’re keeping the terminology, youngling.”

“So, we need to uphold the honor of our skeets if we’re going to establish any credibility out there?”

“We’ve already established some, otherwise the Calavari wouldn’t have agreed to the Gnar’s terms, but yeah, we need them, and you, to kick ass…so hop in and we’ll do a little testing, skeet to death glider.”

“Death glider?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell?”

“No, it doesn’t. What’s that from?”

“Stargate.”

“Never heard of it,” Boen said deadpan before Mark punched him in the gut.

“Shut up,” the trailblazer said, swinging around on his seat and lowering the pod as he searched through the database of fighter designs until he found the Gnar’s version, which did have the gentle arc of a Goa’uld death glider, save for the fact that it was painted bright white.

6

January 14, 2396

Jartul System

Daka

“Looks like you moved up to the big leagues,” Mark commented to Boen as the pair walked into one of the Calavari’s simulation chambers. It was much larger than the ones spread around the base for the other races to use, containing hundreds of pods set in rings on multiple levels. Many of them were in use already, but the innermost ring on the ground floor had been reserved for the Calavari/Gnar showdown.

The smaller, fat-looking aliens were already assembled around the large holoprojector that sat dead center of all the circles. It was currently displaying a Calavari training drill that they were running in the closed pods, but whenever a higher level contest began it would minimize that current engagement to a corner of the enormous hologram and display the ranking matchup. The Gnar weren’t watching the training exercise, but rather talking amongst themselves clad in their stiff pseudo-armored suits that hid most of their purple, wrinkly skin. Only the tops of their heads and hands were visible, otherwise they looked like they were walking, talking trash cans.

“There is only supposed to be one of you,” a Gnar said, walking over to Boen and Mark as they slid between the outer pods towards the inner ring.

“I’m just an observer today,” Mark assured it, having no clue if the Gnar had genders, let alone being able to tell the difference in their physiques.

It snorted out an indecipherable comment, probably in its native language, and walked back over to the group as the Calavari pilots walked in, all 12 in a single file line weaving their way through the outer pods from the right and reaching the central holoprojector opposite the Gnar. Gonstan was leading them down, distinguishable by the long earring he wore from his right lobe, signifying his position as a squadron commander.

“Here we go,” Boen whispered to Mark as he walked over to join the Calavari.

“Are you ready?” Gonstan asked the Gnar in a challenging voice.

“We are,” their stubby leader responded. “Need you time to consult with your Human?”

“The Human is ready,” Boen answered pithily, walking over and standing next to Gonstan, with his head barely reaching up to the Calavari’s shoulder.

“Regeneration?” the Gnar asked.

Gonstan straightened. “4 rounds will be sufficient.”

“As you wish,” the enemy leader said as he and the other 11 Gnar retreated to the open pods and began logging in.

Gonstan slapped Boen on the back. “Time to prove your worth.”

“Four?”

“It will allow us some mistakes…and allow you to prey on their weakest pilots multiple times.”

“48 kills, not 4 each?”

“Yes,” Gonstan said, sitting down in a pod on the opposite side from the Gnar and next to Boen. “It will take a moment for the Gnar’s atmosphere to cycle,” the Calavari said as he closed his pod.

Boen threw a glance back at Mark then sealed himself inside as he reconfigured the standard controls and seat, creating the pommel forward stance with a pad on his chest to lean on. Two control bars substituted for the skeet’s joysticks, but they didn’t have the extra buttons. Those functions were accomplished by an auxiliary control board a few inches away from the hand bars, making for a quick reach when needed.

He logged into the system with his ID, then joined one of five ongoing scenarios in this simulator complex, that being the one the Gnar had set up with the agreed upon parameters. Whenever a fighter was killed it would regenerate on the edge of the map and be brought back into the mix until 4 rounds worth of kills were tallied. That meant the Gnar had to rack up 52 kills to win, while Boen and the Calavari had to hit 48.

The trick was, you could regenerate as many times as you liked in this scenario. You weren’t limited to 4 per pilot, but 4 on average, so if Boen could hammer the Gnar’s weaker pilots multiple times it would eat up the number of respawns their better pilots would have.

That was the plan they’d concocted, given that Boen was by far the best pilot among them in the skeets, though all the Calavari were making considerable daily progress. He wished they’d had more time to prepare, but they were going to have to make do with what they had, which meant the Calavari pairing up evenly against the Gnar while leaving Boen free as a wildcard.

He doubted it would end up that way, but a good pilot was one who could adapt during combat, and above that he was an Archon. If he couldn’t adjust then the Calavari had no hope at all.

As Gonstan had said, it took the Gnar extra time before they all logged in and the final countdown timer began to tick off their version of seconds, which were slightly longer than normal. When it finally elapsed, Boen’s hologram flashed into the battlefield with him and the other pilots randomly appearing along the perimeter of a huge circular plain with walls at their backs to define the border.

“Booyah,” the Archon said, accelerating hard ahead and angling to the left as he headed for one of the Gnar death gliders that had lower swept wings that angled up to a pyramid-like point on the top of the fuselage. Underneath was a smooth arc that gave the fighter an artistic aesthetic along with a tri-point plasma attack, two from the wingtips and one from the peak.

The Gnar pilot turned the other way, heading for a Calavari at higher speed than the skeet was capable of. That annoyed Boen, but they’d worked out the flight dynamics of the enemy craft in multiple situations and he knew it was up to the Calavari to bring the enemy to him if they didn’t seek him out to begin with…which they weren’t. The pilot to his right was another Calavari who turned away from him, clearing Boen’s aft arc and allowing him to focus ahead.

Within 10 seconds a kill marker went up for the Gnar, meaning they’d already shot down one of the skeets.

“Focus, guys,” Boen reminded them. “Bring them to me.”

Without a vocal response the nearest Calavari turned and dragged the opposition behind him, staying evasive by spinning around on his anti-grav and thrusting off a different direction rather than trying to fly in a conventional path. During their training they’d discovered that the death gliders’ rate of turn was much higher, meaning the only way they were going to survive was by making direct momentum changes rather than turns, either forcing the Gnar to do the same or fly off in wide arcs to change their direction.

The one closest to Boen was caught off guard and overshot the Calavari as the two fighters exchanged plasma fire. The skeet caught one hit but the shields didn’t go down as the ships passed, with the Gnar banking to the right to come around on the skeet’s tail again.

Boen fired off his lachar at range, hitting the death glider in its thicker cross section as it came around head to head. The energy blast passed through the physical-only shields and knocked out one of the death glider’s three plasma cannons located just above the cockpit, but it didn’t knock the fighter down.

Knowing that leaving the ship wounded was better than having it regenerate with full firepower, Boen flew off, heading towards the next closest Gnar and taking pot shots with his lachar at distance. When he took one down, as it stubbornly stayed on the tail of one of the Calavari, three others suddenly broke off their pursuit and turned to intercept him, realizing that the Human was the priority target rather than the liability.

“Here we go,” he whispered, switching over to plasma cannons. Even having to punch through the enemy shields they were the quickest way to take down one of the enemy fighters if he could get in successive shots and not allow their shields to regenerate in between.

He set his pair of cannons to linked fire and reversed his engines, bringing his fighter to a stop with the three enemies coming in at him within his forward hemisphere. Boen kept the engines burning at full power and began flying backwards, narrowing the firing arc between the three targets as they came closer together, falling in on his ‘tail’ while overcoming his inferior speed and quickly catching up to him.

As they did he started firing back at them, causing them to break off momentarily. Apparently they weren’t used to having someone shoot backwards at them, at least not at this comparatively slow speed. Head to heads usually flashed by, but with his motion subtracting from theirs the catch was drawn out, allowing for multiple shots from both sides.

The narrow, flat profile of the skeet made it hard to hit, while the triangular hulls of the death gliders gave Boen a solid target head on. He splashed plasma against two of the targets before one finally went down, then he got through the shields of a second before his own defenses dipped below 20%, which prompted him to stop firing and hit his anti-grav thrust and rocket his ship straight up into the sky while its nose was kept level to the ground, throwing off the Gnar targeting.

Boen dipped his nose down as the death gliders began to slip underneath him, then fired into their much wider top sides, killing a second with three paired salvos hitting already weakened shields. The third fighter nicked his skeet’s hull, punching through the rest of Boen’s shields, before the proximity warning for the outer wall prompted both ships to break off.

The death glider turned away, but Boen simply reversed thrust and flew away directly, drifting backwards briefly until his acceleration compensated for the drift, which put him on the tail of the death glider at distance. He switched back over to lachars and winged the fighter before it stupidly pulled up, showing Boen its wide top side. He peppered it with lachar blasts, blowing apart a wing which resulted in it slowly spiraling down to the ground as another skeet crossed over it from the left, finishing it off with a short range heavy plasma salvo that popped it into shrapnel on impact.

“Nice assist,” he said over the silent teamcomm. The Calavari, as he learned, kept talking to a minimum, only sharing essential information.

“Four for you,” Morshav said, flying off towards another target as that Gnar pilot restarted far away along the wall on the opposite side of the map. “And they know it. Beware, they’re coming for you.”

“I know…ow,” he said, seeing that virtually every death glider on the map was heading his way.

“Oh shit,” he said, diving down towards the ground, knowing that would give the other skeets at least a peek at the upper sides of the Gnar fighters. “I’ll play bait, you guys hit them when they’re not looking.”

Boen took a quick peek at the score before he ramped up his anti-grav to keep from smacking into the simulated ground. 5 to 3 good guys, but he wasn’t going to be adding to that right now as he started juking left and right as he streaked across the landscape only meters off the ground, dodging incoming plasma. Readjusting his hands on the various controls he executed a combined turn/swivel, skidding his skeet wide to the left while swapping front for back and bringing him into firing range of three of the death gliders closest to him that were also skimming the surface…meaning they had limited maneuvering options.

One came in directly at him while the other two pulled up, exposing their wide undersides. Boen held his skid, blowing apart one of the ones that pulled up, then accelerated forward and into the Gnar lines, taking down the second one a moment before his fighter’s starboard engine disappeared in an explosion and his skeet tipped over and careened into the ground.

Boen flinched, then saw a short-lived score in the blackness of the pod before it restarted him again in an undamaged and fully shielded skeet far away from everyone else, with the score now reading 8/4. With him so far off the Gnar started to reengage the Calavari, which Boen didn’t like.

He switched his comm over to open broadcast so the Gnar could hear him.

“That’s one for you, 6 for me. Looks like letting the arrogant twit play was a mistake. Is this all you’ve got, Gnar? You’re not even making this hard.”

To Boen’s satisfaction he saw half the little blips on his sensor board turn and head towards him.

He switched back over to his squadron’s frequency. “That got their attention. Double up on the others while I keep these busy.”

“Are you sure? We need you racking up kills,” Gonstan asked.

“I’ll get a few before they take me down, go pick on their stragglers.”

There was no response from the Calavari, which was a sign of compliance from them. Boen didn’t have time to worry about it as he lined up a long distance shot and fired off his lachar until he finally got a hit on the lead death glider, then he broke off and led the Gnar over to the other side of the map, pulling them further and further away from the Calavari.

They eventually realized what he was doing, with half of them turning around and reversing course. When they did Boen flipped over and did a direct reversal, flying straight into their now thinned lines, darting down and to the left to try and shoot through a slightly wider gap, from which he angled up towards one of the rear fighters and fired away with rapid fire single shots, one for each trigger pull on the control bar in his right hand. He exchanged plasma with the fighter, but again his smaller cross section worked to his favor and he downed the fighter before he lost shields, then he pushed forward with as much thrust as his ship could manage, dragging the Gnar behind him for a few seconds before their greater speed brought them back into plasma range.

Knowing he was about to get spanked he went erratic, literally flying like he was out of control, spinning around his axis while weaving to and fro, making it difficult for the Gnar to predict his path and shoot him…all the while his shields continued to recharge. It was a stalling tactic, but the more time he bought meant the more likely the Calavari were to rack up some more kills given their numerical advantage.

“Come to us,” Morshav said, with Boen coming out of his spin and weaving side to side as he headed toward a group of three skeets coming from the right, apparently having respawned in that portion of the map.

He glanced at the score again…15/9.

“Up or down?” the Calavari asked.

“I’m going down,” the Archon said, getting his aft shield clipped by a bit of simulated plasma. “Three, two,” he counted down, cutting off his forward thrust and spinning his skeet around again, “one, mark!”

He dropped his anti-grav down to 10% and fell level towards the ground, tipping his skeet’s nose up slightly and firing back at the approaching Gnar. They followed him down, depressing their angle of flight and showing Morshav and his wingmen their upper sides…which they then stitched with lachar fire. Two of the ships veered off, but one reversed its dive too far, coming up and exposing its underside which quickly took the brunt of Morshav’s plasma as the trio of skeets came within range.

After that Boen couldn’t see what happened, so busy he was with just staying alive. He took down two more before the Gnar’s numbers finally caught up with him and he found himself respawning along the perimeter again.

From that point on four of the Gnar stuck to Boen while the others intentionally steered clear, focusing on the Calavari or just getting out of the Human’s way, deeming him too dangerous to go head to head with. Near the end of the engagement the Gnar had finally learned to break off when he flipped over, swing around and reset for another attack run at an angle that didn’t allow for a slow-down. The death gliders had superior speed, which made them especially deadly when they paired up and attacked from different angles, but Boen managed to keep their best pilots at bay long enough to secure their victory, 48/41, with him racking up a kill count of 26.

When the final kill was registered by one of the Calavari he was relieved, knowing that the Gnar had learned a lot from the battle and that the tactics they’d been practicing wouldn’t work so well in a second match…which he hoped wasn’t going to happen, at least not until the Calavari got more seat time in the skeets. Then again, he doubted they would be cornered into using them instead of their Valeries again.

Boen popped the canopy after going through the stats, curious as to which of the Calavari had done the best, and choked as the repugnant smell of ammonia drifted into him from the open pods the Gnar had been using.

“What is wrong?” Gonstan said, placing a hand on Boen’s shoulder as he coughed.

“That air…is nasty,” he said, pinching his nose as the Gnar stomped off, not bothering to stick around long enough for the Calavari or Boen to gloat.

“A bit of defiance,” the Calavari said, unaffected by the fumes. “They exited before recycling the pods’ atmosphere.”

“The air processors are going to take care of that, right?”

“They should be already,” the four-armed alien said as Mark walked up to the pair, scrunching his nose.

“Who taught you to fly anyway?”

“You did,” Boen said, coughing one last time.

“I taught you not to get shot. You died 5 times.”

“It was a tradeoff.”

“Well don’t make a habit of it,” the trailblazer warned, then looked up at Gonstan. “Nice work.”

“Our thanks for your instruction. Your fighters are difficult to learn. Boen has proved they are effective, but I must say, I thoroughly hate them.”

Mark laughed. “To each his own. Thanks for upholding the integrity of our design. With you flying and winning in them I think we’ll get a little more respect for the skeets.”

“I do like your energy weapons, limited in power as they are. Would you be willing to trade for the technology?”

“Would you be willing to help us modify our skeets with your scattergun?”

Gonstan smiled with his wide jaw. “I think so. Without it your ships are not nearly effective enough against the lizards’ swarm tactics.”

“Our gunships are,” Mark countered.

“Only in atmosphere…but I think we have much to discuss on this matter, and this isn’t the proper place.”

“Agreed,” Mark said, lightly slapping Boen in the gut. “Come on, youngling. We’ve got some diplomatic swapping to do.”

7

August 4, 2397

Jartul System

Daka

Mark sat in the small passenger compartment directly behind the cockpit in the falcon-class dropship that was carrying him up to orbit, watching the ascent up through the atmosphere on a small datapad as he simultaneously ran through the latest batch of simulator tests. With the addition of a plasma-based scattergun to the skeets their kill power against the lizard fighters had increased considerably for their weaker pilots, but less so for Mark. His skill with the standard plasma cannons afforded him better accuracy, whereas the scattergun allowed a pilot to damage a target by simply shooting near to it like a fighter-sized shotgun.

‘Damage’ was the word though, because most of the time the simulated lizard ships wouldn’t go down because only a few plasma shards would hit their armored hulls. Put a square shot on one and it would shred the ship nicely, but the whole point of the weapon was to enable less accurate kill power, causing Mark to have mixed feelings about the upgrade, especially since they’d had to remove one of the standard cannons in order to make room for it, leaving him without the ability for linked or rapid fire.

The recycle time on the weapon was about half a second, which meant if you got on the tail of an enemy fighter, even for just a moment, you could pump loads of the tiny plasma pellets into the target, which in the case of the lizards would take them down, sometimes two at a time if they overlapped into the same firing cone during their massed assaults. But when Mark had tried out the weapon against other non-lizard craft the damage was not so spectacular. Even weak shields soaked up a lot of the plasma splinters, then regenerated if the target could get clear. The lizards had no shields, thus any hits were for keeps, but Mark knew Star Force couldn’t afford to make a permanent change to their weaponry because it’d leave them weak against other enemies.

What they really needed was a modular swap out, but the new weapon was tricky enough that his limited techs hadn’t been able to work out the dynamics of such a design, though he had sent the specs back home via a passing Hycre ship. It wasn’t a jumpship, so there was no way of knowing how long it would take to pass the data file back to Star Force territory, but since the Alliance communications network hadn’t been extended out to the Humans yet couriers were still the only way they could keep in contact, and with being so far away sending Star Force jumpships was out of the question, leaving the Hycre as their only link back home.

The communication delay was still monstrous, with no Star Force updates having reached Daka, which meant Mark was going to have to make modifications to their aircraft using his local resources only…that were about to be augmented, which was what had prompted this trip up to orbit. Another Hycre jumpship had arrived carrying Star Force freighters with supplies and additional personnel, the exact specifications of which the trailblazer didn’t know since the reserves had been sent without his consultation, given the communications problems.

In fact, the ships had already been unloaded given that he had no forewarning of the arrival of the jumpship. With the Hycre’s advanced gravity drives they’d arrived in the system and diverted to Daka before any signal of notification could have traveled the intrasystem gap. He’d been notified that the Hycre would be sticking around for a couple of days to pick up messages from Star Force and other friendly races within the Alliance then heading out again, given that they didn’t have any assets of their own in system to deal with aside from passing along some additional fuel to the planet’s two guardian warships.

Mark had grabbed the cargo pilots on base and got three dropships into the air immediately, his being the first up on the way to the partially constructed Canderian seda where the reinforcements had gathered.

Located in semi-synchronous orbit, the spherical station had a large chunk missing from it that hadn’t been built yet, making it look ominously like the Death Star from Return of the Jedi, only colored green. Had this been one of the earlier seda designs it wouldn’t have been operational as yet, due to the dynamics of the rotating central gravity cylinders, but now that Star Force had artificial gravity plates coupled with containment fields to shape and concentrate the effect, the completed part of the seda had full life support and functioning sections that Baron Keller and his engineering crew were now living out of.

They had a small army of Sparrow and Eagle-class dropships that they’d built in system running cargo up and down from the 6 surface outposts they’d constructed. Initially the factories to produce various items had been onboard the freighters, then they’d expanded them onto the surface, but now that the seda was partially operational those facilities were being dismantled and shifted up to orbit, allowing more personnel to transfer back into space.

About half of those workers were Canderian, and as such preferred living in space opposed to on the ground. The others were Star Force regulars who didn’t care one way or another, they were just here to get the seda built then they’d be transferring out of the system along with the Baron. They’d been assigned because Star Force didn’t trust Canderous to set up on their own in a new star system, let alone one so far away from support. Davis’s legion of mini-mes were specially suited to that sort of startup work, which was why Mark had brought Keller along.

His rate of progress was nothing short of amazing. From day 1 he’d had boots on the ground, setting up resource outposts where the Calavari had allowed, and from there they’d worked like an army of ants digging materials out of the ground and building additional equipment to do more of the same thing. Once those operations had snowballed they’d begun assembling construction supplies and storing them in the holds of the now empty freighters in orbit, from which the construction crews began drawing as they built the superstructure of the seda.

With that in place they began filling it out, section by section, like clockwork. Keller had given Mark a projected timeline that he’d nailed to within 3 days so far, and the trailblazer doubted it would vary any until completion…unless the newly arrived supplies and personnel sped up the timetable.

As the wannabe Death Star grew on his screen Mark spotted the docking bay they were headed to as the doors began to open, revealing a blue energy field just inside that was holding in the atmosphere. The bay should have been evacuated, just as a precaution should the shield fail, but containing the valuable gasses was worth the effort and inconvenience. When the dropship hit the specially designed physical energy shield it breached under the pressure of contact, but only those points under duress.

The rest of the field stayed intact and flowed to fill in the gaps, maintaining a crude seal around the ship as it passed through before completely reforming behind it. Once all three dropships were inside the bay doors ground closed and the shield deactivated, maintaining the atmospheric integrity and allowing instant debarkment as opposed to having to vent and repressurize the bay had the containment field not been in place.

When the doors did finally close a group of people entered the bay and met Mark at the foot of the dropship’s ramp, with one of them grinning ear to ear.

“Oh, who let you in here?” Mark mock grumbled at seeing Sandra-255.

“Blake says hi,” the hotshot pilot said, referring to the trailblazer that led Clan Star Ranger. “And that you could use some help, so he sent his best pilots and a bunch of Canderian whelps out to this…frontier world.”

Mark crossed his arms over his chest and stared her down. “You’ll find this frontier world is the hottest place in the Alliance for fighter pilots.”

Sandra smiled. “Which is why I volunteered. I read your report.”

“So it actually got back?”

She nodded. “Still no word on when we’ll get hooked up to the Bsidd comm grid, but the Hycre are keeping us informed of Alliance activity. So, what have you been doing to the skeets?”

“Experimenting with some upgrades. I’m not completely sold, but they are helping in the simulations against the lizard fighters.”

“How’s our cred?” she asked as they began to walk out of the bay side by side with a group of other Archons following in their wake.

“Increasing. We’re not top dogs, but we’re gaining ground and we’re doing it with the skeets.”

“How are you with their Valeries?”

“We don’t spend enough time in them to get on par with the others, but our flight experience gives us an edge. We’re average when we do joint operations in the Valeries, and they’re decent craft, but not something we’re going to mass produce.”

“You don’t like them, why?”

Mark hesitated a moment as they passed out of the bay and into the station’s interior hallways. “They’re good against the lizard fighters, but they’re not built for our fighting style.”

“Expendable?”

“Not so much. They’re built primarily as an anti-fighter craft, modified for limited fire support.”

“We have the gunships for that,” Sandra pointed out. “How have they been working out?”

Mark smiled. “We’ve been tweaking them in private while using the skeets in our skirmishes. I’ve got a partial design change worked out, but I don’t have the engineering support I need to flesh it out.”

“We brought a design team,” she said with a wink.

“Thank…you,” Mark said emphatically, glad his report had made it back in time.

“So who’s tops now?”

“New bunch, came in about a year ago. In the Kvash camp. Reflexes off the chart…almost as fast as mine.”

“Name?”

“Urik’kadel…but we just call them the ‘rabbits.’ They’re not fluffy, but they’re only as tall as your knee and have a twitchy nose.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Nope. They’re not tops in space, but in atmosphere even the Calavari have a hard time keeping up…and they don’t use the Valeries either. They say they’re too big, so the Calavari are working on miniaturizing the design. Vornac says they’re too valuable of pilots to waste on their native technology, which is lacking. They don’t have a lot of kill power, but they’re extremely nimble and dangerous when they attack in packs.”

“Armor and shields?”

“Neither. Hit them and they’re dead. Their pilot corps is huge, so they just replace their losses with new pilots. Survival of the fittest, or luckiest. Another reason we call them rabbits. How many losers did you bring with you?”

“122 Star Rangers, 0 losers…unless you mean the Canderians, which we brought 5000 out.”

“All Star Rangers? Why no other Clans?”

“You’ve already got your handpicked pilots, we’re just here for support and training. You didn’t request specifics.”

“No problem, just remember that as far as everyone else knows, we’re just Humans. So keep the Clan references behind closed doors.”

“Ah, I can’t make fun of you in public then?”

“Blake sent you on purpose, didn’t he?”

Sandra shrugged. “He didn’t want you to go too long without seeing your girlfriend…his words.”

Mark rolled his eyes. “I am so going to get that punk the next decade I see him.”

“Ah, come on. You used to like me.”

“That was mercy. You second gen newbs needed a lot of help after Wilson somehow passed you out of basic.”

One of the Archons behind Mark snickered, drawing a look over his shoulder from the trailblazer. “My condolences.”

“For what?” the Star Ranger asked.

“Being in the same Clan as her.”

“Are you kidding? She’s awesome. We all want to hook up with her, but apparently she only has eyes for you.”

Mark turned on Sandra like a whip. “That was scripted.”

“Was it?” she asked, a devious, yet satisfied smile on her face.

“Archons don’t date,” he reminded her, turning back to the younger ones behind him. “Even these weaklings.”

“We did once, and we were Archons.”

“Workouts aren’t dates.”

“I don’t know, some of those joint stretching exercises were pretty intense…”

“Blake!” Mark shouted, rolling his eyes and looking up at the ceiling, eliciting a laugh from Sandra.

8

February 18, 2398

Jartul System

Daka

Boen flew wide around a holographic pylon, just skimming the surface of Daka and making ripples in the tall brown grasses that followed his prototype Valerie as he accelerated through the turn, firing off the lachar at a series of targets as the nose of the alien craft passed over them. He hit four of the six before corkscrewing all the way around the pylon and pulling up to shoot through a higher elevated holographic ring that lined him up with a gauntlet run through a series of parallel and very real towers, on top of which were lizard-style anti-air defense turrets, all of which were shielded.

Boen snapped off a combination of lachars and the concentrated plasma orbs that the Valerie was equipped with, but he did not use the scattergun, knowing that given his rate of closure there was no way it would penetrate the turret shields unless he was at pointblank range, which he wouldn’t be given that he was flying down the middle of the gauntlet. As he kept the ship mostly stable in the center of the trench he fired off weapons independently of one another, aiming well ahead of the craft to keep the angular arc within the weapons’ tilt range so that he wouldn’t have to weave side to side to point the nose at the targets that were flipping by so fast he couldn’t even count them all, let alone shoot them.

Getting them all wasn’t the point. Hitting as many as possible was.

Boen kept his cool and methodically shot target after target, then he was clear of the gauntlet and heading up to an even higher altitude where a number of floating, mobile targets representing kirbies were tracing a lazy loop around the area. He began lighting up one of them with the lachar well before he got into plasma range, then saw return fire began to sneak his way. It was low powered, same as his Valerie’s weapons, but it was genuine lizard plasma and the green flashes of light sent a shiver up his back…something he never got in the simulator.

The Archon methodically flew around, poaching the kirbies before flying off on the last section of this test course, which was located low to the ground and simulated a lizard predator, with Boen knowing this was going to be his greatest challenge. Again he hit it from range with his lachar before coming in close to slug it out with his plasma cannon, altering it into a hold and fire function that allowed extra plasma to accumulate before release, akin to a plasma ‘bomb’ that gave the fighter heavier firepower to hit stationary targets.

While the predator wasn’t completely stable, it was so slow that it might as well have been compared to the Valerie. Boen flew it right across the much bigger craft on a direct strafing run before rocketing off the other side at a random angle, taking significant anti-air fire on the way, which dropped his shields down to 23%. He looped around at distance and took several more shots at the predator with his lachar, then broke off and circled around again as his shields recharged.

Trouble was, the predator’s shields were recharging as well and the lachar wasn’t doing much to stop them, though it was scoring hull damage. He didn’t make another strafing run, the first of which was just as a demonstration to prove how effective the predator was at defending against such an attack. Instead he kept circling around at range, firing with his lachar and nicking up the surface of the predator in a specific area until one of its anti-air turrets went down, giving him a less arduous approach vector.

From there he began making strafing runs, always coming in on the less active side, even when the predator spun around to keep him from it, in which case he’d bank away and come back in again, getting a few plasma shots off in the process while taking a few hits of his own. After a while he stopped trying to approach on the weak side and angled his strafing runs so that he exited across that side instead, still diminishing the amount of anti-air the predator could throw at him and landing a heavy plasma blast each time he came across.

Eventually he nailed another turret with his lachars, which further opened up his strafing runs, allowing him to make them a bit slower so he could throw more attacks at the enemy. When the shields eventually came down he began lighting it up with plasma, eventually killing the craft after a total of 72 strafing runs and numerous perimeter lachar attacks.

“There,” he said over the comm to the Calavari team observing him. “Told you one could do it. You just have to be patient.”

“Not something that’s always an option in combat,” Procarva said, “but point taken. It’s good to know that it is possible, but picking off individual turrets at range is problematic. How did you manage it?”

“Two ways. One, we’ve been using lachars for a long time, so I’m comfortable with the weapon. Two, I don’t aim for a specific turret. Pick an area of the hull and shoot at it. Eventually you’ll saturate it with enough hits that you’ll get a turret or two.”

“Impressive flying, but it still isn’t good enough,” the Calavari admitted. “We have to modify the Valerie with a bigger weapon.”

“You’ll have to sacrifice something else,” Boen reminded him. “This is a big ship, but not that big.”

“I know, but we need to be able to take down their gunships with a pair of fighters, no more. And we can’t spend as much time on the task as you just did.”

“I don’t see how you’re going to accomplish that unless you add missiles,” the Archon said as he began flying back to the mountain base from the testing range.

“Battle longevity is the aim,” Procarva reminded the Human. “We need speed, power, flexibility, and durability.”

“I don’t see how you’re going to get much more without going over your weight limits.”

“Neither do I, unfortunately, so we’ll have to be satisfied with this minor progress. Come on back in.”

“Already on my way.”

Boen met Procarva at one of the Calavari complex columns within the massive hangar and cycled through their airlock into the more musty atmosphere that they preferred, pulling off his filter mask and slipping it into one of his pockets.

“How’d the lachar hold up?” Boen asked.

“The data is inconclusive. On average there was a slight improvement, but we’re still getting varied intensities.”

Boen shook his head in frustration as Procarva walked him through the complex. “It’s gotta be your power distribution grid.”

“It was operating within standard parameters.”

“What about within the weapon? Do you have any sensors to monitor that?”

Procarva thought for a moment as they entered an elevator. “All was in working order prior to your flight. Perhaps something is becoming amiss during operation.”

“Whatever it is, we need to find it. It may be negligible, but it doesn’t occur with our lachars. And where there’s one copying glitch there might be others.”

“Never the less,” the Calavari said as they stepped out into the research center several floors above the flight deck, “the weapon is adding extra damage at range prior to normal engagement.”

“But you had to scrap your death blossom to incorporate it. If you are focusing on engagements with the lizard fighters I’m not sure you’ll like the tradeoff.”

“Death blossom?”

“It’s a nickname,” Mark said as Boen and Procarva walked up to him, a Star Force tech, and several other  Calavari all gathered around an impressive display table that held both flat images as well as holos of different fighter craft. “We have something similar in our fiction.”

“The radial burst weapon you’re referring to,” Procarva continued, “is used in the latter stages of battle when allied fighter craft are not in the area. It is a last ditch weapon designed to take as many lizard fighters down with the defeated Valerie as possible. I much prefer having a weapon that we can use prior to battle to thin their numbers and attack their larger craft.”

“As do I,” Vornac added.

“Don’t underestimate the first strike advantage,” Mark cautioned. “If you have an incoming fighter swarm and you can send out one or two Valeries equipped with the death blossom, have them dive into the lines and fire, then hope to escape out the back side and run like crazy, you could get dozens of kills since the lizards don’t use shields.”

“We’ve run those simulations,” Procarva admitted. “They don’t prove as promising as you might think. The spherical nature of the attack greatly diminishes effectiveness as distance increases.”

“What if you modify it for only certain sectors…like, say, omit upper and lower so you don’t waste plasma throwing it into the ground, during surface fighting anyway.”

Vornac rubbed his chin. “You mean to aim the blast?”

“Why not, if you can double up the intensity by eliminating other sectors?” Mark asked.

Boen frowned. “Are you arguing against them using the lachars?”

Mark shook his head. “No. What I’m getting around to is suggesting they use more powerful lachars, which would mean cutting out other weapon systems. Cut those out and put them on separate craft rather than trying to make a ‘do it all’ version.”

“You come back to a familiar point,” Procarva said, thinking hard.

“Because I think it’s important,” Mark said, standing his ground. “We only use skeets because they have a narrow operational window. If we used them in space we’d have an alternate design, and we do have an alternative to deal with the lizard fighter swarm tactics, that being our gunships. The skeets are for fire support and air superiority, and have been so armed.”

“By air superiority you mean to take down harder targets than lizard fighters?” Procarva asked.

“Such as Valeries,” Vornac added.

“Not all races use expendable fighters like the lizards do, so we have to build tougher craft. We also build our designs with the survivability of the pilot in mind and that takes up extra hull space, so we don’t have a lot of weapon options.”

“Yet you already have 4 on your skeets,” Procarva pointed out.

“Not really,” Mark admitted. “We have two, a lachar and a plasma. We split the power requirements for a larger plasma weapon into two separate cannons, then added a holding tank that syphons off plasma from those cannons and contains it for the streamer discharge, so in a sense it’s all one weapon pulling the same amount of power, we just included variations on how to use it.”

“What would you have us do, exactly?” Vornac asked, wanting to clear the air.

“Tell me what you want and I can give you direction, but without a purpose behind a specific design there’s nothing to work with.”

“We want a fighter that can kill multiple lizard fighters,” Procarva said, humoring the Human, “survive their anti-air batteries, take down their transports, harass their warships, and be able to outrun anything they can throw at us.”

“And combat their gunships,” Vornac added.

“Individually or in squadrons?” Mark asked.

The Calavari exchanged glances. In the end it was Vornac that spoke. “We wish it could be individually, but we always fight in groups.”

“Then my suggestion is to continue building standard Valeries, maybe with a few modifications here and there, and supplement your squadrons with specialized versions. You mass produce the standard ones, then add a Valerie specifically designed to hunt lizard fighters en mass to a squadron engaging that foe. Meanwhile you add a Valerie bomber to a squadron attacking surface targets or warships. Make a third to chew apart the kirbies, predators, and whatever else they come up with to throw at us.”

“And then, just to be on the safe side,” Mark said, lowering his voice, “you make an anti-Valerie Valerie, just in case the lizards develop a stronger fighter or one of your allies turns the technology back around against you.”

There was silence for a long moment, then a third Calavari finally spoke. “The Human speaks wisdom. The Valerie must be able to accomplish a wide variety of missions, but it cannot excel at all of them. Reserve the radial blast for other craft and put the lachar on the standard model, that way at least a pilot has a small chance of taking down a larger craft, as Boen has just demonstrated.”

Procarva glanced at the older Calavari. “You want to build variants?”

Tibeerva nodded. “For ourselves only…and our Human friends if we can ever convince them to use the craft,” the four-armed giant said with a bit of humor. “Utilizing these special craft will take a tactical understanding that I do not trust the other races to wield, and I will not trust them with a fighter than can supersede Valeries.”

He looked down at Mark. “Now, what changes would you suggest we make to create a Valerie killer…I’m sure you’ve been considering that since the day you got here, in order to upgrade your own craft in place of using ours.”

Mark didn’t hesitate. “No scattergun. No lachar. Modified death blossom to cover the aft arc only. Add a shield depletion weapon and retain two standard plasma cannons. Lose most of the space thrusters and increase in-atmosphere maneuverability. That’s where the majority of the battles will be fought, and you need to be able to outturn the other Valeries or similar enemy ships. You can create a space-based version if you feel the need and give it extra maneuverability by sacrificing the aerial combat aspect.”

“You seem to be well ahead of us,” Vornac suggested, “yet your own craft suffer in comparison. Why?”

“To put it simply, our craft have other design considerations factored in aside from fighting the lizards and we do not want to sacrifice those. If we need to produce anti-lizard specialist craft, we won’t have to. We can just buy the Valeries from you.”

“But there is something else you want from us?” Tibeerva asked, resting his lower hands on the tabletop as he stared down at Mark. “You will help us improve the Valeries, which will also improve your odds against the lizards, but you wish another trade. Am I correct?”

Mark also leaned on the table, his smaller arms looking almost comical compared to the others. “I have something to ask of you, yes, though I wouldn’t consider it a trade. As you know, we do not use fighters in space. We do have some attack drones which are piloted remotely, but they are little more than mobile weapon platforms and useless in anti-fighter combat. While Star Force is not going to change our battle tactics…they work well for us…there is another faction of Humans that live primarily in space. For them I would ask your help in developing a remotely flown starfighter to defend their homes with.”

“These Humans live in your orbital station?” Vornac guessed.

“Yes. They are called Canderous. We created them as a military civilization and they take orders from Star Force, but their procedures are a bit different from ours. They have been wanting to develop starfighters for a long time and we’ve been refusing to let them do so because of the low survivability rate. I also want our pilots accustomed to atmospheric flying and not splitting their time with spaceflight, so Star Force won’t be using them, just Canderous. Think that’s something you could help us with, because we have almost no experience in that type of combat.”

“With no pilot?” Procarva asked to make sure he heard right.

“No, just a comm control system that we already know how to produce. It’s one of our most guarded secrets, so we won’t be sharing the dynamics of that, but it does take up far less space than a pilot and environmental controls.”

“What if the enemy jams your communications?”

“Let us worry about that,” the trailblazer answered ambiguously.

“Risky,” Tibeerva warned. “With a single weapon the enemy could render all your fighters inert.”

“We use the system on our warships. Most of our fleet is unmanned and remotely controlled. We’re aware of the risks and have found ways around them, which allows us to fight even more aggressively when we don’t have a crew to be concerned about.”

All the Calavari within earshot took on a perplexed look, as if they couldn’t believe what they were hearing, but it was Vornac that finally expressed their combined sentiments.

“The lizards adapt extremely well. They will find a way to neutralize your warships, and when they do your worlds will lie helpless to them.”

“I know it may appear that way to you, but there are secrets that we have, secrets that I cannot reveal to your or anyone else, secrets that most of our own population are not aware of that make this tactic far less risky than it sounds. The lizards know of our broadcasting signal, and have targeted our transmitters numerous times. They have failed to disable all of them, allowing our fleet to pick them apart while they overcommit themselves. This too they have learned, and now hold back to fight conventionally unless they see an opening to exploit.”

“Why have we not heard of this?” Vornac asked.

“It’s not something that we advertise,” Mark explained, “and the signals we use are somewhat…exotic.”

“Do you have interstellar comm capability?” Procarva asked.

“Unfortunately no. That’s something we’re still waiting for the Bsidd to hook us up with.”

“But you fly your own fighters?” Vornac asked.

“Yes we do, but only in atmosphere and with a protective shell around the pilot to maximize survivability. Machines are expendable, personnel are not.”

“Perhaps that is so with such a long lived race,” Tibeerva said respectfully. “But many others do not share your philosophy. Especially not the Cajdital.”

“It’s our training that allows us to live so long,” Mark explained, “not our physiology. You and others could live long as well, it is not just a Human thing.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Procarva said.

“When your society treats you as expendable, very few live long enough to find out.”

“Your thoughts are interesting, Human,” Tibeerva offered, “but your race is still new to the galaxy. To many what you say is sacrilege. Life is destined to die, therefore it is in how we die that matters. There is no greater honor than dying while defending your people against the enemy. Pity are those who die in their sleep a useless death.”

“So many say to justify battlefield suicide,” Mark argued. “You can die today, gaining victory, or live in defeat only to return later and achieve 100 victories. Which then is of more value to your race?”

“If you lose today, there might not be a tomorrow.”

“Such are the concerns of a shortsighted race.”

Tibeerva laughed a deep booming laugh. “Always spoiling for a fight, aren’t you? I’m amazed you’ve survived this long.”

“Me or all of us?”

“Both.”

Boen put a hand on Mark’s shoulder. “We watch each other’s backs…and we’re just plain good at what we do.”

Vornac smiled, showing off his intimidating teeth. “You’re not the best pilots here, despite your age.”

Mark smiled back. “We’re catching up.”

9

December 18, 2399

Jartul System

Daka

“Damn it,” Mark swore as he saw Boen get shot down, then he pulled his skeet through a vertical loop as a pair of simulated lizard fighters dropped in behind him and began to light up his shields. As soon as he came out of the maneuver he had to dodge right to avoid running into another group of 5, but he snapped off a quick shotgun-like blast from the scattergun and hit two of them doing partial damage, but not knocking either out of the massive aerial battle.

Mark couldn’t think ahead, much, as he was flying in and out of enemy fighters just trying to keep himself alive, but he did keep his situational awareness intact and was trying to divert to a specific section of the map to where the fighting was the thinnest. He and Boen had flown straight into the lizard formation to disrupt and distract their hundreds of fighters while the rest of the Star Force pilots nibbled away at the edges, but even that he couldn’t monitor, for there were so many fighters around he was literally bouncing between them like a pinball, snapping off shots where he could.

If it wasn’t for the scattergun he likely wouldn’t have been able to hit any because he wasn’t getting an opportunity to aim. The lizard fighters were fast, nimble, and had small silhouettes, so all he could do was pull the trigger when one passed near his firing line and hope to make a hit. That said, he’d already killed 20 or more in his run through the swarm, but he didn’t dare look at the score board now for fear of actually colliding with one of the fighters.

Dipping down on his anti-gravs and pulling his skeet through a skid turn, the trailblazer twirled around an invisible drain as he headed down towards the surface, hoping to make himself very hard to hit but likewise making it impossible for him to fight back. Right now though all he needed to do was run away and if he couldn’t do that directionally, then maybe he could cut low and catch a gap in their formation to exploit.

He pulled several fighters in pursuit down with him, but when he bottomed out and rocketed off in a straight line over the simulated surface of Daka he managed to get away from the massive brawl overhead, though those tailing him were still occasionally peppering his shields with plasma hits. Fortunately they didn’t get too many in sequence and his matrix was able to partially recharge as he weaved his way off to the edges of the map and away from the beehive.

Once he assumed he was far enough away he kicked in his anti-gravs and shot his skeet up into the sky, then skid-banked to bring his forward weaponry around to target one of the 7 fighters in pursuit. He nailed the first with a normal plasma cannon blast using his left trigger, then winged another pair with the scattergun before going evasive. He ducked, dived, skidded, twisted, and anything else he could think of to disrupt any easy firing angles for the enemy while taking brief moments of opportunity to down his pursuit, then when he had only 3 remaining he went on the offensive, trading plasma with the unarmed fighters.

By the end he had only 7% shield energy left, but all 7 of the fighters were down and his hull hadn’t been scratched…but as he swung around and gained more elevation he got his first clear look at the ensuing battle, as well as their score tally, and saw that his 21 other fighters were nearly half gone as the beehive had collapsed around them.

Accelerating up to dizzying speed he entered the skeet’s super-pursuit mode for a few seconds, stretching out his minimal shields to make the craft more aerodynamic, then he reverted back to normal and hit the brakes, flipping his engines over to reverse and coming down on the cluster of enemy fighters tracking a pair of his pilots from above.

He used his scattergun to peel off two of them, then fired his plasma cannon to get another group to break off pursuit of Kara, giving her a moment of relief by drawing them to him. He killed another one before they could fully circle around, then he started his fighter dancing an evasive jig while Kara returned the favor and came around to clean one off his tail. The pair kept switching up the lizards, forcing them to focus on one while the other flanked them or split their numbers to pursue each individually.

That eventually happened, but Mark was able to make quick work of the 3 that came after him, then before he could get back to Kara another 6 flew in from elsewhere and made his next few minutes hell as he took a shot to the tail of his skeet, which fortunately didn’t penetrate the fighter’s thin armor.

A tone sounded in his pod, indicating that they’d passed the prerequisite score to advance into the next round, but he didn’t let up. Beating half the other race’s involved in the annual combat tournament and solidifying themselves in the upper half using their skeets and not the Valeries had been the goal, and this was their 7th run out of 10 attempts, but that wasn’t good enough for Mark, because he knew they were among the best pilots on the planet and he wanted to set a first round score that would indicate as much.

This would be their last run, though. He’d promised as much to his pilots. Most of the other races had already used up their 10 attempts, so their top scores were locked in. Mark had held off on their attempts, stretching them out so they could see how the others were performing, knowing that Star Force pilots worked better when they had a benchmark to hit. Some other races had the same idea, so the Humans weren’t the last to still be making their runs, but according to the tone he’d preprogrammed into their simulation they’d mathematically secured their slot in the second round and any score beyond this point was purely for sport.

By the time he had shaken off and killed two of his trailers Kara had already gone down, as had all but three of his pilots left in the simulation. The remaining lizard fighters, still numbering in the hundreds, began to reposition and overwhelm the last of the skeets so Mark knew his time was just about up.

He pulled up hard and shot his fighter straight up, using both conventional and anti-grav engines to gain as much altitude as possible, then tipped over near the peak of the map and came charging back down firing away with his scattergun and killing the closest fighter. After that he only did damage as his shots spread out too far for a concentrated kill while he was weaving his way back down to the surface at crazy speed.

Three of the lizard fighters had managed to stay with him a few hundred meters back, but they were having trouble shooting him as he evaded, and he had the distinct feeling that one of them had collided with another, but he wasn’t paying close enough attention to the sensor screen to be sure. All of his attention was focused forward at the fighters between him and the ground.

He pulled up on the nose of the fighter, faking that he was going to angle off along the ground, then pulled down and executed a reverse loop that shot him out the other way inverted, skimming across the grassy plain of the planet. Before he could flip back over he took a shot to the underside, knocking out his streamer cannon…but he wasn’t using that weapon anyway, so it wasn’t a loss.

Another tone sounded in his pod, indicating that he was the ‘last of the Mohicans,’ so to speak, and that the rest of the Star Force fighters had gone down…and that now every lizard fighter out there was coming after him and that he wasn’t going to have anywhere to run to.

Having been in a similar situation before, he knew that the only thing he could do was to keep moving erratically, bouncing around and trying to take as many of the enemy fighters as he could down with him. The trailblazer lasted another 1:12 before a green plasma blast hit his skeet in the nose and send it careening down to the ground where his simulation suddenly ended.

Mark blew out a breath like it was a projectile, ticked at having died. He hadn’t expected to survive the run, nobody ever did, but there was a part of him that always resented getting shot down. In his mind that was still a failure, and had this been real he would either be dead or stranded on the surface of the planet in his skeet’s armored pod.

He triggered the release on the simulator after running through the post-mission stats, resulting in a crack of white light around the base that quickly grew to encompass the interior as the pod cockpit lifted off him. Outside Boen and the others were standing around, waiting for him to come out.

“116 kills?” his fellow Archon asked. “You’re making us look bad.”

“The longer you survive the more you can kill,” he reminded him as his eyes were drawn to the central hologram in the simulation room. It should have been showing what was going on in the simulators, but as far as he knew only the Humans were currently using this room. “What’s that?”

“Nestafar 5th run. We’re piping it in from another chamber,” Sandra said from a few meters away. “We are done, right?”

“Yeah, that one did it,” Mark confirmed, walking over to Kara and giving her a friendly jab in the ribs. “Thanks for the rescue.”

“Sabers call it teamwork, but you’re welcome anyway.”

A pair of heavy lands landed on Mark’s shoulders, then another ran through his hair. “You did well, Human,” Vornac said mirthfully. “That’s the second highest score yet. Why did it take you 7 runs?”

Mark pried the hand off his head, then the other two off his shoulders so he could spin around and look up at the Calavari. “A change of tactics this time. Did we prompt you to have another go at it?”

Vornac laughed. “You may have surpassed us this time, but this is only the first round. You may have the credit, if it stands up to the others, but be aware that some of us are only trying to qualify. How you only do so on a run this good is confusing to me. Almost as if it were luck.”

“Please don’t say that,” Boen begged. “He’ll make us do it over again.”

“Luck or not we’re through for the first time,” Kara added as a few of the pilots began to mingle their way out of the chamber while most remained to watch the Nestafar.

“A surprise to most, but not us,” Vornac said approvingly. “We have trained you well,” he joked.

The Calavari glanced around, seeing that no one was heading back into the pods. “If you truly are done for the day, I’ll see you up in the main lounge in a bit?”

“Me, no,” Mark said. “I’ve got a workout to get in.”

“I’m going to grab a shower then I’ll be up,” Kara said, raising an eyebrow at Boen.

“I think most of us will find our way up there sooner or later,” the Archon agreed.

“Good,” Vornac said, clapping palm in fist on his upper set of arms. “I want to see how the others react…especially if they don’t make it.”

Mark glanced up at the hologram. “You don’t think they will?”

“Difficult to say, but I intend to find out with drink in hand. As always, you’re welcome to partake.”

“As always,” Mark replied, inferring his normal declination. Drunk pilots, or Archons for that matter, were dead pilots, as such Star Force had banned all alcoholic substances from use by their personnel and refused to sell them to the general population. The Calavari version was mild compared to some of their other inebriating concoctions, which could theoretically kill a Human, so Mark had issued orders that none of their people should ever so much as sample any alien foodstuffs or drink that hadn’t been cleared for consumption.

Vornac walked off, leaving the Humans alone in their victory as they watched the Nestafar get cut to pieces by the simulated lizard fighters. They did manage a 3/1 kill ratio, but that was far inferior to most of the other races on Daka, putting them well below the qualification line. That said, they had another 5 runs to try and up their score.

“See ya later,” Kara offered Boen and Mark before heading out herself. Once she got into the quiet hallway outside she jogged off to the right, passing Vornac as he headed to a nearby elevator terminal to speed him over to his destination. Kara, heading for the shower anyway, preferred to get a bit of an extra run in and hoofed it over to the entrance to the Human complex, which was more than 3 kilometers away.

The closest simulator complex had been hogged by the Gnar most of the day as they practiced in repetitive shifts, making it impossible for all 22 Humans to get online at the same time, so they’d relocated to an empty one to make their three qual runs today, after a less than successful effort yesterday.

The elevator entrance to their complex was slightly downhill of the simulator, prompting Kara to turn her jog into a heavy run, which felt good after being cramped up in a pod for the past several hours. They’d gone through some practice maneuvers before and in between their quals, stretching out the session considerably, but doing so in order to keep them from getting in a rut and simply repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

Kara tagged the open button on the elevator twice and stepped in, letting the tri-door close and the atmospheric processor recycle the air. While they breathed the standard atmosphere within the base just fine, Mark had fine-tuned their complex’s atmosphere to Star Force standards, diminishing the amount of oxygen and upping the nitrogen. As such she always felt a bit more lethargic after losing the more oxygen-rich air, but then again she didn’t need to be sprinting around their interior hallways.

The Archon headed over to her personal quarters and went straight for her shower…which had been one of the first upgrades Star Force had made once moving in. The Calavari had air turbine scrubbers to blow off dirt and grime, but then again they didn’t sweat either. The modifications made were one of many that all the incoming races were encouraged to make, given that the Calavari didn’t know about all of their individual needs…and very little about the Humans until after they arrived.

Kara walked up the short rubbery staircase, stripping off her clothes as she went and tossing them along with her shoes on the floor, then pulled open the lid on her shower tank and slid inside. The water rushed up over her chin, then careened out overflow ports in the sidewall until it leveled out just below her shoulders. She slid the lid back in place over top, which triggered the illumination panels running up and down the tank which had a clear wall looking out over the rest of her quarters, making the tube feel less claustrophobic.

The water was already warm and filled with a soapy solution according to Kara’s standard settings. With the press of a button drops began falling from the lid and slicking her hair down with pure water as a series of pressure jets underneath the waterline began scouring her body in a rhythmic fashion that doubled as both a scrubber and a masseuse.

She stayed inside for a good ten minutes before she killed the sequence and climbed out using footholds imbedded in the far side of the tube. She straddled the opening, letting excess liquid fall back inside as she rung out her hair before grabbing a nearby towel and stepping aside, only to slide the lid back in place with her left foot before walking down the steps and over to her closet.

Once dressed she left the Human complex and snagged the nearest transit elevator on the circuit of ceiling corridors and headed over to the main hangout for all the pilots on base. When she arrived on the promenade she found Boen and several dozen others already there hanging out in small clusters while the rest of the races did the same with little mixing…save for the bar which was where she was headed to.

“Water and a niktat,” she told the nearest server on the long countertop. With a precise throw the Calavari tossed her a bottle, then a sealed package, both of which she caught with ease.

“Thanks Sala,” she said, retreating back over to one of the tables with half the seats filled with Archons and regular pilots. “What’d I miss?”

“The rabbits went back out on another run, just to show off,” a Star Force regular by the name of Larry Ibsig said. “They upped their high score by 23.”

“Damn,” Kara whispered, tearing open the packaging on the niktat, which was a chewy dough that was on the ‘ok alien food’ list. It tasted like cookie dough to her, which was why she usually picked up some whenever she was in the lounge.

Peter-523 leaned over and pointed up at the main scoreboard. “Have a look who’s in the basement.”

Kara looked down at the bottom half of the list, running through the usual subpar races, of which Star Force was usually one, until one name jumped out in particular.

“No way,” she said at seeing the Protovic not only in the bottom half, but the bottom quarter on the round 1 score list. “Do they have any more runs?”

“Just one…coming up in a few minutes.”

“I’m glad I didn’t miss this,” she said, leaning back a touch and pinching off a glob of niktat that she downed in a slow gulp. “Who else has to go?”

“The Gnar, of course,” Peter said, knowing that there was little chance that they were going to make it given the strength of the scores having been posted, but then again anything was possible with so many elite pilots around. Even those who were at the bottom of the basement were considered top notch just about anywhere else in the galaxy. “But the Irondel are just on the good side of the bubble, and they’re hanging onto their last 2 runs in case they need them.”

Kara glanced up to the top name on the list, the Urik’kadel or ‘rabbits,’ then her eyes slid down to the second name, written in the trade language, the Humans, which was just above the Calavari…wait, no it wasn’t. They’d slipped down to 4th. The Bsidd had moved up to 3rd, which was a total shock. As advanced as their technology was, their pilots had always been subpar, relatively speaking.

“This is turning out to be a very interesting tournament,” she commented to no one in particular before washing down the niktat with a healthy swig of water.

10

December 20, 2399

Jartul System

Daka

Mark heard noise behind him in the hallway then flinched as two Nestafar flew past over top of him as he ran. He wasn’t used to people being able to catch up to him, and very rarely did he ever see any of the Nestafar flying around, though the hallways were plenty high to accommodate their wide, muscular wings. They kept their legs, arms, and tail tucked up to their torso and pumped their wings furiously to get up the incline that Mark was running.

The Archon shook off the surprise, reminding himself to remember that sound in case it happened again…then he twisted to his left and peeked back over his shoulder to see if any more were coming…but the hallway was clear, as it usually was. While it was possible to walk from pilot complex to complex through the ceiling passages most people used the elevator system to get them close, then huffed it over the short distances with very few venturing out into the long ovoid tunnels…save for the Humans when they were running workouts.

They’d never established a proper sanctum in the base, but had made accommodations where they could within the local structure. The hallways offered plenty of room to run and had been mapped out for their precise distance the first week after arrival. Addition chambers within the Human complex had been renovated with various pieces of training equipment, sufficient to cover their core workouts and the specialties of those Archons on site, but they only built what they needed inside the base, given that they were working out of someone else’s infrastructure.

The newly finished seda in orbit did have a full range of training equipment and chambers that they could use, but most of the time Mark and the other Archons weren’t up there, so they just made sure they got in what workouts they needed to maintain and slightly grow their skills while focusing the rest of their time on flying.

The 1st round of the annual tournament, which was measured in Calavari years, was completed with Mark and the others notching the 3rd overall spot with the Kvash bumping them out of second by three points. Those positions were immaterial, for the next round was not seeded in any way. Starting in two days the top half of the field would be running through support tests, assaulting the lizards’ larger craft and bases, which Mark felt their skeets were better equipped for than dogfighting compared to the Valeries, so he held out some hope that they might qualify through to the round robin, where the remaining races would go head to head.

As it was, they were the only qualifying race that wasn’t flying a Valerie. The rabbits had gotten their modified version worked out with the Calavari, which had made them even more of an obstacle to the other pilots. They’d solidified their dominance over the atmospheric competition and were thought to be contending for the space title as well this year, which would occur a few weeks later.

As Mark ran up the incline he accelerated enough to maintain pace, then leveled back out when he hit the peak, keeping close attention on his cadence so he didn’t screw up this lap segment. Each 500 meter section had to be run in under 100 seconds to keep him below 5:20 mile pace and the Archons had put small tracking markers on the corridor walls across the entire base for measurement purposes that would synch with his wristwatch…and it didn’t matter whether there was an incline, flat, or decline in the sections, they still had to be run under minimum pace.

When Mark got a few meters in from the top of the incline and back onto the flat he saw the Nestafar land and walk into one of the pilot dens. They’d gotten so far ahead of him that it took a couple minutes for him to catch up and pass by the entrance…where he skidded to a halt. Inside the open doorway there were sounds of a commotion so he stepped in to see what was going on.

The interior was a labyrinth of narrow hallways leading to pocket-like rooms. He’d been invited to these hangouts several times before so he had an idea of what took place inside and what didn’t, and the sounds he was hearing were very atypical…given that and the fact that the Calavari and Nestafar didn’t like each other, he could tell there was trouble.

After making a right/left/right through the pathetically short halls he almost tripped over a Calavari laying on the floor with orange blood seeping from multiple cuts on his body. Mark glanced ahead and behind to make sure he was clear, then knelt down next to the unfamiliar alien and tried to rouse him, but a loud screech from further in drew his attention and the Archon jumped up from his crouch across the downed Calavari and zigzagged his way towards the sound.

He came out into an alcove and saw three Nestafar flying half a meter off the ground around a Calavari, along with two other winged aliens lying on the ground with misshapen limbs. The three in the air were punching and kicking at the four-armed alien as it wildly jerked about, trying to knock the flyers down.

Mark didn’t hesitate and jumped up behind the nearest Nestafar and let gravity pull him back down a few inches as he hammered his left elbow into its back right between its wing stalks. It went slack, taken completely off guard, and hit the ground underneath the Archon’s body as he somersaulted over it and back up onto his feet where he punched another in the lower abdominal cavity, forcing it to fly backwards a few meters and away from the bleeding Calavari.

That was when Mark noticed the bladed weapons the Nestafar had in their hands and on their feet. The handheld slicers wrapped around their fists in wicked looking circular blades while the foot straps had a claw-like blade sticking up at a nasty angle…and from the look of Gonstan they’d been doing a considerable amount of damage with them.

The Calavari pilot grabbed the last of the Nestafar attacking him by the throat and threw it to the ground as it sliced both hand blades into his thick upper arm. His lower arm grabbed one and pulled it away, but the other carved out a deep trench in his skin, gushing out a river of orange just before his foot came up and stomped down on the creature’s neck, after which it dropped both blades as its arms fell lifeless.

The other one left in flight ignored the Calavari and went straight at Mark, but the Archon was too fast. Even as it swung its blades at his exposed skin he caught it by the wrists and walked up its chest, making the pair too heavy to stay in the air. They both came crashing down to the floor, whereupon Mark delivered a heavy punch to its ribcage while sliding in between its legs so it couldn’t gut him with the foot blades.

It tried to swing a right cross that would have cut through his face, but he caught its forearm with his elbow, then drove his stiffened fingers into its throat with a strike quick as a scorpion, then his arm was back up in defense while the Nestafar choked to get air. Meanwhile Mark grabbed one of its wrists and pried the blade out of its hand, tossing it aside while working on the other…then a huge foot came down on its head and the alien went limp.

“What’s going on?” he asked, sliding back out from under Gonstan’s blood drips.

“I don’t know,” he said, walking out of the room towards the sound of other combat.

Mark left the dead/incapacitated Nestafar where they lay and followed the Calavari through the narrow hallways and into another room where more fighting was going on, but before he could jump in to help he heard sounds behind him and turned just in time to duck a blade swiping for his throat.

The Archon pulled down into a crouch then exploded forward, running on hunched knees into the midsection of the first Nestafar and driving it back football style into the two behind it, then he stopped suddenly and kicked into its midsection before grabbing one of its wrists and twisting hard. The ugly alien’s grip slackened and he pulled the blade free as he backed up a step.

Mark glanced over his shoulder into the room to make sure he wasn’t about to get ambushed from behind then held his ground in the hallway, not letting any of the reinforcements get through to the Calavari as he struck a pose with the curved blade wrapping around his fingers like the scariest set of brass knuckles every conceived. He held it out in front of him in warning with one shoulder turned backwards so he could have a bit of peripheral vision to the inside as the three Nestafar clawed their way to their feet.

None of them could fly, given the width of the halls, but Mark could see and hear more coming up behind them, probably flying in as the two had done prior to his arrival.

“Stand aside!” he heard a voice bellow from behind.

Mark took a step backward to clear the entrance then ducked behind the wall to his left just before a table came flying through the air to smash into the attackers. Following it another Calavari charged in, this one not so bloody, and Mark could hear all kinds of screeches and screams as the four-armed giant busted his way through the pinned flyers. Unable to amass or surround, the Nestafar had no chance one on one, hand to hand with a Calavari and they knew it.

Mark turned his back to the wall and looked for more enemies, but the small room had only 3 Calavari on their feet, with another one lying dead on the ground along with a host of Nestafar. He reached up to his ear to make sure his earpiece wasn’t there, then turned the corner and followed the Calavari all the way out to the entrance after the attackers, spotting at least one that had taken a side detour.

As the four-armed behemoth closed and sealed the tri-door Mark turned and chased the Nestafar through a series of twists and turns until it came out into yet another small chamber, this one with two attackers and one wounded Calavari trying to shield itself from the swinging blades with its already cut up arms and legs as the flyers tried to go for its throat.

Angry as hell, Mark ran up and drove his own blade into the back of one, eliciting a horrible screech as it imbedded in the cartilage and the Human was able to physically pull it away from the Calavari using the handhold.

He yanked it back and away, twisting it to the side before running up and clobbering the other in the back of the head with his fist and instantly regretting it as his knuckles took the brunt of the hit. The wing flaps paused in a moment of shock, bringing the Nestafar down to Mark’s height, upon which he swung his right arm around and leaned into the blow, bypassing its face with his fist and instead landing his much stronger elbow on target.

That knocked it out and Mark pulled it off the wounded Calavari before turning around to see another come in and finish off the one squirming around on the floor with the blade still buried in its back. As he heard the neck snap the Archon turned around and frowned, looking down at the pile of blood that the Calavari was still lying in, unable or unwilling to stand.

“Where are your medics?” he asked the other.

“Elsewhere,” was all the pilot said, heaving with exertion. “If they too aren’t under attack.”

“Are there any more in here?”

“We will handle it. Thank you for your help. You fight stronger than you look.”

“So what, they just jumped you?”

“That’s exactly what happened,” Gonstan said as he charged in, looked around, then began to leave to search other compartments. Mark followed him.

“Are you injured?” the alien asked back over his shoulder.

“No, but several of your men are. They’re going to bleed out if they don’t get help.”

“Combat first, medicine second,” Gonstan said, ducking into and checking another section. Mark waited in the hallway for him to come back out, not wanting to get in the way.

“Why blades?” he asked as Gonstan came back out and moved on.

“We didn’t permit them to bring firearms onto base, given their history,” he said, ducking through more hallways. “They are a treacherous lot.”

“What’s their aim?”

“Depends how widespread this is,” he said, meeting up with another Calavari.

“All clear,” he reported.

Gonstan turned around and pointed behind Mark. “Back.”

More nimble than the giants, the Archon backtracked and headed out to the closed door where they waited for the remaining Calavari to gather, some of which were quite bloody.

“Go with him,” Gonstan ordered one of his kin, referring to Mark. “See to it that he gets back to his enclave safely.”

Mark held up a hand. “No, I can move faster alone. Once I…” he said, suddenly cut off by a base-wide alarm that sounded like something off a techno dance track.

Gonstan swore something in his native language. “This is happening everywhere. Prepare yourself, Human. And good luck.”

Mark nodded and let the Calavari move up in front of him before they unlocked and opened the door. It parted in 3 pieces, revealing an open hallway for a moment, then a Nestafar flew down and landed in front of it, uttering something not in the trade language to the others outside.

Gonstan charged out and punched it into the far wall, ignoring the nasty cut he got on his lower right arm, then another pair swooped in to attack, but the other Calavari got to them first, yanking them down to the ground by their hanging legs and pounding them mercilessly. As ferocious as they were a few minutes ago, the base-wide alarmed seemed to have upped their adrenaline to a lethal level…and Mark’s as well.

The other two Calavari blew through the door after them, immediately engaging other Nestafar and giving Mark an opening. He cut left behind one of them, taking the opportunity to punch a flyer in the gut and drag it to the ground as he sprinted off, leaving the Calavari to deal with the 8 or so nearby. Further down the hallway, though, he could see individuals or pairs flying about, all of which immediately redirected towards the fighting.

One of them came down at Mark, but it missed in its swoop attack as he evaded with a fake to the left then a run/bump against the right wall to scoot by, after which he sprinted off downhill, reaching into his body’s upper gears and hitting 33 mph as he raced towards the last elevator cupola that he remembered seeing on his run. He could hear wing flaps behind him, but he kept pushing his sprint until the sound became ominously close, then he leaned forward, curled up into a ball, and hit the ground hard rolling across his right shoulder and upper back in a sideways somersault as the Nestafar and its buddy shot by.

Ignoring the numb pain in his right elbow’s funny bone, he jumped back up onto his feet and sprinted forward, now running behind the Nestafar as they arced up into a braking maneuver and turned around just as he was passing underneath them, causing a moment of confusion before they flapped furiously to match his acceleration.

Mark beat them to the elevator terminal and slid to a stop, punching the open button twice and staring back at the winged vermin as they closed on him, ready to make a jump attack when they got within range.

Unexpectedly there was already an elevator car waiting, so the doors opened with only a momentary delay. Mark jumped inside and hit the close button, pressing himself up against the left wall, ready for them to jump in after him. He held the button down so that it would override the motion sensor and caught the first Nestafar as it tried to squeeze through, pinching its wings against its sides along with one arm.

Mark grabbed the other and pulled it wide, then kicked as hard as he could into its torso, popping it back out into the hallway. He reached over and jabbed at the close button, this time with the doors coming together with a few inch gap by the time the second one reached in with one arm coming through up to the elbow.

He brought his leg up high at the knee then extended his foot even further up with a slight pause, then brought his leg down on the thing’s wrist, knocking the bladed weapon loose and causing the Nestafar to recoil and pull its arm out. The doors slid shut with a click and mark hit the button for the location nearest the Human complex.

When he felt it start to move he released the button and kicked aside the blade…a disgusting weapon meant for a butcher, not a warrior.

During the ride through the more solid sections of the base ceiling Mark tried to think of what the Nestafar were up to…but he couldn’t come up with any reasonable scenarios. They were the Calavari’s nemesis, not Star Force’s, and the Humans knew very little about them, let alone their motivations or their history with the Calavari. He knew it wasn’t pleasant, but the fact that they’d agreed to tolerate each other within the Alliance had, he thought, meant they weren’t outright enemies.

They were now, though, regardless of what had brought them to this point. Even if the Nestafar hadn’t already displayed their dislike for the Humans Mark still would have sided with the Calavari, even if this hadn’t been their base. Next to the Hycre, and maybe the Kiritas, the Calavari had become Star Force’s closest ally…here on Daka, anyway. Not to mention that several of them had become personal friends.

When the elevator door finally opened Mark wasn’t anywhere to be seen, hiding aside from the door in case the exit was trouble. After not hearing anything for a handful of seconds Mark cautiously walked out, finding the surrounding area to be clear. He sprinted off towards the door to the dedicated elevator shaft that led down into their complex, not sighting a Nestafar until the last few steps, and only then at the very far end of the hall, or rather as far as he could see down to another incline.

Mark jumped into the elevator and rode it down to the command level, then burst out to find it all but empty. Only Sandra was there, coordinating via earpiece and console.

“Report!” he demanded loud enough to get her attention.

She looked up at him, suddenly relieved. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Helping the Calavari fight off an ambush. What’s going on?”

“They hit the hangar bay, but not our ships. The Calavari’s fighters are gone, as are several other races’. Explosives followed up by troops with handheld rockets. Most of us are out there keeping them away from our ships, because now they’re torching everything in sight. We’ve lost two skeets and a dropship so far, but we’re pushing them back.”

“In armor?”

“Yes. We’ve also got some of the regulars in the air, strafing them in the bay, but the Nestafar fighters are waiting outside the bay doors in ambush. We know because we saw a Kvash squadron go through and get hit.”

“Did they get reinforcements or are they doing this…”

“In house only, as far as I can tell. Their ships in orbit haven’t moved.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Mark said, rushing off towards the armory when Sandra yelled.

“Wait!”

He skidded to a halt and came back, seeing her bring up an orbital sensor display  just as several new contacts were showing up…all Nestafar.

“Damn it,” Mark swore as he took off in a dash to get to his armor.

Backstab

1

December 20, 2399

Jartul System

Daka

Mark pulled open the armory storage locker revealing three sets of green battle suits, all his. He took the right boot of the newest one and slid it on over his shoe, securing it in place before pulling out the other pieces of the ranger armor and latching them on, then doing a quick shimmy to get them to all lock into place forming an airtight seal. The density and weight of the armor was greater than that of the acolyte armor, which was in turn greater than that of the adept armor, giving him the most protection possible.

As Archons grew in strength they could bodily handle higher grades of armor, and the ranger armor was the most advanced version they had fielded yet. It weighed 128 pounds, almost as much as Mark did, and was tailored to fit the exact dimensions of his body, thus increasing his speed and flexibility as compared to an adjustable, generic suit. The whole assembly was unpowered, save for diagnostics, communication, and a lot of other stuff in the helmet, meaning that he had to propel himself and the suit around on muscle power alone, which would have been impossible for an untrained Human, who would have had difficulty in walking a single step.

Mark, on the other hand, was a level 2 Archon Ranger and took off running out of the changing area as if the suit was nothing more than a thick set of clothes. He grabbed several weapons in a nearby compartment, attaching them to the built-in rack on the back of his torso along with an extra ammo carrier that slid in along the small of his back but still allowed him to bend at the waist as he left the armory and headed for the hangar.

“I’m in. Talk to me Sandra,” he said as he tore through the hallways.

“Big fight going on in orbit and they’ve got dropships coming down. Closing the bay doors would be a big help.”

“Are they both open?”

“No, just south side. But the Calavari remote control is down. They’re asking for assistance manually shutting the doors. I don’t know how, but the Nestafar have troops swarming the hanger and the interior corridors.”

“I can confirm the latter. Where are the manual controls located?”

“Control booth above each door.”

“Above?” Mark said, skidding to a halt just before he got to the airlock. “So I need to go through the roof to get there?”

“That’d be my guess. I’m not getting much information from the Calavari right now.”

“How are we doing in the hangar?” Mark said, not sure which way to go.

“We’ve got the regulars in the air providing cover, but aside from the smoking dropship remains there’s not much to hide behind out there. We’re good for now, so I suggest you hit the roof.”

“On it,” Mark said, sprinting off towards the elevator. “You going to get in the fight or what?”

“I was waiting to find you,” she said, her voice dissipating a bit as she walked away from the mic towards another station. “Next time we have an alien invasion remember to wear an earpiece, will ya?”

“Get in your armor and mobile. I’ll coordinate enroute.”

“Going,” she said, cutting the comm line as she left the control room to head over to the armory.

“Boen,” Mark said, switching to the Archon suit frequencies listed on his helmet’s HUD, “how’s your day going?”

“Just lovely…these things are starting to piss me off. They’re chucking rockets all over the place, but not a lot at us. They seem more interested in the Calavari and Kvash. Where have you been?”

“Playing hopscotch. We’ve got a battle in orbit and Nestafar dropships headed this way. I’m going for the door controls, think you can keep things together without me?” he said as he punched the open button on the elevator twice.

“Go.”

Mark jumped in between the doors before they were fully open and impatiently rode it up to the ceiling corridors. When it opened again he walked out finding a line of Nestafar flying away from his position. They didn’t see him come out, so he ducked down the corridor until he got to the transit elevator without incident, but as he was waiting for a car to be diverted to his position another group came up following the others, accelerating their wing flaps as soon as they saw him.

The Archon squared himself to the hallway and faced them, smiling at the tiny blade weapons they were carrying. Now that he was armed and armored they weren’t going to be a problem.

He raised his plasma rifle and was about to fire at the first of them when the elevator doors opened, so he held his fire and stepped inside…then was whisked off through the base to the point nearest the southern bay doors. When the car finally arrived and pulled open its doors Mark found himself shut inside by the hallway doors that usually retracted in sync. A crack of light was visible at the top and bottom, but a whole solid line of some sort of melted metal was covering the center, locking the doors in place.

Mark fired his plasma rifle into the seam at pointblank range with his right hand as he held in the retract button with his left. Little chunks of the door blew out but it wouldn’t budge, so he let go of the button and tucked his rifle onto his back and began punching the broken seam. After the third punch the left door shifted, giving him a half inch wide gap into which he drove his fingers and pulled. The door didn’t want to move but Mark’s strength convinced it, prying open a half foot gap before a Nestafar’s face poked in from the other side.

The trailblazer punched it back and continued to pull, but the alien pulled out an exotic pistol and fired a bolt of red plasma through the gap. Mark ducked down with the blast passing over his shoulder and impacting the back wall, then put all his effort into moving the stubborn door.

He only got it a few more inches before another two shots came through, one of which hit him in the left pectoral. Annoyed more than anything, he took a step back, pulled out his rifle and shot the Nestafar with one clean blue streak, then tucked his weapon onto his armor and went back to prying. It took more than two minutes to get the doors wide enough apart for him to slide through, and when he did he realized he was behind enemy lines with a lot of commotion coming from the right.

If his guess was correct the control room was somewhere to the left but he couldn’t see anything in the plaza he was standing in now. It was a pentagon with four hallways shooting out the various sides with the elevator occupying the 5th. Mark hung close to the wall and went left, running down a short section of corridor before he got to a T-junction, on the left of which were several dozen Calavari all hunkered down and silently standing around a few Nestafar corpses.

Mark looked at them through his helmet, frowning. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting for reinforcements,” one of them said, dripping blood from its arm. Mark looked around and saw that most of them were injured and weaponless, though a few were holding the Nestafar hand blades.

“Where’s the bay control room? We need to shut the doors before they can land their reinforcements.”

Another Calavari pointed down the opposite hallway that seemed to go the wrong direction from the exterior of the base. “We just lost it. How did you get here?”

“The elevator. I need one of you to show me to the control room. I’ll get it back.”

Two of the Calavari stood taller. “There are too many, and they have firearms.”

“I can handle it,” the green armored Human said confidently. “Point me at them.”

“The security team is nearly here,” another argued, pointing in the direction of the audible firefight. “When they arrive we will retake it together.”

“I can’t wait,” Mark said, turning about and heading off to the right. Before long he came to another ‘T’ and looked in either direction, seeing nothing but empty hallway, and these were much shorter and narrower than the main thoroughfares he was used to running through.

“Go left,” one of the slightly wounded Calavari said as it ran up behind him.

Mark nodded his thanks and jogged off until he came up on another ‘T’ jutting off to the right. Before he got there a Nestafar appeared, this one walking around the corner rather than flying. A quick plasma shot to its head dropped it to the ground with little effort…but its fall was followed by three more of its friends flying into view, and they came around the corner firing.

Knowing his ally had no armor or weapons Mark charged ahead, shooting one of the ugly vermin out of the air and drawing fire from another before he got to the ‘T’ where he shot a second in the gut and pulled the third down to the ground by its foot. He took a red plasma blast to the chest in the process but shook it off and shot the pinned one in the head, then looked off to the right and saw dozens more at the end of the hall in front of an open door that had to lead to the control room.

“Stay here,” Mark said, glancing back at the Calavari who was still out of view around the corner, then the Archon took off sprinting towards the enemy, intent on giving them as few shots at him as possible. He took several hits on the run up with the plasma washing over him like an angry cloud that traveled down the hallway and barreled right into the lot of them, shooting a few on the way then busting up the rest hand to hand as the Calavari watched from the corner, unable to completely hide and wait while the Human went into battle.

To its amazement the little man didn’t go down, but the Nestafar did, leaving the Archon standing in the pile of their corpses for a moment, smoke rising from his only slightly damaged armor before he kicked his way clear and jumped over their bodies and through the doors.

The Calavari shook its head in amazement then followed Mark up to the pile of dead enemies, grabbing one of their tiny pistols and squeezing his thick finger through the trigger loop…but it wouldn’t fit. It fired off a shot sideways into the wall as his finger pressed in on the trigger and held it flush to the casing, unable to recoil again.

With a growl the Calavari tossed it aside and stepped over the pile, kicking one of the corpses on the way. When he got inside he followed a line of dead Calavari through several small chambers until the suit of green armor came back and looked up at the larger alien. “Where are the door controls?”

“Follow me,” the Calavari said, passing him by and moving two rooms up. Mark followed him, keeping close guard with his plasma rifle crossed over his chest and his helmet turning back and forth robotically as he visually scanned the area for new targets.

A blue flash crossed within a foot of the Calavari’s arm as the Human fired on a Nestafar coming in from another doorway, then the short ally burst ahead as quick as an insect and took up a guard position, firing twice more at enemies the four-armed giant couldn’t see as it bent over and started tapping buttons on the console. A holographic display of the hangar bay arose, offering a clear view of the melee going on below them and the open doors leading out onto the grassy plains. The exit corridor was also displayed with dots representing the Nestafar Valeries moving in and out of the local sensor range as they waited to poach any fighters coming out.

With a few more keystrokes the 2 giant doors began to creep inwards, each several meters thick and hundreds of meters wide.

“It is done,” the Calavari announced, glancing around.

Mark walked back in from the doorway and held position near the hologram, watching the closure. As the gap diminished one of the Nestafar fighters flew in…then another. Halfway closed several dozen shot through and began flying around the interior, knowing that they wouldn’t get another opportunity once the doors fully closed.

Inside Mark could see their skeets moving off from the column that had been their home these past few years to engage the enemy fighters, leaving the Archons on the ground to deal with the individual Nestafar flying about under their own power and causing havoc with their rocket launchers.

“Lock them down if you can,” Mark prompted as soon as the massive doors came together, sealing off the hangar from the outside. “Are there any other entrances to the base?”

“Not to the hangar, but there are a number of tunnels leading out into the mountains. None big enough for a fighter,” the Calavari said as footsteps behind them caused Mark to spin around reflexively…but he held his fire as more Calavari appeared, some of which held their own version of rifles in their two right arms.

“Hangar secured,” the one with Mark said.

The members of the security team looked down at the Human and his slightly pitted armor. “You did this?”

“Yes. Can you hold this position?”

“We can.”

“I have to get back down to the hangar and assist my men,” Mark said, brushing past the larger aliens who stepped aside respectfully. As soon as he was past them he took off sprinting back towards the elevator.

Boen took a knee next to Kara behind one of the broken wings on a Falcon-class dropship that the Nestafar infantry had toasted with a hail of rockets. They were still flying around the hangar, up high where they were harder to hit, and firing rockets down on the other races’ ships. The Archons had cleared out the bulk of those near the Star Force parking lot, but there were so many zipping around that a few kept coming their way from multiple angles…and there were so many of their fighters surrounding the column that they were difficult to all protect.

Add in the fact that the rockets had an equal if not greater firing range than their rifles, given that the targets the Nestafar were shooting at were huge in comparison. If it wasn’t for the skeets hovering in the air and discouraging most attacks they’d have lost at least half of their ships by now. As it was, two of the fighters had already been shot down, with both surviving pilots recovered by Archons pulling them out of the wreckage and escorting them back over to the column.

In the few minutes that the battle had been going on the Star Force pilots had learned to shoot at anything that even twitched in their direction, and the ceiling of the hangar over Boen’s head was a constant wash of blue light as the skeets lit up the surrounding area trying to hit the bird-like Nestafar at range with their plasma.

Boen fired off a shot with his lachar sniper rifle, nailing one of the distant flyers as it pivoted up in an arc, reversing directions and momentarily coming to a halt, which the Archon immediately took advantage of.

“Seventeen,” he sounded off for Kara’s sake.

“5000 more to go,” she said sarcastically, keeping a close watch over both Boen and the surrounding area, ready to warn and shoot if anything came up on the pair. The rest of the Archons were equally spread out, with most taking cover behind the various dropships on the deck or along the base of the column where they didn’t have to watch their backs.

Both Boen and Kara wore their silver acolyte armor, made out of a Herculium alloy stronger than what Star Force had originally used as warship hull plating…only now it was twice as light.

They both had a good quarter inch built into their armor plates, with the adept armor having half that. The plates were necessarily dense and heavy, which Boen was grateful for since Jason hadn’t worked out the dynamics of a small enough shield generator yet, which he’d promised was on the way. His acolyte armor gave him a greater sense of security due to the extra protection, knowing that he could probably survive a rocket impact on his chest…it was the second one that came down while he was unconscious on the ground that was worrisome.

“Right, mid level,” Kara called out with Boen swinging his rifle around in the general direction. He spotted the target on approach then sighted it in with the scope on a wide setting, zooming in to an appropriate level and trying to center the crosshairs on the moving target.

He pulled the trigger half a second after the Nestafar fired off one of its rockets. His lachar blast hit the casing on the launcher, knocking a tiny hole in it at the melt point but the flying trooper was unharmed. Boen didn’t complain, flinch, or even make a sound. He just kept his crosshairs on the target and waited a split second to get the scope’s oscillating motion to the point where he expected it to drift up and then pulled the trigger.

This shot hit the enemy in the waist just below the launcher. Despite the fact he’d been aiming above the shoulder the hit still succeeded in dropping the enemy down to the deck where he saw it hit satisfactorily hard.

The rocket it had fired moved off to the right out of his scope, but Kara saw it streak across the bay and hit one of the skeets on its port engine pod. The fighter’s shields flared and popped, with the resulting smoke cloud covering half the ship before thinning out. As Kara watched the shields reformed with a glimmer, but she could see some small damage marks on the engine pod, maybe enough to inhibit the propulsive engine, though obviously the anti-grav on that wing was still functioning.

Suddenly an earthquake tremor rolled across the deck, bringing Boen’s helmet up from the scope as he looked around…then he saw the massive bay doors start to close.

“Not bad for an old guy,” Boen joked, turning his attention back to his scope.

“Oh crap,” Kara said as the Nestafar fighters started to pour into the bay and the floating skeets took off after them.

2

Legat Orion-024C-14 watched the sensor hologram on the bridge of the Canderian seda in orbit as a fleet of Nestafar warships arrived at Daka and immediately began to engage the Alliance ships in orbit, assisted by those few already on station. The two guardian Hycre destroyers reacted immediately as the first Calavari ship was ambushed while the rest of the allied ships in orbit seemed to be caught unawares, then they slowly began to move…with half of them running away.

Star Force’s cargo ships were all clustered around the seda in a higher orbit than most of the other ships, keeping to themselves and so avoided the initial attack, but Orion knew it was only a matter of time before the Nestafar headed their way…and what in the hell were they doing anyway? They were a founding member of the Alliance and now it looked like it might be the start of an internal war…or worse yet, perhaps they had sided with the lizards?

The Canderian Legat watched quietly as his bridge crew waited for his orders, none of them panicking. They were soldiers all, as was every other person on the seda. If he gave the word they’d snap into action efficiently and effectively, but first he needed to get an idea of what was going on out there.

As he watched the battle he looked for signs that the Nestafar had allies in the fight, but the Protovic warships that had been on station weren’t participating. Instead they were pulling out, save for one. A cruiser sitting alongside a pair of Calavari warships returned fire on a Nestafar destroyer when it attacked, suggesting to Orion that the Protovic had not been informed of this assault and they weren’t sure how to respond.

The battle was quickly turning into a rout as the overwhelmed defenders didn’t coordinate with one another. That was sloppy, and just the sort of thing the mission of this planet was attempting to counter. The Alliance…or what was left of it at this point…had to work and fight together if they were going to survive this day, let alone the war against the lizards.

Orion didn’t even bother to turn his head away from the hologram as he calmly but firmly ordered everyone into action. “Battle stations.”

A repetitive alarm sounded throughout the seda, which the Canderians immediately responded to. It had been drilled into them during their days in the maturia and initiated an immediate adrenaline surge every time they heard it…for the Canderians didn’t believe in staged drills, and if the call to arms sounded they knew trouble was afoot.

As the crew moved into action bulkhead doors slammed shut all over the station…which subsequently opened small, phone booth-sized auxiliary passageways around the doors so the crew could still pass through via the most basic of airlock systems in case there was a hull breach. That was unlikely, given the thick armor covering the spherical station and the strategically designed inner layers that had most vital systems located within the core, but the Canderians weren’t ones to take chances and had built the sedas with multiple doomsday contingencies in mind.

Orion sat back down in his command chair and brought up the Hycre translation protocol. The small hologram appeared on his right, indicating that the line was now active.

“Pull them our way and we can assist.”

WE CANNOT. THEY ARE TARGETING UNARMED SHIPS FIRST.

Orion paused the Hycre channel. “Get me comm lines to all allied ships out there…scratch that, just give me open comm, I don’t care if the Nestafar are listening.”

A small light illuminated on his control chair, indicating that the appropriate setups for the transmission had been completed. He pushed the button and began to address the entire system in the trade language.

“All ships, repeat, all allied ships. Fall back to our seda. We will provide covering fire. Rendezvous here and we stand a fighting chance. All ships, rally at the Human station,” he said, belatedly realizing that they probably didn’t know what a seda was.

Before he had even finished the statement a few of the unarmed transports began altering course as they ran away from the planet and redirected towards what was the only safe zone in orbit. The stations that the Calavari had built for starfighter training were armed, but they had been the first targets of the Nestafar and were currently swarmed with warships systematically tearing them apart and ensuring that the thousands of fighters inside wouldn’t be joining in the battle.

“Incoming comm,” one of the bridge crew noted.

“Send it to me,” the Legat ordered, punching it up on his command chair arm controls. This time a hologram appeared with the image of a Protovic and Orion authorized video response.

“We are not part of this,” the armored suit-clad alien insisted. “We revoke any ties we had with the Nestafar. May we approach your station and take part in its defense?”

“You may. Approach in such a way that you don’t obscure our firing lines, then take up flanking positions with your warships and let the transports hide behind the station with ours.”

The Protovic nodded gratefully, then the transmission cut out.

“Status on our fighters?”

“About half are online,” one of the bridge crew answered as the remote control stations were actively logging in on his display board from their positions in other chambers across the seda.

“Get them into space and have them hold position with our cargo ships. They are to wait there until called for or until the enemy gets to them. Inform the Archons that we’re about to be engaged.”

“We’ve lost contact,” the Canderian comm officer reported.

Orion frowned. They’d been informed that there was combat going on inside the base just before the warships had arrived, now to lose communications…but then again if the Archons were under attack they’d be fighting, not manning a comm station. Still…

The Canderian commander watched the orbital display as the Nestafar finished off the Calavari stations en mass while half their fleet was out fighting/pursuing the ships in orbit. Several had already escaped the planet, making micro-jumps away for those with strong enough gravity drives, but some of the smaller Nestafar warships were pursuing them and it soon became clear that they didn’t want anyone getting away.

With that evident more and more ships started to flee towards the Human station, it being their last refuge as the Alliance warships were being overrun. When one of the Hycre destroyers was taken down it seemed to send out a pulse of panic and soon every ship within range was coming up to the seda…and dragging some of the Nestafar with them.

That was good, Orion knew. Better to engage them piecemeal than all at once…especially if they didn’t know the full extent of the station’s armament.

“Get those ships organized,” he told his staff. “We need clear fields of fire and proper grouping. Inform them that we have fighter support and get them aligned in a defensive grid. Angle their shields, block firing lines with their hulls…standard drill, but make sure they understand before they get here and assign them positions. Get to it, we don’t have a lot of time before they’re on our doorstep.”

Orion punched the resume on the Hycre transmission. “We have the fleet pulling back to us. Retreat before you’re destroyed. I need your ship alive and fighting in this battle. Without it I have no means of flanking the enemy. Pull back now.”

WE MUST KEEP THE ENEMY DIVIDED. WE WILL BUY YOU TIME. FIGHT WELL AND SURVIVE. TELL THE OTHERS WHAT HAS HAPPENED HERE.

Orion wanted to swear, but as usual he kept a lid on his visible emotions. He knew what the Hycre were doing and the stupid Nestafar were falling for it, but the destroyer wasn’t likely to survive against that many ships using blunt force distraction tactics.

The first of the retreating ships arrived at the seda, an Irondel transport, and tucked itself in alongside the grid of Star Force ships behind the station as instructed. The Canderian remote-controlled starfighters flew around it protectively as more and more of them emerged from the seda’s hangar bays, ready to engage the Nestafar fighters and pick on any warship that got too close to their flock, all of which were pumping out as much energy as possible into their shields. The Star Force transports were actually stacked up in pairs, with each interlocking their shield matrixes to provide additional support by giving them less surface area to protect…an ability that Paul had insisted in installing in all ‘unarmed’ cargo ships.

They did have a few defensive weapons Orion knew, but nothing that would let them contend with the warships coming their way. The allied transports he suspected had none, and was tagging and treating them accordingly.

The incoming allied warships were another matter. Several Protovic vessels were on the way, as were a host of the Calavari’s smaller and almost useless navy. Their strength lay in their fighters, and several of the incoming ships were in fact carriers, but up against so many guns on the Nestafar fleet he doubted that fighters alone could do the job, unless they had some extremely badass missiles loaded onto them…which some of the Canderian fighters did.

“Bring all weapons to bear,” he ordered. “Begin battle spin.”

All over the smooth green armored hull of the station small nodules rose up and split apart, exposing recessed components that were mechanically raised to the surface, most of which were weapons batteries, but several along the equator of the station were engine banks that tipped perpendicular and began to fire off a long stream of thrust.

Very slowly the station began to spin, at first just a few centimeters per second as the mass of metal was nudged out of its orbital lock with the planet, then a few more and a few more until the rotation reached 5 meters per second, after which the engines cut off and retracted back into the station. The two chunks of armor on either side of each of them slid back together and depressed into the hull, reforming the smooth outline and protecting the engines for use later if need be.

With the station spinning slowly it would be impossible for the enemy to create a permanent blind spot if they were able to knock out the weapons on one side of the seda, for eventually others would rotate around into firing range. It was true that an attacking fleet could fly with the turn of the station to stay in a blind spot, but it was yet one more advantage that the Canderians had employed into their standard battle procedures and would put the impetus on the enemy for navigational corrections.

“Standby cleansing beams. Rail gun status?”

“Magazines are full, loading tubes now.”

Orion nodded, knowing it would take some time to get the guns up and running. Once the automation was kicked into action the 8 rail guns spaced around the hull could each spit out a slug once per second, given that each battery had 6 barrels. Still, the greatest distance weapon they possessed were the heavy lachars and cleansing beams, though the CBs made the lachars look like pea shooters in comparison.

“All rail guns report ready,” one of the bridge crew noted as more ships began to arrive at the seda and take up parking positions behind it. The station wasn’t big enough to shield them from attack, nor were they close enough to it to do so, but the point was to get them out of the free fire zone but close enough that the Nestafar would have to choose between shooting the transports or shooting the seda, and if they chose the transports the Canderians were going to make them pay a high price for it.

If the ships panicked and ran then the enemy could track them down and kill them outside of the Canderians’ firing range, which is why it was important for them to hold position, as maddening as that may have sounded to their crews.

The last of the fleeing ships weren’t clear of the Nestafar, all of which were warships from 7 different races executing a fighting retreat to the seda, meaning the Canderian gunners were going to have to make precise shots in order to avoid hitting friendly targets if they opened up at maximum range.

The Legat watched as the battling ships crossed into what was marked as the outer firing boundary for the cleansing beam but he didn’t issue the order to fire. He was going to give his men a little bit more leeway, just to make sure they hit their marks. As he patiently counted down the distance to the line he was mentally drawing across the hologram he began whispering to himself so low that no one else could hear.

“Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station,” he said, ironically quoting Star Wars before he raised his voice back up to normal level. “Tag priority targets. Cleansing beams fire at will.”

Due to the rotation of the seda and the angle from which the ships were approaching by only 3 of the 6 cleansing beams had firing lines on the enemy, with the polar battery getting the first strike in. The powerful weapon struck a bolt of glowing white energy straight out into the distance where it all but disappeared from view before impacting a Nestafar destroyer exchanging fire with three fat Fanset corvettes. The beam passed right through the Nestafar’s physical shields and cut into its hull, digging a deep furrow across the surface until it abated.

Three seconds later an internal explosion ripped apart the destroyer along the front edge between the ‘wings.’ All weaponsfire from it ceased just before a second cleansing beam hit it aft of the first that clipped an engine fuel line and detonated the drive, blowing out the aft section and leaving the large wings barely connected by what was left of the hull in the middle.

Orion’s fist slowly clenched in a mild celebration, but that was as far as his outward display of emotions would go. His eyes followed the battle hologram intently while his bridge staff organized the defensive effort and his gunners located around the station chose their own targets. The bridge had a command nexus should he have chosen to use it, but the Legat had always preferred watching the battle unfold and interjecting only when necessary. His men had been well trained and knew how to handle the seda’s weapons.

The third cleansing beam hit a larger cruiser, slicing into its port wing but causing no secondary explosions…though before it abated it did pass all the way through and exited out the far side.

As soon as both of those ships were hit the disposition of the Nestafar fleet changed. Those trying to poach the fleeing transports broke off and began forming up with the others while the large mass back towards the floating rubble of the Calavari stations started to move up towards them as well.

“That’s right, come and get it,” Orion whispered again as his seda’s cleansing beams continued to slice up the cruiser until it blew apart from the wing and went careening around from the excess momentum unpowered, nearly colliding with a corvette that thrust out of the way just in time. “Are the shields synced?”

“All battle systems are go, Legat. Just give the word.”

“Tag the battleship,” he said, standing up and taking a half step closer to the hologram. “Give me one rail gun battery. Let’s see how our range is.”

On the surface of the spherical seda there were 8 additional domes, not complete hemispheres but still significant enough to stand out on the surface. All were coated with double thick armor plating but the curve on the surface didn’t end there, rather it continued all the way around through the interior of the station, forming a ball/socket rotational battery that held a linear rail gun cluster inside.

The sphere with the best firing line to the enemy fleet visible rotated against the hull, aiming its small pit of an eye precisely, computer compensating for the battle spin, then it spat out a metallic projectile the size of a bus at a blurry speed. The projectile was tracked on the bridge hologram where it neared the battleship…and passed it by.

“Give it another try.”

“Sir, that was a hit. The projectile passed clean through.”

Orion raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

“Relaying telemetry from the battery,” he said, bringing up a side hologram. It showed a telescopic view of the enemy ship with a gaping hole torn through its thick starboard wing.

“Hit it again.”

The Canderian relayed the firing order to the gunner, who still had the battery trained on the target waiting for the go ahead. She was about to release another slug when the aspect trajectory began to change…meaning the target wasn’t going to be where it was a few seconds from now when the slug arrived. The battleship was moving off and accelerating at a rate that the computer couldn’t entirely predict, giving the gunner a wide area of space to shoot at in the hopes of getting in a lucky shot.

She opted to hold her fire to wait for a better opportunity but one didn’t come. The target swung wide on an erratic arc, possibly realizing that it was hit with a projectile weapon and as such it would be more difficult to target. The battleship shrunk on her viewer down past what was even considered extremely lucky range, so she never fired off another shot.

“Target out of range,” she reported, then zoomed back out keeping an eye on other targets. As she waited and watched the Nestafar warships turned off, allowing the remaining allied vessels to reach safety, including several that were limping along behind the pack.

The bulk of the enemy fleet, however, was still on approach, with the forward elements merely circling around out of range and waiting for them to join up, now that they knew the Human station was not a soft target.

3

With the cleansing beams firing off white streaks and the all but invisible rail gun rounds pounding the approaching Nestafar fleet, half their ships opened up with missile fire, sending firefly-like glowing green streaks spiraling in towards the seda along with a few heading to the flanking warships. The missiles didn’t fly a straight line as most things in space did, but rather corkscrewed around a linear trajectory in a way that made Legat Orion wonder what the purpose was and why they would waste space on the missiles for the extra maneuvering capability.

He got his answer a few moments later as the missiles heading for the warships abruptly turned and passed by the first few, zigzagging between the defensive fleet until they found the targets they wanted…all Calavari ships. Some of the fireflies went down to anti-air fire while the rest impacted the warships’ shields, sucking large chunks of energy out of them but with none of their destructive force getting through to the hulls.

The bulk of the missiles that were headed for the seda never got through as anti-missile lachar batteries opened up what looked like a shooting gallery and sniped the fireflies before they could hit the shield. Those handful that did get through were stopped short by the protective energy barrier, then the Nestafar fleet entered plasma range.

Red globs shot out from all their ships, raining down on the battle station looking like elongated teardrops. The shields held up against the torrent briefly, then began falling in sections where the incoming fire was the strongest. The weapons batteries exposed beneath them had secondary shields covering them while the armored hull began to explosively soak up the excess damage.

A few moments later the enemy fleet entered the seda’s plasma range and blue orbs began flashing out back towards the Nestafar fleet along with the rail gun rounds and cleansing beams. From his position on the bridge Orion couldn’t see the spectacle, for he was staring at the battle hologram that was displaying damage graphics rather than live pictures. Other than the missiles and rail gun slugs being exchanged it didn’t show any weapons fire…though the amount of projectiles passing back and forth on the hologram was impressive enough.

The view from the backside of the seda was equally impressive, as you had the moon-like station winged by weapons fire being exchanged between the Alliance warships and the unseen foe. Though she was seated within a control room on the seda, Sandy-K903-10 saw through hologram the perspective of her Ravager-class starfighter as it floated in between two Star Force transports. Her orders had been to stay put until called for or until the enemy came to her and she didn’t like it one bit. Her ship had plasma weapons, four type-3 shipbuster missiles, and a lachar that she could have been using against the Nestafar but no, she and the other pilots had to sit back and wait…typical.

As she watched a Gardeen warship, looking like a spindly needle, broke apart from a ferocious plasma attack along its midsection just before the cruiser that killed it appeared crossing the horizon on the seda, trailing smoke as it came but was still pouring out plasma damage and firefly missiles into the warships and completely ignoring the station.

The seda, however, wasn’t ignoring it. As the cruiser worked its way around the perimeter it brought itself into range of more weapons batteries that couldn’t reach the main group, which then gave the ship their full attention.

Plasma orbs covered it like rain, then two plasma streamers reached out and cut into the ship like a fire hose cutting into mud. Before those hits could register one of the backside cleansing beams fired off and cut straight through the heart of the ship, hitting in a section of already damaged hull and disappearing within for a second before blasting out the opposite side. When the beam abated the plasma covered the corpse of the ship with debris plumes, partially obscuring view of the warship.

Sandy whistled approvingly, wondering just what was happening on the far side where most of the fireworks were happening…then her fighter’s sensors picked up more enemy contacts coming around the station.

“Finally,” she whispered in her control cubicle as she thrusted ahead and flew around the bow of the leftmost ship as she took her ravager out to confront the enemy fighters…Valeries no less. They were skipping through and around the Alliance warships, making it almost impossible for the seda’s weaponry to hit them without resulting in friendly fire, though she did noticed a few contacts disappearing from pointblank anti-air fire coming from the warships.

“This is it,” she heard another of the pilots seated next to her yell, but she focused on her ship’s telemetry and tuned out the occasional chatter. Orders would come over her earpiece, so any other sounds were meaningless, though she did share his sentiment.

Sandy brought the ravager’s plasma cannons online but didn’t bother with the lachar, knowing that Valeries had energy shields that would eliminate the penetrating nature of the weapon. She set the modular intensity of the cannons high, knowing that taking down Valeries was going to be very different from their anti-lizard simulations, but she was anxious to show the Alliance what the Canderian starfighters were capable of.

She wasn’t the first to move to intercept the fighters coming in on the left. There were two other ravagers ahead of her with others following up while about half of them took off the other direction to counter the enemy advance on the opposite side of the seda. None were coming up or under the station, given that there were no warships stationed there that they could hide amongst.

There were plenty on the rear side though, and as soon as Sandy got to the enemy they were darting around in between the transports, Human and others alike, with the Valeries firing into every shielded ship they came across. Eventually they split up enough that the Canderian had one of the enemy fighters all to herself, which she was chasing all the way to the back of the transport formation.

Whenever she got a clear shot with a backdrop of black space she fired off the ravager’s blue plasma cannons, managing to hit the Valerie twice over the course of 30 seconds, but it wasn’t enough to take its shields down. The pilot was doing a good job of going evasive in the limited maneuvering space he had, and was using the ships to block most of her shots by making hard turns to form blind corners that she had to follow him around. Several times he almost got away from her, but each time she reeled him back in but couldn’t get a clear series of shots.

That was until he flew out the back of the formation and began to loop around to reenter…only he didn’t. Instead he curved his loop inward even sharper and tried to fall in behind the ravager.

“Oh no you don’t,” she said, twisting her ship around, much like the skeets would do in atmosphere, and pointing her nose and cannons at the Valerie. She didn’t have a shot at it due to its angular speed, but sooner or later it was going to have to line up for an attack run or break off. If it chose to flee she’d drop in on its tail again. If not then they were going to swap some plasma.

The Nestafar chose the latter and swung around at high speed on a direct line for her ravager. She responded by drifting the ship to the right to throw off any computer targeting program the Valerie might have, and continued erratic lateral maneuvers as she fired off the ravager’s plasma cannons in sequence, creating a rapid fire effect that leapt out towards the narrow profile of the incoming Valerie.

It in turn responded with scattergun fire, almost none of which made it to the ravager until it came within close range, then it began to wear down her shields like a sand blaster. A flash of motion later and the Valerie had passed her by.

Sandy flipped her fighter over and began accelerating to pursue the Valerie, which was when she noticed that it was smoking. It broke off and dove back into the rows of ships, leaving behind a visible trail for her to follow.

She accelerated hard to get after it, eating up its lead faster than she expected due to the engine damage her plasma had done. Just as she was catching up to it down a row of warships it turned a hard left and brought her around into the face of another Valerie that smashed a blast of plasma into her forward shields.

The second fighter flashed by and Sandy cursed herself for not reacting quicker. Diagnostic indicators on her display said she’d lost a cannon and a good chunk of the forward hull after the shields were breached, meaning that the second Valerie hadn’t been using a scattergun…but had hit her with a bombardment orb, meaning it must have been waiting in ambush for her.

“Teamwork?” she mumbled, tracking the smoke trail through the ships and seeing one of the Gnar transports with an active hull breach spewing out atmosphere. She wondered what the Valeries were carrying that could do that when another red bolt of plasma came down through a gap in the formation and dug into the same spot.

Up above she saw a Nestafar corvette taking scattered fire from the weapons on the transports, then she saw a bright white light blossom on the side of the winged ship, overstressing its shields to the point where the transports’ weapons were able to breach them at several locations, registering minor hull damage on Sandy’s hologram of the enemy warship.

Letting the damaged fighter go she pulled up hard on the controls and took her ravager in at the enemy capitol ship that had snuggled itself down into the transport lines in order to avoid drawing fire from the seda. With its shields down she knew she had a chance to do some damage if she could get in close enough.

Ducking under another transport and trying to approach from cover the Canderian raced forward, intent on getting within range before the shields could regenerate. So long as the transports kept up their fire that shouldn’t happen but she wasn’t going to squander the opportunity while she had it. On approach, running lateral alongside a row of ships and just before she was to make a sharp left turn and head into the target, she activated the four shipbuster missiles located in a pair of armored storage racks on either side of the ravager, opened their sheaths, and steadying her hand on the launching trigger after reconfiguring the fire control to loose all four simultaneously.

She banked the ravager around the wide nose of a Star Force transport, pulling up at the same moment and coming into sight of the corvette that was just above her down the line. Spurts of tiny red anti-air plasma directed her way but she rolled her ship around erratically, much like the Nestafar missiles did, and survived long enough to get up under the ship where the shields were down and some small craters on the hull were forming. She hesitated a heartbeat to give her missiles a better chance of making it to target then pulled the trigger as the ship grew alarmingly big on her hologram.

As soon as they were away she depressed at the greatest angular turn the ravager could make and skimmed the hull below where all four missiles impacted, creating a huge ball of plasma that ate into the ship like a hungry blob. Half the weaponsfire from the warship cut out and the decompression nudged the corvette to the side, with stabilization thrusters working overtime to kill the list before it drifted into one of the transports.

Sandy missed the damage but didn’t turn around to get a better view, instead she pushed on ahead, knowing that with no more missiles there wasn’t much she could do against a capitol ship. Soon she crossed over a diffuse smoke trail and turned to follow it, hoping to catch up with the Valerie she’d damaged and finish it off.

Orion watched the battle progress with displeasure as some of the enemy warships were able to make it into the transport lines and effectively shield themselves from the seda’s considerable firepower. Half of their weapons batteries on the front side had been destroyed, with more gradually rotating around into range but the back half still had most of their active firepower and they couldn’t use it for fear of hitting the Alliance ships.

The allied warships weren’t putting up much of a fight either, though some had come to them already damaged. After having spent years studying Hycre battle data Orion had gotten accustomed to their level of proficiency in naval warfare and had somehow assumed the other alien races out there were similarly equipped. He’d been wrong, grossly wrong. Even Star Force’s fleet would have fought better than this, and they were supposedly the new kids on the block.

The good thing was the seda was holding its ground. Even though their weapons were being sniped by the Nestafar, the sheer bulk of the station and the thickness of the armor on its surface meant that at best the enemy was going to have to disable it before they destroyed it, and they’d have to commit an insane amount of plasma over multiple hours, if not days, to do so.

The Nestafar fleet was also a shambles, but they were holding together better than the allies. The transports were holding their position, thankfully, and keeping the damage incurred to a minimum while his fighters were causing a good amount of havoc. Canderous had always said that adding starfighters to their defenses was common sense, though Orion admitted that Mark’s caveat about them having to be remotely piloted craft was also proving to be correct. They’d lost 16 of their ravagers in the fighting, yet those pilots were safe and secure inside the seda, available to go into battle again at a later date once new craft were given to them. Had Canderous originally had their way of things, those pilots would have died in the field.

That said, remotely piloting the craft made his pilots even more aggressive, which he liked. Take fear of death out of the equation and they were in it to win it. They’d already disabled two enemy warships harassing the transports, one of which three of the fighters had rammed when they ran out of missiles, racking up enough kinetic damage to take the frigate out of the fight and thus shielding multiple transports from the firepower it would have continued to throw down.

That was a tactic that no sane living pilot would have used, but using remote pilots was turning out to be a whole other ball game and Orion mentally made a note to look into extending the same practice to their surface craft if they could get the lag issues dealt with.

Suddenly the disposition of the enemy fleet on the bridge hologram changed, with the ships moving in all different directions. Orion didn’t know what they were planning, and he really hoped they weren’t going to try to ram the station because that was something they couldn’t defend against. The armor would provide a little defense, but that much mass thrown in at decent speed…the mathematics were undeniably destructive, though the sheer size of the station would offer some protection.

Fortunately that wasn’t the Nestafar’s aim. They intended to preserve their remaining ships, not destroy them, as they ordered an immediate retreat. Their ships scattered in all directions, taking the most direct routes away from the station as it continued to fire on them as they ran off up until they were out of weapons range.

Their fighters went with them, zipping out of the transports like flies with several ravagers going after them.

“Recall the fighters,” he ordered, blowing out a slow breath. “Inform the hangar bays to prep search and recovery teams for our damaged ships, Alliance only. Let the Nestafar survivors breathe vacuum, their recovery is not a priority.”

“Is that a ‘do not recover’ order for the enemy,” one of the bridge officers asked, “or a ‘leave till last?’”

“Leave till last…and check with the Star Force transports to see how much of their equipment is operational and include it in the recovery efforts. Tell them I’m assuming command of their possessions until Mark overrides me. Any contact with the surface?”

“Scattered reports of an ongoing assault on the base, but nothing from our people.”

“Hmmn,” Orion muttered, rubbing his goatee as he thought. “Keep trying, but for the moment there’s nothing we can do to help them. I don’t think the Nestafar are going to be back our way, unless they get reinforcements or try something tricky, but we need to stabilize the situation in orbit before we even think about landing troops on the ground. Contact all other Alliance ships in the system and inform them that we’ve secured a safe haven and that they need to get their asses here immediately. Make them understand that we don’t have any warships in play, so if we’re going to protect them they have to be at the station.”

He turned back to the hologram as another thought occurred to him. “What happened to the second Hycre destroyer?”

“It’s still showing on sensors,” another officer said, enlarging the hologram to show the entire area. “It’s heavily damaged and the Nestafar are disregarding it.”

Which suggested that it was dead.

“Give me a drift plot.”

A few seconds later a dashed line appeared along with a section of Daka beneath them as the orbital path of the damaged destroyer was highlighted. According to the map it was on an outbound trajectory that would cross altitude with the seda prior to it catching up with them in its lower orbit.

“Organize a salvage team. I want that ship caught and towed over to us, just in case there are survivors onboard.”

“We can’t bring them onto the station.”

“No, but we can get them away from the enemy. And even if they are all dead, I don’t want the Nestafar laying claim to the ship and reverse engineering their technology.”

“But…we might?”

Orion put his hands on his hips, still staring down at the hologram and visually tracking the movements of the retreating enemy fleet. “That’s not my call to make. The Archons control our alliance with the Hycre and they’ll decide what to do with the wreckage…if they’re not all wiped out,” he added before dropping silent for nearly a minute as his mind raced through various tactical scenarios.

“I want ground assault teams readied and standing by…and have one of the remote pilots drop a ravager down into the atmosphere to recon the base. We need to know what’s going on down there.”

4

Sam Grind fired off his skeet’s plasma streamer at 50 meters away from the Nestafar Valerie, burning through its shields within a second and killing the fighter within 3 as it shot up a group of Calavari infantry on the hangar deck that were chucking anti-air missiles at it. The Star Force pilot had snuck up behind the craft and luckily got in the killing blow, something that normally would not have been possible with the heavy weapon.

All around the hangar the Nestafar pilots were involved in combat, either with other fighters zigzagging around the support columns or with infantry on the deck. Their own infantry was flying about, flanking the ground units from the other races that had come out of their various column complexes to defend their ships. Who was going to gain air superiority within the hangar was still in question, but Sam had at least gotten rid of one of their pesky craft.

Trouble was the Nestafar had wisely targeted the Valeries on the hangar deck first, meaning the fighters rising up to face them, those that weren’t rubble yet, were largely inferior to the Alliance standard model and were getting shot down rapidly, though they were managing to take a few of the Nestafar fighters down with them. A few more were being hit by the infantry, but all in all it was the Star Force skeets that were pushing the Nestafar pilots to their limits, and vice versa, which was why Sam was glad that he’d caught this one off guard and made the kill.

Whether the pilot was dead or not he didn’t know, it hadn’t fallen far before it hit the floor, but at the moment he didn’t care. Several skeets had already gone down and these bastards were responsible, so if he smoked them in the process so be it.

The Star Force regular flew off around another of the giant columns, hoping to avoid attention and sneak up on another fighter but unfortunately one found him first. Like the rest of the skeets he amped up his anti-grav and shot towards the ceiling, staying level with the ground, then dropped like a rock back down, trying to evade the scattergun plasma shards being shot at him and only partially succeeding. His shields were draining, but the enemy was going to have to land a solid shot to get through them because every bit of clear air Sam got his shields recharged, making this pursuit a game of attrition.

“Sam, come low over the deck and buzz the dead dragon,” he heard Boen order him over the comm.

“I’ll try…” he promised, his voice cutting out a bit prematurely as he yanked the ship hard through a skid turn and snapped off a shot with his own scattergun as the Valerie flashed by on his left. He wasn’t sure if he winged it or not, but he knew it would be circling around onto his tail in short order so he used the brief moment of opportunity to put a few extra meters on it and accelerated off towards the Star Force column, snapping off a quick shot at another passing Valerie and nailing it in the left flank.

Another skeet flashed past behind him after it, then Sam dropped down to the deck and ‘drove’ his way towards the destroyed dropship remains, registering some shield hits from behind as the Valerie’s scattergun racked up more indirect hits.

“Take cover,” Sam warned, “this guy is spraying everything.”

“We’re ready,” Boen insisted. “Keep it tight.”

The hits continued to increase as Sam kept the skeet in a more or less straight line, allowing the Nestafar pilot to aim better…then he brushed over the top of the broken dragon and held his line unnervingly as his shields were shot down under 20%...then suddenly the incoming fire ended and the icon on his sensors representing the Valerie winked out.

“Thanks for the assist,” Sam replied to Boen as he upped his anti-grav and brought the skeet off the deck, circling around to find the next closest target.

“Come on, come on,” Iren said, ducking down behind the far side of the dead dropship.

“Incoming in four,” Boen counted down beside him but around the corner enough to get a clear view of the other side, “three, two, one,” he said with the last number coinciding with Sam’s skeet flashing overhead and into Iren’s view, “now!”

Iren tipped up his rocket launcher and fired blind, trusting the auto-targeting systems to do their job. Six tiny missiles blurped out of the vertical box he held on his shoulder and streaked out towards the Valerie, catching it in the aft and hitting the shield that Sam had already weakened. The first two took it down then the other four broke off the aft end of the craft and sent it careening into the deck where the nose bent at an angle and it skidded to a smoky stop in one of the large plains in between columns.

“Nice,” Boen commented as Iren tossed the spent launcher aside and pulled out his plasma rifle.

“Wish we had a few more of those…heads up, east side high.”

Boen spun around and took a knee, sighting with his sniper rifle then quickly downing another of the Nestafar’s flying infantry. “Anymore?”

Iren glanced around. “Nothing close.”

“Kara, how are you coming?”

“Need another minute to get strapped in…it would help if it wasn’t on its side.”

“Make it quick, we just lost another skeet,” Boen said, seeing one get hit then ricochet off a column before skidding across the deck missing both tail and right wing stub. His HUD tagged the pilot as Jenna, and given that it was still active he hoped that she was alright inside the pilot’s cocoon.

“Ground,” Iren interrupted. “Bsidd complex.”

Boen spun around again, aiming his lachar sniper rifle at the very distance column, seeing lots of tiny specs on the deck fighting it out. “Damn. I can just barely make them out, but I can’t get a shot without hitting the Bsidd,” he said, looking around for a group of Nestafar all to themselves. He waited 30 seconds before he thought he should try taking a shot, and when he did it missed clean.

“Too far,” he insisted. “Anything closer?”

Just then a loud thud shook him to his bones. Another followed it, along with the groan of stressed metal.

“Looks like she’s up and running,” Iren commented as he glanced at one of the destroyed falcons as a mech forced its way out of the interior.

“Will you quit playing around and get out here?” Boen complained as more thuds shook the ground.

“Easier said than done,” Kara said as the dropship tipped sideways as the mech crawled out the hole she’d punched in the side of the bay, unbalancing it. As soon as the neo slipped out the dropship fell back down so hard the vibration rattled the Archon’s teeth. “Where to?”

“Anywhere you can get their attention,” Boen said, switching frequencies. “Good news, fellas,” he said, talking to the skeet pilots. “We’ve got the boss’s mech in play, so bring the Nestafar our way for an introduction.”

“That’s more like it,” Alex said, swinging his skeet around and heading back to base along with most of the other Star Force pilots. The rest were just flying to stay alive at this point.

Kara raised her mech’s arms up, ready to deal with the incoming fighters. It’d been a long time since she’d been in a neo, but given this scenario she wasn’t going to have to do much moving around, but rather play turret. Her mech’s left arm held the standard plasma cannon which would probably down a Valerie with one shot, but it was going to be hard to aim. Her other arm, however, had been modified by Mark with a scattergun…a big, beefy scattergun.

“I’m ready, bring ‘em here,” she announced.

“Coming from the south,” Alex said, pulling a pair of Valeries along in his wake that were having a hard time keeping up with his twitchy flying.

“Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” Kara mumbled, waiting for them to get close. Wisely Alex wasn’t flying directly over her position, leaving her a line of sight on the Valeries at all times, even if the angle was shallow. When they got close and he was about to zip over her mech’s left shoulder she fired.

The blue plasma came out of the neo’s arm like a shotgun blast, crossing the distance between mech and fighter in the blink of an eye and consuming the rightmost Valerie, ripping off its shields and damaging the hull on the first shot. She managed to fire again twice more before the fighters flashed past, with her target shredding in the air and falling hard to the ground.

“Yeah! Want some more of that?” Kara yelled into the comm. “Bring ‘em to me,” she said, firing off at another Valerie as Kevin came in with one on his tail. Meanwhile Alex corkscrewed around and went head to head with the Nestafar, now that he was down to a one on one.

“Who’s in my mech?” Mark’s voice asked over the comm as his ID signature appeared at the foot of the column and ran out into the battlefield of the hangar deck.

“That’d be me, boss,” Kara said, ripping apart another Valerie stupid enough to come in close and target her directly. Its plasma blasts hit the neo in the chest, but only managed to peel off the top layer of thick, heavy armor the likes of which starfighters could never carry.

“Pick up your feet, you walk like you’re drunk,” he chastised as he ran over to Boen and Iren’s bit of cover. “What’d I miss?”

“Half the party, boss,” Boen said, still searching the perimeter with his sniper rifle. “Nice job with the doors…I assume that was you?”

“With some Calavari help, yes,” he said as a pair of Valeries swooped in and fired their largest plasma orbs possible at Kara, blasting a cascade of armor bits off the mech, but only one of the fighters lived to make another pass. The unlucky one twirled to a flame-filled crash 600 meters on the other side of the walking machine that continued to pace a small circle as the Archon fired off continuous scattergun blasts at the Nestafar Valeries.

“Stop shooting up my mech!” Mark yelled at the enemy fighters.

“Contacts,” Iren said, pointing off to the south. “They’re going after Kara.”

“Where?” Mark asked as Boen sighted in on Iren’s line.

The acolyte pulled the trigger twice, dropping two of the Nestafar and causing the others to scatter. “Right there…and they’ve got rockets.”

Mark was silent for a moment, and after Boen fired off another lachar blast he looked up from his scope and turned on Mark. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Can’t let you guys have all the fun,” the ranger said, clapping Boen on the shoulder before he took off sprinting towards the mech.

“Damn it,” Boen said, setting his helmet back to his scope and firing at the broken lines of infantry running/flying forward low to the ground.

“He does have the heavier armor,” Iren pointed out.

“Not as heavy as that mech,” he countered as more bits of destroyed armor flaked off the massive machine.

Mark ran towards the battling neo, but cut to the right to keep out of Kara’s immediate foot path, eventually passing her by and heading for the approaching infantry as she kept firing on and downing the Valeries. Why they kept pounding her he didn’t know, and it looked like their skeets were beginning to take control of the local airspace, though there were still large numbers of both fighters crisscrossing the airspace within the hangar.

It took a long time to get out where he wanted to go, but eventually he positioned himself in the empty plains of the hangar with the mech and Star Force column behind him and the approaching infantry, several hundred worth, ahead and still keeping low to the ground. He stopped his run and held his ground, pulling out his plasma rifle and aiming at the nearest enemies as a few red plasma blasts came back his way.

He killed half a dozen before their line came close enough for them to open fire en mass, though most still seemed to be focused on the mech. When that happened he went mobile again, zigzagging forward and diving straight into their lines taking a few hits along the way to his already damaged armor. He shot the two nearest him then reached up and pulled another one down by the foot as it passed over him, ticked when it shot him in the helmet.

He kicked it in the gut then shot it as he moved off, gunning down a couple more as some of the others began to circle around him, all flying a couple meters off the floor and keeping their distance so he couldn’t yank them down. They went through a short yoyo session with him running out towards the perimeter to try and get some of them in between him and the others, with the circle pulling back and reforming each time, even as it lost more and more Nestafar to Mark’s rifle.

A hot spot on his back told Mark that his armor was almost breached, prompting him to jump to the side in a dive roll that got him mobile and more difficult to shoot, then a bright flash crossed behind him, prompting another dive roll as he didn’t know what the hell that was. He turned face up just in time to see a second bright plasma orb come through and vaporize three of the flyers on contact before it angled down and into the deck, melting a small glassy crater in the floor material.

Mark smiled but didn’t hesitate to waste the opportunity. He went after the confused survivors, gunning them down as Kara fired a third plasma blast into the thickest group she could find all the while taking hits from the remaining rocket launcher-carrying infantry in play, then the mech turned to the left on the torso and fired an almost pointblank scattergun blast into a passing Valerie with a satisfying detonation of its fuel supply, popping the fighter into a debris-laden fireball that rained down on the nearby infantry.

Two skeets flashed by, which she didn’t target, and Mark saw them veer off on a wide angle towards another Valerie up near the ceiling that was poised to make a strafing run on the mech when its back was turned. Beyond that Mark didn’t notice, for he was still dealing with the infantry, shooting any in range but running towards the knots where there appeared to still be rocket launchers. The mech was filled with holes in its armor and a good shot by one of the ugly buggers could cause major trouble, so it was essential to get them out of the fight as soon as possible.

A blur of motion from his left was his only warning to a skeet coming in at ground level and laying waste to most of the remaining infantry with several scattergun shots that barely missed Mark. He could literally see divots in the floor on the left of him 3 meters away and 8 meters distant on the opposite side. From his HUD he knew the fighter was being flown by Prat, so he opened up a comm line as he ran off to chase down the few Nestafar left.

“I hope that was skill and not luck.”

“Either way it worked,” the pilot answered back.

“How many more do they have in the air?” he asked, shooting a Nestafar before it could sight in on him. He caught it in the chest and it dropped out of the air.

“Six left and we own them.”

“Don’t get sloppy,” he said as another bright flash vaporized the Nestafar he was aiming at, along with a good section of the deck underneath.

“I’ve got the scraps, Mark. Get back to cover,” Kara said.

“You giving orders now?” he said, shooting one more before taking off running.

“I’m in the leader’s mech, aren’t I?”

“What’s left of it,” he said as a large boom sounded. He turned his head as he ran, trying to see what it was. “Did anyone else hear that?”

Another boom sounded, then Boen broke in. “Remember those doors you closed?”

Mark skidded to a halt and turned around, looking out across the bay at the distant doors as a sick feeling crept into his gut, then a third boom sounded and a tiny bit of glow manifested on the left side, disappearing as soon as it began.

“Oh crap,” he said, taking off again before the 4th boom sounded.

5

Gouts of blue plasma streaked out from the dozens of hovering skeets surrounding the small hole in the bay doors, firing back out against the Nestafar forces trying to break inside. Their much larger plasma weapon was expanding on the 10 meter wide hole, melting off bits of the door while shooting inside occasionally, which the pilots had to be leery of. The inside of the hangar had been pacified, though there were still battles being fought inside the base, not only in the ceiling infrastructure but within several of the column complexes.

Mark had dispatched Archon ground teams out to assist the Calavari and others fighting inside while he organized the defensive effort being erected near the doors. They didn’t have a lot to work with, but based on the forces landing outside if they didn’t do something here, now, they were going to be overrun when the doors were breached.

The trailblazer had wanted to hop in a skeet and fly out the opposite doors, but base surveillance indicated that there were fighters and ground troops waiting there as well in ambush, though the bulk of the assembling ground forces were at the southern entrance. The smaller base entryways scattered around the mountainside had been locked down with Archon guards as backup, though Mark was tempted to head out that way and start causing trouble for the Nestafar on foot.

None of the options available to them were good ones, and to top it off all base communications were being jammed, with their orbital telemetry offline as well. The main comm array on the mountaintop had been slagged and the transmitters in the skeets were being interfered with by some form of signal washing. He’d thought about sending a team outside and up to the surface to try for a laser link to the seda as it passed overhead each day, but there was little the Canderians could do to help them without the airpower to break through the forces outside.

Before the orbital telemetry had gone down they’d registered not only a swarm of Nestafar warships coming into planetary orbit, but at least five jumpships that had come along with them, which accounted for the insane number of ground troops outside. They certainly weren’t playing small ball in this and had brought an assault force sufficient to take the planet.

Why, he didn’t know. The Nestafar had been founding members of the Alliance and even though they’d always been at odds with the Calavari they were also breaking bonds with the races they’d brought into the Alliance. Everyone in the base was under attack, as if the Nestafar had genuinely gone insane and were attacking everything that moved.

“We have recovered four,” a Scionate said, walking up behind Mark almost silently as the armored quadruped looked up at the slightly taller man, “two of which are serviceable. The others we can use for parts.”

The Archon nodded. The Nestafar had caught most of the other races off guard and pancaked their fighters and support craft in the initial ambush, but some of those resources hadn’t been completely slagged. “How long?”

“48 minutes for one, an hour and 13 minutes for the second.”

Mark glanced over at the doors as another boom sounded, seeing a third cherry red spot appear on the intact portion of the door while sunlight shot in through the existing hole the skeets were shooting out. “Detonators?”

“Remote or timer.”

“Will the remote work with the signal jamming?”

“Unknown…best we use a timer then?”

“Yes.”

The cheetah-like Scionate nodded its head and turned away, walking slowly at first before accelerating up into a slow run across the hangar deck and over to the Star Force column that had become the unofficial Alliance command post. Mark was out on the deck, organizing the creation of all kinds of nasty surprises for the Nestafar and riding around in one of the surviving jumpships as he visited the various complexes, offering assistance and supplies, along with engaging in a few fights. He’d brought back emissaries from all the races he could find along with all their intact fighters, landing them on the Star Force ‘parking lot’ along with any other equipment they could scavenge from the debris…including a few nukes the Scionate had brought with them.

Messy as they were, Mark wasn’t going to pass on them. In fact, he was grabbing up all the ordinance he could find on the hangar deck and assembling it into an open air armory where techs from several races worked with Star Force’s people to repair, remount, and in some case jerry rig new weapon systems onto parts of fighters converted into hoversleds.

“Negative on the cannon, boss,” Boen reported, coming up on his left flank as Mark was pulling apart a circuit board from the debris of one of their dropships. “We can’t get simultaneous fire control. We’re going to have to go with pea shooters.”

“Damn,” the trailblazer said, standing up and tossing the components aside. “These are scrap too. Looks like we’re going to have to get in our fighters and rack up an all-time high score.”

“I don’t like it either,” the Archon admitted. “Fallback plan?”

“I don’t feel like heading up to the surface, but I’ve got Andy working on it just in case,” he said as a signal came through his helmet. Those at least weren’t suffering from the jamming signal.

“They’ve pulled back,” Sam reported from the cockpit of his skeet. “We don’t have a line of sight on the walker anymore.”

“Copy that,” Mark said, glancing over at the hole in the doors as another thud melted away part of the rim along with spraying red plasma through and into the hangar. He turned back to Boen. “If we can’t take those things out they can do the same thing to the roof, and then we will have to evacuate. Find me some more things that go boom, I don’t care what they are.”

“I’m on it,” the Archon said, tossing a quick mock salute before running off.

“Legat, we’ve reacquired communication with the assault shuttle.”

Orion paused his pacing a couple of steps behind the command chair and looking to the comm officer. “Report?”

“They say the enemy has some type of signal jammer in place on the ground, which is why we lost contact. They successfully made their reconnaissance run and have a data package ready to transmit, but are holding off until they get further away from the surface due to inconsistencies in signal strength. We’re only getting text transmission and it’s heavily duplicated.”

“Instruct them to hold transmission until they return to the seda,” he said, resuming his pacing around the control room. A jamming signal explained quite a bit, though they had been able to contact the Calavari early on when the Archons were unreachable.

Orion kept pacing and rechewing what little data he had available until the sensor recordings from the shuttle came through…which showed a massive invasion army situated outside the closed bay doors of the Alliance base.

“That’s insane,” another Canderian commented as they all looked at the main hologram.

Orion turned on him. “What did you expect? If you come to take a planet you bring enough troops with you to do the job, not undercut and hope the battle swings in your favor. The Nestafar clearly intend to have this base and have brought what they thought was necessary to achieve that goal.”

“Are they wrong?” another officer asked.

Orion bit his lip as he weighed their options. “They’re attacking Archons, and that’s never wise, but they’ve got enough materiel on the ground to overwhelm the base if they can get through those doors,” he said, pointing to one large six-legged machine, “and judging by that thing I’d bet they can with enough time.”

“What is that?”

“A mobile cannon would be my guess. Their form of heavy artillery.”

“How do we take it out?”

“You assume we’re going to mount a surface attack?”

“What else can we do but wait and watch them get overrun…then they’ll move on to our surface bases. We might as well fight them while the Archons are still in the game.”

Orion nodded. “I concur, but we don’t have enough equipment to tackle their lines, nor do we have air superiority. Where does that leave us?”

“Hit their jumpships?”

“I would like to, but our fighters wouldn’t be able to scratch the hull. Ground ops are our only avenue of attack.”

The control room staff fell silent, not having any good ideas to suggest…nor did Orion.

“Geyr, set up a battleroom think tank. You’ve got an hour.”

The Tribune nodded and hurried off, knowing exactly what and whom he needed to assemble for such a task while Orion forced himself to be patient and sat down while he studied the hologram. Icon tags were present on a lot of the walkers, fighters, and transports visible, indicating additional sensor data that he was able to access via his armchair controls. There were also visual records attached, showing a large line of glossy chrome walkers headed out from a nearby landing zone towards the bay doors up the side of the mountain slope.

He watched as they set up camp outside and began assaulting the doors with the largest walker of them all, which was throwing an enormous amount of plasma at it in spurts. The Canderian was surprised the Calavari structure was robust enough to stand up to the punishment and was impressed with both races’ military proficiency…a proficiency that he had to deconstruct and disrupt on the Nestafar side.

That was going to be a challenge, for the Nestafar were far better equipped on the ground than they were in the air. They were one of the races that had been reluctant to use the Calavari-designed Valeries, but after seeing the results against the lizards in combat they had begun buying up an enormous amount from their former nemesis. The addition of the aircraft had significantly increased their battle profile, strengthening a weakness in covering their ground forces.

He didn’t have access to much information about the Calavari/Nestafar wars, but rumor had it that the Nestafar were their better except in terms of starfighters, which the Calavari used to impressive effect, both on the ground and to supplement their pathetic naval fleet. All things Calavari were based off the fighter, and now that the Nestafar had their precious technology it seemed they were ready to restart the old war with their weakness now patched over.

Canderous couldn’t achieve air superiority…not even close with their limited resources. That was partly the Archons fault for restricting the type of military assets they could produce, but Orion was wise enough to see their purpose in doing so. Canderous was still young and needed to master each piece of warfare, so making them do with less was an ongoing exercise training their battle skill. They were also a supplement to Star Force, who did cover all angles. While the Archons might have avoided the use of starfighters for naval combat, they were more than capable of making up for it with the design of their war fleet.

Simply copying Star Force wouldn’t do for Canderous, so making the civilization chart its own path was both wise and forward thinking…but in this case it was coming back to bite them in the ass, because it precluded the Canderians from attacking the Nestafar’s primary weakness.

Orion still classified it as a weakness because if the Valeries could be countered the ground troops were still vulnerable to air assault. The stupid Nestafar had worked a patch on their battle acumen rather than redesigning it to cover anti-air.

The reconnaissance team had done a very good job in assembling profile data on the enemy units, which Orion was pouring over and matching up with the rumors he’d heard of their capabilities. They literally had no weapons on their walkers designed to defend against fighters…everything was focused on ground combat. Slow, ponderous, heavy combat.

That was something Orion could appreciate, but it wasn’t a balanced approach. The Nestafar, apparently, compensated for the lack of speed with their infantry. Thousands were flying around carrying heavy weapons, and given their mobility over the ground, not to mention outright flight speed, they made for a more mobile infantry than Canderous could field, even with jump packs.

He could counter the infantry with mechs, but they’d be eaten alive by the heavy walkers. Those they could attack with assault shuttles dropping assets right under their feet, but there was no way they were going to get through their Valerie screens. It was an impressive army, one that he couldn’t overwhelm with numbers and couldn’t attack directly on any front…which left him with what options?

One thing he did notice was that they were leaving their grounded transports relatively unprotected. They did have air cover, but virtually nothing on the ground…and the slowness of their walkers would mean any attack on the LZ would have limited immunity given the time it would take for them to return.

Their infantry would come back quickly enough, but that could be countered with mechs if he could only get them there, which meant landing dropships through their fighter screen.

No go there, which meant he needed to start thinking abstractly. If he couldn’t defeat the enemy it was his obligation to thin their numbers, slow them down, deny them their prize.

A thought suddenly struck him, causing him to stand up as an adrenaline buzz raced down his spine. “Orbital map, now.”

The holographic reconnaissance data disappeared and a map of the seda’s sensors came up, detailing a partial view of orbit. Orion’s eyes went straight to the position of the enemy warships as he played a quick game of naval chess in his head.

“Contact Captain Davion and get me a private line.”

Mark walked forward in his battered mech, finding the biomechanics and weapons functional but the armor was chewed to bits. Fortunately he wouldn’t be needing it, he hoped. The pounding on the bay door was still ongoing, with now three separate holes punched through. The first was the largest, having been eroded out to several dozen meters wide and was nearing a merger with the second. The Nestafar hadn’t yet sought to send troops through, but it was only a matter of time.

He actually hoped they would now, because he figured they could handle them if they were thinned down by the narrow access points. Widen them enough to get their walkers through and there was little they could do but fight the first few then retreat into and up the columns to the roof and fight a prolonged internal engagement…assuming they could take out the behemoth banging on the door and the Nestafar didn’t get sneaky and plant an even bigger bomb than the one Mark’s mech was carrying.

In the mech’s left hand was one of the Scionate nukes, rigged with a timer on a pull chain similar to a grenade. The trailblazer made sure to keep a firm grip on the device without crushing it, for if he accidentally dropped it inside the bay it would be hasta la vista Archon.

Right now the hand was locked in place so it couldn’t be dropped as he walked the mech towards the doors. The question was, how good was his aim?

It was a long walk up there, with his mech getting bathed with red plasma sparks spilling in more freely now as the mega walker kept blasting the intact portions of the door. The holes themselves weren’t being targeted and Mark hoped that would remain so, because he really didn’t want his nuclear softball getting knocked back inside.

When he got to the doors he found the lowest of the holes to be just over the shoulders of his mech, with the others being more than twice its height. He chose the lower one as his target and unlocked the mech’s hand, micro-flexing the fingers around the device as he steadied himself.

“Be like Mike,” he told himself as he set his mech jogging forward towards the wall. He accelerated it to as fast of a run as he dared and brought the mech’s arm up, first to shoulder height, then up over its head, making for a very awkward run in a mech, especially with all the lost armor weight, but this wasn’t the first time the trailblazer had been in a mech and even though he was primarily a pilot he had always liked the neo’s design and had kept in regular practice, making him proficient enough to slam face first into the wall and dunk the nuke through the hole.

He knew the impact was coming but ignored it, focusing entirely on the task he could not fail. He jerked hard against the control restraints, bleeding in several spots immediately but the shock absorbers on the contraption kept him from breaking any bones, though his head went through a mild whiplash as the mech bounced off the wall and fell onto its back...empty handed.

“Son of a…” he said, shaking himself to his senses and twisting the mech over onto his feet while looking around to make sure it had gone through. Not seeing anything by the time he got up he ran off along the door, trying to get as far away from the hole as he could before…

The nuke blew, blasting who knew what on the other side and sending a stream of air and shrapnel through the holes while breaking out the connection between two of them and enlarging the breach. Mark felt the mech off balance for a moment but he caught his feet and kept running off into a gradual slowdown where he turned around in a wide, victorious circle.

“You da man, boss,” Boen said over the comm as Mark walked the mech back towards the holes so he could sneak a peek outside before the enemy could reorganize enough to shoot at him.

“My tongue would be sticking out if it wasn’t bleeding.”

“Meaning what?”

“Never mind,” Mark said, stopping his mech ahead of the hole and seeing a debris field directly in front of him, made up of large chunks of what he hoped was the mega walker that had been pounding on the door. “Get our defenses ready. I think we took away their lock pick.”

The next moment an even larger explosion than the nuke rocked the hangar, denting in the massive doors and knocking the neo backwards through the air with the blast wave coming through the holes.

6

“They’re moving to intercept,” Frankton said from the navigation console as Captain Davion took his Gargantuan-class freighter down into low orbit.

“How close?”

“Hold course and we’ll hit atmosphere first. After that I have no idea. The ballistics of this ship outside of a vacuum are beyond me.”

“It’s not the ship, it’s the shields,” Davion reminded him from the pilot’s seat. The rest of the bridge including the captain’s chair was empty, as was the rest of the ship, save for the Canderian assault shuttle waiting in the hangar bay. “They brake the atmosphere, not the hull.”

“Until they collapse,” Frankton said, making adjustments to the computer projections of their course. “I think we need to brake a bit sooner,” he said, sending a new revised route over to the pilot’s station.

“Worried about the in-atmosphere turn?” the Captain asked, taking the suggestion and altering their course slightly as they descended rapidly towards the planet in the oversized transport. The Starbright and her sister ships were the largest vessels in the Star Force fleet aside from the jumpships, capable of hauling an insane amount of cargo and personnel and barely fitting into the hulls of the interstellar transports. Fortunately the Hycre knew how to accommodate such large ships in transit, otherwise they never would have been able to bring in enough equipment to build the seda in the first place.

“At the speed we’re traveling, ‘difficult’ is an understatement.”

“Relax, I’ve got more than 50 years of piloting experience under my belt before I worked my way up to Captain, and a lot of that was with dropships. I’m well acquainted with atmosphere.”

Frankton frowned. “You flew dropships? I thought you were strictly a navy man.”

“I am now,” Davion said, tweaking their course a bit more as the wisps of upper atmosphere began to tug at the large ship. “But they just don’t hand over command of freighters to anyone like they did back in the day. You’ve got to work your way up, kid, and do so by demonstrating skill. Kiss ass will get you demoted in Star Force. I’ve seen it happen to lots of guys. Double check our exit.”

“Yes, sir,” the ship’s navigator said, sliding over to another console. “All doors read locked open from here to the hangar.”

“Range to enemy ships?”

Frankton slid back over to his normal station. “60 seconds out, but they’re going to have to decelerate before then or the atmosphere will bounce them back.”

“Don’t count on it. Check my alignment.”

“You’re four degrees high.”

“Good. That’s what I wanted. Hold on to your butt,” the Captain said, kicking in the conventional drives at full power.

The ship shook from the blast of acceleration, but thanks to the inertial dampeners neither man felt it. The massive engines at the rear of the elongated, yet fat gargantuan kicked out blue fire exhaust that churned against the upper atmosphere while the ship was flying backwards, causing a faster deceleration than friction alone would have allowed. The shields along the rear portion of the ship were down along a narrow line covering the engines so that the exhaust wouldn’t catch inside, making the already non-aerodynamic shape of the ship even less so by turning the whole thing into a cup facing the wrong way.

Davion didn’t have a choice in the matter, because it was the only way to get to their target ahead of the Nestafar warships attempting to intercept them. They were coming alone, without escort, while some of the warships made a bluff in higher orbit that had drawn the Nestafar further out of position…but as soon as the freighter had started to head towards the planet they immediately reversed and came after it, knowing that they intended to aid the base under assault.

“Give me the count.”

“Rotational speed in 12…10…8…6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, mark!”

Davion cut out the ship’s conventional engines and briefly kicked in the gravity drive to hold them aloft against the torrent of atmosphere trying to twist them around and out of control. They were still falling, and fast, but by reducing the speed he was giving himself a controllable force to work around, thus allowing him to pilot the falling ship.

With their braking maneuver completed he returned the shields to full cover, immediately reducing the drag on the ship and allowing him a slightly easier pivot as the control thrusters fought to turn the bow around so they could face forward and get the trimmer nose pointed into the air.

“Some help, please,” the Captain suggested.

“Working on it,” Frankton promised as he adjusted the shield geometry to act like ailerons and rudders in order to assist the thrusters to complete the turn in time.

“Come on, come on,” Davion muttered as the sluggish nose gradually turned around as his ship fell belly first towards the ground. They were only going to get one chance at this.

A warning light flashed on the shield matrix on Davion’s console, indicating that a section of the top hull had just gone down…then another, followed by hull damage.

“Is that the atmosphere?”

“No, its weapons fire. One of their corvettes caught up.”

“Where are the others?”

“Too far back to matter now.”

“How the hell did this one make it?”

“I don’t…wait, there’s another headed our way from the surface. I bet this one came up at us too.”

“Even that drag out!” Davion yelled, knowing they had precious little time and that the downed shield was now altering the airflow pattern over the ship and catching like a sail.

“Hold on…there’s going to be a jerk.”

“I’m ready,” the Captain said, goosing what he could out of the thrusters as he watched the altimeter drop rapidly.

“Ah,” Frankton commented to the ship, “this is gonna hurt, baby.”

He hit the commit button and squeezed his eyes shut as the shields suddenly reformed into a large wedge.

Davion got a huge swing to the ship, which brought the nose around crudely in front, then the shields all but disappeared from half the hull as the emitters burned out and the ship became a lot more unresponsive.

“What the hell was that?”

“Don’t ask, sir.”

“You pulled a direct feed, didn’t you?”

“It worked.”

“Yeah it did,” he admitted as he used the thrusters to keep the nose pointed forward as he began to cut out the forward gravity drives to dip the front end of the ship towards the surface. “You’re done here, get going.”

“Captain?” Frankton asked suspiciously.

“I’ll be there shortly. Hold the door open.”

“You’d better be,” the navigator said as he got up out of his seat and ran off the bridge.

Davion’s eyes glanced at what little sensor telemetry the ship had, considering that it was now burning through the atmosphere like a fireball…but he could still see the corvette keeping pace behind and above them. Small pinpricks of damage were popping up on the hull, which only made the Captain smile.

“Go ahead, do your worst,” he said, finally getting the ship rotated over fully using the aft-most gravity drive to act as an anchor to hold the angle as he micro-adjusted with the main engines and thrusters to keep her falling on course. If he missed his target on the wrong side…

But no, the ship was falling where it should, though a little to the south. A heavy thrust from the main engines countered that by about 50%, and he saw that he wasn’t going to get much more out of it. That was good though, to have a cushion on the correct side, for as soon as he left the pilot’s chair the ship was going ballistic.

“Starbright, I think you’re going to live up to your name. You’ve been a good ship. Farewell,” he said, shutting off all but the anchor gravity drive and dashing out of his seat, following the route Frankton had took. He ran through doorway after doorway, all that were locked open so as not to slow him down, until he got to the closest hangar bay and pushed his way inside through the hurricane-like winds whipping inside from the open doors on the hull, meaning somehow the hangar’s atmospheric shields had gone down also.

Fortunately the artificial gravity was still in play, otherwise he would have fallen against the wall because the planet was visible perpendicular outside the bay with just a slice of the horizon popping up along the far left wall, indicating how close they were getting to the surface.

Davion ran hard, leaning into the wind and fought his way across to the open door on the assault shuttle where Frankton was waiting for him. The Captain plowed his way aboard with the navigational officer pulling the door shut immediately.

“He’s in, let’s go!” he shouted at the Canderian pilot, who wasted no time in lifting off and rocketing out of the side of the ship.

The tiny craft hit a wall of turbulence and got knocked out of control for several seconds before the ship passed beneath them and the wake diminished. The pilot eventually got the shuttle leveled out and accelerated away from the flight line and the Nestafar corvette that was still trying to pump plasma into the freighter, even though most of it was never reaching the target due to the friction with the air.

“Oh crap, we’ve got company,” the Canderian said, dropping hard towards the surface at an angle that would also pull them away from the Starbright.

“Fighters?” Davion asked.

“No, that warship is coming after us.”

“Surely you can outfly that hunk of metal?” he goaded.

The Canderian glanced back over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. “You’d better hope so,” he said, pulling the shuttle through a tight loop and redirecting it off towards the north…a maneuver that the corvette couldn’t easily match, though it wasn’t giving up on the pursuit.

The pilot reversed his turn and headed back southeast, wanting to get further away from the freighter and causing the corvette to overshoot again, then he headed the tiny craft down towards the surface, intent on losing their pursuit in the mountains. The angle didn’t allow them to see the Starbright when it hit the surface, but several seconds later they felt the shockwave as it bounced the shuttle around.

“Sorry, Captain. Know you wanted to see that, but losing that warship is the first priority.”

“No need to apologize. At least now I won’t have to have it replaying through my mind at night.”

The assault shuttle flew straight down towards the mountains, then ducked into a valley and started skimming the shallow trenches until they found one particularly sheer rock wall. The Canderian pilot slowed them to a hover and tucked up alongside it, waiting to see if the corvette would follow them down.

“Comms are back,” he noted when the incoming signal button lit up on his console. “I’d answer that, but I’d rather not give the Nestafar any help in locating us.”

“You have your sensors set to passive, son?”

“Of course I do,” he said, looking at Davion oddly. “And there she is…”

Davion looked on the passive sensors display as well as out the forward viewport monitor, seeing the corvette high above them flying a lazy course across the mountains.

“I think they lost us,” Frankton added.

“For now,” Davion said, thinking hard. He didn’t see any fighters on the sensors, but being tucked up against the mountain diminished their view of the immediate area.

A second comm light lit up on the dashboard, blinking in sequence with the first.

“Can you tell where those are coming from?”

The Canderian pilot tapped on the first, bringing up the info display along with the transmit button which he intentionally avoided. “The seda…” he said, switching to the second, “and the base.”

Davion saw the Star Force ID signature on the base’s data screen, meaning it wasn’t coming from the Calavari or others…and it had a message attached rather than just a request prompt. Before he could tell the pilot to activate it the Canderian did so on his own and Kara’s voice came over the comm.

“Any Star Force units within the immediate area of the base please respond. Repeat, any Star Force units within the immediate area of the base please respond. You’re about to get your asses kicked.”

Davion and the Canderian exchanged frowns.

“What does she mean by that?” Frankton asked.

“Risk it,” Davion said.

The Canderian reached over and activated the response channel. “This is Canderian assault shuttle 28…respond.”

There was a short pause before the feed cut out the automated message and a live transmission replaced it.

“What’s your current status?” Kara’s voice again asked.

“Trying to avoid detection,” Davion answered. “We’ve got a corvette that chased us to ground and at the moment it seems to have lost us, despite this transmission.”

“Never mind that, you’ve got incoming fighters dropping from orbit. Get running or get inside the base. How many of you are there?”

“One shuttle, three occupants.”

“And what did you hit the enemy with, exactly?”

“My ship,” he said, regret evident in his tone.

“Captain?”

“Davion. Despite the skills of our pilot, I’d prefer not to try and outrun the enemy fighters back up into orbit. What’s our best approach to the base?”

“I need you to land on the mountain and come in through one of the auxiliary entrances…on foot, unless you want to run the gauntlet and come in the front door before they get reorganized. Either way those fighters are getting close to the surface.”

“Send coordinates for the mountaintop entrance,” Davion decided in an instant. He knew well how much firepower had been at the entrance and he doubted they’d have a straight line approach, meaning they’d be sitting ducks as they tried to maneuver through his ship’s debris and into the base.

“Get going. We’ll have a reception committee waiting,” Kara promised.

“How many masks do we have?” Frankton asked as the battlemap waypoint came through and the pilot got them moving within three seconds, eager to get away from the now distant corvette should it turn around and come back for them…which it did as soon as they pulled up into the sky and cleared the horizon.

“Down there,” the pilot pointed back into the compartment behind them over his right shoulder.

Frankton stepped out of the cockpit and pulled open the wall panel, revealing a recessed storage compartment with a rack of filter masks. He pulled out three and handed one to Davion.

“Thank you,” the Captain said, ripping the seal and pulling it out of its plastic bag, then placing it squarely over his nose and mouth before securing it behind his head into a firm grip. He took a few practice breaths and found it mildly restrictive, but otherwise fully functional.

“Two minutes,” the Canderian warned them as he pulled up above the mountaintops, abandoning any ideas of using the terrain to his advantage and making a bee line straight to the waypoint as he flicked on the active sensors, which responded with a much stronger image of the corvette along with a cloud of contacts coming down from above. “Stand by the side hatch.”

Davion moved aft, walking through the personnel compartment to the junction with the cargo hold, there he found a short exit ramp covered by a solid door with an activation panel nearby. He waited there with Frankton, ready to move out as soon as the pilot set the shuttle down.

“Go!” he heard him yell, and Davion didn’t waste any time. He jammed the open button in so hard he felt his finger joint bend back, then was forced to wait through a quick release of the door as it pulled out away from the hull and aside as a foot ramp extended down to the surface. He ran out it just as the Canderian was catching up to them and sprinted ahead to where a red armored suit was waving at them across an uphill field of grass so tall it came up to their shoulders.

Davion punched through it with adrenaline at levels he hadn’t experienced in a long time, clawing it apart with his hands as a rocket was launched into the sky from ahead. He didn’t see where it came from, only the lone Archon signaling to him. A loud explosion made him flinch as it detonated in the air above, then two more shot out just before he broke through the sea of grass and onto the flat stones of the entryway where he saw six Archons and dozens of Calavari standing guard over a very small entrance.

“Come on, come on!” the Archon yelled, urging the threesome forward. He yanked Davion into the building by the shoulder, pulling him faster than he would normally could have ran resulting in a stumbling shuffle, but the strength of the man kept him on his feet before he dumped him to the side behind the thick walls of the base.

A moment later the Calavari started coming through, then another Archon with Frankton. After that there was a long line of armed soldiers pouring in followed by the Canderian pilot and the four other Archons, after which there was a large audible ‘clunk’ as the base door sealed over.

Davion sat heaving against the wall, his limbs numb and tingly from the exertion, until one of the Calavari came over and looked down on him. “You came from the crashed ship?”

He nodded. “We bailed out before impact.”

“They said you were the Captain.”

“I am…was,” he corrected himself. One wasn’t a true captain without a ship.

“You may have just saved all our lives. We are in your debt, Human.”

“No problem,” he said with a wave of his hand dismissively.

“No. We are pilots. We know what it is like to lose your ship and ours are small. Yours was not. It was a great sacrifice and we are truly honored,” it said, reaching down and pulling Davion up off his butt. “It is not safe here. We must go further inside. This is a kill zone should they breach the outer door.”

“By all means,” he said, letting the four armed alien escort him across the wide room and through another doorway along with the others.

7

“Oh for crying out loud,” Mark said as soon as he shook the stars from his head as he laid flat on his back looking up at the hangar ceiling through his mech’s display holo. “What the hell did I hit out there?”

Silence answered him…then he noticed that his comm display was dark, meaning it must have been damaged in either the shockwave or fall.

“Ouch,” he said, twisting his sore arms around as he leveraged his mech up into a sitting position…which was when he saw the now ginormous hole in the door along with a shiny, yet pitted chrome walker skittering through and getting pounded by plasma. “How long have I been out?”

He raised his mech’s left arm up, deactivated the hand and pumped a plasma orb into one of the walker’s six crab-like legs, melting a hole alongside several others and snapping the leg off as too much pressure fell on its remaining support struts. The entire machine wobbled, but the other legs compensated before an internal component blew out from the bulky center and killed the thing.

Mark got his mech up onto its feet just as the much larger Nestafar version began moving again…only not under its own power. As he watched another pushed it forward from behind, using it as both a shield and plow against the other bits of debris lying around.

Plasma fell in on it from multiple angles, most of which were coming from the skeets but a lot of the improvised weapon sleds were also nearby and firing makeshift weapons on the entry hole. Mark was impressed with the amount of firepower they’d accumulated from the wrecks in the hangar, but was appalled at what little damage each of them were doing to the walker that was now half exposed. Its armor must have been incredibly dense…probably why the damn things moved so slow too.

Mark added his neo’s weapons to the defensive effort, both the plasma cannon and scattergun as the enemy walker moved far enough in to use its belly-mounted cannon and roasted one of the weapon sleds over considerable distance with what looked like a plasma fire hose, yet extremely thin. It cut through the metal frame like a hot knife through butter, wrecking both the anti-grav and the weapons onboard, though thankfully it had been remote-controlled by the control bunker and no one had been onboard.

The Nestafar beast cut apart another one before it finally succumbed to the combined firepower of the hangar guard, dropping down on its powerless legs like a withering spider and blocking the hole…the primary hole anyway…in the door. When it too began to move forward, much slower than the first, Mark reactivated his mech’s hands and charged forward, running up against the remains of the first walker and pushed back, leveraging as much strength as he could.

“Please don’t shoot me guys,” he said to the dead comm as his mech’s feet scraped on the floor due to lack of traction. “Come on!” he yelled, twisting a bit and shoving at a different angle.

Slowly, inch by inch, he shoved the mass of the two dead walkers back until the second one was completely out of the hangar…then a stream of small rocks came in through the next biggest hole in the wall, higher up, and rained down around him. When they hit the ground they opened up into protomechs, each about half as tall as his neo, and started shooting into his badly damaged armor at close range.

Mark released his hold on the pile of scrap and turned around, reactivating his cannon and blasting one off its feet, half melting through the outer armor. He ran up to the next nearest and kicked it back, then found himself in a shower of blue plasma as half a dozen skeets zipped over and started shooting at the protomechs while swinging about laterally, making them difficult to target.

Mark popped another one then took the opportunity to retreat, seeing several flashing red markers on his virtual mech chassis indicating critical damage to his armor. Two more protomechs fell to the skeets, which they were having a hard time targeting, then four of them transformed back into balls and started rolling after the neo.

The weapon sleds nearby targeted them immediately, killing two before they could wheel around and accelerate across the deck, passing Mark’s mech and headed for more distant areas.

“No you don’t,” he said, firing his scattergun at one and succeeding in giving it a limp. It bobbled with each rotation, then got nailed by a skeet’s plasma streamer. The controlled roll became chaotic and the thing began careening out of control. Mark chased after it and put a finishing plasma salvo into its belly as it tried to unfurl back into mech form.

He glanced off to the left and saw several more skeets and other fighters pursuing the last one while a much larger brawl was going on at the door as more of the protomechs were popping through, but at least the main hole was still plugged, though for how long that was going to last he didn’t know.

As if reading his mind one of the Falcon-class dropships roared by overhead carrying a large chunk of one of the previously destroyed craft on a series of tethers. It carried it over to the breach point and dropped it unceremoniously on top of the first dead walker, then flew off slowly through a swivel turn, heading back to base while another two came through and did the same, piling up more junk to block the entrance as the skeets finished off the protomechs…which really weren’t good at targeting the aircraft.

A Protovic transport came next, dragging a large mashed up bulk of dead aircraft across the deck and dropped it as a stopper a little way out from the walkers, then more of the other races started piling debris between it and the door, making sure nothing was going to push its way through.

They’d been planning on using that tactic if the nuke attack on the mega walker had succeeded, he just hadn’t expected such a big hole being blown in the doors by whatever that was that followed it. Maybe the thing had a reactor that was damaged and then went nuke on its own.

Mark hung around the doors as the debris was being assembled, waiting to see if any more of the protomechs would shoot through. That hole was too high up to block, unless they were going to make a really big pile, but after a while with nothing further coming in he finally turned his mech around and headed back over to their nearest command center where he parked it and climbed out.

“Did you lose comms?” Sandra asked when he got to the ground.

“Yeah I did. How’s things look outside?” he asked, referring to the base’s external sensors.

“They took out half their army and most of their infantry, but there were plenty outside the blast radius that moved up. We do now have comms with the seda, so either you or they knocked out the jamming device.”

“They? What caused that second explosion?”

“Kamikaze cargo ship.”

“What!?”

“They dropped a gargantuan right on top of their army. Made our nuke look like a spitball.”

“Really…how many do they have left?” he asked sarcastically.

Sandra, however, took him to be serious. “No go. The Nestafar have repositioned their fleet to avoid that happening again…or what’s left of it. They attacked the seda and got their asses kicked.”

“Good…what about the Hycre?”

“They’re gone…as are most of the other warships. The Calavari orbital stations are dust too…and the Nestafar have jumpships in orbit, so who knows how much more ground game they have.”

“Has the Legat launched his own ground op yet? Please say no.”

“No.”

“Good. Those walkers are heavily armored. Our mechs aren’t going to be as effective as they are against the lizards.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Sandra said, glancing over him. He had put his armor back on before getting out of the neo, but apparently she still saw something. “How bad did you get knocked around in there?”

“I’ll be sore for a few days,” he admitted, “but nothing broken.”

“How’s the head?”

“Got my bell rung pretty good. How long was I on the floor?”

“A while. We thought your mech was toast.”

“Nearly, and the only replacement panels we have are on the seda. Other than heavy lifting don’t let anyone pilot it in combat.”

“Gotcha. Where you heading?”

“To suck some ambrosia and have a chat with Orion…before he decides to play snowball with any more of our ships.”

“You disapprove?”

“No, just wish I’d thought of it sooner.”

After a dropship picked him up near the doors and brought him back over to their column complex, Mark got out of his armor and into their medical area, knowing he could trust the others to handle the defenses without him for a little bit, though he did snag an earpiece on the way in so he could stay in contact if needed. He self-administered some healing patches to the cuts on his arms, legs, head, and torso then grabbed a new set of clothes, tossing the blood-soaked ones away as he headed over to their kitchen and snagged several ration bars and two bottles of water. He hadn’t eaten in 13 hours, nor slept in 28, and was feeling a big ragged now that the adrenaline was starting to wear off.

He opened the first ration bar and started chewing as he activated the datapad he’d brought with him that detailed the destruction outside, along with a live feed function that allowed him to see what the enemy was currently up to. The analysis had numerous points highlighted by the Bsidd, offering their summary of the Nestafar casualties as well as the operational nature of their damaged assets. It was meticulous, as if they were trying to make up for their lack of martial contributions, given that the Humans were essentially leading the defensive effort.

That was due to their not being seen as a significant threat by the Nestafar during the initial ambush, a mistake he assumed the enemy would not be making again. The sacrifice of their cargo ship and the resulting destruction, which was significant due to the placement of the impact crater, had also gained Star Force instant credibility as the rest of the races were desperately doing everything they could to support their mutual survival.

Add in the fact that the seda in orbit was the only naval military asset keeping the Nestafar at bay and protecting the Alliance’s remaining ships. All in all, the Humans had quickly proved their worth to their previous naysayers, the Gnar included.

Mark got up, carrying the datapad with him over to a cabinet and pulled out a rack of wafers, counting out 14 of them, then heading back to the table grabbing a breadstick the size of his forearm on the way. He stuffed one of the 2-dose wafers into his mouth and pulled up the live feed on the datapad, seeing that a few more walkers were heading their way from the enemy LZ. They were Giraffe-class, as Boen had already nicknamed them, and medium among the lot. They had four pointy legs with high spider-joints that came up over the level of their backs along with a high arching neck that had a head with a powerful plasma cannon that the Bsidd data indicated was an orb launcher.

There were also 17 Spider-class walkers milling about outside the door, though they were split up by the debris that was littering the surrounding area and preventing any large scale assault on the base from that direction. As it was, three of them were picking their way through the lines and heading up and over the mountain to the far side bay doors with an ever growing number of units assembling there, though the bulk of the units were still being dropped in the main LZ on the south side.

Mark couldn’t figure their strategy there, and so far none of the mega walkers were visible on the battlefield, meaning they didn’t have a lock pick to use to get inside the north doors. They might have had another up in orbit on one of their jumpships, but if they did they hadn’t deployed it yet, making him wonder if they were rolling out some new strategy or just fumbling around after the debacle of the kamikaze attack…and his slam dunk nuke, if they even knew that had happened.

Mark still had one nuke in his arsenal plus parts from two others, which as of yet hadn’t been fully assembled into a single device. The Kvash had requested that project and had spirited the components away to who knows where, but at least they had one big bomb left to work with, though he would have much preferred their own non-nuclear devices, of which they had none in the base.

The seda would have some, he knew, but not the really big ones. It hadn’t been around long enough to have had time to fill its armory of most things and Orion had been insistent on getting their starfighters and mechs assembled first off…which, he now wondered, how had they fared in the attack on the seda?

He thumbed through the datapad while chewing apart another ambrosia wafer, looking for the battle data that the seda should have had on file and accessible through their resumed comm link when his earpiece activated.

“Trouble boss,” Boen said, his voice serious.

“Go,” Mark said, then stuffed another wafer in his mouth and chewed fast.

“Calavari found another group of Nestafar holed up in the base…and they’ve been busy digging a new access tunnel to the surface.”

“Whaaat? Hhow?”

“They had to have started weeks before the attack. The Calavari just found it doing a comprehensive scan of the mountain to look for structural damage after the big bang. The tunnel is several miles long and only a few hundred meters from completion.”

“Tell me they don’t have a lizard planning all this for them,” he said, his mouth now clear of food. “Have the Calavari secured this side of the tunnel?”

“No they haven’t. The Nestafar holding it are armed and well dug in. The tunnel begins directly under one of their columns.”

“How wide is it?”

“Too small for walkers.”

“What about their protomechs?”

“When they ball up, maybe…oh crap,” Boen said, realizing that the hallways in the base were just big enough for the damn machines to fit through, and the ones in the ceiling were wide enough for two side by side.

Mark paused a moment, thinking it through. “Ok, so plan number 1 is to bust in through the main doors…no, check that. Plan number 1 is to take over the base from the inside using their pilots, hand blades, and the few plasma rifles they were able to smuggle in…or at least long enough to keep the bay doors open for their ground troops to enter. Plan number 2 was to break through the doors using the super dragon and let their ground troops inside.”

“Super dragon…I like that.”

“Plan number 3, which begins well before numbers 1 and 2, has them digging a tunnel to the outside of the mountain, creating their own entry point so the base can’t be completely sealed off to them. They didn’t try to assault any of the base’s smaller entrances with the initial ambush, but they dig one of their own…why?”

“I would have said to bring in an assault team to get the hangar doors open, but now that doesn’t make sense, especially the fact that the tunnel isn’t finished yet.”

“That’s because they couldn’t have someone spotting it from the outside,” Mark said, dismissing that worry. “They had to stop short.”

“It would have been easier to just take one of the existing ones and hold it while their troops arrived. They’re closer to the door controls than the columns are anyway.”

“They’re not after the door controls...they want something else.”

“And the controls,” Boen added.

“To get their army inside, but there’s something more going on here.”

“Think it has to do with the Calavari?”

“Get a team or three over to…wait, where is this breach point? I thought you said the tunnel originated in a Nestafar column?”

“It apparently has another access point within the base. Maintenance area. Beyond the hangar wall.”

“Get some Archons over there to help out, then meet me in here. We’re going to have a chat with the Calavari.”

“Think they know something?”

“My spidey senses say yes.”

“On my way.”

Mark tossed the datapad aside and shoved two more wafers in his mouth, grabbed the rest and a bottle of water in his hands, and jogged out the door on his way to get into another suit of armor.

8

“What are they after?” Mark asked Vornac and several other Calavari that had come over to the Human complex at his request.

“They want to capture this base, obviously,” their liaison answered.

“No, they only want to hold it. That tunnel isn’t a way in for their troops, though they may very well be using it for that soon. They were digging for something else. What is this base sitting on?”

Vornac frowned. “It isn’t on anything. We carved it out of the mountain.”

“Why did you choose this location? This particular mountain?”

“That I do not know. I was assigned after its construction.”

“Who would know?”

“The original builders…but I don’t know if any of them are still insystem.”

“A few are,” one of the other Calavari said.

“Get them here,” Mark insisted. “Now.”

Vornac nodded to one of his kin and the four-armed alien walked off to one of the communications consoles and sat down. “What are you looking for?”

“A reason the Nestafar would turn on their own allies.”

“We have been at odds with them for centuries.”

Mark shook his head. “Not you. The Protovic and others they brought into the Alliance. They attacked their ships in orbit and their pilots here. If they wanted to start a war with you again, throwing away their allies makes no sense. There has to be something else going on and I have a feeling it is connected to that tunnel.”

“How does knowing help us defend ourselves? One way or another they intend to take the base. Should we not focus our attention there?”

“I can multi-task,” Mark said, a bit pithily.

“They joined the Alliance,” Boen interjected, “because of the threat of the lizards. That threat hasn’t changed, and you know them better than us. What would be so important for them that they would risk doing this?”

“A good question…but one that I cannot answer. They are, and have always been, a treacherous lot.”

“Did this planet once belong to them?” Mark asked.

“Not to my knowledge. It was unclaimed.”

A comm prompt signaled from Mark’s helmet, which was setting on the table next to him. “Excuse me,” he said, sliding it on and beginning the private conversation with his external speakers shut off. “Go ahead.”

“We found one,” Orion reported.

Mark’s eyes narrowed. “Where?”

“Other side of the planet, and only a small team. One transport, a few dozen infantry. I think they’re a scout team and have been unsuccessful as of yet. There’s nothing else within a hemisphere of their position.”

“What are they doing?”

“Searching some caverns by the look of it. Do you want a more thorough reconnaissance?”

“Covertly, if you can manage it.”

“I already have a shuttle standing by.”

“Send it…and keep searching for other surface activity.”

“We will.”

Mark cut off the comm link and pulled off his helmet, lightly slamming it down on the table and interrupting whatever Boen was saying.

“It’s not the base they want, it’s something on this planet.”

“What do you mean?” Vornac asked.

“The Nestafar have a small search team on the other side of the planet. We’ve got no assets there, and as far as we can tell neither do you or anyone else. They’re looking for something. So I’ll ask again…why this mountain?”

“May I?” Vornac asked, gesturing to the central holoprojector.

Mark nodded and the Calavari brought up a map of the base and extended it outward so they could view the entirety of the mountain/mountains it was contained within.

“I know we desired binary access to the hangar bay so that it would be difficult to block off. We wanted our fighters to have the cover of the mountain and easy access to the skies…now we have so few left the enemy has air superiority. The secondary entrances were to provide infantry access to the slopes should we need to fight outside to flank the Cajdital if they were assaulting the bay doors.”

“What did you plan to hit them with?” Boen asked.

Mark glanced up at the Calavari, thinking the same thing.

“Items that have not yet been delivered to the planet. We did not expect the Cajdital to find this world quickly, if at all. This betrayal by the Nestafar caught us unprepared.”

“Why no defense turrets on the hangars?” Mark asked.

“We did not expect the Cajdital to be able to penetrate the doors. They were the only defense necessary assuming we could maintain control of the skies.”

Mark stared down at the base design, shaking his head. How could you build such a large structure and not put defense guns covering the doors? This had been designed as a ‘cover your ass’ base rather than a fortress to fight out of. A pity, given how much work they’d put into it.

He and Boen continued plying Vornac with questions, mostly without success, until one of the Calavari builders finally arrived to shed some light on the situation.

“There was an extensive network of caverns running through the mountain that we expanded upon,” the slightly shorter Calavari explained. “They made it easier to hollow out the mountain, which was why this location was chosen in addition to the geographic surroundings. We wanted cover but with enough room to maneuver the fighters about and not get them boxed in during an attack. The dome of the mountain is sufficiently thick to protect the base from orbital assaults, and to maintain that thickness we had to dig down very far into the bedrock, which the caverns allowed us to access immediately.”

Mark suppressed a smile. Now they were getting somewhere. “Were all the caverns consumed during the construction?”

“Most were, but some ran deeper than the foundations needed to be. We sealed them off when we built over them.”

The Archon pointed a finger at Vornac. “I’ll bet you there’s something down in those caverns that the Nestafar want badly enough to sabotage the whole alliance, and that they dug down to confirm it before they launched the assault. The access shaft to the surface is just a bonus. Where are the sealed entrances?”

The Calavari reached its lower left arm up and scratched its wide chin, grimacing as it thought, then it reached down and highlighted half a dozen areas on the underside of the base.

“These are guesses, and I know there’s more than that, but I’m sure these are fairly accurate.”

Mark traced the line of the Nestafar tunnel, dipping his armored finger into the hologram and stopping where it intersected with one of the points. “There’s our mark.”

“Says Mark,” Boen added, immediately holding up his hands in apology, but he’d had to say it.

“10 man team,” the trailblazer said, letting it go. “Boen, pick your seven and grab Kara. We’re going in through their base.”

“It hasn’t been secured yet,” Vornac interjected. “The fighting has ground down into a stalemate.”

“I know, I’ve already cycled two Archon teams through there,” Mark explained, standing up straight and grabbing his helmet. “Time for a bigger push.”

Boen slid his helmet on and rushed out of the control room, leaving Mark alone with the Calavari. “The Nestafar want what’s in those caverns. Focus your men on the tunnel entrance in the maintenance areas. If we hit them hard they may call for reinforcements and give you an opening…or maybe the other way around.”

“It will be done,” the Calavari promised.

Mark nodded, put on his helmet, then began to organize a larger assault group via his helmet comm as he contacted the other races in the base.

“Stand clear,” Boen warned. He waited a pair of Time Lord heartbeats then walked around a corner in the Nestafar complex and hurled a small object sidearm towards a doorway guarded by barricades and half a dozen of their winged infantry. A moment later the Archon pressed a small detonator switch in his other hand and the Kiritas-inspired throwing mine exploded.

Kara and two other Archons followed Mark around the corner and proceeded to shoot the survivors, then kicked away the barricade debris and opened up the hall for the Scionate following them. The quadruped bit down on a jaw-stick and pumped another plasma round into one of the Nestafar on the floor for good measure as it walked over, then followed the Humans into a maintenance shaft that spiraled down several floors with various piping running the length, interspersed with an erratic walkway leading down to the floor.

“Stand aside,” the Scionate said, biting another button and causing its body armor to slide up over its neck and form a solid helmet with only two jewel-like eye slits showing. They glowed green in contrast to the yellow armor, then the alien jumped off the catwalk and down through the center along with the pipes, grabbing onto and sliding down them with his front paws.

Boen and Kara took off sprinting down the catwalk, zigzagging left and right as the sounds of weaponsfire manifested below. They moved down three flights before Kara hopped over the edge and fell to the floor, with Boen following her.

He hit hard, legs buckling, and rolled down onto his shoulder turning the fall into a somersault that ended on a dead Nestafar. That off balanced him for a moment, then he came up firing at the dozens of enemy troops around the base of the shaft. Kara was doing likewise with the Scionate ducking behind several pipes to avoid direct fire. It had already killed over a dozen, but its armor was badly damaged and couldn’t hold up to much more punishment.

It didn’t have to. After the pair of Archons came down more followed, dropping from the air as Protovic troops hurried down the catwalk behind them. All three species wore body armor, which was why Mark had requested them. The Protovic, especially, had wanted payback against the Nestafar and had been more than willing to lend a hand now that their own complex within the base had been secured.

“Dre’for?” Mark asked as the Nestafar began to retreat down two side hallways that led out of the shaft.

“I am alive,” the Scionate answered, shooting another before walking out behind Mark.

The Archon gave a hand signal and four Archons shot off down the left passage while he moved up on the right, fired twice, then sprinted ahead sensing an advantage. By the time Boen caught up to him he had three Nestafar down and was punching another into submission. It fell to the ground and Mark kicked its weapon aside before landing his knee on its chest and pinning it to the ground.

He waved Boen on by, then leaned forward as he and others moved down the hallway behind his back. The trailblazer pulled out his stinger pistol from his back rack and pumped three shots into the Nestafar’s midsection, rendering it unconscious.

“A prize?” Kel’sad asked, walking up beside him and looking down at the captive.

“No, just someone to gloat over after this is all over,” he said sarcastically. “Can you carry it up topside? My people will meet you there to take it.”

“As you wish, Human,” the other Scionate said, opening its face armor and gripping the Nestafar’s arm with its mouth, then rolling over on its side and lifting it up into what resembled a fireman’s carry, though the dynamics of which were a bit different for an armless quadruped. As it left with the Nestafar its den brother came up to join Mark, its armor pitted in several places.

“Lead on,” Dre’for said, with several dozen Protovic following him.

Mark jogged on ahead with the Scionate easily keeping pace with its long loping strides until they reached Boen and the others he’d sent on ahead as they pushed through another knot of Nestafar and into a large storage area. There they found a half dozen more which Mark and the other Archons took down before the others could get at them, all standing around a small hole dug into the floor.

The other group of Archons came in through an opposite entrance, apparently having broken through the Nestafar lines on their side, and joined him at the middle as he looked down into the cavern entrance. There was a thick layer of what vaguely resembled concrete that the Nestafar had drilled down through, then nothing but black below.

“No lights?” Boen asked, poking his head over the side.

“They see well in the dark,” one of the Protovic said as it walked up in its trim armored suit and also glanced down. “And they can fly, so I do not think we will find any way down by foot.”

“Can’t be that far down,” Kara said, walking up beside the pair. “This is just the tunnel, not the cavern, right?”

“Should be,” Mark confirmed.

“Well then,” she said, hopping off the edge and disappearing down into the dark.

Boen glanced at Mark.

“Sabers,” he said dismissively, then clicked on his comm. “How many pieces you in?”

“Just one sexy one, as normal,” she answered back. “Bit of a slide a couple meters down…and they do have lights, just not our spectrum.”

Mark saw a tiny white light wink on in the distance down at an angle underneath the floor beneath Boen’s feet that was Kara’s exterior light on her helmet. He switched his HUD to artificial overlay and also picked up the infrared generators imbedded into the walls like gems or marker beacons. They cast a gentle glow on the tunnel, enough for him to see by, at least.

“You guys coming or not?”

Mark motioned to Boen and he jumped in, followed by the other Archons.

“Does your armor have lights?”

The Protovic troops nodded, as did the lone Scionate they had remaining with them, though the other should have been returning soon.

Mark let the rest of the Archons get a few steps ahead of him then he jumped in, immediately feeling his feet hit a gravel wash and slip out from under him. He slid down a sharp bank that leveled out on a curve and brought him to a standstill, whereupon he quickly got up and walked forward, flashing on his lights and turning off the infrared.

“What have you got, Kara?” he asked over the comm, for she was still at the head of a long, single file line of helmet lights ahead of him.

“Basic tunnel. Nothing interesting.”

“Hurry it up,” he warned, “those troops outside aren’t going to wait forever.”

“Hurrying,” she said, taking off at a light run with the others following suit behind her.

Mark joined in when the line reached him, with the Scionate and Protovic following up behind. The large cat-like alien’s distinctive four-beat steps stayed right behind him yet out of sight all the way up the tunnel until a flash of blue plasma marked the end of their brief trip. Two more followed it, then was responded to with a flash of red…then nothing.

“Pair of guards,” Kara reported. “I think we found the entrance.”

“Think?”

“Check your battlemap.”

“What am I looking at?” he said after nothing specific was showing up aside from the Archon icons and the tunnel.

“Nothing,” Kara answered. “Where’s the cavern on the Calavari scans?”

Mark raised an eyebrow. “Call me stupid. I completely missed that. It dead ends above us.”

“Well, stupid, I missed it too until now…but there is another opening here. A big one. It might be a stretch, but I’d hazard a guess that its sensor shielded.”

“Which direction?” he asked, coming up on the back of the other Archons as they were now walking forward and fanning out two and three wide.

“Straight down…and I don’t feel like jumping this time,” she said from the edge where she was looking up at the rough rock. “I think we’re at the bottom of the plug the Calavari put in. Some sort of solidifying liquid, patchy down here. They didn’t have to cut through much.”

“No need to jump,” Varn-1633 said. “The walls are climbable. There’s a series of ridges almost a meter deep and about 10 down from where I’m standing. Can’t see much beyond that.”

Mark nudged his way through the other Archons until he came up on the edge and looked down, adding his light to the others. He switched back over to infrared and got a much better view, for the entire chamber was glowing in it.

“Looks like the Calavari weren’t the first here after all,” he said, turning around and pointing to one of the Protovic. “You, come here. Tell me if you recognize this architecture. Can you see in infrared?”

“My suit can,” the Protovic said, stepping up next to Mark and looking down…then it started jabbering on in its native language and took a step back from the edge, looking as if it was worried it was going to fall in and be swallowed up.

“What?” Mark asked, staring helmet to helmet with the unsettled alien.

“Keepers,” was all it said, which prompted Dre’for to nudge his way forward and poke his armored head down into the hole. A deep, mechanical growl emanated from its suit that made even Mark twitch.

“What’s a Keeper?”

“An ancient race, Human,” the Scionate said, moving back. “One with magical technology. It was rumored that the Nestafar were once their subjects. If this was once their world they will stop at nothing to reclaim it.”

Mark looked down into the ridged cavern, his spidey senses tingling more than ever. “Enough technology to make them the dominant power in the region?”

“Yes,” Dre’for growled, “or enough to give the Alliance the power to defeat the Cajdital with ease.”

9

Ashley-810 sprinted down the Nestafar tunnel, climbing up the shallow incline with every step as she and four other Archons moved ahead of the Calavari and others that were also racing up towards the surface. The diggers were almost through to their reinforcements and she could see them ahead, barely a pinprick in the distance on her helmet’s infrared sensors. That spec was glowing with heat as it chewed through the mountain rock and compressed the rubble down into dense cubes that she had to keep running around or jumping over.

This last section of the tunnel was crude, cut out of the mountain in the past day with no Nestafar lights embedded in the walls and plenty of trash cubes lying around. The workers had abandoned all efforts at cleanup when the tunnel entrances had been discovered and the defenders had dug in to buy time. Now the machine were spitting out the chunks of compressed rock behind them with wild abandon as they raced to get through to the surface before the base defenders could catch up to them.

Ashley was breathing hard, harder than usual in her acolyte armor, both from the speed at which she was running, the distance of the tunnel, and the incline…but it was the regular jumps that were killing her, for some of the cubes had fallen together to form knee-high barricades that she and the others had to go over rather than around.

There were several more adepts behind them, but they hadn’t been able to keep up. Even a few acolytes trailed, but the four behind her were managing to stay in a loose formation and keying off her timing, both for jumps and for managing their ascent up towards the surface.

Just as they were getting close enough to feel the deep rumbling coming from the machine as it tore through the rock a bright light lit up her helmet, causing her to duck to the left and smack into the wall as a plasma blast, glowing fiery bright on her infrared, flew a few inches over her head and impacted the ceiling behind her.

She bounced off the wall, dragging her feet on the crushed gravel ground, and stumbled back into her run behind two of the other Archons. They continued charging up the underground hill as a few more plasma blasts came their way, looking as if they were being fired from a lone weapon…maybe a rear guard on the digging team. The Archon ahead of her to the left fired back, a pair of blue streaks flashing off ahead of them and into the back of the digger, missing the shooter but leaving two hot spots on the machine.

Just below them a lot opened up and kicked out another cube, which also glowed hot on the infrared. Two more followed it before another plasma blast came their way and Ashley finally was able to spot the shooter, hiding in a small covered booth on the left side of what looked like a single digging machine. She jumped another cube and sprinted at the highest speed she could manage, nudging between the other two Archons and pulling ahead as she hurdled another low wall/pile.

Almost there, she told herself, fighting the stress on her body. Sprinting uphill was hard enough, but she was carrying heavy armor and it dragged on her body more than normal, given that she’d been spending most of the past year in cockpits and doing her running through the halls of the base in casual uniforms.

Another plasma blast shot out, this one hitting her in the left shoulder. She snapped off a return shot that made the Nestafar cower back inside its booth as another pair of cubes got tossed out the back side. The entire machine then advanced two meters and stopped again, re-instigating the ground-shaking rumble of it tearing away at the rock, then a bit of steam emerged from the rear as water began to flow down underneath the machine and onto the hot cubes.

Groundwater…they must be getting close.

Ashley fired into the back of the machine, emptying 11 rounds inside of 5 seconds before she had to jump over another cluttered section. She was having to step around the cubes everywhere, literally dancing through them to keep moving as the concentration continued to increase, why she didn’t know, but there was no time to think and she kept firing into the back of the machine, melting through its covering and hopefully into some internal components.

Problem was, it was a digger designed to move through solid rock and was therefore unbelievably well reinforced, meaning they were going to have to pour a lot of plasma into it to stop it from breaking through to the surface.

A scattering of plasma orbs came from behind her whenever the other Archons had a clear shot, one of which finally nailed the sniper. The Nestafar took the hit to the head as it leaned out to fire again, with its body falling sideways down onto the growing puddle, on top of which another cube popped out and crushed one of its wings.

Ashley kept firing, trying to burn a hole into one spot on the backside all the way up till she got to the device…then she ducked into the booth and glanced at the controls. Nothing looked familiar so she just started jabbing buttons.

“Hell with it,” she said when nothing seemed to work. She pulled up her plasma rifle and blasted away at the control board.

The machine didn’t stop, but it did start a high-pitched whine, indicating that she’d managed to do something. The whine continued to increase, with no more cubes coming out from the back side, then finally there was a loud ‘thunk’ and the machine fell silent…hopefully irrevocably damaged.

“Woo,” Ashley said, stepping out of the booth and leaning against the flat backside of the digger as she breathed heavily. “That was close.”

“How far away are we?” Liara wondered.

“The map says…oh, that can’t be right,” Ashley said, double checking.

“Two meters,” Liara confirmed.

“They can blast through that from the outside,” the acolyte said, suddenly feeling a lot less confident. “I don’t see any dirt. How can we be 2 meters away?”

“Sheer wall?” Liara suggested.

Ashley shook her helmeted head. “I don’t like this. We have to seal this tunnel.”

“How the hell did they get this thing in here anyway?”

“Must have brought it through in pieces,” she said as some of the other Archons caught up. The Calavari were further back, but not nearly so far as she’d expected. She stepped forward and put her foot on one of the box-sized cubes. “Damn those are heavy.”

Liara latched her rifle over her back and knelt down to try and move one, wrapping it up in a bear hug and leveraging it up onto one side…then she let it back down, careful not to get her fingers or feet caught underneath. “I can’t get it. That is super dense.”

“Maybe they can,” Ashley suggested to the approaching Calavari.

“I doubt it,” Liara said pessimistically.

“We need to stack these up or find some other way to seal the tunnel,” she insisted, placing a hand on the rear of the digging machine.

Two of the other Archons stowed their weapons as well and worked together to drag one of the cubes over to the rear of the machine and centered it in the circular tunnel. “That’s one,” David said.

“You’re serious?” Liara asked as the others began teaming up and moving individual cubes around slowly.

“For the next five minutes,” Ashley said,” yes. Let’s see how hard this is before we run back for equipment.”

“You mean let’s see how hard it is for them,” Liara asked, pointing back at the approaching Calavari.

“Shut up and lift you pansy,” she said, finding a lonely cube to nestle up to and start shoving.

“Any of this familiar to you?” Mark asked Boen on a private comm channel as they climbed further down into a very unusual Keeper structure, making the Archon feel like he was inside a giant earthworm.

“No, you?”

“Big lizards…like iguanas. Don’t remember the name, but they were huge.”

“From where?” Boen asked, stepping across one of the ridges on the side of the tunnel that had now flattened out for the most part so that they could walk rather than climb down. Behind him the other Archons, Protovic, and Scionate followed, with the Protovic having numerous conversations amongst themselves. Whatever the Keepers were this place was clearly unnerving them.

“Pyramid database…a rimward race the V’kit’no’sat wiped out.”

“So much for magical technology.”

“Doesn’t mean it can’t be of use to us…and it would probably go a long way for the Nestafar.”

“You think there’s anything down here we can put to use, like now?”

“I’m kind of hoping so, otherwise we’re wasting our time. Our comms aren’t reaching back topside either, so we…I can’t stay down here too long.”

“Shielded, huh?” Boen said, checking and confirming that he couldn’t reach anyone else aside from those Archons in the ‘cave.’

“Got an alcove, Mark,” Kara’s voice broke in.

Mark readjusted his comm settings. “Where at?”

“Stick to your left and you’ll come to it,” she said from much further ahead. He had her and a couple others out exploring ahead of them where the cave branched while he stayed with the Alliance’s main group.

“Find any goodies?”

“Yes, but you need to see this yourself.”

Mark exchanged glances with Boen. “Can I get a hint?”

“I think I found the reason for the caverns in the mountain…and the sensor shielding.”

“On our way, twit.”

“Twit?” Kara asked.

“Yeah, you could just answer my question without playing games.”

“Alright fine,” she answered back, a little mock-miffed but loaded with sarcasm. “There’s a Nestafar research platform where they’ve been disassembling some of what looks like battle droids next to an egg chamber and a very large dinosaur-ish creature held in some sort of stasis.”

Mark took that all in for a moment. “You’re right, I need to see that for myself.”

“Thank you,” she said as her voice trailed off satisfied.

“Boss, did she just say dinosaur?”

“She said ‘dinosaur-ish.’”

“Please don’t wake it up,” Boen pleaded.

“What, you don’t want to say hi?” the trailblazer kidded, hopping over yet another ridge as he moved left and picked up the pace. He turned back, half looking over his shoulder without taking his eyes off the irregular floor in front of him. “Fellas, we found something. This way.”

“What is it?” Dre’for asked.

“Ah…you’ll just have to see it for yourself. I’m told it’s a ways up on our left,” he said, hearing Boen snicker beside him. “Shut up,” he whispered.

It took them several minutes to reach the alcove, which was halfway down a steeper section of tunnel but no less ridged. The opening was narrow but the interior spread out with the same grippy terrain covering floor, ceiling, and walls with not so much as a single corner or crevice in sight. In the middle of the alcove was the Nestafar tech, including a flat workspace they’d brought in over top of the floor ridges to allow them to work more normally with three other exits surrounding it that led into other chambers.

“They’ve been busy,” one of the Protovic said, walking up next to Mark.

“That’s not the impressive part,” he told him. “Kara, where are you?”

“Middle doorway.”

Mark pointed across the Nestafar workspace. “That way.”

“I assume the Alliance is going to work out an agreement to share the findings here,” Dre’for asked, addressing both Mark and the Protovic.

“Probably,” he answered as he stepped up onto the metallic plates and walked across, “but we have to keep it away from the Nestafar first…and find some way to get reinforcements here.”

“A message was sent prior to the destruction of the communications array,” the Protovic said, “or so the Calavari informed us.”

“I’m afraid not,” Mark said, crossing to the other side and stepping back off onto the ridged floor. “A signal was sent up to the relay satellite and the system transmitted it, but it appears the Nestafar had previously disabled the transmitter.”

“How do you know this?” the Scionate asked.

“Our station in orbit gets a wash of residual energy from the transmitter when it’s active. We went back and checked the records for the time that the signal was supposed to have been sent, and none was recorded.”

“So no one knows we’ve been attacked?” the Protovic repeated unnecessarily.

“And won’t until another transport comes through.”

“Didn’t some of the ships escape the syst…” Dre’for began to ask as they walked into the next chamber, coming out of a tiny S-shaped connection. Before them was a beast of a lifeform sleeping within a clear containment chamber that appeared to be kept chilled, due to the light amount of frost on the inside. Kara was standing before it, with the creature’s head nearly as tall as her body.

“Icra’nefor,” Dre’for said, visibly shrinking back half a step. The Protovic, likewise, were completely stunned.

Mark, even with forewarning found himself a bit froze in place.

“More like dragon,” Boen said. “Is this them?”

“I think so, though I didn’t think they were this big,” he said, then turned back to address the others. “Is this a Keeper?”

“We have never seen one to know,” the Protovic answered. “Only small bits of their technology.”

“If this one lives still,” the other Scionate, Kel’sad, asked, “will it be friend or foe? The Nestafar seemed more interesting in stealing the secrets of the Keepers’ technology rather than reviving their former masters. Perhaps they fear them. And perhaps so should we.”

“We’ll let it sleep for now,” Mark said, turning around to look at the others. “Agreed? At least until we have the base secured.”

“Agreed,” the Protovic said, and both Scionate bowed their heads in confirmation.

“Kara, you’ve got exploration team,” Mark said, making a snap decision. “The rest of you can stay down here and look around, so long as you don’t touch anything, but our comms are being blocked by this structure and we’ve still got a war to fight, so I’m heading back topside.”

“Yes, battle first,” Dre’for said. “There are still Nestafar in the base. We must eliminate them before we turn our attention here.”

“We will guard the entrance,” the Protovic offered.

“If they break through to the surface the enemy troops are coming straight here,” Mark reminded him. “Set up barricades and whatever else you have to. My people will map out this place and see if there are any other entrances the Nestafar can slip in.”

“What would you have us do?” the Scionate asked.

“Make sure no one wakes that thing up.”

Kel’sad growled. “Nor have people poking around where they don’t belong.”

“We will provide security for search teams and make sure none of us try to take advantage of the situation,” Dre’for promised, turning to the Protovic. “And you will keep them out save for those we let in. A few from each race under supervision.”

“I think that would be wise, though many will argue otherwise,” he said, turning to face Mark. “And they may not trust us or the other former allies of our now common enemy.”

“You guard the door, the Scionate patrol the inside, and my people search and map the rest of the base. I’ll inform the Calavari personally and have them set up some additional checkpoints, both against nosey pilots and Nestafar incursions. Boen, work out a comm relay chain so we can stay in touch. Not sure what the range of their dampening is.”

“We are in agreement. Go Human, the quicker the better for us all,” Dre’for urged. “The Nestafar cannot be permitted to possess this place.”

Mark nodded and began to run back, hopping from one floor ridge to another with Boen in tow. Kel’sad passed both of them by with ease and raced on ahead, jumping across multiple ridges with each lengthy bound. He got so far ahead that the Archons lost sight of him, though a pair of the Protovic were keeping decent pace behind, with both incidents proving mildly surprising.

“Are we getting soft?” he asked Boen as they climbed back out of the hole and into the Nestafar-made tunnel.

“Na, just been a long day,” the Archon said, doing a quick comm check. “Now I can’t get anyone from here, up top or below.”

“Work on it,” Mark urged as he ran off on the now level ground that his legs thanked him for dearly, which also gave him his answer. He’d learned in the past that no matter how good of shape he was in, doing new things was always exhausting...though Boen was right too. He was starting to feel an insistent urge for sleep growing in the back of his mind like a numb spot. Right now though there was work to do. Sleep would have to wait a bit longer.

10

“Status report?” Mark asked when his comm options returned as he ran down the Nestafar tunnel back towards the hole they’d dropped down, figuring he could either climb up it or move on down the tunnel the other way and come up in the maintenance area. Last he heard the other team had nearly broken through.

“Mark! Where have you been?” Sandra all but yelled.

“The caverns are shielded, we lost comms as soon as we went in. What’s happened?” he asked, knowing from her tone that something was wrong.

“What’s happened?” she asked incredulously. “The Nestafar are hitting the front doors, the back doors, and trying to dig their way into the tunnel that we stopped them from finishing. It’s like they all just went into berserk mode.”

“Oh crap,” Mark said, getting to the tunnel’s end and starting to claw his way up the loose gravel. “They know we found it.”

“Found what?”

“The reason they backstabbed the Alliance in the first place,” he said, trying to find applicable handholds. The opening wasn’t very far up, but he was going to have to pick his way up carefully. The Scionate probably just jumped all the way up, and for once he was jealous of their four-legged physique. “There’s an alien base underneath this one, full of advanced tech the Nestafar want really bad.”

“Seriously?”

“Afraid so, right down to the frozen dragon. What’s the status of the main doors?”

“Did you say frozen dragon?”

“Later…the doors?”

“More protomechs coming in while their walkers are trying to push through the debris pile. They’re not getting very far with it, but the mechs are scattering and the skeets are having a hard time chasing them all down, but so far we’re holding.”

“What’s the story with the tunnel?”

“Not good. The digger almost got to the surface before Ashley’s team knocked it out, but the Nestafar figured it out and started digging from the other side. Fortunately they’d established a barricade of rocks on the inside, which is slowing the enemy down, and the Calavari are trying to seal the breach but they can’t fight and build at the same time, not without sacrificing men by leaving them on the wrong side to die.”

“Do not let them do that…” Mark said with a huff as he pulled himself out of the hole and back into the lowest level of the Alliance base. “What are they trying to seal it with?”

“Some kind of concrete, fast drying I’m told, but they can dig back through it or move around unless we take out their digging machine. Ashley said they damaged it, but the Nestafar recovered it and pulled it outside where she thinks they’re working to repair it. At the moment they’re trying to break through the blockade by hand.”

“What about the other entrances?”

“Heavy fighting, but holding. They’re hitting them all, though, so we’re spreading people thin. The Calavari are organizing those lines with a sprinkling of Archon support.”

“Where are you?”

“Main doors. If they get in here we’re toast.”

“Are they still sitting outside the north doors?”

“Some are, but a lot of those units redeployed to the auxiliary exits and tunnel head.”

“How many are left?”

“Too many to fight our way through to get into the skies, if that’s what you mean.”

“Have they reestablished fighter cover on the base?”

“Limited, but there is some. I think we could handle them if we could only get out.”

“Oh, we’re getting out,” Mark said, running through the bowels of the Nestafar complex towards the elevator shaft that would take him back up to the hangar. “Patch me through to Orion.”

“That’s not a good idea,” she warned.

“I’m out of good ideas, you have any?”

“They’ll get creamed.”

“Put me through.”

“Iren’s in the perch.”

“Thanks,” he said, searching out the other Archon’s comm signature on his battlemap. “I need a patch through to the seda.”

“Will do,” Iren responded. “Where have you been?”

“Pissing off the enemy. We found their toy chest and apparently they want it back.”

“You calling down the fire?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Go.”

“Legat?” Mark asked as Iren connected the long range comm unit in the column to their suit to suit systems.

“Here, Archon. I have a status report.”

“Quickly,” Mark urged.

“The Nestafar found some type of ruins linked to subsurface caverns. They explored them briefly then left. Our men went in and had a look around, but there wasn’t much there aside from a series of empty rooms. We didn’t observe the Nestafar removing anything, but the architecture is clearly not Calavari.”

“Good,” Mark said, knowing that meant they probably had the mother lode beneath them and that the Nestafar were going to have to come through the Alliance to get it. Had they found items of value they could have taken them off planet and back to their territory for study…and eventually a massive tech upgrade if the stories of the Keepers were accurate, though Star Force above all others knew how difficult and time consuming it was to reverse engineer more advanced technology. “Now, I need a favor.”

“Name it,” Orion said anxiously.

“How are you set up for a hot drop?”

“The Nestafar fleet is standing between us and the surface, but we can get past them. Ramming another ship into the surface is off the table though.”

“Don’t need that much, just need you to open a door for us.”

“Our pleasure,” the Canderian said, his voice dark and eager for more combat.

Rena-AC-094-11 banked her dropship to the side, accelerating hard to slip by the Nestafar warships and their escorting Valeries along with dozens of other Basilisk-class dropships all taking individual tracks down to the surface at high speed to evade their pursuers. The first wisps of atmosphere began to pull on the stubby dropship and create a ripple effect in front of it as the heat of friction built against the powerful shields covering its nose as it shot past the destroyer on its port side.

A few anti-air plasma blasts tried to cross the gap to the basilisk but they never got close. The high massed ships simply couldn’t maneuver to counter the dropships, which had been designed for extremely fast troop insertions onto a planet. Even Star Force didn’t have basilisks, preferring to rely on their conventional dropships for transport, but the Canderians knew space and the challenges it presented, and as such had developed the means to get from their sedas down to the surface in short order, both to support their meager surface outposts as well as to counter lizard incursions near any of their homes.

The Archons had held back their development initially, but like the wise warriors they were they eventually submitted to the strategic value of the craft, even if they hadn’t employed them in their own ranks as of yet.

Rena watched as the pressure monitor rose on the basilisk’s shield statistics. She knew there was only so much they could take before they’d collapse and the hull would start to burn up from the suicidal friction it was undergoing…but risking it was the only way to penetrate the fighter screen and deliver her pair of mechs and their waiting pilots to the surface. For the first time in Canderous history an Archon had called for their help, not in the form of assistance, but as in saving their asses…and Rena and the rest of the spaceborn soldiers were hell bent on answering that call.

As the pressure built she began to kick in the basilisk’s anti-grav, pushing back against Daka and gently slowing the dropship’s descent as the atmosphere thickened. Already they have left the Nestafar fighters in their dust, but more remained below, circling above the Alliance base and waiting for them…so she had to keep her descent speed up.

Using a modification to the shields she steered the falling, wingless dropship towards a specific spot on the surface to keep from potentially colliding with the others. All of them were spaced out widely, then would break towards their true destination at the last possible moment, distracting the enemy from their intended landing zone enough that they couldn’t reposition ahead of them and be waiting in ambush.

“Prepare for landing,” she said over the intercom to the two modified thors when her altimeter told her it was time to pull up out of the meteor-like dive they were in. She ramped the anti-grav up to maximum power and banked the ship hard to the left as it decelerated, shooting it out towards the valley north of the base.

The pressure on the shields dropped like a rock and the fiery nose cone the ship was creating dissipated enough for Rena to see the grass-covered mountains below. She’d been staring down at them from the seda for years, but this would be her first touchdown on the surface of the planet, let alone at the Alliance base, short as it would be.

She started killing lateral momentum as the LZ approached, where several other basilisks were already setting down, then dialed back the anti-grav so it wouldn’t shoot the dropship back up into space. With the smooth touch of a professional pilot, the Canderian dropped the basilisk down into the valley like a slowly falling rock to kiss the surface on its six thick legs with the backwards facing cargo bay doors facing up the grassy incline. The protective hatch covering her cargo opened up within 4 seconds, exposing the tightly packed mechs.

A mechanical arm pushed the leftmost one out first, dropping its box-like form onto the ground with the second one falling out just as the first one began to unfurl. The dropship’s hatch reclosed and the basilisk took off, rocketing back up into the sky now much lighter than it had been on descent, heading off away from the base and back towards orbit on a course that would take it well away from the enemy’s ineffectual blockade.

Both mechs popped out their arms and legs from their ‘cargo mode’ and stood up, flexing their joints for a moment to insure that all was working as the missile launcher riding over the left shoulder of each cycled its projectiles around internally, loading the 3-prong firing rack as more of the basilisks dropped around them. Within a matter of minutes 56 thors were scaling the side of the mountain and picking at the Valeries with their anti-fighter lachars as the enemy fighters swooped by overhead.

The Nestafar troops staged outside the northern bay doors saw them coming and began to redeploy their medium and heavy walkers down the slope towards them. The taller giraffes fired red plasma orbs down at the thors from atop their long necks while the spiders seemed content to march forward and wait until they got closer in range. Meanwhile a flood of protomechs came down around the flanks, not wanting to get caught up between the larger machines.

To the Nestafar’s surprise the thors split along the center and ran up the hillside heading directly for the protomechs with a surprisingly fast gait. The little ones were faster and had the advantage of moving downhill, but the Canderians were able to regroup into attack clusters of five each and absolutely hammer the smaller mechs with heavy plasma cannons, one in each arm.

A low knob over the right shoulder of each thor held a standard lachar, as well as the anti-air version, that stitched the protomechs at range as they balled up and rolled down the hillside to try and escape the plasma torrent of those thors closest to them. The lachars chewed them up, able to accurately target them on the move with less than a dozen making it down to the bottom of the valley and attempting to climb back up to hit the Canderians from the rear.

One group of five, or a ‘star’ of mechs, turned back to deal with them while the rest continued up the hillside at a slow run, now split into two assault forces that were beginning to exchange fire with the Nestafar’s heavier walkers. The spiders began spitting out plasma streamers at those closest, hitting the thors with potent red streaks and melting the armor straight off their machines. The Canderians lost two before they knocked out the belly gun on the first one with a coordinated plasma attack, but there were six more coming up from behind with equally potent weapons.

The spiders also had missiles in play, similar to the fireflies their navy used. The glowing green missiles launched out a roof compartment on their backs and arched down onto the thors below, blasting away at several of them in a focused strike that wiped out an entire star within 20 seconds.

But the losses only seemed to enrage the Canderians rather than break their spirit. They charged upward, maintaining unit cohesion and methodically targeted the spiders’ belly-mounted streamers and taking them out of play while they suffered through the devastation of the missiles, accepting their losses in order to take away the walkers’ firepower.

18 of the thors went down before the spiders were neutered, with them continuing to fire off their remaining missiles and smaller point defense plasma weapons while the giraffes and thors went head to head in a plasma orb slugfest. A scattering of fighters circled about, strafing the mechs when they had an opening, but the automated lachars kept most of them at bay as the thors quickly discovered that the giraffes couldn’t fully rotate their heads around to cover their aft arc.

Soon the stars, or what was left of them, began splitting up and encircling the medium-sized walkers, each of which massed a bit more than they did, and took turns being the point man. The bipeds were more maneuverable than their counterparts, especially on the slope, so when one got badly damaged it would circle around behind and let a fresher thor take the brunt of the shots until they’d succeeded in decapitating the weapon mount off the walker, after which they’d ignore it and go after the others.

Not a single enemy had been taken out, save for the small protomechs which were now all dead. The walkers staggered about firing off secondary weapons as the Canderian swarm moved through their ranks as if picking flowers, one by one taking out the enemy’s heaviest weapons and ignoring their formidable armor.

The thors eventually moved up the hillside far enough to be able to come around and flank the Nestafar mechs from behind, finishing off the weapon cleavage of the giraffes then focusing on hitting their secondary plasma weapons as the spiders threw their last missiles at the thors. With more than half of their number down, the Canderians continued to pick apart the enemy with their plasma cannons while holding back on their own missiles, knowing that they wouldn’t do much good against the Nestafar’s chrome armor.

There were two exceptions, however, that kept charging up the hillside towards the hangar doors, leaving the rest of the mechs to fight it out behind them. Both thors unleashed their shoulder-mounted missiles at the base of the doors and the infantry stationed there, then began picking them off with their automated anti-air lachars when they took flight. Some of them fired back with rocket launchers, but the mechs were too heavily armored for that to matter. They were also bathed in dozens of tiny red plasma blasts coming from the infantry’s rifles, but the mechs simply shrugged it off and continued the slaughter.

Eventually the rest of them ran…on foot to avoid the anti-air, vacating the doors and abandoning the now besieged walkers who had little weaponry left to fight with. Those batteries that they did have were now being targeted by plasma at close range or with lachars and missiles from further out, gradually wearing down the Nestafar’s offensive capability until they were near to becoming irrelevant.

Before that happened the bay doors shook violently and began to grind open. The two thors turned around into guard positions and slowly advanced forward, sweeping up what little there was left of the infantry while making sure none snuck inside the base as Star Force skeets began to shoot out, first one at a time, then by the twos and threes as the doors opened wider. Behind them came a scattering of Valeries that had survived the initial ambush in the hangar along with 8 other fighter variants from the Alliance races. Behind them all came two Star Force gunships, loaded up with missiles, lachars, and scatterguns, that took to climbing straight up the mountain towards the peak while the fighters immediately mixed it up with the enemy.

Mark was among them, firing off a plasma streamer at one of the Spider-class walkers the moment he exited the doors. The blue jet of superheated xenon splashed across the walker’s back side and melted away a few inches of armor plating before the Archon pulled up and flashed into the sky, extremely happy to be back in the cockpit again and sticking it to the Nestafar directly. As he climbed he searched the sky for fighter contacts, finding several still hanging around and more off to the south.

“Boen, Kara, Iren…you’re with me. We’ve got some Valeries to kill.”

Origin

1

December 21, 2399

Jartul System

Daka

Mark flew in low, just skimming the brown grasses with the underside of his skeet’s shields as Kara and company came in high on the spider walker and hit the breach in its armor with multiple plasma orbs, most of which missed and impacted the intact armor around the hole, though two did slip through and cause more internal damage to the intimidating mech. A short plume of explosive debris shot back out but the spider stayed on its feet and continued walking towards the base doors where the onslaught was continuing. It fired back at the quick fighters with its secondary plasma weapons and missed badly, though it did manage to catch the tail tip of one of the skeets, punching through the shields and burning off a bit of the hull.

The fighter didn’t go down, instead it streaked across the walker with the others providing the diversion that allowed Mark to get in close at a perpendicular angle where he released a plasma streamer dead on target, filling the hole in the spider with a thick squirt gun shot of fiery blue plasma that burned away at the interior. Internal components melted and rehardened, turning part of the walking mechanisms to slag and freezing one of its six legs in place.

The giant machine staggered, nearly falling over before the pilot corrected for the malfunctioning leg. Using the other five it began limping forward, dragging the dead one across the ground and digging up the native grass as it moved slowly towards the Alliance base’s southern doors where numerous other walkers were in the process of blasting their way inside.

Mark shot his skeet to the left, keeping low to the ground and skimming the aft end of the spider before weaving an evasive pattern across the plain then rocketing back up into the sky when he was clear of the walkers’ return fire. He pulled over to the left and came around, giving him a good view of the enemy LZ further south and the line of ground troops crossing up towards the hangar doors like an army of ants…with several of them dead along the route.

The skeets had made quick work of the remaining Nestafar Valeries, losing only two of their own in the engagement. Those two might yet be recoverable, Mark didn’t know for sure, but air superiority had been returned to the Alliance. All the training they’d done against the Calavari had proven to make them very prepared for dealing with Valeries…especially those flown by less able pilots than the craft’s creators.

Knowing that their ground troops were now exposed, the Nestafar knew they had to push their ground advantage and break the base now, else they’d be picked apart from the sky. To that end the LZ had been receiving additional dropships, spewing walkers, protomechs, and infantry to support the others being slowly picked apart by the skeets and the few other Alliance craft in the air. Mark had sent his gunships up to try and harass the dropships in flight, but the truth was they had too few fighters to counter this large of a ground assault when the bay doors had already been breached.

He was keeping in contact with the defense team inside, which was reporting several holes forming in the trash heap covering the breaches in the doors. They weren’t big enough for the walkers to get through yet, but infantry was slipping through and trying to make a mess of things inside. To top it off several of the units assaulting the smaller entrances were also getting reinforced and at least one had gone down, with the Archons and Alliance troops on site reforming their lines further inside the base and keeping the enemy breach team contained for the moment.

The northern doors were still theirs, and the surviving Canderian mechs had left a pair on station outside while the rest had entered the base and walked the long distance over to the southern doors to assist if/when the Nestafar walkers broke through, adding considerable firepower to the makeshift defenses Mark and the others had erected the previous day.

As the trailblazer turned around and headed back towards the Nestafar lines he took a glance at his plasma levels…which read 23%. That wasn’t good, because the only way to seriously affect the heavily armored Nestafar walkers was by using the plasma streamer, which ate up plasma at a very fast rate. Before long he was going to have to try and reenter the base to get reloaded, as would the others, unless he felt like fighting out the rest of the battle with only his lachar.

The line of troops in the distance before him stretched across the entire length of the plain between the LZ and base with a larger group set directly outside the doors, but those were scattered around the debris from the gargantuan and half of them were dead walkers, which was making it difficult for the assaulting troops to throw a concentrated force against the doors…but they didn’t need much to break in now, and apparently their infantry had brought along enough explosives that they were busy making holes for the big machines to move in through.

With that in mind Mark sighted in on a trio of quickly moving dots moving up the line and tore after them, mindful of the larger walkers and their slow rotating, slow firing secondary weapons. While he would be difficult for them to hit, they were bound to get lucky once in a while and their weapons were powerful enough that even a partial hit would cause him serious problems.

He came in at a 45 degree angle and fired his lachar at one of the rolling balls, hitting it twice before nailing it with a plasma orb…then he shot across the lines and weaved away for a bit before circling around and coming back across to hit a second one in a similar manner, damaging another of the protomechs before it could get to the base. Both weren’t destroyed, but they were unable to maintain ball form and had to start limping their way forward on their legs once they transformed, one of which was missing a foot.

Many more of the rolling dots were making their way up to the base before Mark could shoot them all. The other skeets were picking off a few, with the rest of them teaming up to take down the spiders and giraffes one by one. The other races’ fighters were concentrated around the entrance, using the debris for cover as they made their strafing runs against the partially pinned walkers, letting Star Force hit the ones in the open.

Mark jerked his skeet up into the sky, aborting an attack on another of the protomechs as a tiny missile shot out towards him, seemingly coming out of nowhere. He rolled his left engine pod up while jamming the anti-grav at full power, dancing around the infantry-launched missile and missing it by 20 meters.

That was the 3rd time today that their damn infantry had nearly shot him. They were so small they didn’t appear on his sensors until the last second, and then only their weapons did, for their bodies were poor reflectors, making them almost invisible. If he looked close he could spot them visually, but with the speeds the skeets were strafing at that was next to impossible.

The missile turned to follow in his wake, but by the time it did Mark was too far away and traveling too fast for it to catch up, and once it expended its fuel supply it dropped from the sky and fell to the ground, exploding on impact and ironically killing two of their infantry that were unlucky enough to be flying by that spot at the time.

Mark took his random direction and turned it into a dive towards another spider, firing down from nearly straight above and seeing his plasma orbs virtually sink into the chrome armor and disappear before he broke off, firing another at a group of infantry and spraying them with mud from the hit that otherwise missed. In reality the plasma burnt a few inches off of the walker’s topside, but it would take multiple strafing runs to bust through…and if they managed to survive this whole ordeal Star Force was definitely going to snag some of that armor to copy.

“Boss, got another big one walking out of the LZ,” Boen reported over the comm.

“Wonderful…and us out of nukes.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Where are you at on plasma?”

“34%”

“Ignore it for now. We have to take pressure off the doors.”

“Can’t ignore it forever,” his fellow Gunstar pointed out. “And it looks like it’s got a lot more escorts this time around.”

“I’ll figure out something,” Mark promised. “Keep working on the walkers, and especially those damn protomechs. They can slip through sooner and I don’t want them chewing up the Canderian mechs before the big boys break through.”

“You think they will?”

“Break through or chew them up?” Mark asked, delivering a partial plasma streamer into a blast crack on a giraffe’s neck. It was well low of the head, making him wonder who had been targeting it there until another blue streak shot out and hit a split second after his did. It melted through, sheering off the top portion of the neck and taking away the walker’s primary weapon.

“Break through,” Boen clarified. “That trash heap is massive.”

“I’m getting reports that their infantry are carrying explosives in addition to the rocket launchers. They’re planting them in the heap and blasting it apart bit by bit when the walkers don’t have a shot.”

“That I didn’t know. You want us going after the infantry?”

“Not really, but if you have a clear shot take it.”

“Will do…you just worry about that super dragon.”

Mark spun his skeet around on a long loop, giving himself a moment to think before he flashed back into combat. The Nestafar had already landed a second mega walker and they’d managed to take it and a lot of other walkers out with their second nuke, the blast marks of which were still visible on the trail from the LZ up to the base, as was the remains of the giant machine. The line of ‘ants’ had moved to the side around it as if it wasn’t important, and now Mark understood why. He’d hoped they didn’t have a third sitting up in their jumpships to bring down, but apparently he’d been wrong.

He made a diagonal strafing run across the path heading back south, hitting another protomech then flying off towards the east as he came around closer to the LZ. There he saw the super dragon stretching out one of its enormous legs to take a step forward while the ‘small’ spiders and giraffes skittered out around it in a wide formation, forming a bulge in the ant line that was creeping its way out from the LZ and up towards the base.

Boen was right, they had to do something, and soon.

Mark flew in through the slit in the northern bay doors directly over a pair of thors and slipped inside the base along with three other skeets behind him. As soon as they got inside the doors ground closed, locking them in and the Nestafar out. So far the enemy hadn’t attempted another assault there, though they were making plenty of progress in other places.

The skeets flew across the cavernous bay and landed snug up against Star Force’s pillar and the refueling equipment that had been built inside it. Mark popped the hatch as the techs and a handful of grounded Archons ran out and began attaching refueling equipment to his skeet, both for the engines and the plasma, along with a third smaller one for the lachar that virtually never ran out of the scattering of physical particles included in the mostly energy cocktail.

“How we doing?” he asked Luke-593 as soon as he hit the deck, wearing his armor minus the helmet and gloves, both of which were sitting at the bottom of his cockpit in restraint bins.

“No mask?” Luke asked as they walked over and into the airlock while the techs were busily servicing the skeets.

“I’m trying not to breathe much,” he said, toggling the door closure routine and feeling the whirlwind of exchanged air to follow.

“We’re losing ground,” Luke said loudly so he could be heard over the noise, “but all fronts still have the enemy contained at the moment.”

“Found anything useful downstairs?” Mark asked as the sequence died out and the interior doors opened, with both Archons jogging off to the control room.

“Nada. We’ve pulled everyone back up save for two and a group of Protovic. All but one of the Scionate we had to divert to the auxiliary exits to hold them.”

“Tunnel?”

“Can’t get it sealed. Not enough dry time and their digger is operational again…or they brought in a new one. They keep cutting through or digging new tunnels around and we have to keep falling back. We’re trying to erect a larger blockade at the base intersection, but if we don’t take out the digger they’ll tunnel back in within a week.”

“A week I’ll take,” Mark said, walking in on a very sparse command staff, none of which were Archons. The shipless pilots and techs had a holographic battlemap glowing in the center of the room, detailing the conflict outside as well as the numerous ones on the perimeter of the base. Mark looked over the icons representing the auxiliary exits and saw the mass of infantry on the exterior.

“Have they snuck a dropship by us or are these units flying in on their own?”

“No dropships have deviated from their orbit to landing zone flight path, aside from the one the gunships shot down,” one of the techs reported. “No units have emerged from the crash site and no recovery units have been sent out.”

“Any progress on that third nuke?”

“No go,” Luke told him. “Not even close.”

“Damn,” Mark said, leaning on the holoprojector table. “We’ve got to have something to hit the big one with. If it was alone we might be able to pick it to death, but it’s got an army of escorts.”

“We need to get the gun,” Luke pointed out, “unless you’re worried about it ramming through the doors.”

“We can’t get a look at it without taking down the spiders ringing it.”

“We could introduce one of the dropships to it?”

Mark looked over at the other Archon. “I don’t think it’d get through, and nobody is making a one-way run, I don’t care how bad the situation is.”

“Their anti-air sucks, and if we build up enough speed prior to impact…”

“I’ve already considered that. And I didn’t mean get through their weaponsfire, I meant get through its hull. It took a nuke to crack the other two, and they barely got the job done.”

“Oh…don’t suppose we can tip it over?”

Mark’s eyes suddenly went wide as a crazy idea hit him. “What do we have that might trip it?”

“Sorry, no tow cables.”

“We don’t have to kill the thing, just keep it away from the base.”

“If you can’t stop their other walkers it’s not going to matter. They’re about through as it is and the Alliance fighters don’t have enough firepower to take all of them down. The only thing…”

“The approaches,” Mark said, getting the same idea as Luke a split second later.

“The starship pieces are too big to move, not that we could get them in there anyway, but…”

“…we do have a lot of dead mechs on the north side.”

“And a big Protovic transport to help move them, along with some others…if you can thin the herd out there first.”

Mark dug a finger in the Archon’s chest as he turned to leave. “Make it happen,” he said, taking one last glance at the battlemap and the incursions happening on the surface, then he took off to head back to his skeet, knowing it wouldn’t take long to get it refueled. When he got back outside he noticed, to his satisfaction, that a group of techs were in the process of loading two missiles underneath…but they weren’t of Star Force design. Another standing nearby came over to explain as the first of the four skeets took off and headed back out towards the northern bay doors.

“A present from the Gnar, simple release. We’re arming them now so don’t bump into anything on your way out.”

“What yield?”

“About 200 kilotons.”

“How many?”

“They had six stashed away, with the other four going on their craft. They were buried under debris, or so they said. I think they were just holding them back until now.”

“I’ll take what I can get,” he said, clapping the man on the shoulder as he climbed up into the open cockpit and resealed it as he waited for them to finish, coughing out a bit of the harsh atmosphere as the air inside recycled to get the noxious compounds out. While he waited he triggered his comm as he checked to make sure his fuel and weapons were at full power, which they were.

“Boen, you busy?”

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Got a couple party favors from the Gnar. Not enough to do our big boy in but I should be able to wound a couple of spiders. I’m about to come out, get your ass in here and refueled, then I need your help with plan B.”

“Please tell me plan ‘B’ stands for bomb?”

“‘B’ for barricade,” he explained as the techs rushed away from his skeet and one of them gave him a thumbs up. “I’ll fill you in later.”

“Heading in,” Boen said as Mark lifted off and headed for the doors. The other 3 skeets were already gone, but the doors were still cracked open, either waiting on him or they’d just decided to keep them open until they saw an enemy closing in. On his battlemap he saw a few other skeets circling around to the north but he beat them there and ducked through the visibly narrow gap that drastically widened at the last moment, then he was out of the base and back into the sky, turning off to the right and heading along the curve of the mountain rather than flying straight over.

“Heard you picked up some bombs?” Kara asked.

“Be there shortly,” Mark answered. “Got some infantry to hit first.”

“You’re wasting them on infantry?”

“No, but our defense teams are getting clobbered,” he said, approaching the first site and getting a little bit more altitude sufficient to make a strafing run…except he didn’t increase speed. “Are you refueled?”

“Yes.”

“Keep hitting the protomechs, we’ll deal with the big ones when everyone gets cycled through.”

“Better hurry. That big one is slow, but it’s making progress.”

“I know,” he said, coming to an almost standstill over one of the exterior exits but retaining just enough of a drift to keep the skeet moving laterally to make it a bit harder to target. He switched over to scatter gun and fired into the assembled infantry outside and hit his anti-grav, rocketing him up into the sky as he pointed the nose down, keeping the gun in line as he hammered the Nestafar outside, knocking out several rocket launchers before they had a chance to fire and thinning the numbers of reinforcements they had to throw at the defense teams inside.

2

Mark came in on the spider walker from behind in a lazy dive bomb and released the second of his Gnar bombs, rocketing up into the sky immediately upon release, though he still felt the concussion wave hit the hull and rock him around a bit. When he eventually got turned around so he could see the result of the blast another of the Nestafar walkers was partially broken apart and now sprawled on yet another one of the paths through the debris field, blocking access to the hangar doors.

Several other walkers were damaged and knocked down, along with the scattered remains of multiple protomechs and a slew of infantry that had been in the blast wave. Never the less, three walkers were still battering the already breached hangar doors, methodically tearing away at the trash heap that was holding them back. That said, the flow of reinforcements coming into that location was beginning to grow thinner…though the bottleneck of walkers being backed up behind the blockades the skeets were strategically laying down was growing very deep, so much so that the fighters had to avoid flying over that area directly for fear of getting hit by a mass of random weapons fire coming up into the sky.

“Nice placement,” Kara commented.

“Wish we had a few dozen more of those,” Mark responded as he ducked down toward the starship remains and fired a few orbs into the side of one of the spiders near the doors, expanding upon a topside hole that the fighters had been pecking into it.

“If we slow them down enough we can whittle them to death,” Boen added, sensing Mark’s mood.

“I don’t think we can keep them off the base long enough to try,” he said reluctantly as the other Archon found his wing and dropped in cattycorner to his right.

“Got any better ideas?”

“I’m working on it, but if you want to steal my thunder and break out a brilliant strategy to save the day…be my guest.”

“Target the debris,” Boen replied pithily as the pair shot past an approaching giraffe and nailed it in the left flank that did little more than mark it as a target with a few dimples in its armor.

“With what?”

“Dropship with tow cables.”

“They’d be sitting ducks,” Mark reminded him.

“We have to block the inroads and we’re running out of time. Unless you’ve found some more explosives to use, what else do we have to work with?”

Just then he got a proximity warning, highlighting the area around the mega walker, indicating that it had just become a no fly zone.

“Who tagged that?” Mark asked over the comm, too busy flying and shooting to search out the ID tag in the battlemap database.

“Wasn’t me,” Boen asked, his voice clearly confused.

“Nor me,” Kara answered.

“Canderous,” Sandra said, having taken a moment to swing up over the base clear of incoming fire so she could look it up.

Just then a target appeared high in the sky, streaking down towards the planet and smashing into the line of walkers just ahead of the super dragon. The oversized missile detonated on impact and knocked several of the medium and heavy walkers aside while gouging out a larger crater. It was followed by another, and another, and another…all the way up to six missiles before the dust began to settle and the carnage exacted on the ‘ant train’ started to show through.

Mark pulled off his current attack run and got some altitude so he could see the damage, as well as comming the seda. “What was that?”

“A few basilisks filled with improvised explosives,” Orion answered immediately. “Thought you could use the assistance.”

“Tell me they were unmanned,” Mark demanded angrily.

“They were unmanned,” the Legat confirmed. “Coordinate locked and released.”

“If you were aiming for the big one you missed.”

“Unfortunately yes. Did we get any of the smaller ones?”

“You got a lot of the less big ones…I’d hesitate to call them small. You got any other tricks up your sleeve, because we’re running short down here?”

“That was our last tactical option, short of violating your standing orders.”

“Stick to protocol no matter what,” Mark told him firmly. “Death before dishonor.”

“Death before dishonor,” Orion repeated. “If it helps, it appears that they’ve begun recovering dropships. The last few enroute are probably going to give you the tally of the ground forces you have to overcome.”

“Copy that,” Mark said, slightly relieved. He’d felt like the flow of Nestafar reinforcements would never stop…and like the Legat had said, he now had a semi-firm number to work with.

“Boen, Kara. Looks like we’re going to have to rack up a high kill count.”

“Will do, boss,” Boen acknowledged.

“I’m up for the challenge,” Kara agreed.

“Three groups,” Mark ordered. “You each take one and we hit one walker at a time, starting with those near the doors. Opposite strafing runs, target topside.”

“That’s more like it,” Boen said, breaking off Mark’s wing and flying off to rally the other skeets to him.

“We work our way back up the flow and let them crawl over their dead.”

“And the super dragon?” Kara asked.

“We’ll jump off that bridge when we come to it. Right now focus on keeping them off the doors.”

“On it,” she said, dipping down with another two skeets behind her and releasing a plasma streamer into the top side of a spider. Small bits of plasma shot back up at her fighter but they missed badly, then the other two came through adding their blue lances and damaging approximately the same spot, melting off armor but not penetrating all the way through.

“We’ll make as many refueling runs as needed, just unload on them,” Mark said, using his control board to call more than a dozen fighters to his wing. Kara and Boen were doing the same, forming up for a more focused attack run that would have them coming in from approximately opposite sides. He let them go first, holding his group back and circling around to a northern approach as he watched on the sensors as they  moved in.

It took both groups, with each fighter unloading a streamer onto the top side, but they managed to break through the top of the spider’s armor, leaving it open for Mark’s group. Given the angle they were coming down the mountain and the small hollow the doors sat in, his skeets had to drift out over the target to fire, but the trailblazer brought them down three wide and directly overhead where they fired down onto the top of the spider.

The walker collapsed directly in front of the doors, its innards junk, while one of the skeets took a hit and went spiraling off towards the debris field…then it rocketed high up into the sky as the pilot amped up his anti-grav in a last ditch survival tactic. He was totally out of control, but the skeet wasn’t going to crash. Mark knew he’d be able to limp off, but that was one less fighter they now had to throw at the enemy.

Angry, Mark abandoned his group and dropped his skeet straight down to the deck and pancaked out a few meters above the ground, bracketed by debris on either side with a straight targeting line to the underside of the second closest walker to the hangar doors. He fired off another plasma streamer directly into the underside cannon, slagging it then rocketing back up much as the other skeet had before the walkers and protomechs in the area could concentrate their fire on him.

“Nice hit,” Kara commented. “Don’t do that again. They’ll be ready for it.”

“Less to pound on the doors with,” Mark said, though he was in agreement. He got his skeet under control and rendezvoused with his attack group while the other two were already making a run against the next spider in line, ignoring the giraffe that was in between. He also targeted the spider, placing an attack waypoint on top for his group to focus on, then he sped them in at almost reckless speed, crossing over the target half a second after the last of Kara’s group.

He released a dual plasma orb attack, nailing the top of the target while those behind him mixed it up, either firing their plasma streamers in a phaser-like beam that crossed over the walker or pummeled it with additional orbs. Mark flipped around quickly and went back in underneath the rest of his approaching group that had got strung out and hit the mech while its weapons were focused the other way, pouring a streamer in on a slow attack dive and crumpling the walker to the ground.

This time, however, the walker exploded along the midsection, blowing out all six legs like harpoons, two of which speared nearby giraffes, knocking one down and puncturing the other just below the neck. That one didn’t get back up, though the other did, with the walkers’ attention now firmly on the fighters and not the hangar doors.

Another small explosion in the debris pile flashed, followed by a wash of tiny pieces scattering out onto the hangar deck. Soon after one of the rolling spheres pushed its way through and was immediately hit by more than a dozen plasma orbs, melting it on contact and sending its broken form careening off towards the thors. One of them stepped aside, shooting it again as it slid past, then it retook its guardian position, waiting for the next one to come through.

Instead it was a swath of infantry, most of whom were hit by the plasma, which had thoroughly chewed up the floor around the entry point. Those few that survived flew off high and tried to escape into the cavernous ceiling. Several of them were downed by Archon snipers with lachar rifles, but a few managed to get free.

Those were tracked down by another team of Archons circling overhead in a falcon dropship, which flew nearby with gunners in its open doors, either shooting the enemy out of the sky or pursuing them to the ground wherever they chose to land and dealing with them there, though the Protovic were handing most of the infantry resistance on the ground, scurrying about all over the hangar deck, insistent on making sure not one of the treasonous Nestafar made it to any of the base entry points.

The rest of the Alliance personnel in the hangar were waiting around the bay doors, ready to back up the mechs if/when the enemy walkers broke through. So far nothing larger than the protomechs had gotten in, but the debris pile was getting thinner and thinner and soon the highest holes would be open, which would let in an unending stream of infantry that would be much harder to target.

Then the incursions abruptly stopped. The explosions on the exterior of the debris pile cut out, the protomechs squeezing through ceased, and the infantry sneaking their way in disappeared. The Canderians dutifully stayed at their posts, weapons trained on the holes for nearly two hours before the skeets came back in, half as many as there were that had gone out.

The Canderians received new orders from the Archons, indicating that two mechs go on guard duty and the others begin cycling through rest cycles. As those that were recalled walked back over to the Star Force column they saw several dropships lift off and depart out of the northern hangar doors, to where they weren’t told. The mechwarriors were simply instructed to get back to the Star Force complex and get some food and sleep, for they didn’t know when the assault would begin again.

Vikar climbed out of his thor and down to the deck as an additional pair of skeets came back, both battle scarred in numerous places, almost so much so that he didn’t know how the aircraft were still flying. They set down on the hangar deck close to the entry airlock and their cockpits opened just as the Canderian was passing by. Both pilots, Archons judging by their armor, looked exhausted and neither one bothered to put on a breath mask or their helmets as they walked over to the column.

Vikar waited until the air had recycled inside before he asked them to speak, but he was very curious as to what was going on.

“Is the enemy defeated or have they withdrawn?”

“Withdrawn,” Kara told him, her voice dark and angry. “But not far. They’re holding position just outside the debris field.”

Vikar frowned. “Why did they stop?”

Boen kicked the control terminal in the airlock out of frustration just before the inner doors opened. “Because we killed almost every walker they sent up to the base and now they’re rethinking their game plan.”

“You don’t sound pleased,” the Canderian said respectfully as the Archons bumped elbows and began to walk out side by side with Vikar trailing.

“We lost Mark,” Kara said, half glancing over her shoulder.

“The trailblazer?”

“No, the other Mark,” Boen growled sarcastically until Kara put a warning hand on his shoulder. His demeanor softened, but the pain he was feeling still lingered on his features. “He went down on the wrong side of the wreckage, right where the Nestafar have camped out. We can’t get to him, and two more of us got shot down trying.”

“Ground op recovery then?”

“It’d be suicide,” Kara said, frustration coloring her voice. “If he even survived the crash.”

“I know he did,” Boen said forcefully. “It’s afterward that concerns me.”

“If he’s alive we cannot leave him there,” the Canderian said, a bit more forcefully.

“If he survived,” Kara said before Boen could snap, “then he was most likely killed shortly thereafter. I’d give Mark the benefit of the doubt regardless, but with so many walkers and protomechs around he wouldn’t stand much of a chance.”

Vikar thought that over as he followed the Archons further into the base that he’d never set foot in before. “Where are we to report to?”

Kara stopped walking and turned around, glancing over him once. “Next hallway, turn right. Staircase on your left. Three floors up. You’ll find food and supplies there, and there are plenty of empty quarters on the upper levels.”

“Thank you,” Vikar said, respectfully breaking off from the group and leading the handful of other mechwarriors that had been trailing behind him at a distance.

“Are you coming with me or not?” Boen whispered as the Archons walked off another direction.

“To do what?”

“Confirmation at the minimum.”

“It’s not worth the risk. You know he’d say that.”

“At this point I’m starting not to care.”

Kara swung so fast Boen barely saw the elbow coming. He reacted instinctively, shrugging his right shoulder up and ducking his head to deflect the blow but it was too late. Her elbow nailed him in the head and spun him around as he fell to the ground.

“Snap out of it!” she yelled down at him. “He’s not the only one missing out there.”

Boen shook the stars from his vision, but the pain was useful in clearing his head. He focused on it and bled away his panic, then looked up at Kara’s bleary eyes that were barely holding back tears. His armor scraped on the floor as he repositioned himself and slid up onto his feet, standing up in front of her and staring directly into her face.

“If it was Greg, or Jason, or Sara, or one of the other trailblazers out there Mark would go,” he said softly, containing the anger within. “And I’m going for him. I won’t get myself killed recklessly, but I have to try and at least get eyes on his crash site.”

Kara bit into her lower lip, trying to keep her voice and nerve steady. “Then you’d better knock me out first, because I won’t let you.”

Boen stared into her eyes, moving a few inches closer, daring her to do so…then his expression softened and he stepped up on the tips of his toes and kissed her on the forehead before nudging past her on the way to the armory.

Kara didn’t move for nearly 30 seconds, simply standing in place as she knew what he was doing was right…but that it would probably also get him killed. Finally the tears broke through and began streaming down her face, which she just let run, bleeding off the emotional overload and recalming her mind, then she walked off to the control room, knowing that without Mark someone else had to take command and find a way to keep the rest of them alive.

3

Boen slipped out of the gap in the southern doors just before the dropships inside the hangar began to reposition and add to the stack, shoring up the makeshift barrier with extra material gathered from around the base, including some large panels that the Calavari were welding into place over the uppermost holes. They knew they wouldn’t stand up to even a single plasma blast from one of the Nestafar walkers, but they would slow down the infantry when they came back.

Boen knew he wouldn’t be able to get back inside that way again, but it didn’t matter. He had to get out to where Mark had gone down. Fortunately his acolyte armor blended in well with the pieces of walkers laying around, but he was unsure of how well he could hide against the Nestafar sensors and the eyes of their infantry. His armor would reduce his infrared signature to almost nothing, but he still wasn’t very hopeful. Jogging off through one of the mini-canyons in the debris field he began watching and listening intently to pick up any sign of the enemy, hopefully before they spotted him.

They shouldn’t have been anywhere near the doors if they were holding position, but there was no guarantee how long they were going to stay put. Boen also wondered how many of the walkers’ crews were still alive and meandering about. They’d had enough time to find their way out of the graveyard he was picking his way through now, but he had the distinct feeling that he wasn’t alone as he stooped down and slid underneath a giant spider’s leg and onto the charred ground on the other side.

Ash was everywhere from the nuke and starship impact. The grass was completely gone, vaporized in one or the other, and giant furrows had been dug out from the various pieces of cargo ship debris, making for a series of mini mountains for Boen to huff his way across…all of which were loaded down with debris. The pathways that had existed through the field were now cluttered with dead walkers, so much so that even an individual Human had trouble finding a way through without having to climb up and over each dead piece of military machinery, and as the hours stretched on Boen was beginning to envy the Nestafar’s ability to fly, which gave their infantry a huge advantage in this type of terrain.

But he wasn’t out here to fight, he was out here to skulk, and as the day gradually transitioned into night he finally began to approach the largest piece of the gargantuan, which was buried in the ground and sticking up at a 45 degree angle, forming an impromptu mountain on the other side of which Mark’s skeet had gone down…which was where the remaining units of the Nestafar army were also camped out, including the super dragon.

The walkers had been coming around the massive heap on the east side, so Boen felt he had the best chance by going west and hiding in the debris as he moved, but he didn’t get very far into the junk yard before he heard a flap of wings and ducked under cover. A few moments later a rifle-toting Nestafar soldier flew by a few meters off the ground, weaving its way through the debris canyons, obviously on patrol…meaning Boen had to be extra careful from here on out.

It took him another 2 hours just to get to the edge of the debris mountain where he could see down onto the Nestafar camp…which was, in fact, a camp. Somehow the enemy had brought portable buildings with them and had several set up in a ring around which the walkers were parked. The big one was on the south side of the camp and facing north, looking down on all the smaller ones, and Boen could barely make out a slew of protomechs parked around their feet, but the infantry were too small to see, even with his helmet vision enhancements.

The infantry patrolling the debris field were another matter. Those he could see clearly, the trick was in keeping them from seeing him. Fortunately there were many places to hide, but there wasn’t many where he could advance more than a few dozen meters at a time before he’d have to backtrack or go laterally to maneuver around a piece of junk he couldn’t climb over, or couldn’t risk climbing over and being seen.

Partway through his trek he began to think Kara was right, that he was just wasting his time and recklessly putting himself at risk, but a part of him just couldn’t let go. He had to see this through for Mark’s sake, even if there wasn’t anything he could do other than confirm that he was, in fact, dead.

Suddenly there were wing flaps over top of him and he glanced up just in time to see the feet of a Nestafar appear a meter over his head from behind a piece of debris. The enemy didn’t move on, but rather tipped its rifle down after a moment of shocked realization and fired.

Boen moved reflexively, equally surprised, and got a hand on its foot by the time it pulled the trigger. The plasma blast hit him in the right shoulder, melting away the top layer of armor as he yanked the flying soldier out of the air and pulled it down to the ground, bringing around his right fist and imbedding it in its torso twice before yanking away the rifle and turning it back on its owner.

He buried the muzzle in its chest and fired, hoping to diminish the sound of the shot, then he scurried off, leaving both the corpse and weapon behind as he tried to find a new hole to hide in in case the weaponsfire drew others.

Which it did a few minutes later. Tucked under a piece of flat hull that had half imbedded into the ground forming a lean-to with other debris piled on top, Boen waited and listened as several other Nestafar flew in and around the area. He had only a narrow line of sight, but he could hear them moving about, searching for the target that had downed the patrol, of which they had to have found by now.

Boen waited for a very long time, well past the last audible wing flap, before he slowly crawled out of his hiding place and further into the debris field. He kept low and moved very slowly, hoping to keep his visual movement down so he could blend in with the rest of the random junk lying all over the place. With the cover of night he hoped that tactic would be successful, essentially ‘playing rock’ as he crept in towards the giant mountain of refuse.

When he could he kept an eye on the enemy camp, but most of the time it was obscured from view. Twice he had to lay flat and play dead when patrols flew by, both of which missed him, fortunately, because there were no available holes to jump into had he wanted to. When he finally got to the crash site he was able to slip inside what was left of the ship’s corridors and crawl through the crumpled passageways, taking him out of sight of the aerial patrols.

The portion of the ship he was climbing through, however, was totally torqued out of proportion. The hallways were twisted, bent, smashed, and every other word imaginable that was an antonym for ‘straight.’ Boen found himself doubling back multiple times as he tried to make his way forward, not so much ‘up’ the mountain but through it, hoping to find a hole on the other side to climb out of or at least look through. Mark’s skeet had impacted near the bottom of the pile, yet inside several ringing pieces of debris. It had disappeared down inside the trash heap, but at the time Boen couldn’t get a good view as to exactly where, for he was dodging a mass of anti-air fire.

The grey skeet Mark had been piloting at the time was going to be difficult to find, as opposed to the normal gold/chrome version of his personal craft. In the chaos of the battle and Mark’s absence, his own skeet had been taken by another pilot, one that had not fared so well, shot down by the Nestafar fighters early on. After that there had been a swapping of pilots and everyone grabbing what available craft there were without regards to the previous owners or Clan colors.

The grey one he had been flying was one of the spares/basic models that hadn’t been assigned to any one pilot, and unfortunately the coloration was nearly identical to the wreckage of the cargo ship. Boen had mentally tagged the location he’d seen him go down in, but the more hours that passed and the more he thought it over the fuzzier the memory got.

The various creaks and moans coming from the remains of the ship also worried him. He wasn’t walking/climbing through a stable structure and the pit of his stomach kept falling out every time he heard a tremor above, thinking that the whole thing was going to smash down on top of him. He also wondered if Mark had been crushed under debris, or maybe was still trapped inside his cockpit cocoon, unable to pop the hatch because he was buried underneath tons of rubble.

Every possible scenario flashed through Boen’s mind multiple times as he searched for a way through the crashed ship. By the time he finally saw a beam of light coming down into his current area he realized that it must be morning already and was grateful for even a small sign that he was near the other side.

The hole was only fist-sized and punctured through by a beam from outside, but it did give him a view down the slope. He pushed his head up against the hole and tried to look down to where he thought the skeet had hit, but he didn’t have the right angle.

Another tremor shook the structure, this one much louder and stronger with the epicenter close by. Boen walked off from the hole and kept moving, knowing that the sooner he found a way out onto the southern slope the better he’d feel about potential cave-ins, but then he’d be exposed to virtually every gun in the Nestafar camp…which appeared to still be holding defensive positions. Why they hadn’t hit the base again he didn’t know, but he was glad Kara and the others were getting a breather to reestablish their defenses.

A second tremor shook the structure and Boen could clearly hear a piece fall down with a crash, as well as several Nestafar voices off in the distance. The Archon pulled his plasma rifle off his back, then thought better of it. He switched it out for his stinger pistol, knowing that raising an alarm was probably the worst thing he could do right now, so if he had to shoot one or more of them, quiet was definitely the way to go.

Boen followed the occasional sounds through the remains, again having to double back several times to eventually end up traveling in a straight line. He knew he was getting close when he could hear the whine of a walker’s joints, then a giant limb thrust through a wall two sections over from where he was standing. There was a bit of a clear airway through the broken walls, enough for him to see the sunlight shoot in around the tip of the walker’s chrome leg, then the limb bent and dragged a huge chunk of the structure out with it, exposing the interior to more daylight.

Boen backtracked immediately, then tried to flank the breach point, having to move through the labyrinth at its pace and continually reminding himself not to get flustered. Flustered Archons were dead Archons, as the old saying went, so he forced himself to focus on the task at hand and eventually found a way around.

Just as he was walking through the last section before it opened up onto a partially sunlit, cockeyed room his feet were lassoed together and he fell forward onto his knees…suddenly finding the tip of a plasma rifle in his face.

It quickly pulled back and the pressure on his legs released, just in time for Boen to look up and stare into an identical, yet green helmet a few inches away from him.

He was about to say something but an armored finger shot up in front of the helmet, indicating that he be silent. It followed with several Archon hand signals, telling Boen that there were troops nearby.

The Archon got to his feet and responded in kind, noticing crushed plates on Mark’s armor along his left leg. He pointed to it and Mark responded with a ‘snapping’ motion, indicating that the bone had been broken and his leg was out of action.

Putting all questions aside, Boen signaled to Mark to wait, then began walking off a few meters in other directions, trying to get a feel for where the Nestafar were without leaving the trailblazer behind. He had wisely tucked himself up under a shelf-like section of wall that had blown out and was just high enough for him to slide under while laying down, making for the perfect ambush hole.

He wanted to use his suit to suit comm to talk to him, but if Mark had restricted himself to hand signals then there was probably a reason, so he responded in kind and kept the dialog to hands only. Around the next corner he heard footsteps and slinked up against the wall and waited…then grabbed the Nestafar by the throat as it appeared and shot it with his pistol in the chest twice, splattering green paint laden with stun energy on its ugly body before tossing it aside.

Boen ducked around the corner, searching for any others but finding none. He pulled the unconscious enemy aside and stuffed it in a hole in the wall before he went back to Mark where he signaled that he had a way out.

Mark nodded and reached out a hand, then bit down hard on his teeth as Boen dragged him out and up onto his one good foot, then he grabbed Mark’s arm and ducked his torso underneath, hefting him up into an uncomfortable fireman’s carry on top of his weapon’s rack, though the armor on Mark’s chest kept him from feeling the jabbing pressure. Boen kept his pistol in his right hand as he wrapped it around Mark’s good leg, trying to keep as much pressure off the bad one as possible, then in a crouching motion he carried him back the way he had come using his constantly updating battlemap to recall the route he had come in on.

Boen moved Mark back a third of the way through the artificial mountain before he finally set him down and took his own helmet off, with Mark following suit. To Boen’s surprise his face was bloodied, though from what injury he couldn’t be sure.

“You look pretty banged up, boss,” Boen whispered.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Looking for you.”

“What’s the condition of the base?”

“Holding. The Nestafar pulled back and are camped just a little ways yonder. We busted up so many of their walkers I think it put a hold on their plans, but we’re low on skeets.”

“What about the other entrances?”

“We’ve secured the auxiliaries, but they’re gaining ground in the tunnel and we can’t stop them. They’ve only got the troops hiding in the tunnel, because we’ve cut them off outside, but they got a lot of protomechs in there along with the infantry.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know, could be through already if they caught a natural fissure. It took me forever to get here.”

“Thanks.”

“Haven’t got you out yet, and we can’t go back in through the main doors either. They’re sealed up real good by now.”

“Get a dropship to pick us up if we can get clear…assuming we have any left?”

“That’s the plan, but we’ve got a long way to go and most of it is above ground…and they’ve got patrols roaming the debris.”

“They’ve been after me ever since the crash. I dug out underneath the debris and tried to avoid attention but they found me halfway through. Couldn’t get at me with so much junk in the way, until they brought in one of the walkers and tried to crush me. Caught my leg, but I was able to pull free and find my way in here. It’s messed up pretty bad.”

“How’s your head?”

“Fine as far as I know, why?”

“Your face is bloody.”

“It’s from my leg. I had to go upside down several times crawling and it seeped through my armor.”

“You don’t sound like you’re in a lot of pain.”

“Only when I move, right now it’s just numb.”

“That’s a bad sign.”

“I know, and my body’s run out of ambrosia, so I’ve got those headaches to deal with and not enough to speed up my healing, though as bad as it felt when it broke I think I’m going to need a regenerator.”

“Which is up on the seda.”

“Details,” Mark said sarcastically. “Let’s get moving.”

“Don’t suppose we can chuck your armor.”

“If you can get the Nestafar to agree to not shoot me, sure.”

“Just saying, you’re fairly heavy,” he said, glancing around. “Reason for no comms?”

“Just didn’t want to give them a signal to trace.”

“Let’s keep it that way,” Boen said, rotating his helmet around in his hands. “We’re going to need every advantage that we can get.”

Mark nodded. “Let’s go,” he said, putting his helmet back on and reaching a hand up for Boen to grab.

4

Ashley knelt next to the wall silently, pressing her ear against the bare rock as the other Archons and Scionate around her kept absolutely still.

“I hear it,” she said softly, looking up at Ske’rar. “They’re digging parallel to us.”

“We only have one choice if we wish to prevent them from breaking through,” the Scionate said in a frustrated snarl. “To go outside and fight our way back in…unless you’ve learned how to walk through rock.”

“He’s right,” Chase-918 agreed.

Ashley sighed then glanced up at the other Archon from her kneeling position. “You up for some running?”

“Always,” he said eagerly.

“Four man team, me, Chase, Less, and Terry. Everyone else keep slowing them down,” she said, standing up and walking back along the tunnel and accelerating up into a jog with the other three joining her.

Ske’rar also followed. “I will come as well.”

“So long as you can keep up, because we’re going on foot,” Ashley said, gradually increasing her pace.

“Why not use a transport?”

“Because I think the only reason the big boys stopped hammering on the front door is because they think they can get through the back one. If we land outside their tunnel entrance and pour in troops they might not be so confident and resume the main attack.”

“Regardless, we only delay the inevitable.”

“The more time we have the better, so let’s get what we can.”

“Very well, I will meet you topside,” the Scionate said, jumping over the Archons and landing in front of them lithely before sprinting off far faster than the Humans were capable of running.

“Showoff,” Ashley muttered.

Boen knelt down and gently dumped Mark off his back, setting him up against what was left of the corridor wall and moving forward a few steps to get a look at the exterior of the debris mountain. He poked his helmeted head out and looked around, seeing one patrolling Nestafar in the distance as its wingtips flipped up over top of one of the many junk piles dotting the area. It was now midday and brightly lit…and he still wasn’t sure how he was going to get Mark back to base out in the open.

The Archon looked around, trying to mentally plot out their first move after leaving the interior ‘structure.’ Part of him was glad to be on the way out because he was constantly worried that it was going to fall down on their heads, but even with his agility and speed, avoiding the patrols was going to be difficult and he was far less game carrying Mark on his back.

He spotted the last bit of cover he had used on the way in, but quickly nixed that path. He needed more, somewhere he could lay Mark down while he moved around, figuring he’d have to fight past at least some of the patrols. That said, the best of all available bad locations looked to be a slight overhang off to his right, down low enough for Mark to crawl under. It wouldn’t hold two of them, however, so he needed to plan this out as much as possible before they started to move.

Boen took a few steps outside, getting a better view with and listening for the sound of more patrols. Skulking low to the ground he moved out halfway towards where he was planning on putting Mark down and tried to find some place to hide himself, seeing a few possibles that had partial cover that he could duck back and forth between.

That was going to have to do, because there wasn’t much else to work with.

He headed back to the crack in the starship hull jutting up out of the landscape and ducked inside, bringing Mark out a moment later and walking as fast as he could down to the impromptu blind. He laid him down as gently as he could and the trailblazer pulled himself underneath as Boen ducked off behind cover. From there he bounced around from point to point, looking for another place to stash Mark as they began their long and hazardous journey back towards the base while the Nestafar patrols continued to sweep the area.

Ashley led the short line of Archons down the mountainside through the thick grasses on a controlled sprint, during which the Scionate merely loped along behind in its metallic armor, seemingly bored by the Humans’ pace. As for her, she was running hard the whole way down from the auxiliary entrance that had been held and pacified in the previous hours. As it was the tunnel incursion was the only active assault on the base…probably because it was the one deemed most likely to succeed.

The Archons remained silent during their run, not even bothering to chitchat over the comm. They wanted to be as covert as possible, hoping that their approach might go unnoticed long enough that they wouldn’t have Nestafar spilling back out at the entry point as they came down the slope without cover.

But she shouldn’t have worried, for when they got down to the multiple breach points there was nothing left alive moving about, only trashed walkers from the previous aerial assault that had driven the Nestafar troops inside the tunnels, protomechs and all. During the last few meters of the descent Ashley whipped her rifle off her back and slid to an almost stop before dropping off over one tunnel entrance and twisting around so she landed facing in while absorbing the fall by bending her knees and compressing down into a crouch.

She stayed there a moment as the others dropped down behind her, looking into empty tunnel, with Ske’rar pawing about behind them.

“Which tunnel shall we take?” it asked, seeing six spaced out, dug into the mountainside.

“You’re the one with the ears, you tell me,” Ashley prompted.

Ske’rar retracted his helmet, leaving only a control bit in its mouth. He sniffed the air several times and cocked his cat-like ears, then walked over to each of the other tunnels in turn as the Archons remained still and silent, knowing that any movement on their part would interfere with the Scionate’s senses.

“There is activity in four, the loudest of which is here,” he said, walking back over to the second from the right. “I believe it holds the digging device.”

“That’s our primary target,” she said, running over and past Ske’rar. “Let’s go.”

Kara watched from the Star Force column command center as another line of Nestafar dropships came down from orbit and began depositing more walkers, protomechs, and thousands of infantry into the LZ that slowly began to make their way up towards the base camp where the super dragon and the rest of the assault force were gathered…now revealing the reason why they had paused the assault.

The Archon knew they were screwed. Even if the southern bay doors could magically be repaired it wouldn’t be enough to hold back the coming onslaught. Though the walkers couldn’t all attack at once and would have to pick their way through the debris field, it was only a matter of time before they breached the entrance defenses again and sent in their infantry and protomechs. At that point there’d be a fierce battle inside, for they’d prepared well, but during which the breach in the doors would be expanded upon until the larger walkers could come through, at which point it would be game over.

They’d have to fall back to the columns, which were fairly defensible and thick enough that the walkers’ weaponry couldn’t penetrate all the way through, meaning the Nestafar would have to attack hand to hand inside, though the protomechs were small enough to fit through some of the corridors in ball mode. If they could find their way up to the ceiling hallways they could unfurl and walk about, given the size of the structure, which would force the Alliance to hole up in individual chambers in defensive actions against wave after wave of infantry.

She knew they’d make a good fight of it, and the Nestafar would be hard pressed to take down the Archons in hand to hand combat, but short of help miraculously appearing in orbit Kara saw no way to end this conflict aside from death or surrender…and to her knowledge the Nestafar hadn’t so much as contacted the Alliance to gloat since the backstab had begun, let alone offer terms for surrender.

And with Mark gone, their chances of survival had gotten that much slimmer. The only hope they had now was to take preemptive action before the base was overwhelmed. It was looking more and more like they were going to have to call for an evac from the seda, and getting the dropships by the blockade was going to require them to take the long route around the planet. Fortunately no more Nestafar Valeries had appeared in the skies, though there were at least a few squadrons left in orbit, helping to assure that another cargo ship didn’t drop down and obliterate their ground forces again.

She knew she had to do something, now, before events escalated beyond their control, but what options did she have?

Kara pounded her fist on the table once and stormed off, leaving a slight imprint where her armored hand had hit.

“Where are you going?” Sandra asked, pausing her earpiece’s audio for a moment as she directed the ongoing construction efforts at the southern bay doors.

“To do something really stupid,” she said, not sticking around to elaborate.

Half an hour later she walked up to the Protovic guards stationed in the Nestafar-dug tunnel, nudging her way past several Gnar and other races wanting access to the Keeper cave. When the other armored bipeds let her pass through there was a clamoring of protests but she didn’t care. The base was about to get sacked and all these poor excuses for pilots could think about was grabbing goodies out of the technological treasure chest.

She climbed down the ridged walls until the ground leveled out and made her way to the stasis chamber where she met up with Dre’for who was patiently guarding the sleeping alien.

“Mark has been shot down,” she said firmly, looking up into the slightly taller cat’s head that reminded her of a saber tooth without the big teeth. “That leaves me in command.”

The Scionate rumbled a low growl as it looked her silver-armored form over. “You want to wake the beast?”

“We’re out of options. The Nestafar just landed more troops and they’re on their way up to the base as we speak. We don’t have enough fighters left to hold them off, and I don’t know if we’re going to be able to stop the tunneling team or not. We need to see this through while we still have time.”

“What if all we do is unleash another enemy at our throats?” Dre’for asked, glancing back at the cryo-chamber and the huge lizard inside.

“I know there are no guarantees, but if that thing can help us I’m not just going to stand by and wait while everyone gets killed because of what might happen if we wake it up. By the way, have you figured out how to do so yet?”

The Scionate ignored her question. “The Nestafar once served the Keepers, it is likely that bond will be honored here. You will only add to our list of enemies.”

“They didn’t wake it up,” Kara pointed out. “And if it’s half as skilled as you all keep insisting they are, it could have helped them secure the base. Instead they leave it there, frozen, and start ripping apart tech.”

“I will admit that is a possibility, but not a certainty.”

Kara pulled off her helmet and looked up at Dre’for’s much larger head. “Everyone is going to die unless we do something radical. The Nestafar have us beat. What would you have us do?”

“I do not know, Human, but what you propose is too rash. Mark did not want it woken, nor do the Scionate. Focus your efforts elsewhere. We are not defeated yet.”

Kara dropped her helmet out of her left hand to hit the ground where it rolled off, as it did so her right hand came up into view holding her stinger pistol. With a flash of reflex Dre’for tried to move aside but for once the Human got the best of him. She drilled a green stinger into his forehead then tracked the big cat as it recoiled, pumping shot after shot into its unarmored head until it finally fell to the ground unconscious.

The Archon slipped the pistol back into its slot on her armor with a sigh. “I thought you’d say that.”

Kara walked over and retrieved her helmet, slipping it on before she set herself in front of the stasis chamber’s controls. She’d looked these over thoroughly when she was down here the last time and had thought she’d gotten the gist of it, but if there was a complicated revival procedure she could very well kill the thing because she couldn’t read a bit of the script on the controls.

She knew it wasn’t completely frozen, because there was active life support in the chamber and she’d stared at it long enough to see it complete a very shallow breath, but there had to be more than just the cold keeping it down, because there were no feeding tubes attached. Kara didn’t know how long it had been here, but even minimal breathing would have required calorie expenditure, so the machinery must have been sustaining it in some fashion.

There were four active systems, as far as she could tell. Without touching any of the controls she’d guessed out the means by which to turn it off and had discussed it with Dre’for earlier, to which he had disagreed with some of her assumptions. He had argued that if the beast had been put here for a reason, then there should have been a plan to wake it up, such as an automatic trigger. He didn’t think the manual controls were meant to be used, but since the thing hadn’t already woken up they were all she had available to work with.

Kara looked back at where Dre’for lay, thinking that she better move him off or else the thing might think about making a snack out of him. Deciding that was for the best she walked over and pulled the heavy alien off into another chamber, which the ridged floor made exceedingly difficult…plus he weighed a ton.

After getting him removed from the area Kara came back and took her best guess at a revival sequence and shut down the four active systems.

A flashing green light appeared underneath a small morphing hologram that she guessed was a countdown clock of some sort. Probably an automated release now that the life support was down. She wasn’t sure if hitting the button would speed it up or reverse what she had done. Flying blind she just went on instinct and pressed the damn thing…then a groan sounded and the clear barrier between her and the giant lizard retracted up into the ceiling, releasing a foul odor that made it all the way inside her helmet’s filters.

The lizard lay still, just as it had been, though the frost covering its body began to melt. Kara just stood there and waited, not sure what else to do. Maybe she had accidentally killed it, or maybe it was going to take a while to revive. She had no answers so she just stayed back and watched, circling around a bit to get various views, looking for any signs of life.

After nearly 5 minutes she saw it take a breath, much as it had been before, so she knew it wasn’t dead, thankfully. A minute later another breath followed, then another, and another…each with shorter intervals until it was up to one every ten seconds.

That was when Kel’sad came in so quietly that Kara didn’t detect his presence until he was only a dozen meters behind her.

“What have you done?” the Scionate growled, poised in a defensive lean backwards away from the sleeping giant, as if he was ready to run at the first twitch.

“If you don’t want to be here, leave,” Kara warned. “Take Dre’for with you. He’s napping around the corner.”

The Scionate’s face crunched up in a confused look, then he sniffed the air to confirm the proximity of his den brother. “You assaulted him?”

“We had a difference of opinion,” Kara said, keeping one eye on the Keeper and one on Kel’sad. “He’s unharmed, just unconscious,” she said, pulling out her pistol and pointing it at the Scionate. “It will stun through armor if necessary, but I would prefer I didn’t have to shoot you as well.”

“Have you gone mad, Human?”

“We’re all about to get killed when the base is overrun. We aren’t going to get another opportunity for this, so I had to act now.”

“What’s done is done,” Kel’sad growled. “Put your weapon away.”

Kara stared at him for a moment, then decided that he was genuine and slipped her pistol back into its storage slot. “The Nestafar are landing additional dropships. We don’t have much time. If this thing can help us, we need to find out.”

Kel’sad growled again, this time more so than the first, but not at Kara. The Nestafar bringing in more troops was a bad sign and he recognized as she did just how bad of a situation they were in.

On the opposite side of the lizard’s head, where neither Human nor Scionate could see, a crack appeared in the beast’s eyelid at the name ‘Nestafar.’

5

Ashley held up her hand to get the others to stop behind her as the tunnel suddenly branched off to the left. She approached cautiously, with nothing else in sight ahead of her, then poked her helmet around the corner and was suddenly staring directly into a row of ball-form protomechs parked in the side tunnel. They looked like perfectly smooth chrome orbs, but whether or not anyone was inside them she didn’t know…nor did she know where the entry hatch would be, because at a glance she couldn’t see any seams in the spheres.

They didn’t fill the entire tunnel, but it would be next to impossible to climb around one of them without scrunching through. She doubted Ske’rar could make it in his armor, and even though they didn’t intend to head off to the left Ashley was worried about what would happen if the protomechs followed them down the tunnel ahead.

“Trouble?” Terry-1055 asked.

“Have you seen Indiana Jones?”

“Yes.”

“Remember the giant rolling boulder?”

“Protomechs?” the Archon guessed.

“They’re parked to the left. I don’t know if anyone is in them or not, but if they come after us down the tunnel they’ll crush us.”

“You want to turn back and try another tunnel?”

A muffled growl from the Scionate indicated that he wanted to know what was going on, given that he wasn’t keyed into their helmet comms.

“Move back,” Ashley said, also giving the appropriate hand signal. “Time to poke the bee hive.”

The three other Archons did as instructed and retreated back up the tunnel a ways. Given the incline she hoped that if the protomechs came after them they’d be slow enough that they’d be able to run and stay ahead of them on their way back up to the surface. Going downhill further into the mountain would be suicide given that the rolling balls wouldn’t even need to propel themselves to gain speed.

Ashley jumped out into the side tunnel and shot the first protomech three times with her plasma rifle, putting tiny melted divots in the hull but otherwise having no effect. The thing didn’t move, at all, and Ashley fired five more times trying to provoke a reaction…but the thing was as dead as a giant marble.

“Ok, I guess they’re unmanned,” she said, walking up closer, ready to run at the slightest twitch of movement.

The others came down into view, Ske’rar included, as she tried to slide her body through the narrow gap between giant orb and tunnel.

“What are you doing?” the Scionate asked.

“Trying to find…never mind. There’s a walkway carved into the wall. Looks like they dug this offshoot just to store these,” she said, dropping into the narrow shaft that ran parallel with the tunnel. It stretched out down to what looked like a cross tunnel, suggesting that the Nestafar had been digging much more than a single route into the base, but rather establishing their own outpost of sorts inside the mountain where the Alliance fighters couldn’t get at them.

“Chase, Less, come through here,” she said, waiting for the pair to squeeze through the gaps and into the walkway. “Go cause trouble.”

“Happy to,” Less said, rubbing against the wall to get by Ashley with Chase right on his heels. She went back out into the protomechs tunnel and scrunched her way back through to the others.

“They’re the diversion, we press on to the digger,” she explained to Ske’rar.

The big cat nodded and followed her and Terry down the shallow angle of the descending tunnel towards the ever growing rumbles of distant machinery.

Boen tapped Mark’s shoulder twice, indicating that it was time to move again, then he reached down and offered his hand, into which the trailblazer put his wrist. With a heave Boen picked him up over his shoulders and stumbled his way through the debris field down a zigzaggy valley between big sections of what had once been the freighter and one of the spider walkers. He eventually set the Archon down underneath a hollowed out piece of the spider’s leg, then jumped off across the ‘road’ where he slid underneath a narrow overhang just before the wing beats of another patrol became audible.

Both Archons stayed perfectly still and waited. Before long one of the Nestafar flew by a meter off the ground, flapping hard to maintain its subtle hover as it danced from one point of view to the next, then slowly disappeared out of sight and sound. The pair waited longer, knowing that they couldn’t afford to get careless, then Boen moved Mark again, just another 50 meters up to where he found a tent-like overhang where two pieces of wall had fallen in on each other. It didn’t appear to be the safest location, but it was large enough to cover them both with room to spare.

Boen laid Mark down and dragged him inside, then reached back out and smoothed the singed dirt to try and erase the footprints and drag marks leading in. Everything was so fresh that most of the dirt was covered in bits of debris, but erasing even the smallest of signs tipped the odds away from the Nestafar finding them and the Archon was intent on making those odds as lopsided as possible.

“I can’t believe they have patrols this close to the base,” Mark whispered when Boen pulled off his helmet so he could hear better.

The Archon cringed. “Sorry boss,” he whispered back, “but we’re nowhere near the base yet. We’ve only moved about a quarter mile since we left the underground. We don’t exactly have a straight line back.”

Mark pulled off his helmet as well, then lowered his voice to make sure his normal compensation for the dampening effect wouldn’t carry over into his unhelmeted speech. “Where did you first encounter the patrols?”

“About halfway in…” he said, falling quiet as a soft rumble sounded. The faint noise gradually grew louder and louder until the foot beats were unmistakable. Boen put a finger to his lips, a reminder for Mark to stay quiet and still, then he gently poked his head out of the hole to have a look around. At first he didn’t see anything, then a bit of motion off to the left caught his eye. It wasn’t fully visible, given the debris in the way, but through several gaps he saw the flank of a protomech along with at least two Nestafar infantry flying just above its shoulders.

He pulled back in before they had a chance to spot him and moved over next to Mark. “Looks like they’ve added some firepower to the patrols.”

“Protomech?”

“Yeah.”

“They’re not going to halt the assault forever,” the trailblazer reminded him. “We need to get clear of here before they come back en mass.  I’d say that was more of a scout than a patrol.”

Boen frowned and glanced around, more out of habit than trying to look, because there wasn’t much visibility available from where he was crouching. “How’s the leg?”

“Still no go.”

“Not what I meant.”

“It’s bad and not getting any better.”

“Dizzy?”

“Aside from the screaming pain…yeah.”

“You’re low on blood,” Boen commented, which both of them knew was bad. “We’re going to have to risk some longer runs. I was thinking about dragging you, but I don’t know how to do it without making your leg any worse.”

“Please don’t do that…” Mark pleaded in all seriousness.

“Yeah, didn’t think so. You got any ideas?”

“Follow the mech,” he said, leveraging himself up. “Now.”

For a moment Boen didn’t understand what he meant, then realization flashed in his eyes and he quickly pulled his helmet on and ducked out of the hideaway. Mark crawled out on his own and Boen picked him up again, listening for the location of the protomech and then heading that way, intent on getting in behind it.

He heard Mark groan several times from the bumpy ride, but he had to be quick to get in position and the erratic terrain wasn’t helping. It was daylight, which made their being spotted even more likely, but odds were they wouldn’t have one patrol following on the heels of another, so if they got in behind the protomech and its escorts, from far enough back, they might be able to have a clear run through the debris field…or at least in whichever direction the patrol was headed.

Boen remained silent, but he felt like uttering a whoop of joy when the backside of the short mech came into view briefly, then disappeared behind another pile of junk. He worked hard to stay close enough to it so that the sound of its footsteps would mask his own, but far enough away to keep out of sight most of the time. As it was, the Nestafar flying along with it had eyes front and to the side, not bothering to look behind where they had just passed.

Heavy as Mark was in his ranger armor, Boen was more than happy to carry him, feeling like each meter they progressed was an unmitigated victory up until the patrol turned to the east and was no longer helping them along. The pair of Archons ducked off to the north then started heading west before they came to a nook in the debris where Boen finally set him down before jumping off a few meters to the north and grabbing a better vantage point of the area.

Mark lay where he set him, pulling himself back in a few more inches and grimacing against the pain. It was numb, yet eye-piercing pain at the same time and he could feel his grip on reality fading, but as he lay perfectly still his mind began to restructure itself enough to gain control and bring him back into the moment.

Boen signaled to him that they were going to stay put a while, then pointed off further to the west, letting him know where they were headed next. After that it was just waiting and listening for more patrols, then back to the lethal game of frogger they were playing.

“I do not see how this helps,” Kel’sad said. “But here as it may be, let us see where it takes us.”

“Better,” Kara commented as a fierce headache hit her. She blinked away the pain, wondering what in the world had caused it, then she glanced back at the Scionate and saw him staring at the floor. “Are you ok? I just got a bad headache.”

Kel’sad didn’t move, as if he were frozen in place.

“Kel’sad?” Kara asked, walking over to him and gently poking him in the head…without a response.

Then to her left the lizard’s neck twisted, lifting its head up off the ground and rotating around so it could look at her across a 20 meter gap. It rumbled some language she didn’t know, the sound of which was truly frightening, but she held her ground next to the Scionate. It looked at her for a long moment, saying other things she couldn’t understand, then it seemed to grow disinterested in her and turned its long neck back towards its body as it strained to get to its feet, with multiple joint pops attesting to the length of time it had slept.

“Can you understand me?” she asked in the trade language, but it didn’t respond. She swallowed hard, then switched tongues based on something Mark had said earlier. “Gar cu ratch bey?”

As if struck by a bolt of lightning the lizard turned, unfurling huge wings that had been hidden by the way its body had been coiled up, and stared down at her. Kara smoothly pulled her plasma rifle off her back and held it at the ready across her chest, not aiming at the creature but making it clear she was ready for a fight if it was going to make one of it.

“Are you Ter’nat?” it asked directly, both of its huge eyes staring directly at the Archon’s helmet.

“Sort of.”

“Do not trifle with me,” the dragon warned. “Are you V’kit’no’sat?”

“We are enemies of the V’kit’no’sat, as I have been told you are.”

“Yet you are Ter’nat, are you not?”

Kara stared back at the creature, fear running through her veins at the sheer muscle power driving the thing and making her wish she was standing farther away, but she wasn’t about to abandon Kel’sad.

“We are not Ter’nat. We are descended from Zen’zat.”

The dragon recoiled a hair and cocked its head at an angle as if looking her over again. “That explains why I cannot access your mind, so you must tell me the answers I seek. Both Ter’nat and Zen’zat serve the V’kit’no’sat. How then can you be their enemy? Has a rebellion begun?”

“In the distant past, yes,” Kara confirmed, realizing that she was breaking the silence the Archons had kept on all things V’kit’no’sat for centuries, but if this dragon could speak the language then it probably knew more than she did. “A Rit’ko’sor rebellion resulted in a colony world being abandoned. My ancestors were left behind. We had no knowledge of the V’kit’no’sat until we recovered records of the past, and so far we have not encountered them across the galaxy, though we have not traveled far as of yet, but their old borders do not match those of the present. Where they are or what happened to them we don’t know.”

“Why then do you call them ‘enemy?’”

“We know that they do not tolerate splinter groups. If they find us, they will either kill or enslave us all.”

“They will not enslave you,” the dragon said as if it were common knowledge. “Rogue groupings are not tolerated in any form and are marked for eradication. Your survival is a feat of luck, nothing more. Whereas we were not so fortunate.”

That took Kara aback. “Before we get into a lengthy conversation I’d like to clear up one thing first…am I going to have to shoot you or not?”

A cross between a bark and a growl ripped from the dragon’s throat, then was gone as fast as it had been uttered. “I know of the conflict brewing above and of your imminent defeat. You shall not have to add me to your list of enemies unless you fire your weapon. I am weakened from my sleep and it might even hurt me.”

Kara recognized the arrogant nature of that remark and smiled. At least they had that in common.

“Your race was wiped out by the V’kit’no’sat…yet here you are. Explain. And a name would help too.”

“We are the Zak’de’ron, and I have no need to answer to you, little Zen’zat. You will answer me. What world are you from?”

“That I’m not saying,” Kara said, the headache suddenly returning. “What did you do to him?”

“His mind is easy to control, but yours is shielded. He does not know the name of your world, nor do those above. What is it?”

“We are alive because the V’kit’no’sat don’t know we exist, and we plan to keep it that way.”

“You believe they still exist, even though you have had no contact with them?”

“They were too powerful to have fallen.”

The dragon lowered its head down to almost floor level. “In that we are agreed, Zen’zat. The Rit’ko’sor would have hurt them, and hurt them badly if they chose to strike when and where I think they did, but it would have been little more than a distraction unless others joined them. Do you have any knowledge of this?”

“There were no others specified in the data.”

The dragon’s eyes narrowed. “You recovered a planetary defense station.”

“Meaning what?”

“Do not try to hide it from me. I may not be able to access your mind, but I am not blind. Our data records are kept in few places, and knowledge of a rebellion would not have spread to a colony except through controlled channels. You discovered a planetary defense station and used your genetic legacy to access it.”

“Our data records?” Kara asked.

“You obviously haven’t studied them very closely,” the dragon said, a bit miffed. “We were part of the V’kit’no’sat until they turned on us. They eradicated our worlds and decreed that all must die, which is why I must know the name of your world. It is important.”

“That I can’t risk,” Kara said, feeling the gravity of the situation upon her. “I know the names of every race within the V’kit’no’sat. I have studied my enemy well, and your kind were never mentioned.”

The dragon’s nostrils flared with anger, but fortunately it wasn’t directed at Kara. “Killing our young is treason enough, but to rewrite history is beyond contempt.”

“Why did they turn on you?”

“Many reasons. Like your kind, we are not blood kin. We did not fully capitulate to the consensus during inception. We kept a portion of our identity intact, and that the others never forgave us for. The water dwellers never trusted those they could not control, and the smaller races relied on the elders to provide for them, so when it came time to make choices their voices were suppressed. We are Zak’de’ron first and always, V’kit’no’sat second. That was why they betrayed us, and that is why they will stop at nothing to hunt me down, so I ask again, Zen’zat, what world are you from?”

The headache returned a third time, as if the dragon were trying to reach into her memories without success. “Why does it matter? The V’kit’no’sat are no longer there or anywhere in the vicinity.”

“That is exactly why I need to know. From the size of the hole in their domain I can guestimate a sequence of events, but I must know where that hole is.”

Kara stared up at the huge beast, glad to have her helmet in between herself and its massive jaws, for it steadied her nerve a bit. “Tamprani.”

6

“Tamprani…” the dragon mewed. “But that is a region, not a world.”

“That’s as much as I’m going to give you.”

“Sufficient enough,” it decided, spinning around in place and giving Kara a good view of its long, muscular tail as it seemed to stretch out its various joints. “How long have I slept?”

“I have no idea,” Kara admitted, glancing at Kel’sad. “What have you done to him?” she repeated.

“His mind is not shielded as yours is. How long has your world been free?”

“Is he damaged?” she asked icily.

“He is paused,” the dragon said, staring the Human down. “How long?”

“About 100,000 years.”

Suddenly every fiber on the beast’s body tensed up, and for a moment it appeared that he had become as frozen as Kel’sad, then a low rumble sounded from his gut that quickly rose up to a screeching howl more terrifying than any sound Kara had ever heard.

When it ceased the dragon stamped its front legs down hard on the floor, looking severely stricken. “Then I am the last of the Zak’de’ron,” it said, turning to face Kara again. “Zen’zat, I require your assistance.”

“How about you clue me in one what’s happening before you start asking favors.”

“Ask? You serve us, little one.”

“I said we were descended from Zen’zat, not that we are Zen’zat. We are Star Force, and we serve no one.”

“You serve their Alliance,” he said, gesturing towards the frozen Scionate.

“We work with them to counter a common foe.”

“Yes, these Cajdital, you call them. For such weaklings to dominate this area of the galaxy means the V’kit’no’sat must have suffered heavy losses, but still, we are not safe here. We must relocate, and for that I require your…help.”

“Oh, you’re asking now are you?”

“You have courage, little Star Force, but not wisdom. I could crush you easily.”

“And yet you seem to need my help for something. Odd how that works.”

The dragon huffed. “Your insolence is refreshing. Tell me, if the V’kit’no’sat come back to reclaim your world, what will you do?”

“Run,” Kara said without hesitation.

“You have already made plans.”

“Of course we have. We know their strength.”

“You do not, that I can assure you. If they seek it, they will destroy you no matter where you go, as they have destroyed us. If you are wise, you will abandon your world and flee to the edge of the galaxy, there they have no domain. Make yourself small and go unnoticed, for it is your only hope of survival…and the same is true for us, only greater so. You are insignificant to them, we are not. If they believe us dead then I have a chance to fulfill my mission, but I cannot remain here. I must flee as well, before they know to chase me. Do you understand this?”

“Who are you...to them?”

“A threat…one that they will not, cannot tolerate. For their treachery they know we will never forgive them, thus one of us must fall. They believe it to have been us, but here we survive, unknown to them. I can blanket the minds of the others, but yours I cannot. I must either kill or conscript you into silence, but given that we both will share the same fate if the V’kit’no’sat find us, I do not believe you are in a position to betray us to them.”

“You can erase their memories?” Kara asked, looking again at Kel’sad.

“Our power over the mind is formidable, even more so than the Oso’lon. It is one reason why they fear us so.”

“The Oso’lon have mind control?”

The dragon frowned, wrinkling its hairless eyebrows. “You do not know as much as I assumed. You must delve deeper into the information you possess if you seek to unlock their secrets.”

“We have been, but this is the first I’ve heard of any telepathy.”

“Their information systems are designed for use by those who already know, they do not teach as your Alliance does. Information is not given to those without the ability to use it, and those with the ability to use it will know how to find it. You must look deeper to find the answers you seek. Then, perhaps, you will recognize how hopeless your survival is on your native world.”

“They call you the ‘Keepers,’ why?”

“We conscript others into our civilization…something else that the V’kit’no’sat did not condone. Many of our conscripts referred to us as such amongst themselves.”

“You’re not conscripting us, I can promise you that.”

“We cannot, do you not see?” the dragon said, leaning closer with its long neck. “You are shielded from our power. The V’kit’no’sat changed the Ter’nat they recruited into Zen’zat so that none of us could manipulate you. You served us all, without bias. You were obedient, but independent. Zen’zat have no master, for the sake of all.”

Kara frowned inside her helmet, trying to make sense of this. “How many V’kit’no’sat races have telepathy?”

“All do. The Ter’nat do not because they are servants, but the Zen’zat were elevated to better serve. Your mind is blank to me, have you no skill?”

“Wait a second, you’re saying Zen’zat are also telepathic?”

“Much more than telepathic, though your ‘skill’ is impotent compared to ours. Your greatest asset is your shielding, but you should have some basic abilities. Zen’zat were forbidden from breeding so they could not pass them on to those who were unloyal. If your ancestors truly were Zen’zat, then you should possess the capability, no matter how many generations have passed.”

Suddenly all those episodes of X-files she used to watch started to pop into Kara’s head. “Ok…did not know that. So you ‘keep’ races of your own, you’re telepathically stronger than the other races, you kind of do your own thing…so why did the others put up with you as long as they did?”

“It was we who put up with them…do you not know how the V’kit’no’sat began?”

“Oddly enough, that wasn’t foremost in the datab…in the records.”

“There is no need to try and deceive me, little one. You could not access the ‘records’ unless you possessed ambrosia, and in order to know how to make it you would need access to the factories that produced it. Those only existed in one place in the colonies. Tell me, is your defense station fully operational or was it damaged?”

“The Rit’ko’sor trashed everything else on the planet, then submerged it,” she admitted.

“It was on land then? They broke the water ponds?”

“Yes,” she said, feeling a little spooked by how much he knew.

“The armor on the defense stations is extremely difficult to damage…and even harder to build. They could not have destroyed it if they wished, because they did not possess the weapons strong enough to do so. There is a hierarchy amongst the V’kit’no’sat, with weapons and technology divvied out accordingly. The Rit’ko’sor are at the bottom, though their numbers are immense. That is why they were capable of rebellion.”

“If you have an intact defense station, which I’m assuming you do,” the dragon continued, “you should also have access to the information nets?”

“No, they went down shortly after the colony was abandoned.”

“The relays must have been destroyed then,” he mewed. “That means they truly have withdrawn from Tamprani…but then they’d have to in order to replace the Rit’ko’sor. Your scraps of a race may have more time than I originally assumed, but beware, they will return eventually to reclaim what they’ve lost. At present they are unable to do so, but once their numbers rise again they will push back out towards the rim.”

“Why?” Kara asked, glimpsing something more there. “Why haven’t they taken the rim already? You said it was beyond their domain earlier.”

“The V’kit’no’sat are bound to the core and expand when they can. Without sufficient strength the Hadarak will strike, as they always have, thus they are bound to the front.”

“What are the Hadarak?”

“A curse on the galaxy. Beasts without reason that live in deep gravity wells. They have the power to alter gravity and can use it to hurl themselves across the stars. They have no technology, all is biology for them, and it was for our mutual defense against them that we created the V’kit’no’sat to counter, much as you have done with your Alliance.”

“We?”

“You have not discovered even that much? You truly do not know who we are?”

“There is a race known as the Les’i’kron that is similar, but there was no mention of Zak’de’ron. Mark thought you were a race the V’kit’no’sat had in the database that was exterminated, but that was before we could see your wings. I don’t recall what they were, but they were not listed as part of the V’kit’no’sat.”

“Les’i’kron?” the dragon growled. “What do you know of them?”

“Not much. They’re flyers, built like you but with a shorter neck and a double blade on the tail. Inhabit the coreward planets mostly.”

“Vile betrayers!” he said, tilting his head towards the ceiling and eliciting a huge plume of what looked like plasma from its throat. The material of the ceiling partially melted, dropping in molten globs down to the ground, some of which hit the dragon and bounced off, cooling as they fell…though it didn’t seem to care.

Kara didn’t say anything for a few moments, and waited till he’d stopped torching the roof before asking her next question. “Not friends of yours I take it?”

“They are a perversion,” he said, pounding his forelegs into the ground again, which rattled the whole chamber, though the somewhat soft material dampened the vibration from traveling further out. “The blades you mention were a genetic upgrade the V’kit’no’sat tried to force upon us. We refused, as we refused most of their demands. Les’i’kron means ‘subjugated one’ in our native tongue,” he said before launching another plume of blue/white fire at the ceiling angrily.

“They didn’t kill you, they…”

“Corrupted them,” the dragon finished. “I am still the last of my kind, but the others live on as perversions. I swear on the pyres of my ancestors this heresy will not go unpunished!”

“Who controls the V’kit’no’sat? Which race is dominant?”

“In the beginning there were three,” he said, controlling his anger though it wouldn’t abate. “The ground dwellers were led by the Oso’lon, the water dwellers were led by the J’gar, and the air dwellers were led by us, though we also controlled many land dwelling races. We were the dominant of the three, and organized for adding many more secondary races to grow the strength of the V’kit’no’sat. As we fortified the core worlds the Hadarak were pushed back, contained to their gravity wells where we could not pursue. It is because of this the V’kit’no’sat cannot leave the core, nor can they leave it under-defended.”

“Why then did they betray you? That would cut into their strength greatly, I would assume.”

“Indeed it did, but the V’kit’no’sat grew beyond us. They developed a common culture, one which restricted and bound all together in common cause. We were too powerful to be coerced, and they resented that fact. All must yield to the V’kit’no’sat, or else must be destroyed…but you are also correct about their needing our strength, because it seems they recreated us as the Les’i’kron to fill the gap in their ranks. I require the information you have on them.”

“Thinking about a rescue? I thought you were running.”

“If they have done what I believe they have, then there is no one left to rescue…nor am I able, but I need to know exactly what they have done.”

“What are the eggs for?” Kara asked, pointing in the direction of the other chamber.

The dragon’s nostrils flared. “Have they come to harm?”

“Not that I’m aware of, but I didn’t take too close a look. What are they doing here? What are you doing here and what is this place? The Nestafar seem to want it pretty bad.”

“The Nestafar know nothing,” he said dismissively. “They foolishly seek to acquire technology they could never use. Given how we are pathetically lowered to equals in this circumstance, I will tell you why we are here, but the others will never know. That information cannot spread back to the V’kit’no’sat.”

“We know how to keep secrets, as you can imagine.”

The dragon huffed once, blowing out a few sparks. “You have not shared your find with the others in your little Alliance?”

“We have not shared that secret with our own people,” Kara countered. “Only a few know…those that can be trusted.”

“The Zen’zat were individually trained…though I would imagine yours reproduce wildly?”

“Unrestricted, if that’s what you mean.”

“Then most possess abilities they did not earn. For that alone the V’kit’no’sat will hunt you down and destroy you. Every last one. You will not be able to run far enough, nor fast enough, to stay ahead of them. Secrecy is your only hope, as was it ours. While we fought and distracted our former allies we sought to hurt them, delving deeply into the territory of those who dared to defy us, but they were united and we could not turn one against the other, for their fear of the collective was greater than their fear of us.”

“We knew that we were at a disadvantage, for their war caught us off guard. We did not share everything with the V’kit’no’sat, however, and our knowledge and power held them at bay for a time. Knowing that they would never let us live, we knew we either had to defeat them or escape them…so we planned for both.”

“I was entrusted with the escape, and with me a future generation. The only way we could escape was to no longer exist, so here we disappeared. My mind could be detected from space, so I had to slumber in order to insure there was no chance of detection. The galaxy is far greater than you know, Zen’zat, and it is easy to hide when you know how. As good of hunters as the V’kit’no’sat are, the odds are always with the hunted due to the boundless playing field. Because of this I was able to slip away and remain safely here without their knowing.”

“Until when?”

“Until I am summoned by the victorious others…or until another has risen up to overcome the V’kit’no’sat. I do not believe the Rit’ko’sor have accomplished so much, but we can no longer stay here now that you have found us, and I would be a fool not to take advantage of our enemy’s temporary weakness.”

“Wait, how were you supposed to know if the V’kit’no’sat were defeated if you were sleeping here?”

“That is a secret I will keep, little one.”

“So this whole place is a storage facility for you and your eggs?”

“No, it is a repository of all that we are. A seed for us to regrow from. I contain the knowledge, this place contains the power. A power that the Nestafar will not gain…nor will your Alliance.”

“Fair enough, not that we need it anyway.”

The dragon huffed again. “The power stored here is greater than that which the V’kit’no’sat wielded at the time I began to sleep, and I highly doubt they could have attained it since. We know all that they know, but they do not know all that we know. We only shared part of our knowledge.”

“By knowledge you mean technology?”

“By that question, you demonstrate how little you know.”

Kara sighed. “If you can leave the planet, does that mean you have a ship down here too?”

“Your primitive base will remain intact. I will not remove it.”

“It won’t be our base for much longer, unless we can find a way to stop the Nestafar. I assume you can control their minds as well?”

“Not all at once,” the dragon admitted, “but I can stop them. Will you give me access to your world’s knowledge?”

“Will you help us unlock the parts inaccessible to Zen’zat?”

“Though I think it will make no difference in your fate, I wish you to harm them as much as possible. We have an agreement, but knowledge of my presence must not spread amongst your people. I will only risk so much.”

“Knowledge of your presence would betray our own secret. We will keep it quiet, though it will take time to arrange. Our world is far from here and the site is…buried.”

The dragon spun around, swinging its tail over Kara’s head as it retreated to the back of the hibernation chamber. There it reached its four finger/claws on its right limb into a rack containing two rings, then it did the same with its left before walking over additional racks and doing the same on its back limbs. The eight rings in total began to glow cherry red in sync, clashing with the deep grey of the dragon’s skin…then all of a sudden the rings disintegrated and the powder-like material began to expand over its fingers and up its legs. Out of all proportion it gained speed and quickly spread across the dragon’s entire body.

The powder then began to solidify into hard plates…thousands of tiny, hard plates looking for all the world like red dragon scales, even up and over its wings and down its face, making the giant look even more intimidating than it was before.

“Stand aside,” it told Kara.

She glanced at Kel’sad and saw him walking off as well, still in zombie mode, and chose to get out of the dragon’s way as it climbed down and sank its claws into the ridges on the floor, pulling itself along towards the exit and out into the corridor. The Scionate held position off to the side, but Kara gave his frozen form another glance before running off, hopping from one ridge to another as she followed the dragon off elsewhere into the underground caverns.

7

Ashley was partway down the long tunnel and just beginning to see activity in the distance when Ske’rar confirmed her suspicions.

“They are ahead and waiting for us. Several dozen at minimum behind barricades and heavy weapons,” he explained, using his enhanced eyesight, though whether that be from biology or the advanced armor he wore the Archon didn’t know. “The digging machine is a short distance behind them. If we can get past these it is ours, but we will be running straight into their concentrated firepower. I can only block for you for so long, after which it will be up to you to subdue them.”

“Bad plan,” Terry commented. “Ash, please tell me you have something better in mind?”

In response Ashley slowed her decline-enhanced run and reached back to pull the compact rocket launcher off her back, exchanging it for her rifle.

“That’s better.”

“We need your weapons for the digger,” Ske’rar warned.

“We need to be alive when we reach the digger,” Ashley countered when a comm line opened.

“All teams engaging the Nestafar in the tunnel,” Kara’s energetic voice said, “pull back. Repeat, pull back. The Nestafar are coming out. Let them go for now, I’ll explain everything later, but it’s urgent that you do not get in their way or engage them. Pull back now.”

“What the hell?” Ashley commented. “Ske’rar, hold up,” she said, raising a hand and skidding to a halt. The big cat did likewise just ahead and turned back questioningly, but Ashley was already contacting Kara.

“We’re about to blow the hell out of their digging machine,” she argued.

“No need, kiddo. It’s coming out too.”

“Quit calling me that, I’m as old as you. And what do you mean it’s coming out?”

“They’re breaking off the assault and don’t ask me why, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. For now just get out of the way.”

“Copy that,” she said, reattaching the rocket launcher. “Can you see any movement up there?”

The Scionate turned around and stared off into the distance. “Nothing we can exploit. Why have we stopped?”

“We’ve been called off. Apparently the Nestafar are withdrawing from the tunnels.”

Ske’rar did a double take. “Has some form of an agreement been reached?”

“I don’t know, but something is up. Can you tell whether or not they’ve stopped digging?”

“I can still feel the vibrations, can you not?”

Ashley rolled her eyes, unseen beneath her helmet. “Ok, dumb question. Can you see anything else going on up there?”

“Nothing. They are holding position behind their barricades and the machine continues to advance…”

“What’s happening?” Terry asked.

“They are walking out of cover,” the Scionate said as the audible vibrations began to wind down. “And coming up the tunnel.”

“Armed?” Ashley asked, straining to see the tiny figures in the distance.

“Yes, they are carrying their weapons, but their movements are slow. They are also disassembling the heavy weapons…and the digger appears to be reversing direction.”

“Son of a bitch,” Ashley whispered. “Let’s stay ahead of them,” she said as they began to walk back up the tunnel. “Less, Chase…where you at?”

“Heading out, you?”

“We’re in pretty far and pacing the digging team on its way out. What’s happening up there?”

“They stopped fighting a minute after Kara’s message came through and just started walking out to the surface.”

“What about the protomechs?”

“They haven’t showed up yet. We’re trying to beat them out just in case.”

“Meet you outside,” Ashley said, accelerating into a jog. “The rest of their troops are retreating out of the tunnels,” she told Ske’rar.

“This is very odd,” he commented.

“No kidding, but as long as they’re not digging forward let’s play along. Kara knows more than she’s saying.”

“Agreed. Are you fatigued?”

“No,” Ashley said with confused look under her helmet.

“Then I suggest we increase our speed and get to the surface as quickly as possible.”

“Go ahead,” she prompted. “We’ll catch up later.”

The Scionate huffed, a sign of agreement, and tore off ahead of them eager to find out what was going on.

Boen lugged Mark around one last piece of engine that had been flung from the crashed ship, climbing up the shallow ridge that it had cut into the ground on impact and stepping across a narrow line of ashes…then they were back into the grasslands that covered the planet and finally out of the debris field.

“Put me down.”

“Gladly,” Boen said, dropping the trailblazer onto his good leg and helping him stand in place with a firm grip on his arm.

“You see anything?”

Boen looked around the perimeter, but there was nothing aside from grass and mountain ahead of them and debris behind. To the south they could see the edge of the Nestafar encampment, with the walkers barely registering as dots.

“I don’t want to jinx us, but I think we’re clear.”

“Call it in,” Mark prompted as he lowered himself down to the ground, grimacing as his broken leg was forced to bend an inch or two. “See if they’ve got that mantis repaired yet, though if I have to I can ride on the top of a skeet.”

“Not a half bad idea,” Boen said as he activated his comm, thinking that whatever pilot they had fly out here could change places with Mark and let him fly back, then he and Boen could head in on foot rather than risk a dropship. The one surviving mantis had been hit badly, and he figured it wouldn’t be fully operational any time soon. The idea of sending it out wounded to get them was problematic, considering the protomechs and rocket launcher-toting infantry the enemy had in the area.

Mark pulled off his helmet and keeled over to the side, throwing up as the pain finally won out against his stomach. Fortunately there was no blood in it, but his insides now felt almost as messed up as his leg.

Boen looked down at him, but knowing there was nothing he could do short of organize his extraction he didn’t comment.

Mark spit out what gunk was left in his mouth then his arms started shaking. For a moment he thought it was due to his weakening condition, perhaps shock setting in, but the vibration in his arms was also in his half numb leg, making it complain in an entirely new fashion, which was when he realized it was the ground that was shaking.

“What’s that from?” he asked, not in a position to get up and look around.

“I don’t know, but it’s close.”

The tremors increased until a section of hillside below them disappeared. Mark couldn’t see it well, hidden in the grasses, but a tunnel mouth appeared with no dirt or debris being thrown about. As if by magic the hollow formed, out of which a red-scaled dragon climbed and stood upon the grasses, stretching out a huge set of scaled wings.

“What the hell?!” Boen asked, taken aback. “That can’t be the one…”

With a wicked flap of its wings and a muscular leap off the ground the dragon took flight and rose up a short distance, thereupon it stretched out its wings to their full grandeur and hovered in place, looking down on the Nestafar camp, the debris field, and everything else in view as it rotated its long neck around.

Suddenly both Archons got a surge of pain in their minds along with words they did not recognize, but whose meaning they somehow understood.

The pain disappeared as soon as it began, but the words flowed, instructing all those near to cease fighting…with the unmistakable threat of doom should they dare to disobey.

“Boss, can you hear that?”

Mark nodded, his nerve already weakened by his injury. The power of the mental contact was so great that he was stunned into silent awe as he stared up at the enormous beast that somehow was staying aloft without flapping its wings.

“Hey, you still with me?” Boen said, kneeling down next to him without completely taking his eyes off the dragon.

“Yeah…yeah, sorry,” Mark said, blinking away both pain and the tears welling up in his eyes. He looked down at his hands and saw that they were shaking. “Might want to delay that pickup for a while…till the skies are clear.”

Down in the Nestafar camp where the pair of Archons couldn’t see, the enemy pilots of the nearest walkers began exiting their war machines while the infantry around them, clearly intimidated by the dragon’s words, looked about, confused as to what was happening. Then one of the giraffes on the back edge of the formation, apparently unaffected by the dragon’s mind control, tilted its head around and fired a red plasma blast at the distant aerial target.

The shot missed badly due to the range, but it prompted several more to follow, along with missiles launched from a pair of spider walkers. Those tracked directly to the dragon and impacted it on the chest and wings, blowing apart in a short-lived fireworks display that left the dragon exactly where it had been. Boen and Mark couldn’t see what damage had been done, for they were on the wrong viewing side of the attack, but they didn’t miss the subsequent roar of rage, both audial and mental, that ripped forth from the great beast…followed by it flapping its wings and rising higher up into the sky as more plasma and missiles came in at it.

It flew in lazily towards the camp and halfway there stalled out briefly, flapping its wings forward once violently, which resulted in some sort of clear ripple through the air that crossed to the now moving walkers in less than two seconds…and knocked them off their feet as if they were toys. The super dragon tipped over as well, falling on its right side and crushing a protomech that got swept up underneath.

The zombified Nestafar in the ruins that could see what was happening suddenly snapped out of their haze, turning their weapons on the dragon or heading towards it for those that were out of firing range. The remaining upright walkers in the camp began heading towards the dragon, firing as they went…then the leaders would stop their advance and weaponsfire as their minds were frozen once again, though it seemed that combat was significantly diminishing the dragon’s ability to hold as many  minds inert as before.

“Get that transport in here now,” Mark urged, watching the dragon sweep its wings again, this time towards the ground from overhead and crush one of the stalled spiders with the invisible concussion wave as rounds of plasma were hitting its red scales and appearing to do no damage whatsoever…though it was difficult to see from such a distance. Regardless, the dragon wasn’t thwarted and continued to quickly break up the overflowing camp of enemies that Mark and the Alliance had been about to be overwhelmed by. How one aerial craft, dragon or not, could be so powerful filled Mark with a mixture of both dread and inspiration.

“Already on the way,” Boen said, lifting Mark up to his feet. “You feel up to flying?”

“Not really,” Mark said, tearing his eyes away from the carnage below for a moment. “What did you do?”

“You’re flying back, we’re running,” he said, catching a glimpse of reflected light from the top of the mountain as a skeet zipped over the summit. “Three minutes and you’ll be in the air.”

“Thank you,” Mark said, for more than just the good news.

Boen nodded, but didn’t say anything until the skeet got to their position and landed. When the hatch opened Liara hopped out on top and helped Boen lift Mark up and into position, which took some doing without leveraging his bad leg. Still, getting it over the pommel and into position hurt him badly, but once down on the seat he was more than happy for the tradeoff.

“Doors are open,” she told him from behind his head as he reconfigured the controls so he wouldn’t need to use his bad leg. “Put her down by the column, we’ve got people standing by.”

“Better step back,” Mark warned. “I’m a bit shaky.”

Liara smiled beneath her helmet, but her mirth was still evident in her voice. “At least now I can say there was one day I was a better pilot than you.”

She slid down off the skeet and ran around it to where Boen was already climbing the mountain at an angle to get to the nearest auxiliary entrance a few kilometers away. They both glanced back as the skeet slowly rose up into the air and shot out ahead of them…then the Archons picked up the pace, turning the ascent into a mixture of workout and race, eager to get back inside and away from the dragon.

“Do you know what’s going on with that?” Boen asked, thumbing back over his shoulder towards the one-sided battle.

“Kara’s doing. She was starting to explain when you called for pickup.”

“Is that the same one that we found below?”

“Sleeping beauty it is, and she brokered some sort of deal with it.”

“Score one for Kara,” Boen said, feeling slightly less at risk but still wanting to get back inside as quickly as possible.

The Zak’de’ron landed in the midst of what had been the Nestafar camp, lifting up and crushing one of the giraffes without even touching it. The walker simply levitated then collapsed down into a rough ball, which was then thrown into a nearby spider, denting and knocking it off its feet as another telepathic wave shot out to those in the immediate vicinity.

“Submit!” he warned, “or I will destroy you all.”

A group of flying infantry fired a pair of rockets towards the dragon, but a pyre of blue flame shot out from its throat, vaporizing both rockets and the Nestafar that had fired them.

With considerable mental prodding the minds around him began to cave…not him overriding their control of their own bodies, but submitting to his will and command, once again becoming the Zak’de’ron’s servants as they once had, though he knew such servitude would be short lived if he could not also control those in orbit above.

The minds elsewhere were also in turmoil, but a quick check of those at the tunnel entrance confirmed that they were still obeying his orders, though the aftereffects were beginning to wear off. He sent another surge of telepathic energy their way, furthering his tenuous link binding them to his will. So long as the Zen’zat or their pathetic allies didn’t fire on them they shouldn’t be able to break free of his control…and if the fools did, the outcome would serve their stupidity well.

The dragon walked over to one of the broken spiders and lifted it up into the air by apparent magic and loosed a stream of fire into the side of it, melting straight through and cutting the machine in half. It threw the two pieces aside in concurrence with another telepathic wave, this one reaching even further in range and he felt the outlying troops submitting in turn.

A few dozen at a time he contacted directly, imposing his will and command on them until they fully submitted, then he withdrew the focus of his mind while leaving only a tiny monitoring tendril behind. In such a way the dragon quickly and efficiently conscripted the surviving Nestafar troops to its command and had them abandon their machines, then fly back over to their LZ while he trashed their walkers beyond repair, both as a demonstration of power and in order to take away their means to fight should they shuck his mental control as he contended with the others.

Eventually he returned to flight, relishing in the battle and the freedom of the air once again after having slept for so many countless years. He stayed aloft for some time, picking off the minds of those Nestafar that had remained behind at their landing zone, including the pilots of the dropships on station.

From them he also learned many secrets, now that he had the time to pry into their memories. He learned of the assault in orbit and the victory of the Zen’zat in the defense of their orbital station. Crude as it may have been, the design and tactics employed were sound, befitting their ancestry. He had always wondered what the Ter’nat would become if taken off the V’kit’no’sat’s leash. The other races had deemed them stupid and unworthy of peerdom, but then again the Zak’de’ron viewed the other races just the same.

The Ter’nat had been primitive savages when the Hjar’at had discovered and conquered them, then they were ‘elevated’ to mere primitives and allowed to reproduce as a labor force, given their small size and dexterity. They learned quickly, however, and soon became valued slaves that the other races demanded be shared. The Hjar’at complied, and the Ter’nat became wards of the V’kit’no’sat. The Zen’zat had been created so that their new slaves could better serve the more advanced duties needed of them, as well as making them at least minimally useful on the battlefield and had proven remarkably adept for such primitive origins.

They were still inferior, as all were to the Zak’de’ron, but the dragon knew they were not so inferior to the others. He would have liked to have conscripted these rogue Zen’zat, but their shielded minds would prevent traditional conscription and he did not have the time necessary to absorb their race in the means that would preserve their usefulness. A pity, for he would very much have liked to teach them the ways of warfare and throw them back at the V’kit’no’sat…but that was not an option. His race’s survival depended on secrecy and flight. Perhaps one day, millennia from now, he would see to their revenge.

The Zen’zat were on their own and doomed to failure, but it was gratifying to see them making inroads of their own where the V’kit’no’sat had said they were totally inept.

The little ones’ battle station had done well to destroy so many of the Nestafar warships, but many still remained, including their jumpships that contained too many minds for him to overwhelm directly. Conscripting them all would take time, and he could not allow any of their ships to flee the system with knowledge of his presence…meaning he had to act quickly before they recognized the threat and ran for their lives.

8

Out of the ground another tunnel formed and an object hurled forth…this one much larger than the dragon and deep blue in color. It flew up to where the Zak’de’ron was hovering above the Nestafar LZ and impacted it, twisting around and transforming into some form of exoskeleton that covered the red armor scales and turned the dragon into a much larger beast 3 times its original size. Once the fluid machine had encased it the beast shot up into the sky, leaving the Nestafar on the ground to continue loading into their dropships as previously instructed.

The blue of the additional armor began to glow brighter as it rose up into space, ending with a flash of light that left it neon in color. From there it flew up to where the Nestafar fleet was waiting and passed them by, heading directly for the distant group of jumpships parked in a higher orbit.

The Nestafar warships tried to move to intercept the dragon, but it was far too fast…making them seem as if chess pieces it could run around at its leisure. Even the Valeries escorting the warships couldn’t keep up and before they knew it the Nestafar commanders had the image of a blue, glowing dragon staring down at them from outside their jumpships.

“You will submit,” the powerful mental signal shot forth to all those onboard the jumpship the dragon was perched over. There were thousands of individual minds onboard, all of which heard the dragon’s thoughts as if it were standing behind them and breathing down their neck as it spoke. “Or I shall destroy you. Disarm and stand down now. This world belongs to me and you shall not claim it.”

He could sense the reactions of the jumpship crew, mixed as they were, as well as their confusion…but the rest of the Nestafar fleet was not so affected and the warships that the dragon had blithely flown past were now catching up, with their fighters hanging back, probably because of the carnage they had witnessed on the surface.

From the minds onboard the jumpship the dragon drew much information, including the communications occurring between the ships, indicating that they were indeed going to strike.

“Submit,” he repeated, focusing on the minds within the jumpship as some of its weaponry was beginning to come online. Soon those batteries deactivated as he cherry-picked minds to assert control over and gradually the tide of sentiment on the ship began to shift into compliance as he bathed them in telepathic influence…but he could not fully conscript them before the warships arrived, so he linked the jumpship commanders’ minds to his and released the others, then flew off to intercept the approaching warships.

The glowing armor that the dragon was encased in increased in intensity drastically, becoming a harsh point of light rather than a shape, so fierce that it hurt all eyes that viewed it. It flew directly towards the leading warship and cut through it…passing into the front hull and exiting out the back as if nothing had stood between it, though the hole it tore straight through the core of the ship testified otherwise. It banked to the right and rammed another Nestafar warship out of the dozens that were approaching, coming down on one of the ship’s wings and tearing clean through, only to arc back up and go through the other one, leaving two giant holes in the ship as if playing with it as the dragon repeated its mental summons, this time stretching out so as to touch all the Nestafar ships in orbit.

“Submit,” he repeated as he lazily flew towards the next closest ship…but this one shut down its weapons in a hurry and the dragon pulled off, buzzing the warship but not damaging it as he felt its crew wisely relent.

Others did not and fired upon the dragon…or tried to. It was moving so fast that they couldn’t land any plasma on it and their missiles simply disintegrated when they hit the fierce point of light, never getting a chance to detonate.

Suddenly one of the other jumpships winked out, making a microjump away from the planet. On cue the attacking warships spread apart and fled, with all the other jumpships save one running away. Only three warships remained behind, all complying with the dragon’s mental demands, and then the Zak’de’ron suddenly vanished as well, with the point of light disappearing in a flash heading outward.

There was no more time left to try and conscript these fools, so the dragon abandoned its mental links and chased after the jumpships who were wisely heading separate ways, tugging at various planets in the system to spread themselves apart from one another as they all headed by circuitous routes towards the system’s central star…from where they hoped to escape the system.

He couldn’t let that happen, for knowledge of his presence would spread, not just from the stories told but from the images captured from the surface and in space. Those he could not let go or they would likely find their way to the V’kit’no’sat and all his years of sleep would be for nothing. He must maintain secrecy or all would be lost!

Catching up to the still accelerating jumpship was difficult, but soon he rammed into its hull and disappeared inside…with the gravity drives cutting off almost instantaneously. His glowing blue form punched out the port side, temporarily diminished in glow, then arced around tightly as it regained its terrifying brightness and punched back inside.

In and out the dragon traveled like a bee buzzing through a hive, tearing apart the giant ship until it was no longer capable of response…then he landed atop it and summoned all the power he could muster. The blue glow quickly disappeared, returning the dragon’s armor to its deep blue that almost disappeared against the blackness of space, then the ship began to move, towed along by the dragon as it changed its course and headed it into a spiral that would land it in the star. It took far longer than the dragon wished to yank the ship into the proper alignment and as soon as the proper mathematics were reached it released its hold and disappeared from view in a blur of motion as it shot off in pursuit of the next closest jumpship.

One by one it killed the fleeing jumpships, but could not redirect them all in the short space of time it had, so it left some of them free floating while it tracked down the others, then went back and pulled all of them into degrading orbits that would eradicate all traces of the dragon’s presence from their databanks when they burned up inside the star.

After that he tracked down and conscripted the fleeing warships, each of which was too weak to flee the system on its own, though two tried. He tracked them down over the next few days and destroyed them in transit between the stars, for he didn’t have enough power to redirect their masses at such a speed mid jump. He did have the power to redirect himself, however, and flew back into the system and rounded up the surviving warships and lone jumpship, corralling them into a low orbital zone and systematically wiping their memories and databanks of every trace of his presence.

The Nestafar ground troops were recalled to the jumpship, as were the warships, though there were too many left to fit inside. The crews of those ships that would have to be left behind were transferred over to the jumpship, then the dragon set it on its way, escorting it all the way out to the star and holding mental control over its bridge crew until the jump was made and the last of the Nestafar were removed from the star system.

After that he returned to orbit and began wiping the memories and records from the Alliance ships, though the Canderians were beyond his influence. The dragon was taking a chance leaving them alive, but they were at even more risk from the V’kit’no’sat than he was…and he needed the intelligence they had on the Les’i’kron. Their databanks, however, he did wipe. Interfacing with their computer systems remotely and scrubbing all applicable data before they even knew he had hacked in, then he covertly traveled back to the surface, not appearing on any of the ship’s sensors.

Once there he began wiping clean the memories and sensor records of all Alliance personnel and equipment, including Star Force’s, leaving the minds of the Zen’zat with the only traces of his existence as he roamed about in the catalyst below their base, inspecting the eggs and seeds under his care and insuring that no harm had come to them. Several days later the Zen’zat he had spoken with before came down to the tunnel that the Nestafar had dug and stood over the spot that had once led down into the catalyst, which the dragon had since resealed.

“What do you want, little one?” Kara heard its voice speak inside her mind.

“We’ve repaired the orbital transmitter and sent a message requesting transit back home, but it will take some time before a jumpship arrives,” she said aloud to the tunnel. “And even when it does it will take months for one of us to return home and make preparations for your visit.”

“So I assumed.”

“Will you be staying here or traveling with us?”

“I will travel by my own means. You need only give the time and location.”

“Will you speak with Mark?”

“Concerning what?”

“The V’kit’no’sat.”

“You need not concern yourself with those you cannot defeat when you have another war before you. The Nestafar have not only attacked this world, but many others in your neophyte Alliance. Yours are too far away to become targets, but your allies were to come under attacks simultaneous to this one. They have sided with those you call the Cajdital, in exchange for a guarantee of safety when the war escalates. They intend to disrupt your Alliance, sabotaging your growth and coordination so that the Cajdital will have less of a challenge when they bring the full might of their pathetic forces against you. Concern yourself with these things, not the V’kit’no’sat, or you won’t even live to see your inevitable doom.”

Kara considered that revelation for a moment, knowing how screwed up it meant the Alliance had just become. “Will they be coming back here?”

“Those I sent back will discourage it, but they may. I will not be here to save you a second time, so prepare.”

“Out to the rim then?”

“To Earth…from there is not your concern.”

Kara laughed. “And here you had me thinking I could keep that from you. We did notice the hack, by the way. Very subtle.”

“Your memories will be all that you keep. Nothing else of my presence will be allowed. Not here, and not on Earth. Make sure your Mark understands this.”

“Tell me this…when your race returns to the galaxy, will we be enemies?”

“You will not survive that long, so it is a pointless question to ask. Take your people and run to the rim, far from the core and these Cajdital and hide yourselves away from the galaxy. Do that, and I can promise you we will never cross paths again. You will have no need to fear us.”

“We are warriors,” Kara corrected him. “If we run and hide it will be for strategic advantage, not out of fear. We will not be dominated.”

“Nor shall we, and we learned our lesson of trusting allies.”

“No, you just chose the wrong ones.”

“You are not in a position to judge, Zen’zat. The Nestafar betray you and several others are poised to do the same if the situation alters. Build your own strength, do not rely on your allies for it.”

“What do you mean, others?”

“I have seen their minds. A common enemy has brought you together, but that bond will not last once your worlds start to burn. The Calavari will not betray you, but trust no others. I would recommend you conscript them soon, before the Nestafar wipe them out, for it is they that the hammer blow will fall the hardest on. The Nestafar will hit them from the core, then at a chosen time the Cajdital will strike out from the rim and crush your ally, leaving the others untouched, confused, and scattered. Your Alliance is doomed, your enemies have planned well. Take what knowledge I have given you and use it to survive what is to come.”

“How soon is this to happen?”

“When the Calavari buckle, the Cajdital will come. If the Nestafar cannot accomplish this on their own their agreement with the Cajdital will be nullified, thus they will push as hard as they need. You know your ‘ally’ better than I, so make your own judgment as to the timeframe.”

“Anything else we need to know?”

“Many things, though I do not have the time.”

“Catching up on more sleep?”

“There is much work to be done, for us both. If the need arises I will summon you.”

“Bye then,” Kara said in her best impression of a 15-year old girl, sensing the short conversation had come to its climax. She sighed and began to walk away when the ground in front of her opened up a tiny shaft, peeling aside as if the dirt and rock were but blankets to be unfolded. Out of the chasm a small, clear jewel appeared, floating up into the tunnel seemingly under its own power.

Suddenly the left glove and gauntlet of her acolyte armor disconnected and pulled off, levitating beside her…then the jewel shot out and attached itself to the topside of her wrist, burning into place and depressing into her flesh. The pain passed as quickly as it began, then her floating armor pieces jumped back onto her arm and relocked into place as the hole in the ground resealed.

“A gift,” the dragon’s voice droned in her skull, twice as powerful as before. “I miscalculated and did not leave sufficient defenses around the catalyst. This world was empty when I set to slumber and the entrance concealed in rock. Your Calavari carved through the rock and opened the access way, though in their ignorance sealed over it during the construction of your base. The Nestafar reopened it during their attempt to create a covert entrance to the base from which to assault it from. Had you not awoken me, they or your Alliance would have plundered the catalyst.”

“What you carry now is the same augmentation that the Zak’de’ron’s Zen’zat possessed. They were stronger than the rest because we trained them to be so. You are not so skilled, so with the emblem I have given you genetic knowledge that will slowly unlock as you earn it. Do not attempt to remove the emblem or copy it, it is protected from both.”

“Wait a second, I didn’t agree…”

“We are finished. Aside from providing the coordinates for my arrival on Earth, we shall have no further contact.”

“What the hell did you just do to me?” Kara asked, pulling off her armor’s glove and looking at the tip of what looked like a large, flat diamond set into the bone just shy of where her hand lifted up. She wiggled her wrist around, finding that it didn’t hinder her movement, though it did press up on her armor’s gauntlet a bit.

There was no answer from the dragon. His voice had left her mind and she would never hear it again.

“Wonderful,” she said, apparently talking to herself. “I hate jewelry by the way!”

Kara pulled her gauntlet off and tossed it on the floor, then pulled off her helmet, ignoring the harsh air as she looked over what the idiot had just done to her body. The skin around the edge wasn’t bleeding or charred, which surprised her because she could have sworn it had sealed thermally. Her pale flesh met up with the edge perfectly, and the jewel was centered on top of her bone. It had no sharp edges, but several faces, the center of which was a septagon, ringed by dozens of other tiny shapes. It was beautiful to look at, but as she pressed the side of it with her other hand she confirmed that it was firmly attached and not going anywhere.

“You punk-ass dragon! Take this off!”

But there was no answer, and there never would be. She would wear the jewel on her arm, despite several attempts to remove it, for the rest of her life.

9

February 8, 2400

Jartul System

Daka

“Quit smiling,” Mark told Boen as they were running the halls of the Alliance base.

“Can’t help it. I like beating you.”

“Technically…we’re even…right now,” he said, huffing in between words.

“That won’t last long,” Boen promised. “As soon as we hit that turn it’s game on. I’ve given you a month to get back in shape, now no more coddling.”

Suddenly Mark elbowed him in the gut, causing him to stagger for a few steps as the trailblazer sprinted off towards the turn.

“Cheater!” Boen yelled with a smile, pressing to try and catch up with him before the turn…but it was no use. Mark had timed his ambush perfectly and got to the sharp bend in the hallway that led back towards the Star Force complex elevator entrance first, rounding the corner and accelerating a bit more as he disappeared from Boen’s view for a split second.

The other Archon followed him through, finding his quarry a few more meters distant than he’d expected, but he dug down deep and sprinted evenly, catching up centimeter by centimeter down the long hallway and eventually pulling even with Mark. No more elbows were thrown, as the trailblazer was moving at maximum speed and a delighted Boen found that he had just a little bit more left in the tank. He pressed himself up to maximum sprint and pulled ahead, smiling as much as his straining body would allow.

He flashed by the elevator entrance a good two meters ahead of Mark, then gradually decelerated in a long, triumphant runoff, circling around and jogging back to where his friend was bent over and breathing heavily.

Before he could gloat Mark stood up straight and touched his earpiece, apparently getting a message.

“Go ahead,” he said heavily, still trying to catch his breath.

“Are you ok?” Sandra asked.

“Running…what’s up?”

“Hycre fleet just arrived in orbit. Warships and a jumpship ferry for us.”

“Good,” Mark said, relieved. “Tell them we’ll be ready to go within 24 hours.”

“Copy that.”

Mark deactivated his earpiece and looked up at Boen. “When I get back, I am so gonna kick your ass.”

“Promises, promises,” the second gen Archon mocked. “Until then this victory stands. So please…take your time. Assuming that was a call about the Hycre arriving and not just you going to get a snack?”

Mark nodded. “Warships and jumpship just arrived.”

“I hope some of them are sticking around.”

“I would imagine so. This facility is too important to lose.”

“What are you coming back with?”

“As much as I can,” Mark said, starting to walk over to the elevator. “And another thousand pilots, at least.”

“How many are rotating out?”

“Just six, and those are special cases.”

“Including Kara?”

“Yeah, I hate to lose her, but she wants a more in-depth analysis of her trinket. Can’t say I blame her.”

Boen and Mark walked into the elevator as the doors opened. “I’ve got final packing to do. Send someone down to tell the dragon the ETA is 6 months.”

“How’s he going to fit?”

“We’ll have to do some remodeling over the entrance shaft,” Mark commented as the elevator whisked them down into the Star Force complex.

Paul kicked hard, using the prosthesis linking his legs together into a mechanical tail to propel him through one of the underwater hoops with his arms pointed over his head to break the water. As soon as he passed through he tore his hands apart from one another and used them to anchor him in place as he rotated around and dove straight down, kicking hard until he reached the bottom of the lake and tagged the finish pedestal. A holographic number appeared in the water next to him, indicating his time was a multiple of 2.3 of Ariel’s recent course run…meaning she won, again.

His goal was always to pull inside of twice her speed, but today she had done remarkably well, improving her best time by more than 2 seconds and leaving him with even more ground to futilely try to catch up with.

“A decent attempt,” the Elarioni said as she swam up beside him, seemingly effortlessly, as he floated at the bottom of the lake holding onto the pedestal for orientation, “but you are still rigid.”

Paul responded through his mask, which both gave him air to breath and acted as a translator for the mermaid’s native language. “That’s because my back doesn’t bend like yours does.”

She stared back at him with her glowing gold eyes, made all the more intimidating in the near darkness so far away from the sunlight. “Stretching…now,” she insisted.

“Ugh…I had to open my mouth, didn’t I?” he said, using his arms to ratchet his body around into a plank position horizontal to the lake bed while he held onto the pedestal with his hands. Ariel swam up and pressed her forearm down on the small of his back while prying up on his knees. Paul felt a joint pop, then the all too familiar tension as his body was forced to contort in a manner it didn’t like.

She seemed to like doing it to him, however, because he often caught her smiling as she did so. He figured it was payback from all the workouts he had her doing to maintain her self-sufficiency, though she had previously said it was interesting to get her hands on such an awkward and rigid swimmer and that she just felt compelled to loosen him up a bit.

Paul had concluded that she’d picked up a bit of his sarcasm over the years, because she often made fun of him for being so awkward in the water. She, on the other hand, was a virtual gumby. One day she’d had him perform the same flexibility drill on her and he was dismayed when he literally was able to wrap her body up in a ball, with her just looking back and smiling at him as he did so. Then again, having cartilage instead of bones did give her a decided advantage.

“Ow,” Paul moaned as she pushed a little farther than his back wanted.

“Now kick,” she instructed, loosening up slightly on her prying. He managed a weak flicker of his bound legs and she pushed in on a precise spot of his back with two stiff fingers. “Quicker now.”

Paul felt something pop, then his legs loosened up considerably and his micro-kick became fluid and regular.

“There, that’s better,” she said, holding him in place. “Practice the small motions correctly and they will build into the larger ones.”

“You know I’m never going to be able to swim like you, right?”

“Just as I knew I would never live this long,” she countered. “Now kick, a thousand reps. I will keep count, just focus on maintaining the proper movement.”

“Kill joy,” he mumbled, but she only smiled at the complaint while maintaining a firm grip on his waist and upper legs, limiting his range of movement while using her tail to maintain her attitude in the water. He worked through the exercise diligently, trying to keep his movements within necessary rhythm though Ariel had to pry him back into alignment several times. Eventually he reached the 1000 mark, after which she released his legs and pulled him upright.

“Arms,” she ordered, with him putting his wrists back over his head for her to grab with one hand while still holding onto his waist with the other, then she pressed her chest into his back and pulled with both arms, bending him out like a bow, during which he felt another couple joints pop. “You are so inflexible.”

“Not…built…for the…water,” he reminded her amidst the strain.

“That’s no excuse. Taryn is much more flexible. In fact, you’re the worst of all your brothers and sisters.”

“You haven’t…met…all of them.”

“They say you’re the worst, and I believe them.”

“I think…Ian…is in competition…for that title.”

“Would you agree with that?” Ariel asked.

“Agree…with what…myself?”

“No, Paul is by far the worst,” Mark said, swimming up to them skillfully. “He just doesn’t like the water for some reason.”

“Who…is that?” Paul asked, unable to see from his position but vaguely recognizing the voice being transmitted through the commlink in their breath masks.

“One of your brothers that I have not seen in a long time…and one of your better swimmers,” Ariel said, releasing Paul from the stretch and swimming over to embrace Mark. “It has been too long.”

“Sorry I don’t visit more,” he said, feeling her slick hair brush over his neck as she pulled back.

“What brings you back?” Paul asked, awkwardly swimming over to the pair as he massaged the small of his back with his left hand.

“What’s the latest you’ve heard?”

“About what?”

Mark raised an eyebrow. “I thought the Hycre would have gotten word to you by now.”

“The Bsidd are dragging their feet getting the relays built, so we’re still five links off the grid. What’s going on?”

“The Nestafar have allied with the lizards and are attacking Alliance worlds, Daka included.”

“What!?” Paul asked so fiercely that a few extra bubbles escaped his mask.

“I’m told they’re specifically targeting the Calavari, and that when they’ve got them weak enough the lizards are going to come in for the kill, splitting the Alliance apart and taking the rest of us down piecemeal.”

“How do you know that…wait, you said Daka was hit, how bad?”

“Pretty bad, but we only had a few Star Force casualties. We did lose Vitor and Enrich though.”

“Status of the system?”

“In Alliance control. The Hycre brought in a defense fleet and the seda is still intact. The base was damaged but we held it just long enough to get some extraordinary help.”

“What help?” Paul asked, swimming up within a meter of Mark and all but forgetting that Ariel was beside him listening in.

Mark turned to the Elarioni. “I’m afraid I’m going to need to steal Paul away for a few months. We have to take a trip back home.”

“If you must,” she acquiesced.

“Just out with it,” Paul insisted.

“Kara invited a dragon to the pyramid,” he answered bluntly.

Paul looked at him through the water as if he had gone nuts. “What in the world are you talking about?”

“We’ve learned a lot more about the V’kit’no’sat…from a dragon…that used to be part of them.”

Ariel’s face contorted, hiding her usually bemused demeanor with a scowl of rage. “They are here?”

“No, they’re not. And it’s a long story, but to summarize, the dragon we found…”

“Found?”

“Underneath the Alliance base,” Mark said offhand like Paul should already have known. “Was originally part of the V’kit’no’sat, a race called the Zak’de’ron…which, by the way, were transformed into the Les’i’kron, after they were defeated after the V’kit’no’sat backstabbed the Zak’de’ron, who was one of three races that originally formed the V’kit’no’sat as a defensive alliance against the Hadarak. Savvy?”

“You’re having way too much fun with this,” Paul said, trying to comprehend what Mark was saying.

“Kara is the one that got the information out of him, and she got a nice jewel stuck on her wrist as a thank you. Anyway, we’re meeting the dragon on Earth so we can let him into the pyramid because he wants to know what the V’kit’no’sat did to his race, because he’s been sleeping all this time in some form of doomsday egg cache…which is what was underneath the base that the Nestafar found and wanted bad enough to send a huge warfleet out to get, seeing as how they used to be a subservient race to the Zak’de’ron a long, long time ago, which they and most of our Alliance refer to as Keepers.”

“Ok, just stop already,” Paul said, holding up a hand that twisted his floating body aside. “Let’s continue this on dry land.”

“See,” Mark said to Ariel, “he doesn’t like the water.”

“I know the name ‘Keeper’ from Elarioni history. They were a magical race that had many others serving them…then they vanished from the galaxy, leaving behind artifacts that were highly sought after. The Eulersol claimed to have been one of their former servants, but that assertion was doubted by many.”

“You’ll have to tell me that story later,” Paul said, thinking hard. “Whose bright idea was it to give this dragon access to the pyramid?”

“That would be Kara, but I agree with her reasoning and I’m hopping on the next jumpship headed that way. The Hycre just dropped me off here a few hours ago.”

“What’s her reasoning?”

“The dragon agreed to unlock the restricted portions of the database…if we agree to keep its presence a secret. Apparently our minds are shielded to its mind control, so it couldn’t wipe our memories. Instead of killing us, its trusting us to keep our mouths shut so the V’kit’no’sat don’t find out that it survived.”

“And here I thought you would be bored on some backwater world…” Paul mewed. “Ariel, can you get us back up there. We’ve got a lot to do and I don’t want to waste time.”

“With me?” she finished, then smiled to let him know she was only joking. “Alright, but I want to know what’s going on as soon as you get the chance…before you leave.”

“I promise,” Paul said a moment before she grabbed him by the back of his collar and dragged him up through the water at incredible speed…though lesser than normal because she had Mark in the other hand. As they angled up towards the surface they passed by several of the glowing hoops marking the obstacle course they had been working on earlier then they moved through an empty section of water until several small lights began to appear in the distance.

Those lights eventually grew into the underwater architecture that Ariel had helped Star Force design and build. It functioned as both a prototype testing facility as well as underwater embassy and city for the lone Elarioni. Inside it she conversed with Star Force Archons and engineers, continually helping them to upgrade their aquatics division, in both military and civilian applications.

She pulled both Archons up into the structure and through several tunnels before depositing them in a shallow pool with an underwater staircase leading up into the dry land segment of the small city. They eventually got their footing and climbed out after Paul disconnected the prosthetic from his legs. Ariel poked her head up out of the water and waved to them, which both Archons returned graciously before walking out of the room and up towards the surface pad where Mark had a mantis waiting.

“Dragon?!” Paul asked/yelled after removing his mask.

“Crazy, I know, but it’s true. It saved the Alliance from the Nestafar ground assault, mentally forcing some to retreat and killing the ones that wouldn’t. It also wiped all computer records of the battle, but a few people saw it first hand and, if that’s the kind of firepower the V’kit’no’sat have we don’t stand a chance in hell of even scratching them. It did say, though, that the Zak’de’ron were more powerful than the other races, but still, if they could defeat them then we’re sitting ducks. It also singlehandedly took out their warships and jumpships.”

“How big of a dragon are we talking about?”

“Big…like, dropship big.”

“And where is it now?”

“It said it would rendezvous with us at Earth, and we’ve only got a few months to get back there and set things up. We’re going to have to remodel the factory to let it in.”

“It has a ship?”

“It is a ship…don’t ask me how. Some sort of transformer-like armor add-on. Kara said it also had armor that extruded from rings on his claw/fingers.”

“Did you talk to it?”

“Never got the chance. After it kicked the crap out of the Nestafar it sealed itself away and no one on the base knew it had ever existed except for us. Really creepy knowing it can do that.”

“Why are we shielded?”

“Zen’zat.”

“What else haven’t you told me? Did Kara come with you?” Paul asked as they walked up the boarding ramp and into the back of the waiting mantis.

“Only to get her trinket examined. She’s not heading back to Earth.”

“What trinket?” he asked, then realized that she was sitting in the back of the mantis waiting for them.

Kara held up her left arm and pulled back the sleeve, revealing the diamond-like jewel inset there. “This one.”

Many weeks later, back on Daka, the ground underneath the Alliance base began to shake with a steady and low hum that coincided with all the external sensors going offline simultaneously. Those Alliance pilots in the air at the time flew away from the western edge of the base and would have no recollection or sensor data afterwards to confirm what had happened, but a pair of skeets were in the air at the time and, though their sensor data also went ‘missing’ their eyes weren’t blocked from seeing a series of holes in the mountainside open up as worm-like tendrils extruded themselves from the rock that then somehow reformed behind them, leaving the mountainside untouched save for a bit of displaced grass.

On the surface the worms floated up into the air and coiled together into a long chain that then doubled back on itself and pulled together to form a donut, not unlike the original Star Force command ships, save for this one did have a small hole in the center. The massive construction floated above the surface for a moment before the dragon came up out of the ground from another disappearing tunnel, then he flew around the contraption as if inspecting it before flipping over and landing in the small center opening, whereupon the machine appeared to swallow it up with hull morphing to cover the previous hole.

The catalyst then rocketed off into the sky, heading into space and leaving Daka for good. It traveled across the star system until it set on a distant jumpline that would head straight to the Solar System, then winked out of existence as it set off across the galaxy, leaving behind only a handful of individuals that had memories of ever setting eyes upon it.

10

August 4, 2400

Solar System

Earth

Mark ducked under a left cross then exploded back up into the holographic opponent’s midsection, tossing the artificial Zen’zat to the ground while staggering to stay on his own feet. The taller opponent hit hard and rolled across its shoulder, spinning back onto its feet just as Mark kicked its legs back out from under it with a low roundhouse. He pulled out of his spin and leapt up into the air and came down on his opponents back with a stiffened elbow, feeling it give slightly, then the hologram disappeared and he smacked his elbow on the ground.

He glanced up at the statistics floating above the control console, then was startled to no end when the dragon’s voice suddenly thrust into his mind. “I am here.”

Mark jerked back, falling on his butt a meter back from where he had been laying before he realized what was happening.

“Where’s here?” the trailblazer asked aloud.

“In orbit. Have you made the necessary preparations?”

“Yes, but it will take a few moments to remove the camouflage.”

“Do so, then I will approach.”

“Alright,” Mark said, getting to his feet and grabbing his earpiece from atop the console. He slipped it in and ran out of the training chamber, heading down to the lower levels in the pyramid. “He’s here. Open it up.”

Down in the command deck, on one of the Star Force work platforms they’d constructed in the gaps between the V’kit’no’sat pedestals, Davis frowned deeply when he heard Mark’s message. “Orbital tracking hasn’t shown anything. How do you know?”

“He just telepathically told me.”

“Very well. Where are you?”

“Heading down.”

“Do you want me to wait until you’re here?”

“I’ll be there before he is. Where are the others?”

“Working on the database a few pads away.”

“Don’t wait on me.”

Davis turned to one of the many Star Force techs roaming the work area. “Retract the cover.”

The man’s face blanched. “Is it here?”

“So I’m told.”

He nodded nervously and walked off to a station where he began making contacts within the network of installations that they’d set up within the pyramid, one of which was to the security station guarding the topside entrance that had recently been carved out of the foodstuff factory that set overhead.

“We have incoming,” the Knight in command told the Star Force security team stationed on the rooftop around the entry corridor. “Retract the roof.”

“Let’s hope nobody’s watching from space,” the woman next to him said, triggering the snow-covered square plate to separate along the mid seam and gradually scoot off to either side, revealing a deep chasm that part of the pyramid was visible through. Down through the gap the hollow angled off to the left and out of sight where the main entrance to the pyramid sat, given that the Zak’de’ron was too big to enter through the Zen’zat levels.

After several minutes the cover panels locked into place, fully revealing the exposure as the 50 man security team searched the skies for any sign of the dragon, cloudy as it was. A few heartbeats later a giant red mass burst through the grey clouds and fell down towards them like a meteor. The security team reflexively ducked for cover as the dragon’s wings spread wide and braked its decent less than 200 meters overhead, then it tucked them into the hollows on its back and fell down through the open doors, planting its massive feet on the green/black stone of the pyramid and crawling down through the fairly tight pathway Star Force had cut out for it.

“Holy shit,” one of the security officers swore nearby the Knight, as many others did around the perimeter checkpoints.

“Focus people,” he reminded them over the comms. “We have a duty to perform. No one gets in, so keep your eyes on the perimeter and not down in the hole.”

Paul drove his mongoose over to the main doors with Morgan on his back just as the dragon came down outside and pivoted around to face in. Both Archons’ eyes widened at the spectacle, then as it walked through the giant opening on the pyramid’s exterior the red scales covering it suddenly began to disappear, rolling down its body like a sheet of water until they collapsed into a series of rings on its claw/fingers, revealing a deep grey flesh underneath.

Its giant head swiveled to look down at the pair, then walked on by without further interest, heading through the huge walkways that now seemed aptly sized towards the command deck where Davis and the others were waiting.

“Wow,” Morgan commented as its whip-like tail disappeared up around a corner as it scaled a ramp and Paul began to motor after it from a safe distance. “He didn’t even say hi.”

“I hope Mark knows what he’s doing.”

“Ditto.”

Davis stood on the observation platform, some three stories up from the floor of the command deck when the dragon entered, yet still he was below its head height. Without so much as a word it walked around several of the platforms that Star Force had built and went straight towards one of the larger pedestals, the ones reserved for the Oso’lon, in fact. It climbed up over the steep edge with a simple step, then Davis saw three mongooses pulling up behind it as the onsite trailblazers followed it over.

He made the conservative decision to stay put and let them handle the situation, realizing that even a haphazard step by the beast could crush him…but he did open his comm lines to include all six of the Archons so he could listen in on what was happening.

Mark got off the back of Greg’s mongoose and ran up the side steps to get on top of the pedestal as the dragon stepped onto the large circle imbedded into the pad and stood in place, distractedly twitching its tail.

It stayed like that for some time, long enough for all six trailblazers to arrive and mount the pedestal, taking up position amongst the Zen’zat control consoles.

Jason nudged Mark in the ribs, which he returned in kind.

“It’s your dragon,” Jason whispered.

“He’s not exactly the talkative sort,” Mark said, grudgingly accepting the roll of ambassador. “Are you into the system?”

“It will require a considerable amount of time,” the dragon said, eyes closed and concentrating. “Our access has been removed, therefore I must create a new entry path.”

“You have a mental interface?”

“Holographic.”

“Different ambrosia, different access?” Paul suggested.

“So he’s hacking in?” Jason asked, just to clarify.

“Beats me,” Mark said, shrugging.

“Zen’zat…take your place at the controls,” the dragon said, still not looking at the Humans.

Morgan responded instantly, stepping up in front of one of the control boards. “What do you need?”

Suddenly a plethora of images flashed into her mind, then they repeated more slowly, allowing her to work through the operations step by step.

“Ok,” she said, turning on the console and having a hologram activate in front of her. She used various keystrokes on the luminous creation as well as on the control boards to dig into parts of the database she had never seen before, ultimately coming to a code prompt…at which point a very long and odd code entered her mind. It took her more than five minutes to put it into the system, but when she did suddenly the area around the circles on the pedestal where the dragon was standing filled with holograms, several of which were moving in unusual ways as if…

“He’s telekinetic,” Paul said in a whisper.

“Why?” Jason asked.

“Those are control keys,” he said, pointing up at the holograms forming an arc around the dragon’s head and front torso. “He’s pressing them to interface with the computer systems.”

“Why are we seeing them?” Taryn asked.

“Something I did,” Morgan answered as she also continued to enter commands the dragon was mentally feeding her.

“Do they all have Jedi powers?” Greg asked.

“Kara said it said we did too,” Mark pointed out. “So my guess would be yes…which explains how they interact with most of their technology.”

“And here we thought we did everything for them,” Greg said, shaking his head as he watched the dragon whip through command sequences on the holograms far faster than any set of hands could have. “Morgan, is he talking to you?”

“Quite a bit. I’m having to focus to keep up.”

“Shutting up,” Greg acquiesced, turning to face Mark. “He can’t understand English, right?”

“Kara didn’t think so, and he doesn’t appear to be able to pull information from our memories…but he did ransack our computer systems, so I wouldn’t put it past him entirely.”

“And you said he kicked the crap out of a Nestafar army?”

“Not looking like this. He was wearing some sort of armor.”

“He has it on now,” Paul interjected. “Those rings on its feet are the armor. It flew in wearing it, then took it off at the door.”

“That’d be cool,” Taryn added. “And I like jewelry anyway.”

“Is that what he gave Kara?” Jason asked.

Mark shook his head. “I don’t know. Last she said was it was a lump of crystal giving her weird dreams. They’re doing a thorough analysis on Corneria, but short of cutting off her hand and regrowing it they haven’t found a way to take it off.”

“I hope she’s not stupid enough to try that?” Taryn asked, eyeing Mark.

“Don’t look at me, ask him,” he said, deferring to Paul.

“She won’t,” he said confidently. “She’s thinking about it, but in the end she isn’t going to hack off her own hand.”

“Saber taboo?” Greg asked.

“Unless it’s harming her in some way,” Paul added, ignoring the Star Wars jibe.

“He is here to help, right?” Jason asked, returning the subject to the dragon. “I mean, he’s not going to activate the internal defenses, kill us all, and reclaim the planet for himself?”

Paul glanced over at the trailblazer. “Do we have internal defenses?”

“Not that I know of, but who knows what’s in here that we haven’t found. Mark?”

“I think he just wants the information then will be on his way…besides, he’d already discovered where Earth was from our computer records. Better to invite him here than have him force his way in.”

“Good point,” Paul said, trying to figure out some pattern to the morphing holograms surrounding the front side of the dragon. “Does he have a name?”

“Not that Kara knew, no. And he wasn’t talking to anyone else.”

“Why isn’t she here?” Taryn asked.

“Because she’s pissed off with him for sticking that jewel on her wrist without permission,” Mark explained. “And the fact that he won’t take it off.”

“He said it contained genetic knowledge?” Greg asked.

“Something about that. Kara didn’t completely fill me in on that part.”

“You could just ask him,” Jason pointed out.

“Woo,” Morgan exclaimed happily, “yeah baby! We now have core access.”

“That was fast,” Taryn said, stepping over to Morgan’s console and seeing the familiar holographic structure of the database…along with several new tendrils added.

“As agreed,” the dragon said, finally turning to face the tiny Zen’zat, “you now have full access. This one will show you how to use it. I require more time for my own purposes, and I do not seek further questions. Take what I have given you and learn from it.”

With that the dragon’s head twisted back up towards the holograms and a series of new display nodes appeared as it began researching the Les’i’kron and other matters pertaining to the history it had missed out on while sleeping.

It stayed there for several hours, investigating much more than it had planned. There was a wealth of data stored within the database that post-dated his slumber, including some subsequent reports on the Rit’ko’sor rebellion that continued to be logged up until the communications net had been taken down. Included were several reports of massive Rit’ko’sor fleets that the V’kit’no’sat had not been aware existed, and as such the little vermin had succeeded in catching the other races off guard along the periphery. Wisely they had not tried to claim star systems, but rather simply destroy all that they came across, wiping the V’kit’no’sat from several regions before a counteroffensive could be organized.

Shortly after that point the net had been severed and the defense station had no further records, but the last few entries pointed to a massive war with nearly even casualties on either side, which truly surprised the Zak’de’ron. His estimates for the V’kit’no’sat reclaiming this region of the galaxy had been overly optimistic, and now he saw that the Rit’ko’sor rebellion might have even caused a forfeiture of the central band.

If that was the case he had a significant opportunity before him…a pity he hadn’t awoke sooner, but he hadn’t anticipated a rebellion from within weakening the V’kit’no’sat. Frustration at lost time aside, he needed to get the catalyst into position and begin their regrowth. Vengeance was on the distant horizon and the time for slumber was gratefully over.

Using his rings the dragon downloaded and transmitted a wealth of data off into space where the catalyst lay, then it closed down the system and retreated off the pedestal, ignoring the few questions the Zen’zat asked of it. He walked back to the ramp, gracious enough not to step on their crude structures along the way, and headed back to the exterior entrance.

With a thought he activated his rings, which spread back out over the dragon’s body in a sea of red plates, fully obscuring his skin and giving him the anti-grav boost he needed to easily climb up the crude tunnel the Zen’zat had dug. When the opening appeared above him he leapt up, wings tucked, and tore through the hole and into the sky, not bothering to look back at the forgotten colony. He headed straight up into space, lingering only long enough to hack into and jam the sensors of the ships and stations in orbit so that his passage would go unnoticed.

He flew out to high orbit around the planet where he rendezvoused with his exoskeleton. The blue material formed around the red armor and obscured it from sight, then in a flash its gravity drives shot him off to the edge of the star system where the catalyst lay waiting. He merged with it and made a short jump back in to the system’s star, then from there he launched himself and his precious cargo out towards the edge of the galaxy and far away from both the V’kit’no’sat and the rogue Zen’zat.

A month later Kara was still on Corneria, taking the opportunity to undergo some heavy training while she waited for transit back to Daka along with a host of other pilots. Star Force and the Alliance had decided to heavily reinforce the system rather than abandoning it in light of the new war they were having to fight against the Nestafar. Sales of the Valerie to the enemy had stopped, of course, which meant that the more of the fighter craft they were able to kill the weaker the Nestafar starfighter corps would become…and given that that was their greatest weakness, it was deemed an even greater priority for the Alliance to increase its starfighter acumen, which it would need to counter the formidable Nestafar armies.

The Calavari had all but elevated the Humans to peer rank in the Alliance to replace the Nestafar, so far as Daka was concerned anyway, and Star Force was ready and willing to step up into the position of co-leadership on the starfighter front…even though they only used aerofighters, but even that was no longer a concern, given the defensive effort they’d mounted against the Nestafar to secure the Alliance base.

In their allies’ minds the Nestafar had seen they were outmatched and capitulated, leaving the system in favor of a much larger assault later or never to return again. Either way it was a significant victory, despite the betrayal and the losses suffered. No mention of the dragon or the subterranean caverns was ever made, for he had indeed removed it from their memories. Star Force didn’t fill their allies in on the truth, but chose to keep it to themselves. If word did somehow leak back to the V’kit’no’sat that a dragon had been spotted it could hasten their return, and that was something they could not afford to have happen.

As such, the aerial theatre of this growing war was becoming more and more Star Force’s turf, and Mark had asked for much more in the way of resources and personnel be sent to Daka to spearhead the effort. Kara had chosen to return because of this, knowing that on Daka she could probably do more to help the war effort than anywhere else…at least until Star Force decided to start pushing back against either of their enemies, in which case she’d be among the first to transfer to the front lines.

While she waited for transit she focused little on flying, taking the opportunity to train with the commando and mech experts in the system and use them to really push her to the limits, as well as to get their critiques and advice on how to advance her skills to the next level. It was during one of her commando training exercises that involved her dodging tiny bouncy balls that really stung when they hit that she got a glimpse of the ‘gift’ that the dragon had stuck her with.

Not able to dodge all of the balls and seriously regretting the ones that she let get through, Kara began twisting evasively while trying to catch or deflect the ones she couldn’t miss with her hands rather than let them hit her head or chest. When one came in on her left, headed for about neck level and her body was already moving the wrong way from dodging another, she brought her arm up to block it but didn’t feel the impact sting. Thrown a bit by what must have been a near miss she continued dodging the next few that came in until her eyes went wide with shock as she noticed the large piece of red covering the back of her hand.

She got hit several times by balls she didn’t block, one of which was particularly painful that caught her on the right cheek, before she deactivated the training scenario with a voice code. No longer having to worry about the tiny little pain inducers, she stared down at her arm, getting a two second examination of the scale-like armor segment before it retracted back into the jewel.

She held up her arm and stared at the thing, mentally trying to make it come back out but failing.

“Ok, you just got a lot cooler,” she said as her mind raced through various training methods she could employ to prod the thing. “Now let’s see if I can get you to do that again.”

Foothold

1

March 1, 2401

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

“Where exactly?” Jason asked, sitting forward in his chair around the holotable.

“Here,” Greg said, pointing above the table to a particular star on the map that he made pulse blue with a few keystrokes.

Jason eyed the location between Star Force and lizard territory. “That’s a stretch for us without Hycre transport.”

“It will shrink over time,” Paul added, “as our engine technology advances. If we can secure a foothold now, and hold it, the supply lines will take care of themselves.”

Jason shook his head. “Our ships just aren’t fast enough yet. We need to be able to reinforce within months of any assault, and it’ll take that long just to get a courier back with the news of an attack.”

“Which is why we’re going in loaded for bear,” Greg countered. “We’re planning on limited resupply, initially.”

“I know, I’m just saying it’s risky.”

“So is your mission,” Morgan commented.

Jason glanced over at her on his right. “True, but I’ll have Alliance help and Hycre transport. He’ll have neither.”

“We have to learn to do this without training wheels eventually,” Greg pointed out.

“If we swapped,” Paul asked, “what would you do?”

Jason frowned, then rubbed his chin as he looked at the map. “If I was committed to limited resupply I’d go deeper.”

“What?” Morgan said, frowning.

“Either pick somewhere nearby or far away. Middle of the road does no good.”

“You were just complaining about the middle being too far away.”

“I don’t like not having a steady jumpship supply chain…but if you’re going to work without it, you might as well go full bore.”

Paul looked back at the map of the local region of the galaxy. Most of the Alliance territory was on the far side of the table, coreward on the map, with bits of grey neutral areas in between at spots, then a large mass of lizard-controlled systems heading out rimward. The map wasn’t flat, and the glob of lizard territories looked like a giant tumor with tendrils sticking out in all directions. Two of those were reaching in the general direction of Star Force, but with a scattering of dots that were lizard expansion claims…such as Epsilon Eridani would have been had they not held it during the first incursion years ago.

Those dots were typically tests of the local regions to see what kind of resistance they’d draw, with annexation to follow if there wasn’t much pushback. Those areas that did encounter heavy resistance were either put on hold or targeted for greater attacks. Epsilon Eridani had been somewhere in between with the lizards mounting additional assaults that the Hycre had helped to thwart, then the enemy seemed to temporarily abandon the idea and focus their resources elsewhere.

Star Force knew that once the lizards drew down in conflicts in other areas that they’d be back to continue their work, but in general the Human territories were in the backwater of the larger conflict…which gave them an advantage if they were bold enough to try and use it.

Which they were. The war against the lizards, and now the Nestafar, was going to involve Star Force attacking from two fronts. One would be Jason taking an armada, carried by specially designed Hycre jump cradles, off to the more populated Alliance territories where they would assist in fending off assaults currently ongoing. They would be roving battle units, hopping from system to system as necessary, starting with the Nestafar incursion into Calavari space.

Paul’s mission was exactly the opposite. They were going to pick a system and bury themselves in it, building Star Force infrastructure and essentially establishing a fortress from which they would be able to fight out of, traveling to the surrounding systems and hitting the lizards there…all within range of Star Force’s jumpships so they wouldn’t have to keep asking the Hycre for rides.

It was a bold move, and one that was likely to draw significant reaction, but any troops they could pull away from the rest of the Alliance would reduce the threat in other combat areas…and if the lizards didn’t respond Star Force could annex a new chunk of territory and take back a few small worlds the enemy already possessed. Either way, it would cause the lizards trouble, but beyond that Paul’s mission had a much greater significance.

The dragon’s warning about possible betrayal by other allies had not gone unheeded, nor had its recommendation to absorb the Calavari. In addition to messing with the lizards, Paul’s mission was intended to carve out a region of space into which the Alliance could fall back if the war did not go well. Star Force intended to fortify one world first, hold it, and strike back at the lizards to get a feel for how they were going to react…then if they didn’t respond too strongly they were going to move into the region and start claiming uninhabited star systems or incorporating the natives into a much larger empire, into which the Calavari and others could retreat to find sanctuary in.

The ‘expansion’ plan also created a territorial buffer between the enemy and Earth, which was an additional bonus. Epsilon Eridani had become the command center for Star Force’s military, but the bulk of their population and industry was still in Sol, safely tucked away from the interstellar community in what Star Force had tagged as a ‘private’ system. Keeping it off the radar was the plan, and Corneria was believed by many other races to actually be the Humans’ homeworld.

Paul sighed, then highlighted a different system. “If you want to go big, then here’s the spot to do it.”

“No way,” Morgan said, shaking her head. “That’s right next door to three of their systems.”

“On the map it may look intimidating,” Greg differed, “but they don’t have much there. Easy pickings if we wanted to take them out and free what’s left of the natives.”

“Freeing natives means holding planets,” Morgan argued, “and spreading out your forces.”

“We’re going to spread out anyway,” Rafa interjected, sitting next to Paul along with the 9 other trailblazers that were being deployed into the war zones. “Paul can sit on the target world and build while we go hunting.”

“How much more time does that put on our supply lines?” Sara asked.

“A month and a half, on top of the 3 already,” Morgan answered.

“9 month round trip…assuming you can keep the connecting systems secure.”

Jason looked over at the blonde Archon. “If you pack right, you won’t need them for a while.”

“We have to make sure we can hold what we take, otherwise this whole operation could turn into a nightmare…and it takes time to build up that kind of infrastructure.”

“Which I can do,” Paul promised.

Sara eyed him icily. “If the lizards give you enough time.”

“They’ve got bigger fish to deal with,” he said, looking at Jason. “And I’m sure you’ll keep them distracted.”

“See, I told you so,” Jason said to the group.

“You two agreeing is nothing new,” Greg commented. “But you’re right. Secure a forward stronghold and we can pick up the systems in between later with ease.”

Morgan still shook her head. “You’re overreaching. This might work, but it totally depends on how much of a response they throw at us. Do you really want to risk that?”

“Do you want to switch with me?” Jason asked her.

“Frankly, yes.”

“Done deal.”

“Wait a minute…”

“No, Paul, this will work,” Morgan said, nodding at Jason. “I don’t like to get pinned down to holding territory, and if he really thinks you guys can do this then we should swap.”

“Anyone else want to trade?” Greg asked, half sarcastic/half serious.

“I don’t know, Morgan,” Paul said deadpan. “I’m not sure if you’re qualified to cause as much havoc as Jason is.”

The highest ranking ranger smiled. “I’m sure I’ll be able to manage.”

Rafa leaned back in his chair with a wry smile on his face. “Why do I get the feeling we just lost Legolas and picked up Pippin?”

Morgan couldn’t help but laugh at that, and looked over at Jason…then busted out laughing again.

“Funny,” Jason said, not amused.

“Do we have a fallback plan?” Sara asked as Morgan was finally able to get it under control.

“Initially, no,” Paul admitted, “but we’ll be taking more than one system after we get the first nice and cozy. If we lose one, we’ll have the others to fall back to.”

“But we’ll have a window of vulnerability in the beginning?”

“We’ll have most of our fleet in one spot, so I wouldn’t exactly call that vulnerable.”

“We’ll be on our own,” Greg added, “but we can handle it. You know we can.”

“I think we can,” Sara clarified, “but I don’t want to lose half our people if I’m wrong.”

“If we have to we can ask the Hycre,” Rafa said. “That’s our real backup plan.”

“I’d prefer we didn’t,” Greg agreed. “We’re not always going to be able to depend upon them.”

“They do want a couple of systems though,” Paul added. “They’re a bit out of the way, but they’ve told me they’re willing to establish outposts there immediately after we secure our beachhead.”

Jason frowned. “When did that happen?”

“This morning.”

“Which systems?” Greg asked.

Paul worked the hologram controls and highlighted the targets…one was an uninhabited system, the other was tagged as under lizard control, one of their expeditionary claims.

“I suppose they want us to take it for them, too?” Sara asked.

“They know we’re not going to leave a lizard outpost within proximity of our supply lines, so they asked that when we take it out that they be able to move in and hold it.”

“Paul,” Morgan said warily, “that’s nowhere near either of the systems we’re considering.”

“I know…it’ll have to be a side mission.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Sam offered. “I’ll catch up with the rest of you after the Hycre take possession.”

“Wait,” Sara said, holding up a hand. “We’re going to kick the lizards off a world then not keep it?”

“That’s what I’m going to be doing the next few years,” Morgan pointed out.

“No, I mean the Hycre are going to occupy the gas giants in the system,” she said, enlarging the icon to show the entire system highlighted above the main map. “The lizards are on a terrestrial planet where the Hycre can’t really get at them. If we take them out and just leave it’s possible they could come back and bee line it for the atmosphere before the Hycre can take them out, land ground troops, and start this thing all over again.”

“No,” Paul said emphatically. “I’ve had several long talks with the Hycre and they don’t have a problem keeping lizards off planets in systems they have a presence in. Their warships can go in atmosphere and bust up any ground forces the lizards land…it’s when those troops have a chance to dig in that they have trouble. They can’t pry them out very well, but they can keep them from sprouting new colonies. Once Sam clears the planet and the Hycre settle into the system they’ll own it…short of a major assault.”

“Well that makes me feel a little better,” Sara admitted. “I was starting to think we were their personal ground pounders.”

“How much is losing Sam, temporarily, going to slow us down?” Rafa asked.

“First stage is building,” Paul explained, given that he was unofficially in charge of the entire operation. “None of the construction crews go with Sam, we take them all with us and start setting up shop immediately, so there’s no disadvantage there. We’ll just be one battle group short for a while.”

“We’re going in with overkill,” Jason reminded them, “so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“And the other system the Hycre want?” Sara continued. “Why haven’t they taken it already?”

“That I don’t know,” Paul said, distractedly tapping on the tabletop. “They may have plans of their own to fortify the region, which I think they have, but they’re not telling me everything. They simply requested permission to annex those systems after we move further out. My first guess was they want to establish themselves there without having to devote a significant warfleet to hold it…but there may be more to it than that.”

Rafa stared up at the two systems, now sitting side by side in holo over top of the main map. “Were there any Hycre on Daka when the dragon was there?”

“No there weren’t,” Morgan answered.

“I wonder which group he would have put them in.”

Jason’s eyes narrowed. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m wondering if they’re helping us or using us.”

“It’s been all help so far,” Paul pointed out.

“A bit of naval brotherhood there?” Rafa joked. “No, I agree they’ve been more than helpful thus far, but the warning about our allies not being trustworthy bothers me…and I wonder why he thought the Calavari could be trusted.”

“That’s been bugging me too,” Morgan admitted. “There were Bsidd and Kvash on Daka, and the dragon didn’t think they were trustworthy…though how much stock we can put in his assessment is suspect as well, but it does get me wondering.”

“Which is why we have to make our play here,” Paul insisted. “We have to stake out our territory and start calling the shots, work with the people we know we can trust, and chart our own destiny. I don’t begrudge the other races for banding together to oppose the lizards, but let’s face it, if there wasn’t a common threat some of them would be at each other’s throats right now. They’re not real allies, which is what I think the dragon was warning us about.”

“And why would he even bother doing that?” Sara asked.

“Kara said he wants us to hurt the V’kit’no’sat if we can,” Paul noted. “For that reason I think we can trust what he told us. From his point of view we’re too unimportant to talk to, let alone sabotage.”

“Revenge has a way of making allies as well,” Rafa pithily summarized.

“Well said,” Morgan acknowledged.

“Remember,” Greg reminded them, “we’re playing a different game than the Alliance. We’ve got the V’kit’no’sat database…all of it now. The more we technologically advance the more of it we’ll be able to use. Time is on our side, and the lizards’ advantage over us is almost gone. They have their areas of strength, and now we have ours…and ours are growing. We’ve got an ace in the hole and we need to play like it. If we wait and let the lizards grab up more systems before we move we squander an opportunity. This mission is bold, dangerous, and…well, right up our alley. We know the V’kit’no’sat aren’t out here, so the time to tiptoe around is over. We hit, and we hit hard from here on out.”

“I don’t disagree,” Sara said, “but the lizards have shown themselves to be adaptable. I don’t think we should push quite as far as we think we can, and keep a little in reserve for when they pull out their bag of tricks.”

Greg smiled. “We will, because we’re sending the hothead out to beat them up elsewhere,” he said, thumbing at Morgan.

“Hey,” she said, mock offended. “Don’t hate just because I’m good.”

“We’ve got the Admiral planning it out,” Jason added, looking at Sara. “He won’t overcook it.”

“I know he won’t…I just don’t want to have to hold back once we engage. We’re not good when we hesitate...and you’re terrible at any speed other than all out.”

“Not true,” he argued, “but I do like the sound of that.”

“We can do this,” Paul said evenly and bringing the conversation back around to the finer details. “And if the lizards don’t take us seriously we can hurt them in a big way…down the road. None of us is reckless…no matter how much we like to think we are,” he said, eyeing Jason. “I’m nervous about this too, but not because I think we can’t handle it, but because it’s a step forward that we have to run out of. There’s no going back after this. We’re going to make ourselves a huge target, and to quote our enemy, we either dominate or will be dominated.”

“Annihilated, actually,” Morgan corrected him.

“Same thing,” Greg commented, “and I agree with Paul. We can hide out here and play a supportive role in the Alliance, or we can step to the forefront and start playing with the big boys.”

“I’m glad you didn’t say ‘table,’” Jason commented. “The kiddie table was always more fun than hanging out with the adults.”

“Thanks for killing the metaphor,” Greg said, rolling his eyes. “You guys know what I mean. We can play this either way, but I favor the ‘hit now’ version. Are we agreed? Or do we need to consider other options…there are more than two, by the way.”

The Archons glanced around at each other, but it was clear they were all onboard.

“Don’t look at me,” Morgan said. “I’m not going with you.”

“Let’s do this,” Sara said, more enthusiasm in her voice than before. “We need a warmup for the V’kit’no’sat anyway.”

“We need more than that,” Paul noted, the sight of the dragon shedding its armor flashing to mind.

“We do need an evac route to the rim,” Rafa added. “Might as well start working on it now, before the V’kit’no’sat show up.”

“That too,” Jason agreed. “We can’t sit home forever.”

“Better we fight them out there than here,” Sam said, “or at Sol.”

“Alright, we’re agreed,” Greg said. “Now for system picking…we’ve got a lot of choices and a lot of potential targets. Paul, work your magic on the map and the rest of us will try to pick it to pieces.”

“Challenge accepted,” the trailblazer said, returning the map to the full regional view and beginning to highlight dots with various color tags.

2

January 17, 2402

Arkes System

4th planet

Dozens of blue plasma orbs hit the topside of the lizard cruiser as it fired back helplessly, trying to run from the Star Force fleet but unable to outstrip the faster corvettes that had gotten ahead of it and were keeping it from jumping. Eight of them had it in their sights and were pummeling its shields with plasma as they rotated position, blocking for one another as their own shields began to fail. Attrition overcame the lizards’ shields first and soon the blue plasma was impacting the hull, blasting apart the docked kirbies and ripping open the bulbous compartments dotting the otherwise flat ship.

“Cruiser eliminated,” one of the Ares’s bridge crew reported a few minutes later.

Sam nodded, but otherwise didn’t respond as he watched the orbital bombardment of the solitary lizard base on the surface of the planet begin in earnest. Hundreds of rail gun slugs were falling against its shields while the rest of the remotely controlled fleet dispatched from the Warship-class jumpship spread out in low orbit in standby mode. Only one lizard ship had been detected in the system, though with the limited sensor detection range of their expeditionary craft there was no guarantee they didn’t have more lurking elsewhere.

If they did they were probably on the run by now, because as soon as the fleet had arrived and deployed the lizard cruiser had engaged the first few ships to detach, then realizing it was horribly outmatched had attempted to flee back down into the atmosphere where most Star Force ships notoriously couldn’t follow. The corvettes had gotten to and swarm-killed it first, with the remaining debris now turning into fireballs as it began to impact the thick air cushion around the planet.

That cushion wasn’t thick enough to deflect the orbital guns, however. The metallic projectiles were punching through it without much effort and hammering the base shields…though Sam’s eyes were tracking the perimeter, trying to see if the lizards were evacuating over ground.

It took a while for them to move, but move they did. Fighters, predators, kirbies, and ground vehicles all began exiting the perimeter of the shield just before it fell, taking their chances and trying to make a run for the edge of the bombardment zone, hoping they didn’t get tagged by the metallic rain. A few of the unlucky ones got hit by slugs that missed the base, but the majority of vehicles and ships successfully scattered before the energy barrier went down and the lizard buildings began to shatter under the repetitive kinetic impact.

“Prep the dropships,” Sam ordered as he all but leapt out of his chair. “You have the bridge.”

“Aye, sir,” the naval Captain in charge of the Ares confirmed as the Archon headed for one of the jumpship’s small cargo bays. There he boarded a shuttle and took it on a short hop over to a massive gargantuan freighter in which the ground assault team was being prepped. After setting the shuttle down in a small auxiliary bay he jogged through the decks and over to the main force that was assembling inside of ten Dragon-class dropships.

“Didn’t expect you to tag along?” a voice said in Sam’s earpiece as he ran over to a stationary mech standing along the back wall while several others were walking up and into the open dragons.

“The bridge got boring.”

“Usually is,” Amir-577 said as he paused his shadowcat and looked back as the trailblazer climbed up into his personal neo that was painted in full orange with a fake blue ‘belt’ around the middle, wrists, and equally blue ‘boots’ along with a large white crest on the back that contained the Star Force emblem. “When’s the last time you took Goku out for a spin?”

“Years,” Sam said as he sealed the hatch and began to strap himself into the extravagant control harness, “but the techs say it’s in perfect condition.”

“What are we hunting?”

“Scattered runaways. Looks like you’ll have more work to do than the others,” he said, referencing the faster mech that Amir was piloting. The shadowcat had a pair of elbow-less gun arms coming off the sides of a low, squarish body that sat atop a pivot point that doubled as a waist over the ‘pelvis’ of the mech that connected to the legs. The Star Force version of the Battletech knockoff had two knee joints on the backward canted legs that allowed the middle portion to lay level to the ground and allow the lower part that connected to the foot to reach out further, offering long strides and enormous push potential once accelerated up into a full run, along with enhanced balance options for covering rough terrain. It was what was classed as a ‘medium’ mech, but it had almost as much speed as a raven while carrying considerably more armor and weaponry.

Sam’s neo, on the other hand, stood well taller in its humanoid-form and matched the Archon’s movements in the cockpit to the mechanical movements of the mech…whereas the shadowcat’s movements were computer controlled.

Amir laughed as Sam’s mech staggered in its first few steps, making his movements look as rusty as the mech must have felt. “Simulators just aren’t the same, are they?”

“No, it’s not that,” Sam complained, fidgeting with the controls. “Whoever parked it here has the settings all messed up.”

“Sure,” Amir teased, spinning the shadowcat’s torso all the way around before heading over to his assigned dropship.

Sam grit his teeth as he reconfigured the system to his liking, freeing up the movements so they exactly matched those in the cockpit, whereas the person who’d moved it had been restricting movement into a partially computer-controlled gait, prompted by the pilot’s movements rather than being controlled by them.

As soon as he got them reset Goku’s posture straightened and he kicked the legs around for good measure, feeling the agility come back and going through a few shadow boxing punches before he jogged over to another dropship and gently walked inside and positioned the mech on the outside row, facing the doors that closed in front of him. Behind stood several other mechs, all with pilots onboard and no restraints whatsoever. So long as the dropship’s inertial dampening field was active the flight down would be smooth and steady, as if they weren’t even moving…if it failed for some reason, then the mechs would become like bumper cars knocking into one another, but Sam couldn’t recall a time that had happened, given that the IDF technology was old school for Star Force and extremely reliable.

Sam waited patiently as the dropships took off and flew through the 16 jumpships that comprised Sam’s fleet. The freighter they were leaving had only recently detached from one of them, while half of the others were warship-class and sitting back out of the fight. Altogether he had far more firepower and resources necessary to deal with a single lizard base, along with plenty of mechwarriors to send down to finish off the survivors, but he wanted to go down in person even if his presence wasn’t required. Sam never liked playing Admiral, sitting back and ordering others into battle while he waited and watched, and since this side mission was his to carry out as he pleased, personally taking the fight to the enemy was a no-brainer.

He waited patiently through the landing then got the heads up from the pilot just before the doors began to grind open. “Hostiles present to the north, range 3 kilometers.”

“Copy that,” Sam acknowledged as he saw his first glimpse of the planet in stunning green through the crack in the doors. They widened to reveal a very shallow lake covering a sea of moss-like plant life that made the water look like a giant, perfectly flat green carpet.

“Amir, call it out,” he said as he punched his neo out of the dropship hull at a run with the others following behind at a slower rate. Above them a pair of dragons hovered 400 meters off the ground opening their bay doors…out of which shot single skeets, each coming off specially designed racks that allowed the dropships to deliver them down to the planet’s surface for fast release.

The first few circled around, patrolling the immediate area to protect the dropships, then when the squadrons were out they shot off to the east in pursuit of a predator that was milling around the sea, constantly moving so as to confuse the orbital guns without really going anywhere…for the lizards had nowhere to go on the planet. Their only base lay far to the south on the horizon, marked by a thin tendril of smoke rising up from the debris.

Sam almost felt sorry for them, but the lizards never submitted to capture so the only options were to kill them or leave them to starve to death. Aggressive bastards they may be, but the trailblazer would never wish even an enemy to that fate, so in some ways he figured he was doing them a favor. Regardless, they had to clear this planet of all lizard presence and their race’s past actions were still burned into his mind, especially the images from a planet called Urutuk provided to Star Force by the Hycre. There the lizards had spared no one, and had even taken to eating the defenseless natives as part of their conquest.

Sam knew better than to judge an individual by their race, but the lizards were working hard to rid him of that sentiment, so when he ran out onto the green lake he did so with a single purpose…that being to cleanse the planet of the scaly vermin.

“Beta star, form on me,” Amir ordered as he walked his shadowcat out of the dragon behind two madcats. “Sam is venator. We have three tanks to kill, so keep it close. I don’t like 1 on 3 odds so let’s tag team these creeps and take them down quick.”

“What type?” Chad-8322 asked.

“Not sure yet,” Amir said as he started running forward at partial speed with the other 4 mechs in his star forming up behind him. The two closest ones went wide while the back pair staggered themselves so they could fire down the lanes between the other three mechs.

“They’re running,” Sam said as he raced towards the threesome, having to focus to keep from tripping on the extra drag the meter-deep water provided…plus the fact that his mech’s feet were sinking into the mud underneath. Still, the neo was tearing forward and overcoming the terrain through sheer mechanical power.

Amir looked down at the battlemap inside his mech’s cockpit at the three target icons that were moving off to the west…which meant they were headed for land, though that land was several hundreds of kilometers away and wouldn’t offer much cover, for the majority of the planet was flat. He looked around for other targets, wondering what exactly they were trying to achieve other than sticking it out and trying to take down a mech or fighter with them, as was their normal MO.

“Oh crap,” Sam said over the comm, making Amir frown.

“What?”

An orbital scan was transferred over to Amir’s mech, on which Sam had tagged a particular location.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Look closer,” Sam prompted.

Amir studied the green water closely but couldn’t spot any objects on the surface. He was about to ask again when his eyes finally went wide as he recognized the significance of the location.

“What are they doing down there?”

“Adapting,” Sam said coldly. “They know our MO now, and I’d bet you a thousand credits they’re building subsurface bases on all their worlds near us.”

“To avoid the orbital bombardment?”

“Exactly.”

“That discoloration isn’t shielded by anything other than a little water. What’s the point, other than camouflage?”

“I don’t know, but pull back. Naval is about to take a can opener to the thing,” the trailblazer said as he also turned his neo around and started heading east, where he saw a new smoke plume that was coming from the predator that the skeets were methodically chewing apart.

“Big guns coming to play,” Amir announced to the others as he turned his mech through a wide arc with the rest of the mechs following his lead. “Let’s get as many klicks in between us and that place as we can,” he said, sending the same targeting data out to the other four mechs that were sharing the teamcomm.

They didn’t get more than half a kilometer before the first of the rail gun rounds came smashing down, kicking up both debris and water in a spectacular show as metallic ordinance blanketed the area like a rain shower coming from a solitary cloud. Sam let it continue for several minutes before calling it to a halt, then had one of the skeets do a flyby with the telemetry being sent directly over to his mech, which he then shuffled over to all the other mech stars hunting lizards around the perimeter of the destroyed base.

“Whoops,” he said, unexpectedly seeing the lake water flowing down into the myriad of holes in the top of the base and the craters in the mud. The latter filled up quickly, but the subterranean base kept sucking it up, meaning that anyone left alive underneath was now getting flooded…and that whatever commando teams he sent in later would have to go down underwater as well.

“Can they breathe underwater?” Amir asked, seeing the same images.

“I don’t think all of them can…but don’t quote me on that.”

“Not much of a shield against the rail guns, huh?”

Sam got a sinking feeling in his gut. “Depends how big it is underneath.”

“Those tanks are heading our way,” Amir pointed out. “Two shades and a copper. Guess they think they’ve got nothing left to live for.”

Sam frowned, with his gut creeping inwards even more. “Let’s take them out now.”

“Will do,” Amir said, turning his shadowcat to face the enemy and slowly walking up into a run. “Form on me and accelerate up to maximum speed,” he said, knowing that the madcat would be the slowest in the group.

Sam angled over to them as he also ran towards the incoming lizard vehicles, but he stayed well to the left and moved ahead of the others as the three vehicles approached them, not side by side, but in a line, as if…

“Damn it!” Sam said over the team comm. “Hit them at range, they’re trying to blow through…”

“Blow through to where?” Amir asked as he primed his four small plasma cannons, two in each arm. He also had a lachar in his center torso that he brought online and targeted the first vehicle…the copper, which was designed as an anti-infantry weapons platform. It and the others were all swooping across the water with airspace to spare underneath, and doing so at a speed that Sam now realized none of the mechs could match in this soggy terrain.

“I think we only hit a door,” he said, pumping his arms furiously as he tried to run faster and get out ahead of the star of mechs. “Slow down…no, fight in reverse.”

“Door…oh crap,” he said, walking his mech down to a stop as the others did likewise…then the others began walking theirs backwards, but Amir turned his completely around and moved into the rear of the formation. There he continued walking forwards, then spun his torso around so the top of his mech was facing backwards while the legs were moving forwards, something that the other models weren’t designed to do.

Sam fired off the first plasma blast, missing short and blasting a column of steam up into the air in front of the vehicles. The copper sped through the vaporized water and came out the other side firing its low yield plasma shards at the neo, making a few inconsequential hits at range. The trailblazer walked the mech backwards, firing off several more shots but the sneaky lizards changed course and veered off to the east, pulling them further away from both him and the star.

He tried to chase after them, but he didn’t have the speed…plus he was in the process of walking backwards and the delay in getting redirected proved too lengthy for any type of meaningful pursuit.

The other mechs were similarly caught off guard, but not as bad. They began moving east as well, but it was clear that the lizards weren’t going to come close enough to give them easy shots. Plasma leapt between both sides at range while the madcat launched a salvo of missiles at the middle shade. Most of them landed on target, but several missed behind and landed in the water, obscuring the contact with hoards of steam that gave the others a brief amount of cover.

When the mist cleared the shade was broken into pieces, but the other two were gaining both speed and distance on the mechs. The madcat targeted the second shade and fired, but before its missiles reached the halfway point a large object rose up out of the water and shot them out of the sky in a flurry of anti-air. Beyond it another, wider object rose up from the lake and the two surviving vehicles shot across the landscape towards it.

A plasma blast from Amir caught the copper on the nose, blowing out a section and spinning the vehicle around on its anti-grav pads. The shade swerved by it and darted straight into the elevated hangar as the shadowcat ate up the distance between itself and the enemy with its huge strides, but it was still too far away. Several more plasma shots missed high as the copper got turned around and followed the shade inside, then the hangar retracted back down beneath the thin layer of water, disappearing from view.

“Son of a bitch,” Amir cursed as he slowed down to a walk with the anti-air pylon retracting as well. “Just when we think we have these guys beat…”

“We’ve got them beat,” Sam assured him. “It’s just going to take a little digging to finish them off. Hold here until we get a better scan of the area. They may have anti-mech defenses and I’d rather not get close enough to trigger them.”

“Roger that,” Amir said, turning around and rejoining the others as Sam’s neo did the same. Meanwhile the trailblazer sent out new orders for the skeets, now finished with the predator, to circle around for high elevation recon, as well as marking the location of the anti-air turret on the battlemap for them to avoid.

“Sara, you’re right,” Sam said off comm. “They are adapting.”

3

February 29, 2402

Nevarsor System

Namek

Paul stepped out of the dropship onto the dry dirt soil of the planet they’d recently named Namek as dozens more of the transports were coming down out of the sky and landing across the plain. The air was fresh and tart, with the gravity slightly below normal at 97%, and there was very little moisture in the air…but the world was habitable and soon would become home to Star Force’s first base in the distant region and establish their foothold from which they’d eventually begin spreading out and attacking the lizards from.

That wouldn’t happen soon, for the Nevarsor System was uninhabited. It lay 23 lightyears from the nearest lizard-held planet and hopefully was off their radar, which would give them time to get established before they alerted the enemy to their presence.

Paul knelt down, a la Gladiator, and picked up a bit of soil in his fingertips. He wasn’t wearing any armor, just a standard white Archon’s uniform, which gave him a better tactile feeling of the world that he was going to be calling home for several decades if all went according to plan. The other 8 trailblazers with him would be frequenting the planet until they were ready to expand into adjacent star systems and start building their little empire out here, but Paul would remain stationed on Namek as its caretaker and guardian, for it was the one planet they could not afford to lose.

As soon as the first cargo jumpship fully unloaded, which would take a few days minimum, it would be turning around and heading back to Star Force territory to reload and begin establishing the out and back supply chain that would feed Namek additional supplies and personnel, and from Namek the rest of the soon to be new territory would be fed, so securing the planet was of the utmost priority, which naturally fell to Paul, given that he was the mastermind behind the foothold strategy.

The soil felt harsh and very dry, as if it was soaking the moisture out of his fingers…but to Paul that signified raw building materials and a planet just waiting to be reworked into a bastion of civilization, as Davis would have put it. The galaxy was indeed vast and wondrous, but also harsh and terrifying. One side goal of Star Force, aside from surviving against the V’kit’no’sat and others, was to bring a beacon of light into the wilderness, and from Davis’s point of view that light was civilization.

‘The more civilized you become, the more likely your neighbors are to emulate,’ the Director had said in one of their recent discussions when Paul had been back to Earth. It had been strange seeing him again after so many years apart, as well as several of the other trailblazers and Star Force personnel, for now, as their territory grew, they were getting more and more spread out, but no matter where they went within their territory and beyond, Star Force infrastructure…Star Force civilization bound them all together with a common purpose and even the most remote planet in their dominion felt like home when you saw the recognizable grey stations and bases that they’d been seeding across their small slice of the galaxy.

Now here, on Namek, they’d be doing the same. What was a harsh, untamed world was going to be transformed into an outpost of civilization, one from which they would be able to strike at the lizards and push back their barbarism, shielding other nearby worlds with populations that were no match for their common enemy, many of which hadn’t yet achieved space travel and knew nothing of the threat that lurked nearby.

‘For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic,’ Obi-wan Kenobi had said, and Paul felt that Star Force had a similar calling…though the ‘peace’ part wasn’t completely accurate. He and Jason had often discussed the difference, with his friend pointing out that Star Force was less Old Republic and more Empire, only with Jedi leading it instead of Sith…and Paul had to admit he had a point. Like the Empire, Star Force was all about infrastructure, military might, and securing the galaxy.

As much as Paul identified with the Rebel Alliance, especially now that they were faced with a similar situation against the lizards, he preferred the good guys to be more than a ragtag band of hopeful idealists that overcome their enemies through wit and luck. Here on Namek they definitely wouldn’t be playing rebels, for they were taking a page out of the Empire’s playbook and building fortified military infrastructure, which was one of Paul’s favorite hobbies.

He dropped the handful of dirt and stood back up, seeing Kyler-042 walking his way after coming out of a nearby dropship as techs and cargo handlers began unloading behind him.

“Long ride, but we’re finally here,” Kyler said, walking up on Paul’s shoulder as he watched dozens more dropships descending to the planet.

“What was the score?”

Kyler smiled. “Greg 6, me 4, Sara 3, and Emily 1. You?”

“Jason and me both had 5, Rafa 4, Travis 3,” Paul said, giving the training scores from the trip out. Instead of the trailblazers all traveling on their own jumpships they’d split up into two groups so they could use the 4 month trip out as a group training exercise. Given how little they saw of each other it was an opportunity that they weren’t going to pass up and had spent most of their travel hours in the sanctums on the jumpships.

“Middle of the road again,” Kyler said of his own performance. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Greg really got 6?”

“Yes, and I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear you didn’t.”

“What happened with Emily?”

“Heavy grav training was wearing her out and she didn’t want to nix it.”

“I’m surprised she even got 1,” Paul said, impressed. “What’s she up to now?”

“1.4 gs for base training and 3.2 for power segments.”

“Ouch…I haven’t heard of anyone else getting that high?”

“Neither have I. She’s got one hell of a vertical now too. Looks like she’s got springs in her shoes in normal gravity.”

“Makes me feel like I’m slacking,” Paul admitted.

“If you got 5 that’s not slacking.”

“I haven’t been using gravity training, and I’m wondering if I’m missing out.”

“What have you been focusing on?”

“Hi-Lo…running, agility, and evasion.”

“Swords too?”

Paul smiled. “Always. Two of my increases were in that subcategory.”

“What’s your running pace up to now?”

“I’m keeping it short…just 5k segments, three a day, and I’m holding 4:10 pace.”

“I’m doing 10k twice a day, at 4:50, so I wouldn’t say you’ve been slacking. Do you notice something funny with the air?”

“Does have a bit of a twinge to it.”

“I like it. Keeps you alert.”

“Now that we’re here, let’s start the warship crews on their trials,” Paul suggested. “They’ve been hammering the simulations all the way out, and the sooner they start competing with each other the fresher they’ll be if we have to fight off a lizard attack.”

“Haven’t spent much time with them, but you’re right, they’re sick of the sims. How long will it be before they get some surface time?”

“Good question…we can organize field trips if we have to, but it’ll be at least a good 6 months before we get a proper mech bay constructed.”

“That’s too long. We need to set up some field camps for at least part of the troops to rotate through…and I’m not sure what to do with the aquatics short of digging them a swimming pool.”

“They’re just going to have to live off the sims for now.”

“They know that, but I’d like to get their feet wet sooner rather than later.”

“First expansion wave they will.”

“Two years?”

Paul chewed on his lower lip as he mentally calculated. “I’m hoping for sooner than that, but I’ve got a prerequisite list for this world before we shoot off to any others. Faster we get through it, faster we start spreading out. You’ll just have to make do with the swimming pool until then.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about. I’m as much of a mechwarrior as an aquatics specialist now, but our Clan and line troops don’t have that luxury. And you’re joking about the swimming pool, right?”

“Good luck finding enough water on this rock to fill it.”

Kyler frowned. “I thought there were subsurface deposits?”

“The Hycre scans say yes…but who knows.”

“Hello, Paul,” Sara said with a smile as she walked up behind him and poked a finger in his back, startling him. “You guys having a cookout or something?”

“Just enjoying the view,” Kyler commented as Paul mock slapped the blonde Archon, missing her face by an inch.

“We do know how to pick them,” she said, kicking at the dirt. “Not quite Corneria, is it? Looks like this place was made for fighting.”

“I had Clan Saber pack some seeds. We’ll start to green it up if there are subsurface water pockets.”

Sara blinked. “Didn’t realize that was part of the plan.”

“Oh yeah…and the trampoline is going right over there,” Paul said, pointing off to his right.

“You’re terraforming now?”

“Bit of a side project, but yes, and we’re going to relandscape too. Put some border hills up to give the base and the mechs some cover to work with. Plus our anti-lizard booby traps are easier to hide in vegetation.”

“If we do our part they’ll never get here,” Kyler pointed out.

“You’re assuming they’ll hit the closest systems first…they may leapfrog instead.”

“Not really their style,” Sara added, “but Kyler has a point. Unless the system defense fleet is overwhelmed they’re not going to get down to the surface.”

“Plan for the fights you don’t want,” Paul quoted.

“And that’s why he’s the masterbuilder,” Kyler said, pointing both index fingers at Paul’s chest.

“Take notes.”

“Na, just give me a nice waterworld to defend. I’ll be good.”

“Speaking of which,” Sara said, “since we don’t have a use for them here, how long are we going to delay our aquatics?”

“We were just discussing that,” Kyler pointed out.

“Everyone stays put for now,” Paul said, watching the hundreds of cargo lifters buzzing around carrying crates out of the dropships and into makeshift stacks. “I’ll let you know when we’re set to start building other bases. We need a prerequisite amount of infrastructure in place and operational here first.”

“I meant for hunting.”

Paul frowned. “Are the lizards on any nearby water worlds?”

Kyler shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

“No, I mean how long before our fleets can go hunting.”

“That’s not what you said,” Kyler differed.

“He said ‘building bases,’ so I asked about ‘hunting.’ Try and keep up.”

“Not yet,” Paul cautioned. “Let’s see if anyone notices our presence here first.”

Four months later…

Paul touched the surface of the worktable and slid a holographic icon floating above it off to the side on the base schematics, then dragged two others in, trying combinations of positions and seeing what arrangement he liked best. The spaceport was in the dead center of the infantile city and largely complete, with a few other structures ringing it in various stages of construction. Two miles away from that was a large pile of dirt that was stretching out into a line that would circle all the way around the center zone when completed, but for now only three segments, each about a kilometer long, were visible on the map, rising up as shallow bumps, under which construction crews were working furiously to get the mech bays built.

Learning from past battles with the lizards, Paul intended to put the already well armored bays under an additional layer of dirt on Namek, burying them inside the perimeter mounds as well as digging further below the surface and making them multi-tiered facilities with ramp staircases for the mechs to climb up and down. There were three in the works, located north, southeast, and southwest at even intervals and the general framework construction was already complete and holding up the soil above.

The construction crews were now creating the interior of the bays, which would include not only mech repair facilities but the factories to make entirely new units, as well as research and design apparatus that would allow them to make modifications to existing models or design completely new ones. Given the distances involved between star systems and their relatively slow gravity drives, Paul was realizing more and more that each system they possessed had to be reworked into an independent entity that didn’t need to rely on interstellar resupply.

That had originally been the plan as far as logistics were concerned, but given this new front they were opening up against the lizards they were going to, he expected, be fabricating new models of mechs in the coming years and there was no way a 9 month round trip back to existing Star Force RnD facilities was going to work. He needed a local hub, even if they couldn’t build up every star system to the same infrastructure levels, and Namek was going to be the hub for this bit of territorial expansion.

Paul switched out another structure, not liking the virtual placement, and brought in a different one. He’d been tempted to build the entire base underground, for security reasons, but part of him felt that was retreating from the problem. The mech bays needed to be a hardened target, because they would be on the enemy’s primary hit list, but the rest of the base he wanted to keep on the surface. Maybe it was a point of pride, but if the enemy could hit them at their strongest point then this whole mission was going to be for naught, so he decided to keep the tall skyscrapers and work around their weaknesses.

First off, the standard structures were continually being upgraded for strength, both in terms of rigidity and armor. Small scale weapons fire was no longer a threat, and even the lizards’ det packs couldn’t individually take a building down anymore. Redundant support beams were now standard package as well, meaning the enemy would have to take out multiple ones to bring down even a medium-sized structure…and Paul felt that tactical difficulty was enough of a security countermeasure to enable ground troop reinforcement or evacuation of base personnel if and when the time came.

What he had to avoid was the one shot kill, which their cruisers or kamikaze kirbies could potentially land. Star Force shield tech had steadily been improving, but samples taken from lizard shielding had yielded more immediate upgrades than the far superior models detailed in the V’kit’no’sat databases. Though it was difficult to produce, both in terms of time and resources, the B-type shield was now one of the standard pieces of tech the Archons had available to them for use in the field.

‘B’ stood for many things…base, bubble, beta, big ass, and beautiful. It was a clear spherical shield that could be calibrated on any static location, then provide it with significant physical and energy protection. Downside was it was a power hog and couldn’t be passed through by troops, skeets, or anything else…nor could it be any other shape than a sphere. The radial degrees of coverage could be modulated to only protect a portion of said sphere, allowing ground troops to move about beneath while the shield terminated a few dozen meters over their heads, and the radial distance could be adjusted, making the shield bigger or smaller, but other than that it couldn’t be sculpted to fit any other shape…meaning it couldn’t be fitted to skeets or warships.

That said, Paul was quite glad to have it on his holographic pallet as he refined the base designs. The dirt ring was going to be the operational borders of the base in phase 1, but later the interior area would become a city that would eventually expand beyond it and the ring would function as a fallback barrier should the enemy infiltrate it as they had Corneria Prime. In fact, right now he was moving buildings around with just such an invasion in mind, positioning them in the best defensible arrangement possible, knowing that they were going to dig connecting tunnels underneath to facilitate transport even if the streets had been taken by an invading army.

“You look busy.”

Paul’s head came up, as did his right eyebrow. “You’re late.”

“Blame the Hycre,” Sam said as he walked in and pulled a stool over to the elevated worktable on the opposite side from Paul. “They were a month late in getting there, though we only had to delay a week. The lizards were more entrenched than anticipated.”

“Trouble?”

“Deviousness…they had one standard base on the surface, which we smoked easily. Then when we went down to pick off the survivors we stumbled across a subterranean base, hidden beneath the shallow lake and nearly invisible from above. I had it targeted from space and we tore it up pretty good…until we realized it was only one of several surface access points for a huge monstrosity that they were building underground.”

Paul frowned. “Either this is a later stage of their standard game plan or they’re adapting to our orbital bombardment.”

“Bingo.”

“How’d it play out?”

“The lake water flooded a lot of it, and we poked as many holes as we could before we went down hand to hand. Fortunately most of the base was empty, as it was still under construction, but if operational it could have held well over a million of the little buggers.”

Paul whistled. “I hope you checked for others?”

Sam nodded. “We did, and had the Hycre do a sweep as well. The planet is clean of lizards.”

“And the Hycre?”

“Just saw warships before we left. Don’t know when their construction crews will arrive. Any of them swing by here?”

“No visitors yet, from either side.”

“So when are we going to make introductions?”

Paul sighed. “After persistent nagging by a bunch of little whiny girls I’ve agreed to move up the timetable and let three teams go sniffing around. We do need our own maps of the area, to at least confirm and update the Hycre ones.”

“When?” Sam repeated.

“You’re included in the little whiny girls metaphor, by the way,” the Admiral said, moving around another holographic building to a more strategically viable position. “I told them as soon as you caught up.”

4

May 7, 2402

Menthat System

Ricopal

Two skeets flew overhead, dropping what looked like large bombs from underneath their hulls. The objects fell down through the ‘trees’ and impacted with a pair of thuds, but no explosions.

Morgan and her Archon team wound their way through the gigantic fungi that Ricopal sported, ducking under several large teacup-shaped ‘trees’ before seeing the first hole in another where the supply pod had punched through. The Ranger pointed to it and ran off in search of the other while part of her team began securing the site.

The second one had fallen into what looked like a garden of razorblades, though fortunately the fin-like fungi weren’t sharp, though they were hard to walk through. The soft, orange material rippled and crumbled under each step, and the damn things were tall enough to cover Morgan’s knees, not to mention they were spaced only a couple of inches apart from each other, meaning that she and the others had to literally plow their way through to the shallow impact crater.

Morgan leaned to the side and pushed over several of the fungi fins, then stepped them down further, breaking through two before her foot was supported. From there she yanked on the supply pod, trying to set it upright but the vitamin-shaped capsule didn’t want to budge. She kept rocking it back and forth, but the fungi underneath were acting like springs and absorbing the momentum she was putting into it. It wasn’t until Nito-1493 got on the other side and added his strength to hers did they get the thing pointed upright.

“Vaca, Sati,” Morgan prompted, with the two other Archons moving in and forming a four-man carrying crew that managed to heft the pod up onto their shoulders and slowly trample their way out of the fungi fin field. When they got back on solid ground, moist as it was, they walked the second pod over to where the first was already set up and placed it a few meters away, pulling out the extendable stabilization legs and making it appear like an old school science fiction rocket.

Morgan opened one of several doors on the pod, finding rations, water bottles, and ambrosia packets inside. The next one down contained plasma and lachar ammunition rounds, as well as a solitary box of stingers. Below that was a weapons cache with additional rifles, pistols, grenades and even portable rocket launchers stowed in compact form. At the bottom was another door that opened into a small compartment containing comm gear and other technical devices.

The first pod also had rations, water, and ambrosia, but the other compartments were different, containing equipment rather than weapons…including jump packs.

“Movement to the north,” a whisper came through her armor’s comm.

Morgan whipped her plasma rifle off her back and spun around the way they had come. “What have we got?”

“Patrol group, 6 infantry, probably looking for what the skeets dropped.”

Morgan thought for a moment, knowing they needed to take this group out quickly before they could comm in their location. Her 10-man team was pressing towards a Nestafar base that they’d literally carved out of the Ricopal fungi forest, along with a single wide path leading down to the plains kilometers away where most of the action was. Star Force mechs and heavy walkers were currently engaging the Nestafar counterparts in major actions around two small Calavari cities on the plains while other engagements were occurring across a long front…all of which avoided the major Calavari infrastructure.

Morgan’s assault fleet had gotten dropped off here late, well after the Nestafar had arrived and set up shop on the surface, but surprisingly they hadn’t gone for a forward assault on the planet, choosing to occupy several small, rural districts where they had set up some impressive prefabricated bases that they were fighting and expanding out of as more reinforcements continued to arrive from orbit.

Morgan’s warships had put a stop to direct reinforcement, but rather than engage her superior naval force directly the Nestafar warships had scattered and moved up to higher orbits, then whenever a new jumpship arrived they would rendezvous with it and provide cover for the dropships as they made blockade runs through the Star Force lines…which were not set up for that type of interdictment scenario. Her captains did their best to disrupt the Nestafar, and had succeeded in killing a few of their warships, but a planet was just too large of a place to completely block off and there was no way they could keep all of the reinforcements from finding a way through down to the surface.

Normally the Calavari fighters would have at least scared some of the incoming dropships away, but the Nestafar had brought in overwhelming numbers of their own fighters, augmented with Valeries, and had established air superiority early on. Morgan gave them credit for knowing their own weakness and finding ways to work around it…but they stupidly refused to change their basic army tactics and equipment that left them vulnerable to air strikes.

By the time Star Force arrived the Calavari didn’t have many fighters left to harass the Nestafar with, leaving their armies to roll across the plains and sweep up several more small to medium sized settlements with ease, but as soon as hundreds of skeets started picking the enemy’s fighters out of the sky the same old/same old scenario began to play out with it being a race to see who could sow enough destruction first…the army conquering cities or the fighters blasting apart the army.

Morgan was glad the Nestafar were stubborn, because if they retooled their walkers with effective anti-air they’d be extremely difficult to deal with. Star Force had the advantage of numbers in this campaign, due to her bringing her entire fleet here as a starting point to launching other offensives to pry the Nestafar off the Calavari’s throats on some of their smaller worlds before going to the aid of the larger ones where the Nestafar didn’t hold so great of an advantage.

That said, most of her armada was still tucked away deep within the star system. She didn’t want to waste resources by just dumping them on the Nestafar, so she was bringing down what she felt she needed and updating those amounts on the go.

The biggest problem they’d encountered so far was the Nestafar’s mobile bases. They were literally assembling what were premade forts cut up into pieces and they were building them as fast as putting together a set of Legos. More and more were coming down in the cargo shipments and being erected while the walkers and mechs fought it out, buying the enemy time to set up defensive positions that were not easy for Morgan’s armies to take out.

In addition to heavy plasma cannon turrets and missile pods, their bases were well equipped with anti-air towers…a lot of towers, meaning the skeets couldn’t get anywhere close to their bases. Morgan’s mechs were systematically taking down one base after another, denying the dropships secure landing zones while having the skeets harass any that landed elsewhere.

Which all came back to the base in the forest. Mechs couldn’t assault it except from the single road…which was a suicide run. Knowing this, the Nestafar were diverting more and more of their dropships to the base, knowing it was their most secure LZ and fighting their way out of it into the surrounding areas where they were erecting more forts while ones further out were being assaulted. This newer, closer formation of bases were reinforcing each other and creating a blanket of air cover that gave the skeets very narrow flight paths between the bases, unless they chose to go high and look down, unable to contribute aside from dropping bombs.

Morgan didn’t have many of those available and she didn’t want to waste the ones she did have unless absolutely necessary, but to top it off the Nestafar bases were fully shielded and proving to be tough nuts to crack…and if they didn’t stop the flow of supplies the enemy very well might grow a zone of power on the surface that Star Force wouldn’t be able to push back against save for bringing in a mass of troops for a very destructive melee.

Morgan’s armada was large, but her equipment was limited due to her inability to replace it. Every mech, skeet, and plasma rifle in her care, once lost, were gone for good, so the more losses the Nestafar cost her here, the less planets she could help the Calavari defend later, meaning she had to get devious and drop the hammer only as a last resort.

In typical fashion, her deviousness manifested itself in the form of a commando raid on the crucial base in the forest. Due to the positioning the Nestafar didn’t have a hoard of walkers defending it, only the road, so a small team could theoretically approach from the fungi fields and slip inside…if the Nestafar remained unaware of their approach.

Which was where this infantry patrol could be a problem. They were only a few klicks away from the base now, after having hiked over 50 in a circuitous route to disguise their approach. The supply drop had been necessary given that they’d had to fight their way through a group of Nestafar to get to the forest. The rest of the battling mechs and Archon infantry had remained as a diversion while Morgan’s team innocently slipped away. So far it appeared they’d gone unnoticed, but they needed resupply, biologically and technologically, before they tried to hit the base, especially since all their heavy weapons had been delivered via the pods.

“Stingers only,” Morgan ordered over the comm, keeping her external speaker silent. “Call out your targets and wait for my signal.”

“Far left,” Prion-1736 whispered.

“Back left,” another Archon said, with the others following suit so they wouldn’t miss any in what had to be a simultaneous salvo, else they’d have a chance to report in their position or signal via plasma fire.

Morgan doubled up targets with Sati-1354, a Clan Croft commando specialist that she’d tagged for this mission due to her experience fighting the lizards on several clandestine raids. The pistol the trailblazer and other Archons carried wasn’t the most accurate weapon at range, but given the height of the fungi the Nestafar were going to have to come right to them in order to spot them, so if the Archons waited long enough accuracy shouldn’t be a problem.

Just as Morgan heard the first trace of wing flaps a flash of plasma fireworks shot by laterally overhead, quickly followed by the skeet that had fired the scattergun blast. Five of the six Nestafar fell to the ground, leaving only one left alive to spot the Star Force infantry at that point, though there were numerous other patrols in the area.

Morgan kept her eyes on the sky through the gaps in the cup-like trees, wondering how many of the dead ones were really dead, and if they had fallen into the cups out of sight. She picked up a wideband report from the skeets, which all Star Force units could receive but which was meant for her team’s sake, detailing the infantry around the base that it was hunting down along with a dozen others that had been deployed to provide visual cover for the supply drop, as well as to thin down the patrols that they’d have to get past.

The lengthy message detailed the perimeter around which the skeets couldn’t fly within or risk being hit by the base’s anti-air, as well as the number of individual infantry they had taken down thus far. All of it was for show, with bits and pieces necessary information for her team, given that they couldn’t see much from the ground. She didn’t answer back, for the signal might be picked up. Unlikely as that was, all of her team’s helmet comms had been dialed down in intensity so they’d only effectively reach 100 meters or so, allowing them to talk without being heard on site, and without alerting all but the most sensitive detection gear to their electronic presence.

“We down to one?” she asked. “I don’t have eyes.”

“One in the air, the others are down,” Rees-2810 answered from 30 meters further north. “It’s hovering low, trying to stay out of sight of the fighters. Permission to engage?”

“Can you do it quietly?”

“If I can’t, Cev has a shot.”

“Confirmed,” the other Archon agreed.

“Go,” Morgan said, holding her position and waiting intently. “Any sign of movement from the downed ones?”

“Two in sight, both shredded,” Vaca reported, with others chiming in with similar negatives.

Soon Morgan heard an ever so slight crash, slightly enhanced by her helmet’s auditory sensors.

“Tango down,” Cev-1181 said evenly. “No other signs of movement.”

“Find the bodies, I want a head count,” Morgan insisted with the other Archons all coming up out of their hiding spots to start searching the area where the patrol had last been seen. After a few minutes they had four accounted for, then Morgan’s suspicion about the cup trees was proven true when the other two were found, one of which was still alive.

Sati made quick work of it, putting the wingless and legless thing out of its misery with a pair of stinger shots followed by a snap of its neck, fairly confident that it hadn’t been able to see and report anything from its position in the puddle at the bottom of the giant fungi bowl.

“Load up,” Morgan said as they walked back over to the supply pods and took off her helmet as half the others spread out in patrol mode to cover those dealing with the supplies. She downed half a bottle of water then tossed the rest to Gary-933 as she pulled out a ration bar and several small ambrosia cakes. After getting refilled of sustenance she extended the courtesy to her plasma rifle and other weapons, then took a moment to find a concealed spot to relieve herself before rejoining the others and packing some of the heavy weapons onto her already loaded pack.

The others did the same and a few minutes later they were ready to move out, stashing the empty supply pods out of sight underneath the cup trees and walking forward as opposed to their normal jog. They were so heavy with gear now that running was problematic, and they didn’t want to arrive at the base overly fatigued. Morgan didn’t like feeling as if she were a turtle, but everything she was carrying was essential, not just for entering the base but for what would probably be a prolonged firefight afterwards. If things got hot she could always ditch the gear with the emergency release on her armor’s rack, but a lot could happen in the 2 seconds that took and she much preferred to stay mobile and lethal at all times.

The other Archons formed up into a staggered line with Morgan third man back, all of them silent and listening to the surrounding forest for any hint of approaching infantry. Occasionally the Nestafar would move on foot, but usually they’d be dropping down from the air, so the team had to be alert for detection from all angles.

In addition to the tall fungi trees and other Dr. Seuss knockoffs the terrain was wavy, with a number of small hills and ravines that kept the base out of sight most of the time. This was advantageous to the assault team, but it also left them navigating by battlemap most of the time, otherwise it would have been very easy to get lost. Morgan didn’t know if the Nestafar had a similar navigational system, but she hoped they preferred line of sight and would keep to the air as much as possible, allowing them to slip by underneath without too much trouble.

They came up and down 6 more hillsides that offered them a brief glimpse of the base before they finally stopped for a moment and took stock of their position. The edge of the base, which was a solid, vertical wall rising up some 15 to 20 meters, was half a mile away with the defense turrets easily visible rising up around the perimeter but set inside the wall. Like the others, this prefab structure was identical in layout, so they knew what to expect based on the others they’d destroyed/seized.

They had no defense against infantry, other than the wall, which was sufficient to keep them out and thick enough to take hours to burn through with plasma rifles at pointblank range. Explosives would be quicker, but not quick enough, giving the Nestafar infantry or mechs out on the plains plenty of time to react. Here in the forest, which had not been cleared out around the base for more than a handful of meters, the Archon team would have the advantage in that the heavy defense turrets couldn’t depress low enough to target them if and when they got up right next to the wall, which the uncut forest would hopefully allow.

If they could get that close undetected the first part of their mission would be accomplished, though from their hilltop perch the Archons had spread out on they could see several patrol groups roaming about, floating across the treetops like clusters of flying monkeys. When they got to the wall they could be a problem, but if they could discern a pattern to the patrols then they might be able to time it just right.

“Start looking for a gap,” Morgan instructed. “We need to keep this as covert as possible.”

5

Morgan ran up to the wall, placing her fingertips on the metallic surface for spacing purposes to get her half a step away, then she bent at the knees and readied her muscles. She tagged the chest button on her jump pack and leapt up, using the anti-grav harness to boost her height. It carried her all the way up and above the wall, whereupon she dialed it down and slowly fell back beneath the edge…which she reached out and grabbed with her right hand. Still partially powered, the jump pack helped lift her up and over the edge until she was standing on the flat, narrow top.

She took a step in and dropped a meter or so down onto the walkway that ringed the inside of the wall as the other Archons came up and over…with Cev timing it perfectly so that his jump arched up and over the ledge, dropping him directly down on the walkway, rocket launcher in hand.

Morgan walked down a few steps, searching the area for signs of the enemy and found several immediately, further off into the courtyard that served as the LZ for the base…but they were so far away at the moment, with several buildings partially blocking the view, that they didn’t appear to notice the commandos so Morgan led the team along the wall further to the north until they were literally standing meters away from one of the heavy plasma cannon turrets.

With some quick hand signals they split up into 5 pairs, all of which went separate ways. Morgan and Sati stepped off the ledge and floated down to the ground in between turret and wall where there was a narrow foot path. From there they poked out from the edge and sprinted to the next closest building and swung around it on the far side, firing their plasma rifles at a group of three Nestafar infantry lounging nearby.

All three went down within a second, then as their rifles fell silent Morgan and Sati heard more weaponsfire coming from other locations as the Archon teams fought their way towards their initial targets…theirs of which was the anti-air tower fifty meters inside the wall.

It rose up higher than the other towers, poking up above the angled topside shields so that the base could remain protected against bombardment and fighters simultaneously while being set back from the wall far enough for the heavy plasma turrets to retain prime firing position over the sides. Inside the base it appeared as a long, slender rod shooting up high into the sky with a slightly bulbous top that held the rotating anti-air batteries that they needed to take out so the skeets could come in and put some serious hurt on the base.

There was an entryway at the base of the tower that Morgan and Sati ran towards, firing at any Nestafar infantry lounging, walking, or flying nearby that they came across…then they rushed in the turret’s unlocked access door to find an open air tube rising up to the top in place of stairs. Given that the Nestafar could fly that made all the sense in the world, as well as making it nearly impossible for enemy troops to scale the tower.

Fortunately the Archons had discovered the design layout from a previous base and came prepared. Cranking up their jump packs to maximum, both Archons leapt off the ground in Jedi-esk jumps and flashed by the intervening levels, with Morgan noticing a scattering of Nestafar in her peripheral vision. Her jump pack’s capacitor nearly depleted before she dialed it back at the apex of her jump to ‘leveling’ rather than ‘ascending’ and used her hands on the topmost ceiling to pull her over to the side.

She ran out of power a little short and dropped back down, catching her hand on the edge of the floor and dangling for a moment as her capacitor started to recharge…then she gave herself a small boost and pulled up over the top directly into a plasma blast from a Nestafar pistol against her helmet.

Her vision immediately dimmed from the flash, as well as the melting effect on her faceplate, but the helmet kept the blast from getting through and before Morgan could respond weaponsfire from Sati took the Nestafar down, along with three others on the top level. The Archon ignored Morgan and pointed her rifle back down over the edge, firing a pair of shots and discouraging any of the Nestafar from the idea that coming up after them was wise.

“We’re clear,” she said as Morgan got herself up onto her feet, silently cursing the weight of all the gear she was carrying. Her vision was partially obscured with a rippling effect over her right eye, but her left was still clear and, distracting as it was, she could still function without discarding her helmet.

Morgan pulled out a grenade from her pack and chucked it into one of the mechanical access hatches overhead and pulled the hatch shut behind it. A couple seconds later an earthquake shook the tower, grinding her teeth together from the vibration as the bulk of the anti-air mechanics were slagged.

For good measure Morgan went around and shot all the control and maintenance computer stations on the top level with her plasma rifle, along with anything else that looked important, then she headed back over to where Sati was still guarding the central shaft.

“Done,” Morgan reported, adjusting the chest controls on her jump pack.

“Hold up,” Sati said, raising her left hand so Morgan wouldn’t jump off. “Bit of a party downstairs.”

Morgan poked her head out over the shaft, seeing a few wingtips sticking out occasionally but nothing overtly troublesome.

“Two dozen, minimum,” Sati answered her unspoken question. “Waiting to ambush us on the way down.”

“Plan B then,” Morgan said, heading back over to the bent access hatch that she forcefully pried open. Inside was a mess of burnt/broken components, some of which fell out in a cascade of destroyed electronics.

“Might as well just blow a hole in the wall,” Sati suggested, keeping her aim on those below.

“I don’t want to waste a grenade,” Morgan said, wiggling her way up and immediately getting her pack caught. She backed out and stripped off her gear and weapons down to her basic armor and tried again, this time disappearing up into the wrecked anti-air turret cupola like a mole digging through dirt.

Sati shook her head, unsure if this was going to work or not, then took a shot at a bit of shoulder that stuck out of cover half the distance down the shaft. She missed it, but clipped the attached wing, twisting the Nestafar around and bringing its head into sight. Her second shot was a clean hit and the dead soldier fell out into the shaft and landed with a muted crunch at the bottom.

A waterfall of debris started flowing out of the access shaft Morgan had disappeared through, along with consistent noise of pieces of junk being shuffled around. Sati let her work, keeping her focus on the shaft, until a very loud boom sounded, followed by the ceiling of the chamber she was in denting down a few inches.

“Morgan?” she asked over the comm.

“I’m alright…just improvised a little explosive,” the ranger said as her feet appeared through the hatch and she stepped down, kicking aside the pile of junk below enough for her to slip back through…then she began rifling through the debris trying to find her pack and weapons.

“We’ve got our way out,” she said, pulling her jump pack back on. “It’s a tight squeeze though.”

“Tight I’ll take over a wall of plasma any day,” Sati said, rotating her way around the shaft until she got over to Morgan’s side. There she waited until the other Archon got geared up and awkwardly climbed over the debris pile.

“Let’s go,” she said, disappearing up into the damaged cupola.

Sati gave her a two second head start then followed her over, climbing up the debris pile and squeezing herself and her heavy pack through the contorted hatch. After that it was a zigzag climb through the melted/leaking innards of the junked machinery following Morgan’s lead until they finally wound their way around into daylight where one of the firing apertures had been knocked out.

“Oh crap,” Morgan said, with Sati a step behind but unable to see past her out the jagged and narrow breach.

“What?”

“Giraffe headed our way…and looking up at us. Move now!” she yelled jumping out the hole into the open air and falling from view. Sati trusted her judgment and shot out behind her before she could get a good look at where the walker was…then a massive red plasma blast consumed the air behind her as she dropped out of the tower.

Both Archons tagged their chest controls and used the jump packs to slow their descent, but not so much that they became floating targets. As soon as Morgan’s feet hit the pavement she sprinted off towards cover, not even bothering to fire on the heavily armored giraffe, though she did shoot two infantry flyers that headed her way before ducking around the corner of a building and getting out of the walker’s line of sight.

Sati followed her down to the ground then took off running another direction, knowing that following Morgan would be too predictable and that even a near miss by the giraffe’s heavy plasma cannon would be enough to do her in. Instead of cutting across the street she followed the wall of the turret until she was able to sneak around the end and out of sight…followed by another huge plasma blast whose pressure wave knocked her forward off her feet as the air suddenly overheated and expanded less than a meter behind her.

“Sati?” Morgan’s voice asked for confirmation.

The Archon picked herself up and fired wildly down the narrow side street between the anti-air turret and the cattycorner anti-mech turret, causing a group of infantry flyers to scatter. “Still alive. I’ve got this turret, find something pretty of theirs to blow up, will ya?”

“Copy that,” Morgan said, leaving her fellow Archon behind and running off south through the various buildings that ringed the central courtyard. The gaps between them varied, but most were wide enough for the giraffes and…

“Damn it,” Morgan said, skidding to a halt and backtracking a few meters to a door as a protomech rolled around the corner in front of her and began deploying  out of ball mode. The stupid door was locked so she had to shoot the latch out and kick really hard to get it to pop open, then she ducked inside before the small mech could target her.

Inside were dozens of Nestafar sitting at booths doing who knew what, but Morgan didn’t stick around to find out as she ran straight through the lot, hitting and ramming some of them out of the way as they all leapt up in a panicked ruckus, apparently unarmed. Halfway across the building she found another ascension shaft and jumped up it with the help of her pack, getting off on the third floor and chucking another grenade into what looked like a very intricate database or comm system bank of servers.

She took a jumping step up the shaft to the fourth level before the grenade blew, then hopped from one side to another up the shaft until she hit the top level, all the while the Nestafar within the building were fleeing in a chaotic mess. She killed three that came after her, apparently having found some weapons to use, before she reached a roof hatch and climbed up and out just in time to see a formation of skeets fly over the shield and release torrents of blue plasma in streaks into the energy barrier, sucking up its strength but not completely penetrating.

Around the perimeter she also saw a scattering of individual skeets firing beneath the shield directly at the heavy plasma turrets guarding the entry road. The big guns didn’t have a hope of hitting the fighters aside from pure luck and were quickly being taken apart now that all the anti-air towers were non-operational.

Morgan ran over to the side of the building, pulling a collapsible rocket launcher off her back and unfolding it. She had four shells to use, snugged up in her pack and she brought the first one out and loaded it in as she came to the edge of the roof, looking down to try and find the protomech. Instead she saw a swarm of infantry, apparently having come looking for her on the lower levels of the building. Before she could back away from the edge she was spotted and several of them started flying up her way.

She set the launcher aside and whipped out her assault rifle, taking a few steps back and waiting for them to come up over the edge where she could gun them down…but the buggers were smart and split up, coming up on the right and left where she couldn’t target both groups at the same time.

Knowing better than to give them a stationary target Morgan ran right while firing left, knocking two down before she whipped her rifle’s muzzle around and shot those nearest her. She got tagged in the leg by one red plasma blast, but killed the other three Nestafar on the run before circling around and taking the fight to the others. Her and the four flyers exchanged fire, a lot of which missed due to her agility and their airborne acrobatics, but she took down two of them before they got in another hit…then a dozen more came up over the side of the building and opened up on her.

Morgan didn’t stick around to find out what would happen and took off sprinting the opposite way, running a zigzaggy path to throw off their aim as her helmet comm activated.

“Morgan! Turn and fire!”

Trusting her fellow Archons, she did as instructed just in time to see two silver-armored acolytes jumping in from another building from the right side and blasting away at the infantry from the flank, taking down several before getting the others’ attention turned on them.

Morgan took a late hit to her chest, dazing her for a split second, then charged back towards the enemy firing rapidly, targeting both those still focused on her as well as throwing a few shots towards the others, trying to sow as much confusion as possible. Between the three of them the Archons mowed down the infantry, taking only a few minor hits to their armor.

“Drop something?” Prion asked, picking up her rocket launcher.

“Yes, thank you,” she said, extricating it from his grasp and lowering the business end of the weapon down towards the street where she saw yet another protomech rolling up in ball mode from the left. She jerked the trigger and the projectile shot off in a stream of smoke that led straight down to where the rolling ball was about to be.

She’d timed it perfectly and the plasma warhead exploded nearly dead center, creating and spilling the hot, ionized gasses that melted through the round casing of the mech and took away its smooth demeanor. No longer a perfect sphere the mech began jerking and wobbling with every rotation, then bits and pieces began flying off from the centrifugal force before it finally toppled and skidded to a halt almost directly underneath Morgan’s position.

“That your last one?” Vaca asked from beside her.

“No, my first. I’ve got three left.”

“We’ve used all ours, just a few grenades left.”

“Did you get the barracks?”

Prion pointed off to the southeast. “Second smoke signal to the left.”

“I got a little distracted, where do we stand?”

“Primary targets are down, lots of secondaries are left.”

Morgan’s comm lit up again. “Anti-air rocket infantry are deploying on the north side. As soon as the shields go down they’re going to start popping the fighters.”

“Like hell they are,” Morgan whispered before altering channels. “Skeets, break off your attack once the shields go down and you slag the generator. There are some rocket launchers we need to take care of before you start hitting the mechs.”

“Copy that,” Steve-652 said as he passed over the base on another strafing run. “Let us know when we’re clear.”

Morgan pulled another projectile out of her pack and loaded it onto the portable launcher before handing the weapon to Prion along with the two extra rounds.

“Make use of that,” she said, pulling out her sniper rifle and eyeing the slightly taller building ahead of her as she glanced towards the center of the base. “I’m headed up top for support.”

“Trade you for those grenades?” Vaca asked, pulling out a box of sniper rifle ammo.

“Gladly,” Morgan said, happy to lighten her pack a bit further. She tucked away the ammo then jogged back 20 meters from the building’s edge to get enough room for a running start as the other two Archons dropped off the side and down to street level. The ranger sprinted after them then jumped when she got to the edge, triggering her jump pack and launching herself up and over the street to where she easily landed on top of the next building with half her capacitor still full of energy.

Not wasting any time she crossed to the north edge of the building and set up shop, deploying a small tripod and sighting in her lachar rifle on the little dots of infantry in the distance.

“I’m up, guys. Tell me who needs shot first.”

6

Steve and three other skeets shot across the fungi forest a few meters over the tree tops and released another salvo of plasma streamers into the base shield. The first portions of the vivid blue streams impacted and absorbed, then the shield finally succumbed and let the last bits pass through. One hit a building and the other three missed clean into the sky, then the skeets were pulling off at random angles to avoid flying over the exposed base.

“Shield is down,” Steve announced to the other pilots. “Target the generator then get clear. We have rocket infantry inside that need taken out before we hit the walkers. Pick on the heavy turrets from range until we’re clear for strafing runs.”

A small flash appeared in Steve’s peripheral vision as he banked to the right and gained a bit of altitude. When he circled around and glanced back at the base another of the perimeter defense turrets was smoking, though he hadn’t seen any fighters hitting it. He assumed it must have been the infiltration team as he looked for the shield generator, located near the interior LZ and low to the ground, meaning he was going to have to get devious in targeting it.

Just then he saw a pair of skeets strafe the base from the far side, dipping down into a hail of rocket fire and pummeling the shield generator with scatter gun and streamer fire…with him wondering what in the world was the pilot doing using a scatter gun on infrastructure. Steve lost visual track of them behind several buildings, then the pair rose up and raced back into the sky, one of which was smoking heavily but still under control.

“Shield generator destroyed,” Brad reported.

Morgan rhythmically pulled the trigger on her lachar sniper rifle, tagging one rocket launching infantryman after another, until a flash of blue sparks mowed down half of the targets in her scope. She pulled her helmet back just in time to see a pair of skeets roar through the area and the trailing one nail the shield generator with a plasma streamer, taking it out of commission and leaving the base permanently vulnerable to air attack.

Fortunately both skeets came out of the bold attack run, even as numerous little missiles popped up from the infantry and flew after them. Morgan put the unobscured side of her faceplate back to the scope of her rifle and started sighting in on the remaining infantry she could spot, knowing that there were more hiding out of range behind adjacent buildings. Those the others could take care of up close, her job was to get the easy, exposed ones and thin their numbers.

Before long she had to reload, cursing the time it took away from the battle…then she was fortunate that she had done so as she noticed a pair of flying Nestafar come up onto the rooftop from the back side. They took a moment to recognize her as a threat and redirect their rifles down towards the roof, during which time Morgan dropped her sniper rifle and grabbed her plasma one as she twisted around and rolling up on one knee, then started running sideways as she came out of the twist, firing one handed across the rooftop.

The two flyers broke apart and returned fire with Morgan tracking the rightmost one. Several shots missed before she finally got it boxed in and nailed it in the chest. As it fell to the rooftop another Nestafar came up into view from over the building’s edge and took aim at her immediately. Two more followed it. Then another. Then another three.

“Crap,” she said, firing off two more shots before abandoning the effort and running back over to where her sniper rifle lay, hooking her plasma rifle on her back as she did so. She took two hits to her right arm and leg before she was able to reach down, scoop up the weapon with her left hand, and do a headfirst dive off the side of the roof and out of the free fire zone before they turned her into a plasma piñata.

As she went over the wall she tagged her chest and activated her jump pack, slowing her fall…then she smashed into a hard surface, rolling twice and losing her grip on the sniper rifle before leveling out face down on top of something very shiny.

She shook the stars out of her head in a heartbeat and got her feet under her, finding the ground a bit unsteady…then she realized she’d landed on the back of a spider walker passing by on the street below.

“Wha..oh,” she said, staring into the side of one of the secondary cannons, hoping it wasn’t about to pivot around and fry her…then a light rain of random plasma hits started coming down from the flying infantry and kissing the chrome surface of the walker as the infantry she’d just fled from started coming over the rooftop in alarming numbers.

Left with few good options she ran around the back side of the cannon and stooped down for cover behind it, realizing that her head was still exposed, but at least it gave her a moment to think. There were too many to fight off so she had to run for the moment, but to where?

To her left was a building, to her right was a building, above was the infantry, and below was the walker, which had plenty of anti-infantry weapons on the underside.

Not good choices, making her think about staying put and fighting it out with the infantry until a wide oval window appeared on her left. Most of the base’s buildings didn’t have windows, but a few did…and this one might just give her a way out.

She targeted it with her plasma rifle, pumping round after round into the glass-like material as the spider slowly walked by, shifting her aim up to shoot a Nestafar that was getting painfully close. In the blink of an eye she stood up, sidestepped towards the far side of the walker, then made a running jump towards the broken window, manipulating her chest controls one handed and hoping she’d be able to control her arc enough to hit the target.

A moment later she crashed into half-broken glass with her shoulder, twisting her legs around the pivot point and flopping her inside the building. Several Nestafar within the large observation room jumped at her, coming down with their bladed hand weapons that merely scratched her armor, though their mass kept her pinned down for a few seconds before she could punch and kick them free and get back up onto her knees.

One of them grabbed her plasma rifle and tried to drag it away from her, but she caught its leg and pulled it back down, punching it angrily in the chest, which dented its flesh and caused it to drop her weapon. She picked it up and started shooting everything in sight as the infantry from outside started appearing at the broken window.

Morgan took cover behind several thick tables and held her ground, thinning out the room and targeting the reinforcements as they were coming in, giving her a bit of an advantage until her rifle ran out of ammo.

Not even taking the time to swear she dropped it at her feet, pulled out the shotgun from her pack, and began pumping rounds towards the window. The scatter gun-like weapon was extremely useful at close range, given its enhanced kill power and spread area of effect, but the window was a little farther away than the weapon was designed for, so there was a bit of a standoff as several wounded Nestafar managed to get inside and try to flank her.

When they came closer the shotgun ate them up, but they annoyingly added a lot of divots to her green ranger armor, some of which were still smoking when the reinforcements died out and she finally stood up out of cover. She glanced down at all the pot marks, seeing that none were too deep, then she set the shotgun down within easy reach and began reloading her plasma rifle as the ‘all clear’ came through on the comm, indicating that the rocket launcher infantry had been disposed of.

Before she finished reloading she saw a thick red plasma stream shoot past the window, quickly matched by two smaller blue streamers that preceded a yellow skeet flashing past, apparently going after the spider she’d just been riding. Now that the fighters were free to engage she knew it was only a matter of time before the base was stripped of its remaining defenses.

She had no plans to take and hold it, only to deny the Nestafar its use as a secure landing zone for reinforcements. That meant no large ground offensive was incoming to sweep the buildings of infantry and other personnel, and as impressive as her Archon team was, they weren’t going to take on that task by themselves.

“Mission accomplished,” she told her team on a private channel so as not to clutter up the chatter between the pilots and others nearby. “Head back over the wall and rendezvous at our resupply point. We’ll arrange for pick up there.”

Eight days later…

A mantis set down on the ground next to a heavy walker for a moment before rocketing back up into the sky leaving a solitary scuffed green Archon behind. Morgan ran over underneath the giant Hoth’s legs and grabbed the ascension cable dangling there, then was pulled up through an underside hatch and into the troop bay.

There were a handful of personnel in the otherwise empty chamber that she walked her way through, pulling off her helmet and heading up into the command pod. She stashed it on a cramped console and sat down, pulling up the combined battlemap data being generated by all Star Force units in play on the surface and augmented by orbital surveillance.

Now that she was onboard the giant machine began walking again, heading towards one of the last remaining Nestafar bases on Ricopal. Two days ago what was left of the Nestafar orbital fleet turned tail and abandoned the system, including their troops on the planet. Both Morgan and the Calavari commander had offered them terms of surrender but they hadn’t gotten back so much as a casual response. Either they didn’t believe the offer was genuine or they had orders to hold out as long as they could, either to await reinforcement or, more likely, to cause the victors as much damage as possible before they were finally defeated.

“Report?” Morgan asked once she got the comm system operational and an earpiece in.

“Containment is holding,” Cratak answered, “but there have been several infantry squads attempting to flee into the forest. All were intercepted and destroyed.”

“Just infantry?”

“Yes.”

“What were they carrying?”

“Small arms, nothing special. Why?”

“Just wondering if they don’t have another trick up their sleeve.”

“Even if they did, it won’t save them. Our forces…excuse me, your forces have them totally outmatched.”

“So why are they running when they could be surrendering?”

Cratak paused for a moment, caught off guard by the question.

“That’s why I asked,” Morgan said, switching subjects. “We’re about ready to hit base 17, do you have any Valeries you could spare for infantry control?”

“I have six in the vicinity that I can send your way,” the Calavari planetary military commander offered. “Can I assume you’ll also be requiring a cleanup ground team?”

“That’s the plan. Any trouble with the others?”

“We’ve taken just under 1000 prisoners in total, but most of the Nestafar are choosing to fight or flee. Most of the captives we’re taking are their wounded.”

“Copy that. We’ll be taking them off your hands when we leave.”

“What do you want the prisoners for?”

“Didn’t want to stick you with them, plus we’ve got some quirks as far as how we deal with our defeated enemies. We prefer taunting and teasing over enslavement or slaughter.”

“You can have them if you wish, but do not think that we would enslave them.”

“I’m noticing how you skipped over ‘slaughter.’ All around I think it’d be best if they didn’t remain on the planet, and I think I can put them to some tactical use.”

“We don’t kill our prisoners, Human, unless they rebel. Though I will admit that if you take them I won’t have to devote resources to their keeping, so you can have them with my thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Morgan said as the walker’s heavy electrolaser fired with a muted crack of thunder audible from inside. “We’re coming in range of the base. Have your fighters standing by.”

“I’ll have them report directly to you upon arrival. Good luck.”

Morgan cut off that comm line and opened another. “Nestafar base…you’re about to get your ass kicked. Surrender is still on option. Reply on this channel now or after the hammer falls, your choice.”

After that Morgan was in spectator mode, watching over her assault forces as the three heavy walkers in the mech formation took down the anti-air turrets poking up over the shield dome on the west side. After they were down the heavy plasma cannons came next, then the fighters were clear for partial strafing runs against the shield where they unloaded a continual torrent of plasma only into the west side to avoid the anti-air towers that the walker’s couldn’t target.

As they’d done several times before the skeets eventually depleted the energy barrier then scattered before the now unblocked remaining turrets could knock them out of the sky. The Hoths then made short work of the remaining towers, which were thankfully taller than all others, followed by the return of the skeets along with the Valeries that dove down into the base in search of infantry to kill with their scatterguns. The Nestafar walkers remained inside through part of the assault, unable to fend off the elusive fighters, until more than half their number were taken down, after which the rest fled out of the base through multiple exits.

By that time Morgan’s mech formation had arrived at the base with the bipeds flanking out and around the structure forming a containment line that the enemy walkers engaged as they tried to flee. The Hoths stayed at range and Morgan was content to use hers as a front line base of operations in lieu of the typical command structures that Star Force hadn’t deployed to the planet’s surface during this campaign, knowing that they were soon to leave. Morgan wanted a torch and burn rescue methodology employed, which meant not building any assets on the surface…something very atypical for the infrastructure-loving Archons.

Once all the Nestafar walkers were destroyed, either inside the base walls or outside, Star Force pulled back and let the Calavari handle the rest. They stayed on site long enough for their allies to arrive and secure the perimeter, then Morgan’s force marched their way over to the next base and repeated the process.

One by one the Nestafar bases fell, and when the time came to clear out Morgan’s assault group picked up their units via dropship and left the Calavari to begin the cleanup and restoration of Ricopal on their own. The ranger didn’t like leaving the planet all but defenseless, but whether or not the Calavari would send reinforcements was up to them. Her job was to seek out the Nestafar and stop their advance on as many worlds as possible. With that done here, she loaded up her jumpships with her troops and the Nestafar prisoners and left the system enroute to the next engagement zone, traveling this time under the power of their own, slower gravity drives.

“Why?”

“Why do we fight you?” the Nestafar prisoner clarified. “You are weak, and will fall like the rest.”

“You didn’t cause us much trouble,” Morgan countered, leaning back in her chair opposite the cell’s force field. This was the 12th one she’d tried interrogating and the first she’d gotten to speak more than a few sentences.

“You had numbers,” it all but spat, flexing its wings as wide as the confined cell would allow. “And without your aerofighters you would not have been able to defeat us on the ground.”

“But we do have fighters, so your point is moot.”

“They have more.”

“Cajdital fighters are weak.”

“They might not have shields, but they fly fast and shoot hard…and they have so many they block out the sky, so their defenses mean little.”

“The Alliance has a good chance of defeating them, why ruin that?”

“You have no chance, and never did.”

“You helped found the Alliance, so apparently you didn’t think so in the beginning.”

“We founded the Alliance to control you, to spy on you, and to steal your strengths. Even now your Valeries are being used to conquer the race that built them.”

“I’ll admit, the Calavari were kind of stupid to sell them to you…and now it’s coming back around to bite them in the ass. But they’ve got friends, like us, to help them out. You’ve got no one backing you.”

“No one?” the Nestafar laughed. “The Cajdital are no one? They are the power in this region of the galaxy…perhaps one day they will even control the entire galaxy. We have chosen the winning side. Your Alliance is doomed to fail.”

“Ha,” Morgan laughed in spite of herself. “Control the galaxy? That’s hilarious. There are so many enemies out there more powerful than the Cajdital that you’re proving how ignorant your race is.”

The Nestafar all but growled in response, but took a moment to consider its next words. “Your worlds are far from ours, and you may not know the full strength of the Cajdital, but we do. They will crush all that oppose them, so by supplicating ourselves we will survive where you do not.”

“Supplicating? Interesting word choice. Sounds like surrender to me.”

“We will remain intact.”

“Unless they’re just using you and, say, stab you in the back after they’ve finished with the Alliance. Has that thought ever crossed your mind?”

“They sought us out, Human. We did not go begging to them as you have with the Hycre. We accept their dominance of the galaxy, but they will respect our current territory and all that we take from the Calavari.”

“Guess you’re interested in pushing ahead as far as you can to take as many systems as possible before the Cajdital get here…but it looks like one less, now that you failed to take Menthat,” she said, hiding her pleasure at getting him to reveal that bit of intel.

“You will not hold it for long,” the Nestafar promised.

“Oh, sorry. Didn’t anyone tell you? We’re not in Menthat anymore. We’re enroute to another system.”

The prisoner looked a bit surprised, so Morgan pushed.

“Yep, next up on the list is Donovir. Want to place a bet as to how long it takes us to overrun your forces there?”

“You caught us early, Human, but those in Donovir have had time to fortify their holdings. I hope I get the opportunity to see your smooth face again before our fleet destroys this ship. When we arrive you won’t even have time to attempt a ground assault.”

“Don’t count us out just yet,” she said, mentally making a note to expect more enemy warships than previous intel had suggested. “In fact, sparky, I think we’re going to have the opportunity for many more conversations.”

7

August 4, 2403

Mid jump

Jason sat perched on the balls of his feet in the center of one of the jumpship’s Archon sanctum’s sparring rooms, staring off at nothing as he held his meditative stance. Like most of the other trailblazers he found his mind needed some sort of low level activity in order to focus, which at the moment was maintaining his balance. With that focal point in place his thoughts drifted through many places, past, present, and future as he probed the corners of his mind and searched out the faintest of his senses, seeking to expand upon those he already possessed skill over and broaden others.

Long ago Wilson had taught them the importance of being able to think without using words. He hadn’t been referring to spoken words, but words in the mind. Jason hadn’t caught on immediately to what he had been saying, and since there was no way to monitor or measure one’s thoughts it had simply been a suggestion to the trainees rather than an exercise, but later on Jason came to realize what he had meant.

In order to attain maximum speed of reflex and reaction one had to pull and process directly from sensory input and not shuffle actions through the logic center of the mind. That was where words, analysis, and simulation came into play. Useful as those things were in the proper place and time, they were, in effect, a form of fiction. Jason had learned that that fiction could take on a life of its own if not constantly calibrated by direct sensory feeds, which was why Archons needed to be constantly active.

It was the truth that fed them, and if they made the mistake of predicting what was true rather than seeing it, their sense of perception would fog over. Fog would lead to inaccuracy. Inaccuracy would lead to imprecision. Imprecision would lead to hesitancy. Hesitancy would lead to further fogging that could then spiral into full blown delusion…all of which would happen so gradually that one might not even realize it was happening.

Thus was the trap in the logic center of the mind. It was a powerful tool if mastered, but a detriment to the young and inexperienced. Hence, Wilson had suggested that they learn to think without the logic center engaged, both to reset and calibrate it, as well as to give them another level of thought to operate off of in times of need.

That other level had long ago been dubbed ‘Matrix mode’ by the trailblazers, and several other variants had been added over time as they continued to self-analyze and push their mental skills far past what Wilson had taught them. His knowledge had come from athletics, useful in that it served as both game and pseudo-combat, but Jason and the others had risen far beyond that level in their four centuries of training. One rule that they’d set for themselves was to never assume they knew everything, and to keep a constant pursuit of new facets of reality to discover…and then pass on what they learned to the others.

Matrix mode was so easy for Jason now that he didn’t even have to focus to banish the logic center of his mind. Whenever there was the least bit of action required he slipped into it, even if only for a second, pulling directly from his senses and determining what was necessary based on feel…living in the moment rather than anticipating the future.

It was that constant flow of activity, from one action to another without hesitancy or analysis that he found so natural now, but back in the day when this had all began he’d had trouble focusing a single 10 second block of time without a word popping into his thoughts. The mind required as much training as the body did, and as all Archons had learned, the two were never completely separate.

The small balancing movements Jason was having to make were little drain on his focus, but maintaining them kept him awake, literally, as his mind wanted to cloud over and fall into sleep. For him, at least, action was what cleared his mind, not rest, and the tiny bit of Matrix mode he was in at the moment, constantly micro-adjusting his body’s position to stay perched on his bare feet pushing into the firm pads covering the floor allowed the rest of his mind to open up, whereas rest would cause it to close down.

Jason let his mind flow around the balancing action, darting from senses to memories to waking dreams until he found a thread of interest, then like pushing into a hard wind he’d pursue it, usually not getting far before the wind drove him off or the thread fogged up beyond use. It had been annoying to realize how much of his own mind wasn’t under his conscious command, but once coming to that realization he’d taken it as a challenge to probe the biological computer that operated his body, only to find more questions amongst the scattering of answers.

Today was no different than other days. He’d already completed his morning workouts, checked in on the status of the jumpship and crew as they hurled across the hopefully empty vastness between stars enroute to another system to search and map out, and completed a sparring session with swords against some of the junior Archons onboard. With a slight level of fatigue floating over him, for he had refrained from taking additional ambrosia until after the meditative session, he sought to use the tired sensation as a pathway into perception, for he’d learned a long time ago that most of his breakthroughs, physical or mental, came from chaos rather than practice…and the best way to search out new cracks to explore was to blow something up, metaphorically speaking.

He’d tried hammering himself on particular workouts and then delving into the back corners of his mind, with some success, but it was never predictable, and he’d learned to try not to anticipate…just live in the moment and take opportunities as they presented themselves.

As reality had shown him multiple times before, it was when he was trying to do something else that he often succeeded in what he had been trying to do earlier with purpose…so when a warm sensation opened in a tiny piece of his mind he didn’t overreact, but he did reach for it, probing inwards and expanding upon the mental crack. The feeling was like opening his eyes after a long sleep, along with the coolness of a waterfall and all mixed together in a torrent that was impossible to unravel, but it was also very familiar, as if he should have known what this was all along…

Then came the backlash. A fierce jerk in his mind that transitioned out into his body. His back arched and he half jumped up off his feet, stretching out backwards to fall flat on his back as his mind clenched down around the sudden and persistent pain.

It was bad, Jason knew, like a muscle cramp…only this one was completely new and he had no idea how to deal with it so he consigned himself to suffer through it, twitching and kicking and pounding the mat in frustration before it eventually eased up, leaving a knot in his mind and a hell of a headache behind.

Jason pulled his arms up underneath his chest and got his face off the ground, blinking away tears as he looked around and let his visual, auditory, and tactile senses flush out some of the fragmentation within his mind.

“What the hell?” he mumbled, happy to have sparked a reaction, which typically meant a new breakthrough, but a bit freaked out by how intense that had just been. The point in his mind where the crack had formed was now tight and occluded, but as the seconds passed the knot, feeling for all the world like a pulled mental muscle, slackened a bit and the tiniest portion of the previous sensation shown through, like a pinprick of light against a black canvas.

When it did his vision changed.  Not that he was seeing anything differently, but he could feel what he was seeing…at least, for a couple of meters out. The walls were dull, as was the ceiling, but the mat in front of him was vivid, as were his hands.

He rolled over onto his hip as he lay on the ground and brought his left hand up in front of his face, inspecting it closely. Everything seemed to be in crystal clear 3d, as if the walls beyond and his previous senses had only been 2d.

Jason didn’t know what this was, but he knew it was significant so he just let the moment sink in, hoping that the tiny pinprick wouldn’t disappear. He didn’t reach for it again, fearing that would cause it to go away, so he just laid on the floor basking in its tiny light and trying to soak up as much sensory data as he could, knowing that the more his mind had to process the better the chance of retaining this new…perception.

His mind suddenly flashed back to what the dragon had told Kara about Zen’zat having mental abilities, and that their descendants should still retain those even after all the subsequent generations. He had the distinct feeling that this might be an inroad into those, which spiked his excitement through the roof.

That emotion, however, sealed off the crack in his mind and his senses returned to dull normal as a wave of disappointment and stupidity washed over Jason. He should have known better than to let himself get excited.

“Doh,” he said, flopping down on his back and rubbing his forehead, for the headache and knot within still remained.

Later that evening, after getting in a short run with the headache still lingering, Jason headed back to his personal quarters on the jumpship, stripped out of his clothes, and slid down inside his shower tank that was already full of warm, soapy water that covered him up to the neck. He turned on the massaging jets and turned the whole man-sized test tube into a frothing whirlwind of water, scrubbing off the grime and bleeding off some of the pressure in his head.

He stayed in the tank for a long time, trying to undo the stubborn knot in his mind and allow himself to relax. The Archon had been tight and tense ever since the incident, as if reeling from a traumatic injury that his body was afraid might happen again. His defenses were definitely in lockdown mode, and even the subsequent run hadn’t loosened him up as much as he’d hoped, but the warm water seemed to be making some headway.

After losing track of time, eyes closed and trying to channel the physical massage into his brain, he turned on the overhead water nozzle and drenched his short, sandy blonde hair in clean, warm raindrops, each one of which seemed to sooth his raw mind. With the sensation bleeding away the stress and strain he let his mind rescind almost to the point of sleep and leaned his head forward against the clear glass that looked out into his bedroom. It was slightly colder, due to the outside air, and the chill unknotted the clenched area of his mind, allowing him a tiny channel of relief amidst the headache that was still swirling about.

He held his head in place, not wanting to lose the bit of relief, and stayed there for more than two hours, allowing his mind to gradually exit out of panic mode and begin to heal the damage done to it, glad to be free of the persistent pain.

Eventually he risked pulling his head up, finding a bit of stress returning when he did so but the knot was gone, tenuously he guessed, so he remained in the shower for another hour, soaking in the warmth from the water and losing himself in the moment.

Somewhere along the way the tiny pinprick in his mind returned. Jason was so lost in the roiling water and suds that he didn’t even notice it happen, but as he blinked his eyes open randomly he could feel the raindrops passing in front of his face and, surprisingly, a few inches over his head. His range was very narrow, less than the length of his fingers, but when he put his head back towards the glass the smooth curve of the structure formed in his mind in the oddly 3d sensation that he’d experienced before.

Reminding himself not to react in any way he just stood there, soaking in the sensation and not reaching for the pinprick. He felt like it could expire at any time and he wanted to experience it as much as possible, so he steadied himself…then realized that he was tensing, so he closed his eyes and let go his muscle control save for a tiny tidbit required to remain standing in the almost neutral buoyancy of the shower tank.

When his eyes closed the sense diminished, but it didn’t abate. He could actually ‘see’ the water drops passing in front of his face, vague and colorless as they were. It was as if his mind was sketching out their shape, in 3d, absent the visual images. Jason could also briefly make out the ones dropping on his head for the split second they were within range, but he couldn’t ‘see’ any behind or to the sides. He resisted the urge to try and stretch his new sense and just ‘watched’ the drops fall for a long time with his eyes closed.

After soaking up a good amount of sensory experience he accepted letting the sense disappear again and took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly then dunking his head underneath the turbulent water. The raindrops disappeared from his mind and he mentally marked this long shower meditation as a victory, as well as realizing how tired he was. After getting something to eat he intended to head to bed early…if there was still early to be had, for he didn’t know what time it was. Then again, on a jumpship in mid-flight the time was irrelevant. The ship was active 24 hours a day and he could adjust his personal schedule however he liked.

When he came back up out of the water for air he felt the liquid cascade off his face and run out of his hair…then the raindrops reappeared in his mind’s eye, piggybacking on top of his vision.

Jason blinked twice, then twice more…seeing if he could make the sensation go away despite his keen interest in it remaining. It truly felt like he was awake when it was active and he didn’t want to lose it, but part of him had to find out how tenuous it really was. He knew not to reach for it, but he wiggled his arms and leg out, stretching what he could in the tight confines, including his neck, which he tilted to either side, and still the sense remained.

Next he shut off the massaging jets and the water around him calmed down, though the raindrops continued to come down on top of him…then with the turbulent waters ending his sense seemed to grow stronger, tagging every impact the raindrops made with the surface in detail, as if the swirling water had only been dulling or overwhelming his sense.

Jason shut the shower head off and stood still, barely breathing at all and letting the water completely settle out. He closed his eyes as he did so, ‘seeing’ the ripples in the water flatten out and the perfectly smooth surface form. It felt clingy and slightly taught, then the glass surrounding the water manifested itself in his mind.

The trailblazer held position and slowly his sense expanded around him until he could ‘see’ the entire 360 degrees around his body. Directly against his skin seemed to be a fuzzy zone, and the shower head above him seemed to be out of reach, but the surface of the glass that was above the water’s surface he could ‘see’ as clear as if his eyes were open.

A lingering drop from overhead fell down and impacted the tranquil water, with the tremor and ripples forming in his mind as well. The walls diminished when it happened, then slowly reformed as the tranquility returned, telling Jason that whatever this sense was, it was tenuous and easily disrupted…not to mention unbelievably cool!

He took a long moment to ‘look’ around, especially behind him, which was altogether new, then he dunked his head again, with the sense vanishing, and climbed out of the shower tube. He grabbed a towel and dried off, rubbing his head thoroughly then standing still above the hatch and calming his body’s movements.

Again the sense returned, very faintly for there was little within range to ‘see’ but Jason had an aura around him that now stretched all the way down to his feet where he could feel the water on the floor tiles that he hadn’t caught with the towel…and the towel in his left hand also stood out in mind’s eye, with every little filament standing out in 3d, especially when he looked down at it.

“Huh,” he said, partially as an experiment. His sense disappeared along with the vocal vibrations, then slowly returned as before, confirming to the trailblazer that the pinprick crack in his mind was definitely open, he just had to make sure it stayed that way.

Which he knew meant not pressing it.

He chucked his towel off to the side and walked over to his dresser, pulling out a set of casual clothes. He slipped them on and instead of heading off to get something to eat he grabbed a water bottle in his room and downed half of it, ironically thirsty after having been submerged in water for hours.

Wanting to make the most of the moment he slipped into bed, intent on taking a brief nap and letting his mind process this new sense, as well as heal up any lingering damage from the knot that had been there. A bit of his headache remained, faint as it was, and he knew he needed to deal with that before it had a chance to snuff out his pinprick so he lay down and pulled the covers up to his chin, then crossed his hands over his chest, interlaced his fingers, and let his mind drift off as he closed his eyes and let the fatigue slowly swallow him up as his body entered what he and Paul had decided to call a ‘healing trace.’

Thinking of Paul he allowed himself a smile, but kept his words off his vocal chords and inside his head.

The force is strong with this one…

8

September 29, 2403

Lejat System

Inner Zone

“Contacts?” Greg asked as he arrived on the bridge of the Warhammer.

“Not lizard,” the officer reported. “Scans of the 5th planet are detecting habitation though.”

“Habitation?”

“No electronic signatures of any kind, but there are structures down there…and they’re inhabited.”

Greg frowned. The Hycre maps had indicated that this system was supposed to be uninhabited. “What and how many?”

“Not sure and a lot,” the officer answered pithily.

“Show me.”

The officer snapped his fingers and another bridge crewer shunted the intelligence feeds over to the central hologram, which was then cut up into segments, each showing different sets of data from locations on the planet’s surface.

Greg crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the pictures. He knew mapping star systems was a pain in the ass to do, but the Hycre data should have been at least fairly up to date. The numbers of individuals in the primitive cities he was seeing suggested otherwise, making him wonder if they hadn’t migrated to the planet in the interim…but they could hardly do that with the technological prowess of building mud huts.

“This doesn’t feel right,” he suggested, eyes darting from one location to the other. “Do we have anything close to a species match?”

“We’re still running a search, but my best guess would be Ewoks.”

Greg glanced over at the man and raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. The creatures were both short and hairy enough that his mind had already made that connection.

“Wait,” Greg said, noticing a pattern in one of the primitive cities. “Bring this one up full size.”

A moment later the other images vanished and the overhead shot enlarged to a span of five meters, showing in detail hundreds of huts set up in a chaotic pattern amongst a sparse collection of what looked like evergreen trees.

Greg walked up and sunk his fingers into a specific place on the hologram, mimicking a familiar arrangement that matched up with depressions in the mud.

“What is it?” the bridge officer asked, as both he and others were staring at the trailblazer.

“What database are you running the check through?”

The standing officer glanced over at one of the Star Force crewers manning a nearby console.

“We’re working through the V’kit’no’sat database,” the woman answered.

“Search the lizard database instead,” Greg suggested.

She nodded and spun around, pulling up the much smaller information cache they’d stolen from the lizard tech they’d captured in Epsilon Eridani.

“What are you seeing?” the officer asked, stepping up beside Greg.

The Archon reorganized his fingers again and pressed them up against the holographic impressions set on a small open area between the huts. “Look familiar?”

The man frowned. “Landing skids?”

“Kirby landing skids,” Greg specified. “They’re eroded, but there’s no mistaking that pattern.”

“I don’t get the connection. What would the lizards be doing here if not taking over the planet?”

“Something more nefarious, I believe,” Greg growled, but he didn’t elaborate for several minutes until the female crewer found a match.

“Ninkari,” she said, bringing up a secondary holo for Greg to see. “They’re an arboreal species that…”

“…the lizards use for food?” Greg guessed.

“Yes,” the woman confirmed, slightly sick to her stomach.

“Which means that this is a lizard system people,” the trailblazer said, raising his voice. “Alert all ships and continue with the survey. If the enemy has infrastructure here I want it found.”

“A farm?” the man whispered as the comm officer got busy raising the alarm.

“And a recent one,” Greg suggested. “That’s why the Hycre map didn’t tag this system as inhabited.”

The officer considered that. “Then they are pushing into this area. More than we expected.”

Greg nodded as the distant doors to the bridge opened up and the Captain walked in, apparently having been the first the comm officer alerted. “I’d bet they deposited the Ninkari here a while ago to let their numbers grow, now they’re coming back to harvest them at least occasionally to feed…what? If there isn’t anything else in this system then they have to have bases in the surrounding ones. They’re here for a local food supply.”

“Trouble?” Captain Andre asked as he finally got over to the central command ring as the officer Greg had been speaking to took a respectful step back.

“Kirby tracks, and what appears to be a lizard farming planet. No sight of the bastards yet, but the system scan is far from complete.”

“So, more going on than the Hycre knew after all?” he asked, glancing at the hologram. “How large of a population are we talking about?”

One of the seated officers half spun around to answer. “Minimum…500,000. But our survey is only a third complete.”

The Captain’s expression changed as he looked back at Greg. “Orders?”

“None at the moment…other than to stay sharp.”

“Staying sharp, aye,” he said, walking past Greg and over to his Captain’s chair where he set down and started reviewing the surface intel that they’d gathered while he had been off duty.

Greg caught the eye of the comms officer and pointed at the man, then back at himself. “Ear piece.”

The officer pulled a random one out of a nearby drawer and typed in the serial number before tossing it to the Archon, who deftly plucked it out of the air.

“Get me a line to the Hawkeye.”

Sara was conscience of her precarious balance, standing on a small, raised circle only 5 inches in diameter as target holograms spun around her. She fired at one with the laser pistol in her left hand, making a small, quick jerk of her waist to counteract the movement of her arm. The invisible beam impacted the photoreceptors on the wall and the holoprojector painted a briefly lingering red splash on the spot, indicating where she had aimed and missed.

Another target zipped by her right shoulder and almost out of sight behind her, but the trailblazer managed to twist around on her left foot with her other coming up and hanging in the air as she rotated. It was an awkward position but Sara got both her pistols on target and fired at it multiple times.

Several red splashes pot marked the wall, then a green one destroyed and replaced the target for a moment before all the colors disappeared in sequence and she moved on to track other random shapes floating around the sphere that she stood within. Only a tiny area below her feet was unused and the targets often flew up over her head or down low, making Sara constantly reposition on the tiny pillar…else wait for the glowing shapes to work their way up and around into her preferred firing zones. That tactic had been anticipated in the design, and as such would only yield a moderate score for the best of marksmen.

If Sara wanted a high score she was going to have to dance around on her tiny tabletop in order to get at enough targets fast enough to beat the timer.

The Archon twisted her foot aside and made room to set the toes of her other one down alongside, getting both feet on the circle and standing ramrod straight as she fired at two separate targets with either gun, plastering the walls with shots instead of trying to go for precision fire. Her accuracy was being taken into effect in her scoring, but a hit was worth more points than she was losing with the misses so she’d just decided to try and rack up as many targets as she could.

A minus sign materialized directly in front of her face on the wall, held position for a heartbeat, then shot up straight towards the ceiling. Sara brought both pistols up and fired at it, missing behind as it and her back arched up. She hit it just before tipping over and let her knees collapse partially in order to catch her balance and pull her torso forward. The butt of her right pistol caught the edge of the tiny circle she was standing on and helped pull her back to neutral, then she stood up and started firing at an inverted triangle to her left that crisscrossed with a curvy snake-like line.

She bombarded the area where they came together with shots and managed to hit the snake, but the triangle shot on by and her right arm followed it while her left stayed up and in position, waiting for another target to manifest itself in that area. Sara had learned a while ago that reacting wasn’t always the best route to go, and sometimes she needed to be proactive and position herself for shots that may or may not come about, though with the way the targets were zipping around it was unlikely that any field of fire would remain empty for long.

A block ‘U’ appeared from her peripheral vision and Sara shot it with a clean first hit, surprisingly, then the entire holographic simulation went down, which elicited a disappointed response from the Archon.

“Ugh,” she moaned, knowing that she hadn’t hit anywhere near the number of targets she’d wanted. Sara spun around on the pillar and found her score floating behind her.

1734

Her goal for the immediate future was a 2200, and this run had just plain sucked. She was a decent shot, but this particular training challenge had been created by Taryn, who was just a whiz with firearms. The trailblazer’s best score, at least as far as the ship’s data had been updated, was an 11,751.

A mixture of cockiness and instruction, Taryn had posted the video of one of her more modest runs and Sara couldn’t believe the acrobatic and contortionist maneuvers the woman would go through to get shots…and then nail the target with one or two trigger pulls. After seeing that Sara had felt pathetically outmatched and rededicated herself to raising her marksman skill a chunk higher, knowing that while she didn’t think she’d ever catch Taryn, she needed to keep within a reasonable range of her skills.

1734 was better than most marksman specialist adepts could tally, but for a ranger it just wasn’t going to cut it.

“Computer, reset chal…” she said as her earpiece activated. “Computer cancel,” she said, reaching up and tagging the backmost button. “Sara.”

“Have you seen?” Greg asked.

“Seen what? I’m training,” she said, getting both feet on the tiny pillar and bending at the knees so she came down in a crouch, almost sitting on her ankles.

“The system’s not uninhabited, as it turns out. There’s a significant number of Ninkari on the surface that we think the lizards put on this planet to use as livestock. We haven’t found any lizard ships or bases yet, but I did see Kirby tracks in the mud inside one of the villages.”

“Villages?”

“Apparently the Ninkari are a bit more advanced than the Chipparat back on Corneria. Mud and wood huts by the looks of it.”

“Wonderful,” Sara said, slipping her pistols back into her hip holsters and rubbing her eyes. “What do you want to do?”

“Not sure yet. Wanted to run it by you.”

“Well,” Sara said, getting the obvious possibilities out of the way, “we can set up shop here, go for an orbital defense to keep the lizards out, or we could relocate them to another system. How many are we talking about?”

“Upwards of 500,000.”

“And there are no…harvesting facilities on the surface?”

“None that we’ve found yet. I think the lizards see this region of space as their backwater and they just dumped the Ninkari off here to grow their numbers, then they come back occasionally and pluck out the ones they want.”

“Gruesome, but it suggests this system is part of a supply chain. I wouldn’t think 500,000 would be enough to justify an excessive number of lightyears of travel, so they’ve probably got some more worlds nearby out here that we don’t know about.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“So…ambush?”

“Not with everyone. There’s no telling how long it will be before they get back…assuming they aren’t already somewhere in the system.”

“Their bases and ships are hard enough to find as it is,” Sara pointed out. “And if they’re building camouflaged ones now, they’re going to be almost impossible to find if they don’t want us to.”

“I know.”

Both Archons paused their conversation for a moment, trying to think of what to do.

“We can’t let them take any more,” Sara said finally.

“If we’re going to camp out here permanently we’re going to need Paul’s resources.”

“I think a warship will be enough to hold it for now,” Sara differed. “We can split up and explore the adjacent systems and rendezvous back here on our return to Namek.”

“And then?”

“Long term I’m thinking this is a perfect location for Canderous.”

Greg smiled. “You’re right, it is.”

“We’ll have to sit on it for a few years before we can get them out here…and we’ll probably get another ‘I told you so’ out of it, but they’ll make for better guardians of the planet than we will. I for one have lizards to kill and I don’t want to get tied down to the point that they have the movement advantage. We need to retain first strike capability or they’ll overwhelm us with numbers.”

“Those numbers appear busy at the moment.”

“When we start causing them a lot of trouble I have no doubt they’ll find their way over to us.”

“We’re in agreement there. How do you want to split up?”

“I think we can do six groups. Single mission, out and back to the closest star systems. If we find anything we retreat and report, then engage as we see fit with everyone back onboard.”

“Sounds like a plan. Which ship is staying behind?”

“If there are no volunteers draw lots,” she suggested.

“I was thinking about the Avenger. Captain Klivan has the most experience fighting the lizards.”

“Done deal,” Sara said, staring down at the hexagonal ridges that covered the dome’s interior. “Are we finishing the survey here first or leaving it up to him?”

“Finish here. I don’t want to leave him alone if there turns out to be a base here.”

“One warship is more than enough to handle a single base,” Sara pointed out, referring to the Warship-class jumpships rather than an individual fighting starship, of which they carried dozens.

“But if another jumpship comes in to harvest more Ninkari it’ll bring cruisers, kirbies, and fighters with it. I’d say he’d still have the advantage in that situation, but throw in more assets already present with a surface base and the odds aren’t so good.”

“Point taken. How many days are we looking at then?”

“Preliminaries should be done in 2 days, but it’ll be another 2-3 weeks before we get decent topographical maps constructed, and I don’t want to leave before then.”

“Do you want to send a courier back to Paul?”

“Not yet. Let’s have a look around the area first.”

Sara smiled, knowing that by ‘around the area’ he meant the neighboring star systems. “Guess we do need to know who’s next door before we think about setting up permanently here,” she said, standing up. “Keep me updated if something happens in the next few hours. I’m in the middle of a lengthy session.”

“Progress?”

“I said ‘lengthy’ for a reason.”

“Will do,” he said, cutting out.

Sara touched her earpiece and put it into sleep mode so she’d only get a single chime if she was being contacted rather than an immediate link to any ongoing chatter, then pulled out her pair of pistols and lifted up her right leg, flexing it a few times, then alternated with the other before twitching her fingers and getting her mind ready to jump back into the flow.

“Computer…restart challenge.”

A split second later the glowing icons returned and Sara’s body turned into a blur of precise muscle movements as the curved wall began to sparkle with red and green dots.

9

March 29, 2404

Eritath System

3rd planet

Jason stood in the Legolas’s bridge command nexus, watching the ongoing naval battle in mid hologram. At the moment his point of view was from the warship, with icons representing the remote-controlled cruisers and destroyers spanning a large defensive line in front of the massive ship. Further off to the right were two more warships under Jason’s command, each of which also had their fighting ships deployed in an ongoing engagement with a batch of lizard cruisers and battleships. The Legolas’s fleet had yet to be engaged, as it had come in behind the others, and was now flanking the melee in order to get at the enemy defense station in orbit.

Or rather one of them. Three had been constructed to date, with the partial skeleton of a 4th floating lazily around the reddish planet below with construction crews buzzing around it nonstop. Kyler’s forces had blasted it apart from the get go and were currently engaging one of the other defense stations while Emily’s had the third, neither of which would prove difficult in taking down. The trick would be doing it without losing a ship, which he knew both Archons were keen on doing.

Jason’s task was the hardest of the three, for the lizard warships had decided to cluster together to defend this one station, maximizing what little odds they had. Star Force’s numbers were far too great, but had they not been the lizard defenses would have rated very high for such a distant colony world…and one that the Hycre had not known existed.

That bothered Jason, because it meant that the maps they’d been given were woefully out of date. Not only did the lizards have a significant presence in this system, but it meant that they were a lot closer to Namek than they’d assumed…which was the real problem. They were having to make assumptions about their enemy using intelligence from their allies. The least the Hycre could have done was mention the fact that their maps were old…and now he wondered just how old they really were.

Jason input a few additional commands into the nexus, but otherwise let the Captains handle their fleets’ movements. The lizards were picking individual ships to target, hoping to take out at least a few before they were overwhelmed and Jason wanted to deny them that, issuing orders to rotate the lines so that those ships getting hit could be given some cover from the attackers once their shields went down.

Even as he watched though, one of the heavy cruiser icons winked out, meaning that there would be little more than debris left to reclaim afterwards and recycle, rather than a damaged ship to repair. He clenched his fist in frustration, knowing that meant one less cleansing beam he had to work with. Jason was about to issue new orders to get the other heavy cruisers moving back and bring the smaller ships into gap when the ships began to redeploy in just that fashion. Apparently the warship Captains had come to the same conclusions and already made the correction.

Satisfied that they were on top of things Jason turned his attention back to the defense station as the first cleansing beams were being fired from the Legolas’s fleet, which stretched out far longer than the enemy’s plasma range and penetrated the station’s shields, burning into hull plates like tiny scalpels before dissipating. They fired over and over again, slowly picking off weapons batteries, shield generators, and cutting into the hangar bays that were in the process of disgorging thousands of fighters.

Jason sent out a prompt to all of the pilots flying the drone warships to prepare their anti-air batteries as the lengthy swarm began to race out towards the distant ships in several tendrils on the holographic map. As they came the cleansing beams continued to fire, all the while the rest of the Star Force ships began to position themselves around the heavy cruisers to bolster their anti-fighter support, as well as to draw some of the enemy’s fire onto themselves.

It took a while for the fighters to reach the Legolas’s fleet, but when they did they swarmed around the nearest destroyers, frigates, and corvettes that had eeked out in front of the larger ships. Lots of enemy dots began to disappear from the battlemap but the swarm was unphased…then one of the corvette icons went out, followed by a destroyer not soon after.

Jason frowned hard and zoomed in to that particular section of the battle, with the tiny pinpricks that were the fighters enlarged to the point where he could almost make out their shape. Most were swerving in and out of the capital ships, but he caught sight of one ramming a nearby destroyer…after which the battlemap took off the ship’s shields and carved a small section out of its wireframe hull.

“Damn it, they’ve got Kamikazes with nukes…or worse,” he whispered to himself as he began typing out new orders. Soon a flurry of new dots, lesser in number, began appearing around some of the destroyers and cruisers as they ships emptied their stores of attack drones. The small, cubbish little devices flew up and out of the concealed holds and spread out around the warships in a defensive halo…with about half their number traveling over towards the heavy cruisers.

When the lizard fighters encountered them there was a clash of tiny plasma weapons, with missiles added into the mix by the drones. The blue Star Force dots began cancelling out the red lizard ones, while some shot on past the defensive halos and in towards the warships…which the warships’ anti-air weaponry then focused on.

Jason assumed those were the bomb-carrying fighters which, as far as he could make out with the sensor data being analyzed and piped into the nexus by the Legolas’s bridge crew, were exactly the same hull design as the regular fighters, making it impossible to tell one apart from the other. Another nice surprise from the lizards, and Jason was just glad they’d had the previously worthless attack drones onboard some of the ships as standard weaponry, otherwise the kamikazes would have been able to make it through to a lot more ships.

The lizards weren’t stupid, however, and when they  saw the writing on the wall they began bypassing the attack drones and escorting the ‘bombers’ down onto the capital ships, confusing the anti-air batteries as to which were the priority targets and actually pummeling into the ships’ hulls along with them to insure there was no break in the ruse.

The attack drones ate up a lot of the fighters as they passed by, but multiple nuke-level detonations began popping up across the larger ships’ hulls, but most of which were focused on the heavy cruisers. Half of them were significantly damaged, with three being a total loss. One of the lizard ‘poppers’ wasn’t enough to kill a cruiser, but it would take a chunk out of the hull even with the shields up, with upscaled damage if the shields had already been taken down or weakened.

Jason tapped the control podium steadily, resisting the urge to punch it in frustration. His remote pilots were bringing the battle under control and the numbers of lizard fighters in play were significantly thinning, but once again the bastards had succeeded in doing far more damage than they should have.

As the last of the fighters thinned out the heavy cruisers resumed their long range attack on the defense station, lancing it with the pure white cleansing beams until all of its primary weapons on the near side were destroyed. After that the rest of the Legolas’s fleet moved into plasma range and, keeping within the shadow of the dead batteries, unleashed a torrent of blue orbs that systematically destroyed the battle station, clearing planetary orbit of the last lizard presence, now that the other warships had finished off the cruisers.

Recalling all attack drones, and then the remote-controlled warships, back into formation around the Legolas, Jason’s section of the armada moved into a parking orbit while Kyler’s and Emily’s dropped down closer to the planet and began setting up for orbital bombardment. Meanwhile Jason’s damaged ships were pulled into the service area of the jumpship two at a time to begin making repairs. Smaller support craft were sent out from the Legolas to retrieve Star Force debris, along with an escort, while his other two warships moved about all three battlefields picking up what salvage they deemed necessary or just clearing the orbital lanes of it for navigational purposes.

Emily’s image appeared as a small hologram above the control pedestal in the command nexus, indicating to Jason that she also stood in the one aboard her own warship. “What happened?”

“Remember those det packs the lizards like so much? Well, they adapted them to their fighters for use against our capital ships…trouble is there’s no visible difference between the poppers and the regular wisps. They send a cloud of several hundred at you and you’re left guessing which ones to shoot first. Guess wrong and they take a chunk out of your ship.”

Emily raised an eyebrow. “Nukes?”

Jason shook his head. “Rad signature was wrong, but the yield is comparable. I’d guess a level 8 shipbuster.”

“How would they fit that inside their hull?”

“I don’t know, and I’ve only now just begun to sift through the sensor records.”

Emily’s hologram suddenly shifted to the left, off center, as Kyler’s appeared beside it, both of them standing about 18 inches tall.

“We’ve got trouble, I think,” he said as his image jabbed his finger forward multiple times, punching buttons that the hologram didn’t show. “We’re pulling a more detailed scan of our first target zone and found this.”

A small hologram appeared alongside the Archon’s image and Jason highlighted it, bringing it up in the background where the orbital tracking grid lay. A portion of the red-dirted planet replaced it, dotted by hundreds of lizard bases in fairly close proximity.

“There are an awful lot of them down there,” Jason agreed.

“Not what I meant,” Kyler said.

“Oh shit,” Emily swore when she saw it.

“My thoughts exactly,” Kyler echoed. “I don’t know if it’s transmitted yet, because I’m pretty sure it needs line of sight.”

“Damn,” Jason said when he finally noticed the comm building…no, make that complex that was as large as a base itself. They’d never encountered one before because they’d never seen a planet this infested with lizards. It was something well up their tech tree that Star Force was aware of because of the blueprints and other data they’d taken from captured lizard databases, but it wasn’t something they’d expected this far away from the lizards’ core systems. “They’re making a major move into this region.”

“That’s what it looks like,” Kyler agreed. “Question is, why? Do they need room to expand or are they coming after us?”

“Or trying to flank the others,” Emily suggested. “None of this makes sense…especially why the Hycre didn’t know about it.”

“I’m starting to think the Hycre are more in the dark than they’re letting on,” Jason mewed, looking over the well-developed infrastructure on the planet’s surface. “I’m also seeing some umbrella shield generators down there.”

“We may not have enough ordinance to get through all of them,” Emily suggested. “I think we need to smash them as hard as we can now and send back a courier requesting reinforcements.”

“To Namek or chasing after the others?” Jason asked.

“We have 6, so why not both?” Kyler suggested.

“Send three,” Emily amended. “One to Paul, two after Rafa. Greg’s group is too far away.”

“I’ll make out an info packet,” Jason offered, “and take care of the one to Paul.”

“Thought you might,” Emily said with a grin. “I’ll send both of mine after Rafa, and let’s hope he hasn’t come across any more planets like this one.”

“Jason, might want to have your warships start eating lizard debris and see if we can’t get enough materials to make a few more rail gun rounds.”

The trailblazer nodded. “Now I’m glad Paul insisted on installing the upgrades in place of the auxiliary shield generator…assuming the micro-factories work. I don’t think they’ve ever been tested.”

“No time like the present,” Emily said, glancing down at her unseen pedestal. “I’m going to pick an umbrella and see how much it actually takes to get through it. Kyler, if there’s a chance that thing hasn’t transmitted yet, smoke it before it does.”

“That’s the plan…though it’s under 3 overlapping umbrellas, so it’s going to take a lot to get through short of a ground invasion, and I don’t think we should try anything other than orbital bombardment for now.”

“Ditto,” Jason echoed. “If you need more ships let me know, but that transmitter has to go.”

“I’m on it,” he said with a nod before his hologram disappeared.

“How’s the head?” Emily asked before she signed off as well.

“Three nights ago was the worst it’s been. Today is only moderately bad.”

“Still no pain meds?”

“That’d defeat the purpose,” he reminded her.

“Unless you just need a break from the stress?”

“It’s bad, but not that bad. I’m not knuckling under just yet.”

“Keep me updated.”

Jason nodded then Emily’s hologram cut out as well, leaving him with an unobstructed view of the lizard transmitter complex and the bases ringing it. There were three of them that had a huge shield generator at the center, and from the data displayed in front of him he could tell that they were already activated, invisible as they were to the naked eye. The battlemap had a dotted ring indicating the outer edge of each shield, and all three crossed over the transmitter, intentionally he assumed, given that other than sending courier ships, the transmitter was their only way to send messages back to the rest of their empire.

According to the data they’d recovered, a transmitter like this sent a self-accelerating signal off in an extremely narrow cone designed to blanked a single star system on the other end where a very sensitive, and large, receiving station in space would pick up and decipher the message, whether it be long, short, or a continuous stream of data. That station would then retransmit the messages through their standard communications channels within the system, and if it needed to be relayed on it would be shuffled over to that system’s transmitter and the process would repeat.

Given that there was no receiving station set up here, Jason assumed that either they hadn’t gotten around to building one yet, which was unlikely given that the transmitter was far more complicated than the receiver, or this system only had a transmitter so it could keep the rest of lizard territory up to date on what was happening on the frontier. Jason suspected that the local lizard bases and ships all passed through the Eritath System regularly to drop off information that would then be sent back through the network to the lizards masterminding the entire war effort.

He knew why the transmitter was on the surface…to protect the critical and costly piece of infrastructure from naval attack, but the downside was they had to wait for the planetary rotation to carry them around into range of the system they wanted to contact. Not knowing where that was, but assuming it was pointed rimward, they might have arrived in the system after the transmitter had rotated out of alignment…based on Jason’s guess it was a close call, but then again, if they had a receiving system set laterally or above the planet it wouldn’t matter.

Better safe than sorry he knew, and he was sure Kyler would be able to take it out eventually. If they had sent a signal it would still take weeks, if not months to work its way back to the lizard homeworld. Lizard specs indicated that the speed of transmission was roughly 4x that of their jumpships. Alliance relays, built a bit differently but still based on a self-accelerating signal, were supposed to be 3x faster than the lizard version…but until Star Force got access to the grid there was no way of confirming that boast.

Until then, and probably a great deal after then as well, the Humans were going to have to rely on courier ships to carry messages back and forth between systems. Each of the trailblazers had brought two along with them, knowing that as they spread out communication would be even more critical to coordinating their counterfront assault on the lizards. Each of the micro-jumpships was 3 kilometers long and nothing more than engines with a pathetic amount of cargo and personnel space tucked up underneath the nose cone. Weaponry was akin to that on a cargo ship, while the shields were adequate…of course they had to be for a jumpship, else they’d risk losing the ship to small debris while in mid jump.

The couriers were slightly faster than the warships or cargo jumpships, though not by a lot. An empty cargo model was actually a touch faster, due to the size of engines that the smaller couriers simply couldn’t match…and the naval specialists couldn’t bring themselves to design a 10-20 kilometer long ship just to ferry messages back and forth. Mass for mass, they could get 50 couriers out of one such gigantic ship, though the gravity drive components were much harder to come by.

The 6 couriers accompanying this group flew separate from the warships, then refueled out of their ample stores when necessary, allowing them extra range and mission durability due to the fact that they couldn’t haul around a massive amount of fuel without it slowing them down further than their designers liked.

Two days later, with additional information gleaned about the lizards’ surface bases, Jason dispatched all three couriers with the data packet he’d assembled along with a personal message for Paul, bringing him up to date with his recent mental breakthrough…and subsequent setbacks.

10

April 14, 2404

Eritath System

3rd planet

Kyler watched from the bridge as the orbital bombardment of the second Umbrella-class lizard shield generator penetrated the thickest part of the variable defensive field. The rain of rail gun slugs passed through and down onto another, smaller shield beneath covering the base that contained the larger shield generator that even now was trying to restore power to its matrix.

The trailblazer could see on the computer-enhanced surface images that the outer portions of the umbrella shield were still active, including the pair of shipyards that were this attack’s primary targets. Assaulting them directly would have meant hitting a weaker portion of the umbrella and punching through to get to them, but in doing so the umbrella would continuously regenerate, soaking up additional rounds all the way up through the final destruction of the shipyards…and then cover over their remains.

It was an impressive piece of technology and was proving difficult to eradicate, but Star Force was quickly learning what it took to deal with them and appropriating sufficient firepower as Kyler, Emily, and Jason’s fleets spread out around the planet hitting a variety of targets. Each umbrella they brought down would expose a small region of the planet and the bases it contained, then those bases would have to be assaulted and their individual shield generators breached in order to actually get at the lizard infrastructure, making for an ammunition heavy assault…but worth it, considering that Star Force had naval superiority at the moment and was annihilating the lizards piece by piece without having to land any ground troops.

The transmitter had been the hardest target to take down to date, given that they had to destroy 3 umbrellas to get at it and the very far edges of the umbrellas had overlapped on top of each other’s generators, meaning they had to punch through 4 shields in total to knock out a generator. It had taken Kyler’s forces 2 days of continuous bombardment to get through, though part of that timespan was given to trial and error because they didn’t know how strong the shields were to begin with.

Since then the targets had been falling more rapidly, though each shield still took a while to drain of enough energy to form a temporary breach point and that meant thousands of rail gun rounds having to be expended. As it was Kyler’s armada had already blown through their entire armory stores and were having to rely on makeshift replacements constructed from the warship debris. This was causing significant time gaps between the various assaults, but all three trailblazers had agreed that waiting and stretching out their ammunition would be pointless. Better to hit and annihilate what they could rather than give the lizards time to plan and adapt.

In all, Star Force had managed to hit 8% of the lizard bases on the planet, cherry picking the most critical ones. They’d also discovered a number of subsurface ones as well, though how many of those were present was an ongoing reconnaissance matter. None of them had been targeted, given how precious the rail gun ammunition was, but if and when they got reinforcements they were going to need as accurate maps as possible to plan out further orbital bombardments.

Kyler stuck around long enough to see several rail gun rounds catch and repierce the umbrella shield as it tried to reform, with most of them passing through and hammering the base shield beneath. Given the number of ships firing on target it didn’t last long, and finally the first of the metallic slugs got through and buildings began to smash under the random kinetic impacts. He wished they’d have been able to target specific structures, but given the distance they were firing from and the ballistic nature of the rounds, cluster fire was their only option and eventually one of the slugs landed on top of the umbrella generator.

The dotted outline around the base and the surrounding area disappeared in an instant, leaving only the small one over that individual base in play, though it also winked out a few moments later when its shield generator was hit.

Knowing that the base was all but dead now, and the shipyards soon to follow, Kyler left the bridge and their eradication to the warship’s Captain and headed over to the sanctum for his morning workouts that he’d delayed slightly so he could oversee the assault, unnecessary as that was now. Still, when dealing with the lizards you had to expect the unexpected and he didn’t feel comfortable being out of the loop for too long.

“Sir?” his earpiece said as he was halfway there.

“Go,” Kyler said, stopping in the hallway.

“Line from Archon Emily.”

“Put it through,” he said, taking a step to the side and leaning on the hallway wall while a pair of crewers passed.

“Kyler?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“We just picked up a lizard jumpship entering high orbit and pulling a U-turn. It’s gone from our sensors now and I’d bet you 50 credits it’s running back to tell the others that we’re here kicking the crap out of the planet.”

Kyler frowned, then realized that Emily’s fleet was on the opposite side of the planet, meaning if the lizards had jumped in there they’d have been blocked from his fleet’s sensors…still, they should have been sharing telemetry between the three fleets on a constant basis. “Why didn’t my people see that?”

“We almost missed it too. That damn sensor stealthing hid it until we did a narrow beam scan following a comm signal. I think they stuck around just long enough to ask the planet what was going on then ran like hell.”

“So much for keeping this under wraps,” Kyler said, lightly punching the wall with the base of his fist. “Now it’s a race to see whose reinforcements get here first.”

“You think they’ve got enough ships close enough to try and take us on, or they’ll have to send for a fleet from home?”

“I’d guess the latter, but I wouldn’t put any money on it. I think we also need to station a few ships on the jumpline from the star for detection purposes. If they can get a jumpship here without us noticing we’re positioned all wrong.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Emily offered, “but if they come with enough ships to bother us they’ll make themselves known.”

“True. You bring Jason up to speed yet?”

“No, I’ll fill him in later. He’s in secluded training at the moment and this wasn’t urgent enough to disturb him.”

“More mental training?”

“Detox is more like it. He’s getting hit pretty hard.”

“You think we’re all in for that eventually?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

Jason lay on the floor of the training chamber, pushing around the pain in his head as he tried to find a thought or impulse that would drain the pressure building near overload inside, then he pressed his hands to the ground and brought himself up into an inverted ‘V’, bending at the waist. He held that posture for a bit, feeling the blood start to flow into his head and move the pain around further, then he leaned forward and kicked up into a handstand and fought to regain his balance, both physically and mentally.

Paul preferred this posture more than he did, and he hoped his friend was on to something because he was virtually at his wits’ end with this nonstop mental war that he was losing badly. Nothing he did seemed to work and his mind kept getting more and more fragmented, not to mention raw. The 3d sense literally wouldn’t turn off now, no matter how much he tried, and it felt like it was burning his brain out in the process.

Pulling back from the sensation no longer worked, as it seemed to seek him out now. Nor did distraction or overloading his senses with extraneous data. He’d tried audial, visual, and tactile stimuli but none of them would kick him out of his spidey sense mode and he began to wonder if this could actually kill him if allowed to escalate further.

With the blood rushing into his head and seeming to counter-push the cranial pressure he tried to relax and slip into a meditative serenity but literally every thought he made felt like barbed wire, so the only way he could avoid mentally cutting himself into ribbons was by holding absolutely still in mind’s eye…which he couldn’t do with a massive headache pounding him nonstop. He had to push back against it, and that mental activity ground on him. When he got frustrated with it, it became even worse. Jason couldn’t find a way to beat it or escape it…he couldn’t even find a way to fight it, for everything he did or didn’t do just made it worse.

So he was just trying to ride out the storm, keeping his frustration and mental activity in check and causing as little additional damage as possible, hoping that this would right itself eventually. Holding his handstand he closed his eyes…yet was still able to ‘see’ everything around him in faint outlines that helped him orient his balance. After 10-15 minutes he began to make some progress, with the painful hurricane flying through his mind settling down to a mere thunderstorm…then like a flash of lightning a random jolt of pain blinded his new sense for a split second and he lost his orientation.

The next thing he knew his back smacked the floor, knocking the wind out of him and undoing all his mental barriers as he lost connection with reality from the unexpected jolt. The pain was still there, however, and as soon as his brain woke up enough to feel it he instinctively pushed back with all the frustration and anger that he’d been containing before he could remember to stop himself.

Like Goku going super saiyan, Jason screamed inside his head with every muscle in his body clenching up in effort as he tried to blast away the pain by sheer force. When he realized what he was doing it was too late, so he just went with it…tired of backing down against this internal enemy no matter what damage he caused.

The mental scream intensified and soon found its way to his vocal chords, which matched in intensity what he was feeling inside. His back arched off the ground as he stared at the ceiling through closed eyes and yelled, not a scream of pain, but of power and rage as if trying to vocally beat back his enemy.

Somewhere in all that he felt something pop, and when he ran out of air and the yelling stopped he felt a warm, wet trickle rolling down the right side of his face. He flipped over onto his belly and reached a hand up and swiped at the liquid, then saw the blood on his fingertips. With a sigh he just laid down and let it drain out for a bit. The pain in his head was still there and now throbbing, but the building pressure had diminished, and for that, at least, he was grateful.

When the drips coming off his nose got annoying he reached up and pinched off his right nostril, intent on holding it closed until the breach sealed. He slid a few inches away from the small pool of blood on the mat and stared at the dark red puddle, acknowledging the fact that this mental problem was definitely spilling over and having an effect on his body. Part of him had wanted to just see it as a software problem, but in biologicals the software and hardware were never completely separate entities, and as much as a good run could clear his head, a messed up head could certainly screw up his body.

The blood stood out against the lightly colored mats, but it also stood in perfect clarity within his mind. He could feel its shape and texture, as well as the cloying nature of the liquid. Even with his eyes closed he knew its position and could feel the millimeter of height it had up off the mat. When he looked at it his visual senses seemed to enhance the 3d sense, causing it to go into more detail as if it were piggybacking on his sight data analysis program in his brain.

The mass of blood seemed to take on a special presence within his mind, as if it were a tiny pressure point of its own alongside the monster inside his head and the physical pressure of his finger-blocked nostril that was now pulsing amidst the coppery smell. He couldn’t do anything with those two aside from wait them out, but he reached out and tried to push the blood from his mind, feeling it weighed as much as a rock but gave slightly as if it were made of half-dried play dough.

A ripple formed in his mind…and to his shock his vision registered it in the blood as well, like a slight tremor impact. The pool quickly reformed its mirror-like, smooth surface as if nothing had happened, but Jason had seen it and despite the maelstrom in his head he was damn sure not going to let it sweep away that memory.

He found the tiny pressure in his mind again and pushed, harder this time. A shot of adrenaline followed as he realized that the big pressure in his mind drained a bit as he pushed, as if the effort was siphoning it off just a touch. Glad as he was for finally finding at least a small outlet for the mental pressure he also saw the blood ripple again, this time from a slight impact crater on the surface his side of dead center…which was the exact position he had pushed against it in his mind.

Emboldened by both discoveries he put a good amount of force into his next push, feeling like his mind was shoving its way through a bush leafed with razor blades. He clenched his teeth against the searing pain, trying not to flinch in body or mind in the process. Another spurt of pressure left his head…and the center of the pool of blood pushed out away from him, dragging and spreading the liquid a good inch further out onto the mat.

Tears welled up in Jason’s eyes from the pain that didn’t stop when the effort did. It lingered on as if he’d just took a piece of sandpaper made with glass shards and scraped it across his knee. Take the paper away and the injury lingers, as did this insane shredding of his mind.

Through the tears he stared at the misshapen pool of blood and grit his teeth as he forced his mind into a semblance of function along with a body that had begun to shake.

“Worth…it,” he pronounced piecemeal, as if needing to convince himself by hearing the words. Steeling himself against the pain to come he slowly built up mental pressure on the blood, as if spreading out the pain into smaller pieces that he could handle, then he pulled from the pressure in his head and pushed in a long, steady flow that, while rubbing his mind raw, relieved another portion of it like a deflating balloon that nearly compensated for the pain.

With his head turned to the side and his mouth closed so there could be no chance of his breath being responsible, he watched in both sight and 3d sense as the dark red liquid stretched out as if someone had drawn their finger through it and created a tendril offshoot.

Jason pushed it further, then released and pushed another section…nearly choking on the pain of transition. The second tendril pushed out at a slightly different angle forming a shallow ‘V’ that Jason then expanded upon with a third, shorter offshoot more to the side that seemed to drain away nearly half of the pressure in his head, giving him back a portion of his mental capacities that had been pain-numbed for days.

Flinching against the new damage he’d just done, he managed a laugh as he looked at the crude Vulcan salute he’d drawn with his mind.

He blinked away more tears, half from the pain and half from sheer joy. Not only had he finally made a breakthrough against the mental pressure that was literally killing him, but he’d also just discovered he was telekinetic…and the significance of that wasn’t going to be lost on him no matter how much pain he was in. Not after all those hundreds of hours of watching TV and movies as a kid and wishing he could summon the remote control from across the living room with a mere thought and twitch of his hand.

Though back then he had no idea that a mere thought could prove so painful, but that didn’t matter now. He had force powers…and a way to bleed off the pressure continually building in his head, which meant this internal war was now a fair fight, rather than the hopeless struggle he’d been enduring for months.

He had a lot of painful work to do, and was by no means out of danger, but he was going to win this fight...no matter how long it took.

Death Knell

1

February 27, 2405

Brokal System

Sri’ka

“Are you ready?”

Morgan nodded towards the slightly delayed hologram of the Kvash commander. “We are.”

“I wish you luck,” the rocky biped groaned in the trade language. Its various joints clicked as it raised its squat, flat head higher. “Commence countdown.”

Morgan glanced to her right, making sure her people activated their end of the highly synchronized attack they were about to pull off. To answer her question a holographic countdown clock appeared over the bridge of the warship she was commanding. Three others were nearby in high orbit around Sri’ka, a major Calavari world and capitol of this system’s micro-civilization.

Seven planets, all highly industrialized, made the Brokal system one of the Calavari’s economic linchpins, making up a significant portion of their starship and starfighter production line. The Nestafar had hit it hard a little over a year ago, but like Sol with so many inhabited planets, stations, and populations it couldn’t be captured in one fell swoop. An ongoing mini war had been occurring in the system ever since the first Nestafar attack on Sri’ka, with mixed results. The Calavari were holding on to it with a vengeance and even the Kvash had dispatched a battlegroup to keep the Nestafar from taking the valuable industry and turning it to their advantage…not to mention the Valerie starfighter line.

The fighting had been heavy and hard from the get go with both sides throwing reinforcements into the system, but as the available reserves dwindled the system commanders had begun to scale back combat to what they could manage without overcommitting their forces. A partial stalemate had occurred, with some planets in the system seeing lesser conflicts as a giant chess match played out with the Nestafar making small gains as the weeks rolled by.

Star Force, on its juggernaut roll through the list of small Calavari worlds the Nestafar had taken, had been requested to come in and break the stalemate before the Nestafar could summon up additional reinforcements of their own. Morgan had already split up her forces at that point into 3 groups assaulting nearby systems while progressing along a common line. She’d pulled off four warships from normal operations and used a Hycre jump cradle to interlink the four and make the much longer trip out to the Brokal system to drop the hammer on the Nestafar there.

The rest of the jump cradles had already been repurposed elsewhere, as the Hycre helped move around troops from other ‘slower’ races to more opportune locations, essentially stranding the Star Force troops in Calavari territory…but that had been part of the plan all along. This side mission had been on the spur of the moment as conflicts all across the region tied up more and more fleets in combat while lizard attacks continued further out towards the rim, splitting the Alliance forces and stretching their resources thin, allowing smaller worlds to be swept up with minimal effort while the major population centers were being vied for.

Which was why it was so important for Star Force to remain loose in the region as a purely offensive force…while the other supporting races deployed into defensive rolls to protect key systems. If all of them did likewise then it would give the Nestafar the advantage, and the Archons definitely weren’t going to allow that to happen. They had been hitting the Nestafar occupation zone where they were weak for the past 2 years, forcing them to devote additional troops and ships to defend them or lose the little ones that they themselves had taken in a similar manner, exploiting the Calavari’s weakness.

The distances between systems were also problematic. It took at least a week to transition between inhabited systems, even with the Hycre jump cradles. The galaxy was vast and this small corner of it was no exception. If a system was caught off guard it was most likely to fall, given that alerting others to its plight, let alone getting reinforcements sent out, was problematic. This definitely gave the attacker the advantage if they came in with sufficient forces to overwhelm their target.

Likewise it favored the more developed systems that had multiple worlds that could reinforce one another. Those were extremely hard to take, and as such favored the defenders…meaning that assaults on Brokal and others were vast affairs that could take years to resolve, meaning that the entire Alliance war effort was really dozens of individual wars being fought simultaneously, often without knowing what was happening elsewhere. Communication was an Achilles heel for the Alliance that the Bsidd were trying to counter with their relay network, but even messages passing through it were significantly delayed.

Morgan and the other trailblazers had already learned a crucial lesson in space warfare…the victors were those who were prepared. Territory grabbers were notoriously weak, and it was those that could hold what they took and develop those planets up into ‘fortress worlds’ that would eventually dominate the overall war.

But where there was chaos there was opportunity, and a bold race could take dozens of minor systems and hold them with a few ships if they knew the enemy wasn’t in a position to respond, such as Star Force had been doing with the Nestafar occupation zone, except that Morgan’s troops weren’t holding anything…they were returning it to the Calavari and leaving the holding to them.

In war there was much opportunity for the wise to exploit, but part of wisdom was knowing your enemy, where they were, how strong their fleets were, etc…but this war, or rather this regional conflict with the Nestafar, was essentially occurring blind. Both sides were slugging it out, guessing at target strength and reinforcing where they could, which was resulting in a yoyo effect that had seen territory taken, then retaken…only to be lost a second time to another batch of reinforcements.

Morgan poured over every bit of detail she could get her hands on, constantly shaking her head in dismay at how events were progressing. This whole Nestafar/Calavari theatre was playing out like an unorganized free for all, and she knew she had to keep her fleets moving or else they could get caught on the wrong side of one of the mini pushes. Their best defense was to keep mobile and the enemy unaware of where they were, because by now they had to have poked their way onto the Nestafar radar as more than the minor threat that most races in the Alliance had initially considered the Humans to be.

Part of that had been the fact that Star Force territory was on the edge of Alliance ‘territory,’ which was actually bits and pieces around the perimeter of the lizards’ holdings. The Human piece was one of the furthest outliers, so the Alliance races, including the Nestafar, hadn’t had much interaction with them nor knowledge of their worlds. This was advantageous because Star Force could hit the Nestafar without having to worry about them hitting back…anytime soon, anyway. They had their hands full with the Calavari and the rest of the Alliance, though if Star Force’s allies fell, to either the Nestafar or the lizards, Morgan expected their enemies to have a good enough memory of events to come looking for payback eventually.

But for now Morgan was on offense, as she preferred, and this current mission that her four warships were just wading into was the biggest opportunity to stick it to the Nestafar to date, as well as being the most risky, but the fog of war was on their side given that they knew from the others fighting in the system where the enemy was and how strong they were…while the Nestafar had no idea her strikeforce was incoming.

When the timer reached 3 minutes Morgan saw no change, but down on the surface of Sri’ka, in one of the Calavari-held regions, 583 Valeries lifted off from one of their major airfields and burnt hard for space, heading for the position of the main Nestafar fleet in the system that had been interdicting the planet for months, cutting off any large scale hope of resupply and keeping possession of low to middle orbit while they either destroyed or captured the installations around the planet. The part of the blockade the fighters were heading up to was the thickest, and even as impressive as 500+ Valeries were, it was an insignificant force against the Nestafar warships…even if they didn’t have a fighter screen of their own.

Which they did. As the Valeries shot up through the thinning air the Nestafar carriers began deploying squadron after squadron of their own fighters, supplemented by a number of Valeries they still possessed, all of which raced out ahead of the wing-shaped warships in order to intercept the Calavari before they could get within range.

Instead of trying to fight their way past and go after the enemy warships the Calavari pilots halted their advance and engaged the fighters directly in a massive starfighter fur ball just above the atmosphere. Hundreds of dots swirled around each other on the Nestafar sensors, cancelling each other out in ones and twos with the Calavari maintaining their traditional edge. The formation of capital ships just sat and watched the battle until a pair of destroyers on the right flank suddenly turned off, accelerating away.

As if oblivious the rest of the fleet held position in clustered rows…then a cruiser went off, followed by a squadron of corvettes until the sensor ghost they were picking up finally resolved itself into a single, massive warship as it dropped its sensor stealthing matrix so it could fire on the destroyers.

Like a cloaking device, what had been black, signal dampening panels suddenly turned stark white, picking up the sunlight and reflecting it back like a dull star in low orbit that had somehow snuck up on the Nestafar formation. Capital ship grade plasma streamers shot out a deep maroon-colored plasma from the forward two sections of the ‘tri-sphere’ ship, which looked like 3 golf balls mashed together into a solid lump that was one of the most notoriously well-defended ship designs in the Alliance.

Two plasma streamers hit the leading destroyer, sapping its shield strength for several seconds before they broke through and hit the hull on the starboard wing as the Nestafar ship fired off a salvo of glowing green missiles. It emptied its hold of the weapons before the plasma streamers cut the ship in half and diverted to the incoming cruiser, with the missiles flying in an evasive spiral in towards the port sphere on the Kvash battleship.

No anti-air batteries opened up on the missiles, for the battleship had none, but a few seconds prior to impact the Kvash capital ship opened up several ports beneath its shields, with gaps forming in the protective barrier as hundreds of thousands of tiny little, pebble-like ‘blips’ shot out and curved toward the missiles, homing in on their location and interposing themselves between the incoming weapons and the warship.

The Nestafar missiles got swallowed up in the clouds spewing out, detonating prematurely and scattering the blips from the concussion…but the little white dots resisted the scattering, slowing to a stop then gradually returning to their swarm and filling in the gaps where the missiles had detonated. They lingered there shortly, then like a dinner call a signal was sent out and the little white dots retreated through newly opened the gaps in the shield and back into their storage compartments just beneath the surface, clearing the firing line for the ship’s main weapons…all of which were streamers.

All of the corvettes that approached got tagged with an individual streamer, one of which was a heavy. It cut through the shields within 2 seconds, while the other smaller models took more time, but none of the Nestafar ships lasted long. The small amount of plasma orbs they threw at the Kvash battleship smashed against their crystalline shields as if hitting a solid wall of wrinkled glass, barely draining away their energy, which was quickly replaced by the hundreds of redundant shield emitters positioned around the surface of the irregularly shaped hull.

The Nestafar knew immediately what had to happen. The Kvash operated with a rock mentality to warfare…meaning they planned all battle strategy around fixed strong points like chess pieces that they could then move around the map. They weren’t accustomed to losing ships, due to the size they produced them as well as their impressive shields, which were by far the strongest in the Alliance and heads above what the lizards brought to bear. The only way to counter such strong assets was to bring overwhelming force to bear on them, thus when the ship appeared on the Nestafar sensors nearly every capital ship within range diverted towards it and started throwing whatever firepower they had against its shields, even if that meant they’d be taken out within 30 seconds of arrival.

They had to weaken and disrupt the shields by hitting it continuously, then pick off the emitters below when they could, otherwise the shields would reform again. That was a tactic best employed by their fighters…which were currently engaged with the Calavari lower in orbit.

The Kvash battleship, nearly 10 kilometers wide and functioning as its own jumpship, didn’t retreat in the face of the wave of Nestafar capitol ships heading its way, numbering over 600…and that was just the ones in range. They had more than 2,000 in orbit around the planet and over 10,000 spread out across the system. If allowed to isolate the enemy down to a few dozen at a time the battleship could work its way through those 10,000 on its own, which was why the Nestafar knew they had to take it out as quickly as possible.

The main Nestafar fleet group the Calavari fighters had flown up towards now splintered, with the jumpships and a few escorts holding position while the others moved off to confront the Kvash. One large ship also stayed behind, nearly half the size of a carrier jumpship, and armed to the teeth. Its weaponry was the most powerful the Nestafar had in the system but it was electing not to confront the Kvash, rather staying behind and repositioning in between the enemy and the jumpships just in case the Alliance somehow broke through the overwhelming numbers they were throwing at them.

Ironically, it was also the only Nestafar warship that didn’t have wings. It was pointed like an arrow and had three talons sprouting out of the hull and curving over, each of which held a super weapon, which in this case was an enormous plasma orb generator. The command ship looked like a long, gnarly stick with three thorns sticking out, save for the center, which was pushed out to form a ring with the center open and housing a small shipyard/repair center for their smaller warships. It was protected by a secondary bubble shield underneath the primary, with one of the thorns sticking up over it from the prow, literally daring anyone to approach from the topside.

A large gap formed in between the command ship and the rest of the fleet as it coalesced around the Kvash with more ships coming into firing range faster than they were being destroyed, though the rocky aliens were racking up an impressive kill count in the process and their shields had yet to go down even briefly. The command ship organized and recalled more and more ships from planetary orbit and diverted them to the battlefield, knowing it would take them minutes, if not hours to get there, but if not dispatched now the delay would be even longer.

All across the planetary orbit Nestafar ships moved, some taking advantage of the planetary alignment and getting microjumps in off the star or nearby planets, others using the three moons to propel them inward where they then easily braked against Sri’ka to drop them in nearby the Kvash, where they then had to approach at a much slower pace else risking running into one of their own vessels and annihilating both ships due to a navigational accident.

Back out in high orbit where the Nestafar couldn’t detect them Morgan waited patiently, not knowing about the battle going on in low orbit for lack of sensor data. The four Warship-class jumpships had their active sensors turned off so as not to betray their position, not that they would have given them much information other than approximate locations if they knew where to place a direct sensor scan. A typical spherical scan would have been too weak to reflect back anything of worth other than maybe one of their jumpships, which was why they’d had to position themselves so far out into high orbit to keep themselves off the enemy’s sensors.

So all Morgan had to work with was the countdown clock and trust the Calavari and Kvash were holding up their part of the plan…otherwise her ships would be microjumping into a world of hurt.

“Go,” she said simply when the mark came well over half an hour into the battle.

The four warships, lined up laterally with several kilometers in between one another, shot off towards the planet one by one, accelerating rapidly but not so fast that they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. They were pushing off a combination of the system’s central star and one of the moons around Sri’ka, using a precisely balanced combination to head them directly towards the planet with an ETA just over 6 minutes.

Once they were up to speed, which occurred within 30 seconds, each jumpship began detaching the warships they were carrying with the outermost two pushing theirs wide while the central 2 sent theirs above/below the plane that contained all four massive carriers heading in towards the planet. They detached as fast as possible, then aligned into deceleration lanes so that no one ship would be eclipsing another in case something went wrong with an engine or if a decel sequence was a microsecond delayed.

Almost as soon as the first jumpship had all its remote-controlled drone warships released and aligned it hit the brakes and disappeared off the back, then a few seconds later all the small warships did the same, blinking out of formation within three seconds and using their own gravity drives to brake hard against Sri’ka’s gravity well.

In what appeared to be a shotgun of approach signatures, more than 60 ships appeared on the Nestafar’s sensors along with a jumpship further back…then a few seconds later another group appeared, followed by a third and then a fourth as Morgan brought her battlegroup in a few hundred kilometers away from the Nestafar jumpships while the rest of the enemy fleet was occupied with the Kvash.

From the Red Ranger’s bridge Morgan watched the sensor data update, with a big smile crossing her face when she saw their command ship exposed. “Well hello there.”

2

Dozens of cleansing beams shot out from the Star Force ships, punching straight through the Nestafar command ship’s physical shields almost as if they weren’t there, making surgical cuts on the hull that increased in accuracy as the ranges closed. The white beams slashed across the thorn-like pylons protruding off the massive ship first, taking out the command ship’s most powerful weapons while leaving the jumpships completely alone, save for a few smaller warships flying out to physically corral them in, forcing them to either stay in place or ram through them in order to make a microjump out of planetary orbit.

Like a pack of patient wolves, Morgan’s fleet crept up on the command ship as the heavy cruisers picked apart its defenses from range and the rest of the Nestafar fleet, which was still approaching the Kvash battleship in pieces from around planetary orbit, suddenly had a moment of indecision. The ships assaulting the battleship were finally starting to poke through its shields, but they were far from killing it, meaning they either had to remain where they were and let their command ship and jumpships die…or pull back, letting the Kvash recharge their shields, at which point they’d be able to resume the attack with a lot less Nestafar ships in play, having been previously destroyed in what would have been a futile defensive effort.

They chose neither option, which surprised Morgan as she saw their jumpships and command ship began to slowly maneuver away, some of which were actually headed for the corvettes and frigates blocking their paths.

“Damn it,” she all but yelled on the bridge. They were going to make sure they killed the Kvash battleship while diverting their incoming reinforcements towards her fleet in twos and threes as the larger ships spread out, meaning her ships would have to do likewise, diminishing her available firepower or else some of them would get away. “Focus on the command ship. Let’s see how bad they really want the Kvash.”

“Archon, we have incoming,” the Red Ranger’s Captain Wilkinson announced.

Morgan turned her attention to the holographic map the man was adjusting and half a dozen Nestafar ships not yet engaged in the battle were highlighted. Their previous tracks to the Kvash were being diverted and heading towards the four Star Force warships sitting back and out of the way of the fighting.

“Continue the attack,” Morgan ordered. “We’ll deal with them here. Keep the pressure on the command ship,” she said, jogging off the main section of the huge bridge and into an adjunct. There she passed through an open doorway into a short tunnel, then through another open doorway and walked into the ship’s command nexus and powered it up with the touch of a button.

The four warships appeared around her in holo, spaced well apart from one another with her point of view centered on the Red Ranger. Tiny icons on the ship’s hull began powering up as the Captain readied the warship’s weapons. Morgan sent out a similar order to the other three via the control podium in front of her and soon their little icons started popping up as well.

With the flick of a switch the hologram shrunk until her drone ships and the enemy jumpships came into view. The Archon zoomed in on the command ship, seeing its damage statistics popping up as holographic tags noting the systems that had gone offline with various glowing colors. A plethora of red splotches covered the near side of the giant ship, but the reverse side was mostly intact, including one of the primary weapons that was partially shielded from the incoming cleansing beams.

Morgan tagged it with vector approaches, then sent a signal out to her pilots onboard all 4 warships to begin moving the smaller drone ships in, meaning cruisers on down, into plasma range and hitting the intact claw along with a host of other targets that she was tagging with rapid fire keystrokes. A brief interruption in the cascade brought up a secondary hologram on her right that showed the ongoing battle with the Kvash battleship, which was now smoking in several locations, but most of the ship was still showing its impressive shields holding, meaning the enemy only had a few vulnerable spots to probe.

They were doing just that, however, and she honestly didn’t know who was going to come out on tops there, but her fleet had an objective that the Kvash were bleeding for, not to mention the Calavari down near the atmosphere that were still engaging the Nestafar fighters and keeping them away from the other two engagement zones.

And Morgan was going to make damn sure that Star Force came through on their part. The command ship was already retreating back down towards the planet…the only direction available given the bowl-like formation of her ships around both it and the jumpships. In order to keep it from getting away she needed to extend that bowl into a sphere and completely surround it, though the outbound vectors were the most dangerous, given that it had the planet to push off from with its gravity drives.

Heading towards it was requiring partial pushes against other gravity wells in the system, which took a lot of fuel given the little traction it had, but the ship couldn’t attain any significant speed anyway without hitting the planet…but it could get low enough to flank the assaulting ships and open up a jumpline, which Morgan knew was their plan.

Her ships were far faster, but there was that nasty primary weapon still in play and if they got out in front of that they’d be smoked with little effort, so she needed her ships to engage the Nestafar at close range and pick off that weapon before they could run out in front and block their escape route.

On the holographic map she saw one of the jumpships wink out as it found a hole in their lines and escaped, but the others still appeared to have herders with them. Those were being repositioned constantly as the jumpships moved trying to flank their limited pursuit using partial pushes from the moons to get them moving laterally.

Morgan knew she didn’t have enough ships to hold them, but then again she hadn’t expected them to run either. Both her and the Kvash had expected them to pull back their fleet and fight it out around the command ship, using its heavy weapons to tackle the Kvash battleship. The tactics they were employing now didn’t make any sense…but this war, and Morgan didn’t have to only make plans for what made sense but for what the enemy could do, and her fleet wasn’t well set up for this. She’d made the surprise attack play rather than going for containment.

The command ship was going to die though, that much she was sure, and it was a far more valuable target than a jumpship. Those they could hunt down later, or at least scare off if they wanted to play cat and mouse around the system. The Nestafar military leaders for the Brokal invasion were reported to have still been aboard the command ship, and taking both them and the weaponry onboard the behemoth out of the equation would be a major victory for the Alliance.

Morgan wanted more, however, and dispatched a handful of destroyers off from the main group with orders to pin down a single jumpship. The others might eventually get away, but she was going to snag at least one if possible.

All around the hologram of the command ship the smaller Star Force blocks began clustering, first on the rear side where most of the ship’s weaponry was tagged in red, with the remaining intact batteries soon blinking out as the ships picked them off the exposed hull. From there they moved up the length of the ship, bypassing the still shielded shipyard bubble at the center of the warship and moved up and under the bow where the intact ‘thorn’ lay.

The first few came in so low they almost scraped the hull, making sure they stayed below the firing range which, oddly, was limited to mostly the forward arc. A scattering of other defensive weapons targeted them, which the more distant heavy cruisers targeted with their cleansing beams, making it look like the destroyers were backlit by a lightning storm.

The destroyers began firing on the backside of the ‘thorn,’ chewing into the thick armor and structure covering it, intent on taking it out without entering its firing range. That was going to take time, however, for it was well embedded within the pylon.

A fireworks show ensued behind them as the rest of the Star Force ships caught up and began picking off the command ship’s weaponry with a hail of blue plasma orbs countered by a lesser amount of red coming back up at them. Morgan saw several of her ships suffer significant damage but the overall trend was positive…and more importantly they were making good time, for so long as the command ship was mobile there was a chance it could still escape.

The pylon was slow going, however, and she was tempted to order some of the ships around into its firing arc so they could get some clean shots at it, but long term that wasn’t a good idea, knowing that she was going to need as many warships as possible for future campaigns.

Morgan forced herself to be patient, keeping her warships in the less dangerous areas around the command ship, adding more and more to whittle away on the backside of the thorn as the command ship began to move more laterally, with two of her cruisers actually kissing the hull on the port side when they failed to reposition fast enough. That told Morgan that the command ship was desperate, as it should be, and she wasn’t going to assume they wouldn’t run over one of her ships and accept the damage that would ensue if escape were possible.

To that end she repositioned several more ships over to the port side, intent on seriously damaging the command ship if it decided to go bulldozer.

The cleansing beams kept coming down on the back side of the command ship, carefully targeting around the other Star Force ships as they bathed the hull in plasma, nicking away at the giant but unable to get at its gravity drives that were located well inside the hull. According to intelligence from the Alliance the Star Force remote pilots knew the approximate location of the drives and the cleansing beams were now probing those areas, hoping to burn deep enough to prick one of them into malfunction. The command ship had 6 set along the length of the hull even though one was enough to move the ship about within the system, but all six were necessary to achieve maximum jump speed for interstellar travel.

And in order to truly clip its wings Morgan’s fleet needed to damage all six. That would take more time than they had, so physically blocking off its jumplines was the only viable option available to her.

To that end more and more ships began clustering behind the ‘thorn’ and chewing into the pylon, now blasting out internal components as the armor over the target area was completely obliterated. They could see the firing aperture rotating around trying to get them into its sights, but the battlemap system all the Star Force ships were using had a clearly tagged no-go zone around its firing arc that all the pilots were holding their ships to with a decent margin to spare.

As the blue plasma cascaded into the armor breach like coalescing blue raindrops there was a sudden backwash of red as the containment chamber in the weapon was breached. The plume radiated out through the breach and the firing aperture as it melted through the weaker components and was shaped by the intact armor. The plume impacted several of the destroyers and frigates nearest the pylon, washing over their shields and sucking the energy out of them with the sudden overload. The red plasma soaked into the Adamantium armor, vaporizing the outer inches before dissipating into the surrounding space as it quickly cooled.

The hulls on the affected ships glowed fiery green for a moment before the Herculium upgrade cooled back down to its normal faint green…now visible since the Star Force grey paint had been burnt off. Even before the glow faded the ships began moving forward, shooting past the now dead weapon and drawing fire from other smaller plasma cannons. The larger destroyers and cruisers moved into engage them while the smaller frigates and corvettes shot ahead down the length of the command ship and took up position in front of it as the long warship continued to accelerate perpendicular to the planet with its port side now facing back towards the jumpships that were still scattering in an attempt to escape the tiny warships trying to block their path.

A flashing light appeared on the edge of the hologram, indicating weaponsfire on the Red Ranger. Morgan zoomed back out from the Nestafar command ship and in on the four Star Force warships as a scattering of Nestafar cruisers and destroyers began assaulting the extremely large warships. Their shields were weaker than she would have liked, given the sheer size of the ship they had to cover, but the weapons batteries returning fire should be enough to hold off the small number of attackers so long as they were coming in piecemeal.

Like the Nestafar command ship, the newer version Star Force warships had super-sized weapon systems onboard, two in fact…one covering the top of the ship and the other the bottom. Both were capital ship-sized plasma streamers in lieu of cleansing beams, for which the ship didn’t have the power for when its shields were running at maximum deployment.

One of the plasma streamers on the Red Ranger fired off a compressed, long range beam that lost a bit of cohesion and spread out from its 2 meter-wide departure width to 15 meters by the time it hit one of the Nestafar destroyers. Like the Kvash versions it continually sucked the strength out of the target’s shields until it breached them and burned into the hull…then the capacitor drained and the beam abated, leaving the enemy ship crippled.

The super weapon began rebuilding its plasma charge, unable to fire again for 34 seconds. While it recharged the conventional plasma orb launching cannons exchanged fire with the three Nestafar ships harassing it as a fourth came in from afar and began throwing its weaponsfire at the warship’s shields, which for all intents and purposes were a delaying mechanism rather than an effective defense.

Morgan didn’t know if they’d kill them before they did hull damage or not, but the Captain had the defensive effort under control and the other 3 warships seemed to be in a similar situation so she turned her attention back to the command ship and adjusted the hologram…finding the ship and her fleet having moved off a considerable distance, nearly an eighth of the way around the planet.

“No you don’t,” she said, ordering a pair of her ships pacing the command ship to disengage and move up into higher orbit to act as relays for the control signal that was allowing the pilots onboard the Red Ranger to fly the drone ships. If the Nestafar got them out of line of sight that multi-tiered signal would cut out and the ships would revert to computer control, executing previous assignments or, if none had been logged, simply stop fighting and drift through orbit until communication was regained.

By using the ascending ships as relays they could extend the range around the curve of Sri’ka, though the lag was beginning to mount already. Given that their target was a huge, slow jumpship it wasn’t an issue, but had they been manually targeting incoming fighters or missiles it would start to become problematic, which is why they had backup automated targeting systems onboard each of the ships that could handle such things if instructed to do so.

Speaking of fighters, she saw that a group of Nestafar ‘vipers’ had broken off from the ongoing engagement and were rapidly approaching the command ship while the Calavari had sent a handful of Valeries in pursuit while the rest of them were busy killing the Nestafar with a better than 4 to 1 ratio. Morgan did a circle search on the map and the computer counted 39 vipers, which she knew could be a hazard if they still had their missiles onboard, but in general they wouldn’t be more than a nuisance if/when they were able to catch up. The command ship was screaming along now, and with their tiny gravity drives the fighters were having a hard time eating up the distance.

The computer tagged their ETA at another 8 minutes, though that number was fluctuating with every adjustment the command ship made in its course. It wasn’t regarding the Star Force ships as serious obstacles and was nudging them aside to get pointed the direction it wanted. The smaller ships had to back off or risk a collision but they didn’t move off the jumplines, just retreated along them to prevent a massive acceleration of the jumpship and stall for time while…

Just then the command ship lurched and 9 of her drone ship icons winked out. The rest moved rapidly to counter the sudden burst of acceleration, falling behind momentarily then losing all contact as the ship executed a microjump using the planet’s gravity well to launch itself sideways off into space.

“What the hell?” Morgan said, blinking in confusion for a moment before she pulled up a sensor replay to see what had just happened. Upon closer inspection it showed the jumpship ramming the ships in between in a very low powered jump to get clear before making its full escape jump.

Three of her ships shredded on impact with the debris being knocked clear in explosive fashion…but the other six actually imbedded in the hull of the ship. They completely disappeared inside the command ship, doing untold amounts of damage, leaving Morgan surprised that the ship could still jump at all after that.

“Son of a bitch,” she said, ordering her fleet to turn around and head back home, not only to deal with the three Nestafar jumpships that hadn’t managed to escape yet, but also to assist the Kvash battleship that was now in serious trouble. They wouldn’t arrive for quite some time, but every second counted and she needed to get them underway as soon as possible.

When she finished she took half a step back from the podium and clenched her fists…then forced herself to relax and blew out a long, slow breath.

“Ok, focus. That ship is seriously screwed up now. We can hunt it down later. First things first,” she said, switching back to warship mode and seeing several spots in the Red Ranger’s shield that were almost breached…along with the debris from three of the Nestafar warships nearby. Two more were still engaging, but it looked like they were going to be able to deal with them without reinforcement.

The Kvash, however, were another story entirely.

3

A hefty salvo of Nestafar missiles launched from one of their battleships and flew in towards the Kvash, swinging around several closer destroyers and cruisers until they reached the narrow clear zone immediately around the tri-sphere ship. There they encountered none of the ‘blips’ as before, for all the anti-air devices had already been expended during the fighting, though there was a growing debris field around the huge battleship that was accomplishing much the same thing, which was probably also why the Kvash were no longer maneuvering…they didn’t want to rack up any collisions on the already damaged hull.

Only patches of shield remained covering the ship, under which intact weapons batteries continued to fire. The rest had already been picked to death by the Nestafar along with the ample number of Kvash shield emitters. With those damaged there were certain segments of the ship that could no longer regenerate shields, while others could be covered if the existing shields were realigned. Those currently were exposed because those matrixes had either been disrupted or refocused to cover existing hull structures with an extra layer of protection.

The battleship was in a world of hurt, but the Kvash were wisely keeping select parts of its offense active and they continued to burn down ship after ship from the considerably shrinking fleet surrounding them, knowing well how their massive ship could soak up damage and still remain in the fight.

Most of the incoming missiles didn’t target one of the shielded sections of the ship…rather they hammered an area of the hull on the forward starboard sphere that was already showing an armor breach. The little glowy fireflies zipped down into the hull wound and expanded it, swarming into the growing explosion until they blasted out a huge chunk of the ship that twisted around with considerable list as it drifted away towards a nearby destroyer that had to reposition quickly to avoid a collision.

With the now obvious opening on the Kvash battleship, dozens of ships began redeploying to target that area, throwing a mass of red plasma orbs into the unprotected inner portions of the ship, exploding sensitive components and eventually cutting power for the entire sphere…which subsequently dropped what remaining shield segments it had left operational and exposed the weaponry beneath them as the batteries fell silent, making them easy pickings.

As bad as the damage looked the ship wasn’t out of the fight…only a third of it was. The other two spheres had their own independent power sources, so they fought on while the Nestafar swung around and decided to pound the already dead section, ironically giving shield generators on the other two spheres time to partially regenerate new matrixes over portions of the hull that had already been exposed.

One of the Kvash plasma streamers on the port sphere was still functional and protected beneath a shield segment that had to strategically lower around the battery every time it fired, else the plasma would catch on the ship’s own shield. Due to the genius of the Kvash shield design the hole in the matrix was extremely tiny and didn’t offer much of a vulnerability, but at the moment six Nestafar warships were pouring plasma down on that exact location. As the battleship’s maroon streamer leapt up and dug into one of the cruisers a bit of the enemy’s plasma snuck back through the hole and splashed the emitter, as had been occurring for several rounds now.

Most of the plasma was pushed back out along with the Kvash stream, but the little tidbits that crept around the sides finally added up and with one last salvo it burned through and knocked a hole in the battery’s aperture, causing the Kvash plasma stream to fan out laterally, losing cohesion and taking the bite out of the weapon, though the shieldless cruiser was still taking a hit strong enough to cut deep into its hull.

Worse though, was the fact that the spraying effect was hitting the underside of the battleship’s shields, draining their energy away at an alarming rate…enough to make the gunners cease fire for fear of breaching the shield entirely. That took the only remaining heavy weapon on the port sphere out of commission, leaving the rear and mostly untouched sphere as the ship’s primary offensive option.

Knowing this, the Kvash began using what engine power they still had to rotate the ship around on its central axis, bringing the rear sphere slowly into firing position on the remaining Nestafar ships. Before that could happen, though, some of the closer ones began moving around the perimeter of the ship to stay in the dead zone…then the rest wisely broke off, zigzagging their way out of the debris field and making micro-jumps away from the battlefield, with the rest of the ships that had been incoming  veering off course as well.

A few minutes later the first of Morgan’s ships decelerated into weapons range on the Kvash battleship that had been left for dead amidst the results of the conflict…literally hundreds of Nestafar hulks were floating about, some of which were still partially active, having played possum during the fighting to keep from getting completely obliterated. The Kvash apparently saw them on sensors as well, because as the block-like Star Force warships arrived the intact sphere on the battleship was targeting the debris and burning up the damaged Nestafar ships left behind.

The trailblazer watched from the command nexus as she took stock of the damage to her fleet, displayed on a side hologram with rows of ships marked in various colors. Out of 293 in total, 9 were totally missing, with another 5 showing no data at all but with a blue sparkly icon in the center that indicated their telemetry system was down but their location had been tagged through other means. Pulling up visual feeds on those locations she confirmed heavy damage to all five, but the hulls were largely intact and therefore salvageable.

Then there were 56 ships, ranging from corvettes up to cruisers, that were showing total red, meaning weapon systems, propulsion, life support, etc were all non-operational. The telemetry system had an independent power supply that allowed at least limited control over the ships even if they suffered extreme damage and these had, though Morgan knew from experience that part of the damage was probably due to power loss rather than destruction. Either way they weren’t combat or flight capable, meaning they’d also have to be retrieved.

Another 23 ships showed partial damage, but were still flight worthy. Most of those had headed off with the remainder of the fleet towards the Kvash, but a few were already limping their way back to the warships. The rest of the fleet, including all the heavy cruisers, were mostly untouched, with a few showing tiny bits of hull damaged or depleted shields leaving her with a significant fighting force, part of which was already corralling the 3 Nestafar jumpships…but staring them down would only work for so long.

They had to be disabled, either from outside or within, and Morgan didn’t have the troops onboard her warships to handle a boarding action. Nor did she have the capability to handle prisoners. The 4 warships were naval vessels, optimized for space combat and little else. The bulk of her infantry and mechs were sitting on cargo jumpships in a system far from here, so she was going to have to rely on the Alliance for help dealing with the Nestafar jumpships…and the sooner the better.

Before that, though, she needed to assist the Kvash in any way she could. Their plan hadn’t gone as expected, though they had come out of it with a major victory…but at a cost, to both her fleet and the battleship, of which the Kvash only had 3 in system. She was about to open a channel to the ship when a comm prompt pulsed in front of her like a tiny glowing star. Morgan accepted the transmission and an image of a Calavari General appeared over her podium in the command nexus.

“My data indicates you’ve retaken control of orbit. Can you confirm?”

“The battle is over and their ships are fleeing, if you want to call that control. We’ve taken significant losses and the Kvash warship is badly damaged…we also lost the Nestafar command ship, though most of its weaponry is slag now.”

The Calavari’s large head nodded respectfully. “Our sensors show three enemy jumpships still in orbit. What’s their status?”

“Semi-contained. The command ship blew through several of my ships to make their escape and I wouldn’t put it past these either.”

“What are your plans for them?”

“Other than shooting them up there’s not much we can do on our own, and there’s no way I’m wasting the ordinance it would take to completely destroy them. Not to mention the people onboard.”

“You wish them captured and repurposed for the Alliance?”

“I don’t see why not. If you can spare the troops?”

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but would you consider a trade?”

Morgan frowned ever so slightly. “What?”

“Some of your smaller ships are capable of in-atmosphere maneuvers, I believe, if our intelligence is correct. There are a number of surface targets that could use a naval touch. If you can take them out I can repurpose 10,600 soldiers to pacifying the jumpships, now that you’ve cleared the air for our transports.”

“What kind of targets? Most of my ships have orbital bombardment capability.”

“That we know, but these targets require precision attacks within a few kilometers. Our fighters can handle most of their ground troops, but some of their larger assets require more numbers than we have available.”

“Get me a target list and I’ll probably say yes.”

The hologram’s full body image clapped both sets of arms together, fists into palms. “I shall prepare the list and begin readying our transports. I will also confer with the Kvash to see what infantry they can spare.”

“I can give you a few skirmisher teams for the hot spots. Do you have any people that have ever been onboard one of their jumpships?”

“I doubt it, but I will inquire. I assume your people haven’t either?”

“No, the Nestafar are new to us. They could have all kinds of surprises waiting for us, especially if they’re taking cues from their new best friends. We’ve taken down a Cajdital jumpship before and it took a lot of manpower…I have no idea how they compare to the Nestafar.”

The Calavari’s hairless facial ridges raised slightly. “You’ve taken one of their jumpships?”

“With help from the Hycre, yes. We were forced to kill the crew because they wouldn’t surrender. I’m guessing that the Nestafar will, or some of them anyway, if we put enough pressure on them. We need a relocation program set up prior to the assault to shuttle the prisoners down to a secure facility on the surface. Have anything we can use?”

The Calavari nodded. “We have several sites we’re already using to contain prisoners well away from the front lines. We don’t want the troops battling there to be bogged down with security duties. We can send the captives from the jumpships there, though I doubt there will be many. The Nestafar are out for blood.”

“We sometimes employ stun weapons, and it’s best to always have an option in play for capture.”

“We don’t equip non-lethal weaponry…we just aim in non-lethal areas.”

“To each his own,” Morgan quipped. “We just don’t have room on our ships to accommodate prisoners.”

“We will provide it then. The enemy has been making gains on Sri’ka, but not so much as to threaten our major facilities. Our prisons are well secured, and you can be reasonably assured they won’t find their way back into the ranks, so long as the surface war doesn’t turn into a rout.”

“We’ll see what we can do to help in that department,” Morgan promised.

“The target list will be forthcoming shortly. Thank you again for your assistance. You may have just turned the tide in the battle for this world…perhaps even the star system.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Morgan cautioned gratefully.

The Calavari bowed slightly, then his image disappeared.

Morgan proceeded to contact the Kvash battleship, but couldn’t get through on the first attempt. It was several minutes later before an image of an even beefier creature appeared, though much shorter than the Calavari. It actually stood shoulder height to Morgan, though it wasn’t visible on the hologram that adjusted to fit the size of the individual, so from her point of view Morgan had the bulky Calavari replaced by an equally tall living rock monster.

“The battle did not go as planned,” it said with a low, rumbling voice as it flexed its rock-like joints with an annoying scraping sound.

“No it didn’t,” Morgan agreed, ignoring the mild rebuke in its tone. “Where is Sassval?”

“Dead.”

The Archon swallowed slightly. “Can we be of assistance in your repair efforts?”

“You have driven off the enemy. That is enough.”

“Medical evac?” she offered. “It looks like half your ship is inoperable.”

The Kvash was silent for a moment. “We have toxic leaks that we are having difficulty locking down. They are advancing through deck after deck despite our automated containment procedures. Our crew is being forced into a progressively smaller area. Removing them from the environment while our repair teams correct the problem is preferable. We have already contacted the Calavari concerning such an evac to the planet, but your ships are closer.”

“Can you handle a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere?”

“It is not to our liking, but adequate. We do not respire.”

“How many?”

“Approximately 8,000.”

Morgan started running the logistics through her head at lightspeed. “We’ll have the first transport there within half an hour, if you can provide docking coordinates. Doesn’t look like you’ve got many landing bays left.”

“All are inaccessible. Your ships will have to use a gantry way. I do not know how compatible the system will be with your technology.”

“All the equipment in this fleet is post-Alliance, meaning our docking mechanisms are designed to interface with all member races, so they should match up.”

“Acceptable. Our primary sensors are disabled. What is the status of the enemy jumpships?”

“Their command ship escaped, heavily damaged. We have 3 of their jumpships surrounded and are coordinating the Calavari to secure them.”

“Not a total defeat then,” the Kvash uttered. “Do not lose the jumpships. The resources they contain will resupply the enemy for months.”

“We don’t intend to.”

“How much damage was done to the command ship?”

Morgan didn’t answer with words, but quickly sent a data file along the holo-transmission so the Kvash could see for itself. “Heavy damage.”

It took a moment to digest the images, then pronounced them satisfactory. “A fair tradeoff then. We will repair our damage faster than theirs, and they have no guardian fleet at the moment. I will inform the others of their vulnerability. Do you have a current position for the enemy vessel?”

“No, it jumped out.”

“Your sensors can’t track its position?”

“Across the system? No.”

“We will have to extrapolate their course and reacquire their location later.”

“How far can you scan?”

“Our long range sensors are currently down.”

“If they were up, how far?”

“A significant distance with unstealthed jumpships of their size.”

“If you find it, I’d like to know.”

“I will pass along your request,” it said, twitching its head to the left as it looked at something outside of Morgan’s view. “The sooner your transports arrive, the better.”

“On it,” she said, cutting the commlink and issuing orders to the four jumpships to assemble their shuttles, dropships, tugs, and other recovery craft for immediate use. Then she commed the Captain and got him started on prepping an arrival area for the Kvash while she stayed in the command nexus and began cycling out a few of her smaller ships herding the Nestafar jumpships in exchange for the larger ones, freeing up the corvettes and frigates and sending them down into low orbit while she waited on the target list from the Calavari…though she already had a pretty good idea of what ‘targets’ they had in mind.

Her blocky ships weren’t built for aerial combat, but Paul had tweaked the designs enough to keep it a possibility for the smaller warships. They had to run their gravity drives continuously at significant fuel consumption in order to pull off the maneuver, but she admitted that bringing in orbital guns to a mech fight was overly tempting…so long as the naval support was on your side.

When the list did come in there were a few surprises on it, but the primary targets she’d expected were all there, namely the Nestafar’s super dragon walkers. From Mark’s reports they were a bitch to take down from the air and almost impossible to hit from the ground, unless you were willing to sacrifice a slew of your own mechs in the process.

He’d also indicated that tactical explosives were the way to go, but given that Morgan didn’t have any onboard the warships, nor skeets to deliver them, sending in close naval support was the next best option…or perhaps a better one, because plasma and rail gun rounds were easy to replace compared to the high yield, non-nuke warheads that Star Force had nicknamed ‘ship busters.’

Either way, with proper supplies and tactics Star Force could get the job done on the Nestafar army…though Morgan guessed Paul would appreciate this play, even if it was akin to squashing metallic bugs.

4

Captain Wilkinson was waiting inside the Red Ranger’s primary hangar bay when the first of the transports returned from the Kvash battleship. The doors stood open with an energy field keeping the atmosphere in, a definite no-no as far as previous Star Force protocol had been, given that a little glitch in the energy matrix or an oddly shaped craft passing through could result in a sudden depressurization of the bay, killing all those inside and draining internal atmosphere if the connecting doors weren’t also closed. Procedure had always been to evacuate the deck of personnel before the main doors were open, allow the craft to enter or exit, then reclose the doors and allow the personnel to move freely again.

This kept the atmosphere contained short of a malfunction, but made for slow traffic patterns. Recently an upgrade had been made to newer ship designs with a tri-layered energy field covering the doors that led into a short tunnel that had a fourth shield covering the entrance just in case a ring-like object came through. With the way Star Force shields operated, the emitters had to be physically connected to all points on the shield perimeter in order to function, meaning that a straw-shaped object, when passing through the shield, would isolate the circular section inside it. That would disconnect from the controlling energy flow and the matrix in the isolated region would dissipate.

None of Star Force’s ships were designed as such, but whether through damage or other models, incoming vessels could potentially breach the atmospheric containment on accident…which was why the short tunnel had been added, meaning the incoming ships, such as the Falcon-class dropship passing through as Wilkinson watched, would have to fully penetrate one shield before they contacted the others. This would contain any atmospheric breach to the small tunnel rather than vent everything in the bay out into space.

The tri-layered shield had two backup capacitors to power the extra layers in case main power went out, giving the crew time to close the doors before the hangar depressurized. And each of the two backups were located in different locations so that weapons damage to one area wouldn’t take down both simultaneously, with the primary power feed for the third also being routed through another location.

The end result was that the newer Star Force ships could load and unload continuously while leaving the main doors open without fear of depressurization short of a huge hole being torn in the hull…which was coated with double thick armor around the bays just in case they were intentionally targeted by weaponsfire.

The falcon came through and set down across the bay near the Captain while another followed it in a minute later, both of which eventually disgorged a string of short, walking rock piles that were the Kvash. The ‘rock’ was actually an exoskeleton, over which they all wore containment suits similar to parkas with only their faces exposed to keep in their body heat on the ‘cold’ Star Force ship. Their eyes were the only visible appendages on their faces, with no nose or mouth, though there was a series of small ridges underneath their pointed chin that produced the audial vibrations for speech.

Their heads were also flat on top, giving the impression of a tabletop/hat, but at the moment they were covered with thermally insulating material and out of sight as they plodded over towards the much smaller doors that led to the interior of the jumpship, where Wilkinson was waiting. The creatures moved slow, but according to the Alliance data files they were quicker than they looked, though not up to Archon levels of agility.

“Where are your wounded?” the Captain asked as the first of the Kvash walked up to him.

“In another transport,” the shoulder-height alien said in slightly lower tones. “Is your entire ship this temperature?”

“I’ve arranged a less cold area a short walk from here,” he said, wasting no time and pointing the Kvash forward as they began to group up around him. “If you will follow me.”

“We will,” one of them said, waddling forward with an extra wide shoulder swing that seemed atypical to Humans but was necessary to accommodate their higher masses.

Wilkinson led them down the hall and around a corner, then walked a few dozen meters more before coming to a door that led to a recently emptied cargo bay with a Knight posted by it in full white armor. The Kvash looked pathetically tiny next to her, but then again so did Wilkinson. “How are we?”

“Hot,” she said, pulling open the door with a wave of hot air spilling out and causing his face to flash sweat.

“If you require anything, ask her,” the Captain said, looking back at the Kvash and motioning them in.

“Thank you,” one of them said before waddling into the improvised sweat room with the others following suit, save for one that pulled off next to Wilkinson and looked up at the helmeted giant.

“What race is that one?”

“Human,” the Captain answered while the Knight stood impassive.

The Kvash huffed, staring up at the behemoth with its dark, glassy eyes. “It looks like a two-armed Calavari. How many sub-races do you have?”

“None. We’re all genetically the same. This one took growth enhancements during her training.”

“Growth mods?” the Kvash asked, with another pair stopping to listen while the group from the second dropship appeared around the corner in the hallway, led by another of Wilkinson’s naval officers that had been waiting in the bay. “How do you accomplish that without genetic alteration?”

“That is knowledge that I do not have,” Wilkinson said honestly, glancing up at the Knight.

“Something we ingest,” she said with a shrug. “If we want to get larger we eat more, if we want to shrink we drink a different formula. Most of us prefer the 7 foot range.”

“There’s no limitation?” the Captain asked, curious.

“Not that I was told, save for the ceiling height.”

“Impressive technology for such a primitive race,” the Kvash said, with some of the others making gestures of agreement by clicking parts of their exoskeleton. “Your biotech must exceed your starship design.”

“We have supply crates incoming,” another Kvash interrupted. “Can you have them transferred to this chamber or will we need to carry them ourselves?”

Wilkinson swiped several rivulets of sweat off his forehead, guessing the interior of the room had to be higher than the 120F he specified. “We will arrange for the transfer. We’re also currently reconfiguring another chamber into a lavatory, which we will hopefully have operational within the hour.”

“Hopefully we will not be remaining here that long, but thank you for the consideration,” the other Kvash said, motioning for the others to continue inward. They cleared the hallway and allowed the second group to come through, then the Knight pulled the door shut and a blissful wave of air conditioning whipped across the Captain’s forehead now that the blast furnace was sealed off.

“Told you so,” the Knight said as the Captain flicked off several beads of sweat.

“Can you believe that’s still cold for their homeworld?”

“What’s normal?”

“The files say 150.”

“Ouch…thanks for not posting me inside.”

“I wouldn’t do that to a lizard, let alone one of our own. You’ve got to be hot enough in that armor?”

“It self-regulates to diminish thermals…at least the amount I generate. I don’t think it’s rated to compensate for exterior heat. Not with the small power cell that it has.”

“I didn’t know your armor was powered at all, aside from the helmet comms.”

“The movement is all me, but there are a few auxiliary systems with a low power draw. The techs plan to add more as the weight requirements diminish.”

“Is Archon armor the same way?”

“I don’t know for certain, but scuttlebutt says it is.”

“Did you feel that heat?” Wilkinson asked, pointing at the door.

“A bit soaked through,” she admitted.

“Carry on,” he said as a third group of Kvash appeared, led by yet another naval officer. The Captain headed off to the left and back around to the hangar entrance via a different hallway, then stayed to observe the continual offloading of personnel and later the supplies, which consisted of octagonal crates that wouldn’t fit through the hallway. Those he had transferred via the cargo corridors that ran throughout the ship like mini highways, one of which passed over the Kvash-occupied cargo bay.

Several other issues arose during their stay, but were dealt with in course…with Wilkinson finding as many solutions as he could that avoided him and his people from having to go into the hot zones. He desperately hoped he’d never have to abandon his ship and take refuge on a Kvash vessel. Some Alliance races he could handle shipping with, he guessed, but the heat loving living rocks weren’t one of them.

The metallic slug shot out from the ‘forward’ end of the frigate as the ship hovered half a kilometer above Sri’ka’s surface with the slimmest forward tilt possible to give it the depression necessary to target the hoard of Nestafar walkers a little over 10 klicks away. The projectile flashed by too fast for the eye to see, slicing through the air and punching into the side of a super dragon with an enormous sonic boom following it as the concussion wave punched in the air eventually caught up with the slug’s target.

The heavy armor on the walker crumpled around the impact as the rail gun ammunition broke through into the super dragon’s insides but failed to punch out an exit wound. Instead, all of the momentum was directed into the walker itself, knocking it over on its back where it came down on a pair of giraffes that were escorting it towards the heavy fighting further north.

Morgan smiled as she watched the damage even one of the weapon impacts could do, let alone the accuracy of her pilots as they fired the weapon laterally, having to compensate for the perpendicular gravitational pull. Her view from one of the cameras on the frigate swung to the right as the ship twisted ever so slightly, then the image corrected itself and zoomed out, showing her the line of walkers scattering every which way, save for another super dragon a bit further up the line that was too slow to do much else than continue walking forward.

A second shot fired with similar results, save for this one hit slightly off center and spun the giant machine around a quarter spin before dumping it onto its collapsing legs and down to the ground. After that the frigate closed range and started firing at the other walkers with its plasma cannons, not wanting to waste the heavy rounds against the smaller targets. Simultaneously it fired a lachar off at the shields covering the prefab base that was the functioning as the LZ for the newly arrived walkers, having been offloaded just prior to the naval battle in orbit.

The heavy blast impacted the dome-like shield, catching on the partially energy-resistant matrix with almost no penetration, unlike the naval versions that a lachar could get through with ease. Star Force also utilized different shield technologies on the ground than in space, but they were all a combination of physical and energy shields. Why the Nestafar would only equip their bases with energy-resistant shields and not any of their other war machinery was confusing, but that was the nature of the game they were playing. A lot of the aliens’ tactics, allies and enemies alike, didn’t always make logical sense to Morgan, but they had to deal with them regardless.

From their intelligence on the Nestafar’s various shields, a cleansing beam still should have been able to punch through, but the atmosphere-capable warships weren’t large enough to carry the weapon and firing through the atmosphere via orbital bombardment was problematic, given that the beam would scatter and, even if it did manage to hit the target, would only deliver a fraction of its original power. Had the frigate had one, it would have been useful at the closer range in atmosphere, but since that wasn’t an option the bases were going to have to be taken down primarily via plasma…which the frigate wasn’t planning on getting close enough to use.

It was going to do some damage with its lachars, though, and continued to do so as a swarm of fighters came out of three nearby prefab bases the Nestafar had set up. They swirled about at range until they were all assembled into a large fighting unit, then they attacked the frigate in several waves, zipping in and releasing smaller versions of the Nestafar naval missiles along with pinpricks of plasma.

Anti-air lachars across the ship, designed specifically for shooting down incoming missiles and starfighters, tore through the stupid pilots as they ran up on the giant block of a ship, shredding a full third of their craft and most of the missiles they launched on the first strafing run.

The survivors spun around and appeared to set up for a second run, then they abruptly broke off and fanned out around the perimeter of the frigate in packs, as if waiting for a vulnerability to appear for them to exploit.

As the frigate pounded the walkers with blue plasma orbs that melted through their armor on the first hit, the dozens of targets also fired back, bathing the ‘forward’ shields of the ship in an ongoing cascade of red but failing to penetrate the much larger shield generator’s matrix. Once the frigate smoked the walkers over the next 10 minutes it headed up north, away from the Nestafar bases, and began hunting down more walkers that were currently engaging the Calavari army near a semi-large city isolated on a grassy plain.

The large block, growing ever larger in the distance, literally roused a war cry from the Calavari all across the battlefield as it started to poach the enemy troops from range with its lachars, punching exploding holes in the backsides of many spiders while the Calavari’s flying tanks fought a gradual retreat back towards permanent, shielded defenses set up around the city. The turrets had already come under assault, with half their number slagged from spider strikes while the faster giraffes had moved up to deal with the tanks.

Suddenly that trend reversed itself with the Nestafar troops split between continuing their advance and retreating…which occurred in multiple directions as they fired back up at the frigate. In the confusion the Calavari’s weaker army jumped the walkers, ganging up on the stragglers while the Human warship hammered the largest concentration of spiders with plasma as it floated intimidatingly forward up to and over the battlefield.

Halfway through the fight, with its shields already partially weakened from the first group of walkers, the frigate’s ventral shields came down, exposing the hull to Nestafar plasma. When that happened the panicked confusion of the survivors seemed to evaporate as every unit within firing range turned back to target the exposed underside.

A sheet of missile launches came up, streaking in and getting mowed down by the still active anti-air lachars while the plasma started melting small divots in the adamantium armor. The damage it did was insignificant, for the walkers weren’t targeting individual weapons batteries, shield generators, or engine vents…they were just throwing as much firepower at the exposed side of the ship as possible, and some from significant range where they didn’t have the option of pinpoint targeting.

Eventually attrition wore the enemy down, with the death knell coming when the frigate’s ventral shields reformed, catching the last few globs of plasma being thrown at it and continuing to recharge at the same time. It hung in the air above the wildfires spreading across the dry grassy plain and the smoking hulks of the dead walkers as it finished off the few surviving ones that the Calavari didn’t get to first, after which it swung back around to the south and approached the closest of the Nestafar bases, staying out of plasma range while getting within decent lachar range.

From there it systematically picked off the anti-air cupolas, having to gain some altitude to target the backside ones. It took down one base, then another, and then another…taking away their overlapping anti-air cover from range, then it moved in and started taking apart the first base in a plasma fight, now that its shields were fully recharged.

The base heavy defense turrets were more powerful than those on the spiders, but they still didn’t have the punch necessary to get through the frigate’s shields fast enough. With decent pacing and diligence the warship had the bases owned, even with the rocket launcher infantry they were deploying, along with whatever walkers they had left inside, to augment the base’s firepower.

It was at that point that Morgan stopped watching, flipping over to another feed to watch a second assault beginning elsewhere on the planet. That one she monitored for a few minutes before forcing herself to trust her people with carrying out the attacks on their own while she headed back to her quarters and the nearest cafeteria, grabbing a bite to eat, taking a nap and shower, and then meeting up with the handful of other Archons onboard the ship in the armory where they began suiting up for the upcoming assault on the jumpships.

5

The Archons took an Eagle-class dropship off the Red Ranger and went around to the other three Star Force warships and collected the Archons there, bringing Morgan’s addition to the Calavari boarding parties that were even now knocking down the jumpship’s front door to 14. The trailblazer was the only ranger among them, with 6 acolytes and 7 adepts making up the balance. They were all naval specialists, but given that Archons were qualified for all 5 areas of combat she knew they’d be better equipped to deal with the Nestafar hand to hand than the Calavari, despite their size and strength advantage.

The request for Kvash troops had been a no-go, the Calavari commander had informed her, so it was going to be up to the system’s natives alone to capture the three enemy jumpships and Morgan wanted to assist them as much as possible, even if her strikeforce had only been equipped for naval engagements.

That said, each warship was a jumpship, and as such contained an Archon sanctum and armory, meaning she had more than enough small arms and armor replacements to equip her small boarding party. Not knowing exactly what to expect they’d brought a little bit of everything, with Morgan opting for a shield and heavy pistol combination, along with auxiliary weapons stashed on her back. The others carried plasma rifles, stun sticks, and one had even brought a sniper rifle along, given that the slim amount of intel the Calavari had provided indicated that the Nestafar jumpships contained large open areas inside where they flew about, though that was just from scuttlebutt amongst the troops, with no actual blueprints provided.

That meant they were going in blind and were going to have to fight their way through the fog of war. Every room, chamber, and hallway the Archons would pass through would automatically build up a communal battlemap as they progressed, but Morgan would really have preferred to have tangible mission parameters to work with rather than just going at it free for all…though technically they were here to assist the Calavari, not lead the attack.

And as such they weren’t the first to board. A host of smaller starships came up from Sri’ka’s surface and began pounding away at the bay doors after Morgan’s fleet took down the ship’s limited shields. The Calavari assault gunships pried open a section of one of the hangar bays through controlled explosions and fought their way inside the ship through a temporary atmospheric containment shield that their spaceborn construction crews welded over the doors after the breach.

As the eagle passed through the field, Morgan noted that the Nestafar version was also active a short distance inside, making the Calavari’s improvised containment field appear pointless, but she knew it wasn’t. Without their own in place, which covered the entire span of the hangar, the Nestafar could purposefully expose the bay to space after the Calavari had begun unloading their troops, killing them all within a few moments. Despite their preferred use of starfighters, it seemed the Calavari army/navy had a significant amount of experience in boarding enemy vessels in vacuum.

Hundreds of Calavari were already on the deck and swarming out various personnel and cargo exits further into the jumpship when the Star Force dropship landed next to a group of slightly smaller troop transports that appeared to have been tightly packed with soldiers, for some were still pouring out a number that seemed to defy conventional mathematics for the size of their ship of origin.

Morgan led her band of 14 out of the eagle and commed the pilot to head back out over to the Red Ranger and wait for them to call for pickup, so as not to keep him sitting in place for hours, if not days, as well as to clear up more deck space for the incoming transports. The hangar the Calavari had chosen to breach wasn’t the largest on the jumpship, so landing space was tight given the number of Nestafar craft already present in the bay.

As he lifted off the Archons were met by a Calavari trio, one of which stood a head taller than the others. He wore a golden uniform, but with deep red stripes down the arms and legs, on top of which was a thin exoskeleton that looked like it was almost glued to his clothes. It was dull chrome and had small, flat boxes at random points, making up the personal shield generator that their line troops wore into combat in lieu of armor.

“I am Maka’var. You are Morgan?” he asked, looking to the solitary green set of armor.

“I am,” she said, transmitting via her external mic given that the Archon armor was completely air tight with a mechanical ventilation system over the lower faceplate that would snap shut at the slightest hint of depressurization or the presence of various known toxins.

“Initial resistance is light, but widespread. The Nestafar are engaging in a fighting retreat to various strongpoints they’ve set up. I’ve been told that your Archons have a talent for breaching such defenses?”

“Just point the way,” she offered.

“How many groups are you comfortable splitting into?”

“As many as necessary.”

“Some of the Nestafar are utilizing fragmentation grenades and other crude explosives that our shields will not protect against. Would you be willing to act as skirmishers for our heavy combat teams?”

“How many do you have?”

“106.”

“Pick out your best 14 and we’ll all take one.”

Maka’var nodded his massive head while one of his companions began issuing orders via a headset. “You will come with me then, Morgan. We will work our way through this hoard together.”

The trailblazer smiled beneath her helmet where the Calavari couldn’t see, happy that their commander was taking to the fighting personally rather than hiding out in a command center and issuing orders to his ‘subordinates.’ As far as she was concerned, a commander’s place was on the front lines…if he was good enough to lead his men in the first place.

“The rest, go with them,” Maka’var said as his two companions moved off towards different exits. Morgan flipped her fingers after them and the rest of the Archons split up six and seven and followed them out as the trailblazer followed the taller Calavari, who must have been nearing 8 foot tall, towards the nearest exit where a large group of other troops were staging.

“Your shields are rated for energy?” Morgan asked.

“Yes, which will stop the Nestafar’s plasma weapons quite effectively. I have heard your armor fares well?”

“Green more than the silver and red.”

“Different grades?”

“Yes. Mine is heavier than the others. They’re not strong enough to wear it.”

Maka’var glanced at her. “May I?” he asked.

Morgan looked at him blankly for a moment until she took his meaning. “Mind the gear.”

The Calavari walked around the side of her shield and reached his four arms in around her waist and shoulders, then lifted her off the ground with a heave, setting her back down after a moment of evaluation.

“I’m surprised you can tolerate such weight. How many hits can you take from a Nestafar rifle? I assume your armor is not shielded?”

“This model isn’t. I can take 8-10 pointblank range hits to the same location without penetration, give or take. The shield, double that.”

Maka’var smiled. “That is good, very good. No wonder your Archons were so effective on Daka. You will be our little tank,” he said as the other soldiers, all taller than Morgan, parted so their leader and tagalong could pass through their ranks. “Draw them out of hiding and we will slaughter them.”

“Any prisoners yet?” she asked as a light reminder.

“No, they are continuing to fall back. I have men continually attempting to make contact with their commanders, offering a surrender, but they are refusing any conversation.”

“Then let’s motivate them,” she said as they reached the doors to the interior of the jumpship and walked through a short tunnel…immediately seeing a cliff-like drop off into an open air ravine ahead. “Knew I should have brought a jump pack.”

“We were surprised as well,” he said as bits of plasma fire were visible far down to the left, at the bottom center, and half the distance to the right as other breach teams pushed themselves further into the core of the massive winged ship. “This opening appears to extend the length of the ship, and I would image there is an equally large one on the opposite side.”

“Climbing gear?” Morgan asked, seeing a few ropes positioned over the side, attached to what she didn’t know.

“All Nestafar structures have no lifts or stairs. Even their cargo is flown upwards by portable units. Knowing this we came prepared.”

“Why aren’t they swarming us from the air?” she asked, zooming in on one of the distant engagements. The Nestafar there were taking potshots at the Calavari from nooks in the artificial canyon walls that led into the ‘interior’ areas of the ship, she guessed.

“We are too good of shots,” he said, gesturing for his weapon. Another Calavari tossed him a rifle, which he grasped in both left arms around the Y-frame design. The two prongs of the ‘Y’ shifted into a small shield covering both arms and hands while the barrel stuck out in front with a small orange light that came on, presumably when Maka’var powered it up.

“How do you aim at range?”

The Calavari all around her shifted their arms inside the rifles and small holograms appeared over the barrels, computer synched to be able to fire on distant targets.

“Sweet,” she said approvingly.

“They are also variable yield. I believe yours are not?”

“Nope. I assume the Nestafar aren’t wearing armor or shields?”

“They never do,” Maka’var all but spat. “They rely on evasion and numbers. In confined spaces where their flight fails them they are vulnerable.”

Morgan glanced out over the ravine for emphasis. “Which is why I’d expect them to make a stronger stand here.”

“We suspect there may be an even larger chamber along the spine of the ship,” another Calavari suggested.

“Are you ready?” Maka’var asked.

“Where we heading?”

He pointed down and slightly to the right. “There. We will reinforce an assault team caught in a bottleneck. That’s where they are employing explosives.”

“No way around?”

“They’ve closed off numerous passageways,” the other said. “It appears they’ve been preparing for our arrival.”

“Don’t like the sound of that,” she admitted. “And you are?”

The medium height Calavari looked down at her. “Chesk’va.”

“Well, Chesk’va, if we’re ground pounders then that’s where they will have placed all their little surprises. You got any climbing gear to get us up there?” she asked, pointing ahead and up across the ravine to the pockets of little platforms that indented into the chaotic arranged walls.

“Not unless we scale the far wall. We didn’t anticipate this range.”

She turned to Maka’var. “If we delay, I can get my people equipment that will allow us to jump across?”

“How long a delay?”

“Half an hour, tops.”

The huge Calavari nodded. “Do it. They are prepared for a fight with the Calavari, not Star Force. It is possible they do not know enough about your tactics that you may be able to surprise them.”

Chesk’va took a step to the side, glancing down into the ravine then back at Morgan as she was making a silent comm call back to the Red Ranger. “What is your race called?”

“We’re Human,” she answered when finished.

“What is Star Force then?”

“The best Humans,” she answered pithily. “The rest don’t get to come out and play.”

Chesk’va huffed approvingly. “Do you want the rest of us to wait here or position at the entrance?” he asked his superior.

Maka’var looked down at Morgan. “Can you get one of our lines across to the other side and fasten it at an even or downwards slant?”

“Fasten with what?”

The Calavari pointed behind her and the other soldiers moved aside to reveal a heavy box that one of the cables dangling over the edge of the platform was attached to. “It will seal against the floor strong enough to support three of us in normal gravity, and this ship is slightly less than that.”

“Depends how heavy that thing is.”

“Less than you,” Maka’var said.

“It may take a few jumps, but I’ll get it over there,” Morgan promised. “You going to climb across the line? Easy target practice for the Nestafar.”

“We’ll provide covering fire,” Chesk’va said, hefting his rifle across his chest and tapping on the barrel with his lower right hand.

“Alright,” she said as a new firefight broke out just below them and to the left. Looking down she could see a red suit of armor leading the way and mowing down two Nestafar with a shotgun as golden plasma streaks zipped by on either side. A tiny spec that was a grenade came flying out towards the Archon…who deftly kicked it back along the floor and into cover where Morgan couldn’t see. An explosion followed and the assault team ran forward, disappearing inside the far wall on the lowest level.

“Nice one, Carver,” Morgan whispered.

“His armor weighs less than yours?”

“Yes.”

“He moves faster than us in it.”

“He’s slow compared to me,” Morgan said with a smirk. “That’s why I can wear the heavier armor.”

Suddenly Chesk’va raised his weapon with the hologram popping up overtop and fired off a blink of a streak of golden plasma across the ravine and nailed a Nestafar just below their elevation on the far side as it started to creep out of one of the depressions that appeared as caves imbedded in the walls.

“Nice shot.”

“They are everywhere,” the Calavari warned. “They’d rather attack you from the blindside than face you head on.”

“So would I,” Morgan pointed out.

“Warriors stand toe to toe. Cowards slink in the shadows.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow at the insult, then abruptly dropped her shield and pistol a meter in from the edge of the ledge and jump-kicked Chesk’va in the chest, knocking him back into the other Calavari who, caught off guard, barely sustained his weight, else four of them would have fallen to the ground.

“Don’t call me a coward,” she said icily, standing ready to knock him back down again if required.

“They may be little,” Maka’var told Chesk’va as he waved off any retaliation before it could happen, “but do not underestimate our allies. The reports I’ve read from Daka indicate they are skilled fighters…and it seems he doesn’t have an issue of standing toe to toe with an opponent.”

“She,” Morgan corrected him.

All of the Calavari’s eyes widened in shock. “You…are female?” Maka’var sputtered.

“A lot of our troops are,” she said, picking up her shield and firearm. “You just can’t tell when we’re wearing armor.”

“No female is that strong,” Chesk’va challenged.

“Ugh,” Morgan sighed, leaning her shield against Maka’var and disconnecting her helmet. She pulled it off with her tight, dark ponytail flopping out and her intense brown eyes glaring at Chesk’va.

“See, I told you,” the Calavari said. “No female is that strong.”

“What?...hey!” she said, her face scrunching up in displeasure. “I’m totally a girl. Are you blind?”

“You are male,” Chesk’va insisted. “Why you would pretend to be otherwise is a mystery to me.”

“Morgan,” Maka’var asked with tentative respect. “You appear as the males we have seen in our records. Your face is the same.”

“Well not exactly…wait, what do your females look like?”

“They are half our size with spinal ridge on their heads and very dark skin. You appear the same as the males of your species.”

“Our differences are internal, so I can understand your mistake,” she emphasized, glaring at Chesk’va as she put her helmet back on and secured the atmospheric lock. “I suppose you don’t let them fight?”

“They have no wish to,” Maka’var said. “They are pacifistic and totally worthless in combat. Humans are not so, I take it?”

“We’re even, straight down the line,” Morgan said, feeling the urge to bust up some Nestafar to lay down a proper example. “As for me, I’m the highest ranking Archon…and our ranks are based on strength, speed, and skill. So you could say I’m a little better than the males. I’d give you another demonstration, except that I’d prefer as many allies against the Nestafar as possible, and sending you to the medics wouldn’t help.”

“You talk like a male twice your size,” Chesk’va said with a hint of respect mixed in with the condensation and disbelief.

“While we’re on the subject, what’s a Nestafar female look like?” Morgan asked.

The Calavari exchanged glances. “There are none,” Chesk’va answered petulantly.

“They reproduce asexually,” Maka’var explained.

“That…I did not know,” Morgan admitted, mentally kicking herself for not reading the whole Alliance packet. She’d focused mainly on the technology and territory subsections.

Another Calavari, on the edge of the group to the right, snapped off a rifle shot, followed by two others firing along with him as they backed up a group of Nestafar trying to fly down to a lower level. Two dropped out of the air while the other three retreated back into the nook they came out of as another pair of plasma streaks came up from below.

“Nice to see you boys can stay alert,” Morgan commented, zooming in on the position for a couple of seconds but seeing nothing. “Which spot are you wanting me to shoot for?”

“One with as much concealment as possible,” Maka’var said, handing her back her shield. “I imagine many of the Nestafar will show themselves when we establish the connection. We need cover when we reach the far side.”

“Are you climbing or sliding across?”

“Whichever is possible.”

“I mean hands or mechanical?”

“We will climb by hand.”

“Slightly down then,” she said, zooming in and searching for a decent spot. “Better get one of the end links over here and show me how to use it.”

Maka’var thrust his chin out towards the others that Morgan had her back to and one of the smaller ones walked back into the hangar bay to their equipment stash to retrieve the additional gear. As he did so more and more Calavari transports came in and departed, dropping off new segments of their 10,600 troops, all of which moved about in an orderly fashion, organizing into mission groups and deploying as ordered into dozens of assault corridors that pushed the light resistance further away from the hangar…as the Nestafar had anticipated.

6

Morgan picked up the end link box for the Calavari climbing cable from beside the stack of her shield and gear and flicked on the jump pack that was strapped around it, preset to ‘level’ mode. Its weight suddenly decreased and was floating in her hands as she took another step back, looking down the gauntlet of Calavari that had moved off to either side to clear her running space. There were hundreds of them packed around, ready to follow Maka’var and his heavy combat team through to the other side as they waited to see what she was going to do.

“Here we go,” she said aloud, making sure her snipers waiting beside the edge of the drop off knew she was coming. With a jump of motion she and the box moved forward with Morgan sprinting up to decent speed over the short run-up where she tagged her own jump pack on the chest with her hand…as she did so she long-jumped up into the air, dragging along the box with her right hand, which was buried beneath the straps.

Her jump pulled her and the box up another two meters before they leveled out, then they coasted across the gap to approximately halfway up the far side, which was more than two football fields away. Her pack’s capacitor drained of energy before the box’s did, and Morgan dropped down hanging from it like a balloon for the last few meters before she came over top one of the landing platforms…only a meter higher than expected. Without her feet touching ground she and the box slammed into the far wall and ricocheted off it, then the other capacitor depleted under the extra heavy burden and dropped Morgan to the ground.

She caught herself and cradled the box as it landed on her chest, dumping it aside as movement nearby caught her attention. The Archon reached down to her hip holster for her plasma pistol, but before she could get it a pair of golden streaks flashed by over her head and killed the Nestafar coming out of the side passage near to where she’d just hit the wall.

Morgan spun over onto her feet and darted forward, shooting a thin blue plasma lance into another Nestafar before running forward and kicking it back the way it had come. With no more in immediate sight she turned around and ran back over to the box, pulling the jump pack off and setting it upright before triggering the adhesive grapple function that sucked it down tight to the floor.

Morgan fired a couple of warning shots into the hollow as she heard more troops scurrying about, then a dead Nestafar dropped down behind her, landing on the loose line connecting both sides of the artificial canyon. More golden sniper streaks kept firing over her head from the Calavari, providing her cover against enemies she hadn’t even seen while she got the connecting line established.

As soon as the device indicated it was secure she hit the ‘retract’ button and the line began to pull taught as she moved forward again just in time to meet up with two more Nestafar stepping through over the bodies of their fallen comrades. Morgan took a hit to her chest from one of their pistols while the other’s rifle didn’t have time to track towards her before she burnt him down. The other followed a split second later, then the trailblazer put a couple extra shots into both to make sure they stayed down, given that the kill power of the weapon wasn’t as significant as the rifle she’d left on the other side.

Backing up halfway to the box to give herself plenty of room to fight and to counter any overhead opposition, Morgan held her ground as the first of the Calavari began to come across the gap. The line was nearly level to the ground with just a hint of a downward angle, not enough to slide across even if it had been slicked, but apparently the four-armed climbing power was more than up to the task, for the Calavari were dangling beneath the line and scurrying across rapidly with their feet hooked over the tether as an anchor while their muscular arms propelled them forward…three of them anyway, for the fourth held their rifles out to the side in a tuck position.

A barrage of golden streaks shot out from at least three different Calavari positions as a scattering of red blasts came down on the troops crossing the line, one of which got hit but his shield generator took the brunt of the blast and stopped the plasma from connecting with his body. To his credit he didn’t hesitate, but kept clawing his way across in sync with the others, all staggered out so no more than 8 were on the line at the same time. Maka’var said they could have managed 10, but he didn’t want to risk the line coming down if Morgan managed to actually get it across.

Glancing down, Morgan noted the stress meter on the top of the box, indicating that it was within limits of the adhesion capable on this surface. Both boxes working together increased the strength of the line compared to a vertical climb, as well as the steady pressure of the passengers’ weight, compared with the constant yanking of ascenders coming up.

She did note a little fluctuation in the meter, which was a triangular icon filling from wide base up to top peak and changing in color as it went. It was about a fourth of the way down from the peak, which would indicate a threat of losing adhesion, and didn’t poke up more than half that distance on the most wild of fluctuations…meaning that Maka’var had made a good call.

When the first of the troops made it over Morgan was alone on the platform, either with no more Nestafar coming out to play or them wisely holding back and setting up for an ambush elsewhere. The Calavari crawled all the way over to the point where the line touched the ground and he hit his head against the wall, stopping his progress. His feet suddenly disengaged from the rope and all that Morgan could see of him was three fists hanging onto the line…then one of them reached over and grabbed the ledge and pulled his head up above it.

His other fists followed and the muscular alien pulled himself up on top and walked over beside Morgan, taking up guard position on the entrance. She waited until three of them were across before pressing herself up against the wall then sprinting back to the edge where she jumped back across the gap a bit faster than before, due to the fact that she wasn’t carrying the box with her.

The jump carried her higher than before, causing her to come back over the opposite platform four meters up where she dialed down the last bit of energy in her capacitor and dropped herself down into a semi-hard landing on her feet, which she then rolled out into a somersault from to bleed off momentum…running into the legs of one of the Calavari waiting to go across.

“Sorry,” she said, getting her feet underneath her and standing up.

“Your jump pack is well suited for Nestafar architecture,” Maka’var said, handing the Human her shield. “Did you bring enough for the rest of your men?”

“If they choose to go back to the hangar to get them, yes,” she said, strapping on her equipment pack and setting her rifle and stinger pistol into their slots on the back rack while her plasma pistol set in her hip holster, which was little more than a tiny snap-latch for the hilt to connect to.

“Well done,” Chesk’va offered.

“For a female?” she said half sarcastically as she walked over to the line of Calavari waiting to go across, stopping the next one with her left hand as she cradled her shield over her right shoulder like a half cape.

“Excuse me,” she said, holding him up for a bit before adjusting her pack controls to just less than neutral and walking out onto the line.

She gradually accelerated up into a run within a few steps, barely adding any weight to the line while using it to cross the gap with the extra weight on her back. When she got to the first Calavari she passed him by carefully, stepping in between his crossed ankles and his whirling hands, then long stepping out in front of him with a slight hop, expertly crossing the line as if it were a sidewalk, though in reality she was having to make a number of balance checks that the jump pack delayed enough that she could keep herself from falling off.

Morgan ran across, hopping over five more Calavari before she got back to the other side, then with shield in front she ducked ahead of the others assembled on the platform and followed the skirmishers inward through a narrow, zigzaggy tunnel into what looked like more traditional hallways for a starship. They were laid out in straight lines that dead-ended randomly, avoiding long stretches and giving the area a maze-like feel. The halls themselves were pentagonal, with the upper half wider than the lower to accommodate flight.

The Calavari stood only half as tall as the ceiling, but from Morgan’s perspective they were still giants. Problem was there were no Nestafar around for them to shoot, and there were six different hallways heading out from a pair of intersections, one on either side of the doorway.

“Any contacts?”

“Just one,” the Calavari on her right said, pointing. “Down there. It ran off before we could kill it.”

“I’ll have a look,” she said, running away from the six Calavari as a 7th came out to join them. Morgan ran with her shield latched to her right forearm, pumping it to and fro while keeping her pistol level in her left as she came to another branched intersection. It had two angled halls shooting off to the left, with a pair of Nestafar retreating down the first visible one. The trailblazer slid to a halt and diverted that way, then doubled back as a hail of plasma blasts covered her left side.

Twisting around she brought her shield up, snapping a shot off during the rotation then jumping back down the main hall the way she’d come. She took a moment to curse her own recklessness then set up for a pivot turn with her pistol propped on the inside of her shield next to the corner, allowing for only a three inch wide gap.

Taking a moment to listen for movement and hearing plenty, she rotated around into the backward-canted hallway and fired at the first sign of ugly alien that she saw, blocking several plasma blasts with her shield. Rather than standing still and battling it out Morgan charged forward, ramming into several and getting wrapped up in their wings as she shot them at point blank range on her left and butted them out of the way with her shield on her right.

She went on that way for several long seconds, then got through the group and found clear hallway ahead. Turning back she shot two that were still moving while counting seven in total. The Archon kicked aside a new version of pistol, but didn’t stoop down to pick it up. It looked bigger than normal, making her wonder if it wasn’t an alternate, heavy version rather than an upgrade. She spotted three of the weapons, with the other four being their standard plasma rifles.

Just then a pair of Calavari came around the corner behind their odd rifles, ready to shoot the enemy on sight…but only found the green-plated Human with her black shield.

“Ambush,” she told them, stepping over the bodies and walking up to the four-armed soldiers. “Tell the others to watch these forked intersections. They were hiding on the back side.”

“Are you injured?” one of them asked.

“Just a few scratches to the armor,” she said, nudging past them. “Two more went this way.”

An hour later, with nearly all of the Calavari troops onboard the jumpship and Morgan’s team already having broken through to the enormous central chamber on the ship, a few Calavari techs were crossing the artificial ravine back over to the hangar on ‘ground’ level now that this section of the ship had been cleared of the enemy. They came to one of the vertical shafts the Nestafar would fly up in lieu of an elevator and began climbing the synthetic rope installed there with all four hands up halfway to the hangar level where they pulled up over the edge and stood up…then grabbed another line hanging down nearby and scaled it up to the entry level.

As three of the techs headed into the hangar together, two others were lagging back and came up the lines a half minute later. When they began walking through the short hallway into the hangar an energy shield snapped into place, blocking their way.

“What is this?” one of them asked, pounding a fist against the clear red barrier, causing a quick burst of static around the impact point.

“What is what?” one of the leading group said, turning around at the question. His eyes went wide in surprise as he rushed back over. “Where did that come from?”

“No clue,” the inside one said, tapping the shield experimentally to gage its strength. “Why didn’t they use this to block our path?”

“Aim high,” he said, pulling out his pistol and aiming at the bottom end of the shield. The others did the same, and within a second all five were firing pointblank into the shield, causing bursts of static high and low. They kept firing for nearly a minute before the inside two stopped.

“What’s wrong?”

“Heavy,” one of them said, flexing its shoulders.

“If we pump enough rounds into it it’ll come down, but we have to keep up our rate of fire so it can’t recharge.”

“No, the gravity,” the inside left one said. “It’s increasing.”

The outside three stopped firing, confused and concerned expressions on their faces. They glanced at each other, then at the two across the energy field. “We don’t feel anything.”

“More here,” the other inside one added, leaning against the wall. His pistol slipped out of his hand and fell sharply to the ground with a clank. “Double, I’d guess.”

“They may be trying to pin us down for a counterattack,” one of the outside ones guessed.

“But why block off the hangar?”

“Is it still increasing?”

“No,” the inside left one said, having trouble speaking. “But it’s heavy.”

One of the outside ones activated his comm gear and tried to contact the forward teams, reporting their status while the other two went back to shooting the shield.

“Grab a rifle,” one of the inside ones suggested, firing lazily into the base as his gun arm wavered.

The one on the comm took off running, which for a Calavari sounded like a stampede and looked only slightly less intimidating. As he got over to one of the tightly packed transports he got a response back from one of the commanders, indicating that most of the troops weren’t affected. Only those along the hangar were, with the more interior sections still at normal gravity.

The Calavari ran up into the transport and grabbed a spare rifle from the armory rack with its left hand, then grabbed another two with his other hands, leaving one to work his comm unit. When he got back over to the shield the plasma shots continued but the shield was being stubborn.

“The gravity zone is only along the hangar. If you move inward you should be able to avoid it,” he said, passing out the rifles.

“How far?”

“The other side. This whole chamber is heavy.”

“Too far,” one of the inside ones said, picking up his pistol from the ground and firing as he labored to stand steady, his heavy musculature seeming to betray him. “Get us through.”

Without further conversation the three outside techs took a step back and began shooting into the top of the shield with the rifles and continued to do so for several minutes before the matrix finally succumbed. One of the Calavari on the gravity side staggered forward, then the shield reformed across his back as he leaned forward on crossing, pinning him in place. An angry jerk of his powerful muscles took it down again, thin as the recharging matrix was, and the rifle bearers fired a few extra shots over his head to keep it down as the other one came through, immediately feeling a sense of relief as they returned to normal gravity.

The shield reformed behind them, cutting the hangar off from the rest of the jumpship again.

“What are the Nestafar doing?” one of the rifle-bearing ones asked. “I can understand the shield, but not the gravity.”

“If it’s low level, they may be able to fly up high in zero gravity and shoot down on us. That may be why it only affects the cavern.”

“There’s a cavern in the center of the ship,” another pointed out.

“How high do you think they can pump it?” one of the fatigued ones asked, making his own mental guess.

“No more than 3x, maybe 4,” the other tech suggested, glancing with the others for confirmation.

“We probably got the worst of it. No more than 2x, I think.”

“Two times gravity is bad enough, but why only here and not where the rest of our troops are? Doesn’t make sense.”

One of the outsiders put a hand on the fatigued one’s shoulder. “If we’re stuck out here, let’s work on permanently disabling that shield.”

The others nodded their agreement, recognizing the danger if the Nestafar upped the gravity throughout the entire ship save for a safe zone reserved for themselves.

7

“Where are you now?” Ian-2799 asked.

“We’re hanging out on the edge of the inner chamber…and it’s freaking huge,” Morgan answered.

“Well, I don’t know about your area, but we’re working our way through a ghost town. Aside from the retreating fire teams and ambush squads, this part of the ship is deserted. I don’t like it. If they’re monkeying around with the gravity we could be in for a world of hurt.”

“Not sure what to make of that,” Morgan admitted. “The Calavari commander has groups of techs hacking into the Nestafar systems across the ship and they say the ring of high gravity extends the entire way around, even the far side.”

“Suggests a preplanned strategy then.”

“Point,” Morgan admitted. “If we had more troops on the way I could see them using it as a delaying tactic in concert with the shields, but the fact that they’re not engaging us much blows that theory. Anyone got any others?”

“It smells like a trap to me,” Seth-3110 chimed in. “We’re working our way through the same ghost town. If they’re evacuating their people to safe zones and cranking up the gravity when they’re clear that alone might kill us, if they can get it high enough. The shields keeping us in are another red flag in that department.”

“I’ve already had a conversation with the Calavari on that. They said they thought 4 times normal gravity would be the theoretical max…which is about 3.5g. I’ve done that in training before, so I’m not worried. And if we’re fighting the Nestafar they’ll be similarly affected.”

“Unless they’re flying,” Ian pointed out, “and the gravity field doesn’t extend all the way up.”

“Which is why I want the rest of you to stay ‘indoors,’ so to speak. My team is headed out into the center, so if they’re going to spring a trap we’ll flush it out. Maka’var has ordered most of his teams to stay back as well, with only about 200 troops going with us.”

“Hang on,” Carver-6774 broke in. “We just went heavy.”

“Where?” Morgan asked, adjusting her in-helmet battlemap to a wide view of the entire ship, then scaled it back down a little to focus on their half.

“Not far from the ravine. We’ve been patrolling the edge line and running…shit,” the Archon said, cutting out.

Morgan waited a moment, but no response came. “Carver...you there?”

“Wa…i…t.”

“Holding,” Morgan said, guessing as to the strain in his voice and having her spidey senses start to crawl up the back of her spine.

“Damn…it,” the Archon’s voice came back, with heavy breathing audible in between words. “That’s no 3.5, Morgan. That’s 10+. The ravine…cranked up too…and just pancaked one of my Calavari. I dragged him…out to the 2g zone…but he’s hurt pretty bad. Concussion at least…from the fall. He’s also bleeding. Maybe organ damage.”

Morgan squeezed her eyes shut in anger. How could she have been so stupid?

“Fall back to the normal gravity, wherever the line is. We’re unaffected at my position. Everyone else report in. Who’s affected?”

“We just spiked,” Eriona-5229 said. “We’re not far from the ravine. About 2g here.”

“Normal here,” Ian added, with the others Archons all chiming in. Based on her battlemap Morgan guessed that another ring-like section of the ship had upped its gravity while the original did likewise, thickening the gravity zone in between them and the breach point.

“Morgan?” Maka’var’s voice boomed behind her as she was looking out into the huge crater-like chamber in the center of the ship that had varying buildings sticking up at the center and thousands, if not millions, of nooks covering the landscape that stretched at least a couple of kilometers from one side to the other.

The Archon held up a ‘wait’ hand as she finished her conversation with her fellow Archons, then turned around to look up at the towering Calavari. “I assume you heard?”

“The gravity zone extended.”

“And intensified,” Morgan added. “The original zone amped up too.”

“Of this I am also aware. Several hundred of my men are unaccounted for, but our techs have located the source of the gravity,” he said, pointing towards the center of the crater. “Down there is the generator that feeds the emitters that run throughout the ship. If we can capture it we can reset the gravity to normal and proceed with the conquest of the ship.”

Morgan frowned inside her helmet. “Are you sure it’s the only one? Our gravity fields are modular. All they need is a power feed.”

“As do ours, but the Nestafar technology is designed differently. The gravity effect is produced in a single location and reflected out through conduits to the specified chambers, then amplified within containment fields. My techs also say that they don’t think the jumpship has enough power to raise the gravity everywhere, unless they were able to tie in their gravity drives. They believe the rings are a mechanism to force us into a smaller area of the ship where they can crush us.”

“Not so fast…where are they hiding at? We find them and we find a safe place to fight it out with the bastards.”

“I have many teams in combat with the enemy now,” the Calavari commander stated oddly, as if he was nervous but not wanting to show it.

“Then I suggest shifting all your men into those areas and clearing out of any region with raised gravity. If they pump up another ring we can’t have our people caught up in it.”

“A delaying tactic,” Maka’var pronounced. “We have to get to the gravity generator…which is where I suspect most of their troops will be deployed in defensive lines,” he said, producing a small hologram from a handheld device that pinpointed the target building for Morgan to see.

“We need to scout it first,” Morgan said, looking back out over the expanse and putting an approximate waypoint on her battlemap. “They could have another gravity ring around the center to keep us away. Or they could be lying in wait as you suggested. We need to find out before we commit your men.”

“My thoughts exactly. You will lead my team?”

“Happy to.”

The Calavari motioned from behind him and a heavy combat team walked out of the ‘interior’ of the ship in pairs. “Move quickly, Human. The enemy has the advantage on us.”

Morgan clapped him on the lower elbow then turned and ran out over the edge of the platform she’d been standing at the back of. She dropped down to the next one below her and caught herself in a crouch before walking forward to make room for the Calavari, who slid over the edge, clinging by the arms for a moment then dropping a couple meters to the ground to lessen the impact. As they came down Morgan moved up to the next drop off and repeated the maneuver, heading down the angle of the enormous crater’s wall with it gradually shallowing out.

The inset platforms ceased a few hundred meters down, replaced by pillars and walls in a maze-like plain with wide gaps between each other. The purpose of the area escaped Morgan, who otherwise would have thought it to be a training area, given the layout. Regardless, they got a third of the way to the central buildings before the Nestafar appeared, popping up over top of the erratic walls and firing down on them from altitude as they hovered about on their muscular, flapping wings.

The Calavari took cover behind Morgan and started sniping them out of the air with their rifles while absorbing a few hits on their shields, but the Archon chose to barrel forward, ducking in and out of the passageways as she raced ahead behind and underneath her shield, penetrating deep into the Nestafar lines as they continued to rise up into the air, dozens strong at first, then hundreds. Morgan eventually came up to some that were still on the ground and finally began firing her weapon, shooting those closest first, then aiming up at the feet of the others flying overhead.

As she was doing so she heard the call from the other Archons indicating that a third ring of gravity had just popped up, with the second also having vaulted up into the 10+ g range after a short reconnaissance run. Macer-8291 hadn’t pressed more than a few meters inside the zone, let alone traveled across the length of it to see what the gravity rating was now in the first zone. Morgan knew she could walk across a 10 g area, at least she thought she could, but knew the others weren’t as strong as her. If she had to bet she’d give them a slight edge, but there was no point in risking it for a simple recon…unless the gravity had decreased on the far side.

Damn it…if she was back there then she might have tried, but there was no way she was ordering or even suggesting the others try. And there was no way the Calavari could make it. Their high mass was to their disadvantage in this case, while Morgan’s petite musculature would make her more adept to handle the multiplication effect of the higher gravity. The other Archons were similarly better off than the Calavari, but Morgan still had the greatest strength/weight ratio of them all, and it wasn’t by a small margin either.

Only way to fix this now was to get to the gravity generator…which meant beating their way through these troops, no matter how many of them there were.

“Everyone listen up,” Morgan yelled into her comm as she ducked, dodged, and fired her plasma pistol up at the Nestafar with dozens of red plasma blobs coming back down at her, some of which she blocked with her already divotted shield. “Either track the Nestafar teams back to a safe zone or get your asses down to the center of the ship. We have to take the gravity generator offline and, guess what, looks like this is where they have most of their troops.”

“Morgan, run to portside, now!” Ian ordered. “I’ve got eyes on your position and the Nestafar are playing with more than infantry. You’ve got walkers incoming.”

“Oh, shit!” she said, ducking down a side passage that was likewise unroofed. She switched her comm over to the frequency of her Calavari assault team. “Fall back, fall back,” she said as she ran, shooting around her shield as the infantry stalked her from above. “Walkers incoming. Get to cover…somewhere,” she urged, beginning to hear the heavy foot strikes behind her.

Suddenly there was a flash of red behind her back as bright as the sun, then it was gone a moment later with the distinctive crackle/zap sound of plasma impacting matter.

“Damn it,” Ian swore. “Your team just got roasted. Run Morgan, I mean it! You’ve got to get the angle of the walls above its firing line.”

“What’s shooting me?” she asked, dumping her damaged shield and sprinting through the passageways as fast as she could, keeping to the side as much as possible to block infantry firing lines, though knowing that running port would expose her to the walker, so she darted off fore and aft as often as possible to mix things up.

“A super dragon, so move your ass, girl!”

“Guide me!” she pleaded, taking a shot to her back that hit her equipment pack.

“Angle aft, that should block direct lines. It’s oriented slightly to your right with the layout of most of the rows.”

“Infantry?”

“They’re coming out of everywhere, but most in the air are behind you…no, wait, duck now! Incoming!” he said as the super dragon fired again.

Morgan jammed herself up against the bottom of one of the walls and pulled herself into a lump as the plasma raced over her head. The heat plume soaked through her armor and warmed her skin, then bits of melted wall started falling down on top of her as the bang of impact numbed her ears despite her helmet’s protection. She glanced up a moment later and saw that most of the wall above her head was gone, as were three to her right where the plasma had cut straight through.

“Damn it,” she yelled, jumping up and sprinting over pieces of wall as they resolidified into clumps on the floor. Reaching back she detached her pack, dropping the backpack full of supplies and the weapon rack, keeping only the pistol in her hand and her jump pack on. Immediately feeling lighter she raced down the hall, ducked left for a few steps, then sprinted again down an angled corridor that should have visually blocked her from the giant machine that she didn’t waste time turning around to look at.

“Tell me when it’s going to shoot.”

“It’s twisting now…ready…ready…duck!” he said, guessing based on its movements when it had her locked in, which was tricky to do even with practice.

Morgan didn’t duck. Instead he jabbed her jump pack onto full and put as much power into her legs as possible, then leapt up above the flanking walls just before the red plasma streak came in. Its thermal shockwave propelled her up even further, shooting the Archon several stories high before she dialed back the power and started a controlled fall, trying to aim for one of the wall tops.

She came down at an angle but managed to stay up top, then with a twist of her foot began running along the top of the wall for several steps before jumping again, this time less high, knowing that her capacitor hadn’t had time to fully recharge.

Morgan landed in between walls this time, then took off sprinting erratically, using her superhuman speed and agility to try and lose her pursuit as she got further and further away from the stationary walker.

“You’re clear,” Ian said, prompting Morgan to come to a skidding halt and nestle down near the base of the wall on her left.

“What’s…it doing now?” she asked, a bit out of breath.

“Another ring just went up,” Seth said, worry in his voice. “They’re driving us to the interior.”

“Where are their teams heading?” Morgan asked.

“Same place,” Carver answered. “We just followed them to the edge of the chamber, then they took off flying as soon as they could. They’re leading us to slaughter. I can see 14 walkers from my position, and they’re tall enough to step over the walls.”

“That or face the gravity,” Ian agreed. “You think it goes higher than 10?”

Before he could answer Maka’var’s voice cut through on the shared Alliance comm channel. “All units, be aware. The high gravity zones are forcing us to the center of the ship where the Nestafar have an army waiting for us. Beyond that army is the gravity generator, where we must go if we are to survive. The only chance we have is to rush their lines in the hope that some of us will make it through. Their walkers can’t target us all, but we must make a simultaneous attack if we are going to succeed. I hereby order all troops to the edge of the central chamber, there you are to wait in cover until I give the order or until the gravity forces us into the open. Move quickly, we have little time left.”

“Morgan?” Ian asked.

“I’m already halfway to the generator and I’ve got my jump pack.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“More or less.”

“Then hurry, you’ve got a couple spiders coming up on your position from the far side.”

“Use your best judgment,” Morgan said apologetically.

“Quit wasting time and go save our asses,” Ian urged, understanding.

“I’m heading back,” Rev-5901 said on the Archon-only channel. “If there’s a way out I’ll let you know.”

“Lose the armor,” Ian suggested.

“Already stripping,” the Archon said, no merriment in his voice. “I’ll be off comm until I get back to my helmet.”

“Good luck,” Eriona offered. “I’m going to stay put and snipe as many infantry as I can. Maybe clear a road for some of the Calavari to get through.”

“Think some of us should make a run for it?” Carver asked.

“Morgan’s already there,” Ian said, dismissing the notion. “No point in facing down a mech if we don’t have to. Stay hidden along the edge, assist where we can, and retreat back into the gravity if necessary. I’m pretty sure their infantry won’t go back in there after us.”

“Not sure how long we’ll last in 10g,” Eriona pointed out.

“Long enough to reposition around the perimeter,” Ian said, determined to find some sliver of strategy to use. “Duck in and out and stay alive.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Eriona agreed, finding a decent sniping position and sighting in on the nearest flyers while conscious of the firing lines of the two giraffes closest to her position.

“Alright, I’m down with that,” Seth agreed. “Morgan, time to show off.”

“Trying,” she answered, hopping over three walls with a single jump, then coming down into cover and running off another direction before the enemy could spot her position, only to repeat the tactic again and again as she made her way closer towards the center.

8

Rev made his way back through the claustrophobic portion of the jumpship, coming into contact with the 2g ring far sooner than he anticipated. It slowed his run down to a jog, but he still maintained a rhythm up until the point where he crossed over the invisible line into the higher gravity ring. His legs crumpled under the enhanced weight, loaded upon him in a microsecond as he passed through the containment field between sections. His left wrist felt it first as it swung out in front of him, then it dragged his torso forward along with it, pitching him forward as the parts of his body ahead of the line were sucked down to the floor.

The Archon managed to catch himself on his elbows and keep his face from hitting the ground, then he stayed there for a moment, fighting against the pull and letting his body and mind adapt to it…then, very slowly, he pulled his knees up underneath him and set his feet. Standing up felt like lifting a stack of weights, but he discovered it was something his body could handle and within a couple of minutes he was walking forward, searching for the back side of the ring and hoping it contained less gravity.

He knew gravity generators were power hogs, and pulling this amount of gees across most of the ship should have been unfeasible…yet, then again, cranking up the generators this high also shouldn’t have been possible, according to the Calavari techs, yet somehow they were doing it.

Time was against them, and Rev knew he had to hurry. If there was a safe zone on the opposite side he needed to find it for the others before they were forced into the center against that army. Good as they were he didn’t favor their odds, especially given that they had no escape plan other than killing all of the Nestafar…which, had it been infantry only, would have been a challenge worthy of an Archon, but having the walkers in play just made it downright unfair, especially if this gravity continued to advance and pin them down so the war machines could target them much easier.

Guessing by the width of the 2g ring, Rev figured he was getting close to the back edge when he heard a joint pop in his knee. He stopped for a moment, wondering if it was damage or just a readjustment and settled on the latter, but the sound, along with the strain his entire body was under, was a vivid reminder that he had a time limit on his exploration. Determined as he was he kept going, trying to get a little more speed out of his awkward cadence when he passed through to the next ring and the top half of his body smacked down on the far side…in an even higher gravity field.

His head hit hard and his brain felt like it was being squashed, but fortunately Rev remained conscious enough to crawl back out into the 10g field. His upper body was screaming and he saw several cracks in his skin that were oozing blood, all of which fueled his fear-induced adrenaline that let him find his balance again and begin walking back towards the center of the ship.

If we don’t get that generator offline we’re dead, he thought, unable to form the words in his mouth as he hurried as fast as he could to get back to the 2g area…but he wasn’t fast enough. 2/3rds of the way back the rings shifted again, bringing the crushing gravity zone down upon him in the blink of an eye.

The Archon crumpled, bones dislocating as the higher gravity forced him down to the floor. Blood flowed from a number of points on his body, only to be sucked off and flattened into a very thin pool around him, spreading out to mark the spot of his death that occurred sometime within the next 2 minutes…

“Outer ring is here,” Ian reported as the gravity around the edge of the crater kicked up. “And the Calavari are going in.”

Morgan held off commenting until she completed one final jump that landed her outside of the maze and between two of the buildings at crater center. “I’m inside the perimeter. Any infantry headed my way?”

“Nope, they’re thoroughly distracted at the moment,” Ian said, firing his plasma rifle up at the cloud of flying Nestafar as thousands of Calavari charged down into the maze while the walkers targeted them with impunity. The enemy infantry also spread out, taking fire from the four-armed aliens, and began shooting down directly above them…yet staying high enough to give the walkers clean firing lines. The carnage was instant and widespread, but it appeared to Ian’s eye that they might have enough numbers to be able to push through into the center.

“Keep me updated,” Morgan asked as she ran down the narrow street and up to an intersection, breaking a bit before she hit it out of reflex, then jumping forward into a dive-roll when she crossed a barricade on her right side filled with infantry. A half dozen plasma shots blanketed her armor before she crossed the intersection, but she didn’t turn to fight them. The Calavari were getting mowed down and she didn’t have time to waste so she pressed on, running past the opposition that she could and fighting through those that she couldn’t.

One group was directly ahead of her, which she tried to jump over top of to save time…only to discover that her jump pack wasn’t working. That landed her right in the middle of a defensive blockade with nothing more than her pistol to fight with. She took a lot more damage getting through that mess, but get through it she did, then she headed further into the center where the gravity generator was marked on her HUD, knowing that it was an approximate position and that she would have to do some searching when she got there…and then find a way to take it out.

Morgan saw a number of Nestafar fliers gaining altitude in front of her, with those being the first she’d seen within the perimeter of the buildings. Most were rising up through the openings ahead of her and when she passed the next side barricade she noted that it was empty…just before she was tripped up by a tug on her legs that brought her run to a sliding halt and pitched her over forward, falling to the ground as the gravity kicked up to 2g.

“No…” Morgan pleaded, knowing that they were in serious trouble now. She looked up as she got back to her feet, seeing the Nestafar far overhead, circling about with odd wing flaps…then she realized that they must have been above the gravity field and now in zero g. Little red plasma blasts were coming down from them, aimed back towards the mass of Calavari that had to be…

“Morgan, heavy gravity has reached the edge and the Calavari are getting slaughtered. Please tell me you have some good news?” Ian asked.

“Gravity here went up too. All the defensive troops left, so I should have a clear run to the generator.”

“The infantry out here pulled up to higher altitudes and are firing blind down into the maze, but there’s so many that they’re hitting the Calavari anyway…and the walkers are still maneuvering in the extra gravity and burning them down. I wouldn’t count on any of them getting through to help you.”

“Where are you at?” Morgan asked as she ran hard, forcing her muscles to ignore the double gravity.

“A few steps outside the heavy gravity. The walkers are focused on the troops nearest them, so they haven’t been shooting this way…” he cut off suddenly.

Morgan fell again, this time hard as the 10+ g zone spread out to cover the entire crater.

“Damn…it,” she swore, pulling herself up to her feet and managing a clunky jog for a few steps that drained her limbs of energy. She walked the next few, then tried running again, getting in a few more strides before having to dial it back down.

“Morgan…”

“I know,” she said, tears forming in her eyes. “I’m trying…”

The next step she stopped and tore off her helmet, then unfastened the rest of her armor as quickly as she could, chucking one piece of it after another until all that she was wearing was her standard casual uniform. She picked up her pistol, which felt heavy as a rock, and ran forward. The ranger managed 7:00 mile pace now that she didn’t have the dead weight dragging her down and came up to where the waypoint on her battlemap had been, seeing a large conical chamber that had to be the generator complex.

She ran around the edge until she found an entrance and ran in…only to bounce back hard off a red, clear shield blocking her path partway inside. Her balance broken, the gravity yanked her down to the floor and mashed her head backwards on landing.

She screamed inside, not just at the pain but at the futility of her mission. The Calavari were dying and her people were pinned down inside gravity that they couldn’t survive forever, even if they could stay hidden. She was their only hope and now this damn shield was blocking her way!

Just then the gravity in the chamber kicked up to the third level, crushing and killing what Calavari remained. Morgan, already on the ground, was sucked tight, with her chest feeling like there was a mountain sitting on top of it and her eyeballs feeling like they were falling back into her head. She knew they were all dead, the entire assault force, her fellow Archons, over 10,000 people dead because she’d screwed up…and now she was about to die along with them.

Part of her screamed no…not this way. Not after 400 years of training and hundreds of battles. It wasn’t fair to die like this, without having at least a chance of success.

Those thoughts died with the wash of blood swirling in her head and throughout her body. A few surface veins had popped, soaking red into her white, green-striped uniform and all that her mind could focus on was the inevitable, crushing force consuming her…

In that mind blurring death knell her most basic instinct forced its way through…that being to fight the enemy. Somehow, she found herself staring down at the floor and crawling towards the shield, then leaning her shoulder against it and dragging the pistol across the floor with her, pivoting it around to point towards the barrier. Finding the trigger she began shooting the shield with a pointblank splash of blue, spraying hot plasma everywhere, some of which burned the skin on her arm and face but that was a small pain that the crushing gravity didn’t allow to process through her distorted mind.

She fired over and over, with no effect. The shield wouldn’t go down but she wouldn’t stop. She kept firing and tried to push into the shield with her shoulder, using her legs to prop her up a few inches and let the gravity work for her, putting extra strain on it that would add to the plasma damage. When it didn’t work she didn’t stop, she couldn’t stop…other than to lay down and die, which was something she would never do.

Morgan finally started banging her head against the shield as her pistol continued to fire, then a tingly sensation formed along her spine and shifted towards her shoulder. She pushed it forward and suddenly she felt the shield wrap itself around her arm…which was sticking through to the other side!

That flicker of hope redoubled her energy and as she kept firing the tingle returned and she leaned into it even more, feeling it cascade to overload, then release…after which her upper body pressed through, with the shield catching her at the waist and holding her tight.

She pulled herself along the ground but it was no use, she was stuck as the shield regained cohesion around her body…then the tingle formed again and pressure built within her, tiny in comparison to the gravity. The trailblazer pushed the pressure into the shield and suddenly her hips slipped through, along with her wrist that was holding the pistol.

Morgan clawed her way inside before the shield could reset. It caught her right foot, but she managed to slip out of her shoe and get clear. Forcing her head up and her blurry eyes to partially focus as they were being squished out of alignment, she saw a wall in front of her with hallways leading off to either side. She randomly chose to go left, crawling inch by inch as the gravity tried to suck the last bit of life out of her. Her hand clenched the pistol, dragging it with her until a few meters down the wall disappeared and a large chamber of machinery was exposed.

Morgan couldn’t see what it was, she couldn’t see hardly anything, but she pulled the pistol around to the front and pointed it along the ground and started firing blindly. She pumped the trigger more times than she could count, not knowing how much ammunition she had left, and adjusting the angle by pivoting the barrel that gravity had locked down against the ground.

The next thing she knew the grip on her body was gone and she found herself bouncing off a wall. Her entire body screamed in pain and as she forced her eyes open she saw a blurry rotation, then a mass of red that was her body, sprinkled with pieces of white uniform. It felt like grinding sandpaper to blink her eyes but she did, over and over until some part of her vision returned.

She was alive…and as soon as that thought made its way to the forefront of her mind the relief and adrenaline started to wake her up out of the pain-filled haze she was drifting in. Morgan didn’t know what had happened or what she had shot, but she was alive and all that mattered now was making the most of the opportunity.

Looking around she was able to confirm that she was floating in zero g…which must have meant she had knocked out the gravity generation completely. Was it for the whole ship or just this area she didn’t know, but she got her red-soaked sock against the wall and pushed off, sending her over to a bank of computer-like consoles.

She grabbed hold of one and let her body spin around, causing a surge in her head that blacked out her vision temporarily. When it settled she took a moment to try and get more of her broken body back under her control, then saw the remains of an exploded something or other further into the center of the room. It had knocked over several banks of equipment and pieces of debris were floating around, most of which Morgan couldn’t see unless they were right in front of her.

The next thing that poked its way forward in her mind was the enemy…were they around? She was a sitting duck, had lost her weapon, and had no armor.

She was alive though, and part of her still couldn’t believe it. As her mind started to wrap itself around that fact she started crying and couldn’t stop…then the tremors started and she did her best to hang onto the console so they didn’t send her flying off through the room. She realized she was in shock, but other than acknowledging that fact there was nothing she could do but wait it out.

Then she coughed…and spat out a spray of blood, reminding her that she probably had internal organ damage. She had to get out of here, but to where? Back outside would be a death sentence. The Nestafar could fly through zero g using their wings while she would be helpless without handholds to work off of.

Suddenly her mind flashed back to her basic training in Atlantis, with the 6s and the initial zero g training mission they’d gone on. There had been a large empty room they had to learn how to move through, which seemed impossible at first…no, no she reminded herself. Even if she could get across the giant chamber the Nestafar would shoot her. She had to focus and find a way to move in cover.

Just then she remembered the shield covering the door and wondered if it was still up. Was she stuck in here?

Bending arms and legs that just wanted to be left alone to die, Morgan pushed off towards the nearest hallway opening and made her way out into the perimeter walkway, bouncing off of walls until she got to one of the multiple doorways that led out into the miniature city-scape. Using the corner as a handhold she gently stretched out her shoed foot until the toes hit shield and stopped firm.

Part of her wanted to panic again, but another part argued that the shield would also keep the infantry out…while most of the rest of her was still freaked out by just being alive. She should have been dead, her mind knew that, but since she wasn’t she might as well do what she could to stay alive a little longer.

Morgan pushed off and headed back inside. A quick look around with her blurry eyes confirmed there was nothing more to the building than the perimeter hallway and the large central chamber with all the equipment, most of which was clustered in the middle and reaching up to the pointy roof. The bottom portion of it was where the explosive damage had occurred, though Morgan had no idea how her pistol shot could have reached it with all the banks of equipment in between.

As she floated from point to point she examined the blast crater, seeing a lower deck partially exposed. Bouncing off a couple of points to get there, she finally grabbed hold of one of the still warm, warped casings and pulled her face down to the breach point, seeing a narrow tube underneath about twice the width of her arm length. When she reached a hand inside to touch it she got shocked, but nothing more than what static electricity could have accounted for.

She pulled her bloody sleeve up over her cracked hand and touched it again, feeling just a nip. The Archon tapped it twice more, then released her sleeve before touching her fingers to the side wall again. Apparently the charge had bled off.

She didn’t know where the tube led, or if there was another exit somewhere, but it was her best option so she crawled in, cutting her hip in the process on a jagged edge, then began hand propelling herself down the slightly bioluminescent passageway.

9

Her eyes were still blurry, but Morgan couldn’t be sure if there was anything around her to see or not. The tube she was floating down had no shape, symbols, or markings of any kind, it just kept going and going until the still bleeding Archon bumped into the base of a Y-branch.

A few droplets of blood oozed out from her nose as it smashed against the divider, then Morgan was able to determine by feel that the tunnel split in two. She followed the right branch for no particular reason other than knowing that she needed to keep moving. She’d been near death before and not much of her strength was returning. If she had to fight, hand to hand in zero gravity, she wasn’t going to be able to do much. As it was she could barely keep herself moving without passing out, though the elation of still being alive and the fear of what lay hopefully behind her kept her focus ahead as she paddled her way down the tube.

A long time afterwards she hit a dead end as the tube rounded off, sending a sinking feeling through Morgan’s already damaged gut. The hope of escape was all that was keeping her moving, and now it appeared that she was going to have to go back. The stress of it all sent hot, burning tears out of her eyes, and in a brief moment of clarity she saw something on the wall of the tube to her left. She turned her head to look but nothing was there…until she reached out a hand and felt for the wall.

It took a moment of almost blind touch/feeling the area before her hand landed on a handle that her eyes couldn’t see. She pulled and twisted it at different angles before something finally clicked and a hatch opened up, giving her an exit that she could have sworn wasn’t there a moment ago.

A moment of reflection passed and she realized she was probably in some sort of a maintenance shaft and there was a good probability that she had passed several other hatches along the way, but with her eyesight being what it was had missed them all.

That also told Morgan her body was worse off than she was giving it credit for. Banishing all ideas of combat she set her mind into slinker mode and set off through the hatch and into a pentagonal hallway whose edges blurred together so much it appeared almost as a curved line. Not knowing where to go she tried to keep a compass heading back towards where the hangar bay had been and moved through the hallways, zigzagging where necessary, and hoping to stay ahead of the Nestafar that had apparently cleared out of these areas for the heavy gravity zones to push through.

Were they coming out now or waiting for more Alliance troops to board? She didn’t know, nor was the analytical part of her mind functioning well at the moment. Most of her focus was on maneuvering her weightless body down corridors that hadn’t been built for the task, forcing her to bounce from one wall to the next as she came up on one of the Nestafar’s ‘elevator’ shafts.

Remembering that the hangar bay they’d used had been halfway up the side of the internal ravine she floated her way up the shaft, hoping dearly that they couldn’t turn the gravity back on until they repaired whatever device it was she’d blown up. After climbing up what felt like high enough she got off the column and bounced her way into a side deck, still heading back towards the way they’d come…or so she hoped. Disoriented as she was there was a possibility she was headed in the wrong direction, so she tried to keep her mind awake as much as possible to navigate accurately.

Morgan had no way of measuring time, given that she didn’t wear a watch under her armor and the chronometer in her helmet was long gone, but the minutes that passed by seemed to stretch into hours with a nervous panic hanging at the back of her mind telling her that she was about to be discovered at any moment. The compression damage done to her body made her tight and awkward, her ears were ringing, and her eyes blurry, all of which only enhanced her panic. Archon that she was, she pushed it to the back of her mind and kept a small place of focus to drive herself on from.

Seemingly at random, after what felt like hours of moving through rooms and passageways, she poked her head out onto a platform that looked out over the huge ravine. In a moment of crisis she found herself floating towards the opposite wall on the small landing and made sure her feet hit first while twisting her down so she didn’t careen off into the chasm.

The downwards momentum placed her on the floor for a second, but before she could rebound up and away Morgan clawed laterally with her hands and transformed the direction of the bounce into a low ‘V’ that sent her back towards the entrance where she was able to loop her hand down around the ceiling arch and null out her momentum…while clunking her head on the wall in the process.

Gripping the 90 degree angle where ceiling met wall of the arch with her left hand she wiggled around and pulled herself back down to the floor using very small motions. From there she held on with both hands and scooted back out onto the platform about half a meter and looked to the other side…seeing little more than a blur. She had no idea where the hangar was, or even if it was left or right of her position. The jumpship had dozens of hangars and storage facilities in the ‘wings’ and the Calavari had chosen only one of them to breach through. How she was going to find it she didn’t have a clue if she couldn’t see.

“Oth…” she started to whisper, but she suddenly discovered her throat was raw. She started coughing, holding onto the wall as tightly as she could so it wouldn’t jar her loose, sending another spray of blood off through the air in tiny red projectiles.

Other side then, she mentally finished her original thought.

Clenching the wall tightly she eyeballed the spot on the opposing wall that she was aiming for and backed up a bit…then pushed off with one foot to get her moving before picking her feet up and letting her arms propel and aim her momentum before she released, with her feet slowly swinging up in front of her.

Morgan timed it approximately right, with her shoed left foot landing on the wall, from which she pushed sideways at an angle, pinballing her to the right and against the back wall of the platform where her right socked foot landed gently. She bent her leg to absorb the impact as she brought her other foot up alongside, then before the pressure completely dissipated and sent her careening off uncontrolled she unfurled her legs and kicked off the wall as hard as she could.

She didn’t end up with a straight trajectory but it was close. Her body zipped out of the platform and into the free air, suspended over the ravine in the zero g as her ample momentum slowly carried her across, twisting as she went. With her eyes blurry and her head hurting it was difficult for her to get much situational awareness, but fortunately she rotated around face first a few meters before impact and was able to reach out and grab an edge.

Using it as a lever she redirected her momentum and pole vaulted her body up, over, and around her head until her hand slipped off and she drifted into one of the openings on the far side of the ravine, having killed about half of her momentum with the maneuver. The rest kept spinning her around until she bounced off a side wall slightly before smacking into an archway.

A palm reaching out to the side cut her reverse momentum, as well as leaving a bloody smear behind. The Archon pushed up off the floor and the wall, moving her further into the short connective tunnel and to the arch where she gripped the edge and steadied herself, desperately trying to blink away the blurriness without success. Still, she could make out the images of Nestafar walkers lined up across the bay in tight rows…with the nearest one floating a few meters off the floor.

Which way? she thought, having two options. Inset from the edge of the ravine was a narrow hallway running the length and connecting the bays to one another, as well as running across the staggered vertical ‘elevator’ shafts. It was enclosed enough for her to bounce her way down, but which way should she go and was she too high or low to match up with their entry point?

From her reckoning…which was probably way off…she should have been left of the hangar, so she opted to go right, pushing off from the archway and snagging the edge of the tunnel and pulling herself in at a quick clip, still painfully aware that she wasn’t alone on this jumpship, no matter how deserted it felt at the moment.

She pushed her way down the hallway, stopping so she could get a look at each bay she passed. They were set well apart from one another, with at least two entrances on the smaller ones, so Morgan did more traveling than peeking as her eyes still did not want to lose their haziness. She passed over several of the vertical shafts, wondering if she should make a guess and head up a little, then every surviving nerve in her body twitched as she passed over one and saw someone below her.

“Stop!” a booming voice yelled, tossing her into a panicked spin off to the other side. Her hand hit the ground and twisted her around, floating her up towards the ceiling of the tunnel to where she scrambled for traction as a blurry image floated up the shaft and into view.

“Calm yourself, Human,” a Calavari soldier said evenly as he caught the edge of the ceiling with his upper right hand and killed his momentum. “You are among allies.”

Morgan bounced off the ceiling, pressing an arm against it to null out part of her spin but the rest sent her slowly spinning back down to the floor as the stress and pain she was keeping contained burst forth in a moment of relief when her malfunctioning eyes and ears confirmed that she was looking at a Calavari and not a Nestafar. Bloody tears gushed out, along with an involuntary sound from her throat that sent her coughing again, spraying the floor with blood as she bounced back off it.

The Calavari came forward and caught the mess of Human in three arms, trying not to squeeze the bloody thing too hard. Grabbing the ceiling as they went up he pushed them back down hard enough to give his legs a moment of traction on the floor and sent them back towards the shaft where he grabbed the edge and pulled them up it.

“I will get you to a medic,” the deep voice said from directly over Morgan’s head as she was wrapped up in muscular arms she couldn’t have extricated herself from if she wanted to. “Can you speak?”

Morgan didn’t try, but she did squeeze his insanely big arm in response, though he barely felt it.

“Stay alive a little longer, small one,” the Calavari said, pulling them through section after section with Morgan oblivious to most of it. “You are safe now.”

Some minutes later the trailblazer saw other soldiers flashing past, then large ships that she guessed were the troop transports. She was taken up into one and suddenly felt the crush of gravity on her once again, forcing a yell that came out with more blood splatters as she was laid down on a flat surface.

The next thing she knew a Human face was looking down at her and a cool numbness flowed into her body, starting at her neck and flowing down through her extremities but she didn’t black out. Instead she watched as she was floated through the decks of a Star Force warship and into a medical bay where she was moved onto a treatment table and at least three medics began cutting off her blood-soaked uniform.

She heard one of them swear, then a stick was laid on her bare chest that walked out across her body and pinned her in place. All feeling disappeared from below her neck, then one of the little metallic tendrils snaked its way up over her chin and spread out across the left side of her face.

Morgan knew it had to be the regenerator. One had been given to each of the trailblazers when they deployed into the field, and it was the only one that her quartet of jumpships carried. Two other, smaller models had gone with the rest of her armada, but she’d kept the larger version on the Red Ranger with her…and right now she was very glad she had. She was also glad the techs had learned how to recharge the damn things so they were no longer a limited resource, though they were still precious. If one was lost they couldn’t build a replacement, so they only had the ones originally recovered from the pyramid to work with.

Never before had she used one that covered her entire body. She hadn’t even known it could branch out this far, though to be honest she wasn’t sure what she was sensing other than seeing a blurry pair of faces at the edge of her vision and a blue light on the ceiling above her…then her left eye began to clear and the faces became almost Human, but still dark. One of them seemed to grow in size and after a few minutes she recognized it as a Calavari standing a short ways behind the medics, looking in at her questioningly.

She tried her voice again, knowing that she probably shouldn’t, but found that her vocal chords hadn’t been numbed by the regenerator…at least not yet.

“Ee…va…cuate the ship,” she said in the trade language, getting surprised looks from the medics but an intent gaze from the Calavari who nudged his way forward.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Trap…gravity…all dead. Enemy…still alive,” she said, pausing to cough up another weak spray of blood, for her lungs didn’t want to fully function, numb as they were. “Pull…out now,” she warned.

“You heard her,” another voice said from out of view. “Get your survivors out before they’re counterattacked.”

“There may be other survivors like him,” the Calavari argued. “I will not leave them to the Nestafar. We will hold the hangar and patrol the immediate area, and see if any more make their way back like this one…but we will make ready to evacuate if the Nestafar come out to us. They have a flight advantage in zero gravity, but still, I don’t see how 10,600 of our men could have been killed. There must be some survivors.”

“Look at her,” one of the medics interjected. “Her body has literally been crushed. These scans are showing fractures throughout her skeleton and severe internal organ damage. That’s not from combat, that’s from excessive gravity. If the Nestafar cranked it up far enough it will have killed everyone in a very short amount of time.”

“He survived.”

“She barely survived,” the medic countered, “and not only is she the strongest Human ever to live, she weighs far less than your race does. Her petite form combined with her strength somehow let her survive, but Calavari mass far more, and in heavy gravity that is a disadvantage, no matter how strong your muscles are.”

The Calavari frowned. “The jumpship has no gravity at the moment. Why turn it off rather than return it to normal? So they can hunt down the survivors…which means there are still others alive out there.”

“No,” Morgan said, beginning to lose consciousness as the tendrils on her forehead slowly splintered into dozens more and snaked up into her hair and left ear. “I broke…the gravity generator. If they fix it…they can do it again…evacuate.”

The Calavari asked her a question but she didn’t hear it. With that final word she slipped into a semi-conscious state, losing contact with the outside world and remaining only vaguely aware of the damage to her body that the regenerator was methodically eating up.

10

“Wake up, Morgan,” the medic said, gently jostling her bare shoulder as she lay on the cushioned table in the med bay. “Can you hear…” he cut off as her left wrist flashed across her chest and grabbed his wrist, then her right came up and grabbed his throat out of reflex.

As soon as she opened her eyes and saw where she was the Archon relaxed her grip and nervously shook with a twitch-like tremor traveling down her arms and through her body all the way to her bare toes.

“Sorry,” she said, letting him go and looking down at her nude body…which was no longer bloody or wracked in pain, but it still didn’t feel right. She moved her arms around, then her legs, but she couldn’t get rid of the shakes.

Another medic walked up with a stack of clean clothes. “We cleaned you up as best we could,” she said apologetically. “Do you want to dress now or use the shower?” she asked, gesturing to a nearby room.

Morgan squeezed her eyes shut, trying to make sense out of the whirlwind running through her head. “How long have I been out?”

“A little over four hours,” the man whose throat she’d grabbed answered.

“I need a comm,” she said, swinging her legs over the side, only to feel crusty, dried blood in her body’s crevices. She motioned for the clothes and pulled on the aqua-colored T-shirt while she was still sitting. After that she stood up and tested her legs, which held firm but felt odd. She couldn’t put her finger on the sensation, but it didn’t instill in her any sense of strength.

By the time she’d pulled on the matching pair of pants and casual shoes one of the medics returned with an earpiece that the Archon slipped in and adjusted to the appropriate setting.

“Captain?”

“Here,” Wilkinson answered. “Good to hear your voice. What’s your status?”

“Alive…what’s the jumpship’s status?”

“The Calavari pulled their transports out about an hour ago. Apparently the Nestafar attacked the hangar and they couldn’t hold it with the few people they had left. There’s one onboard that wants to speak with you as soon as you’re able.”

Morgan closed her eyes for a moment, with the mass losses weighing down upon her. “Give me an hour, then I’ll meet him and you on the bridge.”

“Very well.”

“I…did anyone else make it back?”

“No,” Wilkinson said softly. “I’ve got a dropship sitting just above their hull and it’s picking up their telemetry data, but there’s no response on comms and they’re not moving.”

“Including mine?”

“Yes.”

“I know Rev took his armor off and tried to head back. They may all have when the gravity kicked up.”

“What happened in there?”

“An ambush. What’s the highest the Red Ranger’s gravity plating can go?”

“2.5 if you want to burn the generators out with an overload pulse, otherwise they’ve got a 1.5 max rating. The ones in the training areas go up to 5.0 I believe.”

“Find out how high the other Alliance races’ go, and while you’re doing that target one of the other two jumpships…they’re still contained, I presume?”

“They are.”

“Target one and demand its surrender. When it refuses or ignores you start poking holes in the ship until they come to their senses. Don’t use the rail gun or the missiles.”

“To what point?”

“Until they surrender or until they’re all dead,” Morgan said angrily as she walked over to the door and out of the med bay, her legs and arms still feeling the shakes. “If they feel like dying maybe the destruction of one ship will convince the others to surrender. Just make sure you leave their comm systems intact.”

“They may try to bolt like the command ship did,” the Captain pointed out.

“Keep enough ships around all three to make that costly for them, and see if you can’t poke their gravity drives with a cleansing beam or two. I think they figure that if they can hold us off long enough they’ll get reinforcements. Make it clear that their jumpships are not going to be used to further this invasion, one way or another.”

“I understand. If they capitulate how do you want them removed from the ship?”

“The Calavari have a lot of empty transports,” Morgan said morbidly.

“I’ll take care of it. Just get yourself patched up. Everyone up here is overly relieved you came out of there alive.”

“So am I,” she said meekly before shutting the earpiece off with a touch of a button as she headed through the ship’s corridors in her aqua medical uniform and shoes. She got a lot of odd looks along the way, but didn’t understand why until she got back in her quarters and looked in a mirror.

Her irises had changed color from a dark brown to some sort of twinkling gray, almost as if they were glowing with sparkles. Morgan blinked several times, finding the sight unnerving, both by the unnatural look and the level of damage that must have been done to require that much restructuring. For a moment she wondered if the regenerator hadn’t added some mechanical components, but a close inspection showed Human iris tissue, just in a bizarre color.

She didn’t know why it would change, but it somehow seemed appropriate given how close to death she’d come. With her eyes a constant reminder and the privacy of her personal quarters lowering her mental barriers, she clutched her arms around her chest and slid down to the floor, leaning against the wall as another round of shakes overtook her, followed quickly by tears that she couldn’t suppress any longer.

What she had gone through was bad enough, but her mind kept focusing on the 10,000 dead Calavari…ten thousand! All killed in a matter of minutes by something as pathetic as a gravity field. She’d requested their help taking the ship and now they were all gone, save for a handful that had survived in the hangar bays, though why they hadn’t been affected was beyond her. She was glad a few had survived, but she felt responsible for the others even though she hadn’t been leading the assault. She’d been there to assist, but the mission was her stupid idea and they’d paid the price for it.

Worse than that, she’d lost 13 Archons. They may have been smaller in number, but their value to her was worth far more than the Calavari, as insensitive as that thought seemed. Archons weren’t supposed to die. They’d lived and trained for over 300 years…to what? Get smashed to death on some stupid enemy jumpship whose worth was minuscule in the grand scheme of things. Their lives had been wasted, as hers nearly had been, all because of a mistake.

She blamed herself for the failure, but knew the mistake was not hers alone. In all of the material the Alliance had provided Star Force they’d never so much as hinted at using gravity generators as weapons against the lizards. Star Force models weren’t even designed to push to lethal level. Such things could be built, of course, but they’d been specifically designed NOT to in case of a malfunction or overload. They didn’t want someone dying because of an accident, and she’d assumed all the other races would have had similar safeguards in place.

The fact that they hadn’t mentioned cranking up the gravity as a potential defense had seemed to reinforce that assumption. Had she assumed wrong or was this disaster of some other making? If the Nestafar had built their ships with this capability she had no doubt Star Force’s techs would find a way to defend against it, but there was no undoing this debacle. Live and learn, she reminded herself, but there was no way she was simply going to be able to let this failure go.

On top of that she was still freaked out by her own near death. Though fully healed her body still didn’t feel right, even after the walk back. It felt half alive…maybe that was due to all the new tissue that had to be regrown, or maybe it was a mental side effect of the shock she’d suffered.

Or maybe it was because it had only happened hours ago...though Morgan still wasn’t sure how many. Most of the post-generator part was a blur and she figured her mind still hadn’t caught up to the fact that she was alive…and she certainly didn’t feel like she should be.

The trailblazer waited out the tears and shakes until they gradually faded away, letting the emotions bleed out until she was ready to clamp them back down again. When she did she got up, wiped the tears away, then stripped off the medical uniform and washed the remaining blood and grime off her body in the shower tube for a few minutes but chose not to linger, despite the fact that the warm water was eating away at the odd feeling throughout her body.

10,000 Calavari and 13 Archons were dead, but the fight wasn’t over and she certainly wasn’t going to spend time relaxing in the shower. The Nestafar had invaded this system, intent on eradicating the Calavari, and they’d just killed a good number of them along with her own brothers and sisters. They were the aggressors, not the victims, and Morgan needed to avenge those that had been lost. To push it aside and continue on like nothing had happened would have been akin to treason in her mind.

She wasn’t going to turn into a savage and kill them all out of spite, but the kid gloves were coming off. If they wanted to surrender she’d give them that option, but if they didn’t she’d blow them to hell along with the jumpships.

Morgan had told Wilkinson to start with one of the others because as much as she wanted to blast the jumpship she’d just been on into pieces she couldn’t bring herself to abandon all hope that one of the other Archons had survived. Maybe even some of the Calavari, if they’d stumbled across one of the Nestafar safe zones…for she didn’t believe that all of them could have been flying around in the main chamber.

She didn’t think anyone else had survived, and she knew in her gut they hadn’t. That wasn’t the point, though. She was going to give them the chance, just in case they had survived against all odds, for she couldn’t live with herself if they had clung to life, only to be killed by a subsequent attack on her orders.

No, they’d leave that jumpship for last. Hopefully the fate of the other two would convince the Nestafar onboard to surrender, whereupon they’d be escorted off the ship to Calavari prison camps on the surface…then Star Force could board the vessel and look for survivors, as well as recover remains and decide whether or not the ship was salvageable.

A vessel of that size was hard not to be salvageable, but there was no way of knowing how much internal sabotage the Nestafar might do on their way out…if they chose to surrender. If they didn’t, then the definition of ‘salvageable’ truly came into play.

That would be undertaken by the Calavari or Kvash, because Star Force didn’t have the personnel in system to handle a ship of that size for more than basic operations, let alone repair and refit duty. Morgan’s concern was to deny the enemy the use of the ships and the material and troops onboard…if they were to become of use to the Alliance after that fact then that was just a bonus.

Morgan dried off quickly and walked down from the top of the shower compartment and over to her closet where she began pulling out fresh clothes. As she did a tingle manifested in her arm and discharged against a uniform top as she brushed up against it like static electricity…save for the fact that the sleeve of the uniform jumped back an inch from her arm like a gust of wind had blown it.

She blinked twice, then dismissed the thought as something random, either her eyes playing tricks on her or she’d nudged it without feeling…which was entirely possible given the sensory disruption in her body. Everything felt as if she was controlling her body like a puppet without actually being inside, a sort of disconnect that she hoped would wear off soon, though her brief breakdown period had helped.

Morgan pulled on a T-shirt then covered it with a white Archon’s uniform top, zipping it up along the left side and around behind the shoulder and up to the neckline, hiding the thin division in the material from frontal view. She pulled on a pair of white socks that matched the white shoes then found a dark hair tie for her ponytail. As she was pulling it back her other arm got the tingles again, like a case of goose bumps that moved from her elbow down towards her wrist.

She flexed her arm and felt it discharge in a flurry…as well as seeing the cuff of her uniform puff up for a moment.

“What the hell?” she said, digging her fingers underneath the material and rubbing her wrist and forearm. That was twice now, and she doubted that she was completely seeing things, though she still didn’t fully trust her senses.

It had been tingles both times, so she tried to summon them up again. At first they wouldn’t come, then she remembered having been able to make them come back as a kid. She thought hard, trying to pull up the memories that had always elicited them. It wasn’t a scary movie, or being surprised, it was…

Then she remembered. In her mind she heard a familiar voice yell out, not in anger or rage, but in sheer effort and determination. She imagined her hair changing to blonde in a flash and energy racing from her body…then the tingle came back, this time down her back and moving up her spine. She mentally held it there for a moment then pushed it outward, trying to get the tingle to move down her right arm. Instead it dissipated again, going out her neck and popping her pony tail up into the air, again like a gust of wind.

“Ok, I am not seeing things,” she said to herself as she found a chair and sat down. Her head had been pounding ever since she’d walked out of the med bay and she rubbed it for a moment as she thought about her eye color change, wondering if the regenerator had also changed some other things in her body, including whatever this was.

Part of her wanted to push it aside and get up to the bridge as soon as possible, but she forced herself to take a moment and self-analyze…what exactly had she just done?

The ranger thought about it for several minutes and, coming to no conclusions, did what any sensible Archon would.

She tried to do it again.

It took a couple tries to find the right mental switch, piggybacking on memories of Dragonball Z, but eventually she got the tingly sensation to form in her right forearm and willed it to move up into her hand…then she pulled her left arm overtop so that her sleeve hung down an inch or so above her opposite palm. With an easy effort, as if the tingle wanted to be released, the sensation bled out of her hand.

In response the cuff of her sleeve moved, not once, but like a quick flutter…or more precisely, as if a tiny conduit of air had blown on it for about .75 seconds.

Morgan stared at her palm, wide eyed…then her sparkling orbs narrowed as another thought occurred to her.

“The dragon,” she whispered. “It said we should have other abilities. Maybe the regenerator kicked them on.”

Following that line of thought she got up and went back over to the mirror and stared into her intimidating eyes.

“Ok, this needs investigating. A little hand puff isn’t dangerous, so it can wait a few hours,” she said, staring into her reflection and wondering if it was really her body she was in, given how odd the rest of it felt, not to mention this new…skill.

“Alright,” she said, nodding at her new look. “Airbending skills can wait till downtime. Avenging my brothers and sisters comes first.”

With that thought focused firmly in her mind Morgan took her still shaky body and left her quarters headed for the bridge.

Ascension

1

March 1, 2405

Brokal System

Sri’ka

Morgan ducked to the right, letting a dodgeball-sized projectile shoot by over her shoulder and impact the back wall of the training chamber. It dented on contact with no rebound, absorbing the momentum, and dropped down into a retrieval trough that ringed the chamber as it slowly reformed into a perfect sphere. A tone sounded, indicating that the ball had in fact nicked her shoulder and subtracted a point from her accumulating score that was tallied on the upper wall in front of her.

Morgan would have frowned, but two more balls were coming her way, one from front left and the other from back left. She spun coming up and caught one on the outside of her right wrist with it deforming around her hand and barely catching on the sensor gloves she wore that counted it as a stop rather than a hit. As she flicked it off to the side and outside of the small circle she had to remain within she knelt down and caught the other, palming it, and throwing it towards a target on the wall. It hit and fell inside the holographic wall panel, adding 3 points to her score as another came in and hit her in the back…subtracting 2 more.

Normally she didn’t have this much trouble on the agility drill, but ever since her gravity crush and subsequent repair her body hadn’t felt right. Most of the oddness had dissipated, but she was left feeling ‘hollow’ and it was taking a lot of physical activity to chip away at that feeling. To top it off she was weaker than before, probably due to the new tissue being grown, but given that she hadn’t had any major injuries…such as a missing piece of muscle like Sam had endured a few decades ago…she’d figured the catch-up time would be minimal.

Honestly she didn’t know what was going on with her body, but in the past training had always straightened her out and it was training that she fell back on now, frustrating as it was.

She took several more hits, all nicks that impacted the walls, but was getting enough dodges in to keep a positive score…plus the occasional captures that added bonus points. Her score sucked compared to previous runs, but at the least she was staying in the positive through the first few rounds of the ascending challenge she was running. Morgan fought hard to stay in the positive as long as she could, twisting, turning, and occasionally jumping to avoid the balls and stay alive, but eventually the level difficulty came up to the point where she was getting hit more than evading and her score went negative.

When that happened the challenge ended and her level reached was emblazoned on the wall…

Level 18

Morgan felt like cussing but didn’t have the energy. She’d doubled up her ambrosia doses and was carrying a sugar high-like headache as a result, but her body wasn’t soaking it up like it used to. She was constantly tired, but wasn’t backing off her workouts, planning to fight her way through it because the idea of just sitting and thinking was unbearable right now. With everything that had just happened and her body being out of whack, calm was the last thing she wanted. She needed to act, and at the moment naval combat was all that was available.

Her fleet had been bombarding one of the Nestafar jumpships for nearly a day now but it still hadn’t surrendered. Captain Wilkinson had reported they’d disabled its gravity drives, so it was no longer a flight risk, but pick at it as they may the crew wasn’t giving up…and all Morgan had to do was sit/stand on the bridge and watch the plasma bombardment as they beat the crap out of the giant ship’s hull.

There was only so much of that she could take, so Morgan had banished herself to the Red Ranger’s sanctum and had been training in one form or another ever since, catching only a pair of half hour long catnaps along the way. After that she couldn’t sleep, another little side effect of her recent brush with death.

She’d had the medics do another scan to confirm that the regenerator had put her back together correctly, which it had, and they had no explanation for her eye color change. They had told her that it was a pigment change only, so no latent superpowers there, but they also couldn’t detect any variations that resulted in her airbending skills either, so other than making sure all her organs were intact the medics were of little use.

Morgan felt like having another go at the challenge but opted to stop now after 20 tries, reminding herself that she needed to take breaks if for nothing else to clear her head and get some water. To that end she walked over to the all but invisible door and flipped up a cover panel, pressing the button underneath.

The door pulled open, revealing the outside hallway while a table rotated down on her right. There she stripped off the sensor gloves she’d been wearing and laid them back in the tray next to several others before walking outside and reaching down to the floor where she had left a small satchel. She pulled out a water bottle, undid the lid, and began sucking it down faster than anticipated…meaning she’d gotten more dehydrated than expected, though she wasn’t sweating much.

She refused to sit down, so she just stood in the empty hallway sipping the second half of her water bottle and trying to wrap her head around what was happening to her. After a few minutes and no new revelations she sucked down the last of the water and put the bottle back in her satchel, noticing her earpiece had a message light lit, so she pulled it out, put it in her ear, and triggered the playback.

“I assume you’re still in training,” Wilkinson’s voice said, “so I didn’t want to interrupt you directly, but the jumpship has just signaled its surrender. I’ve got a few Calavari transports standing by to board and begin taking on prisoners, with more heading up from the surface. We left them with one intact hangar bay, but the rest of the ship’s exterior is pretty much trashed. There are also depressurized areas that have probably killed a fair number of their crew that we’ll have to deal with if we’re going to claim it.”

“It took an awful lot of pounding to get them to capitulate, and the surrender came from the vessel under attack…NOT the others. We haven’t heard a peep from them, and I’m not certain whether they’re going to follow suit or force us to put them into the same level of hurt before they’ll give up. I’m coordinating with the Calavari on the prisoner collection, but am waiting for your order to begin attacking the second jumpship.”

Morgan sighed. At least something was going right…assuming the Nestafar didn’t have some other trick up their sleeve.

The trailblazer switched to active mode and contacted the bridge.

“What’s the status on the prisoners?”

“Progressing smoothly. I think we finally got the message across,” Wilkinson answered.

“And the other two?”

“Still nothing.”

“Do you have an ETA on the prisoner transfer?”

“The Calavari estimate 10 hours, and we’re already 2 hours in. What do you want done with the jumpship?”

“We don’t have the people to sweep it, so tell the Calavari that if they can secure it they can keep it.”

“And the other jumpships?”

“Hold off until the Calavari get the unloading completed. That will give the Nestafar plenty of time to think, and make sure we keep a tight noose around them so they don’t come to the conclusion that they’re better off risking a collision than by staying put.”

“I still get the feeling like they’re waiting for reinforcements,” the Captain said.

“Me too. Focus on securing our small victory, then we’ll worry about other things.”

“Copy that,” Wilkinson said. “Anything else?”

“Any news I need to know about?”

“The Kvash have a probable location for the enemy command ship. I assume our captured jumpships take priority?”

“They do. Where is it?”

“Middle orbit around the 4th planet. It’s staying separate from their fleet, but right now that’s the strongest enemy formation in the system. The missing jumpships haven’t turned up yet.”

“They’re not damaged,” Morgan reminded him. “They might have bugged out if their cargo had already been dropped off on the planet.”

“My intelligence says some of it was. The Calavari believe they still contain troops and equipment that they’d like to not see on the surface.”

“Any more requests for surface strikes?”

“I have a list of requests from the Calavari and Kvash for assistance at various locations across the system.”

“Busy busy. Tell them that we’ll do what we can after we deal with the jumpships.”

“That’s the general sentiment I’ve been expressing. There are several locations I believe we can have an immediate impact with low risk to our ships. I’ve filed recommendations in the log if you want to have a look later.”

“Jump cradle secure?”

“It is.”

“Carry on, Captain.”

“Yes, Archon,” he said, ending the conversation.

Morgan put the earpiece in her satchel and was about to go back into the agility chamber when she hesitated. There was another chamber not too far down the hall that she’d been avoiding, and she figured she might as well face it now…before she lost her nerve again.

Picking up the satchel and carrying the short backpack across one shoulder, the Archon headed across the Sanctum until she stood facing the doors to the gravity chamber, where she reluctantly pressed the entry button, setting her gear down outside as the double doors pulled open. Gritting her teeth she walked inside and let them reseal.

The room looked like the inside of a giant Rubik’s cube, with the lines glowing aqua and the panels a dark black. The floor was polished like glass, but the glossy material sunk down beneath her feet for about an inch before bottoming out, providing a crash mat for acrobatic maneuvers. The lines on the floor glowed as well, giving Morgan’s eyes visual reference marks if and when she should start tumbling about. They were the only illumination in the chamber, though there were so many lines that it was actually quite bright inside.

One of the squares held the control panel, which Morgan walked over to and selected a basic program, setting the timer for a 30 second delay…then she walked back over to the center and stood ready, with a host of thoughts and emotions flowing through her mind.

The gravity began to inch up, .05g every 5 seconds until it topped out at 1.5g. Morgan held still while it amped up, then began walking around, making little movements and trying to lock down the sensation. She was surprised, though she knew she shouldn’t be, for the odd feeling that had been eluding her mental lock now manifested itself in all its icky glory, causing a slight tremble in her arms as every inch of her body ached in a way that made it feel like she was about to come apart into a thousand tiny pieces.

Her stomach also turned over a bit, with the nausea rooted in the feeling that something was just plain wrong with her body. Morgan didn’t have a lot of experience with such things, being in superhuman shape for nearly all of her life, but there were a few childhood experiences that she could draw on and was able to link this to the source of all her trouble.

Her structural integrity, as she thought of it, had not repaired along with the rest of the damage to her body…at least not all the way. Jason had mentioned a similar experience after his bout with a regenerator, and had in fact lost several fitness levels as a result of his concussion damage. While gravity compression wasn’t exactly the same Morgan thought it would be at least vaguely similar, and that gave her mind a point of reference to start analyzing the changes from.

She’d done gravity training before and this was not the way her body had responded, even all the way back to her first experience. She was weak in places she couldn’t identify, but the feeling persisted throughout her body. That meant systemic damage, and the only way to heal it was to back off and work through lower level training in a sort of callisthenic massage that would loosen up any lockdowns as well as provide enough activity to begin adapting back into a stronger persona.

Finally with a plan of action, Morgan walked over to the gravity controls and dialed it down to 1.1g. From there she began a familiar stretching/agility/gymnastics routine, just going through the paces of easy backbends and layouts, morphing into yoga holds and exploding up into leaping twists. It all felt bad at first, but the odd toxic feeling began to bleed out after a couple of hours. Morgan realized a part of her had been clenched up inside, fighting the gravity that was no longer killing her. Now that a little of it had returned she was able to actively fight against it…seeing that it was within her ability to defeat and control. When that got through to her subconscious mind she began to relax and the poisonous pill inside of her slowly started to disintegrate.

When she was eventually finished with her ‘cleansing’ routine she left the gravity chamber drenched in sweat after getting lost in the movements and burning 5 hours in what felt like 45 minutes. She quickly sucked down two more water bottles out of her satchel, as well as downing a couple of ambrosia-laced cookies before heading over to one of the spare quarters in the sanctum and flopping down on the bed face first. The ranger curled her shoulder under and drew up her legs slightly into a familiar crash position and let the lingering fatigue drag her into a semi-conscious state that she was glad to be able to access after so many unsuccessful attempts over the previous day.

Now that her mind had unclenched, the rest that had been denied to her flooded into her mind like a cool wave and she began feeling the mental fragmentation start to undo in a flurry, typical of her experience with training-induced power naps. After that, where her mind went she didn’t recall, but she didn’t wake up for another 6 hours.

Swiping a bit of drool out of the side of her mouth, her body broke the stiff nap-lock and she walked over to the quarters’ computer console and logged into her account. She was going to check the Captain’s priority target list, but as she accessed the system she decided to divert to her personal log and activated the console’s camera to record another entry.

“Successful gravity workout, resulting in a nap crash,” she said, stretching her neck distractedly and not wanting to look directly into the camera. “The odd feeling is mostly gone, but I can’t say for sure because I’m afraid I’m numb and not realizing it. Jason, now I know what you meant. The regenerator doesn’t repair everything the same way it was before, and I’m not even talking about my eyes,” she said, pointing a pair of fingers up towards her face.

“Freaky, huh? No idea why they changed. Thought it might be gravity damage or something, but neither I nor the medics have a clue.”

Morgan paused while in thought, as she typically did. These logs were meant for the other trailblazers and would be dispatched through the computer systems of various jumpships, passing through the star systems until they eventually found their way to the other 99. Morgan had been gone so long she’d run out of entries from the others to read/view, but she still kept logging her own, making her feel a little closer to them, especially now, when she really needed someone to help her sort all this out.

“Still angry about losing the Archons. We pounded one of their jumpships into submission and the Calavari are offloading the prisoners now…or they were last I checked. I’ve been camped out in the sanctum for a while. This is the only place I can seem to get half a clear head. I could really use a sparring partner right now to key off of, but there are no other Archons in the system and we won’t be rejoining the others until…actually I don’t know. This system is critical and there’s a lot my four warships can do if we stick around, so our return to the armada is up in the air.”

“Damn these comm delays, I don’t even know if I have an armada left. We have got to get the V’kit’no’sat transmitters figured out. We’re way too blind like this.”

Another pause. Morgan knew she was rambling but held up the urge to stop, because she’d been encouraged by the others to just ‘think out loud’ since they weren’t around to pry her with questions and they all needed to keep up with each other’s progress as much as possible in between actual meetings.

“This war, I mean the Nestafar/Calavari part, is nuts. It’s so chaotic. It’s like they don’t know how to fight on a large scale. They’re throwing troops here and there and fighting the small battles, but there doesn’t appear to be any overall strategy…just losses. Way too many losses. It’s like they don’t know what they’re fighting for, just taking swings at the enemy. I can sympathize with that, but when you’re taking, losing, and retaking the same territory over and over again you’ve got to ask yourself what the hell you’re doing.”

“We can’t follow the Alliance’s lead. They may be better organized when working with each other, but it’s not up to our standards. If we’re going to fight with them, then let them fight with us…we incorporate them into our strategies, not the other way around. I’ve had the chance to study Sri’ka and the rest of this system in detail and it’s a mess. No large scale planning. Paul would have a fit if he saw it.”

“I hope you’re doing better than this, brother. If we were assaulting this planet we’d break it easily. The Calavari may be fighter strong, but they’re not builders…then again, other than us who is? The Bsidd aren’t bad, from what I’ve heard, but I haven’t seen any war strategy in any race’s designs other than ours and the lizards. No wonder the V’kit’no’sat dominated this part of the galaxy. Even their simplest stratagems are high thinking for our allies.”

“We can do better. We have to do better. And you’d better be doing better, otherwise when I get back I’ll kick your ass for wasting so much time. This is a blood feud out here, and I don’t expect the main lizard invasion to be any less intense when it eventually comes. We have to be ready, otherwise these idiots will roll over us with sheer numbers.”

2

March 2, 2405

Brokal System

Sri’ka

Wilkinson was sitting his watch on the bridge, observing the initial pounding of the second Nestafar jumpship that had yet to surrender. Calavari troops already possessed the first and were doing level by level sweeps to round up any strays that hadn’t voluntarily left the ship, and reports indicated that there were quite a few. No gravity traps had been activated during this boarding, and the central generator had been the first portion of the massive ship secured by an infiltration team prior to several thousand troops boarding.

The jumpship was damaged on the exterior, with multiple hull breaches that the Calavari engineers were starting to patch up, but it seemed the damage Star Force had done to their gravity drives was unfixable save for one which the cleansing beams had missed. They’d severed a power conduit knocking it offline, and with that soon to be repaired the engineers thought they could get the ship minimally flight worthy.

The thrust-based engines had mostly been destroyed, making maneuvering the giant ship hazardous at best, but even with the pathetic condition it was in it was quite the capture. Not only were there cargo bays full of resources, but the ship itself was a giant space station even if it could never fly again, and given the damage done to the Calavari orbital infrastructure having a makeshift base of operations to add to their dwindling assets was definitely a boon for the Calavari.

With a bit of delicate thrust work, the jumpship had began to drift away from the others, letting Star Force’s warships abandon guarding it and redeploy into a tighter net around the other stubborn two as Wilkinson worked on getting the Calavari another prize. Plasma flashed at regular intervals up and down the ship as his remote pilots systematically destroyed key points on the hull while the heavy cruisers poked deep holes into it, searching out the gravity drives inside.

Still there was no word of surrender, even after seeing what had happened to their sister vessel. Perhaps they wanted the ship trashed so the Alliance couldn’t make as much use of it before they gave up. Wilkinson could appreciate that, but he didn’t like having to breach interior pockets of atmosphere before the Nestafar finally got the message, for it would kill hundreds of them before the other sections locked down.

He didn’t mind killing the enemy, but not like this. They were beaten, and they were dragging this out simply out of spite.

A slight murmur amongst the bridge crew caused him to look over his shoulder, then he got up out of his large command chair and stood beside it as Morgan made her way back onto the bridge.

“Still no word from the Nestafar,” the Captain reported. “Looks like they’re going to be stubborn.”

“Keep the pressure on,” the Archon said as she walked up alongside Wilkinson and they both stared at the hologram showing the ongoing, one-sided engagement. “I marked the ground assignments I want us involved with. The Nestafar’s lack of adequate anti-air gives us a huge advantage that I want to exploit as much as possible, and now that we’re down to babysitting two jumpships instead of three I want as many ships as you can spare dedicated to working through that list.”

The Captain sat back down and pulled up an expandable screen from the left arm of his chair, bringing up the lengthy list. “Any preferences as to which we get to first?”

“I’ve given them priority markings,” she said, crossing her arms over the chest of her white with green stripe ranger uniform.

Wilkinson ran down through the long list, seeing a few pop up, along with the amount of warships she wanted devoted to each assignment, some of which called for orbital bombardment. Those weren’t priority targets, thankfully, because the larger ships were still needed to corral the jumpships.

“A dropship?” he asked, seeing one small combat zone tagged in the list as requiring only a dropship. He pulled up the data on that location and the mission specifications that Morgan had written out, noting that it was not one of the ones he had recommended to her, nor was it very large. A small city in what was the backwater of the planet was holding out admirably against a much larger force of Nestafar infantry with a handful of walkers in support. He could see sending down a corvette for a quick strike on the walkers, but other than that there wasn’t much that could be done…and all she had designated for it was a dropship.

“I trust you can handle the jumpships without me?” she asked rhetorically.

“You’re going down?”

Morgan nodded. “I don’t feel like sitting and watching any longer. I’m the last Archon we have in the system, and I’m deploying myself to where I can make a difference.”

“Are you physically ready for that?”

“Well enough.”

"Extraction options?”

“48 hour window, then send for pickup. I’ll contact the dropship when it’s in range.”

“I’d prefer if you took a transmitter with you, that way we can stay in 2-way contact.”

Morgan shook her head. “If something important happens you keep me informed, and if need be you can send a ship early. I’m not going to have any vital intel to relay, and I don’t want to waste the space in my pack the transmitter would take up.”

“Take a satchel with you and ditch it somewhere safe?”

“Not for this mission,” Morgan said, a bit of anxiousness in her voice. “This is run and gun. No base camp.”

“And you want the pack space for extra ammunition?”

“As much as I can get.”

“What about the walkers? Do want them taken out before you go in?”

“No, don’t delay any other operations for mine. There are bigger engagements that need their touch.”

“Understood,” Wilkinson said, though there was a hint of displeasure in his voice.

Morgan put a hand on his shoulder and whispered in his ear. “I owe them.”

“You could take some Knights with you,” he whispered back.

“They’re too slow for what I have in mind.”

Wilkinson sighed. “Good luck.”

Morgan squeezed his shoulder then left the bridge, headed over to the sanctum’s armory.

“We’re nearly at the target,” the pilot’s voice said through Morgan’s helmet commlink, “but we’ve got some enemy aircraft in the area. They haven’t noticed us yet, but I’m not sure how close I’ll be able to set you down.”

“What type of aircraft?”

“Looks like a pair of vipers strafing the city.”

“Get some altitude. I’ll drop early and angle in.”

“With what?”

“I have a jump pack.”

“Alright,” the pilot said hesitantly. “I’ll see if I can’t build you a parabolic trajectory. Which hatch are you going out?”

“Aft is easiest.”

“You do realize you have the aerodynamics of a falling brick, and that jump pack won’t slow your lateral momentum. If I don’t time this right you’re going to be a smear mark on the side of some building.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve jumped. Just make sure you don’t get too close to the fighters.”

“I doubt they’ll be able to hit you once you fall.”

“I meant for your sake. You’re the bigger target.”

“I’m well aware of that. Hold onto something, not sure how much turbulence you’re going to get back there.”

Morgan reached down to one of the seats in the hold of the Eagle-class dropship and grabbed a safety restraint with her left hand. “I’m good.”

Without another word the aft hatch opened and a maelstrom of wind shot in as the horizon moved upwards and was eclipsed by the top of the dropship’s interior as the winged transport arced up. Morgan didn’t feel the gravity change directions, for she was still within the hold and the inertial dampening nulled it out. The artificial gravity field held her in place as she looked out the rear of the dropship on almost a vertical line straight down to the surface with the city outskirts coming into view.

“Go,” the pilot instructed, and Morgan didn’t hesitate. She ran out the back and felt the gravity shift instantly, pulling her into freefall straight ahead but oddly with no wind impacting her front side. Her momentum, carried over from the dropship, was still moving her upwards and towards the center of the city.

“I’m out,” she said so the pilot knew he could go evasive. From her rotating position she caught sight of one of the fighters pulling up from the streets and gaining altitude. “Get moving, you’ve got a tail.”

“I’ll lose it…good luck.”

“Thanks,” Morgan acknowledge as the dropship punched its anti-grav and rocketed up into the sky.

As gravity eventually won the tug of war with her momentum, Morgan topped off her parabolic arc and began to fall, spreading her arms out as she did to level her body and give her some limited maneuvering capability. Once she stabilized she had quite the view, enough to spot the other viper strafing Calavari on the city streets and the walkers working their way through the southwest quadrant.

That wasn’t where she wanted to land, so she steered herself towards the northwest where the infantry fighting was the heaviest, leaving the walkers to the Calavari troops and their few remaining hovertanks. As she dropped closer Morgan activated her jump pack at minimal power, adding a bit of upward thrust to the friction dragging on her body and brought her speed down a bit.

Her ability to steer diminished with her speed, but she was already north of the walkers and coming down on the tulip-shaped Calavari structures when she finally had to use most of her jump pack’s charge to stall her fall. She missed the street and landed on the angled ‘roof’ of one of the buildings, sliding across and down it and using the brief footing to kill some of her lateral momentum. The rest dumped her off the side and she coasted across the street and into the side of the nearby building before the jump pack completely stalled her out.

She drifted sideways out into the street, then cut power and half fell down to the white stone surface, goosing it in one burst to cushion her footfall. Morgan crunched down onto her ankles from the weight of her armor and pack, but managed to stay on her feet as a pair of Nestafar infantry flew over to her between the red/orange buildings, at the base of which several groups of Calavari were taking cover under the gentle overhang.

Morgan reached back, pulling off her plasma rifle and powering it up as a few red plasma blasts came her way. She faked left, then angled right, throwing off their aim before she put a beautiful blue streak directly into the closest one’s chest, dropping it out of the air and down to crunch on the white stone.

When it fell other Nestafar appeared, coming out from around the bulbous midsections of several of the tall, stalk-like buildings at the sounds of weaponsfire. Undeterred, Morgan shot her previous foe then ran forward evasively and began picking off the others, taking as few hits to her armor as she could. At first it wasn’t difficult, but as more and more flooded in she found herself faced with a greater challenge.

All the better. The more attention she drew to herself the less there’d be for the Calavari to deal with.

She picked one of the thin buildings that didn’t have Calavari hiding underneath the curved shaft and ran towards it, eclipsing half of growing opposition and forcing them to come down lower to shoot around the middle-set bulge of the building. The Archon held close to the base of the tower-like structure and began running around it in circles, shooting those ahead of her and forcing the others to follow.

She wound her way around twice before they got wise to the tactic, then most of them held position, flapping their wings furiously so they could hover in place and target the area where she was going to appear next.

Morgan obliged them for another round, shooting the stationary targets but taking several hits to her armor in the process…then she backtracked and reversed her course, catching many of them off guard as she swung around the opposite side. As she did a few golden streaks began popping up in her peripheral vision, as did the Nestafar they were sniping out of the air. Combined with her growing kill count a ring of Nestafar bodies began stacking up around the building, leaving a clear inner ring for Morgan to continue running around as the building’s bulge provided her with an angled roof that kept her footing clear.

Knowing that she was getting predictable, Morgan darted off across the street to another building and repeated the process, making a pair of loops before figure-8ing her way over to another. This one had a threesome of what looked like battle-weary Calavari hunkered up against the base in a defensive huddle and the closest one almost shot her as she came into view. Fortunately he held off just long enough for her to pass by, eliciting confused looks from all three, then the Calavari’s Y-shaped rifles lit up the Nestafar that followed her around the bend of the building, dropping half a dozen before they got wise to the impromptu ambush.

A few moments later the green-armored Human appeared again, having run all the way around the building and dragging a few more dimwitted adversaries to the Calavari even as she continued to take down others in the air with her pinpoint accuracy…on the run, no less. The moment she passed them by she dumped a load of expended plasma shells onto the white stone surface, shoving them via momentum towards the base of the building. One of the Calavari just caught a glimpse of her reaching back into her pack for more ammunition in his peripheral vision before she disappeared and he suddenly had a plethora of targets to deal with.

The Calavari threesome took a few hits, which their combat shields soaked up, and thinned her pursuit enough that the survivors wisely decided to retreat back up above the building bulge and out of the firing line. The four-armed soldiers held their position, taking shots at any Nestafar that came within sight, but the Human didn’t return. Eventually they received new orders to redeploy to another location and got an update on the rogue warrior who was knocking down so many of the enemy that the Calavari were beginning to get the upper hand in this sector.

The tired threesome moved off cautiously, fatigued from multiple days of bitter and pointless fighting as they had gradually lost territory to the enemy, but now with a new spark of hope as they saw other surviving clusters of troops coming out of cover and joining them in the redeployment to the river walkway that the Nestafar had taken two days ago. Before that it had been a dividing line that they’d been holding, and eventually lost to an onslaught of infantry coupled with aerial strikes.

Now there were Nestafar bodies clogging the center of the streets…and quite a few dropping down on the walkway as a cloud of enemy infantry followed a green dot from cover to cover chasing the Human. The Calavari soldiers quickly took up preferred defensive positions, carving out a foothold in what had just been a key Nestafar defensive line. Even now more enemy troops were flying in from across the river and from the south, but a dozen or so imbedded troops were thinning their numbers from afar as the Human distracted the rest further to the north.

“What is that?” one of the Calavari asked, motioning off in the distance down the walkway.

“A Human,” another commented, intoning a deep respect to the term.

“We’ve been reinforced?!”

“Command isn’t sure. The Humans aren’t coordinating their assault. Just make sure you don’t shoot them on accident. We need as much help as we can get.”

“I didn’t even know there were any on the planet,” another Calavari commented between rifle shots.

“Their fleet arrived 3 days ago and prevented the Nestafar dropships from landing any more troops. Beyond that I don’t know what’s going on.”

“I thought the Kvash did that,” another Calavari said from further down the line as more small groups kept coming in and joining the cluster.

“Joint effort,” another one said. “How many Humans have you seen?”

“Just a green one…or maybe several. Hard to say, they were moving around so much.”

“Anyone see two Humans in the same place?”

No one had, eliciting a confused look between the talkative pair.

“They sent one?”

“Could be more elsewhere in the city.”

“They deploy singly?”

“If they’re that tough, why not?” another, older Calavari said, readjusting his aim to the right as the swarm of Nestafar started coming back their way as Morgan darted from point to point beneath them, dropping a few with each maneuver. “He’s bringing them back our way…let’s give him some help.”

Rifle barrels all throughout the group started tracking to the right, with a few Calavari coming up out of cover to redeploy into better firing positions as others kept a back guard on the other enemy troops moving about.

“That’s right, Human. You’re a smart one, aren’t you? Get them out of position and angry following you, then lead them right back to us. You’re one ally worth keeping alive,” he said, squeezing off his first golden plasma lance into the flying infantry swarm.

3

March 3, 2405

Brokal System

Sri’ka

“Ah, good,” the regional Calavari commander said as one of his subordinates walked into the improvised command center set up in the lobby of one of the hundreds of tulip-shaped buildings popping up from the stone surface across the city. “I assume the explosives were useful?”

The gold-clad four-armed alien nodded as he came up and put his lower set of arms down on the table, leaning on his fists. “They were. The Human was able to place them at the base of the walker’s neck. They disabled the primary power line and took out its main cannon.”

“It’s still partially operational then?”

“No, we finished it off.”

“With what?”

“Upended it with a combat sled and the pilot fled. We disabled it from the inside after that.”

“Good work. Now if we can just take out the last one we’ll be in tenable position to hold off their reinforced infantry.”

The other Calavari frowned. “More arrived?”

“Several transports worth, I’m afraid, but no heavy equipment. I’d guess they’ve got their hands full elsewhere and can’t spare any more walkers.”

“But they’ve got plenty of bodies to throw at us?”

“It seems so.”

“At the rate the Human is taking them down it’s either send more or admit defeat…and I’d hoped for the later.”

“A few more Human soldiers and we could run them right out of the city,” the commander commented, overly pleased with the help they were getting from the lone Archon. “Assuming we can take out that walker. I’ve requested additional arms, but there’s no way of telling when or if they’ll arrive, and I’d rather not have to count on them getting here. Do you have any suggestions?”

“No more explosives available?”

The commander shook his head in the negative.

“I suppose we’re down to picking at it with the combat sleds.”

“We’ve only got four left, and two of those are damaged. That’s not enough to take down a long-neck.”

“No Valerie support?”

“Tied up in other engagements.”

The Calavari rubbed his chin with his left upper hand. “I don’t know. Small arms can’t scratch that armor, unless we have something more powerful to throw at it the best we can hope for is to snipe the pilot when he comes out. They can’t stay inside forever.”

“It keeps cycling back through their base camp, so I’d assume any crew transfers take place there…and there’s no way to get a team that deep into their lines. Even with the Human’s help,” he added before the other Calavari made the suggestion.

“I don’t know what to do then, other than keep out of its way.”

“Neither do I, so that’s what we do for now. Focus on whittling down their infantry and see if you can entice the walker in a new direction with the sleds. Don’t engage with clear firing lines, but get its attention enough to keep it away from the more populated areas if possible.”

“Where do we stand on the evac?”

“Less than 10% have gotten out, the rest have been relocated within more secure sections of the city.”

“Ten! We’ve had over a week and that’s all they’ve managed to get out?”

“We don’t have the transport sleds. Their damn vipers picked off most of the civilian ones and we’re barely getting any supply shipments coming in as it is.”

“You’d think we would have been more prepared than this.”

“This city isn’t critical to the war effort, so available assets have to be distributed to protect the vital areas.”

“Is that what command told you?”

“Word for word.”

“Damn them then…”

“I share your sentiment, but if our major fortifications fall it won’t be long before the enemy here gets stronger reinforcements. Heavy fighting elsewhere is helping us as much as it is hurting us.”

“One squadron to take down one walker…that’s all we need. We can handle the infantry with the Human’s help.”

“We don’t have it, so we have to make do…also Command’s words.”

“Fancy talk for ‘shut up and die.’”

The commander shook his head adamantly. “We’re not dead yet. I’m still hoping there’s something in this city that we can scrounge into another explosive. Until we find it, keep doing what you can.”

“Always,” the Calavari said, walking over to a wall rack and grabbing an extra ammunition pack for his rifle.

Morgan sat on her ankles at the base of a low wall, facing out as she took a moment to gather some intel on the enemy’s movements. Her position had a good view of a park-like area that bordered the river, as well as for protecting her flank from interlopers. So far the Nestafar infantry hadn’t bothered her, and it appeared the reason why was because they were regrouping into at least three sections about to make another push to recross the river.

The Calavari had the untenable position of not only having to defend the bridges, but the entire line given that the Nestafar could fly over at will. That said, the area of the river was the most wide open in the thick of the city, offering their snipers ample range to shoot the Nestafar down as they crossed. From the looks of it, the enemy had either received another batch of reinforcements or had redeployed infantry from other areas, because she hadn’t seen any dropships arriving…though she’d been busy enough not to have noticed before.

Their lone walker wasn’t among those assembling in front of her, tucked behind cover so the Calavari couldn’t see. Morgan had taken time to pull back and flank the enemy, swimming across the river now that her jump pack was trashed. It’d taken a plasma hit so she’d discarded it, making her a bit lighter but no longer able to move around as she’d like. Still, she’d managed to get in behind the enemy and was in prime position to cause a ruckus if needed, but her ammunition was nearly gone and she needed to scout out the most logical position to make a dent in their forces before she had to start relying on captured weapons.

As she zoomed in on the infantry formations with her helmet HUD she noticed a faint dot passing between the buildings on the other side of the city. It wasn’t moving like a flying Nestafar and she wondered if the enemy fighters had finally come back after heavy infantry fire from the Calavari had damaged the previous craft and forced a retreat.

Morgan raised an eyebrow when her helmet zoomed in on the dot, having to catch it at multiple points between buildings. Using her wrist interface she adjusted her comm settings and scanned for other Star Force signals…

One popped up on her HUD, with a tiny ID tag displaying over top the dot with the numerical identification of the warship along with its class. The corvette wasn’t coming directly to the city, but it might just be close enough for her to get a signal relay through to the Red Ranger.

“This is Morgan-063, requesting comm transfer to Captain Wilkinson.”

She paused a moment, then was about to repeat her request when the remote pilot controlling the corvette answered her hail.

“Signal request confirmed, Archon. Your signal is patchy, so I’ll hold position as relay until you say otherwise.”

“Thank you…and as long as you’re here, mind trashing a walker for me?”

“Roger that. Location?”

“Wandering the city streets somewhere in the southwest, maybe near city center now. You’ll need precision fire to avoid the buildings, a lot of which are still inhabited.”

“We’ll take care of it. Patching you through to the Captain now.”

“Wilkinson here,” a familiar voice said in his typical, all business tone.

“Mind telling me how a warship happened to wander by my position?”

“I was just looking into that…it’s redeploying from one engagement to another. I didn’t send it your way on purpose.”

“I won’t hold it up long. I need a dropship with ammunition and another jump pack sent down, I’m almost out of both.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes, can you tell me where the fighters went that were harassing us yesterday?”

“You don’t have to worry about them, the base they returned to was destroyed in an air raid a few hours ago.”

Morgan blew out a relieved breath. “Anything else headed my way? There were some infantry transports earlier.”

“Two separate Nestafar camps have been dribbling reinforcements your way, but nothing appears to be moving up at the moment. Are you still a go for pickup tomorrow?”

“Send a dropship down to establish a comm link, but I think I’m staying another day. If they don’t get reinforced and the corvette takes out the last walker, I think we can finish off their troops in the city…and I don’t want to leave before the party’s over.”

“I take it you don’t want a transmitter sent down?”

“Nope, just more ammo. I still plan to stay on the move.”

“Very well. Coordinate drop or landing?”

“Drop. Sending coordinates,” she said, tagging a position on her battlemap and relaying it through the system via her forearm controls.

“Received. I’ll have it out the bay doors inside of 10 minutes.”

“Status on the jumpships?”

“Internal sabotage on the remaining two was followed by a simultaneous surrender. I think they preferred blowing up their key systems rather than us doing it randomly and venting their atmosphere. Removal of the prisoners is slated to begin in a couple of hours, or as soon as the Calavari get the necessary transports up here.”

“Good. Once that’s done see to the recovery of our people and the armor, especially mine. This set is getting banged up pretty good.”

“Can I assume there’s tech in your armor that you’d prefer our allies not get their hands on?”

“Some small truth in that, but mainly I want all bodies accounted for.”

“Understood,” Wilkinson said in her helmet as the grey block of a corvette slid overtop the city buildings like a monolith.

“Carry on,” she said, ending the conversation as the mass of warship fired down into the city twice, then just floated silently in position.

“Enemy contact terminated,” the remote pilot said. “We don’t detect any others on sensors. Is there anything else you’d like us to hit, Archon?”

“Negative, that was the last one. Continue with your previous mission.”

“Copy that,” he said a few seconds before the ship began moving forward, gaining both altitude and speed as it raced west over the city then turned more to the north as it passed the outskirts, gradually shrinking to a dot on the horizon.

Morgan turned her attention back to the infantry staging area and saw that one group had already deployed, with the others seemingly frantic over the appearance of the warship. When the second group began to move out Morgan jumped up onto her feet, shaking out a bit of numbness in her ankles, and ran along the wall to the right before cutting back and heading across the park.

She might not have much ammunition left, but she was determined to get the jump on them from behind and use what she had to disrupt the attack on the Calavari lines. Within an hour or so she’d have plenty more to use, so no point in conserving now.

By the middle of her third day on the planet Morgan and the Calavari surrounded and slaughtered what was left of the Nestafar infantry in what had been their staging area in the southwestern section of the city. Numerous individuals scattered, both along the ground and into the sky, which the Calavari quickly pursued, along with organizing cleanup teams to sweep the city looking for others. Morgan passed on that duty and milled about the city, conferring with the Calavari leaders, both military and civilian, and gathering what information she could on the city and what else they knew about the ongoing war spreading across the planet as she waited for pickup.

The Calavari were more than grateful, as well as curious as to who this alien was and how it had killed so many of the enemy. By now her armor was pot marked and her mostly empty pack had two separate holes in it. She took a bit of her spare time to roam around, consuming the rations and ambrosia that hadn’t been roasted by the plasma impacts, and taking a moment to soak in the war torn landscape, mindful that not all of the fighting was over.

She let the past day’s events roll through her mind, then the debacle on the jumpship resurfaced and she didn’t push it away, trying instead to let the Calavari city give her some new perspective as she waited impatiently for her dropship to arrive.

Morgan admitted to herself that the Calavari should have known more about the Nestafar than she did, given that they were long-time enemies, and that the gravity trap had surprised them as much as her. Apparently they didn’t have much experience taking Nestafar jumpships or maybe this one was special in some way. Now that it had surrendered she’d get a chance to send her techs over and find out what had happened, notably how they’d been able to produce that much gravity, of which she was still curious.

Part of her didn’t like losing, and never would, but the part that felt responsible for the Calavari being there at her request started to die out. Looking out over the city, it was clear that this war was much bigger than one battle, whether here or on the jumpship, and their allies were fighting the Nestafar anywhere and everywhere they could. They’d been suckered into a trap, but they wouldn’t be able to pull it twice. With both Star Force and the Calavari aware of the danger and spreading the information out to every ship and command in the system, including the Kvash, any future boarding efforts would be wary of the risk and plan accordingly…or just blow the ships up and not worry about it.

Star Force wouldn’t do that, but she wouldn’t put it past the others in the Alliance. Part of her didn’t blame them, given that they shouldn’t be concerned about the wellbeing of those that were trying to kill them, but neither she nor the Archons could ever think that way. When they were in survival mode, for sure, they lashed out and did what it took to survive…but the moment when they had the upper hand and time to think they had to consider the enemy as a collection of individuals and not just a mindless hoard of blood thirsty enemies.

How many of them, after all, got a chance to decide whether or not they’d fight in this war? Morgan didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to judge all the Nestafar based on assumptions, so when she had the option she’d keep as many of them alive as possible…she just needed to be more careful that that decision didn’t come back to bite her again like it recently had.

Live and learn…and because of her some of the Nestafar would have that chance. Would they use it? That she couldn’t say, and probably would never find out, but she was one of the good guys and she was going to give them that chance, whether they deserved it or not.

She didn’t like, and resisted, the idea that they’d been traded for the lives of the Archons. That was stupid. She’d never sacrifice anyone in a trade of lives, especially not her brothers and sisters. They’d been killed in combat, losing a challenge that she alone had barely survived…and unlike their training, this was one challenge you didn’t get a second chance at.

Morgan still didn’t know how she’d made it, and her mind kept going back to the weight of the gravity crushing her into the floor and the blurry memories of her getting through the shield. Her pistol shouldn’t have been powerful enough to bring it down, not on its own, and she honestly had no idea what she had shot to kill the gravity field…that more than anything gnawed at her. The idea that she was alive, not because she’d won, but because she’d gotten insanely lucky.

Part of her wanted to say that was bad news for the enemy, because they should have killed her when they had the chance, but she honestly didn’t like feeling out of control. The idea of being stuck in a situation where death was certain and you didn’t even have a small chance of victory, or even a means to fight back, unnerved her considerably. A one in a billion shot was workable. No chance…well, that was something her mind simply didn’t want to acknowledge existed…yet she’d faced it head on…and survived?

Such logic loops kept her occupied until her dropship finally arrived. Without any fanfare or goodbyes she slipped aboard and left the city behind, not knowing how long it would be before the Nestafar returned, but for the moment it was still in Calavari hands.

Mission accomplished.

When she got back onboard the Red Ranger she commed Wilkinson and got an update on recent events, as well as telling him she’d be unavailable for the indefinite future. He said he’d forward any necessary information through the computer logs and keep her incommunicado as long as she wished, then the Archon disappeared into the sanctum for a brief run outside her armor, a series of agility drills, and the object-toting lifting challenges that made up her core workouts…along with a hefty dose of stretching that her body had sorely missed after 3 days on the planet.

All of which she did pushing back the fatigue of having almost no sleep during the fighting. She was running high on ambrosia, enough to carry a stiff headache, but the workouts helped to center her and get her back into the rhythmic training mode of an Archon.

Morgan, soaked in blissful sweat and glad no one was around to smell her, downed two bottles of water and multiple prepackaged foodstuffs from the sanctum kitchen, foregoing the hot meals in the ship’s cafeteria. She guestimated how much additional ambrosia to ingest, then finished up her plateful of pastries and what Paul jokingly referred to as ‘Jedi rations’ and then headed herself over to the shower in one of the quarters, stripped down for a lengthy scrubbing session, toweled off, then slipped into bed nude and fell asleep a few seconds after her head hit the pillow.

A few minutes later, in a dream-like haze, she felt her body prickle with goose bumps, but locked into a motionless state she didn’t move beneath the covers…however the covers did as the ripple of tingly energy dissipated, causing fluttery waves that briefly lifted the material up off her body an inch or two.

Four more times it would happen during the course of her sleep, none of which she would remember upon waking.

4

Over the next two days Morgan spent her time isolated within the sanctum, a mixture of training, sleep, and introspection…as most days were for her. In her downtime she monitored the progress of the capture of the two remaining Nestafar jumpships, noted the arrival of a Kvash cruiser to offload their guests onto as it assisted with the repairs to the gigantic battleship, and kept up to date with the surface activity on Sri’ka and the other 6 inhabited planets in the system, all of which were under some sort of duress.

After the first day requests started coming in from different Calavari commanders, asking if Star Force could provide one or more of their super soldiers to reinforce their own troops…some for offensive action, others for defensive holds such as she had helped orchestrate earlier. Word seemed to spread quickly, because by the end of the second day the list had grown exponentially and Morgan knew she had to respond to at least some of them. While their mission in the system had originally been naval-only in scope, she couldn’t just sit up inside a warship while their allies fought tooth and nail for survival on the ground.

She was a commando, first and foremost, and needed to get in the fight in a way that mattered. She might have been the only Archon left in the strikeforce, but the warship Captains were more than capable of handling the naval affairs alone if need be, even though she admitted that the fleet would be better off if she was around to direct the battles if and when they resumed. So far the Nestafar fleet had kept well clear of lower orbit, but continued to lurk around the higher zones…those that hadn’t outright left the planetary microsystem and strengthened the fleets assaulting the other Calavari planets.

Morgan knew they needed to hit at least one of them before they left the system, but she also didn’t want to leave with only a few drone warships remaining. Repairs were continuing on several damaged in the preliminary fighting, while the wreckage of the others was being harvested and recycled as much as possible to boost the raw materials carried in storage. Even if she got all those damaged ships repaired it was going to be a slug fest with all the other Nestafar ships in the system, and she was half expecting them to show up on her doorstep at any time now looking for revenge.

But the tactical training her mind had absorbed told her otherwise. If the Nestafar pulled ships away from their current deployments they’d leave openings that the Calavari and Kvash fleets could exploit. Even now both sides were dug in defending key installations in orbit and trying to interfere with each other’s reinforcement efforts on the ground. 2 of the 7 planets were nominally held by the Nestafar, with the other 5 still largely in Calavari hands. Sri’ka counted amongst the 5, and had been providing troops and resources to armies seeking to reclaim a larger foothold on the embattled worlds before the recent Nestafar jumpship drop.

Those troops and walkers deployed had put Sri’ka up for grabs, albeit after a very long campaign, for the planet was huge, but the point was Sri’ka was no longer bolstering the other worlds and had become heavily contended itself. This took pressure off the Nestafar in other locations throughout the system, and if they came hunting Morgan’s fleet they’d forfeit that advantage…which the keen strategist would never do.

Alien minds, though, the trailblazer reminded herself, did not always see ‘logic’ the same way, which was probably why she had the feeling the Nestafar were going to jump them at any time now.

As she sat and scrolled down through the list of new requests one jumped out at her…timestamped 2 minutes ago. A series of Calavari building/cities in the mountains were being overrun, with the Calavari requesting any and all units in the area to assist…nothing specific about Star Force in there, so it must have gone out on all Alliance channels in order to have become imbedded in the data stream.

Morgan followed a link to the coordinates, as well as the most recent intelligence reports that the Red Ranger’s crew were gathering from all sources in the system, cataloging the ongoing activity into a rolling brief for the Captain and her to monitor as they chose…as well as for filing purposes, documenting the war for further analysis of enemy tactics at a later date.

According to the data, which was being updated every few seconds, there was a cluster of 8 cities in various valleys interconnected by tunnels and walkways over and through the mountains separating them. Each city was a massive structure, similar in the way they had constructed the Alliance base on Daka, and housed millions of civilians that had nowhere to evacuate to other than the desolate mountain terrain that consisted of little more than dusty rocks and patches of snow.

Growing more interested by the moment, Morgan typed in an active request for live surveillance data…with one of the drone warships in orbit being nearby enough to pull line of sight sensor recordings on the location. Fortunately there was little cloud cover on the planet and the location was currently on the day side, for Morgan got back a morphable image prompt on her command screen, linked through to the random set of quarters in the sanctum that she was currently bunking in.

She adjusted the map and had it zoom in on one of the cities tagged with the highest level of enemy activity, with the drone warship responding and adjusting its telescopic sensors accordingly. An image of what looked like a giant orange rose half buried in between two mountain ridges filled the screen. Zooming in further the top of the rose became elevated rings of walkways, landing pads, and massive walls, all of which tiered around a central dome that was opaque.

Asking the cameras to move in further, Morgan enlarged the rings, seeing dozens of tiny specs spread out on them…then realized that those specs were protomechs and fully grasped the size of the facility. A quick move around the live streaming map and she tagged the landing zones that held Nestafar dropships, some of which already had ID tags assigned as the Red Ranger’s crew processed the tactical applications.

Morgan looked around, seeing a chaotic mess taking place and almost no Calavari resistance. Zooming back out she chose another city, working her way through the other 7 in turn and seeing that not all of them had yet come under heavy attack. Two of them hadn’t been touched, as far as visuals could confirm, but she did see a single fighter landing on one of the decks and being pulled underneath a protective overhang. She caught a glimpse of battle damage and sent a request over to the analyzers to give her numbers of enemy and allied starfighters in the area.

2 minutes and 15 seconds later she got a tally sheet back.

0 Nestafar/14 Calavari

That meant the Alliance had air superiority, weak as it was…which meant Star Force also had an opportunity to act.

Morgan activated her earpiece as she darted out of the quarters and ran over to the sanctum’s armory. “Captain, I want every available dropship from all four warships prepped for civilian evacuation and I want Knight guards accompanying them to protect the LZ…and have them equipped with firearms, otherwise the Nestafar will fly up out of reach and pick them to pieces.”

“Single evacuation or round trip?” Wilkinson asked, already working through the logistical possibilities.

“There are millions of Calavari that need rescued, so the shorter the trip the better. See if you can find a safe location nearby on planet, if not we’ll have to make one and have the Calavari come pick up their people later. Up and down from orbit will take too long.”

“Where are we talking about?”

“City complex in the mountains under Nestafar assault. The Calavari have air superiority but they’re getting overrun on the ground and the civilians are getting slaughtered. I know we can’t save them all, but I want to get as many out as we can.”

“I need coordinates.”

“Sorry, I’m on the move here. Check the request feed, group of eight cities in the southern hemisphere’s primary mountain range, requesting any and all Alliance assistance. Not a specific Star Force request.”

“Timestamp?”

“About 12 minutes ago.”

The Captain was silent for several lengths of hallway then came back on just as Morgan was getting to the armory doors.

“I found it. Which of the eight did you want the evac to target?”

“Any aside from the one getting hit the hardest,” she said, walking into the armory and over to her personal storage lockers and the three sets of unscathed ranger armor tailored to fit her dimensions exactly. She pulled the boot section of one of them out and slid it on over her thin shoe in a quick and well-practiced choreography.

“Where will you be going?” he asked, anticipating her answer.

“Where the heaviest fighting is. I’ll thin their numbers as much as I can, just keep the dropships running as long as possible and make sure the Knights stay with them. They’re coming to protect our assets, not battle the enemy.”

“Understood. I’ll have one ready to go as soon as you can get to the hangar.”

On approach to the city swarming with Nestafar, Morgan had the pilot contact the Valeries in the area and organize a little diversion to give the eagle a patch of rooftop all to itself. The window of opportunity didn’t last long and the dropship’s shields took a diffuse, long range plasma hit from a protomech, but it did drop down close enough to the pad for Morgan to jump out before rocketing off back into the air and across the mountains to one of the other cities where it would start to pick up evacuees and ferry them off to wherever Wilkinson had arranged.

That wasn’t her concern now, killing Nestafar and keeping them from transitioning over to the other cities en mass was…so she planned to make herself as big of a nuisance as possible. To that end, as soon as she was down on the pad she repositioned over to the edge and pulled out the rocket launcher from her armor’s rack, then disconnected her pack entirely and set it beside her, popping open the top so she could reach in for the extra rockets more easily.

There wasn’t any infantry in her exact spot, but there were a few buzzing around in the sky, keeping watch or passing to and fro over the killing fields that showed dozens of dead Calavari lying about…and she suspected the interior of the city was going to look much worse.

Morgan pulled the launcher to her shoulder and sighted in the protomech that had hit the dropship, tagging it with a targeting laser and firing off the round. She held the bead on the chest of the stubby, walking machine as it moved until the streak of rocket exhaust stretched all the way to the target and a concussive explosion occurred.

The trailblazer didn’t wait to see what happened past detonation, busy pulling out another concussive round and snap loading it into place. She twisted to the left about 20 degrees and targeted another a bit further away, fired, then picked up a plasma round and loaded it in. That she deposited into the side of a Nestafar transport three times further away than the protomechs but still in the same direction. It took an agonizingly long time for it to streak over to the target, but when it did a huge blue plume of plasma materialized and ate into the unshielded hull as it sat on the pad.

Morgan loaded and fired off her last remaining rocket, also a plasma variety, at another transport then ditched the launcher and picked up her pack, closing the flap and reattaching it to the back of her armor with a few quick clicks. She pulled her plasma rifle into hand and took off running as sounds of heavy footfalls from the opposite direction started to get painfully loud.

She ducked close to the wall blocking the view of the higher tier that connected via a sweeping turn of an ascension ramp that the protomech was coming down, then she darted off right and ran to the side of the ribbon-like walkway assembly and found a stairway over the side and down into the gap between itself and a higher inset ribbon that several specs of infantry were flying over…and coming down towards her position, preceded by several badly aimed red plasma blasts.

Morgan ran down the exterior catwalk made of some form of decorative concrete in the red/orange motif that seemed to dominate most Calavari architecture and ducked inside the city, removing herself from the firing lines of the protomechs and the flying infantry.

The hallways were larger than Star Force standard, given the size of the occupants, but she didn’t have much time to consider the view as the sound of weaponsfire drifted her way almost immediately upon entry. She followed it through the curvy hallways, spotting the occasional corpse, until the labyrinth opened up into a promenade that seemed to mimic the gradual curve of the surface rings.

There were bodies everywhere, with a pair of Nestafar flying low to the ground to keep their wings clear of the ornamented ceiling. Morgan snapped off a rifle shot at one, clipping a wing and sending it screaming in pain down to the ground where it landed on top a pile of the bulbous Calavari blood-slicked in deep orange.

Morgan ignored it and shot the other one, peppering it with three shots at distance to make sure she connected with either the torso or head, then as it fell she ran forwards, eyes on the other, and shot it dead about halfway across the gap. She took a moment to look around, still hearing weaponsfire but seeing none. She did a complete visual sweep in a slow, agile spin, then picked her best guess as to where the current fighting was going on and jumped her away across the bodies, noting very few Nestafar among them.

All along the perimeter of the promenade there were compartments, most of which had their doors open. She assumed the Nestafar had searched through them all, killing any Calavari they’d come across. Part of her wanted to check the closed ones, seeing if there were any survivors inside but she knew it would be a waste of time. Even if they were still alive she couldn’t get them out of here. In truth, the Calavari in this city were as good as dead…she was here with the sole purpose of killing Nestafar and buying time for Star Force and whatever Calavari transports were available to evacuate the other city/buildings.

She knew they wouldn’t get them all out and she didn’t want to guess at the percentage, but she knew it would be low. Had they been Human they could have squeezed more people into each dropship, but the Calavari’s larger size was going to diminish the amounts they could carry per trip.

Then again, as Morgan ran towards battle, she noticed a large number of smaller Calavari amongst the dead, guessing that they were their females until she got a clear view of one of their heads and confirmed the theory. That, at least, would increase the numbers of potential evacuees…as well as meaning those still left alive in the city wouldn’t be as much use in hand to hand combat if a large number of them were female. Even without weapons, the males were still dangerous to the Nestafar, especially indoors.

She didn’t know who was left alive, but someone was shooting it out ahead because she heard the varying pitches of both the Nestafar and Calavari plasma weapons. Not their rifles, but one of the smaller, single hand pistols that some of their techs and support personnel carried.

Morgan followed the sounds down another staircase and off the promenade, then wound her way back down underneath it, coming up behind several dozen Nestafar on the ground, wings tucked, and taking cover behind various pieces of what looked like sculptures in some sort of indoor park laced with trees and other greenery.

The Archon didn’t waste time and started blasting away at their backs, taking three down before the others even noticed her presence. The rest didn’t last long, some of which were hit by the hidden Calavari as they turned around and rose up to fire on Morgan as she dashed back and forth evasively, while methodically downing the enemy with precision chest and head shots.

“Clear,” she announced when the last of them was down, then she walked out into the space between where the two groups were fighting, which was already clogged with bodies, suggesting that this wasn’t the first firefight to take place in this location.

“Our thanks,” a Calavari male said as he came out from behind a tree, behind which a pair of females was cowering down in the crook of a wall segment. Elsewhere a few more armed males came out of cover, followed by even more unarmed ones, several of which were oozing their bizarre orange blood.  “Are you…Human?”

“Rescue?” another one asked eagerly.

“Human yes, rescue no,” Morgan said, walking through the lot and spying an exit out the other side. “I’m here to kill as many of them as I can while we evacuate the other cities. This one is lost.”

“How many of you are there? Can we not evacuate from your landing zone?”

“Just me,” Morgan said, not wanting to waste time but not wanting to abandon them without explaining herself. “Find some place to hide and hope they don’t find you. I’ll distract them as much as I can.”

“How are you getting out?” one of them asked as she walked past them, glad that she didn’t have to look them in the eye with her helmet in place.

“I’m fighting my way out,” she said, disappearing out the doorway.

5

March 23, 2405

Brokal System

Sri’ka

Wilkinson was waiting in the hangar bay when Morgan’s dropship arrived, bringing her back from her 5th solo mission on Sri’ka. When the boarding ramp lowered and she walked out he was taken aback at how much damage her armor had. The formerly green plates were covered in black char from plasma strikes and some impact points were showing the softer blue inner armor ballistic gel layer seeping through. Her helmet also had a nasty melt spot on the left side, but by her casual movements as the Archon walked over to him he didn’t think she’d been injured.

“You look like hell,” he offered, falling into step beside her as she walked towards the inner doors.

Morgan pulled off her helmet and flipped her ponytail loose. “Busy couple of days.”

“The O’Neill’s raid was a success. I haven’t seen the telemetry data yet, but apparently they got the jumpship on the first try.”

The trailblazer glanced at him. “Pleasant news. What’s their current status?”

“Holding their stellar orbit for the moment. They’ve disabled the ship’s gravity drives, so it isn’t going anywhere.”

“What’s the range of the Calavari transports?” Morgan asked as they transitioned out of the bay and into the warship’s hallways.

“I just made an inquiry…seems they’re capable of interplanetary travel. The Calavari also extend their thanks for your recent efforts.”

“Has the jumpship surrendered?”

“Not as of yet. Captain Morai is applying the necessary pressure. The Kvash are also requesting our assistance with the fleet orbiting Dar’ma.”

“What are we looking at?” Morgan asked, trying to remember the last intel reports from the 2nd planet in the star system.

“They want to move a jumpship into orbit and open up a ground campaign, but they said they can only spare four cruisers as escort. There are currently 56 Nestafar vessels in low orbit, with another pocket of 23 stationed around one of the moons…though it won’t take much to redeploy their larger fleets elsewhere if they want to counter the counter invasion.”

“Did they get another jumpship in system?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“Where’s it right now?”

“Sitting next to a battleship around Arn’nat.”

“Why not deploy the troops there?”

“They said the ground situation is improving and it’s time to push harder into other areas before the Nestafar get reinforced.”

“They’ll get reinforced if we don’t catch the rest of their jumpships,” Morgan said, stopping at an intersection that led over to the sanctum. So far the others that had escaped their initial ambush had been scattered across the system, staying well away from any of the planets. The Optimus Prime and O’Neill had been sent out to try and intercept them after the Kvash had provided tracking data on their locations, but given their jumping capability Morgan knew it was going to be difficult to catch and surround them…which was why she was also interested in seeing how Captain Morai had pulled off the capture.

“I’d prefer to go hunting smaller groupings of the enemy’s starships than another massed assault,” Wilkinson added. “Trim down their numbers as much as we can before we leave.”

“I take it none have come sniffing close enough to get a good shot at?”

“Unfortunately no. And we didn’t bring along enough smaller ships to do much chasing…and those that can are currently aiding ground ops.”

“What’s our fuel situation?”

“We’ve got a week, maybe two before we have to start skimping.”

“Recommendations?”

“Pick a major target and knock it flat on our way out the door.”

“Like their command ship?”

“I wish, but they’ve got enough escorts around it that we’re not going to touch it…at least, not without losing a significant portion of our fleet.”

“Not an option there.”

“Are you going back down again?”

“Still have a waiting list?”

“A continually growing one.”

“I would, but I’m out of armor replacements. I can use the standard models, but they don’t fit as well…and I don’t want to burn up all the ranger armor in case I need to use it again before we head back home.”

Wilkinson glanced at her pot marked chest. “I assume that’s not repairable?”

“Use and lose…and last I checked Jason hadn’t got the shielded version out of prototype stage.”

“I can see how that would be a major advantage.”

Morgan shook her head. “It’s too bulky, not to mention heavy. Until we trim the tech down it’s not worth the loss of agility. Better to stick with portable shield units for tactical ops.”

“Do we have any of those onboard?”

“A few, but I haven’t had a need for them.”

Wilkinson held up a hand, then pointed to his ear as he received a transmission over his comm. Morgan waited through the long pause, then began to wonder what was up when the Captain wasn’t speaking back.

“Copy that,” he acknowledged, then looked at Morgan. “A Hycre jumpship has just arrived in orbit, carrying a small warfleet. They have intelligence suggesting the Nestafar are doubling down and sending a large portion of their neighboring forces to this system. The Alliance wants a meeting between all races involved, in person, on Sri’ka as soon as representatives can arrive, which the Kvash say will take them at least a day to organize. They want to know how soon we can attend?”

Morgan frowned. “Why in person?”

“I don’t know.”

The Archon sighed. “If the Kvash can make it in a day so can I, but if I’m going to be standing around and talking for the majority of a day I’m going to get a full workout plus in before I go down there. Make the arrangements…and let me know if the Hycre have any data packages for us,” she said as an afterthought. Their ships had the habit of carrying Star Force messages, as well as those of the other races, with them due to their superior jump speed.

Wilkinson nodded and they split, him going to the bridge and Morgan heading over to the sanctum doors. When she got there she had a choice of options for entry, but hesitated before issuing the verbal code that would give her access. She hadn’t been back to her personal quarters in more than two weeks and made the snap decision to head over there, leaving the locked doors as they were and heading towards the nearest stairwell, feeling like walking rather than taking a lift.

A lot of things played through her mind on the way…the recent fighting at a Calavari factory that produced Valeries that the Nestafar had been keen on capturing, the changing players in the seemingly never-ending game for control of the system, her full bladder that needed emptying soon, a burn spot on her right inner elbow where her armor had been breached, and thoughts of how Jason and the others were doing establishing their foothold against the lizards.

This was a common routine now post-mission. The way she’d been fighting the Nestafar was run and gun, don’t stop to blink let alone think…and now her mind was catching up on events as she stumbled her way into a walking coma moving through the Red Ranger’s decks.

By the time she got back to her quarters and entered the keypad entry code she was working on an idea for a new agility training challenge when one of the unarmored Knights walked by, staring down at her battle-scarred armor.

“You know,” he said casually as he paused behind her, “we’re more than eager to take the fight to the enemy rather than sitting around on the ship all day. If you brought a couple of us along next time you might not end up with so much armor damage.”

Morgan stopped halfway in and glanced back at him. “I assume you’re still training while ‘sitting around?’”

The Knight frowned. “Of course.”

“And how are you rated for fighting an enemy out of arms’ reach? The Nestafar mostly fly high and fire down on you, avoiding melee.”

“My point was, a few of us could cover for you while you mowed them down. Archons have a habit of hiding behind Knight shields quite well.”

“Not this one. You guys are too slow to keep up with me, and I shake off far more shots through agility than I’d gain from your mobile cover.”

He crossed his bulky arms, each the thickness of her neck, over his chest, frowning. “There has to be some way we can be of use to you…aside from guarding dropships.”

“Until we get back with the rest of the fleet I don’t see how…besides, I’m out of fresh armor, so I’m not going back out, but if you’d like a field trip I can take an escort to an Alliance summit meeting in a day or so.”

“I’ll take you up on that. How many do you want?”

“Just you will do.”

“Armor or casual?”

Morgan chewed on her lower lip as she considered. “I’m not sure where it is, and I’d hate to be caught off guard without armor, so full gear unless I tell you otherwise.”

The Knight nodded and walked on. “I’ll be ready when you call.”

Morgan let him get a step past then moved inside her quarters and shut the door, then she began peeling off her armor piece by piece and dropping it on the floor on her way to the restroom. Another chance encounter with a mirror freaked her out, again, at seeing her unnatural eyes, and she eventually found her way over to the computer terminal and sat down, pulling off her casual shoes and socks that she’d been wearing underneath her armor for the past 2 days. On impulse she smelled one of the socks, wrinkling her nose and tossing it aside as she crossed her ankles underneath the chair and flexed her little toes a few times, glad to let her feet breathe.

Morgan ignored the faint scent of perspiration coming from her white with green stripe Archon uniform that had been sweated in and dried so many times that it now felt like a second, smelly skin while she accessed the external sensors to see what the Hycre had brought to the party. Having them here made her feel better, given how they were much more navally dominant than Star Force and she was having mixed feelings about leaving the system, and Sri’ka in particular, after having pried the enemy loose from orbit.

When the image of their jumpship came onscreen she felt an immediate sense of pride at having them for allies. The Carrier-class jumpship was larger than any Star Force had even dreamed of building, resembling a hollowed out whale some 52 kilometers in length with a fat midsection. Inside it was a multitude of empty racks, now that the warships it had carried were spread out in a defensive halo around the precious starship.

She noted from the attached analysis logs that several groups of two and three ships each had already departed for other planets in the system to assist with operations there…and hopefully to hunt down stray Nestafar warships, given that the Hycre were especially good at hunter/killer deployments…far better than her fleet was, anyway.

Still, as she took into account all the various groups and added them to the defensive halo she found Wilkinson’s remark about a ‘small’ warfleet to have been accurate. There was less than a third of the number of ships the massive carrier was capable of carrying…a testimony to the ongoing war and the lack of available warships to meet every threat. Which was probably why the Hycre had asked her to dispatch some of her ships to the system. The fact that they’d scrapped together a fleet to bring here after the fact was not a good sign as for things to come from the Nestafar.

Morgan knew the system was important, but if there was an even larger confrontation coming this way she’d prefer to be on the outskirts of it, picking at the enemy’s weak flank than squarely in the middle…which Sri’ka was likely to become.

The Hycre obviously figured they had a few days at least, so Morgan knew their presence nearby would prevent anything other than a suicidal assault by the Nestafar coming into low orbit and she could put the puzzle of the Brokal System aside for the moment, so she got up out of the chair and pulled off her stinky uniform, tossing it alongside her busted up armor and weapons as she headed for the shower tube.

Sinking into the perpetually prepared warm, soapy water she felt the burn on her right arm sting, eliciting a reflexive jerk of her elbow that sent her entire arm tingling with energy.

The next thing she knew a blast of water shot up into her face, as well as out the still open shower top and into her quarters. She froze up, blinking away the water in her eyes as she tried to mentally track down where that had come from.

“What the hell?” she asked, leaning back against the curved glass and feeling a wad of hair smash behind her head. She reached back and pulled out the ponytail tie she’d forgotten and tossed it up and out of the shower tube distractedly as she was staring down at her right arm, trying to playback in mind’s eye what had just happened.

“The phantom tingle strikes again,” she said, looking at the water rivulets running down the side of the clear window and into the shoulder-height waterline. “That’s a hell of a lot more powerful…and definitely not airbending.”

Morgan tried to summon up the sensation again, but couldn’t get more than a few goose bumps that wouldn’t discharge…making her wonder if they were actually just goose bumps this time.

“That’s gotta be some type of concussive discharge,” she speculated before bending her knees and slowly dunking her head underneath the water. She stayed submerged and reached up to the shower controls, activating the jet-like scrubbers and relishing the mild massaging sensations running up and down her body, including her face, peeling off layers of sweat and sticky grime.

As the seconds ticked by, with Morgan holding her breath and staying submerged, the jets and the air bubbles they produced worked their way up the Archon’s nude form, tickling her skin and summoning up a light cascade of the tingles in multiple spots, tickling her almost into twitchiness, but she forced herself to hold still and relax, letting the sensation build so she could have another chance to probe it. Feeling like a magical, fizzy fountain inside of her that was flowing outward through her various extremities, some of which was bordering on erotic, Morgan gently nudged the sensation forward, letting it soak into her body.

Then something happened too fast for her to remember. The next thing she knew the glass cracked and the water she was suspended in dragged her out with it, tipping her over on her right side and landing on the floor of her quarters…with several shards of glass in between her and the carpet cutting through her skin in an instant.

“Ah!” she screamed reflexively, as much from surprise as the pain. She lifted her head up and looked down at her long, naked body from shoulders to feet that led back to the base of the broken shower tube as the last bits of water flowed out, leaving a few inches in the base where the glass rim remained.

The trailblazer blinked twice, breathing heavily from the shock, as well as feeling a massive wave of fatigue rush over her…as if she’d just run an insanely hard 10k, uphill against Jace. She was so unnerved and vexed that a few tears broke loose, with the detached part of her mind almost laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.

She gave herself a few seconds to look around and calm down, then she winced as she rolled up onto her side and got her hand underneath her. Morgan raised her body up, balancing on hand and two feet, feeling the glass sticking to her skin…as well as several blood droplets forming. She spider-walked over to a clear spot of the carpeted floor, leaving a trail of dark red liquid behind her, then she stood up and began brushing off the sticky glass, having to pry out a few pieces that had gouged her fairly deep.

When she got it all out she just stood there, looking down at her arms and small breasts, down past her flat abs and thin, but muscular legs as bloody tendrils snaked their way down and around her ankles, mixing with the water ones streaming parallel from her long, drenched hair.

She didn’t say anything, still too shocked for even a pithy retort, and just stood there, bleeding, wondering what in the freaking galaxy was going on.

6

Morgan laid face down on the medical table, completely nude and not caring while the clothes she’d hastily thrown on for the walk down to the med bay lay in a bloody mess at the foot of the table as the medics applied more than a dozen healing patches to the lacerations covering her from shoulder blades down to a nasty one on her right achilles tendon.

“I’m sorry,” one of the medics apologized, “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Neither do I,” Morgan countered dryly as she stared down into the aqua-colored padding that doubled as a pillow. “I want a full body scan, anything and everything you’ve got and look for anomalous readings.”

“You said something about an energy discharge? Wouldn’t that be a technical issue?”

“I blew up the freaking shower from the inside out! It’s biological, not tech.”

“Any clue what precipitated the…incident?”

“Yes. Now scan me for anomalies.”

“Start with a blood sample,” one of the two medics patching her up suggested, given that she was still leaking the deep red fluid from a number of cuts that they hadn’t gotten to covering yet.

“Alright,” the other relented, still thoroughly confused but willing to humor the Archon. He walked out of the patient room, leaving Morgan to wait impatiently as the others kept applying octagonal bandages coated with a thin layer of regeneration fluid that would spur on her skin’s regrowth as well as keep the affected areas sealed from the air. To Morgan it felt like they were decorating her with stickers.

“How’s your head feeling?” the female medic asked.

“Tolerable,” Morgan answered as one of them started working on the cuts on her butt.

“You’ve probably lost a lot of blood on the way over here…are you close to blacking out?” she asked, knowing that Archons were well experienced with such things.

“No, just a little wonky,” she said as one of the medics’ hands slipped between her legs and pried them apart a bit to get the edge of one of the patches sealed tight over a long cut. The medic’s fingers tickled her unexpectedly and the goose bumps returned at the spot, then spread up her spine before discharging even as Morgan tried to hold them in.

Half the healing patches on her torso and upper legs flew off, with the others loosening and hanging on by the edge.

“What the hell?!” the female medic said in surprise.

“That’s what happened in the shower, only bigger,” Morgan said, twisting her legs off the bed and sitting up, abandoning the idea of treatment until she got some answers as to what this was.

“Whatever it was,” the male medic said, rubbing his hand, “I felt it. Like static electricity.”

Seeing that they were no longer patching her up, a fourth medic walked up with a stack of fresh clothes but Morgan waved him off, not wanting to ruin another set. “Later…just get me under a scanner. I need some idea of what’s going on.”

“Where do we start?” the female medtech asked.

“Nervous system,” Morgan said without hesitation as the other medic came back in with his hands full of three different scanners and a myriad of other equipment. He passed them off to the others then stepped up to Morgan and reached past her to the display panel above the head of the bed and synched the scanner to it.

“Lie down please.”

Morgan laid down face up and tried to relax, but inside she was frantic. She did not like her body malfunctioning like this.

The medic took the long wand and ran it down her body, following an inch or so above her smooth skin methodically like he was painting a canvas.

“Spread your arms and legs.”

Morgan did as instructed and he moved up and down each one twice, continually adding data to the scan forming in 3D on the screen.

“Flip over.”

Frustrated but wanting to get some answers Morgan obliged and the medic repeated the scan, taking his time and letting the equipment’s narrow range get as much data as possible. He finished off by taking the rod vertical and sweeping it up and down her arms and legs, then very slowly moving it around her head and neck, ‘painting’ her tissue there multiple times.

“Alright, you can sit up,” he told the Archon, who as typical of their kind didn’t seem to blink an eye at being fully naked in front of three men.

Morgan snapped upright and pulled her legs up underneath her, sitting cross-legged and staring up at the screen while her cuts continued to seep tendrils of blood that she was ignoring. The female medic stepped up and began pulling off the loose patches from her back and replacing them, trying to stem the blood loss the Archon was racking up.

Morgan collected her wet hair into her left hand and pulled it forward around her neck to get it out of the medic’s way. “Highlight the nervous system,” she prompted.

“This scanner won’t help much there,” the man said, reaching up to adjust the controls in another fashion. “Respiratory system checks out, circulatory system is obviously running low on blood, but within acceptable levels. Lose much more and we’ll need to get some artificial plasma in you.”

He changed screens again, taking the computer-generated scan of her body and altering the highlighted regions along with scrolls of numerical data and graphs along the sides.

“Musculature looks good, organs are functioning normally. Aside from the cuts in your skin nothing jumps out as odd.”

The other male medic shook his head and commented from behind the others as he handed the women new patches as she needed them. “No, I felt her discharge some sort of static field. Something had to generate it.”

“Do you have a faster scanner?” Morgan asked.

“Faster how?”

“Realtime.”

“This one was recording in realtime. The computer took the disparate scans and compiled the mockup.”

“Fine,” Morgan said, trying to be patient. “Do you have one that can scan my entire body at one time?”

“Depends what you’re scanning for,” the medic half answered. “Between these three we hit everything, but there are some full body units downstairs for more selective scans.”

“Archon,” the female tech asked politely. “Your legs?”

“What…oh, sure,” she said, half standing up on the bed and then stretching out backwards like she was laying down for a day at the beach, save for the bloody splotches covering her body. “I think I can do it again, but I don’t have complete control.”

“Don’t,” the other male suggested, “not yet. At least not until we get all the data possible. Excuse me,” he told the other medic, stepping past and syncing the palm device he was holding to the unit.

“Do what you have to, just find the damn glitch,” Morgan said, releasing her elbows from underneath her and laying flat on her face while the man touched a soft, slick nub to her back and began to massage her spine starting at her neck and running all the way down to her pelvis and back up again. He did that three times then pulled it off.

“Try not to flinch. I’m going to touch your leg again.”

“Alright,” she said, spreading them apart and trying to prepare herself so as not to get spooked. The nub appeared in mind’s eye just above her knee and then walked itself up and down her inner thigh. “What is that one scanning?”

“Nervous system through energy signatures. It also includes body heat.”

“What’s the range?”

“A handful of centimeters, but the scan is extremely sensitive,” he said, finishing with the leg. “I’m going to do the other now.”

Morgan waited through the gentle massage, then he proceeded to run the little device all over her skull. Halfway through her head started tingling and she felt another discharge coming on. She tried to spread it out through her body but it didn’t want to go below her neck. It just stayed there and built.

“Watch out,” she warned half a second before the medic’s hand jumped up in the air a few inches as an invisible forced gently knocked the device up and away from Morgan’s head.

“Son of a bitch,” the other medic said, not having seen the first incident with the patches. “Did she just do that?”

“I told you,” the trailblazer said, annoyed.

“It’s dead,” the other medic said, trying to turn the device back on without success. “Whatever you did, it’s got to be an energy discharge of some type.”

Morgan glanced at the other one, raising her eyebrows but not repeating the same words twice.

The female tech reached up to the topmost patches and made sure they were still secure with a quick pat down, then she pointed at the screen. “I think you’ve got your anomaly, Archon.”

Morgan pried her body up and sat back on her heels, looking at the screen and only understanding half of it, mostly related to a massive spike in biometrics.

“Translate please.”

“A black hole…medically speaking,” the other man said, putting a hand on her left shoulder and pointing to the screen with the other while tapping a finger on certain statistics. “Nervous system activity as a byproduct of some other activity, one that I’d guess we don’t have the equipment to analyze on this ship. Whatever it is, the electrical output increased to a level equivalent to a workout, meaning control signals going somewhere. You lying here doesn’t require much, so whatever just happened your brain definitely triggered it.”

“That’s something,” she said, looking down at her achilles tendon and prodding the patch covering the injury, noting that they’d applied an extra heavy version. It was stinging, even though it shouldn’t have been, given the numbing medication within the pads.

“Is something wrong?” the female medic asked, then corrected herself. “Something with the patch, I mean?”

Morgan closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to unblock her senses. Normally whenever she was in pain she held it in check and focused her mind around it, and doing the reverse was unusual enough that she was having some difficulty. After a few seconds and several muscle clenches/releases trying to reset her balance, she confirmed that she could feel at least a little bit of pain from all her cuts.

“I’m not totally sure, but I think whatever I did bled off the numbing effect, because I’m feeling the cuts again.”

The female medic sighed, then reached up to peel the top one off but Morgan gently caught her hand. “Leave them, I can barely feel it.”

“Do you want these now?” the medic in the back asked, still holding her fresh set of patient clothes.

“Wait till she washes off first,” the female medic suggested. “Or she’ll get those bloody too.”

Morgan eyed the man. “Tired of seeing me naked?”

“Honestly, I could stare at you all day without blinking, but I’d feel guilty if I didn’t at least offer you clothes.”

Morgan rolled her eyes and sighed. “Look all you want. When you get past 100 years old you won’t be so skittish about nudity. Everyone’s naked underneath their clothes anyway.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” he said, glancing her up and down appreciatively.

“Pain overrides pleasure,” she said, offering a bit of advice while the other two males were busy analyzing the sensor readings and the inoperable device. “And like it or not, most pleasure turns out to be an illusion. When you can wrap your mind around that you can turn it off at will. And you definitely shouldn’t be feeling guilt over anything sexual. Count this as your lucky day and enjoy it…so long as you can still see to your duties.”

He seemed to bristle at that. “I’ll admit you’re hot, but you’re not that hot.”

Morgan’s eyes narrowed, and she could tell he was faking. “Liar,” she said with a smirk as she turned back around. “Alright, you’ve had 30 seconds. What’s your prognosis?”

“You fried it,” the medic on her left said. “But maybe if you get a mechanical tech to analyze the damage they’ll be able to tell you what kind of discharge your body produced…though my guess would be other than electrical.”

The other medic frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“Concussion,” Morgan answered. “Electricity won’t move nonmagnetic objects.”

“True, but there could be a combined effect, so I wouldn’t rule out electrical damage to the device.”

“A fair point,” Morgan conceded, “but my gut agrees with him. This is something…new. Can you make anything out of the data we got before I fried the sensor?”

“Well, there was a considerable amount of activity in your brain at various points just before your overload. I suppose those could be significant, if we knew more about what was actually happening.”

“What points…and what do they control?”

“Physical attributes,” the medic on the left answered, studying them closely. “None are the pure mental processors. It’s like whatever this was lit up multiple functions with an abundance of control signals.”

“Or return signals,” the other countered. “There’s no way of telling which way the stimuli were flowing.”

“Odd word choice,” Morgan noted.

The medic on the right shook his head. “Not really. Stimuli can be sensory signals flowing to the brain, or they can be control signals ‘stimulating’ the organs to function. Action and reaction, regardless of the direction through the nervous system.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow. “I stand corrected. So best guess, are these spikes my brain creating the effect or responding to the production of it.”

“Hold on a moment,” the female medic said, pointing up at the screen from behind Morgan. “Take a look at her optical fibers on that pass.”

Morgan’s head came up a hair higher at hearing that, looking for the part of the scan she was referring to as it was rewound.

“Increased activity there,” the medic on the left said, running backwards and forwards as the scope-like vision of her head moved about, “but not the auditory.”

“Pigment change, huh?” Morgan asked, turning around to face the man holding her clothes…and the one who had diagnosed her eye color change to be cosmetic only.

“Did your vision alter?” the man on her right asked.

“No, it didn’t,” Morgan confessed, confused.

“Let’s try another scan…hopefully you won’t burn this one out,” he said, taking the other device from the female medic as she passed it over Morgan’s shoulder to him as the Archon stretched back out on the padded table. This one was neither wand nor nub, but looked for all the world like a sonic screwdriver and emitted a red tracking laser that stretched about a foot in length. The medic moved the glowing line up and down her body, covering every part as another diagram began to form on the screen from the tissue scan.

“What the hell?” both men said in sync, glancing at each other for a moment, then back at the screen.

“Clue me in please,” Morgan said, sitting up and looking at another computer-generated diagram of her body, zoomed in on a portion of her back.

“Do you see these dots?” the medic on the left asked, circling an area.

“Yes. What are they?”

“They’re not supposed to be there,” the other medic said. “They’re tiny…growths, for lack of a better word.”

“Oh my gosh,” the female said, and Morgan finally caught on to what they were looking at.

“They’re spread over my entire body, aren’t they?”

The man on the left nodded. “Not just below the surface either, they’re in the deep tissue, your bones, organs…but nowhere critical,” he noted, spinning the diagram around and around, zooming in and out at different angles to get a better lay of the thousands of tiny specs, each less than a tenth of a millimeter in width. “They don’t appear to be connected to anything.”

“Power generators?” the Archon guessed.

“I have no idea. You said this began after we used the alien device to repair your body?”

“Yes…well, wait. I might have had one incidence in the high gravity, but my senses were so screwed up I can’t be sure. I was feeling all kind of strange things, but before that nothing like this has ever happened, even remotely.”

“Have you used one of these regenerators before?”

“Yes.”

“Then maybe the alterations were made a long time ago and your system just got boosted by the wide scale damage and repair the gravity caused. Do you know anything about the source of the healing device?”

“A great deal, actually. It’s never been known to change a person, and they’ve been used thousands of times.”

“When was the last time she was scanned?” the medic on her right asked, glancing at the others.

“Last file is over 100 years old,” the one in the back answered. “I checked when she came in earlier.”

“That’s something, at least. Let’s run a comparison and see if we can narrow down some variables,” he said, finally looked back down at Morgan. “How about you hop in the shower next door, then let us run you through every scan we can manage before you go back to duty. Hopefully without frying the rest of our equipment. We’ll get a team analyzing it, but I have a feeling you’re going to need higher grade medtechs with a lot more toys to get to the bottom of this.”

“Alright,” Morgan said, sliding off the table. “Find out what you can, and copy the scans to my files. I want to have a look in my spare time. Bring those,” she said, pointing to the stack of clothes as she walked across the room a bandaged, bloody, nude mess, feeling a bit tipsy from either the loss of blood or low ambrosia…maybe even a bit of both.

7

March 25, 2405

Brokal System

Sri’ka

Morgan studied her medical sensor data for several hours the next day, but neither her nor the medics could make anything of the tiny growths, the surge in her nervous system, or the change in her eye color…let alone the energy fields she was producing. The cuts on her back, butt, and legs had healed over within 24 hours, leaving her with just the nasty gash on her achilles tendon, but even that was fading quickly with the combination of a healing patch and the ambrosia coursing through her system.

That was one discovery she’d made that Morgan had kept to herself. Ever since she started having these episodes her body started craving more ambrosia, as if the creation of the energy was being fueled by it…or, probably more accurately, it was a new type of workout for her body that it was painfully inefficient at. Her dosage level had increased 40% and she was keeping it just nipping at headache threshold, the Archon version of a full dose, as she got half a day’s workout in.

There were no incidents during her training, and only a couple of little tingles afterward that she managed to suppress…proud that she was making a least some progress in being able to control whatever this was. She would have preferred to stay in the sanctum, away from everyone else and focus on centering herself and flushing out these instabilities…as well as seeing if she could harness them to her advantage. If it came from the Zen’zat then it had to have combat applications, and those interested her greatly.

But time wasn’t on her side. The Kvash representative had finally arrived at Sri’ka, meaning it was time for her to head down to the surface for their little summit meeting to discuss strategy in the wake of what looked to be a major Nestafar offensive, so she found herself stuffed into a generic set of ranger armor, with the size adjustments calibrated as closely to her body shape as possible. It felt like wearing a bag of rocks compared to her custom armor that fit like a glove, but it was either this or wear one of her damaged sets.

She was riding down to the planet with no pack, only a rifle and pistol on her rack and a small ammo pouch attached above the small of her back and just below a stun stick she’d thrown in for good measure…light armament as far as she was used to carrying. Her escort sat across the personnel bay in the dropship in full white Knight armor, carrying a long stun sword and huge shield with him, though both warriors had their helmets off and lying on the seats beside them, waiting for the ship to land at the Calavari capitol city of Helmshirr.

The Nestafar hadn’t been so bold to even send a single fighter its way yet, preferring to engage the Calavari over smaller targets. Morgan had studied the defensive arrangements for the city previously, but as they approached she was getting some good visuals via the datapad relay of the defense towers ringing the perimeter. Originally designed to defend against lizard cruisers, they held naval-grade plasma cannons and had an individual power station attached to each one, along with individual shield generators making each a mini fort, complete with subsurface levels that held ground troops and fighters.

Inside that impressive defensive perimeter were buildings even more massive. Some were residential while others were shield generators…huge shield generators, capable of catching a starship falling from orbit. They didn’t extend all the way to the ground, rather they formed a massive umbrella high above the city that covered everything out to the defense towers, doubling up on their protection and making orbital bombardment or kamikaze runs difficult for an enemy to execute.

Beneath the primary shield there were smaller ones covering select sections of the city or individual buildings, but they were low to the cityscape, leaving an open air corridor between the two layers for their trademark fighters to be able to engage the enemy within. The entire design almost enticed the enemy to assault them with fighters, given that even a Nestafar ground assault would be laughable with the defense towers online. One of them could fry a super dragon with a few shots of its medium batteries.

Gone were the tulip-shaped buildings, replaced by much larger artworks…or at least that’s the best as Morgan could describe them. They had wide bases that narrowed to a thin waist, then bulged back out again numerous times up until they capped off with a ridged rooftop that held multiple landing pads, parks, and whatnot. She did notice that all of the bulges were aligned between the buildings, meaning there were levels where there was little building and a lot of airspace…which she guessed was also built for their fighters to zip around within.

As they came closer Morgan saw that it wasn’t just fighters moving around through those gaps, but enough flying vehicles to make Coruscant blush. They were jam packed into the various levels in a chaotic formation that saw curving lines of traffic going this way and that on a flat plain. She couldn’t pinpoint the flow patterns in the brief glimpse she got, but it was far more intricate than the typical grid layout of most Star Force cities.

Their dropship was met well beyond the city boundaries by a flight of Valeries and given priority clearance to land, allowing it to bypass the traffic flows of the higher levels and move straight through the ‘military’ airspace between cityscape and the primary shield. The Calavari fighters led the dropship to one of seven of the largest buildings in the city, each of which sat on the edge of a circle around the largest shield generator of them all, blocking all but a few access corridors into it with their bulk and representing with their design how important they knew the shield was to the survival of the city and their defense plans.

Paul would consider this a challenge, Morgan thought, given his penchant for orbital bombardment, as the dropship set down and she stowed the datapad away. Picking up her helmet she walked aft and caught the ramp as it just began to lower. The Knight took two large steps and caught up with her, hovering off her right shoulder as both came down into the planet’s atmosphere with their helmets on and alert for trouble, though expecting none in the Calavari stronghold.

An honor guard, some twenty men strong, was waiting for them bearing rifles and wearing red/gold garb, but no shield generators. They eyed the two Humans while holding positions, wanting to see the green legend in person, but also shocked by the size of the Knight. He stood as tall as the shorter Calavari and, though he only had two arms, looked stalky enough to have considerable strength beneath his armor. His shield was also equally impressive and large, standing as tall as Morgan and more than three times as wide with the Star Force emblem etched in gold on the otherwise pristine white shield.

“Welcome, Archon Morgan,” a differently dressed Calavari said that didn’t appear to be a soldier. He was also a few inches shorter than the Knight. “We are grateful you could join us.”

“I have duties to attend to, so this had better be important,” she said as he led the pair forward, with the honor guard pacing them on either side.

“I have heard stories of your recent ‘duties’ and the invaluable aid you have been providing us. Trust me when I say we do not wish to misuse your abilities, but there are grave concerns that all fleet commanders need to confer over.”

“We could have conferred over comms…why the face to face?”

“An emissary arrived with the Hycre, and they did not want to risk exposing them over comms.”

“Emissary from whom?”

“I will let them inform you of the details. I am not permitted to speak of it outside of council chambers.”

“Very well,” Morgan said as they entered a rooftop lift big enough to carry a couple of Valeries. Actually, that probably was what it was for.

“I can tell you that the meeting will take place in one and a half hours. There is an issue with the Kvash’s accommodations that we need to rectify first. You can either wait in quarters or in the summit chamber?”

“Chamber,” Morgan said without hesitation as the elevator bottomed out on a huge internal hangar with row upon row of Valeries, some of which the Archon spotted as the variants Mark had proposed them building.

The Calavari ambassador nodded approvingly, and led them along the wall to a smaller lift where all but two of the honor guard departed them. The five remaining individuals stuffed themselves into the transport chamber and were whisked down through the building to a restricted administration level.

Morgan noted that the Calavari walking around the halls were a mixture of males and females, with her Knight escort able to look down on almost all of them. She guessed the largest Calavari were more valuable as soldiers while the weaker took on support roles, unless there were also some size enhancements involved.

After a considerable amount of walking they entered a large room…and large was an understatement. There was a holoprojector in the center with a galaxy filling most of the airspace around which there were dozens of chambers that Morgan recognized as used for the races that couldn’t breathe the Calavari air. Three of them appeared to be in use, while two tables with chairs were set up on the floor, one of which was full of Calavari, all of whom stood when the Humans entered.

“Welcome, Star Force,” one of them said, standing far taller than the rest. “If it has not already been said, I offer our thanks for your assistance in the battles here. Your fleet has been invaluable in breaking the blockade of Sri’ka. I also thank you for the possession of the three jumpships. I promise we will make use of them, one way or another.”

“Actually, there are four,” Morgan pointed out. “Your troops are securing another one presently.”

The Calavari blinked. “I was not informed of this. Where did you get another one?”

“We tracked down one that had fled, and through some serious naval strategy managed to clip its wings before it could run again. Your transports have been offloading prisoners for more than a day now.”

The Calavari snapped the fingers on his lower right hand and pointed one of his attendants away to fetch information, then bowed his head towards Morgan. “You do not disappoint, Archon. Might I ask what your personal kill count is at?”

“I don’t have an accurate number, but ammunition wise I’ve used up more than 10,000 rounds, so I’d say a few thousand at least. Can you tell me what’s going on or do we have to wait for the others?”

“The Hycre are already here,” he said, pointing to a chamber with the windows obscured for privacy reasons. “The Kvash will be along shortly. It seems we heated their chamber too hot for their liking and it will take some time to cool. Our techs built it yesterday and including ample heating elements, but no cooling units…thus we’re having to let the thermals bleed off gradually.”

“Why not pull an atmospheric purge?”

“We have, it is the framework that is retaining the heat.”

“And the other chamber?”

The opaqueness of the Hycre window disappeared and the floating, mohawk-headed gasbags came into view, speaking through a computerized translator.

A GUEST WITH VALUABLE INFORMATION

“What race?” Morgan asked bluntly.

NUMERION

“You wouldn’t know them,” the Calavari answered before she could ask the question. “Neither do we, but they have knowledge of the Nestafar.”

“What kind of knowledge?”

WE SHARE SEVERAL WORLDS WITH THEM, a different computerized voice said as an individual moved up to the window of the other compartment.

Or more accurately, swam.

“Son of a bitch,” Morgan said, walking around the holoprojector and up to the window to get a better look, staring into the glowing eyes of a mermaid.

“What is wrong?” the Calavari asked, alarmed at Morgan’s sudden change in demeanor.

Morgan pointed at the window of the fish tank. “You and I need to have a talk…in private.”

CONCERNING WHAT MATTER?

Morgan shook her helmeted head. “In private only.”

The Calavari walked up behind Morgan, curious but respectful. “The adjacent chamber can be sealed off and a direct line of communication can be established between the two.”

“Secure or monitored?”

“Secured internally. You choose the access from inside. The controls are labeled in the trade language.”

“Are we still waiting on the Kvash?”

The lead Calavari glanced back at one of his subordinates and got a gestured response. “Yes, you have time.”

“Good,” Morgan said, a bit huffy. “Stand guard,” she told the Knight as she stepped into the empty chamber and sealed the clear door. Inside, the wall next to the tank became transparent while the outer one went opaque, shielding the other races from viewing the mermaid.

Morgan played around with the controls on her end, finally getting the front wall/door to likewise black out and the comm channel set to only transmit between the two chambers.

WHAT RACE ARE YOU?

“Human…but you may have an unpleasant reaction when I take my helmet off. I promise you we are not your enemy, Elarioni.”

The mermaid visibly squirmed, her green hair jumping up in front of her face as she jerked backwards. HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT NAME?

“You are hiding, I know, which was why I did not want to reveal your secret to the others. I have met one of your kind. She now lives with my people and is teaching us many things about underwater habitats and combat. We call her Ariel, and we rescued her from the Cajdital. They had claimed her as a trophy and kept her captive aboard one of their ships.”

The Elarioni swam close to the window separating air from water. WHY DO YOU CAUTION ME TO SEEING YOUR FACE? WHO ARE YOU?

In answer, Morgan unsealed and removed her helmet…but the Elarioni didn’t so much as blink.

I DO NOT KNOW YOUR RACE.

“I assume you remember the V’kit’no’sat?”

Again, she jerked…and this time Morgan could see panic in her eyes.

The Archon held up a calming hand. “Relax. They are our enemy as well, and we are also hiding from them. Our world was originally one of their colonies, abandoned during a civil war. My ancestors were left behind. We were their slaves, and if they should find us again they will kill us all, same as they will your kind. Our allies do not know of this, nor do they know of the V’kit’no’sat. We believe they have pulled back closer to the galactic core, but we do not know exactly where they are. And we know better than to hope that they have somehow been destroyed.”

The Elarioni slowly floated back towards the glass.

I KNOW OF THE V’KIT’NO’SAT ONLY FROM STORIES. THEY ARE THE REASON WE HAVE TAKEN ANOTHER NAME. OUR SISTER WITH YOU, FROM WHAT WORLD DID SHE COME?

“I do not recall the name, nor would it probably mean anything to you. She told us the Elarioni survivors split up as they were running, hoping that at least one group would escape the V’kit’no’sat pursuit. They did, but the Cajdital assaulted their world. Past that point she had no memory.”

WILL YOU RETURN HER TO US?

“As valuable as she has become to us, yes, we will. But our territory is far from here, and the Hycre had to transport my fleet in order for us to arrive soon enough to make a difference. If you live in Nestafar territory I think we will have problems, but we will try to work something out. But while we’re on the subject, how do you and the Nestafar coexist?”

WE ARE WATER DWELLERS. THEY ARE AIR DWELLERS. WE SHARE A FEW WORLDS BUT WE DO NOT INTERACT. THEY DO NOT HAVE THE POWER TO DESTROY US SO THEY LEAVE US ALONE. WE TOLERATE THEM BECAUSE THEIR PRESENCE HIDES OURS. WE ARE GHOSTS ON THEIR WORLD AND SAFE FROM PRYING EYES.

“Why are you here?”

YOUR ARIEL IS NOT THE ONLY SISTER THAT HAS BEEN FOUND. WE KNOW THE CAJDITAL KILLED MANY OF THEM. THE NESTAFAR HAVE ALLIED WITH THE CAJDITAL. THIS WE CANNOT TOLERATE. WE WANT THE NESTAFAR GONE FROM OUR WORLDS BUT WE DO NOT HAVE THE MEANS TO EVICT THEM. YOU DO.

“What kind of intelligence you do have pertaining to this system? I got the impression that there was something urgent.”

WE MONITOR THEIR MOVEMENTS ON THE WORLDS WE HOLD. WE ALSO MONITOR THEIR PRIMITIVE TECHNOLOGY. WE KNOW THEIR PLANS. THEY ARE SENDING NEW FLEETS TO TAKE MANY SYSTEMS. THIS IS BUT ONE. ONE THAT THEY BELIEVE THEY HAVE TO TAKE THUS IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT THEY DO NOT. THEIR BATTLE PLANS FOR 39 STAR SYSTEMS CENTER HERE. DENY THEM THIS SYSTEM AND YOU DENY THEM THE SURROUNDING TERRITORY.

“I think I understand now,” Morgan said, putting her helmet back on. “Your secret is safe with us. I trust ours is safe with you?”

WE HAVE A MUTUAL ENEMY. IF THEY ARE IN THE CORE AS YOU SAY BRINGING THEM OUT TO DESTROY YOU WILL LIKEWISE INCREASE THE ODDS OF THEM DISCOVERING US.

“Not quite the heartfelt assurance I was looking for, but I’ll take it,” Morgan said sarcastically. “How long until this system is reinforced?”

I WAS SURPRISED THE HYCRE GOT ME HERE BEFOREHAND.

“Wonderful,” Morgan said, very much wanting to be back up on her ship.

I WILL ASSIST YOU WITH THE DEFENSE OF THIS SYSTEM.

“How?”

WE HAVE ACCESS TO THEIR TECHNOLOGY, the Elarioni reminded her.

8

Captain Wilkinson was waiting for her again in the hangar bay when her dropship arrived back onboard the Red Ranger, but this time their conversation was brief.

“Recall the O’Neill and Optimus Prime and have all four warships prepare for redeployment. We’re going after the Nestafar fleet before they can get reinforcements, which according to intel suggests any day now. Coordinate with the Hycre, we’re using their battle plan. Alert me if the fireworks start before I get to the bridge, I’m going to be off the grid for a while,” she said, walking abnormally fast. So fast that Wilkinson had to jog to keep up, and he noted that she hadn’t removed her helmet.

“Is something wrong?”

“In a hurry. Don’t let me hold you up.”

Wilkinson understood the dismissal, but not the cause for it, so he let her go and headed back up to the bridge to get their fleet reorganized as she headed over to the sanctum at a brisk walk that turned into a slow run halfway there. When she started having to dodge crew in the hallways she just said to hell with it and took off as fast as she could manage and hoping the physical activity would help.

By the time she got to the sanctum doors she already had her right arm piece removed and smacked her palm down on the scanner, impatiently waiting for it to identify her and unlock the door as she used all her willpower to keep herself contained. When the doors finally parted she tossed the armor piece inside and started disconnecting the rest as quickly as she could.

The sanctum doors closed and locked behind her, with a trail of green armor segments leading further inside and over to one of the sparring chambers. There her casual uniform, shoes, socks, and underwear followed leading up to the center of the circular padded chamber where Morgan dropped to her knees and finally let go the energy that had been slowly building inside her for the past three hours.

It came out in spurts, sending random waves out from different parts of her body and sending the air within the chamber into a chaotic whirlwind. Her clothes jumped off the ground and were kicked around, part of which flew back out the sparring chamber’s door while her shoes rolled over a couple of times, too heavy to be lifted up by the moving air.

The cascade of energy releases took 12 seconds to work their way out of Morgan’s body, then left her feeling deflated and overly relieved as she sagged to the ground, crying silent tears from the effort. Her body felt raw, as if the energy had caused damage on the way out. She made a mental note not to let it build to such levels again, meaning, unfortunately, that she was going to have to remain in or near the sanctum until she got a handle on this.

The Archon glanced down at her naked body, wondering why she’d taken her clothes off…or for that matter her armor. She didn’t have a good reason, but somehow felt it was appropriate, like the layers would have interfered with the process…though she didn’t know if that was a product of her imagination or not.

Then again, it might have ripped her clothes off anyway. So at least she had them to put back on…if she could find them.

Morgan got to her feet, then feeling so dizzy she almost passed out, just told herself to forget it and sat back down, sinking an inch or so into the padded floor as she felt a rush of ambrosia fatigue wash over her, confirming in her mind the fact that whatever this energy was it fed off her ambrosia very quickly. She’d been down on the planet for the better part of a day, but her ambrosia levels shouldn’t have been below half by the time she got back…and it felt like the little mystery nodules in her body had just sucked up what was left in her bloodstream.

“Uh,” she said, laying back and staring up at the ceiling feeling like she’d just finished a hard workout. “Wonderful timing. I’ve got the largest naval battle we’ve seen to date to lead and I’m stuck with a malfunctioning body. Can’t do this when they need me…so what are my options?” she asked, thinking out loud as her head swirled with a mixture of familiar and new sensations, all of which were fatigue related.

“Control it, or bleed it out…but I don’t know when the Nestafar are coming to bleed it out, unless I can do it quickly when the time comes. No, check that. I need a clear head and this won’t do. I have to get this under control.”

Morgan rubbed her forehead, part of her just wanting to go to sleep.

“Focus, girl…and sit up,” she told herself, crunching her abs and heaving her head up off the mat uncomfortably.

“Wibbly wobbly timey whimey,” she said with a laugh, surprised by how much that exertion had taken out of her. Even on her most extreme workouts she didn’t get this dizzy.

“Ambrosia,” she said, finding the need to vocalize her thoughts, otherwise they’d be lost in the maelstrom of numbing sensations swirling through her mind. “Walk.”

As if coaching herself through the next few minutes, Morgan focused on the simple task of getting her feet underneath her and standing. With a pounding headache that nearly unbalanced her she walked a few steps over towards the door and stopped, looking at the ceiling to try and let a wave of nausea pass. When it had partially settled she walked a few steps more and found her shoes.

She considered putting them on, but the idea of bending over got her mind calculating the possibilities of her retaining her balance and she decided the odds weren’t too good of that so she just walked around her shoes, taking very tiny steps out of the sparring chamber. She stopped several times, but eventually made her way through the empty sanctum to the kitchen where she pulled open several cabinets and began dragging out various items and setting them on a nearby table one at a time.

After making several trips back and forth she sat her nude butt down on the chair and cradled her head in her hands for a moment, desperately wanting to drift off into a comatose, pain-racked sleep. She held her head for more than five minutes before she woke herself, thinking it had only been a few seconds. Forcing herself into action she opened a water bottle and sucked down half of it before she even realized how thirsty she was.

“Ambrosia,” she reminded herself, pulling one of a stack of wafers out and chewing it slowly. She washed it down with a bit of water and started on another, slowly making her way through the entire stack.

Within 60 seconds of eating the first she began to feel her head clear ever so slightly, and with each additional wafer she ingested her head cleared more and more, so much so that it shocked her.

“Damn it, this…power does feed off ambrosia. And food,” she added, feeling her stomach rumble. Whatever those little nodules were, they definitely required a lot of fuel…fortunately Archons didn’t have trouble sucking down the calories when needed. After getting a bit of her balance back from the wafers Morgan got up and fixed herself a heaping plate of foodstuffs, all carb-heavy, ranging from breadsticks to noodles to cookies, all of which were premade or quick fix meals, though some did have to be quick cooked in the flash oven, such as the noodles.

Five minutes later she sat down and began to chow down, along with sucking in a couple liters of water. When she finished her head had cleared up for the most part, though she did still feel drained.

Morgan stood up experimentally, finding that her legs felt almost…strong. Wary of making her headache worse, Morgan cringed and jumped in place, rising up more than 2 feet before landing back down on the balls of her feet lithely.

“Ok, so I’ve got strength. It was just my control that was lacking?” she asked herself, trying to puzzle this out. “Two separate bodily functions, both routed through my brain. One gets fatigued and zaps my head, interfering with the other. My head clears, then I’m free to…train normally?” she wondered.

Morgan belched, suddenly remembering how much food she had in her stomach.

“Just a mile then,” she told herself. “Now, where are my clothes?”

A day later the Red Ranger and her three twin warships jumped out from Sri’ka in towards the system’s central star, abandoning their stewardship of planetary orbit with their drone warships tucked safely inside their racks. There they waited for several hours, falling lazily towards the star in the inner zone of the system until they received a signal from the Hycre, telling them it was time to make their entrance, along with a preferred deceleration zone.

“Let’s go,” Morgan said to herself, standing in the command nexus as she ordered all four ships to make the microjump. One by one they blinked out of view heading for Ra’sa, the 4th planet, and the enemy fleet stationed there. Minutes later, when the Star Force strikeforce decelerated at the point the Hycre had requested, Morgan’s tracking data showed the fish-like Hycre warships darting in and out of a huge formation of Nestafar warships, more than 400 strong, surrounding the damaged command ship.

Those 400 were split, with a main group engaging a Kvash fleet. One of their battleships and seven other smaller, yet still huge vessels were slugging it out with the Nestafar as they moved around orbit, having jumped to the 4th planet from another in the system. On the opposite side there was a small cluster of Hycre warships, much smaller in size but stronger in bite, taking on a cluster of heavy Nestafar capitol ships. Both conflicts had stretched out the Nestafar formation, leaving the command ship and about a quarter of its escorts situated in between guarding the primary jump line to the planet.

Like the third point on a triangle, Morgan’s fleet came in along that jumpline and immediately began unpacking its warships. As they did the Nestafar dispatched most of the command ship’s escorts towards them while the roving Hycre destroyers and frigates zipped in and out, hitting them on the flanks and harassing the command ship, forcing some of the Nestafar warships to stay behind to protect it.

As planned, some of the Hycre warships were zipping around the command ship in very tight, synchronized orbits, keeping their masses in the way of the ship to discourage it from jumping out…though it might not have even been necessary. As Morgan’s data on the enemy updated further she saw huge chunks of the command ship missing from the hull where it had rammed her ships previously. Apparently the Nestafar had managed to extrude the Star Force wreckage, leaving the huge ship looking half dead.

But only half…weaponsfire was still showing from its hull, though not any of the primary weapons which Morgan was sure they’d thoroughly trashed.

The Kvash were thoroughly bottled up, but their drift rate was still bringing them closer to the command ship. That was the feint, at least, because they weren’t here for it. Taking it out fell to Star Force. The Kvash were targeting the Nestafar battleships, including a dreadnaught that was leading their segment of the battle. Taking out the larger ships was key to the battle plan, and while the Hycre were certainly capable of taking them down with numbers, their fleet of mostly smaller ships couldn’t stand toe to toe with the cluster of heavy capitol ships…whereas the Kvash with their greater size and stronger shields could.

As Morgan’s fleet deployed more ships jumped in behind them. Calavari warships, cruisers down through frigates, assembled from throughout the system came pouring in, bringing their elongated, pointy hulls to the fight and spreading out in attack groups of 3-5 heading for the Nestafar ships coming into the battle from other planets in the system. Now that the giant melee had begun the enemy was calling in all the support it had to bolster their numbers, and it was the Calavari’s job to intercept and destroy them piecemeal as they came in…or at least delay and damage them before they could engage the other three fleets.

Morgan began amending the battle formation the four warship Captains were deploying into, assigning a few individual ships onto separate missions, tagging wounded ships to finish off or points on the command ship to target. Thanks to the Elarioni they now had detailed blueprints of ALL the Nestafar’s combat equipment, from capitol ships on down to their infantry weapons…including the precise location of the gravity drives within the command ship, or more importantly, the location of the two primary generators that supplied them power.

She assigned numerous heavy cruisers to target those locations with their cleansing beams, and started to feel a tingle of energy as the first of them opened fired at range. The Archon frowned, her ire rising and her unpredictable ability seeming to respond to it. Angry at the distraction, she forced the tingle on her spine down her left arm, surprised that she was able to accomplish that much. She pushed it further, feeling it pool in her wrist and outside the perimeter of her clothes, then she flicked her hand to the left, hoping to expel it.

She succeeded, but not in the way that she suspected. The tingle transferred down into her hand and formed a solid knot of energy that rushed out in a single vector towards the wall. She heard a small thud, but no damage was done. Feeling a twinge of fatigue she raised an eyebrow, then turned her attention back to the battle just in time to see one of the Nestafar battleships break in half from the combination of 6 different Kvash plasma streamers impacting the ship and at least one of them succeeding in coring its way into a power generator.

A holographic signal appeared on Morgan’s right, citing a notice from the Hycre that the next phase of the plan was taking effect. From several of the Hycre warships engaging in the battle, Morgan didn’t know which, a specially crafted signal, created by the Elarioni after studying the comm traffic in use within the system, began transmitting continuously. If it worked as told, it should seriously interfere with the Nestafar’s battle coordination, blocking their ability to squawk when…

And there it was. Morgan smirked as a new contact emerged on the battlefield in a slightly higher orbit from the Kvash engagement. It was their third battleship, having been sensor stealthed and waiting patiently, though now it was bearing down on its sister ships and soon to come within weapons range.

With not one, but two Kvash battleships, not to mention their other heavy warships in play, the Nestafar dreadnaught and support ships were heavily outgunned. The logical response would be to withdraw and rendezvous with the fleet engaging the Hycre or the reinforcements coming in from elsewhere in the system.

Morgan waited for a response as her own warships began to slug it out with a superior number of Nestafar ships in a nasty plasma fight, but with her heavy cruisers giving them an advantage by being able to penetrate their shields prior to engagement and all ships being released to use rail guns and missiles without restraint. Still, if events continued they were going to lose more than half their fleet, assuming they came out on top at all. Star Force’s purpose was to hit the command ship, and in doing so keep a large portion of the Nestafar fleet engaged there while the Kvash and Hycre cut up the rest of them.

More and more contacts kept appearing on the widespread battlemap, indicating more Nestafar ships coming into play…far more than Morgan had expected them to be able to whistle up so quickly. Their placement was poor, delaying their arrival at the actual fighting, but most of them were coming from the star jumpline, meaning they were popping up near her fleet rather than the others.

The Calavari were bravely jumping into the gaps and delaying their approach, as well as outright killing several, but their warships were weaker than the Nestafar’s and they hadn’t brought any Valeries into the battle, leaving those behind to cover the planets they’d just abandoned to land the hammer blow here.

“Ok, work your magic, Archon,” she whispered to herself, flexing her fingers in anticipation, then taking to the controls like she was playing an RTS videogame. If the Nestafar comms were jammed, then she should be able to hit them with some complicated strategies that their commanders, even if they could see and analyze the situation, wouldn’t be able to organize a counter response for.

Morgan sectioned off a group of ships and tagged Wilkinson for command, with orders to deal with the command ship, then Morgan turned her full attention on the brawl, knowing that how many ships they lost here would have a significant impact on battles yet to come, meaning that if she could even preserve a handful, those handful would be around to use on future missions. This was to be Star Force’s last battle within the system, for the Hycre knew the toll it would take on them and had only reluctantly asked for their additional assistance this time, and not for when the reinforcements would eventually arrive.

Morgan had agreed, knowing how important this system was to the Calavari, even before the Elarioni had explained the Nestafar’s plans for it in detail during their summit meeting. Morgan had also volunteered to take the hardest assignment, knowing that her drone warships were unmanned and she could spend them as she liked…whereas their allies’ warships were all manned, and any lost meant hundreds, if not thousands of deaths.

As they’d expected, the scattered reinforcements coming into the system were focused on rescuing the command ship, meaning her fourth of the enemy fleet was growing rapidly in number. The Calavari had insisted on aiding them, and Morgan was glad that the Nestafar were more keen on breaking through to get to the command ship than engaging them directly, because they were taking a lot of damage as they passed by and destroying only a few of the Calavari when they deigned to stop and engage their rivals.

The Calavari had hoped to encourage that, but the Nestafar’s need to get to their crippled command ship was overriding their hatred and giving Morgan more and more warships to contend with.

As she worked her forces around, moving them through various formations far more than the Nestafar were, who were mostly drifting around and slugging it out with anything in range, the trailblazer smiled as the kill counts began to rack up. She’d gone through thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of naval simulations in challenges over the past 400 years, many of this size, but never before had she been thrust into this type of command position in a live naval engagement where Star Force did not have the advantage.

Her skill, her painstakingly trained and developed skill, was making a real difference above and beyond even what her skilled Captains were organizing. Her presence mattered, navally, which was a new experience for her. Paul, Liam, and Roger had always been the ones to take the heavy naval battles on their shoulders, and Morgan was both proud and relieved to see that she could step up to the challenge and work the ‘Admiral’ magic in their absence.

9

“We’ll begin recovery operations here,” Morgan told the holographic symbol representing the Hycre on the other end of the transmission. “Go get the bastards.”

ARE YOU CERTAIN?

“Yes. We’ve got enough ships left for defensive operations, and our jumpships are armed. We can handle a few strays and you need to press your advantage while you have it. Don’t forget they’ve still got a few jumpships lurking around the system.”

WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN. THE WARSHIPS ARE THE GREATER THREAT WHILE WE CONTROL ORBIT. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE.

“Our pleasure,” Morgan said, ending the transmission. She rubbed her eyes and glanced at the battlemap again, seeing the Hycre warships begin to move off the massive debris field in search of the Nestafar warships stationed elsewhere in the system and those that had fled the battle during the later stages. There weren’t many in comparison to how many had been destroyed, but with reinforcements on the way the more they could hunt down now while they were isolated the better…and the Hycre fleet was the best equipped to do so.

The Kvash had already retreated from the battlefield, having lost a pair of cruisers. Both battleships remained, their hulls unblemished, while their other ships showed some wear and tear. Thinking defensively they immediately redeployed their assets to the other planets in the system whose defenders had been stripped from orbit to mount this assault. They didn’t like leaving ground forces exposed, theirs or their allies, and sought to get at least some orbital cover back in place as soon as possible.

That left the Calavari and Star Force in orbit, both of whose fleets had been decimated. The Calavari were remaining to hold orbit while the Hycre went off hunting, all the while the ground war raged on beneath them…but at least the enemy wouldn’t be getting resupplied in the near future.

Star Force was therefore left to pick up the pieces, roaming the debris and destroying what partially operational ships remained. A destroyer whose gravity drive had been damaged had surrendered to them, unable to flee, but the rest of the survivors refused any such offers and Morgan had them obliterated with what was left of their ships, having neither the manpower nor the disposition to save the lives of their enemies if they were going to be uncooperative.

That said, there wasn’t much left alive out there to negotiate with. They had managed to rescue some of the Calavari from damaged vessels while the Hycre had seen to their own survivors. Star Force couldn’t have helped them anyway, given the life support requirements for the race, and the Kvash, having suffered the least damage thanks to their tactical ploy, had already cleaned up what they could then left the wreckage of their destroyed ships to float as so much more debris in the ever expanding rubble that marked the orbital battlefield.

Morgan had 35 operational drone warships left, half of which were damaged to some extent. That equated to about half of what the Red Ranger alone could carry. The rest of her impressive fleet was now junk floating nearby, but they’d come out the victors and given the Brokal System a chance of survival once the Nestafar reinforcements arrived. Morgan hoped to be gone by then, and she felt a ticking clock inside her head urging her to depart soon for fear of being caught up in the next massive engagement.

Calavari reinforcements were also on the way, she’d been told, and even the Protovic were sending a fleet, though there was no way of knowing how soon they’d arrive. If this system was as critical to the Nestafar’s plans as the Elarioni had stated, then Morgan knew the Alliance would keep sending assets in to secure it, even as the enemy did the same…and she didn’t have the resources to stick around for that type of prolonged, heavy fighting. All four of her warships had survived undamaged, and she wanted to get them and their few remaining drones out of the combat area before they could be wasted by being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the enemy arrived.

With the remaining drones encircling the warships in a thin defensive halo, Morgan ordered recovery efforts to begin on the wreckage, with a flurry of support vehicles moving out of the warships’ hangar bays to start chewing apart the salvageable technology from their dead ships. The Archon knew she needed to recycle as much as possible, for even one repaired warship could make a difference in the smaller engagements her armada was dealing with, and she intended to pick the Nestafar apart as much as possible on the flanks while they continued devoting the bulk of their resources here.

The question was how long to stick around chewing on the debris. When she finally left the command nexus she told Wilkinson they had 48 hours to get what they could, then they were pulling out regardless…if not sooner, then she left him and the other Captains to handle their work and Morgan retreated back into the Red Ranger’s sanctum, feeling like they were nearly past the worst of it, but could lose everything if they made a misstep over the next hours. With her luck the Nestafar would arrive today, at this planet, with no forewarning, and they’d get annihilated before the Hycre and Kvash could get back to assist them.

That creeping feeling aside, she was relieved to have the star system at least nominally back in Alliance hands. The ground wars on all 7 planets were still continuing, oblivious to the naval engagements above them save for how it affected their resupply. Morgan had wanted to at least pound a few more surface bases before they left, but the recent battle had expended their full supply of rail gun rounds, save for those in the batteries on the jumpships…and part of the recovery efforts getting underway were aimed at salvaging unused rounds from the wreckage.

Star Force had managed to turn the tide of this micro-war, but at a cost. A lesson Morgan wasn’t going to forget. The more data from the V’kit’no’sat pyramid that they unlocked and learned how to use the stronger their ships would be, but this recent engagement showed her that, in the near future at least, Star Force had to have numbers on its side, against the Nestafar and the lizards, otherwise they were doomed. The other races were throwing around warships and their crews like they were expendable commodities, and when opponents were willing to play that type of game an inferior enemy could succeed in defeating a superior one through attrition alone.

Morgan knew she needed to have a chat with Paul about that one, because this Nestafar front of the overall war was just plain insane. If this type of fighting ever came to Star Force territory they’d better have a damn good battle plan in place, for this chaos was totally unacceptable…and she had no idea how many millions of Calavari had already died as a result.

Banishing such thoughts from her mind for the moment, the trailblazer hit the locker room in the sanctum and swapped out her casual uniform for a pair of formfitting shorts, sports bra, and running shoes, then headed over to what the Archons called ‘Balboa Lane.’ When she entered the long rectangular room it was completely empty, just a three story high ceiling with walls set about twice that length apart and running about a football field and a half in length.

As the doors auto-closed behind her she turned a sharp right and adjusted the control board set into the back wall. Panels opened up along the length of the chamber, sending out a myriad of floating objects suspended by precisely controlled magnetic fields so there were no connecting wires or supports. Some were man-sized and pill-shaped, like traditional punching bags. Others were squares, spheres, bars, targets, platforms, etc. The course layout Morgan used was preprogrammed, as was her music playlist which she cut down to a single song, ‘Stamp on the Ground’ by the ItaloBrothers, and set it for continuous repeat before she walked over and activated the training challenge with a tap to the start pedestal that had risen up out of the floor on the left side of the door.

She timed it perfectly to coincide with the beat of the music and ran forward lazily matching up her footsteps and jump-kicking a punching bag-shaped target. She let herself fall down to the ground on the opposite foot, then pivot and sidestep to the right, side-kicking another before bouncing back left and side-kicking a third. From there she moved forward rhythmically, following a sequence of targets she had done so many times she could probably do it blindfolded, though she’d never tried.

With the music pumping through the chamber Morgan got into the groove, punching the next series of targets, also punching bags, but using their trademark Archon Punches for the forward targets and the side of her fists/wrists for the lateral attacks. She alternated between the side attacks and elbow-lunges that the trailblazers had learned to use long ago in lieu of punching with their knuckles when unarmored. The ‘Archon Punch’ required getting bodily closer to your target, which Morgan actually liked because it took a higher skill level to execute, and swinging your elbow up along the side of your body and into a level ramming level, using a shoulder twist to add extra momentum into the blow.

As Morgan Archon Punched several of the targets the monitoring equipment inside measured the intensity of the blows, as it did everything in the chamber, which she could review afterwards, but right now the trailblazer was losing herself in the music and fluidic movement, punching, kicking, and jumping into a sort of training trance that most of the higher level Archons had mastered. It required living in the millisecond and linking one moment to another…something that Morgan did so easily nowadays this was actually like recess to her.

She worked her way down the course, which gave her progressively harder targets, but none overwhelmingly difficult. The sweep bars came halfway down, which were floating forwards and back over a 20 meter stretch like a pinched racetrack. Morgan hit the first one with a forward flip, sailing over it cleanly before ducking down beneath the next one and coming up to forward flip over another as they continued to come at her. When she got to the end of the row she sidestepped over to the right and began back flipping up the reverse stream of bars, landing and immediately flipping into the next jump for a series of 11 leaps before coming back out in front of the zone.

She went back through the first line again, this time doing a leg-flip jump, cartwheeling her legs over each bar as she leaned at a 45 degree angle with her torso, keeping her head upright and mostly stable as she playfully moved down the length of obstacles. She spun out of the final landing and ran forward to the next section, kicking up on the underside of a floating sphere with her knee, then danced over to another one on her left and repeated with the opposite leg.

From there she went through a mix of punching bags and cubes that had one side highlighted as a target, requiring a lateral attack, then one in the center of the room that required an aerial attack.

Morgan took three long strides and jumped up above the meter-high squishy box, spreading her arms wide a la Trinity and brought her knees together, stretching out her quads and turning her body into a falling arrow that imbedded her knees in the target before spilling her forward through a partial summersault off the box. Her arms caught her before she could fall far and she did a front handspring back up onto her feet and into a run for two steps before an almost instantaneous Archon Punch into a punching bag, then reversed herself diagonally to hit another one back left.

From there she zigzagged through a plinko course of the objects, having a considerable amount of fun matching her movements to the music’s beat. The targets on the far end of Balboa Lane got stranger and more complicated, including some hoops she had to jump through while kicking, the last of which required a backflip overhead kick into a target atop the hoop. Morgan nailed it with a few inches to spare, then brought her knees up to her chest and continued the abbreviated rotation.

She stuck her legs down just in time and managed to land on her feet, then stutter-stepped with her back facing towards the far wall. Morgan turned the recovery motion into an additional two intentional steps and dropped down into a hunching position, driving her left elbow into the top of the reversal pedestal…which altered the course into the second half arrangement.

New obstacles shot up to replace a few of the others while the rest repositioned slightly to offer her a different choreography to work through. Morgan headed back through on rhythm and eventually ended up back where she began, slapping the finish pedestal and stopping her timing clock. She held position for a few luxuriously exhausted breaths, then walked over to the control board to see how she’d done.

Her time was about what she expected it to be, a few seconds slow because she was going for rhythm and not speed. The concussion levels were well below normal though, which she didn’t like. That meant she was hitting and kicking weaker than normal, which she reluctantly admitted was probably due to her body’s repairs from the gravity trap. Jason and others had said the healed tissue didn’t work as well, but part of Morgan had hoped it would just be a matter of reacclimation rather than rebuilding strength.

She’d had enough time to adjust by now, so apparently she’d been wrong. The damn Nestafar had set her back in her training…one more thing that she would never forgive them for.

Morgan reset the controls for the course but let the music continue to play. There was one thing the Nestafar hadn’t set her back in, and in fact may have helped her to accelerate.

All the objects within the long room disappeared into their compartments save for one punching bag that moved into center position about 30 meters down from the entrance. Morgan walked over to it, jumping playfully a few times when the music lyrics said to do so, then she set herself and stepped into the bag, Archon Punching a single time, then stepping back and looking to her right…where a holographic concussion score of 173 was floating.

She stepped back in and threw a few sidearm blows and even a knee for good measure, then walked back about two meters and faced the left wall so her right arm was aimed towards the target.

“Ok, Morgan. Let’s see how hard this is,” she said, raising her arm up lazily and summoning the tingle that was already present within her body and that the agility run had shaken up even more. Like before they manifested along her spine, as well as with a bit in the back of her head and upper left leg. Using a considerable amount of will she sucked all the tingles up and into her shoulder, then sent them down her arm where they caught in her palm, just as they had in the nexus.

The energy wanted to blow out in all directions from her hand, but somehow Morgan was able to focus it down into a small point which she imagined to be directly in the center of her palm, and like a water hose being pinched by your thumb to aim the spray she sent the energy out of her hand towards the punching bag.

There was a small ‘thump’ in the material that Morgan couldn’t hear over the loud music, but she could see the wrinkle in the surface of the bag when it hit. Then the concussion counter registered a score of 6, confirming that she had actually hit it with the invisible blast.

Morgan nodded, smiling from ear to ear. “Again,” she prompted herself, trying to summon another wave of the tingles. It took more effort this time, but she succeeded in bringing them forth and forcing them down her arm. They released a bit easier and with less ‘spray,’ or so she imagined.

The hologram flashed bright and changed the number from 6 up to 8.

Morgan blew out a slow breath. This wasn’t going to be easy going at first, she knew, but she had what she thought of as a ‘training foothold’ on the ability and in the end that’s all she truly needed. Now that she could summon it at will she had a way to train for it, and she was more than eager to not only get the random energy discharges under control, but to learn how to focus the energy into a myriad of combat applications.

New training.

New ability.

New challenge.

That was Archon candy, and Morgan was more than happy to bite off a mouthful of this challenge.

She summoned up another wave of the tingles and got to work.

10

March 27, 2405

Brokal System

Ra’sa

Morgan was lying in bed, half-waking between deeper sleep sessions that seemed to oscillate every couple of hours, during which her mind leapt about in a semi-dream state. Ever since coming out of the gravity trap she hadn’t slept well, as if her body/mind were still damaged and undergoing subtle repairs. Even when she got a really hard workout in the fatigue would only knock her out for four or five hours, then she’d start to oscillate again until her alarm finally pulled her all the way back to consciousness.

This time her mind flashed back to the Nestafar jumpship, a mix between dreamy alterations and memories. First she was fighting the Nestafar infantry, then she was climbing the leg of the walker. Somewhere down the chain of battle snippets she found herself back in the crush of the high gravity, shooting at the energy wall blocking her way from the generator. Hazy as the memory was it replayed intact, and she could feel the desperation and hopelessness of the situation, along with her determination not to give in to it.

Morgan curled up in a ball underneath the covers, her closed eyes squinting in effort as she relived the moment…then just as she felt trapped and never able to get out the tingling sensation returned and she was through the shield, then her mind zipped over to the zero g aftermath of the explosion of what the techs had subsequently deduced to be a cooling unit. When it had gone offline the overtaxed gravity generator had almost instantaneously fried itself, thus saving Morgan.

In her dream state she began to float down the maintenance tube, but there she forcefully stopped her dream and put it into reverse…going back to the energy field and making it replay again in her mind, though some elements became distorted by the effort.

With a jolt of adrenaline she jerked in bed, then blinked away the post-dream haze as she woke herself up. She pulled her torso up into a sitting position, ensuring she wouldn’t fall back asleep, and rubbed some of the ache out of her forehead as she tried to line her thoughts up in an analytical manner that wasn’t possible in a dream state.

The tingle.

Morgan pulled the covers off of her bare legs, slipping on a pair of casual shoes lying by the bed and then bolted out of her quarters at a brisk walk, intent on testing her theory despite the differences in technology. It had long been bothering her as to how she’d been able to get past the security shield with only a pistol. She’d considered that the power level might have been lower because of the energy needed to create the higher gravity, or that the emitters were affected by it and therefore less effective.

She’d also put down the occurrence to faulty memories, realizing that there may have been another factor in play that she was unaware of due to the tunnel vision that the gravity crush had put her under. Now she realized she had known all along how she got through, it just hadn’t clicked before.

Morgan made her way through the Red Ranger’s decks in T-shirt and shorts until she came to the security wing…which was empty. They’d never housed any of the Nestafar prisoners on the ship anyway, leaving them all on the transports until Morgan had finally released them prior to one of their planetary assaults to be used as messengers to encourage a surrender. It hadn’t worked, and they’d probably just been armed and sent back at her troops, but she’d been glad to get them off her hands regardless…and after that point they’d been leaving all the prisoners taken with the Calavari, not wanting to devote any more of their limited resources to their enemy’s well-being.

Morgan walked through the outer reception area and back into one of the cell wings. She turned on one of the clear blue force fields used as both door and window and tapped it with her finger, getting a slight buzz as the physical shield resisted the pressure.

Closing her eyes and focusing, she summoned up a small tingle down her back and forced it down her arm and into her hand, then pushed against the shield and released it, half expecting some type of blowback. Instead her hand slipped through the clear blue barrier, then was caught at the wrist as the shield reformed around her arm.

“Ha!” she laughed, finally realizing how she’d been able to get through the Nestafar shield. Somehow the tingles had manifested themselves during the gravity crush…not from the regenerator’s repair work afterward. That meant she had developed this ability on her own…and if she had not, then the pistol would never have been enough to get her through to knock out the generator, and she would have died onboard that ship along with the others.

Morgan could accept that, though how close she’d come to death still freaked her out, but at least this way she knew she’d saved herself…not to mention had a very useful skill to now employ.

Her smiled faded when she tried to pull her hand back out of the cell and couldn’t. The shield had constricted her arm down to the most narrow point during her wiggling, and now had her pinned in place like a giant handcuff…and she was too far away from the on/off switch to reach it with her other arm.

“Wonderful,” she commented, knowing that there was no one on duty given that there were no prisoners to guard. She closed her eyes and tried to summon up another tingle, but only managed to get a few goose bumps to transfer to her arm and not nearly enough to loosen the shield’s grip on her.

Morgan mentally kicked herself for not thinking ahead. She’d been using so much of the bio-energy that she’d exhausted herself several times and had gained a decent understanding of what that felt like…which she was also experiencing now. The energy she’d used to punch through the shield was probably about all that she’d recovered during her partial sleep period, and now she was going to be stuck until her body built back up more charge…unless she could psych herself up enough to summon another round of tingles from wherever it was stored inside of her.

A glance sideways at the control panel stalled that action, which she shifted over to plan-B status. Experimentally Morgan stepped to the side and lifted her foot towards the panel and stretched out, seeing that she had just about enough reach. She pulled her leg down and lifted her right foot up to her free left hand and pulled her shoe off, wiggling her bare toes in anticipation, then reaching her leg back out towards the panel, tipping her upper body the opposite direction to get as much length out of her leg as she could.

Her toes brushed the control panel, settling on a blank section of the flat box. From there she dragged them up towards the off switch…then had to eek out another half inch before she made contact. Wiggling to try and get some momentum, she gently pounded the button half a dozen times before getting enough pressure for it to register.

The shield deactivated, and given that she was pulling against it for balance, dropped her onto her backside when it vanished.

“Whoo,” she said, relieved as she sat up and slipped her shoe back on, then the Archon just sat there for a moment, thinking. She replayed what memories of the gravity trap she had and confirmed that she had, in fact, penetrated the shield using this invisible energy she was generating, putting an end to that unanswered question.

With a bit of closure completed she stood up and started walking back to her quarters, not sure if she’d be able to sleep or not, because now she knew she could walk through force fields, and how cool was that!

The next day Morgan ordered the salvage crews back to the warships, leaving behind a lot of untouched wreckage but she figured they’d pushed their luck as far as she was willing to risk it. The Red Ranger and the other three Warship-class jumpships took what they could with them and docked their remaining drone warships in their berths, then made a microjump away from the planet, crisscrossing the star system out to the 18th planet and braked against its tiny gravity well. It was located much further out than the inhabited planets where all the fighting was taking place, barely more than a spherical lump of rock caught in stellar orbit.

Its one use was for navigational purposes, and Morgan’s fleet had been here before. Using its gravity again they gently floated further towards the edge of the star system, traveling several hours before using their conventional engines to null out their momentum. There they found the Hycre jump cradle they’d used to enter the system on, along with two drone destroyers they left behind to shoot at anything that approached it.

The Red Ranger reassumed remote control of those two ships and brought them aboard, then the warships carefully maneuvered their massive tonnage around and into alignment beneath the cradle on thrust-based engines alone. All four parked in a square underneath the spindly device, then the jump cradle made physical connections with the ships before extending its considerable inertial dampening field around them all, creating an invisible bubble that would carry them together across the stars.

Using the tiny gravity wells of other large, floating rocks out further in system the jump cradle gradually created forward momentum, eventually bringing it back to the 18th planet, swinging into orbit then jumping back towards the star. From there they fell into a low stellar orbit and waited to come around to the proper jumpline, then with a massive burst of speed the jump cradle sent the four warships and itself out and away from the Brokal System and its ongoing micro-war, heading them back to rendezvous with another portion of Morgan’s armada and continue picking on the smaller enemy deployments across Calavari territory.

Morgan took a quick break from her training exercises and walked over to the satchel she’d left by the entrance to Balboa Lane. She pulled out a couple of ambrosia wafers and chewed them up quickly, having learned over the past 2 weeks of nearly nonstop training while traveling in the jump cradle that she couldn’t wait for ‘meals’ to refuel.

This new ability, which she’d dubbed ‘concussive energy,’ seemed to suck the ambrosia out of her body almost in realtime and she’d learned that having snacks on hand would help increase her workout longevity…for when she ran out of energy she literally ran out. It wasn’t like a typical workout where she could continue at lower intensity and/or greater difficulty. When her concussive energy emptied out there wasn’t much left afterwards to try and work with, hence the necessity of the snacks.

Her ability to produce…and subsequently suppress…the ‘tingles’ had gotten much better, almost to the point of being predictable, though there were still some nights she’d wake up, half uncover herself, and throw a blast up towards the ceiling in what she called a ‘concussion wave’ just to bleed it off. That would usually relieve the pressure on her internal buffer until morning, which allowed her to get back to sleep.

She didn’t know, biologically speaking, how the energy was being contained, but purely from workouts and self-analysis she’d determined that she had a ‘buffer’ of energy inside her that she could draw from, and that it was constantly filling. When it reached capacity she’d get the tingles whether she wanted them or not and would have to discharge.

Morgan had intentionally pushed that barrier several times just to see what would happen if she held it in. She found she had some leeway there, and with effort could force her buffer to hold more, but it was always a matter of time before she relented and bled off the excess energy. To her it felt similar to having a full bladder and trying to hold it in…sooner or later it was coming out whether you liked it or not.

The Archon had also noticed, both through guesswork and the measurement systems in Balboa Lane, that her buffer was increasing in size, allowing her to store up more energy for either larger concussion waves or greater numbers of smaller ones. It seemed to work much like some of her favorite video games, aside from Halo, where you had a limited supply of ‘magic’ or ‘force’ to use on various skills that would gradually replenish. Trick was with her, she had to keep eating to get it to recharge quickly, prompting her to pack ambrosia wafers by the hundreds to take along with her to training sessions…or on future missions.

This new ability was definitely changing things for her, but she liked it…a lot.

After her snack she gave her body a few minutes to process the ambrosia into her bloodstream and for her little nodules to soak it up…or at least she assumed it was them. Biologically they were the only anomaly detectable, aside from her eyes which they still hadn’t figured out and Morgan hadn’t been able to induce any superpowers from yet.

After the snack she took the time to do some contortion-level stretching exercises, already having been warmed up. Her range of motion wasn’t all the way back to normal yet, but it was close, and she wanted to get it back there as soon as possible, prompting her to include extra stretching workouts throughout the day. Once she got it fully back she’d start focusing on other areas, one at a time, until she got her entire workout routine back to where it had been pre-gravity trap.

When she figured she’d waited long enough she pulled out of a languid side splits and sat down on the floor to pull her shoes and socks off, then she walked over to the single punching bag-style target in the giant room and set herself. As she had been doing earlier, she summoned up the tingles along her spine and sent them down her right leg and into her foot. From there she kicked her leg out towards the target, coming up about a foot short of making contact and released the energy.

The holographic display to the right showed a 13, confirming that she’d hit the target despite the fact that she couldn’t feel the impact. More often than not, when Morgan released a concussion wave her eyes were closed in concentration, so without the system’s measurement she’d be hard pressed to know if she was succeeding or not.

She reset herself and did the same thing twice more, then switched to her left leg and likewise went through three practice rounds. Getting the energy to go to the body part she wanted was like having to shovel snow. Once you got it off the ground you could move around as you liked, but try and go somewhere new and you had a lot of digging to do.

Morgan had gotten her arms pretty used to the transfer and was now working on her legs, though she still felt like she was losing a lot of energy in the transfer, not to mention the release. She’d pulled up two more targets and set them beside the primary before and had picked up just a hint of concussive spillover on them, meaning her attacks weren’t point precise, hence the concussive ‘wave’ moniker. She thought she could trim it down more with practice, but how far was something she’d have to figure out in the long run. Training took time, and with this being a brand new ability she was going to be a newb for some time to come, like it or not.

After several more rounds of kick-launched waves Morgan went back to eating more wafers and more stretching/agility runs while she waited to recharge. It didn’t seem to matter what she did in the meantime so long as she didn’t pull on the buffer’s energy.

After several repetitions of this practice/recharge cycle Morgan came back from a 2 mile run on the track and decided to try something she’d first attempted yesterday with partial success, but it was a power hog so she hadn’t tried a second time.

At least partially full of energy, she stepped away from her satchel and pulled her shoes and socks off again, leaving them in a neat pile on the floor on top of which she added her clothes. She ran a short length past the target to get into the clear portion of the Lane, having as much room around her as possible, then she stood still in the center between the two walls and raised her head up, half staring at the ceiling while she spread her arms and legs slightly wide and flexed every muscle in her body, trying to maintain a hold on her self-control.

Feeling the energy just below the surface she tapped into it, drawing forth as small a set of tingles as she could and feeling it manifest along her spine again…except she kept pulling on it, causing more tingles to come forth in a gentle cascade. She tried to spread it out through her entire body, but only managed her left arm at first. With some coaxing she got it going down her right as well, then she added her legs and finally her neck up into her head and she could feel her hair begin to lift up and tug on her ponytail.

Morgan reached up and pulled her hair tie out and tossed it aside, then closed her eyes and focused on smoothing out the energy flow as it gently dispersed from various points on her body. She held the effort for nearly 20 seconds before upping the flow, feeling new body parts begin to discharge that hadn’t before. She kept patiently pushing it out, focusing on new areas of her body with her mind until they became saturated in energy and began to discharge, creating a gentle wind flowing out from her naked body in all directions.

The trailblazer could feel the ‘snow’ melting away and kept the energy flowing steadily as long as she could, feeling sparkly inside as the tingles began manifesting not only along her spine but a few other points in her body as well. She hoped it would escalate further, but Morgan started to feel her buffer running out of energy so she decided to go for a finishing move.

Pushing as much of a surge of tingles as she could get, she yelled and let loose a much more violent stream of energy flowing out from her body in all directions over the course of 1.5 seconds…then she dropped to a knee and her straight hair fell back down over her shoulders as she blew out an excited and relieved breath, feeling herself once again out of energy.

She reached up and pulled some of the now frizzy strands out in front of her face so she could see the hair, ironically wondering if it had gone blonde, for she could have sworn she’d been close to going super saiyan.

Still taking a knee and in no hurry to move, Morgan glanced down at her naked body. It looked normal, but on the inside it felt like she was absolutely glowing.

“Now I just have to figure out how to do that with clothes on,” she said, adding that to her mental list of future training priorities, along with several other potential applications of the concussive energy that she was eager to begin experimenting with.

Morgan stood up and walked back over to her satchel, pulling out a couple of wafers to chew on while she got dressed and hoping that drills like that would help her increase the size of her buffer considerably, because as it was she didn’t have even a shred of the energy reserves necessary for some of the crazy training ideas she was coming up with.

iTunes: "Stamp on the Ground"

Insurrection

1

May 3, 2405

Solar System

Ganymede

A foot landed in his back, knocking him forward into two other adepts but taking it had been necessary to get his hand around the right one’s wrist. As David-441 was moved forward he jerked to the right, landing his shoulder into the Time Lord’s dark blue uniform just above the navel and knocking him back…only to twist aside to duck another adept’s punch at his head. As David dropped he yanked the other one back in by the wrist he still held, off-balancing him enough that when the level 77 acolyte popped back up to full standing height he was able to kick the adept in the midsection and knock him back to the edge of the elevated ring.

The Time Lord almost caught his balance, but came up a few inches short, falling backwards and landing on a 45 degree padded incline a few meters down that slid him away from the ‘king of the hill’ open air ring and out of the enhanced gravity, depositing him on the flat floor some distance away where more adepts from Clan Time Lord were picking themselves up and walking off to the exits as more and more of their trial team continued to get knocked off above in spurts.

David kept on the move, knowing that staying put was to the Time Lords’ advantage. He had a 25 meter diameter circle to work around in 1.2 gravity, with six short walkways feeding him 1,000 adepts at a staggered rate of their choosing. Their goal in this Archon trial was simple…knock him off in hand to hand combat. They could come at him one at a time or rush as many as they could onto the platform. This lot was pumping numbers at him, but they weren’t being reckless about it. David was having to stay on the move constantly, because they weren’t giving him so much as a second’s break…which he knew was intentional. They were trying to wear him down to the point where he’d make a mistake.

Which was the challenge for him. This trial was one of hundreds taking place across the star system which saw the Clans battling each other with their lower ranking Archons, adepts mostly. There were still prizes to be claimed, both material and territorial for the Clans, but the trials had mostly reverted back to what they were originally intended to be…combat experience, Archon vs. Archon, to keep them sharp and uncomfortable to where they’d have to push their limits and improve, else they’d be very uncomfortable.

As these adepts now were. Most of the time they thought of themselves as being the best of the best, and compared with the rest of the star system they were, but with all the higher level Archons off on assignments outside of Sol David felt it necessary to come down and remind them how far they had to go to catch the others, let alone the trailblazers. This trial was important for them to get their asses kicked so they could learn from it, as well as to learn how to counter a superior opponent using numbers.

David’s challenge was the reverse, learning how to cope with numerical disadvantage despite being superior to his challengers. This wasn’t the first time he’d worked this end of this trial, nor was he the only one doing so. Other Clans were making runs against a few higher ranking Archons in the Star Force training facility on Ganymede, along with similar trials for a number of Knights and Regulars that David was also assisting with on occasion in between his own training sessions…getting to play ‘black knight’ despite the fact that he only wore his white with silver stripe Archon uniform.

By the ones and twos he continued to knock the Time Lords out of the gravity enhanced ring, moving about from side to side but never getting within 2 meters of the edge. The gravity was slowing their movements considerably, but less so David who normally did extensive gravity training at 1.5g, so to him this felt easy…especially when everyone else seemed to be in slow motion.

Still, this Time Lord bunch had come prepared. He guessed they’d watched previous trials footage when other Clans had gone up against him, each of which had failed, and had tailored their strategy accordingly. He was faster and stronger than any of them by a long shot, then add in their gravity disadvantage and they were hopelessly outmatched one on one, but they had six access ways onto the platform and they were using all of them to funnel adepts in, many of which stood waiting and watching until there was enough room on the platform to get into the fight.

Though he didn’t have time to analyze their tactics, David noted that they were staggering their attacks to keep the pressure on him constantly, but without cluttering up the platform and allowing him to shove/kick them off four or five at a time…which was smart. It also lengthened the time of conflict, stretching out the 1000 man army he had facing him into one very long fight.

To top it off they weren’t fighting him trying to knock him off, but rather to stand their ground. Another interesting tactic, in that each of them were trying, he thought, to get in as many blows/blocks as they could, thus wearing him down further. David wondered if they were holding back their strongest adepts for the end when he would be the weakest, but there was little time for him to do anything other than punch, kick, flip, twist, and evade until he set one of them up for a knockout bounce. If he wanted to analyze their attack pattern in detail, he’d have to do it post trial.

David was making good time, but each Clan that came against him was getting better…which was the point. This was one of the newer trials, and not widely used because of the availability of high enough level Archons to play king of the hill with. Gone were the egotistical ‘I’m gonna knock him out’ attacks that he’d gloriously punted off the platform in previous days, now replaced with pure team tactics. These adepts had to work together to stand a chance of taking him down, and he was pleased to see they were finally starting to think and fight like Archons rather than newbs.

David palm-punched an adept with a cross from right to left, knocking her up off her feet because of the shallow rising angle he put on the blow and threw the adept back into another, then dropped into a heavy spin kick and knocked the legs out from two more as they swung at where his head had just been. One of them fell into him, but a knee lifted the adept up and nearly all the way off the platform where the Time Lord fell on his back, his head dangling over the side.

He felt his chest, wondering if something hadn’t been broken as more of his Clan members were tossed aside with horrifying ease. He was a level 11 adept, far stronger and faster than any normal Human, and yet he’d been flicked aside by a man an inch shorter than him and one who looked to be 20 pounds lighter…and made of adamantium.

The adept swung himself around so he could get his legs underneath him from behind while keeping his torso low and his eyes on the acolyte. Another Time Lord got knocked back his way and the adept ducked down…with the other flipping over top of him like a pivot point. Had he not ducked he would have gone over the side as well, which is probably what the Archon had intended.

Pleased that he’d succeeded in defying him that much, the adept got his feet under him and charged, sliding in across the floor and reaching for David’s legs…only to get kicked in the face, hard. He felt his nose pop as he was twisted to the side by the blow, then all of a sudden David was knocked back his way by a pair of others with interlocked arms and forming a Human battering wall. The acolyte countered them, but an almost random kick by the adept caught him between the legs and tripped him up, dumping the acolyte down on top of the adept with other Time Lords falling onto the pile.

David knew he’d been caught off guard and had made a tactical mistake of letting one of them drop near his feet…but he’d wanted to teach the newb a lesson that would sting for a while. Coming in at his feet was stupid, and David wasn’t going to cut them some slack because this was a training exercise. He might be holding back on the others to conserve energy, but he wasn’t going to let one of the imps wander into dangerous territory like that…otherwise it might encourage them to do the same in the future, and had he been a Calavari or other physically strong opponent they’d stomp the newbs flat without hesitation.

His lesson had cost him though, and now David was squeezed between a sandwich of Time Lords, and if they had any sense they’d…

Just as he got his head up the other adepts began rushing onto the platform and pushing the pile towards the edge with the downed adepts clinging onto David so he couldn’t get up or fight back, intending to go over with him in order to get their Clan the victory.

Problem was, despite having a bunch of kids clinging to his arms and legs, David definitely could still fight back.

Knowing that he had to go all-in David started flexing back and forth, getting himself inches of airspace to work with and started delivering elbows and kicks into the bodies surrounding him…gapping them and creating more room to work with, all within split seconds before they’d come crashing back down on him or more would stack on the pile…which then made it even harder to push towards the edge.

David kicked his right leg free, then knocked the leg out from under an adept on the outside of the pile. She fell down, taken off guard, and he kicked her in the chest as she dropped, sending her tumbling back into the legs of three others and mowing them down like bowling pins from the ferocity of the blow.

Then another adept got knocked off the stack…and another. Two more went toppling over the edge as the pile neared it before David’s head finally came into view just in time to headbutt another newb Archon in the chest and knock him off. Twisting left and right David finally got mostly free, then punched three more in sequence off of him, one going over the side and two more headed back towards center, falling into the others coming forward.

They caught them and shoved them back, using their fellow Time Lords like ammunition to keep David down or knock him off the side, but the acolyte had just enough time to snap his legs back underneath him and drop down to his knees in a turtle shell as they fell on top of him…then a moment later they all came rising up in a mass as David heaved them off him in Neo-esk fashion. A series of lightning-fast blows knocked the mass of blue uniformed adepts aside, hollowing out a small clear space that David expanded upon as soon as he had enough room to swing his legs, after which the more than three dozen Time Lords that had come out onto the platform began falling off it in droves, given that they had no room to duck or dodge the acolyte’s blows.

David eventually worked his way back to the center and cleaned off the deck, with the Time Lord reinforcements falling back into their staggered attacks, hoping again to wear him down with their numbers but they would have no success. His ire was up now and he kept his effort level up straight through to completion, reveling in the increased challenge they were finally giving him and knowing that it would make both them and him better…though mostly him, given that the average time on the ‘hill’ for the adepts was between 10 and 15 seconds.

David grappled with the last of them, slipping an arm underneath the adept’s armpit and twisting her around, then he grabbed her leg and lifted her up off her feet and walked to the edge.

“Off you go,” he said casually, tossing her down to the angled crash mats and watching her slide down to the bottom where the others were still picking themselves up and walking out.

David rubbed his hands as if brushing off dirt then slowly walked back to the center and gave the control room a two-fingered salute before heading over one of the six walkways and exiting the way the adepts had been coming in from a large gathering area circling the ring whose overhang extended out above the majority of the crash pads. With the room now all to himself the acolyte walked across with almost inaudible footsteps and exited out a side door to one of the main hallways that connected the various trials’ competition zones that were separate from the training areas.

As he walked down to the left his vision got a little wonky on him and he blinked several times trying to clear it, only to have it extend out behind him where he could ‘see’ a person running up towards him.

The enhanced sense faded almost as soon as it had begun and David turned around to meet the adept chasing after him.

“Acolyte,” the man said, appearing to be the same age as David…though all Archons looked to be roughly 25, despite the fact that David was 380 and this adept was probably 40-100. “Can you spare 30 seconds?”

“Half a minute, yes,” he offered, waiting for a question.

“How do you defend against a chest blow when your opponent is stronger and faster?”

“Ready yourself,” David said, then he stepped forward and like the crack of a whip sent his stiffened palm into the adept’s chest and knocked him back off his feet to the ground where he slid back another two meters.

“Again,” David prompted with his fingers. Gingerly, the adept got up and walked towards him.

“Now me.”

The adept nodded and tried to use the same attack against David, but when his hand approached the white uniform it skidded aside as the acolyte twisted his body to the left and around the adept’s hand so that only the corner connected, though David still had to take a half step back to maintain his balance.

“Speed is essential, because it allows you to reconfigure your opponent’s attacks into situations that are less damaging or potentially advantageous to you…but if you are not the faster, then you must use the time you have to diminish the attack. Set yourself and lean forward,” David prompted, then he hit the man again just as hard as before.

The adept flew backwards, but landed on his feet and fell face forward, half the distance from David as he’d gone before.

“Whatever you do,” David suggested as he reached a hand down to help the adept up, who had got the wind knocked out of him a bit, “don’t let the blow land flush. Chip away at it with angles, however you can create them.”

“Thank you,” the man said, cringing from the ache in his chest. “I’ll try to remember that.”

“Speed is the best defense,” David said as he turned and walked on, letting his impromptu lesson sink in. He didn’t know who the adept was, nor did he know most of the Archons in the training facility, but this wasn’t the first time he’d been asked by the younger ones for help and he always took the time to offer some quick assistance no matter how rushed he was.

Today there was no rush though, and he walked across the facility to one of the training tracks and found it half full of Archons working through various paces. Gone were the lane line lights that had used to guide them in the old days, replaced by holographic glowing spheres set a few inches above the track all the way up to head height depending on where the runner wished their marker to be. David triggered one to stay on the ground, for that was what he was used to, and dropped into the flow before swinging out into lane 3 to pass a pair of slower runners.

He made his way through 5k at 5:00 pace, just a relaxing run while he gauged the amount of damage he’d taken from the trial, noting the locations where he was sore and hoping they’d work their way out, which most of them did by the time he was finished. For his body, anyway, running worked as therapy and stretching, loosening him up for other training, of which he focused primarily on hand to hand combat.

Feeling warm and lithe after the run he ran himself through a set of agility drills then headed his way over to Balboa Lane for some strength calibration, noting how fatigued his muscles had gotten from the trial while measuring against a punching bag he had moved into the corner while others were hanging out in their own areas of the long room working on various drills.

After that it was time for lunch so he stopped by his quarters for a quick shower, then checked his message terminal on the way out…only to stop and sit down when he saw there was a vid from Davis, timestamped 56 minutes ago.

“David, I need you on Earth. Possibly Green Team as well, though I’ll leave the choice up to you. This mission is a bit more complicated and I’d prefer we discuss it face to face, so get back here as soon as possible. Mischief is afoot.”

2

Half an hour later David and a small gear satchel were riding a dropship up to low orbit for a rendezvous with the primary starport. As the golf ball-shaped dropship rose up from the airless surface of the moon the Archon watched the monitors distractedly, seeing the Star Force military complex shrink beneath them as other cities, civilian and Clan, began to show up on the horizon. Each of them spread out across the barren surface in a glittering of lights on the night side, then as the dropship began accelerating laterally new ones began to show up, including the huge city of Capsule Corp that was the largest on the planetoid and served as Clan Saiyan’s capitol.

It held over 48,000,000 people with a footprint of only 27 square miles. Together with six other cities, Clan Saiyan’s population on Ganymede topped off at 112,000,000, though the Clan had five times that number in total population spread throughout Sol and a few other nearby star systems. The second most populous Clan on the moon was Clan Croft with 18 smaller cities that totaled 68,000,000 members, a mix of civilians, techs, and Clan military Regulars and Knights. The Regulars were recruited and trained by each Clan out of their own population, but the Knights were still trained by Star Force and distributed out to the Clans, much as the Archons were.

As David watched he could see other bright little specs moving across the black sky as dozens of dropships came and went from low orbit, servicing the 16 Clans that had territory on the moon as well as Star Force’s own colonies and the 5 nations that had retained territory after a long fought out political swapfest. In the end Germany, Denmark, Argentina, Russia, and Tranquility had come out with sizeable swaths of the moon to populate, though together that population totaled only 4,000,000. Star Force and the Clans were by far the most prolific builders in Sol and the nations had never even begun to catch up.

All together Ganymede held a population just under half a billion, and though it was the largest moon in the star system it wasn’t the most populated. Thanks to Star Force’s guidance Earth’s overpopulation paradox had been solved, and while some stubborn nations still experienced problems most of their unhappy citizenry would emigrate to Star Force colonies, of which there now numbered over a thousand, 4/5ths of which were located in Sol.

Each colony operated as a part of the Star Force corporation, but was organized to be semi-independent for logistical reasons. All ultimately answered to Davis, but legal concerns were kept to a minimum. All Star Force citizens were free to do as they pleased so long as they didn’t bother others, with the entire civilian legal code numbering only 5 pages, making Star Force colonies a bastion of freedom that many on Earth fled to, further diminishing the population and power of the original nations.

Star Force’s business code was far longer and infinitely more complicated, detailing a corporate code of conduct for anyone and everyone who did business with Star Force or conducted their own businesses within Star Force territory. For this reason the other nations saw many institutions establishing their headquarters and ‘pirate’ industries within their borders to avoid Star Force scrutiny…which was usually the subject matter for Green Team’s missions. David and 9 others comprised the Clan-less squad that was assigned to Davis along with a few other highly skilled Archon teams.

They stayed within the Solar System save for when the Director had need to deploy them elsewhere, training heavily and assisting in other duties while they waited for their next mission, most of which usually involved the other nations or independent corporations, though David had been previously assigned to hunt down a serial killer that security was having a hard time pinning down, so when the big man called it could be anything, but when Davis had said ‘mischief’ he got the feeling he was referring to something political, but where the trouble could be coming from was anyone’s guess with so many players in the game.

When Star Force had began there were about 200 independent nations, now there were 783, some of which Star Force had helped to created, like the Ananke Republic on Mars. It had grown into one of the larger nations, due in no small part to the Star Force training its founders had received, and had expanded to several other planetoids within the system. Other nations were the splintered fragments of political dissolvement, none more prominent than those on Luna. Earth’s moon held 185 independent nations, some of which had begun during World War III and then splintered further as they grew.

Still there were others, spread across the system, coming from independent ventures by civilians, corporations, or political factions wherever they could find a foothold, though many were orbital facilities only with no surface territory to their name. Star Force didn’t recognize everyone who wanted independent status just for owning and operating their own space station, but more likely than not another new nation would rise, in name at least, over the next decade or so.

That was the continuing, chaotic political flux that was the Solar System, but with each year that passed it was being carefully diminished when and where Davis found an opportunity. Already Star Force and its affiliates held more than 4/5ths of the Human population that had originated from Earth and slowly Davis was bringing the rebellious portion into line one generation at a time.

When David’s dropship finally reached its designated orbit it docked with an enormous, flat rectangle of a starport. One of the more recent constructs that had been designed after artificial gravity plating had become standard, the starport had docking ports along one side designated for dropships while the other half were reserved for starships, many of which were visible, sticking out past the pylons and hanging in space as mobile traffic passed by all around them, most of which was coming to or from the starport, but with some passerbys headed for nearby orbital installations.

Ganymede wasn’t as orbitally cluttered as some of the other planetoids, but it was still a navigation hazard that had to be managed diligently…which Star Force handled free of charge for all travelers.

David transitioned off the dropship along with a few other Star Force military officers coming up from the complex, then the Archon went his own way, immediately heading across the huge promenade that doubled as temporary city for the travelers, complete with an enormous entertainment/recreation section. David kept close watch on the time and cut across the indoor park to save distance, walking over a series of waterslides that stretched more than a mile long, twisting up and through the confined area. He’d heard the trailblazers had had some input into the design, but whether or not that was mere rumor was guesswork. They had their hands in so many side projects it was impossible to know, and he admitted he’d wanted to try out the waterslides a long time ago, but never had seemed to find the time.

Today wasn’t going to be the day, though, for he had a flight to catch. All scheduled Star Force and Clan flights back to Earth were at least 18 hours away and David hadn’t wanted to commandeer a ship just to get him back a few hours faster, so he’d checked the civilian flights and had found one that left within 2 hours of his database search.

When the Archon got across the station he checked through security, drawing some odd looks when they scanned his pack and saw the single set of armor inside. David just smiled and typed in an identification code on the nearby terminal, seeing the screeners’ eyes go even wider at seeing his identification number…or rather, seeing how few digits it contained. Odd, how he and the other ‘second geners’ used to be the outsiders, with the trailblazers being considered the ‘cool’ ones…now being 5th class was essentially akin to godhood as far as the public was concerned.

David grabbed his satchel and passed on through, wearing a set of civilian clothes so as not to draw attention. Most Archons wouldn’t have cared, but he’d traveled on civilian transports a lot in recent years and found that a little change of clothes could save him answering all types of repetitive questions enroute from other travels who had ‘never met an Archon before.’

David boarded the starship without incident, arriving a few minutes before departure and taking a seat in the middle left row after stashing his satchel in the bin over his head. To his right was what looked like a family of four on vacation, with an elderly couple seated in front of them. To his left was a group of teenagers and behind was a scattering of other people, but in all only half of the seats were filled, offering him a buffer of emptiness around him that he was grateful for.

A series of video screens spread around the wide cabin showed the starport as they gradually pulled away from it and gently accelerated up into a higher orbit on the starship’s gravity drive, heading on a specific corridor through the hundreds of orbiting habitats. When they eventually cleared the congested areas the inter-planetary transport, barely larger than a Dragon-class dropship, pushed off from Ganymede on a short hop in towards Jupiter, decelerating less than a minute after leaving the moon and dropping into a ‘transit’ orbit that was purposefully clear of stations.

The starship used its conventional thrust engines in concert with its gravity drives to maneuver into an orbit around the planet that would bring it around to the jumpline for Earth, which David was monitoring on a small datapad that showed the planetary alignment. A direct line was possible from Jupiter to Earth, barely missing Venus along the way, along with hitting one of the multiple gaps through the Asteroid Belt. Had the alignment not set up properly the route would have been flagged as hazardous and an alternate, multi-linked route would have been taken, bouncing off a few more planets in order to get a clear approach to Earth.

It took the starship more than an hour to orbit around to the outbound jumpline and as it did David could see a steady flow of ships coming into the Jupiter microsystem along the same line, decelerating well out from the transit orbit but perilously close to the outbound jumping traffic. Even further out he could see the cluster of tiny moons that were actually some of the first Canderian seda ever built. Jupiter orbit was home to their civilization, and as such contained over 200 of the battle stations that they lived within.

In addition to that there were thousands of other smaller structures, along with several larger, including several Star Force shipyards that were fed by the mines and factories on the nearby moons. Most of those shipyards were civilian, producing the insane number of vessels cruising around the star system while at least a few were pumping out drone warships by the dozens, though most of Star Force’s military production occurred elsewhere. The Clans also had some of their own shipyards in orbit around the moons, but only Star Force had them in Jupiter orbit as they wisely kept all others confined to the moons or specific orbital slots to cut down on navigational hazards.

That said, when David’s starship arrived at the jumpline and engaged its gravity drives at minimal power to counteract the pull of Jupiter while it stalled out its orbital momentum, it had to get in line behind several others that were jumping out one at a time, all the while more were coming in from Earth higher up in orbit with the actual jumpline in between them.

Normally a starship had to jump on the exact line, else the propulsion wouldn’t be centered along the correct trajectory and the ship would drift off target. Problem was, the line to Earth and from Earth was exactly the same, meaning that cross traffic could potentially ram each other during transit. To solve that problem Star Force had originally enacted a circuit around the system, from one planet to another that was one-way only, which required ships to make a significant, if not nearly fully lap around the system to get to their destination, but with the advent of the differential gravity drive technology…another gift from the pyramid database once Star Force techs had figured out how to build it…the gravity drives could ‘push’ off of whatever gravity well they wanted while excluding others.

This meant more precise jumps out from Earth without Mars’s limited gravity nudging you off course, or any other mass for that matter, including the Sun. It also meant that you could make combo jumps, such as pushing off of Jupiter just off the jumpline with a side push from the Sun that would counteract the errant vector. In this way, when David’s starship eventually found its way to the front of the line, it was able to jump on the ‘right side’ of the jumpline with help from other gravity wells in the system while incoming traffic was decelerating in the same manner on the ‘left side.’

This gave several hundreds of kilometers of breathing space in between both sides of the jumplane, more than enough for safe transit so long as your craft had a sufficiently accurate gravity drive…which Star Force mandated for transit, whether you were affiliated with the mega corporation or not. If a nation felt like they didn’t have to follow the rules and could jump wherever they liked they’d find a warship on their ass in short order, for mid-jump collisions were not something to be taken likely, given that they were 99% fatal and could spray debris across the destination point that could affect a multitude of ships and stations.

Star Force punishment for unsanctioned jumps along the primary jumplines was immediate confiscation of the vessel, followed by stiff penalties and fines. Many nations and corporations had vehemently objected to this infringement on their sovereignty, but Davis didn’t care and after a few stupid individuals had their ships seized everyone got the point that he was adamant on this when he took the seized ships and organized a low speed collision for display purposes. The virtual liquefaction of the ships had put enough of a scare into the populace that Star Force protocol concerning navigation jumps was immediately deemed as ‘common sense’ with anyone even joking about making an unsanctioned jump getting a social beatdown by the media.

David’s flight back to Earth, ironically, took all of 17 minutes before the starship decelerated against the planet’s gravity with an additional push on the Sun for stabilization purposes. That left it drifting wide upon arrival, not having completely negated its erroneous trajectory. Another extremely low power pulse from the gravity drive along with conventional thrust engines moved it off the jumpline and into a high parking orbit where a series of starports were strung out around the orbital infrastructure like pearls on a necklace.

It took a couple of hours to get to the nearest one, then David got off onto the station and met up with a Star Force priority shuttle that he’d arranged for earlier, which allowed for a direct flight down to Earth rather than having to process through the intricate series of traffic stops that the civilian population had to endure, for there were so many orbiting stations around Earth that it made the use of designated space lanes absolutely necessary.

The map upon which David glanced as the shuttle took him down through the orbital layers looked like a spider web of straight and orbitally curved lines that morphed around Luna and covered it in almost a cocoon of navigational tracking signals. The line between planet and moon had been cleared in past years so that microjumps could be made between the two, allowing for direct transit at reasonable speeds, but going anywhere else in orbit required numerous transfers between hundreds of Star Force owned and operated starports, making for what looked like roads on the orbital map, from which shuttles and other craft would ferry out their passengers to their various locations.

Some of those locations were massive stations, or conglomerations of stations physically attached to each other so space travel wouldn’t be necessary to transition from one to another. The original state of Nimbus, long since destroyed, had functioned as the prototype and spawned hundreds of subsequent versions, some of which now functioned as independent nations in their own right.

Before David’s shuttle got low enough into orbit to pass by any of those constructs it did pass by a high orbit shipyard, and this one was definitely military. The flight path into Earth wasn’t even that close to it, for security reasons, but the facility was so large it almost counted as a small moon. It was a Thanatos-class shipyard, shaped like a series of planks interconnecting to form the frame of a long, rectangular box. Inside those planks, and crisscrossing in between, were the ship berths ranging from small scale bays where they could build dropships, shuttles, skeets, and other insignificant craft up to enormous slips capable of building jumpships.

Hundreds of medium-sized construction berths spread out amongst the rest built drone warships to feed the ongoing war against both the lizards and the Nestafar, which the trailblazers were organizing from afar, keeping the rest of the galaxy away from Earth while Davis and others continued to build up its already staggering amount of infrastructure.

Distant as it was, David was able to get a visual enhancement of the shipyard, noting 3 satellite stations positioned off the points of the rectangle with a 4th under construction. Those, he knew, were Liam’s brainchild, dubbed ‘MAC cannons’ and identical to rail guns, save for their extreme size. Each of the MAC stations held multiple ‘Magnetically Accelerated Cannons’ with long barrels poking out from an orrery that would allow them to reposition at insane rates of turn…but they were all centered around one massive cannon, capable of throwing dropship-sized slugs at a fraction of lightspeed, enough to take down a lizard cruiser in a single shot if they ever got as far as Earth.

Eight of those stations were slated for the shipyard, one on each corner and spaced well distant from the mass of metal to ensure good firing lines. Elsewhere more were being constructed, though it was a constant judgement call as to how much in the way of resources should be devoted to defensive installations vs. warships. These stations wouldn’t come into play unless the enemy essentially won the war, while more warships sent out to other systems to fight could keep them from getting here.

David was glad they were being built, but he knew that they were being built for more than the lizards…though he wasn’t sure how much of a dent they could put in the V’kit’no’sat’s shields, even the big gun, though he was sure Liam had done his homework and built them big enough to have at least some effect if/when their primary nemesis ever returned.

3

David transferred from the shuttle to a dropship at one of the low orbit starports that brought him directly down to Atlantis, landing on one of the numerous pads that had replaced the runways, given that with anti-grav technology all landings/takeoffs were now vertical. A number of other surface buildings had been reworked as well, giving the city a slightly different look than it originally had, though the proportions were exactly the same. Rather than expand the city Davis had had six more built nearby on the sea floor for various operations while the public element of Atlantis had been completely removed.

Now the city served Star Force operations only, with the public transitioning through 4 of the other 6 cities. There, Star Force was the corporate entity it had always been with entertainment facilities, stores, resorts, transit hubs, training facilities, etc, but where Atlantis had once held that benchmark the original ocean city was now split between high end Star Force personnel and Archon trainees, making it the most reclusive hub within the entire infrastructure network.

That said, flights were coming and going at a furious pace, as they always had, but now it was Star Force personnel being shipped in and out rather than tourists and diplomats. Even the national embassies had been moved to one of the other cities, making Atlantis’s inhabitants 100% Star Force and reducing security risks considerably.

David made his way through the bustling city over and up to Davis’s office, passing through security at the bottom before walking his way up into the same 360 degree skyline view the Director had always worked out of. Like always, he found him busy at his desk, though the thin, grey man Davis had been when David had first met him centuries ago was now gone, replaced by a fairly fit build and stylish dark hair, making him appear strikingly similar to the Archon’s favorite Doctor, minus the Converse shoes.

“You made good time,” Davis said, not looking up from the datapad he had in his right hand as he compared notes with the holographic display on his desk.

“I came alone,” the Archon said, pulling up one of several chairs and sitting down while Davis finished whatever he was working on. “I didn’t want to pull the others off until I knew what we were dealing with.”

Davis tapped his desktop and the holograms vanished, replaced by a floating list of dates and events on the Archon’s side for him to view. “Bits and pieces I’ve been able to piece together over the last century. We’ve dealt with other dissident organizations before, but this one is far more devious and widespread…so much so that security hasn’t been able to track down more than a few leads. They’re extremely secretive and above all else, patient.”

David looked down the list, seeing small thefts and rules violations, cargo transfers, and other very thin fibers in the web the Director was trying to track down. “Not much to go on…especially given the range of dates.”

“No it’s not,” Davis agreed. “But logistics necessitates certain realities, and I’ve been getting better at guestimating their capabilities and needs…which led me to find this.”

Another hologram popped up, detailing a more recent incident involving the death of an American police officer.

“I don’t see the connection. The Americans still permit civilian ownership of firearms, unless you’ve convinced them to adopt Star Force protocol?”

“Not on that count, no. Look at the weapon.”

David touched a few virtual buttons on his side of the desk and pulled up photos and a report on the confiscated weapon. It was a plasma pistol, obviously, but not of Star Force make. In fact, the report indicated that it didn’t match up with any known weapons maker…which was extremely odd, given that you couldn’t just build plasma weapons out of your backyard shop, not even the crude knockoffs of Star Force designs that other nations and corporations produced.

“Custom build?”

“Tie that in with various thefts of materials and you have a rough region around the Colorado area showing activity. It’s barely detectable, but there.”

“I don’t see how thefts are low key?”

“I’m labeling them thefts,” Davis explained. “To the corporations they’re coming from the amounts are small in number and listed as damaged or miscellaneous parts and compounds. Whoever this organization is they’re very sneaky about appropriating what they need…and this weapon suggests that they are in fact building some items on their own. To do that they have to have a base of operations off the grid, and I suspect it’s somewhere in or near Colorado.”

“You want us to locate and dispose of the firearms factory? That’s a lot of ground to cover.”

“No, I want you to expose as much of their operations as you can. I don’t think this is a local organization. I believe it to be system-wide, but Colorado is the only location I can even remotely pin them down to. I know there isn’t much to go on, but they think and operate socially. In order to produce equipment they have to operate logistically, establishing infrastructure. Sniff it out and follow the threads wherever they lead.”

“And the Americans?”

“I’m not tipping them off that we know anything, otherwise this group might go to ground again.”

“Again?”

“They’ve been exposed before, the last time being 17 years ago. It was whitewashed into a bribe attempt by a gambling syndicate, but they were attempting, I believe, to infiltrate key facilities in order to create blind spots in the surveillance grid. If no reports of missing items or personnel are filed, then they’re ghosts save for the locals. This is how I think they’ve been covering for themselves, and that recent shooting was a major blunder. It’s already been deemed an act of suicide by cop, but the weapon report was filed before they could get at it and our computer sifters picked it up before they could retract it. As of now the officer was killed by a series of bullets fired from a 9mm Trech.”

David frowned. “How long did that take?”

“The report was adjusted within 20 minutes of publishing. Unless someone was looking at it live they wouldn’t have noticed.”

“Sounds like they don’t have the local police in the bag, but there’s no way that’s going to fly with the locals unless they can put some pressure on them.”

“I agree, which is why I’d like you to start there. Look for infrastructure, possibly subsurface tunnels. I’ve had geoscans of the area taken from orbit, but there are so many subsurface caverns that only straight line construction sticks out, and we haven’t discovered any, so they may be using natural or concealed passages.”

“Why are you so sure they’re subsurface?”

“Because I’ve been monitoring cargo shipments and there haven’t been any anomalies. If they’re interested in medium to large scale production, they’ve got to be getting resources in somehow.”

“In to where? You can’t monitor an entire state.”

“Process of elimination. I’ve built enough structures to be able to ballpark the capabilities and requirements to house industry and have quietly investigated all those that fit the profile…but they’re clean. I think this organization has built their own structures, and best bet would be in the mountains deep enough that our scans can’t penetrate. I was hoping we could pick up connecting tunnels or overland cargo shipments, but we haven’t been able to find evidence of either.”

“Other than just poking around, what do you want us to do that security can’t?”

“Security is already on site, undercover. They’re tracking down some leads. I want you there and ready to move if and when something comes in.”

“So no clue then?”

“Suspicions only. Find their supply lines and they should lead you to the nest, wherever it is. I doubt they’re growing their own food, so they’ve got to be shipping it and other items in regularly.”

“As far as your suspicions go, how large of a ‘nest’ are we looking for?”

“Something big.”

David nodded, having heard enough. “I’ll assign myself until we find something more solid to go on, then call in Green Team if a target materializes.”

“As you wish. I don’t want to take you away from your training for any prolonged period of time, but this is a weed we need to pull out before it grows any larger.”

“If they’re building up an arsenal of plasma weapons in secret, they intend to hit something,” David guessed. “Any ideas?”

“None…and plenty. Whoever this is is staying very quiet while they build their strength. That alone suggests something nefarious.”

“You think they’re stupid enough to come after us?”

“We’re the shiny object that people like to toss rocks at, and given how widespread I think this organization is, I’d be genuinely surprised if their agenda didn’t involve Star Force in some way.”

“I just can’t see what their endgame would be,” David said, rubbing his forehead. “We don’t bow to public sentiment, and there’s no way they’re putting up anything that can touch our fleet.”

“Headache?” Davis asked.

“A bit. My senses have been wonky for the past few weeks.”

Davis’s eyes narrowed. “Wonky how?”

“Flashes, on and off. Sometimes I think I can even see behind me, but it doesn’t last long enough to analyze, which makes me wonder if it isn’t a bit of dream-state slipping over. That’s happened before when I’ve been going through heavy training, but that felt dopey, not flashy…not that that probably makes any sense to you.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Davis said, pulling up one of several datapads and finding a particular file. “Read this.”

David took the datapad and scrolled through a short message from Head Trainer Wilson, detailing some alarming reports he’d received from Jason-025 and Aaron-010. Both were having headaches, it seemed, along with mind-related ‘powers’ that were beginning to manifest. Both trailblazers had requested Wilson’s take on ways to refine the new abilities, given that they’d never trained for anything like this before. Attached were the personal messages from both Archons, detailing their similar, but not identical situations.

As he skimmed through Jason’s report David’s eyes widened at the noting of ‘spherical sight’ and how it had been a precursor to telekinesis.

“Similar?” Davis asked at seeing his reaction.

“Jason’s case is, not so much with Aaron,” he said, skimming his report having to do with thought projections then going back to Jason’s. “Grainy black and white, yeah, that’s exactly what it feels like. Why haven’t they said anything to the rest of us?”

“I’d hazard a guess they wanted to work this out for themselves so they’d have some guidance to offer the rest of you. They didn’t tell me either, by the way, and if you’re showing signs then there may be others as well.”

“Signs?” David asked, curious as to how he intoned that word.

“Of repressed mental abilities resurfacing.”

“What repressed mental abilities?”

Davis frowned. “They didn’t even bother to tell you that much?”

“Apparently not.”

“The dragon we had come visit…you know about that, right?”

“That was mentioned,” the Archon said sarcastically.

“The dragon said that Zen’zat possessed mental abilities that shouldn’t have been affected by subsequent generations…meaning we still have them in our genetic code.”

“Son of a…now that they really should have told us. How long have Jason and Aaron had this?”

“I only know what you’re holding in your hand, but it seems recent.”

“Coincidence?”

“To what?”

“The dragon’s visit.”

Davis sighed. “That thought crossed my mind, but Aaron wasn’t even on Earth when it came and hasn’t been back to the pyramid since, so I don’t think his case was prompted by any alien influence.”

“I wouldn’t rule it out entirely,” David warned.

“You three are all high level Archons. It might be that you’re just breaking through naturally…or maybe the trailblazers were trying on purpose and your case is just random. How much mental training do you do?”

“More than the others,” he admitted.

“Tell me, have you mentioned this to anyone else?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I…well, to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what was happening. I half thought it was my imagination.”

“And I wonder how many others there might be in the same situation,” Davis prompted.

David raised an eyebrow as their gazes locked. “You’re thinking it’s time we all swapped notes?”

“I think that would be wise.”

“Jason’s still out on the frontier.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but if they’re asking Wilson for training assistance then this must be a whole new ballgame for you guys. That’s not something you’re going to solve in a few weeks. You’re going to have to create a whole new training component. I think that’s something Jason would be willing to swap off for.”

“If you think he’ll come back, send out a recall order.”

Davis smiled. “I’m not an Archon. Military matters, and especially your training, are not something I have pull over.”

“Yeah, like second gens can give trailblazers orders? You do know how silly that is, right?”

Davis worked his mouth around as he chose his next words, realizing he’d been caught in a ‘my bad’ moment. “I would hope that such internal rivalries wouldn’t cloud their judgement.”

“There are people fighting and dying out on the frontier,” David said, steering the conversation towards the point. “They’re not going to want to leave that in someone else’s hands unless there is a very good reason to do so. You’re in a better position than me to convince them of that fact.”

Davis nodded. “Point taken. I think Taryn’s still on Earth, so I’ll run it by her. Do you have any objection to pulling yourself off the line?”

“After this mission, I assume?”

“After,” Davis confirmed. “With travel times being what they are, it’ll be months before word can even get out to all regions.”

“If this is a new ability developing, I’d like to get it under my thumb sooner rather than later…and if it’s the beginning of massive numbers converting, better to have some of us get through it so we can toe the line when the others need to come back and train. Did the dragon say how many Zen’zat had these abilities?”

“It was taken to mean categorically.”

“Then whatever is prompting my head to go wonky might start happening to a lot of others. So let’s get this figured out now, before the war really ramps up.”

“A point I’ll be sure to make with the trailblazers.”

“If you don’t mind, can I get your medtechs to run me through a few scans before I head off to the states? Not the normal ones, your specialists.”

“Please. The messages from Jason and Aaron didn’t come with any data, and I’d like to get our biologists working on the problem as soon as possible.”

“Have you had a look through the database yet?”

“Briefly, but I don’t have any terminology to specifically search for so I was just wasting my time.”

“Why the damn dinos couldn’t leave an index is beyond me.”

“Alien thinking. Besides, when you pack a bag for a trip, how often do you make an inventory list?”

“Never.”

“Because you already know what’s inside and where to find it.”

“Right…we’re fake Zen’zat so we shouldn’t be complaining.”

“Our techs can work their way around the portions we’re familiar with, much as I assume the V’kit’no’sat did, and can show others where to find what they need, but finding new areas is random and tedious. I’ve got 8,000 techs working through it, piece by piece, but we’ve gotten through less than 2%...and we only know that now because we have core access. I’m sure there are files on the Zen’zat’s mental abilities in there somewhere, but without any links we haven’t been able to find them.”

“You did run a search for ‘superpowers,’ right?”

Davis smiled. “I don’t even know how to say that in V’kit’no’sat. Our vocabulary is still on the thin side…and our mathematics are even worse. They have an engineering language that is completely separate…that we also discovered with the core access. We’ve learned about 10 words since, and that’s just from matching up symbols on schematics.”

“So we’re going to have to figure this out on our own for the time being?”

“Pretty much, which is why I’d prefer to have you all working the problem together. I’m not the combat expert, but even I know that telekinesis would be a huge asset on the battlefield.”

“And if the real Zen’zat have it,” David said, thinking long term, “the sooner we figure it out the better.”

“That thought also crossed my mind.”

David shook his head in dismay. “Is there no end to their bag of tricks?”

“Given the size of their database, I’d guess we’re in for a lot more surprises…not to mention whatever they’ve developed over subsequent millennia.”

“Don’t remind me,” David said, standing up. “If I start mindbending pebbles I’ll let you know, but I’d like to get on the Colorado mission before the cop shooting gets any colder.”

“I’ve made arrangements for you to work out of the Phoenix spaceport. There’s a mantis on standby to take you there whenever you’re ready.”

David tapped the datapad he’d left on the Director’s desk. “Send a copy of that and all other relevant information to my account.”

“That’s all I’ve got at the moment, but I’ll make sure you get any updates within an hour of them crossing my desk.”

David nodded, not bothering with a goodbye now that all relevant information had been exchanged, and headed down the stairs out of Davis’s office, picking up his armor satchel from the bottom where he’d left it, and headed straight over to the mantis air pads.

4

May 17, 2405

Solar System

Earth

David sat in one of the Phoenix spaceport’s executive offices, studying report after report that Star Force security and analytics were pulling for him, some based off of Davis’s previous work and others following up leads the Archon pointed them toward. The more data that David worked through the more he was convinced that Davis was right that some shadowy organization had a foothold in the Colorado region. Whoever it was was very tidy, but Archons weren’t chosen only for their physical skills.

Seeing and identifying new patterns, troubleshooting where one had no previous experience, and finding ways around problems were all baseline prerequisites for Archon trainees and while this organization, which David had come to start referring to as ‘The Silence,’ had perfectly blended itself into societal norms to the point of invisibility, his mind didn’t function within the box that the masses did, and thus The Silence couldn’t camouflage against what they didn’t understand.

There were clues everywhere, like scattered easter eggs, but nothing that could even remotely be used as proof…not that David needed proof. Nor did Star Force for that matter. But he could see how The Silence had eluded national authorities so easily, even with the occasional gigantic snafu like the death of the police officer in Steamboat Springs. The city was small, but like most nowadays had a central portion that was built vertically to allow for population growth while maintaining the wilderness environment that many vacationers came to visit from the urban sprawl along the coasts.

The shooting had apparently happened on the street in a small college park when a group of students got into an argument with a passerby. The man had shot them, then a nearby officer that responded to the ruckus before three others got onsite and killed the shooter, whereupon they claimed his weapon that mysteriously morphed from a plasma variety to the much more common bullet-launchers.

Three students in total were killed, but the death of the police officer is what had made national news. Upon arriving in the United States David had immediately traveled out to the college campus and did some quiet searching around, both in daytime and night. The hubbub of the shooting had already died down and normal routines were returning to form but there were plenty of people still unnerved enough at what had happened to be willing to talk about it at length.

Security footage from the park area where the shooting was supposed to have occurred was unavailable due to a power failure in the cameras…though with some minor hacking Star Force techs were able to confirm that the campus security systems were functioning normally and that the recordings from that time had been erased.

Not only in the park, though. There was a large section of the campus that had been blacked out. That, combined with some idle gossip around the campus, gave David the impression that the shooting was a cover up for something else that had gone down outside of the park. The shooter himself was unimpressive, though his personnel records were also altered to include previous run-ins with the law that Star Force’s files did not show. The man, named Harkin, had visited Luna on several occasions, and as such his personnel file was computer checked by Star Force for any security flags…at which time a copy was made and stored in secure databases that couldn’t be easily hacked.

A quick check between the American and Star Force records popped up the discrepancy, which suggested that the man was a fall guy, either a part of The Silence or someone they had paid off or set up to cover for something else…and David thought he had the location for that something else pinned down to a particular building on campus that held support services, including a bowling alley, cafeteria, fitness center, and several lounges.

Since he’d gotten back to the spaceport he’d had Star Force’s people digging up whatever data they could on the college and its staff, as well as the students. Security had also placed several discrete recording devices on site so they could monitor traffic patterns in and out of the campus and that one building in particular, which David was now reviewing in conjunction with a logistical estimate analytics had put together on his request.

Given that the suspect building was a cafeteria that fed thousands of students on campus continually it was natural to assume regular shipments of food coming in and trash going out, but David had suspected, and analytics had confirmed, that the traffic flow was above and beyond what was necessary, meaning the cargo shipments were either being carried in half empty trucks or there was more moving to and fro than just college foodstuffs.

Also, two of the three students killed were a couple whose friends had said they had a regular eating schedule in the cafeteria before one would attend a night class and the other would head over to a friend’s dorm room. No one knew what the two had been doing in the park where they were alleged to have gotten shot, which made David suspect they had been killed elsewhere and moved to the park to divert attention away from the location of the actual shooting.

If this was all a massive cover up, then the pair had probably stumbled across something they weren’t supposed to see, while the third person may have been involved or just added to the body count while in the park. David didn’t know what to suspect there and he hadn’t been able to dig up any information on that individual’s dining patterns.

Several other people in the cafeteria at the time had recalled seeing the couple eating and then leave prior to the shooting, which jived with the official report of the incident occurring in the park, but David’s gut still said they had seen something they weren’t supposed to have seen and they were shot on sight, with a very quick cover-up put into place, otherwise the plasma pistol would never have seen the light of day. He guessed it was either the only weapon The Silence had on hand at the time, or they used it in public to match the lethal wounds the students had received so no one would think twice on site…then the files were altered later, with key people being hushed up to overlook the difference.

Had there been plasma wounds on the bodies, supposedly fired from a bullet launcher, that could have spread word of mouth before The Silence would be able to hush it up…at least that’s where David’s mind was headed. What had actually happened was still up for speculation at the moment.

The building, though, was the main priority. Receiving schedules appeared to be repetitive, according to the report he was reading, with several occurring during the night. The cargo trucks would arrive, offload in an interior bay, then leave shortly thereafter. Based on wheel depression, for most American vehicles had not transitioned over to anti-grav, expensive as it was, the trucks coming in had been lightly loaded the first few days after Star Force had its surveillance equipment set up, but the past three, it seemed, showed fully loaded vehicles coming and going…while shipping manifests for the college indicated that the trucks were delivery only and should have been departing empty.

“Mistake number one,” David said to The Silence, wherever and whoever they were. “Assuming that no one is curious enough to pay attention to details.”

Getting up from his borrowed desk the Archon shot across the room and out the door…then came back in a moment later with a ‘did I really just forget that’ face and snagged the last two cookies from a small plate on the desk, biting off half of one as he headed back out the door.

Six hours later, after a quiet, stealth mantis drop off in Steamboat Springs, David was walking across Manning Community College campus just as the sun was setting behind the mountains and the street lights were coming on, blanketing the walkways in gentle green and orange to match the school colors. David was dressed in baggy civilian clothes, not even of Star Force issue, and blended in easily with the college students as he made his way across to the cafeteria in question.

He walked through it twice, from different angles, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary that the dead couple could have stumbled their way into but there was nothing on the main floor so he slowly walked up the curving staircase to the second level balcony where there were no vendors, just tables looking out the building’s walls that were mostly made of glass, offering a decent view of the campus grounds, lit up splendidly in artificial light now that night had fallen.

There were only a few occupied tables, all of which were along the edge of the balcony where they could look down on the people below. Opposite the railing there was an array of potted plants and trees bracketing twin doorways leading to restrooms. David walked that way, giving him a purpose for being on the upper level as he visually scanned the area, finding nothing of interest until he was a step away from entering the leftmost door to the men’s restroom.

In between the shrubbery and the back wall was a narrow gap on both sides, but on the one to his left was a fairly well worn path. Playing a hunch he stepped onto it, disappearing from view though there were a few tiny gaps that he could see the tables through. The dirt/wood chip pathway led to the corner of the wall where it revealed a hidden nook in the architecture…along with a very attractive girl typing something into her phone.

She looked up at David, then did a double take, sizing him up from head to toe and back again. “You’re not the one I was waiting for, but you’ll do just fine,” she said with a smile as she pocketed her phone.

“Oh I will?” David said, catching on quickly. “What if I was waiting on someone too?”

“Then we better hurry,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and pushing him back against the sidewall before standing up on her toes and kissing him hard.

David returned the gesture, but twisted her around enough that he could get an eye on the oddity in the building’s construction. The walls were unfinished, just bare plastio board, and the backside was open, though to what he couldn’t see because the entire area was in shadow with the only light coming in through the breaks in the trees, making for a convenient, yet secluded makeout niche.

The Archon found himself coming up short on air, but kept at it until she finally relented, realizing he hadn’t kissed anyone in a very long time. He looked down into her big brown eyes and smiled.

“How was that?”

“A bit sloppy. Seems like you could use some practice, but I’m really digging this hard body of yours. Are you on the football team?” she asked, leaning heavily into him and kissing his chin playfully.

“No, but I train pretty heavy. I’m going to try and test out to become an Archon later this year.”

Dim lighted as it was, he could clearly see her give him a ‘yeah right’ look, though the kiss that followed didn’t hold such sarcasm.

“As hot as you’re making me right now, I hate to break it to you, but you’re no Archon,” she said, followed by another kiss.

“Why not?” he asked, suppressing a laugh as he let himself enjoy the moment.

“You’re too short. I hear they don’t take anyone under 6’ 9’’ and you’re a good foot short of that.”

“I’m still growing,” he countered, then kissed her back, twisting her around again so he could try and get a different angle on the back end of the niche, but other than the faint drop off he couldn’t see anything past it.

A vibration on his hip cut the kiss short and the girl quickly backed away and pulled out her phone, looking very nervous as she read the text.

“Um, shit. My boyfriend’s here. Can you hide…please???”

David glanced around. “Where do you suggest?”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him back to the edge, then used her phone’s screen to provide some light on a narrow walkway along the wall about a foot and a half wide that led to another wall that jutted out left with the walkway following the perimeter to a hidden landing cattycorner from their position.

“Nobody’s back there, I think. Please?”

“I don’t know…you called me a bad kisser,” he teased.

“I said sloppy,” she said, kissing him hard again. “All you need is practice, which I’m more than willing to help you with later…just not now. Please.”

David pulled her back to him and did, he thought, a more credible job in the art of liplocking, then nudged her away. “Go.”

A relieved look crossed her phone-lighted features as she hopped back up to the front of the niche while David walked out of view down and around the L-shaped ledge that he guessed was half of a structural wall. He gingerly stepped off onto a flat top of what was probably a room below, but there was so little light that he had to feel his way around with his feet and hands. He followed the wall a few meters away from the drop off, then his foot caught on something. He reached down and, through tactile inspection, guessed that it was a bra some college chick had lost in the dark…making this the ‘more than make out’ platform.

Eventually he came to the other side of the landing and found another edge, making it clear to David that he was in the ghost of the building. Star Force designs didn’t have ‘ghosts,’ meaning interior space that wasn’t designated for use. Whoever had built this building had done so by drafting rooms as needed and fitting the entire construct into an exterior shell rather than adjusting the rooms to fit the shape of the shell. Normally ghost spaces were sealed off, from both people and air, but apparently the construction crew for this building had missed a wall, and with the leafy interior decorating the oversight hadn’t been noticed.

Meaning that if a couple of college makeout artists had ventured far enough in this building’s ghost zone they might have come across something they weren’t supposed to see.

David worked his way across the edge of the drop off until he found the far wall, which coincidentally was at a slant, meaning he had to stoop down to follow it to the base where there was about half a meter of empty space between the edge of the room he was standing on and the angled roof. He reached a hand over, feeling the drop off, then noticed a hint of light when he stuck his head over. It was barely a crack, but it let out enough of a glow for him to see where the floor was.

Swinging his legs forward first, he slid over the edge and dropped down a remarkably short fall, being able to reach back up and touch his elbow to the ledge. The Archon knelt down next to the crack, smelling chemical sealant. He pressed a hand against the flat surface above the crack and pushed firmly.

The bottom corner peeled forward, letting in more light and breaking off little bits of dried sealant. David froze, waiting for a reaction from the other side, but no sounds or movements resulted so he pressed on, working his way up the panel and finding the hard points. With proper leverage he snapped each one loose, allowing the panel to swing forward enough that he could slip through underneath.

The Archon slithered out into some type of maintenance area underneath a shelf. There were several indicator lights in the room, but otherwise it was dark. Having had his eyes already adjusted to the diminished light it appeared well lit with sufficient floor space for extra-collegiate maneuvers if you were willing to crawl this far in.

David stood up, brushed himself off, then knelt back down to inspect the panel he’d popped loose. As his nose as told him, it had been recently resealed with the adhesive and fastening pins…which he’d managed to pry loose and were now sticking out the back side of the panel and keeping it slightly ajar.

Looking around as best he could in the dim lights that stood out like colored stars, he got the feeling that he’d worked his way into a machinist’s closet that doubled as a computer core for the building. There was one door to the left, which he gently brushed the handle of and by which determined it was locked…then his nose started to pick up another scent, one that was familiar.

He dropped back down to the floor and started feeling his way across the soft carpet, finding yet another reason why the love birds might have found their way in here. As the smell got stronger his hand brushed across a charred section of the floor, barely larger than the face of the watch David wore, but by the feel and smell of it he knew it was a plasma burn, one that’d probably been stamped out as soon as it’d hit.

He put his nose down to it, also noting the smell of cleaning fluid, as if the carpet had recently been shampooed. If the two students had come through the ghost region of the building and into this secluded hideaway, been discovered and shot on sight, then there was probably a measure of blood on the carpet that had to be washed out, no matter how much their wounds would have been cauterized on contact.

David had seen and smelled enough, and with the door locked couldn’t go any further without getting blunt with whatever might be on the other side…and if he was going to do that he’d need his armor if plasma pistols were floating around.

He pried up the panel and slid back through, then pulled it closed as much as possible, with the adhesive sealing catching more than he’d hoped it would. The tiny crack of light was almost invisible, but he figured that was because his eyes had adjusted to the lights in the closet. Hoping the panel would avoid scrutiny before he could get back, David climbed up in the dark to the platform and walked his way across, then came around the ‘L’ cautiously listening for sounds of contact before poking his head around the corner.

The girl was there, leaning against the wall and looking at her phone, and from the light it produced along with the bits coming in through the foliage on the other side he could see she was crying.

“All clear?” he whispered.

She jerked at the sound of his voice, then slumped back against the wall dejectedly as she swiped away the tears. “Yes.”

David walked out and over to her, which was when he noticed the strap on her shoulder was broken.

“You heard?”

“No I didn’t,” he said, frowning. “What did he do?”

“More than I wanted,” she said, sniffling at a tear-induced runny nose. “How could you not hear?”

“I was exploring the architecture. Are you hurt?”

“Well, he was exploring my architecture and wasn’t too gentle about it. Sorry, but I’m not in the mood anymore. Maybe another day.”

David caught her head in his right hand and kissed her on the forehead. “Would you like me to walk you back to your dorm?”

“Just walk?” she asked skittishly.

“Just walk,” he promised.

“Yeah, sure…why not,” she said, putting her phone away and grabbing his hand. A step toward the path she stopped and looked up at him. “Wait, what about your girl?”

“Let me worry about that,” David said, nudging her forward. She led him along the short trail between wall and shrubbery and out into the light by the restrooms, then dragged him by the hand across the room, down the stairs, and out into the night air. He matched her pace, which slowed once they were outside, and escorted her back to her dorm…then called for pickup and headed back to the spaceport where he put out a call for two other members of Green Team to join him in Phoenix.

5

May 20, 2405

Solar System

Earth

With the stealthed mantis hovering above the cloud layer over Manning College in the moonlight at 3 am, invisible to both radar and prying eyes below, David watched Nathan-937 and Assad-501 step off the deployed boarding ramp and drop down through the clouds. He waited a moment, seeing their ID tags continuing downward on his HUD, then he walked off the edge and fell through the water vapor, emerging on the much darker underside and tapping the chest controls of his jump pack to slow his descent.

The other two Archons bottomed out below him in tandem then walked apart to give him room to land, coming down gently on the rooftop of the college’s loading dock on the back side of the cafeteria complex. The three of them spread out and knelt down, with Nathan crawling up towards the door side edge where he could keep watch.

Then they waited, silently, for the better part of half an hour before a pair of semi-trailers rolled into the parking lot and the garage door opened, retracting up into the ceiling to allow them inside. Nathan gave a quick hand gesture behind him and the other two Archons moved up with David crawling to the right and positioning himself behind the wireless security camera covering the parking lot.

The first of the 12-wheeled trucks pulled in underneath them, with a short gap to the second. When its cab crossed underneath their position David twisted the camera out of alignment and the other two Archons rolled off and onto the top of the cargo canister as it passed by. David waited a few seconds until the second truck disappeared from view and he heard the doors lowering before he slid his legs over the edge of the roof and dropped to the ground, not bothering to use his jump pack.

He landed hard on his feet, but thousands of hours in high gravity training had strengthened his legs to the point where they didn’t buckle, merely dropping him into a recovery crouch before darting underneath the half-lowered door as flashes of pink lit up the interior just before it locked down and cut off the view from the outside.

David pulled out his stun gun from the rack on his back and ran down the gap in between the two trucks just as the driver of the second one was getting out in a panic. The Archon fired his own pink energy blast in a blur that spread out into a cone nearly half a meter wide by the time it hit the driver, dropping him to the ground unconscious as David hopped over him and pulled the door closed so he could pass through the narrow gap between trucks and up to the front where Nathan and Assad were sweeping around from both sides.

The three quickly downed all personnel in the garage and checked them for weapons, finding none.

“Trucks,” David ordered as he moved off into the loading area opposite the doors. In between the two was a large open parking area with hover lifters racked up on the western wall, one of which was already detached and floating knee height above the floor with the handle dragging on the ground next to an unconscious worker.

Further up along that wall was a ramp that led to an elevated walkway that led back into the loading area, with a symmetrical version on the eastern side, no doubt with one being for entry and the other for departure as the offloading crews would cycle through their rounds offloading the cargo into the rooms that David was now about to start checking.

He held his stun gun in his left hand, aware that he only had 11 more shots left before it was drained of charge. The weapon was a power hog and the Archons preferred using stingers, both for the higher number of rounds they could fire and the increased accuracy, for the stun guns’ energy didn’t flow in a packet or streak, nor did it even dissipate like plasma. Instead, the energy constantly wanted to expand, meaning the moment it left the muzzle of the weapon it had a cone-shaped effect that only made it effective at short range.

That energy was itself invisible and the same used in the stingers, but they had a physical object for the energy to cling to and thus could fire at greater ranges. The stun energy was so repulsive upon itself that a second type of energy had to be added to the discharge for it to cling to, which is what gave the weaponsfire the pink flash.

Very few Archons used the weapons, and even the Regulars usually preferred stingers, save for those who had difficulty aiming. The energy-laced paintballs took some skill to operate, which the Archons and many others preferred, while the stun guns’ spraying capability made them more of a rookie weapon. However, there was one major advantage to the weapons aside from the coolness of a pure energy discharge…they didn’t leave behind any trace of weaponsfire.

Plasma weapons left burn marks, as did lachars to a lesser extent. For this mission, Green Team was operating on non-lethal protocols until they understood what the threat level was, which meant either stingers or stun guns, and stingers left behind paint. Star Force didn’t have legal authority to operate inside the United States and most other countries, so this mission had to be covert, leaving behind no direct evidence that could link them to the site.

Hacking into the campus’s systems had told them where the security cameras were, as well as the lack of cameras inside the loading garage, not to mention the blueprints of the facility, including the storage room that David had found previously and was now coming up on down a narrow side hallway.

It was locked, as before, but the Archon pulled out a small object from a pouch on the small of his back and set it over the swipe card slot. A few moments later the door clicked open and David flicked on an interior light, clearly seeing the burn mark on the floor where he had felt it out before. He had a quick look around the room then put his back to the wall and looked out, trying to work through what might have happened and where a plasma-armed individual might have come from.

Stepping back outside there were two doors on either side of the narrow hallway that led to the wider cargo-access tunnel that ran straight into a warehouse. David checked all four doors, finding them unlocked and leading to more small-scale storage, mostly for maintenance and cleaning purposes. Nothing there jumped out at him, so he moved on down the hall and headed left, bringing him to the warehouse area that contained crates of supply in the center with a ring of refrigeration units around the perimeter for the foodstuffs that couldn’t survive room temperature.

“Got something,” Assad reported over the comm.

“What?” David asked as he turned around and hurried back.

“One of these things does not look like the others,” the Archon said in a sarcastic voice as David came back into the garage area and saw both Archon tags located behind the leftmost truck. In fact, one looked to be up inside the back of it.

David ran around the back and hopped up inside while Nathan stayed on the deck below, finding the truck only partially loaded with food supplies…until he leaned against one of the boxes and felt something much heavier inside. He was about to open a box when Assad pointed him towards something over behind the nearest boxes and obscured from direct view.

Peeking up, David saw the top of a large device half buried in boxes.

“Industrial laser,” Assad told him, already having had a closer look. “Not exactly what you need for making breakfast.”

“Aines Corp?”

Assad’s helmeted head paused a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, it is.”

“It was listed as damaged and scrapped less than a month ago,” David explained. “A lot of things have been going missing from various corporations, and this was one on Davis’s list.”

“Where were they planning to take it?” Nathan asked, still keeping an eye out behind the trucks.

“Either they’re storing it here to transport elsewhere later, or they’ve got subsurface tunnels, and I’d bet on the latter. See what you can find,” David said, then looked at Assad. “You find anything else back there?”

“Only crawled back halfway, and we still have the other truck to look at.”

David pointed him towards the boxes and hopped out the back, heading over to the other truck. He opened it up just in time to have a blue plasma blast rip by over his head.

He ducked down and out of sight on reflex, then came back up and pumped two stun gun shots into the truck without aiming. When his eyes focused enough to spot individuals he pumped another round into the one left standing and held his ground, aiming in at elbow height from the floor of the truck.

A few seconds later the other two Archons came up alongside him and David nodded for Nathan to jump on up while he covered him. The other acolyte’s silver armor levitated its way up with a quick tap of the jump pack all the while holding a stun gun level in the other hand.

“Tangos down,” he reported as he walked in around a few stacks of crates. “I count four,” Nathan said, pulling out the stun stick from the rack on his packless armor’s back and jabbing it into one of the still moving men. He did the same with the others, unsure of how much of a hit they’d taken from David’s weapon.

“They weren’t going into storage,” Assad said, switching to venator and roaming about the garage. The stun guns made enough noise, but not nearly as much as plasma weapons. If someone else was nearby it might have attracted some attention.

“No insignia on the uniforms,” Nathan said as David climbed up into the cargo compartment and stepped over a crate to get to the men. “But this clothing is definitely standardized. These men weren’t meant to see daylight.”

“Hello,” Assad said from a few meters outside, his tag visible on David’s HUD through the left side of the truck out into the middle of the clear area in the hangar.

“Whachya got?” Nathan asked, still stooped over and examining the unconscious men.

“Seam in the floor. I think there’s a hidden lift.”

“That would explain the enclosed loading bay,” David said…then another idea struck him. “I need to check something. Grab that plasma and any others they’ve got,” he said, climbing out the back of the truck and heading up the side ramp. He ran back over to the closet, wondering again why someone would have happened onto the pair of love birds with weapon in hand.

When he got inside he began looking around for some type of switch, pulling out and pushing aside boxes, widgets, and any and all things that were packing the shelves…then he dropped to the floor and looked around low, seeing if there wasn’t something they could have accidentally kicked.

And there it was…on the left side, up underneath the bottom shelf set barely high enough to slide your foot under, was a 2 inch wide toe button. David reached his hand under and tapped up on it, assuming it was usually activated by foot…then the whole far wall disconnected from the closet and pulled back a meter revealing a well-lit hallway to the left.

“Son of a bitch,” David whispered as he got to his feet. Just then a person appeared in the nook, coming out of the hallway, pistol in holster. As soon as he saw the Archon’s armor he drew his weapon but David was faster, jumping forward and grabbing the man’s wrist as they smashed back into the shelves on the moveable wall. David snaked an arm back and grabbed his stun gun from the rack on his back and tucked it into the man’s side as he tried to wiggle free of the Archon’s iron-tight grip.

A quick shot ended his resistance and David untangled himself enough to stand up, then he saw that two steps down the hallway a sharp and narrow staircase descended around curve, heading further underground…along with a large lever imbedded into the wall.

“Trouble?” Assad asked at hearing the weaponsfire.

“Watch the floor,” David said, then he pulled the lever.

“Bingo,” Assad confirmed as a huge section of floor came up on pylons.

“Found a stairway headed down. You two take the lift, assuming that’s what it is?”

“Cargo lift for sure, judging by the size.”

“I caught a guard coming up, so stay sharp.”

“Copy that,” Nathan confirmed as he came out of the truck and joined Assad as the lift finally finished extending up in two parts. First was the pneumatic lifts pushing the floor section up and out of the way, then came a second floor with a short 3-sided fence outlining the perimeter with a control console in the far back corner. The lift assembly locked into place with a snap/hiss then the pair of Archons stepped inside and toggled the ‘down’ button.

Slowly it descended, first past the garage floor, then down through tens of meters of vertical tunnel until a crack of light showed at their feet along with the sound of plasma fire.

Nathan fell to his belly, aiming his weapon through the growing gap just in time to see David pistol whip an opponent off his feet then fire a pink stun blast off at someone else out of view. As he searched for a target to shoot Assad ran forward and slid out of the now two foot gap face first and fell into the large open cavern on his head, rolled into a crude somersault, and came up firing at a pair of uniformed guards, both of which were aiming at David.

Within a few seconds all of the enemy were down and Nathan picked himself up and jumped off the lift before it locked down into place, leaving the threesome in the middle of a high-ceilinged chamber with the far wall open to natural rock that was unlit.

David kicked aside one of the knockoff plasma pistols and walked out onto a rectangular dock reaching into the rocky end of the chamber, seeing a watery tunnel heading off into blackness. Attached to either side of the dock were three boats, two were small skiffs while the third on the left was a long platform, apparently for moving cargo.

“Impressive setup,” Assad commented, walking up beside David and looking down the dark tunnel. “That looks natural.”

“All the better to hide it from geological scans. Looks like Davis was right about them having a hidden base.”

“Press on or tidy up?” Nathan asked.

“These guys are good at covering their tracks, so let’s probe as far as we can while we’ve got them off guard.”

“I’m down with that,” Assad said, reattaching his pistol to his armor rack and hopping onto one of the skiffs. Nathan followed him, leaving David on the dock until the other Archon got the engine running, then Green Team’s leader hopped on the back of the four person transport as it pulled out and around the end and slowly motored off down the tunnel under the glare of four bright spotlights on the arch overtop the skiff.

A few moments later the dock area was silent, exposed to the surface via the lift and the staircase, with numerous unconscious bodies up top and below for any 4 am maintenance worker or security guard to stumble across.

6

The underground waterway was mostly natural, but David could see bits here and there where it’d been hollowed out wide enough to allow for easier passage. Multiple loops and switchbacks made their route seem erratic, but as they progressed the Archon’s armor created/updated their battlemap with an exact record of their travels, which was showing a gradual progression to the southwest.

There were also sporadic hollowed-out turnarounds where opposing traffic could slide off to let others pass by, suggesting that this tunnel saw a fair amount of traffic, yet the Archons came across none as they zigzagged their way through the claustrophobic tunnel for more than 2 hours. Eventually the rough rock ceiling smoothed out into concrete and they found themselves in a spur with four opposing tunnels and an exit on the right side that led to a large underground lagoon.

Assad flipped the lights off and brought the motor down to a minimum crawl as they looked out across the dozens of small watercraft docked against a very manmade structure. Gone was the natural rock, with the ceiling being comprised of flat, solid lines and the perimeter of the loading area lit by small lights in what appeared to be standby mode for the larger ones above that were currently deactivated.

“Bring us in,” David said over the comm, and Assad trolled them out of the spur and across the lagoon.

“Two doors,” Nathan noted as they approached. “No guards.”

“You take right,” he said, pulling out his stun stick and flicking it on. David’s stun gun was out of shots and hanging uselessly on his armor next to another, along with a stun rifle that held 52 rounds, but that was the full extent of his ammunition. The stun stick had hundreds of hits in it, making it by far his most useful weapon…if they were fighting in close.

“Neutralize tangos on contact,” he continued as the skiff nudged up against the dock and he and Nathan jumped up and off onto a clear section of the platform. “Keep them off the comms.”

Nathan ran across to the rightmost doorway and ducked inside, wielding his stun stick in his left hand and a stun gun in his right. His door was only man-sized while the other was built wide for cargo passage. Befitting its smaller nature, inside and to the right he found another circular staircase that led up, which he took to two steps at a time.

Meanwhile David headed for the cargo door, pausing long enough at the entrance for a look inside and so Assad could catch up behind him. There was a short tunnel that connected to a cross hallway with a large lift on the opposite side. He signaled for Assad to head right down the tunnel while he took left and the Archons split.

David immediately came up on a small room with a man inside to his left, prompting him to skid to a halt and jump inside, jabbing the man into unconsciousness before he could properly react. A quick look around the room suggested that it was a quartermaster’s station, inside of which there was a schematic of the cargo areas and the transport lines coming from nearby production areas.

The facility was huge, and David guessed there was probably more to it than was showing here, given that there weren’t any residential or service areas marked, just industrial ones. Not wanting to linger he ran back outside and continued down the hallway just as a loud and ominous alarm sounded.

“Sorry guys,” Nathan said amidst the sound of plasma fire. “That was me. Ran into a nest of them…and more are pouring out from everywhere, but not all are armed.”

“Take them all down,” David said as a couple of people popped out of nearby rooms in front of him. He sprinted ahead and wacked one across the forehead with a halfhearted tap of his stun stick as he passed by, then he chased the other back into the room she’d come out of and poked her in the thigh as she panickly jumped across a table trying to get out of reach.

“Security teams coming down from above,” Assad reported. “All with plasma pistols and shields.”

David ran down the hallway and into one of the cargo areas, then sprinted down the side wall until he came to a door that the schematic had said led into a factory area. As soon as he was inside he ran into workers moving about everywhere, some running for cover and others not knowing where to go or what to do.

The Archon took after them indiscriminately, slapping and poking them with his stun stick as rapidly as possible and littering the floor with bodies as he worked his way around the largely mechanized assembly line that appeared to be making rifles. Of what kind David didn’t know, for there were so many people running about that he had his hands full containing and stunning them all.

When he got through most of them he began tracking down the fleers, following them into other compartments until a security detail finally got to him and they had a brief shootout. David pulled out his stun rifle and went to work on the soldiers, knowing better than to let multiple plasma-wielding shooters take him on while he tried to close to melee range. He had to time his shots well to get them past the guards’ shields, but the spraying effect of the energy weapons usually hit some part of their bodies, disabling them enough for a second shot to down them completely.

David took the last of them hand to hand, saving precious stun ammo, and wacked him with his stun stick across the face. The Archon let him fall and kicked aside another shield so he could poke the man laying underneath, remembering that he’d only got a partial hit in on him. When the shield moved to the side a waiting pistol underneath it fired up at David’s silver armor, but it moved aside quick enough that the blue plasma streak hit the ceiling, then the Archon’s stun stick came in and finished off the devious guard.

“Report?” David asked as he poked a few more to make sure they were down.

“I’m in…their security station,” Nathan said. “I’ll have it locked down in a minute or so.”

“Rounding up strays,” Assad added. “There’s a lot of people down here.”

“Have you seen where the strays are headed?” David asked, heading back out into the halls.

“Everywhere and nowhere. I haven’t come across any other exits aside from the dock.”

“Me neither, but let’s not assume. Fill out the battlemap as soon as possible.”

“Already working on it,” Assad confirmed.

David ducked into another processing area, stunning five more personnel that were taking cover behind various pieces of equipment before having to run down 3 more that tried to escape. Several of them pleaded with him to spare them, but he wasn’t in a mood for conversation just yet, nor was he going to take the time to tell them that he was only using stun weapons…so for the time being he went around taking down anyone he saw like some villain out of a horror movie. His victims would have time to sort out what happened later, when they woke up and realized they were still alive.

To date, no other entity, corporate or national, had been able to duplicate Star Force’s stun technology…nor had they offered it up for sale. There had been some discussion on that policy within the Star Force ranks, but it had been decided to keep the technology in-house rather than let it out to the public in the hopes that the bad guys would try stunning some of their victims rather than outright shooting them.

That said, attempts had been made to create stun weapons independent of Star Force…all of which had failed. The energy used wasn’t part of the electromagnetic spectrum, thus it was off the scientific radar of the rest of the planet. Star Force had learned of it from the pyramid database, along with a myriad of other types of energies, and that also was something they weren’t keen on sharing with the public. Star Force had mastered the basic stun energy early on and had been tinkering with it for nearly 400 years, making their stun stick/sword and stinger technology extremely efficient, as well as providing directed energy stun weapons for building security…ones that could run directly off a power grid.

David had been part of a Green Team mission 160 years ago to recover a stolen stun stick from an illicit research facility that had been organized and funded by the Japanese, and though they’d had possession of the item for several months David’s team had recovered it, or rather its disassembled components, along with the data the researchers had been collecting…only to discover they couldn’t make anything out of it, given that it functioned in a field of science that the rest of the planet hadn’t discovered yet.

There were dozens of other attempts to steal and replicate Star Force weaponry, almost always taken from building security forces in spaceports or starports. Every time it happened Star Force would track them down and make a mess of things enough to get the point across that they weren’t going to tolerate being stolen from. That, along with additional penalties handed down to the nations responsible had led to them backing off and surreptitiously using third parties to try and gleam some of Star Force’s weapons technology for their own uses…but they had to do so covering their tracks, for more often than not Star Force found out anyway and put the economic smackdown on those involved.

Nowadays the attempts still occurred, but were always by individuals or small organizations…ones that had more to gain than they had to lose, and ones that were frankly stupid enough to try. The national intelligence divisions from Earth and the various colonies around the Solar System were well aware of the tendency of unannounced, unsanctioned, and unwelcome Archon strike teams popping up randomly inside their territory to chase down what Davis often referred to as ‘mischief’ or ‘misbehavior,’ but they didn’t publically protest, because they almost always had their hands dirty and Davis had no qualms about exposing them publically if they tried to put diplomatic pressure on him.

So there was a fragile understanding that teams like David’s were going to violate territorial borders on a whim, and in exchange Star Force was going to keep those missions quiet…often with the national authorities coming in after the fact to clean up a criminal element that they also wanted brought down. Still, no Archon team had ever been discovered, save for after the fact, and David knew they always had to stay a step ahead of the local authorities and militaries in order to keep themselves safe, for a lot of the nations’ understanding hinged on their inability to stop Star Force, and give them the upper hand, even once, and you’d probably see that understanding quickly redefined.

So as David and the others went around the incredibly large subterranean base rendering the security and workers unconscious he began to wonder what the next step was going to be. In the past they’d had tech to recover, or could call in a specialized team to make a quick sweep of a location or confiscate computers and such…but if the water tunnels were the only way in and out they were going to have to do whatever it was David decided on their own.

Davis had wanted the base discovered and exposed, but he hadn’t stated any objectives beyond that…though he had said he thought this was an extensive organization, which meant more than just this one base of operations. That then was their mission objective, because The Silence was undoubtedly going to shut down this operation now that their cover had been blown. Green Team needed to give the Director threads to follow in order to rout out this organization.

As David made his way through the facility he monitored the others on his battlemap, seeing more and more floors being added to the updating schematic until everything had been filled in. There were no exits leading up from the upper portion of the base, no other tunnels dug through the rock, just the waterways, though there was no way of knowing where the others led unless they could find a schematic inside the base.

“Damn it,” Assad said over the comm. “Computer terminal’s been wiped. It’s completely dead. Some type of emergency purge function.”

“Nathan, circle back to the dock. See how many boats got away.”

“Already been through there once. I counted 2 missing.”

“Anyone seen any more stragglers?” David asked.

“Not for a few minutes,” Assad answered as he searched room to room looking for a functioning computer.

“I’ve got a couple of stunned bad guys in a very nice office,” Nathan reported. “And it looks like one of their laptops is still working.”

“Hang onto that,” David urged. “Did either of them have a plasma pistol?”

“One did.”

“Pull it apart and tell me what you see.”

Nathan looked around on the floor until he saw the weapon up against the wall where he’d kicked it out of the way underneath a large gator head mounted to a finished wood plank.

“Standard magnetized barrel,” the Archon said, detaching the pieces much like one of their own weapons would break down into, though the design was different. “Loading chamber, magazine, trigger assembly. Doesn’t appear to be a power pack in the weapon. The barrel must be permanently magnetized inside a sheath.”

“That’ll eat it out eventually,” David commented as he picked his way through another factory, this one where they were making plasma ammunition shells.

“I don’t think this one has been fired…ever,” he said, checking the mag. “Full rounds, 10 total.”

“Disposable barrel?”

“That’d be my guess. If this is a knockoff of one of our weapons, they sure dumbed down the design. Looks more like they knew how ours worked and mixed the principle with the construction of the heavy models the Americans and Russians use, with the power cell replaced by the rounds.”

“I’m looking at the ammunition assembly line now,” David said, still on the lookout for roaming personnel. “Weak stuff, but they’re making a lot of it.”

“Did you take a hit?”

“Barely scratched the armor. Thermals must be lower than normal. Actually, this looks like a weapon built for flesh.”

“Soft targets?”

“That’s the feeling I’m getting,” David said, working his way out of the ammunition factory and into a short connective hallway to another production line.

“Security?”

“Civilian maybe…no ballistics either.”

“These weren’t made to come after us,” Nathan said, reassembling the pistol without the mag inside, which he laid on top of the very ornate desk one of the men was ‘napping’ on, still sitting in his chair.

“They don’t have a chance against us,” David said unnecessarily. “But there are others they can exert influence on. Davis said they’ve been around for a long time, and having some quiet muscle to throw around at key points in the system where we’re not looking over their shoulder could be useful.”

“Even more so if they’re packing plasma,” Nathan added, referencing the unanimous national bans on the weapons aside from military applications. Many nations had outlawed firearms entirely, while some still permitted bullet weapons. Star Force protocol banned travelers from carrying firearms through their transit network, save for individuals with passes. On Star Force colonies the general citizenry was forbidden from owning/purchasing/carrying firearms and most bladed weapons, though former security/military members were permitted passes to carry/own Star Force sold weaponry, given that they already had extensive training and experience with the weapons.

All the personal weapons were itemized and registered with the security division wherever the individual resided, with a lot of individuals carrying stinger pistols out of habit, just in case they came across trouble or security needed backup. A few non-experienced citizens were also allowed to carry weapons, but only after going through long training programs that most didn’t have the fortitude to make it through. Carrying weapons was a privilege on Star Force facilities, one that had to be earned, and many countries had adopted a similar approach to their laws.

The Americans had not, but they still outlawed the ownership or production of plasma weapons, which was probably why The Silence had gone to such great lengths to establish this facility, giving them a quiet, secure location to build as many as they wanted, just so long as they could keep feeding the base the raw materials it needed. Then they could ship out the finished weapons via trucks and distribute them across the planet or off…though they’d have to go through non-Star Force transport lines to smuggle the weapons through, unless they were really, really good at it.

“I’m going to keep searching,” David said, coming into a factory that apparently made the security shields The Silence’s troops were carrying. Several had dumped off the finishing end of the line, apparently before the entire unit had shut down, and David could see a few stacked on top of each other, but hovering in place where they should have touched. He grabbed a couple of them and pushed them together, feeling a slight resistance that indicated they were magnetically active…which he knew was a defense against plasma weapons.

“Assad, keep nosing around and keep an eye on the docks, we don’t know what else is down those other tunnels. Nathan, wake up one of your guests and start asking questions. And by the way, their shields are magnetized, so maybe they are playing a bigger game here than roughing up some civies.”

“Will do,” Nathan said, walking over to the desk and pressing his forearm against the bare neck of the man slumped over in his chair and held it there, letting his armor’s stun-neutralizing material slowly suck out the residual energy from the man’s body.

7

“Now that is a strange feeling,” the white-suited man said as he blinked his eyes and cleared his head as he woke up bleary with his senses seeming to creep back into alignment.

“Hello,” Nathan said, pulling his arm off the man’s neck and walking around to the other side of the desk and looking down at him from behind his silver helmet, “my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

The suited man looked up at the Archon, seemingly unphased by the threat. “Quite possibly, though I don’t recognize the name.”

“Or the movie, apparently,” Nathan said, tapping an armored finger on the desk in between them. “Let’s recap. Your facility is in our control. Your security teams have been neutralized. You’re not escaping. There are a lot of unconscious people around for me to chat with, but you were the best dressed so I decided to start with you. Shall we have a chat or should I return you to dreamland and try someone else?”

“I have no illusions of escape, Archon, and I’d much prefer to spend the next few moments awake, if you don’t mind,” the slightly aged man said, leaning back in his chair casually as if he was in control of the situation and not Star Force.

“Name?” Nathan asked, getting a weird vibe from the man.

“I am simply known as Agent.”

“Wrong color suit for that…and you’re missing the sunglasses.”

Agent reached inside his jacket, pausing his hand and glancing at Nathan for permission, then he pulled out a pair of opaque white-lensed glasses that he slipped onto his face, matching the color of his suit as well as hiding his eyes from view. “Better?”

“Why the suit and not the uniform?” Nathan said, realizing this guy was willing to play the word game. He switched off his helmet’s external audio and switched to transmission mode. “Heads up guys. Keep an eye out for reinforcements. Got a talker who’s overly confident.”

“Higher intellect is rewarded with better style,” Agent said, glancing at the other man in the room and his thick, dull grey uniform.

“And an office,” Nathan added.

“A necessity more than a perk, given my position.”

“Which is?”

“I organize and coordinate this facility.”

“Did,” Nathan pointed out.

“As you wish…I did run this facility. By the way, the laptop will be of no use to you. I already deleted the contents.”

Nathan glanced at the open screen situated out of arms reach from the man but still on the desk. “And that would be?”

“A false cover while the purge continues. I imagine that by now all the linked data systems within the facility are also quite useless.”

“Something you don’t want us to see?”

“Many things,” Agent admitted. “I must congratulate you on discovering and infiltrating this facility…well, discovering it anyway. The infiltration wasn’t subtle and gave us time to clean up, though you certainly didn’t have trouble breaking through security. Star Force is rather good at such things, despite espousing a peaceful agenda, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I don’t recall Davis ever describing us as pacifists…”

“Perhaps not, but whether directly or indirectly you put forth the message of peaceful coexistence while hypocritically building up by far the largest military in history. Well, Human military anyway. How goes the alien war?”

“We’re keeping them off your doorstep well enough. You’re welcome by the way.”

“All the while keeping this system under your thumb. Is that going to become your justification now?”

“We don’t need justification. We’ve got the big guns, remember?”

“Might makes right?”

“Right requires might,” Nathan pithily answered. “After all, if we’re not around who’s going to catch clever murders of college students?”

“Ah…that. Yes, a major blunder. One that I’d hoped we’d covered. Sloppily, I will admit, but I didn’t think you’d be able to track it back to us. How did you locate the entrance, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“What’s the purpose of this facility?”

“Illicit weapons production, obviously,” he answered, expecting a return gesture.

“You didn’t take into account the habitual movement patterns of the students when you dumped the bodies. Who was the fall guy?”

“A loyal associate. So, we placed the students where they shouldn’t have been and you backtracked their movements to…?”

“A makeout nest.”

Agent blew out an annoyed breath. “Of all the things…”

“The other tunnels?”

“You didn’t really expect us to have only one entrance? There’s only so much cargo traffic we can cover at each site, and this facility requires a great deal of continuous supplies in order to remain operational.”

“And with them comes armed security to retake the facility?”

Agent shook his head slowly, reminding Nathan of the agents from the Matrix, save for the white coloration. He had the same eerie calm demeanor about him. “I have no illusions that Star Force now owns this place. What it becomes is entirely up to you. The moment you discovered it, it ceased to be of use to us.”

“Who is us? An organization of this size has got to have a name…or should I just call you SPECTRE?”

“Of course we have a name. And given your victory here I suppose you deserve at least that much in recompense. You may call us The Word.”

“Oh, that begs an explanation,” Nathan said, still standing and looking down on Agent across the desk.

Agent raised a hand to his mouth and gently coughed. “Pardon. Without giving you too much information, let me say that we are dedicated to returning the Earth to the old ways.”

“How old is old?”

“Difficult to answer, that. Society doesn’t change in a moment, rather it loses itself a piece at a time. We are putting those pieces back together, despite the damage Star Force is continuing to do.”

“That sounds like a complaint to me.”

“We have many.”

“I have time.”

Agent glanced to the wall, and Nathan followed his eye line to the gator’s head.

“Your trophy?”

“You don’t approve, do you?” Agent asked, a bit of curiosity in his voice.

“Was it a fair fight?”

“That’s not the point, is it? We don’t hunt to fight, we hunt to kill, to claim an elusive prize. We hunt for sport, not combat. Is everything combat to Archons?”

“That and cookies…well, mostly. What I see there,” he said, gesturing to the wall, “is an abomination. Archons kill, but never for fun or what you call sport…I don’t know if you’d refer to that as fun or not.”

“No I wouldn’t.”

“Something more noble?”

“Good word choice. It separates us from the lesser species…those Star Force erroneously put on par with Humans.”

Nathan leaned forward, setting his armored fists on the edge of the desk. “If you want to prove superiority, outperform.”

“Chu, chu, chu,” Agent said, making the noise with no lip movement. “You miss the point again. We are superior by birth. We do not have to prove it.”

“Isn’t that what you’re trying to do by hunting?”

“I would call it a confirmation…the question is never in doubt.”

“I call it cowardice.”

“You would have me kill the animal with my bare hands? Would that constitute your fair fight?”

“If you’re superior, do you really need a weapon?”

“You carry several,” Agent pointed out.

“Perhaps we don’t assume superiority as much as you think.”

Agent nodded, politely conceding that point. “That we may have mistakenly assumed of you. Ignorance may be the true root of your problem.”

“Feel free to enlighten me.”

“As you wish. There is an order to life. Those below us in the order are ours to use, for necessity or sport. Personally I don’t like those who kill for fun, but it is their right and they can exercise it as they choose, so long as they do not exceed their position.”

“And if they do?”

“They shall suffer the consequences.”

“And the killing of the students. Was that exceeding your position?”

“If it had been out of fun or sport, yes. Humans are all on the same level, and we have an obligation to protect and serve one another…but at times sacrifices must be made to protect the masses. The death of the students was a regrettable necessity, forced upon us by circumstance and your incessant scrutiny that has forced our operations under a strict cloak of secrecy.”

“Now, wait…so you’re blaming us for their deaths?”

“Partially so, though the majority of the blame lays on the individual who shot them on sight, and those who oversee him…namely me. We are meant to be silent and unseen. My operations have failed in that regard, the penalty of which was your discovery.”

“Silent and unseen to what point? If you’re going to take us on you’re going to have to come out in the open.”

“We are no match militarily for Star Force, nor do we ever entertain the notion to be. In fact, we rather like what you’ve accomplished in that field.”

“I know, you’ve tried to steal it from us several times.”

“Can you blame us? Your mastery of technology is unmatched. Almost as if you’re getting outside help.”

“We do share a bit with our alien allies…does that bother you? And by you, I mean The Word. Where do they rank in the universal order?”

“A subject of continual discussion, I can assure you. In truth, we have too little evidence to work with. Only you have ever dealt with them. All anyone else has is stories.”

“You question their existence?”

“Some do…I do not. The universe is too large to be populated only on Earth.”

“Smart boy.”

“Is that a knock against my age? I hear Archons can live forever. Truth or fiction?”

“Everyone can live forever. Most don’t know how, and most of them it wouldn’t matter because they’re just too lazy.”

“Training? Come now, there must be more to it than that. Your Knights don’t train themselves to greater size?”

“Their size is irrelevant to how long they live. The body and mind have many capabilities, some so simple they’d surprise you. Raise your healing ability above your attrition level and you can live forever. It’s not complicated.”

“And what of the malformed children that Star Force has corrected? Did they train their way to health?”

“As you said, we’re masters of technology.”

“But it isn’t necessary for your longevity…interesting. How much the younger am I?”

“About three centuries.”

Agent shook his head in admiration. “I don’t suppose you’d let me see your face?”

“Don’t believe me…or do you have active recording devices that you hope will be able to identify me?”

“There are devices,” he admitted, “but I’m curious as to what might have been. Are you young, or merely postponing the inevitable?”

“What are the weapons for, if not to challenge us? And why plasma?”

“As you so aptly pointed out, right requires might. The Word will spread, not through grand wars but through small, deliberate actions. In such small incidents, plasma is superior to bullets, as I’m sure you know well.”

Nathan reached up and disconnected the seals on the neck of his helmet and pulled it off for a moment, but only a moment, giving Agent a few seconds to confirm that Nathan wasn’t lying, then he put it back on.

“Some would say you are unnatural…but I fear The Word may have made a mistake in this regard. Perhaps you have stumbled onto a truth of the universe that we have been oblivious to. I hope that whoever sees this will have the wisdom to investigate further.”

Nathan frowned. “Active transmission?”

Agent nodded. “As I said, the facility is yours, but The Word will watch and learn and adjust our other facilities,” he finished with a smile, then another small cough.

Sensing something was amiss, Nathan stepped around the desk and pulled the man’s sunglasses off.

“I have only a few minutes remaining,” he said, looking up at the Archon with bloodshot eyes. “Ask what you will.”

“Poison?”

“A small tablet I ingested once hope of escape evaporated. I contain the knowledge of this facility. Even if you successfully interrogate the others, the secrets of The Word die with me. That is one function of an Agent that I have never had the privilege of executing, but I do so gladly in the knowledge that Humanity will one day be rectified.”

“Rectified to what?”

“Our original purpose.”

“All of Humanity, or just those on Earth?”

“We have operatives everywhere. Where the children of Earth go, so goes Earth.”

“And what does Humanity look like when you rectify it?”

“Order…brotherhood,” he said, coughing again, this time with a little blood coming up onto his lips, “clarity of purpose.”

“Who rules?”

“Those with the vision of leadership.”

“The Word or are you the enablers for another?”

“A wise question…one which I do not know the answer to. Change will take time, and I do not know what form it will be. As an Agent I focus on the moment and the moment to come, for to dwell in the future is to ignore the reality of the now.”

“The Now? Is that your sister organization?”

“Choose your questions wisely. You only have a few remaining.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’” Nathan said as Agent slumped a bit in his chair, but kept his head upright. “If you had your way, what would you have Star Force do?”

“Recognize the error of your ways and free the planet from your protocols…use your might to enlighten and uplift Humanity.”

“We’re already doing that.”

“To deny the natural order of life is to suffocate it. Your enlightenment is naïve and counterproductive. You have done better than most throughout history, but you are still in the wrong. The Word will bring you into the light.”

“You can’t infiltrate us.”

“We already…have.”

Nathan smiled beneath his helmet. “Liar.”

“Am I? Believe what you will, but know this…we do not want to destroy you. You are too…important…to the…fut…”

With that Agent slumped forward, mashing his head on the desk as he breathed his last few breaths.

Nathan stared at him for several seconds, both to make sure he wasn’t faking and replaying the conversation in his mind, trying to glean some additional meaning in it. He’d been recording it all through his helmet, but he wondered if there wasn’t something there that would affect the here and now…like a self-destruct for the base or airborne toxin to kill the rest of the personnel.

“Report?” Nathan asked, getting back on the comm.

“All quiet,” David said. “Trouble?”

“Assad?”

“Same here.”

“The whitewashed Smith I was chatting with just died. Some sort of self-administered poison. I’m half expecting something to go boom right now.”

“Did he say it would?” David asked.

“I’m not sure. He said they weren’t going to contend our seizure of the facility. But I could see how that could be interpreted into ‘boom.’”

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” David promised. “Did you get anything out of him on The Silence?”

“You’re close…they call themselves ‘The Word.’”

“Any more than that?”

“A bit. I’ve got it recorded,” Nathan said, pulling the laptop over and trying to switch the screen…but it was froze in place. “He said they did a data purge, but they may have missed something. It’d take a while, but I think we need a tech team in here to sniff around.”

“What do we do with the personnel?” Assad asked.

“Depends on the situation at the college.”

“One of us has to go back,” Nathan insisted.

David sighed. “I know. We also have to check out the other tunnels. You two stay put and start containing the…”

“No, wait,” Assad said, thinking deviously. “When the people wake up, what are they going to do?”

“Agent said they didn’t want the facility now that it’d been compromised.”

“His name is Agent?” Assad asked.

“That’s what he said.”

“Let the rats scatter and see where they go?” David floated.

“That’s the idea,” Assad confirmed.

There was a short pause on the comm.

“I like it,” David eventually came back. “And if there is a self-destruct or other sabotage I’d prefer to get away before it happens. We’ll head out down the other passages, get to the surface, and call in surveillance teams, hopefully before they can scatter.”

“Sink a few boats and it’ll delay them,” Nathan suggested.

“You think the end lines have already been alerted?”

“Maybe,” David said. “Regardless, we need to find where they are, and if the computers are wiped I doubt we’re going to find a map laying around…unless one of you have found a map laying around?”

“5 minutes to look?” Nathan asked.

“5 minutes,” David agreed. “Then get back to the dock.”

Nathan reached down and closed the flap on the laptop and took it with him, hoping that Star Force’s techs might be able to make something out of it.

8

May 24, 2405

Solar System

Earth

David walked out of a freezer, pushing open the door after the back had sealed like an airlock. He wore no armor, only the standard Star Force uniform that had a slightly raised collar where the silver stripe that extended down the arms and legs began on either shoulder of the pure white shirt and pants. Outside the freezer, in the back storage room of a donut shop in Craig, Colorado, several other Star Force uniforms were present…the reds of the logistics division, red/greens of analytics, and many gold/white uniforms of security.

The Archon closed the door on the empty freezer, then another person cycled through and followed him out of the covert entrance to another subsurface exit station on The Word’s connective water tunnel line. She wore the light green uniform of a software tech, and had just finished up her confirmation of Agent’s assertion that the hidden base’s computer systems had been thoroughly purged.

One of the security officers stepped over to David as he came out, shaking his head in a negative. “Dead end. We picked up the operative in an apartment, like he was just waiting for us. I think they gave us a decoy to follow while the others got away.”

“They got away?” the Archon asked, raising an eyebrow. They’d been tailing dozens of The Word operatives that had fled the four base exits that Star Force had discovered.

“We’re still following 13 others, but the rest vanished. We plotted the locations and are searching for more concealed bolt holes.”

“Damn,” David whispered. “You think the others are decoys or we still have a shot with them?”

“A few are running hard, so I think they’re genuine. The others I couldn’t say.”

“Got some big pieces coming up. See that they’re quietly moved to the spaceport.”

The security officer nodded, then David passed him by and entered the kitchen where three dedicated staff were busily creating the morning pastries in lieu of half their staff having mysteriously vanished.

“David! When did you get back?” the owner asked, coming back into the kitchen from the small dining area.

“Just passing through, I’m afraid,” he said, shaking the man’s large hand.

“Can I get you something to go?”

“As long as it has sprinkles.”

The owner/chef pointed a finger at him. “Stay right there. I’ll be back in a second.”

David obliged him and waited in the kitchen as more donuts were being made to add to the quickly thinning trays up for sale out front. Two days ago Star Force had made the owner a very lucrative offer, buying the business and allowing him to continue running it for as long as he wished. After the purchase David had clued him in to the fact that his shop had been used as a covert entry point for a criminal organization, of which he had been completely oblivious to.

He’d agreed to keep the matter a secret, as all sorts of Star Force personnel were coming and going regularly now and David didn’t feel like trying to hide the fact from him. The other entrances they’d discovered were less accessible, so Star Force had purchased this one to use on a regular basis and without the former owner’s cooperation that would have been dicey to say the least. The Archon knew he could have replaced him and the others with an entirely new staff, but that would have created a disruption in the regular business cycle, and the less attention the shop attracted the easier it would be for Star Force to come and go as they’d need to over the coming months.

After setting up hasty surveillance on the exits the three members of Green Team had found their way out of, all of which had been abandoned prior to their arrival, David had led a return team a day later made up of security personnel and techs, which proceeded to sweep the base for lingering personnel and booby traps, neither of which was found. What they did find was a cleaner version of the base than they’d left it, with a few items having gone missing and the bodies covering the floors gone. That said, there was still a huge amount of equipment left behind that subsequent Star Force analysis teams were busy going through, trying to dig up whatever intel on The Word that they could.

So far they’d been able to keep the Americans out of the loop. Many Star Force personnel working out of the Phoenix spaceport were American citizens, so seeing Star Force uniforms in public wasn’t as much of an oddity politically as it was fashionably, for they stood out in greater contrast to civilian clothes than even the American military uniforms.

Then again, everything that Star Force made did…including their civilian clothing line. Functionality mixed with a dose of superiority, as one fashion reviewer had stated, was Star Force’s MO with regards to clothing, and moving around town David had spotted several familiar items on Craig’s inhabitants…mainly on those running, jogging, or walking their way through workouts, because Star Force only made clothing to fit the fit.

Still, he’d turned many heads walking through town over to the donut shop from one of the apartments rented for the surveillance teams’ use. Not only because of his Star Force uniform, but because more often than not the public knew the different color codes and could identify him as an Archon. And as David well knew, they didn’t get out into public eye much.

As for the donut shop, the Star Force personnel kept to the back areas, letting the regular customers conduct business without added distraction. Still, many questions were raised, which the owner covered for them by informing the public of the purchase of the shop because of the high quality of donut he made…which David wasn’t about to argue, given that he did make a mean donut.

They’d also started a remodeling job on the building, covering for the trucks coming and going and giving the business a more ‘advanced’ look, befitting the new owners. Those trucks were bringing in more personnel that David hadn’t wanted to risk being seen walking the streets, as well as equipment for the analysis teams…most notably their own water craft. Like the college, the donut shop also had its own cargo lift, which would allow the larger pieces to move in and out while the freezer airlock was reserved for more quiet personnel movements.

The equipment coming up was a mix of seized weapons and industrial compounds…toxins mostly, that The Word had been storing rather than recycling or shipping out. A few other pieces were computer components that the techs thought warranted a closer inspection by specialists, hoping that some data might be able to be gleaned from the hardware.

Other than that, The Word had done a commendable job of covering their electronic tracks, but David expected Star Force’s teams, given an unlimited time to search the base, would come up with something useful. Until then all he had left to do was oversight on the runners they still had an eye on and see if they led anywhere of interest. That he could do from elsewhere, so this was going to be his last trip on site before heading back to the spaceport.

“Here you go,” the chef said, coming back with a none too small package inside a semi-translucent plastic bag. “Figure you guys burn a lot of calories, and if I’m wrong about your appetite I left you with a bit of a choice. Enjoy.”

“We eat more than you’d imagine,” David assured him, gladly taking the sugar-laden donuts. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” the chef said with a large smile as the Archon slipped out of the kitchen through the front doors and into the lobby where half a dozen people were standing in line at the counter for the chef to return, while about 15 others were sitting around eating donuts and sipping coffee. David’s nose wrinkled at the smell of the foul liquid, which oddly none of the Archons favored…at least as far as he knew.

He tolerated the smell and the odd looks as all eyes of those not with their backs to him followed him out the doors and onto the street, where he finally reached into the sack and flipped open the lid on the hard plastic container, pulling the top donut out and taking a bite on his way down the sidewalk. A few minutes down the road and a long hover truck passed him by on the airway five stories up, being only the third aerial vehicle he had seen.

This one, however, was familiar, with a giant Star Force emblem on the side of the cargo compartment. It flew over the smaller buildings and between the taller ones, then slowed to a stop above the road crossing the donut shop and descended to near street level, then ducked off into the parking lot before landing on wheel-based skids.

David didn’t turn back to watch, continuing on his walk through the small city until he came to the small airport it contained. There he processed through to a private terminal where a single mantis was parked. He picked up the pilot from the lobby on the way out, then was flown back to Phoenix directly where he linked up with the ongoing tails that were still pursuing The Word’s personnel, some of which were now out of the country.

He set up shop there for another two days, finding each of the operatives in question to either disappear or make themselves available for pickup at some pointless location. One checked into a hotel and didn’t leave the premises, while another went home to visit his parents. David knew they were intentionally making themselves visible, and went so far as to leave some of them out in the open to see what they would eventually do if Star Force didn’t pick them up.

That was more of an in-your-face gesture to The Word than any real hope of tracking them to something revealing, but you never knew. He wasn’t going to be in charge of this operation for much longer, but there were sections of Star Force that would stay on the matter indefinitely and chase targets around the star system if asked…so he figured he might as well see where it led.

One of those long term tails, having camped out at a spa resort, left after 3 days and, ironically, headed to the Phoenix spaceport, having purchased a ticket for transport to Mars…but when the man arrived he checked himself into the security station, saying that he had a message for Nathan.

David had the man placed in a holding cell while he checked on other leads, wondering if this might be some type of distraction. Meanwhile he had Nathan, who was still in the spaceport along with Assad just in case one of the leads led to another Word facility, head over to the security station to see what message the operative had for him.

The Archon lazily made his way down to the holding cell, stopping by one of the food stations in the terminal on his way, and wondering if The Word knew he was here or had just shown up at the closest Star Force spaceport.

Nathan entered the holding/interrogation cell room by himself, having had all other security personnel leave it prior to his arrival, and chewing on a ‘sugar stick,’ which was essentially a long, tubular cookie that was baked extra thick and layered with various types of decorative confections.

“Archon,” the man greeted respectfully.

“Let’s hear it,” Nathan said, biting off another small piece of the treat…not because he was hungry, which he was, but in order to give his body something to do in order to cover his facial expressions. He wanted a mask to observe from behind, rather than being the one observed.

“As the Agent said, your conversation was being recorded, including your face, which was how we identified you,” the man said plainly, letting Nathan know that somehow during his ‘escape’ he had not only been in contact with The Word, but they’d given him information and instructions…meaning their ‘covert’ rep just went up a notch in the Archon’s estimation. “First off, congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Nathan said, nipping off another piece of the stick.

“You’ve dealt us a significant loss. Not a crippling blow, by far, but one that we did not expect Star Force capable of dealing. Admittedly the death of the students was a mistake on our part, but you’ve proven yourself more…adept than we gave you credit for.”

“I assume this comes from your boss and not your own opinion?”

“It does.”

“Please continue,” Nathan said, drawing an imperceptible frown from the man who’d expected him to inquire as to his source of information.

“Now that we have been introduced by name, allow us to make a full introduction. The Word is a Human organization. We have no nationalistic ties. No corporate agenda. And we are fully committed to our goal of returning our people to purpose. We look at your recent seizure of our Colorado base as a failure on our part, we were forced to kill to cover our tracks. Had we been wise we never would have been backed into that corner. It was our error that led you to us, and we do not hold you accountable for the end result, only our own ineptitude.”

“We will, however, hold you accountable for any future actions against our organization,” he continued. “We are not inherently your enemy, but if you choose to oppose us, we will view and treat you as such.”

Nathan held up his hand to forestall further comment, then finished the mouthful he was on. “Does The Word favor hunting, sacrifice, meat-eating, female denigration, and subservience of ‘lesser’ races?”

“Females have their roles, as do males. We would not define that as denigration. As for the others, the answer is yes, naturally.”

“Then naturally we are and always will be your enemy.”

The man stared him evenly in the eye as the Archon took another disinterested bite. “I have three remaining messages to give you, in that case.”

“Shall I get a datapad?”

“No need. They are simple enough, and you’re undoubtedly recording this conversation anyway. First, we are aware of many of your surveillance efforts. If you wish to oppose us then discover the error of your ways, cease your efforts and we will reciprocate. This need not be an eternal conflict.”

“Oh, you have no idea how stubborn we can be.”

“Two,” he said, with his demeanor changing from calm to an iron firmness. “So long as you operate against us, so too will we operate against you. To date we have not done so. This is fair warning. Cease now or we will begin targeting you directly.”

“I thought we were important to the future?”

“There are many possible futures, not all of which you are present in.”

Nathan waited for the third message, but the man chose to remain silent. Mimicking him, Nathan took another bite and chewed for a minute, with the crunching of the sugar stick the only sound in the room save for the tiny hum from the shield separating the two men.

He visibly swallowed down the lump of sugary carbs, then gestured at the man with his other hand. “And?”

“Treguna…Mekoides…Tracorum…Satis…Dee.”

Half a second after the he pronounced the last word there was a flash on the shield wall, then a pressure wave hit Nathan and he blacked out.

He woke to a pounding headache and a twisting of his legs around his torso at the waist, then realized he was being moved and reflexively clenched his muscles to straighten his posture.

“He’s coming around,” a voice said as Nathan blinked his eyes, one of which was clouded by liquid that his nose soon identified as blood.

Nathan’s foot found the ground, then a flurry of hands helped stand him up as well as supporting his weight as he swiped his free arm over his right eye, followed by the cuff of his uniform.

“Can you hear me, sir?”

“Don’t call me ‘sir,’” Nathan said, seeing security uniforms around him as he tried to clear his head, which he noticed was ringing as well. “Where am I…what happened?”

“You’re a few meters down the hall from where the prisoner…exploded.”

Nathan focused on the man’s face, then the hallway around them began to materialize. A couple seconds later he could see the blast zone emanating from a doorway down on his left. He waved off the supportive hands and nudged his way back down there, then looked inside.

“Where’s he at?”

“Bits and pieces are everywhere, si…Archon. There’s no corpse remaining.”

“I’d recommend,” another security officer said, “that we get you to a medbay. You’ve got shrapnel damage over your entire body.”

Nathan glanced down, both at the rubble on the floor from the walls that were blown out and the growing red spots scattered over his white uniform. He grimaced, then reached up to his forehead and pulled out a piece of debris…which resulted in an increased blood flow that he swiped at with his other arm.

He looked at the shrapnel…seeing that it was a bit of bone.

“Nobody touch this room,” Nathan ordered. “I want an analysis team looking for residue traces. Any other security alerts?”

“None reported.”

“Check anyway, just in case this wasn’t isolated...I can walk, but clear the way…and have a medic meet us on the way so I’m not leaving a blood trail across the spaceport,” Nathan said, taking one more glance at the blast zone.

Message received.

9

May 29, 2405

Solar System

Earth

“You have something?” David asked as he launched himself up out of the staircase and into Davis’s office.

“I’m sorry it took so long,” the Director said as the Archon sat down opposite him, “but we had to send the fragments down to the pyramid for a closer analysis. Our equipment isn’t sensitive enough to detect the explosive when it detonates properly, which it did. It’s called Dargomir, and takes up residence in the body’s tissues…all of them. The man wasn’t carrying a bomb, he was the bomb.”

David frowned. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s rare. A specialty amongst some assassins, I’m told. Very high end tech on the black market. I’ve only got 3 cases of it ever being employed, all of which had the target ingest the explosive in liquid form, then detonated with a precise frequency microwave burst. It triggers the compound to explode simultaneously, leaving little behind to analyze. On occasion there will be pockets that do not detonate, but if there’s not it’s untraceable, yet obvious due to the nature of the damage.”

“Was he carrying the detonator on him?”

“Not on him,” Davis explained, “inside him. We think it was imbedded in his neck near his vocal chords. There was a tiny mark visible on surveillance recordings, but there wasn’t anything left after the explosion to analyze. We suspect the trigger was the phrase he spoke just before he exploded.”

“I looked it up. It comes from an old movie. Older than me, actually.”

“Treguna…Mekoides…Tracorum…Satis…Dee. It’s a spell from Bedknobs and Broomsticks, an obscure Disney movie. Did you see it?”

“No, I just googled it. It’s obscure enough that someone wouldn’t randomly say the words and accidentally trigger the device, but as to why they chose that particular phrase I don’t know. Aside from Star Force personnel, no one alive was even born in the century that it was made. If you think there’s some hidden meaning in it, I’ll have a look.”

“No need,” Davis assured him. “I actually have seen the movie and recognized the words. Coupled with the warning the operative gave Nathan, I think the spell is indicative of how they’re going to deal with us.”

“How so?”

“In the movie the spell takes inanimate objects, suits of armor in a museum, actually, and brings them temporarily alive to fight for the witch against a superior military and defeats them. The Word knows, and has admitted to the fact that they can’t match us in raw power. I think the spell is them telling us that their power is going to come from an uprising of sorts. Something or some things that appear innocuous will turn out to be our demise.”

“Sleeper agents?”

Davis shook his head. “No, bigger than that. I think they’re declaring an unconventional war, and the way they delivered the message indicates that they’re fully committed to carrying it out. They know sacrifice is an advantage they have on us, and I expect we will see many more examples in the future…though no suicide bombing spree. They know we won’t bow to social pressure.”

“I wouldn’t call sacrifice an ‘advantage,’” David argued.

Davis waved off the notion with a hand gesture. “The darkside operates with a slightly different bag of tricks, some that we’d never touch. That can offer our enemy a tactical advantage in a limited number of situations. Correct?”

“The lizards use suicide bombers to great effect, but when you know it’s coming you can guard against it. I’d call an advantage something your opponent can’t retaliate against.”

“Such as?”

“Our orbital bombardment capability. The races that use plasma weapons can’t hit the surface from orbit, we can with rail guns. Hence we have an advantage.”

Davis smiled. “I stand corrected. What word would you use?”

“It’s an avenue of attack. This Dargomir, is it always detonated with the same frequency?”

“I believe there are several options, each of which is determined by the molecular structure of the explosive.”

“Then they’re not the only ones that can detonate their bodies,” David pointed out.

Davis tapped a finger on his desk as he thought. “I’ve had this information for 5 hours now, and that thought had not occurred to me. Though the idea of random people exploding amongst crowds is not something we can allow. How do we confine the damage?”

“Choke point detonations, though they’re not practical. Have an armored room that each person has to pass through individually. Blanket each one with a microwave burst. If they blow they only take themselves with them. Is there a way to sniff out the explosive prior to detonation?”

“I’m told it requires physical contact, but I’ve already assigned a team to start work on a remote detector.”

“What’s it take to create the explosive? Something rare, I hope.”

“I’ve already got a list of targets compiling. Some of which we’re buying out. I’ve also got some idea now of what The Word is importing to their bases, some of which is exclusive to a handful of suppliers. I’m going to start waging an economic war that will hopefully slow them down, or force them to start creating more and more industry of their own. The ones I can’t take out of their reach we’ll monitor closely.”

“Green Team calls dibs.”

“You’ve got it, but I need you down in Antarctica.”

“For what?”

“Taryn agreed that an Archon training summit is needed. We’re sending word out that anyone experiencing any sort of superpowers, no matter how slight, should report to the pyramid indefinitely. I’ve got a full medical research team standing by exclusively for the project. Between them and the pyramid database and equipment, I’m confident you’ll be able to sort things out.”

“Am I going to be down there by myself?”

“At present the list stands at four. You, Aaron…who will be there in 3 days, Mathis-831, and Angel-676. The latter two are Clan Croft that Taryn discovered recently insystem, and she guesses that there will be many more popping up once word gets around. Both are mild cases, like yours. Nothing as extreme as Jason, as of yet. I’m hoping you’ll be able to get some answers before anyone else potentially gets to that point.”

“You think that’s predetermined?”

Davis bobbed his head in indecision. “The problems Jason reported could be isolated to him, but I wouldn’t bet very many credits on that.”

“Neither would I,” David admitted. “These abilities have been dormant so long I can understand us having problems waking them up.”

“Find a way to do it gently, please,” the Director asked.

David mock frowned. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“The faster you get adjusted, the stronger you’ll be.”

The Archon narrowed his eyes. “I was just thinking that. Sure you’re not developing any telepathy? You’re older than the rest of us.”

“No, no mental abilities popping up here. And I don’t think it has to do with age. Your advanced training is probably shaking them loose. All four of you are from the first batch of trainees, and have become some of the strongest…so I don’t think I have to worry about myself any time soon.”

“A bit premature there, given that we don’t know what’s happening yet…and especially considering that I’m only an acolyte and there are plenty of rangers that are currently unaffected.”

“Call it a hunch then.”

“How long do you expect us to be down there?”

“As long as it takes. Use your own judgement.”

“If something develops with The Word I want to know immediately.”

“I’ll keep you informed and let you decide whether to assign yourself or other members of Green Team, but put a priority on hammering out these new abilities. Long term they’re going to be more important than anything The Word can throw at us.”

“Translation…the V’kit’no’sat will stomp them the same as us if we don’t get strong enough to oppose them.”

“That too,” Davis added.

Five weeks later Taryn made a microjump from Earth to Venus via a Puddle Jumper-class transport, riding the next generation of small transport craft that had begun with the mantis and expanded up into dropships. The puddle jumpers were Star Force’s first experiment with combining a dropship’s and starship’s roles over interplanetary distances, forgoing the need to transfer ships onboard a starport. The puddle jumper the Archon rode in was as large as a Falcon-class dropship, but only had 1/10th the cargo capacity.

That put it still in the prototype phase, but the Archons had decided to put it into production anyway for priority personnel transfers around the Solar System. Several hundred had been built and spread out amongst the Clans while Star Force engineers continued to try to downsize the most basic of gravity drives to more manageable sizes. Taryn had 3 in Clan Croft, and kept one reserved at all times for her personal use.

This trip, however, was going to be one way, with the puddle jumper returning to Earth for other Clan Croft usage in the near future. Hopefully by the time she got back they’d have a newer version in production stage, for the ability to hop into a ship on the ground and ride it all the way up into space, across the interplanetary gap, and land on another planet or moon was too tactically and logistically significant to pass up.

When her puddle jumper reached Venus it stretched its gravity drive out and flash decelerated against the planet’s gravity well, bringing it out of the ‘jump’ outside the tracks of orbital infrastructure literally ringing the planet. Several bands were visible, holding industrial processing equipment on a level that rivaled Earth orbit, though the majority of Venus’s infrastructure was devoted solely to Star Force’s space navy.

With the micro-jump timed so as not to approach any of the rings as well as brining the puddle jumper out into middle orbit on a coast track to the lower zone, Taryn had a short tour of Venus orbit as the ship made its way to the cluster of Mark III warships in extreme low orbit that was her destination. Before they got there, though, they passed by thousands of factories with hundreds of starships bringing in the raw materials to feed them from elsewhere in the system, though a great majority of it came from Mercury, whose mass had already decreased by 1.28% due to the heavy mining Star Force and a few others were conducting on the planet, literally eating it apart at an astounding rate.

Other shipments were being brought in from the Asteroid Belt and beyond, with a significant amount coming from Venus itself. Though it was too far away to see, the puddle jumper’s sensors detected a continuous flow of needle-shaped dropships coming up and down through the planet’s thick clouds carrying raw materials up to distribution centers, essentially huge warehouses that held and sorted out the millions of compounds and components that were being shipped around planetary orbit and elsewhere by an army of small orbital ferries.

Taryn’s ship linked with orbital control and established a flight path that would avoid the rest of the traffic and keep from risking a collision with not only with the small craft, but with the huge infrastructure of the rings and satellite facilities dotting the orbital map.

They passed by one of those satellite facilities at a range of a few hundred kilometers, close enough to see a cluster of stations interlinked by thick structural bands that contained transport passages for both cargo and personnel so they could avoid excessive space travel. In the cluster, Taryn knew, were the factories to process raw materials brought in, refine them down into various compounds, and recombine them into hundreds of new compounds. They referred to the stations as ‘Synthesis Clusters,’ and most of the planets in the system had at least a few so they could reduce the amount of unwanted material in various ores before shipping it from planet to planet.

Venus had 73 such clusters, serving it as well as Mercury, which was so close by that almost all raw materials harvested on the smaller planet were brought across the small interplanetary gap en mass by cargo ships so large as to appear like miniature jumpships, even bigger than the Gargantuan-class transports. One of the Juggernauts was visible, nestled up against one of the structural pylons of the synthesis cluster they were passing, unloading its cargo holds internally and dumping so much material into the cluster that it would fill nearly 40% of its cargo space.

That was because the Juggernauts were 95% cargo hold, 5% starship. Other than a tiny crew compartment and living quarters, strapped onto a thin frame with undersized engines, the ships were empty boxes for the mining division to fill up and specifically built for the Mercury/Venus circuit.

There were also smaller, yet still drastically large cargo ships docked with the cluster. They were there, for the most part, to carry processed materials over to the factories in the orbital rings where precious materials would be molded into all sorts of technology that would be put to use building starships.

One ring around the planet, which was only 3/4ths complete, was comprised entirely of shipyards, ranging from small to large to insanely huge Thanatos-class monsters…all of which were tasked to produce jumpships, drone warships, cargo ships, dropships, mantises, skeets, mechs, and anything else that Star Force’s naval fleet equipped. If you were going to plan a planetary assault, you’d find everything you needed could and would be built in Venus orbit. Just add personnel and you’d be ready to go.

Which was the purpose of Taryn’s visit. She was the last of the crew to assemble in the fresh-off-the-line armada built for the specific purpose of fighting in the Nestafar/Calavari conflict. All of the ships were the latest models, and based off of the few of Morgan’s reports that had cycled back through the Hycre they’d made some adjustments to weapon loads and the disposition of the ground forces they’d be carrying, foremost of which was additional rail gun stores and an increased number of small scale warships capable of atmospheric combat.

Taryn was pleasantly surprised by how fast everything had been built, with the oldest ship having been started in construction only 4 years ago…and even now there was a partial second armada in orbit, with additional ships being added by the month that would eventually be dispatched to Paul’s front against the lizards.

After that there would come more, and more, and more…while Earth’s shipyards split their production between feeding the armadas going out to combat the enemy and domestic production, building a mass of cargo ships that continued to expand Star Force territory out to new star systems, as well as producing the naval fleets to defend them. Lesser on the priority charts were starships sales to the public, with dedicated shipyards feeding those, but a staggering 68% of all natural resources harvested by Star Force were being funneled into infrastructure construction.

Starships were tiny compared to the stations and cities that Davis had sprouting up around the system and elsewhere, though most of the resources harvested in Sol stayed in Sol, given the exponential shipping costs of sending them across the stars…still, the Director knew that quick startup in new systems required an influx of supplies to get their own resource collection and industrial infrastructure up and running, so there was continuous, daily jumpship travel leaving the system carrying cargo off to other worlds.

This was nothing new to Taryn, having become accustomed to Star Force’s industrial might long ago…what blew her mind was the idea that all of this was but a drop in the bucket compared to the production of the other Alliance races, and that Star Force had to up its game considerably in order to stand a chance of survival if the united front was defeated and the heavy fighting shifted to their own front door.

Because of that Taryn understood her mission well. Even as Morgan’s armada was on its last leg, having to return home soon for resupply and refurbishing, Taryn was going to take her place hitting the Nestafar and aiding the Calavari wherever they could. Plans were to have 2 active armadas in play within the next 5 years and to expand on that as Davis continued to scale up their starship production rate.

She knew the more trouble she gave them out there, the more time it would buy Star Force back here to grow to a size comparable to the other races. Like it or not, even with some advancements in technology thanks to the V’kit’no’sat that the other races didn’t possess, Star Force was still the low man on the totem pole, both in terms of their fleet size and territory.

Morgan’s initial reports had indicated that their battle acumen was still effective against the Nestafar, if applied properly. Play the game the enemy’s way and they’d rip you apart, but seek out their weaknesses and not overcommit and Star Force could rack up an impressive kill list, as Morgan had already started to do.

Taryn planned on continuing that trend, and adding to the newly created battle manual on how to fight the Nestafar.

When the puddle jumper finally reached the 184 jumpships in her armada, of which 104 were Warship-class, it flew into a shielded hangar bay and deposited Taryn and her single duffle of gear on the deck before promptly turning around and leaving the gigantic ship. Taryn’s personal armor sets had already been delivered, with everything else she’d need for combat already packed inside the Archon armory onboard the ship. The few items she carried with her now did not come standard, most of which she’d collected over the years as she’d had custom items created for her, such as a modular hair-dying kit that she could run her originally brown locks through in less than 10 minutes to adjust the color.

On occasion she’d experiment with new colors, but in recent years she’d stuck primarily with a fiery red so bright it almost appeared neon, which she wore now braided into a Tomb Raider-esk ponytail that trailed halfway down the back of her white with green stripe ranger uniform and could be tucked up inside her armor’s helmet with ease.

Taryn’s ship Captain met her on the edge of the deck, offering a brief salute that she immediately waved off.

“If you know of an Archon that likes getting saluted, please give me their name and number so I can make a personal attitude adjustment.”

“Ha,” Oppenheimer laughed, caught off guard by her frankness. “As you wish. You’re the first trailblazer I’ve met, and I wasn’t sure if you’d be more formal than the others.”

“Less, actually,” Taryn said, walking with him into the ship. “How are we set?”

“Ready to break orbit on your command…assuming you’ve got a name in mind for 2312?” he asked, referring to the warship’s production number.

“Winston,” she said without hesitation. “Go ahead and get the fleet moving. I’ll meet you on the bridge once I unpack.”

10

December 18, 2405

Eritath System

3rd planet

Jack-020 watched from the bridge of the Fury as the system tracking data updated as his pair of warships decelerated against the planet’s gravity well. Hundreds of Star Force markers popped up in low orbit, spread widely around the planet. Previous reports that had come back to Corneria, as well as the updates Paul had given him while passing by Namek, had indicated that the system had a major lizard presence on the third planet and that the assault group had chosen to keep it bottled up from orbit as they pounded the surface…and it appeared that tactic was still in play.

No lizard contacts appeared in orbit on the battlemap as the Fury pulled information from the other Star Force ships, but the planet’s surface was covered in them. At a quick glance Jack could see several bombardment regions tagged on the planetary holo, but there were many more that appeared untouched. Too many to mount an effective ground campaign against.

That was alright though, because parked in several ship slots on the pair of warships he’d brought out from Corneria were cargo containers stacked full of rail gun rounds, both for his use and to reload the fleets already on station.

Jack opened a comm frequency using the controls on his command chair. “Anyone awake out there? Got some boxes of goodies to pass out.”

There was a few seconds delay, then Rafa’s holographic image appeared on the right of Jack’s chair. “Crispy Kremes, I hope?”

“No, something with a bit more bite in them. Heard you were running low on rail gun rounds?”

“We’re out, as of now. We’ve been throwing everything we have at the surface squashing lizards.”

“Any action up here?”

“Not since arrival. A few jumpships showed up and turned tail, so we’re kind of waiting for a big ass fleet to show up and evict us.”

“Glad I didn’t miss that.”

Rafa frowned. “Two warships?”

“All we could spare at the moment. Taryn’s sucked up the reserves to tag team Morgan. I’m here to do the same with Jason, except his ships will be staying here, I understand. How’s he doing?”

“Better, but he’s still pretty banged up. Anyone else getting bad?”

“Not by the time I left, but there are several more second geners that are showing blips of ability. Kind of insulting, if you ask me.”

“I know,” Rafa agreed, “but I don’t envy the process Jason’s going through. Any theories back home?”

“A few, but nothing concrete yet. Davis is sure there’s something in the database, but without knowing the right keywords to search for good luck finding it.”

“I assume they tried ‘superpowers’ and ‘force?’”

“Haha, I’m sure Paul tried ‘force’ the first day we were there. Part of the problem is we don’t have the full vocabulary worked out.”

“Too bad the dragon didn’t leave us a dictionary.”

Another hologram popped up beside Rafa’s. “Hey, Jack! Didn’t know you were coming to the party?” Emily said, beaming.

“I’m relieving Jason. Professor Xavier wants him back at school.”

“He needs it. Anyone else turning mutant?”

“Some of kiddos are, nothing too extreme though. Whatever Jason did must have been…oh hell, we know what he did. Same thing we would. He saw an opening and pushed.”

Rafa’s hologram turned to face Emily’s. “Jack also brought treats.”

Emily’s eyes widened. “Please tell me they came with metal toothpicks?”

“Boxes full,” Jack said with an endearing smile.

“Good. These jackoffs are refusing to surrender and I want to hit them hard enough from orbit that we can risk sending down a cleanup crew.”

Rafa frowned. “That’ll take a lot of hitting.”

“How much did you bring?”

“Enough to resupply every ship you guys have twice over…and then some.”

“That still won’t be enough,” Rafa pointed out.

“Enough to clear a region…and then we can work on some low altitude naval support.”

“You can fill me in later,” Jack offered, “but right now I need to tag Jason.”

“He’s probably in the sanctum,” Emily said. “He spends most of his time there.”

“We all do,” Jack countered.

“I mean, like, not coming out for days. I spend a day a week with him, and most of the time he can’t keep up, his head hurts so much.”

“I’ve spent a few days training with him,” Rafa said, “and she’s right. He isn’t the same. It’s like he’s been sabotaged. He’s working his way through it, but I think he’d rather have had a grenade go off in his head,” the Archon finished as another hologram popped up.

“More like a grenade going off twice an hour, every hour of every day,” Jason said, waving at the newcomer. “Hi, Jack.”

“Have you tried stunning yourself in the head?” Jack asked bluntly.

“Yes I have,” he admitted, “but it’s worse when I wake up. I have to keep my head balanced to contain the damage or it spirals out of control…and I can only do that if I’m conscious. Which is why I’m not getting much sleep.”

“You taking the next freighter out? Please say yes, because I’d like to keep as many of your toys as possible.”

Jason nodded. “Got one waiting. I’ll get over there and out of your hair within the day. Don’t break anything, will ya?”

“If I do, you know I’ll just blame it on her,” Jack said, barely containing a laugh as Emily’s eyes went wide in remembered rage.

“Don’t even joke about that,” she said icily. Back in their basic training Jack had broken one of Paul’s favorite shields during a challenge when he wasn’t supposed to have been using it. Emily had been stunned during the fighting so he’d switched shields with her and let Paul find her with it. When she woke up from the stun Paul pointed at the broken piece of shield just long enough so she’d know he knew, then he shot her pointblank in the head with a stinger.

Afterwards she hadn’t been too happy with Paul and they’d gotten into a bit of a fist-swinging spat until they pieced together what happened…after which they tracked down Jack and settled the score.

Jack snickered, then looked at Jason’s hologram. “You think you can stick around a few hours to catch up?”

Jason smiled, though the pain he was tolerating was evident in his eyes. “Once you make low orbit transfer over to the Legolas and we’ll hit a few challenges. Em, you’re welcome to come too.”

“I’ll be there,” she promised. “Jack, get those rounds transferred ASAP.”

“Will do. See you in a few.”

Jason and Emily’s holos disappeared, but Rafa’s remained. “You know him better than me. Keep an eye on him and tell me what you think later.”

Jack nodded, then Rafa’s hologram winked out as well.

“Captain, put priority on distribution of the rail gun slugs,” the trailblazer said as he stood up and headed aft towards the hangar bays. “Then pick us a nice camping spot.”

Mark ducked under a lightning fast roundhouse kick, barely getting underneath Kara’s calve and feeling the near miss run through his hair. Before he could make a decent move forward Kara was already backpedaling, increasing the amount of time it would take him to get to her. Mark hit her in the chest with his head, but a quick slap/push to the side of his temple moved him off center and Kara avoided most of the blow, knocking the trailblazer down in the process.

He rolled out of the fall and made a fake jab coming up as a distraction. As she moved to sidestep it he launched into her with his opposite arm, elbow first, and planted an Archon Punch into her shoulder as she hastily tried to back out away from it. The blow spun her torso around enough for Mark to get a quick lasso of her waist with his other arm, then he pulled her up off her feet so she couldn’t move out of reach. His other arm came around and crossed wrists with his first, locking her butt against his chest as he lifted and spun the Clan Saber pilot through a half circle before tipping her laterally and throwing her to the floor.

Kara landed on one outstretched hand and  pivoted her body around gracefully, coming into a football stance and looking back up at Mark before she jumped forward up out of her crouch into a two-legged kick, bringing her knees up to her chest and tipping backward…then lashing out at him with both heels.

Mark held his ground and did a backbend, letting her outstretched legs clear his head by inches as he fell backwards, wrapping his arms around her thighs and pinning her to him. They both went down on the mats and Mark used her awkward position against her, twisting her to the side so he could get his right leg free, then he gave her a none too gentle kick between the shoulder blades as he released his grip, knocking her aside. The ranger spun the opposite way and came up to his feet as Kara chose to roll over twice before coming up and drawing back her right leg in a stretchy Zen’zat combat stance.

Mark knew better than to rush her head on, so he ran to the left three steps then cut back at an angle, forcing her to alter her stance or get sideswiped. She did the former, literally transforming from one pose to another and reached out with wrists touching in a two-handed palm attack that caught Mark square in the gut as she ducked under a side hand swipe from the trailblazer.

He got the wind knocked out of him for a moment, but Kara didn’t relent. She pounded his chest with a pair of quick jabs, then kicked him in the side of the leg, knocking him off balance long enough to switch direction and snap down an angled roundhouse kick that knocked Mark to the floor with a decisive thud.

He spun around in a defensive kick, barely two inches off the training mats, to keep her back as he reset himself and got some air back in his lungs. He faked getting to his feet and drew her in, then collapsed back on his heels like a coiled spring and lunged low towards her legs.

With the combination of her forward momentum and his counter movement Kara pitched forward and banged her head against the floor…or rather she should have. Instead her upper body floated above it with her scrunched-up face spared a few inches of clearance between it and the mat.

Mark looked down at her head, still holding her legs in an arm lock up near his shoulders.

“Cheater.”

“I know,” she said, relaxing her face and pivoting her body up high as if Mark was rotating her up like the hands on a clock…except that he wasn’t. He let go of her legs and they fell down underneath her as she floated half a meter off the floor with a frustrated look on her face. “Reflex I guess.”

“Well that makes 3 for me, 5 for you,” he said, taking a step back as she floated down to the ground. “Again?”

“You’ve only earned one of those,” she reminded him, dropping down into another Zen’zat combat stance, this one painfully low to the ground.

“It’s not my fault if you can’t learn control,” he mocked, taunting her forward with his hand.

Kara’s head tilted to the side in an annoyed look, then she launched herself forward and the pair began exchanging a flurry of arm blows and blocks, forgoing any kicks or lunges and simply testing each other’s speed and reflexes. For the first time in a very long time Mark found himself outmatched…and reveled in the challenge of facing a superior opponent.

His arms began to grow warm and numb as the lightning fast exchange lasted the better of two minutes before Kara got enough of a speed advantage on him to throw in a twisting grasp on his right wrist with her left, then pull it forward across her body as she spun around his arm, pinning it to her back as she whipped her right elbow around towards the side of his head.

To his credit Mark moved forward just in time, hiding behind her back where she didn’t have much leverage to hit him, but at the last moment she released her grip on his wrist and opened up her turn into a full pivot that wacked him solidly in the head, blacking him out for a moment. He woke up a moment later, staring up at her face looking down at him.

“Six,” she said, reaching down and offering him a hand up.

He grabbed it, then halfway up put his shoulder to her waist and lifted her off her feet, then satisfyingly smashed her down onto the ground back first, banging her head against the mats just before planting a forearm across her neck to keep her down.

He stared down into her eyes from a much closer distance with a ‘you forgot who you were facing’ look.

“Four.”

“Now that is cheating,” she said with him pulling back off her quickly so she couldn’t return the favor.

“She still kicking your ass boss?” Boen asked from the edge of the sparring mat.

“More or less,” he said with a smile.

“He has such a crush on you now,” Boen teased.

“And you don’t?” Kara mocked, stepping laterally around the ring and keeping an eye on Mark as he did the same.

“You need something?” Mark asked, looking Kara over and trying to find a weakness to exploit. Ever since she’d gotten the wrist jewel from the dragon her abilities had spiked well above his, making sparring with her a unique challenge, given that there weren’t any other trailblazers on Daka. He’d jokingly referred to her as ‘Trailblazer 101’ a few months back and she’d latched onto that title like an Iratus bug. Since then she’d been almost giddy, and more than willing to kick Mark’s butt outside of the cockpit in order to offer him a chance to test her growing skills…as well as hone his.

“Jumpship just came in,” Boen said, looking at Kara.

“Ah man,” Mark groaned, abandoning his combat stance with a pouting face. “Now I’m going to be stuck training with these weaklings.”

Kara smiled broadly, both at his compliment and the news that her ride was finally here. “You know I can’t stay here forever when there’s a war going on.”

“And I…we can?” Mark said, glancing at Boen mid statement.

“You’re the master pilot, so you’re needed here more than me,” she said, brushing off her skintight training uniform that had a special notch cut out on the left wrist for her diamond-like jewel to show through. “But I know you’re not sticking around here forever either.”

“Not forever,” he admitted. “But we’re still not top dogs, so there’s a lot of training experience to gain and take back to the others.”

“Which you’re uniquely suited for. Me, I need to get into the action. You can see the big picture clearer from your position. All I can think about is Calavari fighting and dying out there while we play with simulators.”

Boen frowned. “I thought you wanted to go lizard hunting?”

“They’re the bigger threat, but from what I’ve read there’s not much ground combat going on yet. I don’t want to get stuck on a jumpship waiting…that’d be worse than staying here.”

Mark sighed. “How long does she have?”

“Hycre said they want to leave within the next 10 hours. Sooner if possible. Their jumpships are in short supply right now.”

Mark walked over to Kara, hands up for a moment to call off any sparring action, and wrapped her up in a big hug. “Go kick some ass, 101.”

He couldn’t see, but her eyes got a bit moist at hearing that.

“That’s the plan,” she said, returning and holding the hug for a long time before letting go and looking over at Boen. “Did they bring replacements?”

“Another 500 or so,” he said, referring to the growing number of Star Force pilots accumulating on the planet. Kara wasn’t the only one going back, as more than 100 of the Archons/Regulars that had been insystem for a long time were finally cycling out with the intent of putting their newfound skills to use, either in combat or in kicking the asses of their fellow Clan pilots in training exercises.

“They’ll keep you busy,” she said, glancing back at Mark. “See if you can’t find Boen a girlfriend. He’s going to get grumpy without me around.”

Mark laughed at the slight, but Boen didn’t seem too happy with it. Archons didn’t date, and to suggest one did was akin to saying they were inferior.

“Unless you plan to fly up there yourself, you’d better get going,” Boen said.

“Catch you guys later,” she said, winking at Mark and walking out past Boen…only to have him catch her off guard with a punch to the gut on the way by that doubled her over, but didn’t knock her down.

“That…was for last month,” he said, taking a cautious step back that Mark found hilarious.

Kara stood up and pointed a warning finger at him. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was a love tap,” she said, her glare turning into a smile as she silently walked out of the room and off to get ready for her trip back to Star Force territory.

Boen rolled his eyes and let her go, then glanced over at Mark. “She’s been like that ever since you called her a trailblazer.”

“Like what?” Mark asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Cocky, arrogant, sarcastic, flirty.”

“She’s not arrogant,” Mark said, dismissing that sentiment.

“She didn’t used to act like that.”

“She didn’t used to be that strong either,” he pointed out. “I think she’s acting just fine…and you should take the flirtyness as a compliment.”

“Sounds more like teasing than flirting to me.”

“You said flirty,” Mark reminded him.

“Whatever…we still on with the Protovic later today?”

“Yep. We’ll tag Hanson to replace Kara,” the trailblazer said, clapping Boen on the shoulder. “Let’s go see what kind of newbs they sent us.”

Two hours later Kara sat onboard a dropship reading a datapad as she transferred up to a Gargantuan-class freighter that the Hycre would be taking back nearly empty for Star Force to fill up with additional supplies and personnel in Epsilon Eridani for a future return trip. Kara flipped through the large data packet that the Hycre had brought with them, first checking on war news and deployments, seeing that Morgan’s armada had finally been cycled out of Hycre territory and replaced by a brand new fleet under Taryn’s command. That’s where she eventually wanted to end up, but didn’t know how soon the next fleet would be deploying, though she imagined that the ships Morgan was bringing back would be sent back out sooner rather than later.

Next she cycled through the Archon files, noticing the recall order/suggestion from Davis along with the news that a small number of Archons were developing Zen’zat abilities, some of which were potentially damaging. The Director wanted everyone experiencing even the slightest signs to return to the pyramid and pool their ingenuity to get a handle on these new abilities, as well as try to find a way to stimulate them in others if possible, while avoiding the damage that Jason seemed to be incurring as he developed telekinetic skills.

Sarto’kan, she corrected Davis, using the V’kit’no’sat word. With a sigh she leaned back on the dropship’s seat, sinking into the cushion as she realized that she wouldn’t be heading for Calavari territory after all.

“Fren sen ta’zel mit janco bey ich Earth,” she said, speaking the alien language as easily as she did English to the empty dropship bay. Glancing down at the datapad that was sitting in her lap, she narrowed her eyes and telekinetically floated the device up in front of her, spinning it about in place like a decorative ornament.

“Hang on, Jason. I’m coming.”

Psionics

1

May 28, 2406

Solar System

Earth

Jason sat cross-legged inside a white spherical pod, patiently waiting while the Star Force medical staff scanned him using their most advanced sensors. He neither heard nor saw anything other than the calm interior of the pod, but the equipment was bombarding him with numerous types of energy, probing straight through his clothes and flesh and detailing his body in intricate design as the machine worked to compile a composite digital clone for the medtechs to research.

While the pod was calm and tranquil, with his body reflecting the same, the trailblazer’s mind was not. It was a low level storm, constantly raging that he had to maintain control over constantly. The pressure exerted on him, and by him in return, kept his mind in a semi-numb state that left him partially vulnerable to his surrounding environment, given that his situational awareness wasn’t at its normally high level.

That said, his ‘spherical vision’ helped to compensate for the disadvantage, allowing him to see in all directions around him even with his eyes closed. At the moment they were, but he hadn’t turned on the ability, which he’d subsequently learned how to control and the more times he used it the easier it became to switch it on and off. Despite the pain, he’d been diligently working to improve the ability, learning to focus it where he wanted for greater range and detail, almost as if it were a radar beam.

“That’s good, Jason,” a medtech’s voice echoed through the small pod from a hidden speaker. “Begin phase 2 please.”

Without answering Jason sucked in a deep breath and slowly released it. As he did he flipped on his spherical vision and the interior curve of the chamber manifested itself beyond his closed eyelids. It stretched all around him, down to the flat floor beneath, while ignoring his clothes by means of a minimum distance function of his mind. If an object had reached out to poke him in the arm, it would have disappeared in mind’s eye a couple of inches away from contact while he was in this ‘viewing’ mode.

No such objects were present though. He was alone in the chamber with only himself and his clothes. Even all sounds from the exterior were being blocked, so as not to affect the subject undergoing the scans. Jason ‘looked’ at the inside of the pod, seeing nothing but the tactile-like sensation of its inner surface for several minutes, then the medtech’s voice came on again.

“Begin phase 3 please.”

With a bit of increased pain, Jason forced his spherical vision to switch from ‘viewing’ mode to ‘proximity’ mode. The walls of the pod disappeared and the perimeter of his body seemed to glow, with his clothes being registered in his mind as foreign objects, especially his shoes that appeared like heavy boulders around his feet. He could feel his eyelashes, the small hairs on his body, and the thicker ones on his head bristling like a blonde porcupine, though he could see no color. Everything felt black and white and grainy, though in proximity mode the grains decreased in size, offering enhanced accuracy.

Jason had been on Earth for nearly a week, and one of the first tests the medtechs had run after thoroughly debriefing him was to test his level of sensory sensitivity. While in proximity mode they’d touched various parts of his body with tiny objects, similar in size and pressure to ants and flies. With a signal button he was supposed to register exactly when contact was made, and for control purposes they’d run the test with his spherical vision turned off, though they had to take his word for it at first.

The control tests had been in three stages. The first stage was neutral, just having him come in and be politely prodded with his eyes closed. Second stage was for him to go through a sensory cleansing meditation and dial his senses up as much as he could. It was something Jason was familiar with, much akin to noises sounding louder when they broke into a quiet setting, while noises sounded fainter after, say, coming out of a very loud concert. The body adjusted its ‘normal’ based on what was going on around it, so as to keep as accurate as possible without overloading.

Stage three had been going the opposite way. He’d gone through a short but intense workout in the pyramid with some of the other Archons then come straight to the testing area, where they repeated the same level of touch tests. As expected, there was a variance…and from the data gathered they’d constructed a baseline for his tactile sensitivity, which differed depending on which part of his body they touched, with the areas that saw the most contact, such as the pads of his feet, being the most unresponsive, given the amount of stimuli they processed on a daily basis…not to mention the thin callouses he’d developed from so much kicking and running.

With that biological map in place they’d repeated the tests with him using his spherical sense in proximity mode…and found an insanely sharp increase to his tactile sense. Even the post-workout mode was sharper than the meditative calm had been. How he’d been enhancing his tactile sense had been a mystery for the other Archons who’d arrived at the training summit before him, but eventually one of the medtechs had stumbled onto an erroneous data packet that led one of the engineers on station to deduce the presence of an energy field.

With that avenue of thought now before them, Star Force had hastily brought in energy sensors and confirmed small amounts from the four Archons showing tidbits of the spherical vision…enough to convince them to design and build a much more complicated and powerful sensor, which Jason was now sitting in.

The trailblazer was unlike any of the others, given that his abilities were so much more advanced, so this test would hopefully give the medtechs plenty of data to chew on while the Archons went about the discovery process in their own training-inspired way.

“Excellent. Phase 4 please.”

Jason shut down his proximity mode and instead pushed out his spherical vision around him, going beyond the boundaries of the pod and ‘seeing’ through the walls a few feet…which was all the further his range would go at the moment. As prompted, he compressed his spherical vision down to a narrow cone and pressed it out forward, allowing him to see two of the medtechs outside near a terminal.

He moved his ‘spotlight’ around, all the while sitting motionless inside the pod. Jason counted 9 people in the room in total, with another four in the one below and at least 8 in the room above, though it was so busy with feet walking in and out that he couldn’t be sure how many there actually were. His vision wouldn’t extend throughout the room, nor even far enough to touch the ceiling, but he could see several sets of legs up to the knees, but he couldn’t focus close enough to see through their clothes as he could with the medtechs nearby.

It was strange, given that he could adjust what he was seeing. One moment the walls of the pod were opaque, then with a mental twist he could see the components inside, layer by layer if he wanted, so long as the material didn’t get too dense. Like Superman, the heavier elements blocked his vision, or rather some of them did and didn’t. Which ones were a continuing subject of interest for the medtechs and engineers who were continuing to try and examine the energy fields he was producing in order to ‘see’ in this fashion.

Those energy fields were part of what they were measuring now in the pod, along with his body’s reactions, trying to determine how and where he was producing them. This wasn’t the first time they’d put him in the pod, and each time they did they gathered enough data to have the engineers reconfigure the device in a new way, as if they were tuning it to settings they were just now discovering, making this whole exercise a massive beta test.

“Thank you. Rest a moment.”

Jason did as prompted and released the vision, causing another blip of pain in the transition, though the power drain in his head diminished. It didn’t pull much, but there was definitely an energy expenditure of some sort pulling from an inner reserve that seemed to refill gradually. In the past his head had been so chewed up that he’d had a hard time analyzing it, and though the pain wasn’t gone he’d been able to define several things about his abilities, first of which was that his ‘reserves’ were actually three different pools of energy, one of which fed the spherical vision.

“Begin phase 5.”

Jason opened his eyes and looked down at the small marble he held cradled in a fold of the material of his pants where his legs crossed. He’d placed it there half an hour ago rather than hold it in his hand or place it on the floor. It’d been invisible during all but his proximity mode, but now that he looked at it both his proximity mode and viewing mode activated, piggybacking onto his vision in an odd way that he hadn’t quite been able to pin down yet.

The senses pulled from what he thought of as the secondary pool of energy, while he painfully released the floodgates on the primary and fed power down a line of connection and into the marble, gripping it in a different type of energy field and lifting it up into the air in front of him, where he held it aloft as the sensors scanned both him and the fields he was producing.

Meanwhile the tertiary pool of energy lingered in his mind. At first he hadn’t been sure it was even there, for he never could seem to make it do anything, but given enough experience poking around his own head he’d confirmed that there was in fact another reserve there, smaller in size, but that was probably because he hadn’t used it for anything, and if/when he did it would probably grow larger like the others had with training.

Holding the marble aloft took a good deal of concentration, but his primary pool of energy had grown to the point where the ‘physical’ aspect of lifting the lightweight object wasn’t an issue. At present he’d have trouble budging his shoe, even without his foot in it, but a marble was definitely within his ability to manipulate and given the size of this one, which he carried with him most of the time for practice sake, he could maintain the mid-air suspension for a little over 5 minutes.

His record with the white orb was 5:39, but this test wouldn’t last more than a minute, for the medtechs didn’t want his energy depleted.

True to their word, the voice came back again 32 seconds later.

“Begin phase 6.”

Jason closed his eyes and concentrated, feeling his ‘grip’ on the marble slip as his vision went away. Relying now only on his spherical sight for coordination, he kept the marble aloft then pulled it to the left and set it into a slow orbit around his body…which was very difficult to maneuver. Fortunately it was something that Jason practiced regularly, otherwise he’d only have been able to manage straight lines.

“Thank you. Rest now,” the medtech said after five full rotations.

Jason guided the marble back down to the niche where his legs crossed and set it into the fold of cloth where it had originally been, then bit his teeth against the pain as he released the object. His head constantly hurt, but it always hurt more when he was changing something.

The side of the pod cracked open and the two halves of the dome split, peeling apart and turning the floor he was sitting on into a round table with the various medtechs standing around. Some of which had thoroughly startled expressions.

“What?” Jason asked, sliding off the table and pocketing the marble.

“Have a look,” the lead medtech said, motioning him towards a console.

He walked over and glanced at a detailed image of his sitting form, only without visuals. Instead it was a mass of data signatures, including auras surrounding his body. “Energy fields?”

The medtech nodded. “And we finally have data on them. Yours are far more advanced than the others, though that’s probably due to the crudity of our equipment. You’re putting out larger fields, hence there’s more for us to glean an understanding from.”

“Hey,” one of the engineers said, mock offended. “Ingrate.”

The lead medtech smiled ironically, but let the comment pass. “This is phase 2. Note how the field fills the entire chamber, and probably beyond. Now compare with stage 6,” he said as another medtech adjusted the scans for them.

Jason squinted, trying to make out what he was seeing. There was a compressed line running from his head to the marble as it spun around, but the intersection between the line and the widespread energy field was…funky.

“What am I seeing?”

“I don’t know,” the medtech answered honestly. “But it’s significant.”

“Well I do,” the engineer said, pointing a finger at the display. “At least I have a theory. The thin line is your lifting mechanism. Think of it like a tractor beam. Where the beam connects with the object there are secondary lines flowing back to source. Input and output.”

“Flowing back through the other energy field?” Jason asked.

“You’ve said that’s how you ‘see’ things. One field causes a change, the other senses the change. Look here,” the engineer continued, pointing at Jason’s feet in the image. “There are very faint lines of activity. My guess is because the field has something to ‘report’ back, whereas the rest of the area is open air up to the wall. Less stimuli there, so the field is less active? Just thinking out loud.”

“I get what you’re saying,” Jason said, studying the display. “But tractor beam doesn’t fit. I can move an object on the other side of a blocking one. It’s like the field can penetrate matter, then condense at any point it wants to form a physical hold.”

“Perhaps the line is your power conduit,” the medtech suggested, running a finger on the console from head to marble. “As you send energy down it fluctuates and gives the sensors something to ping off of.”

“Perhaps, but the field is larger than is showing. It feels like a shadow I can throw over an object like a blanket, and once on top I can use precision control, but the blanket throwing is almost random. I can nudge it one way or another, but it’s pretty much all around me and that’s not showing here,” he said, tapping the screen.

“Probably the sensitivity of the sensors,” the engineer grumbled. “We didn’t have much time to build them, so they’re still a bit on the crude side.”

“Do you have enough data to work with for now…both of you?”

“Yes,” the medtech said, while the engineer simply nodded.

“See what you can make of it,” Jason said, placing a hand on the engineer’s shoulder as he walked by and out of the room. He continued down a few hallways before finding a short stairwell and heading down to ground floor…where he walked out of the building and onto the enormous command deck within the V’kit’no’sat pyramid.

He grabbed one of two dozen tech-grade mongooses parked outside the Star Force-constructed building and tore off down the ‘road’ between the other out of place structures dotting what had once been dinosaur central. Their large lounging pads were now surrounded by a sea of buildings, none of which really even began to put a dent in the massive amount of floor space available.

Jason followed the chaotic traffic patterns via painted lines on the deck that swerved in and out around buildings and pads, changing routes twice before he came to a newly constructed building, larger than all the others but still painfully short compared to the height of the chamber. The Archon locked up the brakes and skidded the low-powered mongoose to a halt in its parking place, turning off the whisper-quiet engine and heading inside the most recent addition to the training sanctum.

What had originally been four buildings was now five, with this one larger than the other four combined, given that Davis anticipated many more Archons coming to the pyramid over time as they developed these peculiar mental abilities. The original sanctum had been built small, given that they only needed it for the handful of Archons on site, which was usually one or two doing some basic research through the database or helping the techs by working the hidden interfaces.

On occasion there’d be a group of Archons that would come down to use the holographic training programs, but in general there were few on site at any given time and the facilities could really only handle about 20. Thus Davis had ordered an upgrade.

The building Jason entered was a tall spire with a wide base three stories thick. The highest peak reached only halfway up to the ceiling, but looked down on all the other buildings with ease. The trailblazer headed over to one of the multi-purpose rooms they’d designated as Cerebro 1 and tagged the door switch on the wall. When the halves parted he walked into a control booth, on the other side of which was a pitch black room, visible only through technological means on a wall-spanning artificial window.

Jason sat down in one of the seats, watching the individual inside walk slowly through a maze of small objects.

“Have fun?” Aaron-010 asked, his eyes not turning away from the screen as he was telepathically guiding the other Archon through the darkened obstacles.

2

“They confirmed the presence of energy fields,” Jason answered.

“Well, at least now we know it’s not magic,” Aaron quipped, still focusing ahead…then cringing as Zack-887 walked face first into a soft pylon.

“Nice one,” the Saber said, feeling the dark object with his right hand while he rubbed his smooshed nose with his left.

Jason glanced at Aaron, seeing his forehead knit up as he concentrated. The conversation capability of the control room was one-way only, allowing Zack to talk to Aaron, but not the reverse…forcing the trailblazer to use his infantile telepathy.

Zack received another mental message, then stepped left and smacked into a knee-high object that tripped him up and had him half fall on top of it, catching himself on his knee.

“Let’s go back to binary, please,” Zack said as he stood up and oriented himself straight towards the object, then pointed to his right for a moment, receiving a ‘no’ command from Aaron, so he pointed a thumb back over his shoulder behind him, whereupon he received a ‘yes.’ Neither command was a word, for Aaron didn’t have the skill for that yet. Each thought was something unique, almost like a sound, with the ‘high pitched’ version being used as a ‘yes’ while the ‘low pitched’ version was being used as a ‘no.’

Zack spun around, doing his best to manage a 180 to keep with a grid pattern. He took a step forward and stopped, pointing forward. Another ‘yes’ command formed in his mind like a lingering ping and he took another step.

Jason heard the mental commands as well, as could anyone within a limited radius around Aaron. He’d learned how to transmit openly, rather than point to point. Some of the other Archons that had come in were able to spot other minds, and in this same room they practiced identifying where they were on a grid, much like a chess board. When one person would move from point to point the Archon would sense where their mind was and adjust the board, all the while not being able to see or hear them.

From that ability it was quickly assumed that if an Archon could do both then they might be able to send private messages to one individual rather than blasting it out for all to hear, but so far no one had progressed far enough to try, given that they either had the ‘tracking’ ability or the ‘transmitting’ ability, with Aaron being the most advanced in the transmitting department.

They’d experimented with range outside of the cerebro building, and at his best Aaron had managed 345 meters, though he’d had to practically shout with his mind, which had been taxing, similar, Jason expected, to lifting an object smaller than a marble. He guessed as each of them advanced their power levels would increase, but right now that’s not what Aaron was working on.

“Slow going?”

“My ‘vocabulary’ sucks,” Aaron said as Jason sensed him give Zack another ‘yes’ command when he pointed to his left. “I can handle binary because it’s measured from one extreme to another, but can you notice the variation?”

“Your yesses aren’t all the same.”

“And that’s the problem,” the trailblazer said, sending another ‘yes’ as Zack pivoted and took a step forward, even before he’d pointed ahead.  “We’ve been trying four points…left, right, forward, and back…but I keep slurring the thoughts and he has to guess. It’s like I’m a baby just learning how to speak and all I can do right now is make random sounds.”

“Any sensing ability peeking through?”

“No, and I’d hoped that I might be able to pick up a bit of reflection from my own transmissions but I haven’t got nil.”

“When you’ve got time they’re going to want to stick you in the machine.”

“I’ll head down in an hour or so. I want to get him to the end of the maze first. The more practice I get the better.”

Jason clapped him on the shoulder then headed out the door, leaving him to work without having to talk. As he left he heard another ‘no’ from him, followed by a ‘yes’ in the hallway that was fainter. He caught one more ‘no’ before finally walking out of Aaron’s transmitting range, then as he moved over to another part of the sanctum his head started to hurt worse.

His vision blinked out for a moment, then he steadied himself against the wall as he forced his mind to function…then the strain released and he was back to his normal pain-racked self.

Jason shook his head clear then entered a door a few steps down, finding a pair of Archons in the adjacent room. This one was a normal sparring chamber, circular in design, with Kian-093 sitting in the center while Ellie-579 worked her way around the perimeter doing a series of gymnastics exercises ranging from flips to balance bends, all of which required a significant amount of mental control and coordination.

“Your range is getting better,” Jason commented, with Ellie ceasing her circuit at the sound of his voice. She pulled up, her chin-length blue hair flopping down over her ears as she completed an inversion.

“You felt that?” Kian asked.

“Just now,” Jason confirmed. “Unless someone else was nearby.”

“No, that was me,” the trailblazer said with a bemused look on his face. “I just didn’t think my range had progressed that far. I’m surprised you could tell the difference with how screwed up your head is already.”

“How’s Barbie doing?” Jason asked, referring to Ellie who frowned at the reference.

Kian’s face clenched up and Jason felt another upgrade to his headache that made his balance wobbly, but he managed to stay on his feet. Ellie, however, looked like she was suddenly standing on ice and slipped, falling back onto her butt just before Kian released his disruption field.

“Still getting caught off guard, I’m afraid,” he said, standing up. “I’m surprised you didn’t go down too.”

“Like you said, already got a lot of stuff rattling around in here, so I have to stay on guard.”

“That was cheap,” Ellie complained, getting back up to her feet.

Kian snickered, but offered no further explanation.

“You any better at resisting?” Jason asked her.

“Yes,” the Sangheili said, “but it’s not so much about resisting as it is pushing back. It feels like firing a squirt gun only to have the wind scatter the squirt into droplets. Up the pressure and flow and you can still maintain decent firepower. I haven’t found a way to fight back against what he’s doing, just manage it better. Is your headache really blocking it?”

“My mental pressure flow is sky high already,” Jason told her, “but I almost fell over too. Any twinges from you?”

“Not yet. Still just spherical sight.”

“I want to know the moment it happens. There are some drills I want you to work through so you can hopefully avoid the fragmentation I’ve got.”

“Cheery thought…but as far as keeping you notified of any changes, I’ll add now that I’m also starting to show some tracking ability. Minute levels, only about 3 meters in range, but that puts me on the doubles list now.”

“You and three others?”

“Five total,” Kian corrected. “Tyr came in this morning. He’s got tracking and transmission at minimal levels.”

“Six of us now,” Jason commented, referring to the number of trailblazers. “I get the feeling that eventually we’re all going to end up here.”

“You had your test yet?”

“Just. The techs have got some data to work with now, but they’re going to want to run everyone through the machine.”

“Learn anything?”

“Energy fields and lots of new questions.”

Kian rolled his eyes. “Well, we knew they were energy fields. Anything useful?”

“Not particularly. You figured anything out recently?”

“Starting to,” Kian said. “I’d give you a demonstration but your head hurts enough, I’d imagine. Sorry about the accidental one, by the way. The disruption field can be modified to affect the target in different ways. I haven’t mastered control over it yet, so it’s pretty much accidental when it happens.”

“What ways?”

“Well…ask her. I haven’t actually been on the receiving end yet.”

“The usual is staticy interference, like your nervous system has been disrupted with bit errors. But twice now he’s done something different with it and the static wasn’t there, but it required a lot more mental effort to move.”

Jason glanced at Kian. “Slow?”

The other trailblazer’s jaw dropped. “I totally missed that connection.”

“It didn’t slow me down,” Ellie differed. “My movements were the same speed, it was the mental processing that was…well, ok, that was slowed. Call it slow reflexes, but movement was unaffected.”

“Not like that,” Kian said, shaking his head.

“Have you ever played Final Fantasy?” Jason asked.

Ellie shook her head. “No.”

“That’s why you don’t get it. ‘Slow’ is an effect that you put on an opponent allowing them to get, say, three punches in a given span of time as opposed to four.”

“I’ll have to check that game out…because that’s pretty much what it felt like. Of course I didn’t have long to work through it. He only managed a few seconds each time.”

“Start with Final Fantasy 7,” Kian suggested.

Ellie frowned. “Why not at the beginning?”

“Just trust us on this one,” Jason agreed. “Any other variations?”

“He did something once that felt like a sharp pain inside my head. I don’t know if I shook it loose or he just couldn’t maintain it, but as soon as it started it stopped.”

“Do you have any variations on your end?” he asked Kian.

“I’d say a weak yes on that. Every time I produce the field it feels a little different. Kind of like trying to hold onto something slippery. You never know which way your hand will go when you squeeze.”

“That makes no sense to me,” Ellie said, looking at Jason for confirmation.

“Not much here either, but I understand the lack of control. I assume no one else has joined the disruption group for you to share notes with?”

Kian spread his arms wide. “Just me and me right now.”

Jason sighed and did a fair impression of McKayla Maroney’s ‘not impressed’ face. “You know where Tyr’s at?”

“Cerebro 1, I imagine.”

Jason shook his head. “Aaron’s there.”

“I think he headed up to the holograms,” Ellie offered.

“That’s not mutant training,” Kian scoffed.

The Sangheili shrugged. “Maybe he’s low on power. I heard he tested with almost nonexistent readings.”

“Actually, there’s something I want to check out there anyway,” Jason said.

“Try and see if you can force throw a hologram?” Kian asked, half serious.

Jason frowned hard. “Not unless it’s a holographic marble. I want to see how it looks with spherical sight.”

Kian’s eyes widened just a touch. “Good call.”

“Carry on,” Jason prompted as he walked out. “And you might want to find a bigger room so you don’t keep tripping up people in the hallway.”

Kian smiled deviously. “Now where would the fun be in that?”

Jason glanced back and mock slapped him through the air…with his cheek denting slightly as he added a telekinetic nudge to the gesture.

As he turned into the hall he got a dizzying burst of static in return, making him stumble just a bit but he brushed it off and moved on, heading back to the mongooses parked outside. He grabbed one, noting the one he’d ridden in on was already gone, and drove across the command deck until he got to the dino-ramp that was made up of differently shaped stairs. In the past they’d had to hoof it up and down, but Star Force had built its own ramp over top along both sides and Jason drove his upwards on the right, riding the accelerator heavily to overcome the steep grade.

He drove up several levels before getting off at the entrance to the Zen’zat levels. From there the hallways were too small to accommodate mongoose traffic without running over people, though the hallways were sufficiently wide to accommodate a single vehicle if necessary. They weren’t the smallest hallways in the pyramid, for Ari’tat were half as tall and their habitat section was constructed accordingly, but they did function as the cap to the ginormous structure, preventing most of the other V’kit’no’sat races from physically entering the tiny bipeds’ domain.

Rit’ko’sor still could, which was why the Zen’zat hadn’t been able to hide out during the rebellion and maintain control over the pyramid, but Jason never understood how they’d managed to get the Ari’tat out, for it would have required them to crawl in. Then again, maybe they simply had…or used some sort of weapon to ferret them out.

Jason worked his way through the Zen’zat levels until he came to the sealed section…which had been purposefully left open to allow non-Archons through. He could clearly see the hidden markings around the door that the others couldn’t, and wondered if they would also open up to Rit’ko’sor or just Zen’zat.

Yet one more question in a long list that was attached to the pyramid. They’d had it in their possession for nearly 400 years and there was still more mystery to it than answers.

Jason headed through the open doors and worked his way to the holographic training chamber and did indeed find Tyr inside sparring with a much taller opponent. He wore a black body suit with emerald trimmings that stood out in stark contrast with Tyr’s white with green stripe Archon uniform. The two were exchanging blows, with the Zen’zat hologram using a rotational fighting style that they seemed to favor. Whether moving forward a step or back, the man’s large torso would twist around in a full circle, swinging arms or legs with it to keep Tyr at bay or to inflict damage.

Jason stayed out of holographic range, standing a step outside the doorway as he extended his spherical sight out in a wide cone towards the pair…whereupon he discovered that he could sense the hologram, as well as feel the pair of bumps on its chest.

That surprised him, because he didn’t remember there ever being any holographic female opponents, but more than that the hologram didn’t feel like Tyr did. It felt sparkly and hollow…with a very rigid frame, like it was made of moving glass just waiting to be broken. Like an energy shield, it diminished on contact, and Jason could just barely make out a weak point where his fellow trailblazer punched it, then the thinness dissipated as more power was pumped into it from the emitters in the room, restoring the thin shell to full thickness.

A series of kicks on Tyr’s part ended with his foot punching through the hologram, whereupon it disappeared with the Archon’s victory…but to Jason’s sight the hologram disappeared prior to the impact, suggesting that it had shut itself down rather than be breached, making him wonder how tough the hologram would be to penetrate at full power.

“Long time, brother,” Tyr offered when he finally noticed Jason. “Bit of a constant headache I hear?”

“You shouldn’t have to ask, Professor.”

Tyr waved a finger at him. “I barely count. I didn’t even notice till after the recall order went out, then I started paying attention. I started mentally yelling at people I passed in the hallway and freaked myself out when somebody actually heard me.”

“You try force-lifting anything?” Jason asked, walking inside.

“No joy there. I hear you’re the only one to break through to Jedi mode?”

“Hmmn, I like the sound of that.”

“Can you lift a stun sword yet?”

Jason reached down into his pocket and pulled out the marble, then levitated it in the air between the two.

“This is about all I’m rated for now. I can manage a bit more mass, but I don’t have the longevity.”

Tyr stared at the floating white orb in wonder, then ran his left hand around it, feeling for connections and finding none.

“Now that is impressive.”

Jason returned the marble to his hand, then his pocket. “Hurts like hell though. And yeah, I’m the only one to break through, but there are several with the precursor so I don’t think I’ll be alone for long.”

“The Jedi sight I read about?”

“Seriously, why didn’t I think to call it that?” Jason said, a bit disappointed with himself. “Yeah, I was just using it to scope out the hologram you were kicking the crap out of. It’s what you use to guide the telekinesis, so if it pops up the other is bound to follow.”

“And which is damaging you?”

“At this point, I so much as blink and it hurts. I don’t know if I’m actively being damaged anymore or just tearing open old injuries. My head is fragged, not as bad as it was before, but enough that I can’t sleep. You can imagine what that’s done to my training.”

“How’d it start?”

“The sight started popping up randomly, and it did fry me pretty good, but there was a building pressure inside that did the worst of it, and that only released when the telekinesis broke through. I’m hoping we can get some answers before the others get to that point.”

“Physical activity help?”

“Other than a distraction, no. This ability operates on its own little island with its own rules. Don’t know if it shares a cabana with yours or not, but it’s completely separate from the physical skills.”

“I brought 18 Angry Chipmunks with me, four of which have your Jedi sight. One of those is starting to get headaches.”

“Who?” Jason said, now well used to Tyr’s Clan name. In the beginning he, Morgan, and others had chosen more humorous names than the rest of the trailblazers, but at this point the words had gained new definitions and Clan Angry Chipmunk no longer registered as funny, but rather a group of Archons strong in aerial and commando with a large chunk of Titan under their control.

“Riona-111.”

“Where is she?” Jason asked forcefully. “Time matters.”

“I don’t know,” Tyr said, walking towards the door with Jason dropping into step. “But if you think it’s urgent?”

“The headache will build continuously until it pops…I broke through to telekinesis. If I hadn’t…”

“You could have died?”

“I came close,” he whispered.

“That wasn’t in the update,” Tyr complained, changing from a walk over into a jog as they exited the restricted section back out into the communal hallways.

“I just got here too. I didn’t have a hand in writing it.”

“I meant your logs.”

“You haven’t read the recent ones then.”

“Damn those comm delays,” Tyr swore, meaning it more than ever.

“I know. I’m going to put Clan Sangheili techs to work on it round the clock now. We’re getting way too spread out for couriers.”

“Angry Chipmunk will do the same. What’s taking Davis’s people so long? We should have at least a primitive version up and running by now.”

“As long as we’re here, why don’t we ask him?”

“That…is a very good idea,” he said as they ran down a narrow set of oddly shaped stairs. “After you get Riona squared away.”

3

May 31, 2406

Solar System

Earth

David stepped over a 3-inch high ‘wall,’ barely able to make it out. It and the floor looked almost the same in his growing spherical sight, but there was just enough of a line in the scratch black/white mental image to get his attention, allowing him to avoid tripping over the tiny obstacle.

The next one was not so small. It was a wall with several oddly shaped holes in it, through which David had to crawl. The tricky part was his mind seemed to be filling in the gaps where his senses lacked, and unless he got a good ‘feel’ for the holes his mind painted a solid wall in front of him. He knew others had been getting blocked by that trick, and was glad he’d developed to the point where he could at least spot a disturbance in the solid barrier…from there his hands did the rest, feeling out the perimeter of the hole in the pitch black training room.

Cerebro 2, as they called it, had been developed specifically for those Archons with the spherical sight manifesting to hone their skills. The obstacle course David was walking through was a level 4, throwing different challenges at him as opposed to the level 1 he’d begun with that was simply a walking maze with predictable, straight hallways and right angled turns. That had been hard enough when he began using the new course 3 months ago, but the more challenges thrown at him, the better his mental radar got at both interpreting the data he was receiving as well as enhancing his range and accuracy.

When David crawled out of the hole he ‘saw’ several disqualification pits in the floor, no more than a foot or so deep, but if he stepped in them he’d have to abort this run and start over again…with the arrangement of the room resetting so his memory wouldn’t help him. There were several narrow walkways through the pits, slightly wider than his body, and he slowly walked down one until he got on the other side and almost bumped his face into a protrusion, stopping himself just in time.

As he ‘looked’ ahead, though his spherical sight was in fact looking everywhere at once, his mind began to gather more data on what was in front of him and several tubes appeared sticking out at him end on. Careful not to backtrack into the pits, David walked sideways, seeing more tubes appear as the others dissipated. He frowned, still disappointed that his range wasn’t better. He could make out walls a good 10 meters away, but smaller objects seemed to escape his detection unless they were right in front of him.

David reversed direction and sidestepped to the right, eventually finding a patch where the tubes weren’t and squeezing through the gap in the wall that had little bendable fibers covering the opening so it wouldn’t be seen. Had he not been able to detect the tubes and see where they weren’t, there was no way he could have found the right spot, save for feeling up and down the length with his hands…which he had done before, and was legal in this challenge, but he was also on the clock and that took a whole lot of time unless you got lucky right off the bat.

When he pushed through he came out into a small empty space with a solid wall on the far side and to his left, forcing him to turn to the right and walk a few meters…then he tripped and fell forward onto an up-ramp, catching himself with his hands.

“Damn it,” he whispered. “Why can I never see you?”

David ran his hands over the surface of the ramp and magically it appeared before him, like his spherical sight needed the physical stimulus to reset itself. He was beginning to think a lot of what he ‘saw’ was his mind guessing, just like now it had been guessing that the rest of the hallway was flat like the start. He knew that could be dangerous, but without better senses it was all he had to work with.

David just wished his subconscious would guess right more often.

The Archon climbed up the ramp and turned left at another flat wall/corner, then walked across a bridge with rails, thankfully, but there were 1-inch high strips on the floor at random points, tripping him up when he failed to spot them. 3-inches high he could handle, but 1-inch was virtually invisible…then again, him being able to navigate the room at all with no lights was impressive enough.

After stumbling his way across he came to a nexus with three circles low to the floor which he knew from previous experience were slides. Now came the tricky part…knowing which slide to take. It was written somewhere in physical, block letters, which David couldn’t yet read. Well, he could barely make out some big ones during individual practice, but give him a sentence in front of him with 2-inch long letters and all he could see was a long block with a few pits in it…the best guess his mind could make based off his limited sense.

But David could see where the circles were so he walked towards the rightmost one and felt around the perimeter, quickly finding the letters tattooed on the wall. Using his fingertips he felt over the first letter of what was always a different word, meaning he couldn’t just feel the first one and guess the rest.

N…O…P…E

David sighed and moved over to the center one, feeling around the edges until he found the word underneath the bottom of the circle.

U…H…U…H

David’s sigh turned into a growl as he moved over to take the third slide, then for some reason he felt around for the words anyway, wondering why he was wasting the time when it had to be the one.

W…R…O…N…G

“What?” he asked into the dark, feeling over the letters again. He hadn’t read them wrong.

David stood up and soaked in the radar-like sense of the entire room, sensing the three circles in front of him and low to the ground, as well as the doorway behind him.

He froze in place, ‘staring’ at everything around him and trying to get his sense to reset. Maybe it was ‘guessing’ away another exit.

After maybe 10 or 15 seconds a little bit of disruption above him caught David’s attention, then a fourth circle appeared. He reached up and felt around the low ceiling, finding another set of letters that to his mind’s eye looked like a very shallow rectangle.

Y…E…P

David reached up into the circle and felt around, finding a ladder rung. He jumped up, bypassing several, then hand climbed up enough to get his feet on the bottom rung, pulling himself up inside before climbing a few meters to the peak where the entrance to the slide began. Not wanting to waste any more time he went in head first and began to slide down, twisting and turning through several corkscrews that showed little in his vision other than some weird flashes of signal and very little of the tunnel ahead of him.

He was eventually dumped out on the ground with a waist-high object situated several meters in front that he recognized as the finish pedestal. David got to his feet and walked forward, then fell face first to the ground as another low wall tripped him up.

Not wasting the time to curse his stupidity he got to his feet and tagged the finish button on top, stopping the clock and turning the chamber’s lights on slowly so his eyes could adjust without a bright flash.

David released the spherical sight, feeling thoroughly drained. He no longer had to worry about it going out on him mid-course as it had done that first month, but it was still taxing him heavily. Additional ambrosia doses didn’t seem to help much, though he and the others had been trying them frequently with some minor successes. From David’s perspective his internal battery simply had to recharge over time, and at the moment it felt like he was running pretty low.

The holographic time popped up over the finish pedestal a few seconds later, indicating that David had shaved off 4 seconds from his previous record. Progress was progress, but with the course altering every go around the time should have been coming off in large chunks, whereas 4 seconds could have just been luck with this particular setup.

Still, the more runs he made the more training experience his mind had to adapt to, so David walked out of the nearby door mostly content and hit the reset button. He watched for a moment while the various barricades and such pulled back into the walls, eventually leaving a large, empty room behind, coated in white panels with golden lines crisscrossing them in a grid, giving it a very holodeck-like feel.

David wanted to have another go at it, but he knew his mental power reserves were too low so he decided to take a break. He’d already gone through three rounds, and knew it’d be at least another 2 hours before he was full of energy again. Jason had suggested keeping that energy reserve draining as often as possible to encourage better discharge capabilities and prevent blockage that could cause an overload similar to what he had initially suffered from.

David was grateful that hadn’t happened to him, but Riona had already started having trouble with pressure headaches. Jason had her going through a variety of drills to try and alleviate the pressure while restructuring the pathways that the techs still couldn’t isolate. Right now Jason knew more than they did, and if he said there were ‘pathways’ then David trusted him on that, even if he couldn’t completely confirm what the trailblazer was saying. To be honest, David only had a rudimentary understanding of what was happening inside his own head, and that freaked him out to no end.

“You done?” Mathis-831 asked from behind him, seeing the empty room through the viewing pane.

“Yeah, I’m…” David said, turning around from the control board. “What the hell is that?”

Mathis held up his bow for David to see more clearly. “Something I’ve been working on.”

David frowned. “Seriously?”

“Clan Croft is encouraged to think outside of the box,” the Archon said, stepping past David and activating a preset training exercise.

“Alright, I’m outside of the box. How is a bow and arrow useful?”

“Don’t think of them as arrows,” Mathis said, pulling one of the long shafts out of the very advanced quiver/vest he wore. “More like tiny missiles or remote mines, for you Goldeneye fans.”

“Does that…” David said, pointing to the shaft with a very heavy end piece.

“Anti-grav it does have,” Mathis confirmed as multiple targets began floating around the room as the lights dimmed, leaving only a narrow, lit pathway leading out to a circle of light far off in the center of the room.

“Oh I’ve got to see this,” David said, pulling up a chair in front of the wall-sized window.

“Turn on the night vision,” he suggested as he walked into the chamber, closing the door behind him.

“Blind target shooting…typical,” David said, switching the window over to a mode that saw the dark areas of the room lit up in green highlights. He watched Mathis jog out to the center of the circle of light, then on cue all the illumination went out, leaving only the glowing green shapes behind.

Mathis’s outline sprouted his bow and David could barely see him pull an arrow/missile out and sling it in. His position was well away from the window and even with the nightvision it was difficult to make out objects that small. The larger targets he could see clearly. There were dozens of floating cubes drifting in a circle around the Archon, then three of them broke formation and moved in towards him. David saw a distance counter activate on the console in front of him…which indicated that the purpose of this challenge was to keep the targets from getting all the way into the center.

Suddenly a streak of green shot out from Mathis and imbedded itself in one of the cubes, sticking out like an ugly hair. Nothing exploded, though in retrospect David chided himself for expecting as much. Mathis was here for accuracy, not destruction, and David found himself impressed at the range he had shot the target…not because of the archery skill involved, but because it was farther away than David could currently stretch his spherical sight. Given that the lights were out, Mathis was targeting purely with the mental ability.

The Clan Croft marksman spun around and fired at another one behind him, then spun again to hit the third as more targets began to drift in from the ring towards the center while the hit ones dropped to the floor and pulled back, letting Mathis know he’d already tagged them. David counted 24 targets in total and guessed that was about the amount of arrows he’d had in his quiver, meaning this was going to be a very short exercise.

David kept count of his hits mentally before he noticed another counter on the console. With fluid rhythm Mathis found and tagged each of the cubes as they came in, then the counter passed 24 hits on its way up to 30, making David wonder exactly how many arrows he’d stuffed in that quiver. The targets, he saw, were cycling back to the outer circle to be reused, but Mathis kept firing arrow after arrow, causing David to have a mental fit…where was he getting them all from?

Using the control board in front of him, David pulled up the info on the current challenge. He scrolled down through the basics and into the physical dynamics of the setup, finding his answer…somehow the room was pulling the arrows off the cubes and moving them back to a recycling post at the center of the room.

David took a closer look at Mathis’s green form, not noticing anything for a long time as the man spun about, targeting cubes behind him almost as if he could see them there…which he could, thanks to the spherical sight. After getting used to watching the nightvision David finally saw the difference…instead of pulling new arrows out of the quiver, he was reaching down towards the floor slightly, not enough to drop to a knee, but low enough to pull out a new arrow from what the schematics indicated was an open-air quiver, meaning no sidewalls, from which the recycled arrows would sprout from.

Ingenious system, and typical Star Force. This way Mathis could train for hours without ever running out of ammunition, though he expected the arrow tips had been altered to accommodate the cube impacts. The one Mathis had shown him hadn’t been pointy, but rather blunt and thick like the end of a firecracker. David wasn’t sure if that was standard or not, because in order to have a decently sized explosive he’d need to have a significant amount of volume on the arrow…not to mention room for the anti-grav tech inside.

As he watched more and more arrows being fired off David visually confirmed that they were flying straight-line trajectories…meaning no arc from gravity. That would also give Mathis insane range, though David knew the capacitor on the anti-grav had to be extremely limited. Probably no more than a few seconds worth…which this challenge had to be recharging with each cycle.

David shook his head in silent appreciation. He didn’t know how useful the weapon would be on the battlefield, but its design was certainly impressive, as was Mathis’s ability to shoot in the dark and track objects at such a range. He wondered if he could do the same with a pistol at short range and scrolled down through the chamber’s options…finding such a program already created.

He’d have to give that one a go later, but for now he needed to move on. With an unlimited supply of arrows, Mathis could be at this for a very long time.

David tossed his fellow Archon an unseen two-fingered salute and left the chamber, heading over to the more traditional parts of the sanctum to get some agility course work in while his mutant powers recharged, then he’d be back here or in one of the other Cerebro rooms to keep adding up mental training experience points and hoping that through it all he and the others would learn enough to hone their abilities to the point where they wouldn’t only be useful in combat, but wouldn’t be a danger to themselves.

Even though he’d dodged the bullet so far, David wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t going to start seeing the same headaches as Jason and Riona started to manifest. And the idea of not knowing how to fight the unknown unnerved him considerably, as well as causing him to give the trailblazer more credit than he’d done in the past, for he’d had to work through it alone, and at least David and the others had him around to nudge them down the right path…even if Jason didn’t fully know what was going on either.

4

July 13, 2406

Solar System

Earth

David came back to his quarters within the sanctum after a long run around the pyramid and slid into the shower tube straight off, getting the drenching sweat off him. For some reason the V’kit’no’sat had preferred a bit more humidity in the air than Humans liked, and thus far the techs hadn’t discovered the primary environmental controls. The ones for the Zen’zat levels had been available straight off, with those in the other dino-chambers discovered and accessed gradually over time, but the ones for the communal areas had always been thought to be located within the restricted core access…but now that they had it, they hadn’t been able to find the damn settings to readjust.

As a result, any workout done within the air of the pyramid and not in one of the Star Force structures left one drenched in sweat, which David actually preferred, given that it added another element of difficulty to the runs aside from climbing/descending the gigantic stairs/ramps that connected one level to another. He’d gotten in a good 2 hour run and had been blissfully soaked in sweaty clothes, but now that he was done he wanted/needed to get cleaned up before he continued on with additional workouts.

After he dried off and pulled on a new training uniform he slipped into the computer console’s seat for a quick check of his account, looking for any new messages or alerts…and finding two. One was from Jason, passing on yet another bit of advice for dealing with the spherical sight development. David had gotten to the point where the strain was causing him headaches, but with a few training tweaks those had gone away and Jason was continuing to update him and the others showing the same ability with whatever information he could…which David was grateful for.

The second message was from Davis, which gave David pause. He’d been waiting a long time for an update on The Word’s activities, and he wondered if this was the first sign of their promised unconventional war beginning to develop. So far they’d been all but silent. A month ago Davis had passed on some intel that David had assigned Jet-612 to run down…or more accurately, the Russian convoy on Mars that had been hauling illicit cargo.

Jet had intercepted, boarded, and inspected the overland train’s haul before it reached terminus, whereupon he alerted Russian security and assisted them with confiscating the handful of plasma rifles stuffed in alongside spare parts canisters holding items of similar construction and making it almost impossible to spot the rifles on inspection scans.

The confiscated rifles were the same make as the weapons produced in Colorado, meaning these had either come from that facility and were only now cycling out through distribution channels, or that The Word had another operational facility churning out the crude knockoffs. Regardless, their presence on Mars indicated that The Word definitely was operating elsewhere in the Solar System, just as Agent had attested.

When David opened up the Director’s message he saw it came in parts, the first of which was an update on the Russian confiscation, which had apparently disappeared from records…along with all of the weapons. Davis was working with higher up Russian officials to track down where the weapons had disappeared to and how the data files could have been altered, but a side note from him suggested that the Russian security forces on station must have been affiliated with The Word, for no official transfer of the weapons outside of their custody had been ordered.

David pounded his fist on a flat spot of the table/console in frustration. Their one and only victory had been undone thanks to corruption on the part of the Russians. In fact, Jet may have inadvertently helped deliver the weapons to them, if security had been their ultimate destination.

No, he couldn’t assume that. The easiest way to smuggle cargo was to have it never see the light of day. The security seizure may have been a backup plan though.

Either way, the weapons got where they were going and were now off of Star Force’s grid. How many operatives did The Word have anyway? That was the last time Green Team was going to rely on outside help. From here on out they were only going to use in-house resources.

The note from Davis indicated that the trail hadn’t gone completely cold, and at the least he felt that between Star Force and the Russian Internal Affairs they’d snag at least a few of the conspirators, but the weapons were long gone, and given the time delay since discovering the ‘oversight’ they could have been moved anywhere within the system, so they couldn’t even narrow down their search to a specific region of Mars.

David finished the note, feeling angry and embarrassed at the same time. Whoever these people were, they were good at what they did…but get them out in the open and he’d see how good they are with the weapons they’re making.

He moved down to the second item in Davis’s message packet, seeing that it was the summation of the background searches into the individuals they’d been tracking from the Colorado mission, some from photo identification, others from genetic samples taken both from when they were on the run and from the base. As good as The Word had cleaned it up, they hadn’t actually ‘cleaned’ it up, and Star Force now had dozens of unphotographed individuals with genetic IDs to search for.

Finally some of those searches had come up with new leads. Family relations, previous employers, school records, traffic patterns, both from in atmosphere flight on Earth and transit through the system, a lot of which had been on Star Force flights. With the data before him now, David had some threads to follow, one of which he was sure would lead to a nexus point or something of value for Green Team to hit, and right now he badly wanted to return the favor for the Mars snafu.

There was a lot of data there to work through, so David set it aside and moved down to the third item in the packet, finding yet another analysis report…Davis must have been holding them back so he could send them all at once. It was on several of the items recovered from the Colorado base, backtracking them to their points of origin. Some had been purchased by companies that were now on Star Force’s watch list, while others had gone ‘missing’ or were listed as ‘damaged’…but there were a few others that had no official connection at all.

David pulled up one piece of the report that detailed a 3d fabrication machine that was used to create the pistol barrels prior to the magnetization process. It had no serial number whatsoever, but the design was able to be traced back to Setting Sun Industries. A quiet search through their computer records by Star Force hackers discovered an accounting program with a curious bit of code that would occasionally register numerical errors in the production assembly line…meaning that some pieces of equipment would be physically produced but never cataloged.

In that way, David assumed, The Word could produce equipment for their explicit use without having to buy or steal it, leaving no records trail at all to follow…suggesting a higher level of The Word activity in that particular corporation, for a little sleight of hand with computer systems wouldn’t allow for physical shipping of the product when it didn’t have an ID tag for processing purposes. They had to have agents in position to intercept the ghost units coming off the line and spirit them away into The Word’s illicit transportation network.

Davis’s notes attached to that set of data informed David that they’d set up long term surveillance on those sites, hoping to spot and track future ghost shipments and suggesting that they be left alone rather than shut down by grabbing The Word operatives there if/when Green Team identified them.

In that David agreed.

The third piece of the data packet was the results of a comprehensive search through Star Force’s computer systems within Sol, looking for unrecognized security breaches. It was a short report, for none successful had been found, but they had discovered a bit of nibbling at various locations that warranted further investigation, which Davis inferred was ongoing. Whether or not The Word was responsible for the nibbles couldn’t be said, but David was glad that whoever it was hadn’t managed to get in. The security of Star Force’s comm systems was one of their greatest assets, and if it could be cracked they’d have to rework just about everything, because it could potentially jeopardize control of their remote craft.

Namely their warships. And if an outside force gained control of even one of them temporarily, it could result in disastrous circumstances.

So far the systems were clean though, which was a bit of good news. The fourth piece of the packet was not, however. The Director had been pulling anomaly searches throughout Star Force territory, hoping to discover some bit of The Word’s web without following a link back from Colorado to do it. His notes indicated several accidental discoveries unrelated to The Word, which Davis had Red Team dealing with, but there was one individual by the name of Seamus Kilmeade that had drawn a yellow flag.

The man worked in an affiliated Star Force facility, meaning technically he was on Star Force’s payroll, but more of an independent contractor than one of the lifelong staff. On the civilian side, Star Force was split into tiers, the uppermost of which held the more important workers, administrators, and techs. These people, like the Director, had dedicated their lives to the Corporation and lived as part of it. There was no commute to work, for they lived in Star Force facilities and moved about as needed. Most were unmarried, or ended up as such as the years passed due to the fact that they outlived their spouses.

The upper tier members were virtually all more than 100 years old, having attained self-sufficiency even if physical activity wasn’t part of their area of specialty. They had learned the essentials of maintaining their bodies and minds, as well as the advantages it gave, making them far more valuable than any of the ‘younglings’ looking for employment in the Corporation, no matter what their background.

The upper tier, designated a level 7, received no pay…but had free access throughout Star Force’s transportation grid and access to any purchases within the Corporation free of charge, ensuring they had what they needed but making no effort to establish a lifestyle independent from their ‘jobs.’ Like the Archons, they lived and breathed their work, and were exceedingly good at it. It was the techs in the upper tier that were given access to the V’kit’no’sat pyramid data and were pushing the limits of Star Force technical knowledge, doing what the trailblazers had done with the military only on the scientific front.

Level 6 members of Star Force were lifelong employees as well, also taking no pay and mastering at least the basics of self-sufficiency in order to prolong their lifespans enough to become sufficiently skilled in their work and to be of use handling assignments that the level 7s were either too busy to handle or assignments that had been handled before and needed to be replicated. The 6s were essentially master apprentices, far more experienced than most employees of the Corporation, but not entrusted with ‘trailblazer’ duties. They handled the difficult familiar, taking their cues from the 7s whenever something new came into play.

Level 5s were long term employees that did receive pay, and about half of whom retired outside of the Corporation. The other half was split between those who had achieved self-sufficiency and preferred to stay active in their positions rather than turn tourist, and those that were working their way up the ladder towards level 6. Most level 5s lived within Star Force facilities, though a few maintained personal residences in their limited spare time. Most of those who did were assigned to colonies where the public sector habitats were within travel distance from the Corporate facilities.

Level 4s were high skilled employees valued for their abilities but who only saw their employment as a job, one that would consume most of their time but one that paid well and came along with a lot of perks. They were split between family types and career hounds. Physical training was required for them, along with all the upper tiers, but ambrosia was reserved for those who achieved certain benchmarks. Most level 4s did not achieve that level, and thus were not entrusted with the super-juice due to their unwillingness to train more than necessary to maintain the fitness levels required of employment.

More often than not, experienced level 4s would ‘retire’ when they failed to pass their quarterly physicals which required a quota of completed workouts during the previous 3 month period. In this way the turnover for level 4s was slow but steady, with most cycling out over a period of 40-50 years rather than working their way up to level 5. It was a fact of reality that Star Force had come to accept, that the individual had to want to attain self-sufficiency in order to get there, and that while prerequisite training would extend the workforce’s lifespan they couldn’t maintain the number of workers necessary by requiring higher standards.

Thus, Star Force would teach its employees what they needed to know, and require a moderate level of training that would give them the opportunity to work towards self-sufficiency, but at the end of the day they were in control of their own destiny, and many simply were too lazy to do what was required, even knowing and seeing the benefits in others.

Level 3s were required to do a bit less, and made up the bulk of Star Force’s members. These were the experienced workers that had made a permanent job out of Star Force, though many of them bounced from one section to another as demands met or as they chose. They lived in private housing by choice and kept a social and personal life separate from the corporation, with the average employment lasting between 15-20 years.

Level 2s were a mix of inexperienced workers learning the ropes and of experienced affiliates. The affiliates received pay, but were not part of the Star Force permanent workforce, operating instead as contractors on a set timetable that could range from a day to 10 years. Only minimal physical standards were required of level 2s, of which was measured by being able to run a sub 8:00 mile twice a month. For the affiliates they maintained this requirement for employment sake, while those who were part of the Corporation and looking to work their way up usually exceeded this requirement by a significant amount as they trained towards the level 3 requirements…which would come with increased pay and perks, which was the only reason why many of the level 2 employees put up with the training in the first place.

Seamus Kilmeade was a level 1 employee, having the same sub 8:00 requirement and little else physically, but with a plethora of Star Force codes of conduct to follow. He was an independent hire, and not part of any other company, working as an instructor in one of the training centers prepping would be colonists migrating from Earth. His area of specialty was linguistics, David saw from the attached file, with him speaking 5 separate languages fluently, allowing him to help teach English to groups of colonists coming from varied nations.

One pet peeve of Davis’s was the multi-cultural euphoria that the planet had seen in past centuries, celebrating Earth’s diversity and preserving the cultural and linguistic differences that kept the people living next door to each other from being able to communicate. He’d put a quick end to that with the colonization program, declaring English to be the one and only language Star Force used and requiring all colonists to be able to test out in the language at a sufficient level to be able to operate within an all English-speaking colony without translators…from which point they’d pick up the fluency in the language from daily interactions.

Davis’s seemingly arrogant assertion, as viewed by the public, had been hilariously reinforced when the Hycre had introduced Star Force to the Alliance, noting that different races throughout the local region of the galaxy had seen the wisdom of creating a trade language through which to communicate with each other…which made Humans not being able to communicate with other Humans hilariously pathetic.

Seamus, it seemed, was good at his work, having received an 85% efficiency rating as an instructor, meaning that 85% of his students passed their requirements within a given amount of time that was deemed reasonable. It seemed he was usually assigned groups that had no prior experience with the language at all, which was rare. It also gave him an audience that probably couldn’t understand what he was saying most of the time…which was probably what The Word was interested in.

Davis’s anomaly search had indicated traffic patterns atypical with someone in his position, seeing him travel outside the city/building that he worked within. That wasn’t completely unheard of, but the Star Force transit data didn’t match up with any locations of known relatives, which is what had thrown the yellow flag.

A closer inspection of the data suggested an irregular pattern of predictable routes, none of which could be associated with any known behavior, such as sporting events, festivals, and such. All of the trips on record had been 1-day affairs, some of which had seem him leave and return almost immediately, which had suggested to Davis that the man was making or receiving drops.

David concurred, and was glad to see the Director’s final note on the data.

I HAVE ISSUED NO ORDERS CONCERNING THE TARGET, THEREFORE HE SHOULD BE UNCONTAMINATED. PROCEED AS YOU DEEM APPROPRIATE.

While he knew this might not be related to The Word, David had a gut feeling that it was and apparently the Director did too, otherwise he wouldn’t have sent it to Green Team. With the location being in Antarctica and essentially right next door, David couldn’t see the logic in calling in one of the other team members and knew that he had to deal with this one personally. He wanted to start with a surveillance order and then sit on it for a few weeks, but he had a sneaking suspicion that the target might go to ground if he did…and then there was the slim possibility that the local security might have been compromised as well.

He doubted that, but felt it better if he had a quiet look around before bringing them in on the operation, if at all.

David got up from the console and was headed to grab the duffle he had in his closet to start packing when his earpiece chimed. It was sitting on the corner of a nearby table where he’d left it after coming back from his run. He walked over and picked it up, flicking off a droplet of sweat that had survived on the surface.

“Go.”

“David, Morgan just showed up,” Angel-676 said excitedly, “and she’s playing King of the Hill against six trailblazers and kicking their asses with some freaky new powers. Get over here before you miss the show.”

David raised an eyebrow. The highest ranking Archon was here, had gone mutant with some type of new power, and she was taking on 6 other trailblazers…and winning?

“On my way,” he said, hurrying out of his quarters.

The packing could wait an hour or two.

5

Kerrie-057 slide/kicked across the floor into Morgan’s bare right leg, knocking it askew and dropping the ranger down on top of her. She jabbed her in the ribs just below her sports bra before getting knocked in the side of the head as Morgan spun back up onto her feet. Then Kerrie saw Jason jump into her vision laterally and tackle Morgan around the shoulders.

Morgan went down with the Sangheili on top of her…then Jason flew off as she knocked him free with a combination elbow jab and concussive wave. He went flying out of the ring on his own momentum, landing in the softer padding around the King of the Hill circle that they were trying to knock Morgan out of.

High above the wide circle a holographic clock counted up from 4:21, indicating how long Morgan had held her ground against the other six trailblazers. Today the ring was flat, rather than being elevated to form an actual hill, but the basics were the same…stay in and keep knocking the others out. And when the others were 6 trailblazers the odds of anyone staying in, even Morgan, was slim.

As soon as Jason was tossed Tyr came in and tried to knock Morgan further to that side of the ring, ramming his shoulder into her torso but she rotated around and deflected most of the blow. Tyr countered by latching onto her arm in the process and dragged her another two feet towards the edge while Aaron came in to knock both of them out. Morgan countered by dropping down to the ground, tipping Tyr over at the waist in the process and sending Aaron over top of her as she grabbed his wrist and used her back as a pivot point.

The other trailblazer doubled over and inverted momentarily, his legs coming up above his head as he twisted around Morgan who had dug her heels into the floor…then with a concussion wave tap she sent Aaron flying out of the ring upside down, leaving her with only Tyr to deal with for the next two seconds.

He kicked into her midsection as she came up, but the blow never landed. Suddenly he found himself propelled backwards by an invisible force…then he landed on his backside on the soft mat outside the ring and somersaulted backwards into the line of Archons ringing the area as they watched the contest.

“Looks like she’s kicking your ass, boss,” one of the other Angry Chipmunks commented.

“She usually does,” Tyr acknowledged as he got to his feet and ran back into the circle as Kian and Ryan came at Morgan from opposite sides when she moved back towards the center of the circle. The pair circled around her, not making a move until the others got to their feet and headed back in.

Morgan knew what they were doing and smiled as she set herself, glancing back across her shoulders occasionally to get all of them in her peripheral vision.

Jason came first, from behind her, and she back-kicked towards him, but he easily swatted her foot aside with a pair of hands then kneed her in the torso as he got to pointblank range…except she’d already seen it coming and had twisted to her left, bringing his knee out of range. Halfway into the maneuver Aaron came in from the other side, with Kian and Ryan a split second later. As Morgan dealt with Jason and Aaron, keeping them at least arms reach away from her with a fury of punches and kicks, the other two came in from the sides like a pair of gongs and smashed into her with precise timing that didn’t allow her to divert one or another.

She should have gone evasive, which the other two trailblazers were waiting for a few steps back, but instead she held her ground and balled up…then released a spherical concussive wave, a la Starkiller, and knocked the four of them back away from her, with the other two bobbling on their feet as the remnants of the wave hit them.

Morgan stood up tall and laughed once, but kept her eyes moving around, knowing that even though she’d surprised them they wouldn’t let up.

Kerrie moved first, coming in and slide/kicking towards Morgan’s feet, which caused her to hop away a step towards Jason, then off to her left as he kicked towards her feet. She dodged both then nearly fell over as a wave of static ran through her body…then the next thing she knew Kian’s foot was in her midsection, doubling her over as he kicked her back towards the edge of the ring.

Morgan caught her balance just in time for Aaron to blindside her with a spin kick across her chest that knocked her backwards a meter to where she fell across the out of bounds line…stopping the clock at 4:58.

“What the hell was that?” Morgan asked as she stood up.

“You’ve got your new power, I’ve got mine,” Kian commented with a smile. “I call it a disruption field.”

“It jams your senses briefly,” Jason explained. “Now mind telling us what you were doing?”

“Do it again,” Morgan prompted.

Kian blinked, then Morgan’s head got all weird again, this time for more than a second. She tried to shake it off, only partially succeeding, then the sensation vanished.

“Enough,” Aaron said, rubbing his head. “He can’t pick and choose. It hits everyone.”

“Except me,” Kian pointed out. “Think of it like white noise.”

“Useful,” Morgan commented. “I hope there’s a way to defend against that?”

“We’re working on it,” Jason agreed. “Now what did you do?”

“And what’s it got to do with you not wearing a uniform?” Kerrie asked.

“Tougher to hold onto when you’re slick with sweat,” Morgan pointed out sarcastically.

“No shoes is a bit of a disadvantage,” Tyr countered.

“Except when I can project from my feet.”

“So that’s what you did,” Aaron said in realization. “I didn’t think you could kick that hard.”

“If I wear clothes I’ll just tear them off,” Morgan said. “The energy originates from my skin, so even shoes get in the way.”

Jason slipped a finger underneath the shoulder strap on her bra where there was a tear. “And these?”

“Figured you seeing me naked would have been too much of a disadvantage for you guys,” she joked. “I’ve learned to fight with my arms and legs and to avoid the torso and pelvis as much as possible, but that’s not always an option. Luckily I didn’t blow them completely off,” she said, finding another rip in the waistband of her skintight short shorts.

“How close to dead are you?” Kian asked as the other Archons began to migrate in closer to listen to the conversation, some 50 of them in total.

“I have a few more blasts left in me, but I’m nearly out. This power feeds off ambrosia, so with some snacks I can work into some long training days, but my reserves aren’t nearly as robust as I’d like. They’re growing with time and training, but I’m having to hold back my intensity otherwise I’ll drain myself out within 30 seconds or less.”

“I assume,” Kerrie asked, “that when you knocked all of us back at once that you were close to full power?”

“Sort of…with a bit more prep time I can go bigger. Been working on a Kamehameha, but it takes so much out of me I can’t practice it a lot.”

“Still invisible, right?” Jason asked.

“Oh we’ve got to see that,” Aaron prompted as Morgan nodded to answer Jason.

The senior ranger smirked. “Alright, I think I’ve got just enough left, but I’ll need a target…and since it’s your idea, Aaron,” she said, motioning towards the center of the ring.

“Bring it, girl,” he said, setting himself so that he leaned forward a bit to counteract the blow that would be incoming.

“The rest of you need to clear out,” Morgan warned. “I’m not all that accurate yet.”

“Sam is going to love this,” Kian whispered to Jason as they stepped back behind Morgan and the other Archons parted behind Aaron, leaving a large open wedge of space leading back to the far wall.

Jason stared at Morgan as she took up Goku’s patented stance, pulling back her arms on her right side, palms connected at the wrists.

“Ka…meeee,” she said aloud, summoning up a cascade of tingles throughout her torso like a fireworks display.

“Haaa…meeee,” Morgan added, shifting them through her body and into her arms, then forcing the energy to pool in her hands and wrists, with a lot backing up all the way to her elbows because she couldn’t fit it all in. When the pressure got as much as she could handle she reached her hands forward, still touching at the wrists, and launched the energy from her palms, cradling the blast between her energy-laced fingers and directing it forward like a fire hose with plenty spilling out between the gaps.

“Haaaa!” she yelled as she released the torrent directly toward Aaron who was standing about 5 meters away.

He thought he was ready for it, but the blow came so fast and heavy that he was taken completely off guard, and the angle of his chest leaning forward actually helped to propel him upwards into the air a foot or so as he was slammed backwards all the way into the wall some twenty meters back where he bounced off it gratifyingly and fell to the floor.

“Whoops,” Morgan said apologetically as he smacked the unpadded wall and was slow to get to his feet.

“Wow,” Jason commented, walking up beside her. “You definitely got the big guns.”

“You should be able to do that too eventually, right?” she asked, glancing across her bare shoulder at him.

“Ha…maybe in a few hundred years. My telekinesis is good for lifting tiny objects and playing with water droplets in the shower right now. I have no idea how you’re generating that much power.”

“Medics think it has to do with a number of growths spread throughout my body. Power cells, emitters, maybe both. They haven’t been able to make much out of it yet.”

“Have you had the specialists take a look?”

“I did on Corneria, but there wasn’t much more they could offer. The energy fries their equipment, so they can’t measure anything active. Oh yeah, did I mention I can also walk through force fields?”

“Get out,” Kian said, giving her a ‘there’s no way’ look.

“Did it on accident at first,” she said, nodding so that he’d know she was serious. “Saved my life actually.”

“Oh?” Jason asked as Aaron came walking back over rubbing the back of his head.

“I’ll tell you later,” she promised, and Jason got the feeling it was a bit of a sensitive subject she didn’t want all the others to hear about.

“That’s the last time I play target dummy,” Aaron said. “I didn’t think you could knock me that far.”

“Neither did I. Sorry about that.”

“No you’re not,” he said with a wry grin.

“I am a little,” she countered. “Now, I’m out of juice. So unless you want to do some conventional training I need to suck some ambrosia. Wanna take a run then hit the cafeteria or cafeteria first? I want a chance to pick your brains one way or another.”

Aaron glanced at Jason, and Morgan followed his eye line. “What?”

“I’m up for a run,” Jason said, glancing down at Morgan’s bare feet. “As soon as you grab some shoes.”

“What’s wrong with you, besides the obvious?”

“Later,” he said, glancing out at all the other Archons around. “Show’s over people. Needless to say, if any of you start developing this ability we’d very much like to know…because right now you seem to be it,” he said, looking back at Morgan.

“Another lone ranger,” Kian said, pun intended.

“You’re the only one?”

“So far. I don’t even know what the disruption feels like, let alone how to train against it.”

“Same here,” Morgan said as she looked around for her shoes, knowing that she’d need to learn how to defend, and potentially block against someone else’s concussive energy.

“I’m sort of in the same boat,” Jason added, “and I’m kind of hoping it stays that way until the medics can figure out an easier transition. A few of the others are starting to get the headaches.”

“Looking for these?” David asked, holding up a pair of shoes with crumpled socks tucked inside them.

“Thanks,” she said, taking them from him and unceremoniously plopping down on the floor to put them on while everyone else remained standing around her.

“By the way,” David added, looking at Jason. “I’ll be heading out for a few days. Local mission for Davis.”

“What’s up?”

“Potential Word operative in the colonial training facilities. Hopefully if it pans out it’ll give us some other leads.”

“Who’s us?” Kian asked.

“Green Team.”

“I heard one of them blew themselves up?” Aaron asked.

“Who blew what up?” Morgan asked from below as she wiggled on her second sock.

“Long story,” David said. “Check the files, it’s all in there. He did blow himself up, on the other side of a shield from Nathan and took out the entire cell. Aside from some bone shrapnel Nathan just got his bell rung, but if the shield hadn’t been so robust he’d have been killed.”

“Good hunting,” Aaron offered.

David nodded his thanks then pulled back out of the quickly thinning group and left, heading back to his quarters to pack before hitting the Antarctic transit system that crisscrossed the snow-covered continent with high speed rail lines.

“Somebody talk to me,” Morgan said, lacing up her shoes.

“The Word is a new bad guy,” Kerrie offered. “Sort of a SPECTRE wannabe. Green Team busted up one of their bases in Colorado, after which they pretty much declared war. I haven’t heard that they’ve done anything since then though?”

“Neither have I,” Jason said, offering a hand to pull Morgan to her feet. “Is your power separate from the rest of your energy?”

“Almost completely separate. I can be dead in one and energetic in the other, but it does take a lot of physical focus to pull off, so if I’m really fatigued I won’t get as much out of the ability.”

“Four laps then?” Jason asked, referring to a circuit around the pyramid’s interior that was quite long.

“At least,” Morgan scoffed. “I may have spent the past 4 years on a warship, but I guarantee you it hasn’t slowed me down.”

“That I don’t doubt, but we’ve extended the main lap a bit to include the lower sections.”

“Goes through the fish tank now,” Tyr added.

Morgan smiled. “I can take whatever you dish out.”

Jason stared straight into her eyes, holding the gaze for a moment before smiling. “Ok, let’s go,” he said, jogging off out of the chamber that now only held the 7 trailblazers.

The others went with him, but Morgan only got a few steps before realizing one of her shoelaces was untied.

“What the…?” she asked, dropping to a knee to retie it while the others hurried out. Ryan was grinning from ear to ear, having seen what Jason had done.

“Let’s go slow poke!” Jason said before ducking out of the door with the others and taking off sprinting, trying to get as far ahead of Morgan as they could while she retied the shoe that Jason had telekinetically unlaced.

6

July 15, 2406

Solar System

Earth

David sat in the security station of Colonial Transition City/Building #35 studying surveillance data from the hallway cameras that were placed everywhere public and built into the walls and ceiling as to avoid notice. Such was standard for civilian habitats, with a lesser amount of surveillance on other Star Force infrastructure, but having cameras in place to monitor internal activity was a necessity for dealing with large numbers of people living and moving about in such small areas.

Some people found it intrusive, but David did not. It gave potential victims an ‘eye in the sky’ and a lifeline for help that a dark alley didn’t allow for, not to mention allowing security to track threats in realtime as they moved about. Back in the day the first colonists had complained about the intrusive nature of the surveillance…which was not placed in personal quarters…and suggested that it was too much power for any government to have, and that abuses of power were sure to follow.

David had scoffed at the idea then, and by now most of those silly notions had been laid to rest with regards to Star Force. Power was not the enemy. Power did not corrupt. Power wasn’t to be feared. Power gave the good guys the ability to stop the bad guys…as well as allow David to backtrack Seamus Kilmeade’s movements throughout the city/building for up to a year before the records were purged to allow for new data space.

The surveillance records at the terminals were another story. Those camera feeds were permanently saved, allowing David to monitor Seamus’s movements over the past 6 years since his employment began. Where he went when he left the train system was sketchy, but a number of purchases popped up at various venues that allowed him to confirm the approximate locations he’d been, as well as establishing a pattern that David was currently using to search through thousands of recent surveillance footage from individual cameras at one of the coastal cities.

Seamus went here often…or, rather, regularly, coming out randomly within a two month period that belied any repetitive schedule, but like clockwork he’d reappear within the given timeframe and hit one of the busiest sections of the tourist sector, where millions of people, mostly non-natives, would be congregating for holidays and vacations, allowing him to mix with the masses and lose himself in the Antarctic travelers.

Except that with the ‘intrusive’ surveillance there was a record of his movement…hard as it was to track. David had to go through frame after frame, losing sight of the man behind obstacles and other people, then reacquiring view of him again briefly before repeating the process. He had building security helping him go through the local feeds, but the ones he was pulling down from other Antarctic locations he was accessing by himself, having identified 3 probable drop locations and working on a fourth as he tracked Seamus’s movements to another sector of the coastal city.

The man didn’t carry any luggage or packages to be exchanged, he simply traveled about and ducked inside various venues where the security feeds didn’t go. He’d come back out at a reasonable time and return to the civilian flow, working his way back to the transit terminal and promptly back to the colonial building where he worked.

David was convinced he was up to something. Had he been going to the same location, then there could possibly have been an explanation…a friend or relative, or perhaps even some activity he was fond of, but by switching venues in a circuit at random, it pretty much ruled out any habitual activity.

All of that had already been confirmed by Davis’s investigation, but David was trying to pick out a bit more from the raw feeds. The man had to be doing more than just relaying messages, and David was paying close attention to the man’s bodyline whenever he had a clean camera view…which he could then zoom in for closer examination.

He was looking for a clean shot of Seamus’s chest on the current footage, flipping between different cameras as he walked down a crowded internal boulevard that sported a slew of shops, one of which the man had spent all of 5 minutes in, coming out with no visible package.

David stopped one of the feeds, backtracking a few frames and then enlarging what he had onto a side monitor. From there he zoomed in, confirming a slight bulge using an analysis program on the man’s clothing.

Left chest internal pocket…same as before.

Which again confirmed him as a recipient of another drop rather than the courier. That made sense, given that the people he was theoretically contacting were on a one-way trip towards a new colony. The question was…what was he passing along?

So far none of the local cameras had caught any potential contacts, and the classrooms were on the surveillance grid. Davis’s people hadn’t found anything suspicious in them, and he imagined they’d listened through session after session trying to glean any tidbits of information that could have been verbally passed on in a number of different languages.

David knew there was something here, he just wasn’t thinking outside the box. The Word was devious and operated in the cracks where traditional methodology didn’t reach…meaning what in this case?

“Where is he now?” David asked.

“In the classroom,” one of the gold/white uniformed security officers informed him, glancing over at a live feed for confirmation. “He should be there for another 5 hours if his schedule holds.”

“Grab me a magic wand. I’m going for a walk.”

Jason walked around the perimeter of the darkened sparring ring, moving to Morgan’s left side as she stood near the center, unable to see her opponent but not needing much more than a sound to direct her concussion waves in the approximate direction. She’d knocked him down twice so far, but he was up on her 6-2, having snuck in to close range and taken her down to the mat from a variety of angles. Each time he did she adapted, and he to her as they both learned new combat strengths and weaknesses.

“Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” Morgan taunted as she slowly twisted around, not talking much so she could listen for Jason’s movements.

He knew better than to respond, for an invisible wave could come back his way a second after he spoke. That was how Morgan had got her first takedown.

Jason reached his right leg out, hovering his foot above the ground for a moment as he ‘looked’ at Morgan. Her arms were partially up, ready to throw some energy wherever she needed, but he’d learned it took her a moment to charge up so if he acted fast he had a chance to rush her.

That wasn’t the plan though.

Holding his leg out to the side he bent down on his left knee a bit, leaning that way as he lifted his foot up a few more inches before smacking it down on the mat, then pushing off towards his left as he dived out of the way.

As expected Morgan threw a concussion wave toward the sound. The two meter-wide blast missed Jason as he ducked to the side, dragging his left foot across the mat into a pivot and running straight in towards her.

To Morgan’s credit, she got her arm turned towards him, though all she had to work with was the sound of his half dozen steps. As she summoned another burst of energy Jason slid feet first underneath her arm and slipped directly underneath her spread legs, wrapping his arms around her knees and tipping her over face first into the mat.

His head got pinned underneath her body in the process, but that didn’t matter. He shoved her legs off to the side and stood up, flicking back on his spherical sight that had turned off when he got smooshed underneath her shorts.

“Seven,” he noted, standing back up and seeing her do the same from behind him. Jason was really starting to like being able to see every direction at once, even if it did pull some extra mental energy to sustain it longer than a few seconds…but that again was the point of these bouts. To push both of them into uncomfortable areas and give their bodies a chance to adapt.

“Center?” she asked, not being able to see where the ring was.

Jason walked over and pushed her by the shoulders into position and backed up, sidestepping as quietly as he could so she hopefully couldn’t track him.

Morgan drew in a slow breath and stood up to her full height, lowering her arms to the sides and splaying her fingers out wide, drawing a frown from Jason. He held still and waited, trying to figure out what she was doing because she wasn’t in position to throw off energy like she normally did…then he got the feeling she was going to go big and try a spherical attack, despite how much it would drain her of energy.

He knelt down slowly, positioning his right foot behind him to brace for the blast but Morgan didn’t move. She just held still as a statue.

Jason really wanted to say something, but knew he couldn’t so he just waited.

Eventually a smile crept onto Morgan’s face, a little at first, as if she was unsure about something, then it blossomed into full mocking mode as she twisted her body and pointed her left hand down towards him.

A directed blast hit him, and it was all he could do to keep from getting knocked over, but he held his exaggerated track start pose, only to see Morgan coming towards him and sweep kicking his forward leg out.

With that physical contact made and registered in her mind, Morgan quickly got her hands on Jason’s body and they wrestled around with him losing his spherical sight in the process. That little hiccup gave her the advantage and he quickly found himself smacked back down onto the mat with Morgan sitting on top of him.

He flicked his spherical sight back on and saw the grainy image of her ghostly face smiling at him.

“I…see…you,” she said in a poor imitation of Sauron.

“You have glowrods in those eyes now?”

“Well, I saw you. It’s completely black now,” she said, not letting him up.

“You developing a newfound crush on me?” Jason teased.

“No…just trying to do it again.”

“Do what? Is there something with your eyes?”

“Where’s your head at?” Morgan asked, feeling up his chest until she got her hands on the side of his face. She leaned forward and kissed him on the head, but missed and hit him in the right eye. “That’s two, sweetheart.”

“That’s three, actually,” he said, frowning. She didn’t usually act like this.

“Nope…two,” she insisted, tapping on his chest twice. “And I’m pretty sure I have you to thank for it.”

“Wait…” he said, reassessing what she meant by ‘I see you,’ and the fact that she’d known right where he was on that last concussion wave.

“It didn’t last long, but I saw you. I’ve been getting little blips the past two days, and always when I’m sparring with you. I think you’re turning me on, boy.”

“Spherical sight?” Jason asked, just to be sure.

“If it looks like a grainy black and white radar image?”

“What did I look like?” Jason said, keenly interested.

“Couldn’t see your face or arms or legs. Just a whitish blob low to the floor…and I could see the floor.”

“How far?”

“About a foot past you. Everything further out kind of just didn’t exist.”

“Did it turn on by itself?”

“No…I kind of coaxed it out. Sort of a Jedi trance thing. How do you do it?”

“It had a mind of its own in the beginning, then I just found the switch. I don’t know how to explain it. It was like finding a third arm I never knew I had. How do you explain how to mentally move your arm?”

“Point.”

“So…are you going to get off me or are we going to make out?”

“If you insist,” Morgan said, leaning forward and finding his nose, then moving down to kiss him on the lips for a split second before she couldn’t help but snicker.

Jason playfully punched her in the gut and flipped her off him, then got to his feet. “You’re in a good mood.”

“New powers do that for me,” she said, not knowing where exactly to look, given that the room was still pitch black.

Jason didn’t have that problem. “What did you mean about me helping?”

“I think your energy field is prodding mine,” she said, her playfulness gone. “Now that it’s happened once, fully, I should be able to exploit it…but I would ask that we keep training in the dark so I can soak up your effect as much as possible. I’m guessing the others aren’t as strong.”

“I don’t know about field strength, but mine is more sensitive and has longer range…however that works.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Sure. I want to keep an eye on you anyway.”

“It’s a lot worse than you’re letting on, isn’t it?”

“Ahh…” Jason sighed, not liking the question.

“Come on.”

He walked over next to her and sat down on the mat where she was sprawled out and touched her shoulder so she knew he was there. “It was. I’m past the worst of it now.”

“Scary?”

“Like you’re going to die and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he admitted. “I hate feeling helpless.”

“Have you had time to read my log?”

“No, but I did hear about the gravity trap.”

“I should be dead,” Morgan said, with Jason hearing something in her voice that he didn’t like. “I was dead. The gravity was crushing me, there was a shield in my way, and I only had a tiny pistol, not enough to get through the shield, not to mention that I couldn’t lift it. I’d walked into a trap and they had me dead to rights. The others died, and I should be dead too. I’m glad I’m not, but it doesn’t feel right. It feels like…total luck. I screwed up. I didn’t deserve to live.”

“Hey…that doesn’t sound like you at all.”

“I don’t know what happened, Jason. And it still freaks me out sometimes.”

“How did you get out?”

“I was stuck on the floor, tipping the pistol and firing into the shield. I levered my shoulder up so I could lean against it, hoping to add some more disruption and after a few tries I fell through. In retrospect I figured out it was the concussive energy manifesting. It disrupted the shield enough for me and the pistol to come through. After that I was almost dead anyway, but I crawled down a hallway and into a room with machinery and just fired off a few shots at random. I couldn’t see well and I still don’t know how I hit what I needed to.”

“The gravity shut down and I woke up floating in the room. After that I managed to get through the ship to the hangar bays where the Calavari recovered me.”

“Well the lucky shot I can understand,” Jason said, trying to work it through for her, “but the shield was all you. However the ability manifested, it was your body that produced it and got you through.”

“I know, I know…my brain does, anyway, but I still remember what it felt like on the other side. I was dead and I knew it. I never should have put myself in that situation. I deserved to die and I didn’t.”

Jason saw a ‘shiny’ tear roll down her black and white face so he scooted close to her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled his face in close opposite from hers and tipped their foreheads together.

“If the others had survived, barely, would it still bother you? If you’d knocked out the gravity in time, and they lived, busted up royally but lived, would you still be kicking yourself?”

“That’s not the problem, Jason. I mean, it was, but I got over it. I didn’t like losing them or the Calavari, but I know sometimes things just go wrong and you have to move on. We learned that from the Black Knight lots of times. I know how to lose.”

“So what is it?”

“It’s like…the enemy got inside my defenses and is still there. I’m still scared.”

Jason didn’t say anything for a few seconds, nor did Morgan. She just sat, letting Jason hold her in the silence. He shut off his spherical sight so he was in the same boat as her, then finally whispered in her ear.

“Me too, sis. That’s why I want to make sure you and the others don’t have to go through what I did. I was dead too. And I don’t have an explanation for why I pulled out of it. I’m not out of the woods yet, so maybe me still being in combat mode gives me some perspective. You can’t go back to the gravity trap, so you’ve only got a few memories to work through, and those alter with time. My enemy is still in my head, hammering away. It’s not the same beast it was, but the fear is lying there under the surface. I’ve got it under control for now, but since I really don’t know what I’m doing, there’s always the worry that it’ll get worse again and I won’t be able to stop it a second time.”

Morgan reached up and ran her fingers through his hair, a silent way of saying thanks while she was too choked up to talk.

“Then,” Jason added, changing the tone, “I remember that Paul would gladly trade places with me. He hates that I’ve got Jedi powers and he doesn’t.”

“Ha,” Morgan laughed. “He would.”

They didn’t say anything else for a few seconds, then Morgan wiggled her way free and stood up, pulling Jason up with her. “I think Davis was right to recall us. Our best bet is always working together.”

“Something we rarely get to do nowadays.”

“War aside, I think we need to make a change there.”

“I think you’re right,” Jason agreed.

“Now,” Morgan said, swiping away the moisture around her eyes. “You wanna have another go or find some second gens to knock around?”

“They are getting a bit cocky with their new powers, low level as they are.”

“I was thinking the same. Now,” she said, grabbing hold of Jason’s hand, partly gesture, partly necessity in the pitch black, “show me where the door is.”

7

David passed the small, pencil-like ‘magic wand’ over the alpha numeric keypad/swipecard box in the residential area of City/Building #35 and remotely unlocked Seamus Kilmeade’s quarters. The door slid aside to reveal a modest, yet compact living area with three doorways leading to other rooms. It was neat, but not too neat, with a few scattered items laying around without any actual trash or grime.

David stepped inside and shut the door behind him, then began a visual sweep of the living area. One wall had a large video screen, with another having a morphable mural that changed from dull orange to blue as he watched, emitting a low glow along with depicting a fantasy landscape. It wasn’t holographic, but rather another type of video screen…one intended to give the occupant a sense of having a ‘window’ while inside the giant cube of the building, as well as to visually make up for the tight confines.

David had never been the claustrophobic type, unless he was being restrained in some way. A small room was just a small room, but these types of murals apparently helped many individuals with both the transition to an interior, urban lifestyle, as well as prepping them for life on airless planetoids or space stations where there literally was no ‘outside’ to go strolling through. Star Force facilities usually had interior parks of some sort, along with spacious warrens for people to mingle through and this city/building was no exception, but given the newb status of most of the occupants, the murals had become standard issue in all the building’s quarters.

This set had a single chair in the center of the room facing the video screen. It was plush, but where most units had a couch or two this one did not, belying that the man who inhabited it did not feel the need to welcome guests. On the wall opposite the video screen and next to the three doorways there was a small table with a high stool, on top of which was a comm terminal and an assortment of items. David walked over and visually ran through the lot, seeing nothing uncommon.

He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he suspected that whatever the operative was doing here had to be happening where he knew there was no surveillance. There were small items coming into his quarters…that much they’d been able to confirm from hallway monitors. He’d never been seen leaving with anything in his chest pocket, but the trouble was there were many places on the body to hide such things that wouldn’t be visible.

David was pretty sure this operative wasn’t that cagey. If he was pocketing the package in his chest pocket upon arrival he doubted he would smuggle it any other way coming from his quarters…meaning that whatever it contained was probably still here.

He had to be passing something on to the colonists moving out, David was sure of it, but nothing had shown up on visual records. That left these quarters as the end of the thread, meaning there had to be something here.

The fourth wall, bordering the hallway outside, was blank, standing in stark contrast to the mural on the opposite side. At the end of both were two doorways, with the third on the mural side nearby the table. David walked the perimeter of the room three times, checking in every nook and cranny he could find, but there wasn’t much to search through. The room had almost no furniture and looked like it hadn’t been lived in more than a week, though that wasn’t the case.

Next he checked the restroom, which was on the hallway side of the table. It was also spartan, with the cabinets full of little items but nothing overly important. Toothpaste, shaving kit, makeup, anti-acne ointment.

David frowned, taking a second look at the makeup. He opened the lid on the small circle and saw several shades to choose from, all skin tone, one of which was half gone.

Interesting, David thought. A guy with makeup, but no social life? You’re hiding something. Tattoo maybe? Or a wound?

He set the makeup back down exactly where it had been and moved on, finding no other items of interest. Next he searched the structure of the room, trying to see if there were any secret hideaways. Lastly he checked the shower tube, noticing nothing significant other than the fact that it was a walk-in model rather than a vertical entrance.

David left the door to it open, as it had been, and checked the next room whose entrance was on the same wall on the opposite side of the table. There he found the probable cause of the makeup cover up…a bit of blood on the carpet, directly underneath the broken edge of a portable workout kit of shoddy construction.

Best guess was he slit his shoulder on the edge while doing dips. One of the modular pullouts had a nub tapped over heavily, padding it against another cut rather than buying a new unit. The guy was cheap, as well as clumsy…and the fact that he didn’t want to go to the communal workout areas further hinted that this guy spent most of his time in his quarters, but doing what?

At least he worked out…or tried to. David couldn’t say as much for most people, and doing this kind of upper body work wasn’t going to help him on his running quals, so it must have been self-interest or vanity…which was also odd for an operative that seemed to want no social life other than from his official interactions with his students.

The workout room was otherwise empty aside from a series of shelves built into the wall. They had an earbud mount on them, which Seamus obviously used for workout music, but then again earbud technology could be used for a lot of other things as well. David walked over and gave it a closer look, but everything seemed standard and there wasn’t anything else on the shelves so moved on and tried the fourth room.

It was small, with a bed built into a wall niche and storage compartments above, with a closet on the right and more storage on the left. David pulled open each drawer and cabinet, looking through without rifling. He took his magic wand out and pressed a button on the side, then proceeded to sweep a blue laser guideline through the man’s clothes and other possessions, looking for hidden electronics and other items that would give a response ping from the sensor.

He moved through three large drawers of clothes finding nothing till he opened the fourth to three stacks of folded shirts smooshed together in a compartment only wide enough to hold two and a half. David spotted the upturned corner of one of the stacks immediately, but got no ping from the wand as he ran it over the drawer.

He put the device back in his pants pocket and gently lifted up the shirts in the corner in a manner that he could pivot them back down in approximately the same position, then he reached a hand down into the nook and discovered an object beneath. David pulled out the small, flat box and laid the shirts back down, realizing that it was the same approximate shape as the bulge in the man’s chest pocket from the surveillance footage.

David popped open the hinged top, revealing four slots. Three were empty, but the last one contained a tiny vial of dark liquid that looked like blood. In the top of the case there were another four slots, but these were shaped differently and likewise contained only one item…an injector assembly small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

David pulled it out and undid the strap, which he quickly discovered slipped onto his index and middle finger as a pair. A small mechanical box was attached to the strap with a recessed needle tip, along with a receptacle that matched the end of the liquid tube.

It’s an injector…so why would he have blood?

David’s eyes widened and stared at the vile, glancing back and forth between it and the injector.

“Son of a bitch,” he whispered, realizing that the blood wasn’t the point. It was merely the transport vector. Inject one of the outgoing colonists and they’d carry whatever was in the vial with them through Star Force’s transportation network where it could be recovered at the other end by another operative. Question was…what was in the blood?

David’s mind flashed back to the drops on the floor in the other room…then dismissed it as coincidence. The machine had been broken and taped over, and he knew Seamus hadn’t had any visitors in his quarters…ever. So unless he was injecting himself and was really clumsy with it, the blood didn’t come from the vials.

The other three were missing, and with three more slots for more injectors he assumed they were meant to be disposable…so probably a trash can. Best bet would be the restrooms, meet up with the target inside, inject him, dispose of the device, and be back out without delay. David had monitored his restroom visits between classes, trying to see if he was meeting up with someone inside but he hadn’t established a pattern. If this was a one-off drop, and the individual he was injecting would leave the planet shortly thereafter, then there would be no pattern to pick up…and since everyone had to use the restroom regularly there was no suspicious activity to flag.

This was all speculation, he knew, but his instincts told him he’d found the smoking gun…plus, he had no legitimate idea for why someone would be injecting themselves with such a small amount of blood. He flirted with the idea of trying to tag and follow whoever he injected next, but with only one vial left he quickly dismissed that idea. This one was going to the medtechs for analysis.

David took the injector off his fingers and placed it back in its slot, then closed and pocketed the case before leaving the tiny bedroom. He opened and then relocked the door to the hallway, then used the comm unit included in the wand to contact security.

“I want these quarters locked down until I can get a sweeper team here. Post a guard 24/7. No one in or out.”

“What about Kilmeade?” the security officer asked.

“I’ll handle him. Is he still in class?”

“They just went on break. He should be back in the classroom within the next 10 minutes. I don’t think he’ll come all the way back to his quarters. He’s in the restroom at the moment.”

“Get a cell ready and have a medical team standing by with scanning equipment. I want him sedated until we can arrange for transport.”

“Scanning for what?”

“Mechanical implants.”

There was a slight pause before an acknowledgement came back. “I’ll pass the word along. Do you want backup?”

“No, just get the quarters locked down and the cell ready. No alerts or anything else to tip him off.”

“Copy that. We’ll be waiting.”

David clicked off the wand and placed it back in his side pocket, then walked through the sparse hallways of the residential block and into one of the larger traffic flows heading through the gigantic building. He headed towards the instruction chambers that served the tens of thousands of would be colonists, all of which were located in the southern lower quadrant of the structure. On his way there he took a short detour to one of the security checkpoints handling incoming traffic from the trains and walked up towards a pair of security guards overseeing the calm transition of passengers as they passed through a scanning machine.

Both men stood a bit straighter when they saw him and his Archon uniform approach.

“Sir?” one of them asked.

David pointed a finger at him, then down at his belt. “I need to borrow that.”

“My weapon?” the guard asked, a bit confused.

“Yes. Belt too. I’m in a hurry.”

The man undid the buckle and handed him the stinger pistol still in the holster.

“Do you need assistance?” the other guard asked.

“Nope. This will do. Thanks,” David said, turning and walking away quickly as he adjusted the belt to match his waist size.

“That…was strange,” the guard said after he was gone.

“You think something is up?”

“Has to be…otherwise why would he need a weapon?”

“Think I should head back and grab another?”

“Not until we get a replacement. If something is going down we don’t want to leave this station undermanned.”

“Easy for you to say, you’re still got your stinger.”

“Recuerde, el adjetivo viene antes del sustantivo. Por tanto el botón rojo se dice ‘red button,” Kilmeade said in Spanish to a class of some 50 students in a tiny amphitheater as David walked in the side door, drawing the attention of some of the students but Seamus didn’t notice him until he started to mount the short staircase that led to the speaking podium, probably having assumed he was another student coming into class late.

When he did see him he stuttered, then held David’s gaze admirably with only a bit of quiver that quickly disappeared.

“Yes?” he asked casually, noticing as the students did his white Archon uniform.

“Instructor Kilmeade, can I have the word?” he said, deliberately mispronouncing the phrase.

A flash of recognition crossed the man’s eyes and David knew he’d guessed correctly. Before the man could respond the Archon took a half step to the left and brought his right arm up in a side-fisted cross and popped the operative in the side of the head, sending him spinning to the floor.

A collective sound of exasperation came from the students, but before any of them could so much as mouth a word David drew the pistol with his left hand and shot Kilmeade in the chest three times, insuring that he was quite unconscious.

The Archon reholstered his pistol and casually looked out over the wide-eyed students.

“Class dismissed,” he said with a smirk, thumbing towards the door.

The lot took the hint and hurried out nervously, sensing that they weren’t in danger but too agitated to stay around and ask about what had just happened. There were any number of rumors floating around about the Archons, but the one constant amongst them all was that they weren’t to be trifled with.

Once they were gone David laid Kilmeade out on his back and searched his body, finding nothing of interest in his pockets and no marks on his neck other than a bit of paint splatter. Out of curiosity he unzipped the Star Force-made civilian shirt across the shoulder and down the left side until it came undone, then he flipped the man over on his face and pulled the back off. As he’d guessed the man had a fairly recent cut across his left deltoid that had sealed over, but it wasn’t patched. He probably hadn’t wanted to see a medic because questions might have been asked, so he’d just stopped the bleeding himself and was letting it heal unaugmented.

David pulled the back of the shirt in place and zipped it up again, then flipped him over right side up and examined his face. It took a few moments, but he eventually ran a finger across his left jaw and came up with a bit of makeup on his finger. He proceeded to rub it off the man’s face enough to see another thin gash, made all the more evident by the tiny droplets of blood oozing out now that he’d broken the scab.

That took care of that little mystery, given that the cut was on the same side of his body.

David picked the man up by the waist as if he were nothing more than a toy and tossed him over his shoulder, despite the fact that the man was two inches taller and weighed a good 15 pounds more than he did. It looked a bit comical, and he cringed a bit as he realized he was smearing paint all over his white uniform, but David nonchalantly carried the unconscious man across the platform, down the stairs, and out the door into the hallway, drawing stares from passerbys and a few of the students that had been brave enough to stick around and see what happened next.

“Relax guys,” David said casually as he passed them by. “No homework for today.”

8

July 16, 2406

Solar System

Earth

“Scans are clean, Archon,” a female medtech said, having been brought in with a specialized team on an overnight flight from Atlantis. “No Dargomir is present in the subject’s body, so far as we can tell. It’s possible there are isolated pockets, but to date all the data I’ve received indicates thorough distribution throughout the body, and we’re detected none here.”

“Good,” David said, arms crossed over his chest as he looked into the cell where the unconscious operative lay with a pair of medtechs hovering over him. “Anything else I should know?”

“He has a mild concussion, along with previous lacerations on his shoulder and face that haven’t completely healed. No signs of surgical augmentation of any fashion.”

David nodded. “Wake him and leave. I’ll take it from here.”

The woman nodded and gestured to the other medtech, who injected Kilmeade with a destunning serum before walking out of the cell. As he worked his way back to consciousness David activated the energy shield and stood waiting for him to wake up as the medtechs left the room.

“What…happened?” Kilmeade asked as he sat up, holding his hand against the throbbing in his head…then he noticed the Archon standing behind the glowing barrier. “Why did you hit me and why am I here?”

“You’ve been found out,” David said simply. “We confiscated your last blood injection, along with your data files. I believe your next appointment was a Tankana Walkowski?”

The man’s eyes went wide, but he kept his mouth shut.

“When we hired you, it was for instructional purposes only. I’m pretty sure somewhere in the contract we mentioned you weren’t allowed to work for the opposition.”

“I’m not employed by anyone else. What are you talking about?”

“I didn’t say ‘employed,’ I said ‘working for,’” David clarifying using quote fingers. “Just so you know, Star Force and The Word have already been formally introduced. Been playing a bit of a chess game and, guess what, you’re one of the pawns we just took.”

“And what are you, a knight?”

“An Archon.”

“I know what you are, I meant metaphorically,” Kilmeade said with an instructor’s tone.

“There’s no equivalent piece on the board for us. Chess is a limited game. Star Force likes to fashion its own pieces.”

“So what is it that I’m actually being accused of doing? What law have I broken?”

“Uh…working for the wrong side.”

“You can’t put me in jail for that,” Kilmeade argued, finally standing up and walking towards the blue force field.

“Dude, we caught you. There’s no trial by jury with Star Force or lawyers you can use to worm your way out of this. You got caught. End of story.”

Kilmeade rubbed his head again. “So what, you’re going to lock me up and throw away the key?”

“Haven’t decided yet. But Star Force does operate its own prisons. They don’t get very full because we really don’t care what you do so long as you don’t cause trouble. That said, we do have a regular flow of smugglers cycling through. So maybe you’ll have some company after all.”

“Oh, wait,” David said before the man could respond. “That’s right. Star Force prisons function on isolation protocols. You won’t see anyone once you go in. No inmates, no guards…not a single living person. You’ll have plenty of things to do to keep you busy, or you can just sit and rot if you like, but you’ll be completely cut off from society until you get out, so if you feel like talking this will probably be one of your last chances.”

Kilmeade shook his head firmly. “You can’t just throw civilians away like that. You have to have some judicial procedures in place.”

David smiled. “Nope.”

“Come now,” Kilmeade said, disbelievingly as he sat back down on the single bench inside the cell. “Star Force has all manner of rules. You want me to believe they don’t also have a justice code?”

“We’re not interested in playing games, only ferreting out the truth. Once we have it, we decide what to do with you. You should be grateful, actually, since we don’t execute prisoners.”

“You still haven’t stated what rule I’ve broken.”

David frowned. “Let me make it more plain then. You’re one of the bad guys.”

“Depending on your point of view.”

“I’m willing to hear yours.”

“Are you the one that decides what happens to me?”

“Pretty much.”

“So Archons can do anything and everything they want?”

“We’re in charge,” David answered simply, not sure which way this guy was leaning.

“Of the military. I thought the civilian side of Star Force was out of your jurisdiction?”

“You heard wrong.”

“Did I? I’m starting to get the idea that you’re just trying to squeeze information out of me before the actual authorities arrive.”

“Ha!” David said, walking around in a small circle with a bemused look on his face. “For an intelligence organization that has supposedly infiltrated our ranks, The Word is really clueless on a lot of simple stuff. The Director and the Archons run Star Force. There’s no jurisdiction involved, no politics, no internal wrangling. We all get along and share responsibilities. Ferreting you out was one of mine, so I get to decide what happens to you.”

“There’s always politics,” Kilmeade said dismissively.

“The young ones always say that.”

The man frowned. “Just how old are you?”

David sighed and pointed to the silver stripe running down the side of his white sleeve. “You see this. Good luck earning one of these before you hit 100.”

“You want me to believe you’re more than a century old? Best guess is you’re 20, maybe 25.”

David looked at him oddly. “Are you even part of The Word or just a stooge? Do you really know that little...wait, check that, most of the populace knows how old Archons are, and a lot of them know what our uniform colors mean. How can you be so dense, especially when you’re getting paid by us?”

“I’m a linguist. I help people learn to communicate with each other. I have few interests aside from that, so my knowledge of the rest of society may be deemed as lacking. I don’t see that as a fault, merely specialization.”

David pointed a finger at him, but refrained from touching the energy field in between. “That’s the most reasonable thing you’ve said thus far. So, your pathetic workouts. A hobby?”

Kilmeade glared. “What do you mean, pathetic?”

“Dude,” David said emphatically, thumbing at his own chest. “Archon.”

“Meaning what?”

“Did I really smack you that hard, or are you just playing dumb?”

“What’s wrong with my workouts?”

“Why didn’t you use the proper equipment that we supplied you with, rather than buying that cheap ass stuff in your quarters?”

“So you searched through my stuff too?”

David hesitated for a moment, unsure whether or not all of this was really a bluff. This guy was acting like he wasn’t that sharp, and David was starting to believe part of it.

“Where did you think we found the blood vial?”

“Star Force says it respects people’s privacy within their quarters. So now you just search them at random?”

“You’re working for our enemy. You have no grounds to complain, Seamus.”

“What’s it matter what the equipment costs, so long as it gets the job done?”

“Your cuts, for one. It broke while you were doing dips, didn’t it?”

Kilmeade frowned. “You have a camera in there, don’t you?”

“Didn’t need one. The placement of your cuts and the piece of the machine that you tapped over don’t leave very many options. Also, I noticed your arms are larger than average. Not hard to deduce what happened.”

“I prefer to train alone, and I couldn’t afford the larger models. Until it snapped I didn’t have any complaints.”

“Where do you run?”

“I don’t. All my workouts are lifts.”

“That…is why your workouts are pathetic. You’ve got to have the cardio to boost you towards self-sufficiency…you do know what that is, right?”

“Yes I know. I read the Star Force fitness manual. What’s cardio have to do with it? I thought any workouts would increase your healing ability.”

David was confused as to how inept this operative was but he was definitely sensing an opening, so he decided to pursue it.

“Efficiency is the key. For that you need lots of reps. When you run you get thousands of cycles on your body, even in a short workout. When you lift you only get a handful. They’re more powerful, which induces more muscular strength and new muscle fibers being added if you overdo it, but it won’t boost efficiency. Efficiency will reduce your attrition, as well as making your body capable of doing progressively greater workouts…which will then further increase your healing ability, allowing you to attain self-sufficiency.”

“That wasn’t in the manual.”

“Yeah it is,” David said, crossing his arms over his chest again. “But don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to read in prison. Plus you’ll have all the workout gear you need. You can actually diminish your stay by completing workouts, so you’ll get in better shape during your solitude if you choose to. Was that part of your plan?”

“What do you mean, part of my plan?”

“Knowing that you’d be able to train at a higher level than ever before, all by yourself, once we caught you? Was that a perk The Word mentioned when they assigned you to this mission?”

“My training is a private hobby.”

“So what, they told you to expect a traditional prison if you got caught?”

“The subject never came up.”

Bingo…first crack.

“You had to know this wouldn’t last forever.”

“Lots of people work for Star Force. I’m just one of the many. You weren’t supposed to notice.”

“We did.”

“Obviously. Mind telling me how?”

“One of your students,” David lied.

Kilmeade lowered his head. “How’d you catch them?”

“Just kidding,” the Archon said, adding another data point to his mental list. “Most people don’t go on vacation for a few hours. You should have stuck around for a while, gave yourself some more obvious cover story for why you were coming and going.”

“They told me to keep everything to a minimum to avoid drawing suspicion…and you’re saying that’s what led you to me?”

“That, and the fact that one of their other operatives mouthed off that they’d infiltrated us so we started looking harder…and found you,” he finished with a sarcastic smile.

“So much for ‘mind your own business and you won’t get picked up,’” Kilmeade scoffed.

“Is that why you were training in your quarters?”

“Yes.”

“As I said, you’ll have better training facilities to work with from now on.”

“I still don’t get that. Why give your prisoners stuff?”

“More like borrow, but I get your question. You’re not the first to ask, by the way. The basic point is, if we wanted you dead we’d just kill you, so why lock you away in a cage where you’ll rot to death or get killed by other inmates? Kinda counterproductive. This way, we isolate you, don’t harm a hair on your head, and drive you insane with the isolation. Now, for me and others in Star Force the isolation wouldn’t be a problem, but for weak-minded people with a pack mentality it is. You can call it revenge…or an impetus for change.”

“Rehabilitation?”

David shook his head in the negative. “Change comes from within. It can’t be forced. It can be heavily encouraged, but not forced. So, you can sit on your butt and stagnate if you want, or choose from a list of activities that we feel will be beneficial for you…and if you haven’t noticed, we really like training.”

“So how long are you going to give me?”

David uncrossed his arms and planted his hands on his hips. “Depends how much you actually did. I’ve got people digging through things, are they going to turn up more than just the blood injections?”

Kilmeade sighed. “No, that was my sole purpose here. They tell me who and when, then the student finds me right before graduation, I inject them, they move on, and I wait for the next person on the list.”

“Where are you injecting them?”

Kilmeade pointed to his inner right elbow. “Easiest veins to hit and doesn’t leave a visible mark if you’re wearing long sleeves like the neck would.”

“I meant the location in the city.”

“They told me the hallways were monitored, so I had to use the restrooms…the target would show up, say a code phrase to confirm identification, then I’d find a little privacy or diversion and inject them. Sometimes all it took was one of us having our back to whoever else was in there. Nothing complicated.”

“What did you do with the injector?”

“There’s a button to press after use that causes it to disintegrate. Never stuck around to watch how. I just hit it and tossed it in the trash, like I was told.”

“Were any of the contacts in your classes?”

“Two were prior to my being given instructions, but at that point they’d already moved on to other instructors. I handle the basic linguistic translation, so the ones I’ve got aren’t near to leaving. Something about the liquid was time-sensitive, which was why they had to be injected right before they left.”

“You call it liquid, why?”

“That’s all I know. It looked like blood to me, but they never said and I never asked.”

“What were you getting out of this?”

“A job that pays 5 times what this one does, after I complete my stay here.”

“That’s it?”

“That and a philosophical justification. Why, were you expecting more?”

“So you’re more of a contract case rather than a member of The Word?”

“Both small and large, we are all The Word. There’s no mission too small, for all support one another in building the structure that will take Humanity back to our rightful place.”

“Team mantra?”

“Something like that. Then again, they also told me I wouldn’t get caught, so who knows.”

“What made you think they’d come through with the job afterwards and not just cut you loose?”

“They said the job would be a step up in the organization, so it wasn’t so much a payoff as a promotion. They’re not just going to let someone in that hasn’t proven themselves.”

“So this was an initiation?”

“You could say so.”

“How much information were you given about the organization?”

“About an hour long speech. After that the only contact I’ve had was at the drop points and the contact lists. How’d you unscramble those anyway?”

“It wasn’t that hard when the instructions were still in your files.”

A weird expression crossed Kilmeade’s face. “I never had an instruction file.”

“It was deleted, but not all the way.”

The man facepalmed. “I wrote a note to remind myself the first time, then got rid of it. You’re saying it was still on there?”

“Computers have a way of backing up lots of things.”

“So you know who that last vial was going to?”

“Yes.”

“Are you picking him up?”

“Is there a reason we shouldn’t?”

“Have you picked him up yet?” he insisted.

“Not yet.”

“Can I get a lighter sentence if I help you?”

David frowned. “Meaning what?”

“I don’t know where they go, but if you know who it is you can follow them down the line…if I inject him as expected.”

“That’s assuming word of me punching you in the face and carrying you across the building over my back hasn’t gotten around to him.”

“Oh…hadn’t thought about that. You carried me through the halls?”

“I’m a lot stronger than I look.”

“It might still be worth a try?” he pressed.

“So what happened to your philosophical loyalty?”

“It died.”

“What was their selling point, by the way?”

Seamus sighed, figuring there was no harm in explaining fully, now that he realized he wasn’t getting out of this. “Meat. There are very few places you can get it nowadays, thanks to you. My father took me hunting as a child and I grew fond of the taste of the wildlife cooked over a campfire. So their pitch to return things to the way they used to be while improving on the mistakes of the past had something tangible for me to hold on to…that and the assignment seemed a pathetically easy inroad to the organization.”

“How’d you even learn of the organization?”

“They found me…I don’t know how. Guess they did their homework, because the hunting was brought up as one of the first complaints against you guys, along with a list of others, most of which I didn’t care about. I actually like how you’re defending the planet and all…assuming that isn’t a gigantic hoax?”

“It’s not. So why help take us down if you want us defending the planet?”

Kilmeade frowned. “The Word isn’t trying to take you down. Fighting a civil war would do more harm than good. They’re changing things from the inside, which is why they have to stay hidden. They didn’t say, but I got the feeling the injections were some sort of message being carried. They assured me there wasn’t anything dangerous, like a disease or something, just an injection that had to be given within a certain timeframe. I thought it might also be some type of medication or drug, but nanites holding a message or something made more sense. Do you know what it is?”

“It’s undergoing analysis now, but I can tell you that it is blood. Were the contacts always delivered singly?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t make drops that often, so they’d give me a set of liquids that I’d wait on. Each one was different. They insisted that I didn’t get them mixed up.”

“Can you give us the names of your other contacts?”

“I deleted the messages…can’t you pull them back out of cyberspace too?”

“No. The instructions were a document on your tablet. The messages weren’t. How’d you know where to look for them?”

“If I tell you that, you can backdate them, I assume? They’re in public documents. Surely those haven’t been deleted?”

“No they’re not.”

Kilmeade smiled. “I can give you the most recent few from memory, then maybe a few more. They updated the key each time I picked up the vials.”

“Who was your most recent contact, and when?”

“Harold Smithison. About two weeks ago. The 3rd I think. I don’t usually remember past one. I’d write it down, but they told me not to, so I make myself remember until it happens. The previous code cypher was ran…random kitty. That was good for 5 people.”

“I think I’ll arrange for your prison stay to be…oh…let’s say about 2 years. If you complete the training programs that’ll decrease considerably…or lengthen based on bad behavior. It’s all up to you. If this information, or anything else you can provide us, turns out to be valuable in some way, I’ll see that your pay continues…that way you’ll have a tidy little sum built up by the time you get out.”

Kilmeade half smiled, not liking the idea of going to prison but favoring the terms the Archon was offering. “I can live with that.”

9

August 21, 2406

Solar System

Earth

David ducked just in time for a tiny ‘thud’ to zip by his ear, missing his shoulder. The mundane ball hit the far wall, compressing on impact so as to give little rebound. It fell to the ground and rolled towards the exterior of the dark training room where there was a collection tray set into the floor. Gravity pulled it down and in, then it rolled to an intake port and disappeared from the Archon’s spherical sight, though he wasn’t paying attention to it any longer as more thuds were firing out at him from multiple launchers in the walls.

The tiny ball slipped into a mechanized elevator that pulled it up high into the wall and placed it in a dispersion machine, waiting its turn to be sectioned off and returned to one of the launchers in the room when the hopper ran low. That occurred about 40 seconds later and it, along with several dozen other thuds, were scooted through an internal track around the inside of the curved wall and dumped into the weapon’s ammunition store. From there it waited again, before being pulled into another transition chamber, then shifted down into the firing tube.

The barrel tilted slightly within the wall, adjusting to David’s position, tracking his torso, then a bit of compressed air propelled the thud back out again towards its target, but the Archon deftly twisted to the side and let it slide underneath his armpit...then it impacted the far wall and began to repeat the same cycle.

Over and over the little thuds would cycle, giving David an unlimited amount of training time if he chose. This was a staple of Archon agility drills, the trick of it this time was that the room was dark and there was a white noise generator, sounding like an oscillating hiss, that was covering the telltale ‘whiff’ of the thuds coming out of their tubes which normally alerted an Archon from which direction they were coming, giving them a split second or so to react.

With that advantage gone, as well as his sight, the only way David could track the thuds was with his spherical sight…which ironically worked far better than usual for this drill, because he didn’t have to be constantly alert for getting hit in the back when he could ‘see’ everything in the room as if it was in front of him…meaning that, as far as his sensing ability was concerned, he no longer had a back.

The trouble was, both for him and others, that the smaller the object was the less it stood out in his spherical sight…or any other sight for that matter. If David’s ability wasn’t refined enough he wouldn’t be able to sense the thuds coming out of their tubes until they were only a meter or so away, or maybe not even that, meaning that those Archons with a low level spherical sight ability just beginning to manifest couldn’t use this drill until they progressed a bit further, making it something of an alpha dog scenario that currently only he and Jason were developed enough to use.

Not that he was anywhere within Jason’s league. David had worked up to a level 4 setting, compared with the level 37 he managed when the lights were turned on. Jason had already progressed to level 34 with the lights off, blowing David thoroughly out of the water…but it was still a feather in his cap just to be able to use this challenge, and he definitely wanted to stay ahead of the rest of the Archons just now beginning to experiment with level 1 runs.

David had this current scenario set at a simple 10 minutes…no scoring threshold to meet, just gaining experience picking up the fast moving objects on approach and getting his body out of their way in time. When he finished he’d accumulated 57 hits, which averaged out to be one about every 10 seconds. That wasn’t good, but it wasn’t horrible either, considering how many were being spat out of the walls.

As David exited the chamber he pulled off his safety sunglasses and put them in a rack along with several others of varying size, knowing from experience that he didn’t want to take one of the thuds in an eye socket again. His spherical sight stayed on until he got into the hallway, then it slipped out of focus and disappeared. It had been staying on longer than David liked, but he also appreciated the fact that he didn’t have to focus to keep it active, which allowed his mind to move to other tasks…like evasion, with the sight as an afterthought. It was simply there, like his eyes were, and had become quite natural after so many attempts.

His endurance had skyrocketed as well, with him almost having to concentrate to turn the sense off. Usually he could just relax and it’d knock itself offline, but the more and more he got used to seeing through it his subconscious mind didn’t want to let it go and he had to make more of a mental choice to shut it down.

Right now that wasn’t an issue because he was feeling a bit of fatigue from using it and it slipped off on its own. He had a bit of a headache from the effort, having had to metaphorically ‘squint’ a lot during the drill to catch the thuds coming out of their barrels. If he didn’t he had only a 50/50 chance of picking them up enroute with enough time to evade, so he’d been having to press his spherical sight as much as he could to give him another few hundredths of a second to work with.

To be honest, he wasn’t sure if he was actually doing anything when he ‘squinted’ or just giving his head a brain cramp, but he was trying none the less. Other than Jason’s instruction…which was quite helpful at times…David had to poke and prod around inside his head to figure out how things worked, which a lot of times meant trying the stupid and pointless and seeing if anything happened…and on occasion something would.

As David’s spherical sight released and the hallway returned to his normal vision he felt a release of pressure in his head, now that he wasn’t expending the mental energy to produce the field that allowed him to ‘tactilely’ touch the objects around him to generate the image in his head. Jason had figured it out first, then was later backed up by the medtechs when they confirmed that the energy field being produced was not straight line beams like conventional sensors were. Instead it operated as a cloud that filled in the area around the person, allowing them to ‘see’ the backside of objects as well.

Not that it mattered, but David could ‘see’ the entire way around each of the thuds if he’d had time to concentrate, the same way that Jason could ‘see’ around the perimeter of his favorite marble. Neither of them could see inside objects well, unless they were porous. The energy field could push through lower massed walls, but it was more concentrated with direct access. This the medtechs had also confirmed with multiple studies on Jason and backed up with tests on David and a few others.

David’s test had been two balls. Both had an inner core that was hollow, one was sealed and the other had a tiny pinprick of a hole. He could see the hollow center on both, but the one with the hole was more distinct, confirming that even though the energy field he was producing could penetrate the material, it also was being restrained by it in some fashion, the exact specifics of which the medtechs hadn’t deduced.

They had, however, come through in several other areas, namely identifying the regions of the brain that were producing the superpowers. Both David and Jason had a growth in their occipital lobes, or rather a reconfiguring of existing tissue into a denser configuration. What had caused the upgrade wasn’t known, but Archons and other Star Force personnel were now being checked for similar growths which would indicate that they were developing the spherical sight ability.

How it worked was still a mystery, but the growths were emitting the energy field, and in the case of Jason’s, the structure was four times larger than David’s, as well as many times denser, almost as if the brain tissue was developing much as muscle would. This wasn’t surprising to the Archons, but it did freak out the medtechs, given that they’d always viewed the brain like a computer core rather than a source of physical output.

In Jason’s case he also had a second ‘anomaly’ within his brain, located in the back portion of the parietal lobe, that was responsible for the telekinetic energy fields he was capable of producing. They’d also been able to identify new tissue interlinking the two, and the more he developed his abilities through training, the more complicated and intricate the tissue became, almost as if the brain was running new wires between the two to increase processing speed.

The medtechs had also been able to detect and measure disruptions/anomalies in other portions of his brain, all of which seemed to stem from the new tissue growth, as if it was progressing too fast. That was their assessment, but David put that down to no more than a guess. He’d seen the scans, and could tell that the new areas were the source of the changes, but as to how they were causing them wasn’t clear. The medtechs didn’t understand that training could progress slowly or lightning fast…it was unpredictable, but repetitive, and given the leaps and bounds Jason was making with his training now, and the gradual improvement he was making inside his head, speed didn’t seem to be the deciding factor in what was going on.

So it wasn’t with any great surprise that on his way through the halls, just as his spherical sight was fading, that something else in his head began to clench up…just slightly, as if his mind didn’t want to completely relax. David noted the change then dismissed it, having had all kinds of little tweaks happening over the past months. He hit the track next for his second run of the day, a short 5k, then he swung back by his quarters for a quick shower and nap…the latter of which usually helped to loosen the tension in his mind, a trick that Jason had passed along and David had found to be effective.

He was out for 20 minutes in a foggy trance where his mind seemed to be far more active than it should be, chewing over what he didn’t know, but the clenching seemed to ease a bit until he stood up.

David pressed a hand to his forehead and massaged the knot a bit, which helped in some way he couldn’t explain. He kept it up for several seconds on his way over to the comm terminal to check his incoming messages, expecting an update from Seraph-822 either today or tomorrow. He was following one of the leads that Kilmeade had provided them, or rather that the student who Kilmeade had identified had provided them.

After David had finished his interrogation of the operative and sent him on his merry way to a prison facility on Luna, he’d returned to the pyramid while sending other members of Green Team around the star system to track down the students that had been carrying the blood samples inside their bodies. Those had turned out to be very clever data transfers, and completely biological, leaving no nanites or other machines present to be detected even if someone was looking for them.

Instead, the blood contained genetically altered cells, matched to the target’s blood type to avoid rejection. These cells were nonfunctional as oxygen carriers, but where that capability was missing there were dense regions of material containing genetic patterns that could be readable by certain types of analysis equipment…nothing standard or handy, but advanced models that could give you a complicated genetic string, from which a computer program could synthesize data.

And not just a little data. These cells were capable of carrying entire programs, charts, books…they were essentially a biological equivalent of a data chip, one with low memory capability, given the size, but more than enough to send brief packets of intel out to operatives without leaving an electronic trail behind for Star Force or any others to track down.

Each cell in the blood sample they’d recovered was identical, with the idea being that at least a few should survive in the body long enough to reach their target. The extraction process was unknown until Green Team recovered one of the handlers that the student/colonist had met up with, and though the individual was not forthcoming with information they had recovered his equipment.

A small probe would be inserted into the carrier’s vein, whereupon it would sit and wait for one of the special blood cells to pass by. When they did a component of their design was attracted to the probe and would attach. In this way the operative would ‘sift’ through the carrier’s blood until they got their message packet, then they’d remove the probe and send the colonist on their way to begin their new life…either as the endpoint of their service to The Word or on to another assignment within the colony itself.

The students/colonists that Green Team had been able to track down were much more forthcoming with information than the operative had been, given that their association with The Word was only in the beginning stages. Unfortunately they didn’t have a lot of information to offer, but some of it was valuable, in so far as identifying some of The Word’s recruitment procedures.

Between their data, the information extracted from the blood sample, and the equipment recovered from the operative Green Team had several new leads to follow up and David had sent four members off to hunt down individuals or data trails. Seraph was currently investigating a facility on Titan where they thought The Word had set up a warehouse of sorts, but so far there was no message from him.

That didn’t worry David, because he was just in the beginning edge of the expected timeframe. However, there was another message from Davis that did concern him, detailing a bit of sabotage at a chemical plant in Mars orbit. One of the storage tanks had been detonated…nothing combustible, but it had spewed out a cloud of icy debris that caused several orbital traffic patterns to be closed down temporarily. There was already a news story out about how Star Force’s safety procedures hadn’t been sufficient on the station in question and blah, blah, blah. Point was, it looked like Star Force was being sloppy, and Davis had already tagged it as an example of The Word’s unconventional war…

Damage their reputation and turn public sentiment against them. Even if that wasn’t going to stop Star Force in any way, shape, or form, it would could cause them headaches and, more importantly Davis pointed out, create a growing opposition that in time could escalate to dangerous levels. The Word might not even have to fire a shot if they could convince others to in their stead.

That was far down the line, as the Director pointed out, but it was a concern none the less, not to mention the damage done to the station. He indicated that no one had been harmed in the sabotage, but the perpetrator had yet to be discovered.

Attached to the message was the preliminary investigation notes and David pulled those up for a quick read through before heading over to the Cerebro section of the sanctum for some more navigation drills. He got through the first few pages, indicating that the explosive had been concussive in nature and that the pieces of which had been imbedded in the ice fragments and recovered during the cleanup operation.

It had been a small device, but not something you could carry around in your pocket, meaning…

Suddenly David’s head clenched up again, but this time far worse…so much so that he stumbled out of his chair and went to his knees on the floor. It reminded him of a muscle cramp, and he knew the only thing he could do was go inactive, because any movement or resistance would just make it worse.

He held position in the floor, trying not to think of anything and just enduring the pain before it began to slowly subside. David blinked away tears as he held his nerve, but like Jason had told him about his own trials, the pain didn’t go away completely. There was a small knot in his head that, once the wash of pain was gone, was still fighting him. David wanted to forcefully break it up after his nerve returned, but he held off, knowing that had made Jason’s even worse.

Instead he stood up, experimenting with the movement and finding it didn’t affect his head much, then he walked out of his quarters and headed off through the sanctum. For the first time since hearing about Jason’s story David was truly scared. Not just because of the intensity of the pain, but because of the idea that it wasn’t going to stop, rather it was going escalate to potentially fatal levels.

“Something wrong?” Aaron asked, passing him by in the hall and seeing the tears in his eyes.

“Very,” he said with a slightly trembling voice. “Do you know where Jason is?”

10

September 4, 2406

Solar System

Earth

Kian stood on the finishing platform in the dark, using a pair of nightvision sunglasses so he could watch Jason as he approached, leaping from one pillar to another across the disqualification padding a meter below. The other Archon was having to navigate the uneven pillars, using only his spherical sight for navigation, all the while Kian was attempting to knock him off.

Well, not literally, but he was trying to disorient him enough that he’d fall off on his own. Randomly he was throwing out disruption field pulses, trying to catch Jason off guard and cause him to slip up, but his fellow trailblazer was getting accustomed to Kian’s ability and had learned to guard against it so long as he used slow, deliberate motions. That had prompted Kian to not broadcast it constantly, but rather to switch it up unexpectedly and catch Jason in the transition.

He was about halfway across the course now, balancing on the tops that ranged from 15 inches wide all the way down to a mere 2. Which route he took across was his choice, but if he kept to the wider ones they also added an elevation component, forcing him to jump, not just across, but higher and lower as he progressed, making the landings even more tricky…or rather they would have been for regular Star Force personnel. For the Archons this was child’s play.

Doing it in the dark was part of the challenge for Jason, though by now his sensing capabilities had reached the point where flat objects were no longer a problem. His sense of balance had adjusted and he was able to recognize the platforms in an instant, whereas other more irregular objects took a moment to process in his mind. The more familiar the shapes were, the quicker he could react, with the geometric pillars easily recognizable.

He could also see Kian on the far end, blurry as he was. Jason’s range was continually increasing, but he didn’t like to extend it out too far for it took more and more energy to do so. Like light emanating from a star, the farther away you got the dimmer it became, and in order to see far out he had to up the intensity of the energy field considerably…unless he wanted to focus on a particular section in ‘spotlight’ mode, but that would cut out everything else around him and leave him vulnerable, and right now he needed his spherical sight active to help maintain his balance.

Jason jumped across a double gap, bypassing a 3 inch wide pedestal and getting hit mid jump with another disruption burst. His spherical sight didn’t go out, but his connection to his senses dimmed enough that when he landed he felt half numb, however he did retain enough connection to his limbs to flex his legs underneath him to absorb the landing and stay more or less upright.

He focused hard to get his balance, as if he was having to plow his neural impulses through snow-covered roads to get to his muscles, but he maintained one foot on the pedestal and wiggled around for balance, then placed his left down with only his toes touching the pillar, offering now a two legged stance.

The disruption field ended, with it feeling like his body suddenly lost 500 pounds of weight. His senses cleared up and he felt lithe again, but he knew he had to be patient otherwise Kian would catch him off guard and he’d smack his face into one of the pillars on his way down like the last time.

“Come on, Jason. Pick up the pace,” Kian said, throwing a half second burst in just to mess with him. “You’d be a sitting duck if I had a weapon.”

Unfortunately, Jason knew he was right. He was moving too slow, but it was the only way he could assure himself of getting across…and there was no time restriction on this drill, though he should probably add one later. Right now, though, he just needed to get across while holding his nerve. The disruption field Kian was producing never got easier to take and it shook him to the bone each time. He was making progress in resisting it, but by resetting his equilibrium faster, not by blocking it.

Jason hopped to a nearby 2 inch pillar set half a meter higher and skipped across to a 4 inch of equal level…with Kian not interfering. That almost tipped him over the side, having set his mind against something that never manifested. He teetered on landing…then got blindsided by a short burst, followed by a pause, then another burst.

Kian repeated it for a third time and smiled as he saw Jason topple over the side, unable to keep up with the changes. He waited for the disqualification signal to sound and the lights to come back on but the chamber remained silent…then he saw the trailblazer hanging onto the pillar with one hand and his feet mere inches from the padding below.

“That’s kind of cheating,” he called out as Jason pulled himself back up, despite another disruption field descending upon him and staying in place.

“Shut…up,” Jason said, having to force the words out as much as the nerve impulses. Most of his body was a ghost to his mind, with only thin tendrils of controllable mass, but he pulled upwards strongly, almost telling his muscles blindly what to do rather than feeling the feedback and adjusting. Soon his chin came up past the tip of the tiny pedestal and Jason reset his hands on top of one another as he snaked his head up over top of them, followed by his chest in an impressive feat of strength and balance.

It wasn’t to last. Kian kept the disruption field up long enough that the sensory fatigue got to Jason and his control slackened just a touch, but it was enough for his hands to slip and for him to come crashing down on top of the pillar. It knocked the wind out of him, for he couldn’t predict it coming with his senses on the fritz, then he toppled off the side and hit the mats.

The lights came back on, but the static in his head didn’t end.

“Enough already,” he complained, flipping over into a seated position.

He heard Kian laugh, then his head suddenly cleared.

“Can you adjust the intensity?” he asked, getting to his feet.

Kian’s merriment died out. “Sorry, but no. I’ve been trying, but right now all I’ve got is one setting. And I think it’s getting louder as I grow stronger.”

“So if I’m holding even I’m actually making progress?”

“More than that, you’re getting harder to knock off.”

“I wish there was one more of you,” Jason said, climbing up one of the shorter pillars and getting back on top, then hopping across the others easily to get to the finish platform. “I bet there’s a way to block the effect. There’s got to be.”

“I’m still surprised I’m not affected,” Kian said with a shrug. “Useful trick though.”

“Too bad we don’t know what it’s called. There’s bound to be something in the database about it.”

“Still looking, still failing,” Kian agreed.

Jason sighed. “Again?”

“I’ll give you three more. Any more than that and I’m going to get a headache.”

“You feeling any other power twinges?”

“Nope. You?”

“I’ve got my hands full with this one, thanks,” Jason said, hopping back onto the pillars and crossing back to the start end directly rather than going round through the exterior hallways. When he got back to the other side he triggered the start pedestal and the lights went out.

Kian hit him with a blast immediately, not even waiting for him to get to the edge of the platform. He saw Jason stumble a bit, then he hopped onto one of the smallest pillars, after which he leapt up to an even taller narrow one, seeming to take the most direct route across gap. He let him go through four before hitting him with a disruption blast just before he jumped again.

That caused Jason to only get partial power on the jump and he came up short, having to stretch out his foot to get it on the target and then leaning forward to try and regain his balance. Limber as all Archons were, he reached down and grabbed the edge of the pillar with his right hand and hung there with his butt off the side and his leg mostly extended…then he leveraged his way back up to neutral and weathered another disruption blast before standing up again.

Suddenly there was a burst of light from behind Kian. He didn’t notice it immediately, given that he had his vision augmented by the sunglasses, but Jason stopped moving immediately and Kian backtracked the whitewash around the edges of his vision to the door leading out of the finish area behind him just before the main lights came on.

“Hello,” Kian said as he turned around, a bit annoyed. People knew that when this chamber was active it was supposed to be dark.

Kara came around the corner and nodded distractedly at Kian, looking out across the pillars to where the other person in the room was standing. “Jason! Get over here!”

“What’s up?” Kian asked, taking a step closer to her as she seemed serious about something. “And when did you get here?”

“Just now,” she said, keeping her eyes on Jason. “Sorry about interrupting, but I didn’t want to wait. How’s he doing?”

“Am I missing something?”

“His head. How’s he doing?”

“Well enough. David’s got it worse.”

“David?”

“441.”

“Does he have telekinetic abilities yet?”

“I don’t think so…what’s going on?”

“I’m here to help,” she said firmly as she watched Jason display his superior agility as he jumped from one pillar to another with barely half a second spent on top of each, bouncing left and right as he chose an erratic pattern, grabbing the medium to large pillars to maximize speed.

“How?” Kian asked, his eyes dropping down to the jewel on her left wrist.

She followed his eye line, then raised her forearm up so he could get a better look. “How much did Mark tell you?”

“Some form of retractable armor.”

“And?”

“You couldn’t take it off, even with an army of medtechs.”

Kara smiled. “It does a lot more than that, and I’ve had 4 years to work with it.”

Kian noticed the uniform she was wearing, including the green stripe bracketing the sides. He pointed to it. “When did you make ranger?”

She shook her head side to side. “Not just ranger. Level 43 ranger.”

Kian’s face scrunched up in disbelief, and Jason had a similar look as he hopped off the last pillar and jogged over to them.

“Say again?” he asked.

“I’m a level 43 ranger,” Kara said evenly, then held up her forearm jewel. “It’s a cheat, I know, but I’m stuck with it.”

“Cheat how?” Kian asked.

“It boosted my strength, agility, speed…everything. Took a while to take effect, and the increase was one time, as far as I can tell, but all that can wait,” she said, looking at Jason and motioning him forward with the fingers of her right hand. “Give me your head.”

Jason and Kian exchanged glances. “What for?”

“Your mind is blocked from my Ikrid, so I need physical contact.”

“Ikrid?” Kian asked.

Kara rolled her eyes. “Sorry…telepathy. I think in V’kit’no’sat half the time now…can’t help it.”

“Wait,” Jason said, raising an eyebrow. “You know what it’s called?”

“Yes, and a lot more. This little baby,” she said, pointing to her left wrist, “holds more than armor. Puff didn’t just give me Zen’zat equipment, he made me a full Zen’zat, meaning a huge knowledge upload. I’m not through all of it yet, pieces keep popping out at random, but I can help you with your head, I think, but I need to touch it.”

“Why haven’t you mentioned any of this before?” Jason asked.

“I’ve been on Daka and spent most of my time flying and figuring this thing out in my spare time. Mark knows most of it, didn’t he tell you?”

“Ah, no,” Jason said, a bit perturbed at the oversight. “We’ve been looking through the database for anything related to these superpowers but we didn’t have the keywords to search. You’re saying you do have them.”

“Ugh,” she complained, wishing they’d just trust her. “Rensiek, Fornax, Ikrid, Sesspik, Pefbar, Lachka, Ensek…the seven basic Zen’zat psionic abilities. We’re supposed to have access to them from the get go. Breeding wasn’t figured into the equation so they’ve gotten a bit funky. Genetic deactivation, I’d guess. You guys are shuffling your bodies around enough through training adaptation that you’ve probably triggering a Menslavenchednes…sorry, a…resetting of your abilities to your defaults, though apparently not all at once. You can see all around you and lift objects, correct?”

Jason and Kian exchanged glances again, thoroughly blown away. “Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“Not me, as far as I know.”

“I can do this,” Kian said, throwing off a disruption burst.

Kara squinted, but her body didn’t move while Jason slumped a bit, even though he knew what was coming.

“Fornax. Always wondered what that felt like.”

“Me too,” Kian echoed, studying her closely as if he wasn’t sure she was being genuine.

Kara caught the gist of his look and closed her eyes for a moment.

Suddenly Jason slumped again, while Kian nearly fell over. He caught himself after Kara’s disruption blast passed and stared at her with wide eyes.

“You have them all?” Jason asked, picking up on what she’d said earlier.

“All the basics. I haven’t broken through to the higher abilities. Will you please let me help you?”

“How?”

Kara held up her hand and stared at him.

“You don’t think you can give me at least a little explanation of what you’re going to do when you start poking around inside my head…which I thought wouldn’t work on Zen’zat anyway?”

“You guys can be so stubborn,” Kara said, still holding up her hand. “Trust me. Time matters.”

“Alright,” Jason said, stepping closer. “But if you mess anything up Kian’s going to kick your ass.”

“He wishes,” Kara scoffed. Then Jason remembered what level ranger she claimed to be, which put her ahead of all of them save for Morgan and Steve.

“Just hold still,” she said, touching her fingers to his forehead as she concentrated. She held them there for only a second, then started running them through his hair around to the back of his head. There she lingered, bringing up her second hand around the opposite side of his head in a loose embrace with her face a few inches away from his. She had her eyes closed, but his were open and staring at her. He felt nothing and wondered what exactly she was doing.

“Damn, you’re chewed up alright,” she said without letting go. “Did you use a Kich’a’kat?”

“Tried,” Jason said, recognizing the V’kit’no’sat name for the device Star Force referred to as a ‘regenerator.’ “If it helped, it wasn’t enough to notice.”

“I can see the repairs it tried to make. It probably bought you a little time, but it can’t heal what isn’t there to begin with. Your pain is coming from new tissue growing incorrectly. If you had the tissue and then it was damaged it could repair it to previous condition, but given this is new to your body it has no pattern to work off of, so it tried to repair the incorrect pieces to their previous incorrect status. Understand?”

“Actually, that makes a lot of sense.”

“I’m still lost,” Kian offered.

“Fortunately, I can fix this,” she said, still probing the damage. “But it’ll require you and I take a long nap together.”

“Careful, Jason. I think this second gen is hitting on you.”

“I’ll take the chance,” Jason said bluntly. “How are you doing what you’re doing?”

“Remote Ikrid download is blocked, so someone can’t pry into your memories or thoughts and extract information, nor can they take control of your body. Physical Ikrid operates differently in that it allows you to directly access the nervous system. Zen’zat have some blocks there as well, but most of those are conscious ones. They wanted us to be able to interact with each other, but not with other races. Rit’ko’sor, for example, can’t access our minds through touch any more than they can through remote Ikrid.”

“What I’m doing now is basically hacking your localized nervous system and getting some basic status feedback from it. Damage assessment. My Ikrid ability isn’t high enough to get more than a few inches from source of contact, but if it was I could hack your head by simply touching your finger.”

“No more pinky swearing, I guess,” Kian joked.

“By the way,” Kara added, “your Ikrid ability is manifesting too. It’s dormant because the tissue isn’t developed enough, but I can feel it beginning.”

“How close am I?”

“I don’t know enough to give you a good estimate, but it’s coming,” she said, finally releasing his head and taking a step back.

“My turn?” Kian asked.

“Oh, now you trust me?”

The trailblazer gestured at Jason. “He didn’t die, so…”

“You having headaches too?” she asked, stepping up to him and touching his head.

“No, but I’ve only got the one power. Can you tell me if I’m getting any more?”

“You’ll get them all, eventually. At least you should. Depends how you’re shaking them loose…you’ve got a very small Pefbar growth,” she said, moving her hands around his head to various locations, “but I don’t feel anything else at the moment.”

“Pefbar?”

“Your third eye,” she answered metaphorically before pulling away.

“Spherical sight?” Jason asked, just to be sure.

“That’s one way of describing it,” Kara said, turning her attention back to Jason. “You want to find a bed or do this here?”

“What’s ‘this’ exactly?”

Kara held up her clear jewel. “This is also a Kich’a’kat. It has tendrils throughout my body…or can extend them out, haven’t quite figured that one out yet. Anyway, I can connect to another person. Basically my body becomes a Kich’a’kat and you have to wear me for a while for it to make repairs.”

“I thought you said a regenerator couldn’t fix the problem?” Kian asked.

“Well, it can, but not on default settings,” Kara said, catching herself again. To her all of this was common knowledge. “If they’re not set to rebuild you to previous settings and go on straight genetic replication, they’ll build entirely fresh tissue...unaugmented tissue. It’ll wipe away years of training in a matter of minutes.”

“As much as I hate the headaches, I think I’ll pass, thanks,” Jason said, taking an unconscious step back from her.

Kara noticed and laughed. “Relax. It only targets damaged areas, and I can use it to build brand new tissue around what you’ve already got. I may have to nick off a few pieces here and there, but for the most part you’ll retain what skill you have already.”

“And that will stop the damage?”

“You’ll be fully formed, then you can upgrade from there naturally.”

“If this works, can you do it for the others?”

“Yes.”

Jason laid down on the floor. “Do it…then get to David. He’s in worse shape than me.”

“Ok,” she said, straddling him. “This may feel a little weird. The tendrils are going to have to penetrate into your brain, same way they do when repairing muscle, and like a Kich’a’kat it’s important that you don’t break contact until the process is finished. Don’t want to jerk around pieces of your brain. It doesn’t take damage as well as muscle does.”

“Don’t move, got it,” Jason said, glancing over at Kian. “See to it that we’re not disturbed,” he joked.

“Jason and Kara…sprawled on the floor…” Kian said mirthfully until she turned around and pointed her index finger at him like she was holding a gun. She pulled her thumb down and the trailblazer felt a telekinetic thump against his chest that knocked him back a step.

“Don’t,” she said seriously. “I need to concentrate. This won’t be automatic like usual.”

“Got it,” Kian said, matching her serious tone.

“You’ve never done this before, have you?” Jason asked.

“Actually I have, just not on someone’s head. Ready?”

“Anything I have to do other than stay still?”

“No.”

Jason leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Do it.”

Kara leaned forward and rested against his chest, then nestled her head up against his, pressing her left arm against the other side and putting a light vice grip on his head to increase physical contact and hold it steady.

She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, concentrating on the mental interface with the device that she’d been refining over the past few years.

The clear jewel lit up, as it always did when used as a regenerator, and Kara could feel little tendrils coming out of her head like new hairs being grown. When they touched Jason’s head they immediately numbed the tissue and bored their way inside in the magically technological way that left no penetration damage.

She could feel the strands on her side, for they had only been partially numbed so as to let her be able to monitor the link and not accidently pull away, forgetting that she was still attached. In mind’s eye she could see the thousands of tiny lines worm their way into the rear portions of Jason’s brain and engulf the damaged and unstable tissue in both locations, as well as the connecting filaments.

Once connected she had a zoomed in mental map of the area and she began tagging what to keep and what to lose…on top of which she ordered the Kich’a’kat to grow the remainder of fully functional units based off his repressed genetic code, which hadn’t originally grown them from birth.

Kara knew better than to speak while in such close proximity, for fear of it jiggling the connections, but a tiny smile, barely visible appeared on her lips as she connected to his nervous system simultaneously and sent him a crude, but audible telepathic message.

You can relax, Jason. I’ve got this.

Recalibration

1

September 4, 2406

Solar System

Earth

The Kich’a’kat leads withdrew from Jason’s head back into Kara’s body and she sat up looking down at the trailblazer. “How’s that feel?”

Jason blinked twice, seeming to come back to his senses after having disappeared inside his mind’s eye and doing a check on his abilities, finding the pain and fragmentation gone…along with a touch of his power reserves, but that didn’t matter.

“Hey,” Kara asked, frowning a bit. “You still with me…or did I unplug something I shouldn’t have,” she joked.

Jason reached up and grabbed her head, pulled her back down, and kissed her once, hard.

“Thank…You…” he said emphatically.

Kara smiled broadly. “You owe me one.”

“That I do,” Jason agreed as she slid off him and they both got to their feet.

“I assume whatever you did worked?” Kian asked.

“She’s definitely got the magic touch,” Jason said, flicking his spherical sight on and off several times, trying to get the pain to return and happy when he couldn’t. “David’s next. Can you find him?”

Kian frowned. “You got somewhere else to be?”

“Yeah, I do,” he said, turning to Kara. “Pefbar?”

She nodded, then added, “and Lachka.”

“Get to David and the others. I’ve got some homework to do.”

Kara turned to Kian. “Let’s go.”

The other trailblazer nodded and followed her out of the training chamber, throwing Jason a questioning glance on the way out.

Jason gave him a subtle nod, indicating that he was truly ok, then he found himself alone on the platform and took a moment to reshuffle his thoughts…including bleeding out a few tears from the sheer relief of having the fragmentation in his mind cured in a matter of minutes. It seemed cheap, in a way, because every inch he’d scraped for over the past months had suddenly become irrelevant.

Jason took a knee and sat on his heel, breathing in heavily and relishing the calmness of his mind.

“Now,” he whispered, “it’s time to start playing catch up.”

Half a dozen things leapt to mind, training wise, that he wanted to tackle today now that the pain was no longer inhibiting his workouts, but getting some answers was going to take precedence. With that thought in mind he stood up and walked out of the training chamber with an intensity that had been sorely lacking…and only now did Jason realize just how debilitated he’d been.

He left the sanctum and passed up the group of mongooses parked outside, preferring to run instead…and finding a measure of his speed had returned, now that he didn’t have the mental drag on his movements. Jason ran across the command deck to the nearest of the pads and scaled the attached stairs, coming up on top and shooing away the techs working there.

“Move aside fellas,” he said, jogging up to the Zen’zat control consoles. “I need to do some research.”

“Anything we can help with?” one of the three offered as they made room for him, either moving aside or to other stations, giving him the primary.

“Actually yes. I need you to assemble of list of terms that we have no V’kit’no’sat translation for, specifically items that we’ve tried to locate in the database and failed to do for lack of necessary vocabulary.”

“How long a list are you wanting?”

“Everything you can think of,” Jason said, accessing the console and bringing up a holographic interface display. “We’ve got someone who can translate now. Start with engineering terminology.”

The techs eyes went wide, but they held their questions, sensing that the Archon was busy.

“Right away,” one of them said as all three left the platform in a hurry to find their peers and start compiling the list.

Jason didn’t give them a second thought, digging into the database with tunnel vision. He input the first word, Pefbar, and got an immediate hit…several actually, for the ability was present in many of the V’kit’no’sat races. Resisting the urge to start exploring their capabilities he focused on the Zen’zat entry, and upon opening it was overwhelmed with data.

Good as his V’kit’no’sat was, he had to concentrate to decipher the alien script, though there were many charts and schematics to work off of as well, all floating in holo before him. One detailed the position in the brain where the relevant tissue was located. Another was a chart of different developmental tiers. There was a wealth of knowledge here, with Jason drooling like a kid in a candy store, but the overall assessment he was gathering without having to dig too deep into any of the individual files, was that the spherical sight ability was something that could be developed in multiple ways.

He’d originally thought that the telekinesis was the second stage incarnation of the ability, but that appeared not to be the case. There was a small subset of data related to the interaction of the Pefbar with the telekinesis, but Jason set that aside for later and dug through the timeline. It seemed as though his current incarnation of the ability was at level 1, with level 2 manifesting itself internally.

Jason frowned, not having ever tried that…nor knowing how. His Pefbar energy always seemed to radiate out from him like the light from a lantern. How was he supposed to direct it inwards?

Then again, it was emanating from his brain, so he should have been able to use it to see inside, say, his arm as the records indicated was possible. In fact it’d be necessary if he had to telekinetically remove a piece of shrapnel from inside his body, so how was he supposed to refocus the energy into his body whereas it seemed to only exist outside of it?

An hour of reading through subtext gave him his answer…the energy was already being transmitted throughout his body, it just wasn’t registering in his mind. In order for him to process the signals coming to him his own body was a null spot, as he’d discovered earlier through his own training. He’d learned to pull that in with proximity mode all the way to his skin’s surface, but never inside his body.

The data indicated that level 1 abilities were standard, but that subsequent level upgrades had to be attained by the individual rather than by genetic manipulation…which suggested that such genetic manipulation might be able to deliver the ability directly. According to the generic timeline a Zen’zat would train and develop the Pefbar ability on a particular level until the next level randomly broke through. There was no significant precursor or threshold to be met, according to the data, which left the process a bit murky from a scientific point of view.

Jason found that odd, given the rest of the detail in the records, but he could accept that the next level wouldn’t manifest until an individual had attained a significant amount of skill in the current one. It seemed appropriate, actually, given that they had to earn their way forward.

During his search Jason came across a statistical assessment of Zen’zat in general, indicating that 98% progressed to the 2nd level…reminding him that, once again, he and the other Archons were still newbs compared to the real Zen’zat out there somewhere in the galaxy. Frustrating as that was the numbers intrigued him, for while 87% progressed to level 3, only 54% progressed to level 4…and upwards from there the numbers dropped drastically. That meant either the development of the abilities got progressively more difficult or the turnover rate of the Zen’zat was drastic.

Everything he’d learned thus far about the Zen’zat indicated that while they were deemed somewhat expendable in combat, they were valued enough not to be wasted, if for no other purpose than the other races didn’t want to be constantly having to train replacements. Most Zen’zat lived over 1000 years, shy of large scale conflicts, of which there were a number throughout V’kit’no’sat history, but 400 years old was considered young by their standards, meaning that most of them would live well past that and conceivably have a wealth of time to train their abilities up to the higher levels.

But how good were they, really? That had been a lingering question in all of the trailblazers’ minds for some time. How well did they stack up, head to head, given their age? Were they ahead of the curve and only behind because of the Zen’zat’s longevity, or were they on par, or inferior, with the V’kit’no’sat training standards being even higher than the Archons’?

They’d been able to study some training data left in the machines in the pyramid, getting the raw scores from a number of the Zen’zat who conceivably could have been their ancestors, as well as pulling some numbers from the database of their training in general, but this was the first instance that he knew of where he had a ‘tech tree’ of comparison scores to view. Maybe that was because he’d never been able to identify an individual skill to study, or maybe their understanding of the database was just too pathetic for them to realize how much they were missing.

Regardless, Jason now had a glowing display of Zen’zat aptitude scores, pulled from what he didn’t know. It could have been a detachment, planetary statistics, or all Zen’zat throughout history. The label had three terms he couldn’t identify, but the scores he could read and they were showing him that there was definitely a bulge of lower level individuals that steepled into a very elite group.

The scores for the masses were attached to individual tests. Jason tagged one of the solid holograms and a schematic of a familiar room appeared, along with a wider breakdown of the test scores for what appeared to be a response drill…if Jason was reading it right, and he wasn’t completely sure he was. He brought up the test description and read through a mass of text, realizing that he could stand here for the next 24 hours and not even get through a sliver of the material on Pefbar. That excited him to no end, so he squelched his curiosity and focused on the single test before him, reading up as much as he could.

Content that he knew what he was doing, Jason eventually shut down the interface and made the long run back to the ramps on the edge of the command deck and up into the Zen’zat zone of the pyramid. He worked his way into the restricted section and into one of the chambers that the Archon’s had previously assumed to be a sparring chamber…one of many.

It had a circular mat with a narrow ring of hard floor around the outer edge, but now it seemed that this and probably the others like it were more than met the eye.

“Cha’ves’lak,” Jason said aloud as he stood in the center, as the database instructions had indicated was the startup procedure.

The open-air arch of a doorway disappeared as recessed door segments slid shut, sealing him in. From there a holographic array of colored discs appeared around Jason. Through them he chose the particular psionic test he’d been reading up on and selected the lowest ability level.

The menu vanished, as did all illumination in the chamber. Jason flicked on his spherical sight, or ‘Pefbar’ as he had to keep reminding himself, and saw an object about a meter wide appear to his right in the shape of a geometric sphere with more than 100 tiny sides…which he was pleasantly surprised that he could make out. In the past it would have appeared as a giant blur, and the detail was a welcome perk of all the headaches he’d gone through to develop his ability to this point.

Then again…it was a bit too precise, and he couldn’t help but think that some of the new tissue Kara had said was needed to be grown had added an element to his ability that hadn’t been there before, meaning he was probably functionally stronger than he had been a few hours ago, even if he’d lost a bit of power generation in the process.

Jason walked over to the object and punched it lightly, feeling his hand sink into the hologram with resistance, like he was pushing into liquid. After a brief delay it ‘cracked’ and vanished, along with a satisfying tone indicating that the target had successfully been dispatched.

When it went away another one appeared elsewhere in the room, immediately coming up on Jason’s ‘vision.’ He walked over and tagged it as well, then proceeded through 13 more before the basic test ended. His statistics appeared, along with the control interface and a prompt asking for a username to attach the scores to.

Jason smiled, imputing his number 025, which he’d used before for the holographic sparring program. The purely holographic interface was slower to use than the console mounts in some of the other chambers, but it functioned well enough, making him wonder why all of the chambers weren’t controlled strictly from holograms.

A matrix appeared with two small areas highlighted. Jason touched one and his previous sparring scores appeared, filling in a small area of that overall program and indicating that he’d only brushed the surface of its capability. It took him a moment to find the ‘back’ button, then the matrix returned to overview mode and he tagged the second piece, bringing up an almost blank submatrix with the test he’d taken highlighting one area.

Tagging that, he had to go through another submatrix to get to the hexagonal cylinder tube that showed the bottom segment highlighted. This, he knew, was the test level, marking his completion of level 1. He touched it with his finger and the attempt he made showed up, tagged as a single score icon. Had he not found and dispatched all of the targets within a generous timeframe it would have indicated how many targets he’d successfully achieved, but since he’d gotten them all it merely marked the attempt as completed.

Jason touched the 2nd level sliver of the cylinder and brought up a blank score sheet. From there he used a linking button to reactivate the chamber without having to go back to the main menu.

The visible holograms disappeared again, while the invisible ones popped up, this time two at a time. They neither glowed nor reflected light…not that there was any in the chamber, but if there had been they’d have been completely clear and perceptible only by touch. The Pefbar ability manifested in a similar manner, ‘touching’ all objects and as such it registered the holograms…at least that’s what Jason could make of the description in the database, of which a lot of the vocabulary was still a mystery to him.

He wondered where the massive dragon had gone, and what it would take to get him to pass out a few more of those forearm trinkets.

The two holograms were of equal size, but different shape. One was the geometric sphere like before, while the other was a cube. Jason walked over and touched the sphere, jamming his knuckled fingers into the resistant surface and shattering the object. The cube disappeared at the same time, then two more targets appeared elsewhere in the chamber, with him having to choose the sphere each time.

In the past, he knew, his Pefbar wouldn’t have been detailed enough to determine the shape, but rather would have registered as a blurry spot on his vision. As Jason danced around the chamber easily tagging the spheres, he was relieved that he could pass the lowest level of the Pefbar tests. That meant he was ahead of the rookie Zen’zat, at least. How long it took them to move through these levels after their genetic conversion from Ter’nat he didn’t know, but he was glad to be statistically in the game now, and was eager to see just how far up the cylindrical icon he could move his scores.

Four hours later he hit his limit, on level 17, when multiple moving objects were put into play…and by multiple he meant upwards of two dozen. They were small and different shapes, each of which indicated a sequence, like being numbered. Jason had to tag them in order, but he couldn’t maintain ‘visual’ identification of them all simultaneously…it was too much for his mind to process and he kept losing track of some of them. They literally vanished from his view as his mind constrained what processing power it had to focus on certain areas, using his ‘spotlight’ ability simultaneously with his spherical sight, something that he’d not done before.

The other tests had gradually progressed him towards this point, and he felt like he was getting quite the psionic workout, even though these tests were meant to measure one’s skill rather than train…there were other scenarios for training sake, he’d discovered, but using the tests designed specifically for this ability and refined over millions of years was doing more for Jason than their own crude training chambers ever had.

That was a result of simple ignorance, and he knew their own facilities would advance quickly as they mimicked and upgraded the V’kit’no’sat methods…though without the ability to produce solid holograms this was going to be the only location capable of this level of training, meaning that the pyramid was going to be Archon central for years to come.

Jason failed the level 17 test, not moving fast enough between targets and feeling like an elementary student trying to order block letters in a sequence and studying the ‘U,’ holding it upside down and wondering if it was an ‘N.’

He sighed, resigning himself to stop for the day but satisfied with his progress. The past few months hadn’t been a wash after all, for they’d advanced him beyond the basic level of Zen’zat Pefbar skills…though only barely. The progress cylinder, as he’d found out, was only marking the lowest subset of 10 tests. Once he’d completed that it had minimized into its own block on yet another cylinder. Jason had searched through the displays and discovered approximately 1200 testing levels available, which absolutely blew his mind…both with imagination and appetite.

New training programs, with this level of complexity and depth, were like opening a Christmas present and finding a Time Lord’s cookie jar…which was bigger on the inside.

“Cha’ves’lak,” Jason said, powering down the testing program. The lights came back on and the doorway reappeared, revealing a pair of second gen Archons looking inside.

“Easy kiddos,” he said, walking out and rubbing his head reflexively, then realized he didn’t have a headache and laughed at himself. “I’ll show you the ropes later.”

“What is it?” Sloane-1043 asked.

“New training toys,” Jason hinted, then walked off, knowing that they couldn’t get anywhere without the activation phrase. Those two didn’t have Pefbar anyway, but even if they did they’d need to get worked on by Kara before they could make any real progress.

On that note, he needed to find her and ask her a bazillion questions…now that she’d had enough time to fix David’s head, along with who knew how many others.

2

Kara pointed to the tiny cookie on David’s tray with her finger, then sent it smoothly flying down the length of the table as if on an invisible tractor beam emanating from her fingernail. Two meters down and it landed in Riona’s mouth. The Archon bit into it smiling, then Kara slowly launched another from the tray down towards Aeryn-412’s waiting tongue.

A few inches from her mouth and the cookie made a sharp detour, bouncing off her forehead and away from the table…straight into Jason’s hand. He held it between two fingers and nipped off a bit of it.

“Looks like this is the ex-headache Clan,” he said, sitting down at the cafeteria table opposite from Kara, but two seats down where there was an opening. “Thanks again, by the way.”

“Questions?” she guessed.

“Plenty,” Jason confirmed.

“You should have gotten here earlier,” David suggested. “We’ve been getting schooled on several matters.”

“You mind?” Jason asked her.

She telekinetically stole a cookie from another Archon’s tray and delivered it straight into her own mouth as she set her elbows on the table. “Shooott,” she said, chewing.

“I just found a Pefbar training chamber that we didn’t know we had and spent several hours measuring my skill. I hit level 17…out of some 1200. How far behind the Zen’zat are we really?”

Kara swallowed and stared down at the tabletop for a moment, seeming to search her thoughts. “My information is dated. Some comes from near to when the Rit’ko’sor rebellion began, but the rest comes from the period previous to the Zak’de’ron purge, which was approximately 850 millennia ago.”

“Ouch,” Lanny-257 commented.

“That’s the first number I’ve heard on that,” Jason added.

“I had to do the math,” Kara admitted. “I’ve got the dates up here,” she said, tapping a finger against the side of her brunette head. “Some of them, anyway. More information keeps popping up as I come across it, so I’m not sure how much memory I actually have. I do know that the V’kit’no’sat advance slowly when they’re not being challenged, technologically I mean.”

Kara held up her wrist so all 9 Archons at the table could see the jewel, with a few techs from the other tables starting to come over and listen as well.

“This should still be superior to what the Zen’zat have. At least that’s what my memories tell me. Zak’de’ron technology was superior, and they only shared part of it with the V’kit’no’sat. We…their Zen’zat didn’t mix with the others, and were drawn from their own Ter’nat populations. All the races draw from the communal Ter’nat race, then usually keep some of the Zen’zat they produce for themselves once they reach higher levels, but technically they’re supposed to serve all the races and can be rotated between duties.”

“The Zak’de’ron didn’t submit to that and kept their own Zen’zat, not to mention giving them greater abilities than the others. We all have one of these,” she said, tapping on the clear jewel imbedded into her left wrist, “it’s our armor, regenerator, comm system, and just about everything else you can think of. It uses compression based technology on a scale far beyond what the V’kit’no’sat possessed, and the knowledge in my head says that there’s no way they’ve caught up yet.”

“The knowledge is separate?” David asked.

Kara frowned. “I’m pretty sure it comes from this, but it’s not standard. I think the dragon added it specifically for me so I’d know what the hell I was doing. Then again, some of it could have been standard.”

“Maybe I should ask how strong are you, then?” Jason pressed.

“I’m a weakling, unfortunately,” she admitted. “You need to understand, the Zen’zat attain self-sufficiency, as do most of the races, so you’ve got individuals living hundreds of thousands of years, with a small few reaching over the million mark. Most of those, oddly, are Zen’zat. And you can imagine how powerful one could get with a million years’ worth of training.”

“Damn,” Riona whispered. “I can’t even imagine what that skillset would look like.”

“I don’t have to imagine, I can remember,” Kara said uneasily. “The greatest Zen’zat in history was Ironnsey. He wasn’t Zak’de’ron, but a regular Zen’zat who primarily served the Oso’lon. He was pretty much a Jedi compared to everyone else, Zen’zat and dinosaur combined. I have several memories of him, including an incident where he was ordered to hunt down and destroy a group of six rebel Hjar’at warriors.”

“I should probably say, and don’t hesitate to ask questions because I don’t always remember what you know and don’t know, but the Hjar’at are the more dangerous of the races when it comes to close quarters combat. Their Saroto’kanse’vam were specifically engineered to make them lethal above all others, and while they’re not the dominate race in the V’kit’no’sat socially, they are the most militarily dominate on the ground.”

“What was that word?” Chad-913 asked.

“Sorry, Saroto’kanse’vam are the spikes that run down their back and tail. The Les’i’kron have a smaller version on their tail tip, from what I can tell, and a few other races have minor combat adaptations, but the Hjar’at’s are by far the most impressive. They produce different energy fields that give them ranged attack, proximity defense, even biological shielding in addition to the armor they wear…and don’t think they’re slow. The Saroto’kanse’vam are bladed for a reason, and they can cut a decent sized target into shreds with a spin strike and flip.”

“Ironnsey?” Jason reminded her.

“Right…he was sent to kill the six, and they were highly ranked, meaning their combat skills were above the rest. Had the Hjar’at sent their own troops after them it would have been a blood bath, and nothing short of elite units would have had a reasonable chance of defeating them. So instead they sent Ironnsey, by himself, to take them down inside one of the Hjar’at facilities, which is how I have a mental recording of that battle.”

“Impressive?” David asked.

“Goku-esk,” Kara said with awe, “aside from the fact that he couldn’t fly. None of the regular Zen’zat could…which is stupid. Even we have jump packs, but the Zen’zat only had gravity buffers to stop falls from killing them, and it was the same with the other races. They have the technology, but they never used it…and though I don’t know about now, I doubt their methodology has changed much. The V’kit’no’sat like to stick with tradition for tradition’s sake.”

“Wait a sec,” Jason said, pointing a finger at her. “Can you?”

Kara smiled and nodded.

David’s eyes went wide. “You can fly?”

“My armor has to be deployed, otherwise I just hang from my wrist. The Zak’de’ron are flyers…why would they want servants that couldn’t keep up with them in the air?”

“What kind of power source does that thing have anyway?” Riona asked, with several of the techs around them nodding in thanks for asking that question.

“It absorbs power from the environment and stores it. It’s at about half charge now, which is a lot, and it’s slowly recharging. That’s why it’s a bit cold to the touch. It absorbs light, heat, electricity and just about anything else. I usually just find a power conduit, stick my gloved hand in, and let it drink up. My body is protected somehow, and don’t bother trying to stun me. It’ll last like a tenth of a second before this baby sucks it right out and adds the energy to its reserves.”

Jason levitated a cookie up off of one of the half-empty trays and sent it up high towards the ceiling and held it there with a bit of effort, then motioned for Kara to go get it.

“Oh…fine,” she said, pushing back her chair and standing up. She reached her left hand up like superman and slowly floated up a few meters, then snagged the cookie with her right hand and began eating it on the way down.

“Don’t suppose that thing has twinning capability?” David asked as she sat back down.

“It’s called a Vorch’nas, and no, unfortunately. It’s bonded to me permanently, so even if I get my hand cut off no one else will be able to use it.”

“So much for needing a parachute,” Jason joked.

“We need to press our jump pack technology in this direction,” Kara urged. “It’s one advantage over the other Zen’zat that we’ll need. They can always counter by building their own, but we need to be able to fight in the air and move across rough terrain unaugmented.”

“You said Ironnsey didn’t have that?” Jason pressed.

“No, but he could jump and glide in his armor, and his vertical was insane, as was his speed. The Hjar’at couldn’t touch him up close, and he was cagey enough not to get caught in the open. He killed them all together, one at a time, at pointblank range, and didn’t look like he broke much of a sweat doing it. Him and others of similar skill are the reason there is very little rebellion within the V’kit’no’sat. Cause a big enough ruckus and you’ll get elite troops sent your way. Defeat them and you’ll work your way up through the ranks until you face an opponent beyond you.”

“Sounds rather hopeless,” David commented, half-sarcastically.

“It is,” Kara said, glancing back at Jason. “To answer your original question, we’re not a match for even their low level troops. Well, I am, but I’ve got this,” she said, tapping her Vorch’nas.

“Ranger level 1 ranks where in comparison?”

Kara grimaced, then bit her lip as she thought. “Without augmentation. No armor, no toys whatsoever…would still get owned by all but the greenest of Zen’zat, but only because of their psionic abilities. If and when we can catch up in that department, it’ll be another story.”

“Take those out of the equation,” Jason said. “Where does a level 1 ranger rank?”

“That’s hard to do, because those skills are part and parcel of what the Zen’zat are and how they fight…but I’d say easily still in the bottom 10%.”

“So we’re ahead of some of them?” David asked.

“Did you make ranger when I wasn’t looking?” Kara asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Some of us, then,” David corrected himself.

“With me, we’re about even with a Zen’zat expeditionary force,” she explained, “which is made up of one moderately leveled leader with experienced rookies. That’s the standard deployment for low level incidents that need dealt with. If the team fails a higher level one is dispatched, and so forth. The V’kit’no’sat don’t waste resources if they’re outmatched, they just bring in higher classed units.”

“That’s something then,” Jason said, relieved that they were at least in the game.

“No, Jason, it’s not,” Kara said, almost apologetically. “I know more than I can explain, and we’re hopelessly, hilariously, and pathetically outmatched. I know we’ve got our own war to deal with now, but unless we crank things up significantly we’ll be rolled over by their crap units…and that’s just talking Zen’zat. Our odds are even less impressive when the other races are thrown in.”

“How often are they used?”

“Most of the time. We’re sent in for utility work or special assignments. Almost all of the combat is handled by the race in question. They may be augmented by Zen’zat units, but it’s their show. We’re extra.”

“What do you mean, ‘crank things up?’” Riona asked.

“It’s complicated,” Kara said, shaking her head. “Very, very complicated. Archons are better than Zen’zat, as in how much we train and how smart we are about it…but we’re still ignorant and making up stuff as we go along. They’ve got a refined training system and upper tier individuals who have had thousands of years’ experience to instruct where necessary. They get more done with less, and we’re behind the curve in that department, save for our adepts. They’re squared away, but the acolytes and especially the ranger training is what I’d call ‘loose.’”

All eyes moved to Jason, as the Archons sensed Kara’s rebuke in her analysis, but oddly Jason didn’t seem to take offense.

“Let me see if I heard you correctly,” Jason said slowly. “We’re better than they are because of the way we train, but not because of the way we train?”

“Yes.”

“Fast forward a thousand years…”

“If the trend holds, we’ll have an advantage over most of them, taking technology out of the equation. Their elite units will still own us and, I’ll point out, that most of the Zen’zat slow their training over time. This is either from boredom or lack of motivation, but while they are still advancing their rate of advancement drops considerably aside from a select few, like Ironnsey, who keep pressing on. He and the others are Archon-like in that respect.”

“I almost want to meet the guy,” Jason joked.

Kara shook her head. “Don’t have to worry about that…he’s dead.”

Jason frowned. “How?”

“We killed him during the first year of the war.”

“We being the Zak’de’ron?” David asked.

“Yes. I still think like one of them. That’s how this knowledge is programmed.”

“How’d you take him down?” Jason asked, keenly interested.

“Orbital bombardment,” Kara said dismissively. “We targeted all the high level Zen’zat the enemy possessed at the outset, as well as the more powerful of the other races as well. Doesn’t matter how good you are if you’ve got a naval fleet sitting over your head firing down on you. That was one thing the V’kit’no’sat didn’t take into account. They expected us to fight them on an even playing field, army against army, navy against navy, and so forth. But we’re built to fly, and we’re very good at raining down destruction from above.”

Jason glanced at David. “I don’t know if that’s Zak’de’ron or Saber talking?” he quipped.

David nodded. “Does sound rather like Paul.”

“That’s the kicker,” Kara emphasized. “We have no hope if we can’t face them directly in space. We have to develop a navy capable of doing that. If we do then we’re still toast, because they’ll hit us from other angles, but without a competent navy it’s game over before it even starts…and that isn’t dependent on skill as much as it is technology.”

“How much of that do you have in your head?” Jason asked.

“I don’t,” Kara said, almost relieved. “Some Zen’zat are techs, but not this one. The Vorch’nas he gave me is a combat model.”

“Does it have weapons?” Ursala-529 asked.

“They’re a power hog, but yes. Usually Zen’zat will carry independent weapons, like we do, but there are built-in units even in standard Zen’zat armor, which you already know.”

“Feel free to show and tell,” Chad urged.

Kara set her left elbow on the table with her hand up in the air, then on mental command the jewel fractured and sent out a spray of red slivers that formed into a scaly, metallic glove that extended back to her elbow and stopped.

“Oh that’s cool,” David commented.

“Yes it is,” Kara agreed, then with another thought a bump appeared on the back of her hand and formed into an elevated weapons battery, tiny in size. She looked over at Jason. “Give me a target.”

The trailblazer telekinetically grabbed another cookie and sent it floating up into the air above their heads. “Try not to blow up the ceiling please,” he asked.

“I can modulate the power output,” Kara said smiling as she aimed her gloved fist up, then hesitated a moment before an emerald green pinprick of light flashed out and intercepted the cookie, burning it into a cloud of smoke and charred debris that drew the attention of everyone else in the cafeteria that hadn’t already been brought into the conversation when she floated her way up to the ceiling.

As it was, the cookie debris rained down on the assembled Archons and more than 100 other Star Force staff who’d gathered around to watch and listen.

“Which weapon was that?” Jason asked.

“Basic Dre’mo’don,” she said, with the other Archons recognizing the term. The energy the weapon produced wasn’t something that Star Force could create yet, but many of the handheld weapons recovered from the pyramid were constructed in this fashion. The energy itself wasn’t a beam, but rather a condensed packet fired at a range of speeds, most of which were within viewing capability and looked like speedy, glowing paintballs when fired. This one had been so tiny that only the glow was visible for a split second.

“Any others?” Chad asked.

“I’ve got a stun and an orb-launcher…and you don’t want me to demonstrate that here.”

“Mobile artillery?” David asked, referencing V’kit’no’sat tech lessons he’d had a long time ago.

“From our point of view, yes, but compared to what they work with…hardly. It’s mainly used to get through dino armor. They can wear so much more tech than us due to their size that their shields and plate thickness are insane. Besides, these are basic weapons. The more potent ones we carry as rifles and such. You’ve seen the basic setup before.”

The crowd of techs parted to let another individual through and Jason turned his head to look at the motion as Morgan squeezed into the group.

“What’s with the party and who’s shooting what?” she asked, looking down on the assembled Archons with her eerie gray eyes.

Kara’s face, which had been smiling, suddenly blanked…then her jaw dropped. “Son of a bitch, Morgan,” she said as she stood up, almost angrily. “How the hell do you do it? You are always one step ahead of everyone else.”

“What?” Jason asked, glancing back and forth between the two women.

“What are you talking about?” Morgan asked, glancing at her armored hand, “and what are you wearing…wait…is that your armor?”

“Her eyes,” Kara said heavily. “Look at her eyes.”

Morgan stared back at her. “What about my eyes?”

“You have no idea, do you?” Kara asked, forcing a laugh. “Of all the…and here I thought I’d finally caught up with you guys.”

“Kara, spit it out,” Jason ordered.

“To put it in simple terms,” Kara said between gritted teeth, frustrated at once again being the inferior. “Zen’zat wise, she’s gone Super Saiyan.”

3

Morgan’s eyes narrowed. “Explain that, please.”

“I can’t, because it shouldn’t have happened,” Kara said, exasperated. “What can you do?”

“Concussive energy,” the trailblazer said, not offering a demonstration.

Kara rolled her eyes. “Straight to the big guns.”

“What’s with her eyes?” Jason asked pointedly.

“It’s the way the V’kit’no’sat tiered our abilities,” she answered, sitting back down. Chad stood up to give Morgan his seat but she put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

“Ok, little history lesson,” Kara continued, leaning back in her chair. “When the V’kit’no’sat found the Ter’nat they had a choice between eradicating them or ignoring them, as they do with all other races they encounter. The Ter’nat were large in number but technologically weak. Cannon fodder stuff, but due to their small size and biped structure it was decided to annex them. In case you hadn’t noticed, most of the V’kit’no’sat don’t have much in the way of hands. They use their Lachka abilities to manipulate small devices.”

Kara saw several frowns, then corrected herself. “Telekinesis. Lachka is their word for it. They wanted a race of servants that could be useful without upgrading them, plus there are also advantages to being biped. A whole lot of disadvantages too, but as large as the V’kit’no’sat are, they deemed it wise to add another element to their power, so they made the Ter’nat part of their empire.”

“They were slaves initially, and tasked to the Era’tran for incorporation and ‘enlightenment,’ but they didn’t live up to reptile standards. Part of the problem was biological, they deemed, the rest was psychological. The Ter’nat were belligerent and lazy…pretty much like Earth has been in recent history, aside from Star Force, and they bred too fast. Now, most of the V’kit’no’sat races lay eggs that have to be fertilized, so sex isn’t really an issue culturally. It’s seen as a huge detractor in the Ter’nat, which is also a reason why Zen’zat are forbidden from reproducing.”

“Define reproducing,” Jason asked.

“They have no contraception available, so if they get laid they’re risking execution,” Kara explained. “So dating is essentially taboo. Not so for the Ter’nat. They’re allowed to breed to their hearts’ content…and if they run out of resources and a few million of them die, so be it. The Era’tran, in their assessment of the Ter’nat, discovered that a small percentage of them were useful, but there was no biological indication as to who the useful ones would be. It was totally at random. Some of the V’kit’no’sat wanted to just eradicate them and be done with it, but the Era’tran strongly supported a different option that eventually won out.”

“The Zen’zat,” Jason guessed.

“The Zen’zat,” Kara agreed. “They would farm the Ter’nat in exclusive colonies. They would not be able to intermix with the other races and would have to pretty much be self-sufficient with regards to resources and technology, though the Era’tran had already given them enough upgrades to bring them up far beyond what we have now, unfortunately. From those colonies the Era’tran drew the useful Ter’nat and put them to work in a manner of fields, primarily as techs and areas where their small size would be of advantage. Eventually they were used for some small combat applications and proved useful in a support role.”

“The Era’tran especially wanted to incorporate them into their own ranks, given the size differences. In order to do that they had to be trained and biologically upgraded…which a lot of the other races didn’t want to allow. There was a lot of internal wrangling, but a satisfactory method was eventually arrived at. The race of Ter’nat wouldn’t be upgraded, only individuals would, but they’d have to earn their abilities. The other races were born with theirs, of which they developed through training, but the Ter’nat individuals would have to prove their worth, which was highly doubted outside of the Era’tran.”

“Because of that, Zen’zat are ‘created’ by taking a Ter’nat and making alterations to their genetics. Those alterations are many, including the 7 basic psionic powers at minimal levels. Default Lachka of, say, the Oso’lon is considerably more powerful than ours, even taking into account the size difference. Bigger brain, bigger emitters and more power.”

“Size does matter then?” David asked.

“With psionics, yes, it does. They gave us the ability, then cranked it down really low to the point where we almost have nothing, but wove into our genetics the ability to upgrade over time, more than just with training. When we hit a prerequisite level you’ll see significant upgrades to your current abilities as well as new ones popping up.”

“Not like now,” she clarified. “We’re all supposed to have the basic 7 to begin with, which is why your development is causing problems. There are other abilities beyond those. Some small, some large, but they have to be earned, basically disproving the general V’kit’no’sat sentiment that Ter’nat are worthless. If and when they can do that Zen’zat are viewed with some level of respect from the others, all the way up to peers in some cases. Other rare occasions, like Ironnsey, and they’re actually superior.”

“My eyes,” Morgan reminded her.

Kara held up a finger. “I’m getting there. With the individual advancement plan in place, Zen’zat began being created and their genetics were tweaked over time giving them more and more potential. Eventually the V’kit’no’sat saw the advantage of using them and Ter’nat colonies were given to all the other races to care for and restrict, from which Zen’zat would be created to serve not just the Era’tran, but all the races. They were to be shared and serve as a commonality amongst the V’kit’no’sat, which the Zak’de’ron didn’t hold to.”

“The others did, and the mass of Zen’zat that were ‘harvested’ from the Ter’nat began taking on more and more tasks. Eventually they became present in virtually every V’kit’no’sat colony and ship, but always in the background. They are the quiet servants without a race, and because they have no race they are seen as neutral politically and therefore trustworthy.”

“There’s bickering amongst the races?” Riona asked.

“Not bickering…but while they view themselves as V’kit’no’sat first, they’re not above positioning their own race ahead of the others with regards to resources and territory. Again, the Zen’zat have none, so they’re not involved in the egotistical conflict and are often seen as a calming influence. There’s no actual fighting between the races, V’kit’no’sat society is too structured for that, but it doesn’t keep them from competing against each other in lesser forms of conflict.”

“Anyway, over time it was deemed necessary to further enhance the Zen’zat to compensate for their smaller biology. They still had to earn their advancement, but the potential was much higher. Seeing the Zen’zat as tools rather than a competing race, their potential got jacked up so much that the elite ones became capable of killing the much larger races in hand to hand combat. Rather than view this as a threat, they wanted more Zen’zat of this level and aggressively pushed the training of the ones they had, while maintaining allegiances with those already present.”

“Technically, Zen’zat serve no one race. They serve the V’kit’no’sat as a whole. But bonds are formed and, short of betraying the V’kit’no’sat, certain Zen’zat will help one race seek dominance over the others…then if they’re traded off they’ll help those they now serve. A lot of the trading happens within the Zen’zat ranks, because they control their own assignments for the most part, so establishing a relationship with them is seen as the route to power, given that they can’t technically give them orders.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Jason said, stopping her before she could go on. “You’re losing me. You’ve said Zen’zat are servants, now you’re saying they don’t take orders?”

“A Zen’zat serves where needed,” she explained, taking no visible offense at the lack of understanding. “They are assigned by the Zen’zat leadership upon request of one of the races. If the Brat’mar requests 10,000 Zen’zat for use on a particular planet, the request is reviewed by the Zen’zat leadership and if applicable the personnel are sent. Once on site they take their orders from the race or races that requested them. A lot of their planets are shared, so a contingent of Zen’zat will often serve multiple races at the same time.”

“Who tells the Zen’zat leadership what to do?” Jason asked.

“The V’kit’no’sat operate as a collective, so no one race can order them around so long as they stay in good standing with the dominant races. Many times the Zen’zat leadership will flat out refuse a request from one of the races and get into a bit of a staring match…and win, but only because the other races are silently backing them. Zen’zat are supposed to be neutral, so them putting another race in their place is generally seen as a good thing to maintain societal balance, but if any aspirations of their own manifest the Zen’zat would be quickly put into a world of hurt by the other races.”

“That never happens, because the Zen’zat are fanatically loyal to the V’kit’no’sat. They feel like they’ve been given peerdom where their race doesn’t belong, and because of that they’re committed to the cause. That commitment is seen with a measure of admiration by the other races, given that they all have secondary agendas.”

“Jedi-ish,” Jason commented. “No attachments, greater trust.”

“I said fanatical for a reason,” Kara pressed. “They’re not moral. Honorable, maybe, in a skewed way, but don’t call them Jedi. They are committed to V’kit’no’sat dominance, and they will do whatever it takes to maintain it.”

“What about you?” David asked.

Kara smiled. “Zak’de’ron Zen’zat were kept separate, on purpose. The dragons didn’t like blind obedience. They wanted submission, not ignorance, so they taught us to be superior, and in doing so we would realize just how far beyond us they were. It’s a philosophical sticking point with the V’kit’no’sat that contributed to the purge. To put it simply, the V’kit’no’sat mantra is ‘Because we say so,’ while the Zak’de’ron version would be, ‘Because we are.’”

“And you know this how?” Morgan asked.

Kara held up her forearm jewel. “Memory downloads included.”

“You still haven’t gotten to my eyes.”

“Still getting there…trust me, the story is worth it. Now, the Zen’zat were given potential to become very, very strong, but most did not. They rose to an appreciable level but only select individuals like Ironnsey really dug down into their genetic potential and put it to use. In order to cater to this possibility, the Zen’zat were again upgraded with greater potential so they could progress to a point where they could be used as enforcers against the other races,” she said, looking at Morgan. “So one of us could kill an Era’tran or Brat’mar…or even a Hjar’at. When a Zen’zat upgrades close to that level they undergo a physical change, developing new powers, and the eye color signifies they’ve risen to that level.”

“You obviously haven’t, which is why I don’t understand how this happened,” Kara said, frowning at Morgan.

“How do you know I haven’t?” the trailblazer asked.

“How many other abilities do you have?”

“I’ve got a touch of spherical sight.”

“Pefbar,” Kara corrected. “And that’s how I know. You’re not supposed to be able to access level 2 powers until you’ve really developed your basic 7, and you don’t even have access to 6 of them yet.”

“The eyes come at what level?” Jason asked, glancing at Morgan, then back at Kara.

“The third tier is called Mvor, as are the assassins. They’re pretty much the Super Saiyans of the Zen’zat.”

“How many tiers are there?” David asked.

Kara was about to say something, then stopped with a word half-formed in her mouth. She closed her eyes hard for a moment.

“What’s wrong?” Jason asked.

“Give me a moment,” she said, still wrestling with something internal. “This happens when something new worms its way out.”

The Archons took her at her word and remained silent for some twenty seconds before Kara opened her eyes again, then looked at David. “I don’t know. The abilities imprinted into our genetics are known because of what we’ve seen develop in other Zen’zat, the actual blueprints of which the V’kit’no’sat refuse to tell us, and the same goes for the Zak’de’ron. It’s like they’ve hidden genetic easter eggs for us to find, so we don’t know how many are actually out there. Mvor has 3 known abilities, but what else is there to discover is anyone’s guess.”

“What about level 2?” Jason asked.

“There are 15 well documented abilities there, and it’s assumed that those are fully charted, because you can’t skip from one tier to another…yet you seem to have,” she said, looking hard at Morgan.

“Why does that bother you?” the trailblazer asked, picking up on her mood.

“Because I was ahead of everyone else,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “And I’m nowhere close to level 2.”

“What level ranger are you?” Morgan asked, noticing her uniform stripe.

“43…this thing upped my strength and speed,” Kara said, tapping her jewel, “but I didn’t use the armor in the challenges. With it I can still take you, even with your Jumat.”

“Jumat?” Morgan asked. “I assume that’s the concussive energy?”

“Yes.”

“And you think your armor can stop it?”

“It can do a lot of things,” Kara said, a bit of cockiness returning.

“Morgan,” Jason interrupted, “she can fly.”

The trailblazer frowned. “Fly?”

“Dragonball style,” Kara confirmed. “When my armor is on.”

“Before you two decide to throw down,” David said lightly, “give us the rundown on these powers.”

“We’re not going at it in armor,” Morgan said dismissively.

“The basic 7 are Rensiek, Fornax, Ikrid, Sesspik, Pefbar, Lachka, Ensek. Rensiek is an ability to generate heat. It’s not so much a combat ability as it is an environmental skill. You can walk around in a snowstorm naked and not be bothered. You can also use it to start fires, and if someone has you in a headlock you can cause them to become very uncomfortable.”

“You can throw flames?” Jason asked.

“No, but you can warm other things up,” she said, telekinetically grabbing a nearby water bottle, since hers was empty, and bringing it over to her. She undid the cap and stuck her finger inside it and concentrated. “I’m not used to doing this, but I should…there.”

A small wisp of steam puffed out the top, followed by a few more as she heated the water inside.

“I really want one of those Vorch’nas,” David said, drawing looks of agreement from the others.

“It’s not doing it,” Kara said, withdrawing her finger and sending the water bottle back down the table to where it belonged. “I am. The rest of you will be too once we find the right equipment.”

“What equipment?” Jason asked.

“The same equipment they use to make Zen’zat in the first place. With it we’ll be able to turn on your abilities without me having to sleep with all of you…though I will need to fix the damage already done.”

Jason caught Morgan’s questioning glance. “Not what you think,” he told her, then looked back at Kara. “You think this machine is here?”

“Should be.”

“Easy Santa,” Tyr said from behind Kara.

“When’d you get here?” Jason asked.

“Been in the back listening. Before we go on a scavenger hunt, finish with the basic 7 psionics. We’ve identified several already, but not all of them.”

“Fornax,” Kara continued, “is what Kian has. It acts like white noise in your nervous system in its most basic form, and can advance up into pain surges and other distracting things.”

“Can it be defended against?” Jason asked, a bit worried.

“You can learn to resist it,” Kara said with a smirk, “but the immunities come into play as level 2 abilities.”

“Good,” the trailblazer said, leaning back in his chair a bit. “I don’t like someone being able to mess with my head at will.”

“Better get used to it,” she warned. “There’s a lot more going on than Fornax. Ikrid is the largest skill, and involves telepathy, being able to sense the location of other minds, memory hacking, override control, and a bunch of others. They all have to be developed, so don’t think of level 1 abilities as simple or easy, they’re just ones that you get a foothold on initially.”

“Pefbar is your third eye, which you’re already familiar with. Lachka is your telekinesis. Sesspik is a healing trance for when you don’t have a Kich’a’kat handy. Zak’de’ron Zen’zat don’t have to worry about that,” she said, tapping her Vorch’nas again, “but the others do if they’re not wearing their gear. This is a difficult one to practice, and the Zen’zat countered that by intentionally injuring each other. Not something I’d recommend.”

“How fast can you heal?” Morgan asked.

“Depends how good you’re at it. Something around 10x normal is standard. It still has to pull nutrients from your bloodstream, unlike a regenerator, but it’s good at dealing with low level damage, say, post workout.”

“Power nap?”

“Something like that.”

Jason frowned. “I’ve been doing that for years.”

“This isn’t sleeping,” Kara clarified. “You have to lockdown in order for it to initiate and then you have to keep focused on it throughout. You doze off and it’ll end. Besides, I already checked you. You don’t have the brain tissue for it.”

“How does brain tissue affect that?”

“It’s not new tissue so much as a reconfiguration of what you’ve already got, so no growths that will show up on a typical scan. You’re just lacking a bit of processing power, same thing with the Rensiek.”

“What about me?” David asked.

“Wasn’t there either,” Kara said apologetically.

“I could have sworn I was doing that,” he said, not quite believing her.

“Me too,” Jason added.

“Ensek,” Kara continued, “is an ability to function as an Ikrid relay, even if you don’t have strong Ikrid skills. It is a special growth and lets a telepathic message from a distant individual reflect off of you and transmit on to another. By reflect I mean the power level is nearly identical to the incoming signal, even though you’re producing it. The power of the signal is absorbed and released, losing some in the process. It can be enhanced with your own Ikrid power, but it will let an Era’tran relay a message over multiple miles to another command unit by positioning Zen’zat in a chain across the gap.”

“They can view some of the transmission, but if it’s above their Ikrid ability they won’t understand it. It’ll just get copied and retransmitted reflexively. This is a straight line ability…the more you use it the better it gets, but it’s essentially complete at the outset.”

“Are you finished eating?” Morgan asked when she paused.

Tyr glanced at her. “Want to find that machine?”

“Yes,” she said emphatically. “So long as it won’t interfere with my Jumat?”

“I would guess not,” Kara said, standing up. “But this is uncharted territory. Yeah, I’m done eating…mostly,” she said, telekinetically pulling a cookie off of Riona’s tray.

“Hey,” she mildly complained.

“Let’s go,” Morgan said…then another cookie floated up into the air and into Jason’s hand.

“Guys…not cool,” Riona said, grabbing the last three before they could wander off as the group of Archons broke up.

4

“Did they let Ter’nat in here,” Jason asked Kara as they walked up through the Zen’zat levels of the pyramid one stair/ramp at a time, “or just Zen’zat?”

“Depends on the planet. If there’s a local Ter’nat colony these levels would have a lot of them, call them ‘possibles’ that are being evaluated or liaisons from the colonies, because the rest of the V’kit’no’sat don’t go there. Even the Zen’zat stay away unless there’s a problem. The Ter’nat are beneath the rest of them, so facilities like this serve as an embassy for them as well.”

“Hence the restricted sections,” Jason added.

“Not just to keep the Ter’nat out, but the smaller V’kit’no’sat races as well. Those are Zen’zat only areas, while these,” she said, referring to what they were walking through, “are more communal. The Rit’ko’sor used these passages to get to the higher exits, which they shared with the Zen’zat and others, while the larger races used the lower ones.”

“To get to the pyramid surface?”

“Landing pads,” Kara clarified, turning a corner and heading for the lower entrance into the restricted section of the Zen’zat zone. “Each ring is reserved for specific types of ships, and the smaller races tend to have smaller ships, so they use the upper ones mostly.”

“Who got the top?”

Kara glanced back at Jason, who was following off her left shoulder along with a handful of other Archons behind her. “You do know there are weapons in there, right?”

“So not a landing pad then?”

“In a pinch, sure, but you don’t want to make a habit of parking over top of the big gun…besides, there are no entrances up there.”

“How much tech in here is new, compared to your memories?” Jason asked, continuing to ply her with questions.

“Very little. These structures are built to last…forever, pretty much. I don’t know when this one was built, but it could have been before the purge. The structural materials don’t weather, so unless they’re damaged they’re going to be shiny new for a long, long, long time. Some of the equipment has been upgraded, but I haven’t seen anything brand new yet. Then again I just got here too, and I never had the chance to visit before.”

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“Yep.”

“How?”

“Standard design. When the V’kit’no’sat have something that works they don’t mess with it. They do tech research as needed, but they’ve advanced so far their knowledge is more dogma than experimentation. Show them a hole in their defenses, though, and they’ll cover it quickly. They’re counterpunchers, and they’ve had so much combat experience their tech tree and battle tactics are quite refined.”

“You’re saying they’re stagnant?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but as of 850,000 years ago they weren’t in a hurry. Militarily they don’t have a lot of challenges outside of the Hadarak, but they’re formidable enough that when they make a push they’ve got their hands full. As for their techs, each race does its own research and shares the results. That, really, is the reason they’re not advancing by leaps and bounds anymore. They don’t need to, and they don’t want to be doing the hard work while the others sit back and reap the rewards. If a need arises they’ll get very industrious, so even if we could theoretically match them technologically they’re sure to make a pushback there.”

“They’re so dominate they’re just coasting forward now?”

“Coasting…yeah, good word.”

“On that note, gonna need you to teach our techs some new words.”

Kara sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“You’re the only one with the full vocab,” Jason reminded her.

“I know, I know. It’s just boring. I want to be out fighting the lizards or Nestafar, not handholding a bunch of techs,” she said as they came to a sealed door. Kara touched it with her bare fingers and the stone-like material verified that she was Zen’zat, splitting apart to give them access to the restricted sections.

“Why was this door shut?” Morgan asked.

“I guess it’s not used much,” Jason said, glancing around and confirming that they hadn’t walked into some new area. “The techs come down from above.”

“Still, I thought we’d opened all the doors,” Morgan added, following them in.

“Me too,” Jason said, raising an eyebrow at Kara.

“Don’t look at me. It’s just a door,” she said, making a right turn shortly after passing through. “Here we are.”

“A closet?” Morgan asked, seeing the small room she was opening.

“What? No. Why do you say that?” she asked as the door split in half and revealed an empty room about 10 meters wide and ovoid with the door being on the longer axis.

Morgan waved a hand at the empty room.

“Seriously?” Kara asked with a look of disbelief, then she glanced at Jason. “Please tell me you know.”

“Know what?”

“There are hidden components,” a tech said from the back of the group of Archons, one that they’d grabbed in the cafeteria, and a few other curious ones had followed along. “Some are accessible by control panel, but some rooms don’t have them.”

“Some rooms are more important than others,” Kara said, closing her eyes for a moment…then the floor opened up and a host of machinery began to rise up a la transformers and assemble around a central pedestal. “Some of the doors and equipment function off of genetic identification through tactile contact…others, like this ‘closet,’” Kara emphasized, glancing at Morgan, “have a telepathic trigger. Call it a mental ‘on’ switch.”

“You knew this?” Morgan asked the tech.

“We knew the dinosaur chambers had components that responded to mental command, but we’d assumed a physical link or sensor was required. These chambers have no sensors or interface pads, so we assumed they were just for storage purposes or extra rooms to be configured at a later date.”

“The room doesn’t have a sensor,” Kara explained, “in so much as it scans your mind, but it does have a sensor right there,” she said, pointing at the center of the ceiling. “I have to use my Ikrid to link with it, because it’s little more than a switch.”

“How do you know where it is?” Jason asked.

“I can see it. It has a telepathic presence, just like all of your minds.”

“Kara, is this the device?” Tyr asked, taking a few steps forward and past her.

“This is a medical station where genetic alterations are made. It’s one of the more impressive pieces in the V’kit’no’sat collection, and if misused could cause all manner of trouble.”

“Like what?” Morgan asked.

“Well, if you’re wanting to live you’d better not alter the wrong bit of genetics, otherwise you’ll grow a third arm or your heart will shrink down to the size of a quarter. Bad stuff like that they didn’t really care about, because the idiot using the machine would just kill themselves. What they needed to make sure didn’t happen was one of the races physically advancing themselves beyond the others. Any upgrades had to be approved by the collective, otherwise you could customize your body like you do your armor and create all kinds of abilities.”

“Like the Hjar’at,” Morgan pointed out.

“Their Saroto’kanse’vam were sanctioned, but their medtech is so advanced they could literally create super-monsters if they wanted. Think Godzilla and you’ll get the idea on the small end. Problem is, that sort of tampering with the genetic code has unanticipated consequences, so any sanctioned upgrades are heavily tested before general implementation.”

“This machine,” she continued, “has only one setting, which is basic Zen’zat. We can’t use it to open up powers like Morgan has, that would have been cheating as far as the V’kit’no’sat are concerned, so all we can do is trigger the transformation and then dig out the powers through training.”

“With core access to the pyramid, shouldn’t we be able to override that?” Tyr asked.

“If you’re insane, sure,” Kara scoffed. “Even the V’kit’no’sat techs don’t fully understand genetics. There’s an element of the core interaction with them that can’t be predicted. It’s a symbiosis effect, and they have nothing that can touch the core, gratefully. You don’t want to go messing around with this stuff, trust me.”

“By core, you mean life force?” Jason asked for clarification.

“Yes.”

“What about bioweapons?” Morgan asked.

“They can make them, if desperate, but they prefer not to.”

“Can we make them?”

Kara glared at her. “What exactly did you have in mind?” she asked with a bit of venom.

“Easy youngling…I wasn’t suggesting anything grotesque, but if we could create something to interfere with their powers, or even render them unconscious it could be useful.”

“Possibly…but not with this machine. It’s set up for Ter’nat biology.”

“You look like you don’t think that would be a good idea,” Jason commented.

“They’re counterpunchers,” Kara reminded him. “If you want to fight that kind of war they’ll reciprocate. And the potential they have, considering they know our biology intimately, is downright scary.”

“Can we use the technology to develop immunities?” Tyr suggested.

“That’s something worth looking into,” Kara agreed, “but it’s way over our heads right now, and my knowledge doesn’t extend into tech areas very much.”

“So what can we use it for?” Jason asked.

“Tyr, step inside,” Kara prodded.

“Uh, what for?” he asked skittishly.

“Just a scan,” she promised.

“Don’t go making any changes,” he said as he walked onto the pedestal with the various arms of the equipment forming a loose cage around him.

Kara stepped up to the device and a slew of holographic control icons appeared before her that she began tapping on, working her way through the control menu. “This will let us see what’s going on in far more detail than I can.”

A moment later a holographic version of Tyr manifested beside her at about half height. She zoomed in to his brain and highlighted the portions that were beginning to develop psionic growths.

“You,” she said, pointing to the medtech, “get over here. Follow along as best you can. I’m not going to do this thousands of times, so you guys are going to have to learn.”

“Do what?” Tyr asked.

“Nothing yet,” she promised, then began sifting through additional scans until she finally got to what she wanted, though she had to rely on the machine’s own diagnostic equipment to handle most of the work. “There.”

“There what?” Jason asked, standing behind her other shoulder.

“That’s the bit of genetics that has altered, along with several other pieces. The Zen’zat powers are there, lying dormant. If we can reconfigure the machine to only target those areas it’ll set them to defaults and trigger the growth of the new tissue like I did with you. This machine is also a regenerator, but on a level far beyond the other Kich’a’kat. It has nutrient stores…correction, it had nutrients stores so it wouldn’t have to cannibalize other parts of your body to grow tissue. We’ll have to replace those.”

“You’re saying we can turn on everyone’s powers by turning them into Zen’zat for a second time?” Morgan asked.

“Basically yes, but I wouldn’t do that. There’s a lot of other little genetic changes that occur over time, and if we use the default setting for the entire body we could lose some things we’ve gained or gain some things we’ve lost. Either way, it’s not something to go playing around with…and it’ll cost you your Jumat, because it’ll reset you to newb status.”

“No thanks,” Morgan whispered in a ‘over my rotting corpse’ tone.

“Which is why we need to target only specific sections of your genetic code, turning on what we want while leaving the rest alone. That will stop the developmental headaches you’ve been getting,” she said, glancing at Jason.

“But it’ll reset anyone who already has the abilities manifesting?”

“I can fix those personally, but there should be a way to reconfigure this machine to fix them the same way. I know how to use my regenerator because it’s a part of me, but it’ll take some time to learn how to use this bad boy.”

“Ok, so bottom line,” Tyr asked, still standing in the machine. “We can give everyone minimal skill levels in the 7 basic psionic powers, correct?”

“If you want to bring everyone down here, one by one, yes.”

“And we can fix those who are…having difficulties?”

“Once I, or we,” she said, glancing at the medtech, “figure out how to operate it properly, yes we can.”

“Not all of us,” Morgan said flatly.

“No,” Jason agreed, getting her point. “We’re keeping these powers for Archons only.”

“Really? Why?” one of the other techs asked from the back.

“Telekinesis would be advantageous for working with tiny parts,” Tyr pointed out. “The engineers could use that.”

“We might consider that later,” Morgan wavered, “but for now Archon only and…” she said, thinking out loud, “only rangers and high level acolytes have been developing them on their own, so I say we run them through the machine at acolyte level 1. The adepts have enough on their plate as it is to work on, we don’t need to throw this at them from the get go.”

Tyr nodded. “I like that. They get the upgrade when they become acolytes, and if an adept happens to break through on their own we can deal with that individually.”

“We’re going to have to rework the level requirements,” Jason said, realizing how much this was going to change their ranking structure, “and develop new challenges for these skills.”

“Not to mention reworking the existing ones,” Morgan added. “Some will be pathetically easy to beat with telekinesis.”

“Everything adept stays the same,” Tyr reminded them. “So the younglings won’t be affected, but we are going to have to retool everything else.”

“Looks like we’ve got some homework then,” Morgan said, crossing her arms and glancing at Kara. “How long before you can get me and the other trailblazers opened up to all 7 skills? We can’t design challenges unless we can test them.”

“No promises,” Kara said, glancing at the medtech, “but if I can do it in my head, then it’s just a matter of figuring out how to do the same on this machine. Give me a couple of days and I should have something.”

Morgan nodded, satisfied. “Tyr, Jason…let’s go.”

“Go where?” David asked.

“Secret stuff,” Jason said with a wink as he passed him by and wove his way through the others back to the door.

“What we’re best at,” Tyr said as he came by last of the three. “Trailblazing.”

“Yep,” David said after they’d gone, “that feels more like it.”

“Always second gen, huh?” Kara asked with a knowing look.

“I get the feeling that I’m about to lose my level 77 status,” he said with a frown, though at the moment he didn’t really care so long as the headaches didn’t come back.

“And me my ranger,” she said, one eye closing half way in a suspicious look. “Makes me think they’re doing it on purpose just because I busted up their party.”

“Actually, it puts us all even for once,” Riona commented. “Except for you, Kara. You’re ahead of everyone else now.”

“She has a point,” David said, his mood improving considerably. “A lot of the trailblazers haven’t even developed an ability yet. They may be stronger and faster than us, but as far as these powers go we’re dead even. I kind of like the idea of a fresh start, now that you mention it,” he said, nodding his head towards Riona.

“It won’t last,” Chad said knowingly. “They didn’t have much of a head start on us the first time.”

“We’ll see,” Kara said, sizing up their odds. There were thousands of acolytes, but only 100 trailblazers…most of whom were out fighting the war.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” David asked her.

“I say it’s on…us against them.”

“What…” Riona asked, wide-eyed. “You’re serious?”

“If Kara only trains with us…”

“Oh…I like where your head’s at, boy.”

Chad rubbed his hands together, building up a little friction-based heat. “They do like doing things on their own…and they claim to always be up for a challenge.”

“Kara, get to work,” David said, exchanging glances with Riona. “We’ll get our team up to speed.”

Archon-111 smiled. Having been only a couple of months shy of being a trailblazer herself, Riona had always resented the divide between the first 2 classes, which had been of the trailblazers’ making. Now it was time for a little payback…or at the very least, push them into another round of greatness, from which everyone else could pattern off of and learn from. Either way, the Archons as a whole would be better off for it.

“I’m in. Let’s get going. We can’t waste a minute against these guys.”

“Not a word from you,” David said, pointing to the techs as the rest of the Archons made their way out, leaving Kara alone with them.

“What was that all about?” one of them asked with a confused expression on his face.

“It’s an Archon thing,” Kara said dismissively. “Come on over here and start taking notes.”

5

November 14, 2409

Solar System

Earth

A mantis landed on the snowy rooftop of the foodstuff production facility in Antarctica and disembarked 12 Archons, including Paul, then just as quickly took off again and disappeared into the sky heading back to one of the nearby spaceports on the southern continent. The twelve men walked across to the nearby, hut-like entrance and descended down into the facility and made their way to the covert access shaft that led down into the V’kit’no’sat pyramid underneath.

As they walked down the catwalk Paul reached a hand out and stroked his fingers against the smooth green/black stone, finding it warm to the touch. It’d been a very long time since he’d visited this place, and once again the sheer magnitude of the construct reminded him of the terrible power their enemy wielded…a power that still dwarfed their own, despite how impressive Star Force was becoming and their growing role in the Alliance.

The two-front war they were fighting was showing mixed results. Taryn’s and Morgan’s fleets were continuing to harass the Nestafar as they pounded the Calavari. Even with support from the other races in the Alliance, limited as that support was, the Calavari were losing the fight at a snail’s pace. Both sides were grinding it out, both in terms of ships and personnel being lost, the benefits of which were obvious to the lizards as they continued their part of the war with campaigns against the other races on multiple fronts.

The Calavari weren’t lost, not by a long shot, but the Nestafar had prepared well and were hitting the Calavari where they were weak while suffering through their air superiority with sheer numbers until they ground down their fighter core…essentially taking the Calavari’s best shot to the face and still standing. It was gutsy and, in Paul’s opinion, sloppy strategy, but it was proving effective none the less.

Star Force’s two fleets were breaking up the Nestafar onslaught, hitting their supply lines, backwater planets, and other areas that the Nestafar either had to abandon to them or devote more resources to defending…resources that would have to be pulled from elsewhere. Ship to ship, Taryn and Morgan’s forces were proving superior, but the vast scale of the warfront made whatever gains they earned seem inconsequential, given that the entire Nestafar and Calavari civilizations were going at it, with populations in the hundreds of trillions and militaries greater in size than the entire population of Earth and its colonies.

Such wars did not occur quickly, even if it had been a rout. The war against the lizards had been going on for centuries, and that was with them steadily winning. The dynamics of interstellar warfare dictated as much, given the distances between star systems and the inherent advantage of the defender when one was assaulting a homeworld or other major population center, making kings of those who could plan strategy years in advance…and those who could coordinate such massive fleets with little or no communications between the various pieces on the galactic chess board.

To that end Paul’s part of the war on the lizard front was proceeding well, with Star Force having eradicated the enemy presence on a total of 8 worlds. Despite several attempts to negotiate surrenders the lizards still battled to the last individual, and the Archons were willing to oblige them after a point.

Their largest conquest to date was in the Eritath System, where they’d eventually been able to clear the third planet of all lizard habitation…but at a cost of massive devastation to the surface. There had been so many lizard bases and full blown cities that they’d had to eradicate most of them through orbital bombardment, with millions of rail gun slugs falling down in spurts whenever the orbiting fleets received additional ammunition shipments.

There had been some ground fighting to mop up the remnants, which the trailblazers had wisely kept to a minimum, though it had netted them access to a number of structures that were semi-intact. Nothing new to discover, however, because Star Force already had the lizard tech tree at their disposal and had built a full-fledged base/city of their own on Corneria using the captured equipment, from which they were studying the enemy tech for weaknesses or strengths to copy.

Greg had taken some of the last lizards left on the planet captive, around 100 or so, and had worked on them for more than three months before Jason had come back and replaced Paul, but the last word he had from the trailblazer indicated that the lizards were fully non-compliant, as if their individuality had been hardwired out of them. He’d told Paul he was going to stick with it a bit longer and see if he could get them to show any cracks in their fanaticism, then as planned they were going to release them in a captured lizard cruiser in another star system so they could convey a properly insulting message back to their superiors.

Even though the lizards might prefer killing themselves, Paul and the others weren’t going to put up with that. The lizards might be barbaric, but they weren’t going to return the favor. The handful of trailblazers assigned to the lizard front had decided amongst themselves to keep pressing the surrender option whenever applicable and not assuming that all the lizards would be so intractable, though thus far they hadn’t encountered any more reasonable…not that they were a talkative lot. All transmissions to the lizards were summarily ignored, making for a determined and illusive enemy that honestly wanted nothing more than to kill every Human they came across.

Fortunately that wasn’t happening and Star Force was busy setting up a significant foothold in the region, recently off Namek as well. Kyler had begun the construction of a second major base in the Retari System on a waterworld they’d named Atlantica. At present it was uninhabited by the lizards or any other race…just a big, wet playground for the aquatics division of Star Force to play with, though given the size of the world and the nearly encompassing ocean, which covered 98% of the planet, they couldn’t be sure it was totally lifeless, but the most recent report from Kyler indicated that they hadn’t discovered so much as a minnow to date.

Paul knew the lizards had the capability to fight under water, but if they wanted to counterattack Star Force there they’d have to fight them fully on that front, which was an area of warfare that neither side had seen the other active in, though from Ariel Paul had learned a great deal about their capabilities…and he’d stopped by Corneria on his way back to Earth to further confer with her.

All in all, things were progressing well on the lizard front, but Paul knew the blowback would be coming eventually, and the more time they had to prepare the better. Right now Greg, Sara, and the others were out hunting for more lizard-occupied planets, essentially cleaning out the region around Namek while Jason continued Paul’s development plans there, further building up the planetary infrastructure and defenses while he and other Archons rotated home from field assignments so they could get their heads realigned prior to any developmental difficulties like Jason had gone through.

The eleven with Paul now weren’t from the group he’d traveled back with. Those had come on ahead of him while he stayed on Corneria for more than a month dealing with duties that he’d had to entrust to others while he was way out on Namek. Duke Hightower had done well with continuing to grow both the planet and the system, but there were some things that Paul had to see to himself, as well as laying out future development plans for planetary defense, underground weapon stores, and other things that administrators had no strategic sense for.

Paul knew, as well as the other Archons did, that every planet they settled on would more than likely become a warfront at some point in the future…whether it be against lizards or V’kit’no’sat, so with that in mind Paul was laying out the infrastructure in a way that would give them a defensive advantage. One way to do that, he knew, was to make the streets and hallways small enough that the larger V’kit’no’sat races couldn’t physically enter, forcing either aerial bombardment or sending in the Zen’zat and other smaller races, which Paul felt that the Archons could more or less stand toe to toe with.

Building underground would shield them from some of the aerial bombardment and force the V’kit’no’sat to come down at them…unless they had their big guns with them, at which point it was more a question of how you wanted to die rather than mounting a proper defense. The lizards were another story entirely, and he’d already seen firsthand in Corneria Prime how city layout affected their surface warfare.

Building and training had occupied Paul in recent years, while the others were out actively fighting the lizards. He envied them, but knew how important the setup efforts on Namek were and didn’t hesitate to take that responsibility on himself. Now, as he walked down the catwalk staring at the still mostly buried pyramid beside and beneath him, he grudgingly admitted that as good as he’d gotten in the ‘master builder’ department, he still had a long way to go. This pyramid could take a kamikaze starship strike head on and barely show a scratch…and that’s the type of dug-in, hard hitting infrastructure that Paul dreamed about building.

But, like all things, a change of routine could be beneficial and Paul was eager to spend some time solely on training…not to mention getting the force powers that Jason had been none too hesitant to show off when he’d returned to the front. He had a couple of years head start on Paul, not to mention now outranking him as a level 17 acolyte, given the reset in rankings they’d all suffered. Their original scores were still there, waiting to be utilized, but with each level ranking there came prerequisite scores in a number of areas, of which psionics were now included.

It was those scores that were holding the rest back, so while the Archons were still training to increase their strength, speed, agility, etc, it was those who were progressing through the psionics skills the fastest that now held the highest ranks…with Kara now number 1 with an acolyte level 85 ranking.

Paul had mixed feelings about that, because she was a Saber, but he and the other trailblazers didn’t like getting beat out of anything, let alone their overall ranks. It was true that Kara had a cheat, but that didn’t do anything to quell their competitiveness. Not only had Kara advanced ahead of everyone, several other second geners were pacing the trailblazers as well…and at the moment they were all ahead of Paul, given that he was officially a level 1 acolyte, or would be after he got his psionics turned on.

That was the reason he and the others were here. Most of the psionics training was happening in the main sanctum alongside Atlantis, which was the only fully-refitted sanctum where all the psionic abilities could be trained for…and as a result it was packed full of acolytes working on their skills while construction crews busily worked to upgrade the other sanctums in the system, as well as across interstellar Star Force territory, including those on the jumpships.

While the Archons walking down the long catwalk with Paul would only be staying in the pyramid a day or two at most, he would be staying for a longer period of time and training with the elites in the interior sanctum…that, and doing some research of his own into the unmapped portions of the database.

When they finally reached the personnel entrance, higher up the pyramid than the main one the dragon had come in through not so long ago, a dark blue uniformed attendant met the Archons on the platform outside and led them through what was now a well-choreographed procedure. Paul let them go and stayed outside for a moment, letting the view of the enclosed pyramid sink into his bones.

There were scattered flood lights providing illumination to the otherwise blackness, but the pyramid almost seemed to soak them up, offering little reflective glare. The air was warm and moist, as usual. The pyramid gave off enough heat to pull moisture out of the surrounding soil, most of which still covered the green/black stone. The foodstuff factory set atop of it rather than burrowing down all the way to set on top of the pyramid itself. For security reasons and structural ones…because no support struts could reach the bedrock that the pyramid was blocking…most of the dirt/rock mix that had buried the pyramid remained in place, and Paul could almost feel the millennia in the smell of the chamber they’d hollowed out.

It also reminded him that they weren’t supposed to be here, for the catwalks, flood lights, and underside of the structure overhead clashed with the pyramid’s seemingly omnipotent construction.

“We have so far to go,” he whispered, kneeling down and pressing his fingertips against the tiny symbolic grooves in the ‘floor’ that led to the entrance. “And there’s no way of knowing how far you’ve come since this was built. If I didn’t like a challenge I’d be scared out of my mind.”

Paul stood up and blew out a breath. “Fortunately, we do like challenges,” he told the pyramid. “And though I don’t know how yet, we are so going to kick your ass.”

On that note the trailblazer walked inside the ovoid-shaped hallway and joined the casual flow of personnel wandering about the pyramid…far more than he’d been expecting. There were techs everywhere, with a scattering of security personnel that he’d never seen on site before. As Paul moved through the halls and down some of the ramps the number of people increased, then as he finally got down to the command deck his jaw nearly dropped when he saw the small city of Star Force structures and the hundreds of mongooses zipping about between them.

“Davis, what have you been up to?” he said aloud as he stared up at the spire in the center of it all that was part of the Archon sanctum.

“Excuse me?” a nearby tech said.

“Nothing,” Paul said, waving him off. The man shrugged and continued walking on along with a group of three others, all of which boarded a nearby passenger-sized mongoose and drove off around the corner of one of the enormous dinosaur pads.

Paul shook his head at the spectacle around him, feeling like he was in a giant Star Force themed amusement park, and walked over to the mongoose corral and grabbed one of the traditional smaller ones…not the tech version, but one of the Archon’s, of which there were currently three in waiting. He flicked it on and drove off on the whisper-quiet engine with the oversized wheels seeming to turn over an infinite number of times to even gain a few meters on the gigantic plain of a room, though he knew it was only a trick of perception.

Paul took a long half lap around the command deck until he found a pad that was unused…one of the Voro’nam ones, otherwise known as Pachycephalosaurus. He parked near the foot of the staircase and jogged up, then found a single tech working the Zen’zat controls.

“Archon,” she said at seeing his white with silver stripe uniform. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Just need a console,” Paul said, walking up to one of the positions beside her. “What are you working on?”

“Deciphering the social codex. There are lots of racial logs depicting the interactions between the V’kit’no’sat races, written from their own point of view. I’m sifting through them looking for anything of interest. You?”

“Going where no one has gone before,” Paul said, only half paying attention to her. “Kara gave me some translations and this is the first chance I’ve had to look them up.”

“Kara…the Archon with the neural download?”

“The same,” Paul answered as he typed in Menonga’fil and executed a search.

“It’s a pity she didn’t stay longer. We really need her expertise here.”

“She has several types of expertise,” Paul said as entries popped up in a hexagonal grid. “I have need of her elsewhere, but I assume she’s still sending back her homework assignments?”

“We’re getting back translation requests, yes, but the lag time is unbearable. Pardon me if I ask, but what’s your name?”

“Paul,” he said, bringing up one database entry in particular.

“Number?” she prompted.

“024,” he said, reading intently.

The tech’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think…your uniform isn’t a ranger uniform.”

“We made some adjustments to our ranks, given the psionics…son of a bitch,” he said, emphasizing the last word.

“What’s wrong…if I might ask?”

“Just found something…really clever. A way to mine material from a star using an anti-grav syphon.”

“Is that something we can use?”

“They didn’t exactly leave one laying around,” Paul scoffed, still scrolling through the details. “It’s way too advanced for us to build, for now, but long term it’ll be very useful in planet-less star systems.”

“Outside my area of expertise,” the tech said with a bashful smile as she turned back to her own console. “I’ll let you to it then.”

Paul nodded, but didn’t turn around. Instead, he pulled up the schematic of a mobile unit, far larger than any jumpship Star Force had constructed…larger than even one of the Hycre ones, and he stared at it for a long time, hardly believing his eyes.

“They actually built one,” he whispered to himself. “They built a freaking Star Forge.”

6

November 15, 2409

Solar System

Earth

“You’re up,” the tech said to Paul as Darren-7933 walked out of the genetic alteration machine, his procedure now complete.

Paul passed him halfway and clapped him on the shoulder as he walked by, then he stepped inside the small cage-like confines as the tech on station began scanning him.

“Your ID?”

“Paul-024.”

The tech raised his eyebrows as he pulled up his file on the V’kit’no’sat equipment. “Last of the trailblazers…or no, second to last. Taryn’s still missing, isn’t she?”

“She’s on the Nestafar front. She won’t be back for a while.”

“Where have you been?” the tech asked, working the controls. “The others got here quick as they could.”

“Lizard front,” Paul answered simply, forcing himself to be calm. Something about being in the center of the machine unnerved him.

“Well, looks like this is going to be a simple procedure…you’re not showing any growths as of yet, so I’m just going to activate your latent abilities. No repair work needed. You want any changes made?”

Paul frowned. “What do you mean?”

“We figured out how to make some small modifications about 6 months ago. It’s a part of the standard program, but like most V’kit’no’sat coding it was hidden in the customized options. We thought the machine was locked into Zen’zat genetics…which it is, but there’s some variability there. I can change your hair color, eye color, stuff like that…”

“Don’t suppose you can turn my facial hair off?” Paul half joked. He hated shaving.

“Sure can,” the tech said, “but I’ll need you to pick a line for your sideburns.”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah, it’s not hard. Some of the others turned off their body hair too, and some their head hair. I don’t know why you’d want to be bald, unless it’s something to do with the helmet thing? I can turn off or on any follicles you want.”

“How do I show you the sideburns?”

“Step over here.”

Paul walked out and around to the operator’s side of the machine and saw a hologram of his body. The tech zoomed into his head, then his right ear.

“Draw your mark,” the tech prompted.

Paul looked at the hologram, seeing all the hair follicle locations tagged…including places on his face that currently didn’t have hairs. He took his finger and traced a line across the side of his head, cutting off his hairline where he currently had it shaved. The tiny red icons switched to blue, indicating that they were tagged for deactivation.

Paul spun the hologram around and did the other side of his face, then ran his finger over his ears, taking off the tiny hairs there, and drew a line across the top of his neck.

“Is there an area highlighter?”

“Here,” the tech said, pulling up an option on the menu.

“Thanks,” Paul said, dragging it over his face to cover his facial hair while missing his eyebrows and eyelashes…then he chiseled those the way he liked, zooming in quite close to get the shape he wanted. “I assume these can be turned back on later?”

“Can be, but right now this is the only unit capable of doing it.”

“Good,” Paul said, highlighting his entire body below the neck and turning all the follicles blue.

“Hair color?”

“I’m fine with black,” Paul said, checking over to make sure he’d tagged everything he wanted. “Looks good,” he said, walking back around and inside the machine.

“Going with the streamlined look, huh?”

“Will the hairs fall out?” Paul asked.

“Give it a few days, but yeah, you’ll be shedding for a while. You might have to scrape your face a bit to dislodge the tiny pieces, given that there’s not much there. I had to.”

“You’ve used the machine?” Paul asked, a bit concerned.

“Only Archons have gotten the Zen’zat upgrades, but we experimented with some of the other stuff on ourselves. Now I’ve got a perfect goatee that I no longer have to trim up, just shave down to length. Takes all of 30 seconds where it used to take 10 minutes.”

“Is that why I noticed a female tech with aqua-colored hair?”

“Sharron…yeah, she did that with the machine. You can get some really weird combinations…even some striping. There’s quite a few ‘experiments’ walking around the pyramid right now.”

“Any side effects?”

“Not so far, and I don’t think there will be. It’s pretty straight forward stuff. If anything I’d be concerned with the psionics upgrades, but there hasn’t been one reported case of problems to make its way back here.”

“There hasn’t been,” Paul confirmed.

“I guess you’d know before me,” the tech admitted. “You guys seem to keep things pretty close to the vest, if you ask me.”

“When you do what we do,” Paul explained, “other people just don’t get it. If we want to share something, better to share it with those that will understand. Are we good to go?”

“Just running a few final checks. There’s a bit of anomalous coding in your genome. Don’t want you to end up growing another arm or something,” he joked.

Paul frowned. “Define ‘anomalous?’”

“Something that doesn’t match the Zen’zat template. I’ve seen a few of these before. Standard protocol is not to touch them, but I like to give the person the option…which is why I’m trying to isolate what the deviation is. Don’t want to take away any accidental superpowers you’ve developed,” he said with a wink.

“What were the others?”

“The ones that I personally handled were mostly dormant, so we lost them in the wash. Two were active. One was an alteration in the lungs, the other was a growth in her feet. The lungs was an improvement, the feet weren’t, so we undid the growth. Never heard how that turned out, but since we didn’t get back any bad news I assumed there wasn’t a problem.”

“Do you remember who she was?”

“Don’t have to, have the file saved,” the tech said, pulling up a side menu and going back through the history logs. “Agnieszka-2117. Came through here a little under a year ago.”

“What was the growth?”

“It waaassss…” he said, checking, “a lump in the ankle. A bone growth, to be specific. It wasn’t hindering movement, but it didn’t need to be there so she opted to have it removed.”

“How long did that take?”

“The regenerator in this thing can take you apart and put you back together alarmingly fast, though technically it doesn’t tear anything down, it just regrows you to specs…but if there’s tissue there that’s not in the specs it has to get rid of it.”

“What if you use the wrong scan? Do I end up with someone else’s body?”

“No, it doesn’t work off a scan. It pulls directly from your living genetics, which is why we have to alter those first. There are gobs of safety protocols built in, so don’t worry. I’ve been using it enough that I pretty much know what I’m doing,” he said with a smile.

“I’m overflowing with confidence,” Paul said sarcastically.

“Here we go…your anomalous coding is centered around your nose. Looks like a deformity.”

“How does it know that, based off of Zen’zat standards?”

“Zen’zat genetics don’t include any deformities…or, to put it another way, there’s a range of possible body shapes, and when something is outside of them it flags it as a deformity. Yours makes your nasal passage a bit larger than normal. That probably allows you to get a bit more air into your lungs…”

“And water up my nose?”

“I can’t say to that, I’m not much of a swimmer.”

“Tempting…” Paul said, considering the revision, “but leave it as is for now. Anything else?”

“Nope…scan is clean aside from that. Well, I mean clean as in big stuff. There’s a lot of dormant coding that will uncover that won’t have any immediate effect. Stuff that’s supposed to be dormant at the outset, but not buried as far as it is now.”

“Second tier psionics?”

“Not what I was getting at, but probably. Over the millennia our genetics have adapted to fit the requirements of our daily lives. Zen’zat are fighting and training. The populace…not so much, so some of the shifts have been detrimental, making you work harder for advancement than you should have been. Think of it like a parking lot that gets snowed on and never used. Builds up a thick layer a foot or so deep. Then you try and drive in and park and have trouble moving through it all. When we reset to defaults, the snow gets wiped away.”

“End result?”

“You get a little more superhuman than normal? I don’t really know. You’d have to ask the other Archons that have had the procedure…though it would be different for each of you, to some degree. I would guess the younger ones would see more of an effect, given that you guys have already brushed off most of the ‘snow’ already with your insane training…hence the spontaneous psionics appearing.”

“Or I can just find out firsthand,” Paul commented.

“Yeah…can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“We’ve all got Zen’zat genetics…so when are you going to let non-Archons get the procedure?”

“For what purpose?” Paul asked neutrally.

“Well…you’d think that the Knights should, at least.”

“The Knights are trained to do one thing and one thing only, and that’s fight hand to hand. If they branch out into other areas it will dilute their efficiency. They’re not as good as us, so the only way they can keep up on the battlefield is to focus all their training into one area. That and the drug enhancements are the only reason they’re on par with us.”

“What about the rest of us then?”

“Other than it just being cool, what do you need them for?”

“General advancement of the Human race, for starters. I’m sure I could cite several specifics if I had time to think about it.”

“Let me ask you a different way…why aren’t we giving all the Archons the procedure?”

“I wondered that myself.”

“Because the adepts already have a lot on their plate, and they need to focus on other areas of training. Throw too much at them and it’ll slow their development. Let them master a few things first, then give the psionics a go. Stair-step advancement.”

“I suppose that makes sense, from a certain point of view.”

“Feeling left out?”

“I suppose you could say that…especially since I’m operating the very machine that makes it happen and I’m not allowed to use it on myself.”

“I can understand that,” Paul sympathized.

“But you’re still not going to let us?”

“I won’t say an absolute no, but if we’re not letting adepts, why would we let anyone else of lower rank?”

“What about the Director?”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “Has he been down here?”

“No…just thinking out loud.”

“Fine, you win…” Paul relented. “When 900 years old you reach, get the procedure, you will.”

The tech frowned. “You’re not even 900 yet.”

Paul shrugged. “Archon.”

The tech pointed at him. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

Paul smiled. “How old are you?”

“112.”

“Remind me in 788 years.”

“Deal,” the tech said, glancing over the final settings. “Looks like we’re good to go. Try and hold still while the machine makes contact. After that you’ll be numbed up and can’t move anyway.”

Paul rolled up his sleeves as he’d seen the previous Archon do and placed his hands on two circular pylons in front of him. “Ready.”

“One Archon car wash coming up,” the tech said deadpan as he activated the machine.

The entryway Paul had walked in through disappeared as several arm-like mechanical extensions twisted around the chamber like fast-growing roots of a metallic tree, with several of them moving in and making contact with Paul’s body. Both of his arms and the back of his neck were targeted, then he felt a numbness creep down his back and up his arms as the liquid metal spread out across his body underneath his clothing like a regenerator, finally spreading up over his face in tendrils and causing him to get drowsy enough that his eyelids flopped down and cut off his vision.

“Just relax,” the tech said reassuringly. “Your genetic code is being reset, and it takes a while to hit every cell of your body, especially the deep tissue. The range of the filaments is rather short, but considering the rewrite they’re doing it’s downright amazing. I’m tracking the progress on the hologram and everything is proceeding normally. Just wait this out for a few minutes.”

Not like Paul had a choice. He felt like he was wrapped up in a numbing cocoon.

“If you’re curious to know, the genetic reset would be sufficient on its own,” the tech said, purposefully making conversation to give Paul something to focus on, “but the growth process of the new tissue would take time and could develop problems, somewhat like your fellow Archons were suffering from. By building the tissue here and now that problem is avoided…and you have instant access to the new abilities, though it will take time to learn how to use them…you’re at 25% now and looking good.”

Paul would have nodded, had he any control over his head. He sensed it was still upright, but had no way of knowing if that was an illusion or the machine was locking it in place. All he saw was staticy black with a disembodied feeling, almost like he was floating in a cool sea of nothingness.

He’d used a regenerator before, but it had never taken this long, nor had it had this total body takeover…then again, his injuries had never been so massive as to require it, either. He wondered how much this would hurt if he wasn’t numbed, or if the genetic alterations could even be felt.

“50% now…still going strong. Getting down into your skeleton a bit. This thing goes after every cell, no matter how compacted or dead. Even the hairs on your head get altered so there’s no competing genetics. A bit of overkill if you ask me, but the V’kit’no’sat tech has a reputation for being thorough…at least the medical implements are. Don’t know about the rest.”

“Looks like it’s into your major organs now,” the tech continued. “Don’t worry, operation of your heart and lungs won’t be affected, the machine hits them on the run, so to speak. 75%, and now transitioning up into the brain. Last stop for the changes…and don’t be alarmed if your vision and hearing go…”

Paul heard a pause, then several seconds later the man’s voice returned.

“…and that’s when it gets reset. Looks like it’s just about finished…now. 100% genetic transformation. Congratulations, you’ve just had your Zen’zat genetic bath, now to get your physical parts matching up.”

In mind’s eye Paul’s legs and arms came back into existence, but only partially. He could feel they were there but still couldn’t move them.

“Don’t try to move, even though you may be sensing some motor control returning. The psionics are all centered in your brain, so it’s important to keep your head still while the regenerator grows them. You’ll be gaining a few grams of tissue, by the way, so you may have something of a headache for a day or two while your equilibrium resets. The regenerator takes care of most of that, but I’ve heard stories of it taking a few days for the effects to fully wear off, and you Archons aren’t given to whining, so I assume it must be significant if you’re talking about it.”

As he spoke, Paul could feel a pressure building inside his mostly numbed head, then it subsided, only to repeat again several times before the regenerator liquid leads finally retracted from his back and gave him full use of his body below his neck, but his head was held in a brace that the machine arms had formed that wouldn’t let him move so much as a millimeter.

As instructed he tried to remain still, but had the urge to twitch his finger…which he found was firmly stuck to the pedestal his hand was on.

“Almost done now,” the tech said. “Making some final calibrations to the rest of your brain tissue to accommodate the new hardware. Your hands should disconnect shortly. That’s where the extra material for the new issue is entering your body. If you could see the hologram you’d be impressed with all the micro-conduits the regenerator is creating and disassembling inside of you. How it doesn’t damage your tissue in the process still amazes me…there, procedure complete.”

Paul’s head unnumbed to a slight headache as the mechanical arms retracted, both away from his body and into their previous placements, opening up the doorway out of the transformational cage.

“Take it slow,” the tech urged. “Best to let your head settle before you try…”

Suddenly Paul’s vision snapped open…or rather his visual information was augmented by his Pefbar ability, allowing him to see the cage around him in all directions, lacking in detail as it was save for the areas still in his vision, which now seemed to be laden with extra clarity.

“Holy crap,” Paul said, getting used to the spherical vision, “this is so cool.”

“I hear that a lot,” the tech mildly complained. “Guess I’ll have to wait 788 years to find out for myself.”

Paul grinned. “Test out as an Archon and you can do it in less than half that time.”

The tech sighed. “I think waiting is my only hope. You’re done now, so you can step out.”

Paul walked out, seeing his field of vision go with him, which he measured at about a meter or so in range. He concentrated, trying to get it to shut off, and succeeded on the third attempt, then he turned it on and off several times until he’d gotten the feel for it.

“Are you alright?” the tech asked.

“Bit of a headache…and head rush. These new perceptions are intense.”

“You’ll adjust…what are you smiling at?”

“Nothing,” Paul said, forcing the expression off his face. “Thanks a million.”

“If you feel like sharing with the rest of us let me know,” the tech said, trying one more time.

“We’ll see,” Paul said as he walked out. There wasn’t anyone else standing in line, which gave him a few meters of clear space where the tech couldn’t see his face and Paul let his unguarded smile return.

Now…a Jedi you will become, he said mentally in Yoda’s voice. And a powerful Jedi you will be.

7

April 2, 2410

Solar System

Earth

Paul raced across the obstacle course, stinger rifle in hand, and ducked down behind a low barricade just as a flurry of shots passed through where his head had just been. He ‘heard’ a telepathic signal in his head, a sort of sound/image that the Archons had developed as copies of their hand signals, with this one meaning to stay down…followed immediately by the wait command.

Paul did as instructed and stayed hunkered down behind the wall as he heard more whiffs of stingers being fired elsewhere on the course. He couldn’t see much beyond the floor in front of him and the wall to his left, so he flipped on his Pefbar and immediately got an image of what was on the other side of the wall, including the turret that had been firing at him. He saw its barrels rotate around and away from him, quickly followed by him receiving a telepathic ‘go’ command.

The trailblazer rose up on a knee and spun, bringing his rifle around and disconnecting his Pefbar as soon as his regular vision crossed the contact…then he reached out and felt for a presence in the turret, finding the mechanical version of a ‘mind’ inside the device. He mentally latched onto it and concentrated hard as the barrels fired a few shots off to the side then began to track back around towards him.

Summoning what felt like all his mental strength he used his limited Fornax ability and sent a disruption beam into the turret, specifically targeting it and not generating an omnidirectional field. The mechanism in the turret registered the telepathic white noise effect and deemed it to be above the threshold limit…which triggered the targeting sphere to quickly rise up out of the top of the turret for a few seconds of vulnerability.

Paul peppered it with green paint splatters then duck-rolled to his right, coming back up just in time to hit it with two more before the target sphere retracted. With enough stun energy delivered to the target it ceased firing, though no other visual sign was given that it was deactivated. The target sphere retracted and the turret remained silent, prompting Paul to launch himself over the barrier and run up towards a vertical pylon just on the other side of the turret where he began climbing a ladder built into the side one handed, as he still held his rifle but without any armor or strapped rack to attach it to for carrying purposes.

Knowing that the turret behind him would eventually reactivate Paul moved quickly, but hesitated when he got to the top.

Clear? he asked Angel-676 telepathically, focusing specifically on her mental location. Like his Pefbar ability, he could sense minds in all directions simultaneously. Some appeared like stars, tiny pricks on the horizon, while others stood out much larger, despite their varying distances. The tiny ones were the telepathically active machines, while the other Archons in this challenge were the larger signatures.

He got the ‘hand signal’ version of ‘clear’ coming back rather than the word, which they’d learned to use to differentiate between saying it was clear and asking if it was clear. Paul’s transmission ability had progressed to the point where he could articulate words, but signaling to an individual person was still tricky and required him to stop and concentrate to do it.

Fortunately one didn’t require any Ikrid ability at all to receive signals, so while he popped up over the top of the ladder and began crawling across the raised platform that led to a suspension bridge he heard Angel’s telepathic warning loud and clear.

New target on the ceiling…move Paul!

Trusting her he launched himself across the bridge at a run, only sensing the new pinprick above him as he hit the halfway point. He didn’t bother trying to knock it out with a Fornax beam, because there was no way he was going to be able to hit it with his rifle over his head on the run before it nailed him…so he just tried to outrun the stingers that began falling around him.

Had this been one of the old school turrets he would have made it across…but the newer versions had been improved with greater rotational and tracking speed to counter for the Archons’ growing agility, and despite his official level being only an acolyte, his physical skills were still ranger level and the difficulty of the turrets had been adjusted to match.

He got clipped in the right foot and left calf as he got to the other side, tripping him up and sending him face first down to the planks that made up the bridge, but he managed to curl up into enough of a ball to roll forward and into cover on the other side…though his rifle didn’t make it with him. He dropped it mid fall, and as his recent luck held, it careened over the side and off the bridge.

“Damn it,” he said, pulling his numb legs further behind cover as he concentrated and found Angel’s mind up in the observation nook on the far end of the course. I’m down and I lost my rifle. Leg hits.

How fast can you crawl?

Are we that close?

Frank is almost there. If you can open up the turrets from range we can still do this.

Guide me, Paul insisted. He didn’t see how this was going to work, but she had a better view of the situation than he did.

Zigzag left. Stop at square.

Paul crawled further away from the bridge on his elbows, getting some use out of his half numb knees in the process as he ducked down a side hallway in the tree house-like enclosure he was in. Like Angel said there was a zigzag-shaped hallway that exited into a square intersection that had two possible choices. When Paul got to it he signaled his readiness and waited.

Go right and tell me if you’re in range of the turret.

Paul did as instructed and dragged himself through another hallway and up to a corner but sensed a turret nearby so he didn’t duck his head out, though the corner of the hallway junction had the nook of the outer wall missing, exposing it to the course exterior, offering an opportunity to shoot out…or in.

I think I can get it, Paul told her. His Fornax range wasn’t great, but when used in beam mode he had extra juice to work with and fortunately the target wasn’t moving, otherwise it would have been another story entirely.

Paul received the shorthand ‘standby’ signal and he kept hunkered up near the inner corner of the 90 degree turn, but far enough back inside the hallway to keep out of view of what other turrets might be operational outside. Each time the Archons ran the course their locations would alter, not allowing them to trust their memory and forcing them to stay on their toes each time they attempted the challenge.

Paul felt Angel’s ‘go’ command and he concentrated again, sending a Fornax burst along the tight beam trajectory to the target. Though Paul couldn’t see or feel it, the disruptive telepathic energy washed over the receiver in the turret around the corner like water from a squirt gun, save for it passed through the target and out the other side, diminished only by the amount that soaked into the receiver.

The rest continued on, spreading out as it went and dissipating. According to the V’kit’no’sat database this was a simplistic use of the ability, but what Paul thought of as ‘second level’ because it required coordination with his Ikrid to feel out the targets…not to mention learning how to produce the white noise in a straight line rather than ‘shouting’ it in all directions.

Still, he knew there was a way to disable a target directly, without having to ‘beam’ it…which meant if another person got in the line of the beam they’d be hit too, whether on this side of the target or the other. The dynamics of that still perplexed him, because he was thinking of energy transfer like a laser…but there was some way to ‘hack’ into the target and deliver the Fornax to a single point. It required Ikrid, he knew, but beyond that the explanation of the dynamics was still beyond him and his vocabulary…of which Kara had been no help, because there weren’t English translations for much of the ‘mental’ terminology that the Archons were having to discover through their training.

Paul’s best guess was that there was a binary nature to the Fornax, and that two ‘strands’ had to overlap at a certain point in order to take effect…but in truth that was just a stand-in explanation for Paul’s head to wrap around until he figured out the truth. It worked, somehow, and Paul seemed to automatically go to naval metaphors whenever he needed an explanation for something, hence the binary, which was the way several weapon systems worked in the V’kit’no’sat archives. They didn’t use them, but several of the races they’d defeated had, being able to target one building through another for demolition and other more interesting applications…some of which were downright grotesque.

As bad as the V’kit’no’sat were, their purges of sufficiently advanced races in the galaxy had the side effect of cleaning up some of the other nasties out there.

You’re clear, Angel told him, up to the platform.

Paul crawled around the corner, acknowledging her with a simple telepathic ping in their shorthand meaning ‘copy’ as he saw the turret set in the middle of a little roofed cupola with its target sphere coated in green paint. He hadn’t heard the shots, but judging from the angle they must have come from one of the other Archons in play that had a sniper rifle. There were six of them in total, plus Angel working as coordinator. She had no weapon and couldn’t move from her observation spot, per the rules of the challenge, but could use her telepathy to aid them as much as possible.

The other Archons weren’t trailblazers, but they were the more advanced psionic acolytes remaining in the pyramid, acting both as trainers and trailblazers of their own as they pushed the boundaries of their abilities and logged their progress for others to follow. The trailblazers, meanwhile, continued their training in the field as they attended to war duties that were growing by the year as both fronts began to expand, leaving other Archons with more and more significant duties…things that otherwise the trailblazers would never have let them take the lead on, but given current circumstances that had changed drastically.

War aside, many of the second geners were as skilled or more skilled in the psionics than the trailblazers…though Paul’s class was catching up, despite their field training disadvantages. That said, Paul was helping the group here advance as much as they could, and they were returning the gesture, helping him catch up where they had the lead. His ranger-level physical skills surpassed theirs, and their psionics in turn surpassed his, making challenges like this tricky to execute, but advantageous if they could organize properly.

And organizing properly was one of the Archons’ greatest skills…even if they had to do it improv.

Paul knew the turret would come back online soon, and with a random downtime so they couldn’t know for sure exactly when, so he crawled as quick as he could, keeping below the low fence-like walls of the cupola that the turret stood within and around its base…then off the opposite side and into a short hallway, hoping that he wasn’t going to get shot in the butt on the way.

He pulled off around a corner before that happened, thankfully, and had a few meters of hallway to work with before it opened up onto a platform half the size of a volleyball court…underneath which he could feel two more turrets down at an angle.

I’m here.

Stay put, the platform is guarded. What can you hit from there?

Paul concentrated again, sensing a third turret up high on the ceiling. Three. Two low, one high…but they’re at range. 50/50 on reaching threshold.

Dual strike, she suggested. Lower right from your position on my mark.

Paul sent the ‘copy’ signal and waited, keeping his mental lock on the contact and excluding all else from his mind. Some 20 seconds later the ‘go’ signal popped into his mind and he beamed as much Fornax energy as he could down through the platform floor towards the target, knowing that it was going to mushroom out trying to go that far away, not to mention that passing through matter scattered it a touch as well.

Meanwhile, Kanse-449 sent his own disruption beam at the same target from an even greater range. Combined they overwhelmed the threshold on the receiver and the turret’s target sphere raised…then was hit by a sniper from even further away, enabling a closer Archon to move up and duck behind cover as the other lower turret peppered his steps with blue paint splats.

Paul couldn’t see any of it, aside from the mental image of the Archon running forward once he stopped concentrating on the individual turret. He waited for Angel’s next signal, not wanting to bombard her with questions while she was talking to the others…that would work almost as well as white noise, as they’d learned from previous challenges, so he knew they had to keep communication to a minimum and let her decide when to make contact…that was her part in the challenge, which worked to train her communications skills in an improvised setting.

Paul waited what felt like a long time then finally couldn’t stand just sitting still while the pins and needles began to work up his legs. Status?

Almost there. Stay put.

Paul sighed, glad that they were making progress but not liking to be kept in the dark. Half of the Archons were visible in mind’s eye, but the others had moved off far enough to escape his tracking ability…or more accurately, his tracking radius had begun shrinking with fatigue. At the outset he’d been able to sense nearly the entire course, now he was down to about a third of it.

A few moments later the course was bathed in blue finish light as a challenge-end klaxon blared once, indicating that they’d won. A few seconds later Victor-773’s hands appeared on the edge of the platform, then the Archon pulled himself up on top and walked over to Paul.

“Need a hand?”

“Legs, actually,” he said, letting the Archon pull him up onto his feet and dip a shoulder underneath his arm, allowing Paul to wobbily stand.

“One more down,” Victor said as he helped Paul waddle across the platform, referring to the new challenges that kept popping up seemingly every week, of which the super hard ones were being given to Paul and the other higher level Archons to work on. Their success/failures would then be analyzed by other Archons/trainers and the challenges would be tweaked, eventually getting them to the ‘standardization’ point, which would result in them being officially sanctioned and sent out to the other sanctums across Star Force territory for them to add to their training regimens.

“My range still sucks,” Paul said as they neared the edge. “And it shrinks faster than I’d like.”

“You’ll get there,” Victor assured him, setting his feet and acting as a living rope as Paul stepped off the edge and climbed down his arm until their hands latched, then Victor knelt down, eventually dropping to his belly and lowering Paul over the side as far as he could before releasing his hand.

Paul dropped the last few inches, knowing his legs were going to give out, so he made his landing as elegant as possible, dropping into a roll that left him standing on his knees below as Victor swung over the side and dropped down beside him.

“Me…it’s going to take me decades to get as fast as you are. No way any of us could have made it across that gap. Your turret settings are insane.”

“Morgan’s are insane,” Paul corrected him. “Mine are just hard,” he said as Angel came towards them from somewhere on the course carrying a vial of destun serum.

“Thank you,” Paul said, telekinetically grabbing it as she tossed it into the air in front of him. It took a moment to slow its momentum, but he landed it in his hand deftly enough then jabbed it into his neck, feeling a wave of cool relief pass through his body, swiping away the bit of dizziness in his head, arms, and chest, then eating through the roadblocks in his legs, taking with it most of the uncomfortable pins and needles gathering there.

He gave it a couple of seconds to work its magic then he stood up, nodding to Angel. “Nice work up there.”

“Yes, very,” Victor added.

“Team effort,” she deflected. “They’re not making it easy on us, though.”

“Easy isn’t the point,” Paul reminded her.

“Duh,” she said sarcastically. “What I meant was these co-op challenges are getting more complicated. Clones of me couldn’t have done this together, nor could clones of you,” she said, gently putting her finger in his chest. “It’s taking different skill levels combined to complete these, and that’s something we haven’t worked on before.”

“Half right,” Paul offered her. “We have, but in the past we didn’t have such varied skills to work with. Ten years from now, when more of us get caught up, you’ll see the disparities disappear…somewhat. If some of us really pull ahead in one area, then we might be getting more varied challenges. I can promise you we won’t be doing that, but I wouldn’t put it past some of the others.”

“Meaning you’ll stay balanced?” Victor asked, knowing by ‘us’ he meant the trailblazers.

“Only way to get our ranger ranks back,” Paul said, seeing the other Archons approaching from various points on the rather large training course. “Plus we don’t like having weak areas.”

“I’ve seen your swimming scores,” Angel said with a smirk.

“Which I continue to work on,” Paul reminded her with a bit of wounded pride, though not much. With Ariel’s help he’d made up some ground on the others, though he still hated going underwater without breathing gear. “But I can see some of you guys focusing on one skill almost exclusively just so you can show off.”

“Us…show off?” Victor asked mock wounded. “Perish the thought.”

“Can’t level up our ranks that way either,” Angel said, reminding him that they weren’t that different…which Paul already knew, though he still liked to mess with their heads a bit from time to time.

“We going again?” Riona asked, walking up behind Paul and stopping just off his shoulder. “Or moving on to the next one?”

“Next one,” Paul said, knowing that meant they had to switch rooms. “Unless you guys are too low on brain juice?”

“I think we’re fine,” Angel said, suppressing a smile. “Are you good to go?”

“I’ll manage,” Paul said, realizing he’d walked into that one. He was still low man on the psionic totem pole in this group. “Let me find my rifle, then we’ll head over to the poppers.”

“Lovely,” Victor said with a cringe.

“That’s the spirit, newb,” Paul said, clapping him on the shoulder before he walked off back towards the underside of the suspension bridge.

8

July 12, 2410

Solar System

Earth

Paul blew out a slow breath and pressed his left hand against the synthetic material of the measurement wall in front of him. He felt out the contact point and kept his mental handprint focused in his senses as he increased his internal body temperature. His entire physical structure began to run hot, then he began shifting the excess heat into his core and out through his arm to his hand in a process he still didn’t fully understand.

It had been explained as increased control over his body’s internal functions, but he knew from a physics standpoint that something had to be either pushing or drawing the heat out of his tissue in order for it to move away from equilibrium. He also knew that his body couldn’t take too much of a temperature increase, so he tried to focus it to only a few degrees higher than normal, then drag it down to his arm where it began to build up to uncomfortably hot levels as he held most of it inside and away from his skin to keep from dissipating it into his clothes and the air.

That amount of control intrigued him, and while his mind couldn’t academically explain how it was happening he was learning to do it by feel alone…as well as knowing he was going to royally cook himself if he didn’t stop soon.

But he didn’t. He kept the heat building and flowing down into his arm, pulling it away from the vital areas of his body down into that one extremity, then before he could burn his hand again…as he’d done a month ago…he channeled the heat through his palm and into the material of the wall in front of him, feeling it drain out and open up room for him to move more heat out from his core.

Now was the tricky part. He needed to heat the wall past a required point, which was well above the boiling point of water. Doing that would burn his hand again, but whatever part of his body allowed him to move the heat around internally also acted as a blowback shield…if he did it right. There were no useful instructions on how to do that, which left Paul having to figure it out through trial and lots of errors, though some of the other Archons had tried to give him a few tips.

Today, though, was going to be one of his successes. While he couldn’t store a massive amount of heat inside his body, including his hand, he could create a continual flow of it, which was now pooling in the wall directly beneath his hand. He could feel it there, but for some reason it wasn’t burning him, almost as if he had a one-way force field covering his palm that allowed the heat out but not back in…yet it allowed him to sense how much heat was there.

Some of the other Archons had been investigating this phenomena as well, but their sifting through the V’kit’no’sat database ran into the same problems his had…a lot of vocabulary they didn’t understand, and Kara was no longer around to translate. However they were doing it, they were able to shield themselves from the heat coming back into their body, and both Paul and the others knew that if they could do that in their hands, then it might be possible to do that over their entire bodies and give themselves some level of immunity to high heat situations…or at least a little bit of air conditioning on hot days.

Right now Paul was just focused on this test which, if passed, would rank him up again, given that he had the other 5 psionics areas already sufficiently advanced to reach level 11 acolyte, with the Sesspik healing trace something that they’d chosen not to measure, given that it would require an injury to test.

The wall in front of his hand didn’t glow, but he could feel the heat building on the other side of his palm as he channeled more and more of it from his core, out through his arm, and past the barrier on his palm, reducing his internal temperature…which then required him to create more heat, and at a rate that would be sufficient to affect the wall, for every bit he put into it, it was also bleeding off into the surrounding material and air.

It was a race of dissipation, with Paul barely winning out. In the computer monitoring program the degrees in the wall continually and slowly ticked up, though there was no hologram for Paul to monitor it with. He was completely on his own, and had to guess how close he was coming based on the ‘feel’ through his magical barrier…which was very tenuous at this point, so he just kept creating and pumping heat into the wall and hoping it would be enough.

His concentration slipped twice, with a hot spot quickly forming on his index finger the first time, then his thumb the next. He got the barrier back into place almost immediately, but he knew he’d have a couple of burn marks afterwards. Cursing himself for his lapse, he concentrated as hard as he could without shaking himself and kept at it…eventually reaching the 110C/230F mark that resulted in a completion tone.

Paul pulled his hand off immediately and vented the remaining excess heat out of his body like releasing the air from a balloon. The internal constrictions he’d been using to contain and move it where he wanted disappeared and the heat flushed out to his skin and began to vent in the air…along with beads of sweat breaking out across his body. Oddly enough, his natural cooling mechanism had been deactivated somehow in the heat redistribution effort, but now that he’d released it his internal thermostat had reverted back to normal function.

Paul swiped his forehead with his right hand as he examined his left, seeing the two red marks from where the heat had bled back onto his skin. He held still and closed his eyes, ignoring the statistics popping up on the console and taking the opportunity to practice his healing trance as well as wanting to get rid of the annoying pain. It wasn’t much, but the sting was annoying.

In mind’s eye he deactivated his hand, locking it up rigidly in its current posture and essentially putting it into hibernation as he mentally forced a calm energy into it, or at least that’s what it felt like. The database said it wasn’t a type of energy, but rather an excited state being induced in the cells, causing the tissue to regenerate faster than normal. Paul could partially understand that, but it still felt like an energy surge, and he wasn’t going to completely discount his senses in favor of the V’kit’no’sat notes.

“That puts you where?” Ben-5449 asked as he entered the small training chamber.

“Level 11,” Paul said, feeling the first few whisks of cool air on his neck as his heat plume finally dissipated. He held his hand still in front of him but turned his head to face the other Archon.

“In what…a year?”

“8 months,” Paul corrected him, still holding his localized Sesspik trance. For that psionic, at least, failure in Rensiek provided extra training opportunities, painful as they were.

“You hurt your hand?”

“A couple of small spots. Just trying to get a head start on the healing process. A couple of minutes and I should be good for the rest of the day.”

“Can you do that walking?”

“So long as it’s just my hand, yes,” Paul said, thinking. “If I don’t bounce too much.”

“Message came through for you. Some guy named Tennisonne wanted to see you as soon as possible. I didn’t want to bother you with it until you’d finished.”

“Thanks,” Paul said, stepping back from the now cool wall thanks to the internal heat sinks that had activated as soon as the test was complete. “All yours.”

“Appreciated,” Ben said, toggling the control panel and dismissing Paul’s completion emblems, then selecting the parameters for his own training/testing session.

Paul walked out, keeping his hand fairly rigid and energized, and made his way out of the training sanctum. He paused for a minute or so next to the mongooses outside, then deemed his hand pain-free enough to grab the handle bars, deciding he’d finish healing the damage later when he took a nap.

Paul drove across the command deck and down the ramps, moving lower in the pyramid until he came to the Oso’lon section. Inside those large rooms he found another mini Star Force cityscape that held a local research and development facility where the upper level techs were continuously working to crack the secrets of V’kit’no’sat technology.

Paul wove his way around several of the buildings until he came to a smaller complex and parked outside next to three larger mongooses designed to carry four passengers. He went inside and grabbed an elevator up to the 15th level where one of the small scale fabrication labs was located.

“Mr. Stark,” Paul said loudly as he walked in on Tennisonne with his head buried in the side of a mechanical monstrosity, “what have you for me today?”

The man wearing a dark green uniform with 5 gold stripes running down the sides pulled back out and stood up, frowning in Paul’s direction. “Grand Admiral Thrawn…nice of you to finally show up.”

Paul returned his frown. “Don’t call me that.”

“Don’t call me Stark,” Tennisonne countered.

“Stark is cool,” Paul argued, walking over to the man and having to navigate his way around equipment trays and other random projects to get there.

“And he has toys compared to what we’re working with,” the master tech said, pointing across the room to a small booth. “I need you to try the mental interface again. I think I’ve got the feedback connection powerful enough this time.”

Without a word Paul walked over to the booth that was a compact version of the command nexus the Archons used to control their fleets and organize ground battles from afar. There was a control pedestal, as usual, but the walls were so close it almost felt claustrophobic…or would have if the back side hadn’t been cut out, though once he stood inside his peripheral vision didn’t extend far enough back to notice the gap, making it appear that he was inside a vertical tube.

In addition to the usual control board there was a central sphere sticking out a foot or so above the board and recessed into the wall to keep it out of the way. Paul pulled it out, bringing it to chest level in front of him, and placed his hands on it.

“Ready.”

“Just a sec,” Tennisonne said, walking around the backside of the chamber and fiddling with something. “Ok, give it a try.”

Paul closed his eyes for a moment, finding the telepathic receiver in the sphere and extending his Ikrid energy into it remotely, just as he’d done a week ago, making a mental link with the device.

“Anything?” Tennisonne asked.

“Just a connective tone…no sequence,” Paul said, ‘listening’ with his mind.

“Well…I didn’t think that would work anyway. Give the tactile interface a go.”

Paul severed his mental connection with the receiver and shunted his Ikrid over to physical ‘hacking’ that used his nervous system as a conduit for the Ikrid energy, increasing the efficiency dramatically. The material of the sphere had been designed to allow the energy to pass to the receiver in the center, similar to how another person’s nervous system allowed the physical transfer to the mind via touch, establishing a bridge between the two while bypassing the ‘wireless’ linkage that had been disabled for all Zen’zat.

The type of interface that Paul was attempting required 2-way communication to access information, and with all Zen’zat configured to only be able to transmit information at will an individual could receive all kinds of external control influences, but the return part of the neurological ‘handshake’ would never return, thus blocking the connection. If you couldn’t link with the target all you could do was blindly transmit, which in the case of a message was all you needed. If you wanted to remote control someone’s mind or dig into their memories for information that wasn’t possible with Zen’zat, save for physical contact…which then bypassed the transmission blockage due to the fact that the person’s own nervous system was being used to get in through the ‘backdoor,’ so to speak.

The sphere in front of Paul was supposed to operate the same way, allowing him to link with the receiver to not only send signals but get return information.

“2…3…1…1…5…4…2..3…”Paul said, counting the beats in his mind.

“Good, good…” Tennisonne said distractedly from wherever he was working on the opposite side of the curved wall in front of Paul. “Here we go, switching to full access.”

Suddenly Paul’s head froze up with shock…but it quickly bled off as the information coming in began to process. It was all scattered at first, like watching a video screen that was malfunctioning, but his mind started to pull bits and pieces of it apart and he could sense certain areas as being distinct from the others.

“Well?”

“I’ve got something. What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Power up the screen, Admiral,” Tennisonne said sarcastically.

Paul frowned, then reached over with one hand and turned on the hologram, with the walls around him disappearing as they were replaced by status displays and charts. As soon as they did the information in his mind seemed to process, and he could feel icons for many of the things he was seeing, as if the telepathic signals were overlapping with the visual ones.

“Much better,” Paul said, ignoring the tech’s jibe.

“Do you see the program?”

Paul looked around a bit, then saw the start function directly in front of him…with four options.

“What do you want me to run first?”

“Doesn’t matter, just pick one.”

There were four labeled icons…A, B, C, D in front of him, so Paul mentally reached for ‘C’ and, to his surprise, was able to press the telepathic button, despite the fact that he didn’t know what it was that he was really doing.

“Eureka!” Tennisonne said. “There’s four months of hard work being put to use. Keep running with it as much as you can. I’ve got a diagnostics program measuring your interface, so even if you screw up it’ll be beneficial.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Paul said as a tactical program popped up. It was a watered down version of a videogame, with icons for mechs and vehicles of Star Force make aligned against a similar force of Nestafar units…and they began engaging each other without Paul’s prompting.

He concentrated, highlighting a single mech in his mind and feeling three ‘growths’ appear, as well as seeing three new options pop up holographically over that mech. He ‘touched’ one of them, with another branch of four options appearing. When he mentally chose one of those the branches disappeared and the mech in question veered off from its current target and began tracking the strongest one.

“Not bad,” Tennisonne commented. “Thought you’d have more trouble than this. Have you mentally selected targets before?”

“I’ve tracked the turrets, but never had to interface with them.”

“How are you pushing the buttons?”

“Um…not quite sure. If they were a box, I’d be shaking it every which way until it did something.”

“Randomized action then,” Tennisonne said thoughtfully. “Good thing I went with isolated commands. Binary would probably have been too hard.”

“Binary?” Paul said, moving another mech around on the map, this time to a specific point he highlighted, mentally dragging a ‘mouse’ icon to the spot he wanted and ‘clicking’ it.

“On and off. Right now you’re just hitting a button. The receiver can read different signals, so I can set up an ‘on’ switch and an ‘off’ for lots of things. Pushing ‘on’ twice won’t turn it off like it does now, because all your options are one command, like a handheld controller with only one button to press.”

“I get it, I’m just glad I can finally press a button.”

“Well, the mechanics of it aren’t that complicated, but our fabrication techniques for some of the components are still crude. This should have worked last time, but there were some impurities that I had to refine out. The Nerantium is tricky to work with. It wants to pick up hitchhiker molecules whenever possible. I’ve got it coated in a sleeve of aluminum now, but we’re going to have to redesign the manufacturing process. I can’t be manually refining each piece coming through because of sloppy processing.”

“What do you need?”

“The V’kit’no’sat processors,” he said scornfully. “I know the reason we’re not using them, and I agree with you, but it’s times like this that are damn frustrating.”

“I’ve heard similar complaints from some of the Archons, wondering why we don’t use the Zen’zat weapons or armor. Bottom line is, if we can’t produce new ones, we’re not going to get hooked on using them.”

Tennisonne nodded, knowing that both men were on the same page. “What I really need is a slew of new fabrication equipment, but I don’t have the time to design them with my current projects. We just don’t have enough level 5 engineers, to be frank. We’re rarer than you Archons, come to think of it.”

“Mild offense taken,” Paul said, still practicing the telepathic control interface. “Not all Archons are the same. We’ve got our newbs too.”

“Maybe that wasn’t a fair metaphor,” Tennisonne said, still on the opposite side of the chamber working his analysis equipment, “but we need more hands. Assistants can only do so much when they don’t understand the underlying physics. I know far more about V’kit’no’sat tech than it looks, I just can’t build it all from scratch fast enough. You’ve got the same problem with the military, I can imagine. Not enough trailblazers to go around leading war fleets?”

“So what do we do about it?” Paul asked him.

Tennisonne sighed. “Nose to the grindstone and work the problem. Like always.”

“At least we’re of the same mind there...what are these other programs?”

“Different applications of the interface. I need you to go through them all.”

“This is getting easy. You might want to go ahead and work up a binary.”

“Have it for you by the end of the week,” Tennisonne promised.

9

November 22, 2410

Solar System

Earth

Paul pushed his complaining quads a bit further, coming to the second to last lap on the training track within the sanctum. His holographic marking ball was getting ahead of him, but he’d managed to keep within a couple meters of it and now he was within half a mile of the finish, nearing a new personal record at the 5k distance and another tick up the speed charts…so long as he didn’t let it slip this lap. He knew he’d have at least a little kick at the end, which meant this lap was the key lap, so he squeezed just a bit more energy out of his legs and aching chest, ignoring what it would do to him on the last lap if he held the effort that long.

The trailblazer knew all he had to do was focus on the pacing marker, but over the next 100 meters it inexplicably inched out even further ahead of him, despite the increase in speed he’d already made…or rather thought he’d made. Coming into the backstretch he accelerated up into a low sprint and ate up a meter of the four he was behind, regretting it instantly as his already aching quads tripled in complaint. He felt his form starting to swim but held the effort, eating up another half meter by the 200 mark and feeling his tank emptying, but if he could only keep it close he’d have a shot at the end.

The next 100 meters was a wash, keeping him 2.5 meters back of the glowing marker running ahead of him. Had it not been for the tracker there was no way he could have hoped to have gone this fast, and it was one of the more important, yet underrated pieces of technology in the sanctum, in that it allowed the Archons and other Star Force personnel to really work themselves into collapse so long as they could stubbornly stay with it.

Paul inched up his effort again once he hit the straightaway, but the marker pulled back out ahead and he crossed the finish line with one lap to go being 3 meters back, at which point he pushed beyond all sanity, knowing with his legs being as wobbly as they were he couldn’t wait for the last 100. With his subconscious mind knowing he wouldn’t have to be retracing his steps again on the 400 meter track, it loosened up what was left of his energy reserves and he began closing in on the marker, eating up a full meter over the next 100 and pulling almost even with 200 to go.

At that point he knew he had it, but he couldn’t mentally relax otherwise he’d fall back a bit. With his steps pounding a bit as his form suffered, he started stepping ahead and through the holographic marker.

When he hit the final straight his form returned just a touch as he stretched out his legs, no longer having to hold the tilt in the turn, and the marker disappeared behind him as he accelerated up into as much of a full sprint as he could manage, gaining another 2 meters of distance on the marker over the final stretch.

Paul coasted to a stop past the finish line, staying on his feet even though his legs were thoroughly gassed and he was feeling the downside of an ambrosia deficiency. He didn’t need to look at the clock, knowing that he’d breached a significant milestone just by beating the marker to the line. The other Archons who’d respectfully cleared out of lane 1 when he passed them by knew he was flying, but they didn’t understand how fast or how far he’d gone until they saw the clock, with jaws dropping in sequence as they worked their way around the track and found his finish time alongside the dozen others still counting on the virtual display board on the inside of the track.

“Damn, Paul,” Addison-673 said as she ran by.

Paul raised a hand to acknowledge her, but was too busy breathing to mouth a reply.

What was your time? another Archon telepathically asked from across the track.

Paul didn’t recognize the ‘voice,’ nor could he tell who the guy was who’d asked out of the group on the backstretch, but he did have the mental signature locked so he sent a quick reply on what he thought of as a ‘tight beam’ transmission.

10:59.22

Where’s that put you?

9th.

And what, a minute ahead of the World Record? Nice work.

Paul didn’t respond, but did see that Mathis-831 was the person on the other end of the telepathic connection as he and a group of four others rounded the turn onto the straightaway in 1x2x2 formation as they chased a much slower moving pacing sphere. His comment about the World Record was a joke, given that it was officially 12:14.83. Star Force personnel had been banned from record setting privileges and professional competition because they wouldn’t comply with anti-doping regulations that had grown to the point where the sports acted as if they owned the athletes…requiring daily testing along with a controlled travel schedule, all in the name of ‘fair play.’

That wasn’t going to fly with the Archons at all, let alone the rest of Star Force. While the corporation had grown to immense size and scope, there were still detractors trying to stick it to them relentlessly and sports had been a familiar avenue of attack. Many of the nutritional enhancements that Star Force used had been labeled as ‘performance enhancing drugs’ and therefore banned, not including the ambrosia, which no one could get their hands on to analyze anyway, though they’d tried by bullying non-Archon Star Force personnel into blood tests to try and see what it was that they were ingesting.

The few times they’d succeeded and caught some of the weaker minded individuals off guard at casual competitions had resulted in Blue Team raids to recover the samples, after which Star Force instituted a ‘no testing’ policy that flew directly in the face of the various sports organizations and tournaments, including the Olympics and System Games.

Paul found it laughable how a bunch of administrative know-nothings sitting on some panel thought they got to decide what substances were ‘fair’ and what were ‘cheating.’ After all, calling something ‘performance enhancing’ was akin to saying ‘duh’ as far as sports were concerned. Enhancing your performance was the point of training, so if there was some supplement you were taking to give your body a boost, how in the galaxy was that cheating?

Cheating was cutting the course or interfering with an opponent, not eating certain foods and boosting levels of chemicals that your body already produced. The drug nazis had existed all the way back when Paul was in high school and unfortunately had only gotten worse, with the officials jerking the athletes’ chains around, telling them what was and wasn’t acceptable to the point of stupidity.

During high school Paul had looked up the definition of ‘drug’ in the dictionary after reading the list of substances that were not permitted in Indiana high school sports, and he was galled to find that it was a joke of a definition.

Drug: A substance that has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body.

He immediately pointed out the hypocrisy to his coach, saying that included everything, including food, water, and even oxygen. His coach disagreed and gave him a speech full of nonsense, supporting the ban on performance enhancing drugs, with the only bit of coherency in it all being the idea of protecting the athletes from overdoses that could kill them.

Paul had followed the rules back then, not wanting to lose his eligibility for competition, but looking back it was painfully obvious that the nonsense definition of a ‘drug’ was simply something the people in control used to exert their influence whenever and wherever they wanted. Gatorade, as Paul had also pointed out to his coach, was a substance ingested with the specific purpose of enhancing your performance…but no, that wasn’t deemed a ‘drug’ despite it fitting the ridiculous definition.

Fortunately, within Star Force they had learned enough about biology to rid themselves of such nonsense. The Knights in particular had been instrumental in that, considering that their size and physiological enhancements were due specifically to a cocktail of V’kit’no’sat drugs that Vermaire had pushed Davis to let him use. Davis, as he’d told Paul at a later date, had been reluctant to do so, but eventually permitted one, then another, and another as the Black Knight successfully showed that they were not only safe, but remarkably beneficial.

After that Star Force’s policy on ‘drugs’ disappeared, as did the term in their dictionary, though it still stuck in the living language. Medical staff used more specific terms, like supplement, additive, chemical, etc while some of the backwards populations on Earth and elsewhere still clung to the nonsense of ‘performance enhancing drugs,’ acting as if they were magic pills that gave you superpowers and thus an unfair advantage.

Knowing something about superpowers, Paul was continually disgusted with occasional news reports coming from the Pro Track circuit on Earth. In truth it had become a bastion of defiance against Star Force, despite the laughable performances, with supporters making it financially viable despite the fact that Star Force’s colonies had a much larger circuit that held superior competition…as well as older individuals. The Earth track circuit, along with many other sports, had instituted a 50 year age limit to competition, deeming that if you were viable after that point it could only be the result of illegal enhancements.

Stupidity, Paul had learned over the centuries, was something you could never completely stamp out. It grew like weeds, and some people, no matter how much you taught them, were always going to be dumber than a box of rocks…and for some reason they liked it that way, which was the real problem.

Star Force had taught the populace so many things that there had been a substantial shift in culture back in the 2100s, with a divide forming between those who held to tradition for tradition’s sake and those who wanted to learn and improve. That rift was still present, but barely a shadow of its former self as new generations were born into a ‘world’ where 200 year old individuals were common and a host of other new things were present in society to combat the stupid traditions. Children grew up processing the reality of the world around them despite the competing influence of traditions…all the while the stupid adults eventually died out.

There was still a sliver that tried to isolate themselves from reality in order to preserve their traditions, and unfortunately Earth’s sports federations had fallen into that category, claiming to be the only bastions of ‘clean’ competition and preaching to those who wanted to find an axe to grind against Star Force.

As such, they’d become sort of a philosophical enemy of the Archons who, if they chose, could have wiped the floor in every sports competition in existence with little effort…and there were many ‘regulars’ within Star Force’s ranks who could do the same, not to mention colonists who’d achieved self-sufficiency and grown to impressive skill levels, of which many competed in Star Force’s sports leagues and tournaments.

On occasion an Archon would step out of a sanctum and into one of the competitions, just to give the public an idea of what they were capable of or to give the dominant players a greater challenge. Most of them relished the challenge of getting to face an Archon, and the viewer numbers for those competitions skyrocketed, far higher than the Olympics or System Games had ever managed.

Paul had only done so twice, both times of which had been running, and like today he hadn’t prepped as he once had back in high school, which normally would have required at least 1 easy or rest day before competition. Archons didn’t take easy days, for they didn’t want to lose their streak of workouts, so Paul’s drops into the public competitions had always carried with them a level of fatigue, as had this 5k attempt. He knew he could go faster rested, but that wasn’t the point…improving was, and the quickest way to improve was to keep the workouts flowing.

He didn’t usually go for a personal record in his runs, so today was a bit of a special challenge. Getting under 11:00 had been his goal, and it was a full 18 second improvement over his previous best. It also pushed his prerequisite score for that piece of his overall level up to ranger 94, but then again he’d always been stronger in running than other areas, and it was the overall completion that tallied their ranks.

Paul walked off the track to clear room for the others and deactivated his time from the display, clearing the space as the others reset to more favorable positions so the active runners could note their progress if they wanted. He got a few other congratulations on his way over to the edge, then he stopped to rest a bit as his legs were thoroughly complaining. That he welcomed, because it would give him another chance to train his Sesspik skill with a long nap, after which he’d head back out for an afternoon training session.

So it was with a happy discomfort that Paul eventually left the track and walked over to the small cafeteria/kitchen in the sanctum and helped himself to a stack of wafers and cookies laden with the ‘performance enhancing drug’ the Archons were infamous for using.

Paul considered that as he ate, recognizing the stupidity of it once again after that remark about beating the World Record. Truth be told, using supplements and chemicals in training was more troublesome than helpful, because the body operated with a delicately controlled internal balance. Injecting additional testosterone, Human growth hormone, or any of the other substances your body already produced would cause an imbalance. Most people, back in the day, had assumed that imbalance would boost your body’s performance…but what it really did was unbalance you, and while you might gain an advantage in one area you’d lose in others, not to mention the advantage gained was usually unstable.

Paul had eventually learned from his own training and discussions with the other Archons, as well as reading the research logs of Wilson and other trainers, that proper supplementation required giving your body what it needed and letting it choose the dosage levels, rather than having some doctor guess as to the proper amounts. If you needed more testosterone, your body would produce more, so give your body the building blocks for the testosterone and let the body build what it needed, in the precise amount, rather than trying to do so ‘manually.’

The ambrosia Paul was busily eating was just that…building blocks for the body to use. The ambrosia itself was fuel, highly compact and refined fuel that the body would happily deconstruct and put to use in other compounds and chemicals it would manufacture internally. Nearly all of Star Force’s supplements, Archon and civilian alike, were based on fuel rather than chemicals, with a few small exceptions, like caffeine. Those supplements would enhance training, and from enhanced training you would gain enhanced ‘performance,’ but if you went with a largely chemical route you’d unbalance yourself to varying degrees, which in the long run would actually cause a decline in performance.

Which was why banning ‘drugs’ was pointless. If they hurt your body’s balance, and therefore caused negative effects, they were a disadvantage…and if in the rare case that didn’t occur, good for you. Improving was the whole point, and if the ‘drugs’ really were helping you to do that then have at it, the faster and stronger a person gets, the better. But what people didn’t see, or maybe they didn’t want to see, was that without proper training, no amount of ‘drugs’ was going to make you fast or strong. All the ‘cheats’ out there were still training their asses off, and that’s what caused them to improve temporarily…before the imbalance caught up with them and they began to decline.

Greg had pointed that out to the Earth sports federations a century ago at their request, and Paul had been impressed with how eloquently he’d laid out the obvious for them. They hadn’t thought the Archons would respond when invited, and had been somewhat dumbfounded when not only had one come, but a trailblazer at that. Still, despite the fact that billions of people had heard that speech, there was a percentage of them that still refused to accept the fact that ‘drugs’ were a myth, and that if you used chemical enhancement there was nothing wrong with that, so long as you didn’t screw with your internal balance, which was almost impossible to do, meaning the ‘dopers’ were essentially cutting their own throats and killing their longevity.

Greg had also pointed out that such foolish attempts yielded competitive results because Earth’s sports federations had such weak competition. He wisely, and boldly, pointed out that, had the few ‘dopers’ that had been caught in the Earth federations been competing in the Star Force leagues they wouldn’t have been able to win anything, because those who had achieved self-sufficiency and trained themselves up to a high level over the decades were beyond their reach. Doping yourself up with chemicals couldn’t compete with years of training and improvement, so if you had a strong field of competition you wouldn’t have ‘dopers’ succeeding in the first place.

The sports summit he’d been invited to had taken a turn downhill after that speech, which Paul found hilarious. Half of the people present or viewing started to voice their doubts in the ‘traditional’ model of drug regulations after that and the traditionalists nearly had a heart attack dealing with the aftermath…of which saw many of the athletes in the Earth federations switch competitive leagues and come over to the Star Force side, taking their fans with them.

As Paul started to feel the ambrosia working its way into his legs and a bit of energy returning he finished off what he guessed would be the appropriate amount of doses, knowing that his body would suck what it needed out of his bloodstream and leave the rest there to sit…and give him a headache if he took too much, but it wouldn’t affect his chemical balance, given that it was fuel, not chemicals that he was ingesting.

He took a moment to reflect on the past few years of psionics development within Star Force, realizing that the desire for chemical enhancement hadn’t really manifested along with these new abilities. That was surprising, really, because the medtechs were always looking for some advantage outside of pure training to offer, and with the brain being thrown into play he’d have guessed they’d come up with…or rather found in the database…many different chemicals that could affect the new tissue growths and how they interacted with the rest of the body.

But rather than suggest the use of injections, the medtechs had simply identified the chemicals that could have an effect on the psionics as a sort of ‘heads up’ to the Archons so that they would be aware of what could happen. That, as far as Paul was concerned, was proof that even their own egg heads had finally accepted the importance of training and letting the body make its own upgrades, rather than manually attempting to do so with chemical or physical augmentations…though the V’kit’no’sat had become skilled in doing just that and Star Force medtechs had always been trying to rise to their level, distant as it was.

“Training rules,” Paul said to the empty room as he snagged a couple of carb-heavy chewy sticks and headed in the direction of his quarters. Impressive as the ambrosia was, it still couldn’t replace food, and that short, but intense run had left him rather hungry.

He finished the forearm-length foodstuffs before he got back, then grabbed a quick shower before settling down on top of his bed in a static pose and trying to kick himself into a healing trance before he nodded off to sleep…getting all of 15 seconds into his rest before his earpiece chirped from the nearby table.

“Uh,” he said, deciding to get it given that he wasn’t that far into the trance. Had it come a minute later he would have just ignored it.

“Yes,” he answered after slipping it on.

“Did you just run a sub 11:00?” a female voice asked.

Paul didn’t recognize it at first, so he touched a small button on the earpiece and a hologram appeared in front of his left eye with the ID of the caller…Jillian-402.

“Surprised?” Paul asked, walking back over to the bed and laying down, starting the Sesspik cycle in his legs.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be,” she rebuked herself. “How tired are you?”

“What’s up?”

“You up for another dunk in the fish tank later?”

“How much later…I’m about to start on a nap.”

“Three hours.”

Paul blinked his eyes, already starting to feel sleepy. That 5k had taken more out of him than even his dead legs had attested. “I can do that if it’s a quick match. I need to get a pretty long training session in this afternoon.”

“After that run?”

“Yes,” he said as if it should have been a no brainer.

“Well, we’re going to be there a while, but it’d help if we could add you to the mix for at least a couple head to heads.”

“A couple it is, minimum,” Paul promised his fellow Saber.

“Thanks. The Ninja Monkeys have gotten a bit cocky since Eran got here, and we need to give them a good smackdown.”

“I’m in…so long as I get the red one.”

“I’ll get there early and save it for you, Speedy,” she said, referring to a particular submersible…the underwater counterpart to the mongoose. “Sleep well.”

“Night,” Paul answered sarcastically, switching off his earpiece so that any incoming calls wouldn’t chirp, then he set his mind into Sesspik mode and got his whole body healing at an accelerated rate, eating into his post-run micro-damage while drawing on the food and ambrosia in his stomach. Best of both worlds.

He let himself drift off, never fully going to sleep as he held the trance, and held it for the better part of an hour before his concentration slipped and he finally nodded off for a good twenty minute powernap.

10

June 29, 2412

Solar System

Earth

The 97th thud shot out from the wall of the chamber from Paul’s left side, visible immediately in his spherical sight, but slowing it before it hit his seated form was difficult. His total ‘pushing’ power was still limited, and his energy reserves were nearing depletion, but he managed to slow and then stop the soft projectile before it could smack into the side of his head.

It came within four inches, then moved back off a ways in Paul’s telekinetic grip before being released and rolling off to the edge of the chamber.

“Three to go…hold it together,” Paul told himself, watching in mind’s eye for the next thud, which was expected sometime within 6-12 seconds. That amount of time wasn’t enough for his mental power reserves to recharge…not even close, but it did give him a moment to refocus between each projectile, making this test about power and endurance, not reaction speed.

A thud shot out from directly in front of him, aimed straight at his nose, but Paul caught it a bit earlier than the last, slowing it to a stop before it could hit him and then dumping it off onto the ground as he felt like he was squeezing the final bits of energy out of his Lachka reserves. This was as far as he’d ever gotten on this test, falling short every previous time as he ran out of energy, but he’d spent the past month focusing heavily on his telekinetic endurance and had thought he was finally ready to knock this one off…but he wasn’t sure how much he had left, if any, so when the next thud came in at the back of his head he cringed, throwing whatever power he had left at it.

The small sphere slowed on a longer deceleration track, ending just two inches shy of the back of his head. Surprised he’d had enough to stop it, he quickly released his hold and let it roll off in order to preserve as much power as possible. He was 1 away now, so he had to concentrate and scrape together whatever he had…and throw it at the thud as soon as possible, because he didn’t think his power level could go quite as high again.

He pushed his Pefbar ability out, concentrating it as much as he could and hoping to eke out a little bit more forewarning. Paul had plenty of energy left there so he didn’t skimp, though he did have to keep himself focused, otherwise his mental fatigue would leave him a little foggy, and that would cost him inches on his reaction speed…which he needed to maximize, given that he was now underpowered.

Paul felt the last one coming from his left, out of a launcher slightly ahead of him. Sensing that, his Lachka energy field concentrated in that area and gripped the little bit of mass flashing out, putting a small, curved wall in front of it as he didn’t even try to suspend it in midair by gripping it. He bled off momentum but his power wasn’t there, as expected, so he went for broke and just pushed as hard as he could.

On instinct he tipped his head back as the thud came in at him…then it stopped an inch from his nose and dropped into his lap, with Paul coughing out a breath of air that he’d been holding tightly. It hadn’t hit him, but he wasn’t sure if it’d passed the halfway point, which also would have disqualified the stop. Regardless, he’d improved considerably, but at the moment he didn’t care. He wanted to know if he’d made it or not.

Paul stood up and turned around…then smiled widely as the stop counter read 100.

“Ow…” Paul said as another thud shot out and hit him in the leg. The sensors registered the impact and stopped the scenario, logging Paul’s 100 mark and flashing a large holographic symbol into the air above the control board, indicating that he’d completed the Lachka test requirement.

A completion tone accompanied the hologram, which lingered there for three seconds before transforming into another symbol with another tone. This one indicated the ballistic Lachka subset had been completed, due to the fact that this test had been the last in the group that Paul needed.

The trailblazer sighed and waited, knowing it wouldn’t be the last one and taking in the moment even as his head began to ache from the previous effort, now that he was no longer pushing back against the fatigue.

A third tone accompanied another symbol, indicating the completion of the Lachka defensive skillset, followed by a fourth indicating completion of all Lachka skills.

But that wasn’t the end of it, because with that last test he also completed the requirements for all of the psionics, with a symbol twice the size of the others flashing into view in front of him.

Three seconds after that the big one came, which he’d been working towards for the past two and a half years, training round the clock and excluding all other duties while most of the other trailblazers were out on the war fronts. While they were training on their own in addition to their current missions, Paul had elected to remain in Antarctica and see how far he could push his training…both for his own sake, and on behalf of the other trailblazers, who’d lost their higher ranks with the psionic reset.

The second geners, by virtue of there being so many of them, had people on the war fronts and in the pyramid, training round the clock to develop their psionic skills and keep even, if not ahead of the trailblazers. With Jason already having taken over the lead on the lizard front and them seeing no significant pushback as of yet, Paul had elected to stay in the pyramid and remind the second geners why the trailblazers had the reputation they did and take it to them on an even playing field…or in Paul’s case a disadvantageous one, given that he’d gotten his upgrade later than the others.

So when the level up symbol appeared, indicating that Paul had completed all of the prerequisites in every measured skillset, psionic and otherwise, he felt quite satisfied, putting yet another level up on the others and continuing his breakneck advancement, given that his physical skills had already reached prerequisite levels years ago, allowing him to focus the bulk of his training on psionics and catch up on his levels faster than the second geners.

The huge level up symbol in front of him, which was larger than his body, lingered for a full 10 seconds before disappearing…then another tone sounded, and the half the room above the control pedestal was filled with a gigantic green symbol, indicating that he’d just made the transition from acolyte to ranger, with the level upgrade having gone from acolyte 99 to ranger 1.

“Green again,” Paul said, glancing down at the silver stripe on his uniform and mentally making a note to change out all of his clothes by the end of the day. He looked up at the glowing symbol and let it sink in, knowing that he’d literally done the impossible. 99 level upgrades in less than 3 years. That was something not even Morgan had achieved.

It was a bit of a cheat, given that he was retreading ground already covered, but his psionic skills were now above and beyond all the rest, save for a few isolated skills by individuals pressing them as far as they could while largely ignored the rest. Some of those specialists still held an advantage on him, but he’d caught many of them already, surging ahead of them in skill and power despite the fact he was training for all 6 areas evenly.

Physical skills aside, Paul’s psionic rating was now ranger level, which was 7 levels ahead of the next best Archon…that he knew of. With the other trailblazers spread out across this corner of the galaxy, their scores were updated with considerable delay, especially those fighting on the Nestafar front, where Morgan was still on her second deployment. As of last check she hadn’t made ranger again, so it was possible that he had even surpassed her…though that wasn’t something he was going to make any bets on.

Still, he was curious, because even with her Vorch’nas Kara hadn’t made ranger yet either, as of last check. She was out on the lizard front working special ops assignments and finally getting some of the field work she’d desperately wanted…all of which diminished the amount of training time available to her. Paul hadn’t been fighting any lizards on Namek, but when he was there he had been dealing with a lot of administrative work that took hours away from his training, and this training stint in the pyramid had been something he’d badly needed.

What he and the other trailblazers were doing, both on the fronts and in the prep work back home, was vital…but they needed heavy training blocks if they were really going to step up their advancement, and Paul hadn’t realized how much he’d been missing until he’d gotten down here with the other Archons, second geners as they were, and started training with/against them, as well as devoting 24 hours a day, every day, to pushing his training into unknown territory.

Whether Paul was the only ranger now or not, he’d regained the rank, if not the level, he’d had before, cementing the trailblazers’ dominance and leadership…as well as schooling the other Archons as how to really train.

Paul waited out the even longer duration of the hologram until it finally shut off and left his updated statistics behind in much smaller form. That brief moment of reflection was all the celebrating the trailblazers ever did, knowing that taking any sort of break would just be wasting time. To that end Paul shut off the console and left the training chamber, heading off to Balboa Lane for some agility runs while his Lachka reserves slowly regenerated.

Even if he had beat Morgan back to ranger, he knew it wouldn’t last for long, and he intended to goose whatever lead he might have on her as far as he could.

Three months later…

Paul pulled himself out of the pool, coughing out a bit of water that had worked its way up his nose during his laps. He’d been swimming on his back with symmetrical arms so he could breathe constantly and not splash too much water in his face, a form he’d come to call ‘butterfly backstroke’ that got made fun of by most of the better swimmers, but as he’d learned, he was an air hog and his body performed much better when he had a constant supply of air, so whenever he was doing distance swimming on the surface he used this style…but never the less he always managed to get at least a few drops of water down his airways.

He pulled in a few mouth breaths and blew out of his nose, clearing the water as he always did and walking over to the locker room where he changed out of his jammer-style swimming suit and into a ranger training uniform which he wore with considerable pride around the pyramid, especially around the second gen swimming specialists.

“Paul,” a voice said as soon as he left the locker room and stepped out into the main hall.

The trailblazer frowned. “Director?” he asked, seeing Davis standing off to the side in a Red/Gold/White Duke’s uniform.

“I didn’t want to interrupt your training,” Davis said, leaning against the wall and doing a good job of blending in with the Archons milling about, fit as he was. “But there’s something we need to discuss.”

“Hungry?”

“In private, if possible?”

“Do we need a terminal?” Paul asked, wondering what this was about.

“No.”

“Alright,” the Archon said, pointing to his left. Davis followed him a few steps down the hallway and into a side door. Paul turned to the right down a short interior hallway to a stairwell and headed up two levels, leading to an observation deck overlooking the four Olympic-sized pools below.

Paul leaned against one of the windows after taking a glance down at the scattering of Archons swimming laps. “What’s up?”

“What are we going to do with the psionics?” Davis said, mimicking Paul’s pose and leaning against the window opposite him.

Paul sighed. “You mean with non-Archons?”

“The Zen’zat are more than just warriors, they’re techs and analysts too.”

“They don’t need them just for kicks,” Paul said, looking Davis in the eyes. “What do they need?”

“The ability to diagnosis by touch would be useful for medtechs,” he pointed out.

“True, but I don’t know how far we can narrow it down. Ikrid has more sub-skills than any of the other 7.”

“What’s your biggest concern?” Davis asked.

“Breeding,” Paul said without hesitation.

Davis blinked. “I guess I’ve gone more Archon than I thought, because that thought hadn’t even occurred to me.”

“Not only do we have only one machine to make alterations with, not counting Kara, I don’t want the general public getting access to powers that even Archon adepts don’t have. We’re having to earn ours, and for good reason. We’re not having children, so there’s no issue there, but we can’t assume the same for all Star Force personnel. Even if they work for us for 100 years they may have a change of mind and go civilian…then what happens if their kids develop psionics?”

“It could kill them,” Davis said first off.

“Yes, but that’s not my point,” Paul said, raising an eyebrow and wondering where the Director’s head was at. “They’d be getting access to powers they hadn’t earned.”

“I read more into your tone than I’m thinking. Why is that a serious concern?”

“Why don’t we sell weapons?” Paul countered.

“Psionics are that much of a threat?”

Paul sighed. “I guess if you haven’t used them you can’t understand. Give me your hand.”

Davis frowned but did as instructed and held out his right hand. Paul took it in a handshake…then the next thing the Director knew he was waking up, staring at the ceiling.

“What…”

“Your head’s a little groggy,” Paul explained, leaning over him. “It’ll shake off in a moment.”

Davis blinked several times, then finally sat up and looked around. “Explain.”

“Ikrid,” Paul stated simply. “It’s far more powerful than communication. Zen’zat are shielded against telepathic interface, but not tactile. Give me access to your body, skin to skin, and I can hack into your mind through your nervous system.”

“I knew that,” Davis said, still sitting on the ground and shaking his head to try and clear it. He felt like he’d just woken up from a long nap and couldn’t get his brain to fully function. “What exactly did you do to me?”

“I rendered you unconscious with a single touch,” Paul said, and there was no mistaking the severity in his voice. “Me and some of the others have been practicing on each other in the hopes that we could develop an immunity to it, and so far we’ve learned to resist it when our minds are focused, but catch us off guard and we’re still vulnerable. All we need is a moment of contact, and the more skilled we get at it, the briefer the contact necessary. It took me about 4 seconds to fully knock you out.”

“That wasn’t in your updates,” Davis mildly complained.

“A lot isn’t,” Paul admitted, helping him to his feet. “We’re keeping some of these things to ourselves until we get a handle on them, and when I say ‘to ourselves’ I mean myself and a handful of others in the pyramid. Not even the rest of the trailblazers know, not for security reasons, but because I don’t want to give them information that may or may not turn out to be true. We’re learning to do a lot of cool things…but in the wrong hands those cool things get rather scary. Not something you want to trust to some random kid.”

“They’ve already got the genetics,” Davis said, mentally working the problem. “How sure are we that they’ll stay dormant?”

“We’re not sure why they went dormant in the first place, but best guess is that it was a function of time. I don’t see the general populace developing them on their own, though there may be isolated cases popping up that we need to be on the lookout for. But speaking from personal experience, I’ve done just about as much training as any of the others and I didn’t have so much as a psionic blip before I got upgraded. I may have been headed there, maybe not, but if it is linked to our training, then there’s zero chance of the general public accessing the repressed genetics through the same route.”

Davis nodded. “And Morgan?”

Paul cringed. “Traumatic events may serve as a breakthrough, but combat is traumatic enough and the V’kit’no’sat didn’t have people skipping over to the third tier powers. None of us have any reliable theories as to what happened with her…aside from her being typical Morgan.”

“Assume Ikrid is out then,” Davis said, floating options. “What about Lachka for some of our high level techs?”

“There’s still the reproduction issue…and Lachka is worthless without Pefbar. Plus, I’m not even sure if we can activate the powers individually. The process was set up as all or nothing.”

“Kara was able to make some alterations, I read.”

“That was to keep the machine from deconstructing the tissue some of us had already grown…and I’m not sure, but the 7 might have additional levels of interconnectivity that I’m not aware of. Going piecemeal could cause unforeseen problems.”

“Bottom line, is there any scenario you’re comfortable with outside of the Archons?”

“Other than you, no.”

Davis smiled. “I appreciate your vote of confidence, but I certainly haven’t earned them where adepts haven’t.”

“Check that,” Paul corrected himself. “Throw Wilson in there too.”

“I’ve already spoken to him about it. He seems to think as you do. I just want to know if there’s any reasonable advantage we can get out of them with non-Archon personnel, and you’re saying there’s none?”

“There are probably some advantages, but they’re not worth the risks. We keep ambrosia in-house, and psionics should be the same.”

“More than Archons use ambrosia,” Davis pointed out.

“But they can’t take it with them when they leave…and you haven’t trusted anyone else with its manufacture.”

“Not counting Canderous,” Davis said, tapping his lip with his finger as he thought. “I have a nagging feeling that this is something we’re not going to be able to contain within the Archon ranks forever, and I’d like a plan set up before it breaks out on its own.”

“Breaks out?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Davis admitted. “I’ve just got a bad feeling about this.”

“So do I,” Paul agreed. “Which is why we need to keep this Archon-only…at least until we’ve got more experience with it. We’re still in the discovery stages.”

“I guess we’re both on the same page, just working it from different angles.”

“This is changing the Archons more than you know,” Paul told him. “Let us get a handle on it first, then we can sit down and analyze where else it might be of use.”

“Agreed,” Davis said, glancing down at the swimmers through the window. “Though I wish we had the ability to turn it off. Right now we have no safety net if someone else develops the ability…or an Archon goes rogue.”

“If the second case occurs we’ll deal with it,” Paul promised, “but that’s another reason to restrict it to acolytes and above. The few quitters we’ve had didn’t go very far past basic training.”

“Sounds like your thought process is well ahead of mine.”

“For once,” Paul joked.

Davis looked down at the floor, then back up at Paul. “But now you’ve got me wondering just how powerful the actual Zen’zat are…and what all they can really do to us.”

“Not just the Zen’zat,” Paul said, barely louder than a whisper. “The V’kit’no’sat have psionics too.”

Aquatics

1

July 2, 2429

Retari System

Atlantica

“Captain, we’re receiving a distress call from Manaan.”

Voru turned from the aft observation display screen ‘window’ and walked across the small bridge, abandoning his ocean view. “That cruiser we picked up coming down from orbit?”

“No, sir,” the comm officer answered. “There’s a major assault underway, with additional aerial forces coming in from the east.”

“Show me,” Voru said, glancing at another bridge officer.

A hologram of the planet popped up just in front of his empty Captain’s chair, then it zoomed in to cover a third of the planet’s surface with icons marking all Star Force ships and installations on the waterworld. The city of Manaan was a few thousand kilometers to their northeast, and Voru could see the additional lizard contacts moving in that direction.

“Sir, the Dutchman says they’re moving to relieve the city and are asking our intentions.”

“Tell Captain Isso we’ll be there as soon as we can,” Voru said, gripping the back of his chair as he studied the hologram. “Mr. Cadren, get us airborne…plot course for Manaan.”

“Aye, sir,” the helmsman said, beginning to work his console.

“Give me ship-wide.”

The comms officer pressed a few buttons, then nodded to the Captain.

“Attention all hands. Manaan is currently under lizard attack. We’re moving to assist, but it’ll take us some time to get there. Make ready all war assets and wait for deployment orders,” he finished with a nod to cut the intercom. His eyes moved back to the hologram, seeing the icon for the Dutchman not far from Manaan and moving out to interpose itself between the approaching contacts and the city…leaving the onsite defenders to handle the ensuing assault.

All around the perimeter of the bridge were ‘windows’ relaying video images from the exterior of the aquatics battleship, and as Voru studied the tactical hologram he caught the image of the ocean line sinking in his peripheral vision, though the view was much better from the outside, had anyone been around to see it.

The 1,840m long warship looked like a giant sea creature, without a single sharp edge or line to the flowing, deep blue hull shaped like a flattened whale. The center line was raised, but from there the sides went well wide of any traditional design, stretching out to a maximum width of 720m. The perimeter of the ship was a curved edge that looked like a blade, but was in fact flat rather than sharp when viewed in close. The angled hull rolled wave after wave of water off it as the blade edge of the ship came up from below the water line, showing the battleship to be much larger than she appeared from the surface.

As the low-powered gravity drive lifted the aquatics warship out of the water the underside of the hull came into view, dripping gallons upon gallons of water back down into the ocean beneath as it cast a shadow on the resettling water, blocking the harsh yellow sun that quickly began to dry out the upper hull. The underside was the top’s mirrored twin, with a single long, shallow ridge running down the midsection with the rest of the hull angling up and out to the blade-like edge that narrowed to a rounded peak near the ship’s bow and a much more gentle, overarching curve on the aft end.

No engine ports were visible, nor was there any other obstruction of the hull. It was one solid piece of machinery tailored to be as smooth as possible to reduce friction…both in the water and above it.

As the battleship rose to a kilometer in height it began to slowly spin around, pointing itself on the heading for the distant city of Manaan like a compass needle turning round the center pin. When it finally settled into place the differential gravity drive within the ship excluded the mass of the planet ahead of them and pushed against the mass behind, providing limited lateral propulsion…limited at least as far as naval warships were concerned, but this ship wasn’t moving through space, it was heading through the atmosphere to another point on the globe and couldn’t attain the super-speeds only capable in vacuum, so the ‘limited’ lateral propulsion was all it needed to create a smooth acceleration curve off across the sky in ‘airship’ mode enroute to the Star Force city to counter the lizard assault just getting underway.

“Ready?” a voice asked over the comm of Dan-1191’s skeet as it sat nose up in a series of mechanical restraints inside Manaan.

The Archon pressed a few remaining buttons, bringing the aerial fighter’s anti-grav into standby mode.

“Lock me in,” he ordered, bringing his opaque cockpit into full holographic mode and seeing the inside of the launch bay through the walls, ceiling, and floor around him, as well as the stubby T-shaped frontal wings on the fighter sitting directly ahead of his dual control handles. Silently the hologram began to shift as the Clan Cloud yellow skeet was hauled upwards into the base of the hangar’s ceiling and into a narrow tunnel barely wider than the fighter.

The tunnel wasn’t empty. Ahead of him were two other skeets, viewed from the tail, while others were packing in beneath him as the vertical column was loaded up as the pilots stood by, knowing enemy air assets were approaching the city. The Dutchman had intercepted two lizard cruisers escorting transports towards the city and had engaged and destroyed one of the naval warships, but the rest of the hoard had slipped by during the fighting.

Those were going to be the skeets’ targets…well, not the cruiser. That was out of their league, but the transports coming in to bring reinforcements to the lizard aquatics forces already engaging city defenses beneath the ocean’s surface had to be hit prior to emptying out, otherwise the already heated battle beneath the waves was going to get even more dicey.

“Standby,” the controller said, transmitting to all of the waiting skeets as the top of the tunnel/tubes were opened to the water, which was held back by a powerful force field. Though Dan couldn’t see it, he knew what they were standing by for. Overtop that force field another one was forming…a tiny sliver running from the top of the submerged city straight up to the ocean surface and a little above it. Once connected all the way the sliver would widen, pushing the water back until the physical shield had created an open air conduit through the water for the fighters to exit the city from.

“Launching in 3…2…1…”

Dan gripped his skeet’s controls, knowing that he wouldn’t be the first to go, but when the tail of the skeet ahead of him in the tunnel/tube flashed up and out he knew his acceleration would be less than 2 seconds delayed.

He didn’t have to touch anything, for the process was automated. An inertial dampening field was created around his skeet, emanating from a mechanical ring in the tunnel. That ring essentially held the fighter locked to it via energy, so when the ring was accelerated upwards the fighter came with it, but without feeling any sort of acceleration. Just before hitting the top of the tube the inertial dampening field cut out and the ring decelerated, allowing the fighter’s momentum to carry it up and out of the city, essentially coasting up the open air conduit through the ocean water surrounding it for a heartbeat before it broke into open air and Dan kicked in the craft’s anti-grav, rocketing up even higher into the atmosphere.

He wasn’t alone. Fighters were pouring up from multiple launch tubes within the underwater city, about a third of which had Clan Cloud pilots. The rest were a mix of Star Force regulars and an assortment of other Clans, though none were officially given a chunk of Atlantica to colonize. It was a massive co-op designed for one purpose…to draw the lizards in and use the planet as a battlefield, keeping them away from Star Force’s actual colonies.

Almost as soon as Dan leveled out his skeet he got a command signal, requesting him and the others in his squadron to form up around their leader, Eric-2056, a slightly younger member of Clan Cloud whose aerial skills surpassed his own. Without need of comm chatter Dan and the others found Eric’s location on the very active battlemap and flew to his position while the other 6 squadrons did likewise before heading off towards their various targets.

They didn’t have to wait long, for the lizards were on their doorstep within a minute, decelerating hard with the kilometer-long, flat lizard cruiser coming in above them and peppering the air with plasma shards to try and keep the skeets away from the transports coming in behind it low to the surface.

More commands came through Dan’s display and he followed the symbol-driven orders, splitting their squadron apart and giving the lizards multiple groups to deal with as the cruiser launched its own Wisp-class fighters. Dan ignored them and dropped to the deck along with four others. Once there they leveled out and accelerated towards the incoming transports as plumes of steam lit up the ocean around them as the cruiser’s plasma tried to intercept them in a deadly, hot rain.

Dan’s skeet took a hit, but the enhanced shields held up and he zipped across the ocean towards the first of some 36 transports beginning to slow to a stop and descend into the water. They had the same yellow-tan hulls as the cruiser, but the smaller objects that two of them began dropping into the water from side doors opening up were altogether different.

Dan lit up one of the dark brown attack craft with his lachars, hitting it as it dropped down to the water, but most of the dozens of objects got through, though he did see a plasma streamer hit one of the side bays and get inside the transport, given that its lateral shields were down for the unloading.

Dan’s skeet closed to effective plasma range within a few seconds and he targeted the transport behind the front pair, knowing that most of their goodies were probably already in the water. He hit it with a long, blue plasma streamer, eating into the shields along with three others before they finally popped and let additional weaponsfire through.

Pulling his skeet up for a bit more altitude Dan clipped off a lachar blast at a transport behind the one he’d been targeting, then delivered two more plasma streamers to other transports before flying out the backside of the enemy formation and swinging around to come in on another pass…which was when the wisps from the cruiser finally caught up with them.

Knowing that the transports were the main priority Dan went evasive and tried to get clear of the swarm of fighters long enough to line up another plasma streamer…but only at the cost of several plasma hits to his shields. In the past that would have been enough to take them down, but with every year that passed the Star Force techs back home were learning more and more about shield matrixes from the V’kit’no’sat database, and from that they were designing progressively more advanced shields that operated off the same power output, enhancing the protection the aerofighters had without adding weight.

Dan couldn’t ignore the wisps forever, so after getting a plasma lance into the topside of one of the smaller transports that he saw another squadron picking on, he spun his skeet around on its anti-grav and reversed direction, confusing the wisps momentarily and giving him a clear shot at two of them.

He fired off a series of ‘chips’ at the shieldless fighters, killing both with the tiny blue energy arcs. The chips didn’t have much range before they dissipated, but with fighter to fighter engagements being what they were, they literally shredded the fighters on impact, given that his skeet was firing 7 with each pull of the trigger in a rapid-fire burst.

After easily killing those two weak fighters, Dan crisscrossed the impromptu battlefield downing several more as he hoped the rest of the pilots would focus on the transports…then he noticed another contact on his battlemap incoming, followed by a painfully bright blue sun that emerged to the west.

That ‘sun’ was the chips’ big brother, designated a ‘mauler,’ and it had just impacted the side of the cruiser floating high above them that was returning heavy green plasma fire on the aquatics battleship just coming into the fight.

Dan saw the ship, designated as the Black Pearl, fire another mauler blast into the side of the cruiser as the Star Force vessel dropped in altitude, heading for water where it held a bigger advantage. Fortunately it could handle most of the troops the lizard transports were dropping off, but Dan knew they needed to hit as many of them as possible while they were on the surface to thin their numbers, so he dropped back down to the deck, burning another wisp on the way, then turned most of his attention on the biggest of the transports as it lowered ever so slowly into the water.

Several other skeets were pounding its topside, so when David lit it up with a plasma streamer of his own it got through the shields and burned a long furrow into the hull, which the others quickly expanded upon as he flew off and swung around for another pass.

As he did he caught sight of the underside, still not all the way down to the water, as the ventral bay doors opened up and began releasing a very long, narrow aquatics craft. Grinding his teeth in frustration at their inability to stop the mass of deployments, Dan went as low to the small waves as he dared and flew towards the transport, zigzagging around two others to get a good approach vector, and then repeatedly firing his lachar until he got within plasma range.

He burned a fiery blue lance into the side of the corvette being deployed as it dropped into the water, but its own shields held up to the assault…then it sunk into the ocean and was suddenly beyond the skeets’ ability to touch.

“Get us into the water,” Voru said from the bridge of the Black Pearl as the aquatics battleship traded weaponsfire with the space navy warship in an odd confrontation that had become almost commonplace on Atlantica ever since lizard assault fleets had arrived to reinforce their frontier colonies that Star Force had been handily tearing up. Given that all the Human colonies on the planet were beneath the ocean and had eschewed the tiny bit of available landmass, the lizards were forced to fight them underwater if they wanted to remove them from the planet, but there were no shortage of air assets in play, with most of the heavy lifting being done by the enemy’s nimble fleet of naval cruisers.

As the Black Pearl dropped towards the ocean it continued firing its mauler cannon, blasting away at the cruiser’s shields with the medium-sized weapon that seemed to defy reason. It was another little ‘primitive’ gem discovered in the V’kit’no’sat database that operated off of an exotic type of energy that was extremely unstable, giving it an ultra-short range of only a handful of kilometers in space and less than that in atmosphere, but the destructive potential was undeniable…not to mention it wreaked havoc with shield matrixes.

With the third salvo fired from the Black Pearl the lizards’ shields went down over a small section of their hull, but Voru didn’t have much conventional weaponry onboard his ship to exploit the breach with, though several medium-sized plasma cannons opened fire and targeted the critical systems on the lizard hull that were now vulnerable, knocking out at least one weapons battery before most of the Star Force vessel’s batteries submerged beneath the waves. Once settled in, the battleship’s spinal bulge was all that remained above the waterline, making the vessel appear as a very large and long whale…but the mauler cannon was located in that section of the hull, so it continued to fire unmolested as now most of the ship was protected by a ‘water shield’ that would continue to replenish itself to no end.

The cruiser responded by narrowing its plasma fire onto the above water portions of the ship, with its misses vaporizing huge plumes of water and sending them into the air like geysers, especially over the shallow portions where the hull of the Black Pearl helped to reflect the concussive pressure of the flash vaporization.

All of the aquatic battleship’s weapons were medium grade, when compared to naval implements. That was due to both the size and design of the ship, which was not a drone vessel and not designed for space combat. The lizard cruiser was, which would have given it the advantage if not for the continuing tech progression Star Force was spewing out, with the mauler cannon more than evening the odds now that the Black Pearl was in the water and having to defend very little hull area with its shields…which were now being redeployed to strengthen the upper matrixes by drawing power from the lower ones.

In the past that sort of shield alteration hadn’t been possible…but there again, the pyramid database was playing into their hands, offering them much more dynamic shield matrixes that the V’kit’no’sat still considered to be child’s play.

Entrenched in the water as it was, the lizards knew they weren’t going to win out against the Human battleship, but they maintained the exchange until their transports…or what was left of them…finished unloading and flew off, with the cruiser following. They retreated off into the sky, heading either into space or to one of the many hidden lizard bases on the besieged planet.

“Keep an eye on the sky,” Voru cautioned his sensor officer. “Subsurface hologram, please.”

The surface of the planet, a smooth curve with the Black Pearl, Dutchman, and several Star Force cities and marked craft, including the overhead skeets, literally inverted at the waterline. The units above the waves disappeared and the flat ocean morphed into the crumpled terrain of the seafloor…with Manaan and the assaulting forces arrayed around it outlined in hundreds of moving icons.

“Full submersion,” Voru ordered. “Let’s take it to them up close.”

2

“Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Voru commented to the bridge crew as he saw the underwater army the lizards were throwing at Manaan…not to mention the incoming reinforcements that the transports had just deployed. They were still off a ways from the confrontation points, centered around 2 city defense towers that were stationed outside the boundary fence.

There were six in total, spread in hexagonal formation around the more or less circular fence and set well off its perimeter to give them better firing lines. The lizards had tangled with enough of this type of turret to know better than to close within firing range, otherwise their ships would be obliterated…thus they were doing the next best thing.

Voru saw hundreds of small craft zipping in past the towers’ impotent attempts to target them. Once at the base of the tower they were being engaged by both its own perimeter defenses along with the city defense forces. The two engagements at the towers appeared about equally numbered while the bulk of the lizard underwater fleet sat out of range and continued to feed reinforcements into the tower battles.

Amongst the enemy fleet were several large lizard aquatics ships…mostly carriers for their infantry, but there were three cruisers in amongst them, with what looked like multiple destroyer escorts. More than enough firepower to assault the city shield should they get past the towers and other turret defenses, meaning this was no mere skirmish. They were making a serious play for the city.

“Helm, head us straight for their capital ships. Launch squids in our wake and tell the Archon to do the same.”

Vander-6933 was straddling the pommel seat of his ‘streak,’ the underwater cousin of the aerial’s skeet, when the deployment order came over the comm. He was already waiting in the small underside launch bay of the Black Pearl, which was schematically squeezed between the much larger squid launch bays that ran the length of the ventral side of the battleship, and only had to nudge the throttle to punch through the containment shield holding the internal bay water separate from that of the ocean.

The needle-like nose of the streak poked through the differential containment shield, widening the breach until the conical midsection of the attack craft reached its maximum width, then the shield reformed as the thinner tail segment passed through. Vander accelerated the craft slightly, passing through a ‘waterlock’ before getting to a second shield that finally let him exit the aft of the ship.

Once through the second shield he punched the throttle, using the internal anti-grav engine to push it out while maintaining a slight downward angle to null out the lifting property of the differential thrust, which was pushing off the aft half of the planet, but since it was located below the streak it was also providing an unwanted upwards vector in addition to the lateral. When in the air or space this wasn’t relevant, because the anti-grav was already pushing against the planet to maintain altitude, so that ‘push’ was simply scaled back to maintain position.

In the water gravity was no threat, so any unwanted upwards vector had to be compensated for…which Vander accomplished by nosing down enough that the angle of the streak acted like a fin, dragging it downward slightly. That wasn’t the most efficient way to move about, but it wasn’t relevant at the moment, for all he wanted to do was get clear of the Black Pearl before the squids started coming out.

When his movement and that of the battleship pulled the gap between them to over 400 meters Vander turned the streak to starboard, causing the pointy cylinder to bend along the middle, arcing the needle-like nose and using the hull itself as a maneuvering fin. It curved around in a tight U-turn and accelerated forward, bearing to port to get alongside the battleship as the streak’s speed increased…but then the Archon cut out the anti-grav and leveled the nose of his underwater fighter out, activating the jet engines and running them up to full power.

Small inlets on the middle of the craft opened just aft of the widest portion, pulling water in towards a concentration tube from 8 locations. That tube then sent the compressed water off in multiple directions inside the streak along tiny lines to provide maneuvering thrust, with the bulk of the water going directly aft to the main nozzle and launching it out the blunt tail.

Vander’s streak shot forward again, this time faster than before, punching through the ocean water as the silver hull of the craft became coated in shiny gloss as the defense shields activated and responded to the pressure of the water flowing over them. The speed he was moving drained them of some energy, as was typical, but they held steady at 94% strength as the power core fed additional energy in to replace that which was lost to the friction.

The streak’s battlemap flickered with new glowing icons coming out the aft of the Black Pearl, and though Vander couldn’t see them from his holographic view…which was enhanced with sensor data in the form of computer projected overlays onto the limited visuals he was getting from the hull of the streak…he could see them being tagged as independent allied units as they cleared the containment shields of their own bays, save they weren’t staggered, coming out in close sequence like the battleship was dropping two trails of crumbs behind it.

The crumbs began to move of their own accord, gathering into formations and flanking the battleship as they caught up, but Vander knew they weren’t quick enough to catch his streak so he put them out of mind for the moment and focused on the enemy fleet formation ahead.

There were eight big ships, too far away for him to have a hope of seeing visually, despite the running lights the lizard ships traditionally displayed once in battle. His view of the clear waters ahead was dim due to the depth he was at, but every now and then he’d see a bit of light to port coming from Manaan, though he was still too far out to see the city lights…meaning it had to be coming from the defense towers.

He was beyond their range, comfortably, as was the lizard fleet ahead as he closed in on the enemy quickly. Depressing the nose he began to drag the streak further down below their elevation, searching for the seafloor visually even as the hologram and battlemap electronically displayed its location. Fast as his ship was swimming, it took him a while to get down there, then he leveled off 20 meters above the rough, irregular rocky ground and sped across the shrinking gap to the lizard ships, seeing a line of ‘ants’ popping up on his sensors in greater detail.

The ants were lizards swimming towards the city. They were a biological variant designed to swim and breathe in the water, meaning they weren’t in craft, but rather ‘hoofing’ it across the gap on their own power, with more and more pouring out of the sides of several of the big lizard ships ahead.

Vander picked one of those points and tagged it on his battlemap as a personal target…with a visual waypoint popping up on his holographic display marking the exact spot.

The Archon primed the four torpedoes he had onboard, glad he’d had the streak rearmed after their last little skirmish, and opened the launch tube set on the topside of the needle-nose. No water entered, due to the shield overtop of it, but when the moment to fire came the streak’s computer would quickly deactivate that section of the shield to allow egress of the warhead, then snap it back into place to maintain the smoothness of the flow lines as much as possible.

Vander knew there would be a firing ‘bump,’ but that was unavoidable when launching from speed and he mentally prepared himself for it as he saw the enemy ships began to get higher from his point of view, though they weren’t actually gaining altitude, he was just starting to get underneath them.

Happy that the stream of infantry was still pouring out of his target, meaning they wouldn’t have had a chance to close the bay doors or raise the shields, Vander waited for the proper moment, already having mentally plotted out his trajectory, then activated the anti-grav engine and added its thrust…along with the upwards momentum…to the jet propulsion he’d already maxed out.

Like the skeets, the streak also had its own ‘super pursuit mode,’ and it allowed the Archon to move faster than any lizard craft could hope to, making Vander feel like he was literally flying through the water. As the streak slowly lifted up towards the waypoint he adjusted his trajectory, keeping his aiming sight on the open bay door that was growing large by the second…with only a few more remaining before he slammed into the side of the carrier.

Mind the bump, he reminded himself as he thumbed the firing button.

The silver needle that was the streak shot in towards the lizard infantry transport on a perfectly smooth line, then it jerked ever so slightly as a tiny piece of it lazily shot out the front end. The streak bent hard at the middle, curving its hull line and trajectory so that it pulled up and passed over the top of the carrier as the torpedo it’d launched slipped inside the bay doors, knocking a number of infantry aside on the way in.

Vander couldn’t see the detonation, for it was internal, but he saw a hiccup in his climb as the pressure wave rebounded out of the confines and ironically helped to push him upwards as he shot overtop the ship, holding onto the anti-grav ascension for a few more seconds then flicking it off and snaking around in a tight, jet-propelled turn to come up on the aft end of one of the lizard cruisers.

That was too big of a target for his lone streak so he didn’t try, but it did try to swat at him, sending an expanding arm out in his direction like a kid’s toy lightsaber that extended up out of the hilt…save for this version had exploding nubs along the length, meaning that if it contacted his streak it’d get a nice detonation directly on the shields and really ruin the Archon’s day.

Quick as the tendril was, it wasn’t quick enough, and Vander had no problem maneuvering around it…for it could only extend quickly in a straight line, then almost drift about to other locations on its bendable frame because it had to push water out of the way, making it more of an explosive net strand than a weapons battery.

Then again he was piloting an agile ship. The squids the Black Pearl were bringing with it to the battle were not so agile, and the lizards had been making good use of the defense tendrils in an anti-air fashion, though that term didn’t quite apply underwater, so they’d come to call such things ‘point defense’ weapons.

There were several smaller targets ahead, akin to gunboats that the lizards used as slow fighters. They’d nicknamed them ‘sharks’ for the multiple fins they had spread around a double hull that reminded Vander of TIE Bombers from Star Wars. The fins allowed them to pivot at sharp angles and turn around on pursuing ships…just as three of them did now on his approach, launching tiny ‘minnows’ his way.

The automated missiles locked onto his streak and zipped towards him, leaving Vander with three options…try and outrun them, outmaneuver them, or take them out before they hit him.

Mentally calculating his odds he opted for the third, cutting thrust and letting the streak drift forward for a second as he raised a pair of nubs on the hull’s surface, with the shields altering to accommodate the bumps. From them fired even smaller projectiles…the aquatics version of naval intercepts. Nine of the tiny, pen-sized objects were shot out of the pods towards the 3 incoming minnows, getting about halfway there before their momentum started to fade out from the friction of the water, despite their needle-like shape. When they slowed their short-lived internal batteries activated a tiny jet engine and maneuvering fins, turning them into self-propelled anti-missile missiles that tracked towards the lizards’ minnows.

Vander reactivated his own jet propulsion before they made the intercept, knowing the little devices were quite effective at what they did…as well as knowing that the sharks had many more of their own to fire. Before that happened he closed range with the nearest one and buzzed it, dropping a bowling ball-sized hockey puck in its wake. The small drone swam the remaining meters down to the shark and latched itself to the side, bypassing the pyrotechnic arm that made up the second half of the lizards’ weaponry.

The little plasma mine sucked itself down to the hull, chemically welding itself in place as Vander swiveled his streak around, launching more intercepts at additional minnows coming his way from other sharks moving into the fray. As he danced his sea snake around an activation light appeared on his control board, indicating that the remote mine was now in place. With a touch of a button he detonated it, causing the hockey puck to produce a plasma flare directly into the side of the shark like a roman candle firework.

It burnt into and gutted the inside of the shark, taking it out of the fight while maintaining hull integrity and not allowing so much as one drop of water inside. Getting plasma to the target was the lizards’ primary hindrance underwater, given that they couldn’t launch it from point to point, and they’d become innovative in creating weapons to circumvent that problem…as had Star Force.

Finding himself with way too many sharks around to play with, Vander kicked in his anti-grav and ran hard away from the group, outdistancing several of the minnows while taking one to the hull. It exploded prior to contact with the shield as the streak maneuvered to the left, diminishing the range indicator’s closing speed enough that the minnow assumed that it might not reach the target and detonated once it reached proximity.

Due to the few meters in between the damage to the shields was reduced, but the concussive wave buffeted the streak around something fierce, causing Vander to lose directional control for a moment as the controls seemed to fight him. Once it subsided he did a quick check of the status hologram on his right, which indicated no hull damage, but severely weakened shields over the aft/starboard quarter.

His eyes flashed back to the battlemap to confirm no more minnows were closing on him, then he steered an evasive course around the shark formation that was trying futilely to keep pace behind him…then they suddenly broke off and returned to the flank of the large lizard ships as they began moving en mass in towards the city.

“Damn it,” Vander swore, realizing what they were doing as he saw the Black Pearl coming up on their other side. They knew they were about to get their asses kicked, even with their incoming reinforcements…so they’d decided to forego the slow method of taking down the nearest defense towers and just overwhelm them with numbers.

It would work too, because as powerful as the towers were, it took time to kill aquatics ships…and the torpedoes they were carrying, big and slow as they were, would be moving too fast and in too great a number for the point defenses to take out. Vander knew the towers had larger intercepts than he was carrying to deal with the stronger torpedoes, but put that many ships up close and there was no way they were going to get them all.

On the battlemap he saw the Black Pearl turn early, diminishing the distance it would have to travel if it fell in behind the fleet and instead angled to intercept it closer to the city, all the while sending its entire fleet of squids ahead as fast as they could move to engage the lizards before they overwhelmed the nearest tower.

Take two out and they’d have a clear approach on the city defense fence, for the other four couldn’t overlap firing fields to cover more than those adjacent to them…which was why the lizard infantry and smaller ships were currently engaging only two of the towers.

What to do? Vander knew he had to stay away from the firing zone, otherwise the detonations from the lizard torpedoes would crack his ship apart, not to mention those coming from the towers, though that wasn’t their primary weapon.

He couldn’t take on the capital ships directly, and at best he could only damage the smaller ones…so he figured he might as well provide cover for those he could and curved his streak around and headed for the approaching squids, picking out the closest sharks to them and tagging them as priority targets, with his hologram marking them appropriately.

Vander fought his anti-grav, nosing down heavily to drag him lower in altitude while crossing over the top of the lizard fleet as it transitioned ever closer to the city, then he went with jet engines only and swerved around on the flank of one of the sharks as it launched  two minnows in towards the approaching squids.

The Archon lined up his approach and came in quickly, glad to see the shark was preoccupied. When he got within 100 meters he nosed down and used his anti-grav to brake hard, skidding his streak to a stop less than 20 meters away.

Vander powered up his primary weapon and the shields over the streak’s nose pushed out into a flat circle on the end of a cylinder like a battering ram. Using his jet engines Vander goosed it forward, dropping off distance meter by meter until the 12m long shield vacuum hit the lizard hull and morphed around it, maintaining a watertight seal.

The Archon thumbed the plasma cannon firing button, sending a pulse into and through the gap directly into the side of the shark even as it began to move off. The blue plasma hit the hull a split second before shield cylinder slid off the back of the moving shark, quickly filling with water.

Vander flicked it off, letting the shields reset to their normal, hull tight mode, as he maneuvered the streak around to the back of the damaged shark…then he slid up behind it and extended the shield column again, butting it up against the back side and delivering a three shot salvo of plasma at pointblank range that cracked open the lizard craft via an internal explosion.

The Archon pulled back enough to allow him to slither the ship to the side and accelerate away, moving towards the next closest isolated shark he could find as the squids finally got to the lizard fleet and the heavy fighting broke out.

3

The three big lizard aquatic cruisers and the 5 carriers held their line, heading straight for the nearest of the underwater towers with their destroyer escorts, but the support craft and smaller capital ships veered off to engage the squids as they began to get close and open up their forward arms, diminishing their speed greatly as they each angled towards their chosen target. Being flown remotely by pilots within the Black Pearl, the squids, each about the size of a small house, were expendable grappling weapon platforms. They contained no offensive torpedoes, but they did carry defensive intercepts that began launching en mass as the lizard sharks swooped in to engage them before they could come into contact with their target ships.

Minnows were being shot off from all directions, along with larger torpedoes coming from the frigates who were three times the size of the squids and shaped like a stingray…flat and wide with a sharp edge to cut through the water laterally. They’d spun about and broke formation first, thus getting to the incoming squids ahead of the other lizard ships and they were pumping out sizeable torpedoes that the intercepts were having to swarm with multiple hits to take down.

Several got through the initial wave and hit four of the squids, two dead on. The concussion wave from the explosions rippled through the surrounding water, rocking all craft nearby as the debris seemed to float near to the kill point, unlike land combat that saw pieces of shrapnel flying large distances through the air from the point of impact.

The other two squids managed to put up their shields in time to block the attack…but not their energy shields. Those were already active and too weak to stop a frigate’s torpedo, though they would ward off a minnow or two before breaching. Each of the squids had four forward arms emanating out of a tail section that contained the jet engines that drove the craft. The tip of each of those arms contained a metallic net that could be expanded like an umbrella, and it was with these that the lucky two squids stopped the incoming torpedoes from impacting the main hull, though one lost half of its arm in the blast while the other lost only the tip and the porous shield that was on it in the detonation.

In the massive exchange the ocean became turbulent, buffeting Vander’s streak around violently as he closed on the heels of one of the sharks as it was weaving its way through the squids and peppering them from the flank with minnows. He didn’t want to waste one of his three remaining torpedoes on it, so he fought the chaotic currents and rammed it from behind with his shield extension, peppering it with plasma shots and taking some fragmentation backlash on his own shields as he chewed the enemy submersible apart.

He stayed at it until something internal exploded, shredding the shark. It’d probably been one of the minnows onboard, or perhaps a fuel cell…he didn’t know nor truly cared, so long as it was out of the fight. Vander pulled his nose out of the backside of the carcass, having drifted into it as he delivered the final shots. The schematic of his streak showed minor hull damage on the needle nose, which he hoped wouldn’t affect his steering…though at the moment, with torpedoes exploding around him, that minor inefficiency in aerodynamics was hardly going to be noticeable.

Vander swung around the dead shark and accelerated towards the next closest one as the rest of the lizard support ships came into contact with the squids, of which there were 3 varieties. The largest was a light destroyer, only 20% shorter in length than the full destroyers that were getting more distance between them and the battle by the second. The main difference was the weaponry on the whale-like hull, which consisted of tree-like arms that the ships deployed when they arrived in position, essentially staking out their little piece of the ocean and becoming mini battle stations.

From them flowed streams of minnows, for they had none of the heavier weaponry the smaller frigates carried, but the defense ‘trees’ were laced with plasma nubs that would burn anything that came into contact with them. In between the ‘branches’ of the trees there were smaller filaments that would catch objects before they could hit the hull, much like the squids’ arm shields did. Both designs allowed water to move through them in the gaps, but the rigid net lines of the squids were replaced with barely visible strands on the light destroyers, making them almost look like a hoard of spiders had set up in the trees and strung their webs between them.

The light destroyers were definitely anti-fighter platforms, making them a significant threat to both Vander’s streak and the squids, and he knew better than to go play with one. When deployed, the defense trees would prevent him from getting close enough to the hull to use his plasma cannon, and his torpedoes would get stuck in the webbing. When they detonated they’d clear an area for additional weaponsfire to get through, but the light destroyers required a disproportionate amount of firepower to take down for their size.

In addition to the light destroyers, the lizards also had ‘hammerheads.’ These T-shaped craft vaguely resembled a skeet, though they were much larger and on a scale akin to the frigates. They were anti-ship vessels with the express purpose of ramming larger craft and using the hundreds of plasma nubs to burn into the side of their hull in explosive fashion. It was no wonder, then, when several squids bypassed other lizard ships and went straight to targeting the hammerheads, swimming up to them and using their superior mobility to attack them from the flanks and avoid the dangerous kill zone up front.

The first one to get hit got a squid on either side along the tail segment, with each wrapping its arms partway around the hull and bringing the ‘mouth,’ located between the four arms, up against the hull or as close to it as possible. Like Vander’s streak, a short stub of a cylinder-shaped shield reached out and sealed itself to the lizard hull as the squid’s arms compressed and depleted the hammerhead’s own shields.

That wasn’t necessary, but it removed one impediment for the plasma streamer that followed. A pinprick of bright blue was visible from outside in the gap between hammerhead and squid, but otherwise the destruction that followed was all internal. Both squids latched on like ticks and instead of sucking blood out, poured plasma into the hull and tore apart the deadly craft before it could even think about getting close to the Black Pearl.

Up and down the line the hammerheads were targeted first and taken out, often with the squids being targeted by torpedoes as they stubbornly latched onto the hulls of their targets. A quarter of the attack drones were lost within minutes, half of which fell to the lizards’ smaller corvettes. They were barely larger than the squids and resembled long tubes until they deployed, making them the second fastest vessels the lizards had after the sharks.

Several of the squids got caught by the corvettes’ armored claws. Unlike the larger ships the corvette didn’t have shields, but instead made up for it with thick armor that was difficult to crack by explosive concussion, meaning they usually required plasma to take out or successive torpedo strikes. Like a crawdad or other clawed sea creatures, the corvette had four deployable arms…two front and two aft, allowing it to attack/defend itself from either direction. Several squids got caught by those claws and literally cut in half once they latched on and ratcheted up the pressure, and though Vander wanted to help them he knew it’d be suicide to come anywhere near those claws.

So he did the next best thing and buzzed one, dropping a plasma mine that swam in and latched onto the side and burnt through…though most of the charge was used up in penetrating the armor leaving little to damage the interior, plus the ship was much larger than the sharks and one mine wasn’t going to take it down even if it had tissue paper for a hull.

Vander swung his streak around in a spiral turn, getting a bit more altitude as he did and came back at the corvette as it finished cutting through a squid that’d just finished killing a hammerhead. That was the only way the corvette could catch the squid…when they were latched onto something else, which made them appear to be the cleaning crew amongst the lizard fleet, going around picking off the Star Force ticks.

This one pulled apart its claw and released itself from the crushed midsection of the squid, pulling back and tucking in its claws before accelerating away towards another target with the remains of Vander’s plasma mine still attached. Using the depleted mine as a targeting lock, the Archon fired off his second torpedo from the flank and watched it swim an arced line right into the device and detonate.

With the hole already punched through by the mine, part of the concussive explosion got through to the interior, and as Vander fought the explosive turbulence in the water he saw a gap had formed in the corvette’s hull. It wasn’t big, barely twice the size the mine had been, but it was definitely a breach allowing water in…as well as an opportunity he wasn’t going to waste.

He swam his streak up alongside and slightly ahead of the corvette as it suddenly slowed, then he dove in towards it and launched his third torpedo, targeting the gap. It zipped across the now less turbulent water, autocorrecting as it went for the various currents, and slipped inside a moment before the hull cracked apart and blew out armor shards in a slow motion fireworks display that was shrouded by a cloud of dust.

“Got one,” Vander said aloud, adding one more capital ship to his personal kill list as a bright blue streak illuminated the water in front of him.

“Whoa,” he said, diving his streak lower to get out of the firing line of the Black Pearl that had now caught up with the squids. Now that he was paying attention he saw two more almost invisible strands shoot out from the gigantic hull and touch the side of one of the light destroyers, pushing right through their defense trees and triggering the plasma nubs to discharge on one. That strand disintegrated near the lizard ship, then it seemed to regenerate from halfway back towards the Star Force battleship, reaching out to touch the hull again, this time slipping through the branches and punching apart the strands.

Vander knew that was an illusion, and in truth the extremely long shield column the Black Pearl was extending originated at a width akin to the size of his thumb, then expanded out to more than a meter, giving the medium plasma cannon it was attached to a few inches of clearance for it to fire directly on the enemy craft.

The shield column flashed blue as another squirt of plasma traveled down the vacuum the shield had created in the water, essentially cheating the two kilometers of distance between the ships. As much as the lizards loved using plasma, and had adapted it to function underwater, their form of ship to ship combat relied on physical contact, due to the water interfering with conventional plasma delivery, but thanks to the ever enhancing shield designs Star Force was fielding, the Archons had found a way around the problem.

Which meant the lizards were heavily outmatched, requiring them to either flee or charge the ship and get within touching range…something the squids were not allowing to happen, at least not for the more dangerous capital ships. Several small torpedoes and minnows streaked towards the massive hull that was creating an underwater tsunami with all the water it was pushing ahead of it, which actually made the lizard projectiles twitch on approach before they slammed into the shielded hull.

One advantage of having a ship more than a mile long underwater was the fact that you could carry very large power cores, which fed an unbelievable amount of power to the shields, allowing the battleship to shrug off the bee stings of the minnows and weather the smaller torpedoes. Not only that, they also provided the power necessary to force and hold back the water along the shield columns, something that was not easy to do, with the downside being they were easily disrupted by weaponsfire or collision.

But their ability to regenerate made them resilient, if not mobile. They couldn’t swing to the side very well to target a moving ship, but rather had to come out of a fixed vector from the Black Pearl, meaning you had to pick your spot to fire on several seconds before you could pull the trigger, making them almost impossible to target the sharks and smaller lizard craft. Moving through the water also put more stress on the shield columns, reducing their effective range, but once the giant ship settled into position its 16 plasma cannons made for an impressive fireworks display at range, though the firing rate was slow compared to aerial or naval combat.

Everything in aquatics seemed to move at a snail’s pace comparably, giving Vander plenty of time to note the advance of the lizard heavy capital ships into the firing range of the defense tower, which held its own array of shield column plasma cannons, only these were the large variety.

Those blue flashes appeared off to the left, while the Black Pearl was currently on his right as he swerved around again looking for another shark to pursue. He saw several futilely targeting the battleship and ignored them, looking instead for some opportunity to aid what squids were left. More than half had been destroyed, but all of the enemy hammerheads and a chunk of the frigates were gone, leaving the corvettes and light destroyers as the primary threat…and they were going down quickly under the Black Pearl’s plasma cannons.

There wasn’t much more Vander could do here, so he set out to find the closest, but yet untouched squid that appeared to be in danger, sighting one that a corvette was pursuing. It wasn’t going to catch it, due to the speed difference, but Vander could see that the squid was heading to one of the remaining frigates and downing a torpedo coming its way with a wave of intercepts…clearly intent on closing to lethal range with the lizard craft…which would then allow the corvette to come up from behind and cut it in half.

Vander kicked in his anti-grav for a short speed boost, coming up behind the corvette and seeing that all its arms were tucked in for maximum aerodynamics, giving him an idea. He snuck up behind it, getting closer and closer to its aft end, essentially daring it to open its claws and grab him, but it seemed to either not care or not want to slow down from the drag, because it didn’t respond to his presence.

“Ok, you’re making this too easy,” he said, nudging a bit closer, ready to hit the brakes when needed, as he extended the short shield column out in front of him and nestled up against the back of the corvette, fighting against its jet engine wash. The lizards, so far as Star Force knew, had differential gravity drives in some of their equipment, but it wasn’t very advanced, meaning their naval cruisers had to rely on thrust engines for their more extreme lateral thrusts.

Some ships had the differential engines, some didn’t, but to date none of their aquatics ships did, according to the schematics Star Force had recovered from the lizard bases captured on Corneria some two centuries ago. A lot of technological enhancements could have been made in that time, but so far using anti-grav for aquatics propulsion didn’t seem to be one of them, so the lizard ships had to rely on water manipulation.

The corvette had intake vents on the side, pulling water into an internal caterpillar-like drive unit that exited out the back end between the retracted claws…and was spewing water directly onto the streak, making it difficult to stay close enough to get the shield column in place. Vander had to maneuver a bit high, so he was riding just over top the jet stream, in order to get in close enough to make tentative contact…fortunately the shield designer had accounted for some variation, because it auto-adjusted to the erratic movements, maintaining the vacuum corridor with a solid seal on the aft end of the corvette.

Still no claws came out, so Vander pumped a plasma shot into the hull…then jammed on the brakes as the minimal damage seemed to awaken the lizard ship, for it deployed both claws simultaneously and arched them back to grab at his slender streak.

Cutting his jet propulsion and flicking the maneuvering vents in reverse he quickly put some distance between the two ships, with the corvette continuing to chase the squid that was just now reaching its target. Vander thought hard, trying to figure something he could do to distract the corvette away from the squid, knowing that his one remaining torpedo wasn’t going to do much to stop it, and with the claws now deployed he wasn’t going to get close enough to hit it with a plasma shot again.

Just then he noticed another contact on his battlemap closing fast as the corvette slowed to align with the squid that was now latching onto the frigate as it tried to flee, dragging it through the water as it did so. The corvette moved after the pair, then turned to the right suddenly, but not before another squid shot in and rammed it in the midsection between the forward and aft set of claws.

It latched onto the ship with its arms…then inexplicably let go as soon as it had a grip, escaping the incoming claws and swimming off sharply, leaving the corvette to drift momentarily with a crack in its hull from the impact. The squid’s arms were even more damaged, but not so much that it couldn’t tuck them up into a fat needle and zip off elsewhere.

Vander wondered what that had been all about, then saw a tiny silver tendril shoot across his vision and into the side of the now more or less stationary corvette. It widened ever so slightly, then a blue plasma blast shot into it from the not so close Black Pearl, thanks to the squid having set up the shot.

“Good work,” Vander commented, though his comm wasn’t open. He accelerated forward and under the shield column as another plasma blast was delivered, off to hunt more opponents in the ever shrinking battlefield…then he noticed the distant contacts on his battlemap, seeing that the turret tower was now under heavy assault with the incoming reinforcements getting painfully close to joining the fray.

Too close for the Black Pearl to intercept in time, meaning the defense tower was as good as lost.

4

At the base of the defense tower, well lower than the altitude of the battling fleets, part of the lizard infantry was swimming across the rocky ocean floor while the rest assaulted higher portions of the huge, narrow cylinder sticking up out of the ground and running almost all the way up to the ocean’s surface 1.4 miles above.

It was an immense construct, guarding an even more immense city beyond it, but given its size it was difficult to properly defend. This the lizards had learned in previous years as they assaulted the Human cities, trying to find a way past their defenses so they could eradicate the infestation from the planet even as orbit was being contended for in an ongoing naval chess match between massive fleets.

Reinforcements kept coming down to bolster the growing lizard colonies, even as the Humans continually raided and destroyed those they could find. Give the lizards time to build and grow and they’d overwhelm the planet, but hit them early and often and they could stem the tide…as well as causing them to divert resources from other planets to this one, all the while Star Force’s infrastructure continued to grow.

The defense tower was one of the more impressive underwater constructs that they’d come up with, and even now, further above, the heavy plasma cannons were lighting up the ocean with streaks of blue as they targeted the incoming lizard capital ships in between the massive explosions of the incoming torpedoes, which had the nasty habit of breaking apart the shield conduits the plasma flowed down. That bit of offensive defense was also something the lizards had learned, and it kept their fleet intact long enough to vie for the tower in what otherwise would have been a short battle.

Multifaceted attacks were the lizards’ specialty, and even as the fleet and other infantry units assaulted higher portions of the tower, this lower detachment was using the seafloor for cover to get in close and plant the det packs they were carrying against the base…assuming they could get that far.

Star Force had set up weapons emplacements all along the height of the tower, including point defense weapons akin to the intercepts that would fire out and intercept incoming infantry…but send enough troops in to bleed out their ammunition and zones of vulnerability would open up. This they had also learned from past, unsuccessful attacks, and this time they had come prepared.

The lizards swam forward, propelled by their own fin-like legs as they carried their det packs, escorted by others with rod-like melee weapons that each had one plasma nub on the end for them to jab into enemies. On physical contact the glowing nub containing the plasma would discharge through a specially designed membrane and into the target, contacting very little water in the process, but enough would slip through to cause a burst of steam in the form of bubbles, visibly marking weapon strikes.

The tips of the plasma rods glowed green as they contained a ready amount of plasma for discharge, but the troops swimming across the ocean floor had their rods turned off, so as to not draw immediate attention. Also, the rocky outcroppings made it harder for the Human sensors to detect their approach until they were virtually on top of them.

When the lizards finally broke cover about 300 meters away from the tower, where the rocky cover disappeared into a pancake flat plain that Star Force had carved down as a perimeter, little swimming missiles shot out from the 200m wide tower, each tracking towards individual infantry, taking out many of them with surprise hits resulting in muted explosions that ripped into the fleshy, yet flexible exoskeletons on this variant of lizard.

The others saw the point defense missiles, or PDM for short, coming and activated their shield gauntlets, which were little more than a second rod that deployed an energy shield that they used to block the small detonations…though they had to stop swimming forward in order to deploy the large barriers, for they dragged heavily against the water.

The remote targeting systems in the tower, relayed to controllers back in the city or nearby battleship if it needed to assume control, suddenly began spewing out more PDM with groups tagged to each individual they spotted with a shield, knowing that several successive hits would breach it and take the infantry down, which started a bit of a stalemate in the advance, with more and more lizard infantry popping up from the rocks and deploying their defensive walls that they slowly swam behind, inching their way in towards the tower like a scattering of Roman Legionnaires.

A hundred and fifty meters up the tower, one of the plasma cannons extended a shield column down to the surface where a knot of the infantry were, with them scurrying out of the way as it touched bottom and widened, followed by a plasma blast that vaporized a bit of rock and left it superheated enough that when the shield disappeared and the water flowed in it resulted in a pyre of bubbles rising upwards like a marker beacon…but the attack had little chance of hitting an individual lizard, making it almost worthless against infantry, though it did manage to scatter those in the immediate area.

More PDMs flowed out of the tower like schools of tiny fish, zipping this way and that, keeping the lizards thoroughly occupied even as their numbers continued to grow as more kept coming up out of the rocks…but as they did a school of much larger ‘fish’ came in to flank them, each with a person at the helm of the water-version mongooses known as ‘arrowheads,’ named for their triangular design.

A quartet of blue arrowheads skimmed the rocky terrain, having emerged from the back side of the tower and moved out laterally, coming in over the irregular surface to help hide their own approach. Some of the lizards saw them coming and turned to face them…opening themselves up to the PDM, which took a few down before the arrowheads got to the first group and split up into separate attack vectors.

The first one, with an Archon at the helm, dropped down level with the lizard ahead of it and increased its speed, ramming the water lizard with the tip and delivering a punch to its midsection that doubled it over before knocking it to the side, unconscious from the stun energy delivered on contact. The arrowhead jetted on, ramming another while the others in its quartet did likewise until the rest of the lizards noticed their appearance and began huddling up into groups and overlapping their shields while sticking their plasma rods out through the gaps, hoping to catch one of the arrowheads with the tip as they came at them.

Tucked safely inside the arrowheads’ sleek hull, the Archons and aquatics regulars knew better than to get that close, so they ignored the knots of infantry and picked off the individuals, many of whom were just coming up out of the rocks. As they did more formations of arrowheads popped up in various locations, ramming the lizards into unconsciousness with the specially designed ridge on the little aquatics craft that delivered stun blows against solid targets rather than the liquid water…which was a tricky bit of engineering.

Other than the V-shaped stun edge the arrowheads were just quick transports, unsuited for any other combat. Going up against infantry was almost too easy, aside from when they turtled up like many were doing now…but as they’d quickly find out that wasn’t a good idea.

A group of six lizards had formed a complete dome around themselves with their plasma rods sticking out to hit any arrowhead that tried to ram them when a shield column descended on top of them, forming a seal against the topmost lizard shield. A split second later a plasma blast came down through the vacuum and vaporized both the lizard shield and the lizard underneath it, along with all the water surrounding the other 5 lizards.

A huge steam cloud blocked out any vision of the site, but then it lifted up, heading for the ongoing battles above, revealing bits and pieces of charred lizard floating about where the shield huddled formation had been.

Those lizards near enough to see what had happened suddenly rethought their defensive maneuver and broke up into smaller groups, using their shields as side walls as they swam forward. Some of the arrowheads went after them, ramming into the groups now that their plasma rods weren’t deployed, but rather tucked inside as they swam forward. The Star Force pilots concentrated on them like sharks spinning about a school of fish, darting in and out making strikes.

Like the streaks, the arrowhead bent at the middle, approximately where the pilot’s knees were located in the flat machine, allowing it to make sharper turns. With that agility, and no vehicular backup for the infantry, the arrowheads had no problem keeping the lizards from getting to the tower and planting their explosives…but as they zipped around, picking off those lizards that were closest while even more continued to arrive, a large piece of debris fell down from above and landed on the 300m wide plain around the tower.

The lizards immediately took to it for cover and turtled up behind it. A shield column came down and shot it, but it was too big to dislodge quickly, so it continued to fire down into it, having to reset the vacuum lock each time by pushing a ‘plug’ of shield down the length and getting all the water out that was flowing back up.

Clean, mate, fire…clean, mate, fire. That was the cycle that had the plasma cannon chewing apart the lizards’ new cover, but it wasn’t the only piece to come down. Two more smaller ones joined it, then a cascade of large ones began raining down…pieces of the turret that the lizards were chewing apart from above.

The arrowheads had to dart out of the way and eventually retreat to the backside of the tower to avoid the debris, allowing the suicidal lizards a narrow window of opportunity, though a number of them were still going down to the PDM coming from the base of the tower. They swam forward in a massive charge, many of them being crushed as the debris landed on them while they tried to get to the side of the tower.

A few brave arrowheads zipped around near the giant cylinder, using it for cover given that the debris seemed to be leaving a narrow clear zone right up next to the massive construct. Those arrowheads zipped around the perimeter like they were making laps, never slowing down or turning around and ramming lizards as they passed. Soon more joined them, forming an unending train making circles around the tower and ramming any lizards that got that close.

An explosion from above rocked both the arrowheads and lizards below as their counterparts higher up successfully tore out a section of the tower, with the shockwaves being felt all the way down to the seafloor. Further up the construct was a mass of blue lights and occasional green flickers from lizard contact weapons. More and more debris continued to fall down until the arrowheads got an evac order and made a beeline back towards the fence that surrounded the city…just as the top section of the tower began list.

It looked like a log that termites had gotten a hold of, with huge chunks missing from it, but it was a section along the middle that had taken the worst damage. It was from there that the imbalance occurred…along with a bit of pushing by the surviving lizard carriers. The entire top half buckled and tipped over, then the break point completely snapped and slid off, tossing 3/5ths of the tower off to the side where it floated down and crashed into the seafloor tip first, then continued to slowly keel over until it landed on its side, crushing into the rock formations below.

A number of weapons on the bottom half continued to fire, even with the water flowing in from above. The design had been compartmentalized, and there were no personnel inside, so some of the plasma cannons below were still functional and reached up towards the ships overhead vengefully, but they didn’t last long. The infantry that had survived the falling debris swam up to the tower, now that the arrowheads were gone, and planted charges directly next to the plasma cannons.

Some set timers, others didn’t bother and just blew themselves up with the Human weapons, but as the arrowheads retreated back to the fence the remaining defensive capability of the tower was picked apart and eliminated as the remains of the lizard fleet and their now arrived reinforcements concentrated on the second tower, attempting to do the same there.

Vander didn’t see the tower go down, as he was busy with the sharks from the reinforcement fleet, but he did notice it disappear from him battlemap…then he saw the holographic depiction of its remains laying across the ocean floor.

“Damn it,” he swore while keeping attention on the pair of sharks ahead of him. He was going to ram the slower of the two, but so far neither had broken their paired formation. The Archon was about to pick one and hope he could get a decent plasma shot off before the other turned on him when a new contact appeared on his battlemap, emerging as a long, large line in the sky that spread out into the comforting curves of the underside of the Dutchman as it landed in the ocean directly beside the second tower and was slowly descending into the fight.

Shield columns extended from 8 locations on the underside, streaking out to connect with the large lizard ships, then pumping plasma shots down them as the Star Force battleship engaged multiple contacts at once. Its bays began pumping out squids as well, ensuring the demise of the lizard fleet as the Black Pearl pressed in from the western side, offering the enemy an escape vector to the southeast, but they were hell-bent on hitting the tower to the north and continued to press their attack, hoping to do at least some damage to the gigantic underwater pillar.

The two battleships and the tower itself took their stupidity face on and systematically cut the lizard fleet to shreds over the course of the next 20 minutes, with only a pair of torpedoes actually reaching their target. Neither breached the shields, given that they hit in different locations at different times, though they did suck a considerable amount of strength out of them, and had the Dutchman not arrived when it did, the lizards would have at least seriously damaged the tower in the last stages of the battle.

Once the last of the capital ships were destroyed the arrowheads were recalled from the city to help deal with the infantry, along with other Star Force transports that followed in their wake, collecting the stunned lizards, corpses, their equipment, and other pieces of salvage, clearing away the 300m perimeter around the base of the tower. After that the recovery crews began chewing apart the dead lizard ships, along with recovering their own damaged squids, both those from the battleships and those the city had deployed in the first stages of the battle along with a scattering of other ships, including other streaks that Vander finally came across as they patrolled the area post battle.

He was recalled first, given that he’d been out on assignment with the Black Pearl, and headed in towards the gigantic net-like wall that surrounded the city in a spiral, offering only one entryway between the overlapping sides. Vander’s streak, however, was narrow enough to shoot the gaps in the fence and he did just that, passing through the metallic grating that kept larger ships at bay. Given the side of the city that he was on, he actually passed through two sections of overlapping fence, then he was inside the perimeter looking in on the giant seashell-shaped city of Manaan.

Vander headed for one of the hangar bays, passing through the water conduit that sported defense turrets of its own, and up into an internal lagoon that held an atmosphere similar to the small bay on the Black Pearl that the streak had originated from. His long ship floated up to the surface then trolled its way into one of the many docking berths where a mechanical walkway extended out to the streak and attached to its midsection, holding the ship in place and giving Vander an easy way to get to the nearby dock as he popped the hatch on the streak and stood up off the pommel seat.

He stretched his back and popped his helmet off, sucking in a deep breath of marine air and scratching a spot on his head that had been nagging him for several minutes, then he stepped up onto the short bridge and walked over onto the dock where a maintenance crew of three were waiting.

“Welcome back,” a female tech by the name of Heather offered, knowing Vander well, given that Manaan was his base of operations. The stint on the Black Pearl had only been a 2-day mission out hunting lizards near one of Star Force’s mining sites.

“Needs torpedoes and some plasma,” he said, all business.

“Did they get one of the towers?” a male tech asked as the third slid off the dock and swam two meters over to the side of the streak and opened up a side panel in the armor with a specialized tool.

“Unfortunately yes,” Vander said, pausing for a moment as he visually did an inventory on the ships in the bay…seeing very few of what was usually berthed here. Most of them were still outside, either patrolling or working the recovery and cleanup effort. “And I’d expect they’ll be back soon to take advantage of the weakness. Get her reloaded as soon as you can.”

“Will do,” the female tech answered, then got busy with another panel on the topside of the ship as Vander walked off, heading for the large pressure doors that led into the city, on his way to see Kyler. Between his previous mission and the recent assault, they had quite a few things to discuss.

5

On his way up to the command level Vander stopped by the armory and got out of his silver aquatics armor, a more robust version of the standard Archon armor that included small jet propulsion units in addition to a larger air supply…along with the means to manufacture oxygen directly from the ocean water.

He’d been in it for the past 9 hours, having pulled two missions back to back, but didn’t stop by his quarters for a shower nor the cafeteria to grab a bite to eat, instead he went straight up to the command level that sat 2/3rds of the way up the city superstructure and was imbedded deep inside, making it one of the last places that would be breached by weaponsfire or invading troops.

When Vander got there it was quiet, yet busy, with staff and a scattering of Archons moving about showing more activity than they should have been, given that the battle was over. Recovery efforts would take some coordination, but he sensed an angst in the room that belied something else was going on.

He found Kyler in a circle of three other Archons around the central planning table, talking amongst each other while looking over a holographic map of the surface of the planet, so he didn’t interrupt, but he did step up beside the trailblazer and listen in, letting him visually know that he’d arrived.

“Take it,” Cryson-933 urged.

“Can we?” Preston-1229 asked, raising an eyebrow. “We lost a lot of squids today. They’re not going to be easy to replace.”

“They lost a lot more than we did. The attrition rate’s in our favor.”

Kyler shook his head. “No. They got exactly what they wanted when they took that tower down. They may have wanted both, but I’d guess that was more to split our defensive forces and maximize their chances of getting one, which they did.”

“What are we looking at,” Eaton-2503 asked, “9 months to get a new one built?”

“If we have the resources on hand, yeah,” Kyler wavered. “If not,” he said, glancing to his left at Vander. “How bad did we get hit?”

“The lizards junked two with det packs,” he answered, referring to the processing units in the mining outpost his previous mission had sent him out to deal with. “The rest saw superficial damage and are still operational.”

“How’d they get past the defenses?” Cryson asked.

“They tunneled,” Vander said, his voice taut with frustration. “There was a natural fissure running underneath the perimeter defenses. They added to it in some key points, but most of it was already there waiting for them. We got it sealed up, and the techs are working to fill it and others in so this won’t happen again.”

“What’d they use to dig through the rock?” Kyler asked, frowning.

“It could barely fit into the hole in my armor, so it wasn’t anything big, but we couldn’t recover anything. I’d guess they took their time and set up the tunnel well before the attack.”

“How many got in?” Eaton asked, leaning forward so far on the table that his arms dipped into the hologram a bit.

“Six with det packs and another 40 or so escorts. We couldn’t find the ship that brought them, so it must have bugged out as soon as it dropped them off.”

“Damn suicide run,” Cryson bit out.

“Not atypical of them,” Kyler commented, rubbing his smooth chin where his stubble used to be as he thought. It was a habit that he hadn’t broken yet, despite the fact that his facial hair follicles had been deactivated years ago. “But they had no chance of destroying the entire facility with only six det packs?”

“Not even close,” Vander answered his glance. “Maybe they thought they could hit the power core and cause a chain reaction, but they’ve got to have better intel on our tech than that. My guess is they just wanted to cause damage and slow down our growth rate.”

“We’re the stronger here,” Kyler reminded them. “In the past that hasn’t been the case. I think we’re starting to see a shift in tactics, not unlike what they’ve used against the Kvash in space…save there’s more opportunity to slink about down here than in vacuum.”

“We need a bigger sensor grid,” Eaton insisted, referencing the sensor limitations that had the stealthy lizard aquatics hulls disappearing from view at a range of about 3-4 kilometers, with their biggest ships registering out to about 5-6km. Their infantry showed up first, in some cases, because they didn’t carry the armor that their craft did. Like their space navy, their aquatics forces became ghosts at range, despite the continually advancing Star Force detection capabilities.

“We can’t defend much more than we’ve got,” Cryson pointed out. “They’re already disabling the perimeter nodes.”

“Two ideas,” he countered. “One, we make mobile units and have them swim random paths. Two, we build larger units with defenses, linked into city or outpost control.”

“The second will require resources that we don’t have,” Kyler reminded him.

“If it saves us having to replace equipment they would otherwise have damaged, I’d say it could logistically be worth it.

“We need to go hunting,” Vander pressed. “That will take some of the pressure off of our defenses…and allow us to build what we need. If they keep us on the defensive they’ll win the resource race, because the fleet isn’t able to keep their cruisers in orbit and it’s a big planet.”

Kyler looked at his fellow aquatics specialist. “Other than sending the battleships out, what are you suggesting?”

“They’ve got more shipyards out there than we’ve been able to locate. We need to find them.”

“If you have any suggestions as to how to do that?” Cryson implored.

“The assault fleet didn’t come in via air,” Vander reminded them, referring to the initial assault on the city. “That limits their range.”

“Unless they took their time getting here,” Eaton pointed out.

“No, he’s right,” Kyler said, looking down at the map. “There have been too many raids without air drop. They have to have at least a transitional base somewhere close. Any guesses?”

Vander looked down at the map, seeing the section of the planet where Star Force had set up the bulk of its operations. There were 3 main cities, each a huge independent colony identical to Manaan. They were spread out in a triangle approximately 3600 kilometers apart from one another. Around each were clusters of additional facilities, mining the seafloor for resources. Rail lines didn’t connect them, as was usual Star Force protocol, given that the lizards could easily disable them, though some of the closest facilities were connected via subsurface tunnels.

That tunnel network was expanding out slowly, leaving the bulk of the shipments having to occur either through air, point to point, or through the water via transports. Both were used, but the lizards had quickly started poaching the air transports, either by dropping fighters via cruiser and having them run them down, or by deploying them from aquatics craft and doing the same. Skeet escorts then had to be used, and the overall process essentially ground to a halt with Star Force shifting almost everything underwater where the fighters couldn’t go.

The result was large convoys traversing the grid of mining sites under heavy escort. Usually those weren’t hit, given the number and size of ships protecting them, but the lizards weren’t above putting ambush forces down in the rocky seafloor and trying to damage a freighter as they passed over with det packs or a torpedo salvo, chipping away at the freighters whenever they could get the chance.

The bulk of other production, aside from the mining sites, was located around the cities but inside the massive fences that protected them from direct assault. Those included bioharvest facilities, processing centers, shipyards, and the rest of the standard allotment of Star Force infrastructure that couldn’t be housed within the city itself as Kyler and the rest of the Archons continued to expand their production capability.

“I’d suspect somewhere here,” Vander said, jabbing a finger into the hologram about 300 kilometers to the east of Manaan, “but that’s just a gut feeling.”

“How do we check on your gut feeling?” Preston asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “That’s a lot of deep, dark ocean to search with a tiny sensor brush.”

“I know,” Vander agreed, “but we’ve got to do something. It’s been 3 years since we found and killed a lizard base…and no, I’m not counting those startups.”

“At this point,” Kyler interrupted, “I’m willing to concede that the lizards can out build us, but they seem concerned about stunting out growth as well, so I don’t think we have the same situation as we would if this was on land. Their aquatics are less robust, and I’m guessing the same goes for their underwater resource collection, otherwise they wouldn’t keep trying the resource drops from orbit.”

“They’re used to stealing resources that they haven’t been able to do here,” Cryson added.

“A fair point,” Kyler offered, “but it’s more than that. I get the distinct feeling that they don’t want waterworlds…they just don’t want us to have them. Agree/disagree?”

“Possible,” Preston said.

“They wanted Ariel’s,” Cryson pointed out.

“She said they were learning a lot in the process,” Eaton added. “I agree with Kyler. This is putting them out of their element, but they are learning.”

“And they’re dangerously clever,” Vander finished. “Water or no water.”

“We can’t search the entire planet,” Kyler said, “and they’re not taking the land bait. So other than following what leads we get and waiting for them to come to us…”

The other four Archons were silent for a moment, until Preston finally spoke.

“I don’t know why, but I get the feeling like they’re starting to win. We don’t know how many ships they have, where they are, and they just knocked down a mark 5 defense tower on our front door. I think the only place we know they’re going to be is right here,” he said, pointing to the city under his feet. “We’ve got a weakness in our defenses that we can’t easily patch. This feels like a prelude to a larger assault. Now, we can track them through the atmosphere easier than we can underwater, so that’s where we should focus our detection efforts,” he said, nodding at Eaton.

“How?” Kyler asked.

“We need more forewarning,” Preston continued. “We have to push the sensor nodes out further.”

“They’ll pick them off, one by one,” Cryson warned.

“Do you still think they’re approaching along the seafloor?” Kyler asked Eaton.

“Yes.”

The trailblazer zoomed the holographic map in on Manaan and its satellite facilities, bringing up a more detailed topography of the region. “Best guesses.”

“We know they come in through here,” Vander said immediately, pointing to a curvy valley that ran south of the city, coming within 20 kilometers at the closest point with shallower veins running all the way up to within 3 kilometers. “I’ve personally seen two groups passing through there, and there have been other contacts noted.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Cryson said, jumping ahead in the conversation, “but it’s the trench sensors they always take out first.”

“I wasn’t thinking sensors…I was thinking fence, plus sensors, plus towers. A quartet of mark 3s or a lot of 2s.”

“That’s a lot of resources we don’t have,” Eaton pointed out.

“And all it’ll do is cause them to make a detour,” Preston added. “If we had better sensor range it might be worth it, but their damn armor makes them ghosts outside of a few kilometers. I don’t see how a fence is going to be effective.”

“I do,” Vander countered, “but it’s over our heads right now. We need more battleships, and wasting resources on anything else is foolish.”

“Go back,” Preston urged. “How is a fence effective given the sensor limitations?”

“What’s the lizards’ sensor range?” Vander countered.

“25-30 kilometers for a midsized vessel,” Eaton answered. “As of 200 years ago.”

“And we know that because we captured their tech tree schematics,” Vander pointed out. “Do they know what our sensor range is?”

“They probably have a good guess by now.”

“Do they?” Kyler asked. “Aside from firing on them, how do they know? Given perfect water conditions our shield columns extend out almost to the edge of our effective sensor range.”

“You’re suggesting they don’t realize how blind we are?” Cryson asked.

“Why would they bother running trenches?” Vander pointed out.

“Even if you’re right, all that does is tell us they’re being extra careful about their movements.”

“It also tells us,” Kyler added, “that they’re worried about our speed. If we detect them 500 kilometers away we can get a battleship there in a blink of an eye, relatively speaking, and they know it. Their ships are pinned to the water, and therefore vulnerable, so they’re doing their best to stay hidden as they move around…they just don’t know that we can’t see them.”

“You think a fence across the trench will scare them off?” Preston asked.

“I think it might disrupt their routes, which is the point.”

Vander nodded. “If they’re using the terrain like roads, strategically placed fences could be useful in the long term.”

“But it’s still a bluff,” Cryson pointed out. “And I say we can’t be wasting resources on mind games.”

“He is right.”

Kyler looked behind him to the small pool of water built into the floor. “How long have you been there?”

The Elarioni smiled from just beneath the surface. “Long enough,” the computer translation said.

“Thank you,” Cryson said, walking around the display table so he could see Ariel more clearly. “How am I right?”

“The lizards are used to dealing with longer sensor ranges, so they are cautious. They do not know of your weakness, because their armor did not stop Elarioni sensors. They may suspect, but given our flying ships and the speed of our smaller ones they are reluctant to try. They will not remain reluctant forever. The more contact they have, the more they will learn. They do not learn today, for there were no survivors.”

“Actually there are 52 captives…so far,” Kyler pointed out.

“You will release them?” the mermaid-like alien asked.

“I’d like to, but where? Not going to drop them off in the middle of nowhere to starve to death.”

“They’ll be dead by the end of the day,” Vander guessed, reminding him of the lizards’ suicidal habits when taken prisoner.

“I ordered them sedated for the time being,” Kyler said off hand.

“Do not,” Ariel warned. “Give them no information from the battle to study.”

“Assuming they didn’t send telemetry out,” Vander noted.

“We detected none,” Ariel countered.

“We can hold onto them indefinitely, though Vander is probably right about them killing themselves,” Kyler added.

“I have need of escort,” the Elarioni said bluntly.

Kyler and the other Archons frowned. “Where to?”

She swam to the side of the small pool and interfaced with an underwater console, altering the hologram above the table to match a small one inside the water, allowing her to confer with the Humans. Using that ability she zoomed in the regional map all the way down to the city, then highlighted the debris field, tagging one of the three dead lizard aquatics cruisers.

“I need to go there. Now.”

“What is it?” Kyler asked, having learned to trust her instincts.

“A hunch.”

“I’ll take you,” Cryson offered.

With barely a nod of recognition Ariel swam down to the bottom of the pool and disappeared into a water tunnel, heading elsewhere in the city through the personal transit system Star Force had built for her when she volunteered to help them fight the lizards on the frontier rather than be returned to the splinter group of her race in Nestafar space.

Cryson walked off, nodding at Kyler on the way out, leaving the other Archons to continue their now pointless discussion. Something was up, and they didn’t have a clue what it could be.

“I want a perimeter patrol around the debris,” Kyler said, tagging the area on the map and using it to send out the order. “Double lines.”

“I’ll head back out,” Vander said. “I want to see what she finds.”

“Might want to move the battleships out further,” Eaton suggested.

Kyler twitched his head, silently giving him the go ahead to send the order, leaving the trailblazer and Preston at the holographic table staring at the map.

“Ok, the fence was a stretch,” he admitted.

Preston smiled. “We have to do something. I just wish we knew what it was.”

6

Cryson slipped his streak through the large gaps in the fence surrounding Manaan, aiming for the square holes between the meters thick strands making up a narrow, inverted ‘V’ that ended just shy of the ocean surface, finishing the last bit of elevation with a single line of fencing that reached up to block the remaining waterways into the city’s perimeter. The gaps wouldn’t keep small craft out, but they would keep most of the lizards’ warships back from the infrastructure, forcing any battles to take place at a distance rather than directly over the city.

The fence itself comprised a huge mass of metal, stretching 1.4 miles in height with a circumference of 38 miles, but the investment of resources to build it and its two twins surrounding Ackbar and Seaquest had paid off given the number of raids it’d thwarted. The spiral design overlapped for a span of 3.2 miles, creating a corridor that all traffic had to travel through, and was just wide enough for a battleship to pass, though given their flight ability they had the option of just hopping over the fence on anti-grav.

The streak was one of a few Star Force craft narrow enough to shoot the gaps in the fence, with plenty of smaller defense towers inside the perimeter to deal with lizard craft of similar size that tried to get through without their larger cousins backing them up. They’d tried a few times, but had given up the attempt after city defense patrols kept intercepting them. This most recent assault had been the largest to date, and signaled a significant shift in tactics.

Cryson zipped his streak out the second side of the fence and accelerated over to the ruins of the defense tower, then altered course to the gap between it and the adjacent one that had come under attack, following the littering of ships like a trail of bread crumbs. When he eventually got near the second he found the dead cruiser Ariel had indicated, having been killed before it could close range. Cryson lowered the streak in a spiral down to where it lay on the seafloor with the aft end sticking up at an angle and made two full rotations around the wreck looking for trouble before heading to ground.

Cryson parked well out from the cruiser as a number of squids and arrowheads circled around the area, making sure no one was going to get a shot off at their aquatics expert. The Archon pressed a button on the streak’s control board and the water-filled canopy opened to the ocean, allowing him in his armor to swim up and out as Ariel deftly pulled ahead of him, emerging from behind his seat in the cockpit. Her tiny form wriggled as she swam ahead, with Cryson using the propulsion units in his armor’s arms to keep pace behind her.

“Anything?” Cryson asked, tagging those personnel already scouring the ship in his comm choices.

“Ship is clear,” Vander reported. “They caught a few survivors hiding inside, but they didn’t last long. One was taken prisoner.”

“Stay sharp,” Cryson reminded him and the others listening in.

“We’ve got your back,” his fellow Archon promised.

Cryson switched to Ariel’s comm and highlighted it individually. “What are we looking for?” he asked as they swam towards the broken cruiser, which looked absolutely huge up close, and they were still more than 200 meters away.

“One of the tendrils on this cruiser is still intact. I need to examine the internal mechanics. Hopefully they are also still intact and accessible,” she said, speaking through a necklace that translated and transmitted her native language, otherwise she was completely naked, as was typical of her species, given this was her natural environment.

“Where are we going in?”

“Midsection breach.”

“Let me go first,” he prompted.

“Don’t make me slow down,” she teased.

Cryson smiled and kicked in his ankle jets, pulling up beside her and inching ahead. His armor was bulky by Archon standards, but in the water it felt extremely agile…aside from compared to the Elarioni, who could swim circles around him at will. On the back where a weapons rack and pack would normally have sat was a smooth flap extending from the shoulders down to his waist, underneath which he had a pair of ‘needlers’ stashed away, just in case.

The weapons, colored pink in Halo homage, contained the pen-sized anti-personnel PDMs that the towers and streaks carried, only in much smaller numbers. He had 10 per weapon, each of which would kill a lizard on contact, though their legionnaire shield gauntlets would hold up to several detonations before going down.

The weapons had a targeting laser that could be used to paint targets for them to swim to, otherwise they were just point and shoot with an optional proximity detonation setting, though if they didn’t actually hit the target the odds of them doing sufficient damage were slim, given their low yields.

The PDM on the streaks were slightly larger, as were most of those in the towers, but in a pinch the Archons could use the needler to shoot down incoming minnows…if they were a good shot.

Cryson and Ariel swam up to the most viable breach point on the hull…a massive blast point where plasma had triggered some sort of internal explosion, opening up the dark brown hull to the ocean water, though in the depths it appeared nearly black, save for the scattering of lights the patrols were carrying.

Cryson had sensor telemetry overlaid on his helmet’s HUD to navigate by, but he also had lights on the exterior of his armor, one of which was on and glowed a dull orange, marking his position along with those of the other Archons and regulars out swimming about. Otherwise it was a dark, empty graveyard of hull fragments surrounding the bulk of the dead lizard ship, with the giant blast crater making it look even more intimidating.

Ariel didn’t seem to mind, and could see quite well on her own, given her bioluminescent eyes. They glowed golden, while tiny patches of skin along the length of her body provided aqua-colored lights depicting her location alongside Cryson’s orange marker.

The Archon swam into the breach point first, flicking on the rest of his armor’s external lights and bathing the area in a white glow along with the help of a regular who was already swimming about inside the ship. Ariel stayed right behind him, whipping her tail back and forth to provide thrust while using her arms as rudders to control her orientation and direction of movement. Her normally loose green hair was tied back in a sleek ponytail, a sign that she felt excessive speed might be necessary, thus the additional streamlining.

“Guide me,” Cryson prompted.

“Right,” Ariel’s computer processed voice said, sounding identical to the Disney version, thanks to whatever joker had done the programming. Most of the other Archons hadn’t noticed, but he’d had a younger sister who’d been a Disney fanatic growing up, and as a result he’d become knowledgeable in a lot of movies and TV shows he’d otherwise never have watched on his own.

Cryson swam around a corner and down a corridor that looked like a hamster tunnel. It was totally different from the lizards’ typical interior designs, indicating that this ship had been built with water-filled interiors rather than air-filled ones.

“New model,” he commented.

“A good sign,” Ariel’s cartoon voice said in his helmet. “It increases the likelihood that the equipment will still be functional.”

“Point,” the Archon said, coming up against a section of tunnel that was sheered in two by some type of bulkhead that was now blocking their way.

“Left,” Ariel prompted.

Cryson pointed his right arm away from his body and reversed the flow, using it to push rather than pull, while leading with his gun-wielding left around the corner. They moved through several more sections, having to backtrack twice around damaged areas, before they finally got to a main corridor that led them to the area where Ariel wanted to go.

They passed by a piece of lizard hand floating in the corridor, with the webbing between the four fingers clearly visible…yet one of the many genetic augmentations they’d made for their water-breathing variant. A little further ahead they turned a corner and came to another damaged section, with more bits and pieces of lizard and machinery floating about.

Ariel bypassed them all, swimming ahead of Cryson to a nook in the large room they’d come to and trying to access a particular console. She got some function out of it while the Archon merely waited and watched, then the Elarioni swam to the side and pointed to a section of the wall.

Cryson swam forward, using his body rather than his jets, and latched his armored fingers into the grooves on a wall panel, then planted a foot beside it and lightly pulled, popping it off with Ariel swimming into the gap before he even had it halfway removed. Clearly she was eager to find something, because this was above and beyond her normally energetic mood when out in open water.

Cryson waited again, not sure if he could even squeeze into the passageway with the width of his shoulders. He was visibly sizing it up as he pulled his needler back off its hook and into his hand, knowing there were lots of places in here were a survivor could be hiding out, though they usually preferred the frontal attack or suicide charge to laying ambushes…but it wasn’t unheard of.

A few minutes later Ariel came back out head first, having somehow turned around in the narrow shaft. In her hand was a small component, a type of control node by the look of it. The Elarioni held it up in front of Cryson’s helmet for him to see clearly.

“This is what I was looking for. It controls one of their defense tendrils, seeking out nearby targets and differentiating between friend and foe without crew input.”

“An upgrade?”

“More than that. This was made from Elarioni technology. Reverse-engineered, for this isn’t our construction. The materials are lizard, but the design is not.”

Cryson frowned. “How bad is it?”

“I’ll need the techs to analyze this in detail, but it’s not good. Even if the programming is half as effective as Elarioni technology, this will be a problem. We can disable these batteries on their ships from afar, so that’s not significant, but if they implement it large scale…”

“I’ve never seen the real ones, so you’ll have to fill in the blanks for me.”

“We won’t be able to use any of our direct contact weapons. The tendrils will take out our ships with ease. Even the streaks could get caught, depending on the speed of the mechanics, because this,” she said, tapping a blue finger lightly against the control node, “will help them predict the movement of incoming objects, increasing the odds of intercept. Even if all they have them armed with are plasma nubs, they will be effective against our technology.”

“Are you done here?”

“Yes, though we need to recover the tendril pinned beneath the ship, if it’s salvageable. Tell them to be careful, this one still has power. I wasn’t able to deactivate it from here.”

“You want me to carry that?”

“I have it,” Ariel said, swimming by him and heading back through the ship fast enough that Cryson knew he wasn’t going to have a chance of staying with her.

“Showoff,” he muttered.

Two weeks later…

“They’re making another drop run,” Captain Ender commented as he watched the tactical hologram from the bridge of the Hawkeye.

“Who’s got it?” Sara asked via the comm.

“We do.”

“Do we have an angle?”

“Slim. They’re coming in hard.”

“Damn it,” Sara said, tossing aside her towel and hastily pulling on her uniform over a still shower-wet body. Her earpiece was the only thing on her that was actually dry. “What have we got moving?”

“Two corvettes. They’re running three cruisers, two of which are transports.”

“What do we have for an atmospheric intercept?” the trailblazer asked, pulling on her shoes sockless and running out her quarters’ door.

“Nothing. They’re headed for the backside of the planet.”

“How is that in our zone?” she asked, running through the warship’s corridors, dodging personnel on the way.

“The lizards are being creative in their approach vector. Looks like they’re going to aerobrake pretty hard, so even if we did have surface assets we couldn’t give them a decent prediction of where they’re going to come down.”

“What’s the corvette loadouts?”

“Maulers both,” he said, referring to the section of each ship that was modular and could be swapped out for different weapon systems.

“How long till we get a shot?”

“12 minutes.”

“Copy that,” Sara said, ending their conversation as she ducked into a stairwell, bypassing the elevators in favor of running. She knew she didn’t have to be on the bridge for the intercept, and could have left Ender in command and not given it a second thought, but the lizard fleets in orbit around Atlantica were constantly playing games with them and a gut feeling said she needed to get up there and follow this live.

In addition to her fleet, which consisted of 6 warship-class jumpships, there were five others in orbit, along with 3 Star Force battle stations in close formation, mere kilometers apart so they could overlap their defenses. It was those seda copies that had allowed Star Force to retain a presence in orbit, for when the lizard counter offensive began 6 years ago they’d arrived with a fleet 4 times as large as theirs and had immediately set upon clearing orbit of anything alien.

They hadn’t been able to remove the battle stations, which gave the Star Force fleets a fixed point to retreat to. That first assault had lasted 3 weeks, during which the lizards lost half their fleet trying to take them down. The surface damage to the stations was extensive, but between their numerous cleansing beams and the backing of the warships, they systematically tore apart the lizard ships when they came at them, enough that they hadn’t tried to assault the trio of stations again…despite the fact that their insystem fleet now numbered twice what it had been during that first assault.

Star Force had lost a lot of ships in that first defensive effort, but with that little piece of orbit secured Paul had been able to work his naval magic and keep the lizards continually frustrated. Both sides maintained orbital presences around the planet, attacking whenever they saw an opportunity while their surface forces vied for possession of the planet.

Paul had managed to secure the low ground…which in orbital terms was the prime zone around the planet within a few hundred miles of the atmosphere. That gave their ships the ability to maneuver around to different latitudes faster than the higher orbits, making response times better, as well as positioning themselves between them and the lizards, as hilarious as that notion was, given how much open space there was around a planet that simply couldn’t be shut off to ships wishing to pass through to the surface.

Like their basic training had first taught them long ago, getting down to a planet from orbit was easy…so the only way to stop someone from doing it was to get to them first, which the pair of Corvette-class drones were attempting to do now.

Sara arrived on the bridge with a few minutes to spare, shaking water droplets out of her short hair as she walk/jogged across to the Admiral’s chair and slid in, using the control interfaces to get up to speed rather than have the Captain talk her through it. He was seated nearby in his own command chair, monitoring the catch attempt.

The trailblazer pulled up an assessment program, which calculated the various trajectories of the 5 ships in question, seeing the difficult angle the corvettes were having to come in at and the speed of which they were going to pass by each other given they were travelling on two different lines that were about to cross.

“Ahead or follow?” she asked Ender as to which orders he’d given.

“Follow…given we don’t know their exact arrival point. We can go atmosphere if we have to when trailing.”

Sara nodded, then her eyes switched to the large hologram directly in front of her chair that detailed the orbital situation around the entire planet, though at the moment it had been zoomed in on their quarter of it. Touching a button she zoomed it back out, knowing that the people who needed the close-in data would be able to access copies of it on their individual consoles.

“A feint?” Ender asked, catching her line of thought.

“When’s the last time they only sent three ships?” she countered. The rest of their warships were split up into 17 different fleets occupying various points around middle orbit, some of which were very far out, essentially parking themselves for use later. Others were set up strategically on various jumplines, both from the star and the other planets, hoping to catch incoming Star Force jumpships while simultaneously protecting their own on arrival.

But again, a planet was huge, so with a little work, finding pirate jumplines past the entrenched fleets wasn’t difficult, but it did keep one on their toes, especially with lizard ships deployed elsewhere in the system trying to ambush incoming and outgoing convoys. So far they hadn’t succeeded in doing more than scaring Star Force ships into short delays as they circumvented the threats, but given the lizard ships’ ability to remain undetected at long range, a napping officer on duty could lead to a nasty surprise attack.

Fortunately, no one in Star Force’s military was even remotely lazy, given that most of them were over 100 years old and had achieved self-sufficiency long ago.

“I’ll be in the nexus,” Sara said, all but jumping out of her chair and jogging across the large bridge to the open door annex that held the Archon-only control chamber. She walked up to the control podium and activated the encircling holographic display, pulling up the telemetry from one of the corvettes and watching from its perspective as its twin was running slightly ahead of it and to the right.

Three closely spaced contacts, highlighted by ID tags, were crossing from left to right ahead of them, and the corvettes turned slightly as they continued to accelerate, causing the enemy ships to move back left again, before proceeding to creep to the right towards the planet’s atmosphere.

A line suddenly was drawn, emanating from her corvette, marking the line of a lachar being fired. The camera display that the holograms were being created from didn’t see it, given that there was no glowing trail to see, which was why the computer tagged the long range weaponsfire…and the impact on the leading ship.

“Good shot,” she said, putting it down to luck until several more blasts were fired, all missing with one additional hit, suggesting that it was more than luck. Sara hadn’t expected anyone to be able to hit from this range, not that it was doing much good. The heavy lachar blasts would penetrate most of the lizard shields, but unless the pilot got really lucky, it wasn’t going to do much more than chew up a little armor. They’d have to get considerably closer to be able to target key hull structures.

As if in response to the attack, the three contacts spread out a bit as they accelerated again, causing Sara to frown. They were already moving at crazy speed for being this close to the atmosphere, but now they were just being reckless. Shields or no shields, come in too fast and they’d burn up in the friction.

The trailblazer typed in a quick set of orders to her two ships to not try and match their speed, just keep in close. Due to the corvettes’ smaller size they’d be able to decelerate faster, but even they were approaching dangerous speeds.

A few moments later the lizards finally decelerated…hard. Sara was happy to see the corvettes match their maneuver while cutting the distance between them to a fourth of what it had been. Both ships opened up with their lachars, poking small holes into the ships but too far away for plasma fire. As they fought to get within range to use their more powerful weapons the lizards began to enter the atmosphere, creating huge plumes of disruption as they tore into the gas layers as if they were liquid, given the speed they were still carrying.

The shields on the corvettes elongated into spikes, helping to decrease their friction, but Sara could see their power levels begin to continuously drain as they fought to stay close to the lizards. The enemy’s shields must have been likewise deplenishing, meaning if/when they caught up to them they’d be able to break through with only a few shots…but the same would be true for the lizards’ weapons.

No intercept was to occur, though, because the lizards kept up their insane speed, forcing the corvettes to lag behind. Should their shields fail, the friction of the atmosphere against their block-like hulls would knock them askew and tear them apart. Either the lizards knew this or they were taking a gamble, because all three ships managed to escape their pursuit and get to the lower atmosphere ahead of the Star Force warships.

They weren’t free and clear yet, Sara knew, because they had to get into the water first, and the corvettes were still coming. As she watched the fiery disruption clouding the camera view, and likewise disrupting any potential lachar fire, clear she could see blue ocean below…along with three orange blips. With a touch to the controls she zoomed in the view and saw all three lizard starships heading down to the surface, their hulls aglow from friction damage and the kirbies on the escort cruiser having been torn off in the descent.

The glow died out quickly, and soon the ships stopped their fall just above the water…then they lowered themselves into the ocean, throwing up pillars of steam as their hulls superheated the water. The two transports began to lower down into the ocean, halfway submerging before blue plasma blasts from the corvettes hit their hulls and the water around them, trying to do what damage they could before they sunk beneath the waves.

Sara saw several hull breaches pop up, in addition to the friction damage already done…then the transports were gone, covered by a protective layer of water as they gained more and more depth. The escort cruiser, however, wasn’t submerging, but rather releasing other, smaller aquatics ships from its cargo holds while its upper surface shielded them.

Plasma blasts ripped into its topside, blowing out chunks of armor but the cruiser held position, returning fire with about half its plasma cannons, for the rest had been damaged during the descent. There was a brief exchange as the corvettes came in closer, then both opened up with their single mauler cannons, adding a baseball bat to the plasma bee stings.

The maulers were more than the cruiser could take, and it reluctantly lowered itself down into the water, with the waves flowing over and into the damaged areas of the hull and flooding several internal sections until they got them locked down, killing a number of the crew in the process.

The corvettes’ weapons fell silent, with both ships hovering over the ocean silently.

Sara used the control podium to open a comm line to the nearest aquatics battleship, the Nautilus, halfway around the planet.

“You up for a side mission, Captain?”

“Possibly,” Anderson said, noncommittally.

“The lizards just made a drop. Two transports and a cruiser. The latter submerged and I’ve got two corvettes hovering over it. They’ll keep it pinned until you can get here.”

The aquatics captain smiled. “Always happy to add another naval kill to our boards. We’ll get underway immediately.”

“Happy hunting,” she offered, cutting the comm and sending appropriate orders to the corvettes.

They should be able to kill the cruiser, one way or another, but the transports, designed to move underwater, would get away, if for no other reason than there were 3 lizard ships and only two corvettes, meaning if they all traveled in different directions they could only follow a pair. The lizard cruiser wasn’t moving, however, and was probably doing what damage repair they could, hoping to wait out the corvettes, who couldn’t stay in hover mode forever.

Sara bit her lip, frustrated. One less cruiser was a good thing, but their sensors could detect multiple smaller aquatics ships descending into the ocean and scurrying off. Now those and whatever the transports contained would be added to the lizards’ underwater front. And given the number of supply runs they were getting through to the surface, Star Force was in danger of losing the war purely from attrition.

7

September 9, 2429

Retari System

Atlantica

Ariel read the final report on the techs’ analysis of both the control unit and the offensive/defensive tendril recovered from the downed lizard aquatics cruiser, seeing a mix of conflicting data. The unit was patterned after an Elarioni tendril, but the lizards had done a very poor job of copying it in some ways, while others were nearly exact duplicates.

The mechanics were shoddy, with little flexibility and speed compared to the Elarioni designs, which ranged in size from 2 meters long up to a kilometer. Ariel had tried to help the Star Force techs recreate the technology for their own defensive uses, but they hadn’t got far. While she was knowledgeable in many things aquatic that the Humans were not, she was not, in fact, an Elarioni aquatics tech and only had a basic understanding of their underwater technology.

She’d been a mathematician, focusing on navigation systems for their spacefaring craft before her capture. Now she was the foremost aquatics expert Star Force had to draw on, pathetic as that was, which was one reason why she’d elected to stay with the Humans rather than return to her own race. They needed her, badly, despite their impressive adaptive skills. They’d learned much from her over the past 2 centuries, but there was still much more she couldn’t teach them without having access to Elarioni tech, which wasn’t an option.

Paul had offered to arrange her transit through the Alliance and into Elarioni custody, where they would spirit her through Nestafar space to their oceanic colonies…but it was a one way trip, and despite her wish to see her own kind again, she found she truly didn’t want to leave the Humans. Not only had they become a family for her, in an odd way, considering they were repulsive air breathers, but they’d given her the gift of training and self-sufficiency, and she was all but certain that if she returned to her own kind she wouldn’t be able to maintain the levels of workouts the Archons so easily completed, despite their ineptitude in the water.

Also, the Elarioni in Nestafar space weren’t her people. They had died or fled, and despite what Paul had said about this group having picked up survivors from across the galaxy, including those from her destroyed colony, all those that she had known would be long since dead, given that they typically lived 100-150 years. No one that she’d known was still alive, she figured, so what was there to return to? The Humans gave her whatever she wanted, and were constantly encouraging her to dream up new requests for them to create, which helped them grow their own knowledge of underwater life.

Ariel was proud of what her Humans had accomplished, not only here on Atlantica, but on many other worlds, some of which she’d been able to visit before transitioning out here. Their aquatics leader, Lens, had built a magnificent city on a world they called Reach, which was split 40/60 water to land. It was far larger than the three on Atlantica combined, and according to the plans he’d showed her it was barely a fraction of what they were going to eventually build.

Kyler had been doing well here, and the three cities they’d constructed had stood up well to the enemy’s attacks, until recently anyway. The loss of a defense tower was troublesome, but the lizards had paid a high price for it. No matter how hard they hit them, she knew the Humans would win out eventually if they could only build more of their battleships, for while they were crude in design, they were more effective than she’d given them credit for…and not to mention massive, even by Elarioni standards.

The enemy had no answer for them, and she was pretty sure the lizards knew it too, which was why they were so desperate to penetrate the city defenses before the Humans could build any more.

Ariel shut down her terminal, filing away the analysis reports in case she wanted to access them later, and swam through her research lab, waving at the Humans on the other side of a large window in their air chamber as she left and heading through a connecting tunnel, finding one of many branches that wound its way through Manaan’s internal structure and headed towards the outer surface.

She exited through one of 26 external ports and swam out into the open ocean overtop the slight downwards curve of the city behind her. The water out here felt different…slightly warmer and cruder than the processed internal environment Kyler had built into Manaan specifically for her. The other two cities were not so equipped, but they did have some chambers she could use when visiting. Most of her time on the planet she stayed and worked out of Manaan…but sometimes she just needed to get out and feel the wild water on her flesh.

Knowing better than to venture anywhere close to the perimeter fence, Ariel followed the curve of the city, feeling the pressure on her body increase while her body’s size decreased slightly in response. She could go deeper than the city sat, but there were some regions of the planet beyond what her physiology could deal with, but those were far from here, and aside from some mapping expeditions Star Force hadn’t ventured down into those regions, which covered about 18% of the planet.

Ariel wore her communications necklace, so she wasn’t worried about being away from the lab, knowing that the Humans could contact her if needed, so she lazily swam down the side of the city until she reached the polished seafloor, running her fingers across it and dragging up just a bit of silt that had settled on top of the rock that the engineers had ground down to a flat plain. She didn’t know why, but Star Force seemed to dislike any structures that didn’t have straight lines or aerodynamic curves, and the irregular rock of the seafloor seemed to irritate them to no end.

The mermaid-like alien swam a few meters above the polished rock, kicking with her powerful tail in a twitchy, underpowered way that scooted her along quickly with her long green hair trailing behind her while her arms were tucked in next to her sides. She respired through her skin, as all Elarioni did, and the movement through the water actually enhanced her breathing process, much akin to wind stoking a fire by providing more oxygen to it, giving her a boost as she swam, though it was less than half of her top speed.

Still, it took some time to cross the gap to the nearest structure. Another dome/seashell shaped building rose up out of the ground, this one housing a bioharvest facility annex to supplement those inside the main structure, and was connected via a subsurface tunnel, though it did have water entrances should one want to take the long route to get there.

Ariel bypassed it, swimming up and over the visible part of the structure, for it extended well down into the bedrock below. That was another oddity of the Humans. They preferred burrowing beneath their cities, both on land and water. Elarioni built on the seafloor, but did not like living beneath it. Their mining operations were the only exception, out of necessity, but even most of those simply involved cutting out a huge section of material and processing all of it…then returning the unwanted material in to the chasm, filling in the hole they’d just dug.

The Humans liked digging and then building underground, and a good part of Manaan was actually subsurface. The Archons had told her that was for defensive reasons, but she sensed it was more of an aversion to the open water. Elarioni didn’t like being indoors, and built their structures to be as open to the environment as possible, with their spacecraft being ‘oversized’ in order to provide excess internal living space.

When Ariel swam up over the top of the bioharvest facility she got the view of another prime example of their resistance to open water. A building almost as big as the main city structure stretched out more than a mile long, yet was low to the ground, having been built with the bulk of its internal structure below the seafloor.

There were eight massive, armored doors spreading across the top, each covering a piece of the 2x4 grid and protecting the clear water doors beneath. Those enclosed an air pocket in which the Humans were building another of their giant battleships. Even though they were air breathers, she found it difficult not to criticize their decision to build a water ship outside of the water. The hull at least should have been constructed in the open ocean, then they could have pumped in air so they could finish the rest of the construction inside…but no, they had to build them completely away from the water, only exposing them to their primary environment after total construction was completed.

Then again, they were also airships, so in some respects they weren’t true water craft, she often found herself telling herself, but that wasn’t fair and she knew it. They were beasts compared to what the lizards were throwing at them, and to be totally honest, she didn’t like being cut off from their construction.

There were a few waterways in the structure so she could enter and interface with the engineering crews, but she couldn’t touch the ship or anything else inside until they finally opened the main doors after flooding the bay.

That wouldn’t be happening for many more months, as the current occupant wasn’t anywhere close to sea worthy. Currently they had 4 operational battleships, with a fifth due to be finished in a few weeks in Seaquest, but it was taking them almost 2 years to finish a single ship, which was far longer than Kyler had told her it should take…with the main reason for the delay being available resources.

A slight vibration in the water caused Ariel to turn her head to the left where she saw a convoy of transports rising up from their berths at the nearby waterport. They were no doubt empty vessels beginning the return trip to one of the mining sites, and their guardian destroyers were moving out alongside them.

All of their jet engines firing off had created the vibration, but the destroyers were moving on anti-gravs, as the battleships did, though they didn’t share their same design aesthetic. The Star Force aquatics destroyers had an angular design to them with multiple hulls, similar in design to the Normandy from Mass Effect. There were two going out with the convoy, one in the lead and one bringing up the rear, literally daring the lizards to jump them, for each one had a single medium-grade plasma battery of the same make the battleships carried.

That gave them an unbelievable combat rating, given their much smaller size, and allowed them to fire on approaching ships before the raiders could even get within firing range of the convoy. It took most of their available power to do so, but the ships definitely lived up to their classification name.

In addition to the primary plasma cannon, they also had multiple smaller versions with shorter range to deal with a close-in mass attack, similar to what the battleships had, only these were tiny in comparison. Still, they had the ability to reach out and touch the enemy before they could get within plasma nub or grapple range.

Ariel watched the convoy form up in the predictable formation and begin trolling out through the overlap in the perimeter fence. The ships were hazy at the range she was looking from, but her eyes were more than equipped to pick up their running lights and thermal signatures from a distance where the Humans’ couldn’t.

The Elarioni didn’t stop to gawk, but continued swimming forward, taking an angle down and around the edge of the shipyard, then popped out a few bubbles of air from her nose, startled. With her keen eyesight she’d spotted three splotches on the seafloor wriggling their way between the buildings.

She took a moment to be sure of what she was seeing, then she activated her necklace. “We have a perimeter breach,” she said excitedly, though the computer translation didn’t take that into account when the message reached the city’s command level. “We have a perimeter breach, do you understand?”

“Where, Ariel?” Kyler’s voice came back, though she couldn’t tell given the translation. Fortunately the communication came with an ID tag.

“In between the buildings. There are three of them, at ground level, in between the industrial buildings.”

“Which ones? And where are you?”

“I’m outside…and they’re next to the non-metallic processors.”

“Our sensors aren’t showing anything,” Kyler said, his voice calm but worried. “What do you see?”

“They’re practically crawling across the ground, very slowly.”

“Infantry?”

“I believe so. They move like biologicals, but I’m far away.”

“Stay away,” he said firmly. “Get back inside.”

“No. I’m going to watch them until you get someone out here. If you can’t track them you need my eyes.”

“Are you in any danger?”

“I don’t believe so. They are all I see.”

“If they got through there could be more,” he warned. “Keep an open link. I’m deploying streaks to your location. One of them will pick you up.”

“Very well,” she relented, keeping her eyes on the lizards as they crept forward. How did they manage to get past the perimeter defenses?

True to his word, a streak zipped over to her position within minutes, decelerating hard but well away from her then moving in closer at a casual speed.

Not wanting to delay, Ariel swam towards it, seeing the cockpit crack open just before she got up to it. The Elarioni swam inside and the Archon in silver armor triggered it to reseal, but kept the internal water so she could breathe while his suit’s reserves sustained him.

“Ahead and to the left, down on the seafloor,” she said, tagging his armor’s comm on her necklace’s display rather than relying on his external audio pickup.

“How many are there?” Levi-1832 asked.

“I’ve only seen three…there,” she said, reaching an arm up past his helmet and pointing into the hologram that surrounded the cockpit in lieu of a window, leaning heavily on his back in order to reach that far.

The Archon focused his streak’s sensors ahead, but the ship still couldn’t pick up anything, though he could see a faint smudge on the ground, illuminated by the city’s running lights, though that was hardly a substitute for the sunlight that failed to reach this far down.

“Get closer,” she urged, seeing several other streaks closing in from multiple directions on the battlemap over his left shoulder, though the bulk of his armor required her to slither around inside the cockpit to see even half of it.

“I’m supposed to get you out of here, but if they’re not showing up on sensors then you’re all we’ve got, so hang on,” he said, accelerating them forward, intent on doing a swimby.

“To what?” she asked, seeing no handholds.

“Just an expression,” he said, cracking a grin. With the inertial dampeners they wouldn’t feel a crash, let alone the acceleration swings of some fancy piloting. “Keep your eyes on that spot, I’ve still got nothing on sensors.”

“I will,” she promised, watching the fuzzy blip enlarge. Thanks to the external cameras’ complexity, they were retransmitting all images captured, including those outside the Humans’ vision range, allowing her a bit more spectrum to work with, though her eyesight in the water was still superior to the technological hologram.

Finally, as they came within 200 meters the sensors lit up with three tiny contacts.

“Got them,” he said as they suddenly accelerated and split up, with him opening a wide comm. “Sensor contacts. Come get them. I’ve got a passenger onboard and will play eagle. Hurry up, they’re moving fast.”

“Shoot them,” Ariel urged.

“This is as close as I’m getting with you. Keep your eyes on the surroundings. Tell me if you see any others.”

“I can watch better from outside,” she said, but glanced around the encompassing hologram none the less, including the part on the wall behind her, playing Gumby so she could twist her head around to multiple angles.

“I’ll take you up to a better view in a moment. I just need the others to get in sensor range. Until then they’re using ours to key off of.”

“I know how it works,” she said dismissively, though the computer translation spat it out in the cute cartoon voice.

A few moments later a streak moved in and one of the little icons on the battlemap disappeared…then the holographic view vibrated as a concussion wave rippled out towards them.

“Det packs,” Levi said, pushing them forward through an ascending spiral to get more altitude as additional streaks moved into the area below. “If there are any more we need to find them now.”

“Let me out,” she insisted as the streak rose up to several hundred meters above the seafloor.

8

“There…and there,” Ariel said, pointing to two different positions as a pair of streaks beneath her in the water finished off the other two lizards, with the wash of their distant concussion waves rippling her hair as they passed. “They’re coming from the north.”

Levi floated beside her, with the streak floating above them thanks to a touch from its anti-grav, and placed an approximate waypoint in both areas she indicated, though it was impossible for him to spot the lizards at this range.

“Can you see any others?”

“Not from here.”

“Get back inside,” he said, twisting around with his forearm jets and climbing with his leg-mounted ones to get back up to the cockpit, with Ariel beating him there easily. He grabbed the edge of the open cockpit and pulled himself over the pommel and sat down, then triggered it to auto-close before he moved the water fighter off to the north.

“Another there,” Ariel pointed out a good distance from the others but still holding to the branchlike-pattern emerging from some northern entrance point.

“How the hell are they all getting in?” Levi mumbled inside his helmet, placing another waypoint.

“Levi, report?” Kyler’s voice asked.

“We’ve got lizard infantry with det packs inside the perimeter. They don’t show up on sensors unless you’re within a couple hundred meters. Ariel is visually picking them out from range, and we’ve already identified 4 separate groups, all coming from what looks like a northern vector.”

“I see the markers,” the trailblazer said, referring to the waypoints on the battlemap, “how many per group?”

“Three for the first. The others are unknown. We’re heading north trying to spot more.”

“Keep her clear of the blast radius.”

“Understood.”

Kyler cut the comm line and walked away from the hologram of the city as other command staff readied their defenses. He worked his way through the workstations and consoles until he got to a wall and ducked into one of three alcoves that contained command nexuses.

He powered it up and was immersed in his own private holographic underwater world with the city, the surrounding buildings, perimeter fence, and exterior turrets all there in a 3D display. He adjusted the zoom and triggered the playback of the battlemap data to when Levi had encountered the first lizards, watching the sensor records carefully.

First there were no lizards, then three blips showed up. Those blips got better resolution when additional streaks came into the picture, chasing them down as they split up. Kyler zoomed in again, sorting through the little data they had, and got a half decent picture of one of the contacts with just a touch of visual light added in.

It was lizard infantry alright, carrying heavy loads that were obviously det packs, but the lizards were wearing clothes, oddly, for the water variants never did. These covered them in a black body stocking, leaving only small patches of skin showing on their hands/feet/face. The same black material stretched over the det packs, making them very hard to see visually in the dim light.

Kyler opened a Star Force-wide comm channel. “Be advised, the lizard infantry are wearing some form of stealth suits. They’re probably based off their hull armor, so expect nil from your sensors. Everyone with external lights, pump them up as high as you can. That goes for buildings too. Let’s not leave any shadows for them to swim through.”

As he said that the command level staff heard his order and began flicking on the external lights on the main city structure, bathing the area in omni-directional flood lights and turning the giant seashell into a Christmas tree. The other buildings soon followed suit, as did the 5 functioning towers. Even the perimeter fence lit up its running lights as bright as possible, making the dark ocean come alive with light thanks to the more or less clear water that encircled the planet.

Not long after that another waypoint popped up on the map, followed by three others in the following minutes. As more streaks got into the water and out to the targets Kyler was able to get sensor hits on the enemy, seeing that while they were coming in groups they were splitting up and heading for separate targets, most of which appeared to be the expansion buildings around the city.

As Kyler studied the seascape, trying to divine their battle plan one of the mark 3 towers inside the fence line stuck out one of its shield columns, visible on the battlemap, and peppered the seafloor with plasma strikes, aiming at something that wasn’t on sensors or near the existing waypoints.

With a few button presses Kyler opened a comm channel to the Archons/Regulars manning the consoles that were remote controlling that particular defense tower. “What are you shooting at?”

“Movement on the seafloor. If it’s not us, and there’s no wildlife, then it’s got to be lizard. We can’t get anything on sensors though…wait, check that,” the gunner said as a contact manifested near to where they’d been aiming.

Kyler zoomed in and saw that the steam bubbles had carried one of the infantry up off the ground, allowing the sensors to finally get a lock.

“Keep at it,” the trailblazer urged, “and knock them off the ground. I’ll send units to take them out, but we need at least a momentary sensor ping to tag their location.”

“Will do.”

Kyler highlighted a squadron of arrowheads just coming out of the bay and ordered them to the most recent contacts with spotter-only orders, given that ramming explosive-carrying infantry wasn’t wise, nor was trying to connect a short range shield column to blast them with plasma, meaning they were going to have to rely on PDMs or larger torpedoes.

Several larger ships than the streaks were already in the water, namely those too large to enter the standard bays, and Kyler started moving the destroyers, frigates, and corvettes around like chess pieces, putting them into gaps between buildings and other sensor towers to try and spot infantry moving about. In addition to that he worked out patrol routes for the arrowheads, of which there were now more than 50 zipping about in the water, but with around 110 square miles to cover inside the fence perimeter, there was a lot of ground to cover, giving the sneaky lizards the advantage in this situation.

More of their demolition teams began popping up as their visual detection grid expanded with more ships and higher visibility, not to mention the ones Ariel was spotting. Kyler knew they were lucky that she happened to have been outside to spot the first ones, otherwise…

A damage indicator lit up on the battlemap, and not at one of the tagged infantry locations. This one was on the edge of a power distribution node for the surface guns, one of five each that fed power from the main generators and by necessity had to come aboveground. All other power transfer lines were protected in tunnels carved out of the seafloor rock and thus inaccessible to the lizards.

“Damn it,” Kyler muttered, glancing over the map and realizing he’d missed the obvious, due to the fact he hadn’t assumed the lizards would be that ambitious. With a flurry of keystrokes he began redeploying ships…then he said to hell with it and pulled out the interface sphere and placed both hands squarely on it, linking to the system directly through his Ikrid ability and mentally reorganizing the defensive effort at a speed his hands could never match.

He wasn’t as well practiced as Paul, but he’d mastered the basics of the technology years ago.

On that note he opened up a comm prompt to orbit with a side thought, and a few moments later a hologram of his fellow trailblazer popped up beside him in quarter scale.

“Trouble?” Paul asked.

“They’re targeting the power feeds for the surface batteries,” Kyler said, still mentally ordering units around and recalling the Black Pearl and Highwind from their current missions. “That suggests we’re going to have aerial problems…”

“We’re seeing activity up here too,” Paul said grimly. “They’ve been prepping for something big lately, maneuvering pieces around in a very atypical fashion. What are you dealing with now? I can only see a handful of targets.”

“Damn demolition infantry…wearing a knockoff of their sensor-absorbing hull armor would be my guess. We’re having to spot them visually. The sensors don’t do much good until you’re about to trip over them so long as they stay tucked to the seafloor.”

Paul was silent for a moment as he analyzed his own holographic battlemap onboard his flagship, Excalibur. “Bubble lift?”

“They’ve knocked a few loose, high enough for the sensors to tag. One of their teams already got to a target, and I don’t know how many more there are.”

“Any idea how they’re getting in…or do you think they’re just crawling past the front door?”

“No clue right now. Don’t suppose you could send a few ships down to babysit us?”

“I’ve got a corvette close that I’m sending down, along with a frigate and destroyer that you’ll have to wait a bit longer for. They should be able to cover you until this attack runs to completion. No approaching ships yet?”

“Not a twitch on sensors, but these lizards obviously got here somehow, and I don’t think they swam the whole way.”

Paul’s hologram frowned. “I’m picking up incoming jumps, low orbit. Something’s afoot. I’ll get back to you. Got some warships to blow up.”

With that his hologram winked out and Kyler turned his full attention back to his own part of what looked to be the opening salvo in a much larger battle…check that, them taking down the tower earlier was probably the opening gambit, in which case that meant they’d be attacking from that vector if they did have ships in the water.

Kyler pulled a pair of destroyers off their current search positions and marked an elaborate course over to the fence overlap, having them search that route and then head out to open water to patrol the area where the destroyed tower was currently being rebuilt, getting some extended sensor range from them as he signaled for the construction crews to pack up what they were doing and return to the city.

Another detonation pinged on his screen, this one on the opposite side of the city and again against once of the power transfer nodes. A handful of seconds later a second explosion on that same node from a slightly different position knocked it offline, though there were no pyrotechnics involved. It simply registered as disabled on the map, though the turret island it fed remained undamaged nearby.

As if in response a group of tagged infantry blinked out as those units were destroyed shy of their targets by a streak launching a torpedo on the still clustered group. Elsewhere individual units were winking out sporadically, all the while more were being tagged on the battlemap as the streaks moved out to the waypoints being provided by Ariel and some of the smaller defense towers. Kyler didn’t know how many units they were dealing with, leaving his assessment of the enemy as a giant question mark.

He hated not being able to know what was going on, but this was the situation he had to deal with so he made some guesses as to where the lizards were coming from and had a group of arrowheads looking for the infantry’s entry point when a third power node took a hit.

One of the frigates simultaneously spotted a pair of infantry approaching another node and got to them first, blasting the surface ahead of them with their tiny plasma cannons, then knocking them out with PDM when they floated up high enough for sensors to lock on. Ships of all sizes across the city began swirling around the other nodes, looking for more enemies and finding many on approach, but they weren’t only targeting the nodes, for a few minutes later a large group of lizards appeared directly in front of one of the access tunnels leading into an interior docking bay, having been creeping along the connection of the main structure and the seafloor, using the almost 90 degree nook to hide from both sensors and vision.

As soon as they swam out into the short waterway they immediately were pinging on sensors as a swarm of PDM came at them from wall turrets, exploding on contact and taking out half of them without detonating the packs on their backs, for they were hit in the head or chest. The rest of them did detonate, cracking the surrounding walls and sending an overpressure wave into the internal bay, save for the egress shields stopped it at the end of the tunnel.

The reflection of the concussion wave pushed the debris back out into the ocean, leaving bits and pieces of lizard and wall floating about before the heavier bits slowly sank through the dust cloud generated from the silt on the ground and the pulverized debris. Ambitious as they were, the lizards should have known better than to assume the entrances to the city wouldn’t be defended.

Similar incidents continued to occur across the city landscape, with about half of the lizards getting through to their targets being obliterated by standing defenses, but the others that chose just to detonate against exterior walls were proving effective, both against the power nodes and other structures, two of which saw minor interior flooding as the detonations cracked the exterior armor and allowed the ocean to begin seeping through.

Just when Kyler thought things were winding down and the number of enemy contacts began to dwindle the pair of destroyers he’d sent outside the city on patrol picked up a contact a few kilometers outside the city…a hammerhead judging by the size and shape, small as the sensor silhouette was. A few seconds after it appeared Kyler saw another pop up beside it, followed by a slew of others as another lizard armada was making its way towards the side of the city where the mark 5 defense tower had been taken down.

He checked the aerial sensors, seeing that the Black Pearl was 4 minutes out, meaning it would arrive before the enemy did, and he tagged the exact spot he wanted it to land, putting it between the city and the lizard fleet just in front of the partially reconstructed turret…then he indicated the depth he wanted it, so that both the dorsal and ventral weaponry would come into play. Then he sent a message to Captain Voru indicating that he wanted the battleship to be aggressive and dive right down their throats once they were in position, to which he received the following text reply.

WITH PLEASURE

As those two words hovered in the air beside Kyler inside the command nexus, more lizard ships began appearing behind the others, making this group far larger than the one that had hit them before.

The destroyers launched a salvo of torpedoes at the leading hammerheads, then they turned and retreated laterally, both of them taking different directions and keeping extended sensor range out from the city for Kyler to observe the enemy fleet with, given that they were still outside the range of the city’s sensor grid.

When the Black Pearl slowed to a stop, floating overtop the submerged city and began its descent into the water, Kyler’s gut clenched up as another group of lizard ships appeared on one of the destroyer’s sensors, coming in from a different angle and heading for the adjacent intact defense tower. If they could take that one down, then they’d have a clear run to the fence where the other towers couldn’t reach.

Then, to make matters even worse, a slew of aerial targets emerged well away from the city but coming in at considerable speed. Kyler flipped over to a surface map as one, then two naval cruisers appeared.

That two became three…then four…and five…and six…with a slew of transports mixed in between them.

“Making this hard on us, aren’t you,” Kyler said with plenty of venom in his voice, mentally requesting an update on the incoming naval corvette. Gratefully its ETA put it ahead of the lizards, but it was severely outmatched, and the other two ships Paul was sending down were considerably farther behind in their atmospheric entry.

Kyler keyed for an open comm again, addressing all Star Force units across Manaan.

“Alright people, looks like they mean business this time. Let’s light ‘em up.”

Kyler sent another mental command into the nexus, with the battlemap flipping back to underwater view. Six of the buildings on the seafloor suddenly detached and began rising up on extendable columns, pushing a huge amount of water askew as they rose. Attached to each of them were connecting lines looking like 5 ropes stretching down to the ground to tether it in place. Those ‘ropes’ were the armored power lines feeding the turret islands that were rising up to the surface, whereas the central column was solely for lifting purposes.

Some of those power lines were now dead, their connecting nodes on the surface having been taken out by the lizard infantry, but each of the six artificial islands breached the ocean surface with at least 3 lines intact, allowing the smooth mushroom-shaped surfaces to sprout numerous plasma cannons, lachar turrets, missile racks, and anti-air batteries, ready to defend the submerged city from an aerial attack trying to drop units inside the fence perimeter.

9

Blue plasma lances leapt out from three of the six turret islands towards the first of the incoming naval cruisers as Paul’s corvette moved out to engage the enemy before it could get to the fence perimeter, lashing out with its own plasma and its single mauler cannon, painting the forward edge of the flat yellow/tan ship with a wash of energetic fireworks that punched through the shields in short order.

The cruiser took the hits with impunity, letting the Star Force defenses chew into it as the rest of the aerial assault force slipped by…right into the face of a coordinated missile assault rising up from all six turret islands. They got chewed up by the lizards’ anti-air batteries, but there were so many coming in that more than half got through and nailed the leading transport, completely ignoring the cruisers that the plasma cannons were targeting.

The transport, half the size of the cruisers, went down hard in a cacophony of explosions…then dropped into the ocean with a massive splash that sent water up onto the nearest cruiser and two more smaller transports behind it. If any lizard units inside the transport survived, they now found themselves sinking outside the fence, meaning the missile barrage had done its job and stopped at least one transport from reaching the target.

The lizards apparently came to the same conclusion, realizing that the city’s aerial defenses were tougher than anticipated, so the 5 cruisers not entangled in the slugging match with the corvette moved ahead of the transports, leaving them momentarily exposed as they swatted down more incoming missile barrages at closer range. The turret islands in the back opened up with their plasma cannons when the enemy ships came in, but the cruisers kept moving forward, then suddenly split up, each going to an individual island and hovering over top of it.

Their underside shields fell before they got into position, but their hull armor soaked up most of the weaponsfire, with the rest being absorbed by the hull. The ships were so big they could take the damage and keep on fighting…though that wasn’t their intent.

Almost in unison the elongated starships dropped down on top of the smaller turret islands and pancaked them with their mass, crushing the weapons batteries on top while damaging their own hulls in the process. The weight of the cruisers pushed the islands back down into the water, leaving the starships partially submerged and firing at the nearby corvette and last remaining turret island with their topside weaponry as Paul’s frigate and trailing destroyer were approaching firing range, with the destroyer slightly in the lead and both coming in from different angles.

“Son of a bitch,” Kyler swore, both in anger and frustration at getting their defenses owned by such a tactically brilliant maneuver. If he didn’t know better, he could have sworn Paul was on their side directing the naval attack.

He tagged the incoming transports as priority targets for the remaining turret island, knowing they needed to knock down as many of them as possible before they got over the fence…and the corvette pilot obviously knew the same, because it’s smoking hull pulled out of its fight with the cruiser and diverted, ramming into two of the transports and taking a third down with what was left of its weapons batteries before the mostly intact cruiser finished it off and dropped its hulk down into the ocean perilously close to the approach of yet another lizard aquatics fleet that hadn’t shown up on city sensors yet.

The other transports moved on and ducked down into the water just on the far side of the fence, some 19 in total, and began releasing their contents even as they began the submersion process. One of the largest 3 remaining took a hit from the topside by a heavy lachar from the approaching naval destroyer, followed quickly by a low powered rail gun slug from the frigate who had a better firing angle.

The slug breached the shields and dented the hull, then the transport dipped underneath the water’s surface even as plasma lances from the destroyer targeted it, blasting plumes of steam up into the air marking the position of its descent…only to be followed by another rail gun slug that didn’t seem to mind the water, for it punched straight through it and into the topside of the transport delivering a lethal kill shot.

Two other transports were damaged by plasma before they all disappeared beneath the waves, leaving the two starships with only the 5 sitting and 1 flying lizard cruisers as targets…and firing on them with rail guns was problematic because of what lay in the water beneath them should they miss.

The destroyer flew straight in towards one of them and started blasting away with plasma, lachars, and missiles all at once while the frigate dropped as low to the water as it could and set up a rail gun shot that wouldn’t jeopardize any buildings if it missed or passed through the target, then started spitting out metal slugs at one of the bastards…only to have it rise up off the crushed turret island along with the others, all damaged, and start running away...following the one that had already been in the air.

The two Star Force warships, each smaller than the lizard cruisers and not normally a match for them, peppered them with weaponsfire as they fled, trying to do as much damage to their shieldless hulls as they could, but even if they’d wanted to they couldn’t have pursued more than 2 of the 6 ships. Instead they stayed over the city, guarding it against who knew what, while the 6th turret island streamed smoke into the air, a visible sign of their utter defeat as it had only 2 plasma cannons left operational.

That didn’t matter now, for the purpose of the aerial assault had been to deliver transports to ground…and they’d done just that. But if those transports thought they were going to fly off after they deposited their troops they were severely mistaken, and the destroyer and frigate were floating over the submerged city just waiting for them to poke up above the surface to offer them viable targets.

Up in one of the orbiting warships the pilots of the drone frigate sat at their stations, controlling its weapons, shields, propulsions, comms, and every other system it had, spreading out the responsibilities between three people to maximize efficiency, as were most of the drones in the fleets, a lot of which were now engaging the lizards in an even larger naval battle.

The three pilots, all regulars, sat and monitored their sensor feeds, waiting for one of the lizard transports to come up but otherwise had nothing else to do while those pilots sitting at nearby stations were busily working their consoles as they pursued the naval battles occurring in orbit.

Then something they’d never had happen before caught all three off guard. Their control interfaces suddenly lost connection, though they were still able to observe all of the ship’s systems, as a strange, dark voice spoke through their headsets.

“Assuming direct control.”

It was followed with an ID tag, indicating that Kyler had remotely taken over their frigate.

“What was that?” one of them asked aloud, glancing to the man beside him.

“Never had that happen before. What’s an aquatics specialist doing overriding us? Even if he is a trailblazer?”

Another pilot sitting opposite them behind their backs overhead and turned around, given that his drone ship wasn’t currently engaged in combat. “Did it say ‘assuming direct control?’”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t a regular voice.”

The other regular smiled. “Had that happen once to me. It’s an Archon joke. A reference from an old video game.”

“But what’s he doing with it?” one of the three pilots asked. “There’s nothing left to shoot.”

“They always have a reason,” the other pilot said, glancing back at his own console to make sure nothing new was happening there. “Wait and see.”

All four pilots ended the conversation there and put eyes back on their readouts, with the three dispossessed pilots watching as Kyler flew the frigate well outside the perimeter fence and brought it to a halt again…then it began to pivot, tipping the front end over so that it faced straight down.

“No way,” one of the pilots said in disbelief. “There’s too much water.”

“Yes way,” another one said in a whisper over their linked headsets. “Though there’s no targeting system to handle that. He’s going to have to do it old school.”

“Here we go,” the third said as the diagnostics indicated that a fresh slug was being rotated into the barrel from the ‘on deck’ position, with one from storage being rotated over to replace it. “Oh shit, he’s powering it up to full!”

“Splish splash,” the other said, guessing as to what was about to happen.

With a small enemy fleet inside the perimeter fence engaging the internal defenses and the few ships that remained, who were already busy hunting down the rest of the det pack carrying infantry, along with a massive battle brewing outside and several more looking to crop up at different positions around the perimeter, most commanders would have gone into panic mode…but not Kyler. Like all the trailblazers and most of the other Archons to some degree, when the intensity ratcheted up he got calmer…icy calm, with his adrenaline channeled into boosting his focus rather than fraying his nerves.

He knew he couldn’t get the troops inside the fence back out, so a battle was going to have to be fought there and they did have assets to counter the threat, though he knew it was going to be messy…but it was going to get even messier if the approaching fleets threw down with the perimeter defenses. A third had just popped up on sensors, with the second now coming into weapons range of the targeted defense tower, with it reaching out its shield columns and tagging the largest enemy ships as their armada pressed forward as fast as possible to close within their own weapons range.

Thinking ahead, Kyler took control of the now useless frigate hovering overhead and brought it into position just ahead of the path the 3rd lizard fleet was taking, knowing he needed to take out as many as he could while they were well away from the city, because he couldn’t risk doing this close to his own ships or infrastructure…for he didn’t know for sure how much of a concussion wave it would produce.

When the spot he’d staked out via coordinates showed lizard ships passing under he fired, using battlemap telemetry given that the frigate’s sensors couldn’t detect the aquatics ships below. The pointed rail gun slug flashed out of the front of the frigate, passing through a couple hundred meters of air before slicing into the water and parting it with kinetic overload.

The slug’s momentum created a cavity in the water, pulling air down behind it like a tornado as the water walls spread out in a concussion wave that tunneled down deep into the ocean…then the back pressure of the collapse shot a geyser up out of the impact point that splashed the shields on the lowest point of the frigate. A few seconds later it fired another slug, and kept firing as fast as it could reload, sending deadly metallic spikes down into the water, fighting the friction to get deep enough to hit the enemy aquatic fleet.

The first shot missed its target by 50 meters, but the concussion wave knocked it and a dozen other ships askew before the slug eventually floated down and settled on the seafloor. Kyler eyeballed a correction, adjusting the aim of the weapon inside the hull of the ship by a tenth of a degree, coming closer with the second shot but still missing. Its concussion wave buffeted the ships around, and with the third shot and miss he actually succeeded in causing two of them to bump into one another, though the damage was little more than cosmetic.

He finally made contact on the 5th shot, though it was more by luck than skill, given that the turbulent water he was creating with the shockwaves with each shot was throwing off the slug tracks, some of which appeared to be skewing laterally as they dropped. The ship he did hit was a destroyer…following the cruiser he’d been aiming at. The metal bullet, the size of a bathtub, hit the ship’s shields and punched through, scratching the hull beneath. Normally it would have passed clean through, but the amount of water it was traveling through was killing its kinetic punch, making it less effective the deeper the lizard ships were.

And they knew that too. After the first few shots all of them began sinking deeper, getting more and more water between them and the rounds that kept falling. Unfortunately for them aquatics ships didn’t move very fast, and with each shot that the frigate fired Kyler got better at guessing where the slugs would fall and began racking up hits with every other shot, or so, against their aquatic cruisers and a few others that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time on some of his misses.

What had been a long convoy of ships scattered in all directions, trying to put more space in between their ships rather than running directly into the impact zone that was a mass of water and air being mixed up like a blender as each shot dragged more air pockets down with it, and the effect was accumulating…allowing each shot to get a little deeper, because passing through rising air pockets was a lot less drag than the water.

Kyler kept up the attack, damaging their ships in limited fashion while managing to kill only two until the Highwind arrived and he let the ironically larger aquatics ship take the place of the smaller naval vessel as it dropped down directly on top of the last few bubbles coming up from where Kyler had been raining metal down into the water.

The battleship reached out with its shield columns as soon as the underside hit the water, with some of them stretching out more than 2 kilometers to hit medium sized targets that were running hard, knowing that if they could disable a few of them they could deal with the closer ships later as they futilely began attacking the larger ship’s heavily armored and shielded hull.

Kyler tilted the frigate back up parallel to the ocean and had it gain some altitude before he relinquished control back over to its naval pilots, then turned his attention to the other three ongoing battles…and was galled to see that a fourth lizard fleet had been detected on approach.

How many ships did they have to throw at them?

He put that fleet out of mind, given that it wouldn’t be here for some time, and checked in on the internal city defenses, seeing that they were slugging it out with the invaders admirably…then he followed the lizard ships, seeing what it was they were targeting. To his surprise it was the internal defenses themselves, all the while deploying hoards of infantry into the water that were heading down to the seafloor.

Inside the nexus a side map flashed a warning, indicating that the mark 5 defense tower had started to take damage, and Kyler knew that the lizards had enough ships assembled to take it down, but it would thin their numbers enough that the Black Pearl should be able to finish them off after it got done blasting apart the first lizard fleet.

Kyler took a moment, eyes darting from spot to spot on the overall battlemap, evaluating their standing. This was winnable, he determined, but it was going to stretch their defensive capability to the limits…and even if they won it’d leave them vulnerable for another round of attacks.

That was, if there weren’t more than 4 lizard fleets on approach…and he wasn’t going to put money on that.

10

“We have incoming,” Jess Walker said from her seat on the four man bridge of the Star Force destroyer leading the cargo convoy away from besieged Manaan as fast as the bulky freighters could move.

Commander Carver, sitting in the middle of the back edge of the triangle made up by the three control stations stared at his personal hologram rising up in front of his chair and behind the backs of the three bridge crew. Jess made an alteration for him to see, detailing a pack of lizard ships angling towards them from considerable distance away…and yet they were coming from ahead, not from the battle occurring behind them.

He opened a comm channel to the other destroyer, with a short image of Commander Rena popping up over his armrest.

“Looks like our troubles are ahead of us. Suggestions?”

“Going back is a really bad idea,” she said, getting the most obvious question out of the way.

“Fight or run?”

Rena hesitated. “If we send the transports off we could be sending them to their deaths. We don’t know how many lizard ships are out there, or in what direction. I’d divert to station 4, that’ll delay this group’s arrival and give us some more guns if we can get there.”

“Agreed. Tom, get them turning,” he said to his comm officer…who also handled several other duties, given the multi-tasking, low crew bridge layout.

“Back door still looks clean,” Rena continued. “Do want us to move up?”

“No, we’ll come back to you as you drift out on the turn, and keep our spacing wide. We can’t let them slip by us.”

“Bit of a gamble, but I agree,” she said, seeing dozens of targets building the snake-like sensor swarm of approaching dots. “We need to hit them early while the angles are to our favor.”

“Looks like hammerheads and smaller. We can handle this so long as they come in stages. If they get tricky we’ll disrupt them here while you fall back.”

“Agreed,” the commander’s hologram said as the large transports on the battlemap began altering course to port like a school of fish swimming in a long line…save for they didn’t stay in line, with all of them turning at once to maximize distance over the enemy. Carver’s destroyer turned with them, but at a less sharp angle, drifting out further north to insure that there weren’t more enemies on their doorstep.

“Happy hunting,” Carver said, ending their brief conversation. Rena nodded and her image blinked out, leaving him with his bridge crew as they powered up the weapon systems and reconfigured the shields into the most advantageous settings. “400 more meters, then stall out. Bring the bow around to face the enemy and get me a shield column as far out as we can. We’ve got to destroy or damage them at range or they’ll be able to slip by us.”

“Depth?” Kevin Smallee asked, manning the helm controls.

“Match them,” the Commander said, steepling his fingers in front of his face and leaning his chin against them as he watched both the convoy’s sluggish turn and the lizards’ far more agile approach. The closer they got the more information the computer had, with Jess helping to ID the types where the automation was confused.

He saw more hammerheads get tagged first, for they were the largest ships with the biggest sensor profile, given their forward hulls. After that came a slew of corvettes, followed by the larger frigates, who’s stingray-shaped leading edge gave the sensors little to lock onto from straight ahead, but from above or below they made for easy targets…which meant their crews would try to keep them on edge as much as possible relative to the Star Force ships.

Smaller dots began popping up in between the larger contacts, which the computer quickly tagged as sharks, given their size…then a larger contact appeared in the back, which Jess felt like vocally announcing.

“Light destroyer,” she commented, even though the battlemap already had it tagged.

“All stop,” Kevin announced. “Adjusting attitude.”

“Standby shield column. Put it on the destroyer and stretch it as much as you can.”

“We don’t have a straight shot,” Tom said, already making track plots even though the battery wasn’t fully rotated around yet. It sat on the top/front edge of the ship, giving it a good field of fire, but typically the destroyer crews liked to fire it straight on ahead, though the mechanics didn’t favor one angle more than another.

“Blow apart whatever gets in the way, just start doing damage,” Carver ordered.

“Powering up shield generators,” Tom commented unnecessarily, but there was little else to do at the moment. “Currents are cross. That’s going to eat up some distance.”

“Get what you can,” the Commander said, encouraging him to stretch the shields to the breaking point in favor of extra range. If they did go down they’d have to reset and it’d waste time, but until they got within range they’d be wasting it anyway so there was little point in waiting.

“17 is extending column,” Jess noted, referring to the other destroyer’s ID number. Only aquatics battleships received names, so all smaller manned craft got designators, with their destroyer tagged as A-7, meaning it was the 7th produced on planet. Other worlds would have copies of their designators, given that they didn’t transfer off planet very often, making almost all aquatics ships of this size local builds.

“What are they going for?” Carver asked, seeing a tiny line extend out from A-17, followed by another from themselves a few seconds later.

“Something closer,” Jess answered without being specific, for the trace didn’t match up with any particular ship.

Both lines extended from the ships on the battlemap, then changed color starting near the destroyers and extending out as the shield columns widened from a pencil-width out into a waterless, airless vacuum corridor wide enough for the plasma to travel down without it touching the shield walls. That second color also indicated the positions they were capable of firing down, should a ship cross their lines, for the shields were set to automatically seal around any solid objects they came across rather than deflect them.

Which is what the A-17 was doing. It stuck its shield column into the lizard lines at a shallow angle, cutting across the paths of all but the leading ships and waiting for one of them to run into it. The smaller sharks saw and dodged it easily, with the other ships attempting to do the same, though they weren’t so agile. One of the corvettes nicked the edge of the column with its cylindrical hull, immediately drawing a blue plasma streak from the destroyer.

It traveled down the 3.4 kilometer length in a flash akin to a lightning strike, save for it was perfectly straight, and blasted into the armored hull, vaporizing the outer layer and pushing to the interior before the plume of plasma against the target broke through the very weak shields, given the range they were stretched, and brought the water in on itself, quelling any hope of an explosive radius.

The shield matrix, detecting the breach, sent a ‘plug’ up the length in a heartbeat, pushing out the vaporized water spreading back up its length in the vacuum and clearing the firing line again, though it had to slow drastically to push back the liquid water at the end and reconnect with the corvette…though by that time the enemy had passed out of the column, so it extended on past the point of attack and stretched out the ‘trip line’ to the far side of the lizard formation as the rest of the enemy ships, with more forewarning, diverted around it.

The A-7’s shield column passed over it by 75 meters, heading almost straight up the lizard lines, running into one of the flat frigates as it rose up to miss the other destroyer’s column. Tom sent a plasma blast straight into it, then two more as the column cycled and resealed, though on different portions of the hull as its momentum moved the point of impact. By the fourth cycle the way cleared and the column stretched out even further, leaving the enemy frigate with three hull breaches to contend with.

A shark got in the way and was toasted in a single shot, then a hammerhead which Carver was glad they hit, taking out a slew of its plasma nodes that it would undoubtedly be trying to ram either the destroyers or the freighters with, then the way cleared and the column reached all the way back to the light destroyer that was trying to move aside.

“Gotcha,” Tom said, pumping the first plasma lance down the pipe and hitting the large ship’s hull with a satisfying damage plume popping up on sensors…but then the ship began to rotate out of line, looking like they were only going to be able to get one or two more shots on it at best.

“Stay with it,” the Commander ordered.

“Don’t know how much play we’ve got,” Tom said, mentally crossing his fingers. He continued pumping the trigger as fast as the computer would allow him to, but at the same time he used the controls to move the shield column laterally…which was usually a bad idea, because the amount of water that would have to be pushed out of the way would drain additional energy out of the shields, threatening their integrity.

To minimize that Tom only nudged them a little, watching the strain meter. If a little targeting drift gave them another shot it’d be worth it, but there was no way they were going to be able to keep the shield column on the target at this range. If they’d had the power of a mark 5 tower with their large plasma cannons/shield columns then they could have managed more movement, but they only had the medium variety, and that alone required a huge energy drain on the ship’s power core.

Carver watched as the light destroyer got hit again and again…then it moved out of line to the right, as well as dropping in altitude.

“Let it go,” he ordered. “Focus on mid-range targets. Split them up so we can deal with them piecemeal.”

“They’re not charging ahead,” Jess warned. “They’re sticking to formation, so we might not have that option.”

“See if you can change their mind.”

“On it,” Tom said as the other destroyer’s shield column suddenly reached out and touched the light destroyer at its new location, prompting a grin to stretch across Carver’s face.

“Tag team,” he whispered, seeing the enemy ship take several more hits.

The long range shooting gallery continued on for several more minutes, with the Star Force destroyers picking off six vessels…then the lizards figured they were close enough and broke ranks, sending their sharks on ahead while launching torpedoes of their own towards the A-7, completely ignoring the other destroyer.

“Looks like we’re popular,” the Commander commented. “Standby PDM, ready offensive torpedoes and spitters.”

Kevin nodded, assuming control of the extra light plasma cannons used for short range defense, given that there wasn’t a need to maneuver the ship right now so long as they were playing battle station. The destroyer had 4 spitters in total, spread around the ship so that at least one could cover every angle. It was possible to hit a shark with one of them, but not likely. They’d use their torpedoes for that, but if the larger lizard ships came close enough to grapple with them the spitters would make them pay for it.

“Here we go,” Carver commented as the fireworks started. “Keep the fight here. Focus on disabling, not destroying. We can clean up later, right now we have to keep them away from the transports.”

Rena’s hologram popped up again. “We’re coming across ahead of you, then turning and paralleling them. We’ll pick up what you drop. Try not to shoot us, please.”

“You can’t outrun the sharks,” he reminded her.

“The transports aren’t completely unarmed. They can swat down a few gnats, it’s the big ones we have to knock down.”

“Permission to cross granted,” Carver said sarcastically, then watched as the friendly destroyer eeked its way out in front of them and dove into the lizards in slow motion…except for Carver saw it as fast, given the amount of time he’d been in the aquatics division. Aerial combat thoroughly confused his mind, given the insane speeds they operated at. He’d completely converted over to the physics of water combat and knew that the destroyer was actually moving in quite fast, using its narrow hull design to cut through the water like a thick knife.

It reached out with its shield column at short range, dragging it through the water and draining an insane amount of energy out of it in the process, but given it didn’t have to extend more than half a kilometer the maneuver was feasible and it pounded a nearby hammerhead mercilessly, adding to it with a couple of spitters. Simultaneously the ship launched wave after wave of offensive torpedoes out against multiple targets while defending against incoming torpedoes with hoards of PDM acting as intercepts.

The water around the destroyer roiled with turbulence, steam, and muted explosions…with the battlemap updating the damage it was unleashing, as well as receiving. By the time it came out the opposite side and turned into the same direction the lizards were traveling its shields had gone down and multiple hull damage points were tagged on the hologram, but none were breaches, though more torpedoes were coming its way and trying to take advantage of the downed shields.

It spat out more PDMs to knock them down, as well as shooting out another shield column and tagging a flanking frigate, who couldn’t escape given the shorter range and the fact that both ships were traveling in the same direction, meaning its momentum offered it no dodging advantage. It tried to turn away but couldn’t in time, with repetitive plasma salvos coring into its hull and depriving it of power through internal damage.

“Our turn,” Carver said as the sharks began to zip around them, some firing minnows and others just trying to get past so they could head for the transports. Those trying to go around were giving the destroyer a wide berth, which required offensive torpedoes having to be fired to intercept them. Carver watched their speedy tracks on the battlemap, satisfied when they intercepted and destroyed their targets one after another, though he hated wasting the larger ordinance on the tiny ships.

Before long the water around the destroyer was lit up in blue as the spitters began firing on the corvettes that were trying to get within ‘pinching’ range of the hull. They worked over the targets one by one, based on their proximity, with the main plasma cannon helping out when it could. Torpedoes were used as a last resort, and many did have to be expended to keep the enemy off the hull as the A-17 passed them by and left the main hoard to their guns…but then the lizards changed tactics, and rather than trying to get some ships by the destroyer, they adjusted their side slipping courses and angled directly for it, intent to wipe it out first, then go after the convoy.

“Oh shit,” Jess said as she worked the torpedo and PDM controls.

“Calm yourself,” Carver said stoically. “We want to draw their attention away from the transports…just not this much. Reverse course, give us some more closure time for targeting, best speed.”

“Reversing,” Kevin acknowledged, taking a moment away from the spitters to reverse the jet engines and get them moving backward, adding a bit of anti-grav on top of it. As they accelerated all the computer calculated ETAs for the approaching vessels began to lengthen on the battlemap.

Rena’s hologram popped up again. “Hold on, Carver. We’re circling back. Didn’t think they’d be this game for a fight.”

“They’re always full of surprises,” the Commander said, taking control of one of the spitters while Kevin was busy with the helm. He used it to shoot another corvette coming in, lighting up the bridge ‘window’ holographic view ahead of them with a blue lightning strike into the cavity in the enemy ship where one of its forward claws had just extended from. While the Star Force destroyer had thick armor plating, there were several points on the hull that the lizard ship could get a grip on, and it had enough compression power to punch through their adamantium armor.

A torpedo shot out from the hull below the ‘window’ and streaked up into the corvette, literally punching it in the face and visually knocking it back a bit while two more spitters reached out and tagged it with plasma…after which it began listing, unpowered and out of the fight, or so they hoped.

Carver tagged it with another spitter for good measure, then let Kevin reassume control as their backwards path was now set into the helm’s autopilot. The carnage ahead of them continued, with the torpedo and especially the PDM count in their armory dropping perilously low. Enough scattered torpedoes were getting past their intercepts that portions of their forward shields had gone down and power from others was being shifting around to regenerate them faster.

Just as their hull began to take a beating from more hits the A-17 came up underneath them and drifted out ahead, firing up at the underside of the stingray frigate’s wide silhouettes with both plasma and torpedoes, distracting a good portion of the incoming weaponsfire away from the A-7.

Carver blew out the breath he’d been holding.

“Helm forward,” he ordered, knowing they needed to stay close to their sister ship. “Hold it together, people. A few more minutes and we’ll be through the worst of it.”

That prediction didn’t hold entirely true, for ‘a few minutes’ turned into more than an hour of pitched fighting before the incoming hoard thinned, for more ships had continued to enter sensor range behind the damaged light destroyer that eventually made its way into the fray. By the time it got up to the pair of destroyers most of the rest of its fleet was already drifting about as semi-operational rubble, blocking the straight on firing lines and requiring the hundreds of minnows it launched to swim evasive routes to get to their targets.

Both destroyers shot down what they could with their remaining PDM, but they were soon depleted and they had to resort to taking the small missiles impacts on what was left of their shields and the hull as the enemy ship extended its defense ‘trees’ and sat in place, spitting out more and more minnows until the destroyers double teamed it with their primary plasma cannons and pounded it into submission, eventually triggering an internal explosion that cracked the ship in two.

That left a few dozen smaller ships to deal with, but they were dropping fast given the attention the medium plasma cannon on each ship was giving them. The A-17 managed to get a lizard corvette attached to its left ‘wing’ where it dug in and began slicing up the hull piece by piece, conveniently tucked where a spitter battery couldn’t get at it, nor did they have any offensive torpedoes or PDM left to knock it off with.

Fortunately its sister ship was there, and with some fancy maneuvering from both destroyers, the attached corvette was brought into the A-7’s targeting range, which latched a shield column onto the clawed ship and burnt it off the hull while both ships’ other weapons finished off the remainder of the lizard fleet…with a few strays having turned off and taken after the now distant convoy.

“Kevin, how we set for speed?” Carver asked, surveying the damage statistics on his chair’s hologram. The hull was pot marked with various levels of blasted armor, but the interior breaches numbered only 2, and were both minimal. He had the other 2 crew members not assigned to the bridge working on sealing them up, but there was nothing they could do about the exterior damage while they were moving.

“Just a limp,” the helmsman answered metaphorically. “Shall I get us underway?”

“Go,” Carver said, getting Rena back on the holographic comm. “We’re going after the ones that slipped by. You’re chewed up worse than us, what kind of speed have you got?”

“We won’t be able to keep up with that chunk out of our hull. The convoy will be station 4 before we can catch up to them. We’ll stay here and pound the wreckage while we make repairs. One of their torpedoes made it inside and made a mess of deck 3. Luckily the armory was empty.”

“Alright, we’re getting underway now. Good luck,” Carver said, knowing that there could be more lizard fleets roaming out beyond their limited sensor range.

“Likewise, Commander,” Rena said formally, then signed off.

“You want me to head aft and lend them a hand?” Tom asked.

“Go,” Carver said, toggling the hologram as his crewman walked past him and went to help with the repair efforts. The battlemap before him expanded out to include Manaan and the battle still ongoing there…with a lot more ships in play than there had been before.

“Damn,” he commented, prompting Jess and Kevin to glance back.

“They’re under siege,” Kevin said, aghast. Two more defense towers were gone, and multiple lizard fleets were encircling the city, with another one coming in from the edge of what was left of their sensor range. Both battleships were now tucked inside the fence and exchanging fire with ships outside it, targeting through the gaps.

“I’m glad we’re not there,” Jess said, a mixture of worry and relief on her face.

“I know we don’t have much left, but…” Kevin began.

“No, we have a duty to do,” Carver reminded them. “If Kyler wanted us back he’d tell us. Focus on the convoy, there may be more enemy ships headed after it. We need to get to station 4 and bolster their defenses, we might be in for another fight there...and if they have to evacuate the city they’ll do it by air. We’ll be of no help to them on the outside, as much as I’d like to try.”

“Copy that,” Kevin acknowledged.

Jess nodded her agreement and both crewers turned back to their stations.

Carver kept his eyes on the battlemap, zooming in to Manaan and watching the carnage occurring there while trusting his crew to keep an eye on the immediate area.

Mastermind

1

September 15, 2429

Retari System

Atlantica

Kyler hit the water in his arrowhead late, well behind the other Archons who were already outside the hangar bay, and locked the flat topside panel in place by means of a switch on the right side control stick. It retracted down into place and sealed itself flush with the rest of the small craft, fully concealing the trailblazer’s armored body inside, then the control jets fired up and began pumping water out behind where his feet were set against a pair of foot pedals, allowing him to adjust the thrust levels and skillfully arc a curve through the bay and hit the first containment shield at decent speed.

The shield, designed to hold back water, allowed the arrowhead through once sufficient pressure was applied, causing a jolt in the craft that did not have inertial dampening technology. It was little more than a water mongoose and barely twice the length of the land version, flat like a knife and light enough that Kyler could have picked it up out of the water using nothing but his bare hands.

That light weight and angular design also allowed it to be very fast, so after he suffered through another jolt exiting through the second shield in the waterlock, he was able to punch the throttle and accelerate up to near torpedo speed as he tore off from the side of Manaan towards the infantry battles occurring at now three points inside the perimeter fence…the third of which had prompted him to abandon the command nexus and get into the fray himself, given how outnumbered they were.

In the six days since the initial attack on the city’s defenses, all 6 defense towers had been taken down and the littered remains of the lizard ships that had accomplished it were spread out on the seafloor next to the Star Force debris. Kyler had been both amazed and intrigued that the lizards could bring as many ships to bear as they had, with more continuing to arrive via water from locations unknown.

The Nautilus, Highwind, Dutchman, and Black Pearl were all tucked inside the perimeter fence, guarding over the 110 square miles of seafloor as the bulk of the lizard fleet was stationed outside. They’d made several raids over the past few days, some up the gauntlet approach where the fence overlapped, others through breach points they’d created in the gigantic metallic monstrosity, but none were successful in doing damage to either the city or the battleships given their shield column plasma cannons.

Had the fence not been in place that would have been another story, but since it was forcing them to attack piecemeal the assault had essentially come to a standoff, with the lizards circling around the besieged city and continually probing the defenses, trying to find a way to either bring the fence down or to damage one of the battleships from range, which they’d attempted to do with onslaughts of torpedoes fired through the gaps in the wire-like barrier. The Dutchman had taken hull damage from one of those assaults when it ran out of PDM, but given the amount of damage the shields soaked up before breaching, too few torpedoes remained to seriously hurt the gigantic ship.

But give the lizards an inch and they’d try to take a mile, and once the Dutchman was wounded they began to try and repeat the effort, getting resupplied from underwater convoys carrying ammunition and bringing more ships into the fold, as well as some aerial drops that made it through the city’s limited defenses. Manaan still had skeets to deploy in response, but when anything large came their way and naval warships weren’t in range to intercept, the lizards would get their supplies through.

Some of those supplies came in the form of infantry pods delivering thousands of the swimming lizards into the campaign, and although the enemy hadn’t given up on taking out the battleships through coordinated torpedo strikes through the fence, they were circumventing the battleships’ primary advantage by exploiting its weakness…which was their inability to track small targets with their plasma cannons, meaning a mass of infantry could literally walk right underneath one of the battleships and only lose a few in number to lucky shots.

In fact, that seemed to be their choice of attack now, for they were launching the largest infantry invasion to date. Thousands of the little swimmers were crossing the perimeter fence at now 3 locations, all intent on getting into the city’s auxiliary structures and doing what damage they could. Whether that meant external explosions or actually boarding the city Kyler didn’t know, but with so many in the water they needed all the Archons they could get to thin their numbers that were quickly overwhelming what interior turret defenses the city had left.

Once outside of the main building Kyler followed a group of arrowheads that were already halfway to the eastern boundary where a pair of frigates were trying to stop the flood of infantry coming through at a point more than a kilometer inside the fence line, otherwise the Star Force ships would draw too much weaponsfire from the surrounding lizard ships eagerly awaiting a chance to get to the interior. They’d lost several ships over the past few days when they’d responded to breach attempts, and while they’d been successful in stopping those ships cutting into the fence, they’d taken significant losses of their own, resulting in several wrecks of ships having to be abandoned.

On the battlemap Kyler saw that part of the lizards were taking up residence under some of that debris on the seafloor, using it as a shield against the pair of frigates that were pumping out PDM at everything they could see. The tiny missiles were in high demand right now, with the factories inside Manaan producing replacement ammunition as fast as possible to counter the lizards’ attempts to disarm Star Force by weapon attrition. Once again they didn’t seem to care how many lives they lost, so long as they could do some damage in the process.

A flashing light on his battlemap, which was located inside his helmet rather than in the craft itself given the tiny confines, indicated that another link in the fence had been cut, opening up a slightly larger hole for reinforcements to come through. Kyler knew that it’d take a square of four being removed to allow a corvette through, and even then that was a squeeze.

In response to the flashing, a tiny sliver of a shield column extended out to that point on the fence from the Nautilus, then several flashes of plasma passed through it, lighting up the ocean in tiny blue streaks from Kyler’s point of view, and impacted the lizard frigate on the other side that had been blasting away at the fence with a series of short range torpedo strikes.

The enemy contact went out after some additional pounding, but the small damage to the fence remained and Kyler knew the enemy was playing a long chess match towards the destruction of the city, with every little nick in the fence putting them one step closer to attaining their penetration goals.

Kyler wasn’t going to let them play that game, however, and as he watched the continually updating battlemap as he zipped his way across the large internal ocean space that the fence had sectioned off from the rest of the waterworld, he saw the Highwind rise up and disappear from the map, leaving the other three battleships to patrol and protect the base from the inside.

A few minutes later it came back down outside the fence, dropping in on top of a fleet of lizard ships in the southeast…where none of the infantry were coming from. It hit a section of the enemy armada that had thought it was safe, and one that contained many transports. When the giant battleship began to submerge into the water overhead, the lizards had a choice…stand their ground or run.

Given how many ships there were at that location and nearby, the lizards opted to fight, as the Captain had hoped. Kyler hadn’t ordered him to make the maneuver, but he’d encouraged all the battleship Captains to be aggressive in their defense and to not let the enemy get to feeling as if they owned the perimeter.

Even as the Highwind had barely gotten submerged Kyler knew it was going to come away damaged…but therein lay their advantage. Though it moved slowly, the battleship was also an airship and could retreat from an underwater battle by going up into the air and flying away, making it very hard for the lizards to kill one unless they had aerial support, which at the moment they did not. In truth, Manaan would already have been lost if it hadn’t been for the presence of the 4 battleships, but so long as they were on site and the perimeter fence was holding off an onslaught, it was going to be very hard for the lizards to destroy or capture the Star Force city, and that was one advantage that Kyler intended to milk as much as possible.

The battleship Captains knew it as well, which was why Kyler was glad to see the Highwind redeploying outside the fence to land another gut busting blow to the enemy and eat up more of their ships to compensate for those reinforcements still coming in. After the first two days of the engagement he’d sent Vander off on a reconnaissance mission, hoping that he could quietly backtrack where the lizards were coming from, and he hoped that as long as the besieging forces continued to receive support that meant Vander was getting closer and closer to pinpointing at least one of their transitional bases nearby.

Let the lizards get too many ships on site and they’d be in for a nightmare of problems, thus it was necessary to thin their numbers when they could, just as the Highwind was beginning to do now. Kyler watched the battlemap briefly, then turned his attention to the engagement ahead of him as he approached the location where the other 13 arrowheads were zipping about across the seafloor and tagging what infantry they could as what looked like a mass of ants was swimming its way further inside the perimeter.

The column of ‘ants’ broke up at the ship debris, pooling underneath it before branching off in multiple strands and small groups, making it hard to pin them all to one location. These lizards, fortunately, weren’t wearing stealth suits, so they showed up on sensors from a considerable distance, allowing Kyler to pick out a small group ahead of the others and zoom in towards it, with a jet of high pressure water propelling him and his arrowhead through the dark depths where the sunlight couldn’t reach.

Given that he was the only arrowhead near this lizard group he didn’t turn on his exterior running lights, nor had the lizards powered up their plasma rods or legionnaire shields, but he could clearly see them on sensors, giving him an advantage.  Maintaining a high speed he flicked on the V-shaped band around the arrowhead’s front edge and charged it with stun energy, then adjusted his heading as he picked out a single lizard amongst the 8 ahead of him.

He rammed it less than a second after it flicked on its plasma rod, apparently having heard him coming. It careened off the side, doubled over at the midsection as the impact simultaneously broke its back as well as stunning it unconscious. Kyler turned to the right and clipped another in the arm before exiting out the back of the group. He flipped the arrowhead on its side then bent the machine at the waist, arcing it back around and searching for his next target.

The other lizards’ lights suddenly flashed on, both from their plasma rods and the forearm length shield gauntlets that they held out in front of them. They swam together and huddled up into a group, extending their plasma rods out between their shields to zap the arrowhead should it try to ram them again.

Kyler slowed his speed as he programmed the autopilot to make a simple out and back maneuver, then he hit a button that sucked out the air in the compartment into a container while flooding it with seawater. Inside his armor Kyler didn’t notice the change, other than seeing it on his faceplate, then when the indicator panel informed him that there were no longer any remaining bubbles to give away his presence he cracked the cover partway open and pushed himself out the back near to where his foot pedals were, hand climbing/propelling himself out as the arrowhead continued to move forward under its own power, compensating for the drag of the half-open compartment.

The Archon got caught in the jet wash and shoved back away from the arrowhead even as he activated his own much smaller jets on his legs and forearms, lowering himself in the water while he moved forward, intent on coming up at the lizards from below as the arrowhead passed over top of them. As he closed he reached his hands inside the cover on his back and pulled out one of two needler pistols and powered it up, but kept his arms tucked against his sides to maintain a smooth trajectory.

The arrowhead succeeded in buzzing the 6 lizards, getting their attention and keeping it as it executed the preprogrammed U-turn and started heading back towards them to make another pass, thoroughly distracting them enough that Kyler was able to swim up underneath them and fire up at their webbed feet.

He held off until he was only a few meters away, then put a laser dot on one towards the center that was holding a shield up high to cover their topside and fired straight up into the mess of legs, seeing a puff of compressed water move out to obscure the group as the water was explosively knocked away to produce a short lived vacuum/vapor sphere that the 5 remaining lizards got pulled back into after having their formation knocked apart.

One of them was injured from the explosion, having been next to the one that was now missing its pelvis. Kyler cringed at the gruesome damage, but pushed the thought aside. He didn’t like messy kills, but he didn’t have much choice at the moment…though in two more meters he would.

The trailblazer didn’t fire again, but instead jetted his way up into the midst of the lizards, grabbing one’s plasma rod out of its hand in the confusion and jabbing it into another. The green plasma glowing in its tip discharged into the water lizard’s head, burning out a section of its brain in less than a second, though a plume of bubbles disguised the point of impact briefly.

Two down, four to go.

As Kyler spun the rod around as quickly as he could considering the water drag, the green tip reformed and he jabbed it towards another lizard, but the thing got its shield moved in time and the plasma impacted it, discharging on contact and weakening the shield considerably.

Another PDM from the needler blew apart what coordination the other lizards were regaining as it detonated against the leg of one to Kyler’s left. During that disruptive compression sphere Kyler got knocked slightly askew, but was able to jab the plasma rod into the shield of the lizard on his right a few more times, fully breaching the energy field.

The tip of the rod slipped past and poked the lizard in the chest, though no plasma was present. Kyler did a double tap and got a little bit to discharge as it built back up, enough to painfully distract the lizard. The Archon dropped the plasma rod and jetted forward, wrapping his arm around the lizard’s neck and spinning it around…right into another plasma rod jabbing towards him.

Using the friendly fire to his advantage, Kyler pushed the now dead lizard back into the others, using his armor’s jets to provide more leverage than the swimmers could, then he shot another PDM in between the group and saw it pop against the center one’s midsection before his view was obscured. When it cleared that lizard was dead and the two nearby were injured, one missing both an arm and a leg.

Kyler grabbed one of the floating and still glowing plasma rods and finished off the survivors with a couple of taps rather than waste his own ammo, then he located his arrowhead, which was floating in place 40 meters off where he’d told it to wait. He swam out to find the remaining unconscious lizard and tagged it once in the chest, then discarded the plasma rod and tucked the needler into the fold on his armor’s back. Kyler jetted over to his arrowhead and climbed inside, sealing himself in then evacuating the water to reduce the craft’s weight. That produced a bit more buoyancy, but once he got moving the shape of the arrowhead would keep him in line due to the deflection angles.

8 lizards down…who knew how many thousands more to go.

Kyler checked his battlemap as soon as his body got back into the arrowhead, looking for his next targets with several to choose from, none of which were nearby…at least not within 30 seconds anyway. The arrowhead was fast, allowing it to cover a lot of water quickly, but the lizards were doing well to scatter past their bit of cover near the downed warships, which was making it difficult for the other 13 arrowheads to get after them as well, though they were mostly focusing on the main flow, trying to take them out while they were still bunched together.

Kyler would have preferred to be there doing that, but right now someone was needed to knock down some of the groups getting past…and there were many of them, too many for him to get them all.

He glanced at the fuel cell gage, which indicated that he had enough power for at least 30 minutes of heavy combat, though it would vary depending on how many stun charges he used and how many little breaks like this he took. Guessing that the other arrowheads were in a similar position, he knew they were going to have to make several round trips, utilizing their speed to move to and from the city while the lizard infantry progressed forward slowly.

He’d just have to whittle down as many as he could, then let the point defenses around the structures thin them down further. To that end he randomly picked another group and jetted off, hoping to ram at least some of the lizard groups out of commission so he wouldn’t have to suffer the delay of getting out and dealing with them hand to hand.

2

Paul replayed the battlemap data from the previous day’s battles in his quarters, just back from a lengthy training session in the Excalibur’s sanctum. The lizards were getting more reinforcements coming in and Star Force had attempted to mine the jumpline from the star with a few heavy objects. They’d delivered them far out in mid orbit and sent them drifting in, with their internal engines keeping the house-sized lumps of metal directly on the line whereas orbital paths would have moved them laterally out of position within minutes.

Star Force had thus tagged that jumpline off limits, with a beacon informing all ships entering the system to avoid that route stationed in orbit around the system’s star. Greg’s fleet was stationed there, escorting incoming convoys and trying to poach lizard ones whenever they entered the system. The beacon was set up as a small space station that transmitted constantly, rather than having one of Greg’s ships do it. That way his ships could move about at will, rather than having to guard a fixed point.

The beacon was using a new communications technology, one built from the V’kit’no’sat database rather than reverse engineering the lizards’ interstellar comm tech, that used telaris energy. Star Force was still working on the sensor package, but it had already started to build new ships and facilities with telaris comm systems, as well as producing upgrade packages for the others. The key value in telaris energy was that, unlike an accelerating signal, it naturally traveled at 3.205 times the speed of light.

That wasn’t instantaneous communication across a star system, but it was a considerable improvement over systems that had been relying on various forms of electromagnetic radiation for both communications and sensors. Telaris energy was emitted from riol, a tier 3 subatomic particle that was only present in corovon-bonded atoms. It would pool around the corovon in the gaps between attached protons, then would be dislodged fairly easy, resulting in huge bursts of energy that was very repellant to other matter.

That gave it a huge spring capacity coming off the corovon, resulting in its 3.205 lightspeed instantaneous acceleration. It also meant that the telaris energy would be deflected rather than absorbed by most substances, making for some very fast and very powerful sensors. Paul and others hoped that it would overcome the lizards’ sensor dampening armor, but to date the techs hadn’t got a viable sensor array prototype worked out, though they were getting close.

The comm system was crude, but functional, and was allowing Paul and Greg to exchange information faster. If the lizards were quick they could still enter the system from a specific jumpline and get to Atlantica before Greg could send word if the navigational angles were favorable, given that the planets were continuously rotating around the star and changing their relative positions to the incoming stellar jumplines the lizards seemed to favor.

The other day Paul’s fleet had got a heads up that another lizard convoy was incoming, one that Greg’s fleet hadn’t been able to intercept. With the kinetic ‘mines’ in place in low orbit, where they were essentially hovering on their gravity drives, Paul had moved some drone warships into more favorable positions to intercept the convoy once it arrived.

The lizards came out of their jump early, decelerating most of their momentum away before they crossed through the mine field…which only contained 119 objects. That was a very diffuse net, but given the size of the lizard jumpships it was probable that at least one would get hit.

Two had, punching deep into the hulls on 2 out of the 16 that had arrived. At least part of their gravity drives had been damaged, for the last bit of their deceleration was delayed, pushing them out ahead of the others, and fortuitously for Star Force saw one ramming another on a deflection angle, sending both damaged ships spinning about on a descending route down towards Atlantica’s atmosphere.

To the lizards’ credit, they managed to stall out their fall and keep the damaged ships in space, though the wounds were extensive. With all three jumpships out of the position they had expected to be, Paul’s fleet, which was technically all ships in orbit despite which Archon’s warship they came from, had pounced on them in their damaged state and killed all three, but not before the other lizard ships could respond, including one of the newly arrived jumpships that was a carrier containing a slew of cruisers and a pair of battleships.

It was that battle that Paul was now reviewing, not to mention the cleanup effort the lizards made on the other mines. They couldn’t vaporize them, and breaking them up into bits was hazardous to navigation as well, so after locating the others…which had been sensor stealthed…they used some of their jumpships to capture and remove them from the jumpline, as well as shooing away battle debris down into a lower orbit that was even now starting to tickle the atmosphere and drop into the oceans below.

The chess match in orbit was getting more and more complex. While Paul and the other trailblazers were learning more about their enemy, the lizards were doing the same with them in a punch/counterpunch timeline that saw both fleets improving their strategy while the lizards and Star Force continued to run supplies down to the war taking place on the planet below. Every now and then Paul would be able to catch a lizard supply run and disrupt it, forcing them to either turn back before they got to the atmosphere or destroying them as they attempted the insertion.

Those that did drop down consistently went to the backside of the planet where Star Force had no infrastructure…then the supplies/reinforcements would make their way beneath the waves where the Humans’ sensors couldn’t track off to who knows where, then it would eventually end up on Kyler’s doorstep, as it was doing right now.

Paul had forced himself to stop watching the live battlemap feeds from below, focusing on the naval confrontation and his training. Kyler had told him he’d request evac if they needed it, otherwise there wasn’t anything he could do to help other than trying to keep more lizard resources from reaching the planet.

He had insured that the airspace over Manaan stayed clear of enemy warships, keeping small capital ship groups close in orbit that could drop down if/when needed, and so far the lizards had respected that threat and kept their assault subsurface where Paul couldn’t get at them. That way, at least he could provide a secure evacuation route for the city. Thankfully Manaan didn’t contain any colonists, but there were thousands of Star Force personnel inside, and if the city was going to fall they would be hard pressed to pack them all into the battleships and would need the aerial route kept open.

The orbital situation was less strenuous, mainly because Paul was successfully chewing up the lizard reinforcements as fast as they could send them. Earth was supplying them with new fleets as soon as they came out of the shipyards, all with upgraded weapons technology, primary of which was the mauler cannons, but they were also fielding better plasma and lachar batteries along with higher densities of adamantium armor. Paul never knew what the next convoy would contain, but Davis had yet failed to disappoint him.

With those incoming resources, part of which were meant for the aquatics front, Paul was overseeing the construction of a 4th battle station in the shadow of the other 3 where the lizards couldn’t get at it, though they had attempted a few hit and run raids which the fleet had successfully blocked. Right now he had 1 strong point in orbit and he intended to spread that out to two, but whether he could do that by splitting the stations into pairs or not was still up in the air. Most of it had to do with the lizards’ capabilities, of which he was trying to get a handle on.

In some respects he understood them very well…in others, they seemed almost like the Borg from Star Trek, in that they would adapt to whatever he threw at them. Their commanders were probably from the strategic class, though with lizard naval crews he could never be sure. Sometimes they were comprised totally of the standard variant, which were devious enough, but he knew they also had the ability to grow specialized commanders when needed.

There were 11 known variants, of which they’d personally encountered 6, now that they’d met their swimming version, but Star Force had the genetics profile on all of them, thanks to the battles on Corneria and the copycat version of lizard infrastructure they’d produced from the technological ‘seeds’ they’d recovered. They hadn’t grown any new lizards to study, though they maintained that capability. Rather, they had medtechs pouring through their genetic code trying to learn what they could.

One thing they’d learned was that they were all sterile. Not one of the lizards could reproduce, for that ability had been genetically removed from them. They now reproduced totally through technological means, which also gave them the ability to increase their numbers rapidly if they had the resources to do so, as they were doing now on Atlantica. Their achilles heel had always been having enough raw materials to build ships, but somehow they were also overcoming that hurdle, given the numbers Kyler was facing at Manaan.

The lizards had tried setting up other bases in the system, given that there were 18 planets. None of them were habitable, but most were minable, and several small engagements had been fought to weed infant lizard bases off those worlds before they could gain a foothold. At present Sam’s fleet was patrolling the system, scanning every planet and moon periodically and dealing with any new infrastructure popping up, for they knew from experience that they had to keep the lizards resupplying from outside the star system. If they gained a resource base from within, it would be very difficult to overcome their growth rate.

The lizards had succeeded in building their own battle station in orbit, though they’d had to cheat to do it. One of the less recent supply convoys had brought a jumpship variant they’d never seen before. This one was covered in weapons and appeared to have few bay doors. It didn’t match any schematic in the known lizard tech tree, and after some careful prodding Paul had determined that it was essentially a mobile battle station.

The lizards used it like Star Force had used the seda copies, establishing a foothold that their fleets could base themselves around…except that the lizard station didn’t have the firing range of Star Force’s cleansing beams. After a two week period of cat and mouse engagements, Paul had succeeded in destroying the jumpship/base and removing the lizards’ strong point from orbit, costly as it had been.

Even now, as he watched the replay of yesterday’s battle, he could see the weapon strikes against his ships deliberately targeting their weakest points rather than just blasting away at their shields and armor as the lizards had once done. Likewise his gunners were targeting the critical systems on the lizards’ ships, now knowing exactly where to hit them, not just because they had their schematics available, but because both sides were now well experienced with their opposition.

Star Force, Paul assumed, had more of an advantage due to the fact that they weren’t cycling personnel like the lizards were, for every ship they destroyed required a new crew being grown, whereas the drone ships in Paul’s fleet had the same pilots flying them no matter how many were destroyed…so long as the lizards didn’t knock out a warship, which to date was something that Paul had not allowed to happen here, though he had heard that Morgan had lost one fighting the Nestafar.

Some of the regular crew had begun to label this conflict as the forever war, for they couldn’t see an outcome on the horizon…other than Star Force capitulating and abandoning the system. Paul and the other trailblazers had an entirely different view. Where others saw an insurmountable and unrelenting enemy, the Archons saw a challenge…and the bigger the challenge the more they wanted to face it rather than run away, making this just the situation Paul wanted to be in rather than guarding Namek as it continued to grow its infrastructure oblivious to the lizards.

Well, not totally oblivious, for the supply convoys running to Atlantica were coming from there and the lizards had backtracked them, but they hadn’t done more than scout the system, seeing that Star Force was well dug in on the planet. Namek, though, was less close to existing lizard colonies, with Atlantica practically on their doorstep. Paul and the others had planned on defending both locations, though they’d hoped the lizards would focus on the waterworld.

Now that they’d gotten their wish, the enemy wasn’t disappointing. They were drawing an unbelievable amount of resources off from their main territory, resources that could have been sent to fight their allies. That said, Paul knew what they were facing here was merely a drop in the bucket compared to the total military might the lizards possessed.

The sheer amount of their warships was mindboggling, but what Paul had learned early on is that if you had a lot of territory to defend, you had to spread your fleet out. That meant the lizards couldn’t just pick up their massive fleet and pound it all against a single world. Given the distances involved they had to leave defenses in all their systems else risk losing them to a handful of enemy ships. Even with their considerably quick gravity drives, getting from one end of their territory to another could take more than a year, depending on the route.

Paul wished that Star Force could one day possess that amount of territory, not just for the resources and capabilities it would afford them, but for the challenge of managing it all. Their allies all had far greater realms than the Humans did, and they didn’t all do the best in managing them. It was hard to think of an entire planet being lost in accounting, but when you had thousands of them spread out across this piece of the galaxy with little communication between them…it wasn’t all that uncommon.

Which made the V’kit’no’sat’s much larger empire all the more impressive.

Paul finished watching the replay, seeing nothing new tactically, but he always preferred studying his enemy directly rather than being handed a spec manual, especially given the lizards adaptive abilities. Those in this system could very well behave differently than those in others, based solely on what they were learning here. Paul didn’t know how much they’d transmit that knowledge back to the rest of their empire, given that they’d have to do it in the form of couriers, so really his fight wasn’t with the whole of the lizard empire, but this local branch of it.

He flipped back over to the realtime battlemap and checked the position of the lizard fleets, noting that Oni-081 had repositioned some of her heavier warships further out. It took Paul all of four seconds to figure out why, then another two seconds to deduce the lizards’ probable countermove.

This was how their chess match was usually played out on a day to day basis. Both fleets would reposition, attempting to pull off supply runs, catch incoming convoys, or draw the enemy fleet into a formational weakness they could exploit. Paul had come to nickname his lizard counterpart Thrawn, and saw that it/them were breaking up their largest fleet and spreading it out into multiple appendages, each on a different trajectory.

“Here we go again,” he whispered, knowing that this was standard practice when the lizards wanted to run a convoy down to the surface. Each of the tendrils had cargo ships in them, and picking which one to intercept was mostly guesswork, unless they knew which ones had the goods and which ones were empty.

He had no clue in this go around, and very possibly they were all full given the recently arrived reinforcements…but Paul sensed that Thrawn was being cagey again, expecting Star Force to see their move and likewise reinforce their extreme low orbit fleets, readying themselves to make intercept runs at anything heading down to the surface.

Thrawn should have kept the rest of his ships stationary, but several of them were creeping into new formations, tipping their hand. Paul saw that he had no choice, given their current locations were outside of effective range from a hit and run on the outermost defense fleet that Emily commanded.

Oni saw it too, which was why she was moving her heavy cruisers out further, not all the way up to Emily’s orbit, but close enough to cut down the response time should the lizards make the move.

Paul looked at the hundreds of ship icons on the small hologram in his quarters like pieces on a chess board, then let a smile creep across his face as he saw a move that he was sure Thrawn was trying for. Ever since they’d launched their main underwater assault they’d been getting bolder in orbit, for what he hadn’t known, since the two campaigns were more or less separate entities, but if Paul’s instincts were right, in a few hours time their partially constructed battle station was going to get blasted.

Paul opened up a comm channel to the three battle stations and delivered a text message.

Prep for incoming assault. Probable target is the 4th station. Quietly bring up to full battle readiness. We have a counterattack possibility that I don’t want to waste.

3

A group of 3 lizards swam along the polished seafloor inside the Manaan perimeter fence headed for the large underwater mount that was the Humans’ shipyard. It was totally contained inside an armored shell, with the unfinished battleship obscured from view, but the det pack one of the lizards was carrying was about to make a dent in it.

The trio swam along lazily, along with more than 10,000 others already inside the perimeter fence and spreading out on so many different routes that the Humans couldn’t get to them all. They all had their preferred targets, with secondary options if they couldn’t reach them, but so far this group hadn’t so much as even seen a Human craft near them.

They swam up towards the base of the shipyard where the slightly angled wall met the stone seafloor, with the escorting pair drifting laterally and falling back as the det pack carrier eyed his spot on the dark wall. It didn’t know if the explosion would breach the barrier or not. If it did they would move inside. If it didn’t, they’d wait until another group came their way and added to the damage, defending their entry point as more lizard groups pooled outside.

As the lizard with the det pack swam up to the base of the building it pulled the explosives off its back, intent on setting them in position and triggering a delay timer, but it noticed a faint line in the silt a meter out from the building just before passing over it…then it smashed head first into the defense shield surrounding the shipyard.

Unaware that the building had been shielded, the lizard reached out its webbed hand and ran it over the odd surface of the invisible energy shield, but without enough pressure to make it visible from the disruption. For that it had to bring its plasma rod forward and jab it into the invisible wall, discharging its green load into the shield matrix and producing a meter-wide patch of momentary static.

It wasn’t nearly enough to penetrate the defenses, but it did confirm the fact that it existed.

Unsure how to proceed, the lizard used the small comm device strapped to its head to report the presence of the energy barrier and ask for instructions in a water dialect of their native language that adjusted for their inability to use their vocal chords without air, instead having to rely on a genetic modification inside the roof of their mouths to modulate sound within the water.

The reply wasn’t swift in coming, leaving the three lizards floating in place up against the enemy structure as another group swam up behind them, only 20 or so meters further west and diverted to join them. By the time a strategy had been formed their small group had grown to 18 in number, with 4 det packs amongst them.

Then as one they all received new instructions via their comm units and they began swimming away from the shipyard towards one of the smaller enemy buildings that did not have defensive shields. Apparently only their largest two did, meaning they could access the others and the connecting tunnels beneath and use them to gain access to the primary targets.

Like a school of slow moving fish the lizard infantry redeployed as more around them were snatched up by the quick moving Human craft. By luck or sheer numbers the group of 18, which had now grown to 22 as it picked up another bunch enroute, made it across the gap to a moderately small building rising up some three stories above the seafloor and stretching out across it for a considerable distance.

Using a series of chirps the lizards coordinated with each other and the first one swam up and set its det pack at the base, hoping to use the seafloor to concentrate the blast into the structure, though in truth it wasn’t sure how strong it was. It swam off, with the others even further back forming a small semi-circle, and waited for the brief delay to expire.

The det pack exploded with a muted ‘thump,’ kicking up a cloud of silt in the process. As soon as the ripple reached the lizards the next one began swimming towards the target and placed its det pack in the crater the first explosion had left, which had done as much damage to the rock as it had the wall. The lizard wedged it in the best it could, set the timer, and swam off.

When it blew a third moved in, and with its detonation contained even further inside the growing crater it succeeded in cracking the outer wall, allowing a bit of water to begin leaking inside.

The fourth det pack then punched a hole in the side large enough to begin draining in water with considerable suction. The waiting lizards without det packs swam forward, staggered, and let the flow grab them and pull them through the small breach. They landed inside in what looked like white water rapids as the ocean water flowed from one chamber into another before it leveled out enough for the first of them to find their feet and stand up, finally opening the flap over their air breathing lungs and sucking in the Human atmosphere.

With their plasma rods held at their sides, glowing bright even underneath the Human lights, they began working their way through the flooding areas looking for enemies to kill.

“Go, go, go!” Uma-19448 shouted at the techs running through the corridors to her position near the entrance to the subterranean tunnels that connected the processing center to the other buildings around Manaan, five of which contained routes straight into the main building of the city. Already there was a couple of inches of water around the Archon’s feet, with the running techs splashing up a storm as another explosion was heard from inside the building.

Twenty seconds later a surge of water made its way to her position, knocking two techs off their feet and dunking their heads in the white water that was now up to her knees.

Uma fought her way through it and yanked one of the techs up, pushing him back towards the entrance to the tunnel.

“How many behind you?” she yelled to be heard over the rushing water that containment fields were fighting to hold back, but the lizards were systematically knocking them out and letting the water precede them further into the building.

“I don’t…know,” the man said, coughing as the other tech climbed to her feet, her long hair stuck to her uniform soaking wet.

“Down,” Uma ordered, pushing the man back a couple of meters. “Deep breath,” she warned before pushing him back another as the rushing water was now up to the red armor on her thighs.

The tech grabbed his nose then fell down as he stepped on a containment shield designed to hold back water and not solid objects. The transition was slow, like he was sinking into sand, but his feet came out into dry air beneath him and quickly found a steep staircase that he stumbled his way down until his head came through and he was able to both breathe and regain his balance.

He walked down the stairs and around a corner, coming out onto what looked like a highway-sized tunnel that led straight to the left and right, with a junction visible not far to the left that a lot of other techs were running down. Not wanting to get left behind he took off after them, stumbling at first in his wet shoes before adjusting and picking up the pace.

“Anyone behind you?” Uma asked the female tech when she got to her.

“At least one,” she said in a controlled panic as the water continued to rise, though it was being stemmed as it drained out into other areas of the building.

The Archon pointed down and the tech nodded, then dove head first into the water and pushed her way through the containment field as Uma fought her way upstream looking for other personnel that had failed to evacuate in time. This wasn’t the first building the lizards had hit, and the evacuation orders had come out a few minutes prior to the hull breach, but there had been a lot of personnel continuing their work refining the raw materials already collected so other factories within the city perimeter could keep making ammunition to feed to the defense forces.

The level 79 adept took a knee in the water near the doorway where the current was the strongest and activated one of her leg jets, helping to propel her through into the corridor as she grabbed the doorjamb for additional leverage. She had plenty of air in her armor, and could produce more oxygen from the water itself if needed, but the techs weren’t so equipped and were in danger of drowning if they didn’t get them all out. They also didn’t have comm units or locator beacons, so she and the few other Archons in the building were having to improvise.

“Anyone out there!” she yelled, using her helmet’s external mic to amplify the sound.

“In here!” a muted response sounded from her left, prompting her to walk/swim that way painfully slow as she fought the current. “Hurry!”

“Trying,” Uma said to herself as she slogged her way down the hall. “Keep talking!”

“In here!” the voice repeated, then a hand shot out into view just above the waterline.

“Got it!” she answered back, dropping down underneath the water and using all four of her jets to plow her way forward, using her toes for additional leverage until she got to the door and ducked into its smaller side current.

When she came up she saw two female techs perched on top of a table, one of which was bleeding and probably unconscious. A door on the opposite side had water flowing out into another section, creating the cross current.

“I couldn’t leave her,” the conscious tech said, crying in addition to the water dripping down her face from her braided blonde hair.

Uma let the current help her along then gripped the side of the table to steady her as she got to the pair…immediately seeing the plasma burn on the prone one’s left leg.

“Is she alive?” Uma asked, not able to feel for a pulse with her gloves on.

“She passed out, but she’s still breathing. I couldn’t get her out the door with the current, and there are lizards that way,” she said, pointing to the far door.

Uma thought that odd, being essentially downstream, but she wasn’t going to argue with the wound on the other woman’s leg.

“Go,” she ordered, picking up the unconscious one and setting her over the armor on her shoulders to keep her head away from the water as much as possible. “To the right. I’ll be behind you.”

Without hesitation the tech jumped into the water and swam against the current, pushing with her feet when they touched bottom up until she got to the door, then she grabbed the wall and leveraged herself outside and into the heavier current.

“Hang to the right and take the next open door,” Uma said, having to fight the water without her jets, but thankful for the extra weight helping to pin her feet to the floor. When she got to the door she reached her right leg out and latched her ankle around the doorjamb, then pivoted the unconscious tech through as the water was now up to chest level. Down the hall she could see the other tech waiting, hanging onto the open doorway.

Uma twisted out into the flow and kept at least one foot in front of her at all times, using it to balance herself upright so she didn’t tip the tech over into the water, knowing how quickly someone could drown when they weren’t conscious to close their mouth and hold their breath against even a little water.

The other tech ducked out of the doorway just before Uma arrived, where the Archon used her left leg jet to nudge herself into the side flow and into a long room that split at the end.

“Stay with me,” Uma said, letting the current carry her down to the other end of the room as the tech latched onto her arm twice for balance.

When they got down to where the containment shield was, Uma swung the tech off her shoulders and held her head above water with an arm latched around her shoulders, but with the rest of her body in the water.

“I need you to close her mouth and hold her nose, we have to go down,” Uma instructed, pointing below them with her free hand. “There’s a shield two steps ahead holding back the water. Keep her lungs clear and I’ll pull you both through, ok?”

“How long…do I have to hold my breath?”

“Less than 10 seconds,” Uma said bringing the two techs together, with the conscious one wrapping the other up in a bear hug.

“Ok,” she said shaking as the water was nearly up to her neckline. The ceiling was high with plenty of air left, but the before long the pressure would start building to painful levels even if they did have air pockets remaining above the doorjambs.

Uma ducked down underneath the waterline so she could see exactly where the shield was and moved over to it, sticking a foot in while gently dragging the pair of techs her way, with the conscious one walking the other through the still flowing water and keeping her upright. When Uma’s legs were partway through the shield and found a stair beneath she tapped the tech’s leg three times…then twice…then once more before pulling both of them down into the water.

Using her weight the Archon pulled both of them down through the shield as fast as possible, dropping them into an uncomfortable fall that she only managed to halfway catch.

Uma immediately got the unconscious one upright and tipped over, then tapped on her back just to make sure she didn’t have any water in her lungs while the other one coughed considerably, probably haven gotten water up her nose or maybe not having understood the tapping countdown.

For good measure Uma picked up the unconscious one off her feet and inverted her for a moment, using gravity to drain any water out of her lungs but apparently the other one had done a good job of keeping it out of her friend, just not herself.

“Let’s go,” she urged, picking the tech up over one shoulder and hurrying down the stairs with the other one following in her footsteps. Once out into the underground tunnel the only people visible in the distance were Archons, one to her left and one further down on the right that ducked out of sight at the same time she heard plasma fire…which meant the lizards were close.

As she jogged with the techs she toggled her battlemap and comm system, identifying who that Archon was.

“You got lizard trouble?” she asked Jaden-11833, another adept who’d gotten internal security duty while the acolytes were busy fighting the lizards outside.

“Their…rods can fire like rifles in the air,” he warned, apparently in the middle of a skirmish. “I could use some help, they keep popping the containment fields.”

“Got some techs to deliver, then I’ll be back.”

“Use your plasma rifle. They’re not waiting for the chambers to fill up.”

“Copy that,” Uma said as they made their way down the hall to the other Archon who was guarding a spur tunnel that ran over to another building, one that wasn’t yet flooding. Those areas that were under assault were being tagged on the battlemap so they could tell at a glance where it was safe to move the techs through as all the external buildings were being evacuated, though it seemed like those that used this tunnel were already on the move and long gone.

“I’ll take her,” the other Archon offered, freeing up Uma so she could head back the other way.

“Thanks,” she said, all but tossing the unconscious tech into the other’s hands before sprinting back down the tunnel. The aquatic armor she wore wasn’t exactly graceful, given its bulkier nature, but it was still Archon armor and therefore had to be at least partially agile, allowing her to run at a decent gait all the way down to where Jaden’s tag had ducked down a side entrance.

She found another stairwell up and took it, unslinging her plasma rifle from the rack underneath the flap on her back, next to which she carried a needler, both of which were standard issue for internal deployments, given that one never knew when they’d need to step outdoors for a swim or when the water would come pouring in as it was now. The plasma rifle was configured to be water safe, though firing it submerged was next to pointless unless you just wanted to make steam bubbles.

Uma charged up the staircase and through another containment shield, coming up through only a few inches of water, meaning this section of the building must have only recently been breached, given the cellular nature of the design and the hundreds of individual containment fields set up throughout the structure.

“Bringing them to you,” Jaden’s voice said, with Uma seeing his approach on the battlemap. “Ambush please.”

“Gladly,” she said, ducking back into the room away from the doorway so they couldn’t see her. A moment later Jaden’s red armor splashed into view then out the opposite doorway…then a trio of lizards came through after him, with Uma lighting up the second in line first with a shot to the midsection. As it fell she targeted the first before it could snap its unwieldy plasma rod around, downing it with a pair of shots before turning back to hit the third as more lizards were pushing through after it.

Jaden came back into the room and between the two of them mowed down the wet lizards with plasma, leaving a foggy haze in the room from all the vaporized water.

“Thanks,” he said, ducking out of the room and heading back towards the tunnel.

“Any more?” she asked, following him.

“Not here…not that I saw, but I want to stay ahead of the water as long as they’re doing the same.”

“Lead on,” she said, checking her battlemap as she followed him back to the containment field and the now half foot of water covering it.

4

A mongoose zipped down the main tunnel from Manaan and turned hard, tipping up on its left-side tires slightly as its shocks banked it through the inertial-laden curve, but it managed to stay upright thanks to the squat wheeled design and leveled out in one of several spur lines that ran through the bedrock and out to the adjacent buildings under lizard incursion.

As soon as he made the turn Kyler could see flashes of weaponsfire in the distance, so he didn’t spare any speed and ramped the mongoose up into its top gears as he held to the right side of the tunnel, passing by a few straggling techs running away from the fighting and towards a trio of parked mongooses taking on passengers. They were the larger versions, used to haul personnel out and back through these tunnels regularly, but Kyler’s was the individual variety and it most definitely wasn’t stopping to pick up and evacuate people…he was heading straight for the fighting.

Most of the arrowheads were still in the water, taking down what infantry they could, but that front was already a lost battle with hundreds of lizards now down inside the network of tunnels and more swimming in to join them. Knowing that, Kyler had come back to Manaan and hit the armory, grabbing as much combat gear as he could carry on one mongoose and heading out to the ground fighting as quickly as he could.

He had to zigzag a bit to avoid other pedestrians, most of whom were Archons redeploying from other assignments to reinforce their subsurface lines. Kyler sent out a telepathic warning ahead of him and most of them moved to the sides, though they had little forewarning given the speed the mongoose was moving.

Even as he watched the road ahead he was monitoring the battlemap inside his helmet and was well aware of what was happening up ahead. The lizards were breaking through shield after shield in the tunnel, allowing it to flood and fighting out of it to the next section, figuring that they stood a much better chance against the Archons in the water than they did in the air. They may have been right about that, but that didn’t mean the Archons couldn’t defeat them submerged, it was just that at the moment there were too few to counter the incursion, which was why the lizards were gaining ground.

That and the problem of weapons. Plasma couldn’t fire into the water at the lizards…and needlers couldn’t fire through the air to get into the water, making the transitional areas that were partly flooded up for grabs and the lizards were pushing these zones forward all the way down into the tunnels, having essentially water-grabbed several buildings above that they were no doubt setting up shop in as far as their incoming reinforcements were concerned.

That was about to change as soon as Kyler got up to them. This wasn’t the only tunnel under assault, but it was the one that had seen the lizards get closest to Manaan and the trailblazer was going to put a stop to any more forward progress here while other acolyte Archon teams were moving out to the other tunnels to reinforce the adepts that had been on station at the time of the first incursions.

The lone ranger on the planet, Kyler continued to speed down the tunnel in his green aquatics armor that looked odd on the back of a mongoose, but none the less it was getting him up to the fighting quicker than any other transport along with a stash of weapons for the other Archons tied down to the back of the vehicle.

When he came up on the fighting he didn’t slow, but telepathically told the other 6 Archons ahead of him to make way. Their 5 red and 1 silver armored bodies shifted positions, giving him a narrow line through them as they continued to fire plasma blasts into the shield ahead of them as several lizards stepped through from the half-flooded tunnel and into the air, firing green plasma orbs from their rods back at the Archons who had no cover to hide behind.

Kyler couldn’t see it, but several of them already had armor damage…but in a moment they were going to have a mongoose to hide behind, along with some new toys to play with. He didn’t have enough time to tell them that much, but if they couldn’t improvise then they didn’t deserve to be Archons, so he didn’t worry about it as he killed the engine on the mongoose and let it coast forward towards the gap the others had made.

As he steered to maintain his line, Kyler got his feet up on the seat and set himself in a squat, then jumped forward as he passed the other Archons, letting his momentum carry him up over the mongoose as he yanked the handle bars to the side. It curved sharply and bounced off the wall, flipping over and careening to a stop a few meters shy of the shield while Kyler’s body continued straight ahead and he punched through the shield superman style about 2 meters up from the ground.

Given that the shield was only holding back air on this side, it didn’t resist his entrance too much, but there was still a considerable deceleration as he hit the water on the far side, shooting him into the mess of lizards and knocking his head enough to disorient himself slightly.

The two dozen or so lizards floating in the water that was continuing to rise up towards the high ceiling were caught off guard, but quickly recovered and brought their plasma rods up and around to tag him with…then they suddenly lost their grip on their weapons and began to twitch around unnaturally.

Kyler pulled out a water-version stun stick from his back rack and jabbed the closest one to him while maintaining the Fornax disruption field with as much intensity as he could. He jetted to his left, jabbing another into unconsciousness as he grabbed a plasma rod with his free hand and began going through the lizards with the two weapons, knocking more than half of them out of the fight before he could hold the Fornax field no longer and had to mentally take a breath.

With their nervous systems now functional again the lizards got their situational awareness back and grabbed for their weapons, most of which had floated down to rest on the floor. Kyler stunned two more and killed a third while one near the shield reached down and picked up its weapon, then brought its glowing end up a couple of meters away from the trailblazer and kicked its legs back to propel it forward into him.

The lizard moved all of two inches before a pair of hands punched through into the water behind it and latched onto the creature, then it was pulled back through the shield and into the air, no longer a threat to Kyler.

Another lizard swam up to him and tried to jab him with his weapon, but Kyler parried it with his own plasma rod, then sent a tight beam Fornax burst directly into that lizard’s mind, allowing him to knock its weapon aside and move in to tag it with the stun stick.

He released the selective Fornax generation, which required far less power, and spun around just in time to knock aside another incoming plasma nub that missed his torso by a foot. Kyler took that lizard hand to hand, then summoned up another short range omni-directional Fornax field to distract two more long enough for him to swim up to them and take them down, one with each weapon he wielded.

Behind him two of the adepts had already come through and picked up plasma rods, using them to take down the rest of the lizards, which was when Kyler pointed them towards a det pack on the floor underneath one of the bodies.

“Get that out of here,” he ordered over the comm, “and secure these weapons and bodies. I’ll keep them busy ahead.”

“Copy that,” one of them answered back just as Kyler straightened out parallel to the ground and jetted off a la Ironman, using both leg jets and forearm jets to maximize propulsion and holding his weapons tight alongside him to reduce drag. It took several seconds for his speed to build, but once it did he was zipping back up the tunnel through the waterlogged bottom half to the point where there were individual lizards swimming down towards the shield.

Kyler jousted with them as he passed, not reducing speed. He won seven quick confrontations, given that he was able to cheat with a directed Fornax burst and knock their plasma rods aside in the confusion, tagging them in the chest or head as he passed and delivering a lethal touch of plasma in most cases. Each physical contact required him to corkscrew around to regenerate his line and speed, making his dash down the tunnel a feat of aquatics acrobatics that he pulled off well all the way up to the door some of the lizard reinforcements were coming in from.

Kyler stopped there, letting the water drag him to a halt, and waited in ambush. Using his Ikrid tracking ability he stretched out his senses to the point where he could ‘see’ the minds of the approaching lizards in a radius of about 15 meters, more than enough time to set himself and his stun stick in place to poke at it the moment the first one came through the doorway.

He grabbed the unconscious lizard by the neck and hauled it aside out of view, then repeated the process with the next one, staggered as they were. Behind them was a group of three, several seconds behind, as well as a pair coming down the tunnel from ahead, so he pulled out his needler and fired a PDM down the tunnel, using the laser targeting to lead it straight into the chest of the first lizard who tried to scramble out of the way.

It detonated with an audible pop and a slew of vaporized water from the brief vacuum created by the spherical concussion wave blocked his view of the other, which was still outside of his Ikrid range. He let it be for the moment and swung the needler around into the doorway and fired off another at the group of three lizards coming up.

The backwash knocked Kyler out away from the door, then he jetted back up and into it, grabbing the nearby plasma rod and finishing off what was left of the threesome after the detonation. Sensing no more lizards immediately close by he ducked back out into the tunnel and jetted down to the other lizard and finished it off before returning to the door and taking up sentinel duty. More lizards were on the way, and he intended to make them work very hard to get past him.

Off in another tunnel, Mero-7833 got knocked off his feet as the containment shield ahead of him fell to a lizard det pack and the water behind it burst forth. He fell headfirst to the ground but the rushing water never let him hit, instead carrying him further down the tunnel like a raging river, picking up a scattering of other Archons along the way.

Not far down another shield activated and caught the water, quickly filling up and condensing the air above it for the shield wouldn’t let anything less than solids pass through. Already, with the weight of the ocean filtering in through the numerous breaches in the infrastructure, the pressure being exerted on both the air and water was being translated into the shields, which were gratefully holding up, save for when a det pack blasted apart the emitters in the surrounding wall, as had just happened.

When the water hit the shield the backlash knocked Mero around, but eventually it settled down enough for him to get his mobility back, after which he jetted over to the shield and pushed his way through. Once he got his footing he backed up alongside two other Archons waiting with plasma rifles raised for the lizards to move up and bring the fight to them again.

A couple more Archons followed him out and helped reform their defensive line. All of them had plasma damage to their armor, but it was superficial and their water seals were holding. Behind them was the open arch leading into the loading bay for the shipyard where dozens more were setting up barricades and a more proper defensive line. One more shield remained between it and them, ready to activate if the current one was breached, and it was up to Mero’s team to delay the lizards’ advance as much as possible.

As they watched through the clear shield, the churning water up top settled and cleared down towards the bottom where they could see the lizards’ swimming forward in a tight group a few seconds away from passing through the shield. Mero held his plasma rifle ready, taking a knee in front of an adept and using his silver armor to cover the red legs of the other, minimizing the available silhouettes the lizards had to fire at while overlapping their own protection.

The first thing through the shield was a deactivated plasma rod, for otherwise the nub would have discharged against the shield on contact. Mero squeezed off a shot immediately and hit the weapon, melting into the nub casing and rendering it useless.

The lizard didn’t know that, and when its body came through the shield it flicked on the activation button and aimed at the first Human it saw…but no plasma orb shot out. Instead two blue lances came in and shot it dead while more lizards popped out more or less standing erect and firing green plasma at the Archons.

There were too many to hold off without letting them fire a few return shots, some of which hit the defenders. Between that accumulating damage and the Archons’ limited ammunition, coupled with the seemingly limitless number of lizards moving forward, the defensive line had to fall back, with Mero being the last to move, given his armor was thicker than the others’.

He held his position, taking a couple more hits as he killed three more lizards, then he jumped up and ran across to the other side of the tunnel, turning as he did into a sprint back towards the archway some 50 meters back. He took a hit to his back before reaching the barricades and jumping over the crates and taking up position behind them.

The lizards didn’t follow immediately, but more of them were popping through the distant shield while some of the Archons fired off plasma lances that hit several of them due simply to them being clumped together so closely, but they didn’t move off, charge, or scatter…they just held position until a few seconds later the ones in the front were passed forearm length rods from behind, and soon the leading lizards deployed their legionnaire shields, overlapping them as much as they could and beginning to walk forward while blocking the incoming plasma lances for at least a couple hits each.

“Shit,” Mero said, dropping his rifle on the ground beside his knee and concentrating on the minds ahead of him. His psionics skills weren’t very strong compared to some of the others, but most of those around him were adepts, leaving situations like this to him to deal with.

He picked out one of the minds on the front line and summoned as much Fornax intensity as he could and mentally shot it out on a straight line into the target.

That lizard suddenly stumbled, dropping its shield and tripping over its own webbed feet.

Half a dozen plasma lances shot out through the gap into the lizards behind and for a moment there was chaos in their line…but it quickly reformed as another picked up the shield and stepped into place.

Then as soon as the lines reformed they were blown apart by a wall of water from behind as the containment shield succumbed to another det pack.

The lizards were knocked forward in the wave, disappearing for a moment in the water until it ran up against the last containment shield in the tunnel inside the Archway and meters away from the horseshoe-shaped barricade line.

Right after the water hit, the lizards reappeared, plopping through the shield from their momentum and falling to the ground where the Archons made quick work of them. Those that didn’t get knocked through began assembling just inside the rising wall of water on the other side of the shield.

If they were able to knock that one down, the entire loading bay would flood…which was something they couldn’t afford to have happen.

Mero stood up and leapt over the barricade, leaving his plasma rifle on the ground behind it. On his way towards the shield he reached down and scooped up one of the plasma rods that had come through with the lizards then he ran into the wall of water like a football player shouldering into a block, punching through the shield and taking it to the lizards hand to hand with several other Archons following suit behind him.

5

“Kyler, they’re breached the shipyard outer defenses,” one of the aquatic Regulars said over the comm from the command level, given that all Archons had redeployed themselves into battle.

The trailblazer didn’t respond for several seconds, killing lizards as he was down in the tunnels.

“How many surface breach points do we have?” he asked, jetting backwards through the already filled tunnel a bit and grabbing another plasma rod from the floor. He flipped it on and jetted back the way he’d come, sensing more lizards approaching but unsure of the number given the limited effective distance of his already strained Ikrid tracking ability.

“49,” she said evenly with just a hint of strain in her voice.

“Mark them on the battlemap,” he ordered, slinking up against the wall and swimming around a stack of bodies he’d been piling up…the fourth pile, actually, given that he’d moved ambush spots three times now.

Little icons popped up on his holographic map on the edges and he zoomed out to get a better feel for where the lizard reinforcements were coming in from.

“Damn it,” he whisper swore. “Are any of them contained topside?”

“The seafloor is covered with lizards. Without physically patching the breaches we can’t rule any of them secure, but there are a few without current activity.”

“Any big ones?”

“Define big?”

“Arrowhead size?”

“Not to my knowledge. We don’t have visuals on all of them, so I can’t be sure.”

“Hold on,” Kyler said just as another lizard popped out into the tunnel beside him. He sensed another two right on his heels so he let the first one come out then jabbed the plasma rod into the head of the second one, meeting it just as it came into view.

There was an audible pop followed by a stream of steam bubbles as Kyler pulled back and rotated the rod to the left as he kicked off from the wall and jabbed straight into the ribs of the first one, taking it out and jetting around in a pinwheel to face off with the third that had to push its way past the body of the second. Its plasma rod jutted out at him, but Kyler got a hand on it in time and parried it aside. With a firm hold just below the plasma nub he pulled and brought the lizard closer as it chose not to let go, then he jabbed it with his own and quickly ended their little threesome’s advance through the outer city.

“Still there?”

“Yes.”

“Has the shipyard been completely evacuated?”

“Of engineers and techs, but we’ve got combat teams engaged there now.”

“What about the tunnel spurs outside the fence?”

“Those doors have been locked down, but the lizards haven’t gotten to them yet. They’re two sections away on the southeast side though, but that defensive position appears to be holding for the moment.”

“Is the tunnel entrance to the shipyard flooded?”

“Three are.”

“Open one of the topside doors and flood it, then order the arrowheads inside.”

“Did you just say flood the main bay?!”

“If there are no techs left, yes. Flood it.”

“Is that safe? There are probably pieces of equipment that will react poorly to water.”

“Give everyone a heads up then open one of the doors, then have the arrowheads start patrolling the flooded tunnels. They should be able to deal with the infantry better than we can.”

“Alright.”

“And Linda…start prepping the techs for an air evac. We’re not giving up this city, but if the lizards get much further I want them out of the way.”

“Evac to where?”

“If Paul’s not busy have them taken up to the battle stations.”

“Uh, actually they’re under assault right now…”

Kyler frowned, and not just because he sensed another group of lizards coming his way. “To Ackbar then. Don’t suppose we still have that naval support available?”

“Yes we do. He left six ships standing by for our use.”

“Bring them down and get the evac started…and see how many Archons we can pull in from other locations.”

“Vander is on his way back.”

“Any good news?” Kyler asked, readying himself next to the doorway again.

“He said he’d fill you in later, but yes.”

“We need more than him, but any will do.”

“Do you want the Regulars deployed?”

“No, keep them at the city entrances. What gets by us they’ll have to deal with, so keep them together and digging in as much as possible. How are the battleships holding up?”

“The Black Pearl is over the fence trying to hit the transports bringing in more troops. The others are still maintaining the fence-line and look to be able to continue doing so for some time. Lizard activity is centered around the infantry. I think that’s what they see as their ticket in now. They’re not even targeting the defenses anymore, they’re going straight for the breach points and making new ones.”

“Keep tagging any that they make with markers. I’m going to roam around and disrupt their flow as much as I can. Just get those arrowheads in here as soon as possible, and let me know if you have trouble with the evac.”

“Good luck,” Linda offered before cutting the comm.

A moment later Kyler used what little Fornax energy he had left and disrupted the lizards on the other side of the doorway before he pulled his way through and started taking them out one by one with the plasma rod, due to the fact that his stun stick had long since been depleted, as had his needler.

He worked his way through this group of six, then instead of going back to his ambush spot he began working his way through the building towards the nearest of the tagged breach points, killing whatever lizards he came across with a combination of psionics, captured weapons, and sheer determination.

Fred-6992 was one of the closest Archons to the shipyard when the orders came through, offering him an overtop view of the huge building as he zipped his arrowhead along its flank heading for the far corner door as the shields dropped. Visibly it didn’t register. An invisible shield going down didn’t show up, but the vortex that formed above the armored door as it slowly began to retract was.

With the interior clear door already having been removed, once the armor shell that covered 1/8th of the building cracked open the incoming water and out flowing air twisted around each other and made for all kinds of turbulence that Fred was happy to be far from. He continued his approach, slowing his speed so as not to arrive too early, and waited for the air/water exchange to finish out, noticing that the door wasn’t fully retracting.

That was probably intentional to keep the equipment inside from being completely blasted apart by the water. He didn’t doubt he’d have a minefield of parts to navigate through once he got inside, but he’d definitely prefer it if the battleship’s hulk wasn’t broken up as well, that way at least he’d have a predictable structure to zip around hunting lizards rather than a chaotic mess.

Truth was, he wasn’t sure how much damage the water was doing, but given the weight of it falling from the height it was, plus the pressure the water was under with a mile and a half of ocean pushing down above it, he definitely didn’t want to be inside while the transition was taking place.

The fact that they’d gotten to this point was a bad sign, but if the subsurface tunnels were already flooded and filling up with lizard infantry then bringing the arrowheads inside made sense…even if they had to junk the shipyard in the process to do it. Also, he knew they could have taken the long route and carried the arrowheads through the city and down to the tunnels via the cargo lifts, so the fact that they were intentionally flooding the shipyard to allow them access told him that the situation inside must have been worse than he thought.

Fred was pleased to see a number of lizards get sucked up into the vortex. That hadn’t been part of the plan, but there were hundreds swimming over or near the shipyard that got caught up in the turbulence and knocked around, if not sucked inside. He didn’t know if they’d survive or not, but at least it was disrupting their movements, of which the arrowheads and other craft had done little to stop. Fred alone had stunned/killed hundreds of them in the previous hours, but the enemy was pouring an unbelievable number of the ‘ground’ troops into the assault, far more than he’d thought they’d have in play on the entire planet.

The vortex, or more accurately, vortexes, lasted several minutes before the entire mile+ long building was filled with water. Even then there were still erratic currents flowing around the entrance but Fred wasn’t going to wait any longer. By then several other arrowheads had assembled around the area, and as soon as one of them started heading in the others followed suit and jetted up to the crack in the doors, then dropped down inside, visibly quivering as they got buffeted around by the remaining turbulence.

Fred passed through the ‘small’ gap easily, given that it was wider than a football field, and dropped down on top of a skeleton of a battleship directly beneath. He followed the others as they pulled up and skitted along the underside of the doors until they got past the skeleton to the open water surrounding it…which was littered with debris and lizards.

Before he could zip over and tag his first with the V-shaped stun blade on the front of his craft, he got a ping on his battlemap from one of the Archon teams near the entrances. He followed it, or rather navigated to it around the floating junk, and came in slowly on the doorway to an offshoot chamber where he saw numerous Archon ID tags floating.

Making sure not to hit any of them he ducked his arrowhead in first, with another four following behind him with the others moving around the shipyard to other locations, and immediately finding a cluster of lizard infantry to target as they closed with a knot of Archons who were fighting hand to hand with some others. They looked to be holding their own, but the numbers definitely were not on their side.

Fred plowed right into the enemy troops, ignoring their plasma rods given that he was coming at them from a backside angle and he didn’t think they’d seen his approach…nor were expecting it.

He put the point of the arrowhead dead center in their formation and busted his way through, hitting some with the stun weapon and others with the sides of his tiny ship, knocking the whole group apart and making easy pickings for the arrowheads following him. They spun around the large chamber, taking down others and allowing the Archons in the water to finish off the stragglers before the arrowheads left them behind and ducked into the tunnel entrance, seeing a hoard of infantry ahead, most of whom appeared to still be scattered from the currents created by the flooding of the shipyard.

“Hold up, Fred,” Sera-10483 said over the comm as she fought to catch up to him in her own arrowhead. “Let’s go in side by side.”

“Gladly,” the other Archon said, coasting forward until hers came up alongside, then the pair accelerated hard ahead and began catching the lizards off guard as they plowed through them, keeping their mental fingers crossed and hoping they didn’t take too many plasma rod hits in the process.

Far outside the fence line Vander was approaching the lizard fleets surrounding Manaan, jetting forward in his streak as he sized up the enemy alignment. His ship, low on power as it was, was faster than anything the lizards had, but if he got too close he’d be in trouble…and his mission now was to get inside the fence, not engage the ships outside.

“Ok,” he said, flexing his back for the umpteenth time in the cramped cockpit that had been his home for far too long. “Here we go.”

He angled the streak to the left, ran it out about 500 meters then banked back right and started a shallow ascent as he ran the water jets up to maximum power…then he kicked in the anti-grav and his ascent steepened. His speed also ramped up until he became a long, thin missile cutting through the water towards a gap between the lizard ships drifting around the 38 mile perimeter.

The point he’d chosen had no large ships nearby, but there were hundreds of sharks moving about in between and they’d seen him coming, given that they were now moving to intercept him where they thought he was going to cross their lines.

Vander held his nerve and his line, knowing that they weren’t going to be able to predict his exact spot given his anti-grav ascent…plus he kept wavering his line a bit to keep them guessing, which was difficult given the speed he was moving, for every little twitch of the nose moved him several degrees due to the friction of the water, making his entire ship a directional pane despite its needle-like hull.

He kept a close eye on the altimeter, knowing he had to nail that one exactly, or nearly. He had a little leeway there, but not much.

As he got near the sharks, most of which were still lateral of him, he saw minnows start popping up on his sensors by the dozens and forced himself to breathe. There was no shooting them down, he simply had to outrun them, and given the speed he was bringing in, so long as he passed them cleanly, he doubted those already fired would be able to reverse course fast enough to catch him on the other side.

However, as he closed to parallel with the sharks they continued popping out more minnows…and those were coming at him from the side at nearly his speed and accelerating quickly.

He saw most of the first minnows pass behind him and arc around, trying to fall in on his tail. He mostly ignored them, watching his line and just hoping none of the little torpedoes got lucky. The fence was just ahead and he was nearing the end of his ascent as the minnow count pursuing him passed 100. Vander wasn’t counting, and when he saw he was going to stay ahead of them by at least a small margin he ignored all but his trajectory, making a few small last moment adjustments as he neared the fence.

Given the speed he was traveling, which was insane for an underwater craft, he wasn’t going to risk shooting the gap in the fence…so instead he chose to go with something a bit more flashy.

A few hundred meters before he reached the top of the fence, which was a single layer reaching up to just above the waves, he adjusted his angle of climb heavily, pointing the nose higher up and shifting his anti-grav from lateral to vertical, ramping the streak out of the water and into the air…

Like a javelin it shot up, arched over, and came back down in the water on the far side, clearing the fence top by more than 20 meters. The minnows that hadn’t already ran out of fuel lost track of the ship when it was in the air and went after the closest proximity target they could find…which was the fence.

They swarmed to it, detonating against the thick metal pylons and barely nicking them with their small explosions, leaving Vander’s skeet unpursued as he shifted the anti-grav back over to lateral and sped in towards the Highwind that sat in the water a couple of kilometers ahead of him and more than halfway down from the surface.

He could see sporadic blue flashes from the plasma columns as they targeted the seafloor, trying to hit or scatter the thousands of lizard infantry that the battlemap had tagged crawling over the fence line interior like an infestation of ants. Vander wanted to help out with them, knowing that the battleship wasn’t equipped for such small scale combat, but he knew the major fight was occurring indoors so he set course for the now flooded shipyard, passing by several smaller Star Force capital ships floating in place and targeting what infantry they could, though by now most of them had expended their ammunition and were awaiting resupply.

Vander knew that wasn’t likely to come with the support structures around the city under assault, and even as he shot his streak across the interior landscape he saw a large shield column rise up above the city and connect to the atmosphere, indicating that a transport was either coming down or going up.

That meant they were beginning to evacuate the city, and if he was going to get into this fight now was the time.

Once he reached the shipyard he dove his streak down through the large crack in the topside doors, knocking aside lizard infantry that were now pouring down into the facility through the crack as a swarm of arrowheads were waiting below to ambush them.

They made way for his streak, after which he literally had to blow through the unconscious/dead bodies floating inside to get down to the bottom of the shipyard to where he snaked his way around the debris and battleship skeleton over to the tunnel entrances, picking the one he thought held the quickest route to the heaviest lizard concentrations below.

“Heads up, people,” he announced over open comm to the Archons’ helmet receivers, but excluded any ship ones. “Streak coming in. Point me where I’m needed.”

6

“Vander, that’s not going to fit around the corners,” Kyler’s voice said over the comm as the Archon shot his craft down the flooded tunnel, knocking aside lizards that got in his way like they were bowling pins, though most survived the impacts.

“I can at least disrupt their movements,” he argued, coming up to the first crossroads intent on trying to turn anyway. The tunnels had never been designed to be flooded, so he doubted anyone had considered the possibilities of ships moving through them, though he did see several arrowheads moving about on the battlemap ahead of him.

“How many PDM do you have left?”

“Full load, plus four torpedoes if I can find a use for them. They get anything other than infantry in here?”

“No, just the little guys. Play train as long as you’ve got lizards to kill, then ditch the streak and take it to them hand to hand. The only way we win this one is by racking up an insane kill count. They can’t get their fleet in past the battleships yet, so this is their only play and they’re going for broke. They’ve been mass assaulting choke points and using their det packs to take down the containment shields and flood sections ahead of them, so watch it when you get close and use needlers on any carrying packs at range.”

“Evac?”

“We’re not giving up the city,” Kyler said emphatically, “but if they break through into the main building things are going to get messy and I don’t want noncombatants getting in the way.”

“Copy that, but I wouldn’t assume they’ve given up on the fence line. They’ve got a freaking huge fleet camped outside that I had to run my ass through to get back here.”

“I know,” Kyler said calmly. “That’s the battleships’ fight right now, this is ours. Get into Halo mode and work on our kill count.”

“Happy to,” Vander said, stopping at the intersection and bending his skeet at the midsection. Using only the anti-grav for maneuvering he tried to tip the needle-nose to the left into the next section, but the ship was too long and even with the bend in the hull the curve wasn’t sharp enough. He pounded the tip against the wall, then wiggled the hull around a bit seeing if he could goose his way through, but it was no use. He was stuck with forward and back only.

“Ok,” he said to himself, switching over to weapons control as he backed up and straightened out, “let’s make this death row then.”

He picked up a cluster of lizards ahead in his tracking display and fired a PDM out at them. It was larger than the versions fired by the needler pistol but it operated off of the same technology. The little missile spat ahead and swam to its target and detonated, killing the lizard it hit and wounding those around.

Vander’s streak spat out several more, then he reversed direction and backed his way up the tunnel with the more blunt end of his ship pushing a significant wall of water ahead of it. Those lizards that he’d knocked aside before were hit again, then when they became visible in his forward arc he popped them with PDM at close range, making it feel like he was playing a videogame in reverse.

He moved his streak all the way back out into the shipyard, then swam it around to another tunnel entrance and proceeded down it, shooting all the lizard groups he could come across while simply ramming the individuals. This process he repeated for all the tunnels, including an angled spur off of one that he was able to make the bend for.

Vander patrolled the stretches he was capable of maneuvering down while the arrowheads in the shipyard and above kept disrupting the incoming lizard flow as much as they could. The other streaks in play were elsewhere, shooting up the lizards as they crossed the seafloor, as was the rest of the interior defense fleet, but the carpet of invaders kept coming in numbers that seemed unfathomable.

Four hours later…

“Close them, now,” Kyler said in between plasma rod parries with three more of the never ending lizard infantry.

“What about the Archons outside the doors? There are several dozen of you,” Linda said from the command level.

“We’ll be fine,” he said, jabbing one of the lizards with its own plasma rod after a Fornax burst that disrupted the nervous systems of all three. “Shut them now.”

“Closing,” Linda said, nodding to another staffer in the city’s control center who pressed the final commands into the console before him. On the central holographic display detailing the subsurface battles they were gradually losing, the five tunnel entrances into the city flashed with highlights as meter-thick doors began to inch their way into position, physically closing off the entrances where before there had only been containment force fields.

It took the better part of a minute for them to all close, with Archon and Regular troops ducking back through at the last minute as the lizards approached two of the positions on foot, with the wall of water held back a few sections in each location by still intact energy fields.

“Doors closed,” she told Kyler. “Good luck.”

“So long as they have det packs they’re still coming through,” the trailblazer reminded her. “We just bought ourselves some more time. Beef up our defense lines inside.”

“On it,” she said as Kyler cut the comm from his end, no doubt busy killing more lizards.

“We’ve got a flight of dropships and mantises inbound from Seaquest,” another staffer reported. “They’re requesting permission to land in the city.”

“Are we clear?” Linda asked, glancing at the hologram but not relying on her cursory look.

“No aerial lizard contacts showing. No known launch capable submersibles.”

“Open shafts 3 and 4. Launch two skeets on patrol.”

Up on the ocean surface two tiny shield columns reached up from the seafloor and broke the surface, then began widening as they pushed a mile’s worth of water aside, gradually creating a pair of open air corridors capable of carrying the wider aerial craft straight down into the city. As those formed two smaller ones manifested beside them and launched the skeets into the air where they split up and began circling around the perimeter.

All of Manaan’s transports had already left the city with passengers onboard and had yet to return. The incoming flight was from their twin city, carrying Archons and Regulars along with a number of small aquatics craft. Those carrying personnel went straight for the open shafts, with a pair of Falcon-class dropships being the first to settle into a hover and carefully descend down into the shafts with the ocean water poised around them in heavy walls ready to come crashing down on top of them if the shields failed.

Four Dragon-class dropships ignored the shafts and landed in the water itself above the city, opening up their holds and releasing schools of arrowheads into the war zone below. With their cargo released the dropships slowly rose back up, draining their holds of the water, then made their way over to the entry columns and got in line behind the others, ready to take on additional Manaan evacuees.

Paul’s mind was working frantically, his eyes darting across three different holograms in the command nexus as he was Ikrid linked into the system. He saw an escaping opportunity to take out several lizard ships in the chaos and knew he had to act quickly before the enemy took its good fortune and fled.

One of the Star Force battle stations was rubble, along with over 4,000 people inside. He hadn’t completely abandoned the idea of there being some survivors remaining somewhere in the pieces, and he had the Excalibur’s Captain working on organizing the search and rescue operation, but the fighting wasn’t over and he was focused on taking out as many of the damn enemy ships as he could while he had the opportunity.

He alternated between sending out orders to individual ships and fleet commanders, including other trailblazers, getting their widely spaced battlefield realigned to pounce on isolated pockets of lizard ships that had succeeded in engaging Star Force and pushing hard to take out the battle station currently under construction, going so far as to land a few long distance plasma shots on the weak defense shield it carried.

But it had all been a ploy…or maybe not, and the enemy commander had simply improvised. Either way Paul had failed and let a kamikaze ship through their lines.

‘Thrawn’ was certainly living up to the moniker Paul had given it/them, and the trailblazer was burning with a mix of rage and embarrassment at getting owned in his specialty. He wasn’t going to compound his error by letting the lizard ships within range get free, so he channeled all his rage into his mental calculations and reset his naval chess board into hunter mode, ganging up on several select groups while maintaining defensive pickets around the jumpline between the planet and the battle station cluster so the lizards couldn’t pull the same trick twice.

Using momentum and ramming a ship into another as a kinetic weapon was a tactic Paul had invented for Star Force way back during his basic training, and he’d been adamant about arraying defenses to protect against someone else doing the same thing to them. That was one reason Star Force maintained a large number of smaller capital ships rather than just building all cruisers and up.

The smaller, faster ships would be deployed out from a battle station or command ship at considerable range, enabling possible intercepts of any incoming craft on a high speed collision course. They needed the faster speed to increase the odds of catching the incoming kamikazes, or at least to match them. Paul knew the quicker the ships he had and the greater the range he could deploy them gave him the ability to intercept and nudge the enemy off course, which was why the block-like construction of the drone warships was heavily reinforced with a superstructure capable of pushing other ships without completely deforming themselves on contact.

Then, as a last resort, he could have one of his picket ships kamikaze ram the kamikaze in order to knock it off course so that it would miss the target. He wished that Star Force had shields capable of holding off an impact of that size, but that was far beyond them. In fact, Earth’s defense plan had a number of specially designed kamikaze ships lying in wait for if/when the V’kit’no’sat came back. Paul knew that momentum was the strongest weapon they had, and given the huge size of the their ships it was probably the only chance he had of destroying one, because even as navigational calculations became more and more precise the farther out you made your run, you could always add more speed, and therefore more destructive power if your approach wasn’t challenged.

Paul had defended the battle stations against such an assault, with numerous pickets in position to deploy to intercept any lizard ship that took up an approach that even smelled like a kamikaze trajectory. That picket line was always subject to the number of ships he had to work with, but during this battle the enemy hadn’t appeared to be attempting such an attack, even given their penchant for suicide missions.

During the long, drawn out battle that had several ‘engagements’ within the sequence of events, a small group of cruisers broke off and made a run for the planet. Paul sent a few waiting ships in extreme low orbit after them, hoping to knock out at least one before they got into the atmosphere, assuming they were going to reinforce their aquatics forces with additional weapons/troops/materiel.

During the run down to the atmosphere one of the ships broke off on a spur, looking as if it was heading to an alternative surface site, but it decelerated hard prior to entering the atmosphere and above the intercept Paul’s ships were angling for.

That one ship positioned itself square on a jumpline from the planet that led straight into one of their battle stations. Paul had recognized the threat moments after it stalled out its descent, but his ships were too far away to do anything about it. In agony, he watched as the stationary cruiser rapidly accelerated up away from the planet on its gravity drives, stretching out its acceleration curve into a streak of motion as it made a kamikaze jump straight into the battle station.

At the speed it connected the cruiser punched straight through the shields and armored hull, passing into and through the station with the debris pushing out the far side like a shot gun. Fortunately the other two and a half stations hadn’t been caught up in the spray, though Sara’s warship did take a few shield strikes from baseball sized ‘dust’ much farther up in orbit.

No one else had seen the attack coming, but Paul didn’t excuse himself for making the mistake of letting the lizards pull it off. They’d never used this tactic before, to his knowledge, but that didn’t mean Paul wasn’t aware of it, because he had planned to use it against enemies in the future if the situation merited it.

He should have had ships guarding that jumpline, though in truth a ship could have used the star or any other gravity wells in the system to make similar kamikaze runs, but the planet offered the closest and strongest push off for an attack, and Paul was furious at not having seen that coming in time to stop it.

He didn’t let that anger blind him, and had the Star Force fleet picking off capital ships in the double digits as the lizard forces disengaged piecemeal now that their primary objective had been met. What galled him even more was the sloppy retreat they were making that was giving him the opportunity to thin their numbers. An enemy that could pull of a kamikaze strike like that should have been competent enough to make a coordinated retreat…which showed that despite their tactical brilliance they weren’t that significant of a naval power.

Which meant Paul had got owned by a group of losers. That and the deaths of so many Star Force personnel were really eating under his skin. He hated losing, but he couldn’t stand other people dying because of a mistake he’d made.

At the same time his calculating mind knew he had to cut himself some slack. Without some means of energy-based deflection, such as a tractor beam to push a kamikaze off course before it hit, there was no way he could put up a perfect defense. He’d simmed against himself so many times in that regard, and no matter how skilled a defensive net he laid, he was always able to find a way to penetrate it when he took on the role of attacker.

So in essence his current defense against kamikaze ships was half real, half bluff…and required him to predict the enemy’s movements in order to forestall an attack being launched, because once it was, especially in this case when the transit occurred inside of 2 seconds, Star Force had no way of stopping it.

Paul worked the Ikrid interface skillfully, his anger enhancing his focus rather than distracting from it, and his fleets racked up 17 additional capital ship kills, including 2 battleships that got left behind by their faster escorts during the retreat. Ship for ship, the sum total of the engagement had their kill count at 132 and the lizards’ at 54, though that was skewed given the fact that the lizard ships outmassed the Star Force ones, leaving the adjusted kill ratio at about 4/1.

A victory, that would have been, except for the loss of the battle station. Include it in the mix and, equipment wise, it amounted to a draw…but Star Force naval strategy, of which Paul had written most of, was centered around preserving crews while expending equipment. Only the largest ships had personnel onboard, and they weren’t used in the direct fighting.

The battle stations were heavily armored due to the fact that they couldn’t redeploy away from the enemy, meaning that the lizards would have to expend firepower on the shields to get them down, then slowly chew through the armor to get at the interior that held the crew, most of which would redeploy to the center levels during battle for additional protection.

The kamikaze cruiser had blown right through those defensive precautions in a fraction of a second, making today not only a defeat, but a total rout. Never before had Paul lost a battle this badly, and while it wasn’t going to negatively affect his ability to command, it immediately set his mind on a review process of every tactic and protocol he’d come to rely on.

Paul’s subconscious wouldn’t let him do any less, because he couldn’t accept the deaths of the battle station crew as ‘acceptable.’ Losing personnel was never acceptable, but above all else Paul abhorred the idea of the 1 shot kill, for it meant that those who prepared, who trained, who grew stronger than the rest could be killed as easily as a newb…and his gut told him that was just plain wrong.

Which meant his defenses were at fault. He’d failed those personnel who’d been aboard that station. They hadn’t gone down fighting, been overwhelmed by a superior opponent…they’d been blindsided and that had been his fault.

And he couldn’t let it happen again, no matter what the logistics of their available defensive technology were.

7

September 16, 2429

Retari System

Atlantica

Kyler hadn’t slept since the infantry battle began, nor had any of the other Archons in the tunnels, and he was beginning to feel the effects of both fatigue and lack of ambrosia in his system, but there was no way to resupply given the fact that he was literally surrounded by thousands of lizards, and even if he’d had an arrowhead bring out a satchel of supplies from the main building via the shipyard entrance, there was no way he was getting over there given the infested nature of the tunnels.

He had a slight headache buzzing, but fortunately the power cell in his armor hadn’t given out, and he was relying on his four suit jets for most of his movement through the warehouse he was hunting in at the moment.

Or being hunted. Which was occurring was a bit of perspective, given that the lizards knew his approximate location and the fact that he was isolated. They were diverting troops to hunt him down, given that he’d been raiding their strongholds in the captured buildings. The infantry that were still coming in from ships dumping more of them outside the fence perimeter were carrying more than det packs. The Archons still patrolling around the most popular entry points in the substructure had stopped many of them and done a quick assessment of what they were carrying.

Which was everything…everything they needed to set up for a long siege.

Foodstuffs, comm equipment, portable structures broken down into very small pieces, shield gauntlets, bundles of plasma rods, and a bunch of other useful stuff for a long campaign. Leave it to the lizards to show you where you were weak, because they were setting up shop inside Star Force’s own infrastructure because they hadn’t put up enough damn anti-infantry defenses. He hadn’t conceived of that being a problem, given that they could intercept any troop ships well out from the city…nor had, even in his wildest dreams, he considered them deploying this many into open water.

They were killing so many of them it was literally a slaughter, but they’d sent so many in, and were continuing to send more, that they were overwhelming the defenders with targets. Too many targets to get to before they got past them.

There had been some brief discussion about building a solid wall around the city, but the amount of resources expended on the fence hadn’t been something they’d conceived of lightly. Given the small net it was constructed of the amount of metal they’d had to mine to construct it was enough to build several more cities, but Kyler and the others had deemed it essential to establish not just infrastructure, but strongholds that would seriously hinder any lizard assault attempts.

And it was doing just that. Their larger ships couldn’t get through the net and their smallest ones were toast if they tried. The inverted ‘V’ design made it impossible to topple the fence, and cutting out pieces of it for them to get through took time and made a choke point that they’d have to pass through, and given that there already was a huge opening ‘gate’ set in the design, the lizards cutting their own didn’t make a lot of sense, but if they decided to press that angle the guardian fleets could respond before they could get much accomplished.

Add in the defense towers outside the fence and you had a significant deterrent against large scale assaults. The only reason the towers had gone down was because the lizards were hitting them with an insane scale assault, but even then the fence was doing its job and keeping their ships back…and the battleships were whittling them down, taking turns hopping over the porous barrier and roughing up the fleets outside before jumping back in to recharge shields all the while daring the lizards to make a more frontal assault that they couldn’t do with the fence constricting their approach options.

So even with their towers busted up outside, the city was more or less safe, not counting the turret island devastation, and then the damn lizards had to go and show Kyler that his carefully designed defenses had a weakness he hadn’t considered…nor had anyone else, including Ariel, meaning this mustn’t have been in their enemy’s playbook until recently. Hell, Star Force had probably prompted them to invent it. Nice how they were always teaching each other new things.

And now it was his turn, in which he intended to school them in the art of not pissing off a sleepless Archon in close quarters.

The warehouse wasn’t an area the lizards had set up shop in, which made it an empty zone for them to throw down in, save for the dozens of dead lizards cluttering the water. Given the pressure it was under the lizard bodies more or less floated neutrally, while their slightly more dense weapons sank. Those he was collecting and putting to good use, and though the suspended bodies were a bit hard to differentiate from the living, those he was also putting to use as barricades as he swam about, ducking in and out of the corpses and crates as he wove his way from the floor to the ceiling that still had a few meters of air trapped and compressed there.

Breathing it was a no go, not that he really had time to try. His armor provided him with all the air he needed, and he was breathing heavy as he fought the dense water, leveraging his arms and legs in conjunction with the jets to maneuver around like a predator hunting the scores of lizards also hunting him. Taking them down was easy one on one, but he’d been having to do it for so long that his fatigue was making him slip up every now and then.

Fortunately the lizards’ weapons were point of touch only in the water, meaning they had to get up close and personal rather than pound on him in groups from afar. Given he was using their weapons, since his needler ammunition had long since expired in what felt like a lifetime ago, he had to close with them as well to fight, with the key being choosing the moments of contact and not letting the lizards gang up on him.

That wasn’t the only reason he needed to keep moving about, because he knew that if he got stationary his fatigue would start to assert itself and he’d get sleepy. Without ambrosia to cut into his fatigue he needed his adrenaline at least seeping through, so he had to stay active and the best way to do that was by fighting the enemy…which was fortunate, given they kept coming for him and didn’t seem to feel like taking a breather.

Kyler jabbed, parried, kicked, and punched his way through more and more lizards, reserving his nearly depleted psionics for select cases of need, until there were too many bodies floating about and he was forced to fight his way into an adjacent hallway. From there he jetted down a long, straight length until he came to another appropriately sized room, knowing from experience that he didn’t want to get cornered in a small one again.

They’d previously pinned him in one and tried to run a det pack in to finish him off, with him barely distracting the lizard from pulling the trigger. Had he not had Fornax he’d have been facing an explosion a meter in front of his face, and even with the water dampening the blast a bit his armor would have at least cracked, and the concussion would have left him unconscious even if he’d been lucky enough to avoid getting any shrapnel in his body.

So Kyler kept moving after that, from one large area to another with little chance of rest. The lizards had his position and were coordinating to keep him under pressure, unlike the previous day when he’d been more or less free to roam about. The other Archons, when he had the chance to look at his battlemap, had at least paired up, but they were also under assault, being hunted throughout the tunnels and buildings, though a couple had managed to secure safe zones from which to counterattack from.

Kyler, as he’d hoped, was drawing the most attention, given the amount of infantry he was killing, but he was beginning to hit his limit…and he knew from encountering this level of fatigue in training that his abilities were going to stretch out rather than black out. His speed would slow, his thought processes would fog up, and though he’d still be fighting he wouldn’t realize how debilitated he was becoming until an appropriately sized challenge came up and bit him in the ass.

Only this wasn’t a challenge, it was live combat. And the ass biting in this case would be lethal.

That left him two choices…retreat and rest, or go hyper and keep his energy flowing so much that it would fight off the blowback. That was risky, like continually stretching a rubber band…eventually it would snap back on him, but he had no choice. He had to live in the moment and ignore the biological warning signs telling him he had little left to fight with. Those signs had been wrong in the past and he was gambling that he had more in him than he knew…and this was one of those rare times when you got the chance to find out.

“Kyler, how you holding up?” Vander’s voice popped into the trailblazer’s helmet.

“Still alive. You?”

“They’re trying hard, but failing. You got plans?”

“Nope. You?” Kyler said, spotting a pair of lizards appearing ahead and prepping himself to ram them rather than slow and fight more conservatively, for there were more following behind, and his jets weren’t getting him all that far ahead of them when he had to stop and contend with more infantry every 10 seconds or so.

“We’ve got something cooked up if you can get to us.”

“Give me a sec,” he said, summoning a short range Fornax burst, just enough to disrupt their senses as he got within sparring range. He pushed one of their plasma rods aside and ducked under another, jabbing his own into the lizard whose weapon he didn’t have a grip on, then kicked into the midsection of the one he did when its eyes focused on him in the wake of the Fornax disruption.

Its grip slipped a few inches but it didn’t let go…until he jabbed it with the plasma nub and burnt a hole into its chest. He kicked it in the head as he jetted by, then dumped his old plasma rod and brought the new one with him.

“Go.”

“Got a place where we can get some breathing room. Did a little rearranging and hid an exit. Can you get to my location?”

Kyler checked his battlemap, sensing another lizard about to come out into the hallway ahead. Vander was in a different building altogether, meaning he was going to have to move through one of the tunnels to get there…and the shortest route was a no go, considering it passed through one of the main staging locations for the lizards.

“It’ll take me a while, but I’m headed there now,” he said, adding Vander’s current location as a waypoint in case the Archon moved to another spot.

“The others are heading this way, and those of us here are staging raids out to clear a path. When you get close we’ll do the same.”

“Copy that,” Kyler said, moving off so he was traveling along the leftmost wall, then accelerated harder so that he came up on a doorway just a hair after the lizard’s plasma rod came into view. He grabbed it and used his own to jab the enemy infantry in the head. Once the fiery plasma melted into its skull and the bubble spray dissipated he knocked the body aside and jetted on, turning right at the far end of the hall with a plan and structuring his mind around the task of completing it with what energy he had left.

Kyler jetted out of the tunnel and into an industrial building, zigzagging through a preplanned course that Vander and four other Archons had more or less cleared out of lizards. With every second that went by he gapped those following him and with the multiple turns he got out of sight long enough to momentarily lose them while avoiding the others in the building.

Two more turns and he was into a storage room where Vander was waiting. The acolyte waved him over to a stack of crates and pointed him through a gap where one was set with the side pulled up. Kyler went through first, then Vander swam in and pulled the flap down, locking it in place with a crude latch before swimming through the gutted crate to the other side of the stack set up against a wall covering a doorway to the other side of the building.

“How many exits?” Kyler asked, glancing back at their handiwork. They’d cut and welded the camouflage crate door, judging by the job they’d done on the interior latch, making it impossible for the lizards to pull it open even if they found the spot.

“We have three from our mini complex, which contains six rooms, two bigger than this. We’ve covered the other entrances so they can’t get in, and so far none of them have tried.”

Kyler floated in place, waving his hands around a bit to maintain his position as his head began to swoon from the sudden rest…quicker than he’d expected.

“Head count?”

“We have two yet to arrive, the others are out on raids. We’ve got a stash of lizard weapons, some of our heavy equipment, a few lizard shields, and one of their det packs.”

“What heavy equipment?”

“Industrial stuff, cutters and things that can go bang if we need them to.”

“What’s the status on the city doors?”

“They’re pounding on two of them, but we’ve managed to disrupt some of their supply runs. They’re having to send a lot of det packs up and we’ve stopped several from getting through. I’d guess we’ve got at least 12 hours before breach.”

“How many packs is that?”

“I’m figuring upwards of 200. The lizards keep scrounging them up from somewhere, so I assume they’re still getting fresh supplies in from the surface.”

“Last I heard the supply ships were still dropping fresh armies off outside the fence,” Kyler said, finding his eyelids drooping. “But I haven’t had much time to chat. You probably know more than I do.”

“Yeah, had a few chats with the defense teams. They’re going to randomly open up the main doors to disrupt the assault groups. No more than a meter, but they’re not going to let them just sit there and pound.”

“Are they all waterlogged?”

“Yeah.”

“Well I’m fresh out of ideas…and ambrosia. Thanks for pulling me in.”

“We’re all feeling it, but we’ve been able to take some quick naps. I suggest you do the same.”

“In a bit. Do we have a plan?”

“In case you didn’t hear, my streak got toasted after I left it. We can call for another to come in, but this building is too far from the shipyard to get to easily.”

“What good would that do? Other than the PDMs?”

“They’re real handy for popping det packs,” Vander reminded him.

Kyler rolled his eyes inside his helmet. “Right, sorry. My mind’s not functioning well at the moment.”

“Let me bottom line it for you then. The arrowheads are still patrolling the shipyard and the surrounding tunnels, but aren’t going much further because some of them got winged by det packs. Without eyes ahead, they’re not risking going up against lizards entering from other locations. They’ve closed and reopened the shipyard doors, trying to stem the tide but the lizards just redeployed elsewhere, so they opened it back up and are hammering them on the way in. Numerically that seemed like the best option. They’re not good blowing themselves up in open water where the arrowheads can hit them at speed.”

“Current estimates put the infantry count over 30,000. I’ve killed at least 200 of that, and the others have racked up a considerable amount…but the arrowheads are only stunning most of their victims. They’re reengaging once they wake up, which is why we’ve been snagging as many loose weapons lying around as possible.”

“They’ve got to stop those troop ships. By any chance did you find out where they were coming from?”

“Partially. I found some bread crumbs to follow back to what I hope will be their base, but it isn’t doing us much good right now. The battleships are continuing to hop over the fence and whittle down the enemy fleet, but more ships keep arriving like clockwork.”

“They have to run out at some point,” Kyler argued, wishing he knew when that would be.

“I agree. But there’s not much more we can do from down here. We need to get back to the city and resupply. I’m already getting dehydrated, ironic as that sounds.”

“How long before the others get here?”

“Long enough for you to grab a nap. Pick a corner and I’ll wake you when we’re ready to move. We’ve started clearing a path already. When we go we’ll all go and fight our way into open ocean. I’ve already arranged for pickup if we can get there.”

“I’ll take it,” Kyler said, grateful that the others were already a couple steps ahead of him. “You might need to ring my bell when the time comes. Don’t know if I’ll respond to the comm.”

“Sleep. We’ll handle the rest,” Vander said before jetting off.

8

Kyler woke up suddenly, finding a bit of drool stuck to the side of his mouth as his head fought to bring him up to speed from his power nap. He looked around, his eyes hurting for a moment under the bright lights of the Manaan cafeteria, then he saw Vander standing across from him.

“Sorry. I would have let you sleep, but the other trailblazers want to talk to you.”

Kyler swiped his face clean, then drank what was left of his bottle of water in three gulps.

“Ok, give me a minute.”

“Take two,” his fellow Archon said, leaving him to find his own way to a comm terminal.

Kyler looked down at his watch…he must have been out for nearly an hour. He didn’t remember putting his head down on the table, nor much else at the moment, aside from getting back into the city, out of his armor, a brief shower, and chowing down on ambrosia wafers and concentrated foodstuffs…not to mention three bottles of water that were still sitting before him, now empty.

He must have dozed off without realizing it. With an hour gone by the lizard infantry should still have been outside the blast doors chewing into them with their det packs…and if they’d gotten through early Vander would have said something.

Kyler shook the haze from his head and stood up, leaving his tray where it was on the off chance he’d be able to come back and finish the food left on it. He briskly walked out of the cafeteria and grabbed the nearest elevator, taking it up to the command level and claiming one of the unused command nexuses. When he powered it up he did a quick check of their situation, seeing it was unchanged, right down to the infantry contacts crossing the sea floor enroute to the entry points they’d blasted into the buildings.

Kyler, Vander, and the other Archons had gotten out through one of those breaches, after fighting their way through a couple of lightly defended tunnels and the lizards basing in the building. With surprise on their side they’d gotten through without too much hassle, breaking out into open water in the face of the incoming lizards. They’d briefly fought off some of them, up until a series of streaks and arrowheads got to them and carried the Archons over to the main hangar where they dumped them off before going back out to try and thin the infantry a bit more.

He switched over to communications mode and searched for incoming queries, finding that three were currently active. He joined the linked conversation and three holograms appeared of Paul, Sara, and Rafa.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Fighting’s pretty much done up here,” Sara said, her short blonde hair bobbing slightly as she moved her head to face Kyler’s hologram in her own command nexus. “What’s your situation?”

“Too many ants to stomp on,” Kyler said, disgusted. “Their infantry are running right through our defenses, no matter how many we stun or kill. We need shield generators on the fence so we can selectively block off sections we want, because they’re coming in anywhere and everywhere…and in far greater numbers than I thought the lizards could field. Basically we screwed the tactical pooch on this one.”

“Are we going to lose the city?” Rafa asked.

Kyler’s head wavered. “50/50. They’re not into the main structure yet, but they’re pounding on the doors. If we could stem the flow of their reinforcements I’d say we could hold out, but they’re continuing to pour more in and I don’t know how many more they’ve got to send our way.”

“Too small for the battleships to handle?” Paul guessed.

Kyler nodded. “And we’ve all but used up our PDM stores.”

“What about resupply from the other cities?”

“I presume that’s already happening. I’ve been in the water a lot lately.”

“Need some extra hands?” Rafa offered.

“We need a plan,” Kyler countered, “to stop the reinforcements. The lizards found our weak spot and are hammering us through it. I don’t want to concede the city as a learning process, but I’m not sure what else we can do right now other than hold out and hope their reinforcements dry up.”

“How many spare sets of aquatic armor do you have?” Sara asked.

Kyler sighed. “I know we’ve got plenty, but I don’t have a number for you.”

“Did Ariel evacuate?” Paul asked.

“I believe so,” Kyler said, uncertain. “I was told all noncombat personnel were gone.”

“You look exhausted,” Rafa mentioned.

“Just woke up from a nap, so I’m better off than I was. With the outer buildings flooded we didn’t have a chance to rest.”

“No air pockets?” Paul asked.

“There are, but the pressure is so high we didn’t want to risk taking our helmets off. So we didn’t get a chance to eat, drink, or other things for a long time.”

“The lizards are unaffected by the pressure?” Sara wondered.

“Didn’t take that close of a look, but they’re not wearing any environment gear, so I’d assume they’re built for at least this depth.”

“How many do they have in play?” Paul asked, his eyes narrowed to slits.

“Thousands, tens of thousands…it’s impossible to say. Most are staying so close to the sea floor on approach that the sensors are having a hard time picking them up unless we’ve got a craft nearby. Plus there are so many bodies in the water it’s difficult to tell what’s alive, what’s stunned, and what’s dead.”

“What’s your best weapon, hand to hand?” Rafa pressed.

“Their own plasma rods. We don’t have to worry about running out of ammo, and the stun sticks only take them out of the game temporarily. The arrowheads are only delaying their movements rather than killing them. We need a modular option that we can fit them with that will do damage on contact.”

“We’ve already been discussing this, Kyler,” Sara said, glancing at the other two holograms. “Do you concur that the only way to save the city is to take the lizards hand to hand?”

“At this point I wish I knew another way, but that’s the only option we have left. Then again I’m sleep deprived, so maybe I’m missing something. Do you see another option?”

“Send the battleships outside the fence all at once,” Paul offered. “Gang up on select portions of their fleet and destroy it. That will diminish their options for reinforcement.”

“They’ve already been doing that individually. The lizards have too many ships…plus, they are killing some of the infantry, and every one we don’t have to take hand to hand is helpful.”

“Are the battleships in danger?” Paul pressed.

“They’ve already taken some hull damage, but they have the advantage of being able to redeploy where the enemy can’t follow. So long as the Captains are smart about it, they’ll continue to pick apart the enemy until they run out of ships. Problem is, they keep getting more.”

“Staggered reinforcements or coming from a nearby staging area we can’t track?”

Kyler hesitated, his mouth half open. “Vander found something, but I never got a chance to ask him about it. He referred to it as breadcrumbs.”

“He already filed a report,” Sara offered. “He found a comm relay network, line of sight, which is why we haven’t been able to track their communications.”

“How far out?” Kyler asked, his mind working quickly as a shot of adrenaline hit him. A relay network explained a lot, but it also meant the enemy’s infrastructure was far closer than he’d guessed.

“Here,” Sara said, bringing up the schematics for him. The relay looked like some kind of sea bulb attached by a tether to the rock below. It held suspended in mid water, far enough up to be able to pass signals around the curve of the planet. The lizard tech was larger than one of their corvettes, but was totally smooth on the surface, and Kyler recognized their standard hull armor on it, meaning that it wouldn’t show up on sensors unless the probing ship was within a few kilometers of it.

“He also pulled this,” she continued, bringing up tracking data that expanded out the holographic map and included several other points around Manaan, as well as two points on four other lines headed away from the relay. Kyler knew instantly why two…it was in case the nearest link in the chain became disabled, so the relay could try and transmit double the distance to the next link, while maintaining secrecy over the location of the others in case it was discovered and accessed.

“He got into it?” Kyler wondered aloud.

“Software hack,” Rafa offered. “From what we he surmised, they’ve been communicating exclusively through these relays for some time. Meaning they’ve been setting up for this assault for more than a year, I’d guess.”

“Longer than that,” Kyler said, a glimmer of hope beginning to form in the back of his mind. “Paul, can I borrow some rail guns?”

“Way ahead of you,” he said, cracking a smile for the first time since the battle station was destroyed. “I’ve got ships standing by in low orbit. But if we take them out, we won’t have anything to study.”

“Hold up,” Sara said, raising a ‘stop’ hand for emphasis. “These are in a grid pattern. Taking one link out won’t necessarily cut their communications. We need to get all of them, and we don’t have position data for the other side of the city.”

“If the skies stay clear I can get those the same way Vander did…however he did,” Kyler said, double checking his thought processes. “If you’ve got warships in atmosphere to cover us, I’d say this is doable.”

“You think it’ll make enough of a difference?” Rafa asked.

“If it blinds their commanders sitting back at their bases, yes, it’ll be worth it,” Kyler assured him. “They’ve been very coordinated thus far, and if we take that away from them they’ll start getting sloppy again. I’d bet 1000 credits on that.”

“That’s assuming their commanders aren’t on site.”

“All of these ships are expendable,” Kyler said assuredly. “So long as they damage or take the city, they don’t care how many die. If they’ve got a mastermind organizing all of this, it won’t be in harm’s way.”

“I agree,” Paul said, his voice icy cold. “We cut the link and see what happens. If nothing else, they won’t be able to monitor their own progress unless they use conventional comms, and I don’t see any relay points above the surface for them to transmit to, unless the mid orbital fleets have very good receivers.”

“They might,” Rafa pointed out, “but anything of theirs we can bust up is a good thing at this point. Kyler, do they have anything in the tunnels aside from infantry?”

“Infantry with det packs, but nothing else that we’ve found. The breach points are too small for sharks and the shipyard entrance is guarded. Besides, anything bigger would have trouble getting past the battleships. So no, it’s just infantry. A whole lot of infantry.”

“Time to get our feet wet then,” he pressed. “We’ve got our custom armor, but the other Archons will have to suit up when we get to the city. See if you can find out how many you have before we head down.”

“On it,” Kyler promised as the three holograms winked out in sequence.

Paul sat in the cargo bay of one of his dropships along with a hoard of other Archons pulled off duty on his warships in orbit as they descended through the atmosphere towards the section of ocean that held Manaan. Ahead of them were several drone warships, part of which were making sure the skies stayed clear of lizards while a few others were hovering over the waves and making pinpoint rail gun strikes down into the water to hit the shallow comm relays. Meanwhile the lizard fleets around the submerged city increased their depth once they realized the warships were overhead.

All the way down on the sea floor they were safe, and there they stayed, as if hiding from the sunlight above.

That wouldn’t matter to Paul’s group, because they were headed inside the fence, not outside where the battleships were taking what advantage they could from the lizards being surface shy. Still, more transports and aquatics warships were arriving in shifts, replacing those Star Force was killing, more or less. Given the practice they were getting, the battleships were getting good at making short raids over the barrier and their kill count was increasing each time they did, while taking only minimal damage themselves.

Paul didn’t focus on that, or any other part of the overall battle plan. His part was simple…swim and kill lizards the way only Archons could, and he had plenty of pent up anger to sustain him for a long engagement.

Those seated next to him on the pull out benches in the Falcon-class dropship would be doing the same, though with less reckless abandon. While aquatics armor wasn’t as varied as their normal sets were, there were still differences between the adept, acolyte, and ranger versions, making his custom set more robust than what the others had, save for Sara, Rafa, Kyler, and Emily who all had identical ranger armor, save for the fittings.

It was heavier than the others, but not by much, giving him a bit more protection while maintaining his available speed. The biggest difference came in the style of the armor, which was far less bulky than the adept armor, which was little more than flexible turtle shells. The acolyte version was in between, offering more range of movement and slightly heavier armor plating, but containing less volume of such. It was a tradeoff meant to emphasize the swimming agility of the wearer…those who had little got the bulkier sets, figuring they were going to be taking extra hits anyway.

In order to reach ranger status, Paul and the others had to achieve benchmarks in all five areas of combat, plus now psionics, meaning that even though he didn’t care for the water he’d become quite skilled in it. And in this case, where his nose was safely inside an air pocket within his helmet, he didn’t suffer from as much of a disadvantage as he did when directly in the water, making him more than deserving of the heavier, but more agile set of ranger aquatics armor.

He’d outfitted his with several mods, one of which was a stun stick built into the right forearm that he could jab with while leaving his hand free. Another was a bubble shield attached to his back, his extra insurance if they were to come across any lizards with det packs and itchy trigger fingers.

“30 seconds,” he heard over his helmet comm, prompting him and the other Archons in the bay to stand up and grab their gear, most of which was already attached to their bodies at some point, though some carried physical shields meant for land combat. Paul figured they’d work about the same as the lizards’ shield gauntlets, save for you couldn’t see through them. That, and the physical ones would probably stand up to more plasma strikes than a shield matrix.

A crack in the rear of the ship opened up, lowering into a boarding ramp that hung out over the ocean. Nothing was visible on the horizon…just more and more water, eliciting a bit of a warning tingle down Paul’s spine. That was a lot of nowhere to get lost in, had there not been a city underneath them. His brain knew there was, but his eyes didn’t agree, giving him the impression that they were about to walk out into the middle of nowhere.

The Archons ahead of him didn’t hesitate and began dropping out of view two by two. When Paul got up to the edge he saw that the dropship pilot had the ship drifting forward so they wouldn’t land on top of each other, which was smart. He gave the acolyte ahead of him a second and a half head start then he walked off the edge and dropped several meters straight down through the air until his feet hit the water and his armored form cut into the ocean like a knife.

His battlemap shifted automatically to an underwater view, but his eyes were ahead of it, picking up the myriad of lights visible in the otherwise dark beneath them. To their northwest was the greatest concentration, which he knew was the main city structure. They weren’t headed there, but rather down to one of the lizard breach points in a nearby building.

To that end he fell into line and followed the others as they inverted and started swiftly jetting down to the sea floor more than a mile below.

9

All the incoming Archons met up at the same location on the sea floor, with Paul’s group arriving in about the middle. Sara and Kyler were both already in position, fighting off the scattering of lizards heading to the breach point they’d chosen to insert from. Paul let them continue, dropping down inside their circular perimeter on the edge of the bioharvest facility’s armored dome where the lizards’ det packs had broken through.

Unlike the blast doors currently holding the lizards back from the main building, the armor covering the surface buildings was lower grade, mass produced bulk armor, designed to take all sorts of nicks and dings without compromising the interior…but it wasn’t designed to stand up to significant weapons fire. That said, it was chemically designed to resist fracture, meaning that the blast point hadn’t translated up through the rest of the structure. Only the small area nearby Paul had been pulverized, absorbing the blast and letting Star Force have only a small repair job ahead of them rather than replacing football field long cracks throughout the entire dome.

Paul’s feet hit the angled surface, but the tread on his aquatic boots caught enough to support his almost neutral body weight. There he watched the other Archons assembling around him, most on the flat seafloor, while keeping their suit lights off. He could see their ID tags, however, given they were all transmitting into the battlemap and the holographic overlay set on the inside of his faceplate.

There he and the others waited as 338 handpicked Archons from the naval fleets gathered, then Kyler eventually swam over to his location with the other trailblazers following a few minutes later.

“Welcome to Atlantica,” he said over the comm to the naval expert, both of whom were wearing green armor as opposed to the silvers and reds around them.

“It’s a lot bigger from this perspective,” Paul said, referencing his normal orbital view.

“You ready for this?”

“Are you?” Paul quipped.

“I can sleep later. I want these guys off our doorstep.”

“Let’s start sweeping then.”

Kyler pulled up a special version of the battlemap that allowed him to share it with Paul, then using his forearm controls he began drawing routes on it.

“Six routes. These will hit the major staging areas in this hemisphere. We play venators, starting by heading here,” he said, pointing to a small building that had three different tunnels connecting to it. “Then we play it by ear and go where we find the most targets.”

“Weapons?”

“There will be plenty just inside. We’ve hit this location before.”

“Assuming the lizards haven’t cleaned up.”

“They were littering the floor last I was here, so don’t worry. Save those needlers for the det packs.”

“You picked up any outside?”

“A few, we’re…” he paused as a ripple ran through the water and shifted them aside slightly, “detonating now.”

Another set of green armor swam up next to them with dozens of other Archons trailing in her wake.

“What are we waiting on?” Emily asked.

Kyler shot her the battlemap with the routes tagged. “The five of us are going out on our own, so we need to split the others into assault groups headed up by my guys. As soon as we get them divvied up equally we’re going in.”

“Odd play,” she commented.

“We’re staying on the move,” Kyler explained, and Emily knew instantly what he meant based on their prior experience, dating all the way back to when they were trainees.

“I’m down with that,” Rafa said, swimming up to the group.

“One to go,” Paul commented.

“I’m here,” Sara said from afar. “Get going.”

Kyler didn’t hesitate, flipping head for heels and jetting straight down into the breach and ‘crawling’ through. Paul went in right on his heels, stun stick extended, and was met with resistance immediately on the other side of the small broken tunnel he came out of.

Kyler fended off two jabs from lizards flanking the entrance, but given he’d sensed their positions he’d scooted out of the breach at speed and made them miss behind him. The plasma nubs nearly hit each other directly in front of Paul, who reached out and grabbed the right one, tugging it and the lizard that held it in towards him where he jabbed him with the stun stick in his forearm.

A quick Fornax blast to the other’s mind kept him from getting hit, and he knocked the tip of its weapon aside with his stun stick before reaching his arm up and poking it in the ribs, then he jetted forward and cleared the breach for the others to come through.

Meanwhile Kyler was engaging a handful of others who’d been hanging around the entry point, but he soon plowed through them, coming out into the next room with plasma rod in hand and another five kills to his credit.

“Form on me,” Kyler said on his private comm channel to the other trailblazers, then he switched to another he’d reserved for his assault team leaders. “Entry point secure, we’re heading out. Proceed at best speed.”

With that last order he jetted off at half speed, knowing the others would catch up with him, and picked almost random directions to travel, getting off the routes the others would be taking and ‘into the weeds’ so to speak. If the lizards were going to coordinate their defenses against them, he wanted them tracking his group and not fully prepping for the main kill squads.

Two and a half hours later the five trailblazers were halfway around the perimeter of the city, having kept moving and killing constantly, now more than 3 miles away from the closest of the assault groups. There were more than enough lizards in play for all the Archons to have their fill, and the rangers were focused on killing as many of them as they could rather than clearing out sections of the city.

The assault groups were proceeding in that regard, though they couldn’t lock down any of the buildings given the explosives damage, not only on the hull but inside where security doors had been shut to try and stall the lizards advance…and had been subsequently destroyed to allow them to progress. That said, they were proceeding building by building and killing all they came across, attempting to provoke a counterattack or at minimum kill all the lizards in a given area and eliminate the field bases they were setting up inside.

“Kyler, the lizard ships are breaking off,” Linda’s voice broke in suddenly to the trailblazer’s helmet.

“Say again?”

“I don’t know what’s happening, but every ship within sensor range is turning about and leaving. Their infantry on the fence line are also turning around for pick up. Those inside are still advancing, but it looks like you’ve got a finite number to work with now.”

“What the hell happened?” he asked, following Sara’s feet as she led the ranger group through a zigzag course around the inner edge of an industrial building.

“It wasn’t the battleships, they’re all currently inside the fence, and the lizards just got a group of reinforcements 10 minutes ago. I don’t know what’s happening.”

“Keep me updated,” he said, switching over to his teamcomm. “Guys, the lizard fleet is bugging out. Their infantry inside the perimeter is still coming, but the flow has dried up. I don’t know how many we’ve got left to deal with, but we can finish this.”

“Good news,” Sara commented, raising her plasma rod up as all five of the rangers sensed lizard minds gathered ahead around the next corner. “How close are they to breaking through the doors?”

“A few inches, as of 20 minutes ago. I haven’t gotten an updated report, so I don’t think they’re through yet. They can hold if we can thin the reinforcements further. The doors aren’t going to come down when they poke a hole in them, so they’ll have a shooting spree for a while until the lizards widen the gap. If we can keep up our kill rate we’ve got this.”

“Why are they pulling back?” Paul asked, swimming fourth in their staggered line.

“Control is working on it, but right now I don’t care so long as they’re not dropping off more infantry.”

“Maybe they ran out,” Rafa suggested.

“Had to happen sometime,” Emily added.

“Heads up,” Sara warned unnecessarily as she got to the corner. As was their standard operating procedure, she came up and veered off, engaging the closest lizard while making room for the others to come through. Individualized Fornax blasts were the name of the game, with each trailblazer choosing, then disabling their targets as they swam up and jabbed them with the enemy’s own weapons, burning into their scaly flesh with the plasma nubs.

They worked their way through the group of 20 or so in a flurry of steam bubbles, leaving behind a trail of bodies as they swapped out plasma rods on the go, swimming out the backside of the engagement, barely losing 15 seconds from where they would have been had it been a clear hallway.

Once they were clear Paul accessed his battlemap, seeing for himself the lizard aquatics warships pulling back and retreating in a number of groups out to where they disappeared from Star Force’s limited sensor range. Some of their ships were holding position, which he saw were comprised mostly of their infantry carriers, picking up nearby lizards before bugging out.

He frowned, knowing this wasn’t their standard operating procedure. Star Force was getting hammered, and while the battleships were holding the lizards’ ships to the perimeter their infantry were near to penetrating the main city…why would they give up now when they were so close?

It couldn’t have been them, for while they were killing the lizards left and right, there were thousands more out there operating with impunity that they just didn’t have time to get to. No, something else was going on, and part of Paul’s mind said this might be part of a larger gambit.

“Wondering what they’re up to?” Sara asked on a private comm.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said, knowing she was well aware of their naval habits in orbit. The lizards didn’t give an inch, unless it was beneficial to them in some way. And when you gave them an inch, they’d take the proverbial mile.

“I agree, but it gives us a finish line for the moment. Control estimates 10,000 to 15,000 left in play.”

“Oh, that’s all?” Paul asked sarcastically.

“They’re going to run out of det packs.”

“True,” Paul said, glad for that. The only trouble they’d had with the infantry so far had come from their suicide squads, of which they’d dealt with five, all at range with their needlers. One pack had detonated anyway, and even though it was at distance, they still got a bit shell shocked from the blast as the concussion wave knocked them around the narrow hallway they were in at the time.

“Ok guys,” Kyler broke in over the teamcomm, “time to ramp it up. We need to work our way here,” he said, giving everyone a new waypoint that was kilometers away from their current position, marking the location of one of the tunnel entrances into the city that was under assault.

“Just us?” Emily asked.

“Hit and run,” Kyler explained as he felt more lizard minds nearby. “I don’t expect we’ll be able to take the doors back, but if we can thin them down it’ll help the defending teams if/when they get through.”

“I think we can do a bit more than that, Kyler,” Rafa argued.

“Well I could,” he came back, “but I wasn’t sure about you space monkeys.”

“Ha,” Emily laughed. “You’re going to pay for that when this is over.”

“How do you plan on that?” Kyler asked.

“Paul knows.”

“Knows what?” Kyler asked him.

“Sorry, it’s a 2s thing. I’m sworn to secrecy,” he said, not having a clue what Emily was talking about, and fairly certain she didn’t either…but Kyler didn’t know that.

“At least you have something to look forward to,” Rafa said with a laugh. “Sara, my lead,” he said, jetting ahead in line just before they came up on another small group of lizards.

The rangers worked their way through the buildings and connecting tunnels in an erratic path, but one that kept them heading more or less towards the city entrance that Kyler had tagged. Meanwhile, what was left of the lizard reinforcements had reached their breach points and entered the subterranean structures, leaving the stragglers outside exposed for the arrowheads and other Star Force craft to pick them off.

When the all clear was sounded for the seafloor some time later, the remaining arrowheads diverted for the shipyard and dove down into the tunnels, coordinating with the assault teams so they could ‘plow the road’ of the larger lizard formations while the Archon teams scouted out the locations of the remaining det packs. With that coordination established the arrowhead pilots ran their craft through the lizard groups until they became disabled from plasma nub impacts, then they evacuated them and took their place fighting hand to hand with the infantry.

It was a calculated strategy, sacrificing the arrowheads in exchange for disrupting the lizard strongpoints that otherwise would have taken hours to work through. The Archons knew better than to charge into overwhelming numbers, for they didn’t consider even so much as one of their own to be expendable. That meant nibbling away with raids and feints to break down the lizard lines into workable groups…which the arrowheads accomplished much quicker.

That was, unless you were rangers.

When the trailblazers finally came out into the main tunnel that led up to the city entrance they were more than 2 kilometers away, but the entire length of the none too narrow shaft was full of lizards waiting to go into battle, not only in the direction of the city, but out to their left as well for who knew how far down the tunnel.

Normally that would have meant turning tail and trying to draw them back into the adjacent building where they could work through them piecemeal, but not today. Whether it be an overabundance of confidence or just plain fatigue, the rangers didn’t hesitate to jump into the fray. They swam out and gave each other some gaps, allowing the lizards to surround each one of them and attack from multiple angles like tiny piranhas going after a larger fish…not the best strategy in the world.

Unless you had psionics, and you needed the extra gaps to keep from disabling your own teammates.

The five trailblazers swam out like fingers extending from the side entrance in the tunnel, and once they’d accumulated enough lizards around them jabbing in at them with their glowing green plasma rods the Archons began unleashing Fornax disruption fields…not blasts. These extended out a few meters in all directions and held their intensity, essentially blinding the lizards’ nervous systems with white noise, allowing each of the rangers a few moments of impunity to swim up and kill the enemy without them even knowing what was happening.

Each of the Archons could hold the Fornax for varying lengths of time, with Kyler being the weakest given how much mental energy he’d depleted earlier. They had a finite amount that gradually regenerated, but he’d never had time to fully recharge and had been operating off of the bottom half of the barrel while the others had come into this fight on full.

That said, he still had enough to work his way through the center of their formation, giving him the cleanup work in the middle of the tunnel while the others spread out in either direction, meaning he’d have to use less than them. Within two minutes the section of tunnel directly outside the entrance to the building they’d come through was littered with lizard corpses, with Kyler swimming about the middle of it all hunting the few that had survived in the chaos.

He used Fornax blasts to target them individually, conserving his energy and keeping them off the others, who were even now spreading out in either direction. Once he caught the last lizards and disposed of them he floated stationary for a moment, doing a quick mental perimeter check to make sure he hadn’t missed any, then he started putting waypoints in the tunnel for the others to work off of, essentially splitting up the lizard hoard and navigating a path through to the next building entrance, knowing they couldn’t fight in a corpse field that would get progressively more and more dense.

Paul and Emily, doing their well practiced 2s tag team, reversed course and came back towards Kyler through the corpses as he headed out behind Rafa and Sara as they pushed into the lizards on the city side. Those were accumulating so thick you had trouble seeing past them down the tunnel. Hundreds of little glowing green orbs were spread amongst them like berries on a tree, making for a formidable wall of plasma and flesh, but the Archons didn’t hesitate.

The wall suddenly buckled in two places as Rafa went low and Sara high, ‘detonating’ Fornax fields that caused the lizards within a few meters of them to go all twitchy, with half of them dropping their weapons when they could no longer control their fingers.

From behind Paul and Emily reached out and touched some of the lizards’ minds in another manner, using their Ikrid to implant the image of an enemy on their flanks, causing some of the lizards to flinch or even jab at their fellow troops from the feint. Two of the hits succeeded, injuring one and killing another, but also resulting in spreading chaos as the lizards behind them saw what they thought were ‘traitors’ attacking each other.

To their credit they didn’t swarm over each other in a killing frenzy, but the once solid line of bodies was now a mash of confusion with two Archon prongs digging deeper and deeper inside.

Kyler followed them up by punching into the middle, then Paul and Emily jumped in on the flanks following the waypoints Kyler had set down earlier, all of which kept them spaced out from each other enough not to worry about interfering with each other’s psionics, for as good as they’d gotten with generating Fornax, they weren’t very good at defending against it, especially when they didn’t know it was incoming.

Formation spacing was an old tactic, and not one that even the chaos of an underwater battle was going to shake them from, so, doing the seemingly impossible, the five trailblazers fought their way through the tunnel thick with living lizards leaving a trail of dead in their wake that the living from the opposite side were maneuvering their way through to try and catch up and cut off the Humans from behind…which they did.

But that didn’t shake the rangers either, for they were intent on fighting mobile and didn’t care what was more than a few meters away from them. Block, punch, kick, Fornax, jab, and repeat was the trend, though not always in that order, with the waypoints their only other concern. Fighting their way from one to the other they pushed through the schools of lizards until they got to another building entrance on the length of the tunnel, but still far short of the main building. There they ducked inside, fighting through still more lizards on the interior but far thinner in numbers than outside.

The Archons fled through several rooms, drawing pursuit their way and encountering others enroute as they caught their collective breath, knowing that there was no way they’d have the strength to go all the way up the tunnel to the main entrance…at least not all at once.

“What I wouldn’t give for a streak right now,” Rafa commented as they ducked into a storage area that was currently empty, with Sara and Paul floating out of sight beside the door to ambush any lizards that followed them in.

“Tell me about it,” Kyler said, breathing hard inside his armor. That many lizards all lined up in a row. Even if the craft didn’t fire any weapons, it’d literally squish the lizards against the walls given how many of them there were, but there was no way to get one into these tunnels, and an arrowhead would get overwhelmed within meters, clogged up with bodies and pinned in place long enough to get skewered with plasma nubs.

“Thank you,” Paul said as a lizard swam in and he leveraged the plasma rod out of its hand, replacing the one he’d been carrying that must have been low on power by now. Sara jabbed the lizard with hers and kicked the body aside, waiting for the next one to come through. “Where now, Kyler?”

“Working on it,” the trailblazer said, setting new waypoints on the battlemap.

10

Weston Pratt stood on the inside of the blast doors along with dozens of other Regulars, all in aquatics armor more bulky than what the Archons wore. It was colored deep blue and had the same jet thruster system, but at the moment it was cumbersome to wear because Pratt and the others were waiting in atmosphere, not water, as the lizards continued to pound on the doors with occasional blasts.

Two weak spots were visible, both of which had dime-sized holes in them that were leaking water. A containment shield set just inside the doors was holding it back, and by now an inch think wall had risen up to the level of the holes, with the atmosphere above it contained and compressed. Each subsequent det pack blast would vaporize the water, but so far the shield had held up, given that only a tiny bit of the compression wave was getting through, but each time more of the sturdy door material would be chipped away, enlarging the holes.

Pratt and the other Regulars knew it would take a lot of time for them to chew out a hole big enough to come through, and then they’d be bottlenecked enough to turn the area into a shooting gallery. He and the other aquatics Regulars were armed with plasma rifles, stun sticks, and needlers as backup, hoping that since the shield generators were set on this side of the doors that they’d remain active, whereas the lizards had been destroying the others out in the tunnels by blasting into the hardware set into the walls.

They couldn’t do that here, because there was no way they were going to be able to set up det packs on this side unless they could get through the defenders first. That meant that the shields, even when breached, would regenerate and keep most of the water out. That was the hope, anyway, for so long as their weapons stayed dry they could shoot the lizards from range with plasma and hold this position indefinitely…or at least until the number of bodies offered the lizards cover and they smuggled through a det pack.

Which was why Pratt and several others had been tagged as ‘cleaning teams’ who would retrieve and remove the lizard corpses when there were lulls in the fighting, hoping to keep the firing lines clear. He figured as long as they kept to the walls they’d be relatively safe, but with what was said to be thousands of lizards on the other side, who knew what was about to happen, though he was confident they would be able to mow down a great number of them before they could overwhelm this position.

Several fallback points had already been arranged within the city, and they were determined to bleed the lizards of infantry at all moments of opportunity. He didn’t know if he’d prefer to fight in the air or the water, but they were all wearing the aquatics armor just in case the city became flooded, otherwise they would have donned the standard security armor.

Two more blasts occurred over the next 10 minutes, opening up one of the holes to the size of his fist, then there was a long lull during which the Regulars waited…and waited. They’d been stationed here for hours, with some rotating out occasionally to try and stay fresh. They didn’t know when the doors would go down, or which doors would go down first, but they knew they needed to be on site when it happened to take maximum advantage of the partial breaks when they occurred.

“Wake up guys, time to get wet,” his commander said over their teamcomm just before the doors began to retract into the walls. “Archons are moving up from the outside, we’re going to hit their rear. Squads 1, 4, and 7 stay put on this side of the shield, everyone else leave your plasmas behind. Empty your needlers then grab the enemy’s weapons. Let’s get to it.”

Pratt was squad 6, so that meant he was going through. As the doors opened up a meter he set his plasma rifle down and pulled out his needler, then took another from one of the defense squad members who offered it to him. Dual wielding, he hopped over the barricades they’d set up and walked forward as the crack between the damaged doors widened.

The commander jogged up to the shield holding back the water as the first of the lizards pushed their way through and were hit by plasma snipers in the back who’d stood up on the crates to get a better angle. Those lizards fell dead just before the commander got to the shield and stuck his needler through into the water. There he fired off a pointblank shot that detonated a meter ahead, killing a lizard and knocking back several more.

One up high on the doors came through the shield, apparently not realizing it wasn’t flooded on the other side, and popped out 4 meters up only to fall down on top of the Regulars…but after receiving a plasma hit on the way down. Another of the Regulars got to it before Pratt could and stunned it unconscious, then the commander and several others spread out along the growing gap between the doors and fired off PDM after PDM into the water side of the shield, annihilating the lizards on the other side in a cascade of explosions that rippled the shield matrix with waves of static.

“Go,” Pratt heard over the teamcomm, then as one four of the Regulars pushed through the shield, firing off more PDMs as they went. Once inside, they jetted up a couple of meters in the water, clearing room for another four to come through beneath them.

Pratt didn’t get wet until several more groups went through, fanning out to five wide, then six. When he did get in he had a clear shot at hoards of lizards ahead of him, but he only got off a few needler shots before the commander ordered them to change tactics.

“Cease fire with the needlers. We have Archons on the other side. Engage hand to hand.”

Pratt hooked both needlers onto the hooks on the back of his armor and picked up one of the lizards’ weapons near his feet while the Regulars above him jetted forward with stun sticks. He followed underneath their feet and traded jabs with a lizard. His blue armor bubbled and burnt, but the plasma nub didn’t get through, whereas the lizard had no armor and suffered a plasma blast directly to its scaly chest.

Pratt kicked it back and jabbed at the shoulder of another that was engaging the Regular beside him. Their plasma rods were crossed, giving him a good opportunity to break the stalemate. With its shoulder charred, the other Regular was able to get the leverage he needed and finished it off with a touch to the head.

That sort of close quarters combat went on for several minutes before Pratt finally saw one of the Archons. He almost got caught off guard when he saw that there were not one, but five trailblazers on the other side, based on their ID tags, and took a partial hit to his left arm before he wrestled the lizard around enough to expose its back to another Regular that jabbed it for him.

Then the pressure from the lizards subsided. In front of him Paul was knocking them down left and right and Pratt had to start looking for more targets to attack. Two minutes later and the commander ordered them into hunting mode for stunned or injured lizards to make sure there wouldn’t be any surprises later, given how many bodies were clogging the tunnel. Pratt was shocked when he literally couldn’t see more than 70-80 meters down the tunnel. There was that many corpses floating from top to bottom, most of which were due to the Archons’ handiwork.

Kyler worked his way up to the shield and down to the floor, then walked through the barrier to the air side and gratefully pulled his helmet off and sucked in a fresh breath. Paul and Rafa came through next, followed by Emily and Sara, all of whom likewise removed their helmets as they walked forward awkwardly, both from fatigue and being in neutral buoyancy for hours on end.

“That was fun,” Emily said, hopping over the barricades and getting behind the defense squads in case a lizard popped through and they needed to shoot it.

“Is it over?” one of the Regulars asked as the trailblazers worked their way through the defenders.

“Stay sharp,” Kyler warned. “There are so many bodies out there some live ones could ambush you, but the heavy fighting is done…here. The other entrances are still under assault.”

“Should we redeploy there?” the regular asked.

“Clean up here for now,” Kyler said as the trailblazers quietly walked past and headed towards the second line of barricades and began hopping over them.

“Holy shit,” one of the Regulars whispered once they were gone. “Did the five of them just clear out that?” he asked, pointing through the now completely open blast doors at the junkyard of lizard bodies clogging the tunnel.

“That’s why they’re wearing green,” another said, throwing one last glance at their retreating forms before turning his attention back to the shield and their now considerably easier job of holding this position.

8 hours later…

Paul brought a tray of warm, sugar-filled pastries out of the kitchen and set them down on the table the other four trailblazers had claimed in the otherwise empty cafeteria. The cooks, along with all other noncombat personnel, had been evacuated from the facility, leaving the Archons with prepackaged foodstuffs to gnaw on unless they wanted to cook for themselves. Fortunately there wasn’t much ‘cooking’ involved with Star Force food, and warming up the already baked pastries wasn’t something that required an excessive amount of intelligence.

The others had all brought out trays of their own. Rafa’s had plain pasta. Emily had brought out a stack of various cookies. Sara had a tray of breadsticks. And Kyler had a much smaller tray filled with ambrosia wafers, cookies, and all the other forms of laced foodstuffs they’d invented over the years to help them measure their intake without having to actually measure anything out.

Dozens of water bottles littered the table, some of which were already empty. One problem of fighting in pressurized water was the inability to remove your helmet and ingest anything, food or liquid, even if you found an air pocket, so the Archons had got thoroughly dehydrated during their fighting, something that Kyler intended to fix with an upgrade to the armor to carry a small water reserve inside, possibly one that could draw from the exterior like the oxygen generation system did.

When Paul’s tray hit the table the pastries began to vanish in a flurry of hands as each of the trailblazers added at least one to their individual plates. He sat down and bit one open himself, finding chocolate inside. He sat back in his seat and nibbled on it for a while, then worked his way up to larger mouthfuls until it disappeared from his fingers. He reached out and grabbed another one, not bothering to try his Lachka, given his state of mental fatigue and the size of the pastry.

The telekinesis might have drawn on a different pool of energy than his Fornax, but overall his head felt fried, as if he’d overworked his mental trigger to the point where it had pulverized and he had nothing but a stub left to work with.

“Anyone else fried?” he asked in between mouthfuls.

“Very,” Sara said, glancing at Kyler. “You’ve got to be dead.”

“I admit I’m feeling it, but I’m more used to the water than you guys are.”

“Liar,” Emily said with a smirk. “You’re barely staying awake.”

“Am I?” he asked honestly. “Maybe I’m still numb to it.”

“Probably,” Rafa said, grabbing a breadstick. “As soon as we get done here I’m grabbing a bunk and getting some long hours in.”

“Same here,” Emily agreed, then looked at Paul. “Did you find anything?”

“It was the relays,” he said, referring to his recent dive through the battlemap records while the others helped with various things around the city. The enemy infantry had been taken care of, they thought, but they were only beginning to clear out the nearest of the submerged buildings with the help of the recently arrived engineering crews from Ackbar. A team of Archons and Regulars were there now, pulling the bodies out and securing the exits as the breach in the hull was patched over and the damaged shield generators were repaired/replaced. Pretty soon they’d start pumping out the water in that section, then down the chain one building after another.

“I don’t get it,” Rafa said, frowning. “They’ve fought without coordination before. Why turn tail and run when we cut them off this time?”

“Two ideas,” Paul said, snagging another quick bite. “One, these aren’t their expeditionary troops. Two, this is a larger scale assault than we’re used to dealing with.”

“Not a raid,” Emily clarified.

“But they left almost exactly when the last of the relays were cut?” Rafa asked.

“There was a two minute delay,” Paul noted.

“I’m glad they did, but that doesn’t feel right,” Sara chimed in. “It’s like they let us off easy.”

Both Emily and Rafa glared at her.

“Ok, not easy, but why not at least let the rest of their infantry get to target. You said they recalled some of them that were already in the water.”

“Those closest to the fence,” Paul said, washing down his second pastry with a swig of water. “I agree with Sara that something is different here, and we’ve been seeing it in orbit too. They’re fighting smarter than they used to. Not more experienced, but more clever. And now with this bit of data, I’m betting it has to do with Thrawn.”

“Thrawn?” Rafa asked.

“He thinks they have a mastermind calling the shots,” Sara offered, explaining the Star Wars reference.

“Big man gets cut off,” Kyler said, thinking aloud, “little ones run away. Almost makes sense, save for it doesn’t fit their MO.”

“I know,” Paul admitted. “But I’m almost certain of it now.”

“One of the variants?” Emily floated.

“Could be, but I’m starting to think not. We recovered 11 lizard sets of genetics, but that was from an expeditionary group. Their main forces may have more than that…or we might be seeing a ruling faction and a lizard that wasn’t grown here, but shipped out from their core worlds.”

“Big man on campus?” Rafa asked.

“I don’t know if it’s an individual, group, or caste, but we’re facing more strategic and tactical wizardry than we have anywhere else. Agreed?”

The other four trailblazers nodded, all of whom continued to chew food.

“So the question is…where is Thrawn?”

Sara swallowed. “Not with their fleet, obviously. The relays kept them in contact.”

“How much water can they punch through anyway?” Rafa wondered. “Wouldn’t it be easier to link to orbit than through miles of water?”

“We’ve got control of low orbit,” Paul reminded him. “And we can hack part of their communications, which they obviously know by now. I suspect they’ve got several surface to orbit relays set up, or maybe they’re using cruisers in that regard, but I’d bet you the water relays operate differently than their normal comms, if for no other reason than to keep us from hacking into them.”

“Still, if they’ve got an attacking fleet here, why not just link directly to orbit for coordination. If a mile of water interferes with the signal too much, just send a couple ships up in a chain to transmit from.”

“If they’re using line of sight,” Emily suggested, “and we know the locations of their warships in orbit, then we could interfere with the signal.”

“That or they’re a binary operation,” Sara added. “One water, one space.”

“No,” Kyler said emphatically. “They’re integrated. The cruisers pull double duty.”

“It might be as simple a fact as Paul suggested,” Emily added. “They’re used to having control of orbit. Without that, they’re going to plan B and setting up the underwater relays.”

“So is Thrawn down here or up there?” Sara reiterated.

“Or both,” Paul added.

“I have to say down here,” Kyler offered. “Setting up the relays is too elaborate if you were leading this from space.”

“Too little data to speculate,” Rafa said, pulling the conversation back a bit. “All we know right now is that they are using underwater relays and that we’ve got at least one mastermind lizard in the system. So, next move?”

“Find and follow the relays,” Kyler said without hesitation. “To field the kind of fleet they just hit us with, they’ve got to have some massive infrastructure in play. Now that we’ve got a thread to follow we need to pursue it before they get a chance to cut ties. If I were them I’d remove the relay links closest by and set up new ones in their place.”

“What do you need to start?” Emily asked.

“Given the ranges involved, no less than a battleship.”

“What are you waiting for then?” Rafa asked.

Kyler’s eyes glazed over. “Good point,” he said, reaching for his ear and finding he had no earpiece in.

Paul reached up to give him his, only to discover that he hadn’t put one in either. He looked at the other three trailblazers and laughed when he saw they didn’t have any.

“How the hell did we all forget them?”

“Hungry I guess,” Kyler said, standing up to leave. “Don’t touch my tray. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

As he walked out Emily reached over and poked her index finger into one of his pastries, then pulled it back without taking anything. She licked a bit of vanilla icing off her fingernail as Rafa raised an eyebrow.

She smirked, then turned her attention back to her own plate as she deviously whispered, “Space monkeys.”

Eviction

1

March 4, 2428

Alpha Centauri System

Tyr

“Olá,” the Brazilian receptionist said as she stood up from her chair and took a pair of steps up to the table/desk as she saw a man in a Star Force uniform approaching the Civilian Communications Depot, or CCD for short. It was the Brazilian government’s interstellar digital package delivery service, offering transit of data files and messages between planets via insystem relays or by carrying them via jumpship with a reasonable delay in delivery. For those with family or business relations off planet, or off moon in this case, the CCD was the primary means of communication and saw a steady stream of customers on a daily basis.

“What can I do for you?” the receptionist said with a smile, switching to English at seeing the man’s uniform.

The man didn’t return her smile, but in a very fluid and casual manner produced a pistol from behind his back and leveled it at her chest. Before she could react a bright blue plasma streak shot out and burned through her clothing and into her rib cage.

The Brazilian dropped to the ground, barely getting out a yip, then with his firing line cleared the man adjusted his aim and fired a pair of blasts at the man seated a few meters behind the desk as he jumped up and out of his chair in a panic.

He twisted as he was hit in the shoulder, then fell back down onto his chair face first as the second shot hit him in the back, leaving a small smoke trail rising up into the air as he lay kneeling into the chair with his head wedged into the gap between seat and backrest.

The shooter remained still and quiet, listening for a moment to see if anyone else was nearby, then he jumped up over the table/desk and into the back area of the kiosk, stepping over the woman’s twitching body and moving to the rear door that led into the equipment area. He pulled it open and stepped through, plasma pistol held ready, but no one else was in the area.

He lowered the muzzle and headed to a particular console, knowing well what he was looking for. He pulled up the control menu and input a flurry of commands, shutting off and locking down the communications equipment and creating a comms blackout in the colony…on the civilian side, at least.

He pulled out a small, pencil-sized personal comm and flicked the ON button.

“Point 2 is dark,” he reported.

“Copy that. Keep it that way.”

The man slipped the device back into his pocket and walked out into the reception area, finding the woman’s terrified eyes on him. He was surprised she was still alive.

Rather than using his pistol again he walked up and gently put his foot on her throat and constricted her airway. He held it there as he looked out the front entrance of the kiosk at the sparse passing traffic. The double doors leading in had done a good job of keeping the sound of his weaponsfire from drifting out onto the promenade, though there were few people out and about this early in the morning to have noticed anyway.

Once he was certain the woman was dead he dragged both bodies into the back area, then put the ‘Closed’ sign up on the reception desk and retreated into the equipment room where he took up a guard position, insuring that the CCD transmitters would remain dark.

Davis was studying a prototype schematic of a new civilian jumpship in holographic form over his desk when a chime sounded. He glanced to his clock inside the smooth, clear surface of his desk and saw a time flag, indicating that he had an appointment with the Brazilian ambassador. The Director sighed, collapsing the schematic and standing up. If he didn’t watch himself he’d be studying prototypes all day long.

He stepped around the side of his desk, hitting a button on top that retracted a portion of the carpet to the right of his chair, well out into the ‘empty’ confines of his spacious circular office. He stepped on the exposed metallic circle and faced inward, putting the panoramic window behind him and the central staircase in front, with a hologram of a pair of men manifesting itself before him in full size, looking as if the individuals were literally standing before him.

One of the men was the Brazilian ambassador, the other a Star Force staffer that quickly walked out of picture, disappearing from the hologram to allow the two of them to speak in private. No longer did Davis accept diplomatic inquiries in person, nor any other type of business matter with non-Star Force personnel, given that Atlantis was now off limits to the public. The Brazilian ambassador, an amicable associate of Davis, was currently in the Star Force embassy wing, located in another of Davis’s ocean cities along with the rest of the permanent diplomats, all of which had to contact him through subordinates, or through holographic relay if the matter was urgent enough to occupy his time.

“Rodrigo,” Davis greeted him by name.

“Director,” the ambassador replied with an uncomfortable expression on his face. “I have a favor to ask, as well as a story to tell, assuming you are unaware of it.”

Davis frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “Concerning what?”

“Tyr.”

Davis ran the name through his mental list, finding a few references, one of which was the name of a trailblazer, but the name of a moon that he’d given the Brazilians complete control over in the Alpha Centauri System seemed a much more likely candidate.

“Nothing currently on my radar concerning the moon. What’s going on?”

“I am embarrassed to say that…we have lost control of the colony.”

Davis’s frown deepened. “To whom?”

“At first we believed it was you…but subsequent intelligence reports quickly dispelled that ridiculous notion,” the ambassador said, toggling a control board off holo, followed by a series of video files popping up beside Davis. “A group of armed men in Star Force uniforms seized control of the colony while maintaining a communications blackout. These surveillance feeds we were able to obtain later from security agents within the colony.”

Davis saw several incidences of Star Force-uniformed men attacking security stations and other vital checkpoints with plasma pistols, efficient movements, and practiced coordination. No screaming or flailing about, just quick, clean, methodical kills eliciting no more emotional response than if they’d been ordering dinner.

“How old are these?”

The ambassador looked even more ashamed. “A little over 2 years.”

Davis’s eyes went wide with disbelief. Factor in transportation delays, and he’d expected no longer than 6 months. “Why have I not heard anything about this sooner?”

“We heard nothing of it ourselves for nearly a year. Whoever these men are, they took control of the moon without the general populace even becoming aware of it. Not a single transport, passenger or commercial, was so much as delayed. Business and commerce have been proceeding like clockwork, with regular reports flowing back to Mars. We’ve even seen an uptick in productivity from the moon since the takeover. Our people have complete freedom of movement, so we didn’t suspect a thing until certain personnel transfers failed to occur. The dead men from those surveillance videos couldn’t produce themselves, thus questions were asked and investigations begun.”

Davis found that remarkable. Even though the moon had no official Star Force presence on it, it was linked into their transportation grid, meaning his people had continued doing business with the colony all this time and his own security division hadn’t gotten wind of it.

“Detectives were sent to find the missing personnel, at which point the new rulers made themselves known to us through back channels. They wanted to keep the public from panicking, as did we, and they have declared themselves to be a liberated colony in fact, if not in name. They actually had the gall to suggest that business continue as normal and Tyr remain part of Brazilian territory, but without us having any control over it.”

“Hostages?” Davis asked.

“None,” the ambassador said with disgust. “They are beyond arrogant…or so we thought. Our investigators brought back all the information we needed, including these surveillance recordings of the initial takeover, then we sent a military strikeforce to reclaim possession of the colony. They didn’t even bother to resist the troops coming into the city…then we got no word back from them, nor did any come out. Our agents continue to come and go as they please, passing off as civilians, and they say nothing is wrong with the colony in the least. Everything is as it should be, as if no takeover had happened. They also can’t determine what happened to the strikeforce.”

“When was your last report?”

“Dated a month and a half ago. We’ve tried to keep matters quiet on our end while we figured out what was going on, so none of this has hit the newsfeeds, though I don’t know how. Tyr has a population of 13 million. You’d think word would spread through that many people simply by word of mouth. It’s as if these people are ghosts and the takeover never happened.”

“Do you have any idea how many of them there are?”

The ambassador shook his head, disgust on his face. “They’ve blended in with the rest of the population. All we can give you are the casualty lists, and there are 38 people missing, presumed dead based off those surveillance recordings.”

“How have they covered for the 38?”

“There are now replacements in those positions, logged as transfers. Whoever these ‘liberators’ are they’ve got good hackers working for them. The 38 have disappeared from all local databases. We had to pull backups from Mars to get the headcount,” he said, referring to the Brazilian capitol on the multinational planet.

Davis looked at one of the still playing security recordings off his right shoulder, seeing for a fact that the gunmen were wearing various Star Force uniforms…some personnel division, others engineering and mining. While Tyr was a Brazilian world it wasn’t uncommon for Star Force personnel from the planet Glasir, around which Tyr and two other moons orbited, to visit the colony. That would make the Star Force imposters blend in without them being recognized as foreign, not to mention that they might be given extra courtesy given the good relations between Star Force and Brazil.

Then again, he couldn’t completely discount that they were Star Force personnel…but no, if they’d been gone missing for 2 weeks a flag would have been raised, let alone 2 years. They had to be imposters.

“We obviously didn’t have a hand in this, but I’m curious as to how you came to that conclusion?” Davis asked. “These are our uniforms…or a very good knockoff.”

“Aside from our long history of cooperation, the assault made no sense,” the ambassador explained. “If you wanted to take the moon from us you have many more efficient options of doing so…like buying it. Sneaking around and murdering people doesn’t fit with your methods. Also, the weapons they are carrying are not of Star Force make.”

“No they’re not,” Davis confirmed, already having sized up the approximate model despite not being able to zoom in on the footage from the holographic transmitter he was standing on. He’d have to go over to his desk to do that, which he’d get to later. “Do they have anything larger than pistols?”

“Not based on our intel, sketchy as it is.”

“What was the favor you mentioned?”

The ambassador swallowed hard. “We have no choice but to send a larger force to retake the moon, and that could lead to unforeseen complications, given we don’t know what happened to our first strikeforce. It is rumored that you have clandestine Archon units sneaking around taking out the trash, so to speak. We would ask, as either a favor or for a price, to root out these insurrectionists and reclaim the colony for us.”

Davis stared at him evenly. “How large was your first strikeforce?”

“All ground troops, ferried in on transports to the spaceports, some 500 men in total.”

The skin around Davis’s eyes constricted slightly. Making 500 soldiers in combat gear disappear was no easy thing, meaning this takeover was even more complicated than the Director had already suspected.

“Have any civilians gone missing?”

“We’ve been checking into that, but so far our record searches have come up clean…though those residing on Tyr permanently are impossible to check on, given that we have to work through the local databases.”

“Anything else changed since the takeover, even the slightest anomaly?”

“Other than the fact they’re managing the moon better than those they overthrew…nothing stands out, and our people have been data sifting extensively. We have no answers as to what is going on, nor is there anyone else on the moon to ask for assistance. One of the drawbacks of owning your own world, we’re coming to realize.”

“Have they made any demands?”

“Not a one,” the ambassador said, his mannerisms evident that the Brazilians were at their wits’ end. “Not even a tirade as to why we brought this on ourselves or why liberation was necessary. No manifesto, no demands, not even an ill word. They want to continue on as is, but have made no threats concerning the eventuality that we don’t agree, and we haven’t received a word from them since the strike force was sent…not that we really expected any. There’s been almost no communication whatsoever.”

“You haven’t restricted travel to the moon?” Davis asked rhetorically, for if they had he would have already known about it.

“So long as we have access and the citizens of Tyr aren’t in any apparent danger, we felt it would be reckless to try and alter the situation, given that they might then become hostages.”

“I understand,” Davis said, his tone turning formal. “In light of this information, I have a favor to ask of Brazil, Ambassador.”

“Name it.”

“It seems there has been either a theft or counterfeiting of Star Force uniforms on the moon of Tyr. I thereby ask for your permission to investigate the matter and deal with it in a manner of our choosing.”

For a split second the ambassador was lost, then he caught on to the Director’s meaning and bowed his head gratefully. Star Force wasn’t going to charge Brazil with any sort of debt, merely deal with the situation pro bono. “Permission granted.”

“You’ll forestall your next assault?”

“If you’re stepping up, of course, though our troops will be available if you need them.”

“That won’t be necessary, but thank you. As you mentioned, we have other means of dealing with these incognito situations. Please forward any additional data you receive from your operatives.”

“I will, and thank you, Director.”

“Just part of being good neighbors,” Davis said as the ambassador signed off. His image disappeared but the surveillance feeds remained, shifting to center view now that they had room.

Davis stepped off the pad and retreated to his desk, transferring the images there as the carpet resealed seamlessly. He sat down and brought one up in an analysis program he’d gotten well used to using, having sifted through thousands of hours of data trying to hunt down leads on The Word. He brought up one of the security camera feeds and paused it when the man wearing a Star Force aqua-colored medical uniform pulled out a pistol from a hidden pocket…which the standard uniforms did not possess…and pointed it at a guard.

No doubt the Brazilian had been taken off guard by the uniform, but even as the weapon was being aimed at the woman wearing a light combat vest she responded by stepping laterally and drawing her own weapon. Davis had seen this one play out several times already as he’d been talking to Rodrigo, so he wasn’t interested in seeing the outcome, but rather the weapon the man was wielding.

Davis advanced it forward and back several times, zooming in and out and taking snapshots at various angles. He could tell from the look of it what it was, but he sent them into a 3D recognition program anyway, and using the parallax of the images it was able to construct a wireframe design and match it up against known weapon types.

A single option appeared, tagged as the custom plasma pistol design produced by The Word.

Davis had known as much as soon as the ambassador had started describing the takeover. They’d been getting progressively bolder as the years went by, even as Star Force had managed to root out a few of their operations centers. Industrial sabotage was usually their game, with the occasional assassination of individuals associated with the anti-Star Force crowd. Their aim seemed to be discrediting Star Force’s reputation…or rather, minimizing it. Death by a thousand cuts would be an overstatement, but their efforts had none the less been repetitive and selective, and Davis had often wondered what they were building up to.

This he had not expected, nor could he see their endgame, but the fact that they’d had effective control over an entire moon for 2 years meant they’d had plenty of time to misbehave. Even if Star Force went in and shut them down today, he wondered how much of their future plans they’d been able to accomplish in the interim with no one looking over their shoulder.

And the fact that they’d managed to keep it quiet all this time impressed Davis to no end, as well as being typical Word methodology. Granted, planets and moons were geographically isolated from one another, and if you hit the communications grid you could effectively black out or censor the primary comm channels, but with free flowing commerce being maintained there was no way to monitor and conceal what was going on on the moon, which meant their efforts to keep the takeover from reaching Tyr’s population’s knowledge…

Well, they were damned good at what they did. Davis had always known that, but this really took the cake. Granted, he’d have to confirm this intel, but he didn’t doubt the Brazilian reports. While Star Force didn’t spy on associated nations, they did monitor them, especially their commerce patterns, and had a takeover of even minimal blunt force been applied there would have been ripples of economic consequence that would have alerted his people to the incident.

No, The Word was behind this and they managed to keep it so quiet that neither Star Force nor the Brazilians had discovered it for a full year, and then they’d managed to keep the Brazilians dancing to their tune for another one. How they quietly dealt with an assault force of 500 men was another matter entirely, reinforcing in Davis’s mind that The Word’s agenda was not completely civilian. Why they had been producing firearms had always been a bit of a mystery, given that their previous efforts didn’t seem to require such weapons, nor in such large quantities.

Now he had a partial answer, though he knew this was merely the tip of the iceberg rising up a few meters. He had no doubt The Word was merely running through the first few pages of their playbook, building to something more ambitious down the line, though the quiet takeover of an entire planetoid was certainly a feather in their cap…but it didn’t do anything to seriously undermine Star Force, which was their stated agenda.

Davis knew he’d be spending numerous hours over the next months digging into this, so he put his curiosity on hold for a moment, knowing he needed to get the Archons moving as soon as possible, along with security’s intelligence subdivision, and sent a quick message out to David-441 and Drake-756, calling in both Green and Red teams from wherever in the Solar System they currently were.

2

May 9, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Glasir

David’s dropship departed one of the massive hangar bays onboard the jumpship Tardis, flying off across planetary orbit towards one of the planet’s 8 starports. Many more dropships were leaving along with it as the old jumpship, now recommissioned twice with more advanced gravity drives, began offloading passengers and cargo onto Glasir, one of seven Star Force planets within the system, all of whose natural environments were uninhabitable.

Glasir was a heavy grav world, registering at 154% of Earth’s gravity and containing an atmosphere of pure nitrogen. Temperatures were cold and the planet rocky, with no plant life whatsoever. It sat 4th in line around the twin stars at the center of the system, reminding David of the scenes of Tatooine from Star Wars. Glasir had such a view, though the pair of glowing orbs in the sky were much smaller, given the planet’s greater distance from them, which also accounted for the cold temperatures.

Despite the frigid conditions the nitrogen atmosphere kept enough ‘warmth’ in the surface to keep temperatures in the -20 to -40 Celsius range, which allowed the Star Force engineers some leeway in their construction and mining efforts. They’d built 3 large cities on the planet to date, with another in the early excavation stages, that housed upwards of 120 million colonists, all of which lived in regular gravity inside the enclosed structures.

Two other planets in the system held larger populations, Ragnarok and Odin, with 270 million and 1.3 billion respectively. All together, the Alpha Centauri System held just over 2.1 billion Star Force colonists, along with another 38 million that were under national jurisdictions.

Glasir had 3 moons, Tyr, Aesir, and Vanir, all of which bore no Star Force presence. Tyr was the sole property of Brazil, Aesir belonged to Russia, and Vanir was split between Australia and Andulia…the latter of which was a nation founded on Luna shortly after World War III that had expanded out to numerous holdings within the Solar System, and one that Davis had trusted to extend interstellar territorial holdings to.

All the moons were small, requiring gravity enhancement for the cities that dotted them. The Russians had colonized Aesir with a scattering of settlements, as had the Andulians, while the Aussies and the Brazilians had opted for building one megacity each on their planetoids that they continually expanded out like a bacterial growth on the rocky surfaces of the airless moons.

What infrastructural approach they took was their prerogative, but all four of the nations relied heavily on Star Force contracts for the construction, and as such the national settlements used almost all Star Force materials, making them look like an extension of the infrastructure on Glasir, though that was not the case.

Of the three moons Tyr was in the middle and not currently visible from David’s passenger dropship, though Aesir was. It made for a large, imposing silhouette in the sky, being half again closer to Glasir than Luna was to Earth. Around it orbited a number of stations, one of which was a Star Force starport, linking the Russian world to the rest of Humanity via the transportation grid. There, however, Star Force’s territory ended, with all transit down to the moon being handled by Russian ships, most of which had been purchased from Star Force.

Vanir and Tyr were the same, and once David’s dropship docked with the starport in Glasir orbit, he and the other passengers went their separate ways. Some remained onboard while most split up to take other flights, more than half of which were down to Glasir’s surface, with the others a mix of orbital stations and the ferries out to the three moons.

David took the ferry out to Tyr, flying onboard a dedicated starship that hauled both passengers and cargo between the two starports. Then came a longer wait for the Brazilian Orbital Transit Service, or BOTS, to dock their scheduled dropship flight with the Star Force station and exchanged passengers. David boarded a converted Dragon-class dropship reconfigured as a passenger liner along with more than 500 civilians transiting down to the large city on the moon’s surface.

David took one of the seats, feeling a bit odd in the surrounding accoutrements, which had been altered to Brazilian design aesthetics. He tried to think back to the last time he’d ridden onboard a non-Star Force ship, then got hung up in the mental conundrum of whether raiding one counted or not, for Green Team had pulled that duty on occasion.

As he mentally chewed on that thought he observed the crowd, which filled about 3/4ths of the seats. Though he couldn’t read their minds, he could read their body language…and none of the typical agitation of crossing into a dangerous situation was evident. The people were simply going about their regular routines, apparently unaware that anything untoward was occurring down on the moon.

Sitting back in his narrow, but adequately plush seat, David half watched the vid screens that showed their descent down to the surface, though neither he nor any of the other passengers or crew felt the acceleration and deceleration swings, given the inertial dampeners and artificial gravity.

He could, however, hear the rhythmic chomping of gum three seats to his right in the row ahead of him. The young girl was chewing loudly with perfect timing. David counted 23 chomps, each time followed by a break when she’d ball the gum up and roll it out onto her lips, twiddle it about, then suck it back in and start chewing another 23 times before repeating the process.

Before long some of the other passengers began to visibly bristle around her, though none had said anything as of yet. It was starting to get on David’s nerves too, not so much from the noise but by the precision of it. His mind kept getting stuck on the pattern of it, and whenever he started to think about something else the chomping would start again and he’d begin mentally counting the beats.

Annoyed that he was letting it bother him, he forced himself to endure it through the remainder of the short flight down to a spaceport within the Brazilian city. There the dropship landed on an exterior pad before rolling through an atmospheric containment shield and into a pressurized bay large enough to hold a dozen more of the huge dropships. The entire terminal, which was built on a 90 degree ‘V’, was connected to three other bays on the other side of the large walls that were covered in windows where more passengers were waiting to board and watching the flights come in and out.

David’s dropship parked in one of the berths and a gangway stretched out to dock with it, creating a level connection to the terminal that the passengers could walk through without having to drop down to the deck where the cargo transfer was occurring. David grabbed his carry-on satchel, the only luggage he’d brought with him on this mission, and joined the rest of the passengers as they slowly filed out into the gangway…though he did keep an eye on the gum chewing girl, and when she and her traveling companions stepped out into the walkway ahead of David he waited for her to roll the gum back out on her lips, at which point he telekinetically snagged it and shot it up towards the ceiling.

He suppressed a smile as the girl mildly freaked out, wondering what had just happened and where her gum had gone, as he used his Pefbar to navigate a course for the tiny annoying wad through the cabin and over to a trash receptacle.

With his contribution to society for the day done, he stepped into the passenger flow and departed the dropship, making his way into the terminal and onto the observation promenade where he camped out for a few hours, grabbing a bite to eat and just milling about getting a feel for the situation.

Again, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, though this was his first visit to the moon, so he couldn’t completely be sure what ‘ordinary’ was for the Brazilian city, but compared to the rest of the Human interstellar society everything was buzzing along like normal commerce should. People were moving about in a hurry, others were idling the hours away at the entertainment venues and shops. There was no apprehension here.

As David was sitting at a bar, sipping a soda and watching the numerous vid screens along with a number of other waiting passengers an attractive woman slipped onto the stool beside him and favored him with a smile.

“Hey, you’re cute…wanna fuck?”

David jerked, reflexively spitting soda back down his straw and out around the edges, causing it to fizz up. He looked over at her with a comical expression on his face.

“What kind of a greeting is that?” he laughed, feeling some of the soda tickling the inside of his nose where it’d gone up.

“A blunt one,” the Brazilian said with a discernible accent as she slipped her left hand around David’s right and pulled it away from his cup. As she did she tapped the inside of his palm three times.

The tapping caught his attention, with him realizing this was more than a social hookup attempt. Using the skin to skin contact between their hands he used his Ikrid to hack into her nervous system and use it as a conduit into her mind. A split second later he confirmed that this was not a sexual overture. She was wary of something, and wanting his help.

“Well now,” he said, swiveling around on his stool so he could look at her face to face while still holding onto her hand, gleaning more insights as to her current state of emotions and a few surface thoughts. He and Green Team had been practicing this sort of mindreading relentlessly, only to find out that there was so much more that they couldn’t do yet, insanely complex as the structure of the mind was.

“Well what?” she echoed playfully, but repeated the three beat tap into his palm with her middle finger. “Sizing me up?”

David smiled. “Something like that,” he said as he continued to search her mind, finding a growing sense of urgency.

“How about a sample then,” she said, sliding off her stool and stepping up into him, then laying a very gentle and sensuous kiss on his lips before she slowly pulled back. “Anything else you want to check out? I’m willing to submit to a strip search.”

“Are you now?” David said, slipping his hand out of hers and placing it on her waist, only to snake his fingers down the small of her back and dip them in underneath her shorts…and there, out of view, he mimicked the three beat tap as he looked her square in the eyes.

He saw a flicker of recognition, as well as sensing a swell of relief in her emotions.

“In private, if it’s not too much to ask? I’m a shy girl.”

“Well,” David said, glancing around the area as he tried to catch a glimpse of anything suspicious, “I’m supposed to be waiting for my wife, but,” he said, checking his watch, “she’s not due in for a few more hours. I’ll be honest, you’re not really my type, but I’ve got nothing to do but sit here bored so the least I can do is give you a thorough examination.”

“And if I pass?” she said, smiling even more.

“Big ‘if’ there,” he said, throwing a little cold water on the moment. “Is there somewhere around here you’re comfortable taking your clothes off?”

She slipped her hand back inside his. “Follow me.”

David grabbed his satchel with his free hand and let her lead him away from the bar, leaving the nearby occupants, all ‘older’ men, with wide eyes and open jaws.

The woman walked quickly, almost giddy, dragging David along though he had no trouble keeping pace. They got halfway down the promenade before a voice thrust its way inside the Archon’s head.

What the hell are you doing? Assad asked comically.

I don’t know, he answered back telepathically. She’s putting on a show and gave me a recognition signal. Whoever she is she’s not interested in playtime.

You’re not being followed as far as I can tell. Want a shadow?

No, I’ll handle this. Worst case scenario I called it wrong and I have to disappoint her.

Don’t think that’ll be the issue here, Assad said, his mental voice altering slightly. Mental communication carried with it far more information than vocals did, and right now Assad was pinging ‘warning’ along with his words. You’ve got a lazy tail. Thin, scrawny guy. Doesn’t seem to be in a hurry.

“This way,” the woman said as they got to the exit archway and she pulled him to the left, accelerating up into a near run.

Later, David said as he and Assad were reaching the maximum range of their effective telepathy.

“Where are we headed?” he asked, still being led by the hand.

“Not far,” she promised with another smile, though David could see some cracks in it. Her adrenaline was also spiking a bit, and he was fairly sure it wasn’t because of him.

They moved through the crowds in the hallway, then broke out into the terminal’s interior, which functioned as a miniature resort city with shopping, food, lodging, and entertainment that travelers could access without moving into the rest of the city, allowing the tourists their own area while keeping most of them out of the normal flow of pedestrian traffic, for both parties’ concerns.

David’s new girlfriend dragged him off into one of the resorts, producing a keycard that let them access the customer only areas, whereupon she led him up a couple of flights of stairs, across a long hallway, then back down a flight on the far side before pulling him inside a hotel room and locking the door behind them.

When she did she sagged backwards against the door for a moment, breathing heavily as she let go the façade.

“Thank you,” she said gratefully.

“For what, exactly?”

“Letting me pull you away from the bar. You were about to disrupt a carefully choreographed handoff.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Milla.”

David raised an eyebrow. “What are you, and what do you think I am?”

“You’re Star Force, obviously,” she scoffed. “Even without the uniform, your trim physique is a dead giveaway. People who wear those kind of civilian clothes don’t work out…at all. You really need to find better cover.”

“I thought the baggy look was cover,” David argued.

She shook her head slowly. “Those chiseled cheeks aren’t hidden. At first I thought you might even be an Archon, then when I kissed you I dismissed the idea, because you obviously liked it, so I’m guessing Star Force Security?”

David rolled his eyes. “And you are?”

“Your Brazilian counterpart.”

“I assume we’re safe to talk in here?”

“As far as I know, unless they have every room tapped, which I doubt.”

David frowned. “Sloppy,” he criticized.

“I’m improvising,” she deflected. “We didn’t expect you to show up anytime soon, let alone today. You stumbled across our drop and I had to get you out of there.”

“What kind of drop?”

“Data,” she said simply, not offering any more detail.

Something about that bothered David, not the fact that it was a data drop…but because she wasn’t being more forthcoming, almost as if…

Suddenly he sensed a mind approaching and stopping outside their door, and he knew that their tail had finally caught up with them.

David stepped over to the door and pulled Milla away from it with a yank on her arm just as the lock clicked open and a thin man stepped inside and pointed something in the Archon’s direction…only to drop it and fall to the ground as if the floor had suddenly become quicksand and he could no longer keep his balance.

David stepped forward and grabbed the man’s wrist, pulling him inside while using his Ikrid to render him unconscious, then he closed the door again as Milla got to her feet, having fallen over the side of the bed when David emitted his Fornax disruption field and her equilibrium was lost.

She scrambled to her feet, only to fall down again as David hit her with a select blast. He caught her by the waist halfway down and tipped her up onto the bed and placed a hand on her neck, rendering her unconscious as well, then he went back over to the man and rolled him over, finding a small holdout pistol beneath him.

David picked it up and gave it a quick glance, recognizing it as a tranquilizer gun, then he set it on a nearby table and began going through the man’s pockets, finding amongst other things a personal comm device and several keycards, none of which had any room or door markings, making David suspect they were master access duplicates, which would explain why he was able to unlock the hotel room door.

“Hello,” David said, pulling off the man’s watch and exposing the tiny trapdoor in the side that held a familiar ‘kill pill,’ one that Green Team had come across many times over the past decade, though usually they didn’t get to them before the operatives ingested it. The fact that it was the same make, as well as being located inside a custom, but identical watch to those they’d recovered from other operatives marked this man as a member of The Word, confirming that the Director’s suspicions had been spot on.

The Archon planted his fingers on the side of the man’s head, linking to his mind and ensuring that he’d be unconscious for a good long while, but unable to access any information. Maybe someday in the future his Ikrid skills would be good enough for that, but at present he and the other Archons needed the individual to be conscious in order to access their surface thoughts. Even dreams were too ‘low powered’ for him to monitor, meaning he wasn’t going to get any intel out of this one right now.

David stood up, leaving the man sprawled on the floor, and stretched out his mind to the surrounding area. No one was lingering outside their door, and the nearby rooms were empty, save for one.

Looking around for something to tie the man up with, he eventually settled on disrobing the operative entirely and taking his clothes and the woman with him across the hall to an empty room that he accessed using the master keycard. That way, even if he did wake up, he couldn’t leave the room without roaming the hallways naked.

David tossed the bundle of clothes and his own satchel to the floor, then set Milla on the bed in the new room before backtracking and locking the door, then he emptied his own pockets of the operative’s belongings onto the table and did another quick mental check of the hallway, finding it still clear.

“Now, for you,” he said, looking down at the woman.

3

Milla woke up in bed, rubbing her head as she blinked away the sleep, wondering where she was. She leaned up on her elbow, seeing that she was in a hotel room. It took her a moment to remember the last thing that’d happened before she blacked out, but when she did she cautiously glanced around, looking and listening to see if anyone was about, then she pulled off the covers and slipped out of bed…only to discover that she was naked.

“O que o inferno?” she said, pulling herself back under the covers as she tried to think through the situation. She took a minute to wonder, then braved the cold room air and got out of bed, cautiously looking around the room for her clothes. Finding none she went into the bathroom and gladly found a towel that she wrapped around her, then as she saw her reflection in the mirror her hand darted up to her ear, confirmed what her eyes saw, that her jewelry was also gone.

When she walked back out into the room and across into the small kitchen/breakfast nook she did a double take, seeing a man sitting on the bed she’d just left.

“Sleep well?” David asked sarcastically.

“What happened?” she asked, slinking up against the wall and holding the towel tight against her chest. “And where are my clothes?”

“You did volunteer for a strip search,” David pointed out.

“Did you like what you found?” she said, starting to slip back into character.

“Not really,” the Archon said, holding up a small device that caused Milla to blanch. “You can drop the act, I already disabled the homing beacon. It’s just you and me now. Your friend is elsewhere and won’t be joining us.”

Milla’s mind flashed back to the last moments before she was knocked out, and there was a suppressed look of fear on her face as she remembered. “You drugged me?”

“No, that was your boyfriend’s plan. By the way, I can understand why you cheated on him. Not a very attractive fellow.”

“So what happens now?” she asked neutrally, though at the same time she loosened her hold on her towel so it dipped an inch or so.

David tapped his hand on the bed beside him. “Have a seat.”

She eyed him for a moment, then gingerly walked over and sat down next to him, loosely clutching her towel. “I don’t suppose you’re going to give me my clothes back?” she said with a smile.

“Depends on the answers I get.”

Milla sighed. “In that case, I might as well tell you the truth,” she said, pulling off her towel and tossing it on the floor. She scooted back on the bed and leaned back on her outstretched hands. “I’m not shy.”

David smiled back. “And you’re not Brazilian security either.”

“I’m not?” she asked coyly.

“Look,” David said, his tone getting a bit gruff. “We can either do this the easy way, or the fun way. Your choice.”

Milla frowned a bit, but kept the smile on her face. “Not the normal cliché there. What’s the fun way? That sounds interesting.”

David pointed a finger at her and spun it around in a circle. “Roll over, face down.”

“Why didn’t you say so earlier,” she said, sprawling out on the bed chest down and spreading her legs. David pushed them back together and sat down on top of them, straddling her and reaching up to her shoulders as he pinned her to the bed, then began hacking into her nervous system again as he gave her a massage.

“Hmmm, I like the fun way,” she mumbled, her face half buried in the bed covers.

“How’d you mark me?” he asked, running his hands up and down her back.

“You Star Force types stand out,” she said, pretending to enjoy it, though her mind was in panic mode, trying to find a way to maneuver herself out of this jam.

“There were others, in uniform, but you spotted me. How? Did you know I was coming?”

“I was helping with a drop and you happened along. I needed to get you out of there,” she repeated, using the same cover story from before.

David pressed a bit harder, and felt her starting to enjoy the massage. He locked onto that feeling and boosted it as much as his Ikrid skill would allow, slowly bleeding away the panic in her mind, though it was a stair step process. He didn’t have the mental power for a direct override.

“Why was I a problem?”

“Our contact was an independent contract. If anything suspicious was around the drop would be scrapped and he wouldn’t return for another 2 weeks. I had to get you out of there, the information is too important to wait that long.”

“And your boyfriend?”

“Didn’t get a good look at him before I blacked out…how’d you do that, by the way. And I don’t have a boyfriend,” she added sensuously. “Feel up for the job?”

“Today I’m simply your masseuse and interrogator,” he said, leaning down so he could whisper just above her neck. “How’s my technique?”

“You can interrogate me any time,” she said, half meaning it as David continued to loosen her up with small Ikrid adjustments to her current emotions…like diverting a river the direction he wanted by planting stones in the water, and drying up her worry and suspiciousness.

David adjusted his massage again, constantly giving her mind new sensations to work through. He didn’t want her to numb up to him…rather the opposite.

“Where’d you learn that three tap code?”

“It’s old school…something I was taught by an old timer. I’m glad you took the meaning, not all persons would, especially when they’re drunk.”

“I don’t drink alcohol,” David added casually, continuing to delicately adjust her mood.

“I noticed that when we met and your soda fizzed up,” she said with a giggle. “Also typical Star Force.”

“Do I really stand out that much?” David asked, actually wanting an answer. He knew he could only hide his fitness level so much, but he thought he and the others had gotten good at blending in with the crowd.

“Yeah, afraid so,” she said, sighing with a particularly forceful shoulder rub. David could sense the lie, however, and the part of her mind that constructed the falsehood, easy as it was, briefly accessed her memory of the real way she’d identified him and he was quick enough to catch the gist of it.

She’d been told he was coming, and had been given a photo ID in order to find him.

That made him feel better and worse at the same time. He knew his face was probably known to The Word by now, given how many missions he and Green Team had run against them, and he would have been disappointed if they hadn’t been on the lookout for him, but how and when they picked up their arrival was critical in determining if they had a mole, electronic or living, within Star Force, or if they’d been monitoring the BOTS passenger feeds and spotted him when he’d booked passage onboard the starport in orbit.

If that was the case then this was a quick assignment.

“When did you first spot me?”

Again, her mind started constructing the lie almost instantly, but in doing so referenced the truth in order to make sure she avoided it.

“As soon as you got to the bar…you’ve got good hands,” she added, flexing under David’s firm massage. “I waited for a while, hoping you’d move on, but when you didn’t I had to get you out of there in a hurry. When you didn’t take my initial offer I decided to confide in you, though now I wish you did. You certainly know all the right spots to hit.”

David listened to her story, but was focused on piecing together the brief glimpses he got into her memories, for as soon as the lie was constructed they vanished, replaced by the fiction she was espousing…to the point where he could even get imaginary images as her mind constructed them, meaning she was the type of liar that lived the lie inside her head, making any cover story hold up to biological cues.

What had really happened had been a rush job, with her arriving in the lounge area moments before she approached him. That meant The Word hadn’t known he was coming ahead of time, which David found reassuring…as well as impressive, considering the quickness by which they responded.

“By the way, I saved your earrings. Where did you get them? And I’m not married, by the way.”

“I didn’t think…you were,” she said, starting to moan a bit as David continued to amplify her positive emotions. “They were a gift…from a friend,” she said, having trouble concentrating enough to construct a complicated lie. Even as she tried her body kept tugging her mental focus back to the massage, making it hard for her to be devious.

The ‘friend’ she mentioned was the operative that had followed them, and it had in fact been a gift given to her at the same time as she’d been given the assignment, allowing him to track her and David to wherever she took him in the city, hence the ‘lazy’ tail that didn’t require him to stay within visual contact.

David leaned in close to her neck again, after feeling her let go of most of her resistance. “The Word.”

“What…word?” she asked, not really caring to hear the answer.

That surprised David…or rather the lack of recognition within her mind. As far as he could tell she’d never heard the term before.

David leaned back up and kept one of his hands working on her spine, but slipped the other around the side of her body and began tracing a gentle line around the outside of her breast, feeling her libido spike, which he then mentally boosted. He kept it up for a few seconds, then paused his finger, mentally implanting the suggestion that he’d continue when she answered him.

“Who do you work for?”

“Oh god…don’t stop,” she said, half playing, half serious. He made one more trace then held off, waiting for an answer.

“I work freelance,” she said, feeling him just barely start to move his touch again. “Contract work…out of Aerotrop.”

David recognized the name and continued on with his massage, feeling her mind slip so far that she forgot what she’d just said, basking in the sensation.

Aerotrop was a private intelligence network that hired out to various parties. Part of their services were corporate, with another section that hooked up freelance agents with employers, while taking a percentage of their contracts.

“Who did you work for before you went freelance?” he asked, not stopping, but rather slowing his massage this time.

“Brazil…that’s how I knew the tap code,” she said, getting to the point where she was starting to volunteer information. Right now David was her favorite person in the galaxy, and all other considerations had been pushed to the back of her mind, though he knew if he let the massage subside for long, or if he let it get predictable her mind could start to restructure and she could find her nerve again.

But he didn’t think that was going to happen, for the simple reason that she was enjoying this too much. For her sake he almost hated to stop.

“What were the terms of your contract?”

“Snatch…and grab. One time deal.”

“Who was your employer?”

“Brazil,” she said, and he sensed no deception. He probed the open memory while it was there for a heartbeat, and found that she really thought she’d been hired by her former employers for a quick job.

“Now isn’t the fun way better than the easy way?” he said playfully as he slipped his hand off her ribcage and ran it down underneath her body to a more sensitive area.

Milla gagged from the sudden stress, then David latched onto the sensation and amplified it, causing her to orgasm once before he rendered her unconscious again, having got the information he needed out of her.

David stood up on his knees and pulled himself off her and the bed, then he walked into another room and retrieved her clothes from where he’d hid them. He redressed her unconscious form and set her down gently into one of the room’s chairs, slumping her at an angle so her head could rest more or less straight, not wanting to give her a crick in the neck when she eventually woke up.

David left her there, locking the room door on the way out. He stepped across the hall to the room they’d originally tried to take him in and slid in the keycard. The door popped open and he went inside, finding the agent still unconscious and naked where he’d left him over an hour ago.

The Archon took a knee beside him and placed a hand on his head. He was already working his way back to consciousness, so he plunged him back into the depths of the dream world, not intending to try and extract any information from him here. Star Force didn’t interrogate using pain…well, aside from an occasional punch when the person got mouthy. The more ‘traditional’ interrogation methods, being drugs and torture, were something Star Force and the Archons particularly didn’t like, and they came down hard on anyone that did use them.

That said, there were other ways to interrogate, as David had learned over the years. Most of them involved tricks and mind games, though with psionics now in play for the higher ranking Archons that gave them far more options than Star Force security had, including the pleasure option, which was something David had developed on his own, though he knew a few others that used it as well.

Overloading someone with pain was unacceptable, but pleasure…now that was fair game.

He wouldn’t be using that tactic with this guy, obviously, nor he doubted would any of the female Archons, which was a moot point, given that Green Team was all male. Regardless, with this guy being part of The Word, he needed to get him into Star Force custody as soon as possible, else one of his buddies might try to take him out. Very few Word operatives had ever been captured alive, and David wanted to add this one to their collection.

Others would handle his interrogation, and if he got sloppy he might slip up and give them something. If not, they’d at least have taken one more of The Word’s playing pieces off the game board, which was all that David wanted to do at the moment.

He pulled a specialized comm device out of his pocket and flicked it on, selecting the frequency he wanted. “Red Team, copy?”

“Red here,” a voice said that wasn’t Drake’s, and David couldn’t quite make out which of the 10 members it was.

“I’ve bagged a Word operative. We need him quietly evaced into Star Force custody. Green Team will get him to you, just tell us where and when.”

“Give us half an hour to arrange something. Can you hold onto him that long?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll be in touch.”

David switched frequencies and contacted the other members of Green Team, of which only 4 had yet arrived, given that they’d taken different flights to get to the city. Like him they didn’t have earpiece comms, so he waited several seconds before one of them responded.

“What’s up?” Devin-841 replied.

“The Word knows we’re here. One of them tried to pick me up and I got the drop on him. We’re handing him over to Red Team for evac, hopefully in an hour or so. I’m going to need some help moving him.”

“Where are you?” Assad asked, joining the conversation.

“Hotel room just off the promenade. Meritol Suites, I think, or something close to that.”

“You said ‘him?’”

“The girl was a contract job, last minute. They didn’t have much heads up I’d arrived so they improvised. I let her go, or will, once she wakes up. The operative has been deprived of his kill pill and we need to make sure none of the others get to him before we get him out of the city, so start planning. I’m stuck babysitting for the moment.”

“I saw something earlier I think we can use,” Devin commented. “I’ll get back to you in a few.”

“I’ll be nearby, within Ikrid range, if you need to call for backup,” Assad promised. “Which room are you in?”

“Hold on,” he said, walking over to the door and pulling it open so he could look at the outside tag. He closed it before speaking again, even though no one was in the hall, save for one individual at the far end waiting on an elevator. “332.”

“Copy,” Assad said before cutting out. The other two members of Green Team hadn’t responded yet, but even after David shut off the comm the others would have a message light on their devices indicating who’d tried to make contact so they could check in when the situation allowed them to. For security sake no messages were recorded, in case the device was lost or fell into the wrong hands.

“You know, I really don’t feel like staring at your hairy butt,” David said, glancing down at the nude operative and remembering he’d left his clothes on the other side in the same stash he’d placed Milla’s and his satchel…if that even was her name.

“Stay put,” he told the unconscious man, then headed across the hall to retrieve his hidden bundle.

4

May 11, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Tyr

Nathan?

No go, the Archon answered back telepathically from his position in the hallway just outside the doors. They’ve got a camera here too.

Lio?

It’d be noisy, but we’ve got a window in three minutes.

We need silent, David reminded them. Anyone else?

Sorry boss, Jet-612 said, communicating through their telepathic chain, with each of them simultaneously functioning as a relay using their Ensek abilities, which also allowed them to monitor what they were passing along, making for an open comm channel between the 6 men that The Word couldn’t pick up on. Already in. Had to go dark for a moment.

David frowned, holding position in a maintenance crawlspace alongside the dead zone they were attempting to penetrate. How’d you manage that?

Went in with the crates. Somebody stacked them crooked and left a gap, so I went for it. Didn’t have time to ask permission.

Any ruckus?

No, I think I’m in clean. The cameras were out of view too. Nearly got mashed by a lifter though.

Where are you now? David asked, rethinking their strategy.

Intake warehouse by the looks of it. There are mountains of crates here, and a very busy army of ants working them over…one of whom just lost his keycard. I’m heading to position 6. If you want in, get your asses over there.

Move, David said, sending out the telepathic message and having it ‘bounce’ from one member to another, though in actuality it was being retransmitted in a mental ‘reflection,’ with the distance of transmission limited to the individual’s Ikrid range. All of Green Team had trained hard to extend that range, as well as other skills useful to their line of work, so David had a fairly wide telepathic net to work with, even with 4 of Green Team off on other assignments.

That said, the ‘dead zone’ was extensive, far wider than they had the ability to communicate, so they were focusing their infiltration efforts on what they thought was the most vulnerable side of the ghost complex.

One of the first things Green Team had done once they’d arrived in the city was start digging into computer records using equipment that Red Team had smuggled in from the moon’s exterior. Their team had arrived the same way, while David’s had come the civilian route. The Word had obviously detected David’s arrival, but hopefully Red Team, and maybe some other members of Green Team, had gone unnoticed.

Once they all got in, they literally vanished into the city, with no further attempted grabs by The Word, though whether they were trying or not was another matter. David had slept only 4 hours since he’d gotten to Tyr, having been busy nonstop with low level activities that did little to drain his energy compared to his normal training, allowing him to keep awake and active far longer than normal, though given they didn’t know how long they’d be on site, he chose to grab a few hours of rest to keep himself from dropping into even light fatigue.

Green Team kept on the move, bouncing from location to location where they couldn’t be put under surveillance. Thanks to the Star Force contract teams that had built most of the city, they had access to detailed blueprints, allowing them to navigate through areas unknown to the public, as well as being able to access locked doors that were likewise built by Star Force, using dedicated lock picks specifically designed for the familiar technology.

Doing so had kept them more or less off the grid, though when they passed through public areas there was always the chance of them being picked up by some form of surveillance, but thus far either their opposition had been unable to keep track of them, or they were laying low and playing another angle. Assad was currently monitoring the city’s data flows, having found a nice little niche to hack in from, and would keep David abreast of any changes in activity via comm if necessary, though thus far there’d only been a flicker since their arrival.

That flicker had been in regards to exports, which ticked up by an average of 6-10% across a wide variety of categories. That told David that The Word knew they were here and that they needed to start moving their operations out, hidden in the commerce flow. Problem was, there was such a large volume of cargo coming in and out of the city that it’d be almost impossible to spot unless they put a total lockdown on orbital traffic and started sorting through crate after crate by hand.

The lockdown was an option, given the Star Force fleet in the system, but they didn’t have the manpower to sort through even a tenth of the cargo, not to mention the delay getting through it all would give The Word the opportunity to relocate it before it could be found.

So Green Team was keeping quiet, as was Red Team, who was off bagging key personnel in the Brazilian hierarchy on Tyr and sorting out which ones were operatives and which ones were legit. Their mission was to reclaim the colony. Green Team’s was to ferret out any Word activity.

Which brought them to the dead zone. Another benefit of having the city’s schematics was they were able to compare them to the public ones and see where the maps didn’t match up. As expected, there were regions that were mislabeled or just plain left off the public map, that David had no doubts contained Word facilities. The complex Jet had just worked his way into was the largest by far, with several smaller ones spaced around the city, which the other three members of Green Team were investigating simultaneously in case one of them alerted The Word to their presence.

Hopefully they still thought their secret areas were unknown to them, but David had long since abandoned any ideas about The Word being stupid.

He crawled back through the maintenance area until he got to a junction that led him off through a level that ran underneath the dead zone, meeting up with Seraph-822 outside what looked like a small blast door that had a keycard lock that wasn’t of Star Force make. Devin, Lio, and Nathan arrived a few minutes later, having had to traverse a longer distance to get down to point 6 out of some 18 potential entry points Green Team had scouted previously.

30 seconds after the last of them arrived Jet made telepathic contact from the other side, then the door eased open, showing itself to be some 8-10 inches thick.

All clear, he said telepathically, knowing it was pointless to talk aloud when they had the means for silent communication, despite being only feet apart.

Jet backtracked and led the 6 man squad inside. David came in last and closed the door behind them, waiting the few seconds it took then jogging off after the others, who split up and went in separate directions once they got to the main floor that Jet had entered from.

David stayed in the ring of service areas and tried to work his way around the perimeter through a network of maintenance hallways, but quickly ran into a dead end. He back tracked and worked his way out to the main floor, getting quick telepathic reports from the others when they spotted a guard or camera, both of which appeared only to be located near the main entrances.

That held with the overall feel of the place, which told David that security was designed to keep people out, not monitor those inside.

The crate stacks offered considerable cover, so David crossed to the nearest one and jumped up onto the lowest tier, working his way around and keeping off the floor as he spotted the nearest people in mind’s eye and worked his way up towards the top, eventually finding an eagle’s nest to visually search from.

The area was busy, very busy, but most of the traffic involved moving crates off the floor, with a lesser amount coming in at regular intervals. David followed the flows and saw they were leading to a series of exits on the far side, but rather than being mounted on movers they were individually being loaded onto conveyor belts and disappearing, one by one, through the walls.

David knew that was where they needed to go, and already the others were working their way there. He knew they’d find a way in if there was one, so he stayed behind and dropped down a couple of tiers on his crate stack and picked one of the more concealed containers to inspect. They all had basic locks on them, the kind that responded to chip tactile identification to release the latch that held the top of the crates closed.

David didn’t have the key to open it, so he did the next best thing and wrapped his hand around the tiny device, pulling it up above the level of the crate as it pivoted on the loop ring that held the latch down, and closed his eyes.

Using his Rensiek ability he began increasing his body’s production of heat and channeling it down into his hand. He released it into the lock, using his palm and wrapped fingers to concentrate and contain most of the heat, not allowing it to bleed off into the air as he poured more and more into the device. The metal he wasn’t going to melt, for his skill wasn’t that advanced…yet, but the adhesives bonding together the casing of the lock were another story, and within a couple of minutes he felt the entire assembly shift in his palm as they melted apart.

Focusing so not to burn himself, he kept his thermal barriers up on his fingers and picked the halves apart, exposing the inner workings of the lock, which he then realigned to release the fishhook loop from the casing. He ran through the eyelet on the crate and tossed it aside, using his Lachka to cushion its fall so it didn’t make much of a sound, then he stepped aside and pulled up the top of the crate to see what was inside.

More crates, small ones numbering 8x8 and probably just as many deep. He pulled out one of the synthetic boxes, as opposed to the large metallic ones he was standing on, and opened it up…finding white powder inside.

He tasted it, wrinkling his nose as he swallowed a smidge of the flour.

At least some of the crates contain ingredients for foodstuff production, he told the others, who were now well ahead of him.

Question is, what are they baking? Nathan commented.

Or building, Jet added. Mine have industrial parts. Nothing I can identify. It’s all small stuff.

Anyone see a way through yet? David asked.

Look up, Devin prompted.

David frowned and angled his head upwards, then he saw the catwalks running the length of the ceiling, but they were too high for him to jump to from his stack, even if he went all the way to the top.

There’s a ladder on the north side, Devin continued, but we’ll have to take out a few eyes to get there.

Any other options?

Hide in a crate, Nathan said, and David wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.

Southeast side, Lio suggested, there’s a ladder almost close enough to jump to. We can bypass by the floor.

Define almost, Nathan asked.

I’m not close enough to measure, he said, and David could feel his mind moving in that direction. He could feel all of the minds in the area, almost all of them in the chamber, but his teams’ stood out, not only because of his familiarity with them, but because they were operating on a higher level and therefore had a stronger signature that ‘felt’ different. He couldn’t access any of them given the Ikrid blocks the V’kit’no’sat had placed, but they still reflected his Ikrid energy, giving him some information that didn’t require hacking into them.

Try it, David prompted. Everyone else, keep looking.

And they did, for nearly 10 minutes as Green Team skulked their way from one crate stack to another, avoiding the 400+ workers along the branch-like routes they were traveling up and down as they pulled crates out of stacks and transferred them over to the exit conveyors, as well as stacking up the lesser amount of new ones in the correct locations as determined by their contents.

Eventually David sensed Lio’s mind rise in altitude, then he got a quick confirmation blip that wasn’t a word, but rather one of their set of telepathic ‘hand’ signals.

Looks like that’s our way in, David told everyone as he started heading towards the ladder.

Meanwhile Lio scouted ahead over to the far side, cutting through the wall that had open access points for the catwalk to pass through. They were connected in a large grid that covered multiple rooms, allowing access to what had previously been crane tracks on the ceiling, though their mechanisms had all been removed. In fact, the walls separating the chambers looked to have been of different construction than the structural elements, making him wonder why they left the catwalks up at all.

He got his answer a minute later when a lone contact showed up on his mental radar, slowly walking through the adjacent chamber. Lio made his way around the square that he was looking down on and over to the most likely entry point the person was coming through, noticing the workshop below that had 2 dozen grease monkeys disassembling the parts coming in from the warehouse side and reassembling them into new formations.

Splitting his attention between the work and the approaching mind, he noticed that they were pulling specific components out of the parts, though he couldn’t see for sure what they were…and to be honest, even if he was down on the floor he might not be able to identify them. Mechanics wasn’t his area of expertise, and the stuff the workers were manhandling didn’t match any of the standard parts he was familiar with.

Lio turned the corner of the square and slowed his walk to keep his steps as quiet as possible, which was difficult on the metallic grating. Fortunately it was fairly firm and didn’t give with his steps, but there was still an audible ‘thunk’ every time he stepped down no matter how soft his steps were.

The Archon got up to the hole in the wall that held a spur of the catwalk just as the person came through. Lio timed it well, plastering himself up against the side wall and getting the drop on the man from the side with a hand going straight to his throat.

Lio held him aloft for several seconds as he squirmed in place, then he dropped unconscious, but not from lack of air. The weapon he was carrying slipped from his grasp and fell towards the catwalk, and Lio reached out for it with his mind, using his Lachka to lift it up…but it was too large for him, which he knew before he even tried, so he slowed it as much as he could with it hitting butt first with an audible clang.

He managed to hold the barrel upright long enough to get his hand on it as his eyes went straight to the work floor below…but the people down there were making far more noise and thankfully didn’t notice the stray sound.

Lio watched them for several seconds, wanting to make sure he hadn’t been seen. The catwalk didn’t offer any concealment, save for the shadows that the suspended drop lights didn’t reach up to.

The Archon laid the unconscious man out on his back, looking him over. He was dressed in a Brazilian security uniform…not their intelligence division, but the regular guard detail that was visible all around the city. Lio had no way of knowing if this guy thought he was doing his job or whether he was part of The Word’s hoard of operatives and accomplices, but the fact that they had someone patrolling the catwalks, and armed, meant this area was more vital than a traditional industrial wing should have been.

As Lio sorted through the man’s pockets he gave the other members of Green Team a quick recap of what he’d seen so far, then he took the man’s rifle and examined it, seeing quickly that it wasn’t the standard Brazilian plasma rifle. Rather, it was one of the knockoffs that The Word made.

That made Lio cringe. Why bother dressing up as security if you’re not going to use the right weapons? It was a dead giveaway to anyone who had the proper experience that this guy wasn’t on the up and up…or was he just put here after The Word realized they’d breached the city?

Devin sent a small recognition ‘hand’ signal as he approached on the catwalk behind Lio, then stooped down next to him.

Remember this? Lio asked, passing him the rifle as he continued to sort through the guard’s pockets, pulling out several personal items along with a radio-like comm unit.

The Archon cringed again, seeing the man already possessed an earpiece. Why have two sets of comms, especially one as beefy as the hand-sized unit Lio now held?

Devin set the rifle down and walked past Lio, taking up point as Jet came up behind them with the others not far behind. Lio stayed put, finishing his search of the man’s clothing and trying to puzzle out what was going on. He glanced over the side, seeing the workers keeping up their busy pace, wondering just what all this was about and who in here was friend or foe.

Before he could make any guesses he got a telepathic warning from Devin and shot up to his feet, pulling out his own weapon while leaving the guard’s on the catwalk as he stepped over him, heading around the corner and into the next room.

5

David came up the ladder last, getting to the catwalk just as Devin’s warning was sent out. No visuals or other information came with it, so the Archons were moving forward towards his position not knowing what to expect. They were all armed with two weapons…one a stun gun, which David now had in hand, and a stinger with a couple clips of extra ammo in a belt strapped underneath the loose civilian shirt he wore.

None of the Archons were wearing armor, given that this was a sneaking mission and they needed to be able to blend in with the populace to get to and from the area in question, which made every warning a bit more tense. They couldn’t take a random hit and shrug it off, so they had to be extra careful with their movements.

In the past that would have been a greater problem, but with their ability to spot minds around blind corners the threat was lessened…unless there were automated defenses or other non-living opponents to deal with.

When David caught up with the other five he stepped over the downed guard, but could tell that wasn’t the threat they were worried about, for he got a ‘hold’ signal as soon as he started to step over the man and turn the corner into the walkway through the wall.

David crouched down and held still, then got a brief telepathic glimpse from Nathan of the room below…followed by a questionable tactic suggestion. Sensing their window of opportunity closing he sent a return gesture, indicating he agreed and that the others should stand by in their shooter positions as he tucked his stun gun into its holster and backed up against the railing as he rolled the downed guard to the side with his foot.

Here goes, he told the others just before he pushed off the railing and accelerated up into a run as he passed through the short catwalk connection. He couldn’t build up too much speed over the handful of meters, but he gained enough momentum to carry him up and over the railing in the next room as he jumped out into the air and fell down into the very deep room.

Halfway down he turned himself into a Fornax transmitter, producing as large a disruption field as he could, knowing it wouldn’t extend up to the rest of his team. Between holding that effort and bracing himself for a hard fall his focus was consumed, with him barely noticing the guards below that were packaging sedated Humans into canisters, ostensibly to be transported off the moon.

David had jumped from this height before in training, but there had always been at least a thin mat at the base. This time there was a hard, concrete floor and he put as much resistance into his legs as he could without locking them…but his momentum was too great and he had to spill part of it to the side, collapsing on his right leg and rolling out of the jackhammer deceleration on his body.

He rolled into one of the guards, who was leaning against a table to remain standing against the Fornax David was still transmitting. As he opened his eyes, struggling to get to his feet on jarred legs while maintaining the Fornax, he heard small puffs all around him, with the resulting paint splatters knocking the guards down as they were unable to return fire.

David pushed the guard next to him away, then pulled out his stun gun and was about to shoot him when a green paintball splashed against his skull and delivered the necessary stun energy to drop him to the floor unconscious.

With the Fornax effort buzzing in his head, David heard Lio’s ‘all clear’ signal and released the effort, catching his psionic breath and panning the area with his stun gun held ready. The others had used their stingers because the height of the room would have made the stun guns inaccurate and diffuse, but in the close confines David found himself in it would work just fine if there was still a live one wandering around the stacks of canisters and medical beds that offered a lot of cover.

From his point of view David saw a connecting hallway on ground level and made his way over to it at a quick run, dodging the various pieces of equipment and forcing himself to ignore the people held inside some of them as he started to feel minds ahead. He held close to the left side of the hall and crept to a halt just before the exit, seeing a conveyor system carrying more of the canisters up and into the wall off to who knows where.

David sent off the ‘get over here’ telepathic signal and ran out into the open, targeting the nearest guard with his stun gun and blowing past him on the run to get to the workers loading another canister onto the conveyor. He shot three of them, then sent a Fornax blast towards another guard that appeared at range. The Archon swapped weapons and shot him as he twitched on the floor, all the while running towards the conveyor and jumping onboard.

He ran up and over the first canister, hurrying towards another on the belt that was almost to the hole in the wall. David tucked his stinger into his belt and jumped forward, landing on top of the canister and grabbing hold, then swinging his legs around to the front and planting his feet against the wall as they came to it.

Using his Archon trained muscles he pushed the canister back and to the side, tipping it over the edge and dropping it three meters to the ground. The conveyor dug into David’s right shoulder as he held himself in place with his feet, then he clawed his way up into a crawl and ran forward a few steps to get to the other canister early and dump it over the side as well.

With me, David told Nathan as he came into view, then mentally directed the others to the pair of canisters on the ground as he ducked into the tunnel the conveyor was pulling through.

Nathan jumped up onto the belt and ran forward, catching up a lot before ducking down and entering the narrow tunnel, letting the conveyor carry him forward. He got a warning from David just before he saw the other Archon leap off the belt on the far side, followed by the faint sounds of stinger whiffs.

Nathan rolled off the conveyor on the opposite side from David, going after a pair of guards on that side that were moving away after his fellow Archon. He tagged both with his stinger, then started peppering the workers in the loading bay as they scattered. Both he and David ran around the large room, ducking in and out of crates and hunting down everyone inside, then they circled back around to the open crates, seeing that there were more Human cargo canisters being stacked inside.

“What the hell are they doing?” Nathan asked aloud as he jumped over a lateral canister and continued on a jerky patrol around the room, knowing that there were connected chambers that had more personnel in them, possibly guards.

“We’ll ask them later,” David said, pulling out his comm. “Red Team, copy?”

“Red Team here.”

“We’ve got a mess we need your help with. The Word is smuggling people out of the city as unconscious cargo. We’ve stopped their packing operation, but we’re pinned down guarding them. We need more hands to secure the area, and they do have armed guards deployed. Come in armor,” he said, tagging the locator beacon set inside the comm device.

“On our way.”

“Stay here,” David told Nathan before he ran off towards one of the cargo exits large enough to accommodate heavy equipment to move the crates. When he got to the large doorway a flurry of minds started popping up on his mental radar and he slowed his approach, tucking in along the wall as a wild plasma blast shot by over his head.

David backed up and tucked in behind the edge of the wall and held position, feeling some of the minds coming closer while the others scurried around elsewhere. He poked his head out briefly, getting a split second view of what was ahead, then ducked back behind cover as several more plasma squeals were heard, with the blue lances shooting through the gap, one of which hit a crate midway into the loading dock.

What David had seen through the doorway was the primary loading dock, which apparently serviced the entire illicit complex. On the deck was a pair of dropships, both Falcon-class purchases from Star Force and painted in Brazilian green and gold. He’d also seen the rooftop hatch that would give them access to the surface, but he knew from the city schematics that the shaft led up through several other industrial levels that were on the local map, disguising the traffic flow by mixing it in with legitimate commerce.

That also meant this was the end of the line, and once loaded onboard the cargo was as good as gone, transferred to other locations on Tyr or off the moon entirely. Star Force could track the dropships, and any ships they loaded onto, but David knew The Word’s typical procedure was to move, then remove their contraband, making the transfers where no one could see.

David growled, and not just at the guards coming his way. He was really missing his armor right now.

Nathan, make like a sniper.

On it, the Archon said, leaping across the gap between crates and crawling up on top of a pair, laying flat on his belly with his stinger pistol held out in front of him. He didn’t like that position, but he wanted to expose as little of his profile as possible, knowing that David was about to become the primary target.

With that in mind, he shunted his vision over to David specifically, not extending telepathic links to the other Green Team members, and allowing his team leader to ‘see’ through his eyes as he held his fire, although he had open shots on several of them, but at a range that he couldn’t be sure to hit with a pistol.

Nathan waited until the approaching guards, some four up front, neared the door, then he released his telepathic link to David and squeezed off a pair of shots, only one of which hit. As that guard stumbled, his leg now numb and unresponsive, David popped into their view and took the other three down with a Fornax field as he peppered them with stingers…only to duck back into cover as a series of plasma streaks shot through the huge archway from positions that Nathan couldn’t see.

After that no more guards advanced, but Nathan could see several repositioning in the distance to establish a perimeter where they could fire on the entrance.

Stay put, Nathan warned. They’re setting up for a turkey shoot.

“Damn it,” David swore, tucked up against the inside wall. He knew Red Team couldn’t get here in time, and if The Word had any sense they’d load up the dropships and get what they could out of here.

Status report, David demanded telepathically, linking 5 mental searchlights on each of his team members’ minds then sending out copies of the message to each simultaneously. If he transmitted in the open, every mind within range, including the enemy, would ‘hear’ him.

Picked up another guard, Jet replied, you in a firefight?

Sort of, David replied, sneaking another peak around the corner and drawing more than half a dozen plasma shots coming his way. There’s a hangar that they’re keeping us out of, and short of growing a set of armor we’re not getting in.

Want us to find a back door? Lio asked.

Somebody stay with the bodies. I don’t want them spirited off when we’re not looking. Other than that, cause what trouble you can, but conserve ammo.

Seraph, Lio said, running off to a side exit from the Human packing room they’d stayed behind in. It was the only personnel exit, and led into a nearby chamber on the opposite side that Seraph was keeping his eye on, and it was also the direction the roaming guard had come from.

Seraph popped up onto his feet a moment before Lio got to him and they ran through the short connecting hallway together, making a left turn and coming out into another noisy chamber with a hoard of workers loading baking ingredients into automated foodstuff production units. Seraph pointed left while he went right and the two Archons split up, taking advantage of the work floor din.

Lio worked his way around several crates the workers were getting the ingredients from and came up behind one carrying a box of flour, saving a stinger round via Vulcan neck pinch. The woman dropped the box, drawing the attention of two others that he disabled with a pair of Fornax blasts, upon which he added his sleep touch.

By that time Seraph had already been discovered and a wave of recognition ran throughout the workers, prompting Lio to pull out his stun gun and fire it at a cluster of them. The single shot spread out as the pink energy was notorious for and hit five of them, dropping them all to the ground, though a couple didn’t completely fall unconscious, merely with numb limbs. Lio didn’t worry about them, but worked his way around his half of yet another large room, taking out the personnel and looking for more guards, only one of which materialized…and Seraph got to him first with a pair of green splats to the side of his face and arm.

Lio worked his way around the various pieces of equipment, watching where the workers fled and following them out into another chamber. This one led to a personnel service area and another of the entrances into the secure area that they’d considered breaching, then passed on for it being too obvious. Seraph trailed behind him, grabbing and knocking several other workers unconscious.

Lio pushed through the crowd, not bothering to waste ammo or time on them as they bunched up fleeing out the security door that had taken them too long to open. The Archon made his way through them to the door on the other side that led into a different chamber, hoping to find a way round through that complex and into the loading bay.

With Devin holding guard over the unconscious Human cargo, Jet found a slow way to climb back up to the catwalks and scrambled his way over to the mechanics bay and cut across two more chambers, not bothering to stop and gawk at what was inside. He ran, unworried about making noise, and came to a dead end close to where the loading hangar was.

From there he jumped over the side, clinging to the railing for a moment to lower himself down a bit, then dropped and slid off a piece of machinery down to the floor of a toy factory. From there he found his way into another loading bay and hopped up a conveyor, shooting a guard in the back with a stinger as he passed through to the other side.

He came out into a loading dock similar to the one David and Nathan were pinned down in, but most of the security guards had moved off to deal with them, leaving only a pair for Jet to get the drop on. One he hit with a straight line stinger shot, the other he had to incapacitate with a Fornax blast before jumping out of cover and running over to the man after he’d dropped his weapon, delivering a sleep touch and taking the man’s plasma rifle as he ran over to the large doorway leading into the hangar.

He was too far away to telepathically link with the others, so he flipped on his comm as he took cover, with the workers he hadn’t taken down scurrying off towards the corners to stay out of his way.

“In flanking position,” he reported.

“Stay put,” David ordered. “They’ve got too many guns on the deck. We count at least 30.”

“What’s the play?”

“Ah…don’t get shot.”

“Brilliant strategy,” Jet said sarcastically.

“Are you within Fornax range?”

Jet stretched out his mind, sensing the position of the nearest guards to him on the other side of the doorway.

“Negative.”

“Then we wait for them to come to us. Pick out a nice ambush spot and go camper.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then Red Team will kick their ass when they get here.”

“How are they getting here, we shut the door didn’t we?”

“I didn’t specify and they didn’t ask,” David said, realizing that could be a problem, except for the fact that they wouldn’t be coming in quiet like and could blow any doors they couldn’t get through, though that would take time. “They’re following my beacon.”

“While we’re waiting,” Jet said, repositioning away from the door and moving over to a corner where he felt two people were hiding. “Any idea what The Word is doing making toys?” he asked before gripping the comm in his teeth.

Jet disabled the pair with a Fornax field before he even came into view, then he stepped in and grabbed each of the worker’s necks, rendering them unconscious as David answered.

“What kind of toys?”

Jet pulled it out of his mouth, camping in the quiet corner while focusing his mental radar to pick up any minds around him, several of which were popping up on the other side of the wall, but they couldn’t get to him, nor him to them. “Action figures and other small stuff. Didn’t get a good look.”

“We’ll find out later,” David said as the whine of mechanics drifted in from the loading hangar.

“Somebody leaving?” Jet asked.

“Two Falcons on deck and the roof is opening…and we can’t do anything to stop it. Stay put and grab what we can.”

“Copy that,” Jet said, wandering out from his lair a bit, about to get a jump on another hiding worker, with many more to follow as he cleaned up the area, keeping keen attention on the hangar for when the guards decided to move back his way.

6

“Who are they?” Derrick-633 asked, standing over David’s shoulder in his silver armor as he pried the casing off another of the transfer tubes that contained a small carbon dioxide/oxygen recycler unit, just powerful enough to keep a sedated individual alive during transit, but not nearly powerful enough to sustain a waking Human.

“Some of them are the Brazilian assault force,” David said, pulling the casing aside to reveal a man dressed in plain civilian clothes hooked up to what was now a standard IV unit. He and the other members of Green Team had already opened dozens of the canisters, as well as attending to the unconscious ‘packages’ that had yet to be closed up. “But some don’t match the IDs we were given.”

David placed the end of a small cylinder against the man’s arm, a piece of equipment that Red Team had brought in with their second wave after the first four Archons they’d sent had made short work of the guards and incapacitated what workers hadn’t fled off into the rest of the city. Two more Red Team members showed up later, bringing with them equipment and ammo from their makeshift armory that they’d set up elsewhere in the city.

Nathan had gone back to don his own armor and grab David’s for him while the rest of the 6 Green Team Archons stayed on site as they sorted through The Word’s leftovers, with their primary emphasis on the unconscious Human cargo they’d recovered. The other members of Green Team, finishing up their own reconnaissance of other dark zones in the architecture, were heading back to get armored up and were bringing the others theirs, now that there was little point in trying to hide their presence in the city, given the hundreds of fleeing workers running off to tell all of the Archon incursion.

The cylinder in David’s hand analyzed the man’s genetic code, flashing up a negative match symbol, meaning this individual wasn’t on the list of missing soldiers the Brazilians had given them. Matching it up against Star Force’s own database would have to wait, for the small device couldn’t hold that much data.

David pulled the needle out of the man’s arm and detached the primitive sedative injection package that was tied onto his flesh with tape. He put his hand on the man’s head, trying to wake him up as he had the others, but with the same results. The man wasn’t just asleep, but his consciousness was being chemically suppressed, meaning his body would have to flush out the drugs before he’d wake up.

“Deep coma?” Derrick asked.

“Very,” David said, examining the man for any other oddities before reaching down and looping his arm around the body and pulling it out of the tube. Derrick stepped in and grabbed an arm, leveraging the heavy guy out and over to a section of floor where three others were laid out perfectly still. More were in the packaging room on the other side of the now deactivated conveyor belt shunts coming through the wall.

“Looks like we need to commandeer the Brazilian medical corps next?”

“If you could snag a few, it’d help, but we have to make sure these people don’t disappear again.”

“We’re not outfitted for this,” Derrick reminded him. “And the longer we’re babysitting the more opportunity the enemy has to be mischievous.”

David lightly gnawed on a fingernail as he thought ahead. “Call Glasir. Get them to send dropships straight down here. We’ll offload these people and…trinkets. Green Team will hold this position, Red Team can press on without having to worry about babysitting.”

“We’ll need to disable Tyr security to get the dropships in,” Derrick reminded him.

“Is that a problem?” David said, raising an eyebrow.

“Might be, but we’ll get it done,” the Archon promised, walking off as he contacted his team leader on his suit comm and began making arrangements.

4 hours later…

David jumped behind a crate, skidding to a halt on his knee as three plasma blasts impacted the metal on the other side, melting little divots in the casing with loud ‘pings.’ He held there for a moment, then reached out with his mind to sense the location of the Brazilian security guards as some six of them carefully walked forward, alternating hops from cover to cover, as they closed in on him in an offshoot of the warehouse that he’d fled into while trying to distract a group of the troops away from the hangar loading bay on the other side of the illicit complex.

Security had come down on them half an hour ago, with the Archons holding off the first batch easily, but then the Brazilians had flooded reinforcements in battle armor in, equipped with half shields that made tagging them with stingers extra difficult. Their armor also bled off some of the stun energy, but they were still able to take them down with a couple of shots, as they weren’t yet sure if these were Word operatives or actual loyal Brazilians coopted into fighting a battle they knew nothing about.

Miss me? Nathan’s voice entered David’s head.

David frowned, frustrated but otherwise relieved. What took so long?

Big city, the Archon complained, and carrying your stash through the main hallways isn’t a good idea.

Hurry up, I’m pinned down.

I see them, hold on.

David didn’t have that option, for one of the guards was about to work his way into view on the left. The Archon flicked on his Pefbar, or third eye, and was suddenly able to see around the corner, as well as through the crate and floor. He saw the armored guard pressing forward, holding a stubby plasma rifle of Brazilian make up against the shield he held across his torso, resting the barrel against the rim to help him aim.

David knew he was going to pivot around the edge of the crate and light him up, and the Archon didn’t have a good place to fall back to, so he did the next best thing and smashed his back up against the crate and pointed his stinger, now with only three shots remaining, at the gap the Brazilian was about to come out of.

As he aimed he got a feel for the plasma rifle in his mind and started to form a ring of constriction around the end of the barrel, so when the guard came around the corner, pointing shield and weapon in his direction even before he saw David, the Archon used his Lachka and pulled the plasma rifle’s barrel askew, forcing the guard’s first plasma lance three meters wide of his position.

David held onto the barrel telekinetically, but knew the guard had enough muscle to overpower his grip. Lachka, unlike most scifi movies attested, was very low powered, used more for delicate manipulations than brute force, but in this case it was enough to get the first and second shots to go wide, long enough for two stingers to ping the guard’s helmet and render him unconscious.

He dropped both weapon and shield as he fell to the floor, and David grasped the shield with as much force as he could and telekinetically yanked…

The shield jerked and moved his way a few inches.

David repeated the process again and again, until the leading edge of the shield passed behind the cover of the crate. The Archon reached down to grab it with his left hand just as he felt another guard coming up, about to step on it.

David yanked it up just in time, curling into a ball and emitting a reflexive Fornax field, toppling the second and third guard who couldn’t remain standing against the neural disruption. As the closest guard half fell onto him, David pushed up with the shield and knocked him over, making sure he didn’t step out of cover as he did so.

Coming up for a mental breath, he had to release the Fornax, then spun around and used his last stinger on the guard’s chest.

Duck, Nathan’s telepathic voice ordered.

David trusted him and dropped down onto his heels, hiding behind as much of the shield as he could squeeze his body in line with as the third guard staggered back to his feet and raised his weapon…only to get splattered with green paint from above as a fully armored Nathan jumped down next to David from a higher crate, dropping an armor bundle next to him.

Seeing Nathan’s silver legs walking forward as he began peppering the nearby guards and drawing their attention away from his fellow Archon, David dropped his empty stinger and shield, mentally keeping an eye on the others’ locations as he began tearing into the armor pack and undoing the built in latches.

He pulled the helmet out first and donned it, then unraveled the rest of the 1-piece suit and stepped into the broken boots with the rest of the splayed apparatus connected to them by a back piece. Reaching down he began retracting the components around his feet and legs, locking them in place as he worked his way up his body, pulling all the loose pieces in and forming the armor around him manually, finishing by popping his helmet up a few inches and securing his collar, then bringing it back down and clicking the airtight seals in place.

He stuck his tongue out and tagged an interior helmet switch, turning on the power unit and bringing up his HUD, battlemap, and shields.

“Finally,” he said to himself, feeling the reassuring drag on his body as he reached down and grabbed the Brazilian shield and one of their plasma rifles.

Catch, Nathan said, pulling an extra rifle off his back rack and tossing it high over the crates back his way.

David reached out with his Lachka and directed it towards him so that it fell directly into his hands as he stepped around the crate, leaving the plasma rifle behind. Ducking behind his shield he charged forward, heading towards more of the reinforcements that continued to flood into the warehouse even as Nathan was mowing them down on his left.

Going right, David began firing his own stinger rifle, full of ammo, and rammed into a knot of three of them, not caring that he took a couple of plasma hits to his armor, one of which splashed on his chest shield. He emitted a Fornax field and knocked the surrounding 8 down, peppering their blue armor with green splats and kicking aside their weapons.

“1st dropship is away,” David heard over the comm, tagged as coming from Drake, Red Team’s leader.

“Good,” David said to the emptiness of his helmet as he gratifyingly worked his way through the otherwise competent Brazilian security forces…but they were no match for either the Archons or their stun energy, which bled straight through the Brazilians’ armor, leaving their half shields as their only real defense.

Between the two of them, David and Nathan worked their way through more than 50 Brazilian guards before they ran out of targets in the warehouse, then they ducked into the conveyor belt chutes and walked through into the ‘toy’ factory, coming across another pair before working their way out into the hangar bay.

They saw another dropship, Eagle-class, lifting up off the deck and maneuvering into the vertical shaft that would lead to the airless moon’s surface as soon as they entered, then they picked their way across a landscape of bodies where the other Archons had fought an even larger group of guards. David had pulled reinforcements away from this bunch…or was it that bunch? He wasn’t sure, seeing another group to the side. No, make that three…there were unconscious Brazilians everywhere.

“Status report,” David asked over Green Team’s comm.

“Lio got winged,” Assad answered. “The rest of us are fine.”

“Define ‘winged?’”

“Three shots on the right elbow pit,” Lio answered, and David could detect a bit of pain in his voice. He glanced down at his own armor, seeing the hexagonal flex armor over that portion of his own arm. Each of the tiny plates were solid armor, like the rest of the suit, but they had stretchable material in between them on all the joints, allowing the flexibility the Archons demanded. The gaps in the cover were likewise unacceptable, which was why the armor was layered, with one section of gaps hovering over lower plates, making every inch of their bodies fully protected against plasma and projectiles.

That said, the hexagonal patches were less protected than the thicker portions where they could put down extra mass without it affecting their flexibility. Additionally, the patchwork of weak energy shields over the armor was on the hard points only, meaning the flexible portions weren’t covered. That said, taking a shot to the joints was rare, but it happened. Taking three to the same spot was virtually unheard of.

“Penetration?” David asked, not sure that 3 plasma blasts would be enough to get through.

“No, I just got burnt. There’s still an intact layer left.”

David looked around the huge hangar as he talked, seeing another pair of dropships being loaded up with both bodies and cargo they’d taken from the facility. He wished they’d be able to go over it all with an investigation team, but as soon as the dropships were away they’d be returning to ghost status, given that they were on enemy turf. So long as the Brazilian guards were fighting them, they had to play a different type of game, given that rescuing them was also one of their mission priorities.

“We’ll be finished here soon,” David promised, knowing that Lio was going to be underpowered simply from the pain distracting him. “Anyone have any active contacts?”

“We’re clear here,” Jet answered, “for the moment.”

“Red Team has some activity,” Brad-1044 said, and David could see that his locator icon wasn’t in the hangar.

He switched frequencies. “Red Team, status?”

“Cleaning up a few stragglers,” Drake answered. “I don’t think they’ve got much left in this section of the city to throw at us. Linger much longer and that could change. They’re sending mostly scouts in now, trying to determine how they got their asses kicked so bad, I’d guess. What’s the status on the dropships?”

“Two to go.”

“We’ll keep you clear. Do what you need to do then get out.”

“Will do,” David agreed, switching back to his teamcomm. “Anyone packing Word weaponry?”

“These look like Tyr security standards,” Devin answered. “They’re not the same as the ones we found on site.”

“Anyone disagree with that?”

David didn’t get an answer, so he assumed that was a negative.

“Jet, Seraph…start working on our exit,” he said, kneeling down next to one of the bodies.

“Copy.”

David pulled the clear visor/helmet off, revealing a buzz cut on what looked to be an older man, though from the Archon’s point of view that was almost a joke. Nathan stepped in and picked up the weapons nearby, moving them out of reach as David pressed the forearm of his own armor against the man’s neck, using it to absorb the lingering stun energy in his body and slowly bring him back to consciousness.

“Stay put,” David ordered when the man finally came around, planting a hand against his armored chest to emphasize the point, while in the background another dropship lifted off, with a group of Star Force personnel loading up the last. “What’s your name?”

The man’s eyes flicked around, seeing Nathan beside him. Both Archons were armed and armored head to toe, with several others visible across the deck…along with the bodies of his fellow Brazilians.

“Hey!” David repeated, having his free hand in front of the man’s face. “If you don’t want to talk I can knock you out and wake one of them up.”

“What did you shoot me with?”

“Stun,” David said simply. “Them too. None of you are dead. That’s us being nice.”

“Nice?” the guard asked, not believing he’d heard him right.

“Yeah, nice. We came here to rescue you guys, after all. And here you are shooting plasma at us.”

The Brazilian’s face screwed up. “What are you talking about?”

“First things first,” David slowed him down. “A Brazilian assault force was sent here about a year ago to remove a group of insurgents. What happened to them?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The only insurgents we’ve seen are you. What is Star Force doing here?”

“How long have you been on Tyr?” David asked, ignoring him.

“13 years.”

“And you know nothing about 500 troops coming into the city about a year ago?”

“No,” he growled.

David pointed a finger over to the dropship as the last of the equipment was being loaded. “We have some of them onboard. They were drugged and being loaded into cargo canisters…far less than 500. I’ve got positive genetic IDs on 32 of them, given to us by your government. This moon has gone rogue. Brazil sent the troops here to reclaim it and they didn’t report back, so they asked us for help. So tell me, who’s giving the orders around here.”

“Nothing has changed here,” the guard said, his face frowning up with wrinkles. “And all I see you taking is our property.”

“This entire complex doesn’t exist on the city map,” David argued with him, not wanting to have to try his luck with another, because they really did need to get moving. “This stuff belongs to an enemy of ours that appears to have quietly taken over control of the moon. We’re here to take it back, at Brazil’s request. Now, you can oppose us and hope we continue to be…nice…or you and your buddies can think things through once they wake up and stay out of our way.”

Behind David the dropship crew ran aboard and the boarding ramp sealed up, with the Archon glancing over his shoulder and watching as it rose up on its anti-grav and slowly made its way over to the vertical shaft, all the while holding the guard down with a firm hand to the chest.

He turned his helmet back, knowing it was time to leave. “You’re fighting on the wrong side. Get wise to it before you get hurt.”

David stood up and ran off, with Nathan hesitating a moment to make sure the guard didn’t move, then he followed him off as the rest of Green Team quickly disappeared out side exits from the hangar.

The guard sat on the deck until the Archons had left, then he stood up and retrieved his helmet, put it on and activated the comm.

“They’re gone,” he reported, speaking the native Portuguese. “Our men are down, but only stunned. One of them talked to me. They’re trying to turn us and reclaim Tyr for Brazil.”

He remained silent, listening to the comm as he looked around, seeing none of the others waking up and wondering how long it would take. Typically Star Force stingers kept one out for several hours, but if they were only winged they could be back up, wobbily, within minutes.

“They took cargo out on the dropships, including some Human captives,” he said, unconcerned as to who the people were. “They know the captured troops are among them. They had a genetic test match done.”

Another pause of silence.

“Copy that,” The Word operative finished, walking over and retrieving one of the plasma rifles the Archons had left piled up on the deck.

7

May 12, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Glasir

“Easy now…lie still until your head clears,” a voice said as the man blinked bleary eyes on the way back to consciousness. “You’re safe here, so take your time.”

The man stirred, rolling over on his side as the Star Force medic placed a hand on his shoulder to keep him from rolling off the cushioned medical table.

“Easy,” she insisted. “Can you see me?”

A pair of fingers waved across his face, drawing his attention and stopping most of his movement.

“There…that’s better,” she said calmly. “Do you remember your name?”

The man didn’t say anything, still blinking as if his eyes were windows that he couldn’t get the rain off of.

“Your name,” the medic repeated, still gently holding him down with her hand.

“Maa…” he said, finding his voice too hoarse to finish.

“You’ve been sedated for a very long time,” she explained. “It may take a bit for your voice to come back.”

Beside her another medic walked up, one of higher rank and some 70 years older, who slipped a hand underneath his shoulder blades and began to lift.

“Try and sit up,” he instructed, with the female medic retracting her hand. He glanced up at her and whispered, “Vertical requires balance, and will force more mental activity.”

She nodded, moving her hand over to the man’s arm and helping to secure him in an upright position.

“Can you flex your hand?” she asked, lifting his wrist up in front of his chest where he could see it.

His eyes tracked down, and while his head bobbled a bit his fingers slowly contracted, then extended three times. “Whe..a..mi?”

“The planet Glasir,” the female said as the more experienced medic walked off to attend to other patients, his task done. “You’re in a Star Force medical bay. Clan Alterra to be precise. Can you raise your head and look at the ceiling for me?”

The man blinked some more, then slowly lifted his chin up and stared at the slate gray paneling with a scattering of tiny light orbs that hurt his eyes, despite the fact that they were diffuse.

“That’s good, now look at me if you can.”

His head came back down and twisted to the right, staring into the cute blonde’s blue eyes. “Ma…nfred. Man..fred Nor..el.”

The medic smiled. “Very good. We’ve flushed the sedative from your system, but trace amounts will remain until your body processes them out. The more active you can be the faster it will happen, so keep moving your head and hands,” she said while keeping a hand on his back for support.

It took more than an hour of gentle coaxing before the medic had Manfred taking his first steps and his vocal chords working, though his voice was reduced to a whisper due to the length of inactivity they’d seen. Once he was fully awake his mind began backtracking where he’d been, without much success. As the medic pried him with patient questions a camera in the ceiling recorded the conversation for later review, with Star Force wanting to know what had happened to the man that their records indicated as being ‘deceased.’

“Where is Glaysor?” he asked, twitching his left hand that had suddenly turned into pins and needles. “What system?”

“Glasir is in Alpha Centauri,” the medic answered. “Records indicate that you lived in Sol, is that correct?”

“Mars,” he answered, looking around at the med bay, which held several other patients, some from Star Force and others from the rescue effort that had just taken place on Tyr. Manfred had never been in a facility like this before. The equipment and design were familiar, but the gray/red color scheme seemed alien.

“What nation are you a citizen of?”

“Ananke Republic,” he said, referencing the first Star Force colony granted its independence, created partially from refugees resulting from World War III.

“What did you do there?” she asked, already having read his file after matching his genetic code within their database.

“I’m a…chemical engineer for Colaffa Industries. How long have I been missing?”

“You were listed as killed in an accident 8 months ago,” she said sympathetically.

Manfred’s eyes opened a bit wider. “What accident?”

“Some type of explosion in the loading bay. Over a hundred people were killed. Do you remember how you survived?”

“I wasn’t there,” he said simply. “I don’t work in the loading bay. What exploded?”

“I don’t know,” the medic said, then her eyes darted to the side as a man in white walked up on the other side of the medical table/bed.

“A shipment of Francium detonated,” the Archon explained. “The loading bay was wrecked, not to mention having undergone explosive decompression when the walls were breached and most of the air and resulting rubble got sucked out. Made for quite the funeral pyre, and got splashed around the news grids for months. Still up and running on a few. Fortunately the interior bulkheads survived and the rest of the factory wasn’t breached, though there’s some question as to how that’s possible.”

“Because the building exterior should be more robust than the interior bulkheads,” Manfred finished, flexing his jaw painfully as he strung too many words together at once.

“Speak slower,” the medic urged, “or your muscles may cramp.”

The chemical engineer nodded as he waited a small one out, reminding himself not to do that again.

“What’s the last place you remember being?” the adept asked.

“I got jumped going into my office…I think. I remember waking up in…an unfamiliar room…locked. Two people came in later, wearing masks, and asked me a lot of questions. They drugged me and…now I wake up,” he said, visibly disturbed.

“What kind of questions?”

“Technical ones, inventory, personnel…pretty much everything…having to do with my job.”

The other medical walked back over, coming up shoulder to shoulder with the slightly shorter Archon. “How did they drug you?”

“What…oh, they made me swallow…a pill. I fell asleep right after.”

The medic nodded, throwing a glance at the Archon.

He took it in stride and looked back at Manfred. “Was there anything special about the work you’re doing at Colaffa?”

“It’s all special…to me…to us, anyway. Experimental stuff. I don’t know what…you mean by special?”

“Profitable, illegal, immoral, really cool,” the Archon said, throwing out examples.

“Nothing untoward,” he said with a pained expression. “And I’m told by my wife…that my work is boring. It’s of interest to the corporation…otherwise we wouldn’t get paid.”

“Were you working with the Francium yourself?”

“On a few projects…yes…but in small amounts. Nothing outside of the lab. Nothing Colaffa was producing yet. You don’t think I was at fault…do you?”

The Archon shrugged. “You’re supposed to be dead. We’re trying to put the pieces together.”

“Whatever happened to the Francium happened…after I was knocked out. I don’t remember there being any explosions.”

“Is there anything you can tell us that might help with this investigation?”

Manfred shook his head innocently. “I honestly don’t know what has happened. I’d tell you if I did…know something. Apparently I’ve been unconscious most of the time.”

The Archon glanced at the female medic and nodded, then walked off.

“If you remember anything let us know, but for now we need to get some nutrients into you. Drink this,” she said, reaching over to a nearby shelf and pulling a bottle out. She unscrewed the cap and had him start sipping while the Archon and the senior medic retreated into a nearby room.

“And?” the Archon asked once they were out of earshot.

“I’ve seen my share of traumatized individuals, and this guy is acting all wrong. He’s a bit rough from the chemically induced coma, but he’s not harboring any panic from the kidnapping, interrogation, or any elation at now being freed.”

“I caught that. Anything medically stand out?”

“The drugs they gave him put him in a very low metabolic state, designed, I believe, to keep him out for prolonged periods of time. If you found him in a cargo box, I’d guess they were planning a long trip and couldn’t have him up and about.”

“How long would it take to put him in that sort of coma?”

“Several hours, minimum. His body has also atrophied from the process, meaning he’s due for some lengthy rehab before we release him. Same for the others.”

“Take your time, we’re holding onto all of them for the moment. Can you measure how long they’ve been out?”

The medic cringed. “It’d be ballpark at best, but I can be fairly certain that none of them was awake within the past few days.”

“That’s something,” the Archon said, making a point of adding that to his report that would be shot over to Green Team, who was still in the field. Clan Alterra had been entrusted with the rescued prisoners, as well as tasked with pulling as fast a debrief as they could, followed by a more in depth interrogation, which would require an acolyte, of which Alpha Centauri had few on station. One was coming in from Odin, but until then it was up to Jani-54332 to handle the debriefings and compile the report.

“Who’s up next?”

“I’ve got three near consciousness, two women and a boy.”

“The boy then.”

The medic nodded. “Follow me,” he said, leading him out and into another wing of the medical bay.

Simultaneously on Tyr…

Harold Weston tore through the door of his opulent personal quarters, but held in his adrenaline-fueled rant until it slid closed behind him…then he was off walking across the carpet and talking to his wife before he found her two rooms away.

“It’s happened again!” he half yelled, plodding down the two stairs that separated the outer foyer from the main living room that looked out on a balcony that overhung one of the many forested parks within the city. “It’s happened again!” he repeated.

“What has happened?” a calmer voice asked, with his wife rising up off a long couch and walking a few steps towards him as he stormed in, stopping a few feet short of her.

“Iverson is gone…gone! I talked to him this morning, now he’s vanished…right out of the office complex! That’s the 8th one, Mylan, the 8th one!”

His overly attractive wife frowned, yet still appeared beautiful enough to question how a hefty accountant like Weston had ever attracted that caliber of woman. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, damn it!” he bellowed, but she knew it wasn’t directed at her. Over the past 3 days he’d become increasingly agitated as members of the government and high level executives on the moon had begun vanishing…of which he knew personally. And now he was thoroughly convinced that he was going to be next.

“What has TSD to say about it?”

“Nothing!” Weston said, throwing his hands in the air. “They claim to be investigating the disappearances, but that they haven’t been gone long enough to raise any serious alarm. As if the brightest minds and highest leaders on this moon have a habit of going off on impromptu vacations without so much as waving goodbye to their secretaries!”

“Perhaps we should go on one...” Mylan offered gently.

Weston put a hand on his face, burying his eyes in his palm. “I don’t know, nooble. I just don’t know. If someone can get to us here, will we be any safer elsewhere?”

“I can’t answer that,” she said, walking over and rubbing his shoulders affectionately.

“I can,” a voice said evenly from the bedroom annex, jolting Weston’s bulk almost off his skeleton, “and the answer is no,” Drake said, walking into view obscured beneath his silver acolyte armor.

Weston backpedaled, tripping over an end table and falling on his ass while his wife stepped to the side gently, but otherwise held position as she stared the Archon down, more angry that he’d invaded their home than afraid.

“What…do you want?” Weston sputtered.

“Information,” Drake said, pulling off his helmet and revealing his loose, 3 inch long bright red hair that he’d altered and enhanced in brightness to the point that it almost glowed. From another room Yavari-824 walked up behind them, also without his helmet, and curiously, his gloves.

Weston puffed once, regaining some of his fire. “And then I disappear too?”

“Depends on your answers,” Drake said as Yavari picked Weston up and held him in place, standing.

Drake pointed to his wife, then the nearby chair. “You…sit.”

Mylan chewed her lip for a moment, then relented silently and glided over to the chair, sinking her petite frame down into the opulent cushions almost to the point of swallowing her legs.

“Now,” Drake began, walking over and sitting on the edge of the central fountain in the room, dipping his armored fingertips inside and shooing away a few colored fish from a lump of rock on the bottom that didn’t match the rest. He pulled it out and played with it distractedly as he spoke. “First things first…what do you know of The Word?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Second question…two years ago a number of administrators were changed out. What do you know of the reason?”

“Personnel shuffle…happens occasionally, why?”

“Third question…do you know who I am?”

“No,” he said blatantly.

“Fourth question…do you love your wife?”

Weston’s face screwed up. “Don’t you dare lay a finger on her.”

“Alright, I won’t,” Drake promised as Yavari shoved Weston across the floor. He stood up and grabbed hold of the man with an arm around his neck, pressing in gently with his armor plates as the other Archon walked over and yanked the woman out of the chair, grabbing her neck as he stood her up in front of him.

“Stop…please,” Weston said, suddenly changing his tone.

“I’ll ask again. What do you know of The Word?”

“Nothing…I swear to god!”

“Question two…the administrators. What was different about the changeover that happened approximately two years ago?”

“There were more transfers,” Weston said, trying to give the man some type of answer. “A lot of retirements. It was rumored that they’d received some deal, a payoff that got them out of the hierarchy. Someone said it was related to a scandal, but no one ever knew for sure. It’s just hearsay, I don’t know if it’s true or not.”

“Third…you really don’t know who we are?”

“I’ve never seen you before in my life?”

“What about our armor?”

“What about it?”

“Let’s ask your wife then…do you know who we are?”

She scowled at him, with her chin held slightly high by Yavari’s clenched hand around her throat. “They’re Star Force Archons.”

“Correct,” David said, pleased. “How then do you know us and not you,” he said, glancing down at Weston’s balding head.

“He doesn’t pay attention to the news, he’s always working,” she defended him. “I’ve seen your armor before.”

“Most people have,” Drake agreed, knowing that they’d become the equivalent of Jedi within the public’s perspective, with several fictitious recreations in the entertainment industry educating those who didn’t catch snippets of them in action on the news.

“Fourth question…do you love your wife?”

“Yes,” he said regretfully, as if anticipating she was about to be hurt.

“Why then,” Drake said a bit softer, “doesn’t she love you?”

When Weston didn’t answer Drake continued on. “Let me ask you another question…when did you meet your wife?”

“Three years ago this July.”

“And when were you married?”

“Three months and four days later,” he recalled, having the statistics memorized, fond of her as he was.

“Good memory,” he offered. “What’s today’s date?”

“The twelfth of May,” Weston humored him.

“Then remember this as the day of your divorce.”

“Don’t hurt her…I beg you! I’ll answer anything you want.”

“Chh, chh, chh,” Drake said, making a disapproving sound. “You weren’t listening. I said today was the day of your divorce, not her death.”

“I don’t understand,” he mumbled, his face turning a bit red from Drake’s grip.

“It’s simple,” the Archon said, pulling his arm off and stepping between him and Mylan as Yavari continued to hold her in check. “She’s no longer your wife…or to put it more accurately, today is the day you realize she is not your wife.”

Weston rubbed his neck where the Archon’s armor had pinched him. “What do you mean?” he demanded, flicking his gaze back and forth between Mylan and Drake.

“She doesn’t love you,” the acolyte repeated. “And the timing of your meeting has to do with my second question regarding the personnel shuffle. Some key people had to be removed, others were coopted. In your case, you were manipulated. This woman is a sleeper agent of a criminal organization.”

“Ridiculous,” Weston sputtered, not even looking at his wife’s reaction. “You’ve made a mistake.”

“No,” Drake said confidently, relying on her reactions to his questions that Yavari was monitoring and his subsequent telepathic reports. “And even though Archons don’t date, I do sympathize with what you’re about to emotionally endure, for she is rather lovely…on the outside at least.”

“No,” Weston insisted, finally looking at her, still held tightly by the neck. “What are you accusing her of, specifically?”

“She’s a member of The Word,” Drake said, staring at her. “The criminal organization that has quietly taken over this moon. Brazil is no longer in control, and those administrative retirements marked the time of the takeover. You’ve been working for the enemy and never knew it.”

“What has she done?” Weston said, fixated on his wife and only partially processing the other facts Drake was throwing out.

“You tell me…what have you let her have access to?”

“We share all possessions. My bank account is hers.”

“What about your passwords?”

“No…that’d be a breach of ethics. Only I know my passwords.”

Drake smiled, getting another telepathic update from Yavari. “You work from home occasionally?”

“It’s rare, but sometimes when I have a special project I need a few extra hours…after supper before we go to bed.”

“Ever have her looking over your shoulder?”

“I don’t hide my work from her, but I’ve never let her see my password.”

“You may not have intended to, but she did…and has quietly used your access to do things with your books.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“We’re Star Force. We have lots of ways of ferreting out the truth. Some of your friends that have gone missing were also operatives, others, like yourself, were merely dupes.”

Suddenly Mylan passed out and Yavari let her fall to the floor…with Weston running towards her, though Drake stopped him halfway with a firm hand on his chest.

“She’s not dead, only unconscious. And now that she’s been exposed there’s a possibility that you could be in danger. The Word has no problem lethally cleaning up loose ends. Those administrators that ‘retired’ went straight from work to the grave. Eventually Brazil missed them and began investigating, whereupon they were contacted by the people who have taken control of this city and were told to maintain normal operations leaving them in charge. Your country didn’t agree and sent in an assault force…that magically disappeared. That’s why we’re here. Brazil asked Star Force for help.”

“May I have access to my computer?” he said stoically, though a mixture of pain and trepidation was flooding his emotions.

“Why?”

“If she truly has been accessing my account, I can find out.”

“The Word is very good at covering their tracks,” Drake cautioned.

Weston’s chin raised ever so slightly. “I’m very good at my job, sir. And I’m no novice with computers. Will you let me try?”

“I’m no novice either, so don’t try to contact anyone or you’ll find yourself with a sudden headache.”

“I don’t completely believe you,” the man said, “but either way I want to know the truth.”

Drake glanced at Yavari, then waved a go-ahead hand in front of Weston, who walked off into another room with the Archon following.

The accountant logged in and immediately went to the user history, finding it clean…then to David’s surprise he accessed a backdoor and ran through the interface logs for his console, discovering several specific program accesses at times the history didn’t record.

He sat frozen at the keyboard for more than a minute before Drake eventually put his armored hand on his shoulder, seeing the man crying in the reflection of the screen.

“I need to get you out of here before The Word can get to you.”

Weston sniffled. “I actually let myself believe she loved me…that she wanted me. What are you going to do with her?”

“Star Force doesn’t kill or torture its prisoners. She’ll be taken away and questioned, then imprisoned for a very long time.”

“Rehab?”

“Of a sort…though The Word might label her a liability and try to take her out. For that reason we have to get you and her off the moon as soon as possible. Let’s go,” Drake urged, pulling Weston up out of his chair.

“They’ve really taken control of the entire city?”

“Through one means or another, yes.”

“What are you going to do?” Weston asked as Yavari came into view carrying Mylan over his shoulder.

Drake walked him over to the balcony, grabbing his helmet on the way then pulling a rappelling line from his back rack as they stepped outside into the view of several other nearby balconies, a few of which had people on them. He stopped for a moment, not caring if anyone saw them, for as soon as they got to ground level they’d be on the move to a nearby extraction point. The Archon looked at the balding, overweight man through his helmet, with his voice being synthetically altered by the external mic.

“We’re going to take it back.”

8

May 13, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Tyr

The Brazilian technician slumped to the ground unconscious thanks to the sleep touch Quenton-1123 had just laid on him, with the Archon pulling him away from the chair, allowing Nathan to slide in and quickly access the control board.

“Make it quick,” Quenton reminded him, “misguided underlings are already on the way.”

“Give me a heads up when they get here,” Nathan replied, shunting power from one section of region 8 to another. The power station they were in was responsible for both the generation and the distribution of power to one of 24 regions of the city, with region 8 containing several dark zones that didn’t match up with Star Force’s original schematics. Those dark zones had previously been scouted out, finding a lot of locked doors and security cameras blocking their way, but Green Team had been ingenious enough to find their way around some of them without tipping off The Word that they knew of their location.

At least that was the theory. How much the enemy knew of their movements was guesswork…as was their assessment of how much of the city was under their control. Their clandestine war had yet to reach the local news networks, meaning the populace of Tyr had no idea anything abnormal was occurring and continued to go about their daily lives. If The Word wanted it that way they’d oblige, save for already having issued recall orders for all the Star Force personnel on the moon, who as of now had mostly left, with the last few stragglers quietly making their way to the spaceports, not knowing themselves that there was any danger, just that they had some place to be that wasn’t on Tyr.

Their leaving probably hadn’t gone unnoticed, so Green Team figured it was just a matter of time before a more obvious confrontation broke out, though when that’d be was also guesswork.

David had assumed that with two years of time to play with, The Word had probably built their own little nest in the city much as they had in other locations, in addition to the factories, warehouses, research labs, and other illicit facilities that Green Team had already located within the city. His suspicions had been confirmed 7 hours ago when an offshoot of one of the dark areas lead to a subterranean structure not previously logged on schematics and outside the city’s subterranean boundaries.

Some surveillance of their own had confirmed the flow of personnel in and out of the complex that was of unknown size, but the power usage was being logged and counter-logged within the city’s books to hide the consumption. Bookkeeping could be falsified, but power lines couldn’t be so easily obscured, though The Word engineers had done a good job of hiding them. Knowing what to look for, Green Team had followed the conduits and discovered a maintenance crawlspace that wasn’t designed for transit, but one that they could squeeze through in their armor, but just barely.

Trick of it was, it was below the city and the complex, in the very supports that held the massive structure in place against the low gravity…and was below the artificial gravity zones that added the extra tug to keep the population at the standard 1g. Thing of it was, so was The Word’s complex, so if they could cut the power there was a good chance that the hidden base would revert back to the moon’s normal gravity that ran at .52g.

Taking out the power would also hit the lights, security cameras, and any line-powered defense systems, assuming they didn’t have a backup power supply in place, which was possible, but David doubted that would be powerful enough to cover everything, so if they managed to cut the main power something The Word was used to having on would go off and make for a hopefully chaotic environment inside.

Green Team wanted that chaos, for as of now they were going in totally blind.

Quenton stepped over to the open door and looked down on the catwalks below. “They’re here. I’ll buy you some time.”

“60 seconds should do,” Nathan said, typing away at the keyboard furiously, both the built in one and the plug-in variety he’d brought with him to help hack through the security codes, which were rather light for such an important piece of infrastructure.

Quenton nodded his helmet and jumped over the railing on the narrow balcony outside, falling down two stories to catch himself on the catwalk below, then he hopped over again down to the floor and ran over behind a wide support pillar as Brazilian security guards began popping up from behind pieces of machinery with weapons drawn as they closed in on the only way up to the control room.

The Archon didn’t waste time waiting for them and decided to distract by hitting first, which he accomplished by circling around the pillar and climbing up on top of one of the many support machines that fed the city’s buildings their power, water, air, and all other vital systems from below, situated far down in the bedrock. From atop the boxy machine Quenton jumped forward spread eagle, landing on top of one of the guards and pancaking him to the floor with an audible crunch of armor on armor.

The Archon rolled off him and pumped a stinger round into the man’s back, with the energy bleeding through the blue armor and rendering him at least numb, if not unconscious. Quenton didn’t wait around to find out which, sidestepping once he got to his feet and elbowing another guard in the ribs as he brought his plasma rifle around…which went flying off and ricocheted against another bulky machine.

Before the other guards could close on him, Quenton took off the opposite way from the control room, leading several off before cutting across the main flow of guards still coming down from whatever elevator shaft or stairwell they’d been using. He stunned several, taking a few hits against his shields that left only the barest of scuff marks on his armor when they breached…then he was lost in the machinery again as he circled back around and ambushed the guards pushing towards the catwalk from behind, catching several on their way up that, once stunned, rolled back down the steps until they flopped onto one of the flat transition sections.

“When do we get to start bagging these guys instead of just stun and release?” he asked over the comm.

“All in good time,” Nathan said, just finishing up. “There…power flow interrupted. Target should be dark.”

More than a mile away, with too much metal and concrete in between to allow their low powered comms to connect, David and the other 7 members of Green Team lay scrunched in next to a series of pipes in single file as the power gage they had attached to one of them suddenly registered a negative, meaning that the floor above them should be as dark as the tiny space they were in now.

“This is it,” David said at the head of the line, but several meters down from the explosives they’d drilled into the top of the crawlspace. “Detonating in 3…2…1…” he said, pressing the button on a remote trigger while he was face down against the metal base, with an arm stretched out in front of his helmet holding a loose section of plate he’d brought in with him to help catch the blast.

That plate popped back into him with the detonation and he could see his forearm shield breach on his HUD’s diagnostics, but otherwise he was ok…which meant he had to move, and fast.

He pushed the plate off him, seeing several indentations where debris had hit it thanks to his Pefbar, that not only allowed him to see in the dark, but to see through more than a meter of structure up into the hallway above them at the breach point. David crawled forward, pushing aside bits of debris that made it even harder to squeeze through when one of them would get stuck along his side, but eventually he got up to the blast point and began crawling up, pushing aside pointy ends of this and that and making a larger exit point for the rest of his team as he expanded upon their impromptu foxhole in the middle of the hallway.

As the power gage had indicated, it was completely dark. David didn’t turn on his armor’s exterior lights, of which he had a few choices, but rather kept his Pefbar on continuously, seeing the area both ahead and behind him in the grainy black/white spherical vision that his telekinesis relied upon, though now it was serving an entirely different purpose.

David jumped up, feeling that the gravity had indeed lightened, and landed more than a meter out from the edge of the hole, dragging his weapon bundle with him. He walked forward and knelt down, detaching the tether on his leg and pulling out the varied weapons, placing them on his back rack while hefting the stinger rifle in his active grip. He advanced down the hallway, with his battlemap using a low level scanner in his armor to plot out the dimensions of the corridor and share it with the others coming up behind him.

It took a while, but all of them made it up and out before they saw any personnel…in fact, it wasn’t until they were several hallways over in the grid-shaped layout that they encountered any individuals, and the one they found was bound and gagged inside a room. David had seen him through the walls before they ever got to the door, then he paused just before his hand reached for the latch, seeing something disturbing inside.

“Jet?” he asked the Archon directly behind him as Assad moved forward and took up a forward scouting position at the end of the hall.

“What?”

“What do you see inside?”

“A prisoner…one prisoner tied to a chair and no guards.”

“Take a good look at the chair.”

“Damn,” Lio said, a step behind them.

“Is the door rigged?” Jet asked, though he couldn’t see anything on the handle, latches or in the walls to indicate it was.

“I don’t think so. Everyone move on, I’m going in alone.”

“We can come back for this guy later,” Jet reminded him.

“I get the feeling this is a ghost town,” David said as the others jogged by him. “See if you can find anyone else, but stay alert.”

“Copy that,” Jet said, the last to leave him.

David let them move on then slowly pulled the latch on the door, rotating the locking device and popping it open. He swung it out into the room and stepped through, ‘seeing’ little different than when the door had been closed, save for a bit more complexity of detail. He took a few careful steps forward, looking around multiple times for some type of trigger, like maybe a laser trip line, but he couldn’t see any mechanisms imbedded into the walls, floor, or ceiling.

He stepped up within 2 meters of the man, whose head was sagging down. David still felt a mind there, meaning he wasn’t dead, but he was either asleep or unconscious. That wasn’t his worry at the moment, but rather the stack of explosives concealed underneath the chair. Had the lights been on he probably would have missed them entirely, but the dense bricks showed up plainly in his Pefbar sight, and now that he was closer he could see the tiny wires connecting them to the man’s butt.

David adjusted his sight, viewing different layers right through the man’s body, including his internal organs, which the Archon always found to be a bit gross, but it was necessary to examine the device without touching it or him. After a few minutes of exertion David released his Pefbar for a moment, rested his mind for a handful of seconds, then reactivated it with a much narrower focus that required more of his power as he…

“Contact,” Assad said over the comm, startling David enough that he sucked in an involuntary breath, then flashed his Pefbar out behind him, realizing he hadn’t been paying attention to his back. Sloppy...but necessary if he was going to avoid blowing up.

“What have you got?”

“Looks like another prisoner tied to a chair.”

“Set a waypoint but do not approach. See how many more are out there.”

“Looks like we’ve got the level to ourselves.”

“Find the stairs yet?”

“Not yet.”

“When you do hold up. They may have left us some other surprises.”

“You think they’ve already bugged out?” Devin asked.

“That’s my gut feeling, but we don’t know how big this place is either. Leave me off the comm for a few minutes. I’ve got some delicate work to do.”

“Copy that.”

David stood in front of the chair with the slumped man inside it, holding his stinger rifle with a reflexive grip born of many missions and long training sessions, for at the  moment his mind was wholly consumed with the wires connecting the explosives to the trigger, which appeared to be attached to the man so that when he came up off the chair it would pull apart and send the detonation signal…meaning that the explosion will kill both him and his rescuer, and given the size of the bricks he didn’t want to know how much damage it would do to him once it got past his armor.

This was definitely one of The Word’s attempts to kill the Archons, given that they didn’t have a good track record doing it the old fashioned way with men and guns. To date they’d never killed one, though there had been a few injuries in past altercations. Now it seemed they were starting to think outside the box, perhaps as a result of Green Team having rescued the prisoners they’d come across 2 days ago. They knew they wanted them alive, so they thought they’d use them as bait for a booby trap.

That meant The Word suspected they were coming here, but he doubted they knew how they’d enter the base, so they may still have the element of surprise, along with the blackout, if anyone was still around. The others would discover that…right now he needed to get this man unhooked before he woke up and started wiggling around on the detonator.

David could see the wires where they connected to the detonator box, which was split into two pieces. That he had to avoid separating, so he felt his way down to the other end of the wires and began pulling on them with his Lachka, trying to separate the lines from the explosives. There were 8 wires, one each connecting to the bricks stacked 4 wide and two deep and secured underneath the chair with some type of adhesive, he guessed, for he couldn’t see any other types of fasteners.

He got the first wire out without anything going boom, and from then on he breathed a bit easier, having to take small breaks to recharge his mind and gather his strength, for the wires were stuck into the explosives quite well and it required a pinch-pull to yank them out, which didn’t allow as good of grip for his already limited telekinetic manipulation.

The acolyte was more than strong enough though, he just didn’t want to make any mistakes, as well as knowing he’d have to repeat this process again on at least one other prisoner, so he wanted to take this first disarmament slow and methodical, establishing a procedure he could execute more quickly down the line.

When he got the last wire out he pulled them all away from the bricks and stepped forward, reaching a hand down underneath the chair and grabbing the bundle, then giving it a sharp jerk that disconnected it from the man’s clothes where the opposite end of the detonator stayed attached.

The electric charge the detonator sent down the wires sparked against David’s forearm shield, notable only by a tiny indicator on his HUD. Otherwise there was no visible sign of activity.

He activated his comm. “Prisoner disarmed. He’s still unconscious and I’m leaving him that way for now,” he said, using his HUD and menu buttons underneath a flap on his left gauntlet to drop a waypoint on the battlemap so they’d know where to come back to when they wanted to pick this guy up.

“Five other chair-bound prisoners found,” Devin reported. “We’ve almost got this level checked.”

“Are we the basement?”

“Negative,” Assad reported. “I’m at the stairs, with flights going up and down.

David glanced at his growing battlemap and zoomed out, beginning to see how big this place was. Either The Word had started the construction prior to their takeover or they’d been really busy over the past 2 years…though without anyone looking over their shoulder they could have devoted an army of construction crews to dig this place out of the bedrock within weeks, so he guessed he shouldn’t have been so surprised.

“Finish this level, then I want teams of four. One goes up, one goes down. We tag prisoners and other items of interest with waypoints but we keep moving. Heads up for more booby traps and see if we can’t find someone who’s supposed to be down here. We can take inventory later.”

David followed his own order, tossing the detonator across the room where it was well away from the explosive bricks on his way out the door, then he followed his battlemap over to the stairwell where Assad and Jet were waiting.

9

Green Team searched through the complex in two parts, finding level after level deserted and partially cleaned out. Furniture and nonessential items were still there, but all computer hard drives had been removed, many storage rooms were completely emptied, and skid marks and wall latches attested to where other equipment had previously been. It seemed that The Word had known they’d be coming and had cleaned house in anticipation.

Twelve bomb-laden prisoners had been discovered, spread out across the lower levels. They were still sitting there in the dark, unconscious, while the Archons completed their search…finding the most significant discovery last of all on the uppermost level where the facility connected into one of the city’s dark zones via a hidden doorway the size of a cargo tram. Green Team had avoided going in that way because the door was thick and probably guarded on the inside with who knew what kind of defenses.

“Huh,” Devin said, looking at what Assad had come across and all of Green Team was now staring at. “That’s one hell of a door prize.”

“Do we disarm it or leave the way we came in?” Jet asked.

“I’m not sure the door will even work without power,” Nathan offered.

In the dark, visible only through their Pefbar, David pointed to the left. “There’s a manual release in the wall panel. Let’s see if we can’t get this neutralized. I don’t want some Brazilian team opening the door a month from now and going boom.”

“We could warn them,” Jet pointed out.

“I also don’t want to drag the prisoners out the way we came in.”

“Point,” Nathan agreed. “Where do we start?”

“It’s not complicated,” Lio offered. “It’s set up to go off when the door opens. They didn’t expect anyone to get at it from this side,” he said, referring to the lack of security measures. The bomb attached to the inside of the door was literally a stack of explosive bricks identical to those strapped underneath the prisoners…only there had to be thousands here, enough to pop the door off its hinges and bust out the walls, floor, and ceiling, creating a crater around the entry point into the base.

Then the prisoner bombs were just a bonus for anyone who didn’t die at the doorway.

“Same way we handled the others,” David said. “Pull the wires out of the bricks.”

“I can do better than that,” Assad said, walking up towards the bookcase-like stack covering nearly the entire inner side of the door. “There’s one cable coming from the contact points to the detonator, then a bazillion going out to the explosives. If we remove the power source from the detonator it won’t be able to go bang.”

“What kind of power source are they using?” David asked, walking up to Assad and standing beside both him and the brick wall that was less than a meter ahead. The detonator was in the middle of the stack with the wires coming out the front and arching around to connect with the narrow ends of each of the bricks.

“One that wasn’t designed for the detonator,” Assad said, seeing into and through the various components. “The original has been removed and a portable power cell has been tied in. It’s sitting behind it and connected by a handful of thicker wires.”

“I see them now. We have to make sure it’s the only power source.”

“Lio was right, this isn’t designed to be tamper proof. Pull the connecting wires and the juice will be gone.”

“Take the left one, I’ve got the other,” David said.

“Wait,” Nathan said, walking up on his other shoulder. “Ok, do it now.”

“What was that?” Assad asked.

“I turned off the power on the cell. There’s a button on the side.”

David looked at it again, trying to see what he meant. After a few long seconds Nathan telepathically sent him an image, then David was able to make it out. “Good catch.”

“Thank you…but I’d still recommend disconnecting the hard lines.”

“Oh yeah,” David agreed. “Assad?”

“Pulling,” the Archon said, telekinetically yanking on one of the cables. The end attached to the detonator wouldn’t budge, but when he tried the plug-in to the cell it disconnected cleanly. He looped it back on itself and coiled it up inside the detonator cavity that had held the original power source.

“Done.”

David finished up 10 seconds later, making sure the wires weren’t going to come loose and work their way back out and accidentally make contact with the cell. The odds of that happening were nil, but with this much explosives they couldn’t afford to take chances. Armor or no, if this thing blew they’d be dead.

“Alright, we’re clear. Open it up.”

Assad walked over and opened the wall panel, which revealed both a latch and a wheel. He pulled the large switch, disconnecting the lock on the lock, then began wheeling the locking stubs out of the side of the door and into their wall niches, all of which the Archons could see, thanks to their wall-piercing sight.

“Ok, start pushing,” Assad said, referencing the lack of power. David and four of the other Archons found handholds on the spots on the door that did not have explosive bricks and used their enhanced muscle strength to pry the half meter thick door out of its fitting, pivoting on the right side.

As soon as the edge passed out a bright band of light broke through the Archon’s helmets as the lit interior of the ‘dark’ zone shown in. In keeping with their hiding protocols, the power lines for the door and base didn’t mix with the ones that were part of the normal infrastructure, meaning the blackout was only present in the levels that didn’t officially exist.

“Nathan, stay here with me,” David said, taking a couple steps out and feeling normal gravity return. “The rest of you go grab a prisoner.”

One, two, three, four, jump…one, two, three, four, jump…

Drake held that pattern for six of the stubby transport trucks trolling down one of the internal highways within the city. They had no driver or cab and were rolling along on six wheels, each in a convoy taking cargo from one distribution center to another, keeping their computer-controlled spacing and speed almost perfectly aligned on the straight, 5-laned road.  The even spacing allowed the Archon to make the jumps between them easy enough, but he was more impressed that the fugitive he was chasing was doing the same.

Red Team had just smashed a security station and grabbed a number of officers they’d concluded were either Word operatives or in league with them, capturing and eventually releasing the other security officers, but during the raid one of them had broken loose, jumping out a window and going across several building tops until he hopped down off a walkway bridge into the traffic flow.

Drake had been on his heels when he did, and he was surprised the man hadn’t been run over…but the man had successfully landed on a long-bed transport, then had been hopping from one to another up to this convoy that had more than 20 short cargo trams in a row.

The acolyte paced him, waiting for him to slip up and drop to the road…which he didn’t want him to do. They were only moving at 40-50 miles an hour, with all of the cargo transports moving at the same speed, but they were still plenty heavy enough to squash him if he got ran over. The other vehicles, however, were moving at a range of speeds, allowing both the fugitive and the Archon to hop from one cargo transport to another as they made their way down the road.

Drake hoped the man would get caught at the front of the convoy, with no more trucks to jump to, but when he got to the first in line he hesitated only slightly before jumping to his right and down, landing on a squat personnel transport. It had no driver, but seats for 4 people inside, two of which were currently occupied. The man road on top of it past the convoy, gaining meters of distance as Drake jumped up to the front truck top…where the gap had become too large for even him to jump across.

“Damn it,” he said, looking around. There wasn’t anything else in that lane for about 50 meters back, but there was a larger personnel transport two lanes away, and it was moving faster than the trucks too, giving him a window of opportunity until it completed the pass.

“Kung fu grip,” he reminded himself, backing up to the edge of the truck then sprinting a couple of steps into the jump. He flew across the empty lane and landed against the side of the bus with his knees hitting the edge. His torso slammed down on top with his legs missing and beginning to drag him down over the side, but he splayed his hands out on top and he clung to it like a tree climbing frog long enough to get his toe tips against the side. From there he climbed his way up, seeing the front truck in the convoy he’d just been on drifting off behind him.

He looked ahead, seeing the man riding the cab and looking back at him, realizing that it was moving slightly faster than the bus.

“Oh no you don’t,” he said, climbing to his feet and running to the back of the bus…where he turned around and sprinted down the length into a long jump ahead to a medium length truck, tucking into a somersault before coming to a halt on his knees on top of its roof. Behind him the bus pulled out into the next lane so it could pass the slower moving vehicle, but Drake was running and jumping ahead again before it could catch up, moving up to another truck before making a cross jump to a long-bed across the empty middle lane that the bus was now coming up.

The long-bed was carrying crates, but only on the front half. Drake landed on the back, then climbed up on top and headed to the first in line, with no cab to jump off of, just a sheer drop off like at the back of the flatbed. The gap up to the next truck was a bit longer, but he made it across to the back of an enclosed tram, hanging off the back for a moment as he was only able to catch the back edge with his hands.

When he came up top he saw the man on the cab was still ahead of him, but not as far as he had been…and Drake had a long line of trucks in this convoy to catch up on.

One, two, three, four, jump…and he was up to the next one, then the next, and the next until he pulled even with the man, but before he could hop out to the cab the man jumped the opposite direction, grabbing hold of the edge of another truck by his fingertips, then pulling himself up top just as Drake hopped out and landed on the cab.

He didn’t know who this guy was, but he was starting to get impressed.

Drake set himself and followed the man across to the truck, then pursued him over to the next lane as the man jumped onto a short convoy that was heading off the road and into an offshoot. Then amazingly the man leapt up as the trucks moved under a pedestrian walkway and clung to the railing as the convoy passed underneath him.

Drake shook his head and moved to the head of the truck he was on, then reached up and grabbed the man’s left leg, latching on and yanking him loose as he ducked down to miss the overhang that was about a meter and a half above the top of the trucks.

The man got peeled off none too gently and smacked down onto the top of the truck, bloody from the abrasion against the edge of the walkway. Drake stood up after they passed under it and pinned the man down with an armored knee on his chest.

“Nice try,” he offered as the wind whipped past them both, even as the trucks were gradually slowing down as they headed into a terminal. “Who are you?”

The man’s nose was bleeding heavily from a nasty gash, but more shocking than that was the way his eyes went wide at his question.

“You don’t know?”

“No clue,” Drake said easily, still pinning him down.

“Why are you after me?” the man asked, blood dribbling down into his mouth. He turned to the side and spit some of it out, but more kept bubbling out making it hard for him to breathe/speak.

“You ran.”

“What?” he coughed.

Drake backed up and pulled the man into a sitting position, letting the blood run down onto his blue security uniform.

“Who are you?” the Archon repeated.

“If you don’t know I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

“We’ll get you ID’d soon enough.”

“You didn’t come for me?”

“We came for your bosses. Why’d you rabbit instead of fighting?”

“I thought you were after me.”

“Why would we be?”

The man didn’t say anything, instead he pinched his nose trying to get the blood to stop…then he jerked as he realized most of the tip of his nose had been torn off by the edge of the walkway.

“What do you know about The Word?” Drake asked as the trucks slowed to a near stop as they rolled into individual lateral berths where they could be unloaded. From the corner of his eye he saw more security guards approaching, having noticed the pair of people on top of the truck.

“What word?”

“The criminal organization that’s taken over this moon,” Drake said bluntly. “It was their operatives we were after in the security station. If you’re not one of them I don’t care, but tell me now or I’m taking you in for questioning…in how many pieces is up to you, but your buddies over there aren’t going to be able to stop me,” he said, thumbing over his shoulder at the armed guards approaching.

“I’m on Star Force’s detain list,” he admitted. “When I saw you break in I thought you were after me.”

Drake swiped his hand across the blood dripping from the man’s face, then held it up for him to see. “I’ll find out for sure in about an hour, so tell me the truth or I may hunt you down just because. What do we want you for?”

“I’m a hacker. I gave myself a new identity here where I didn’t think you’d be able to find me. Figured a security officer would be the best place to hide.”

Drake’s helmet nodded. “Sorry about the face,” he said, running past him and jumping off the truck down to the curb.

The security guards yelled at him to stop, but he weaved his way through the workers and machines coming out to unload the trucks, working his way out into the pedestrian walkways accessing the terminal. Despite the fact that he was running through the people wearing bloody silver armor and drawing all kinds of stares, they didn’t get in his way and he easily outdistanced Brazilian security.

“Report,” he asked over the comm as he continued to run through the wide walkways that were entirely separate from the roads.

“Tagged and bagged,” Derrick answered. “How about you?”

“Red herring. He’s a Star Force fugitive who thought we were coming after him. Made a pretty good run of it before I caught up to him.”

“What’d you do with him?”

“Let him go. I’ve got a blood sample so we can make a positive ID, then let security handle it. We’ve got bigger targets to deal with.”

“How good of a chase?”

“I got to play frogger on top of the cars. Any problem with the extraction?”

“None yet.”

“Oh crap,” Drake said, skidding to a halt with the people nearby reflexively jerking away from him as he stared at a newscreen flashing a bulletin…one with a warning to the population on Tyr that a Star Force strike team was in the city and responsible for the deaths of over 40 people. They were labeling them a rogue faction, now unaffiliated with the mega corporation, and were requesting any intel on their locations.

“What?” Derrick asked.

“We just made the news. So much for our underground war with The Word.”

“We’re already off the grid, where are you?”

“Nowhere important,” Drake lied as he started to run again, with people’s stares changing into pointing and yelling. “Don’t wait up on me. I’ll make my way back by another route.

10

May 14, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Tyr

David shot one of the spaceport workers in the chest with a stinger, not because the man was a threat, but because he no longer had the luxury of being choosey. Every person he came across he was taking down as he and half of Green Team had already fought their way past the security guards and were in a hurry to catch a cargo shipment that was just about to launch.

During their initial recon of the dark zones in the city blueprints, Green Team had placed tracking beacons on some of the sites that they couldn’t assault immediately. Those crates and pieces of equipment had then been spirited away soon after, giving the team a few leads to follow now that it was clear that The Word knew it was compromised and was pulling out…or relocating within the city. It wasn’t clear yet what their progressing agenda was, but this beacon had gone to the spaceport and David knew they had to get at it before it flew off and had a chance to disappear in the transit network.

The other four members of Green Team were scrambling into the spaceport at different spots, all of which were trying to get to the beacon before it left. David was coming through a staff area, having blown through a locked rear door using the plasma rifle that was now snuggly tucked onto the back of his armor as he shot another passerby with his stinger version…or rather as he passed by, for he was running through the interior halls following the beacon on his battlemap.

The blueprints the battlemap was drawing from put it squarely in the hangar, meaning it was probably already onboard a dropship. He could call for Star Force to intercept the ship once it took off, but he didn’t have a long range transmitter on him, and even if he went back to their armory stash and got one, or commandeered a local one, there would be a delay in getting a ship here. The dropship would most definitely dock with a starport or ship in orbit before that happened, allowing the cargo to disappear.

Even if the beacon kept broadcasting there was a chance that the cargo would be split and they’d lose some of it, which was why it was important to get to it now…not to mention if there was more than cargo onboard. He didn’t know if it’d contain Word personnel or not, but he intended to find out.

David rounded a corner and ducked his shoulder as he rammed into another worker, knocking him aside and into the wall as he blew by. He didn’t turn around to shoot him unconscious, instead sprinting on as fast as the narrow hallways allowed. He had several more turns to make before finally popping out into the hangar and spotting a few guards firing at Jet and Nathan who had already come in through other entrances.

David shot one of the guards in the back, then the others dove for another part of the crate pile when they discovered they’d been flanked. Most of the hangar was flat and filled with ships, but at three points there were mountains of cargo either arriving or going out, stacked up in random segments to keep various shipments separate for easier handling later. That provided ample opportunities to shoot out of cover and a couple of plasma blasts came David’s way as he ignored the guards and hurried towards the Dragon-class dropship whose boarding ramp was still down, but no one was visible moving around it.

Another plasma lance caught David in the leg, splashing off his shields before overloading and penetrating…leaving a tiny scar in the armor alongside another he’d gotten yesterday. While the patchwork of shields overtop the armor was certainly a defensive boost, it was more in longevity than sheer power, given that this was the same set of armor he’d been wearing since arrival and he only had a dozen or so scorch marks showing what otherwise would have been melty gashes.

He risked getting a few of those now as he sprinted towards the massive dropship, only to see the boarding ramp begin to rise as he was halfway across the deck, angling underneath the wing of a falcon and shooting a pair of workers who didn’t get out of his way. David hurdled their bodies as they fell and sprinted on, knowing he wasn’t going to get there in time.

As the wide ramp tilted up and began to decrease the opening into a sliver, the anti-grav powered up and the belly of the wing-shaped ship started to drift up off the deck even before the hatch was closed. David slowed to a stop still far from the ship as the landing gear began to retract, his mind racing as he tried desperately to think of something else to do…maybe get to a control panel and close the bay doors.

But there was no time. The spaceport hangar deck was huge, and by the time he found the control room the dropship would be out of the containment shields holding in the atmosphere from escaping out to the airless moon’s surface. As the dropship slowly spun about, lining up for its run over to the center of the deck to align with the exit column, David resigned himself to finishing off the guards that were still shooting plasma at the Archons, along with however many others might be on their way in. The Word had beat them this time, but there was still a chance that they’d be able to intercept the shipment on the other end of wherever it was going if the beacon remained active.

Just then half a dozen plasma lances flashed together in one direction, and David saw that Jet was drawing the fire as he sprinted across the deck, stepping up on top of a crate sitting on a lifter whose driver had fled once the shooting started, and using the large box as a stepping stone to jump up onto the wing of a parked falcon, though the impossibly long leap came up short and he had to pull a one handed smack/grab to stay on top. As he climbed up and got his feet under him David shot one of the guards that was coming out of cover to target him.

“Jet, what are you doing?”

“Shut up, I’m busy,” the Archon said as he got himself fully up onto the wingtip…then he stood up from his crouched position and sprinted down the length of the long wing.

David ran up towards the crates, tracking down another pair of guards, but he kept throwing glances over towards Jet, unsure of what he was doing…then he saw him run and long jump off the other end of the dropship, crossing a gap of several meters to where he once again smack/grabbed the wing of the dragon as it passed by.

He was going to ask him what he had in mind, but as Jet had pointed out he was busy, so David kept quiet and paid as much attention as he could while dealing with the guards.

Jet climbed up over the wing’s edge, glad the Archon armor had grippy finger pads, and ran across the wide wing as the dropship eased its way into the ascension column, giving him a view of stars above his head through the slightly blue-tinted energy fields. As the ship settled into proper alignment, for the width of the dragon almost matched the width of the opening in the ceiling, Jet ran towards the bent forward portion of the flying wing and dropped to his knees over where he knew the cockpit was, though like all Star Force space ships there were no windows for him to look through.

Fortunately for Archon acolytes that wasn’t a problem.

As the dropship began its ascent, pushing Jet closer and closer to the energy field, his black/white Pefbar vision flicked on and he was suddenly able to see down through the hull plates and into the cockpit where the two pilots were seated. Seeing they were slightly behind him he slid across the dragon’s white exterior, knowing he needed to be as close as possible to make this work.

As Jet’s head passed through the first of two containment fields it bumped him slightly, given that it had to maintain some pressure to keep the gasses inside, then he was into the airlock chamber that was little more than a short vertical tube that led to a second shield, on the outside of which was the city surface.

Ignoring his ever changing location, Jet targeted both pilots’ minds and pumped a Fornax blast into each, with both men slumping in their chairs, one of which fell face forward into the control panel. Jet cringed but didn’t notice any change until he passed through the second shield and saw the city’s spires start to rotate slightly as the dropship began to twist as its port thruster was continuously firing.

“Whoops,” he said, releasing the Fornax flow into that man while continuing to disrupt the other with repetitive hits that saw his slump tilt to the side and cause him to fall out of his seat. The other man got his motor control back for a moment, sitting up and switching off the thruster control that he’d hit before slumping and twitching again, this time with a gentle telekinetic bump to the side of his head that toppled him out of his seat and onto the floor.

Jet released his barrage for a moment, using his Pefbar to study the control boards. He was about to activate the thruster control when the men started to get up, then he hit them with another blast, following by a quick tug of the controls.

The gentle spin the slowly ascending dropship was in nulled out, then Jet got the anti-grav set into neutral, which stopped their rise. He risked a glance to the side and saw the city spires now beneath him, with only the more or less flat expanse of the city visible over the wing and the rocky landscape of the moon beyond that, otherwise there was just a mass of stars over his head and all around him…and he realized that if he fell from this height, low grav world or not, he was probably going to die.

So when the pilots started to get up again he slammed another, more forceful Fornax blast into them, knowing that if they hit the main drive the momentum would slide him off the wing and down he would fall.

Telekinetically using the pilots’ controls in between repeated Fornax blasts to keep them subdued, Jet got the ship descending very slowly, hoping that they were still more or less aligned with the entrance to the spaceport. With his Pefbar he couldn’t see any of the display screens within the cockpit, only the flat material of the screens that appeared like a blank wall section. So it wasn’t all that surprising when the right wing suddenly began to tip up and his grip on the dragon’s hull began to get dicey.

He reacted quickly, killing the descent and stopping the dragon at a 35 degree angle…still enough to hold on to if he was careful. He twisted his head around as much as he dared, while still pounding the pilots with Fornax. He saw the inside lip of the spaceport ring to his left, along with the gap between it and the dipped wing, so he used the controls and slid the dragon over in that direction, eventually feeling the right wing drag loose.

The anti-grav controls auto-righted the level of the dropship, which Jet was grateful for, so he only had to trigger another descent down into the spaceport. When the first containment field passed up over his head he felt a sense of relief, and when the second followed his armor switched over from self-contained reserve oxygen to environment draw, meaning he was no longer on the clock there.

The dragon bottomed out before Jet could find the landing gear deployment button, crunching the hull slightly but otherwise leaving the ship intact. When Jet turned off the anti-grav entirely the wings began to tip to the left as the ship started to roll over, so he quickly reactivated it at a low setting, just enough to balance the tilt out.

“Jet, you are one badass nutcase,” David said with a laugh.

“Will you shut up and get inside before it takes off again,” Jet said, searching for the boarding ramp cockpit release button while once again having to disrupt and subdue the pilots with a Fornax blast…along with a third individual that came up into the cockpit to see what the hell was going on.

“Keep it down long enough for me to get the emergency panel off,” David said as he sprinted across the deck towards where it had come down, looking for a toolkit he could grab along the way. If he didn’t find one he’d just have to use his plasma rifle and armored knuckles to improvise, for the exterior release switch was buried under hull armor, meant only to be used as a last resort if some idiot triggered the ramp to seal up then jumped outside before it could fully close, leaving no one inside to open it again.

“No need,” Jet said, smiling underneath his helmet at both the headache he was developing and the button he’d found. He used his Lachka and telekinetically pressed it, then focused his remaining mental strength on keeping the pilots away from the controls.

“You’re getting a pay raise for this,” David joked as he continued to sprint forward, now seeing the boarding ramp start to lower, though it was all the way over on his left. He angled that way, goosing a little more speed out of his armored legs, not knowing how long it’d be down or who would be waiting inside.

Assad got to it first, with David following him in 6 seconds later. Jet kept up his Fornax until he saw Assad’s mind come up to the cockpit and shoot the pilots unconscious, then Jet let his helmet hit the hull for a moment of rest. Eventually he got up and slid off the front of the dragon, dropping hard to the distant ground and rolling out of his fall as he’d done in training thousands of times before.

He picked himself up then circled around to the ramp, running up it into the face of mountains of cargo. He picked his way through it, focusing on the minds he felt ahead, of which there were many. When he got out of the hold and up into the passenger section he found it packed with now unconscious people…all of which were wearing different, yet similarly styled clothing.

Jet turned one over, looking at the man and shuffling around his paint-splattered shirt for an ID. He pulled it out and examined the small, flat rectangle, finding nothing out of place about it, but he still got the feeling these weren’t varied people catching a ride up to orbit.

“Dropship secure,” David said over the teamcomm. “How’s the hangar look?”

“Rounding up the strays now,” Nathan answered, shooting a random worker that was only now fleeing across the deck. He was probably harmless, but better not to take chances. Besides, Nathan was getting tired of playing nice when everyone in the city seemed to be coming after them…and if this guy ran into an incoming security detachment and told them exactly where they were, it could cost them a surprise attack or a few seconds head start, so the guy got a green splatter on the back and a face plant into the deck as he fell.

Nathan ran along the row between parked dropships back towards the end where the dragon had originally been. Lio was doing the same only a few rows over, with both of them looking with their Ikrid senses for any minds still lurking around. Almost all of the dropships were empty, awaiting crew and cargo, but every now and then there’d be a worker who hadn’t left their post, figuring to ride out the ruckus and then get back to work…or maybe just being naïve enough not to realize the significance of plasma fire.

The next guy Nathan came across had an excuse, for he was welding a patch inside a partially disassembled transport, this one not of Star Force make. He let him get finished with what he was working on, then tapped him on the shoulder. The man extinguished the torch and turned around, only to get a stinger to the chest. Nathan caught him before he could land on his equipment, then laid him out on the floor for a not so uncomfortable nap.

From there on down to where the dragon had been was clear…save for one mind up in a crate stack where it shouldn’t have been. When Nathan got closer he realized it wasn’t actually in the crates, but behind them up high in the wall.

Frowning, Nathan turned on his Pefbar and got the traditional spherical vision, then he narrowed it to a cone and shot it up towards the mind like a spotlight, seeing through the crates as he walked up to the closest ones. Back behind them there was an air duct, pumping in fresh and processed atmosphere into the bay…and just inside it was someone hiding. The grate was in place, but the person was definitely inside.

Whoever it was, he wasn’t staying there, and Nathan began hopping up the crate stack and working his way around a few peaks to get over to near where the vent was, which the workers who’d stacked the crates up against the wall had wisely left an opening around.

As Nathan got closer his Pefbar increased in detail, and he could make out the arms and legs of the person crunched down inside the shaft before he got into view, then when he came around from the side and stepped up to within a couple meters of the grate the person pulled something out of his sleeve, a tiny pebble from the Archon’s view, and moved it towards his mouth.

On instinct Nathan telekinetically yanked it out of his hand and levitated it outside through the grating. The tiny object pulled a sharp right turn in the air outside and flew straight into Nathan’s hand as he walked up, keeping a close Pefbar eye on the person. One glance was all he needed, and the Archon knew he’d guessed right.

He stepped up to the grate, slid his fingers in through the gaps and pulled, popping it off and tossing the metal net aside…then he knelt down so he could see straight into the face of the man hunkering down with a startled and also resigned look on his face.

“Come out or I’ll drag you out,” Nathan said, knowing the man could decide to flee down the duct for as far as he could get, but apparently he wasn’t going to try that…or maybe already had. Nathan stretched out his Pefbar to see where it led just in case he did dart off, and found that about 10 meters back it dropped straight down well below floor level, meaning the man had cornered himself within his little hideout.

“Now,” Nathan repeated when he didn’t move.

The man sighed and crawled forward, sliding out and down half a meter to the crate floor where he rolled over his shoulders before standing up and brushing himself off. “That’s a neat trick…mind telling me how you did it?”

The man was dressed casually, same as the others in the dropship, though Nathan didn’t know that, for it was his calm, almost disinterested demeanor that sent a warning flag up in the back of the Archon’s mind.

“Would it matter if I did? You don’t have any cameras around here for your buddies to listen in on, do you?”

The man smiled. “No, this is just a standard spaceport. Not one of our facilities, which I believe you breached the other day.”

“Booby trapping prisoners is low,” Nathan growled.

“They served a purpose, assuming we got at least one of you. I know you somehow managed to disable the door bomb, but there was no way we…”

Two stingers at pointblank range to the chest cut off his sentence and dropped the man to the ground unconscious. Nathan shot him in the head a third time, just for good measure, then crunched the kill pill that was still in his hand and tossed aside the resulting dust as he knelt down and began searching the man’s pockets.

“David, I got one.”

“One what?” Green Team’s leader asked back over the comm.

Nathan found a larger object in a chest pocket of the man’s loose shirt and pulled out a pair of what looked like ordinary sunglasses, though he knew they were anything but.

“An Agent.”

Deceit

1

May 18, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Glasir

Shannon-103445 rode in the back of the Falcon-G dropship along with two other Archon adepts and a team of Knights from Clan Tron as the silver-plated ship rose up through the planet’s atmosphere leading a swarm of conventional dropships in its wake, all of which contained Clan combat personnel scrounged from Glasir. Their small colony on the planet held only 55,000, but Red Team had requested all local combat assistance they could offer, so Shannon and the other Archons on station had been dispatched to lead the Knights and Regulars out to the nearby moon of Tyr.

For Shannon, a level 34 adept, this was her first combat mission. She’d only recently been assigned to Alpha Centauri, having spent the past 83 years in Sol along with the other lower level Archons undergoing a slew of training missions and trials. She hadn’t progressed as fast as most of her original class, but she’d finally warranted a posting to another star system…one that was considered inconsequential and boring where she could be of limited use while she continued to train and upgrade her skills.

Neither she nor anyone else had expected Alpha Centauri, let alone Glasir, to be a hotbed of activity, but that was the universe for you. Once you think you’ve got things figured out it goes and upends your carefully constructed fiction, reminding you to look, listen, and learn…not guess and predict.

Shannon was ready, more than ready, and relished the chance to put her combat skills to use, despite not having much intel on the situation. She and the others were to report to the higher level Archons already on site and assist them with their current mission…and that was all she’d been told, though from the recent news stories making their way across planetary orbit and down to Glasir she knew there was at least some level of fighting already underway, with an Archon team being labeled as renegades to the general public.

Star Force had quickly shot that notion down with the rest of the public in the system, but Tyr’s open exchange of news had just as quickly clamped down thereafter, leaving what was currently going on as a mystery. Information wise the moon had gone dark, and if Red Team was requesting backup Shannon guessed something major was going down.

There were other Archons and troops in the system, far more on Odin than Glasir, but they’d made the call to bring them up from the nearby planet rather than send an assault force. Shannon wasn’t sure what that implied, so she just waited patiently as the dropship formation made a mini-jump towards the nearby moon with the gunship in the lead.

The Falcon-G was a modified dropship popular amongst the Clans. It had a broad range of weaponry, including bulky missile racks on the wings that cut down on its aerodynamics, but it was primarily designed for convoy defense and assaults on airless worlds, such as they were going to now. She knew Tyr had some anti-air defenses, and if it did her gunship would be the one to go in first and knock a hole in them to allow the unarmed dropships through to deliver their troops.

Shannon was also glad that they’d received their new shielded armor, which she’d gotten a custom set of only a year ago. That added an extra layer of protection that she hoped she wouldn’t need, but it was reassuring to know that she could take a few small hits and shrug them off without damage. The upgrade was a touch heavier than her old armor, but she agreed that the tradeoff was worth it…though until now she’d never had a chance to test it, or her skills, in real combat.

The other two Archons onboard the gunship variant both outranked her. In fact she was the lowest level adept assigned to this mission. All of Clan Tron’s Archons on Glasir were being deployed, along with groups from Clan Alterra and Clan Star Ranger, the other two Clans that had colonies on Glasir, both of which were larger than Clan Tron’s, given that they’d been the last to start building a little more than 30 years ago. The others had been on the planet for more than a century, and as such had much larger populations and Archon deployments.

When Shannon’s flotilla of dropships finally decelerated against Tyr’s gravity well they proceeded to drop into a slingshot orbit to get to the backside where the city was currently located, then dropped down to the surface and approached over land, skimming the airless, rocky landscape at an altitude of less than a kilometer and coming in at an angle following the instructions of those already in the city to bypass the intact anti-air defenses.

Red Team had already knocked out several, creating the opening, but many more still remained. A Star Force cutter was holding position over the northwest corner of the city, sitting in one of the defensive dead zones ready to assist should it become necessary, but given that the mission objective was to recover the city, Red Team had decided to disable the exterior defenses from the inside rather than slag them in a naval assault…but the cutter was standing by just in case that changed or any ships attempted to flee.

It was the smallest drone warship Star Force fielded, also shaped like a flying brick and far outmassing the dropships that flew in underneath its protective aura and down into one of the spaceports that Red Team had initially captured to facilitate the troop arrivals, though Shannon knew the city had many, for she’d been reviewing its schematics in helmet for the past hour as the teams were assembled.

When they passed through the containment shields the dropships set down in an orderly fashion, making rows in the area of the deck that had been cleared away. A variety of other ships were now parked around the perimeter, some of Star Force make, some not, and all Brazilian, while the Star Force reinforcements from Clan Alterra that had already arrived had sent their dropships back to Glasir so they wouldn’t be clogging the deck and blocking access for those yet to come in.

As soon as Shannon and her team disembarked from the Falcon-G it took off again, flying low to the ground and around into a waiting position for the surface entrance to clear, then it and those waiting in line behind it cycled back out as the grounded troops made their way to the spaceport exits.

A rally point popped up on Shannon’s battlemap, indicating that was where she was supposed to head to next, so she jogged off with the other two Archons with the Knights and Regulars following behind them in a phalanx and passed through a side entrance, seeing some of the other teams headed their way and some not.

When Shannon got through the archway and into the city interior she followed the battlemap to a nearby foyer where two other Archons were waiting for them, both adepts of Clan Alterra. When she stopped nearby she immediately got a comm reconfiguration prompt inside her helmet, which she followed, setting up familiar channels that she could toggle through during the mission.

“Here’s the situation,” Stan-47554 said over the comm while other teams were catching up from behind. Already the foyer had filled up, so Shannon guessed he wasn’t going to waste time waiting for the others to stack up behind them.

“Tyr has been seized by a criminal organization known as The Word. They’ve integrated themselves with the local population, making them believe that Brazil still controls the moon, so a lot of the people shooting at you probably think they’re just doing their job defending their colony and that you’re the bad guys. This is why you’re packing stingers rather than plasma. Stun anyone that even looks at you the wrong way and we’ll sort out who’s who later.”

“Both Red Team and Green Team are on site and leading this mission. They’ve given us a number of locations to take and hold while they stay on the move, updating us with additional mission parameters as needed. The Word is pulling out, and they’re trying to snag as many of them as they can. We’ve got a cutter parked overhead to run down any ships that attempt to flee, but with 13 million people in this city The Word doesn’t have to go far to hide. They can blend into the population and hide out, then leave a year from now once things cool down.”

“They’re good at that, I’m told, which is why the big boys are running every which way hunting them down. We get to play king of the hill and hold what they take, collect and guard the prisoners they’re racking up, and do the ground work of actually reclaiming this city for Brazil.”

“Those of you with me are being tagged as Group 19. Head to the following waypoint. The rest of you stay here with Ian.”

Shannon’s battlemap didn’t update, so she assumed she hadn’t been assigned to that group. The other two adepts she’d rode in with had, so they began to move off along with a lot of the Knights, leaving mostly Regulars and a few others behind.

“We’re Group 20,” Ian-65939 said after the others left down the hallway to the east. “Unlike the other groups we have one and only one mission, and it takes us to the other side of the city. We’ll be using subsurface maintenance lines to get there, and a lot of running. Right now we don’t have an accessible spaceport in those areas, so this is as close as we can start from. The transit options within the city are also a no go. Brazilian security has virtually shut them all down, turning this city into a much larger playground.”

“Other teams are working on getting those back up and opening up another spaceport, but we can’t wait on that. Our target is here,” the adept said, updating all of their battlemaps with a mission objective waypoint. “This is the main environmental control unit, and ties into all the subsidiaries within the city. If this unit goes down the others can compensate, but it’s responsible for nearly a third of the air the population is breathing. We’re to take it and hold it against any sabotage efforts. Normally this would be a low priority, but Red Team has tagged it as a primary objective, so we need to get there as fast as possible while everyone else is distracted, which is why we’re taking the low road.”

“Archons on point followed by the Knights,” Ian said, referencing the four they’d been left with. “Regulars keep it close and tight. You,” Ian said, pointing at Shannon, “rear guard. Let’s move.”

With that last word Ian started running, albeit slowly, over to the northern door in the foyer with the rest of the Clan Tron troops arraying themselves as instructed. Shannon waited for them all to pass, then dropped in behind them, leaving a short gap between the last Regulars in their Tron Black armor and herself. That way she could rove about more freely, as well as provide a distance buffer should anyone come up and try to ambush the group from behind. It was sort of like being tagged as Venator, except that she had a moving target to center on.

Shannon kept an eye on the others via her battlemap, seeing the column of ID signatures start to make progress down through the city’s layers as she held back, keeping her eyes moving about from side to side all the while taking a few peeks at the position of the other groups. Some she could see on the overall city map, others not, given that the transmission range of their battlemap feeds were limited, but where there were individuals close enough to transmit the data down a relay line, they could keep tabs on where everyone was at, plus she noted the placements of several dedicated transmitters for just that task, further extending both their battlemap and comm range.

Also, the cutter overhead was acting as another relay, and with its broadcast power it could reach just about everywhere within the city, no matter how far down you went. Trick was, those units couldn’t communicate back up, so their positions were unmarked and would remain so until others came close to them.

Shannon knew they could carry more powerful transmitters on their racks, but those larger units were easy to track, meaning their enemies could use them to follow their movements. The battlemap network, as well as their communications, were low powered and configured in a way to be almost untraceable, keeping the Archons and those they were linked to as ghosts. And that was critical for the battlemap, which updated constantly.

They ran for the better part of an hour before making enemy contact, which amounted to a scattering of guards at one of the subsurface bottlenecks. The point men blew through it with ease, leaving only the unconscious bodies as testament for Shannon to see as the back of the formation ran past. From there they were back to traversing through the unpopulated underbelly of the city which, for its sparsity, was not convenient to travel through, for there were no straight line trajectories.

Shannon spent her time hanging off the back as the line on her battlemap snaked back and forth as Ian tagged waypoints ahead of them to travel to using the city schematics they had available, plotting their course a few minutes ahead of their current movements. So far they hadn’t hit any dead ends, but Shannon could tell from the architecture that that was just good planning on Ian’s part, for it was a maze of connections down here designed to be accessed from above, not laterally.

When the line stopped at a random waypoint Shannon guessed they were about to go up, seeing that the mission waypoint was not that far off, but there was no comm chatter so she just carried out her assignment as rear guard and kept watch. After several minutes of pausing the line began to move again and, like she guessed, they were going up a flight of stairs, which she hit a few seconds behind the last Regular in line.

At the top of some 18 flights they got off, though the stairs continued to go up, and ran through a populated building out to a street. Shannon saw several stunned bodies along the way, though none with weapons. She figured they’d gotten in the way or done something to hinder the Archons’ advancement, but the paint splatters on their civilian clothing weren’t telling and she didn’t have time to stick around and find out.

When she finally crossed the street, which was pedestrian rather than vehicular and capped by a high, false glass ceiling with several walkways crisscrossing it at higher elevations, she saw people running for cover, yelling and screaming at the presence of the Star Force troops, which she thought was odd. She could understand them being startled, but not hysterical.

That didn’t feel right, so she double checked both directions, looking for enemies about but finding none before ducking into another building on the other side, just as her comm activated.

“Contacts,” one of the point men reported, along with a flashing icon on her battlemap that disappeared after three seconds. Not a waypoint, but a heads up as to the location. She could see that it wasn’t where the line of troops were, but rather farther to the south inside a building on the edge of a large promenade.

Just then one of the dots swung out of line and held position, with the rest of the troops running on past. When she was nearly up to it her comm opened again, this time on a personal channel from Ian.

“With me,” he said, waving her his way on the promenade as she came into view. “We’ve got a security checkpoint to neutralize.”

“Happy to,” she responded, accelerating her sore legs up into a more familiar cadence. The Regulars and Knights simply ran too damn slow, and it’d been bothering her nearly the entire way out here, so despite the soreness it felt good to really be on the move again.

“I’m playing rabbit, you hit them on a delay.”

“Copy that,” she said, letting him get a few steps ahead of her.

Ian ran through the crowds, darting from one gap to another and came up on the checkpoint…which was essentially a toll booth monitoring the passage of pedestrians from one section of the city to another. On the other side was a more restricted area, reserved for governmental purposes and off limits to the wandering public. Tucked up next to it was a guard house, which was their target.

Outside there were four guards lounging around in a very unalerted state. The rest of the fighting in the city was far from here, so maybe they didn’t think it worth the worry…either that or they hadn’t been alerted to it, which Shannon found hard to believe. Only one of them noticed Ian coming and stood up, grabbing for his plasma rifle which he’d left sitting a meter to his side propped up against the wall.

Ian shot him first, then peppered the other three with stingers before opening and ducking his way inside the guard house. Shannon kept her spacing behind him, as instructed, and came in a few seconds later…right into the view of the flanks of half a dozen guards scrambling for their weapons while several others were already firing at Ian who was halfway across the lobby headed for the rec room.

Shannon took it to their blind side and sprayed them with stingers as fast as she could pump the trigger, downing four before the others even noticed her arrival. After that there was a furious few seconds of cat and mouse as she ducked behind a desk and played sniper while Ian completed a half circle and came at the wad of off duty security from the other side, taking a few plasma hits in the process.

Shannon didn’t stay put for long, jumping up out of cover and forming the opposite side of a pincher maneuver, firing her way through the guards until she met up face to face with Ian…then they found themselves standing in the middle of a pile of some two dozen bodies, some of which were still squirming, only having gotten partially stunned.

“Clean up,” Ian ordered as he dashed into a side room.

Without a word Shannon started hopping over legs and arms and shooting single stingers into the downed bodies, some of which she wasn’t sure whether they were moving or not, so she just shot them again for good measure. As she did she collected some of their plasma rifles and pistols and made a stash atop one of the desks that hadn’t been toppled or shot up by the guards’ misses.

Ian came back out a few minutes later, pointing for the door.

“We’re done here. Let’s catch up with the rest.”

Slightly surprised they were leaving so soon, Shannon dropped the plasma rifle she’d picked up and followed him back out of the guard house, then they ducked inside the restricted area rather than backtracking, taking a different route to the waypoint as the adept suppressed a smile at finally having gotten her first bit of real action, simple as it was.

2

“I think I see one,” a Brazilian guard said nervously from his position on a pedestrian crossroad in Region 13 of the city.

“Where?” another of the six guards asked, looking down through a sea of people. Some were going about their daily activities given the fighting hadn’t reached this section of city, while others were scrambling about trying to get to wherever they thought would be safe, with still others buying up anything and everything they could in the way of supplies, intent on holding out in their quarters until the danger had passed.

“Just beyond the courtyard,” the Brazilian said, hefting his plasma rifle. They’d been dispatched to this location on the report of Archon movements in the area, but so far this was the first sighting in more than 2 hours.

“Take cover and watch your aim,” the squad leader ordered, kneeling down behind a short barricade fort they’d set up. “Wait for the people to run clear. We don’t want to hit any of our own. Then concentrate all shots on the first Archon. They’ve got tough armor, so it’ll take a lot to take one down. Scatter fire and they’ll own us.”

“Here they come,” another said, hearing the screams of the civilians just before the road in front of them cleared with people ducking into side stores and walkways as fast as they could.

“Steady,” the squad leader said, but as the first of the pair came into view the distant Archon didn’t charge them, nor fire. Instead he took a large object off his back and laid it on the ground some 100 meters away from the checkpoint, then the second one came up and put an identical piece on top, connected the two, then pushed a button and took off running the way they’d come, ducking down a side street while the other Archon went a different way.

“What the hell?”

“Hold position and watch our flanks. On my order everyone turn and focus on the same target. I get the feeling they’re going to hit us simultaneously from both sides and divide our firepower.”

“What’s that thing they dropped?”

“I don’t know, but it’s…” the squad leader said before a huge plume of blue smoke began billowing out of the canister the Archons had just laid down. It expanded so fast that the street around it was filled within two seconds, with the cloud rushing down towards the guards and filling into the side crosswalks and stores, including the ones that had their ornamental doors closed, for the gas seeped in through the cracks.

The blue smoke wall rushed over the guards before the squad leader knew what to do, and he expected to have the Archons on top of them at any moment, taking them down hand to hand or with pointblank rifle fire…but that didn’t happen, nor did anything else. The six guards, unable to see each other, were left alone, though the screams of the people in the surrounding buildings and those that had been stuck outside behind them made the otherwise silent environment horrifically creepy.

“Check in,” the squad leader finally said after forcing himself to take a breath of the blue smoke. He coughed on it, but was still able to get some oxygen in.

“Here,” one of them said, followed by a chorus from the others.

“Orders, sir?”

“Hold position,” he said, waving a hand in front of him but still unable to move the smoke away from his eyes. Everything looked blue, with lighter hues above where the walkway lights were pushing through it.

“Face out so we don’t shoot each other. In fact, move back to back,” he said as the tactic jumped to mind as the screams began to die down, replaced by more further away and thus not as loud, returning some semblance of order to the place.

The squad leader retreated a couple of steps, holding out an arm until he made contact with the man on his left while holding his rifle in his right. From there they all got ahold of one another and made a small circle back to back.

“Take a knee,” he said, still unable to see anything. “Let them come to us.”

Then they waited…and waited. Nothing happened, save for the smoke began to thin out ever so slightly.

A few more minutes passed, and the squad leader found himself starting to get light headed from all the smoke, then he heard a slump/crunch as one of his men keeled over behind him.

“Manuel’s…down,” one of the others said, coughing.

“Is he hit?”

“I don’t…” the man said, before he too collapsed.

“Damn…smoke,” another said, with the squad leader starting to get tipsy himself. He stayed upright for another minute, the last to fall, then tipped forward and landed on the ground with his hands forward as he dropped his weapon. He kept himself on all fours but awake for a bit longer, then heard a few drops of water underneath him.

After that he blacked out and fell to the floor on top of the blood drops coming out of his nose.

18 minutes later in Region 4 a larger checkpoint leading into a shopping complex spotted another pair of Archons coming their way. This time the walkway leading in was three times as large and already clear of people, all of whom were taking refuge inside. There were two dozen guards entrenched behind barricades with plasma rifles drawn when, in the distance, a silver-suited Archon stepped out of a side street with a red one following a few steps back. The silver knelt down, pulling a canister off his back while the red one stood by, raising his rifle and taking a pot shot at the guards.

The blue plasma lance hit high, already having diffused slightly, but none the less it melted out a bit of the glass above the guards’ heads, leaving a hole into the complex. Two more plasma shots came down their way, one of which hit the ground shy of the barricades, but the Brazilians held their fire, waiting for the Archons to come closer.

The red and silver ones switched places, though the silver didn’t fire. He merely waited behind the red as it unslung its canister and set it atop the other…then the silver one jerked in sudden warning and twisted to his left, raising his plasma rifle halfway up when another silver blur came out of a side street and laid a running Archon punch into his chest.

The real Archon’s armored elbow punched through the fake chest plate of The Word operative, driving the fragments into his ribs and knocking the impostor entirely out of sight down the opposite walkway. Lio spun around and grabbed the red one by the neck and pulled it back from the double canister, smacking him onto the ground before punching him in the helmet three times, cracking the ceramic material and knocking him unconscious in the process.

“Got it,” he reported over the comm. “Just in the nick of time too.”

“And the operatives?” David asked.

“Oh yeah,” Lio said, glancing at the pair of bodies wearing the knockoff Archon armor. The red one was unmoving, but the silver was stirring a bit. He’d deal with that in a second.

“Deal with the canister, then get moving,” David said, enroute to his own intercept.

“Copy,” Lio said, walking out of sight of the guards and pulling out a stinger pistol, whereupon he shot the operative in the chest, splattering the hole in the fake armor and stunning the man’s wound. He fell still and the real Archon walked back out, eyeing the distant guards, and walked up to the canister. A quick inspection found him the release latches and he pulled the two pieces apart.

Knowing that he couldn’t babysit the thing he took a chance and started jogging down towards the barricades, stowing his pistol on his back rack and raising his hands in the air while amping up his external mic.

“Hold your fire,” he said, knowing that if they did start shooting that he’d have to duck into a side room pretty quick. That many plasma rifles on him would eat through his shields in a heartbeat and chew into his armor like a chainsaw through wood.

Lio kept his run smooth and sluggish, with his hands held high and got halfway down to the guards without them returning fire. He’d guessed they’d seen him take out the others, and was relying on their confusion to keep their trigger fingers at bay.

“I need your help,” he yelled through the mic, and he could see several heads, some helmeted, some not, twitch to the side as they glanced at each other.

“There are Star Force imposters roaming the city,” he said slowly as he approached their lines, transitioning from a jog to a quick walk when he got within 50 meters. “I just took out two of them before they could detonate a chemical weapon. They’ve already set off several others within the city, and we’re trying to get to the rest before they can set them off. I need to go after the next closest one, but I need you to take possession of that one,” he said, thumbing his left hand backwards, “so it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

“Stop there,” one of the guards said, and Lio obliged, coming up within 20 meters of the shooting gallery.

“Star Force is responding to a request by the Brazilian government,” Lio explained. “There’s a rogue faction on Tyr that we’re rooting out, and they’re attacking you dressed as us to cause chaos. Our personnel are equipped with stun weapons. If you see one that has a plasma rifle, like those two jokers, shoot them down. They’re wearing fake armor too.”

“Stand down,” the Brazilian commander ordered, and the guards half lowered their weapons as he stepped up to the front barricade. “What’s going on?” he asked Lio.

“It’s a long story,” he said, lowering his arms, “so I’ll give you the short version. Tyr has been infiltrated by a criminal organization, at all levels, and has been quietly cut off from the Brazilian government, though very few people were aware of it. Finally Brazil got word and sent a strike force to reclaim the city. That strike force went missing and they asked Star Force to investigate before sending a larger force in. We’ve been here a few days picking apart the rogues, but since they control the moon they tagged us as enemies and ordered you guys to stop us…then they started dressing up like us and killing people. All caught up?”

“No, but I’ll take your word for it,” the Brazilian said, running his fingers through his black hair. “That answers a lot of questions. What sort of chemical weapons?”

“Deadly smoke, from that thing down there. Can you keep it safe?”

The Brazilian nodded. “What about the imposters?”

“Hang onto them too, and be careful, they’re a devious lot. We’ll collect both later, but right now I have to go before they set any more off.”

“Go,” the Brazilian said, with the Archon not wasting any time. He turned around and ran back the way he’d come, sprinting faster than the commander had ever seen a person move.

“Six man retrieval team,” he ordered, pointing ahead. “Grab that device and those men and get them back here.”

He pulled a large comm unit off his belt and held the phone-like device up to his ear as he watched his men move out. “We have a situation. There appears to be two sets of Star Force in the city, one genuine and another group of imposters. I just saw one attack the other, then the Archon came to us and explained that the imposters are setting off chemical weapons within the city. Can you confirm any of this?”

There was a long pause.

“I believe him. We’re recovering the device now, along with the two fake Archons he took down. It appears to come in two pieces which they have to assemble on site. They were doing so at range, and took a few shots at us…with plasma weapons. The Archon said all of Star Force’s troops are equipped with stun weapons, so the imposters will be the ones with plasma.”

There was another pause, during which the Brazilian commander watched his men haul the canisters back down towards him, with the others dragging the two suits of fake armor lagging behind.

“I know…but can you confirm any chemical weapons usage in the city?”

The commander waved the first canister piece over to him, then pointed to the ground where he wanted to set them down.

“Dear god…how many?” he asked, watching the fake Archons dragged up towards him…as well as the breach point in the silver one where the real Archon had punched through. The commander knelt down and pulled at a fragment of the armor over his chest, with it breaking off after he tugged twice. Cheap imitation it was, more like a costume than armor.

“I’m looking at the imposters now. Their armor is fake. A single plasma shot should get through. The Archon said they’re trying to sow confusion. He also said they’re here on the request of Mars…yes, I said Mars. Claims they sent a team in previously to investigate a hostile takeover and then promptly vanished. Star Force said they were asked to investigate. If that’s true then we’re working contrary to our own good.”

“No I don’t care. When’s the last time you heard of them using chemical weapons? They’ve got enough firepower to lay waste to the moon if they wanted, which makes this whole assault implausible. What the Archon said makes sense, so at least try and make contact with them. I saw one intercept and disable a weapons canister, so let them keep doing it. If we slow them down more could be released.”

The Brazilian commander sneered and pulled the comm away from his head, shutting it off and clipping it back onto his belt.

“Orders?” one of the guards asked.

“Contact the other checkpoints in the mall. I want them reporting to me and only me. Command has its head up its ass right now, so we’re going rogue. Don’t shoot at any Star Force personnel unless they’re firing plasma at us…that’ll be the imposters.”

“What do you want done with these?”

The commander looked down at the two canisters. “What can you make of it?”

Another guard stepped over and knelt down, pulling off the outer shell with practiced ease. “Some sort of liquid, binary mixture. If this transforms into a gas it’ll pump out enough to cover a wide area, more than enough to get to us from their detonation point.”

“Is it safe?”

The man nodded. “I think so…so long as the two compounds aren’t combined. I’d prefer not to test that theory.”

“Find a closet and post a permanent guard…and keep it disassembled. And get these two out of that armor and restrained.”

“Who are they?”

“You can ask them when they wake up, just keep them away from the device and make sure they don’t escape. I don’t know what’s going on here, but if Star Force really is here to help then they’ll sort it out in good order.”

“And if they’re not?”

“Then you might as well kiss your ass goodbye,” the commander said with a scoff. “I used to work for them, and they can drop the hammer whenever they like, more so than any of you know…but don’t worry, they’re as good as good guys get, and you saw for yourself how that Archon disabled them and the canister. So sit tight, watch your approaches, and keep an eye out for more imposters. We have to protect the people inside, regardless of what command has to say about it. If you see real Star Force personnel, Archon or otherwise, inform me immediately. We’re going to help them protect our people however we can, so check those itchy trigger fingers.”

Before he could utter another word the commander was shot in the back, not once, but four times in succession by one of his own guards…who even before the man fell, ran towards the barricade and hurdled it, then took off at a run down the walkway, sprinting for his life.

At first the other guards didn’t know what was going on, but a couple of them snapped into action and fired plasma streaks down at the traitor. One hit him in the shoulder, but the armored vest he wore caught most of it. The man veered to the left, with several more shots missing, then ducked into a side door and disappeared.

The other guards got to and flipped the commander over so that he was face up, but there were no signs of life in the man. The pointblank plasma fire had blown right through his vest and exploded his heart.

“What just happened?” one of them asked, aghast.

“The Archon said Tyr had been infiltrated,” another said, his plasma rifle shaking slightly in his hands. “I guess Pao was one of them.”

“No. That’s…”

“He just killed him! What is unclear here?”

“Who’s in command now?” another guard asked.

“I am,” one of the fully armored ones said, stepping up from behind. “Carry out his orders…and put his body somewhere out of the way. And I want 3 men on the canister. Who knows how many more traitors there are.”

When nobody moved he dropped the butt of his plasma rifle to the ground and smacked it against the tile floor three times. “Move before we’re all dead!”

Half of the guards seemed to snap out of their haze, with the others following suit after the men started to deploy to their tasks.

3

“Do you think we’ll be safe in here?”

Ben Morrison looked his wife in the eye, then glanced around the shelter that was already near capacity. “Better than out on the streets.”

“What do we do if they come in?” she whispered, barely audible over the din of hundreds of different conversations. The shelter had several thousand people packed into tiered platforms with staircases running up and down the levels at multiple spots, but otherwise it was a large empty complex they could use to pack people into in times of need.

“They’ll have to get by the soldiers to do that,” he reminded her. “And there are none back in our apartment complex.”

“Right,” she said unconvinced as she looped an arm around their 5 year old daughter, who’d been silent for the long walk out to the shelter, but whose eyes were wide with terror and worry.

Someone behind Morrison bumped into him, and he turned to look.

“Sorry,” the old woman said as she tried to find a place to sit down. Most of the floor space had already been taken, with only narrow cracks in between families and clusters of people available.

“You’re fine,” he offered, ignoring the elbow as she walked on, trying not to stumble over the tangle of arms and legs sticking out everywhere.

“How long do you think this will last?” his wife asked him after the woman walked by, though there were several other people wandering around trying to find a spot to sit down.

“I honestly don’t know. The fighting may never reach us. I don’t think it’s even hit this section of the city.”

“Yet,” she reminded him.

“Daddy?” his daughter asked, finally breaking her silence.

“Yes sweetheart?”

“I’m thirsty.”

His wife looked up at him. “I forgot to bring anything.”

“Neither did I.”

His wife looked down and rubbed her shoulder. “I’m sorry, but it’ll be a bit longer before any of us get something to drink. We have to stay here so the bad men won’t find us. We’ll get some water after they leave, ok?”

Their daughter didn’t respond, just leaned back into her mom’s chest and returned to her shell of silence.

A beep from Morrison’s watch caused him to glance at the time, then he looked around at the hordes of people and sighed. He turned and locked eyes with his wife.

“I’ll look around, see if they don’t have some type of emergency supplies.”

She reached out and grabbed his arm. “No…”

He smiled and placed his hand on hers. “It’ll be alright. Just save my spot.”

She faked a smile and released his arm, then stretched out her legs so her right foot extended into the spot he’d been sitting.

“I’ll be back,” Morrison said before hopping his way in between people over to a walkway that had been roped off so people wouldn’t sit down inside. He ducked underneath and headed over to a staircase, whereupon he walked down against a sparse flow of people coming up from the main entrance. His wife and daughter were on the 4th level out of 6, with the only entrance on 2, which was where he headed.

Once he got down to that level, which was even more packed than those above and below, he bypassed by the facility staff and headed for the entrance, one of the few people actually leaving the shelter, passing through several lines of guards who gave him odd glances, but he wasn’t the only one that had left today so they paid him no more thought, intent on keeping an eye on the large promenade that Morrison took off down, hanging tight to the wall as he headed to the left.

Two doors down he walked into an abandoned store, using a master key to get through the locked door. From there he headed into the back and unlocked another door into a maintenance area. There he climbed up a ladder to the highest level and stepped off onto a catwalk, then headed over to a section of the machine-laden corridor that ran behind the rows of stores and unlocked a specific panel.

He crawled into the empty box and pulled the cover shut, so as to leave no trace of anything askew. On the back side he kicked out a false wall and crawled through the hole in the real wall that had been precut days ago, following a string of tiny lights that allowed him to navigate through the otherwise total blackness. Once through that he was free to climb up a series of handholds that had been welded into the side of the containment wall and up to the ‘roof.’

Morrison had to duck down when he came up, given that the city shell was only a meter and a half above the building roof. It was a thick layer of metal and armor designed to protect the inner buildings from weaponsfire and meteorite impacts. The airspace Morrison was crawling through was auxiliary, for the wall that his entry point had been cut through was otherwise airtight, meaning that even if the city shell cracked the interior structures wouldn’t depressurize, adding an extra layer of protection to the Star Force-designed structure.

The gap he was crawling through was dotting with support braces, but he eventually worked his way over to the top of the shelter, finding the stacks of explosives that had been placed there earlier. They were outlined in a square with a small hole in what looked like a brick wall, there were so many of them. He crawled in through the hole and to the detonation mechanism inside the mini fort.

Wires were everywhere, but the path to the detonator had been kept clear, allowing him to crawl up and sit down cross-legged in front of the trigger mechanism. He pulled a small chip out of his pocket and inserted it into the housing, arming the manual trigger.

“We are The Word,” he whispered, closing his eyes as he prepared himself. “The sword and shield, guardian and gardener. We are entrusted with the soul of our race, and will counter the darkness corrupting it, bringing Humanity back into the light. We are loyal, committed, penitent, and honored to acquit this duty, for ours is not to determine the bounds of righteousness, but to accept those inherent in the universe and to bring back into line those that have strayed. We do this through creation and destruction, both in ourselves and our enemies, for all are the children, no matter how far they have strayed…and all can become enemies, for none are immune to corruption. We are The Word, and we will hold to the righteous cause, no matter the effort or sacrifice required of us.”

“We are The Word,” he repeated, placing his thumb on the trigger. He paused for a moment, checking his own conviction and finding it not lacking. Then he depressed his thumb and detonated the wall of explosives.

His wife and daughter were caught in the blast, having the level above them crashing down in a wave of debris that killed many instantly while cracking the floor beneath them. Both of them survived the impact, with the lay of debris cradling them, though both were knocked around as they fell…only to have a whirlwind of pressure push them back up and pin them to a slanted piece of debris, shoving them down into the nook where it had lodged into another piece.

The mother held onto her daughter as both were screaming, but the air was suddenly taken from their lungs as they and the debris were launched up through the breach in the city shell and launched with hundreds of other people and building pieces out into the low gravity of the airless moon.

The mother and daughter’s veins popped as their bodies swelled from the sudden lack of pressure, turning them both into an instantaneous, gory mess…but they didn’t die instantly, as the blood loss and trauma of explosive decompression competed with a lack of oxygen in their lungs. Both suffered a short, but gruesome death as they were flung out over the city and slowly fell down to land on the rocky landscape or on other parts of the city shell, which did well to catch and stop the debris from penetrating to the living areas inside.

A continuous plume of air continued to jet out the huge hole, though it reduced in volume almost immediately as the shelter was emptied, forcing it to suck more through the corridors and promenades nearby, adding more damage to the city’s population than the explosion alone could have, though the spray of Human bodies across the cityscape was gruesome enough.

Andre-80319 was ducking behind a potted tree well down the promenade, all the way into the neighboring section of the city when the explosion occurred. He was so far away that he couldn’t even hear it over the plasma fire coming from the Brazilians who were bunkered up in some well-arranged barricades and blocking the Star Ranger’s advance. The adept didn’t have any doubts that they were going to be able to subdue them, but it was going to take some time, else they risk losing some men, for the guards were doing well to overlap fields of fire and Andre had already had his shields go down twice crossing from cover to cover.

He was the point man in their current alignment, with the Knights and Regulars further back. His job was to get up close and lob one of two stun grenades he had on him over the barricades and inside the small fort. Andre could have winged one from where he was, but he wanted to diminish the chances of his missing by getting in closer, and the potted tree was the furthest he’d been able to get, realizing that he was going to have to make a hook shot in order to lob the grenade without getting lit up with plasma…which he could survive, but he didn’t want to take the armor damage.

Suddenly he was tugged forward, hitting his head on the rim of the pot as the air in the promenade turned into a hurricane. He saw the pressure meter on his HUD drop sharply, with his suit’s automated systems cutting off the external air feed and going over to backups immediately.

The Archon planted a hand on the rim to steady himself and half stood up, looking in the direction the air was going and was surprised to see the containment doors not lowering into place. All plasma fire coming from the Brazilians immediately stopped as they began to run out of air, meanwhile people on the other side of the archway, far back behind the Brazilians, started running out into the streets in a panic from where they’d been hiding.

Andre didn’t wait and flung himself up over the pot, using the air flow to pull him across and into a run. He flew right past the barricade fort which had been built up against the wall on the left side of the promenade and jumped over a series of benches, landing awkwardly but staying on his feet…then he fought his way to the right and caught himself on the archway, setting his feet and moving to the side.

There he pulled open the emergency panel and pulled the containment trigger arm…only to have it not respond. He glanced at an indicator light, which due to the Star Force design of the system he knew to be an indication of computer override, meaning someone in a control room was ordering the doors to stay open against their basic programing.

He wasted no time, seeing the pressure dropping even further, and punched the locked panel over the emergency trigger, cracking the case enough for him to pry it off. Underneath was a clear case covering a button, which he pried off and pressed, overriding the computer override and triggering four pieces of a massive clear wall to iris out of the archway and lock into place.

Before that could happen Andre jumped out and through to the other side, somersaulting through his landing and running forward to grab the nearest person he could. He caught a man as he was stumbling forward and literally dragged him back to the now closed wall, at the bottom of which were four rotational booths. He pushed him inside one and spun the basic air lock around, getting him on the more pressurized side then ran back and forth three times to grab additional people, though the last two didn’t survive.

Andre carried the bloody fourth person through himself, seeing that the rest of the Star Rangers had taken the opportunity to subdue the Brazilians, though at the moment no one seemed interested in fighting. The air pressure on the good side of the wall was rising again, as it sucked air from other sections, but not nearly as fast as it should have been, meaning that there were probably other leaks that would eventually render this section airless minutes later if they weren’t sealed.

The Archon pulled up a wider map of the city, seeing where the next closest archways were, then opened a comm to the other two Archons in his group that were nearby but not on the same promenade.

“Manually close all containment doors,” he ordered. “Regardless of whether or not you have a breach. The computer controls have been overridden and a lot of people are dying. We need to contain this before it gets any worse.”

“Where’s the breach?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere west of here.”

Outside the city the nearby cutter got a good view of the explosion and maneuvered over to that location, or as close as it could get without exposing itself to still operational defensive batteries…then a decision was made and it moved in closer, drawing fire from a small plasma battery that it took out with several precision lachar blasts while it absorbed the plasma hits as it moved over top of the breach point. It fought against the outflowing air a bit, but given its mass it didn’t have trouble descending over top of the massive hole and pushing its shields out further from the hull.

With some tricky reworking of the matrix the drone warship’s pilots used its protective bubble to temporarily seal off the breach, holding position on anti-gravs about 30 meters above the hole and sitting down in between several ‘mountains’ where taller sections of city sprung up. Thanks to the warship’s small size it was able to slide in between them without issue, though a destroyer or larger wouldn’t have been able to fit, for the surface of the city wasn’t a smooth curve, but a mottled mess of concealed structures contained beneath the protective blanket of armor, with more internal buildings added on the edges of the city with every decade that passed.

“Carver here,” the engineer answered his comm, swinging across his office on a rolling chair to get to the terminal. There was no image attached to the signal, just a voice…and an ID signature of a very high ranking Archon.

“We have a hull breach on Tyr,” Drake said evenly, but Carver could sense the urgency in his voice. “A big one. We’ve got a cutter temporarily plugging the hole but we need a patch job done as soon as possible, so prep a team and get over here.”

The engineer started pulling up available units on his console, looking through what they had available on Glasir.

“We’ve got a pair of MFSs,” he said, referring to the Mobile Field Slips that were basically a shipyard condensed down into a transport and allowed Star Force to initiate construction on fresh sites, as well as being used for repair work, given that they brought all the necessary workspace and tools with them. “I can deploy one within the hour.”

“Do better,” Drake pressed. “We’ve got a battle going on inside, and we don’t know what caused this breach. The city has already lost a chunk of atmosphere that we’re having trouble replacing. If we get a second hole hundreds of thousands of people will die.”

Carver frowned, though Drake couldn’t see it. “What’s wrong with the containment systems?”

“They’ve been overridden.”

“God dammit,” he swore as he jumped out of his chair, realizing in an instant the disastrous implications that could ensue. “You need to start manually sealing them. There’s an override panel on each of them, unless the Brazilians changed the architecture.”

“We’re working on it. Just get here and get it sealed as fast as you can.”

“Going,” Carver said, cutting the comm and rushing out of his office.

Already sitting in a parking orbit around Glasir, MFS-0832 was powered down and tethered to a monitoring station without a crew aboard. Those had to come up from the planet and from nearby orbital stations, pulled off of current jobs and shoved into dropships and ferries. Carver was one of the last up, having hopped directly onto a dropship and flown up with a scattering of personnel. He took the skeleton crew he’d assembled and made a pair of jumps, the first of which was out to Aesir, then from there to Tyr to get around the curve of the planet rather than wait through orbital transition.

They got to Tyr and down to the city 53 minutes after Drake’s call had come through, with the MFS gliding in over the city top and setting ‘down’ beside the cutter, though it was still hovering on anti-grav. Had it actually landed it could have cracked and damaged the armored shell even further.

Carver and most of the others he’d grabbed donned armored work suits and shot out the airlocks, dropping the short distance down to the city top and running across it in low g to positions around the blast crater as the cutter held position above them. The MFS then fed down a thick cord that, between the men and several mechanical arms, they managed to stretch around the perimeter of the hole. From there they began sealing it to the surface of the shell, going around and triggering the premade segments to chemically bond, then testing all the connections before they finally gave the go ahead.

The MFS fed power to the cord and its shield generator powered up, creating a ‘band aid’ over the breach up to the edge of the cutter’s shields. A quick reprogramming of both allowed the band aid to generate its shield through the other, with both holding back physical matter but not each other.

A quick signal to the cutter and it slowly rose up, undoing the overlap and allowing the engineers’ shield to take over. The warship hesitated, waiting for confirmation that it was no longer needed, then moved off and overtop the MFS, guarding it against any interference from city defenses.

The MFS moved forward and overtop of the shield ring, then reprogrammed the shield to only hold back air. Once that was accomplished the shield geometry altered, changing from a circle and arching up into a dome that intersected the bottom of the ship. The engineers outside walked over the ring, passing through the shield to the walking space around the jagged crater, whereupon a slew of extendable equipment from the underside of the MFS came down and the engineers began cutting apart the rough debris and prepping the rim to accept replacement parts to put a hard seal in place.

4

May 20, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Tyr

Governor Gabriel Aranha woke with a pounding headache and a sore back, rolling over only to discover he had no pillow under his head…nor a bed underneath him. As he blinked his bleary eyes open he saw several people around him seated on the floor that he now laid upon, which was when his brain caught up to the present and he remembered the Star Force raid on his office complex.

He sat up with a hand to his forehead, finding it difficult to move without sending triggering waves of pain. When he did he saw green paint plastered all over the chest of his very expensive suit where he’d been shot. He poked at his chest delicately, trying to find a wound unsuccessfully. He’d heard Star Force liked to use stun weapons, but he’d never actually seen one, and the way they’d blown through his security detachment and into the safe room he’d been holed up in he’d been sure they were out for blood.

The Governor turned his head slowly, looking around at where he was at. It was a big, empty warehouse with people everywhere, half of which appeared to still be unconscious. Those closest to him weren’t his staff, but they all had some government affiliation based on their uniforms. Some were guards, now disposed of their weaponry…others were dock workers, secretaries, accountants, and corporate liaisons.

Then he spotted one of the towering white suits of the Star Force guards standing next to a door with a wide clear space around him. That would be one of their Knights, not an Archon, but even more terrifying given their size. He’d watched the security camera footage from his hideout as a pair of the monsters had charged in behind shields the size of a small wall and literally ran over his personal guard. This one didn’t have a shield with him, but he did have a sword attached to what passed as a belt on his armor, and Aranha didn’t blame those nearest to him for keeping their distance.

“You there,” he said to one of the guards next to him. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve been taken prisoner,” he mumbled, none too happy with the situation.

“What are they going to do with us?”

“They haven’t said.”

“This is intolerable,” Aranha said, standing up.

“I’d stay put if I were you,” someone else advised.

He straightened his suit, ignoring the dry paint on it. “I’m the Governor,” he reminded them, drawing a few startled reactions. “They’ll speak to me.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” he heard as he began walking towards the door, stepping over the unconscious and around the seated as everyone else in the room kept relatively quiet. The Knight didn’t so much as twitch as he walked up to him.

“I demand to know what is going on,” he asked in English, not expecting anyone from Star Force to speak Portuguese outside of their diplomatic personnel.

“You lost. Now sit down,” the Knight said through his helmet’s speakers, which gave his voice a slightly artificial tone.

Aranha was undeterred. “I’m the god damned Governor of this moon, and I demand to speak to your commanding officer!”

The Knight laughed. “We’re Star Force. We don’t have commanding officers.”

“Your Archon then,” he pressed.

“They’ll come for you when they want, not when you want. Now sit down,” the Knight said, still holding his stoic pose.

“I will not. I demand to speak to your leaders. I’m the Governor, and I will not be treated like a common citizen. I want to speak to someone I can negotiate with.”

“You’re a prisoner, same as the rest,” the Knight said, unclipping his sword and flicking it on with an audible crackle/pop.

The Governor took an involuntary step backwards, then found his nerve again…or more accurately, his ego. “I’m not moving until I speak to someone in authority.”

The Knight didn’t even bother to speak again, he just raised the tip of his stun sword and lightly tapped Aranha in the chest, knocking him to the floor unconscious. He held his sword at his side for a moment, looking out over the rest of the prisoners who were all staring at him.

“Anyone else want to negotiate?” he asked loudly, hiding a smile behind his faceplate. He loved being able to quote Bruce Willis movies and have no one catch on, young as they were.

No one responded, so he flipped off his stun sword and reattached it to his armor as he returned to his stoic pose.

“What happened next?” David asked.

“We were told that Mars had issued a new staff to replace those that had been indicted,” the woman said, held down into her chair by Assad’s strong grip on her shoulder and neck. “They were being taken back to face trial, and we were told it would be unlikely that they would be returning.”

“What do you know of any other corruption on Tyr?”

“There’s always the occasional rumor, but nothing concrete that I’m aware of,” she continued with intense eyes, holding back her panic and trying to work through the situation.

“And what do you know of The Word?”

She frowned. “I’m not familiar with that phrase…or is it a name?”

Assad sent him the all clear signal, and David finally removed his helmet and set it on the table in the Governor’s former office that they were using as a command post for the interim government they were setting up to keep city functions running. With 13 million citizens having to be fed, they couldn’t afford to waste time and allow the city to fall into even further chaos without security in place to keep order.

Assad released his grip on her and walked out of the room to go and fetch another prisoner, leaving David alone with her.

“I apologize for the way we arrived, but be aware that the Brazilian government asked us to come here and reclaim the moon for them. Whether you realize it or not, you’ve been working for a rogue faction, a criminal organization that took control of this moon some two years ago. They did so very quietly, and have been inserting their personnel into the command structure at a number of levels, which was why we had to capture everyone, yourself included.”

The woman’s eyes went wide. “This was sanctioned?”

David nodded. “Your people are on their way to take possession back, but until then we need to keep as much order as possible, which means reestablishing as much of the current administration as we can. We’re fairly certain that you’re not part of the insurrection, so we need you to go back to work immediately, taking on as many additional duties as you can until Brazil can set up a transitional government, after which I assume they’ll be doing a very thorough background check on all personnel.”

“Of course,” she offered.

“We’re using this building to coordinate from. Down the hall to the right, room 1944. You’ll receive further instructions there, including a secure earpiece. Don’t lose it,” David said, walking up to her and grabbing her wrist, upon which he placed the end of a small device.

“Ouch!” she said as it pinched her skin quickly. When he removed it she saw that it’d left a tattoo behind on the back of her hand.

“It’s temporary, but won’t wash off with water. It marks you as having been cleared to return to service. Others will ask to see your mark, and you will do the same to those you work with. Check often, for the infiltrators are both subtle and very effective at blending in. You all have the same mark…exactly the same mark, down to the details. If there’s any alteration it’s counterfeit. I have no doubt they can duplicate the mark with time, but it’s not something they can just draw on free hand.

The woman rubbed her thumb over the gold/white Star Force symbol that had a lot of extra icons spaced around the exterior and within the gaps of the very familiar vertical double infinity symbol, finding that it truly didn’t smudge or alter in any way, as if it was a real tattoo.

“They’re called The Word?” she asked, remembering what he asked her.

“That’s not a public name as of yet, but yes.”

“Room 1944?”

David nodded.

“Thank you for trusting me,” she said as she stood up, then hesitated as she wanted to ask more but thought better of it and simply walked out the door.

David put his helmet back on and waited for Assad to return, this time with a man that had also worked in the Tyr administrative ranks. The rest of Green Team was doing the same thing, handling five interrogations with two Archons each…one to question, the other to monitor via Ikrid. It was the only way they could be sure they weren’t putting Word operatives back into positions of power, tedious as it was.

As for the lower ranking support staff, there were far too many to go through this process with, so a team of Star Force hackers were going through Tyr’s records and doing quick personnel searches…if they came up clean they were released from custody to return to their jobs. If there was even so much as a letter out of place in their files they were flagged and kept imprisoned for the time being.

He had no illusions that they’d be able to round up all The Word operatives, given the size of the city, but they had to make sure that the leaders were clean, otherwise they could gain a foothold again and lay low, covering for others, until Star Force was gone and order restored. Then they could either start again or leave quietly.

The Word was extremely skilled at hiding in the cracks, and Green Team knew they had to seal as many as they could, as quickly as they could, or give their enemy new opportunities to exploit in the chaos.

Mason Watkins sprinted down one of the city’s many shopping promenades, jumping over and through a slice of vegetation in the otherwise fabricated environment, whereupon he popped over a hedge and punched a looter to the ground before roundhouse kicking another off an old man he was in the process of mugging. The third of the punks, a few inches taller than the Regular, delivered a gut punch into his black Clan Tron armor, immediately regretting it as his middle knuckle broke on impact with the hard plates.

Mason didn’t give him a chance to make the same mistake twice and swatted him in the head with the butt of his stun rifle, toppling him to the ground before shooting the other two as they got to their feet. He added a third stinger to the big guy, then turned his attention to the old man whose eyes were so wide with fear that they looked like they were going to pop out of his head.

“Are you injured?” he asked through his black faceplate.

“My…my ankle,” he stuttered, then reached for his wallet on the ground nearby where one of the muggers had dropped it.

Mason retrieved it for him, then got on his helmet comm and called for a medic, as well as placing a waypoint so they could find his position…or rather, their Star Force escorts could find his position, for with so much chaos running through the city none of the medical response calls into the unsecured zones were going in alone. Several had already been jumped, with the medications they carried stolen and some of the medics beaten, despite the fact they were local Brazilians.

After those initial reports Star Force had begun extending escorts to those response teams going out into the ‘wild zones’ while most of the troops were locking down various sectors of the city and restoring order. Mason was part of several patrols heading through the wild zones to try and discourage the looting going on, assuming that just by showing themselves in some areas that the locals would be less encouraged to misbehave as opposed to them seeing no uniformed presence at all for the better part of 2 days.

The Regular was patrolling on his own, which was a bit irregular, but there were other Clan Tron commandos in the area that he could call on for help if necessary. They’d decided to split up to cover more ground, with these roaming bandits offering little resistance.

“A medic’s on the way,” he told the man. “Can I help you over to that bench?”

“Sure,” he said, reaching up and grabbing the arm of the black armor. The man stood up on his good foot and hopped over to the shrubbery that the bench was set into.

“Thank you, sir,” he said gratefully after he’d sat down.

“Us old guys have to stick together,” Mason quipped.

“Ha…with the way you handled those kids, I doubt you’re half my 84 years.”

“I take it back,” he said sarcastically. “You’re a youngling. I’ll be 124 next month.”

The man’s face scrunched up. “Really?”

“Really,” Mason echoed. “Now, I’ve got to go bust up some more punks. Wait here, a medical team is on the way. Tell them those three are responsible.”

“What if they wake up first?”

“They won’t,” Mason promised, leaving the bench and jogging off. He added a stinger to each of the downed muggers as he passed, then continued on his running patrol, spotting another broken store window down the promenade past an upturned vendor cart…with a body laying nearby.

“Don’t you just love the civilian life?” he said to the air as he picked up his pace, heading towards the body.

A few hundred thousand miles away on Vanir a man in the Australian colony was sitting in his apartment watching the news vids when he got an incoming message tone from his desk console. He walked over and logged in, setting aside the half-eaten bowl of popcorn he’d been working on and seeing that the message was an atypical one, in that it hadn’t gone through the regular comm network.

Instead, it was a direct transfer, accomplished via a burst transmitter on Tyr to a private receiver on Vanir, then added to the Vanir system as a local message, disguising its origin. There was a brief message indicating that the attached data file was a movie his brother had sent to him…though that was only half the truth.

The man downloaded the data file then deleted the message, not particularly caring if it was later traced or not. He pulled out the data chip he’d saved it on and pocketed it, then grabbed one last handful of popcorn before walking out of his apartment, never again to return.

He booked the soonest available flight out of the system and spent the layover at a series of spaceports and starports until eventually boarding a jumpship carrying some 7,000 other passengers on their way over to the nearby Proxima System. After a two day layover there, the jumpship took most of those passengers, plus a few hundred more, back to Sol where the man offloaded onto a starport in high Earth orbit.

Another layover there transitioned to a ferry that sent him to a resort facility in low orbit, where upon he handed over the data chip. Immediately thereafter he boarded another flight, this one ferrying him over to a low orbit starport that gave him access to the dropship traffic going down to Earth’s surface. He bought a ticket for a quick drop down to Australia and exited Star Force’s transportation network through their Sydney spaceport.

After that he milled about in a hotel for two days before a packet arrived. Following the instructions inside, he bounced around the city to several locations picking up a variety of purchases before hopping on a train that took him over to Port Augusta. There he had a ride waiting for him…a cute blonde in a compact car that took him up the A87 highway heading for the northern coast.

When the car arrived in Darwin two days later on some prearranged visit, only the blonde was in the car. The man had been dropped off in the Tanami desert along the side of the road at a specific point, following a coordinate trail in the navigational device he’d received back in Sydney. He hiked for three days, utilizing the backpack full of supplies he’d purchased, until he came to his destination…a small boulder set out in the open, otherwise just a random object, but one that The Word used for visual reference.

Half an hour after he’d arrived an all-terrain four wheeler showed up and carried him off further into the desert, eventually ducking into a subsurface tunnel that took the man, his former identity now forgotten, into an underground facility where he’d be put to use with another task, one that would have him not see the public scene again for a decade or more, now that his original identity might be compromised.

The sleeper agent had completed his singular task of delivering the data chip to Earth, and whether or not he’d be given another field assignment under a false identity was a matter of necessity. The Word much preferred using real identities, so that no possible data mining could detect anomalies. Star Force was good at such discoveries, and they needed to keep their secret operatives secret, which meant burning their original identities as needed, then recruiting more operatives as they were available.

The ‘burnt’ individuals would then be recycled into other duties, with this man transitioning into a data analyst working out of their hidden base…having literally disappeared from the public records once he got off the train in Port Augusta.

Normally sleeper operatives were rarely used for anything less than vital missions, let alone data transfers, but this was a special case, and well deserving of the sacrifice.

5

June 6, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Tyr

Drake got back to their command center in the former Governor’s complex from a 2 hour running patrol through the city, with little to report aside from overall progress. The streets had been cleaned up from the looting, though repair efforts to the stores were still lagging behind, given that they’d only resumed minimal orbital commerce at one of the spaceports, thinking it better to route through the most essential supplies while keeping a close watch on the transfers. Green Team was still convinced that there were Word operatives in play, and they didn’t want them moving cargo out, so Drake had agreed to take things slow, though as the days passed Tyr was gradually getting back to normal.

The damage to the city’s exterior had been physically patched over, though the inside was still a mess. He imagined Brazil would contract Star Force crews to rebuild the internal structure, but that was their call given that it was their city. Star Force wasn’t going to repair it for free, above what was necessary to maintain atmospheric integrity. The source of the blast was still unknown, but fortunately no others followed it.

The casualty lists had run high though, far more than Drake had initially estimated, topping out at 593,228. A review of the city’s computer systems confirmed that someone had directly overridden security protocols and locked open the containment walls, allowing the atmosphere to purge from a huge area of the city before a few nearby Archons were quick enough to stem the tide with physical overrides, else it was possible that more than half the city could have been compromised.

The bodies that had been flung outside the city had been recovered, as well as those inside. The hordes of stunned guards and other personnel had been rounded up and contained, with many of them still in holding areas. Red Team had taken over several hotels and turned them into comfortable prisons in order to keep them detained while shuffling through them looking for both traitors and trustworthy individuals that they could assimilate into their makeshift government to get the city functioning again.

The running patrol had been unnecessary, but after three weeks of no training Drake and the rest of Red Team were getting irritated. Retaking the city was their mission and responsibility, but the work they were doing now was administrative, with almost no combat remaining aside from the occasional takedown when Green Team found another operative and they made a run for it. Those didn’t last long, and most didn’t even cause him to break a sweat, so both he and the other members of his team needed to do something physical, hence the running patrols, which helped to keep the citizens in check simply by seeing the Archons in person…not to mention how fast they were moving in full armor.

Drake finished his patrol at the base of the Governor’s complex, which appeared as a tall ‘building’ inside the city structure. There was a wide promenade/street that rose up several dozen stories with enclosed crosswalks jutting out across the gap at numerous points, but above that was a solid ceiling that was the underside of multiple residential levels. The architecture reminded one of a conventional airborne city, though it was only illusion, for the actual structure was really one gigantic complex.

Fortunately the Governor’s section only allowed a few entrances in and out of it, though it shared support structures with those nearby. Drake entered through the lowest one, which was the largest, walking through wide ornamental glass doors that were not air tight. Star Force hadn’t designed those, but rather they were Brazilian either in build or refit as they customized the internal ‘buildings’ to their liking.

Those fanciful doors in other sections of the city had allowed the atmosphere to slowly purge, killing many more inside than just those that had been on the streets, and Drake was grateful that Star Force always designed multiple levels of safeguards into its designs, for some of the less wealthy areas of the city had stuck with the standard construction, and as a result those interior ‘buildings’ had become lifeboats for many survivors. The main populations centers, however, had all been rebuilt, and where the vacuum had reached them they’d turned into bloody killing fields without so much as one plasma blast being fired.

Drake suspected sabotage, but there wasn’t much left to study, though they did have a team combing the debris, both inside and out, trying to find some fragments to identify the source, but so far they hadn’t come up with anything.

The acolyte walked in through the lobby, passing a fully armored Knight and several Regulars from Clan Alterra in their gray/red armor that were guarding the entrance to the building. Drake gave the Knight a nod then hit the stairs, bypassing the elevators and taking the steps three at a time to stretch out his legs as he made his way up to the pair of levels they’d claimed for their own use.

He walked into their improvised command room, full of modular equipment they’d brought in via dropship so they wouldn’t have to risk using compromised Brazilian systems, and saw that David was already there, pouring over some data on a tabletop display.

“Nice jog?” Green Team’s leader asked as Drake came over to him and pulled his helmet off, setting it down on the corner of the table where it wouldn’t block any of the display.

“Tolerable. How close to finished are you?”

David sighed. “We’ve cleaned out all the equipment we can find, though I know there’s more here hidden somewhere that we’re probably never going to get to.”

“The Brazilian transports made orbit this morning. How long do you want me to hold them off?”

“Four more hours. Green Team will be ready to go then.”

“Last minute op?”

“Following one last thread, though I doubt it’ll amount to anything. How are you set for the transition?”

“Primary services have been stabilized. So long as we hold them through the handover we’re good to go. Pulling the rest of the city back together is Brazil’s problem. How many prisoners are you taking out?”

“We’ve got most of what we want already on Glasir. There’s a few dozen probables I still need to sort through, so we might have a handful more to add.”

“How’s the investigation going?”

“We’ve got a mountain of questions to answer, and a lot of data to work through, but we are getting some good intel out of the prisoners. The fact that they don’t know we can read their minds is really helping out, because they’re only guarding their words, not their conscious thoughts. In fact, that last little op we’re running is following up on intel we got from one of the contract operatives we caught, though I doubt the stash he pulled from previously is still in place. The Word cleaned out their facilities quite thoroughly, so I doubt they left much of value behind except where we got the jump on them.”

“Better to check and come up empty than to miss a find,” Drake agreed. “How’s the prime guest getting along?”

“Incredibly resistant while being excessively chatty. I’m told his mind is very tight, though I haven’t interrogated him yet. I expect that to be one very long conversation.”

“I for one would like to know about their chemical weapons program…and how many more of those canisters are floating around other worlds.”

“You and me both, but I don’t expect him to give up that kind of information voluntarily…unless it allows him to brag on The Word in some way.”

“You keeping him on Glasir?”

“We’re keeping them all on Glasir for the length of the investigation. Then we’ll decide what to do with them.”

“Do you have a list to give the Brazilians?”

“Already made up.”

“Four hours then?”

David nodded.

“I’ll let them know,” Drake said, picking up his helmet and walking over to another station, letting David get back to his work.

“Ah…finally,” Governor Aranha said, getting up out of his chair only to have Yavari push him back down into it again with a firm grasp on his shoulder. “What?! Let me go!”

“Sit still,” the Archon insisted as the Brazilian delegation walked into the Governor’s office and presented themselves to Drake, the leader of which offered his hand.

“Antonio Costa.”

“Drake-756,” he said, gently shaking the man’s hand, given that he was still wearing his armor minus the helmet.

“Brazil owes you a great debt, Mr. Drake.”

“Just Drake.”

“As you wish. Though I’m saddened to see the decompression death toll, I’m told the actual combat was more or less bloodless? That’s not something my people could have accomplished, and I thank you for it, on behalf of myself, my troops, and my country.”

“You’re welcome,” Drake said, wanting to skip the formalities. “We’ve reestablished a skeleton government using your own people that we were able to clear. There’s a still a backlog of prisoners that we haven’t had time to determine their allegiance, most of whom are security. If they shot at us their loyalty is in doubt, though many of them believed we were the enemy, given how quietly the moon switched hands,” he said, throwing a glance at the former Governor.

Costa followed his gaze. “Is he one of them?”

“No,” Drake said, surprising the Brazilian. “What he is, is an incompetent dupe. He let his subordinates carry out all of his duties while parading around like a rock star. The Word kept him distracted by all the perks of his job while he carried out none of the responsibilities. I highly suggest you fire his fat ass.”

“What?!” Aranha demanded, trying to stand up again only to have Yavari push him back down.

“Done,” Costa said, giving the man a harsh glare.

“What? No…I had no part in this. They attack my city and I am to be blamed for it?”

Costa looked at Drake. “He still doesn’t know?”

“He doesn’t believe he could be that inept,” the Archon said, rolling his eyes.

Costa took a step towards Aranha, but didn’t come up close to the overweight man. “You are hereby relieved of your post, effective immediately. You will remain in your personal quarters until such a time as transport is arranged for your deportation back to Mars. You can plead your case to them, so do not waste my time. Guards, escort him there and make sure he doesn’t wander off.”

Two men standing in the doorway behind Costa and his transitional team walked forward and pulled Aranha out of his chair, relieving Yavari of his charge.

“This is an injustice,” he murmured, but once they got him moving he didn’t resist. “A proper inquiry will bring the truth out.”

Costa let him go, then turned back to Drake. “I have security teams coming down, some 5,000 men to replace the leadership in the local forces. How would you like to handle the transfer?”

“It’s your city, and there hasn’t been any looting or riots for over a week. Things are fairly calm, it’s the logistical situation that you need to get a hold of. We’ve maintained the essentials, with a limited commerce flow through one of the spaceports, but before you open up normal operations you need to lock down the infrastructure, or you could have chaos with people grabbing at whatever they can get.”

“Rationing?”

“In place on foodstuffs. The water supply is secure, and I didn’t care about luxuries, a lot of which were looted anyway. Some stores have reopened, but most are awaiting new inventory and a full security detail before they open up their doors. That’s put everyone on edge, but so far they’re behaving themselves…though you will have a backlog of looters to prosecute that we bagged. We didn’t have time to investigate any reported thefts or assaults, so the ones we’ve got in custody were caught in the act. I’d take that fact into consideration when they whine about due process.”

“I’ve been given a wide latitude in legal matters to rectify this situation,” Costa said with a smirk. “We’ll take your word for it.”

Drake nodded his contentment. “I’ll start inserting your men into the current field assignments and rotating ours out. As soon as you can get enough down here we’ll be out of your way.”

“There’s no rush, though we don’t want to be a burden on your time anymore than Tyr already has been. Thank you for fixing the hull breach.”

“It’s a firm patch, but it’s not armored. It’ll have to be replaced at some point.”

“I’ll get on that right away. I understand you were able to discover what happened to our previous assault team, some of which were recovered?”

“The Word took most of them captive and were holding them in a section of the city where one of the chemical weapons was detonated. We found their bodies there, no survivors, but some of them that The Word was smuggling out we were able to rescue. They’re not in good physical condition, and we evacuated them all to Glasir for treatment and debriefing, but they said that there were plants in the strike force itself that turned on them…so I’d be careful with the people you brought out with you, for there might be more Word operatives among them.”

Costa frowned deeply. “They knew who we were sending?”

“More than likely.”

“I don’t like the sound of that at all,” the Brazilian said, turning and beginning to pace a short line over to the Governor’s empty desk and back again. “That means they’ve not only infiltrated Tyr but other facets of our government.”

“And for all I know you could be one of them,” Drake said evenly, not trying to be insulting. “Which is why Star Force is going to make occasional visits to the moon, have a look around, and make sure The Word isn’t getting another foothold in the aftermath of all this.”

Costa nodded. “Please do, and forward me any findings. In my experience ferreting out spies is a nasty business. I’m clean, and I’m fairly sure of my senior staff…but if the very troops we sent here to root out this criminal organization were part of it, any part of our government is suspect. Having an external set of eyes would be most helpful.”

“There’s also some new infrastructure beneath the city that you need to check out. The Word built an extensive complex, as well as mislabeled the city schematics to section off areas that they rebuilt according to their needs. We obviously haven’t had time to search the entire city, but we compared our construction records to the public ones and found the discrepancies. I’d suggest that you do a full survey of every room, corridor, and shaft on Tyr and draw yourself a new map, just in case there are any other alterations…some that their operatives might still be using.”

Costa sighed. “That will take a while to organize and execute, but I agree. What was in their base?”

“They cleaned it out before we got to them…then left a heap of explosives as a door prize. We disarmed them, but who knows how many more are sitting around out there.”

“Thanks for the warning. How many operatives have you been able to discover?”

“Over 200, but we know there are far more out there. Some of the factories we raided had hundreds of workers that we weren’t in a position to collect at the time. They got loose and we’re not sure who or where they are now.”

“Do you have a list?”

“Yes, but I’ve decided that we’re not sharing it just yet. We’d prefer if The Word didn’t know who was taken, and if we give you a list they’ll probably get a copy of it before too long.”

“I wish I could disagree with you, but given recent information I don’t see how I can. That will make taking a head count rather difficult.”

“If you can take my word for it, we’ve already done a head count. Everyone on the books is accounted for, including the corpses…though those books may very well have been cooked to make some individuals disappear prior to our arrival, but as far as having missing citizens in distress, that’s already been taken care of.”

“Which doesn’t discount the possibilities of lurkers,” Costa said, referring to individuals who lived on various worlds without proper identification, “but that’s one more item I can check off my list. Thank you.”

“We like to be thorough,” Drake said, glancing at the four people waiting behind Costa. “I guess this is your office now. Our makeshift operations center is in this building. I suggest you utilize that through the transfer, though we’ll be taking our equipment with us when we finally leave.”

“Best to use what’s currently in operation,” Costa agreed. “Anything else big that I should know?”

“Wanna get to work?”

Costa smiled. “That’s why they sent me.”

“The Word had an arsenal of custom made plasma weapons. We’ve collected all we could find, but there still may be some floating around.”

The Brazilian’s smile faded. “Tyr isn’t known for a large criminal element, I’m told, but even one unregistered weapon could do a wealth of damage. Dozens in the wrong hands…could mean the casualties from this mess aren’t yet over. What of the weapons from the assault team?”

“That I can’t answer. I assume they were of the same make as the local security armament?”

“Not entirely,” Costa said, disgruntled. “More loose ends to tie up.”

“The ship they came in is also missing,” Drake added. “We’re guessing it was disassembled.”

Costa blew out a breath, seeing his massive job already developing wrinkles. “Command center?”

“Follow me,” Drake said, grabbing his helmet on the way to the door.

6

June 9, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Glasir

David was staring at a datapad in one of the Archon lounges in the primary Star Force city on Glasir when his attention was broken by someone else entering. With most of the Archons on planet being part of the three resident Clans, very few had been assigned to the regular Star Force colony, and as such the Archon-only lounges there were usually left unused. David had set up shop in one of them for that very lack of activity, giving him a quiet, large area to work out of as he tried to piece together the data they were collecting and delve deeper into the mystery that was The Word.

“What?” he asked as Nathan walked over with an odd look on his face.

“Just got the chemical analysis on the toys back from Odin,” he said, hefting another datapad. “They confirmed Glasir’s analysis. There’s nothing abnormal about them…even the Archon action figures. Maybe they’re just selling them to make some credits for the organization and couldn’t do it aboveboard without our franchise license?”

“That’d be insulting enough…but I don’t buy it. There’s got to be something hidden in them.”

Nathan shrugged. “Maybe it’s some sort of code.”

“I’ve been down that road already. The toys, aside from the various models, are all identical. Unless they’re packaged in mismatched sets to deliver some sort of encrypted message I don’t see how they’re relaying information…aside from the cargo hatch in some of the Star Force knockoffs, but they could just as easily purchase the real ones and use them for that purpose, which brings into question why would they need to make their own and why in a secret factory?” David said, referencing the Star Force merchandizing mandate that all frivolous toys and trinkets have some practical secondary function.

Some of the items the mega corporation produced were light sources, others had cargo compartments where you could store a data chip or micro-ration food cube. Others transformed into screwdrivers, hammers, picks, and other tools. Some more expensive models were even small hologram projectors. Even with their toy line, Star Force products always served some purpose, including the Archon action figures.

“Perhaps you should ask our resident Agent.”

David frowned, leaning back in his chair and setting down the datapad he’d been holding. “Anything new on that front?”

Nathan shook his head. “I don’t think he knows how, but he’s caught onto the fact that we’re monitoring him somehow and has locked down his biological cues. I don’t have the Ikrid skills to penetrate the armor over his thought processes, so we’re working him through some mind games trying to loosen him up. Aside from what Jenson got the first couple days we haven’t seen any progress with him, and he’s stopped talking too. Not even any friendly chit chat.”

“At least we’ve got him on the defensive. If it hadn’t been for your quick grab he’d be dead and out of our reach. Our psionics have given us a greater victory here than I think The Word anticipated, and I don’t expect they’ll make the same mistake twice, so we need to squeeze whatever intel we can out of what we’ve got.”

“Well, the lower operatives aren’t so savvy and have been giving up chunks of information, we just can’t pull very much of it from their minds…and what we have got is illuminating, but overall not very useful in exposing threads to follow. They’re very strict with their cellular layout, which means Mr. Agent is holding most of the cards we need…though we are piecing together some things from the collection of cells.”

“Anything new?”

“Not conclusively, but Assad thinks that they were using Tyr as a sort of training ground. We’ve been able to trace a lot of fake IDs back there, now that we know what to look for.”

“Don’t suppose we’ve picked up Drake’s hacker yet?”

“Nope,” Nathan said with some disgust.

David shared the sentiment. After running a genetic test on the blood Drake had brought back on his armor they’d determined that the man was in fact on Star Force’s detain list, with a priority 2 ranking…the highest possible for non-violent individuals. He was known as the ‘Specter’ and had a very elusive nature when it involved computer records, having switched between hundreds of identities during his career. Green Team badly wanted him for interrogation, thinking his presence on Tyr probably wasn’t a coincidence and he may have been helping The Word with the forged identities that many of the captured operatives were using.

“On the up side, of all these shipping manifests I’ve been able to piece together,” David said, tapping the datapad on the lounge table, “it looks like they’re primarily using non-Star Force channels. Most of their exports were going out on Brazilian transports or private hires. They’re not risking sending them through us anymore.”

“Did you get that packet out to Davis yet?”

“It went out on a jumpship this morning.”

“How long have you been in here?” Nathan asked, though he was fairly sure he already knew the answer.

David sighed. “Too long.”

“Take a break. Deviousness isn’t going to be discovered on a fried mind.”

David checked his watch. “I guess it’s time for my afternoon workout anyway,” he said, getting up out of his seat and snagging his datapad. “I guess if this was going to be easy I’d be disappointed.”

Nathan walked into one of the rooms they were using for interrogations and saw Assad sitting opposite a long table with the man known only as ‘Agent’ at the other end. They’d run his genetics and come up with no matches, meaning he was either someone born outside the Star Force network and its affiliates, or he’d had his identity erased.

Both men were silent and staring at each other with a plate full of donuts sitting in the middle of the table.

Nathan looked down at the donuts, then at his fellow Archon. “I think this is more torture on you,” he told Assad.

“I’m managing,” he said, not breaking his staredown.

“You don’t want any?” Nathan asked Agent, but the man didn’t return his gaze. He was staring blankly at Assad with a bored/tired look and didn’t even seem to notice the newcomer.

“Hmmn,” he said, reaching down and snagging one of the glazed ones from the side of the heap without toppling the rest…not a small feat. He bit a huge bite out of it and chewed while adding his stare at the man. “You know…you’re doing this all wrong. If you eat the whole plate it means you’re innocent.”

“Innocent of what?” Agent said, slowly twisting his head to look at Nathan who stood partway down the table next to the donut plate.

Nathan pointed a finger at him. “Good point, there. I could come up with a lot of sarcastic replies, but I can see you’re not in the mood. You’re a member of The Word, an organization that has been doing quite a lot of bad things…more than we were recently aware of. Now, what you personally were a part of we don’t know, but being an Agent means you’ve got operational control.”

“I’ve already admitted I was an Agent,” he pointed out grumpily. “If that is my crime then I have already been determined to be guilty. What then am I to protest my innocence of?”

Nathan took another bite of the donut, chewing thoroughly before answering. “Being a bad guy. Your predecessor regaled us with the wisdom of The Word, explaining how Star Force was misguided and that you were doing us and Humanity a favor by attempting to put us back on the right track.”

“Then again,” he continued, “that was just a stalling tactic while he died. Or maybe he just wanted someone to talk to in his last few minutes.”

“I know who you are, Nathan-937, member of Green Team who has been tasked with locating, infiltrating, and taking down our organization. But unlike the other Agent you encountered, I have no wish to talk to you.”

“Donut then?” Nathan offered, not taking the bait about the ‘infiltrating’ part, for Star Force was doing no such thing…but The Word didn’t know that, so he figured the disinterested Agent was still fishing.

“For someone who protests to live an unlimited lifespan, you certainly have an appetite for unhealthy food.”

“To…tallwee in…correct,” Nathan said before he’d finished his third bite. “Define healthy.”

“That much sugar is bad for you.”

“That’s not a definition.”

“Healthy are those things that are good for the body.”

“And sugar isn’t?”

“Excess isn’t.”

“This isn’t excess,” the Archon said, shoving the last bite into his mouth, then licking the glaze off his fingers before grabbing a sprinkled one off the top of the plate.

“I suppose you’re going to claim a higher rate of metabolism as your defense?”

“Now see…right there is your problem. You have a guilty outlook on life, like you’re defaultly tainted in some way.”

“Star Force has a naïve positivity. I’m not inclined to believe that you actually live as long as you claim, given your ignorance.”

“Enlighten me,” he asked, taking a huge bite out of the second donut.

“Human nature is inherently flawed, none can escape this without accepting the fact and working to correct it. Your positivity will be your undoing.”

“Na…you’re just a sucker for the illusions in life. Take your body, for example. It may crave sugar. You eat a lot of it, get fat, then curse your body for craving it in the first place. Your body isn’t at fault, you are, for not understanding how you’re supposed to operate it. Now that isn’t your fault, per se, given that you were never given an instruction manual, so it’s understandable how people get things messed up. Actually, a lot of the problems in society can be attributed to the fact that we’re all born ignorant, only acting on instincts that we don’t understand.”

“You admit to the flawed nature.”

“No, no,” Nathan said, taking a moment for another, smaller bite, dropping a few sprinkles off his lips and fighting the urge to telekinetically grab them before they hit the floor. “Stay with me. Everyone is inserted into the universe cold, and by cold I mean without foreknowledge or intel. I assume you know what a cold insertion is, from a spy’s point of view?”

Agent nodded.

“Well, we’re all inserted cold and have to figure out how things work as we go, learning on our own or from others. Turns out those sugar cravings aren’t a bad thing, just your subconscious mind telling your ‘pilot,’” Nathan said, making quote marks with his fingers and donut, “that the sugar is a good thing and that you should grab it up when you have the chance. Now, if you do that and hoard it, you could be in for some problems…but only because you’re ignoring the other signals your subconscious mind is feeding you. We call those biofeedback.”

“No…w,” he said, chewing another quick bite. “Your biofeedback monitors how much food you have in your body, kind of like a fuel gage, except that your stomach can stretch out, so ‘full’ doesn’t mean full. That’s where a lot of people go wrong, feeling that they have to be stuffed full of food in order to get a full fuel load. In truth you need to fill up your stomach only part way, multiple times per day…but since that isn’t always an option you can overload and stretch out your stomach to overfill before having a long drought and not taking in any extra.”

Nathan finished the sprinkled donut and pulled a long one with chocolate icing out from the bottom, playing Jenga with the stack.

“Your body tells you that you’re overloading through your biofeedback, but if you’re ignoring that signal and just going on the ‘sugar is great’ target analysis, then you’re going to be overloading when you don’t want to…simply because you’re ignorant of what you’re doing, even though your body is giving you all the telemetry you need, you just don’t understand it.”

He bit off the end of the donut, discovering that it was also crème filled. “Now, sugar is like rocket fuel…very useful for rockets, but overkill for less powerful situations. Someone such as you doesn’t require much, which your biofeedback will tell you. Me, on the other hand, well I burn so many calories a day I need the condensed nature of the fuel just to keep up. Food is fuel, neither good nor bad. What I need and what you need differ based on our fitness levels and our energy expenditure.”

“An ignorant person would say sugar is bad, from someone in your position…but for me, it’s an essential part of life,” he said, taking another bite that encompassed a fourth of the long bar of deliciousness. “There’s nothing to feel guilty about. It’s just fuel, and far more efficient than eating a lot of bland foods until my body pulls enough trace sugars out of them to get the fuel load I need. This way, I don’t have all the filler to process, just the refined sugars that take up less stomach space, which leaves me more mobile.”

“So sugar isn’t bad…instead it’s something very, very valuable. But in the wrong hands, in ignorant hands, you can get fat off of it. So the solution isn’t in avoiding sugar, but learning to read your biofeedback to determine how much sugar and other fuels you need. That takes time, experience, and most importantly an introspective mind. For the dumb masses it’s easier to just say something is evil and not think about it, hence the guilty consciences when people do follow their biofeedback and it conflicts with societal boundaries. They haven’t done anything wrong, but their subconscious and conscious minds are in conflict, which creates your ‘flawed and tainted’ mindset.”

Nathan shoved the rest of the donut in and chewed slowly, given that it filled most of his mouth.

“I’d heard,” Agent said into the silence, “of Archons’ off the wall lectures, but that was truly a masterpiece of disconcordant thought.”

Nathan picked up a fourth donut and held it halfway out towards Agent. “So you don’t want one?”

“No,” he said simply.

Nathan glanced back at Assad, who hadn’t moved the entire time and was still staring at Agent, though The Word operative was now ignoring him. “Oh that’s right, you probably prefer your own ingredients. We picked up some of them from Tyr, would you like us to make you your own batch? It’s not a problem, we’ve got a legion of cooks for that sort of thing.”

Agent eyed him, his disinterest having disappeared. “Even we have to eat.”

“Why not buy it…or steal it from the local market. You controlled the moon, so I doubt it would have been much trouble. You guys don’t strike me as cooks.”

“What makes you think we didn’t?”

“I meant the finished products,” Nathan said, biting into his fourth donut. “No..the..ing..ents.”

“You prefer your sugar. We have other nutritional requirements.”

“Not all that are available on the market?”

“Indeed.”

“And what, you just add the allergens for taste?” Nathan said, revealing the results of their chemical analysis on a number of the ingredients.

Agent just stared at him.

“Didn’t think we’d catch onto that?”

“I didn’t think you’d acquired samples.”

“We grabbed a few when we hit your factory the first time. Nice cleanup job afterwards. You people work fast.”

“A necessity in our line of work. You never know when uninvited guests will show up.”

“Uninvited? You practically invited us to Tyr.”

“How so?”

“Ha,” he said, biting off another bit of donut. “You have the gall to suggest to the Brazilians that they allow you to retain possession of the moon, and you don’t think that overture would attract our attention?”

Nathan didn’t need to be Ikrid linked to Agent to catch his mental slip. A slight twitch in his facial features gave away his surprise over the Archon’s revelation.

Catch that? Assad asked telepathically.

Yes I did, Nathan said, eating more donut.

“Eavesdropping on allies’ conversations now, are you?”

“Like you don’t?”

“We work alone.”

“That I figured,” Nathan said, tossing the last bit of donut up in the air and catching it in his mouth, chewing, and swallowing. “Well, four’s enough for me. Only ran five miles this morning. If you feel like working out let one of us know, we’ll arrange something. You won’t even have to give us anything in exchange.”

“Generous of you.”

“Not really. The sight of unfit people annoys us, so we don’t want you stagnating any further.”

“I’m healthy enough, thank you.”

“Better than being dead, I’ll grant you that, but the streaks of gray in your hair say otherwise.”

“Merely a sign of aging.”

“Ugh,” Nathan sighed, turning to look at Assad. “I’ll let you explain self-sufficiency to him. There’s only so much ignorance I can take per day.”

Agent smiled coyly. “So, I can expect you back tomorrow then?”

“Don’t know, we like to improvise,” Nathan said, walking out and clapping Assad on the shoulder as he left. When he got outside the room he headed over to another one further down the hall with a Regular guard stationed outside. He nodded and the man pulled open the door, let him walk through, then closed it behind him without locking it.

Inside was a woman with short black hair sitting in the corner in a single plush chair with the footrest up…but there was nothing else in the room.

“About time someone got here,” she said, sitting up a bit. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, but I really have to pee first. That blasted guard hasn’t let me out of here in hours.”

Nathan smiled, appreciating her bluntness. Not all of The Word’s operatives shared the Agents’ passive persona, meaning that different interrogation techniques were required for each. Yet one more challenge presenting itself to Green Team in the most important investigation they’d ever been tasked with, and one that was solely theirs now that Red Team had returned to Sol, their mission on Tyr completed.

7

June 11, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Glasir

“We have a problem,” the medic told Jet as he walked him through the med bay to a diagnostics holographic display detailing one of the patients’ internal organs.

“We have lots of problems,” the Archon replied. “What kind is this one?”

“Remember when you said you didn’t know why The Word had kept the Brazilian soldiers alive?”

“What did you find?” Jet asked, feeling something sinister about to surface.

“Nothing in the corpses, but some of the live ones you recovered from the stasis canisters are being used as carriers…and I think it’s linked to the food supply. It’s just a hunch, we haven’t been able to confirm anything yet.”

“What exactly are they carrying?”

“That we haven’t confirmed either, but it’s some type of designer molecule…not anything Star Force has on record.”

“Explosive?”

The medic shook his head, pointing to a side display on the hologram that showed a cellular analysis. “This isn’t explosive, or rather not of itself. I think it’s a molecular key. One of these people is smuggled into a population…maybe even just released back into the public, meaning they don’t have to be complicit, and the molecule combines with something else in the environment triggering an action. What that action is, is the underlying question.”

“Wait…how is it combined? And is it replicating or a finite amount?”

“It’s not viral, just a molecular substance that has been saturated into their bodies. The saturation means it’ll linger for quite a while until it’s processed out, making for a long lasting trigger…which also means whatever it is the key to requires only a small amount of the molecules to activate.”

Jet crossed his arms over his chest. “Combined inside the body?”

The medic wavered. “Possibly, but trace amounts will also be found in bodily fluids, such as sweat. Meaning that mere touch could transmit the molecules.”

“How would that be connected to the foodstuffs? If it’s external?”

“I honestly don’t know, and I hate to speculate, but I can think of a lot of nasty things they could be up to. With a trigger molecule, which I’m convinced this is, it could be linked to a lot of things. They could activate a latent virus in other people that begins to spread when the trigger is present. It could be, as you implied, the trigger to explosives within certain individuals’ bodies that a handshake could set off…or a kiss. I really don’t want to speculate until we have more data to work with.”

“You think the foodstuffs are delivering one part of a binary mechanism to a broad population and these individuals are the activation triggers?”

“That’s my current line of thought, yes.”

Jet stared at the hologram, which was showing locations of the molecules within nearly all portions of the patient’s body, save for the brain. “Can you flush them out?”

The medic nodded. “They’ll eventually work their way out, for the most part, and we can accelerate the process. Thankfully we can scan for them, with the right settings, but there’s no quick remedy…at least, not that we’ve created yet. This is another job for Earth or Corneria, but we’ll do as much as we can here.”

“Are the molecules harming the carriers?”

“Not at all. I believe that doing so would cause questions to be raised and that’s exactly what The Word wants to avoid. I’d bet they designed them to be totally innocuous.”

“What about the allergens?”

The medic altered the hologram, pulling up a different patient file while minimizing the current one off to the left. “They were doing a lot of different things with the foodstuff samples you retrieved. The allergens need no trigger. This is a medical scan from three years ago on Titan. The individual developed symptoms, along with three others, on the same day and was attributed to a bad batch of foodstuffs, but no other contaminated products were discovered. It was supposed that the only bad ones were consumed, but I’ve been able to match up the symptoms with the theoretical ones that our Word allergens created in computer models…and it’s a precise match.”

Jet rubbed his chin. “What kind of damage does it do?”

“Nothing irreversible, unless you get a very weak individual, in which case there’s a small chance of death. It’s basically tailored food poisoning. Very nasty reaction that passes with time.”

“And you’re convinced the trigger molecule is completely unrelated?”

“95% sure, though there are some overlapping possibilities that we need to explore, such as trinary compounds and more complicated interactions.”

“Do you mind?” Jet asked, pointing at the hologram.

“Please,” the medic offered, taking a step back.

Jet accessed the nearby keyboard and went outside Glasir’s medical database and into the master files that got shuffled around from system to system, keeping all Star Force outposts up to date on things they couldn’t get from other locations without considerable delay…such as foodstuff production statistics.

Jet sifted through several databases until his search came in, then he ran it against several other sets of data, compiling a list and bringing it up in holo in the form of a timeline, pointing at the start of a three year spike.

“There’s your contaminated foodstuffs, two months from the first entry. Our facilities are too well run to come up with bad batches other than on freakishly rare occasions. There’s a consistent trend of incidents starting three years ago that’s gradually been escalating, but it’s been occurring in multiple systems at multiple locations. It looks like the largest was 21 people on Orion.”

“That’s minuscule. Probably wouldn’t have drawn regional awareness, let alone interstellar.”

“There were four other cases in the Sirius System, each with no more than 10 people affected. If you look at any one instance it appears isolated and nothing more than a fluke…but on a whole there’s a pattern of minor incidents, like a shotgun approach. They’re either testing or going for a gradual escalation. They’re certainly patient enough for the latter.”

“But to what end?”

“Discrediting Star Force,” Jet said without hesitation. “They’ve been sabotaging industrial, commercial, transit, and other facilities for years. Nothing major as far as casualties, but enough to start making us appear incompetent. One of their major goals appears to be discredit us and pull away some of our public support, so staging food contamination makes perfect sense.”

The medic frowned, then gestured to the timeline. “Even something this isolated?”

“Word gets around, and with as much as they were producing here I’d bet they’ve got more disruptions planned. Keep working on that trigger. If we can find the lock it fits into we may be able to preempt them.”

“One other thing. In one of the samples, a protein bar, we found a biological marker…and by that I mean a substance that is scannable. Eat the bar and it’ll show up on a specially calibrated EM reflection.”

“What kind of range?”

“Unlimited, depending on the strength of the transmitter and the sensitivity of the receiver.”

“Best guess?”

“You’d have to ask an engineer about that, but I’d say considerably more than a few meters. The reflectivity is far higher than the scanning equipment we use.”

“Thank you,” Jet said, turning to leave.

“The more they eat, the more visible they’ll be.”

“Way ahead of you,” Jet said, flashing him a smile as he headed out of the med bay.

A day and a half later Jet was back on Tyr along with Lio and Assad. The three Archons had spaced themselves around the city dressed in full armor with Brazilian security teams backing them, courtesy of Costa, as a Star Force transport ship flew in to one of the spaceports and made a slight detour, drifting out over the center of the city and holding position just above the armored exterior. There it sat, beginning to broadcast the specific frequency necessary to generate the sensor reflectivity of the tagged foodstuffs.

Each of the Archons had a receiver of their own, plus a patch into the transport’s sensors, which had been augmented at the same time as the transmitter by an engineering team on Glasir. As soon as the invisible energy began flowing out Jet got an immediate contact on his sensor pad…along with 14 others spaced around the city, including two very large signals which he guessed were probably depots holding the laced foodstuffs.

“Let’s go,” he told the security team, picking the closest target to his location, one that was coming in faint. The semi-armored guards followed him in a phalanx as he led them through the city, insuring that no one stopped him and he had access to all restricted areas. As they tracked the target he recognized the fact that it was moving a bit, which suggested that it was a person rather than an inert bar, and he was proved correct when they ended up in a residential area and the personal quarters of a financier.

Security got him in through the locked door, whereupon they quickly rounded up some four people in the quarters…two parents and two children who were none too pleased to have their evening interrupted.

“There’s no one else here,” one of the guards told Jet after coming back from a search of the other rooms to the main living area where the foursome had been watching a large vid screen.

“What’s the meaning of…”

Jet walked up to the wife and jabbed a finger into her chest just below the neck as he watched his scanner. “This one.”

Two of the guards walked around behind the woman and gently grabbed her shoulders, escorting her over to the doorway while her husband tried to intervene, but Jet stopped him with a firm hand on his chest.

“Not you.”

“What’s going on?” the boy asked.

“You three stay here,” Jet ordered, pointing to the kids and gently pushing the man down into a chair. “We’re going to have a little chat later, but for now these men are going to stay with you and ask you some questions. I’ll be back in a bit. Answer them truthfully and it will save me some time.”

With that Jet turned and left the room, leaving two guards behind and trailing another half dozen in his wake.

Their next stop was also a residential area, but in a different section of the city. This time they found an abandoned set of quarters that the logs indicated hadn’t been inhabited for the past 7 months. Upon closer inspection Jet found a concealed wall panel, inside of which he found a series of empty protein bar wrappers, each with smears of chocolate and crumbs, the sum total of which had enough reflectivity to stand out faintly on his equipment given the huge amount of signal the overhead transport was generating.

A quick records search indicated that the previous occupant no longer resided in the city, and Jet made a note to add him to Star Force’s detain list once he got back to Glasir.

His third target was one of the two big ones, inside of which he and the guards got into a brief firefight with the occupants of a small warehouse. Four men were captured, though two of the guards received plasma burns and had to be transferred to one of Tyr’s medical facilities…but more were cycling over to Jet’s entourage to make up for those lost, as well as to give the warehouse a thorough teardown.

Jet went straight for one crate, inside of which he found boxes of protein bars, all of which were giving a very strong reflection of the signal, making this one of The Word’s distribution centers…though he didn’t know if they were piggybacking onto the normal operations of a legitimate warehouse or running the whole facility.

The men captured were transferred to the spaceport and held there until the three Archons returned, which would be several hours later. Jet, for his part, rounded up one more individual, this one a retired geologist, then returned to the family he’d initially broken up while the guards escorted the prisoners and warehouse holdings to Star Force dropships on their way up to the moon.

Jet pulled off his helmet as he motioned to the guards to remain outside the living room and guard the entrance, giving him a personal audience with the husband and two frightened children whose mother he’d taken away.

“Ira Demora?” Jet asked, reading the debriefing the guards had already completed on a Brazilian datapad. “Channa…and Demarco?”

“Yes,” Ira, the father, answered from his large chair while the two children sat on the couch so close together they looked like they were stuck at the hips.

“Time to talk,” Jet said, adding a dark tone to his voice. Even without his helmet his silver armor was incredibly intimidating, but the look in his eyes was even more so.

“What do you want to know? I answered all of their questions. Why have you taken my wife?”

Jet walked forward a step and stared down at the man, who shrunk back into the deep cushions. “The protein bars.”

Recognition and horror flashed through Ira’s eyes, then he quickly tried to hide it. “I don’t know…what, hey!”

Jet lifted the man out of his seat by the collar of his shirt and stared into his eyes from about a foot away. “Don’t play games. Tell me what happened.”

The man didn’t answer for what seemed like an eternity, then he finally whispered, so low only Jet could hear. “She’s dead if I do.”

Jet dropped him into his chair and walked back into the center of the room, halfway between the man and the couch that held his children. “We can do this here or in an interrogation room. Your choice.”

“Will you promise me…us immunity?” he stammered.

“What did you do?” Jet countered.

“New identities too…please.”

“We can protect you if you cooperate,” Jet said, guessing where this was going enough that he didn’t feel the need to remove a glove and dig for answers. “But I need it all now. The longer you delay the more time they’ll have to get to you.”

Ira’s eyebrows raised. “You know about them?”

“Who do you think we just kicked off this moon? Now tell me what’s going on with your wife?”

“She’s innocent, I swear. They threatened to kill her if I didn’t cooperate. They said she had to eat a specific foodstuff that they’d provide, and that they’d be able to monitor her whereabouts 24/7 through it. If she ever didn’t eat it they’d kill her, and if I didn’t do as they said they’d kill her…so you see, I had to do what they said. I had no choice!”

Jet glanced at the children. “Is this all of your family?”

“On Tyr. I have relatives on Mars and Earth.”

“Have they ever been threatened?”

“No, just my wife.”

“How were the bars’ delivered?”

“A package would come, with some random item in it along with one bar. They only sent one at a time, about every 2 weeks. She had to eat the whole thing.”

“What did you do for them?”

“Illegal things,” he said, lowering his head. “My wife had no part in it, nor my children. Only I did.”

“Does your wife know?”

“Not the specifics. I wanted to shield her from it all.”

“What specifically did you do?”

“Mostly forgeries. Economic transactions, currency transfers. All local stuff…nothing touching Star Force’s systems. I didn’t have any access codes to those. Every now and then they’d come to me with something they wanted done, always at a random time. So long as I complied they let me and my family live in peace.”

“Why didn’t you report it to security?”

Ira swallowed hard. “They killed one of my coworkers to make a point. They told me who, then the next day she died in an accident. I knew I couldn’t risk telling anyone.”

“In return for full disclosure and assisting us with backtracking your forgeries I’ll agree to relocate you and your family, complete with new identities, to a Star Force colony far from here.”

“If you can guarantee our safety?”

“I’ll take you somewhere they can’t go,” Jet promised.

Ira seemed to hesitate, then started bobbing his head.

“Yes…ok, yes. I agree. How soon can we go? My wife too, I assume?”

“Your wife will have to be purged of the tracer first, but she’ll go as well. You’ve got 15 minutes to get the four of you packed,” Jet said pointing a finger at the bedrooms. “Leave anything non-essential behind.”

“Thank you,” Ira said, bolting out of his seat and heading over to his children, though he made sure to keep clear of Jet by a few feet as he passed him by. He grabbed both of their small hands and walked them over to their rooms, whispering to them as they asked him questions, telling them they were about to take a trip.

Jet put his helmet back on, then walked out to where the guards were waiting. “I need the quickest secure route to the spaceport. The Word may try to take him out in transit if they’re keeping a close watch, so I want clear hallways ahead and behind us. Pull in as many men as you need…so long as you can trust them.”

“You think there are traitors among us?”

“Possibly. I’ll accompany the package. You secure the route…and get it done within the next 15 minutes. After that we’re heading out, even if I have to take them off the grid to do it.”

“I’ll have it done for you in 10, sir.”

“Good…and don’t call me sir.”

8

June 22, 2430

Alpha Centauri System

Glasir

A commercial transport, twice the size of a Dragon-class dropship, descended from orbit fighting Glasir’s deep gravity well enroute to the primary spaceport in the Star Force colony simply designated as ‘City 2.’ It landed slowly, extending numerous skids as it set down in the nitrogen-rich atmosphere on an exterior pad. It was one of many newer models produced by Star Force’s competitors, and was capable of making slow jumps between planets in the same system, forgoing the need to use dropships to load/unload orbital starships that accomplished the same task.

Star Force, meanwhile, had been sticking with their familiar dropship designs and gradually upgrading their gravity drives, so that now a trip from planet to moon didn’t require a starship, and while it was technically possible to travel between planets, efficient travel would require a larger gravity drive than the craft fielded. Star Force had instead pushed their production of basic, cheap interplanetary transports of far greater size for the dropships to transfer cargo to/from that would remain purely starships.

That was the more economical route, but for some midlevel haulers and independent operators the one-ship fits all duties platform was preferable, giving Star Force’s competitors a small niche in the market that the mega corporation didn’t care to directly compete in, making the Juniper-class transport setting down in the Star Force spaceport a fairly common sight.

There wasn’t as much private commerce within Star Force colonies as national or independent ones, but there was still a fair amount of open market trade where the basic necessities were already covered by location production sources. Clan colonies were a bit more reclusive, but they also allowed for people and cargo to come and go as they chose, with many non-Star Force businesses operating out of Star Force worlds, necessitating that the design of the shipyards be able to accept not only Star Force-produced craft, but their competitors’ versions as well…hence the large, open air landing field.

Given the unlivable atmospheric conditions Glasir’s spaceports were internal, with the atmosphere being kept at bay by energy fields that the dropships could pass through, but for the exterior landing pads there were subsurface tunnels running out to small bunkers scattered about like boulders on the otherwise smooth, flat plain…each of which contained an array of modular shield generators that would extend a bubble of normal atmosphere out to mate with the loading doors on the large transports, or in lieu of that extend smaller physical tubes out to connect gangways to the large ships’ airlocks.

Today the shields were to be used, and once the pilot had set the juniper down in the correct position five tiny arms reached out from the bunker to the hull of the transport forming the outline of the shield conduit, then they powered up starting at the base and extended their shield walls out between them along with a plug to push out the bad atmosphere similar to an aquatics’ shield column.

The arms glowed blue once the seal had been established, giving the offloading crews a visual indicator that all was safe, then the main cargo door/ramp detached from the ship and pivoted down exposing a cavernous cargo bay…out of which walked a half dozen passengers, followed by a procession of cargo lifters carrying crates.

The six men dressed in civilian clothes walked into the bunker and ducked out a personnel exit that led them directly to the city interior with only a small security checkpoint to pass through, given that they’d arrived on a non-Star Force flight. Three corporate employees, one personnel division and two security were seated behind a protective clear wall within the hallway, allowing a narrow walkthrough scanning tunnel as the only way past.

The first man went through cleanly, then began to deal with the dark blue uniformed attendant who required his ID. As he reached into a pocket and brought out his identification card the second man in line came through the scanner and waited in line.

When the third came through and set off the device, all hell broke loose.

The first man grabbed the attendant and smashed his head into the table while the second simultaneously jumped up and over the counter, rushing the pair of guards…both of whom were wearing stinger pistols in hip holsters. The Word operative kicked one of the gold/white uniformed men back into the wall while wrenching the other’s arm out away from his body as he reached for his weapon…then the man who’d set off the sensor leaned over the counter where the attendant was pinned down face first and aimed a plasma pistol at the nearest guard, shooting him at a range of 2 meters.

The Word operative swung the other guard around and into the firing line, with him being dropped just as easily, never having a chance to draw his pistol. The first man released the attendant, who also caught a plasma lance to the chest as the other men came through the sensor tunnel, all of them setting it off, then they passed out weapons and body armor to the first two men who made them disappear inside their loose clothing before the six walked out into the city drawing a few startled scares and screams, but once they split up and got into the pedestrian flow they quickly disappeared amongst the masses, using a small scanning device to locate the reflectivity tag within the city.

Agent woke up in his bed…not a prison bed, but his bed back in his apartment on Tyr. He blinked his eyes, not seeming to get them fully open. He was groggy, and he found the sensation familiar. As his mind began to process more and kick off some of the sleep drunkenness faster than his eyes, he remembered going through this before and wondered why he wasn’t sleeping right.

Still unable to get his vision completely clear he sat up and swung his legs over the side of his bed, hoping that would wake him up further but it did not. Resigning to work himself out of his stupor he stood up and went about his morning routine of shaving, showering, and receiving a delivery at 8:32 on the spot. He went to the door, now freshly dressed in a blan set of civilian clothes, and accepted the warm breakfast packet with a smile and tipped the delivery man.

He locked the apartment door behind him and went back into his small dining area and sat down on the half table sticking out of the wall just below a vid screen that held daily news broadcasts, but his eyes were so bleary that he couldn’t make them out, not that he cared anyway. He opened the box and felt the steam rise up from a plateful of eggs, two pieces of toast, and five strips of synthetic bacon, given that Brazil didn’t allow the sale of meat, taking after Star Force’s protocol like a whimpering pup following its mother around.

There was a disposable fork in the box and he set to eating the eggs as he reached for his sunglasses that he’d left on the table. He slid them on and the genetic recognition software confirmed his identity and activated the built in HUD and wireless receiver that allowed him to tap into The Word’s private information net.

He blinked his eyes again, trying to make out the data that popped up but only got a few words…then seeing those his mind seemed to wake up a bit and more text flowed, along with several data graphs that he’d been looking at the other day. As he ate he ran through a list of projects he’d been keeping tabs on, finding no new updates.

That was strange, he remembered, because he was supposed to have gotten word back from Operative Alpha 32 last night. Even if he got delayed he should have logged in early this morning.

Agent’s eyes flashed over to the news vids, wondering if his kidnapping attempt had been unsuccessful. Even if he’d been killed, word of that sort of thing usually made the news, and he could think of no other reason why he wouldn’t have reported in.

Then something in his mind clicked, and he checked the updates feed again, finding not one new piece of information.

He pulled his sunglasses off and looked directly at the video screen…finding himself unable to make out anything other than a wibbly wobbly picture that had no detail, only a familiar sound and images, such as the news desk. Agent focused hard on it, then just as he was about to realize it wasn’t real he blacked out, returning to a dreamless rest as Nathan removed his fingers from the man’s forehead.

He sighed, standing up from the head of the cell bunk and walking back out past where the containment shield usually would emit. It was shut off at the moment, but Nathan tagged it back on as soon as he was on the other side, then checked the wall clock, seeing that he had 3 more minutes until it was time to wake him and start the interrogation cycle all over again, meaning he wasn’t going to have a chance to run another mental simulation.

He’d gotten fairly proficient at it, not just because of the experience he was gaining working on Agent and the other Word prisoners, but because he was becoming familiar with the way this man’s mind worked. Normal interrogation methods had been almost completely ineffective on him. He wouldn’t respond to deal making, logic, intimidation, lying, flattery, insults, or any of the other mind games Star Force typically employed to glean information out of prisoners.

Unlike unsavory intelligence agencies, Star Force didn’t rely on torturing prisoners to gain information, rather both Star Force security and the Archons relied on mechanical and eyes-on reconnaissance to gather data, with anything gained from prisoners being extra, and usually suspect. They could trust their own eyes and sensors, but what an individual chose to tell them was not so easy to swallow if they couldn’t confirm it, which was why the information they were getting from the rest of The Word operatives and associates was being treated as leads rather than facts.

That said, the Archons did employ a few physical prods where the security division didn’t, one of which was self-imposed sleep deprivation. Recently the Archons had been keeping Agent awake round the clock, with them taking shifts talking with or to him…though aside from Nathan he rarely spoke to any of them. When he would begin to nod off they’d poke him or shake his shoulders, nothing violent, but just enough to keep him awake until he agreed to ‘earn’ his sleep by doing workouts.

2 miles a day at sub 8:00 pace got him 6 hours of sleep, which David had been running him through, both as guard and pace keeper when he took him over to the track, which other Archons and personnel were simultaneously using. Agent had found that odd, but given that David never got more than a few meters away from him at any time there was no real security issue to deal with. What could have been mistaken for sloppiness actually worked to reinforce Star Force’s dominance over The Word, for it became clear that neither David nor anyone else on the track was concerned about the skinny stick that was waddling around the track at pedestrian pace.

That almost seemed to embarrass Agent, but if he wanted to sleep he had to do the workouts, so once a day he’d go over to the track with David and get his 8 laps in, then shower in the Star Force locker rooms nearby before being brought over to the interrogation/conference rooms for another round of questions/lectures by varying individuals. He’d have to stay awake despite the powerful urge to nap until they were finished, with his meals brought in, then he’d get to go back to his cell and sleep…only to be woke up before he was truly rested, meaning he was carrying some lingering fatigue with him, something the Archons were intimately acquainted with.

That fatigue had loosened his mind, if not his lips. No longer was there a solid wall of resistance within the man’s conscious thoughts. It was sagging a bit, having to compete with his wobbly head…and if he refused to run the workouts he’d be even worse off being sleep deprived, so either way it was working on him in a way Agent had not anticipated.

Actually, Nathan had learned that Agent had undergone resistance training to interrogation, including sleep deprivation, which was why the man wanted to avoid it at all costs, knowing how it would affect his mental state. Star Force would never subject someone to it unless they had an out, but in this case the out was working more against Agent than he realized, all because the man had never done much physical training before and his mind was being inundated with new sensations and stresses, along with his body, whose hamstrings, back, and shins were quite sore.

Nathan found that amusing, but it also tied up more mental power that Agent couldn’t use to hold his mind clenched up. During interrogation sessions he was still hard to read, but there were a few slivers of memories that he and the other Archons had pulled in response to questions, mainly due to the fact that his normally quick reacting mind had slowed due to his lingering fatigue and there were reactive thoughts breaking through into the Archons’ psionic range for a second or two before he could lock them down.

Using those tidbits Nathan had begun constructing mental simulations and feeding them to Agent as he woke up from one of his 6 hour stints…but he didn’t let him fully return to consciousness. He kept him in a semi-dream state where he could access his mind, but not enough for the man’s senses to interfere with the fiction he was feeding him. In the beginning the simulations hadn’t lasted long before Agent saw through them, but each time Nathan gathered more information and used it in later sessions, making a more complete scenario that kept the man inundated with normalcy for a longer period of time.

It also helped that after the workouts Agent was butt tired, so when he went to sleep he released all his mental walls and was truly out of it until he woke up. By keeping him from reaching that point Nathan had access to his surface thoughts without any resistance until he started to suspect something, such as when the news vids were unreadable. That had been necessary, for when Nathan had replayed old versions from the man’s memory he caught on pretty quick, and newer ones that Nathan had watched couldn’t be projected with enough clarity, given that the Archon’s skills in this department were still limited.

He could only project a small range of images, so he had to use Agent’s own memories and allow him to draw on them while the Archon changed small things.

When the clock reached the completion of Agent’s 6 hours, down to the second, Nathan hit the buzzer that woke the man up in a start, with the sudden shock shaking off any remainder of the ‘dream’ he’d just gone through, though Nathan doubted any of it had remained after how deep he’d sunk the man back into unconsciousness…though it didn’t hurt to be thorough.

“Wakey, wakey,” he said with a smile as Agent reached up and put a hand on his forehead as he sat up, clearly feeling the effects of continuous days of training. His body probably needed 10-12 hours of sleep to adjust to the stresses, so only 6 was leaving him fried even when he woke…though not sleep deprived, for his eyes cleared quickly enough and he got his feet back under him and stood up, waiting for Nathan to lower the shield.

He glanced at the clock as Nathan removed the energy barrier. “Punctual as always.”

“Workout time,” Nathan said, motioning him forward. Agent sighed and followed him out and down the row of cell blocks, each of which had a wall and door separating them from the hallway so the prisoners couldn’t see or hear each other, keeping with Star Force’s prisoner isolation policy.

Nathan escorted him out of the security station and into the city where he handed him over to David, who then took him through the semi-crowded streets over to the track, almost daring him to try and escape.

When they came back Nathan was waiting in the interrogation room, having his own breakfast tray at one end of the table and Agent’s opposite his…with the Archon’s being stacked up three times as high with foodstuffs.

“What’d you finish in today?” he asked as Agent walked over and sat down without preamble.

“15:57,” he said, looking at his tray, then at Nathan’s. “I must admit, I am beginning to understand your affinity for sugar,” he revealed, taking a bite into an iced muffin.

“Finally making some progress,” Nathan smiled as if he was a buddy rather than an enemy, chewing into a long sugar stick.

“Are you Archons always this sore?”

“No.”

“Then it appears I must adapt further,” he said, taking a small swig of water while Nathan gulped his, having gotten his own morning workout in before his ‘dream’ session with Agent.

“I’ll swap you training advice for Word secrets,” he offered.

“I’m not that sore.”

“Yet,” Nathan smirked before sinking his teeth into a long donut, twitching halfway through the bite as his earpiece chirped, though only loud enough that he could hear it. That was odd, because they weren’t supposed to be disturbed during interrogation sessions.

All the smirk disappeared out of his face as he stood up, dropping the donut in his hand back onto the tray and quickly chewing what was in his mouth.

Agent noticed, and Nathan’s smirk seemed to migrate its way over to his face, though he didn’t say anything, but he did lock eyes with the Archon.

Nathan frowned even deeper as he telepathically sensed minds nearby moving about in an agitated state, with one disappearing entirely.

He stepped over to a shelf and grabbed a set of handcuffs, then ran over to the end of the table and pulled Agent out of his chair, binding his hands behind him.

“You could at least let me finish breakfast,” he said sarcastically, but offered no resistance.

“Stay put,” Nathan said, shoving him back down into his chair before running out the door.

9

When David dropped off Agent he didn’t stick around, instead leaving the security station and heading towards the city’s small Archon sanctum to get his own workouts in before coming back and working on some of the lower level operatives. He’d been making progress with some of them, and two had already cracked, accepting deals in exchange for information. Altogether the bits and pieces of mostly unconfirmed intel were painting a picture of The Word’s operations on Tyr, but the most valuable bits were coming from Agent, due almost entirely to Nathan’s efforts.

They knew this Agent hadn’t been the only one operating on Tyr, but rather one of three. This one’s ‘name’ was number 7. He was responsible for operations within the city’s populace, rather than the Word’s infrastructure. He’d been recruited at least 30 years ago, and had done some very basic fitness training to increase his longevity…but more so in recent years as The Word tried to ascertain the source of Star Force personnel’s longevity, though they still didn’t fully buy the training angle.

Nathan had uncovered more than two dozen operations The Word had previously conducted, or were in the process of conducting when the Tyr operation began, giving Green Team some leads that David had the others tracking down, leaving only him, Nathan, Lio, and Axe to lead the interrogations, though they had the support of the local security force and the scattering of Archons assigned to the city.

David was 50 meters out from the security station when a group of Regulars came rushing out behind him, running towards the nearest elevator…with one of them flagging him down and lagging behind as the first few disappeared into an open car.

“What’s going on?” he asked, running over to them.

“The spaceport has been compromised. More than 100 enemy troops have broken through and are working their way to city control.”

“Who?” David asked as the next five armored security guards claimed the next car, leaving four times that number waiting in line.

“Don’t know. They’re wearing armor we don’t recognize.”

“I’ll meet you there,” David said, having heard enough and sprinting off through the pedestrian crowd that so far hadn’t been told there was an invasion underway. As he wove his way between the clusters of people enroute to the Archon armory where he’d stashed his armor and weapons he tapped his earpiece and filled in the other three members of Green Team on what was happening.

As he was doing that and the bulk of the security station’s forces were deploying, along with troops from multiple stations across the city as well as the small defense garrison, the six Word operatives emerged from the crowd and slipped in the front doors of the station, pulling out their weapons at the last moment and gunning down the lone guard that remained along with two attendants before scrambling inside and fighting through those personnel in the building that responded to the weaponsfire, enroute to the reflectivity marker in Agent’s body that had been exposed when the time-sensitive blocking chemical had run its course.

Nathan ran out into the hallway that stretched the length of the interrogation rooms, or rather the rooms that had been repurposed to handle that function. He kept a lock on Agent’s mind to insure that he did in fact stay put all the while sensing a beehive of activity a couple levels below him near the stairwell. One of the minds disappeared, meaning they either dropped into a very, very deep unconsciousness and the output of their mental processes dipped below his detection range, or all mental activity ceased, meaning someone had just died.

Ahead of him an armored Regular stepped out of a side room and headed towards the stairs ahead of Nathan and the Archon let him go ahead, given that he was both unarmed and unarmored. When they got down to the level below them two lances of plasma fire shot past the Regular, with a third hitting him in the shoulder of his dirty white armor as he fired back with his stinger pistol.

Nathan tracked the nearby minds and sent Fornax blasts into each of them in sequence, knocking them off balance and allowing the Regular to close range while he waited on the stairs out of the firing line. He felt the minds intermix and clicked on his Pefbar while maintaining the Fornax blasts so he could see through the wall as the Regular engaged the men hand to hand, using their own bodies to block the firing lines of the others as he took another plasma hit to his armor.

Wobbling as they were, two of the attackers charged forward and used their mass to try and tackle the Regular, but the longtime veteran smacked one aside and held the other at bay, punching into his chest and knocking him backwards, but the man came away with his stinger pistol, leaving the Regular only his armored body to fight with.

Wisely the Regular stepped forward and grabbed one of the enemy’s dropped plasma pistols and shot the nearest operative as Nathan disabled him again. The man took a nearly pointblank hit to the chest and the Regular twisted to the side to shoot another one jumping for him…then the first man who’d been shot got back up and dove onto the Regular, knocking him and his compatriot down.

The others didn’t wait, but rushed on past with Nathan knocking down another two, unable to hold a Fornax field without also disabling the Regular, though he was about to do that anyway so he could get down to them and grab a weapon. He didn’t have time, for the operatives left the others behind and jumped up the stairwell coming around the corner to where Nathan was.

Disabling another he retreated back up to the next level and took cover behind the corner. When the first of them came up onto the platform and entered the hallway Nathan disabled him with a Fornax blast and punched into his chest with a stiffened palm, expecting to knock the man out with a single blow, then turn his attention to the next one coming up…but his hand hit something hard and he realized the men were wearing armor beneath their civilian clothing.

The momentum still knocked the man back, but not out. Those behind him slipped by, firing ahead of them into the hallway while Nathan was to the side, not allowing him to charge through to get to them. Had the doorway been narrower he could have ambushed them one at a time, but he could ‘see’ them coming up side by side half a second from shooting him.

He hit them both with a short range Fornax field as they pressed through and aimed at him, spraying the wall with plasma as he dove into a nearby door, smashing the latch down to open it as his shoulder hit it. He tumbled through, with the jerky arm of one of the men firing an erratic plasma blast that caught Nathan in the right calf.

He collapsed, but managed to turn it into a roll and came up on his knees facing the door, putting his left leg up and pressure on that foot, ready to jump in whatever direction he needed as the pain seared from the burnt hole in his otherwise disabled right leg.

His Pefbar and Ikrid tracking had disabled with the hit, so he didn’t know where the operatives were for a couple of seconds until no one came after him and he got a lock on their minds again, seeing that they were bypassing him and heading straight for Agent.

Standing up on his good leg and hopping towards the door he’d rammed through, he poked his head out into the hallway just as the Regular came up the stairway, his armor a mess of burn marks and holes.

“They’re after the prisoner,” Nathan said, pointing down the hallway just as one of the operatives came back out and sprinted towards them, firing plasma. Nathan ducked back inside the door and reached out with his mind to send a Fornax blast into the man just as the hallway behind him exploded, sending a concussion wave of compressed air and debris down towards them.

The operative took flight and the Regular was also knocked down, with Nathan being partially obscured but still knocked backwards by the blast and onto his butt, given that he couldn’t catch himself on his other leg. When he rolled himself over and up onto his hands and knees he saw the operative trading punches with the Regular through the doorway, then the commando slammed the enemy down onto his back and landed an elbow jab into his armored midsection.

“Unsung sparrows migrate underne…” Nathan heard the operative say, then thinking fast he pulled a Vader and telekinetically gripped the man’s throat, pushing in on his windpipe so he couldn’t speak the detonation trigger.

“Shoot him,” Nathan said, working hard to hold the pressure.

“He’s not going anywhere,” the Regular said, looking around for his stinger pistol.

“Quickly,” the Archon urged. “He’s a walking bomb and I can’t keep him silent forever.”

The Regular did a double take from inside his helmet, then saw the man’s plasma pistol nearby and dove for it, having to release the operative to do it.

“Un…” the man tried to say, massaging his tight throat with his hands as he stayed put, focusing entirely on the detonation phrase. The next moment a lance of blue shot out from the side of the doorway and hit the man in the chest, but the armor stopped most of it.

“Unsung spa…rrows…”

“In the head!” Nathan yelled.

Gritting his teeth, the Regular walked up to the man and brought the pistol within a foot of his forehead and pulled the trigger.

The operative flopped back onto the floor and Nathan was able to let go of his intermittent Lachka, which had been near to failing entirely. Down the hallway where Nathan couldn’t see a few other people came out of the interrogation rooms, walking over the rubble and trying to figure out what was going on. The Regular spotted them, saw that they weren’t loose prisoners, then walked in towards Nathan.

“How bad are you hit?” he asked, kneeling down in front of him.

“Forget me,” Nathan said, spitting out a bit of blood from where he’d bit his tongue when he got hit. “Where are the others?”

“Down below.”

“Find and kill them all,” Nathan said icily, but it was danger rather than vengeance driving the order. “If they speak a few words they can detonate…the triggers and explosives are inside their bodies. Kill them all, even if they’re unconscious, and do it quickly.”

The Regular swallowed hard, not liking the order. “I understand,” he said, retreating out the door to do what was necessary. He’d seen the blast a few rooms down and he knew what kind of destructive power the Archon was referring to, even if he wasn’t familiar with The Word’s Dargomir-laced Human bombs.

Nathan stayed put, looking down at his leg and wishing he hadn’t. There was a hole burnt straight through his calf muscle, leaving a charred little tunnel that was seeping a lot of blood. He knew if he tried to stand on it he wouldn’t be able to, and would further shred the muscle in the attempt.

David was too far away to hear the explosion, already having gotten most of the way to the armory when it went off. Once he got there, into his armor, and back out to where the fighting was happening it was mostly over, with only a few roaming Word troops left in play, and those were being hunted down by closer teams than him, leaving the Archon little to do other than sort through the bodies, almost all of which were the enemy’s. Even with the element of surprise, Star Force’s security teams and a pair of Archon adepts that had been within response range had torn through the invaders quite efficiently, making him wonder what they had been attempting to accomplish.

The question of who they were was quickly answered when he got a look at their plasma rifles…typical Word make, though the dark brown body armor, complete with helmet, was a new addition. It hadn’t done much to stop the stingers though, for their stun energy had soaked right through, leaving most of those down merely unconscious, with security collecting their weapons and bagging their new prisoners with hand and ankle restraints.

“What the hell were you guys after?” he said, getting on his helmet comm and contacting Green Team. “The incursion is all but over. Security is rounding up the strays. They’re Word troops, maybe here to go after the prisoners? I don’t know what they were after, but they didn’t get very far.”

“David…” Nathan responded, and he could tell by his strained voice that there was trouble. “They got a team through. Agent is dead and I’m hit. Their troops are walking bombs.”

“Where are you?” David asked, his mind racing at he looked out over all the prisoners lying in front of him. Before Nathan could even respond he pulled his stinger rifle off his back and started shooting the unconscious/semi-conscious prisoners, knowing full well all it would take is a handful of words to turn themselves into living landmines.

“Security station. Got a Regular cleaning up their team. Don’t let any more detonate, take them out with plasma.”

“We’ve got most unconscious and I’m going to make sure they stay that way,” David told him as he continued to pump out more rounds. “I’ll warn the remaining teams. How bad are you hit?”

“Plasma burn straight through the calf. I won’t be running anytime soon.”

“Hang tight and we’ll get you back to Earth.”

“I’m fine,” Nathan lied, “focus on the exploding bad guys please.”

“Already on it. Get back to you when we’re secure.”

Nathan grimaced, leaning forward onto his elbows and trying to hold his injured leg still as he stared down at the floor back towards his knees. Pushing past the pain he tried to slip into Sesspik mode if just to accelerate the scabbing process and cut down on the bleeding, which had now accumulated into a small puddle near his foot.

He turtled up into a ball and stayed put, doing quick mental checks of the surrounding area now and then, but otherwise focusing on numbing his mind against the pain and healing what little he could on his own.

The remaining Word troops were taken down without explosions before David could get out to any of the teams hunting them, then he ordered massive stinger hits on all the captives as he called in medical teams to do immediate surgery to remove their detonation triggers. The first few unconscious bodies they lugged over to the nearest medical station, however, didn’t have any.

In fact none of them did, making David wonder just who had gotten to the security station, killed Agent, and wounded Nathan. When he finally confirmed all the potential explosive enemies were duds he headed back over to the station and saw for himself the explosive damage, as well as the dead operatives that had yet to be removed, with the onsite medical personnel attending to the Star Force casualties first, including Nathan, who’d he’d already talked to outside on the way to a med bay.

“No armor,” he commented to a pair of Regulars standing guard nearby, having been redeployed from elsewhere to secure the now vulnerable station.

“Look under their clothing,” one of them suggested, having been onsite for longer than the Archon had.

David knelt down next to one that had a plasma burn in the side of the head and undid the buttons on his loose shirt. He got through two of them telekinetically, given his armored gloves weren’t so good at such tiny tasks, then just said to hell with it and ripped the shirt apart, revealing a form-fitting chest plate, not dark brown, but very pale tan that was a shade lighter than his skin.

“Pulled security away with a diversion, then came in with these walking bombs. Well played, you assholes,” David said as he stood up, looking around the lobby and heading for the stairs. He passed three other bodies on the way up, then saw a fourth at the end of the hall that led through the interrogation rooms…or what was left of the hall. As he turned the corner he saw that a huge section down on the left was gone, both walls, ceiling, and floor.

David walked down to the edge of that crater, seeing a pile of debris on the level below them where the junk had settled and deposited, marking the center of the blast zone…right where he’d dropped off Agent after his run not so long ago.

Most of the other Word prisoners were still alive, with only three having been killed in the blast. Most of the rest were in holding cells on lower levels. Two Star Force personnel had been killed, and a third badly injured, when they were hit along with the prisoners. The rest of the people on the interrogation level had survived, some with injuries, some unscathed. None of the prisoners had gotten away, given that security had already pulled a head count, meaning that this attack had been for one purpose and one purpose only.

To deny them access to Agent.

That told David a lot about their operational authority and knowledge…and how little they worried about what the rest of the prisoners might know. The Word could take the hits of their minor intelligence breaches, but they couldn’t risk an Agent being compromised.

While it had proven effective, it felt like a kneejerk reaction to David, for The Word had broken their cover and made a blatant attack on a Star Force facility, and in doing so they’d revealed the fact that they were not only a criminal organization with highly capable intelligence assets, but that they also had an army to call on, and in this system no less. There hadn’t been enough time to bring in men from Sol or elsewhere, meaning they’d accomplished this through local assets only.

David didn’t know for sure what it all meant, aside from the fact that their agenda now appeared to be a great deal more ambitious than stirring up public dissent. There was no way The Word could challenge Star Force on a military front, which begged the question what else were they up to?

Not having an answer to that worried David more than a fleet of warships. Those he knew how to fight, but an unseen aggressor with an unclear target was something virtually impossible to defend against, for you never knew when or where the strike was going to land.

10

August 1, 2430

Solar System

Earth

Davis stepped out of one of Atlantis’s many elevators and walked through a sparely crowded hallway up to the rotunda that held a broken circle of workstations staffed by half a dozen people, with the pedestrian walkways splitting around either side. In the center of those workstations were two security guards, an almost unnecessary gesture given that the public no longer had access to Atlantis, but they remained there just in case, guarding the rising staircase in the center that led up to Davis’s office above.

He passed through one of the breaks in the workstation ring, offering a few ‘hellos’ and ‘good mornings’ to his executive staff of gophers who stood ready to find, or find someone else to find, whatever he needed. They handled most of the mundane, repetitive duties associated with his position atop the Star Force ‘empire,’ allowing him to focus on new things and crises as they arose.

Davis passed between the security guards and climbed the twisting staircase two steps at a time, just having come from his morning workout. He knew the Archons pulled doubles, even triple workouts per day but he was doing well off of just one, and he preferred to get to it first thing in the morning…that way all the time spent sitting at his desk served as rest rather than stagnation.

When he got to the top of the stairs he walked out into a low sunrise visible through the panoramic 360 degree window that stretched the entire length around the perimeter of the circular office. His daily routine had him getting up before sunrise and running 4 miles at sub 6:50 pace, then a quartet of 150 meter strides kept under 30 seconds. He’d been doing that workout every morning for the past year and a half and knew it was time to make an upgrade, but he hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

The pace and feel of the workout just seemed so natural to him now that it wasn’t a bother, more like stretching out his muscles every morning. He was debating between dropping down to 6:30 pace and hammering it out until he adjusted, or nipping it down to 6:45 and just eating up that little bit of improvement as he settled back into the routine. He was leaning towards the latter, but a part of him felt like hammering, so he was still undecided, which was why he was delaying making the change. Whatever he chose he was going to stick with it, so he wanted to be sure before he made the upgrade.

Davis walked over to his desk and activated the holographic displays as he sat down, with the top of his clear table/desk  sprouting colorful ‘objects’ that contained status reports, sales graphs, message bundles, and a host of other tools that he used to keep track of his ever growing corporation, which now spanned 73 star systems. Unfortunately they were still having to rely on couriers for communication between them, but the first test of their new interstellar transmitters was due to begin in less than a year, and if it succeeded they would be able to cut the weeks of message delay down to less than a day in most cases.

The Bsidd had finally gotten around to extending the Alliance network of communication relays out to Epsilon Eridani, giving them access to a flood of data that was then being relayed back via ship to Earth. The Archons operated out of Corneria for the most part, so military intel rightfully went there, but Davis was also keeping tabs on the war effort and had welcomed the illumination provided on the fog of war.

That said, if their own transmitter prototype performed as expected, they’d have the ability to transmit data far faster than the alliance…though at a significantly reduced range, meaning they’d have to string together a lot of relays, but they’d finally be able to keep in direct contact with each system, even all the way out to Retari where Paul and several other trailblazers were battling it out with the lizards in what he’d been told, and shown, to be nearly an even fight.

Until then he had to rely on snail mail to get his updates, of which appeared on a specific screen…one that was flashing a level 4 notice.

Davis frowned and brought it up first, seeing a report generated by members of his staff downstairs after receiving information from numerous divisions within Star Force. They’d summarized it for him while including the link to the raw data, one of which he pulled up.

It was a YouTube video tagged as ‘Star Force’s assault on Tyr.’ As he watched he saw a drone cutter hovering over the city, filmed by some camera set outside on the barren moon’s surface. Then a missile sprang up from a topside launch port and arced over, coming down on the city and blasting a hole in the armored roof that sprayed out a plume of debris and bodies across the moon’s surface as the city’s internal air pressure fueled the destructive fountain.

Davis saw other videos tagged as related, and pulled up one that showed Archons setting up and releasing chemical weapons on the civilian population in order to neutralize security checkpoints. The plumes of smoke were recognizable to Davis, for he’d already seen their use from security camera footage taken from Tyr that had been included in both Green and Red Team team’s reports.

He pulled up other videos, listening to one analyze the attacks attributing it all to a hostile takeover by Star Force in response to some dispute with Brazil. Another said it was a test bed for Star Force’s new line of chemical weapons, and they’d needed to blow a hole in the city to evacuate the excess gas when some element of the mixture proved to be too powerful.

Other videos had snippets of the internal damage…bloody corpses resulting from the gas, plasma-burned Brazilian guards who’d died fighting off the Archons, and pictures of the explosively decompressed civilian bodies found inside the city after the patch in the hull had allowed atmosphere to be returned to the depressurized areas.

The footage was gruesome, and the comments being left on the videos were a mix of disbelief and justifiable outrage.

In addition to the raw videos that were exploding across YouTube, there were also news stories cropping up elaborating on what had, and was continuing to happen on Tyr. Given that the moon was in another star system, albeit a very close one, there was no way for the public in Sol to know what was going on over there save for the tidbits passing jumpships brought back and the tales from travelers who’d witnessed the events, few that there were.

The summary that his staff had put together indicated that these videos and stories were sprouting up all over the Sol internet with no known source, and that the public was reacting harshly. The major news networks had held off on reporting on the story, demanding to get Star Force’s explanation before they went public with it, but the groundswell was already happening and anyone who had ever had a doubt about Star Force’s integrity was now going to have evidence to back up that suspicion.

Davis knew that even without having to read the theoretical implications attached to the report. There had always been a lingering anti-Star Force movement, but it had never had any real teeth after the first century. Star Force had proven itself to be reliable, honest, and above all else the good guys that intervened to stop the bad…a beacon of hope and prosperity for Humanity.

The Word had been trying to diminish that with seemingly random sabotage, but now their aim was both obvious and effective. Even as he read through the report new items were being attached to it as the story continued to grow and spread around the system through the internet and mid-tier news agencies.

The reputation he’d built up over 400 years was being hacked apart in minutes, and he knew there was going to be a segment of the population that he’d never be able to convince otherwise. They’d throw their support to the nearly dead anti-Star Force crowd, giving them new life and resources…which The Word would no doubt gain from, in the form of a social wedge, at least, that they could subtly hammer into various cracks they discovered or would create.

Davis knew this would quickly turn into a nightmare if he didn’t jump on it. Some of the public was already lost, but 400 years of consistency wouldn’t be so idly abandoned by many, and they needed to know the truth before their minds could run wild with theories.

Touching a key on the edge of his desk he brought up a holographic keyboard and started tapping on the touchscreen tabletop, requesting immediate contact be made with the Brazilian ambassador. Then he sent a request to security’s intelligence division to have them break down the missile strike footage, which he knew to be phony, so they could get that out to the media as soon as possible. The Archons’ reports had indicated the hull breach was caused by an internal explosion of unknown origin, but given the camera set up outside he had no doubt The Word had killed all those people just for this photo op.

Star Force had succeeded in kicking The Word out of their sanctuary, but their enemy had turned that defeat into an advantage…and had probably been planning this ever since they’d infiltrated the moon, counting on the fact that Star Force would find them eventually.

Davis sent out many more messages, then got a response back from the Brazilian ambassador. He flipped on his office transmitter and stepped out from behind his desk, taking his place on the holopad.

“I’ve just seen the news reports,” Rodrigo said with a very displeased look on his face, “and I can assure you we had no knowledge of this.”

Davis waved off his concern with a swipe of his left hand. “I know you didn’t. This is The Word’s handiwork.”

The ambassador seemed relieved to hear that, though his scowl didn’t fade. “What can we do to assist you in battling this ridiculous propaganda?”

“It’s not all propaganda,” Davis said calmly. “Most of those images are real, I assume, just taken out of context. I intend to make a statement within the next few hours laying out what really happened, including your involvement. I’d have preferred to keep this confrontation with The Word private, but I no longer see how that’s possible. The people need to know the truth, regardless of how many supporters The Word might gain.”

“As you wish,” Rodrigo agreed. “I don’t like admitting how easily they stole Tyr away from us, but you’re correct in pointing out that we need clean air on this. Too many people have died, and now thanks to these brutes their deaths are visible to everyone. If we don’t explain who is at fault it will fall back on Brazil, and Star Force as well.”

“I’m not sure what The Word expects us to do, but I’m going to lay it all out there, including the sabotage they’ve been committing over the past years that you’re not aware of.”

Rodrigo raised an eyebrow. “May I ask?”

“Star Force doesn’t have industrial accidents,” Davis said flatly. “My people are too good for that.”

The ambassador sucked in a deep breath. “Perhaps it is best if you filled everyone in on what you know. Brazil would like to know what else they have been up to. Do you want us to issue a joint statement?”

“No, let me take the lead on this. Brazil can confirm what it likes after the fact.”

Rodrigo nodded. “I’ll get things moving on this end.”

Davis nodded and cut the transmission by stepping off the pad. The carpet resealed behind him as he headed back to his desk, but he didn’t sit down. He typed out one last message then headed for the stairs at a jog, wanting to get out ahead of this social revolution as much as he could.

“This looks like a movie to me,” Victor Anderson told his son as he watched one of the viral YouTube videos on a datapad, seeing the cloud of blue smoke billowing out from the canister, obscuring the Archons who’d set it off along with everything else a few seconds later as it reached the camera.

“No way, Dad. This stuff is everywhere. They even blew a hole in the city and vented the atmosphere. You can see the bodies coming out.”

“Why would Star Force do that?” Victor argued.

“I don’t know, but they did. It’s right here!”

“Don’t believe everything you see.”

He heard a noise from the kitchen and suddenly his wife walked into the living room where they were having their little family discussion. “Have you seen the news?”

“I’m showing it to him…he doesn’t believe it.”

“They killed over 100,000 people,” she said earnestly. “I really think it’s time you got a new job.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Victor said, trying to quell the rising tensions despite the fact that he was also concerned. “What does Star Force have to gain from attacking Brazil? More likely this is just some giant hoax to drum up YouTube views.”

“It’s on the regular news channels too,” his wife said, grabbing the remote and turning the vid screen on. When she did a press conference was being shown, with Davis center stage.

Victor frowned, realizing this had to be a lot more serious than he’d given his son credit for if the big man himself was addressing it.

“…which was when I sent an Archon team in to investigate the situation, probe the criminal element, and remove it from Tyr, returning the moon to Brazilian possession.”

“The Archons confirmed that the criminal organization responsible for the takeover was a familiar one. They call themselves The Word, though we know very little about them. Star Force has been hunting them down for over a decade in response to a number of sabotage attempts and successes against our infrastructure. Their personnel are very elusive, and have no qualms with committing suicide to avoid capture. The Archons managed to take several of them alive on Tyr, and we’re still in the process of interrogating them, though their organizational structure appears to be cellular, with each operative only knowing what is necessary for their mission. Thus we are having a difficult time assessing their full capabilities.”

“The takeover of Tyr was a far bolder step that we’d expected of them, but they surpassed it when they began slaughtering civilians dressed in Archon armor costumes. A lot of you have already seen those vids. They’re little more than actors engaging in real manslaughter. All our troops sent into Tyr were equipped with nonlethal weapons. We didn’t know who was a member of The Word and who was a loyal Brazilian security officer following orders from superiors he thought were legitimate.”

“We stunned and captured the local Brazilians, all the while a replacement force was being sent from Mars to take control of the moon. They didn’t know any more than we did who had been compromised or not, so they sent in an entirely new administration and security force, then began to sort through the local personnel, determining who they could trust and who they could not.”

“While Star Force was fighting and stunning the local population, Word operatives used the chaos to their advantage, staging raids dressed as my people and recording them to create this propaganda. To my current knowledge the deaths you are seeing on those vids are real, but the identity of the attackers has been faked.”

“The missile strike on the city never happened. Star Force had a warship on hand to prevent any ships from leaving. We wanted to contain The Word to the city rather than allow some of them to escape. The explosion that occurred originated from the interior, probably also The Word’s doing, given that the camera that recorded the explosion was neither Star Force nor Brazilian in origin. We believe it was placed there before the assault, along with explosives in the emergency shelter, so they could record their deaths and offer them up to the public as proof of Star Force’s imagined misdeeds.”

“Both Star Force and Brazil wanted to root out this criminal organization quietly, but given their recent wave of propaganda that is no longer an option. But whereas we’ve been keeping quiet in order to hunt down the leads we’ve had, so too has The Word kept knowledge of itself quiet, and that ends today. Following this broadcast I am releasing files of the varying crimes The Word has committed, ranging from thefts, to kidnappings, to murders…bank fraud, smuggling of contraband, copyright violations. You’ll get the full list, but be aware that these are only the activities that we’ve discovered, and there are probably far more that we have not.”

“This is the enemy we face. They know they cannot stand up to us militarily or economically, so they are trying to strike at us through other means. Whether or not you will hear from them now that I’ve outed them, I do not know. Regardless, we are making progress in hunting them down and will continue to do so, but I will tell you this…as a few of you already have heard by word of mouth. Shortly after the reclamation of Tyr, there was an assault on a Star Force city on nearby Glasir.”

“That attack was accomplished by The Word’s private army. We do not know how large it is, or where they are based, but they attacked one of our spaceports in full combat gear and were quickly subdued. We have them now as prisoners, but while their attack seemed to be futile, it was in fact a ruse to pull security away from the area where we were holding The Word prisoners from Tyr, including one of their leaders we managed to capture.”

Davis hesitated, and you could see the fire in his eyes. “Six men dressed as civilians attacked the holding area and fought their way in to where the prisoners were being held. Once they found their leader, they detonated an explosive they were carrying, killing him so that we could not glean any further secrets from The Word.”

“The other 5 were killed before they could detonate themselves…and yes, we did lose several Star Force personnel in both the attack and the explosion.”

“So there you have it…the truth. I know many of you will believe what you want to believe, and honestly I don’t care about you. I’m standing here explaining this to the rest of you so that you will have the truth available to you in this war of lies The Word is waging. These men are evil, and will do whatever they deem necessary to accomplish their agenda, and what that is we still don’t fully know. They are secretive, intelligent, amoral, and dangerous. They thrive on corruption and deceit, which is why it is important that you know the truth.”

“I will say that The Word isn’t the only threat out there, and there are many that Star Force deals with without you ever knowing about it. We don’t do this to hide it from you, but because you don’t need to know. This isn’t a game or entertainment or a hobby. This is real people’s lives being affected by evil men, and Star Force exists to hunt them down and stop them…not to record it in vids to play for the rest of you on the news.”

“I would have preferred to have dealt with The Word quietly, but they have begun to wage a different kind of war. They strike at us with lies…thus we strike back with the truth.”

On that seemingly abrupt end Davis stepped out of camera, leaving only the Pacific ocean backdrop as seen from a tower in Atlantis in place for a few seconds, then the news anchors reappeared and began to weigh in on the revelations.

“Damn,” Victor whispered.

“Cover-up,” his son declared instantly.

The father pointed a stern finger at his son. “You shut your mouth. Sean Davis is the most trustworthy person on this planet. If he says Star Force didn’t do this, then that’s the truth.”

“Whatever,” his son said, walking him off.

“I don’t know what to think,” his wife said, sitting down next to him as they continued to watch the newsfeeds, which were just now being updated with the data the Director had promised would follow.

Victor glared at her. “Who are you willing to trust more, a corporation with a track record 400 years long or some anonymous poster on YouTube?”

“If Star Force isn’t responsible, how could they have let this happen?” she countered.

Victor turned away from her gaze, looking back at the vid screen. “Davis said this Word was dangerous.”

“It’s Star Force,” she countered. “They can defend us against aliens, but not some tiny criminal organization?”

“Who managed to take over an entire moon without anyone noticing.”

“That’s just my point!”

“It wasn’t a Star Force moon,” Victor said, huffing. “If the damn Brazilians can’t hang onto their own territory that’s not Star Force’s fault!”

She raised her right hand, forestalling any other comments. “I’m not trying to fight, I just don’t know what to believe right now.”

“Star Force wouldn’t do this.”

“I wish I could be sure of that.”

Victor didn’t say anything after that, nor did his wife. They just sat watching the list of alleged Word crimes being displayed and commented upon by the news anchors.

Two weeks later the first public broadcast from The Word broke its way onto the internet, with an unremarkable man laying out their mandate to return Humanity to its true purpose while defending it against outside threats. The man, who talked very much like an average everyday citizen, pointed out that they did not want to destroy Star Force, but that its leaders had lost their way and must be replaced, for the organization itself was key to Humanity’s survival and prosperity…and that they were exposing the corruption and murderous vein within the mega corporation so that the rest of society could cleanse it.

From that day on the confrontation between Star Force and The Word would be a public one, with the latter gaining followers by the droves, managing to unite the anti-Star Force sentiment in a way no nation had succeeded in doing before and creating a true and almost instantaneous split within Human society.

The sides had been laid out, and every nation, corporation, and person was rushing to pick one or another, drawing in old vendettas to the new social battlefield and escalating the tension far more than The Word could ever have done on its own.

Paradigm

1

December 2, 2430

Lejat System

Endor

“Command says we have contacts heading our way,” Reggie said in a whisper inside the surface blind that concealed the entry point to the Canderian base.

“Details?” Vitor asked.

“No transports this time. The lizards sent a battle fleet to check up on their missing ships. We’ve got a cruiser incoming escorting a hoard of kirbies.”

“Damn,” Vitor said, his eyes scanning the forest outside through a slit of a one-way window. “What are our orders?” he asked the Evocati.

“Others will handle the big boys. We jump the kirbies same as before.”

“And hope the cruiser doesn’t blast our asses to oblivion in the process?”

“Pretty much,” Reggie said as a few more Canderians in green camo armor, complete with the force field faceplates they preferred over the Archon/Knights’ full helmets…or at least on a planet like this, with breathable atmosphere and plenty of trees for their enemy to hide behind, which was why they liked their ears exposed so they could clearly hear every little creak and snap nearby.

“Have the Ninkis been alerted?”

“I assume so,” Reggie said as he walked to the door that was covered only in a concealment hologram that he couldn’t see out of, nor could anyone see in through. He clicked on his headset comm. “Check in.”

Vitor clicked his own comm, sending a signal out to his Evocati that registered his readiness on his HUD. Once all 42 members of his Evocaton showed up Reggie led them outside into the evergreen forest as they headed away from their concealed, subsurface base towards the Ninkari village/city off to the southwest.

None of the Canderians talked along the way, not only because they needed all the breath they had for running through the underbrush that continually tried to slow them down with a mixture of vines, leaves, and thorns that dragged on their armor, but because they knew better than to make any extra noise than necessary, given that their voices would carry out of their partial helmets, as opposed to the Star Force variety that was fully concealed.

The Canderians ran at just shy of a sprint across ground that held no trails…for they could lead back to their base. The trailblazers’ orders had been specific: Protect the primitive Ninkari population of the planet, and do so without drawing further lizard attention here.

That was a new exercise for the military civilization, for they lived out in the openness of space and fought in a similar manner…though as the years passed they were getting better and better at operating on planets, and in this case, hiding on one.

Or rather beneath it. Everywhere the Ninkari had a hut city there was a Canderian base nearby so that they could react quickly when the lizards arrived. They’d been on the planet a quarter of a century, and in that time the lizards had sent ships to harvest the natives 8 times, each of which was thwarted by Canderous. Apparently they’d finally got tired of sending off ships that never returned, and now they had come in force to see what had been happening to them.

It wasn’t the first time they’d investigated. Many times the lizards had sent a jumpship with cruisers attached in system to find their missing ships…and found nothing. No ships insystem, lizard or otherwise. No debris from where they might have been destroyed, in orbit or on the surface. Canderous had been good about leaving no traces and had apparently dumbfounded the lizards. Now they had sent a fleet to investigate and harvest at the same time, meaning they weren’t going to be able to operate with the same methods.

But that wasn’t Reggie’s concern. What happened upstairs wasn’t his department. His was to keep the lizards from picking up any of the Ninkari from the city over the small ridge ahead of them, while other Canderian units were doing the same elsewhere. Trick of it was, there were over 120 million Ninkari on the planet, thanks largely to the fact that Canderous hadn’t let any of them be harvested. They reproduced quickly, and were expanding so fast that Star Force had to help them plan out their settlements to avoid starvation.

The ‘Ninkies,’ as they’d come to be called, were semi-intelligent, compared to Humans anyway, and Star Force had assigned a team of liaisons to the planet that had managed to construct a simple language they could use to communicate with each other, given their native language was a series of barks and chirps that Humans couldn’t well reciprocate, and on top of that it was a muddled mess of syntax. The new language was much more efficient, and gave the Humans a way of communicating with the Ninkari, who’d come to see them as both guardians and teachers.

Thanks to that relationship being established, shelters had been dug underneath the Ninkari cities, giving at least some of them a safe zone to run to when/if the lizards came back. Reggie appreciated that, for the less of them out in the open the better. Thankfully the lizards wanted to take them alive, or they could just have blasted away at their huts from the air rather than landing collectors on the ground and going after them with tranquilizers and nets.

On foot Reggie knew it’d take them 11 minutes to get to the edge of the village, given the number of times they’d practiced making the overland trek, but finding exactly where the lizards were going to set down would be a matter of luck, though he knew they preferred wide open landing zones and this city was nestled up into the thick forest, leaving only a handful of spots he hoped they’d go to…otherwise they might get to the Ninkies before Canderous did.

The Canderians had debated linking an underground tunnel with the village and using it to quickly get there when needed, but they wanted their base to not be connected in a way that the lizards might find it, else they could draw a military response that would further endanger the locals. They had to be ghosts in this, and to do that they had to keep out of the village until needed, come in, hit, and disappear before anyone could check up on what was going on.

Inside his helmet’s HUD, which was projected via hologram just inside the shield that covered his face, Reggie got updated tracking data from the passive sensor stations set all across Endor’s surface. They weren’t as good as active stations that sent out a sensor beam, but they still provided them a heads up via the disturbance in the atmospheric reentry as well as visual spotting. Other than that the lizard tech was hard to pick up on sensors anyway, given their signal absorbing armor plating.

Reggie saw that there were dozens of signals heading towards their village, all of which he assumed were kirbies. Elsewhere there were other contacts, visible on his battlemap when he zoomed out, heading for other settlements, meaning there were hundreds coming down from orbit to this region of the planet…and who knew how many more elsewhere, making this the largest harvesting attempt to date, giving his Evocaton more targets to deal with than he’d expected.

But this is what they’d trained for and he was eager to take it to the lizards, so as his six Triarill came over the crest of the low ridge and the mass of wood huts came into view, obscured by some tall tree clumps but otherwise out in the open and vulnerable to attack, the Canderian accelerated his pace on the downhill as he issued deployment orders, tagging various locations within the village on his battlemap via waypoints.

The six Triarill that made up his Evocaton split, with one staying with him and heading for the largest open area available, which was just this side of the village center. The other Triarill, each comprised of 6 Munifex and one Triarii, diverged slightly as the line of soldiers broke apart as they listened for the sound of engines that they knew would be approaching soon.

Reggie hit the edge of the village first with the outlying huts, some of which were multiple stories tall, already having been evacuated. It wasn’t until his command Triarill was a quarter mile inside the perimeter did he come across any of the short, bristly Ninkies, passing them by as they huddled up together inside one of the larger huts, with one poking its narrow head out the wood slat door. The open air windows were also visible with the Ninkies’ green eyes that seemed to glow from the reflected sunlight.

As per Canderous’s previous instructions, the Ninkies were clearing the streets, which were little more than dirt paths winding in between various huts and trees, offering a varied battlefield with no linear geography. That favored close range combat, which the Canderians liked, but it also made it difficult to navigate to the hot spots and respond in a timely manner, giving the nature of the zigzaggy course one would have to run.

When Reggie passed one of the taller huts he pointed a finger towards it and one of his men veered off, going inside and climbing up to the top to act as a spotter/sniper. Rather than camping out in the structure itself, the Munifex climbed out onto the roof and jumped to the tree branches a meter away, then crawled up further into the pine-like needles, obscuring himself near the trunk and picking out a good viewing spot of the clearing that Reggie was headed to with the others.

They got there a couple of minutes before the first of the kirbies arrived, hearing their telltale hum of the lizards’ anti-grav engines. It wasn’t loud, but it did have a different pitch than Star Force tech, which was usually far more quiet. In truth the anti-grav propulsion was silent, but the cooling systems that kept the components from overloading and melting made the noise, and the larger the pull the more cooling was required.

The lizards liked using sensor-stealthed ships, but they didn’t care about noise levels at close range, so when the kirbies came overhead the Canderians could feel the hum in their bones, even though none had yet set down. A few hand signals from Reggie and his Triarill split up, with him taking position behind a tree on the edge of the clearing that was made up of pounded dirt around a water well the Ninkies had dug. It was no longer functional, given that Star Force had taught them how to make better ones that were indoors, but they’d asked the Ninkari to leave it in place so as to draw the lizards in…which it now was.

Three kirbies from the 10+ that flew overhead dropped down to make use of the exposed dirt, landing in a triangle around the well and hovering a meter off the ground as they opened their side hatches.

Suddenly a rocket zipped across the clearing and into the side of the nearest kirby, detonating within and killing most of the lizard troops waiting to come out. That detonation triggered a hail of plasma lances from around the perimeter as all 7 Canderians shot every scaled head that came into view.

Reggie nailed one in its protective vest, having hit low. That knocked it back into the hold, but it was shoved out again by those behind and it caught its balance upon landing, then scurried off to the side as a sniper shot from a lachar rifle nailed it in the head, coming down from a high angle. The Evocati held his position near the tree, lighting up the lizards pouring out with accurate plasma blasts as another two Canderians overlapped their fire with his own, mowing down all but six of the lizards that got free and scattered around behind or under the kirbies, giving them some cover.

Without him even having to order it one of the other two nearby Canderians sprinted out to the kirby and hopped up into the hold, disappearing from sight as he headed for the cockpit, intent on taking out the pilots. Reggie stayed put and dropped to the ground, holding his plasma rifle a couple of inches above the dirt and firing underneath the kirby at the lizards’ legs behind it.

He nailed three of the appendages, but one of the creepy crawlers took cover behind the well where he couldn’t target. Reggie scanned the area underneath the other two kirbies, finding another set of legs to shoot at, despite the further range…then one of the kirbies started climbing out of the clearing, attempting to run away while the other two were still on the ground.

Two rockets leapt out from different locations, one of which splattered shrapnel against the kirby’s shields. The second one breached the energy barrier and scarred the hull, but didn’t do much damage. As the cargo bay door resealed more rockets came up from the pair, blasting into the side and causing the kirby to keel over, coming back down into the side of the clearing and nosing into a hut where it grounded itself.

Another rocket followed, hitting the aft of the kirby and knocking out what anti-grav it had left, bringing the entire blocky ship crashing down to the dirt…whereupon one of the intact plasma cannons rotated around and started taking pot shots at the Canderians.

That reprisal didn’t last long, for a hail of plasma lances targeted the now shieldless battery and slagged the weapon, followed by the others that were visible on the half buried ship, though none of them returned fire, having had either their power feeds or control lines severed from the rocket damage.

The other two kirbies never fired a shot, having been boarded almost immediately upon landing. With their pilots dead they floated in place while the Canderians hunted down the last of the lizards outside, then signaled the all clear to Reggie.

“Open the door on the downed kirby,” he ordered, followed by another pair of rockets being launched into the side of the already damaged ship. After the smoke settled he could see a hole in the side, leading to the interior hold, which he hand signaled towards.

Two of his Munifex ran forward and hopped inside, going after the lizard pilots. A few moments later he got a sitrep over his comm.

“Lizards are down, one casualty. Ona took a couple hits to the chest on entry.”

“Is she fighting capable?” Reggie asked.

“Burns only,” the Canderian responded as the pair climbed back out the hole into the sunlight. As they did he could see the scorch marks on one of them, but as far as movement was concerned Ona didn’t seem too disabled.

“Retake positions around the perimeter. These might not be the last heading our way,” Reggie ordered as he ducked back behind the tree and in front of a hut, giving him a partially concealed position from where he could check up on the other Triarill via his battlemap and comm. When he did he noticed something much larger on approach.

“Everyone get under cover. We’ve got a cruiser nearby. Don’t let them see you.”

8 klicks away from the village, which held over 100,000 of the small Ninkari, a small patch of dirt in between the thick evergreen trees was covered in a thin layer of grass and weeds, soaking up the sunlight as a lizard cruiser floated its way over the forest, watching the kirbies as they spread out to take their living plunder. When the first signs of resistance sprouted the cruiser altered course, heading towards the signs of trouble while deploying fighters.

As it did that patch of grass suddenly took flight, ripping out from the ground around it as a concealed Canderian assault tower rose up above the treetops, powering up its weapons and defense shields as it targeted the enemy cruiser some 3 kilometers away, well within its firing range.

A cleansing beam reached out across the relatively short gap and punched straight through the lizards’ shields, tearing into the hull and drawing an almost immediate response from the wisps in the air. The lizard fighters wheeled about and headed for the tower as the cruiser slowly did the same, returning plasma fire as it came about that impacted and exploded the trees surrounding the turret, with only small pieces of the green fire getting through to the shields, which rebuffed them easily.

As the plasma continued to flow from the cruiser the forest around the tower was set afire, with the gap between the two targets clearing out and giving the lizards a better shot at the spindly Human construct. When the fighters got close they lit up the shields with tiny specs of green, all the while the anti-air defenses powered up and began firing rapid lachar blasts back at them from multiple cupolas.

The wisps dropped from the air like flies as the cleansing beam continued to cut into the lizard cruiser, then the turret’s plasma cannons came online as a shield generator on the cruiser was hit and a portion of its hull was exposed. Two blue orbs shot out, blasting into the hull plates and making like shrapnel bombs while the lizards’ deluge of plasma blasts hadn’t yet penetrated the turret’s shields.

The exchange went on for another 20 seconds before the cruiser pulled up and accelerated away from the tower, heading almost straight up as it tilted to give the aerodynamics a better edge on the atmosphere, getting it out of plasma range first, while still taking cleansing beam strikes well after it shrank to a tiny dot in the sky.

Elsewhere around the planet identical towers were popping up and scaring off other cruisers while the Canderian ground troops were making quick work of the kirbies via ambushes and heavy weapons. Those few that got back into the sky were taken down by deployed towers, while a scattering of others were pursued and eliminated by drone starfighters launched from hidden bays and piloted by Canderians safely tucked away beneath the surface.

Every kirby formation that came to ground was eliminated, and every cruiser that came within range was turned back damaged. Once the enemies were gone the turrets retracted back into the ground, though the dirt wasn’t replaced over top of them, figuring the lizards already had their positions tagged anyway. Some of the kirby formations that had further to go to get to their targets were recalled, fleeing back up to orbit or to nearby cruisers to dock upon.

Altogether the lizards’ harvesting attempt was thoroughly and bluntly blocked, with the lizards in the warfleet overhead beginning to plan out new, more robust assaults on the towers while landing troops outside the villages so they could hunt down the ambushers who they thought were Human, though very few reports had made it back from the teams on the ground.

As the cruisers and kirbies were on their way back up to orbit and making runs to dock with the pair of jumpships and the fleet of cruisers they’d deployed, more contacts began arriving on an unusual jumpline, not coming from the star but from another planet in the system and putting them about an 1/8th of an orbital arc away from the lizard fleet.

The lizards weren’t going to get the chance to plan and launch an assault of the planet, for the Humans had their own warfleet in system, and it was heading straight towards them.

2

“Sensor contact made, Captain. Two lizard Carrier-class jumpships, 52 cruisers, and six jump-capable transports with kirbies enroute.”

“Very well,” Captain Jamke said, studying the battle hologram on the bridge as enemy data was being updated both visually as well as verbally. “Deploy the fleet. Target the cruisers, and give me attack lances headed for the jumpships and transports. I don’t think they’ll stay long, but just in case I want ships in position.”

“Aye, Captain,” the first officer said, relaying the appropriate orders in more detail.

The single Warship-class Star Force jumpship began disgorging its drone warships as it accelerated through as low of an orbit as it could, trying to close with the lizard fleet before it had a chance to bug out. That said, the odds were relatively even, and keeping ships contained in orbit was almost impossible, so if the lizards wanted to leave there was little to keep them from making a micro-jump out of planetary orbit…save for the chance to fight the Humans.

As the approaching fleet began braking maneuvers using a pair of repulses strung out between Endor and one of its moons to get the right vector, the lizard jumpships zipped off, jumping out from the planet and quickly leaving sensor range. The cruisers, however, stayed behind setting themselves to receive the Star Force fleet while the transports ducked down to a slightly lower orbit to pick up what kirbies had survived the surface ambush.

Jamke didn’t know if the cruisers were buying them time or if they wanted to fight it out, but either way he intended to do them some damage. With the Meteor hanging back and remotely controlling the attack fleet made up of a quartet of heavy cruisers on down through a mix of cruisers, destroyers, frigates, corvettes, and cutters, the Captain watched as the leading ships of both formations crisscrossed and began exchanging fire…the lizards with their potent green plasma and the blocky Star Force ships with their mixed assortment of weapons ranging from missiles to maulers.

Each ship potentially had a different layout, given that they were partially modular, and Jamke had configured his fleet for close up combat, using a large number of the new mauler mods that gave his ships shield disrupting capability, in that the weapons severely messed with the lizards’ shields on impact, allowing them to punch through far quicker than normal and letting even his smallest ships inflict hull damage before the lizards could take them out.

As per his standard alignment, he had his warships clustered up into trios that picked on individual lizard targets. Whether it be a destroyer and two cutters, or a threesome of corvettes, each little battlegroup worked together to maximize its collective weapons package, hitting the lizard cruisers hard as the fleets continued to close with one another and start the main melee.

Two of those battlegroups sidestepped the heaviest fighting and went lower in orbit, headed for the transports. One of the enemy cargo ships jumped out immediately, but the others remained, still picking up kirbies coming back from the surface. Those began taking long range lachar hits, which also penetrated their shields, putting small pot marks in their hull armor…which quickly started to add up, forcing another to jump prematurely leaving some 6 kirbies behind as it made an emergency micro-jump away from the planet. The line it took lead nowhere, meaning it was going to have to do some serious navigating to find the star or another planet to land on before drifting off into interstellar space.

But the tradeoff was that Star Force would be hard pressed to follow them out, and Jamke didn’t intend to. He wanted to do what damage he could and run them out of planetary orbit, which happened some 10 minutes later when the transports decided they’d picked up as many kirbies as they could before turning away and jumping out of sensor range.

As soon as that happened the cruisers, who’d been trimmed down from 52 to 39, also made micro-jumps away from the planet, but with much slower acceleration given that they didn’t have the massive drive cores that jumpships carried. Still, it was enough to get them away from the Human fleet, whose continually developing weapons and shield tech was beginning to outclass theirs.

Suddenly low orbit was clear, save for the remaining kirbies that didn’t really have anywhere to go. Some accelerated on their tiny gravity drives and tried to leave the planet the same way the other ships did. A few made it past the Star Force fleet, though most were gunned down by the ships’ lachars, leaving a handful of kirbies heading back down to the planet to try and escape the orbital guns.

“Get me course plots on those outgoing kirbies and potential intercepts…and a line to Canderous,” Jamke ordered, with his crew carrying out his last order in a matter of seconds, generating a hologram of a Legat just off his bridge command chair.

“The enemy fleet has been run off, but there are a few kirbies returning to the surface,” the Captain explained without preamble.

The Legat nodded. “We’ll take care of them, one way or another. Can you remain in orbit for an active sensor trace?”

“As long as you need,” Jamke offered, knowing that most of the Canderian sensor outposts were passive, so as not to give away their locations. “We’ll be cleaning up ship debris for a few hours at least.”

“Will you call in the salvage ships? I’d rather not send out that strong of a signal, given that there are still enemy ships in the system.”

“Next item on my list,” Jamke said, glancing at his comm officer, who nodded his understanding of the indirect order.

“As far as I know, none of the kirbies that got away contained any Ninkari, so do not concern yourself with capturing them.”

“I wasn’t,” the Captain admitted. “Most of them hadn’t even made it to the surface.”

The Legat seemed to bristle at that, but he didn’t voice his feelings concerning the Captain’s sloppiness. If one of the kirbies had taken a Ninkari onboard and was then destroyed, that would have been a mission failure…one that could easily be avoided by the Canderians tagging the ship with a ‘no kill’ marker. They hadn’t needed to, but the Captain’s explanation made him wonder if he would have even double checked before blowing them all away.

“We will need at least one transport on the surface. Two or three if you can spare them.”

“You’ll get at least 2. Surface cleanup takes priority.”

“Thank you. What are your plans concerning the surviving lizard ships?”

“We’re not taking their jumpships unless they make a mistake, and I don’t think they’ll be coming back without a larger fleet, which they’ll probably be needing over Atlantica.”

“Back to hide and wait then?”

“Seems so. We’ll stay close for a week or so, just in case they have other plans.”

The Legat nodded and ended the commlink.

“Where are we with those traces?” Jamke asked, standing up from his command chair and taking a step up towards the main hologram that was detailing the slice of orbit that they were currently located in. None of his officers answered him, but the holo did zoom out with 9 lines indicating where the kirbies were making their slow jumps out from. Only now were they actually approaching the speed of the ship’s sensors and dropping off their active scans, but due to the ballistic nature of space travel between gravity wells they had a good idea where they would be heading in the near future.

The lines on the holo connected at their origin with dotted lines indicating the quickest intercept routes to get to those jumplines with the closest of the Meteor’s drone warships. By his visual inspection, Jamke had enough cutters and corvettes operational to pursue all of them.

“Go after them, boomerang protocol,” he ordered.

Situated within the widely spaced fleet and now drifting debris field from the battle, a Star Force cutter received new orders, using both its differential gravity drive to push off the nearby moons and planet to reverse its orbit course, along with conventional thrust engines to diminish the time to target as the smallest of the rectangular warships headed for one of the jumplines. After six minutes of heavy acceleration it coasted for another 2, then likewise decelerated until it came to a stop on the exact jumpline, hovering over the planet below on its gravity drive now that it no longer had any orbital speed.

Ramping up the repulsive field while obscuring the pushes from the nearby moons, distant planets, and star, it launched up the jumpline, accelerating in a fluid motion that quickly shrank it to a dot that was traveling well faster than the kirbies could manage, but not so fast that it would overshoot.

Soon the cutter passed out of communications range with the Meteor, given that it was traveling faster than the control signals, meaning that it now was operating on preprogrammed instructions. First among those was to continue up the jumpline with active sensors scanning ahead until it found the target or a certain amount of distance/time expired.

The kirby showed up as a hazy signal at first, due to the signal lag and range, but it was enough for the computer onboard the cutter to start plotting an intercept course, reaching out to the star and planets to give it some small amount of deceleration by combining those various trajectories and playing them off at one another. It didn’t offer a lot of thrust potential, but it did save precious conventional fuel, as well as allowing for course corrections where ships without differential drives were forced to sit through a coast phase.

The lizards had differential drives, which was how they maneuvered around in atmosphere without having to expend a great deal of conventional thrust, meaning the kirby had the ability to move off its jumpline slightly if it wanted, though it hadn’t. Once the cutter made contact and got it in a sensor lock it was only a matter of time before the intercept occurred, given the larger ship’s more powerful engines and navigational capability.

Many more minutes passed until the cutter closed within weapons range, at which point the kirby did try and alter course, pushing itself to the side and hoping the cutter would pass it by, but the computer program recognized the altered trajectory and corrected itself, staying on the kirby’s tail as the enemy contact accelerated, pushing forward and gaining a bit of ground on the cutter before it again corrected and started to eat up the gap.

Once within a predetermined range the drone began sniping with its lachars, stitching the kirby with immediate hull breaches, given the size of the weapons on the warship. The kirby’s thrusting ended almost instantly, allowing the cutter to close even further and douse the chewed up hull in plasma, burning the corpse in a delude of blue fire in successive blasts that was clearly overkill, but the computer didn’t recognize that, for it was only following its programming.

It continued to batter the remains until the sensor signature diminished to rubble, which then triggered the computer to tag the target as ‘dead,’ at which point the boomerang programming kicked in and the navigational computer took note of the positions of the planets and star, then started pushing off their weak gravity wells to move it into a trajectory that would lead it to one of them, in this case the 3rd planet in the system.

It took it some 29 hours to reach its destination, upon which it easily and quickly braked against the gravity well and settled into an orbit that would bring it around on the jumpline back to Endor. That jump took all of 38 minutes, at which time it returned to the short range control signals from the Meteor once the warship orbited its way around the curve of the planet…or more accurately, one of the Canderian transports orbited around the edge of the planet and relayed the straight line signals to the drone, acting in lieu of a Star Force communications grid that typically would have had orbital or surface installations to relay the signal around the sphere.

A pilot onboard the warship took the drone back under direct control and flew it into the ship’s external carrier bay, sliding it up into an empty slot along with most of the others. Those missing were either on patrol alongside the gigantic craft or had been damaged/destroyed during the battle.

The damaged ones still capable of flight had been sent off while those not capable of movement had been towed back to the Meteor, which would deliver them in person to the repair yard some 9 days later.  At the moment four Canderian transports were harvesting the battle debris from the lizard cruisers, already having gotten to the Star Force debris first.

With it being a full day past the battle, the cleanup of the dead kirbies on the planet’s surface had already been completed, with the battle scars in the Ninkari villages being patched over with new construction, tilled soil, and new seedlings where appropriate. The hidden Canderian turrets were also being resodded, so as to take root as soon as possible to conceal their locations, though it would take time for new trees to replace the burnt ones. The grassy clearings would have to suffice in the meantime, but with each day that passed the concealment would literally ‘grow’ more effective.

After Jamke’s fleet finished watching over the transports as they cut and picked up battle debris, leaving orbit clean of any trace of either lizard or Human presence, he took his escorts back inside the jumpship and made a micro-jump out to the 15th planet in the system, which was only a short hop away from Endor. There the Meteor stayed, so as to be in close proximity should the Canderians call for support again.

The Captain lingered there for more than a week before making another micro-jump out to the 73rd planet in the system, one of the furthest away from the star on the very edge of the system. The Meteor braked against its small gravity well then redirected towards its even smaller moon that was about a tenth the mass of Luna…though that mass had been reduced greatly, requiring a specially built gravity drive to nudge it back into a stable orbit, for it had started to spiral out from the planet a bit as the Canderians had gradually hollowed it out to build their concealed seda inside.

It was the largest built to date, surrounded by a rocky exterior miles thick that made for better armor than anything Star Force had produced to date. It was so large, in fact, that they had included an internal shipyard where they could both build new ships, including the salvage transports they used to clean up the lizards’ mess whenever they sent ships into the system, and repair the damaged ones, both those drones already having traveled to the moon under their own power and those the Meteor was now releasing from its grasp to be towed inside.

The jumpship had repair facilities onboard that could rebuild the drones if necessary, but a lot of that construction had to happen on the ship’s exterior rather than in a full slip cradle. Bringing them to the seda would yield both faster repairs and more efficient ones, which was why the Meteor was making a stop at the moon. Otherwise it normally camped out around random planets in the outer zone of the system, bouncing around so as to keep out of sight of the lizards as it waited for recall.

Once it offloaded its wounded ships it maneuvered back over to the planet then jumped out, not wanting to draw attention to the secret seda, who had opened its massive rock-covered bay doors over the space of 6 hours to allow the damaged ships inside, followed by another 6 hours reclosing them…not because they lacked the necessary torsion power, but because they were moving a rocky exterior miles thick as the doors pushed out then flowered open, reclosing the same way to maintain the seda’s camouflage.

From the seda other ships would come and go, servicing the Canderian bases on Endor with supplies and rotating field deployments, all of which was designed to keep the system clean of Human presence so as not to draw the lizards here with a target to hit, for their mission wasn’t their destruction, but the defense of the Ninkari. The trailblazers had been convinced that a stealth defense could be successful and evacuation of the Ninkari to another planet would not be necessary, and if their efforts on Atlantica bore fruit, the lizards would probably be so busy fighting there or at Namek to not pay much attention to the Ninkari…or barring that, not be able to produce a large enough fleet to outmatch both the Meteor and the Canderian bases on the surface.

If the worst case scenario came to pass, a courier ship docked within the seda would be dispatched to whistle up reinforcements, after which the Ninkari could be relocated, but so far the plan was holding to form and Star Force intended to keep it that way and the Ninkari on the world the lizards had deposited them on, if for no other reason than to thumb their nose at them and their barbaric food supply chain.

That was something the Canderians could appreciate, and they reveled in their responsibility in the system, as well as their zero failure record to date.

3

February 23, 2432

Karmena System

Epipo

Sara watched from the bridge of the Hawkeye as the drone warships in her fleet took out the remains of the lizard defense fleet and then began pounding the orbital infrastructure around the planet. It was the less developed of the two inhabited planets in the system, and the location where she’d chosen to stage her raid. Her fleet of 5 warships had easily overwhelmed the planetary defenses, then reinforcements from nearby Iradon jumped in as she’d expected.

That battle had been more lengthy, but the outcome had never been in doubt. While both planets were heavily encroached with lizard bases/cities, their naval defenses were limited compared to the fleet she’d brought with her. Rather than get coy, the lizards had thrown everything they had at the Human fleet up front, leaving her forces with little now to do other than blow up their orbital infrastructure, including a handful of battle stations that her cleansing beam-equipped warships were sniping apart from range.

She didn’t like the slaughter, but time and again the lizards had refused to surrender, and now was no exception. The trailblazer had sent out the customary offer, and as usual there was no response…not from the lizard commanders, the planet below, or any of the ships or stations in orbit. The lizards were determined to either dominate or die, with surrender not being an option on the table. Sara kept waiting for the time when one of them would make another call, but so far neither she nor any other Archon had encountered an independently thinking lizard, making it even more apparent that they were bred for purpose, with any singular concerns, such as staying alive, having been hardwired out of their biology, or more probably suppressed.

No matter what genetic engineering had taken place, each of them was still a person with at least the option of making choices. If they didn’t exercise that option that too was their choice, but Sara wasn’t going to get in the habit of assuming every lizard was a bloodthirsty blockhead, though today wasn’t showing any evidence to the contrary.

While she didn’t like slaughtering them, she wasn’t stupid enough to try and send troops over to capture the lizards crewing the stations in orbit around the planet. That would be putting her people in unnecessary risk. To date no lizard had willingly accepted imprisonment, and those that had been compelled had tried to kill themselves at every turn, either through kamikaze attacks on their jailers or through self-mutilation. When that option had been taken away from them, in the form of claw covers that latched onto their wrists like cuffs, they tried to starve themselves to death.

There were still some alive, last Sara knew, having to be fed by IV as some of the trailblazers worked on trying to communicate with them. They could speak the language, but the lizards were mostly unresponsive. Greg had reported a few limited breakthroughs, but none to the point where they could trust them not to kill themselves.

Given that situation, the taking of lizard prisoners by force had pretty much been taken off the table, though the voluntary offers were still par for the course.

As she watched another of their communications stations bite the dust in a wash of blue plasma, Sara glanced over at the battlemap looking for surface activity. There were several small shipyards on the surface that had their doors closed, meaning there could be ships inside that were at least partially battle capable, but above that there were thousands of other smaller craft on the deck, ranging from kirbies to transports, and she was curious what they were going to do now that Star Force controlled orbit.

The transports, at least, she thought would try and make a run for it, either to elsewhere in the system where their sensor stealthy armor would allow them to hide from the Humans, or over to Iradon to hide behind the battle stations in orbit there.

No activity was tagged as of yet, which Sara found a little surprising. The lizards didn’t accept defeat, they tried to do everything they could to beat or confound you, so them sitting still and waiting for the rain to fall didn’t quite fit their MO. That suggested to the trailblazer that something else was in play, like perhaps reinforcements being whistled up from a nearby system. That would encourage the lizards to hunker down and weather the storm, but there shouldn’t have been any sizeable fleets nearby, not since Paul had put the final nail in their coffin over Atlantica.

Living up to his moniker of ‘The Admiral,’ Paul had lead them into a total rout of the lizard forces in orbit once Star Force had received a steady stream of new fleets coming out from Sol and Epsilon Eridani. The lizards had also been receiving reinforcements, but the ones Paul, Sara, and the others on station were receiving were the newest models, giving them increased tactical options.

Paul had stretched those options to their limit and worked a bit of his strategic magic, moving the enemy around the system as he wanted, setting up a hammer blow assault that cracked their strongest formations, leaving scattered remnants for the trailblazers to clean up afterwards. Sara had taken part in the fighting alongside him, but Paul’s genius in naval combat still outmatched hers, and she had no qualms in giving him credit for the winning strategy, though it wasn’t his efforts alone that won them naval superiority.

The battle under the water was another matter entirely, but now that they’d cut off almost all lizard resupply runs to Atlantica Kyler expected that to change, given that the lizards didn’t harvest resources from the sea floor as easily as they did on land. Now knowing where the major lizard bases were on Atlantica, Star Force was working its way towards a major aquatics offensive, but now that orbit had been bottled up there was no need for multiple trailblazers in the system, so they’d split up to other tasks, with Sara taking one of two fleets out to harass nearby lizard systems and keep them on the defensive while Star Force continued to colonize new systems in the expansion zone that stretched out from Earth’s original territory around Sol to Namek.

That ‘gap’ between Star Force and lizard territory was slowly filling in with side projects, some of which were Hycre, who’d been colonizing several systems. The area was vulnerable, which was why Star Force had pushed into the lizard lines, drawing the battles to Atlantica in order to keep the lizards from finding and hitting their more vulnerable areas. Those areas were now strengthening, so as long as the handful of trailblazers on the front could keep the lizards distracted for another decade or so, the weakness in the expansion region would diminish on its own.

After Sara’s fleet finished up the lengthy process of demolishing the lizards’ orbital infrastructure around Epipo they made the jump across the system to Iradon and continued the eradication process there, which took considerably more time given that the planet had a larger lizard population. Once that process was completed Sara picked a single target on the surface and had it pounded flat with the fleet’s rail guns, obliterating a large lizard base/city before retreating from the planet.

The trailblazer had her fleet pulled back into the Hawkeye and its 4 sister jumpships, which she then split up with orders to pinball around the system from planet to planet pulling scans and looking for additional lizard assets. They spent the better part of a week doing so before rendezvousing at the innermost planet, a small red gas giant that looked to be a few centuries away from being consumed by the system’s central star.

Once back together her fleet jumped out of the system, heading back to Namek via several other systems well below the destination on the galactic plane.

Three weeks later the Hawkeye decelerated against Nevarsor’s central star, arriving behind the other four warships that took up low orbits around the large yellow/orange sphere waiting for their command ship to arrive. Once Sara’s flagship did they made micro-jumps in series out to the 4th planet in the system, then across to the 7th that was Namek.

There they encountered a slew of orbital infrastructure, but sparse in number compared to Earth or Corneria. That said, the puzzle pieces that Paul was back to constructing were usually larger than a jumpship and equipped with enough shields and defenses to hold out on their own for a short period of time before the planetary defense fleet arrived.

Those ships, all drones controlled by the local comm grid from command centers either on nearby stations or from surface command centers, were sprinkled around low and middle orbit like the colored namesake on donuts, giving all orbital infrastructure at least some ships within quick response range should the lizards show up again.

The two moons that orbited the planet were barren and rocky, both in high orbits. Those also had a few orbital stations, connecting back to Namek via shipping lanes as they brought additional raw materials and manufactured goods produced on or around the moons back down to the planet for use in the ever growing infrastructure there.

What Paul had built in orbit paled in comparison to what was on the surface. It had been 30 years since they’d first set foot on the dry world, and in those three decades Paul had built one enormous city rivaling those on Corneria. Shield generators of massive size protected the city from orbital bombardment on a scale that even Sara’s five warships wouldn’t be able to penetrate even if they rained rail gun slugs down on them all day.

It was what was called a ‘strong point,’ around which other infrastructure could be built and people could evacuate back to if needed. There were hundreds of small outposts scattered across Namek, mainly resource gathering operations, but the population and industry was all within the city, safe beneath the shield that could even hold back a kamikaze cruiser falling from orbit.

A kamikaze jumpship was another matter, and as impressive as Star Force’s shield technology became, there was always a way to penetrate it…with that being adding more mass.

That was why Paul had devoted a great deal of resources to the planetary defense fleet, so it could intercept any kamikaze ships before they could make a run on the city. There was no such thing as an impenetrable target, but Paul had done a good job of making one very difficult colony for the lizards to crack, and apparently the enemy had thought so too, for after a few sniffs of combat at Namek they’d given up the attempt, focusing their efforts on Atlantica instead.

Sara’s fleet accessed the local grid and plotted a course to one of the storage/repair yards that orbited nearby a shipyard, both of which were located on the boundary between low and middle orbit, which put their full revolution at just under 24 hours, given that Namek had slightly less mass than Earth. The ships took their time getting there, conserving fuel and bouncing their way in between stations as they pushed against both planet and moons to adjust their trajectories until they got around to the side of the planet where their target currently was.

The station dwarfed all five warships, given the fact that it was mostly empty space inside, but it was still an impressive and intimidating perfect cube, even more so as the primary bay doors opened up, giving Sara’s fleet enough room to fly inside if they wished, but that wasn’t the plan.

The Hawkeye and other warships disconnected their damaged drones, some of which had already underwent patch work on site, and flew them out away from the fleet while replacement drones came out of the massive construct. The controllers in the fleet exchanged ships with the controllers in the repair yard, though the handoff occurred without any visible twitches, and within an hour Sara’s fleet was back up to full strength, minus the ordinance they’d expended. That they’d have to pick up along with foodstuffs and other supplies via dropship shipments which were already being scheduled by her command staff that worked silently on the bridge while she opened up a commlink to the surface.

“Welcome back,” Paul’s hologram said upon popping into view. “Any problems?”

“Not really,” Sara said, almost disappointed. “There was less resistance than we thought. We eliminated all ships and orbital infrastructure, then took out a base before bugging out. Surface activity was nil, which made me think they might have been holding out for reinforcements, but none arrived before we left the system. I pulled a survey run before we left.”

“We lost a cargo jumpship,” Paul said bluntly. “Bad jump.”

Sara’s eyes narrowed. She knew well the dangers of interstellar travel, but so far Star Force’s record had seen only a handful of accidents over the past three centuries. The mathematical calculations and drive control technology were critical to making an accurate jump, but such things had always been well within their engineers’ ability, making her wonder what had happened.

“Where?”

“Here we think. It was part of a convoy from Corneria. 18 jumpships left, 17 arrived. We also picked up stellar disturbance that coincided with its arrival ETA, so we’re pretty sure it hit the star.”

“Braking malfunction?”

Paul shook his head. “The disruption pattern on the star was widespread.”

“Damn,” Sara said, closing her eyes. That meant the jumpship failed to decelerate, not due to a shipboard malfunction, but because it’d been damaged/destroyed mid jump…meaning collision with debris on the spacelane. “Which route were they taking in?”

“Hadren,” Paul said, naming the system the convoy had jumped from in order to get to Nevarsor. “I’ve flagged it as yellow, given the other 17 ships made it through in the same timespan.”

“Where was it in line?”

“5th.”

“Any damage to the others?” she asked, knowing slower moving bits could have collided with the ships behind, or hit the ships ahead when they decelerated and the debris did not.”

“Not so much as a scratch.”

Sara’s mind was flipping over, trying to wrap her head around the danger. “So what do we do, call this a fluke or tag it as impassable?”

“We’re rerouting convoys through other jumplanes, but I wouldn’t recommend red flagging it entirely. For whatever reason 17 other ships got through, though losing even one is enough to warrant a redirect.”

“What’s it been, 50 or 60 years since the last one?”

“53,” Paul said, already having looked it up. “Andres to Palora.”

Sara recognized the names of two of Star Force’s inhabited systems with a direct line between them…no stopovers or redirects needed. That spacelane saw an enormous amount of traffic, and despite the lost jumpship the route had never been flagged. Then again, they didn’t know what had happened to it. It hadn’t been part of a convoy, but a single transit that simply didn’t show up on arrival. Questions still hadn’t been answered, and there were a number of people who suggested that the ship had misjumped and missed the target star entirely, doomed to be lost in space as it coasted through the interstellar void hoping to stumble across a gravity well to brake against.

“No chance of a misjump here?”

Paul shook his head. “Doubtful.”

“How much time does that add to our convoys?”

“13 lightyears distance, as for time that varies depending on the how new a jumpship you’re talking about,” he reminded her.

“I was afraid it would have been more than that,” Sara commented, knowing that there were already several red flagged spacelanes in the expansion region, and tagged as such because of either the Hycre maps labeled them as dangerous or because of Star Force’s own exploration, which saw them sending out computer-controlled survey ships. When several of the tiny jumpships didn’t return from a target system, they labeled the route untenable and searched elsewhere.

As a result the quickest routes geographically weren’t always available, meaning the distance from one system to another varied widely. Also, with every new generation of jumpship, the distance they could make a single jump across accurately was increasing, opening up new, longer spacelanes than Star Force had previously been able to utilize…though ones that the Hycre used regularly.

“We got lucky,” Paul admitted. “I sent a courier out around to warn incoming ships, but it shouldn’t have arrived just yet. After that it’s heading back to Corneria to request a boatload of survey ships. I’d rather not lose that spacelane if we don’t have to.”

“Not losing all of them makes me wonder too.”

“You sticking around or heading back out?” Paul asked, changing subjects.

“I’m going to rotate crews out and give the regulars a bit of time planetside. You have another target for me, or am I going back for seconds?”

“Nothing definite, but a few probables have shown up. We also have a diplomatic envoy on the way out. Seems the Hycre have found another race that’s sticking it to the lizards.”

Sara arched an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Primitive bunch,” Paul said before she started to get any ideas, “but they’re really big.”

“How big?”

“Remember Lord of the Rings?”

“Yeah.”

“Think Ents.”

“Who pulled that assignment?”

“Emily.”

“That should be an interesting debrief to read.”

“My thoughts exactly. You up for some challenge runs?”

“Always. Psionic or regular?”

“Thought we’d go old school.”

Sara smiled. “I’ll be down within 24 hours.”

4

April 22, 2432

Ventross System

Albo (lizard territory)

Kara sat on her hands and knees in utter silence, adhesively attached to the hull of a drone cutter as it raced towards the yellow planet’s atmosphere with a host of lizard warships in pursuit from multiple angles, but given the approach speed it was mustering it was going to beat them all to the insertion position, then slingshot around the planet and hopefully return to the single warship in extreme high orbit that had brought it and the Archon here.

Sitting inside both the shield boundary and the inertial dampening field of the ship, Kara felt nothing as the drone made several navigational tweaks, then decelerated hard against Albo’s gravity well. Inside her Zen’zat armor’s scale-like second skin she monitored the telemetry being fed to her by the drone and awaited the arrival at the drop off point…or rather the point she was going to drop off from, given that the ship wasn’t going to stop.

As had been programmed prior to its released from the Broadsword, it inserted into a very low orbit at high speed, belly down…with Kara riding on the underside so that from her perspective the large, yellow planet was above her and bracketed by clusters of bright stars in constellations unfamiliar. On her back was a large bump that her armor had expanded to cover, inside of which was a pack of supplies attached snugly to her spine. She didn’t feel the weight, nor any weight, given that riding on the exterior hull of the drone there was no gravity, real or artificial, to pull on her. All that held her in place were her hands, knees, and booted toes that gripped the Adamantium hull armor in a bonding mechanism that Star Force had yet to fully understand.

When Kara’s telemetry indicated that the drone had reached the proper position a countdown appeared on her HUD, which rather than appearing in front of her eyes, which was an option with the V’kit’no’sat tech, it appeared within her mind, given the Ikrid link between person and machine.

When that countdown expired she walked her feet up underneath her and mentally severed the adhesive link to the hull, then using the power of her legs and the powered nature of the red, scale-like armor she wore, Kara jumped off the hull, passing through the shield perimeter and falling towards the planet’s atmosphere below.

Once she had separation she rotated around so that the planet was below her feet, then using the engine technology within the armor…technology that far surpassed that on the drone warship…she began arcing her trajectory and coming down into the atmosphere at insanely high speed, protected by her own personal shields as she dropped like a meteor down towards the surface.

Once into the thick of the air and well away from the lizard warships in orbit, Kara began decelerating more than friction alone would allow, and after a long braking maneuver she leveled off some 12 kilometers above the surface of a mountain ridge with a humongous lizard city visible on the edge of the horizon, which was her ultimate destination.

With her mental link to her armor she could feel the lizard sensor beams hitting her body…and being absorbed, making her as much of a sensor ghost as the lizards had once been to Star Force tech. Her own sensors tagged lizard fighters patrolling in clusters over the city, probably deployed when the drone appeared in orbit, but they didn’t move in her direction, for they didn’t detect her presence.

They may have seen her fiery reentry into the atmosphere, she acknowledged, but that was now no longer the case, for she was flying level to the ground searching for a nook to set down in from which she could then approach on foot. The city, like most lizard bases, had a shield topping it, preventing her from dropping directly inside, besides which, at that close of range it would be difficult for her to evade detection even with her small size and stealth armor.

Other than that she had no idea what she was going up against. This system was far inside lizard territory…which she’d had to travel to in order to find infrastructure of this size. She was here for one reason and one reason only, and that was to hunt down lizard variants that they hadn’t encountered before.

This mission would have been a suicide run for anyone else, but given the Vorch’nas attached to her wrist, Kara had options none of the other Archons had, and she was glad the trailblazers acknowledged that fact and allowed her to go on solo missions such as this…though to be fair this was by far the most risky one she’d attempted thus far, as well as the furthest away from Star Force territory.

Kara spotted a good looking crevice in the jagged mountains and descended to it, coming down through the yellow foliage that was larger than her body. She dropped to the black soil gently, glancing around at the huge tree trunks surrounding her, then back up at the spherical leaves that could easily have doubled as a blanket for her or the lizards.

Her sensors didn’t detect any lifeforms nearby, so she retracted her armor, with the red scales pulling back off her body and retreating into the clear gem on her left wrist, leaving her dressed in a skin-tight environmental armor suit that would protect her against cuts and scrapes and little else. Her hands and head were left exposed, and on her back she carried her pack of supplies that contained no weapons. For combat she’d be relying on her Vorch’nas entirely.

Kara sucked in a deep breath of the air, smelling the odd forest and the musty scent that it contained. The soil was damp, but not wet, though she had seen a storm front approaching from the north as she descended, meaning she was probably in for some rain within the day.

Visually getting her bearings, Kara walked up the ridgeline, concealed beneath the high yellow canopy, as she quietly made her way across the forest towards the lizard city, knowing that she had 1 week to do her thing before another drone warship would make a collection run through low orbit, at which point she’d have to fly up to it else miss her ride for another full week…and the supplies she’d brought with her wouldn’t last forever.

Two days later, after walking/running through miles of forest, Kara encountered the first of the lizard patrols surrounding the city. They were situated well out into the forest, with groups of three moving through the more or less clear soil that surrounded the car-sized tree trunks. The canopy overhead was thick, allowing no direct sunlight to the ground, leaving only small plants or mosses dotting the forest floor. The lizards were roaming about on well beaten paths in the dirt, with multiple trios in the nearby area as they crept their way north to south.

They would have been easy enough to get by or take down, but Kara intended to do neither. Slipping off her backpack and stashing it up next to a tree trunk, Kara used her Vorch’nas to raise her up the length of the tree and into the lowest branches. From there she hopped across the gaps, scattering a number of birds and other critters inhabiting the upper levels of the forest as she stalked the lizards on their patrol routes below.

Once she was directly over the paths they were traveling she found a nook up against the main trunk and sat down, wrapping her legs around the thick branch and reaching out with her mind. She’d already been picking up the lizards’ presence with her Ikrid, which now seemed to always be on in at least a passive sense. She could turn it off if she wanted, but when her mind relaxed a type of mental radar always worked its way into activity, letting her know when a mind was near.

Concentrating, she extended that range out greatly, picking up 21 lizards beneath her, all of whom were walking slowly, so Kara knew she had to either work quick or keep pace with them.

She’d had plenty of experience working with alien minds, not just lizards, but their allies on Daka, some with their permission, some without. Each race had a distinctive feel to it, and then each individual was different in lesser ways on their own. When she touched the lizards’ minds, which were not blocked as Humans were, the feel was what she would have described as ‘purpose.’

The lizards didn’t think as individuals. They were part of a larger organism, each one with a role to play, based on their biological variation and their assignments. These lizards on patrol were bored, she could sense, but they were none the less alert and committed to their task, as tedious as it was, patrolling the perimeter on a secure world.

As she searched through several of their minds, accessing their surface thoughts, she realized they weren’t just here to guard the perimeter against invasion, but against the local wildlife as well. Her skills weren’t developed enough to probe much beyond their current thoughts, but she caught the gist of there being large creatures roaming the forest that on occasion would encroach on the lizard cities and do some damage.

These lizards, she discovered, were looking for signs of trouble so that they could relay position data to takedown teams that stood ready within the city…which explained why these lizards were wearing only trousers and a belt, rather than their normal vest armor. Each of them carried a comm device and plasma pistol, and Kara could sense that that was far from enough to take down one of the native creatures should they come across one.

The boredom suggested that they hadn’t encountered a target in some time, and they didn’t think they would anytime soon. The hunters had done most of the hard work already, leaving only the wild regions of the planet as a threat, but the creatures in those areas could still migrate out, hence the regular patrols.

The lizards kept walking/creeping along, acquitting their task while otherwise being uninterested in it. None the less the sense of purpose was still there, as it had been with all lizard minds Kara had ever touched.

In contrast the Calavari minds, as far as Kara would describe them, felt like ‘honor,’ whereas the Protovic were ‘curious,’ the Gnar were ‘greedy,’ the Bsidd were ‘calculating,’ the Kvash were ‘committed,’ and the Scionate were ‘eager.’ She’d never encountered a Nestafar after her psionics had manifested, nor a Hycre, which very few Humans had ever encountered face to face. Other Alliance races each had their own mental idiosyncrasies, some which blocked most of her mental control due to their incompatibility with Human thoughts, but the more she worked with them the more capable she became at reading and influencing their thoughts and senses.

Lizards were easy to read now, and she probably had more psionic experience with them than any other Archon. Still, the raw power the Zak’de’ron had utilized in subduing the Nestafar on Daka still caused her jaw to drop, especially now that she had some context with which to define it. She was an ant to the dragon’s very large boot, and there was no question as to who had been in command back in the day, for the Zen’zat simply didn’t have the power to challenge their masters.

Which made all the more sense to make them immune to Ikrid control, otherwise one race within the V’kit’no’sat could control them, using the Zen’zat as a wedge against the others and create more internal conflict. By keeping the Zen’zat neutral it created an equality between the various races, and an equality between the Zen’zat and the dinosaurs. She got the distinct feeling though, that the Zak’de’ron had simply done it to keep them from being so pathetic, and because a tool that an adversary could take control of would have been a liability as much as an asset.

The Zak’de’ron didn’t need to control the Zen’zat’s minds…for they were already so dominant it truly didn’t matter.

But whereas the Zen’zat were the inferiors in that regard, compared to the lizards they were the ones who dominated…even one as young and inexperienced as Kara.

Sitting up high on her branch she examined the lizards as they passed below, then focused on the rearmost of the lot and linked to its mind, assuming control over its nervous system despite the range involved. She thought it was just close enough and realized she was right when her remote hack gave her access to its body, despite the limited ‘bandwidth’ she had to operate on. Had a Zak’de’ron tried this it wouldn’t have even needed to blink to make the override, but Kara had to focus all of her Ikrid energy to create the link down to the lizard and render it unconscious.

It tripped over its own feet and sank to the ground, the noise of it falling being swallowed up by the damp soil.

Kara pivoted around her branch and fell off, pulling a Mary Poppins with her Vorch’nas to drop her to the ground below, where she ran up on the fallen lizard and planted her fingertips against its skull, keeping her eyes and Pefbar locked on the other two lizards in its trio that were still continuing on ahead, ready to take them down if they noticed her or the lack of their companion. They had about 20 meters of spacing in between each of them, so Kara figured she had at least a brief window of opportunity.

With the direct physical connection her available ‘bandwidth’ shot up exponentially, now that she wasn’t having to transmit across a gap. Linking into the lizard’s brain directly through its own nervous system she dug into its recent memories, locating an outpost not far from here. She followed that memory to others linked to it, quickly getting a crude map of the area.

Not wanting to press her luck she jumped up into the air and flew back up into the branches, then remote linked to the lizard’s mind and half woke it up, getting it to stand back up and start walking forward before coming back to full consciousness. After that she let go her control but monitored its thoughts, wondering if it would notice anything.

It did, but not knowing what had happened to make it black out and fall behind the others it shook off the weirdness and jogged up to reform with the others, keeping Kara’s presence undetected.

She waited a few seconds, then hopped off through the branches and back over to where she left her pack, though it took her a while to find it. Once down on the ground she pulled out a vial that held tiny cubes and slipped one out telekinetically and flew it into her mouth, smashing the concentrated ambrosia sugar cube between her teeth before swallowing as she put the container back in its place.

Kara slid the backpack over her shoulders and attached the waistband to hold it firmly against her spine, then took off running, crossing the trail behind the lizards and heading in the direction of the nearest outpost on her mental map. As she moved through the very sparse underbrush she was conscious of the footprints she was leaving behind, but hoped the next patrol through wouldn’t notice. If they did they’d be hard pressed to catch up with her, but sounding an alarm would make her jog a lot harder. She needed to remain a ghost on this world as long as possible.

About half an hour later she picked up a weird mental signature on the periphery of her passive sense, just before a massive spider-like creature dropped down from above in eerie silence and fell on top of her, pinning her inside a cage of ten spindly legs.

The torso of the creature knocked her down, shocking her given the suddenness of the attack, but as soon as she smacked the ground her instincts took over and an invisible shield covered her body and pack a split second before her Vorch’nas spat out its red scales in a wave that quickly encompassed her body, but even before that happened an orifice on the underside of the spider opened up and a sharp tooth-like spear jutted out, hitting the dirt as Kara kicked her way to the side, dragging her pack across the ground like an anchor.

She pointed her left wrist up and a weapon formed on it, followed by a quick yet powerful pale green stun blast that rendered the creature unconscious and dropped it down on top of her…but her shields caught it, which she expanded outwards in a sphere to lift it off her.

“Huph,” she said, blowing out a relieved breath. She had been about to blast it, but then had the presence of mind to go for the stun to avoid a corpse that would have told any lizard patrols that whoever had killed it was in the area.

Using her shield like a giant ping pong ball, she flew her way to the side, pushing the spider’s legs out away from her body until she got into the clear, then she switched it back to energy mode and got her feet under her, looking back at the ugly critter that probably out massed her by a factor of ten.

Expanding her mind out she searched for others nearby, finding several lifeforms up in the trees, but none that felt like this one.

“Guess their hunters missed one,” she whispered to herself, hoping the lizard patrols were more alert than she had been. Enemies they might have been, but she didn’t like the idea of anyone going out that way as spider food.

Lowering her shields into standby mode and retracting her armor all the way back into her jewel, Kara jogged off, accelerating back up into her cross country cadence as she stretched out her Ikrid senses to a considerable range, actively scanning both the area ahead and above so she wouldn’t get caught off guard again.

5

April 23, 2432

Ventross System

Albo

Kara knelt down on a tree branch more than a meter wide, looking out through the breaks in the huge leaves and down on the expansion zone around the lizard city where they were adding another section of buildings, having cut back the forest to accommodate the new construction. The area expanded out from an almost solid barrier wall formed by old building sides across a 3 kilometer gap that stretched out as far as the Archon could see to the left and right, making it appear that the lizards were adding a new ring to the more or less circular city.

The new construction ended her forest cover, meaning she was going to have to start playing cat and mouse to go any further.

Before she did that she wanted to get the layout, which involved a slew of partially built structures and a beehive of lizard activity as they delivered parts and crews to the sites. Not all areas ahead of her were currently active, but it was going to be hard to avoid the construction crews all the way up to the pseudo wall that marked the boundary of the original city.

Most of the structures were typical lizard, yellow/tan in construction with an emphasis on the tan. Some were shaped like bread loafs, others were teepee variety, but Kara also saw numerous combinations of the two, along with architecture that they hadn’t typically seen in other lizard bases. They had reconnaissance from the Alliance about the more heavily populated lizard worlds, and the infrastructure here definitely matched up more with those than the frontier worlds that Star Force had been fighting the enemy on.

A lot of these buildings also didn’t match the blueprints Star Force had of lizard infrastructure, captured from that first battle back in Epsilon Eridani. Those, they now knew, held the full schematics for the technology the lizard expeditionary teams had available to them, including the genetic material to grow 11 distinct lizard varieties. Star Force had actually used the enemy’s tools to build their own lizard base on Corneria, learning from their technology and testing their own against it, figuring out where exactly to hit their fighters, predators, coppers, etc for maximum damage.

Trouble was, useful as those schematics were, they were almost 200 years old and, Star Force had learned, not the full extent of their tech tree…or their biology. A lot of the buildings Kara was seeing now, both those fully constructed and partial ones fell outside the expeditionary tech she was familiar with, meaning this world was definitely higher up the ranking chain, which she hoped also meant more variants for her to hunt down.

To do that she had to get inside the city, but daytime wasn’t her best option, so she decided to wait out the long rotational cycle in her tree, observing what she could and planning out her infiltration. Fortunately none of the defense turrets in the expansion zone were operational, and she hoped their ground forces were likewise elsewhere…then again, her experience with those came from front line bases, so maybe a city like this had less active defenses. The Alliance reports indicated more large scale defenses on other worlds, but neither they nor Star Force had scouted out this one, meaning she was having to learn everything about it from scratch.

When night finally came she slipped out of her tree, dropping to the ground with her Zen’zat armor concealing her in the deep red scales that she adjusted into a stealth mode. The V’kit’no’sat battle strategy wasn’t one that favored cloaking technology, so they’d never attempted to develop it. Their MO was to come in the front door and kick the crap out of everything that dared to get in their way…and with an attitude like that who needed to sneak around?

Scouting was another issue entirely, but the same direct approach was taken. Like their warships, they favored diminishing sensor range rather than hiding altogether, and not even the Zak’de’ron had seen fit to develop even an active camouflage system for themselves or their Zen’zat, but fortunately they did allow for color alterations, as well as for sensor dampening technologies within the armor. That allowed Kara to both change her scales to a null-like black that would soak up excess light and take away any glare the normally shiny scales would reflect.

It didn’t make her invisible, but rather a shadow amongst other shadows…so long as she stayed out of the lizard lights, of which there were many, so when she got to the edge of the forest she began hopping from one structure to another and sticking to the shadows they made, set against orange flood lights.

She didn’t have the area to herself, for the construction crew continued building round the clock, but with a few Jedi mind tricks here and there she was able to slip by them, ducking from cover to cover and making her way across the construction zone so long as she was patient and waited for her openings.

Kara got stuck once when a flock of kirbies came in with several large beams suspended by lines beneath them for the building directly next to her. She had to camp out in a shadowy crevice between pillar and wall for half an hour before they eventually flew off, then she was able to dart across the dirt streets and continue to make her way in towards the city wall.

When she got there it looked a lot less solid than it did from a distance. There were roadways breaking through at multiple points, and the buildings weren’t arranged in a straight line, but were sticking out like blocks in random fashion, making what had looked like a smooth boundary really a mottled mess of incoherent infrastructure.

The roadways did switch over from dirt to stone-like paving as Kara crossed the blurred line between new city and old, and the shadows that had been present in the construction side now vanished with street lights that made it impossible for her to walk about unnoticed…so she went up to the rooftops where there were still some shadows to be had and began jumping her way from one to another, trying to avoid the low ones for fear of being seen out a nearby window, few as they were on lizard buildings.

Finding a path in through the city was tricky, for the rooftops were not all flat. A lot of them were teepee shaped or slanted, meaning she either had to bypass those or go Spiderman on them. Kara did both as needed, working her way several kilometers into the city before finally going inside one of the larger buildings through a roof entrance.

She shifted her armor over to the color of the lizard interior hallways, giving her a yellowish look that would stand out less than pitch black, but with her psionic advantage she didn’t plan on relying on her visual camouflage, limited as it was. Moving down into the building she pried what she could from several passing minds, then ambushed one with an angled head that she knew to be a higher level coordinator variety they referred to as ‘librarians.’

Kara took the librarian down on its way through a hall with four other lizards within sight, but through a little psionic trickery they didn’t notice when the librarian veered into the wall and slumped halfway down to the ground, only to have a pair of armored hands reach out from a doorway and drag it inside.

When the Archon got the door shut she released her Ikrid link to the others, having had to juggle four different sets of senses simultaneously, not to mention knocking out her target. That had strained her, but she’d managed to pull it off, based on the lack of reaction from the minds of the others as they continued on with their duties on the other side of the walls from where she and her captive now rested.

It was a large room, with two other lizards already napping in it. Those she’d knocked out when she’d come down from the balcony above. The two story room held an obelisk in the center that was some sort of data device, or so she’d gathered from the two users. It was low priority and sparsely used, which should give her a bit of privacy in which to conduct her ‘interviews,’ though she still had to keep her Ikrid radar alert for others coming in on either level.

She pulled the librarian over to a bench and got to work on his head, finding his mind more complex than the standard variants across the room. This type of lizard was used to deal with data, and as such should provide her with valuable intel…specifically where in the city the higher ranking lizards were.

That information wasn’t hard to retrieve, for the lizard’s mind was segmented like a computer database, with the hierarchy well established. It served a command variant, which Star Force already knew about. They labeled them ‘administrators’ due to the fact that they didn’t command anything in combat, but ran large scale operations from a logistics angle.

It was its superior that Kara was interested in, and the librarian gave her not one, but three others, two of which were on planet. Images were fuzzy, but she got the location of one of them on the lizard’s mental map of the city, giving her another building to get to.

Not wanting to overstay her welcome, she let go of the librarian and jumped/flew up to the second level, heading back through that level to a maintenance shaft that led to the service area directly underneath the roof, distracting a few minds along the way. When she got back outside she ran across the rooftop to the edge and jumped across the street, angling up to the wall of a much larger building, this one shaped like a teepee.

Kara hit the side and clung to it, then flew up the side keeping her body pressed as close to the building side as possible to reduce her silhouette until she reached the peak. It had no entrance, but a dome-like cap that glowed orange that she sat down upon, making her armor go reflective so she blended in with the massive light as she looked out over the city, trying to spot her next target.

Star Force cities had buildings of various size, but none clustered together in the center like the nations of Earth used to have. This lizard city seemed like a throwback, with the tallest buildings all located towards the center, including three massive ones that stood more than twice as tall as the others.

Those weren’t where the librarian had unwittingly directed her. Instead, the location it’d tagged was a massive building alongside those, but only 1/3rd the height. It was a fat teepee that dwarfed the one she now sat upon, but looked small given how far away on the horizon it was. She guessed it was at least 20 kilometers away, and her armor sensed her mental question and popped up a rangefinder in V’kit’no’sat measurement units, which she mentally translated into approximately 42 kilometers.

Kara sighed. She’d wanted to probe a big lizard city, and that’s just what she’d got. Resigning herself to a lot of indirect building hopping she eyed her next target, quashing the urge to just fly directly over there. She didn’t want to tip off the lizards to her presence, and this close in it would be unlikely that their sensors couldn’t detect her if she got up into the air…and it would be almost impossible to avoid being visibly spotted if she flew low over the streets.

She really hoped she wasn’t wasting her time, but so far no troops had been whistled up to come after her and she didn’t want to risk squandering whatever opportunity she had, so she slid off the top of the building, switching her armor back over into null black as she fell…then kicked off the side of the wall and crossed to another building top, coming down in a crouch as she looked around both with her eyes, her armor’s sensors, and her psionics.

No one was on this rooftop, despite the various protrusions sticking up that made her feel like she was standing inside a giant, inverted ice cube tray.

“One down, 50,000 to go,” she said, working her way over to the opposite side of the roof and picking out her next target, feeling for all the world like she was playing Frogger.

Wanting only to travel in the dark, it took three Star Force days and one and a half night sessions for her to make her way across to city center in zigzag fashion, camping out inside the buildings during daylight and catching a bit of sleep when she could, but she was reluctant to completely nod off, for she wanted to keep a watch on any nearby minds that came within her proximity.

Kara then found herself clinging to the outside of her target spire in the cover of night looking for a way inside. There was no roof, but only a lighted dome, meaning she had to either find or make an entrance…and it was looking like it was going to be the latter, unless she wanted to go down to the surface and try the front door.

After scouting around she finally decided to go in through one of the windows, but finding a room without occupants was difficult and took her the better part of an hour to locate, with her knowing that it might not stay unoccupied for long.

Looking like a Garfield car toy, she stuck to the outside of the triangular window and used her Dre’mo’don to melt through the surface, carving a wobbly circle and pushing the plug inside as it clung to her right palm. She crawled through and dropped to the ground on her head, rolling out into a somersault to bring herself back up to her feet.

She set the glass plug down on the floor just inside where she’d cut it, not sure what the lizards would make of it when they saw it but having little other choice. She needed to find this higher level lizard and to do that she had to get inside the building.

Kara crossed the small room, hopping over some sort of bench/chairs to get to the door, outside of which she felt several minds nearby, all of which were standard lizards. She accessed one of them and pulled what situational information she could, getting the basic layout of this level and those that that individual frequented…then it passed out of her Ikrid range and she tried another, and another, and another, picking up additional data and piecing together what she needed to know.

The off limits region of the building was only a few levels up, and having learned of secure check points inside, Kara decided to go back out through the window and climb up. When she did she couldn’t find a room without occupants, though she went the entire way around the spire looking for one. Settling on making some waves, she picked one and systematically picked off the minds inside, rendering them unconscious even as the others sprang up in panic and alarm.

She got to them before they could signal for help, she hoped, then climbed up onto the window and cut her way inside. All of the 9 lizards were librarian variants, and she pried the closest one up off a data console and set it back in its chair, delving into its mind and pulling out the location of its boss.

With a clear target set one level down on the other side of the building Kara set off through the hallways, distracting and blanking the minds of those she couldn’t otherwise slip past, hoping they didn’t have internal camera surveillance…or at least if they did that they weren’t actively monitoring it.

Boldly walking down some of the hallways that she had no choice but to go down, Kara worked her way over to an altogether separate complex that appeared to be a mix of command center and residential…all to serve the lizard variant that inhabited it.

Kara had to take a group of lizards down with a Fornax sphere when she entered one of the control nexuses, then she picked off a few minds, rendering them unconscious before Fornaxing the others again as she worked through them a few at a time. When she was finished she crossed over their unconscious bodies and headed for the one mind she sensed nearby that was slightly different from the others, entering a small elevator and moving up to a living center larger than any quarters she’d ever seen, Star Force or otherwise.

Inside she disabled a pair of guards and six attendants, then telekinetically yanked the comm device out of the larger lizard’s hand as it pulled the device from beneath its dark green robe.

Kara then hit it with a Fornax blast, taking the 7 foot tall lizard down to its knees before worming her way into its mind and sending it into sleep mode.

It slumped over, with its thick tail sticking up underneath its robe from the face plant it was doing. It was by far the largest she’d ever seen or heard about, literally dwarfing the maulers they used for hand to hand combat. Why their leaders were bigger she didn’t know, but she was glad Star Force wasn’t having to face down these in the field, for while they stood as tall as Knights, she guessed they outmassed them by 50% or more, especially with that muscular tail.

“I don’t have much time, big boy,” she said, peeling back the armor from her hands and placing her fingertips on its brutishly wide head, “so let’s see what you know.”

6

The structure of the lizard’s mind surprised Kara, for it was far more advanced than the others, not just in processing power but in complexity, and after only a cursory look through its recent memories she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was the variant of ‘Mastermind’ that Paul had speculated to be operating on Atlantica.

Like the trailblazers, this lizard was tasked with overarching strategy and troubleshooting, leaving administrators to handle repetitive and mundane oversight duties. This one in particular was overseeing the infrastructure expansion on this city along with dozens of others on the planet, escalating up to what it labeled as Tier 9. Information on that was hard to retrieve, for it was buried deep within its mind, in such a way as it was considered common knowledge and didn’t need to be spelled out in cognitive thought.

From what she could pull from it, Tier 9 was another leveling up of the lizard infrastructure of not just this planet, but this star system. Once reached, it would give them more capabilities…capabilities that this mastermind needed to extend the dominion of the lizards in this section of the galaxy.

That meant this guy wasn’t just in charge of this system, but multiple ones. Meaning Kara had definitely found one of their big guns.

She followed memory to memory, unable to ‘search’ for specific information. It was like bringing up the most recent web page the individual had been to, then following the links on that page to other pages, then following more links from there. It was an indirect way of sifting through memories, but the only one available to her short of bringing the lizard partially back to consciousness and interrogating it with questions intended to jog specific memories.

Kara didn’t feel like going that route, so she just kept searching, following any connected memories that seemed pertinent. It took her a while to get used to the way this lizard categorized data, but once she did she was able to jump from ‘page’ to ‘page’ rather quickly, allowing her to soak up a wealth of data, tricky as it was given that it was all stored in visual, audial, or language formats…and her knowledge of the lizard language wasn’t that great.

Her armor had a translation program that the lizard language had been uploaded into, so she could hear what they were saying around her without having to try and think through the translation herself. She could even speak it back to them, allowing the armor to synthesize the appropriate sounds and pitches that her own voice had trouble with, but in this mental digging it was completely unhelpful, for it couldn’t connect to the lizard’s mind, only hers, and asking for a translation of individual words was tedious…so Kara did the best she could with her own knowledge of their language and pulled on visual memories as much as she could.

Numbers were much easier, especially when it came to strength assessments. This lizard had an enormous number of ships under its command, spread out across 28 star systems and 78 inhabited planets Tier 4 or higher. Not just cruisers, which seemed to be the lizards’ preferred ‘do it all’ starship, but battleships, dreadnaughts, carriers, assault pillars, and invokers…all of which took higher tiered colonies to produce.

The last two versions were new to Star Force, and Kara dug into the memories of them deeply, discovering that the ‘assault pillars,’ which was her best translation of the lizard terms, were massive siege weapons, one of which could utterly rip apart a seda with a single shot from range. That scared Kara instantly, knowing how much Paul and the others relied on the sedas as strongpoints in orbit. She had to get this intel back to him as soon as possible so he could upgrade their defenses, otherwise they could run right over Atlantica’s defenses with ease…or even Namek’s.

So why hadn’t they? Kara started to get the sense that the lizards had only been playing with the Humans so far, or the Alliance for that matter, because these assault pillars had never been mentioned in any of the tactical analysis briefs she’d read. Nor the invokers, which operated like a gigantic mobile battle station that used area of effect weapons against attacking fleets.

Kara didn’t understand that straight off so she delved deeper, horrified by the tactical clarity that the lizard’s mind then provided. The invoker looked like a huge black spider, with arm-like pylons jutting out at numerous angles. They ‘invoked’ what looked like a space storm, with energy cascades similar to lightning stretching out into nearby fleets and savaging them with a single discharge. One memory she pulled showed a H’kar fleet engaging one of them with upwards of 1000 warships and being torn asunder within minutes.

A chill ran down Kara’s spine, but she pressed further. She needed this intel badly, no matter how much it creeped her out. These invokers were fleet killers, and judging by the approximate size were bigger than a seda. She got the sense that they weren’t easy to build, but rather were used like chess pieces on the galactic playing board, reserved for the truly large engagements and densely defended worlds. Apparently the Alliance didn’t rate that high on the lizards’ enemy list, but the H’kar did…that was something the Alliance had told them from day one, along with the fact that once they were done killing the H’kar they’d turn their full attention on the Alliance.

That was before the Nestafar had backstabbed them and made an Alliance victory even less likely…but with technology like this?

Kara knew what Star Force had to do…they had to get to the invokers first and take them down before they could be deployed against them. To do that meant excessive trickery, and she was sure Paul would come up with something. If not, she might have to go in alone and try to mess one up from the inside.

But that could wait till later. She didn’t know how much time she was going to have with this one so she didn’t want to waste what she did have speculating. Kara searched for more high level tech, coming up with a slew of different ship variants, some combat capable but most were mission specific, such as dedicated mining vessels, couriers, and whatnot. It was their infrastructure tech that blew her away, with so many ground-based weapon systems that she literally blushed from embarrassment at having thought Star Force might one day make an excursion into the lizards’ home worlds and knock them out of contention before they could destroy the Alliance.

It was the Tiers…it was all about the Tiers. Each level up they progressed they opened up more tech options, meaning the longer you left a lizard world alone the more powerful it would become.

As soon as that thought hit Kara’s mind it triggered a strategic memory within the lizard, and a galactic battle plan emerged like a mental map…and she suddenly realized what the lizards were doing.

“Oh shit,” she whispered, realizing how much trouble they were in. The lizards weren’t aggressive brutes…or, well, they were, but that wasn’t what was driving them to expand. They were builders, engaging in frontier wars while they strengthened their core worlds. Their entire fight against the Alliance was to keep them preoccupied, which was why they were sending lower tech forces out to face them.

If they lost, they’d gain information on the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses, then send another assault force to experiment with modifications. The fighting would keep the enemy on the enemy’s turf, not the lizards…and the lizards had so many midrange worlds surrounding their core that even if the enemy pressed in they’d have star system after star system to hack their way through to get to the prime lizard defenses.

And the lizards were adding midrange worlds. What was once frontier, if left unchecked, would grow new lizard colonies. Those colonies would push out, planting outposts and probing the surrounding systems as a distraction of their own while they advanced to the next Tier, adding yet another line of defense to the overall lizard empire.

If the lizards won worlds in the frontier wars, so much the better, but either way they gained time to strengthen and grow their core…and it was a strategy that they’d been employing for millennia, going all the way back to their original homeworld when they had to fight against three other races across 5 continents.

The lizard’s mind flashed back to those stories, seeming to cement the strategy into the very fabric of their race. They’d only had one variant back then, one that they didn’t even use now. All the others had been genetically engineered over time as needed, with the aquatics version being the most recent addition.

Following that thread Kara pulled the identity of this lizard’s superior, discovering that it wasn’t one that was grown. Almost as soon as she made that realization the mastermind’s memories linked all the way back to its beginning and Kara could see the flash of light as its development cocoon was opened to air and it stepped out into the cold fully mature, driven by genetic knowledge and a singular sense of purpose as it worked its way through basic orientation drills and exercises, then within only a few weeks it was given control over this world’s strategic workings, learning and growing along with the colony.

But now it wasn’t in full control, for a higher ranking lizard had been brought in…not grown, but brought in from the lizard core. It was one of the ruling brood that, unlike the rest of the lizards, was part of a bloodline. Kara loosely translated its title as ‘templar’ and dug into the mastermind’s assessment of the one on Albo.

It was not the intellectual equal of the mastermind, and the lizard knew this, but it did serve a purpose…a very important purpose. Whereas mastermind had been grown on this world, never having seen the core worlds or anything else of the lizard empire, the templars were the glue that held their vast interstellar empire together. Like Star Force’s Archons, the templars were all family, and viewed each other as such…not as competition.

That was key, Kara knew, for otherwise it would have been very easy for one region or system to break off and go rogue, given the travel times and comm lag between one part of their empire and another. All the genetically grown lizards had a purpose in serving the mission needs of the local region, while the templars functioned as their link to the commonality, focusing on empire-wide concerns.

The templar here had a purpose, as did the mastermind, and ironically there was no clash between them. Sometimes the templar would need resources to be dispatched back to the core, which the mastermind would supply, or specific systems to take, guard, or abandon…all according to the overall strategy of the empire, which the ruling brood kept to themselves. The masterminds were the warmasters, and the templars were the ones who moved them around the galactic chess board assigning missions, leaving the genetic constructs free to micromanage as they saw fit, for the templars knew they were not as brilliant as those they commanded, and kept to their designated role within lizard society.

Higher up their ranking, amongst the ruling brood, was another lizard variant…this one a biological upgrade to the templars, keeping to the live birth bloodlines. The lizard Kara was probing had never seen one, nor probably ever would unless this world rose to a very high Tier. They were the uber-leaders of the lizards, which she dubbed ‘sovereigns,’ who oversaw legions of templars.

Kara knew that the local templar could one day upgrade into a sovereign, but the mastermind’s memories said that was a distant possibility, tagging this one as very green, thus it had been given a periphery command where it could learn and develop while still serving the empire’s overall purpose…which Kara realized was to spread out and dominate the galaxy. Lizard society was all they knew, and all they would tolerate.

This mastermind knew that enslaving other races was one option it had, but they could never be treated as equals…only tools.

That meant the Nestafar were going to get backstabbed themselves, because the lizards would never tolerate another power within their borders. She rather liked that part, aside from the fact that it meant the lizards could only be stopped through defeat and probably annihilation. There were no diplomatic channels available…they were what they were genetically designed to be, and unless those handcuffs were removed their individuality was not going to surface. Without it, they couldn’t be reasoned with, and were essentially slaves to their own race.

That both saddened and impressed Kara, for all they’d accomplished, dishonorable as some of it may be, they deserved a nod of respect…but the idea that they could have come so far and yet be so blind at the same time made them pathetic, which Kara felt that any advanced race didn’t deserve to be.

Both sentiments faded as the strategic implications of her newfound intel rose back to the forefront of her mind, along with the immense danger they posed to the Alliance and Star Force. Both had time to counter the lizards, given their current lackadaisical war strategy, but it was only a matter of time before they escalated the conflict, multiple times, until they overwhelmed their opposition.

Kara desperately hoped the H’kar could give them more trouble than expected, but she didn’t hold out hope that the once great rimward race had any chance of winning…not now that she knew what kind of tech the lizards were holding up their sleeve.

The Humans’ greatest asset was the fact that the lizards didn’t perceive them as a significant threat, coupled with the fact that their territory was on the frontier and farther away from the lizard core worlds than that of the rest of the Alliance. That made it all the more imperative that Star Force suck more technological upgrades out of the V’kit’no’sat database and set up a solid line of defense before the lizards got wise to their true potential.

Kara realized for the first time that the Alliance, her team that she’d never give up on, was going to get beaten, and beaten badly…even if the Nestafar had stuck with them. Knowing that, Star Force had to adjust its plans…and Kara made a mental note to have a very long chat with Paul about that when she got back.

She started digging into recent memories, trying to soak up some tactical knowledge of this mastermind’s plans in the local region, hoping to remember the flurry of images she was seeing when her spidey senses started to tingle with Ikrid contacts outside the room she was in.

“Damn it,” she whispered, trying to glean the current location of the templar then giving up as armed lizards came in and found her kneeling over what looked like their dead superior.

Kara knocked them down with a Fornax field as she sensed hoards more surrounding the chamber. She popped out her forearm weaponry, resealing her armor over her hands, and shot the downed guards with fast firing blips of green energy. She glanced down at the mastermind unconscious beside her feet and considered killing it, but a part of her didn’t want to, given how advanced it was. So out of professional courtesy, and the fact that they’d just grow another, she gave it a swift kick in the abs for all the trouble the lizards had caused, then ran off towards the main entrance where the other lizards were now coming in.

She fought her way through them with relative ease, given the fact that they couldn’t get past her shields, let alone her armor in the small hallways that diminished the number of weapons they could bring to bear on her simultaneously…and then add in the fact that she was knocking most of them down with Fornax blasts before they could even pull the triggers, and she made her way to an exterior room rather quickly.

Kara shot three lizards inside then extruded a different weapon on her right wrist that wrapped around her hand and created a hard circle in her palm. There she produced a small orb of green/white energy as she threw her hand forward towards the intact window as she ran, releasing it a meter prior to impact.

The window vaporized in a flash of energy that also melted the rim around it…then her armored form shot through into the night air, falling a couple of meters under the influence of gravity before she shot off in a straight line like a missile, abandoning stealth in favor of distance and hoping that the alarm the lizards were sounding was contained to just the building behind her and that they hadn’t put the entire city on alert.

Dropping low, she moved down into the city streets, hoping to keep beneath their sensors, and flew Ironman-style right through the lizard infrastructure, moving so fast there was a boom of compressed air whenever she flew past.

Her black form didn’t go unnoticed, and before she’d managed to zigzag a third of the way back towards the city’s edge a repetitive screech sounded throughout the city and a number of blips showed up on her armor’s sensors, indicating that one of their fighter patrols had been pulled in and were angling towards her approximate location.

“Time to dance,” she said, pulling up out of the streets and accelerating into a blur as she hit clean air.

7

“Stay low, stay low,” Kara said as she zipped across the lowest rooftops within the city, bouncing between one canyon-like area to another while avoiding the taller buildings as her armor tagged numerous anti-air batteries scattered across the cityscape.

She’d accelerated up to more than twice what her speed had been flying through the streets, but she still couldn’t take a direct line to the city’s edge without exposing herself…meaning it was a race between her and the fighters moving towards her position, despite the fact that she had her sensor-dampening ‘skin’ on.

Kara was flying so close to their equipment that she knew she was impossible to miss, but get those fighters over her head and a lack of restraint in firing down onto their own city and she’d be in for a world of hurt, for these were just the first few, with new contacts popping up on her sensors from numerous hangars…meaning she had to get out of here fast.

Weaving her way below the firing lines of the anti-air batteries, Kara got halfway out to the city’s edge before the first stunted green plasma lance flashed by her and hit a building ahead, melting into the rooftop.

Instinctively she pulled off to the right, feeling the excess aero drag of her pack underneath her armor coating, but that couldn’t be helped now. A couple more flashes hit behind her, then she pulled a hard left turn and shot off down a row of low buildings with the wisp turning more sluggishly to follow behind her as it leveled off at nearly the same altitude and started firing at her feet.

Kara kept dancing about, all the time keeping under what her armor showed to be the anti-air altitude boundaries that kept changing depending upon what battery she was nearest. That still left her a lot of wiggle room in between the taller buildings, given her small size, but another pair of wisps came up from high overhead and started making strafing runs so they could fire down on her, adding to the green streaks hitting all around her…then one hit her in the shields covering her feet.

“Oh no you didn’t,” Kara said, registering a significant chop in her shield strength just before she flipped over onto her back and put her palms together, forming a green orb that she cradled in both hands as more plasma came her way.

Ignoring it and sighting the wisp behind she sat up a bit, still flying level to the ground and backwards across the building tops as if she was coasting, and stretched her arms out in front of her as she got a mental lock on the target, releasing the energy orb like a bullet popping out of a gun. The glowing ball of light slightly smaller than her head shot back in a straight line and sank into the hull of the lizard fighter, then detonated in a bright puff of confetti that had once been the wisp’s hull.

Kara smiled momentarily, then flipped back over to fly chest down, letting the tiny bits of debris left over from the shredded fighter fall in her wake as she saw more fighters dropping in behind her, as well as some gathering ahead, having predicted her course across the lowest building tops.

Rather than facing them head on she made a detour, cutting close to the edges of lizard structures when she turned, hoping to get lucky and peel off a fighter in the process, but unfortunately their pilots weren’t clumsy enough to run into their own buildings. Some of them went high and wide, while a few others kept on her heels, all the while more were coming in from the periphery and boxing her in at a respectful distance.

Kara could do the basic math in her head and knew time wasn’t on her side, so she tucked her arms in close to her body and eyed the nearest anti-air battery, plotting a course directly underneath it and up out the other side, then she accelerated hard, feeling the air dragging against her shields as she zipped down across building after building until she had no more room to maneuver and it was either slow down and turn or ram into one of the taller ones.

Kara arced up and into what was soon to become a firing range above the city, putting herself through a wide spiral as the anti-air battery that showed up directly behind her spat a slew of plasma shards, each similar in size to the stubby lances the wisps fired, at the shrinking dot that was the armored Human as she tore across the cityscape gradually gaining altitude and speed.

The buildings began to whip by her, with the forest ahead seeming enticingly close, then what looked like the fourth of July broke out ahead of her and the air was filled with plasma shards…with the lizard fighters wisely holding back and letting the city defenses take a swipe at her.

Kara’s only saving grace was her tiny size, because even with her ever increasing speed the batteries were still able to accurately track her. She took a hit early on, then got by most of the short flight to the city edge without incident…then took three hits over the course of 2 seconds that nearly penetrated her shields.

Before she even realized what was happening most of the anti-air fire cut out as she reached the construction ring around the city, with her dropping back down in altitude and skimming the partially constructed buildings to cut out most of the rest…which was when the now swarm of fighters moved back up in pursuit and began taking long distance shots at her, all of which missed initially, but sooner or later they were going to get lucky just through sheer numbers, as there were now well over 200 fighters on or near her tail.

Every second that passed her shields regenerated…far faster than any Star Force shields, or even those of the Kvash, so she dropped low to canopy when she crossed over the boundary from lizard construction sites to forest, trying to use the limited topography to her advantage, but the mountain ranges were a bit further off yet, giving the lizard fighters a large field of yellow trees to fire down upon in the hopes of hitting her, now without having to worry about collateral damage.

The sky around Kara lit up in green, and she took another pair of hits, both grazes, to her arm and leg, but her shields held…then she hit the brakes as fast as her armor could manage and her tiny dot of a body sudden fell back into the lizard fighters and collided with one.

It exploded in a puff of confetti-like debris, then another one nearby did the same…which sent the others into a frenzy, zipping about every which way as they tried to track her movements while avoiding running into each other at the same time.

Kara killed two more of their fighters at pointblank range before accelerating off in a straight line again, leaving them to come to their senses and reform their chase pack, allowing her to get some quick distance. She pressed her acceleration hard, building speed with every second as the air tugged heavily on her shields…which she reformed into a pointed tip to give her a more aerodynamic profile, feeling a sudden rush of speed accompanying it.

The wisps were fast too, and a dozen or so of them began closing on her, but she’d gotten far enough ahead of them to almost be off their sensors. A few wiggles here and there, along with dropping down and literally skimming the treetops, and she was able to subtly veer off their current flight line, which told her she was almost in the clear.

She held her line, letting them get further and further away…then they broke up and went multiple directions, trying to reacquire her signal.

Kara pushed on, getting away from all but two of them who managed to catch a bit of a sensor image and redirect her way with the others turning to follow, lagging far behind. With the mountains just ahead of her Kara kept low and headed for the first jut of terrain popping up from the flat terrain and swung around it, blocking her from their sensors.

Then she began swerving, hopping, and mimicking the ups and downs of the increasingly rough terrain, tricking the fighters into going the wrong direction, only to reacquire her sensor silhouette again. After several minutes of cat and mouse they lost her altogether and she was able to fly deep into the mountains while they pulled up to higher altitude in search mode, now too far away to pick her up while she was sensor dampened.

Kara flew well away from them, curving to the south while they held a westerly vector, then she gently slowed to a stop and ducked down through the yellow forest canopy as the sun was beginning to rise. The branches and leaves scraped against her armor, now that the shields were down, but they didn’t scratch the black material. Like a rock sinking through water, the forest seemed to part for her as she dropped down to the dark interior, with her armor scales returning to their normal red after she confirmed that there were no lizard foot patrols nearby…or giant wildlife.

Kara retracted her armor from her head, pulling in a fresh breath of forest air and almost choking on the moisture. She hadn’t seen it from above, but now that she was down on the ground she realized she was standing in a cloud that had formed below the treetops, covering the area in a thick mist.

She could see just fine with her Pefbar, and otherwise it was still night anyways, or would be for a few more minutes. She took in several breaths, getting used to the vapor, then looked around with her second sight, finding the nearest ridgeline. Retracting her armor all the way back into her forearm jewel, Kara hiked up the hillside and found a small, level spot on top where she pulled her pack off and sat down, resting against one of the massive trees.

“Well that’s done,” she whispered to the not so quiet forest, for there were chirps and creaks galore. “Don’t suppose they’ll settle down soon enough for me to go back and have a chat with the templar, so I guess it’s down to camping out the next few days.”

Kara didn’t like that at all…the idea of just sitting and doing nothing. So after a couple of hours to let the wisps get bored with looking for her, she ate a snack and pulled her pack on, then headed down the opposite hillside on foot, managing a decent paced run without slipping and falling on her face on the way down to the bottom of the ravine. Once there it leveled out enough for her to make a go at a cross country run, for no other reason than to give her something to do and to keep her body from stagnating in lieu of the workouts she was missing.

So Kara ran and rested the remaining days until her pickup was scheduled to arrive. When the countdown in her armor was getting close, she pulled her pack off and dropped it on the forest floor, glad to be free of its weight. With a mental twitch her scale-like armor reformed over her body and she summoned up another green orb that she used to blast apart her pack, leaving only bits and pieces of debris along with a hole in the dirt, a lot of which had sprayed up on her in the explosion.

She shook and it fell off, cascading back to the ground as the construction of her armor resisted the grime. Now clean and lighter, she started mentally plotting the rendezvous point in orbit, adjusting for her current position and expected flight path…which told her she had another 22 minutes and 18 seconds to wait.

Kara hopped up into the treetops and perched herself on a branch tall enough that she could look out through the leaves into the sky. Off in the distance she could see the edge of the lizard city, but it was far from her current position and the anti-air weaponry was well out of range. Some of the other defensive weapons weren’t, but there was no way other than sheer luck that they’d be able to hit a moving target as small as her, even if they could pick up her sensor-stealthed armor.

Forcing patience, Kara waited until the timer counted down to 00:00, then she jumped out through the leaves and flew through a sharp arc heading straight up into the air for a few kilometers before pulling back into an angle that gave her both height and lateral distance as she needed to accelerate up past orbital speeds to make her rendezvous, which even now should have been pushing past the lizard defense ships on a high speed approach to extreme low orbit.

With her sensors in stealth mode she couldn’t pick it or most of the lizard warships or stations up as she ascended, so she had to rely on position data alone…but when she reached the upper atmosphere the target materialized on her passive sensors, along with the lizard ships racing to catch it.

They weren’t going to, for the cutter had apparently got the jump on them again. It was moving too fast for them to overtake, but it did have to slow down somewhat for Kara to rendezvous with it, meaning it had to have a gap on the enemy whereas upon delivery it hadn’t. That said, it did have an ample head start on the pursuit, so as long as Kara could get up to speed and meet it at the proper height and time there shouldn’t be a problem.

Such a hot pickup was extremely complicated, but the math was easy enough for her armor’s computing systems. It gave her the appropriate vector, speed, and timing she needed to make the intercept, so as long as she followed the prompts she didn’t have to concern herself with anything else.

And that’s just what she did. Using the anti-grav in her armor she rose up above the atmosphere, gaining more and more lateral speed until the cutter was only 100 kilometers behind her and closing fast, at an altitude 2 kilometers above and on almost the exact same directional heading. Following her navigational prompts she continued to accelerate as it went through its own braking maneuver and the closing speed dropped smoothly.

When it got within 5 kilometers their speed differential had almost nulled out, allowing Kara ample time to get the proper altitude and wait beneath where the cutter would come across. With the lizard ships visible on her now active radar, she flew off the tracking program directly over to the cutter who’d entered a coasting phase rather than braking as it dipped down towards the atmosphere on a trajectory that would not sustain orbit, for both it and now Kara were moving too fast laterally to maintain a natural orbit, and only she could maintain an unnatural one, meaning the cutter was going to be leaving the planet one way or another when it bounced off the atmosphere, giving her only a brief window of opportunity to get aboard.

As she approached she confirmed that the drone warship’s shields were down, then she came up underneath it and latched onto the smooth hull with her adhesive grips, locking her toes, knees, and hands to the hull before signaling to the computer-controlled ship that she was aboard.

With that prompt the cutter altered its course prematurely and missed the atmosphere entirely, pushing off against the gravity well fiercely as it made a microjump away from the planet, shooting through the lizard orbital infrastructure and fleet and heading off towards high orbit without Kara feeling any of the acceleration now that she was safely inside the extended inertial dampening field of the drone.

From her perspective everything was still and her grip on the ship was almost unnecessary…but float up a meter or so and that’d change greatly, so she kept herself tucked low to the hull and rode the warship out away from the lizard planet as it pushed against neighboring gravity wells to get some course and speed adjustments enroute to a rendezvous in extreme high orbit where the jumpship was passing by.

Both ships had lizards tracking them, with the jumpship only having returned to planetary orbit a few hours ago. It had been hiding elsewhere in the system until the appropriate time, now it was making an orbital insertion to pick up the cutter, much as the cutter had to pick up Kara, only on a greatly exaggerated scale.

With the lizard fleet closing from a distance, Kara rode the cutter up to the jumpship then leapt off as it maneuvered to slide back into its parking slot alongside the other drones this warship/cargoship hybrid was carrying. Where half of the normal drone ship complement would have been were interior cargo bays, one of which Kara flew to, arcing her way through open space as if she were Ironman, completely independent of gravitational physics.

Her armor produced no physical thrust, as the drone was having to do in order to align itself with the docking slot, but she was still able to curve her way around the hull and fly into one of the open bays, passing through the containment field and into the ship’s artificial gravity, which her suit was then able to push off of for flight dynamics. Kara flew halfway across the bay and came down midway into an open area of the deck, dropping into a smooth walk and peeling off her armor by the third step as she casually strode across the hangar as if she’d been there all along.

With her inside, the bay doors closed and she headed over to a comm terminal, informing the bridge that she was aboard so they could micro-jump out of planetary orbit as soon as possible. After that it was a short rendezvous with the system’s central star, then the beginning of a 3 month zigzaggy trip across multiple star systems back to Namek, where she was going to have that long chat with Paul on Star Force’s strategy against the lizards.

8

October 8, 2432

Retari System

Atlantica

Kyler watched from the bridge of the Black Pearl as it floated its way across the sky looking down on the world-spanning ocean. The churning water ahead was finally settling down, which prompted one of dozens of skeets circling far overhead to make a diving run towards the surface and release another warhead.

It fell straight and cleanly entered the choppy waves as the fighter pulled off. Underneath the surface the turbulence was stiff, but the lengthy torpedo steered a course through it, dropping down towards the seafloor where a carpet of plants covered the watery landscape.

Except they weren’t plants, but rather tower-sized lizard defense tendrils, copied from Elarioni tech and produced in massive numbers to protect the subsurface base set beneath. They had similar defense tendrils at their other bases, but nowhere near this number. With the battleships’ shield columns they could take out the tendrils one by one, but it was a slow process, and given how many were situated below it would take days at minimum to break through, if not weeks.

There was also a huge lizard aquatics fleet below, swimming in and around the tendrils ready to strike out at any Human fleet that dared to hit the base. Kyler knew it would be a nasty fight, even with all 9 of their battleships committed, so he’d decided to change the game and hit them from the air, keeping his fleet right next door but out of the water and out of both the tendrils’ and lizard ships’ reach.

The wreck of a lizard cruiser and dozens of wisps lay on the seafloor now, with the wisps having come from carrier ships that rose up to the surface, but neither they nor the starship were a match for 9 battleships, even if they were in airship mode. Their maulers had torn the cruiser into shreds with only the Triton taking damage in the fighting.

It was patching itself up at the moment, still holding its anti-grav hover over the ocean as the battleships moved into position over the city that the skeets had been bombing for some time now. The most recent torpedo followed the track of the others, heading straight down into the mess of defense tendrils and detonating against one of them…taking out 6 of the huge constructs with the resulting blast/concussion wave.

The bomb wasn’t a nuke, but rather something far more powerful…powerful enough to push around an enormous amount of water and turn it into a weapon of its own, for while 6 of the intact tendrils were ripped apart, many more were damaged, leaving yet another wide crater of damage on the tendril carpet below.

The lizard fleet had thus scattered rather than risk getting caught up in the blasts, having retreated within the base itself or scurried off to the fringes, passing beyond the boundaries of the tendril field and putting as much distance between them and the bombing as possible. Star Force rarely used bombs, preferring more surgical strikes, but that didn’t mean they didn’t make them nor knew how to use them, which the lizards were learning the hard way right now.

Kyler was glad to see it was working, having half expected them to have some surprise defense against the attack, but aside from the almost panicky cruiser/wisp counterstrike the enemy hadn’t been able to touch them above the water and now looked to be on the defensive, though for how long that would last he didn’t know.

A massive bulge in the ocean rose up like a dome beneath the battleships, then sank back down into a depression with the walls of water rolling in and twisting about in a violent vortex as the liquid water and flash vaporized gasses sorted themselves out chaotically. Once the ocean settled down the skeets dropped another bomb at a slightly different location, mowing the grass, so to speak, on the seafloor below one strike at a time.

The craft carried only one torpedo each, and after the drop each skeet took off heading for the upper atmosphere and the long trip back to Seaquest, the nearest Star Force city, some 2,490 kilometers away. They had more than enough fuel to get there, but it was a long turnaround to get reloaded and fly back out, which was why Kyler had planned on only the one assault, having assigned multiple flights of skeets to accompany the battleships out so he’d have all the ordinance he’d need on hand.

“No response to communications,” Captain Voru said, stepping up beside Kyler as he looked at one of the video screens of the ship’s exterior. “Looks like they want us to come down and get them the hard way.”

“In time, Captain. Let’s see how many of their toys we can break first.”

Voru cleared his throat. “We could take the opportunity, while we wait, to eliminate some of their fleet, given how scattered they are right now.”

“You won’t get many unless they turn and fight.”

“Why not take a few now when we can?”

Kyler sighed. “Alright, but I don’t want any of the ships near the shockwaves. What targets do we have furthest out?”

“The Waverunner is currently tracking a small group that got clear before the first blast…they appear to be undamaged and holding close formation. They should be able to drop on top of them and kill or disable half of the ships before they can flee outside plasma range.”

“Save the squids,” Kyler ordered, “then tell them happy hunting. What else do you have?” he asked, knowing Voru already had a plan of attack in place before he’d brought it up for discussion.

“Four other groups well outside of the blast range, none of which are a match for one battleship.”

“Dispatch four of the others, but keep us here.”

Voru nodded, then walked off leaving Kyler next to the vid screen. He was right about taking the opportunity to eliminate some of their ships before they saw them again on another battlefront, but Kyler wasn’t wholly convinced that Star Force had the upper hand here. If events continued to follow form it appeared that he’d found their achilles heel…but that just didn’t feel right, especially given all the tactical headaches this smart lizard had been giving him and Paul.

He watched as another torpedo dropped and swam its way down to the tendrils, blasting more apart and pushing the water surrounding them back so far it formed a huge void that caused the surrounding water to vaporize due to the nonexistent pressure once it began to collapse. That bubbled the new air up through the debris in a pyre that marked the detonation point on the holographic battlemap beside him, with only a small amount of the destructive energy reaching the surface to be seen on the exterior cameras.

A few more drops and they’d be clear to head down themselves and begin taking out the tendrils around the entrances to the base, of which there were many. This main base of theirs had been under surveillance for quite a while now, even as Star Force hit and destroyed the smaller ones scattered around the ocean closer to their own cities. Once they’d gotten their first breadcrumb of a trace, they’d followed it to a transitional base, and from there out to several others.

One find led to another, eventually leading them here, to a mid-level section of the ocean deeper than the Star Force cities were located at, but shallower than the great depths where neither side seemed inclined to go just yet. Kyler had been keeping their strikes conservative, focusing on disrupting the lizards’ growth rather than seriously cutting into their numbers as he forced most of his resources on repairing the damage done to Manaan and building more battleships, which he knew was the key to their victory, for the lizards had no viable counterpart as of yet.

Their surveillance of this base had indicated multiple shipyards somewhere beneath the tendrils, for resources would come in and new ships would come out. How many lizard ground troops were down there was unknown, as was the actual size of the base, but the tendril field covered over 130 square miles and massed more than all three Star Force cities combined, having consumed an enormous amount of resources to build…which suggested that whatever was beneath it was vitally important to the lizards’ operations on Atlantica.

Which was why Kyler didn’t feel confident about the bombardment, nor his 9 battleships being enough to take this mega base out, but so far he hadn’t seen any brilliant masterstroke on the part of the lizards to combat them…but then again, they weren’t in the water yet either.

Then one of the bombs took out a section of tendrils, simultaneously breaching what looked to be a concealed entrance to the base, giving the sensors onboard the Black Pearl a good view of a very wide shaft heading straight down into the bedrock. No massive amount of air came up from the site, meaning it had already been submerged…probably a navigational tube, suggesting the base itself wasn’t right beneath the tendrils, but buried deep underground where the bombardment couldn’t follow.

“Captain, redirect the next torpedo on this shaft and run a telemetry feed up here.”

“Shaking the beehive, aye,” Voru acknowledged as one of the vid screens switched over from ‘window’ mode to the perspective of the torpedo, still hanging underneath a skeet with the craft just visible in camera on top.

When the skeet moved into its diving run the ocean appeared, then the torpedo detached and fell straight through the waves, quivering a bit as its engines fought the turbulence of the last explosion, but it maintained its course down to the crater and sank to a lower depth than the others had, now that there were no tendrils blocking the way.

It passed through the broken concealment doors and into the shaft, with the camera view having to switch to computer enhanced imagery due to the lack of light at that depth, despite the glows being cast from the intact tendrils that looked like a field of ugly Christmas trees. Inside the rectangular tube there was nothing to see for some time, then the architecture made a turn and shallowed out, running lateral a bit before coming up to another set of closed doors that it detonated against.

The feed cut out, and there was a delayed reaction before a tiny bit of turbulence made its way up to the ocean surface, with the lizard passageway acting like a squirt gun to direct the blast straight up rather than out spherically, allowing it to reach all the way back to the surface, carrying a lot of tendril debris with it that arced over and drifted back down into the field.

Kyler kept staring at the ‘signal end’ message on the vid screen, chewing on his fingernail as it switched back to an external view.

“So that’s how it’s going to be then,” he whispered, seeing his easy assault just get a lot more complicated. The lizards were burrowed in good and deep, meaning that Star Force was going to have to go down through predictable entrances and engage them at places of their choosing…and who knew what was waiting for them down there.

“What’s the width on that passageway?”

“Widest point is 580 meters,” Voru answered a moment later.

Kyler nodded. “So they can come in and out, but our battleships can’t.”

“It appears that way, though our squids will have no problem.”

Kyler shook his head. “We’re not playing their game. I’d bet our mastermind is down there, and he can stay all comfy and incommunicado until he’s ready to come out. Begin a search for comm lines, buoys, transmitters, and signals. I want this place under blackout…or whiteout if necessary. We can build jammers if we have to, let’s just make sure they haven’t got any buried lines that can circumvent it.”

“We’ll need to be in the water for a tight scan…and I suggest we use the squids to maximize our coverage area.”

“Put a hold on that. Direct the rest of the torpedoes to the likely entrances and peel off as many tendrils as we can. I don’t want the lizards sneaking out once we submerge.”

“No guarantee we’ll get them all, given the size of the field,” Voru cautioned.

“We’ll disassemble the rest with the battleships.”

Voru raised an eyebrow. “That will take some time,” he understated.

“No rush,” Kyler said offhand.

The Captain smiled. “And no resupply for the lizards in the mean time?”

“Not here anyway.”

“Where do you want the Pearl?”

“As soon as the water calms down I want us over the big entrance…and a probe sent down inside to see what damage we did. Have the rest of the battleships go hunting. If their fleet hasn’t already gotten out of sensor range, see that they don’t live to learn from their mistake.”

The tiny probe jetted its way out from the underside of the Black Pearl, arcing over into a dive that brought it down through the water towards the broken entry doors as multiple blue lances flashed around it as the battleship targeted the closest defense tendrils with its shield columns and delivered plasma blasts down the waterless conduits to their targets.

The man-sized probe eventually got low enough that the debris shrouded its view of the tendrils under attack, then the camera angles were consumed by the interior of the rectangular tube. The probe continued straight down for quite a ways before it encountered any floating debris, then the remote pilot in the Black Pearl slowed it down and zigzagged its way through until it came to the turn. It paused there briefly, receiving new programming, then pushed on, with the control signal from the battleship weakening the further in it got, given that it couldn’t pass through the solid rock.

The camera signal returning to the battleship eventually disappeared as well, with Kyler waiting nearly half an hour before contact was remade and a data dump of data flooded back up to the Pearl. As the bridge crew deciphered the sensor data a holographic map began to form, drawing Kyler’s attention away from the ‘window’ that showed the ongoing tendril destruction.

The doors to the passageway had been destroyed, along with chunks of the rim that led into a massive underwater chamber that was clogged with ships…some intact and others damaged or destroyed. Kyler knew instantly that this was one of the lizard shipyards, even before the construction slips were displayed, attached to the rocky walls.

Connecting tunnels exited out four other points around the large chamber, but the probe hadn’t ventured down any of them. Instead it had explored the intricate lattice work of cargo modules that had been cracked open and warped by the explosion, meaning the computer had wasted most of its scanning time nudging its way through a maze of junk.

That was the downside of computers…they could only do what they were programmed to, unable to improvise where a person easily would, but at least the wasted time had kept it away from the active lizard ships in the chamber, allowing the probe to survive long enough to return to them with the data it had.

“Your thoughts, Captain?”

Voru rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “All that debris would make for a chaotic battlefield, giving more value to the nimbler ships. I’d recommend shipping in another load of tactical torpedoes and shoving them in there rather than going in with ships. I’d still give us the advantage if we brought enough forces to bear, but it’d get really messy and we’d lose a lot taking it. I also don’t like those connecting passageways. We have no idea of how many more ships they have to reinforce this chamber with.”

Kyler pointed to several points on the ever growing map near the entrance.

“No to the torpedoes. They’re erecting minnow launchers. They’ll take them out before they could breach the interior.”

Voru frowned. “They do learn fast. We could still use one, detonated prematurely, to push those defenses out of position with the blast wave, then send a second before they could get them realigned.”

“Some potential there,” Kyler granted him, “but I don’t want to fight their fleet without the battleships. We bring them out to us.”

“And if they don’t feel like it?”

“This base is neutralized one way or another while we take the fight to the others. For now we need to focus on getting this entire tendril field cleared.”

“Permission to use our onboard ordinance?”

“Denied. I still don’t trust the lizards not to have an ace up their sleeve. Be patient and use plasma only. The next move is theirs. If they feel like sitting on their hands then we’ll systematically take down the field with our only losses being plasma and power. Time is our ally in this…let’s make the most of it.”

9

October 19, 2432

Retari System

Atlantica

Kyler ran through Manaan’s interior corridors, bouncing in and out of people walking by as he shot his way towards the command level, then when he finally got there he bypassed all of the staff and ran across to the command nexus and logged in with a quick touch to the Ikrid sphere, bringing up the systems in a hurry.

The holographic map of the planet shrunk down and highlighted the location where his battleships were still working their way through the lizard defense tendril field, having cleared more than 60% of it and revealing 5 different entrances to the subsurface base…but that wasn’t why he was in a rush. It was the plume of lizard aquatics ships coming up out of one of the entrances that his fleet hadn’t gotten to yet that had prompted a quick comm call from his staff that had pulled him out of Balboa Lane.

There had only been so many hours he could keep himself from going crazy using the Black Pearl’s treadmill and other limited training equipment, so after it was clear that there wasn’t going to be a massive battle for control of the lizard base, he’d called for a dropship to come pick him up and return him to the city while Voru and the other Captains went about their work clearing the field. Apparently the lizards didn’t like the idea of all their entrances being exposed, so they were now coming out to engage the Star Force fleet while they still had some tendril defenses left to aid them.

But it only took a quick look from Kyler to see that the lizards weren’t engaging the battleships…they were running, while using part of their fleet as a sacrificial distraction, hoping to draw the battleships in to the tendrils.

Using the nexus controls the trailblazer set up a no-go line on the hologram, indicating that the battleships shouldn’t press any closer in towards the tendrils, even if the lizards withdrew into them…which they were doing, making it almost impossible for the battleships to get a straight shot at them, because the tendrils would sway and snap the shield columns before they could fire on the ships.

That left hundreds of lizard light cruisers and frigates with cover to fire their torpedoes and minnows out of the tendril field against the closest battleships, covering their shields in a flurry of impacts that their point defenses were allowing through. The battleships wisely let some hit the shields, knowing that they could absorb the gnat-like blows while saving PDMs for later, but that was only going to lengthen the engagement, for there were so many lizard weapons coming their way that there was no way they were going to be able to keep shooting them down, at which point they’d be forced to retreat or advance into the field where they could not go.

The Highwind and Nautilus maneuvered up to the surface, then over top the field so they could fire down directly on top of the tendrils, hoping to aim through the gaps between them…but the large moving strands of what looked like living machinery bent over to provide cover, not allowing the vertical shield columns any more luck at reaching the ships nestled below the tendrils, which glowed with thousands of plasma nubs that would wreak havoc on anything that they came into physical contact with.

The lizard ships were immune, however, and the tendrils knew not to brush up against them, even turning off the plasma nubs nearest to their hulls so there would be no accidental grazes…all the while more torpedoes and the slightly smaller minnows kept swimming out and hammering the battleships in a lengthy torrent, which the larger ships more or less shrugged off, though they couldn’t keep that up forever and Kyler knew it.

Now would have been a perfect opportunity to use a tactical torpedo…had they any left. He guessed the lizards had waited until they were fairly sure that Star Force had expended all they had before launching this counterattack, for the turbulence alone from a detonation would have knocked their ships into the tendrils, effectively using their own defenses against them in one masterstroke of a blow. And even if the tendrils deactivated in time the ships would still receive hull damage from the collisions and the concussion of the blast.

But no, Kyler had used all of them to take out the tendrils as fast as possible, and even if he had pulled more out of storage in Seaquest there was no way to get them here in time, for the lizard ships were continuing to come out and saturate the tendril field, all the while part of them shot off in a straight line away from the battleships, making a run for the edge of their sensor range while the others kept up the torpedo barrages.

Kyler immediately tagged two of the nine battleships with orders to go after the fleeing ships, and a few seconds later they almost synchronously started to rise up towards the surface, knowing that they could travel farther and faster in air than the lizards could underwater. The trick was in keeping them in sensor range, and scanning from the air down into the water was more problematic than scanning through water only.

Even as he gave the order Kyler suspected it was what the lizards expected him to do, so he waited and watched…then he saw another strand of ships come up from a second hidden entrance and shoot off a different direction while more and more came up the first one and added additional torpedoes to the attack on the closest battleships.

Kyler knew the lizards…no, the mastermind lizard…was trying to divide the battleships up and he was succeeding, but was it doing it to whittle them down and hope to win a battle, or as a diversion while something made a run for it? With the sacrificial nature of lizard war tactics he didn’t expect the boss lizard to be trying to save his own skin, but they were definitely not making a random push, meaning they had an objective in play. Now what was it?

As Kyler watched the escaping convoys of ships stretching out like fingers his gut collapsed into a cramp as he had a thought, then he zoomed the map out a bit and saw the ends of the lizards’ communication relay network that Star Force had cut the base off from, and the fact that the ships were heading directly for them…meaning the mastermind would be able to relay signals through the line of ships and out to the intact infrastructure, giving it the ability to both send and receive messages for at least a brief period of time.

Kyler knew that wasn’t the main reason they were fleeing, just a side benefit. It was clear that the lizards didn’t feel like they could hold the base so long as Star Force didn’t feel like trying to fight it out inside, and rather than be neutralized by a siege they would prefer running and…doing what?

Even as he formed the mental question he knew the answer. Their mastermind would pull a Thrawn and devise a better defensive system than the tendrils alone, after scattering their fleet across the planet where Star Force could only get at a few of them…essentially resetting the game with a disadvantage of resources, but with an ocean of anonymity to hide within, letting the lizards hold out and play for the long term, perhaps hoping for a reversal in orbit.

Kyler didn’t want to let that many of them get away, and he had no idea where the mastermind was, let alone how to confirm they’d found it if they ever did, so he opened a comm line out to the Black Pearl in lieu of typing out orders and got Voru’s hologram in response.

“Sorry you’re missing all the fun,” the Captain commented.

“Deploy squids down the cleared tunnel entrances,” Kyler said quickly, knowing they had little time to waste. “Use a handful at the junctions for relays and scouts down to probe for booby-traps and defenses…then push through en mass and flank these bastards from inside.”

Voru’s eyes narrowed quickly, then eased back open as he comprehended what the Archon was saying. “With pleasure.”

Kyler cut the hologram off and returned his main view to the battlemap, which was being relayed from the battleships on site through an aerial buoy floating on anti-grav above the ocean, allowing it to transmit through the air back to their cities rather than trying to do so through underwater relays. Before the lizards had knocked down any such vulnerable objects with their air power, but now that it had diminished to almost nothing Kyler had gotten more bold and started to reset the aerial relay grid, with a special buoy having been brought with the battleships to this location to allow them all to submerge and still stay in contact with the rest of the planet.

It was his only link to his ships on the battlefield so long as they were all underwater, just as the line of fleeing ships was about to give the mastermind its link to its underwater grid, allowing it to organize in the same way…though there couldn’t have been enough ships nearby to call for aid, so whatever it intended it probably didn’t have to do with this battle, and launching a simultaneous assault elsewhere was nearly futile, given that it would only take a handful of hours for the battleships to relocate via air to wherever needed within Star Force territory.

Kyler knew it had something up its sleeve, but right now he couldn’t do anything about it.

The first of the squids were popping out of the battleships on his battlemap now, reminding him that even if the lizards had some side objectives going, they were at the disadvantage here and he needed to push for as many gains as he could get before they had a chance to regroup.

He switched over to binary view, with the battlemap shifted to his left and the right side of the nexus’s holographic display becoming the first person view of one of the squids heading for a descending tunnel around which all the defensive tendrils were gone. It zipped down the passageway at decent speed, then came up against a wall of torpedoes and the signal dropped out.

Kyler pulled up another squid, this one further back in line, and saw a hoard of the remote-controlled aquatics craft rushing forward to overcome the torpedo launchers with sheer numbers. The first few soaked up a lot of hits, churning the water about chaotically within the tube, but as much as that affected the squids it also buffeted around the torpedo launchers at the far end.

Like a football running back pushing through blockers and the defensive line, the squid Kyler was watching through got past the debris and came up on one of the blocky launchers that looked like it was part of a frigate that hadn’t been fully assembled, probably pulled from their construction facilities and repurposed for use here.

Whatever its origins, Kyler’s squid latched onto it with its four gigantic arms, gripping it so tight it left grooves in the hull as the drone extended a short shield column out from its ‘mouth’ and poured plasma into the torpedo launcher multiple times…then the explosives must have been hit, for the entire assembly exploded, taking the squid with it.

Kyler shifted view over to another, and followed it in past where the impromptu defenses had been laid out and inside a much cleaner chamber than Kyler had seen at the previous entry passage that they’d sent the probe down. There was no floating debris here, but rather an almost completely empty sphere of water with construction slips around the periphery. A few lizard ships remained, and Kyler could see other squids go after them while his and the main body pushed on through the chamber towards one of the side tunnels.

When it ducked in, Kyler could see that it was the same width and shape as the external shaft, but not nearly as long, for it opened up into a much smaller chamber that reminded him of a parking lot with a large building attached, having been dug into the rock face. With nothing there to attack the squids pushed on through to the far side and back into another tunnel, with the battlemap updating and expanding as they and other squid groups worked their way through the other entrances…all of which were headed towards the intact region of the tendril field where the enemy fleet was coming out of.

Eventually Kyler’s squid, being piloted by a crewer onboard the Loch Ness, came out into a chamber that was not deserted…at all. It was packed full of warships, apparently having been pulled from other areas of the base and awaiting their turn to go up the shaft in the ceiling and exit through the tendril field.

The trailblazer almost blanched when he saw how many they had built, then his squid accelerated in behind another trio of the drones and headed for a lizard destroyer, bypassing a host of smaller ships and sharks. As he watched the arms, which had been clenched together into a rough arrowhead shape for maneuvering efficiency, split apart just before it rammed into the whale-like hull and grabbed hold.

Kyler’s holographic screen was filled with hull as it extended its shield column out and started hammering through the lizard hull with blue plasma strikes. He watched it break through and begin slagging internal components, then just as he was about to switch to another squid he saw his get hit by minnow strikes that took down its shields.

He pulled back from the camera view and went straight to battlemap, seeing swarms of the sharks hammering the squids that had attached to the large ships, all the while more of the Star Force craft were pouring out of the connecting tunnel into the already crowded chamber. It was the equivalent of two boxers being shoved into a phone booth with each other and trying to go at it with only inches of separation, with chaos ensuing.

Kyler started tagging targets, trying to get his team organized while the lizards panicked and shot at anything that moved. First thing he did was mark the destroyers and cruisers as non-primary targets while putting the most emphasis on the frigates, which carried a disproportionate amount of the lizard’s torpedoes. The larger ships had more and stronger versions, but using them was doing as much damage to their own fleet as it was the squids, so Kyler wanted to trim down the enemy’s precision weapons, given that with the forming debris field the bigger ones would have a hard time getting to their targets.

The sharks were too fast to easily target, but thanks to the less than amicable moving options the squids were able to catch some of them, not even bothering to hit them with plasma and merely crushing them with their arms…which also helped to keep from detonating their onboard minnows, or rather what they hadn’t already fired off.

As the melee ensued, the nearest sharks quickly ran out of ammunition, allowing the incoming squids more freedom of movement. The lizard light destroyers, amazingly, had put up their defense trees, looking like swollen puff balls trying to block what little room there was in the water and getting a mess of debris in their defensive netting as a result. That said, they were spitting out hoards of minnows, with the squids hard pressed to get at them through their strands.

Kyler ordered them to just ignore them and focus on other targets, namely the frigates and the now pesky corvettes that were clamping down and crushing the squids as they held onto other targets. Meanwhile the portion of the lizard fleet that was situated away from the entrance the squids were coming through either held position or moved around a bit trying to get into a position where they could engage the enemy…if they could only get past all the others in the way, plus the debris.

Most of the lizard fleet kept siphoning out the shaft to the surface, but it was so narrow and the fleet so big that it was like trying to sip up a gallon of water through a single straw…all the while the carnage of the squids was eating into the lizard numbers at a considerable rate, with every drone destroyed being replaced by more coming through from behind.

Kyler switched battlefields and saw a similar engagement occurring in another chamber, though that area was only half as congested, with more conventional warfare ensuing. Two other engagements had also broken out, with a third just starting as the other groups of squids rushed through the lizard base in search of targets, and found plenty.

He knew most, if not all of the squids were going to be lost, but that was acceptable, given that they were unmanned and expendable. The trailblazer didn’t like losing assets in this way, because he knew there were cleaner ways to fight, but time was of the essence and if he had his forces pull back and engage tactically more lizard ships would get out and away, so he did what he could organizing and pushed the fight hard into their fleets, racking up as much damage as possible.

Kyler pulled back out to the master battlemap of the engagement, seeing the battleships taking hull damage from the ongoing torpedo impacts, but none of them were in serious damage. They’d been built to take a beating and keep on fighting, plus they were returning torpedoes for torpedoes, given that their shield columns were proving ineffective in the tendril field.

Kyler half smirked, then typed out a message to Voru, reminding him that this was why wasting ordinance on the tendrils would have been a bad idea earlier.

A minute passed, then a pithy response came back, also in text.

Savvy.

10

November 12, 2432

Nevarsor System

Namek

Paul watched as the lizard aquatics fleet fled their underwater base, amazed at how many ships they had managed to build and content with the number that Kyler was knocking down, both with the battleships up top and the squid armada he’d sent around through the back door. Many got away, slowly moving off in groups on various headings, some of which a few of the battleships were intersecting and poaching, but with thousands of ships to hit there was no way they could contain them, and the lines began arching away from the splash down points, with the battleships’ shield columns stretching out to hit whatever they could before they fully scattered.

Using the control pedestal in the command nexus, Paul fast forwarded through the long battle, pausing occasionally to see a specific item or encounter, including some ships that hadn’t been on their lizard list before, though they didn’t appear to be warships. A lot of transports had been holed up in the base as well, and most of those had gotten away as the battleships focused their firepower on the armed lizard ships, knowing they were the true threat, not just in the here and now, but down the road as well.

Eventually the streams of escaping ships coming up from the tendril field thinned out, then a few squids emerged, marking the end of the line as they pursued the last of the lizard ships out from the base. Paul immediately knew that was a mistake, and watched as the nearby tendrils bent over and brushed up against the squids, detonating their plasma nubs against their hulls and blowing them into bits while the lizard ships moved harmlessly through the field.

After a quick learning moment the remote pilots stopped bringing the squids up and that ended the majority of the fighting. The battleships still sniped at what ships they could, but the lines quickly filed away from the tendril field and base, leaving it in Kyler’s hands as they ran off to who knows where. Fortunately the battleship Captains were smart enough to drop probes and have them follow the lizards at a distance until their limited fuel supply ran out, but it was enough to establish general headings after they left the battleships’ sensor range.

From those vectors, Kyler noted, they were exposing more lizard infrastructure, but none as large as the base they’d just taken, with his fellow trailblazer suggesting that they may very well have just broken the back of the lizard operations on the planet, assuming they weren’t going to get any more supplies from offworld.

Along with his battle reports was a thorough analysis of the base, which Kyler indicated they were going to repurpose for their own uses. The tendril field was coming down, given that they were still live and self-powered, and Paul had to admit the technology, stolen as it was from the Elarioni, was impressive. Its ability to discriminate between friend and foe alone made it a significant threat, given that simply by navigating through the field a lizard ship could use it for either offense or defense, and not have to coordinate at all. It was completely automatic, and Paul appreciated that sort of defensive technology.

Given the lag on these reports, Paul guessed that the field had already been destroyed, though he doubted cleanup would be complete any time soon, given how many tendrils the lizards had built. It put their own construction efforts to shame, as well as backing up Kara’s report of them being master builders that had only been toying with the Humans and the Alliance to date…though they did appear to be at a disadvantage as far as gathering resources underwater.

That was something he wanted to take up with Kyler the next time they met, for if they could get a foothold on aquatics warfare they might be able to press the advantage on other worlds that were part land, part ocean. As a rule, the lizards didn’t like to take worlds that were fully ocean, with Atlantica being an exception, so the trick would be in keeping their land forces from resupplying their aquatics…or maybe even using the aquatics to draw off resources from their land bases?

It was definitely an angle to pursue, but that was a conversation that was going to have to occur in bits and pieces over messages for the time being, for Kyler still had a lot of lizard opposition to hunt down and eradicate, even if they had lost their primary base. Paul wondered if the mastermind had gotten out on one of the ships, and figured that he’d give the scale head the benefit of the doubt. It would use what bases and ships it had, which was still a lot of the latter, to wage a convincing war against the Humans, but both Kyler and Paul felt like they had just turned a major corner, and that Atlantica was now theirs to lose rather than the even playing field it had once been.

After Paul finished going through the battle records and other data he shut down the command nexus and headed out into the city to inspect some of the new construction personally. It wasn’t something he had to do, but he liked being able to overlay virtual maps with actual memories of the layouts. After all, it wouldn’t do for him to design and build a huge city and never to see more than a handful of buildings inside of it.

He hopped inside one of the nearby elevators and took it down below ground level, then walked a short distance until he came to the terminal of the underground rail network. From there he took a small tram out to the dirt ring that isolated the core of the city and came up inside one of the mech bays where he got into a Starbright-class mech and walked it out onto the city streets.

Its body was thin with a T-shaped shoulder frame and no head. Its legs were normal jointed and computer controlled, unlike the neo he usually piloted in both simulators and reality. The starbright was a Star Force original mech, rather than one patterned after the Battletech fiction from long ago. It felt to Paul like a walking turret, but it moved nimbly and that was the point. It wasn’t the largest mech Star Force fielded, nor the smallest, but it was one that was totally dependent on plasma weaponry, hence the name, and it had several unique varieties of weapons.

Paul wouldn’t be needing those today, for he was just on tour ‘driving’ it down the streets that were used to mech traffic as much as vehicles. It was a long walk out to the city’s outskirts, but once he got there the turret-like vantage point was worthwhile and he spent the better part of an hour nosing around the construction and excavation equipment, almost blending in with the fabrication mechs that were lifting and holding components in place while an army of workers buzzed around them making connections and hard seals to lock the new pieces into the frameworks.

The trailblazer knew how to observe yet stay out of their way, and he was so preoccupied with the construction efforts that he didn’t notice another military grade mech approaching until it was within 100 meters of him off his back quarter. The ID tag registered as Emily-023.

Paul opened a comm line. “When the hell did you get back?”

“Nice to see you too,” she replied from the cockpit of a hunchback, which stood slightly lower than his starbright. “About 2 hours ago.”

“And you just felt like taking a stroll?”

“I know better than to interrupt your Grand Admiral thing unless something is urgent, so I figured I’d just join you out here and fill you in.”

“Right, so how are the Ents?”

“Bigger than our mechs…and now allies, thank you very much.”

“Bigger?” Paul reiterated.

“Half again,” Emily explained. “And they’re not plants.”

“I figured that much. What’s their situation?”

“Lizards had a small presence on the planet, almost like they were fighting them just to study them and learn new ways to fight beings of that size. I smashed their bases from orbit and the survivors scattered, so I don’t know if we did enough or not, but the Ikrotor are in no immediate danger and are very grateful. We’re going to take stewardship of their planet via orbit in exchange for natural resources, which means building at least 1 seda and having a small fleet stationed there permanently.”

“What kind of resources?” Paul asked, curious as to what she’d negotiated for.

“Lots of things…including some massive deposits of corovon that they have no use for.”

“Jackpot.”

“No kidding. Last I checked our stockpiles were getting low.”

“We’re always running low,” Paul pointed out, given how the metallic subatomic particle was used in literally thousands of compounds critical for Star Force’s advanced tech, including gravity drives.

“Well we won’t be if my scans are even half accurate.”

“Heavy grav world?” Paul guessed.

“304,” she said, referring to the percent compared to Earth.

“Ouch.”

“You should see their vegetation. Everything is rock hard.”

“What do they look like?”

“You didn’t read the brief?”

“I did, but they didn’t have any close up pictures.”

“Their bodies aren’t as hard as they look. A lot of the ‘stony’ patches are solid, but others give under pressure. The lizards figured out which were which and strategically targeted the weak areas, but the thing is plasma only tickles them. Their body temperatures are sky high internally, with their thick carapace containing the heat. That’s one reason why the lizards were having trouble with them.”

“No change of weapons?”

“Recently yes, which is why I think the lizards were experimenting. They brought out what looks like mini rail guns, both on vehicles and hand weapons.”

“How effective were those?”

“Lethal…in large amounts. The Ikrotor are so massive the lizards had to pour projectiles into them to take them down…or hit them with capital ship levels of plasma. The bullet philosophy worked better, but these guys are tough kills no matter what angle you take.”

“What about an ice gun?”

Paul heard Emily scoff. “It took three weeks before that thought occurred to me, and you pull it out within three seconds.”

“Lizards haven’t tried that angle?”

“No, but I think it could be effective. I didn’t have that discussion with them, though.”

“What’s the language situation?”

“Solved prior to my arrival. Seems the Hycre got them schooled in the trade language. We’re still working on decoding theirs.”

“Are they going to turn into a protectorate, or have combat potential?”

“If the lizards reestablish on their homeworld, definitely combat potential, but I don’t know how eager they are to expand their territory. Right now they don’t even have computers, let alone spacecraft. Big fingers don’t lend to building tiny parts.”

“But they have some tech?”

“They’re working on developing machinery to accommodate the size problem, but we can do more to help in 10 minutes than they’ll accomplish in 10 years.”

“Trustworthy?”

“I don’t know,” Emily admitted. “Gratitude goes a long ways. We’ll see what happens when it wears off. They did make a point of not wanting us to set up operations on the planet. They’ll do all the resource collecting and processing, then turn it over to us at specified drop points.”

“Did the lizards know about the corovon?”

“I’d have a hard time saying no, unless they never bothered to pull a planetary scan. Most of their tech doesn’t require it, so there’s a chance they weren’t looking for it.”

“I doubt that too…so when they don’t hear back from their people on…wait, what are we calling the planet?”

“Midgar, and yes, that’s a possibility. Which is why we need a warship put on permanent station as soon as possible.”

“We can cycle one of the old ones over. I want the newer model gravity drives devoted to the raiding missions.”

“Anything happen while I was gone?” Emily asked, walking her hunchback to the side to let a pair of construction mechs pass carrying a huge structural rib between them.

“You hear about Kara?”

“No, what did you have her off doing this time?”

“She found and interrogated a mastermind variant.”

“Where?” Emily asked suspiciously.

“A planet called Albo on the Hycre charts.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“It’s deep lizard territory. She had to go pretty far to find a world big enough.”

“Typical…what did she learn.”

“There’s a ruling family of lizards, which we’re referring to as Templars and Sovereigns…the latter is an upgrade, physically as well as rank. They rule the overall empire, while the genetically grown versions deal with local matters. That’s how they keep from having rogue systems splitting off from the whole.”

“Back up, you said ‘family’ and not genetically grown?”

“Live births…or, well, as far as eggs go. They maintain a bloodline rather than genetically growing what they need. But that’s not the big thing she discovered.”

“No?” Emily asked, finding that rather significant.

“She got a glimpse of their overall battle plan. They’re not aggressively gobbling up every system they can get their hands on, they’re being patient. Very, very patient.”

“Since when?”

“They’re toying with us and the Alliance while they build. They’re master builders, and the combat on the frontier is a diversion away from their other worlds. As time goes on those worlds level up through a tiered system, unlocking bigger and better tech, some of which we’re going to have huge problems with. They’re far more powerful than even the Alliance knows, and instead of rushing ahead and bleeding themselves dry, they’re building more than they lose, and they never stop building. Every year that passes all of their untouched worlds get stronger.”

Emily was silent for a moment.

“Sounds like they’re playing the same game we are.”

“Except their ultimate goal is to spread across the galaxy and keep on going.”

“Good luck with the V’kit’no’sat.”

“True, but from their point of view they are the rightful inheritors of everything and they have to dispossess the squatters. They’re not doing this in self-defense or because of a grudge…they’re purposefully trying to dominate everything and everyone. And by dominate, I mean kill just about everyone else, save where they can find a use for slaves.”

“What about the Nestafar?”

“They screwed up big time.”

“Serves them right,” Emily said, thinking hard. “Where does that leave us?”

“I’ve only talked to a handful of the others, but from here on out we’re going rogue. The Alliance is doomed, and while we’ll honor our commitments and help out where we can, that avenue to victory has always been a mirage. If we’re going to survive the storm that’s coming we have to do it on our own.”

“I don’t follow how we’re better off alone than with the Alliance.”

“We have something they don’t.”

“The pyramid,” Emily said, catching on.

“We have to upgrade past the lizards and establish a strong hold on our territory. We have to build a wall so strong the lizards can’t get in no matter how many trillions they throw at us. Wasting resources going to the aid of our allies would diminish our ability to build that wall in the time we have remaining.”

“How much time are you figuring?”

“Maybe a century, it’s hard to tell. Depends how much of a pain in the ass we are to them.”

“So we should stop making raids?”

“No, odd as it sounds. We do that and we’ll invite an escalation. If we keep them on the defensive they’ll wonder how strong we are and hold back until they’re ready. If they perceive us as weak they’ll try to expand into us and grab as many worlds as they can, then push on further letting those worlds level up while we’re distracted on other battlefronts.”

“So they’re fighting on a bluff out here?”

“Out here, yes. They don’t have the strength to hold as many worlds as they take, and rely on intimidation to shield them from counterattack. But go further back into their territory and they’re sitting on an enormous fleet and resource base.”

“So they’re just playing with us, letting their JV get some experience?”

“They don’t consider us or the Alliance to be a credible threat, and haven’t gone all in as a result. If they ever do, watch out.”

“If we’re going to build this virtual wall, does that mean we stop sending fleets off to fight the Nestafar?”

“We’re working on a plan for that now, and the answer is no. We keep fighting the Nestafar and aiding the Calavari…just with a slightly different agenda. Sara named it Operation Conduit, and I’d like your input before we send a draft back to Corneria.”

“Not one of your projects then?”

“Not directly, no, though it will require cooperation across multiple star systems and fleets. I’m staying here and keeping the lizards busy, distracting them while they’re distracting us,” Paul said ironically.

“You’ve got me curious. What’s the gist of it?”

“Annexation.”

Knighthood

1

December 4, 2434

Iona System

Kirit

Randy sat in the Star Force enclave, a small Human dot situated amongst the world-spanning city that was now Kirit, reading the news briefs that had just arrived insystem via jumpship from the home territories. The Iona system was now considered to be mid-range out from Sol, opposite Paul’s expansion region into the lizard front. Randy had sole command of the ‘neighborhood,’ as he liked to think of it, which was a coreward extension around and out from Iona.

Travel times were still lengthy, but far shorter than what they’d once been, especially given the new jumpship that’d just arrived. It was one of the first Binary Differential Gravity Drives, in that it had a revolutionary breakthrough that now put Star Force on par with the Hycre. The gravity drives were no longer just anti-grav, but gravity enhancing as well.

This meant they could push and pull against gravity wells, whereas before pushing was the only option. Randy had already begun making plans for secret installations in Iona outside the orbit of the furthest planet in the gigantic star system. Kirit was the 8th planet out of 20, which was rather low on average, but the central star was a huge white variety with a gravity well far larger than average…meaning the geography of the system was much more spread out, able to hold multiple Sols or Epsilon Eridanis within its gravitational borders.

Usually the outermost planet in the region marked the boundary from which all starships could not cross, given that they wouldn’t have anything to push off of outside of that to return on…save for conventional thrust which had limited range. Now with the Binary drives the range from which Star Force ships could travel out from the star was extended greatly, for they could now pull on the star itself to bring them back in, leaving the trailblazer with the opportunity to build bases in the outer areas, or doldrums within the system, where other races couldn’t go.

At least he could so long as he had a ship that could get there. It would be decades at least, if not a century, before all Star Force jumpships were upgraded, but all new models coming off the line would be so outfitted, meaning that they’d have more navigational options as the calendar crept forward, which would help him greatly in the Beta Region.

As he’d been learning from pouring over Star Force, Alliance, and V’kit’no’sat maps, population clusters didn’t become denser closer to the core and thinner out towards the rim as most people naturally assumed, but rather there were clusters of habitation everywhere, each with its own internal geography. Paul’s expansion region, loosely dubbed Alpha Region amongst the Archons, was sparsely populated, yet it had dozens of races within it, and that was only the explored sections.

Beta Region was much more populated…but still with isolated, desert-like stretches of untouched star systems that the other races saw as ‘fly over’ country. There were many potential colonization opportunities nearby, and many other races just as close. As it was, Babylon 2 saw more activity than the original Babylon diplomatic station in Epsilon Eridani, which was saying something.

Randy had expanded it twice to make room for the, at present, 132 enclaves that it fielded. That meant 132 different races that felt like establishing permanent diplomatic contact, with many more out there that didn’t. He’d known the galaxy had an insane number of races from what he’d read in the V’kit’no’sat database, but in the time since it’d been updated the geography had changed drastically, making this a whole new neighborhood to get to know.

Randy had expanded Star Force and Clan Star Fox holdings out to 8 additional systems within the Beta Region, pushing their perimeter towards the core while mapping expeditions went well further. Nevil-037 was overseeing a small Gamma Region that was stretching out beneath Sol on the galactic plane, which was around 1,000 lightyears thick, meaning that Star Force was essentially sitting inside a giant sphere of star systems, nowhere close to reaching the galactic edge no matter which direction they travelled.

Each area they mapped brought them into contact with more civilizations, expanding their presence out to more than 500 races, many of which had never even heard of the lizard juggernaut that was slowly creeping their way. Good news was, most of those races were either on par with Star Force or their inferior, with the Alliance making up the bulk of the advanced races, all of which were loosely located in what had been tagged as the Zeta Region to Sol’s ‘left,’ if you were at galactic center looking out.

Epsilon was to the ‘right’ while Delta was ‘above,’ giving the Human Empire six 3-dimensional directions to orient its geography on. Zeta was not being expanded into, other than a handful of systems in the ‘central’ zone that surrounded Sol like a rough sphere. It was Star Force’s core zone, much as the lizards had their own central territory, while Zeta held the jumplanes connecting Star Force to the Alliance.

Most of Star Force’s colonial expansion was happening in Alpha, which was 5 times the size of Beta and was also being lightly colonized by the Hycre and encroached upon by the lizards. Conversely, Beta was almost off the Alliance maps, untouched by the lizards, and a blank slate that the Humans had to deal with entirely on their own merits.

Opening up Star Force systems to trade had helped their reputation immediately, with many races arriving in Iona and establishing diplomatic contact deciding to extend their own interests up further into Star Force territory, with the exception of Sol, which was deemed off limits. They didn’t all trade with Star Force, but they trusted the Humans to keep their own territory clear of pirates and other malcontents, making them safer ‘roads’ to travel and allowing them contact with other races more to their liking than the Humans, who they regarded as neutral arbiters.

Many races closed off their star systems to others…officially. It was impossible to keep a jumpship out, and very hard to intercept one just passing through, braking off the star and repositioning for another jump, so the threats by others were mostly for show, but you didn’t want to risk the chance of bumping into an insystem patrol near the star to which you just decelerated against…after which you’d have to wait and recharge your capacitors to get enough power to make another interstellar jump.

If unable to do that immediately, they’d have to make a micro-jump elsewhere in the system and play a game of cat and mouse until they’d recharged enough to make a run back to the star, find their jumpline, and get the hell out of the system. That minimal possibility of interdiction kept many races out of each other’s territory, forcing commerce lanes to travel in convoluted paths through unclaimed systems in order to ensure safe and reliable transit.

So Star Force’s claim to unfettered access was a popular policy, backed up by their military fleet that was well capable of keeping poachers at bay. Randy pushed that reputation regularly, and had established a multi-racial economic partnership within Beta Region with many neutral exchange centers, some Star Force, some not, where the local races could deal with one another face to face rather than having to search out distant star systems in the hope of finding trading partners.

As he did so Randy kept looking for any hint of the V’kit’no’sat, both in their ongoing mapping expeditions and in their relations with the other races, but so far not one of them had indicated knowledge of a race that powerful, with the Skarrons holding the primary ‘bad guy’ rep in the area, though their territory was much deeper into the core than Beta Region currently extended.

Friendly as most of the racial interactions were with Star Force, though not necessarily with each other, Randy knew he needed hidden bases throughout the region should anyone start planning against their very open infrastructure, making the Binary Gravity Drives a considerable boon to his future plans.

That bit of good news wasn’t all that had come in the message packets. Updates from both the lizard and Nestafar fronts were included, along with a slew of database data that he never directly looked at. It was meant for their computers, so he’d have searchable access to what was happening on every other star system within Star Force’s domain, ranging from population statistics to economic transfers and infrastructure maps. Likewise, data from Beta Region was being carried back via jumpship traffic, keeping the others up to date on what was happening in his neck of the galactic woods.

Randy was drawn to the V’kit’no’sat database updates, which contained useful entries the research teams had pulled out, along with blueprints for new technology upgrades. He particularly liked those, for they were tech that Star Force had already worked the bugs out of, having reverse engineered it from the V’kit’no’sat specs, built, tested, and tweaked for their own uses.

In this update came a genetic scanner that he’d been requesting for years, given the amount of traffic that Babylon 2 and his other public commercial centers saw. Unlike previous scanners that required physical contact, this one had a range of .94 meters and would scan against templates rather than take samples. That meant he could put people in a line, send them through a sensor arch, and be able to identify their race without having to touch them. According to the specs it would work through thick clothing, though armor would probably block the sensor beam.

It would take time to upgrade his infrastructure, but it was a valuable puzzle piece he needed in Beta Region as he grew what he considered to be an economic Alliance between the various races in the region.

In the message packet there were also log updates from some of the other trailblazers which he’d sort through later, but with them came a few flagged items, including one ‘Operation Conduit’ brief that he opened up and skimmed through, his brow furrowing as he went back to the start and read it through line by line.

Randy set the datapad down when he finished, then stood up and walked over to the panoramic window that stretched around his command tower, reminiscent of Davis’s office in Atlantis. This version rose up on par with several nearby Kiritas towers outside the Human city, though they didn’t surpass it. A sign of Kiritas gratitude and respect for their Star Force allies.

Randy’s view out to those towers was unobstructed, given that all other Human structures were lower in height. He stared out past them to the Kiritas buildings, which mimicked the Star Force infrastructure while maintaining an alien tinge, and lost himself in calculated thought for some 20 minutes before he finally walked away from the window to the central staircase, but stepped over the inner railing and grabbed hold of the fire pole that the staircase wound itself around.

Slackening his grip he slid down several stories through the gap, landing in the main control center for the Clan Star Fox city, the Iona System, and all of Beta Region.

“Is the High Council currently in session?” he asked one of some 30+ staffers coordinating his mini-empire.

“Should have began an hour ago, and they typically go for three or four.”

Randy nodded contently and headed for the exit, passing down through the wider sections of the tower below until he got to the surface streets. He crossed over to a nearby hangar and grabbed a skeet, then flew the green/brown starfighter up above the buildings and crossed into the Kiritas zone, flying over the crowded streets full of wheeled vehicles, for the corovon elements necessary for anti-grav technology were reserved for their space and aerial craft, unlike on Star Force worlds where flying traffic was as common as ground vehicles.

Randy flew straight over to the Kiritas capitol building, which they’d purposefully located near to, but a respectful distance from, the Star Force enclave. He was given direct access, bypassing security and landing on a topside pad reserved for high ranking individuals, such as the High Council and Human traffic.

When he set down and exited the topside hatch Randy slid off the side onto the ground with 8 Kiritas waiting for him. Two were guards, armed with their anatomical version of stinger pistols, while the other six were pad workers, one of which walked/hopped over to him and looked up at his face from its lower height.

“What do you require?” it asked in English, which all Kiritas now spoke as their native language. The Alliance trade language was their preferred secondary, with their original language now having been relegated to the annals of their planetary history.

“Is the High Council in session?”

“Yes it is. Would you like to meet with them?”

Randy nodded. “I have something important to discuss.”

“Follow me,” the short, stubby kangaroo-like creature said, turning and hopping off towards the pad entrance to the building beneath them. The two guards took up ceremonial flanking positions alongside the Human, who was dressed in his standard Archon ranger uniform and unarmed. Kirit was probably the safest world in Beta Region, given that the populace was almost entirely pro-Human. Star Force was upgrading their society by leaps and bounds, both with technology and knowledge, and many Kiritas would glad jump in front of an enemy to save a Human without a second thought.

The area around the Human enclave saw a fair amount of Humans mixing with the local Kiritas, but other than in this part of the planet Star Force was more legend than reality, with the rare encounter seeing the Humans treated with greater respect than the Kiritas’s own leaders, with whom Randy was now enroute to.

The capitol building wasn’t a spire, but rather a thick building designed to shield the internal core from potential weaponsfire and protecting the leaders against attack, taking from Star Force’s own tactical designs. Several other nearby buildings were taller, but none the larger, for it held the command infrastructure for their entire civilization that now spanned 5 star systems and 18 planetoids, thanks to Randy’s help in teaching them how to build jumpships.

When he got to the guarded doors that led into the High Council chamber the Kiritas immediately opened them for him, interrupting the ongoing meeting. Randy walked into the now silent room down the middle of a rectangular promenade with rows of seats on his left and right, along with a short set of rows directly ahead. A hologram of some data chart disappeared from view in the gap between them, giving the Archon the full attention of the assembled Councilors as the doors resealed behind him.

“Greetings, Archon Randy,” one of the 58 Kiritas said, its voice amplified by speakers. “Your presence is most welcome, though we would gladly have come to you if you’d requested it.”

“I know,” Randy said, glancing around at all the leaders, most of whom he knew by face, having dealt with or trained them all. Still, they weren’t Humans, so at times he had trouble differentiating one from another, though now he had the ability to pull a mental profile and memories if needed, so he rarely made a mistake as to who was who.

“But what I have to say is more appropriately said here than in one of our facilities. You have asked for many years to assist us with the war against the Nestafar or lizards, and I have declined your requests given that your warfleet is not yet a match for their technology. Above that, it’s also not your fight…at least not yet.”

“However, recent information has been sent to me indicating that the lizard threat is far greater than we anticipated. They have amassed a huge empire deep inside their widespread territory where we can’t scout. They are waiting and growing their strength rather than throwing their full resources against us. When they do, we will be sorely outmatched, even with the combined might of the Alliance. We do have time, however, to prepare, for they are not choosing to launch their full power against us yet. They still have a powerful enemy on their rimward border, known as the H’kar. So long as they exist, I don’t believe we will draw their primary attention.”

“Given the recent information we’ve gained about their strength, we are implementing a new battle plan…and for that I am here to ask for your help,” Randy said, letting that point hang in the air.

The High Councilors visibly stirred. This was the first time in their 86 year history that the Humans had ever asked for their help, and the Kiritas had been continuously eager to both prove their worth to their superior allies as well as to repay them for the lifesaving changes they’d implemented on Kirit in any way, shape, or form possible, hence the previous offers of military assistance.

“What do you require of us?” the Military Councilor asked. Each of the 58 High Council members led a portion of Kiritas society. They were not elected or appointed, but rather experienced leaders having risen up through the ranks in their respective divisions, patterned heavily off of Star Force’s own personnel structure, though without any Archon or Davis equivalents.

“Something big,” Randy said slowly, making eye contact with many of the shorter aliens who were seated above his eye line. “Something that will change the Kiritas once again.”

Some of the Councilors practically bounced out of their seats with anticipation, for they knew that whatever this was, it was monumental.

“Ask,” the Food Supply Councilor prompted eagerly.

Randy let out a slow breath, then looked up at his Kiritas friends, knowing how much of a shock this was going to be, given the population restrictions they lived under.

“We need you to grow.”

2

“There are half a trillion Humans,” Randy continued after a round of frenzied questions, “spread out through 74 star systems. There are five and a half trillion Kiritas, spread across 5 star systems. You can reproduce faster than us, which has been a problem in the past, but it can also be an asset.”

“You need more soldiers?” the Military Councilor asked.

“We need more resources,” the trailblazer clarified. “We’re not asking you to fight, we’re asking you to help us build. This region of the galaxy has many uninhabited star systems with worlds that hold vast amounts of natural resources. Star Force has claimed only 8 systems, and those that we do have are not well developed yet. It will take time to expand and grow, but even as we do it will not be enough to counter the resources the lizards have available to them. We have to close the gap, and you are the key to doing that, if you’re willing.”

“Of course we are willing,” the Reproduction Councilor said cautiously, “but how will we sustain greater numbers, above and beyond our current growth scales?”

“I do not want you to alter your current plans. Your civilization is now stable, and growing at a substantial rate. You’ve taken what we’ve taught you and applied it well, but what I’m asking of you now goes far beyond that.”

The High Councilors exchanged glances with one another, but it was the Reproduction Councilor that spoke for them all.

“We do not understand.”

“Star Force is comprised of many parts,” Randy began, knowing this was going to take some explaining of things the Kiritas had not been previously informed of. “We have a military and a civilian split, with the Archons controlling the military and Administrators controlling our cities. We work together, much as you do with your respective divisions. This you know, but what you do not know is that there are more parts to Star Force.”

“I am of Clan Star Fox, but unlike the clans that Kirit once had, my Clan is independent and self- supporting. This is critical, in that if the major network of Star Force infrastructure was to be taken down, Clan Star Fox could survive on its own. In addition, there are 99 other Clans, each capable of independent operation. We are each an individual empire, with our own cities, sometimes our own worlds. We have our own military, some of which is present in this system, the rest are standard troops, assigned here from the primary fleet, which is far larger than what any Clan fields.”

“We are all Star Force, but we operate in different ways, structured for a future day when we are badly defeated. If and when that day occurs we will not crumble, for the Clans can continue on without the others…just as the primary fleet and colonies can continue on without the Clans. We are stronger for this, but the primary fleet and the Clans are not all that there is to Star Force.”

“There is also another entity called Canderous. You have never seen them, for they are not present in this region of the galaxy, but they co-inhabit many star systems along with the Clans and the primary colonies. They are Humans that we, the Archons, have trained to be a military civilization that lives almost exclusively in space stations. They have some resource gathering infrastructure on the surface of worlds, but their colonies are always in space.”

“They are independent as well, but they take orders from the Archons, and are part of Star Force. Our terminology can be confusing at times, for ‘Star Force’ can refer to our primary fleet and colonies, or it can refer to our overall empire that includes the Clans and Canderous. Also, in our home system, there are Human factions that are independent from us. Some are allies, some are not. They are small and insignificant, a remnant of the past, but they are also under our protection, so when we speak of Humans they are included, and when the term ‘Star Force’ is used for Humans, it can also apply to them, and the population number I gave you includes them as well.”

“What I am here to ask of you…or perhaps I should say offer you…is for the Kiritas to become part of Star Force, part of our empire, while maintaining a level of independence, same way the Clans and Canderous do.”

That set the Councilors off, and the din of hushed conversation between them was too convoluted for Randy to make out, even as it escalated into a full blown roar. Using his psionics, he could get the general sense of their mood…which was elated…and knew that they were going to accept in some form or another, for what he had just offered them was being received as a great honor.

The frantic discussions went on for nearly 2 minutes before the Reproduction Councilor brought the others into order with a series of audial tones that sounded like a musically inclined jackhammer.

“A point of clarification, Archon Randy. You said earlier that you needed us to grow, now you say that you want us to join with you. How are these two things connected?”

Randy smiled, glad that he’d caught that.

“As I said, your civilization is stable, and we do not want to upset that stability. We want to bring the Kiritas into Star Force as you are, while at the same time creating another Kiritas from volunteers. Long ago the Kiritas clans referred to those of you who were trained by us to be Kiritak, and separate from the rest of you. I plan to build a new Kiritak civilization, one with the sole purpose of collecting the raw resources we need to build the ships and infrastructure we need to defend ourselves against the lizards when they finally move against us en mass.”

“The Kiritak would be led by Humans and use our technology, as we establish hundreds of new colonies with the sole purpose of collecting resources. We, the Humans, will monitor and control the population growth rate of the Kiritak, as well as supply all foodstuffs they require. We only need your volunteers to begin, along with as many eggs as you can spare.”

“Meanwhile, the Kiritas will continue to advance on your own. Know this…we need you to be independent and capable of operating without the rest of Star Force. You need to advance your technology, your fleet, and be able to protect your own worlds when we are not here. When the lizards come, we may have to pull our ships away, and in their place you will have to step up.”

“The Star Force fleet will guard the Kiritak and their colonies while the resources they harvest will be shipped out, for the most part, to the lizard front. There they will build warships and battle stations to prevent the lizards from ever coming here. You can help us defend ourselves against the lizards by providing us resources…resources that we cannot collect ourselves, for our numbers are too low. They are growing, but you have far more people than we do, with the potential to raise that number considerably higher over a much shorter period of time.”

“That is why we need you to grow. Continue your stable growth as Kiritas, and channel to us your explosive growth through the Kiritak. Both will become part of Star Force. At present, you are our friends and allies. We are offering to make you our brothers. What say you to that?”

The Kiritas Councilors exchanged glances with each other again, but this time there wasn’t much discussion. One of them put up a voting hologram above Randy’s head in the chamber in a simple ‘yes or no’ fashion, and the Councilors quickly input their votes, needing no further discussion or clarification.

The tally quickly shot up to 58 yesses, making their decision unanimous.

Randy smiled, and clasped his hands behind his back as he stared up at the tally, and then them.

“Welcome to the party.”

Four years later…

Morgan raised her strapped right arm up level to the ground, with her neo mimicking her movements and doing the same with the machine’s appendage, on top of which sat a small mauler cannon. With a twitch of a finger she triggered it to fire, sending a brilliant blue mass of energy across a couple hundred meters into the side of a Nestafar super dragon.

The corrosive energy ate into the normally stubborn chrome armor, literally dissolving it in a splash of melted material that left a hole in the underside of the giant walker as Morgan’s neo ran up to and underneath it, getting hit with a red plasma blast from a leg turret in the process. Her mech’s energy shields caught it fully, spreading out the blast so that it surrounded her in a momentary cloud of ionized gas before the shields drained it of power and it reverted back into harmless hot air.

Morgan pumped another mauler blast into the hole she’d just made, overlapping impact craters to get a small opening in to the interior of the gigantic walker. Standing underneath it as its six humongous legs propelled it onwards towards the Calavari battle fort, she raised her neo’s other arm, this one containing a plasma cannon, and started firing at near pointblank range in through the hole that was well above the mech’s head.

The ranger got off three salvos before her shields failed and her neo’s armor started to take hits, prompting her to get moving again. She ran across to the other side of the giant walker, targeting one of the leg batteries that was firing on her while other Star Force mechs took the opportunity she’d given them and targeted the hole with plasma fire and missiles while Morgan tried to snipe the heavy weapons that had been devastating the Calavari flying tanks.

Meanwhile the super dragon’s primary weapon fired off another long range stream of thick plasma into the shields of the fort up ahead, this time penetrating the defensive barrier and winging one of the defensive cupolas on top, with the excess plasma passing harmlessly through air and out the far side of the base. Morgan saw the shield failure notice on her battlemap, and despite the armor damage she was taking, moved up to the front of the super dragon, dancing between its six giant legs to avoid being stepped upon, and fired her mauler up into the main cannon’s orifice.

The energy hit a small shield protecting the walker’s primary weapon, blocking it from doing damage to the vulnerable mechanism, but the excess ate into the armor surrounding it, and Morgan knew that even if the shield didn’t go down, the armor would melt away with a few more hits.

The Nestafar gunners on the massive walker realized that as well, with every available heavy weapon still operating on the legs and underside turning to target her mech.

Luckily she saw it coming and ran back through the legs, knowing that the Nestafar weapons batteries rotated slowly. She caught a few plasma hits, one of which her renewed shields blocked before failing again, before she exited out the back end of the walker into the face of a giraffe as it collected red plasma at the peak of its head, preparing to fire at her.

Morgan didn’t slow, but ran straight into it, jutting out a corovon alloy blade from the left wrist of the modified neo and hacking through the neck of the walker with one strong swing…though the blade stuck three quarters of the way through, but it was enough to sever the power conduits and render the walker’s primary weapon useless.

Turrets on the back of the super dragon’s legs lit her neo up just as an internal explosion sent a plume of fiery debris back out the small hole in the left side. Two of the legs stopped functioning, bringing the massive beast to a frozen stop. Its weapons on the right side continued to fire, as did the main plasma streamer, which launched another ruby beam towards the Calavari fort, with this one hitting the barrier wall surrounding the buildings and melting through the artificial rock construction.

Morgan deactivated the mauler on her right arm, regaining the use of her mech’s hand and grabbed the neck of the giraffe. Using the leverage she pulled her blade free, then ignored the nearly decapitated machine as its smaller weapons chewed at her mech’s legs and chest. She pivoted around, coming up on the super dragon’s left side and passing through or underneath the firing lines of a dozen or so Star Force mechs as she moved back up to the front and targeted the main weapon again as gold plasma orbs and streaks were nipping away at the walker’s almost impervious armor from a host of Calavari tanks halfway between it and the fort.

Morgan’s neo was the only mech on the battlefield that had a mauler, so she knew she had to take out the primary weapon else it’d wreck the Calavari base like it had two others previously. With her own armor down to 50% in places she knew she could take a few more hits and tagged the nearest batteries on the super dragon as targets, hoping the nearby mechs could whittle them down before they roasted her.

When she got up past the first leg on the left she pumped another mauler shot into the side of the stubby main cannon, melting some armor off as she shot a plasma blast into the shield covering the muzzle, discovering that it was still in place and wondering just what kind of matrix it was using, for the mauler usually disrupted shields. Then again, her mauler was just a baby mauler, so she hit it again with both arms’ weapons, and this time saw a little bit of plasma sneak through following the mauler.

Then another huge ruby beam leapt up, with the defensive shield dropping a fraction of a second before it did, and reappearing afterward. Morgan didn’t even look at the damage it had done, nor to the flashing red on her own mech’s armor schematics, she just fired again and again until the mauler did its magic and penetrated the shield, melting the outer barrel and letting her plasma get in too.

A hail of golden plasma followed, most of which missed but a few hits got inside the only vulnerable place on the otherwise armored weapon, followed by a radial plume of plasma as the weapon tried to fire again and malfunctioned, eating through its own armor as the magnetic constraints in the barrel were no longer powered.

A sizeable amount hit the fort, but the rest opened up the barrel, melting away its components and causing a backwash that gutted the weapon. Now with a new spot to shoot at, the Calavari tanks, which were still getting picked off by the super dragon’s remaining secondary cannons and support walkers, concentrated their firepower and pounded the ‘head’ of the huge walker furiously as Morgan got the hell out of their firing line and retreated back behind her fellow Star Force mechs, who shifted to targeting the spiders and giraffes that had been escorting the big machine.

Only then did Morgan take a good look at her armor, seeing it was chewed up and her shield generators had been slagged…or at least the emitters had been, with the internal generators still labeled as intact, but without the emitters they were useless.

Walking with a slight limp, due to an excessive amount of armor having been sheared off the right leg that was now unbalancing the mech, Morgan circled around behind the three stars of mechs that were distracting the enemy from her and picked out a peripheral target, running up alongside a madcat and using her still intact mauler to help take down the spider it was targeting by slagging the belly plasma streamer in one shot, taking out its most potent weapon.

With the super dragon down, the rest of the battle came to a predictable end. Morgan lost two of her mechs, but the pilots were recovered intact…the same couldn’t be said of the Calavari tanks that littered the road between the mega walker’s corpse and the fort, whose shield generators had survived the attack and were now covering the base with its protective canopy once again.

“Morgan, you have a minute?” a voice asked into her spherical cockpit where the Archon was strapped into the control harness half nude.

“Go ahead.”

“A relief fleet just arrived in orbit.”

“Who’s?” she asked, frowning.

“One of ours, and it’s a big one. Says they’re looking for you.”

“Who’s in command?”

“Jenna-732.”

One of her Ninja Monkeys, and a high ranking one at that. Whatever this was about, it had to be important else they wouldn’t have assigned an Archon of her caliber to babysit a fleet. It couldn’t be another taskforce, for only Morgan, Taryn, and Leif-069 had been assigned to the Calavari/Nestafar front, with replacement and relief fleets being sent out to them rather than having the trailblazers return to Star Force territory periodically for resupply.

This new fleet had to be one of those, but if it was a lower ranking Archon would have been escorting it here. Jenna was too important to be wasted as backup to what usually was an all naval theatre of war. This particular ground excursion had been an exception, meaning that most of the Archons in Morgan’s taskforce usually sat on their butts onboard their warships twiddling their thumbs or training in the onboard sanctums. Most of the strategic and tactical planning was carried out by Morgan and her fleet Captains, meaning the Archons she did have with her were usually second string, yet seasoned fighters.

“Connect me to her now,” Morgan ordered, still picking her way across the debris field of downed Nestafar walkers looking for living enemies, machine or biological, that could still pose a threat as the Calavari sent out troop transports to take care of any Nestafar crews trapped inside their disabled walkers.

With resources spread thin on many worlds like this one, she had to keep an eye on them to make sure they didn’t gun down surrendering Nestafar, though they probably deserved it. Star Force wasn’t taking permanent prisoners, and the Calavari didn’t want to waste foodstuffs on prisoners when their own people were seeing heavy rationing on war torn worlds. That said, the Nestafar usually didn’t surrender, but Morgan wasn’t going to let any battle she was in devolve into a mindless slaughter.

“Morgan?”

“Here, Jenna,” she said to the audio-only commlink. “What’s up, Monkey?”

“Big things in the works, including a convoy route back home that doesn’t rely on the Hycre. The ships I’ve brought with me are fresh out of the shipyards with the new Binary drives. We’ve got a link from Drema to Corneria that’s 3 and a half months long,” she said, referencing the relatively secure Calavari world that the Hycre had been dropping Star Force fleets off at, then letting them make their way across the Calavari spacelanes hunting Nestafar targets of their choice.

That was almost as good as the Hycre’s 8 weeks, considering they wouldn’t have to wait for available carrier jumpships which always had load limitations. In fact, it’d allow much more in the way of cargo transfer once Star Force had enough upgraded jumpships to flood the route with.

“Sweet,” Morgan said, knowing how important that would be, but knowing that wasn’t the reason why Jenna was here. “What else?”

“Stuff I’d rather not say over the comm, no matter how good our encryption is.”

“I had a feeling it was something like that,” Morgan said, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll be back in orbit within the next 10 hours. Meet me on the Red Ranger…but first, tell me whose brainchild this is.”

“A team effort that originated with Paul, I believe.”

That meant it wasn’t big, but huge, otherwise he wouldn’t be involving Morgan’s war theatre when he had his own to deal with.

“Figures. See you in a few. I’ve got some cleanup work to finish down here first.”

“Copy that, boss. Take your time. We’re not in a rush.”

3

March 19, 2439

Karchonis System

Elomirit (Calavari territory)

Morgan and her personalized neo, or rather what was left of it, returned up to orbit via dropship and rendezvoused with the trailblazer’s taskforce that consisted of 43 warships and an additional 28 cargo jumpships. Huge as the fleet was, it paled in comparison to the 263 jumpships that were holding position in a slightly higher orbit, each of which was twice the size of the Red Ranger and full of new tech.

They were the largest jumpships Star Force had ever constructed, with several variants. Only a handful were warships, Morgan saw as she studied the dropship’s link into the fleet battlemap as it ascended, with the rest being a mix of pure cargo ships and hybrid carriers. Those carriers were empty, which she found odd. They were designed to carry other ships, drone or otherwise, and it didn’t make sense for Star Force to send them out here with empty loads. She hoped their internal cargo bays weren’t likewise empty, because she could use as many resources as she could get out on this very lonely battlefield.

The Calavari civilization was in shambles, or rather parts of it were. There were still strong areas, bunches of star systems that the Nestafar hadn’t yet been able to touch, but by the same token there were vast areas of carnage that may have been labeled as Calavari territory on the map, but it no longer truly belonged in that category. Some of them had fallen into Nestafar hands, but most were just empty battlefields littered with machines and bodies from both sides.

The Calavari had made two reprisal campaigns into Nestafar territory that had cut deep, and after that everything seemed to get lost in the fog of war. Information coming from the Alliance was sketchy, with Morgan, Taryn, and Leif coordinating with each other through a network of courier ships. They were hitting targets of opportunity rather than engaging in the heaviest of fighting, often being able to blindside Nestafar fleets and ground troops that were in more or less the same condition as the Calavari.

The two civilizations were pounding each other so hard, it seemed like whoever came out the victor would be a mere technicality, for they were decimating each other in the process.

Morgan was doing what she could to help, as were the other Alliance races, but the Nestafar had committed their entire military to this blood feud and the Calavari had been forced to respond in kind. The Bsidd and Kvash had been assisting them primarily in the contended region with the lizards, insuring that the Nestafar threat wouldn’t pull Calavari out of that fight and leave the door open for the real enemy to come in through. Meanwhile the Hycre were all over the map, making strikes with their dominant naval power but never staying in one place for too long.

The lesser Alliance races, Star Force included, were helping out where they could, but in the case of the Humans they just didn’t have the numbers to make a significant difference on the overall warfront. They were making a huge difference to the systems they were intervening in, as well as racking up a sizeable kill count of Nestafar ships, which Morgan was most definitely keeping score of, but it was still just a drop in the galactic bucket, with the overall outcome remaining in the hands of the Nestafar and Calavari.

Had she more resources Morgan could have made a bigger dent, which she hoped had been provided by Jenna’s fleet, but seeing the carriers empty made her reconsider that and question what in the blazes were they really doing out here.

Once she got back onboard the Red Ranger Morgan didn’t have to wait long to find out, for Jenna was waiting for her inside one of the ship’s map rooms.

“Ok, what’s going on?” she asked, stepping into the medium-sized room and only seeing Jenna present, which was odd, for these workrooms were typically busy with overflow duties that couldn’t be accommodated on the bridge.

“Shut the door,” Jenna prompted.

Morgan frowned but turned around and spotted the door control on the edge of the entryway arch and telekinetically pressed it, with what looked like a blast door closing behind her. She waited until it had sealed before looking Jenna in the eye and raising an eyebrow.

“I can brief you in full,” the Ninja Monkey said, holding up a small data chip, “but first you need to see this…so you don’t bite my head off.”

“Nice to see you too,” Morgan said, walking up to the main holographic table and standing next to it on the opposite side from Jenna as she input the chip into a slot on the underside, with a half-sized image of Jason appearing to stand on the table between them facing the wall to Morgan’s right and Jenna’s left.

“My apologies,” the prerecorded message began, “for keeping you in the dark for so long, but we thought it’d only serve as a distraction for you until we had the assets in place to allow you to take action. You’ve been kicking the crap out of the Nestafar and we didn’t want to jinx you, so we didn’t include any of what you’re about to hear in the standard message packets.”

“If it makes you feel any better, we told everyone else except you three because, well, we just don’t like you,” Jason joked as his hologram snapped its fingers and a star map popped up beside him. “Operation Conduit provides us a link to Calavari space independent of the Hycre, freeing up their carrier jumpships for other uses and allowing us more tonnage than they could provide…save for Daka, which they are still providing transit to.”

The star map outlined the zigzag course from one pinprick of light to another starting at Epsilon Eridani and ending just inside the outer boundary of Calavari space, crossing a huge gap of territory in which the majority of the Hycre worlds fell, along with a number of other smaller races.

“Now, here’s the part we didn’t want to distract you with, and what Jenna will explain in detail. The Conduit isn’t meant for us to supply you with additional resources. It’s meant for you to start sending Calavari back to us, quietly, so we can start rebuilding their civilization within Alpha Region. As we discussed earlier, the Alliance is doomed one way or another, but we intend to save the Calavari…some of them anyway…and make them a part of Star Force, similar to what we’ve done with the Kiritas.”

“From the reports you’ve been sending back, we know there’s a lot of worlds the Calavari aren’t resupplying, either because they’re short on resources or because they’re now behind enemy lines. I’d suggest you target those Calavari for removal. There’s no need to consult with the Calavari government, for these worlds have already been abandoned in one form or another.”

“They also might not like the idea of us annexing their race, so be careful how you proceed. We know we won’t be able to evacuate even a tiny fraction of their overall population, but we have facilities in place to handle all you can send us via the Conduit. You’ll be getting more of the new jumpships sent your way as the years pass, and we intend to make this operation one of our top priorities. Aside from their friendship with us, the Calavari are too valuable of an ally to let them be destroyed. Whereas the Kiritas aren’t well suited for combat, the Calavari are another matter entirely. Put them in Knight armor and…well, you can use your imagination.”

“We didn’t want your actions tipping our hand prior to now, which is why you weren’t informed. Taryn and Leif I’ll leave you to update and coordinate with.”

With that Jason’s hologram and star map winked out, leaving Morgan looking across the table at Jenna.

“I only found out a year ago, so don’t blame me,” she said, raising her hands up defensively.

“No, it’s alright,” Morgan said, waving off her concern as she started thinking hard. “What’s your fleet’s carrying capacity?”

“Conservatively, 80,000 Calavari per jumpship, half that for the hybrids, with sufficient supplies onboard for the trip back home. Roughly 14.5 million capacity with the ships I brought.”

Morgan sighed and shook her head. “That’s not enough, not by a long shot. Most of the Calavari frontier worlds hold 50 million plus. With all the losses they’ve taken we might be able to evacuate one.”

“More jumpships will come, and these will rotate back. We know this is going to be a long process. Our primary concern is finding Calavari that want to be rescued.”

“’Rescued’ isn’t the concern,” Morgan said, knowing well by now how the Calavari thought. “Whether or not they’ll want to leave the war zone is the real question. If this war was happening in Star Force territory and the Calavari came and pulled you off a destroyed colony, would you want to leave or get back into the fight?”

“Dumb question there,” Jenna answered.

“Don’t assume their military is going to be any different, for the most part. We’ll have to be choosey, as well as offering to relocate the ones who don’t want to leave…probably just drop them off at Drema, but there’s only so many refugees they can take on, and we don’t want the Calavari government catching on to what we’re doing. We need to deal exclusively with the Calavari colonies that have been lost or are in really bad shape, and I can’t go up to them and offer to evacuate half of them,” Morgan pointed out.

“So we don’t evacuate the military, just the civilians.”

“Their females may be ‘civilians’ but the males aren’t. They all fight, one way or another,” Morgan said, tapping her fingernail on her teeth as she thought.

“This is your end of Operation Conduit,” Jenna said bluntly. “Get Calavari back to the others however you like and they’ll take them from there.”

“Where is there, exactly? If they’re going to a planet in the expansion zone, stopping off at Corneria is out of the way.”

Jenna pulled up the map that had been alongside Jason’s hologram and highlighted the conduit’s route…then brought up a spur several segments away from the Epsilon Eridani System.

“Here’s the point where the Calavari transports will break off…all other jumpships will continue to Corneria as usual.”

“Are the Hycre aware of this?”

“No.”

“What system is that?” Morgan asked, pointing to the end of the spur.

Jenna zoomed in on that portion of map, expanding out Alpha Region until it filled the table.

“Prolio. It has one large, habitable world with conditions favorable to the Calavari. We’re building Star Force infrastructure there already, but tailored to their physiology. You don’t need to send Calavari construction crews back, just the people themselves.”

“Can I offer the Calavari sanctuary here if they travel on their own ships?”

Jenna nodded. “That’s a contingency plan that’s been discussed. If they want to construct their own colony here they’re welcome to, but we’re planning on assimilating the refugees into Star Force, not recreating one of their homeworlds. We can do both, if necessary.”

“Well that’s something then. What kind of numbers can we support, foodstuff wise?”

“As many as you can send our way. With the help of the Kiritak, we’re setting up bioharvest facilities on a scale we’ve never attempted before, some of which are being placed in Alpha Region to directly feed the Calavari. One of them will be operational before you can get the first refugees there.”

Morgan nodded. “Useful little buggers, aren’t they?”

“I had a chance to meet a few before we left. They’re very eager to help, and they speak perfect English, which is a little disconcerting.”

“Randy’s doing…what’s their efficiency like?”

“Better than ours, mostly. Their smaller size is letting us design more compact factories, and we’ve got a very basic ambrosia formula worked up for them…so they’re very hyper.”

“Not sure that’s a good idea,” Morgan scoffed, trying to imagine what that would look like.

“It’ll increase the odds of them reaching self-sufficiency, and that will help maintain a workforce rather than having to cyclically replace…”

“I know, I know. I was joking.”

“Oh,” Jenna said, having missed that cue, probably due to the fact that she hadn’t seen Morgan in more than 20 years.

“Who’s handling the Calavari at Prolio?”

“Jason and Jace. Jace with the training and Jason is organizing the entire operation from a seda he built in orbit. They’ve got the relay network extended out that far, so he can link in with Corneria and the rest of the inner zone.”

“Have they got it out to Namek yet?”

“Working on it, but they’re still missing a few links.”

“Do the warships you’ve brought have telaris sensors?”

Jenna nodded. “Both the jumpships and the drones.”

“Well then…looks like I’m claiming a new flagship. We’ll swap out my oldest ones and put them on convoy duty.”

“What about Taryn and Leif?”

Morgan shrugged. “First come, first serve,” she said with a smirk.

Jenna mirrored her expression. “Jason wanted me handling the convoys, unless you had another place for me?”

“Sort of,” Morgan said, thinking fast and already having outlined a rough playbook that she’d be working out of for the next decade. “The Captains can handle themselves moving up and down the conduit, what I need you to do is oversee the transfer from my taskforce back to Drema…and to make sure we don’t lose that planet, otherwise our convoys coming up the conduit could be walking into an ambush. The Nestafar are fairly good at insystem intercepts, and if a ship is caught sleeping they’ll nail it.”

“I’d hope none of our Captains are that sloppy.”

“They’re not, but some of the Calavari are, and the Nestafar have picked up a lot of experience at their expense, so they’re not so hesitant to try as others might be.”

Jenna nodded. “How many warships do you want to leave me?”

“Enough to hold Drema and patrol the routes out to ever changing pickup points,” Morgan said, taking control of the map and zipping it over to Calavari territory…which was far larger than all six Regions surrounding Sol combined.

She pointed to their current position, then ran her finger back through several systems until she got to Drema.

“We’ll have to coordinate well, but I want fingers coming out from Drema that will be your responsibility to guard. Me, Taryn, and Leif will bring the Calavari transports to the end points where they’ll meet up with your escorts. Once they do and move back to Drema, the finger will move to another position, that way neither the Nestafar nor anyone else will be able to peg our movements and get inventive.”

“I’ll have to know where to go ahead of time,” Jenna pointed out.

“I’ll send the next finger endpoint back with the jumpships, so will Taryn and Leif. You plot the best route to get there…and be mindful of the geography, there are some jumplanes that we won’t use, but the Nestafar will.”

“I thought our shields were on par with theirs by now?”

“The newer models are better, actually, we’re just more cautious with navigation. They’re losing so many ships per day that the odd debris collision during jumps probably seems minor compared to the distance savings.”

“Glad I’m not on their side.”

“The Calavari are doing the same thing, as far as I can tell. Information on their movements is sketchy, but they’re desperate. They know they’re losing, even with Alliance help. Their naval disadvantage is proving too great, but then the Nestafar can’t easily take the worlds they’re claiming from orbit. That means really messy ground combat that is eviscerating the Nestafar.”

“We’ve been picking off as many ships from orbit as we can,” Morgan continued, “but have left most of the ground engagements to the Calavari. We’ve pacified this region more or less, but we keep moving about so as not to draw attention for a counterattack. Thus far it’s been easy pickings, but equipment wears down and ammunition is depleted, limiting what we can do. So I hope somewhere in that big ass fleet of yours there’s supplies for me and just not the Calavari?”

“Well, we had to fill the empty interiors with something for the trip out,” Jenna said, smiling.

“Why are the carriers empty then?”

“They’re only empty since Drema. We dropped off a lot of stuff to fortify the planet.”

“Good,” Morgan said, relieved that Jason was on top of the planning. “Now give me the rundown on who and what you brought.”

4

August 27, 2439

Renx System

Lrat (Nestafar Occupation Zone)

Bronsor ducked behind a tree trunk as a pair of Nestafar infantry flew by overhead, pulling his four arms in close to his chest and trying to hold still. He and the rest of his unit had fled into the hills surrounding the city of Sassma when the garrison finally fell, and they’d been hunted ever since, though the Calavari had been taking down a good number of them from range.

These had gotten in close, meaning Bronsor’s unit was either out of place, incapacitated…or dead, otherwise this pair would have been sniped out of the sky by now. Give the Nestafar the sky and they had a significant advantage, but force them down to ground level and the odds weren’t in their favor. The trees here weren’t the thickest, granting many gaps for the Nestafar to fire down through and leaving Bronsor in a tight spot when he’d been expecting fire support.

Luckily the Nestafar didn’t spot him and flew on past. The Calavari held still for several seconds afterwards, listening for more wing flaps or footsteps and hearing neither. Unfurling his arms from his sides, he pulled up his one remaining rifle and held it at the ready in his lower right hand. He only had a few dozen shots remaining, and after that he’d be down to his knives, which wouldn’t be very useful against Nestafar in the air, especially given that he wasn’t very good at throwing them.

Bronsor walked away from his tree, trying to stay under the thick parts of the reddish/brown canopy as he moved further into the forest and away from the city…heading to a small training outpost where he and the others hoped they’d find some supplies. Ammo they needed, but food and water were more scarce, and Bronsor hadn’t eaten anything the past 2 days, leaving him lightheaded but none the less committed to reaching his target and finding a way to survive.

Ten minutes later he heard a rifle shot nearby, but couldn’t see anyone ahead through the brush or any Nestafar in the air from his position underneath the broken canopy. Gripping the upper branch of his Y-shaped rifle with his top right arm as well as the lower, he readied himself to shoot quick and headed in the direction the sound of the shot had come from.

It didn’t take him long to find a Calavari lying dead beneath a tree…but he hadn’t been killed by the Nestafar. The plasma burn to his forehead had come from his own rifle, which lay nearby at an angle that told Bronsor that he’d triggered it with his foot while placing his head over the barrel, meaning he’d killed himself.

Bronsor closed his eyes for the moment, then opened them and picked up the rifle. Checking its ammo supply he found it only had 8 shots remaining, but it was 8 more than he’d previously had so he switched it over to his lower left arm and carried it away with him, leaving the body where it lay and wondering how much longer he could hang on before being tempted to do the same as Chavva had just done.

The Nestafar owned the planet now. Sassma had been one of the remaining holdouts, but now it was gone, overrun by the flying bastards and their hard armored walkers. Their infantry the Calavari could handle, but the walkers were damn near impossible to take out when they hit you with numbers, and they’d assaulted Sassma with more than 40 of them.

With air support they might have been able to do something about that, coupled with heavy weapons on the ground, but the Calavari Valeries had long since vanished from the skies of Lrat, and only bits and pieces of military units were left scattered across the planet trying to claim some minor victories or, like Bronsor’s group, just trying to stay alive.

He’d seen what the Nestafar had been doing in Sassma on his way out, taking a moment to look back from atop a hillside in the forest. They weren’t capturing the city or taking prisoners…they were razing it, with their walkers moving in through the buildings and methodically taking them apart one plasma blast after another.

Bronsor doubted many would have survived, save for fleeing into the forest as he had, but like he’d seen, the Nestafar had scout patrols out hunting the survivors down, so this really looked like their last stand, scattered amongst the trees wondering whether they’d die of Nestafar plasma or starvation.

He wasn’t ready to give up all hope yet, for so long as he lived there was a chance he could kill at least one more of the bastards that were annihilating his people. So he pushed on, weary and wobbly as he was, walking slow but steadily towards the training outpost that one of the local soldiers had marked on a map before evacuating.

Bronsor wasn’t from Sassma, but rather he and the others of his unit had been shifted here after the defeat at Nonssa, and before that at the primary spaceports in Luissen. Originally he’d been assigned to a counterattacking army that had got its ass royally kicked during the first months of the planetary assault, then he and the survivors had been bounced from one defensive position to another, until now there was nowhere left to evacuate to, nor anyone to do the evacuating.

Another couple hours went by before he heard another shot, this one further away and Nestafar…quickly followed by several more. Eager to get some payback, Bronsor spotted the nearest high ground and found a gap in the trees wide enough that he could see partially around the perimeter, because he didn’t think he had the strength left to climb up any of them.

He didn’t have to, for off in the distance, hovering just above the tree line, were a trio of Nestafar infantry firing down on what was probably another member of his unit. They’d intentionally scattered, all heading for the training outpost from different angles to keep from giving their position or their heading away…but also close enough that they could support each other should one of them get attacked.

Bronsor dropped his own rifle on the ground, then held up the one he’d gotten from Chavva and activated the long range holographic sight on top, seeing the three targets appear before zooming in on them while trying to hold the rifle still.

Having two arms on it helped greatly, but he reached over with his other two for extra stability as he saw one of the three Nestafar fall to a golden plasma lance from far off to his left, meaning one of the others was sniping as well. Bronsor fired off a shot, missing badly, then pulled the trigger four more times before finally dropping one of the remaining two out of the air. He wasn’t sure if it was dead or just winged, but he hoped if it was the later that whoever was down on the ground would finish it off personally.

The third flier went evasive, but the other sniper took it down and Bronsor deactivated the sight on his rifle and got moving again, knowing that he and the others couldn’t linger. He was also angry with himself for using 5 shots on one target. No matter how weak he was getting he shouldn’t have missed 4 times. That was just wasted ammo.

The Calavari walked on…and on…and on, eventually coming to the approximate location where the training outpost was supposed to be, wondering by now if it was even real, or if it had just been a false hope given to him and what remained of his unit as they fled the city. Realizing there wasn’t anything else to do aside from lay down or die, he kept looking around for another hour until he spotted a Calavari who flagged him down and motioned him to come over.

Relieved that at least he wouldn’t have to die alone, he trudged across the forest, now with every step feeling as if his large feet were dragging weights on them. When he got close to where the other was situated, it stepped out and offered him its top two fists, which Bronsor tapped back in a welcoming gesture.

“Good to see another friendly face. Name’s Atriaacs.”

“Bronsor. I was told there was a training outpost around here.”

“There is,” the Calavari said to Bronsor’s relief. “I’d point you in the right direction, but you look like you can barely stand. Follow me,” he said, taking one of the rifles from Bronsor to lighten his load.

“It’s almost out.”

“We have replacement packs,” Atriaacs said as they weaved their way between the tree trunks, which were thicker in this part of the forest, leaving less aerial visibility, though there were still occasional breaks where the sky could be seen. “Every weapon is useful. It was good of you to bring two.”

“The rest of my unit should be here soon, if not already.”

“We will find and bring them in if they get here. This location is well hidden. Hopefully we can outlast the Nestafar…and give them a good fight if we can’t. Their walkers can’t get up here, so you walking all this way wasn’t for naught. Just a little further now.”

“Do I look that bad?” Bronsor asked.

The other Calavari turned around as he continued to walk and gave him a once over glance. “Yes.”

Bronsor tried to laugh, but his throat was so dry it came out as a cough.

Atriaacs waved to someone ahead of him in the forest, then pointed Bronsor ahead.

“He’ll take you the rest of the way in. I have to return to my post.”

Bronsor nodded his thanks, but didn’t speak again as the Calavari went their separate ways. He walked up to another of his four-armed kin and was escorted up over a short ridge, then down to the bottle of a bowl-like depression that held a number of trees and one well camouflaged entrance to a subsurface base.

“Food and water inside…get yourself patched up,” the other sentry said, clapping him on the back and sending him down.

Bronsor walked down the narrow steps, trying to keep his dizzy head from losing its balance. He managed to get down the three flights, then stepped off onto a stone floor with a pair of armed guards standing watch. They hurried him inside the facility, which looked like a basic hideout. No power or equipment, just hollowed out tunnels connecting empty rooms that had begun to be filled with portable equipment and supplies.

Ceiling lights were stick-ons, battery powered, as was everything else. Bronsor was eventually escorted into a larger room with a number of portable bunks, half of which were occupied, but his eyes went straight to the water keg set on a table. He walked over and downed several cups worth before a higher ranking Calavari could get over to him.

“Easy there, or you’ll choke. How many of you got through?” the slightly taller soldier said, handing Bronsor a foodstuff package.

“There were 12 of my unit that got out of the city, along with a handful of others. We split up to avoid attention. Other than hearing rifle shots, I haven’t had any contact with them…aside from a body.”

“No comms?”

“There was word that the Nestafar were tracking them, so we left them in the city.”

“Get some rest,” the larger Calavari said, placing a hand on Bronsor’s head and giving it a slight double tap. “You did well in getting here.”

“For what it’s worth,” he said, opening the package and biting into a hard ration, his jaw aching from lack of activity.

“We’re not dead yet.”

Bronsor nodded, then what he assumed was the commander walked off leaving him alone. He sucked down another cup of water then walked over and sat down on a bunk, feeling like his legs weren’t going to allow him to get back up again. He ate the contents of the package, all three items, then laid down, still feeling hungry but knowing from experience that he had enough in his stomach…it was just a matter of time before digestion kicked in and got the food into his bloodstream.

Bronsor woke up some time later, realizing he had nodded off without noticing. The room was empty, with the other occupants having left him to sleep. He found that odd, then heard people scurrying around elsewhere in the outpost, with him fearing the worst. Forcing himself to sit up, he looked for his rifle that had been at the foot of his bunk, but it was gone.

Guessing that it had been added to the communal armory, he stood up and stumbled his way to the open doorway and out into the hall, following the commotion until he caught up with the others.

“What’s going on?” he asked to the backs of half a dozen of them.

“We don’t know,” Dwermat said, doing a double take. “Good to see you again, Bronsor.”

“Likewise,” he said, walking up to the group and trying to look over their shoulders.

Up on the surface the Calavari commander strained his hearing, barely able to pick up the sound his sentries had heard but were unable to identify. It had a repeating pattern, not identical, but rhythmic…and not anything of either Calavari or Nestafar make.

The commander slowly cracked a smile, then pointed upwards to the nearest of the sentries before he jumped up and grabbed a low tree branch and began climbing.

“What is it?” the sentry asked halfway up.

“It’s a battle song,” the heavy Calavari said, having to carefully select branches that could hold his weight, though he had no trouble lifting himself from one to another using all four of his muscular arms. “A call to arms.”

“Nestafar?”

“No, of course not.”

“I didn’t know we had battle songs?”

“Not like this, no. If I’m right, it’s one of our allies,” the commander said, getting up high enough to push his head up into clean air. “And they’ve got a ship nearby transmitting.”

“Which ally?” the sentry said, coming up on another tree nearby.

The commander’s smile went from understated to full blossom as he saw the tiny block of a starship hovering over the distant city of Sassma and firing down on it with blue plasma.

“Humans,” he said casually, then he raised his voice and shouted back down to the base and the rest of the nearby sentries. “Humans! Our allies have arrived! The Humans are here!”

“So’s our enemy,” the sentry pointed out, extending an arm to the southeast, almost in line with where the city lay.

“Damn them…get everyone armed,” he ordered at seeing the flock of fliers wheeling about and heading their way thanks to his shouting. One last glance at their approximate position and he started climbing back down in a hurry.

“Get a comm to the Humans,” he said as he came down, with the others in the outpost surrounding the entrance as they came up, some with weapons, some not. “Let them know where we are and take up defensive positions. We’ve got Nestafar infantry coming in from that direction,” he said, pointing.

Those with weapons gave him a few excited nods and moved out, while the others filed back inside ahead of him.

Bronsor came up to the surface a few minutes later, having found himself a fully loaded plasma rifle, and moved to one of the better sniping positions outlined by those that had been here longer than him. By the time he got there he only had a few seconds before the sound of wing beats obscured the music of ‘The Imperial March’ that the Human warship was blaring across the landscape. He didn’t know what the sound was, but to him it meant hope and help, only now they were going to have to stay alive on their own merits a bit longer…and that was a fight he was more than up for.

He set himself against the side of a thick tree trunk and aimed up through a gap in the canopy as plasma fire from both sides overrode the thrumming of the wing beats. A moment later a group of Nestafar flew over in a hurry and he fired up at them, tagging one in the wing and causing it to fall into the treetops, but it didn’t come down to the forest floor.

Bronsor fired again and again every time a Nestafar passed over, seeing red plasma come raining down through the leaves where their enemy wouldn’t. Two deadly raindrops hit the ground near him, but he didn’t get hit and continued to fire back up at every enemy he could see while the other Calavari did the same.

Then a tree fell nearby, having been cut off at the trunk by a series of plasma hits. It dragged a couple of others over with it, exposing a larger swath of sky that Bronsor used to his advantage, knocking down two Nestafar in quick shots…then he had to duck behind his own tree as the enemy swarm dropped lower into the opening and fired on him and the others.

Bronsor ducked back out for a quick shot, seeing some 6 Nestafar blow apart into confetti when he fired. He knew instantly that it wasn’t his doing, but that of a Calavari scattergun…but where in the world had a Valerie come from?

Before he could wonder a gray blur flashed by overhead, skimming the trees and poaching the Nestafar, which was when he realized it wasn’t a Valerie, but one of the Human skeets whom the Calavari had gifted with the scattergun technology.

As the bits and pieces of Nestafar bodies fell down onto the felled tree Bronsor smiled for the first time in weeks. The Calavari leadership had chosen their allies well.

5

August 28, 2439

Renx System

Lrat

Bronsor walked up into the back of the Human dropship, which had squeezed itself down in between several trees to get low enough to the ground. The alien gray/white ship was a welcome sight in the morning light, after a long night of watching the plasma flashes over in Sassma. The battle there had apparently ended in the Humans’ favor, for their warship hung over the city most of the night before flying off less than an hour ago, and now they’d sent one of their transports to pick up the Calavari survivors.

There were 38 of them in the training outpost, with only 22 of them having fit into the first transport. It had left Bronsor and the others behind, waiting on this one, which the Calavari was more than glad to climb aboard.

The ceiling was a bit low, but at least they didn’t have to duck down. A few of the Calavari ahead of him sat on the Humans’ low benches while the rest of them, Bronsor included, stood in what appeared to be the cargo section of the craft as the rear hatch sealed up and the dropship lifted off. One Human, nearly their height, stood in gleaming white armor at the entrance to the cockpit, separating them from the pilots as it answered questions.

It seemed Sassma had already been evacuated with only a handful of survivors being found. Bronsor and the others were being transported up to a Human ship while their fleet was out pounding the Calavari across the planet and evacuating all the survivors they could find…meaning they were either conceding the planet to the Nestafar or there were no intact Calavari cities left to move them into.

The trip up to orbit was uneventful. The Humans had small handheld screens on which exterior views could be monitored, for their ship had no windows. Bronsor didn’t get a chance to see one, though he was curious as to how many ships the Humans had brought with them, but most of all he was relieved to be alive and leaving the planet he had once called home. It had become a graveyard, and short of a major effort to rebuild he no longer wanted to be here with the memories of what had occurred.

His mind flashed back to Chavva, who would still have been standing beside him now if he’d only held out a little longer. At the time he’d agreed the situation was hopeless, but was both saddened and proud now. He had survived long enough for help to come, but Chavva could have done the same if he’d only been a bit more stubborn.

As the Human ship left the atmosphere and accelerated up towards the waiting fleet, Bronsor began to feel the effects of having escaped near death…for now his mind was starting to unnumb and a wealth of emotions that he’d been suppressing were beginning to play out, though he managed to keep them off his face as he and the others rode quietly in the back of the Human ship.

Eventually they landed and the hatch behind Bronsor cracked open, lowering into a ramp that he and the others walked down with a host of the shorter Humans waiting for them…but across the huge hangar deck they now stood on there were other Human vessels flying in and unloading more Calavari survivors, which was a welcome sight. Up until now he didn’t know if anyone aside from his unit had survived, and right here in front of him was at least 1,000.

“Welcome to the Hermes 18,” a dark blue uniformed Human said in the trade language as it stepped out in front of them. “This jumpship is going to be your refuge in the near future, and we need to organize your survivors according to your skills. If any of you are techs, please step forward and follow this woman,” the attendant said, pointing to a yellow haired Human in an identical dark blue uniform.

“We are all soldiers,” one of the Calavari beside Bronsor told the Human.

“In that case, follow him.”

Another Human stepped up, held up its hand, then walked off leading them to wherever they were destined to go. After a couple of exchanged glances the Calavari complied, with Bronsor stepping third in line as they dropped into single file on their own accord, much as the rest of the Calavari across the expansive deck were doing.

Once they were several steps away from the dropship the entry port came into view, and outside of it through the containment energy fields Bronsor could see six other Human ships stacked closely nearby, all jumpships. He wished he could see more, but there was a narrow tunnel leading to the outside of the ship that constricted his view, but it was clear that the Humans had come here in large numbers, despite their much smaller populated race.

He looked around at the others, seeing a large number of females and infants…lots of infants, in fact, coming off a trio of the Human ships. They must have evacuated a training brood that the Nestafar hadn’t gotten to, which was fortunate, given their enemy targeted them specifically once they broke into their cities.

Bronsor followed the Calavari in front of him as they left the hangar deck and moved into the ship…which to his surprise had Calavari height hallways. He’d expected it to be compact, but that wasn’t the case.

Eventually they arrived at a set of stairs which they climbed…and climbed, until they got off on an upper level and were led to an area with other Calavari, where the Human dropped them off. Bronsor walked inside the large doors that two of the bigger Humans guarded and was met by a higher ranking Calavari that got them moving through a series of checkpoints where they turned in any equipment they were carrying, removed their clothes, had a quick but thorough injury check, then were shuffled into a bath house.

Bronsor washed off the grime he’d accumulated over the past few days with the ice-cold water jets the Calavari preferred. How and why the Humans had such things built into their ship he didn’t know, but it felt good to find some familiarity on the alien jumpship, and the cleaning did his mood a world of good.

When he exited the cleansing station he found Calavari-sized clothing of Human make, and while it wasn’t familiar material it fit well, as did the boots that they somehow knew to make in the standard Calavari sizes. Apparently they’d come prepared as a relief ship, having gotten information from other Calavari…which made Bronsor worry about how the war was progressing across their territory, if they were assisting the Humans in creating relief ships rather than warships.

The accommodations were none the less welcome, as was the pallet of foodstuffs available outside the dressing area. It was all Human food, but with enough familiarity to suggest that there had been a Calavari cook involved in its preparation. Bronsor filled up a triangular plate and sat down on Calavari-sized tables along with others dressed in the same red clothing as him…and who were having similar reactions to the Humans’ knowledge of Calavari needs, for there was a lot of low level chatter going on amongst the tables and not in the trade language, which they figured was what the Humans would understand.

Bronsor would get no answers as to what they were doing here, but he did hear numerous stories from across the planet, all of which were thoroughly depressing. Their defensive effort had been a total rout, with the number of survivors coming in from various locations occurring only in handfuls.

After he and the others finished eating they were directed into another nearby chamber that held 50 or so seats, also of Calavari size, and once they were filled the door was shut and another Calavari commander stood before them along with a Human.

“I have been here a few days longer than you,” the Calavari began, speaking the trade language for the benefit of the Human, “so I’ve had more time to process what is going on. At first I didn’t like it, but now that I’ve had time to think it through, and the fact that they’re giving us a choice, I have come to respect the Humans’ plan. We all owe them a debt for saving us. On that merit alone, hear him out.”

The Calavari beside the Archon crossed both sets of arms over its chest and remained silent, offering the short man a ‘go ahead’ nod.

“You are fighting the Nestafar,” the level 65 adept began, wearing his casual white uniform rather than armor onboard on the jumpship, “but despite your long history with them, the true enemy is the Cajdital. The Nestafar are fighting you on their behalf, and doing a damn good job of it.”

That caused a bit of stir amongst the seated Calavari, some of whom were mere hours past active combat with their longtime nemesis. The higher ranking Calavari raised one hand to settle them, but didn’t take sleight at the Human’s words.

“They have devoted their entire military to destroying you, and you in turn have devoted your entire civilization towards your defense…and while you have the help of the Alliance, you are still fighting the Cajdital on another front, as is most of the Alliance, which means that none of us can devote our full strength to helping you. Star Force is, at this moment, engaging the Cajdital on a battlefield far from here where they are encroaching on our territory, and we have split our resources and fleets between fighting there, and fighting the Nestafar here.”

“We believe the Cajdital are biding their time, using the Nestafar to either destroy or cripple the Calavari, leaving you nearly defenseless for when they make a larger push. Or perhaps they mean to go after the Bsidd or the Kvash…and you won’t be in a position to help them. Regardless of how they plan to proceed, the Nestafar are intent on destroying you, and the Cajdital mean to use this blood feud between you to their own advantage.”

“The bottom line is, you can’t win this war. The Nestafar are too powerful of a match for you. Even now, as your fleets see victory in key star systems, dozens of others are being abandoned…not by choice, but by lack of available resources. Lrat is one of those worlds, and I don’t need to remind you what happened down there.”

“But I can tell you that this is happened across Calavari territory. Up until recently, Star Force has had roving fleets attacking Nestafar targets rather than establishing defensive lines around your worlds and waiting for the enemy to come to us. We’ve killed many of their ships, their fleets, and their pesky walkers because we’ve been able to choose our battlefields. You have not had that luxury.”

“While our approach is working, it is not enough. Our population is small compared to yours, as is our fleet. We don’t have the numbers to hurt the Nestafar enough to push them back, but we have no intention of letting our Calavari brothers be wiped out…not by the Nestafar…not by the Cajdital…so we’ve come up with a different strategy.”

The Archon activated a large hologram set behind him and the Calavari commander that showed the most recent map of Calavari territory they had.

“The Red is secure territory, the Yellow is Nestafar held worlds, with the Blue being systems that are currently under contention. The Green is worlds that you still hold, but are so weakened that the Nestafar can take control of them at will, if they choose to devote the resources.”

Bronsor looked at the sea of blue, with only small patches of red remaining…he also noticed the black on the opposite side that he knew marked Cajdital-held worlds. Near it was a narrow slice of blue, indicating that they weren’t making a major push forward, but were still inching their way in.

“Star Force has decided to hit as many Yellow worlds were we can, as Lrat just was, and evacuate their populations. Same goes for Green worlds. Both of these categories are beyond the ability of the Calavari government to affect, for they’ve got their hands full fighting in the Blue and defending the Red.”

“Star Force is evacuating as many off these worlds as we can get to all the while hitting Nestafar targets. When we take out their ships on their low priority worlds they have a choice to make…leave them undefended or move troops away from battering the rest of you to counter us. We’ve retaken many worlds since we’ve been out here simply because they don’t have the ships to send to take them back, but long term, it’s the key systems that are going to determine the outcome…while worlds like Lrat get abandoned by both the Calavari and Nestafar.”

“Eventually someone will come back to claim them, and there’s a good chance that it’ll be the Cajdital. We don’t like that, so Star Force is claiming them…or rather, their populations. We know the Calavari need every military asset they can get to fight this war and defend the worlds you already hold, which is why we’re not asking them to participate in this endeavor. We’re picking up people like you…who have been cut off from reinforcements and resupply. Many of whom are starving to death.”

“We’re taking your females, your young ones, your techs, your medics, and other civilians out of the war zone…far out of it, to a planet where they will be safe. There Star Force is beginning to rebuild the Calavari civilization using our resources, our tech, and creating a fallback point should either the Nestafar or Cajdital defeat you.”

“Now hear me out,” the Archon said as some of the Calavari began to get up out of their seats in livid protest. “Please, you’re not the only ones to react like this. If we take you back to your territory, they’re not going to have room for you. Refugees from thousands of worlds have been fleeing back to your safe systems, and as a result they are overloaded. Food shortages are common, with strict rationing taking place.”

“I know you want to return home, and if I was in your position I would not be running away from a fight…which is why we are willing to return you, the soldiers, to a safe Calavari world where you can rejoin your military and do what you can against the Nestafar. You are fighters, as am I, and we will not deny you that path if you wish it, but we will not send your civilians back only to face another Nestafar attack. We are taking them away and helping them rebuild, combining what they know and what we know, and making a stronger Calavari civilization…one that, if we work quickly, could send fleets and troops back here to fight before this war is over.”

“Whether that happens or not, we intend to give your people an escape route, a fighting retreat back to new territory we are providing you. We are not going to let the Calavari be annihilated, even if all we can save is a small piece of your empire.”

The Calavari commander dropped its lower left hand onto the Archon’s shoulder, knowing that he was done speaking, for they’d gone through this speech many times already.

“If you wish to return to the fight, I can understand that,” the four-armed giant said with a deep voice that seemed to calm down the rest of them. “The Humans have offered us training and equipment, of which I have been able to witness a small amount of here. Their skill is not to be underestimated. I would ask that some of you go with them…learn from them, and build a stronghold for the rest of us to flee to, if the war should go ill for us.”

“However, there is a third option. I am not returning to our military, despite the sense of duty I know you all feel. I have requested, and the Humans’ have granted, permission to join their warfleet that is fighting the Nestafar and rescuing survivors such as we just were. The more of us that we can return to the fight, the better it will be for all Calavari. Those of you who wish to stay with me, we will be fighting the Nestafar again within weeks!”

“What training?” Bronsor asked, swallowing hard as the others turned to look at him, realizing he had spoken out of turn. “What do you think you can teach us?”

“A fair question,” the Calavari commander agreed, dismissing the impertinence of the question, given the situation they found themselves in. Normally Calavari didn’t interrupt a superior, rather saving questions and comments until after they were done speaking. “Come forward.”

Bronsor stood up and walked to an aisle, his mind reeling from the choice before him. Running away felt like dishonor, not returning to the Calavari military seemed like abandoning his duty, and going back felt like a drawn out death sentence, leaving the soldier thoroughly conflicted.

The commander glanced at the Archon, who offered a nod of agreement.

“Pin this one to the floor, if you can,” the commander said, gesturing to the Archon, who took a step away and dropped his shoulders an inch or so into a combat stance.

Bronsor frowned, but did as he was told, not seeing much challenge in it. The Human was tiny.

When he reached for it with his upper arms he had them knocked away with blindingly fast punches, then a small hand grabbed his huge wrist and yanked, pulling the Calavari forward and off balance.

Bronsor reached out with all four hands, grabbing for the Human that was no longer there. It had backed up and moved to the side. The Calavari stumbled forward, keeping from falling, but as he stood back up and started to turn in the direction his opponent had moved he caught a hard elbow in the waist just below his right arm.

Bronsor bent into the blow, then found a thin arm looping around his neck from behind, followed by a kick to the back of his knee that crumpled his left leg. He fell backwards, but as he did the arm vanished and he hit the floor without squashing the Human…who quickly appeared over top of him, planting a palm against his forehead and using its full weight to pin it in place so he couldn’t sit up.

“Enough,” the commander said before Bronsor could swat at him with his huge arms.

The Archon let go and stood up, taking a step back as Bronsor did the same.

“As I said, they have many skills, despite their missing arms. Will you accept the challenge of learning from them, and helping teach the others we send after you?” he said in the Calavari’s native language, making it a more personal request now that the Human was out of the loop.

“Promise me I will see combat again.”

“I don’t need to promise you what you already know. We have more enemies at our throats than we can deal with. There will be no shortage of fighting in the years to come.”

“Very well,” Bronsor said, making his choice. “If this is what you think is wise.”

“I know it is. We need a future to fight for, and this is our chance,” the commander said, turning his giant head and looking out at the others still in their seats. “Who else will go?”

6

October 8, 2439

Jasne System

Drema

Bronsor had mixed feelings, seeing many of his comrades departing the Human jumpship via their oddly shaped dropships to head down to the surface of the Calavari world they now orbited. Many more Calavari had chosen to stay onboard and make the trip back to the promised world the Humans were claiming to give them, though most were females and techs. Very few soldiers had agreed to go, and he just felt out of place.

But he’d made a commitment and he intended to see it through. While everyone else was scrambling to fight the Nestafar, he would be attempting to build the groundwork for a new Calavari army, comprised of forgotten and abandoned soldiers that the Humans were gratefully rescuing. For that much, at least, he figured he owed them, for had they not come to Lrat he would probably have been dead by now.

That didn’t make it any easier seeing the others leave. Those Calavari that were staying behind to help in the rescue efforts had already departed piecemeal to other Human ships, but this mass exodus had a different feel to it, partly because Bronsor knew they would be leaving Calavari territory shortly thereafter…at which point he’d be entirely in Human hands.

After watching the departing refugees board their craft and saying farewells to the few he knew personally, the Calavari retreated into one of the Humans’ training areas and continued to work through their fitness program he’d started over a month ago. It was challenging enough to distract him from most of the negative thoughts swirling through his mind, and was altering his body in a way to increase his speed while decreasing his muscle mass…something that he also had mixed feelings about.

He and the other soldiers onboard trained constantly, while the civilian Calavari had other tasks to keep themselves busy with. The Humans had prepped their transport ships well, so that even before they could get their passengers back to the new world, they were training them for what they would need to do upon arrival rather than wasting precious time sitting stagnantly onboard ship.

Ever since the ‘demonstration’ his first day onboard, Bronsor had wanted to spar with one of their Archons again, but unfortunately none were left onboard for the journey back to their territory. That he could understand, given that they were warriors who wanted to be where the action was, making him feel even more out of place, save for the fact that some of the bigger Humans were onboard and proving to be a nearly even match, despite the fact that they had only two arms. They were called ‘Knights’ in the Human tongue, and Bronsor had been told that their training and what the Calavari were going to be put through were quite similar.

Once the jumpship departed along with 5 others carrying Calavari, not to mention a slew of Human cargo ships escorted by only a single warship, Bronsor and the others spent the next 4 months training in four sessions per Human day. That kept him busy with little time to think, complain, or sorrow…with him grateful for the constant activity. The Humans knew well how to treat their fellow soldiers.

When they eventually arrived at their destination Bronsor and the other Calavari were flown down to the surface via dropship, and this time the Calavari did get one of their ‘datapads’ so he could observe what was outside. They were no longer packed inside the back, shoulder to shoulder, but seated at regular intervals that gave them plenty of leg room, though the Human seats were clearly designed for two-armed individuals with no indented arm rests for their lower set.

But that didn’t matter to Bronsor, who’d gotten accustomed to the Human designs. He was interested in seeing this new planet the Calavari would be building on, and as soon as the dropship left the jumpship’s bay he got a view of one of the Human stations in nearby orbit. It was perfectly round and colored deep gray like most of their ships were, and he knew from his recent reading that it was what they called a ‘seda,’ but because of the color he knew it didn’t belong to Canderous, which always had green sedas. That meant it was a Star Force seda, placed here as both an outpost and battle station to guard orbit and the planet below.

The soldier in him wanted to know how they fought, for the Humans hadn’t provided any battle footage, only schematics and general details.

As the dropship passed it by and moved down into the planet’s atmosphere the exterior cameras clouded up a bit by the aerial disruption, then cleared again letting the Calavari see the city below them on the arid planet. Bronsor knew there was no vegetation or native lifeforms, but the atmosphere and gravity were habitable, and would allow them to begin seeding the planet with forests if they could scrape up enough water from beneath the surface…otherwise they’d have to find a way to recycle the carbon dioxide into oxygen artificially.

That wouldn’t be a problem inside sealed cities, but if they wanted to roam free on the surface it would eventually become a problem…and one that the Humans seemed to be on top of already, for he could see a narrow stripe of green around the northern edge of one of their cities, three of which could be seen on the small datapad he held in his hand. The one they were headed for was a military city, where the new Calavari army was going to be trained, with the females and infants being located elsewhere.

As the dropship descended to the middle of the three visible cities, the other two slowly disappeared over the horizon and the landscape below them opened up into a very alien cityscape, far larger than Bronsor had expected it to be. He’d been told that the Calavari would be using Human tech in addition to anything they could build of their own on site, but he hadn’t realized how much infrastructure the Humans had already prepared for them.

The city below them could hold millions of Calavari, judging by the size, making it abundantly clear, along with everything else the Humans had done for them, that their allies were overly intent on reestablishing the Calavari powerbase here, so that they could recover their strength and help the Humans in the war against both the Nestafar and the Cajdital.

When the dropship landed and the rear hatch opened, Bronsor walked out onto the surface of his new home and looked up into the sky on the landing pad, seeing a slight pink haze and tasting the dry air as any doubts as to his coming here erased themselves from his mind. This was a place of power, and a sign of the respect the Humans had for the Calavari, making his success here all the more important, both to his own race and their ally.

Purpose…that’s what he was feeling, and that’s what had been lost on him for some time now. This city, this world surged with hope, drive, and above all else, purpose. This was the Calavari’s future, even if they did manage to hold onto key systems in the war zone. Here they would build a force capable of rescuing the others…and that felt right to him in a way he couldn’t fully articulate.

Fortunately he didn’t have to, for he and the other Calavari remained silent as they walked across the exterior spaceport deck and were passed on to another Human handler that showed them into and through the city, first onboard a hovertruck that took them along the city streets that were a mix of both Humans and Calavari pedestrians, as well as a number of other hovering vehicles. They also passed one of the Humans’ upright walkers as it stomped its way between buildings, loaded with weapon pods.

Bronsor huffed his approval as they passed, as did several of the others beside him in the open aired vehicle that held 8 of them plus a driver. Their Human attendant stood beside the also Human driver without sitting, then led them off and into another blocky Human building when they’d arrived at their destination.

Inside they were given individualized quarters, learning that this was the Humans’ form of a military barracks. To Bronsor it seemed like a lot of wasted space but he didn’t complain, for the sizing was all Calavari, right down to the table tops and doorways, making the few Humans walking around look especially tiny.

He was given an access code for the door, and showed how he could alter it to whatever he wanted, not seeing the point. Calavari didn’t use locked doors except where outsiders were concerned. If your fellow soldiers couldn’t be trusted not to steal your stuff, then there was no way they could be trusted on the battlefield. None the less, with so many Humans around Bronsor thought it was an acceptable safety precaution, despite the fact that he didn’t have any possessions to steal, nor did any of the others.

That was to change within a few hours, when their handler took them ‘shopping’ for all types of gear and personal items…all Human produced for the Calavari. Bronsor picked out several uniforms that he felt were acceptable, along with a comm device, datapad, data chips, person grooming device, and an assortment of other things that he’d not had the luxury of owning on the jumpship. He and the others carried multiple boxes full of items back to their quarters and began organizing them, taking away the empty feeling the multi-roomed chambers had as they were given the rest of the day off to settle in.

Bronsor roamed around the building, then went out with a few of the others to scout the nearby area, discovering that while the architecture was Human, the buildings’ functions were familiarly Calavari. Everything was different, with a Human feel to it, but this had been designed as a city for the Calavari and followed many of their traditions…including a wrestling bar where they could lightly spar with one another over drinks, except that the Humans didn’t allow for any intoxicating or damaging confections.

In their place they had a wide range of new liquids and snacks, most of which Bronsor actually took a liking to. He spent the next several hours there with the scattering of other Calavari in what he learned was still a very low populated city. It was near empty, in fact, making him and the others some of the first evacuees to arrive.

Bronsor squared off with a tech, taking the slightly smaller Calavari down quickly 3 out of 4 times while having to work a bit harder on the fourth. Neither was injured, and the wrestling gave both of them a way to blow off steam against someone they weren’t familiar with, offering a refreshing sparring challenge compared to his fellow soldiers whose fighting styles he’d grown familiar with.

From the tech he learned that the Humans, who preferred to be called Star Force, were having the Calavari learn their tech as well as teach them theirs as they designed new equipment specifically for the Calavari…including their own version of combat walkers to replace the tanks they traditionally used, though they were also upgrading those into remotely controlled drones, similar to the Star Force warfleet.

Bronsor asked many questions, and the techs were eager to talk with their own kin after being surrounded by Humans for most of the day. At first, they admitted, they’d taken affront to Star Force redesigning their military, as if it hadn’t been good enough, despite the fact that the Calavari empire was infinitely stronger than the Human’s tiny territory, but quickly enough they saw it was combat efficiency that they were after. They wanted to keep existing troops deployments intact by building better equipment to protect the soldier, rather than training more soldiers to replace those that were lost.

It was then that Bronsor learned how old some of the Humans were, and he suddenly understood the logic behind their military peculiarities. Some of them were hundreds of years old, with combat experience eclipsing the eldest Calavari…and they did it by making what normally would have been death blows into survivable defeats.

That also told Bronsor that Star Force, small as it was in numbers, was far more powerful than others gave them credit for. For if they could preserve what they had, they could face down much larger enemies and prevail due to attrition being in their favor. The more Bronsor learned from the other Calavari who’d been here for a while, the more impressed he was becoming with the Humans and curious as to what else they had to offer in this newfound brotherhood.

He eventually left the bar and returned to his quarters, sleeping well and too shortly, for his fatigue was greater than he’d realized. When his wakeup call came, he reported for training duty along with the others at the base of the building and was carried off through an underground transit system to a much larger facility, inside of which there were other Calavari soldiers going through a series of training drills…some he recognized, others that were entirely foreign.

As he learned quickly enough, there were no training sessions here…just a long, arduous day with short breaks, none long enough for them to leave the facility. Bronsor was almost ashamed at how out of shape he was compared to the Human trainers that were doing the same workouts alongside them and were barely showing any fatigue. Most of them were Knights, but a handful were the tiny Archons who were unbelievably fast, not to mention overly strong for their size.

Bronsor returned to his quarters at the end of the day with a couple of hours of free time to spare before heading to bed, but he was too tired to go anywhere so he just crashed on the circular pad that was one type of Calavari couch and turned on the vid screen. Half of the available channels were in the Human language, with the other half mostly being in the trade language. Two were native Calavari, but they weren’t the news programs he wanted, so he sat in the glory of sore muscles and well-earned fatigue, for Star Force was very keen on running workouts, and watched/listened to the planetary updates from Calavari commentators in the trade language.

His interest kept him awake for half an hour, then he woke up to find that he’d dozed off for another 45 minutes in what felt like a matter of seconds. Pulling himself up and into his sleeping room he committed himself to an early start on his sleep cycle…only to begin again the next day in an arduous routine that would slowly transform his muscular form into a tight, fast, and powerful frame some months later.

Only then would he realize that he’d completed basic training…and was going to advance to the next level of even harder trials.

7

July 3, 2440

Prolio System

HTC

Bronsor woke up bleary eyed as normal, pulling himself off his sleeping pad and dressing in a rush. He had to get down to the cafeteria and grab something to eat before the others left for training. Normally he’d allow himself a bit more time to wake up, but today was special and he didn’t want to lag behind.

Apparently the others felt the same, for when he got down to the eating hall most of them were already chowing down on foodstuff bars and cakes, all of Human fashion and designed not to be a drag on the stomach…though the Calavari still knew better than to overload himself with fuel before entering a training session. Their trainers didn’t take it easy on them, with heavy workouts hitting them the moment they arrived rather than seeing a gradual transition, so he carefully chose a plateful of items and a single bottle of water and began eating as fast as he could.

He made up some time and left about middle of the pack, hopping into the subsurface rail lines that took him over to his designated training facility where he and the other ‘advanced’ students were shuffled off into a sort of briefing room, breaking with their normal routine. Inside there were no chairs, but rather a lighted demonstration area surrounded by stacks of crates, by which several of their Human trainers were standing…along with an Archon in his white uniform, though this one had a green stripe down the side.

Bronsor stiffened. He’d learned about Star Force’s various ranks and knew that very few of the Humans rated a green stripe. It meant this person was what they called a ‘ranger’ and was one of their war leaders. Had he not seen what the other lower ranking Archons were capable of he would have assumed this Human was a fit weakling, judging by his size, but Bronsor’s eyes had become accustomed to sizing up their smaller race and he could tell by looking at him that this one was different, despite the uniform.

“Today,” Jace-013 began speaking the trade language, “those of you who have progressed to training tier 4 are going to get an upgrade. Traditionally, you’re used to wearing shields as defense in combat…well, we’re one upping that and giving you proper armor, for which you were already measured. These suits are custom fitted for each of you, so no sharing or trading. We have units that can be adjustable, but trust me when I say that your custom set will be far more comfortable and agile than one of the generic ones.”

The trailblazer glanced around the assembled Calavari, some 50 of them, and pointed to one.

“Your name?”

“Nratch,” the larger biped said, looking down towards the Human.

“You get to be first. Step into the circle.”

The Calavari huffed and walked over to the lighted area, leaving the dimly lit remainder of the room where the others were standing. As he came up the handlers opened one of the crates and began pulling out pieces of armor painted bright orange.

“Your armor comes in pieces,” Jace explained. “When you strap it on the various pieces will interlock and you’ll have an airtight seal with a short term backup oxygen supply that will allow you to survive in vacuum for a brief period of time. It will also allow you to move under water and will lock down against airborne toxins automatically. When that happens you need to get to clean air before you run out of reserves, but it will allow you to survive in situations where others won’t if you’re quick enough.”

Nratch stepped up at the prompting of one of the handlers as the Human slid an open boot underneath the Calavari’s thick, pedestal-like foot. When he stepped back down he gained a couple of inches of height, then the handler began cinching up the internal grip lines, ensuring that the boot wouldn’t slip around when moving, then he began locking the hard plates in place over top as Nratch stepped up to receive his other boot.

“The armor has weight, obviously, which will slow your movements. This is why you must train for speed without it, mastering the required movements, then learn to repeat those movements with the extra weight, meaning you will be training in the armor as well. Over time it will become natural, like a second skin, but in the beginning it will be cumbersome and you will be going to bed stiff and sore.”

“The armor has no powered joints, meaning your muscle is what moves it, same as our armor. As you become stronger you will gain access to stronger plates, increasing the durability of the armor in battle. While this may be new to you, it is something we Archons have grown accustomed to over the past 400 years.”

With the boots locked in place and coming up to cover Nratch’s knees, the Calavari stepped up and down in place, testing the weight and traction, then three handlers came over with more sections, the first of which was the cod piece that locked around his waist and looped down between his legs. When it was attached like a belt, the other Humans brought in the upper leg pieces and wrapped them around his tree trunk-like quadriceps.

The halves locked together smoothly, but were still loose where they butted up against the boots and cod piece.

“Now,” Jace said, talking directly to Nratch. “Wiggle around and the pieces should lock together.”

The Calavari wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do, but he followed orders and began moving his leg side to side. Suddenly there was a click on his right knee and the armor became more rigid, but still flexible enough to give him considerable range of movement. Nratch tried to mimic the same motion on the other leg and, after a few attempts, got it to lock as well.

The hip movement was trickier to master, but after several embarrassing attempts in which he almost tipped over and fell, the leg pieces locked into place and the Calavari was fully armored from the waist down.

“You can wear the armor with or without a uniform underneath,” Jace said as the handlers retrieved additional pieces. “On occasion it will bunch up if you leave a crease, so be careful to smooth any out when you put the armor on. The inner gel layer will mold to your body, spreading out concussion from a single point to a wider area, allowing you to hit and get hit harder than normal, but you still have limits, so don’t go jumping off any cliffs and expecting the armor to save you.”

“One advantage you have over our original designs is a built in shield generator,” he said as the torso piece was brought up and wrapped around the Calavari’s huge upper body…huge not only in size but in height, for it stretched out longer than a Human’s to accommodate the two sets of shoulders. “It’s extra protection, and will allow your armor to survive longer, but don’t get in the habit of walking out into the line of fire. That’s not what this armor is for…that’s what your physical shield is for, which we’ll get to later.”

“You are to train and fight in the armor as if you had none on. Over time you will learn how far you can press your advantage, but now that you’re just learning, treat every situation as if you were still exposed…and we have several new training challenges waiting for you that will reinforce that point.”

Nratch’s chest plate latched together with the back piece at multiple points along the side and near the neck, then he wiggled around to get it to attach at the waist without having to be prompted to do so, learning quickly.

“The energy shield will stop plasma and other forms of energy weapons, but it will not stop physical impacts…that’s what the armored plates are for. Later on we might integrate physical shields, but so far it’s been more effective in this manner. We’re constantly experimenting with our own armor, and any advances we make will eventually trickle down to you, so you can consider this to be your prototype armor. By the time you see real combat, you’ll probably have an upgraded version.”

“Now,” Jace continued as the arm pieces were slipped over Nratch’s wrists and pulled up to his shoulders, minus the gloves, “the color. Archon armor is either red, silver, or green at this point…and we’ll be adding another when our skill level merits it. Star Force Regulars have dirty white armor of a similar design, though it’s not identical to ours. The Knights have pure white armor, also of a slightly different design, and the Clans have identical armor to the Regulars, though they’re all individually colored to match their affiliation.”

“Your armor is orange, and designates you as a Calavari Knight. You are, as of this moment, a part of Star Force’s military. Other Calavari soldiers will not possess this armor. What they will have has not yet been determined, nor is it your concern. You are here to train, to learn, and to grow to the point where you will be sent back to fight the Nestafar and Cajdital, and you will do so as an integrated part of Star Force.”

“Obviously, there are differences between you and the Human Knights, both advantages and disadvantages. You will learn from each other, test each other, and make each other better…but be warned, you are infants compared to the rest and still have a long way to go, but today marks the beginning of the Calavari Knights, of which this armor is a symbol, but it’s far more than that. It is a weapon unlike any you’ve used before.”

Nratch wiggled on the first pair of arms, repeated the process with the second, then pulled on the armored gloves he was given, locking those in place. His helmet came last, but it was Jace who brought it to him, hesitating before he handed it over.

“The helmet has comm gear, and access to our battlemap. You haven’t used it yet, but it allows for tracing of allied and enemy units by relaying data from one unit to another. We have a network that shares that data, allowing one set of eyes to be shared by all. There are a few switches inside that you’ll have to learn to use your tongue to manage, but the interface controls are on your forearm gauntlet…lower left, I believe.”

Jace nodded at Nratch, and the Calavari looked around until he found the release, then pulled an armored panel up on a hinge, revealing a slew of large buttons…or large for a Human’s finger, but normal for a Calavari.

“There are a lot of options, which you’ll be educated in later. Know that the helmet is what contains the transmission gear and power pack, and it links in to the other systems at the back of the neck. Those systems are minor, and will not help you move the armor. Again, that comes from muscle power, which you must develop further. The power pack for your energy shields is separate, and located in the torso section.”

Jace handled the Calavari the helmet, who took it up higher than the Archon could reach and slipped it on over his large head, then snapped it into place, completing the air tight seal.

Then suddenly the Calavari was gone…replaced by a bright orange, four-armed Knight.

Jace walked over to another crate and pulled out what looked like a thick suit case with a green helmet attached to the top. He pulled it off and unfurled his own armor into one sprawling piece that he stepped into and locked up inside of 30 seconds, finishing off with his helmet that altered his voice into a slightly more mechanical version.

“Alright guys, suit up. We’ve got some drills to run through.”

Bronsor walked forward with the others, each finding the crate that held their armor. He opened his and pulled out one of the boots, finding it was heavier than he’d expected. He put it on, trying to duplicate the procedure he’d seen with Nratch, and had it halfway fitted before a trainer came around and showed him how to adjust the tension straps.

He got his other boot on with less trouble, then proceeded to the cod piece, thighs, and torso section, making sure to smooth out any wrinkles as he went. He walked around a bit, just a few steps here and there, surprised by the weight/agility level. His movements were smooth, yet slowed, as if he’d suddenly lost a great deal of fitness. He wondered about that as he pulled his arm pieces on one by one, then locked them in place and went for the gloves. Unlike the Archon’s and Human Knights’, the Calavari’s armored hands only had four fingers that were considerably thicker. Fortunately the gloves fit perfectly to his anatomy, allowing him most of his original dexterity while cushioning his digits against the hard plates that now covered them.

Bronsor liked the feel and flexed his hands thoroughly as he shifted around, making sure all the clicks were completed so that his armor was connected properly, then he held up his helmet, looking inside at the tongue switches and hitting one with his finger before sliding it on.

That one was the power switch, which he then tested with his thick tongue, making sure he could reach. He flicked the power off and back on again, then snapped the helmet in place, making connection with the rest of the armor and getting a status diagnostic that showed full strength on his armor plating…or was it his shields?

He wasn’t sure, as most of the internal helmet displays were new to him, but at the prompting of the handlers and the Archon he didn’t worry about it. After all of the Calavari got into their armor Bronsor followed Jace out, feeling his movements were slow yet strong, and walked to a nearby chamber that held a running track.

“Ok, first rule…no stopping, no walking. Run as slow as you have to, but keep going. It’s going to take a while for you to learn the new movements, then a long time to adapt to the armor, so be prepared to suffer for a while,” Jace said, stepping out ahead of the group and down to lane one. “Your size and strength are assets in combat…but it also makes you slow, which is a disadvantage, even for a Knight. You have to lessen this disadvantage, which the armor makes even worse. Today you get four laps in the armor. Try to make it before I get 8 in.”

With that Jace took off around the track and Bronsor’s jaw dropped inside his helmet as he saw how fast his little green armor was moving.

“Move, move, move!” one of the trainers yelled as a pair of Human Knights bumped arms with the Calavari and started pacing them around the track wearing their bright white armor.

Bronsor and the others got going, realizing they were on the clock as Jace disappeared around the first turn. At first the running seemed normal, but by the time he’d gotten past the first 100 meters his body seemed to change its mind and start to drag on him, but as he’d been instructed he slowed down and continued running, not able to keep pace with the white Knights who evenly trudged their way around the track, making it painfully obvious how inferior the Calavari were.

A few brave ones stuck with them for the first lap, heaving their two sets of arms back and forth to maintain rhythm, but they all dropped off pace over the second lap as the Archon came around and lapped them all before they even completed the first circuit. When he passed Bronsor the Calavari was laboring, and he got the message the Human was trying to impart.

Wearing armor required a higher level of strength and skill. It wasn’t just something you put on and you were instantly more combat capable…you had to adjust to it first, meaning that he and the others had to learn to wear it, and that it wasn’t just something that Star Force could give to the rest of the Calavari to use in the war against the Nestafar.

That realization made the Humans all the more impressive, especially the Archon, who moved with such a fluid grace and speed that seemed to defy the physics of his hard plating. Jace finished his 8 laps 100 meters ahead of Bronsor, who crossed the finish line to realize there was a clock running. He marked a 10:53, which was more than 4 minutes slower than his best time of 6:04.

When he crossed the line he almost collapsed, but had the sense to clear the line so others could come across and walked a few steps further, then bent over and breathed deeply, finding that the helmet didn’t cut back on his oxygen intake despite the close cage over his mouth and nose.

“What’s the matter guys,” Jace gloated with his synthesized voice booming from the speakers inside the Calavari’s helmets as he transmitted directly to them over the comm. “That was just an easy run for me, and my armor is a lot denser than yours. Come now, are you going to let a pathetic Human show you up?”

“You are anything but pathetic,” one of the Calavari answered back over his exterior mic, not knowing yet how to respond over the comm.

“No, I’m not,” Jace agreed. “But I’ve had 400 years of training to get this far. You’ve only had a handful of months. Longevity is the key. That’s why we needed you to come here and train instead of going right back at the Nestafar. Training is everything, and with it, you can unlock a power you’ve never known. This armor is the first major piece of that power.”

The trailblazer glanced at one of the Knights, who were noticeably not winded as the Calavari were. He walked over in his white armor and clapped a slightly larger Calavari on the back as it was doubled over, still gasping for air.

“Welcome to Star Force…and a whole new kind of warfare.”

8

March 2, 2441

Prolio System

HTC

Bronsor ducked behind his ‘half’ shield, with several stingers splattering against it from the nearby turret. He kept his helmeted head down, knowing well that the training armor he was wearing wouldn’t absorb the stun energy like his combat set would. Then again, it wouldn’t be much of a challenge if he and the other 5 Calavari on his team could just walk up to the finish pedestal with impunity.

He pulled out one of the specially made stinger pistols Star Force had designed for the Calavari from a hip holster and held it at ready behind his left shield with his lower hand, knowing he was going to have to be quick or get a face full of paint. Bringing his right side half shield around, which was actually more of a 3/4ths version of the Knights’ full shields, he touched the inner edges together, making a wedge that he hid within, hoping the turret wouldn’t hit his exposed feet as he stepped forward.

Bronsor felt the stingers impacting the shield and felt just a hint of numbness entering his forearms as it soaked through the material, but it wasn’t enough to cause him to drop them. Plodding forward under the turret fire he got within 10 meters and cracked the shields apart, popping the pistol out through the gap and firing repeatedly at the target sphere atop the turret with orange paint.

Two of the red stingers got through the gap and hit him in the chest. His arms went weak and his shields split even more, allowing the kill shots through. Bronsor blacked out from multiple hits and keeled over unconscious, only to wake up some time later staring up into the white helmet of a Knight.

“What did you do wrong?” Marshal asked behind the faceplate.

“I opened myself up to attack in order to land a killing shot,” Bronsor answered in English, sitting up and shaking his head clear. One of his armored gloves had been removed to inject him with the destunning serum, which he now pulled back on, looking down at the globs of red paint covering his dull gray armor.

“Stupid,” the elder Knight pronounced. “It takes more than one hit to take down a turret, and you exposed your center line on top of it. You have shields and four arms, use them!”

Marshall stepped back and Bronsor stood up. He was a few inches taller than the Human, but he felt the smaller, for the Knight was far stronger than he could ever hope to be.

“Pick up your shields and weapon.”

Bronsor leaned over and retrieved his gear, seeing none of his team around. The challenge had obviously ended, but he didn’t know if they’d won or lost.

“Repeat what you did.”

Bronsor faced the turret and split his shields slightly, sticking the pistol out into the gap.

“Hold,” Marshal said, walking around in front of him. He grabbed his left shield and pushed it wide, tucking it back along the Calavari’s left shoulders. Then he grabbed the right shield and pulled it across his body so it shielded his torso and came within a few inches of the other shield, but set at nearly a 90 degree angle.

“There, now poke your weapon out.”

Bronsor did as instructed, seeing the improved cover…but little else.

“I cannot see the target,” he said, with the right shield blocking his eye line to the turret.

“And it cannot see you, which is the point.”

“How do I shoot it…guess?”

“Bronsor,” Marshal said harshly, “you have lasted longer than most of the others because you are committed, but commitment doesn’t make a Knight. You have to be smart, and in order to be smart you have to learn to figure some things out for yourself. You have a stationary target…that is all you need to know. Prepare yourself, the turret is going live in 10 seconds.”

The Knight stepped away, leaving the Calavari where he was.

“Oh, and some of the others are too. Get to the finish.”

“As instructed,” Bronsor said, holding position and waiting for the turret to come online. He was trying to figure out how to aim when he couldn’t see, then the paint started flying and he huddled up behind his shields in the form that the Knight had instructed. It worked in so far as allowing his pistol to fire out without him exposing more than his hand, but he couldn’t see what he was shooting at.

He fired off a few shots guessing where the target was…then he remembered what the Knight said. It was a stationary target, meaning a fixed location that wouldn’t alter.

Bronsor took a step to the side and rotated around quickly, bringing the narrow gap between his shields across his eye line for a blink of vision. He rotated back again and repeated several times, mentally approximating where the target sphere was atop the turret with each flash, then he tucked back up to the shields and fired where he remembered it to be.

He fired off 5 shots, then flipped the gap back across his vision, seeing some paint on the underside, meaning he had been shooting low. He fired off another pair blind then check again, whipping the gap across his vision fast enough that it was unlikely a stinger was going to get through in the split second his face and chest were lined up.

Those two orange splats had hit, so he tried to repeat the process, wasting a lot of missed shots but eventually getting the turret up to its saturation limit where it deactivated.

Bronsor poked his head out to make sure, then seeing the barrels no longer puffing out the little paintballs he walked forward and passed through the narrow corridor the turret had been guarding. When he exited out the far side of the artificial mini-canyon he caught another red splat on his left shield, seeing that there were more active turrets on the other side.

On reflex he rammed his way forward, tucked up behind his shields and pulling out his second pistol so that he held the shields with his upper arms and the pair of stingers in the lower hands. Getting a feel for where the two turrets were he slid his shields in to the alignment the Knight had showed him and poked one pistol out the gap, then brought the other around the far side of the shield where…

Suddenly his back went numb as several stingers hit him from behind, then he blacked out and dropped hard with a crunch of armor on shields.

“They’re slow learners,” Marshal said to Jace in the observation blind over the training course as Bronsor woke up from the stun on his own and stood…only to get mowed down by the same turrets again, this time without his shields blocking two of the stinger streams.

“Ouch,” Jace winced in sympathy. The Calavari had head to toe armor on, but the sheer number of hits meant an awful lot of stun energy going into his body…which would end up with pins and needles galore when he woke up again naturally. “Guess the situational awareness is a bit low.”

“They’re brutes,” Marshal said emotionlessly. “They should be better than us, given their advantages, but they’re physically and mentally slow, and unless they learn to counter that it won’t matter how many hands they have.”

“Easy,” the trailblazer said, taking remote control of a hidden turret and popping it out of the ceiling where he aimed at Bronsor and fired a single paintball down onto his chest…this one carried in it a cancelling effect that would negate some of the stun and bring him back awake faster, though it was coated in red same as the stingers, so the trainees wouldn’t know the difference. “They’re first gen.”

“So were we,” Marshal pointed out.

“You didn’t learn very fast, if I remember correctly,” Jace recalled. “If they had other Calavari to learn from this would be going faster…and it will once we get this group squared off.”

“They have us to learn from and they’re still progressing at a snail’s pace.”

Jace looked up at the helmetless Knight that stood more than a foot taller than him. “You had the Black Knight to pattern off of, they have a bunch of skinny, two-armed bipeds to emulate…which they can’t do, so they have to learn what it means to be a Calavari Knight, same as you had to learn what it meant to be a Knight.”

“We weren’t this slow.”

“They’re making progress, which is all that matters. If that stalls out then we’re in trouble.”

“We’re down to 8,” Marshal reminded him. “I’m not sure we’re going to have any in the first class make it through qualification.”

“We’ll get them there if they’re willing,” Jace said, watching as Bronsor began to stir. “Just remember, they’re coming in as ignorant as you were when you came from the MMA.”

Marshal looked down at the Archon. “I’m surprised you remembered that.”

“Also remember, that you’re not a 450 pound mass. They’re going to have to work harder to meet the same agility standards.”

“Unlike you, I’m well aware of the difference. I didn’t always weight 340.”

“My point is it’s worse for them, and when you’re used to moving slow your mindset centers around that. Being quick and devious is totally alien to them.”

“I don’t need devious, just some ingenuity to work with.”

“They’re used to being used as cannon fodder,” Jace pointed out, “with some upgrades. Their shield belts gave them some longevity, but standing toe to toe and slugging it out has been the Calavari way.”

“Same with the MMA,” Marshal countered.

“Ok, point there.”

“My point is, if they can’t hack Knight standards they don’t deserve to be Knights, no matter what they weigh, orange armor or white. We can’t have separate standards…the battlefield doesn’t discriminate, so neither can we.”

“Is there a suggestion in there somewhere?”

“Push them harder. Learn by failure. Break their group think.”

“That’s already happening.”

“More challenges, less training.”

Jace rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “If they’re going to increase their agility, it’s raw training they need. Which is more valuable at this point?”

“Knowing when to duck,” Marshal said, pointing down to Bronsor as he crawled back to the narrow choke point rather than stand up and get shot again, though there was no promise that the turrets wouldn’t tilt down to shoot him on the floor.

“Keep the others on schedule…but see what you can do with him. I think he can take more than the others, not much, but a little more.”

Marshal smiled. “That’s what I hoped you say. By the way, what do you mass out at now?”

“Without armor?”

“That is what we were talking about, right?”

“Without armor, 155 pounds. With, 215.”

“Damn runt. Why haven’t any of you taken the size enhancements? You know the Zen’zat are our size.”

“A lesson we learned from Dragon Ball Z.”

“Oh?”

Jace looked up at the Knight. “Beware the small ones.”

Bronsor dragged his numb right leg behind him as he crawled beneath his shields along the wall. This was the 6th time he’d reawoken after getting knocked out, and yet the challenge wouldn’t end. He assumed it was some sort of a test…which he was failing. The parts of his body that were awake screamed in discomfort, but the pain of transition he could handle, it was the lack of response from his leg that was getting to him. He couldn’t stand on it yet, but he wasn’t just going to sit still and wait for his body to come back to him…he had to be making at least some progress forward, or he could be stuck out here forever.

He didn’t know how long it had been, though it was possible he’d been unconscious for hours. No one else was on the training course, but the turrets were still live and acting unconventionally. Some didn’t move until he closed within a predetermined range, appearing dead then coming online when he was exposed. Others didn’t fire until he’d passed them, meaning he couldn’t trust that any inactive turret that he saw was truly offline, making him run the full course by himself whereas before it was supposed to have been a team effort.

The Calavari had tried bullying his way forward several times, but had eventually determined that he would make no further headway unless he changed his tactics, and his numb leg further encouraged him to focus on making small progress, even if it was only a few inches at a time.

Right now though he needed to hurry, for the last turret he’d taken down would reactivate after a certain period of time and he to get to cover before that happened. One upside was that a low wall was covering him from another turret that kept pinging stingers off the top of his shields that were laid over his back, unable to depress low enough to hit his exposed sides or head. Before he wouldn’t have considered crawling, but now that he was forced to it made perfect sense why the low wall had been placed where it was…to encourage him and the others to think of alternate ways of getting past the turrets aside from shooting them into submission.

Bronsor held his two shields in place over his back like an insect and crawled forward on his lower arms and good leg, dragging the numb one in a rhythm that he was getting better at, then as he rounded the corner a wave of stingers shot out at his feet, nailing his already numb leg with another splatter, though he couldn’t feel it. He pulled his leg out of the firing line and took a moment to rest and look around at where he was, finally seeing the finish pedestal ahead on a platform that had three possible approaches, each of which crossed a disqualification pit on various sized bridges.

He looked them over, spotting the turret locations and trying to think of a way past. He couldn’t run, and even if he did there was at least one turret on ground level that he knew would shoot his feet, tripping him up when they went numb. Bronsor thought back to the low wall that he’d just used as cover, wondering if the Humans had hid any more clever approaches in the architecture.

He knew he needed to look where a Calavari normally wouldn’t, and mentally ruled out all the ‘common sense’ approaches, but aside from the three choices he couldn’t see any alternates, nor any little tricks he could use to pass through one of them.

Before he would have taken off and tried to bully his way through anyway, but now he decided to stay put and think, knowing that with his leg out of commission he wasn’t going to be able to shoot his way through. The Knight had said to get to the finish, so he had to find a way to do that somehow.

As he leaned back against the long wall that was blocking him from the turrets he’d just escaped, his eyes got caught on a pair of grooves set into the concrete on a tall pillar that separated two of the route choices ahead. The pillar beside it that separated the others, identical in every way, but didn’t have the grooves, which he’d thought were decorative…but then he remembered that Star Force didn’t do anything decorative, and if they were present on one pillar and not the other, then they probably meant something.

Just then it occurred to him, and Bronsor looked around eagerly, trying to judge the firing lines of the turrets ahead…then wondering about those behind him and if they would fire over the wall or not. If they did he’d fall, but it was worth the chance of having a straight route into the finish.

The Calavari punched his numb leg in protest, then crawled over to the far pillar, passing the entry point for routes 1 and 2 and glancing down their footbridges to cover on the far side. It had to be a decoy, a lure to draw them in, while this pillar was the real way across.

When he got up to the base of the concrete pylon he slipped his armored fingertips into the groove that sat just above his head, then tilted one of his shields up and tried to fit it inside. It took some wiggle work since he couldn’t stand well, but once he got up on his good knee he was able to slide the shield in several inches where it stuck firmly, making for an impromptu platform.

Bronsor huffed in approval and crawled up on top of it, using his three free hands to haul his body up. The shield supported his weight, and looking back he could see the long wall was still higher than his head, meaning it was blocking the previous turrets, so he was safe for the moment.

Getting up to a knee by leaning against the pillar, Bronsor raised his second shield up and slid it into the next groove, then grabbed the edge of it and hung off, using his lower two arms to pull out the bottom shield and flip it around over his back where his left hand held it in place. Using his right he three-armed his way up onto the top shield, ending up face down on it as he glanced back at the wall, seeing himself now level with the top of it.

The turrets were just below it, but he could only make out the tip of one of their target spheres, meaning they still couldn’t shoot at him…at least not until he stood up. There was still one more groove left before he got to the top, but looking up he could now definitely see the grooves in the ceiling that he had guessed were there, camouflaged as they were.

He took a couple of deep breaths, then leveraged himself up and onto his knee, glancing back and staring at one of the turrets on the other side of the wall. It didn’t rotate to track him, which he took as a good sign, but he wasn’t going to stick around for long and let it change its orientation, so he leveraged his free shield up and slid it into place, making a small roof over his head.

Gathering himself, he climbed up on top of it, then up on top of the pillar another half meter higher to a small platform. From there he could see the ladder in the ceiling that crossed over the disqualification pit and bridges below…as well as the numerous turrets that could easily rotate up and knock him off into a long fall. With his armor on he didn’t know if he’d break anything, but he’d definitely be injured…but if that was the case why would the Humans have put the ladder here?

He decided to take the chance, then carefully stood on one leg and reached up to the now low ceiling, grabbing hold of the rungs with both upper arms. Checking his grip twice, he pulled his body up off the platform, seeing if his arm strength would hold up. It was shaky, but possible.

He wrenched himself up high enough that his head almost hit the rungs, then he reached his lower arms up as far as he could and grabbed hold as well, finding that configuration more reliable, albeit slower, but at this point it didn’t matter. He just needed to get across.

Bronsor moved a hand forward, then another and another, about once per second and pulled himself off the platform, hanging over the freefall below. Ignoring everything else but his hand placements, he looked up at the rung ahead of him and got into a rhythm, his numb leg now no longer an issue. One hand release…one hand grab, always having three locked on tight to support his weight.

It was slow going, but it was steady progress, as he’d come to learn was the point. When he made it halfway across and hadn’t been shot down he knew he was going to make it the rest of the way, for his arm strength was serving him well…and now that he’d found a way to win, there was no way he was going to relinquish his grasp on it.

When he got to the far side there was another platform waiting, which he dropped off on, allowing himself to fall on his face rather than tip over the side as his numb leg collapsed underneath him. From there he slid down a curvy slide that deposited him behind a low wall that hid the slide from view and left him two meters away from the finish pedestal.

Bronsor crawled out and smashed his large hand on top of it, triggering the challenge complete tone and ugly blue lighting the Humans used along with it, but right now it was a welcome sight.

From the concealed exit the Knight walked out with a destunning injection and pointed to Bronsor’s hand. The Calavari detached the armored glove and let him inject the cool relief from the pins and needles that traveled down to his leg and brought it back to life as well. After a few experimental twitches he stood up beside Marshal, who simply tapped a finger against his own helmet, then turned around and led the way out.

Bronsor got the message. Fighting wasn’t always enough. Sometimes victory required one to think their way through, or out of, a bad situation.

9

January 22, 2442

Prolio System

HTC

Bronsor came out of the last turn on the track sprinting, in full armor, knowing that he had victory in this last piece of qualification if only he held his pace down the straightaway, but pride made him dig a little deeper and eke out some more speed. He needed to run under 5:45, and had been 12 seconds ahead of pace at 3 laps. Though his fatigue was wearing on him there was no way he was going to squander that lead so long as he kept the pressure on.

Which he did, and then some. The Knight armor he was wearing had been designed for running and allowed him to stretch out his thick legs and pound his way down the straightaway. When he crossed the line in 5:31 he knew all his hard work had finally paid off and coasted to a stop, breathing heavily inside his helmet. That was it…the last piece of the puzzle. All the combat challenges and tech training had already been completed, leaving only the physical fitness requirements between him and official Knight status, same as the Humans, and would give him the same white armor they wore...along with a combat assignment.

It also meant he was the first. The first Calavari to qualify as a true Knight. There were several hundred others in training for the same thing, but out of his ‘class’ there were only three remaining. The others had given up the full Knight qualification goal, sticking with the orange armor they’d already earned and a position in the new Calavari military being built on their new homeworld. Star Force called it HTC, but the Calavari had come to refer to it as Hamathrat, or ‘home’ in the Calavari language.

Bronsor was now going to have to think of it as HTC, given that he was no longer part of the new Calavari military. He was a full Knight, meaning he was all Star Force now, not just a subsidiary like the Kiritas or Canderous, but part of their line troops…at the lowest level, but he was 100% one of them, and Archon Jace had promised him an immediate combat slot if/when he achieved that feat.

Catching his breath, Bronsor looked up at the others using the track, most of which were plodding around as he once had been. There was no one paying attention to him, no fanfare or congratulations. Only a marker on the scoreboard to indicate his time and completion of the qualification mark.

Somehow that felt fitting, because he’d learned that Star Force wasn’t one for celebration. That was alright, even if it wasn’t the Calavari way, because what he wanted most was to be done with this endless training and get back into the fight.

Bronsor walked off the track, disconnecting his helmet and holding the orange head covering between his upper and lower right arms as he moved out into the hallway. He was planning on going back to the prep room, getting out of his armor and taking a shower before finding one of his trainers and asking for his combat assignment, but to his surprise not one, but two Archon rangers stopped him a few steps out the door.

“Archons,” he said with a respectful nod down at them as he stopped walking.

“Time to lose the orange armor,” Jace said with a smirk. “Follow us.”

“You were waiting?” Bronsor asked as they walked off. In the past he wouldn’t have spoken unless it was vital to the mission at hand, but these Humans were more informal than even the Calavari were on the battlefield, which was something he appreciated. Pointless egotistical ritual had always annoyed him, and so many of the Alliance’s member races lived and breathed their social standings rather than recognizing true skill.

“We can usually tell when someone is close to passing,” Jace explained as he walked shoulder to shoulder with Jason. “You’re the first Calavari to qualify as a Knight, so we wanted to be nearby to get you up to speed as soon as possible. Your time on this planet is over.”

“How soon?” Bronsor asked.

“You’ll be transferring to a seda,” Jason answered, “and training with the Knights there until your jumpship is ready to leave. Probably within 3 weeks.”

“I doubt any of the others will pass before then, so you’ll be the only one going back,” Jace added.

“What of the Calavari Knights?” Bronsor asked, feeling weird asking the question now that it no longer applied to him.

“They won’t be deployed for several years,” Jason answered. “We are sending a few squadrons of Valeries with you, but the Knights, Regulars, Mechs, and Naval aren’t ready yet, and won’t be for some time.”

“I understand,” Bronsor said, following the Archons into a stairwell and climbing up with heavy steps, for his legs were still burning from the mile he’d just ran.

“Do you?” Jason asked.

Bronsor looked at the back of his head as they climbed. “I’m now part of an experienced military. Theirs is brand new and has to prove itself before being given combat assignments.”

Jace glanced at his fellow trailblazer. “Seems he does.”

“Does that bother you?” Jason asked.

“No.”

“Told you he’s one of us,” Jace quipped as they got off the stairs and headed for a room just a few meters down the hallway.

“He’s earned it, but does he understand it?” Jason asked, looking at Jace then Bronsor as they walked inside.

“He’s about to,” the other trailblazer said as the three of them came through the door in the face of a set of Calavari Knight armor set up on a display rack, making it look as if one of them were standing before them. Bronsor looked at the white armor, feeling an immediate sense of pride and accomplishment.

Jace walked past it and pulled a small package off the wall behind it and brought it out for Bronsor to see.

“This goes along with the armor. It is a secret amongst Star Force that most of our civilians do not know about, nor do our allies. When Jason and I went through our initial training we did so in a similar way to you…”

“Except it was way harder,” Jason added.

Jace smiled but continued talking without missing a beat. “Afterwards we were told of this,” he said, holding up a small vile of blue liquid. “We call it ambrosia.”

Bronsor looked down at it, frowning. “What does it do?”

“It gives you additional energy and structural components to make your body stronger. You eat small amounts of it with your food, as we have been doing every day for the past 400 years. Human ambrosia is different from this, which is the Calavari version. We’re still adapting it to your physiology, so this isn’t as potent as ours, but it will help you in training and combat.”

“Think of it like a super sugar,” Jason said, seeing that Bronsor wasn’t fully grasping the concept. “When your body runs out of it you’ll feel low on energy, and when you take too much you’ll get bad headaches, so you have to carefully measure how much you take and when you take it. It’s something you’re going to have to learn on your trip to Calavari territory.”

“I drink it?”

“No,” Jace said. “This much would cause you immense pain. Only a small drop is required, so we measure out the amount and put it into specialized foodstuffs, so you’ll be eating your ambrosia rather than drinking it. And make sure you only take the Calavari version. We also have one basic formula that we give the Kiritak, so it’s important to know what it is you’re taking.”

“What happens if I take the wrong one?”

Jace and Jason exchanged glances. “We don’t know.”

Bronsor nodded. “How do I tell the difference?”

“In its liquid state, Human ambrosia is colored red, Calavari is blue, and Kiritak is green. The laced foodstuffs will also have labels on the containers with the same colors.”

“Is this how you have become so strong?”

Jason shook his head. “No, our training has made us strong. The ambrosia has helped us train harder and longer than we’re normally capable of doing.”

“So in a way yes,” Jace added, “but without the training it will do you little good.”

“The Knights on the seda will help you figure out how to use it,” Jason said, putting the vile back in the box, “just don’t tell your fellow Calavari about it. It’s something you have to earn, and as of now we don’t have very much of the Calavari version made yet…and we’re still working on increasing the potency of the formula.”

“It’s a work in progress,” Jace said, “but we want to get you started on it so you won’t be at too much of a disadvantage when you start training with the other Knights.

“Now,” Jason said, clapping his hands together after having put the box back where he got it. “Time to swap armor. The design is the same, aside from the comm system. This set has more options, given that you’ll be fully active on our network.”

Bronsor set his helmet down on the ground and began unlatching his gloves.

“There’s a lot of new stuff for you to learn,” Jace explained, “but that’s normal for new Knights. You’ll be assigned to a unit that will split up as necessary for missions…usually you don’t all fight together. Knights supplement combat teams.”

“Which is something else you’ll have to learn,” Jason added. “Becoming a Knight doesn’t mean things get easier, it’s a step up to the next level.”

“I’m not afraid of a challenge,” Bronsor said, pulling off the last bits of his Calavari Knight armor and stepping out of the boots. “I just want to get back into the fight.”

“You will,” Jace promised, “but you’ve got a lot to learn on the trip.”

Bronsor walked up to the white armor on the rack and looked at it for a moment, proud of what he’d accomplished, then he took the left boot and opened it up, seeing that it was the exact same dimensions as his previous armor, meaning a custom set.

Jace and Jason didn’t say anything else until he got all the armor pieces on, including the helmet, and let him move around in it a bit.

“Everything fit?” Jace asked.

“Yes, but the visual interface is unusual. It’s all English.”

“That’s the default setting. You can switch it over to the trade language like your old set if you want, but the more you can assimilate our language the easier it will be to link with the rest of our troops.”

“I will adapt,” Bronsor promised.

“Normally Knights don’t carry firearms,” Jason said, “but given that the Nestafar infantry can fly you’ll see them carrying at least a pistol as backup. Given that you have more hands to work with, I want you to always carry one. What’s your preference, stun sword or stun stick?”

“The sword is too long to use with the shields. I use a pair of sticks, though my first choice is the shotgun.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. The plasma shotgun was one of the weapons that Star Force armories typically held, but it was rarely used. “Why the shotgun?”

“When I carry the shields my effective combat range is medium. The shotgun allows the greatest damage and has a shorter barrel.”

“Something we need to look into,” Jason said, glancing at Jace who nodded. “Just be aware, that typically Knights go into battle only with stun weapons.”

“Because you usually take prisoners,” Bronsor said, already having heard that rumor.

“Some situations are different, just remember to focus on the mission objective and how best to accomplish it.”

Bronsor flexed his neck, with a slight clicking of the flexible plates covering it. “I know my duty. I will not let the Nestafar make me stupid with anger.”

Jason smiled. “Welcome to the family. Pack a gear duffle and get yourself to the spaceport. There’ll be a ride waiting for you.”

“Shields and weapons you’ll get from armories,” Jace added. “Duffles are for personal items, though you can get everything you need on site if you want to travel light.”

“We’ll send replacement armor pieces along. Eventually they’ll be standard in armories, but right now you’re the only one that will need a Calavari set.”

“I understand,” Bronsor said, looking down on the Humans. “Thank you.”

Jace smiled. “Go get us some more recruits.”

Four hours later Bronsor’s dropship landed in the Star Force seda’s hangar bay, after which he met up with the Knights onboard who got him situated into temporary quarters and acquainted with the handful that would be transferring out to Calavari territory with him. Thorough and intense as they were, they ran the newb through the works, testing his speed, strength, memory retention, and sense of humor.

Bronsor dutifully went along with the process, and within a few days started to understand how the Human Knights operated, and they in turn began to get a sense of what he could and couldn’t do. By the end of the first week they were practicing group maneuvers and troubleshooting ways to coordinate strengths and weaknesses, usually with Bronsor being center in the formation with the faster Humans in skirmish and flanker positions.

The unit training continued nonstop, with Bronsor being expected to see to a lot of his own fitness training, either at the same time as the others or at a time of his choosing. He worked out with them, so there would be no mistakes as to what he was supposed to be doing, as well as getting a feel for what the Knights trained like, for he’d only seen a few in the roll of instructors or sparring partners before.

His first impression was how fast they were, and Bronsor knew he’d have to work hard to keep up with them. His second takeaway was the fact that they weren’t that much stronger than him, and he could keep pace with a couple of them on brute strength exercises. Overall he was the weakling amongst the group, but given his greater mass he quickly picked up the nickname ‘Ram’ given that’s how easy he could push through opponents when he needed to.

Bronsor clung to that strength as a matter of pride, and was happy to have two or three of the Knights test his strength as they tried to figure out the best way to stop a charging Calavari. With his two half shields locked into a wedge in front of him and a short run up, Bronsor turned his 450 pound mass, plus armor, into a juggernaut that the others had to get innovative to stop.

And that they did, which Bronsor liked. Some of them took to his legs, trying to sweep underneath his shields and trip him up while others used their speed to circle around behind him and latch on to his limbs or neck and drag him to the ground. By the time the jumpship was ready to leave, they’d gone through the exercise so many times they’d gotten quite good at predicting each other’s movements and had quite a lot of fun seeing the other Knights they met up with onboard the troop ship trying to take him down as he ‘ran the gauntlet.’

The drill instantly became part of the Knight lexicon, with a 50 meters or so stretch of deck with a line Bronsor was trying to get to and that the others were trying to keep him from. Sometimes they went with armor, armor and shields, or nothing at all. His ability to successfully get past 2 and sometimes 3 other Knights at a time immediately made him one of the guys, despite the fact that several of the Knights were female, which was something he didn’t have too much trouble getting used to, given that the Humans all looked the same to him.

Show a Knight a weakness that someone could exploit against him, and you just became his best friend and new sparring partner. In return the group helped expose Bronsor’s many shortcomings, as well as helping him learn to counter them. Most of the Knights he was traveling with didn’t have a lot of combat experience, but they were all more than 100 years old and had so much trials experience that they were more knowledgeable about combat than the combat veterans he’d served with in the Calavari military.

Staging mock wars was another thing he liked about Star Force, and from the stories he was told they were more intense than the real thing because the Knights could learn from their mistakes and come back to try again, whereas in a real war you’d just be dead.

Bronsor was learning so much from his new brothers that the long trip back out to Calavari territory passed incredibly quick. Wiser as he was, he felt even more inadequate now than before, learning the depth of skill the other Knights possessed, but none the less he was eager to get his feet back on Calavari soil and within reach of the Nestafar so he could put his new skills and armor to the test.

10

July 19, 2442

Atriann System

Juness

Bronsor and the other Knights onboard the jumpship watched via vid screens as the warships in the Star Force fleet engaged the Nestafar in orbit over Juness…a Calavari world that was involved in a pitched battle on the surface with the outcome up for grabs even before Morgan’s fleet arrived. The troop jumpships were held back in higher orbit around the planet while the warships and their drones dove in low and went head to head with a fleet of more than 150 Nestafar ships deployed in clusters around the planet.

Star Force used that to their advantage, hitting with their full force on a single vector, annihilating the ships there before going hunting for the others. As most naval engagements went, it was a much slower process than a ground battle, but the way the Human ships came in and literally ripped apart the Nestafar was something the Calavari fleet had never been able to do. Granted, the Humans did have greater numbers, but even a Calavari fleet of twice their size couldn’t have defeated the Nestafar so efficiently.

Several drone warships were lost in the fighting, but not one of the control ships was hit, meaning Star Force wiped the Nestafar clean from orbit without a single death on their side. Once again, the Humans’ methodology impressed Bronsor, shedding more light on their now legendary longevity.

Once orbit was secured and the fleet was broken up hunting down fleeing Nestafar ships, the troop ships and Conduit transports were brought down closer to the planet and the Knights were called to the hangar bays where they loaded up onboard a plethora of dropships along with Archons and Regulars. Bronsor waited in the rear of the tightly packed dropship all the way down to the surface, hearing not a word from the other troops.

It wasn’t surprising, given the time he’d spent with the Humans, but while Calavari weren’t overly talkative, there would have been some small amount of chatter about what they were going to come up against or some jokes just to break the nerves. None of that happened here. The professionalism of Star Force both impressed and inspired Bronsor, who kept his own thoughts to himself and remained as stoic as the others until the dropship set down and the boarding ramp began to lower ahead of him.

The troops had boarded the dropship facing backwards, so now as the ramp came down they were facing out. With his shields tucked up against his sides as closely as he could manage, Bronsor watched as those ahead of him filed out, with his helmet receiving a waypoint for him to report to, coming from one of the Archons in command of his current unit.

The Calavari plodded down the ramp next to several Regulars, flexing his arms and neck inside his armor as he moved off with the others towards the glowing marker digitally emblazoned onto his HUD some several hundred meters off across the courtyard they’d landed in. Juness was a high population world with thousands of cities, but not so overgrown as to have them all bleed together into one giant urban mass. Though he’d never been to this world before he recognized the architecture, as well as the large remembrance plaza he was now standing in.

The waypoint took them out of the open and into a gap between the surrounding buildings. The other units coming off the dropships split up on their own assignments, leaving 30-40 troops with Bronsor’s group as they met up briefly before plunging into the cityscape.

After that came a lot of running, which Bronsor labored to keep up with, but he managed. The other two Knights were with him, one ahead and one behind, with Regulars spaced in between them in their dirty white armor. Leading the way were two red armored Archons who knew what their mission objective was, though as of yet the Knights hadn’t been informed.

The Star Force troops ran across the white stone surface, eyes glancing into every gap between the red/orange buildings and seeing almost no people at all, nor enemy troops. Bronsor didn’t take that as a good sign, but as they progressed further a few isolated faces began popping up in windows and around corners, then the sounds of distant battle began to waft their way back to his audial pickups.

It was coming from the direction they were running, which he could tell thanks to the directional speakers that successfully mimicked the origin point of sounds his helmet was recording and playing back for him inside the protective barrier that fully obscured his ears. Bronsor ground his teeth in anticipation and continued running along with the others.

“We have Calavari troops engaging the Nestafar ahead,” one of the Archons finally spoke through their helmet comms. “No walkers as of yet, but keep an eye out for the protomechs. They can move up and down these streets almost as easily as we can. Break up by Knights and follow Archons through, maintain moderate spacing once we’re engaged.”

Bronsor huffed, glad to now have his operational orders. His team flashed on his HUD, identifying him to the Regulars that he was supposed to operate with. As they continued to run the short Humans shuffled about repositioning and Bronsor opened a comm line to his team.

“Form a wedge behind me. I’m going through first.”

Without any unnecessary chatter 11 Regulars fell back even with his shoulders and behind as a slew of Calavari came into view ahead. Most weren’t troops, but evacuees from elsewhere in the city that were clustering together around the entrances to several buildings that must have been being used as temporary barracks.

Bronsor activated his external speakers and jacked them up to a high volume.

“Move aside brothers!” he yelled in the Calavari language. “Make way! Let us get to the enemy!”

Bronsor was in the middle of the Star Force pack, but some of the Calavari had seen them coming and started to move out of the way of those up front…though when he spoke all eyes turned to see the armored soldiers coming and the crowd quickly split, exposing the center of the white stone road to let them pass. When they did the first signs of battle were seen far ahead, as the Calavari soldiers were defending a key position behind several crude barricades with a mass of Nestafar flying in the air beyond them.

When the crowd created the gap for them the two Archons immediately took off sprinting, moving faster than Bronsor could ever hope to. They ran straight up to the Calavari, firing a few blue plasma streaks on approach up into the enemy swarm, then they both leapt up and over the barricades, coming down into the grip of the enemy and drawing attention away from the Calavari and the approaching Star Force troops.

Bronsor clapped both of his inner arms against his chest plate, appreciating the aggressive tactic, then reached down to his sides and pulled out the pair of plasma pistols he had hanging there as he simultaneously brought his pair of shields up in front of him and formed a wedge.

The group in front of him came up to the barricades and the Knight there planted his single shield down on the ground extending the left cover as his Regulars fell in next to the Calavari in the gaps behind the barricades, where they began sniping the Nestafar with a flurry of plasma streaks.

Bronsor didn’t head for the available cover on the right, instead he headed straight for the cluster of crates in the center and hopped up on top of the lowest of them. He didn’t hold there, but came over the far side into the firing lines of the ugly bugs and started taking a hoard of red plasma strikes on his shields as he barreled his way forward with the Regulars tucking in close behind him in a narrow triangle as they fired back.

Bronsor moved up some 20 meters into the open area then claimed his position, coming to a halt and cracking his shields apart as he popped out his pistols and began firing at every flapping wing he saw.

What he didn’t see were the Archons. Ahead of him was a building and a Y-split in the road, both sections of which were full of Nestafar, some of which were on the ground and advancing forward on foot. None of that mattered now, for Bronsor was committed, so he kept his shields close and his weapons hot, racking up as much of a kill count as he could while the Regulars around him mowed down the closest Nestafar while absorbing the few shots the enemy could land on them with their armor’s shields.

Bronsor’s energy barriers had already gone down over his half-shields, but his body armor was still protected by half a charge despite the Nestafar landing a pair of head shots. That defensive barrier began to recharge as the weapons firing at him thinned considerably, and within 30 seconds the choke point had been secured with the other two Knight teams moving up the branches of the road, sniping the occasional Nestafar that flew into their firing lines.

Bronsor got another waypoint move order, heading up the right branch, and sucked in a deep breath preparing for another stint of running. There was a planet full of Nestafar ahead of him, and with the way Star Force fought, always on the move, he needed to pace himself, for this is what he’d been training the past 3 years for, and now that he was here any doubts as to his leaving the fight earlier were officially squashed.

He was far more of a threat to the Nestafar as a Star Force Knight than he had been as a Calavari soldier, and now was the time to put his skills to use in a war that had already been going on for 4 decades…longer than he’d been alive. Rushing into battle before one was ready was a quick road to defeat in a massive engagement such as this…which was another important lesson Star Force had taught him.

And now that he was prepared, and had thousands of more skilled warriors around him, it was time to take the fight to the enemy and save as many of his kin as they could…all in preparation for the massive war against the Cajdital that was inevitably coming.

Taryn stood in the command Nexus just off the bridge of the Winston, studying the progress of her ground troops on the planet below. This was the first time her fleet had seen major ground action in the 30+ years she’d been engaged in this theatre of war. During most of that time they’d made naval raids, but now with Operation Conduit in full throttle they had a mission objective beyond simply neutralizing as many Nestafar ships as they could…they were here to rescue Calavari and take them out of the war zone.

That war zone had seen little shift in the balance of territory. What the Calavari had lost they’d made up for by taking Nestafar systems, and in turn, 63% of the captured worlds were then recaptured by their former owners. Some star systems had flipped multiple times, leaving the only clear result of the war effort so far being widespread death and destruction.

She didn’t have numbers on the Nestafar, but the Calavari had reportedly lost a full third of their population, meaning they’d lost several times over the entire number of Humans…and that wasn’t something you just rebuilt over the space of a few years. Both the Calavari and Nestafar were losing the war, with the only question in play being who would be left standing in the end to rule over the rubble.

That said, even the weakened Calavari still far outnumbered the Humans, both in terms of systems, ships, and population. Their empire was massive, and as such it took a great deal of time to tear it apart…with the four-armed brawlers doing a better job of defending themselves than the Alliance had given them credit for at the outset.

Juness was one of three planets in this system that the Calavari had inhabited, but it held 98% of their population. The other two worlds were merely starter colonies and had been bypassed by the Nestafar entirely. Taryn had already dispatched jumpships to begin evacuating those worlds, but the ongoing conflict on the surface of this planet was still in full swing. Usually Star Force was coming to planets that had already been conquered or were on the verge of destruction, but with Morgan sweeping through the smaller systems and Leif pulling out Calavari units that had pushed too far into Nestafar territory and got cut off, she was left with picking a larger world under siege and coming to its rescue.

The Calavari had lost orbit, but they had not conceded the planet. Both races’ ground forces were in far greater number than Taryn’s, so she had to be tricky in knowing where to insert them and her smaller warships to tip the scale of the ground battle to their favor.

Trouble was, she was going to have to hold this system for several years before Star Force could supply enough jumpships to evacuate all 3.3 billion of them…or at least that’s what their population had been before this invasion had started. How many of them were left alive now was an ongoing conversation amongst her analysis staff. While Taryn wanted as many of them to be alive and rescuable as possible, the more that were meant she was going to have to hold this position longer…and the longer she held it, the more time the Nestafar had to size up her fleet and plan a counter assault.

So far Star Force hadn’t faced any of those, given they were raiding systems rather than taking them, so this was going to be a whole new ball game and she wanted to micromanage as much of it as possible this early on to give herself more options down the road.

She’d held off deploying herself into combat for just that reason, instead deciding to play ‘Admiral’ and organize everything from afar. Her troops had dropped down into 18 combat zones, committing all the forces she had in order to overwhelm the opposition and reduce casualties to both Star Force and the Calavari troops they were aiding. So far two cities had been wiped clean of the Nestafar…two that had not had walkers in play.

Taryn had already dispatched fleets of dropships to head down to those locations and begin picking up the Calavari civilians. She didn’t know how reluctant they would be to leave, but had told her personnel that if they balked to just pass them over and pick up those that were willing, then they’d come back and deal with the others later.

The dropships that had just taken down the ground troops were now being recycled into pulling supplies off the jumpships that the civilians would soon be boarding. Those supplies currently filled every room and hallway, and would have to be pulled out before the people could go in. Most were foodstuffs, with the rest being survival supplies including portable tents, medicine, tools, and a host of personal items the Calavari used. Their purpose was to supply those that they were forced to leave on the planet to wait for future jumpships, but by the look of the planet Taryn guessed that a lot of their industry and support systems were still intact.

With that in mind Taryn began tagging those facilities as priority targets to grab and hold, directing her troops, mechs, and aerial forces like she was playing a game of StarCraft and kept at it for the next 6 hours before forcing herself to abandon the nexus and get in some training time, food, and a nap, after which she was back at it and would continue to be for the next two weeks.

That was the point when she finally decided to deploy herself into one of the hotly contested cities via aerial drop. With her comm system set up so she could manage the entire planetary war from her helmet if needed, Taryn stepped off the boarding ramp of a dropship midflight and fell down through the atmosphere feathering her jump pack controls to land her near the front but still inside the Star Force lines.

Carrying a pair of plasma pistols and a backpack full of replacement ammo, Taryn got to work quickly helping to clear the skies and streets of the Nestafar’s flying infantry, engaging them at short to medium range while her mechs hammered the protomechs zipping about the streets trying to pick off the Calavari and now Star Force infantry. They did their part, she did hers, and the skeets zipping over the city did theirs as they worked through the captured sections of the Calavari metropolis, reclaiming building after building and saving a lot of the Calavari hiding inside.

But for every one they saved, 10 more lay dead on the streets or in the hallways, making it ever more evident that the Calavari were losing this war, one way or another, and that Operation Conduit might very well end up being the only way to save their race if the Alliance wasn’t able to find a way to cut the legs out from under the Nestafar invasion.

Though Taryn didn’t know it, nor would know it for some years to come, the Bsidd, Kvash, and Hycre were planning just such an assault on one of the Nestafar homeworlds in conjunction with the Elarioni, who were giving them all the intel they needed on their former ally.

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"The Imperial March"

Scruples

1

January 9, 2444

Orica System

Inner Zone

A tiny jumpship decelerated against Orica C, the smallest of the three stars that made up the trinary system that the Nestafar had made their capitol. Some said jumping into or out of a trinary was more difficult, others said it was easier because it gave you more gravity well options to work with, but it was true that with the stars orbiting around each other you had a moving target to hit, making accurate stellar charts a must for transit into or through the system.

The Alliance had all the Nestafar maps, or so they they’d been told. That said, the Nestafar could have been setting them up from the get go. Fortunately the long animosity between them and the Calavari had seen their enemies compiling detailed charts of their most precious systems, Orica included, so it wasn’t a surprise when the jumpship came out of its coast phase and decelerated right on target for the innermost star.

Very nearby was Orica A, with its huge red glow providing the background to Orica C’s yellow hue. Had the jumpship not had differential drives it would have been a more robust navigational calculation required to push off of both stars for deceleration purposes, but the Bsidd ship didn’t have to bother, for they and every other major power in the Alliance had the technology to pick out one gravity well and exclude the others.

The tiny ship was barely larger than a lizard battleship, but a true jumpship it was, though it carried no cargo or other vessels. It was a scout ship, pure and simple, and as soon as it got itself situation into a holding position over the star in lieu of an orbit, it began picking up Nestafar tracking signals.

Thousands of tiny beacons spread across the system were pumping out lightspeed detection signals of various types, allowing delayed detection of any ship entering the system. Should the scout ship delay making another jump, Nestafar patrol ships would be quick to begin intercept maneuvers, coming from one of the 93 inhabited planetoids within the system.

This scout ship, however, had come in very close to Orica C, with the stellar radiation making detection a bit more difficult. Add to that the sensor dampening hull plates that the Bsidd researchers had reverse engineered from lizard hull segments, and the scout ship had a small window of invisibility in close to the star to work out of.

So there it sat, soaking in the signals from afar while it was backlit by the yellow star. Most traffic coming into and out of the system used Orica A’s much larger gravity well as their jumping point, which meant that Orica C was less likely to receive traffic…and in a few hours’ time it would be receiving a lot of traffic in the form of Alliance warships. Warships that would need a heads up as to what was going on in the system and where all the key pieces were at.

Thankfully, the Bsidd sensors could pick up the reflective pings from the Nestafar beacons just as well as they could, so every ship within its line of sight was being registered, on a delay, and updated into a forming battlemap that was being overlaid onto the system map that the Elarioni had provided. Given that they had never been in the system themselves and had only stolen it from the Nestafar databases, the Alliance wanted confirmation before they’d risk the sizeable fleet they’d assembled, so if the scout ship didn’t find what it was meant to find by the time they arrived it would flag them down and they’d jump back out of the system as soon as they recharged their capacitors.

The delay in doing so wouldn’t matter, for no amount of patrol ships would be able to harass them in sufficient numbers, but if they were to achieve a surprise attack they’d have to split up immediately upon arrival and essentially be flying blind to their targets without knowing what was actually waiting for them.

And there was a lot waiting for them. Even from its limited perspective the gangly jumpship, which looked like a twisted knot of bluish/purple tubes, began tabulating the fleets of warships present over several worlds, along with hundreds of defense stations and millions of other ships moving about. Some were jumpships, but most were interplanetary cargo ships serving the system by carrying cargo to and from the various planets and moons.

The system was an empire in and of itself, holding more planetoids and infrastructure than Star Force’s core zone. One of those planetoids, the 17th out from the inner two stars and 4th in from Orica B’s very high orbit, was the Nestafar homeworld.

It wasn’t the largest, nor the most populated Nestafar world in their territory, or even in the system, but it was the planet their empire had began upon and was still the focal point in their society. Their industry was another matter, with three planets in orbit around Orica B holding their primary shipyards. They accounted for 43% of all shipbuilding the Nestafar possessed, though that staggering number didn’t do the actual facilities justice.

Even at vast distance between the central two stars and their sister out in high orbit, the scout ship had no trouble picking up sensor images from some of the orbital facilities around the trio of worlds, or rather the two that were visible. The third was on the opposite side of Orica B and temporarily obscured from view.

The scout ship held position, soaking up data from the current side of the star then slowly moved around it, hovering on its gravity drives. As it did more planetoids came into view, as well as more ships in the gaps. As predicted, the infrastructure was almost entirely located in orbit around the planets and moons, with only a handful of signals coming back confirming the presence of interplanetary facilities that the Elarioni-stolen map had indicated.

Two were refueling stations, set close in to the center of the system to service passing jumpships without them needing to make a microjump further into the system. Four more, set at LaGrange points between the stars and planets, were military outposts with quick response fleets capable of reinforcing the various planets or going after ships coming into the system. By staying on the gravitational jumpline between two gravity wells, or more accurately just off it to avoid collisions with passing traffic, they had the option of moving in two directions, albeit at a slower pace given their distance.

The scout ship did a sensor focus on those outposts, holding a passive receiver directly on those locations and soaking up more of the limited reflective signal, trying to get a breakdown on what was there. It took some time, but the glob of a signal refined itself into the station and the hundreds of ships docked or floating nearby it.

The scout ship did a basic head count and added that information to the survey it was pulling, which would be transmitted to the Alliance fleet as soon as they arrived.

When the Bsidd ship moved all the way around the star to the far side and started to come in through the gap between Orica A and Orica C it picked up something that wasn’t supposed to be there. Situated in the gap between the stars was a huge fleet, thousands of ships strong, all of which were warships based on the silhouettes.

The scout ship moved just close enough around the curve of Orica C to keep itself from appearing as a silhouette of its own off the edge of the star, but it didn’t shoot the gap itself, knowing that if the fleet’s active sensors were sent its way its odds of staying hidden were nil. As it was the Bsidd were closer to the star than they wanted, with their partial shields having to push back a considerable amount of stellar radiation. The outside half of their ship was exposed, which was necessary to pick up the reflective signals at maximum effect, but the hull had to retain the growing amount of heat else it’d start to glow on its own accord.

That was one downside of the lizard armor. It soaked up EM, which it then had to process internally before it became saturated…and this close into the stars there was a lot of EM coming its way.

The Bsidd knew they could only nose into the gap for a brief period of time, for while they were blocking the stellar radiation from Orica C with their hemispherical shields, they couldn’t shield their front half and still get a good passive sensor read on the fleet. That meant Orica A’s radiation was hitting them and their superabsorbent hull with a ton of heat.

The scout ship eventually had to pull back around Orica C and lose sight of the fleet, after which the internal processors began eating up some of the extra heat in the armor rather than venting it. Conventional wisdom held that heat coming from the direction of a star would help its cover rather than expose the ship, but that wasn’t true if someone was monitoring the stellar output and saw a blip of radiation that didn’t match what the star was putting out…and heat was one form of radiation.

The Bsidd held position over Orica C as it orbited around Orica A, gradually exposing the remaining slice of the system that Orica A had been hiding and allowing them to finish their battlemap just before a pair of warships circled around Orica C in low orbit, hunting for the ghost ship that the sensor beacons had picked up entering the system.

The high speed at which the scout ship had entered the system meant it was plowing into the beacon signals and reflecting them back at greater than lightspeed. Those unusual signal speeds existed as a brief, intense flash on sensors that normally alerted one to an incoming jumpship, if you were on the trajectory line to see them.

The Nestafar sensor grid was, but after the flash there had been no visible ship. One obvious possibility would have been that the ship had hit the star, but careful evaluation of the flash could produce a descending acceleration curve, indicating that the object had in fact been braking.

Now, that didn’t mean the ship didn’t hit the star, but had it, there would have been some sort of disturbance on the surface of Orica C…which there wasn’t. The Nestafar had then sent out two ships to pull a close scan near the star, finding nothing on the approach side, so now they were moving around to check the back where the scout ship was currently hiding.

The Bsidd saw them coming first, and knowing they still had a few hours until the fleet arrived, they turtled up inside their full shields and abandoned any further monitoring. Their mission now was simple…survive long enough to deliver their data.

Using their superior shielding the scout ship dropped down closer to the star, so far in fact that they entered the extreme upper atmosphere, using it as a sensor-dampening blanket that cut out the Nestafar sensors as well as their own as the intense radiation tried to cook the Bsidd, with their advanced cooling systems sucking heat out of the hull and storing the energy internally, some of which was then used to reinforce the shields…at least as much as the emitters could handle.

They couldn’t see the Nestafar, and they very much hoped they couldn’t see them. After that point it was just a matter of time, with the deteriorating shield matrix pitted against the clock, and according to the Bsidd’s calculations they’d survive in their presence location until the Alliance fleet arrived with 48 minutes to spare.

When the estimated time for the fleet arrival came the scout ship increased the trickle of power to its gravity drives and raised up out of the star’s atmosphere and started pumping out its active sensors, looking for ships nearby. The two Nestafar warships were no longer snooping overhead, leaving the area around this side of the star open.

But the fleet wasn’t coming in on this side, so the Bsidd flew back up into low orbit and reversed course, flying back around the way they’d come until they were in view of the approaching jumplane the fleet would be taking now that the star had completed a full orbital tango with its twin. Though they couldn’t see the response, they knew the Nestafar would be alerted to their position within minutes and begin to deploy ships to hunt them down, but given the signal lag it shouldn’t matter…assuming the fleet was on time.

Right now all that mattered was staying alive and getting the data to the fleet, and in order to do that the scout ship needed to know if anyone was nearby, hence the active sensors. One contact materialized, coming out of the gap between stars where the Nestafar fleet was, just before the first Alliance ship jumped in, decelerating hard against Orica C and stopping just shy of running into it…though that had been by design.

The scout ship detected its presence a few seconds after arrival, then began transmitting its data along with the go ahead order, indicating that the plan was still in play, despite the thousands of warships right next door.

The Hycre jumpship received the data and input it into their computer system, set to relay out to the other ships automatically as they arrived…but they weren’t here yet, also part of the plan, because the Alliance didn’t want the Nestafar to see who was coming.

Using a computer virus the Elarioni had designed, the Hycre began transmitting into the Nestafar data grid, pumping the program out to as many enemy receivers as it could. The beacons and other receivers bounced the signal around the system, getting it to locations that were eclipsed by the stars and planets, including the nearby fleet that was pinched between the disruptive influences of both stars.

When the program got into the Nestafar computers it didn’t affect weapons, life support, navigation, or any of the vital systems. Instead it altered the computer records, so that when the sensors saw the first dozen Hycre jumpships arrive the data was lost, superimposed with an ‘active’ map of the system from either memory or the last current location of ships and facilities if they were within a certain range, so that a ship a kilometer off the bow of another wouldn’t just disappear and attract attention.

The purpose of the virus was to keep things ‘normal’ as the fleet arrived, and that’s just what it did…aside from the scout ship and the first Hycre jumpship, which the Nestafar were now learning about via signal lag. At first it was just another incoming jumpship, but when the sensors confirmed it wasn’t Nestafar the fleet between the stars began to redeploy some of its ships to intercept.

But their sensors weren’t functioning properly…or rather their memory banks weren’t, so when some ships began to move out of their parking formation the maps the others had of the immediate area didn’t update, making all of the moving ships think they were the only one deploying. In reality some 38 ships had been ordered out from the edges and were repositioning to make tiny microjumps towards the enemy jumpship.

Flying blind as to where the others actually were they succeeded in leaving without incident, though a discussion over the comms quickly broke out with the commander of the fleet asking why none of his ships were moving. As they tried to sort that out, with the ships claiming to not only be moving, but the only ones moving, the Hycre jumpship released its school of warship ‘fish’ against the harsh glare of the yellow star, with them moving out towards the Nestafar ships that couldn’t see them coming, for their sensor data wasn’t being logged.

The jumpship itself began moving around the star in low orbit, heading for the approximate location of the scout ship and clearing the lane for the others coming in behind it. Those jumpships decelerated and stopped at a slightly higher altitude, all preplanned, so they wouldn’t risk colliding with each other. Using mathematical precision of the highest order, the ships dropped out some 100 km apart from one another like bread crumbs falling from some invisible hand moving out away from the star.

Each ship then descended further towards Orica C, releasing the warships it was carrying out of the entry corridor and proceeding to the ‘corral’ point with the others. All of the first wave of jumpships were Hycre, given that they had the best navigational programs and thus had the least risk of misjumping into the star at such close range. Originally their preplanned targets were at various planets and moons across the system, hunting down the Nestafar war fleets and leaving less threats to their allies which were behind them in the jump order, but with the scout ship’s update concerning the fleet a quarter revolution around the star they quickly adjusted their strategy.

The first few hundred Hycre warships clustered together and, after quickly finishing off the 38 ships the Nestafar had sent their way, they dove straight into the heart of the Nestafar fleet that couldn’t see them on sensors, thanks to the virus, and began shredding the enemy ships with their brilliant white plasma that appeared as dull streaks in the backlight of the two stars bracketing the battle.

All Nestafar weapons that relied on the ship’s sensors were rendered useless, and only those batteries that had line of sight capability returned fire. Missiles couldn’t be launched without targets, and without the computer-aided firing the gunners in the batteries had a hard time picking and hitting their distant targets…especially with the Hycre flying their typically evasive battle routes rather than standing still and slugging it out.

The ‘battle’ was a misnomer, given that it was a one-sided slaughter. The ever growing Hycre warfleet destroyed them all before the last of their jumpships arrived, then the school of ‘fish’ broke up into multiple groups and began making microjumps out to other locations, intent on getting to more of the Nestafar ships before their computers tracked down and eliminated the virus. How long that would take they didn’t know, but they certainly weren’t going to wait around for the rest of the Alliance fleet to arrive and squander part or all of their opportunity.

In all more than 2,000 Hycre jumpships arrived in one long convoy, decelerating against the star one at a time but only spaced a handful of seconds apart, after which there was a few minutes gap until the first Kvash battleship jumped in, with its tri-sphere hull small in comparison to the Hycre jumpships, but even smaller compared to the ‘starbases’ that followed, each of which was the size of 3 Hycre jumpships and carried not only a fleet of warships, but functioned as troop carrier, battle station, refueling depot, repair yard, and just about every other function imaginable.

The massive battleships moved into flanking positions, dwarfed by the starbases they were escorting, as each one jumped off to a different position in the system with unique targets. Normally a starbase was reserved for the assault of a heavily defended enemy system or the defense of a highly important Kvash one, but for this assault they’d brought not one, not two, but 17 starbases, underscoring just how important this assault was…and how infuriated they were by the Nestafar’s betrayal of the Alliance.

2

After the ‘small’ Kvash fleet arrived, the much larger Bsidd force started to pour in. Their gangly ships were as convoluted as their bodies, but the vaguely insectile race was the most technologically advanced within the Alliance, although not the strongest. The Hycre had superior gravity drives, the Kvash better shields, and the Calavari better starfighters…but it was the Bsidd that were overall the most balanced, and where the other three had weaknesses the Bsidd did not.

What they did have were numbers. Each of their ships were smaller than their Hycre counterparts, and all were manned, unlike Star Force’s small drone warships, which gave them a fleet of nimble, high tech craft that were faster than the Nestafar and equipped with weaponry befitting larger ships, giving them a more potent sting individually and a swarming capability that allowed them to take on more massive vessels.

With such numbers it took a long time to get all of their jumpships into the system, for they too were smaller than average. The assault on Orica was already 10 hours old by the time the last of them arrived, with the jumpships not disgorging the warships within, but rather jumping off to their target locations to deliver them up close and personal.

With the Hycre engaging the Nestafar’s mobile fleets, which were still mostly disabled by the Elarioni virus, the Bsidd moved out to 18 planetoids and began unloading their warships into large swarms out on the periphery of planetary orbit, after which they moved down the gravity well engaging the Nestafar battle stations with a mix of plasma and an energy weapon they referred to as a ‘disruptor’ that worked in a similar way to Star Force’s mauler, only with longer range and less effect on matter.

It did have a similar effect on shields, highly damaging the energy matrixes and penetrating them sooner than other weapons, after which their bright blue plasma would have a straight path to the hull armor. Each of their weapons was small in size, but they had many on each ship and all with decent range, allowing them to engage multiple smaller targets, like fighters, with ease, or they could group their fire together to hit larger targets, giving the Bsidd fleet a highly adaptive battle profile.

They did take losses, unlike the Kvash whose smallest ship in play was a heavy cruiser, but the Bsidd had so many ships that those that were lost were hardly noticeable. The Bsidd swarms moved methodically from one battle station to another, utterly tearing them to shreds while the Nestafar fleet that normally would have been supplementing the stations’ defense was being engaged by the Hycre elsewhere.

Halfway through the Bsidd assaults the battle stations were able to overcome the Elarioni virus, allowing their targeting programs to reassert themselves…at which point the number of Bsidd casualties began to climb, but their numbers were so great there was no stopping them as they moved throughout the orbital tracks of the planetoids they were assigned, wiping them clean of Nestafar infrastructure, both military and civilian, along with any cargo ships that hadn’t had the sense to run away when the fighting started.

The Kvash moved slower over their target worlds, overlapping fire and cycling out ships when their shield strength dipped near the breaking point. They had such a numerical superiority that they didn’t fancy on losing any ships, and set out a slow moving game plan to accommodate that outcome as they picked off more of the Nestafar battle stations with their heavy cruisers and battleships while their starbases offered fire support on the bigger targets, for the Nestafar had a wide range of defensive platforms, some of which were truly massive.

But they were stationary, which was their defining weakness. They were also scattered around orbit rather than clustered together, which let the Kvash and Bsidd isolate and pick them off in sequence thanks to the fact that the Hycre were doing such a good job engaging the Nestafar fleets elsewhere. In addition to the Elarioni virus, the mohawks were laying out a tactical display that would be studied for years to come by the Alliance member races, for they were single handedly sticking it to the Nestafar navally in more than 200 locations, not allowing their defense fleets to bunch up and mass attack the Kvash.

They also didn’t let them go after the Bsidd either. At first they didn’t have much choice, because the Nestafar warships couldn’t see where the attacking fleets were, or their own that were trying to reposition, and the Hycre used that advantage to blindside them, destroying more than a third of their defense fleet before the Nestafar computer programmers found and disabled the virus…some individually onboard ships at first, then a master cleansing protocol created and distributed from one of the planets in the system.

When the Nestafar finally got their ‘eyes’ open they found themselves under assault at dozens of planetoids, not to mention the interplanetary staging bases that were supposed to be hard to get to, given that they didn’t have a nearby gravity well to quickly brake against, meaning ships would have to approach slowly and use weakened gravity drives or convention thrust to arrive at the bases.

That would have been true of the Bsidd and Kvash, but with the Hycre’s binary drives they were able to push off the stars and head straight towards the outposts the Elarioni-stolen map had tagged and the scout ship had confirmed, traveling at speeds that none of the other races in the system could hope to brake against. All of them would have overshot the targets, but because the Hycre could push against the distant planets, same as the other races could, and slow their approach gradually, they were able to use that repulsion and the gravitational attraction back to the star they had just jumped from to double up their braking speed.

Only they, and now Star Force, had that oh so valuable ability, and it allowed them to get to the semi-hidden fleet bases and massacre the staging fleets there before the virus was counteracted. That meant the planetary defense fleets they were also engaging didn’t have the backup they expected, allowing the Hycre to engage them head on and tie them up so they couldn’t reposition to assist the battle stations that the other Alliance races were ‘pwning.’

That left the defense fleets over the worlds that the Alliance hadn’t hit yet as the only free ships to reposition, save for a handful of patrol fleets that the Hycre hadn’t gotten to. After a stretch of hesitation they all began redeploying to Vreen, one of the worlds that the Kvash were attacking with a single starbase and four battleships, plus a cluster of heavy cruisers. The Nestafar’s intent was to isolate it and take it out with massive numbers while the rest of the Alliance was engaged, even if it meant leaving their other worlds undefended, for they could clearly see they were getting overrun, and before long they wouldn’t have the fleet strength to take on the Kvash, after which point it’d all be over in space.

The winged Nestafar warships rendezvoused in high orbit over Vreen as the Kvash moved from on battle station to another, wiping them off the map with their indomitable firepower and superior defense shields. The Nestafar commanders wisely waited for some two hours to assemble their reinforcements before they moved out, dropping down into the lower orbits and engaging the Kvash battleships and heavy cruisers midway as they moved out to protect the starbase, hoping to make the Nestafar split their forces.

That didn’t happen, and the Nestafar blew right by the much larger Kvash ships, firing as they passed in a long chain that proved too much for the defender’s shields to handle. All four battleships’ shields fell under a brutal assault of green glowing missiles that were being released from the passing ships, none of whom stayed to slug it out. What damage the Kvash did to the Nestafar as they passed was little, given that they couldn’t target the same ship twice at the speeds they were moving.

In retrospect the Kvash should have kept their ‘smaller’ ships in close to the starbase, which was where the Nestafar fleet slowed down and began slugging it out at close range. Plasma streamers galore shot out from the Kvash supership, coring enemy warships with single shots, along with clouds of ‘blips’ pouring out from the white hull and moving to intercept the thousands of incoming missiles before they could hit the shields.

What followed was a massacre on both sides, for the Nestafar had the numbers to take the starbase down, but in doing so it cost them greatly. Neither the Bsidd nor Hycre were in a position to assist, for they were engaged with other Nestafar fleets across the system, so as the starbase resigned itself to destruction it launched a flotilla of landing craft out down towards the planet below, carrying the massive number of ground troops and equipment that were onboard, hoping that at least some of them would survive.

The Nestafar intercepted a few of the ships as they left, but given the almost kamikaze-like speeds they were accelerating at, most of the Kvash transports got away from the battle and down into the atmosphere, picking a position in between the heavily shielded Nestafar cities to land. All across the planet the Kvash sensors showed energy domes going up, marking the positions that would have to be assaulted from the ground in lieu of a massive orbital bombardment campaign that none of the three Alliance races were outfitted for.

As the Kvash transports began landing on an uninhabited grassy plain and spilling out their prefab construction units, they were able to look back up into the daytime sky and see the blocky star-shaped wedge that was the starbase as an internal explosion sheared off one of the arms and set it slowly adrift, along with a lot of other tiny pinprick explosions across the hull and the gray/black halo of Nestafar warships that surrounded it.

Knowing that help would eventually be on the way and that the Nestafar warships were ill suited for in-atmosphere operations, the Kvash ground team began implementing the battle plan they’d entered the system with. They picked five locations on the grassy plain, with four directional points around a central fifth, and began assembling the prefab structures they brought with them, using the transports to fly the material out to the various locations.

The structures came together quickly, given that all the Kvash had to do was move them into position and ‘click’ them together. As they did that, with the transports doubling as flying cranes to lift various pieces into position, Kvash fighters began to deploy from cargo containers and take to the sky in defensive patrol as swarms of Nestafar fighters began approaching their positions, having come from the nearest cities.

These fighters weren’t Valeries, but rather the Nestafar’s native designs, which the Kvash had battle simmed against numerous times. They were flat and tri-pointed, like a ninja’s throwing star, and moved extremely well on lateral angles, but less so in climbing and diving. They had minimal shields but very good hull armor, taking a cue from their walkers, but it also made them heavy and a touch slow.

The Kvash fighters were also heavy and slow, but that was because of the large amount of tech they’d squeezed into the confined space of their antler-shaped craft. A short pointed nose cone feathered back into four hull segments splaying out to aft, the middle two of which went high, and the outer two went low, offering weapons on all four to have a forward line of sight. The fighter was twice the size of the Nestafar’s Jennsa, but nearly as fast…which was to say slow by Alliance standards, but the Kvash didn’t like using the Valeries as much as some of the other races did, due to their easy ability to be shot down.

Or so the Kvash thought. The Valerie was a well-defended, nimble, fast fighter…but sticking to their rock mentality the Kvash version made the Calavari’s look easy to kill. The Kiach had thick hull armor surrounding the pilot’s pod, which like Star Force mech designs didn’t have a window to the exterior. It was thoroughly encased in multiple layers of protection, making for an ‘egg’ design within the fighter, around which the four hulls of the starfighter radiated. With the forward hull nose cone pointing out in front of it, it was almost impossible to directly target the pilot’s cradle, which allowed many downed Kvash pilots to walk away and fly another day.

But as thick as the armored layers were, the defense shields were extremely robust. From Star Force’s perspective the Kiach was more of a gunship than a fighter, and that’s how the Kvash used them. They didn’t even bother trying to outfly their opponents, preferring instead to arrange situations where they’d trade weaponsfire, with their superior defenses winning out.

That meant the Kiaches taking to the air over Vreen were worth several Nestafar Jennsas each, and the Kvash had packed plenty of them into the transports. The equally white fighters rose up into the sky by the bunches and fanned out, creating a wide perimeter around the construction field as the 5 outposts were beginning construction. That perimeter thickened considerably, then several tendrils of fighters shot off to intercept the incoming Jennsas before they could get over the landing area, inciting  three separate midair battles as Nestafar walkers within the nearby cities and further defense bases began assembling to await transport out to the new warzone.

The fighter combat slewed to the Kvash side, given that the Nestafar didn’t totally overwhelm them with numbers. A few of the Jennsa got through to make strafing runs on the construction crews and transports, but not enough to stop their progress, for there were so many transports on the ground or hovering in the air that the Nestafar had too many targets to choose from, and any damaged equipment was quickly replaced by others.

Eventually the starfighter battle thinned, but it didn’t abate, for the Nestafar continued sending reinforcements over from other cities, ensuring a continuing battle until the Kvash eventually lost to attrition…or so it seemed until the central construction site completed a partial power up and the battle fort began pumping out anti-air plasma blasts at the closest fighters and lachar-like beams at those further off.

That took care of the stragglers getting past the main melee, and soon the central battle fort raised its defense shields, claiming a tiny piece of Vreen for the Kvash and establishing the centerpiece in their strongpoint defense that would soon see four spurs added to it in the coming hours. Each battle fort was equipped with shields and weaponry capable of defending against the Nestafar walkers, including the super dragons, meaning that once the Kvash got set up on a world they were very difficult to remove.

The Nestafar knew this, which was why ground troops and fighters were being assembled from across the planet and shifted over to the landing zone as quickly as possible, hoping to take down some of the Kvash transports that were now taking cover beneath the battle fort’s anti-air defenses as they waited to unload their cargos. The starbase had been so large it held an insane number of troops, and even with the losses they suffered coming down to the planet there were still hundreds of thousands of Kvash sealed up inside waiting to be deployed…but they weren’t going to do so until they got a proper strongpoint established, else they’d risk losing their troops unnecessarily.

By keeping them in the transports they maintained the option of redeploying to another location or running away if this landing zone was overrun. So as more of the 5 battle forts came online, additional transports were ordered to unload their personnel and equipment to man and expand them, for they weren’t just stubby blocks of defenses, but rather Lego-like building segments that could be added to over time.

Take a small battle fort, add fully loaded transports and a healthy dose of time, and they’d see a plant-like growth that would eventually merge the central fort with the four spurs, creating a gigantic fortress whose combined shield power would be equivalent of the bubble shields protecting the Nestafar cities from bombardment.

If the Kvash got that far, then they will have secured a route of resupply from orbit, allowing even more troops to come down had they more ships waiting. They did not, for the other starbases were doing the exact same thing on other worlds. That said, once the Kvash opened the door to the surface the Bsidd’s weaker troops would follow them down, take up residence inside the mega fort, then begin deploying out with the Kvash to assault the surrounding cities.

Against one race the Nestafar could hold their own, but with all three Alliance races working together to overlap their strengths the Nestafar were at an extreme disadvantage in skill, tactics, and technology…but what they did have were numbers, for the system housed more than 8 trillion of the winged vermin, and their millions of cities were well defended, calling into question the Alliance’s ability to take more than one or two worlds.

And after that what would they do, with fleeing Nestafar ships carrying word out to nearby systems that Orica was under assault? They would eventually send reinforcements to oust the invaders, while the nearest Alliance worlds were months away.

At the moment that didn’t matter, for the fight that had been long in the making was finally here, with both sides hammering each other across the Orica System on a scale of warfare that had not been seen in millennia.

3

January 16, 2444

Orica System

Nestarraffa (Nestafar Homeworld)

It was the Bsidd who had been tasked with assaulting the Nestafar homeworld, and after taking several days to clean out its orbital tracks of every ship and station the enemy had built up, they began landing ground teams en mass, as they and the Kvash were doing on numerous other planets and moons across the system. The Hycre fleet, or rather what was left of it, was still moving about from planetoid to planetoid engaging the remains of the mobile Nestafar defenses, keeping their attention away from the Kvash and Bsidd while they focused on ground assaults.

Not every planetoid in the system was under assault, nor could they be given how many there were, but Nestarraffa had been chosen as one of the primary targets, thus it got tagged for the first round of assaults, with the Bsidd devoting more ships and troops towards it than any other location.

Unlike Vreen, Nestarraffa was a world covered in one unending cityscape, making landing troops more difficult, which was why the Bsidd had been chosen to hit it. Their battle plans didn’t call for establishing strongpoints and battle forts like the Kvash did, but rather in pouring an insane number of units down onto the planet and overwhelming the defenders with numbers and superior technology.

Trick of it was, the Nestafar had greater numbers on planet than the Bsidd could hope to counter, meaning they had to pick their targets…which in this case were the primary shield generators.

While the urban landscape covered the entire landlocked planet, the primary shields did not. Instead they covered large swaths of the city, leaving gaps where the Bsidd transports came down and began spilling out their own mutli-legged walkers while a battle for air superiority was taking place over the 184 landing zones.

Immediately upon being dropped by advance transports, the walkers skittered off through the narrow city streets in search of weapons batteries and secondary shield generators to hit, with Bsidd troops staying near the LZs and clearing out the surrounding buildings and establishing a perimeter within which to begin unpacking the larger transports. Out of those would come their flying fortresses, which were the equivalent of hovering battle forts shaped like a horseshoe. Tendrils appeared to grow out of the structure, then wrap around it in a bird nest-like motif that held a vast array of weapons, both for anti-air and against ground targets.

With the walkers leading the way and hitting key infrastructure around the LZs, thousands of the massive flying fortresses, each more than a kilometer wide, took off towards the primary shield generators, being escorted by scores of Bsidd-built Valeries that took on their standard blue/purple coloration. Working in consort, the formations fought their way to the edge of the nearest shield domes and began assaulting specific patches of it with choreographed disruptor strikes, trying to destabilize the shield segment enough to create a temporary opening.

A scattering of Nestafar walkers came out to oppose them, but they were limited by the geography of the city streets and were met with the powerful underside weaponry of the flying fortresses and gunned down easily. As the Nestafar quickly called off the meaningless assaults and began to pool their local defenses underneath the shield for a more sizeable counterattack, the Bsidd pounded the outer edge until a gap formed…then the disruptor fire spread out to the edges, holding the opening while one of the flying fortresses pushed through.

With it came a slew of Valeries that immediately engaged the fighters inside, for the dome itself had a radius of several hundred miles. With over 30 flying fortresses hammering the shield and keeping the breach open, dozens more passed through but the walkers and infantry did not. They could have gone underneath the outer edge where it met the building tops, for the Nestafar designs didn’t allow for it to drop all the way to the ground, but they didn’t, instead holding their position and protecting the flying fortresses as they kept the gap open long enough for the others to get inside.

After that the ones left outside retreated, along with the walkers, and headed back towards the LZ before breaking off and getting a head start towards another distant shield dome, with the walkers skittering rapidly through the streets to get to the target and passing by most of the Nestafar that were in the way.

As they redeployed the flying fortresses inside the first shield dome accelerated towards the generators at the center, letting the Valeries with them handle most of the anti-air duties, as well as flying ahead and scouting out larger defensive weapons that needed to be disabled before they could prove dangerous to the flying fortresses.

With a tempered pace the Bsidd fought their way across the interior, knocking out several large defense cannons that were designed for aerial defense against warships or transports had the Bsidd been stupid enough to fly overhead, and eventually got to the dome’s center where the shield generators themselves were protected by a secondary shield, which they began assaulting en mass.

Once the enemy fighters within the dome had been destroyed the Bsidd Valeries added their small firepower to the attack, flying low on the streets and undershooting the bottom edge of the shield in some cases, but mostly providing support against Nestafar infantry that was deploying in a defensive perimeter. Their scatterguns proved most effective in knocking them down, but killing them had never been the objective.

Eventually the secondary shield succumbed to the firepower of over 100 flying fortresses, allowing the secondary generators to be targeted and destroyed…thus exposing the well-armored primaries. It took longer to knock them out, but down they eventually came, exposing the city beneath to aerial attack.

But the flying fortresses and remaining Valeries didn’t stay, instead they too began to retreat, ignoring the valuable infrastructure below them that now lay open to assault. They didn’t even bother to destroy the scattering of other small secondary shield generators that were now popping up in place of the primary over key buildings. The Bsidd simply turned around and flew off, leaving the cityscape exposed.

They repeated the same process over the coming days, assaulting the shield domes, creating a gap, then sending their flying fortresses and fighters in to destroy the generators, after which they ignored the Nestafar cities, moving about stripping off their defenses one after another. Ironically the Nestafar’s heavy walkers did them little good on the city streets where they were unable to bunch up and concentrate their firepower. They were left scattered and isolated, allowing the Bsidd to pick them off from the air with their heavy weapons on the flying fortresses when they so chose.

The Nestafar did try and gather their strength to assault the LZs, which quickly became rubble fields. When that happened the walkers regained some of their advantage, crawling over the downed buildings in what eventually looked like a large grained sandbox, but they were unable to penetrate to the center of the LZs with the Bsidd walkers, smaller, faster, and in greater number, chewing apart the heavily armored Nestafar versions after the Valeries and flying fortresses busted them up from above.

Once again the Nestafar’s aerial weakness came back to haunt them, for the Bsidd were far more capable on the ground than the Calavari, and they had access to the Valeries that complimented the flying fortresses very well. Not even the anti-air defensive cupolas on the ground were able to do much against the Bsidd, for the Valeries flew in low at building height and popped the turrets beneath their minimum depression range where they could, while going after the others with walkers.

The sheer number of Nestafar on the planet made it a pitched fight, with high casualties on both sides, but the Bsidd clearly had the advantage, merely having to work through every stage of the assault while the Nestafar continually tried and failed to counter them. After several different tactical maneuvers the Nestafar resorted to an all on infantry assault, rousing the native inhabitants to the air on their own wings and rushed the LZs, providing more targets than the Bsidd could fire at.

That desperate and suicidal tactic actually worked, with the Nestafar getting inside the Bsidd’s defensive perimeter and attacking the staging areas and landing craft on ‘foot,’ though in their case it was flying over the debris, using their wings to avoid the rough terrain and bring their handheld weapons in close to the insect-like Bsidd, whose own infantry met them amongst the grounded ships.

What followed was wholesale slaughter on both sides. The Bsidd skittered around on their multiple appendages, firing blue plasma orbs from ‘wrist’ launchers and weathering some of the Nestafar’s own red plasma with thorax shields, both physical and energy…but there was so many Nestafar that they quickly wore down and the casualties began to mount.

The Nestafar got inside every open door they could find, trying to disable or take control of the ships, walkers, and aircraft in the LZ, including some of the flying fortresses that were hovering over the engagement and laying waste to the Nestafar by the hundreds per second as they fired into the clouds of flapping wings with their plasma and disruptors. Body parts rained down on the Bsidd below, making for a landscape of total horror, but neither side so much as blinked, for both were totally committed to the assault…the Nestafar in defense of their homeworld, and the Bsidd out of vengeance for their former ally’s betrayal.

The Bsidd assault wings out taking down the Nestafar shield domes didn’t turn back, allowing whatever happened at the LZs to work itself out while they stayed on mission. Unlike Star Force or the Kvash, the Bsidd operated off a military strategy that allowed for losing massive amounts of troops to achieve victory. They weren’t so casual about the deaths of their own as the lizards were, but the lengths of sacrifice they were willing to go to in order to achieve their most important objectives was both awe inspiring and gut wrenching at the same time.

Partway through the LZ counter assaults, which were happening simultaneously across the planet, a few small Hycre warships came down from orbit and punched their way into the Nestafar infantry clouds, ramming some of them into hot goo while torching others with their plasma cannons at pointblank range…but still the Nestafar didn’t flee, instead they were being continually reinforced as more of the ‘civilian’ population kept flying towards the LZs armed with hand weapons, which in some cases were merely blades.

Up in orbit more Hycre ships were arriving, following on the heels of Nestafar warships that began redeploying from other planets, leaving them undefended in order to come to the aid of their homeworld. The growing fleet in orbit was already engaging the Bsidd and pushing them to the limit, which the Hycre realized and began diverting a scattering of ships their way from other current engagements. That made it harder for the Hycre fleets which were donating some of their ships to win the battles they were already engaged in, but they weren’t going to let the Bsidd over Nestarraffa or any of the other worlds be wiped out, and the same went for the Kvash.

The Hycre had no ground troops in the fight, which made them almost obsessive about protecting the other races’ fleets in space. They were overextending themselves, they knew, which would result in them losing even more ships, but for them it was a matter of honor, and they countered every unexpected Nestafar naval tactic by pulling the burden upon their own fleets, leaving their allies with the same basic battle plan as they’d discussed prior to the invasion.

Them sending ships down to the surface was an act of desperation and ego, for while they were a naval power only, that power did extend down through the atmosphere if and when they chose, so when it appeared that the Bsidd might be losing their LZs to the unexpected mass infantry assault the Hycre put it on themselves again to change the course of battle.

They couldn’t respond quickly, given that they were bringing ships in from other planets, but the LZ assaults weren’t exactly surprise attacks either. They were a Starship Troopers affair, with the Bsidd holding out as long as they could against an unending stream of Nestafar over the span of hours that then stretched into days.

Rather than sit and watch while their homeworld was being invaded, the native Nestafar from around the planet were being called out to fight and were responding in huge numbers that only a flying race could muster, for as they rose up out of their dwellings they bunched together like a swarm of insects that grew continually larger, then began travelling across hundreds of kilometers, picking up more numbers as they went, turning the skies over the planet into living rivers all emptying out on the Bsidd LZs.

It got so bad that on the third day one of the Kvash starbases repositioned itself into orbit and began dropping reinforcements down to the planet. Their fighters replaced the Bsidd ones who had run out of fuel and crashed, for they couldn’t access the facilities at the LZs for resupply and they didn’t attempt a run up to orbit because they were so overwhelmed with easy targets all they could think of was point and shoot…and shoot…and shoot.

The flying fortresses were another matter, with ample fuel to stay aloft for as long as the Nestafar had suicidal troops to throw at them. With the debris-strewn ground now covered with an ever thickening layer of bodies, the Kvash had to land well away from the LZ in order to find clear space in which to deploy their own infantry…each of which was a battle pod slightly larger than a Nestafar protomech.

Star Force had nicknamed them ‘metroids’ after the power suit Samus Aran wore in the video games, for they had a ‘ball’ mode and a mech configuration. When in ball mode they floated above the surface, acting like a low level aircraft that kept to within 100 meters of the ground. When in mech mode the metroid would sprout a head, arms, and legs that loosely mimicked their pilot’s physiology.

All Kvash infantry were metroids, making them the most robust in all of the Alliance, even more so than the Archons…though some of the trailblazers would dispute that, given their psionic abilities that could cripple the metroid’s pilot. When they began spilling out of their own landing zone they immediately deployed into ball mode and shot off across the cityscape towards the ongoing battle, diving into the Nestafar flows and shooting them down with the single weapon that ball mode afforded them.

When they got to the body mounds that were now the Bsidd LZ they dropped to the ground into mech mode, finding the scattering of clean areas where the few remaining Bsidd troops were holding out. They’d been excavating the body parts like dirt and forming them into barricade mounds, using equipment onboard the transports or even the transports themselves to mash aside the piles.

When the first of the metroids arrived they set their legs down on charred rubble and began firing up into the clouds and drawing the Nestafar’s attention away from the cowering Bsidd. The metroids’ shields absorbed a torrent of plasma all the while the armored infantry shot down many more of their pathetic Nestafar counterparts, taking cover underneath the several horseshoes hovering above whom were all but impervious to the enemy’s infantry weapons.

From there on out the battles continued, with the Kvash only able to reinforce some of the LZs. Those that they did held out, somehow, while the others were eventually overrun. Some of the transports managed to flee, but others were boarded or damaged during the fighting, with a small percentage of the Nestafar infantry coming to the fight carrying explosives or rocket launchers, though it was nearly impossible to tell who had what in such a massive swarm.

The LZs that held eventually thinned out the opposition, then pushed back the engagement zone to a perimeter that allowed reinforcements to start coming down again, not in the form of troops but of supplies, in particular ammo replacements, for plasma didn’t manifest itself without a matter component, and those reserves on the flying fortresses had to be refilled occasionally as they continued to puncture shield dome after shield dome while ignoring most of the attacks being thrown at them by the infantry in those areas.

The battles across the planet lasted for well over a month before the Bsidd had all the shield generators knocked down, after which they began recalling their troops to the LZs that were still under assault by the infantry flowing in from far reaching corners of the planet. The Kvash with occasional Hycre support from low flying warships held the handful of LZs that remained long enough for the Bsidd to pull out their flying fortresses and Valeries that remained, after which the Kvash also removed their troops, seeming to flee the planet.

Fleeing yes, but not conceding. Once all Alliance personnel was cleared off the surface, numerous Bsidd jumpships moved into low orbit and began launching spherical objects down to the surface by the thousands. Each one of which was a tactical warhead pinpointing a specific surface grid. In horrifying mathematical precision, rows of impact points blossomed on the surface, destroying the tiny buildings in massive concussion waves, along with the Nestafar population still inside.

When one row of a sector was completed the orbs began stitching the adjacent rows, one after another, methodically carpeting the entire surface of the Nestafar homeworld with impact craters. The Alliance didn’t intend to capture the planet, nor did they invite a surrender. They were here for one purpose and one purpose only…to wipe out the Nestafar as they had been attempting to wipe out the Calavari.

And what was occurring on Nestarraffa wasn’t an isolated occurrence, for the Bsidd repeated the orbital bombardment on every other planet the Alliance was fighting on once their ground troops succeeded in stripping the Nestafar of their defense shields. When the primary worlds were hit and destroyed, the remaining Alliance troops took to the secondary targets, all the while the Hycre fleet fought off the incoming Nestafar reinforcements from other systems as they dribbled in.

The massacre of the Orica system did not occur quickly, taking more than a year to run its course, and the Alliance fleet that finally left the now dead system was a tiny fraction of what it had been at the outset, but it had accomplished its purpose and the survivors left victorious on their long trip back to Calavari territory, where they split up and began their equally long trips back to their respective territories…all the while the war between the Nestafar and Calavari continued on oblivious in most systems, for that was the nature of interstellar warfare. One system didn’t know what was happening in another as it was occurring, but word of what happened would slowly spread from ship to ship and race to race.

The name Orica would become synonymous with ‘betrayal,’ ‘vengeance,’ and ‘annihilation,’ but to the Archons it would come to mean something altogether different…putting the final nail in the Alliance coffin, as far as the Humans were concerned.

4

March 19, 2446

Nevarsor System

Namek

Paul sat staring at the hologram of the Bsidd jumpships bombarding Nestarraffa and annihilating the population with his jaw clenching in anger. He’d been reviewing the battle data that the Alliance had transmitted to them via the relay network for the past 3 days, massive as it was, and only now had he gotten to the crux of their strategy. They hadn’t gone to Orica to cripple the Nestafar’s shipyards or to destroy their warfleet or to hinder their economy…they’d gone to outright slaughter the enemy.

That didn’t sit well with Paul, and a message from Jason that had come along with the data packet through their own interstellar relay link out to Namek had suggested as much. He’d told Paul what he thought of the assault, in exquisite detail, as had several other trailblazers in forwarded comments, but rather than skip ahead Paul had decided to work through the year-long invasion chronologically and was only now coming to the civilian slaughter.

The Bsidd’s battle tactics were bad enough, wasting personnel when they had the technology to adopt either the Kvash’s or Star Force’s approach, but laying waste to the Nestafar homeworld was going too far. The Alliance hadn’t been fighting to defend themselves or to neutralize the enemy, they’d gone there to kill them. And while Paul was pleased to see the Nestafar get kicked in the proverbial nuts, this was not a battle plan that he ever would have signed onto, and he was disappointed and disturbed that the Hycre had.

The Kvash had also participated in the bombardment, not of Nestarraffa, but of the other worlds…though Paul hadn’t gotten that far yet. Jason’s notes had indicated they were just as methodical about wiping out the Nestafar as the Bsidd were, showing their true colors as well. From the beginning Star Force had known little about most of the races in the Alliance, but from reading their available histories something had always been amiss with those two, and now it was clear that neither race could be trusted.

Star Force had little contact with either of them, given their territories were on the other side of the Alliance, with both the Hycre and Calavari between them…and it was going to stay that way, for the unanimous assessment amongst the trailblazers that had chimed in on the data packet and the subsequent message updates coming through the relay grid about it, which Paul would be adding to shortly, was that the Bsidd and Kvash were now on their own against the lizards. Star Force wasn’t going to come to the aid of such a dishonorable race, so while in appearance they were both part of the Alliance, the trailblazers were no longer considering them to be allies.

If the Kvash and Bsidd could do what they did to the Nestafar, then they could do it to anyone else they considered an enemy, for they had no honor. Killing the enemy because you had no choice was altogether different from having their lives in the palm of your hand and choosing to crush them when you were in full control. There was a great difference between defeating a civilization and annihilating one, and what the Alliance had just done had been the latter.

Paul unclenched his jaw and sat back, watching the bombs fall from orbit and obliterate swaths of the holographic planet’s surface on a scale that no nuke could ever touch. Not even Star Force could make warheads of that caliber, and even as Paul watched the horror of it all he wondered if the Bsidd had a tactical missile version that could be used against, say, a Kvash starbase if they wished. He mentally cataloged the possibility, in case Star Force and the Bsidd ever found themselves at odds, but given the distances between their respective territories he doubted that would ever happen.

The lizards would probably wipe them out first.

Paul watched through the conclusion of the bombardment of the Nestafar homeworld, then left the room to get some air. He eventually ended up down on Balboa Lane with a handful of other Archons and summoned up a punching bag target off to the side in the huge chamber so as not to interfere with those running obstacle courses.

He proceeded to lightly pound the target with punches and kicks, slowly escalating up to more powerful hits as he bled off his anger, allowing his mind to process more smoothly. This wasn’t the Alliance he’d thought they’d joined, nor was it an Alliance they were going to remain part of, for they certainly weren’t going to participate or condone any such barbarism, but it made him wonder just how many of the other races would.

He doubted the Calavari would, but the fact that the Hycre had sat by and watched as the Bsidd and Kvash obliterated non-military targets now had him questioning all of their allies, some of which they’d gained considerable influence with. At last count there were 32 races that made up the Alliance, with all of the Nestafar’s allies having been abandoned by their betrayal and staying with the overall group, such as the Protovic. A few new races had been added since the summit where the Alliance had officially been forged, but the main players were still the same…the Calavari, Kvash, Hycre, and Bsidd.

Star Force’s stature had grown, but they still weren’t first tier within the Alliance. Paul knew that many races would now follow the Bsidd’s and Kvash’s lead, emulating their slaughter. Even the more sensible races, put under the strains of war, could cave to the barbarism being displayed unless there remained a beacon of honor present to show them that there was another way. The Calavari had held that position within the Alliance, but now as their civilization was shrinking and their military might weakening they clearly didn’t hold the influence they once had, otherwise the Bsidd, Kvash, and Hycre would have included them in the assault on Orica…even if it was just on a symbolic level.

The Alliance was already fracturing, and Paul feared it would devolve into a barbaric fight for survival rather than stand as a united front against barbarism. Most people, he knew, would trade their principles for survival, and Humans right up there among the other races. Star Force wouldn’t, because the Archons and Davis wouldn’t…or at least the trailblazers wouldn’t, and now that Paul thought about it he couldn’t say the same for all the Archons, especially the younger ones. They mimicked those that had come ahead of them, following their lead just as he feared the other races would follow the Bsidd and Kvash’s example.

Take the trailblazers and the other experienced Archons out of the equation and what would Star Force be? Take Davis out and what would it become? Paul knew that he’d never turn to barbarism in order to survive, and trusted the other trailblazers were the same. He knew they were the same, but they were only 100 out of trillions of individuals across Alliance territory. Unfortunately most people’s true colors were not golden. They were either blank slates that could go either way based on those around them or they were selfish, greedy, unscrupulous bastards just waiting for an opportunity to stab you in the back to advance themselves.

Then again, he wondered how many more individuals out there were like him. His true colors had always been golden, but before he’d joined Star Force he didn’t understand much of anything. It was only after learning and growing did his true colors fully manifest themselves, before which he’d been in sort of a protective cocoon, going along with the flow of society until he figured out who he really was and began customizing his own life accordingly.

If there wasn’t a beacon of hope, a shining light for other younglings out there to see, how many good people would stay in their cocoons, prisoners of their own societies for the simple, inescapable reason that they’d never seen anything different on which to pattern themselves on…or those like Paul that had just needed a wakeup call to ignite his own core nature. He’d seen firsthand how Earth had changed due to Star Force over the past 400 years, and while there were still bad elements there, the masses had shifted to a more enlightened state…but take away Star Force and he knew it wouldn’t sustain. It’d devolve back towards barbarism and tyranny.

Which was why he couldn’t let this pass.

Paul spent the next four hours in Balboa Lane, punching and kicking his way to a conclusion…along with scuffed knuckles. When he sent the target back into its wall niche he left the sanctum and boarded a dropship, taking him up to orbit where he commandeered one of the warships and jumped out of the system a few hours later enroute to the nearest Hycre colony in the expansion zone.

Three weeks later…

When the Star Force warship decelerated against the yellow/orange star of the Cadathi System it entered a system that contained only two planets, both of them gas giants that had a total of 56 moons between them. All were rocky with little to no atmosphere, but they did make plotting jumps more hazardous. Fortunately Star Force had already been to this system and updated their ever growing galactic map, so that they knew the orbital placements of each of the gravity wells before making their microjump out to the larger of the two gas giants…after using their gravity drives’ acquisition programing to verify that there was gravity pulling from where it was supposed to.

Without any navigational hiccups the warship jumped into high orbit around the gas giant, which was so massive it would have become a star were it not for the fact that it didn’t contain much hydrogen. The core of the planet was solid, in fact, probably a collection of a few moons that had fallen into the nitrogen/sulfur dioxide sphere. Around it was a hardened layer of the ‘gas’ itself, having been compressed into solid form. Further out from it was a liquid ocean, also due to the pressures involved, but beyond that tiny core the rest of the massive planet was gas…very, very hot gas.

Which was how the Hycre liked it. Paul knew they had habitats down inside the planet’s faded yellow clouds, but the ship’s telaris sensors could only detect the uppermost few. Bright white bands of clouds stretched across the upper atmosphere like claw marks on the otherwise monotone planet that was entirely unsuitable for Humans, but was a garden spot for the Hycre who didn’t even need environmental suits to move about in the atmosphere.

To do that the winds needed to be low, which they were according to the planetary data he had available, but only at certain altitudes. The white streaks were evidence of higher velocities and currents, making the gaseous planet a geographical maze in that it had to be viewed in 3D as opposed to a flat map.

That didn’t matter to Paul, for there was nowhere down in the clouds for him or the warship to go. The sulfuric acid alone would eat the paint off the hull if the shields weren’t raised, and Paul found it odd that the Hycre’s bloated bodies didn’t respond to it in a negative fashion. To them it was no more harmful than a cloud of fog or a rain shower, making the world below Paul’s warship truly an alien environment.

The Hycre were also a truly alien race, but they’d found common ground with the Humans in several areas of commerce and warfare, all starting with the navally dominant race coming to Star Force’s aid on Corneria centuries ago. Their willingness to help an unknown neighbor had spoken well about them and their intentions, but now Paul was wondering if he’d misread their alien nature and truly wished he could get within a few meters of one so he could poke around inside its head, but given their varied life support necessities that wasn’t going to happen here.

So he was going to have to get his answers the old fashioned way, using guile, intelligence, and diplomacy…the first step of which was not to make immediate contact upon arrival. Instead he had the warship maneuver down into low orbit, beneath the myriad of moons into a clean orbital track that gave them a good sensor view of the spacebound Hycre infrastructure.

There were a dozen different stations in planetary orbit, plus many more circling individual moons. The rocky planetoids were being mined by the Hycre in their awkward fashion, though Paul noted that two of the mining colonies were using Star Force equipment. He recognized the largely automated drilling machines from the catalog of products that the megacorporation offered to buyers from other races, but this was the first such use he’d seen the Hycre make of them and wondered just how much better they were performing than the other sites.

Amongst the stations and mining colonies there were 100 or so ships moving about planetary orbit, and he guessed there was at least half again that amount around the other gas giant. Both planets were habitable by Hycre standards, but the one below him now was the more desirable one and had been the first to be colonized some 120 years ago, which is why Paul had chosen to come here.

He let his warship sit in orbit, watching as two Hycre cruisers and a scattering of corvettes traced their lazy orbits around the planet at various locations, none of which moved to intercept the Human ship. They were longtime allies and friends, with a level of comfortability between the races given the fact that they shared a few star systems, and even though this wasn’t one of them there was no animosity on either side resulting from their arrival.

Paul held position in orbit for several hours before the Hycre finally made contact with them, asking their purpose here and offering any assistance should they require it. In response Paul politely demanded that he speak with the senior-most Hycre in the system, of which contained some 3 billion of them, though Star Force had never been able to confirm those numbers. When his comm channel got switched over to a mid-level administrator he refused to discuss anything with them, holding out with his original demand.

It wasn’t until he identified himself as the Star Force naval Supreme Commander did he get the response he wanted, though that title was more for their benefit. The Hycre had never quite understood the Humans’ lack of hierarchy within their military, so Paul had found it best at times to translate his standing into terms they could understand…though Roger and Liam would have raised an eyebrow at that particular title.

Shortly thereafter a holographic transmission came through, as opposed to the standard audial comm that had to be computer translated into English. As Paul stood up from his command chair on the bridge a large hologram of the mohawked gas bag appeared before him in actual size, which was akin to a small car.

SPEAK SUPREME COMMANDER.

Paul stared back at the eyeless creature, knowing that it perceived the world around it through its skin, including some level of visual information, giving it its own spherical sight.

“Tell me what you know of what transpired in the Orica System.”

5

“Unacceptable,” Paul said firmly, though that firmness was probably lost in the translation program so he focused solely on the words he was using. “If we are fighting the Cajdital because they are barbaric and unable to be negotiated with, then we cannot be the same.”

THEY BEGAN THIS WAR. SO DID THE NESTAFAR. WE ARE NOT THE SAME.

“We are if we do not have a code of conduct.”

SUCH A CODE IS A LUXURY IN WAR. SOMETIMES IT MUST BE ABANDONED TO DO WHAT IS NECESSARY FOR SURVIVAL. WE ARE NOT ALONE IN THIS. YOU ALSO PURGE THE CAJDITAL.

“We have taken both Cajdital and Nestafar prisoner. The Cajdital kill themselves when they are taken captive and cannot find a way to further harm us. The Nestafar do not. Despite this fact we still offer the option of surrender to the Cajdital. The Alliance never made an offer in Orica, not even once, on one world. What you, the Bsidd, and the Kvash did was outright slaughter them. That is not something Star Force can condone.”

WHAT IS DONE IS ALREADY DONE. YOUR APPROVAL IS NOT REQUIRED.

“True,” Paul admitted. “The events at Orica are fixed, but Star Force’s future relations with the Alliance and the Hycre are not.”

WHAT EXACTLY ARE YOU ASKING OF US?

“We cannot let ourselves become butchers, no matter what the circumstances. That goes for Human, Hycre, and every other race in the Alliance.”

BUT THAT IS PRECISELY WHAT YOU HAVE BECOME WITH THE CAJDITAL. THEY GIVE YOU NO CHOICE BUT TO SLAUGHTER THEM, AND WISELY YOU DO.

“There is a difference between neutralizing threats and killing those who cannot fight back. Every lizard settlement we’ve razed from orbit had the capability to grow to the point where it could produce warships and weapons that could be turned against us. If we left it alone it would come back to hurt us later. The Cajdital have no civilians. They have no children. They are genetically engineered and grown on demand with inborn knowledge of who and what they are expected to be. Their individuality has been suppressed to the point they’re practically zom…they’re living weapons.”

“We have been trying to find a way to negotiate with them, but with very little success. Every individual we’ve encountered has been fully committed to their race’s goals and our destruction, but we haven’t let that change us and the way we fight. We kill them when we have to, but their overall destruction is not one of our goals. Neutralizing the threat they pose is.”

BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION NEUTRALIZING THE THREAT WILL REQUIRE WIDESPREAD SLAUGHTER BECAUSE THEY WILL NOT ALLOW ANOTHER OPTION.

“Possibly, but we haven’t given up looking for alternatives…and I didn’t come here because of your battles with the Cajdital. The Nestafar are the matter at hand. You had options with them, and you chose slaughter. That is the problem.”

IF YOU HAVE SEEN THE BATTLE DATA THEN YOU KNOW THE ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT WAS NOT UNDERTAKEN BY THE HYCRE.

“No it wasn’t, but you had to know the battle plan before the invasion began, which meant you were ok with it.”

NEITHER I NOR ANY OTHER IN THIS SYSTEM WAS PRIVY TO THOSE PLANS. WE CANNOT ANSWER THAT QUESTION FOR YOU.

“I didn’t think you could, but you’re the closest Hycre I have to talk to.”

WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO ACHIEVE WITH THIS CONVERSATION?

“An understanding,” Paul stated flatly. “Star Force holds to a code of conduct, and we expect our allies to do the same, otherwise they’re not worth being allies. To date I’ve not been disappointed by the Hycre, but now I am and I’ve begun to wonder if this was an isolated incident or a part of Hycre methodology that I was previously unaware of. You should be able to address that.”

YOU SEEK COMMON GROUND NOW WHERE YOU HAD PREVIOUSLY ASSUMED THERE TO BE?

“Yes. I seek confirmation or clarification.”

A REASONABLE REQUEST. ASK YOUR QUESTIONS.

“Do the Hycre seek to eradicate the Nestafar for their betrayal of the Alliance?”

WE SEEK PUNISHMENT, NOT ERADICATION.

“What is your idea of punishment?”

THERE ARE MANY OPTIONS. FORFEITURE OF TERRITORY AND TECHNOLOGY IS STANDARD.

“Define technology.”

SHIPS AND WEAPONS.

“Have the Hycre ever eradicated a planetary population?”

TWICE.

“Explain the circumstances.”

INTERNAL CONFLICTS.

Paul frowned. “They were Hycre?”

YES.

That was disturbing…and yet it made sense, given that the Hycre didn’t have ground troops to assault worlds with, nor an ability to bombard a planet from orbit. That’s why they’d coopted Star Force for several assaults on the lizards.

The disturbing part was that they were capable of doing so, especially to their own people. That told Paul that given the right circumstances they could do it again if they weren’t opposed to the tactic itself.

“Why were your people killed rather than punished?”

SOME DIFFERENCES ARE TOO GREAT TO ACCOMMODATE.

“I need further explanation on that point.”

THEY WERE TRAITORS. WE MAY PUNISH OTHER RACES FOR THEIR ACTIONS, BUT WE HOLD OUR OWN PEOPLE TO HIGHER STANDARDS. THEY SOUGHT REBELLION AND HAD TO BE EXTERMINATED.

That was not what Paul wanted to hear, but it was important information none the less.

“We are not in a position to punish the Bsidd or Kvash for what they did, but we consider what happened at Orica worthy of punishment. As you pointed out, the Hycre did not participate in the bombardment itself, but the fact that you aided in the assault that set up the bombardment, and the fact that you didn’t stop it when it occurred, puts your honor into question.”

“The Bsidd and Kvash are far from here, but Star Force and the Hycre share territory, and this system is largely protected by us as we hold the Cajdital in this area at bay. Ever since our two races met when you came to our aid we have trusted you, but Orica has shaken that trust. Should the Hycre attempt to do the same again, with a Star Force fleet in the same system, our ships will intervene to stop you…so it’s very important that we come to terms now before such a situation can occur.”

YOUR WORDS BORDER ON THREAT AND WARNING, BUT I SEE THE WISDOM IN THEM. OUR RACES DO SHARE BURDENS, AND AS SUCH WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND ONE ANOTHER. I WILL OFFER WHAT EXPLANATIONS I CAN, BUT I CANNOT SPEAK FOR THOSE OUTSIDE THIS SYSTEM. IF YOU SEEK TREATY TERMS I CANNOT SIGN THEM.

“But can you negotiate them in principle?”

SO LONG AS THEY ARE UNBINDING.

“Only unbinding terms would be acceptable, given that we are not aware of each other’s actions the majority of the time.”

YOU DO NOT SEEK REPERCUSSIONS FOR FUTURE ACTIONS THEN?

“I seek an understanding between us, so that if one day Star Force must sever ties with the Hycre it will not be a surprise to either side.”

YOU RELY ON US MORE THAN WE RELY ON YOU. SUCH A SEVERING WOULD BE TO YOUR DISADVANTAGE.

Paul smiled. “That is exactly what I am referring to. You are assuming that our primary motivation is to seek out advantage. It is not. Our first priority is to the truth and to honor…not honor in the form of reputation or status, but in morality.”

YOU SAY YOUR PRIMARY, THEN YOU NAME TWO ITEMS. A PRIMARY MUST ONLY BE ONE.

“Honor is linked to the truth, and cannot be attained through a lie. The truth is rarely acknowledged by those without honor, for they lie to attain their own advantages. In this way the two concepts are intrinsically linked, yet they are separate words for us.”

WHILE TRANSLATIONAL DIFFICULTIES COULD BE AT FAULT, YOUR WORDS MIMIC THOSE OF THE CALAVARI. THEY TOO SPEAK OFTEN OF HONOR AND LINK IT TO STRENGTH. WE ARE NOT IN DISAGREEMENT WITH THEM. WE ARE NOT IN DISAGREEMENT WITH YOU. BUT WE PUT THE NEEDS OF OUR OWN PEOPLE ABOVE THOSE OF OTHERS. WE HAVE NOT ENCOUNTERED A RACE THAT HAS DONE OTHERWISE.

“To me, every race is my people. You are my brothers, same with the Calavari, the Nestafar, the Cajdital, the Kiritas, and others. Even the primitive races that we cannot communicate with are our brothers, right down to the insects that we accidentally step on…” Paul hesitated, remembering that the Hycre don’t ‘step’ on anything. “Even the small, seemingly insignificant lifeforms that most races see as beneath them or as their property. All are living, and therefore my brothers. I can communicate more easily with my own race, given our similarities, as I can communicate more easily with warriors than I can pacifists.”

“And just as I can communicate with you in naval terms better than any other race. Similarities enhance communication, differences hinder it, but all are my brothers, all are my people, and all are my concern…including the Nestafar in Orica who the Alliance slaughtered.”

“That is why I will side with those who are in the right, above and beyond my own race. Doing what is right is the definition of honor. If Humans are in the wrong I will side against them, even if it means my race’s destruction. My ‘people’ are those who hold honor as the highest priority and those that speak the truth, regardless of their race, and it is with them that I will side…always.”

THIS IS WHY YOU ARE NOT CARNIVORS?

“Yes.”

THE CALAVARI DO NOT HOLD HONOR AS YOU DO. THEY CONSUME THE FLESH OF OTHERS.

“In a small amount, yes, and they are in the wrong for it. Not for the consumption, but for the killing. But even they have nearly abandoned the practice because of the logistics. Large civilizations cannot rely on a food source that in itself consumes food, particularly not where land space is limited. Honorable foodstuff production is more efficient and reliable.”

WE CONCUR.

“I am curious,” Paul said, going slightly off topic, “are there other lifeforms in the planets you inhabit, or is it just the Hycre that are present?”

MOST OF OUR WORLDS ARE SOLELY OURS, BUT THERE ARE A FEW WITH INDIGENOUS LIFEFORMS. WE DO NOT CONSUME THEM. WE DO NOT COMMUNICATE WITH THEM. THEY ARE IRRELEVANT AND WE IGNORE THEM.

“There are many on our worlds, and we ignore most of them…but we also take care not to harm them, save for when the harming is unavoidable. We don’t like it when it occurs, and we usually find ways around it, but in clogged ecosystems it is almost impossible to fly through the atmosphere without running into something. We don’t intentionally do it, but when you can’t communicate with the insects in the air, you can’t tell them where to stay away from.”

“The more advanced the race the more options one has, but the inescapable fact is that the universe is chaos. We can either participate in it or rebuff it. The honorable rebuff it, which is what I am doing now. Rebuffing the chaos in Orica and everywhere else in the war zones where it might also be occurring.”

YOUR POINT IS TAKEN.

“Is it? I want you to understand clearly that not only do we not condone such action, but that we will fight against those that take it. We can’t stop what happened in Orica, but if the Alliance does it in the presence of a Star Force fleet we’re not just going to stand by and watch like you did. We’re going to take action, even if it means fighting our own allies, for we will stand against the chaos.”

“To date we’ve haven’t had a problem with the Hycre, but our good relationship won’t stop us from doing what’s right if you should choose to go down that path. Do you understand the implications of what I’m saying?”

YOUR MEANING IS CLEAR, BUT YOUR ACTIONS ARE CONTRADICTORY. EXPLAIN YOUR HONOR REGARDING THE CAJDITAL, FOR IT SEEMS YOU HAVE ABANDONED IT IN THE NAME OF NECESSITY.

Paul suppressed a frown, knowing ahead of time that this was going to be a sticking point. He didn’t like the way they were dealing with the lizards, but so far the enemy hadn’t given them much choice, and until he or one of the other trailblazers figured out a better way to deal with them they were going to have to keep killing them by the droves or see their territory encroach on theirs…at which point numerous worlds would be put at greater risk.

“We have no problem with killing,” Paul began. “We know that most people in the universe are not honorable. If they were we wouldn’t have chaos, or we wouldn’t have it for long, for we’d figure out solutions to minimize or negate it entirely. Those of us who are honorable know that we are few, and that we will live most of our lives alone.”

“Most Humans are not honorable, but what Star Force has done is create a haven for those that are to gather and combine our skills. We have active enemies within the Human population, and I expect we always will. Fighting is to be expected, and while not all fights are to the death, some are, and we don’t shy away from them. If someone needs to be killed we kill them, no hesitation. But those people are threats in some way, and they’re a threat because they chose to be one.”

“We do not kill because an individual belongs to a certain race, we kill because of the actions they take. No one chooses what race they are born into, or on what planet…therefore we will not penalize them for such things. There were probably Nestafar in Orica that had nothing to do with the war against the Calavari and in fact were opposed to it…but the Alliance killed them along with the rest, not because of a choice they’d made, but because of the race they were.”

“The Cajdital don’t choose to be born, but they do choose to try and kill us…so we try and kill them back. Not always, because sometimes we can defeat them without killing them, and we have taken some of them prisoner. When we held them together they killed each other, with the last one standing using its claws to tear out its own throat, for they will not accept imprisonment.”

“Now, we don’t presume all Cajdital will be the same, but so far we haven’t encountered one with a different mindset. We offer surrender before killing their colonies from orbit, and if they would take it we’d make accommodations, but none have as of yet. We’ve stopped taking prisoners by force, for the most part, because it is inconvenient for us to do so and they end up killing themselves anyway. We’ll only go so far, in risking our own people, to keep our enemies alive…but we will try to do so because we are honorable, when we have the advantage.”

“After we learned of the Cajdital’s suicidal tendencies we created wrist cuffs that covered their claws so they couldn’t use them to cut their own throats…and we also started keeping the prisoners separate from one another, so they couldn’t kill each other. When we did, they tried to starve themselves to death. We fed them through forcible means, putting nutrients directly into their blood stream. To do this we had to restrain them, making them little more than objects kept in storage.”

“We didn’t let that continue for long, and eventually we returned them to a Cajdital world, figuring it would be better for them to die in combat than live restrained and stagnant. We flew through enemy fleets to execute a low orbit drop to return the Cajdital to their people, and not because it was to our advantage to do so. Some of our ships took damage in the return, and we expended resources to build the drop pods…or in some cases returned one of their captured ships to them.”

“We returned them because, wayward as they are, they are our brothers, and if they are going to die let it be in battle where they are free to choose their own fate. As dishonorable as the Cajdital are, they are skilled in warfare, and in that small area at least they have our respect. We fight them because they are in the wrong and because they are trying to kill us, and sometimes that means we have to kill them en mass, but we never actually slaughter them.”

“That word, slaughter, has several meanings for us. One is simply a lot of killing, and is not dishonorable. Another is killing when combat has ceased, which is what happened on Orica. The Cajdital never stop fighting. They keep building more weapons and troops constantly, so there is never a moment when you can say it’s over. You either kill them when you can or they build up their numbers and come back at you again. It’s never over with them, which is probably why none of them accept surrender.”

“It is forever war with them, and will continue to be so until they have wiped us our or they are wiped out…or until we can find another alternative, which we’re continuously searching for. That’s the difference between the Cajdital and others. So long as the fight continues they are a threat, and they will not stop until they’ve won. So either we destroy them or we take away their ability to fight.”

Paul left it at that, though he could have gone on further, but he didn’t want to muddy the intellectual waters any more. The Hycre he was speaking to, whose name he hadn’t even gotten, didn’t respond immediately, but took a few seconds to either think through what Paul had said or to consider its response.

I STAND CORRECTED. YOU ARE NOT HYPOCRITICAL, THOUGH IT IS A NARROW LINE BETWEEN THE TWO POINTS.

“Details matter.”

DETAILS ARE ALSO IMPORTANT TO AVOID MISUNDERSTANDING. I THINK IT IS VALUABLE FOR BOTH RACES TO DETAIL OUR PHILOSOPHIES. THERE MAY BE CONFLICTS, BUT YOU ARE RIGHT TO WANT TO AVOID UNNECESSARY ONES. MAKE A LIST OF PRINCIPLES BY WHICH YOU OPERATE AND WE SHALL DO THE SAME. THEN WE WILL SEE HOW MUCH WE HAVE IN COMMON FOR A DECLARATION OF WHAT YOU WOULD CALL HONORABLE CONDUCT.

“Acceptable,” Paul said, with the Hycre’s hologram winking out a moment later.

The warship’s Captain stepped over to Paul and lowered his voice. “I didn’t realize we were taking lizards prisoner.”

“A few here and there,” Paul said, rubbing his eyebrow distractedly as he thought. “Looks like I’ve got some writing to do. So long as we’re going to be here a while, unpack a couple of the corvettes and have them take up flanking positions. If our luck gets really bad and the lizards or other bad guys happen to show up I want some quick response assets in place.”

“You think that’s a possibility?”

“I don’t plan for what I think will happen, but what’s physically capable of happening. I also have a long history with the bad luck monkey, and you never know when he’ll jump on your back.”

“Are you worried about the Hycre?” the Captain whispered.

Paul shook his head. “No, I’m not. I just want some flankers.”

“I’ll make it so,” the Captain joked, leaving Paul to sit down and pull up a writing prompt on his command chair.

6

June 10, 2449

Ghanis System (Beta Region)

Ettiana

Captain Erica Sorvela stood on the observation deck of her jumpship’s 32nd cargo bay, monitoring the incoming dropship traffic as she always did. The large artificial plain stretching out before her carried its own subtle wind currents, tussling a few strands of her blonde bangs hanging out from the tight up-do she usually sported, as over 100 Dragon-class dropships were offloading grain cubes directly into the chamber.

Off to her left, the wall stretched into the outer hull of the jumpship, along which were 4 entry points…short tunnels with multiple atmospheric shields to keep the air in and the cold of space out. Off to her right were the cargo crate stacks, being organized and added to by a myriad of cranes reaching down from the ceiling above her. Normally a hangar bay and a cargo bay were two separate facilities, but this jumpship was Harvest-class and designed specifically to carry produce from the Kiritak colonies back to other Star Force worlds, meaning a very limited and specific inventory list.

Knowing ahead of time what the ship would be carrying, the designers decided to maximize internal hull space and combine the landing and storage areas into one multi-tasking facility…or rather 44 such facilities that ran the spine of the jumpship in rows of 11. Each bay had its own external ports, the only ‘windows’ on the ship, but they also had armored hatches that could and would close during travel to make sure the odd bit of space debris didn’t shoot inside one of the gaps and bypass the hull armor.

Bays 1-31 were already loaded, and ‘loaded’ to Sorvela meant full to the point where only 1 dropship could enter. That would make offloading take longer, for the dropships on location would have to ‘eat’ their way into the crate stacks, but it maximized the amount of cargo her ship could carry, and the less jumpship flights necessary the better, for the Kiritak were pouring out the resources now that their colonies had gotten firmly established and were seeing ridiculous growth.

Her jumpship, the H132, had been built in a Kiritak yard with a mix of alien and Human crews in just under 10 months’ time. Star Force had gotten so good at building the massive ships that, coupled with the Kiritak’s insane numbers and work rate, they were pumping them off the line unbelievably fast…limited only in how many resources they had available, now that the Kiritak training programs had caught up with the demand for workers.

It was those resources that Sorvela’s ship was meant to carry, and she knew well how critical they were to the war effort. Sometimes it was foodstuffs, sometimes it was metals…then there would be fabricated components or finished products, many of which were coming out to the Kiritak from factories back in the core region. But what still awed the Captain was the fact that after 6 years on the job, her jumpship had never seen a split cargo. It was always all of the same product, underscoring just how much the Kiritak were producing…and requiring in return.

This current cargo was destined for the Sirius System, all the way back in the core and just a handful of lightyears away from Earth. There it would be split up and sent off to a number of locations, though she knew a great deal of it was being sent to HTC, the new Calavari world, along with a number of other colonies in Alpha Region, which was why Sirius was being used as a way station. The system had several inhabited planets, with Orion as the major population center and distribution hub for the Kiritak supply chain.

And that’s where her farthest supply runs went. Sorvela’s missions didn’t always take her that far, most kept her inside Beta Region, but as the number of Kiritak-created jumpships increased the more veteran Captains were being given the longer routes, leaving the newly minted ones handling the short hops, some of which were only insystem.

Some people would have thought that driving a huge jumpship from point to point was a mundane and simple task…which it was, until something went wrong. The cargos that the massive ships were carrying, such as this foodstuff load that was still being brought up from the planet’s surface after 18 days of continuous dropship ferrying, were so important that Star Force wasn’t going to play games with their fleet and assign lower level personnel to their care. In fact, it had taken Sorvela over 40 years of service aboard other vessels to finally rate a Captain’s slot, and had it not been for the aggressive fleet expansion being forced for the Kiritak annexation, it would have been unlikely for her to have gotten the post in the coming decades.

The amount of foodstuffs her ship was loading up was sufficient to feed a population of 5 billion Humans for a full year if stretched, though they weren’t yet processed. Each of the cargo cubes being brought aboard contained pure grain, most of which had been crushed in order to diminish the wasted airspace between kernels. The inventory for this shipment had 37 different types of grain, with the bulk being wheat, corn, and kepper…the latter of which was a Star Force favorite that didn’t originate on Earth.

Where exactly her shipment would end up Sorvela didn’t know, but she did know that Star Force fed more than just Humans, Calavari, and Kiritas. Before she’d joined the naval division, Erica had worked as a ‘herder’ on one of Star Force’s biological preserves, which they referred to as a ‘sanctuary.’ They weren’t accessible to the public, and because of that most people didn’t know they existed, but Star Force had thousands of them spread across its territory, most of which were in Sol.

Each sanctuary was a location where less intelligent races were contained and cared for, given that Star Force didn’t allow for individual ownership of ‘pets.’ There were sanctuaries for dogs, cats, horses, cows, birds, squirrels, and almost every other ‘animal’ that used to either be owned as pets, used as food, or lived in the wild. Star Force principle held that you didn’t stomp out one race in favor of another, nor did you let one starve to death. Survival of the fittest was not a philosophy Star Force looked kindly on, so they’d established the sanctuaries as places they could send ‘refugees’ whenever they encountered them.

Those refugees required foodstuffs as well, but fortunately Star force was smart about how many mouths they had to feed. Population control was in effect in the sanctuaries, but not in any surgical or damaging way…they simply kept the males separate from the females, and in doing so could control how many offspring were produced, more or less. The purpose of the sanctuaries was to preserve, learn about, and uplift the lesser races…which Sorvela had been involved heavily with on the communication front.

She’d been a dog person from the get go, having grown up in the United States were pets were still permissible. When she learned that Star Force accepted, and in fact wanted, any strays picked up or dogs that people had abandoned for whatever reason, she’d sought out employment with them…only to learn that the dogs in the sanctuaries were not like the ones she’d owned as a child. These could actually speak.

Not English, but Star Force had created a rudimentary language to use with them that had a decent sized vocabulary. Even the refugee dogs being brought in picked up some of it, just by being around the others that had been born and trained in the sanctuary. And when she said training she meant Star Force training, meaning the dogs were going through daily workouts and drills as if they were people.

In the beginning she thought Star Force was overdoing it, giving them more credibility than they deserved…until one day when one of the dogs she was working with grabbed the cuff of her pants in its teeth and pulled her back from a tree as she started to sit down next to it. The dog had pulled so hard she fell down, then it let go, walked around her and looked her in the eye…then spoke the dog word for ‘danger’ and pointed with its paw down into the grass.

When she looked she saw some sharp bits of splintered wood in the grass. That had been her moment of epiphany, with it finally clicking in her mind what Star Force had been telling the public for ages. Different races were at different levels of ability, but all were people. It was then that she’d been able to look the dog in the eyes and see a person there…not a Human, but a person, after which her outlook on society changed drastically.

The ‘animals’ she’d once thought were property and, to be honest, expendable, were people like her who needed things…and the idea of just turning them loose in the wild suddenly didn’t seem so fitting when she imagined it being done to her. How long would she last in the wilderness if she had to fend for herself? What would she eat? What would she wear? Where would she live?

The natural wilderness that had seemed so tranquil and pristine before now looked to her like a nightmare, and she suddenly understood why Star Force had created the sanctuaries. It was to defy the chaos of nature and utterly destroy the concept of the food chain, for all the foodstuffs that both the Humans and the other races ate came from plants and chemical synthesis. No meat was required, for it meant that you had to kill one person to feed another, and that was totally reprehensible within Star Force philosophy.

Realizing just how much her dog herds, and by extension her Human herds, relied on foodstuffs being produced by Star Force, she eventually changed vocations and ventured into the supply chain, ultimately landing in naval cargo transfer. To rise to the rank of Captain she had to branch out into military applications, because Star Force knew, as she now did, that the cargo must flow and continue to flow else billions would suffer and/or die.

Because of that simply fact Sorvela’s mundane cargo transfer responsibilities were among the most important within Star Force. It might be a simple thing to move cargo from one place to another, but it had to happen else tragedy would ensue. Her job was to make sure it didn’t, and it was a duty that she never took lightly, as well as being one that she took great pride and care in.

Which was why she personally observed all of the loading, being directly on hand should a problem arise.

“Captain,” a non-Human voice said from behind her.

Sorvela turned around from the railing and looked down at the Kiritak staring up at her.

“Yes.”

“From Gerardi,” it said, holding up a datapad for her.

“Thank you,” Erica said, taking the device. Only a third of her crew were Human, with the rest being made up of Kiritak, given how many jumpships were being pressed into service. Archon Randy had wanted Beta Region to be as self-sufficient as possible, and to avoid a major personnel drain on the rest of Star Force he had Kiritak manning as many posts related to their resource production colonies as possible, including the cargo transfer to and from.

Fortunately the little buggers were loyal and hardworking, if a bit naïve…though that was probably due to their youth, for most of their race had yet to achieve self-sufficiency despite Star Force’s efforts to provide them with their own version of ambrosia as a boost. Still, every year that passed her Kiritak crewers grew more capable, and she figured she’d just gotten used to having experienced personnel around her, given that none of the young Humans just joining Star Force would be assigned to a starship, no matter what its class.

The days of 20 years olds ruling the world was gone. Now if you weren’t at least 100 you were still considered to be ‘green’ unless your skill level merited otherwise.

The Kiritak crewer hopped off while Erica opened the file on the datapad and saw the inventory list that her Chief Mechanic had compiled upon her request. It wasn’t overly long, but contained 48 types of items and the quantity of which he needed to fully restock the ship’s spare parts stores. Sorvela wanted to get that taken care of before they left the planet, and had put Gerardi through a hurry up assessment of all ship’s systems and replacing worn, if not yet broken, components.

She ran an eye down through the list, seeing most of it was standard equipment with a few exceptions…but nothing that the Kiritak colony depot wouldn’t have on hand. Her jumpship didn’t carry a fleet of its own dropships in order to maximize hangar/cargo space, relying on the local planetary fleets to handle all loading/offloading, but there was one small bay reserved specifically for transit use that contained several ships that belonged to the jumpship. Guessing they would be sufficient to handle the supplies she needed, Sorvela activated her comm earpiece and got her crew moving, arranging for the pilots to head down to the planet in three Falcon-class dropships while she directly contacted the Kiritak colony, all while continuing to oversee the grain loading.

It took another 7 days before the jumpship was full up, during which Sorvela got the spare parts she needed aboard, cataloged, and stocked in the appropriate places. With all final checks made on the cargo she ordered the bay doors shut and hard locked, then the very heavy jumpship eased up out of planetary orbit on its gravity drives, bypassing the hundreds of orbital facilities, many of which were still under construction, and getting to a clear jumpline out to the star, from which Sorvela ordered a microjump starting them on the first leg of their trip all the way back to the Core Systems.

When the jumpship decelerated against the star, it had to reposition around the perimeter to find the exiting jumpline, and while working through that navigational delay the ship’s sensors picked up a fleet coming in on a different jumpline. That wasn’t uncommon, for a lot of jumpships operated in convoys, but as she observed the system map update as the newcomers slowed to speeds where the system tracking network could identify them, she noted with a bit of apprehension that they weren’t Human nor Kiritas ships…nor were they from the Alliance.

“Who are they?” she asked her bridge crew, staring at the holographic map and wondering if she wasn’t going to have to order an emergency microjump elsewhere in the system, but she didn’t let her crew in on those thoughts.

It took a few moments for the crew to pull up a match from the ship’s database, due in part to the fact that only a few of the incoming ships matched a profile they had on file, but eventually they found her their answer.

“Mssot,” one of the crew relayed to her along with the racial profile, which was sent to her command chair’s built-in screen.

Sorvela chewed on the inside of her lip as she watched more ships coming into the system on a wide stagger, with 7 already present and descending closer to the star to make way for the others in order to avoid a collision.

“Are they in our way?”

The navigation officer shook his head in the negative.

“Remain on course,” she ordered, thumbing through their file. They were a race that had little contact with Star Force, but were an associate of the Calavari with their territory sitting within the larger empire, though with the 3D placement of star systems and the immense voids between them, ‘within’ was really a misnomer. Even Star Force had other races ‘within’ its territory in Beta Region, given the cherry-picking of worlds that had taken place.

The diplomatic file read that the Mssot had 3 systems under their control, but they were located multiple jumps away, near to the Nestafar ‘border,’ which meant their presence all the way out in Beta Region was as unusual as Sorvela had though it to be.

She wanted to open a comm channel and ask what they were doing here, though it wasn’t uncommon to have ships passing through Star Force territory enroute to other locations, but she knew others would be handling the inquiry and it wouldn’t do much good to have multiple Star Force personnel contacting the Mssot all at once.

No warning flags arose from system command as her jumpship reached its jumpline, nor was there any news about the Mssot, whose total fleet count rounded out at 22, so despite her curiosity Erica left it alone and ordered the system exit jump after she confirmed with navigation that there were no incoming ship pings on that line.

In the blink of an eye the grain hauler accelerated its extreme mass, red-shifting the camera views behind until they went totally black, as did the aft sensors. Relying on memory coupled with gravitational effects, the system map updated as the jumpship accelerated through the inner, middle, and high zones, eventually cutting its drives somewhere in the outer zone on the edge of the system as the gravity from the star was waned. From there it coasted on its hundreds time lightspeed momentum, nudging aside from the jumpline using conventional thrust engines to ensure no mid jump collisions occurred, while broadcasting a signal ahead to warn others of their approach and position relative to the jumpline.

Sorvela breathed a sigh of relief, now safely underway, and wondered if the Mssot were just passing through or if they had business to conduct with the Kiritak colony.

7

July 21, 2449

Ghanis System

Ettiana

“Anything new?” Randy asked as Eric-9377 met him at the foot of the dropship. The trailblazer had just pulled a quick trip out from Kirit after getting the Archon’s message about the Mssot convoy showing up and asking for help and/or trade, given that they’d just fled the invasion of their territory by the Nestafar.

“I’ve ordered a steady stream of foodstuffs and a touch of fuel distributed to them until you arrived. Their supplies are running low,” the lead Archon in charge of the Kiritak colony on Ettiana noted as the pair started walking out of the spaceport hangar and into the city, enroute to where the Mssot representative for their refugee fleet had been waiting for Randy’s arrival.

“Good call.”

“Yeah, well, I figured you didn’t want them to starve to death before you had a chance to talk with them. They’re not the easiest to understand, but they do speak the trade language. They do not know what happened to the world they fled, but they’re not expecting any survivors. They’re just glad to have gotten out when they did…now they’re nearly out of fuel and supplies after having been turned down by others. I almost granted them sanctuary on the spot, but figured you might get huffy if I went over your head.”

“Only if you made a bad decision,” Randy said as they stepped out of the hangar and into a nearby elevator cab that descended them into the subsurface levels where they eventually would come to a tram station. “Have any more ships arrived?”

“No, and they’re not expecting any more.”

“Any battle recordings?”

“The data is sketchy, but shows a small Nestafar fleet kicking the crap out of their defenses while the convoy ran. It looks like less than 10% of them made it out. The Nestafar were gunning the others down like it was target practice. The Mssot’s tech is low grade with add-ons they’ve purchased from other races, including their gravity drives. A good chunk of that is Calavari tech.”

“Anything more on the relationship there?”

“The Mssot operated their own defense fleet, but were augmented by a treaty with the Calavari. As busted up as they are now, the Mssot were left without support and the Nestafar pounced on them…and others, as far as rumors go. They think they were targeted specifically because of their link to the Calavari, though they admit to never having good relations with the buggers in the first place.”

“What rumors?”

“A lot of nastiness happening in the territories adjacent to the Nestafar/Calavari border. Extremely lawless, now that the two major players are fully occupied elsewhere. We’ve got no verifiable intel on file, but they say more than just the Nestafar are on the prowl, and given how few ships they hit the Mssot with I’m inclined to agree that they’re not the only culprits. My gut says Skarrons.”

Randy cringed. “That’s what I was afraid of. Who else are the Mssot saying were hit?”

“About 20 or so smaller races than them, most of which are one system civilizations that either had ties with the Nestafar or Calavari. The Mssot didn’t encounter any hostiles directly, but on their exodus out here they stopped in at a number of high population systems seeking aid and crossed paths with other refugees from the fighting, which is where the majority of the rumors are coming from. I’d guess that we’re going to have more coming knocking on the door before too long.”

“Did you find out why they came here?” Randy asked as they claimed a tram car for themselves ahead of the Humans and Kiritak waiting in line and sped off through the city’s understructure.

“Closest Star Force system they were aware of. The Critel advised them to come to us after they turned them down.”

“Why am I not surprised,” Randy muttered. The Critel were a friendly, low military, high econ race with territory set below the Hycre and Calavari on the galactic plane, with their systems stretched widely apart from one another. One tendril of the lizard advance was headed in their general direction, but the Hycre had been battling it, and in doing so protecting a region that contained many races that were pinched between the Nestafar and lizards. The only ‘open’ area was Beta Region and further down on the galactic plane that eventually ended with the galactic barrier…a region Star Force had not yet been able to venture to, given its distance.

The Critel were close to the lizards, close to the Nestafar, and were intermixed within the general area the Hycre marked as their territory, but they hadn’t been drawn into the fighting as of yet. They were regular customers at the Star Force interstellar exchanges, both buying and selling goods, as well as diplomatically hob knobbing around and boosting their rep as deal makers and information brokers.

More often than not they’d referred new races to Star Force, most of which turned into advantageous business transactions, but from which the Critel gained influence for the introduction while Star Force did all the leg work. For that they were savvy diplomats, but Randy had gotten tired of them being eager to suggest solutions and extremely reluctant to take part in them, and he wasn’t surprised in the least to hear they’d denied the Mssot help then sent them Star Force’s way.

“I’m surprised they came here,” Eric added. “Rotunna and Brenns are considerably closer.”

Randy shook his head. “They’re newer, so the Critel might not have added them to their maps yet. Ettiana is well established, and with all the visitors you get coming to take a look at what we’re doing here it makes sense.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“I’ve been working on that on the way out here, and we’re got a few options. Depends on what they have to say.”

“Indentured servitude is off the table I assume,” Eric said, referencing one of the offers made by the Mssot, who were desperate to secure some sort of arrangement that would allow them to survive.

“I don’t want Star Force to get a Santa Claus reputation, but we’re not making demands solely for our benefit here. Putting them to work in some fashion would seem better than just having them sitting around getting fat off our generosity.”

“If these are the first of many to come knocking on our door, are we going to have a refugee protocol or program established?”

Randy smiled. “You read my mind.”

“No, my Ikrid hasn’t progressed that far,” the acolyte joked. “I’m just wondering if Star Force is going to turn into the galactic lifeboat when the lizards start rolling over the Alliance and everyone else in the way.”

Randy’s expression blanked. “It could very well go that way.”

“Operation Conduit is still under wraps, I assume?”

“As much as we can control, yes.”

“How long do you think that will last?”

“You mean once they hear we’re harboring the Calavari others will start running to us?”

“Apparently they already are,” Eric pointed out. “The Mssot also referenced the Kiritas and how we absorbed them, asking if that was an option. If an empire as large as the Calavari joins us…”

“I know,” Randy said, already having thought down this road many times. “I know.”

When the pair of Archons got to the part of the city that held an open air park, one that was actually open to the planet’s atmosphere, it was lit up with a splendor of lights hidden amongst the greenery. A scattering of Kiritak milled about with the occasional Human passing through, but otherwise it was empty, and the pair made their way to a pavilion that contained four Human security guards and one cloaked figure that stood a few inches taller than them.

Randy stretched out his Ikrid link and connected to its mind, getting an altogether new feel. The complexity wasn’t as high as some of the other races he’d come into contact with, but this one felt more alien than the rest. At first he had trouble making anything out of the incoherent mess, but as he’d done before he held the link and tried to match up pieces of what he knew and what the newcomer was familiar with.

The Nestafar were the common ground that allowed him to break through, after which he had an easier time of sorting out its mental ‘language,’ though he did gently land a hand on Eric’s shoulder to slow their pace, giving him more time to poke around in its head before they got to the pavilion.

When they did the cloaked figure turned to face them underneath a series of dull lights that provided ample illumination from the underside of the pavilion roof without glaring. Randy saw the oily black skin scales referenced in the racial file Star Force had, but they were even more intimidating in person, bracketing its single red eye in the center of its head, underneath which was a mouth slit, but no nose. Beyond that he could see nothing, for the cloak hid the rest.

That was until Randy flicked on his Pefbar, expanding his psionic energy field out to penetrate the cloth and the alien. Underneath the robes that gave the appearance of a humanoid figure was a hunched over mass of collapsed limbs tucked inside to conceal its true size and shape.

“Hello again, Mssot,” Eric said in greeting, using their race’s name in lieu of a personal one that their representative had never given.

“Greetings and thanks,” the alien offered back in the trade language, its robes swaying in the air a couple inches short of touching the ground.

“This is our leader,” the Archon said, gesturing with his hand towards Randy as the acolyte walked aside and took a seat on the railing that encircled the small pavilion, extricating himself from the conversation.

“Speak your request,” Randy said bluntly, which surprised Eric a bit by the abruptness of his opening words.

“I represent the few remaining survivors of our race, who are now living in orbit amongst a small fleet of cargo ships. We are short on supplies and have no worlds to return to. We seek any aid you can provide, and thank you for that which you have already given us. We also seek trade, if we have anything you wish to possess, including our services in any form you shall name. We seek sanctuary if you are willing to offer it, or a business arrangement. Our future is bleak with few options for survival, so we offer you many in the hope that we can be of value to you, and in that value we survive and preserve our race.”

“So I have heard,” Randy said, throwing a glance towards Eric. “First, tell me why you are concealing yourself.”

The Mssot did not speak, but stared back at Randy for several seconds.

“Most races’ structures are not built for us. We find it best to interact with others in this form. Have you met other Mssot?”

“No, but I know how constricted you are right now. Feel free to assume your normal form here.”

“I cannot. My clothing is not of the proper shape.”

“Tell me of the atmosphere you breathe,” Randy said, pressing on and again startling the alien with the question.

“You know much of us. How is this possible?”

“I know little about you,” Randy countered, “which is why I am asking. You do not respire through your mouth as we do.”

“We do not,” the Mssot confirmed. “Your atmosphere is poison to us. The oxygen you breathe would be the death of us with only a few breaths.”

“What do you breathe then?”

“Nitrogen.”

“Are you wearing a filter or a contained supply?”

“It is both. We can exist in your atmosphere indefinitely without resupply.”

“What skills do you have that we might find valuable?” Randy asked, mentally probing the alien simultaneously, with Eric doing the same. The trailblazer could just barely detect the other’s Ikrid connection to the Mssot, but figured the same wasn’t true in reverse.

“We are few in number, but large in knowledge. The Calavari engaged us for our biological analysis.”

“Analysis of what?”

“Detections of genetic anomalies, corrections, and enhancements of themselves, their biotech, and their foodstuff production.”

“They had a disease that you cured for them?” Randy asked, pulling the memory from the other’s mind.

“I mean no offense, but I cannot answer that question.”

“You’ve made modifications to your own genetics, I assume?”

“We have.”

“And created bioweapons?”

“Yes, and we can do the same for you if you wish. Our knowledge of the code of life is extensive and applicable to most races we have encountered in some form or another.”

Randy pulled up a lot of memories when the Mssot referenced the bioweapon research, and while it was a mess of alien thoughts, he was able to pull several key pieces out of what was coming together to be an interesting puzzle.

“The Nestafar have a grudge with you because you helped the Calavari thwart the bioweapon they employed against them, and now that the military protection they offered in return isn’t available, the Nestafar have exacted their revenge.”

“You know far more than you should. How?”

“The Calavari are our allies, and we are engaging the Nestafar on their behalf in several systems. You will betray no trust by answering my questions, and I need honest answers if I am going to be able to offer your race any…options.”

The Mssot bristled, though Randy only noticed through the mental link, because its body didn’t so much as twitch. It didn’t want to break its race’s word to the Calavari, but was heavily conflicted with preserving the lives of those it was entrusted to negotiate for.

“What do you wish to know that you have not already learned from the Calavari?”

“What restrictions did they place on you in the terms of your defense pact?”

“That we only engage in defensive alterations. They believed offensive assaults on a biological front were an unacceptable battlefield practice. We did not concur, but obliged their philosophy, as we will for you on whatever terms you see fit.”

Randy knew what that meant, even without the psionics…but the images that came with the offer thoroughly disgusted him. Images of past projects and ‘research.’

“Star Force concurs with the Calavari. We have no use for your bioweapons, but your genetic knowledge may be of some limited use if it is greater than our own. What other value can the Mssot provide?”

“We will aid you in whatever way you deem necessary, so I shall ask you, humbly, what is it that you require?”

“Honesty,” Randy said with considerably more iron in his voice. “You are unscrupulous bastards who tried to play one power off against another and got burned for it. Most of your biotech is unethical, as is your civilization…which is now almost entirely destroyed, or so you fear. You ran away from the fight before you could see its conclusion.”

“You’ve tried to bargain,” Randy continued, “and cajole your former associates for mercy now that you’re on the edge of destruction, and knowing your reputation they refused. Others weren’t in a position to help, while most simply chose not to do so, seeing that you had little to offer them in return other than weapons that obviously didn’t save you from the Nestafar.”

“So what you’ve really come to me for is a last chance, banking on our good will to save your despicable race so you can regrow and one day take back the worlds you’ve just lost or start over on a new one…where you will pick right up on your bad habits that you’re willing to suppress for now in order to ingratiate yourselves with whomever you need in order to survive.”

“I will not facilitate your request,” Randy said before the Mssot could speak in protest, for he could feel the diplomatic cunning of the alien working in overdrive to try and stay on top of the conversation by anticipating where Randy was going and attempting to steer him towards an area of need or greed that they could exploit. “But I will offer you sanctuary…at a price.”

The Mssot completely ignored the insults, considering them to be the Human’s version of a negotiation tactic. “What is it that you want?”

“Your younglings.”

8

The Mssot visibly shifted, suddenly growing a few inches in height beneath its robe, and Randy could sense the first strains of anger from the alien, mixed with cold calculation.

“Explain.”

“I’ll make it very simple. If you want to continue living, you will do so as our slaves.”

Eric turned his head and threw Randy a confused glance, but he didn’t say anything, vocally or telepathically, waiting to see where the trailblazer was going with this.

“What do you require of your slaves?” the Mssot asked, making it clear that such an option was on the table.

“Your people will be sustained and confined to a single location where you will live out the rest of your lives away from harm and without the ability to harm anyone else. You will survive, but your civilization will not. You will be absorbed into our empire and assist us with projects of our choosing, while operating none of your own. Your freedom will be gone, but your lives will continue…and your offspring will be delivered to us to do with as we please.”

“Your numbers will dwindle over time,” Randy continued, and Eric was surprised by the cold honesty in his words, “and your civilization will die even as you continue to produce more offspring for us. That is the bargain we offer. You can choose to live as slaves or leave this system and take your chances elsewhere, which you know will lead to your imminent deaths.”

“You ask much of us,” the Mssot said slowly, with the anger that had been spilling out before now thoroughly clamped down, “but your terms are not wholly unacceptable, though they will require clarification on some points.”

“Ask,” Randy prompted, his demeanor still icy.

“Where will we be situated?”

“In a single facility,” the trailblazer said, picking up on some of the Mssot’s unspoken questions, “that will be inhabited exclusively by you. You will be confined to it and supplied with resources by us. You will be our permanent guests, and you will own nothing of your own.”

“Our ships?”

“Once you arrive at the location you will abandon them and all possessions. You will have no autonomy. You will be a subsection of our empire.”

“We will not be of use to you without our technology,” the Mssot warned.

“We’ll determine that, and give you what is required. You’ve done a lot of unethical research in the past and that will not be permitted with us. All projects will require approval by us, and you will not be cleared for any work of your own. You will be our slaves with no autonomy whatsoever,” the Archon reiterated.

“And our offspring?”

“You will clear their genomes of any genetic memories and turn them over to us. We will move them to a separate facility and that will be the last you ever see of them. What we plan to do with them is our own concern. You will have no further contact with them after handover, and handover will occur immediately after they are developed enough to travel.”

“What numbers do you require?”

“Nothing unreasonable, but a steady supply. How does your race reproduce?”

“Asexual external egg production, one per cycle.”

“Then we will require the eggs before they hatch. You will not be allowed to keep any, all must go to us.”

“Do you wish the young for a specific purpose, or simply to deny us a future?”

Randy’s eyes narrowed slightly, and he could sense just a hint of the anger returning in the Mssot. “You don’t know if any more of your race survived the Nestafar attack, so it’s possible that you are the last. Had we met under different circumstances it probably would have resulted in us killing you for your misdeeds…but you come to us as refugees, and despite your past history we choose not to turn you away, but we will not allow that history to continue. We will preserve your race in our own fashion, but your dishonorable culture must die, and I do not trust you or those with you to change your ways, thus you will be restricted and unable to repeat the past.”

“So you seek to teach our offspring what you think we cannot be taught?”

“Yes…which is why all genetic memory you’ve added has to be undone, so they don’t carry with them the taint of your civilization.”

“Our gain in this proposal is obvious, but yours is dubious. If you do not wish us to use our knowledge to create weapons, then what projects of value do you seek from us in compensation?”

“Our own biologists are quite advanced, but you have knowledge that is different from ours. You will teach us what you know and we will add it to our own. You will also provide information on every race you’ve encountered, a list of historical events you’ve been part of or witnessed, and be used as analysts when we encounter bioweapons or other types of interesting little puzzles created by others. You will do our bidding, in seclusion, for the remainder of your lives.”

The Mssot’s single eye closed its black lid and held it shut for a moment, and Randy could sense it coming to a decision. When it opened again the level of deviousness surged forth and the trailblazer could tell it had other plans than meekly fading away from galactic events.

“Your terms are plausible, but I must confer with others before official supplication can be enacted.”

“Take your time,” Randy offered. “We’re in no rush.”

“As you know we are. With permission I would like to return to orbit as soon as possible. Matters of this importance must be negotiated in person.”

The Archon looked to one of the nearby guards. “Take him back to the spaceport, directly, and allow him to board his dropship. He goes nowhere else.”

The Human security guard nodded and gestured to the Mssot who walked off with the four guards, leaving the two Archons behind in the park as a gentle wind began to drift down over the barrier walls and filter its way in through the tree leaves.

What was that about? Eric asked telepathically as Randy sat down on the railing beside him as they watched the cloaked Mssot and guards walk off.

A bit of theatrical negotiation.

I thought we weren’t in the slave owning business.

Usually no, but these guys are as slippery and amoral as they come. Can you think of a better way to keep them contained?

Mind letting me in on what you know. I wasn’t able to pull any memories from him, just emotions.

They’re bad guys, Randy summed up pithily.

So…we just shoot them, right?

It’s not your fault. These guys appear benign enough, and it’s part of their cover, but I’ve had enough experience reading non-Human minds to pick this one apart. Their civilization is pretty much a mad scientist’s dream. Lots of biotech wrapped up in their ships, which are partially sentient. We’ll have a look, but I’m not sure even the V’kit’no’sat could undo their machinations. If the Mssot refuse our offer and go on their merry way we’re taking them captive and putting an end to their misery. I didn’t get a lot of information, but what they’ve got going is akin to Captain Keyes as a Flood bulkhead.

Eric swallowed hard, his ire rising. Now I’m really glad I called you in. What’s the angle with the younglings?

Exactly what I told our friend…we’re destroying their civilization while preserving their race.

Why?

What would you suggest?

Well, aside from shooting them, keep them locked up and unable to creep about like you said. I just don’t get the ‘rebuild the bad guys’ civilization.’

Randy sighed. Something the trailblazers have been discussing for a long time now. We kind of have a pet peeve about writing off an entire race. It’d be like the Calavari killing us because of what The Word has done.

Still not seeing it. We’re not killing the Mssot, just locking them away in a resort somewhere…by the way, where were you thinking?

You said there were about 4 million of them?

Yes.

We’ll build a station in orbit of Bolo, Randy said, referencing a world in Beta Region that Star Force was beginning construction on as an inter-racial commerce world that would be populated by entrepreneurs and settlers from other races, but that would have no connection with their governments.

I thought you wanted them isolated?

They will be. There aren’t any windows for them to wave out of.

A comfortable prison in plain sight?

Not a prison, a residential habitat. They’ll have contact with each other, no isolation protocols for the individuals.

I guess if we have security nearby already that’s not hard to pull off, Eric conceded. What’s the up side for us…other than getting them off the galactic streets?

Not much.

Side project?

Randy turned to look at his fellow Archon. We don’t like having to kill the lizards…not all of them, anyway.

That’s why you threw out the comment about the Mssot removing the genetic memory?

No, I said that because he was thinking about using that as a tactic to circumvent our control.

Oh…how long does it take to get to Professor Xavier level anyway?

I’m not there yet, but the more practice you have the better, and you can’t train for this by going to a sanctum. It has to be field work for the most part, and I’ve been dealing with the Kiritas up close for a long time.

So this is a lizard prototype reeducation project?

No, the lizards are born with full genetic memory. We can’t take their young and turn them to the lightside, unfortunately.

So then why are we doing this?

Because we’re the good guys…and amongst our many enemies are compromising situations. One being us having to kill every single individual to defeat an opponent. In the middle of a firefight fine, but when we have time to think and plan we want options, and when we’re faced with the lizards and not being able to find any it’s…unacceptable. Here we’ve got Mssot that are just as bad, but we’ve got a chance to wipe them out without wiping them out.

You did the same thing with the Kiritas.

Randy tipped his head and frowned uncommitally. In a way, yes.

I know we’re rescuing the Calavari and integrating them into Star Force, and have already absorbed the Kiritas, but this doesn’t fit the mold.

No, it’s not the same. This is going to be a lot of work with little gain, but we’re still going through with it. One thing I hate above all else is having the situation force someone into becoming a bad guy. Corruption through environment. It’s real, but a lie at the same time. If you have a switch you have to hold open to keep a lethal injection from going into a person, you stay put and keep your hand on the switch. But what if there’s a countdown clock on the other side of the room next to another switch, and if you don’t flip it 5 people will be ejected into space when the countdown expires. What do you do?

Eric’s mind flipped through the scenario in a few tenths of a second before he found a solution.

Tie the switch open and go flip the other one.

That’s what we do…we find other options. But what if we can’t find one in time? Do you kill the one to save the five, or do you protect the one you’re entrusted with and pass up the opportunity to save the others?

Neither is acceptable.

Let’s change it a bit…take out the second switch and the five people and put in a table with food and water. How long do you stay on the switch?

Meaning that if you don’t move you’ll eventually die of starvation or dehydration?

Exactly.

Eric blew out a breath, thinking. I guess you’d buy what time you could, but if you let yourself die your hand will come off the switch and both of you will end up dead…so you’d have to let go at some point before that.

And always wonder what would have happened if you had just held on a few minutes longer.

Bad situation, but it wouldn’t corrupt me.

But it does take away your choices. You’ve got someone else pulling your strings and forcing you into a choice not of your own making. As Archons we don’t like to believe in a no-win scenario where we’d have to turn to the darkside…because there isn’t one. You can’t force someone to turn evil, but you can really screw with their head and heart.

Eric considered that, even if the concept wasn’t entirely new to him.

You want us to be the guy that comes in and flips the second switch, taking away the bad vs. bad choice?

Not all enemies are people. Some are ideas, some are circumstances. All need to be fought.

So saving the Mssot younglings is you sticking it to the darkside?

Taking a corrupt race and showing that it can be saved is the point. The enemy is the culture, not the individuals…at least not until they buy into it, and even then some of them can have their eyes opened.

And where do the Mssot land?

Randy frowned heavily. While it’s theoretically possible that they could change their ways, I’m not betting any credits on it. That one was evil, and I’m guessing the others are too, but on the off chance that one of them up on those ships isn’t, he’ll still be alive since we’re not just blowing them out of orbit…which I do have an urge to do, by the way.

So how long do I have to keep them in orbit?

Good question…I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

And if any more wayward refugees show up, what’s my response supposed to be?

Randy smirked. I don’t think you’ll be bothered with this on a regular basis, but we are working on a long term plan.

We being the trailblazers?

Yep.

Where does Davis stand on all this?

He’s onboard, but he really lets us handle all inter-racial relations, given that it’s military based. He’s got his hands full with Human-only worlds.

Did you even ask him about Operation Conduit?

It was run by him before we implemented it, why?

Just not entirely clear where his influence ends. Annexing other races seems more than a military thing.

We’re a team that are used to working with each other, Randy explained. Same way you’re familiar with the other Star Fox Archons. Work far enough down the chain and you’ll run into adepts who’ll ask the same question of you regarding how the Clan functions and who’s really in charge after me. What would you say?

That you’re a tyrannical jerk who controls everything, Eric joked. I get your point. Too bad I wasn’t born a few years earlier.

You think that’s all of it?

Meaning what?

You think being a trailblazer is just about being the first class? I should punish myself for not schooling you foxes better.

You really think all 100 of you are the strongest by sheer luck?

Because we’re better.

But what are the odds that the best Archons would all be the first ones?

Never really thought about that, we just are.

And maybe if I’d been there I would have picked up a few things from training alongside you guys. That’s what I’m saying.

Sounds like whining to me…and besides, it’s 101 now.

“What?” Eric asked out loud.

“You heard me. There’s 101 of us.”

“How is that possible…unless you’re counting Vermaire or Davis or someone?”

“They’re not Archons.”

“Who’s the new guy then?”

“Someone who can kick my ass.”

Eric thought for a moment, knowing that only the other trailblazers were high enough ranking rangers to best him…save for one.

“The Queen of Diamonds?” Eric asked, using Kara’s nickname.

“Yep.”

“But she cheated,” he complained.

“One thing you need to know about us is that we value results, not excuses.”

“Shut up and train…got it.”

“You read my mind,” Randy said, hopping off the railing with Eric following suit. “Need something?”

Eric thought he was talking to him, but then followed his eye line to a Kiritak that was standing on the other side of the bushes beyond the railing they’d just been sitting on.

“Are you the Randy?” it asked, shuffling its feet.

“I am.”

The shorter alien smiled widely. “I apologize for interrupting, I was merely curious.”

“Not a problem,” Randy said, clapping Eric on the elbow to get him to walk beside him as he left the pavilion.

Rock stars too, Eric added.

Like you aren’t? Everyone on the planet knows who you are.

I don’t get reactions like that.

You’re not the savior of their race.

Exactly my point.

They know you better than the other trailblazers, Randy pointed out.

Damn…you got me there.

Usually do, the Clan Star Fox leader reminded him as they crossed onto a park path that would lead to the exit into the city. Randy would stay groundside for the next few days, with the Mssot returning after 3 with their answer…a desperate and categorical yes.

9

January 1, 2450

Solar System

Pluto

Sander Rennold had just woken up from a good night’s sleep and hopped over to the nearby track for a ‘wake up’ mile before showering and pulling on his red Star Force logistics division uniform, then sitting down for a bowl of cereal in his quarters while he watched the news feeds. He opened a small container of supplement that had been designed to simulate milk and poured the vitamin rich white liquid onto his crunchy cereal, starting a mental countdown for how long he had to eat it before it got soggy.

As was per his year-old routine, Sander would have some 35 minutes to eat and catch up with what was happening across Star Force’s interstellar empire before he reported for work and got caught up on what was happening on Pluto, as far as commerce and cargo shipments were concerned. He’d been working as a senior logistics administrator on the planet for a year now, with their collective responsibility being to ensure that all Star Force colonies on the planet had what they needed in order to survive.

The Clan holdings were outside his domain, but it was up to him to keep tabs on the three national territories on the planet and to make sure they didn’t accidentally starve to death. The Aussies took care of their affairs well, but the smaller Terran Hegemony and Ipexion nations, both founded off Earth, were always operating on the edge of sufficiency. They relied on some 72% of their resources from imports, while Star Force colonies on Pluto operated on an average of 3%, with stockpiles to sustain them for a considerable amount of time should commerce break down.

The goal of any logistical operation was to get that number down to 0%, making a colony truly self-sufficient. That didn’t include luxuries, just the basics. Things like entertainment and décor weren’t a logistical concern, though the division did facilitate their transfer. Most of those items were sold in stores not of Star Force ownership, but they still had to transfer through the transit network and enter through the same spaceports, making them an unimportant, but ever-present piece of commerce to track.

Sander’s main concern were things like oxygen supply, foodstuffs, water, power supply, construction materials, and ensuring that the factories kept running smoothly, producing all the parts and products that Star Force required, most of which were built out of raw materials harvested locally…which usually meant mining or recycling efforts.

There were some things that Pluto didn’t have, like Corovon, that had to be imported, but through stockpiles and recycling efforts the planet’s need for regular shipments was minimal…so far as maintaining the status quo was concerned. Securing the materials to expand a colony was another matter entirely, and with Star Force constantly growing there was a lot of resources being shipped in, along with several locally produced specialties being shipped out.

Most people considered such concerns as background work and cited it as boring, but Sander knew that it was the lifeblood of any civilization and one that Star Force heavily emphasized. It had taken him some 42 years of hard work to rise this far up the ranks, but he had only just now reached tier 6 within the corporation, which oddly enough meant that he no longer received any pay. That he actually took as a good sign, indicating that he was now part of the Star Force ‘family’ rather than just being an employee who would one day leave to pursue other work or retirement.

And therein lay the problem. Being a level 6 now granted him greater autonomy within the corporation, and with it came questions that he hadn’t been in a position to face before. Up until now his duties had been straightforward and he didn’t have to think about doing anything other than what he was told, but now that wasn’t the case.

As Sander crunched another spoonful of cereal he watched a news vid about a Word rally on Mars, in one of the Brazilian cities, that was espousing their belief that Star Force’s code of conduct was interfering with their natural rights as Humans. He knew it wasn’t really The Word, but their overt civilian followers. The actual organization was secretive, but the societal push that was going on had seemed to take on a life of its own.

No such rallies occurred in Star Force colonies, for the simple reason that public demonstrations weren’t permitted. Public expression was accomplished through media, not by blocking transit ways and disrupting passersby. And with media, if you didn’t want to hear what someone had to say it was your choice, for you could just change to another channel or watch a different vid. The ‘in your face’ public  pressure that nations like Brazil still allowed was a no-go with Star Force, and most of the citizenry that lived on Star Force worlds appreciated the lower angst.

That hadn’t stopped The Word movement from getting their propaganda out, and for some reason Star Force didn’t try to censor it. At first Sander hadn’t understood that tactic, thinking they should have been opposing their enemy’s interference, but ever since Director Davis had made his public announcement concerning The Word, Star Force had taken a very open approach which Sander now appreciated. Let The Word have their say, then utterly tear it apart with logic and reason…for those that would listen, anyway.

The people he was seeing on the news vid did not fall into that category. Whether they believed in what The Word stood for or not, they were using the movement as an opportunity to do things they otherwise would not have been permitted to do, whether it be publically misbehaving and not getting punished for it, or by slandering those they had grudges with by lumping them in with what parts of the public were declaring to be the ‘evil empire’ that was Star Force.

The Word itself knew better than to take that approach, for Star Force did so much good that it was impossible to truly paint them as the enemy, save for with those in society that were weak in the logic department…which usually focused on the young. That was a real problem in Star Force colonies, for proportionally speaking the 15-30 year olds made up only a sliver of the population, given that with the physical training emphasis the corporation pressed, its colonies had people living far longer than within other nations.

So it was not a surprise that most of the anti-Star Force movement cropped up there, then tried to work its way in through civilian angles…but so far Davis’s super-nation wasn’t being converted, only annoyed at times. Even the news vid didn’t spend much time on the demonstrations, simply adding them as a footnote to more worthy news, today of which was highlighted by the opening of a new colony in the Barnard System, which was only 6 light years away from Sol.

Sander listened to half the story, which was noting the opportunities for early immigration and the procedures to follow for filing requests, before he finished his bowl and got a head start on the clock as he headed out of his quarters enroute to his office elsewhere in the city.

Halfway there he made a detour, having concluded that he’d given the matter at hand sufficient thought, and headed towards the section of the city that held the Archon sanctum. There weren’t many stationed here, despite the fact that the city/colony housed some 53 million people. Star Force had 6 others of lesser size on Pluto, plus Clans, but given that Pluto was secure territory there wasn’t much need for a large Archon presence.

That said, one couldn’t just walk to the nearest planet, so Star Force kept at least a few Archons everywhere they had a colony, no matter the size. They had their own section of the city, beyond just their exclusive training areas. It was off limits to the public, but Star Force personnel had access, which allowed Sander to pass through one of the automated security checkpoints with his genetic ID in the form of a handprint.

Analyzing the structure of his hand and taking a genetic sample at the same time, it confirmed his identity and lowered the energy field blocking his progress while raising one behind him. When he passed the threshold of the first they switched back, exposing the handprint scanner to the public again.

What had been fairly busy city streets turned into almost empty corridors as he walked through the Archons’ residential areas that held their quarters, most of which were empty. The first person he passed in the hallways was another non-Archon, which he gave a nod to and let pass by, but when he spotted the first white with red stripe uniform he flagged down the man by waving a hand as he jogged up to him.

“I’m sorry,” Sander said, “do you know where I can find Larry?”

“Still doing his morning workout, I think,” Darren-134229 said, stopping next to the logistics officer in the middle of the hall.

“Can you take me to him?”

Darren frowned. “Only Archons are permitted in the sanctum.”

“Can you bring him out to me then? It’s urgent.”

“Is it something I can handle?” the Archon offered.

“I need the highest ranking Archon available,” Sander said apologetically. “To my knowledge that’s Larry.”

Not seeming to take any offense at the slight, Darren tapped his earpiece and cycled through a few options.

“Are you still in the sanctum?” Darren asked the air, pausing for a response that Sander couldn’t hear. “Did you see Larry?...Yeah, I’m guessing he’s not wearing his comm. Can you tell him to meet me at the sanctum entrance, I’ve got a situation he needs to deal with…I’d tell you if I knew…thanks.”

Darren dropped his hand after terminating the call and stared Sander in the eye.

“Follow me.”

He did as told and walked slightly behind the Archon as the man led him to the sanctum’s entrance where another hand scanner was in place next to what looked like chrome blast doors. A few seconds before they stepped up to them the doors opened from inside and a mildly sweat-soaked Archon dressed in an armless shirt and shorts walked out.

“What’s up?” he asked his fellow Archon while glancing towards the red uniformed logistics officer.

Darren turned to him as well. “Go ahead,” he prompted.

“I need you to take me to Earth off the books,” Sander said, realizing this was the point of no return, “and I need you to arrange for me to meet with Director Davis.”

Larry raised an eyebrow and exchanged a glance with his fellow, yet lower ranking adept. “For what purpose?”

“I’m turning myself in, and I have information that he will want. Information that others will try to stop me from revealing if they become aware of my intent. That’s why I didn’t go to Earth on my own or send the Director a message. You need to take me there directly, before I’m missed.”

“Turn yourself in for what?” Larry said as he microscopically stiffened. He didn’t have psionics yet, but he could tell this man wasn’t one for hyperbole.

Sander let out a light breath. “I’m a member of The Word…and I don’t want to be anymore.”

“He just walked up and surrendered?” David asked Larry after he arrived in the Pluto spaceport some 18 hours later along with Nathan and Quenton, who were now both snooping around the city looking for and prepping for Word threats.

“He used his access to get into the Archon zone then flagged down the first one he saw and asked to talk to me…then he just bluntly stated he was a Word operative and he wanted to be taken to Davis incognito to avoid reprisals.”

“That’s no joke. We’ve seen the lengths they’ll go to to cover their asses,” David said, thinking back to Glasir as they walked up to the same handprint scanner Sander had used to access the Archon zone, with David letting Larry go through first.

“Nothing’s happened yet,” the adept said as the shields cycled him through automatically, registering the ID signature in his armor, “aside from his coworkers wondering why he didn’t show up from work. I took care of that, and everything has been quiet since.”

“How many guards do you have on him?” David asked as he pressed his palm against the flat panel and it flashed his Archon ID number above his fingertips.

“12 Archons, four in and 8 around.”

After that there was a brief period of silence as they rounded the corner ahead and ducked into a stairwell, traveling up three floors before they came to the level that had another fully armored adept standing guard just inside. Larry clapped him on the shoulder as he passed, with the adept giving David a nod of respect as he walked by.

Four doors down the hallway and they came to the empty Archon quarters that they were using to hold him in at David’s request, which the leader of Green Team knew was better than putting him in a security station where The Word would know to look…assuming this wasn’t all some devious plan of theirs. Regardless, David was about to get some answers.

Sander, who was sitting in a lounge chair watching TV surrounded by four more red-armored guards, turned his head as the two men entered…then stood up respectfully when he saw the green trim on David’s white uniform.

“Have a seat,” the level 3 ranger said before the man could utter a word. “I’m not here to take you to Davis, but he has been told of the situation. If you want him to know something, you’ll have to send it through me.”

“What I want from him is his permission to remain in Star Force,” Sander said bluntly, yet gently. “I no longer wish to be part of The Word.”

“So you’ve said,” David noted as he sat down on a stool next to one of the armored adepts, keeping his head above Sander. “Why the change of heart?”

“I’ve learned a lot since being assigned to infiltrate Star Force. Our previous attempts all failed because of the longevity required. You don’t have much turnover, so placing individuals in the Star Force hierarchy was problematic, and confounded by the issue of self-sufficiency. The Word believes it is unnatural and counter to predetermined design…yet the widespread and well documented cases have challenged that assumption.”

“The last theory that I know of was that your self-sufficiency is chemically induced and creates an unnatural state…stronger proponents have suggested brainwashing as a side effect, rending you zombies after a fashion. Those Word operatives that have had more contact with you testify counter to that point, resulting in a philosophical division that The Word was trying to rectify.”

“Now that I’ve become self-sufficient I’ve been exposed to a number of truths that I cannot ignore. The Word is in the wrong, Star Force is in the right. I want to switch sides, and will accept any punishment or demotion you deem necessary, though to date I have not taken any action against Star Force. My mission was to infiltrate, and in order to do that I could have no contact with The Word. My identity is real, as is everything else. The best cover is the truth, and I’ve stuck to it the past 4 decades, becoming a part of Star Force…and now that I am, I no longer want to betray you.”

“How were you going to accomplish that?” David asked, his tone calm and hyper serious.

“The Word infiltrates through cracks created by corruption or forgery. Neither is present within Star Force. Your computer systems are too robust for us to penetrate without notice, most are not even accessible, and your high ranking members are extremely disinclined to turn on you. They aren’t greedy, so we can’t bribe them. They aren’t power hungry, because you give them so much leeway and responsibility as it is that they’ve got their hands full. And most don’t have families for us to use as leverage…and those that do have been wise enough rebuff such threats, which is why so few have been made.”

“None that I am aware of,” David commented.

“No, because that avenue of infiltration was tested and discarded long ago. After which it was determined that personnel would have to be inserted at the lowest levels and work their way up, but they never got very far. The societal dynamic within Star Force is something that The Word cannot fully wrap their minds around, and as a result they don’t know how to mimic it. The people they sent were not deemed worthy of advancement, so no worthwhile plants were feasible.”

“And you’re different how?”

“It was eventually determined that a traditional operative could not be used, thus a new approach had to be taken. I was chosen to be a clean slate, to enter into your ranks, learn your ways, and become one of you rather than trying to mimic you. It may sound like semantics, but it’s an important difference…though you may not understand given that Archons don’t operate in such ways.”

“You’d be surprised the varied work that comes out way,” David said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You scare us…or more precisely them. I no longer fear you, ‘you’ being Archons. The Word does, because it doesn’t understand you nor your source of power. You are secretive, even within Star Force ranks, but working alongside you for so many years I have a better understanding than they do.”

“You haven’t explained it to them yet?”

Sander shook his head. “I haven’t transmitted anything to them, nor been contacted by them for the past 42 years. To do so even once was a possible slip in my cover. I had to be completely clean, which is why I haven’t been in a position to undermine Star Force…until recently. Now that I am, I have chosen not to and turned myself in.”

“Undermine how?” David asked, curious, but with a few ideas of his own.

“Star Force members in the upper tiers couldn’t be corrupted, so The Word needed to put one in who could be. I was supposed to use my position to cover for lower level operatives being inserted and assist them in rising through the ranks. The more plants in place, the more we could let in. I was to be the seed to start the growth of the corruption…but I would not count on my being the only one. That is what I was told at the time, but I could have been lied to, or they could have started others since my insertion. Being out of contact means I have no idea what they’ve done since then.”

“So you’re not an ordinary operative then?” David asked offhand, trying to prick a bit of pride in the man to use as a leverage point to steer the conversation in a direction of his choosing, still under the assumption that this was all some ploy and that he could get the man to an area of uncomfortability that he wouldn’t compromise, thus signaling that his intentions in turning himself in were a ruse.

But to his shock that wasn’t the case, and the man’s blunt honesty caught him off guard.

“Technically I’m not an operative at all. This assignment was deemed too demanding for an operative, because he’d have to adjust to unforeseen factors once on the inside in order to set up an inroad without security or the Archons discovering it and overturning decades of placement work. For that reason an Agent was assigned.”

10

January 8, 2450

Solar System

Earth

Sander walked side by side with David up to the staircase, then the Archon nudged him in the arm to go first, with the former Word Agent climbing up the circular stairs and seeing four people as soon as his eye line rose above the ceiling/floor into the Director’s office in Atlantis. As he climbed the last few curvy stairs he noted that three other Archons were flanking Davis, all of which were acolytes according to their gray uniform stripes.

The Star Force leader, seated behind his desk while the Archons stood on the wings, pointed towards a chair opposite him which Sander promptly sat down on.

“I’ve been reviewing the intelligence you’ve been providing us,” Davis said without preamble, though this was the first time he’d met the man, “and it appears to check out, but The Word has been exceedingly devious and I’m not wholly convinced that this isn’t some type of ploy, so I have a few questions of my own, if you don’t mind?”

“Ask what you like,” Sander prompted, “but I know you’ve already come to the conclusion that I can be trusted, else I wouldn’t have been brought here.”

Davis frowned slightly, but didn’t say anything for a handful of seconds.

“To a point,” he finally added. “You’ve stated that you haven’t compromised Star Force in any way to date, and that you want to remain a part of the corporation, even if it’s on a minimal level. Why now and not 10 years ago?”

“I didn’t have to make the choice until now,” Sander answered honestly. “Becoming part of Star Force was my assignment for The Word, so there was no conflict of interest. Now that I’m in a position to start undermining the personnel structure I either had to carry out my orders and betray Star Force or stay loyal to Star Force and betray The Word. I chose the latter.”

Davis tapped a finger lightly on his clear desktop, but didn’t take his eyes off the man.

“What does the name mean?”

“The Word is an acronym for World Order achieved through Retrograde Dominion. The basic fundamentals of The Word state that Humanity will achieve its golden age by returning to the old ways, supplemented by advancements that don’t encroach on the proper structure of life. That structure must be maintained, protected, and in some cases forced on the populace for their own good, with freedom limited within its confines. Star Force has strayed from the path, as far as The Word is concerned, and must be brought back into line.”

“And the flaw in their logic lies where?”

“Hierarchical structure of life. They believe that some lifeforms are superior to others, and that the higher placed ones can justly lay claim to the lowers for use as they see fit. That order seemed to make sense to me in the beginning, because the notion that everyone is equal is rather absurd, but when I finally understood Star Force’s angle I had an epiphany, and from there on out other things started falling into place and the entire Word philosophy was shown to be nothing more than a highly calculated façade to justify bad behavior.”

“What is Star Force’s angle?”

“You would know better than I, but from my perspective, climbing up through the ranks, Star Force also believes in a hierarchy, but one based on the individual’s skill rather than right of birth. You also state that it is the role of the higher tiers to protect and guide the lowers, as if they were younger brothers, equal in peerdom, if not in ability. That last bit is what I had been lacking, for The Word does uplift many through a myriad of functions, but it does so through destruction and sacrifice, which makes a certain amount of sense when all are intended by nature to expire after a given amount of time. Take away that lie and you see how sacrifice is a core betrayal of the stated purpose. You cannot save the masses by betraying the individual, for the masses are composed of individuals.”

“But you thought at one point it was acceptable to betray the individual?” Davis pressed.

Sander sighed. “I would say it was more ignorance on my part, but yes, academically I accepted that fact, though I never had the occasion to put it into practice.”

“You said,” Davis noted, referencing the long interrogation sessions that Green Team had already put the man through, “that you were never given any Agent duties prior to your insertion into Star Force. How is it that you achieved that rank without any prior experience?”

“Experience doesn’t create an Agent,” Sander said, seemingly at ease with the conversation and his conscience, “its innate skill that has to be developed and honed through field work. Mine was infiltration and breaking down the inner Star Force structure to know where and how to create blind spots to hide operatives and plants, both in the flesh and electronically. There are no apprentice Agents. When we’re assigned we’re in full control, no matter how green we are.”

“You gave us the descriptions of the other 5 Agents you trained with, but no names.”

“For security reasons we use none. I had to retain my name in order for my cover to be legit, but the others never knew who I was, nor I them. I assume our Master did, but he never spoke of it,” Sander said, referencing the man who’d trained the Agents and given them their assignments.

“Our?”

Sander hesitated. “I didn’t say anything earlier because I cannot confirm it, but my suspicion was that the man who trained us was not the leader of The Word. If I had to guess I’d say there were several Masters. Even I don’t know the scope of The Word’s operations, and not just because of my mission. The others weren’t told either, though they may have learned more afterwards as their assignments necessitated. Information is very segmented, and while an Agent has his hands in many affairs, they are all regional, insuring that if one Agent is compromised the damage will only spread so far.”

“We captured an Agent once,” Davis said, offering up a secret that he’d held until now. Publically, the term ‘Agent’ had never been used by Star Force or The Word’s propaganda campaigns. “The Word staged a military raid into one of our security stations in order to kill him. What do you know that’s so valuable to warrant that?”

Sander’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly as he thought. “Glasir?”

Davis smiled. “Good memory. Yes.”

“We are supposed to kill ourselves prior to capture that we feel we cannot escape. Failure to do so is considered cowardice, and for that reason alone an Agent would be terminated if they had the chance…but no Agent had ever been compromised at the time of my insertion, so it was a theoretical topic. Depending on the Agent, knowledge on his regional structure could compromise large cells, along with others he’d been assigned to previously. Agents don’t rotate around, but when one operation is completed the personnel are deactivated and reassigned…but if they accessed permanent bases in the course of their duties that knowledge would travel with them, exposing more threads for you to follow.”

“Above that,” he continued, “I know The Word…and The Word doesn’t want to be known. Anonymity is its greatest weapon, and for that reason they will try to kill me if they find out that I’ve abandoned their twisted cause. I have no doubt they are following my career, and when they suspect something is wrong they’ll take action. I doubt they have cracked your computer security, but I didn’t want to take the chance that they had and could intercept me before I was able to speak to you, hence the insistence that I be brought to Earth incognito.”

“There has to be something more than that,” Davis pointed out. “Something that you Agents know in particular that is worth exposing themselves to neutralize. We took a lot of prisoners on Glasir and extracted a considerable amount of information from them…information that allowed us to backtrack and shut down several dozen of their operations. I suspect they knew this when they sent their private army to get to the Agent in question, so I ask again…what’s so important to warrant that?”

Sander shrugged. “It could be a number of things. I’ve been out of the loop so long I can’t point to an achilles heel for you to hit…but then again, I don’t know what you don’t know, and it’s possible that there’s something I consider common knowledge and am overlooking that you might see as critical information.”

“Go back to the beginning then,” Davis prompted, getting the feeling that the man wasn’t purposefully trying to hold back information. “What do you remember of the training facility?”

“When I was recruited I was told that I was going someplace not on the map and was delivered into the back of a truck in lower Florida, some small town I can’t remember. From there I had no knowledge of where I was being taken, but the trip lasted a total of 6 hours and 52 minutes. I timed it on my watch. There were also several transfers of the crate I was in, and it included wheeled and anti-grav transit, I could tell that much from the vibrations.”

“When the doors finally opened again I could see no loading dock, just a hallway. When I entered, the facility’s doors closed behind me and I never saw them open again until the day of my assignment. I was taken back by crate to Florida, with a plausible cover story to explain the lost time. The training center had no windows that weren’t artificial, and while it could have been in a sealed building I got the impression that it was underground.”

“Aside from the Master and my fellow Agents I never saw another person. Master handled all of our training and instruction, and it was important to him that we understood why we would be doing what we were doing. He needed us to believe in the cause, and said that if we didn’t we’d never succeed. So rather than indoctrinating us into a set of specific rules and procedures he encouraged us to think outside the box, stating that that was exactly what we’d have to do in the field, because outside the box was the only safe place to hide. Star Force was too good monitoring the box, so we learned to operate outside society’s perceptions and the resource grid.”

“Do Agents have contact with one another, you notwithstanding?”

“No. Our orders come from Master, and any personnel transfers are routed through him as well. We inform him what we need and he transfers it to us, usually before we’re assigned, but on occasion modifications have to be made. Other than that we ‘grow’ our own resources and operatives, so to speak.”

“No one else knows about Master?”

“Only Agents,” Sander confirmed. “And most operatives don’t know about us, we use local handlers as intermediaries.”

“And your knowledge of this is academic, or did Master gives you files to study from actual operations?”

“Purely academic save for the case of failures. Those he gave us full information on so we could learn from their mistakes.”

“Were there any locations included in those files?”

Sander smiled. “Yes there were, though how outdated they are now I have no way of knowing.”

“Such as?” Davis pressed.

“The largest referenced was a production center in Bolivia. It was supplying an Agent’s operation in western Brazil, but so much cargo was being moved that eventually there was a mishap and a shipment got scattered over a roadway. The Word quickly cleaned it up, but the accident and the few tidbits of information that leaked to the press were enough to cause the Brazil operation to close. The lesson we were meant to learn was to keep as much production as possible local rather than drawing on our major industrial facilities.”

“What was the cargo?”

“Machine parts for equipment that was not native to the region, which would have thrown up a red flag to anyone looking for anomalies. Typically large pieces are deconstructed into spare parts, shipped, then reconstructed on site so the size of the cargo is small and easily disguisable.”

“How close could you get us?”

“I can narrow down the location to within a few hundred miles. I had the exact location on the map given to me so I could study the transportation route in order to assess how much cargo had been excessive, but I wasn’t given any information on the facility itself, but judging by the amount coming out it was an impressive setup. It might still be in operation.”

“How did you contact the Master from the field…or rather how were the others supposed to?”

“Codes hidden in public documents, that way no comm link could ever be established.”

“Can you contact him now?”

“I was supposed to if I had set up the proper blinds, but my sudden disappearance from Pluto has probably spoiled that option.”

Davis slowly shook his head. “Not if The Word pays close attention to Star Force operations. We have a tendency to pull people away on spur of the moment projects, particularly the Archons when the need arises. Since you were last publically seen with them we can concoct a story as to where you have been that won’t raise any eyebrows amongst your coworkers.”

“Risky,” Sander warned. “The Word may not know as much about Star Force as you’re giving them credit for.”

“But you think they’ve got enough eyes on Pluto to realize you’ve not reported for work?”

“I don’t assume anything, but I can’t discount the possibility whenever there is public access to a site. I would guess The Word has no eyes in Atlantis, now that you’ve closed it to non-Star Force personnel, unless they’ve been successful with other infiltrations. They were especially keen on establishing some form of electronic surveillance, though didn’t know how to accomplish it, but they’ve had 4 decades to work out a solution.”

“I think it’s worth a shot,” Davis said, glancing up at David. “Thoughts?”

“We’ll need communication coming back from the Master to trace.”

“Not a problem,” Sander said confidently. “In order for me to infiltrate the tainted personnel, I have to know who they are, and as I’ve said, Agents don’t correspond with other Agents.”

“Sounds promising,” David agreed.

“Alright then, Mr. Rennold. We’ll get you back to Pluto and let you start doing what it was The Word always wanted you to do. I’ll give you a secure comm line to this office so you can keep me informed without any middle men, nor extra Archons on planet. Those that are there will be informed of the situation and be ready to assist. This, if you hadn’t already been informed, is Green Team,” Davis said, gesturing to the four Archons standing around him. “They’ll be the ones hunting down any leads you give us, but you won’t be in contact with them directly. It seems The Word is already familiar with their identities, thanks to several previous encounters.”

“Yes, I know. The Colorado facility was one of the failures we were given to study. Which means that his presence,” Sander said, pointing back to David, “on Pluto could raise some suspicion.”

Davis raised an eyebrow as he looked at the ranger.

“Possible, but improbable. We didn’t take public transport, and unless they’ve got operatives on Pluto that happened to bump into us in the city or gain access to ID scanner records, I doubt our presence was noticed.”

“We’re still a go then, if you’re willing?” he said, looking at Sander.

“I am,” he said, hesitating slightly. “Though to be perfectly candid I have to ask…why are you trusting me? I half expected to be stuck in a prison, or at the very minimum be shuttled off to some corner of Star Force’s domain where I couldn’t do any harm if I wanted to. For all you know I’m a very bold plant who’s still carrying out Word orders.”

Davis smiled, glancing at the Archons who didn’t break their stoic demeanor. “It’s not so great a risk as you might think. You see, there’s a great deal about Star Force that you have yet to learn. Now that you’ve reached level 6 you’ve become acquainted with ambrosia I assume?”

“Yes, and I was quite surprised. The Word had suspected some type of drug use…and ironically they weren’t wholly wrong. Though technically the ambrosia isn’t required for self-sufficiency to be achieved.”

“No it’s not, but it helps considerably, as you’ve probably already noticed.”

“I’m only up to a mic every week, but yes I have.”

“You should be higher than that,” Davis commented, weaving a bit off topic.

“The first few hours after ingestion are troublesome. I’m highly agitated, but once it levels off I see the benefits for the next 3 or 4 days, gradually diminishing thereafter.”

A frown from Davis prompted him to type a few commands into his desktop, bringing up personnel records for the corporation and quickly finding Mr. Rennold’s, which included his workout logs. The Director went straight to his running mileage, seeing that it was very light and moderately slow.

“You’ve attained self-sufficiency?”

“I’m 74 years old and I look like I’m 30, so I assume yes.”

Nathan stepped over behind the holographic display to take a glance at the readout and confirmed Davis’s thoughts with a pithy telepathic analysis.

“Your workouts are very shallow,” the Director said. “You’re not pressing very hard for advancement, thus the ambrosia is not having much effect. Your body isn’t craving energy, so when you ingest even a small amount of it you overdose…that is what creates the agitation you mentioned. You need to crank up your workouts slowly until the sensation goes away, or stop using the ambrosia altogether. Its purpose is to allow you to do beefier workouts, and if you’re not trying to become a rocket you shouldn’t be taking rocket fuel.”

“I’ll make an adjustment. I had thought so long as I maintained self-sufficiency greater workouts weren’t required.”

“For self-sufficiency they aren’t, until you’re thrown into a less than ideal situation. If you’re just hovering at or above 100% it’s easy to tick down to 99 and start losing ground. These guys,” Davis said, thumbing his right hand towards the Archons, “couldn’t shake their self-sufficiency in a month if they tried. They’re running up like 110%, so they can take a lot of hits and not even drop below 105. Better to devote the time to building a cushion and not need it than to be a minimalist and get caught off guard.”

“So noted.”

“Now…back to why I’m trusting you,” Davis said, leaning back in his chair. “It’s because I know you’re telling the truth…plain and simple. If I didn’t, there’s no way we would be meeting face to face, despite the medics clearing you of any potential explosiveness.”

Sander frowned. “But how can you know for sure?”

“Ambrosia is one of our secrets,” Davis said, pulling a small, rubbery practice marble out of his pocket and holding it palm up before him, “but it is not the only one.”

“What am I looking at?” Sander asked.

“A tiny ball, nothing more. Catch,” he said, gently arcing it up above head level towards the man…who caught it in his left hand as it came down near eye level.

“Decent reflexes,” Davis commented. “Throw it back.”

Sander mimicked the Director’s toss, wondering what the object lesson was here…then his jaw microscopically dropped as the ball froze halfway through its arc, levitating in midair.

The Agent’s eyes went from the ball to Davis’s face and back again. “What is this?”

“This is me trusting you more than most of my staff,” Davis said, his face taught with concentration as he kept the ball more or less level in between them. “Give me one word as to why you’ve chosen to switch sides.”

Sander thought for a moment, distracted by the floating ball. It could have been anti-grav or magnetically levitated, but his gut told him neither was the case.

“Scruples,” he finally said.

“Scruples,” Davis echoed approvingly. “It’s the sign of a man who can be trusted once all illusion is removed. You will do what’s right because it’s right, and now that you have seen the truth you will never let yourself go back to the lies.”

Davis glanced up at David. “That’s what he told me, and I trust his judgement implicitly. Though your route to us has been an unconventional one, you belong with Star Force, and with your help we may have a chance to end The Word permanently if we can get at their leadership. Provide us a sliver of opportunity and we’ll make it happen, for as you can see, we have abilities that The Word can’t comprehend. That’s us operating outside of their box.”

Sander’s mind was quick, and he made the necessary logical progression in a matter of seconds.

“Telekinesis?”

Davis nodded, slowly transitioning into a smile as he flew the practice sphere back into his palm, then returned it to his pants’ pocket. “Along with other things.”

Termination

1

February 18, 2451

Solar System

Earth

David walked through the tethered crates in the back of the heavy mantis as he watched the countdown clock inside his helmet pass under 30 seconds as he headed for the far end of the gigantic aerial craft. Nowadays most flight traffic was accomplished via dropships, with the mantises having become more or less obsolete…except for on Earth and Corneria. There the atmospheric-only ships had seen numerous design modifications over the centuries, with the ‘heavy’ version that David was walking through being more than 4 times the size of a Dragon-class dropship, the largest version in the Star Force fleet.

Using a combination of wings and anti-grav, the huge haulers were a common sight in Earth’s skies, hauling Star Force cargo and personnel across the planet on a regular basis…so much so that David had chosen this particular flight to hop a ride on, for it was already scheduled to pass over his target, allowing him an unnoticed approach into French airspace.

When the ranger reached the back of the mantis he triggered the primary boarding ramp in the aft end to begin to lower as he grabbed hold of a handle on the wall as a swirl of turbulence forced its way inside the hold and buffeted his green armor around a bit. The cargo pallets were unaffected, and aside from the pilot no one else on the combination passenger/cargo ship noticed the activity as David timed the lowering to within three seconds of the elapse of his HUD’s countdown…with him running off the back and dropping into free fall as a tone sounded, signaling he’d reached his drop zone.

The mantis was traveling at high altitude and considerable speed, giving David some maneuvering options as he fell. Using his arms and legs as maneuvering veins, he angled his way towards the waypoint superimposed on his faceplate that marked his target coordinates in a remote area of the Pyrenees Mountains.

The Archon feathered his jump pack’s controls a bit to adjust his descent into a more lateral approach, gaining a bit more distance while still dropping fast, wanting to get over the target before coming down to ground so he could have a purely vertical attack vector.

His target was a castle that he’d scouted out the exterior of previously, finding it little more than a sturdy stone structure that had been reinforced with great care…including a subsurface barrier wall installed to make tunneling efforts more difficult. Every crack in the exterior had been sealed up, every window likewise secure, and there was a small security presence to keep out unwanted visitors, though this particular region of France had been preserved in an anti-urban fashion, with the large, interconnected cities far away, leaving only a privileged few the anonymity of their private retreats dotted across what little remained of the wilderness.

Thanks to Sander Rennold’s assistance, Green Team had been able to locate the source of the Master’s codes on various public publications, such as fanfiction and photo posting sites, where they found a handler inputting the messages. Using surveillance only, they had backtracked where he was getting his messaged from…which was another handler, who was receiving secure comm signals across a nearly obscure landline that was broken up with a series of short range wireless transmitters that made it very hard to follow, unless you knew where and how to look.

Messages were infrequent, so it took some time to follow the private message system across the French countryside, bouncing from building to building in the cities and tree to tree in the forests until the electronic bread crumb trail had led to the castle. Upon studying it for several weeks, including some up close inspections in the dead of night probing the external security systems, David was relatively sure that the Master was inside, hence his current drop on the castle while Green Team was hitting other Word facilities across the planet in conjunction with Red and Blue teams in one massive surprise attack using the intel and leads Rennold had provided over the past year as he played his part and let Word operatives infiltrate Star Force.

They were being cleaned up today as well, and with luck David and the others would gather enough intel from their raids to fold up the Word altogether, with the most critical mission being his. Bagging the Master was their top priority, and if his reconnaissance was correct, the castle was all but undefended…relying on anonymity as its shield and very atypical of all other Word facilities they’d encountered to date.

Either that or this was a wild goose chase.

David held off on his jump pack’s power right up until the last few hundred meters, decelerating quickly to land in the central courtyard where he pulled his stinger rifle off his armor’s back rack and shot a man and woman in civilian clothes that didn’t even notice his approach until his feet hit the cobblestones.

They dropped hard to the ground as David stretched out his Ikrid sense to maximum range and began picking up the location of nearby minds as he ran towards the guard house. When he got there he felt two inside and disabled them both with a pair of Fornax blasts through the wall before he opened the door and shot them on the ground where they’d fallen out of their chairs. The Archon took a quick glance at the bank of monitors blanketing two walls in the room, seeing that the castle’s denizens were milling about calmly, meaning no alarm had been sounded yet.

He took off across the courtyard and, with the help of his jump pack, leapt up to a second story window on the west wing and punched his way inside before going on a stunning spree, bypassing numerous rooms that his psionics told him were empty and going straight for the personnel. He worked his way around to the south wing, then the east, before finally getting into the much larger north wing that made up most of the castle.

There he burst into a large communal lounge and mowed down some 8 more people, one of whom was in a wheel chair and all of which were unarmed. None of them even had so much as a Word uniform on, and for all intents and purposes seemed to be regular French citizens as David left them where they lay and headed off after the few remaining others, not wanting the Master to have a chance to escape.

David swept the castle twice, then dragged all of the bodies over to the lounge. He used his Pefbar to search the room for monitoring equipment aside from the obvious security camera on the ceiling that he telekinetically disconnected…then he began his Ikrid interrogation one by one as the prisoners slept, still with no alarm or activity to suggest anyone knew he was here. How long that would last he didn’t know, which meant he needed to be quick.

He’d gotten so good at worming his way into people’s minds that he no longer needed them to be awake, though that did help if he wanted to delve deeper. The stun energy in them also interfered a bit, especially if they’d gotten hit in the head, but so long as their mind wasn’t shut down he could still connect to them. Regardless, the more obscure the information was the more difficult it was to access, with him relying on memory threads and surface thoughts for most purposes, though right now he was just pulling personal identity information, seeing who each of these people were.

As he worked through them he began to worry, for none of them worked for The Word. They were just local hires as residential staff to maintain the grounds, and David was beginning to think that The Word had deceived them again with the castle being a gigantic red herring until he got down to the last three people. He pulled the man who’d been in the wheel chair up off the ground where he’d fallen and set his paint-splattered body on one of the numerous couches and put his exposed fingertips against the man’s forehead…immediately sensing a much more structured mind.

It took all of four seconds for him to make a Word connection, then another six to confirm that this was in fact his target…the Master himself.

David let him sleep and pulled a quick check on the last two people, confirming that they too were just local staff and not Word members, meaning the Master was the only one here who didn’t belong…which appropriately made the cover all the more convincing.

“Alright big guy, let’s see what you’ve got around here,” David said, kneeling down behind the couch and coming in at the elderly man’s head from the back, hacking into his nervous system and pressing an armored forearm against his neck to suck the stun energy out and partially wake him up to aid in his memory search.

The Master blinked his eyes open and tried to turn his head, but the Archon held it firm, leaving him to groggily try to get his bearings as David confirmed that there were no weapons or guards on site, other than the two hired from a civilian security agency…which were little more than babysitters to drive off unwanted guests. There was also no alarm system or hidden chambers, only a computer that linked in to the secure Word comm system that allowed him to send messages out to his Agents…and a second system to likewise correspond with the other Masters.

There were 12 of them in total, each with their own operations and facilities. They kept in contact remotely, using numbers instead of names. This one was Master 7, though his real name was Gustave Beland…but more than that David couldn’t get out of his hazy head, so he woke him up the rest of the way and physically held him in place on the couch, which wasn’t very difficult considering his weakened and decrepit state.

“Bonjour?” he asked into the air, but David didn’t answer, nor did he let him turn around enough to see him. He held onto his head tightly and began digging deeper into his thoughts as the haze cleared from his mind…which went straight to his desk drawer when he saw the other bodies lying around.

David got a clear mental image of a small case inside that contained a kill pill, but there was no way he was going to let that fall into his possession.

“Relax and you won’t be harmed.”

“Who are you?” Beland asked, switching to English.

“Star Force,” David said, feeling the spike of fear run through the man…and he hoped he wouldn’t have a heart attack on the spot, though he sensed that Beland was actually hoping that might happen. “Easy fella. You’re not getting away and no one is coming to help you.”

David followed up that assertion, confirming from the Master that there truly was no help coming. His entire operation here relied on secrecy. He was hiding in the open, and now that he’d been discovered the only way out was by getting to his desk and swallowing one of the pills.

“What do you want with me?” he asked, and David could sense that he was going to play innocent, though the man was puzzled why he was being held down on the couch in such a rigid position.

“I know you’re the Master, and I’m here to get you to rat out the rest of The Word’s leadership…along with all your subordinate Agents, if you don’t mind?”

David’s coy honesty came with an unexpected bonus, for when he mentioned leadership the Master’s mind went directly to the other Masters…and the man that led them all, which they referred to as the Primarch.

Five days later he was back in Atlantis while the rest of Green Team was out chasing down more targets that the Master had unwittingly given them. David had been telepathically interrogating him ever since capture, with Star Force techs going over the equipment in the castle ever so carefully and discovering the second, dedicated communications link that went straight to the other Masters.

Even now their locations were being plotted and their apprehensions planned, with the cellular nature of The Word’s structure seeming to insulate them from one another enough that they didn’t notice Master 7 having been captured, given the ongoing communications between them that Star Force was now able to monitor.

Eavesdropping on them and gaining what tidbits of intel they could, Star Force was in a semi-waiting mode while busy sweeping up a growing number of lower level operatives…with David eventually called away from his interrogations for a meeting with Davis along with Red and Blue Teams’ leaders.

He got there second, with them waiting on Andre-399 who walked up the central staircase in Davis’s office and over to the trio, flipping a data chip through the air at the Director who telekinetically dragged it through the air into his palm, then plugged it into a slot on his desk’s rim. A holographic status report on one of their most recent anti-Word missions in South Africa popped up and Davis skimmed through it, finishing with a satisfying nod before shutting it down as Andre sat down next to David and Drake on the other side of the desk.

“We’ve located the Word headquarters,” Davis began. “Thanks to David’s interrogation of the Master and some electronic backtracking, aquatics has confirmed the existence of the Primarch’s base under the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. We’re assembling a drilling team for a direct assault, but there are also tunnels leading out to what we think are land entrances.”

“Our scanning ships are having to follow the tunnels at close range to work out a map and aren’t finished yet, but we’ve identified 3 leading out from the base with one of them branching off, so at the moment we have 4 potential entrances. Both the tunnels and the base are buried deep in the bedrock beneath the water, which was why we never detected their presence or construction. There’s not so much as a comm relay in the Arctic, everything is, we believe, transitioning through these tunnels.”

“We’re hitting on both fronts?” Drake asked.

Davis nodded. “Once we find the entrances we’ll coordinate the drilling and tunnel teams to hit at the same time.”

“We’ll need an aquatics specialist for the drilling team,” David commented.

“Rikku has already volunteered and is on her way up now,” Davis said, referring to the highest ranked aquatics Archon on Earth.

“What about the other Masters?” Drake asked.

“We’re going to hit them at the same time. The techs say their messaging system is linked to the headquarters as well, so if they send out an alarm the Primarch could be alerted and, potentially, bolt before we can get to him.”

“Same with the Masters,” Andre pointed out.

The Director nodded. “We need them to expose each of their cells, so if they go to ground when we hit the headquarters we’ll miss out on our opportunity, so we have to go after them all simultaneously, and the sooner the better before Master 7 is missed. Yellow Team is going to handle the off Earth leads that we’ve been gathering, while Blue and Red Teams are going after the Masters. Green Team gets the Primarch.”

“We’re going to need more than 10 for that,” David pointed out.

“I know. Pull in whoever you need and coordinate with Rikku. We’ll have to get the drilling team assembled first in order to get them under the ice via water. I don’t want to fly a team up there if there’s a chance of The Word noticing.”

“How close are our cities?” Andre asked.

“300 miles, given or take. About 50 to one of the tunnels,” Davis said, referencing Star Force’s underwater colonies, which now totaled 2 billion in population on Earth alone, though only a handful were located in the Arctic Ocean.

“How long before we get the tunnel locations?” David asked.

“Another 24-48 hours.”

“Are we sure there’s only 12 Masters?” Andre asked.

“Fairly,” David answered. “They appear to be the only ones fully in the know, with the Primarch’s replacement being chosen from amongst them. When that happens he chooses a replacement from his own Agents, elevates them to Master and teaches them everything they need to know, then the new Primarch retreats to their headquarters, which they refer to as Mount Olympus, and never comes out again…same goes for any personnel they send up there.”

“No possibility of leaks,” Drake guessed.

“Exactly. Now it’s possible that there is another layer to The Word, with multiple Primarchs that only know the existence of each other…but I doubt it. The Master we’ve got says this guy is in charge of The Word, and he keeps in contact with the other Masters, so if there were operations taking place that popped up on the news and one of them couldn’t take credit for it…”

“…they’d figure out there were other fish in the pond,” Davis finished.

David nodded. “I’m 95% sure the Primarch is the big dog, but with Mount Olympus never having any of the roaches check out…”

“Have fun,” Drake said with a smirk.

“And take an army,” Andre added.

“We’re on it,” David assured them. “Just make sure you don’t let any of the Masters escape. They know enough to restart The Word from their own cells. We have to get them all, plus the Primarch, in order to decapitate the organization. The Agents aren’t in the loop, dangerous as they are, so we can miss a few of them and still kill The Word, but we have to get all the Masters.”

“Which is why we’re going after them simultaneously,” Davis reminded them. “We know where they are, and they don’t know we know. If we screw this up we’re not likely to get another shot at it for some time, if at all, which is why I’m splitting your teams up. This has to get done and done right the first time, and I don’t trust anyone else. Your teams have experience with The Word, Green Team more than the others, so if they’re going to get tricky you have the best chance of spotting it in the moment.”

“If they’re where they’re supposed to be,” Drake said confidently, “we’ll get them.”

“Ditto,” Andre agreed.

Davis nodded. “Get on it.”

2

February 28, 2451

Solar System

Earth

David stepped off the dropship’s lowered ramp and sunk into the snow nearly a foot, barely able to see the other five dropships that had landed in a circle on one of Canada’s northernmost islands in the middle of a raging snowstorm. It was daylight where they were, but the cloud cover and blowing snow was so thick it appeared dim lighted, with only the interior illumination from the dropships visible in the near distance as they too lowered their ramps and disgorged some 32 Archons in total.

David trudged out into the snow, feeling a chill sink into his armor, but one that he quickly dissipated with a touch of Rensiek heat produced throughout his body as he activated a waypoint for the coordinates that his team had been given for the tunnel endpoint he’d assigned himself to. The aquatics scanning track had led one of the tunnel spurs directly to this island and had calculated its upward trajectory to reach the surface somewhere near where they had landed, though the water craft obviously couldn’t track the tunnel once it crossed over onto land.

The island was a large one, so the best they could do was narrow down the area, which they’d pinpointed to within a 500 meter radius…which David thought was pretty damn good, though satellite reconnaissance showed no structures or topography in the area, just a flat, snow covered mass of land surrounded by ice-locked ocean.

The other members of Green Team weren’t with him. Jet and Nathan had gone with the aquatics team, while the other 7 members were each heading up their own tunnel team, given that aquatics had found a total of 8 tunnels spurs. David wanted to hit them all simultaneously as the drilling team began to chew its way down towards the base. That way The Word wouldn’t have any escape routes, plus he didn’t know what kind of tunnel defenses they might have.

He’d brought along some reconnaissance drones to probe for any booby traps, but first things first…which meant finding the damn tunnel entrance underneath all this snow and ice.

The waypoint marked a position some 700 meters to the north, so David started walking across the middle of the dropship formation and cutting underneath one of their long wings, getting a momentary shield against the thick falling snow that was obscuring his view of the others, though his HUD was able to keep track of their transponder signals just fine and give him position placements for them all.

Those closest to him were visible in their silver acolyte armor, with him being the only ranger amongst the group and no adepts. He’d pulled as many high level Archons as he could get from both Earth and the rest of the star system, giving him a potent, yet sizeable force to assault whatever defenses The Word may or may not have at their base. They were going into this blind, for the Master they’d taken had only heard about the facility while never having been there, nor having a hand in its construction. Those secrets, it seemed, belong to the Primarch alone.

“Everyone form on me,” he ordered over the comm. “Lateral line with spacing. We walk north towards the waypoint, report anything on or under the snow.”

The ID tags on his battlemap began to move his direction, so David slowly began walking out from under the Dragon’s wing and away from the dropships, which he’d brought along some Regulars to stand guard over. He commed them for a quick check, then turned on his Pefbar and focused it down into the snow and ground beneath, looking for any signs of the tunnel exit as he walked forward.

David got a brief headache as he suddenly was able to see every single falling snowflake in crystal clarity…but then his mind adjusted to the overload of data and he was able to ignore it as he focused on the ground, seeing his team’s signals beginning to stretch out on both his left and right into a shallow ‘V’ that gradually straightened into a flat line as they all trudged their way forward through the thick snow.

Below the recent snow was a thicker, denser pack that supported their weight…and below that was a sheet of ice covering the dirt. In some places David could see deep enough to encounter the bedrock, but if there was a tunnel exit nearby he shouldn’t have to look that deep, for The Word would need access through the dirt, so whatever they’d built here had to be shallow.

And whatever they’d built here either had to have its own vehicles or arrange for a pickup, because there were no roads nor any signs of civilization this far north, which made David wary about what they were about to butt heads with.

“Got something,” Harry-8334 reported.

David glanced at his position on the battlemap, for he couldn’t see more than two men down either side with the blowing snow obscuring his vision and now covering most of his own green armor.

“What do you see?”

“Subsurface structure buried in the snow. Nothing up top though.”

“Everyone, rendezvous at Harry’s position and give me a perimeter scan,” he said, heading his way. “And watch out for concealed turrets.”

David accelerated up into as much of a run as he could manage with his feet sinking into the snow up to his knees, and got over to Harry just after his own Pefbar penetrated down to the squarish vertical rectangle that the acolyte had discovered.

“What do you make of it?” Harry asked, knowing the ranger’s psionic skills were well beyond his own.

“I can see the tunnel beneath it. It dead ends here,” he said, trying to get as much information out of his senses as he could. “Nobody’s down there that I can detect.”

David set up three new waypoints heading north from his position along the length of the fairly deep tunnel that he just saw eeking off in that direction.

“I need psionic sweeps at and around these points. Mechanisms and minds.”

“On it,” one of the acolytes responded, with several more joining him as their dots on the battlemap repositioned.

“It looks like a lift shaft,” Harry commented. “But it looks incomplete, like they dug and built it here all the way out from their base and never finished it. It’s still got several meters of dirt overtop.”

“Nearly right,” David confirmed, dropping to a knee as he continued to mentally scan the area below. “There’s a flat top to it, but inside there’s a rotor assembly.”

“I…there, ok, I can just make that out. But what’s a giant fan going to do if it’s not connected to the air?”

“Not a fan, an auger,” David said, dropping all the way to his chest in the snow to get his head a bit closer. “It’s meant to drill the last bit up to the surface.”

“Emergency exit?”

“Possibly…which would explain why there’s no guards,” he said, switching to teamcomm. “Anyone find anything?”

He got back a host of negatives, confirming his suspicion that this wasn’t a tunnel shaft that was being used by The Word.

“So we need to dig down to it?” Harry asked.

“Maybe,” David said, focusing his Pefbar into as narrow a cone as he could to reach down to the base of the vertical rectangle where the tunnel met with it.

Suddenly there was a rumble from underneath and David jumped to his feet. “Maybe not. Everyone fall back,” he said, planting a special waypoint on the battlemap for them to scatter away from.

Beneath them David and some of the others whose Pefbar was advanced enough saw the rotor blades begin to spin within their casing, then once they got up to speed they elevated and broke through the thin metal, digging into the dirt and rising up towards the surface.

As David ran through the snow he looked back visually, seeing a mound of snow push up from below, then a stream of dirt burst out, blanketing the white landscape with something their eyes could actually lock onto. A few seconds later the dirt flew off the rotating auger as it came into view, with the square shaft rising up to the surface underneath it, forming a metallic hut that the falling snow started to blanket.

The rotors spun to a stop and David walked back over to it, hiking up and over a meter thick mount of snow/dirt around the new pavilion and stepped inside the two opposite walls, getting some cover from the snow as he spotted a control panel.

“It’s a lift,” he said over the comm. “Five with me, then come down in shifts.”

David switched his comm over to a frequency that would reach the dropship pilots, then ordered them to reposition their circle around the lift shaft as Harry and four other Archons stepped inside shoulder to shoulder with him, leaving just enough room for them to maneuver if/when combat broke out, otherwise they could have squeezed in more than twice that number.

David pressed the ‘down’ button and the floor began to lower them into the metallic hole. Once their heads passed below the rim and descended another two meters, an iris closed above them, shutting out the cold and the dim light, leaving them in total darkness.

Fortunately that wasn’t a problem, given that their Pefbar allowed them to see quite well, not to mention that their armor also had lights if needed, though none of the Archons turned them on, not wanting to make better targets for themselves when the lift reached the bottom.

There was no door on it, so a crack formed at their feet first, then it expanded up into a full square opening that led them into a very wide and deep tunnel at the base of what looked like a loading dock and a pair of ramps…with absolutely no one in sight.

Harry noticed the single control panel on the wall beside the lift shaft, noting it only had one button.

“You pressed that from up there?”

“Barely,” he admitted. “Saves a lot of digging.”

“No lights,” Mike-10395 observed, looking at the ceiling and walls that were clearly synthetic rather than having been cut out of rough stone…then again, with an Ocean nearby one didn’t want to have to worry about potential leakage. Still, this tunnel entrance was the nearest to the base coordinates at some 420 miles away, meaning someone had gone to a lot of work to carve out and line the tunnel…yet they hadn’t bothered to add lights?

“Maybe they haven’t finished yet, or maybe they don’t need them,” David said, pressing the ‘up’ button on the lift and hopping off it as it returned back to the surface so the next group could make their way down. “That’s a lot of tunnel to light if you’re hardly ever going to use it.”

“We would,” Mike noted.

David frowned as the lift disappeared above the entrance. “Point.”

“You think the other tunnels are like this?” Harry wondered.

“No, I think we got the spare,” David said as he got on the teamcomm. “Looks like we’re going to need the mongooses after all. Get them unpacked once the dropships move. Should be able to fit four.”

“Wide tunnel,” Harry remarked after he’d finished. “Too big for this little exit.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” another acolyte remarked. “Unless all the tunnels are the same size.”

“A lot of extra digging,” Harry replied, with the Archons looking out down the tunnel as far as their Pefbar would allow. They could see the floor, walls, and pointed ceiling forming a house-like pentagon, but there was nothing visible as the tunnel disappeared beyond their view a few dozens of meters ahead, depending on the individual Archon.

David went ahead and flicked his suit’s lights on, but they didn’t penetrate much further. The other five did likewise, brightening the immediate area with small floodlights, but the massive tunnel, easily wide enough to hold a four-lane highway, swallowed them up, not letting them see very far ahead, but according to the reconnaissance scans the tunnel descended at a shallow angle until it reached a depth of several kilometers below the seafloor, then it flattened out and wiggled its way out towards the center of the Arctic, intersecting with another spur line before connecting to the main base.

There were no other stops, so far as the limited scan could see, but a small outcropping or checkpoint wasn’t out of the question…though David got the feeling they weren’t going to find anything but empty tunnel until they got out to their destination.

It took longer than he expected for the first group of mongooses to come down. They’d packed them into the dropships in case there wasn’t any local Word transportation for them to pirate, given the hundreds of miles that they weren’t going to travel on foot. Each of the mongooses had been equipped with a backup fuel canister underneath the seat sufficient to get them out and back at least once on the furthest length of tunnel…with David’s being the shortest of them all, meaning they shouldn’t have any problems, and could probably make it on a single load, but given the lengths involved they didn’t want to take chances, which is why they brought a mongoose for each person, giving them the option to double up if one or more became damaged.

This was The Word after all, and even though he didn’t feel like there was any danger here, they weren’t above using booby traps, so they’d also brought a long a few multi-seaters that could carry extra gear, including some drones. Only if they got very lucky would they get to the base and find the doors open, and with this entrance not having any defenses whatsoever David pretty much ruled out that possibility.

Whatever was waiting for them they’d tackle while the drilling team created their own back door…he just hoped the base didn’t have a self-destruct nuke tucked away, and they’d brought ultra-sensitive detectors to try and smoke out that possible threat, but if it was well-shielded they’d never know until it was too late.

Which was why the drones got to go first, both in the tunnels and the drilling shaft.

Once all 32 Archons and their rides were down the shaft…with the mongooses having to be pushed more than driven through the thick snow…David mounted up his low to the ground four wheeler with a small gear satchel attached to the back in place of a second rider and trolled his way up to the front of the group, with the onboard lights punching much further down the tunnel than their armor’s had…yet still they were ate up by the distances involved.

“Travel by twos,” David ordered, pulling out ahead but at a speed the others could easily match as they formed up. “3 second spacing. If we come up on something I don’t want us pancaking. If anyone has trouble say so immediately. It’s a long walk back if you fall off the group, and the tunnel is smooth enough we’re going to be moving fast. Let’s go.”

David, now with Harry flanking him on the left and both of them with meters of space between them and the walls, accelerated smoothly, dragging the others behind him in a long convoy of nearly silent vehicles, but with the lack of any other sounds they made for a buzzing swarm of bees as they zipped off down the annoyingly straight tunnel, with David feeling the slight downhill as he passed 100km per hour. He continued to accelerate further, eyes focused ahead in case any obstruction might occur, but none would come.

Over the next several hours the mongooses would fly down empty tunnel enroute to the branch point…which was likewise undefended. It was merely a splitting of the tunnel, with no sign of anyone in either direction. The spur turn was the largest they had to navigate, but while the rest of the tunnel appeared straight there were very shallow adjustments as it almost imperceptibly zigzagged its way across the Arctic bedrock, allowing the mongooses to maintain their high rate of speed.

The closer they got to their target the more angst David felt. He knew the drilling team was even now coring its way down to the base, and he wondered how close they had to get to breaching before The Word would become aware of their activity. If it’d been Star Force, they would have put some small sensors on the Ocean floor above, or maybe that was just paranoid thinking. After all, The Word had built this base by digging under the Arctic because they couldn’t venture out into the ocean without Star Force’s aquatics fleet noticing.

So no, they probably didn’t know they were being drilled down to, but thanks to David’s group’s easy insertion, it was questionable as to who would get to the target first, and what they would find when they got there.

David didn’t like going in blind, but given the size of these tunnels, the obvious difficulty in crafting them, and the fact that only the Masters knew of their existence told him that this was finally the rat hole Star Force had been looking for the past 45 years, and he was eager to get inside and ruin their day.

3

After more than 5 hours of travelling through the dark, annoyingly straight tunnel the view ahead finally changed. What had been a black pit directly ahead of them solidified in the faintest glare of their headlights and David immediately eased off the accelerator.

“Hold up,” he ordered, gradually slowing down his mongoose to a stop as the rest of them caught up and idled behind him, still keeping decent formation spacings. David activated the zoom on his helmet and got a decent look at what appeared to be a massive door or wall ahead, blocking the tunnel off, though they were still far enough away that the dim lighting wasn’t very distinct, and they were so far away he didn’t have a hope of reaching out with his psionics for any additional information.

“Break out a drone,” he ordered, flicking on his Pefbar and adding it to the view of dozens of mongoose lights just before there was a small flash ahead, followed by a super-loud ping/screech as something flew past them over their heads…then the boom of a cannon caught up to them as it reverberated down the tunnel.

“Get against the walls!” he said over the comm as he drove his mongoose up against the right side just as another ping/screech sounded, this time closer to them and he could see just a tiny blur of a projectile coming up from a low angle as it deflected off the floor of the tunnel and passed through the Archon formation…hitting one of the multi-seaters.

The four wheeler got hit in the back quarter, shredding and spinning it about at the same time while throwing the single rider and cargo off violently into the side wall, with the momentum transferring and pushing the broken vehicle back down the tunnel the way they’d come.

“Eyes on with snipes, rockets ready,” David said, having neither on his mongoose, but he knew others did. “What have we got?”

Another projectile whizzed by them, this time not hitting the floor until it was passed them all, and David could see it gouge out a shallow trench in the floor where it hit.

“Cannon attached to the ceiling,” one of the acolytes reported. “Marking now.”

“Take it down,” David said unnecessarily, for a split second later a rocket whizzed back the other way, followed by two more at intervals, streaking down the long tunnel towards the laser dot the sniper had on the inverted tank turret. Another projectile shot through the Archons before the first of the rockets hit, followed quickly by the others.

“Target neutralized,” the sniper reported.

“Anyone hit?”

“Just got my bell rung...but my mongoose is toast,” the Archon that had went flying said as he leaned against the wall while he got his spinning head under control.

“Get a drone out and up there,” David said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Let’s see what else they’ve got waiting for us.”

After a couple of minutes of unpacking, a little dog-sized remote control drone zipped past David and headed up towards the wreckage of the cannon turret, still too far away for David to see, even with zoom. He altered his comm settings and pulled the transmission frequency from the drone so it showed in a small popup window on his HUD, giving him an eyes-on view of the tunnel as the end doors/wall gradually grew larger.

He guessed they were at least a half mile away, but by the amount of time it took the drone to travel the distance it might have actually been farther. Eventually the view of the doors widened, including a crack between the two half, confirming that they actually were doors and not the back wall of a perpendicular tunnel crossing, with a junked turret still hanging from the peak of the ceiling over a small debris pile beneath it.

As David watched a trio of small objects rose up from the floor, looking for all the world like Doctor Who’s Daleks. A few moments later they started acting like them too, firing blue plasma streaks out towards the drone and knocking it offline with 3 quick hits.

“Anti-personnel turrets,” David announced unnecessarily, for the rest of them had been watching as well. “I want snipers with eyes on along the walls while the rockets advance up the center with me. Mongooses stay put.”

“I’ve got a bead from here,” one of the snipers offered.

“How stable?”

“Twitchy, but I think I can chew it up a bit.”

“Give it a try.”

With the words barely out of his mouth a yellow lachar flash lit up the tunnel, followed by four more in rapid succession, then one of the other snipers observing chimed in.

“He’s making good hits. I think we might be able to take them all out from here.”

“Please do,” David prompted, with seven other snipers starting to take pot shots at the turrets…that suddenly decided to retract into the floor.

“Damn it, they pulled them back in.”

“Hold on,” David said, pulling a pack of explosives off his mongoose and setting it on the floor before he hopped on. “I’ll get their attention. Rockets and two snipers move up to half distance and stand by.”

David turned his mongoose back on and slowly rolled it out and hugged the right side of the tunnel, giving the snipers as much room as possible. His armor could stand up to a few wayward shots, but he wasn’t eager to take any friendly fire. He gave the snipers some time to reposition as he maintained his right side line and accelerated up to about 30 kph and held that speed, zooming ahead with his helmet and looking for any surprises, intent on stopping where the drone had been killed.

He didn’t get that far before a couple of the turrets popped out of the ground and started firing at him…with several yellow flashes answering back. Both hit, with the former impacting David on the chest and being repelled by his shields at first, then one hit lower and punched a hole in the mongoose’s front bumper shield, but it didn’t slow the machine.

The leftmost turret blew apart after a few well-placed hits…then it was replaced by four more popping up, one of which came out of the wall.

David slid the mongoose to a stop just short of where the dead drone lay as the plasma and lachars crisscrossed, then it took a few too many hits and lost power…as did his shields as they were overwhelmed with several consecutive hits, leaving the remaining plasma streaks to gouge into his green armor.

The Archon jumped off the mongoose into a backflip and came down behind it for some cover to let his shields regenerate as the snipers continued to do damage to the turrets that were just a bit too far ahead of David for him to see with his Pefbar, but he could confirm that there were no minds around the tunnel doors and turrets, meaning all of these were automated/remotely controlled defenses.

He pulled his plasma pistol off his back rack, kicking himself for not bringing a rifle. The one he had on his back was a stinger, given that they planned to take The Word personnel prisoner. Some of the other Archons had plasma rifles and a mix of other weapons, but not him. He just had a plasma pistol and a bunch of ammo, along with a stinger pistol and rifle, plus some Kiritas grenade/mines that he was still too far away to use.

“Rockets ready,” someone said over the comm as David ducked down behind his quickly shredding mongoose corpse.

“Test shot…don’t waste ammo,” he said, showing nerve under fire as a single rocket zipped past him. He couldn’t see it hit, but he could hear the explosion.

“Door hit,” Harry told him, referencing the fact that it had missed the small turret and blasted into the barrier behind it…which was ok, given that David expect them to have to blow their way through anyway.

“Get closer,” he said as his shields flicked back on, indicated by an icon on his helmet’s HUD.

“Permission to get reckless?” Harry asked.

“Define reckless.”

“Mongoose plus det pack.”

David smirked inside his helmet. “Don’t hit the drone on the way by…or me.”

“Keep your head down.”

David did as instructed, though there wasn’t much of the mongoose left to hide behind. He’d resorted to dropping down on his belly to stay behind some of the debris, but the turrets kept pounding it, whether on auto-tracking or remote he wasn’t sure, but they were methodically eating up his cover, with one of the rear tires exploding into a spray of rubber just before another mongoose zipped past him and drew their fire.

Harry’s icon fell off behind it, though David couldn’t see anything directly, and it stayed put on the ground as they both waited several long seconds for the very large boom to come. When it did the loose mongoose parts blew back over top of him in the concussion wave, exposing him a partial view ahead.

“Turrets neutralized,” Harry reported with obvious satisfaction in his voice.

David stood up, brushing the debris off him just in time to see some 6 more pop up out of the floor and walls and start shooting at the two of them.

“To hell with this,” David said, reaching into his pack and pulling out a partial glove that he slipped over his right hand. “Rockets get as close as you have to and light these bastards up. I’ll draw out the rest,” he said as two came by him in the tunnel before he’d even finished talking. He ran by Harry, who was already side pedaling to get out of the way, then pulled out a Kiritas grenade from his pack with his left hand and rubbed it against the activation pad on his right, taking several plasma hits to his shields that quickly went down again.

Harry pulled out a plasma rifle and started taking aim at the turrets, hoping to draw at least some of their fire away from David or knock one of them out as he ran forward, but held his position against the wall, neither advancing nor retreating as his shields also went down.

Rockets and lachar flashes filled the tunnel behind them and poured in on the turrets, blowing apart 3 of them almost instantly, with more of the trashcan-sized pylons popping up to replace them, including some coming down from the ceiling around the remains of the cannon turret. As he soaked up plasma hits on his armor, David sidearmed the remote grenade towards the nearest one then dropped to a knee, keeping his eye on the hockey puck with his thumb rubbing the detonation trigger on his right hand.

When it bounced off the floor and skidded up next to one he triggered it, blowing apart half the device, but not able to take out the firing eye that shot back at him once before a pair of sniper shots finished it off as they deftly found the hole in the casing he’d just made.

More turrets popped up and more got knocked down by the rockets, with David advancing a few more steps, arming another grenade and hurling towards a target, detonating when it got where he wanted it, then repeating the process several more times as his armor got very chewed up…but he knew he was the only one in the group with the denser ranger plates, so if someone was going to play bait it had to be him.

Eventually the defenders ran out of turrets, thankfully before the Archons ran out of rockets, but as David cautiously walked up towards the debris field around the heavily damaged but as of yet unpenetrated doors his mask filters locked up. He frowned and looked around the area, stretching out his Pefbar into spotlight mode and searching the walls…finding small ventilation shafts that were pumping out a cloud of toxic smoke that was quietly mixing in with the dust from the rocket explosions.

“Damn it,” he said, knowing that he only a few minutes of reserve air to work off of. They could retreat back down the hall, for he doubted they had enough poison to fill it all up, but it would be taking them in the wrong direction and buying time for the enemy…something they couldn’t afford.

David picked the weakest spot on the now damaged door and chucked a grenade towards it, telekinetically stopping it before it hit, then wedging it into a nook before letting go and detonating, then he checked with his Pefbar to see how thick the door was, finding in that spot it only had a few inches of material left.

David marked that position with a waypoint on their battlemap and stepped to the side, ignoring the toxins pouring out around him.

“We’ve got toxic gas coming in near the doors. I want every rocket we have left to hit the waypoint, and start bringing up the remaining det packs. We have to break through now,” he said as he slowly walked away from the doors as the rocket streaks started coming in and exploding behind him.

He couldn’t see much from the distant mongoose lights, nor his own armor lights, but in his Pefbar he caught all of them as they passed, along with the explosions behind him, allowing him to monitor the damage even with his back to the doors.

“Cease fire,” he ordered some 35 seconds later when he spotted a hole forming. Once the rockets fell silent he ran over to it, knowing his oxygen was still on the clock, and examined the basketball-sized hole beaming with light from the far side. He pulled out and primed three grenades and wedged them in and around the hole, with him having to telekinetically hold one in place as he backed up.

When he trigged them all simultaneously the hole expanded out wide enough for a single person to climb through…which he did after a quick Pefbar check of the far side. Going through head first in a gymnastic spillover that had his chest armor leaning on the bottom edge of the hole so he could squeeze his pack through the top, he rolled out into a bad somersault and fell off to the side, due to his lumpy pack. He got to his feet quickly and looked around, seeing a small clump of mini-skyscrapers and other buildings directly ahead underneath a very high and well lit dome.

Around the perimeter was an open ring that he now stood in, with The Word city inside covered with numerous Star Force ID tags.

“I’m through,” he said over teamcomm, walking away from the breach point and having his filters unlock and start drawing in fresh air, thankfully. He looked up at the top of the dome and saw a tiny hole in the ceiling plates where the drill team had come through, realizing that they had beat his team here and were already engaged.

“Everyone get in here, we’re late for the party,” he said, switching comm frequencies. “Status report?”

“Hey boss, glad you finally showed up,” Nathan replied. “We’re in a bit of a pickle right now.”

“What have you got?” David asked, walking a bit further away and looking around, unable to see anything on the outer ring that was completely devoid of buildings or other objects. The dome arched straight down into the floor, with two other large door entrances spaced around the perimeter as evidenced by the battlemap that was now updated with the information the drill team had already gathered.

“Walkers, small quadrupeds and one big biped. Big one shot up on our way down, with a couple of guys falling and getting messed up really bad. They’re alive and we’ve got them out of the fire in a building, but we’ve got our hands full. There are a lot of stationary turrets that we’ve been working our way through, but the big one is preventing us from bringing anyone else down from up top. We’ve got 9 down here and not much in the way of plasma weapons to work with.”

“David, glad somebody finally showed up,” Rikku broke in. Apparently the ranger had been one of the first ones down.

“There’s gas at our entrance. They using it anywhere else?”

“Not that I know of. It’s all walkers and turrets in here…with no people that I’ve been able to find, though we haven’t had much of a chance to look. I can’t sense any within Ikrid range.”

“Hiding or bugged out?” David said, hearing footsteps approaching from one of the narrow streets between buildings as his team began to come through the door hole one at a time.

“Don’t know.”

“Stand by,” David said, running up towards the noise and pulling out his plasma pistol just before a horse-sized quadruped walker moved out and swiveled its dual back turret his way. It pumped more plasma into his already damaged armor, with his shields holding up against the first two shots before going down again.

David shot back, but rather than gun it out with the thing he sprinted towards it and slid underneath the legs, jamming his own between its metallic supports and twisting them askew. With some heavily applied leverage he tipped the beast over onto its side and kicked his way free before climbing up over onto the back and pumping four shots directly into the turret barrels and slagging them as the walker started to stand up despite the Archon’s weight on it…which wasn’t much with him weighing about 225 lbs including armor and pack.

David stayed on top of the thing as it righted itself, pumping shots into the main casing until he melted through, then he tossed his weapon aside and pulled out a grenade, primed it as the thing tried to buck him off, then pushed it into the hole…or tried, for he did fall off the second time.

The grenade fell askew, but with a quick reacting telekinetic grab he redirected it back into the hole then blew the thing, popping out the armor plates like a flower and leaving the dead hulk of the walker standing erect like a dead AT-AT.

“Sorry,” David said, getting back on the comm. “You guys in any immediate trouble?”

“We’re holding on our,” Rikku replied, “and thinning out the stationary turrets where we can. It’s the big mech we don’t have the firepower to take down.”

David looked on his battlemap for the tag, and found the enemy mech just outside his view behind the buildings around the ring to his right.

“I’m on it. Any signs of a self-destruct?”

“Not yet, but we’ve been pretty busy so don’t hold me to it.”

“Keep your eyes peeled. We’ll take care of the mech.”

“Have at it,” Rikku prompted.

“Need help?” Nathan offered.

“Nope, he’s mine,” David said, running off along the buildings in its direction.

4

“How many rockets do we have left?” David asked over his teamcomm as he poked his head around the corner of one of the buildings and got eyes onto the mech as it twisted to the left and fired its two arm-based plasma cannons up to the ceiling as a rope dropped down from the drill hole. The plasma melted it in half even as a couple other Archons were peppering the mech’s legs with small arms plasma fire, trying to create a distraction.

Once the bottom half of the rope fell, the biped mech twisted its torso around and angled its arms down and fired into the street gap between buildings as the Archons fled back to cover, with David spotting a bulgy rocket pod over its right shoulder along with what looked like a stubby head.

“Seven left,” Harry reported after taking a quick count.

“Get up here and unload on the thing. Everyone else into the streets and go after the quadrupeds…and stay away from the big one. It’s got a pair of heavy plasma cannons, but it looks too large to move anywhere aside from the outer ring.”

“And the tunnels?” Harry guessed.

“Probably,” he answered as the first of the rocket launcher toting Archons came up behind him. “Pick a spot and everyone hit it. We can’t afford to scatter fire.”

“We still have some det packs,” Synker-8299 suggested.

David pulled one of the silver discs out of his pack and held it up for Synker to see. “I still have some of these. Get me a hole in the armor if you can.”

“Pick your spot,” the acolyte said as two more rocket launchers caught up to them, each with three rounds that they’d collected from the others.

David grabbed his plasma pistol in his right hand and leveled it at the back of the big mech and fired a single shot, making a tiny pot mark just below the ‘head’ and off to the right. The mech didn’t respond to the sting, but continued to take pot shots the other way as it walked further around the ring and temporarily out of sight.

“As fast as you can,” David said as the foursome ran up, with him diverting into a side street as he continued to talk on the comm. “Don’t shoot anywhere else if it turns around,” he said, running to the nearest cross street and ducking to the right, intent on getting ahead of it in case it did turn around.

But between him and it was another quadruped roaming moving up the street, with him turning right into its firing path. Wanting to save his grenades he exchanged plasma pistol fire with it, eventually winging the turret and knocking out one of the barrels before he got up to and jump kicked it down onto the ground…along with himself as he fell off.

He pumped several more shots into the turret then took off running again, not sure if he’d completely disabled it or not, but needing to get over to where the mech was.

David passed the next side street, noticing another Archon to his far left taking on another quadruped, along with several other hulks further into the tiny city. Up ahead there was a junked turret that Rikku’s team had already gotten to, and David noticed that it was the same rising variety that they’d encountered back in the tunnel.

After that he began noticing more circles on the ground, possibly additional turrets that hadn’t been raised yet, but he didn’t have time to try and dig them out. When he came up to the next side street he turned right…then skidded to a halt and backtracked as he saw the mech looking at him from the other end.

David ducked into the other side of the intersection just as the first rocket slammed into the mech’s back…then after that David didn’t see anything, but on his battlemap the mech icon began to move, so he reversed his direction again and headed back into the street, just seeing the right arm of the biped disappear to the right behind the buildings.

He sprinted forward, only to have one of the hidden turrets pop up ahead of them and start shooting. His shields indicated that one of his emitters had been fried, leaving his maximum shield strength at 82%...and he knew that with a few more armor hits the rest would go out too, leaving his chewed up plates as his only defense. But the mech came first, so he ran into the oncoming fire, dodging this way and that to make some of the shots miss, then skidded to a halt right in front of the turret and fired his plasma pistol into the ‘eye’ where it had no plating and melted the firing chamber.

The next shot it tried to fire blew the whole thing up like a grenade, tossing David into the building on the right as he tried to run past. He slumped to the ground, shook his head once, then got back to his feet and sprinted on, coming up to the outer ring and poking his head around the corner where he saw the mech walking off chasing after the rocket launchers with a bit of armor damage in the back…but not enough to penetrate all the way into the interior.

David took a breath then ran after it, pulling out a Kiritas grenade and arming it in his right palm. When he got partway up to the mech he stretched out his Pefbar to see into it, confirming his suspicion that it was carrying some very thick armor plates…then the mech stopped and began to twist its torso around to target him.

“Damn it,” he said, turning hard right and ducking into the closest side street just as it fired its right arm plasma cannon.

The blast just missed his feet as he dove into cover, but his diversion got the mech’s back exposed again and three more rockets flew in, causing the mech to pause as it decided who to shoot at, eventually picking David and walking out in front of the street so it could fire down it.

As it did David backtracked and ducked underneath its legs, running out the back side before it could move and step on him. He kept jerking around, avoiding its steps and arms while getting it to turn its back again on the rocket launchers, getting the 7th rocket to come in and hit the damaged area, reducing the armor there to less than an inch of thickness.

As if in response to the mech’s inability to get at David, two quadrupeds popped out onto the outer ring and came towards them, firing their turrets with impunity, unafraid of damaging their bigger twin with leg shots.

David knew he couldn’t take them down from range with his pistol, so he tagged them with a waypoint requesting fire support, then he worked his way around until he got a clear view of the mech’s back and flipped an active grenade up towards it, telekinetically steering it into the breach.

He wedged it in as best as he could, then ducked out of the way of a backwards step by the mech’s big foot and detonated it, seeing with his Pefbar that there was still a bit left, but only a couple of millimeters, though he couldn’t measure accurately at this range. He saw enough to know he needed another, so as the quadrupeds kept melting additional divots in his armor, he activated and slung another grenade up, steering it into place.

When it blew it knocked out a tiny section of the armor, which David immediately followed up with another grenade, forcing it inside and blowing apart the innards of the mech and expanding upon the hole in the armor slightly…but it wasn’t enough, for the big machine continued to move about and fire.

Fortunately the quadrupeds got flanked a moment later, with one turning to deal with the approaching Archons and the other still tracking David, only to get forcibly knocked over with a jump kick by Rikku. Her green armored hands shot into the turret top and physically wrenched it off the machine as the one behind her got bathed in plasma fire from a side street.

The mech rotated around to shoot at Rikku, but she sprinted up and got underneath its legs along with David, who sent her a quick telepathic message. The other ranger moved to the side as the mech repositioned, then put her hands together into a makeshift step and waited for David, who ran up and put his foot in her hands.

She used all her strength to get him as much height as possible, which was just enough for him to snake a hand into the breach point. He held on and leveraged himself up into a two-handed hold, then swapped a hand for a foot and climbed up on top of the mech’s shoulder where he did a spread eagle to try and hold on as the mech shifted about.

Rikku ran off out of sight of the mech and ducked into a side street before it could fully turn around, leaving David alone to wrestle with it, now that the two quadrupeds were down.

He waited till it settled and got up to a knee…only to have it pitch forward and try to dump him off, but he got a hand on one of its edges and held on, then pulled himself back up to the peak and wedged his feet against the side of the missile box and his right forearm against the flat ‘head’ while he ducked his free left hand into his pack and pulled out another grenade. He swiped it against the activation pad on his right hand then repositioned himself as the mech jerked again, taking a brief moment of opportunity to reach down and tuck the grenade inside the hole.

David didn’t detonate it, but reached into his pack and dug out three more in sequence, having to be very careful not to get bucked off. He activated each of them and stuffed them inside, saving his last two as he slid his legs around and dropped off the back. He crunched into a ball on impact, then took off sprinting away as he thumbed the detonator button on his right hand.

He felt and heard a small boom from the grenades, then a much larger one as the internal detonation reached up into the missile box and triggered the missiles’ fuel loads to combust. When David swung around the closest corner and into a side street he glanced back, seeing that the mech was missing its right arm and a third of its torso…as well as standing perfectly still.

“Sweet,” Rikku commented.

“Is it dead?” David asked.

“I’d say so…and there’s no pilot. Which means someone has been driving it by remote.”

David frowned, running back out cautiously and down towards the mech that had its back to him. When he got up to it, running well wide of the direction its remaining arm was pointing, he looked inside the damage and confirmed that there was no pilot’s compartment.

“Has anyone seen or felt any Word personnel?” David asked over the all Star Force channel.

“Nothing,” Nathan said after a long period of silence. “Looks like they rabbited.”

“Someone has to be controlling these defenses, and I doubt its anything other than a local link.”

“Hold up,” Jet broke in. “There’s someone down deep. I can barely sense him.”

“I’m on my way. Everyone else keep cleaning up.”

Devin sat on the front edge of the 10-wheeled, flatbed transport as it rolled down the dark tunnel without so much as a bump to break up the monotony. Two more transports followed behind them with the rest of his assault team onboard. They’d had to fight their way through a small fortification at the tunnel entrance, disabling some 6 guards who’d been on station in the subsurface bunker that was topped off with a food processing factory.

The tunnel itself was blocked off by a small fortification with remote turrets that they’d had to fight their way through, though they and the guards didn’t provide much trouble for the Archons. Devin figured they were there to keep factory workers out should they have happened across the well-disguised entrance in one of the spare storage rooms.

The factory was in northern Russia, and Devin’s team had appropriated the transports from within the tunnel itself. They’d been parked at the entrance awaiting cargo shipments, he assumed, and the Archons had taken them and the guards and started the hundreds of miles trek atop the open air transports. Other than the wind and the whine of the engines and tires, Devin could have swore they were still parked, making for a long, boring drive.

He had his legs hanging off the front and was staring out at the short stretch of tunnel ahead that the transport’s flood lights illuminated as the walls passed by wide to either side. The tunnel itself was more than wide enough to hold two of the trucks side by side, giving the driver plenty of wiggle room that he didn’t need while traveling down what felt like one very long, perfectly straight underground shaft.

But it wasn’t. Devin was following their progress on his battlemap, which was updating as they traveled. The tunnel had made several slight redirects as it passed underneath the Arctic Ocean, which meant it was cutting off line of sight transmission. They’d passed a spur a little over an hour ago, but hadn’t been able to make contact with the other tunnel team. Devin guessed this was because of the little twists in the tunnels, but if they’d gotten delayed, or somehow were ahead of them, then they might also have been out of range, for their armor’s communication systems would only travel so far.

Still, he was surprised they hadn’t bumped into each other yet, and wondered if Lio’s team might have had more trouble at their entry point than his.

Devin figured they had another couple hours to go before they hit the coordinates of the base, so he sat off the front of the transport, thinking through various scenarios they might face when they got there, when the view ahead suddenly shifted. It wasn’t much, but after such a long time with nothing to see the tiny pinprick of light caught his immediate attention.

Devin grabbed an edge beside him for leverage.

“All stop, lights off,” he ordered.

The transport’s engine wound down and the vehicle slowed, with Devin’s momentum tugging him forward as a result. He held on and inched back a bit so he didn’t fall off as the lights went out and the driver kept them off the walls using his Pefbar alone. When the lead transport finally stopped Devin hopped off two meters down to the ground and landed in a reflexive crouch, then got up and walked forward a few steps as he zoomed ahead with his helmet cam.

There was definitely something coming their way, and they weren’t registering on his battlemap…meaning they weren’t Star Force.

“Reposition the trucks to block the tunnel. Everyone else come forward and line the walls. They may not have noticed our lights yet. Get into flanking position with stingers ready. We want whoever they are alive.”

“I count at least two transports,” Pao-999 said from behind his sniper rifle. He was the only ranger amongst the group, though technically Devin was still in command since Green Team had the lead on this mission. “Probably more. They’re single file.”

“Let’s move people,” the acolyte said, running down the right side to get enough distance away from their own transports that were now repositioning sideways to cover the full width of the tunnel. If they’d seen the lights they’d stop short or try to blow through, either way the Archons needed to be further out so they could respond. If the lead vehicle rammed the parked ones, the entire convoy would back up, meaning they would already be in position to hit all the vehicles simultaneously…or chase after them should they start to turn around and flee.

Thankfully the oncoming vehicles were further away than they looked, with even the smallest amount of light traveling a great distance in the pitch black tunnel. Once Devin got where he wanted he motioned others on by him so he could be more towards the center.

“Don’t let the last one turn around,” he said, stretching out his Pefbar as wide as it would go so he could see the two Archons on either side of him, but just barely. There he waited, watching the lights growing larger, as if a train was coming their way, then the buzz of their fat tires rotating rapidly reached their position and caused a spike of adrenaline in Devin after so many boring hours of waiting.

“Here…kitty, kitty, kitty,” he whispered as he pulled out his stinger rifle and flattened himself up against the wall, ready to pounce.

5

Devin saw the first transport whip by him a few seconds before he heard it slam on the brakes and skid to a halt just short of the roadblock. The one behind it rear-ended the first, with the others doing the same and stacking them all up as some in the rear started moving sideways and angling for the walls to avoid the pileup as they too slammed on their brakes.

Several of the Archons jumped to avoid the transports, but they came back up a moment later peppering the tops with stingers from the floor or climbing up on top and taking it to the passengers at pointblank range. Devin jumped up onboard the one that nearly smashed him into the wall and unloaded on the 20-30 people onboard, most of whom had fallen over from the sudden stop.

Most didn’t have weapons, with him targeting the few that did first, then hammering those who were closest second, running through his rifle’s clip in under 30 seconds. With his transport secured he pulled out his stinger pistol and looked around in the scattering of flood lights, using both his Pefbar and Ikrid to search for targets…but the others had done their work well and none of The Word passengers were still conscious.

“Front and back…any stragglers?”

“Negative, none got through.”

“None off the back. All are down.”

“Ok, let’s do a head count and get these transports turned around. Stack ‘em up on top,” Devin said, dropping down to the tunnel floor to retrieve the few that had fallen off the side, one of which had a bloody head from the fall.

Devin pulled off an armored glove and pressed his fingers against the side of the man’s head, hacking into his nervous system despite the stun energy fogging up the connection, and confirmed that he was still alive, but he was bleeding considerably from the gash on his forehead and what was probably a broken nose.

The Archon reached into his pack and pulled out a small med kit, placing a healing patch on his head and sealing it in place over the split skin while leaving the nose to clot up on its own. He reached an arm underneath the man’s abdomen and lifted him up over his shoulder, passing him up to Rinan-10339 who was on top of the transport and lining up the unconscious prisoners.

“Devin, got something here you might want to see,” Pao said over the comm.

Devin checked his battlemap and found the ranger’s position further up the line of transports near the blockade point. “On my way.”

He headed up the staggered line, zigzagging between the flat-topped transports until he got to the second in line and climbed up on top. There he found about half the bodies lined up in neat rows with Pao leaning over one with his right hand visible outside his armor as he examined one of them. In his other hand he held a small container that he tossed up to Devin as he approached.

“These look familiar?”

Devin pulled the lid off and looked inside.

“Kill pills,” he confirmed.

“This guy had them on him, but he’s still alive. His head’s murky, but I think he’s one of their leaders.”

“Let me,” Devin said, kneeling down and taking the ranger’s place. Even though he outranked him overall, his Ikrid skills weren’t on par with Green Team’s, given the amount of experience they’d had. In fact, he wasn’t sure anyone else was, trailblazers included.

He pulled off his glove again and pressed his fingertips against the man’s head, finding the stun-induced haze that Pao had referenced, but he was able to dig a bit deeper than the ranger, pulling up some recent memories along with an identity.

“Bingo,” he said, throwing a glance at Pao. “Mr. Primarch himself.”

“Really?”

“Drill team must have spooked them,” Devin said, rolling the man over and getting a good look at his face. He was ‘middle aged’ with a few streaks of grey in his otherwise black hair, and far more fit than the Master David had brought in…though that wasn’t saying much, given that both men clearly weren’t anywhere near to achieving self-sufficiency.

“Where do you want to take them?”

“Nearest Star Force facility is the ship attached to the drill site. We’ll get him out there and decide what to do with the rest of them after we meet up with the others.”

“I’ll take point,” Pao offered, heading up to the back of The Word convoy as the last transports began moving side to side as they tried to turn around in the tunnel.

Devin looked on his battlemap and found one of the other acolytes, opening a secure comm channel to him.

“Kander, get over here. I’ve got your date for the rest of the mission.”

David ran across the city, having to stop only once to help down one of the last quadrupeds roaming about, and got over to the quarter opposite from their entrance where Jet was, scanning the surrounding buildings with his psionics, finding no one inside as Rikku had said. When he got near to Jet he focused his energy fields down into the ground, finding that the buildings went down beneath the floor multiple levels, but the single mind he detected was deeper still.

“He’s really down there,” David commented when he caught up to Jet as he was working his way through one of the buildings’ interior hallways.

“There’s a cross tunnel down there,” Jet said as he passed his fellow Archon. “It’s above him, but I think it might be the way down.”

“I see it,” David said, using his Pefbar to chart out its zigzaggy course beneath them, noticing that it was headed across the street into another building before it stretched out of his range. He followed a step behind Jet down the hall and out of the building, crossing the now quiet street into the neighboring blocky structure.

But it didn’t stop there. It continued on out beneath another building, and another, and another until it eventually wrapped back around on itself, leading them in a big circle.

“Did I miss an entrance somewhere?” Jet asked as they stopped near to where they began.

“Wait a second,” David said, holding still and stretching out his Pefbar as far as it would go and condensing it down into a spotlight to better examine the tunnel. In his mind’s eye he could only ‘see’ a small column, like a flashlight beam, and ran it along the piece of tunnel beneath them. They weren’t far from the source of the mind, which was considerably lower than the tunnel, meaning that if there was a connection below it would probably be near here.

“There,” David said, spotting a tiny connective shaft…or rather a tiny piece of it before his Pefbar range fizzled out. “A downspout.”

“Where?”

“Below the tunnel.”

“Ah…how do we get to the tunnel?”

“One thing at a time,” David said, walking off to follow the tunnel again…this time staying directly over top of it so maximize his limited psionic range, meaning he had to go into a lot of dead end rooms and keep constantly backtracking in order to scan every meter of it from as close as he could get.

It took him three buildings and a few hundred meters away from the source of the mind before he found a small deviation in the tunnel…a side shaft, less than a third of the tunnel’s width.

“Can you see that?” David asked Jet, stopping directly over top of the junction.

“What am I looking for?” the Archon asked, concentrating.

“A tiny connection on the left. It’s hazy even for me.”

Jet dropped down to all fours and pushed his head as close as he could get to the floor. “Maybe a little. My Pefbar is junk at that range. I can only see big objects.”

“Mine’s not much better, but we need to follow that shaft. Go across to the next building and as deep as you can get. See if you can pick it up. I’ll try to find where it goes under here. If it takes a turn I’ll redirect you.”

“On it,” Jet said, jogging off as David moved into the next room and focused hard again to mentally chart out the next few meters of the side shaft. When he got to the wall he had to backtrack and work his way around to the opposite room and pick up the trail there. After that he didn’t have to go far before the shaft made an abrupt turn to the left and interconnected with an equally tiny vertical shaft.

“Jet, never mind. Get back over here,” he said, ducking out of the room he was in and crossing over to another where the shaft came up…but when he got inside there was no visible entrance, just a ghostly ladder shaft behind what appeared to be a solid wall.

David walked up to it, getting a better resolution with his Pefbar the closer he got, and saw a faint line in the wall moving off from it. He followed the line, which he guessed was a wire, keeping his head less than a meter away so he wouldn’t lose it, and followed it around the corner and into a set of wall shelves just as Jet came in.

David pointed towards the spot on the wall, but kept his eyes on the wire until it finally stopped. He pulled a box off of the shelf in front of it and spotted a small shiny circle on the wall behind it. He touched it, with no response, then he removed his glove and did so again…also with no effect.

“Hold contact,” Jet suggested, and David put his thumb back on it. After a couple of seconds the wall segment broke apart on a nearly invisible seam and pushed out into the room in two halves, splitting down the midline.

“Well now,” Jet said, seeing the ladder at the back of the tiny closet.

“Rikku, I think we’ve found our rat hole. What’s your status?” David said as he followed Jet over to the ladder and placed a waypoint on the battlemap to mark its location for the others.

“City is clean as far as we can tell. Still got a lot of buildings to check, but psionics are coming up clear save for your guy.”

“Any booby traps?”

“No, but we haven’t been able to find the controls to open the other two doors either. The computers appear to have been wiped and if there’s a manual release we haven’t found it yet.”

“I have a feeling Mr. Wizard might have the key. Get back to you in a bit.”

“Copy.”

“No door keys,” David told Jet as he grabbed hold of the ladder rungs and followed the Archon down. “The other teams are going to have to fight their way in unless our dude is controlling the defenses.”

“My credits say he is,” Jet said as he stooped down to crawl into the side shaft that was barely a meter tall.  “I’ll bet this guy stayed behind to run the turrets and mechs while the others bolted. I just hope he isn’t sitting on a self-destruct.”

“You read my mind,” David agreed, getting down on all fours and crawling in after Jet. Now that he was down level with the tunnel his Pefbar was giving him a lot more detail, and he could see ahead that the tunnel they’d been chasing was full height as opposed to the shaft they were crawling through.

When they got to the junction there was no door or grate blocking them, just a pitch black tunnel that they stepped out into, using their armor lights and Pefbar to see their way.

“You see anything else down here?” Jet asked as they began walking off down the half of the tunnel that headed towards their Word mind.

“Nothing,” David said as a panel fell shut over the shaft they’d just crawled out of with a loud clank.

“Oh shit,” Jet said as a number of tiny vents opened up at intervals down the hallway releasing more toxic gas.

“Move,” David prompted, with both Archons running towards their target as their filter locks kicked in. They got a few dozen meters before another panel pulled out of the wall in front of them and cut off the tunnel ahead.

“It’s shallow,” Jet said, seeing the panel’s width in his Pefbar before he walked up to it and kicked hard, putting a sizeable dent in it.

“Can you sense him from here?”

“Yes,” Jet said, kicking it in again.

“Fornax range?”

Jet paused, measuring the distance. “Pulse range I think. Want me to keep him occupied?”

David pulled out one of his last two grenades as an answer and activated it in his right palm. Jet backed up several steps and took a knee, facing away from the panel as he stretched out his mind and sent a Fornax blast off into the distance and down, followed by another a couple seconds later as David tossed his grenade towards the panel and telekinetically tucked it up into the right corner at the bottom before blowing it.

Bits of debris hit both Archons’ armor, but the blast broke the panel free and blew the large pieces down the tunnel. David ran through the gap with Jet following as he continued to send repeated Fornax blasts into the not so distant mind as they closed in.

When they got around the next corner in the tunnel they ran up against another panel, with David pulling out his last grenade as the poison gas continued to flow in. He chucked it down into a corner again and blew the barrier out, then ran on up to the next one, whereupon he began punching and kicking dents into it as Jet continued his mental distraction, easier now with closer range but more difficult to continue with each repetition.

It took some 40+ hits/kicks to warp the metallic barrier enough to pop a corner free, then David leveraged his knee into the gap and pushed, bending it aside enough for him to slip through. Jet followed, sensing they were getting close, but finding another panel in their way blocking their access to the vertical shaft that led down to their target.

“Switch,” Jet said, elbowing past David, who took up the Fornax blasts while Jet pounded the panel, one resting his mind while the other rested his muscles. They both knew they only had a few minutes before they ran out of oxygen, so neither Archon was going to waste a second of time.

When Jet had the panel down it proved to be the last, with them climbing down the ladder and coming up to a very solid door into a small room with a man lying on the floor on the far side, visible via Pefbar. While David kept him down Jet searched the opposite side of the door, seeing no latch, lock, or handle on the outside. It took him a few seconds, but he found the interior latch and telekinetically pulled up on it, moving it about half an inch.

“Some help please,” Jet said, pulling again as David added his own telekinetic tug while still maintaining the Fornax blasts. The latch pivoted up and the open sequence activated, with the door pushing in and swinging open.

The two Archons moved inside, David going for the downed man while Jet closed the door behind them, hoping to keep the gas out. It closed slowly, but locked in place with a satisfying hiss.

“Air,” David said as he pulled out his stinger pistol and pumped two green paintball into the man’s chest, knocking him unconscious.

Jet slid into the control chair, around which were three walls’ worth of monitor screens showing everything from the city streets to the base entrances and the poison-filled tunnel they’d just came in through.

“Working on it,” he said, sifting through the controls trying to find the life support systems for the room as he got a ‘low air’ warning on his helmet’s HUD, indicating that he had 60 seconds of air remaining.

David stood up and looked around the room, trying to find something to help with mechanically. He saw a couple of vents in the ceiling, and now that they were inside a lighted room he didn’t see the toxic clouds, but knew enough had gotten in when they opened the door that their filter masks wouldn’t open up.

That meant their friend here was in trouble, but at the moment he didn’t care. He and Jet needed air, and fast.

“Got it,” the other Archon said as David heard the air start to cycle. “Purging protocol.”

“Let’s hope it works fast,” David said, trying to slow his breathing and stretch his air out a few extra seconds…but he needn’t have bothered, for a moment later his mask unlocked, allowing him to draw air directly from the environment, along with his suit starting to replenish its oxygen backup supply in the same manner.

“That was close,” Jet said.

“No kidding.”

“No, I mean this…”

David looked where Jet was pointing and his eyes narrowed when he saw the trigger mechanism for a series of huge gas containers buried deep under the city…enough to flood the entire dome and well out into the three connecting tunnels.

“Why’d he wait?” Jet asked.

“Let’s find out,” David said as he knelt down next to the man whose nose had already started bleeding. He took off his glove and pressed his fingers against his head, resisting the urge to put his forearm on his neck to pull out some of the lingering stun energy to get a better read, but if the man was going to die he might as well do it unconscious.

“David, do you copy?” Nathan’s voice asked over the comm.

“We’re here,” he replied, focusing on the mental link while pointing a finger at Jet, then his own helmet.

The other Archon joined in on the party line, seeing that it involved Nathan. “David’s a little busy. What do you need?”

“We lost contact with you, and there’s a barrier over the shaft you marked.”

“Probably signal loss from being so deep…and the plate you’re referring to is holding back poison gas, so don’t go busting it open just yet.”

“Are you guys trapped?”

“That was the idea, but we got to the rat first. He got a breath or two of his own medicine, but we’ve got the control room now.”

“Good news, because we’ve got a team outside wanting in. Can you open the doors?”

“Hang on,” Jet said, twisting his chair around and looking through his control options. This computer hadn’t been wiped like the others had, but there were also a number of manual controls on the board in front of him. He pulled up a diagram of the base/city with one of them, then highlighted the doors, with his vid screen views changing to show a group of vehicles waiting outside…along with the remains of the turrets that had been defending it. There was also a small hole in the doors that they were apparently communicating through.

With a little exploring he found the open button and triggered all three to open up…then looked for the life support systems for the dome, hoping to initiate its own purging program to get rid of the lingering gas from the tunnel they’d entered from, and probably the other one as well.

“Got it,” Jet said as David released his hold on the man who was continuing to bleed out.

“Who showed up?” David asked.

“Devin’s team is the one held up. Assad’s group came through our door already. Devin’s got prisoners they captured on the way here, a lot of them.”

“Really?” Jet asked, feeling better already.

“They’re holding them back so the gas doesn’t get to them, but they want to evac at least one guy out the drill shaft. Devin says he’s got the Primarch.”

6

March 5, 2451

Solar System

Earth

The Primarch woke up staring at the wall of his cell and blinked off some of the post-stun haze he’d gotten used to over the past few days. Every time the Archons moved him locations they made sure he was unconscious, letting him wake up in a new place with no knowledge of how he’d gotten there.

He rolled over, feeling with his left hand the edge of the bunk he lay on, and twisted enough to see the blue energy field constricting him to a small cell with a pair of Star Force personnel on the other side.

“Morning,” David offered, leaning against the far left wall. The energy field was nearly transparent, with only a slightly colored tint to make both prisoner and guests aware of where the barrier lay.

“Where are we now?” he asked, swinging his legs over the side of the bunk and sitting up. He reached back a hand and massaged a slight crick in his neck, then ran his fingers up through his salt and pepper hair, trying to judge from the feel of it how many hours it’d been since his last shower. Apparently quite a few.

“Atlantis,” the other man said from the edge of the small table he was sitting on.

The Primarch squinted, recognizing the voice more than the face. “Director…you’re looking well for your age. You really should let the press update your photo profile. You’re getting younger by the decade.”

“They say they’re photoshopped anyway,” Davis replied as he stood up and walked forward, stopping a few inches shy of the energy field. “Some people just don’t understand the concept of self-sufficiency.”

“And where does your ambrosia fit in?” the Primarch asked, standing up and facing off with Davis.

“It’s a supplement that aids training with a mix of structural components and energy enhancements. Sort of a ‘super sugar.’ It doesn’t create the self-sufficiency, and many of our lower level self-sufficient personnel don’t have access to it.”

“But you use it?”

“I do.”

“Then your youthfulness is unnatural.”

“Define natural.”

“That which was predetermined by our genetic code. Alterations to the plan set in place are unnatural.”

“Artificial limbs?”

“Tools…though in Star Force’s case they seem to never be needed. Also several severely disfigured individuals have been miraculously healed after a clandestine visit.”

“Is that a complaint?”

“Such things imply an unnatural medicine, and where there is a deviation from nature there are always consequences. Some unforeseen.”

“You would leave them mangled?” Davis asked as David merely watched from the sidelines, intending to stay out of the conversation.

“They had their chance and it was wasted. Nature will see them replaced with the renewing of each generation.”

“You assume a commonality.”

“Humanity is a commonality.”

“Comprised of individuals.”

“Basic building blocks.”

“That must be bound together by force or choose to operate in concert. The commonality isn’t default.”

“It is default,” the Primarch argued. “The dynamics of connection must be maintained. If they aren’t, fragmentation occurs and your vaunted ‘individuality’ arises.”

“Which you’ll have ample opportunity to study during your 1000 year sentence. As you well know, Star Force prisons operate under isolation protocols. You won’t have any commonality to link with. You’ll have to operate as an individual.”

“Being disconnected from the commonality doesn’t make me any less part of it. We work for the advancement of Humanity. Much of that work is in isolation.”

“We’ll see,” Davis said, knowing from past experience that the isolation protocols forced many individuals through a cleansing fire of silence that resulted in them reverting to a learning state similar to childhood once society’s influence was removed. Like a narcotic, some had more difficulty adjusting to its absence than others.

“After my interrogation?”

“It won’t take as long as you think.”

“If you think I’m going to cooperate, you’re gravely mistaken. I won’t betray The Word.”

“The Word is already dead,” Davis said emphatically. “You’ve been captured, along with all 12 of your Masters…save one, who managed to get to his kill pills before we got to him. We’re interrogating them as well, and as you probably already noticed, we’ve been hitting a lot of your facilities…or did you notice? It hasn’t exactly been on the news.”

“We noticed, but what we didn’t notice was the leak that led you to Olympus.”

“Arrogant name.”

The Primarch raised an eyebrow. “Coming from Star Force I find that statement overly hypocritical, especially since we’re standing in Atlantis.”

“Olympus was the home of the gods. Your insistence on your natural function and limited existence make the name incompatible.”

“I may not live forever, but the Primarch will. Thus the leader of The Word is immortal, as is our cause and function within the commonality.”

“Given to you by whom? The Word didn’t originate with the beginnings of the universe, so I fail to see how it’s a natural function.”

“The function predates the organization. We merely acknowledged its existence and structured ourselves accordingly. We do not create our mandate, only respond to it. Star Force is the unnatural machination.”

“We safeguard Humanity, not The Word.”

“You safeguard against external threats, but do so by corrupting our purpose. One is a noteworthy function, the other is an abomination. We do not wish to end Star Force, merely to put you fully on the proper path which you already have a foot on.”

“Can nature be improved upon?”

The Primarch hesitated, unsure how to answer the question. “Nature provides us with all we need.”

“Technology?”

“Using the tools that are available within the structure of the universe is not contrary to nature, it is a function of it.”

“Yet you decry improvement. How can we be acting contrary to nature if we’re simply using the tools?”

“Misusing the tools,” the Primarch corrected him.

“Define misuse.”

“Utilizing the tools to act counter to purpose rather than to enact it.”

“By attaining self-sufficiency I and my associates are more knowledgeable and powerful, given the amount of training and experience we can accumulate with an unlimited lifespan. This allows us to safeguard Humanity better than a force that continually has to replace its personnel. We are using the tools of nature to accomplish our purpose.”

“But corrupting others in the process. That is not a victory.”

“Nor is it a victory when you have to sacrifice those you are trying to safeguard, for you become the enemy in the process.”

“Lifespans are not unlimited. A loss of a life is merely a premature death. Unfortunate in many cases when viewed from the individual perspective, but so long as the commonality continues, sacrifice can serve a beneficial purpose.”

“If there is a commonality or purpose to life, we are unaware of it. We are born in locations not of our choosing, through parents not of our choosing, at a time not of our choosing. We are thrown into this universe cold…we know nothing of who we are or why we are here, and we enter as individuals. Commonalities try to suppress the individual nature and conscript them into their groups, but it is that individuality that is the fundamental truth to life,” Davis said, getting at the heart of Star Force philosophy.

“We don’t know where we come from, just that we’re here,” he continued. “We have to figure out everything as we go, with our ‘nature’ being default programming inherent in our genetics to allow us to function cold. Sexuality insures reproduction, thirst and hunger encourages refueling, burning lungs triggers a breath. We operate on programing until the individual can learn how to operate their body and mind, and when they do…or perhaps I should say ‘if’ they do…they find the capability to reprogram themselves in order to customize their body and mind as they wish.”

“But we don’t know that when we’re born,” Davis said before the Primarch could utter a rebuttal. “We have to figure it out on our own, and there is so much complexity in the universe that we cannot figure it all out on our own…which is why we intercept individuals when they come into the universe and teach them what we know, skipping them through the ignorance phase and ensuring that most of them will live where otherwise they would not. We encourage the individual’s growth, and from it Star Force finds its strength and purpose.”

“We are all individuals, and to betray one of us is to betray all of us. Sacrifice is abhorrent because it goes against everything we are doing in life, with that being trying to advance, to learn, and to figure out what the hell is going on in the universe. If we die, it will be at the hands of an enemy or by accident. If it is at the hand of an ally or friend, then those terms no longer apply and we’re back to commonalities rather than individuals, for the sovereignty of the individual is the fundamental principle. Abandon it and you abandon reason.”

“Which is why we’re not going to kill you,” Davis finished. “You certainly deserve to die, given the things you’ve either organized or allowed to happen within The Word, but you are an individual, and now that we’ve made sure you’re not in a position to harm anyone else, we’ll leave you to ponder the mysteries of life in solitude. If you can’t understand the concept of self-sufficiency, there will be plenty of training aids made available, as well as workout facilities. You will either learn and grow and attain self-sufficiency…or you will not. If not, you will slowly degrade and die. Your fate is in your own hands, but one way or another The Word dies with you, for if you survive it will be by contravening the ‘nature’ you ascribe to.”

The Primarch crossed his arms over his chest. “So you’re not here to interrogate me. You’re here to pass sentence?”

“I’m here to look the bastard in the eye and see what he’s made of,” Davis said bluntly, allowing a bit of his anger to slip into view. “And I’m not impressed.”

“I am but a part of the whole. You shouldn’t be impressed with me, but I will say I am impressed by you. That you could have come so far and achieved so much while missing the basic truth of life.”

“Which is?”

“It ends. We accomplish a few tasks during our temporary window, advancing the commonality, then we pass on.”

“Obviously not.”

“Your longevity is unnatural, and as such it cannot be sustained. How long it will be before you realize this I honestly cannot say, but I know you merely prolong the inevitable.”

“You can take that and the rest of The Word nonsense to your grave while we live on…unless you wise up. Like I said, it’s a chance we’re giving you that you don’t deserve, but you have it none the less. If you want to commit suicide we won’t stop you, but you’re not going to have our help with it.”

“After the interrogation,” David corrected.

“Yes, after,” the Primarch echoed, looking at the face of the Archon he’d become familiar with during his brief stints of consciousness over the past few days.

“We still have questions that need answering so we can save at least some of the lives you’ve put in harm’s way,” Davis added. “After that your solitude will begin, and you won’t see another living being for the next millennia. So if you feel like talking, now’s the time.”

“Despite your assertions that the Masters have been captured, I only have your word for it,” the Primarch said defiantly, though Davis could detect a bit of trepidation in his eyes. “I won’t give you anything to compromise them…and through them The Word will continue. I am not the first Primarch and I will not be the last. You may have weakened us, but others will continue forward as we fall. That is the nature and structure of life. You can kill the individual, but the commonality will continue.”

“We’re not killing you.”

“So you say. I have yet to experience your interrogation techniques. If you have any skill with them, you would know that survival isn’t guaranteed. Then again, you do have this magical medicine. Will it be used to repair my mangled body?” the Primarch taunted.

Davis stared back at him, then a small smirk tugged its way onto his face. “You think that because I admitted to the existence of ambrosia that you can extract information out of me. You are mistaken. You are still a rookie, and rookies don’t get access to the higher levels of Star Force’s collective knowledge…at least not until you’ve earned it. Prerequisites and all that. Until you master the basics you don’t need to be distracted with the complexities.”

“You delude yourself if you believe I will become one of your initiates.”

“Oh, that won’t be happening. Even if you survive your millennia you won’t ever be allowed into Star Force. I was merely pointing out that your status as our primary enemy, here on Earth at least, doesn’t afford you any special privileges. You’re not our peer. You’re just a twisted kid, and as the days go by that point is going to grow more and more obvious.”

“Years do not necessarily beget wisdom,” the Primarch countered as Davis motioned to David, who hit the energy field release, dropping the blue barrier between them.

“We won’t meet again, so this is me saying goodbye,” Davis said, stepping forward into a short lunge and driving his left elbow into the man’s chest.

The Primarch flew backwards and bounced off the wall, tripping on the bunk that he then fell down onto, unable to get his balance as David sent a weak stream of Fornax energy into him, making him feel far more affected by the hit than he should have been.

Nice form, David commented telepathically as Davis turned his back on the Primarch and casually walked out.

All yours.

The ranger left his perch against the wall and walked over to the Primarch, who he was still feeding a bit of Fornax to keep his body wobbly, and helped him sit up, leaving his hand on the man’s right shoulder with a couple of fingers reaching over and brushing the skin on his neck.

“Packs a punch, doesn’t he?”

“A taste…of what’s to come?” the Primarch asked, his breathing heavy as Davis began hacking into his nervous system and subtly beginning the interrogation.

“No, no…if I hit you I might kill you. Why are all of you guys so pathetically out of shape? You can barely sit up right now.”

“You have unnatural strength. More so than I estimated, or is he as strong as you?”

David smiled, both at the question and the workout thread he identified in the man’s mind that gave him access to the Primarch’s daily routine that included some light running, weight lifting, and yoga…typical ignorant workout fluff, especially the weight lifting. David got a slew of memories from recent lifts, as well as him tearing a quad a couple months ago.

“Not even close,” David said, sending a bit more Fornax out to make the man slump over…all so he could help him sit back up, giving him an excuse for keeping a hand on his neck. “You and I are going to get to know each other very well. My name’s David.”

“Yes…I know. And if you don’t already know my name I’m not going to give it to you.”

As soon as the man said the words his name popped up inside his conscious thoughts, basically handing it to David.

“Do you prefer Jameson, James, or Jim?”

“Jameson will suffice.”

“Alright, Jim. Let’s get you over to a more comfortable room,” he said, pulling him up off the bunk with ease and practically dangling him like a puppet with the wobbly legs the Fornax was giving him. “Then we can start our very long chat. I’ll make sure they bring us some donuts.”

7

March 25, 2451

Solar System

Earth

David sat at the computer console in his room, typing out a report on his interrogation findings for the day while they were still fresh in his mind. He was handling the Primarch while the rest of Green Team was out with Blue and Red teams hitting Word facilities as fast as David and the rest of the interrogators could identify them. Those hits were likewise bringing back with them more prisoners to be interrogated, along with the 11 Masters they already had, which had prompted them to call in all the highest Ikrid-rated Archons within the system to assist with the mass of interrogations.

David and the others knew the faster they could hit The Word operations the more of them they’d be able to sweep up before they had a chance to respond. The cellular nature of their organization, which in the past had always been an advantage, was allowing the Archons to take out one Agent’s operations with the others more or less unaware, for the raids weren’t making the news vids.

Part of him wanted to be out there busting heads, but he knew the interrogation of the Primarch was the highest priority and wanted to get it finished as soon as possible so they could pass him off to a Star Force prison and wash their hands of him. Problem was he had a huge amount of intel, and digging it out of his mind was not a straightforward process…especially when David had to hide the fact that he had the ability to delve into the man’s mind through physical contact.

That said, he was making considerable progress and wanted to get the most recent finds into the computer records before he headed off for his second workout session of the day. He’d gotten all of his core workouts done in the morning before saying hi to the Primarch, but he wanted to get some skill work in this afternoon before he headed back over to assist with the interrogation of Master 2.

Today he’d dug out The Word’s origins from the man’s mind, finding that it had began back in the 2290s in direct opposition to the changes that Star Force was making on Earth…meaning the organization had operated in the dark for years before Davis had picked up on their illicit activity. What their ultimate goals were David hadn’t gotten to yet, but his prying into the Primarch’s mind clearly indicated that the man felt he was but one piece of an ever growing puzzle…a puzzle that Star Force was in the process of putting an end to before it could fully take shape.

David was keeping track of Green Team’s operations in between his interrogation sessions and workouts, all the while tagging new missions for them as he oversaw the collective data files being assembled piecemeal by all the Archons involved in the mass interrogations…which was why he needed to get his latest findings down in a report before the slew of facts he dealt with on a daily basis washed away some tidbits of information that may or may not prove useful in the long run.

‘Type now, think later’ had become his habit, and it allowed him to disassociate one activity from another. Once today’s sessions were over, both his training and the interrogations, he’d thumb through the other recent interrogation reports, as well as the ones from the field missions. From there he’d make adjustments to Green Team’s assignments while throwing others to Blue and Red teams for the insystem work, while Yellow and Orange Teams had already been dispatched to other systems to hunt down Word facilities there.

Purple Team was still standing by, waiting for a different system assignment when the interrogators had weeded out another cell from either the Masters or the Primarch, though from what David was learning the vast majority of The Word’s operations were here in Sol. The other star systems didn’t afford them a great many opportunities to establish independent bases, and with most of the extra-solar colonies being Star Force owned the security was tight enough to constrict Word operations minimal activities.

Where there appeared to be pockets of The Word in other systems was, of course, the national colonies. They were few, meaning most of Star Force’s interstellar empire was untouched by the taint of The Word, but where there was a colony, station, or ship not run by Star Force personnel, The Word would try to insert its people, extending their network of operatives out into previously untouched segments of Humanity.

Those had to be eliminated, but given the distances involved David and the special Teams were going to be hunting down Word fragments for several years to come, but most of their activities were right here on Earth, which took priority for Green Team. Only Antarctica and a few tiny territories across Earth were under Star Force control, the rest of the planet was a conglomeration of nations, and even those allied with Star Force, such as Brazil, were not immune to Word infiltration. In that way Earth had been a weak spot as far as Star Force’s intelligence division was concerned, and The Word had done well to exploit that advantage, leaving a lot of cleanup to do on the planet.

Already they’d hit 118 Word facilities, with another 52 on the to-do list, with more being added by the day as they discovered their locations through the interrogation of the Masters and Primarch, along with the tech work being done at captured facilities, giving them electronic trails to follow to even more hideouts.

The size of The Word was far larger than David had expected, and he could imagine what they’d been up to their first 100 or so years. They’d needed to establish their own infrastructure, off the grid, in order to keep Star Force from using the economy to locate them. Doing so must have been a long and tedious task, and David found it surprising they could have been so patient. Usually philosophical zealots needed to be seen and heard, but The Word had been a ghost for such a long time David wondered what else they might have been up to, and had only begun to interrogate the Primarch concerning such things.

He had discovered that anti-Star Force wasn’t their driving mandate, for they sought control and/or influence over all factions, and with their primary focus being here on Earth they had a lot of dealings with the local governments as they pried here and there. It was always clandestine, up until Davis had outed their existence, with the public swell of support being a new factor the Primarch had to work his way through.

This one, like his predecessor, had kept The Word independent from the social movement that bore its name and manipulated it as they did other threads within Human society to get the outcomes they desired. That way, nothing could be backtracked to expose the organization, though the Primarch was still wondering if it somehow had, for neither David nor anyone else had informed the prisoner how exactly he’d been exposed.

Which worked well as an interrogation technique, for the man kept running possible scenarios through his head, effectively giving David a rundown of Word facilities and operations where the breach in security might have occurred. As far as he knew, for he wasn’t monitoring the man constantly, the Primarch had never considered the possibility that an Agent might turn.

He’d considered the possibility of other personnel being captured and interrogated, but they knew so little that there wasn’t anything they had access to that could have led Star Force to the Masters or Olympus, so every time David questioned him in a way that brushed upon a new idea, the Primarch would unwittingly run it through his mind for the Archon to see, showing more memory threads for David to backtrack then or later.

All in all, it was tedious work, but it had to be done and there was no one more equipped for it than him, which was why he didn’t shirk the task. Even though he didn’t have complete control over the various operations within The Word, the Primarch did have a wealth of knowledge that no Master did, for he saw the organization as a whole while they saw merely their own slice of the big corrupt cake.

But what he didn’t know was the identity and location of all their operatives. He knew the Agents and their assignments, but who they recruited for their assignments wasn’t always known, even to their Masters, meaning there was a lot of leg work being done at the raid sites, grabbing up as many personnel as they could, bringing them back to Atlantis for the big interrogation party, and identifying who was where and doing what, though so far only a handful of Agents had been taken captive. Most of them had enough of a heads up during the assaults to get to their kill pills first.

Those cells were being rolled over by the Teams, for each Agent knew every aspect of their operation, making them the most valuable captures in finding all the rats, but in the case of those who had died it meant that those cells effectively died with them, for they could no longer function. David assumed some of the operatives would continue to carry out their orders, and perhaps even try to set up their own organizations when it became clear that their superiors had disappeared, but they wouldn’t be the threat that The Word was, given their lack of leadership, training, and resources.

That didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous and didn’t have some nasty toys in their possession, but their long-term sustainability was now gone, making this less of a clandestine war and more of a cleanup operation. The biggest threat they now faced was in missing cells and leaving an Agent in play, creating an opportunity for a new criminal organization to spawn if the Agent was so inclined to do so, making it important that David and the others find all the Agents, or at least identify them, so they could make a clean sweep of The Word leadership and eliminate their knowledge from the equation.

One thing David had been able to get from the Primarch was the total number of Agents in play, which was an astounding 2493. Each Master recruited and trained their own Agents, and as such they had varying numbers of them, with each report filed by them being filtered up to Olympus for the Primarch and his staff to keep track of.

And his staff didn’t do the lion’s share of the work, for the Primarch really did lead the Word. He was a statistician that recruited his staff from Word members in order to assist him with an insane amount of data analysis, most of which wasn’t even Word related. He had some basic security staff to safeguard Olympus, but most of the people they’d captured along with him were the data hounds that gave The Word such impressive intelligence capabilities.

That brain trust was being interrogated simultaneously, though David wasn’t directly involved, but he was seeing the reports coming out from them and used that data as interrogation points for the Primarch, spurring specific memory threads that he could then follow to new and often obscure facts that hadn’t passed through the man’s conscious mind in months, if not years.

The entire interrogation party was a team psionic effort, and David was a bit freaked out to think how hard and damn near impossible it would have been to root out The Word without psionics, now that he could see how big and professional the organization was. Star Force was a monster organization, and as such it cast a huge shadow that many could hide within, and The Word had been doing just that with extreme efficiency.

Still, if Sander Rennold hadn’t happened The Word would still be active and operating despite the Archon’s psionic interrogation techniques, underscoring not only how skilled their opponent was, but the limits that Star Force had. The larger their population grew the easier it was for individuals to hide…so long as they had proper ID. Learn where the security cameras were and weren’t, and you could hide conversations off the grid, arrange clandestine meetings and other activities, all of which there was no way Star Force security could track…not because of a inadequacy on their part, but due to the simple fact that the bigger you got the harder it was to keep track of it all.

But therein lie the disadvantage as well, for as soon as The Word or anyone else took any action of note they’d be on the grid and invite scrutiny. The Word had done well to stay off the grid, but aside from some sabotage, kidnappings, and other ‘small’ activities they’d kept quiet. Tyr was an example of a larger operation, but it was part, not of a Star Force colony, but another nation where security wasn’t so robust.

From everything David had learned from the Primarch and other prisoners, he had not seen a way for them to hobble or even slow down the mega corporation, meaning either there was some grandiose plan that he hadn’t gotten to yet within the Primarch’s mind or The Word simply didn’t have one. They survived because they hid well, but in order to take Star Force down they had to stop hiding…at which point they were doomed. All they could do was preserve the status quo and try to make tiny alterations, which Star Force had shown an almost impervious resistance to.

Even if The Word took full control over every independent nation and colony they still wouldn’t have the power to take on Star Force, militarily, economically, or even in manpower, for the majority of Humans lived in Star Force territory. Only Earth was the opposite, which was why The Word had been focusing so much effort here, David had learned.

So in the end, David acknowledged, the confrontation between Star Force and The Word had been a draw, ended by the actions of an Agent who’d essentially turned to the lightside because he had seen through The Word philosophy and recognized it for the lie that it was. So philosophically Star Force had won the war, but it still bothered David that they hadn’t been able to get at The Word’s hierarchy without help. Maybe they would have eventually, if The Word had slipped up, but given the dynamics of how the organization operated, he really didn’t see how they would have gotten to the Masters and Primarch, short of stumbling across Olympus during some Arctic construction.

Call it ‘professional dissatisfaction’ on his part, but he was certainly happy that they made good on the opportunity Sander had given them. Luck was certainly a part of the game, and while he didn’t want to make the mistake of depending on it, using it when it came your way was something he’d learned all the way back in basic training when going up against an annoying challenge that he just couldn’t seem to beat. When it finally did happen, often unexpectedly, you took it and ran on to the next roadblock in your way.

And this roadblock had been long in overcoming. He and Green Team had been assigned to The Word mission for the past 45 years, making it by far their longest assignment, one which he expected to be wrapped up on Earth within the next couple months, as far as the Archons were concerned. Once the heavy psionic lifting and base raiding was done, rounding up the rogue operatives would become a security division mission while Green Team would split up and head out to other star systems hunting the remains of The Word while Red and Blue Teams got back to their normal assorted workload for Davis.

David was looking forward to getting back out in the field, for he’d had far too much Professor Xavier work in recent days to suit him. His workouts were all that were keeping him from going stir crazy, and he was glad this current report was coming to an end so he could head off for some real work.

David, you busy?

The ranger kept typing as he answered the telepathic question coming from a few levels above his quarters.

Just finishing up a report. What’s up? he asked Rikku.

With so many of us in the city, Vermaire requested a challenge. I’m rounding up as many high levels guys as I can for a ‘king of the hill.’

How many is he giving us?

Nine.

Nine? He’s getting rather bold.

Which is why I want to stick it to him if we can. We’re set to go at it in 34 minutes.

David checked his watch, then quickly typed in a short list of topics for him to finish later.

On my way.

Good, Rikku said, sending him the telepathic equivalent of a smiley face.

David hit the save button and flicked off his computer, heading for the door. He ran out into the hallway and all the way to the nearest elevator, crossing Atlantis over to where the non-trainee challenge chambers were. He ducked into the nearest equipment room and quickly got dressed, all the while having flashbacks of going up against the Black Knight as a trainee all those years ago.

Time for a little payback.

8

David dug his knee into the padded, angled wall and dragged his falling body to a stop midway down the side of the artificial hill he’d just been tossed off of. Aeryn was below him, all the way down on the flat that surrounded the four-sided, flat-topped pyramid, and as David clawed his way back into some upward momentum Peg came flying off the top and falling towards him.

He ducked down flat, with her body missing his by inches, and there was little doubt in his mind that her trajectory hadn’t been coincidental. Vermaire had thrown her at him, hoping to knock him back down before he could get to the top again…but no such luck this time.

David got his legs back underneath himself and rushed up the 45 degree incline until his head cleared the top edge and he could see what was happening in the center of the large scoring square. The Black Knight, dressed in the same gray/tan light armor that they all were wearing to reduce the blows and allow them to fight more freely, stood a head taller than the Archons ringing him and outmassed David by a factor of 2.

A quick punch to Sev’s chest knocked him back, then Kivy dove at the Knight’s legs, trying to latch on but he wasn’t quick enough about it and missed one of them…which Vermaire then used to kick him away just as David was coming up to him. A telepathic prodding by Niles told him to jump high, which David made good on by launching himself and his flexible armor up into a jump-kick aimed at Vermaire’s chest.

The larger man dodged it easily, grabbing David by the ankle and twirling him around like a bat to smash into Aeryn who was just now coming back up the hillside. Both Archons tumbled back down and out of sight, but David’s diversion had allowed Rikku to slide in underneath the Black Knight and latch onto his legs.

David didn’t see what happened next as he and Aeryn tumbled down the side all the way to the bottom before they got themselves pried free of one another. There were nine Archons in play on the hill versus the Black Knight, who looked odd not dressed in his typical intimidating Knight armor. The light armor had been at his request, knowing that if they went at it in just their training garb he was going to have to hold back to keep from injuring them, and vice versa, and that wasn’t good for anyone when playing ‘king of the hill.’ Vermaire wanted a challenge, to be pressed, and he couldn’t do that if he was holding back.

The entire suit of armor was made of flexible pads, save for the clear faceplate that was hard and kept noses and eyes from getting busted up. The light armor was used for a variety of combat missions, usually not by Archons, but it made for an excellent training tool for when one wanted to get some rough sparring in, and the way the Black Knight went about things any challenge against him ended up that way.

He’d allowed them nine Archons, with Rikku having assembled the highest ranking group she could out of those in the city helping with the psionic interrogations,  meaning high level acolytes and rangers. In order of class they were Riona-111, Kivy-188, Aeryn-412, David-441, Rikku-452, Sarah-800, Niles-803, Peg-1367, and Sev-1522, with Riona, David, Rikku, Niles, and Sev being the 5 rangers in the group and the other four being the highest ranking acolytes available, with the balance of those invited watching from the sidelines.

Rikku had assembled an all-star team, but like always the Black Knight was proving to be better than them. They’d been at this for the past 40 minutes, with the scoreboard reading 2:31 on his side and a big fat 00:00 for the Archons, meaning they hadn’t been able to remove him from the top at all, while he’d been able to keep the top square clear of them for a total of 2 minutes and 31 seconds, though he’d only managed to do that by adding up a lot of brief periods of 2 or 3 seconds each when all nine Archons had been knocked off the top.

But hell, this was fun, and there was no way any of them were going to back down, especially since they’d come close to deposing him three times over the past 10 minutes. David didn’t think his strength was wearing down, but rather the Archons were getting better acclimated to his combat skills…which were far superior to theirs.

Like all Knights, Vermaire trained exclusively for the hand to hand subdivision of commando, and with the man being older than all of the Archons he’d had centuries to focus on improving that select skillset. Nowadays he didn’t even split his time helping to train, or more accurately terrorize, the Archon trainees, for even with the stun-neutralizing component of his armor removed he was still too strong and fast for them.

Another Knight had taken his place, leaving Vermaire even more training time in the day to hone his beastly skills. He was far more than a match for any Archon, discounting psionics, trailblazers included, but against 9 of them he should have been at a disadvantage, which is why he figured the Black Knight had chosen that number of opponents.

David gently kicked Aeryn off his leg and both of the Archons jumped to their feet and climbed back up the hill just in time to see Vermaire send Rikku over the edge on the far side, with only three other Archons currently up top. Kivy had hold of the giant’s left arm and was latched onto it like a dead weight while Sev came in and tried to tackle the man across the abdomen.

It didn’t work well, but it knocked the Black Knight back a step as he knocked Sev up into the air with a raised knee…which Riona then slid under, coming up from behind him, and snaked her arms and legs through his, trying to topple him.

David and Aeryn both saw the opportunity and sprinted across the top of the hill and jumped at Vermaire as he punched Kivy away and dropped to a knee on top of Riona, smashing her into an impromptu submission hold as he grabbed Sev by the shoulders and chucked him over the side like a rag doll. David and Aeryn came flying through the air, Aeryn a step ahead, and rammed into his torso, with her snaking an arm around his neck and pivoting her body around behind his massive bulk as David torpedoed his chest with another jump-kick.

A jump-kick that came to a sudden, firm halt. Using Riona as a brace, the Black Knight had set himself against the ranger’s incoming momentum, stopping him flat and dropping him to the ground where he spun around like a cat, all the while Vermaire grabbed Aeryn’s arms as he stood up, stepped to the side away from Riona, and spun the Archon around twice before tossing her well up into the air where she fell down over the hill and out of sight.

David was back on his feet and punching at the man’s gut as he released Aeryn, getting in a quick, unanswered blow before the large arms came back down and David began backpedaling as they sparred lightning fast. He knew he had to give ground or get overwhelmed by the man’s strength, but what galled him the most was that, despite his bulk, he was just as fast as the Archons were. David suspected Riona might be a hair faster, but one on one it was no contest, meaning that he had to block and parry the heavy blows long enough for the others to get back up the hill and link up to do some kind of damage.

One of his punches resulted in Vermaire latching onto his wrist and holding him motionless for a split second, which was all he needed to kick into David’s chest and send him flying backwards across the square. The Archon dropped to the slightly padded top a meter shy of the edge, immediately regaining his footing and turning around just in time to see Riona slide back underneath the giant’s feet and wrap up his legs again…this time crumpling one of his knees enough that he lost his footing and began to fall forward just as Kivy and Peg came flying in and grabbed each of his arms.

Like a tractor pull, they dragged his torso the opposite direction, flipping him over onto his back as Niles and Sarah came in and grabbed his legs which Riona suddenly let go of. Together, the four Archons lifted the Black Knight up off the ground and walked him towards the edge, intending to chuck him off the side.

But they knew he wouldn’t go quietly, and before they got to the edge he pulled Peg in too close to his torso and head butted her in the chest just enough to off balance the acolyte and allow that arm of his to sag to the ground. The Black Knight used the dip to convulse the others out of position, then he began to kick his way free as they unwittingly dropped him to the ground two meters shy of the edge.

Once down his bulk regained its dominance and he quickly pitched Kivy over the edge with an elegant frontside scorpion kick in which he crunched up his abdomen as if he were doing a sit-up, except that his back laid flat on the ground and it was his lower body that moved upwards whereupon he extended his right leg and sent the Archon flying backwards over the edge.

Vermaire snapped his legs back down, kicking Sev as he jumped into the mix and giving himself a tiny bit of clear space on top to maneuver in as he spun around on the ground in a roundhouse kick, knocking down Aeryn as she came back up and into the fight. Then suddenly he was back on his feet taking a step in towards the middle and away from the edge the Archons had got him dangerously close to.

But that was when Riona got back under his legs again, and with Rikku’s help this time the pair was able to dump him to the ground and hold tight while he tried to kick his way free. David ran up and grabbed the man’s left wrist and pulled as hard as he could, with three of the others jumping in and grabbing what leverage points they could and yanking desperately to move both Vermaire and Riona and Rikku over the edge.

When David got his foot across and onto the angled slope he pitched himself over, trying to let gravity assist him, but the Black Knight yanked him back up with an insanely strong arm curl and threw him across Riona’s chest, tripping David up and knocking him down at the Black Knight’s feet.

The next thing he knew he saw Sarah flying by and jumping into the mess of arms and legs, then suddenly it all pitched over the side and disappeared from view.

David glanced up at the scoreboard, seeing their clock tick up a second, then two as the Archons now had control of the top now that Vermaire was off it and at least one of them stayed up top to hold it.

As he got to his feet he saw Aeryn and Niles with him, all of whom ran over to the edge and looked down the hill where they saw the Black Knight knocking his way free of the Archons and start to run back up the side…only to have Riona come at him from the left flank and dive after one of his legs, which she somehow managed to latch onto.

David didn’t hesitate when he saw the opportunity and abandoned the top, leaving the other two Archons to hold it as he charged down the hillside and jumped head first at Vermaire as he punched Riona into submission and kicked her aside. David’s momentum hit the man in the shoulder as he tried to dodge, partially succeeding, but the Archon had been moving so fast it sent him staggering back enough that he had to drop to a knee to keep from pitching over as David flew about wildly down to the bottom, accidentally knocking Rikku and Sev down like bowling pins.

But what he couldn’t see was that while the Black Knight was off balance, Aeryn was coming down the hillside behind David and she finished what he’d began, plowing into the giant and knocking him off his feet where he slid back down the hill, tossing the arrogant Archon off him and digging his knee into the padding to slow his descent. He reset himself and raced back up towards the top, fighting off two more Archon delaying attacks on the way.

When David stopped tumbling at the bottom of the hill he banged his head on the flat, stunning himself for a moment. When he shook his head clear he wobbly got back to his feet and looked up, seeing Kivy and Aeryn flying off the top, quickly followed by Riona, and David knew that the Black Knight was pissed and he was trying to quickly clear off the top to add a few more seconds to his tally.

David wasn’t going to let that happen, so even though his head hadn’t fully stopped spinning he ran up the angled padding towards one of the corners and stepped up on top, holding position rather than jumping into the fight, and laying claim to a piece of the square while the others were scrambling to get back up in time, for Vermaire was chucking them off one by one too fast for them to coordinate with each other.

Sev came up alongside David and likewise held position, then suddenly it was the two of them and Vermaire as Peg got kicked off. David and Sev split up, each heading towards opposite corners and forcing the Black Knight to chase after one of them…and he chose Sev.

The ranger ducked and dodged for several seconds, but Vermaire eventually got to him and with three quick punches distracted, disabled, and removing him from the top, then the eldest of the Knights turned around and headed for David, intent on grabbing another second for the scoreboard that now read 2:31/0:29.

Knowing that sitting on the edge was stupid, David ran forward and met him in the middle, sliding down underneath him and turtling up, not trying to fight the giant but rather trying to buy time for the others to get back up to the top. He rolled to his right, jabbing his knee into the Black Knight’s shin, moving it back an inch, then he felt a hand underneath his shoulder and suddenly he was being picked up off the floor.

David reacted quickly, twisting around and getting his own grip on one of Vermaire’s arms, not allowing him to throw the Archon so easily. Then, oddly, Vermaire dropped him and took a step back, kicking into Riona’s faceplate as she tried to dart underneath his legs and tie him up again. His kick stopped her cold, then he spun around and did the same thing to Rikku who was coming in on the opposite side, having anticipated their attacks.

What it also did was start getting the Archons reassembled on top, now with 4 of them up and another nearing the edge. Seeing this Vermaire plowed through David, knocking him aside but not off, and reset himself at hilltop center while the Archons moved around him in a circle, looking for an opening.

The Black Knight stood up to his full height and reached a hand forward, motioning them to come on with a couple of fingers, then David got a telepathic strategy from Sev, with him sending a confirmation ping back.

Rikku took off first, running three steps straight towards him, then diverting into a shallow ‘orbit’ that twisted her around to the far side. With his back turned, Peg came in as well, dropping into the circular motion and waiting for the Black Knight to strike either her or Rikku, but he didn’t. He let them move about him at a range of two meters, not taking the bait.

Then suddenly both Archons appeared to trip over their own feet and fall to the ground, with Vermaire taking both hands, balling them into fists, and beating them against his chest once as he pushed his own Fornax field out to its limits, teasing with the rest of the Archons’ balance, but they were too far away and his energy field to weak at that range to do little more than get their attention.

That does it, Riona said telepathically to the group. He’s getting it now.

David knew what she meant and smiled, lining up the Black Knight’s mind in his mental targets and preparing to send a Fornax blast back his way. Most sparring drills and challenges had a ban on psionics, aside from telepathic coordination, because they got in the way of the skills you were trying to hone. Because of that, the Black Knight’s strengths were kept intact while the Archons’ most potent weapons were deemed off limits for this king of the hill challenge.

But what Vermaire had just done by using his own, very limited psionics upgrade that the trailblazers and Davis had afforded him a number of years ago, was to disregard the ban entirely, opening up the Archons to fight at full psionic strength…and there was no way he was going to beat them at that.

A flurry of telepathic coordinating signals went out to the group from Riona, and David joined two others in throwing pinpoint Fornax blasts at the Black Knight, hobbling him to the point of shaky legs, but the big man didn’t go down…until the others combined their lachka and delivered a telekinetic punch to his chest simultaneously.

Except the ‘punch’ wasn’t a punch, but an invisible energy ball pushing the Black Knight down and across the top of the pyramid. Somehow he managed enough coordination to reach his arms and legs out and go spread eagle on the surface, making it more difficult for them to move him, but with a swift kick from Rikku to his shoulder blades the rest of them telekinetically shoved him off the top where he clung to the angled side like Garfield on a car window…until all nine of the Archons hit him with a combined Fornax blast and his nervous system was suddenly no longer under his control.

The Black Knight slid down all the way to the flat bottom as the seconds began to tick up on the scoring clock for the Archons.

David was smiling inside his clear faceplate, but then it faded as a sort of mental image of the Black Knight smiling was telepathically transmitted up to the group as the big man got to his feet and began walking up the hillside slowly. He shook for a step as one of the others hit him with a Fornax blast, but he didn’t go down, instead keeping to his steady, pounding steps as he leaned forward and crawled upwards with his hands for added balance.

Another coordination signal came from Riona and David responded with the others by hitting the Black Knight with nine simultaneous Fornax streams this time, with each of them keeping the flow of disruptive energy going. Their opponent collapsed to his elbows and knees, but somehow he managed to keep from falling over.

Then, inexplicably, his arm moved up two inches and set in place, followed by his opposite knee. Then his other arm…and other knee.

David’s gut clenched up as he continued to pour Fornax energy into the man, for somehow he was withstanding all nine of their psionic attacks and very slowly making his way up the hill.

“Son of a bitch,” Riona said out loud as she jumped over the edge and went down after him.

9

March 26, 2451

Solar System

Earth

Davis came into his office after his short morning workout and went through the priority updates his staff had laid out for him, eventually working his way down to the interrogation files that had come in over the past 24 hours. He skimmed them all, but took care to read David’s latest report from the Primarch concerning the origins of The Word.

According to the memories pulled from the man’s mind, The Word had began in the 2290s. That was far earlier than he’d guessed, meaning the criminal organization had been active on Earth for a century without him finding out…though ‘active’ was a bit of a misnomer. They had to have been keeping a low profile during all that time, but why?

As he read through the report he got a partial answer. The Word’s first priority was to establish an off the grid network so that Star Force couldn’t track them. That meant bases and resources that neither came from Star Force nor any other nation whose economy he could monitor. They wanted to build and produce everything they could in secret, and had spent many decades doing just that, supplemented by thefts to give them the material they needed.

But a century was a very long time, and he found it hard to imagine they could keep quiet for so long without at least attempting to do something of merit. Davis might have that kind of patience, but these people did not, nor did they have the longevity for it, meaning there must have been something else driving them. Something that David hadn’t gotten to yet.

As he read down through the report he came to the point where the creation of The Word was detailed, indicating that there had originally been 12 Masters and 1 Primarch from which the rest of The Word was created. That format had been derived from the Arthurian myths, with the Primarch taking the position of King Arthur and the Masters being his knights of the round table. Apparently the notes from previous Primarchs were preserved for each successor to study, allowing that single individual to maintain continuity over the years while the rest of the organization focused on present day tasks.

The concept and mandate for The Word had been set down at a clandestine summit meeting involving representatives from 6 nations. Shortly thereafter The Word had been created from volunteers that left public service in those nations, never to be seen again as they disappeared in a variety of accidents designed to get them legally dead and off the electronic grid.

The nations, by design, had no contact with The Word past that point, knowing that if even a shred of evidence was left behind Star Force would backtrack it to the source and come down hard on them. They’d concluded that being economically, militarily, and technologically outmatched, the only way they could challenge Star Force’s power was by doing so indirectly. Thus they created a criminal organization to do their dirty work for them, setting it on its path then washing their hands of it to give them deniability if it were ever exposed.

That said, they ‘allowed’ various items to be stolen from them on a regular basis, fueling The Word’s growth until it got to the point where it could steal on its own, having infiltrated operatives into various corporations and countries…including those that had founded it. As the founders in the 6 nations eventually died out, the secret of The Word died with them, erasing any last links between the two and leaving the criminal organization completely sovereign, off the grid, and in a position to do whatever it wanted.

But the Primarchs held to their mandate, which was more or less what their subordinates espoused. They were to counter the ‘degradation’ of society that Star Force was bringing with it and return Humanity to its true purpose, going back to the ‘old ways’ while embracing present day enhancements.

Davis could read between the lines, knowing that such philosophical ideology was merely a smokescreen to cover their real objective…which was to gain power. Star Force was in the way of that, and like a lot of people, they find courage and purpose in taking down whoever’s on top, without any plans for the afterward.

The Word was, admittedly, a bit more complex than that, for their philosophy was a tool they used to indoctrinate and recruit, thus it had to be more robust than a casual façade…but a façade it was, and it existed to legitimize bad behavior, something that Davis had all but eliminated from Earth over the past 500 years.

Oddly enough, Earth was the one planet that Star Force had little control of. Davis had given some moons and small planets away, such as Tyr to the Brazilians, but on Earth he had never had control, and aside from Antarctica and some small bits of land elsewhere, Earth’s landmasses were completely independent from Star Force’s oversight.

He had control of the ocean colonies and his spaceports in the various nations…which was a caveat that had allowed banned nations to reclaim their portals into space. The land that they were built on had to be ceded to Star Force, essentially creating small embassies where the local nation had no jurisdiction. As such, even China now had Star Force spaceports dotting its territories, despite the fact that the government couldn’t conduct business with the mega corporation due to its permanent ban.

Its citizens could, which was why it had ceded the small bits of territory to Star Force in exchange for the courtesy of closer placement, for the Chinese and other banned nations didn’t like having their citizenry transitioning through other countries and feeding their economies. Even though no government officials were allowed access to the spaceports, the area surrounding them boomed with ancillary economic activity, making it very profitable for the host nations to sport as many spaceports as they could coax Davis to put there.

And that wasn’t just true for the banned nations, but for all of them. While the Archons were out battling alien races militarily, Davis had been battling Human enemies back home economically and philosophically, and kicking just as much ass as they did. Using animal herds as a food supply was now gone from the planet, banned in every nation due to the fact that it was a stipulation from Star Force in order to conduct various levels of business with them.

Several nations had balked early on, but as the years passed and new generations rose up to replace those that died out the citizens in those nations gradually swayed to Star Force’s firm and steady code of conduct, aligning with it to gain their own economic advantages.

Star Force held to the sovereignty of the individual without exception, which had led to a holy political war against Islam, Christianity, and a host of other religions who placed females subservient to males. Likewise he went up against the evolutionists and ‘mother earth’ naturalistic fanatics who likewise put individuals as subservient to the planet or their species. Davis had been unbiased and relentless in his assertion that every individual, no matter who or what they were, was a sovereign entity that no one owned…and that stance hadn’t made him many friends at the outset.

But he had the leverage and the time, with society’s mood gradually changing. When a nation changed its laws to accommodate his demands they opened up new economic opportunities, with him essentially rewarding good behavior rather than punishing bad. He still held that the nations of Earth were independent from Star Force and treated them accordingly, working with them or against them, but always they were Earth, not Star Force. Star Force existed above and beyond it, an outside influence that by unspoken agreement had no territorial aspirations back home.

There was a short list of nations that were considered allies of Star Force, which Davis held to a higher code of conduct…a code that many of the others would not embrace. While they had, eventually, gotten rid of all of Davis’s ‘red flag’ practices, such as meat production, hunting, conscription, second phase abortions, forced pregnancies, forced abortions, death penalties, dismemberment penalties, circumcision of youth, gladiatorial contests, ‘lab rat’ experimentation on macroscopic races, organ transplants, ‘live’ animal food, living sacrifices, etc…they still clung to many yellow flag practices that kept them from being considered ‘allies.’

Such things like income taxes, censorship, and mandated activities were penalized by Star Force in less severe ways, but they didn’t trigger the revocation of licenses and removal of spaceports the way red flags did. By setting up code of conduct standards for the nations’ legal codes, Davis had gradually pulled the chaotic, brutal planet into a diluted version of civility…but it was still a far cry from the civilization that was present in all Star Force territories, whether they be owned colonies or free affiliates, with the result being a continual flow of people leaving Earth nations and seeking to establish homes somewhere within Star Force’s domain.

And that was the kicker of it all. The individuals in a nation had to have the option of leaving. If they didn’t that was also a red flag, because it meant a person could be trapped inside a culture and a set of rules not of their own choosing, which was, in essence, another form of slavery.

Star Force had rules, of course, but they were few and basic for the common citizenry. So long as you didn’t interfere with another individual you could pretty much live your life however you wanted, for better or for worse, and Star Force would leave you alone. That openness without acceptance, for Star Force didn’t coddle the stupid or delusional, merely letting them discover the error of their ways on their own time, was something that the nations of Earth, even Star Force’s allies, could never quite fully swallow.

They still, at their core, wanted some level of control over their citizenry, seeing them as property rather than sovereign individuals under their care. Without Star Force and Davis holding their bad behavior at bay, Earth would gradually devolve back into the mess it had been when he’d first created the space corporation.

Nowadays no one starved to death…at least if they could reach a Star Force facility of some kind, for Davis freely gave away basic foodstuffs. That in turn prompted the other nations to do the same, for economically speaking if you could get a product for free elsewhere you were quickly going to lose your customers. To assist them with the conversion, which still allowed for the sale of ‘luxury’ food items, Star Force provided the various nations with basic foodstuffs for distribution on the grounds that they remain free of charge and available to all.

That had virtually eliminated starvation from the planet, save for remote or lawless areas within the mega cities covering most of Earth’s landmasses. That was something Star Force couldn’t fix on its own, for they didn’t administer those areas, but they did keep an eye out for them and gently nudged the nation in question to fix the problem with the unnecessary threat of repercussions if they didn’t always hanging over their heads.

Still, the people suffering in those areas still had a chance if they could get themselves to a Star Force facility, whether it be a spaceport, recruitment center, food kiosk, etc. Likewise people could come to Star Force with medical problems and be aided without cost. Some nations, still greedy and unscrupulous, allowed Star Force small tracts of land to establish hospitals to service their populations in advanced medical cases, which Davis readily agreed to. While it was extremely unusual for a regenerator to have to be used, for they were still a closely guarded secret, as were all things pyramid-based, Star Force had reverse engineered enough medical tech that they could now regrow lost limbs and organs with the aid of other devices of their own manufacture.

Star Force didn’t sell those devices, but they used them to treat people that couldn’t be treated elsewhere, and given that those sorts of cases were very expensive in the local healthcare markets, the nations were more than pleased to have Star Force come in and foot the bill for them. They thought they were using Star Force, but in reality Davis was infiltrating their nations and uplifting their populations. Over time those people would come to forget the ‘old ways’ and grow used to some standards of living that would be difficult to reverse.

Money was no longer an issue for Davis, not that it had ever been important for him, but now that Star Force directly controlled 3/4ths of the Human population and his army of logistical personnel kept their supply levels optimal, currency was now no longer needed for sustenance, and had been reduced to a voluntary means of acquiring luxuries or raising your personal ownership and influence within society.

That was less true in the nations on Earth, but monetary classes had virtually disappeared in Star Force colonies. Everyone knew the echelons in Star Force were based on merit, with those at the top having to work their asses off for centuries to get there. Politicians were a joke, for the idea of choosing one’s leaders by a popularity contest simply didn’t exist within Star Force’s overly efficient empire. Some of the nations had followed their example, hybridizing their governmental structures into republics rather than democracies, but there were still some that operated off of ‘the will of the masses,’ but behind closed doors they knew that Star Force and Davis were subsidizing their foolishness.

Most nations no longer fielded militaries, for they knew Star Force would protect them if they were in the right. The ones who weren’t blacklisted used Star Force’s transportation network and resource markets to sustain their populations, without which their lack of self-sufficiency would be their undoing. Little by little over the decades since its inception, Davis had been changing Earth without conquering it, which would have been a much faster resolution to its problems.

And that had long bothered him. Should he have taken action sooner to save people he knew were suffering by taking out the governments that were allowing the suffering? He hadn’t, rather undercutting the problem by getting to some of the individuals and supplying them with what they needed or evacuating them to Star Force territory, but there had always been others he couldn’t get to unless he went in and overthrew the bad nations that were allowing and/or encouraging the suffering in the name of sovereignty…something that Davis had reinforced often.

Nowadays it was a moot point, for the most part. Many nations still sucked, but the level of depravity was nowhere what it once was, and so long as the people maintained the option of leaving and going someplace better, those that chose to stay where they were had a choice, which was enough to satisfy the sovereignty of the individual.

But Davis knew that a legal code and reality on the ground were often two separate things, so even with the wholesale improvements he’d leveraged on Earth he knew there were still people out there who were getting screwed in some way, often unseen by the media and his own intelligence division.

It was that underlying problem which had always left his dealings with the nations of Earth a bit strained. Colonies off Earth were another story, for they were all in artificial structures that demanded a different way of living, but Earth was open air and the origination point of this Human exodus out to the stars…meaning the old was still buried there, whereas a colony on Mars had to have everything built brand new.

And those nations that Davis didn’t deem worthy didn’t have colonies off Earth anymore, for his pull in the Solar System was far greater than it was on Earth, and those that had done a bad job of managing their colonies had seen those colonies confiscated, either through secession or being taken over directly by Star Force…leaving only the nations on Earth as the lingering taint on Humanity’s growing empire.

Davis had been tolerant of them, though they would have vehemently attested to the contrary, choosing to work with or through them to achieve his goals and helping those in need, whereas the Archon approach was simply to go in and take out the bad guys directly. A part of Davis had always been tempted to do that…no, not tempted. That was the wrong word. His logic had been leaning him in that direction while his past assertions had been holding him back.

He’d made promises and assurances to the nations, stating what was and was not acceptable behavior, so how could he go back on his word and seize nations that had gotten rid of all their red flags? His own logic said because people were still suffering in one form or another and Star Force could eliminate it.

Those two differing points had been bouncing around in the back of his head, lightly, for many years as he helped the nations past their own stupidity, teaching them how to do things differently and having many grow because of it…though in truth those non-allies, and even some of his allies, only did it to ingratiate themselves with Star Force rather than out of an understanding of what he was teaching/coercing them to do.

And now there was this. As he read through David’s report the names of the six nations burned into his eyes and the centuries of patience he’d been granting them, coupled with this blatant ingratitude, fueled an anger in him that he had not felt since World War III.

Before he finished reading the report he mentally set it aside and stood up, beginning to pace the circumference of his 360 degree window as he thought. Part of him was kicking himself for not doing something sooner, and he came to the realization that he had partially created his own problem.

Conditions had been so bad on Earth in the beginning that even a partial improvement seemed to be a huge accomplishment…but now, looking back on those days, he knew he hadn’t done enough. He’d been hesitant to take on the nations of Earth because of a misplaced idea of sovereignty that he had created in order to get Star Force established.

He had created the idea that Earth operated on different rules than space, that it was somehow immune to responsibility. Yes, the combatants in WWIII had lost their colonies, but they hadn’t lost their territory on Earth. At the time Davis didn’t have the resources to fight a war on Earth, at least not a clean war, and take out the bad guys directly…Archon style, he reminded himself…so he punished them instead, and used that punishment as a tool to gain traction and influence with the others. That had, in turn, allowed him to begin some of the planet-changing trends that had worked so effectively.

He hadn’t made the wrong decision back then, but it was a decision that had negative consequences that he was only now fully seeing. He had been starving corruption to death rather than killing it quickly, because killing it quickly hadn’t been an option back then in Star Force’s infancy. Now though, was an entirely different matter, and had been for years.

By the fourth lap around his office everything had become crystal clear. He’d become so focused on working the problem that he hadn’t bothered to take a step back, clear his mind, and look at the playing field. His face was down in the dirt, fighting the battles that needed to be fought…and because of that he hadn’t even noticed the game change.

That was his mistake, and he was mentally kicking himself for the duration of the fifth lap, at the end of which he sat down and opened a personnel map that detailed the location of every single person in Star Force’s employ, in this case the Archons. He refined the map down to the 100 trailblazers, seeing that none of them were in Sol at present. He zoomed out to the nearest star systems, seeing that there were a handful nearby that could be recalled within weeks rather than months.

He went through the current mission assignments, trying to pick the one that he would inconvenience the least, eventually settling on Kent-076.

He typed out a brief recall order and set it off through the network, which would quickly get it transmitted through their interstellar relays out to the adjacent Dasher System…faster than a courier ship, anyway. The signal would still take days to reach the target, but that was considerably faster than the weeks it used to take him to get messages out to his people.

With nothing else to do on the matter, Davis went back to reading David’s report. When he finished it he set the interrogation information aside and moved on to a list of 183 medium priority items he had flagged on his current docket, with his staff adding things to it throughout the day.

10

April 17, 2451

Solar System

Earth

“What’s up?” Kent asked calmly as he leapt up the circular staircase and walked into Davis’s office.

Davis smiled. “I get to see you guys so rarely nowadays. What level are you up to now?”

“Ranger 82,” the trailblazer said as he pulled up a chair and sat down.

“Have you chosen a name for the next tier yet?”

“We’re batting around a few ideas, but last I heard Morgan was still 6 levels away, so we’ve still got some time to decide.”

“It’s not like you guys to have trouble naming things.”

Kent smirked. “No, we’ve just got too many good ideas and haven’t been able to nail them down yet.”

“Any new projects you guys are working on that I need to know about?”

Kent shrugged. “We’ve always got ideas kicking around.”

“Well, I’ve got one that I need your help with,” Davis said, abandoning his desk and standing up so he could look directly out the section of window behind his desk.

“Something big, I take it,” Kent said with a slight frown as he likewise stood and walked up beside Davis with both men staring out at the Atlantis cityscape as the sun was almost directly overhead, leaving no shadows to speak of.

“We’ve captured The Word leadership, which I assume you heard.”

“Yes.”

“We’ve learned from the Primarch how the organization began. Six nations created it in order to strike at us, then severed all ties to preserve deniability. I doubt the current governments even know their own history, but they’re going to pay the penalty regardless.”

“Which is?”

“They forfeit their sovereignty.”

Kent was silent for a moment. “What six?”

“France, China, the UK, Caribbean, Turkey, and the US.”

The trailblazer whistled.

Davis nodded. “Your thoughts?”

“Just them?”

The Director sighed. “Go ahead and say ‘I told you so.’”

“I don’t recall my ever saying anything.”

“No you didn’t. You let me handle Earth while you handled everything else, and you’ve done a better job of it.”

“We had a clean slate to work with,” Kent said, understanding that by ‘you’ he meant the trailblazers.

“Not on Kirit.”

“Earth owes you a big THANK YOU, not condemnation.”

“It’s not about them, it’s about what I could have done and failed to do.”

“Randy didn’t save everyone on Kirit,” Kent reminded him. “That really bothered him, and Tom especially. Eventually they realized they had to stop reworking past problems and focus on the current ones, but the idea that you didn’t save someone you could have isn’t something that should sit well with you.”

“Ignoring those that were lost feels like a betrayal.”

“Don’t ignore them. Keep the anger and a list, then when you come across a time traveling Delorean you can go back and save them.”

Davis kept his eyes on the cityscape, but a smirk curled up the right side of his face.

“Stop considering yourself to be responsible for the fate of others,” Kent advised. “Star Force is your family and your responsibility, and as such it has responsibilities to you. Others do not, and the blame for their fate isn’t on you at all. If you deny them responsibility for themselves, then they have no sovereignty. If they do, then they are responsible for themselves. Randy didn’t cause the Kiritas to have problems, he was the solution…and you have to make certain you don’t blur the two together.”

“But to stand by and watch while people suffer when you have the ability to stop it…”

“Tom said the same thing. He didn’t have enough foodstuffs to feed everyone, so he had to prioritize. If he reduced rations to some he could have saved others, but then how far should he have gone? He needed a section of the population healthy and working to increase their foodstuff production. There were people right in front of him who were starving to death that he could have shared his own foodstuffs with and didn’t. Why didn’t he?”

“He had to keep training.”

“Why?”

“That’s a dumb question, especially for an Archon.”

“Is training more important than someone’s life?”

“He shouldn’t have to suffer for someone else’s problems.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” Kent pointed out.

“My gut says both answers are wrong. You don’t ignore the person when you have the ability to save them, but at the same time you don’t compromise yourself.”

“So what do you do?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“They didn’t either for a long time, but eventually they figured it out.”

“Please share,” Davis prompted.

“They’re Archons. They’re going to help someone if they’re in need, period, so the question is a trick of fate that seems designed to try and get the Archon to choose to not be himself. Or as Paul would put it, choose to turn to the darkside.”

“That’s exactly what it feels like.”

“But like all trick questions, the solution lies in understanding the error in the way the question is stated. Randy and Tom felt responsible for the Kiritas, but they weren’t. So long as they weren’t causing the suffering, they could stand by and watch without interfering if they chose. They didn’t have to save anyone. Now, they couldn’t live with themselves if they stood by and did nothing when they had the power to do something, but everything they did from the point they got there was bonus points. They couldn’t go negative, because the lives of the Kiritas weren’t their responsibility.”

“I see the distinction, but it still doesn’t sit well.”

“No it doesn’t. Randy and Tom wouldn’t be satisfied unless they saved everyone, which was why they had to force themselves to keep their own rations separate from the Kiritas, else they would have scrimped and diminished themselves to save as many as they could, all the while kicking themselves for not saving more. It was driving them crazy, and after a while they just had to shut it out and focus on one piece of the problem. That wasn’t betraying the others, just acknowledging that they couldn’t help them…and if they couldn’t help them, there was no need for them to watch.”

“Turn a blind eye?”

“To the emotions that serve no purpose, yes. You will never tolerate suffering. It will always bother you if you’re a good person.”

“But I could have done something different. I wasn’t limited by supplies.”

“Such as?”

“Take over Earth.”

“Why didn’t we?”

Davis sighed. “Because I outlined a basic code of conduct for the nations that was far better than their previous behavior, but not good enough. And now that they’re in compliance with my own demands, how do I justify punishing them for that compliance?”

“Do you expect a rookie to do the work of a veteran?”

“No.”

“At some point the rookie becomes the veteran. When do the expectations change?”

Davis closed his eyes and leaned forward, banging his head against the clear window in a ‘doh’ moment.

“How do you guys get so smart?”

“We bounce ideas off each other, and there are 100 of us…but there’s only one of you.”

“Unfortunately,” Davis said, pulling his head away from the glass.

“What do you want me to do?” Kent asked, finally looking over at the slightly shorter, but equally trim man.

“The Word killed a lot of our people, and as such the nations that created it struck against us in a way they thought would insulate them from reprisal. They thought wrong. Take them out, annex their territories.”

“Surprise or forewarned?”

“How much trouble is forewarned going to be for you?”

“If you give me time to set things up beforehand, it won’t be a problem. If you need to berate them immediately I can still make it work.”

“Can you make it bloodless?”

“On our part, yes. But I can’t guarantee anything against their stupidity.”

“Their countries must suffer responsibility for their actions…not the present day individuals.”

“Clean capture is possible if handled carefully, but we won’t be in full control. Some idiot with a rocket launcher shooting at us could miss and hit civilians. That part we can never control.”

“Try to lock down as much stupidity like that as you can, but it’s our weaponsfire that I’m concerned about.”

“We won’t kill anyone that’s not shooting at us,” Kent promised.

“Can you capture the ones that are?”

“To a point, yes.”

“This has to be completely clean.”

“Then a direct assault isn’t the solution.”

“I sense a suggestion forming,” Davis noted sarcastically.

“‘Take them out’ can mean a lot of things. Define it more specifically.”

“Take possession of their countries.”

“To do that we have to acquire and hold select infrastructure, not battle their military. While that will happen if they choose to resist, if we can get to ground first and secure targets, it’ll be them attacking us, not the other way around.”

“Better, but that’s not a full solution if we’re having to shoot them down.”

“We won’t have to,” Kent said with a smirk.

“Explain to the kindergartener please.”

“We can take their personnel down with stingers easy enough, it’s their aircraft that are the problem. We disable them and they crash. But if we deploy shield generators and ward off their attacks long enough they’ll run out of ordinance and fuel. If we quietly take out their refueling capabilities we can neutralize them without having to destroy them.”

Davis smiled broadly. “That’s why I’m not an Archon. That never even occurred to me.”

“We’re both problem solvers. Your economic prowess surpasses ours.”

“Perhaps, but I wouldn’t count you guys out in any contest.”

“Wise.”

“Can you do this?”

“You mean without us becoming the bad guys? Yes, I can. But it will take a while to set up.”

“Tell me what you need.”

“I need a distraction…and an eyeball.”

Davis frowned, not sure what he was saying.

“Guess you haven’t seen that movie.”

“Apparently not. Which one?”

“The first Avengers.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Captain America?”

“All in the same movie?”

“Yeah. Looks like you’ve got some homework to do.”

“Indeed,” Davis said, mentally adding the movie to his to-do list. The more Archon references he was aware of the better. “In the meantime, translation please?”

“None needed. It was a joke. I’ll have to assemble equipment and personnel to hit all sites simultaneously, even if we don’t end up handling it that way. That means a lot of recalls from outside Earth or using a handful of veterans along with a mass of rookies.”

“Can you get by with the personnel in this system?”

“More than enough, but getting them all here isn’t going to happen overnight, and I’m going to need target lists for each country, including up to date intelligence on their military units and locations.”

“A lot of prep work then?”

“When were you planning on letting them know?”

“The Word has been captured without public knowledge, so there’s no timetable to work off of. I’ll wait until you’re ready.”

“And what about the rest of the planet?”

“You had to pass a series of tests to become an Archon, and just about every other Star Force member has had to do the same. It’s time the nations of Earth had theirs.”

“And the independent colonies?”

“I’ll write up a protocol outlining the basic requirements of sovereignty that will apply to everyone. If a nation, colony, or faction doesn’t measure up they’ll forfeit back to Star Force. We’ll reorganize and fix the problem through some sort of arrangement or fully annex them. It’ll also provide a framework for splinter nations to gain legitimacy. You probably aren’t aware of the number of requests we get to recognize independence?”

“Not all of them, but I do know that a lot of loose colonies are out there.”

“We even get requests to declare a ship a sovereign nation. So many people are eager to create their own little empires without a clue to the responsibilities that entails. It’s time I laid it out for them.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t already.”

“I guess I have been piecemeal, but I’ve been making one very large mistake that you’ve just opened my eyes to. I’ve been respecting the original group of nations as peers without treating them as such. Not one of them would be doing what it needed to without Star Force leverage, which a true peer would. That means we have no peers, just children to babysit. Children that I’ve been giving adult privileges to. They’ve had more than enough time to learn and grow, so now we test them. Those that pass will gain a level of freedom equal to their skills, with total anonymity reserved only for peers.”

“So we are taking over the planet,” Kent said with a satisfied smile.

“They won’t like it. And I’m pretty sure our allies aren’t going to be too keen on it either, but give them a route to full anonymity and a few of them might chase it. As for everyone else, they’re going to rant and rave about me having too much power…”

“Tough,” Kent summed up pithily.

“It’s amazing how simplistic you guys make everything.”

“These governments and people you’re worrying about are all kids that we’re protecting from the lizards and all other manner of threats. They get no say until they show some skill.”

“Would you like to give the speech?”

“My speeches often involve physical stimuli, so talking into a camera is somewhat limiting my communications capability.”

Davis shook his head slowly. “I sooo miss having you guys around.”

“Nothing like planning a global takeover to get the band back together,” Kent quipped. “This will also diminish the likelihood that another Word will rise up, won’t it?”

“That thought crossed my mind about two minutes ago. Yes, it will. They won’t have any more political holes to hide in. Until a nation reaches full sovereignty, if that ever happens, Star Force security will have a presence in all territories. That won’t guarantee an end to covert criminal organizations, but it will make it a lot harder for them to hide in the shadows.”

“We got lucky, didn’t we?”

“Sander?”

Kent nodded.

“Yeah we did,” Davis admitted. “The Word gambled everything on maintaining the security of a handful of leaders. Had Sander not turned and given us a thread to follow, it would have been virtually impossible for us to find them short of their making a mistake. Now, their gamble has allowed us to sweep them up rather easily without making us work for it, but given their position they made a strategically effective choice. Someone else could do so again.”

“Most of their facilities were on Earth, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Make them play on our turf and security will own their asses.”

“It’s not quite that simple, but you’re mostly accurate.”

Kent crossed his arms over his chest as he watched a dropship landing on a pad nearby, but out of sight behind several lower buildings. “Face it…if I wanted to bypass security and create a covert organization under your nose I could do it. It’s just a matter of finding the cracks.”

“But?”

“But the size of the crack matters. Eliminate all the big ones and there won’t be room to build an organization large enough to do what The Word did. And security can handle the little ones…in most cases. And you’ve got Archon teams for the others. Uniting Humanity will come with the added benefit of making a lot of lingering problems go away.”

“While ticking off a lot of people in the short term.”

“Just outlive the protestors,” the 430 year old Archon said dismissively.

“A common solution we seem to employ.”

“That or a stinger.”

“We also seem to use a lot of those. Tell me, how long is it going to be until we can abandon the paint?”

“When the techs get a superior weapon built. Right now stingers are more reliable…and familiar.”

“Still a far cry from what the V’kit’no’sat have at their disposal.”

“We don’t know what they’ve got now,” the Archon pointed out.

“That’s an even cheerier thought.”

“If we’re going to die, they’re going to have to do the killing, because we’re not falling on our sword. Focus on cleaning house and increasing our strength, then we’ll see what the future brings.”

“We should have done this a long time ago.”

“We’ve been busy,” Kent reminded him, “but yeah, we should have.”

Both men stood watching the flight traffic coming and going from Atlantis for a few seconds, with Davis content that they were making the right decision.

“Don’t call me Palpatine,” he warned.

“Wasn’t even thinking about it, Loki.”

“Who?”

“Watch the movie,” Kent said with a lingering smirk.

Unification

1

February 21, 2452

Solar System

Earth

70 miles off the Virginia coast where the underwater Norfolk Canyon cut into the edge of the continental shelf that significantly shallowed the Atlantic Ocean prior to making landfall, a large bulge of water pushed up into the cold winter whitecaps, forming a small tsunami that would dissipate before reaching the coast. Underneath the quickly rising dome of water was a Star Force aquatics battleship transitioning into ‘airship’ mode and heading towards the Unites States on anti-grav, but it wasn’t alone, for alongside and behind it, coming up from the submerged canyon, 18 additional battleships took to the air, leaving the ocean beneath them a churning mess as they quickly disappeared from view.

Flying together like a pack of aerial whales the warships crossed the 180 mile stretch up to the American capitol coming under fire from squadrons of US F-834 fighter jets, but their missiles and plasma cannons couldn’t penetrate the battleships’ thick shields, nor could the anti-air turrets on the ground. The aquatics warships bullied their way through the defenses up to Washington DC, then spread out across the sky over the city, picking off automated defense batteries with their onboard plasma cannons as they one by one flew low over the small Tidal Basin that sat between the Potomac River and the White House.

There each battleship dropped large chunks of machinery into the shallow water before cycling off to form a slowly drifting formation in the sky over the panicking local population. When the last of the battleships deposited its cargo it held position, modulating its shields away from the underside hull and extending them down like a dome over top of the lake-like basin.

Once that protective energy barrier was in place, thin as it was, scores of personnel began dropping out of the hull and down into the water. The aquatics specialist Archons rode their wrist and ankle jets, spreading out to the perimeter of the Tidal Basin where they held position just under the water’s surface, waiting to act as a defensive line should any local troops come over ground and poke their way through or under the shield.

Behind them engineers came down and boarded the large chunks of equipment, some of which sprouted construction mechs than stepped down into the 3 meter deep water and began pulling the large pieces of equipment apart or repositioning them into the proper arrangement that the battleships more or less laid them out in. Using their large mechanical arms, the mechs put the giant ‘Lego’ pieces together over the next hour while the city streets quickly emptied, leaving the capitol more or less a ghost town.

No soldiers or police approached the Tidal Basin, for they were either bunkered up inside the city buildings or running away with the hordes of road vehicles packing the highways and the already scattered hovering vehicles that ignored traffic regulations and zipped off across the cityscape in whatever direction they thought would get them to safety.

The floating battleships ignored them, holding position while the one over the Tidal Basin hurried through the construction of a city-sized bubble shield generator. With a fixed geometry, unlike the battleships’ shields that could modulate their matrix and form multiple shapes as needed, the bubble shield was Star Force’s most robust and efficient shield. The amount of equipment needed to build a proper surface generator was massive, which created a problem for mobile units by limiting their size and strength.

By using a bubble shield they minimized the volume of equipment needed, but the tradeoff was they couldn’t get a surface seal, meaning the shield would cover the sky but not come down to touch the ground as the battleship’s shield currently was surrounding the Tidal Basin. It would be low enough to block aircraft from entering the dome, but not ground troops, meaning a land assault was still possible…but in this case it was actually preferred, making the bubble shield the perfect tool for a quick city grab.

When the generator was finally assembled beneath the low hovering battleship, it set up a hemispherical cap over the city, stretching out to a diameter of 12 miles and covering the US capitol building, the White House, the Pentagon, and many other key governmental buildings in the never ending cityscape that stretched hundreds of miles along the east coast. The edge of the shield dome hung in ghostly blue hue just over the building tops, visibly marking the barrier so no aerial traffic or high floating anti-grav vehicles would mistakenly ram it…as well as to symbolically mark Star Force’s new turf.

Once the primary shield was up the other 18 battleships settled down to the ground in various locations and began disgorging troops, Archons, Knights, and Regulars in large numbers, each with their own objectives and armed with a massive amount of stun weapons, for their objective was to capture the city, not to destroy it.

Amongst those troops were Senpan-142117, who had the honor of dropping down onto the White House roof along with a team of other adepts while a pair of Star Force combat mechs were set down on the south lawn, drawing most of the attention from the secret service and other limited defensive staff that were wisely staying inside the building, though a few did stupidly fire their sidearms at the mechs, with the tiny plasma spurts doing little more than scratching the paint on their armor.

The ineffectual attack did grab the attention of the madcat pilot, who twisted his mech around on its bird-like legs until its arms faced the windows where the fire was coming from, then it unleashed what looked like a shotgun blast of pink energy shards into the building, blanketing multiple windows in stun energy, some of which saturated the walls so much that it actually numbed the shoulder of a man leaning against one on the inside.

After that no more return fire came, and the madcat and thor set up in guard positions out front while Senpan’s team broke in at multiple points and began neutralizing all personnel they came across with green stinger paint splatters, most of which ended up on the unconscious personnel rather than the walls…though the same couldn’t be said of the secret service’s return fire that set pictures and other accoutrements hanging on the walls on fire.

Senpan had come in from the north side of the west wing, eventually making his way across the office spaces where the President’s staff did most of their daily work, finding only a few of them present and hiding while secret service and an assortment of other guards occupied most of the Archon’s time. Room by room he cleared the wing, ending up in the oval office that was likewise empty.

He walked around the curvy perimeter, checking all three exits/entrances before making his way out onto the porch and exiting through the southern greenhouse where he got jumped by three more guards. After stunning them into submission he tagged the west wing as ‘clear’ on his battlemap and retreated into the office area where he took up a roaming patrol in case personnel from other areas of the White House might migrate back in response to the other members of his team pushing through the rest of the building or in the unlikely case of a counter assault occurring, though with DC’s network of subterranean structures it was possible that there could be reinforcement coming from underground, bypassing the mechs outside.

To that end the adept kept on guard, roaming around the west wing and gradually policing the bodies, which eventually ended up in the Cabinet Room, while the other adepts on this small portion of the overall assault on the city cleared the main residence and east wing, including the subterranean bunker complex…but the President wasn’t among them, nor his family. Apparently they’d gotten out prior to the attack.

That wasn’t Senpan’s team’s concern though, for they didn’t need the politicians, just the real estate.

Back in Atlantis, Kent was overlooking a large holographic map of the United States in a much larger operations center than the White House sported. This one was the size of three basketball courts, with the centerpiece of it all being the main holoprojector, which currently showed an image of the continental states along with non-geographical cutouts for the remaining 5 states on the uncharacteristically flat image.

Kent had it displayed that way, rather than showing the curve of the Earth, because the board was monitoring the 23 incursion points, each of which had numerous objectives that he wanted to be able to be advised of at a glance.

A flashing icon over Washington DC indicated an update coming in, one of hundreds over the past few minutes, and Kent glanced down at the flat topped worktable he was standing at to see the ‘White House secured’ update, with that tiny piece of the city filling in with a blue highlight on a secondary map along with a scattering of others, but most targets had yet to be neutralized given the sheer size of the city and the limited number of personnel Kent had assigned to it.

Simultaneous ‘capture and hold’ assaults were taking place at New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Miami, Phoenix, San Diego, San Antonio, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Columbus, Denver, Portland, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, Seattle, San Juan, Detroit, and Dallas as Star Force was choosing to hit the United States first out of the six countries that had been tabbed for annexation, hoping to convince the others to simply submit rather than face similar assaults.

Personally, Kent didn’t expect China to submit, but they were going to get a chance to think it through as they watched the US assaults, for Davis had chosen to keep the media outlets in the loop during this invasion, letting everyone across the Earth and Solar System monitor it live as the assaults went down.

They didn’t know it was coming, nor did anyone, for Kent had hidden his troops well, but the declaration of the forfeiture of sovereignty had been issued by Davis three days ago, with all six nations issuing adamant refusals…who were quickly backed by almost every other nation on the planet when the Director went on to explain the ‘verification testing’ that all countries would be subjected to in the coming years. Only four stood by Star Force in their silence, with the others banding together with such a unanimous decrial that many pundits were suggesting that Davis had finally gone too far and would have to submit to the will of the planet and back down from his demands.

Kent imagined they were having a moment of epiphany right about now as the news vids caught up with what was happening and fed images of the assaults on the American cities out to billions of people in the neighboring countries. Political opinion was useless against physical equipment, and as the American military began to respond to the invasion, it being the largest and most powerful of the now rebellious nations, most of whom had no military whatsoever, Kent was monitoring the deployment of their combat units away from their bases and towards the besieged cities.

All 23 sites now had their shield generators in place and operational, keeping the American air assets out of the equation. A few had launched light assaults against the shields, testing their strength, but they eventually abandoned the attacks given the calculated ordinance necessary to penetrate the energy barriers and the collateral damage they would do if they broke through and fell on the city below.

Now turtled up inside the shields, Kent’s assault forces were securing buildings and rounding up stunned personnel while allowing the fleeing citizenry out if they wished. They weren’t in a hurry, but were establishing a safe zone inside each city and expanding it out, street by street, intent on working their way out towards the shield barrier and making the captured cities theirs.

Or that’s what it appeared to be. With local media allowed to continue transmitting without being jammed or captured, the American military and the rest of the Solar System watched in detail as the efficient and overly armored Star Force troops made quick work of securing key installations and spreading out their containment zones. As they did that the Americans were organizing counterstrikes on a handful of cities, intent on walking their ground troops underneath the shield edge and engaging the invaders underneath their own protective dome.

Which is exactly what Kent wanted. His troops could handle the Americans with ease, and had been equipped with special weapons to handle the mechanized troops without killing them, and the same went for their vehicles while the shield would keep their aircraft out of the equation. For the coastal cities the American water navy was in a bad position, for Star Force owned the oceans and could take them out at any point they wanted.

They made the mistake of assaulting the shield dome over San Diego from the water, and succeeded in temporarily penetrating the energy barrier, dropping several shells onto their own people within the city before the ships sitting off shore suddenly saw a mass of mechanical tentacles popping up out of the water and wrapping around the American ships. The tentacles snapped off their weapon batteries, gouging out cuts and scrapes all over their armored hulls, then released them, disappearing back underwater and reappearing beneath other ships.

Some of the American ships had subsurface weapons, which the source of the tentacles had to disable, which resulted in hull punctures. Automated seals popped into place, keeping the ships afloat, but Rikku, who was overseeing the aquatics operations from the same command center that Kent was working out of, didn’t take the chance of one of them sinking and ordered the Kraken-class cruisers to remove them from the ‘bathtub’ altogether.

The mass of tentacles reappeared along the sides of those ships, with a few wrapping around the top as they took hold of them from below and lifted them up into the air via anti-grav, exposing the mechanical monsters lurking beneath the water.

The cruisers looked like sea creatures, each with six legs and two massive arms that ended in a bouquet of tentacles that were wrapping up the elongated American ships that were about a third smaller than the kraken. Both floated low over the waves, with the Star Force aquatics warship bringing the American ship to the shore and depositing it on the beach more or less upright as it landed in the water alongside. Gradually its tentacles withdrew, pushing here and there to position the ship correctly, then it walked back out into the Pacific and sunk beneath the waves as its twins deposited the other damaged American ships up and down the water’s edge.

Kent rather liked those visuals, which the news vids were blasting across their networks. They didn’t know Star Force possessed such ships, let alone could own the American navy in such an impertinent way, which made the irony of the attacks that much sweeter. All across the coverage that more and more people were becoming glued to were instances of Star Force coming in and taking what they wanted, seemingly unstoppable, but without them killing a single person and in many instances, such as the grounding of the water ships, deliberately preserving the life of those who were fighting them.

That point, Kent knew, was critical, for even before the nations could hope to spin the events to their favor the people were getting the raw footage and seeing the care Star Force was taking to secure their targets even as the American military deployed to counter them.

Which was where the next phase of the plan was taking place…this one off the news vids. As the American military bases sent out their counterattacking forces, Archon teams preplaced nearby were moving into position to quietly hit those bases and neutralize their refueling/rearming capability. Red and Blue teams were among more than 1300 high level Archons split up into small teams to conduct their sabotage that was scheduled to begin in a matter of hours.

Once they took out their targets, nipping at the bases rather than trying to capture them, the American troops already deployed in the field would have a time limit on their battle readiness, after which this invasion would essentially be over. Without the ability to refuel and rearm, the mechs and vehicles would run dry and grind to a halt, while their infantry would end up as target practice for Star Force’s own mechs and ground troops as they stunned them en mass.

Their aircraft would expend their fuel and land…only to find no operational refuelers, essentially grounding the craft without them taking any damage. The military would try to secure civilian supplies to compensate, but Kent had taken that into consideration and had tertiary teams already staking out those supply depots, ready to secure/disable them when the time came.

Until then his forces simply had to hide out underneath the bubble shields, taking their time securing their target cities and holding off the ground troops when they arrived, which Kent was confident they could do without problem. While Star Force’s military power was unquestioned by Earth, the planet hadn’t seen them in action for centuries. What happened out on the lizard front was ‘covered’ by the media in the form of basic reports Star Force sent them, meaning Earth had no idea how powerful the Archons and their troops really were, though they were getting an education at present.

As he watched, more tiny sectors in the cities flicked over to blue as the Americans clumsily assembled their troops and sent them their way from exterior military bases, with those bases inside the target cities having been hit a matter by saboteur squads moments before the main assaults began.

Those attacks had been the most tenuous, with Kent assigning his best troops to them, and to their credit they’d completed their missions without incident, keeping the aircraft on the ground and disabling many of their mechs and vehicles before they could take to the city streets.

Everything was going as planned, with what would end up being two weeks of attitude adjustment on the part of the Americans as Star Force demonstrated time and again how outmatched they were. Eventually it was the city mayors who began surrendering, followed by a handful of states while the President kept organizing the national government’s resistance to the Star Force invasion from a series of hidden locations around the country.

He soon became little more than a talking head as more and more cities surrendered, most of which hadn’t seen a single Archon within their borders, followed up by a handful of military units that hadn’t yet been captured/engaged. Over the following month a landslide of surrenders came forth as the previously unseen divisions within the country fragmented and the often rebellious Americans started making their own decisions once the President and Congress were seen to be out of the loop.

Both of those political entities didn’t submit, taking to hiding in various locations to keep the country alive even as Star Force brought in millions of personnel to take control over infrastructure and begin setting up the transitional government that would oversee the total deconstruction and transformation of the nation into a proper Star Force territory.

2

January 1, 2454

Solar System

Earth

Jessica Avril stepped out of the side exit of the Star Force mantis that had flown her out to Atlantis, walking down an extendable ramp until she hit the dry tarmac with her elevated heels clicking on the surface as she walked over to the security detachment waiting for her, but her eyes were drawn upward into the Atlantis sky where the rain was falling hard and slicking the top of the defense shield covering the city. The water ran down the dome as if it were glass, depositing off the sides into the turbulent ocean as the storm she’d just flown through raged on…yet here on the city’s surface the air was calm and dry, something she appreciated, not wanting to have to walk through the rain to get to the nearby terminal.

As her escorts took her indoors she wondered just how much power Star Force was wasting to keep the rain out, but she didn’t criticize the existence of the shields, whose presence made her feel as if she were standing on the safest place on Earth. Little did she know how wrong she was, for the safest locations lie in secret beneath the oceans, but as for surface cities she was correct, though she didn’t understand the full depth of defenses the Star Force capitol contained…nor did anyone else outside of Star Force.

Jessica wore a trim skirt and matching top, one of the uniform variants New Zealand governmental staff sported, but the heels were her own addition. They were illogical and detrimental to walking…but they were so attractive she couldn’t stand not to wear them, so she clicked her way inside the terminal and all the way across the magnificent city to her temporary quarters where she was given a few hours before she was due to appear for a ‘verification’ meeting on behalf of her home country.

Ever since the 6 nations that had formed the criminal organization known as The Word had been eliminated from the political map and annexed into Star Force territory with no identity or autonomy remaining, for which the Americans and Chinese fought them over, to no avail, the rest of the nations on Earth had undergone a severe amount of scrutiny. Star Force security had established a presence in each country to deal with the riots and other malcontents, though there had been none in New Zealand and a few other more enlightened nations, but the security presence had come to them as well.

Other logistical outposts were established where Star Force spaceports didn’t already exist, tying each nation to Star Force in a way that had once been unconscionable, but after seeing how easily Star Force took down the Americans most people took the cue to back down and submit, with the Chinese being the only government to actively rebel, but even knowing that Star Force would be coming for them didn’t stop the Archons from cutting up China into bits and pieces over the course of a year and a half, eventually squeezing the governmental sectors out of power as they took the rest of the massive country literally out from under its former rulers.

Oddly most of the Chinese people favored Star Force’s takeover, as did a majority of the Americans, but it had been made clear that their favorable opinion didn’t matter in the slightest to Director Davis, who seemed intent on claiming the entire planet for himself. Jessica knew there was more going on than that, for New Zealand had always had close ties to Star Force and in the past he’d respected their sovereignty…up until now. Star Force was positioning itself for a takeover of her homeland, but what she didn’t understand was why they were balking when it was clear they had enough military might to take whatever they wanted.

No, as much as people wanted to think this was some imperialistic takeover, Jessica and the New Zealand government knew that wasn’t the case. Star Force personnel had been analyzing every facet of their country, insisting it was for the purposes of the ‘verification’ that Davis had announced a few years back would be occurring for every nation on Earth, and those that didn’t measure up to the needs of their people would lose their sovereignty as the price for their failure. New Zealand wasn’t in danger of that, so Jessica and her country weren’t overly worried about the outcome of the verification, just curious as to where all of this was going.

Given that she only had a few hours downtime, Jessica took off her glorious heels and uniform, kicking back on the couch in her underwear as she flipped on the wall-mounted vid screen. The flight out from New Zealand hadn’t been overly long, but she’d been awake a good 6 hours before that and in the same set of clothes the entire time and she didn’t want them to get any more ‘lived in’ than they already were. Her assignment had come with instructions not to pack, so she guessed she wouldn’t be staying here long, otherwise she would have brought along a personal bundle with a change of clothes, but for now she was just going to have to make do.

Jessica bypassed the news feeds and pulled up a three year old movie that she had never gotten around to seeing and settled in, having been told not to leave her quarters. Apparently Atlantis was under guard to outsiders, a far cry from the old days when it was a major tourist center. As it was, she was probably one of the lucky few to gain access to the city nowadays, though it was never clear what Star Force was up to, given that they didn’t permit news vid crews in a lot of places, including Atlantis.

She was disappointed not to get to look around, but drowsy enough that when she caught herself nodding off during the movie she conceded that taking a tour of the place might not have been the best of ideas. Knowing that she needed to be on the top of her game for whatever Star Force had asked her here for, Jessica decided to wake herself up with a shower that the quarters thankfully had and lingered there for the better part of an hour before redressing in her original clothing and finishing up most of the movie before her escorts returned.

Slipping on her painful, yet beautiful heels, she followed the pair of guards through hallways full of Star Force personnel crisscrossing about in an almost chaotic fashion, but with a relaxed feel of people who knew what they were doing and going about a routine as opposed to normal pedestrian traffic. She wondered if a shift change had just occurred, because there were far more people moving about than there had been when she arrived, but then again they were taking her into a different section of the city, passing from one elevator car to another, leaving her completely unaware of her location.

Yet another reason why it was a good idea that she had escorts, otherwise she could have genuinely gotten lost.

As they walked she looked around at the faces passing her, not seeing a single old or fat person amongst them. In their identical uniforms they looked almost like clones, save for the color variations. While New Zealand uniforms were all based around the same color motif, with that being a checkered red/white, Star Force uniforms were solid colors denoting which branch of the mega corporation each individual belonged to, and the sea of people around her varied wildly with the most common color being red, which she knew to belong to their logistics division.

That would make sense, given that Atlantis was the hub of their economy, or perhaps she should say controlling hub, for as far as she knew it wasn’t a heavy cargo terminal. It was mostly administration, she’d been told, but by people outside of Star Force, so who knew what they were really up to nowadays.

It wasn’t the largest Star Force city, not by a long shot, but it was the most well-known and right now she felt conspicuously out of place amongst its people. Normally she walked the city streets of New Zealand, feeling an air of superiority due to her status as one of the few individuals within the government that had achieved self-sufficiency, with her 77 years of age putting her on nearly superstar status within the country, but here she felt tiny and almost embarrassed. These people she was passing were probably all older than her, some by more than a century, and each of them had worked their way up through the years to warrant a position in Atlantis, making them the best and brightest Star Force had to offer.

Then there was her, walking with two escorts like a child who didn’t belong from a country that appeared as a mere spec against Star Force’s mass. It was a turnabout she hadn’t expected, and despite herself she could feel a bit of a blush on her face as she passed more and more people, all of which looked like fashion models but none of which were wearing heels. If she could have, Jessica would have flipped them off and walked barefoot, for now they felt stupid and she could see the eyes of those around her looking down at them, followed by an occasional laugh.

Star Force valued functionality in clothing, and her heels were the exact opposite of that…not to mention noisy.

When they came to another elevator Jessica and her two guards boarded it alone and zipped off across another section of city, with her in the back of the car standing behind them. She glanced at the back of their heads, then dipped down and slipped off her shoes, picking them up and scrunching down the elegant straps into as compact of a wad as she could, which she held in her right hand against her side as they walked out.

Both guards turned back when they didn’t hear the telltale clicks of her heels, but after a quick glance down at her feet, then her hand, they ignored the now shorter woman and continued to lead her through the traffic, with Jessica grinding her teeth together trying to suppress the awkwardness of the moment, but she received no more looks from passersby at her feet, which she was grateful for.

After two more elevator hops and a lot more walking the hallway traffic thinned out and she was brought into what looked like a higher level administrative section, through which her journey ended at a conference room with a few other people already inside and its own pair of guards silently standing by in their enormity and pure white armor, both of which she knew meant they were Knights.

“This is you,” one of her escorts said, pointing her inside while they remained in the hallway.

“Thank you,” Jessica said graciously as she walked in, immediately feeling better when she saw the other four people were Star Force outsiders like herself. They were seated around a large ovoid table that had seats for forty, none of which were marked, so Jessica sat down along the right side, giving a nod to a woman three spots down from her.

“Long walk?”

Jessica reddened a bit more. “Very. Do you know why we’re here?” she asked, curious to find out and eager to change the subject from her shoes, which she dumped on the floor beside her feet, both of which were now under the table and out of view.

“No, they told us nothing. Aside from the list of candidates. Who are you here for?”

“New Zealand…and you?”

“Russia. I’m surprised you couldn’t guess by the accent.”

“You barely have any,” Jessica said as another person entered through the door, and she just caught a glimpse of his own pair of guards/escorts disappearing down the hall past the Knights.

“Thank you. It seems as more years go by my mastery of English increases.”

Jessica smiled in response, but didn’t continue the conversation any further. More people were entering the conference room and sitting down, probably being summoned from their own sets of temporary quarters like she had been, though it was hard to imagine any of them having to have come from further away, given the distance that she walked to get here.

She sized them up as they came in, seeing that they were all visibly ‘young,’ though in her case that didn’t hold true. How many of them had attained self-sufficiency she couldn’t know, for while it wasn’t uncommon amongst the non-Star Force nations it wasn’t prevalent either. Her name had been given along with 36 others from New Zealand to her government to choose a representative from, with the instructions being someone that they had full confidence in, both in terms of honesty and skill. Someone that they could trust as an emissary between Star Force and their nations to deal with the verification issues that would be forthcoming.

Jessica assumed the reason she was on that list was due to her experience and self-sufficiency, but in truth it could have been any number of reasons. Star Force hadn’t been forthcoming on the details, but by choosing the list of candidates she assumed they wanted her for a reason…which made her poor shoe choice even more embarrassing, for she wanted to live up to the compliment they had given her.

Beyond that, she was here to represent New Zealand. What they would need a second ambassador for she didn’t know, and had been pondering that question ever since being selected by her government. She got the feeling she was about to find out within the next few minutes, but after all the hours she’d wasted trying to guess, Jessica still didn’t have a clue, and judging by the small talk going on around her, neither did the others.

When the doors were finally closed only half the seats were filled. 18 in total, including her, with no Star Force personnel present. She and the others glanced at each other, not sure what was supposed to happen next, then a door on the opposite end of the room opened and a young and very attractive man walked in wearing Star Force civilian clothing rather than a uniform.

Jessica had an instantaneous crush on him the moment she saw his face…which didn’t register with his identity until he spoke. It was only then that she realized it was Director Davis himself, looking far younger than any photo she had ever seen of him. He looked younger than her, which was impossible, given that she appeared to be in her twenties. She stared at him, a mix of awe and appetite, then realized her mouth was hanging open and pressed her lips together, trying to regain some semblance of professionality.

“Welcome to Atlantis,” Davis said, walking a slow perimeter around the chairs and table rather than sitting down. “Your stay won’t be long, but I felt it necessary that we understand each other before proceeding any further. You’ve all witnessed the revocation of six nations’ sovereignty over their attempt to strike at Star Force via the creation of The Word, and many of your nations have disagreed with those actions.”

“Tough,” Davis said as he walked behind Jessica, who pivoted her chair around slightly so she could face him, as the others were doing. When she did, coming within 2 meters of him, she flushed more than she thought was possible, digging her bare toes into the carpet to try and steady her nerves. Whoever had been responsible for updating the Director’s public profile should have been fired years ago.

“Star Force has been very accommodating to your countries over the centuries, and in fact all of you rely on Star Force to maintain your local economies, not to mention your off-Earth colonies. You’ve had time to get your houses in order, but instead of living up to the responsibilities that come with sovereignty, you’ve leaned on us to do so. As of now, we are no longer being so accommodating.”

Despite her swooning, which Jessica was mentally kicking herself for, she felt the warning in Davis’s tone as he completed his loop around the assembled representatives, finally settling at the head of the table, but shoving a chair out of position so he could remain standing.

“I am rescinding the sovereignty of all nations. As of now, you are all part of Star Force.”

3

Davis held up a hand to forestall questions as the representatives visibly stirred.

“I know this may not be a popular edict, but consider this. It is Star Force that is protecting Earth. Star Force that is feeding Earth. Star Force that is channeling most scientific advancements to Earth. We are sustaining the planet and your so called ‘independent’ nations. In truth, you are already linked to us and not taking any of the responsibility. We are doing it all, while you sit back and reap the benefits, including making laws that work contrary to your citizens’ own good. Without Star Force counteracting your bad policies, your nations would collapse, thus we have been subsidizing your bad behavior…which stops now.”

“If Star Force is going to run Earth, then Star Force is going to run Earth. No more parasites. The 18 of you are from nations that have shown some measure of wisdom and responsibility, but it isn’t enough. You are being annexed, while maintaining a temporary, partial sovereignty during the second stage of the verification process. The nations that you do not see represented here did not pass the first phase. Shortly, their sovereignty will be revoked and Star Force will take full control over their territories. Their governments will be dismantled and we will reorganize them as we see fit.”

“Bottom line is, we’re not coddling the incompetent anymore. You’ve had more than enough time to learn and grow, but most of you have not. You 18 can thank your predecessors for doing something of merit, otherwise your nations would be in the same situation as the others. You have a chance to prove yourselves…a single chance. Whether you make good on it or not is up to you.”

One of the representatives raised a hand, and Davis nodded in his direction.

“What of the nations not on Earth? Are they being annexed as well?” the German asked.

“Yes, but many of them will maintain partial independence. No one will maintain full independence. The details of those annexations will vary based on the history they have with Star Force, but other than knowing that they’re all joining the band, you needn’t concern yourself with their fate. You have your own to worry about,” Davis said, flicking as small remote in his left hand to trigger a hologram over the table.

“Star Force is larger than you know, and it’s time you’re brought up to speed. What you see before you is the current map of our territory. As you can see, we possess dozens of star systems,” he said, triggering a slew of green dots to appear alongside the blue that marked Star Force territory.

“These are lizard systems, and as you can see,” he said, zooming out the map to the point where the blue almost disappeared next to a sea of green, “we’re heavily outnumbered.”

Jessica sucked in an involuntary breath, shocked by the sheer size of the aliens’ territory. Up until now Star Force had only indicated where the battles on the frontier were occurring. They’d never mentioned anything about how large the enemy was, keeping a tight lid on nearly all war news.

“Our allies are here,” he said, adding a slew of other colors that combined did not outmass the green dots. “As you can see, we hold the right flank, looking from galaxy center. We’re not involved in the heaviest of fighting because we’re isolated, but had Star Force not held our ground when we did, Earth would most likely already be in lizard possession…and they rarely take prisoners. Those that they do are slave labor, some of which we’ve helped to free.”

“At present, we’ve made you aware of 6 alien races…the lizards and our allies. The Nestafar,” he said, highlighting their yellow systems with a pulsing of color, “betrayed the Alliance some time ago, siding with the lizards. On their behalf they are fighting the Calavari, their longtime nemesis, and significantly weakening the Alliance. The two races are set to annihilate each other, though we and the other allies are assisting them in their defensive war against the Nestafar. This second war front has not been made public, and is in fact far from any of our systems,” he pointed out with another pulse to both Nestafar and Calavari territory.

“At present, Humanity has a population of about half a trillion. Before this war started the Calavari had an estimated 24 trillion, and the Nestafar 36 trillion, though the exact number now is impossible to determine, for both sides have lost huge chunks of their population.”

“Dear god,” the Canadian whispered loudly.

“The Hycre, our longest standing ally, live inside of gas giants and are altogether incompatible with our living environments, and we with them. They have a population of 19 trillion, and look something like this.”

The galactic hologram lowered down to table level, with Jessica reflexively pulling her hands back from it, as an image of a plump blob appeared over top.

“This is true size,” Davis went on. “They float buoyant in their native atmosphere, appearing rather harmless, but they possess the largest and most powerful warfleet in the Alliance, as well as owning the most difficult of worlds for the lizards to take, given the environmental conditions.”

The image of the Hycre disappeared, replaced by a thin, winged alien.

“This is a Nestafar…and this,” Davis said, adding a four-armed monster alongside it, “is a Calavari, also life-sized.”

“Madre de Dios,” the Spanish representative muttered. “Why haven’t you shown us this before?”

“You didn’t need to know,” Davis said pithily. “Star Force has contact with them, not the nations of Earth,” he said, wiping the two aliens from view and putting up another, this one short and lumpy with a flat-topped head. “This is a Kvash. They are also part of the Alliance, and arguably the strongest race. While the Hycre have naval superiority, the Kvash have size and shield strength advantages, as well as a formidable ground force…something the Hycre lack. Our dealings with them, whose territory lies on the left flank,” Davis said, highlighting their territory, “have been brusque, as they see Star Force as a minor player within the Alliance.”

“I’m not arguing that point with them, given they have a population rumored to be upwards of 50 trillion. Exact numbers they wouldn’t give,” he said, removing the image of the Kvash and replacing it with a gangly insect-like alien. “And finally we have the Bsidd. Their numbers dwarf all others, with their admitted population somewhere between 220 and 240 trillion. They reproduce so fast even they don’t have an accurate head count, and along with the Kvash they make up the left flank of the Alliance, though as you can see our collective territory isn’t flat as you’re used to seeing on Earth, but rather a lumpy cloud that the lizards have been eating into.”

The Bsidd disappeared, replaced by a standard lizard. “This is the face of the enemy that has been made known to the public, but what you don’t know is that the lizards have multiple varieties, each with a specific purpose within their civilization,” Davis said, cycling through all 12 variants, the last of which was a Mastermind whose image had been composited from data provided by Kara’s Vorch’nas.

“We know there are two more versions,” Davis said after it’d cycled back to the standard variant and held that image, “but we don’t have any images of them yet. The lizard numbers are impossible to determine, but it’s safe to say they outnumber all the Alliance races combined, and there are a total of 32, including Star Force. The names we gave you earlier, and the images you’ve now seen here, are the founding members and by far the strongest. Each of which outnumbers us handily.”

“The Hycre brought Star Force into the Alliance, as they did other races. We are a minor player that has been rising in stature, but there are several other races greater in number and military assets. Ours are increasing, but should we face off with another race we’d be in a world of hurt. The only reason we’ve been able to hold out against the lizards is because we’re on the very edge of their territory and not very important as of yet. They’re busy fighting the other Alliance races, plus a much larger foe further rimward known as the H’kar, who they are in the process of destroying.”

“They are not part of the Alliance, but more powerful than any of the races we call allies. Perhaps even stronger than all of us combined…or rather they were. Now they are dying off as the lizards exterminate one system after another. When they finish with them they’ll come harder at the Alliance, and eventually us.”

Davis was silent for a moment, letting the recent revelations sink in as he stared down at the slowly rotating holographic map and the people seated around it.

“So tell me,” he said, leaning down on the table with both arms extended and all but glaring at the representatives, “why should I give a damn about your tiny, pathetic countries?”

When no one answered Jessica bit her lip, then decided to offer her opinion. “There must be something, something small we can do to help?”

Davis looked over at her and slipped a bit of a smirk through his stern face, then he stood up and flicked his remote again, zooming back in on Star Force held territory.

“These systems,” he said, highlighting about a third of the blue dots with a green tinge so that they appeared aqua, “hold an independent Human faction known as Canderous. Star Force created them long ago, and you’ve probably seen their spherical space stations around Jupiter and other planets. They are part of Star Force, but they operate independently. They take orders from me, and especially the Archons when needed, but unless there is an issue they are left alone. Theirs is a military civilization, structured quite differently from the rest of Star Force territory.”

Davis brought another hologram up above the map, with 100 icons floating like pieces of glass, each a different shape and color.

“There are also the Clans. You know a little about them, but what you don’t know is that they are each a nation unto themselves. They exist independent from the rest of Star Force, but are still a part of Star Force. Each Clan is run by one of the trailblazers, the most senior of the Archons. They structure each Clan according to their own unique wishes, and the Clans operate outside of the main Star Force supply lines. They trade with each other, but their mandate is that they remain self-sufficient…same goes for Canderous.”

Another flick of the remote sent the Clan icons to the periphery of the map, with Clan Star Fox’s Arwing icon settling in front of Jessica. She tentatively reached out to touch it, but her finger passed through the light matrix as another alien image appeared.

“While you only know of a few alien races, Star Force has diplomatic contact with hundreds. This one is known as the Kiritas, and they are also part of Star Force.”

Jessica’s eyes widened, but she held her tongue as a few of the others made hushed comments. The revelations were coming so fast her emotions were starting to numb up, and she prompted herself to absorb what she could now and leave her reactions for later.

“When I said that Star Force contained a population of half a trillion, I was referring to Humans. There are, at present, approximately 7 trillion Kiritas, with that number rising quickly at our request. Their civilization is split into two factions…the Kiritas independent civilization and the Kiritak colonies, which function as part of the Star Force infrastructure. The Kiritak exist to provide Star Force with natural resources, and as their population grows so too do the amount of resources they can gather using our equipment and methods.”

“The Kiritas were technologically inferior and suffering from overpopulation when we first discovered them…or rather they discovered us. They came to us asking for help, and we forged a relationship with them that eventually brought them into Star Force…which means that Star Force contains more Kiritas than it does Humans, though we still run the organization.”

Davis altered the holograms again, pushing the Kiritas off to the side and bringing the huge Calavari back up beside it, dwarfing the smaller alien.

“The Calavari are also part of Star Force…not their territory marked on the map, but a number of war survivors that we’ve evacuated back to our territory. We are helping them rebuild on a world we gave them, and incorporating them into Star Force. Their numbers are small, given that we can only evacuate so many given the ships we possess, but as of now there are approximately 300 million Calavari within Star Force, and they too operate as an independent faction, with a handful crossing over to join our main ranks where they’re able.”

Davis altered the hologram again, with a baseball-sized sphere representing Canderous appearing in the center with a large pair of discs labeled Kiritas and Kiritak bracketing it, around which all the Clan markers moved in. Lastly a smaller triangular pyramid representing the Calavari popped up next to Canderous with a large golden square bumping the others aside to get center stage, on top of which stood the Star Force symbol glowing blue.

“This is the true Star Force, as it exists at present. Each piece operates independently from the others, but all work together, not under threat of reprisal or due to some legal code. Star Force is, for lack of better terms, a brotherhood and family. We choose to help one another, we are not forced to do so. This is a critical concept all of you have failed to understand, and you must understand it now or go the way of the other nations that we are dismantling.”

“I have no idea what is happening on the frontier unless those there tell me. Our territory has become so vast they can pretty much do what they want out there, and vice versa, because we can’t keep tabs on one another. We can’t look over each other’s shoulders. We are sovereign, for no other reason than pure geographical distance.”

“For you that is a problem, because it means you lack control, and your governments are structured on control. You force your populations to do or not do things. That is why you don’t understand Star Force. We don’t force each other to do anything. We work together by choice, doing what is necessary. That is why we don’t have a hierarchy. You think that I run Star Force, and you are correct, but the Archons control far more than I do. They’re the ones out fighting the two wars we’re currently engaged in. They’re the ones out making contact with aliens, none of whom I’ve ever met face to face.”

“Star Force is not a single individual, we’re a team, and we trust each other to do what is right and necessary, as well as have the confidence to know that the other guy will step in and help us if we slip up. Canderous is the oldest example of this, and many times the Archons have had to make alterations to it. At first some found this offensive, but over time it just became standard practice, with Canderous seeking to improve itself to the point where Archon intervention wouldn’t be necessary, and they have succeeded, for the most part.”

“We are not enemies, nor competitors, we are brothers working for a common cause. While the Canderians might identify themselves as such, they also identify themselves as Star Force. Up until now that meant Human, but no longer. Star Force has become more than one race. We are a civilization. We are an empire. And if your nations want to become part of that empire, then you’re going to have to prove your worth. The time of Star Force babysitting you is over.”

“Now, each of you have been selected by your nations out of a pool of candidates that we provided. If you are sitting her now, you have skills that Star Force recognizes as at least minimally adequate. Upon you the hard task falls, for I am appointing each of you as the leader of your respective nations, effective immediately.”

“What?” Jessica couldn’t help but ask, but her words were drowned out by half the others saying more or less the same thing.

Davis held up a hand to settle them, and eventually stared them down over the holograms of the various pieces of his growing empire.

“I am no longer dealing with your governments, only you. It is your responsibility to override or work with your nations in whatever manner you see fit during a process of transition. The trick of it is, Star Force isn’t going to tell you how to proceed. If you want to remain an independent faction within the empire,” he said, gesturing to the other holographic pieces before them, “then you’re going to have to prove that you can operate independently.”

“Your task is this. Isolate your nations, which include your offworld colonies, from the Star Force supply chain. That doesn’t include the transportation network. You can still ship cargo and personnel via our jumpships, which everyone else does as well, but you have to produce everything your nation needs on your own, and you have to do it in a way that doesn’t compromise Star Force legal standards, which you must fully adopt. Any other laws you make are your own prerogative, and we will not be advising you on such, but we will be watching and evaluating.”

“Every year that passes you will be held accountable for the progress you’ve made or not made. If you don’t make the cut your nation will be annexed in a manner of our choosing and your partial sovereignty will end. The only way your nations survive is to grow…stagnate, and you die.”

“Earth should be the most important planet in Star Force territory, but soon it will not be, as Corneria has nearly equaled its population, with infrastructure far superior to what the nations have created here. I’m not letting Earth be run by amateurs anymore, and we’re going to remake it into the capitol that it should be. If you want to be a part of that you’re going to have to learn, learn fast, and learn hard, for the training wheels are coming off, and those of you who don’t learn to ride are getting your bikes taken away.”

“Each of you is in charge now. Trick out your bikes as you like, but between yourselves and your nation’s assets, both physical and personnel, you have to get the job done. Period. Or it’s game over.”

The Brazilian representative raised a hand, which Davis recognized with a flip of his chin.

“What’s a bike?”

Davis rolled his eyes and cradled the bridge of his nose between his fingertips as he sighed, realizing that these people had probably never seen a bike in their short lives, let alone rode one.

“Younglings,” he muttered, searching his mind for another metaphor to use.

4

January 3, 2454

Solar System

Earth

Jessica sat on a park bench, looking out at the Wellington Harbor through teary eyes as the heat of the day puckered her bare shoulders with sweat, but she didn’t notice nor care about the weather, nor the crowds walking past her. She was a roiling mess of emotion after coming out of an emergency session of parliament in which they ‘discussed’ the report she’d filed yesterday upon coming back from Atlantis.

Everything was a mess. Star Force had only communicated with the New Zealand government to confirm to them that they weren’t communicating with them any longer aside from going through Avril. She was the emissary, with direct access to Davis, and in charge of the country according to Star Force…something the parliament had been unwilling to accept. Though they had no military to fight with, the government was adamant about opposing the takeover, for what little good it would do for them.

The Americans and Chinese had fought…and subsequently been overrun. Star Force had even managed the takeovers without killing any of their opposition, which just showed how hopeless resistance was even for those nations with a military. Worst of it all was the fact that parliament, who’d chosen her for this assignment, had turned against her. They’d even gone so far as to ban her from all government facilities, labeling her as one of Star Force’s agents.

That hurt, but the worst of it was knowing that New Zealand was wasting its one and only chance to remain sovereign, despite the Star Force security division already present within the country, as well as other small Star Force agencies taking away specific duties and handling them in their own way. And Davis had said it was up to her to find a solution…now that wasn’t possible, given that she’d been banned, meaning New Zealand would be swept up with the other failed nations and cease to exist.

But maybe that was for the best. Jessica hated even thinking that, but looking out over the water through the gaps in the pedestrian traffic ahead of her she began to visualize the changes that were now inevitable, and she had to admit that for the common citizen they’d at least be as well off under Star Force rule as they were now…if not slightly better.

Damn Davis…he was right. If New Zealand couldn’t hold its own then it didn’t deserve sovereignty, especially when Star Force was shielding them from alien threats too large for her to fully comprehend. Parliament had been less than receptive to that as well, not willing to believe what she’d told them. Well, a few did, but the mass of the Representatives denied her claims as a Star Force lie meant to intimate and bully her into compliance.

She’d had nothing to show them, for Davis had given her no information other than what he had shown them in the meeting. Now she thought he had done that on purpose as a test, one that New Zealand was failing. He’d told them what was going on, entrusting them with information that no one else had been given, and instead of using that information the Parliament sought further proof, not because they feared it might be a lie, but because the truth wasn’t convenient to their agenda.

Jessica had been a member of Parliament for more than a decade, but had since moved on to other endeavors both inside and outside of the government, so she knew well how the inner wheels of politics turned and how the verbal lashing she’d just received hadn’t just been for show. They were adamant in their refusal, and there was not going to be any dissuading them, for Davis had said they would be judged on what they did rather than being told what to do, and given no pattern to mimic to maintain their independence, there was no fallback position for them to eventually come around to.

And the clock was ticking. Davis hadn’t set a firm deadline, and that too, she figured, was part of the test. New Zealand had to fend for itself, so Davis was taking the proverbial leash off to see how they ran free, and the stupid Parliament was like a dog chasing its own tail with excessive effort, yet going nowhere.

“Excuse me,” a voice said from beside her, but Jessica barely moved to acknowledge the man who’d stepped up behind her park bench. “Rough day, I hear.”

Jessica sighed, wiping away her more recent tears before sitting up straight and twisting her neck to the side to see the person talking at her. “Very.”

“Do you mind?” the elderly man asked, pointing at the empty portion of her bench.

“Help yourself,” she offered, taking a second look at the man as he sat down. “Have we met before?”

“Many years ago, before I looked like this,” he said with a laugh. “I was one of seven students picked as your escorts during your campus visit to Auckland. I dare say you look even more attractive now.”

“Thank you,” she said to the silver haired ‘grandfather’ figure, who accordingly had a very soothing demeanor. “Your name?”

“Nevil Broncholl.”

The name clicked. “As in Governor Broncholl?”

“Yes, I’m still Governor of our Lunar colony, though I hear for not much longer?”

“You were observing the session?”

Broncholl nodded. “I’m here on business, actually. I had business with Parliament, but it seems that they’re no longer the one I need to talk to. You are.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Right now there is only one man’s opinion that matters, and he isn’t sitting in Parliament. Director Davis recognized you as the leader of New Zealand, and on behalf of Illumia, so do we.”

Jessica frowned slightly, sizing up the man who, despite his physical appearance, was younger than her by at least a handful of years.

“What was your business with Parliament?”

“The independent colonies are facing a similar situation to what you described. Their sovereignty is being revoked, though not in full. They’re being annexed into Star Force but allowed to retain some semblance of identity. The Director’s reasoning was that they aren’t large enough to become self-sufficient, and so long as they’re dependent on Star Force supply lines then they’re going to become part of Star Force. They can’t argue the logic, though our Parliament seems to have overcome that hurdle otherwise known as ‘reason,’ but the colonies still wish to retain the independence they gained centuries ago. It’s very important to them, though they admit not vital. They’re willing to accept annexation, but are seeking another option.”

“What option have I missed?”

“The Director told them they weren’t large enough, so various Governors have been floating around the idea of a merger…with us.”

“And you’ve come to Parliament with their request?”

“With their request and counsel, though given recent revelations I now come to you. You are our only hope to remain independent. Parliament has otherwise sealed our fate, and I regretfully admit that Star Force would be in the right to remove them from leadership…which in a way, Davis already has by appointing you. He’s giving us a chance to measure up, and those of us on Luna are willing to embrace that challenge…if you’re willing to lead us, which I hope you are. New Zealand needs to make this transition, and you’re the only one in a position to make it happen.”

“Circumvent Parliament?”

“As I said, only Davis’s opinion matters. If we do nothing he’s going to be in charge anyway and Parliament will no longer exist. That body is merely a walking corpse. You said Davis told you that you could work with them if you wished, but it was up to you?”

“Yes, he did. So you’re asking me to choose another path?”

“Indeed.”

“By chance have you spoken with our other colonial Governors?”

“About the merger, yes, but I haven’t had time to inform them of Parliament’s recent actions.”

“Of course not,” Jessica said, mentally kicking herself. It’d only been a couple of hours, though to her it felt like days. “Do you think there are enough resources off Earth to accommodate a successful merger?”

“I haven’t given up on the homeland just yet, but if you’re forced down that road I believe it is logistically possible, with a lot of leg work.”

“What’s their pitch?”

“A conglomerate with linked economies, transit, and a military option. They add their specialties to the pool rather than trying to produce everything that they need themselves, which is nearly impossible, unless you were very, very meticulous in planning out your infrastructure. They don’t have the time or resources available to do that in the time allotted, so a merger appears their only option…with each of them working towards individual self-sufficiency down the road.”

“For eventual secession?”

“No. So long as they retain their own identities within the conglomerate they are content. They don’t mind playing for a team so long as they’re not forced into becoming a team player.”

“I fail to see the difference.”

“Forgive me, its athletic terminology. A team player is someone who has no identity, they serve the team and do whatever it requires without autonomy. It’s long been held that a team is a group of individuals working together for mutual advantage, with the ‘team player’ concept having existed previously in a type of communistic philosophy.”

“A band of equals then?”

“Exactly.”

“Davis said we’d have to exist using Star Force’s legal code.”

“Most of the colonies already do. In order to attract colonists and keep those born to them they’ve had to heavily pattern themselves off Star Force, otherwise they’d lose population and self-destruct as many others have.”

“Would they accept me as a communal leader, for that’s the only way I could see this happening under Davis’s terms. They would have to join New Zealand, not just ally with it.”

“But you can remake New Zealand into whatever you wish, if I understood your powers correctly.”

“He said I was in charge and could do what I want.”

“Well then, formulate a new government and I’ll run it by the other colonies.”

“That’s far more complicated than you make it sound.”

“Not when you can make it whatever you want. There’s no need to form a new Parliament unless you deem a good reason for it. We can be an empire, in the traditional format, for a short period of time if necessary to preserve our independence.”

“You mean a single, all-powerful leader?”

“Isn’t that what Davis already made you?”

“He didn’t make me anything, he just mentioned it in a conversation.”

“Power isn’t something that can be given,” Broncholl reminded her.

“It’s something that is created through skill and influence,” Jessica finished.

“I highly doubt the Director of Star Force chose you randomly. He must think you have the skills necessary to lead.”

“He didn’t choose me specifically. I was on a list he gave the government, and they selected me.”

“But to make his list means he decided you were worthy.”

“All I have is a title...or, actually, I don’t even have that. I’m just the ‘one in charge’ without any means to do anything.”

“Our country is coming to an end unless you do. A leader doesn’t do the heavy lifting, she just points out the direction to go. Point, and you’ll find volunteers coming forth with the resources you need. As I said, Illumia will back you, and while we’re not the largest Lunar colony, we’re not exactly small. Population wise we’re a quarter the size of the homeland, and all New Zealand colonies put together amass more than we have here.”

“We…I have to rework an entire country into a self-sufficient nation that will meet up with criteria that Davis won’t share with me. How am I supposed to do that without the homeland?”

“Be creative and get the ball rolling. The homeland will probably come around when it sees that Parliament had no answers, but even if it doesn’t you have a responsibility to the responsible New Zealand citizens who are willing to work the problem.”

“Even if doing so starts a civil war?”

“The country dies regardless if you fail.”

Jessica put her head in her hands, making a sound of frustration.

“You’re also respected by the people because you’ve attained self-sufficiency…and without being athletic.”

“I assume there’s a measure of insult there somewhere?” she said through her fingers as she faced the ground.

“Not from an old man like me,” Broncholl said diplomatically.

“I actually do a lot of running, if you must know.”

“Running’s not a sport, it’s a workout.”

Jessica sat up and looked around, seeing people moving about oblivious to their conversation and how it was going to affect their lives.

“Where do you suggest we start?”

Broncholl smiled broadly. “Let’s begin by taking this indoors, shall we?”

Three hours later Jessica and the Governor were sitting in an office complex with half a dozen corporate CEOs working through multiple ideas of how to restructure New Zealand in a fashion that would suit Star Force’s demands for self-sufficiency along with modifying the economic foundation of the country to operate without taxes…something that every Star Force colony impossibly accomplished on a regular basis.

New Zealand had abolished their income tax a while back, but still maintained sales and property taxes to fund the government, as did local municipalities. The situation in the offworld colonies was a bit different, since their populations lived in habitats where there was no private property, only leases for businesses and personal quarters. That meant the homeland was going to be a larger problem to convert than the colonies were, something that almost tempted Jessica to just forgo the homeland and let it revert to Star Force control while the ‘nation’ of New Zealand continued on elsewhere in the Solar System.

But no, that would be giving up a lot of valuable resources and people. If she was going to help New Zealand save itself then she was going to see that all of it got saved. That meant finding a revenue source other than taxes and a supply chain other than the Star Force markets.

Those two things seemed impossible, but little by little over the following hours and the subsequent 5 days she and others put together a basic plan that leaned heavily on the voluntary participation of native businesses and corporations to come together and spawn a new business that would fund the government the way Star Force’s corporation had in its outset. That new business was an exchange, handling everything from stocks to natural resources, and one that only operated within New Zealand boundaries.

Loyal New Zealand corporations would start to funnel as much of their business as economically viable through the exchange, giving Jessica some quick revenue to begin working with, estimated at 3-5 weeks past inception, which was happening impromptu over her first few days as ‘Empress,’ with more ideas and support pouring in as word got around that she was forgoing the Parliament and seeking to secure New Zealand’s independence according to Star Force terms.

On day 7 of her quest the Parliament sent their police force after her with orders to arrest and detain, but by that time she’d already picked up a Star Force security escort, which made quick work of the police unit sent to retrieve her. Then, unexpectedly, Star Force backtracked the arrest order to the Parliament and arrested them, meaning suddenly her opposition was out of the picture and she was left with sole command of the country.

After that happened everyone flocked to her side, seeing her as their only hope of averting a Star Force takeover, which became ever more real when they saw the members of Parliament being taken out of the capitol in restraints. The news vids quickly caught on to the sentence they were receiving, which was confinement until the fate of New Zealand was decided, after which they’d be released.

That meant no imprisonment for the Representatives, just house arrest that Star Force security and the local New Zealand police worked out the specifics of quickly, getting the troublesome politicians out of the way of the sweeping changes that Jessica Avril, Emissary of New Zealand, as they’d eventually come to call her, was making to upgrade their country enough to keep them alive in a world where almost every other nation was being wiped off the map.

Jessica also told the public why, and how she didn’t disagree with Star Force’s actions. Humanity was at risk, and if New Zealand wanted to continue to exist they had to measure up and offer something of value, no matter how small, to help Star Force rather than be a parasitic drain on the organization that was actively protecting them from alien annihilation.

With that message firmly established, New Zealand’s population became united in a way they’d never seen before, with virtually everyone working to find ways to make their nation more powerful and less reliant on outside resources, tech, and personnel. It was grow up or go home, and the nation as a whole was now game to meet that challenge.

5

January 1, 2455

Solar System

Earth

With the turning of the New Year Jessica was summoned back to Atlantis, ostensibly to receive New Zealand’s report card on their actions over the previous year, but like before the Director hadn’t specified. Though she had direct communication access to him, they’d only spoken once, that being when she’d run the merger concept by him. There hadn’t been much discussion, but he had okayed the concept, and Jessica hadn’t pushed for more after that. They were, after all, supposed to learn to do for themselves and she felt that asking Davis for things would undermine that purpose, so her line to the ‘Emperor’ had gone virtually unused.

Likewise Davis hadn’t contacted her, save for the recall message she’d received three days ago. A mantis had picked her up in New Zealand and flew her east towards Atlantis, just like it had a year ago, save for this time she remembered not to wear high heels.

When she got to the city she was taken to temporary quarters again, but her stay there lasted only 20 minutes before her escorts came and led her to what looked like the same conference room as before, though it was difficult to tell given the size of the city and her inability to keep track of exactly where she was being shuffled around to.

When the doors closed she saw that the 18 nations that had been represented here before had now been cut down to 12. The faces she now knew well, as she’d become acquainted with all the ‘emissaries’ over the past year. After all, they were now the most famous people on the planet outside of Star Force, with the pressures and tasks placed on them making for the largest reality show the planet had to watch…with the stakes higher than anything they’d witnessed before.

Because of that Jessica’s every move was followed by the media and scrutinized heavily, not just by New Zealand, but by the rest of the planet and even those offworld. The entire Solar System was watching, but fortunately there were no cameras here, in what appeared to be the second round of the ‘Nation Games.’

Across the table from her were the Russian and Brazilian reps, with Marcus Stosur seated to her right. The Australian was a friend she’d known for the past 2 decades, but the others she hadn’t personally met aside from their brief meeting a year ago. The other 8, seated on her left around the curvy table, were from Spain, Ukraine, Canada, Germany, Sahara, Argentina, Scandinavia, and Poland.

“Welcome back,” Davis said, walking in and sitting down between the Australian and Russian reps. “As you’ve probably guessed, you’ve all made it through the first cut, not because your countries are sufficient, but because you’ve made strides in that direction. Due to this, you can rest assured that your nations will retain their identities even if you fail beyond this point. Those that are not here with us will not have that luxury. Their political borders will be scrapped and a new layout set in place. If/when we fully take over yours, you won’t suffer the same fate. That much you’ve earned, at least, though your governments will be totally replaced and all social structures gutted and replaced with Star Force standards…but your names and borders will remain intact,” he said almost mockingly.

“Now, to the business at hand. You’ve had 1 year to begin reworking yourselves, with some of you making more progress than others. That progress may have gotten you this far, but it will take you no farther. You have a total of 5 years to make the full transition, of which 1 has already passed. At that point you will either gain full sovereignty or you will be relegated to some limited autonomy as deemed appropriate, as many offworld colonies already are being transitioned to.”

“That’s the end date, but for the coming year there are two major hurdles you must pass, at minimum, to proceed further. That is the abolition of all taxes, and the 100% production of your own foodstuffs. I suggest you don’t focus exclusively on these two things, but these are must haves by year’s end.”

Davis glanced over at Jessica. “To another matter. Those nations that are not present at this table may be inquiring of you to form mergers to avoid their being annexed. You can accommodate them as you choose, but with their populations and resources comes their baggage as well. Their territory will become yours, and you will be judged accordingly. Do not take on more than you can handle, if any, but the choice is yours.”

“Some of you have been inquiring about information regarding the alien threat, to which I’ve responded in the negative. That has not changed. You don’t need to concern yourself with what’s out there, you need to focus on what’s happening here.”

Davis leaned back in his chair and flipped both hands up in an open gesture.

“Questions?”

“One year is a very short timespan for that level of construction,” the Saharan commented.

“If you were starting from scratch, yes, but the reason all of you were given this opportunity is because you had already accomplished some things on your own. Those of you who accomplished less than others are at a disadvantage, but it is one of your own making. The truest test takes place when you don’t know you’re being tested. If you didn’t build infrastructure on your own, when no one was making you, that goes to show you’re irresponsible. This makes your current requirement more of a challenge, but as such, your countries’ current conditions are irrelevant to the finish line. You will either make the cut or you won’t. How or why you fail is irrelevant.”

“Is there a middle ground to achieve a partial level of autonomy?” the Spaniard asked.

“Yes.”

“And what are those requirements?”

“Each year is a round. There are five rounds in total. The more you pass, the more autonomy you get.”

“There are no alternative requirements?” the German asked.

“Maintaining the food supply is one of the most critical responsibilities within a civilization,” Davis underscored. “If you can’t do that independent of Star Force’s supply chain, then you don’t deserve autonomy, for autonomy isn’t a privilege as much as it is a responsibility. If you want autonomy you have to prove yourselves worthy, and that starts with an independent food supply.”

“Can we purchase bioharvest infrastructure from Star Force?” Jessica asked.

“At this round, yes, but that will not always be the case.”

“Which round do we lose that option?” the Saharan asked, whose North African country sported thousands of the Star Force designs out in the desert wastelands.

“Not this one. As for the others it won’t matter if you don’t make it past round 2.”

“So you’re not telling us what’s ahead?” Jessica asked.

“You know what’s ahead,” Davis countered. “Full self-sufficiency. Get there how you like, but do it quickly.”

“And if we like taxes?” the Saharan asked half sarcastic.

“Taxes are cheating. If your governments are competent they won’t need to rob the wallets of the…excuse me, rob the personal bank accounts of their citizens, nor those of their businesses to stay financially afloat,” Davis said, realizing he was referencing another metaphor that they wouldn’t understand. Nowadays there were no such things as wallets.

“May I ask,” the Russian said coolly, “what our military requirements will be?”

Jessica frowned. “Are there going to be military requirements?”

“There will be security requirements,” Davis said ambiguously. “In order for your nations to be independent you have to be able to police your own territories. You cannot rely on Star Force’s military or security division any more than you can our markets. Now, I don’t mean to say you’ll be contributing troops to the ongoing wars…that would be rather absurd given how inferior your military technology is compared to ours, but you cannot be a victim waiting to happen. You have to have the ability to react to, at minimum, organized criminal or mercenary attacks.”

The Russian nodded, seemingly content given the fact that they now fielded the largest military after the downfall of the United States, many of whose disarmed captured ships they’d recently purchased to bolster their own fleet.

“When you refer to self-sufficiency,” the Scandinavian asked, “does that mean operating outside of Star Force or on our own?”

“Meaning can you trade with the other nations here?”

“That and the various corporations operating out of Star Force territories.”

“While trade is an important facet of economics that you need to master, for the purposes of this test you must eventually produce everything in house. So no, you won’t be allowed to trade with other nations or corporations, though at present you still can. Understood?”

“Yes,” the man said reluctantly, and from there on the questions got more and more depressing as the various emissaries began to explore options and have Davis shoot them down one after another. While many of them understood the basic concept of self-sufficiency, they kept trying to find a loophole to allow them to work around it, knowing how difficult it was going to be to transition their countries over to an entirely self-contained economy…not to mention having only a handful of years in which to do it.

“Miss Avril, might I have a word?” the Saharan asked as Jessica and the others were walking out of the conference room some hours later.

“Of course,” she answered, stepping aside in the hallway around one of the giant Knights standing guard.

“In private?”

“I’m not sure exactly where that would be around here,” she asked with a laugh, looking for her escorts and finding them nearby. “Are we required to leave immediately?”

“What is it that you need?” one of the pair asked.

“Someplace where the two of us can talk before we head back to our respective countries.”

The escort nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem. There are empty rooms nearby,” he said, glancing at his counterpart who walked off to find them one.

“Thank you,” the Saharan said with a respectful nod.

Not wanting to talk in the presence of the Star Force personnel or the other emissaries that were mingling outside and throwing a few curious glances at the Saharan, they waited quietly until the escort returned and guided them to an empty, enclosed balcony overlooking an indoor park of massive scale. There was an assortment of benches and decorative plants and waterfalls, making it seem as if the platform was a halfway zone between the austere city interior and the organic space beyond.

“We’ll be outside when you wish to depart,” the escorts said, with all four of them walking out of view, though with no door into the hallway, only a zigzag entrance to obscure the view and isolate the balcony, it was still likely that they could overhear the pair.

“Thank you for speaking with me.”

“You’re welcome, Amman. What’s on your mind?”

“As I’m sure you’re aware, Sahara is an exporter of foodstuffs, meaning we’re already self-sufficient in that category.”

“Unlike the rest of us,” Jessica quipped.

“Some more than others. I was wondering, if it’s not private information, how is New Zealand set at present?”

“It’ll be tight, but we have a fair chance of making the deadline. A few of our colonies are foodstuff exporters as well, and if we can get them to increase output it’ll swing us close to the mark.”

“Your annexation of extraneous colonies has served you well?”

“Like the Director inferred, they also come with baggage, but most offworld colonies are already partially self-sufficient due to the realities of existing in space. It’s the homeland that’s dragging us down, as I image is the same for everyone else?”

“Russia appears to have the worst of it, given their Earthbound population, but Sahara is also suffering from this ‘drag,’ and despite our status as a foodstuff producing nation, there is no chance that we will be able to abolish all taxes within a year’s time. I’ve been running the numbers constantly, and the simple fact is that we rely on the taxes and private industry for everything. I’ve studied your solution to the problem, but our nation is nowhere near as diverse as yours, with most of our resources being achieved through external trade.”

“To put it bluntly,” he continued, “we cannot function without the Star Force markets. I’ve been trimming back the problem where I can, but 5 years is not nearly enough time. Perhaps if I had Davis’s skills I could manage something, but I do not. My country has also been somewhat resistant to my leadership, and I must admit that I envy your position.”

“They weren’t too keen on my leadership in the beginning either,” Jessica noted.

“This I heard, but now you have a free hand to act as you wish?”

“They trust me…as well as realize there’s no other way to do what’s necessary in the little time that we have.”

“Yes, time is of the essence, and you have a foodstuff production shortage to address…so I humbly offer a shortcut to you dilemma.”

“I’m listening.”

“We will not pass round 2, and though our borders and name may remain, I fear little else will after Star Force gets done ‘upgrading’ us. We’re already beginning to see it happen in other countries that failed to measure up, and I’d like to avoid that happening to us, even if it means playing a supporting role. Though my government may not agree, like you, I have the responsibility for my nation, and I will override them if necessary, so I am asking you on behalf of Sahara, if you would consider accepting us as a New Zealand colony. That, I believe, will solve your foodstuff inadequacy over the coming year.”

Jessica’s eyes narrowed as she considered all the implications. “Why us? I’m sure the others need your foodstuffs, perhaps more than we do.”

“I’ve been studying you and your tactics, as well as those of all the others, and you were the first to begin incorporating other factions into your nation. Others have copied your methodology, and I for one wish I could have as well, but all the prime colonies have gone to others, and the few that remain would be more of a burden on us than an asset. You’ve turned down many requests, yes?”

“Unfortunate, but true. I would like to incorporate as many people into our pot as we can, not because I think Star Force will do wrong by them, they won’t, in fact they’ll do better than we can, but controlling your own fate has an appeal that’s worth working for, so I’ve had to be choosey, for if I overload us and fail all of us default back to Star Force control.”

“You’re also allowing your colonies some measure of freedom?”

“A measure, yes, but make no mistake when I say that I…for lack of a better term…rule them all. We can’t subsidize colonies’ bad behavior and inefficiencies, so if they’re not interested in making changes I’m not bringing them onboard…and those that are interested, but are too burdensome, I’m reluctantly having to pass on too.”

“Would Sahara be a burden or an asset?”

“Honestly, both. Your homeland population is far larger than ours, and so far I’ve not been inclined to accept any homeland nations into our conglomerate. Your foodstuff production is something that may make me reconsider that, but without running through the logistics I can’t give you an answer here and now.”

Amman smiled. “Not that I expected you too. If you decline I’ll be forced to go with other offers that will no doubt be forthcoming, but I can give you a month to consider your options. Will that be sufficient?”

“If you can provide economic statistics, the real ones, not those floating around the news vids. I don’t know who’s providing the bad numbers, but I’ve made a few corrections to ours, which is why I haven’t been taking the reporting on the rest of you all that seriously.”

“I will provide you with all the data you need, but while we do have our shortcomings, I believe a merger would be in both nations’ best interests, and I am confident the numbers will back that opinion up.”

“Thank you for coming to me with this first.”

“New Zealand might not be the power player here, but the odds makers have you fifth in line as of late.”

“I haven’t looked,” Jessica admitted. “What’s the odds of no one making it running?”

“3:5…only slightly behind Australia’s 1:2.”

“I have a feeling that once this round’s requirements hit the news those numbers are going to alter significantly.”

“It’s a shame we’re forbidden from placing any bets of our own.”

“Not my area of expertise,” Jessica said kindly, looking up at the slightly taller man.

“Well then, if there are no questions you have that I can answer now, I’ll see to getting you those statistics as soon as possible.”

“I…” Jessica started to say as she saw a number of tiny people in the park below her come running out of the trees into view and start getting knocked around by a larger man wearing all black in some sort of a training exercise, she hoped.

“Future soldiers in training,” Amman said, following her eye line. “It’s said the Archons take their basic training here. Perhaps that’s what we’re seeing.”

“It’s so…brutal,” she said, though not being able to make out much detail from the height they were looking down from.

“I expect we’d be surprised by a great many things they do here. I doubt we were meant to see even this.”

“Accidental security breach?”

“Or a coincidental privilege. Either way, it is fascinating to watch. Makes you wonder what’s actually going on out on the frontier.”

“I get the feeling I’d rather not know the details,” Jessica said with a frown. Fighting had always been a turnoff for her.

“Yes, well, we both have a great many of our own to deal with as it is,” Amman said, turning away from the wide window. “Until our next meeting then.”

“Whenever that may be,” she offered with a smile as the pair walked out and split up, with their escorts taking them different ways through the city to their waiting mantises.

6

January 4, 2455

Solar System

Earth

“We can’t do it,” Jessica said to her roomful of advisors as they stared down at a tabletop workstation that had a plethora of statistics on both Sahara’s and New Zealand’s economic situations. “There’s no way we can accommodate that much cost, we’re barely skimming by as it is without any tax revenue.”

“I agree,” Travis Ven said, rubbing his goatee thoughtfully. “If we had more time we might be able to work something out, but with only a year…it can’t be done.”

“Can we get enough foodstuff production up and running as is?” Governor Broncholl asked, who’d permanently reassigned himself to Earth to assist Avril with the Nation Games while running Illumia from afar.

Jessica shook her head. “Not at our current production levels. The homeland is dragging everything down.

“Arcadria is boosting production as fast as it can,” Ven said, being Jessica’s official liaison with that Lunar nation that had recently come onboard as one of 22 additional New Zealand colonies in her country’s new conglomerate, bringing the total up to 37. “Coupled with help from Nadia and Crodd, we may be able to meet the demands of all the colonies, leaving the terrestrial territory to our remaining production base.”

“Which is insufficient,” Jessica reminded him.

“At present, but we have a year to work with.”

“Sahara is the key,” Karen Drake said, tapping on a non-sensitive portion of the touchscreen tabletop above their bioharvest statistics. “Not only in passing this round, but giving us enough of a surplus of basic foodstuffs that we can diversify out into luxury items and not have to subject the population to categorical rationing.”

“Do you see a way to make it work?” Jessica asked.

“No, but I’m convinced there has to be one. We just haven’t found it yet.”

Jessica took a step back from the table and rubbed her eyes, weary from so much data shuffling. “Let’s look at this from another angle. We’re not Star Force, and we can’t do things their way, which is usually the best way, so is there a not so good idea that would work that we’re overlooking?”

“Abandon the homeland,” Broncholl quipped sarcastically.

“Actually,” Arron Ecsten, her fourth of four primary advisors, mewed, “that might be preferable than failing to pass this round.”

“Says a non-native,” Broncholl pointed out, for Ecsten was also from one of the newly joined colonies.

“No…no, he’s right,” Jessica admitted. “Star Force would keep everyone onboard and make it work, but we have the luxury of jettisoning our ‘baggage’ because we know what will become of it.”

“They’ll be better off with Star Force’s resources anyway,” Drake added, “rather than having to skim along with the rest of us.”

Jessica nodded.

Broncholl stared at her disbelievingly. “You can’t be serious?”

“Very serious,” she said, tapping on the table and moving aside the mounds of data sheets in exchange for a map of all their current possessions, laid out in iconic format to include all 37 colonies alongside the appropriately shaped New Zealand home islands. “Let’s look at this as an academic exercise, shall we? What can we cut and where. Explore all options.”

“What about a sell off?” Broncholl suggested, if only to avoid the idea of abandoning the homeland. “The government holds a great deal of property. If we offer it up to private enterprise it could give us the influx of currency that we need to build new infrastructure.”

“Or to support Sahara for a calendar year,” Ecsten added.

Jessica tapped a finger in the air, indicating that there was a valid point. “What do we have that Star Force doesn’t…as far as private industries are concerned?”

“Nothing that I’m aware of,” Ven said with a half-hearted laugh.

“Land,” Jessica insisted. “They have to pay continual leases to set up in Star Force territories, or taxes in other countries…which will now no longer be an option. What if we were willing to sell them land that they’d never have to pay another credit for after purchase?”

“It’d be a long term investment,” Broncholl said, thinking as he spoke, “that would be contingent on New Zealand retaining its independence, for Star Force most likely wouldn’t honor the sales if we fail and they take over.”

“No they wouldn’t,” Jessica admitted with a smile. “It’d be a gamble…and a very lucrative one at that if a corporation could pull it off. Some of them would try, I’d wager, if we gave them the opportunity and the appearance that we’re in a solid position for making it through the rounds.”

“Transitional capital,” Ven said approvingly.

“We’d have to build fast, but at the moment we can still buy Star Force contracts,” Jessica teased.

“Wait a moment,” Drake said, holding up a painted fingernail. “Doesn’t Sahara have a lot of unused land space?”

“In government possession?” Ven added.

Jessica pushed aside their virtual map and dug up the information on the other nation, which included a geographical layout of property rights within the country. Almost all of the bioharvest facilities scattered across the desert were privately owned, the tax money from which fueled the country’s treasury, in addition to the leases they paid for being set up on government owned lands.

“Most of it is government owned,” Jessica confirmed, seeing large tracks of land that were as of yet undeveloped in between the bioharvest oases spread out across the once useless territory. Star Force’s internal bioharvest technology had changed that, turning the desert into a breadbasket once water lines from the ocean were established to feed the facilities that then recycled most of their lost moisture.

“If you can strike a deal with Sahara,” Broncholl suggested slyly, “that gives New Zealand actual possession of the country, then we can sell off these unused lands and give us a wealth of credits in addition to sale of land here, and perhaps a bit out in the colonies as well?”

Ven stiffened slightly. “I’m not sure how popular that will be back home.”

Jessica waved the notion off. “The agreement we have doesn’t give New Zealand total possession, so the nations that joined us as colonies will be exempt from this plan, though the ones we already possessed will be an option,” she said, throwing a glance at Broncholl. “But the main draw is the Earth territories, given the environmental conditions. If we’re going to be funding Sahara’s lack of tax revenue, I might be able to broker terms to get what we need…or they might figure out what we’re doing and just do it themselves without us.”

“Not if they’re wise,” Ven disagreed. “It’s a onetime influx of credits, not a steady flow. Without their bioharvest industry to tax they’re a poor nation, so they can’t go that route.”

“A fair point,” Broncholl acknowledged.

“Alright,” Jessica said, raising a hand. “I’ll contact the Saharans and see if we can hammer out a deal. You guys keep working on theoretical cuts, both as a backup and maybe something we can do to stack our odds.”

“Now?” Drake asked as Jessica turned to walk away.

“We can’t waste a day, or an hour,” she said, looking back over her shoulder. “Keep working and let’s try to maintain the advantages we’ve got while we’ve got them.”

A year later Jessica found herself alone in the back of a mantis heading for Atlantis, reminiscent of her previous 2 visits. The year had gone by so fast, yet so much had happened that she felt like she was in a time warp. New Zealand had been invited back for round 3, which was a huge relief. With their finances teetering and the foodstuff production flowing adequately, the New Zealand conglomerate was holding to the requirements Star Force had set down for round 2, but she knew that Davis was looking at other factors as well, and she’d had a bad feeling that he was going to nix her over them…but that had never come to pass.

She’d only received word a few hours ago, upon which a mantis showed up to whisk her away along with the other ‘victors’ to where they’d hear the terms for round 3, or so she assumed. Davis wasn’t telling them anything, and that among other things was what was lending this whole endeavor into a game-like environment, which had Jessica constantly thinking ahead, even while scraping to meet the current requirements.

Sahara had successfully been integrated into the conglomerate, but only piecemeal. Several high population centers had been cut out, leaving her with the most resourceful areas of the country as an independent colony in league with New Zealand. That independence had been hard to come by, given that Amman had to effectively secede from his own nation to achieve it. His government now had control over the ‘discarded’ regions, but without a means to fund itself now that the taxes from the bioharvest facilities were gone.

Upon his request Star Force had already started to move in and annex the old government, which was none too happy with being discarded. The Saharan people, meanwhile, were doing a lot of traveling as they decided which side of the line they wanted to be on. Those loyal to the independent Sahara moved into the New Zealand colonial zone while those wishing to either oppose the split or live under Star Force rule left for the carved out regions that were already seeing a major facelift as Davis’s construction crews came in and started reworking the major infrastructure along with an influx of supplies that the populace was not accustomed to.

Many felt the immediate benefits of the Star Force takeover, so there wasn’t much widespread ill will about the split, with plenty of ardent supporters within the borders willing to work to maintain their independence, even if as a New Zealand property. With Amman’s help they’d already set up a colonial government in line with the rest of Jessica’s mandatory structure, with her appointing him Governor now that his role as emissary was now over.

With the foodstuff production from the new colony filling in the cracks, as well as providing them with exports, Jessica had been able to devote her attention and resources to other problems, some of which she was only anticipating Davis to pounce on in later rounds, hoping to get a leg up on the deadlines before they came down.

With a load of credits that was steadily increasing as excess land was being sold off to, in her opinion, either brave or stupid entrepreneurs that saw the value in paying a large upfront cost only to never again have to worry about paying a lease, which would considerably cut down their expenditures compared to the corporations operating out of Star Force territories, Jessica was able to create a number of startup programs, the first of which was a communal security force.

Part police part military, it was a tether that was intended to bind the various colonies together, staffed not of locals, but of a core group of individuals recruited and trained together. She hoped this and other programs would provide a backbone for the conglomerate that would make it a true nation rather than just an alliance. Adding to the security force, she also set the basics for educational and training facilities that all the colonies could use, ridding them of the necessity of maintaining their smaller facilities and allowing them to reduce their individual operating costs.

In theory, anyway, for these were just starter programs that needed time to build, but she knew she had to plant the seed early, which was why she’d consolidated many of the various colonies’ resources into communal projects, including shipyard facilities, the bulk of which were having to be built new. They’d contracted Star Force for that job, hoping to give themselves the capability of building their own ships so they wouldn’t have to rely on outside purchases.

Fortunately there were already some New Zealand yards of smaller scale, along with those of companies within their borders that gave them some immediate capability to begin building the security force vessels that the program would need once it got off its feet, and the same for their infantile cargo distribution and transit network.

There were so many programs starting up that it was difficult to keep them all straight in her head, and right now she was worried about what the next round would entail. Would they have time to build, or would they have to scramble to catch up? Already there were a line of nations asking to join up, most of which she had to put on hold or refuse, though by cutting up several of them piecemeal they’d added another four colonies to their territory, bringing the total number up to 42 not counting the homeland.

For the length of the trip out to Atlantis she was trying to guess at what Davis was going to assign them to do this round, going through numerous mental calculations and predictions for the umpteenth time. She knew she needed to grab a few hours of sleep now that she had the chance, but her mind was far too wound up to allow for that, leaving her in an anxious state all the way out to Atlantis.

Fortunately she didn’t have to wait when she arrived, and was taken straight to the conference room, being the last inside. When the doors shut behind her she sat down amongst 5 other nations’ emissaries…meaning that half of those in round two had been eliminated.

Those that remained included the big three of Russia, Brazil, and Australia…along with Canada and Germany. Canada, with a large bioharvest export capacity in its frozen northern landmass, had merged with Scandinavia and a scattering of other colonies and nations that were already set up for Star Force annexation. Germany had done the same with off Earth colonies, but had not taken on any homeland nations, leaving the others that had failed to make round 3 now out of the ‘game’ entirely.

“Six remaining,” Davis said, appearing from the other entrance as he had the previous two times. “You’ve done moderately well to get this far, though some of you have had to get very creative to accomplish it.”

The Director sat down and activated the hologram above the table, this time with an image of the Earth with all the various nations outlined.

“The mergers that some of you have been making are hereby no longer tenable for the nations that did not receive an invite to this test,” he said, hitting a button and wiping their borders off the map, leaving most of the planet in a unified blue representing Star Force territory. “The others are still in play if you wish to take them onboard during this round. Annexation programs there are still in their infancy and won’t reach end game levels for some time, thus preserving the option. Oh, and the offworld colonies are likewise out of play.”

With the touch of his handheld remote the planet rose up, clearing space beneath it where a laundry list of items appeared.

“Now that you have enough foodstuff production that your nations won’t starve to death, the next step is the quality and diversity of said foodstuffs, with these items all being required to be produced by your respective nations in amounts unique to your populations, the numbers of which we will provide you. These are not the only products you may make, just the minimum list.”

Davis shoved the list aside and popped up another, floating in glowing letters between the emissaries and slowly rotating in place so all of them could glance at it face on at some point.

“In this round you will also be required to produce raw materials, with the minimums on the list before you. Corovon, you will note, is not on this list. It is a rare material that you will be allowed to purchase from Star Force in perpetuity, or from the Russians, who at present have a small mining facility in the Prancer System. Some of you already have recycling facilities to reclaim the C-type elements, and I would encourage you to continue down that line of thought, for you will be required to create and maintain a stockpile of 45 kilograms at all times for the remainder of the rounds.”

“How you acquire it is up to you, but I don’t want you relying on Star Force’s ability to provide it to you instantaneously. If our supply lines are interrupted, you could experience shortages, and therefore you must have a reserve in play to accommodate ongoing construction projects.”

“Other requirements for this round include the following: establishing a societal database compatible with and linked to Star Force’s computer network regarding the identification of all individuals within your nations. Up till now there have been some lurkers that have never crossed through a Star Force facility and thus have never been cataloged. That is no longer an option.”

“Star Force’s code of business rules will also have to be fully applied. Most corporations will be operating and selling across our borders, thus the rules will be universal. No exceptions for local market exclusives.”

“Production of all dropships must now occur within your own borders. You can purchase them from corporations within your borders, but they must be fully produced there. Likewise you will now be banned from purchasing dropships from Star Force.”

“You will be required to establish and maintain a military force equivalent to the rating level 11 that some of you are already familiar with. Three of you already possess this rating, the others do not. Given that Star Force doesn’t sell weapons, you must either produce or purchase them on your own merits. Confiscated ships in Star Force possession are now off limits as well, though you may purchase them secondhand through other individuals if the opportunity arises.”

“Lastly, each of you must build and have operational a spaceport/starport link from Earth to Earth orbit. This must be an entirely new build, not a refitted existing facility, and accomplished either by your own construction crews or by corporations existing within your borders. No outside corporation or Star Force contracts are permissible.”

Davis added each of those requirements to the holographic group floating before the emissaries, with Jessica swallowing hard at the sight of them…and the implications they held for the coming year.

“That’s right,” Davis said, guessing as to their thoughts. “It’s getting harder. If you can’t keep up, you don’t deserve to run with the big dogs.”

7

April 19, 2455

Solar System

Mars

Luis Remma stood waiting on the holoprojector, running what he was about to say through his head again so he didn’t have to rerecord this message a fourth time. Given that Mars and Earth were too far away for realtime communications, even at their closest orbital approach to one another, Luis’s communications with Director Davis always had to be achieved via message. He would have preferred to have spoken with the man in person, and had considered traveling to Earth to do just that, but one advantage of the communications lag was that he had several attempts to word his request just right, for a lot hinged on this conversation and he didn’t want to screw up a potential opportunity by coming off with the wrong tone.

With his mental point list ready, he thumbed the record button on a pedestal to his side and the hologram began recording.

“Director Davis. On behalf of Brazil I want to extend my thanks for the opportunity you’ve given us to achieve full sovereignty within Star Force’s restructuring of Humanity. After conferring with my advisors and our government, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is not in Brazil’s best interests to try and achieve full sovereignty. Our nation is best suited when intertwined with the Star Force markets, and while many believe that succumbing to Star Force control is a loss of freedom, I disagree.”

“You are far wiser than us, and we have learned much from you and wish to continue doing so as an integrated part of the larger economy rather than try and establish our own separate niche of it. You stated previously that the further we progressed through the rounds the more autonomy we would attain if we failed to proceed all the way to conclusion. Brazil is willing to continue with the testing in order to guarantee a suitable balance between integration and autonomy, but we have no wish to fully succeed.”

“Therefore I am asking you what our current level of gains amount to, and what it will take to secure an arrangement similar to that which the Ananke Republic currently holds, but on an interstellar scale. We do not wish our furthest colonies to be separated from us, if applicable, nor our strengths diminished. We want to assist Star Force in its endeavors here, and if possible in the wars on the frontier if there is a means to do so, but to do so as part of the system rather than a separate entity.”

“The specifics of how this would work are not clear to me, hence this message. At current we are attempting to assemble enough stockpiles of corovon to meet this round’s requirements, which you know is rather expensive. If we need to meet this requirement to attain more autonomy then so be it, credits well spent, but if we can assimilate into the Star Force structure now under suitable terms we’d prefer to put our credits to more beneficial use than obtaining a backup supply that we wouldn’t require.”

“I am not contacting you to barter, but to seek your counsel and clarification. What do we need to do in order to work from within the Star Force system rather than separate ourselves from it?”

With that he held still for a moment, then reached over and hit the stop button…then the replay and watched it through twice before deeming it sufficient and sending the message off through the comm grid, knowing it would reach Earth within minutes.

Luis stepped off the holopad and took a seat a few steps away, waiting for the reply that usually occurred promptly, given the direct access Davis had afforded him…so long as he didn’t catch him on a sleep cycle, and according to his watch Atlantis time was currently 11:34 am. With a sip of very early morning coffee, Luis sat for a few minutes staring at the wall monitor that showed a dark horizon, with the sun not set to rise for another two hours, then he pulled up a news vid and watched at half volume, consigning himself to wait as long as necessary for the reply so he could respond promptly when it came in.

Davis was in his office, as was typical, when the message came through. He put aside the shipyard expansion plans for Venus orbit and played out the message on his holographic desktop, only mildly surprised by the content. He hadn’t expected any of the nations to actually make it through the verification process, not because it was impossible or unfair, but it required them to have displayed foreplanning prior to the beginning, with it being virtually impossible to throw together a fully capable nation, even at what Davis considered to be minimum standards, within a 5 year span.

He would have given himself a 50/50 chance with a treasure chest of credits and an empty territory purchase, but they weren’t him, nor did they have his experience. That said, Australia, Russia, and Brazil had a decent foothold on the problem given their long and beneficial history with Star Force, though none of them had been where they needed to be, still relying on taxation and a myriad of other old school bad habits to sustain themselves, with Australia being the one to show the most progress.

As it was he figured they alone had a decent shot of making it, for they’d done considerable retooling before the verification edict had come down, and even more so since then…but they still had a long way to go and not a lot of time to do it, so he wasn’t really surprised to hear the Brazilian request. It was both logical and forward thinking, with their efforts to date accomplishing, if nothing else, to show them how incapable they were of true sovereignty.

That put the remaining nations down to three, with Canada having immediately realized that there was no way they could meet the military and corovon requirements on their own. Before they’d hit February they had negotiated a deal to consolidate with New Zealand, abandoning their own bid for sovereignty and adding to that adhoc conglomerate that appeared doomed to fail, yet was limping on far longer than Davis had expected.

Germany had given up a month ago, unable to secure a merger with any of the other nations, leaving the original big 3 plus New Zealand. With Brazil now out, for Davis was going to give them what they wanted, which amounted to a governmental replacement and restructuring that would maintain and upgrade all of Brazil’s current assets while removing their politicians, he figured it was highly likely that one more would go before the year was up, and he was hedging between New Zealand and the Russians.

Australia, he knew, already had a stockpile of corovon because Star Force had recommended they create it more than a century ago. It was insufficient at present, but they were adding to it rapidly and he assumed they’d get the prerequisite amount, along with meeting the other round 3 requirements, most of which they were already in compliance with.

New Zealand he expected to drop this round, but he was hedging his bets as Avril kept pulling one rabbit out of the proverbial hat after another, unwilling to write them completely off. Russia was the question mark, for while they had access to corovon mines of their own, plus a well-established military, they were beset with a number of lingering problems, the biggest of which was their reliance on taxation. With that option now gone they were financially weakened, having to rely on stopgap measures and draining their reserves to stay afloat long enough, they hoped, to begin generating the necessary revenue.

They were fervently cost-cutting wherever they could, including selling off military assets to New Zealand, which was trying to assemble the prerequisite force through acquisitions rather than in-nation builds, which Davis knew they had no time for. The Russian ‘empire’ was larger than Brazil’s, and only slightly smaller than Australia’s, but it was heavier than both with a dense population and a large operating overhead. They had gone for a bulk approach to colonization expansions, building and building with little effort put into efficiency…and now that their heavy taxes were now extinct, that bulk was suffocating them.

Already they’d jettisoned several territories, with Star Force stepping in to stabilize and annex them immediately. It was sloppy and reckless on the Russians’ part, leaving so many people hanging, but they knew Star Force was going to pick up their scraps so Davis didn’t hold it against them officially, but it did attest to their lack of foreplanning, something that was necessary for a nation that expected to survive past today.

But the Russians didn’t have many choices, from their point of view, and were doing whatever they could to survive to the next round of the Nation Games as the media had come to call this contest, and which, Davis admitted, he had structured in a way that gave it a competitive feel. His own purposes behind it were lost on the public, for this was no game, though Star Force being there to pick up the pieces offered a sense of security that was not present in reality…which was what he was trying to hammer home to the nations involved.

They had to be able to survive without him and Star Force, thus he had no qualms about putting the pressure on them in this time-constrained test. If they hadn’t prepared beforehand, and weren’t capable of learning quickly, then he was going to wash his hands of them. The time for tolerating these pretenders was almost over. Either they raised their game to a level he could work with or they’d be annexed into subservient colonies in which Davis could cut out all the dead weight that was dragging them down, replacing their leadership with his own appointees and getting everything moving forward in a typically efficient and redundant Star Force manner.

He did give the Brazilians props though for recognizing the situation for what it was and making the best call for their nation, for which he was going to reward them. Wisdom is what he was most looking for in the verification tests, and they were displaying a considerable amount now.

Davis ran through the list of terms he would need to give them, and decided it was too many to just wing, so he pulled up a writing prompt and keyboard and began making a list. Star Force security, transit, and military applications would assert themselves over what the Brazilians already possessed, along with a number of smaller applications that Star Force handled better with ‘empire’ personnel, but the rest of Brazil, in all its territories and systems, would continue to operate on local assets, though those would be reorganized as deemed necessary by the transitional leader that he would be appointing.

Actually it’d be a large team that would go through and make changes to Brazil where necessary, though in this case he was going to take a personal hand in making those changes. It’d take a chunk out of his available work time, but he felt he owed them a few tweaks here and there where he could make them to keep their national identity more or less intact. They’d been a longtime ally, unlike many of the other nations, and he wanted the new government to reflect that, even if in the end they hadn’t been able to measure up.

Germany was another matter, being a nation that had rode the metaphoric fence throughout its history. Its annexation would leave it geographically intact, but most of its core structure was going to be rewritten into a more or less brand new nation, saving what pieces of it were deemed functional. The colonies it’d absorbed recently wouldn’t stay with it, and split off to form or merge with other factions as deemed prudent.

Brazil would keep all of its, though Davis was undecided as to what to do with Russia when it finally caved. There were large chunks of the nation that were well developed, along with sections that were totally unsustainable. He’d been teasing himself with the mental challenge of how he could salvage their situation if it was his doing, during his off hours, which were few, and while he saw several avenues to pursue, none of them were obvious…and he wasn’t going to give them any tips. This test was about what they could figure out and achieve on their own.

New Zealand, when it finally caved, was a monstrosity that had to be disassembled. Davis hadn’t formed any firm plans as yet, but he’d been floating a few ideas for the Lunar colonies and some of the other off Earth ones, but the conglomeration of territories on planet was a mess that he could tackle in any number of ways.

Australia, if they couldn’t make the leap he was asking of them, would remain intact, much as Brazil would be, for they had been Star Force’s most staunch supporter and attentive student. Davis had already been planning their light annexation, with the only real question being how long it would be until he implemented it.

But in truth, while he spent an amicable amount of time on the nations of Earth, his recent thoughts, when his mind was free to wonder, were focused on what the Archons were doing out there, as he thought of it. He’d never been outside of the Solar System himself, and rarely off Earth. Sometimes he felt like a prisoner in Atlantis, though the only one confining himself there was…himself. Logistically he had to remain here, unless there was a really, really good reason to go elsewhere. Star Force’s empire had grown so large, and the Solar System so densely populated, that he needed to remain here to oversee it while his most closely trusted ‘apprentices’ oversaw the other systems, Hightower first among them and running Epsilon Eridani, Star Force’s second home system.

Once the verification procedure was over and the old nations converted into proper Star Force colonies, a great deal of his attention could be turned elsewhere, for they were really the wildcard in the system. He realized now, as he had somehow missed before, that his focus should be the same as the Archons…the war they were fighting and that would, if not somehow blocked, find its way to Sol and Earth.

Patience, he reminded himself. Only a few more years and his headaches with Earth would be abated. Then, as a united front, they’d turn their full efforts to fueling the monster of an empire that the Archons were creating out there, and which Davis had little to do with. He’d taught them well, or rather, they’d learned well from him, then taken the tools and personnel he’d given them and ran wild with it. They had his full trust, and on occasion, even taught him a thing or two.

The Kiritas in particular intrigued him, and he could sense the immense power they wielded…not in a military sense, but from an economic one. Natural resources were critical to their ability to counter the lizards, and the little aliens were proving to be very adroit at procuring them once given Star Force equipment and training. Randy in particular had done a spectacular job with them and the creation of the Kiritak, with Davis eagerly awaiting any progress reports from Beta Region as he followed their progress.

More and more he found himself wanting to be out there, on the frontier, working with them to build and expand their empire. Occasionally he’d offer suggestions, tweaking some of their plans they sent back for his appraisal, but for the most part they were on their own, sovereign nations above and beyond their Clans. The trailblazers were everything the nations of Earth weren’t, and Davis badly missed their company and counsel.

But they needed him here, and he knew it. Without Sol’s massive industrial machine, the Archons wouldn’t have a tenth of the warfleet they currently fielded, and he knew it had to get larger…much larger, in order to give the trailblazers even a chance of holding back the lizards, which was what he was working on at Venus and other locations. They needed more shipyards and engineers, and were finding the later far easier to acquire than the former. They were especially short of the massive slips necessary to create the progressively larger ship designs that were starting to put them on par with the other races, as far as tonnage was concerned.

Davis was part of a team, and he knew he had to come through on his end, else the trailblazers, no matter how skilled, would be too shorthanded to succeed.

With that thought in mind he set himself to the task of composing the return message to the Brazilian emissary, for once he had that task completed he could return his attention to the important matter at hand…that being Humanity’s continued survival.

8

June 9, 2456

Solar System

Luna

“There’s no way around it,” Jessica said firmly. “You have to meet your quotas.”

“Your requests are putting a strain on our ability to maintain our exports,” Manfred Elon said to her far right on the gigantic ring of a table that seated the 37 colonial heads she’d summoned to the moon. “Without them, we cannot maintain the market you set up to fund your government.”

Jessica leaned forward slightly, elbows resting on the table.

“If we don’t get that jumpship built, there won’t be a government.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Broncholl said from his seat beside Jessica, “Illumia is feeling the strain as well, but the only way we have even the slimmest hope of keeping to the construction schedule is by going all-in, markets or not. Once this project is complete the flow of natural resources will resume, making this a temporary disruption only.”

“Not if Davis adds another even more ridiculous demand in the final round,” Elon pointed out. “Merkeria is more or less self-sufficient, but to meet your quotas we’re going to have to compromise our reserves and begin scrapping current infrastructure in order to make these quotas. If this was a onetime issue then it might be feasible, but we have no idea what Davis will demand next.”

“No we don’t,” Jessica admitted. “And I agree that building our own jumpship probably isn’t the most drastic item on the Director’s list, but it’s what we have to do in order to stay alive through this round. So unless you want to forfeit, let’s discuss ways of making this happen rather than offering up additional negativity. I know well the strain this is putting on our collective economy, and believe me when I say that I’m having a much harder job holding everything together than you are in your respective colonies.”

“That point is well taken,” the Arcadria Governor emphasized. “You’ve done a miracle of a job holding this group together thus far, but the numbers are just too steep for us to manage.”

“That’s why I asked you here, because you know your colonies better than I do. You can find ways to scrape up more resources that I cannot. We all but gutted our credit reserve buying up corovon, so this next ‘miracle’ is going to have to come from you,” Jessica said, leaning back in her high-backed chair and remaining silent, leaving the floor open for someone else to speak.

“Have you considered a merger with the Russians?”

Jessica looked at the Governor from Channi, a collection of orbital habitats that sat in high Earth orbit beyond Luna. “No, nor have they offered. And I would like to point out the stupidity of such talks now, given that both they and us are already well into the fabrication stages of our jumpships. The time for merger talk would have been at the outset.”

“Our colony will meet its quota,” he insisted, “but the others will not. They cannot. Most are tapped out already, and I’m not taking their word for this, I’ve been going over the numbers. There simply isn’t enough resources off Earth to finish the jumpship, and you wouldn’t be up here trying to shake the proverbial tree if our planetary colonies were putting out. I’m assuming they’re mostly consumptive. Am I correct?”

“Partially,” Jessica allowed. The homeland territories were a considerable draw on resources, but they were also producing specific items that the conglomerate needed, so it wasn’t like they were a dead weight around their neck…as several talking heads in the media had suggested.

“Then I don’t think we’re going to even get close to finishing the jumpship, let alone on time. We have three weeks to dig up additional resources or the production timeline is screwed. If we can’t make it on our own we need to consider all options.”

Several other Governors nodded, and she could sympathize. They were trying to keep their colonies independent, and didn’t truly care who they had to ally with to do it.

“Then let’s discuss all of these ‘options,’” Jessica offered. “If you have something to add, no matter how small, now is the moment, and we’ll take as much time here as needed. If we’re coming to the end of our run, let us make sure we leave no rock unturned.”

Three days later she left Luna via orbital ferry, transitioning from one Star Force starport to another as the dedicated starship carefully flew her and several hundred other people through the mass of stations that littered Earth orbit. Jessica sat in one of the plush passenger seats between two other people, neither of which she knew, sagging heavily as the weight of her responsibility seemed to be crushing her into her seat.

It was over now, and she knew it. She’d convinced the Governors to continue meeting the quotas as much as they realistically could, leaving the door open for her to find another way out of the jam they were in, but what little she and her advisors hadn’t previously considered the Governors had thrown out at her, detailing the ‘end of the road’ scenario they were now in.

Her New Zealand conglomerate was now more or less self-sufficient…but it had few resources left to do anything else other than keep itself running. Davis had said he wasn’t interesting in dealing with weak parasites, and while her nation might have gotten off the parasite rolls they were the textbook definition of weak. Forcing the remaining nations to undergo a construction project of the size and complexity of building a jumpship, even when Star Force had supplied the blueprints, was an all too true test of their industrial muscle…for it was showing they had none.

Constructing a spaceport and starport had been challenging enough, but the jumpship was much larger, and while not one of the monster varieties Star Force was producing nowadays, it contained so much mass that, without the exterior markets to buy resources from, New Zealand was coming up painfully short, and there was no magic wand around to summon up parts that didn’t currently exist.

The Governors had agreed that, unless she could figure out a way to get past this round, it would be preferable to be annexed into Star Force as they were, rather than attempt to solicit a merger with the Russians…not because they didn’t feel that was a workable option, which some people differed on, but because the Russian system of government was not to their liking. An alliance might have worked, but absorption into Star Force, who’d already let the Brazilians maintain most of their former structure, was deemed preferable to conversion into the hierarchical Russian domains.

So they’d basically finished their summit by working out the details of their demise, leaving Jessica without even the slightest flicker of hope of coming up with a solution. She’d gotten so used to ignoring the impossible and finding a way to do it anyway that she hadn’t realized how much of a hole she’d dug herself into, for with each progressive round of testing, New Zealand’s lack of preparedness was becoming more and more obvious, with her no longer able to make feasible adjustments after the fact.

She should have been proud of getting them this far and maintaining their national identity, unlike most of the other nations on Earth that were being cut up and reorganized to Star Force’s liking, but pride was not on her retinue of emotions at present, and the entire trip back to Earth was a dejected affair…which fortunately she was able to endure in private, thanks in large part to the dark wig she wore to conceal her bright blonde mass of hair.

Without the public’s attention on her for the moment, she had a long time to just sit and think, replaying every move she’d made and considering others that she’d passed up, trying to figure out where she’d gone wrong…but in the end she could find no solution, either because there wasn’t one or because she just wasn’t good enough to find it.

She got off the ferry at a Star Force starport, then secured a ride over to the nearby New Zealand version which was already showing a meager profit, despite its hasty construction. There she boarded a dropship and headed down to the planet, landing at the linked spaceport and traveling off on a dedicated rail line that would take her back to Wellington.

The wig was doing enough to camouflage her that she expected the train ride to be equally quiet, but only a few minutes into it a man walked up beside her at the window table she sat at and smiled down at her warmly.

“Rough last few days?”

“More than you know…and I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not in the mood for company just now.”

“I understand,” he said as he sat down opposite her anyway, pulling out an ID card that he slid across the two person table between her elbows and directly under her face as she held her chin in her left hand lazily. “But I’m not here to chitchat or hit on you. I’m here on business.”

Jessica sat up straighter and picked up the ID card, seeing that it tagged him not as a New Zealander, but as an Australian…and a high level member of their government at that.

“We’ve been monitoring you, which was why I was able to hop the same train back at the spaceport. Please don’t take offense, we don’t view you as competition or an opponent, but we wanted to keep tabs on all the other nations involved in the Nation Games. You’ve stood out from the others, and now that your nation is about to default, I’m here to offer you another job.”

Jessica frowned. “Who said we’re on our way out?”

“Your face, for starters. We’ve also been monitoring your economy statistics and know you’re nowhere close to finishing your jumpship…not to mention you don’t have enough corovon to create the drive cores without dipping into your stash, which would also cause you to default.”

Jessica’s face soured even more, though there was also a note of inevitability in it that showed she was starting to vent a bit of her pent up anxiety. “You’re very well informed.”

“We try to be,” he said with a soft smile.

“And what is it you’d like from us? Short on corovon yourselves?”

“No, we have secured an ample supply. There is nothing we’re asking from your government, this is a personal request to you and you alone.”

“So no hope of a bailout merger, I take it?”

“I’m afraid not. While you’ve done well patching together a workable government from disparate nations, Australia prefers to retain our existing…oh, how shall I say it…standards?”

“I envy that,” she admitted. “Do you think you will be able to hold them to conclusion?”

“Whether we can or not we’re not considering any mergers. As to our chances of making it to full sovereignty, that’s what I’m here to maximize. Now that you and your governors have concluded that there is no feasible way forward…”

“You’ve been spying on us too?”

“Making some educated guesses. Stop me if I’m wrong.”

“Go on,” Jessica prompted, leaning back in her seat and removing her elbows from the table.

The Australian repocketed his ID card. “When your nation officially defaults, we’d like you to help us make it through the 5th round. Your, shall we say, scrounging skills are most impressive, and we don’t expect the Star Force Director to make completion of this test anything but near impossible. He wants capable allies, and won’t let us off easy.”

“Have you had this discussion with the Russians?”

“No, they’ve already defaulted, though that hasn’t made the news vids yet. We’ve arranged to purchase a great deal of their equipment, with the credits going to stabilize their already toxic economy and pay off existing debts before Star Force begins reworking, and reworking heavily I would imagine, their governmental structure, which is exceedingly bulbous.”

“Bulbous?”

“Top heavy would be another term, unlike yours. You’ve managed to run your nation with what amounts to a skeleton crew.”

“A crew of skeletons maybe,” she said sarcastically, referencing the long hours they’d been working. “What is it that you’d like me to do for you?”

“Troubleshoot…as a short term hire, if you prefer, but we’re offering a full position and citizenship within Australia. We’d like you to become one of us and, if we’re able to pass this current test, help us plot Australia’s future forward.”

“A lot of ‘ifs’ there.”

“That we are aware.”

Jessica twisted her lips up in a curious expression and leaned forward, noticing a couple of eavesdroppers nearby. She lowered her voice.

“What exactly do you need me for?”

“Thinking outside the box.”

“You have a box?”

The Australian smiled. “Are you always this charming when sleep deprived?”

“I can never seem to remember. Now, what is it specifically that you need help with,” she pushed.

He lowered his voice, also noticing a few eyes turning their way.

“Using the tools we’ve got in new ways.”

“You sure you’re not hitting on me?”

“No…should I be?”

“It might help your selling point.”

“I didn’t realize I had so many assets at my disposal.”

“Just a few, but then again, remember where I’m sleep deprived?”

“Yes, but any agreement here and now has to hold up in the light of tomorrow’s clarity, so I was going with the logic angle.”

“Sensible, though not as much fun.”

“I’m here on business. Fun can wait till later.”

“How much later?”

“How soon do you default?”

Jessica sat back again, laughing once. “Well I will say, if nothing else, you’ve lightened my mood, and I thank you for that.”

“There’s no rush. Take a few days and think about it…or a few months. We’d like to have you onboard, though, when we hear the round 5 terms.”

“Assuming you make it that far.”

“We plan to.”

“Such confidence. Reminds me of me a couple years ago.”

“We’ll take that as a compliment then.”

“We?”

“It’s a team effort, thus a team compliment.”

“I also have a team…one that’s not going to be easy to walk away from.”

“Once you default, it won’t truly matter, will it?”

“That depends on the transition and how much sovereignty Davis leaves us with.”

“Do you have good people?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then leave your former nation in their hands and come join ours. It’ll be Star Force calling the shots soon enough anyway.”

Jessica looked out the window at the low level buildings carpeting the landscape, with larger clusters popping up at various points in the distance where the ‘cities’ were located, at least those she could see around the mountains.

“I just got everything working here…” she complained sarcastically.

“A good reason not to waste the experience.”

Jessica glanced back at him, then returned her eyes to the window. “You’re an awfully smooth talker for someone so young.”

“Truth works wonders,” he said, seeing a ping of respect in her eyes. “And in fact, while many within Star Force might consider me young, I’m actually your elder by a couple of decades.”

Jessica raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve read your file,” he explained.

She looked at him closely. “So that’s what self-sufficiency looks like in a male.”

“Oh, now don’t start gender bashing. I’ll be forced to reciprocate and spoil this rapport we seem to be developing.”

“Yet you’re only humoring me.”

“Like you said, you needed a morale boost.”

“For a pep squad you’re doing quite well.”

“You’ve got skills that we need, and New Zealand no longer does,” he said, letting the playfulness dissipate a bit.

“You may be right, but like you said I’m sleep deprived. No answer I give now will hold up.”

“Which is why I’m not asking for one, just laying out the offer.”

“Laying out…” she said, considering his word choice with a smirk.

“Were the situation different, I might have had a second meaning there, but given your status and importance to Australia, I’m sad to say my intent is entirely professional.”

Jessica fake sighed. “Not exactly what an overworked, sex-deprived girl wants to hear.”

“Sometimes the truth hurts.”

“But we need it none the less. Any more innuendo-laced compliments burning on your brain, or is that the end of your pitch?”

“I think I’ve made my point.”

“Not nearly far enough.”

The Australian smiled again. “If and when you come to a decision,” he said, pulling out a datachip and placing it on the table in front of her. “Now, before my professionality flags any further, I’ll leave you to think…or nap,” he amended as he stood up and saw her very lovely face from another angle.

“Would a forehead red mark be unprofessional?” she asked candidly.

“It won’t diminish our interest in you by the slightest.”

“Good,” she said, offering him a faint smile as he walked off and into the next car. Once he was out of view she glanced around, taking stock of those near her and deciding they were unimportant enough. She crossed her arms in front of her on the table and lowered her head on top of her wrists, realizing just how tired she was as she phased out into the bliss of the crash nap within a matter of seconds.

9

December 26, 2456

Solar System

Earth

Jessica arrived at the primary airport in Wellington with three large bags of belongings and boarded a flight for Canberra early in the morning. With Christmas festivities over, she’d wanted to get a fresh start on her new job, in which she’d agreed to come on as a temporary advisor to the Australian government. She left with no fanfare, for she hadn’t told anyone the date or time of her departure, but she had gracefully stepped aside from the transition effort as the New Zealand government she’d put together began to be cut up and reorganized by Star Force administrators.

She could have helped with that, but no one begrudged her leaving it to others. She’d done everything she could to keep New Zealand independent, and no one of merit blamed her for the failure. In fact most people gave her credit for keeping them alive through to the fourth round, which would afford them additional privileges after the transfer, though what exactly they were Star Force had never spelled out. If it was anything like what the Brazilians had got, then her country would remain more or less intact, though with the adhoc conglomerate she’d hastily formed, there was no way to be sure how much of it Star Force would keep together.

But that was behind her now, professionally and privately. She had no regrets, ultimately deciding that New Zealand just hadn’t been strong enough entering the verification testing to make it through. Had it been a challenge where everyone started off on an equal footing then it would have been a different story, because there would have been a way to win and it would have been her fault for not finding it, but in this game that wasn’t the case, as Davis had made clear the various nations had to think and act for themselves, and not just be led around by Star Force’s edicts.

As the large Australian mantis took off, she and some 243 other passengers watched the urban landscape beneath them eventually drop off into ocean, then enjoyed a calm, almost unchanging view for an hour or so until the Australian coast came into view well below them. Jessica watched it on the viewscreens, having only visited twice in her life. While New Zealand was heavily urbanized, Australia was not…at least not in the conventional sense.

Even from the extreme height the mantis was flying she could see the tiny shapes of the spires that dotted the coast, each of which was a large building constructed by the Australian government. Taking a cue from Star Force, they’d abandoned all private property rights and systematically rebuilt their cities with a forward thinking design.

Each spire was 1800m high, and identical to all the others, inside of which there were multiple levels of ‘private’ property. While technically the government owned the building and maintained it, they allowed the individuals they’d previously dispossessed to buy permanent leases inside for a very high cost, or pay a regular, cyclical lease as most people did…but not for living quarters. Those were free to everyone, with other pursuits, business or personal, requiring currency to attain.

The spire design was unique to Australia, with a very thin tip that only widened considerably when it got close to the base, which splayed out like a suction cup against the surface. This allowed considerable airspace between the spires, taking away from the claustrophobic feel of most cities on Earth. Each building flowed into those beside it, allowing for no land space or external streets. Everyone was housed inside, with some surface-top recreational facilities giving people access to the sun and air in the wide valleys between spires.

Though she couldn’t see it from here, for the coasts were covered with what looked like metallic hairs, the interior of the continent had been left to the wild country it had always been. As they needed, Australia was adding more spires and nipping into the raw landscapes a little more with each decade that passed, but they had not allowed any other building in the ‘natural’ regions, preserving both the land space for future building and what had become a rarity on the overcrowded planet...wide open spaces.

Australia was the one country that still had them, which garnered a huge tourist market which they restricted to manageable levels. With such high population on Earth, the Aussies had become more and more clandestine, keeping to themselves and holding others out, not for the purposes of being rude or selfish, but in order to keep their country in proper order, whereas other nations had let the crushing mass of Humanity turn it into a chaotic and often deadly circus.

As the mantis flew lower, heading for an airport in the nation’s capitol, with a thin band of spireless land separating the coastal ‘cities’ from Canberra. Once it crossed over that nature preserve the aircraft was flying at less than 3 miles in altitude, with the spires now looking more impressive and very lethal, as if they were there to protect the surface from murderous balloons coming down from orbit.

Jessica had to admit, that of all the nations, or rather she should say ‘former’ nations of Earth, Australia was the closest to Star Force’s level of civilization, though they definitely had their own unique motif. She didn’t know if they’d be able to hold onto their sovereignty or not, but they were far beyond New Zealand’s level and she could feel it in the city architecture as the mantis came to a stop over top one of the few breaks in the spire field and hovered in place for a moment before descending down to a landing pad along with a lot of other air traffic coming in and out.

As their elevation dropped, one spire stood out from amongst the rest. It was taller than the others by a mile, thicker too, and was her eventual destination. Odd how it only showed up now when she could see it from the side, before it had more or less blended in with the other pointy structures, all of which were the same dull white coloration.

When her flight set down she exited through a gantry that nested up to the mantis, allowing her and the other passengers a level walk off into the terminal where she retrieved her bags and was met by an Australian who took her and her luggage off through the undercity beneath the spires via a transit car that ran on a set of tube tracks that made up for a lack of vehicular streets. Once inside, her attendant simply input the destination code from a navigation map and the automated system scurried them off through the tube system that didn’t allow for any view other than distance marker light bars out the window/door.

Jessica couldn’t feel the acceleration and deceleration as the car switched tracks and turned corners, for it had an onboard inertial dampening system, making the 12 minute trip feel as if they’d simply stepped into another room and sat down for a rest. When they eventually arrived she wheeled her stack of bags out into the terminal and was led to a smaller elevator car to take them up into the prime spire they were now situated beneath.

Like the transit network, the elevator system operated the same way, allowed for vertical and horizontal movement within the building, all of which was unfelt. When the double doors slid open again she saw what was apparently a residential area, for there was a large circular square with a fountain in the center and a dozen or so doors around the perimeter, along with three hallway entrances. The attendant led her down the right hall, passing even more doors, until they came to another circular foyer, this one with a large potted tree in the center.

“Here you are,” he said, bringing her to one of the doors on the curved wall. “Access code 217. You can reset it internally using the same number,” he said, punching the exterior keypad and opening up her new quarters. He stepped aside and let her enter first, dragging her luggage behind her.

When she entered the lights automatically came on, revealing a very large and well-furnished quarters. Too high end, in her estimation, for it was far better than any residence she’d had in New Zealand, even when she was the defacto head of government.

“All mine?” she asked sarcastically.

“I can provide you a map if you like. The bedroom is over in that quadrant somewhere, I believe.”

Jessica smiled. “I’ll manage. When and where am I supposed to report for duty?”

“You’ll be working exclusively out of this building, but the elevators won’t allow you to use them without a special keycard,” he said, holding up his own. “I’ll make sure you get yours within the next few hours, but feel free to move anywhere around the spire by foot. There are food, shopping, and entertainment facilities inside so the denizens don’t have to travel far, though once you’re settled feel free to explore the city. The buildings all look the same, but the interiors are very different.”

“I’m not here on a vacation, I’m here to work,” she reminded him as she left her bags in the center of the entry foyer’s floor and meandered over into the main living area…which was the size of a large patio sunken down into the floor with wall-spanning vid screens displaying a fake, green exterior of an encroaching jungle landscape. Two other doors exited from it, leading to additional rooms.

“In truth you’ll not be needed until after the 1st, but it may be useful to familiarize yourself with our staff and work areas. I can give you a tour after you settle in here.”

“Including economic data?”

“That you’ll have to ask someone else for. I’m just the tour guide, ma’am.”

“Is Vincent Ray also located in this spire?”

“He is.”

“Can you tell him that I’ve arrived and would like to speak with him as soon as possible?”

“No need,” a voice from behind them said.

Jessica turned around, mildly surprised to see her recruiter there…but then again, she’d half expected him to be the one to pick her up at the airport.

“I’ll take it from here, thank you,” the man said to the attendant, who nodded and walked off.

“I was wondering when you’d show up,” Jessica said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Not needed till the 1st I hear?”

“The word ‘need’ has been misconstrued,” he said, walking over and stopping a meter in front of her. “You’re free to start work before then, but once Stosur gets back from Atlantis with the round 5 details we don’t want to waste a minute of time, meaning we want you present for all meetings thereafter.”

“That’s better,” she said, loosening her arms and turning her back on him. She walked down into her pit of a living area and looked around the huge room, hearing him follow her down.

“Sufficient?” he asked.

“You know damn well it’s more than I’m used to.”

“Actually no, I don’t. Some private quarters are far more extravagant than this, and most of the ones I’ve seen pictures of were not in Australia. Some were from New Zealand, so I assumed you’d been given the royal treatment when you’d assumed the emissary post.”

“I was working, not relaxing.”

“Well, now you can do both.”

“Unless you have some specific task for me, I’d like to start with a complete overview of your economy and infrastructure. Can I access that information from here or do I need to be on a secure level?”

“I can bring it here, along with some food if you like? I don’t believe the pantry has been stocked as of yet, and if you want some more complicated plates we’ll have to order out, though there is a standard cafeteria one level above.”

“Order in and bring the information with you,” Jessica said without hesitation. “And make sure you’re available for extended periods of time. I need someone with firsthand knowledge of your systems to guide me through the basics.”

A look of resignation crossed over his features. “If I must.”

“You must,” she said coyly.

“Shall I also move into the guest room?”

“I’m not here for sex, I’m here to work. So don’t get your hopes up.”

“Never crossed my mind…but it does seem to be on yours,” he said, flipping the onus back to her expertly.

She smiled, suddenly caught off guard. “Perhaps it is.”

“What would you like to eat,” he said, returning the conversation back towards professional.

She squinted at him. “Actually, you can probably tell me. After all, you did a thorough background check before recruiting me.”

“Background checks don’t usually involve popular foods unless you have an allergy.”

Jessica didn’t answer, merely raising her eyebrows.

Vincent rolled his eyes. “Pizza, pancakes, or lasagna?”

She nodded fervently. “You did, didn’t you?”

“We like to be thorough.”

“Including my taste in men?”

“If that was taken into consideration, I was never told.”

“Hmph…pancakes and sugar sticks, if you have them.”

“Easy enough. I’ll fetch the food and leave you to unpack.”

“Get my ID card on your way,” she added as he began to walk out.

“Of course,” he said, then disappeared out of view and earshot.

Jessica sighed and sat down on one of the petite, but very comfortable chairs, sinking down into the cushions and leaning her head back, looking up at the high ceiling. This place she could definitely get used to.

A week later she and Vincent met up with the Australian leadership in a planning area of the governmental spire as Stosur was returning from Atlantis. They had 5 Regents, all of whom were elected from a pool of high ranking personnel in the 5 divisions of their government…Bioharvest, Mining, Industry, Security, and Research. Like a few other republics that had been established by Star Force, the people didn’t vote on a popularity contest, allowing unskilled individuals into positions of power. All ‘candidates’ had to have a level 12 rating, the highest possible within their respective divisions, to qualify for the elections that were held every 10 years, with each division staggered into two year intervals.

Stosur had only been a level 11 bioharvest administrator, and he’d confided in her in several long talks they’d had leading up to the new year that he had no idea why Davis had put him on the list. Vincent had told her that Stosur had been picked off the list by the Regents because he had a solid grasp of logistics and a knack for creating efficiency in places thought already to have been maxed out in that department.

Stosur had been more than welcoming of Jessica, whom he regarded as a peer in this whole endeavor, essentially giving her an equal spot to his at their small leadership table, and the Regents hadn’t disagreed. The seven of them, plus a few extras like Vincent, who were level 12 officials, were waiting for Stosur in a large, communal workstation that had several platform tables with touchscreen interface and individual holoprojectors…while there were two large scale units on either end of the elliptical chamber. One showed a diagram of the Solar System with all of the Australian colonies highlighted, while the other showed a schematic breakdown of their economy, with a swarm of numbers and graphs eating up the airspace.

Eventually Stosur walked in, with the door sliding shut behind him, and Jessica could immediately tell he wasn’t in a good mood.

“I know that look,” she said as the others remained silent.

Stosur walked up to the table most of them were standing around and leaned his elbows on it, lowering his head slightly as he shook it.

“We’re in trouble.”

“Do tell,” the Bioharvest Regent said.

“For the final test Davis is citing our need to be able to deal with unforeseen cataclysm, and to do so he is providing that cataclysm. Beginning on the 5th, he is levying a tax on all our possessions within the Solar System.”

Jessica’s face scrunched up. “A tax? Star Force doesn’t use taxes.”

“It’s for the purpose of simulation,” Stosur explained, running his fingers through his short, loose hair. “Should we lose a part of our infrastructure, we have to be able to maintain vital services without it. Redundancy is the lesson here, though he didn’t say it outright.”

“We’re already fairly redundant,” the Mining Regent noted.

Stosur shook his head. “He’s hitting us hard, judged by a set of economic variables.”

The emissary pulled out a datachip and stuck in into the table’s appropriately sized slot, bringing up a slew of graphs on the tabletop.

“If any of these indicators drop below the red marks, even for a single hour, we lose,” Stosur said, visibly vexed.

“What’s the tax?” Jessica asked, knowing that it had to be something fierce.

“Half of all our bioharvest produce, industrial produce, and natural resources will be given over to Star Force…though our stockpiles are immune. It only effects the active production. Also, there is a 50% tax on all revenue, not profits, but sheer revenue that our government functions on.”

“With our reserves having dwindled due to the jumpship project,” the Industry Regent remarked angrily.

“I don’t see how we can manage on half resources,” the Bioharvest Regent warned, with the others nodding their agreement.

“Not just manage,” Stosur corrected, “but keep our economy afloat in all categories,” he said, looking at Jessica. “This is his last hurdle to cross, and he’s sticking it to us hard. Any ideas?”

All eyes turned to her, and she was very thankful for those long flirtatious, but ultimately nonsexual study sessions with Vincent.

“A few, if you’re willing to get creative.”

“Define creative,” the Security Regent asked.

Jessica glanced at Stosur, referencing a conversation they’d had about her experience with New Zealand’s unsuccessful bid.

“Painfully scrappy.”

The emissary nodded once. “Let’s get to it then. We’ve got two days before the tax is implemented.”

Jessica suppressed a smirk and turned to Vincent. “Food, boy, we’re going to be pulling an all-nighter.”

He laughed once, then glanced at Stosur and reluctantly headed for the door. “I’ll see what I can manage.”

10

January 1, 2458

Solar System

Earth

Jessica followed Stosur up the circular staircase that led into Davis’s almost mythical office atop Atlantis, immediately seeing the iconic 360 degree wraparound window that showed the setting sun just nipping at the ocean off to the west. At the top step she paused slightly, spinning around for the full view and seeing nothing but open floor space save for the single desk on the north end where the Star Force Director currently sat.

She followed Stosur over to him, where he motioned for them to sit down in two of the small chairs opposite him.

“I must say, I am pleasantly surprised,” Davis began, looking out at the pair over his crisscrossed fingers as he set his elbows on his desktop, forming a rough triangle. “At the outset I didn’t think any nation would be able to complete all 5 five rounds.”

“Is that confirmation?” Stosur asked. “You had mentioned other factors being in play earlier.”

“So I did, and yes it is.”

The Australian emissary smiled, glancing over his shoulder at Jessica who returned the smirk.

“Where do we go from here?”

Davis tapped one of his fingers against the others. “Your work isn’t over just yet. In fact, it’s just beginning…assuming you’re willing to stay on.”

Stosur frowned. “For what, exactly?”

“As Australia’s leader.”

“The Regents are the ones in control. I was just a stand in.”

Davis shook his head. “No. Australia may still hold to a measure of democracy, but there must be a single individual through which I will work.”

“I thought they were sovereign now,” Jessica pointed out.

“They are,” Davis confirmed, “but that doesn’t mean they can do whatever they want. It means they’re a part of the team who can add their own flair to the mix, for better or worse. While I’ll be keeping tabs on Australia, and step in if things start to get out of control, your nation will police and manage itself with your interactions with me occurring through one and only one individual, and that person can’t be a messenger. It has to be the leader.”

“And if they don’t want a single leader?” Jessica asked.

“Then they don’t get their sovereignty,” Davis said flatly.

“It’s not sovereignty if there are restrictions,” Jessica argued while Stosur simply looked on.

“You don’t have the freedom to screw up or be stupid. Sovereignty isn’t about privilege, it’s about responsibility…and I have neither the time nor the inclination to babysit incompetent nations any further. Australia has earned a measure of peerdom along with Canderous, the Clans, the Kiritas, and the Calavari, but in truth you don’t belong in that group. You are a child that has a lot of growing up to do, which is why I need a single leader to deal with as you make strides to close the gap.”

“I’m willing,” Stosur offered.

“It’s done then. You now command Australia, and how you deal with the Regents is your own concern. Keep them, replace them…I will not interfere. That’s an internal Australia matter to deal with, so long as you don’t start taking the nation backwards.”

“As for you,” Davis said, looking at Jessica. “Why are you here?”

“She’s as much responsible for our success as I am,” Stosur said defensively. “I asked her to come along.”

“And is she staying with you?” Davis asked, though still staring at Jessica, which made her feel very uncomfortable. Attractive as he was, there was a look of raw power behind his eyes that made her feel very unsettled, especially with the cold tone in his voice.

“We’d be honored to keep her with us, but her contract expired this morning,” Stosur said, looking over at her.

“I haven’t made any plans.”

“So you’re here as a spectator?” Davis asked.

“I suppose you could call me that.”

“Should I not have brought her?” Stosur asked, steering the conversation back to himself.

“I’m curious as to why you did. The invitation was just for you.”

“We’ve been working so closely together that it just seemed natural…and given that she was already an emissary I didn’t think it would be an issue.”

“It’s not,” Davis said, dismissing any sense of misgivings. “I’m merely curious as to how you plan to move forward…and yet she doesn’t seem to have decided.”

“A day ago the round was still live,” she reminded him.

“A lot can happen in a day,” he said, turning his attention back to Stosur. “You’ve succeeded in earning your place at the big table, but you’re going to have to keep improving and upgrading your nation in order to stay there. To facilitate that purpose I’m reopening full access to the Star Force markets and returning the resources and credits we syphoned off from you over the past year. It is your responsibility to see to it that Australia doesn’t become dependent on the markets.”

“Furthermore, as now a full part of Star Force our weapons tech will become available to you, but it is only for the purpose of your security forces. You will not share it with others, and you will not permit it to be leaked or stolen as you build a properly equipped military to supplement Star Force’s fleet in the defense of your territories here and elsewhere. A police force is not sufficient. You must become a war-capable nation like the others.”

“Understood,” Stosur said, matching the steel in Davis’ voice as he sensed the importance of what the man was saying.

“Your economy is still weak, as is your industrial and shipbuilding base. You must strengthen them and all other aspects of Australia. Do not depend upon private industry for anything. Allow it to exist and use it in the interim, but you have to transition all necessities over to government production, leaving only luxuries for the private markets, along with redundant production if they wish. Your economy will stay linked and open with the rest of Star Force, which is different from the others. Use this to your advantage, but waste the opportunity for growth that I’m giving you and I’ll rescind your sovereignty.”

“You are far behind where you need to be,” Davis said bluntly. “Maintaining the status quo isn’t enough. You have to grow and grow fast, which is why I’m letting you keep permanent access to the markets and private industry, both in your nation and throughout Star Force’s colonies. The Clans and Canderous will still keep their economies private, but under certain necessary or emergency conditions trading with them is permitted. You won’t have contact with the Kiritas or Calavari in the foreseeable future.”

“What exactly do you envision us becoming?”

“Someone I don’t have to keep looking over their shoulder to stay on task.”

“What can we do to help the war effort?” Stosur asked more directly.

“Keep yourself from becoming a liability,” Davis said, ticking that item off on his thumb. “Protect your own territories so we won’t have to devote ships to them, become an exporter of resources and tech that can feed the line troops, Canderous, or the Clans on the frontier while being safely within our protected zones, increase your population as much as you can support, and begin colonizing new territories as I make them available to you,” he finished on his pinky finger.

Stosur nodded. “You want us to step up to the plate as much as we can.”

“As little as that will be in the overall picture, yes. I want you to become an asset to Star Force.”

“Then that is what we shall become,” he said confidently.

“Make it happen, Regents or no,” Davis said with a nod. “Now, what about you?”

“What about me?” Jessica asked.

“Are you planning to stay with Australia, return to New Zealand, or work for me?”

Jessica raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize that third option was on the table.”

“It is as of now. I know how integral you were in keeping New Zealand in play for as long as you did, and despite that failure you proved yourself adept and useful, then used those skills again to assist Australia who, despite several useful talents, tends to have a hard time thinking outside the box…especially the Regents.”

“Point taken,” Stosur admitted.

“And what would I be doing for you?” Jessica asked.

“Star Force has differing methods, as well as different resource opportunities that you’ve not had available. We’re starting up new colonies in other systems, and if you wish, I’ll appoint you to head up one.”

Her eyes narrowed. “How big and in what system?”

“A full planetoid and several options, all of which are a considerable distance from here.”

“Frontier?”

“No, edge of the Core Region.”

“The frontier inside the frontier?” she asked.

Davis responded by activating his desk’s holoprojector and giving them a glimpse at the master map of all of Star Force. He zoomed in to show the Core Region where nearly all of Humanity resided, with seven systems around the edge being highlighted.

“I’m expanding out into these systems, each of which has multiple planetoids tagged for habitation. Some are environmentally friendly, others are not. Canderous and the Clans are also taking part, but the bulk of the colonization will be regular Star Force colonies. If and when Australia gets itself in a strong enough position, they will also be given a planetoid or two to colonize…if there are any left by then.”

Stosur cracked a smile. “Challenge accepted.”

“Do I get to pick?” Jessica asked, only half sarcastic.

“You won’t be the first insystem. There will be a Duke present to oversee all system activities, based in another colony that will have a head start on yours, but it won’t be able to offer much in the way of help in the beginning, so you’ll have to make do with the cargo shipments as they come in and work towards setting up your own production infrastructure, with the ultimate goal of becoming self-sufficient.”

“You really should say ‘self-sustaining,’ so as not to confuse the meaning with biological self-sufficiency,” Jessica noted.

“You’re not the first to suggest that.”

Jessica chewed on her lower lip for a moment as she thought quickly. “Will I become a member of Star Force or will this be contract work?”

“A member.”

“What level?”

“6.”

“So no pay then?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Depends how long I will be there.”

“Indefinitely. Several decades at minimum.”

“And how long do I have to decide?”

Davis glanced down at his wristwatch/communicator. “Say about 5 minutes.”

“5 minutes?!”

“If it’s something you have to think through, then you’re not the person for the job. You’ll be building everything from scratch, making it up as you go, so the only thing to consider is whether you want to accept the challenge…or not. That shouldn’t take more than 30 seconds.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Davis echoed, watching her closely.

She didn’t say anything for a moment, thinking hard about various possibilities…then she took the Director’s suggestion and just let all the details wash from her head and look at the offer from a fresh perspective.

“An entire planet?”

“Or moon. It wouldn’t be shared, with all the territory and resources yours for the consumption.”

“You really think I’m qualified for that?”

“Everyone has to take a leap at some point, and you’ve shown me enough skill and improvisation over the past years to make me willing to trust you on this.”

“Coming from someone so methodical that sounds almost reckless.”

“Risk is our business,” Davis said, using one of the Archons’ favorite quotes from Captain Kirk.

“What would my title be?”

“Baron.”

“A level 6 Baron?”

“No newb is going straight to level 7,” Davis said with an incredulous look.

“A what?”

“Newb means rookie.”

“She’s not exactly a rookie,” Stosur chimed in.

“She is as far as Star Force is concerned,” Davis explained. “She has to learn our methods and procedures. As it is, no one from the outside has ever been appointed Baron, and I’m only doing it because I think she’s quick enough to handle the learning curve without it being a detriment to the colony.”

“That doesn’t exist yet?” Jessica asked.

“Not a single ship has landed, other than survey teams.”

“And you don’t even know the location?”

“We can choose now, if you’re onboard?”

Jessica sighed. “As far as presents go, no man has ever given me an entire planet…or moon…before. I don’t see how a girl can say no to that.”

“Then let’s pick out one, shall we?” Davis said, pulling up the seven systems’ individual maps side by side. “The blue ones are where we currently have startup colonies. The green are your potentials.”

Jessica saw there were many, from 2 possibilities in the Therion System to some 12 in Nirrel.

“Which are Earth-type habitable?”

“8 are marginal, with only 2 similar to Earth conditions,” Davis said, bringing up the two planets, one in Nirrel and the other in Merkle. The one in Merkle was a heavy grav world, marked as 2.3g, which made it an absolute monster that would require artificial gravity to make it habitable, meaning one couldn’t go walking around the countryside, but they could have exposed city tops and open air parks so long as the inertial dampening fields covered them.

The other was the reverse, being a small moon with a gravity of .45g. That would also require artificial gravity to make it habitable, otherwise her population would grow weak from muscle atrophy…but they could roam the countryside freely and live without worry of being crushed should the AG fail.

“I’ll leave the big one to your people, but that moon looks right about my size,” she joked, putting her ring finger up underneath it as if it were a gem.

“That one doesn’t have a name yet,” Davis told her as he brought the small icon up to full size, showing her the moon. “Care to do the honors?”

Jessica looked at the sparse lakes and thick forests, up through which rose several steep mountain chains, with her imagination quickly running back to a childhood story of a magical planet inhabited by elves and dragons.

“I think I’ll call it Adria.”

“Adria it is then,” Davis said, inputting the name onto the map, with the update immediately going out across the comm network to every other linked map, eventually making it all the way out to Namek some weeks later, along with several other small updates, messages, and news packets. One of those packets was a forward from the Alliance relay system, having gone through Epsilon Eridani and then shuffled out through the Alpha Region interstellar relay network to the lizard frontier where Paul was still stationed.

Activity along the border had been up and down over the years, with every lizard push having been thwarted by a Star Force counterattack, along with the Humans managing to take a few lizard systems here and there, but the boundary line remained much the same, for Paul didn’t want to extend it too far past Namek and the other strongholds he was setting up against the eventual lizard onslaught that Kara had warned them about.

In between Namek and the Core Region was the vast Alpha Region, the outermost third of which Paul was dotting with new colonies and bases, thickening their band of resistance against the lizards and allowing for reinforcement options they previously didn’t have given the remoteness of the area. Every year that passed Paul, considered to be one of Star Force’s ‘master builders,’ metaphorically dug in deeper, extending their ‘wall’ against the lizards in 5 directions…up, down, left, right, and backward in the hopes of blocking the enemy’s advance, given that the galactic plane was so thick that there was a mass of star systems above and below them.

Those systems were an inroad for the lizards, so Paul was stretching out Star Force’s reach further into them, blocking tendrils of lizard territory that were poking in that direction and forming a massive ‘shield’ around the end of Alpha Region. That barrier, as it was, couldn’t stop the lizards from moving through, for space was vast and a jumpship only stopping in a system for a redirect was hard to detect, let alone intercept and stop before it made its next jump out.

The key was, Paul knew, to make the lizard supply lines so long that any assault force they sent past the Namek area was doomed to fail, either in the initial invasion of whatever system or world they chose, or in the quickly ensuing counterattack that Star Force was gearing all of their systems up for with dedicated fleets strategically positioned for just that type of mission should the need arise.

They didn’t have nearly enough yet in Alpha Region to establish a proper defensive line, but Paul was working on it, even as he monitored the events on the Calavari front, and kept updated with news from the other regions, including Davis’s long overdue annexation of Earth.

One of the message packets that came through with the map update got the attention of one of the Archons on Namek immediately, who took it via datapad all the way into the sanctum where Paul was running his pace laps and all the way out onto the track, handing it to him as the Archons ran side by side for a few steps.

Paul kept running until he saw the contents, then gave the acolyte a telepathic reassurance that he had been right to interrupt his workout. The ranger coasted to a stop and hopped off to the inside of the track where he read through the full Alliance report detailing activity on the lizard border of Calavari space.

5 star systems had fallen in the past three months, with another 8 currently under assault, all of which formed a short knife blade into the gut of Calavari territory, despite the Kvash fleets that had been positioned in that area. They’d been run off due to overwhelming lizard numbers, and the lightly defended Calavari worlds had seen their defenses obliterated before they had the chance to evacuate more than a handful ships, barely enough to get the word out as the lizards hit the local relays, beginning to sever links in the Alliance’s communication chain and split the Kvash and Bsidd off from the Hycre and Star Force.

Paul stared at the little knife blade of quickly captured systems, seeing a great deal more vulnerable worlds around them that the Calavari wouldn’t have a hope of defending with their fleets having been drawn away to fight the Nestafar…and even if they had been there, the outcome would have been the same, though somewhat delayed, for the lizards were finally coming for them in force, now that their treasonous ally had finally weakened them near to the breaking point.

“It’s starting,” Paul said to the acolyte as he handed him the datapad and stepped back onto the track just in time to catch his pacing marker as it came around for another lap. He took off running again and locked into its speed, with his mind going strategic and sifting through the various implications, all of which led to one conclusion.

The Calavari empire was doomed.

Commando

1

May 22, 2458

Solar System

Earth

Rio Jakson sat atop one of hundreds of short skyscrapers in Riverside, California with his back resting against a monument pedestal dedicated to someone who did something a long time ago with no real significance. The letters were mostly worn off, and in truth no one cared about the small monument, but it did make for a good spot to sit on the rooftop garden/park and look out over the city, for all of the buildings were bumping up against the mandatory height restrictions, meaning there was nothing taller in this area to obscure your view of the sky.

The 17 year old sat a few meters from the clear fence that surrounded the pentagon-shaped building that was both his home, school, grocery store, fitness center, and all around prison. It had been designed to give the residents just about everything they needed indoors in an attempt to diminish the amount of traffic that plagued the area, and to Rio that meant he was virtually a prisoner, for security wouldn’t let the ‘children’ outside the building without their parents’ permission.

The open air up top was his only reprieve from the claustrophobia inside the building. His parents weren’t rich, nor were they poor, but land space was at such a premium that every building in the U.S. was designed to maximize internal space…or at least every building in the metropolitan areas, which in California’s case covered pretty much the entire state.

He, like many other teenagers, tried to push the boundaries of the residential complex, and had found that this roof was the best option they had, and as such it was usually crowded. This particular spot along the edge Rio favored because it was away from all the recreation areas, giving him a more or less peaceful spot to relax, though he could still hear the sounds of a pickup volleyball game going on behind him in the ‘sand box’ that covered the central portion of the roof.

“Hey,” Nadia said, coming up from behind Rio on his left and dropping a long, flexible tube in a wrapper in his lap as she sat down next to him and scrunched up against his bare arm despite the oppressive heat that was only now just beginning to cool with a stiff breeze.

“Hey,” Rio answered his girlfriend back as he tore open the sugar stick, pulled it out and split it in two, giving her the bottom half that contained the cherry and grape flavoring that she liked, while he kept the lime and strawberry sections for himself as he got a whiff of her marine-scented perfume as she turned her head and gave him a quick peck on the cheek before gnawing into her half of the foodstuff.

“They sure aren’t wasting any time,” she commented, gesturing to the half-constructed tower in the distance that had already risen above the height restrictions of the other buildings. It was several miles away, but it was so large that it was impossible to miss and dominated the local skyline.

“Star Force doesn’t mess around,” Rio commented, drawing a look from Nadia.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded, poking him in the chest for emphasis.

Rio sighed. “How do you always know?”

“I can hear it in your voice…now spill.”

“You’re not going to like it,” he warned her.

“Now you have to tell me,” she said, scooting away just enough that she could turn and face him. “What’s wrong?”

“That’s what’s wrong,” Rio said, pointing out into the city.

“The tower?”

“No, everything else,” Rio said with disgust. “Everyone here, they’re going nowhere. Doing nothing. Hell, half the people in this building haven’t gone outside it in years. They just sit here stagnating, and for what?”

“We all get spooked, Rio. This isn’t your first time. I nearly had a panic attack three weeks ago in the hall outside the locker room. We manage it and move on, like always.”

“Move on to where exactly?” he asked with a touch of anger in his voice.

Nadia gave him an incredulous look. “Move on, move on. What do you think I mean?”

“I think you don’t know what you mean.”

“Now you better explain what you mean…”

“Or what, you won’t talk to me for three days? Then we make up and continue on…doing what? What is anyone around here doing?”

“Everyone is adjusting to the Star Force takeover. Things aren’t going to be the same anymore,” she said, gesturing with her hand towards the tower under construction, one of many popping up across California to house the transitional personnel that were already reworking the local infrastructure and social systems…including the schools, though those efforts hadn’t reached their building yet.

Rio shook his head. “Good riddance, but what is anyone going to be doing here?”

“Not having to work for a living, that’s what,” Nadia said like Rio had lost his mind and forgotten how to count to 3. “No more crap jobs just to get by. Everyone gets a place to live and food to eat, no money required. We don’t have to worry about where we go after we graduate…at least, not once they get done with things. Is that what’s bothering you? You’ve got another year before then.”

“But even then, what do I do? Live rent free, worry free…and then what?”

“Marry me…if I’m not already taken,” she joked, wrapping her right arm through his while she bit off the end of her sugar stick.

“And just live out our lives together doing…nothing?”

“Marriage isn’t nothing.”

“It isn’t something either. It’s a status, not an activity. Not a life.”

“I didn’t think you thought so little of me,” she said, knowing he wasn’t serious.

“But that’s just it,” he said, finally turning to look her in the dark green iris implants she’d gotten two years ago. “You’re a person, not a piece of property to acquire. Don’t you want to do anything with your life? Once Star Force gets through remodeling here, whenever that will be, we won’t have to worry about scraping by and working to live. So what do you want to do when that happens…sit around and watch vids all day?”

“Something is really eating you. No more being evasive. What is it? Just tell me.”

Rio leaned back, putting his head against the stone of the monument and looking out over the tops of all the other residential buildings with people just like him, looking ahead to normal, boring lives. Then there was the Star Force tower, rising further above them by the day as its frantic construction continued.

“I want to make something of myself, not spend my life just…living. I want to do something that matters.”

“You still want to go to law school?”

Rio frowned at her. “That was a long time ago. Besides, with Star Force in charge there’s no need for lawyers. Their civilian legal code is only 5 pages long. You can practically memorize it in a day.”

“I think that’s the point.”

“What?”

“That you can memorize it. That way you know the laws.”

“Novel idea there. Wish we’d thought of that.”

“But don’t they more complicated rules…for business or something?”

“Yeah, they do.”

“So?”

“I don’t want to be a lawyer, or whatever the new version is.”

“Then what do you want to be?”

“A man.”

Nadia squeezed his arm. “Well, I haven’t done a full body inspection yet, but I think you’re already there.”

“Sexuality can have a strong influence on the weak minded.”

“What?”

“It’s a quote.”

“From what?”

“Star Force.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“It means ordinary people get caught up in relationships, and those relationships form the basis of their entire world.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t consider you to be a bad thing. Are you saying that I am?”

“I can’t define you,” Rio insisted as he stared out over the city, wanting her to understand. “You’re your own person. So am I. The question is, what do you want to do with your life, not who you want to be with.”

“What should I want?” Nadia asked skeptically.

“To be better than everyone else.”

“What’s wrong with everyone else?”

Rio turned to look at her again. “What’s wrong?!”

“Yes. What’s wrong with everybody else? Why aren’t they good enough for you? Why am I not good enough?”

Rio shook his head. “You’re missing the point.”

“No, it’s coming through real clear. You think you’re too good for us,” Nadia said, thumbing back towards the others on the rooftop park.

“No I’m not…but I want to be. Someday.”

“You’re not making any sense, Rio.”

“I can’t say here, Nadia. I have to get away. This place, these people…they’re killing me.”

She ran a finger down his chest. “You look fine to me.”

“On the inside. I feel hollow. Empty.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Don’t. You’re the one thing that makes this place bearable.”

“Well that’s better, but I still don’t get what you’re trying to tell me.”

Rio closed his eyes and lowered his head, knowing there was no way to break this easy to her.

“I can’t stay here anymore.”

“Where exactly do you think you’re going?”

“I passed, Nadia.”

“Passed what?”

“The recruitment test.”

Nadia stiffened. “What test?”

“Remember when my uncle came over a few weeks ago?”

“Yeah.”

“He didn’t take me water skiing. Well, he did, but while he rounded up some of his friends he dropped me off downtown and I went to the recruitment center.”

“What recruitment center?” Nadia asked with no small amount of anger in her voice.

“Star Force. I passed the entrance exams on the first try. I was only missing the PT test.”

“That’s why you’ve been doing all that extra running?”

Rio nodded. “I needed a 5:15 mile. Yesterday I ran a 5:14 on vid and sent the file to them. I got a confirmation message this morning. I’ve qualified for Regular recruitment.”

“Regular what?”

“A Regular. The Regulars.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about fighting the lizards,” he blurted out.

Though he couldn’t see it, for he wasn’t looking at her, Nadia’s face scrunched up into a look of total revulsion.

“Military! Star Force is bad enough, but military? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“It’s what I want,” Rio said simply.

“What you want? What about me? What about our life together? Our marriage? Our children?”

“I don’t want children. I don’t want a marriage, a normal life. I want to be someone,” he said, turning to face her. “I want my life to matter.”

Nadia pushed him away. “So I don’t matter?”

“You do matter to me. A lot. Which is why I want you to come with me.”

“Now I know you’re out of your mind.”

“Your science scores are high enough for a tech recruitment, I’d wager.”

“I don’t want to join Star Force. I want to stay here, see what changes Star Force makes and how they affect our lives. If what they claim is even half true, it should be a golden age for all of us ‘normal’ people. I want to raise children in that…maybe not here, in this building, but one like it.”

“Is that all you want? Just to be a mother?”

“You make it sound like it’s not important.”

“It’s still you defining yourself through other people. Who do you want to be, Nadia? You…nobody else. Just you.”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you. Am I suddenly no longer good enough for you?”

“I have to be man, Nadia.”

“Be my man,” she insisted.

“I can’t be your man before I become a man…and I can’t become a man if I stay here, get married, have kids, and do nothing with my life. Everyone does that. Everyone has kids. Billions upon billions of people. It may be important but it’s not special, and it doesn’t require any skill. You just hump and let nature take its course. You know that better than most people with your parents.”

“My parents suck, which is exactly why I don’t want to be that way with my kids.”

“Why do you need kids? Why can’t you just be enough as yourself?”

“I want kids, Rio. It’s not about them defining me. I want to be a mother and do things right where my parents obviously didn’t. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“No, that’s just your imagination. I want you…not the other stuff.”

“Stuff? You have no idea how insulting you’re being right now.”

Rio sat up and pointed at the Star Force tower.

“They are the only reason people get the chance to have families. Out there they’re fighting aliens to keep them away from Earth. Without them we’re all dead. Protecting Earth is more important than being a parent.”

“There are plenty of soldiers, Rio. Let someone else do it. You don’t have anything to prove to me.”

“It’s not about you. I guess I need to prove it to myself.”

“Prove what?”

“That I’m a man…and a better one than the average guy. I’m not now, but I want to be. I can feel the potential to be something…more. But I can’t do it here. This place, it eats away at that potential, and I’m afraid if I stay any longer it’s going to destroy it. I have to leave this place before it kills me, Nadia. I need you to understand that.”

“And you want to take me with you?”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“Then don’t leave.”

“I have to. I know that now, clearer than I’ve ever known anything else. I’ve earned my slot. It’s my chance and I’m not going to pass it up.”

“So you’re going to just leave me here?”

“Come with me and make a life for yourself. You can have children later if you really want. There’s no rush.”

Nadia crossed her arms over her chest. “Spoken like a typical male.”

“Meaning what?”

“A girl can’t wait. It’s biological. It’s literally in our DNA.”

“What about that woman on the news who gave birth at 93?”

“Star Force’s freaky medicine.”

“Self-sufficiency isn’t medicine…or freaky.”

“Yes it is. It’s unnatural.”

“You don’t want to live forever?”

“Nobody lives forever, Rio.”

“Don’t you want to try?”

“No. I want my husband and my children and that normal life you seem to hate.”

“With a passion,” he emphasized.

“Enough of this,” Nadia said, standing up. “Get your head on straight and I’ll talk to you in the morning. Hopefully with a good night’s sleep you’ll wake up sane.”

“I’m not joking, Nadia,” Rio said as she started to walk away. “I can leave now if I want. You’re the only reason I’m not gone already.”

She turned around. “So you want to convince me to come with you. What makes you think we’ll even be allowed to stay together? Damn it, Rio, I’m only 16.”

“Star Force doesn’t care about your age, only your abilities.”

“If you go off to war then where will I be?”

“We may be apart from each other, but we’ll both be gaining experience and rank, and who knows what else. We can become better people and hook up again down the road. If we attain self-sufficiency there’s no rush. Why can’t we be individuals first, couple second?”

“It’s one or the other, Mr. Jakson.”

Rio sighed. “I’m sorry, Nadia. I knew this would be hard on you, but I’m not giving up on you. I don’t have to be with you physically to love you. I can be halfway across the galaxy and still yours, married or not. I have to do this, but it doesn’t mean we have to split up.”

Nadia gulped. “So you are serious. You’re choosing Star Force over me?”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Rio said, standing up and looking into those green eyes he’d grown overly fond of.

“Yes it does,” she insisted. “I’m willing to make you my entire life. If you’re not willing to do the same, then there is no other option. You can have your Star Force career or you can have me. Not both.”

“I’m sorry then,” he said, trying not to get choked up. “This is something I have to do, or I’ll never be happy. I want you. I need you. But I need more than you. I need to be a man before I can be a husband, and I can’t do that here.”

Nadia shook her head. “If you go, I’m not waiting for you.”

Rio clenched his teeth together to help hold back the emotions swirling inside of him. He’d worked through this conversation beforehand in his head, already having made his decisions so he wouldn’t lose his nerve. He just hadn’t known how she’d respond, but this eventuality wasn’t hard to imagine, so he’d prepared himself for it.

“I love you, but I have to go. If you can’t work with a long distance relationship, and you need someone physically with you day in and day out…then that person isn’t going to be me.”

Nadia’s jaw dropped, then she took a step towards Rio and slapped him across the face…hard.

He couldn’t hold back the tears, but Nadia didn’t stick around to see them. She walked off in a huff, leaving Rio alone on the edge of the roof park.

He turned around and walked to the clear fence and stood a few inches away from it, staring out across the other rooftops and the sea of people they contained. His eyes went straight to the Star Force tower, now with another piece sticking out of the top that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago.

That was it. He’d just done it. Maybe she’d have second thoughts tomorrow, try and convince him to stay, but he knew that she wasn’t coming with him. She was afraid to leave…or maybe she actually wanted to stay. Rio couldn’t understand that, for every fiber of his being wanted to be away from here, and if she truly wanted the family life, then it was best that they part ways now, before they made each other miserable down the road.

That’s what his head told him, or rather had told him a few hours ago. Right now his emotions were running wild and he was following the instructions he’d told himself to follow in case this happened, in case he got emotional again, so that Nadia couldn’t use it to twist him around like she had so many times in the past. He didn’t mind so much before, but this was important…and he had to make his own decisions.

Like he’d planned, he knew he had to leave now before Nadia, his parents, or anyone else could get to him. He wasn’t in a mood to argue, and was afraid if that was what happened he’d cave. He was weak like that, which was one of the things he didn’t like about himself. That meant now was go time, and he had to head off his weakness before it caught up with him.

That meant calling his uncle and having him come and pick him up. He knew better than to tell his parents, but couldn’t just walk out on them. His uncle would explain things afterwards, so that way they’d know where he was and that he was alright, but they weren’t going to like his not graduating high school one bit, not even to join Star Force, which was much harder to accomplish.

Rio glanced over his shoulder at the others playing games in the park, realizing he had a moment of opportunity that was going to vanish fast. Nadia was upset, and soon word would get around, meaning he had to go now. Pulling out his communicator he searched for and found his uncle’s contact ID and sent him a preplanned message, which he got a reply for immediately, along with a timestamp indicating that his uncle would be here to pick him up within 2 hours.

Rio was already packed, which amounted to little more than a backpack, based off the fact that Star Force had said he wouldn’t need anything once he reached the recruitment center, but he had a few keepsakes he wanted to bring with him…along with his favorite shirt.

“Here goes,” he said, turning away from the sunny cityscape and walking slowly away across the large park, feeling his anxiety spike. This was the moment. The moment where his life was going to radically change, and now that it was here he welcomed it. He was a nervous, emotional mess, with a hole in his heart the size of a starship, but this was what he needed to do and he knew it. Now that he’d called his uncle there was no going back.

Rio walked through the park, found the down elevator, and returned to his family’s quarters. He grabbed his small satchel, swung it over his shoulders and quietly walked out, intending to hide elsewhere in the building until his uncle arrived so no one would have a chance to talk him out of it.

Two hours later, as promised, his uncle showed up and got him through the underage security measures at the building’s entrance. From there they walked to a nearby transit terminal and hired a transport car to take them off, with his uncle returning several hours later to explain to his brother and sister-in-law what their son had done.

2

May 27, 2458

Solar System

Mars

“Welcome to introduction, cadets. I am Trainer Henderson, and I am tasked with determining which of you passes basic training and which of you wash out,” the tall, thin, muscular man said wearing a pure white uniform as he paced back and forth across a platform set before a wall-spanning open ‘window’ that looked out onto the training grounds which, since they were on Mars, were all indoors.

“Yours will be individual training, allowing you to progress at your own rates. The only way one of you washes out is if you choose to leave. If you cannot pass the graduation trials, then you will remain here in perpetual training until you do. Those sitting beside you are your induction class, but whether or not you remain together is determined by how far each of you advances and in how timely a manner you do so.”

Rio glanced to his left, seeing two men considerably older than him sitting on the narrow bench beside him. They were probably at least twice his age, and about half of those sitting in front of him looked to be at least 30. He sat in the back row of 5 benches, just trying to listen and go along with the flow, feeling very out of place, for he was by far the youngest of them all, including the 4 girls out of the 48 member group, all of whom looked to have been post-college in age.

“Today you get your first taste of training, which will be based on the scores you entered with. There will be a lot of running…and by a lot I mean a lot. Running is the foundation of a commando, for if you can’t move around the battlefield you’re little more than a living turret, and if we need turrets we’ll just build them. We need you to be commandos, meaning you’re mobile, accurate, intelligent, and possessing a strength no normal Human can match.”

“Commandos are Regulars, and Regulars serve the Archons, assist the Knights. You are not cannon fodder, but rather one man armies capable of undertaking difficult tasks solo or combining your skills in group missions. You must learn to do both in your training, during which you will be subjected to multiple challenges to probe your weaknesses. Learn from them. Don’t fear failure. Analyze and adapt. If and when you achieve full commando status, you will know that the most important lesson to take with you from this training facility is to stay alive. Die in battle, and you will be of no further use in the war. We need you to become warriors, not the expendable commodities you’ve seen in vids.”

“How much you know of the lizards I cannot say, but I can tell you that you don’t know much. The lizards outnumber us so greatly we can’t even count them all. If we trade lives, one for one, one for five, one for ten…they win by default. The only way we prevail is by being better than them, which means our troops walk away at the end of the battle able to fight in the next one. Death is failure, even if you take a million enemies with you.”

“That means sometimes you have to run away to live and fight another day. It’s a cliché, but one you need to remember. When to run and when to fight is something that we will endeavor to teach you here, but there is not a rule book written that can take into account every possible scenario. You will have to make the call in the moment, and the best way to help you prepare for that is by throwing you into a plethora of learning experiences here, so be prepared to run the gauntlet. The more we hit you with here, the less surprises there will be out there,” the trainer said, pointing up at the high ceiling, indicating the stars beyond where the war was ongoing.

“Now, don’t concern yourself with tomorrow. We don’t send rookies out to the front lines. Only our best get combat assignments…unless the enemy ends up on our doorstep. If that happens here, you might as well kiss your asses goodbye. If the lizards reach Sol, then we’ve already lost and it’s up to us to make their victory as messy as possible. Our victory comes in keeping the enemy busy on the frontier while Star Force grows stronger, which is what you are doing here…becoming stronger, wiser, faster, sharper.”

“If and when you graduate, you will leave this facility to pursue even more training, one day rising in ability enough to get a field assignment. By then you will be ready, now you are not, and my advice to you is not to be thinking ahead to the war. Live in the  moment, for this training, while modulated to each of your individual skill levels, is going to be more of a challenge than you’ve ever faced before, and it will require your full attention. Anything less, and get used to receiving failure notices.”

“Now, this is where it begins. When you go through that door,” he said, pointing to his left and Rio’s right, “you listen, you learn, you obey…and grab on with two hands to the greatest challenge of your life to this point, for there is no turning back or slowing down. If you wash out, it will not be an instantaneous thing. There is a procedure to follow, to ensure that you’re not making a rash decision, for if you do decide to leave, there’s no coming back for a second try. Not with the commandos anyway, though you might have a chance with the mechwarriors or pilots.”

“We learn to get things done the first time by never stopping our efforts and always working the problem. Surrender isn’t in our vocabulary, nor is it something the lizards will allow. They’re out to kill us all, so get used to the idea of having to find a way to win or survive to win another day. Second place in this conflict means you’re dead.”

“That said, we are not our enemy, and we do not always kill our enemy. Each mission varies, and we will allow the enemy to surrender when we can. That is also something you will have to learn. Many wars are fought between bad guys. Being the good guy means we fight differently, so get used to that difference. If our enemy were as honorable as us we wouldn’t be fighting them, so expect your opponent to use different tactics and tricks, and be alert for them.”

“And make no mistake, this war is not some misunderstanding or diplomatic snafu. The lizards want to rule the galaxy, which in their definition is to kill or enslave all others…and guess which one they’ve tagged Humans for. That’s right…kill. They will kill you on the spot, sometimes blowing themselves up in the process. They are dishonorable scum that you will not emulate. You will defeat them and their methods, not become them.”

“Star Force is part of an alliance with other enemies of the lizards, one of which is called the Nestafar…or perhaps I should say was, because they betrayed the Alliance and joined with the lizards. You may end up fighting them one day, or one of hundreds of other races we’ve come into contact with. Each of them is a person, like you, and you will treat them accordingly. Some you might even be fighting alongside, like the Calavari, and if you have enough prolonged experience you will come to realize that they are just like us…only different, and those differences you will need to learn. There are good and bad people in every race, so see the individual, not the species.”

“That is why we give our enemies the chance to surrender, but when they’re out for our heads the proper response is to kill them first, and do it quickly. Torture we do not tolerate, and as commandos you will have the most up close contact with the enemy, who does use bladed weapons as well as plasma. There will be blood, gore, and nastiness that you probably can’t even imagine. Through it all you must remain true to who you are and true to Star Force. To quote an Archon, ‘you must not turn to the dark side, no matter how dire your situation.’”

“So, let’s recap,” Henderson said, clapping his hands together as he finally stopped pacing. “Hardest challenge of your life so far…learning a lot of things I’ve mentioned that you currently have no clue about…always be the good guy…never expect the enemy to…neither hate nor trust the aliens, they’re people like you…gotta go superhuman in order to beat the lizards…and oh, yes, one more thing. Don’t ever call an Archon ‘sir.’ They take it as a sign of disrespect.”

“So,” he said, pulling his arms behind his back and standing up. “You have two doors. One door starts your training, the other door takes you back to civilian life and your chance to become a Regular isn’t wasted…in so much as you can always have a change of heart and come back and give it a try, so long as you test out again. Once you go through that door it’s make or break, so make your choice. My task here is done.”

With a smile the trainer stepped backward towards the edge of the platform and in a blur of motion did a backflip over the railing and fell out of sight, leaving the 48 recruits alone to make their choice.

Rio stood up with the rest of the group, but held his place as some of them ran up to the edge to look down on where the trainer had gone too. The 17 year old massaged the sides of his grey pant legs as he watched the others, not wanting to make a move towards the door before anyone else did. There was a bit of chatter between some of the men, but there was a sense of wary silence as the first of them walked over and opened up the door with a press of a button.

It vanished into the wall revealing a tiny compartment large enough for only one person. Rio couldn’t see from his position, but suddenly the person that was there a moment before no longer was, drawing a bit more talk from those nearby. Slowly the crowd moved up, with others disappearing, until Rio finally got a clear line of sight to see that the door would close over the person at the touch of an interior button, then open again with the person having disappeared.

Rio waited at the back until there were only a handful left, including three standing along the platform railing and looking out over the very active training grounds.

“How old are you?” one of the two men asked.

“Me?” Rio said in a small voice, then coughing to cover his nerves when the man nodded. “I’ll be 18 in three months.”

“That means 17,” the girl corrected.

“And you passed the PT test?” the man asked again.

“Yes,” Rio said as the last of those behind him disappeared through the door, leaving only the four of them behind.

“What do they want children for?” the second man asked the first.

He shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

“Do you know each other?” Rio asked, prying his eyes off the hundreds, if not thousands, of people moving across the training fields like an army of ants, and taking a glance back at the door that stood invitingly open. The other one that they’d entered through had never been shut, allowing them a visual line of retreat if they wanted.

“We’re ex-military, kid,” the girl answered. “Out of a job, now that the old armies were scrapped.”

“You coming or leaving?” the first man asked.

“I was going to go through last. Why are you waiting?”

“Just enjoying the view,” he said, cracking a touch of a smile through his goatee. “Name’s Raven. This is Styk and Julie. Formerly of the United States Ranger Corps.”

“Rio Jakson, from California.”

“Well now,” Styk said, immediately getting a bit more friendly, “another American…or should I say former American, now that they’re tearing the old girl up into bits and pieces.”

“You really going through with this, kid?” Julie asked.

“Yes.”

“Then get going. We’ll follow you through.”

Raven nodded at him to go, so Rio didn’t argue. He turned and walked over to the door and stepped inside the compartment and hit the button. The door slid shut behind him, then all of a sudden the floor dropped out and he began to fall…

He bounced off his arms and legs against a flexible tube as it curled and twisted underneath him, reminding him of a dry waterslide as he slid down very, very far before falling out through open air onto a pile of foam squares that gently dragged him to a halt in an alley set off a main street in some sort of city. Rio had landed face up, and found himself staring at pure blue sky…but that was impossible, for he was on Mars, not Earth.

Rio sat up…immediately falling back down as the foam resisted his movements. He tried again, eventually able to wiggle himself over to the far end of the foam field and get his feet onto the hard pavement and stand up. Neither Raven, Styk, nor Julie had come down yet…nor did he see anyone else around, so he walked out and looked into the street.

He couldn’t believe his eyes. There was a city, a huge city all around him with building after building going down as far as he could see in either direction, as well as some huge skyscrapers in the distance…not to mention the one behind him that the alley had been carved out of. It rose up so high he had trouble guessing its height, but there was more to worry about at the moment…like the fact that the streets were rubble strewn and deserted.

“What the…” he said, getting caught in the right arm by a small projectile. It smashed into goo, leaving his elbow numb and his head turning, trying to see where it had come from.

Something inside him told him not to wait, so even as he looked he ran across the street to the nearest set of doors he could see, causing another shot to miss him by inches.

The next thing he knew he was inside and climbing stairs as people were chasing him. He ran and ran, ducking into one deserted hallway after another, going up stairs, then down stairs, then up again trying to lose his pursuit. Eventually he ended up on a decorative ledge spanning a wide set of double doors, laying down behind some short potted plants that had long since withered and died.

In truth he didn’t know where he was or how he’d gotten there, but all Rio knew at the moment was that he needed to slow his breathing and hope to hell that they didn’t see him. He closed his eyes and concentrated, noticing that his left hand was shaking and he couldn’t stop it, so he tucked it underneath his butt as he lay on his back and tried to think of a calm ocean beach under blue skies, light years away from his current situation.

His eyes snapped open as he heard the faint rasps and clicks of armor as someone ran by underneath him…then another some 20 seconds later. Neither paused, and Rio was enormously grateful, despite the fact that his heart felt like it was clenched up into a diamond inside his chest.

He waited a long time before getting enough courage to slip an eye up over the edge of one of the pots and have a look. The hallway was big, bigger than he remembered. It must have been a main corridor within the building, but it was completely abandoned. He saw a desk tipped over and otherwise askew down a ways, remembering suddenly that he’d nearly tripped over it as he ran by after slipping on a puddle of water or some liquid that he couldn’t see.

Rio took a deep breath and tried to think back to what the trainer had told them, especially the part about living in the moment. This had to be a test, one where they didn’t get forewarning. But if it was a test what was he supposed to do?

Approaching footsteps from underneath prompted Rio to duck back down, but he silently scooted far enough that he could look around the dead stem of one of the plants and get a tiny peek at who was chasing him…only to see another grey uniform like his own flash by.

Rio popped his head up and saw the backside of a familiar red ponytail. Gathering his voice, which had gone hiding along with his body, he tried to make as low level a noise as he could.

“Psst, psst,” he said in a whispery mouth noise.

Julie immediately spun around, holding a small pistol in her left hand while her right hung limp beside her…much as Rio’s right forearm had been doing before, though his nervous jitters had seemed to bring it back to life sometime during the past minute or so.

“Kid?” she whispered as Rio sat up enough for her to see his face and torso.

“Yeah,” he whispered back.

“What happened to you?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the hallway, in both directions, as she walked back underneath the doorway so she could talk to him in as quiet a voice as possible.

“I don’t know. I got shot…and ran…then hid here.”

“Have you seen any of the enemy?”

“I heard two come by, but didn’t look up.”

“Did you hear which way they were going?” she asked, not expecting him to have the skill to differentiate the sounds but asking anyway.

“Underneath,” he said confidently.

Julie glued her eyes in that direction and held her pistol ready. “Get down from there. You’re coming with me.”

“Where?” Rio said, climbing quickly.

“Beats me. Stay quiet and two meters behind me at all times. I’ve only got a few shots left, and I don’t want to trip over you if we need to run.”

“Where did you get that?” Rio whispered, not knowing if she’d get mad at him for talking. She was a good inch taller than him and looked like she could snap him in two at will, despite being jaw-droppingly attractive.

“Knocked out the guy trying to shoot me. They’re wearing armor, but the stingers soak through. Let’s go.”

Julie walked under the ledge that Rio had been hiding on, with him locking his mouth shut and trying to stay exactly 2 meters behind her, just as she’d said, happy to have someone else to follow. Otherwise he would have stayed up in his hiding place for who knows how long.

3

May 29, 2458

Solar System

Mars

Rio woke with a start, finding a fingernail poking in the side of his neck as Julie woke him up as he had apparently dozed off in the lounge chair he’d been inhabiting for the hour or so since they’d finished with their last training session of the day…a short, but intense stair climbing run.

“What?” he asked groggily.

“Time to go to sleep,” she said with a grin, then pointed across the lounge to the exit that led to their individual quarters.

“What?” he asked again. They didn’t have curfew until 9 pm.

Rio glanced down at his watch and did a double take. He’d come into the lounge a little after 5 pm, and was dead sure he couldn’t have been in here more than 2 hours, tops, but his watch read 8:57.

“What the hell?” he asked, prying his body up out of the chair and finding himself quite stiff.

“Long nap?” she asked, nudging him on like a bossy sister.

“I guess so,” he said, still not sure how he could have lost track of that much time. He’d been watching the news vids with a lot of the other recruits after their official day was over, which was to be spent either in their quarters, the cafeteria, or the huge and well-furnished lounge that he was in now…which virtually everyone had been in, all 200 or so of them in Rio’s residential group. Now there was only a handful of people left.

“Next time sleep in your bunk,” Julie told him as they both headed for the distant door on the other end of a narrow, hard walkway that separated the vid screens/games half of the lounge from the assortment of other equipment and activities that made up the other half, beyond which was the staircase that led down four levels to the cafeteria that they shared with 7 other residential groups.

“I can’t believe I was out for that long,” Rio said honestly.

“Star Force training might use short workouts, but if it’s not something you’re used to it’ll suck the energy out of you just the same. Until you adapt, I suggest you try and get a few extra hours of sleep. The standard 8 won’t be enough.”

“I’ll remember that,” he promised, rubbing a crick in his neck. Maybe his bunk was a better place to rest than the chair, no matter how comfortable it had felt at the outset.

“Make sure your alarm is set loud, kid,” she said as they came to the doors and started to head different ways…her to the left and him to the right. “Don’t want to get penalized for oversleeping.”

“What’s the penalty?”

“I…don’t know. If you’re smart you won’t find out the hard way.”

“Ok, thanks…” he said as she walked off. He turned down his hallway and counted side hallways until he came to his section, then found door number 118. He typed in his access code, then had to do it a second time as his sleepy finger mishit one of the 8 digits. A bit slower and he got the code right, with the door sliding into the wall to reveal his tiny quarters.

Rio walked in and closed the door with a touch of the control panel set just inside the door jamb, then he locked it with another button an inch higher before pulling off his shirt and tossing it on the bit of floor the hexagonal room contained. The two angled walls on his right contained a single bunk built under an overhanging set of storage bins, with the opposite 3 walls containing a personal vid screen, pullout desk, and a very compact restroom/shower also set into the wall.

His ceiling was a geodesic dome with back lighting, taking away a bit of claustrophobia with programmable lights, which he had set on a slow, oscillating flicker of blue and green, but the floor was only a few square meters, meaning he could stretch out from his bunk and touch the restroom door, making him feel like his quarters were more like a containment pod…but at least they were exclusively his and he didn’t have to suffer through a roommate.

Rio laid down on his bunk and quickly began to fall asleep. Ever since that first day when they’d been deposited into the fake city to be hunted down by the trainers, he’d been barraged with workout sessions divided up between information dumps. Today the morning session had been focused on the various types of armor Star Force used, with commandos having 3 distinct varieties that differed from what the Archons, Knights, and others wore…carapace, vacuum, and jump.

Commando armor was designed to be quick and agile like the Archons’, but the one notable difference was the squarish design of the plates. Archon armor had smooth edges, while commando armor had rounded lines. Rio didn’t know what the significance of that was, but it gave them the ability to differentiate between a commando and an Archon set, despite the color IDs.

Commando armor could come in all kinds of colors, but mainline units either came in a dull grey or dirty white. Clan commandos had their armor appropriately customized to their Clan colors, while Star Force security armor usually had some gold coloration worked in. Knight armor was always pure white, like it was stating their superiority over the Regulars, and Rio couldn’t hold it against them. They were brutes, far larger in size than he or even the American Ranger trio, and though he hadn’t seen any of them here, Rio had gotten a combat demonstration vid in the afternoon information session that showed several in action, both in armor and out.

Then, as insanely humbling as that was, they showed him and the others in his ‘class’ an Archon adept, who despite her smaller size managed to fight toe to toe with a Knight, after taking apart a quartet of Regulars. Then a higher ranking Regular was brought in and somehow managed to take down the Archon.

But the demonstration didn’t stop there. A higher level adept came in and picked the Regular apart, then a Knight came in and did the same to the Archon. One after another, progressively higher ranked Regulars, Knights, and Archons were brought forth on the vid, clearly demonstrating the stratified nature of Star Force combat soldiers. One class wasn’t defaultly better than another, it was all determined by the skill level of the individual…though the Knights definitely had a size advantage.

By the time the vid worked up to an Archon ranger Rio’s jaw had dropped and stayed down for the remainder of the vid. Nothing he had ever seen even came close to the speed and strength he was witnessing, not even the most wild movie characterization of the Archons ever made. Reality, somehow, was lightyears beyond the fiction, making Rio wonder just how many awesome secrets Star Force had that they hadn’t felt like sharing with the public.

When Rio finally drifted off to sleep again, despite the long nap he’d already taken, his dreams started to repeat parts of the stunning combat he’d witnessed, via vid, earlier…along with the trainer’s words after Rio and Julie had been revived from their stun-induced defeat the first day, despite the fact that they’d lasted the longest out of the group.

“If you want to survive, you have to upgrade your individual skills…or hope to have some very powerful allies covering your ass.”

That sentiment took on new meaning after watching the skill levels displayed in the vid, and Rio’s subconscious mind agreed with his earlier sentiment that he had a very, very long way to go before he was going to fit in around here, but if what they’d told him about having no time limits was true, then what he had to do was live in the moment, one day, one workout at a time, and slowly, gradually climb the ranks.

Then maybe one day, very far down the road, he’d become a superhuman like them.

One month later his assessment hadn’t changed, but his understanding of the challenge did as he learned the fundamentals of training and just how badass the Star Force troops were. His body was sore, stiff, and fat-deprived now, with him sucking down platefuls of food at every opportunity in between workout sessions and during his off hours at the end of the day, most of which he spent in his bunk getting extra hours of sleep…that never seemed to be enough.

He woke up each day wanting to stay in bed, but after the first week he’d finally convinced his sleepy mind that he needed to get up in order to become superhuman, so despite the want to stay under the covers and soak up more of the bliss, he’d pull himself out of bed at the sound of his alarm and quickly dress in what he thought of as his ‘pajamas’. With his casual uniform on he’d report to the doors that exited the residential area, then get passed through by security that would otherwise not permit anyone to leave. New as they were, they didn’t have roaming privileges yet. Those they’d have to earn later.

Once through, Rio headed to the equipment room where he and the others got dressed in their training gear, which in this case was merely shorts, shirt, and running shoes. He and the other recruits hit a nearby track and got their pace laps in, of which Rio’s were 7:00 miles. He’d worked up to 2.5 miles, or 10 laps on the track, and even though the pace was now well within his wheelhouse, it was still an effort to get the laps in. Thankfully all he had to do was live in the moment and keep up with his holographic tracking icon, all the while the other recruits did the same thing, running at their individual paces and lap totals.

With his workout taking less than 20 minutes, he was back in the equipment room within a half hour to shower and dress in a fresh casual uniform. Then it was off to the cafeteria for breakfast, which for Rio was a stack of pancakes, two donuts, and several glasses of ‘red,’ which was one of several drink flavors/concoctions, each of which had different nutritional values. Red was full of electrolytes and other things needed to replace workout losses, while blue, green, white, purple, black, and clear all had different supplements. Some were vitamins, others were sugars, and all had their purpose, with ‘clear’ being pure water.

The foodstuffs had some similarities, with specific items having specific supplements, but Rio hadn’t given much attention to them other than what his nose and taste buds told him…which, ironically, one of his ‘classroom’ sessions had indicated was a good idea, for the body’s biofeedback worked to inform the individual of what it needed at that moment. It was a subtle thing in most cases, and Rio didn’t think he was reading anything subtle into his tastes. He was hungry and craving food, sugars mostly, but that was the extent to which he made it a mental exercise.

Mouth open, food in…then after that, along with a lot of red, he’d either head back to the lounge or, usually, take a slow walk over to the information session he had to report to next and just get there early. Two hours of information about a variety of things, all of which he could then look up in his quarters later for review, given that all information was locked until it was broached in session, and it was back to the equipment room again and out of his casual uniform, which he stowed in a locker before changing into a full body combat suit.

The material was thin, but the knees and elbows were slightly padded, and the whole thing preserved his agility to the point that sometimes he felt like he was naked. It was colored gray with shoes that zipped into the legs, forming a total single piece that went up to his tight neckline, but left his head exposed. Now properly attired he headed over to another area of the training facility, this one a weapons range where he would get in an hour of static shooting practice with a variety of weapons, stun and live rounds, before switching to the obstacle course half.

That was much more difficult, which had him running along a path and engaging holographic enemies as they randomly popped up. He was scored on hits/kills/ammo and had never gotten all the way through to the end without running his weapon dry, including the rifle which carried an insanely large amount of rounds. When he was given that, it usually ended up being a zombie fest…which was what Raven called a particular challenge where there was a holographic chaser moving at a specific speed behind you, keeping you running forward at all times else it make contact and trigger a disqualification.

As it pressed you forward there were hundreds of holographic targets…some Human, most lizard, with a variety of other races thrown in, including some fictitious ones, such as ewoks and Zerg, each with their own movement patterns. They were all his targets, while others were targets/hunters that would actively move towards him, and if they made ‘physical contact,’ which in this case meant the holograph overlapping with his body, it would dock him points. That meant he had to track, shoot, and evade simultaneously in an overly chaotic run to the finish…all of which had to stay ahead of the ‘zombie’ behind him, which preventing him from camping out and putting some order to the chaos.

By the time he was finished at the range his legs were dragging all the way back to the equipment room. He had two hours off for lunch, a significant piece of which he spent in the shower. Some of the others skipped that step and went straight to eat, knowing they were going to have another training session afterward, but with an unlimited supply of uniforms, Rio preferred discarding his sweaty ones whenever he could and getting cleaned up in between sessions.

He got to the cafeteria and chowed down again, this time on breadsticks, pasta, and a huge piece of cake. Hungry for more, he held himself back, not wanting to get sick an hour later when he went through basic hand to hand combat drills, all individual based against practice equipment, developing and strengthening the movements that his body needed to put to muscle memory, upon which later sessions would be built around.

Everything here worked off of prerequisites. Learning one thing led to another that required knowledge of the first, and the physical training was no exception. In his spare time he had a chance to look ahead at some of the challenges he had available to him, seeing what scores he needed to unlock others and additional equipment. So far the sniper rifle, which was his favorite weapon by far, was still out of his reach, requiring mastering the pistol in three versions first…plasma, stinger, and stun…enough to make him competent enough to hit targets rather than friendlies most of the time.

Another thing he learned early on was that ‘mastering’ something didn’t mean you couldn’t improve any further…far from it. There was always another ability level to rise up to, with the appropriately named ‘trailblazers’ leading the way for the Archons, pushing their skills into unknown territory and giving those that followed benchmarks to train towards or against. The same was true of the Regulars, with their own leaders providing an example of just how much could be accomplished over the centuries if one had the mental fortitude to devote themselves to the task day in and day out without fail.

And they weren’t done yet. They were still rising higher, attaining new skill levels while the trainers wrote the requirements for others. Those men and women fascinated him. What would it be like to go at it completely blind as to what was ahead? Everything Rio was learning and becoming was based off of what others had done before him and codified into the quickest, most efficient means of learning for others to tackle and level up as fast as possible.

Besides their skills, which were nearly god-like already, they had to be true badasses in order to do what they did and cut the trail for the others, like him, to follow on.

In the first few weeks of his training, Rio had occasionally thought back to home and Nadia, with his sentimental feelings quickly being replaced with sober understanding of just how sheltered and stagnant he had been. He could never go back there, be what he had once been, and he felt a mixture of pity and revulsion at those who lived their entire lives in such a state.

By the end of the month all thoughts to that past life were gone, with Rio’s entire being now dedicated to training, training, and more training. This was his life now, and it was more than he had ever dreamed of it being…because it was real, visceral, and a lot of other things he couldn’t put into words.

Bottom line was, it was what he wanted…and from that point forward he never had any regrets concerning his decision to leave. Star Force was legit, and he couldn’t imagine him doing anything else, now that he’d gotten a taste of the real thing.

4

December 28, 2458

Solar System

Mars

Rio ducked down behind a low wall as stingers flew over his head, cradling his rifle across his chest as he glanced down the flank and saw his teammate for this exercise flash him a hand signal. It was palm flat and level to the ground, but his hand held steady, indicating that Rio should stay behind cover.

He didn’t respond, but kept his eyes on that hand until it suddenly flipped over to where he could see the back of the hand with a thumb pointing up…at which point Rio, trusting his teammate’s vantage point, stood up and jumped over the wall in one semi-fluid motion. He came down on the other side and took three awkward steps forward before sliding down behind another low wall…with more stingers flashing over his head, narrowly missing.

Rio shoved his protective sunglasses back up his nose, them having slipped half an inch when he hit the ground. He knew he should have picked up a snugger pair in the equipment room, but there was no going back now…he’d have to make do with what he had.

He glanced around, seeing a pillar on the wall to his left, and crawled towards it, allowing him to stand up on a knee and poke his right eyeball out around cover to where he could see the single turret he and his 4 man team were approaching. There was a series of low walls going all the way up to the thing, but the deactivation sphere atop the damn thing wouldn’t go live until they got up to the closest wall, forcing them to leapfrog their way up to it rather than pepper it with paint from range.

But then again, that was the point of the exercise, and this was his fourth time going through it this afternoon. The idea was for no one to get hit while giving them a chance to practice their coordinated movement tactics…with being fast and clean the objective. The basic hand signals they’d been taught helped greatly, and Rio had memorized them the first chance he had, but there was only so much you could do with a single hand, or two, and he really wished he had a comm piece right now so he could tell Linda when the right time to move was.

He could see her hunkered down on the opposite side from him, one wall ahead. She looked back at him waiting for him to give the go ahead, but he held his palm out flat to the ground, telling her to stay put. Rio had to be careful to stay behind the pillar, otherwise the turret would shoot his hand…something he’d learned the hard way a few weeks ago. Poking his eye out and trying to do it slowly so as not to trigger the motion detection sensors on the turret, he watched the twin barrels rotate and depress slightly as Nate jumped up and down behind his wall, getting the turret’s attention.

When it rotated to track him, spitting out some stingers that missed badly, Rio gave Linda the ‘thumbs up’ and saw her blindly jump up and slither over the wall, disappearing from view far quicker than Rio had. A moment later stingers landed on the other side just as he saw her crawl into view up against the next wall, with no paint on her. Once again her previous gymnastics experience allowed her the flexibility to bend and move low to the ground in ways that Rio couldn’t…at least yet. His flexibility was increasingly slowly, but he wasn’t going to catch her for some time, meaning he was going to have to stiff-leg it through these exercises until he was able to limber up.

Ok, she’s there, he’s there…which means I need to go there, he mentally planned out before dropping into a crawl and headed down the length of the wall closer to where Linda had gone over, but near to another pillar that would give him a vantage point, allowing him to coordinate with the others. It had felt like a painful game of chess to him when they’d first been introduced to the maneuvering tactics, but now it was coming easier, with the available positions starting to pop into his mind on sight rather than him having to think it through too much.

He signaled to Tom, getting him over the next wall, then provided a distraction to the turret, helping Nate get by…leaving him the furthest back. His teammates returned the favor, created a diversion that let him move up not one, but two walls using his hurdling technique from high school track on the second barrier before dropping into a roll that bumped him up against the second, back first.

Rio was safe though, with a couple of blue stingers hitting the wall behind him and splashing their paint and stun energy against it. The stun energy dissipated into the material, leaving only the slick goo behind, but he knew if he touched it too soon he’d get a little numb, for the stun didn’t disappear immediately on impact. Same went for a person, which he’d also learned the hard way when one of his teammates had gotten hit and he reached to pull him behind cover. His hand had gone numb when he grabbed the man’s shoulder, causing his grip to slip and a wash of pins and needles to follow that severely hampered him through the rest of that challenge.

Rookie mistakes, he knew, and he was glad he was beyond that point now. A few minutes later and this impromptu team was up to the closest wall, with them taking turns popping up and shooting the deactivation sphere atop the turret until it became saturated enough to end the exercise. When it did a finish tone sounded and blue lights came on…along with a cleaning crew that quickly wiped off the paint splatters, resetting the course within 2 minutes for the next group to come through.

Rio knew he didn’t have time to wait around and go through again with a different set of teammates, so he checked his rifle in at the waiting area and headed out into the hallways that ran through the training areas, deciding to get in a little sparring practice with an available trainer before heading back to the equipment room for a show and over to his designated cafeteria for supper. When he got there he saw Julie and Raven already there and went over to join them with his plateful of carb and sugar-heavy foodstuffs, not to mention two large bottles of red.

“You need to shave, kid,” Julie said as he sat down, with him reflexively rubbing his chin, realizing that he’d forgotten to shave that morning.

“Guess so,” he said, taking a bite out of a roll. “Must have slipped my mind this morning.”

“You still having trouble sleeping?” Raven asked, then downed a spoonful of mashed potatoes.

“Yeah. It’s like my body is so tired it forgets how to sleep. Best I can do is catch a crash nap, but they don’t last longer than 45 minutes. Then I’m back to being a zombie.”

“Sounds like you could use a girlfriend,” Julie suggested, paying more attention to her plate than him.

Rio looked up. “You offering?”

Julie half choked, then looked at him with a weird expression on her face. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Well, it was your idea,” Raven commented with a grin.

She starred laser bolts back at him. “He’s not my type, and besides, he’s like my brother. You can’t screw your brother.”

“Says who?” Raven shot back. “Well, from a girl’s perspective anyway. Biologically it’s all the same, brother or stranger.”

“Fine,” she said, taking a sip of green, “you can screw your brother, but you shouldn’t want to. Totally different relationship there. The two aren’t compatible.”

“Still,” Raven teased, “if it would help him sleep.”

She stuck two fingers into his mashed potatoes, dipped up a healthy glob, then flipped them in his face all within a second and a half.

Rio couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks Raven, but I don’t think sex is going to help. My body’s all messed up from the changes, I’d guess. I just need time to adapt.”

“Wise words,” Raven approved, flicking a bit of potatoes back at Julie, who caught it on her nose. “Leave it to a girl to think sex solves everything.”

She pointed a warning finger at him, then went back to eating as Styk came and sat down next to her, directly across from Rio. He looked at his fellow ex-Rangers and frowned.

“What happened to you two?”

“A difference of opinion,” Julie said.

“The kid can’t sleep, and she suggested sex would help.”

Styk glanced at her. “I didn’t think the young were your type?”

She pounded both fists down on the table, bracketing her plate. “I am not the only girl around here.”

“But you are the hottest,” Rio said, drawing a snicker from Raven.

Julie’s mouth opened to argue, then closed against when she realized what she would be arguing against. “Thanks.”

“Just pointing out the obvious, sis,” Rio added.

“Did I miss something else?” Styk asked.

Raven shook his head. “Just Jules inferring that we’re all family here, and therefore off limits on hump day.”

“Ouch. Guess I’m going to have to take back that Valentine’s day present I got you,” Styk joked as he bit into a very long sugar stick.

“Yeah, yeah, pick on me,” Julie complained. “I was just trying to help the kid.”

“Thank you,” Rio said in between bites.

“As far as us being a ‘family,’” Styk commented, pausing to take a drink, “I’m afraid we’re going to be splitting up. I’m heading out tomorrow.”

“Where to?” Raven asked, serious.

“I passed my trials, so I’m moving to another facility a few hundred kilometers from here for advanced training.”

“When did this happen?” Julie demanded.

“Two hours ago.”

“You got the agility course mark?” Rio asked, curious. That one in particular was giving him headaches in the a la carte trials that all of them were working their individual way towards passing.

“Took some doing, but yeah, just yesterday. Crazy, they’ve already got me scheduled to leave this soon.”

“What about the graduation ceremony?”

“Ha…there is none. Just a joke the trainers let spread around as rumor.”

“Nothing?” Julie asked.

“Just a brief talk, explaining what’s happening next. Passing basic means you’re not a screw-up, so now it’s onto the real training to become commandos.”

“Good,” Raven said with a nod. “I thought things around here were a little weak.”

“Be careful what you ask for,” Julie warned him.

“If they’re weak, why haven’t you passed yet?” Styk challenged.

“I’m close. Maybe another week or two.”

“What’s holding you up?”

“Stupid sword. Really, in this day and age, who uses a sword?”

“Knights,” Rio offered.

“Well we’re not training to be Knights. I can see using a stun stick, but the sword is just too damn long to be of much use.”

Rio smiled, but didn’t say anything, though Julie raised an eyebrow.

“What?” she asked him.

“I already passed the sword trial. Wasn’t that hard once I stopped using it to ‘chop wood,’” he explained, using the phrase his trainer had drilled into him to correct his mistake.

“Way to go, kid,” Julie said, brimming with amusement as she stared at Raven. “If he can do it, then you just suck.”

“I’ll second that,” Styk added.

“As I said,” Raven emphasized, “I’ll get it soon. Then I’ll join you wherever it is you’re going.”

“Maybe not,” Styk said, his merriment disappearing. “I’m told there are multiple facilities. We might not end up at the same place.”

“So this could be goodbye?” Julie asked.

“I prefer ‘until next time,’” Styk said, forcing a smile.

“There’s a chance we might meet up again,” Raven added. “I’ve been talking with some of the vets that turned trainer, and they say assignments aren’t always blind. Sometimes you get options. Let us know where you land, and there’s a chance we might be able to follow.”

“Will do,” Styk said, returning his attention to his plate.

“You too, kid,” Julie said, drawing an eyebrow from Raven. “Keep us up to date on your progress…occasionally.”

“Yeah, I’m going to be here a while longer,” he said with resignation.

“It takes time,” Raven offered. “We started here on the same day, but we’ve had years of experience you lack. If you tested out the same time we did, then we’d suck.”

“I’ll make it,” Rio promised.

“One step at a time, kid,” Styk cautioned. “Stick with it and we’ll see you on the other side.”

It took Rio another 8 months before he finally completed his graduation trials, the last of which was the running test, which required a sub 16:00 5k. That was three times as long and just as fast as the mile he ran to qualify for the program, and had left him thoroughly drained afterward, but unlike the mile he felt more in control of the 5k, now that he knew how to train for it…and had a pacing marker to follow. That let him bury himself in workouts, not having to worry about anything other than staying with the glowing dot as long as he could.

His legs didn’t like that method, but they responded to it well enough. Still, it takes time to build strength and speed, and he was happy with completing the trials when he did. Others had come and gone from the training facility, but there were some that had gotten there before him and had yet to test out, meaning he wasn’t bottom of the barrel. As the trainers had said, it didn’t matter how long it took you to get to the qualification point, so long as you got there, then, after that, everyone was even going forward.

Which was something that Rio was eagerly anticipating. When he got his graduation speech, he was told that the training would be ramped up, with a lot more challenges and less individual training time. He’d have to use what he’d learned in basic, combined with computer database resources, to create his own physical training workouts…forcing him to rely less and less on trainers, at least for things they’d already gone over time and again.

When it came time to leave he packed a duffle and hopped a train that took him across the Martian landscape, bypassing several cities on the way until it dropped him off at a huge complex, and that was saying something given the monstrous Star Force-built cities that sprouted up across the planet. The training facility looked like an artificial mountain range, but with smooth sides and flat peaks, on top of which he could see dropships coming and going, along with several larger starships, cargo transports from the look of it, though they were so far away it was hard to be sure.

The ‘mountains’ grew larger as the train crept towards them, ultimately ducking into a tunnel and regaining its apparent speed…for the sheer size of the center had made the train feel as if it were standing still rather than speeding along at several hundreds of miles per hour. Once inside it continued its speedy transit, eventually coming out the other side, allowing Rio to see that the mountain ‘range’ was actually a ring, with a huge interior ‘crater’ that housed what looked like exterior training facilities for mechs.

He hadn’t realized that this would be a shared division facility, but as the train slowed he could see dozens of mechs moving in formation, while others were lifting objects and running over others. Some jumped into the air and floated on anti-grav jump jets, while others climbed rocky hills, all of which appeared to be non-veteran pilots by the awkward way the mechs were moving around.

There were also aircraft in play, and far off in the distance he thought he saw infantry in pressure suits moving around on the surface. That scared him, for he didn’t like the idea of dying if he got a tiny cut on an arm or leg. Mars’ atmospheric pressure may have risen slightly since Star Force had first colonized it, due to terraforming factories turning rock into gas, but the natural environment was still unlivable.

It was warmer, but still below freezing on most of the planet, and the oxygen level was minuscule. Most of the gasses being produced were carbon dioxide, which several hardy forests were gobbling up and producing the oxygen…but for an entire planet’s worth of atmosphere it barely made a dent, meaning that if you went outside without a suit, you’d either suffocate to death or bleed out from decompression, just not as fast as you would have in the old days.

The rest of the planet was still a dry, cold desert, with Star Force’s major terraforming projects using their resources on planets with near to normal gravity. Mars, at 37%, was better suited to the interior-dwelling mega structures that already covered the planet, with more and more gradually being added to fill in the remaining swaths of red as seen from orbit, which only recently passed the 50% mark, making the planet more urban than empty.

Rio’s train came to a halt in a terminal that housed several other tracks, with two other trains visible parked inside shielded buildings that allowed them in but kept the cold and low pressure air out. He got off onto the landing, duffle carried over his shoulder, and moved to the nearby check-in station as he’d been instructed to. From there various handlers escorted him off through underground tunnels and into the mountain range of a complex where he was inundated with people…all Star Force, and recruits by the look of them, making him feel like this was Star Force’s version of the upper class in high school…meaning he was at the bottom of the totem pole all over again.

But at least he’d have company, for there were a lot of other recruits fresh off of basic training that he was assigned quarters with. Unlike his first dip into the basic training world, there was no survival or combat scenario, just an introductory meeting and an assignment to a training team, which he met up with the next day, headed up by an active commando that was overseeing a staff of trainers that likewise oversaw all 1000 of Rio’s team.

Together, they’d be competing against other teams, both in terms of scores and combat scenarios, meaning that they were all starting out at the same place as he was…rookies, and they’d have to learn and grow together, else, the commando warned, they’d never get their official rank, for while a commando had to be able to take on a ‘one man army’ role at any given time, it was essential that they be able to work together for maximum advantage, which was something they’d need when facing superior opponents…such as some of the other teams that had been at this facility for a few years.

Rio knew that meant he might have to go up against Raven, Styk, and Julie at some point…which he wasn’t looking forward to, but who knew. After a year or so he might feel differently, for he got the feeling that his previous ‘education’ in basic really was just the beginning, and that he was about to be indoctrinated into a whole new level of badass...

5

March 1, 2460

Solar System

Mars

“Today is the day you take your training to the next level,” Tamon Sla said to Rio’s team, designated Epsilon 12, as they were back in the amphitheater for another lecture/instruction session from their commando overseer. The man appeared in casual uniform on the center stage, with a much larger version of him being displayed on the vid screen behind, which was the only way Rio was able to get a good look at the small vile he held in his hand.

“This is a concoction that we call ‘ambrosia.’ It boosts your energy levels and allows you to train longer and harder than before. With proper doses, you’ll be able to lengthen your running workouts immediately…with improper doses you’ll be in your bunks with a monster headache the likes of which you’ve probably never experienced before. This stuff is potent. Take too much and you’ll regret it.”

“Both the Knights and Archons rely on the stuff, but do not misunderstand me when I say that this aids in your training…it doesn’t replace it. Ambrosia alone won’t make you strong, it amplifies the training process, and that training is what upgrades your bodies. Use it wisely, and ambrosia will advance you through the abilities levels far faster than your current rate of progress.”

So that’s how they got so strong, Rio thought, one piece of the gigantic Star Force puzzle finally falling into place. He and the other recruits were far inferior to the training marks of line units, and he wondered how they’d ever be able to measure up…even if they did have hundreds of years of training to do it.

“Over the next month you will be given no new challenges. Your fitness training is going to take precedence. Learn to use the ambrosia properly, let it upgrade your workouts and determine your proper doses before you return to your normal training. I cannot overemphasize the importance of this transitional period. It is key. So listen to your trainers and be cautious in upping your dosage. Over time, as your workouts increase, your body will be able to use more, so don’t try to copy others. If you took one of mine you’d overdose in all its painful glory, so much so it might kill you…or maybe you might just want to die.”

“You don’t take this,” he said, holding up the vile. “This is far too much. We measure it in foodstuffs that are laced with an exact amount. We never drink the liquid. The doses are too small to measure in this form. From now on you’ll have access to the new foodstuffs. Be wary not to confuse them with your others. They’ll be set aside in a different area, just don’t forget these aren’t snacks. They’re precisely measured ambrosia doses, and different types of foodstuffs have different amounts, so don’t grab one without checking. The heavy doses won’t be available, because none of you will need them, but in other Star Force facilities they will be, so don’t grab one a ranger would take, or, like I said, you’ll be in a world of hurt.”

Rio listened intently as Sla talked them through various applications of the ambrosia, as well as things not to do with it in training. He tried to soak it all in, but a lot of it he just didn’t understand, and he hoped that was because it required some measure of experience to grasp…but if he did miss anything some of his teammates would figure it out and explain it later, so he didn’t worry. They’d gotten good at information sharing and helping each other with training, because it had become apparent early on that the better they made each other, the better the team became, and they really wanted to outdo the other teams on their level…if not take a few of the senior ones down.

They had a total of five years to work together towards graduation, at which point the team would either be advanced or failed, as a group, based on their challenge performances, both man to man and against the various automated courses. If the team passed, then the individuals would all face their own final trials. If completed they’d earn the position and status as a Regular, the ‘lowest’ level of Star Force’s superhumans.

But Rio knew it wasn’t low by any standard. It meant he’d be one of the elite, and he was sure going to have to earn it, given the way they were being trained. If he didn’t make it after 5 years he’d be recycled back into a newly formed team and get the chance to go through it all over again, hopefully taking his experience and skills and adding to them enough to make it through a second time.

Sla had told them about one particular commando that was a friend of his, and how he’d gone through three times before finally making it, but once he did he became one of the most steady and reliable commandos in his former unit. Shooting stars burned out, he explained, but it was the steady progressor that climbed their way up the ability ladder, and it was the steady progressor that Star Force was interested in.

Hitting a plateau was the one thing nobody wanted, with those that appeared ‘gifted’ often doing so. No commando got to being what they were by luck, privilege, or favor. They had to earn it, over and over again, so there could be no mistake about their skills and their ability to continually increase them.

Which was what Rio was focused on. He was competitive, for sure. All of them were. But he didn’t get hung up on the rankings like others did. He was focused on improving…fast or slow, but always improving. That was the one thing that kept him going, despite all the craziness of their training schedule. Ignoring the big picture and focusing on taking tiny steps forward. Between that and the support of his teammates, he figured he had a decent chance of graduating along with the rest of them in this go through, but if he didn’t, he’d already decided to stick it out as long as needed, 100 years if necessary. He wasn’t going to quit. He was going to become a commando, one way or another.

“You ready?”

“I hope so,” Rio said, running a finger under the tight neckline of his training suit. “I’ve only got three days left.”

“Anxiousness will slow you down,” the trainer warned. “You need to relax a hair, and do it by living in the moment. All that matters is moving…not the implications of what happens if you fail.”

“Got it.”

“Step up.”

Rio did as instructed, mounting the small pedestal that would start him on the 3rd of 5 trials…the only one left for him to pass. This was his 17th attempt, and he wasn’t very confident in his luck changing this go around.

As instructed he put those thoughts aside, focusing on his body position as a clear tube dropped down around him, sealing him in. He focused on his breathing, timing it right as he heard the countdown tones and dropped into a crouch. When the final one sounded the top of his tube opened and water poured down, flooding him. Patiently he held still, feeling his buoyancy manifest as he held his breath with his right hand pinching his nose until the water settled, then he launched himself up, pushing off the floor, and grabbed the top rim of the cylinder for additional leverage.

Carrying as much momentum with him as he could, he swam up some 20 meters until he broke the surface on an indoor lake, blowing out a bit of water and jerking his head around, getting his bearings.

There was a dock to his left, shore to his right, and jungle straight ahead…but he chose none of them. Swimming about, he headed behind him and across the long part of the lake to a wall that appeared unclimbable, but from previous experience he knew it contained small handholds, something he’d learned by watching one of his friends go through the trial.

It was a long swim, about 300 meters in length, but when he got to the wall he had to swim around even more until he found the right spot. Digging his fingers into the small indents, he pulled himself out of the water and began scaling the wall, making sure not to slip and fall back down as he had before, knowing he was on the clock.

He had to get to one of the exits within 12 minutes, and Rio didn’t want to waste seconds here.

When he got to the top he held position, glancing down the walkway that was on the other side. The placement of the turrets changed with each trial, so one couldn’t map out the best way through with successive tries. He spotted one to his far right, but that was it, and it was doubtful it could hit him at this range.

Rio launched himself up and over the wall on his ambrosia-enhanced muscles and ran across the walkway to a small building, ducking down outside the front door where a low wall gave him some cover. A few stingers followed him, but the turret wasn’t able to land any. Rio held still in a crouch behind the wall for a moment, then crawled across the doorway and around the corner of the building, chancing a look around the wall, then running out around it and into the jungle shrubbery.

He knew he had to move fast, for the exit he was making for was around the other side of the lake. The closest ones were well guarded, as they all were, but the outside of the dome wasn’t a smooth wall, and he’d learned that there was a rimward entrance to one of them that avoided most of the typical turret nests…but it meant a lot of running with little time to do it.

And he couldn’t run straight line either. He had to zigzag, pausing to listen and look for turrets…not to mention a scattering of trainers with stinger rifles and snipes. They roamed about wherever they pleased, which was why Rio had chosen to swim for the wall. They would have seen him do so, which meant they would be repositioning around the perimeter towards those exits…all the while he was running the opposite direction. With luck, he should be able to slip by them, but so far his plan had failed 3 times.

He’d gotten nicked by a turret each time, which slowed him down enough to make him easy pickings for the trainers…especially when he got hit in a leg. No, his problem was he was rushing too much, which he knew was counterproductive. Like his trainers had been drilling into his head for years, he had to survive in order to succeed…and this time that meant going slow and ‘safe’ despite the hounding of the ever counting clock.

Tree after tree he passed, ducking down occasionally to get his bearings and line of sight on his next sprint. He found three new turrets enroute, but spotted them far enough ahead that they couldn’t blindside him. Adjusting his course each time, he moved around them, trimming what seconds he could off his trip until he got up to a section of sand bisecting the jungle that had two turrets up against the wall and several other pairs dotting the stretch all the way down to the lake…meaning the only way to get by these was move back down to the lake and take a swim, or take your chances running across.

Rio took two seconds to plot out his path, then sprinted out onto the sand, immediately drawing stingers his way. He jumped up and fell into a somersault, coming back up on his feet and running sideways…then skidded to a halt in a baseball slide before shooting off another direction, messing with the motion trackers as much as he could. Give the programming a straight line trajectory to follow and predict and you were as good as dead…meaning a direct sprint across the gap was a no go.

Rio got past the halfway point in the sand clean, then caught a stinger on his left thumb. His entire hand went numb, but his wrist on up still worked, meaning he was still almost completely mobile. The next somersault was awkward, but he managed to keep his momentum and get near to the edge of the sand, resisting the urge to sprint the rest of the way and throwing in another right angle pivot, rolling across the sand and then jumping back to his feet at an angle, with two stingers peppering the ground where his body would have been had he moved directly toward the trees.

Four more powerful strides and he was up to a sprint again, which he carried into the brush that shredded the stingers flying at him, making a shotgun-like effect of paint splinters that blanketed his back. He felt little patches of numbness pop up, but his torso motion wasn’t affected, nor were his legs that had escaped the paint shrapnel.

And then Rio was through, with his mind not lingering on that fact as he moved off closer to the dome edge, running away from his target exit and slightly backwards as he came within a few meters of the sand he’d just crossed, only all the way up near the wall. Carefully he snuck around a rock outcropping and ducked past the turrets, then climbed up out of the trees and ran through a narrow trench between the rocks that protected him from view on either side.

He was in the clear for turrets, he hoped, then caught a glance of paint splatter in front of him as a stinger from behind overshot. Pushing his speed as much as he could on the rough terrain, he ducked close to the side rocks, trying to disrupt the firing line of the sniper he knew was behind him. With little else to do aside from cross his fingers for luck, he ran through the trench and eventually made it to the far end, coming back out into the trees, having bypassed the thickest of the permanent turret fields.

Ducking down on reflex, he dropped beneath a pair of stingers flying through the air and rolled to the right, taking cover behind a tree. He held position and got his bearings, then sprinted off to another tree further on. Two more and he was past the turret and nearing the exit, which he knew would be guarded by multiple defense points.

When they came into view he held up, thinking fast how he was going to get through them. The others had used multiple tactics, none of which seemed especially good, so he chose a really bad one…in that it was slow. Backtracking a few meters he found a tree he liked and started to climb it, getting up as high as he could, then jumping from one tree to another, cringing as he could practically feel the seconds ticking off the clock.

Five tree hops later and he was past the turrets, which was the moment of truth. He grabbed a branch and swung his legs over, dropping to the ground in a crouch and sprinting for the finish inside a cave as the turrets rotated around when they picked him up on their motion trackers. He threw in a zigzag motion a couple of seconds later, not wanting to give them a stable target, then felt his right shoulder go numb a split second before he stumbled forward and fell to the ground, tumbling into a somersault that took him through the blue energy field that marked the finish.

Without his right arm working, Rio pulled his legs up to his chest then rocked forward, rolling up onto his heels and standing up as he heard the triumphant finish tone sound, indicating that he not only succeeded in passing the trial, but completed all trials…meaning he’d just earned his commando credentials.

An uncontrollable smile broke out on his face as a medic appeared and walked over, injecting him with a destunning serum that brought his arm back to life, along with all the other little numb spots covering his body.

“Thanks,” he said, rotating his arm around and confirming that it was back to normal.

The medic nodded and walked off, with Rio following him out of the cave exit and into the hallway beyond, transitioning from naturalistic environment to the urban landscape that made up the bulk of the training center. A few steps out he found Sla waiting.

“End of the road,” he said, grabbing his shoulder and steering him to the left. “Come with me.”

“Is there more?” Rio asked with a frown.

“There’s always more…something that you need to remember, commando. Time to find out where you’re going next.”

Rio didn’t ask any further questions, simply walking with the man over to a lift that took them somewhere else within the facility, somewhere that he’d never been before. When the doors eventually opened Sla led him out into some sort of a control center, a single, empty room with a bank of terminals ringing a holographic pad…a small version, making for an intimate room that reeked of importance.

“When a commando is minted, as you’ve just been, assignments are given here. There’s a complicated selection process that you don’t need to concern yourself with the details of, but it’s all highly automated. Unit commanders make their preferences early, with priority ratings, then when you finish I come over here and input your ID tag,” he said, typing in Rio’s number, “and we see where you end up.”

Sla took a step back and looked at where the hologram was…or rather should have been, for it was displaying nothing.

“Wait for it,” Sla said, picking up on Rio’s thoughts. He’d overseen so many mintings that he was familiar with all the various reactions, and Rio wasn’t anything new.

About 20 seconds went by, then a holographic icon popped up, drawing a raised eyebrow from Sla.

“Well, well…look what we have here,” he said, seeing the rare headband icon emblazoned a meter tall in between the two men. “You’ve been recruited by Clan.”

“Clan Metal Gear?” Rio asked, recognizing the symbol.

“One of the better commando Clans at that. Most new commandos get assigned to colonial mainline units. About 18% go out to the Clans. You might not stay there forever, there’s a bit of mixing going back and forth, but apparently someone values your skillset enough to put in a bid for you. Take a moment to appreciate that, then dispense with the good feelings. You’re about to leave kidsville and get your eyes opened to what experienced commandos are capable of.”

Rio locked eyes with him. “Looking forward to it.”

6

August 26, 2464

Solar System

Uranus

Rio rode the dropship down from the starport, seeing the greenish/blue atmosphere of the planet grow in size until it swallowed up the vid screen view, and still their destination wasn’t visible. Braking against their own orbital momentum coming off the starport, the dropship eventually slowed to a near hover, matching the drifting motion of the Snake Pit that was riding the upper atmosphere below them, partially obscured in the gas giant’s haze.

The colony wasn’t on the surface of the planet, because the planet had no surface. It was layer after layer of gasses, mostly hydrogen and helium, that transitioned down into a blender-like mantle of gas and ices. This gave it no true surface to land or build on, with the center core of the planet being made of rocky material…material that Clan Metal Gear was convinced contained significant corovon deposits.

Trace amounts of Herotol, a gas whose atomic structure included a single corovon along with 8 protons and 4 neutrons, had been discovered in the atmosphere of Uranus, and the Clan had been adamant about probing for deposits within the core. Davis had eventually granted them permission to try, and Clan Metal Gear had built the Snake Pit to facilitate those ongoing efforts.

The city/colony floated on anti-grav engines…a lot of engines, with backups for the backups, to keep it afloat and away from the dangerous interior. With pressures and temperatures rising the deeper one went into the planet, the more exotic the stages of matter became, with bits of liquid hydrogen mixed in with the rock, all of which was in a molten state. The thick ‘atmosphere’ contained the heat, preventing there from being a solid center, resulting in mud-like layers of material, sorted out by their densities and magnetic properties.

The corovon, if in its pure form, would have sunk to the center of the planet…in theory. There was no way to scan that deep, so the Metal Gears’ efforts were more exploratory than mining, and so far they hadn’t been able to penetrate anywhere near deep enough to get at the center of the planet, but they had been recovering other compounds that contained corovon, in small amounts, which made the facility worthwhile in the interim as they continued to upgrade their technology and devise ever more interesting techniques to get at the core.

Though Rio couldn’t see them, coming down from atop as the dropship was, there were thin tethers dropping off the bottom of the circular city that connected down to mining probes that were collecting material at varying depths. Hydrogen and helium collection were being harvested en mass, then exported out to the rest of the Clan, along with methane and other gasses in the upper atmosphere.

Over the years many of those tendrils had snapped, due to the winds, but the Clan had kept at it, devising more flexible and robust connections, allowing them to sway about without breaking. None of them were manned, but the underside of the city was covered in tendril mounts, letting the miners within the Snake Pit fish for whatever resources they wanted, when they wanted, with 12 currently deployed, two of which were deep probes.

Those probes were designed to penetrate the non-gaseous layers, coming into contact with liquids and ices, though those ices were not ‘solid,’ being churned up and moved about in a high pressure environment. Those probes were out of the prototype stage, and were reliable enough to pull in a slew of material into their ‘bulbs,’ which sat at the opposite end of the tethers. Those bulbs were miniature processing centers, sifting through the mix of material and discarding what they didn’t want. What they did want they shot up the tendrils to the city, where the more or less pure material was collected and put to use.

Power and control lines were located in the tendrils, meaning that if one got cut the only way to deal with the situation was to reel it up, fix the damage, and send it back down…which took hours, if not days. When powered, small anti-grav units in the bulb assisted with the lifting, but if they went out the Snake Pit had to physically haul them up, and if they tried to pull them in too fast the tethers would snap and they’d lose the bulb altogether.

That had happened several times in the beginning, before the engineers got a handle on the stresses and somewhat predictable nature of the turbulence in the planet. Those bulbs were now floating somewhere in the mantle, they assumed, but with no onboard power there was no way to locate them, though if they did have an active tracking beacon it was unlikely that it would have been detectable from the city’s location. Another probe might have been able to pick it up within a few kilometers, but without power another probe could pass within 1 meter of the lost bulbs and not even know they were there.

The Clan didn’t like littering, but the failures paid off in the form of new, more durable constructions, and they didn’t lose many nowadays. The only ones they did were the deep core probes that were still in what they labeled as a prototype stage. None of those were currently deployed, as the Clan engineers were still working on designing upgrades after the last mission that had narrowly brought back the bulb after it hit a pocket of turbulence within the molten core that had stretched the tether far beyond expectations. It had been raised back up in time to preserve the tether, but there had been so much stress damage that it was easier to build an entirely new one rather than attempt to repair the damage.

As fascinating as all of that was, Rio wasn’t here to assist with the mining or engineering efforts. The Snake Pit was a fully functional colony housing some 18 million people inside the floating city. This was to be his first assignment, along with thousands of other Clan Metal Gear commandos that were on hand for military readiness, should an alert come through they need to be deployed nearby in the system or, in the unlikely case of an internal problem, combat within the city itself.

That aside, most of the commandos were here for training…and trials combat. The Snake Pit was one of the permanent trials sites, meaning that not only commandos, but Knights and Archons would be there in large numbers, eager to battle each other to gain status and rewards for their Clans, as well as combat experience for themselves. While there were no mechs or aircraft trials taking place here, save for on simulators, there was an aquatics section within the city, allowing for real water combat in addition to the simulators, which Rio found to be absolutely crazy.

Water warfare, inside a city that was floating in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant? Now that was something he was definitely going to have to see for himself, but more than anything else, the Snake Pit was renowned for its commando trials, with few facilities in the Solar System that could match its varied challenge courses. Clan Metal Gear typically maintained a Top 10 ranking amongst the Clans, and a Top 15 ranking with mainline and Canderous units through in.

All divisions of the Star Force military took part, using the trials to hone their personnel, as well as experiment with new tactics, giving their troops practical experience before being sent out to the warfront. The most experience Regulars, Knights, and Archons were out there, fighting the war, with a few remaining behind to take care of business in Sol, with them occasionally joining in to help their teams or give the newbs a lesson they wouldn’t soon forget.

Rio was arriving with a dropship full of new Clan personnel. About half of them were commandos, but there were also techs and medics, with one administrator and two personnel relations division, who they referred to as either attendants, facilitators, or handlers, based on what task they were assigned to. All of them were new acquires by the Clan, and as such had never been to the Snake Pit before, so Rio didn’t know any less than they did upon landing.

The dropship came down through heavy atmospheric shields into an ‘open air’ landing bay that had more shield than roof covering it. Dozens of dropships were coming and going, most with cargo, but there was a steady stream of personnel transiting back and forth up to one of the starports in orbit. A city/colony of this size had to have a busy link into the transit network, but it still impressed Rio, given the fact that they were in such a remote location…from his point of view, anyway.

Uranus was, to most Star Force personnel, a part of ‘home’ that they considered the Solar System to be. Only to a rookie, who’d lived his entire life on Earth and Mars, would consider the blue/green planet to be ‘remote.’

Rio walked out of the dropship, duffle over his shoulder, along with the others and reported into the processing station where they each received their quarters assignment and information on when and where to report for duty. Unlike with his training, there was no one here to meet, greet, and lead him around. He guessed this was what it was to be a Star Force ‘adult,’ and as overwhelming as the Snake Pit was, with crowded and constant pedestrian traffic, he rather liked the sense of freedom it gave him.

Breaking off from his dropship group, Rio took an impromptu tour through the city as he almost immediately got lost. He had several hours before he was due to report for duty, so he embraced the moment and wandered, crossing through civilian sections and realizing they weren’t Star Force personnel roaming about, but denizens that had come to make the Snake Pit their home. There were business vendors everywhere, along with what looked like a decent amount of tourists, but interspersed amongst them all were the obvious Star Force uniforms, making for an integrated population that moved about within the city, with each person attending to their own duties or prerogatives.

Rio thought about dropping in and catching a movie, but he was carrying his duffle so he thought better of it and kept walking, but did stop to buy a specialty sugar stick, the kind of thing that didn’t come free in Star Force cafeterias. This one was laced with chocolate and other novelties, then twisted up into an exotic design that caught his eye. It cost half a credit, which he pulled from his personal account via his ID card, then he walked off, slowly devouring his treat as he explored the city.

Eventually he got his bearings, with the help of several interactive maps, and moved into one of the Star Force personnel-only sections. It wasn’t long before his curiosity brought him to the gigantic trials complex within the heart of the city, which was itself more of an extravaganza than the entertainment sector had been. There were walkways meandering in and around clear walls that looked down and into the various trials courses, most of which currently had ongoing challenges.

Most were combats between various teams, but some were obstacle courses or other things that required the team to go up against a standard, and then their score would be held up against others. Rio saw that every now and then there were scoreboards superimposed over the windows in hologram, detailing who was currently involved in the challenges and how well they were doing.

Rio saw a hand to hand engagement in full armor taking place between a small group…only a dozen or so on each side. The scoreboard indicated it was his Clan, the Metal Gears, taking on the Ninja Monkeys, with the current score tallied as 123-118. He didn’t know what criteria they were using to mark points, but was glad to see his new Clan on top.

He walked through section after section, taking it all in and resisting the urge to stop and watch, for there were so many. Rio eventually made his way into the aerial division, where he was given holographic battlefields to observe as the pilots, in nearby simulators, fought it out in a variety of engagements, one of which was so large it had to contain several hundred fighters.

After that he passed through a similar section that contained naval engagements, then another for mechs, coming up lastly to the aquatics. That section was split between simulators and several water courses, his favorite of which was the jet boards, which had Regulars and Archons in full body suits riding on what looked like surf boards on top of the water. Their feet were apparently locked in, and they were zipping about tagging targets by hand in some sort of scramble race.

Commando as he was, that looked like so much fun he wished for a moment that he could switch divisions.

“You lost?” a voice asked from behind him.

Rio turned around and his eyes widened as he saw the white uniform with red stripe that denoted an Archon adept.

“No…yes, well, I was, but…I’m just looking around before I report for duty.”

“Commando?”

“Yes. I just graduated.”

“Newb then,” the Archon said, eyes narrowing a bit. “You like the jet boards?”

“I wish we could use them,” he said sarcastically, glancing back at the ongoing challenge.

A confused expression crossed the Archon’s face. “Who do you think that is in there?”

Rio did a double take. “Aquatics?”

“And commandos,” he explained. “Aquatics operate mostly underwater, so being on the surface is kind of a neutral zone between them and the commandos. Sometimes aquatics use the jet boards, sometimes the commandos do, and then sometimes they do mixed challenges, like this one. Clan Mantle commandos are taking on Clan Sneaky Fox aquatics in a non-points match.”

Rio fought back a smirk, for he couldn’t help himself. He’d become familiar with all the names, but hearing the Archon say it in such a serious manner was ironic.

“Something funny?”

“Sorry, Archon. It’s just that some of the Clan names are serious, and then some are…”

“Less so?”

“Exactly.”

The Archon nodded. “Each of the original Archons got to choose their Clan name. Some went for serious, others for ironic or funny. Now, none of them are funny. I look at Clan Sneaky Fox and I see the Clan, its strengths and weaknesses, all the times I’ve engaged them in combat. Only rookies and civilians find it humorous.”

“But why did some of the trailblazers choose funny names in the first place?”

The Archon shrugged. “You’d have to ask them.”

Rio nodded. “Just curious. What Clan are you?”

“Clan Aquaman. You’re a Metal Gear, I assume?”

“Yes, how could you tell?”

“Fresh out of graduation, carrying a duffle…means this is your first assignment. And no rookie goes straight to the trials.”

“Right,” Rio agreed.

“Given that these are your new stomping grounds, I expect you’ll find yourself on a jet board eventually. Just make sure you wear a full suit. You may have had swimming training, but you’ll half drown before you get your feet unlocked from the board if you aren’t aquatics…or really familiar with the boards. So make sure you and your buddies wear the masks.”

“I’ll remember that,” Rio promised.

“Carry on,” the Archon said, walking off.

“Right,” Rio whispered, resetting his duffle over his shoulder and moving on through the aquatics section until he eventually found his way back around to the commando courses. He lingered there, finding more and more new combat variations that he hoped to try at some point, before finally heading off to find his quarters and settle in.

When he finally reported for duty it was a basic information session along with 30 or so other freshly minted commandos. As it turned out, he wasn’t going to have to wait long to get his taste of the trials, for it seemed that Clan Metal Gear favored a 50/50 split between training and combat in the Snake Pit, given that they had the trials facilities on hand. They said that meant the new commandos coming here had an opportunity to rise through the ranks faster than others…so long as they kept up their physical training.

It was an arduous combination, but they hadn’t been recruited by the Clan to take things easy or slow. Rio had been chosen, it seemed, because of his steady progression. Others had been more streaky, rising quickly then plateauing…only to break through and repeat the process. The Metal Gears wanted rookies who could grind their way through training and combat simultaneously, absorbing far more experience than others could in a short period of time, and only those who had a firm grasp on the principles of adaptation and ascension could be expected to survive in that intense environment.

Those that couldn’t would crack and their workouts would tank…then they’d have to reset themselves and get their mojo back on a purely training program. That wasn’t altogether bad, for those that had gone through that process had come out stronger for it in the long run, but it wasn’t the preferred path, and every now and then you’d get a commando that would say they’d had enough and quit, returning to civilian life...but Rio was past that point. He was a commando for keeps, no matter how hard a regimen the Metal Gears put him through.

7

October 12, 2464

Solar System

Uranus

Rio walked out into the ‘Arena’ along with 74 other Metal Gear commandos, each wearing their signature camo green uniforms. The single color motif was broken up by black stripes down the sides of the arms and legs, with black safety sunglasses that looped around the left ear holding a comm piece. Lastly, each of the commandos wore a headband with tails, a bit of a flourish the Clan liked to sport in situations where an opponent couldn’t grab hold of it to gain leverage.

Across the Arena course there was another 75 commandos from Clan Firestorm in their orange uniforms with equally orange safety glasses and earpieces. To Rio’s left in the Arena was the light blue uniformed Clan Saber, and to his right was Clan Kirk in yellow with gold trim. In the middle, separating them all, was an irregular pyramid topped with a finish pedestal. The goal of this challenge was simple…get to the top and press the button to win. Getting there ahead of the others was the challenge, especially when everyone was armed with stingers.

Rio had two pistols, each with a clip of 40 rounds. That made them heavier than usual, and a bit awkward to aim, but he needed the extra clip size because they weren’t allowed to carry spares. That meant once you ran out you had no further ability to hinder the opposing Clans, leaving it as a race to the top, for hand to hand combat was barred in this challenge.

The rest of the Metal Gears had an assortment of weapons, all chosen to maximize their Clan’s chances. Rio was tagged as a rusher, which meant that when the start tone sounded he was to flank the other Clans and try to take down as many of their people as he could while some of his teammates made their way up towards the top, grabbing strongholds as they went. While the pyramid’s highest elevation was at the peak, there were several others enroute, separated by valleys, that offered good sniping positions…which those of his team so equipped would be heading for first off.

It wasn’t a quick climb to the top, but if they didn’t get their snipers in place Clan Saber and Clan Kirk would make more progress than they should, grabbing up additional strongpoints, so the game was as much about hindering your opponents as it was about climbing to the summit. The tricky part was, the Metal Gears couldn’t see Clan Firestorm, for the pyramid was blocking their view and firing lines, meaning they were going to have to trust the other two Clans to keep them hindered, and vice versa.

Rio and the others lined up on the starting grid, 25 wide by three deep, with him on the extreme left flank first in line. He could see the Sabers well off in the distance, for the Arena was absolutely huge, yet only the third largest off all the challenge courses. They were his target, and his first attempt in a counting trial. Before now he’d been running through practice challenges with other Clan Metal Gear commandos, but now the outcome counted in the rankings, and he wanted to do everything he could to measure up…which right now meant shooting Sabers.

The start tone sounded, blaring out across the vast empty chamber as onlookers formed a ring around the top where the observation windows were. Rio took off sprinting while moving to the left, heading for the lowest of the strongpoints…a stubby elevated nook on the lowest level that formed the corner of the pyramid. It wasn’t a high value spot, because other nearby strongpoints were at a higher elevation, and with no roofs the high ground would rule, but he needed to get there in order to get around to the Saber side on the flat before he took to climbing.

The rest of the Metal Gears split up, each heading towards their individual assignments. Nearly all of them were faster than Rio and moved ahead of him, including the other four that were tasked to go after the Sabers. He found himself getting to the mini-fort last, but just in time to see one of his Clan get shot in the chest by a Saber as they both got to the corner at nearly the same time.

Rio brought both pistols up and peppered the area with stingers, catching the Saber with two of them. It was a waste of ammo, but a takedown none the less. He kept his pistols raised as he ran up to the spot and took cover on his side of the strongpoint, wondering how many others were on the other side.

“You’re clear,” he heard in his earpiece. “Get going.”

Rio didn’t bother to respond. Less talk was preferable in an engagement like this. He took two steps and rounded the corner, hanging close to the wall and seeing none of the Sabers ahead of him…at least until he got to the edge of the strongpoint box and the first level of the pyramid came into view, inset as it was from the corners. They were everywhere, all climbing up various routes, with some shooting back at the Metal Gears above his head in the strongpoint they’d claimed.

“Ok, time to get crazy,” he said, sprinting off, not towards the pyramid, but at an angle away from it, drifting back towards the Sabers’ starting position as he headed for the center of their side. No one bothered to shoot at him as he ran, probably because they didn’t want to waste ammunition, and he eventually got to the center and swung about, now fully behind the other Clan and following in their footsteps.

“Point 7 and 9,” he reported, noting the strongpoints where the Sabers were headed for the benefit of the others. After that he picked the closest Sabers and went after them, nowhere near close enough to hit, but gaining ground quickly. He didn’t go unnoticed, and caught the swivel of sniper rifle from one of the lower strongpoints the Sabers had just claimed as it came around to target him.

Rio immediately went into a zigzag, making it difficult for the sniper to steady his aim, and as a result no incoming fire rained down on him. Again, with the limited ammo, it wasn’t worth risking a shot until he got closer…then he was toast.

But fortunately he wasn’t working alone, for as the sniper took aim at him a Metal Gear sniper took aim at him and used several rounds of ammo to take him out, giving Rio a narrow opportunity to get up to the first level of the pyramid and take cover.

He backed up against the wall and caught his breath, then turned left and ran a few steps to one of the ladders, climbing it awkwardly with a pistol in each hand, but he got up and onto the second tier and ran to the closest bit of cover. Fortunately the pyramid wasn’t trim, but rather had a zigzaggy configuration of its own, so now that he was in amongst all the cracks he had a fair chance of getting to at least one of the Sabers before he was taken down.

The problem was the strongpoints. They stuck out and up, allowing good shooting positions to rain down stingers on him and everyone else nearby. Not all of them were claimed, for the higher you got the better, so the Sabers were skipping over most of the lower ones and rushing for the mid-level fortifications. Had Rio a sniper or even a standard rifle he could have taken one of the lower ones and used it to hamper their rise, but he didn’t. Meaning he was going to have to go at it in close range combat.

Remembering where the closest routes were that the Sabers had taken up, for there were many, he hurried his way up from one level to another, pausing where necessary to keep from running into an ambush, though he needn’t have worried, for the Sabers were climbing so fast he was still well behind them. From his vantage point he couldn’t see that, but soon he was to get additional instructions from one of the Metal Gear sniper/spotters.

“Rio, head left four ladders, then up two levels. That should give you a flanking position on a nest of Sabers we’ve got pinned down. Hurry.”

Rio took off running, not bothering to be cautious, and scrambled over to his ladder and climbed, crossed the flat, and climbed again. When he got up it he jogged to the right, both pistols ready, moving in and out of cover as he rounded what were essentially oddly angled corners while trying to keep his footsteps as quiet as possible. He was out of view of his own snipers most of the time, meaning they couldn’t guide him, so when he came up on the Sabers it was as much of a surprise to him as it was to them.

There were four of them, two of which had their backs to him. He didn’t hesitate when he saw their blue uniforms and started firing as rapidly as he could pull the pair of triggers…

The next thing he knew he was waking up staring at the Arena ceiling, which was a massive set of tiny light bars that he’d never noticed before.

“You with me?” one of his Clan Metal Gear teammates said, snapping his fingers in front of his face.

“Yeah, I’m here,” he said, sitting up. “Is it over?”

“Not even close,” the man said, tapping the ground. “Just brought you back. Take this, the Sabers won’t be needing it.”

Rio glanced down and saw the meter-wide square he sat on, recognizing it as a destunning pad. There were several spaced around the pyramid, which meant he’d been dragged over here to be revived. He took the stinger rifle from his teammate, reflexively checking to see how many rounds he had left, which was about 50 or so, given that it looked like half a clip.

“Which side are we on?”

“Metal Gear side. Fighting’s up top, I was assigned to cleanup. Get up there and help where you can.”

“On it,” Rio said, jumping to his feet and feeling the last bit of pins and needles being pulled out of them as he stepped off the pad and searched for the nearest ladder, finding instead a ramp of stone-like steps. He ran up to the next level, then the following 16 before he got up to the back lines of the Metal Gears and into one of their occupied strong points. He crawled over to an open spot on the rim ledge that three others were camped out behind.

He pulled up enough to look out, seeing Sabers poking around the edge of the pyramid and shooting at the Metal Gears climbing up two levels ‘above’ them, but that were now even with the elevated strongpoint he was in.

“Elsa, two on your left,” he said into his comm piece after a blink command into sunglasses, now taking on the role of a spotter.

“Rio, you up for a tandem run?” the commando next to him said, who was also holding a mostly useless standard rifle at their current range to targets.

“Take point,” he agreed, following the more experienced commando out and down the stairs to the level below, then over to a ladder where they began to make their way up, with Rio loving every moment of it.

8 years later Rio was with his Metal Gear teammates, this time one of the experienced ones…well, more experienced, for they had a considerable amount of newbs with them, climbing up the Arena pyramid and near to the top with four shots left in his stinger pistol, one that he’d picked up off a stunned Clan Skystrike commando three levels down. He’d been climbing unarmed before that, with half of the Metal Gears remaining having run out of ammo. Pretty soon now and it would turn into a pure footrace…one that he intended to win.

He wasn’t the highest up, at least four others were ahead of him, but the odds of them making it were slim. There was a fierce firefight taking place near the top, with one of the Clans trying to punch out the others by running them out of ammunition and forcing the issue by mounting a surging climb that the others had to counter. Something was about to break, and from past experience it usually meant a lot of stunned bodies being climbed over by a lucky few survivors that stayed hidden amongst the nooks.

In order to beat them he had to get up there first, which meant running the gauntlet. Rio wouldn’t be the only one of his Clan doing so, but with a few flankers designated to guard duty he had a decent shot of making it up…or helping one of the others do the same.

Rio scrambled as quick as he could, hearing the whiffs of stinger fire starting to wither out, and came up behind one of his Clansmen who waved him on while maintaining a specific firing line. Rio went without hesitation and climbed up the ladder, hearing the other commando fire off two shots, followed by the ‘thump’ of a body falling nearby. This close to the top each side was getting progressively narrower, meaning less of a divide between the four Clans.

Rio made it up to the fourth level from the top before he got caught up in a firefight that left his right arm numb. Fortunately all commandos were trained to shoot equally well with both hands, and he switched over to his left and kept on climbing. When he got up to the third level he saw a Clan Thunderfist commando reach the top…then immediately get hit by three stingers from three different shooters. She dropped and rolled off the flat top down to the first level and out of sight as one of Rio’s teammates caught up to him and hunkered down by his side.

“What do you think?”

“Still hot up here.”

“I’ll lead you up to two.”

“Alright,” Rio said, following him over to the steps. “Go.”

The two of them sprinted up, rounding the curve in the climb as the other commando fired off a couple of shots before getting stunned himself. Rio hurdled him and jumped head first up onto the next level, crawling up next to the wall for cover, now being two more climbs from the top…but that wasn’t his destination. He was here to help the others up, and with only a handful of meters on either side of him this was the end zone where everything got dicey, for the other Clans were almost within touching range.

Sitting in the middle wasn’t going to offer much help, so Rio moved around a pointy section to the far left where he set up, able to snipe down onto the Skystrike side if need be, or around onto the same level to…

His pistol came up and fired a single shot that nailed a Skystrike in the chest who noticed him a split second too late. He went down next to a ladder, then Rio made a snap decision and abandoned his post. He ran over to the downed commando and knelt next to the ladder and man, appropriating his pistol and checking the clip count. It only had two shots left, compared to his three, so he let it lay, unable to use his right hand to dual wield.

With the area behind him being friendly territory, he took a chance and climbed the ladder, hoping not to get shot in the back, and climbed up belly first over the edge to stay low. Now there was only one climb left to get to the summit, he was ever so close…which was why he fought the urge to jump up to the top and win the challenge for his Clan. He’d be toast the moment he exposed himself, for they surely still had snipers in play, just as the Metal Gears had.

So he played guard, watching for the next Skystrike to come up and gunning him down with a shot to the head. There were only two ways up, short of jumping and clinging to the edge…which was almost impossible to do with gun in hand, though that hadn’t stopped them from doing it before.

“Skystrike side is secured,” he reported via comm. “Someone get up top.”

“Where are you?”

“Level 1, and I have two stingers left. Hurry,” Rio whispered.

“On it,” Dagan answered.

Rio held position, shooting another Skystrike that came up on his right, leaving him with one shot, then his comm line activated again.

“Rio, Thunderfist is almost up. Go now!”

“Damn it,” he said, dropping his pistol and jumping up directly to the top and grabbing onto the edge of the wall with both hands, forcing his right to suffer through the pins and needles that were now exploding through the denumbing process. The last climb had no stairs, so this was his only option.

Pulling mostly with his left, he got his chest up over top of the flat ‘roof’, seeing two other commandos coming up on the left and far sides. The left one went down to a sniper immediately, leaving just the other to finish climbing up while the two corner boxes, at equal height and a gap of several meters from the top platform, watched on.

Rio got his left leg up and rolled onto the top, then crawled forward as the Thunderfist commando got shot in the leg by a Metal Gear sniper. Keeping low, Rio got over to the pedestal a second before the other commando and slapped his left hand down on the top, pressing the finish button and triggering the blue lighting and end of challenge tone to sound.

The Thunderfist dragged himself up on the pedestal and nodded at Rio.

“Nice job, scum,” he joked.

Rio laughed, and poked the commando in the chest. “Metal Gears have to win. It’s embarrassing if we get beat in our own facility.”

“I’ll try to arrange that next time.”

“You will try,” Rio said, slipping an arm under his shoulders to help him walk with the numb leg.

8

After he and the other Metal Gears evacuated the Arena to let the cleaning crews do a quick job of readying the course for the next challenge, Rio went up to the viewing area and checked out the primary scoreboard detailing the status of all Clans, Star Force mainline units, and Canderian units taking part in the trials…not just here, but across the star system.

The points gained for winning the Arena challenge were small, but they added just a bit more to the Metal Gears’ overall count, which spanned the previous 5 years, helping to secure their position as the 3rd rated commando Clan. Neither the mainline units nor Canderous currently topped them, though the later’s top ranked trials Legion was currently in 4th and nipping away at their heels.

The Canderians had several different tiers of warriors within the trials, which they referred to as ‘Legions’ despite the fact they weren’t structured quite the same as their standard Legions, but they weren’t spread out evenly as the Clans more or less were. They were stacked with the best they had into the Alpha Legion, and they were giving the Metal Gears all they could handle.

They hadn’t gone up against each other for some time, and the Alpha Legion wasn’t on the Snake Pit, but their Gamma Legion was. They were familiar opponents who sought to gain points through running challenge after challenge, figuring they had little to lose so long as Alpha Legion upheld the honor of Canderous. At least that’s what Rio had been told by one of their commandos, but he may have just been making excuses for getting beat at the time. Still, he’d said the other Legions in the trials were more for training purposes, with the Alphas being the prime contenders.

That made some sense to Rio, but given that the Legions were being given equal status with a Clan, he didn’t see how the Gammas could all be second rate commandos, for they were beating 6 of the Clans at present. The mainline units, each large enough to merit ‘Clan’ status in the trials, were currently 68 in number, with additional ones being added as the military grew. Some of them were elite units, he knew, with the 8th army ranking 7th overall in commandos and 17th in mechs, with a less than auspicious 72nd in aerial.

Their 3rd army had the best aerial rank at 18th, with the Clans claiming the top 17 spots. Canderous only had one aerial unit, which they designated as part of Beta Legion, signifying that they didn’t truly consider it a fair contest, given that they were a space-faring civilization with little aerial assets. Their naval scores, on the other hand, had Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta Legions all in the top 50, where they employed their unique remote controlled starfighters in the simulated naval challenges.

Mainline fleets, which were separate entities from mainline armies, held their own against the Canderians and maintained two spots in the top 10, though Paul’s Sabers still maintained their lock on the top spot, with Roger’s Emerald Sharks and Liam’s Neon Squirrels occasionally knocking them off the thrown, only to have the Sabers reclaim it in short order. Behind those three there was a large gap that no one else seemed capable of bridging.

Metal Gear was currently ranked 34th in naval, 52nd in aquatics, 78th in aerial, and 82nd in mechs…which were all top half marks, making the Clan well rounded, unlike, say, Clan Aquaman who held the number 1 ranking in aquatics, but didn’t have their other four divisions inside the top 80 Clan or top 120 overall. They were what was known as a ‘specialized’ Clan, but even still they had good Regulars and Archons in their other divisions, it was just that the competition in the trials was so fierce that if you didn’t put everything you had into developing all your divisions the specialists would eat you alive.

That was the way it was meant to be, with Clan Metal Gear striving to be a full contender, but maintaining its commando pride. As he’d learned, the recruitment process the Clans used was spread out across all disciplines, so if you bid heavily in one area, you had less to bid in others. Now, that was just to attain recruits, and didn’t affect how you trained them afterwards, but there was still a lot of strategy in making the picks, which made Rio overly proud that Metal Gear had chosen him at all, let alone as a commando.

He’d been working hard to live up to their faith in his mettle, and like the others was always eager to monitor their Clan’s progress across all fronts…which left the scoreboard area rather congested, so once he’d taken a quick status check of everything he wanted to see he gently nudged his way past the crowd and out into the traffic flow.

Rio, hold up.

He hadn’t been on the receiving end of too many telepathic communications, but the existence of such things had been made aware to him when he’d reached commando level 5 a few years aback. Since then he’d only been spoken to twice in this form, and it still left him a bit shocked when he heard the Archon’s voice inside his head.

Rio stopped walking and waited for his unseen contact, who appeared some 15 seconds later in the crowd flow and motioned for him to step off to the side. The commando took up a spot on one of the commando course observation windows in his camo green casual uniform as the Archon stepped up beside him in his white with silver trim counterpart.

“Nice grab,” the Archon said, referring to the challenge win. “We can always use the points.”

“Thank you,” Rio said, glancing back and forth between the man and the ongoing battle below.

“My name is Durango-12833. I’m putting together a volunteer unit and your name was brought to my attention. I hear you’re eager for a field assignment?”

Rio’s eyes widened. “Yes I am.”

“Word hasn’t reached the main news yet,” Durango said, lowering his voice a bit as he watched the commandos below fighting it out across a series of fences, “but the Protovic have come under attack. They played it cool early on when the Nestafar switched sides, given that they were their benefactor within the Alliance, but once the Calavari and Nestafar bloodied themselves the Protovic stepped in and safeguarded a handful of Calavari systems along their border. They’re actively fighting the Nestafar there, trying to secure fallback points for the Calavari as the lizards push in, but now they’ve been hit by someone else and are requesting assistance from the Alliance.”

“Not us specifically?”

“No, but so far no one else has been in a position to respond. Everyone is caught up fighting the lizard incursion or covering their own asses. Star Force doesn’t have much to spare, or at least the mainline units don’t. Trailblazer Kip has decided to go to their relief, but doesn’t think that Clan Protoss is strong enough on its own, so he asked Metal Gear to join him. We’ve agreed, and are rounding up as many personnel as we can spare without hurting current deployments.”

“Do you think I’m ready?” Rio asked, a bit concerned.

Durango nodded. “Ready enough. Several of the Protovic’s worlds are under assault, so there will be a lot of opportunities for ground combat. We won’t send you in to get slaughtered, but there should be plenty of cleanup missions where we could put you and other lower ranking commandos to use. The question is, do you feel ready?”

“If I can’t fight lizards, I’ll happily fight their allies. You can count me in.”

The Archon shook his head. “No. The Nestafar aren’t hitting the Protovic territories. The Skarrons are. The bottom end of Zeta Region where it borders Beta is a chaotic mess right now. The Nestafar used to be the major power in the region, and now that their strength is severely depleted other races are making a play for territory and influence. The Skarrons are exploiting the Protovic’s weakness, given that they’ve deployed a significant portion of their military to safeguard the Calavari worlds, and we intend to fill that hole in their defenses.”

Rio nodded his understanding. He didn’t know a lot about the Skarrons, but knew they were a major force coreward of Star Force territory.

“What do they look like?”

“Big and slow quadrupeds with just as many arms. Think elephant and you’ll be close. They can’t match your leg speed, so keep at range and gun them down. They also have two slave races that are much smaller. One isn’t used for combat, the other fights as skirmishers and escorts. They’re quick, but about half your size and biped. It’ll be a different type of combat compared to what you’ve seen on vids of the lizards and Nestafar, but we’ll learn on the go and adapt. You still want in?”

“If you think I can be of use, then yes.”

“It won’t be a mission, it’ll be a campaign. I can’t say when you’ll see Star Force space again.”

“Years?”

“At minimum.”

Rio sighed, realizing what this meant. “I’m here to serve the Clan. If you need me, I’m yours.”

Durango smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man. We leave to rendezvous with the jumpship in 10 days. Have you got a custom set of armor yet?”

“Yes.”

“Bring it. We’ll have spares, but I hate using generic armor. Never seems to fit just right. I’ll have transfer orders waiting for you by tomorrow at the latest,” Durango said, mixing back into the crowd and off to round up more recruits.

Rio turned back to the window, but as his eyes fell on the commandos below his mind was elsewhere. This was what he had been wanting all along, he just didn’t think it would come this soon, or in this fashion. The Skarrons were an entirely different enemy, one that Star Force hadn’t fought before…or at least he didn’t think so. He had some database research to do tonight, learn more about the new enemy…and the ally they were going to the aid of.

It wasn’t until several hours later, when he finally sat down at the computer terminal in his quarters and accessed the restricted files granted to him given his commando status, that he realized just who the Protovic were. He’d known they were part of the Alliance, but he had thought they were a minor player…and they were, compared to the Calavari, Bsidd, Kvash, and Hycre, but he hadn’t even considered the possibility that they were stronger than Star Force.

They had an estimated population of 5 trillion clustered into a dense set of star systems, slightly less than what Star Force currently inhabited, but so much closer together that they were easier to reinforce. They formed an egg-shaped knot of systems that ran parallel to Star Force territory in Beta Region, with the Hycre and dozens of smaller races’ territories stretched out between.

Their fleet was estimated to be three times the size of Star Force’s, which explained to Rio why one Clan wasn’t going to be enough. Each of the Clans was now a monstrous empire of its own, but compared to the size of the Protovic they were still tiny. Sending two would provide enough of a force to assist the aliens in defending their territory, but if they were getting hit, and hit hard by the Skarrons, then there wasn’t a lot that Star Force was going to be able to do…unless their presence would tip the scales one way or the other.

But that didn’t deter Rio. Even if they were smaller, Star Force could give better than they looked numerically. He was both excited and scared to the point his hands were starting to shake…which was when he forced himself to sit back, take a few long breaths, and get his focus. An ally was under attack, and they were going to help them defend their territory. He didn’t need to know the overall tactical situation…they had Archons for that. All he needed was a mission and the means to carry it out, which he would be given at the time.

Rio didn’t care if it was picking up trash, if it helped his Clan aid the Protovic then it was worth his going. He assumed his training would continue in between missions. Jumpships had training facilities, after all, and there was no way the Archons would be caught dead not able to do their workouts…so they had to have those things covered.

Durango, whom he’d known about previously, though never having met the Archon, had said there would be plenty of opportunity for ground combat because several planets, or systems, had been attacked by the Skarrons. That meant he’d be fighting on the ground defending Protovic facilities and people? What did they even look like?

Unfortunately the files didn’t say, for the only pictures were of them in their environment suits. They looked Human, right down to the five digits on their hands, but there was no telling what was underneath that armor…or was it armor? A light version, maybe.

Rio brought up the analysis of their military strength, seeing several notations for their piloting skill. Their warships were larger and more powerful, though slightly less technologically advanced, with them employing Calavari-designed Valeries both in space and in-atmosphere. Their ground troops were less robust, but what they lacked in vehicular strength they made up for in speed, utilizing a slew of anti-grav tanks that, according to a note in the file, fared poorly against the Nestafar walkers except for when they swarmed them with overwhelming numbers.

Nothing was mentioned about aquatics, and Rio knew that not all races had them, just as Star Force didn’t have a starfighter division. The Protovic planets, it seemed, were mostly lifeless ones. Barren rocks with breathable atmosphere into which they burrowed underground to build more than half of their infrastructure.

So would the Clans be fighting underground or on the surface? He wasn’t sure of that, hell, he couldn’t be sure of anything at this point, but if he didn’t start running the data through his head he’d go nuts imagining things.

Halfway through his research he suddenly remembered that he needed to shoot off a message to Julie, Raven, and Styk, especially if this was the last time he got to talk with them for a few years. Messages could travel via jumpship, he knew, but if they were traveling into another race’s territory, odds were there wasn’t going to be a lot of back and forth comms, meaning any message sent might take months, if not a year to make it from origin to destination.

All three commandos were current in mainline units. Julie was on Mars, Raven on Ganymede, and Styk on Titan. All were progressing through the trials like Rio was, but so far none of them had seen real combat. They were assigned to defensive/training units that were a mix of veterans and rookies kept here to safeguard Sol along with a few elite units. The rest were out system, either defending Star Force territory or engaging the enemy on one of the two fronts.

It seemed odd that he was going to see action before them, for their levels were all above his. He was a level 9 commando now, with Julie a 14, Styk a 15, and Raven a 17. If they weren’t ready to fight, then how could he be?

Different units, different situations, he figured. He was in a Clan, after all, and the Clans had a reputation for being a bit more reckless than the mainline units. But if an Archon had specifically requested him, then that was good enough for Rio. He just wished the others could be out there fighting alongside him.

But he wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to gloat a little, so he got about the business of recording a vid message for the three of them and sent copies out to each. With luck they might respond before he left the system. If not, then so be it. This was the life of a commando…they went where they were needed and when they were needed, and even though he didn’t fully understand it, Clan Metal Gear needed him out on the frontier fighting an altogether new set of aliens.

Still grinning from ear to ear, he got the transfer order while he was researching the other races in Zeta Region, confirming what Durango had told him. As of now he was on leave until his designated report date arrived, with instructions on where to go included. Until then, a small side note said, it was best if he transitioned over to a full training routine, for that’s what he would be operating under once onboard the jumpship.

Rio knew what that meant, and with a few hours still left in the day he exited his quarters and headed for the track to get a couple of extra miles in, for there was going to be a lot of running, sparring, and agility workouts in his future, and he needed to adjust his stamina accordingly away from the ‘easy’ challenge routine that didn’t require as much of his daily energy.

A few days of long workouts and some extra ambrosia doses and he would be fine, but he was going to play it safe and take the note’s advice. This was the moment he’d been waiting for, and he was going to make every effort he could to overcome his low ranking and prove himself worthy once again.

This time, though, the firefights were going to be real…and very unforgiving.

9

February 21, 2465

Krichjan System (Zeta Region)

Eshwan

Kip-022 stood onboard his flagship Tassadar as it decelerated against the Protovic planet Eshwan, getting telaris sensor feeds enroute that detailed the position of the ships in orbit before the Warship-class jumpship had a chance to accidentally bump into them. The computer detected several within proximity along their jumpline, but none in direct blockage. Still, it queried the pilot who made a quick change to their approach, using other gravity wells in the system to steer the warship a bit lower than planet center to give them a wider berth.

Simultaneously that information was transmitted back to the following jumpships via telaris comms, giving them a very brief heads up and allowing them to make the course corrections as well. When the Tassadar finally stopped its massive momentum coming off the system’s central star, it had a good look at the blue/brown planet and all the Protovic ships in orbit on the near side, but nothing from behind…until two other Clan Protoss warships jumped in on different jumplines, forming a rough triangle that, with their current altitude over the planet, allowed them to communicate via line of sight and produce a combined map of the planet’s surface and orbit in a matter of seconds.

Kip saw that map pop up in front of his command chair, with a scattering of dots coming in behind the Tassadar that made up the rest of his assault fleet. They were making staggered jumps, ensuring that none of the massive jumpships ran into each other upon deceleration, so it was going to take several minutes for them all to arrive.

Fortunately it looked like the Protovic had reclaimed orbit from the Skarrons, for none of their ships were visible…though he couldn’t say that about the rest of the system. Even with the telaris sensors, which were 3 times as fast as lightspeed, it would take minutes to get feedback from the other planets, and given the range only very large targets would show up, meaning the enemy could still be hiding out there and they might not know it until they dropped in on the newly arrived reinforcements.

But since the Protovic fleet was here, there was an easy way to find out.

Kip hit a button on his command chair linked to a preprogrammed comm channel and spoke in the trade language.

“This is Kip-022, commander of the Star Force fleet arriving in planetary orbit. Per your request we are here to assist with the defensive effort against the Skarron incursion. What is the current status of the system?” he asked as the sensors began mapping out grounded troops on the planetary holo that was becoming more complex by the second as his crews started pulling tighter sensor scans.

A hologram of a seated Protovic superimposed in front of the planetary diagram, mimicking Kip’s posture, save for the fact that the alien wore his full body suit, making Kip unable to see so much as an inch of skin.

“Sarnor Tel’nash’gi,” he identified himself, using their fleet commander title. “I am surprised to see you here, but most welcome that you have come. We had thought the Alliance had abandoned us.”

“I don’t know about the Alliance, but I have a small fleet with ground troops ready to assist,” Kip said as the Star Force warship count passed 30 and continued to rise as more arrived at the planet. “The last report I received said this planet had been overrun?”

“Not entirely, though we had lost control of orbit. The fleet you see now is mostly comprised of reinforcements we pulled back in from Calavari territory, which we used to drive off the Skarrons, but as far as we can tell they haven’t left the system. We have a few monitoring stations around the star, and they haven’t been seen jumping out.”

“How many?”

“50 or 60 ships remain, with two juggernauts amongst them.”

Kip frowned. “I’m unfamiliar with that vessel.”

The Protovic motioned to someone off holo. “I’m sending you all the intel we have on the Skarrons. If you have anything to add please do, our knowledge of them is limited. They’ve never ventured this far out from the core before…at least not that I’m aware of.”

“Thank you. We have some knowledge of them, but have never come into direct contact. Our most coreward territory has a decent boundary zone, and so far they’ve not come too close.”

“I would warn you to be wary. They are thirsty for conquest,” the Protovic fleet commander said as the information came through, with the Tassadar’s crew immediately sending it to Kip’s command chair. With the telekinetic touch of a button he brought up a secondary hologram beside the Protovic and glanced at the files, with the warship classes having been tagged by his crew a moment ago.

“Did you engage the juggernauts?” Kip asked, highlighting the largest ship they had. It looked like an old school Star Force command ship, donut shaped, except that this donut had been stomped on repeatedly, with the hull broken and peeled up in numerous spots with extra pylons added, looking somewhat familiar to the Skarrons themselves with their gangly arms.

The Protovic nodded. “Yes, and destroyed one. They are slow, but are armed with long range weapons. One has to get in close, where their point defenses are weak, and slug it out with them…which their escort ships prevented the defending fleet from doing. My fleet was better equipped, and once we exploited their weakness the other two retreated.”

“Have you tried to hunt them down?”

“My priority has been to safeguard our three inhabited worlds…this planet, its moon, and the fourth planet in the system where I have a fifth of my fleet on patrol. If they engage them there we should be able to reposition in time to intercept them, but I don’t have enough ships to stand guard and hunt them down simultaneously. Also, I have no idea of knowing if or when they might receive reinforcements.”

“We have some experience with hunting down ships. Do you mind if I have a try at it?”

The Protovic nodded gratefully. “Please do, but it’s the situation on Eshwan that is our primary concern. The Skarrons had already landed their armies by the time I arrived, and our ground defense has been less than adequate. They’ve taken a third of the planet and are pushing for more. Are you able to assist on the ground as well?”

“Are they only on Eshwan?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll land my troops then go hunting for their fleet. Can you give me a planetary map with priorities highlighted. If they’re getting close to something they shouldn’t be we’ll hit them there, otherwise I’ll land in their backwater and start causing trouble.”

“I will provide a map, but our primary problem is with their walkers. They have several varieties of enormous size, greater even than those of the Nestafar, that our troops are having difficulty stopping. They’re quite frankly walking straight through our defense lines. They’re slow and heavily armored, almost to the point of immobility…but they have significant anti-air defenses.”

“Are your warships capable of atmospheric combat?”

The Protovic shook his head. “Capable yes, but not designed for it. I already tried that tactic, and nearly lost a corvette. They have grapple technology, anti-grav in nature, I believe, and will yank any large targets out of the sky. My ship hit ground before it was able to flee, but only after our Valeries took out several tethers, allowing it to escape. I’ve never seen anything like this weapon before.”

“We’ve heard rumors, and we’ve brought along some specialty equipment to deal with their walkers.  We also have orbital bombardment capability if we can catch them in the open.”

“So I’ve heard. My own attempts to do so have failed, though we use guided missiles. You use unguided mass?”

“Well aimed mass, yes. And we’ve had a lot of practice with it.”

“What’s your accuracy range?”

“I can safely land a slug within a radius of 2 kilometers, and probably within 200 meters,” Kip said, using the trade language conversions.

“Which is only good if we can catch them out in the open, en mass,” the Protovic said with obvious disappointment. “You can’t pinpoint target troops within cities.”

“No. It’s designed for large, shielded targets mostly.”

“The Skarrons are using none. They’ve established no bases, and are continuously on the move.”

“Supply lines?”

“Convoys that follow the troops. We’ve tried to get at them, but they’re well-guarded. The Skarrons dropped an enormous amount of troops and supplies on planet. With what they’re also capturing from us, we don’t have much hope of waiting them out.”

“Have they been resupplied yet?”

“Twice. The second time only a single ship got through. That was four months ago.”

“What are their primary targets?”

“They appear to have none. They’re wiping our population out region by region. We’re evacuating what we can, but we estimate over 2 billion have already been killed.”

Kip closed his eyes and sighed. This was a full planetary assault, and he didn’t have nearly enough troops to fight it back on their own, so the best he could hope for was to do some damage, maybe take out some key Skarron units that would help the Protovic lines hold, or at least delay their collapse. In orbit was another story, and with the combined Star Force/Protovic fleet they had a good chance of keeping any additional Skarron reinforcements from landing…but there was no way of knowing how many more Skarron ships were enroute.

That meant this was going to get interesting, and he was going to have to play it by ear.

“Send me all the planetary data you think relevant. I’ll have troops on the ground within a few hours.”

“You have transport ships in addition to your warships?”

“We do.”

“You may leave them in our care, if you wish, while you pursue the enemy. My fleet has done little but sit in place since the first battle.”

“Thank you.”

“No, it is I who thank you. I’ve been having to watch as the planet under my care is slowly being conquered by the enemy. I don’t know if your troops will turn the tide, but at least now we have a bit of hope to work with.”

“Let’s get to work then…and you’re welcome.”

This is it, Rio thought as he boarded one of the Dragon-class dropships and squeezed into the passenger hold along with hundreds of other Metal Gear commandos, Knights, and Archons. He wore his full armor, appropriately colored camo green, as did the others. On his back he wore a rack, no pack, with a lachar sniper rifle, plasma rifle, and a pair of pistols, one plasma, one stinger. At the bottom of the rack was a small spare ammo compartment, but other than that he was left free to move without the weight of additional supplies.

Very few of them were seated, with most of the Clan troops standing to get as many inside as possible. More were back in the cargo section between the supplies. Should the dropship get hit by enemy fire they’d lose a lot of people when it went down…or at least if it went down and its inertial dampeners failed. If they held up there was a chance they’d survive impact…

No, he had to stop thinking like this. Star Force wouldn’t pack them in so tight knowing that they would be an easy target. The reverse, rather, and the tight fit meant they were confident they were going to get to ground. So until that happened he just needed to wait and watch.

The trip down to the planet was boring beyond words. He couldn’t feel the inertial swings of the dropship leaving the jumpship bay, nor could he watch it on vid screens, packed as they were, so he just stared at the back of the helmet in front of him and the pair of weapons bracketing it until he finally got the go order through his comm.

“We’re on the ground. Commence with deployment…and watch your step, it’s a mess out there.”

Adrenaline spiked through Rio’s body, but he held still, for there were too many people packed in around him for them all to leave at once. When the crowd thinned he followed the others out a side door and down an extendable staircase to the ground…that was strewn with debris.

Forcing himself not to stop and gawk, he continued down the line looking out over the devastation that had once been a Protovic city. Not a building remained standing, only pieces were visible, strewn here and there, as if a monster tornado had come through and ripped everything to shreds…along with delivering plasma burns.

A waypoint beacon pulsed on his battlemap, with Rio following it after he got down the stairs and off the dropship. He and several other commandos milled about in a spot between dozens of dropships that set down in a giant double line, staggered to find available landing spots. Out of them, Rio watched mechs walk forward and trek off into the city remains, pushing out to establish a perimeter while more dropships continued to come down.

Soon cargo haulers, compact little vehicles with powerful anti-grav engines and grapples, began unloading giant metallic cubes and setting them into clearings that bulldozers began to expand upon. Rio knew those were the building blocks for a prefab firebase, and watched as the first of them was activated.

It broke down into pieces, like a giant transformer, and flattened out into a floor and wall segment many times wider than the cube had originally been, forming an L-shaped piece that another cube was sat down next to. It was briefly attached at the floor, then it too transformed and added to the wall, making another 50 meters or so of the barrier and a large section of floor that was extra thick, for it contained support equipment.

One by one more cubes were added, both to the sides and the floor, extending it inward while creating various buildings, some of which required a second cube to be set on top by the cargo haulers. Bit by bit an impromptu base was established, with Rio and his fellow commando group waiting for orders until the last cube transformed and locked into place, then they got a waypoint at one of the four gates, indicating that they needed to move.

Rio followed in a two man wide line as they jogged up to the entrance, getting there just in time to see the doors grind open and the bubble shield activate over top. It dropped to the ground before them, then the portion over the doors disappeared, allowing them access. They ran inside to another waypoint, whereupon they received their orders…this time through a text message that appeared on the HUD of Rio’s helmet.

He split off from the others, moving to a position on the wall that had a lookout post with an enclosed canopy. His orders said to take that position and stand guard, watching the surrounding area…which had an awful lot of cover for bad guys to hide in, not to mention any underground structures.

Rio walked inside, with the wall doubling as a narrow walkway that shielded him from view from the waist down, and took a seat on a stool-like bench and started to visually scan the area behind a second shield that doubled as a window. He experimentally put his hand through, feeling the shield crackle around his armored glove. It was a combination energy/physical shield, with the physical aspect set to only repel fast moving objects.

The bubble shield that lay some 30 meters further out was the hard variety, and no weaponsfire from Rio was going to get through it. That said, the generator wasn’t overly strong, so the bubble would go down after a decent amount of pounding, after which it’d be up to him and the other defenders to hold off the enemy from the supplies that the base was being loaded up with…not to mention the restrooms, shower facilities, bunks, and cafeterias that were inside, none of which you wanted to be without for long in the field.

Combat teams would be cycling back here from missions, meaning this was a proximal firebase. If/when the battle lines were moved forward it could be broken back down into cubes and repositioned, making Rio wonder just how close they were to the fighting. There were no enemy fighters visible, but maybe that had to do with the squadrons of skeets protecting the dropships as they continued to come down in an unending stream of reinforcements.

Rio pulled off his sniper rifle and poked it through his lookout post’s shield, with the protective energy reforming around the barrel. He used the zoom and his vantage point up high to scan the area in the direction he saw some of the mechs moving. A lot of the view was broken building, but several long gaps gave him miles worth of view, and in one of those breaks he saw additional mechs engaged with some type of enemy.

Rio blinked, realizing that they must have been set down in another group, and his was here merely as supply support. That was fine by him, he was happy to help in any way, but he wondered where exactly the enemy was and why he couldn’t see any fighters in the sky.

Then his scope caught a bit of motion in closer, and he adjusted the zoom back to the ruins around the base where he caught the motion again, seeing a waving hand in the building debris more than half a mile away. He sighted in on it, seeing a Human-like figure, but one with fluorescent skin that shown a dull green/purple.

Feathering the barrel every so carefully he zoomed in again and got a decent look at the person’s face, seeing what looked like burn marks on the left half, but he confirmed that it had a head, two arms, and a torso that appeared to fit inside the pictures he’d seen of Protovic armor.

“Nemmal, comm on,” he said, using the voice commands so he could keep both hands on the rifle and keep his eye on the individual, who was continuing to wave furiously. Once the comm activated he used eye line commands and blinks to highlight a direct frequency to the commando tagged as the base commander.

“I have contact with what I think is a Protovic native. He’s wearing no armor and waving at us from the rubble.”

“Where?”

In response, Rio synced his rifle’s scope to his HUD and laid down a waypoint on the battlemap.

10

The Protovic survivor and four others found nearby were brought into the Star Force base and quickly interrogated. Fortunately some of the commandos could speak the trade language, for Rio knew only 50 or so words, which he didn’t deem sufficient to make first contact with an alien. He stayed at his post, but kept glancing back inside at the Protovic, for they were the first non-Humans he had ever seen.

They wore clothing that appeared metallic, but by the way it moved he figured it was just shiny cloth. It had holes in it, on each of the five they had brought in through the gate, two of which were still outdoors within the courtyard created by the four base walls, while the other three had been taken inside one of the buildings which Rio knew to be a medical station. The two outside were Human height, but aside from their glowing flesh their eyes stood out, even at a distance. They literally burned neon purple, making their allies look altogether freaky.

He didn’t let his attention linger on them for long, for he had a perimeter to watch. There were other commandos on the wall at various points, some behind heavy weapons batteries, and all were entrusted to safeguard this tiny bit of Star Force territory on the planet. Already one mechwarrior had returned…missing her mech. She’d returned on foot and taken shelter inside, looking overly haggard. Rio didn’t have a line of sight on where the fighting was taking place at present, but every now and then he’d see a bit of it as weaponsfire passed through the gaps in the rubble.

After a couple of hours another commando came up and relieved him, with Rio leaving his sniper rifle in the lookout post for the other to use, seeing that he carried none. With his other weapons locked onto his back rack he sat down on the inner ledge of the wall and pivoted his butt around, dropping off until he caught his hands and hung on the inside for a moment to kill his momentum, then he let go and dropped several meters to the ground.

His feet hit and he absorbed the impact as he’d done in training hundreds, if not thousands of times before. Normally he would have had to roll out of it to bleed the last bit of compression off, but the gravity here was a bit below normal, allowing him to stick the landing and walk it off into the building cluster, with the ‘ground’ he was striding across being a synthetic compound designed to give slightly, but able to support a mech’s weight without cracking.

There was a wide open area next to the wall, well wide enough for a mech to walk through, then there were the buildings mounted on top of the ‘ground’ that held numerous support lines…power, sewage, water, comm…not to mention the plasma that fed the corner turrets, which was produced in a generator in the interior, allowing the turrets to pivot about more freely without all that mass weighing them down.

When Rio crossed into the pedestrian walkways in between the single and two story buildings he caught a glimpse of the Protovic pair as they entered a doorway ahead of him. His eyes weren’t failing him before…their skin was actually glowing, visible even in the daylight.

He walked by the building they’d entered, throwing a glance inside as he passed, then he headed for the barracks, only to get stopped on the way there by another camo green armored soldier.

“Rio, you up for some action?” Dravic asked.

“Always,” he answered the level 23 commando.

“We’ve spotted some skirmishers in the rubble. I’m making a running patrol through some of the areas the spotters can’t see. Mission is to kill and/or flush them out, as well as recon the area to see how many are out there. Our Protovic friends seem to think they were sent to hunt them down, not us.”

“We going underground?”

Dravic shook his head. “Not worth the effort. If they’re down there, and come up, then they’re our problem.”

“What about the shield?”

“It’ll be raised enough to give the wall guards firing lines.”

“How many of us?”

“Just you and me…if you can keep up?”

Rio pulled his plasma rifle off his back. “Lead on.”

Dravic didn’t waste any more time talking and took off at a jog through the buildings, then accelerated up into a decent run when they hit the exposed ring just inside the wall. Rio stayed with him easy enough, knowing the tricky part was going to be navigating the debris…but if he was only following it shouldn’t be a problem, even in armor, because there weren’t going to be any long clearings to get up to top speed in.

The double doors in the south wall ground open partway, just enough for the pair to slip out, then they closed again as the commandos ran single file out and over the mound of dirt/debris that the dozers had pushed out to clear the base plain. Once over that Rio followed the more experienced commando out and down behind a section of round building that had once been a tower, crossing under the top half that was laying across their path, leaving a small triangular opening for them to pass through.

Almost immediately after crossing under, Rio saw Dravic fire off a quick shot, downing a target that the pair then ran after. They hesitated only slightly as they passed it, confirming that the small alien was dead, with a plasma burn on its rounded chest. It had a flat head that made it look like it was wearing a decorative halo, with four eyes spread across it on the front half, giving it considerable lateral vision.

Two arms and two legs made it a biped, but more than that Rio didn’t have time to learn. The pair moved on for another five seconds before two more of them came into view, then bolted…with the second one firing a tiny spec of white plasma back at Dravic that was absorbed by his armor’s shields.

The little things moved fast, and Dravic picked up his pace into full pursuit mode, with Rio struggling just to keep up. He had the advantage of only having to match the other’s steps rather than choose them, so he managed to stay within two meters of his partner as they chased the pair of aliens further south before they suddenly turned to the east.

Dravic winged one, with it limping behind enough that he was able to finish it with another pair of shots on the run. Rio jumped over its corpse as they kept after the other, then a few steps later Dravic was covered in little white flashes as the two of them ran into an ambush. On reflex both commandos went evasive, with them parting ways. Rio went right and Dravic went left, with both of them staying on the run and flanking around the dozen or so aliens trying to line up a decent shot that didn’t involve taking a lot of hits to their shields…which weren’t all that strong to begin with.

Rio got there first and pumped two blue streaks into the closest one, realizing after the fact that one would have been enough to take it down. They were wearing clothing, not armor, and the plasma burned deep into their small bodies, knocking them out of commission rather easily.

The others peppered him with plasma as he ducked behind cover, then Dravic came out the other side and hit them from behind, killing two before he ducked out of sight behind a broken wall segment.

Rio came back out and shot another, then charged forward, accepting several shots to his shields as he closed range and got inside the small crater and kicked one of the aliens back into another pair, bowling them down from the melee as he pumped out plasma shots to the others still standing, with Dravic joining him a moment later.

Rio’s shields went down and he took three plasma hits to his armor before the aliens were all killed. He inspected the damage, finding the melty spots being superficial only. Their plasma pistols didn’t carry a lot of damage…unless you were caught outside your armor, in which case they’d be plenty lethal.

Dravic raised a warning finger after putting an extra shot into one of the bodies that he felt wasn’t completely out of the fight yet.

“Patience,” he counseled. “Don’t let your shields be taken down unless absolutely necessary. You don’t know how long you’ll have to make do with that set of armor before you can get a replacement, and even though those are small marks, they add up over time.”

“Noted,” Rio said, realizing his mistake.

“Come on. If there are more pockets it’ll be run and gun. Let the snipers eat them up.”

“Go,” Rio agreed, dropping in behind the commando as they made their way up the east side, coming across several individuals and killing about half of them. The others either fled or chased after them, and Rio could hear the occasional lachar blast behind him as the aliens crossed into the base’s firing lines.

He didn’t look back to see if they were hit or not, for that wasn’t his role here and it would slow him down. They were meant to flush them out, which meant eyes forward at all times.

The pair hit another pocket on the north side, this one larger than the last, and it seemed that the aliens were slowly gathering around the base, possibly to assault it, or maybe just being attracted to the action. If they were out here to exterminate surviving Protovic, then maybe they didn’t have an overall plan, in which case it was good that they were getting to them first and forcing the issue.

Plus, the more of them they killed, the more Protovic might survive.

Rio got more than a dozen kills by the time they finished their long zigzaggy circle around the base, coming back up to the south entrance and entering the same way they had come out…through a small slit in the doors, but this time the shields remained partially down, or rather ‘up.’ They were deployed over top of the base, but didn’t extend all the way to the ground, ending just above the wall so the snipers could continue taking out targets of opportunity.

“Hold up,” Dravic said once they were inside, proceeding to walk around Rio inspecting his armor. “Not too bad. Do you have full shield strength? One of the gashes is close to an emitter.”

Rio checked his HUD. “I’m reading full power, and all emitters are green.”

Dravic nodded. “Get to the maintenance building and have a tech put some patches on those holes while we’ve got the chance. And other than being a little bold, you did well keeping up. This was your first live firefight?”

“Yeah it was,” Rio admitted.

“Live and learn, commando,” he said, punching the center of Rio’s chest with the side of his fist, which bounced off the active shield matrix.

“One thing,” Rio asked as the other started to walk away. “What do we call those things?”

“They’re called Aronsic.”

“No nickname?”

“This is the first time Star Force has engaged them. You have a suggestion?”

“Well, they kind of remind me of Lord of the Rings.”

Dravic stared at him for a moment. “Hobbits?”

“Yeah…that’s what I was thinking, anyway.”

“Makes sense. No guarantee it’ll stick though,” he said, getting on his comm. “How many more Hobbits have we got roaming around?”

“Several,” one of the wall guards answered on the communal comm that Rio and the others could listen in to. “It looks like they’ve been spread out across or beneath the debris and are starting to converge on the base. No telling how many are out there…and I like the name, by the way.”

“Rio’s idea. If they start accumulating too much, let me know and we’ll make another shakeout run.”

“Copy.”

Dravic pointed at Rio, then at a particular building. “Get going. I want you ready for the next go around.”

Rio smiled inside his helmet, then jogged off towards the maintenance building.

16 kilometers to the northwest Kip watched a mech engagement ongoing via the Tassadar’s bridge hologram in delay as some of the jumpships in orbit around Eshwan transmitted the battlemap data across the system to the trailblazer’s flagship as it was stationed in a null orbit far from any planet or moon, waiting for a target to ambush as other warships were poking around the system trying to find the Skarron fleet. He watched as the Metal Gear neos, madcats, and thors fought with three plump, six-legged walkers, seeing that the enemy truly wasn’t going down very fast at all.

But at the same time they weren’t giving much return fire. Already an analysis of the battle data from every engagement was being processed by the command crews on the warships, with a weapon map and strength assessment for what they were tagging as a Type 4 walker showing on a side hologram. The ungainly thing had a fat rear end, almost like a giant tick, that was covered in small plasma ports…but with overlapping fire they were able to rack up considerable damage, and combined with the thick hull armor the Type 4 was taking three of their mechs to take down.

But going down it was. There were two stars of Metal Gears, 10 mechs in all, taking on the three Skarron Type 4s, each of which stood twice as tall as the neos when it was laying on the ground, and rising higher when its legs engaged and lifted its bulk up. The front end was tapered, which Kip recognized as a way to get the lateral plasma ports, which he guessed were all fed by a single internal generator, to align into a narrow forward arc where they could aim and fire on the same target simultaneously, similar to the way Star Force’s original battleship design allowed, based off the Star Destroyer model.

The Metal Gears recognized it too, because they were using their superior mobility to keep out of that arc and hit it from the flanks, chewing up a couple of spots on the armor in an attempt to eventually break all the way through. Missiles appeared to have greater effect on the armor, far more so than they should have versus the plasma cannons…which told him that these things had been designed to be resistant to plasma, which almost every race used in some fashion. It was the most common weapon, coming in many designs, so it was understandable that the Skarrons had predicated their defense against it.

Trouble was, missiles weren’t that easy to come by, meaning engaging these things was going to eat up a lot of ammo unless they could find another way to do it. Unfortunately the mechs currently engaged didn’t have maulers. He guessed those would have more effect, but he was going to have to wait to see how that played out.

Suddenly a projectile shot out from one of the Skarron walkers, followed by a tether that connected it to a madcat’s leg. Kip zoomed in on the hologram, seeing a claw grip wrapping around the mech leg just before the Skarron pulled and knocked the Metal Gear mech off balance. It tipped over and fell onto its port missile box, crunching in the side as the Type 4, unbelievably, reeled in the mech like it was a fish on the end of a line.

Kip’s eyes went wide even as a Neo came in and shot the tether twice with both its arm-mounted plasma cannons, severing the connection and allowing the madcat to start to get back up on its feet. The Neo walked over and used its hands to pry the claw off the leg, breaking one of tines in the process, with Kip still not believing that the Skarron walker had enough mass/torque to yank a madcat off its feet…meaning that that thing was far heavier and stronger than it looked.

And it was the second smallest of the 5 types the enemy had in the field. His forces had been ordered to engage the smaller ones on the flanks of the enemy lines and leave the bigger ones for later, hopefully once he got back from hunting down the enemy fleet. He had to be present to do that, for tracking down and successfully engaging an enemy insystem when they didn’t want to be found was next to impossible. Paul and the other naval experts had been continually experimenting and upgrading their equipment to make such things easier, but Kip knew this was going to require a trailblazer’s touch…but so would the major ground combat, meaning he needed to be in two places at once.

He typed out an order to send to the Metal Gears, indicating that they shouldn’t engage the enemy mechs with less than a star against each, and to wait to engage the Type 3s and larger until he returned. Right now the Protoss mechs weren’t even to their engagement points, for they were locking down various facilities in the line of the enemy advance and preparing to make a stand to delay the Skarrons and buy time for evacuation convoys moving the locals out.

That put both Clans on opposite sides of the enemy, with the intention being to force them to split their forces. If they didn’t one Clan was going to have an opening to exploit, and right now it seemed the Skarrons were more eager to go after the Metal Gears, something that he needed to attend to right now.

He zoomed out to the main battlemap and across to the Protoss landing zones, picking one that was already well established and ordering a series of raids forward into Skarron territory…but harassment only. Kip wanted to get their attention and take down a few of their walkers, but not get into a full-on engagement. Fortunately their ground troops were slow as hell, and would give the Clans the time they needed to maneuver the coming assaults into positions of their choosing.

“Kip, we have contact,” the Tassadar’s Captain said, interrupting his ground campaign holo and sending it off to the side as a naval system map replaced it. “Five ships in low orbit around the 8th planet’s innermost moon.”

“Have they detected our presence?”

“If they have they aren’t moving yet.”

Kip nodded, tagging several of his own warships on the map, wanting those to converge on the target along with the Tassadar at the same moment. “Let’s go say hi.”

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Table of Contents

Allegiance

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Augmentation

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Backstab

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Origin

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Foothold

- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Death Knell

- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Ascension

- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Insurrection

- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Psionics

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Recalibration

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Aquatics

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Mastermind

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Eviction

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Deceit

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Paradigm

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Knighthood

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Scruples

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Termination

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Unification

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10

Commando

- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10